Three Wishes

Just unrolled a red rug at a flea market to shake it out and suddenly there's this guy standing there. Tall, swarthy, thick black beard and mustache. He's wearing a long, colorful dishdasha and sandals. "Three wishes," he says in Arabic- accented English. 

I'm a little taken aback. Where did he just come from? "Three wishes?" 

"Three wishes. Hurry up, I am tired.  Then roll me back up. It has been a hell of a century."

"That it has." I peer closer and notice that his black eyes are full of fire. "You're a djinn?"

He bows low, sweeping out an arm. "Faran Al-Naar. Djinn. Now about those wishes."

"Okay, okay." Persistent guy. I think a minute. "All right. I want you to have whatever you want." 

His brow wrinkles in confusion. "You want what now?"

"I want you to have whatever you want," I say again. "I mean you're hundreds of years old, right? Maybe thousands. And all that time somebody rubs your lamp--"

"Unrolls my rug." 

"Unrolls your rug, right, and wishes for three totally impractical things that'll never work, like a giant house they can't afford the taxes on, or--"

"Or a yacht, when they live in North Dakota and don't know how to sail," says the djinn.

"Right, or they wish for world peace, so you have to make all the humans disappear, or for global warming to be fixed, so you have to move us all into grass huts--"

"And then they spend their second and third wishes undoing their first wish!" exclaims Al-Naar. "Exactly!"

"And you never get what you want. Nobody ever grants your wish."  I fold my arms. "So that's my wish. I wish for you to get whatever you wish for."

The djinn's eyes flash. "All right," he says. "Done." 

Nothing happens. I glance around. Three men and a woman are entering a Starbucks across the street. A few cars go by. Al-Naar stretches his arms and takes a deep breath. 

"Well?" I say. "How is it?" 

"Hm." He looks at his hands. "Not at all like I expected." 

"Isn't that what usually happens?"

"Yes."

I pat him on the arm. "Come on, I'll buy you a Starbucks. There's a lot more to life than being rolled up in a moldy old rug." 

He starts to follow. "What is a Star-bucks?" 

"It's a drink we drink a lot. You'll like it."

He stops. "Oh."

"What's wrong?" 

"I just realized. I cannot grant you your second and third wishes now." He looks sheepish.

"That's okay," I say. "I couldn't think of anything good anyway." 

Physical Therapy Handy Tips

So I had total knee replacement surgery (!).  It all went surprisingly well, no complications or other glitches.  Or so the surgeon told me in post op.  At least I think that was the surgeon.  I'm not sure.  There was also a little gray kitten running up and down my bed on my leg.  I told the nurse I was pretty sure it wasn't real but I kept seeing a little gray kitten.  The nurse promised me there were no little gray kittens in post op.  If there wasn't a little gray kitten, was there ever a surgeon?  You can understand my confusion on this point.  I'll see him in like 3 weeks and I guess we will find out then.  (Joan brought me a little stuffed gray kitten once I got to my room.  I named him Bruce.) 

I was in the hospital a full two extra days longer than planned.  After surgery, my electrolytes took a nosedive and the internist was very worried.  This wasn't presented to me as "Your electrolytes are low, so you can go home if you want, but be sure to drink lots of Gatorade."  It was, "Your electrolytes are low, and you are not going anywhere until we figure this out."  So I had to drink lots of Gatorade.  I hate Gatorade.  I have never liked it.  The hospital only had two flavors but I obediently drank them.  I am home now and I still hate Gatorade.  And I'm still drinking a lot of it.  

The other thing I did a lot in the hospital was walk.  Whenever I woke up (which was not often; they had me taking OxyContin and that stuff knocks me six ways to Sunday) and could gather myself together enough to get up and pee, I would also ask the nurses to take me for a walk.  I would set out in my walker, walk as far as possible and then turn around and go back.  This might be at 10 am, 3 in the afternoon or 4 in the morning.  In fact 4 in the morning was more likely because that was when the staff had extra time.  So the first time I made it as far as the emergency stairs.  (Always know where the emergency stairs are, kids.)  The second time I made it to the nurse's station.  The third time I made it all the way around and back to my room. (Private room, by the way.  I think they were warned about me.)  I kept doing that as long as I was there.  

There were some glitches.  We found out if I take Tramadol, it interferes with something else I'm taking.  So I can't take Tramadol, which is like the step-down drug from opioids.  So I'm taking the mildest opioid there is, hydrocodone, and just reducing the amount.  I'm down to one pill every 4 hours.  I can cut them in half, so the next thing will be half a pill.  Maybe in a few more days.

