10.14.24: The most pernicious effect of chronic sleep deprivation is feeling locked out of your own brain. I flirted with writing nothing tonight since I don’t currently have many thoughts worthy of anyone’s attention, but fear that skipping one night might lead to skipping two made me resume typing. Today was mostly spent going through the motions like that. Other than staggering downstairs to feed Muriel, so tired I was dangerously wobbly, my recollection of this morning is hazy.
Eventually I edited the clunky first paragraph of last night’s post and went for a walk with Crankenstein, who has the week off. Then things got hazy again: I completed various routine tasks but don’t recall being engaged with any of it. We reconvened this evening for Midsommar, which she’d selected as our Halloween viewing because she enjoys folk horror.
“What did you think?” she asked when it was over.
“Why watch that when you can watch The Wicker Man?” I answered. Though I’d enjoyed writer-director Ari Aster’s Hereditary, Midsommar didn’t unduly impress as either a horror or breakup film. It wasn’t unlikable — the lead performances were good — but it was meandering and self-indulgent. “Look at me, I’ve seen all the major Bergman Criterion releases,” Aster seemed to boast, but haven’t all of us whose teenage pretensions coincided with the halcyon days of Netflix DVD rentals?*
Speaking of meandering and self-indulgent, I’ll try to write something better tomorrow. Crankenstein and I might also clear time for a museum date, assuming I get enough sleep tonight to not pose any danger to sculptures.
* Now our continued pretensions and larger budgets mean we own the Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema collection, purchased during one of Criterion’s 50% off sales. Crankenstein felt similarly about Midsommar, by the way. She liked it more than I did but thought it should’ve been shorter.
10.13.24: I’m not sure if “Unbreak My Heart” or “How Do I Live” is more appropriate for what I’m about to tell you, but Auntie V has made her final appearance on Eight is Enough.* Tragically, even the excitement of her softer, hipper hair couldn’t compensate for a lackluster plot; Viv deserved a better sendoff. (She’s one of several Bradford women whose ‘dos were modernized in the fourth season to greet the ‘80s in style, while Dick Van Patten’s toupee and Adam Rich’s signature helmet hair were preserved as timeless classics.)
There’s still the Hawaiian arc to cover before we get into the nitty-gritty of her finale, but I’ll cop to growing concerns about the fifth and final season, which features a young Ralph Macchio in his Danielle Brisebois/Quinn Cummings era.** This brings me to an idle question: has Taylor Swift ruined the word ‘era’ for the rest of us? It seems to have recently become popular for Swiftian reasons that presumably have some lyrical significance (since it’s also the name of her current tour), but I’m not curious enough to investigate.
It’s widely believed that most Caucasian women born during or after the 1980s own all of her albums in triplicate and can recite her boyfriends in order the way my White Diamonds-spritzing grandma could list Elizabeth Taylor’s ex-husbands; but the only songs of hers I’ve deliberately listened to in their entirety are “Love Story” and “You Belong to Me.” (This fact drove Ex, an avowed anti-Swifter, to the edge of despair, but I’m unapologetically pro-“Love Story” to this day.) Though my peers assume you’re joking, lying, or visiting from another planet if you’re unfamiliar with Swift’s oeuvre, it’s easy to fall out of the loop when you prefer older music and television.
Joe tried to get me to listen to Olivia Rodrigo’s new album last year, which I still need to do; more recently, Crankenstein had to explain Chappell Roan in much the same way I once explained to her that Julie London was more than just Dixie McCall, the nurse she had a crush on as a kid who watched Emergency! reruns all summer. Now I’m rambling from tiredness and will try to wrap this up. The weekend was uneventful; we went to the library and the art supply store, and yesterday we met people for lunch.
They’d requested patio seating and the back of my shirt was soaked with perspiration within five minutes of getting to the restaurant, but that could’ve just as easily happened indoors so I didn’t say anything about it. Our waitress and the young couple sitting behind us probably wondered why I was sweating like Nixon at the Chicago debate — we were sitting on benches, so there was no hiding it — and every time I felt them glance in my direction, I wanted to call out “Trust me, I’m as confused and unsettled by this as you are.”
* I suggest we split the difference and listen to the esteemed Diane Warren veterans Toni Braxton and Trisha Yearwood duet on both songs; here’s their “Unbreak My Heart” and “How Do I Live.”
** “You’ll have to be more specific,” some of you might be thinking, for Macchio looked 14 until he was in his forties. He only started to look 40-something within the last couple years, once he turned 60, and before you know it his children will be mistaken for his parents.
10.12.24: We’ve reached a point in my sleep saga where I’m wondering if Crankenstein should Velcro me to the bed overnight; manacles are out of the question because she’d immediately misplace the key. This morning she responded to another report of poor sleep with a revelation of her own: “You were doing weird things again last night.” New weird things — or rather, newly noticed things (for all we know, it’s happened for months or years) — beyond the usual leg movements
“With my right hand?” I guessed. For a couple weeks now I’ve suspected it’s up to something odd between 5 and 6 am on the days I manage to sleep, but she was referring to my toes.
“I woke up in the middle of the night and we were on our backs, cuddled up to each other,” she said, and either her lower leg was over mine or mine was over hers. That’s how she realized my regularly scheduled ankle flexion party had a guest. “It was similar to striatal toe,” she said, demonstrating what she’d felt through my sock: big toe extended, the rest where they should be. I wanted to groan — that’s a Parkinson’s issue that can cause hand or foot deformity. Some people even wrap or brace their feet in an attempt to contain their rogue toes.
“Do your legs hurt when you wake up?” Crankenstein probed.
“Everything hurts when I wake up.”
“Including your feet?”
“Yeah.”
Now she was in doctor mode, asking location questions I couldn’t answer off the top of my head. Even before ‘Niles’ arrived on the scene, Crankenstein was very attuned to her body and hyperalert to anything that feels slightly off. I’m the opposite of that, which exasperates her at times, but how much attention are you really going to pay mundane aches and pains when you’ve had arthritis for almost 30 years? Early morning and late at night are when you expect the most pain and stiffness, anyway.
At next week’s appointment I’ll ask the physical therapist if she has any suggestions, but until then this is one more overnight worry I’ll try to banish from my mind. Sure, I’m just a hand flourish or two away from performing the Macarena while I sleep, but that’s nothing compared to the bilingual conversations Crankenstein has between snores — or the medical orders she issues when she isn’t punching the air and breathing like a Lamaze coach.
10.10.24: “A Roomba isn’t a splurge,” Crankenstein protested yesterday evening, in response to Tuesday’s ode to our new robotic vacuum. “And if it makes your life that much easier, put one in every room.” She meant it as a figure of speech, obviously, and wasn’t only saying it because she’d endorse any measure that might spare her the agony of being asked to sweep. It was more about her post-YOPD diagnosis belief that I shouldn’t just live it up and travel to tennis tournaments while it’s still practical, I should also do more to embrace comfort and convenience.
Loosening up financially has been easier this year than it was last year, mostly because Crankenstein’s med school debt is gone and partly because I’ve started to unhappily accept some of my limitations. I’ve taken Lyfts to stressful appointments, replaced the iPad that Muriel and I accidentally broke, and will pay for a couple of fall leaf cleanups instead of doing it all myself.* My Parkinson’s purchases — the Roomba, a planner, the trekking poles and expiratory trainer recommended by physical and speech therapists — are boring, but making them at all was a sign of progress.
There’s been no tennis travel yet and it’s hard to imagine a Slam experience without Joe, so I might plan other trips instead. For now I’d rather prioritize retirement savings and home improvements while enjoying my new money pit hobbies: I’m currently working on a half-scale brownstone and need to put together a post with photos of other recent builds. The scenes in the brownstone, as with most of my models, will be set in the past, but I plan to make a 1:12 Roomba for Crankenstein’s cabin — maybe one for each level, instead of one in every room.
I’d hoped to write something longer today but this has been a bad week for sleep. Fingers crossed I’ll be less groggy tomorrow.
* I’m aware of the ‘leave the leaves’ campaigns, and we enjoy our leaves, but you also have to consider your surroundings. The restaurants down the street attract pests and it’s best to keep your yard unattractive to them.
10.09.24: It doesn’t feel right to crack a bunch of stupid jokes as Hurricane Milton pummels an already battered Florida tonight, so I’ll delay discussion of Crankenstein’s reaction to last night’s ode to our new robotic vacuum. The other subject I was going to mention was the death of Nicholas Pryor, a wonderful character actor who showed up almost everywhere in a career dating back to the 1950s.* He appears, in fact, in the fourth season of Eight is Enough as Joanie’s boss at a local news station, and I’ll be disappointed if they don’t end up together.
