Sorry for the month-long break... hey, new post!

I apologize for the month-long break I seemed to have taken. There have been some small conversations that I shared with the Facebook group- but nothing really seemed like it was long enough for a whole blog post. Then, my mom passed away on Christmas night (it was almost midnight, she very nearly made it- she had promised my dad she wouldn't leave him on Christmas). Here's a blog post about that- over on my fibro blog.

So... back to the conversation today...

The Disabled Guy is watching Barrett-Jackson Auto Auction on the SPEED channel. He can- and has- watched this thing for days. Days. Not an exaggeration. Over the weekend, he watched a marathon of "NCIS" on Saturday and on Sunday, he watched one of the two seasons he got on DVD for his birthday from our daughter, Ceej. Then on Monday, he watched the all-day marathon on USA network. Yeah, three straight days of Mark Harmon and the gang. Funny, I finally can look at him without thinking: "That's Mister Shoop from Summer School..." And all it took was almost three solid days of seeing him as Special Agent Jethro Gibbs.

The Barrett-Jackson Auction.

DG: "You know what the bad thing is about this thing?"

Me: "That in this economy, people are laying tens of thousands of dollars on a car they won't drive?"

DG: "No, they can't drive them. They're show cars."

Me: "That's what I said, they won't drive them."

There was a pause. I don't know if he was merely eating or if he was pondering that I had said what he said or just staring at the shiny cars on the TV. Then he said, "You know, the bad thing about this is that I coulda bought some of those cars in the 70s."

Me: [trying not to spawn a debate of how things were better in the old days] "Okay then."

DG: "Really. I coulda bought some of these cars back when I was a teenager in the 70s."

Me: "Uh, you weren't a teenager in the 70s."

DG: [slight pause] "Okay then, the 80s."

And that's where it ended. I tried to get him to see the alternate life of this imaginary classic car that he'd buy as a teen in the mid-80s. We got married at the end of 1986. We had our first child in 1989 (subsequent kids in 1992 and 1993). Even if the imaginary car had a backseat, we would have eventually had to upgrade to something with four-doors. Oh, DG's imaginary car was not a four-door. That's not cool.

In 1994, one week from our youngest's first birthday, I had a car accident. A woman ran a red light and slammed into our car. I was alone, having left the kids home with DG. I had to take the dog to the vet that morning, so he took the morning off work and when the vet didn't take very long, he told me just to go to the store without the kids, he'd stay home (meaning he'd nap on the sofa while they were napping in their rooms). I was on my way back from the grocery store in our 1989 Dodge Spirit when the lady ran that red light. Car was totaled. She not only destroyed the body, she broke the front axle and bent the frame. What was she driving? A little white Toyota. Yeah. Totaled.

Now that I think about it, had I been in a classic car from the early 70s that had been lovingly restored in the middle 80s by a teen-aged boy, I might have gone unhurt. Cars were made of metal back then.

When I said that thought out loud, DG said, "SEE!? I told you!"

I don't know what he thinks he told me, but there you go.

The Pardoning of Mittens the Rat

First of all, DG changed the rat's name from "Cibo" to Mittens. And here is why...

This morning, he was playing with the rat and talking to it and all and I made a comment about how it would be difficult to find Nike shoes small enough for a rat's feet. They have tiny feet.

DG informed me: "They only wear shoes on their back feet."

Me: "What do they wear on their front feet?"

Without any sarcasm or humor, he said: "Well, mittens, of course."

So there you go. And now you know where the name "Mittens" came from.

During that conversation, he revealed that he gave the rat a pardon. The poor rat has been pardoned from a death sentence of Consumption by Snake. And in telling us about "The Pardon", he made a hand gesture. You may remember, a while ago, he also told us about The Shun. And the hand gesture that goes with "The Pardon" is palm up, hand open, and a downward motion from the elbow- sort of like you've said: "Ta-dah!"

Mittens the Rat has gotten The Pardon from the Disabled Guy.

Ta-dah!

