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Mostly Teachable Episode 10 Tastes Like Chicken

 

Thanks for reading and listening to Mostly Teachable. This week’s podcast is a nugget of joy about the end of the world through health care, the end of Camelot with Tom and Katie, and (hopefully) the end of people eating strangers. Have a great weekend, and have a peaceful and joyous whatever it is that you do!

 

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mostly-teachable/id526613092?mt=2

 

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#Bath Salts #Health Care #Health Care Law Upheld #Katie Holmes #Katie Holmes Divorce #Naked Criminals #Tom Cruise

A few months ago I was lamely explaining my reasons for abandoning the daily running program that had become a cornerstone of my life. The whole argument came down to barfing. Professionals turn their noses up at the term barf, seeming to prefer the more tasteful notes in the word puke, or that classic of the ancient world vomit. I, however, was spending all my free time (and many of my scheduled moments) barfing. The doctor was trying to establish how much I was “really” running. The answer was not at all, real, or otherwise. Barfing had me on a fitness program of its own, and that was about as real as things got.

I got off the barfy train a month ago thanks to medications that may kill me (but will keep my stomach contents in place) and began the task of rebuilding the runner’s body. This is not an easy gig. The inverse of living as Andrew and His Technicolor Dinner Re-runs, was that I had to eat to make up the lost energy. My body began to take on the look of Jabba jr. The way back to the solid, strong (and mercifully silent when outdoors) runner I used to be meant becoming a walker. Jabba the Shuffler is slowly being replaced by something better than the old upchuck marathoner of a year ago. To coin the cliché, whatever doesn’t make a person sick any longer, should make them mad enough to go and fight. My once full race schedule is down to one event, the aptly named Old Farts Marathon, in Lowell, Michigan at the end of summer. I have no notions of suddenly getting back into good form. The truth is that this will be a season of dirt, scrapes, hills, too-early mornings, and way-too hot afternoons. A very good trade for barfing, if I do say so myself.

#Barfing #Marathon Running #Migraines #Old Farts Marathon #Running #Training

Last Wednesday I posted about being a solitary person and having a need at times to step back from life and just think. Over the days that followed, I drove deep into the woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, far past Mackinaw and the pasties, fudge and smoked fish that are meant to lure in us southern dwellers. Even though I am a Michigander by birth, my trips over the bridge to the U.P. have been few. The world of the Yoopers is different. Towns are few and far between and most consist of small grocery stores, or gas and bait shops that cater to hunters and fisherman on their way to lodges. Over a seventy mile stretch of two lane highway, a driver might only encounter five passing lanes. For the most part, if you get stuck driving behind tourists, there will  be a grinding wait before being able to pass the slow vehicle in front of your bumper.

Each morning on my visit to the U.P., I made a habit of waking up at six a.m. and then watching through the window for the first “barely there” strains of dawn. At half past, I’d lace up my running shoes and head out into the woods. After a half mile, I’d reach a paved road that wound its way through the Hiawatha National Forest. There are few times in life when I’ve felt so absolutely alone. The further I’d traipse away from the cabin, the more isolated I began to feel. The trees seemed to grow around and over me, only allowing the sunrise to break just a bit over their tops. I smelled nothing but the cool scent of piney woods wafting on the breeze mingled with the fish smell rolling off of the lakes. Alone in the woods, I wondered what would happen if I ran across a bear. After twenty minutes went by on the road without seeing a car or any dwellings, there arose a flutter of panic in me. Then it vanished. For the first time since living in Grand Teton as a young man, or the year spent roaming the Delaware Water Gap, did I feel truly at home. In emptiness, as well as in quiet, did I find peace and the realization that I am infinitely small in the vastness of God’s world. The world is and will continue to be and my small footprint is just…small.

On its margin the great forest
Stood reflected in the water,
Every tree-top had its shadow,
Motionless beneath the water.
From the brow of Hiawatha
Gone was every trace of sorrow,
As the fog from off the water,
And the mist from off the meadow.
With a smile of joy and triumph,
With a look of exultation,
As of one who in a vision
Sees what is to be, but is not,
Stood and waited Hiawatha. H.W. Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha.

#Hiawatha #Hiawatha National Forest #Lake Superior #Longfellow #Mackinaw #Michigan's Upper Peninsula #Northern Michigan #Pasties #Yoopers

Ichiro Suzuki was traded from the Seattle Mariners to the Yankees this afternoon. To you, this may seem the routine business of modern professional baseball. There has never been anything routine about the very routine-ness that is Ichiro. He’s been a career .322 hitter with the Mariners since 2001, a workhorse of steadfast on base percentage. The very businesslike way he’s fielded his position and gotten on base doesn’t make the Sports Center highlights any more, because we’re used to his excellence. The fact that he finally played a major league season in 2011 not hitting .300 was only worrisome, because he’s Ichiro. I may be a Detroit Tiger homer for life, but Ichiro has been my one baseball infidelity over the years. When the Mariners and Tigers have squared off over the years, I’ve been in the habit of calling my daughter in to watch the TV. “C’mere, because you’re not going to see anyone like this again.”

