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Hardware Man

 We made the Monday trip to Corpus for the three-week follow-up with the surgeon.  He said I’m doing awesome.  I think that was the technical term he used; that’s what I heard anyway.  The staples are now out, so I guess we’ll need a newer nickname than zipper neck. Remember how my neck looked before?.......I sent out an x-ray of it........This scrolling down thing is your chance to escape before the graphic x-rays show up, if you don’t want to see them........It looked like this.Lots of hardware. Almost all the old hardware came out.  There were two broken-off screws that got left in.  They put in two new bone grafts, then they put twice as much hardware back in.  Now it looks like this; screws, plates, and rods: They took this while the staples were still in the back of my neck.  Looks like they had a long way to go to get from there to my spine. Anyway, now I’m more hardware than neck.  They’ve got me screwed down so tight, these fusions should take though.  We’ll know in about two more months.  Six months for sure.  Or twelve. From the front it looks like this. The plates and screws in the middle are on the front.  The outside rods and screws are on the back.  You can see the neck staples behind them. Here is the staple collection after. That’s the staple puller.  It distorts and pulls them at the same time. 
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Happy Birthday Judy!

I’m being nice to her.  We went to Bed Bath and Beyond, but they didn’t have what she wanted.  She went to Michael’s.  Nothing there either.  We split a burger at Whataburger for lunch.  She found what she wanted at Walmart.  We came home and she made a birthday cake.  She can have anything she wants for dinner.  She chose leftovers. There is not much I can actually do for her but follow her around all day.  I’m being nice to her.  She makes it easy.  Happy Birthday Judy. 
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I was wrong

 I didn’t think Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee.  I thought he was a loudmouth bigot with no real solutions to real problems, preying on our insecurities and fears, even helping us invent some that are totally baseless, appealing only to people who felt like victims and were willing to be rescued by a bully.  I thought the more he talked, the more he would be found-out, and end up a discarded footnote to the campaign.  Boy was I wrong.  Exactly wrong.  The more he talks, the greater his appeal! Watching the popularity of the candidate grow, I realize that it would be a ridiculous charge to make about such a sizeable segment of our electorate; that they would succumb to such a shallow appeal. There is a much simpler and more likely explanation for Trump’s popularity; it is that there is something going on that I don’t recognize or understand.  Confusion on my part would certainly not be unprecedented; I get confused by lots of things. So there you have it.  I was wrong.  Now I’m right.  I recognize the trend.  Donald Trump *will* be the Republican nominee, and his popularity will continue to grow and he will be elected President of the United States.  Donald Trump.  A man of the people.  President Trump.  Get used to it.  
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I’m rubber and you’re glue

 Everything ……   I forget how the rest of that goes. I’m in the recliner chair watching football.  I can’t work the lever with my right arm to get up and down, I have to ask for Judy’s help each time.  Instead of asking to get up, I asked her to get me a particular pillow off the couch the next time she got up.  She got up right away and headed off to that end of the couch.  On her way there, she noticed the flowers on the table at the end of the couch needed to be turned, so she adjusted the vase.  Leaning over the flowers she saw that the afternoon sun was coming in through the window and would soon shine on the television set so she adjusted the blinds.  There was an empty coffee cup on the end table so she headed off to the kitchen with that, from where she announced that she had decided to take an early shower.  I asked if she’d get me the pillow first. Well, some of us thought that was pretty funny. A couple hours later, Judy let me down off the recliner so I could go about my business.  I put away an empty coffee cup myself.  I got a warmer shirt from the bedroom.  I stopped in the kitchen and got a cold pack out of the freezer to put on my shoulder.  I put down the ice pack so I could put on the shirt.  I put a fresh cup of coffee on to brew.  We had been listening to the Bronco game on the computer in the front room, so I had to relocate the computer to the office.  Judy helped me get it plugged in.  I sat down in front of the computer and started typing.  A few minutes later, Judy walked in the room with my shoulder ice pack (which I had totally forgotten) in her hand.   Some of us thought that was pretty funny.