“We’re All Misfits”

We watched Rudolph the other night, and it was cute having all of our Island of Misfit Toys action figures on the extended hearth under the TV.

We have – by my count – four different instances of Yukon Cornelius, and two Hermies (or Herbies, depending on who’s doing the listening). I collected these over quite a few years. I’ve always identified with the Misfit Toys, because – well, it’s hard to say just why. But I’ve felt that way.

I mean, I don’t have a scrap of musical talent, but I keep trying to play all these different instruments. And I’m a mesomorph – a guy who adds muscle and weight easily – but I wasted thirty years trying to be a runner or a triathlete. Misfit all the way.

I have two brothers. They were born within eighteen months of each other. I was born eight years later. So I was even a misfit in my family of origin.

When I got sober, I fit right in to AA at that time and place, because that’s where I learned it. But the longer I’m sober, the less I seem to fit. I’m a Big Book Thumper and a Traditionalist in a time and place where folks pretty much just remember what their sponsors said, and don’t even read the Traditions at their meetings (this has recently changed in one of our meetings, but not everybody does it yet). I’m also the guy going to five or six meetings a week after forty years of sobriety.

There are others like this here – in terms of going to plenty of meetings – but they aren’t stick-in-the-mud dinosaurs, like I am. I reckon that the message that I got was that there is, indeed, a message to get, and we’re supposed to carry that very message, whereas nowadays it seems like the “message” is whatever folks feel like saying on any given day.

This doesn’t just make me a misfit – I think that it makes me unpopular.

Of course, I’d be unpopular anyway. I’m not one of the cool kids. I was just at the grocery store where a lady pointed at me and said “Yeah, he’s in my choir now. He’s some sort of wannabe standup comedian. I feel sorry for his wife.” Of course, now, how do I go back to choir practice? The one thing that I never, ever, want (besides a relapse) if for Kim Puckett to be ashamed to be next to me.

I know people who are cool. It seems that part of being cool is being sure that you are quick to point out those of us who aren’t cool.

So, I’m a misfit. But – I am married to Kim Puckett, and I have a sponsor, and as long as those two approve of me, that will have to be good enough.

(BTW – Kim finally found out what is wrong with Dolly, the doll on the Island of Misfit Toys. It turns out that she cries real tears, and that little girls don’t like that. Well, Dolly, you go right ahead. I feel ya.)

Dry Spell

It’s been two weeks since our last real snow, and there’s nothing happening anytime soon.

That rain on Christmas might give us a little snow, but not much.

Well, I keep telling Ethel that we picked the wrong town, but we’re actually getting visitors from all over, because we’ve got the most open terrain in the state, or something like that. So things are tough all over.

And it will, eventually, pass.

I didn’t sleep well last night; I was up for a few hours, with stuff running through my head. So when I finally got up today, I was in no hurry to start my workout; I didn’t finish lifting and swimming until 12:30, and it took me another 20 minutes to make it home. I decided that I didn’t care how long it took me; I was going to do the whole workout, and swim the whole routine. I spent a lot of social time because I wasn’t in any hurry to get the next set done. And I did, indeed, do what was on the schedule.

My pulmonologist wants a stress test; he told me this yesterday, and it’s already schedule for the 29th of December. Meanwhile, the cancer doc wants an MRI, and Aetna says “no”; the doc has appealed it, but it will take a month to hear from that. I hope I don’t die from cancer during the pulmonary stress test.

It looks like Ethel has definitely decided on the Everest Base Camp trek, for next October. It won’t be cheap, and it won’t be easy – the trek itself should be less stress than Kilimanjaro, but it’ll take forever to get all the way over there. I’m putting off singing “Kathmandu” over and over again until she’s actually booked the trip.

Speaking of booking – today I registered for the Iron Horse Classic on Memorial Day weekend. I’m in the “citizens ride”, which means that I’m not competing or being timed. It looks like I’ll be spending a while in Silverton waiting on Kim Puckett to come pick me up, as the return transportation ain’t cheap, and I think it’s already filled up. But I’ve never minded hanging out in Silverton.

We’re currently watching “The Long Kiss Goodnight”. We’re way ahead on our Christmas movies this year, because I’m too tired to do much more than just sit and watch them, and it ain’t like there’s any skiing to do. Because, as I mentioned, we’re in a dry spell.

Choir Practice

We have choir practice today at St Patrick’s.

We’re (supposedly) only doing this for the Christmas holidays. Of course, I’m not running my life – I have a God, a sponsor, and a wife to do that for me.

