Why My Eye Twitches

So this morning, I come upstairs to do my morning stuff. When I walk back downstairs, my wife informs me that God has told her to move to Cabo and buy the Vista Vela penthouse – there’s only one left. Here’s a representative view, from a neighboring unit:

If you’ve been playing along at home, you know that we were buying a home – Casa Wendy – back in March, when Kim decided that she didn’t want to live in Mexico. As the Grateful Dead sang, “…nothing left to do but smile, smile smile!”

Then we came home, and she told me that instead, we’d go to Colorado. Then I backed out of the deal, and we didn’t buy the house on Latigo. I just couldn’t bring myself to let Ethel cry and get over it. When a woman cries, a man is supposed to do something. That’s the rules.

Since then, we’ve made another trip down there, but we could never agree on a house. And it’s not been going well.

So, this morning, Ethel did a 360 on me 🙂

The condo won’t be ready until June 1st. Once I got over the initial shock, we talked about what needed to be done, and when, and our realtor said “if you’re going to sell, sell now – we don’t know what next spring will be like.”

So then we actually started getting the house ready to sell. We started taking stuff off the walls. And we have a lot of stuff on our walls.

We decided to put everything into two groups – one group of sstuff to go to Cabo San Lucas, and one to go to a possible small condo in Colorado, if what we’re looking for ever shows up.

All day long, the aftershocks have been hitting me. As we’ve been taking stuff down, it’s become real, and I’m starting to feel like this is a bad idea. We can’t do this. This is despite having been talking about moving to Cabo since our first visit there, in June of 2011. Ten years ago.

It’s kind of like retirement. We know that if we leave here, we’ll regret it. But if we don’t go, we’ll regret not going. It’s impossible to know which regret will be larger. Of course, if we stay here, then the regret about not going to Cabo will be a theoretical regret, and it’s been my contention for many years that theoretical consequences are much easier to live with than actual consequences. That’s why I don’t believe those folks that say “You regret what you don’t do more than what you do do”. Folks who talk like that probably haven’t been arrested much.

Let’s see how I feel in the morning. We have five days to back out of this and still get our (rather large) reservation fee back. After that, we have ten days before we have to make the down payment.

I would say that I’m excited, but – I’m still decaffeinating. And one can’t generate excitement when decaffeinating 🙂 However, even with no caffeine in my system, I’m still able to register shock 🙂

Sort Of An Anti-Depressant

So, I’m learning more about caffeine.

I’ve always thought of caffeine as a stimulant. But it’s not a stimulant – it’s sort of a “depressant uptake inhibitor”.

“Lemme ‘splain. No – is too much. Lemme sum up.”

Caffeine, chemically, looks a lot like adenosine, which occurs in our bodies naturally.

(this picture, and these concepts, came from this article, although I’m dumbing things down a good bit because my brain isn’t working, because now it’s getting a WHOLE LOT of adenosine).

Adenosine* seems to be a sort of natural depressant; it arrives at receptors in the brain, and tells the brain to “calm down, slow down, maybe take a nap”.

Since caffeine resembles adenosine, what happens is that when we drink caffeine, it goes into those adenosine receptors, and sort of takes up adenosine’s parking spot, so that the adenosine can’t get in. So, the brain doesn’t get the “slow down, calm down, maybe take a nap” messages.

Also, since now there’s excess adenosine running around, this causes the brain to send out to get adrenaline delivered, as well. And it also causes the brain to decrease the number of norepinephrine receptors – that’s another stimulant.

So the caffeine isn’t a stimulant, but it stops the brain from uptaking a depressant, and also causes stimulants to get created.

So, since the brain is wondering “what happened to all of that adenosine I should be getting?” it starts adding more adenosine receptors; this is what caffeine dependency is progressive. It takes more caffeine to fill up more receptors, to keep blocking the adenosine.

So now what’s happening is that I have a whole lot of these receptors, and no caffeine blocking any adenosine. Which means that I have to talk myself into stuff like, you know, walking upstairs. EVERYTHING is an effort; life is like walking through molasses.

My brain is (allegedly) responding to this situation by reducing the number of adenosine receptors – taking it back to normal. However, I suspect that – just like everything else – this adaptation takes longer, the older one is.

So I have some takeaways from this – the first one is that I am not really tired. The fact that I always feel like I’ve just finished a marathon means nothing at all with respect to my muscles and cardiovascular system.

Which means that I just have to go ahead and do stuff – all of this stuff that I don’t want to do, at all, like ride and run and lift and swim. And go to meeting, and practice piano, and do whatever chores Ethel assigns. Because I’m not really tired; my brain just thinks I am.