Have I been in pain?  Why yes, I have, but I was in a fair amount of pain before the surgery.  So this is really not new.  At physical therapy it gets bad, but just walking around, sitting, etc it is not bad.  It's there but I kind of just ignore it if that makes any sense.  I mean, unless I do something that brings it forcibly to my attention, like standing on one foot or turning the wrong way.  Don't do that.  

But I am home now and going to physical therapy.  And as healthy as all of you are, some of you will have to go to physical therapy.  So this is what I have learned in physical therapy.  Just in case you ever need it.  

Physical therapy tip No. 1: It's going to hurt no matter what you do. Take your pain meds (or something over the counter, if you can) about 45 minutes before your appointment and hope for the best.

Physical therapy tip No. 2: Don't cheat. Yes, there are a lot of ways to cheat, but don't do it. You're there to get better. Let those guys help you.

Physical therapy tip No. 3: No. 2 notwithstanding, if you need a short break, ask for a glass of water.

Physical therapy tip No. 4: Also No. 2 notwithstanding, it's OK to take short breaks. Like 5 seconds after 5 reps and 10 seconds after 10 reps. Just don't abuse the privilege.

Physical therapy tip No. 5: Every exercise (that I've encountered) has 2 parts. There's the movement that's the point of the exercise, and there's the opposite movement. Like bend the knee, straighten the knee. The tip is, don't neglect the second part. If bending the knee is the point, bend the knee, but also fully straighten the knee until you get a stretch between bends. You will progress faster and you'll have to do this fewer times.

Physical therapy tip No. 6: Try really hard to do what the physical therapist says the way they say to do it. If you need a short break, say so, but don't argue and don't opt out of doing an exercise because you don't feel like it. You won't feel like it next time either. Be an adult about this.

Physical therapy tip No. 7: You want a 10 minute ice wrap at the end of the session. Yes, you do, no matter how much you want to run screaming out the door and never see these people again. Ask for one. And when you get home, you'll want to sit with an ice pack for about 30 minutes.

Physical therapy tip No. 8: Do your home exercises. I know, I know. But do them. Three times a day if you can. Or at least twice. And on the day of a session, you would be a total rock star if you did your exercises at least once in addition.

Physical therapy tip No. 9: Send your physical therapy office donuts or Tiffs Treats or something after you're done. Physical therapists are underappreciated in the medical field even though what they do is critical. Let them know they are loved. Just don't do it while you are still a patient. It might look like a bribe. 

Oh man, I forgot the most important one! Physical therapy tip No. 10: Three minutes is the first two verses and the first two choruses of Men at Work's "Who Can It Be Now." Four minutes is the first two verses, the first two choruses, the saxophone solo and the first line of the third verse.

Well, there ya go.  Hopefully that will help.  If you have any more tips, send them along and I'll publish them in a future blog post.  And probably you all have great DNA and never get in accidents and will never need to know this anyway.  But you never know.  Cheers!  

Hey, I Got an Article Published!

 Here's the link. https://www.kevinmd.com/2024/05/can-weight-loss-medication-interfere-with-adhd-meds.html#commentsModal

I'm also gonna be on Kevin MD's podcast on an episode being recorded June 13. I'll also send the link for that, when I get it.

In other news, Dallas was hit by some major storms and we are okay and undamaged but sans power. This is cramping my techie lifestyle as you might imagine. Hopefully that will be fixed soon. Meantime, be excellent to each other, and party on. 😎

Eatin' Good in the Neighborhood

 I realize the earth may crack asunder and the heavens tear open if I write two blog posts in one week, not to mention within two days of each other.  But I just gotta take the risk.  Joan & I stopped at the local Applebee's to grab a quick bite.  Where we had the most surreal restaurant experience ever. I mean this put the sushi restaurant with the fish conveyor belt to shame.  I may not ever eat out again.  

What happened:  We had just been to Half Price Books.  It has come to our attention that if we ever want to get a new washer & dryer, we're gonna have to clean out our spare room so that the door on the far end is accessible.  That's the only feasible way in or out of that room with a large object.  There's no way anybody's wrestling a full size washing machine through the ridiculously narrow door from our kitchen and down that tiny staircase.  I'm sorry, but they'd have to dismantle it, take it down a piece at a time and reassemble it once they got it down.  Ain't nobody got time for that.  