Aww, rats! Er, I mean, Rat!

Our son has a pet snake. A really big pet snake. He named him "Raizo" and he's a ball python. I wasn't too thrilled about him getting a snake. He's had many different kinds of lizards, so it isn't like he doesn't know what he's doing. He stays in his cage- the snake, that is- and he hasn't eaten any family members yet, so its all good for now.

For some reason, the snake hasn't been eating lately. It eats live rats. I feel bad about that- and I know, circle of life and all- but till now, the live items being eaten by critters in this house have been crickets and pinkie mice (which are newborn mice viciously taken from their mothers to be used as food! What the hell!). But, Raizo the python eats rats. Live, sentient, furry, and somewhat cute rats. I asked Jase how a feeder rat differs from a pet rat and turns out, that's just luck of the draw for the rat. Lucky rat goes in the display cage for someone to buy as a pet, not-so-lucky rat wishes he had little Nike shoes so he could escape.

When Raizo doesn't eat the rat, Jase puts it into the old gerbil cage in the girls' room. They both live away from home now- Ceej in the dorm at college and Kat has an apartment with her boyfriend- so having a random rat for a day or two isn't such a hassle. Except we've had this rat now for almost two months. Jase has offered it up to Raizo once a week for several weeks. What a hellish existence that must be, don't you think?

DG has been going into the room and talking to the rat and making sure it has food and water. The other day, he decided to clean the cage and in the process of getting the right bedding (Aspen, not cedar), he decided to put it in a bigger cage so it would have more room. It went from a smallish, ten-gallon-sized cage to a twenty-gallon-long with a mesh top and lots of room. There are toys in there for it to play with and the water bottle is now "properly" hung on the side. It took him hours to get this whole thing set up for the rat. He talked to it almost the whole time. He pets it. He hands it treats and it takes them from him. Its a very friendly rat.

So it looks like we have a pet rat now. (Jase has had pet rats before) I asked DG what he was going to name it and he said he couldn't name it or he'd get attached to it. I told him: "You're already attached to it! You just spent more time setting up its home than you ever did getting your cats ready for anything!"

We named it "Cibo" (chee-boh). According to Google Translate, Cibo is Italian for "Food". Cibo's cage has been moved to a part of the house where it will get to interact with humans more often. And I can hear DG when he goes upstairs and walks past the cage. He talks to the rat.

This morning, I said, "Did you notice how small the rat's feet are? Where in the world can it find little Nike shoes that small?"

DG looked at me with squinted eyes. "What?"

I said, "Duh? Rats with the Little Nike Shoes? You know the story."

DG: "Ohhh, yeah. You should go tell the rat that story."

Me: "Shouldn't the rat already know it? Its a rat."

DG: "Yeah, but they still like to hear the story!"

Here is a terrible mobile phone photo of Cibo.

And, because I mentioned him, here is a photo of Raizo.

We've covered this before- The Brain Damage

Part of a stroke is the brain damage- I mean, that's what a stroke is, basically. In DG's case, a blood clot got through the filtering systems of the body (the lungs, the heart) and made its way to his brain and killed many, many brain cells. This, of course, rendered him disabled and if we fast-forward, here we are, on this blog, talking about the Disabled Guy.

Edited to add: This sounds awful, as if I'm being mean to him. But, we were laughing through the whole thing. And the expressions he was making were not one of anguish or anger. He was laughing with me and our son. Like I've said before, if the Disabled Guy isn't laughing, he doesn't realize it and I don't share it. I only share what he's aware of and he knows what I say before I post it.

I'm not even sure, now, how we got on the topic of disability again. I mean, obviously, the topic is always right here- in the room, wherever DG is, but this particular day, I don't recall what led us to discussing the speech and communication disorders DG has and that led him to say: "I'm not disassem- dissss-asssembl- disabsembled. I'm not neither!"

Me: "You're not disabled?"

DG: "No. I'm not."

Me: "Clap."

DG, eyes narrowed: "I don't want to."

