EVERYTHING

It started like this:  I couldn't sleep.  My head hurt.  I walked the hall.  In the bathroom I bashed my knee on the vanity.  My teeth hurt.  I felt my head.  A knot, two or three.  What is it?  What are they?  In the morning, I was exhausted.  I couldn't get out of bed.  In a day or so I recovered but spiked a fever.  My knee was lividly, shockingly bruised.  Nothing else, chills.  But then it started again.  Head.  Teeth.  Unspeakable fatigue.  The doctor said, see your nail beds...they're all one color.  Look at mine, contrast.  I want to do a blood test.  Diagnosis. Biopsy.  Diagnosis confirmed.  Things went very quickly.  Few options, little discussion.  Actually, lots of discussion, but just spinning wheels, no grain to grind.  Here? Somewhere else.  When?  Soon.  Move to Baltimore, commute to Baltimore?  Move.  Then commute.  10 months of poison.  Miss thanksgiving.  Infections.  Fevers.  Blood so thin vaso-pressers hung.  Remission.  Two years.  Good years.  Great years, with gnawing dread of relapse.  Then,  relapse.  Back to Baltimore.  Trial.  Trial failed.  Standard salvage.  Standard salvage failed.  And it was brutal.  Torture.  10 mos of poison distilled into two weeks.  No choice.  Down to my last.  More fevers.  Steeper, stranger fevers.  Fevers with nightmares of shrinking, shrinking, diluted, what? Self?  Too small.  Way, way too small, smaller than sand in space bigger than space.  The infinitesimal versus the infinite.  Terror dreams.  And infections: Gram negative, fungal.  Nasal biopsy, gum biopsy.  At any hour.  There was no day, no night.  MRI.  Scans.  Infection came millimeters from gray matter, the point of departure.  What time is it?  It doesn't matter.  Surgery.  The surgeon said successful.  Surgeons always say successful.  Another one.  The surgeon said successful, truly.  Yes, success against infection.  Disease still galloping to the gallows.  Refractory disease.  This is a synonym for incurable.  They sent me home with oxygen and a special potty.  How long? I asked.   Weeks.  Months. Hard to say.  But no more?  Probably not.  Sorry.

New trial.  But first: qualify for new trial.  The lowest point.  Lowest.  I gave up.  It's the truth.  I quit.  I didn't have anything left.  Couldn't do it anymore.  I wanted to go home.  I knew what that meant.  Still wanted to.  Could only figure I deserved it.  But for what?  I don't know.  Something. . .something.  Wanted to go home; it was probably gonna be hard, hurt, wanted to get it over with.  Qualified anyway.

New trial works.  New trial is a miracle.  New trial is 9 hours away.  Six months of weekly trips nine hours away.  Flights.  Cancelled flights.  Hotels.  Taxi cabs.  Diners.  Chinese food.  Donut shops.  Cellophane crackers.  Remission.  Transplant.  Transplant is worse (repeat: worse) than above but with hope. Drugs and drugs and drugs and drugs and a suppression of the self, a scrambling, blotting, eclipse of the self.  And the blessed German woman, just like me whoever I am, was.  Sorta.  Pain, loneliness.  So so lonely.  Suffocating solitude.  Even with people, lonely, desolate.  Far far far away.  Who am I?  How did this happen?  What will happen to...where is everyone? Who are the people?  How could I have done this to my wife?  What is this?  The asking asking asking echoing off the canyon walls of my heart ceaselessly, keeping the brain awake.  4, 6, 12 days.  No sleep.  More drugs.  Day by day.  You might live.  But what kind of life will it be? Who are you?

Still working on those, but I came home.  A year ago today.  My wife's birthday.

In this time people told me: the names of doctors.  Herbal cures.  They were so, so sorry.  Told me not to worry.  They told me God had a plan.  That everything happens for a reason.  They wanted to help.  Some wrote, but didn't say anything.  Some said the perfect thing, naturally without trying, without words even.  Some wrote letters I read over and over and over and so many times that to unfold them now makes me nauseous with transport back to that time, still I can't throw them away.  Some said they were coming to see me or were going to call.  But didn't.  Some came to see me but the visits were hard.  They wanted to see me, but could only look at me.  Some sent greeting cards and emails.  They said:  I can't believe it.  I'm sorry.  I can't believe it.  Im praying for you.  They told me you should give your life to Christ.  You should get right with god.  You should ask forgiveness.  Some of the people who said stuff like this were well-meaning and sincere, if you can imagine, and some of the people who said these things were guilty guilty people probably hoping for a way out.  Some people sent blankets and food and slippers.  Some people asked after me.  It was a death watch there for a while.  In the darkest days, some just came to see what it looked like.  They had good pretenses, honest covers, but think how powerful curiosity can be.  Some people think a dying man is a medium, a hotline, a stigmata.  They just want to know, hear, touch the hem.  Some people, plenty of people, enough people--I call them friends--did it just right.  They fixed my house.  They watched my kids.  They helped pay bills and they didn't want any recognition and they didn't pretend that they wanted no recognition.  They just did it and said, forget about it.  They sat with me, hours and hours and hours and hours.  If I was asleep or awake, they were there.  They didn't need anything, they just sat or read or talked or didn't talk.  They traveled very far just to sit with me.  They knew flowers don't rally and hams don't count.  Not the way we want them to, the way we wish they would.  They're not wrong but they don't matter.  Lots of people, you're probably one of them, understand a dying man is just dying and might need company, his house cleaned, his wishes heard, his memory stoked.

