Scattered Thoughts . . .

This past week has been an unbearable week of inflammation and debilitating pain. Needless to say, getting anything accomplished this week was virtually impossible.   Standing hurt, sitting hurt, laying hurt and sleeping long enough to keep my health stable was very difficult because the pain kept me awake. Understandably, my mood was negatively impacted. My ability to stay focused on anything for longer than a few short minutes was impossible. What an absolutely frustrating and excruciatingly painful week.  My entire spine was so inflamed it seemed like it was swollen and on fire... constantly... steadily... it burned consistently like the sun.  Each of the areas of my spine that have been injured during my career hurt so badly that it felt as though I had a large swollen red bump the size of a handball at each point of injury.  For those who aren't aware, after two line-of-duty spinal injuries I am left with two herniated disks, four bulging disks, six compressed disks, two a

Overall, my health has been quite miserable and very unstable for the past few months.  What really pushed my health into this bad spell was the fireplace project during the few weeks in December. I was in a rush to get the fireplace to an operating condition before Christmas arrived. Systemic Mastocytosis causes extreme, overwhelming fatigue and this is especially so whenever I over do it and use more energy than my health allows. I'm still trying to recover from pushing myself to finish that project in time for Christmas...  but, the fireplace really is nice. Unfortunately, although "really nice", that fireplace is still not completely finished.  I managed to work on this project about an hour each day this past week.  It still wore me out each day... imagine just a quick hour of light, easy work requiring bedtime immediately... Despite the need for sleep everyday, over the course of the week I managed to fill some open edges, sand, fill some more, sand even more

Disney videos on Grammy's Kindle Fire I went back and looked in the folder of photos from dinner with the grandchildren the other night and I found a couple of decent photos which have Mackenzie in them.  In one of the photos, Grammy is watching short Disney videos with the kids on her Kindle Fire. That kept the three of them busy for fifteen or twenty minutes but it is easy to see that Kenzie's interests are headed in a different direction than Lukey's interests.  Should be fun times ahead! I included another photo of Lukas here even though I shared one of him in a previous post already.  I included it because I thought it was interesting... it is a bit blurry, but a nice photo nevertheless. I was holding my camera in my right hand and the teddy bear (featured in my previous blog post) in my left hand.  If I hold the teddy bear just right, I can also bob his head and move one of his arms with my piano-playing fingers. So, while trying to get a photo of Lukey la

This past Sunday, the grandchildren were here to join us for dinner. I made some cheese ravioli, meatballs and tomato sauce for dinner.  I rarely make ravioli but it was pretty good... well, it was a nice change anyway. Lukas was fairly easy to capture in photos that afternoon but Kenzie was a bit difficult this time around. Either she kept her back to me whenever I was holding my camera or she was busy doing something elsewhere. She did, however, want to view the photos on the back of the camera so she kept squeezing between me and my camera to push buttons and swipe the screen. I showed the kids the video I put together from a visit a couple of weeks ago... that captivated them and they get very animated seeing themselves and family members on our television. The funny thing is that every time they saw themselves playing with their Thomas the Train train set, they would jump up and run over to the trains to play again. Their attention was constantly being diverted back and fort

A friend of ours, Anne, recently shared a few photos she shot while visiting a butterfly conservatory in Massachusetts a few days ago. If you've ever tried shooting butterflies you know how difficult it can be to get some nice shots of them! Anne shared a really nice album and it prompted me to go digging for some photos I shot in the butterfly house at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden when we visited in 2009. These feathery, lightweight day-flying insects are difficult to follow in flight which makes it exceptionally difficult to capture a nice photo of them while in flight. To be honest, I don't know if I have ever managed to capture a decent photo of any butterfly while in flight! If I ever do, I am sure it would be completely by sheer luck... and I'm not really the luckiest guy in the world so accomplishing this is highly unlikely. I have, however, managed to capture a few nice shots of butterflies perched on plants while bathing in the sun (not me...  the bu

