Ruminations On A Month Away ...

First up, the header up there is the family of deer that visited my father’s house every afternoon to eat apples, both on the ground and from the tree. You could actually get quite close to them, though they watched you carefully, and were so graceful and peaceful. It was a nice way to spend the mornings, waiting for their arrival.

I was happy to be able to go out to Oregon and help my Dad before, during and after surgery. I was happy that my boss, when I walked up to him and asked for five weeks off—starting in two weeks—simply said, ‘Do what you need to do. We’ll be waiting for you when you get back.’

That said … I went all Seinfeld while I was gone. I calculated how many hours I slept each night and then took that number of days off my stay. Ten days? That’s eighty hours of sleep. And that 3 days and eight hours, so really, it’s just six days.

The hospital where Dad had his surgery was more like a high-end hotel. I mean, there was a lady playing a grand piano in the lobby and there was an actual restaurant—not a cafeteria—in the place. Even the rooms had views, and except for the medical equipment, I might have checked in for a stay myself.

This is ‘The New Ankle.’ In the right image, those screws are from when he broke the ankle about eight years back; the new ankle is where they drilled a hole in the bone and inserted the new ankle, with a bottom piece screwed into his foot. All I can see when I look at this is ‘Ouch.’

Oh … and his doctor was adorable. So much so that I almost asked for an ankle replacement myself. Or, at the very least, a consultation.

I’ve had it with “thoughts and prayers” and am ready for substantive gun laws. Anyone … anyone … who thinks it should be okay to own a weapon that killed 9 people in 30 seconds should be notched under the Red Flag laws because they are too insane to own a firearm.

I’m glad there’s a discernible shift between black and brown mass murderers being terrorist, while white mass murderers are called insane. Shooting up a church, a movie theater, a Walmart, a bar, a mosque, a synagogue is all terror, no matter the color of the shooter.

While I loved helping my dad out, there was that moment, or moments, when I was over it. Most notably the day we were leaving a doctor’s appointment and he had so annoyed me that while I was pushing him in his wheelchair down a ramp, I suddenly envisioned myself as Baby Jane Hudson pushing sister Blanche down a flight of stairs. What can I say …?

I had to return a pair of crutches my father had ordered to a medical supply company because they were too tall for him; he used to be over six feet tall, and now he’s 5’11”. I took the pair back and asked for another size, which they didn’t have, but could order. By the time I returned to my Dad’s house, they’d called to say they had the crutches, so I picked them up the next day. But the crutches were not going to work getting my father up the stairs, so I had to return this other pair, too. As I explained to the women at the medical supply company, I was my usual polite self, causing one of the women to ask where I lived. I said, “South Carolina” and one woman looked at the other and said, “It figures. That’s why he’s so polite.” I laughed, and then explained that I was so polite because my mother was Southern, and my father was military.

I’m over racists in the White House and anyone …anyone … who stands with him. If you like _____ because you got a tax break but can turn a blind eye, and deaf ear, to his hate speech, then, yeah, in my mind you’re a racist too, because you’re selling out black and brown people, not to mention kids in cages, for a few more coins in your bank account.

On that note, Anthony Scaramucci? Your Fifteen Minutes were up on Day Eleven when you got fired from the White House and ran to Celebrity Big Brother. If you expect me to buy that you loathe _____ now, I don’t. You’re just searching for a way to get you mug on TV. Go.The fuck.Away.

My dad is an avid news watcher and so I watched, too, as he recorded all the news shows he liked and watched them while recovering. Now, he was interested in the news, while I was interested in the Hot Mens reporting the news, like … clockwise from the top right … Jeremy Diamond Craig Melvin, Jacob Soboroff, Phil Mattingly, Andrew Scholes, and Alex Marquardt.

And then, in the wake of the El Paso shooting was Hot Texas Congressman Cesar Blanco. Hot, and compassionate, and passionate about doing something about guns in America and racists in the White House.

Finally, Carlos. I don’t think I’ve ever missed someone so much in my life. We’ve taken time away from each other, whether for work, or family business and the other couldn’t get away, but  31 days was quite the long stretch. And we had a very nice reunion, steamy, you might say, and spent about five days together, just us; perfection. 

I’ve never been so happy to see someone in my life, well, except for maybe Tuxedo who came running to the door when we got home and leaped to the back of a chair so I could pick him up and give him smooches. As is his way, Carlos didn't want his picture up, so you'll have to make do with Tucky.

Lastly, the things we've seen and heard this last month? You all have a choice to make next year if we want to make a change from being the country that forces other countries to tell their citizens not to visit because we have a gun problem, or being the country that fixes it.

And that was my month, more or less …