Little Green Men and Such...

I'll admit I fell for the hoax about plastic being found on Mars, but for the first time in a long while I felt happy.

Why? I'm not sure. Maybe it just felt good to have something to believe, to know how I fit into the universe. If Mars had prehistoric life, if life was something that just happened, it would answer so many questions.

The scariest headline I saw all year was, "What if we're alone?"

It scared me.

I mean it's not that I was expecting grey aliens waiting to contact me, but the idea that in the vastness of space, humans are not unique, that Earth is not unique was somewhat of a comfort.

I don't expect an intergalactic federation of alien life or anything, but it would be nice to know that in the grand scheme of things, life can live or die, and then live or die somewhere else. That extinction of life on Earth wouldn't mean the end of life.

Lies, and the lying liars who tell them (part 2)

Yesterday's blog spawned an email or two from worried relatives worried about whether or not it was about them.

It's not. Nothing happened over Thanksgiving, no one person caused it.

I wore out before I could get to the point so I'm going to start with the point and then explain it from there.

I was watching the television show Psych the other day, and Sean's father taught him how to beat a lie detector test. Basically if you want to lie convincingly, you need to come at it from a place where you believe the lie.

I looked around the room in a panic to make sure Christian hadn't seen it. He hadn't. I was safe.

It's not that I don't want him being able to beat a lie detector test, I just don't want him to develop a lying habit. I've seen from experience what it does to a person's mental state. They believe one lie after another until they break with reality. They lose their grasp on what's real and what isn't.

As far as I know, my mother only told one lie ever, and it was a big enough lie to mess her up.

Lying is bad.

My son thinks it's as bad as swearing and I'd like to keep it that way.

Lies, and the lying liars who tell them... (part 1)

I had a mental break the other night - a full blown nervous breakdown.

I wasn't sure it was possible with all the medication I've been on since the stroke. If I wasn't on all the meds, I think I would have had another stroke.

It's not just moving back in with my parents, or the fact that Robin and I can't find a house of our own to rent or any of the obvious reasons that a 37 year-old man living at home would be stressed.

No, it wasn't anything like that. I can't stand a liar on the best of days, and living with my parents is a reminder of how far I've come.

It used to be, when I was fresh out of high school and starting college, that I was a liar, too. I was good, so good it was scary.

The trick to lying is to convince yourself that the lie is true, then you can speak with conviction. I've known a lot of liars, and all of them eventually began to break from reality.

The aquatics director at the YMCA in Lexington was always blaming every mistake on me. I kept going into work and everyone was surprised. "I thought you had been fired," they would say. It turns out he knew no one liked me and thought he could get away with it.

After he left, he went to work in Chicago. He was fired from Chicago. As it turns out, he had lied about his credentials when he was hired. He only had a Lifeguard Instructor certification, meaning he could train and certify lifeguards, and not the Lifeguard Instructor Trainer certification that he claimed. The last I heard his wife had divorced him and was working as a stripper in Lexington.

My friend Rob thought he was a Lifeguard Instructor, but when he and another guard would teach a class, the aquatics director would submit the rosters under his name.

I went to the Frankfort YMCA next, and the Executive Director there impressed me. He was always in his office at odd hours. As it turns out, he was gay, he had been sleeping with teenage boys, then hiring them to work at the Y so they wouldn't rat him out. He's in jail now.

Somewhere in the midst of all of this, I happened across Hunter S. Thompson. It was the movie version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that captured my interest. I read everything I could by or about him.

He was a liar and a trickster, but no matter how outlandish he got, no matter how hyperbolic he went, he always told the truth. I realized - I wouldn't have to alter my skill set. I could use the techniques and devices of fiction to tell ultimate truth.

Which is why I went back to school to study Journalism. If truth gets buried by lies, it may never recover. Truth is very fragile, but also very powerful. Or maybe it's the other way around; truth is very powerful but it's also easily damaged.

I decided long ago that the central part of my life, the core of my belief system would be Truth. Not God, not Jesus, not any sort of philosophy or system.

Just Truth.

I truly believe that if you live honestly, if you have nothing to hide, that you will be healthy. I tried to lie about something I did and it stressed me out to the point my brain popped and I had a stroke.

Never again. Not even a little white lie to spare someone's feelings.

Which brings me to the other day...

On Suicide

The last time I sat down to write, I had every intention of complaining about how my class reunion was coming up again and the organizers wanted a senior picture for the name badges, and I never had a senior picture made so I wasn't sure if I could go.

Instead I wrote about how I hadn't seen anyone since my stroke and I threw in a line about how my prom date had died and a year later I didn't even know how.

One of her friends messaged me immediately and told me she had killed herself.

It was a shock.

My friend went on to say that she was fragile and she had been for a long time, and the family didn't like to talk about it.

Which explains why the very first email message I sent after the stroke (and after I was verbal enough to write a coherent email) went unanswered.

Her death is also one of the reasons I started this blog. When I was getting physical therapy at Cardinal Hill she was the one person I kept thinking about - not romantically, but because she had been a licensed Physical Therapist. Her funeral was the day I got kicked out of the hospital, and I was in a wheelchair, couldn't talk and Robin didn't want to drive me to Frankfort.

I always make a point to say I was "kicked out" of Cardinal Hill because I was asked to leave. The last few weeks I was in the hospital, I was considering killing myself. The reason I didn't was I saw how much my stroke and subsequent hospitalization had done to Robin, and I didn't want to put her through the strain of a funeral.

It scared me that I was contemplating suicide. I had only done that once before, when my marriage was going badly and I found myself on the third floor of the University of Kentucky library looking down at the lobby floor and wondering what it would feel like to jump.

It wasn't even half a second of contemplation, but it was enough to scare me. Years later when the marriage counselor asked me if I had ever considered suicide, I thought about that moment and said yes, which promptly got me a closed door session with the counselor who seemed almost disappointed that I didn't have plans to off myself.

Up until the hospital, I considered the thought of suicide ridiculous. Once in the dorm I disappeared for a few hours and when my friends Angie and Kim found me a few hours later, Angie said to me, "We thought you had committed suicide."

I actually laughed the idea was so ridiculous.

It wasn't so ridiculous ten years later when I was in a hospital bed and couldn't move, could barely think and was having to watch my wife come in every morning. I wasn't allowed out of bed but I had a plan. I would transfer to my wheelchair, scoot to the bathroom and hang myself with my belt. I hadn't figured out how to secure the belt but the belt was my only option.

I thought about it day and night, and I was awake all night, watching the clock tick.

I decided to get myself thrown out early, so I started throwing myself out of bed, threatening nurses and generally making a nuisance of myself. My speech therapist told me that even if I apologized, they wouldn't keep me.

I was happy to be going home; Robin wasn't.

She would have to take care of me and she wasn't convinced she could do that. The hospital staff trained her on transfers and scrounged some equipment. We had to buy a wheelchair and toilet seat and they couldn't find a shower chair but my parents picked one up at Goodwill. It smelled for a week or two, but it worked.

Home Health worked with Robin on the transfers and the first question they always asked was, "Has he fallen since our last visit?"

For a while the answer was yes, then it became not since that one time I told you about, and then finally the day came when we couldn't remember the last time I had fallen.

Eventually I moved to a cane instead of the walker and recently back to my Chuck Taylor All Stars instead of a bulky brace.

 I still had a dead spot in the center of my brain but I could think again. I could do math. I started making connections between seemingly unrelated things. I was happy.

Then I found out Amy Farmer committed suicide.

I called her my prom date because that was the simplest term for what I was. I had asked her to prom and she said yes, and we went. I took her home early because she said she felt uncomfortable and I drove around the backroads of Franklin County in my grandparents' Buick until it wastime for the party we had been invited to attend afterwards.

I changed out of my tuxedo doing ninety miles per hour on the road to Peaks Mill. I didn't turn fast enough when the road turned and ran straight into someones front yard. It left visible ruts. I backed out and went to the party without Amy. They watched Steel Magnolias and I slept on the floor by myself.

We both ended up at the University of Kentucky in the fall. She majored in Physical Therapy and I majored in drinking. I took a lifeguarding class that her mother taught and that's how I became a lifeguard. I did it to impress a girl.

We settled into a rut. She lived in Boyd Hall, which was the honors dorm, and I lived in Haggin Hall, which was in the middle of campus. All of our friends from high school had (with a few exceptions) gone to UK with us and all lived in North campus dorms.

Every night I would hike across campus for dinner at the student center with Amy and the rest of the Franklin County crowd. After dinner I would go back to Amy's room, watch Jeopardy with her then go home.

It wasn't much of a social life, I'll admit, which is why I began to spend all night in the computer lab. I would walk from her room to McVey hall (where the computer lab was) and work on the computer all night. I wrote short stories and played games, but mainly I tried out new Unix commands.

UK was using a computer network called UK Prime and instead of actual computers, one had to log in from terminals. The internet was entirely text based then, and jpegs and gifs wouldn't become widespread until the World Wide Web and html were invented.

Pictures were limited to ascii art, which was pictures made up using text characters. Also, you could crash a server by mailing the screenplay to Monty Python and the Holy Grail which was apparently a popular prank since I heard of it being done twice.

The lead programmer/computer guru at UK was a man named Rex, who looked like Lazlo, the guy who lived in the dorm closet in Real Genius. He was almost always in the computer lab in the early morning when I was there. He had written a dungeon crawler for the Prime system and it wasn't text based but the characters were all punctuation marks.

I saw someone ask him once if he had really written the game, and he responded by asking who else was playing. The student said his friend and him were playing and Rex said,"Watch this."

