Speed Typing

I don't have much time to write this morning.  I'll be speed typing.  I have to get my mother to her ortho appointment across town by eight.  We'll need to leave here by 7:30.  This is a long-awaited appointment.  Most of the pain she suffers is sciatica.  The IR docs who fixed her vertebrae never addressed the problem.  When I brought it up with one of them, he blew me off.  What could I say?  

"C,mon, doc, you don't know what you're talking about."

We'll see if the ortho can help.  If not, my mother's life will be a series of pain pills.  Do you know how hard those are to get now?  

Mr. Tree came by yesterday to get his money.  A big chunk-o'-change.  He was all about telling me how much work his boys did for me, what a great job it was.  "Eh?"  He started picking up things in the yard and asked me if I wanted his boys to come do this or do that.  He looked at my Xterra sitting in the driveway and said he had a guy who could detail it and make it look like new.  He walked around pointing out all the things that could be done including painting the step rails.  

"He can do it cheap." 

"What's cheap?"

"A couple thousand."

"Are you crazy?  The car isn't worth that."

He invited me to come to Cuba in December.  He and his wife were going to be in her hometown.  He had bought a Toyota Forerunner and was shipping it down.  He got a good price.  He has a dealer's license for the auto auction.  If I ever want to buy a car. . . .

"You come down.  You'd love the town.  It isn't anything like Havana.  It is really primitive.  And I can set you up with lots of women."  

Always that.  

When we went into the house, he saw some photos I had put up on my magnetic blackboard of myself with a young Hugh Grant haircut, if you remember that.  I'm thinking about getting my hair cut like that again. . . . if it hasn't thinned too much.  

"Is that you?" asked Mr. Tree.  

Now that is always a comment to make you sad, right.  

"It used to be." 

Wide eyed.  "Wow!  You look like a movie star or something.  No wonder you were always dating the girls."

Where he got that idea, I don't know.  I've hardly had any dates in my life.  I wanted to tell him I was his age in those pictures, but I didn't.  What's the point.  I was forty-nine.  I was fifty.  

"Look what your God has done to me!"

Selavy. 

I have to admit, though, that Mr. Tree did alright.  His Cuban surgeon wife is very pretty.  But I can't imagine.  

After Mr. Tree left, I went to a bank to renew another of my mother's CDs.  I took in my new Power of Attorney document.  I had to wait a while as the bank people scrambled.  They don't like doing this, but in the end, it wasn't a problem.  

That was done.  

Back to my house.  I was going to take a little exercise.  I've been doing a little twelve minute workout to strengthen my "core," exercises that I have never done.  I do them gingerly, but I think they are helping.  They do not make my muscles big and strong like Dwayne the Rock, but they sure do something.  And after that, I went out for a walk.  Walk-run.  Walk a block, do an old man arthritic stumble run.  Walk a block.  Repeat.  

Something like that.  This is the second time this week.  After the first, I didn't feel any terrible pains.  This time, however, I stopped because my knee was kicking up.  But I had done enough to remember what it feels like to run.  I don't know if I did enough to get the endorphins going, but I think maybe.  I was happy for a bit.  

Until l called my mother.  

But that will have to wait.  I have not speed typed quickly enough.  My mother got up in misery and needed help.  Everything will have to wait.  Even the explanation of the image at the top.  

Oy!  My life.  

So. . . for now.