Meniers Disease, Change and The Coming Apocalypse

A lot of times it feels like I’m going nuts.  It’s nothing definite, just a feeling I have.

I’m not alone in thinking that, because the people I work around and interact with all think I’m going nuts too.

The reason I think I’m going crazy is because of Menieres disease.  I’ve got it…..or at least that’s what the ENT guy said, but he wouldn’t give a 100% certainty rating.  

Doctors rarely ever do.  Anytime there’s even the slightest doubt, they always seem to prevaricate, or provide a few caveats.

“Well Mr. Gaunt, it looks almost certain that you have Menieres disease.  I can’t be 100% certain, but I’m about 99% sure.  We could run a few more tests at several thousand dollars a pop, or……”

I usually opt for the “or” part and avoid paying scads more money out of pocket for that extra 1% certainty.  Either way, I know I’ve got crazy ringing/roaring in my ears, occasional episodes of vertigo and rare (so far) bouts of nausea.  I’m 100% sure of that, no further testing necessary.

I could do drugs to (supposedly) limit the symptoms, but……nah.  Not yet, let’s see how things go; if it gets worse than…..maybe.  Of course, if the constant ringing “feedback” I have finally does drive me completely crazy, I may not need the meds anyway.

If I was really fed up, I could change my eating habits, and cut out salt too.  Supposedly that helps.  But I hate changing things.  I’m not real good with change.  In fact, change for change’s sake sucks…..or could suck.

Change could also be okay, but more than likely it’s going to suck, at least for someone…..probably me.

Did I say I don’t like change?  I don’t like change.  It’s not that I am boring (okay, I probably am), but I just like things to be where, when, how, I want them and expect them to be.  Like this morning.

This morning I stopped at my usual morning coffee pit stop; the local QT convenience store, and ran face first into some change.

The first problem was that someone had parked in MY parking spot.  The audacity!  I mean, I don’t have a sign, but since I stop there EVERY Monday – Friday at about the SAME time each morning, then everyone should know that it’s MY spot right?  Easy in, easy out.  That’s one reason I chose it, and now some assface was using it.

Grumbling about the rudeness of it all (and it was even an ugly stupid car) I walked inside to get my joe.

When I reached for a 20oz. cup from the dispenser, the colors were wrong.  The middle cup (16oz, 20oz. 24oz.) was some weird, different shade of tangerine or something.  For a second I thought they had loaded the wrong cups in the middle dispenser but no, it was a new cup.

A thick, styro-fucking-foam cup.

The old ones were Styrofoam too, but they were thin, and had nice dimples on the bottom that felt right holding it while I drank.  These were big, fat, ugly cups with the the QT label wrapped around them and no cute dimples.

Unnecessary change.  Aaaarrrrgh!!

So I try to do my coffee routine, except it isn’t routine now.  Now I have to find a new mark on the cup to judge my sugar pouring by.  You see, I also used the little dimples on the old cup to make sure my sugar input was accurate and consistent every day.  It’s going to take a few trial and error attempts to get the right amount of sugar.  I don’t like trial and error either.

After dispensing the cream / flavor shit from the automatic machines (which never work right) I stirred with the new thicker straws they had changed out a couple months back and grabbed a lid.  Wrong size.  The old lids don’t work with the new styro-fucking-foam cups so now I have to use a different lid.

Sheesh!

Well, at least the lids seem to be a design improvement over the old ones.  They have the little flip over tab to close up the sippy hole.  For a chronic spill-fool like me, closing the sippy hole is always a good idea if you aren’t actively drinking.  So you see, some change is okay, but the lousy usually outweighs the good.  And all change upsets my routine.

The reason I like routine is that I can let my mind wander to pleasant thoughts while I go through the motions of living.  I probably look like a mouth-breather while I mentally wander, but I don’t care, it’s my happy time inside my head.  But change?.....change makes me think of strange things.

I start reminiscing about childhood, bad parenting, grade school failure, disastrous relationships and shit like that.

