Well, it's a new year, and my wife is not a happy camper - literally. Let me explain...
Most of you know my backstory, but allow me the brief history lesson. In late August of 2006, we bought our dream home, the home we hoped to retire, and even die in, an 1890's Victorian farmhouse in a small, rural community.
Almost exactly a year later, I started to develop neurological symptoms. Spinal cord surgery followed in 2008, and despite intensive in- and out-patient rehabilitation, by early spring of 2009, I became paralyzed from the waist down.
Our house is two stories, with the bedrooms and a large bathroom upstairs, and the living areas downstairs, including a smaller, but still good size bathroom, and a parlor off the front room. Even with the paralysis, I managed to maintain enough upper body strength to hoist myself, with the help of my son, up and down the stairs, sitting on my butt, one step at a time.
Life went on this way, then in September of 2013, as if I didn't have enough on my plate, I was diagnosed with cancer (for the second time). The subsequent surgery, chemo, and radiation therapy, exacerbated by the difficulty of transporting me and preparing me for all the treatments, were too much. We had to convert the parlor, which we were using as a home office, into a hastily conceived hospital room.
My wife and son bought a basic twin bed with a metal frame, and drove home with it tied to the roof of the car because we couldn't wait for delivery. They made me as comfortable as possible, and placed a TV on the desk across from the foot of my bed. However, due to digital boxes, signal splitters, and the VHS recording input on our archaic living room entertainment system, I could not change channels.
I could turn my TV on and off, and adjust the volume, but that was it. If I wanted to watch something, I had to get someone else to change the channel on the front room television. This in itself was neither here nor there, but what it really meant was that I could not surf!
Enough of the backstory, now back to the story.
For Christmas we replaced the hundred pound, glass tube piece of crap that stuck out three feet from the wall, in what is now my wife's room, with a brand new, cable ready TV. My son removed some small device that he had attached to the old TV, took ten seconds to pop it onto the TV in my room, and voilà, I was riding the waves.
You have no idea what this means when you're flat on your back, it's 4:30 in the morning, you can't sleep, and there's nothing to distract you from the pain, sickness, and isolation.
I discovered that at that time, the oldies stations - COZI TV, MeTV, and TGC (The Gunsmoke Channel) - showed such scintillating programs as The Real McCoys, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Have Gun - Will Travel, and on weekends, The Lone Ranger. (I'll take kemo sabe over chemo therapy any day.) I have been in bad (or should I say good vs. bad) western TV heaven for the last week.
My wife took off work the week between Christmas and New Year. With her company being closed the Mondays after the holidays, and offering them as paid days, she had a nice little vacation. Today was her first day back, and she was late. Of course, it was my fault.
We have a small fire pit in our back yard, and I have been making my wife prepare all our meals over an open fire. Beef stew, beans and bacon, Indian pan bread, and Dutch oven apple pie. This morning I insisted that she cook the coffee cowboy style. By the time she got the fire going, and boiled the coffee, she was late.
But the burnt grounds in the bottom of my tin cup were worth it. I tipped my hat and said, "Much obliged, ma'am," and as she rode into the sunrise, I couldn't be sure, but I swear her reply had something to do with my head and a horse's rear end.
Your head and a horse's rear end? Can't imagine what THAT might have been about!
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