Earlobe fatigue

 

It's not really the lobe, google says, but rather the pinna or auricle that all that crap is hanging on. The lobe is the drippy thing on the bottom, as if you didn't know.  (Bet you didn't think I actually did research, did you.) In any case, it's gotten to be kind of a lot, as the crimpled, folded state of the top of my ear shows. 

If I put it all on wrong and then, say, try to put a stocking cap on, it all comes tumbling down and I have to start over. If I try to take off my glasses, or, for example, pull my mask -- or both masks -- down, you can see the problem. And don't even ask about changing the volume on my sound system. None of this, of course, has yet risen to the attention of the Biden administration, but for those of us not skilled in health care, or not flying to Cancun, it is what we're left to. 

While we're on the subject of ears, let me take you back about 40 years to one of the best days my ears ever had :

Ah, shucks. That's Ms. V, in her best flannel pajamas, fingering my smooth elfin auricle. Such hair!  

 

 

38 years

A big party in a park would've been better, but you do what you can.

The energetic Ms. V graduated -- er, retired -- last week after lawyering for almost 38 years. A great career. Her first job was as a lackey at a small law firm in Milwaukee -- collecting overdue bills and taking out the trash (at least, that's what it sounded like to me) -- before signing on with the Legal Aid Society, closer to her heart, where she stayed for 16 years, rising to chief staff attorney for the guardian ad litem division, which represents the interest of children in cases of abuse or neglect. A tough job. 

For the last 20 years she worked for the county as a judicial court commissioner. Starting in June 2000 she presided in many different courts, including small claims, children's, and criminal intake. She made decisions regarding bail in intake court, placement and safety decisions regarding children in juvenile court, and did soup to nuts in small claims court -- performing marriages, ruling on neighbor disputes, debt collection and eviction actions.  

I heard a lot of stories -- storytelling is a Vosper family trait -- such as one about a child kept in an attic by her neglectful family who found the strength to reach safety; kids on the brink of redemption who, in a moment, became involved in a car theft or worse, affecting the rest of their lives; weddings in small claims court with sometimes happy, sometimes contentious participants.

She would tell you that among her most satisfying experiences was the day same-sex marriage was legalized in Wisconsin, when the courthouse doors remained open late into the night and she got to  perform some of the state's first gay marriage ceremonies; and the day when a mother who had battled addiction for years at long last was reunited with her children after success in a drug treatment program.  

She's been assigned to small claims court in recent months. With the pandemic raging, all of it is done online, and the most difficult cases have appeared in evictions court -- tenants frantic to be given time to pay and landlords frantically facing months of lost income. There are never enough solutions, there is never enough time. Every day she would come home feeling like there had to be a better way of getting through this covid crisis. 

This retirement has been long-planned. She says that the scary days she spent in the ICU trying to will me back to health in August 2019 gave her time to see that life is short and retirement shouldn't be -- and this was well before the pandemic upended the world. Now we start our new (mostly) calendar-free life together! Clearly, the first priority is to get her a good road bike.

Somewhere else

                                                                         Dropping off a table on the road to Arcadia.

You just have to trust.

We got out of town just in time to meet the bad weather up in northern Michigan last week. It was cold, windy and damp. But the scenery was different; the house had been professionally cleaned; and it was just really nice to be somewhere else. We saw no one but grocery clerks, played Scrabble with a real board and wooden pieces, and actually conversed on topics beyond politics for minutes at a time. 

We were going to take the Milwaukee ferry on Sunday morning, but when we arrived at 5 a.m. the ferry had been cancelled because the lake was kicking up 9-foot seas. So we drove up through the UP, the calming, scenic route, and I did get a bike ride in during a one-day break in the weather. It was a lot of climbing, and, if I wasn't such a sissy, the descents would have been chaotically fast. We took the ferry on the way back, and it was harrowing, the boat lurching and slamming from side to side. They should have cancelled that one, too, and I will never ride the Lake Express again.