It’s not the sort of thing that I’m good at; for the purposes of choir, I’m a tenor, but I was only able to discern that by comparison. I listen to a lot of Clint Black, and I can usually sing the same notes that he does (although it doesn’t sound the same when I sing them) and I read or heard somewhere that he was a tenor. However, I’m not calibrated – if you hit a note on the piano in that range, I can probably hit it with my voice, but I couldn’t tell you what note it is. So sheet music only helps me if I have something else to listen to to remind me where we are.

And I often get lost in the more complicated pieces. So, I try to stop singing then, and just lip sync, until I get back on track. Sometimes I see Ethel leaning away from me, which means that I’m singing the wrong notes and need to shut up for a while. Ethel is also a tenor; she’s really a contralto, I think, but there are plenty of altos and not enough tenors, so she’s on the back row with us guys. As I like to say, she “identifies” as a tenor.

This is an experience that I haven’t had before, and I sort of like collecting those – but, while I’m sitting here typing about all this, I can feel a little fear in my belly, which means that I am scared about singing in the choir; these are folks who know what they are doing, and I’m faking it. Dishonesty always come from fear, and also generates it.

So this morning is lift and swim. I’m also hoping to get in a bit of yoga, as well, but I’ll be doing it by myself, because Ethel has been filling her schedule like crazy since we got home from Alabama. And I’m also sort of planning to look at the local ski shops, to see if they have what I need. We’re planning to go to Durango tomorrow, because they have a lot more inventory than we have here – in addition, there’s one shop that is only open from Thursday to Sunday, and they focus on having last season’s gear, still new in the packages; that’s probably the best place for me to get what I need.

I need new boots, and – yes – I also am going to need new skis, so I might get both at the same time. But, if that happens, the stuff will come back home with us and go under the tree, and I’ll keep skiing with what I have until Christmas. We’re not supposed to get much snow for the next two weeks anyway, so my skis will become my rock skis.

Back when we lived in Park City, the first time, when Silas was about ten years old, he had a short list of chores that he was supposed to do when he got home from school. One of those chores was vacuuming the downstairs hearth, and the rug near the hearth, because we had a fire pretty much every day. He was supposed to use the old vacuum, but sometimes it seems that he got confused, but – for whatever reason – he would use the new vacuum, and he’d get in trouble.

One day Kim was giving him grief about it and finally got him to repeat it, over and over – that he was supposed to use the old vacuum to clean up around the fireplace. And she said, “Okay, Silas, which vacuum are you supposed to use to do this?”

Silas said “The old vacuum”.

“Which vacuum are you never supposed to use?”

“The new vacuum”.

“Are you always supposed to use the old vacuum?”

“Yes, ma’am”.

“So, when do you use the old vacuum to clean up around the hearth?”

“Every day.”

“And, when would you use the new vacuum?”

Silas looked off, pursed his lips, looked back at his mother and said “…when it becomes the old vacuum?”

🙂

So my new skis will be my new skis, until they become my old skis 🙂

My Animism

Well, that animism is bothering me again*.

The liner in my ski boot has torn; it’s a hard piece of plastic, and so it’s tearing into my ankle when I put the boot on – painfully.

So I went to the ski shop, and they sold me a pair of rental demo boots until I can figure out what I’m going to do. Ethel says that I should get new boots, but that’s something that doesn’t happen quickly, so I have the rentals until that happens. So now I have my old boots and these old new boots (or new old boots). And it leaves me feeling guilty about getting rid of those boots.

I went ahead and threw them away; and while I was doing that, I was talking to God about how these boots don’t have any feelings, so it made no sense to feel like that – but when I trashed them, I still went ahead and told them that I was grateful to them. I had these boots for a long time – Ethel got ’em for me for Christmas either 2013 or 2014.

So I am now on used boots – we’ll see how they do.

I did wind up riding for an hour and a half, and it left me tired. I seem to be going downhill faster than I was. But I’m no longer running the show.

In other news – today, for the first time ever, I went to choir practice. I have never sung in a choir, and it went better than I would have thought. I’ve been told to sing tenor – as in, ten or eleven miles away. 🙂 Ethel identifies as a tenor, although she’s always sung alto. The folks were nice and tolerant and haven’t asked me to go away yet. Of course, they’re good Christians, so they might not get rid of me – but, then, the good Christians in Massachusetts burned folks at the stake, so maybe I’d better not place too much stock in that.

