Taking It Easy

My wife and I took a drive to the park and had a nice relaxing time, recently.  We needed a break.

Shelter house at Versailles State Park

Creek

Dam

Where my mom, dad, sister and our friends and relatives would camp.  Mostly, it was just the four of us (sister,mom,dad and I) that would stay overnight when we were kids and teenagers.   We slept in this heavy canvas tent.  Sometimes ten of us could fit in there if we positioned ourselves just right. We would sit around the campfire, tell crazy, raunchy and entertaining stories and made the most noise in the park, out of all the guests, camping in the campground .  The park rangers would tell us to quiet down a couple times while we were there but they were nice about it.  We had a great time at site 116.  There would be times when there were a dozen and a half of us, laughing and frequently enjoying ourselves with adult beverages and fun conversations.  :)      

This is the red wooden bridge from the inside as we drove.  It goes between the town and the park.  Look... there is a light at the end of the tunnel!

Strange and Rare Diseases

Throughout the years, I've often been fascinated with strange and rare diseases. Whenever I'd stumble upon articles on this type of subject matter in medical journals and books at home (my mother was a nurse in the mental health department of a hospital in a neighboring state) or in the library or doctor's office, it would cause me to either gasp in disbelief or shake my head, feeling pity upon those afflicted.

I've read a lot about these conditions that made unfortunate victims of these people and the following information about them is something you, yourself, may find interesting.

Exploding Head Syndrome-

Those who suffer from this disease experience a very loud noise as if it’s within his/her own head like an explosion. Typically this happens within several hours of falling asleep although not due to a dream. Patients may feel fear and anxiety associated with increased heart rate. Some physicians suggest that there’s a relationship with stress and extreme fatigue.

Stendhal Syndrome-

This disease causes people who have it to experience dizziness, rapid heartbeat, confusion and hallucinations when exposed to large amounts of beautiful art work.

Blaschko's lines-

Blaschko's lines are an extremely rare and unexplained phenomenon of human anatomy first presented in 1901 by German dermatologist Alfred Blaschko. Neither a specific disease nor a predictable symptom of a disease, Blaschko's lines are an invisible pattern built into human DNA. Many inherited and acquired diseases of the skin or mucosa manifest themselves according to these patterns, creating the visual appearance of stripes. What makes them more remarkable is that they correspond quite closely from patient to patient, usually forming a "V" shape over the spine and "S" shapes over the chest, stomach, and sides.

Cotard’s Syndrome-

Those who suffer from this disease feel that they are dead and non-existent. The sufferer may also feel that he/she lost his or her blood or internal organs; the patient even feels that the internal parts are putrefying. It can show up due to mental illness and is also associated with depression.

When you hear or read or see something about these diseases and others that are, in no doubt worse, you can't help but to wonder how you would react or struggle with any one of these diseases. Although I feel great empathy for people who endure life changing obstacles, such as a few of the ones described here, I can't help but to be impressed by those who are able to cope with whatever they are afflicted with each and every day that passes.

It's something worth thinking about. At least to me, it is.

Caribbean Adventure: First Day Nearly Killed Me

August 29th 2010

The day started out as intended. The alarm clock woke us up after getting just a few hours of sleep due to packing some stuff too late, bickering about God knows what trivial doohickey to take in our carry on or main suitcase and just being too damned excited and anxious about going on the cruise and starting our adventure.

I, for one, popped a Valium before stumbling off to bed that night. I nearly leap out of bed. I might have tripped over one of our cats on the way to the shitter. Not sure. Thought I heard a meow. Though, I was so out of it because I was so fucking tired and from the pill I popped, the meowing might have come from me. Or I was hallucinating.