Today is Rare Disease Day. (Or, is it Rare Disease Awareness Day?)  Because of this occasion, I thought it would be appropriate to write about my feelings toward my illness, Systemic Mastocytosis, and awareness days such as today. In short, I suppose you could say that I feel similar about today's awareness day as I do on Memorial Day. On Memorial Day, I'm reminded of all the ghosts whom have left empty holes not only in my life, but it seems like in my soul as well.  Memorial Day is not a pleasant day for me and I tend to lock myself in my home on Memorial Day weekend. I don't want to watch movies of war... I don't like the memories fireworks evoke... I don't want to do anything which will remind me of what I try so hard to put into the back of my mind every day. Rare Disease Day feels the same to me and only reminds me of my early struggles with this illness... how long ago that was (read how unbearably long I have been struggling)... the support groups a

I have been in the process of descriptively writing about some early morning kayaking I have done while at Lake Groton. It should be a really nice piece when I finally finish it. Because of that project, I have been skimming through my hard drives searching for the best photos I have shot from my kayak while the sun is rising and slowly burning off all the early morning fog. Occasionally, I come across an unrelated photo which captures my attention. This photo here was one such photo and understandingly diverted me from my original project. I'm sure that those of you from Waterbury recognize this cluttered but blurry background as  The Alchemist Pub & Brewery.  This photo was shot in May, 2011  before Tropical Storm Irene destroyed all of downtown Waterbury including this popular gathering place by submerging and swallowing our entire community and spitting out nothing but destruction, mold, mildew and tons upon tons of stinky, oil and sewage laden mud. My camera was new

This past weekend, we managed to get out for an afternoon and evening on the town in Burlington. It had been about nine weeks since we last had an opportunity to get out with some friends and that is far too long! All in all, we had a great time with Frank and Christine. We met at Vermont Pub & Brewery which has always been one of our favorite spots to visit. Unfortunately, the service absolutely sucked but the food, the drinks, and especially the company were exceptional. Not only was the bartending quite lousy because it was extremely difficult to get each round of drinks, but one bartender got a bit arrogant with us seemingly simply because we wanted to order another round of drinks and some food. Idiot.  What is really odd is that there were four people behind the bar and the bar wasn't even what I would consider "crowded". Additionally, we were seated at the bar yet we still had to struggle to get a bartender's attention for each round of drinks and foo

Like most days, I had a plan for this morning.  It was an extremely simple plan, but I had a plan...  1.  Get up out of bed as soon as possible... 2.  Take my cocktail of morning medications... 3.  Start a load of laundry... 4.  Shower and shave... 5.  Get dressed... 6.  Eat something small so I don't stress my body unnecessarily and run out of energy any sooner than my health dictates... 7. Start the car and clean off the snow (Sheila cleaned off the snow this morning before heading to work so my car was good to go)... 8.  Drive to town to pick up a refill prescription (took the last pill last night)... 9.  If I still have more energy, then try to tackle a small project in the house (I still need to finish that fireplace project)... Well...  I only managed to get to number five, "Get Dressed", before running completely out of energy.  So, here I sit, completely spent for the day simply by getting out of bed, starting a load of laundry, showering and s

Overall, since Christmas, my health has been quite lousy to put it mildly. I used up too many "spoons" in the month of December leading up to Christmas. (For those who don't know, a "spoon" is a unit of energy... see  Gift of an Extra Spoon .) As a result of using far too many spoons in December, I am still trying to recover in February. Unfortunately, the end of this recovery period is nowhere in sight at the moment.  I am so exhausted and experiencing such consistently poor health that I'm having great difficulty even thinking clearly. Just writing this short blog entry is taking about four hours of frustrating work. My thoughts jump from topic to topic in just a few short seconds... yes, a few short  seconds.   I am having great difficulty trying to accurately explain... uggg... about five minutes have passed while I struggled to finish that sentence. I suppose that might explain my difficulties fairly accurately. I don't know whether to scream or