In fact, there’s an adenosine party going on in my brain’s parking lot, telling me to calm down, slow down, and just go take a nap. And this is happening well below the level of conscious thought; it’s not something I can talk myself out of, or into.

It’s not fun when nothing is no fun. “Fun” has to do with emotion and energy levels, and all of that stuff is dead, dead, dead right now.

We’ll see if things straighten out.

*If you’re like me, you’re wondering if adenosine has anything to do with ATP, or “adenosine triphosphate”, which is what the mitochondria use to get work done in the cells. But, if you’re like me, then you’re recently decaffeinated, and aren’t about to go look things up if you don’t have to do so..

Depleted

It’s been ten days since I’ve had any caffeine. The web sites all say that the withdrawals last 2-9 days. They are wrong.

Or maybe I’m through withdrawals, but now my body is adjusting. I saw somewhere where that can take two months. If that’s the case, I don’t believe I’m going to make it.

I’m doing some stuff, but not much. The other day, we hiked up to the Sykes Overlook on Lion Mountain:

It’s a nice view. Now, a guy like me will look at that and say “Gee, that doesn’t look like the Rocky Mountains. That looks more like the Appalachians.”

Of course, I’m not seeing things in their best light these days. No caffeine has left me with no energy, no gumption, and no enthusiasm or pleasure in anything. Surprisingly, it has also interfered with my sleep some – a normal, it seems, side effect of caffeine withdrawal.

I haven’t done a full day of piano since this started. I have done some workouts – not that many, but at least I’ve done some hard rides, and I’ve even run some, although I finish my runs on the elliptical. I have no gumption at all.

Alcoholism involves powerlessness. Thus, we make no attempt to shield the alcoholic from temptation (page 101). Caffeine, however, is a simple dependency; it can be beat by will power, and, thus, it has to be.

And I’ve been feeling the temptation to just have a cup of coffee. Maybe go back to having three cups a day – two in the morning, and one in the afternoon. But I already know that I will quickly need more than that; that’s what “develop a tolerance” means. So, that won’t work.

I’ll just stay miserable. At least I can tell myself I’m miserable for a good reason 🙂

*In fact, I did say just exactly that. Next thing I know, Kim Puckett is looking at log cabins in Boone, North Carolina.

De-Energized

It’s been six days since I posted to this diary. You might think it was because I was busy. But that is not it at all.

I’m decaffeinated.

And discouraged, and maybe depressed. And feeling detached, as well.

For those of you playing along at home, here’s Ethel’s current frontrunner in the “where next are we going to go under contract just to cancel and break Jim’s heart” sweepstakes:

That’s in Pagosa Springs. It does NOT have a mountain view, but it is surrounded by green space. It’s the same size as this home that we’re in, but on one level, and it has a three car garage. And it’s in Pagosa Springs, which is nice.

There’s no AC, but it’s almost 7600 feet up, so there’s that.

Last week I was so tired. My friend Leslie said that she got where I was, and cut out caffeine entirely, and now she’s fine. Well, ‘diseases desperate grown by desperate appliance are relieved, or not at all’, so on Thursday and Friday I cut way back, and I haven’t had any caffeine since.

I’m waiting for the miracle. Currently, I’m too tired to do anything more than go to a meeting.

On Saturday I rode for an hour; I had two hours planned, but it wasn’t happening. I’ve maybe practiced piano for an hour in the last three days, all totaled. I’m not sure when this is supposed to happen – this regaining of energy. But I’ve been hearing “don’t quit before the miracle” for so long it’s sort of engrained in me.

In fact, I’m sort of stuck in not being able to drink coffee now. I think I’ve gotten stubborn about it – like I think I can make this work, if I just stick it out. It sort of feels like when I quit smoking, except I haven’t felt like getting into any fist fights.

Eventually something will happen – I’ll get energized, or I’ll give up. In the meantime, I’m losing conditioning at a terrible rate.

I sure would like a happy ending here.

Welcome Stoned Hunters

In Pagosa Springs, we saw a “dispensary” (that’s the new term for dope house) that was advertising to sell dope to people with large caliber high powered weaponry.

There’s no way at all for that to go wrong.

We’re at the airport, heading back to Montana. We’re waffling on the issue of the condo on Coalbank. Ethel is sitting beside me right now. They asked for volunteers to take a bump on the next fight to Durango; I suggested that we take the money, take the bump, and call our realtor and have her come pick us up and write an offer on the property.

She ignored me. That’s a bad sign.

We really like Pagosa Springs, but from what we’ve seen of the meetings, it doesn’t seem that they have as many newcomers as Durango, at all And there are lots of things that Pagosa doesn’t have. But I really think that the main thing is that we couldn’t agree on a property there.