So the alarm wakes us at 4 in the morning. I thrust myself out of bed and realize this is it. After a little over a year of planning every last detail of this trip (except the last minute packing fiasco) the all-important first day of our highly anticipated trip of a lifetime had arrived. And by God, I was determined to get things going. Not to mention get the hell away from my family, friends, wife's co-workers, the apartment we live in and all of the rest this redneck town has to offer (which is sorrowfully not damn much)- Fuck you very much. Not to you. The people around here. To my blog pals, I bid you a sincere THANK YOU and HOWDY HO for helping to keep me halfway sane at times.

My wife grumbles, not wanting to get out of bed and I start the chaos rolling by shouting, "Hurry up! We gotta get moving!"

This pisses her the fuck off, of course. She screams back at me and I run to the bathroom to take a shower and hide until she decides not to kill me. I'm frantic, you see. I'm worried about getting to the airport on time, leaving our cats at the mercy of people who have memory problems, getting through security without much fuss or cavity searching and making it to cruise ship, Freedom of The Seas on time. Any other time, if a woman wanted to do a cavity search on me, that would be hunky dory with me. A finger up the ass, with a little knob polishing on the side from a hot chick in a uniform would be A-Okay any other day. Not that day.

After waiting for her parents to pick us up for a half hour and me going nuts because I wasn't sure if they had remembered to pick us up to take us to the airport (wife's idea... not mine), I felt like popping another Valium but I figured if I had done that, my thinking would get so freaking fuzzy that I wouldn't be able to concentrate on what and where we had to do and go. I have severe anxiety disorder which adds to the fun in all of this.

After leaving a list of instructions on the table about the cats and other stuff, we hear the phone ring. It's my wife's parents below, in our parking lot. I was so temporarily relieved, I could have cum in my pants and whistled Dixie. Instead, I grabbed our suitcase and headed down the steps in a frenzied pace. The wheels of the thing were clonk-clonk-clonking on the steps. Likely, much to the enjoyment of our neighbors trying to sleep. My wife said something like, "Don't fall before we get there."

I thought, Even if I go down these stairs, crash into a muddled mass at the bottom and break my goddamn leg so badly that my femur bone is jutting out of my thigh like a shark fin, I will, By All My Insane Might, will get on that goddamn boat! Even if I have to crawl on my belly like a big old drunken white whale with prostate cancer. Notice: I'm only mentioning marine animals thus far.

Must be a reason.

We do get to the airport on time. Getting through security at the airport was only a little annoying. Taking off your belt, shoes and the metal plate from your head is a bitch. Just kidding about the plate. I knew from talking to several people who have flown recently and checking out the airline security rules online on what to expect. The last time we flew on a plane was twenty years ago for our honeymoon. After 9/11, the difference in security is night and day, in regards to that era and now when it comes to what they want you to do in order to pass all the security checkpoints, while still keeping all of your important documents and paperwork, ready and in your hands at all times. This was tough for a nervous traveler with zero positive expectations of people like me. I figured someone would invariably fuck with us on whatever minor thing they could get crazy about. Perhaps they would think my toothbrush was a weapon of mass destruction. I don't put anything past anyone.

I've seen too much outrageous behavior during my lifetime.

Ironically, that's one of the reasons I wanted to go on this cruise. Dumbass, looney people.

Still, we passed the checkpoints with no complications and after hours of flight, continuous walking with heavy luggage that threatened to tear my arms away from my shoulders, the long boring shuttle bus ride to the ship and more miles of walking we finally make it to the cruise ship. Then it was more security checkpoints and more walking to find our cabin.

The Promenade, like a gigantic shopping mall, in the middle of Freedom of The Seas

At one of your checkpoints, they give you a plastic credit card like thing on the ship called a SeaPass, which also functions as a key to your room. But sticking the SeaPass into your cabin door slot, waiting for the little light above the handle to turn green and you turning the handle and pushing on the door at just the right second, being perfect in your timing, takes a lot of practice. We found this out the hard way the first day. And I was trying to do these manuevers without passing out.

Finally, we find our room on one of the largest cruise ship ever created. Then, after much fun of doing the old "in and out" with the fucking card, we stumble through the door. I quickly take notice of our wonderful balcony that sits just outside our cabin in the opposite direction before...

