Snippets

I have been extremely tired over the last few days and not felt like writing.  I have thought of some things that are not necessarily good topics for post but none the less are thought provoking.  Here they are:

Being the youngest in the family means you don't have a younger sibling to boss around but instead all of your siblings can boss you around.

Are the pains that I feel just normal every day pain or are they related to ALS.

Families are fragile and need super-gluing.

I tried to stay hidden, even more so now.

When I write notes to people because I cannot be understood, why do they feel the need to open their eyes wider and talk louder?

I cannot yell for some one on my Arkansas Hillbilly iPad when they are in another room.  Yeah, you got to think about that one for a while.  Wait, it will come to you.

I some times miss my dogs more than my extended family.  No, I am not going to name names.

My last words are going to be, "Don't forget the Gold is hidden at........................"

There are few things that I really want to do that I have not done, but then again there's...........

It is okay to just be.

I sound like a donkey when I laugh.

People who are asses have less control over me now than ever before.

I need and love my crazy friends.  

Don't try and save money by buying off brand ice cream.

Walking away is not always the best answer.

Tin cans with a string between may be a better piece of technology than cell phones.

Road trip anyone?

I'll bring the sardines and crackers, if you'll bring the beer.

Hope you keep thinking up crazy scenarios and things from everyday life that you can go 'huh' at.  Share them occasionally and watch peoples' faces when they hear your crazy ideas.  They will either see the humor or they will be trying to remember the hot line number for the nice young men in their little white coats..............

Until next time.....................

Of Broken Bones and the Future

I once saw a cartoon of two cavemen.  One had a slab of rock and a stylus in his hand, and was addressing the other caveman, who is obviously in some kind of distress.  The dialog went something like this, "I am sorry but medical science just doesn't know that much about broken bones."

Well I can safely say that has changed.

My Angel and I are sitting in a hospital room tonight.  More accurately she is laying down and I am sitting in a chair next to her.  She had her right knee replaced this morning and has done remarkably well with the pain.  She can even bend it in an almost normal range.  Which is a good thing.

The bad thing is she will be in pain tomorrow or whenever the pain meds wear off, and then the fun will begin.  We have been through this once before and we know some what to expect, but then again it has been three years.  Things change in that amount of time.  Medicine has changed tremendously in that time.

There is still a lot we do not know.  There is still a lot to discover.  In twenty, thirty years we will know more.  We may be able to cure diseases we have not even heard of yet.  And yet we may have no further progress on age old problems that we still cannot understand.  Like ALS.

We can hope.  We can work for a cure.  Will we cure ALS?  I have no idea.  What I can say is it will too late for thousands perhaps millions of people.  Maybe too late for me.  I don't know.

What I do know, at this point in time, is that my Angel is out of pain, her knees will out last her, and I can take care of her until she gets better and then she will be able to take care of me.

Of course she knows she does that now.

She just lets me think I take care of her.

Until next time......................

A Miracle

Thirty-two years ago today a miracle happened.

No it was not covered on the news.  It did not make the back page of the newspaper.  No alert was issued.  Nevertheless it happened.  A beautiful baby girl was born.

All through the time that my wife was pregnant with her, she would get upset with me if I tried to hug her Mother.  She would squirm and push and kick and I am sure if she could have screamed she would have.  She absolutely did not like me and she made it perfectly plain that she was her Mama's girl.

We were so sure she was going to be a boy that we did not even have a girl's name picked out.  Michael Ryan was to be her name.  One of my flight school buddies asked what was going to happen when she turned out to be a girl.  I quite flippantly said we would name her Ryan Michelle.  When she was born and not even wrapped up yet, my wife looked up at me with tears in her eyes and asked' "What are we going to do?"  I looked at her and them at our baby and said, "Welcome to the world Ryan Michelle."

Over the years we have had our problems as any two mule stubborn people could have.  We, I am happy to say, have overcome most all of our problems.  One we have not overcome is her wanting to be between her Mother and I when we hug.  Oh she does not do that any more, but she passed that characteristic on to her youngest.  Quite unexpected the first time she did but it brought back very great memories.