Alabama was in a game with Georgia today. You’ll note that I didn’t say “played a game” because they really didn’t. It was the worst that I can remember seeing Alabama play since before Nick Saban got going. So, they lost the SEC championship in a big way. Oh, well.

I didn’t get in any piano or chanter practice today; again, that bad night of sleep has left me feeling poorly all day. Tomorrow we go to church and I’m supposed to actually sing for real – not just lip sync. I hope to go ski after that, but we only have until 2 PM before our Zoom Traditions inductive study starts. Nobody asks me about the scheduling of these things.

It wasn’t a great day.

*if you don’t know what that means, then hit a dictionary – or you could go to my search window and search for it, and you’ll see it associated with my old car, and my old refrigerator, and my old chair….

“Diseases Desperate Grown…”

The fireplace is getting done, slowly. When we got the estimate, it sounded like a reasonable deal – but now I see what it’s taking, and it seems that I’m paying the mason and his helper something like $200 per hour. Of course, he lives in Pagosa, so that’s probably minimum wage.

So – I had a talk with the electrocardiologist the other day, and she told me to back off on my workouts so that I only go up to the low end of Zone 3 in my heart rate, and she told me to “listen to my body”. So this morning, I backed off to 80% intensity in my Sweet Spot ride, and then had to admit that – if I’m being honest, which I have to do according to page 58 – I don’t feel up to going skiing after that workout.

So – I’m really in bad shape, cardiovascularly. I was saying “Well, I can’t run, but at least my bike and swim are still strong”. Well, my bike and swim aren’t strong anymore.

And my prostrate is acting up. My PSA has gone up in the last few months, so that now they want an MRI. When this prostrate cancer thing started off, it was “No worries, mate. It’s cancer lite. We’ll just monitor it”. Well, they’re monitoring it, and it’s not good.

So – I’m in awful physical shape – the worst ever – and my medical problems are getting worse.

I’ve always said that, if I can’t ski, I might as well move back to Panama. But, if I have all these medical problems, then I can’t live in Panama because I’ll need medical care.

SO HERE’S THE PLAN – I “move” to Texas. I reckon I’ll rent a room from my childhood friend in Dallas (no, I haven’t asked him about this) just to establish residency. Then I’ll move back to Panama. Then I can fly “home” easily to top-notch medical care in Dallas, and I won’t have state income tax.

To quote Jacopo in Count of Monte Cristo, “tell me why this is not a good plan”,

However, Ethel isn’t going for it just yet. So I’ll leave her to sit with it for a while, until she suddenly realizes that it’s actually her plan. To quote Jubal Harshaw, “once [she] pees in it, she’ll like the flavor better, and she’ll buy it”.

In the meantime, I’m resting, and hoping that tomorrow morning I feel up to going skiing. Before I “move” to Texas.

Nothing Ever Settles

We got back from Alabama last night, and unpacked, and even watched a movie. Time to settle back into a routine, right?

Wrong again. Nothing ever seems to be settled down.

Here’s the living room right now:

For some reason, Ethel didn’t like the fireplace surround – apparently, it didn’t surround the fireplace correctly – so now we’ve bought stone and timber and hired a mason and a carpenter to put up stone and a new mantle. During all of the prep and discussion, the stonemason has been responsive and on time. Now that it’s time to start the job, he’s late.

And we can’t sit in the great room, for at least a week, during the day. We’re great room people – this is where we sit. Where I nap. It’s pretty much the center room of our lives, but we’re now exiled from it, because the fireplace surround didn’t work, and the mason ain’t working, and everything is covered with sheets.

I had to go to the local clinic this morning to get lab work done; I had to get my truck moving outside, at 16 F, with that hard, crusty, thin frost that forms on the windshield and that won’t scrape off very well. Then, when I got home, I got tagged to sit around and wait on the mason before I can do my VO2Max ride, before I can do the rest of the day. Fuss and bother. It was a PSA test, to see if my cancer is acting up. I had to not work out for three days prior, and now it’s time to get on the bike, but I can’t, because the mason isn’t here yet.

We’ve taken the skis in for the first tune of the season. The nice ski techs told me that my Rossignol Soul 7s, that I bought 5.5 years ago, have been worn down too much, and that I’m going to need new skis by the end of the year. Well, gee – Rossignol has quit making Soul Sevens. And there’s nothing out there to say what to replace them with – I mean, if I ask, Google AI is really ready to make suggestions. But Google AI has been so wrong so many times that I really don’t want to trust it.

