What If

I've been thinking, what if we have lives in order to experience just one moment. Or two, or three. I'm saying, what if most of our life is mostly filler, and only a few moments are really meaningful. 

I know one moment that I would like to change. It happened when I was about 12 years old. Maybe I can be partially forgiven, for being so young and unworldly, and for taking bad advice from someone I trusted. Now it's in the distant past, my distant past, and the person who gave me the bad advice is long dead. I still, and probably always will, blame myself for acting on bad advice.

Most of our life is mush. Hundreds of small choices, decisions, words, and random thoughts every day. What should I order for lunch?—do I drive this road or that road?—do I perform that chore Thursday or Friday? Those moments pass by and we don't remember most of them. But now and then, we do something that is life-changing. We change our life, we change someone else's life, we change both of our lives. And it can be something small and simple that does it. A sentence—just a few words.

There are a few small things I'd like to take back, to undo. Now I'm wiser. It's too late to undo the damage, but at least I try to be more careful and I try not to repeat the missteps. But sometimes we don't know we are making a mistake until after we've made it, and then the damage is done, the pain is inflicted, the wound becomes a scar. Though it's too late to undo, I'm wiser for it. 

Maybe out there somewhere, someone is thinking of me, thinking of some interaction from long ago, and wishing they could undo it. Probably not, but—maybe. If I could talk to that person, I would say, "Learn from it and let it go." Though letting go is the hardest part.

Dr. SaxLove

When I began writing this blog, I had lots of time. Now it seems like there is always something that needs to be done. Every morning, I get up with the intention to write a blog post, but then...

For example, today I was going to write a blog when I heard Nuria call to me, "Look at this—there's water all over the floor."

She was at the kitchen and I went to look. Sure enough, the floor was covered with water. It was coming from the refrigerator. I checked and determined that the plastic hose going from the water valve to the icemaker had a loose connection and water was no longer going to the icemaker. Now it was going to the hardwood floor.

I went to Home Depot to buy a compression nut with a new insert fitting and compression sleeve and I came back and installed them onto the icemaker switch. But due to the long passage of time since I had done this kind of home repair, I made a mistake. So I had to go back to Home Depot and buy another kit: compression nut, fitting, and sleeve. 

I installed the kit, connected the water line, and turned on the water. There was no leakage of water, which is a very good sign, but I won't know if the icemaker is working for a few more hours. The fridge was unplugged briefly, so the icemaker is starting at the beginning of its cycle, which might be 90 minutes, or might be 180 minutes. It might also be 12 hours if the icemaker engineers assumed the fridge was at room temperature when it was powered on. 

This took half the day. In the middle, we stopped at Wendy's for lunch, which seems to get worse every time I eat there. This time the drink machine was broken; there were no napkins; there was no ketchup. The kitchen staff took care of the problems, but the problems shouldn't be there. I've written about Wendy's at least six times previously. Hello, Wendy's management, where are you? To be fair, I've written about other fast food restaurants. Wendy's is not alone in its lack of good quality control.

I've got some good sax jazz music playing now. It played through dinner and it played while I wrote this blog. It's still playing. It's on a three hour loop. I cast the video and sound to my big-screen TV. I love watching the fire as the music plays and I hope others enjoy it.

The song of the day is Mellow Smooth Jazz Saxophone by saxophonist, composer, and recording artist Dr. SaxLove (Mark Maxwell). Enjoy!

Car Status

My lady friend, Nuria, bought insurance for her newly-purchased Toyota yesterday. Her car insurance cost much more than mine, though I purchased my Jeep in that far-off time called Long Ago. I've had the same insurance company and insurance policy for many years. Nuria hasn't owned a car for the past ten years, so the insurance company made her pay higher premiums. For example, for Nuria's car, a 2009 Toyota, collision insurance would cost over $700 per month. So she declined to buy it. 

We went to Richmond today and picked up the car. That sounds much easier than it really was. First we found some scratches on it and requested they be touched up. Then the paint had to dry for a while. There was much paperwork to be read and signed. All of this took a while. We went out to lunch while the paint dried. Then I drove the car (and Nuria) home in heavy I-95 traffic (again). The car looks like this (although this isn't the actual car; hers has a darker color, but you get the idea.
 

