🦃🦃🦃 Three Turkyes

A Thanksgiving Poem

Thanksgiving to be spent by my lonesome

One turkey was a young hen
She was beautiful and tender
One could never feel in a pen
Her busy life didn’t make her surrender

It’s happened for the last couple of years

The other one was a handsome young Tom
He was smart, tall and somewhat skinny
He was the only known bird who won
An athletic scholarship for cross-country

But Sasha and Daniel were awesome

The third turkey was old and tough
He was going to give you indigestion
His skiing misfortune was simply bad luck
He enjoys receiving and giving affection

They stuffed me with plenty of cheers!

A Change of Seasons

Courtesy of
https://www.rd.com

September is a great month for sports. Baseball’s pennant races are heating up and the excitement of the World Series is just around the corner. The NFL and College Football previews are mind-boggling and a great distraction for any arm-chaired quarterback getting a leg up on his buddies.

The beaches of Southern California are at their best. The throngs of tourists are gone. The waters of the Pacific are still warm and somehow seem cleaner and more inviting. It is a great time to perfect bodysurfing tucks or to just horse around on the boogie boards with the kids. If I am lucky, I may even squeeze in an epic ocean kayak paddle with my water-dog friend before the winter storms exile me to the snow of the mountains

When September rolls around, there really is only one sport that consumes me: Coaching my kids’ Soccer teams. There is the challenge of learning 25-odd names and faces and the quirks that go with them. There is the sense of accomplishment of organizing reluctant parents into a circle of friends who turn into rabid Soccer fans every Saturday. There is the joy of meeting previous team members and friends on the fields. There is the pride of winning games and the satisfaction of turning losses into lessons of sportsmanship. September means coaching Youth Soccer and it is always a magical time of the year.

I can sense the changing of the seasons. My Sunday mountain biking rides are getting more pleasurable. The unbearable heat of the summer is almost gone. Cool, overcast mornings are soon replaced with glorious sunny afternoons that intensify the great feeling of being in the outdoors. This September there is another change in the wind. It is not crisp like the autumn air. It is not radiant like the equinoctial Sun. But it is more palpable. It is easy to feel it in the horrific pictures replayed on the TV, in the disturbing headlines of the newspapers and in the strident chatter of the radio.

Something is changing. It is history itself. Like watching the images of the fall of the Berlin Wall or the failed anti-Gorbachev putsch that signaled the disintegration of the Soviet Union, I find myself hypnotized, with the clear perception that an important historical event is unfolding right before my eyes.

I cannot help but share in the collective feelings of outrage, apprehension, reflection and determination resulting from the events leading to the now christened “First War of the Century.” Pundits and talking-heads seem to have all the solutions and provide us with multiple scenarios of how the future might unfold. But nobody
knows; History is fraught with remarkable, unforeseen events. I do know one thing: Next September will be a great month for sports!

Originally written 18 years ago, before I discovered BlogSpot and WordPress.

The Run for the Roses

Courtesy of
https://www.kentuckyderby.com

In case you don’t know, the Kentucky Derby is also known as “The Run for the Roses.” Why? You see, the winning horse gets draped with this beautiful rose garland. And what a crazy horserace this year’s Run for the Roses was!

First of all, the track was a muddy mess, making the outcome more uncertain; The Triple Crown races —The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes— are for young horses only (3-year-olds, teenagers really), and most of them don’t have experience with muddy tracks. Second, it was won by a DQ; In all of 145 years of Kentucky Derby history this has never happened. If you had bet on Country House to Win you would have collected a cool +$132 on your $2 ticket (one usually gets cents on this kind of bets). Most people think Maximum Security was robbed (myself included). It was so crazy even the Donald got involved.

I have a longtime tradition to watch the Triple Crown races (and making personal bets) with Mik —That’s my nickname for my beautiful wife; it goes back to when we were dating: I learned her maiden name and mispronounced it as MacFerren; she promptly corrected me to MicFerren— We watched the race at one of our all-time favorite places, Stadium Brew while sipping mint juleps. I asked the pretty bartender to dial a couple of sports screens to the race, so we could watch it. The manager went one step further and turned all the TV’s to the Kentucky Derby, with sound, which is not usually done!

Someday, Mik and I will attend all the Triple Crown races. She has promised to wear an extravagant hat; All I have to do is to get hammered and lose exotic bets. [Insert emoticon or emoji here] © Mik and I, had also agreed that this year we wouldn’t have a Triple Crown winner before learning about this development.

By the way, I came across this video while watching sports documentaries, during my early-day warm-ups with one of my caregivers; Even if you don’t like horse racing, it’s well worth watching for its amazing story.

Open Letter to my Neurologist

Courtesy of
https://www.amazon.com

I was referred to a neurologist to get rid of an abdominal pain right on top of my bladder; I wear a catheter: I used to wear a supra-pubic and switched to a foley, hoping to get rid of the excruciating pain associated with changing it every three weeks. My bladder stoma didn’t heal properly and my urologist gave me a referral after treating me surgically.

I will not mention my neurologist’s name to protect his identity. However, the events described are real and have cost me much pain beyond the physical ones.

Instead of treating my abdominal pain, my neurologist decided to treat me for psychological problems (real or imagined [Insert emoticon or emoji here] ©) aided by the insecurities and anxieties of my wife. He proceeded to waste weeks of my life administering unnecessary tests and prescribing dangerous drugs; To this day I still suffer from my abdominal pain. Of course, the main party to be blamed for this situation, it’s really me; I should have done something about it right away. And I finally have.

