What if a Polar Bear wrestled an Eel?

My colleague and I were in Chicago for a week long training and decided to celebrate completion by attending a Major League Baseball Game. The Cubs were out of town but there were White Sox tickets available for a song - good ones! I haven't really been able to root for the American League since the adoption of the designated hitter rule - Charley Finley's dark legacy excusing pitchers from the batting lineup - but I decided to risk spontaneous combustion and go along. Besides: I have a new zoom lens and baseball games are a primary reason I was longing for one.

It was a cool, clear late August evening. We rode the El in from our hotel in Rosemont and got to the stadium in time for the Orioles' batting practice. Audra, my colleague, invited a young AmeriCorps alumni from the South Side - a known Sox fan. "You don't grow up on the South Side and root for the Cubs," says Jermaine.

I'm a Cardinals fan, although it's hard to be brave with the Redbirds trailing the hated Reds this late in the season. Most of my baseball experience has involved Cubs/Cardinals matches at Wrigley or Busch. The new US Cellular Field was large, beautiful and, from the seventh row in left field, surprisingly intimate. A little too intimate, as it turned out.

Robyn and I were once invited to go to a Cubs/Cardinal game at Wrigley as part of an event sponsored by my brother-in-law's employer. We all boarded a bus in the morning and rode directly to the game. The price was right and the convenience seemed inarguable, so we signed on. At 8:00 a.m. as we boarded, we noticed that a large majority of the passengers were beginning to drink. By the time we got to Rush Street, the cumulative blood alcohol content on the bus had reached near epidemic proportions. At the game, the serious drinking began.

My friends know I don't mind lying around the shanty and getting a good buzz on. At deserted cabins among close friends I might even drink in the morning ("If you don't start in the morning, how can you drink all day?"). That said, the bus ride home was a little excerpt from one of the inner circles of Hell. Robyn and I sat crouched in our seats as people stumbled around the bus, taking turns vomiting in the small bus bathroom, clogging both the toilet and the sink. People would occasionally try to interact with us, urging us to drink, of course. "What is that? A BOOK?!?" To be fair, my brother in law was also appalled by his co-workers and apologized profusely. I will never ride a bus to a Cubs game again. I suspect Redbirds fans would have been more mature.

Meanwhile, back in the relative present, the Sox game was really good, from a Chicago standpoint. Carl Jackson was pitching 98 miles per hour and the Orioles were batting like schoolgirls (apologies to schoolgirls everywhere!). It was a festival of singles and there was plenty of action on the base paths. Juan Pierre stole his 50th base. Behind us, two Sox fans, young men in the obligatory jerseys, were beginning to show the effects of the suds, their comments delivered in clipped Chicago diction.

"If a polar bear got into a wrestling match with a chimpanzee, who doya think would win!"
"I dunno. Is the bear sober?"
"It wouldn't make any fucking difference, you moron!" the first guy explained. He paused. "Fuckin' sober."
"My money's on the bear." Various combination of animal wrestling matches were discussed and evaluated, punctuated by insults and epithets and occasional pity observations. "You're drunk."

They also evaluated the size and shape of various players.

"Juan Pierre is a fuckin' midget. They say he's five foot fuckin' seven but that first baseman towers over him?"
"Konerko's a lazy son of a bitch. He hasn't had an RBI in months and he sits on his fat ass collecting a salary."
"If that fucking midget Juan Pierre wrestled a chimpanzee, who do you think would win?"

I looked around and blessedly there were no children in immediate earshot. Hope springs eternal, though. The boys' volume was increasing with their blood alcohol content.

"You're drunk."
"I'm a fuckin' extrovert. I say what I think. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."
"I can hold it better'n you, you pussy. This is nothin." It was about the 7th inning stretch when the fan told a story about a Sox/Yankees game just after 9/11. The Yankees were ahead and they were apparently "taking advantage" of the disaster to drum up some cheap sympathy. Offended, our hero tells how he addressed the issue.

"I yelled at 'em that I hoped the fucking building fell on 'em. I let 'em have it, the phony assholes. I gave 'em a piece of my mind before they kicked us out. We were drinking vodka lemonade from that thermos I used to carry to school with my name on it and we were fuckin' lit. When they kicked us out of the game, I puked on the El, remember that?"
"You were drunk."
" . . . had to fuckin' evacuate, and left that fucking thermos behind for evidence."
"You're drunk. You talk too much."
"If you catch the next foul ball in your teeth I'll run out on the fucking field and wrestle that midget Juan Pierre to the fuckin' ground."