Ryan has grown up to be a very intelligent woman who cares for the truth in matters and searches for that in her life.  A person of keen insight and charm.  Information driven and researcher of facts. Passionate in beliefs.  Defender of family, even of the adopted ones.  A hard and conscientious worker.  A sparkling personality with the biggest heart in any body around.  She is in short a wonderful human being and one that I am proud to call my daughter.  And she has come to love me.

Happy birthday my baby girl.  I love you and always will!

Yep, a miracle happened and I got to see it happen.


Until next time........................

Good-bye To An Old Friend

I said good bye to an old friend today.

The first time I saw this friend it was behind my Dad's bedroom door.  Not exactly hiding.  He was hidden.  No Dad was not holding some one captured.  This friend was made of wood and steal.  It was a Remington Modal 32, Single Shot, Bolt Action .22 chambered for short, longs, and long rifles.

He was old when I met him, Dad having bought him back in 1940 from an old wino for $14.  There were dents, scratches, dings, and character all over the stock.  Smooth wood darkened by time and hands of four brothers.  I think that the rifle was the first firearm any of us ever fired.  I know it was in my case.  I can't speak for my brothers for I was the last of the four and was not there for their first shot.

It served all of us well.  Dad used it for varmint control around the chicken house.  Skunks, opossums, raccoons, snakes, snapping turtles, bullfrogs, and at least one fox.  Birds and squirrels aplenty.  In fact my first ever squirrel was taken with that rifle.  A ground squirrel.  Commonly known as a Chipmunk.  Yeah, I killed Alvin.  Well not really.  I guess you  could say a distant cousin of his.

Getting back to the point.  I would carry that rifle to the woods and have grand adventures chasing away pirates and rooting out Indians from their hiding places.  Mostly it was there so that I could feel closer to my brothers when they were all gone from the house, away at college, or in a place called Viet Nam.

Years later, when my parents started getting older and somewhat feebler, I took the rifle home with me from my Dad's house.  It was covered in a thin film of rust over all of the metal parts.  The ammo he had for it was, well lets just say I was nervous picking it up as I didn't know if it was stable or not.  Have you ever seen rust on lead?  I took the rifle home and cleaned it for the first time in a very long time.  The rust coming off, the wood cleaned up, parts cleaned and oiled, seem to breath life into an inanimate object.  It seemed to know that some one was caring for it one more time.

It took me a long time to bring myself to shoot it again.  A couple of years as a matter of fact.  When I did it still had the same old magic.  The sights settled, the firing pin dropped, the bullet fired and on target, just like it had been all those times long ago out in the pasture behind the house.  Over the last few years I have looked at it on a daily basis and remembered.  It had become a touch stone to my past, one that I will miss, even as I know it is the right thing that I do now.

Today I gave him another good cleaning.  The last that I will give him.  With all that is going on with me, I decided, with the help of my brothers, to put it in my oldest brother's care for now to be passed on to his son, when it is time, and to his son when that time comes.  I also left a note with it.  Not a long one and not eloquent because I was too emotional to make too much sense I am afraid, but none the less a short note about the rifle that I hope will be added too by my brothers, to be kept with the rifle so when, in a generation or two, when another Crownover male comes into possession of it, he will know of the generations leading to him and how the rifle shaped us, taught us, and helped mold us into the men that we are and were.

Good bye my friend.  You have a lot of teaching left to do.  Do it well.

Don't Forget That Cats Can Climb Trees Too

While doing dishes this morning, I looked out of the window and saw a black cat that hangs around in the neighborhood hunkered down and looking at something.  Just on the other side of the tree from where the cat was a young squirrel was gathering nuts.  The predictable happened, the cat pounced the squirrel got away up a different tree than what was closer to both of them.  At the time I thought two things, why climb a tree 6 ft away when there was a perfectly good tree 2 feet away, and didn't the squirrel realize that cats can climb trees too?

I some times think we do the same thing in our lives. we ignore what is right in front of us for something else that is further down the road.  I have never been around a lot of people who are dying before and I am still an armature at it myself, having come close only once before myself, but I can see that some people can fall in the trap of seeing only the dying and not the living that needs to be done before the dying comes along.

The same goes for the care giver of the patient too.  Too many times our loved ones will be paralyzed, frozen in time if you will, when the doc gives the long face.  They refuse to see the potential living that can be done before the dying gets here.  Yeah, shock can do that to you as well.  It can also make you ignore the dying part and lie to you telling you there is a cure that is going to come along.  A cure administered to the patient just in time to turn around all the damage and banish the disease to never kill another person again.  After all that is what happens in the movies and on TV, so it has to be true.

