Half A Century Is Better Than None

If you were able to decipher the clues from my last post, you probably figured out it was a big birthday week for me. The whole age thing doesn’t bother me in the least. I’ve earned every wild ear hair and facial crease. I’ve even adapted to ordering an adult beverage at a local saloon and not being carded. Sure it hasn’t been all beer’n’pork chops (wine’n’roses for you romantics who don’t know the way to a man’s heart) but at least there’s been more applesauce than sour grapes.

Wait a minute! I like sour grapes. You know the big green ones that make your face pucker, maybe that’s where these creases come from. The moral of this story is, if you woke up this morning relatively healthy and you’re still looking down at the topsoil, count your blessings. It’s good to be any age!

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We received some news of possible concern this week from the pediatric endocrinologist. Cassidy’s growth spurt has lost its steam. Her bone age has caught up to her real age. This means that as far as height goes, she is just about done. They have upped her growth hormone to the medical max to coax every last inch out of her skeletal structure.

When we first started with the hormone treatment it was predicted that without it Cassidy would top off at maybe 4’6”. She is currently at 4’7” just barely passing the amusement park ruler line that says you must be this tall to ride. Being short in itself is not a problem, just ask me or my mother. Adapting to a world built around average standards a foot above where you top off will be challenging though.

The big question is, does this mean that there are underdeveloped organs that could cause medical problems down the line? It is all wait and see of course, we won’t know for a while. What we do know is that the doctor was very disappointed that the lines on the growth chart are going sideways rather than up.

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How ‘bout them WinterLympics!

This is where, as a spectator, you find out if you’re a “thrill of victory” or “agony of defeat” kind of person. Did you say “Oh yeah!” when the Russians came down the track under their bobsled? Did you cheer when the Japanese ski jumper face-planted her landing? Or, are you saying that you just wish each individual team and athlete could finish their respective run cleanly and count up the subjective scores to see who is awarded the medals? For me it is a little of both but I do want each one of these athletes to leave it all on the course. Seeing a top-tier skier dog it down the mountain because others in front of her have crashed is not sport. Go for the medal or go home.

Sometimes it is better to be remembered for a spectacular crash that you survived rather than them playing your song and handing you a bouquet. What is with the bouquets anyway? Tops in the world and you hand me tomorrow’s trash? If I make it to the podium keep your dead flowers and give me beer’n’pork chops and don’t forget the applesauce!

Olympic Pursuits

It feels strange to sit and stare at the screen and have nothing of medical portent to report. What is going on here? This does not mean that you get to stop reading and move on to other useless endeavors, you must complete this bit of uselessness first. Only then may you return to your far-outvilles, mafia chores, downloading mobile phone apps and flipping channels between rocks’n’brooms and men in tights in jealous rages over a hunk of jewelry. “Oh, that brute can’t even do a quad and besides the gold goes much better with my eyes.” High drama in Vancouver, I agree, but you can DVR that stuff and avoid the relentless Marriage Refs promos for the few precious hundredths of seconds it takes to slog through the slush here.

Renee still has not rescheduled her Cleveland Clinic trip, which right now looks to be nothing more than a perfunctory follow-up visit with no additional testing necessary. It sure was touch and go for a while there, but it looks like everything is working as advertised a few years back when her colorectal doctor first broached the subject of surgery, knock on mahogany. Yes, mahogany, not just any wood. Go out and find some solid, smooth, polished mahogany, dagnabbit! The bar in an Irish pub is usually made of the stuff. Order a Guinness while you’re there knocking and toast to the passing of Renee’s colon. We never did give the little bugger the proper Irish wake it deserved. It is time to make up for lost time.

There is also nothing to report on the Cassidy front. Her check-up at the endocrinologist was postponed due to the whiteouts that blew through here. Based on the tidal waves of mood swings, the (gulp!) feminine blossoming and the fact that she’s still growing with the help of the daily hormone injections, we think the doctor will be pleased with the progress and only make minor adjustments to the doses of medication.

