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The Wheelchair -- It's Love.
May 28, 2009

I'll sleep well tonight. I've done more things this afternoon and evening by way of fetching and carrying and putting stuff away than I had all week before that.

I loves me wheelchair. When I get to my destination I can stand up and do things, and when I'm on my way, I can carry heaps of stuff in a basket in my lap.

Fear of falling has been the main phobia of late. Yesterday afternoon I nearly fell when I was carrying a small meal back to the living area. A piece of quesadilla began to slide off the plate and in fumbling to put it back I began to pitch forward. I was lucky that the dining table wasn't far ahead and although salsa went all over the place neither I nor my meal hit the floor.

I had fallen earlier in the day, when travelling about fifteen feet to put a bottle of milk back in the fridge. Somehow one foot didn't travel forward on command and I went down gently, almost absentmindedly. Although unhurt I was shaken emotionally and, once I regained the safety of my office chair (after lying next to it for a while until my knees would obey commands) I didn't leave it for an hour or so.

It's a feedback loop. It's constantly on my mind. I get out of the car and look around. How many steps in the open to my destination with nothing to catch hold of if I lose my balance? Where is the nearest chair in case I lose signal in my legs? And latterly, this fear has pervaded the house where I had till recently felt safe. WhatifIfall whatifIfall whatifIfall is the mantra in my head as I try to assess the energy levels in my legs and whether I can carry more than one item in my hand on the way to or from the kitchen.

I sit on the edge of my bed after post-shower ablutions, waiting up to half an hour for that indescribable sensation to return, the sensation that says 'If you stand up you'll stay up.' Only then do I have the courage to travel about 30 feet out of the bedroom and over to the chair at the dining table. I hope I've remembered to put a bottle of water at my desk, I think, because I don't know how I can double back into the kitchen, carrying water all the way to the office area.

I knew the wheelchair was the cure for this fear, but what I didn't expect was how much more exercise I would be doing, and how much stronger that exercise would make my legs feel. Well, maybe the office chair sculling helps, too. And the chiropractor is working to restore lost sensation, which is likely to improve my sense of balance.

Sometime in the next couple of weeks I will go to Albuquerque and put myself in the hands of neurosurgeons (and students). I don't look forward to the conduction tests they may decide to perform, I don't look forward to more MRIs as they try to determine the cause of the syrinx, and I don't want to be away from home and safety. But now I have a wheelchair to get me through hotel lobbies and air terminals and all those places that take the ability to walk for granted.

And who knows, maybe I'll be just a bit stronger when I am required to clamber on and off those examining tables.

(7 replies, Latest reply: May 28, 2009)

Fire!
Mar 8, 2009

It started because of the wind. An thin and elderly telephone pole went down well off the road and took Lincoln's electricity supply with it. Landlady and I confirmed that it wasn't just our own house, and I called in the outage to the electric co-op.

So when trucks started flying past a few minutes later I thought nothing of it except that the repair service was pretty good.

Three hours later, I've just come back from looking at the damage. The fire started under a quarter of a mile east of my place, behind Murray's house, where we can still see a few desultory flames, and came within fifty feet of his back door before veering east and racing up to the road side next to his driveway. It then went due east, driven by gusty winds. Tom and Sadie grabbed their dogs and fled, their property being right in the path of the wildfire. There still seems to be "activity" in the thickets of salt cedar immediately to the west of their home, but, apart from blackened pasture, all seems well. We don't know about the empty Caldwell house on the other side of the Bonito.

A slurry plane is circling overhead, and fighters are still on the scene, but the official word is that the fire is under control.

And the power is back on already. That repair service is pretty good.

As some of you know, I've had mobility problems lately, but I was making progress and gaining strength. Right up until Kevin burst in the door to announce the fire and advise me to evacuate a little further up the road. And suddenly I went so weak in the legs that even packing my laptop and carrying it to the car was out of the question. I'm pretty much OK now, but it was a sobering experience.

(28 replies, Latest reply: Mar 12, 2009)

Unannounced Psychic Visit
Mar 4, 2009

Call him D. He came to see me mid-afternoon this past Sunday, a man with two artificial legs and a stetson hat, friendly open face, because Billy wouldn't stop pestering him about me.