You don't know how I wish that was true.

However, I am at peace with my condition and prognosis.

I have friends who are not okay nor any where near okay with it.  They have that false bravado of 'buck up ole man, we'll see you through this!'  I know they mean well.  I know they are trying to show compassion.  I know they are doing it out of what they believe you should do for people like me.

I can't speak for any one else but I would rather they ask me what I have been doing.  What new book I am reading.  Where am I going this weekend.  Acknowledge the disease.  Acknowledge the way the person looks.  Don't try and give me false hope.  Be honest and tell me you don't really know what to say.  That might get you a hug and me comforting you.  Hey I am that kind of guy.  Kinda like Olaf in "Frozen", I likes hugs.

If I had been that squirrel this morning I think I would have jumped up on the nearest tree to me.  Climbing like hell to get to a limb where I could sit and laugh at the cat down below.  I just hope the cat wouldn't suddenly realize that it can climb a tree too.

More importantly I hope that I don't forget that it can too.

Until next time.......................

In Trouble Again

I am in trouble.

For as long as I have known my beautiful bride, I have teased her about talking with her hands.  I would go as far as grabbing her hands and tell to talk, and she would not be able to do so.  She would just look at me gaping like a fish out of water.  We would eventually laugh and break the spell and I would release her hands and she would finish what she was saying before I so rudely interrupted.

Some of you remember when we were in college together, there was a class through the Speech and Drama dept. called American Sign Language  circa 1977-80.  I and several others got that class going.  I took it for as many times as I could but never really got very good at it, except for a few signs and phrases.

From a very early age my girls knew how to sign 'I love you' with one hand.  They still do that.  We still do that.  Now the grand kids all know how to do that.  I hope the great-grands will know when they come around, say in twenty years or so.  No really, 20 years kids!  NO sooner!

Now flash forward some 35 years.  I contract Bulbar onset ALS.  My voice starts to go.  Not only is it a struggle to say words they often do not come out as anything intelligible.  More of a grunt and sounding like I am yelling when I am actually not.  I just have to use a tremendous amount of force to get the words out.

Many of you have seen a pic of my "Arkansas Hillbilly iPad", which I use effectively when talking to the general public or sales people.  It is getting a little cumbersome to use around the house.  So I get this bright idea, let's learn ASL!  I bought two books on signing; one about 200 pages with a lot of basic signing in it from Hastings, and another that would rival Webster's Unabridged Dictionary in size and volume.  Let's put it this way, it should be registered as a deadly weapon!  Smack someone upside the head with it and they ain't getting their eyes uncrossed for a while.

I went through the smaller of the two books last night and highlighted words that will be most helpful to both of us.  I need to knock the rust off of my signing and my Angel, I am sure just to please me, will be practicing and using it around the house.  Even as I write this she is going through the book, seeing the illustrations, doing the signs and learning their meaning(s).  I love you my Angel and thank you for trying.

Yep I am in trouble, but I will take this trouble any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Until next time.........................

Old Barns

The barn is long gone through neglect and just being old. Dad put the roof on the barn when he was in HS in late 20's early 30's maybe 1931? He was held on the steep sections by a rope tied around his waist and anchored on the other side of the barn by several grown men.  

It was located literally on the county line between Van Buren and Conway counties at a place called Formosa, AR. The county road in front of the house was the county line. Never was 120 acres a country unto itself to dozens of grand kids running around barefooted in the summer slaying dragons and making up ghost stories to act out in the barn hay loft. Fishing in the pond with red wasp larva and catching fish each one large enough to be a record, at least to us and our grand-dad. 

Good times? Yeah you could say that.

All of our cousins have fond memories of the barn and all the bonding that took place there. I think of it often these days and wish that one more trip could be made to the loft, one more play made up through committee and acted out, one more wasp nest taken down from the rafters, one more corn cob fight, one more summer of fun.

I don't know how many "one more"s I will be able to do as the best places of my youth and memories are mostly gone now. Few landmarks remain. Those that do remain are sometimes unrecognizable because of time and changing opinions and owner's whims.

