The Weight Of It

      "I'll just stand this 24-pack of water on end, keep my arm straight and lift with my knees to get it over the threshold and into the house.  How bad can it be?"

     Readers, it was bad.  Back spasm.  I once again saw the logo of the company that owned* whatever is left of RCA's technical IP, rotating and strobing.  I'd as soon see the old 1920s RCA meatball, myself, but what I get is far more colorful and I do not recommend it. 
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* They were Thomson when they ate RCA and that entity is gone now, bankrupt, split up and some of the parts recombined -- including one big chunk, back under the famous technichromatic name. RCA barely kept their patent pool corralled when they existed and it's no surprise the successors never quite managed.  Their pro gear was a wild mix of in-house, contracted out and rebadged products, and you kept it running by keeping track of where the parts had been sourced.

Status Report

     I am in sufficient pain and of such restricted mobility that my temper has no fuse at all.  Every minor annoyance or household mishap triggers anger bordering on rage.  This is nothing I am proud of.  It's annoying.  It's embarrassing.

     One of those remote-grabby things is on its way to me, along with a front-porch delivery of bottled water.  I have a 24-pack, but it's in the back hatch of my car, on the far side of the garage, and I can no more carry it in than I could fly.  Getting those should help with some of the frustration: I'll be able to pick things up from the floor without a heart-pounding series of scary moves to get down to floor level and, far worse, back up.  And Indianapolis city water is nothing to write home about.  It's okay fresh out of the tap but carries the faintest aroma of wet dog after it sits a spell.  (It has been this way for years, no matter how well our reservoirs are doing.  Is it that hint of canal water?  The scattering of city wells?  Some purifying chemical or process?  Our water company draws on a variety of sources and they do honest work, but it's a bulk business, not a boutique bottler.  It's clean water and plenty of it.)

     Just took the second muscle relaxer pill and the first anti-inflammatory.  The latter is some turbocharged prescription-only relative of naproxen, so I had to wait for the previous dose of aspirin to time out; you can't take both at the same time.  Fortunately, acetaminophen is still okay, and I'm watching the clock for my next dose.  Such excitement!

     First commenter to suggest horse-paste, moxibustion or a chiropractor gets punched in the face as soon as I'm feeling better.

Progress?

     Went to the doc, got checked out, got the meds.

     Five hours later, I'm still miserable.  I can't pick stuff up from the floor.  It's a gymnastic exercise to stand up.  But I'm hopeful.  It beats not being hopeful.

Almost

     I rested well overnight, got up and took a walk, napped more, did a little laundry very carefully and almost convinced myself I was getting better.

     Almost.  I relaxed eating dinner and stood up incautiously to clear away my take-out platter.  My lower back went into a spasm that nearly buckled my knees.  Technicolor pain.

     Time to stop pretending.  Tomorrow, I'll get washed up well enough to face the world and go to the doc-in-a-box. 

"Oops?"

     Between work yesterday (trying to rebuild a portable camera tripod that has had a hard life, typical of them; they're extremely difficult to take apart after a few years of heavy use) and my contributions to Trash Night last night (cleaning out the freezer and fridge, a bending-heavy activity, and changing two litter boxes, a task I have long done while sitting on the floor due to bad knees), I am back at square one with my back.  Maybe square -1.  Or -2.

     Hello, Dial-A-Doc?

     Update: The the dickens with them.  They never connected.  Waited an hour, with the little reminder that someone would be along Any Time Now blinking away at the top of the screen.  Oh well.  They don't prescribe muscle relaxers and I won't take them, so what was the point?

Walking

      During the pandemic, Tam and I got into the habit of taking a walk around the block every morning.  Or, by and by, two blocks, or three....  It was decent exercise for a couple of spinsters, and we don't actually spend much time in one another's company otherwise; I work, she's always got writing projects underway, and a lot of our interaction consists of keeping out of the other person's way.  We're usually watching a TV series over supper -- 45 minutes or an hour of staring at the same screen.

     So walking around the block is a good way to find out what's going on with the other person living in Roseholme* Cottage, as well as exercise.  We'd stopped our walks at the worst of winter, and as that damn virus became endemic and the vaccines made it far less a problem, we eventually came to a spring when we didn't start our walks back up.

     That was a mistake.  We're getting old; we need the exercise.  We're getting grouchy, too, and it helps to have a little time to go talk about inconsequentials: Oh, look, a cardinal, a squirrel, the Moon; what lovely flowers! what kind of bush† is that? and so on.

     So we're walking again, this time with our smartphones keeping track.  I need it, especially after the way I strained my back last weekend.  It's getting better, but still a little sore.  And some one of these days, our track will go as far as the place that sells breakfast pastries -- maybe it's not the most healthy goal I could have, but at least it's a goal.
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* This name of my house is not a reference to the similarly-named university but a mocking allusion to the heraldry supposedly associated with my family name, a "naturally-colored" rose on a silver-grey background.  Oh, the arms are real enough, a minor title that faded over three generations, apparently a War of the Roses version of the GI Bill, but my last name is a toponym, and so far there's no evidence I'm related to that long-ago soldier/squire.
 
