Category: Personal Reminiscences

Knee Surgery, 9

Daily life / Personal Reminiscences / Surgery & Medicine / UncategorizedLeave a comment

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Well, I have a whole new set of exercises, most of which come with a pain factor increase, but nothing that seems to make any great leap forward in either mobility or pain (fortunately for the latter). Yet. But, of course, it’s still very early days. It’s difficult to be patient or optimistic when every little thing is still a struggle. I’m sure Susan’s patience wears thin during the day when I have to ask for things to be brought, picked up, removed, moved further, moved closer… yeah, yeah, I’m whining again. I should concentrate more on the accomplishments so … click below for more ↓

Knee Surgery: 8

Daily life / Personal Reminiscences / Surgery & Medicine / UncategorizedLeave a comment

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On this blog, I’ve been counting the days since surgery from the day of the operation. That makes surgery day Day 1 in my count. And the first day I wrote about it as Day 2 (the day after surgery). But a friend argued that most people think of the first day as the 24 hours since surgery, and my perhaps eccentric counting was misleading, so I am changing the heading to show just the number of posts, without a day. When I refer to the days since or the date in the post, I will try to be clear. … click below for more ↓

Knee Surgery, Day 7

Daily life / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Yesterday, after taking off the tensor bandage, my knee was a cheerful gnome of pain, likely released, I suspect, by the flesh expanding rather suddenly after all that compression. Sort of like one of those strange deep-sea fish dragged to the surface from the depths. And while it calmed down somewhat overnight from the tempest of torment, the pain has not fully gone away. Just another day in the saga of knee replacement recovery, Not that positive notes don’t sound: going up and down the stairs with a cane is a tad easier and less gruelling than before. No faster, … click below for more ↓

Knee Surgery, Day 6

Daily life / Musings / Personal Reminiscences / UncategorizedLeave a comment

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Aficionados of slow food, mindfulness, and slow thinking should add knee surgery to their list of life-focusing activities. It certainly makes everything move more slowly and deliberately. One does not rush — indeed cannot rush — with a walker and an operated knee. One walks with a speed that glaciers would admire; carefully, with each step considered. You look at the ground and consider obstacles, you pay attention to the motion of cats and dogs nearby. You plan how to get short distances as thoughtfully as you would a long road trip. It can be almost Buddhist-like in its contemplative … click below for more ↓

Knee Surgery, Day 5

Daily life / Musings / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Accomplishments come in little packages. Last night, I managed to get myself up and into the bathroom to pee twice, without having to wake Susan up to help me get out of bed. I felt like a proud toddler who finally went potty on his own! Mind you, I woke her up getting back into bed, what with the clanking walker, my grunts and groans, and what thought was the sotto voce swearing when the pain shot through my leg as I lifted it. But still, I did it, on my own. Twice! And I am getting up and down … click below for more ↓

Knee Surgery, Day 4

Daily life / Musings / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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The other thing you lose with mobility is dignity. And that loss can affect you deeply, albeit not physically, but certainly a blow to your morale and ego. We are raised to be independent, to do things for ourselves, to dress ourselves, feed ourselves, to be self-reliant on ourselves for so many things in our daily life. And when we lose mobility and have to depend on someone to help with the smallest things that were previously in our control, our dignity suffers. You feel incapable of doing even the basic tasks; you become an invalid. And while it may … click below for more ↓

Knee Surgery, Day 3

Daily life / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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If you want to see just how bad the roads and streets are in the Town of Collingwood, just drive over them a few hours after knee or other surgery. The roads around the hospital are excruciatingly painful, almost nausea-inducing when you hit one of the *many* deep ruts, potholes, or bumps, and the pain explodes. I know, because this was my experience two days ago. But so are the rest of the streets we drove on, on our way home. Some of these streets have ankle-deep potholes, others have been left to decay for decades. But the town doesn’t … click below for more ↓

