adventures of a 70 yr. old man on the dc beltway friday night christmas holiday

 Hi friends.   I've been a chatterbox recently.  Mostly just talking to myself.  And to my wife.  Because, as you know I have shut myself off for four years or so now.  Maintaining  "Radio Silence".

Happy New Year by the way!  It's still ok to say Merry Christmas as we have not yet reached Twelth Night.  I could talk a lot about being a shut- in hermit.  But I'm not going to.  I want to talk about a few days I had during Dec. that picked me up and threw me out into the world.   On Dec. 14th I got a text from my nephew George the twin  He told me via a text to my wife that dear friends had invited me to a Christmas party the following night.  At their house on the Western Shore.  They are not really just friends.  They are my second family that I love as much as my own family.  I asked my wife  "How can I do this?  I can't drive at night.  D.C. traffic even in broad daylight ... my heart rate....my insulin, my leg, I need a bathroom and my meds near.  and I...  well... I would love to go...but..  My wife said that it is rumored on face book that Paul and Johnny will be there.  "What! I said.  You see I had had a bit of a falling out with Paul although I love him like a brother and always will.  And Johnny had a battle with cancer that was ongoing and life threatening and I had been praying extra hard for him for some time and I had heard from wife that he had gone into remission a couple of months before with some off the chart recovery  with ahead of the art chemo.   Johnny will be there.   I had no time to think about this if I was to go tomorrow.  My wife was shuffling her schedule already for that Fri. 15 tomorrow.  Since I would not be available to take care of horse and other animules.  I hardly slept that night before,  thinking of a small overnight bag,  my little travel guitar,  a small bag of meds, insulin, emergency candy.  I seemed to be more alive.  More positive.  Happier?  I had made a reservation at the Hilton where RT.1 meets the Beltway in College Park my Alma Mater town.  I had to get there before dark and Fridays on the Bay Bridge can be log jams.  Corolla topped with gas,  bridge traffic but no delay.  I check into the Hilton and my friend Kevin picks me up and we head for the party.  As we drive through College Park I realize a town can change a lot in 40 years.  At the front door admiring classic Christmas trim,  the door opens and there is Paul to meet us.  He is smiling. Gleaming. And we are shaking hands and we don't let go.  Johnny steps up to me and we hug and I've lost it by now and the party crowd was talking and visiting and they paused and looked our way a moment and sent out a communal ahh!           There's a lot more I can say.  My outlook opened to something.  Christmas spirit?  I had many more adventures through Advent and Christmas and like the Grinch my heart was growing.   Love you readers!                                                     LLITTY    :::::+:::::                                         