We have agreed on Coalbank, and Kim says that she’ll buy it with no hesitation, but we’re not making an offer – instead, I’m typing this and she’s on Facebook.

Want to know what I want? Just watch what I do.

We’re heading home and should be at a meeting tonight. Made two meetings yesterday. I have done no sort of workout today – I think it being the fourth day at elevation, things just came caving in.

The San Juans

Last two days were Durango; now we’re in Pagosa Springs. These are two of the ski towns in the San Juans, other than Telluride, which is ridiculously expensive. * Here’s the view down the valley back west from up near Wolf Creek Pass:

Durango is great. We’ve got a definite candidate there that we are seriously considering. But now we look at Pagosa. Pagosa is smaller. The mountain doesn’t have an alpine club.

BUT – they get 430 inches of snow a year (the most of any ski hill in Colorado; that’s like Alta).

There’s a lot to recommend Pagosa Springs – not the least of which is that Kim Puckett really likes it. So I like it too. It doesn’t have all the services of Durango, but it also doesn’t have all the weirdness.

Tomorrow we view homes. Let’s see what happens.

At four in the morning, I wake up and know that we’re not going to move here, and that it’s stupid to do so. But by nine or ten AM, I’m ready to buy, sell and boogie. It’s sort of funny, that way.

* well, there’s also Silverton, but while that has amazing skiing, it’s almost all guided. And I can’t get Ethel to consider Silverton.

Coalbank

Well, there’s a townhome in Durango that has caught our attention. It’s on Coalbank Road, which is named after one of my favorite passes.

This is the view looking out the window; just to make sure that we’re seeing the right stuff, they show the view looking from the kitchen out through the living room, as well:

If the property is as advertised, then we are very interested. Some things about the listing don’t make sense, though – but, then, that’s usually the case when looking at or reading a listing. We’ve got a call in to the list agent, and have had for almost even hours. Surprisingly, we’re waiting to hear from her.

I’m sure that this has nothing to do with the listing agent being the one that we cancelled our contract with when we backed out of the purchase of Latigo. Okay, so maybe I’m not that sure 🙂

While we were waiting, another property came on the market that grabbed our attention, as well. That’s currently two in Durango that are interesting. And we have all of those that we like in Pagosa Springs.

I thought that we’d be heading out to go look at stuff in Red Lodge and points south, but Kim Puckett’s back went out; she’s been down since yesterday afternoon, almost immobilized. This has happened to me, but perhaps only three times in my life; my bones seem to stay fairly well in line.

Meanwhile, it’s another hazy, smokey day in Whitefish. Can’t really see the Swans or most of the Whitefish Range. It’s been like that a lot this year. All winter, it was cloudy; then it was cloudy and rainy until the end of June, and it’s been smokey a lot of the time since then. This may have been this way before we moved into the Dog House, but we wouldn’t have noticed it as much when we didn’t have a view, in the condo.

Still training at about half volume. Still doing the piano. Still making 5-6 meetings per week. These are disciplines. I don’t have all of my disciplines in place these days, but the big rocks are in the jar.

Now I’ll go back to working on my Hanons, and then pounce on my new sight-reading song and try out the songs that she’s marked for me in the Methodist Hymnal. I figure I’m more comfortable messing up the Methodist songs than I would be trashing good Episcopal music 🙂

New Skill

One benefit of all of this COVID stuff is that I learned how to zip up my speedsuit all by myself.

I wear a speedsuit in the pool because a) it’s marginally warmer, I think and b) it hides the chubbies, and c) it smoothes out the fat rolls into a more streamlined shape. I mean, walruses and seals are fat, but streamlined.

It’s pretty stretchy, so here’s what I do – I put it on, then reach around and pull the back of the suit DOWN, towards my hiney, and then pull the zipper up as high as I can in that configuration – then, I reach over, and pull the suit UP as high as I can, and then I can reach the zipper to pull it up the rest of the way.

Swam today. It wasn’t awful. I quit at 2000 yards because I’m still trying to manage my fatigue – read: “see if I can get untired enough to be reasonably happy. I started to say “cheerful”, but I pull that one off, already. Yesterday I did an hour fairly hard on the bike, but then just did an easy hike with Juneau rather than try to run and lift. Eventually, either I’ll get my fatigue under control, or I’ll wind up completely stationary.

Now I’m going to go over to the piano and work on the uber-simplified March Militaire, by Schubert. (Query – Schubert was Austrian, so why was this work titled in French?) I’m not doing this piece to learn the piece – it’s all part of my trying to learn to sight read better. Sight reading, for me, is like flip turns in the pool – I can do them, sort of, but they quickly wear me out, and I have to start over.