I can't really do this dialogue justice, since it ran on - wrestling match ups with animals and baseball players interspersed with profanity and surprisingly revealing stories of old revelries delivered without shame or insight - for the better part of eight innings. It didn't ruin our game. We're adults and we showed up with no kids in tow. For some reason, perhaps divine intervention, there were few kids near us and I'm sure these gentlemen were drowned out for most of the kids by the other fans. Had I spent my hard earned money to take my family to a ball game, I would have been forced to wrestle that guy to the ground like a chimpanzee or perhaps that midget Juan Pierre.

Instead, I listened in amazement, in awe. What must it be like for everyone around you to know more about your soul than you do?

A hint of Fall. . .

I took my camera with me to the Chippewa Flowage but didn't bring the battery charger. This picture documents the edge of our good friend Paul's dock, and perhaps the first hint of autumn.

This has been a week full of highs and lows. On Wednesday I toured three nursing homes on behalf of my mother, who now experiences life second by second and seems to understand it less and less. She must move from her comfortable memory care unit into the final leg of her journey, and a higher level of care.

I remember taking Mom to visit my Aunt Joan, who accomplished her dementia by virtue of the consumption of vodka martinis, at Chatham Oaks, which used to be called the County Home. Mom was in the early stages of her disease and found the visit very sad and difficult. A woman was wandering the halls wringing her hands and pleading "help me, please! Help me!" Mom couldn't abide seeing her like that and pulled a staff person aside and asked her to do something. There was, of course, nothing to do.

The places I visited were only marginally less sad than the County Home. All three seemed well run and the people I met who lived there seemed comfortable. Staff treated them considerately and seemed quite used to this end of other people's lives. In the end I chose a place that was a little quieter, that had a nice room to offer and a quiet room-mate who is "in about the same stage as your mother," the intake director explained.



I have always planned that as Mom's money ran out and her cognition disappeared I would move away from the comparative luxury of the assisted living facilities she nonetheless hated and settle on practical care. There is no reduction in price for this lack of luxury since she requires more staffing and hourly care. There is no fine art and there are no chandeliers in the lobby. We purchase cleanliness, good care, and the absence of the smell of urine, sweat, and the subtle funk of old age left unattended. Mom sleeps wherever she is seated and looks apologetically and confusedly at whoever speaks to her, searching for an answer that comes to her less and less, the end of a sentence begun seemingly eons ago, the identity of a face so familiar and yet infinitely puzzling. I found myself wanting her to have a private room, a little place of her own. What good would that do? She's more likely to be attended to if there's someone else there, if she's out in the common area. The privacy is for me, for who she used to be, for old times.

We're now in a race between Mom's assets and her neurology. Her attorney and I are moving to take advantage of something called a "Miller Trust." This trust is designed for people like my mother with steady income that doesn't cover the cost of nursing care. We put her income and dwindling assets into a trust and make a pact with Medicaid. I think we can protect her life insurance benefits, but I'm not sure. She's "spending down." In the end, I guess we all do, one way or another.

I have been involved as a witness in a trial of a young former youth worker at my former employer who took it upon herself to seduce my 16 year old client who was a resident in her care at the time. This young man initially felt that the incidents in question were his responsibility. I don't know if being a young man, and being offended against by a woman, made his situation worse. All victims start out feeling for their oppression, at least all the victims I've worked with.

This young man was a child witness to horrifying domestic abuse, over and over again. He learned some things about intimate relationships it will take much of his life to unlearn. Our work together centers on how to trust, how to be trustworthy, how to love and be loved. The young woman's need to "fall in love" with her client, to tell him the bad things staff were saying about him during their meetings, to involve him in an attempted cover up of her madness and irresponsibility "proved" to him again that intimacy is inevitably for satisfying the needs of others at one's own expense. It erased the value of his treatment, leaving him as doubtful as he was when he began it.

My client's mother called administrators at the agency. She called the Department of Human Services. She called the Sheriff. They told her that what happened was not a crime, was not child abuse, that the young man was at the age of consent and that there was, regrettably, nothing to be done. She looked up the Iowa Code for herself and found a statute making it illegal for counselors to engage in sexual activity with clients. She copied this statute and sent it to the agency, to DHS, to the Sheriff's office and the County Attorney.

My client was called upon to testify several times. As we worked together and as he gained some distance, he came to see that he needed to face his accuser and tell what happened. To my wonder and amazement he gave a powerful deposition, and appeared as a witness in court, at great emotional cost. The jury found the young woman guilty of "sexual assault by a counselor." She may serve up to a year in jail, may be listed on the sex offender registry, may be on a ten year "special probation." The judge will have some discretion. He also knows that she lied, failed a lie detector test, made a full confession on videotape, and that the videotape evidence was thrown out because she asked to stop and her interrogators insisted she continue.

