Batten Down The Hatches...There She Blows

      Hello, it has been 9 years since I published my book, and 4 years since I wrote my last blog. I thought I was done. Life has taken me other places now. The 3 kids that contributed to my book have made Melissa and I grandparents. I got to go to one of the Hawaiian Islands 2 years ago and perform my youngest daughter's wedding.

Jessica and me 2 years ago getting prepared for her wedding.

     
As someone with a progressive disorder I continue to do the best I can and deal with changes as they happen. Here are a few of my latest thoughts.   

      You may be able to walk across a 1-inch tightrope, 45 feet in the air...but if you really want to impress me, let's see you stay up there after being onslaught by 2 or 3 sneezes. If I feel the warning signs of an impending nasal eruption, and don't quickly drop anchor or launch a grappling hook for stability...I suddenly feel like I just signed up for classes at the Arthur Murray Dance Academy. Not sure if the teacher at the Academy would approve of my interpretation of break dancing at that moment, but I might impress with my raw enthusiasm. I’m thinking that break dancing was not associated with sneezing when it came on the scene over 40 years ago, but this is my only connection…as the 2 forms of expression now go together in my world. 

      When Phil Medley and Bert Berns wrote the song, Twist and Shout, in 1961…I can’t imagine that they ever saw a day coming when the upbeat song about teenage dancing, twirling, and hipskirts…would become an actual cry of pain. If I “twist”...I will be”shouting”...bet on it. 

      At one time it was believed that the expression, “good luck”, said before a theater performance, actually would bring bad luck. So the idiom, “break a leg”, was born. In my life, breaking a leg is a saying which has nothing to do with theater…but begins with the word, “don’t" and refers to the use of my walker or wheelchair when appropriate. This would also be a way to hopefully avoid the aforementioned twist and shout.

     In 1974 at the age of 10 (before an SCA diagnosis) there was a toy named Weebles. They were small figures that were rounded at the bottom, and the product song, or catch phrase, was weebles wobble...but they don't fall down. I remember hours of playing with the weebles. True to there slogan, they would tilt and rock when pushed but always would return to an upright position. I didn't see the day in my not -so -distant future when I would also be rounded on the bottom. That's were the similarities end though...I easily fall over when....( forget "pushed", when someone just breathes my way)....and I do not spring back up. Webble-wobble has taken on a whole new meaning.