When Mrs. Daisy Jacobs taught our second grade class she spent time after school with the neighborhood tough kid, Sonny. He threw rocks at our feet. This kept him from getting in trouble because the bruises didn’t show.
Sonny chopped his brother’s index finger off with a hatchet. His brother Raymond was the nice kid in their family, but Mrs. Jacobs didn’t have him in her class.
I don’t know how often we filed home past Mrs. Jacobs and Sonny, who were whispered to be having a heart-to-heart about his behavior.
Mrs. Jacobs bought Sonny gym shoes because his parents couldn’t afford them.
My mother taught second grade also, after Daddy died, but not in the same school. I’m not sure how Mother regarded her, but I thought Mrs. Jacobs was a great teacher because she liked me. She correctly predicted that I’d be a pharmacist some day. Well, she said that my interest in chemistry could help me.
Moreover, she lived just a few blocks away, so I often walked past her house where she and her husband had their store, the “Food Center.” They had no children. She looked in my ears when she caught me walking past. Said she could plant potatoes in my dirty ears.
Mrs. Jacobs was mid-career in the early 1950s when I had her for second grade. I learned that during the 30s and 40s, teachers were exposed to the progressive ideas of a pioneering educator, John Dewey. He taught the concepts of respect for student diversity and student-centered learning, ideas congruent with the methods of Mrs. Jacobs. I learned about Dewey when I Googled “teacher training in the 1920s.”
I also learned teachers then were beginning to form unions. In Montana it was the Montana Education Association and the National Education Association. Mrs. Jacobs expressed pride in her profession and her loyalty to the union.
My trusty Hiawatha
Thursday, March 30 @ 1631
I was reading about how difficult it is to learn to ride a bike. Do you remember learning? I remember that trees and bushes seemed to loom in front of me and force me to crash into them. Perhaps this happened to you, too. I was an elementary school kid in Missoula.
The reason for the propensity to crash into trees is easily explained. The trees and bushes don’t like us. Just kidding. I think that as one attempts to steer away from the tree, one leans toward it. Then one steers to “regain wheel” beneath the center of gravity and lo! The tree looms straight ahead. “Boom.” Took me a few tries to learn how to avoid the trees and bushes.
In the seventh grade I watched open-mouthed as a college student rode my bicycle backward. Impressed, I tried to do the same. One sits on the handlebars, holds the handle grips backward, then pedals backward. At first, when the bike starts falling left, I pull with my right hand, as I would riding frontward. “Crash.” Amazing how quickly one’s body slaps down to the ground.
I attempted to ride backward a whole bunch of times until it dawned me that I had to reverse my impulse to pull forward or backward with the handlebars. Soon I was successfully riding backward, even able to ride around the block backward.
Now I throw the gauntlet for the rest of you riders. Let’s ride backward.
I recently received my usual lukewarm job evaluation. You know, I’ve complained to my boss that the evaluation was less than satisfactory to me. Actually, it was better than the one last year, which was unsatisfactory in several categories. “Nope,” I said. “This one won’t do at all.”
In that vein, I wish to evaluate Gunther as though he were me, getting evaluated.
I’d say he “needs improvement.”
- Gunther has no shame. Like a prostitute, he does tricks for a treat. That’s how I get him to come to me when we go walking off leash. He is little interested in coming without a bribe. Milk Bone dog biscuits work well.
- Same time, he is too timid to run far away, lucky for me. After all, has no place to go but home, no one he trusts but us. I think he has a vivid imagination and fearful. Causes him to bark at some strangers.
- Despite his shamelessness, or maybe because of it, he usually walks tall and proudly, prancing ahead on the sidewalk. Thus, he is self-important and swaggers.
- He often lacks focus. He saw a rabbit this morning and took off after it, but the R. easily outmaneuvered Gunther, who gave up the chase after a few seconds.
He will turn two years old in early April, when we will celebrate his considerable achievements: “kennel up,” “sit,” “down,” and “roll over.” Oh yes, “stay.”
Wednesday, March 29 @ 1402
I returned home from the United Postal Service office where I took a package 7 by 7 by 120 inches. I carried it across town in our car with about five feet of it sticking out the back window. Of course, I worried that I’d hit someone or someone would hit my package with their car. Well, nobody did. Cost $76 to ship it back to B&H Photo in New York. You see, I ordered the wrong thing. It was a projection screen. Would have been great, except the thing was ten feet long, and we live in a modest bungalow.
I ordered a carpet once and had the same problem with getting one too large for our house.
We don’t own a television, but we do have a digital projector and, until recently, we used a window shade as a screen. I had it mounted in our bedroom on a cabinet near the ceiling. Pulled it down to watch videos. The screen, I mean.
Unfortunately, last week we moved our bed closer to the windows for the springtime breezes and we needed to move the screen, only now there’s nowhere to fasten the window shade. Anyway the shade was worn where it engages the bracket, so I’ve put the screen somewhere to discard. I don’t remember where I put it.
