CityWOOF

Well, the drama/storm has passed.  I am, as the title of this post suggests, feeling much better about everything.

I’m at the point where I am in a walking boot and the test steps I took yesterday worked out really well…I can walk, holding onto one crutch.  My best bud came over yesterday and we went grocery shopping.

Jesse seems to be better, I actually took him out for a walk on his leash.  He is still peeing in the house, but 0I’ll figure that one out.

I watched Marley and Me and had a really good cry.  Have you seen it?  You should see it.

Always darkest before the dawn.  I think the sun is coming out.

Hope you are having a good summer!

Well, life is real exciting for me these days.  I’m still hobbled and can’t walk.   I have returned to work, though; The short bus comes and gets me, takes me to work and back home.  It usually takes them 2 hours to get me from the office to my place, when it’s really just a 15 minute drive, but there are other people to pick up and drop off.  I try to be patient, but mostly want to cry.

I did make it to the movies…none of my friends heeded my hinting at wanting to go to the movies and see some of the summer really-big-shews like Star Trek, Angels and Demons…so I took the short bus to theater and sat by myself with a giant tub of popcorn, pepsi and raisinettes and watched a few in a row.  Then I caught the bus back home. In the last week alone I have managed to:

• Get my cell phone completely soaking wet, thereby destroying it and rendering myself incommunicado.
• Get myself to an audition (and I gave ‘em a pretty good audition, I believe.
• Entertain a really lousy now-former friend (”Why is your place so messy?  And don’t give me the thing about being in a cast…you should have had this place cleaned up for my visit!”…of course, he didn’t offer to help me do anything, just complained.  I’ll speak to him no more.)
• Attend the 2009 Portland Gay Pride parade and festival with my lovely lesbro friend.
• Lose my wallet and everything in it, including my credit cards, cash and shortbus pass to get to and from work.
• Witness my dog going insane.

About that last one?  He really is losing it…it makes me sad.  My friend Kelly  got Jesse and I to the vet to see what was wrong with him…it’s just his mind, that’s the only diagnosis I got.  Senility.  He has reverted back to puppyhood, pissing all over indoors, destroying things…it might be because I haven’t taken him out for a walk in two months, whatever it is, it is about to make ME lose it, too.

Things are not good.  I want the fuck out of this cast, I want to walk, I want this nightmare over with….can’t take it much longer.  The isolation, the disappointment in the people I know…I’m going to end up so bitter.  I really will have to move away.  Where, to California where the Terminator is Terminating all funding for aids drug assistance?

I don’t know.  I’m not happy.  Everything sucks.

Done venting.  Things have got to get better.

I was reading Joe My God today and he posted about a Saint Reunion Party dance.  If you’re anywhere around my age (46) and were dancing in the days of disco, make sure to check it out,  along with the comments, which include lists of many of the songs that were played.  Whew, the nostalgia.

Sometimes I feel the need to keep up with what’s current in music, but that is like swimming against the current…there’s so much, and it is so niche.  It used to be easy to keep up…just listen to the radio!  Or spend a night out at the club. It seemed there was a finite flow of music, and just when that great new song we all loved was beginning to get tiresome, a new one would come along…and then we’d love that song.

I know, I know…and we trudged to school in the snow and ate rocks for lunch…

I don’t mind getting older, but I don’t want to be out of touch, I guess is the thing.  But I am beginning to realize that being out of touch with what is current and hot might be…inevitable?  And that is because what is hot and current, frankly, is not intended for me.  New bands don’t make music for old people.  Maybe you have already realized this, I am just getting it.  Poo.

When I go out and look for music, I am looking for the same kind of stuff I have always liked:  Jangly 80′’s pop, Broadway show tunes, Elton John…

Hooray for Scissor Sisters to wonderfully connecting to the past and staying in the present…they are awesome.

I dunno, I think disco is coming back around.  Lady Ga-Ga, anyone?

I didn’t start this post to be about music.   It was to be a much more meloncholy post.   That one will come later, I guess.  I’m at work.

These couldn’t be more random. But they are all true!

1. I discovered a wonderfully funny Brit-com called “The IT Crowd”. Hilarious.
2. I am planning to audition for Oliver!, a show I’ve done chorus for in the past. I am thinking Mr. Bumble, but Fagan might be fun too.  It’s a pretty bad musical, but the theater pays well.  Stephen…time for a comeback?  Sorry…a return to the stage?
3. RENT is coming back to town next month, with original cast members Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal.  I’ve seen the show 4 times.  Looking forward to seeing it again, with those guys.
4. I want a banana split.
5. I want to go to the movies and see Star Trek and Angels and Demons.  Alas, I do not have friends kind of enough to take me in my condition. *sigh*  This is  one major reason why I am so often thinking about moving away, even though I love Portland.
6. I am planning on going on a serious diet, it’s called Medifast.  It’s like Nutrisystem.  My friend Kelly is on it and has lost about 30 lbs in short order.  A 30 – 40 lb weight-loss would look great on me.  
7. I was extremely sad and to read about the end of gay porn mags.  Although I never read or buy them anymore, they were a seminol part of my coming out and discovery of my sexuality, as is true for most gay guys.
8. Just as I became laid up, my Xbox 360 broke.  I had just spent a fair amount of money on some new games, and was looking forward to getting lost in those worlds.  Microsoft will repair it, but I have to mail it to them and pay quite a bit for the repair…maybe it’s time to lay down the joystick…I am 46.
9. I am thinking about becoming a funeral director.  Not kidding.
10. I watched “A Night to Remember” last night.  I had never seen it…it was really excellent!  After James Cameron’s Titanic came out, along with the musical Titanic, I became obsessed with the story of that story.

