March 2022 – Even A Broken Clock

A Delight of Daffodils

March 30, 2022 evenabrokenclock103 Comments

Spring appeared spontaneously in March. We went from total winter inertness into a delight of daffodils almost instantly. Plus the bonus of flowering trees and Lenten Rose in full display. Even the brief interruption of 8” of snow a couple of weeks ago couldn’t stop the procession of the seasons.

Our daffodils represent 30 years of living in the same house. I’ve managed to spread the daffodils not only to all niches of our yard, but pass the bounty on to many others in the Charleston area, and establish outposts in Ohio, Richmond Virginia, and near Ft. Worth Texas. It is easy to be generous when you only have to dig up the bulbs that are crowding the surface and replace the lot with a few of those I’ve extracted. Now is the time – the 3 or 4 weeks in the spring – when all of the past work shines in its glory. Soon will come the jonquils as the last blooms of the spring, with multiple flower heads making up for the lower numbers of bulbs.

Then all that will be left are the green leaves of the flowers. If you merely leave these in place, until June when they tend to blend with the dirt after they’ve fertilized the bulbs below, you will be guaranteed of flowers next spring. And for us, the added benefit is that the deer will not touch them. They dislike both the daffodils and the Lenten Rose, so we’ve cultivated both of these species to colonize our slopes and shaded flower beds.

With my knee now functional, I should have much less of a problem in getting down on the ground to weed the flower beds, and dig up those bulbs whose heads poke up above the ground. I’m looking forward to that, since for the last few years it has been a struggle any time I sank down to the level of the flowers. If I could only find flowers that bloomed later in the year that deer wouldn’t treat as their buffet, I’d be happy. We try lantana every year, and sometimes it does not get munched, but it is not immune to the deer predation. Plus it gets expensive to buy lantana by the flat. So far we also have found lavender that deer don’t like, so we’re going to try some more of it. Plants like coneflower have not done well for us.

At least I am only worried about the marauding deer disrupting our flower beds. I am grateful that I don’t have to worry about tanks and armored personnel carriers and the boots of the enemy tromping around. I feel for the people of Ukraine, who will find this year’s spring to be a hollow reminder of what should be instead of what is.

Forget-Me-Not

March 15, 2022 evenabrokenclock10Leave a comment

I really feel sorry for the memory impaired. Especially those of the Republican ilk who are having such a hard time remembering the way DJT sucked up to Putin during his campaign and presidency. This includes DJT himself, since he is confident that no one was harder on Russia than he was. Somehow the painful memories of the aftermath of the Helsinki conference, where DJT couldn’t think of any reason why Russia would have interfered with our election process, have disappeared totally from the frontal lobes of this ex-President.

But he’s not the only one suffering from near total amnesia. Let’s tale the examples of our local legislative representatives in West Virginia, who are bound and determined to continue to relive the mistakes of the past by cutting taxes on the wealthy while piling on costs to those who live on the margins. Can you imagine the cheek of those people who have lost their jobs, being upset because the 26 weeks of unemployment they used to rely upon now becomes 12-weeks maximum unless the state is suffering high unemployment? Fortunately, this bill was moved to the inactive status on the penultimate day of the legislative session. But the priorities of our legislative Republican supermajority was made clear, we have too many people who want to mooch off of the state, and I have no doubt this bill will resurface in upcoming special sessions, or no later than next year’s session. How these Republicans have forgotten the trauma our state and nation suffered at the beginning of the pandemic, when a switch was turned off and employment took an immediate nose dive.

Our legislators at the Congressional level also seem to suffer from acute amnesia. Maybe this is really a contagious disease, with carriers like Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, and Madison Cawthorn being vectors of forgetfulness. Of these, Jim Jordan is the most practiced, since he has forgotten everything that happened when he was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State from 1987 to 1995. He would have been shocked, shocked to learn of inappropriate behavior taking place under his watch. Since he’s had so long to practice his lying, it was a bit disconcerting to see his recent performance when he couldn’t recall having called DJT, or when he called him, or anything about his phone logs of 1/6/2021. His stuttering and obvious discomfort at having to answer the questions were unworthy of someone who has practiced the art of prevarication for such a long time.

