Episode Fifteen: No Blast Shield To Save The Ice Cream; Work Reentry

Recovery Escapades:
A Newsletter Of 2nd Chance Life Across Cardiac County Line Road

Episode Fifteen: No Blast Shield To Save The Ice Cream From Work Reentry

THE RIGHT STUFF

I vividly remember the space reentry scene in the movie version of Tom Wolfe's book "The Right Stuff". The book was about our early astronauts' ability to face incredible danger unaware or at least unaffected by the prospect of fiery death. Ed Harris played astronaut John Glen, strapped down in his one-man capsule Friendship 7.

That little lifeboat capsule orbiting the planet came close to turning John Glen into one crispy critter because of a flaw in the sacrificial burn shield covering the arse of his little ark. Talk about a rough reentry ride back home to mother earth. And that was after the high of some ride - a mind boggling amount of altitude from which Glen viewed the world, from in space.

ALL HAT AND NO CATTLE

It's all old hat now. Nobody notices much about the next space shuttle launch. The real is all so cliche and banal compared to unreal SFX - sci fi special effects. But I was a first grader watching it on TV and nothing about it was boring then. I think it was venerable TV news anchor Walter Cronkite (Uncle Walter who just passed away at age 92) on the CBS network who helped us plot Glen's progress around the world. It was done with the aid of a little blinking light. Mounted on a board map of the world with a a cutout slot in which the blinking light slowly was shoved across the plywood backed world map to simulate Glen's flight.

CHEEZ WHIZ, BATMAN

Cheesy Velveeta drenched Cheetohs in the extreme this was, SFX wise. But back in that day, it was something. It even got us out of class. And kinda, that getout mattered as big as the space race thing, as big as beating the commie pinko atheist Soviet totalitarian godless bastards. In militarily precise rows we kids sat uniformly and quietly, watching dutifully on the school's TV Our Astronaut - kicking Cold War ass.

JOHN GLENN AND HOT MISS HAVERSHAM

John Glen's all out ride was the catchup hit that moved us from behind in the space race, got the score evened up by halftime. Later astronauts would take the ball all the way past the goalpost of the moon's dusty surface. And watching the news got us much time off from writing drills in Ms Haversham's first grade class.

Or whoever it was who was our teacher back then. Haversham sounds like a nice spinsterly name for a hot first grade teacher when you cannot remember, so it Ms Haversham it will be (er, was; gotta get those tenses right or Ms Haversham would be upset - don't want her ghosts or zombie grade teachers visiting me at night to motivate me towards correct grammer, no siree bob a roony).

16 TONS, 800 EMAILS AND WHADDAYA GET

My reentry into the work world was not so dramatic. There was no threat of being vaporized as was portrayed in "The Right Stuff". Fatigue and time off for doctor appointments were the worst strains. Well, the the worst next to the 800+ emails awaiting my return after being gone for five weeks. Much of that was junkish mail that cleared away easily on day 1, leaving a solid set that had to be read and dealt with carefully the remainder of the week.

PUT ON A HAPPY FACE

And oh, the other risk was the side effects of putting on a happy face. Which truthfully was my internal state of gratitude, not just a mask. I answered the inevitable "So how are you feeling" with "Not as good as before the surgery obviously but all things considered, quite well". Sometimes I'd be shockingly candid and say "I look better than I feel, which is old and feeble. I want my old self back, and can't wait to start working out again".

I WAS A TALKING MR POTATO HEAD

For those who've jumped into this without reading prior posts, I prepared two years for this surgery. I changed from being a ventriloquist's Mr Potato Head (I was a talking couch potato, perhaps not truly sentient, so I had to be ventriloquism in a skinned over bag of fibrous starch). I changed my diet, and added in vigorous exercise to drop 114 pounds or thereabouts, and was running 4 miles or biking 35 miles the week before my heart surgery.