I hate this. I love those skis.

We’ve got to either put the Thule box back up against the garage ceiling, or put it on Ethel’s car. It looks like it will fit under the garage door, but I know that she doesn’t like the whistling noise that it makes at highway speeds. But we moved to a place that charges $2000 for a double ski locker (the last time we paid rent, at Big Sky, it was $200; we belonged to the Big Mountain Club in Whitefish for about $3500/year) and we didn’t do due diligence – no, wait. That’s not true. We knew that Wolf Creek was going to be building out a locker room, but they couldn’t tell us then how much it was going to cost. Goofed up again. I reckon that I didn’t think “probably seven times the cost of the last locker rental” was a reasonable assumption.

I have a call with my electrocardiologist’s PA today at 11 AM. I’m going to tell her that I can’t run anymore, so I’ve given up on life, and if the doc wants to recommend elder euthanasia, I’m cool with that. But nobody ever wants to do things the easy, simple way.

And now I’m through typing this, and the stonemason hasn’t arrived, or called. So it looks like things are going to be up in the air for a while. – actually, Ethel just called, and he’s going to be a couple of hours, so I’m going to get on the bike.

(UPDATE – Apparently, I didn’t post this yesterday, when I wrote it. Posting it now, a day late).

If I Sit Long Enough

So yesterday, since I don’t have my pool stuff, I substituted an hour of aerobic riding for my swim, and then did my lifting. It seems that the weights on the Life Fitness machines here at the Hartselle gym aren’t the same as they are everywhere else; I don’t think that they are 2.2 times as hard (which would mean kilograms instead of pounds) but something is seriously different.

So when I finished with my legs, I sat on the bench for a long time, trying to get up the gumption to move into the upper body stuff.

As usual, once I sat there long enough, I got off my patushka and got the rest of the workout done.

These last two days I’ve made two meetings each, since my regular life is a thousand miles away and so I don’t have anything else to do. Yes, I’ve been visiting with my son’s family, but that can only take up so much time and energy (although Ethel seems to have made a new career out of it). And this little AirBnB is very comfortable, but there’s not much here for me to do. There’s no piano, either. So I go to extra meetings.

Thanksgiving “dinner” isn’t until something like 4:00 PM. That sort of throws the whole day’s eating out of whack, but I’ll trust God to take care of my abstinence. I am having trouble getting enough protein here in Alabama, though. Unless it’s fried.

Pandora just served up “Pieces of the Night”, which may be my favorite song of all time. It still throws my emotions around, because I let it – I attach my feelings to the song and let it jerk me around for about three minutes, because it’s so sweet, and sad. I have two pieces of decor in my house taken entirely from this song – a framed print that says “A hillside in shadow, between the people, and the starts”, and we have a small statue of Aphrodite on a barstool in the great room.

Now I reckon I’ll get a shower, finish the movie that we’re watching, and make a noon meeting. If anyone is reading this, then I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving!

Honesty, Please

We’re currently watching Appaloosa, with Vigo Mortensen and Ed Harris. Renee Zellweger plays a floozy. The floozy is promised to Ed Harris, but out of nowhere smooched Vigo. Vigo walked away.

Now, Vigo and Ed are great friends, but Vigo – while he rebuffed Renee’s advances – isn’t going to tell Ed about what a floozy she is. You can just tell that he’s not going to say it. Which will, no doubt, cause much trouble later on, as Renee keeps floozying around.

This happens all the time. If somebody would just SAY SOMETHING, the movie would be over quick and everybody would have an easier time of it. But, no – nobody just tells the truth, and it all results in drama, fuss and bother.

Honesty really is the best policy.

We’re still watching movies. She pulls ’em out, loads ’em up, and I say “What? Why haven’t we watched this?” Now, sometimes there’s a reason – Cocoon wouldn’t play all the way through, and it turns out – for various reasons, depending on how much tolerance you have for conspiracy theories – you can’t stream that movie anywhere, and you can’t even buy the DVD. I had to order a new one from Amazon Germany. I hope that it still has the English dialogue.

The other night we saw “Batteries Not Included”. The critics say that that’s a kid’s movie. Ethel says critics are morons.

I heard from the electrocardiologist in Colorado Springs. He told me to stop taking my calcium channel blocker – this was the same day that the cardiologist in Durango sent me a message to keep taking it. You wonder if these folks ever talk. So, I’ll stop taking it. I currently have no belief that this heart rate thing is going to work out, because nobody yet has actually hazarded a guess as to what is actually wrong – and, if you don’t know what’s wrong, how can you fix it? But I’m following instructions.