† I'd sure like to know.  Feathery, reddish-green needles, gnarly branches, dense and no more than three or four feet tall.  Interesting-looking shrubbery. 

That Was...

     Monday wasn't fun.  Tuesday wasn't great, either: my back.  I've been living on aspirin and sleeping on an ice pack, walking as much as I can manage, and I'm getting better, but oh, jeepers.  I did not see this coming.

     I mean, it could be worse.  I could be stuck in a country rapidly sliding down into competitive authoritarianism, in which one party's politicians were uniformly crooks, cranks and grifters, while the other party distinguished itself by fielding many more plain old hacks and allowing the occasional idealist to slip though, counterbalanced by a scattering of outright weirdos; not that their opposite numbers didn't have a few of those, too.

     Oh, wait.

     The United States may be the only two-party democracy (in the broadest sense) that does itself in by the two parties leaping off a precipice, one shouting, "Hey, everybody, lookit me!  I can fly!" while the other party mutters, "Oh dear," and frantically tries to improvise a parachute from a pocket handkerchief all the way down.  They'll both make identical splatters when they hit the ground.

     The next person who gives me a version of "Same old same-old" in response to our present crisis is going to get the unexpurgated version of this diatribe, because no, it's not.  I'm looking back on LBJ and Nixon and both Bushes and Bill Clinton with fond regret: we didn't realize how good we had it at the time.

We Did It!

      Actually, we have almost done it.  For, well, years, Tam and I -- mostly me -- have been accumulating fallen branches and twigs on the front porch, and trimmed saplings in a pile out back.

     Some of it is decent firewood and we do have a fire pit.  I have sorted that out in batches and stacked it in small crates.  The brushpiles remained.  A couple of months ago,* I picked up a canvas mini-dumpster.  They're sold folded up flat, of course, and the package sat in the garage, in mute recrimination.

     Or it did until yesterday.  The weather was nice, the heaps were annoying, and even if we only made a little progress, it would be worth it.

     The work went much better than expected, and after a couple of hours, what do you know?  The porch was clear.

     I felt so good about it that I went out after supper, added a stack of broken-down cardboard boxes, and there was still room for the back yard brushpile.

     Still to come, calling up the provider and paying a little more to have it taken away.

     Maybe we'll even plant some flowers again this year.

     Downside?  My back feels pretty awful.  Too much bending over, not enough proper squatting.  Price of age -- and of getting rid of some of the mess.  And my creaky knees are, at least., not any creakier this morning than they were yesterday morning.
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* Yes, I do have only two speeds, but they're not Dead Slow and Full Stop, only Slow and Slower.

Clever Cicero, Time Traveler?

      The Roman lawyer, writer and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero is greatly admired for his command of language.  Like Shakespeare centuries later, he introduced new words and conventions of form that persisted ever afterward.

     And like the Bard, he was fond of wordplay -- but how could he possibly have invented a riddle that works the same in English as it does in Latin?  Sheer luck, of course, the same chance that preserved his words and Shakespeare's.

     A greeting:
     "Mitto tibi 'navem' prora puppique carentum."*

     In English:
     "I send you a 'ship' lacking stern and bow."

     Something of an "Aenigma a patre," I suppose.
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* I have here taken the cheapest/easiest transcription of written Latin.  For Romans vowel "u" and the consonant "v" were distinguished only by context, as readily as we skip through the myriad inconsistencies of English orthography.  While contemporary fancy inscriptions and (probably) professional scrolls would have written MITTO TIBI NAVEM PROPRA PVPPIQVE CARENTVM at best and probably abbreviated many of the words in standardized ways, Cicero himself probably jotted it down in a chicken-scratch cursive not too unlike a modern doctor's handwriting, with a character like a cross between a "v" and "u" and what looks to our eyes like a ruthless disregard for getting the letters on the same line; Romans didn't see 'em the same way we are taught. 

When An "Idiot Plot" Isn't, Maybe

     Writing -- and chairing the critique group -- has me in the habit of taking a critical look "under the hood" of books and TV/movies/radio shows.  One of the gotchas is what SF writer (and critic) Damon Knight called an "idiot plot," though he gave credit to James Blish for originating the term

     Simplest form, it means a plot that only works if one or more of the characters ignores something that is obvious to the audience.  Now, that's one thing if the plot is just an excuse for razzle-dazzle (the Ginger Rogers - Fred Astaire film Top Hat is often cited, but nobody cares: you're there for the dancing), and something entirely different in a serious work.

     No spoilers, but-- The most recent season of For All Mankind has a crucial plot development that only works if a very smart character misses a point that should be entirely clear to the audience and perhaps the other characters involved, based on past behavior.  They miss it, and keep on missing it, several times.

