Winter Storm

I awoke at 4 am this morning.  I got up to pee.  There was no water when I flushed the toilet.  I checked the taps. No water. I went out in the cold in my pyjamas in clogs still wet from yesterday. I checked the plug for the water hose heat tape.  I believe it was well secured.

I prayed. I hoped.  I couldn’t sleep.  There is no scarcity.

Yesterday I used my last propane tank,  Delivery isn’t till Friday.  I am anxious about the propane and heat,  I do have the barbecue small propane,

I’ve been using the electric heaters to reduce the propane since yesterday.  

It seems drafty in my home.  I’ve put on underwear and tights under my night shirt.  My flannel pyjamas are in the storage locker along with my fur hat.  I have warm comfortable slippers but should find socks. I have hiking boots that would help.  

I woke from some bad dream. I read yesterday that trauma was infectious, an article on ptsd. I’ve had enough of my own trauma and I’m reliving the trauma of vets and victims.  

I remember the winters on the sailboat, the hose on the dock freezing, depending on the water in my tank, rationing, no showers.  Showering at work. I’d ride my motorcycle in the slush and sleet. I’d smell of diesel and not realizing sitting in the luxury of my comfortable appealing office,  I was thankful when Tom brought me a large tank we filled with water during the day and it lasted the cold spell. I ran a hose to the tanks and managed for those weeks of terrible cold, the dock iced and the dogs and cats sliding despite their claws as we struggled to make it up to the car in the parking lot.

Yesterday the roads were closed.  There’s a few feet of snow on my Ford Truck and Mini Cooper.  When Mack with the grater cleared the road I walked out to see my vehicles.  I’d not gone into work at the clinic.  The news said that the roads were dangerous. I have an F350 with winter tires and chains but Vancouver drivers don’t know how to drive in Canadian winter. They have electric cars with summer tires.  A film of an Aston Martin fish tailing all over the road went viral. It confirmed my suspicion. I was glad to work from home.  

I’m barely managing. My back hurts and I feel fragile.  Aging isn’t for the young. I do all the exercises, swam last night and used the hot tub.  The inversion table I ordered through Amazon, came and I have it in the garage still in the packing. It needs to be assembled. I don’t seem to find time. Yet I can watch the new Halo Sci Fi alien series on Paramount plus for 3 hours in the evening.  My sidewalk needs shovelling but I can’t find my shovel. It’s may be under the snow. I could borrow one but then I’m hesitant to subject my back to the strain.

I’m in defensive mode against the universe. I know the best defence is offence.  Go face them and fight them be savage again says Rudyard Kipling in my brain. Younger I was made of sterner stuff.   

I installed my new Starlink satellite and it was going well but then it wasn’t so I unplugged it and started all again It might well have been a temporary outages but I thought it was overheated only to find once I ‘d disconnected it that it was normally warm. So I put it all back together and forgot the password. I didn’t watch tv those evenings, After a 9 hour day of work I spent 4 hours a couple of nights dealing with tech issues.  I have the Mac equipment all working and have continued work with ipad and MacBook, newer, but the older PC isn’t working and I think it’s a PW thing.  I couldn’’t get the security cameras back on line either except the Blink . I want them all working before I go away after Christmas for a few days.  The Blink is fine but my mind says I need a full array. 

In Arizona last month I watched the cat and a raccoon pass through the yard at night.

I have a full array of fears and 2 years of constant fear bombardment by the government I’m worn down. I had a sore throat on Monday and it’s gone. Belinda said the staff had been having these come and go. My powerful psychosomatic defences responded to that little reassurance. I was in a struggle to the death internally fighting off images of dying in ICU’s unable to breathe.  I was crying for my friend who died. There’s never been enough time to grieve.  Every day and every year there are more sick and the party of clowns continues non stop in the capital cities.

I would wallow in self pity but I realize women are being killed weekly in Iran and Chinese are locked and immobilized by storm troop police. All over the world there are riots against the NWO regime and it’s lies of dire climate change and hysterical control measures to viruses.  The war continues in Ukraine and China now has 400 intercontinental nuclear warheads aimed at me, here, us.  I remember growing up in Winnipeg on the flight path to the Russian nuclear missiles targeting the American silos just south of us,  

I know safety is an illusion and perception,

I’m chilly today despite the electric heaters and propane furnace warm clothing and my second cup of coffee. I was so glad that the water reservoir was full from last night. I know that if I take action each of these challenges and fears is reduced. It’s the curling up in the fetal position that makes things worse. I could bring in the frozen 5 gallon container and it would be thawed out by the time I needed it , if I needed it

The water may not be frozen just in my hose but may be at the pump. A few years back this whole sector lost it’s water when the main froze,  I remember my friend coming from Winnipeg and enjoying the shower because he was still running a hose from the neighbours to shower after the suburb lost it’s water to a deep frozen main beneath the streets  It was weeks or months before they could solve the problem. Water needed to be trucked in.