.... I collapse on our comfortable queen size bed. My wife turns on the TV. The captain of The Freedom of The Seas, Tor Olsen, is going on and on about having to go a different route that was intended. If we didn't, he said the 160,000 ton cruise ship (not including crew and passengers) might be rolled over or something by Hurricane Earl- which was a category 4 hurricane at the time. At the time, the captain on our TV was blathering on about possibly becoming shark bait after being capsized (maybe he didn't say that exactly). According to him, Earl was about to sweep across the main islands on our itinerary: St. Maarten and St. Thomas. Which was sad- because on one of those islands is a nudist beach. All that naked pussy.... just blowing in the wind.

This news came after spending (I kid you not) an hour of looking for our cabin throughout the entire length of our pro football field sized and then some- ship. We never could find someone around who could give us decent directions. I was getting frustrated and I was fading fast, due to lack of food for so long.

The first question my wife asks me, while I'm going into a diabetic coma due to lack of food for twelve hours, continuous excersize and completed depletion of glucose and patience is this:

"How are we going to get our fuckin' money back on all of our pre-paid excursions (snorkeling, quality time near the nude beach, big planned drinking fiesta on St. Thomas)?" This is quickly followed by, "Are we going to get our money back?"

I think I might have said, with spit dribbling out of the corner of my mouth, still barely breathing on the bed, "Idonnnaknowfuurrrrrkdoceiemcowweempawiejfmffufufuf."

This answer did not satisfy her. Then it dawned on her. As a diabetic, my fucking bastard self needed some sustenance.

Gosh, ya think?

So, after much poking and prodding from the wifey, I grumble, mind like spoiled jelly and follow her endlessly to a eating spot on the boat. Surprise is encountered! But not enjoyed! After searching for the restaurant that we were told was going to be open on another deck, the restaurant turns out to be closed. We are also told that-

BEEEEEE-UUUUUHHHH!!!!!

That's the sound the horn made when the captain suddenly wanted everyone, close to being in a diabetic coma or not, to come to a certain deck to go to a "you're-fucking-capsized-and-are-now-shark-bait-in-the-ocean-drill. Chaos ensues while everyone is running around and attempting to make it to their own predetermined place on the ship, which could be any one of the 15 decks.

After struggling to the drill spot we were assigned, I stand there, trying to hold myself up, while two snot nosed teenagers beside me are playing "giggle and slappity-slap" with one another. If I had the strength, I would have thrown them overboard. They could have giggled and slappity-slapped each other all the way down to the shark infested waters. Then, if I still had a wee bit of sprightliness in me, I would give a chuckle as the sharks ate idiot a la mode until they puked.

Finally, a couple crew people come out and demonstrate how to put on life jackets and kiss your ass goodbye. The captain does some narration in the background over loud speakers, telling you where to go, what to do in the case the ship goes down and how to eat human flesh with a spoon if you should make it to a deserted island. Or whatever the fuck he was saying. I was just trying to remain conscious throughout.

Our Cruise Ship, Freedom of The Seas

When he gets to the part to everyone that our course would be changed, due to the direction Hurricane Earl was going, everyone grumbles and chatters loudly. So many different languages are going back and forth. So little food in my belly. I'm guessing some of these folks didn't tune into the boob tube when whey got inside their cabins to hear the "change of itinerary because of hurricane" news. I could tell they had the same concerns as us when it came to being refunded for their prepaid for excursions on the predestined islands. Their growing disappointment was apparent because they were getting louder and louder.

The captain must have heard all of the excitement from the top deck or something because he quickly began to apologize for the change in course. It would have helped, somewhat, if he had said that everyone would be refunded their money for their prepaid for excursions but he didn't. I believe this would have quelled a lot of hostility and frustration among the 3, 634 passengers.

Instead, all of this stuff was going on with the tired, hungry, lost, disappointed passengers and all of us found ourselves at a very rocky start to our trip.