Knee Surgery Day Two

Daily life / Musings / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Well, I’m back from the hospital following my knee surgery. It was a “Total knee arthroplasty (TKA), also known as total knee replacement,” described as a “surgical procedure that involves replacing the damaged surfaces of the knee joint with artificial components made of metal and plastic.” I am now the bionic man. First time I’ve had artificial bits embedded in me, but it’s common with my age cohort who get their knees and hips done.*  I came home just after 5 p.m. yesterday. I could have stayed in the hospital overnight, but I’m sure the hospital staff preferred to see … click below for more ↓

Collingwood’s Mystery Councillor

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / MusingsLeave a comment

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Who is Ian MacCulloch? We were only told by the town that he’s the newly-appointed councillor, chosen this month by council to fill the seat vacated by Brandon Houston, who quit his responsibilities and resigned back in January. But unless you dig deeply, you won’t know anything more about the newbie other than his appointment. The town’s announcement about him was vague and insubstantial, although not surprising for a townhall that prefers secrecy over openness. In fact, the town said nothing about MacCulloch’s experience, his past, his relation to the community, his qualifications, his plans and priorities, his family — … click below for more ↓

Chaucer’s House of Fame

Chaucer / Musings / Poetry2 Comments

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Recently, while I was reading in bed — as is my nightly habit — I came across some lines (641-660) from Book II of Chaucer’s early poem, House of Fame, in a recently purchased book on his prologue to the Canterbury Tales (a small 1960 reprint of a 1903 original picked up at the local used book store). I’ve seen the 2,158-line poem (Wikipedia says 2,005 but that’s wrong) in my Riverside Chaucer, but never paid it much attention and can’t recall ever reading it beyond the opening lines. I’ve always focused more on the major works: Canterbury Tales and … click below for more ↓

Home on the Open World Range

Culture / Games & Gaming / Musings2 Comments

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A recent article in the Journal of Internet Research described a study that came to the conclusion that open-world games (OWGs) “may offer unique cognitive escapism opportunities, potentially leading to relaxation and enhanced well-being.” Well, duh! Pretty much everyone playing OWGs has known that for the past three decades since those games were published. After all, isn’t escapism the whole point of gaming? People have played games for millennia: to gamble, for intellectual challenges, for entertainment, learning, competition, and often for simple solo pleasure. But open-world games are a recent invention, and while not unique to the computer era, have … click below for more ↓

Blue Skies, Nothing But Blueskies…

Musings / Social media issues / Social Order & Disorder3 Comments

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Enshittification is a delightful neologism coined by author Cory Doctrow in 2022 to describe how things decline in quality and service. While it initially meant to describe how vendors would gradually change their services to move the focus from users to business interests, it has expanded to include the way Elon Musk has turned Twitter-aka-X-aka-Xitter into a fetid swamp of rightwing toxins: racism, misogyny, Russian disinformation, lies, and, of course, his conspiracy-addled pronouncements from the throne, which no user is allowed to block. Ever click a link to a site and when it opens you get flooded by pop-ups, ads, … click below for more ↓

When I’m 64…

Daily life / Music & Reviews / Musings / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? When I’m sixty four… it seemed cutely remote to consider being that old when the Beatles sang “When I’m Sixty-Four” back in 1967 on their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Sixty-four seemed so far away then. My father wasn’t even that old in ’67. Sixty-four was to my teenage self somewhere in the distant future, like science fiction or The Jetsons. Old age was somewhere in the time zone of my grandparents, an exotic foreign, and wrinkled land. Unimaginable being there, at least for me when that song … click below for more ↓

Democracy or Fascism?

MAGA cultists / Musings / Politics / US Politics10 Comments

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We are, today, watching the most momentous decision that Americans have had to make in the entirety of their — and my own — lifetimes. Compared to the choice between Harris and felon Trump, all other elections seem almost inconsequential. That’s because never before was the whole fabric of democracy at risk. Never before has an openly racist, misogynist, totalitarian, cognitively-addled felon come so close to winning the presidency. Never before has the entire American experiment been on the scales. The choices are stark: between hope and despair; between optimism and negativity; between unity and division; between inclusion and exclusion; … click below for more ↓

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