I remember with tears my elderly neice living in the freezing cold of the old family house with no one knowing that the furnace had broken and she didn’t have any money for repair.  My brother said you could see your breath inside,  She never wanted to bother anyone and just didh’t know what to do.

I know what to do. I’ve been doing it all my life. I’m very handy and was raised by an engineer father who was constantly maintaining the house and cars while we took it all for granted.  

I’m a survivalist. I have all these skills. I have most of the equipment to thrive though my chain saw and pumps are in the storage locker.  I imagine later today I’ll get the broom out and sweep off the truck, hope it starts, so many times I’ve charged or changed batteries, with frozen fingers and ears.  

I just got back from Arizona and Mexico missing the November gloom and rain so that winter hasn’t seemed so never ending as yet.  Since Covid I’ve felt in Vancouver like I did in Winnipeg when spring seeemed never to come and the SAD lite didn’t bring the happiness promised. I don’t like darkness in morning and early night.  The short days were in Arizona too but the sun was bright and warm in the day.

Not like the wan sun in the sub arctic where I worked for years,  I don’t know many who can recall the bush pilot having to use a blow torch to warm the oil pan so he could start the plane and get us out of the reserve where we landed .I remember that and the fear I had taking off uncertain, The same holds true for being in the DC3 when the runway was black ice so we had barely hit the tarmac before we were bouncing into the ditch. The plane flipped onto the wing which crushed with a god awful noise but we were stopped and the pilot and stewardess helped me out of the side exit which was now on top.  

It’s my mind that’s the problem. No one better to know that than me. I need to have gratitude. An attitude of gratitude will always dispell fear and sorrow,  But I don’t want another. AFGE - another ducking growth experience,  I prayed, I sat in meditation but I wassn’t at peace,  I feel I have to cancel some of my day, to make a trip to Canadian tire for a scraper and shovel and more propane,  I hadn’t counted on one of my tanks being ‘expired’,  The fellow wouldn’t fill it,  It’s hard to keep up with all the tasks and binge watch tv at night when I am so exhausted that seems all I can do though when I swim and I’ve done that 2-3 nights a week I feel i have more stamina. I walk the dog at least an hour a day in spurts buth during the week it’s hard to get a half hour in morning and a half hour at lunch and a half hour in the evening. I’ve been short changing him. I’m always short of perfection .  I try to pace myself but the problems don’t seem to slow. The printer is down because the satelite was down and I’m uncertain of the password,  I was so thankful I could deposit the cheque at the bank because Nova Scotia on line banking is such a bitch to re install with their silly password security questions that only an accountant could solve and yet for now reason the cheque photograph function has failed I’m afraid to re install it because last tine it took a week and 2 bank managers and hours of my time going to the bank and on the phone to get it restarted.

I couldn’t stand for the pain and thought I should go to hospital and call an ambulance lying on the floor but waited because I didn’t to spend days on the floor in hospital waiting . I’d done that with my father.  The pain passed, I know it’s grief but a physical doctor would say it’s something else.  I have pain. I’m aging.  It’s all in my mind. My mind is in God’s mind and all is well. Fear will kill me faster than anything else,

I used to be stoic.  I used to laugh more. I think of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and this government as so like the Adam’s government intent on building a space highway through the earth and insisting they beurocrats had given fair notice by posting it at the nearest planet to earth . I like that the old gods of Dick Gentleys Holistic Detective Agencies have taking up residency in nursing homes because they get clean sheets and tea is brought to them.  

I worry I’ll be homeless though I lost faith in homes with the last divorce,  The mausoleum and insaniety . 

It’s now 7 and still no light. When I was sailing off shore and it was night I knew I just had to hold it together till dawn because everything was better in the light even if the 40 foot seas were horrifying to see, it was all so much better than my imagination of how much worse it was than it felt in the washing machine boat bucking and straining and threatening to pitch pole.  