I ordered another projection screen that is 60 x 60 inches, so we’ll see if that works better than the ten-footer.
On the way home from the UPS office I turned onto our street to see a post office truck with someone sitting in the back eating a big sandwich. My eyes must have been large, I wasn’t expecting that sight, and, as I stared, the young woman waved, so I waved back. I parked the car, got Gunther, and walked down to the end of the block where she was still eating her sandwich. I apologized for staring at her and explained that I hadn’t expected to see her. She said she often waves to people and admired Gunther.
“Gunther is therapeutic for me,” I explained. “I have depression and he cheers me up.”
She replied, “I have anxiety and also struggle with depression.” She said she has three guinea pigs that serve as comfort for her.
Another old guy ambled up and asked her if she was a mail carrier. Gunther started growling, so I exited.
Gunther licks his chops.
Tuesday, March 28, @ 1316
I was telling Clara about the bird my dog Gunther caught the other day outside of my sister’s assisted living apartment in Nebraska. I was headed out her patio door to the car and I noticed Gunther sitting comfortably on the grass with his feet sticking out. Some feathers stuck out of his mouth! With some difficulty I pried loose a small bird that my sister later identified as a house finch. At first I thought it was newly fledged, but when I let it loose a fairly large wing began flapping. Just the one wing because, turns out the other was broken with a bloody stump. Compound fracture, I believe.
On the way back to Carol’s from the car I’m wondering if G. will eat the bird, big wing feathers and all, or ?? Chicken bones are supposed to be bad for a dog. What about bones and feathers from a small bird?
This time the bird was between G’s front paws sitting quietly. I saw on closer inspection the creature is alive but when I tried taking it away G pounced and the poor bird began crying with a sort of buzzing howl like it was hurting. I backed off. Then I contemplated the vows every Buddhist must take to help relieve suffering. Soon the bird was back between G’s paws again.
The short of it is that I got a paper towel, wrested the bird from G, and, with equal effort, resisted the urge to just fling it onto Carol’s almost-flat roof. In a couple tries, (I was timid the first time) I wrung its little neck. I held onto the bird’s neck tightly to ensure death — and an end to its suffering.
Feeling guilty, we (I) carried its carcass through the building to the dumpster near the building entrance. Then Gunther and I returned to Carol’s. I had a heavy heart but G. seemed just as carefree as ever.
Saturday, March 25, 2017 at 1616
Gearing Nebraska—assisted living complex.
Carol, nine days out from her first round of chemotherapy, cursed and swore and trotted back into her bedroom for another nap. Her hair is coming out. She has a lot of fatigue. She needs to rest up because Beth and Joe, Sam and Luke and Sammy are coming for supper.
Today I went to Fresh Foods and bought two bags of instant Caeser Salad makings, a quart of beef stock, a 2 # chuck roast, a 3# bottom round roast, a yellow onion, a red onion, a bag of carrots four russet potatoes, a bag of hard rolls and 5 pounds of flour. As I write, the bottom round roast is in the oven with the yellow onion and most of the beef stock in a dutch oven. It’s been in the oven for 3-3/4 hours. I put the chuck roast in Carol’s freezer.
Gunther is crapped out on the red chair, oblivious to my anxious thinking about supper. I plan to peel, cut up, and boil the potatoes and to peel, cut up and add the carrots to the roasting pot roast. Dessert will have to be, well, ice cream.
Gunther at my sister’s house.
Thursday, March 23, 2017 at 1242
Gearing, Nebraska, at the assisted living complex.
My sister naps and I’m reviewing the use and side effects of her chemotherapy. I found the best information at Wikipedia. I recommend Wikipedia.
My role in helping her is to remember the instructions given her by her oncologist. I got chastised when I urged Carol to take more laxatives more often than her doctor recommended, so I resolved to be more careful. Carol doesn’t need more than one coach at a time.
The trouble with pharmacy information websites is too much boilerplate language warning against what they always warn against: hypersensitivity to the drug or its excipients, followed by sparse information that is too brief and too general.
She is getting the chemotherapeutic drugs paclitaxil and carboplatin followed by pegfilgrastim to stimulate her bone marrow. Apparently these cause bone pain.
Most people these days know that anti-cancer drugs are effective because they take advantage of cancer cells propensity to rapidly grow and reproduce. Some of the newer drugs are more specific, binding to–and killing–certain kinds of cancer cells because of a biochemical binding site. Sometimes these agents have minimal side effects. Carol is not a candidate for that kind of medicine.
Unfortunately the drugs my sister receives every three weeks for six treatments are not terribly specific for cancers only. They kill rapidly dividing cells of the cancer variety, but they also knock back hair follicles and the rapidly dividing cells throughout the digestive tract and bone marrow. Thus, after several cycles of chemo, one becomes bald, gets sores in the mouth, and gets low on white blood cells, essential for fighting infection.