The friend, who was still playing shouted something about a dragon, stood up in the middle of the computer lab, shouted something about it killing him, and started to have a nervous breakdown in the middle of the computer lab. Rex hit a few keystrokes, and the guy who's character had just been killed said, "Wait a minute it's all back," and sat down and played for another half an hour.

Rex was God, as far as I was concerned.

Later, when UK lost their license to the Phone chat program, he coded a new program called Bone. The people who had used Phone were called Phoners, so when they switched over to Bone they became Boners.

Which is where I met my new batch of friends.

The old friends fell apart very suddenly. While I was in Jamestown at Lake Cumberland State Resort Park as a lifeguard, Amy and three of our friends were in a car wreck and Suzanne Elam was killed. The fence post that decapitated her scraped across Amy's face on the way and left her scarred. The last time I saw her she still hadn't learned to drive, and would only ride in the middle of the backseat.

I blamed myself for Suzanne's death. A few weeks before I had meant to invite her to a concert and even called information and wrote down her phone number. If I made that phone call, I thought at the time, she would still be alive.

And Amy wouldn't have been in the car. We had a falling out. After months of hanging out in her room, she finally agreed to go on a date with me. The only thing was, I wasn't allowed to tell her mother. Hopeless romantic that I am, I made the date for Valentine's Day.

Which is also Robin's brother's birthday, which means when my Eagle Scout Court of Honor was snowed out they moved it to Valentine's Day. I had to cancel my date.

But it worked out for me. Robin was at the Court of Honor and she was wearing a blue dress she had borrowed from her mother to try to impress me. I went to Kroger the next day to buy Amy a flower, but it was the day after Valentine's Day so all they had were the discounted bundles. I bought 3 or 4 bundles, picked out the best carnation and took it to Amy's dorm room.

The main surprise was that Amy's lesbian friend from down the hall had also brought her a single flower for Valentine's Day. I was heartbroken so I eased my wounded spirit by gathering some friends and handing out random flowers up and down Euclid Avenue. We took what was left and planted them in the snow outside of Boyd Hall. As we went inside I heard someone shout,"Hey, there are flowers IN THE SNOW!"

It totally made the whole day worth it.

So basically, my one shot at Amy Farmer was ruined by my future wife and I don't regret it. What I do regret is letting Amy and I become so estranged. The summer, after Suzanne died, when I asked our friend Ginger how Amy was doing, she blurted out, "She has a boyfriend," then apologized. I said, that isn't what I meant, but it was still nice to hear. She had moved on with her life.

Class of '93

I graduated in 1993 from Franklin County High School in Frankfort and my reunion is coming up again next year.

I missed the first reunion because it was the same weekend as my best friend's wedding and I was in Colorado being his best man.

I made a point to go to the next reunion after that, even though it wasn't an official reunion. We arrived at the restaurant where the reunion was supposed to be, and the hostess was surprised when we told her there was going to be a reunion. We waited around until ten minutes past the start time, didn't recognize anyone arriving in the parking lot, and left.

This reunion is very important to me because I've had a difficult year. First I had the stroke, lost the ability to walk or construct sentences.

Then while I was in the hospital recovering, my prom date died. Her funeral was on the day I "escaped" from the hospital and a year later, I still haven't found anyone who will tell me how she died. Even the pastor who performed her funeral died last week. If I don't find out soon, I'm afraid I never will.

Also, I want to see some familiar faces. I'm living ten minutes outside of Frankfort and I haven't seen anyone familiar. Every so often, I'll read the State Journal and see someone I recognize, but only if they get arrested, die or are running for mayor. The mother of a kid I was in Scouts with was in the newspaper one day as an Alzheimer's patient and I was excited. It was something different.

Sunday Morning - All By Myself

I woke up about ten this morning and had the house to myself.

Robin had woken me up on her way out the door to church and reminded me that I was on my own for the rest of the day. She was on her way to church with my parents and was going to Wicked at the Louisville Opera House immediately after.

I woke up about two hours later with a Michael Nesmith song in my head, "I've forgotten how long I've been sitting here."

That's odd, I thought, then I remembered I had to give myself my meds. I went to the bathroom, fixed myself a glass of water, took my pills and had a seat on the couch.

I was all by myself.

Or so I thought...

Christian was down the hallway, playing Warcraft.

When I walked down the hallway to use the computer, he said, "Hi, dad."

I was shocked.

"You've been here the whole time?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said, in a distracted monotone. "Mom went to church."

"Oh, and take your meds," he said.

David Lincoln Blankenship

My father said yesterday that he has trouble keeping secrets, and he doesn't understand why anyone would tell him a secret.

I have the same problem. Secrets cause stress, stress causes strokes.

On the first day of school, I keep thinking about the children who never where, who didn't get born. My wife is prone to miscarriages, and we've been trying to have another child since well before the stroke. We came close once.

Robin was pregnant. The child even had a name, David Lincoln Blankenship. My father's name is David but he doesn't have a middle name. Lincoln would let us call the kid Link, like the protagonist in Legend of Zelda.

That was my plan, anyway. It might have changed after the child arrived. We named Grace Beatrix because we were going to call her Trixie.

She doesn't like to be called Trixie.

We aren't even allowed to call her Gracie or my grandmother will hit us. She's surprisingly strong for an 88 year old woman.

Anyway, the child never arrived at least he wasn't viable when he did. One day I was cleaning the toilet and there it was, a fetus, about the size of my big toe and discolored. It's the single most traumatic moment of my life and I never told anyone, except maybe Robin. But it would have been months later when I was in the hospital, and had the Fountain of Truth pouring like a spigot from my lips.

The funny thing was, I had come so close to death that everyone in my family started to load me up with secrets, I guess so I wouldn't go to the grave without knowing?

It makes for a horrible family get together when you know things you aren't supposed to know. At my grandmother's birthday party I was sitting right between two people and I knew something about each of them that I shouldn't have. It made for a very unsettling dinner.

But back to the third kid. We're still trying, but we've officially retired the name David Lincoln. We're planning on Dorothy (my other grandmother) and Katherine (with a K, because Robin wants to call her Kat). I said that would be good because we could call her DK, and Robin said, emphatically, no video game names.

To which I frowned, emphatically.

My First Aniversary Celebration

This song holds a special meaning to me. Before the stroke I had an encyclopedic knowledge of music, and would spend most mornings with VH1 on the television keeping up to date.

After the stroke, while I was in the hospital, I missed all of the new music that came out. Not only that, my memory was iffy and I had zero retention. Even if I heard a new song it wouldn't "load" into my long term memory.

During the memory exercises in therapy at Cardinal Hill, I would cheat using my long term memory. I was supposed to read articles and then regurgitate the information, but it was hard for the therapist to find an article on which I wasn't already familiar. I can remember one time she gave me an article about the planet Saturn and I answered the questions, but then Robin pointed out to the therapist that I already KNEW everything about Saturn.

It became hard for the therapist to find articles on subjects which I wasn't familiar.

Robin helped a bit. She attended every one of my therapy sessions and would catch me when I was "accessing" my long term memory.

For example, when the therapist asked me to describe the sun, I said "the sun is a mass of incandescent gas," which impressed the therapist until Robin pointed out that it was a song by They Might Be Giants.

The song was stuck in my head for weeks after that. I filled up entire files on the patient computers at the hospital with the lyrics, over and over again.

If I hadn't had a stroke, I would have worried about it.

So anyway, music brought me back from the edge of the abyss, but I couldn't learn any new songs. After I got myself thrown out and was home, I might recognize a song on the radio but only because Robin had sung it repeatedly when she visited. Even then, I wouldn't know who sang the original song.

I spent weeks on the internet, matching songs to artists and then instantly forgetting. If it wasn't out before my stroke, I couldn't recognize it.

I made a determined effort to re-engage with music. I spent days watching VH1 in bed and trying to remember what I just saw. Then I heard Everybody Talks on the radio.

"I recognize this song," I realized (and probably said out loud).

It took me a few more weeks to learn that it was by the band Neon Trees but every time the song came on the radio, it made me happy. This was the first song I had learned after my stroke.

When it came on the radio last night on the way home from Whitaker Ballpark, it seemed fitting.

August 10 was the day I had my stroke so Robin wanted to have a party and celebrate. My mother had ticket vouchers to a Lexington Legends game that we hadn't used on an earlier date, so we sent out Facebook invites.

It was also Big L (the mascot's) birthday and they were having fireworks after the game. It seemed a fitting end to a year of misery.

The first thing that went wrong is that I didn't know what day it was. Friday sneaks up on me now, like a predator on an antelope. I never know what day it is.

When Robin left for training that morning she told me about the ballpark and that it was that night. It might as well been the first I heard of it.

My memory retention is still only so-so, and I was in bed sick all morning.

My mother sent everyone an email reminding them that we were going to the ballpark and asked me if my friend Rob was going.

He had been on the original guest list for the night we didn't go and he was the only one who had not RSVPed to my mother's Facebook invite.

I called him and we caught up. His son Avery starts preschool on Monday. He works weekends and couldn't make it, but it was nice to talk to him.

Robin had been driving around all day and she was tired by the time we arrived at the ballpark. I hadn't thought to grab my walker and I had broken my foot attempting to register at the Frankfort YMCA last week, so she made me ride in a wheelchair.

My wheelchair, the fancy one from Cardinal Hill with the seat cushion and the leg rests, was in storage way up high in the back where she couldn't reach.

She blamed her brother James for that. All I know is that it wasn't me.