Anyway, my thoughts are with Floridians. Though I have no firsthand experience with hurricanes, I’m very familiar with catastrophic flooding (if the photos don’t load, here’s a video retrospective) and flash floods, and am unnerved by the increased frequency and severity of these events.
* Pryor was married to Christina Belford (also known as Christine), a Cranky favorite who, like her husband, always brightened the screen. She’s still with us but retired years ago.
10.08.24: Last week I did something enormously self-indulgent and purchased a second robotic vacuum cleaner. We already had one on the main floor of the house, a basic budget model that darts around without any rhyme or reason and has to be manually emptied and charged.* It’s a workhorse that’s held up well over the years, and I regularly lugged it upstairs and down to the basement to cover those territories, too.
That’s been trickier lately for PD reasons (especially shepherding the vacuum from room to room upstairs to make sure none are skipped), which has been driving me nuts because old houses are dust havens.** It’s not as much of a problem in the basement, but keeping up with it has become a losing battle upstairs. Realistically, Crankenstein is never going to help sweep the floors or dust the millwork, blinds, and furniture; that’s my responsibility. Outsourcing the floors to a smarter gadget was an appealing alternative but the price was never right.
A self-emptying Roomba was recently on sale for $250 at Amazon, which was more than we’d spent on the downstairs vacuum but not unreasonable for a machine that I’d program to run daily. It arrived this past weekend and connecting it to our network was the first minor hassle; then it returned to the dock but didn’t charge. There was an emptying error I figured out with help from Google (the dock thought the bag was fuller than it was), but other than that I’ve been dazzled. It mapped the second-floor’s layout and lets us customize routines.
You can schedule cleanings from the app or initiate them on the fly; you can send it back to the base to clear its bin and recharge. Owning a robot that vacuums while I tend to other matters already made me feel like Jane Jetson, but having one this capable is a different, more obscene level of luxury. This wasn’t an acquisition I would’ve made prior to Parkinson’s or the repayment of Crankenstein’s student loans. But it’s worth it every time I go upstairs and the floors are clean. It’s made me less disappointed in myself and less irritated with Crankenstein. Now, if only there was a robot that cleans sinks and bathtubs…
* I sweep several times a week and do a deeper vacuuming once every 7 to 10 days since Muriel is a moderate shedder.
** Our older vacuum has become more of a pain because my hands aren’t nimble and I have to frequently detach and clean its brushes. The newer model has brushes that supposedly won’t require as much attention. Housework is harder in general with Parkinson’s, between the clumsiness and lightheadedness and overheating. Floor-cleaning tasks are among the worst for lightheadedness because of all the stooping and squatting and getting back up, same as bathroom-cleaning and laundry. It’s easier to clean the kitchen since most of the areas that attract messes — the sink, counters, stovetop, etc. — are right in front of you.
10.07.24: Nothing’s ever quite as simple as it’s supposed to be with old houses, which turned what was scheduled as a half-hour appointment this morning into one lasting two hours. Muriel, despite having been given Trazadone leading up to what the prescription bottle calls ‘the stressful event,’ registered her displeasure throughout. When her saddest cries and most resentful barks weren’t enough to spring her from the joint (i.e., my office), she even tried her hand paw at howling.
Muriel’s wild insecurity and frantic desperation when I engage with anyone who isn’t her is exhausting, and not only because it reminds me of my last relationship. Multitasking is more onerous now than it was in the past, which means it’s difficult to tune her out and focus on the conversation I’m trying to have. This kookiness of hers wasn’t a problem prior to the pandemic; we’d worked extensively on her separation anxiety and she made amazing progress that regressed during lockdown.
It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks (that’s why I’m still confused by my phone four years later), so I don’t know how much of that magic we can recapture. Muriel’s anxiety, like Crankenstein’s, wears me out now in ways it didn’t before. I was able to avoid the domino effect of her distress intensifying my tremor, but the physical tension she carries on days like this feels inherently dangerous. She has so much energy, so much strength, so many friggin’ legs, and it doesn’t take much to knock me off-balance.
“If you don’t clean up your act, I’ll have no choice but to adopt a sickeningly obedient, well-behaved breed one day when you’re gone,” I warned her afterward, assuming she’d be disgusted if only she understood. She bolted from the office like a bat out of hell when I finally let her loose and dutifully performed a perimeter check while releasing the occasional warning back. Once she was satisfied we were alone, she snuggled up to me on the couch and permitted herself to sleep. She’s still snoring hours later.
10.06.24: “I’m a great wife,” Crankenstein modestly boasted of herself this morning after learning she’d gallantly — and groggily — offered to share her blanket with me if I had the chills overnight. She almost never remembers our late-night exchanges due to how sleepy she gets, so I filled her in as we set off to procure her weekly supply of Coke Zero.
“Are you sure?” I’d challenged her, knowing she’s almost Fatal Attraction-ish in her possessiveness toward blankets. “You won’t yank it away if I grab some of it?” We’re often locked in that most common of domestic power struggles: Crankenstein is almost always cold and I’m usually burning up. To keep the peace overnight, we share a flat sheet and quilt and top them with separate fleece throws. She requires hers year-round, even when our bed is hotter than Hades, and I use mine so rarely it’s kept in another room.
She swore that she wouldn’t abscond with her blanket and not only was she true to her word, she reined in her calisthenics and strange burrowing routines to keep it easily accessible — even as I flopped around all night, broiling one moment and freezing the next. Altogether, I got off easy this time; last year, my temperature stopped just shy of 104 degrees while Crankenstein threw Tylenol at me like a kid tossing peanuts at the circus.
We also trudged to the library today and I picked up a Hallmark movie or two, along with a Claude Chabrol Criterion and I Escaped from the Gestapo, which looked intriguingly bad — but as long as no one yells “Outlander!” 876 times, I probably won’t complain. That’s right, we watched the original Children of the Corn last night, and holy mackerel did it fall apart at the end. I was half-tempted to immediately rewatch it as a comedy but Crankenstein had suffered enough.
10.03.24: If I ever write a memoir, there’s going to be a chapter called “The Uncrustables Incident.” You’d assume that if anyone were to squabble over those odd little frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, it would be the children to whom it’s marketed. But earlier this week Crankenstein and I, childless women closer to menopause than not, bickered about an Uncrustable, something we find more amusing with each passing day.
It was a kerfuffle rooted in ignorance (mine) and irritability (hers). To start with, I’m not too familiar with Uncrustables other than knowing the name; my mom, a supermarket skinflint in the ’80s and ’90s, never brought them home. Meanwhile, Crankenstein’s love affair with these ‘grab and thaw’ sandwiches goes back quite some time, so it was all she could do not to huff “Cranky, you ignorant slut!” like Dan Akyroyd when asked if I should throw out her still-wrapped sandwich, which had been on the kitchen counter for a long time.*
She has previously thrown out groceries after ‘Niles’ raised food safety concerns, so it seemed an innocuous question until she snapped something heated in response; then it was off to the races. In retrospect, I should’ve known she might detect anger in my voice even if none was intended; she probably felt defensive since I’ve previously complained about ‘Niles’ and waste.** But there was more to it than that, as she later admitted with a laugh: Crankenstein was stressed about something unrelated to sandwiches and simply wanted to argue.
It was an impulse I could appreciate, even if she didn’t. The nature of Crankenstein’s work means she sometimes wants to shout things she can’t, much as her strict religious upbringing often silenced her when she was younger. If there’s one place she should always feel free to speak her mind, even if that means impassioned quarreling about Uncrustables, it’s at home.
Though our frivolous fracas was over almost as quickly as it began — we soon felt utterly stupid and decided to move on — it might flare up again later this week if we disagree about a question I’ll pose to everyone here right now: is the hazelnut spread variety of Uncrustables technically a dessert?
* The ‘grab and thaw’ part was what I was missing; I foolishly assumed you were supposed to cook it somehow.
** It doesn’t have to be food waste, it can be almost anything. OCD has a limitless imagination.
10.02.24: For tonight’s spooky viewing, Crankenstein and I turned to Tubi and looked for something in the 75-minute range because we were tired and short on time. Having been enticed by its star, Barbara Stanwyck, we went with The House That Would Not Die, a 1970 TV movie directed by the prolific John Llewellyn Moxey.