HAS BEEN ACTORS FROM OLD SLASHER FLICKS

I am now struggling to retain the active lifestyle changes I gained while motivated fearfully, while running not from Jason with an axe and a hockey mask (or Mike Meyers, whichever) but a masked surgeon with a chest saw. And now I only run/walk 3 miles and cannot do so yet without stopping to catch my breath, kinda like old times back two years ago. But I am getting there, back to my old meaty hearty self. I smoke all the other dudes in my cardio rehab class, leave them behind in my dust. Easy to do if you are the youngest guy there and had a two year head start before a non-surprise surgical procedure. Still there is much to remodel - I lost another 5+ pounds net after surgery and muscule turning to soggy mush from 5 weeks of torporous inactivity, waiting for my split sternum to heal back up.

HEAD OF THE SLOW CLASS

That said, head of the class I am again, at cardio rehab "class" I rock and I rule and like America did when kicking commie ass across the planet seen below by astronaut John Glenn. And to be frank, I rule arrogantly so at times (in my mind). But this time around I am not the class teacher's pet. The rehab center supervisor, she's kinda hot like a first grade Ms Haversham-ish teacher, but too young - young enough to be my daughter, rather than her being hot AND old enough to be my Mom. That was the constellation of wonderous things unfathomable to a single-digits years old kid back in his first grade class. Back when John Glen jockeyed himself around the world and showed everybody that America Rocked, America Ruled, America Couldn't Lose. Hey, me being part of America - then by proxy or democratic trickle down, I couldn't lose either.

HOURGLASS INSIDE OUT OR UPSIDE DOWN?

We were all much younger then. (Or maybe you weren't around then, not even up to being younger; prior to age zero on the time charts, I dunno what you'd be - feel welcome to look it up in some book about preincarnation, but it's opaque to me at that stage of statelessness). Now I see the hourglasses of time are reversed; and I think that Einstein was right, it's all relative to the observer's point of view.

KING OF THE TIME HILL - NOW WHAT?

I perceive I am looking down from a higher mound of time passed behind, not looking upwards towards a potential and undefined, unlimited future. And this cardio rehab class? That is one of those classes in which you really don't want to belong. Unless you really do belong, and then it is better to be there huffing nad puffing rather than sleeping six feet under the dirt nap storm weather up top, unable to nab that perfect school attendance record despite having to walk to school against the beating winds of stormy living.

POST STAR TREK POSTURING

"Not as good as before the surgery obviously but all things considered, quite well" - banal and cliched my answer, like how we now regard the space shuttle launches (notice I did not properly capitalize the shuttle as a proper noun, in consistency with America's spoiled post Star Trek attitude about imagined future space travel; how much America lives in fantasy as it disregards the real but plain and routine toe dips into space, hey - it's all red white and blue and all that, but we cast that aside once it's no longer novel).

INSTA-GRAVY

But I do have breath to speak that banal answer to "How are you", as clumsy as it does come out. Say it proud and say it loud, with the brown on the down low below - instead of the brown being six feet up over my head. The brown, man, it is all gravy - gravy, gravy, gravy. Ah, gravy - explaining that triplet is another story, a story from my brother after he returned from Vietnam. I'd rather not say what he did when he was In Country, just to say he came back - kinda sorta.

See my brother after 'Nam became a system engineer with Compaq Computer Corporation in Houston. One day he got so frustrated about the over heated conflict at a design meeting to choose what type screw to seat cards inside a desktop PC (the only kind of PC back then, laptops were not yet invented). He was overheard muttering "Gravy, gravy, gravy. Gravy, gravy, gravy". He did not misspeak the word "Groovy" which was much over used back then.

GRAVY ON BUTTERED MASHED TATERS

When asked to explain if he had some kind of eating problem, he replied "Eating disorder? No, not that. When I was out In County back in 'Nam, I promised myself something. I promised myself that if I ever got back home, the worst day back home would be gravy compared to my best day in 'Nam. Ao this stupid meeting is gravy man - fine brown gravy, on 'taters, mashed with butter".

Well said my brother, so very well said. And my 800 emails and my stack of bills and calls to make all awaiting me is the hot chocolate fudge on top of my ice cream dish of troubles for the living. And questions like "So how are you feeling" are the whipped cream and my tartly sighed answer is the red pitiful little cherry on top.

