On proprioception

This morning, I recalled the word “proprioception”, including the correct spelling, on the first try. No semi-humorous homing in on it like when my brain tried “cake pharmacy” for “confectionary”. Just the right word, spelled right, on the first try.
Fun fact: I took up bouldering *in part* to help ward off dementia, and the fact that I was able to remember a word I have never before used tells me that it is helping, or at least not hurting.
On the other hand, I for a while really suffered from the misconception that I was a lousy proprioceptor because a friend who occasionally coaches me is wont to yell things at me while I am climbing like, “MIG DU HÄNGST DA WIE EIN SACK!” and I would be like, “really? I had no idea!” Or last time, trying a route a level higher than I am used to, there was a spot where you had to do a certain move and I had no idea if I was doing it right or what I was doing wrong.
And because of this I decided that I had a serious proprioceptivity deficit.
But then I did an Internet search and read a couple articles about it and my conclusion is I am just a beginning boulderer, someone starting out at a new sport at an – let’s admit it – relatively advanced age – after a lifetime of non-sportiness and uncoordination, and so I’m not handicapped, I’m just shitty (but improving) at the new sport, which is completely normal and also great fun. If I had a problem with proprioception I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the middle of the night and navigate my house in the pitch darkness almost never treading on a cat, then sit down on the toilet (sitting, because no matter how good your proprioception is you don’t want to risk a standing wee in the dark, what if the cover is down, or someone is already sitting there? etc.), then wash and dry my hands and return to bed – finding everything perfectly (doorknob, toilet seat, sink, faucet, soap, towel) simply via orientation in space.
So my proprioception works completely fine.
I may have a vestibular disorder, however, according to one article I came across on my search, possibly vestibular neuritis or Meniere’s disease, looking at YouTube tutorials right now who needs doctors anymore welcome to the 21st century.

Far of fir

My wife carefully adjusts the draft on the “Schwedenofen”
in our living room,
which is what they call a cast-iron woodstove
with a glass door here, becaus a cat has made
itself comfortable on my chest, and
watching her (my wife) I think, People who
didn’t play with fire as childrn
have a greater fear of being burned.
Some days I wonder about the extent
to which Covid damaged my brain. Some
days it’s not so bad, some days I feel
like my laptop with the wonky “E” on
the keyboard (you hav to go back a lot
and mak sur it typed all th “e”s) and
some days I should just stay in bd.
In fact, sufficient sleep seems to make
a big difference. I got 9 hours last night,
according to my watch, but was still
physically tird because we went on a rather
long hike yesterday, and had a real
hankering for sweets, specifically a
“Punschkrapfn” which is a small rum-
filled one-portion-sized cake with pink
frosting. And as I took my morning
shower I thought of the word “Konditorei”
which is the plac where one might buy
a Punschkrapfen and wondered what the
English word would be (I often wonder this,
this in itself is not weird) but my brain’s
first suggestion this morning was
not “confectionary” or “cake shop” but
“cake pharmacy”
which, let’s admit it, is even
better than “cake shop”, which I
had prferred until then,
but on the other hand worris me a
little.
Anyway afterwards I complained
to my wife that the cake pharmacy
was close on Sundays, th very day
I have time to go there and my
wife, a skeptic like all of us, googled
it and determind that it was in fact
open on Sundays now, which it didn’t use
to be bcause they had been short
staffed and the owner was tired of
working 7-day weeks.
So, happy ending, we got our
Punschkrapfen.

