Well it has certainly been a year, a year with the Stroke, I can not recall what I got last year, that memory is gone with the wind. I can recall parts of it, I remember Harry's for Dinner....
I am better this year, although I have to take time to recall stuff and I have not finished the book I am reading for 2 months, well maybe it is a month....
It is coming together, an "inch" at a time, but it is working.
I am thinking with I go back to Dr. H's I will get him to take me off the Prozac, that will be good.
7/15/60 good dog!
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Prozac
I recall everything.
I recall nothing.
Which is it?
More and more I recall everything with moments of nothing.
I guess I should be grateful not to do this when I am 68. I am 48. I went under the Stroke at Feb 2nd 2007, I was 46. I mean good dog! At 68 I would be washed up, better give me a grave and sit me in it.
Ok, so I have plaque coursing through my veins. I suppose I got this from Bill, my father. I got the Blood Pressures from Joan, my mother. Neither of my siblings have this, not Nick at 62, not Steve at 60, not Dave at 55. Go figure! All of them, other that Steve, have got Lipitor from there Doc. I to have this and :
Lovastatin
Nasasin
Diovan
Aspirin
Prozac
Everything but the Prozac I needed for my Elevated BP and my Cholesterol.
The Prozac I got from the Stroke.
My lingo went south, it was fried.
I felt OK for around eight months, then I started down the long road of depression, I could not help it. I had the "selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) class" Which means, nothing would work for me. Unless I started on the Prozac.
Prozac in popular culture
Because of its wide appeal as a popular anti-depressant, Prozac has had numerous references to it in popular culture, including many books, movies, and songs. The autobiographical book Prozac Nation was authored in 1994 by Elizabeth Wurtzel; it was turned into a movie of the same name, Prozac Nation, in 2001, starring Christina Ricci. A 1993 book, Listening to Prozac, was a generally critical look at Prozac and its side effects. Another book, Talking Back to Prozac, also focuses on Prozac side effects.
Vanilla Ice has a song called "Prozac." After having the drug prescribed for her, Cheryl Wheeler wrote and recorded a song called, "Is It Peace, Or Is It Prozac?" The British band Killing Joke has a song called "Prozac People." Rap artist Jay-Z makes reference to Prozac in his song "Nigga What, Nigga Who."
Bowling For Soup refer to Prozac in the line "one Prozac a day" in the song "1985".
A famous French record label called "Pro-Zak Trax" was created in 1994, possibly earlier. Their music style is mostly deep house music.
Prozac helped me.
It got my Brain firing again.
So it was the stroke which brought on the Prozac. I was happy long before the stroke. And will be happy again after the Prozac is done.
Now it is the blasé I feel from time to time, that and the Akathisisa ("constant pacing, purposeless movements of the feet and legs, and marked anxiety,") and the sexual dysfunction ( I am libido less.) I can take all these things for the lingo. Let me tell you about that.
You can see the languages center of by Brain was fried. Now I recalled everything, I could not make since from it, but I recalled everything. If that is to be understood. I new Kim ( my wife ), Dylan (my son) and Savannah (my daughter), everything about them. But as it was I could witness each thing they did. And lingo-wise I could not put the picture together, I could see them , lets say reading from a book. After they were done with it. I could not recall a single thing. I new it - but I didn't know it. So after 18 months of this, 18 months! This is about 5% of my Adult Life. 18 months of this I can read : Wired, Rolling Stone, News Papers, Google News etc. It is getting better. Now the books, the books I use to read in an afternoon, the books just leave me, well, who cares! And the movies I use to watch, who cares! It is funny I can watch funny stuff, Knocked Out gives me a roll each time. I went to see Wanted with Kim, and was floored when she came out of it raving about it. Huh? Raving about it? It was for all the glamour and style that went in to Wanted, I was left with nothing, I saw it, experienced it, my did not "take in" any of it.