Which then makes me realize that I’m getting older, and if the apocalypse is going to come, it had better get here soon or I won’t have the energy, strength, or…….whatever…… left over to kick ass and kill zombies.

Because kicking ass and killing zombies is what the apocalypse is all about right?

I think the apocalypse will happen when a huge asteroid or comet impact (remember Shoemaker-Levy 9?) causes an almost extinction level event and brings in alien viruses from outer space.  We’ll all die eventually, but in the meantime there will be plenty of ass kicking and zombie killing to do.

If it’s going to happen, I hope it does before I need to use a walker and hearing aid.  No one can kill zombies if they have to hold on to a walker and can’t hear ‘em coming.  Have you ever seen a hero in a zombie flick that scootches around using a walker?  I haven’t, and judging from the rate of deterioration I feel like is happening with my body, I’ve got a couple years left before I am just zombie food.

Which brings up this thought; apocalypse happens to every person at some point.  Whether it’s death dealing cancer, heart attack, bear mauling, garbage truck smack down, or being eaten by sharks, everyone suffers their own personal apocalypse at some point eh?

Usually it’s totally unexpected, and often happens when the person is old and decrepit.  

Maybe that’s why zombie apocalypse stuff appeals to people because you can see it coming.  That gives you the opportunity to scream a lot and kill the undead in the process, but eventually you’ll be zombie food, or worm food, or something.

I’m okay with that, I’ll be crazy by then anyway; wandering around, listening to the loud ringing in my ears, mouth-breathing and grumbling about how things have changed so damn much.

Task "A:" Every Ten Years (or so)

Every spring, something makes me decide, against all better judgment to do some yard work.  

Mount Leaverest

There are two times of year when I have that urge, autumn, and spring.  Usually I resist the urge until it goes away. 

Occasionally I succumb and do something stupid like prune bushes or try to fertilize stuff.  It never ends well and I usually only succeed in spending money in a totally unnoticeable way.

This year, the weather started warming up and on a particularly beguiling Saturday morning I decided to clean out the accretion of leaves from the azalea beds.  

Not being a complete bone head, I stopped to evaluate my mental health, and assess the amount of work needed to complete the task. All this preparation prior to even putting on my work clothes.  I was going to KILL awesomeness today!!!

It seemed like a simple enough task; rake out the old leaves from under and around the azaleas, and spread some fertilizer.

Simple enough.

I glanced at the sun beginning its climb up the eastern slope of the sky, and smiled to myself.  With some enthusiasm, I could be finished by mid-afternoon, and have the rest of the glorious day to waste any way I wanted to.

This is the kind of thought I usually have right before some Armageddon like event.

It’s like when I go to the auto parts store to inquire about the likelihood that I can do some sort of Zen level repair.  The guy behind the counter that was born with a torque wrench in his hand says, “Sure! It’s easy!  All you gotta do is…..” 

Then he proceeds to tell me three easy steps to a new engine and I get all excited, jumping up and down and yell, “SOLD!”

Twelve hours later, after suffering defeat after humiliating defeat at the hands of an alternator, I’m convinced cars were built for the sole purpose of destroying my sense of manhood.

Anyway, that’s cars and this is just a bunch of leaves so……

A quick trip to the shed and I secured everything I needed. Or I would have if I had actually been able to make a quick trip to the shed and secure everything I needed. I can't do quick trips; my quick trips are punctuated with long, frustrating interludes.

I’m one of those people who can’t simply accomplish task “A.”  Task “A” usually requires that I finish task “M” which was started a month ago and never actually completed.  Task “M” didn’t get done because it required that task “F” be fixed again.  Task “F” was never properly accomplished the first time because while doing task “Q” I used the wrong part/chemical/bolt/beer. The subsequent effect was that task “X” (which task “F” relied upon) never actually got finished………. leaving all dependent tasks deficient.