Finally, after more walking, we find a restaurant to eat at that was open. I eat. My wife grumbles about the food quality at this particular eatery. The ship rocks back and forth from a storm. And slowly, I gain enough strength and rise in my blood sugar to make my way back to our cabin, but not before getting lost a couple more times. The signs on board the ship, telling you where this or that was, were utter confusing crap.

Like I said, the first day damn near killed me. But the bed in our room was so nice and inviting. I lay there, full, content and honestly happy that we had made it this far. What was left of our night, was spent in our room, unpacking a little, watching the news and being rocked by the waves of the deep blue ocean. I secretly hoped the next day would be better.... and it was.

Disturbing Neighbor and The Attention Needy

My neighbor that lives below us in our apartment complex is likely the worst one we've had in the ten to twelve years we've lived up here on the hill.

Not only is he annoying and disturbing, but he has that bad boy, punk ass, "gangsta" look about him. He has made it clear he is a bully and is possibly physically abusive to the woman and little girl who lives with him.

I'll get back to this douchebag in a minute but first I have to say....

It hurts me to utter or write the word "gangsta" because it's not a real word, but instead, something rappers and rap fans made up to make themselves sound tougher than they actually are. "Gangsta", which I'm guessing is supposed to mean gangster or some other similar tough guy nonsense, sounds silly to me.

In fact, anyone who tries that hard to impress me with their toughness or supposed uniqueness ends up making me shake my head. This especially goes for people who stick lots of metal jewelry into their skin or cover themselves with too many tattoos or black eye liner or wear their pants almost down to their knees.

I feel like saying, "Yeah, you're such an individual. How unique you must be. I get it." Or.... "Gee, what a statement you're attempting to make. I'm so impressed with your supposedly extreme, attention getting appearance, I'm clearly shaken by it all or, at the very least, popping a boner with excitement or whatever. Now, go away!"

At first, people like this made me laugh. Then I found them to be mildly entertaining. But as the years go by and I grow older, I find that they just bore the fuck out of me with their desperate need to get my attention or show that they are so much more different than the rest of us. Pure Silliness. Futility in action.

Hey, do you want to show me how unique you are, Numb Nuts? Talk to me and let me in on your thoughts or your true persona. Better yet, show me who you really are through your actions. No swaggering or over-the-top conduct, please. Just the real you.

There were real gangsters in the 1920's to 1940's in America. These were true criminals. Like Al Capone, for instance. Not that these true criminals have any more redeeming value than today's gangster wannabes in the rap industry, poverty-stricken districts and ghetto areas.

I guess you could call someone a gangster that belongs in a street gang. But that's really stretching it a bit for me. To me, they are just common street thugs, dealing drugs, involving themselves in petty crimes and sometimes committing violent acts. They have many excuses for needing to belong in these gangs and will usually acquire their money by doing anything but getting a real job and earning their money.

But getting back to my equally worthless neighbor....

He also wears the droopy pants, has tattoos all over his body and does the "tough" talk routine. Never before have we had someone (or something) like that living in our apartment complex in the years we've lived here.

More importantly, this gangster wannabe screams at the woman and little girl that lives below with him. He shouts at them in the parking lot, too, for all to see. I also hear a lot of thumping and banging down below. I can't say for sure if he's physically abusing the little girl but it wouldn't surprise me that much if I found out for certain.

My wife says the front door below, that sits below our stairwell, is broken at the top, where the metal arm thing was attached, because of him. My wife says she thought she saw him pushing his girlfriend so hard against the door one day, that the force of her shoved body caused the door to break free from the wooden frame above. Earlier that same day, she could hear what sounded like them arguing back and forth below us. The door is, indeed, unhinged at the top and I'll be calling our landlord soon to fix that.