     Now, the individual involved has been set up as a deeply focused and somewhat neurotic person, probably neuroatypical* and everyone else in a position to work out what happened has a vested interest in staying mum -- so is it really an "idiot plot," or were the writers playing a deeper game?

     Flip a coin.  Much as I love the big, rich story, I've got to admit I'm there for the sets and the characters, for the broad sweep of an alternative history, one in which the Space Race went on and on.

     Moral?  You can get away with it -- if you're as quick on your feet as Fred and Ginger, if you're that gifted at choreography (in the broadest sense), if you're willing to subtly lampshade it, if you've got the sets and costumes and skilled photographers and editors (and/or literary chops) to pull it off.  I think For All Mankind managed the trick, but it's there if you look for it.
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* It's not original with me, but inclinations and skill sets that make for good scientists have a lot of overlap with some autism-spectrum behavior patterns, so much so that it has often been pointed out that while there's zero evidence that vaccines cause autism, there's a pretty good case to be made that autism causes vaccines.

In Other News

     Odds are pretty good that I'm in a recurrence of rheumatic fever.  It's an autoimmune ailment, triggered by strep, and sure enough, I had a sore throat a few weeks back.  The sore throat ran its course and went away, as such things do, and....

     And I've had creeping fatigue, and aching knees, and figured I needed to move more, so I did.  And I kept on being tired and started to have eyelid twitches around my left eye, and sore knuckles, and wow, was I tiring easy, getting other aches and pains here and there, and oh, gosh, did my knees ever hurt, and...

     This morning, I went back to sleep for an hour after I fed that cats.  When I got up again, I was moving slower and slower.  It hurt like the dickens to go down the basement stairs and hurt worse to head back up.  Those darned knees!  Because I can (eventually) take a hint, I loaded up on aspirin* and kept moving, but things did not get better and I ended up back in bed by and by.  I managed to do my part in the Trash Day festivities (cleaning out the refrigerator and changing two catboxes, in that order) but it was slow going and left me worn out.

     Is it or isn't it?  This collection of symptoms lines up pretty well; if I was twitchier or had a bit of a rash, it'd be more likely.  But even physicians differ on diagnosing  mild cases, so darned if I know, but it sure feels like the last couple of bouts I have had with the stuff.

     Tam and I did watch the last episode of this season of For All Mankind tonight, and I would happily watch more if there was any more.  So far, they have done nothing to shake my theory that the series can be taken as a prequel to The Expanse.
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* If the underlying strep infection is gone, aspirin is still the hot ticket for treatment: it's one of the best anti-inflammatories around.  I usually use it as my backup pain relief, since it's a bit harsh on the stomach and acetaminophen in milder, but until this either settles down or drives me to the doctor, I'll do steady aspirin and take the other as-needed.

Gearless Ratchet

     Multitool maker Leatherman sells a gearless ratchet about the size of a fountain pen, and nobody told me.  There was apparently a lot of hype when they first showed up, probably driven by scarcity -- it was a few years back, when supply chains were still shaky, and availability was variable on the manufacturer's website and elsewhere.  Not so much now; you can find 'em anywhere that stocks a good assortment of the maker's tools. 

     What the thing has going for it is that A, it's a ratchet, which makes the slightly awkward Leatherman bit-driver less so; B, it's an extension, which is often less awkward; C, it's also a bit adapter.

     For those who don't know, a very long time back, Leatherman started including a double-ended "precision bit" on most of their multi-tools, a flat, double-ended straight/Phillips gadget that is held in a receptacle by a flat spring.  It's a mixed blessing -- the bits are considerably better than the usual multitool fodder, and you can swap 'em out, but it's one more item to lose and small enough to fumble when you're changing it.  Critically, though the bits are very flat, the shape is a subset of a standard quarter-inch hex drive: the short sides are "pointy" and fit into the widest part of the hexagon recess!  (A downside is that the amount of torque you can apply with the modified drive is lower.  In practice, it has never been a problem for me.) 

     The specialized shape means a plain Leatherman extension -- and this ratchet -- has a flattish end that plugs into the driver receptacle, but the bit end is standard hex.  They'll fit any bit, and it works with any driver.*

     I wanted one of those ratchets on sight, and wouldn't you know it, Tam and I tend to give one another gift certificates on our birthdays.  So that's what she got me for my birthday.  It arrived this morning and I'm very happy with it.
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* Or almost any.  There was an outfit in New England, the Wadsworth Falls Manufacturing Company, who made one of the neatest and most compact sets of bits and drivers imaginable, with a straight-knurl quarter-inch drive that formed part of a 3-degree ratchet.  Their ratchet drive system was deliberately compatible with quarter-inch hex -- but that ratchet won't work with Leatherman's "slice-of-hex" bits.  The company appears to be fading or gone now, and more's the pity.  There are alternatives but nobody makes 'em as small.