My Motorcycle Injuries

This past weekend was a little rough on the body. On Friday and Saturday I did some work in the yard and had some things to do inside of the house that required a lot of standing and moving around. Sundays are more taxing simply because they are a work day for me and usually involve a good amount of physical exertion. I felt weak and fatigued most of the day because of the work done the two days previous. The damage to my bone structure causes pain in several places and it becomes prohibitive in functioning normally, sometimes even with simple movements like getting up out of a chair when I’ve sat for too long a period of time. It’s now Monday afternoon and for the most part I’m feeling alright. I’m thankful to God for a quick recovery. I once honestly believed that I would never get sick, injured, or fatigued. It was before the motorcycle accident, but I felt that sense of invincibility for most of my life. I think that one of the things that the accident injuries have taught me invol...

I've been working on the sprinkler system in my yard at home the past few days. The sprinklers have been inoperable for a few years now. I had just gotten the grass to start looking nice in my yard for a year or so before the accident, but it all sort of fell apart after the big event. I’m just now getting to where I can start to repair everything and fight the weeds again. It will probably be a few years before everything looks good again with the grass on my lawn, but you’ve got to start somewhere, right? The sprinklers needed a lot of work, and I’m just now getting things going. I fixed the major problem with the water source, but there’s an issue with a leak in the main service line and many of the sprinkler heads are in such bad shape from not being used for so long that they will require replacement. Fixing the leak in the main line isn’t rocket science, but it will take a little bit of physical effort. I started to work on things this morning, but the day is demanding too mu...

We are approaching the mid-term election primaries here in the U.S. I’m not registered to any political party so I only get to vote for nonpartisan candidates such as judges within any of the primary elections. I’ve voted in every election since I was 18 and I’ll be voting in this one, primaries and all. We have a funny (funny strange, not funny ha-ha) way of handling our freedom here in the U.S. concerning voting rights. The greater percentage of eligible voters in this country do not actually vote. However, if a law was passed that allowed for political offices to be filled in a way other than through a free election, the people of this nation would riot and demand that voting rights be restored. Still, they don’t actually use their constitutional right to vote as frequently as they should. I think that the basic mindset involves a desire to have the right to vote, and to also have the right to choose in how to actually exercise the right to vote. Again, funny “strange”. I think that...

                                                                                                My two unattractive legs as they appear now.                                                                                                                    Guess which one was heavily damaged by a motorcycle accident? My leg has been giving me more trouble lately. I have had pain in my leg to some extent since the accident 4 ½ years ago, but the past few weeks hav...

I am breaking my diabetic diet today (a little) because it's my birthday. It’s the only day of the year that I deviate from the dietary restrictions of diabetes in any way. I’m having a doughnut tower made instead of a traditional cake. I bought three dozen doughnuts early this morning at a local place that only makes one thing, and it isn’t salad. I’ve never really been much into the whole birthday celebration thing for myself, but it makes my wife happy, so there you have it. I was thinking of going to a restaurant later today for dinner and eating a non-diabetic meal, but I’m not sure at this point if I will go ahead with that idea. The doughnuts, however, shall be conquered later tonight at my party. My sister-in-law is expecting a baby in January. She told us all a couple of weeks ago. She and her husband waited a while to tell us because it was an unplanned pregnancy and she is not at an age that is generally considered as being within the prime child bearing years. Everyone ...

We often have ducks wandering throughout our neighborhood. They breed, hang around, disappear for a time, and leave a mess on my driveway. Because they have been around here forever, they have become a very familiar part of the landscape. I’ve gotten to know a lot about the way that they live throughout each season. One even set up a nest against the front wall of my house once. One of the things that I have noticed about the ducks over the years involves the way in which they cross streets. Do you remember the old adage “look both ways before you cross the street”? Yeah, they’ve never heard that one. The ducks around here cross streets, regardless of the amount of lanes or the speed at which people are driving, all with a casual sense of privilege that rivals Yankees’ fans in October. They casually strut across the road, seemingly without a single care, at a speed that leaves you wondering if they have bothered to notice the 4-ton vehicles coming straight at them. I believe that I kno...

The way in which I have started to label events in my life has evolved into a set of terms, either “before the accident” or “after the accident”. I noticed it more last night while I was looking at photos on my computer with my wife and my daughter. I was transferring and editing a number of photos from my camera and the three of us sat together for a while to reminisce. The pictures covered several years’ worth of events and we hadn’t really seen most of them since they were first taken. As I scrolled through the different photos on my computer I kept thinking of them as either pre or post motorcycle accident. You want to know something? I need to change this. There has to be a far better way of thinking when attempting to categorize the events of my life. I cannot allow this one freakish event to define my mortal existence. I’m going to determine to think differently and pick better benchmarks from which I define the timeline of my life. It really is time to move forward in a better ...