Pay no mind to the old house that might be haunted or the young woman who might be possessed; the screenwriter certainly didn’t.* This is strictly worth seeing for Stanwyck, who was incapable of giving a lazy performance and plays every scene with all the dignity she can muster, whether attending a séance or making out with Richard Egan.
Speaking of old houses, my free time today was spent tending to ours. Later this week, possibly as soon as tomorrow, I’ll have a shameful confession to make regarding our abode. It’s not a home that’s ostentatious in size or design, though we think it’s rather handsome. The excessive upkeep it requires is due solely to its age, which is relatable to anyone old enough to have caught Cheers during its original run.
There are other trivial things I could report if I wasn’t overdue for my 10 pm levodopa, like Markie Post’s appearance on Eight is Enough and my maddening indecisiveness about whether to plan a special farmhouse project in half or quarter-scale. Alas, my thought process is becoming as slow and stiff as one of the hands that’s typing this and I still need to get ready for bed. Sorry this was so boring, but tomorrow promises to be more exciting since I have to wrap a few gifts.**
* I apologize in advance for recycling some of this post if I end up covering the film at Cranky.
** That’s not a tremor joke, I’ve been a lifelong danger to myself and others when wielding tape.
09.30.24: Before I forget again, let’s kick this off with a correction I should’ve made last night: “Don’t Let the Old Man In” was not Oscar-nominated. I meant to double-check that before bed and it slipped my mind. The annoying thing was, I had plenty of time to fix it; I was awake more often than not overnight, listening to the familiar whir of ceiling fan blades.
Lately the problem hasn’t been nocturnal hacking — the antibiotic cleared up whatever was intermittently crackling in my chest and we’re left with a more benign choking cough that doesn’t visibly fill Crankenstein with dread — it’s just the usual PD antics. There’s no universal description of what Parkinson’s sleep disruption is like because it’s different for everyone, but for me it can turn any night into a dark night of the soul.*
Once you’re in that zone where your sleep is horribly fragmented, your brain starts to feel under siege. Sometimes I picture it as a rabid doberman desperately lunging and growling and rattling a chain link fence. PD’s the dog from hell, with apologies to Charles Bukowski, and my sanity’s the fence. Noises that don’t bug me in the daytime are torturous at 3 am, and my outlook in general grows very dark and bleak.
It’s not as bad now as it was pre-levodopa, when things got so miserable that I recognized almost none of myself in whoever I became overnight. (On the rare occasions Crankenstein was privy to that agitation, she agreed.) But I still frequently remind myself “This too shall pass. A couple hours from now, the sun will be up and everything will be fine and this will seem absurd.”** Maybe next time I’m up, I can interrupt the pep talks long enough to proofread or fact-check myself instead.
To end this on a lighter note before heading off to bed, one of my nieces told her bus driver today that “Aunt Cranky and Aunt Crankenstein are going to have an anversary,” her mispronunciation of anniversary. She’s never given any indication that she understands we’re gay and I’m not sure she fully grasps what it means, anyway.^ But the story made me laugh because it reminded me of one I’ve shared here before about Youngest Sister telling people I was an alien back when she was a kindergartener who had ‘alien’ and ‘lesbian’ confused.
* Some are plagued by bladder issues overnight. Fortunately, I’ve not dealt with that so far, but PLMS and waking up startled and confused because of noises in dreams is common for me instead, along with dystonia that gets weirder and more severe when I’m asleep or half-asleep and my medication wears off.
** That’s usually true but lately it’s not, because grief feels the same regardless of the hour.
^ She’s only aware of it because she watched her dad write it on their kitchen calendar this weekend, along with other October occasions.
09.28.24: Maybe the mothball post will come sooner than expected. It has to do with the contentious topic of ghosts — of Casper and Topper and “I ain’t afraid of no” fame — and whether or not my great-grandmother, Grams, paid my mother a visit in my bedroom circa 1990 or thereabouts. I said no, as you may have guessed, and Mom said yes.
It wasn’t the last ghost debate to erupt on that side of the family, followed as it was by an incident involving a photo taken in my grandparents’ dining room that showed… what, exactly? Half of my relatives were convinced it was a ghost and the rest of us thought they’d lost the plot. Besmocked teenagers developed rolls of film in drugstores, supermarkets and parking lot kiosks back then, and odd artifacts often appeared due to light exposure and improper techniques.
For 15 or 20 years, my family argued about that photo, and by the time they were done I’d taken up with Ex, whose grandmother went way back with a ghost on a bicycle. My life was ghost-free after that relationship ended — in the traditional sense, anyway — and for a long time afterward.* The streak ended when my in-laws took up ghost hunting, an odd pursuit I’ve mentioned a few times without exploring, an oversight I might soon have reason to correct.
This afternoon they called to ask if they could visit us on X dates next month. It seemed normal enough, until they explained that they were going to be in town for some paranormal tours and ghost hunting and would carve out an extra couple days for us once those activities were done. They said this as casually as you might tell an old friend “Hey, I’ll be in town for business next month if you’re free for dinner.” After all, who doesn’t ghost hunt?
Crankenstein looked at me with raised eyebrows and replied “Uh… sure! That’ll work,” then hung up and shook her head. “What the hell?” she asked, ostensibly speaking to me and Muriel, though I sensed the question was intended for the universe. Naturally, I had no answer, but I might as well start organizing my own ghost stories now since they’ll undoubtedly have some to share by the time we break bread together.
* In a metaphorical sense, sure, I’m haunted. But not by Patrick Swayze or the Ghost of Christmas Past. It’s mistakes and missed opportunities, my own and those of others — did The Conners really have to be so bad? — that gnaw at me no matter my attempts at enlightenment. Yes, I’m a bit more forgetful about appointments and deadlines these days, but there are a million things I’ve imbecilically said or done over the years that I still remember in excruciating detail. The earliest of these memories begin at five or six and new ones are created each year. [Note to Crankenstein/Niles: ‘Imbecilically’ is in the OED. I’m not inventing words.]
09.25.24: The dreaded McCheese is back after a one-day absence, which is sooner than I would’ve liked but there’s hope on the horizon: I’ll finish LSVT tomorrow morning. Should I celebrate my freedom in the coming days by writing reviews? Completing my promised Eight is Enough posts? Throwing myself headlong into It’s a Living, a Witt/Thomas sitcom featuring Susan Sullivan in spandex?*
As a Golden Girls scholar and former devotee of Mama’s Family (in my defense, I was very young), I’ve been on a collision course with It’s a Living since at least the early ’90s. It’s currently streaming at Amazon and this seems like an opportunity worth seizing since it’s not available on DVD. Other than Eight is Enough, which is running out of steam early in its fourth season, there’s no series I’m watching solo right now and a sitcom might buoy my spirits.
Not too long ago, Best Friend suggested I pick out an old show for us to watch together. He was too straight for It’s a Living and had been working his way through ’80s crime and action series, so I was leaning toward Wiseguy or Scarecrow and Mrs. King. It feels too soon to embark on Scarecrow now, though I need to tackle it eventually as part of my Kate Jackson coverage.
In search of a distraction this weekend, I gave Netflix’s The Perfect Couple a try. Susanne Bier was once an interesting director and the cast — Nicole Kidman, Isabelle Adjani, Liev Schreiber — was intriguing. Schreiber’s turning into Sydney Pollack, which I love, but the first couple episodes were terrible. It’s a hybrid watered-down White Lotus/stale cozy mystery and its opening credits are insufferable.
More and more, new streaming content feels AI-generated to me. The Perfect Couple’s title is particularly unfortunate because it evokes Robert Altman’s A Perfect Couple, a forgotten film that’s as effortlessly offbeat (hell, it’s a romantic comedy starring Paul Dooley and Marta Heflin) as Bier’s series painfully aspires to be.
* Alas, she’s only around for a season or two, but she’s joined by a host of others, including future TV movie queen Ann Jillian.
09.23.24: All right, five days in a row it is, but this will be the last: I should have enough free time tomorrow to write a proper post, one that might begin “It’s never a good sign when the psychologist conducting your mental health status exam has a copy of the DSM-5 on his desk.” Immediately I suspected I was dealing with a doofus, particularly because it wasn’t even his permanent office, just a space he was using for the day.
The whole look of the desk, like that of his person, was carefully curated in a way that reeked of intellectual insecurity, and it reminded me of that Anchorman quote: “I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.” But he looked young, if still too old for that nonsense, so maybe there’s hope for him yet.