By the time I get the backlog of tasks updated, I’ve often forgotten what the original task was that I was setting out to do. It’s okay though, the next time I try a new task, I’ll be reminded what I've forgotten to do and I can get it done then.  This is a messy system but effective given enough time.

But I digress as usual.

After repairing the shed door, setting a mouse trap, sharpening the pruning shears, rearranging paint cans, and washing the dog, I finally pulled out the rake, ground sheet and other miscellaneous tools and set to work.

A quick glance over my shoulder told me that the sun had somehow managed to get from the east to the west without ever once warning me the day was slipping away.  Stupid sun!  Of course, that realization made me also realize I had missed lunch.

Well, no time like the present to tuck into a good sandwich.

An hour later, after loading the dishwasher, putting in a load of laundry, and gobbling a banana while remembering I had failed to get sandwich fixin's the last time I was at the store, I was back outside to “get this bitch knocked out!”  I attacked the job of raking out the azalea beds (a loose euphemism for scads of azaleas gone wild)  with gusto.  

Later that “gusto” would become desperation punctuated with bursts of maniacal laughter, but for now I still had some positive enthusiasm.

One thing I failed to take into account before embarking on this ridiculous yard work project, was that I had never actually done it before; at least not in the last ten years or so.  The “build-up” of leaves was so deep, it would have taken a track hoe half a day to dig down to the bottom.  

By the time I had excavated down to the level of the early Pleistocene epoch, the sun was low in the sky and all I had managed to do was create several piles of moldering leaves large enough to be spotted from the ISS.

Obviously the neighbors must have been using my azalea beds to dump their own leaves.  They must have carted loads of them in bag by bag over the years at night while I slept.  Funny I had never caught the scoundrels doing this heinous deed, but clearly there had been mischief afoot.

Now I had raked them all back out in a slightly scaled down version of the Himalayas sculpted from organic material.  It was going to take more than a little while to rake all these mountainous piles onto a ground sheet and cart them across the back-forty to dump them in the woods.  A task I didn’t relish doing another day, but light was fading almost as quickly as my will to continue.

For one brief, mad moment, I considered bringing out lights and working into the darkness.  If I could just make a hard push, and get it done…….. but pain, hunger, depression, and thirst drove me indoors for the night.

The next day, Sunday, dawned even brighter and more glorious than the day before.  Of course that was merely Mother Earth's way of mocking me, because she knew I had an assload of work to do and wouldn’t actually be able to enjoy such a gorgeous day.

Determined not to let incomplete task “W” side track me, I gulped a quick cup of coffee, downed a banana (while making a mental note to PLEASE remember to get some damn sandwich fixin’s soon) and headed out the door with substantially less good will than the day before.

To make a longer story long, I spent the entire day spreading the ground sheet, raking moldy leaves onto it, half-carrying-half-dragging load upon load (each load the approximate size of an adolescent elephant) across the yard and dumping it in a spot near the edge of the woods.  During that entire time, my dog Tinker spent her day alternating between galloping through the piles of leaves, lying in the sun / shade, or romping about.  The whole time she kept eyeing me with that “stupid human” look and telepathically suggesting we give up this madness and head to the park instead.

I had reached an out of body state by that time and could not be dissuaded.

By the end of day, with all the repetition (the mind numbing, back breaking repetition) of raking, cussing, grabbing, dragging, cussing, dumping, raking, dragging, cussing, etc…, I had gotten pretty efficient at moving the mountainous piles.  Such was my efficiency that before the sun had crashed on the second day, I had transported everything overland and had created one humongous pile of leaves. A mound of organic material substantial enough to eventually become a new feature on Google Earth.

Even though I had totally wasted one of Mother Nature’s best weekends on record, I had to admit that with all the fun stuff I could have been doing instead of cleaning out the azalea beds, nothing would have been nearly as satisfying.  At least that’s the lie I will keep telling myself in the hopes that one day I might believe it.

On the other hand, with all the experience I gained, it’s good to know that things should go far more quickly and efficiently the next time I have to do this……say in ten years or so.