We took my father's wheelchair, which he had given us when I first came home from the hospital. It has brakes that lock, but no very well. If I try to stand up out of it, and no one holds it, it rolls away. It wouldn't be my first choice for a wheelchair.

But it was all I had and Robin had a bad day and it seemed to cheer her up to push me in the wheelchair again.

And it got us in the handicapped seating, which at Whitaker Ballpark is directly behind home plate.

The usher was extremely nice and gave Grace a baseball. She got it signed by the mascots, Big L and Peewee. She didn't care about the players or the game at all.

The highlight of the game for her was when of the MacAttack dancers complimented her pigtails and asked her name.

She couldn't understand Grace (who turns shy when the focus is on her) so she asked me.

"Beatrix Grace," I said. "But we call her Grace."

"That's a very pretty name," the dancer said.

Grace blushed at the attention.

Robin took the kids over to the play area and bought Grace a baseball bat and ball set on the way back. She also bought Christian a ball.

He had already received a foam piece of coal emblazoned with a Friends of Coal logo. Everything at the ballpark had a sponsor. They still have the Herald Leader graphic of the dog with a newspaper in its mouth that they phased out years ago. They had an official announcement that they were phasing it out. That was years ago.

We attended a Monkees concert at the park when it was new. It was the first concert they ever had. Christian was a baby and we left him with Robin's parents. The ballpark has a display of homeplates signed by every musical act who has ever performed at the ballpark.

Robin couldn't believe how long it had been since we saw the Monkees. My mother vowed that she would never go see them again, that they were getting old and it made her feel bad to watch them on stage.

They just announced a tour, the first since Davy Jones died, and Mike is joining them. She's planning to drive to Cleveland and see them on my father's birthday.

Some things never change.

Especially at baseball games. They have Chik-Fil-A fowl poles and they donate money to the Boy Scouts. They run ads for the YMCA of Central Kentucky on the right fields view screen. During the fireworks they played "Sweet Home Alabama" and a song by Toby Keith.

They know their audience well.

As my mother pushed me back to the car, so we could spend the next half an hour in traffic, I reflected on many things, most of which were how much I appreciated Robin and all she's done for me.

As I climbed into bed next to her, she gave me a lecture about how hard the last year has been for her and she hoped I appreciated it.

I do, Robin, I do. Thank you.

Part Three

One would think that after one of the Stewart Home "kids" took a deuce in the pool that they would be my least favorite group to lifeguard. After they came back they were very apologetic and I enjoyed ligeguarding for them.

The autistic kids who would come in to swim laps were much worse.

I don't remember who they were or where they came from, but they weren't anywhere near as pleasant.

The Stewart Home always brought along enough supervision, but the autistic kids only ever brought two adults for three children. These were actual children, or at the oldest, teenagers. I remember that there were three of them, although the details of the third have left my memory.

The first was a black girl, I would guess between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. She would rock back and forth in the water until ten minutes before she had to leave and then explode into laps. She was mechanical and focused and easily the fastest swimmer which I ever guarded for.

The second was a male teenager who looked like Leonardo DiCaprio. I will remember him until the day I die.

I mean, I remember him now and I had a stroke. I even forgot the Down Syndrome kid dressed as a clown for a while, but I will never forget the autistic kid who looked vaguely like DiCaprio.

The woman who was in charge of him came running out of the boys locker room. She wanted me to go in and check on him, because I was male and she wasn't.

She seemed nervous.

I bounced into the locker room not knowing what to expect. I mean this was a YMCA where board members used to hang out in the sauna naked for hours at a time, and one time one of them came downstairs without putting his swim trunks on.

"Oops," he said. "I forgot to put on my drawers."

As I turned the corner into the locker room, I saw the boy on the other side of the showers. He was completely naked and completely erect.

He also had pulled some lockers loose from the wall and detached a water fountain.

I don't remember what happened next (I was stunned by the image of a naked, aroused autistic kid; nothing will hold after that sudden shock) but I imagine I told the handlers what he was up to in the locker room and she apologized profusely.

To this day, autistic people frighten me. When my wife worked at the Stewart Home, all the females were obsessed with babies. I was outside in the parking lot with my son in his car seat and the car was surrounded by girls going, "Baby..."

It was like something out of a zombie movie, except these were mentally handicapped individuals and not the undead. I did consider running them over with the car but only as a last ditch escape.

Robin came out of the building and shooed them away. I was glad.

The focus of an autistic person makes them freakishly strong and they make me nervous to this day.

The Frankfort YMCA (part two)

Part One

The Mike Kennedy scandal disillusioned me with the Y, but I still came back and worked some more.

I worked with the day camp at the Y and taught all of my sister's friends how to swim (but not her, as she likes to remind me). I worked with the kids from Montessori (the woman at the front desk called it "a damn hippie school") and the population from the Stewart Home.

The Stewart Home is a home in Frankfort for people with moderate to severe mental disabilities. My wife worked there for a while, and it's a pretty nice place. A lot of rich people send their children there and it's like a resort.

They take the "children" out on excursions. Sometimes they go bowling. Sometimes they come to the Y and swim.

One time they packed up in the middle of their session and hurried out without saying anything. I knew something was wrong so I checked the pool.

There was a turd on the bottom of the pool, right where the pool began to switch from the shallow end to the deep end. I notified my boss and attempted "extraction."

The pool had a net on a pole that was for this sort of thing, but since the turd was a sinker (i.e. it was on the bottom of the pool) the pole wouldn't reach.

So here I was, in the middle of the pool, up to my armpits in water, fishing out a piece of poo. Which would have been fine had it been a solid piece of poo. The moment I hit it with the edge of the net, it dissolved into a brown cloud.

So, now, here I was, in the middle of the pool, up to my armpits in the single most disgusting water ever. I was in a cloud of poo.

I notified the man upstairs, closed the pool, cancelled activities for the rest of the day and went home.

My (failed) trip to the Frankfort YMCA (part one)

I wasted today. I had such big plans and they all fell through.

I have been waiting all weekend to go to Frankfort with my father and join the YMCA. I worked at the YMCA since college, both in Frankfort and Lexington. I was put on the "do not rehire" list twice in Lexington, which is not an easy feat.

I trained as a lifeguard because my good friend Amy Farmer was teaching the class. Well, Amy and her mother were teaching the class. Her mother, Sueanne Armistead, was the main swim instructor for Frankfort. She took her job seriously.

She was a Lifeguard Instructor Trainer which means she could certify people to teach Lifeguard classes. She certified me as a Lifeguard Instructor, which meant I could certify other Lifeguards. She was the queen bee trainer for the region and years later, when we found out my friend Rob Rowe had never been certified as a Lifeguard Instructor, she called me on the phone and told me that he wasn't allowed to teach a class without me.

I managed never to tell him that, and this could be the first he hears of it.

Rob's boss had been a man called Mike Hagy who lied on his resume when they hired him as Aquatics Director. He said he was a Lifeguard Instructor Trainer when he was only a Lifeguard Instructor and he had trained Rob and another lifeguard to be Lifeguard Instructors but then he was submitting the paperwork under his name.

When Rob went to be recertified, he found out he had never been an instructor at all. He was devastated.

The Instructor Trainer for the Dayton area was angry at him. She made him come up and do remedial classes.

And she notified the national YMCA office and they contacted Sueanne and Sueanne contacted me.

Or she might have had Amy contact me, I don't remember.

Anyway, the point is, Rob thought he was doing me a favor by letting me help teach his classes when I had been ordered to help him by the regional trainer.

Rob was my roommate at the time so it all worked out.

Mike Hagy went to the Chicago area where he was eventually found out and charged with something. The last we saw of his wife she was working at a low end strip club in Lexington.

I moved back to Frankfort and worked at the Frankfort YMCA teaching swim lessons. Sueanne volunteered at the Y and was in charge of swim lessons. She had always been in charge of swim lessons. Amy told me one time  that she had to call her mother Sueanne because she wouldn't answer to any variation on the word, mom, because she had heard it too much.

The director at the Frankfort YMCA was a man named Mike Kennedy. He seemed dedicated - he was a father and a soccer coach. I used to brag to Rob that he always seemed to be in the building in the middle of the night.

He was arrested for taking young teenage boys to hotels and exchanging sex for jobs at the Y. He's in prison now, and I used to check on him to make sure he was still in prison.

He tried to appeal once by saying they mislead him about his chances of being found guilty. The prosecution released some more of the evidence, including that he had a locked cabinet in the basement where he kept naked photos of his victims.

That bothered me, because I had seen that cabinet. I had stopped one of the other guards from busting the lock on it. When I saw what had been in it, I internalized the guilt. I had to write a paper for one of my Journalism classes about why I wanted to be a journalist.

Because, I opted to show restraint instead of being nosy, and people got hurt because of it.

So now, as a rule, I am as nosy as possible.

Everything is not a tragedy...

That's what my wife said to me just now, everything is not a tragedy.

Except that it feels that way.

My father has redone the bathroom floor and I haven't had a shower all weekend. I knocked a pry bar on my foot and it hurt. I took a picture of C.'s room to post on Facebook, couldn't find the pink USB cord to connect the camera to the computer, borrowed a grey cord that fit the camera from my father and had to kick C. off the computer.

I told him all I needed was "ten minutes," except when I finally got the camera hooked in to the computer the memory was full.

I had to sit through a slideshow of the last year of my life, starting with the dead mouse pictures I took right before my stroke, going through Christmas and Easter and Elinor's recital.

And I say "finally" because before I could even look at the pictures I had to physically hook the camera to the computer, which isn't easy when you only have about fifty percent use of your right hand.