Me: "Then say- Rubber baby buggy bumpers."

DG: "What?!"

Me: "Rubber baby buggy bumpers." *no response* "Tikki Tikki Tembo No Sa Rembo Chari Bari Ruchi Pip Peri Pembo."

DG: "What the hell are you saying?"

Me: "Tongue-twisters. Except for the second one, that's a name in a book I read as a kid."

DG: "I can say that, I just choose not to."

Me: "I slit a sheet, a sheet I slit, upon a slitted sheet I sit."

DG: "I.... I sheet- No, I didn't. I what now?"

I repeated it. Slower. I also repeated "rubber baby buggy bumpers", slower. And DG stumbled along, trying to say them. I gotta give him credit, he tried. And then, he asked me to say it again. So I did. Along with "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."

Jase looked at me and said, "I can't even say that!"

I repeated them again, in rapid succession. DG looked at me, his eyes narrowed, his mouth opened slightly, like he was going to repeat them and he said in a hushed tone: "Shut up."

Another edit- here's the video I did of myself saying the tongue-twisters after a comment on the Facebook group. Enjoy!

I would like to say this is "adult-themed", but in the end, it so clearly isn't...

The other day, I finally got around to the much-needed washing of our curtains. They've needed it for months, but on my list of things to do, taking down and washing and putting them all back up was never at the top, so I just kept forgetting. But the other day, I finally did it.

We don't have proper "curtains". We have lace sheers hanging in the living room and just valances in the dining room and kitchen. That's because everywhere but the kitchen, we have mini-blinds. They came with the house. We should probably get new ones... because I really don't want to clean those.

Since the whole "TV cabinet blocking the window" incident, I saw no reason- no easy way either- to rehang the lace thing on that window. So, I put it on the window on the stairway landing. We had lace curtains with an attached valance with matching drawback... uh, thingies. Those were originally the outside curtains on the shower we had in our house in Georgia.

So, I put the single panel lace curtain on the window on the landing. Then I took one of those fabric drawback thingies and pulled it to one side, because the cats like sitting on the windowsill. While I was doing that, I was adjusting it and pulling on it to make it hang in a drape-y, swoop-y way.

DG asked what I was doing. So I told him that I was "making it sexy".

DG: "Why do you want to do that?"

Me: "I don't want to, but c'mon, its lace, don't you think its sexy pulled to one side like that?"

DG: "You're going to make all the other windows jealous!"

Me: "Why? They're wearing the same outfit!"

DG: "Oh, now they're embarrassed!"

Later, and I mean much later. Like hours later, Jase was walking back up the stairs and in a flat and completely serious voice, DG asked, "Hey, do you think that window is sexy?"

Jase hadn't heard our earlier conversation and yet, he replied, "It is, Dad. Quite. But I don't want to make the other windows jealous by dating just this one."

More time passes. Not a lot of time, but enough for all of us to stop talking about the window. I said, "I need to get a photo for the blog."

DG gasped: "Don't do that! It'll embarrass the window!"

Me: "How will it embarrass the window?"

DG, making a scoffing noise: "Because it doesn't want to find the photo on the internet! How embarrassed would you be if you found a photo of yourself all sexy wearing lace on the internet!?"

Me: "How is the window going to get on the internet?"

DG: "It can see the internet through the windows next door!"

Me: "You don't even know if our neighbor has internet access."

DG: "Our window is showing all her stuff to the world!"

Me: "Our window is a girl?"

DG: "You didn't know? Psssh, man..." and he shook his head.

Last night, I got busy and forgot that I had to write this blog post. I said that, after I shut down my computer and he laughed at me with a loud, mocking laugh. "Now you can't post it!" followed with some "nyeah" sounds.

Me: "I'll just post it tomorrow."

DG: "You can't! It won't be the same!"

You'll notice that there isn't a photo of the sexy window. That's because I didn't want to embarrass her by showing everyone how she wears her lace. You can thank the Disabled Guy for protecting our window's virtue.