Like a boss

I was buying yarn, no wait, I had finished buying yarn (oh, you’re a busy knitter, said the yarn lady, I like to see that) and was paying the lady at the dry cleaners… no wait, I was at the dry cleaners, but had not yet been to the yarn store, after which I returned to the dry cleaners to pay because I forgot the first time, nor had I been to the bank yet — so this was the first visit to the dry cleaners, before I went to the bank and to the yarn store, and before I returned to the dry cleaners to pay, my phone rang and I answered it and my mother in law said, hi mig, we have a big problem (invoking images in my mind of things leaking and smoldering etc.), the nurse’s outside door won’t close.
At this point let me interject for clarity that it’s one of those doors I first encountered in Austria, which you can open normally, in a door-like way, or if you turn (a) different handle(s) just tilt in, like if you want to air out the room.
Ah, I said, did she tilt and open at the same time?
I think so, said my mother in law.
So I finished my errands, going to the bank and the yarn store and the catfood store (because I got them food the day before yesterday, when I was at the hardware store getting light bulbs for my inlaws and super glue to fix a camera filter I had dropped, causing it to pop out of its mount but not break, but the hardware store didn’t have the food they like and they hated the food the hardware store did have so much that only one ate it and another ignored it and the third meowed at me plantively), where it took me forever to find cat milk, then went home and unloaded and gathered tools I thought might help (screwdrivers, a length of pipe to use as a fulcrum, and a big rubber hammer as comic relief) and drove over to fix their door.
But first I had to fix my car engine, which made a funny noise when I started it. I fixed it by turning my car off and back on again.
Noise was gone. Success!
Yeah so I drove over with my mask on and my mother in law and the nurse (who was cooking lunch, because my mother in law treats her more as someone to help with everything than someone to look after her husband) were both happy to see me. My father in law, a former mechanic who built the house, was watching TV and I sort of snuck around because I didn’t need him helping. I looked at the door, and my mother in law looked at me looking at the door, while the nurse made lunch, and then I looked at a healthy door to figure out how it was supposed to work, and went back and forth a couple times.
Then I went downstairs where we quietly got another tool (big chisel, to use as a lever because the door was too heavy for my screwdrivers) out of the furnace room, quietly because father in law thinks they lost the key to that room because we don’t want him in there fixing anything. Then I went back up and mother in law, father in law and nurse watched me trying to fix the door. We figured out what had to be done (metal hinge thing had to go back into metal hinge thing receptacle) so I asked the nurse to stick it back in when I lifted the door, which I did by sort of grabbing the door with one hand on the inside and one hand on the outside because my original lever/fulcrum idea wasn’t working, and manhandled it up and she stuck it in and boom, fixed, like a boss.
They were all happy, and I explained to the nurse, tilt or open but never both at the same time and drove home and took cardboard to the dump. Leaving the dump again, a guy with an SUV pulling a horse trailer (full of garbage I assume) couldn’t get in the in gate as I was getting out the out gate, I suppose because he had forgotten his key card, and got out of his truck and walked back to the car behind him, totally in my way and not even checking to see if, like, there was an oncoming car he might be blocking, and finally turned around and saw me and gave me a dirty look and I gave him a dirty look back, then he walked over to the other car, I suppose to ask to borrow that person’s key card (good thing for him he didn’t ask to borrow mine, I would have said no and felt good about it) and as soon as there was space I drove past, thinking, use the right tool for the job, moron who takes garbage to the dump in a horse trailer, ignoring my attempt to fix a door (like a boss, let me reiterate) with a chisel, a pipe and two screwdrivers.
Now if you’ll excuse me gotta bake some bread (which has been rising way too long cause of unexpected errands).

My banana is freezing

What are you doing for the inauguration?
I broke into my own house. I forgot my keys at work, and the cats were locked in the house and hungry, and the organic vegetable delivery was outside behind the house, and it is freezing cold now, and driving back to work to get the keys would have taken 90 minutes so I had to figure out a better plan.
So I asked myself, WWMWTMTD?
What would my wife tell me to do?
So I broke in.
I’m not going to say how, maybe a burglar is reading this. It took me about 2 minutes; Gamma used to do it when she was in grade school and forgot her keys somewhere so it’s either not exactly hard or Gamma and I are natural burglars.
I figure a professional burglar could do it in way less time than that.
Then I fed the cats and got the vegetables into the house and ate some organic fruit.
My banana was freezing (not a euphemism).
Later I will give old red cat his dementia pill.
Other red cat gets antibiotics daily. I wrap those pills in bacon.
Bacon is his favorite.
They are easy to remember because he gets them every day.
Old red cat gets his once every two days, so I get mixed up and forget to give him his dementia pills, which is ironic, LOL.
He either sleeps or stares at his water dish, so it’s hard to tell if they’re helping.
Right now he’s sleeping, and I hate to wake him up to give him a pill.

Cleaning a furnace

The world, it spins so fast, yet we are not dizzy.

First weekend in ages with sweet, empty hours to goof off. Woman goes to zoo with kid, tells man, oh BTW you have to paint walk-in closet as cleaning lady coming tomorrow. Gives him roll of plastic to cover stuff.

Post-tantrum, man looks for brushes, paint. Calls wife. White paint has solidified. Try other color, she says, to his disappointment.

