The other day somebody asked me how things were going.
I told them, “Great! So far everyone thinks I’ve been paying attention.”
Which is pretty difficult for a deaf fellow to manage a lot of the time.
I was particularly proud of myself at the Midway council meeting on Monday night when it came time for me to acknowledge they wanted something added to our community calendar page for a meeting to be held next week.
That pride was crushed the next day however when I sent the calendar copy in without this meeting being included and I had to phone the production room and yell, “Stop the presses!” so I could make the addition. During the course of that telephone conversation with the production folks it quickly became clear that I didn’t have a clue where the meeting was going to be held.
So I guess ‘thinks’ is the operative word in my claim that everyone thinks I have been paying attention.
Sometimes it is really, really important to be paying attention. Like when your wife is talking to you for instance – or maybe when the politicians are making changes without consulting anybody.
It’s also important to remember to take your daily meds – something I forgot to do the other day.
Now as you get older your body begins to take on some of the characteristics of an expensive, finely-tuned sports car. But a finicky sports car that will only perform well when everything is in balance.
What this skipping my meds meant for me personally was missing a little pill called a diuretic that the doc has prescribed for some mild high blood pressure. A diuretic, for those not in the know, is a pill that makes your body get rid of excess fluid – you have to go pee more often.
If, like me, you are used to taking one of these pill every day then your body expects it. If you skip a day then there is a bit of a fluid retention problem that will have to wait for the next pill to come along and remind my body what it’s supposed to be doing.
When you finally do catch up with the pills the next day there is a bit of a high water thing going on and that’s when it become even more important to pay attention – even more important than it was the day before when you’d missed your pills.
Because now you’ll be needing a private bathroom – maybe a urinal right next to the desk. Or a desk right next to the urinal.
So as I say – it became vitally important that I pay attention to stuff.
Either that or change my byline to Puddles.
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If you have some time between 10 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon this Saturday then you should make it down to the Rock Creek fairgrounds for the 2nd annual Kettle River Artists Art Show.
The work produced by our local artists is amazing.
What is even more amazing is that they insist that so-called normal people such as myself can do it too.
Bring the kids and be prepared to get involved because there will be hands-on workshops through the day.
Stay for lunch too as Jerry Watson will be there providing her usual wonderful fare.
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Later that night – for those of you not going to Bridesville to watch The Speakeasy there is the opportunity to get out with friends to the Casino Night at the Greenwood Legion – proceeds to the Legion’s scholarship and bursary fund for BCSS grads.