Dry January Update

I mentioned a few blog posts ago that I took up the Dry January challenge—giving up alcohol for the month of January. I stumbled coming out of the gate. The first three days were fine, but on the 4th and 5th days I drank alcohol again. But then I stopped again. Today is the 21st and I haven’t drunk alcohol since the 5th. I want to at least make it to the end of January, and if I can do that, I may never drink alcohol again. At least that’s the plan.

I began drinking nightly to get to sleep. I had very bad insomnia, lying awake all night until the sun came up. So I was self-medicating. But now I’m not drinking, and last night I didn’t bother going to bed. I wasn’t sleepy at all, and I felt filled with energy. I watched a little TV then made two or three videos and published them to YouTube. At 4 AM I went out to the garage and took the battery charger off my Jeep. (The battery had gotten so run down that the engine would barely crank, so I had put the charger on it at 10:30 AM the previous morning.) I checked the oil and added half a quart of 10W-30, which is all I had on hand. The engine coolant reservoir was low on antifreeze, but I couldn’t find the antifreeze I had on hand so that was postponed. At 4:30 AM I pulled on a hoodie and walked down the street to my friend Butch’s house. The air temperature was 21°F and a brisk wind made the temperature feel like 10°F.

I spent two hours visiting with Butch. I felt energized and not at all sleepy or tired. When I walked back home, the night felt even colder. The temperature always falls as sunup nears.

Around 10:30 AM I decided to drive to Food Lion. I walked to the garage and got into my Jeep, inserted my key into the ignition, and turned it to Start. The engine cranked like the Jeep had a new battery! I drove to the store, bought what I needed, and returned home. The car’s battery performed like new on both engine starts, going to the store and returning.

Now it’s almost 4:30 PM. I haven’t slept in at least 42 hours and I’m beginning to feel fatigued. I don’t care when I sleep, be it day or night. I don’t care whether I get 8 hours, or 6 hours, or just 3 or 4 hours sleep. It only matters to me that I sleep a few hours each day. If I can do that, I’ll be satisfied.

It’s 4:30 on this January afternoon. Dusk will fall soon. The sun will set today at 5:21 PM. By 6:30 PM the sky will be dark. Maybe then I’ll lie down and try to get a few hours of rest.

Death Comes

My phone rang in the dark hours of the morning. The caller was the wife of a friend. My friend had been suffering from cancer for many months, and she called to tell me that he had just died. It was sad news, but his life had essentially ended weeks earlier and had become only suffering. He’s gone now, and I will miss him. But we’re all terminal, every one of us.

He (and his wife) lived in another country, so I won’t be attending his funeral. But I’m not really good at handling notices of a friend or loved one’s passing. It’s awkward. I feel there is something special I should say. I feel if I could find the right words, I could lift some of the grief from the other person. But I don’t know what those words would be. I told her I was sorry to hear of his death but I thought, given his suffering, it was also a good thing for him. I thanked her for calling me. I told her if she needed to talk, I would be here for her.

I’ve been down this road before. Grandparents, parents, close friends, and yes, even the death of a beloved pet can cause grief. It’s a wound that requires time to heal, as all wounds do. That’s a cliché, of course, but it’s still true. When you’re not a close relative of the departed, you feel like a bystander. You’re watching events from the “outside” and feel unable to be of any help.

My belief is that death is not the end of our journey. It is a “passing over” from this world to another existence. I have read dozens of books about the experiences of people who were clinically dead and were revived, and many of those people, after their near-death experience, recounted an amazing journey. For those people, the near-death experience was so powerful that it changed their lives in major ways. So I believe there is life after our bodies die. I believe, not because of religion, and not because of philosophy, and not because I want there to be life after death; I believe in an afterlife because of descriptions of it from thousands of people who went there. As a science-oriented person, I also understand that the evidence is anecdotal, meaning it cannot constitute proof, but for now it’s all we have so it will have to suffice.

WB and the Lexophiles

I have a longtime friend—I’ll call him WB—who always wants to debate politics. But if you debate him on any political subject, you’ll soon discover that by an amazing string of coincidences he is always right. He has always been right in the past and he will doubtless always be right in the future. I’ve debated him more times than I should have. If someone is never willing to concede a single point in a debate, sooner or later no one is going to debate that someone. What’s the point? It’s like talking to a telephone pole. You know “going in” that no matter what you say or how long you talk, that pole is not going to budge a millimeter in its position.

There’s an email going around with the title Lexophiles. It’s about the quirks of certain words in the English language. (If you haven’t seen it, you can find much of it here.) Most people find the email, at the least, amusing, and some people also find it thought-provoking about the English language. When I sent Lexophiles to WB, his reply was simply, “I think it’s more challenging to debate politics.”

