A spider made me do it

I’m in the rehab hospital. No, I’m not a celebrity druggie; I’m an idiot. Here’s the story. I was up on a ladder pressure washing the pilings and girders under our Edisto Island house. Hot day, good fun, bathing suit, barefoot. Almost done when a huge black spider dashed out from a crevice right over my head. I don’t like spiders so I commenced a high-speed emergency descent. When I got to the bottom rung I stepped back off onto the concrete floor. Just one problem! It wasn’t the bottom rung and I stepped off into thin air. Suddenly my frail nearly naked body was speeding toward cruel hard concrete at about 900 miles per hour. Fractured left side humerus and femur near the top of each. Sassy spider looked down at me writhing on floor for ten minutes awaiting rescue. Spouse found me and kindly hosed off dirty floor all around me so things would be tidy for the ambulance guys.

Fast forward 17 days. I now have some metal pins in my femur and am just able to walk on a cane with a spotter. Left arm still strapped tightly to my side. Nice ladies help me go pee and poo. They promise me hellish agony when the time comes to unstrap my arm and start cranking it around. Due for discharge and further outpatient therapy beginning on June 15. Will convalesce at my sister’s house until well enough to travel to Asheville for the rest of the summer. Good news is it’s supposed to heal completely to original strength and I got out of my dreaded trip to Spain.

Fast forward again 58 days from fall. I can drive, walk in almost a normal gait, ascend and descend stairs normally, and scratch my head with my injured arm. Punishing physical therapy and home exercise continue and I continue to slowly improve. No jump rope or pull-ups though. I think I will be as normal as anyone my age eventually.

The South Carolina Light Bulb

Failing schools, genocide in Libya, budget deficits, drunk drivers killing 17,000 people per year nationally, earthquakes, tsunamis, scary unions wanting to bargain collectively. Just when we thought we had heard it all, we learn that the government wants to tell us what kind of light bulbs we can buy, starting in 2012. They want us to use those sissy energy saving “Curly Friggin’ Lightbulbs” (CFLs for short) Isn’t that the coup de gras for our personal freedom!

We in South Carolina don’t have to take this. Representative Bill Sandifer (Republican Oconee County) is going to attract a manufacturer here to build a factory to make old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs like Thomas Edison invented in the late 1800’s. Apparently if they are manufactured here, we can still sell them here. Heck; we should take this to the next level and make it a state constitutional amendment. We already have a “right to hunt” amendment. We could have a “right to buy horridly inefficient light bulbs” amendment. Yeah! And even a “right to eat junk food while praying in school” amendment. OK, I’m getting off topic. Just got a little excited about how SC could set the nation’s pace for freedom.

How will we get a manufacturing facility for obsolete light bulbs here? Easy! Give them giant tax breaks, and fund training programs for their workers. We did it with Boeing. We can do it for obsolete light bulbs. If need be we can even give them big subsidies. Everyone knows that if you give money to rich businessmen they will invest it in ways to create jobs and stimulate the economy.

Why should we support this effort to keep ourselves in the 19th century? There are lots of reasons. Everyone knows the 19th century was the best century. The old fashioned light bulbs are only 10% efficient so we can get 90% heat out of them in the winter at only three times the cost of heating with a heat pump. Two out of three women say the 19th century bulbs make their skin look better and warmer. In fact it really is warmer because they are so inefficient they give off tens times more heat than light. If you think that doesn’t make you look good, go to Light Your Face and have somebody look at your face. It lights up your face like a super inefficient 19th century light bulb. Oh! Don’t make video calls to movie stars with this; they’ll fall in love with you and start stalking you.

Funny Superbowl Commercials

I watched the Superbowl XYZ (or whatever the Roman numeral for 45 is) along with the rest of you. The commercials were truly entertaining. There was one where a fellow fell through a rotten wooden bridge and smashed his testicles. There was another where a whole bunch of different guys were getting violently kicked and kneed in the testicles with near lethal force. There was one where a baby got smashed into a glass window and another where a giant log smashed into an elderly lady. There was one where a robber had a gun in the face of a guy in a convenience store threatening to take his life while another guy lay writhing in agony on the floor with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Ha ha ha ha! Isn't it fun to watch other people get painfully injured?! Oh oh, another great one was the one where somebody threw a pop can with such force that it smashed a young woman in the face and completely knocked her off her park bench. Oh, crack me up! Ha ha, get it? CRACK me up. How will they top this next year? I can’t wait. Maybe they can have people getting their eyes gouged out or actually killed completely dead. Sooooo funny!
Actually I’m being sarcastic, which is supposed to be the lowest form of humor. That’s probably why you aren’t laughing. I miss the gentler more refined commercials of a few years ago like the Budweiser one where the greatest violence was when a couple just got singed a little when they accidentally ignited a brewery horse's bowel gas. And wardrobe malfunctions! That one with Janet Jackson was GREAT. I know that was the half time show but why can’t we have more of that in the commercials?

Boo may come to Edisto Island

Brace yourself. He wants to move to Edisto and bring Boo. I am speaking of Kiawah resident, Graham Banks, a self-described poet, investor, day-trader, and dog owner. Mr. Banks is fed up with getting big fines on Kiawah Island for repeatedly having his dog Boo on the beach unleashed. According to a February 9, 2011 Post and Courier article, he plans to teach Kiawah a lesson. He aims to sell his Kiawah house and move to Edisto Island where he figures it’s more “laid back southern”.
I am a very laid-back grits and collards-eating Edisto Island resident, born and raised in the middle of South Carolina. However, I really do not need Boo or others of his species scampering unleashed and sandy-footed on my beach towel, shaking water on me, and shoving his big wet sniffing nose where I do not care to be sniffed. My two-year-old granddaughter does not like getting body slammed by affectionate forty-pound carnivores laying siege to her and her sand castles. Few of us good old freedom-loving southern boys and girls on Edisto really want unleashed dogs digging up turtle nests and defecating big steaming piles of disease-causing coliforms in the sand, even if their owners do scoop when watched.
Town of Edisto Beach rules require that dogs on the beach be leashed May 1 through October 31 and of course owners must scoop year-round. Dogs anywhere in town anytime must be under “verbal command” of their owners when off leash. If Mr. Banks does not intend to live by the democratically established rules of the community, perhaps he and Boo can seek their Utopia somewhere far away. Maybe there is a place where the prestige of having a poet and day-trader for a neighbor outweighs all else.