So many near death experiences come to mind when I open that door but I don’t dwell instead on the recovery.  There have been so many. The sun always rises. When I die i will awake in another dimension, hopefully a paradise like Mark Twain’s Captain Stormfields Visit to Heaven

I don’t want to dig about in the snow to follow the lines and check the source if there’s problem at the main, Kelvin went over my water system last month to ensure it was skookum,  It’s just these are the coldest days.  

I haven’t down the laundry for fear there is some freezing along the outlet and I’d hate to have a water spill.

I just remembered the year it got so bad living in winter on the SV Giri that I moved ashore for the weekend taking a suite in the Bayshore and loving thee luxury, hot showers and room service. I might order a pizza tonight, I have a meeting and hope to go though right now my being is still pretzelled in a fetal position,  I’ve had coffee. Incrementally things have improved. I’m feeling the need for a bowel movement and considering what I ‘ll use to flush but I have liquid toilet cleaner and wet ones.  I’ll feel better.  It’s going forward.

The alarm went off and the Creed played, Inspirational.

I’ve been alone so long.  My father and brother had women who helped them and were assets, I reflect too quickly on the women in my life who tried to destroy me and how I picked them like that, damaged by some earlier relationships or insane drunken parents.  I have always been too willing to bite off my leg to get out of a trap.  

I’m blessed though. In the tarot deck there is the fool stepping off a cliff .  Everyone has called me lucky but I’ve just concluded that’s God acting anonymously, good karma or even sense but not something to disparage a person about. I was so brow beat in marriage. I began giving as good as I received but eventually found solace in silence. I was always blamed and shamed and wrong. Certainly never good enough.  Certainly not perfect,  Mostly poor despite constant work and providing for others.  

See the quick slide to self pity.  I haven’t drunk wine in 25 years but still am so which to whine,   The winos really worse such whiners in their cups,  

Today I’m struggling to be positive and hopeful even without water immediately. There’s no concern in the present. My anxiety is for hours or days away and my struggle with cancelling work I keep hoping the heat tape just went off and that when I fiddled with the plug it came back on and all shall be well. Though now I’m tired having been sup since 4 am.  

Silly Billy.

Thank you God for all your blessings, Thank you for the Hound of Heaven poem and the poem of foot prints in the sand,  

I’m so afraid and frozen in 

Gratitude Jan.15 , 2020

Thank you God for light.  Thank you God for breath.  Thank you God for warmth. Thank you for morning.  Thank you for the night’s sleep. Thank you for the dreams that touched me with otherworlds and mystery. Thank you for the mind. Thank you for Gilbert in bed beside me. Thank you for indoor plumbing, running water, hot water, flushing toilets.  Thank you for coffee.  Thank you for grinders and electricity and intricate machines that make the morning brew. Thank you for my rugs. Thank you for the heater. Thank you for this clothing. Thank you for my positive memories.  Those things that spark the mind looking forward. I thought of old friends and little children and knew I was blessed. I reviewed my fears and felt that I didn’t want to live in a fortress of walls and moats. I’m so terribly vulnerable and I live in a dystopia but I continue to trust. Each day I go out on the battlefield and bring back the wounded.  I rally the dying.  I’m in this insane world but I’m doing my bit. Each day.  I pay my way. I guess I do thy will.  I’m bitching and complaining and self pitying and moaning and groaning and whining but I get up and help the next person in the line. Two malaria’s and and a cholera.

There are the elite. These men and women so far above the world with guards and limousines and servants and nannies.  I’m wrong to compare myself with them without comparing myself with the cripple.  Acceptance is the answer but I keep slipping. I struggle with my thoughts. I’m beating on your chest God asking for protection and support and guidance. I want to be safe in an unsafe world, rich in a planet of poverty. I want to be joyful in the malaise and depression of existence. Life is suffering unto death.  Desire is the root of all suffering. My back hurts. My shoulder hurts. My knees hurts. I’m always in pain. The plane crash, the car crash. All these attacks on my being. I was doing nothing wrong and paying attention. Shit happens. Ive been living but Ive not been able to evade the arrogant narcissist going through the red light oblivious to others or the troubles he causes. Now years later the trauma greets me.  Ive got to get through the pain. 

The life long desire to be in the south in winter. I want to run from the snow. I’m reminded of the terrrible cold.  Lost in blizzards. Making fires in woods, waiting out the night, blue.  So many negative memories. I can pull them out like a speed dial.  Dial up despair.

Yet here I am with you.  I’ve meditated sitting cross legged on the floor, listening to my breath, distracted by every sound and every undone thing but there I am making a space for you. Listening on the radio pointed to the inside.  God’s within.  I am the bubble make me the sea. I’m talking to the architect not the wall. Be with me today. Guide me.  

