Car Seats

      Nowadays, when you set out to take an automobile trip with a child under six or seven years of age, before you set off, you must strap the kid into the car seat.  Failure to do so may result in a heavy fine or in a worse case, injury to the kid.

       It wasn’t always thus.  One of my earliest memories stems from an automobile trip.  We were headed for town for whatever reason with my Dad and my two older brothers.   

     I was wandering around on the back seat with a new pair of shoes.  Well, not new, new to me.  Dad started slowing down to turn a corner on the country road.  I tried to balance myself and the unfamiliar shoes caught on each other, or I stepped on a shoelace, or something.

     Down I went between the two seats.  With help, I regained my perch on the back seat.  I uttered what must have been one of my first attempts at a sentence:  “’Tit over shoes, hurt hiney.” 

       The concern of the other passengers was dispelled and there was great laughter.  My phrase was repeated several times.  When we returned home from the town trip, the “boys” had to repeat the entire episode to our mother.  Everybody laughed again.  I was a hero!  I enjoyed the limelight for a brief while.

       There were no such things as seatbelts in those olden days.  We free-ranged around the back seat.  The seat backs of the front seat of our old Chevy were worn with kids standing between the seats and leaning on the front seat back.  Also on the back of the front seat back, a couple of round rope-like straps designed to be coat hangers, I guess, dangled uselessly by one end, the other end having been torn out by using the ropes for handles by the youthful passengers.

      For a few years,  seven of us loaded up whenever the family all went, such as to church or to visit our Aunt, Uncle and cousins, three of us in the front seat, four in the back.  Among  my least-favorite memories is a trip home from church on a cold winter day, Dad smoking a cigarette with the windows all rolled up against the bitter cold air.  The smoke-filled air was a guaranteed headache for me.

      There were some advantages of not being strapped in.  For a year or two, I could stretch out on the shelf behind the back seat, under the back window.  On night trips, such as coming home from a basketball game or from a 50-mile jaunt to visit the cousins, I could retreat to that bunk and go to sleep.  It left room for the other three back seat passengers to stretch out a little, too. 

      But then there was always the wakeup call, when I had to leave my cocoon and face the night air on my way to undressing and falling at last into bed.  Oh, those good old days!  Good, if you don’t look at the stats on death and injuries from automobile accidents in those good old days.

     For all the complaining about, and from, kids in car seats, it is better now, at least from a safety aspect.  Anyway, most cars no longer have that shelf behind the back seat.  Kids have to sleep sitting up.  And there are no “knee fights” as back seat passengers attempt to stake out their territory.

 

“Oh, I Forgot”

 

     These days I spend an inordinate amount of time doing one of my least-favorite things—looking for something. “Dang it!  Put it back where it belongs!  Then you won’t have to waste time looking for it!”  But my words fall like the seeds among the rocks and never take root.

      Most of the time, I am looking for something the Goodwife can’t find, like cell phone or glasses, and other such things.  But not always is it the Goodwife’s fault.

        I went with her to a hair appointment.  I went equipped with a warm coat, my tablet, and my reading glasses.  In these days of CORONA virus, it’s not always possible to find a seat in the salon.  If you do sit inside, you can’t always read if your face mask is fogging up your glasses.

      So, I planned on sitting in the car and reading my current book (“1984” by George Orwell, never have read it before) while I waited for her to get her hair cut.  However, we “forgot” to check her text messages.  The hairdresser had texted to ask her to reschedule her appointment because she was way behind on that particular day.

      I only had about five minutes to get comfortable and delve into my tablet before the Goodwife was back.  Caught by surprise, I didn’t do a good job of stowing things before we took off again.  I hung my reading glasses by an ear piece on the top button of my shirt, just beneath my neck.

      When we got home, since we were dressed warmly and I needed a few more steps to reach my daily goal for the break-in of my new hip, we elected to take a brief walk in the more-than-brisk air.  Arriving home again after our constitutional, I grabbed my tablet from the car and escaped into the warmth of the house.  

     I removed my overcoat and started to take off my sweater, but where were my reading glasses?  They were no longer hanging from the v-neck of my shirt.  They must have fallen off somewhere.  Or did I remove them and put them somewhere unconsciously?  It has been known to happen.

      I looked here and there.  I stepped out into the chilly garage and gave the car a thorough search, looking between seats and console, under the seats, anywhere I thought the glasses might be hiding.  Nothing.