Look, people say and do stupid shit.  I'm one of them, the people.  I say and do stuff I regret.  I don't get it right.  We don't mean it.  It's takes work, getting it right, and you could still get it wrong.  You have to concentrate.  You have to be honest with yourself.  The self is such a sucker, so easily lied to, so easily deluded, drugged.  And honesty is hard or it seems that way.  But you can get better at it.  You can improve.  You have to practice.  Be honest.  Not mostly.  Totally.  Unvarnished.  All the way.  HONEST.  Don't flinch.  If you know, say.  If you don't know, say that.  Most of the time you don't know.  We don't know.  Face it.  Admit you don't know.  You can take a guess, you can say from past experience, but you dont know.  You might want it a certain way, wish it, pray for it.  But that's not knowing.  It's okay not to know.  We don't know.  And that can drive us back, make us angry, defensive, agressive, protective, stingy, hesitant.  Don't do that.  Be honest.  And generous.  Give and give and give and give.  It's not really that simple.  That's a tricky part:  There's nothing simple, nothing's cut and dried.  Its all wild and complicated and nuanced and messy and sometimes there's no right, only wrongs.  But being honest and generous is the right place to start.  Start at the right place.

I had a notion to give some of those people a piece of my mind.  Tell them what I think of advice and cures and prayers and oh man ....but I don't want to do that anymore.  I don't know.  I don't know.  Don't blame.  Be kind.  Love everything.

Certifiable

Last week Matt and I attended a USA Weightlifting Level 1 Coaching Certification.  My score on the final exam was 95%.  Matt, 98% (spread is within the test's margin of error, but I easily admit Matt's easily 3% better than I am.)  Our level of satisfaction with the course, instruction and weekend overall:  exactly 0%.  I now know why the United States fails so miserably at weightlifting on the world (i.e. olympic) stage.  The material was dated, the instruction poor at best, the facility cramped and the barbells junky and few.  (the food is terrible and portions are small!)  Could have dealt with far worse space/equipment if only there was good material or decent instruction, if only we were learning anything at all.  Anything at all.  Really, there was not one thing to feel good about, save that I had a good friend along with me.  Tuition, travel, lodging, food...all down the drain.  One thing after another to let us down.

Pretty much everybody knows, or should know, a good athletic foot position is toes-forward.  Early on many people squat with their toes turned out so that their knees can track over them.  Knees-out helps the femurs generate torque and lift the caboose--it's a squat.  Toes-out solves the torsion problem positionally but the position presents a big compromise: now your feet are in a not-so-athletic position and you run the risk of motor-patterning a bad foot.  Ideally, one squats knees out over straight toes, generating torque muscularly and maximally.  This requires strength and flexibility and those can take some time to develop.  We tolerate less-than-ideal foot position to keep the knee safe and maintain balance, but we're ever cultivating more umph, better mechanics.  Never under the delusion that it's ideal.  Try this:  stand with your toes forward and heels down.  Squeeze your belly and your butt.  Relax.  Now turn your toes out and do the same thing, belly & butt.  Get it?

Right.  So.  Day one lesson, lesson one.  We had not even gone over a dead lift, you know, the way you pull the bar off the ground (only later did we realize we would NEVER COVER THE DEAD LIFT.  Imagine teaching someone to dive w/o making sure he knew how to swim or even put on trunks) when someone asked about the feet.  Strong woman, eager to learn, worried she was too duck footed.  Matt and I glanced at each other.  We both had an uh-oh kind of feeling from the classroom.  Instructor says:  Oh yeah, you gotta let your toes point out.  And then demonstrates a "good" toe-out position.  Yeah.  See if I have straight toes, I get pulled forward. (BECAUSE YOUR FLEXIBLE AS A 2x4 YOU CLOWN)  More demonstrating, AS IF HIS OWN SHITTY MECHANICS were proof everyone else needs shitty mechanics too.  Oh my god.  Matt and I were in a race to show a good toe-forward, torso-upright squat, avec balance.  Matt beat me to it (3%) and his squat is better anyway, but I can squat with my feet forward, knees out, torso upright, and balanced.  I know I can b/c I've been working at it for a goddamn YEAR (or more).  Guy in our group kinda went pop-eyed at Matt's pretty-near perfect squat and promptly left our group.

There was an assistant coach who squatted with knees in.  No lie.  Lots of people do, but none that call themselves weightlifting coaches.

They didn't like how Matt throws his head in the snatch (he uses it to open his hips better than you've probably ever seen hips open).  It is true that often this will lead to pulling the bar away, but Matt does not.  They still wanted him to fix it.  It became clear by the end that they could find no other fault, so they held on to the one they thought they found.

The only thing they could coach me to do was "shuffle my feet," that is, they wanted a wider landing position.  Fair enough, but plenty of drill work is done in the jumping stance (this was all empty barbell work).  And if you remember a Coach's Eye vid I posted a while back, I diagnosed my own (what I thought at the time) foot fault.  Actually as I've been studying/thinking through the problem, I think I'm so right-dominant that under load, my right foot shoots (shuffles, their word) out farther 'cause it can.  I've since seen it in some other (much stronger) power cleans.  My point here being, I got plenty of things to work on but my coach this weekend wasn't really up to the job.  If he was even aware of having a job.

They look down their noses at CrossFit (despite the fact that 80% of the class trained at boxes).  I knew they would and am not really troubled by it per se.  I try to live and let live and honestly, I think weightlifters are some of the most athletic humans to ever roam the planet.  But the "you can't do 30 snatches" criticism of CrossFit is stupid.  AND I find the doctrinaire debates so enervating.  Yawn.  CrossFit has it weirdnesses, but it has pretty much saved the sport of weightlifting in America.  The sport of weightlifting doesn't know it.  Watch Froning do Isabel.  You can do 30 snatches if you're fit enough to do 30 snatches.  Turn your toes out it will help balance you, if you can't get your torso upright.

There was no, I mean NONE, talk of conditioning.  Just lift weights.  with your toes out so you can balance.

The cert was in East Stroudsburg.  That's in the Poconos.  So is the Pocono International Speedway.  There was a NASCAR race on the same weekend.  The gene pool in the Stroudsburgs is more like a test tube.  Add to that the world's largest spectator "sport" whose main corporate sponsor is big tobacco and it's very easy to assume natural selection can be not so selective.