Facebook has really been my way of maintaining contact with the outside world for the last month.  That, and Bear411.com.   Especially FB, I really enjoy seeing what other people I know are doing and posting and chatting about.

I have re-connected with several people from high school.  We talk more than we did then, actually.  There’s Cathy, the evangelical Christian (we were in choir together), with whom I’ve been having interesting and respectful conversations about things we don’t agree about.   There’s Lyndsie-June, who was in drama class with me.  LaRonda, another choir/drama person.  But no guys, until yesterday.

Yesterday I re-connected with John, who was my best friend in junior high school, and whom I haven’t seen or spoken to since junior high school.  We were very close back then, and it has really been interesting chatting with him…I thought for all these years that there may have been bad blood, but there wasn’t.  It was all in my mind.  Funny the things we hold on to.  It’s unlikely that we’ll become terrifically close friends again after a 33 year gap, but…still, it’s nice seeing what is going on in his life.  Also nice to see that I am so much better looking, even though we’re the same age.  

He is funnier than me, though, always was and clearly still is quite a comical guy.

Thanks to Facebook, I don’t feel quite so isolated, not like two years ago when I had this same surgery.

I return to work on Monday.  Looking forward to that.

CityWOOF on a Friday Evening

Royce – You Know Nothing!

I’m leaving the house this evening for the first time in 18 days.  I will be going to the opera on crutches.  My friend Kelly and Troy are going with me, we will see RIGOLETTO.  

I’m on Facebook all the time.  I’ve kind of lost interest in this blog.  If you are on Facebook, please friend me and let me know you’re a reader.  This blog will probably fold soon.

Shawn!  Facebook!

Well, it’s been a week and 2 days since the surgery.  It’s been pretty mellow around here,  just Jesse and I and the occasional visitor.  I have gotten to leave the house once – went back for a follow-up appointment and came home with a spiffy new purple cast – but other than that, just kind of here on the couch.

Jesse seems to be rebelling against the fact that I can’t take him for a walk…he peed in the apartment 3 times yesterday.  Not sure if he’s just acting out, pissed off or just incontinent, but a solution to that problem has got be found.  Can’t have it.

I mostly hop from place to place, sometimes I crawl.  Sometimes I use the crutches, but I can’t really carry anything with me if I am crutching, whereas I can carry books or dishes or whatever if I just hop on the good foot.

I had some neighbors, actor acquaintances of mine, who were coming over twice daily and taking Jesse out for me….then, 2 days ago, they just stopped coming.  Is it me, or is that weird?  I don’t know if I should call them, or just accept that they don’t want to do it anymore.  I don’t want to be pushy.  Whatever.

I haven’t had a cigarette for 5 weeks, 2 days, 10 hours, 31 minutes, 10 seconds.  Feels great not smoking, and I feel that my voice is coming back.  I may join the gay men’s chorus again for awhile, just to do a lot of singing and really get the voice back in shape.

I’ve applied for our local transit systems “Lift” program….basically it is public transportation that will take you from door-to-door.  Because, if I can, I plan to go back to work in several weeks, and that’s the only way I’ll be able to get there.  Hope that comes through.

Hope you are having a great weekend.  I’m going back to more swine flu coverage.

Back home from the hospital with a big cast, a bunch of new screws and pins in my foot, some dead person’s bone cartilage, a lot of pain and a bunch of narcotics. 

I guess it went well. They started me down the hall toward the O.R. and next thing I knew I was in the recovery room.  

Shortly after that I was moved into my room, which I shared with a big guy who had diverticulitis.  We didn’t chat, there was a curtain between us.  I figured I’d freshen up there and my mom and buddy Kelly would come in and we’d be outta there…no such luck.

Apparently there is a national shortage of oxycodone.  Oxy was what got me through the last surgery recovery period with zero pain.  I asked for oxy, they told me there was no oxy, I insisted on oxy, they reiterated…no oxy to be had.  I threatened to alert the media (not really, but I thought seriously about it).  Meanwhile the little percosets were doing hardly anything for my post-surgery pain, and morphine was not working either.  So they added dilaudin.  That didn’t work.  I said I wanted oxy.  They said there is no oxy.

I cried.  Yep, that part is true.

Turns out the only thing that would cut the pain at all was dilaudin given to me intravenously.  So finally, I could relax a bit.  It also meant I had to stay the night and most of the next day til some of the pain died down.  They wouldn’t release me until my pain could be managed with some combo of pills. 

SO…the nurse gave to two morphine pills, two dilaudins, and some percoset.  Hey, that worked.  Except if I turned my head, the rest of the world stayed still…and I vomited out the whole of my guts.

So the choice was to lie there in agonizing, burning pain, or lie there hallucinating and vomiting.  Friday was a very rough night.

Saturday got a little better.  Now I’m home, and the pills are working.  I can’t take very many, just one every four hours, or I get really sick.  Not sure if it’s from the narcotics or the pain.  

It’ll all be better eventually.

Mom went home today, and I am settling into my solitude.  I have to find a way to get to a post-surgery appointment on Wednesday.  

I’m loaded up with food, DVD’s, cable tv, lots of books and projects and high-speed internet.  I should be okay. 

And how was your weekend??