Winter Misery, Hospital Trickery, Facebook Skullduggery and Ultimate Happiness

Fun with Winter 2015
It’s getting to the point where those of us who live in the Northeast find ourselves planning days, errands, trips, chores around SNOW – when is it coming, how much is expected, will public transportation shut down again, how well-stocked is the food and water supply, should I make up a last will and testament in case I die of a heart attack shoveling it ... the usual.

People are just moaning with the fed-uppedness of it all.  We’ve broken all sorts of snow accumulation records, and it still keeps coming:  one huge snowstorm after another.  We are all running out of room to put the snow we keep shoveling ... and we’re all getting slightly freaked out.  Our ability to do anything is becoming narrower, along with our focus.  For the moment, all we can see is the next storm, barreling towards us; all we can hear are weathermen, consistently apologizing for their reports:  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but ...”

We got Winter Storm Neptune about two weeks ago.  Blizzard, big snowfall, high winds, and luckily a holiday on Monday to dig our way out of it,  After Neptune?  “The coldest temperatures in a generation”.  I didn’t trust the MBTA to keep running in temperatures like that, and they didn’t.  Limited service, cancelled trains, the works.

But those cancelled trains in the evening – compounded by a manager who didn’t care if I needed to get home to take my anti-leg spasm medications on time – took their toll.  I can’t take the medication after 7 pm, or I don’t wake up on time in the morning; sleep right through an alarm held up to my ear.  I was getting home at 8, 9 and 10:00 at night.  I have gone without the medication for one dosage and been alright, but this was nearly an entire week’s worth of missing meds.  And apparently, that was all it took.

I got home late one night, was still in my coat and boots – and a dual leg spasm seized up both of my lower legs so fiercely I fainted from the pain of it.  On the bed, luckily; I was standing bedside when it happened.  Woke up six hours later – with the spasm still going.  Still in my coat and boots.  I could feel the spasms in my thigh muscles – and that hurt like hell – but I could no longer feel my lower legs at all.  I crawled my way into the shower – or actually butt-walked backwards, and that took me a while - scooted myself onto the lip of the shower and managed to turn the hot water on.  Kept the lower legs under a stream of hot water and massaged them until they finally released.  Crawled for the phone.  And called an ambulance.

If I thought I had nerve damage after that bus accident before ... I wish I had that level of nerve damage back again.  The 6-hour long spasm had to have shut down the entire nervous system down in my lower legs ... the question is:  do they just need time to recover from the spasms, or are they gone for good?  There is a major disconnect between my brain and my legs – doc says, “Move your toes”, and no matter how hard I concentrated on moving my toes, I couldn’t do it.

Fun with Anna Jaques Hospital in Newburyport
And now for the Epic Fail of Anna Jaques Hospital in Newburyport.

Why is it that no matter how many times you tell emergency room personnel what the issue you’re having IS, they – out of stupidity, deafness or arrogance, I’m not entirely sure – dismiss what the patient tells them out of hand, and then write down something entirely irrelevant and misleading in the file?  Do they honestly think they know my own body, and my own symptoms better than I do?  They’ve just met me for the first time – ever – and yet they completely disregarded every single thing I told them.

I had also – by fainting – missed the nightly insulin injection.  I had also – thanks to the aforementioned manager – missed an injection at noon time, because he deliberately scheduled a meeting with me (despite the fact that I’d be missing lunch AND noon injection) right before I had to deliver a 3 hour training session.  So, my blood sugar levels were high when I got there; I explained to them just what I’ve said here.  I also said, deliberately – loudly – repeatedly – “the nerve damage was caused by the dual leg spasms, NOT diabetic neuropathy.  The leg spasms are the result of a bus accident and spinal fusion surgery in 2010.”  I said the same thing to everyone I saw at Anna Jaques.  Over and over and over again.

They disregarded it completely.  Totally.  As though I’d never said a single word.  When I saw the file (a visiting nurse service caseworker showed it to me), what did I read?  “Lower leg weakness and diabetic neuropathy caused by high blood sugar.”  No mention of the spasms, the fainting episode, nothing – not a single word! – of what I’d said to them, over and over and over again until I was blue in the face.  Total disregard.  I nearly went ballistic on the poor caseworker.  Lower leg “weakness”?  I couldn’t even feel or move the damn things!  I have to seek treatment for the nerve damage, with THAT report following me around?  It’s dead wrong!  In fact, it was so dead wrong, it was dangerously dead wrong.

Fun with Facebook
New topic, but since I’m already in serious bitching mode:  there’s this guy who fancies himself a musician/singer ... (debatable on both counts), who I made the mistake of interacting with on a Facebook page – twice – so if you want to cite me for gullible stupidity as well, I certainly won’t fight you on it.