There's gotta be a big take away from the weekend, even if I have to go meta-meta to find it.  Right??  I'll keep thinking and let you know...

Dicky Betts played an outdoor concert.  Sound system so bad, I couldn't recognize one song.  Local cover band doing all the Journey hits.  And Billy Joel.  I'm really starting to worry myself, how my disgust of Billy Joel is starting to wane.  Seriously.  But I'll save it for another post.  Or, better, maybe not.

Thought I might get into some nutrition stuff today, but that's probably enough.  I'm over it, have recovered.   HG and I have been pretty serious OUTLAW followers for the last two weeks.  Loving it. What I really love is having my training partner back.

Last one:  in the classroom they showed a clip of Pyros Dimas in London setting world record in the snatch.  He happens to throw his head out the back of the building.  One student commented; no engagement from instructor.  Shoulder shrug.  Later, in a little quizz-ish back and forth (that was so 8th grade and annoying b/c it was them and totally could have worked if it was cool and edifying but whatever) instructor asked "what can happen when you throw your head back in the jump?"

Matt: "world records."

Don't splash the wall. Don't splash the men.

Good friend of mine, a mason of very great talent, is stacking the bricks around a million dollar home out in the county.  The neighborhood is thick, green and lush with arbor vitae, chemically treated lawns and  young moms making a sport of stroller pushing.  In-ground pools, underground electrical hookups, service vans in the driveways.  The job is on a corner lot, carpenters and plumbers inside, masons out.  Some of the masons enjoy spectating the sport of stroller pushing.  The owner of the place is a doughy Italian straight out of a mob movie, track suit, accent and everything.  He even knows something about masonry, (brick face and stucco!) just enough to make himself a nuisance.  The brick on this job are all 12" which is like the tall-boy or pounder or 16-ouncer of brick.  The bond (that's a mason's word for the pattern the bricks make)  is a very attractive pairing of sorts that suits the longer brick.  The corners should start with common 8" bricks but the doughy Italian insisted on 12's, no one knows why, except he is buying the bricks.

Up until the day I arrived, the laborers, not to say craftsmen, were some Amish boys.  They were referred to as round-hat wearing mother-fuckers because they did not possess the same skill as their English counterparts and were costing the job time.  I found this curious as it seemed to me one of the stereotypes for the sect (among others less pleasant) was that they were artisans or at least handy.  "Maybe with barns or something.  This here is a house with electricity," it was explained.  The Amish had committed fireable lapses in performance, but their father owned the hydraulic scaffold.  They were not present this day, which is one of the reasons I was.

A mason tender is sorta like a valet but not so well dressed.  The tender does all the tasks that will keep the mason on the wall, plying his craft.  The most important rules are: don't splash the wall.  Don't splash the men.  These can be distilled into the tender's commandment:  don't splash.  Other tasks include carrying stacks and stacks and stacks of bricks.  A stack of 12"s goes about 90 lbs., shoveling mortar (masons call it mud) into the work trays.  A shovel  of mud probably goes 40 lbs but takes about twice that force to remove from a big tub of it.  Pick this up, move it over there.  Cutting bricks on a giant masonry chop saw.  Because my buddy's working speed is about twice that of a hard, fast worker, he sets his chop saw up on the ground so that to use it you have to kneel in front of it like you're making a prayer.  You are actually, to keep your fingers.  Every time I prayed to the chop saw, someone from another crew would come up and watch, adding to my anxiety over ruining a 12 inch brick.  When the saw spun down they'd give me some instructions regarding the job site.  I said okay a lot and laughed coarsely when they said shit like "havin' fun yet?" or asked me if I'd seen the woman with the stroller.

The other thing a mason tender does is take guff from masons.  Guff for standing around, for mixing the mud too wet, for mixing the mud too dry, for not mixing the mud, for letting the mud boxes get too low, for filling the mud boxes too high.  It doesn't really matter if these offenses are actually committed, the tender takes guff for them anyway.  The upside is you get to hear stories about the working life of masons:  The time there was no work.  The time so-and-so's fingers got cut off by the scissor lift.  The time dude had a bucket of sand dropped on him from three stories.  The time there was no work anywhere.  When the boss fell off scaffold.  The new guy had his wall section torn out brick by brick by the foreman.  Once when no one had any work and we rode our motorcycles to the union hall in the rain. The time a line of fifty dollar bills was clothes-pinned to the the top of the wall, waiting for a crew to brick their way up and claim them.  The day we did 800 brick.  900 brick.  Put up a Target warehouse in 10 days.

I wish had a skill nobler than taking guff.  A trade, I mean.  I'm always a little ashamed at myself around  men that do high-skill physical work.  Like I'm wearing silk underthings and someone's bound to find out.  I offered to run the mixer and make up a new batch of mud. (why the boxes were low, for pete's sake)  Sand, mortar, water.  I've made waffles before.  The mason gave it some thought, said maybe next time, he didn't want to risk jamming the mixer.  would've called him a dick if I wasn't so damn impressed by the way they use a trowel.   I pointed out the stoller babe making another lap and earned a couple points.

Four- five hours tops.  Dirty, hungry, happy that I did not embarrass myself.  No more than usual anyway.  My buddy asked me what I had lined up for the rest of the day.  A wave of shame splashed over me.  I'd planned on going to the gym, but it sounded so callow, puerile, silly in my head.  "Exercise," I said. "You know, fake work."

not a businessman, a business, man

He rode his bike to Sturgis.  South Dakota.  We followed him--my brother, Naughton and I--through Ohio and Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, hell you know your geography.  Past the Chicago skyline, past corn as far as you could see, past the plains the plains, the aptly named plains.  Past whole horizons of sunflowers high a man's head, each with the same cant toward the sun so it was hard to decide if they were many things or one leviathan thing.  Before we left we had to talk him out of the .38 on his person.  "In case there was trouble."  Nate said, "Is it loaded?" And he said, "Why the hell wouldn't it be?"  Actually, we all refused to make with trip unless he disarmed.  Extortion pure and simple, he's rarely talked into or out of much.