I bleed Tigers blue and orange. A  Summer’s Eve swilling mo-ron told me last season that I must have just jumped on the band wagon. Sure, except the bandwagon arrived around the time I was a toddler and could just pronounce Wockenfuss. My dad used to prop me next to the old Realistic stereo speakers and I’d sit and listen to Ernie. “Swiiing and a miss” is still rattles around my brain pan. All this having been said, I was an Ichiro fan. Even if he’d played for the White Sox, this would have been so. Tonight he’s batting eighth for the Yankees, which tests even my respect for the great, working man’s all-star. He played for some woefully crummy Seattle teams over the years and I don’t blame Ichiro for wanting to finish with a contender. In all the years Ichiro’s played for bad teams, this is the first I remember him publicly complaining. Hopefully, he finishes on a high note. Ichiro inspires what should be the best qualities in all of us:  hard work, consistency, and presence at the plate.

#Detroit Tigers #Ernie Harwell #Ichiro #Ichiro Suzuki #John Wockenfuss #New York Yankees #Seattle Mariners

 There is a strange bond between men and the women who raise them. We are dependent on our mothers for life-sustaining food and shelter as very young children, while they depend on us as part of what defines and deepens their lives and livelihoods. That, and we depend on our mothers as little men to tell us the truth about the ugly, wrong-in-every-way outfits they buy us. They coo over us as children and smooth the wrinkles out of stupid looking short sets and creepy polo shirts. Men know from birth that we were made to wear two things: dirt and animal attraction. We somehow believe mom, however, when she tells us tiny beige leisure suits are adorable. That is the power the women who give birth to us hold. Despite the way they combed our hair constantly with mom spit and called every woman we ever tried to impress our “little girlfriend,” each man feels a mysterious compunction to go and visit mom on Mother’s Day. In my case, it’s because my wife (formerly referred to as “Who’s your little girlfriend?”) makes me visit.

I try to assuage my bad son guilt feelings by presenting mom with a gift each mother’s day. Much difficulty goes into the choice of gift given. The journey toward redeemed son-hood begins with getting up from my desk at the hospital and going upstairs to the gift shop. Lots of stairs, but the gift is important. Every gift choice comes with hearing mom’s voice. If I choose to give her soap, I distinctly hear “Soap? Do you think I’m dirty?” No good. Maybe some Absinthe, for which I can hear her scolding me with “Absinthe? Do you think I’m Edgar Allen Poe?” I always get her a card, which after a year is still displayed on her piano. No matter what they dressed us in, our moms harbor some secret pride for us. Even if I don’t own a leisure suit.

#Edgar Allen Poe #Leisure Suits #Mother's Day #Mother's Day 2012 #Motherhood

Earlier tonight I was rooting through the refrigerator for the components that might possibly make up a complete dinner. In our house there isn’t any such thing. I found some oranges, a few jars of mustard and black oil from The X-Files. I guess that my standards need to drop down a little. There happened to be an unopened Lunchable.  I was not going to let the black ooze get a Lunchable. This, I thought, might be a nice change of pace. The last time I ate one of these happy little trays of lunchmeat goodness was…a long time ago. Some years back, I snuck onto a senior citizens bus trip to some war memorial (because when you reach a certain age, you take the bus to visit various cemeteries and restaurants with free, albeit burnt, coffee). The old timers had Lunchables. Stacks of soggy Ritz Crackers, bologna wheels, pasteurized processed cheese food product (the food product you feed to cheese, apparently). Good, All-American, toothless people’s food. As a kid my dad brought this combination of food home when we were getting ready to move, so I get nervous every time I pass the Lunchable aisle in the store. The package in my refrigerator tonight looked a little more sophisticated. It supposedly contained the makings of one sandwich and also a fruit smoothie. Upon opening the package, I figured out that the product was a fancy MRE, the Meals Ready To Eat given to service people in the field. A child size sandwich roll/doorstop, a smidge of turkey, some low-fat/low-interest mayonnaise, the smoothie and two Oreos. The product, to be fair, is designed for school-age children.

Despite my stellar I.Q.., there is no government standard that classifies me as a school kid (except for maybe the No Adult with Social Anxiety Left Behind {we swear} Program).