ARE YOU VACCINATED!?

Against cooties, duh.

First, before I dive right into the conversation about cooties and "the shot", I want to apologize for going over a month without any kind of update. You see, DG has been just as verbose as usual, but he's been sharing it in short snippets. And if the conversation is only a few lines, I don't feel that it warrants an entire blog post. But, I share the short ones on the Facebook group wall. You see, back when I started that page, it was a "like" or "join now" thing. But FB has changed the way they do groups and you can't just simply "join", you have to request to join then be approved. But, the Official Conversations with the Disabled Guy Group is open and anyone can add anyone else. Even non-admins.

Now, onto the cooties conversation.

As you may know- or not know, I'm not sure how much I've shared- Shawn is visiting again. You might remember Shawn from such blog posts as AUS-SOME! (Yeah, I just said that) and Patty is a Double-NASCAR Widow Today. He's been taking it easy, watching A LOT of movies and TV that he doesn't watch at home because he has a job and let's face it, he's also a gamer. Shockingly enough, he hasn't joined the boy (that'd be the almost-20 year old who lives here and pretends to be my son, but I don't see how that's possible since I'm far too young to have a 20-year-old son or even a 22-year-old daughter who lives in another town with a live-in boyfriend or even that 18-year-old college freshman. What? I am. I swear).

Well, I don't know why, but Shawn decided to leave the TV on the channel showing a marathon of "NCIS". I had it on when I was alone in the room because if I turn off the TV (or radio, whatever electronic noise-maker happens to be on), the dogs can hear and then react loudly to every single outside noise. And by "react loudly", I mean they bark their fool heads off. And they'd have woken up Shawn, who was taking a nap. Hey, vacations are tough, man.

So, in this episode of "NCIS", some dude is talking to Mark Harmon's character while they're in the basement of his house. Harmon tells the guy that there's a bottle of bourbon on his workbench and proceeds to take the only available cup. "Hey, I drink out of my coffee cup, you go upstairs and get a glass... or drink out of the bottle."

DG said, quietly and calmly: "Oh, he's got the cooties now."

Me: "The cooties? Really?"

DG (again, quietly): "Yeah."

Me: "You don't think the bourbon in the bottle will kill any remaining cooties?"

DG: "No."

Me: "What do you think he needs to stave off the cooties?"

DG: "A shot."

This whole time, his voice is quiet and calm, as if he's giving a testimony in a boring court case.

Me: "A cootie shot. When's the last time you had a cootie shot? Were you what? Twelve?"

DG: "No. I was... six. Maybe I was seven. But I had one."

Me: "Well, you're long overdue for another. I don't think they last forever."

DG: "They might."

Me: "You have three kids, I think your cootie shot failed."

DG: "Accidents. All of them."

Me: "You had accidents with your cootie shot?"

DG: "Because of the cootie shot."

Me: "Really? So, what you're saying is that a cootie shot is essentially useless because you're still going to get cootied-up by a girl?"

DG: "Yeah."

A couple of episodes later, someone got touched by one of the female characters. Out of the blue, DG said- calmly and quietly- "Oh, he's got the cooties now."

So, ARE YOU VACCINATED? HAVE YOU HAD A COOTIE SHOT LATELY?

You'll have to forgive me while I get serious a little.

One of my friends on Facebook- and I count this person as a real friend because we've met in real life then "friended" on Facebook- posted this video of Jill Bolte Taylor. The summary of the video is this: "Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions -- motion, speech, self-awareness -- shut down one by one. An astonishing story."

Its about 19ish minutes long, but it is well worth watching. I ended up crying more than once- because I was pissed off at her for making it sound so wonderful and because some of what she said is so true, even for Jerry now. Yes, yes, I know I usually call him the Disabled Guy, but up till that day in 1995, he was Jerry and that's what I'm going to call him right now.