Church Of The Inspirational Rattlesnake : Aug 3, 2006
The routine is mostly the same, except when punctuated by travel, illness or sloth. Monday through Friday I rise from a few to 30 minutes before Starbucks at Five Points Plaza opens at 5 in the morning. Natural body functions ensue in a orderly fashion if I am lucky. By exactly 5 AM I am walking from my car to the coffee shop door. 345 out of 365 times I ask for a simple Dopieo ( two freshly pulled shots of expresso in a short cup) all other times I ask for a Triple Soy Latte in a short cup. One out of perhaps twelve times I get a blueberry scone as well. One third of the time I get a bottle of water or a small orange juice. By 5:16 to no later than 5:25
I am scrolling through the numbers on the cell, counting to fifteen as I look at the road and not the readout from the bottom of the list. Ron picks up within 2 to 4 rings for the most part.
If it is cold out he might answer with:
“Ice House.”
My response is mostly the same no matter what,
“White car approaching.”
This statement was modified from the original:
“White truck approaching”
only a short while ago when the truck ceased to function and an 8 year old four door sedan was purchased.
I park the white car across the street from Ron’s for the most part, except on Sundays. If the sky is clear I often take this time to observe the stars over head and engage in a few knees straight, knuckle dragging leg stretch’s. If the morning paper has been delivered early I will take it to the front door and push it through the mail slot. Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays Ron emerges from the house with one dog on a leash. He keeps a mental record of which of his five Jack Russell's is due for the treat of a pre dawn adventure. On Thursdays two dogs are selected and I take the leash of one as we head out on the hike. Some might call it a walk, but I equate a walk with a more easier paced effort. The weekday jaunts are 2.3 mile affairs that we hoof in about 39 to 42 minutes depending on how often the dogs might wish to stop an or how awake we are. One mile of the effort is steeply up hill and takes us past the local water processing plant and the Jesusita trail head. What ever you want to name it, it gets the blood going and the brain processing. Ron is a sales manager, he often give me a short replay of the previous days toil. Which sales person is doing well, who is tanking, how the numbers for the week are stacking up. We talk about work, what we cooked for dinner the previous evening, how are families are doing. By the time we are back at his house the sun is mostly up.
Sundays are unquestionably genuine hike days. We start an hour later and 90% of the time head over to Tunnel Road Train Head which affords us 5 or 6 various routes to cover. My same coffee ritual applies to Sunday. It is customary for us to head up hill for at least 75 minutes before pausing to take in the view, gulp down a bottle of water, and head back to the car.
Four or Five times a year we get ambitious and do a longer hike. Up to seven to eight miles instead of the average five. One of our favorites is what we call the “Rattle Creek Connector” Starting at Rattle Snake Canyon we head up to the” Connector” and climb up and along the ridge back to the right fork of the Tunnel Trail. We park a car at both ends of the trip and shuttle back to the start point.
There are dozens of other parishioners in the Church of the Inspirational Rattle Snake. We see the same faces, the same dogs breaking trail ahead of their people week end after week end.
Not many of us have the nerve for the early mass, but it is the best one if you ask me. The cool of morning is well with you till at least the turn around point. The trail cows on their mountain bikes are few at this hour. Most Sundays we return to the white car with a good amount of sweat dripping from our persons and a renewed bit of thankfulness for just being alive. As practicing atheists and card holding members of curmudgeons anonymous The Church of the Inspirational Rattle Snake puffs out our empty spiritual balloons with a trinity of Trail, Sky and Steady Incline.
We’ve been doing this routine for three of four years now, or some version of it. We field a fare number of new member inquiries but most are put off by the early start time. No one seems to understand that early hiker gets the best pew with a view
To Lurk Or Not To Lurk : from July 31, 2006
Ok, I admit it, I am a lurker. Not by the classical definition of the word:
LURK
v 1: lie in wait, lie in ambush, behave in a sneaky and secretive manner [syn: skulk] 2: be about; "The high school students like to loiter in the Central Square"; "Who is this man that is hanging around the department?" [syn: loiter, lounge, footle, lollygag, loaf, lallygag, hang around, mess about, tarry, linger, mill about, mill around] 3: wait in hiding to attack [syn: ambush, scupper, bushwhack, waylay, ambuscade, lie in wait]
but by the post MySpace definition of one who looks at profiles without commenting.