This is his modus operandi (and he did this the two times I interacted with him, so I’m guessing he does this a lot):  an entire conversational thread gets going and it’s actually pretty interesting, so you devote a certain amount of thought into what you’re posting.  But the minute you disagree with him, he throws a hysterical hissy fit, deletes all of his own posts, and what’s left on the thread after he does that is everyone else who took the time to thoughtfully respond to any of his posts swingin’ in the wind, responding to nothing, and looking like idiots babbling randomly.  Almost like a toddler in a playground who gets his feelings hurt: “Wah, wah, I’m taking all my toys and going home!” 

So now, you have to edit or delete all of your own posts to compensate for his childish temper tantrum.

Here’s my thought, people:  if you can’t have an adult conversation, don’t post anything that someone might disagree with – because people will disagree with you, that’s just the way life is.  I gave him two chances to act like an adult; he failed both times, so he’s gone from my world, at least.  But wow, that was annoying.

Fun with Sharers and Agree-ers
Last bitch of the day:  over time, I’ve gotten more and more irritated by that ubiquitous “Share if You Agree” nonsense, which seems to be attached to every Facebook post I see lately.  It’s at the point now where I don’t even CARE if I agree with you or not, I’ll be damned if you’re going to order me to waste more and more bandwidth doing it, especially when most people don’t even question the basic premise of what they’re “agreeing” with anyway.  Someone makes up a false media story (and it’s such an over the top media story that simple common sense should tell you it’s entirely invented, and yet common sense never manages to kick in for the vast majority of these mindless share-ers and agree-ers) – and everyone just hits the “share” button, like half-witted lab rats pushing pleasure buttons.

I have a mind to take that last paragraph, stick it in Facebook and order THEM to “Share if You Agree”, but I’m guessing the vast majority of those yahoos wouldn’t get the joke anyway.

Back to real life. 
I’m having to scale back, just to survive this.  I knew I was slowly uncoiling when I took a late lunch yesterday and was looking out of the restaurant window, idly daydreaming ... and then, after a thought, a phrase, an unexpected image, reached for my notebook to record more lines in the sonnet cycle.  I hadn’t worked on it in months.

I was thinking of “The Always”, the twin soul I knew I was still searching for, deep down.  The odd image went through my mind, the two of us as ... Neanderthal is probably the best word ... together, in a savannah grasslands, alone; I had just given birth.  And he, looking at the tiny, squalling thing I had produced, his head slightly tilted in curiosity, examining it carefully.  He knew what to look for; signs that it might survive.  I watched him do that and experienced a profound ocean wave of tender regard for him.  In the here and now, I found I had tears in my eyes, sharing that moment with the once-was-us.  I had an ache in my heart, missing him so godawful much, whoever or wherever he was now.  Then I shook the image free and wondered where on earth THAT had come from, out of nowhere.  So I wrote it down.

And Back to Bob

I’ve been slowly re-finding pictures from my “Bob Cowsill All Over My Wall” days ... for nostalgic reasons if nothing else, and I do remember this one.  Ohhh, how naïve I was, back then:  this one didn’t even strike me as an odd caption I was 12.  In the present day, however, I came across it again and spluttered San Pellegrino all over my monitor.  Ahhh, the innocence of the 60’s.  My mind must have gone seriously downhill and right into the gutter in the intervening years.  And of course I’ve since learned about photo re-touching.  Back then, I just thought, “Oooh, he’s got the white-est eyes ... I wish mine looked like that.  Must be all that milk he’s drinking.”  I really was a mindless little twit when I was 12, wasn't I?

I leave you with a wonderful appearance he made in someone’s living room.  Have no idea when.  Just because it made me smile – you’ll enjoy his surprised and delighted reaction at 17:50 when the small audience suddenly starts singing along with him.  And right now, I love anything that can make me smile happily and forget everything else.  I find this so amazing ... that after all these many, many, oh so many years ... he can still make me smile as though I hadn't a care in the world.  Who knows, maybe ultimately I don't, and I need to stop grousing over problems that aren't even remotely important in the vast scheme of things.  What can I tell you?  He's just special.

The Winter of Our Discontent ... and Longing for Spring

On and off over the last month, I’ve been out my window at a silent, peaceful (and sometimes not so peaceful) snowfall ... once, I absolutely had to pick up the mail, so eased my way down the ramp outside ... stepped onto the level pavement, with about 3 inches of snow on it, and completely wiped out, landing on my left knee.  Immediately rolled into a fetal position in the snow and stayed there.