The problem is, the space in front of the door at the other end is full of boxes of books.  We had to box everything up in order to paint down there, which was another crazy adventure I should tell you about sometime, but anyway, we no longer have enough bookshelves to accommodate all the books.  So a bunch of the books gotta go.  We've been going through the boxes one by one and dividing them into "keep" and "Half Price Books."  Today we hauled five boxes down there and sold them for around $90.  Sweet, right?  Well, read on.

So we were on our way back home and we stopped at Applebee's.  By their very nature, Joan distrusts restaurants with apostrophes in their titles.  Chili's, Bennigan's (no longer in existence), Cheddar's, places like that.  They all seem to be substandard in food and service, or at least service.  But hey, it was after eight and it was a Sunday.  Most restaurants were already closed.  So to Applebee's we went.  And then the fun began.

To begin with, it didn't seem like anybody was in any hurry.  There was no hostess.  We waited at the hostess stand (which, oddly, had an upside-down sign posted that said "Please wait to be seated") for about ten minutes.  After which I said, "Hey, the sign's upside down.  Let's take that as a clue that it really means the opposite and find a table."

Which we did.  Some time later, a confused waiter came by and asked if anyone had taken our drink orders.  We said no, and he did so.  He did not, however, hand us the menus that he was carrying.  Which I thought were for us.  So I followed him, and when he stopped at the cashier's station I asked if I could have the menus.  He said, "Oh yes, of course.  I'm sorry."  Then, "Did you seat yourselves?"  I admitted we had.  "Oh, okay.  Okay.  Yes, I'll be right with you."

So I took the menus back, and absconded with straws and silverware while I was at it.  We looked over the menu and picked out some stuff to order.  Then--nothing happened.  I mean there was a basketball game on, and we were watching it, and we noticed there was only this one waiter on the floor, and then another guy showed up to take our order.  We were kind of surprised and he said, "Oh, did someone already take your order?"  I said, "Well, we ordered drinks, but--" "Okay."  And he zoomed off.  To get our drinks, we thought, only he never came back. 

More time went by.  The basketball game got more interesting. Joan broke out her Tarot cards and I asked her what I'd told Joan I wanted for my birthday, which I no longer remembered and which she hadn't written down.  The answer was the two of pentacles (tough decision), the four of pentacles (it was expensive), and Judgment (I have no idea what that means).  Normally you can't start flipping Tarot cards around in a public place without at least one person nearby losing their shit.  I mean, this is Texas.  But nobody turned a hair.  

Some 20 minutes after we ordered our drinks, the first waiter showed up with them and apologized for the wait.  "I'm the only server here.  We had three people call in sick tonight."  He took our order and we mentioned there had been someone else and he said, "Oh, that guy?  He's a cook.  He's just trying to help me out."

While that was going on, this family of a mom, dad, three kids and one kid on the way settled into a booth nearby.  The kids were actually doing great, coloring away.  The youngest one started to get a little boisterous.  Mom started to look seriously annoyed, and after a while she and Dad and brood got up and left.  Numerous tables, not bussed from previous diners, sat around.  The manager walked out, looked around and then disappeared.  He did this at least two or three more times.  

Just then, a shouting match broke out between our waiter and a customer.  Not sure of all the issues exactly, but it seemed to have something to do with a tip, or the lack of one.  It sounded like this:  "Not for a forty-nine cent tip, dude.  No.  No, just get out of here."  The shouting brought the manager back out.  The manager was trying to calm everything down, the waiter was trying to explain what happened, the customer kept asking for his goddamn card back, please, and then the other guy who had appeared on the floor came out with our food.

Which was, to be honest, very good food.  I had no complaints.  Our waiter showed back up next to our table and said he was sorry for the commotion.  He had three tables waiting for their checks and he hadn't forgotten about us and he was just going to vent, if that was okay.  He started doing exactly that and then  somebody else yelled for his attention.

The manager came back out and called the waiter and the other guy, the cook, over.  Thus began a three way conversation with all three of them talking over each other and saying "No, dude, it's like this" and weird apparently restaurant-related gestures.  The volume went up.  The comprehensibility went down.  The manager broke it off, walked over and started talking to a customer about something.  The basketball game ended and another one started.  Our waiter came over, apologized again, and said he'd be right back.  He came out of the kitchen with a bus cart and started bussing the many vacated tables, only he never got to do any of it because some other customer came up and started to complain that he'd been double charged on his credit card.  The snippets of that conversation sounded like this: "No, it didn't go through.  It didn't go through, sir.  There was an error message.  No, I can't print you a receipt because there isn't one. Do you want me to train you on how this works so you can see for yourself? Because there wasn't a charge, sir.  No, you'd have to ask your bank that, sir.  Sir, you're not understanding me.  No, I can't run it back in the machine because it's not there."  