I further admit that the profiles that I lurk are mostly the young people my children are friends with. I am pleased when I see a youngster who has set their profile to private. Not that those who choose to leave their profiles public are universally making a poor choice. Many or most of these public profiles are benign. Why they choose to leave what amounts to a recorded log of private conversations, images and personnel journal entry’s open for any random person to read struck me as decidedly odd until I started reading up on the adolescent mind set. The short explanation is as simple as the classic bumper sticker:
“Hire a teenager while they still know everything.”
The not so short explanation is that until age 17 or so teen’s brains are undergoing a radical rewiring that began at around 12. If one believes in a psychological view of the universe you can think of this rewiring period as the pre-adult shake down of the Ego and Id. This brain growth can engender any number of outward manifestations. The sulking, woe is me, down trodden, teen, the hyper, always on always going teen…the combinations are endless and they all go back to one core teen experience, i.e. learning to live within and cope with a world where they are not the center of all things. I was talking to one of my kids friends and they mentioned their MySpace page, I told them I’d seen it an I liked their photo on their profile. They could not understand how I could have seen their page. I explained to them that their page was not set to private and if I wanted to I could read their blog postings, surf through their friends list and read all their comments.
After a couple of minutes I was told:
“No offence or anything, but I really don’t want adults reading my page.”
I had to explain that the Internet is open to the public, 24/7, year round to anyone with access to computer, that the only way to pick and choose who looks at their page is to switch it to private. Which, for some reason, is perceived as being a real un-cool drag.
What I realized is that this generation of young people has never known a world without an Internet so, they have no frame of reference to understand the significance of its existence. For them it is no different than turning on the tap and getting hot water, or turning on the TV and getting 200 things to watch. This is what the creators of MySpace have tapped into, a “me” generation that makes those old fogies from the 1970’s look like rank amateurs.
The news is littered with accounts of kids being lurked in the classic definition of the term, “wait in hiding to attack”, by all sorts of predators. While this sort of lurker is by far the most dangerous and the most alarming to parents. Another type of lurking can be found if you look for a little while, namely, kids lurking kids. In many respects the friends list on any given kids MySpace is as or more telling than what group of kids they sit with at lunch. The same cliques, jocks, nerds, misfits, popular, et al, exist in the web world. Like a multi paged jig saw puzzle these pages often hold out of context pieces of a larger story or, in many cases, drama. I lurk random profiles within a 5 or 10-mile radius of my zip code too. In an age where one might only learn the name of a neighbor after living on the same street for a decade you can learn more about the folks on the other side of the fence or green belt than you might expect. I browse friend lists and click through profile after profile. I am routinely astonished by how closely the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game mirrors the interlinking “friends” of the MySpace user.
Earlier this year MySpace was acquired by for 580 million dollars ($550 million more than the next highest offer) by News Corp. News Corp says it will be working on how to market their news, media and commercial advertising offerings directly to each and every MySpace user. You can bet the early research groups will be lurking our kids pages heavily. Lurking their groups and forums. Pushing the videos, music and media that News Corp will profit from the most. How long will it be ‘till a friends :”Thanks for the coffee” comment triggers a search engine hit to the word “coffee” and sends a “ add friend” request with a printable coupon attached from McDonalds? Not much longer is my guess.
So for now I will keep on lurking Myspace like some sort of cyber version Boo Radley.
Friday, July 25, 2008
EL Strokism
Well here I am, 17 months after said Stroke, I feel almost useful again. I have about a 10% to 11% where I am not really here. Where am I? Who knows? A pleasant raptor takes me, maybe it is just Puccini taking me for a walk. I now what I have to do. And am making an effort to do it. But sometimes I just want to sit on the beach and be done with with it. Lessoning to my itunes, staring out at the waves. I have to feel this has something to do with my Prozac. Once I am off of it I think I shall be better. We shall see, if I go off the deep end again there will be Prozac for me again. Rose/Kim wants me to be well. Savannah and Dylan thinks I am well.
I started meditation. About a month into it. It is groovy. I sit in the morning, before everyone else is up. Sometimes it is just me going "Inhale and Exhale" a blissful wash takes me. Sometimes work comes up. And then I "Inhale and Exhale" and peace goes with me.