LIfted and swam this morning. It went okay. But, even so, my heart rate never went above 129. Something is wrong, but nobody knows what.

Took the truck in today to get the winter tires on. That, at least, is good news 🙂

November 17th, 2025

…a day that will live in infamy.

I was up sometime around 2 or 3 AM, and I was staring reality in the face. I realized that yesterday I couldn’t even do an hour on the elliptical, at low resistance. The ellip has always been my fallback when I couldn’t run for whatever reason, but yesterday, I simply couldn’t do it.

So, After very close to 35 years of recreational – and competitive – running, I gave up running. I have given up the ghost – which is all that was really left, anyway. I’m done. Running – or running substitutes or crosstraining – stopped being fun a while ago, and became simply painful. And it has left me feeling awful.

From now on, it’s the bike – and the pool.

I changed the schedule I’ve followed for years – this morning, I lifted and then swam, and tomorrow, I’ll do a hard bike ride. No running. None.

I’m in the pool. Now, since I can’t run, I won’t be doing any more triathlons, but, I’m still in the pool. I think it’s because being in the pool just feels right*. It feels like something that I should do. No, I’ll never be a competitive swimmer, but swimming relaxes me, and I really believe that it helps me recover better from my other workouts.

I’ll hit the bike tomorrow. I’m still signing up for the Iron Horse Classic in May – yes, I’m only pushing about 75% of the wattage that I was pushing when I came home from the Arizona Ironman, but that was eight years and a lot of injuries and illnesses ago. And even at an FTP of 179, I’m still a stronger biker than most guys my age.

I’m going to make the most of this. I’m determined to do so.

But no more running.

I still remember that day – I had been jogging a mile or two, two or three times a week (maybe) since I left the Army in 1986, but I quit smoking in 1991, and in January of 1992, I went out for a two mile run, and turned away instead of turning back home, and went eight miles. I came in the back door and told Ethel that I was going to run a marathon. She said “Yes, dear” and kept doing whatever she was doing.

I ran one, too, that next December – and then, the next year, qualified for Boston and then ran Boston the year after that. It’s been something that I’ve always done, for thirty-five years now.

But it’s over. And now I’ll remember the day that I stopped running.

Time to do other things.

*Now, Ethel will tell you the same thing. And she’ll tell you that she knows that swimming helps her general fitness, and that she really enjoys it when she’s doing it consistently. But – she won’t go to the pool. Self-knowledge avails us nothing.

Insurance

Apparently I have insurance troubles.

See, I had this procedure a few weeks back – a pulse field ablation.

I thought I had nailed down the costs before I did it. Now I’m getting bills that don’t seem to make any sense. Now, I can afford them – but it feels weird to be paying charges that weren’t what I thought I was paying.

Ethel says don’t worry, the insurance folks will straighten it out. But I thought it was strange that the original charge, before insurance, was $125,000.00 on the bill. No, I won’t be paying any real fraction of that – but huh? Maybe six people, working for two hours, and they get $5000/hour apiece?

I picked the wrong profession.

There’s something wrong with a system like that. I told Ethel that I didn’t even want to be part of such a….a scandalous situation. I told her that we should move to Mexico or Columbia, where there’s no insurance, but the medical charges that I had while I was there made sense. I was going to have this procedure in Medellin, where the medical care is first rate, and it was going to cost about $2000 – with no insurance.

Then I had a 20 minute followup with my cardiologist’s PA last week. The charge was $500. That’s a third of an hour. $1500 an hour, for a PA? What the heck is going on?

Well, Ethel won’t move to Medellin. So I reckon I’m stuck here. But it just feels really, really strange. Is any of this real money?

….today was church, and then I was supposed to do an hour on the elliptical at low resistance, but all I could do was a half an hour. My long, hopeless slide into abysmal oblivion keep right on going, no matter what doctor I see. And nobody can explain it. Every week, I’m weaker than the week before.

Oh, well. At least some things are looking up. It’s raining right now – a big storm, but that means that up on the mountain, it should be dumping. In fact, it’s supposed to turn to snow down here tonight, but tomorrow back to rain. But at least winter’s coming. It’s been absolutely clear, sunny and 65 F for what seems like forever. Sure, that’s nice, but it bodes ill for a ski season.

I would say that we’ll be skiing next week – but next week, we’ll be in Alabama. It’ll be nice to see the family. But I wish that I could ski first.