We met in 8th grade.  Naughton's mom give him lifts home from wrestling practice.  Home was way the hell over there pretty close to Duboistown.   Eleanor, his mother was in a wheel chair, but she was in charge.  She scolded him and scolded him.  JIMMY! Watch your mouth. JIMMY! Don't leave dishes in the sink.  JIMMY!  That's too loud.  And every time, Aunt Josephine, tittered behind her hand, which burnt the boy to the ground in anger. Yuhzha! he'd yell back, for that was the aunt's family sobriquet, GET IN YOUR ROOM.  Sometimes she'd do as commanded, usually not because it was too much fun to watch him burn.  We all loved to see him get fired up.  Still do.  Josephine was Eleanor's sister and well into adulthood had the working intellect of an 8 or 9 year old.  Sweet as pie, totally dependent on her family, and boy did she have the nephew's number.

Yeah, so.  The boy never was one, really.  Caring for his elders, running a household when most of us would've been stumped by a two-hole outhouse.

And lookout.  Did he run it. The kitchen spotless, the basement clean and fresh smelling.  The car was an early-mid 80's Chevy (Malibu if memory holds).  Interior got a bottle of ArmorAll every week, needed or not.  Vinyl surfaces so shiny and slick they made vinyl seem like a good option.  Antimacassars on all the seat positions.  Fix them please as you exit the vehicle.  From my house to school there was time for Arrowsmith's version of Come Together if you waited in the parking lot so as to enter the building just as the 1st bell was ringing, which we did, oh, every damn day, refusing to give them an extra second of our precious time.

So smart-alecky smart if a chemistry lab was being graded by result, he'd start at the bottom with A-grade result and work the bitch backward calculating values/amounts/ratios/Avegadro's number as he went, conceiving a perfectly fictitious experiment.  And get an A for himself and anyone who copied that lab.  He couldn't do it alone.  The way I helped was by turning the pages of the most current Playboy and keeping the radio tuned.  Where were you on Sunday nights Sept '87-May '88?

I made him mad ONE time.  I thought the crotchless biker panties he found at Sturgis were some kind of gag--poor choice of words--joke.  They were not, hence the anger.  They were actually for someone.  Ahem.  Well, they ended up funny, eventually, just like i first imagined.  I can't say i'm sorry, because i know he values the truth.

You can call him late, say, "come quickly."  And most of the times he'll do it sober.

He talks to my kids like they're human beings, not cartoons.  And when we were kids we made him talk to the parents, straight laced, responsible kid, first in the class, he was perfect cover.  So after his and Wyatt's last pow-wow.  The school teacher called me with a heads up:  Wy-man seemed to have learned a good amount about certain Steeler quarterbacks and sex crimes, real and imagined.  Sorta outta left field for the Potter kid, not typically his issue (though he has plenty)....  yeah, teach, I hear you.  See the thing is, well, we have this friend he's visiting a lot b/c he's leaving the country.  Heart of gold.  24kt. (like his Rolex President)  Very dear to us.  But, well, he's ....I need a good word for...he's feral.  He just is.  And like that lilac bush you don't dare touch because lilacs oughta BE wild, I'm not changing him.  But I will talk to the boy and make sure he is debriefed and no more Uncle Jimmy stories make it back to school.

Threw up in the water fountain at our wedding hotel.  Grabbed only one pregnant woman's ass.  Every superbowl he pays me one handle of Jim Beam as restitution.  This will continue until one of us dies.  Goes to an eye doctor three states away.  Has two vintage cars.  Buys boots that squeak.  Hoards cash.  Thinks BudLight is made by trappist monks.  About as religious as a turnip, yet, actually made us wait in the car while he went to confession (i can only figure they allow installments).  Apparently some kind of asphalt expert.  NORAD went to DEFCON 4 when he landed in Saudi Arabia.  On the phone to the poor woman who merely worked the phones at the trailer joint, he said before he hung up, "ok, Shirley, well get your deal-making pants on, I'll be there shortly."   Wears belt buckles the size of pie plates.  Has a man crush on Ricky Rudd.  Using his kitchen to archive about the last decade of the Washington Post, Sunday paper edition.  Makes background checks.  Drives bank tellers nuts.  Has been found wandering the streets around Pimlico after the Preakness, TWO YEARS IN A ROW.  Only one of those years involved passing out, getting badly sunburned, and relieved of personal possessions.  Will talk your ear off.  Has hair-brained politics.  Maybe the worst diet imaginable.  Poor exercise habits.  And is, I've said, quite, quite dear to me.

No foul language

Ground situation: 1) In the last couple months both girls have had what the ER doc's taught us to call "straddle injuries."  Yeah.  In varying degrees from awful to worse.  Stitches in one case.  Let that sink in a moment.   The term turns out not as euphemistic as it sounds.  It's quite accurate, actually, and you don't have to keep saying "when I took a monkey bar to the who-ha."  We got climbers and jumpers and generally fearless girls.  And they are twins so they do freaky twin stuff like hurt themselves in the same way, weeks apart.  2) Our approach to profanity is outright relish to  grudging acceptance.  There just doesn't seem (to me) to be much integrity in forbidding language.  I'm an English lover/teacher.  And I'm profane.  Heather's thing is: be honest as the age will allow.  We reject the notion of bad words.  Words are good.  Period.  The thing to learn is when and how to use them.  No bad words, only bad times/uses of words.  You can imagine the eyebrows this raises, perhaps even your very own, as our kids sort out the rules. . . of usage, as it were.  You may disagree, you are free to, and it will probably make the story better if you do.  What follows is pretty much verbatim a conversation we had in the car on the way to school last week.