I’m supposed to act with dignity today.  Dignity the new standard that has been thrown at us.  The latest demand for perfection by aa group of hookers, thieves and murderers.  They have the guns and the lies and own the courts and rig the election and propagandize to the children.  Fear mongering.

I’m afraid.  Jesus said Do not be afraid.  I’m always afraid. A perpetual coward, faking it till I make it.  I dont’ want to go to Ninevah. I ve been on the icy roads with every poor driver who hit me out of control. The memories of the 360 degree flying through the air , the idiot speeding on black ice losing control in the passing lane and hitting me. I never knew a car could pitch pole and the driver still live. My divorce wasn’t long after. I’d had another near death experience and couldnt believe I was alive.  The car rolling sideways and righting itself. The self centred drunk and stoned in the morning party animals. I couldn’t get to the clinic that day. The police man took me to the emergency and I was so thankful my friend was on. I was desperately falling apart, my back seizing like its done forever. The incompetent young lawyer. The deceitful insurance company.  I was a week in bed.  I bought an encyclopedia britannica and began to read it.  Drinking scotch and popping T3, every move excruciating.

I have never recovered. Flashback pains in cold weather, the icy roads a reminder. The stoned Prime Minister wanting everyone to be stoned along with him so he can make factories and money and have more jets and nannies. I’m trying to stop them drinking. Trying to stop them drugging. Then yesterday I was asked if I wanted to be a euthanasia doctor.  If thinking about suicide isn’t enough. The government wants me to kill. I surrender we say.  Let me be captain of the artillery. I’ve read a book about mortar’s and gain a whole new respect for tubes. Meanwhile low testosterone is at epidemic proportions in Canada and no ones cares. I’m writing viagra prescriptions and talking to women who are blaming themselves for the mans noodle. The men are crying.  I’m sitting with crying me. The transsexuals are no more happy.

I’m talking to friends who stay as far away from sorrow and fear as they can. They live in little gated communities of the mind and heart and think they are Jesus. 

I write gratitude lists. I send people to anger management. I get asked to talk about anger and struggle to forgive. Forgiveness is not for them as much as it is for me. It’s also we’re all connected. I’m angry at my toe for stubbing itself.  I’m so unenlightened. I’m so dark. I’m carrying the light each day, trying to reduce the pain, trying to cut away as little good flesh. Taking out the old and weak.  I miss the easy days of surgery. I miss delivering babies. I miss the days when my skills with my hands were sought out. I did cut downs in hospital, always go the lumbar punctures and inserted needles in to hearts, swan gauzes and chest tubes and pacemakers. It was all glorious. Now I muck in the mediocre.  

The pain is real. It is all in your head.

“You saying its all in my head.” 

‘If I cut off your head you’d feel more pain?”

Why is the brain and mind and soul so little validated but the body is all the rage.  They want money and more money and more money.  Everyone is poor.  Validate the pain. Blame the world for my pain. But accountability brings power. I am my nemesis.  I can change me but not you. The serenity prayer.  

I drove to work 2 hours commuting.  Duty.  Wanting a pay check.  I had such silly expectations of what it would be like to grow old. Retirement. The promise of all those years of sacrifice. Now they circle like mosquitoes outside the screen. The vampires are coming in the chimney.

I’m grateful.  I need only look at a flower and see the wonder.  I have to focus on the positive and let go of the negative. Ive got to walk on the right side of the street and then I won’t be hit by the cars, mostly.

Ive so many blessing. I have these glorious times walking in the forest by the river with my dog who is happy, blind and old and so content not to be alone .Thank you Lord that I’m not alone. Not in solitary. Not locked in quiet room by the instrument of my rape and terror.  Not injected with anti psychotic medications for telling the truth and shouting ‘j’accuse’.  I’m vindicated. The enemy dies.  Arjuna talks with Krishna. The war goes on.

I buy a little statue of St. Michael as I look back my back trail and see the karma of all who hurt me and wonder why I am afraid.  Why must I get wounded for the squad to come up. I’m walking point and always afraid.  But someone else is walking point right now. I’m here in the warmth and have a royally expensive tank of propane to replace this one that got me through the night. It’s so cold outside. I miss Mexico and the beach.  I miss the glory days. I wallow in grief, suck on the tit of despair. I grieve so much but then I look back and today is the glory day.  Today is now. Now is where god is. If I get into the future I get into fear and if I dwell in the past I gather resentments. Expectation is a preformed resentment.  I’m searching for God, playing hide and seek, minute by minute. Here in the mystery in the game. I’m looking for love in all the wrong place and all the right places.  Life is a poem and I’m a poet. Life is a song and I’m the singer. 