I turned the computer up on its end and found a spare USB slot (our computer has several spots that used to be USB slots but the sockets have fallen into the computer) and then I dropped the computer.

It only fell over, but that was far enough, apparently. The computer died and wouldn't come back on.

I had C. come in and turn the computer upright but it still wouldn't come back on. We tried the monitor cable and the power cables and finally as a last ditch attempt I unplugged the power cord from the back of the computer, plugged it back in and hit the power button.

The computer started back up. It whirred and came to life. I swear I didn't breath until Windows XP finished loading.

But it finally loaded, and I had to look at a bunch of pictures from when I first had my stroke and it depressed me.

I'm not usually one to get depressed, at least I wasn't before the stroke. The stroke took away all of my coping mechanisms. I can't hike, I can't swim, I can't even go shopping by myself.

In all of my first two decades of marriage I only contemplated suicide once and it terrified me. I immediately sought marriage counseling.

The last week I was in the hospital I thought about killing myself nonstop. If I hadn't been kicked out when I was, I might have tried to strangle myself with my belt. I wasn't quite sure how, but I had already decided to do it.

Which is why I worked so hard to get myself thrown out. Robin wasn't quite ready for me yet and it was uncomfortable but at least I'm not dead, which is what I would be if I had stayed at Cardinal Hill.

Anyway, C. just came in and reminded me my ten minutes is up, which depressed me even more.

Cleaning out my e-mail...

I've been clearing out my unread e-mail over the last couple of days and I just now got to the month or so around my stroke.

It's been interesting for me because I don't remember a lot from just before the stroke (or just after) so it's a bit fun for me.

The other day I found C.'s friend request from when he first joined Facebook. He isn't thirteen yet, but we let him join early, mainly so he would stop asking. He saw the e-mail over my shoulder and he was like, "Hey!"

He was indignant, until I explained to him what it was, but I still don't think he appreciated the significance.

But it was also weird seeing the last year of my life in review. I had forgotten about LinkedIn and Google+, since both have faded into obscurity. My ebay receipts reminded me of why I can't find anything. The Tonka figure that looked like Michael Fitzgerald? I sold it. The same with the silver 5 peso coin I used for coin flips.

I spent weeks looking for those when I first got home from the hospital.

Likewise with Hex Games. I tried to do a story on them at Fandom Fest last year and I couldn't remember their names or who they were. I've been calling them "the Hobomancer people."

They were downstairs at this year's Fandom Fest so I couldn't go visit them, which is a shame. They were nice people and they could have used (and deserved) the publicity.

I am disappointed in the Boy Scouts

Anyone who knows me knows that the Boy Scouts of America are a huge part of my life. My father was an Eagle scout, my brother was an Eagle scout and my brother-in-law and I got our Eagles together, on the same day.

My brother and I both met our wives through the Boy Scouts. My wife used to come to the meetings with her father and John's wife was staff at summer camp.

Growing up, my brother was involved in the Order of the Arrow and on camp staff. I started out at McKee as a CIT (Counselor in Training) but everyone always thought I was the younger brother, even though I am three and a half years his senior.

Working at McKee, we had to undergo "Youth Protection" training which was a goofy set of videos followed by a discussion. We made fun of the videos because they were ridiculous. An adult would climb into a shower with a boy or someone would be holding a video camera and shouting, "Here we are right now at the World Wrestling championship."

We made fun of the videos, which is what we were supposed to do. The man giving the training said if someone wasn't laughing then that was a sign something was wrong.

The phrase, "That's not for me!" which is what the boy in the shower said, became something of a dark joke around camp. As in someone would do something perfectly innocent but which might have had another dirty meaning.

"Hey, pull on this," the scout would say.

"That's not for me!" everyone around would say at once.

It was sort of like, "Smoke this and we'll see."

At the time I assumed that the youth protection was a gambit to eventually allow homosexuals to be scout leaders. The national organization had nearly bankrupted itself with legal fees, defending itself from lawsuits. They wanted to keep out gays, atheists, and an entire list of peoples who didn't conform to their morals.

There were also boycotts. The most effective was when Levi jeans pulled their support. Levi Strauss manufactured shorts for the Boy Scouts of America, but I also had seen the Levi outlet store in Dupont Circle when I had been in Washington on a field trip. The new shorts were not and still are not as durable as the denim shorts.

There was a brief ray of hope in the 1990s when the BSA allowed women to be scout leaders for the first time. They had always allowed them to lead Cub Scouts. When my father first worked with my den in the cub scouts he told me that when his mother had the same job she had been "Den Mother."

With all that going on, I also realized the Boy Scouts were becoming more and more conservative. Every time they would piss off a liberal group then the conservative groups would gain that much more control. Pretty soon it would be nothing but the Catholics, the LDS and the Baptists.

None of those groups are gay friendly. The LDS church is considered to be the main backers of the Prop 8 ammendment that barred gay marriage in California.

I can honestly say that all of my gay friends were Boy Scouts. When George Takei came out as gay on the Howard Stern show he said his first gay experience was at a boy scout camp.

Like it or not, the Boy Scouts and homosexuality are intertwined, like sweaty lovers more or less.

When my friend from college (who had been married at McKee in a Pagan ceremony which wasn't legal) was looking for a boy scout alternative for her son, I didn't have to ask why. It was the gay thing.

I told her about the YMCA Indian Guides program although I have no idea whether it is still around or not.

I still consider myself to be a Boy Scout, and I still think about the oath and law everyday. I can't in good conscience endorse an organization that spouts hate, regardless of whether they see it as God's plan or not.

It's the 100th anniversary of the Eagle Scout award, and last week a committee met in secret and issued a statement affirming the Boy Scouts stance on gays.

The committee met in secret and none of the members signed the statement. In an election year where gay marriage is likely to be a wedge issue, this seems like a purely political move from an organization that claims to be above politics.

That's not for me.

My Failure as a Parent

Right after my son, Christian, was born, Robin and I ran into a friend named Henry Lyon and he gave me the best piece of parenting advice I ever received. He told me that the one thing I need to provide for my child was, "Stability."

When I mentioned it to him a couple of years later he couldn't remember saying that, but he did and I've always fallen back on it for every parenting decision.

I've shown up at court and fought evictions, hid things from my children and always picked them up at school on time, even if I had to call someone to pick them up for me.

Until my stroke.

The last year or so has been hell on my children. Visiting me in the hospital, never knowing who would pick them up, and watching Robin take over all of my duties and new ones as well.

And now we've uprooted them, moved to my parents' house in Lawrenceburg, away from every person and place they've ever known.

I try to keep some continuity, to give them the illusion of stability, but it doesn't seem to work.

I let my son keep his World of Warcraft account because he can keep in touch with the people in his guild. That's it, the only contact he has with anyone from his old life.

Grace made new friends, but she's already lost them. The boy told her to open a can of paint and she did, then they painted the carport of an abandoned house together.

Her defense was, "He told me to..."

So here we are, no home in Bowling Green, living with my parents and the kids don't even know where they'll be going to school in the fall.

Robin is starting to crack and I'm only holding together for her sake.

My best day ever (that I can remember)

Last Thursday was my final trip to Cardinal Hill. It was the six month follow up exam for a research study I participated in for stroke victims and brain damaged persons.

At least I think that's what it was for. They had a detailed scientific description of the study on the wall next to the mat where I did my stretches, and I must have read the description of the study and I can't even piece together a random word from the wall.

I know they strapped electrodes to my bum arm and shocked me for a certain amount of time and that I could bring a DVD and watch it.

I quickly went through their collection of DVDs. I picked off the musicals first, and saw classics like Carousel for the first time. I also finally saw West Side Story for the first time, something my friend Michelle Holbrook had recommended back at the Methodist Home.

(When we WORKED at the Methodist Home. We were never "inmates" there.)

Thursday the main difference I noticed was cognitive. I could read the test materials as they were given to me and inadvertently commented on them.

One test the doctor gave me (other than the people running the study, I don't know anyone's professional credentials). She had me do some repetitive task (they were all repetitive). I think it was place a wooden block on top of a cardboard box or move a weight across a line or who knows what it was.

Anyway, I glanced down at the instructions and the directions said to give me a minute's rest between each of repetition. I pointed this out to the doctor (or research assistant or whatever her title was) and she very quickly covered up the page.

The other thing I read off the page was the name of the test. It was the "Action" research analysis exam, a fact which I made fun of for the remainder of the session.

Anyway, to the point, I considered myself cured, or at the very least "recovering." My brain was better than it had been.

But as Rudyard Kipling wrote in his famous poem "If," triumph and tragedy are twin imposters. I would learn this the next day.

hell night of the woeful (in)continence

When I started writing this blog in April, it was so I could record what it felt like to poop my pants for what I thought (I hoped) would be the last time.

I mean how often does an adult male find himself in the sort of situation where he can admit having pooped his pants?

I can only think of one other person who ever admitted to it, and he was an exception. I don't think he ever would have admitted it except 1) his girlfriend was there (he was meeting her parents), 2) he was stressed (he was meeting his girlfriend's parents), and 3) he had the flu.

Also, there may or may not have been alcohol involved (it seems like he had a hangover, but now that I think about it, that doesn't seem likely, especially if he had the flu.)

And he was in a public place, the middle of a Cracker Barrel restaurant.

To me (before the stroke) those were the qualifications to poop in public - you had to be stressed, sick, in a public place and it had to be an embarrassing story.

For example, the last time I pooped my pants before the hospital was when I was ten years old and on a hike with the Webelos in Natural Bridge State Park. I got caught short and couldn't get to the bathroom in time so I ended up burying my scout shorts on the side of a hill in the woods somewhere.