Well by all means, WB, in the future let’s talk about things you and I find challenging. You enjoy politics, so we’ll discuss that subject. My favorite interest is quantum physics, so we’ll spend half our debates on that subject. I especially enjoy the topics of superposition, wave function, and wave function collapse. Speaking of which, do you prefer the Copenhagen Interpretation, the Bohm Interpretation, the Many Worlds Interpretation, the von Neumann Interpretation, or one of the several other interpretations of quantum physics? And speaking of wave function collapse, I’d like to discuss the role of the observer. How do you, WB, define the observer? Must the observer be a conscious entity or can it be a mechanism? If the observer is a mechanism, must the output of the mechanism be examined by a conscious entity in order to collapse the wave function? And how can an experiment conducted today change events that happened in the distant past? Can you explain Bell’s Theorem and the Bell inequality? But I’ll stop here lest we wander into the difficult parts of quantum physics. It’s a fascinating subject that I’ve studied for decades. It does help to have a good understanding of mathematics, so you’ll want to brush up on your differential calculus and integral calculus and linear algebra and matrix algebra. You know—the kinds of math you would expect to encounter in first and second year engineering classes.

Do you see the danger of only wanting to discuss and debate topics that you personally find challenging? Others may find those same topics deadly dull, or filled with conflicts that seem irreconcilable, while you simply brush all inconsistencies aside in order to “be right.” My experience is this: the more certain you are that you’re right, and the less willing you are to consider other points of view, the more likely you are to be wrong. There’s a divide in our country today, and it’s because there are two camps and each camp is very sure it is right and the other is wrong. Each camp believes that inasmuch as the other is wrong, there is no need to consider what they have to say.

So, WB, do we have a deal? Or perhaps, upon further reflection, you should stick to writing letters to the editor, and I’ll stick to my own studies of how reality works, and maybe we’ll both be more content.

Late Night

I was tired. I lay down on my bed a little before 8 PM. At 9:15 PM, I knew I wasn’t going to sleep, so I threw the covers off and put my feet on the floor. I turned on the bedside lamp. I was wearing sweatpants, so as I stood up, I grabbed my phone off the dresser and stuck it in my pocket. Immediately, I was notified of an incoming message. The sender was Linda asking if I was free to talk. Of course, I had to usher a giant mob of people out my front door. I didn’t even know most of them. I don’t know why they’re in my house, unless it’s the free booze I give to guests. Do you think there’s a connection?

Actually, I’m always “free” when I’m at home, unless I’m using the loo. Even then, I can text you. Or talk with you. I just won’t video chat with you. Not that you would ever want to see that. Trust me. I’ve seen me naked and it’s something that even I recoil from. Can you end a sentence with the word “from”? I seem to remember a rule about prepositions. According to Grammar Monster, you can. Thank you, Grammar Monster, for clarifying that.

But it’s late. The computer says 1:15 AM. Linda and I video-chatted for two hours. Then I got off the chat and washed about a week’s worth of dishes: sixteen plates, four glasses, one Mason-jar-glass, and a bunch of knives, forks, spoons, and steak knives. No, I never eat steak, but steak knives are useful for cutting sandwiches in half, which I sometimes do.

Now it’s 1:25 PM. You see how time flies for a blogger. One paragraph, four sentences, ten minutes.

I blogged previously about Dry January. Allow me to quote from it:

“It’s hard to say how long my Dry January will last. Might be 3 days, might be 3 weeks, might be 3 months.”

I was fairly prescient. My Dry January lasted 3 days. Then I ran headlong into the reason I drink: sleep. I started drinking alcohol at nighttime because I couldn’t sleep. You’re thinking: insomnia. Nuh-uh, it’s not your standard insomnia. I’m talking about not sleeping for days at a time. I lie in bed, awake all night until daylight. Night after night after night. It ends only when I drink alcohol before I go to bed. Imagine: you’re awake all day, and all night, and all the next day, and all the next night, and all day long the day after, and all night long the night after, and your doctor will not prescribe sleeping pills for you (because, you know: habit-forming), and you’re lying in bed wide awake and you know that a few drinks will put you to sleep, what do you do? What do you do?

The time is now 2 AM. I’ll go to bed soon. Will I sleep? I bloody well hope so. I’ve prepped my body with the appropriate amount of ethanol. If I don’t sleep tonight, I’ll go to the liquor store tomorrow and demand a refund.

Ralph

I have lost many people in my life. I lost my grandparents. I lost my father. I lost my mother. I lost friends. Soon, I will lose another friend. He is dying from cancer. His doctors have told him treatment is available but he has chosen to reject it. I will miss him, but this is a choice that every person must make. Of all the decisions we make in our lifetimes, how we end our lives must be the most personal decision.