Lady of the Harbor Don't Cry Most of Us love you

 Give me your tired, your poor

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore

Send these, the homeless tempest tossed

To me.  I lift my lamp

Beside the golden door

I'm not Coming out

My memory,  short term anyway,  has been going away with my hair and lot's of other things.  I search       for my reading glasses and find them on my nose.  My grocery list is missing the one thing I needed to buy.  I go to the bathroom every few minutes it seems.  I have forgotten what this post is supposed to be about.  It doesn't matter because my posts are just geezer rambles anyway.  My son told me a dad joke:       "There is a restaurant on the moon.  The food is great but the atmosphere is lousy"                                          I lie in bed a lot to rest and think and try to plan my next geezer activity.  I get tired and rest after jobs like tying my shoes,  walking around the house.     This morning while thinking I had an epiphany.              You know the expression  "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"   It's a true and nice thing.  It made me think.   Wait:   Everything is in the brain of the experiencer.  Thats all life is.  It's just millions of human brains working.  Maybe nothing material actually even exists.   I think I'm special and unique (just like everybody else!).  Things that have been troubling for me for  the last eight years, like politics, and the last 40 years like religion have seemed to be  back burnered a bit when I push back.  I don't have to push back directly to my lost friends.  And the politics is much the same as religion.  The respect of truth is important and critical to this line of thinking.  I'm doing fine closing myself off from mostly all my sociogram and this epiphany is telling me all I have to do is push back in my mind.  Why not?  Thats where the trouble is.  I'm an atheist and have been for over 50 years.  Way back in the day I used to argue with friends about religion.  God, I was immature and insecure!  ( Oops I said God).  Now if the topic comes up in my tangled mind I just remember that no one ,  not Billy Grahm ,  not Al Sharpton,  not any TV evangelist,  not Bart Ehrman and I can just smile because on some level they know that no one knows what happens to you when you die. Their castle is straw.  Sorry my brothers....  it's horsehockey.   Now to this last eight years of dystopia which has been hard on my irregular heart.  But my heart actually broke when I realized that half of us are aching and starving for an authoritarian to rise as a dictator.  I am so disappointed in my fellow man .   Just because you are unhappy you want to blow up the separation of powers and take away help to the homeless,  starving, sick, needy ,   refuged, amnesty seeking,  uneducated etc.  and burn books?  Stop the peacefull transition of power and worship a king?  So I'm disappointed and tired from the 8 years.  Starting now I'm not going to fret over it.  I have to tone down politics and religion because my heart can not take it.  Physically or mentally.  Years ago I created a religion of my own.  I pray very hard every day.  I pray for the underdogs.  I pray for lives lost to serial murderers.  Innocent lives.  The loved ones who now will suffer in pain and sorrow for the rest of their lives.   I refuse to carry this insane violent  behavior around on my shoulders.  I can't stop it but I can ignore it just like everyone else is doing.  It's in our brains.  I'm done with everyone in the outside world. Like during the pandemic, I'm sorry but I don't have time to try to figure out who is virtuous among my fellow man.  Over the years I guess I will come out slowly in the world if it exists.   If you are yearning for an autocracy and want to tear down America, you are in with a big powerful group.  If you want a dictatorship I would caution you with an old sage advice.  Be careful what you wish for.                           LLITTY         :::::+:::::

Thank you Billy Ed Wheeler

 Now that our mountain is growing

with people hungry for wealth

How come it's you that's a-going

And I'm left alone by myself

We used to hunt the cool caverns

Deep in our forest of green

 But then came the road and the tavern

And you found a new love it seems

Once I had you and the wildwood

Now it's just dusty roads

And I can't help from blamin' your going

On the coming, the coming of the roads

Look how they've cut all to pieces

Our ancient poplar and oak

And the hillsides are stained with the greases

That burn up the heavens with smoke

You used to curse the bold crewmen

Who stripped our Earth of it's ore

Now you've changed and you've gone over to them

And you've learned to love what you hated before

Once I thanked God for my treasure

Now, like rust it corrodes

And I can't help from blamin' your goin'