Even though I wasn't an adult at the time, I still was married for years before I told the story to my wife, and she still was shocked by it. She kept bursting into laughter and saying, "Your shorts are buried on a hill somewhere!"

No one over the age of three should no what it feels like to poop one's pants. It is a feeling of total helplessness and embarrassment and you just want it to go away, but it doesn't.

When I was in the hospital they had adult diapers the hospital staff would force you to wear if you had an accident. Even if you spilled a pee jug on yourself, they would threaten you with a diaper, which I don't know if you've ever worn an adult diaper but they aren't exactly functional.

When an infant poops itself you can grab it by his or her little feet and clean the cute little baby bottom. It's simple, easy and it's over in a few minutes.

With an adult in the hospital, every one goes into panic mode. Nurses are everywhere, in and out of your room, trying to get someone else to take care of it.

It is not an experience I would wish on anyone, from either end of things, the pooper or the nurse that has to clean it up.

So anyway I was thinking the other night about how I hadn't pooped myself since April and I should write a blog about that, when I pooped my pants again.

I knew it was coming. I had been on the toilet all night and I hadn't wanted to wake Robin and send her to the store for Immodium. As soon as she woke up, she went to the Kroger and asked if I needed anything and I said yes grab me some Immodium.

She was at the store when I had my accident, and I was standing in the kitchen, watching television with my father and waiting for her to get back with the medicine. She either got back just before or just after I had my accident, because I'm pretty sure she had handed me the Immodium and I had already taken two when the poop arrived.

My parents' have no tile in their bathroom and they just put in a new floor, so it was like when I was visiting my friend Rob and he fed me some Shepherd's Pie and his bathroom was being remodeled and I threw up all over the exposed plywood.

His roommate Carl wasn't happy about that the next morning.

The Return to Fandom Fest (part 1)

You may ask yourself how I could return somewhere that I never mentioned being the first time. The reason I never mentioned Fandom Fest is that it was about two weeks before my stroke and I didn't get the chance to write anything down. Not that I didn't plan to write about it; I took copious notes and did a couple of interviews with people, mainly about a game called "Hobomancer."

The concept was brilliant, I thought. Hoboes and tramps were the one essential piece of Americana thaat hadn't had a turn in the pop culture spotlight. Cowboys and Miners are everywhere, the Hobo, not so much. The gist of the game was that hoboes were actually wizards and that the rail lines functioned like ley lines. They crisscrossed the country and where they crossed, those were places of great power.

Every player had a hobo power (for instance the ability to make a stew out of any available ingredients) and for my character I chose the ability to find random objects in his pocket.

The downside of this ability (every hobo power had to have a positive and a negative aspect) was that every time my character would put something in his pocket, had to roll a die to see if he randomly lost the item.

Anyway, I had fun, they were nice guys and I planned to write a story about their concept. I started the story a couple of different times and even had half an essay written before the show. Some vaguely inspirational drivel about Woody Guthrie and the American Spirit.

I honestly don't know if it was dreck or not because I had the stroke and lost all half a dozen drafts in my computer somewhere. I don't know where, but I lost lots of things from my computer when I went in the hospital.

For instance, I've been locked out of my web site for the past six months because I can't remember the database password.

I still have all the data, I just can't put it back on the internet because I can't figure out my own password. My father keeps telling me I should hack it, but I take internet security very personally and all of my passwords are unhackable.

(Now that I've said that, I'm hoping one of you will try to hack into my web site and prove me wrong. If you do manage to find my password, send me what it is, please.)

In 2011, Fandom Fest was disorganized and chaotic. Rooms were double booked, tables were double booked and it was so hot that the air conditioner gave out in the main exhibit hall. To complicate matters, the air conditioners for the rooms all emptied out into the main atrium, making the temperature unbearable.

Our room was on the backside of the hotel, and it would have been bearable, but our door opened on to a glass covered hallway, which functioned as a greenhouse and also had the heat from a couple of dozen air conditioners pumping hot air into it. The walkway was unbearable especially in the hot August weather.

Running to the room was not an option, but neither was walking. Even walking down a 120 degree hallway would leave you dripping sweat by the time you made to the door. If your keycard decided not to work (which it frequently did) then by the time you got in to your room you would be out of breath. The heat was a dry heat, as though you were inhaling pine trees or sitting in a redwood sauna.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the gaming track was placed by the pool, and the lifeguards, being told that the pool would be closed over the weekend, decided to shock the pool.

Shocking the pool is a process in which you dump bagged chlorine directly into the pool, raising the chlorine to ten or twenty parts per million (a good number is usually three, at the YMCA we would have to close the pool if it tested at 5 parts per million or higher.)

Kirk, the evil mustachioed maintenance man of whom I refuse to talk about in print because he seems like the bitter sort of person who would sue me over mentioning his name, shocked the pool every Friday before I taught swim lessons on Saturday morning. It wasn't pleasant and he wasn't pleasant. The rumor was that he was a germophobe, but I think he was a mean, spiteful man who hated children.

My friend Rob said he came in once while Rob was teaching a swim class and shocked the pool with children in the water. He was a mean spiteful man.

Anyway, the pool at the hotel had been shocked and you could tell there was too much chlorine in the water by looking at it. When pool water has too much chlorine it's visible in the water, and the pool at the hotel had visible chlorine.

Which isn't a problem with an outdoor pool because sunlight burns off the chlorine. But the hotel pool at Fern Valley was indoors, at the back of an atrium, with tables set up for gaming all around it. The place smelled like a chlorine leak. It made my eyes red, it was so strong.

Before chlorine was used in pools it was considered a chemical weapon. Derek Jones, guy in my father's scout troop, worked as a lifeguard at one of the Frankfort pools and caught a lungful of chlorine. It reduced his lung capacity to the point that he couldn't get in the military. He married a woman who was in the army and now he lives with her on a military base in Germany, but that's not the same thing.

Anyway, chlorine is bad, was the point, and you could tell there was too much in the pool.

Songs in my head

It has never taken me a lot to get a song stuck in my head. Yesterday it was "The Doctor is Dying," by Chameleon Circuit. We were moving, and I suddenly looked at my brother-in-law taking a shelf off the wall and thought, "I don't want to go..."

That did it, and the song was in my head for the rest of the day.

Of course, it didn't help that I left the YouTube window open on the laptop and C. found the song first thing when he woke up (at two in the afternoon) and played it nonstop for the rest of the day. He even posted it a couple of times on his Facebook wall if you really want to listen to it.

Today's song is one I picked up from VH1 a couple of days ago. I don't know who sings it but I was able to describe the singer in the car to Robin yesterday. She is small, athletically built and wears the same outfit every time I see her - basically a white tank top and black workout pants. That, and she has long blond hair with a flip in it like Gwen Stefani.

And now the song is gone, replaced by Chameleon Circuit's "Mr. Pond."

Living with your parents...

I had this brief lucid moment this morning where I thought I was in my room from high school, and it was shattered when Robin came through the door. (In high school, I lived in my parents' basement, and the door was at the top of the stairs.)

We're about to move to my parents' house in Lawrenceburg for the summer (different house - this new one doesn't have a basement). I realized my blood sugar must be low.

Which is good, because that means I get an Ale8 slushie, but it also made me realize - we're moving at least twenty minutes away from the nearest Ale8 slushie.

I told Robin, "I just realized, we're moving at least twenty minutes away from the nearest Ale8 slushie."

"As opposed to two and a half hours away?" she replied.

We decided to move in with my parents for the summer and build up cash so we can move to Bowling Green in the fall for Robin to start grad school at Western.

I feel like I should pause here for a moment and talk about Ale8 slushies. First of all, it's my favorite drink. I became hooked on them when I worked at Amazon doing returns. I could go to the Marathon station on Buckhorn, grab a 32 oz slushie, go to work, leave it in the car while I was inside, and I could finish it with my lunch.

By the time I went to work at Manchester Center, I was hooked on the Ale8 slushie. I mentioned it to my coworker, Dave and he was like, "Ale8? And a slushie? Where?"

Up to that point, I only knew of two places in Lexington to find one and both were in my neighborhood, which was nowhere near Manchester Center.

Dave and another one of our coworkers (I forget her name so I'll call her "Camille") found a BP that sold them at the corner of Versailles Road and Industry, which to this day is the farthest west I've ever found an Ale8 slushie.

If anyone is reading this outside of Kentucky I feel as if I should explain. Ale8-1 (or "a late one," according to the package) is a regional soft drink bottled in Winchester, Kentucky. It gets harder to find the further one gets from Winchester.

When my parents lived north of Frankfort, I was in town for the 127 yard sale and wanted to start my morning with an Ale8. I had to drive all the way through Frankfort to Wal-Mart on the south side of town before I found Ale8 in a bottle and I had to pay a premium price. I think it was $1.79 a bottle, as opposed to the fifty cents a bottle costs at Kroger in Lexington.

So in Lawrenceburg the closest place I know to get a bottled Ale8 is Frankfort, and I would have to pay through the nose for it.

And I don't know of anywhere to get an Ale8 slushie that's closer than Lexington.

The Ghost Trap - part 1

A few years ago, I wanted to right a book about ghosts and ghost hunters, so I went to a local convention called ScareFest. It was a horror and paranormal convention, run by local ghost hunter Patti Starr.

She was a bit of a kook, but she got me in the door for free so I figured I owed her a story out of it.