Polly, the wonder dog, has also been healthy of late but is starting to show some signs of aging. Her roughhousing has diminished. Her bursts of energy are very short-lived. Those squirrels on the lawn trying to tease her don’t even rate a raised whisker. There are only flashes of the rambunctious puppy that that ran endless laps around the house like Apollo Ohno, bumping and scratching and clawing o’er the slick carpet. She is content now to just plop down in one spot and sleep through most of the day. Ah, the dog’s life!

So where does that leave Invasive Maneuvers? If the reporting on things I set out to report have all been reported, what else is there to report? Does the old dog need a new trick? Should other useless endeavors be pursued? Am I done publicly humiliating my immediate family? Am I out of ass jokes? I think I may be having a mid-blog crisis.

Perhaps though, your reporter just feels as if a new milestone is approaching. Decades of intense training is coming to a head. The game clock is ticking. The crowd is mesmerized. He stands poised against the battle of time. He lunges through the falling flakes of man-made snow for the five interlocking rings …

And then ….

And then …

“Hi, I’m Bob Costas. We’ll return to the real, tape delayed, live action after we interview a few polar bears and pelt you again and again with clips of Jerry Seinfeld’s teeth. Whoa, that’s laugh track funny.”

Red or Ick?

Did you know that even Muslims, Buddhists and Jews celebrate Saint Valentines Day? That is a rhetorical question folks, requires no answer, draw your own conclusions.

In another forum Renee commented, “Can anything be said around here without you making a song out of it!” (sic) There really should be a question mark there except that Renee was not asking but making an emphatic statement. All of you grammarniks will understand. Sometimes you’ve just got to throw the rules out of the window to get your point across.

I hope I never get to the point where the things I see and hear don’t resonate inside and spark some kind of creative bonfire. Burn baby, burn! The title of the blog is Invasive Maneuvers and at least this week deals with things other than surgery like what goes on inside my head. Heck, Renee hasn’t even rescheduled her Cleveland Clinic appointment. The winter of discontent for many is a period of healing for others. Go figure!

Back to the topic, can anything be said around here without you making a song out of it? Heck no! And I’m proud of that. But what I’m not proud of is so far, as far as that line goes, I’ve got nothing. There’s a song in there somewhere but I haven’t found it yet. Renee throws down the challenge gauntlet and I freeze up. Well sort of …

Rhetorical, rhetorical, rhetorical, rhetorical
The answer is no but you didn’t ask the question
You were stating, stating, stating the historical
And I’m just confirming the lesson

Wow, that’s pretty bad, not Valentine’s Day greeting card bad, but bad nonetheless. So there’s your homework for the weekend folks. Write your honey your own song or at least come up with something original to celebrate Lovers Leap Day. Don’t do the tired old thing like chocolates or Hallmark, originality scores points. But be sure to be judicious in your use of romantic rhetoric.

Who Are You?

We canceled our trip to Cleveland late on Thursday when the weather oujis predicted a mix of wintry slop for the 700 mile round trip. No thank you. Who knows when we can get it rescheduled? And who is that Who person anyway and why does he/she know so much? And shouldn’t they be practicing for the big halftime show?

The Who – Who Are You
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgWQ1erBnMo

Renee’s pains are more floating than nagging this week. Yes, I know I reported that she reported that they were gone but they didn’t completely disappear. They’re just poking about like that strange button on facebook. What purpose does that function serve? I got poked and my eye hurt for hours. Youch, stop doing that!

The rest of the week has been pretty quiet. We have settled into winter mode and our semi-hibernation state only venturing out to complete necessary errands and then returning to hide under the covers on the couch watching the dull crackle of the light box. The only excitement came when Renee hit the panic button because she couldn’t locate her rings, one of which was a priceless family heirloom. Of course this always happens at bedtime and the chaotic quest to find them disrupted the slumber fairies.

It also happened to be garbage night and when Renee couldn’t find them anywhere inside she pulled the bags from the can at the edge of the driveway and started sifting through the ick. After rummaging through a few days worth of coffee grinds and eggshells she located both rings. Yes, she had tossed them in the trash. Had she not thought to panic in the late hours the rings would have been history.

Lessons learned: 1) Don’t throw your rings in the trash. 2) Dumpster diving is not fun but does have its rewards. 3) Panic is not always a bad thing.

So go ahead, you have my permission to panic, whoever you are.