Paclitaxil was developed in the 1990s from the yew tree of the northwestern U.S. I don’t remember when carboplatin came out, but other forms of platinum have been used since the 1980s for such tumors as lung cancers. I believe the mitigation of side effects and the use and dosing for these potent medicines is much better than it used to be because of extensive research and clinical experience.
The pegfilgrastim is used to mitigate the bone marrow destruction of the chemo drugs. Get this: Carol takes a 10mg Claritin antihistamine tablet for several days prior to her chemo treatments and the pegfilgrastim to help relieve bone and joint pain commonly experienced. I was skeptical, but I looked it up and the Claritin seems to help somehow in its role as an antihistamine.
Carol feels exhausted these days, but she overcame most of the other side effects of the cancer treatment after about four or five days. She is dog tired. I say this because Gunther is also visiting Carol and he is asleep too.
Earlier today I was feeling a bit constipated and dropped a toilet-clogging load in the commode near where I’ve been sleeping. I flushed to no avail.
Bad luck! I needed some way to resolve the plugged toilet! Finding no plunger, I fashioned a coat-hanger wire to snake into the plugged trap. I snaked and snaked with no result. I wound up the wire and dropped it into the trash.
Carol had just fallen asleep (I peeked in on her) so I looked around for a toilet plunger. She has two bathrooms. No plunger in any of the usual under-the-sink or bathroom closet places. I roused Gunther and we searched the wider premises, this monstrous building occupied by a half-dozen residents. The halls look like they are a hundred yards long, mostly vacant with an occasional door mat or sign on the door welcoming spring.
About fifty yards down the hall was an apartment that had been converted into an exercise equipment room. I looked in on the bathroom there and — lo! A plunger. The rest is history. Yes, I returned the plunger.
Wednesday, March 8, 2017 @1415
Gunther is tucked behind my head, sitting on the back of my overstuffed chair. This morning we heard the honking of Canada geese. Gunther did not seem impressed. Nor did he poop, at least while I watched. He did flush up a rabbit, but to his credit, did not chase it across the street. Good dog!
I’m getting a knee replaced in about five weeks, so I made an appointment for physical therapy for three days post-op. My sister said such surgery is quite routine and relatively easy. She said the secret is to avoid using a cane and to avoid limping.
I know where those metal knees end up. Well, ultimately where they end up if a person elects cremation. I saw a bucket full of knees and hips and other metal hardware, discolored from the intense heat of the cremation furnace at a Michilotti-Sawyer’s funeral chapel. They had a blue-gray patina. The cadaver bones end up getting cooked, but they are then broken up beyond recognition in a sort of metal blender somewhat smaller than the basket of a clothes washing machine.
The ashes of the loved one one gets are mostly bone fragments after being blended. I suppose one could get the prostheses from a loved one if one asked the mortician. I think they are prevented from handing over recognizable bones by regulation.
I thought the horrifying sight at M.S. funeral chapel of the burnt metal knees and hips would keep me from ever wanting a prosthetic hip or knee, but I in the years since I have had more and more trouble with my left knee. This is the one I hurt in 1964 when I was freshman in high school in track. I tried out for the triple jump and smashed the cartilage in my knee. A doctor in Dillon, Montana, manipulated my knee to reduce the fragments of cartilage. Knee worked great for many years after, although it snapped and popped when I flexed my leg.
This pretty much kept me out of trouble until the past few years when I had a series of misfortunes. You know, I tripped. Or rather P. tripped on a brick in Wash. D.C. and I tried to prevent her from falling, but in the process landed on my knee. Since then I’ve had my internist inject my knee with steroid with pretty good relief.
Most recently I hurt my knee while deer hunting. Bob went to check out a shot I’d made when I missed a nice buck. In turn, while he was gone, I dragged his buck by the antlers down a long ridge. The buck ended up pushing me in the dark when the going got steep, right over a ledge perhaps five feet down. Hey. It was dark! The knee swelled up after that. I got another steroid shot but the orthopedic doctor recommended a knee replacement because the cartilage was nearly gone.
I think more and more of my aging friends will get prosthetic hips and knees. Faced with pain, swelling, and an unstable, unreliable knee, a replacement seems like a bargain, even though the hardware may end up in a mortician’s bucket.
Gunther in a vest last summer.
I’d been in bed since last night at 8:30 sleeping off and on, gagging and choking on mucus. I’ve decided that I’ve been sick quite long enough, so I’m dressed and sitting by the fire trying to make sense of the world again. Wait. I just remembered we have a fascist President who doesn’t make any sense when he speaks. Now I’m oriented. Can’t let the President ruin my day.
I did take Gunther out at 7 each morning, sick as I was. He seems unfazed, even though he licks my face and ears when he jumps on me. I hope he stays healthy. He is moving his bowels regularly, still hammering out code. This morning it was two longs, one short. Can’t imagine what kind of message he could be transmitting that he can’t say vocally with barks, yaps, whines and the occasional moaning.
insearchofbud 