Don't mention this in your blog!

"Please don't mention this conversation on your blog!" My friend is right, of course. It was a personal conversation and very private, about a subject I'm not proud of. Worse yet, he was right and I was messing up - not a situation I'd probably broadcast to the world.

Of course, difficult person that I am, I've been thinking about a way to mention it ever since. This is a place where I claim to "empty out my head" and there was some serious junk in it that needed shaken out. I'll honor my friend's request, for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that he asked. I appreciate that he called me out, although it was not pleasant.

The thing about candor is that there are always limits. I'm willing to be open about a lot of things and so the illusion may be that I am an open book. We extroverts can provide a plethora of information about ourselves, an overload. We suck the oxygen out of the room in our rush to express our rampant personalities. But, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Watch the show, please.

When does the "show" become part of the problem? Careening along on the crest of an unidentified mood, we can do damage and not consider it. We can take risks unthinkingly. We find, once again, that we are not as highly evolved or developed as we thought. We've taken a detour on the road to enlightenment, indulged our darker, more thoughtless selves, or as an old friend said: ". . . let the other guy out."

I'm not really fond of the other guy, but I think he's with me on this journey for the foreseeable future, popping for whatever reason. It's no me or him, it's me and him. I'm fortunate to have a group of friends who know me well enough, and care enough about me, to mention to me when I fall short. Hey! You! Listen! The alternative would be to live in a much sadder, lonelier place where people shrug and write you off.

This week has begun a number of transitions. Caitlin moved into her dormitory at UNI. Moving her was a pleasure, reminding me of how enervating and terrifying freshman year away from home was for me, and will be for my daughter. Walking in and out of the dormitory with boxes of things, we parents were at once necessary and irrelevant. We hooked up the television and the computer, managed the logistics and schlepped, but we are not beginning. We are much farther down this road. I think I was much less tense than a lot of parents, at least from the look of it. There was a lot of grim focus on rolling carts in, setting up bunks. There were terse exchanges between parents and impatient offspring, enduring their necessary but ultimately clueless parents. It reminded me a little of the Disney Channel, where situation comedies involve young people who live in large comfy suburban homes seemingly devoid of adults. This is better than Disney, don't get me wrong. At least I hope it is, considering the price! We are, however, the supporting cast and we leave in the first act. At least we do if we know what our kids need.

On the other end of life's continuum, we were notified that the Bureau of Inspections and Appeals has decided that my mother no longer can be sustained in memory care and have denied her waiver to stay in her very expensive assisted living facility more than about another 30 days. This is less of a crisis than it might be since I was getting ready to move her anyway. The cost is high and ambiance simply no longer matters to my mother, who only occasionally knows me, who forgets the ends of sentences she has begun, who spends most of her remaining moments in a sleep that seems like a rehearsal for the next, much longer one. One day soon she will drift off and not awaken. Our allies at Hospice will administer medication to dull the pain from not being able to eat, and she will begin the hard work of dying, rather than diminishing.

Mom's money is running out and what is left needs to get her to this final act. This is why I was already preparing to hunt for a nursing facility, a semi-private room - who needs privacy when you can't remember from moment to moment? The denial of her waiver is just a marker here, a confirmation. A punctuation. Mom's decline has been precipitous since I asked the doctor to discontinue her Alzheimer's medication. It was time to kick the chocks out from under the wagon wheels. She was in that place she always dreaded - the place of incapacity, of pitifulness, of incompetence - and she's clearly not sampling or enjoying life. Mom can't walk on her own, or stand, let alone be witty or sweet or helpful or knowledgeable. I know what she wanted and I'm trying my best to do it. If I could, I'd press a button and end it all for her. That would be tidy and expedient and that's not how it works.

I suppose this transition has a lot to do with my previous post regarding vodka, but it serves only as a context. There's always something coming up, some grounds for sadness or self-pity to distract us. That's no excuse for indulging the other guy. Life is a very long self-improvement project if it's to mean anything. I have kids to raise, a wife to love, jobs that matter, beauty to appreciate, a wife to love. . .

. . . and I have good friends, keeping me honest, trusting me to listen to them when they speak, and in turn listening to me. I'm a lucky guy that way.

Tolerance

Vodka. It's pretty good stuff. Good vodka and rocks and a sweaty glass . . . the rapid achievement of elevated mood, the illusion of purity through clear liquid. There was a time when she occupied an honored place in the pantry, roosting above mere food in her own special spot, easily consulted at appropriate times.

The "appropriate times" seemed to come closer and closer together and I found that with practice I could consume ounces and ounces, oodles and oodles of vodka rocks garlic stuffed olive martinis to hell with Vermouth. As I recall morning were not the best, nor was waking in my chair at two in the morning the the remnants of a spilled martini in my crotch with a garnish of sideways glass. The thing about drinking for distance is that hangovers seem to dull as well and I found that a couple tall glasses of water in the morning before coffee and perhaps a couple Tylenol left me fit enough to carry on, particularly as cocktail time came earlier and earlier.

I'm fairly certain I've walked my readers (wake up, you two!) down my own version of the slippery slope a few times in the past. What prompts this is that Friday night I had a couple stiff vodkas - big ones. Spilled one, too. Nothing drastic or awful happened, other than Saturday morning. I woke up when someone began drilling into my forehead with an invisible brace and bit. I woke up with the granddaddy of all dry mouths. I woke up with cotton where my brain used to be and a deeply founded wish for four hours more sleep. I woke with an intestinal tract scored as if by gallons of paint thinner, yelping it's distress and urgency intermittently throughout the ensuing day. It was a stirring reminder.

The photo above is not an image of my coming death, it's an example of the size of the stone shard being driven underneath the top of my eyeballs.

Heavy drinkers do not complain of hangovers. We get up, we drink lots of water, we try to take our Ibuprofen without calling attention to ourselves by too much bottle rattling. If we do the crime, we do our time. After 24 hours, suitably chastised by my own body chemistry, I'm clear on a few things. This morning I feel great, if only by comparison. I remember why I'm not, except by inclination, a heavy drinker these days. I'm on a forced and limited beer diet. I make sure there are days, or two or three, between beers, and although some folks don't have to count and measure these things, I'm resigned that I will always need to manage my intake because I am a Buzz-hound. Loving the righteous buzz as I do, I know that I'm capable of truly impressive consumption, big time chemical tolerance, sloppy and careless excess.

What's particularly notable is that I'm pretty sure I used to consume that amount of vodka nearly every day. Living in supposed harmony with a chemical so simultaneously smooth and corrosive is an art I no longer try to master. A true hangover is a gift from the almighty, routed through perdition via a dry Oklahoma back road to the tune of a jackhammer. It's a tap on the shoulder from a bony insistent finger. It's a long talk, for those who listen, with a lesson already learned - a review session, if we're lucky - prescriptive of a course correction.

Message to hangover: situation noted. There's a kayak trip in the offing, three days with my pals on the Wisconsin River, food exercise, beer iced in little portable coolers, perhaps a bottle of something. I'm going to have some serious fun, assuming the water goes down, the stars stay aligned, and I pay attention. It took some discipline to get my body chemistry back to the point at which I can really appreciate a hangover. I think I'll keep it this way.