This has seemed at once the longest, and the shortest week-end in quite some time.  I stayed up Friday night till nearly 2:00 in the morning watching television only to sleep till about noon-thirty on Saturday.  I hate sleeping late on the week-ends because the day goes by so quickly when I do, but I also love sleeping late on the week-ends because it just feels so damn good!  Also because I slept so late, I didn’t do anything of any value whatsoever yesterday and I definitely don’t like that.

I was determined that today would be more productive and so even though I stayed up till nearly 1:30 in the morning again last night and even though I really didn’t feel like doing anything of any value again today, I forced myself out of bed at 10:30 this morning (still later than I would have preferred to have slept) and I took a shower and headed out.

Having not eaten since about 7:30 last night I went first to Arby’s, where I got a Medium roast beef and a Jamocha shake.  When I was young I used to love Arby’s and as I’ve aged that hasn’t changed, only they’re harder and harder to come by anymore.  There is one not far from the Target where I generally shop and I go there periodically when doing my Target shopping but lately their shake machine has been out of service.  Today I walked in and there the nefarious machine sat in all its functional glory!  After chowing down on my sandwich and shake I went on to Target to do my shopping, went on to CostCo for gas, and then to Lucky’s for some groceries.

It was at Lukcy’s that I saw something which, in my mind, defies explanation.  I came out of the produce section ready to go check out when a woman stepped, and I use that term loosely, into my path causing me to have to stop short.  Having stopped short I also had an opportunity to observe her.

This woman stood, or should I say, wobbled, in front of me as she looked at the aisle signs trying to determine where to find whatever item she was looking for.  She stood there wearing a dress with diagonal stripes of the brown family, each stripe about four inches wide and meeting at points before diagonally striping back down the other side.  The dress was reminiscent in my eyes of something from the 70’s (I imagine) and might have looked lovely on the right woman, with the right amount and placement of curves, but this woman had too many and in the wrong places and the dress did nothing to conceal or augment them.

But what really caught my attention was the boots.  This was not a woman of the vertically challenged variety to begin with but she was wearing pirates boots, with four inch heals that looked as if they were made of swizzle sticks.  She was in a state of perpetual motion as she didn’t seem capable of standing up-right and still on these heals.  As I walked past her I looked down to see that she was at no time standing directly on the heals but rather was constantly trying to regain her balance as the heals tilted to one side or the other.

I walked away, went to the self-check out where I proceeded to pay for my items and went out to my car to unload my cart and drive home.  As I was climbing into the driver’s seat of my SUV I looked up to see the same woman walking across in front of me to her own vehicle and I noticed that she was unable to walk normally and unable to take full strides but rather was stepping about 18 inches at a time and I just thought to myself, “I hope it was worth it!”

Now don’t misunderstand me.  I am absolutely a guy who wants to look the best I can, given what I have to work with, at all times.  I get that.  But what I do not understand is the female proclivity for “cuteness”.  Placing a higher priority on looking cute than being comfortable no matter what the cost is a concept that is lost on me.  I have gotten completely dressed for work and been on my way out the door when I realized something wasn’t comfortable enough to wear the whole day and therefore turned around and changed my clothes.

Watching this woman, it was clear that she was in pain.  It was obvious she was unable to stand up and walk like a normal person in these boots, so why, I ask you, WHY would she wear them?  I simply cannot understand the cute over comfort, style over substance philosophy by which so many women make their wardrobe choices.

I have to admit though, the sadistic part of me laughed the hardest when I realized that the car she was short-stepping her way to, was already occupied.  A man, I presume to be her husband, was in the driver’s side of the car waiting for her and I couldn’t help wonder how that conversation went down.  On what planet did it make sense to either one of them that he should sit outside in the car while she hobbled her way into and through the store to get the items they needed?

I feel silly. I feel silly because it amuses me when he is silly. But with each passing day I am more and more aware that his days are numbered and so any time he acts healthy and happy is a good day.

He seems weaker and his balance seems to be waning and now I realize that despite his moments of apparent youthful exuberance, I may be looking at weeks or months rather than months or years that I have left with him.

His death will take a tremendous, indefinable toll on me, but tonight, while he chases one of his bell stuffed toy balls around the house, I laugh! It makes me feel silly… And it feels good!

It’s a bad time to be sick.  It really is.  This country, especially these days, is so prone to buying into any little piece of bad news and making a mountains out of molehills.  Things have been so bad for so long that any little hint of bad news simply must be viable and therefore we must buy into it.

With the announcement that we are experiencing a “near pandemic” threat of Swine Flu (which is sounding an awful lot like regular flu, but with more fear) everywhere you look, people are cowering in corners with an inch thick layer of sanitizing gel smeared all over there bodies, surgical masks covering every orifice and “Beware of Dog” signs between them and you.  OK perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but it’s true that everywhere you look people are living in fear of walking away from any and every situation with a deadly virus that they’re sure can’t be treated.

With this in mind, I can only imagine what it is like for anyone who happens to be sick, experiencing an allergy attack or otherwise just snotty… Oh! No, wait– I don’t have to imagine it because I’m one of them.

A few years ago, after a prolonged period of raucous coughing jags I finally went to the doctor to see if there was something that could be done to put an end to it.  One of the first things he asked me was if I there was a history of asthma in my family, to which I replied that there was not, to my knowledge.  He then listened to my lungs for a few seconds and said, “Yep.  You’ve got ‘longwindicus termino-medicalus passthruitus,’” which loosely translated means long winded medical terminology that went in one ear and out the other, “which is akin to asthma.  Most people who have it only experience any symptoms when they’ve gotten a cold and are trying to shake the cough.”

“Akin to asthma”?  Why couldn’t he just say that?  That I can remember.  It turns out that for years, long after all the other cold symptoms have gone away, I’ve fought with the lingering cough and the reason is because of this basically nameless respiratory issue.  So he prescribed an Albuterol inhaler and told me to use it whenever I feel a cold starting to come on to try and minimize the duration of the cough.

Fast forward to about a month ago when there was a sudden and dramatic change in the weather.  It happens every year around this time.  And every year around this time I get a cold of sorts.  And every year around this time I get the lingering, hacking, reason-defying, WILL NOT GO AWAY, cough!!!  It happened again only this time I could not find my inhaler.  I let it go for a week or two hoping the cough would go on it’s own but when it was still just as strong as ever I decided I’d better get a new inhaler.

Anyway, here I am a month later and I’m still— (cough, cough)—excuse me, coughing and now everywhere I look I am inundated with scare tactics news story about how WE’RE ALL GOING DIE!!! and I’m very aware that everyone around me is freaking out because OH MY GOD HE’S GOT SWINE FLU!! and WHY IS HE CONTAMINATING MY LIVING SPACE!?!?!  Only I don’t have Swine Flu, which by the way has been renamed H1N1 flu, which is a very unfortunate new name for it because depending on what font you’re using it looks like it says HINI (HINEY) Flu and really isn’t flu in your hiney much worse than swine flu, anyway?

So, truly it is a very bad time to be sick in anyway other than with hiney flu and of course that’s worse but at least that’s what everyone is looking for these days and if you have anything else everyone will assume you have hiney flu anyway and want to stay away from you and I’d rather just stay home and not deal with it but I have to work and I don’t want to give up all my PTO time for something that won’t get any better, any faster by staying home and I don’t think there’s anything more I can say about it so I guess I’ll just end this right here.