FireVaney

Pop (and I) sat in a crowded waiting room for an hour and a half before he could see the doctor who’d charge an arm and a leg to scrape the wax out of his ears. That was yesterday. Sometime overnight, Pop’s right ear started to bleed. Dried spots and dribbles of blood have ruined a silken pillow case. But hey, Jackson Pollock might’ve called it art. I called Pop’s internist. He wasn’t available, but the one who was didn’t seem terribly concerned. Doctor Substitute advised me to call Doctor Ears, Nose, and Throat when his office opened, for eardrops. Here’s hoping we don’t have to spend another hour and a half in Dr. E.N.T.’s office waiting for eardrops, if nothing else. Pop keeps asking why it happened; why at night and not when Dr. E.N.T. scraped out Pop’s ears. The ear that bled? Pop’s right ear? It all but quit on him years ago. Sure, it detects sound, but his brain processes the sound as an audible equivalent of mush. Any working hearing aid turns the mush into louder mush. All th...

If I’m late, I’m late because I’m wrapping up something else. Used to be that I’d start out doing this. My “warm up,” this was it. But it drained the muse instead of jump-starting the muse so I switched up the routine. Now, this is my “cool down.” But after this, I’m might go back to the other thing because I’m only three pages away from finishing it up. If I’m smart, I’ll save it for tomorrow, but I’m an idiot and I’m impatient. But I’m also drained, so, I’ll probably save it for tomorrow. And I’ve got the reading yet to do. And when the next baked bean jumps over the hill surprising its mother, I swear to God, I will shoot the motherfucker. Whoa. Hey, hey, hey. Come on now. Relax. It’s just/only/merely a baked bean. It’s not like it’ll give a hoot don’t pollute. And the next time you want my point of view step into my shoes but clean your feet first. I can’t filthy feet mucking up my point of view. And if opportunity affords, please insert a “have” betwixt “can’t” and “filthy” in the...

“Deal, No Deal,” Pop calls it. He’s too cheap to spring for the “or.” When Betty’s with us on the weekends, she’ll watch it with him, but she’d never watch it on her own. So they were watching it this one time, and I happened to be in the kitchen, and there’s like a faux window between the kitchen and the TV room (because the TV room was an addition to the house), and Pop says to Betty, “She’s not wearing any lipstick. I don’t understand that.” Betty doesn’t respond—at least, not verbally. Whether Pop meant the contestant or one of the briefcase models, I didn’t ask. Now, let me be clear, Howie Mandel is very talented—and I get it, work is work and money is money—but this show is truly idiotic. Pop, along with every other dirty old man, enjoys watching it because it’s got money and it’s got models. Big surprise, Pop also watches all the beauty pageants, too. But that’s where Betty draws the line. Whenever Pop tunes into a Miss Whatever pageant, Betty leaves the room. Pop’ll keep watchi...

I’ll go and I’ll see her and I’ll feel all that anguish all over again and for weeks thereafter. So much anguish over someone I know all wrong. She’ll be there—at some point she’ll be there—and she’ll go wild and I won’t be able to wait to want to leave. But because she’s far away, and busy, maybe she’ll be late. And if she’s late, it won’t be so bad for me to leave. I’d feel bad if I had to leave early. Like Bio-Dud often liked to say, “Firey, you need to suffer more,” unless it was, “Firey, you haven’t suffered enough.” So I do my best. I do the best a “snot-nosed spoiled brat,” as Step-Dude likes to say, can do. And it’s true, as a confirmed “snot-nosed spoiled brat,” I do do a lousy job of suffering. If I really, really, really, wanted to suffer, I’d join the military and fight in Afghanistan—and not only because “war is hell.” Setting aside the war, Afghanistan is hot, and I can’t take the heat. Anyway, everything is too late. Why can’t I ever be on time for anything? I don’t mean...