That Adele song comes on, "Set Fire to the Rain, watch it burn..."
Adders: dad, what's she singing about?
Me:  Uh.  Um.  I think she's angry.  She's imagining. . .
Wyatt:  No, she's sad.  She's sad.  This is a sad song.
Me: (quick peek in rearview): okay, yeah, sad, but so sad she's angry too and imagining...
Wyatt: there are SAD songs and MAD songs.  I like mad songs.
Me: Sure.  Mad songs are fun.  But i think. . .
Wyatt: This is a SAD song
Me:  Yes. It's a sad song.  No doubt.  But. . .
Wyatt: you said, you said she was angry.  That's a MAD song.  This is a SAD song
'Nother rearview check: six eyes, waiting: mad or sad, dad?
Me:  Sad, yes, you're right. but there's anger in her sadness.  She wants to set fire to the rain.
Ags:  how would you even do that?
Me: well, you wouldn't, you couldn't, but imagine being so sad AND mad that you thought of it. I think that's the song.  Raindrops could be like "tears" [I hate the finger-quote thing, for some reason I do it here. I don't know.] and you don't want to cry them, you'd rather burn 'em instead. (Kick save and a beauty)
Rearview:  knowing nods.  Sage, dude, very sage.
Ags: Why do people do this: she does the finger quote thing "--"
Me: that's a good one.  It's a way to indicate you don't really mean what you're saying or you mean it in a different way.
Rearview: stone faces
Me: Like, Ags, if I asked you how your "boo-boo" was.  I do the finger thing so you know that i know it's much worse than a boo-boo.  It's a serious injury.  But i can call it a "boo-boo" with my fingers so that i can protect your privacy and I dont have to keep asking you how your vagina is.  which might get . . . does this make sense?
Wyatt: kinda.
Me: Ags?
Ags: yeah (not very sure)
Me: but there are lots of reasons you might want to hide your meaning.  Not your meaning.  Not hide it.  Disguise it. Or, there are lots of situations you might want to say one thing and really mean another.
Adders: why's she sad?
Me:  I don't know,  . . . maybe it's an adult thing.
Wyatt: Well, she's only 22.
Me: okay, but she's older, lots of things could make her sad. what makes you sad, Adders?
Adders:  I was sad went I got hurt.
Me: yeah
Adders: and when Ags got hurt.
Me: yeah.  We all were. i'd like it if you guys didn't go your whole life twining injuries. one was enough.
Wyatt:  MAD songs have curse words in them
Me: they do.
Wyatt: Like Green Day songs.  Billy Joe Armstong swears A LOT!
Rearview: general agreement.  song coming to an end.  "never do, never do..."
long silence, only radio  WXPN morning show
Adders: What does "fuck" mean?
Me: ah, ahem,  it's just an oath.
Adders: what's that?
Ags: dad, so this is my boo-boo?  points at scratch on her leg. im driving, cant look, but think i get her drift.  She's trying out the  finger quote thing.
ME:  an oath.  a curse.  something you say when you're angry. An exclamation.  yeah, but, so, Ags, in that case you'd say, you wouldn't say "boo-boo" because it IS a boo-boo.  You'd say it's a "laceration"or a "giant cut" or "a sucking chest wound"  That's your "sucking chest wound"
Rearview: Ags all smiles, so pleased.  Adders and Wyatt, chewing on what "fuck" means.  I might get out of this yet.
Me: it's just a really powerful expression of surprise or disgust or anger or whatever.  You dont hear it a lot in polite company.  It's for when you're, I don't know, the conditions have to be just right.  I never say it in front of Birdie or GG. [grandmothers, not technically true, but for the age. . . ]  It would be rude and  inappropriate.
Wyatt: you say it to Nate.  I've heard you.  A lot.  laughing
Me: yeah and Lex and Scott.  It's a good word.  A lot of times.  other times it's a terrible word.  Make sense?
Rearview:  yeah. okay. sure.
Me: Adders?
Adders: uh-huh.
Wyatt:  Nadielis [a neighbor girl] says it a lot.
Me: I don't think she understands the rules for it.
Ags: Nooooo!
Me: it's a bad word.  Sometimes.
long pause.
Wyatt:  Wait.  No.  Dad!  Its a "bad" word.  finger-quote thing.
Me:   three backward fist bumps.

mo-sheen

Took a motorcycle ride Down to Willow Street to check on JimmyZ's caravan.  He asked me to grab a credit card from the glove box.  Who am I to argue?  Jimmy's Harley is currently moonlighting with another rider, yours truly.  We just had the 10K service done, replaced the battery and got a new back tire.  I say "we" did these things but I had actually very little to do with them, OR what I had to do with them were the fun and enjoyable parts.  Jimmy paid for it and the mechanics at Lancaster HD did the work. I dropped off and picked up.  The fat boy rode like a dream before, it's another, different, better kind of dream now.  And I'm not sure but I might look even cooler on it, if you can imagine.  Country roads sluicing new planted fields, gently bruised evening sky, smells of spring filling my head.  I don't know how I found my way back.

Before I did, I got to the rig in the RV yard at an undisclosed location.  I started the Denali and commenced to look for the credit card.  Thought to play some music for the search but my CD choices were: Skid Row, Ratt, more Skid Row (did you know they had multiple albums?) and Motley Crue.  In silence, I had to brave the landfill transfer station that is the cab of Jimmy's rig.  If you've ever lost a receipt, it's probably in JZ's car.  A random list of other jetsam and flotsam:  Hilti electric hand grinder.  Like, 5 lives worth of paper: wrappers, note pads, loose leaf, news, order slips, business cards (one from Sauer's Trading, South Williamsport PA.  I grew up about 6 blocks from this place.  i think they closed in the 80's) a strange combination of dental care and dental poison: toothbrushes, floss, whitening strips, appointment cards and CANDY.  Kisses, Peanut butter cups, Brach's black licorice jelly beans, cough drops.  All melted, of course.  Well, the PB cups would be if this particular brand had any real chocolate and/or PB in it (rhymes with feces).  Other stuff; I'll just leave it at that.  It's a man's truck.  Or something.  I've learned not to ask too many questions if there's a chance you might not want to know the answer.  Eventually found the card in the last place I looked: at the bottom of the center consol.  Where everyone keeps his credit cards when off in the foreign legion.