       I put my coat back on and retraced a few of our steps on our walk.  They could have fallen off while we were walking.  But we came and went the same way.  If they had fallen off while we walked, surely we would have seen them on our return trip.  Nothing.

       With the usual silent curses and frustration that losing something always brings, I gave the glasses up for lost.  Sometime later, I took off my jeans, the waist band of which rides somewhat uncomfortably on the top of my hip surgery scar, and started to put on my fat-lady, Wal-Mart lady sweatpants that I wear nearly all day most days.

     But wait, as I stood up to hang my jeans up and grab my sweatpants, something came sliding out from beneath my shirttail.  My reading glasses were sort of born again.  I grabbed them as they slid towards my thighs and sat down to complete installing my sweatpants.

     Emotions flooded me.  Shame, for losing my temper and cursing over such a trifle.  Relief that the lost was found.  Humor, that I could have been so silly, so upset by a trifle.

       I would like to continue with my story, but I have to accompany the Goodwife to Macy’s.  Yesterday, the lady at the bank asked to see her driver’s license so she could update our record.  We looked.  We ransacked her purse.  We checked coat and sweater pockets.  No driver’s license.

       Bring it in when you find it, the lady said, thus dismissing the forgetful old fools.  At home, we searched coat pockets again, car seats, anywhere she might have left it.  This time, I was able to refrain from curses.  But frustration took up residence, soon replaced by resignation.

     I began to search the reams of bureaucratic legalese on the state driver’s license website to see how to go about replacing a lost or stolen license.  After a few minutes, I decided it might be a chore better left for tomorrow.  We set about getting supper on the table.

     As we sat at the supper table,  Macy’s called.  They have a driver’s license, if you can identify it.

     My consolation:  A trip to Macy’s is probably better than one to the driver’s license examiner’s. 

     And so it goes.        

 

COVID Time

      Post-post OP.  So I went to see the doctor for my two-week checkup.  I saw the doctor only when he passed by us in the hall as we sat and waited for my X-rays to be developed.

     “How are you doing?” he asked.

      “Great!” I replied

      Then I saw the nurse.  It was anti-climactic.  I wore my “pajama bottom” pants figuring I would end up in a backless gown so they could remove the “stitches.”  The X-ray technician asked me to empty my pockets, my driver’s license and  my health cards, and pants-on, she lined me up on the target and snapped the picture.

     We were ushered into the little room and the nurse brought up the X-ray on the computer monitor.  She said it looked good.  She placed the X-ray they took while I was still in the operating room beside the latest one.  She said it was coming along nicely.

      Then up on the table I went.  She had me lower the waist band of my pants.  Then she pulled up the leg of my undies.  I held the undies up out of the way and she peeled off the “stitches” just like a band aid.  That was it, or nearly so.  She painted some kind of disinfectant on the wound and put some strips of tape over it.

     The “stitches” resembled a zip-lock bag, with a strip of tape on either side of the wound and held together with a sort of plastic zipper.  Pretty simple, and painless.  I was shaved as smooth as a baby’s bottom, as they say.  No hair-pulling.

      “When this comes off, don’t replace it,” she said referring to the newly applied tape.  Shower, ok.  Soaking, as in taking a bath, not ok.  Don’t put any oil or lotion on it, opposite to what the plastic surgeon told me to do.  She noted that I was not using walker or cane, and that I could raise my leg fairly easily when getting onto the table. 

       We were done, except for making an appointment for a six-week checkup in January.

      I have been to the physical therapist twice since surgery.  I seem to be listing to the right when I walk.  I hear from the Goodwife, “You’re raising you left shoulder.  Stand up straight.”  She also objects to my Walter Brennan imitation when I double pump my elbows when I take my first step or two, ala Papa McCoy in The Real McCoys.

      The P-T guy has me carry ten pounds in one hand and take five prancing steps, like a drum major.  Then I switch the weight to the other hand and repeat the steps.  An attempt to get me to straighten up and walk right?  Doing my exercises takes fifteen minutes at the most. 

     Then I am forced to join the rest of senior citizenry in trying to find something useful and interesting to pass the time during the COVID restrictions.  I can’t go for much of a walk yet.  I have built up to 5000 steps yesterday, but that doesn’t take you far on a warm afternoon.