Prior to his exam, I was evaluated by an internist who inspired more confidence. That said, my expectation of another denial wasn’t swayed by any of it. What normally happens is the government maintains you can do some sort of work, even if it’s no longer the skilled work you previously performed, and then it’s up to your lawyer to explain to a judge why you can’t retrain for another career and aren’t fit to run a fast food cash register or stock grocery store shelves or greet customers at Walmart or Costco.
In any event, I’m glad this is out of the way and will catalog more of the experience later in case anyone’s curious about it. This morning’s appointments consumed more than two hours, much of it spent waiting, and then there was LSVT. Now I’m tired and Crankenstein and I have plans to watch the pilot episode of the new Kathy Bates version of Matlock like the old fogeys we are. It might make us revisit the Matlock of our childhoods, which aired incessantly in syndication and bored us when our grandmothers tuned in, but that’s a slippery slope — if we aren’t careful, In the Heat of the Night and Diagnosis: Murder might be next.*
* Diagnosis: Murder is also on Pluto, but not in its entirety.
09.22.24: Four days in a row of McCheese dispatches is two or three too many, and I’ll do my best tomorrow to keep it from reaching five, but today was mostly about keeping my head above water. My philosophy is usually more aligned with ‘letting the water hold me down,’ a la Talking Heads, but this is a Virginia Woolf situation that calls for hastily emptying the rocks from one’s pockets and reaching for a life preserver — or a glass of chocolate milk.* (Technically, I had a chocolate nutrition shake. But I imagined it was milk.)
To that end, I consumed too much sugar this weekend — you have to get your kicks somewhere when you’re practically Mormon in your approach to drugs and alcohol — and watched a few episodes of The Golden Girls. Crankenstein and I made our usual treks to Aldi and the library, requesting some movies she wants to watch between now and Halloween, and I vacuumed the barren corners of unused upstairs closets and performed other unnecessary chores while listening to a bit of an audiobook, Tyler Mahan Coe’s Cocaine and Rhinestones: A History of George Jones and Tammy Wynette, followed by a little Laura Branigan on iTunes.
Tomorrow I’ll have no choice but to be more productive, which isn’t a bad thing. Once LSVT’s over at the end of this week, I’m going to pick a new (ongoing) distraction to take its place. Maybe I’ll take up twirling, inspired by that Lisa Whelchel telefilm, or become a mafia wife, as Nancy McKeon did in a TV movie that’s long been on my to-review list.
* The funny thing is, no one knows what to say to me right now. Best Friend would’ve known, and would’ve probably already found a way to provoke inappropriate laughter about it, but my family hasn’t gone beyond “I’m sorry.” Tom’s the only one who hasn’t said anything at all, which spurred Youngest Sister to rip into her about what a jerk she’s been lately — or so Crankenstein reports, since Youngest Sister spoke to her and left me alone. I’m not ready to discuss it with any of them, anyway, so it’s just as well.
09.21.24: “You might be young but you already look plenty busted to me,” Crankenstein said this evening, trying to sound both loving and reassuring. We were debating whether I should withhold levodopa prior to Monday’s physical exam for the SSDI reconsideration. It has a very short half-life, exiting our systems so quickly that in theory I’d be ‘off’ just by skipping my 6 am dose the morning of the appointment. But if I also skipped later doses on Sunday, the examiner would glimpse even more of the cumulative toll of YOPD.*
We’ll see how adventurous I feel tomorrow, but I’m leaning toward maintaining the usual schedule and only going ‘off’ on Monday morning. Reconsideration ends in denial 85% to 90% of the time, so why feel worse than necessary while waiting to get kicked (metaphorically) in the teeth? It’s not like there’s anything exotic in my medical history; the examiner will already know what Parkinson’s is and why it’s disruptive.
Whatever they ultimately write in their report, it’s nice to know my wife affectionately views me as a car — or maybe a kitchen appliance — that broke just after its warranty expired and is too expensive to replace.
* Neurologists sometimes ask to evaluate patients in ‘off’ states, but this exam is unlikely to be performed by one. You’re seen by whoever is working that day and their specialty background is mostly irrelevant since they aren’t there to diagnose or treat you. All they’re doing is gathering a few more pieces of information for the decision-makers.
09.20.24: Everyone has their own way of dealing with grief and mine is apparently to dust the remote interiors of cabinets we rarely use and take the Roomba apart, clean it, and replace its brushes, filter and roller. Muriel watched my Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman reenactment with waning enthusiasm, ever the faithful companion, and lowered herself to the floor with a sigh once she’d ascertained that nothing I’d scrubbed or discarded was edible.
Today was my weekly reprieve from LSVT sessions (the exercises continue, you just do them on your own), so I had an extra hour of free time. I used it to grab the zany Bradford screen caps and quotes I needed and arranged it all in order. The resulting post, which was meant to be published tonight, didn’t feel airy enough, so I’ll try to spruce it up this weekend.
It’s important, online and off, to find humor wherever you can during challenging times. Best Friend understood that and so does Crankenstein. Like many who work in medicine, she can crack a joke — or laugh at one — in almost any situation. (Without the relief valve of dark humor, the pressures of their jobs might make them explode.) That’s usually how I operate, too, and I don’t want current events to interfere with that.
When I look back on what I thought and wrote during this period, I want to know it’s something that would make my friend proud. He loved a good Sirkian melodrama as much as the next guy, but we fancied ourselves a Z-grade William Powell and Myrna Loy (or Carole Lombard) and occasionally quibbled about who was whom. Even in better times, I couldn’t give him The Thin Man — neither of us were suave — but we don’t need too many tear-stained hankies, either.
09.19.24: This is just a note to clarify that today’s post, “Do You Realize??” is about the death I mentioned yesterday. While there’s nothing graphic in it, some people dislike heavier subject matters. If you’re one of them, I wanted to give you the option of seeing this first and avoiding it. Tomorrow I’ll return with either “The Night They Raided Bradfords” or something similarly trivial.
09.17.24: The clock read 7:58 am when I logged into the patient portal to initiate today’s LSVT session, which was fine; two minutes was ample time to answer the usual check-in questions since I hadn’t developed new drug allergies or changed insurance providers overnight. But something went awry at the end of that familiar sequence and I wasn’t asked to authorize webcam access or join a call. Instead, there was an automated prompt saying to call if I was in the parking lot and needed assistance.
With a groan, I realized I was expected at the SLP’s office, not in the Grandma Suite. This wasn’t a one-sided snafu — the SLP sheepishly admitted she’d also forgotten or she would’ve issued her usual reminder at the end of yesterday’s appointment. But I wanted to say “No, this is entirely on me. It’s just the latest in a long string of recent screwups I wouldn’t have made in the past.” That would’ve been too personal, though, and I kept having to mute my microphone, anyway, because I couldn’t stop coughing.
It was the usual routine, right on cue after last night’s post about the manometry results: chest weirdness first nudged me awake at 3:30 am or 4:00 am. My sleep was then fitful until 6:25, when Muriel’s breakfast pleas lured me downstairs, so there’d been plenty of time to check the planner I hadn’t opened. Instead, I coughed and shook. The hacking had worsened once I was upright and took my first pills of the day, and I apologized to the speech therapist in advance for any inconvenience, feeling like a bumbling jackass.
After the sixth or so time I’d cut my microphone to cough, she paused to interrogate me and type some notes.
“If it’s still going on tomorrow, I can teach you a cough suppression technique,” she offered.
“Are you trying to kill me?” I wondered, a question left unasked because I lacked the air to expel it.
Mid-morning, I managed a deep enough cough to vanquish the rogue chest gremlin responsible for this campaign of harassment. The rest of the day sailed by after that, including a trip to the dentist to get my permanent crown (and another walk home with Bryan Ferry). I’m optimistic that tomorrow will bring a welcome opportunity to move past the gloom and grievances of the last couple days and write something fun. If I can’t hack it on my own, pun intended, maybe I’ll try the SLP’s cough suppression technique.
09.14.24: Today was mostly a blur of nothingness since this week’s sleep deprivation was worse than usual. Other than running some errands and searching in vain for a couple 1:48 scale accessories to complete my convenience store, I was either nodding off or trying not to. The coffee experiment starts tomorrow and maybe that will help.* If there’s adequate pep in my step, I’ll watch the first installment of “Fathers and Other Strangers,” also known as the vaunted return of Aunt Vivian.
I’m sure everyone’s waiting impatiently for both that and the ridiculous screen caps from “The Night They Raided Bradfords,” but it might help to think of the Auntie V chronicles as the Eight is Enough equivalent of Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson. Do we want it done quickly or do we want it done right? When it comes to Janis Paige’s wigs, I’d argue it’s imperative the historical record be as accurate and comprehensive as possible.
