I am pretty close to entering the seventh decade of my life.  I am retired too, and so I have a lot of time on my hands to reflect on lots of stuff.  You’re probably too young to have the deep thoughts I have and don’t give a shit about the existential conundrums of life.  So many things are perplexing to me.  Does God really exist?  If there is a God who is the creator of all things, is He sorry about Donald Trump?   Is there life after death?  Are there marshmallows in heaven?  I hope not.  I don’t like marshmallows.  How will I die, like am I going to suddenly drop over from a ruptured  aortic aneurysm with my life’s blood detouring any which way it pleases inside of me till I lose consciousness?   Or will I linger relentlessly in a hospital bed with cancer cells migrating from one organ to another till my insides are just a compressed mass of unrecognizable cell clutter that eventually leads to a grizzly implosion and merciful death?  I’m a registered organ donor, but what a waste that would be if all my organs are enveloped in a neoplastic goo.  That would ordinarily really piss me off, but I’ll  be dead so I guess I won’t worry about it.  So to anyone out there that might have benefitted from one of my fantastic organs if those nasty cancer cells had stayed away and bothered somebody else, just know I tried to help you out.  Now a large vessel stroke would really chap my ass.  A paralyzing stroke or any type of major central nervous system incapacitation  would be the worst.  You just sit around and get in everybody’s way for a really long time before you check out.   I’d probably have to have someone hanging out to feed me and change my diapers.  I hate being dependent on anybody, because anybody is always fucking up my life.

Take the douchenozzles that set my countertop and laid the tile during my kitchen remodel.  I suppose you could forgive them if they couldn’t spell the word “clearance,” but you would think they would have an understanding of its concept, like how far from the floor should the countertop be to fit a dishwasher underneath, or how many lateral inches should be allowed to accommodate the sink.  I made the mistake of counting on them to have a grasp of those basics.  And then there’s the guy who called himself a carpenter that framed out one side of my bathroom door a solid inch out of alignment with the other during my bathroom remodel.  In the long run it’s just better to do the job yourself.  That’s what I’ve learned.  But there isn’t enough time.  We all know that.  If I had the time maybe I would take an on-line course in dentistry.  Then instead  of having to go back to my dentist to have him replace that filling that he just installed in my last  upper right molar two days ago I could just take care of it myself.  Time.  Just not enough time.

So I’ve been watching time go by.  I’ve been watching time go by and taking a look at it to see how I am doing.  We all measure that differently.  Some people go to church a lot to help them figure it out.  Others go through their check book ledger and take a gander at expenses or all the charities they’ve contributed to, or legal fees they’ve had to pay.  Some check out their stock portfolio.  You know how I keep track of the passage of time?  I’ll show you.

1947- circa 2003       2003-2008         2008 -2012        2012-2015      2015-2016          2016—-?

These are my maintenance prescription meds that I take daily.   They are all lined up on my dresser, like soldiers standing at attention, and  I have watched with some alarm as new recruits seem to be mustered into their ranks within an increasingly compressed amount of time.  And that doesn’t take into account the shit that went down in October of 2012.  In medication bottle terms, it looked like this:

Confusing, I know.  Here my bottles look like a bunch of drunken sailors, which is not far off the mark, because in October of 2012 I had total knee replacement surgery.  That involved taking a lot of narcotics and muscle relaxants and sedatives and for three or four days it was easier to just throw everything haphazardly into my night stand drawer and hope when the time arrived to ingest a dose of something,  my eyes could focus sharply enough to help my brain direct my hand to the proper something.   And if you’re thinking of breaking into my house because you would like to get your hands on all the left-over narcotics I never used, I hate to tell you you would be wasting your time.  You’ll have to go to the Omaha landfill to find them.  If you’re interested, they’re in a baggie with a quarter cup of coffee grounds, an ounce of water and a piece of moldy havarti.

If you look carefully at my prescription bottle time-line, you will notice a straggler falling out of formation in the picture at the right.  That one bothers me.  It’s my newest recruit and I am extremely hesitant to push it forward in rank with the others I insert in different ways inside my body.  It’s a statin, a cholesterol lowering medication that for the past two years I have managed to convince my primary care physician I don’t need.  I still believe my recent, uncooperative LDL levels are temporary.  In my mind It’s all simply the result of some over enthusiastic mouth banging of anything that ended up on my plate during our month-long holiday gormandizing orgy I call glutton-fest.  However, my attempt at a quick fix this January evidently was unsuccessful.  Oral cramming for a week prior to my physical exam on Kentucky blue-grass salad and boiled cabbage didn’t produce the lipid results my physician was looking for.  So according to him, it’s a statin or a potential heart attack or stroke.

I’m ok with a heart attack.  Maybe I’d go out quickly.  Hardly know what hit me.  But stroke?  No, no. no.  You know how I feel about that.  But damn it- the side effects of a statin.  I’m already achy enough.  And you’ve got your head up your ass if you think I’ll stop drinking scotch.  Then, once again, what does my doctor really know.  Maybe he’s just another anybody I should think twice about becoming dependent on.  I should probably take a stand.  As general and leader of my army of prescription bottles, maybe it is time to incite it to insurrection and revolt.  I’m running out of counter space.  On the other hand, my doctor and all his questionable statistics could be right.  If that’s the case I guess I would be better off doing as he says so I can put off running out of what I am beginning to appreciate more and more each day- time.