Preamble: several years ago, before I worked for the state monument, one of the receptionists came to see me at the post office. "A man came to the courthouse and left me this card, " she said, passing it across the counter. "He said to give it to the psychic and tell her to go to the cemetery. Since you've been doing all the EVP work, I think he meant you."

Problem: which cemetery? There's the official one east of town, and then there's the penitente patch west of town, other side of the river, and then the mostly unmarked one behind the Tunstall store, plus a number of private plantings, like that of Sheriff Brady, up and down the district. I tried the Tunstall one with EVP equipment, got no results, and did nothing more, although the psychic's business card somehow remained on my desk without getting lost or tossed.

This was the same guy. I invited him and his female companion to take chairs and he told me a longish story of his psychic history with Billy Bonney. Seems Billy is looking for rehabilitation. He wants some kind of monument in Lincoln. He wants a pardon from the governor. And he wants me to finish fixing his picture.

I heard him out, showed him some of my work and played a couple of EVP clips, although what with him being a little hard of hearing he didn't really appreciate those. And I pulled out my little DTR and, with his permission, set it running for a few minutes, during which D tried to channel Billy for me. The tape has nothing on it besides our three corporeal voices, except when D "signed off", at which point on the recording a voice can be heard enunciating in a careful whisper, "Good...bye."

And that's it. I suppose I'm going to have to put in an appearance at the campo santo, now, and see what comes up on the DTR.

(9 replies, Latest reply: Mar 6, 2009)

Squeaky Joe's Broken Heart
Feb 12, 2009

It's the laser pointer. That little red dot must be scintillatingly bright to a cat's eye. Irresistible! Both Squeaky Joe and Thumbelina pursued it with dedication and great energy, to the point that they both recognized the characteristic k'tink when I turned the pointer on, and began looking around expectantly.

Squeaky Joe would chase it round in circles, jump up the wall, scrabble paw over paw along the back of the sofa, or pounce from a distance. Most often I would move the laser dot as if it had gone under a throw rug or behind the shelves. Thereupon the cat would either move to the other side of the item and wait in ambush, or else just hunker down patiently, waiting for the dot to reappear. Sometimes, however, Joe would get a paw right on it and I would flick the pointer off. Then Joe would lift a paw and, finding nothing underneath, begin looking around in crestfallen puzzlement.

Finally he stopped chasing it. He watches intently as the dot moves around the floor, up the wall, and across the ceiling, but he has abandoned hope. I think I have broken his heart.

And I empathize with him and feel great regret over what I have done to Joe. I've chased that bright red dot, too, and I know that there is absolutely nothing I can do to make it real so that when he lifts his paw it will still be there, his bright and shiny reward, accessible at last.

(7 replies, Latest reply: Feb 13, 2009)

Tigger 1991-2008
Nov 25, 2008

She was a surly thing who ruled my courtyard and slept in my garage, up in the rafters. Two of my cats wouldn't even go in the courtyard because Tigger was so ill-natured: they had been thoroughly beaten up by her and wanted no further part of it. She simply would not socialize with other cats.

Most nights I would hear her surly indignant yowl when some other feline set foot in her courtyard.

It took 6 months of twice-daily feeding before I could even touch her. And even then she held herself aloof. If you picked her up she wouldn't fight but she remained rigid in one's arms.

In the past couple of months, however, things began to change. Her fur looked matted and tufty, her flanks went seriously hollow, and she could no longer defend her food bowl from other cats, who deliberately mobbed her and took her dinner unless I stood over her.

But she wasn't my cat, she was Cille's. Cille had delivered her as a kitten, and has always been difficult about losing pets, as my earlier journal entry about Ruffles will attest. Eventually, however, it was she who finally agreed that Tigger would not survive another winter sleeping in the garage. She agreed to cover the bill if I would take Tigger to the vet, handed me a shroud, and asked me to bring the body back so she could bury it.

That's what I did today. Tigger went into the carrier without protest -- she was cadaverous, weighed only feathers -- and I drove her to the vet in Capitan. Becky administered a sedative and almost immediately Tigger began to fold in on herself. It was clear she had been on the verge of heart failure, because her veins collapsed and Becky had to administer the chemical coup de grace into the jugular.

She now lies in Cille's shed, wrapped in her blanket inside the carrier, awaiting burial. I never really liked the old boot, but I can feel the empty space where she used to be. May she have a more comfortable and congenial life on the next trip.

(14 replies, Latest reply: Nov 25, 2008)