The ride back was even better because it got just a bit cooler and rolling back through the city I got to see some dude in handcuffs getting stuffed in the back of a cruiser.  The neighbors were out on stoops. The laundromat was busy, the corner store doing brisk business.  Like I said, it was a nice night.  Unless you were a dude cops wanted to visit with.

In the last seven days I've piloted an airplane and riden a Fatboy.  In the last year, add a backhoe to that list.  It's taken me way too long to be honest with myself about this:  I like engines, loud ones especially,  I like having the throttle and steering mechanism.  I like driving shit.  Too late now to do anything about it except drive shit.  i think that makes me simple and unrefined.  Im good with that.  Something oughta.  Too many tendencies the other way. Someone asked me if the plane and the motorcycle scared me.  Had occasion to really think about that tonight in the southern end of the county.  Those country smells, a hue of twilight telling of the river beneath it, though the river was not to be seen.  And I thought about it earlier in the week in the Piper, up high, banking away from the wind project that overlooks the same river upstream.  We were on a heading that followed the water.  We flew up to the Wrightsville Bridge and back again.  The yoke was mine and I rolled long loping 180's over the Susquehanna.  No.  I'm not afraid of that stuff anymore.  Heights? used to be.  Speed?  Maybe still a little, but it feels more like remembering an old emotion.  I'm not saying I'm carefree or reckless.  I've learned respect.  A healthy version.  But I'm not afraid.  I'm a lot more fearful of making mistakes with my kids.  More fearful of not living up to what I think I owe people.  Afraid of not squeezing every minute out of every day.  These things really scare me, not much else.  Of course this is a consequence of having to get ready to die.  Of course it is.  (Im not trying to pass this off as insight.)  I'm learning to like it.  Take it in stride.  I know now, and hope this helps you know too: (this is the insight) the hard part isn't dying.  The hard part is thinking about dying.  Don't think about it.  Quit thinking and solve all your problems.

365

The bone marrow biopsy begins, like all good audits, with your pants down.  You: prone on the "bed" or what we like to call the workbench.  Your practitioner's hands will no doubt be cold and she will palpate the low back searching for just the points on the posterior iliac crest where bone is nearest the surface or what we like to call skin.  Recall that areas of thin skin or with proximal bone bleed easily (near the eyes, e.g.), are fairly sensitive comparatively (back of the arm, say) and prompt hard-wire reflexive protection, (your groin).  Once she finds a spot, the drill master will hold it with a finger like you do for someone tying a bow on a present.  This marking is so she can deliver the "pinch and burn" of a local numbing medicine.  If it's your first time you may even get a target drawn on you.  "Pinch" is really a euphemism for stabbed with a needle, and burn is burn except the flames are on the inside.  While you wait for the numbing to numb, don't be surprised by small chit chat like you might have with a bank teller or your barber even.  No one really likes BMB's and rather than go to pieces, you act like the transaction is far more quotidian and commercial than it really is.  There are no instructions about this.  You just go along to get along.  Once numbed, there is more numbing medicine, this time applied to the bone.  This burns too, but only for a moment.  The bone per se can't really be numbed, but the surface and it's coatings can be and every little bit of numbing is helpful.  You're numbed up, not when numb, exactly, but when you feel things the way you'd feel them if you were made of wood.  From a tree.  That hasn't been cut down yet.  Your healthcare professional will ask you if you feel anything.  The desired answer here is "No."   But it won't really be true.  Say it anyway if your pain or sensation is at or below the level you'd feel if you smashed your thumb with a hammer twenty minutes ago.  At or below this level is just about the best you're going to do.  Above this level, well, you're probably not going to do much better than this either, but everyone will be more earnest in acting like they're doing everything they reasonably can.  It's a bmb, after all, did you expect it to be soothing?  When the drilling starts--think of wine bottle and a corkscrew-- very often you'll hear grunts and clenches of the driller as if your cork broke inside the neck of the bottle.  Cork=your bone  Bottle=you.  You'll feel what people who DO bmb's call "pressure" and what people who GET bmb's call pain.  The pain can range from strange discomforting weight on the posterior iliac crest: "Oh, that's my bone" to a white-hot searing from within. "Jesus, that's MY BONE."  You hope for the low end of the scale and take what you get.  At a certain point in the drilling the driller will decide that she is deep enough into the bone to harvest the needed samples.  There are two sorts:  the aspirate and the marrow proper.  Aspirate is the liquid that seeps or is sucked violently from  punctured bone.  Violent sucking is the preferred method of collection.  When the plunger is pulled back there is a feeling quite like being electrocuted so deep in your person that it must be where the soul resides.  Soul electrocution.  But it only takes three of these per biopsy.  Unless you-know-who did not really drill down/in far enough.  Then there are four or five, a RE-drilling, and a couple more electrocutions of the soul.  Tensions run very high in these cases.  People will think and say things they might not in other circumstances mean.  The cost of science or of simply seeing the end of the procedure will seem quite high.  Hope that proper bone depth is achieved on the first try.  A simple technique for mitigating the electrocution sensation is to breathe out forcefully at the exact time that the plunger is sucking up it's (your) juices.  This works very very well.  It's probably the only thing that lets one lie down on the workbench a second or third or dozenth time without sedation.  If you forget if to blow out or breathe in--you're anxious, the stakes are high--don't worry you will only forget this one time.  You'll never ever ever forget again.  You blow out.  Breathing in upon extraction is likely only topped in desolate, pitiless pain by being fed into a wood chipper feet first, but only if it stalls at the waist.  After the aspirate is collected the marrow proper is sorta scooped out like osso buco only minus the risotto and good Chianti.  The marrow sample is far less demanding of the donor.  After a shark bite, the dog that nips you isn't all that big a deal.   Here too, though, you are likely to feel a good bit of "pressure" but your practitioner will soon announce that you (she) is almost done.  Sample volume is critical.  If not enough is collected, she'll have to harvest more.  If the instruments are still in your back, well that just means more "pressure"  If they have been removed they will be reinserted quickly before the numbing medicine wears off, or that's the theory anyway.  In practice, she just screws them back in with apologies.  Or she may pick a brand new spot altogether, re-numb, drill, and scoop and in this way you get valuable practice for your next, next biopsy, since this is now technically your next one.  Neosporin, big ass band-aid and BP check (it might be high) and you're all set.  Now all that remains is to wait a week or so for news about how your life might turn out.