On the coming, the coming of the roads

:::::+:::::    LLITTU

Warning: Geezer Talk About Medical Issues

I've had diabetes over the last 21 years.  I've had an irregular heartbeat for the last 19 years.  Over the last five years I've had what are called "carries" from cancer damage.  The damage is from the disease itself,   as well as the treatments.  I'm not going to talk about my former suffering other than to say I am very lucky and the last five years have been bonus years and I treasure them as much or more as earlier years.  The "carries" are a burned out jaw and mouth and saliva glands and taste ability,  and swallow ability,  voice deterioration and on and on.  Used to be able to yodel a bit and use falsettos.  Listen to me.  I'm whining.  I have no right to complain at all!  I'm mostly healed up.  I have a thing called "Barret's esophagus".  According to the cancer center's shrink I have PTSD.   Ok, but I don't belong on any shelf with men and women in the armed forces and law enforcement or those with serious disabilities. I see nothing compared to them .  I salute them.  And the children I saw during my treatment days  So braver than I.  And their parents whom I cried for.  And prayed for.    Why am I telling you this?  It's not the half of it.  But over the last five years I've been taking current events in the world too much to heart.  My solution to the sadness and anxiety was to shut myself down socially.  Last summer I had some heart trouble.  When I was recovering from that I realized that after the cancer I was weak and way underweight and the doctor said I could not have my feeding tube or my IV port removed until I was gaining weight for a certain time.   The short story is,  I never came all the way back from cancer.  I'm pretty sure nobody does.  Again,  I am lucky.  Huge thanks to Cancer Center in Easton.  So this heart thing last summer had me doing nothing all day.  Lying in bed,  sitting at desk, trying not to raise my heart rate.  I'm naturally lazy anyway.  When I saw my family doc for a check up,  he said "Lloyd. you are six ft. one.  You weigh 136 pounds"  And I had dizzy spells.  And I already had a syndrome called Proximal Positional Vertigo.   So I mowed through the summer and layed low through the fall.  Something happened to me about a week ago.  I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.   The Endocrinologist had hooked me up with a thing called a Continuous Glucose Moniter.  The dietitian had told me to eat more.  "Your too light.  Eat more."  So about a week ago I started to learn that if one has diabetes and needs to GAIN weight there is a vacuum of advice on that.   The search engine takes you to weight loss.  Most diabetics need to lose weight.  A week ago I walked a mile.  And every day another mile.  Now I'm at day six.  I feel better.  Next I wanted something like the protein power powder the body builders use.  I learned that GNC had closed up most of their stores and I got little help from Walgrens and wasn't sure if that powder was OK for my heart.  Wife reminded me of this little store in Easton called Muscle, Inc.  I went there on a rainy Saturday and the nice trainer lady there told me about weight gain without mentioning weight loss!  It was like I was on another planet.      I got the whey powder huge bucket.  I got pills that make you hungry.  I got vitamins that "support" weight GAIN.  The lady showed me some geezer exercises like vertical push ups and stretches.  I drove the forty miles home in the light rain thinking I don't need no stinkin' Walgren's. I feel a bit Wokened  up about all of this.  Oh yes and wife bought me some walking shoes over the internet of course.  I can barely get them on.  They are my size 10.  I figure they are too small but my toes have room.  So I go out on the concrete and walk.  I can feel my feet in contact points all over the shoes.  The arch is crazy thick.  I'm sure they're going to be too uncomfortable. I force myself to walk.  One lap is 500 ft.  After the first lap I am not thinking about these sneekers.  I'm thinking about my stride and the arm exercises.  I complete the mile, ten laps.  Now six days later my feet haven't a single rash, blister, or mark.  So it's another tool found.  Oh, and wife got them on sale.  Retail $220  on sale $140.  Ever heard of Hoka?      I know I'm a geezer.  The way I look in these shoes proves it.  Thanks for reading.  Love  :::::+::::: LLITTU.

Can't Help but Wonder

       It's a long and dusty road,    It's a hot and a heavy load                                                                               

       And the folks that I meet ain't always kind                                                                                                  

       Some are bad; some are good                                                                                                                            

        Some have done the best they could                                                                                                          

        Some have tried to ease my troubled mind                                                                                                

        Nail my shoes to the kitchen floor                                                                                                              

        Lace 'em up and bar the door                                                                                                                                              

         The answers I know I'll never find                                                                                                                

                                                                                                      :::::+:::::LLITTY         peace friends

Times I've Had

Hi guys.....    I'm remembering a lot now about civil unrest during my young years.  I think about  violence  and I guess we as species,  just can't evolve past it.  Half of us just aren't able to handle disagreements very well.  Some folks are, in this day and age, dead against helping the poor and the homeless, and the ill and disabled and those seeking refuge .   How could anyone. Anyone-  be against such help? This is what drives me to my hermitage........among many other things.

But here's a blues lyric I found back in my College Park memories:

"There's a lotta people talkin' bout a comin' war

Some of 'em rich,  and some of 'em poor 

They talk about it like a Blackjack game  ...

But win or lose ...

You can't play again.                                     Be safe my friends.      Love you.      LLITTY  :::::+:::::