Middling

Well, here it is January, and temperatures are cooling again. Plus it’s going to get wet, so they say.

It was a pretty nice semi-warm spell. Kept me in the yard a little more, even if only to grumble about how long it is until spring.

The Satsuma crop is largely done, and I miss them already. If anyone has any left they want to get rid of, I am open to bribes for a good mention in this column, though I reserve the right to refuse any one at any time my reference.

I was eating two, or three a day. I found that not only do I adore them, but Bogie, our yellow Lab, does too. I would grab one out of the fridge and sit in my chair to eat it with a couple paper towels to wipe my hands and chin with, and Bogie would park himself in front of me and drool. He doesn’t drool if I’m eating cereal or a burger or most anything else, but when I am devouring a Satsuma, it’s like somebody opened the faucet. I let him have one or two segments, and he wags his tail as if saying, “My life for thee!”

When I’m done, I wipe my hands and chin, and then the little spots of drool on the oak floor too. That dog loves Satsumas.

Suzie says I think Bogie is a person, and that’s true. Bogie thinks he’s a person, and who am I to argue with him? He’s got his rights, too. If Bogie wants to think he’s a human, that’s fine by me.

I bought something called Tangelos, presumably a cross between tangerines and…what? I haven’t a clue, but they didn’t peel as well, and the segment skin and ribbing was thicker and harder to chew. I wasn’t impressed, but they were easier than oranges. Much as I love oranges they are just too big a pain in the neck to consume.

Tangelos? A hybrid between a tangerine and Michelangelo? An archipelago? It’s a mystifying thing, really. Tangerine and a bordello? No, let’s forget that one. Tangerine and Othello? Who knows?

I went to get some bananas too, and row after row of them were dark green. I know I could buy them and let them ripen in the kitchen, but at the cost of bananas nowadays, I think I’ve paid to get them properly ripened. Why should I pay top-dollar for a bunch of bananas and wait a week for them to ripen? That’s someone else’s job, and I’ll be danged if they’re going to slough it off on me.

Not much else going on. I’m waiting for my skiff boat plans to come in, at which time it’ll probably turn freezing even at noon and rain like hallelujah, brethren. But I need a project, until it dries out under the house and I can start running some plumbing to the new bathroom I started more than two years ago and am halfway finished. I move slow, I know. It’s mostly due to holiday dinners.

A year or so ago I dropped from a dang-near size 40 waist (meaning 38s were too loose, 40s too big) to a 36 inch waist and I was pretty darned proud of myself. But since Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas and New Year’s, my 36s are rather tight and I notice that, coincidentally, my arms are getting shorter because I can’t seem to easily tie my shoes these days.

I gotta get some of this off myself, but with weather like this, Bogie and I haven’t been able to take our mile and a half walk by the pond every day, like we used to. Walking for fitness in mud boots is extreme, and I refuse to walk even rural sidewalks. Out by the pond, we occasionally startle a quail or Bogie locates a pile of bones from some mysterious creature felled in some mysterious way. But it’s been too cold and wet, so mostly we stay home and whine.

Both of us do. Bogie is about as much a whiner as I am. Like dog like master, I guess. He’s not having trouble with his waist, though, lucky devil. Of course, he just made two the last week of 2009, so he’s still a spring chicken, in dog years only about 24 by modern reckonings that now dismiss the old “one year equals seven years” method. In the early prime of his life!

On the other hand, I am experiencing that midlife thing where “mid” mostly applies to “midsection” and “midback pain” and “midday nap” and “middling” as in when someone asks how I’m doing, I no longer say “Good!” or “Great” I say something akin to, “Fair to middling,” as a precursor to 20 years from now when I’ll say, “I’m still higher than the daisies, so I guess that’s good.”

I did a little research and found that fly fisherman are more prone to back pain than other kinds of fishermen, mainly because we are rarely sitting down fishing, and when we are standing, we tend to hunch over a little. I know a few hours of fishing out of a boat and my back and shoulders hurt something fierce. I’ve taken to carrying some pain meds with me, in a little medicine bottle, along with my Geritol.

Yeah, that whole over 40 thing, whoever told me that before 40 and I didn’t’ believe it, I apologize. I’ve had six fishing bags in the past two years: Three backpacks, one shoulder bag and a waist pack that was probably designed by a chimp. One backpack was too big, the other too small, and I finally found one that is dedicated to fly fishing that is just right. But it makes my back and shoulders hurt after a long day, so I tried a shoulder bag, and that makes the same areas hurt. The waist pack may have done the job if it hadn’t of been concocted by a mad scientist with assistance from an ogre with a bad sense of humor.

I recently found out they make fly fishing waist-lumbar packs and they might work. They have wide belts so that the weight rests on my…ahem!…ample hips comfortably.

I’ve also been considering shoe inserts because my feet are hurting after a long day hiking, fishing in the stream or just standing in the yard whining with Bogie. You just don’t get to this point overnight, folks. It’s a slow, steady descent into despair.

So I read the other day that sitting is bad for you health. Causes the body to quit doing something or other that leads to something else that’ll kill you. Sitting for more than four hours, they said, is very, very, very bad for your health. I sit that long here every day easily, and apparently, the back pain, expanding midsection, whining, foot ache and inability to find a suitable fly fishing bag or pack is an occupational illness. I intend to file for disability and workman’s compensation, just as soon as I can get up and walk to the proper office to apply.

While filling out the paperwork, should I stand, or sit? It’s always something…

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 9:44 am and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.