FROM POTATO HEAD TO SAGGY SHAR PEI

It's all ice cream for me, despite feeling like a cross between a plate of half stuffed steamed Asian dumplings and a shrunken Shar-Pei puppy. How so that? When arising in the morning I look at my sags in the mirror. Sags around the once-six packed gut, sags from the muscle loss due to inactivity and suppressed appetite after surgery. Still, it's all ice cream sundaes from here on out. With sprinkles on top, to boot. Homer Simpson approves and agrees, but mainly because of the sprinkles. In his own way he is wise, and so am I; for despite all this, this I know: S'All Good Darllins, S'All Good.

I BEST REMEMBER ALL THIS GOOD CHEAP ADVICE

I'll have to remind myself of all this feel good exhoration come time to resume my workout regimen (soon if not by time of publication). Bear crawls up and then down a flight of stairs, mixed with wind sprints and push ups and then add on free weight work, all to put human meat back onto my skinnied down frame. I will yet get back to feeling 12 years younger than and remain not much longer feeling 12 years older than my clocked age. Time enough to make that happen (6 months, a year?) will pass no matter what I do/don't do, so why not start with finishing a 5K race this coming August 1st? I won't beat my best 5K time but I can finish the race, and put myself back on the road to a new and better normal. Get to feeling better by anticipating better outcomes from the effort.

FEELING A RISING WIND, EH?

Wind in my sails and lungs, it's rising, coming. I just gotta breath in all the way - in and out, each breath a gift. Breath that aids the firing of neurons - sentience, that improbable burst of a self aware fireworks show. The thoughts and emotions in our heads can be explosions in multicolor splendor against a slipstream sky of layered conciousness, as we move against the backdrop of other acting, living souls. Quite the trip fanstastic this thing called living, despite the times that it feels like trying to swim upstream in a river of pudding otherwise known as the workworld flow of emails and calls and memos and meetings.

WHAT A LONG STRANGE TRIP IT'S YET TO BE

I wanna ride this trip to the very end of the line and back again. I want to make happy talk with the other passengers along for the ride to where ever we are going. Even to workplace and my cubicle and the LCD cyclops that crouches in front of my office chair. Because that too passes, and then it's time off for first Tuesday and Gypsy Jazz Cabaraet night at my favorite coffee house. You hang on, and you win by showing up after work.

LIKE SGT PEPPER'S BAND SAID - ALL TOGETHER, NOW

Together, we the living where ever we stand right now (in the work cubicle, at a workday lunch line for the $1 Wendy's value menu specials, or roaming halls at yet another tech conference at a fancy hotel - anywhere we are) we are all quite an impressive cast. Together we all are a travelling dinner theater troupe - serving up dinner and a show - and that is very good entertainment; educational, too. All of us are the actors and audience, though sometimes it is hard to figure out which part we play at any moment. But give it a bit of sand in the hourglass to sort itself out, and both turns will come about - actor and guest/watcher.

PASS THE PLATE, PLEAXE

Come time for my turn to leave the stage and sit a bit for dinner, please pass the gravy my way and do not pass me by come time for ice cream dessert. Forgive me if the cherry on my dessert adorned by a slip or melancholic conversation is occasionally the tart pity (not pit/pitted - pity)cherry, versus a sweet cherry. I'm working on changing that and making good progress.

WE'RE ON A MISSION FROM GOD

For I am on a mission from God now to patrol the bachelor fridge of my mind. That mental appliance from which conditioned responses are drawn for serving at home's table. I am sworn to update the stash of condiments found therein, and henceforth be sure that any jar of cherries found are proper maraschino cherries packed in sweeter syrup. And fresh, unexpired - like I am and want even more to become. I shall decorate the desserts that life serves up with better perspective and thus sweeter fruits, saving those most tart and sour thoughts for chunking at occasional 2am wakeup-in-the-night blues. That is my commitment, and my ever more frequent follow through.

Life is good, getting better - and if it is not yet a bowl of organic cherries, it is at least a Kroger Card discount priced jar of maraschinos. Fresh and unexpired. Like me.

Gratefully yours, and back now
Contributing into the common economy

James Sullivan