Well Blow Me Down

What the cartoon above lacks in humor, it makes up for (nearly) in accuracy. I felt like I absolutely needed to make a post today just to say "Hi," but I was strapped for material. So I went with the classic desperation play of talking about the weather. Which isn't interesting at the moment but potentially could be since my neck of the North Texas woods will be under a severe weather warning for much of the day. 

This doesn't actually worry me much, since this sort of thing is common in Texas and we all know exactly what to do. Unfortunately, "what to do" is hightail it into the basement - but because of the clay soils in my area, there aren't any basements. So we fall back on "Plan B" which is darting from window to window during a storm and hoping very, very strongly that we don't get hit by an F5 twister.

Trivia note: twisters get their F3, F4, or F5 designations based on how many times you scream the "F" word when you see what's barreling down on you.

Barely related to any of this, I've always wanted to make a low-budget mockumentary about storm-chasing because the subject fascinates me...

It's unlikely (but not entirely impossible) that "FUNNEL RUNNERS: Into The Suck Zone" might get made eventually. Heck, I might get some exciting footage from my home security cameras today!

I genuinely love shows about chasing tornadoes and think that the subject would make rich fodder for a mockumentary treatment. The big problem, of course, is that while a lot of things about storm-chasing are funny, tornadoes regularly do very unfunny things to communities and (God help them) trailer parks of the kind I once lived in. So there's a possibility - or even a likelihood - that if I ever made the mockumentary a tragic news story would pop up that would make me look like an insensitive a**hole. Which would be accurate, but which I can also achieve with a lot less effort.

Outside of pipe-dream projects and weather reports, I don't have much else to share at the moment. Although on Valentine's Day, several outdoor flowers that Kathy had planted actually bloomed for me. There was no card, but I knew who they were from.

Balloonacy

He not only IS a number, the Chinese have got it

Last week, Hunter Biden finally admitted that the laptop computer filled with damning evidence of debauchery, drug abuse, and Biden family corruption really is his and SQUIRREL! LOOK! LOOK! SQUIRREL! I MEAN SPY BALLOON! OVER THERE! LOOK!

What was I saying? I don't remember but I'm pretty sure it must have been something about the Chinese balloon which drifted slowly across our nation for days and days, allegedly doing something or other, before Joe Biden gave the order to "shoot it out of the skies as soon as it finishes its mission."

To help show the gravity of the situation, a terse news media described the balloon as being "as big as two school buses" which is certainly a useful metric for those who like to measure spherical objects with school buses. For the rest of us, it might have been simpler to report that the balloon was "70 feet across" and had enough volume to completely fill three or four news cycles.

Clarification: On Facebook, a number of people remarked that they had no idea what the cartoon above was supposed to be. For such poor souls, I'll explain that it's a reference to the wonderful TV series "The Prisoner" in which a former spy is held captive in a mysterious holiday village by parties unknown. Escape is impossible because when a prisoner appears to be fleeing, he's tracked down by a seemingly living balloon that suffocates him into unconsciousness. The show was created by its star, the always-wonderful Patrick McGoohan and is definitely worth checking out.

ALSO IN THE NON-NEWS

• The ice storm in North Texas has passed which is great news for those of us who have reached hip-breaking age.  And I'm pleased to report that the many plants and flowers that had just started pushing up out of the soil in January look like they've survived the cold weather without too much damage.

• Last week I discovered that the IRS had rejected my tax return only days after I submitted it electronically, owing to a top-secret identity PIN number for Daughter J that they said I got wrong. But showing themselves to be good sports, the IRS didn't make a big deal out of it by notifying me and, undoubtedly for my convenience, just held on to the $36,000 tax refund they owed me. 

Rectifying this required a phone conversation with the IRS in which I was told that I would have to resubmit my taxes (and possibly face a late filing penalty, even though they're the ones who owed ME money). I asked if I needed to get a new PIN number for Daughter J and it was explained to me that I could only submit my return by mail at this point, so no PIN number was needed!

"So I should just mail in the same return I sent before?"
"Yes."
"The same one you rejected?"
"Yes."
"And I should send it without a PIN number?"
"Yes."
"And why was it rejected before..?"
"It didn't have a PIN number."

So with any luck, I'll be receiving most of my tax refund from last year at about the same time I have to file this year's taxes.

Hapless Anniversary

I sure wish I could plug something funny or colorful in here, but I'm afraid it's just not happening today. Saturday is my wedding anniversary and I think I could cope with that okay. But it's also a new anniversary that is a lot harder for me to deal with.

When Kathy and I were in the hospital last year at this time, there was a big whiteboard in her hospital room that listed the many different kinds of chemotherapy she was getting, and a series of boxes to show how many doses she'd received and how many were left to go.

Eventually, it came down to one last dose of one last drug - but the nurse forgot to check the box. Kathy instructed me to pick up the marker and fill in that last "X," which I did.

"That was my anniversary present to you," said Kathy - for indeed, it was our anniversary. "I did this round of chemo for you, and that's the last of it."

We had agreed that this would be the case. She'd had more chemo than she ever wanted and she'd done it for me. So the only thing left was to wait to see the results. Two weeks of waiting followed by a painful bone marrow test.

That test showed that Kathy was almost, almost in remission. No cancer cells could be detected by the human eye...but more sensitive computer sensors found a tiny amount of cancer still lingering. Which started another two week wait as prelude to another test. Would the chemo still in her body kill off those last cancer cells?

We waited- me with hope, Kathy without. And again she had the bone marrow test and we awaited results. Results that were eventually given to us by a soulless automaton of a doctor's assistant: the cancer had again exploded out of control. And that was that. There was nothing more to do.

The next day we were in "hospice" at another facility. Actually, just a standard room in the Alzheimer's wing of a nursing home, staffed by people who couldn't speak English. Kathy received no medicine or treatment of any kind. And together we waited.

Roughly two nightmarish weeks later she was gone.

And so this anniversary - the first anniversary of Kathy's exquisite and painful final gift - is going to be a rough one for me.

And I'm embarrassed to be inflicting this on you good folks, but you are my friends and I could use a virtual hug or two.

I love you and miss you, Kathy.