We rolled into my backyard just ahead of a thunderstorm that brought a lot of rain, so the car got a cleansing off of the interstate dirt and grit. I tinkered with the dashboard controls a little, locating where important switches might be (such as headlights and wipers) but I went into the house as the rain began. It's Nuria's car, anyway, so she needs to find where everything is located, and she will. She can be quite tenacious when she wants to be.

For the curious, my 1995 Jeep looks exactly like this one:

I bought it in 1998. I used to park it on the street in front of my house, but after somebody smashed the driver's side window one night, I began keeping it in my garage, and I'm sure that has prevented a lot of sun damage. For all its years, it still looks good. It has a 220hp V8 with AWD, I drive it fairly gently, but if the situation calls for it, the Jeep can boogie. It's nice to have that horsepower and AWD in my back pocket. You never know when you might have to move fast! 

"What's the difference between 4WD and AWD?" I hear you asking. 4WD (four wheel drive) can be turned on and off and it uses a center differential to split power to the front and rear differentials, 50/50). AWD (all wheel drive) is always on and it uses a transfer case to split power to the front and rear differentials, and it is able to send more power to the differential that needs it. So, for example, if a rear wheel loses traction, the front wheels get more power. 

I've written far more about cars than I intended. It's 10PM and I'm going to hit the Publish button and think seriously about going to bed. Or something. Have a good Friday, y'all.

July 4

Today is Monday. Last week, Nuria decided that she needs a car. I think the thought has been percolating in her brain for a while, and now it must be acted upon. So we drove to a used car dealership in Richmond. She knew what she wanted and how much she wanted to pay, so the deal didn't take long to accomplish. But the Richmond traffic was enough to drive a sane person irrational. Of course, it was "Friday before July 4th," which didn't occur to me at the time and certainly contributed to the high volume of traffic on the highways. Anyway, at the dealership a car was selected and a down payment was paid, and now we have to wait while they do the paperwork and detail the car. She has to get insurance on the car, and the dealer has paperwork to do with the DMV, so we have to go back to get the car. Thursday is the target date.

Nuria intends to pay for the car, but transferring money from her bank in Costa Rica to her bank in the US is complicated and involves high fees. So when we pick up the car, the plan is for me to pay for the car now and Nuria will repay me with funds that she transfers here from Costa Rica by steamship. I've got my fingers crossed that there won't be too many hiccups along the way.

Nuria made July 4th decorations for the front porch.The porch's cast-iron railings are wound with strings of red, white, and blue tinsel stars, and there are decorations hanging from the flag holder. I have a flag that fits in the holder, but I think it would simply rip the flag holder off the brick. It's an old thing, made of very weathered wood, and I could probably rip it off the brick with my fingers.

I think Nuria, though she comes from Costa Rica, is probably more USA-patriotic than 95% of our own citizens. I don't know why that is, but maybe it's because she comes from a foreign land, and has lived there, and therefore she can see the difference between the two countries, whereas most Americans have no other country to compare to America. Although I never hang July 4th decorations on my porch, I always think about doing it. Does thinking about it make me semi-patriotic?  No, it probably doesn't do anything at all except waste time.

We've been watching reruns of Lost, a TV series that I saw back in 2004-2010, and even then I didn't like it enough to watch more than maybe a third of the series. Nuria seems to like it, and I put it into the "OK" category, so we kill time watching TV and eating popcorn and pizza until we find something better to kill time doing. Like, maybe I can convince Nuria that driving the lawn tractor all over the yard is really a lot of fun and she should try it.

Sure, that sounds do-able. In my dreams.

Life and Death

Some people believe in Life after Death. They imagine variations of what it's like. But no one actually knows what happens or even if consciousness continues after death. 

Death doesn't bother me. I don't feel sad for people who die. After all, they've only gone to a place that I'll be going to as well. I'll be going to that same place, unless you believe in heaven and hell, and then all bets are off. But there are excellent reasons to think heaven and hell are fairy tales. The existence of consciousness after death, that's something else, and there are excellent reasons to think that that is real.