For a short time I enjoyed my tot-sized sandwich and smoothie shot. Not for long of course. In the end, there was some quality pizza growing in the back of the fridge. That not only killed my appetite, but several viruses growing in my stomach. Yummy, sprouted food for the modern man on the go.

Lunchable Smoothies Lunchables Meals Ready To Eat MRE's Oscar Mayer Retirement Bus Trips Smaller Portions

One of the great, unifying places in Western Civilization is the public restroom. It doesn’t matter if you are standing with feet firmly planted atop the fiscal cliff watching everyone else in the country go over the edge. Eventually you meet up in line at a public bathroom with those same people. The common design of every public men’s room in America obviously originated from the mind of someone with severe inadequacy. The urinals are generally placed strategically at a height to ensure maximum splash potential. For women, the old adage reminds them not to wear white after Labor Day. You don’t normally see men in white at any time of the year, because we’ll inevitably end up in a public splashing room sometime during the day. For the most part, men are the forgotten gender when it comes to public restroom amenities. Oh, sure, some restaurants and arenas that boast both fanciness and schmancy-ness place television sets or Lucite encased newspapers on the walls directly over the urinal (to entertain our belly buttons, apparently). These same places don’t tend to give us extras like paper towels. Or soap. If we’re lucky, the genius restroom gods assign us hair dryers attached to the walls. This makes sense, I suppose. Floor level urinals and hair dryers that only a three-year old could fit under. Sometimes, the designers see fit to install a changing table on the wall. Every man knows that if he is a loving parent, he mustn’t put his child on this device. For one, there are usually dirty diapers still in the thing. The other issue is the more than likely outcome of having one’s beloved offspring dumped onto a men’s room floor by a broken, diaper filled changing table. There is yet another issue. We don’t actually change babies. Sometimes we pretend to and then bring the dirty child back to his or her mother (Which leads to the conclusion that women are sneaking into men’s rooms and leaving diapers).

One of the strangely considerate items found in lots of public places is the unisex restroom. I’ve noticed that it’s often located smack dab between the men’s and women’s rooms. In case we find ourselves at a crossroads one day and out of confusion need a third option. “I’m feeling uni today. Maybe I’ll try that middle bathroom. I wonder if they have paper towels?” The secret of the unisex bathrooms is that they have cleaner changing tables and sometimes a couch. All in the name of comforting the confused. I could just enjoy the bathroom sofa and let the dryer breezes waft over me. At least until somebody asks what in the world happened to my white pants.

#Bathroom Etiquette #Bathrooms #Changing Tables #Family Restrooms #Men's Rooms #Public Restrooms #Why Are Urinals So Close To The Floor

The arrival of Fall makes me weepy and emotionally irresponsible. I muddle through the Michigan weather and wait out the Seasonal Affective Disorder, all the while coming up with creative solutions. On days when the clouds are heavy and the world seems to recede into darkness that won’t fade until the January thaw, I go and stare at the gas station hot dog machine. The glowing light seems to afford my soul peace and tranquility. This doesn’t help with the seasonal weight gain, though. Part of the S.A.D. dilemma is that it causes increased appetite, sleepiness and the need to be on a constant sugar bender. We-ird. I eat and tear up like Sissy the Blogger. Every time someone mentions that the World Series starts tonight and that my beloved Tigers (sniff) are sending Justin Verlander to the mound against Barry Zito, the waterworks start (“Ahhh…get me some marshmallows! This is too much pressure!”).*

Lately I’ve started to take notice of advertisements for supplemental testosterone. For the most part, these seem to be just commercials sponsored by the inadequacy industry. I don’t need no stoopid testosterone! Give me some Turtle Wax and I’ll be fine. I’m a man, and that puts me in a fraternity of men. The fraternity of understanding the onside kick, the infield fly rule and Top Gear. The brotherhood of “If it ain’t broke, let’s break it on purpose.” The boost of testosterone might help with the obnoxious, seasonal emotional jags, though. Not that I can afford it. It’s more than likely that my insurance doesn’t cover hormones, even if my doctor’s chart states “necessitated because dumbbell can’t keep his big boy pants up.” What to do? I guess that I’ll turn to other, more homeopathic maleness supplements. Since we haven’t been to the grocery store in a while, the only items in the house that might do the trick are Vitamin D pills and Ramen noodles. Get my mortar and pestle. It’s time to mix up some mojo.

*After writing this, Justin gave me reason to tear up. I’m going to need a bigger bag of marshmallows.