I do wish for my grands and their kids, an old barn where they can play out adventures and make memories. We all need that in our lives. A place to retreat to in our heads where good times out weighed the bad and there is comfort in remembering.

Thank you cousins for making it so for me.

Until next time............................

Update On The BB Surgery and All About Ghillie Suits

A quick update on the BB surgery.  As usual with this kid he charmed all that came his way and even gave them advise on what they needed to keep on hand for little guys getting BB's extracted out of their toes.  He came through it all great, until the toe began to wake up, then he stayed on the couch and slept, after a kid dose of the good stuff.

We got to stay and visit with the kids and daughter from Friday night through about noon today.  We had not seen them in a while and it was good to tease and play with them.  In between times I tried to sit down and work on a Ghillie suit for the upcoming hunting seasons.

If you do not know what a Ghillie suit is it originated with the game keepers, Ghillies, on the estates of Scottish noblemen.  In order to catch poachers (people who were hunting illegally on the lords estate, not some one who cooks shell less eggs in boiling water)  the Ghillies needed some way to hide in plain sight and catch the poachers red handed so to speak.  They took burlap from feed sacks and made shirts and pants out of them and then attached different lengths and colors of canvas to that frame work.  Adding just enough real plant material to it make make it blend into the background they were set.

Yeah, it may be easier to go down to the local sporting goods store and buy one already made up.  That is not the point here.  The point in me doing this is to pass it on down to the grands so that they might be able to use it, or store it, or put it on a manikin over in the corner so that they can point to it and say,  "My Papa made that to hunt in when he was sick."  If they should deem to analyze it a little further, and I hope they never do this, they might realize that when things get rough in life, and the end seems nearer than ever before, some times you need something to use to hide in plain sight.  Or it might be that they just need to keep their hands busy and minds occupied on something else for a while.

Thirty-two days 'til squirrel season.

One foot of one leg done.

Yeah I just might make it.

Until next time..................

Shooting Ourselves In The Foot

Monday my grandson will be going into surgery to have a BB extracted from his toe.  That's right I said BB.

How it got there or when I am not for sure.  All I am aware of is that it had been bothering him and when his Mamma took him the doctor they found out it was a BB.  They will make a small incision and pop it out "like a pimple" so said the doctor.

I remember in my youth of wondering what a shot from a BB gun might feel like.  So I got shot with one.  Not one of my brighter decisions.  It left a pretty good size spot on my back.  Good thing my parents never saw it.  I also shot myself in the foot.  That is right. I. Shot. Myself.  Both hurt like H E double hockey sticks!  I cannot imagine my grandson did not know when this happened.

Not sure what this has to do with ALS but it is worth noting, if nothing else but to remind us that life goes on in its maddeningly slow pace.  And mistakes are made.  Mistakes in judgement or should I say lapses in good judgement.  We all have done it.  We all will do it again.  Many reasons why that has happened and will happen again.  Some is our fault, like listening to our heart when we should listen to our experiences.  Others will be the fault of strangers and villains who want something we have and not pay for it in sweet and toil.

Unfortunately, not all problems or obstacles in life can be overcome with just a small cut in the skin and popping it out like a pimple, or, in this case, like a BB.  But we learn as my grandson will learn.

Shooting ourselves in the foot hurts.

Having BB's extracted hurts more.

Take my word for it.

Until next time......................

Quality vs Quantity

WARNING:  I will be discussing in some what graphic detail some things that ALS will have in store for me in the future.  If you wish not to know then please stop reading now.  I will also be discussing suicide for the terminally ill such as myself.  I do not intend to bring Religious beliefs into debate and discussion.  I am well aware of what the Scriptures have to say about life and the sanctify thereof.  If you choose to continue, please do so, but do not condemn nor demean me in any remarks.  This is something that I must face and something you, the reader, hopefully will never have to think about for yourself.



We went to the doctor today, but it was not for me.  My Angel will be getting a total knee replacement and her right leg straightened on the 27th of April.

I have encouraged her to get this done so that I can help her in her recovery while I still feel up to it.  I have a feeling that if she doesn't get it done now then she will put it off and suffer more later.  If she does it now then I have an excuse to spoil her more.  Truth be known I think she likes being spoiled.