Jerry didn't have any kind of enlightenment or any kind of amazing recovery. He doesn't remember our kids' births. He only knows we're married because he's seen the photos but doesn't remember our wedding, and has very little memory from the few months leading up to the stroke itself and doesn't even remember the two weeks he spent in the ICU in the hospital in Maryland (we lived in Georgia, after the Army, he became an over-the-road trucker).

The only reason I know what happened to him when he had the stroke was because I had to go to the company where he was when he had it to unload his personal belongings from his semi-truck. The guy who was with him told me that they were unloading the trailer together, talking about normal, every day stuff when Jerry staggered, dropped the box he was holding and started to fall. And this guy- who had just met him an hour or two before- caught him and kept him from hitting the metal floor of the trailer. They thought he was maybe diabetic or even a drug addict, they didn't know. And I got a call from the trucking company that no wife ever wants to get. (believe me, when I met that man and spoke with him, I thanked him. By catching him, he saved Jerry from further and serious injury).

I made the trip from Savannah, Georgia to a suburb of DC called Laurel, Maryland in two hours less time than the trucking company told me it would take. When we got there, he was in and out of consciousness, unable to talk, unable to express himself, and he looked absolutely shocked every time I walked into the room.

He has no memory of any of this. He doesn’t remember unloading that truck, he doesn’t remember collapsing or even having that big guy with the weight belt catch him. He doesn’t remember the doctors asking him questions that he obviously could not answer. All he knew was that they needed to call me and I needed to be there. Except he didn’t know he was nine hours away from where we lived at the time and he didn’t know that they HAD called me or that I’d stopped twice along the way to call them and get an update (this was in the day before everyone had a cell phone).

I’ve already shared with you the very first conversation we had. And I always try to keep this blog light and funny, because some of the stuff he does say is quite funny. But there was nothing he could do about what happened to him. And there’s nothing he can tell me about what happened to him. All we know is that he had a plain, old-fashioned stroke that should have killed him. But it didn’t. He didn’t have any sense of euphoria. All he can remember from that time is fear. And during his recovery, all he can remember is frustration. In that video, Jill Bolte Taylor talks about all the noise and not being able to pick one voice out of all of it. That’s how it still is for him. Too much noise, too many people, and he cannot discern one from another. So, mostly he doesn’t listen. And that's why he'll never go to a ren faire with me and meet my friends. That's why he never went to a parent/teacher conference for the entire time our kids were in school. Too much activity and noise frustrates him and he doesn't enjoy it. He doesn't outwardly show his dislike, he saves it up and then acts out at home like a spoiled child.

He isn’t ever going to recover. This is it. He’s paralyzed on his right side and he’s got speech and communication problems that will never go away. The blood clot wasn’t just pressing on his brain; it destroyed that part of it. He had to re-learn how to walk and talk and feed and dress himself.

Interestingly, Jill Bolte Taylor says it took her about eight years to recover fully. I think it took eight years for him to figure out he could still work with wood. I don’t remember exactly when he started building things again, but I do remember that I was both relieved and tense. Relieved that he found something to do that would occupy him, but tense in that he was working with power tools and is on blood thinners.

And as you all know, he can do amazing things with wood. Linky-link to photos. And another, and there's the deck he built.

Just now, while I was getting the links for his woodworking photos, he just got all goofy about the theatrical trailer for "Star Trek IV, the Voyage Home" (you know, the one with the whales). "Oh, that's AWESOME! I can't wait till it comes out in theaters! Whew!" and then he laughed so hard he had to sit down. Now he's walking around in the kitchen, "I can't believe it. That movie is gonna be so awesome! Just awesome, man!" and then giggling. He walked by me just now with a bag of fun-size candy bars. "I'm gonna go watch 'Star Trek' and go through some Milky Ways!"

I told him he's not allowed to talk to me anymore today. Then he giggled again.

So yeah, I don't think I'll have him watch the video today. He's in a good mood right now and I don't need to dredge up those feelings of frustrations he gets when he's reminded of what he's lost. Instead, I'll let him sit in the living room, covered in Chis (say it out loud), and watch his nerd movies while eating candy.