* I’m a bit skeptical it’s a viable long-term solution, mostly because of the j-pouch, but some people are able to build a tolerance.
09.12.24: Apologies if anyone was confused by last night’s screwup — I published a new post but forgot to un-sticky this one, which meant the new one was lower down on the page than it should’ve been. Tonight’s check-in will be on the flimsier side because I have to wake up around 4:45 am to get ready for the esophageal testing my doctor ordered after the scopes, but a couple things happened today that are worth mentioning.
For starters, I finally saw the PCP about my overnight coughing and wheezing. She ordered a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia and we (correctly) expected it to come back negative since I’ve had no other symptoms. Taking everything into account — my description of these episodes, that I’ve searched for triggers and found nothing, and her reading of the endoscopy and swallow study reports — she felt Parkinson’s was involved.
Her theory is that I’m sometimes experiencing “silent aspiration” overnight, resulting in an infection I’m struggling to clear, possibly due to immunosuppression. If I understood her correctly, our July run-in with Covid could’ve precipitated this by making me aspirate more than usual. She prescribed liquid antibiotics, said to continue sleeping with my head elevated, and outlined a ‘kitchen sink’ approach to fixing this since I need to stop choking and start sleeping.
She also prescribed a cough medication to use during future episodes, an inhaler to try if the wheezing gets out of control (or persists post-antibiotics), and reflux pills to take as a last resort. I was grateful she understood, just by scrolling past a list of my recent and upcoming appointments, how burdensome my healthcare is right now. It’s a small gesture in the scheme of things, detailing a simple plan and sending in all the prescriptions at once. But it’ll have an outsize impact by giving me a bit of breathing room, no pun intended, if these problems continue.
The big news of the day is that a Lyft driver told me the power to cure ourselves of any ailment is within us right now, waiting to be tapped. If she’s correct, I’ll never have to see the PCP again. I’ll pass along the unusual details of this revolutionary scheme as soon as time permits. It involves a guru who is big on YouTube on TikTok and possesses none of the credentials she believes he has, but at least I wasn’t asked to purchase supplements or healing crystals.
09.10.24: “Are you excited about the debate?” That was the question du jour offline over the past couple weeks and the answer was no, I wasn’t. What I’ll (briefly) explain here, but seldom articulated in-person, is that I was incapable of viewing it as mindless popcorn entertainment. Elections this important shouldn’t be hyped like summer blockbusters, and anything that legitimizes Trump’s candidacy — like putting him on the debate stage — troubles me so deeply that I lack the words to convey it.
In 2016, Crankenstein wanted to watch the presidential debates. I tapped out 10 or 15 minutes into the second or third, exasperated by his unseriousness, his mendacity, his bullying posture. Retreating to the bedroom, I put on headphones and listened to Prince. “Abuse” isn’t a word I use lightly, but he radiated abusiveness and it felt beneath our national dignity — or at least the dignity of the office he sought. My disgust was unchanged in 2020 and again this year.
I understood the excitement, at least in liberal and anti-Trump Republican circles, to watch a seasoned prosecutor like Kamala Harris wipe the floor with a convicted felon who doesn’t value the lives of the Capitol Police officers who protected our lawmakers from his rioters. But he shouldn’t be on the ballot at all, not after fomenting an insurrection, and his smirk still fills me with bottomless rage, so I followed live reactions instead and read the occasional update to Crankenstein.
“Excuse me?!” she asked when the eating-cats-and-dogs claims began, her confusion only growing as I filled her in. Windmills, shower heads, bleach injections, throwing paper towels at Puerto Ricans, the endless verbal diarrhea a million Imodium capsules couldn’t stop — it isn’t funny; it never was. It’s exhausting. Then again, maybe I’ll find more humor in it once I’m properly caffeinated later this week.
09.07.24: The mini-post I intended to put here tonight about a very silly episode of Eight is Enough now requires screenshots, which I won’t be able to grab until tomorrow. Due to poor time management, I’m left stranded without much to post — not even a photo of the miniature can of Eva Gabor’s Synthetic Wig Spray that arrived this evening, and it’s getting awfully late.
This is my second grievous oversight in as many days (the other was mistakenly telling Crankenstein we had a bottle of her allergy pills in reserve) and I promise to make it up to you in zany Bradford content. As for tennis, briefly — there will be more to say later — the odds are in favor of Taylor Fritz losing to Jannik Sinner on Sunday, much as Jessica Pegula lost to Aryna Sabalenka in today’s final. But I have a soft spot for his work ethic and self-flagellation.
“Nobody in the whole world is underachieving harder than you,” he wrote to himself after losing to Alexander Zverev in the third round of Wimbledon in 2021. “You are so f*cking good but 40 in the world. Get your f*cking shit together.” Those who suggested his influencer girlfriend made the whole thing up are either blinded by misogyny (she’s widely loathed by incels and other trolls) or know nothing of the unreasonable demands Fritz places on himself.
By anyone else’s standards, he’s already overachieved in becoming a Slam finalist. By his own, he probably still won’t have his shit together until he lifts that trophy.
09.06.24: “I don’t really know anything about you other than you like tennis,” the speech therapist said in the final moments of today’s appointment, when we broke from repetition exercises to make a bit of small talk. “What else do you enjoy? What did you like to do before?”
“Before what?” I wanted to ask. “Before talkies were invented? Before women could vote? Before Moonlighting was added to Hulu?”*
What she meant was “What did you do pre-Parkinson’s?”, but my ambivalence about the question made me avoid it.
“I like old movies,” I said. “From the ’30s and ’40s.”
She seemed surprised and perhaps underwhelmed, but the biggest shocker was still to come. First she asked why, nodding as I cited the genres and their stories, the actors, the lack of explosions. Then she pressed “Who got you into old movies? What actors did you like?”
The answers weren’t of any consequence; she needed me to jabber so she could evaluate the volume and clarity of my casual speaking voice.
“Cary Grant was my favorite when I was a kid,” I replied. “He was great in comedies and no one’s ever looked better in a suit.”
She obviously hadn’t expected that last part and tried, unsuccessfully, not to show it. (My suspicion was that she briefly wondered whether I’m bisexual, since she’s aware of Crankenstein.) Then she said “Wait, what’s his name? How do you spell it?”
That you don’t know who Cary Grant is makes me feel much older than Parkinson’s does, I thought as she looked him up for inclusion in future prompts. But referencing her age, even jokingly — she’s a recent graduate — might’ve altered something in our dynamic. She’s been nice to work with and I wouldn’t want her to think I’m dismissive of her professional authority on account of her youth.
We found common ground a moment or two later, agreeing there are too many superhero movies to sustain our interest, and moved on to other topics. Before we clicked ‘end call,’ she said to shout as loud as possible during tonight’s tennis matches. As I write this, Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe are heading into a fifth set in Flushing Meadows, with the winner to face Jannik Sinner in Sunday’s US Open final.
The crowd has a vocal preference for Tiafoe, an endearing showman who would be easily dispatched by Sinner in straight sets. Fritz is our only hope if we want to end the American men’s drought at our home Slam. We could do much worse, as I’ll explain later this weekend.
* It showed up on Hulu first but has since been added to Tubi. I’ll write more about Cybill Shepherd when I review her Martha Stewart telefilms; there’s a lot to discuss.
09.04.24: Have you ever tried something new and immediately thought “That seemed a little too easy?” As a lifelong klutz, I’m usually skeptical when an unfamiliar task is a breeze, a superstition that’s grown in recent years as my arm slowed and stiffened. But this morning I was either distracted or simply fell down on the job; I’m not sure how else to explain such an unusual lapse as this: I actually allowed myself to feel pride at unexpectedly doing well during the respiratory training part of today’s speech therapy session.
It was our first online appointment and I’d set up my computer in the Grandma Suite so Muriel wouldn’t disrupt things if the UPS guy darkened our neighbors’ doors during the hour-long session. (A delivery doesn’t have to be ours to set her off, anything within earshot will do.) My homework was next to me — phrases and noises to practice and a sheet for recording decibel levels measured with a smartphone app — along with the EMST150 device that I’d forgotten to bring along yesterday.
It had been a maddening oversight — it was in a tote bag on the counter right next to the door, along with the big honkin’ leg brace I intended to return to the physical therapist while I was there — but the speech-language pathologist said she could walk me through the setup remotely. That’s how we spent the first 10 minutes of today’s appointment and we were both surprised by how well I did. During tomorrow’s Zoom appointment, I’ll have to sheepishly admit I’m a fraud.