It is odd for me, I read the news papers, and Wired and Rolling Stone, the Google News, and for the most part things stick with me. With a book it is odd. I can read a book. But who cares? I read up till 1/4 of the book, and then it goes away. I need to read again. Again I have to think it is the Prozac. I can read. I want to read. I read before the Prozac. We shall see, we shall see....
It is interesting to me, how things have changed. I am better off now? What I was before the stroke and after the stroke are two different beings. One is me hot headed about work and wanting to make a differece. Now I just go to work, call it eight hours, and go home again. It is getting better, but it takes time. I mean when I thought about about this, I just go every week day, and make the best of it. It is all I can do.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
As a boy he dreamed of robots. Not the shiny metal visions of Asimov's future but imperfect soft fleshy robots that said they were his family. In the dreams only he was human, the single warm blooded being in a house of cold automated companions. The Mom-bot was over weight, with bad hair that was gray at it's bottle black roots with a wheezing respiratory system. She perpetually clutched a soiled tissue in her left hand, when the boy took out the trash he examined the discarded wads of thin paper, they smelled of cheap machine oil. For breakfast the Dad-bot ate onions fried in axle grease with eggs and washed it all down with coffee prepared by boiling used grounds in vinegar.
The boys' two brothers, almost identical looking models although they rolled off the assembly line three years apart, with skin like waxed paper freckled with splatters of orange juice. Their bodies long thin, loosely jointed, moved as if dancing to some unheard music. With reedy, nasal voices that spoke from some place located in a southern bayou they would call the boy in from the yard for supper.
The family meals were shared in a semi-converted garage; a sheet of plywood on saw horses for the table. A mismatched set of cane back chairs scuffed the plain plank floor as they were seated. One end of the room was just open framework, the studs and electrical work protected from the outside with tacked up layers of plastic. The afternoon sun through the plastic and carpentry cast slippery shadows across the table as the family began to eat.
The Dad-bot filled his plate first. The meal was always the same: wild greens, mustard and shard picked from the local hillsides and boiled in the brackish water from the well. Fat back, greasy slabs of it, added to the greens as an after thought. Cold biscuits served dry… no butter or jam or even flavorless white margarine to spread on them. Tea in a surplus aluminum three-gallon pitcher, made from loose boiled leaves, sickly sweet with five heaping cups of sugar.
The boy was careful to chew slowly and try to eat his fill; this early supper was the last food he would see till morning. After the meal the boy cleared the table and stacked the chipped enamel plates by the sink for his brothers to wash.
Behind the house a back yard cut like an uneven wedge of pie led down to a mostly dry creek bed over grown with bamboo and cattails. Houses on either side of their lot stood empty, boarded up, yards a mess of rusting industrial rending equipment overgrown with sour grass and black ivy. It was in the silt and mud of the creek that the boy found the disintegrating skeleton of an infant-bot.
He carried it from the muck to the side yard where he hosed it clean and examined its tiny bones and circuitry. He rubbed dirt out of a marking on the infants' breastplate; the lettering was in a fine, feathery type. It read: Princess Ann version 3.6 rev C.
He gathered a pile of clean rags from the wash room floor, used the first batch to wipe and dry the remains and the rest to wrap it up like a doll. In the living room, seated cross-legged on the wood floor in front of the 16 inch black and white Television the Bro-bots are watching a baseball game. On a sagging sofa the Mom-bot is reading a second hand Women's Day magazine in the light of a 60-watt lamp. Her features look ashen in the poor light.
The Dad-bot sleeps on a cot at the edge of the illumination; his snore rattles about the room like a trapped pidgin. The sound drowns out the voice of the sportscaster as he talks about the home teams' pitcher. The boy shows the salvaged remains of the Ann-Bot to his mother. Chewing a piece of candy the Mom-bot inhales sharply at the sight, sucking the candy down her windpipe. She sits up, choking, motioning towards her throat with her hands.