This was the first time I had been to any sort of convention of any sort (not counting a small comic book convention I had my parents drop me off at as a teenager) and I wasn't sure what to expect. It was a lot of D-list celebrities for B-horror movies of which I had never heard.

And way to many small children dressed like Michael Myers from the Halloween movies. Nothing is quite as creepy as miniature Michael Myers, especially when they have a plastic butcher's knife and there seems to be one around every corner.

My brother came down to the Lexington Civic Center to see a Bigfoot expert who's blog he followed give a lecture. Basically the media had been in an uproar about a Bigfoot hoax that had occurred earlier in the year. As I remember it, a group of hunters claimed they had a Sasquatch body in their freezer but it turned out to be a rubber store-bought Bigfoot costume stuffed full of frozen meat.

He claimed that it was the people on his website who caught the hoax, who recognized the Bigfoot costume, but when someone from the audience asked him why he hadn't spoken up louder and sooner, he sort of stared off into space and mumbled an excuse.

I felt sorry for the man. He admitted that the hoax had meant record traffic to his site and he had been quoted as a Sasquatch expert in several national news articles and now he was cornered about why he hadn't done enough to debunk it.

My brother bought a signed copy of his book and I chatted with him for a little bit. I wore my wife's MP3 player around my neck for the entire weekend. When it was set to "record" and the switch was locked it looked like it was turned off.

I wasn't concerned about the duplicitness of it - I had a reporters notebook and made constant notes. I just couldn't write fast enough to capture the natural flow of conversation. They should have known I was quoting them.

Puffalumps of DOOM!!!!!!

As I sit here on the couch, eating my breakfast of cheese ravioli from a can and waiting for Robin to get out of the bathroom, I'm pondering my addiction to Chef Boyardee.

Those of you who have lived with me or spent any amount of time around me will likely be surprised to hear, I didn't grow up eating Chef Boyardee. When I was 10 or 11, they ran a promotion wherein a person could send X number of labels and receive a Puffalump in the mail.

The funny thing was, I forgot why I was collecting the labels. When my cousin Michael asked me about it at my grandparents' house I honestly couldn't remember. I told him it was a "skateboard or something."

I honestly couldn't remember for what I was saving labels.

For those of you who don't remember, Puffalumps were one of those toys from the 1980s. They were basically stuffed animals made from nylon, and they didn't age well. Basically they were a girls toy, and not at all something a boy should want.

When I do find one at a yard sale or a flea market, they tend to be yellowed and have rust spots on them or someone washed them and the stuffing all went to one end. So far, I think I've only found on in salvageable condition, and it was a dinosaur that grunted when you squeezed it. I think I gave it to my daughter.

Anyway, the point was, I was talking about canned pasta and my canned pasta addiction.

My parents had always bought me Franco-American Spaghettios with Meatballs, so they were a little annoyed but not resistant to the idea of buying Chef Boyardee pasta for me.

As I moved out on my own and started buying my own groceries, I kept buying canned pasta. When Christian was starting out on solid food (he liked green beans A LOT) we bought a can of ravioli for him and it stained everything, his skin, the white plastic of his high chair... Everything.

So we banned canned pasta from the house for a while, especially Chef Boyardee ravioli. And I stopped eating it myself. I figured if it stained plastic that horribly it couldn't possibly be doing my insides any good.

I went years without eating it. Then I started again.

I was like a junkie, hiding my pasta habit from my wife. The label said each can of pasta had at least 100% of the recommended daily sodium allowance. Seriously, the food is not healthy at all. Each can has hundreds of milligrams of sodium inside. The next time you buy a can look at the label. You will be shocked.

And if you get in a hurry and eat it straight out of the can without cooking it, you will have diarrhea. My wife and I use to call this "The Cold Pasta S****."

As in, "Why are you still on the toilet?"

Then I would shout, "It's the Cold Pasta S****."

And she would answer back, "Well, I keep telling you to cook it."

But I never would. I just couldn't spare the one and a half minutes it would take to microwave it. Or there wasn't a clean bowl. Or I was just being lazy.

Canned pasta became my comfort food, replacing Spaghettios. (After a steam bubble popped on the stove top while I was cooking them in a sauce pan, and I dropped to my knees and said, "My childhood comfort food has betrayed me," I never went back.)

After the doctor diagnosed me with hypertension and my wife and I started having problems, I maybe should have backed of the ravioli. But no, I didn't and I swear that it was one of the (many) contributing factors to my stroke.

Ready for a Miracle?

I walked today, a short distance and without a cane.

I had the idea in my head since I saw Leap of Faith last week (the Steve Martin faith-healing movie) and I decided to try it this morning in the hallway. It felt good to stand upright. I popped my back also, which also felt good. (I had been giving serious thought to finding a chiropractor.)

In a week that's been filled with setbacks, it was good to find a bright spot.

Memorial Day and the Aftermath

I haven't written a blog entry for a while, but not because I didn't have anything to say. Actually I started and pulled  the plug on several entries since my last post.

Of particular note, I would like to single out my essay on Zombie Television Shows, or shows that continue long after the natural finale because the network doesn't want them to die, shows like After MASH, or The Brady Bunch Variety Hour.

Basically I was going to compare them to the modern zombie in that they are horrific abominations that play off the existing fan base and their familiarity with the characters and their affection for the show.

Then I was going to mention Scrubs: Med School and how it made me miss the House finale (because C. was watching the show with us and he griped every time my wife and I would watch an episode of something without him, even if it was something we were watching as well like Bones or Supernatural) and then I would transition to the topic of spin-offs and I was going to maneuver to finish with the awkward joke "For every Joey there's a Frasier." (Which my Robin loved when I woke her up to tell her about it at 4 a.m. but likely wasn't as funny or as clever as I thought.)

Anyway, the title at the top of this page isn't "Zombie Television Shows," the title is "Memorial Day and its Aftermath," unless I decide to change the "its" to a "the," which is a very real possibility.

It would flow better, I think, with a "the."

Okay, "the" it is.

Where was I? Oh yes, Memorial Day.

My parents had me over for grilled burgers and potato salad, and then left me alone on the couch for a couple of hours while they visited the cemetery.

My parents don't have air conditioning (not beyond a small window unit or two) so it was unbearably hot in their house and I didn't quite catch where they were going.

My mother's father was career military but he was cremated and as far as I know is still in a box on my aunt's TV cabinet, waiting until his wife dies so we can make a family trip to a national park in California to scatter their ashes together.

It's a romantic gesture and I don't mind that my grandmother is making us wait, but for now my grandfather doesn't have a grave to visit.

The other possibility I considered was my father's friend Ralph Coy who had died in a car accident last year and was buried as a veteran. As it turns out they had considered going to see him, but decided the distance was too far.

He's buried about an hour south of Louisville, but since I got lost on the way to the funeral I don't know exactly where.

I do know that if I take a state highway of some sort all the way west until it ends, eventually I would arrive at the funeral home, if I turned left instead of right or some other miniscule bit of direction I didn't discover until I spent two hours driving up and down either Bardstown or Elizabethtown Road and missed the funeral.

And was late picking up the kids from school as I recall.

Where they actually went, as I discovered when my wife posted photos of Grace at the cemetery on Facebook, was Sunset Memorial Gardens in Frankfort, where my father's parents are buried.

When Robin told me on the way back to Lexington, I was deeply embarrassed. I had forgotten Grandpa served in the Korean War.

My Grandma and he are buried in a drawer together and I tend to forget that he was a veteran as well, mainly because my other grandfather was career military and retired after serving as a key punch operator at the Bluegrass Army Depot.

His house was pictures of him in uniform and his children were born shortly after each major war of the twentieth century, starting with my Aunt Carol who was born after World War II and continuing down to my mother who was the youngest and born after Korea.

She was born at Fort Knox, on the army base, and her birthplace is listed as Fort Knox.

When I was growing up in Arkansas I didn't know that most of the world knew Fort Knox as the place where the United States kept their gold reserves. It was the place where my mother was born.

Flies

Yesterday, I was trapped in my bedroom with a fly.

Flies are annoying, but less so now that I'm mobile. Although honestly, I still can't move fast enough to kill a fly, and they still annoy me.

In the hospital it was worse.

This one nurse (Kimberly was her name) was complaining about one of her patients and how demanding they were. I don't remember if it was an old man or an old woman, but I'm almost sure they were elderly (most stroke patients tend to be old - I was the youngest person on the stroke unit until they gave me a roommate who was in his twenties).

Anyway, Kimberly's patient was getting on her nerves. He (or she) wanted too much from Kimberly but the final straw was when she said the patient wanted her to kill a fly for him (or her).

For a paralyzed immobile person a fly in the room is torture. Imagine being able to see a fly and not being able to do anything about it. A fly eats by vomiting acid and sucking back up whatever dissolved in the acid. Which is why when a fly lands on your bare skin you can still feel it after it flies away.

As if that wasn't disgusting enough when I was a teenager my parents bought me a book for Christmas about a cyclist who bicycled from the tip of Alaska to the tip of South America. He made it to somewhere in Brazil and had to stop because he had an infected (what he thought was a) thorn.

When he dug it out with a pocket knife, it was a maggot of some sort. A blood covered maggot.

Which is not an easy thought to forget when you can't move and there is a sinister fly on your leg, staring at you, mocking you.

FYI
While I was thinking about flies yesterday it occurred to me that in Britain they call gnats "midges," so that's why the word midget is an offensive term. And now I know...

Confusing my C's and T's

One side effect of the stroke was an a confusion between the letter C and the letter T.