One way that people end their lives is in poverty—on the streets. None of my friends need to end their lives in poverty. As long as I have a place to live, they will have a place to live. All they need to do is let me know. My home is their home. Of course, their liquor is their expense. I’ll pay their room and board, but not their whiskey tab.

So all of you know: If I have to, I’ll spend my bottom dollar to give you a place to live—on one condition: you must allow me to help you.

Dry January

I’m taking the Dry January challenge this month. Dry January began in the UK in 2013 (Alcohol Change UK) and quickly gained a lot of traction around the world. In  2019, 4 million people participated.

I like to enjoy a few drinks before I go to bed. But it’s become a nightly habit, and that’s not good. So I’m going to take a month off. I do something  similar anyway, from time to time. I’ll take a few days off now and then, and sometimes a few weeks off, from my nightly alcohol. I end up going back to those nightly drinks because they relax me and help me get to sleep. It’s easy to overdo them.

It’s hard to say how long my Dry January will last. Might be 3 days, might be 3 weeks, might be 3 months. If I go 3 months without alcohol, I probably won’t go back to drinking it. That would make my doctor happy. The alcohol is thumping my liver and causing my liver enzymes to go higher than they should be. They’re not terribly high, just elevated, but getting them back in the normal range would be good. I guess.

Why don’t I just take sleeping pills? Because when I take sleeping pills, weird stuff happens. I do things during the night that I don’t remember doing. It’s like living with an invisible roommate. You see evidence of their activity but you never seen the roommate. Like I said, weird stuff.

My body is sort of built for alcohol. For one thing, I never get hangovers. Not ever. Not that I’m complaining. But it’s probably time to slow down, and maybe stop. I’m not sure how to cope with things I see on the news if I stay sober. I guess I’ll just quit watching the news. The nightly news is enough to drive anyone to drink. Someone should create a news website with nothing but good news stories. In fact, it appears someone has. It’s called the Good News Network. How about that!

It’s now the wee hours of the morning, a little past 1:30 AM. I should probably hit the sack now or I’ll end up sleeping till noon tomorrow. Goodnight, and good luck to all of us taking the challenge.

New Year 2020

I intended to ponder the old year, and the old decade, in preparation for the new. But I had a little too much New Year’s Eve “cheer” to get into a pondering mood.

I got up at 8 AM and took my morning meds. I felt tired, so I returned to bed. I fell into and out of sleep several times, each time waking with the memory of a dream. Finally, I got out of bed and made myself a bacon and tomato sandwich. That, and a few peanut butter cookies, took the edge off my appetite.

New Year’s resolutions: I know that if we don’t change certain things in our lives, the universe will change them for us, and maybe not in the way we would have chosen. Lose weight. Exercise more. Eat healthier. Get out of the house more often. Do more house/yard work and less sitting in front of a computer screen. I know what needs to be done. It’s just a question of motivation. There is always that old nemesis called tomorrow lurking to kill our best intentions.

In 2019, I reconnected with a friend from a place I worked years ago. Her name is Linda. You can’t have too many friends. Friends thread themselves like warp and woof through the fabric of my life. When I think about my life, I think about friends I have known.

It’s 2 PM, time for a bit of lunch. I turned on the toaster oven. I have a Pollack fillet in the freezer; I’ll cook it and have coleslaw and potato salad with it. That will be my big meal for the day.

No more time for pondering. After lunch, I’ll do some cleaning and change the bed sheets. I’ll cut my hair (I’ve been cutting it myself for years) and take a shower. I’ll dress and go for a walk in the sunshine. I might walk around the nearby park. A good friend named Butch lives across from the park. His wife died and now he lives with his little black Shih Tzu named Lizzy. Sometimes her name is Lizzy-loo. She is always excited to see me and hops into my lap as soon as I sit down. Then she usually sneezes right into my face. Shih Tzu barely have any nose at all. It’s a man-made defect in the breed.

It’s five minutes until toaster-oven shutdown. Then I’ll let the fillet coast in the oven for another five minutes with the heat off. Then I’ll eat lunch and get my day started. Y’all have a Happy New Year! I’m going to give it my best shot. Till next time.

Home Free

Happy New Year! As I write this, the clock is just hours away from 12 AM on January 1, 2020—the first day of the new year and new decade for people who use the Gregorian calendar. There are about 40 calendars in use around the world, but it’s the Gregorian calendar that sets the 1st of January as the beginning of the year. And I bet a lot of people think there’s something special about January 1. Nope, the first day of the year is just a decision made by Julius Caesar’s calendar maker in 45 BC. January is named after the Roman god Janus, the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings. And now it’s time for that song. You knew it was coming.