Thank you for the laughter. Especially the laughter at myself.  This too will pass. The end is a grave. All else is vanity.  

Thank you God for the coffee.  Thank you for this body.  10 fingers 10 toes.  Help me make the time for seeing friends.  Help me face my fears and go out on the road.  Help me face my fears and get out of bed. Thank you for my waking today. Thank you for the prospect of a hot shower.  Thank you for the coming of the light. Thank you that we know the sun is returning and we dont have to sacrifice any virgins. We dont have many virgins left Lord so thank you for science and the knowledge of astronomy.  

Thank you for all your blessings. Help me to know you more deeply feel you more fully trust you more truly.  Thank you Lord for this life and this day. May I make the best of it, serve you and my fellow man and woman. May I be a better man today than I was yesterday.  Thank you Lord. 

Winter and Spring Fight to the Death, Hear all about it! Place your bets!

The snow came just after I called Trev Deely motorcycle to ask them to have my Harley ready a month early.  Dave had ridden his Softail past me with that smug look I’d seen on all the motorcyclists for days.  Spring was here.  Ha ha ha. Looking at you still riding in a cage.  I fear I jinxed it.  As we say among friends, “I may not be much but I’m all I think about.”
That’s when my furnace died.  I called Eric at Starfleet and had faith he’d have it fixed in a day or two. He’s the best there is and has solved every problem I’ve thrown at him over the years.  I just turned out the furnace lacked the normal access and each day he’d fix one thing and it would work better but crap out in the night. I love my electric blanket.
I fear I’d been thinking about returning to the prairies but this taste of winter cold and equipment break downs was a personal reminder of the struggle with the environment that was part of day to day existence out east.  Here I had mosquito people and horsefly authorities and wasp drivers but there were no real bugs in the lower mainland.  And winter didn’t last all year. The climate here is more hospitable. Even if the creepy people demand carbon taxes and punish people for heating their homes so LA people won’t have to use their air conditioners more.
Winter here lasted only a couple of months at most .  I’d just taken pictures of pretty blue crocus and tulips and posted them on Face book.  I called them Hope and Faith.  Would they survive.
Thank God for Canadian Tire. They had an indoor propane heater to attach to propane bottles. They are imostly used in construction sites.  The temperature had dropped and my electric heater limited by the available power on my cable wouldn’t do more than keep the temperature above 60. Since living in the tropics I will only wear shorts and t shirt in the home.  I was now wearing sweats and sweaters and slippers. I may as well be in Winnipeg.
When the weekend came I escaped with Laura to Harrison Hotsprings. The Harrison Lake Hotel was luxurious with heat and I sat for hours in the public hot spring pool dreaming of the Mariana Islands.  My dreams all week week were of my sailboat and fair winds and following seas. Darlene’s incredible Facebook  pictures of Australia beaches have certainly stoked the dreams. Laura began talking about her love of Saipan once the snowstorm hit.
This week Eric became pretzel man and got into the inner workings of the furnace to scratch the right spot that had made the beast ornery.  A tiny burnt out part that somehow not responded to the computer command to ignite.  Eric set it straight. Heat, glorious, heat was now mine.
I sat on the couch in shorts and T-shirt watching NCIS and Big Bang Theory in shock.  I went to work each day.  I love my F350 truck with new snow tires. I smugly watched cars fish tailing in the ice and snow.  I talked to a motorcyclist who said it was ‘awfully’ cold, the year’s best understatement.
All over the news the Justin Trudeau and family reality show desperate to out compete their role models the Kardashian’s and Jenners were in India dressed funny doing photo ops in front of impressive old buildings. I laughed at the quotes from Indiannews about how ridiculous they looked in their Indian “costume”. Anyway now I expect him to break into the song “It’s fun to live at the YMCA” Even when I visited Mumbai it was as sophisticated as New York so I’m not surprised Trudeau’s antics are perceived as “mocking”. When he visited us in the DTES he certainly didn’t get dressed in layers of rags carry and carry a sleeping bag.
  The India government was further disgusted with him as he was only meetings with terrorists, the same modus operadi he used in Canada. But even that didn’t help his plummeting ratings so he went back to his winning strategy of giving millions and billions to strangers. 10’s of millions to terrorists in Canada. Billions to overseas tyrannies. And now he says he’s got a million dollar ‘trade deal’ but it turns out he knows as little about a good trade deal as he knows about economy, environmen or community. He’s given $750 million to chucling gleeful Indian billionaires, he really likes to hob nob with billionaires at our expense,, and they have said they’ll give him $250 billion in return.  It’s like stealing candy from a baby. But the media is all over it and every one is smoking dope and drinking and no doubt some are trying opium because ‘why not’.