I've been playing a game on Facebook (Marvel's Avengers Alliance) and Dr. Strange has a power (Teressing Touch) and I kept misreading it as Caressing Touch. I also kept misreading Trap Shot.

When we went to The Avengers Saturday night (excuse me, Marvel's The Avengers) a funeral home had left the C off the word "cremation." On the way to the theater, not only were we discussing what a remation was and whether I wanted to be remated when I die, but the C's all began to disappear from the signs.

We were going to an inema and drove past an ar wash. Christian was suddenly calling himself "hristian."

Normally we call him just "C," but he stayed in the backseat, even though I checked several times.

Melanies I Have Known

I woke up this morning with a song stuck in my head, so I googled the lyrics, found the CD on Amazon and ordered a copy.

The song was by a folk singer named Melanie who apparently was a contemporary of Johnny Cash.



It got me thinking about other Melanies I've known.

First and foremost, I thought of Amy's college roommate who I asked out once. I had two tickets for a Billy Joel concert and was looking for a date. She turned me down, but in the 30 seconds she considered it, she was the single most beautiful woman on the planet. It was the single best rejection I ever had.

A year later I was on the roof of Keeneland Hall with Chad and some male friends, and we were watching some amply endowed girl change her shirt. I realized with horror that it was Amy's room and that the girl was Melanie. I felt guilty and to this day when I hear the Weird Al song "Melanie" I feel a twinge of guilt.



Then there's my middle school counselor who said her name was Melonie because her mother said when she was born it was like pushing a watermelon out. I question the validity of sharing that with an 8th grader but I must admit it was a pretty good ice breaker, and I still remember the story until this day.

I had switched schools midway through my eighth grade year, and forgotten to return a library book. She offered to take it back for me (since she split time between both schools). When I found the book, I took it to her in her office and said, "Here's the book," without any explanation.

It was a book about Nazis. She looked uncomfortable.

EZ on the GD

I used to know a guy in the dorm who would say that. His name was Chad and he sold Amway and he was a bit of a jerk. We had a falling out when he said some unkind things about a female friend of mind.

And I told her about it, and Chad wouldn't play chess with me anymore, which in hindsight wasn't that big of a loss.

I mean, he did insult my friend right in the common study room for my floor in front of my other friends.

But any way this blog entry is not about Chad, it's about GD.

Specifically it's about the word "goddamn," which to keep my blog from being censored, I'm going to call GD.

About fifteen years ago when I first decided to become a writer, I decided my "craps" and "dang it's" were weak sauce. I sat down and thought about it, and realized that the strongest swears combined a religious name with a traditional swear word. (Incidentally Robin ran to close to a semi truck one time while she was driving and I let fly with a "Holy Mary Mother of F---." I still don't think my brother-in-law has quite recovered.)

When I was a radio host at WRFL I had a segment that marked the exact moment were culturally you could play GD on the radio. Then the incident with Janet Jackson happened at the Super Bowl, and the FCC began to crackdown on decency, levying giant fines left and right.

With my children, I've always told them that it's okay to sing a "bad word" as part of a song. Mainly because I once wrote a short story for class laden with swear words and when it came time to read it in the lobby of LCC it sounded ridiculous. One of the professors took me aside afterwards and told me that I shouldn't censor myself.

When I play guitar and sing there are certain songs on which I won't censor myself. Counting Crows "Marjory" and Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" are both sacrosanct to me. Besides, songs like "Uncle John's Band" and "Ball and Chain" are useless with the GD removed. It's the word that gives the song power.

An old Scoutmaster I met at McKee (I think he was Camp Commissioner) took me aside one time and told me that swearing implies a lack of intelligence - his point was that a person who swears couldn't think of the right word or combination of words.

I agree with that thought - if I didn't want to be thought of as stupid, I would have to come up with increasingly complex and creative insults. Nothing as mundane as my Sister-in-Law who says, "Piss," for everything.

So with the Republicans trying to create a functional Theocracy in the U.S. to unseat Obama, I am in great fear for the 1st Amendment and the guarantee of free expression. If we can't say GD on the internet, how long before we can't say it in real life?

Brainwashed

I was thinking today about V, not the recent V for Vendetta movie that inspired last summer's Occupy movement but the 1980s television miniseries V.

Specifically I was thinking about how the resistance fighters in that would be brainwashed by the evil reptile aliens and then magically switch from left handed to right handed (or the other way around).

Obviously I've switched my dominant hand since the stroke because my right hand barely works, but specifically I was thinking about how I wipe my bottom.

Before the stroke I wiped back to front and now, after having been wiped by women since summer, I've noticed I wipe front to back.

It reminds me of the ads that student health services used to run in the Kernel about, "boy cats should wipe whichever way they like but girl cats should always wipe front to back."

The advert ran with a picture of a wildcat mascot grinning and giving a thumbs up.

That grinning wildcat haunts me every time I go to the bathroom. It's as if he wants to say, "You've had a traumatic brain injury and you'll never be right again."

Balding, No More

The strangest side effect of the stroke has been, by far, that my hair has started to grow back.

I realized this in therapy one day, said it out loud then immediately caught the bald man in the room with me check the top of his head and frown. I felt bad for saying it.

Baldness tends to follow the male members of the mother's family. My grandfather was bald, and my uncle went bald suddenly, when he was out of work in Florida. I didn't see him for a few months then, BAM! - He aged thirty years overnight.

I never asked  him about it but I assumed it was due to stress, which was no problem for me since I had always led a relatively stress free existence. My roommate compared me to a cat once, but that was after he came home and found me in the floor on my back, absent mindedly batting at the dangly cord that opened and shut the blinds.

So it was a fair comparison.

At a party once, there was a woman going around giving free back rubs. When she got to me she was horrified.

"You have no tension at all," she said, as she backed away. Her voice quivered.

"No, I don't," I said and went back to my conversation with, I think it was, a recently divorced woman who called herself Cat.

"What's it like to be divorced?" I asked.

She seemed stunned by the question, and the conversation quickly ended.

Anyway, the point is, my life was stress free, and I kept a square hairline into my late twenties. I considered it a badge of shame.

I had one friend who started going bald in high school. He could drink anywhere he wanted without being carded and go see whatever band he wanted. The last time I saw him he was drunk in Tally Ho at three in the morning playing video poker.

But the point was, he was bald.

Last spring I noticed my hair was starting to thin out on top, and I proudly announced it on Facebook. My friend Kimber wanted to see a picture, but when I tried to take a photograph I couldn't  take one where you could tell I was going bald. I stood on the patio until the sun went down but couldn't get a decent picture. After the sun went down I kept trying with the flash and when I got up the next morning, I failed some more.

But I was going bald.

I can remember the  first time I sunburned on the top of my head. It annoyed me but quietly I considered it a triumph.

Okay, it wasn't quietly and I didn't keep it inside, but no one else seemed to care.

The balding steadily got worse until I started to worry. What would I look like bald? How should I wear my hair? My father's friend, Dawkins, had a flat top haircut when he went bald and it looked very distinguished. On the other hand I worked at summer camp with a man who wore his long, with the bald head on top (basically a Benjamin Franklin) and it looked horrible.

But alas, my bald spot is gone.

Last week when I was at my sister's commencement, I was looking at all the bald heads in the room and feeling guilty. My hair grew back. I had waited years for my hairline to recede and now I was back to square on.

My theory is whatever stress caused the stroke was also making my hair fall out, and when I had the stroke, the stress dissipated and my hair grew back, but that's just a theory.

But the truth is I still feel guilty, whether I deserve a bald spot or not. And maybe if I feel guilty enough my hair will start to fall out again.

If I'm lucky.

The Narcissism Addendum

The blog I posted yesterday, took me over a week to finish and I still left something out.

During the conversation with Robin I left out a sentence or two, specifically the bit where Robin and I were talking about how hard it is to spell "narcissist."

I would also like to say that "addendum" isn't an easy word to spell either.

Narcissism and its consequences

This blog took me over a week to write because I couldn't spell "narcissism." I kept meaning to look it up, but the dictionary was on the shelf and I was on the couch and the shelf was so far away. And I was lazy.

But if you can forgive me for the delay I will begin the blog entry I started writing a week ago.

The first sentence was something about the show House and then an explanation of why I watch the show. (Short answer: I couldn't move or find the remote and it had a marathon every Friday when I first got home from the hospital.)

Anyway, the episode of House that inspired this blog entry was on the television while I was flipping through one day. I hesitated for a moment to see if it was one I had seen, and I caught a snippet of conversation.

It was as follows:

Cutty said something to House, and he said something back and she accused him of something, and he said something to the effect of, "You can't control everything, that makes you a narcissist, because you blame yourself and the only reason you would feel guilt over everything is if you feel like it's your responsibility to control everything."

Or something to that effect. I don't remember exactly; it's been over a week and I wasn't taking notes.

So anyway, I shared this insight with Robin when she returned and she was aghast.

"It took you having a stroke to realize you had Narcissistic Personality Disorder?"

Which is true. People have told me that for years, and I refused to admit it.

Every friend who died, every drink I spilled, every promise I failed to follow through upon, I blamed myself. Even if I wasn't responsible, I would dwell on it and find a way that it was my fault.

So what should have come as a relief, backfired.

What at any other point in my life would have been a life changing revelation, hit me hard at just the wrong time. I am responsible for ruining everyone's life this time. My children are in therapy, my wife is one argument away from a breakdown, and everything IS absolutely my fault. This would be the moment I should blame myself.

I am a burden to my family and everyone around me.

It's sort of like saying "I'm sorry" to many times. It loses its impact.