The song of the day is Auld Lang Syne performed by a cappella group Home Free. (A version sung by Lea Michelle can be found here.)

Pneumonia Shots

I am writing this blog post as a public service. I have information on pneumonia shots that was not exactly easy to acquire. So I want to share it. If you don’t care about pneumonia shots, you’re welcome to read any of the previous 1,369 articles I’ve published here.

A few weeks ago I went for a routine visit to my doctor. During my visit, she asked me if I had gotten a pneumonia shot. I told her I had. I had gotten a Prevnar 13 shot a few years ago. It protects against 13 strains of bacteria. Then she asked if I had gotten the follow-up shot. I said, “There’s a follow-up shot?” That was news to me.

But indeed, there is a follow-up shot and it’s called Pneumovax 23. It protects against 23 types of pneumococcal bacteria. You’re supposed to get the second shot at least one year after the first shot.

The first thing I wanted to do was to verify that I had gotten the first shot. My memory can be flakey about medical issues. I called my primary insurance and asked them if a pneumonia shot was in my records. I was told it was not but, at that time of the evening, they didn’t have access to all my records. So I called again the next morning. I was able to verify that I had gotten the first pneumonia shot four years and one month ago.

I went to my pharmacy to get the follow-up shot, and the pharmacist told me that since the Prevnar 13 shot was so long ago, I needed to get it again, then wait a year before I got the second shot. That information just defied logic to me. Both shots are good for life. Why would I have to get another Prevnar 13?

I called my doctor’s office and I was told the same thing. Get another “first shot” and wait a year. Although the doctor and the pharmacist agreed that I should start over, it still defied logic to me. I didn’t believe it.

I went to another pharmacy and explained the situation. This pharmacist told me she didn’t think another Prevnar 13 shot was needed. I agreed. We discussed it and she finally took out her phone and went to the CDC website for prescribing information. She probably spent 10 or 15 minutes reading about the two shots before she found the relevant information. You’re supposed to wait a minimum of one year after the first shot, not wait exactly one year. In fact, the data collected by the CDC showed that the longer one waits before getting the second shot, the more effective the first shot becomes. So waiting 2 years is better than waiting 1 year, and waiting 3 years is better than waiting 2 years, and waiting 4 years is better than waiting 3 years. That’s as far as their data went. So I told the pharmacist, “Let’s go with the Pneumovax 23.”

And that’s what we did.

Christmas 2019 Part 2

After eating a tasty (that’s actually questionable) Christmas Slaw Dog for breakfast, I ate a second one for lunch. I spent most of the day at my PC. I connected with cousin Betty in St. Pete and video-chatted with CyberDave in Roanoke and with Linda in Roanoke and with Ralph in Costa Rica. I slowed long enough to nuke a frozen entrée mid-afternoon. And of course I wrote and published a blog post (the previous post) plus this second post. In between events, I watched some YouTube.

The day’s temperature got up to 55°F (from 25° at 8AM). There was a weak winter sun that brought little cheer. I do not have the words to express the ordinariness of this holiday. I know it wasn’t always thus. There was a time long ago when it was special. I have special memories of those Christmases.

For example, one Christmas when I was a teenager, my dad sent me out to get a Christmas tree. It was nighttime and he was drunk, so he didn’t want to go out himself. He gave me the keys to his big Buick Electra and I drove to a nearby Christmas tree stand. The man operating it was an off-duty cop. I selected a tree and popped open the Buick’s trunk (boot, if you’re a Brit). I had momentarily forgotten that dad was an alcoholic, and the trunk (or boot) held dozens of brown paper bags. Inside each bag was an empty Four Roses Whiskey bottle. I knew that, but I didn’t know what the cop thought. He said nothing, but loaded the tree into the Buick and I took it home. I told you I had special memories of Christmas.

Memories beget other memories, and the memory of the Four Roses bottles brings forth another memory. Dad was driving us on a country road, and he raised the whiskey bottle to his mouth and finished off its contents. He rolled down his window, cocked his drinking arm, and hurled the bottle toward the other side of the road. Unfortunately, the bottle didn’t clear the window, instead slamming into the vertical metal bar between the car window and the vent window, which acted like a powerful spring that propelled the bottle around the inside of the Buick like a rocket, ricocheting off various windows and panels until its momentum was gone. That was exciting.

And now it’s time to call it a day. I’ve got a routine doctor appointment in the morning, and no doubt she will quiz me about how I got a black eye. Should I tell the truth or make up a story? Would she believe a Christmas party champagne cork? Probably not.