The manager reappeared and started talking to the customer.  The waiter went past us and started talking to someone behind us.  A few minutes later, somebody burst into song.  "Amazing Grace." Good voice, too.  We turned to look and it was our waiter!  He was serenading a table of African-American people.  We were too far away to see if they thought was cool, or just weird.

Around this point Joan and I decided we might just wanna pay for the food with the cash from the bookstore and get the heck out of there before someone whipped out a gun.  I mean, this is Texas.  All told, we were in this Applebee's for just under two hours.  So maybe Joan's right about apostrophe restaurants.  Anyway, the food was good.  

Mini-Post: Transition Fluid

 So I found out recently I gotta have a total knee replacement (!).  This'll be my second surgery on the same knee and hopefully the last.  I say hopefully because I'm technically too young to have knee replacement surgery and a knee implant only lasts like 15 years so if God forbid I live past 70, I may have to have another one.  Or maybe even sooner since implants are likely to fail sooner if you're fat.  And I am, Blanche, I am.  Anyway, I don't expect to live a long life since I've been ingesting large quantities of toxic meds since I was 40, but still, it could happen.  That's happening June 4 which is really soon.  I'll be off from work for 2 weeks and ease back in part time, from home, as I get off the high test drugs. 😳

Meanwhile, I find myself wanting to stop doing stuff I've been doing for years because I'm realizing it's no longer doing anything for me.  Not swimming, thank God.  It's bad enough I have to not swim for a month because I won't be able to drive.  But I'm a member, say, of this book group.  We've been meeting once a month for years and I've gotten pretty fed up with it.  We picked a science fiction book where slavery was still legal and I wasn't gonna read that one.  I don't read stuff about slavery unless it's historical and there are reasons for that.  I like to be informed but I don't like to have my psyche traumatized.  So no, I've never seen Twelve Years a Slave or Roots.  (I didn't watch Game of Thrones, either, and I quit watching The Handmaid's Tale, compelling as it is, by Season Two Episode One.  Halfway thru, in fact.) So I skipped that meeting.

Then when I do go to meetings there's this one woman who Just. Won't. Shut. Up. And what she generally talks about is herself and how smart she is.  It rarely has any relation to the book.  I mean look, we're all smart.  It's Mensa.  And the moderator isn't inclined to moderate.  And  I wanna read what I wanna read, and my reading time is somewhat limited.  So I'm probably done with the book group.  I may not just leave quietly, tho, because that's not my style.  I may have to tell her, as I'm leaving, that nobody cares how smart she is and that I, for one, am sick of hearing about it.  I mean, they're gonna talk about me regardless.  So I may as well say something I'm proud of. 

The second thing: I've been going to Overeaters Anonymous meetings for a long time, probably 15 years or more. And--I think I've kind of run out of patience with it.  Part of the issue is that I don't believe in God, and though these A groups will tell you it doesn't matter if you believe in God or not, the program is totally and transparently Christian.  Fine, if you've got the patience for that, but I'm increasingly finding that I don't.  Also, I was at a workshop thingy and this lady was announcing that she had "eaten her way up to ___ number of pounds and she was just suicidal" and I thought, "Huh.  That's 30 pounds less than I weigh now.  I guess I should have thrown myself under a passing bus years ago."

Definitely no more workshops.  I may or may not keep going to meetings.  Everyone I've met there is very nice and we have kind of a mutual support society when each other need favors.  I'm fine with all that.  But the dogma and such and this "you must lose weight or die" thing is something I'm just not going along with anymore. I think people are the sizes they are because of the way their lives unfolded, and some of us are big and some are small, and that's the way it is.  We're evolutionarily designed to gain weight, not lose it.  I go into why in this blog post and this one, and yes, the Aunt Friedas among us can lose lots of weight and never gain it back, but Aunt Friedas are 5-15% of the population.  The rest of us are biologically screwed, though some more than others. 