Trash Therapy

Before the stroke, I did 80% of the cleaning. I thought that would be an exaggeration, but after the stroke my wife was overwhelmed and the house quickly fell apart.

Now don't get me wrong - I think she could have handled it if she didn't have to take care of me and the kids. But she does and she gets stressed easily and I feel so helpless.

Yesterday in the Herald Leader, there was an article about a woman who was charged with neglect for leaving her disabled brother in unsanitary conditions. The trash was piled up so high that the fire department couldn't get the door open when they went to investigate.

As a former Journalism student, I read the newspaper web site every day, and I hate when there's a story that concerns me.

Back when I was still in the wheelchair, they ran a story about a man who was trapped in his house in a wheelchair during a fire and couldn't get out. His neighbors had to listen to him as he died.

The day before the home health nurse had asked me what I would do in case of a fire, and I had been taken aback. I told them, I guess I would roll to the back door and fling myself on the patio and crawl.

They seemed okay with that scenario, but I wasn't.

As soon as I saw the story about the man in the wheelchair trapped in the burning house, I became obsessed with it.

I practiced walking without support and would roll myself to the back door and psyche myself up for when I actually had to flee. My wife began to worry, because I was spending all of my free time at the back door, looking out over the yard.

I didn't want to tell her what I was doing, that I was making sure I could get outside in case of a fire, because I didn't want her to worry.

So, this morning when Robin found a cockroach in the living room, I was ready to clean. I had gone to bed with the story of the disabled man trapped in his own house by piles of trash and woke up ready to clean.

Grace has been watching television in our room and she keeps leaving trash behind the bed. I woke up and asked Robin for a glass of ice water and a drawstring trash bag from the kitchen. Then I asked her to cancel my therapy for the morning and she agreed, saying, "Cleaning is therapy for you."

Indeed.

Television and Brain Damage

I'm just going to come out and admit it - part of my brain is dead.

My wife used to carry around an MRI of my brain in her purse to show to the people who treated me, because it was hard to describe where the damage was. The middle of my brain is (or was) dead.

I said "or was" because the last time I had an MRI done, my brain already looked like it had begun to heal. It's not like I can drive to an emergency room and request an MRI just to see if my brain has finished healing.

Which is embarrassing, because I'd like to think I'm normal. I can dress myself now, and I don't feel any less smart. Not that I'm sure I would be able to tell.

The one side effect I noticed was that, since the stroke, I have become especially susceptible to advertising. Not surprising since in the hospital I started watching more television, since it was the only thing to do.

When my wife would stop by for her daily visit, I would beg her to bring me some Taco Bell or a pizza from Pizza Hut. She would almost always refuse, pointing out (very sensibly) that an excess of Taco Bell is one of the main reasons I had the stroke.

Which is true; they were one of the few places that was near the house, had a drive thru, and was open at 3 a.m.

Cardinal Hill had a contract with Jimmy John's to bring grinders and pizzas to the cafeteria but I would have had to put in my order the day before.

Anyway, when my wife picked me up from the hospital, the first place we went was Taco Bell. I had a box lunch like they had been advertising on the television, all night, the entire time I was in inpatient.

It was delicious.

And now I realize why the brain damage ward was key access only - anyone could have talked those patients into anything.

I still am unusually susceptible to television ads. Right now, I'm sitting at home waiting for Robin to get home and quietly humming the J.G.Wentworth song to myself. I'm not even sure what a structured settlement or an annuity is but suddenly I want one.

And I hope Robin brings me Taco Bell. Or Pizza Hut.

Names

My cousin Mike was here yesterday, picking up stuff and chatting.

I call him "my cousin" Mike because we know so many Mikes that we have to clarify between them. Our friend Mike Fitzgerald was complaining about this the other day on the way to Bowling Green.

He said his parents named him Michael so he would be called something different, but they didn't realize that Michael was the single most popular name for the year he was born.

Robin and I know several; my cousin Mike, Bald Eagle, Corsair, her brother Mike, Michael Fitzgerald, Michael Junior, to name a few. We have the same problem with the names James/Jamie. We know so many that we've had to start giving them nicknames and designations as well.

Uncle James, Jamie Girl, Miss Jamie, and Coyote James are all people we know. Oddly, none of them want to be called "Jim." In fact, Robin's brother doesn't like to be called Jim at all.

Context matters with most of these. If I say "Michael" to anyone in my family, they automatically assume my cousin. If I say "Michael" to one of Robin's relatives, they assume her brother.

I feel sorry for my friend Angie. She married a guy named Michael and has a son with the same first and last name as his father. When I read her Facebook posts, I have to think about context and the situation. If she's talking about school or something about a pet, I assume the son. Anything else and I assume her husband.

Sometimes I'm not quite sure which she means.

Passwords

One of the hardest parts about losing my memory was having to remember my computer passwords. I had a partial list written in a notebook, by the computer, and sent my wife for the notebook. We had a laptop that she brought to the hospital and the hospital had wi-fi.

I was able to connect to Facebook from my hospital room (which was a huge relief for my parents) or I could walk down the hall to a computer they had set up.

That was a public computer, so I felt like changing my password. It's probably good that I didn't, since my short term memory was still unreliable.

Actually, the few times that I did change a password I immediately forgot it, so I guess I was right not to change it. I still can't get into my database for 3and3quarter.com, and I created a new database and forgot that password as well.

My password has always followed a similar pattern, I picked a random word (usually a compound word, something that would be easy for me to remember, like Stormshadow or Starscream) and I would had a numeral at the end, and if the website required an extra secure password, I would toss in a pound sign or a dollar sign, just before the number.

But even knowing that, I haven't been able to crack the database password.

When I was a freshman at the University of Kentucky, I was involved in a "subculture" called the Phoners. Everyone on campus had a "Prime" account but only a few could log on to the Phone software. It was basically a chat program, but it evolved into a social network. I met my first girlfriend over Phone, and spent way to many hours chatting with her on it.

I don't remember what any of my passwords on Phone were, but I could tell you what some other people's passwords were. My friend Suzanne used her pet's name, Brownie, and I borrowed that as my password for a while.

I also borrowed my brother's password and I occasionally use Robin's.

My PIN number in college started out as my prom date's phone number, then I rearranged it into another number that was easy to remember. It's still my PIN today, which is why I don't want to even give a clue about it.

My second blog

My parents came by the house today and wanted to know when I'd be posting my next blog. And my wife had breakfast with my friend Kim today also, and she wanted to know about my memory problems.

But I'm still not sure what I'm going to write about.

Idea #1 - Blog Title
Were you aware that Blogger.com blocks the word "stroke" from blog titles. My original title for this blog would have been "Stroke Boy."

Idea #2 - Bathroom Problems
It's amazing how after a stroke your life suddenly revolves around the bathroom. A couple of weeks ago, I found myself in a handicapped bathroom stall and realized that it was the first bathroom I used by myself after the stroke. My in-laws had driven me to the doctor's office one day when my wife was busy, and they sent me in the bathroom by myself. I was very proud of myself.

Last weekend was also the first time I peed standing up, but that was as much because my brother-in-law's toilet was low to the ground and dirty looking.

Idea #3 - Why I'm Doing the Blog
Short answer: my speech therapist suggested it. Long answer: I was trying to learn to write again and my parents brought me a spiral notebook with the handwritten title, "The Story of Andrew."

Idea #4 - My Adventures in Inpatient
Blah, blah, blah... Robotic arm... Blah, blah, blah... Loco-mat... Blah, blah, blah... Thrown out for threatening a nurse... blah, blah, blah...

Idea #5 - My First Day Out
I couldn't walk, I was still mostly non-verbal, and I had to skip a funeral for a friend because I couldn't talk. Or walk.

But I've decided not to go with any of these. Or more specifically, I decided to go with all of them.

My stroke and such...

On August 10 of last year, I had a stroke. I only know this because when I got to the hospital, that was the date on my bracelet.

That may have been the date of my admittance to the hospital, or even the date of my transfer from one hospital to another. I don't know. I was non-verbal for most of the summer.

I also have holes in my memory. For instance, I don't remember the stroke itself (although my wife, Robin, told me about it afterwards). Apparently I pissed myself.

I do remember the ambulance ride afterwards, but only in flashes. It was the first of many ambulance rides of which I can't quite remember. They all blend together after a while.

Up until the stroke, I had only ridden in an ambulance once, when I was nineteen and wrecked my parents' minivan. I remember that time distinctly - I ran a stop sign and was hit by a drunk driver. He had only been drinking because he had a new son and had celebrated with champagne. The accident was completely my fault but the insurance company blamed him.

He called me at home once on a Sunday morning. I apologized but I still felt guilty. When my parents got home from church, they were angry - apparently he wasn't supposed to call me directly.

I've long since forgotten his name, but at one point I tried to look him up on Facebook and offer his kid a scholarship.

But I digress.

It was a problem before the stroke and it's more of a problem now. I can't focus or stay on subject, which
wouldn't have been a problem except I was a writer.

I say "was a writer" and "not am a writer" because although I've written quite a bit (pre-stroke) I have only had five or six things published. (And I self published a couple of books, but I've never thought that counted.)

As a matter of fact, I self published a book right before the stroke and my wife edited it. In hindsight, editing and publishing that book may have caused my stroke.

I think of something at least once a week that "caused the stroke."

My son is convinced it was a level of Super Metroid that I was playing a day or two before the stroke. (It was the boss level and I got extremely frustrated and kept dying.)

Robin swears it was my diet (as I had a fondness for salty, unhealthy foods.) She still won't buy me butter so I can cook creole. My jambalaya was my favorite dish to make.