I know that this mother saw an opportunity, at long last, to defend her son and pursued it. I know that this young man summoned all his courage and faced his abuser and the legal system he has come to hate and fear and gave truthful testimony. I know that now he his making his way from the place of victimization to the place of surviving. I have seen too many young people stumble on this path not to appreciate how miraculous and wonderful this is.

In the paper, and on line, people are speculating about the harshness of the young woman's sentence. The paper reported, falsely, that the young man "initiated" the inappropriate activity. He did not. He initiated the "meeting," wanting to talk about going home. Some on line commentators saw the situation as the enactment of "every boy's adolescent fantasy." Some commented that the young woman wasn't really that attractive. My client and his mother read this stuff. I ask them not to.

At the Jackson Street El stop in Chicago, I saw a busker. We were rushing to a ball game and the people in the crowd were all in a hurry to go some place or another. She was a woman, but it was hard to distinguish her gender. She was neatly dressed and had a violin attached somehow to her neck, a guitar on a strap, some sort of percussion shaker at the end of the guitar's neck, and tap shoes on her feet. The music she made was entirely her own. She bowed the fiddle, strummed the guitar, plucked the fiddle, bowed the guitar, her feet tapping the concrete like castanets. She made an unearthly sound, not jazz, not folk, more performance than interpretation. I went back hurriedly to take her picture.

There in the afternoon bustle in a public place, the busker was making music in her own style, in her own way, and seemed oblivious to the crowd around her. She could have been singing old favorites for the crowd, chasing them with songs they might like, but she wasn't. She stood proudly, making her own strange noise to the counterpoint of crowd and trains.

At the game we met up with an AmeriCorps Member recently graduated from our program. He is from the South Side of Chicago, a Sox fan, and had never been to a game. For 25 dollars we bought him a ticket and we all enjoyed a perfect late summer evening.

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.

On elimination, extortion and heirarchy of need.

Lying down with dogs, one awakens with fleas. We are living with Maggie, the black curly rapidly growing puppy whose bladder is still roughly walnut sized. In the end, I think she will have trained us to let her out whenever she barks at the door. She rewards us with one of two forms of elimination. For this reward, we also let her sleep with us.

Our rationale for sleeping with a dog is that she doesn't eliminate where she sleeps (except for the first night when she "baptized" my leg not once but twice!). Looked at another way, it's a matter of "let me sleep with you or I'll shit on your floor!" This is a very effective form of persuasion, one I should have considered as a desperate and lonely young man.

Sleeps is a euphemism for what happens, really. Maggie alternates between lying near our legs and lying on our about our heads, on our pillows. It must be difficult to choose, because she alternates these positions with some frequency, occasionally using her scratchy back toenails to push off from our foreheads. This is an effective method of propulsion for her, but for us is a problematic interruption of REM sleep. "Let me sit on your head or I'll shit on your floor!"

This morning, Walker came into our room at 5:30 a.m. in order to iron his shirt for work. He was at a party until midnight last night and so did not have time to iron his shirt at a more traditional hour. "Do you mind if I turn on the overhead light so I can see to iron?" he asked thoughtfully. We declined. Maggie suggested that Walker take her outside for her duties (our reward), and Walker thoughtfully declined, suggesting that he was busy ironing. Maggie began barking at him insistently. Walker submitted to the will of the puppy and took her out. "Let me iron shirts in your room at the butt crack of dawn or I will shit on your floor!"

Soon Walker drove off to work, neatly pressed shirt and all. Robyn fell back to sleep. Maggie and I lay around in bed and she eventually came up and gave me many wet licky kisses. Cuteness, softness and cuddliness are evolutionary adaptations which enable dogs to survive their formative years. (How does this explain the survival Chihuahuas and Yorkshire terriers, or those hideous Chinese Crested dogs with no hair except for a stringy mohawk?)

I got up, made coffee and assisted our canines in once again visiting the back yard. I have diverted Maggie from chewing on multiple household items, including me (reduced as I am to the status of household item). After about an hour of this, both dogs are lying peacefully on the floor, convincing imitations of the reality I dreamed I'd inhabit when we added a puppy. Dogs living in harmony, sprawled on the floor in postures of domestic bliss. Soon I'll drive to Iowa City to see a client or two. I will stay awake for a while due to massive doses of caffeine administered orally.

Later I'm coming to YOUR house. "Let me take a nap, or I'll shit on your floor!"

Dahlia

Dogs are good for the soul. We felt our souls would benefit from more doggy karma and so we have added another mutt. She's a mix between a large poodle and a lab or a golden retriever. Time will tell, I guess. At any rate she's soft black and curly.

Maggie and Tye are settling in pretty well now. First Tye ignored her and played catch furiously. Next he growled at her when she came near and took all the toys for himself. At this point Maggie realized he was harmless and began to torment him mercilessly. At this point we got to see some fine doggy drama as Tye did his best imitation of a HUGE ALPHA DOG and Maggie yi-yi-yiped her way under the sofa. Balance was soon restored and Maggie was more respectful.