     Yesterday, I sat in the sun and screened twenty pounds of wheat to get it ready for the flour grinder.  That was a pleasant, but eventually it cools off and I am back to finding a satisfying pastime.   

      Television, not much.  Vast wasteland indeed.  Unless you like to watch football, or old folks singing in order to raise funds for PBS, or fools airing their grudges in various court rooms throughout the country, or murder cases, etc.

       We have turned to games to pass an hour or two in the evening.  We play Cribbage where we get to review our elementary math skills, factoring the numbers fifteen and thirty-one.  And practicing fine motor skills, placing pegs in holes, sometimes a challenge using only one eye.        

     Then there is Scrabble, tasking our vocabulary and spelling skills.  A timer is necessary for this game, along with the Aunt Margaret quote, “P-uh-Lay!”  With only two of us playing, our scores should be high, but the stratosphere is safe.

     Yahtzee takes some logic and decision making and a lot of luck.  No dozing as the “bones” rattle in the cup and onto the table top.

       Closely related to Scrabble, Word Yahtzee takes vocabulary and spelling skills and some luck with throwing the “dice” with letters rather than dots.  It’s as noisy as Yahtzee, and the timer is also necessary to keep this game moving.

      We have also revived gin rummy.   There are a few other games with a sheen of dust in the game room in the basement, Skipbow, Rook.   We don’t have a Monopoly game.  We haven’t set up the card table with a jigsaw puzzle yet. 

      Someday, will we look back and say, “Oh, that was 2020 when we played all those games.  Those were good times”?

      Well, life goes on.  Stay creative.  I will try to practice what I preach. 

Post-Op

       Sung to the tune of, “It was fascination. . . .”

     It was constipation, I know.  That’s what made my poor belly grow. . . .

     To put things into perspective, when you are worried about constipation, you are not worried about other things, such as pain or infection.  Constipation has been the result of every surgery I have ever had.  It happened again.

      So far, the post-op has been eat, sleep, visit the terlet.  Some of the challenges:  getting out of bed.  That hurts, Babbitt.  I have to pick my leg up and  hold it up as I roll over and sit up.  I have been pushing fluids to try to loosen things up, so I have to get out of bed two or three times at night.

      Getting my support hose on and off.  I still have trouble reaching my toes.  I have to wear the socks for two weeks to help stave off blood clots.  The socks run from my toes to my crotch.   After eight to ten hours, they have worn out their welcome.

     Negotiating the shower.  The caution besides blood clots is falling—Don’t fall!  I feel most vulnerable in the shower, wet feet, wet deck.  So far, so good, however.  The wound is covered with a plastic bandage that has a water-tight seal.  I protect it as well as I can.

      I have a nearly constant companion—an ice bag.  I carry it wherever I go.  When I am sitting, it rests between the waste band and the top of my trouser leg.  In bed, it leans over against my thigh or sits on top of my thigh.  It feels good and so far, I have no swelling to speak of.

      I have a check up two weeks after surgery.  At that point, I can stop wearing the hose and the doctor is supposed to remove the bandage.

      When I went in for my pre-op with the doctor, I saw all these guys in pajama bottoms cruising along the hallway with their walkers, proud as they could be.  I said, “That’s the first time in my life I ever envied a guy in pajama bottoms using a walker.”  My turn is coming.

      Independence.  I have independence wandering about the house.  I don’t do so well when it comes to cooking.  I can’t carry much and handle the walker, too.  The bread machine is out of the question.

      I moved things I thought of, such as shaver and toothbrush, favorite bathroom magazine (to an upstairs bathroom), walker (to the garage where I could get a hold of it when I returned from the hospital).  But I forgot some of life’s essentials.

      Like my beer supply.  I am cut off.  The cold ones are in the garage refrigerator (2 steps down), the not-so-cold ones in the basement (12 steps down). My carrying capacity is much diminished.  I am totally dependent on help to indulge that habit.  Dependence.

           I was able to step out (and down 2 steps) to get the newspaper the last couple of mornings, and today, I kerchunk-clunked with the walker all the way to the mail box and back.  I am progressing. 

     Now I look for ways to keep boredom away as the healing progresses.

         My new hip, an X-ray taken while I was still unconscious in the OR.  I think I will set the bells clanging when I step through a metal detector from here on out. 