While demonstrating the exercise for Crankenstein this evening, I realized it wasn’t set to the proper resistance. I’d misunderstood the SLP’s directions and she hadn’t caught the error because it was too hard to see such small details over webcam. After readjusting it, I tried again — it was noticeably more difficult. As stupid an error as that was, I appreciated having had the chance to believe, if only for one delusional moment, “Yeah, that’s right, I’m a master of breathing. A regular savant at exhaling, like a Terry McMillan heroine.”
08.31.24: If you find yourselves with any downtime this Labor Day weekend, consider watching Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County, USA (1976) or American Dream (1990), two of the finest documentaries ever made, each focusing on labor strikes.* They’re currently free on YouTube, though I’m not sure how long that’ll last. However you spend the holiday, please enjoy yourselves and stay safe. I’ll try to check in on Monday but can’t guarantee I’ll have time tomorrow.
* For those who’ve had their fill of economic despair and would prefer something lighter, try this Slate interview from early August with a gay couple who appeared on Supermarket Sweep as “business partners” in 1991. Their story is truly delightful and they mention that Sherwood Schwartz’s son wanted to turn it into a TV movie but was unable to bring the project to fruition. “I guess now it would be a Hallmark movie,” one of them quipped, and I hope Jonathan Bennett’s taking notes.
08.30.24: There’s a new dreamboat in Sacramento and his name is Merle the Pearl. Few of the Bradford girls’ many boyfriends have made an impression so far on Eight is Enough, but a shamelessly cloying Nicholas subplot in the season four opener just introduced Susan (Susan Richardson) to Merle ‘The Pearl’ Stockwell (Brian Patrick Clarke), a minor league baseball pitcher, and already I’m smitten.
From his orange pickup truck and cartoonish Southern accent to the courtly way he removes his cap when calling on Susan at home, he’s the gentleman we’ve waited for through all the drips and jerks and yuk-yuk disasters of dates past. He’s also a strapping all-American hunk, sweet but moderately stupid, whose hat struggles to make contact with his head through a spectacularly fluffy crown of shag carpeting hair.
As was the case with poor Janet, who had to soften her stance toward the endless distractions and impositions of David’s family to prove she was worthy of his love, the strength of Merle’s character is tested by an encounter that leaves Nicholas, previously reverent, crestfallen. If this curious insistence of Eight is Enough’s writers that you can’t fall in love with just one Bradford, you must commit to them all, continues apace as the rest of the older spawn pair off, I’ll deeply regret not selecting a series about an only child.
But for now, in Aunt Viv’s woeful absence, Merle — a farcically folksy fox who likens Susan to an Arkansas mule and probably needs help reading the back of a cereal box — is a gem whose beauty I’ll admire.
08.29.24: Carlos Alcaraz is down 1-6 in his second-round US Open match against Botic van de Zandschulp as I write this on Thursday night, which isn’t the scoreline I was hoping to see as an early bedtime looms. Van de Zandschulp is Dutch, of course, with a name that sounds like an Austin Powers villain or male model from a Zoolander film, and this reminds me that over the last couple weeks a reader from the Netherlands has been working their way through the Cranky archives.
It’s always nice when someone likes a review enough to click through to others or search for their favorite actors or films. Occasionally they read much more, even early reviews I’ve never been satisfied with and would like to rewrite, which is quite a compliment. A decade ago, my sister and her then-girlfriend asked if they could read some of my writing. They weren’t sure where to find it since I work pseudonymously, so I shared a few pieces from a now-defunct site in an attempt to be polite and waited for them to awkwardly feign enthusiasm in return.
“You’ll find it about as funny as you’d find George Jessel,” I wanted to warn them. Then they could have furrowed their brows in confusion and I might’ve explained “See, that’s the point. It’ll be a waste of time.”
A few days later, Tom reported that her girlfriend had selected an article that was a silly take on a serious subject. After reading it she said “I don’t get it. Who’s the audience? It’s like she’s writing for herself.”
She wasn’t wrong. To me, the point of writing is to explain (or educate, depending on the subject) and entertain.* If I don’t find my work funny or informative, why would anyone else? At Cranky, I cover niche topics that will only appeal so broadly. Those posts would bewilder Tom and her ex even more than what they read 10 years ago, which is fine — they’re not the target audience. Readers like the new one from the Netherlands are, people who come for a Melissa Gilbert movie and stay for Joan Rivers and Cloris Leachman and Bruce Springsteen jabber.
“Ah, it’s Botic van de Zandschulp again,” I’ll think next time this new Dutch follower shows up and spends an hour digging through old posts. “Never would’ve taken him for a Patty Duke fan.”
* That’s why I sought refuge in reading and writing as a kid, it was how I made sense of the world.
08.28.24: Muriel and I have spent a quiet evening downstairs trying not to disturb Crankenstein, who came home from work with a migraine and retired to bed after dinner. We tinkered on a review that’s not quite ready for primetime (Muriel’s editing skills are unorthodox since she only knows a handful of words), watched a bit of the US Open, and I read an interesting article about a rodeo doctor.*
This has been a disappointingly unproductive week so far and the biggest impediment has been disjointed sleep. Last night I woke up at least once per hour, breathless and rigid and wishing I could roll to the side. But I remained on my back, head uncomfortably elevated, concerned that side-sleeping might worsen the jaw-clenching that menaces my temporary crown.
To wrap up stupid health things for now, we got the pathology results back from the scopes yesterday and the only esophageal finding was minor, with a name I already forgot.** It’s commonly associated with esophageal motility disorders, which was already the prevailing theory about what’s causing my swallowing difficulties. Following that and an early morning appointment today, I’m caught up on checkups for the next three months and can focus on PT and speech therapy.
What should I do with this freedom, other than chronicle Auntie V’s next Eight is Enough appearance? Season four is finally upon us, and not a moment too soon following an awful David-centric two-parter about hang gliding (!) that even Noah Beery Jr. couldn’t salvage. I’m not sure how long we’ll have to wait for Janis Paige’s grand reentrance, but one of her plots involves a Hawaiian vacation and the wardrobe possibilities are endless.
* The riskiest stunts in the article have nothing to do with bulls; it’s entrusting all of your medical needs to an orthopedic surgeon. You can’t fix diabetes or heart disease by smacking it with a mallet or sawing it in half. (That’s an affectionate joke. No one makes more cavemen jokes about orthopods than they make about themselves.)
** The pouchoscopy was mostly good, which is all we can ask for. As long as there’s no dysplasia and we don’t have to change treatments, I don’t really care what they find. Had my doctor said “You’re not going to believe this, but there was a copy of The Day the Clown Died and pieces of what appears to be the wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s plane in your duodenum,” I wouldn’t have been too surprised.
08.25.24: Not only did I make it through the night with minimal choking, I was able to sleep in this morning thanks to Crankenstein. The only problem was that I never quite woke up — or maybe I did and River of Rage had a sedating effect. I’ll have to finish it tomorrow, preferably before the US Open starts mid-morning, and it will be a welcome distraction from Eight is Enough, which has become agonizingly boring when it focuses on David’s romance with Janet.
So few of the show’s pairings produced any sparks, including Tom and Abby, which makes it all the weirder when Abby and Joanie, or Abby and Mary, occasionally do — although their chemistry is more generically dramatic than romantic. How lucky we are that family-focused TV dramedies of the late ‘70s mostly flew under the slash-fiction radar; the perversity of anything Eight is Enough could’ve inspired (outside of a Tom/Dr. Maxwell affair) would’ve put Brady Bunch fanfic to shame.
08.24.24: Again I woke up choking, struggling to cough and swallow and take deep breaths.
“Are you OK?” Crankenstein groggily asked, probably wanting to smother me with a pillow.
“Yes,” I said, so she could return unbothered to sleep — Crankenstein’s very serious about her sleep; her depression and anxiety worsen when she isn’t well rested. In the morning I confessed that I’d been disturbed by how heavy and clumsy and useless my tongue had felt on its left side as I tried to wash down a levodopa pill with a few sips of water at 4 am.
“When do you start LSVT?” she replied. “Speech therapy can help with that.”
It starts right after Labor Day, but I’ll admit to feeling increasingly bothered by these unwanted wakeup calls and doubtful the ESMT150 (or other exercises) will make an appreciable difference. I’ve evaluated my routines to see if such overnight episodes are less random than they feel but found nothing of interest: my diet, habits and environs are unchanged. The GI found no evidence of GERD, which would’ve been the easiest, most fixable explanation.