My patients are homeless and the news says the shelters turned away 50 people or more.  I’m writing prescriptions for antibiotics. The flu is killing old people.  There’s a sense the government wants to save money by killing off the citizens .  The death rate from the fentanyl epidemic I’m in the middle of is over a thousand and now they’re shooting each other near the clinic I’m working. But there’s another picture of Justin and Sophie cavorting in front of religious monuments in the hot weather having abandoned Canada to the cold for his weekly family vacation.
I snarl by myself at times.  My eye less dog comforts me.  He’s been in a world of pain and now we’re relatively okay. We have heat to return to.
Then the pipes freeze. It’s a diagnostic dilemma in the dark in the snow in the below zero windchill last night in the dark but I find some idiot (me) has unplug the heat wire for the hoses so he could plug in his electric bicycle falsely believeing spring had sprung.  I plug in the cord.  In the morning the shower is running full blast, the pipe unfroze in thee night,but there’s puddles mist and spray throughout the bathroom.  I towel everything  down.  I really have to pee.
I go to my refrigerator to get milk for the coffee I’m making and the fridge is off, the freezer meat is soft. Sometime in the night the water pump and new plug and electric heater have blown the circuit.  I re set it.  I now have heat and electricity and my refrigerator is working. My water heater I hope is back on line.  It’s taken me about a half hour to get this all back in order. I’m having my first sip of coffee.
I’m running a bit late. I didn’t do the sit ups I promised myself I’d do. I’ve not meditated but I’ve not suicided.  I’ve not shot up with a needle. I ‘ve not gone looking for a bomb to blow up some government office. I’ve not become a rapper. I’ve not voted Liberal. I’ve just plodded through a not atypical Canadian winter day knowing that as I’m in Vancouver this is likely my karma for all the ‘smug’ remarks I’ve made about Winnipeg when my friend Wes sends pictures of the magic driveways and walkways there that fill up with snow minutes after they’ve been plowed or shoveled.  Here the snow will be gone in a week or so. I hope the bulbs are deep enough to withstand the cold. I love the flowers of spring.  Soon I’ll be visiting the tulips in the valley for the annual glorious tulip festival.
I just have to remember that Spring does come.  Even in Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal Spring eventually returns with warmth and joy for all.  I expect the media will have triumphal selfies of Justin Trudeau in Canada at last, maybe even at work in parliament.  It might just be once like the sighting of the ground hogs but even the French work here eventually.  The biker gangs and mafia will soon take to the streets. The corruption will heat up. It’s Canada , we’re resilient.
Another old friend died. He was spiritual. We know he’s in heaven.  That alternative appears more attractive in Canadian winters.
  My back hurts getting out of bed.  The chiropractor is helping.  I’ve been chewing aspirin and my lovely doctor gave me a stool sample kit for Occult Blood testing. I am surely bleeding in my aching gut with all this aspirin I’m taking to just be mobile so the last thing I want is a ‘false positive’ test. They threaten everyone over 50 with the long snake. As kids we were scared of them under our beds but these ones are real and despite the humor of Connolly’s description of a colonoscopy I really feel I could go to my grave happily having avoided medically induced explosive diarrhea.
It really isn’t that bad.  I have to look on the positive. Snow tires, clothing, healthy cat and dog, heat again, running water again, light and aspirin.
 There’s just this little bit about going outside. Too many car crashes. The other drivers scare me.
 I see people who can’t bring themselves to leave their apartments. I’m seeing more and more people afraid and paranoid.  The heart patients are having trouble breathing in the cold.
I have a picture of two malaria’s and a cholera up on my wall to remind me we’re just helping each other, one a little more along the road or a little less sick.
 My mother would say, “lord love a duck”.
. I’ve got to see if the water has had enough time to heat so I can shave. I need the inspiration of a hot shower especially to ease my back.
 I’ve got clean clothes.  And snow tires. Don’t forget the snow tires.
Thank God for spring and please get rid of this snow so I can ride my motorcycle.  Really I don’t want a pickle I just want to ride on my motorcycle.
 I trust you spring. You will beat winter . You always do.