(And please don't come on here telling me, "If I can do it, anybody can."  No, if you can do it, you're probably in that 5 to 15 percent.  Don't assume your experience is universal to the other 85 to 95 percent of us.  I used to do that, and then one day I found out that being the eldest child of Lutheran parents in Salt Lake City in the 1970s is actually a pretty uncommon experience and that most people have no clue what I'm talking about when I say a stranger tried to pick me up in her car and drive me to Primary because they have no idea what Primary even is or why I did not find that experience alarming because it happened so frequently.) 

So what I'm saying is, it's not really helpful to be around people who are so obsessed with food, not eating food, having a food plan and trusting God.  I don't think about food that much, unless I happen to be hungry.  I eat my regular meals at my regular times and I'm good.  And no, I don't get any smaller, but I don't get any bigger, either.  I have reached that rare thing, equilibrium.  I don't think about God much either, unless somebody crashes into my Threads feed demanding to know why I don't follow Jesus. (Generally because someone quote-posted him there, which is why I block people who quote-post people.  Your phone screenshots just fine, you know, and then we can all mock them together.)  So you can see how I'm maybe not a great fit for this organization, though I do like everybody.  

I dunno. It seems like a lot of us spend a lot of time doing stuff we think we're supposed to enjoy.  For me that included driving a motorboat, skiing and gardening, among other things.  Driving a motorboat always seemed like a much scarier version of driving a car, with fewer rules, more idiots and more alcohol.  Luckily, I can't afford a motorboat so I got out of that job fairly early in life.  Skiing is great, but once every three or four years for a week is plenty.  (I won't be able to ski after my surgery.  Which is fine, I really couldn't ski before my surgery either.)  And gardening? Tried it for a year.  Grew some excellent onions, which escaped and now grow wild throughout my lawn. Which is kind of cool.  But otherwise?  Hated it.  Glad it's over.  I don't even mow my own lawn anymore.  I cheerfully pay someone else to do that for me.

But, like, we're all adults now, right?  We don't have to keep doing stuff we don't enjoy.  We can stop, and do other things.  Maybe you like going out with friends, drinking too much and singing songs all the way home.  Or maybe you just do that because it's expected behavior and you'd rather be at home binge-watching Gray's Anatomy.  This is me giving you permission to stay home and binge-watch Gray's Anatomy.  You don't have to take your kids to youth soccer games, either, if you don't like it and they don't like it and you're only doing it because you think it's good for them.  Maybe they'd rather play baseball or hockey.  Or chess.  Or even nothing.  (I always felt bad for my parents having to go to swim meets.  You're sitting on hard benches, you're there for three hours, your kid's in the water for 30 seconds and if your kid is me, they always place dead last.)  If you're a square peg, you don't have to keep ramming yourself into a round hole just because everyone else does.  It's a big world.  There's room for everybody.

And if you find that you don't have time to do the things you enjoy, regardless of what they are, that whole work/life balance thing really needs adjusting.  Life's short.  I had a good friend die of a brain aneurysm at the age of 26.  I hope I'll make it to 70, but there are no guarantees.  We're all here to learn stuff, but also to have a good time and experience the joys of walking around in a human body.  So go experience some of those joys, you guys.  Tell them Jen sent you.  

Lost in Oklahoma

So yesterday was my wife Joan's birthday.  She turned 65.  Big year, retirement looming (probably not really for a while, but at least possible now in case she gets fed up) and of course a 5 year.  I have a thing in the afternoon but the plan is go go to the Roughriders ballpark and catch a game, have hotdogs and Cracker Jacks and ridiculous ice cream cookie sandwiches and that whole thing.  I even have advance tickets, for a change. (You can usually get last minute tickets, and even good seats, for the Roughriders.  But the games are lots of fun whether they win or not, it's very family friendly and nobody's an asshole, at least so far.)  

Well, it comes to be time to drive up there and we are not paying attention to the time and messing around with other things.  About the time of the second inning we figure out we aren't going to make it to the ballpark.  So we turn on the Rangers game and eat lasagna and I fell asleep on the couch (I do this a lot) and wake up around ten.  

I suggest we could drive north into Collin County to where it looks like the Metroplex is relatively clear of cloud cover and maybe see the Northern Lights, which are being spotted all over the world right now due to a geomagnetic storm.  Wild colors, too, like pink and purple, which are very rare.  (I spent part of my formative years in North Dakota in the summer, where we saw them often.)  So we pile into the Rav-4 and Joan takes out the address of John and Donaleigh, who live somewhere near Anna, Texas.  She isn't sure exactly where that is, just that it's really dark up there.  We plug it into the GPS.  Sirius Channel 26 is playing the Saturday Night Party Train, which is all new wave dance music and no DJs.  We set off, singing along to "One Night in Bangkok" and "You Were Always On My Mind."