We have both used this orthopedist doc before.  Her for her left knee replacement and me for my left knee meniscus tear repair.  Doc when he came in asked about me and we told him what I was going through.  He took his time to talk to both of us about what we could expect.  He also expressed that if he was terminal with any disease that he would choose to stay in control of his life until the end.  When the quality of life was no longer good, then he would choose to end the suffering.  His suffering.

Obviously I have thought about my ending and how it will be.  I know that as I progress, more and more nerves and muscles will be affected.  Pain will be a daily fact of life and will grow worse with every day.  The medicines will be less effective and more and higher doses will be required just to try and make me comfortable.  In the end I will most likely be confined to bed or wheel chair.  I will be on a respirator and oxygen.  I may or may not be aware of what is going on around me and who is with me or not with me.  Tubes will be running in and out of me, giving me fluids and draining away fluids.

Now ask yourself, is this what you would call a quality life?  And to what purpose would you want to be like this?  Why linger in a state such as that?  If there is a way, would you not want to end life with dignity?

I have discussed this with the closest persons in my life and I have a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) in place and my Medical Proxy holder knows what I want as far as quality vs quantity of life is concerned.  Do the rest of you need to know what that is?  I think not, and I will give you no hint as to my decision and instructions.  That is between us and really is no one else's business.  But this is something for you to mull over, discuss with your loved ones, and decide what is best for them and for you.

If I could, instead of the hospital scene I described above, I would drift off sitting under a tree in the squirrel woods with a limit of squirrels in my vest.

Until next time..........................

Nature's Time

Just last week I was looking out across the mountains where I live and thought how gray the trees were.  The hardwoods standing out in contrast to the pines who never loose their green.  This week, in what seemed with just the blink of an eye, there is a green haze spreading with the rapidity of a tsunami across the mountains.  This change come every Spring and with every Spring I am surprised by it.

This year it seems so much more gratifying to see the spreading of the leaves and the greening up of the hills and valleys.  I do marvel at what is an age old custom of nature. It is fascinating in its complexity.  It is marvelous in its beauty.  It is satisfying in its simplicity.

It happens each year, not on man's time, but on the time of the universe.  And each of us are subject to that time.  Man's time has nothing to do with the regulation of the seasons.  We can time things down to nanoseconds and even two shakes of a lambs tail, yes there is such a time interval of two shakes.  No matter what the calender says, no matter what the clocks of the world say the time is, Nature has her own time.  

We are each a slave to that time of nature as well.  As much as we wish to be in control of all things, time is one thing we cannot control.  What happens, happens in the fulfillment of time as controlled by the universe.  And we, we puny insignificant humans, cannot do a thing to change that.  We can't, and we shouldn't, even as much as we would like to.  For in doing so we would never grow up, never grow old and never have to mourn the passing of a loved one.  We would never know the soaring of spirit that comes with falling in love, nor the heart break of loosing that love.  We would never know the joy and the pain of being human.  For time is what makes us all who and what we are.

In a short while, as Einstein would say 'relatively speaking', I will be joining in, in the Spring time greening up.  My ashes giving nurture to a living growing tree, growing green on Nature's time.  My life having been lived on Nature's time and ended in the fulfillment of that time.  Although I am more aware than most of my time growing short, I still do not know the date and time of my dying.  That is a good thing in and of itself, because it gives me the opportunity to live fuller and do each day something that I enjoy and to do, and not put up with things that are negative.  Some would say I might be a crotchety old man mad at the world and striking out at the world.  I say I no longer have the time to put up with BS.

I hope to have lived in such a way that when my time is fulfilled, that it can be said of my life that it was full. That I was fascinating in my complexity.  That I was satisfyingly simple.  That I was marvelous in my inner beauty.

Until next time.............

My Baby Is Growing Up

At about 5 pm or a little after on this date in 1989, a little girl was born.  Blue eyed like her mamma, she was eight pounds of mischief wrapped up in the modern hospitals take on a swaddling blanket.  We had waited all day for her arrival into the world.  Her sisters from the time we knew she was on the way, would say goodnight to her each night and give her hugs.  She seemed to know what was going on as she would snuggle back against whoever was hugging.  I feel in love.  Instantly.  Irrevocably.  Deeply.  For the forth time in my life.

