OK, I'm 60 years old and now(!) I get to experience medical marijuana. I have a sudden weird need to wear bell bottom jeans, put on a pastel shirt, let my hair grow, and groove out to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. I wish I had hair to grow....

Sorry, Little Buddy.  Should've tried that pot the Professor snuck on the S.S. Minnow to try on Ginger and Mary Ann.

I don't have to roll my own. I would not know how to roll anything except maybe dough, and that poorly.  Try and keep teeny weeny seeds on a small cut of paper when your hand shakes just a little 

And while I'm at it, why are pills round? What's wrong with ovals? My oval pill does not try to flee.  Gel caps try incessantly to get away and some times can for a while, hiding under the couch.  What's wrong with a trapezoid? See that triangle pill? No problems.  But even as they are placed onto my tongue, they never stop trying to flip[ out, leaving their nasty taste so I have to use two full glasses of water to get them down, which goes into my kidneys and that's a whole other column.

I mean take a look at the picture.  The pills are grouped by time I take them.  The pills on the white square are breakfast pills.  The ones on the left are lunch pills, the four below nighttime.  There's also Clonzepam in its nice sealed square packet, which merely temps you into thinking "well, I can get this ready to pop into my mouth ".  The pill emerges as you tear open the packet and immediately seeks freedom away from where it is supposed to be - my mouth. And the search is on - where on the beige shag carpet could it be hiding?

For the last ten days or so, I've been without a number of these pills due to a payment screw up between Medicare and Blue Cross insurance.  I may be the culprit as I still try to master computers as if I still know what I'm doing.  OK, I can luck out and do Class AAA job, but I've sort of become  a B minus guy.  I get the basics, and maybe that's all now.

The loss of the pills made my body twitch more and more, instead of the minor blips of even a week before.  That and my temper was resurrected from its grave.  Sleep was just nightmares, and only quietly screaming about not going to bed, but the body and mind tired of whatever I did thought and in I'd go and my personal Twilight Zone would begin.

So medical marijuana joins the group.  I shall keep you up do date.

And oddly enough, the first song that came on my iPod when I was taking my shower was "Got to get you into My Life", Sir Paul McCartney's song about pot.

"Say we'll be together every day

Got to get you into my life."

Amitriptyline - A Day In The Life

I took some pills today, oh, boy
They'd been prescribed for me by my new doc
And though they were to help me sleep
Well I just stayed awake
Got raisin cookies baked

I really shouldn't drive my car
I barely notice when the exits change
And then the cops will hunt me down
But its not really hard
Then I go and tell them that I'm really just a bi-polar!

I saw the Judge today, oh boy
He asked me when's the last nap that I took
I told him late Two Thousand Five
He told me take some pills
That will cure your ills

I'd love to tell you off...

Woke up, had fuzzy head
Another day of partial dread
Found my way to the bath and got release
The pain had ceased, first task to make the bed
Kissed my pills and took my wife
The brain lesions now are rife
Found my way to the couch and had a doze
And the doc he knows that I really hate to dream

I saw my doc today, oh boy
It seems that I don't have MS at all
It might just be its some thing new
They don't know what to do
Haven't got a clue

I'd love to tell them off...

To the tune of  "A Day In The Life" (Lennon/McCartney 1967)

Pains! My body's got me chock full of pains!

And it ain't the kind that you can see, woh.  So I borrow from the Beatles (OK, Carole King and Gerry Goffin wrote it) from Please Please Me 1963.  It's one of those "I'm not going to sleep tonight" nights so I might as well talk to you.  Busy Saturday as I did lawn work, which means mow the half the area of the yard where grass still exists, and then tomorrow go over the weeds, plants, and other things that have taken over the other half in the heat and drought. And dirt. Just plan dirt and sand.  I've tried to help out by building a small temple.  It takes a little time.

You may see both a Christian and Buddhist motif here.

I just sort of keep adding to it, and the more stones there are, the less mowing there is, which will eventually become a real boon as I'm slowing down enough that sometime soon, not for a few years yet, but its coming.. the day when I won't be able to work in the yard, even something as quietly enjoyable as weeding.  That's my prayer time.  I can move prayer time to anytime, I guess, but there's just something about being surrounded by plants and a gentle breeze is flitting by on a coolish summer morning that just brings one close to the [fill in your version, if any, here] Spirit.

But back to pain, which Buddha warned about (everyone suffers).  This coming Wednesday my doctor is going to work on the lower part of my back to assure that it might just be pulled muscles from overuse, and not the lesions spreading their army.  I've written about the invading pain army before, and it appears that tonight, as I was lying in bed, a new army arrived from Pain Headquarters and took up the right flank.  This new army then attacked.....

See where this dude has his right hand? Right through there and down the right leg, tingle all the way.  (Thank you, Stockphoto).  No matter how I moved, the army adjusted its plan and moved with me.  After two hours of trying to doze off in any form, here I am at 2:20 AM typing this.  The new army just jostled the other army awake and those guys had been pretty quiet since the afternoon. I admit I probably overdid it when, following ninety minutes of yard work, I headed down to Albany to help my niece move to her new apartment.  This meant lifting tables, chairs and packing them into my SUV along with boxes of books (Hey, is that my copy of Mein Kampf?), non used laptops and Macs, and golf clubs(?) some of which then needed to be stored at our house.  Lots of picking up and moving things from here to over there.

The table was my wife's grandmother's, and it was touching to see that Grammie had written her name on a piece of masking tape and stuck it on the bottom of one of the table leafs ("just in case someone tries to take it before they find my body, you know.").  No worries, Gram.  We've got it right here.

Grammie is Margaret Rider, and she's the lady on the left in this shot from 1998.  The other lady is Jackie's mom and we were attempting to have a happy holiday season right after Jackie's Dad died.  Everyone put up a good front, but the pain on each face is true.  Internal or external pain makes no never mind, it is suffering that we must face and deal with.

Personally, right now I'd sell my William Shatner music collection for some morphine so I could get some freakin' shuteye.