The Dallas North Tollway winds north out of downtown and up into Collin County.  Much to our surprise, it then kind of ends, and becomes this two lane road.  So we're still going north but there are still clouds and it's raining a little, No sign of aurora. Joan says she remembers there's a Buc-cee's around here somewhere.  Doesn't look like any Northern Lights are in the offing.  So the new goal is find the Buc-cee's and buy lots of ridiculous treats like banana walnut fudge and hot and spicy Buc-cee's Nug-gees. 

Joan is sure there is a Buc-ee's on the way to John and Donaleigh's.  We just can't find it.  I finally get GPS to search for one and it shows up some 13 miles away.  We're on the wrong highway. Which is not surprising, the roads up there get weird.  I sort of think there's an interdimensional portal between the 75 and the Tollway.  So we wind down these increasingly dark and isolated rural roads and make jokes about how "Wrong Turn" started out just like this and will we run into a bear and stuff like that.  At one point we passed a sheriff's car sitting by the side of the road with its lights off.  We sort of pause at the intersection and wait for the officers to come over and search our vehicle for drugs and somehow "find" a baggie on the floorboards or something, but that doesn't happen so we drive on.  

Finally we come across Bloomdale Road.  I know that one, it goes through downtown McKinney.  I know that because the courthouse is on Bloomdale Road and I've sent them numerous packages.  So we turn that way and pretty soon we stumble over the 75 Freeway which is still a freeway, even way up there.  

We get on that and turn north.  I think.  Pretty soon Buc-cee's comes into view.  We park in the front spot, break out the Rollators and make a parade into the store.  It's pretty busy even at midnight on a Saturday.  We buy banana walnut fudge, Buc-cee's Nug-ees, a giant cinnamon roll, chocolate chip cookie dough and two sodas.  On the way out we run into a crowd of kids coming in from prom in their evening gowns and tuxedos. I'm sorry but kids in prom attire are just so cute.  I'm wanting to ask them if we can take pics but Joan kinda doesn't think that would be polite.  

We decide to head home.  Get back on the freeway, drive through Melissa and Anna and then Denison, Texas, which I've never heard of.  We pass Grayson College and we're both like, "Hey, we didn't know there was a college named after our cat" and debated whether our Grayson was an esteemed professor or Dean of Feline Studies.  We pass Texoma Hospital. What? Then we pass a sign that says "Oklahoma 4 miles."  And then we figure it out.  Apparently when I thought we were heading south on the 75 we were actually heading north and had been for about 20 minutes. 

So we turn around just shy of Oklahoma, which is good because I don't speak the language and carry no currency.  Then we see the Buc-cee's and we stop again because both of us need to pee by now.  Saturday Night Party Train is still on and there's a huge thunderstorm rolling across the Dallas area from the west to the east.  We see lightning strike the ground over and over as we get closer.  It doesn't start to rain on us again until we are almost home. An hour and ten minutes later.

We finally pull back in the driveway at 2:30 AM, just over 4 1/2 hours after we first left the house. "In a Big Country" comes on the radio just as we get there so we crank it up, sing along and make out in the front seat.  Then we step out into the rain and I have to just stand there for a sec, like I always do when I've been sitting for a long time, to get my knee speaking to me before we can walk inside.  I'm sitting here dripping wet, writing this and waiting for Eye Drop no. 2 to kick in so I can take Eye Drop No. 3 and go to bed.  

We never did see the Northern Lights.  But that's okay. 

Meditation for the Mentally Interesting

Well, the grand experiment with the diabetes drug Rybelsus is over.  I was in the middle of trying yet another workaround when I suddenly asked myself why I was trying to work around what was essentially the problem instead of just, you know, solving the fucking problem.  And it in no small way helped that the wife, the good friends and the psychiatrist had all said essentially the same thing.  So I quit taking it, but I still had to break the news to my Regular Doc.

For reasons I'm a little fuzzy on, my Regular Doc seems to think that this medication and the others in this family hung the moon and the stars.  She wants all her diabetic patients on this stuff.  And once in a while I do something smart, like take my wife to my doctors' appointments.  I think if Joan hadn't been sitting right there, she would have tried everything I could think of to keep me on it.  I was actually prepared to go in there and fire her, if necessary.  But that didn't happen, though she did sigh rather theatrically and say, "Well, at least we tried."