Flash forward to 31 October 2006.  One pm.  My blue eyed bundle of mischief had lived up to her mischief potential in several ways.  She was about to do something so astounding that none of us would have ever thought that she would have to do.  She became a hero that day by simply picking up a phone and dialing three numbers.  At 1:05 pm I was in the middle of a heart attack that should have killed me.  She picked up the phone and dialed 911 saving my life.  I heard, "I think my Daddy is having a heart attack.  We need an ambulance."  I don't know what else was said to her or by her as I was concentrating on the massive pain going on in my chest.

On the way to the hospital they nearly lost me as my Blood Pressure got to 84.  Yep that is right just one number.  84.  That meant they could only get a femoral pulse on me.  Any lower than that and I would not be able to sit hear and tell you about it today.  That is not being dramatic.  That is not over stating it.  That is fact.  Check it out with EMT's, nurses and doctors.  Luckily we had the right mix on board that day and I can tell about.

Now it is April 28, 2010.  Another bundle of blue eyed mischievousness arrives in the world.  And I fall in love again. Instantly.   Irrevocably.  Deeply.  For the tenth time.  Time passed and problems encountered and solved.  Tears shed and smiles remembered.  Words exchanged and hugs erased the pain of the words.  And the world grew a little older.

Thanksgiving 2014 and I have to break the hearts of my girls and tell them there was a good possibility that I was going to die.  Not in some far off time and in an abstract 'we all will die some time' way but in 'I might not be here next year.'  They cried. My heart broke because I could not fix this and make it all better.  And I cried.  I must admit to being a coward one this one occasion.  I could not bring myself to tell my grand-kids that Papa would not be around much longer.  My girls had to do it when it was finally confirmed.

The two youngest, child and grandchild had the serious talk from Mom to child that should never have to be had at the age of four.  When she was told that I was very sick and that I wold not be getting better, she had only one question.  At some time previously I had told her that I had a hole in my mouth and that is why I had to have a towel when I drank so I could catch the dribbles.  When her Mother told her, she became all serious and looked at her and asked, "But they are going to fix the hole in his mouth right?"  When I heard about that I knew everything would be alright.

But now today I say to my little girl, Sydney Erin that I love you, and you are my hero for making it possible for me to stay here and meet all of my wonderful grand babies and to hold each and every one of them in my arms and fall in love again and again and again.  To Jupiter and beyond and forever and a day I will love you.

Happy birthday baby girl!

Until next time....................

Catch Up

I tried to post from my phone on here but could not do it.  I guess that goes to show I am really not smarter than the technology that I am using.  I will try and catch up with what has been going on.

On Monday we started out and made a few stops before we got out of town.  At our last stop I got a call from the State Director of the Paralyzed Veterans of America.  He is who we had been working with us  to get my VA disability.  Even though I am not paralyzed, ALS falls under his purview.  Long and short of it is, that in about 3 weeks time I have been approved for a 100% VA disability.  This is a huge deal!  I can now ensure that Golddean will be taken care of after I pass.  It also provides us with many more benefits under the VA that I am sure will be very good to have later on.

Now as far as Tuesday and the PEG tube surgery.  Every thing went well and I had no problems with anything.  For once.  I some times have trouble coming out of anesthesia but I was fine this time.  The only thing that they did not make clear to me was that I could not eat for 24 hours after the surgery.  Needless to say I was very hungry and pigged out when I was able to eat again.  Chicken fingers and mashed potatoes never tasted so good!  I now have supplements to take with real food as well.  I need to get my weight back up so I can deal with things later on.

I had an offer from an online acquaintance to take a trip to Alaska and fish for salmon this coming August.  I saw no way to be able to do that until Monday afternoon when we got the call about the VA disability being approved.  Now I have a chance to do something that I never thought I would be able to do.  Thank you my friend for suggesting it and clearing the way to go with all of your help.  It is truly a trip of a life time.

I am a very lucky man.  Not only do I have a wonderful family, I have people that I have never met doing things for me and giving me the opportunity to do things that I thought were out of my reach. For this I am thankful. And humbled.  And blessed.  I hope that all the good that has been shown to me, is returned ten fold.  For surely they deserve every bit, and more, of the kindness that they have shown.

Until next time..............