Which sounds like an odd thing to do, but I had learned from experience that because the lower leg nerve damage from the bus-jeep collision of 2010 started at the knee, I might not have been able to sense right away how bad the damage was.  If I’d immediately tried to stand up, I could have made it worse if it had been broken.  So I laid there for about a minute, waiting for a belated stab of pain traveling to my upper leg – which fortunately never came.  Oh, I felt it alright, just not the “Don’t move you’ve shattered the (bleep) ing thing,” sensation, which I probably would have felt in my thigh muscle, just above the knee.  So I slowly began to move.

Funny part was a lady I’ve never met calling me from the house across the road:   “Do you want my husband to come pick you up?”  Ahhh, the many ways that question could have been interpreted; and it may be the greatest pick-up line ever:  “My wife told me to come pick you up!”  Despite the pain, I tried not to start laughing at her very kind concern.  She told me that until I moved she was terrified that I was unconscious – and here I didn’t think anyone had seen it happen.  (And in her defense, she probably would have run out the door to come help – were it not for the fact that she was still in her bathrobe and bare feet.)

Bottom line:  just bruised, it appears – thank goodness.  But the bruise is bad enough, I’m still limping around going “Ow. Oooh.  Ow.  Oooh.”  Ice pack did help.

I spent yet another snow day listening to the sounds of Juno outside the window.  Most of New England had the day off; there were no trains or busses running, so I couldn’t get to the office even if I wanted to.  It was still dark outside, so I couldn’t really see how much snow had happened overnight; I could hear the wind, though.  Nibbled on a 3-day old cream biscuit; finally got the chance to try out this Pumpkin Spice coffee I bought a while ago.  I knew I needed to get some chores done; couldn’t quite motivate myself enough to do them.

The night of Juno’s arrival was another one of those MBTA nightmares.  The MBTA bridge before Beverly had gotten stuck open by a boat crashing into it.  We caught the 4:20 to Newburyport alright, jam-packed full of people trying to get home before the big storm hit.  First we stopped and sat at every single station, starting with Lynn.  No announcements, no explanations – just lengthy idling.  An hour passes; people are getting irritated at not being told anything and the irate tweeting starts, some of which are pretty funny.  At about the two-hour mark, we creep into Salem.  Now they make an announcement:  bridge is stuck, yada yada, we’re going to bus you over the water to Beverly, where trains are waiting to take you the rest of the way.  Okay good, okay fine.  (with a respectful nod to the infamous Mouse of Ron Perlman/Linda Hamilton’s Beauty and the Beast who always said that.) 

We all get off the train and over to the Salem roundabout where the busses were supposed to be waiting in the sleet, snow and wind.  Within minutes we’re all shivering.  No busses.  Maybe 200-300 people waiting already.  People even got off of later trains behind us and joined the crowd.

Seems the busses are all stuck in traffic gridlock (welcome to Salem!  Again.)  After about 45 minutes of us standing in the sleet, snow and wind, freezing, they finally straggle in.  NO effort at crowd control.  One guy literally shoved his way past people into a bus, dragging a suitcase that took up enough room for two people behind him.  The people he’d shoved out of the way to do that are now even angrier, and they have the support of the crowd.  As ugly as that incident was, the MBTA now wakes up to the fact that crowd control might be a good idea, but it’s much too little too late.

Eventually, I get on a bus.  Recall that the last announcement they made was “trains will be waiting on the other side to take you to your destination”?  Again, they lied.  Now they tell us that the “Newburyport train wasn’t in Beverly, only the Rockport one”, so they don’t know what to do with us.  We get to Beverly, all get off the bus into the freezing sleet yada yada yada, and stand there.  10 minutes later, they tell us to get back on the bus.  Now, they’re going to bus us to our stations.

After leaving the office at 3:30, it’s now closing on 8:30 at night.  The storm – which had been tame at the time I would have originally arrived at Newburyport – was now blowing snow sideways.  The temperature has gone even further down.  I am so cold my teeth are chattering.  I get home at 9:00 pm.  On the night of what they’re claiming to be an “unprecedented” storm (although, I have to say, I’ve heard worse in terms of winds), that was the MBTA’s idea of customer service.

I can see the bridge mishap being an unexpected event, sure.  But the crossed signals, absence of information, misinformation, lack of crowd control – all of that which followed I do hold them accountable for.  Absolute dead silence for the most part.