I've had a "different" life, I think, from most Americans. Some of the differences I've experienced stem from the panic disorder that ruled my life from about 1967 until I found a medicine that really helped me. (I wrote about that part of my life in a post titled Panic.) That period lasted about 40 years. Although I blogged about it, there's nothing I can say or write that would give you a real idea of what panic disorder is like ... how much it disrupts and tortures one's existence.

We all have paths, and I believe we all have many paths and many lifetimes. We return to this existence to learn things that only living a human life can teach us. Our bodies wear out because each stage of life has it's lessons. Young people can't learn the lessons that the elderly learn. Young and old are like two different creations. 

If I die tonight, I'll miss doing some things that I'd like to do. But I don't think I'll miss life on earth. I think I'll experience that again and again and again. In other words, I'll do it over and over until I get it right. And then I won't need to incarnate in a human life. But I'll probably incarnate as something in some existence that I can't imagine. I think we all will do that. Call it Heaven if you want, but you'll stay, rest up, reflect, and then ... you'll do it all over again. 

Believe me or don't believe me, it doesn't matter at all. Reality is what it is, and wishing won't change it.

Beast Mode Sleep

I slept poorly last night. It happens often, but some nights are worse than others. Nuria told me that last night I kept raising my left arm and leg. And I kept turning over and over repeatedly. At one point she asked me what was wrong and I replied, "I was dreaming." I remember telling her that.

In the past I've thrown my arms up so forcefully that my hands struck the wall forcefully. I've lashed out with my leg and kicked the iron radiator beside my bed with my bare foot. Believe me, that hurt! I've literally thrown myself out of bed and onto the hardwood floor. One night when I slept alone, I awoke to find my bedroom trashed. The lamp beside my bed was on the floor, my pillow was on the floor, the trash can was turned over, my blanket was on the floor on top of the trash can, etc. To say my sleep is restless would be an understatement. Last night my restlessness was bad enough that Nuria got out of bed at 2AM and lay down on the living room sofa in an attempt to get some sleep.

I think I've always slept this way. It's not restless sleep, it's violent sleep. My brain must be in turmoil about something. Nothing comes to my mind during the day when I'm awake. But when I go to sleep, my unconscious brain goes into overdrive.

My mother and father slept in separate beds and I think I know why. I hope it doesn't come to that but I am, after all, my father's son.

Storm Outage

I'm back online. My little city had a hell of a storm. The weatherman said that the winds were 80 mph (128 km/h) and 70,000 people lost electricity. I was one of those 70,000 without electric power. No TV, no computer, no radio, no room lights, and after 12 hours, no hot water. The refrigerator wouldn't run. The electric stove/oven and the microwave oven wouldn't run. 

When night came Nuria and I used candles, and I had a battery-powered fluorescent-tube lamp. When we went to bed I turned off the fluorescent lamp and let the candles light the bedroom. It was a very soft light, and eventually it burned so low that I snuffed out the candles.

(Photo left) A fallen tree blocks a road around the corner from my house. You can see the electric wires tangled in it. That's the mess that cut off electricity to my house and to a number of other houses. I lost power at about 4 PM on the 22nd and power was restored at about 5 PM on the 23rd. That was a very long 25 hours! Sandwiches and trips to a nearby fast-food restaurant kept the situation tolerable.

This photo (right) shows the top third of an electric utility pole. In the US, treated wooden poles are commonly used for both telephone and electric power. When the tree fell on the wires, the top of the pole snapped off and landed in the street. It's not an uncommon sight after a strong storm, especially a hurricane. 

I would imagine sights like these were scattered around the city. I'm glad the outage lasted only a day. I've had outages after a hurricane that lasted three days. And I'm glad this event happened in June. When it happens in mid-winter it's called an ice storm. There's not much worse than waking up in a cold house with no electricity/no heat with the outside temperature at 18°F. It's happened to me. I've blogged about it.