Yes, and we also managed to upend every facet of my life, almost get me fired, and make me mildly crazy.  But sure. We tried. Heck, maybe I'm the only one who even noticed.  

Anyway, there are lots of diabetes meds and they make new ones every day.  The latest is called Januvia and it seems to be mostly harmless. I think it maybe does make me a little sleepy, and the weird vivid dreams are a new thing.  I can't find anything about vivid dreams in the literature, though, so maybe that's Just Me.  My other meds are slowly starting to work again.  (It takes any semaglutide drug about 5-6 weeks to work your way out of your system, so I won't be normal until like mid-to-late April.) And as long as nobody sneezes or anything, everything should be fine.

Which brings me back to the whole point of this blog: Buddhism.  Or at least Buddhism with a sense of humor.  I don't exactly advertise that I'm a Buddhist, since it's not an evangelical kind of thing, but some people do know this.  And I get this a lot:

"You meditate, right?"

Right.  I'm a Buddhist.  We do that.

"Well, like how? Because I've tried it and I can't sit still and my brain is racing around from one thought to the next and I can't focus on anything."

Oh, honey.  I have three (count them, three) neurological pathologies, for which I'm medicated.  A lot.  My brain acts like a highly emotional cocaine-crazed weasel at a rave.  

Now, in most blog posts, the author would say, "And if I can do it, anyone can do it" but this is not most blog posts and I try not to say stuff like that. The older I get, the more I see that however typical you think your experience is, it's really not typical at all.  It's a big mistake to think that "everybody" knows about the Constitution or continental drift or evolution, or believes in science or vaccines or even that the President of the United States should maybe not be a raving criminal madman with advanced dementia who's ready to sell nuclear secrets to anybody who'll pay his legal bills.  It's too big a world and there are too many of us.  Besides, not all of us grew up bipolar/ADHD in a Scandinavian Lutheran family in Salt Lake City in the 1970s.  (And if you did, my sympathies, and we should really compare notes.)

That said, however, most people can learn to meditate, one way or another.  And did you know there's more than one way to meditate?  You don't have to sit crosslegged on the floor and chant om mani padme hum for an hour.  You can even get up and move around.  Yes, I'm serious.  Read on.

Really quickly, the benefits of meditation:

• Reduces stress
• Helps concentration
• Helps with depression and anxiety
• Bolsters self-confidence
• Improves sleep and brain health
• Helps with pain
• Helps with addiction issues and cravings
• Decreases blood pressure
• Makes you look cool 
• Helps you pick up girls

Okay, I'm not sure about those last two.  The rest are backed up by science, though.  Here's a nifty Web site from the National Institutes of Health that links to some of the major studies.  

Now, for most people, meditation does mean sitting on a cushion or a chair, getting comfortable, and focusing your consciousness on a single point.  That's usually a chant, like om mani padme hum, or if you're Christian, maybe Christus mecum est or even Jesus loves me.  If you realize you've drifted away and are lost in thought, you just gently come back to your point.  Yes, you will do this over and over again.  But over time, like a long time, like probably a year, it does get better.  Your mind will be quieter and the other benefits of meditation will start to appear, too.

But: A lot of people don't like sitting still.  Or they can't sit still.  Or they maybe could sit still, but they'd be basically forcing themselves to sit still, and kind of the point of meditation is that it's supposed to be gentle and not forced.  (Which is why I can't figure out in some of those kung fu movies why the meditation master whacks you with a stick when you start falling asleep.  I mean, that's kind of the antithesis of meditation.)  So here's something else:  Walking meditation.

In walking meditation, you walk a slow path from one side of the room to the other, or one side of the yard or the other, and back.  If possible, go in a circle.  If also possible, take your shoes off so you can feel the earth beneath your feet.  (Please don't do this if you might step on an ant hill or a Lego.  Being in pain or needing an Epi-Pen is not conducive to meditation.)  Take slow steps, not fast ones, and take the time to actually feel the earth under your foot.  What does it feel like?  Is it cool? Warm? Hard or kinda soft?  How does it press into your foot?  How does your foot feel after touching it?  What's the space like between one footfall and the next?  Hopefully you are getting the idea.  The meditation focus in this case is not the chant but the sensation of your feet touching the earth. 