Man's Best Friend

She yaps at me every day to go for a walk with her. Then she scampers all over everyone’s yard inspecting their new shrubs and things while I holler for her to come back before we get into trouble with the neighbors. At least this ritual ensures that I get my daily exercise. She’s not always nuts about me watching television but she will sometimes reconcile and flop partially across my lap to be stroked. She’s very protective of my children and grandchildren although she gets restless in the car when we drive to visit them; we sometimes have to stop for exercise breaks and it’s hard to round her up again. She’s a good early warning alert because her acute hearing and sense of smell pick up anything unusual long before I can detect it. My friends all adore her. Most heartwarming of all, she is very loyal and comes bounding to greet me when I return from a trip. Yep…though I sometimes complain about her, I really really love my wife.

Shameless: Coarse language and Insufficient Nudity

Last night we watched Shameless, the much-hyped new edgy Showtime mini-series. Normally we don’t get Showtime but our cable TV provider is doing a free week of it for promotion. Anyway, the show is well named. It is about a trashy single-parent family where everyone uses coarse language to discuss their sex lives and even normal everyday events like going to school or getting arrested. The Dad is drunk most of the time and passes out on the floor every night. They’re just the type of family we all wish we had. Right?

Why does the entertainment industry think viewers are dying to hear coarse language? I’m not a prude; I just don’t see the entertainment value in it. I don’t use coarse language in normal conversation and neither do others with whom I associate…too much. Coarse language should be reserved for special moments like dealing with an inane robotic call director when trying to report a lost credit card, or getting your finger snapped in a mouse trap you’re trying to set – both of which happened to me yesterday. If I become habituated to coarse language in ordinary conversation it will lose its efficacy for these important moments.

There are scant moments of sex and nudity in the show. But somehow the producers think the most exciting sex is on the kitchen sink with dishes getting broken with every lunge. Obviously they have a lot to learn.

The bright spot in the show is Fiona, a lovely young woman and the only character with a shred of discipline and responsibility. She also happens to be smart and deliciously curvy. We need to see more of her…not just more screen time but more surface area. She should be innocently nude in all the scenes, while speaking with a civil tongue of course. It wouldn’t matter what she’s doing. She could be baking cookies, doing her income tax, or practicing her yoga. I’d subscribe to Showtime for that!

Kids say the darndest things

…was the title of a segment in Art Linkletter’s 1950’s TV show House Party. It’s true too. I was too busy to write down what my children said and now I’ve forgotten or garbled their best one-liners. Therefore I aim to transcribe my grandchildren’s quotes. At this time I only have two grandchildren Yaiza and Ayla. Only Ayla at two and a half is old enough to speak. But, already she says the darndest things.

Her most used line is “Don’t worry” which she pronounces, “Don’t woe-rie”. For example…
Me: Ayla if you run around with that sharp letter opener you might fall and accidentally stab it through your eye.
Ayla: Don’t worry.

On the day of her sister’s birth she was left in the care of her grandmother and me. I was about to step into the shower when I realized that I had forgotten to bring a towel to the bathroom. I didn’t bother dressing again to go out and find a towel, figuring that at two and a half my exposure wouldn’t even register with her. She tracked me walking all the way down the hall to the bedroom then called out, “I like your bummy Bapa.”

The next morning I emerged street legal with my shorts on, but no shirt, and sat down on the sofa to check E-mail. She ambled out with her Red Riding Hood book and sat down next to me. She looked up at me and the following exchange occurred.
Ayla: I like your boobies Bapa
Me (ready this time): Thank you Ayla. I like your boobies too.
Ayla: Thank you Bapa.
It all seemed to transpire like any perfectly ordinary exchange of pleasantries.

One day at dinner my wife served Ayla some broccoli. She responded, “Aaaaack!” Her mother said you shouldn’t talk that way to Grandma. You should politely say “No thank you Grandma; I don’t care for any”. Ayla responded sweetly, “No thank you Grandma; I don’t care for any”. At the next meal when we served her something she didn’t like she said (You guessed right) “Aaaaaack!”

The other day we phoned her mother. We could not hear what she was saying because Ayla was jabbering away in a strange voice. Her mother said that she was talking for her stuffed Teddy Bear and then said:
Mother: Ayla AYLA! Can you have Bear settle down now so I can hear Grandma and Bapa.
Ayla: No, sometimes Bear just does that.

Ayla is the world’s worst back seat driver. Her advice usually consists of, “Go Mama” or “Go Daddy” when we’re waiting at a red light. On one of these occasions I counseled her.
Me: Ayla, we have to wait until the light turns green because it’s the other cars’ turn to go now. If we don’t wait we might have a crash. We could be horribly injured with owies all over and have to go to the hospital in an ambulance.
Ayla: Don’t worry.
She may also be the world’s worst mycologist. She snatched a mushroom out of the ground and immediately started dissecting it during our nature walk last week. We exclaimed at how you should never pick mushrooms because some are deadly poisonous and she should put it down so we could wipe her hands good. She was reassuring.
Ayla: Don’t worry. Only white ones are poisonous.