What I’d like more than anything else right now is a day (and night) without any of these distractions — a vacation from myself. Maybe I’ll get one tomorrow and can work on my writeup of a Victoria Principal movie selected for its dramatic title and lack of IMDb reviews: River of Rage: The Taking of Maggie Keene.*
* I’m not sure whether I’ll put this in the review, but Principal is active on Instagram and her social media presence is about as inoffensive as it gets, consisting mostly of horse photos and remembrances of late friends and costars. However, she recently ruffled some MAGA feathers by posting a cheeky Catwoman photoshop of herself that reads “childless cat lady.” Imagine if she were as outspoken as Abby Bradford herself, Betty Buckley.
08.21.24: That deep dish pizza’s so close I can taste it. The Botox is out of the way and none of its annoying (but short-lived) side effects have arrived yet. My neck, shoulder, and back-of-the-head muscles were so rigid that the doctor added a few more injection sites, and we laughed together as she hunted for the right spots because she kept encouraging me to shrug my shoulders and that’s easier said than done when they’re more or less frozen.
The MDS is one of my favorite doctors because she’s down-to-earth and has a nerdy sense of humor, which reminds me of Crankenstein. And so, as we discussed the cost of Botox — it’s the toxin itself that’s expensive, not the injection process — I felt comfortable joking around with her. “My deductible’s been met, so you and the rest of my doctors can do whatever you want for the rest of the year,” I said. “Order any test, perform any procedure. I’d agree to a prostate exam just to get the most for my money.”
She played along, making outlandish suggestions, and it lessened the sting of the notes from last week’s checkup that finally posted yesterday. In it, she cataloged some of the things I hadn’t wanted to discuss with her, even though Crankenstein and I did so anyway, and for the first time she assigned a ‘stage’ to my Parkinson’s. Reading it made me a bit uncomfortable, but it’s fairly meaningless overall (some patients live with Parkinson’s for decades without progressing to stages four or five) and nothing we couldn’t have figured out ourselves.
Tomorrow I’ll be up early again for scope day and at this point in my IBD career I’m inured to the inconvenience of scopes and try to embrace the positive instead — like the enjoyable propofol nap.
08.20.24: As classics by the O’Jays, Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, Dolly Parton, and so many others played during a rollicking DNC roll call tonight, I kept imagining the RNC grimly blasting the same “My name is Kid… Kid Rock!” snippet on a loop, unable to obtain the rights to anything else. Our delegates were overwhelmingly ecstatic to be there and their joy was contagious. It was a block party attended by a bunch of civic-minded dorks, and its emcee, DNC secretary Jason Rae, contributed to the fun by sounding like Rod Roddy by way of Paul Lynde as he called upon each US state and territory to cast its votes.
“This is like The Price is Right or Press Your Luck,” I told Best Friend, but the best was still to come in spectacular speeches by the Obamas, who finally went for the jugular (and, in Barack’s case, the crotch) with Trump. Michelle’s speech was quite possibly the best I’ve ever heard at a convention, but I’ve written enough about the Obamas in the past, online and in print, and won’t do more of it here. There’s an electricity to the Harris-Walz campaign so far that stirs a great nostalgia for 2008, which was the first time in my young political life that I felt unguarded optimism about the future.* It’s something I want to savor because hope can be extinguished just as quickly as it ignites in an election year.
Though I’d like to stay up late reading about the convention and watching talking heads babble on MSNBC, I have to be up early tomorrow for Botox, and again on Thursday for the GI. The plan for Friday, assuming they’re able to dilate what I would guess is an esophageal stricture, is to satisfy a craving for a slice of deep dish pizza. Attempting such a feat now would result in ignoble defeat, and feelings of suffocation, when it got stuck in my upper chest. But if I had to die while eating, pizza would be a great way to go.
* I think I supported Clinton in the primary, but Obama won my ardent support when he earned the nomination. In 2016, I wanted Warren to run but again voted for Clinton in the primary (even though I didn’t like her chances in the electoral college, a stance that irritated Crankenstein slightly less than it had offended Ex years earlier). In 2020, I donated $10 to Harris after she drew first blood against Biden in the Democratic debate; I liked him but wanted to see him fend off challengers. As mentioned in a prior post, Warren had my loyalty, and my recurring donations, in that cycle, but I was happy to vote for Biden in the general election. Despite the assumptions of Crankenstein’s church friends, I knew very few Jews who supported Sanders. Jewish voters, like gay voters, tend to be pragmatists and party loyalists; he’s an independent ideologue. Nor was he a novelty to us like he was to younger Gentiles.
08.18.24: It happened against last night: I woke up coughing and choking and gasping, startling myself and Crankenstein. Our recent conversation with the neurologist still fresh in my mind, I tried paying close attention to my chest and throat to better understand the sequence of events. “Listen to your body,” people like to say, as if the husks we inhabit are radio stations. My own reception’s spotty, especially at 4 am.
“Are you awake?” I eventually whispered to Crankenstein.
“Yes,” she replied, sounding trepidatious.
“Part of what’s wrong is that I can’t get a decent cough” — which she observed after a previous hacking incident — “and part of it’s that I can’t swallow.”
There wasn’t any point in talking too much about it then, since she was unlikely to remember our conversation in the morning. We tried getting back to sleep as I again cycled through positions and pillow elevations, seeking to balance neck stability with breathing comfort. Unable to get enough air on my left side or back, I turned to the right in desperation.
Right-sided sleeping is murder on my neck, even with a fancy contoured memory foam pillow, and facing Crankenstein’s elbow as she sleeps is dangerous itself. But the weird sounds and sensations coming from my chest stopped and I was able to take a few nice deep breaths, which allowed me to achieve the best cough I’d had in weeks. “What the hell?!” I wanted to ask Crankenstein afterward — why is the left side of my body so underpowered compared to the right?
Maybe relief’s in sight by the end of the week, depending on what the GI’s able to figure out. In the meantime, I’m wondering how to best protect my face from Cassius Crankenstein if I have to turn to face her again overnight. A hockey goalie’s mask would work better than a welder’s mask or motorcycle helmet. A fencing mask, while impressively breathable, might not absorb her strength; I’d have to ask a nerdy cousin for his thoughts.
Of course, there are worse problems one could have overnight, like witnessing a murder. This weekend we watched Ted Tetzlaff’s The Window, a 1949 B-movie thriller that bears some similarities to Rear Window: both were adapted from Cornell Woolrich stories and feature protagonists who get an eyeful of their neighbors’ criminal misdeeds. The Window’s twist is that it has a child protagonist (played by Bobby Driscoll, whose life hadn’t yet gone off the rails) so prone to lying that neither his parents nor the police believe his accusations. It’s a grim, genre-blending cinematic portrait of childhood that’s worth 70 minutes of your time.
08.17.24: If you haven’t kept up with these McCheese bulletins, it was only the day before yesterday — see the August 15th entry directly below this one — that I spoke with the DDS adjudicator who was assigned to my SSDI reconsideration. Today Crankenstein received another piece of mail from her, this one dated the same day as our call. It said something like “We haven’t received your response and it might impact our decision.”
Unlike the previous envelope, this one was scanned by the USPS and appeared in this morning’s Informed Delivery preview. We assume it was sent by automated process, but Crankenstein can also leave the agent a message to say “Hey, you should have recently received a PDF with my answers. If you didn’t, or if you have any additional questions, please call me back.” I’ve caused all kinds of headaches for Crankenstein lately, but none have anything to do with the usual off-key crooning, curmudgeonliness, or nagging her to use coasters: it’s all because of the DDS paperwork and medical appointments.*
There was Thursday’s MDS checkup, which she wanted to attend, and coming up in a few days she’ll be my scope chaperone. International IBD patients are sometimes surprised by the way scopes are handled in the US — sedation is the norm here, which isn’t the case everywhere, and because we’re a litigious society American hospital systems normally insist you bring a driver or chaperone. At every hospital where I’ve been scoped as an adult, they’ve asked for my driver’s name during registration, along with their phone number and relationship to me. Sometimes you’re even asked to point them out in the waiting room.
This rule tends to annoy people who live alone, especially prideful, stubborn older men who don’t want to ask anything of anyone else. Some patients find sneaky ways around it. Personally, I’m glad it exists, because it isn’t safe to drive when you’re coming out of anesthesia, even if it’s only twilight anesthesia. Just as importantly, it isn’t safe to send half-sedated (i.e., vulnerable) patients home with Uber drivers. But I always feel bad anyway about the demands my scopes place on other people’s time, and next week’s appointment is no different.