No roller, either, just a little brush. But it is a small room and walls mostly covered by new wardrobes now too so okay.

Takes a couple hours. Maybe a few hours. Go downstairs to  make tea. Father-in-law comes, with something his wife cooked for man’s wife. Says something about cleaning, man fails to understand. Want some tea? Man asks. Okay, says father-in-law. A conversation between the hard-of-hearing and the slightly demented ensues.

Cleaning: man realizes, someone said something earlier, about cleaning the furnace.

Have time to clean the furnace? Yep, says father-in-law. That was the whole reason he came over, man realizes.

Inside his head, his mind is whipcracking around with these realizations. Outwardly, he appears normal.

They go down to clean the furnace. To do that, you remove the plate on the front, remove the bolts holding on the face, open

(whoa giant brown-recluse-looking spider on the floor by father-in-law’s foot)

the door, remove a drum-type thing, get a wire brush, brush out the soot from inside the furnace.

(the spider is very still. it is either dead or playing possum. man watches it closely, although he should be memorizing the furnace-cleaning steps. father-in-law’s birkenstocked foot moves closer and closer to still spider, man wonders if he should say anything, but he doesn’t know if the spider is dead or alive and why waste all the excitement sure to ensue on a dead spider?)

replace drum, bolt door shut, replace face, plug things back in.

(man will tell father-in-law about spider if it starts running up his leg, he decides. father-in-law finally bumps it, it still doesn’t move, so it must be dead, man feels better. it was only dead! who cares about a dead spider?)

father-in-law cleans up. man will shower later.

they chat a while. how many more chats will we have like this, man wonders.

father-in-law goes home. man cleans up room he just painted, reads a book, takes a shower.

it’s a fine, sunny day.

 

 

 

Dazed and confused

That’s my Led Zeppelin song, I took a test. I only took the test because I was hoping for “Immigrant Song”.

Word to the wise? If you’re at all absent-minded, don’t read articles about warning signs of dementia if you’re also prone to hypochondria.

Have a nice week.

P.S. what happened to doctors who like you would go to and ask what you had and they would tell you and give you a prescription that would cure whatever you had and you were done? Because I  have been to three specialists for something dermatological, one of them three times because she is the nicest. The nice one has given me three diagnoses: A, B and Not Sure. The other two gave me one diagnosis each, different from the first one. One of the other two gave me a diagnosis within 30 seconds of entering his examination room, a prescription for something that did not work, and the business card of someone else he does business with. The nice one, to whom I recently returned, gave me a new prescription to go with the “not sure” diagnosis that I discovered upon reading the warning information lists among its side effects causing my original diagnosis in a small number of cases.

This is getting a little too circular for comfort.

That band, you know, with that guy

Traffic was light, I was remarking to Gamma when this woman just zoomed onto the traffic circle thing in front of me, necessitating a braking maneuver, which involved a little braking and more honking. I was still bitching about her to Gamma when she stopped suddenly at the intersection instead of going on through and swerved a little and I noticed an old lady on the sidewalk teetering on her bike, trying to hold something and then gesturing at it in the street.

There was a hat in the street. Did she drop a hat?

Some young people were talking to the lady. Then I noticed the old guy attached to the hat, the other people were helping him up. I started to get out of the car but they had it under control, it looked. He was gesturing pretty good, it looked as if he was telling them he had gone off the curb and lost his balance, and toppled right over, like a tree.

He got off his bike and the woman did and they walked off, a little dazzled.

An old guy I know had a flat in front of my house. We got home, and there his car was, with a flat. He started walking to the gas station to get a pump to fill it back up. Come on, geeze, let me drive you, I said.

It wasn’t a bad idea, the way he parks in front of our house he manages to block anyone else from parking there, so it’s totally possible someone got tired of him doing that and let the air out. Or the little boys who scribble graffitti on our mail box let the air out, or something.

When he filled the tire, he left the valve cap in the street. Then I took him home to get his other car. We had to go twice, because the first time he thought he had forgotten his house keys, discovering when looking for them that he had not, in fact.

The next day he picked up his other car, the one with the flat. The tire appeared fine, but the valve caps were missing from all four tires. He figures someone stole them, we figure he mislaid them. He gets so excited when things happen, practically anything.

The other day, I had to google free-associated phrases to find the name of a band I couldn’t remember, one of my favorite bands.

Not, you know, those other guys, from Finland.

With the cellos.

A different band.