I feel good on a bike. Normal. With my feet locked in, pushing down is no problem. It's just walking I find difficult. My MD-afflicted ankles are such a mess. In a strange house, I lurch from counter to table to wall, pull myself up stairways with the railing and hold on tight coming down. Getting up from a couch requires a push down with my fists, which makes me feel like a very old man. Wearing boots I can do pretty well, walk for miles, but in tennis shoes or just socks I walk with care, or just sit. Do I need a cane? Boy, I hope not. 

Here's a few pix. 

The scenic overlook

Down the other side

About to topple?

(Ms. V photo)

  

Work barge near the lighthouse

(Ms. V photo)

Tough bird

Home and away

                                                                                            Pinewoods Campground

                                                                                               Kettle Moraine South

     

                                          

I planned weeks in advance and got approval from the woman in Human Resources (Ms. V) to take a little overnight bike ride to a campground near Dousman, about 40 biking miles west. Left Tuesday midmorning and had clear blue skies, temps in the 60s, a full load of gear, and a tolerable headwind. I rode the trails -- the Hank Aaron to the Oak Leaf to the New Berlin to the Glacial Drumlin. I stopped for tamales in Waukesha, took a longer break in Wales, and, at Waterville Road, followed the hilly country lane to the campground and set up in site #6. I saw just one other person, and my site was passed by just  three or four cars in the evening and the next morning. 

I texted and called and emailed Ms. V that I had arrived safe and sound -- her sole requirement -- but I was out of range, and I thought, "Well, what can I do? I'm sure it will be fine."

Famous last words.

Site #6

So I ate a freeze-dried meal, went to bed before 8 p.m., and listened to the vice presidential debate with earbuds on a little transistor radio. 

In the morning I got up, made oatmeal and packed up. I waited for the weather to warm up a little bit, and, near the campground entry, called Ms. V. 

"I've had a great time," I said. 

"Where are you?"

"I'm leaving the campground."

"Where?"

"I'm leaving the campground."

"Where are you right now?"

My connection was bad, she said, but it was the fixation on where I was that stuck with me. 

When I got home I called her at work, and said again I'd had a great time, no problems.

And she said, "Well, let me tell you about my day."

Now, just so we understand, she's a woman suffering PTSD from my bike crash of last summer. So she and my solo bike trips are not on the best of terms. (Even though she gave me pro-forma approval for this one.) In any event, she was up most of the night, and called Ahna, our daughter, who also disapproves and also was involved in the bike-crash recovery, and I suppose they got a little revved up.

So, by 6:40 a.m., Ms. V was driving to the Southern Kettle Moraine. Ah! the fixation! She went first to the wrong campground, got directions to the right one, and didn't find me, though I was still there. She was certainly one of those few cars that drove by my site in the morning. 

I should say that I had cleverly camped in a little wooded thicket, completely screened from the road -- because who wants to be seen from the road?  

So she reported to work late, and had to explain it to her boss, and by the time she got home, I had showered and was settling down to rest. In the end, I went and got us take-out to make amends.

Next time I'll bring a GPS.

*

Besides the damage to my relationships, when I got home I couldn't turn this light off and it later burned out, dammit: 

  

What an awful week

Sideways

Welcome to Milwaukee, gateway to Kenosha. I used to be a reporter in Kenosha, and it was the kind of place where new and different feature stories were hard to come by, but you could always count on the common council for a shouting match. The aldermen would even yell at me from time to time, in the middle of the meeting, for things I had written, which, among reporters, is a badge of honor.

But I'm glad I'm not there today. Trump, though specifically disinvited, is due to arrive any time, and people will be out in force, throwing things, shouting things, shooting things, and the truth of anything said will be measured, not by factual accuracy, but by the volume at which it is shouted.

I fully expect that Flight for Life and Froedtert will be busy tonight, and that injured and even dying Black protestors will be shackled to their hospital beds, and that white kids who show up with automatic rifles will be thanked by the feckless police, the national guard and the sheriff's department for their service, and sent safely home, where their mothers can feed them and tell them how proud they were for what they did.

All that, and I think it's going to rain.

My bile, unleashed.