There are much better things Crankenstein could do than sit around for an hour or two while my doctor conducts an Eyes of Laura Mars photo shoot in my intestines. But she’ll be there with bells on, wondering as usual whether they found anything interesting — and the big reveal will again be just as anticlimactic as Geraldo Rivera opening Al Capone’s vault.
* I keep coasters on every surface where she’s known to place drinks and it doesn’t matter, her body rejects the mere idea of tidiness and she places her beverages right next to the coasters instead.
08.15.24: “Another Mayor McCheese?” Crankenstein asked as she glanced from her computer screen to mine. She didn’t add “You lazy bastard,” but that’s how I felt about dusting this off again so soon. From a hungry dog and a morning call with the DDS adjudicator to a marathon dental appointment and a torrent of texts from a friend whose marriage is on the rocks, the day started too early and passed in a blur. Now it’s almost 8 pm and already I can’t stop yawning.
The adjudicator was friendly and helpful, answering a couple questions about what was missing from my file. She laughingly said it was safe to disregard the due dates on any requests she might send us for additional information: “My way of doing it is to give you 30 days because the postal service is a mess.” I knew better than to joke “Can I get that in writing?” or to say, truthfully, that I’ve heard of agents saying that and then closing cases much sooner. Though surprised by how pleasant and accessible she was, I didn’t read anything into it and still expect the reconsideration to be denied.
It wasn’t the cleaning or the crown consultation that detained me at the dentist, it was the full series of x-rays. My mouth is absurdly difficult to pry open and the left-sided x-rays were torturous for both me and the poor technician charged with taking them. The hygienist noticed right away that I grind my teeth, something that started in 2013 and intensified over the last five years or so. She and the dentist identified another molar that will meet the same fate as the one that I cracked and enlarged a photo so I could see why they were concerned.
Two crowns it is, then, though we’re prioritizing the broken tooth, which will be fixed by this time next month. Once we know how things shake out with the dental insurance reimbursement, I’ll decide whether to address the other molar this calendar year or try to wait until next year to maximize benefits; they think it’ll hold up until then. Then there’s the issue of how to prevent further damage from grinding, but this was more than enough boring chatter for one night. I really oughta add some spice to my life, maybe do something wild like attend a polka concert, visit a museum of miniatures, or learn how to darn socks.
08.12.24: Tonight I’m working on a — gasp — TV movie review. It won’t be ready for publication on Cranky until tomorrow or Wednesday, assuming it’s posted at all, but I’ll be back with something new here tomorrow regardless of its completion.
08.11.24: A quiet weekend of chores, errands, and old movies was drawing to a close this evening when I received a text that gave me a moment’s pause. Attached was an Amazon screenshot a relative had snapped and a note reading “I don’t know if you have trouble with this yet, but I saw it earlier and thought it might be helpful.”
Promotional photos show a white-haired man using an assistive handle for leverage — it’s mounted to the door frame’s latch — as he enters or exits his car. An accompanying blurb reads “This car handle can be very helpful to the elderly and handicapped.” Youngest Sister saw this device and thought of me; she’s nearly 12 years my junior but jokingly tells her kids I’m anywhere from 50 to 70 years old.
I’m not in the market for something like this yet, and even if I was our cars are so old that I’d have to verify the latches are compatible. But I bookmarked it anyway, for future reference and because it was kind of her to suggest it, even if it was sobering at first to realize it wasn’t sent as a gag: she now sees me as someone who requires (or will soon require) assistance with basic physical tasks. Though understandable, it still felt strange.
In other news, Crankenstein and I watched Fritz Lang’s While the City Sleeps last night, a nifty noir with Dana Andrews, Ida Lupino, George Sanders, Vincent Price and Howard Duff. If you have access to on-demand content from Turner Classic Movies and haven’t seen it before, it’s worth checking out. We don’t have cable but I use Sling during the tennis season and sometimes toss in TCM as an add-on. It’s good for mainstream classics and a few curiosities that either don’t stream elsewhere — or cost enough to digitally rent from Amazon that I can save a little money by paying $6 (or thereabouts) for a month of TCM instead.
08.10.24: I’m not sure where today went — it’s not like I accomplished anything — or why I’ve wanted nothing more than to indefinitely retreat to a cabin in the middle of nowhere with Muriel. It’s probably mild dread about the checkup Crankenstein and I have with the MDS next week, when we plan to put a few cognitive concerns on her radar. But my sense of foreboding is likely compounded by something weird that’s gone on for a few months now and happened again just yesterday: when I step off an elevator, I feel like I’m about to fall forward or even faint.
In and of itself, it’s not unusual in the slightest: tons of people feel ‘off’ after elevator rides. But I wasn’t one of them until recently and I’m concerned, perhaps needlessly, that it might be related to the lightheadedness my doctor and I discussed at the last Botox appointment. So far I’ve managed to remain upright, a streak I’d like to continue. Passing out in my kitchen a few years ago was humiliating enough; it’s not an experience I’d like to recreate at a department store, hospital or municipal building — to say nothing of my fear that if such an incident were to occur, ‘Niles’ and Crankenstein would insist that I wear a football helmet next time she wants a pretzel from the mall.
08.06.24: As much as I’d love to spend the remainder of the evening writing a post — preferably titled “Take This Walz” — about my enthusiasm for our new Democratic VP candidate, today wiped me out and I’m about to go to bed early. I’ve been waking up throughout the night lately with my left hand, foot, and jaw tightly clenched, my neck twisted at an even more severe angle than usual. It’s physically and sometimes mentally exhausting, so I was happy to have a (positive) political distraction.
If you aren’t familiar with Tim Walz and didn’t catch his fantastic debut at tonight’s rally in Philadelphia, here are two clips I made Crankenstein watch last week: a recent interview with Jen Psaki and remarks he made on gun control last year. For the record, Crankenstein and I don’t own guns — that would be an egregiously terrible idea with her depression — but my dad is a hunter. He has rifles and bows, a basement freezer full of venison his wife and daughters won’t eat, taxidermied buck heads mounted above the fireplace and in his office, the whole kit and caboodle.
A black NRA hat hung from one of his bedposts when I was a kid, and he taught us about gun safety early and often, always keeping his ammo hidden from us. Like Walz, he’s now staunchly opposed to the organization. There’s a lot about Walz that reminds me of my dad, a quintessential Midwesterner with the earnestness of a Capra character, and I hope his selection marks the start of a new, more optimistic chapter in Democratic politics. You’ll find plenty of smart, eager, politically engaged people living in red states, and the right candidates can turn some of those areas purple, and even blue, if we stop writing them off and give them a chance.
08.04.24: What a victory from Novak Djokovic in today’s gold medal match in Paris. Others can debate whether he — for strategic purposes — embellished the extent of last week’s knee reinjury, but I’d argue it’s irrelevant. Nole’s fiercest opponent this year hasn’t been Carlos Alcaraz or Jannik Sinner: he’s been running, hobbled, from Father Time, who eventually kicks everyone’s ass.
In the final chapter of his competitive career, Olympic gold was all that eluded him. To claim it at 37 and in his fifth Games, only two months removed from an arthroscopic meniscus repair and against no less an opponent than Alcaraz, is truly the stuff of legend. It was an agonizingly close match and after Djokovic, who had fallen short in big moments all year, sealed it in a second set tiebreak, he sank to his injured knee and sobbed. It was a closeup of his hand, trembling on the clay, that started my own waterworks.
Even if he plays another couple years — even if he wins more majors — this was very much an ending. We’ve had so many of those lately, in tennis and in life. Few are ever as perfect as this.
08.01.24: When I want to pin a bulletin atop the Cranky homepage without creating a new article, I revive a 2008 post about whether Mayor McCheese was gay. There’s no special meaning to any of it — it was only selected because it cracks me up and pinning an old post to the homepage allows me to say ‘new content coming soon’ without clogging followers’ inboxes and RSS readers — and it hasn’t been used in months since I still need to finish my Stamp of a Killer review.*
Tonight, while watching the Olympics with Crankenstein — she wanted to see Simone Biles and Suni Lee in action, so we streamed a replay on Peacock — I glanced at the clock and realized I wouldn’t have time to post anything worthwhile here. “If only there was a McCheese thread…” I thought, so here it is, a place for trivial updates that I can pin to this site’s homepage in the future. My goal is to use it infrequently since I’d rather write at greater length, but it’ll come in handy occasionally.
* Reviews of Zuma Beach, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late and a couple others I’m forgetting are also in various states of completion on my laptop.