Did one of these last Monday.  KME, sadly, not there to pass out and add to the general hilarity.  Call from practitioner (who really is a lovely person, quite warm and affable):  Disease free.  Not a trace.  Zero is the best score they give and I got a zero.  Audit passed.  One year ago today (well, the 15th actually) I received a stem cell transplant.  Today I dead lifted 305.  Sumo style.  On an axel bar.  I thought I might try to pass along some of what I've learned though my ordeal thus far, or drill down on one aspect or another of what these 300-odd days have been like, in retrospect.  I always have a thought or two and I never seem to lack a point of view.  But those will have to wait.  What I think is in order, indeed, what I feel most compelled to do is to offer my simple but profound gratitude.  Thank you.  To my wife.  To my parents and brother.  To my dear family.  To my friends.  To the folks at Angel Flights. To my nurses and doctors. You fended for me when I couldn't fend for myself.  I'm honored by that and humbled too.  I wish I had the means or capacity or the know-how to communicate how grateful I am for your love and support, your help.  Instead I'll just tell you that I'm trying to live out my days as the best version of myself--Curious, loyal, skeptical, trenchant (hopefully), stubborn and die-hard--for you.  And for me too.  I intend to do this as an expression of my love and affection and because quite honestly it is all and everything I have to give.  Happy my new birthday to you.

teach a man to fish

I mean who really cares what I did for exercise today?  Or yesterday.  Or tomorrow.  A couple months ago? Sure.  Bless you all for being interested in my recovery.  But at some point we should just say "recovered." For most intents and purposes.  But I like hearing from you.  Kinda addicted to it actually.  I said I'd blog for a year and we're pretty close.  Gonna try to keep going but something's gotta give.  I've scared off or bored too many.  Maybe they'll come back.  Maybe we'll go viral.  Maybe Hollywood will call.  here is your last WOD.  I'm through posting workouts.  This is the last one.  Not saying no more exercise talk.  Just no more wod mail.  A template, if you will, of the next 12 weeks.  A little Westside, a little oly work, some gymnastics, some strongman, some wods, some Xfit. I can't really claim that this is the ONE path.  But I think it promises to be a good one.  It's not a stab in the dark.  It's the culmination of a couple years of training, experimentation, success and failure.  Huge citation to Matt at Chupacabra.  He's pretty insightful. And relentless in his search for virtuosity.  This is his handwriting but it's a conversation we've been having for a long time.

so give it a try:  add/delete/amend/abandon/ignore (or dont try).  adapt. improvise. overcome.  You're an adult you can take responsibility.  You can work at it.  You can improve.  Ask questions.  Let me know how it goes.  If you don't dilly-dally I think these can all be done in an hour. a huge upside in my book.

MONDAY
max effort squat.  get 3 reps at 80-90%. or set a pr.  Make it heavy.  Change the squat variation every week.  Some weeks do deads.  Some weeks do good mornings (3rm)  All sorts and styles and varieties.  make it heavy, physically and emotionally.  at least 3 reps north of 80% known pr.  if you can help it try not to miss.  sometimes you cant help it.

Do some assistance exercises.  Address your weakness.  Low back, hams, glutes, hips, mid back etc.  Think: DB lunges, reverse hyper, pistols, GHD raises.  Attack your weaknesses.  Do it like this: 10 x intervals. 15-20 seconds work, 20-40 seconds rest.  make it hard.  Don't be a bodybuilder, but build your body.

conditioning:  hard, fast, simple: 12min tops.  sled drags.  light non-stop squat cleans.  sprint repeats.  hard fast simple

midline:  GHD, L/tuck-sit, hollow.  Change it up.



TUESDAY
30 minutes of gymnastics practice.   You know what gymnastics are.  practice them.  methodically.  quit dicking around.

conditioning: rowing intervals.  min 2K - max 5K



WEDNESDAY
max effort bench or overhead.  Mix it up.  Change the lift.  Any bench, any overhead.  3 reps at 80% or above.

Assistance work:  shoulders.  10x intervals, like monday but shoulders, upper back, tris.

Conditioning: 8-12 minutes:  burpees, box jumps, or double unders.  Or all three.  see how many you can do in a period of time and then try to beat that number.  Like when you stuff envelopes.

Midline:  t2b, kte.  pick one.  5x max UB sets



THURSDAY
rest (or rest Tues and practice thursday)


FRIDAY (pay attention)
Dynamic effort squat.  The lift you did monday: do it fast with cut weight.  add bands or chains if you can.  Try to mini-cycle the %'s like this: 50-55-60+25% band/chain resistance.  go fast build force production.  12 x 2.  IN RE: the bands/chains: don't freak out if you dont have them.  They're worth it, trust me, but dont spend tuition money.  They're like extra 2 tbs of butter.  You're still good w/o, but so much better if you do.  Either way, work on being fast.  Remember Louie's parable of the baseball? Throw a wiffle ball, baseball, shot put at a window.  which one breaks glass?  Wiffle not heavy enough to be forceful.  Shot too heavy to be speedy.  throw(lift quickly) the baseball (properly weighted barbell).  Break glass.