At first, I was very happy to get off the valproic acid improperly prescribed by a psychiatrist that my wife took me to see, under false pretenses; In my frustration, I would become belligerent whenever she wasted my time and money and I could not do anything about it —Valproic acid is a medicine given to epileptics; its organic compound is related to the ‘cicuta‘, a poisonous plant used since ancient times to kill people. It is a dangerous drug!— Instead my neurologist prescribed Lexapro, which is what was originally prescribed by Craig Hospital when I suffered my skiing misfortune (It’s part of Craig Hospital’s protocol for all SCI patients).

I am not a crazy old coot and I did not stop taking these dangerous drugs cold turkey. I did my research to safely discontinue their use. I am not against taking medicines, if one suffers from mental illness. But I am against taking psychotropic drugs to withstand life problems. Ultimately, life problems need to be confronted in order to resolve them.

I can remember one time when I failed terribly as a husband and a father! It was the late summer of 1998; After 19 years of hard work, three major software distributors had agreed to resell my software, AutoDISPATCH™ C/S, at the national level. My efforts had finally paid off! It happened in Cincinnati, Ohio at the Solomon Software Annual Conference; And the best part was that my beautiful wife was there to witness it and help me. At the end of this conference, Solomon Software surprised everyone and told all us re-sellers and developers, that they had just bought my main competitor —My competitor’s software wasn’t better, but they had the numbers and were creating major problems for Solomon customers— Who would you rather buy expensive Field Service Management software from? From some guy with a strange name and a small office in Newport Beach? Or from Solomon-Great Plains-Microsoft? Game over! I got extremely depressed!

In any case, I have decided that I will not spend the rest of my days on this Pale Blue Dot under the influence of psychotropic drugs. It’s been several months since I’ve been off Lexapro completely and I have not suffered a depression, even though I’m going through a very difficult and emotional legal separation. My BMP is down to the low 50’s; I’m 60 years old; When I was in great shape and much younger, my BMP was in the low 40’s. I no longer have nightmares; Instead, I have pleasant dreams, sometimes in Spanish. I wake up naturally just before light announces the dawn of a new day. And yes, my physiatrist (watch the spelling) knows all about it!

To my neurologist: Maybe you want to write off my actions as being delusional in order to justify your actions. Despite your battery of inconclusive tests and dangerous drugs, anyone can tell that I am not clinically depressed. And always remember why I was referred to you!

¡Si Va!


Courtesy of Flickr: Rex Gray

By now, everyone should know that the NCAA Men’s Basketball team from the  University of Villanova is better known simply as ‘nova. And that they won this year’s championship in a historic tournament run.

What most people don’t know (unless they were of driving age back in the 70’s) is that Nova was also a Chevrolet brand for a pedestrian car that was fairly successful and like all Chevy’s, were most-of-the-time reliable, relatively inexpensive and stock cars that could be converted into powerful beasts with a few modifications..

“No va” means “it doesn’t go” in Spanish and there’s a urban legend that the car didn’t sell well in Latin America because of its unfortunate name; Nothing could be farther from the truth, the Nova sold fairly well in my native Venezuela. As a matter of fact, my family owned one in that puky dark-purple color. Although, I didn’t inherited it, one my older half-brothers did; And he drove it for many years.

After Villanova advanced to the Final Four, I made a comment to one of my college BFF’s that was rooting for ‘nova, letting him know that his chosen team ¡Si va! which of course means,“yes it goes,” in Spanish.

So why was this year’s Villanova’s win historic? It all there! But let’s not forget that it could have been a ‘villaneous’ game if the point differential would have been the same as in the first few minutes!

April Fool’s Day or Easter Sunday?

                         Courtesy of Helios Hotel

I have many Guardian Angels; I call them Framily! They have helped me in one way or another, especially after my spinal cord injury. But there is one woman in particular that is my main Guardian Angel and  that’s my mom. She does all the things mothers do and then some; She helps me financially from her  meager resources, whenever I need it. Ever since my skiing misfortune, she visits me for about a month every year. She has a heart condition for which she takes two pills everyday. She then proceeds to walk 5 kilometers to do food shopping and to cook up a storm —She’s Spanish; she uses the international metric system— All she asks in return is for good conversation, occasional technical support and that I pick a good movie or program to watch on TV.

The duty is reciprocal. A few years ago, I devised a game in order to remotely check on ourselves on a daily basis; we pick a phone wallpaper from APOD or Bing and then tell each other our choices for the day. I call her every Sunday like I will be doing in a few hours. And we use WhatsApp to communicate with each other.

So am I mama’s boy? Or are my mom and I each other’s best Guardian Angels? That’s like asking if today is April Fool’s Day or Easter Sunday!

It’s like March!

   Courtesy of AccuWeather

“March Comes In Like A Lion, Out Like a Lamb” I learned this saying a long time ago, from my mother-in-law.

I had to put the heater in my home on auto because the house was at a comfortable 62°. I bumped it up to 66° to make it balmy to framily and my caregivers (Missed one six [Insert emoticon or emoji here] ©).

I want you to know how much I like my new home. It’s smaller but more affordable (Much better than living in a hospice home [Insert emoticon or emoji here] ©).

No matter what happens between Mik and me, you are always  welcomed to visit and stay in my home. Except that you will have to sleep in the den/office on a futton, or in the living room in a very comfortable sleeping sofa. Unless you want to sleep with me and be woken up by a crazy guy howling back at a wild coyote outside my window, or be woken up at 5:30 am to classical music while I do my Dawn Patrol exercises.

xo xo xo  xo xxx xo xo  xo xxx xo xo xo  xo xo  xo xxx xo  xxx  Sri

My mother-in-law was right; At least about the weather for March, in SoCal. It was cold and rainy for the first couple of weeks of the month and today, it was a beautiful day!

💞 [FYI] [NRN] My New Home } Title of email originally sent to my  immediate family (both bands).