This barely human turd also allows the little girl to drive her plastic tricycle all around the parking lot, not keeping a watchful eye on her half the time. With how busy our parking lot can be, this poses a real danger. On one occasion, I've seen him pull his car into the lot and the little girl looked like she was hanging halfway out of the passenger side of the car. At my angle of sight, I couldn't tell for sure if she was wearing a seat belt or not, but it still looked pretty wrong to me.

Whenever, I see the woman living below us, she is never friendly and, in fact, appears nervous, like she's hiding something. This is conjecture on my part, of course. There are also some unscrupulous looking types of people, "friends" of his who visit him time to time. Maybe they are decent people. I don't know for sure so I'm not going to assume -but all of these things put together make me a little nervous, myself.

Another bothersome activity this asshole likes to engage in, every so often, is thumping on our floor/his ceiling if we turn the volume up on our TV above the 25 mark. Not that loud, really, when you take into consideration that our TV goes all the way up to 100. We've had around five different neighbors living below us in the nearly dozen years we've lived up here and we've never had any complaints before -from neighbors or landlords.

Yes, I know. We should have called the landlord already for a variety of reasons. The couple of reasons I haven't done this so far are this:

1- I don't like to get people that live close to me in trouble. Usually, this will cause trouble for the complainer (me, in this case) and will sometimes result in having your car tires punctured or some other retaliation by the bothersome neighbor. Since I have a bad temper and am easily stressed out, I may do something even more stupid to him. I have my very weak and shaky emotional moments and then, on the other side of the coin, I have my super-motherfucker-I'm-going-to-fucking-kill-you kind of moments in these situations. I can be extreme, either way. And neither one of those ways is not good, I know.

2- Even though our most recent landlord is a cop, he's doesn't seem to care about when tenants complain about other tenants -even if it may concern a serious issue. One tenant, who talks to my wife, fairly frequently, alerted our cop landlord that she thought a person who had just moved into the apartment complex was a thief. He told her that he didn't care as long as he paid the rent on time. This tells me that he may not give a good shit when I tell him about the neighbor below us.

I don't know for sure what will happen next with this guy but I have a feeling I'm going to be forced to call the landlord and make a complaint or several complaints about him. I just hope it doesn't backfire -for our sake and if he pisses me off too much -for his sake. I don't want to go to jail over this gangster wannabe.

Besides, that would put a damper on my all-too-important cruise this summer. Ha ha. Good golly, I hate fuckin' bullies and other tough talking pieces of shit. How about you?

On The Road With Kelly

Twenty miles of road separated our place and our destination, today. Even though it wasn't that long of a drive we still managed to see several things that were odd or formidable throughout. The following events I describe really took place -as hard as it may be to believe.

The first sight/challenge we encountered on our journey was a long and twisted gauntlet of orange barrels and cones. Somehow we struggled our way through on a narrow, twisted, crumbling, one lane stretch of road. The road normally has two lanes but the other side going in the opposite direction was being blocked by the heavy machinery and the road crew.

The embankments on either side of this road leads to life threatening drop offs. Before you can kiss your ass goodbye, you're a fuckin' goner, man. The road crew would halt us at different parts of the road so the others in the opposite direction could come through on the same side of the shitty road. Not only did we have to dodge barrels, cones, people and potentially lethal drop offs, there was also the huge backhoe loader.

If you can't picture what I'm talking about, look at the picture of it in the upper left hand corner of this post. That's a backhoe loader. Do you see this fucking monstrosity? See the big elephantine claw-scoop thing in the back of this monster? What's this heavy metal monster doing on something that is, presently, little more than a sidewalk? That big claw-scoop thing was swinging towards us at one point and we thought simultaneously that (A) We have nowhere to go on this hellish road to avoid this gargantuan metal beast and (B) We're going to die before we can get to the shopping mall to spend way too money on stuff that we will likely put up on a yard sale next year.