    

Pre-Op

       There I am with a Q-Tip on progesterone stuck up my nose.

      Around me, other folks sit in cars waiting their turn.  Walking among the cars, moon-walkers in spacesuits wield the overgrown Q-Tips.  Once the Q-Tip has been withdrawn from its 20-second journey up both nostrils, it is placed in a sealable bag and the moonwalker carries it back to the building housing the lab.

     Still other workers in civilian dress, carrying clipboards and wearing masks, interview drivers waiting in line through the open window.  When the interview is completed, the clipboard bearer pins a sticky note on the windshield.

     Soon, yet another worker brings out a label and checks with the driver with a sticky note on his windshield to be sure the information is correct. If the label passes inspection, it is place under the windshield wiper.

     The drivers who have had their fix of coke, or whatever is on the Q-Tips, moves on and the line of cars inches forward.  The patient drivers have waited in line for over an hour when they reach this point.  What could be on those Q-Tips to entice folks to sit in line for over an hour in order to get it?

       Had I drawn this picture a year ago, I would be credited with a piece of science fiction.  Today, ho hum, it’s daily reality.   Anyone headed for the OR has to take a COVID test before being admitted to the hospital.

       My journey to the hour-long line began in January when I could only reach my right foot to dry my toes after a shower, or to tie the laces on the shoe of my right foot, with difficulty.  I had pain in right hip and knee, too.  My personal physician, who serves as a traffic cop directing me to this specialist and that specialist, sent me first for an X-ray and then to a sports doctor.

    The sports specialist's verdict: arthritis.   He gave me four alternatives:  exercise, physical therapy, steroid injections, or hip replacement surgery.  He said, ultimately, hip replacement was THE answer.  I tried the first two alternatives with mixed results. I really didn’t care for the third option.

  Answering my request, the sports doctor recommended a surgeon to me.  It took two or three weeks to get in to see the surgeon.  After consulting with him, I was placed in another waiting line, this time waiting for the doctor and the hospital’s availability.

     About two weeks ago, I went in for my pre-op meeting, where I took an EKG and a blood test.  I also  received a packet of information delineating many do’s and don’ts. The hospital would call me sometime next week, which proved to be Monday, one week ahead of the surgery date.

     Much of what I heard from the hospital repeated what I heard at the pre-op meeting, but I also had to schedule a date to get my COVID test.  Go between 9 and 10 a.m. I was instructed.  That time is reserved for pre-op patients.

      I had already scheduled the final meeting before surgery with the physical therapist at 8:15 on that date, so once I was done with the PT, I headed immediately to the lab thinking to get there right at 9.  Actually, I was early, arriving at 8:55.

       Only to find a string of cars waiting in line.  I pulled up behind the last car which was sitting in an intersection.  After I had sat there for about five minutes, three or four more cars pulled in behind me.  A guy came walking along and asked me to park on the adjacent street at a right angle with the string of cars.  He had the other cars behind me follow, so we had a string of cars heading north, and a string of cars heading west, all waiting in line for the COVID test.

       Yet another man went down the line checking with every driver to be sure that we all were in the correct line.  Nine to ten was supposedly reserved for patients with instructions from their doctor to do the test before being admitted to a hospital or clinic for some procedure, including surgery.  A car or two pulled out of the line and went away.  Oh, wrong line!

     I turned the corner and moved up.  After about twenty minutes, I advanced far enough to see a sign along the curb that said, “About an hour wait from this point.”  It was fairly accurate, too.  In about an hour, I had reached the point where the traffic was divided into two lanes. 

     A masked clipboard bearer approached me and took all my information, including picture ID, and insurance cards I had at the ready according to my hospital instructions.  I inched forward another car length or two.  A masked young lady came with a printed label which together we inspected to be sure I was the right person and the information was all correct.  She placed the label under the windshield wiper and I inched forward some more.

     Then it was my turn.  A moon walker approached and took the label from under the wiper blade.  I rolled down the window and removed my mask.  The rather petite lady occupying the space costume asked me to replace the mask, just over my mouth, as I might cough during the swab.           

     After the mask was in place, I looked up as instructed, and in went the swab.  She twirled it as she verbally counted to ten.  She removed the swab and told me that when I was ready, we would do the other nostril.  I was ready, and into the other nostril went the swab, and the verbal ten count was repeated.