Dynamic effort deads.  similar weights 10 x 1.  switch your grip: clean and snatch

Assistance work:  like monday, but different exercises or the same ones.  work hard.

Conditioning: stones, prowler or kb until gassed then 2 more minutes just to be sure


SATURDAY
rest

SUNDAY (pay attention to this too)
olympic lifts:
snatch then clean: 8-12  singles at 60-85%  no more than 45 seconds rest.  faster if you can.   start with 12 @ 60%.  Percentages go up each week, # of sets goes down.  after 6 weeks, retest, use your new pr to refigure %'s  start at 12 @ 60% again.

midline: GHD, HOLLOW, L-sit


Right now im at 215 squat (probably more), 175 c&J, 150 snatch, 215 jerk, 7:47 2k (maybe better).  Retest in AUG.  let you know.  Please do send us your totals whatever they are, following along or not (control group?) and we'll see who can make some gains.  Make a video, send it to me.  Type out a comment, post it.  The world is full of paper, write to me*


make sense?  Excelsior.

Look for new content on the Ides

Wild dogwood

*Agha Shahid Ali

can't clean the door unless you can clean the door

JZ, sometime blog troll, current resident of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and currently wrestling heavyweight for Montgomery, left in my care: '04 Yukon Denali (1)with "competition grade" sound system (1), BFN enclosed trailer (1) with 250lb drivable tailgate that is rendered less than perfectly operable (it's free swinging now) b/c said owner cut lift cables to see just how much vehicle his vehicle carrier could carry.  The trailer contains:  A 1970 Chevy (1) with a 454 big block that sounds like a deep woods bengal tiger and makes your molars jiggle when idling. 2002 Harley Davidson Fat Boy (1) sounding even better.  Expensive ass Snapping Turtle tire straps(4) wheel chocks (2) a car cover (1), sundry tools, receipts, old coffee cups, boxes and a three year old random Washington Post. (?) [But DOES NOT CONTAIN a dual-axle pickup.  Those are just too big.]  The above are located in a nice towing package at an RV storage yard in an undisclosed location close to my home in Lancaster.

I have permission from the state of pennsylvania  and the owner to ride the motorcycle and intend to do so.

SO:  go to the yard with spouse who currently deadlifts 238.  Bring along a jumble of keys big as a baby's head.  unlock, enter yard.  Unlock, enter trailer.  Chevy.  Ignition.  Fail.  No problem.  Open very heavy free swinging door, coast car out the back.  back into trailer.  Start motorcycle.  Motocycle fail.  Gosh it's hot.  Neutral walk motorcycle out.  Find jumper cables.  Jump start motorcycle with Volvo grocery getter.  motorcycle roars to hog life and makes at least one person smile.  Next jump start Chevy.  No joy.  Chevy not in the mind to jump.  Hmmm.  Impossible for one or maybe even 10 men to push Chevy back on trailer.  Spouse has work to do. And a toe to tap.  Leave neat towing package all undone, Denali blocking others' egress from park. (if you're not camping today you're not  camping today.) Drive Lancaster county backroads in GLORIOUS spring afternoon.  Seriously a day like CHROME.  Go to OTB, place losing KY Derby bets.  Ride home.  Puma Suedes and american iron, pretty much coolest thing in the time zone.  Bonus: New curly hair all mussed by the wind.

Back to the yard with a friend.  Try to jump Chevy again.  NO LOVE.  No chance of pushing it up tailgate.  New Plan:  push/move Chevy along side trailer, return trailer to slip, opening up passage to yardmates whoever they are.  24 hrs elapse.  during which Chevy owner passes along helpful tip that the starter is fussy.  Im not losing, im just behind.

Take boy to "see JZ's Chevy"  Try the Chevy with new tip from owner.  Jumps to life like Steve McQueen and tickles the boys in the front to no end.  High fives, fist bumps, country hollerin'. Whoopin and Hollerin'  Hop out, drop down trailer door. Hop in drive Chevy up the ramp.  Sit in front seat, rev engine several times, mentally account for all 454 cubic inches, think about molars shaking  Ignition off.  Everything set, out the trailer...

The tailgate.

Cant be done one-man.  Boy is willing and god forgive me i think i considered it for a flash.  NO.  NO NO NO NO.  8yr olds cannot help lift 200lb doors.  Their mothers get very angry.  DAMN.  Now what?
Dad, how many cars does Jimmy have?
I don't know a lot.
First attempt: okay grip, pop the hips, shrug, no.  No that's not gonna happen.  Tailgate back to gravel.
Dad, why did Jimmy cut the wires to the door?
He shoots first and asks questions later.
Shoots what?
nevermind
he likes to do crazy things
yeah. backwards anyway.
Dad?
Hold on, bud.  Attempt 2: more hip. better shrug.  almost get one hand turned under waiterstyle.  a glimmer.  but a fading glimmer.
Dad, it's too heavy.
You might be right.
Why does Jimmy like chevys so much
he just does
is this the two tone or the Aztec silver
what do you think?
well the chrome is silver
chrome is chrome.  paint is paint
this is the two tone.
there you go.
I thought it was De-nah-li.
what?
you say De nal ee.
do i?
dad, what's the matter?
Attempt 3:  set your back, from the low hang, big jump. to the CHIN!  Hands under "GO DAD!"
walk it home.  Lock it up, back it in.  Think about letting the boy drive home, decide against it.

Stop on the way for motorcycle battery charger.