The story so far: I’m a few weeks into using a ski pole as cane thanks to the progression of my MS (estd 2019). I’m still getting used to it, adjusting and readjusting the height for the situation. I keep deciding, then deciding something else, stopping every few steps to refine. I don’t know if that’s how it goes all the time or I’m still learning how to do it. I have nobody to ask.
The height sometimes varies based on fatigue or ground terrain. I usually start the day with the pole as more of a guide, a third point of contact, then I like it longer. Later in the day, it’s more of a crutch, shorter. Stairs are a whole thing, possibly different for up and down. I’m playing, learning now so it can be second nature when they throw a school year in my face.
This weekend wrapped the breakiest stretch of summer break; in 5 weeks, I slept in my own bed 12 days. Scandinavia was Travel with the Awesome Wife, Key West was a Trip with my bad self, and Maine was Vacation with each set of sisters and nieces and Matt. We usually do a week with each family, but due to foreign adventures, we jammed both into one week. Very different halves of the week; the Jewish family had bacon with breakfast most mornings while the non-Jews had more bagel days. I ate it all.
This was not Travel, where we saw the sights, or a Trip, where I visited my favorite southernmost spots. This was straight-up VACATION. Maxin. Relaxin. Readin. Beach day. Repeated beach sunsets with the dogs. Mini golf. Epic series of Yahtzee, Taboo, charades, and an Exquisite Corpse that inspired AI to create this:
It’s been a fantastic summer.
And I made it through a Maine week with a stick. This is the family home in Kennebunk, I’ve been going for years. But now I had my pole. How would I work it into northern routines? No morning walk to the Landing Store, I’d brave the 45sec drive to transport coffees and breakfast sandwiches. But our stairs without railings were less precarious with a floating banister. I’ve wiped out on each set of stairs before, not this time. My only fall of the trip was in 12” of ocean while being battered by colossal waves. And that’s not MS, the ocean’s been beating on me since last millennium.
Wobbly late-night trips to the bathroom were so much safer with a stick. And it was easier to dodge the beanbag so beloved by the littlest nieces. I even learned that taking the rubber stopper off made the pole usable at the beach. Niece #3 marveled at how deeply I’d wedged it in, so I showed her what it looked like extended to max length. Soon she and Niece #1 ran off to draw with it in the sand. My sister asked if they could bling it out. The cane in Maine was not a pain in the membrane.
I’m getting closer to mastering my stick, with a deadline is the start of the school year after Labor Day. Those pre-service days will teach me a lot. For now, I’m going to wring out the last drops of summer, stick or no.
And Another Thing
This week: I break it to my PT that I’ve started using an assistive device. It felt like I needed to ask her permission, which of course I don’t. Still… not excited! Also, a woman saw my brace and stick yesterday and asked what I did to my leg. (I continue to play well, even beyond the confines of Key West). My leg issues still read to the general public as temporary, like that knee brace guy with the crutch I saw. But I told her it was MS, and her silence made me wonder if I’m choosing the right response.
The Urban Blah
I collaborated with the brilliant Vee to make a webcomic (2009-11) that failed to become syndicated across the globe. I’m still super proud of it, I still think it needs to be seen, and I am pro-recycling.
I referenced this strip when my thoroughly vegetarian niece announced she loved BLTs. I had already spoken at length about why turkey bacon and veggie bacon are not bacon (neither come from a pig’s belly, they just evoke flavors associated with bacon) so I was miffed. My other food take: S’mores are better as individual components. The char on a properly toasted marshmallow gets totally drowned out inside a S’more, I’d rather toast those, eat some graham crackers, add a dash of chocolate. Come at me.
Jam of the Week
Once I was at a guy’s house and Elvis Costello called. The guy held the phone up for me to hear Elvis C talking. I never much cared for his music, but I dig his look. Whereas I read the original two Peter Guralnick books about Elvis P and continue to swear by the ’50s masters box set. I’ve only ever dipped my toe into his ’70s and ’80s output, but I’ve been to Graceland, and I’ve karaoked “Suspicious Minds” and “An American Trilogy.” And years ago, the Awesome Wife got me an amazing painting of The King in Blue Hawaii getup: blue paint on black velvet, Elvis wearing a lei and shedding a tear. It currently hangs over the toilet. She could not have done a better job.