Thich Nhat Hanh, who was my guy, once wrote that he practices walking meditation in airports.  Yep, he said airports.  Speaking of antitheses to meditation.  Airports are full of stressed-out people having the worst days of their lives trying to get from one point to another point, sometimes for fun but sometimes also for really icky reasons. Anybody who can practice walking mediation in an airport is definitely a Zen master.  (Did I mention Thich Nhat Hanh was a Zen master?) I'm not saying you should try meditating in an airport, especially if you're new to it, but maybe, if you are not late, you could try not walking as fast.  Taking a little more time to appreciate all the different people and the stuff that goes on.  Look at the colors and the different kinds of lights and especially the kids.  The great thing about kids is that they always are who they are no matter where they are, at least until they turn five and have to start being like all the other kids.  In I think 2002 I was at an airport in New York City to catch a flight to London and there was this advertisement that was shining colored lights all over the floor.  This three-year-old boy from I think China chased the lights around and stepped on them for like forty-five minutes.  This still makes me smile.  Especially since his parents didn't grab him and say (in Chinese) "Come on, we're going to be late" but just let him keep doing it until he got tired.

Another way to practice meditation is by doing yoga.  Yoga gets a lot of press and it's sometimes kind of pricey, but check out your local Y or LA Fitness or equivalent.  What yoga basically is, is stretching exercises, but they are exercises done mindfully, with all of your focus.  In this case you'd be focusing on the particular body part you're stretching, how that feels, how to push the stretch a little bit farther if it doesn't feel right or rein it back in if it's gone too far.  Disclaimer: I can't stand yoga.  Too slow-moving, too much holding still and I can't get into a lot of the positions because of my knees.  That said, though, I know people who swear by it.  And I will grudgingly admit that I've had some success at chair yoga or yoga classes for disabled folks.    

Other forms of kinetic meditation include things like doing the dishes meditation, or if you like, sewing or knitting meditation.  Any simple activity that you can put your whole mind into works great for this sort of thing.  Knitting and sewing are particularly good because the repetitive hand movements are very soothing.  (I'll bet you didn't know your grandma was a Zen master.)  Doing the dishes meditation is also good, and it gets the dishes clean too.

Sports meditation is something I do when I'm swimming.  (I haven't talked about swimming much in a while but I swim.  A lot.  I used to be a marathon swimmer, and who knows, maybe I can be again.)  I put the focus on the swimming muscles, usually one at a time because there are a lot of them and I can't concentrate on all of them at once.  Maybe for the first lap I'll focus on how my shoulders come around.  Then next time the leg muscles and the extension of the feet.  Then the third time maybe hand position or head position or something like that.  Not only is this meditative, it makes me a better swimmer, too.  I've also heard of runners, cyclists and other kinds of athletes talk about doing this sort of thing.  I mean, I guess you could go out there and just, you know, let your mind drift around, too, but if you're working on your focus, it's gonna help you in every area of life.  And it's not like there's plenty of time to drift around later.  You know, like during that 9 am meeting.  

The point of meditation, though, is that it's a practice.  If it's something you do every day, for ten minutes a day, you're going to have a better experience than if you do it once a week for an hour.  But hey, if all you have is once a week for an hour, do it then.  All meditation is good meditation.  Bad meditation is good meditation.  Once, manic as hell, I went bouncing into a retreat led by the late great Brother ChiSing.  I boinged down the aisle of this church like a grasshopper, dropped onto one of the cushions, and said, "Hi!!" I could see him trying really hard not to roll his eyes.  Believe me, there was no good meditation that day.  But because bad meditation is good meditation, I got something out of it anyway.  

This I promise you:  If you meditate every day for a year, even if it's only for ten or twenty minutes, you will be a different person at the end of that year.  Fewer things will bother you.  Your stress will be lower.  You won't freak out so much about small things.  People around you will notice that you are nicer to other people. That you will do weird things like ask them how they're feeling.  I know this is true because I've seen it happen, both to myself and other people.  

So, anyway, I'm going to send you to Thich Nhat Hanh's how to page.  There are plenty of other ones if this one doesn't do it for you.  There are also some apps.  My favorite is Insight Timer, but there are also calm, Ten Percent Happier and many others. It doesn't really matter where you go or what kind of instruction you get, though I do think instruction is a good thing.  What's important is that you do it at all.  Yes, even if you are mentally interesting.  Cheers!