Ah, but we’re forgetting the large group of Republicans who have forgotten their purpose upon being elected to Congress. I had always thought it was necessary to make a good-faith effort to propose legislative solutions to problems of the nation. Foolish me. I didn’t realize the real purpose of being elected to Congress was to completely gum up the works if our tribe does not hold a majority. That way we can depend upon a unified party in Congress to work seamlessly towards a common goal, like the Republicans did when they replaced the Affordable Care Act with their own much improved version of health care. What? You mean they were ready to throw out the Affordable Care Act without having legislation lined up to replace it? And they were stymied by the actions of a single Senator who had his Roman emperor moment by extending his thumb down disapproval?

Right now, the Democrats are no different than the Republicans, in that they have allowed the actions of two Senators to hold up a legislative agenda. At least the Democrats have an agenda, instead of the Republicans who failed to put forth a platform in the 2020 election. It’s “whatever he’ll have, that’s what I want.” He, of course, being DJT. The subjugation of an entire party to the whims of an individual who has never known the common good stands as one of the most abysmal failures in governance since the inception of this nation.

So we are left to suffer. Nay, not suffer in silence, since we still have the freedom to speak out about our beliefs and feelings in this nation. At least we are not like Russia, where standing in a public place with a blank piece of poster board can get you trundled into the 21^st century Russian version of a paddy wagon, likely your first stop on the way to a gulag. We can and should celebrate the rights we still have, before the wanna be autocrats decide to remove the uncomfortable nature of dissent from our nation’s shores.

Feeling Stronger Every Day

March 8, 2022March 8, 2022 evenabrokenclock102 Comments

It used to be they had you count backwards from, say, 100. You might have made it down to 93 before you found yourself waking up feeling fuzzy. This time they dispensed with that nicety. I had the bright lights of the surgical suite at 8 in the morning, and the sense of being inside of some high-tech enclosure, then I found myself waking up feeling fuzzy. My experience with knee replacement surgery may have been typical. I see that it is the most common surgical procedure in the US. Still, it is a little startling in that I was moved up to a room and was assigned a physical therapist to guide me in a very short walk outside of the room by noon. I found that the glue used was from a chemical I used to make (methyl methacrylate), so in some small way I felt a bit of pride as I began the transition from the before times (suffering from arthritis) to the after times (feeling the bruising in my quadriceps from the tourniquet that was applied). It is amazing how debilitating such a procedure can be. I went from someone who could walk and use a leg somewhat normally, to someone dependent upon a walker in what seemed like an instant.

I was grateful when the surgeon stopped by the next morning while I was still in the hospital. There he explained I had ground down two bone spurs into tiny pebbles. I wish he had kept them for me as I have an interest in all things mineral, but if there is an opportunity with the other knee, maybe I’ll be able to grab onto a souvenir from my own body. He explained in more detail exactly what the surgery entailed, a scraping away of the damaged bone and replacement with a metal alloy glued to the bone. Then a polyethylene piece glued onto the metal, and voila! A joint expected to last the rest of my life without further complications. I hope so.

Incidentally, I found it very interesting when the woman came explaining that I was not truly an in-patient at the hospital. Instead, I was classified as an out-patient kept over for observation. Somewhere in the bowels of medical coding, I’m certain that little distinction makes a great deal of difference in the reimbursement. Since I’m now on Medicare, I don’t have much concern about the cost. We’ll get the reimbursement from Medicare, then my Medigap insurance should handle most of the rest, and this will be followed by me having to take care of the rest. Given prior experience it may be months before I send any checks to any of the providers who will show up on the bills.

Now my focus is on rehabilitation. Four weeks after the operation, I have recovered much of the range of motion I had prior to the surgery. I can swing my leg in and out of the car with ease now. Strength in the quads is also improving. Pain is still present, but I have gone to double doses of full strength aspirin and given up the opioids. The key thing is being able to sleep and not wake up at 4 AM. Of course, our nearly 18-yeatr-old cat has his own time frame in mind. He’s been my companion, and sleeps in the other twin bed in this room. He’ll not want to go back to normal where no one sleeps on the main floor, and the door to this wonderful room is closed.

The rest of the world definitely is mixed. You’ve got the battle for Ukraine going on at the same time as the first daffodils, the Lenten roses, and the crocus are all blooming outside. It’s good to be able to focus on the things around me, rather than the evil things happening half a globe away.