Now we have reached the air humping stage. Perhaps my dog is the only one that does this, but I suspect not. At some point, he will become so overwhelmed and aroused that he gets a doggy erection and humps air right there in the room with you. Tye is now air humping directly above Maggie. My daughter says this is wrong in so many ways. She points out that in dog years Tye is 63 years old and Maggie is 14 months old.

Friends, my dog is a creepy old guy.

Every time I think about where I was a year ago, I shudder a little. Then I stand up, walk across the room, bend over, pick something up, turn my head and smile. Every day this summer feels like a gift. Having sat and looked at summer passed through a series of windows, enjoying it as a participant is gratifying.

I had a flat on the way home Friday afternoon. The flat tire light came on on the console and I pulled over to see a small metal screw punching into my tire. There was a hissing noise as air escaped around it. I figured that I'd had the screw there for a while and that it was probably a slow leak, so I tried to make it closer to home before I ran out of air. It was a sunny afternoon and I pulled way over on the shoulder and changed my tire. I also discovered that my car has a full size spare! Who knew?

Good to change a tire, not to be helpless in an untoward circumstance. Good to feel self-sufficient. Good to go back to enjoying Friday afternoon off.

You just don't realize how fragile it all is. We slip at the top of the stairs, we give in to impulse, we apply the brakes and nothing happens but a fishtail and a sick feeling.

That bastard ahead of me may be doing fifty-five in a sixty-five zone in the left hand lane, holding up a parade of traffic trailing behind, and me trapped in it. I may be tired and hot and maybe even a little sore. . . but. . . my jaw is not wired shut, and if I want to I can go out into the front yard and jump up and down. I can wiggle my toes, ears too, for that matter.

I had lunch and a couple beers with some old friends outside the Bread Garden yesterday. It was sunny and we compared notes as old friends will. The city is putting upright pianos around the pedestrian mall, apparently at the same time they're trying to stop musicians for playing outside and putting out a case for donations. A guy in a ball cap sat down and played some boogie-woogie and the sun shone and children ran toward the play equipment.

I have a list of tasks as long as a leg to which I must attend this week. I have been undisciplined and far too easy on myself. I must get some check-marks put into some little boxes, goddammit! But for the rest of the evening I'm going to lie around the shack.

It's too wet to plow. Too dark to mow. To windy to stack buckshot.

You got to ac-centuate the postive, e-lim-inate the negative, hold on to the affirmative and don't mess with Mr. In Between.

YIt was a pretty good day out at LeRoy's. I gave us a bit of a pep talk along the lines of choosing one's attitude, to uncertain effect. Robyn had to work at the grocery store this afternoon and so we had a firm exit strategy. We all drove in Walker's new car, Walker proudly at the wheel.

I remember the first weeks I had my '69 Mustang I drove very carefully. After Richard Rivera said I drove like an old lady I began to experiment. Walker is in the careful stage and I hope it lasts a long time. The Forester is kind of "truckish" in a way that discourages sharp cornering. Walker says it goes through mud really well. (I wince.)

After we ate our Amana Breakfast, we went outside to walk around digest and avoid a comatose state. Walker and his cousins Caleb and Noah were playing wiffle ball. More cousins and other kids followed and soon there were two full teams dressed in their out to breakfast best playing wiffle ball in the late June morning sun. We stood and watched and cheered and the big boys were nice to the little boys, let them pitch and bunt and steal and feel like somebody. "Boy World" at its best can be a generous fair and honorable place.

I found that LeRoy's highway patrolman neighbor is an enlightened student of American Popular Music. He saw Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper in Iowa City!

After a while everybody called it a game and we headed over to LeRoy's and sat on his great big deck. We swept the water off the boards and sat in the dappled sun and shade. A doe and fawn ran across the clearing at the bottom of the hill.

The knuckleheads who can make this gathering tedious were not any less knuckle headed than they usually are. I just don't give them any more attention than I have to. My better self tries to find someone interesting to talk to or engage a cousin in a game. My darker self stews and fantasizes elaborate social revenge strategies. We usually try to keep my darker self in the car.

A year ago I was lying in a hospital bed, impossibly bruised and substantially broken, as helpless as the day I was born. Today I'm going to make some coffee and drive to see my mother and pay the bills. This year I've seen my daughter graduate and my son turn sixteen. My wife holds my hand sometimes, when no one's looking. I can wiggle my toes.

We're not going on vacation this Summer. We're going to hang around home and enjoy ourselves doing nothing. Come watch if you want.
Posted here are a couple more portraits from my weekend in Mt Horeb. Kris Rugland took my camera and took the shot of me.