My Back Pages
I decided I wanted to be a writer in 8th grade and have fiendishly held onto lots of my work. I have fun highlighting old writing and making fun of my former self.
From my blog Surgical Strikes during my post-sitcom pre-Boston career as barista. “Dark days at the Karma Coffeehouse,” Aug 1, 2005:
The usual batch of crazies who hang around during my shifts seems, for the most part, to have dissipated. This is at least partly due to my brilliant scheme of posting an “OUT OF ORDER” sign on the bathroom. The toilet is truly broken, courtesy of a tag-team effort by two non-customers giving it what I’m excited to call the bum’s rush. But it can still be operated, and as I explained to certain customers, it’s only really out of order if you don’t buy something.
As someone who now constantly needs to go to the bathroom, I am less sympathetic to this approach, and a little disappointed that I claimed to be the innovator. Although bathroom use was an issue, and this choice did help address the problem for a while.
The ebb and flow of the street scene has also left us dry crazy-wise. In the early days of Karma, a regular fixture on the scene was Sol, an immaculately dressed black Jew with a cowboy hat and chihuahua. He billed himself as the Homeless Hairdresser and spent most days cutting hair on the sidewalk out front or sleeping on the couch inside. This went on for months, then he smoked crack in the bathroom one too many times and was asked not to return. His position as #1 Crazy was filled and refilled many times, but Sol was one of the most interesting.
I’m disappointed I chose the word Crazy here, but that was the whole staff’s term of art. My disappointment expands!
John introduced himself on my first solo shift, explaining that he’d been coming to Karma since it opened. It sounded right — I saw him there maybe 8-10 hours a day, seven days a week. He was a veteran of Gulf War I and was missing most of his teeth, and he claimed to be a video game designer but didn’t know how to turn on a computer. He was odd but always had fresh clothes and plenty of money, so I didn’t think he was homeless. I just assumed he was lonely and this was his community. John knew all the baristas and all the regulars, plus most of the burnouts and crazies. He loved it and he was always nice, if a bit clingy.
It took me a minute to recall John. I first thought of Tony, another regular who was lightly jacked and said he used to be obese. If he ever started to crave sweets, he’d eat bowl after bowl of whole grain cereal to make the urge go away. I think about that a lot.
He also started running a tab. I found this out when I spotted him for a milk and a quiche and the next day was told not to serve John until he’d settled up. He owed $24, but with more digging it became $32. He came in for my shift and was polite but despondent. He’d had his last two teeth removed a week earlier and had started walking with a cane.
I found this entire entry searching my archives for “walking” and “cane.”
He said his mother had just died and his brothers were being killed in Iraq. He seemed a little unhinged and little volatile, and I saw him looking at a pamphlet about mental illness. A day later, more reports came in, the tab has swelled to $70, and the barista who discovered all this told John not to come in any more.
This was last Tuesday, and he hasn’t been back on my watch. His absence has had a weird trickle-down effect, as the store has been remarkably free of crazy. It’s been nice, but part of the charm of an independent coffeehouse is that it’s a little rough around the edges. The crazies, annoying and destructive as they are, give the place character it right now lacks. (Careful what you wish for, though.)
I remember developing a theory of What a Coffeehouse Should Be based on some imagined ideal. We were located right off Hollywood Boulevard, I served Tony Todd and Topher Grace and Jonathan Ames and the Naked Trucker. On the other hand, everyone was paid cash and we recycled unused hot coffee into a Frankenstein vat that became our iced coffee. Sometimes we’d get funky in the back room. I’m not sure my vision of What a Coffeehouse Should Be was rooted in reality.
I’m also a little worried about John. Karma was obviously a home to him, and now it’s done. Don’t get me wrong — he was a colossal pain in my ass, and I was always glad to see him go. But he meant well and was always very nice.
What a sensitive soul!
Yesterday, the crazy returned in a small way as a man with a wispy mustache and a large suitcase stood in front of the store wildly gesticulating and pretending to fix his hair for a solid 90 minutes. I hated him the whole time he was there… and then kind of missed him shortly after he left. This job’s harder than they told me.
God I loved that job.