Better Living Through Chemistry

Last night my wife woke up in screaming pain. Which meant we needed to visit Marathon quam celerrime and happily Doctor Collins had a space available before lunch.


There are so many women with auto immune diseases you'd think somebody somewhere would be wondering why, but treating the symptoms becomes the way forward in modern medicine. And we all know that treatments bring side effects but when the agony is unsupportable one bites the chemical bullet.


Rheumatoid arthritis is a disease that immobilizes thousands of women, so my wife uses a regimen of strict and copious exercise and a large helping of good luck to keep the insidious disease at bay. Some women are completely immobilized by rheumatoid arthritis, but so far she isn't. When exercise and chemistry and luck sometimes fail her we end up chatting with Dr Collins' skeletal assistant.


It was the ankle that flared horribly this time but it was better by the time we left the house, such that slow supported hobbling was in order.


I guess it was a joint in them there bones that was giving trouble but the more I checked the plastic ankle and compared it to the x ray chart and the less convinced I became that science was the answer. I used to work for the Cristian Scientists years ago on their radio service and they never offered health insurance because when they get sick they pray. I remember my editor was laid up in bed with a broken bone when I filed a story and he edited me through gritted teeth. He was cheerful and prayerful though and never minded I thought his was an act of lunacy. Could he have been right to pray to mend a broken bone? Bollocks I say, thank God for modern medicine is my prayer.


We had to wait a bit but the good doctor provides more entertainment than a mere x ray for his waiting patients. There was a table full of bones which we waggled happily for ten minutes as we waited and speculated about her condition.


"What do you suppose this is for?" she asked as I studied the skeleton for answers. The good doctor came by soon enough, diagnosed no broken bones and prescribed better living through chemistry and no exercise for four days.


We were out $20 later and on our way to lunch. I guess we could have stayed home and done the Christian Science thing for free but science science got my vote today. Oh, and health insurance. Tough for those that have none. Don't you hate those Canadian socialists who don't have to worry out such trifles?

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A Little Keys Mystery

I have walked past this home for some years now and nothing has changed.


There is something completely forlorn about a home no longer used.


A home is in fact most people's largest asset when speaking in terms of money, but in terms of emotional attachment what object can there be of greater attraction than one's home?


Private property perhaps but whose and where are they, the affixers of the signs?


And there under the house in its proper place the vehicle that every home must boast, for what is a home without a means of transport, in modern America?


A garden formed and maintained now abandoned and overgrown...


And there out front the ultimate Keys accessory, a boat, with, of all things, a tricycle inside.


And the boat bears the hint of ownership, registration from North Carolina, a place whence go the many that decide that Keys living is too expensive for them.


A hot summer afternoon, a quiet day on Cudjoe Key. And no sign of anyone come to reprieve the home from the encroaching weeds.

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Cudjoe Suburb

Someone get me a cannon and let me take a shot.


It doesn't seem likely anyone would get hurt.


Snowbirds are Up North sweeping mud out of their New England front yards and backing up their hard pressed firefighters in Texas. Millennial drought followed by wind fanned flames. Gross.


I'm going swimming this evening in eighty degree salt water while Keys winter residents are Up North watching their days get short, feeling temperatures plummet while they wait for the first snow.


There are enough people left down here to keep yards clean and trimmed and put the garden trash out.


The post office, that much maligned national institution delivers mail through hot wet September afternoons and holds mail and keeps it safe, or forwards it Up North as needed, no problem. I notice my mail carrier comes by much earlier in summer, so I have to remember to get my Netflix discs out before the little white van rolls by.


Feel that breeze...Watch the palms flutter.


This is Fall as it should be.


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Seasons Change

I read of seasons changing Up North and certainly even down here the days grow shorter. The closer one finds oneself to the Equator the less the days change their length but happily we enjoy the pleasure of summer time and winter time which manages to increase our evenings' light a little beyond the natural. Temperatures remain warm and the days remain sunny as they will through winter if things remain even moderately as normal.


These days my ride home from work is completed in darkness and only after I arrive home does the sun come up. Otherwise Autumn never makes it's presence felt or even suggested. This is a good time to be in the Keys.

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Nightlife

Every other Tuesday I work a bizarre shift from 2am to 6am which means I leave the house at the ungodly hour of one am and every time this shift comes round I loathe it.


Crawl out of a warm bed, step over a dead-to-the-world dog, abandon a sleeping wife and blast off into the night across the Overseas Highway. The weird 2 am shift isn't all bad.


On a sleepless night I can sometimes bring myself to leave home early and get into town with a few minutes to spare and thus give myself the pleasure of a ride round Key West when the drunks and respondents are on the street.


If you need an extra mattress I found a few on Packer Street giving the neighborhood a much needed civic boost.


I felt like hopping the fence and enjoying an open air barbecue in this lovely little corner... I'd be pissed if I went to the lengths this family has to make a nice place to sit out and the across the street sits a pile of moldering mattresses...Key West al fresco is almost a birthright.


Thats a new one for me. An official vendor. Does the red cross have unofficial vendors too?


Dons Place looming up out of the darkness. They serve their first beers of the day at seven in the morning.


I've seen this pottery emporium before. It seems to be more than one store, one called island pottery and the other called Key West pottery. Both look quite interesting.


I stopped for another picture a little further up Truman and there as a Harley parked across the street from Bare Assets a fine late night rendezvous vous if you want to look at naked Slavic women fishing for a green card and permanent residence in the land of the free.


Welcome to Key West, says the signs and here you are in Old Town where naked ass is welcome.


I have never been inside Bare Assets and I don't intend to go. It just seems sad and rather dowdy to me.


I'd rather be at work which I guess makes me as bizarre as the shift.

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Seascapes From Cudjoe

These views from the Overseas Highway looking south are typical for the time of year.


Flat waters and clear skies with a light southerly breeze made for a delightful stroll yesterday.


Cheyenne was restless for reasons known only to herself so I stopped the car to get some peace. It worked and she tired herself out.


She rooted around, I stood and admired the views.


Looking across Kemp Channel toward Sugarloaf Key I could see the earthball.org hovelcraft. The idea is to create a small living space in a Buckminster Fuller type of sphere and add a platform around the ball which one then goes off and floats somewhere.


Back on the Cudjoe side of the bridge my Labrador was still busy lost to sight among the mangroves.


I couldn't believe how pleasant the afternoon was yesterday, despite the 90 degree afternoon, humidity was low and the breeze was refreshing, such that I wasn't even sweating


On the radio I had been listening to Talk of the Nation on NPR (91.5 FM) and a discussion of the out of control drought in Texas, causing tremendous brush fires with huge loss of property.


John Burnett was saying cows are being slaughtered in droves owing to the lack of water and of feed, but furthermore ownership of cattle was a generational thing and once lost the cattle could not afford to be replaced even were there young people ready to take up the ranching trade.


As it is, he said cattle may not return to Texas ranches. And still they deny climate change for it is better to ignore disaster than to confront it.


How lovely then to live in a corner of the country enjoying a perfect and prolonged summer.


Why did the dog cross the road? To look for smelly abandoned bait fish of course!


Not everyone lives in a stuffy little cottage in Old Town.


Some like to live near and see the water. It can be worth exchanging easy access to bars for an open seascape.

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