##San Fransisco Giants #2012 World Series #Detroit Tigers #Testosterone Enhancement #World Series 2012 Game 1 Seasonal Affective Disorder

My family and I returned from a week of vacation on Wednesday night. Now, I’m stressing returned because Thompsons are not a people accustomed to venturing very far from the fold. Vacation usually means that I’ve accumulated too many paid time off hours and am forced to futz around the house hitting various objects with a hammer followed by going out back to barbecue something or other (generally the hammer). This year we had the distinct joy of taking our daughter to Disney World for an actual vacation. I can say in all sincerity that it was one of the best trips we’ve ever gone on. A week on the go as we visited all of the parks, and created some great memories in the process. Darn! Those Disney people and their memory making jive. They were absolutely right. The parks and resort staff treated our little girl like a princess, all for the price of a ticket. As in any perfectly wonderful life situation, there is always the human element. We brought home one long dreaded souvenir in the process, it seems.

My daughter Anna, as I’ve mentioned in the past, carries the effects of Crouzon Syndrome, a cranio-facial disorder she was born with. One of the peculiarities of Crouzon’s is that the disease left her with hearing loss due Large Vestibular Aqueduct Syndrome. I read and read about LVAS and came away with two layman’s conclusions: She can’t hear much because of the disease and excessive jarring of the inner ear will reduce Anna’s hearing further. So, we’re careful. No soccer, or gymnastics. Definitely no roller coasters, which we avoided at Disney World. The spinning tea cups were pretty much the limit. On our fifth day, Anna complained about hearing loss to such a dramatic pitch that other tourists made that “control your kid” face. Not that we cared what they thought. Anna had given us yet another moment of pause in what has been a decade of pauses. We tested the hearing aid and it’s batteries and both were in order. The trouble was all in her left ear and it persisted into the next day. And the next. It has yet to be confirmed by Anna’s doctors at the University of Michigan, but our school district estimates that she’s lost 20 or more decibels. Gone, just like that.

To put Anna’s hearing into perspective, I’ve started to call her difficulty the “Sargent Pepper Syndrome.” Testing her hearing aids on my own ears gives me a glimpse into a world in which she hears what sounds like the opening of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band. The crowd sounds are up front, but when someone speaks directly to her it’s akin to Paul McCartney shouting “It was twenty years ago today…” from some faraway stage. She’s dealing with something we all knew was coming better than any of us. Anna is putting together picture books and having a few brag days at school. The question has always been with her hearing loss “What do we shelter her from?” In the course of being a normal kid, Anna got another dose of damage. She was spending time being a normal kid for once, and making memories. That’s the take away from the situation. She’ll remember Mom, Dad, and Mickey Mouse for the rest of her life and the times when we put our troubles aside and made some memories as a family.

#Crouzon's Syndrome #Large Vestibular Aqueduct Syndrome #LVAS

 Today was one of those days when I was going to write about being superstitious because the calendar read Monday the 13th. Of course, that would be just stupid. Just because I stuck my face too far into a fax machine this morning doesn’t make today any worthier of superstitious behavior than the next. That, and there is no line on the fax machine that warns users “Get your face out of the machine! You’ll burn your nose!” I did and that’s the end of the subject. As I was putting salve (alright, cream cheese) on my face, I happened to read an LA Times article about a theory being tested that purports stressed out men prefer heavier set women. The article is insulting to so many cross-sections of American society, that I’d be better off faxing my face to the Times than commenting on one its blog posts. Then again, today has shown a lack of sense on my part across the board.

The post (“Stressed Out Men Prefer A Fleshier Woman”),  part of the LA Times blog Booster Shots and authored by Melissa Healy, cites a newly published study by the Public Library of Science on the subject of male attraction to curvier women during times of struggle. The way the study was conducted went something like this: A group of heterosexual males were taken into a stress free room for some quiet relaxation. A second group were given job interviews and shown a series of Richard Gere movies. The non-stressed guys were shown photos of women who represented various physical make-ups, and apparently showed a preference for a leaner body type. They were then sent home with trainer Jillian Michaels and made to pay for their vanity. The agitated, post interview group showed an inclination for more buxom women. Actually, many of them just curled up in the fetal position and just hoped a woman might be nice to them at some point. I find it hard to believe that this study actually is justifiable in any way. We live in the world of compartmentalization and instant judgement. I look for more subtle things in people and appreciate those obscenely beautiful things my wife does. Her humanity, wit, and compassion are the reasons I was first attracted to her. My wife’s ability to remove my face from office equipment is super sexy. Yeah, I love her shape. No matter how stressed out I get. I’m sure there’s more stress to follow this post.

#Booster Shots #Jillian Michaels #LA Times Booster Shots #Melissa Healy #Stressed Out Men #Stressed Out Men Prefer Heavier Women 0 7176962.story http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-stress-attraction-20120809

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