Smart People Dumb People

There are two basic kinds of people. There are smart people and there are stupid people. Now this is painting a picture with a broad brush, because obviously people can be divided into many groups. But broadly speaking, we all know there are smart people and there are dumb people. Both groups think they are smart. The difference is that smart people make allowance for being wrong; they know that it's possible, so they listen carefully to arguments from both sides. Whereas, dumb people insist they are always right. They aren't smart enough to recognize when they might be wrong.

In fact, there is a name for this phenomenon. It's called the Dunning–Kruger effect and I've blogged about it previously here. There is a reason that I am bringing up this subject again.

I'm not a very political person but I will say this about the current political climate: it has really put the Dunning-Kruger effect on display. There are many people willing to die for their "cause" when it is obvious from listening to them that they, to put it politely, are basing their decisions on incomplete or faulty information. They don't have all the facts and they don't want to have all the facts. It's like the old saying that goes, "My mind is made up; don't confuse me with the facts." These kind of people have always been around. I'm just surprised to learn that there are so many of them today.

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
—Albert Einstein

"He took over anger to intimidate subordinates, and in time anger took over him."
—Milan Kundera

"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."
—George Carlin

"Never get into an argument about a subject you know little about."
—VirtualWayne

Highway Lesson

There are YouTube videos where you can watch drivers flee from the police. Sometimes they get away. Usually, they're caught. But what is it about the human brain that makes a driver continue fleeing when his car has four flat tires and he can't drive faster than 20 mph, there are a half dozen police cars fifty feet behind him, and a police helicopter is circling above him? Does he (it's always a he) still think there is a chance he might escape?

How does this end? Usually like this: a police car gets in front of the escaping driver and stops. The perpetrator then goes around the police car. So the police car goes around the perp again and stops again. Then the perp does a U-turn and drives through the group of police cars behind him and continues down the road but going the wrong way now. All of this takes place in slow motion because, remember, the perp's car has four flat tires.

It eventually ends when the perp gets caught (or killed) by a gaggle of police officers. I'm not making any kind of philosophical statement here. But if there is any lesson to be had, it is this: sometimes it's in your best interest to know when to quit.

Death

It's Monday evening. Today, I went to the lab and gave samples of bodily fluids so that the technicians could analyze them and tell my doctor just how far from normal my body is, which is what they routinely do. My body has been out of whack my entire life. My first blood test was at age 18, or maybe 21, and I remember my triglycerides being about 300. Or maybe they were 400. Either number is very high. But they've been higher. I have a lab test where my triglycerides were 462. And I have a test where they were 639. A normal test is less than 150. 

My heart has a-fib (atrial fibrillation). It's an abnormal rhythm that can cause a blood clot in the heart that then travels to the brain and causes a stroke. I take two prescription meds for the a-fib. And yet, I still have a-fib. So why am I taking the two meds? 

My cardio doctor wants me to add another med to the mix. He wants me to take Xarelto, also known as revaroxaban. $800 cash, $500 with insurance. That's for three months. So...$2000 per year, until I die. Of course, the price goes up every year. The problem is, I have other, more fun things I'd like to spend that extra $2000 on doing. So, as is often the case, I'm ignoring my doctor's advice. It's a gamble, of course. But every day I get out of bed is a gamble. I could spend that money on having fun. I could spend it on doing good things. Or I could spend it on extending the number of days that I'm not having fun. And even those extended days aren't guaranteed.

My father had a stroke. It interfered with his hand-eyes coordination. The doctor put him on warfarin, a drug so dangerous that users have to get a blood test every week or two to adjust the amount they're taking. Then he had another stroke, even though he was taking the warfarin daily and getting his blood tested routinely. Then he had a third stroke. He survived all his strokes only to die from lymphoma (specifically: septic shock caused by the treatment for lymphoma). 

I think my mother probably died from a stroke. She was found alive but unconscious and never woke up. She had been in good physical health.

We will all die from something, sometimes when we're least expecting it, and sometimes when we've been waiting for it for months. I read a book in which the author made the claim that death is our final rescuer. When we're trapped in a body that is suffering, that is in great pain, and the doctors can do nothing, death will come to us and end our suffering. When no one can help us, death will help us.

But I know that death is nothing to fear. It's like that old saying, "Death is the best part of living—that's why they save it for last."