So one of the things I’m doing now is sight reading very simply stuff.

We’re still looking at Pagosa Springs, but I can sense my enthusiasm waning. Everything that we are looking at is at least 3000 square feet, and I just don’t think that we NEED 3000 square feet. And on one day, I’m just fine with there not being an alpine club, and then next day I’m scared of having to schlep gear. (“schlep” is a term meaning “carry” – I think it’s Yiddish in origin – but saying “I’ll have to carry that” doesn’t sound as bad, or tiring, or as full of ennui as “I’ll have to schlep that”. “Schlep” is much worse than “carry”).

I’ve been practicing saying “Maybe I should just stay here.” I can get it to sound right in my mind – in my thoughts, I can make it sound light and carefree and positive, but when I say it out loud, it sounds like Eeyore saying “go ahead – amputate”. I’ll work harder on that.

If I can learn to zip up my own speedsuit, I can learn to do anything.

Game Day

Well, we’re back in Montana for Game Day, which means that we were watching GameDay on the TV while riding the bikes.

You can even see the big Alabama banner in the front yard:

I put a pipe in the ground last year as a flagpole holder for that big banner; this summer, with ChemLawn doing the aeration and pulling up plugs of dirt on top of the lawn, somehow it got filled in, and I couldn’t find it again. So I changed the algorithm; now I have a pipe with a sharp end that sticks up eight inches or so above the ground, and I will just pull it out at the end of the season and put it back in the garage.

Game day was interesting at the Puckett house this year. We’ve actually had a falling out with a friend who used to show up every day; not sure why it happened, and he doesn’t seem to be disposed to talk about it, but he always helped Kim with the cooking. And we have other friends who are still hiding from COVID, so we both needed to scale back the spread (because we had only one cook) and didn’t need as much spread, because we didn’t feed nearly as many folks.

Alabama was ridiculously dominant. A brand new quarterback who had never started a game or thrown a significant pass, a new offensive line, a new offensive coordinator and several new coaches – a lot of folks were predicting trouble. Well, there was trouble, but not for us. Miami probably never wants to play us again.

And the defense was terrifying.

There were a lot of amazing games this weekend, including a comeback story for a catastrophically injured star quarterback who has taken years to be able to play again. There’s one more game tonight.

In the meantime – went to meeting this morning, just been working on arpeggios, scales and Hanons on the piano, and Ethel has booked us a noon tee time. So my “workout” today will be walking on the golf course. I can live with that. I’m still trying to get enough energy back to feel a full range of emotions.

This week, we play Mercer. It does seem cruel, but that allows this small school to get a payout that pays for pretty much their whole football program. And, sometimes, those things can backfire – Montana beat Washington this week. As bullfight fans know, sometimes, the bull wins.

I may get a nap before golf. Be difficult to get one afterwards.

(I haven’t been able to talk Kim into just getting in the truck and driving. For some reason, she doesn’t want to do that. It just seems like perfect weather for a road trip. I’d rather be doing that than taking Xes on par 4s 🙂 )

Pagosa

Ever since we bailed* on the purchase of Latigo, Ethel has been keeping an eye on the real estate in Durango.

But a while back, she decided that that market simply wasn’t going to open up, and extended her search to include Pagosa Springs. She’s found quite a bit there that she is interested in, including a lovely townhome with this view:

Kinda nice.

Pagosa solves some problems – some definite problems, such as darkness/sunshine and weather and real, honest-to-goodness mountains and actually being in the West. It also appears to be much cheaper than Whitefish, and is not being inundated with Seattlites fleeing the paradise that they’ve created.

They have nice golf and both an Episcopal and Anglican churches – given how lefty our church seems to be heading these days, all “woke” and stuff, an Anglican option might be nice. And they have the hot springs.

There’s a lap pool – but research may indicate that it’s actually restricted access, and is closed until November anyway.

Of course, like everything, there are trade-offs, such as town is farther from skiing, and no alpine club or Costco. Heck, it’s almost a hundred miles to Sam’s Club in Farmington. And an hour to Durango airport.**

So it’s even more remote than Whitefish – and doesn’t have Kalispell next door. So it may not work for us.

This may go nowhere. I started out the morning by asking Kim Puckett if she wanted to fly down to Roatan for a couple of weeks of golf and diving, and you know what? She said “no”. I simply can’t understand where she’s at these days. If anyone asked me if I wanted to go to the Caribbean for two weeks of diving and golf, it wouldn’t take me more than ten minutes to pack.

But, then, I’m not running my life.

*read as “since I screwed up royally and forced Kim Puckett’s hand on Latigo”

** Ethel’s phone says forty minutes. Something’s wrong there.