The ever present clutched tissue flutters loose from her grip to the floor. Broken down oil, dirty from use, boils from her tear ducts. The eldest of the Bro-bots runs to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen. Bro-bot two pounds on the Mom-bots back. With a convulsive hack she chokes the candy up. It slips from her lips and falls to the floor with a trail of shiny red spit. Still unable to speak she takes the Ann-Bot from the boy and looks at it as she forces her breaths to steady. Saying nothing she gives the Ann-Bot to the younger Bro-bot, picks the candy up off the floor, rinses it off in the glass of water, puts it back in her mouth and resumes reading. The older Bro-bot scowls.
The sun sets, winds blow through the canyon, the Moon is obscured by clouds, there will be no stars tonight. As a boy he dreamed of robots.
Dream Journal # 5
The boys' two brothers, almost identical looking models although they rolled off the assembly line three years apart, with skin like waxed paper freckled with splatters of orange juice. Their bodies long thin, loosely jointed, moved as if dancing to some unheard music. With reedy, nasal voices that spoke from some place located in a southern bayou they would call the boy in from the yard for supper.
The family meals were shared in a semi-converted garage; a sheet of plywood on saw horses for the table. A mismatched set of cane back chairs scuffed the plain plank floor as they were seated. One end of the room was just open framework, the studs and electrical work protected from the outside with tacked up layers of plastic. The afternoon sun through the plastic and carpentry cast slippery shadows across the table as the family began to eat.
The Dad-bot filled his plate first. The meal was always the same: wild greens, mustard and shard picked from the local hillsides and boiled in the brackish water from the well. Fat back, greasy slabs of it, added to the greens as an after thought. Cold biscuits served dry… no butter or jam or even flavorless white margarine to spread on them. Tea in a surplus aluminum three-gallon pitcher, made from loose boiled leaves, sickly sweet with five heaping cups of sugar.
The boy was careful to chew slowly and try to eat his fill; this early supper was the last food he would see till morning. After the meal the boy cleared the table and stacked the chipped enamel plates by the sink for his brothers to wash.
Behind the house a back yard cut like an uneven wedge of pie led down to a mostly dry creek bed over grown with bamboo and cattails. Houses on either side of their lot stood empty, boarded up, yards a mess of rusting industrial rending equipment overgrown with sour grass and black ivy. It was in the silt and mud of the creek that the boy found the disintegrating skeleton of an infant-bot.
He carried it from the muck to the side yard where he hosed it clean and examined its tiny bones and circuitry. He rubbed dirt out of a marking on the infants' breastplate; the lettering was in a fine, feathery type. It read: Princess Ann version 3.6 rev C.
He gathered a pile of clean rags from the wash room floor, used the first batch to wipe and dry the remains and the rest to wrap it up like a doll. In the living room, seated cross-legged on the wood floor in front of the 16 inch black and white Television the Bro-bots are watching a baseball game. On a sagging sofa the Mom-bot is reading a second hand Women's Day magazine in the light of a 60-watt lamp. Her features look ashen in the poor light.
The Dad-bot sleeps on a cot at the edge of the illumination; his snore rattles about the room like a trapped pidgin. The sound drowns out the voice of the sportscaster as he talks about the home teams' pitcher. The boy shows the salvaged remains of the Ann-Bot to his mother. Chewing a piece of candy the Mom-bot inhales sharply at the sight, sucking the candy down her windpipe. She sits up, choking, motioning towards her throat with her hands.
The ever present clutched tissue flutters loose from her grip to the floor. Broken down oil, dirty from use, boils from her tear ducts. The eldest of the Bro-bots runs to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen. Bro-bot two pounds on the Mom-bots back. With a convulsive hack she chokes the candy up. It slips from her lips and falls to the floor with a trail of shiny red spit. Still unable to speak she takes the Ann-Bot from the boy and looks at it as she forces her breaths to steady. Saying nothing she gives the Ann-Bot to the younger Bro-bot, picks the candy up off the floor, rinses it off in the glass of water, puts it back in her mouth and resumes reading. The older Bro-bot scowls.
The sun sets, winds blow through the canyon, the Moon is obscured by clouds, there will be no stars tonight. As a boy he dreamed of robots.
Dream Journal # 5
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