January 27, 2004

• UPDATE:

  
  

  Greyfox read my rant below and left his own little rant in “comments”, only he put it one blog down, where not even those who comment on this one will see it, so I’m copying it here because I think it’s worth reading.  BTW, that burn he mentions is on the grasping surface of my right thumb, definitely tissue damage down to the bone, it hurts even in the nail bed on the opposite side.  I got it in a classic fibro-fumble, one of those times when the brain said “zig” and the body went zag. 

  
  

  I was loading a small log into the woodstove.  It rolled to the side, out of where I wanted it, leaving no room for the other piece I had to put in, so I reached in and grasped the end of it (still cool, no prob) to move it over.  Only my fingers grasped the underside of it, and my thumb grasped the lip of the door frame, hot metal.  The reflex that’s supposed to make me draw back when I get burned didn’t work (more “fibro” shit, reflexes that don’t) and I had to wait until my foggy brain realized that the pain I was feeling wasn’t just normal M.E. pain before I let go and ran for the jug of cold water.  No biggie, just the first third degree burn in my life.  Lots of first and second degree burns, but that’s a lot more stories.

  
  

  
  

  Boy, wait until they hear about the third-degree burn you sustained this morning, and didn’t even mention.

  
  

  But as a rule, folks just don’t understand, darlin’–shoot, I’ve been working on it for how many thousand years now and how many lives–still sometimes feel like I don’t have a clue.

  
  

  Key, I think, is that this SuSu person is a combination of tough and tender–very-tender-hearted sometimes, mentally tough as nails other times.

  
  

  Like this summer at Felony Flats, when I learned that one of the boothies was living in his car–he’d put his meager wares out on tables, sit in his car waiting for customers, and at night, pull the car back to close to the railroad tracks.  Sure the guy was a drunk, ended up being evicted by the folks who were trying to help him when they cought him stealing their beer, but he had a sense of honor and integrity that many better-off folks would do well to emulate.

  
  

   I felt for the guy, and when I pointed his situation out to Kathy, she looked at the car–a Honda Prelude with plastic sheeting replacing two or three of the windows–sorta sniffed disdainfully and said “I’ve lived in smaller cars.”

  
  

  Then there was the time some woman wrote this tear-jerking story  in the newspaper about having a miscarriage.  It got to me, and when I showed her the story, her reply was “Miscarriages are nothing.  Full-term stillbirths are hard.” 

  
  

  The tender comes out when I see her show compassion and unconditional love to people who I would just as soon gut-shoot and leave to die.

  
  

  Then again, living up here has a way of weeding out the  worst of the creampuffs and weak sisters.  I’ve seen folks arrive here raving  and gibbering about how Alaska was their new home and how wonderful it was, only to  bail out in October when it got too cold for them, the sissies.  Kathy called me a soft city boy when I got here, which offended me mightily–it was only half-true, I was really a soft suburban boy.  Like the time  my first or second year here when I was too squeamish to slime a salmon.

  
  

  Thanks to Kathy and god and a little bit of guts and grit I didn’t even know I had, I’ve toughened up a bit.  Not much, but enough, I guess.

  
  

  Okay, so I blogged in your comments, SuSu me.

  
  

  Posted 1/27/2004 at 3:32 PM by ArmsMerchant

  
  

  Maybe some of that warrants some more response from me.  That guy living in his car seemed to be okay with it, and I have lived in smaller cars than his, without seats that went flat for sleeping.  He had it soft, I tell you.  And miscarriages?  I’ve had over a dozen of them.  It runs in my family apparently.  My mother had a lot of them and so did her mother.  We considered ourselves lucky if we made it over three months in a pregnancy.  And full-term stillbirths are a lot worse than a miscarriage.  I’ll stand by that statement.

  
  

  Now here’s the blog that started it all:

  
  

  Okay, people, it’s time to stop feeling sorry for me.

  
  

  I’ve been blogging a lot lately about my wintertime activities, and also about my health or the obvious lack thereof.  I have let a few comments from readers pass without response, comments to the effect that my life seems like a struggle to survive, or how terrible it must be to live this way.

  
  

  I must admit that living with myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue immunodysfunction syndrome is not easy.  Coping with this disorder absorbs most of my attention and effort when it is in “flare-up” mode.   During these hard times, I live for the remissions.  Always before when it has gone bad, it has gotten better, so I have some confidence that it will be better again.

  
  

  Living with ME/CFIDS is definitely difficult.  That has nothing to do with this cushy lifestyle I have here now.  Materially and economically, I have it better now than ever before in my life.  It was much worse when I was in Colorado, or in California, and MUCH MUCH worse in Kansas and Texas.  I’m even doing better physically since I learned which foods I need to avoid and cleaned up my diet.

  
  

  Bafflement was my first response to the following email received through the “recommendation” link on this site from ak_wildland_firefighter@yahoo.com.

  
  

  
  

  I survive her in Alaska for 38 years in the wild so whats so hard about liveing here really its nothing

  
  

  As I thought about it though, some of my bafflement passed.  I thought, “Maybe the guy came in during that series of joking ‘complaints’ about the weather that Greyfox and I (and ADN columnist Mike Doogan) were writing.” [BTW, Mike is quitting, hanging up his keyboard.  We think it's political pressure because he's so outspoken against our state administration.]

  
  

  Maybe that firefighter dude read your comments and mistook how you interpreted my writing for the writing itself.  That could happen, especially if the guy’s reading skills are on a par with his writing skill.

  
  

  It’s also possible that he’s a drive-by that caught one of my blogs about the M.E. and thought it was about the weather… I dunno, but what I do know is he certainly read me wrong, just as some of you have done lately.

  
  

  For the record:  living is easy.  I never had it so good.  Tra la… tra fucking la, everyone!

  • 8:00 pm
  • 5 Comments