So here comes Marcus.  Can’t remember which storms were given “K” and “L” names – I think the “L” was “Linus”?  We’re now midway through the alphabet.  Marcus.  Named after the Greek god Mars.  Marcus will be on top of us for 3 days.  This is just Day One.  I’m hearing the wind start to pick up, and we’re not even into Monday yet, when the worst of it is supposed to hit.  Another 2 feet, more or less.  I’m eyeing the snow shovel, propped up against the front door, ready to be reactivated into service for the umpteenth time.

Snow.  More snow.  Snow on top of snow.  I just bought the home last April, so had not invested in a snow blower, because I had not anticipated the record-shattering winter that would find us all breaking snow accumulation records.  We get hit with a monster snowstorm, we barely dig our way out of that one and another one hits.  And another.  And another.  I don’t recall ever seeing a winter like this.  You’ve never seen so many people praying for Spring to arrive, because they can’t endure Winter anymore.  Never-ending snow shoveling.  Useless public transportation.  Stupid drivers.  Mountains of snow so high you can’t see past them.

Spring.  I am so looking forward to Spring.  After all these years, I am finally going to see The Cowsills.  They must be trending now or something; I’ve never seen so many concerts cropping up all over the place.

A trip to New York City in April.  A trip to Rhode Island in May.  And then ... the most amazing thing:  after I was considering myself the most fortunate person in the universe to be seeing them twice in two months, an announcement:  The Cowsills were going to be performing at the Hampton Beach Casino in June.  Five minutes away from me. 

I went through the ceiling with delirium, seeing that announcement.  You have no idea how much I loved and adored this band when I was young and how excited I am to be finally seeing them live.  Unfortunately as part of the “Happy Together Tour”, so not just them.  I forget who else is packaged in with them (and with all due apologies to people who I’m sure are very nice and quite talented – I’m sorry, don’t care a whit), all I saw was:  The Cowsills were going to be literally 5 minutes away from me.  Sat there in ecstatic shock for maybe 2/10’s of a second before hitting the Ticketmaster button.  Got first row.  Could not believe my good fortune.

So because I’m an obsessive sort, I took a shopping detour and drove up to Hampton Beach, to see where the place was, what the parking situation was ... discovered it’s as bad as Salem with its one-car-width-only narrow one-way streets – no wonder the traffic is jammed for miles.  Drove past the Casino Ballroom, then drove around back to check out the parking situation.  Here’s an aerial view.  Notice the parking lot in the rear?

20-feet of snow.  Apparently, since the place is closed for the winter, they had decided to pile all of the snow they couldn’t put anywhere else in the Casino Ballroom’s unused parking lot.  At least 20-feet high, probably higher.  So high you couldn’t even see the back of the building from the street.  It occurred to me, as I gaped at that mountain of snow in front of me, that remnants of that snow are still going to be there in June, no joking.

And check out that water slide!  (Blue curlicue contraption on the right side of the photo).  Looks like fun!

No way in hell I’m getting in and out of there around show time.  Found a few small hotel/motel places with heated swimming pools that looked promising.

Remind me to never – EVER – move again.  It has taken me forever to find even the simplest of things – and I never did find the foot pedal to the sewing machine – had to buy a new one.  Next, I couldn’t find the ¼” seam presser foot; then I couldn’t find the manual to re-set the tension.  Couldn’t find the materials to make templates and had to use old file folders; couldn’t find the right color of thread ... every time I blinked there was something I had packed somewhere remote and irretrievable.

Got videoed for an e-learning course.  I’m wondering if I can get a copy of it.

Back briefly to Bob Cowsill, who I once scotch-taped all over my walls ... obviously much time has passed since those days, and he’s now older and the patriarch of the entire family.  The one thing I never really paid much attention to back then was just how talented he was.  I was (obviously) paying much more attention to the things any young girl pays attention to, when she’s drowning in her first crush of young adulthood, i.e. “He is the most beautiful, gorgeous and soul-stirring hunk who has ever existed since the dawn of recorded time ... yada yada yada,” and less on, “Wow, this guy is an awesome musician.”

So this particularly fascinating video – done quite recently for a series on songs and singers – was an in-depth interview he did on the creation of their mega-hit, “Hair.”  When he’s talking about “we” doing this or that, he’s talking about four people:  Bill, his older brother, and then Barry and John, who were considerably younger when the song was recorded.  Basically:  four teenagers let loose in a recording studio, all by themselves.  They were only supposed to cut a demo of the song “Hair” from the Broadway musical they could lip-synch to on a Carl Reiner comedy variety special.  Nothing more.  Easy enough, right?

Instead, those four teenage boys recorded, produced and delivered a song (Bill and Bob at the controls) that was a global hit and is still played even today.  Point being:  I’m now finally realizing what awesome musicians those four teenage boys were.   No wonder I adored them.  And still do.