Yesterday, Mister Wisecracker * sent around a text message with a photo of his cocker spaniel in a costume. Said cocker spaniel was looking up at the camera, and the message below it read, “Dinka says, ‘Happy Easter. Now get the damn ears off me.’” Like most fringy theatre folks I know, Mister Wisecracker doesn’t take care of himself. He stays out too late, gets up too early, drinks too much, eats too much, and smokes packs and packs and packs. I don’t do any of that, but I am a yo-yo dieter. That said, I exercise pretty hard, so I figure I’ve got a better chance at a longer life—not that I want a longer life. Who can afford to live? Even if I could (afford to live), I’ve no interest in outliving Mister Wisecracker and his company of assorted misfits. Odds are, though, I will. I’d bet they’ll pretty much all have strokes or get cancer before hitting sixty. Inside of twenty years, I’d bet, half of everybody I know will be dead.  9 April 2007 * Formally and foolishly referred to a...

Nearly every weekend, Betty says to me, “Firey, don’t get old.” She means it in both a funny and an honest way. She tells me she was perfectly healthy before the radiation treated her breast cancer, some twenty years ago, when she was sixty-something. The cancer is all gone now, but arthritic aches and pains affect her daily. She can easily recall her phone number and her home address and also the game show that’s on Channel 7 every day at 6:30 post meridiem. She has no problem naming the show’s host and co-host. Monday through Thursday, over the phone, she’ll say to Pop, “Time to watch Vanna.” She means it, too. Ever the accountant, Pop will dryly confess that he “likes to look at figures.” Betty never forgets to call Pop first thing in the morning and last thing at night. But ask Betty to ask her pharmacist three little questions? Forget it. Ask her to repeat those three questions right after you’ve stated them, and she’ll get them all wrong. Poor Betty, she’ll fumble all the words i...

I’m concerned about the sump pump. It works when I test it, but, by testing it, it may not work on its own. This is my fear – that it won’t work on its own. So, that’s what I’m waiting for. I never thought I’d spend hours waiting for a sump pump to kick-in. To be clear, I’m doing other things, too. Like this. But the sump pump is on my mind. And, in a way, it is a blessing. There are only so many troubles I can keep an eye on. In sooth, I have not counted the maximum number of troubles that I can track, but the maximum cannot amount to very many. Nevertheless, it is a blessing, so to speak, to worry about a contraption rather than a human being. The machine either works or it doesn’t. One can either repair the machine or replace it. One should never fall in love with a machine, however. A machine cannot return love. It can work, or it can break. That might change someday; and when it does – when a machine can be programmed to behave irrationally, jealously, enviously and/or selfishly –...

Spiffy likened his lovers to meals. Like his relationship with Trussy? That was a solid meat and potatoes sort of meal—only without much in the way of dessert. His relationship with Kandi was all dessert— too much dessert. Imagine being trapped in a Twinkie factory for a year, that was Spiffy’s relationship with Kandi. His relationship with Nummy was harder to match because he rarely ever gave her an orgasm. That said, she told him he’d given her the first she’d ever had. As for me, I wasn’t terribly interested in likening my lovers to meals. I’ve had so few (lovers) and most of those were basically “appetizers.” So then Spiffy asked, “If you were any sort of restaurant, what sort would you be?” Easy. I’d be one of those early-to-mid Twentieth Century roadside diners—the sort that had a long lunch counter and a line of booths with a clear view of the highway and the cornfields. I’d be open 24hrs. I’d be comfortable—clean and comfortable—and never too busy. And if I had to be a chaine...

Pop spent his 96th birthday in hospital room 4132, recovering from the removal of his gallbladder. His dinner tray came with a frosted cupcake he couldn’t eat. Why? Well, he’s lactose intolerant. That aside, in honor of his birthday, the doctors cancelled the liquid-only diet he’s been on since last Wednesday. Pop’s birthday was yesterday (Sunday). Today is Monday (duh) and I really hope he’ll get to go home. By the way, I learned a new word a few days ago: “sundowning.” According to one of the nurses, this happens when an elderly patient forgets where they are and hallucinates that they are anywhere else. As you might’ve guessed, it often occurs around sunset. Nobody really knows for sure, but it might have something to do with “circadian rhythms.” Supposedly, thanks to “sundowning,” all new hospital rooms are required to have a window. * Last night, in room 4132, Pop kept asking me for the time. Repeatedly, he wanted to know how much “this house cost to rent.” Again and again, he’d ...