Reading the road

Jefferson and Wells,  downtown

Well, I've biked about 1,750 miles on Sally Ride so far this year, and hope to hit 3,000 before the snow flies. For me, this is pretty good. I usually ride about five days a week, between 20 and 30-something miles at a go, with a goal of 100 a week. I did one longer ride to Port Washington, 60 miles roundtrip, and suffered for it, but I'll try that again when I get my gumption up.

Sally Ride is a truck, as bikes go, made of steel and thus heavy -- built for loaded touring -- and I am routinely passed by hotshots on featherweight bikes. And then again, I'm not the rider I used to be. But none of this really bugs me. I see it as not about speed so much as a way of exploring, a way to keep in touch with the world, a way to be out in it. This is also why I really prefer to ride alone -- I can putter if I want: sit and watch the boats at South Shore Marina; do a hill twice in a row to get a little work in; watch the anglers at Kletsch Park; grab Chinese take-out for dinner; whatever. This would drive some riders crazy.

What I think holds a serious Milwaukee rider back -- someone who rides from home and can't spend all day at it -- is the lack of challenging hills hereabouts. My friend Bruce, who rode with me last summer, takes daily rides in northern Michigan and gets in 1,000-foot climbs on a regular basis -- and there's nothing better than that to get you in tip-top shape.

When I started my cross-country ride last summer, I thought I was in pretty good shape, but I was only in good Milwaukee shape, and I was easily the slowest and weakest rider among the four of us, really struggling on the hills. It took two weeks of mountain riding to abate my dread of climbs, and by the end, I wasn't daunted by much. Even so, there were a few ridiculous hills -- like climbing out of Fort Benton, Montana -- where I had to take a break, or two, or three, on the way up -- but I knew by then I could make the top.

A few findings from recent rides.

Okay, I confess, this is not from the road, but from the roof

Protestors on State Street

There's a story here somewhere

Scripture is good for the soul, they say, though I do think it's "vengeance."

62

I had a birthday a couple days ago, and many thanks to all those adherents of Facebook who wished me well! Here's the card I got from the puckish Ms. V:

Inside it said, "Why is it the older we get, the more babylike we look? Happy Birthday."

Babylike or not, it was a startlingly good fit.

My dad at my age now was still running his medical practice. It was at about this time, late in his practice, that he had to start writing things down. Of course, as a doctor, there are a million details, and keeping a record is essential. But over the next few years his loss of memory became more pronounced, to the point where he had to quit some of the volunteer things he loved, like the School Ship project he worked on, and a mentoring program for young pastoral students. I heard him making that phone call to the coordinator: "It's too complicated for me."

As the years went on, he was prevented from driving, but he kept trying. My mother described him out at the garage, punching codes in to open the garage door, code after code after code. It angered him that he couldn't get it right, that anyone would have the temerity to keep him from his car.  Finally he got to be too much for my mom to handle, and we found a place for him at Huron Woods, a placement for memory loss patients. One of the worst decisions I've ever made was to stay there that first night with him. We went round and round. He would say, "Why are we here? Let's just go, let's go home." And I would say, "I'm staying here tonight. Why don't you stay with me." Over and over again. At one point I gave him a playful punch -- just a soft acknowledgment -- and he slugged me hard on the chest, and I was startled -- I had never, ever known him to be violent.

Mom came and got me the next day, and we talked lightly and went to the mall to look at bedspreads and sheets.

The door to his floor at Huron Woods was locked, and Dad would stand at it, twisting the handle and  shouting and pounding, pounding, pounding. He was strong and he fought with the caretakers and hurt at least one woman who tried  to wash him and change his clothes. He could not stand being fussed with like that and every change was a battle, sometimes requiring several aides. Finally he had to leave, and we found another place, closer to Detroit. A young male aide befriended him there, spent hours with him. He would walk with him, talk to him, engage him, and they developed a kind of method, a rapport, a feeling of trust. He was able to do the things that needed to be done.

As time went on Dad grew less willful -- he couldn't hold on to anger or frustration, what he cared about, or even what he liked or not. We brought him back. Mom hired Catherine and her family to care of him, and they kept coming, even beyond his death, to take care of Mom, till she moved here, nearby, when her own decline accelerated.

I hope it's easier for me.