After we struggle through that mess, we finally reach the interstate highway. Ah, a sigh of relief. Finally making headway. Progress, even. But lo and behold, what is this up ahead? Why it is an ambulance. Nearby the ambulance is a slew of cop cars, medical emergency personnel, mangled vehicles and people yelling at each other. This chaos was directly in between a fork in the highway. The closer we got to this accident, the more unsure we were that we were even going to make it to where we needed to turn off. Luckily, we are able make it around this annoying festival of disarray. I have no idea if anyone was killed or not. I was too busy jammin' and gyrating in my seat to my latest Rob Zombie CD to notice such trivialities. Bleed all you want, fuckers! I'm listening to my tunes!

Just as I'm finding relief from getting through that irritating bundle of wrecks and human misery, we travel another mile to see a flaming, smoking car sitting on the right side of a long metal bridge that sits over the river. And we have no choice but to go on this bridge to make it to the money pit known as the shopping mall. I say to my wife, "Gee, I hope that car doesn't explode just as we go past. That would suck mightily." She gives me that look that I take to mean that she is shitting herself (possibly literally) with anticipation.

Lucky again, we also get past the bomb on wheels -without being blown up. After we pass the fiery vehicle, my wife asks, "Hey, do you think we should call 911 for that car behind us?"

I reply, "No way. I'm busy reading the nasty little comic book that came with my new CD. Ha ha... Look at the cartoon werewolves fucking these virgins in the ass! What fun!"

She shakes her head and laughs. After 21 years, she gets me. Good thing, too.

Only a couple miles to our goal, we see a huge bloody pile of animal carcass on the side of the road, teaming with fresh maggots and busy buzzing flies. We ask each other what animal it could have been. Its so fucked up, discombobulated and mushy in some parts (it was headless, too) that we couldn't make out what the hell it was before it became a hairy, bloody, putrid mass of freakishness.

We both said, almost simultaneously, "I'm hungry."

After dropping money off at the travel agency for our upcoming cruise, we decide to throw a bunch of cash at a better-than-decent restaurant. Finally comfortable and salivating at the menu items, a family with a herd of children are soon seated right the fuck next to us. The whole place has maybe five customers in it (due to the odd time of day we came) and they seat two adults and a small army of kids next to good ol' quiet us. Why? I figure they do that in order to make it easier on the server. Put every asshole in a single row of tables. Fuck the customer if they want to eat in peace and not have a fucker on a cell phone yappity yapping away beside them. Hell, I don't know why they always do that. You tell me!

Of course, the children commence screeching, crying and poking each other's eyes out with forks. Normally, this would be funny -the ruptured eyeballs and all -but they were creating too much noise with their persistent wailing for me too handle. I get easily stressed out nowadays, with all the ugly shit that's happened in the past five years. It makes the diabetes worse, too. I start to shake and lose focus.

Rather than say something to the server like, "Could you move us away from the screeching monkeys beside us?", I ask my wife if she wanted to help me move our glasses and silverware, glasses and napkins to the empty table next to us before the waiter comes back and takes our order.

She does and we move our stuff to the next table.

In the past, I wouldn't have done something like that because I wouldn't want to seem rude to the family of screechers beside us -but now, thankfully, I plain just don't give a fuck anymore. Hell, after talking to two complete strangers (my therapist and psychiatrist) these last 2 years, crying and telling them absolutely everything I was feeling and some heavy secrets that even my wife doesn't know about, I can pretty much do or say anything without much guilt. Plus, this medication I'm on now causes me to be a bit on the aggressive side. Happy, aggressive, energetic and impulsive.

A beautiful combination for me. But not for others. Oh, well. Tee hee.

I cheated on my diet, today and had the full rack of hickory smoked ribs with garlic roasted mashed potatoes. Mmmm. It was yummy. It definitely didn't look like that dismembered caked-with-blood thing we saw on the side of the road, earlier. Speaking of things that are creamy, I also enjoyed a piece of white chocolate banana cream pie.

In the end, it turned out to be a better day than I expected given the way it began. I wonder if that car blew up? Ha ha.