      The swab went into a plastic bag and was sealed.  The lady wished me good day and headed for the lab with my swab.  I rolled up the window and departed.  In the distance. I could see the line of cars waiting.

     (I now am in a position to understand why the granddaughter, who had to take a swab test twice last March, first at the urgent care place and then again at the emergency room where they sent her, balked at going to the ER a second time.  "My nose is clean.  I don't have any boogers," she cried.  Yes, I understand. Unfortunately, her tests were flu tests.  They did not have a COVID test yet at that time.)

     Later, the lab report on my health online account stated that my swab was taken at 10:08 a.m.  I had been there an hour and fifteen minutes.  Not too bad, considering the number of tests they had taken in that time.  My test was negative.

      I slightly violated the instructions to self-quarantine after the COVID test by going to Lowe’s for some screws to complete a fence repair my neighbor and I had started last week.  Otherwise, I have been a good boy.

     On Friday, the hospital called to say surgery was still scheduled for Monday, but that could change if there was a surge of COVID patients admitted to the hospital over the weekend.  The lady said she would call me on Sunday to tell me for sure if the surgery was cancelled or still on.

     It’s Sunday, and I await the call.

     “It’s a strange, strange world we live in Master Jack.”

     

 

Another Letter to the Editor

       Two articles in the Friday October 30^th paper (Reporter Herald) both make the same point:  we are a ways away from replacing fossil fuels with clean solar, wind, and hydro energy.

       The editorial from The Dallas Morning News takes a look at the future of transportation and electricity generation and opines that natural gas will still be a major player in the energy industry come 2050.

    According to the frontpage article by John Fryar, the Platte River Power Authority has come to the same conclusion, at least for 2030.  Skeptics have warned for years that solar and wind energy cannot cover all the power needs of the nation.  There are times when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.

     The hang up for clean energy is an efficient battery that can store excess power to use in no-wind and no-sun situations.  Some attempts to store excess energy include using the excess  electricity to pump water uphill and letting the water flow downhill to turn a generator when the power is needed.  Another uses excess power to turn an air compressor which becomes an air-powered motor used to turn a generator when the process is reversed.

     Denmark, the world leader in wind energy, is now experimenting with using excess power to extract nitrogen from the atmosphere.  The nitrogen, in the form of ammonia, fertilizes crops in the fields.  The plants produce oxygen, which helps to offset the CO2 produced by natural gas used to produce power when “clean” sources cannot meet demand.

       American farmers have used ammonia for decades to fertilize crops, but that ammonia is a product of petroleum.  Denmark’s “green” ammonia eliminates the use of petroleum and the CO2 associated with its production.

      Production of “green” ammonia is nearing economic feasibility.  In conjunction with the production of ammonia, Denmark researchers are working on a practical method of using excess power to produce hydrogen and oxygen from water.  The hydrogen can be used to replace fossil fuels for power generation or transportation, and using hydrogen as a fuel doesn’t produce CO2.

     Until such processes prove themselves practical, economical, and efficient, natural gas will have to fill the power gaps.  The road to 100% clean energy may not follow the map we have charted.  There may be detours and dead ends.

       The greenies will have to console themselves with the fact that burning natural gas is much cleaner than burning coal, and that the CO2 produced by using natural gas can be offset by other methods of producing oxygen. 

      Meanwhile, more power to those striving to find a clean, efficient, light-weight battery that will make electrical transportation practical.

         

       

 

Where There’s Smoke . . .

      It looked like this on Labor Day weekend.

      That’s the sun, not the moon.  Underfoot, it looked like this.

     Ash whirled into piles like swirling leaves or drifting skiff of powder snow.  Then the rain and the snow really did come.

      Maybe it would be over!  But, no.  Things flared up again and took a big jump this past week.

 

      The story isn’t over.  Two hundred thousand acres are now on fire or already burned.  A big snow would help, but even when the fire is finally extinguished, there will be repercussions, not just for those poor souls who have lost property, but for all of us who have had a steady diet of smoke to inhale.

     2020 rages on.

       Robert Burns gets the final word, as he addresses a mouse whose “house” has been destroyed by Burns’ plow:

“The present only toucheth thee:

 But och! I backward cast my e'e,

 On prospects drear!

 An' forward, tho' I canna see,

 I guess an' fear!”