profkf's Blog

Father Time….a career of being undefeated, the only one/thing/event that truly is. I keep trying to put that on the back burner and keep in mind that the longer I manage to keep moving, the better chance there is that more and more advances will happen to keep the line moving forward.

I, maybe better than most, know what it’s like to be unable to move. Starting back in 2008 or 2009, the bone on bone arthritis in my hips became more and more painful. Sadly, I thought it was a knee issue and equally unfortunately, the highly regarded rheumatologist I saw in Norwalk, treated me for knee issues. When it didn’t improve, I sought out an orthopedic surgeon regarding knee replacement. The first one I saw, also highly regarded from NYU Medical, did say he didn’t understand the knees causing me that much pain, however, he would do the replacements. Keying in on the fact that he didn’t seem to be sure and that knee work is hideous recovery (ruptured both patella tendons in my knees in ’93 so I was fully aware of the work needed to rehab hinge joints), I decided to seek a second opinion…fortunately the knee guy I saw in Norwalk agreed with the NYU guy that the knees shouldn’t be causing me pain, and called in his colleague who was more of a hip guy..he IMMEDIATELY had me walk a few steps, took yet more Xrays (this time of my hips, not my knees) and proclaimed….”your hips are shot…nothing lubricating them, bone on bone THAT’S what’s causing pain” One good news piece followed by one bad news piece…He would not do a replacement because of my weight…So next up was a consult with an outstanding doctor from HSS who was not at all put off by my weight, in fact, he was quick to say that he had done replacements of folks far heavier than I was (given I was close to 350 lbs at that time…that’s a pretty big proclamation)… So the hips were done, one at a time over 6 months and I was able to give up the copious amounts of Oxycontin and Vicodin (yes, at the same time) that had kept me at least functional for a couple of years…(yes, you read that right….YEARS)… [Sidebar: I was lucky, likely because of my very high tolerance, that kicking those drugs was tough but other than the last week, the withdrawal was not too bad…]

While I was in orthopedic better shape, I was still the size of a medium planet and it was still difficult to move around a lot. That was “fixed” in July of 2015 when I had bariatric sleeve surgery and more than 6 years later continue to be successful and it has allowed me to run, walk, swim, and do the little things like laundry, trash, dishes etc easily.

That brings me all the way back to the point of this particular stream of consciousness: This morning I was feeling “off”, it was kinda cloudy (still is) I had slept strangely, some solid some interrupted with various thoughts, and the last thing I wanted to do was go for a run. However, an exchange I had with a friend of my daughter a few days ago has kept me motivated to lace up and get out. So this morning, suited up, chose music (today a lot of Linda Ronstadt), packed a small water bottle and out I went. The first 1/4 mile was hell, my thoughts kept going back to “what the hell was I thinking”…about 1/2 mile in my breathing got better, and things started to loosen up, around a mile, it was all good…humid and still cloudy, but it felt ok…I ended up doing only 2.02 miles, but all I kept thinking was how lucky I was to be able to move like that, and how much I actually enjoyed it. I also kept thinking that the more I move the more I’ll be able to move…once, a long time ago I read somewhere than anything that’s still stagnates. I don’t remember what it referred to but I do believe that…I’m pressing 70 (well, still about 8 months to go there) but I’m hoping to be writing a similar blog statement when I’m pressing 100….

The title: 146….the kids at school always used to ask how long I thought I’d like to live…for absolutely no reason I always said 146….(quickly clarified that I’d be happy with 144 healthy 🙂 The more science advances, the more I move, the more I do my best to NOT contribute to issues that could mitigate that and with a huge does of LUCK to avoid all kinds of otherwise unavoidable issues, the closer I get to 146…

I came on some woods
And stood at a fork in the road
My choices were clear
Yet I froze with the fear
Of not knowing which way to go…

When you reach a certain point in life, there is a lot of looking back and thinking. I was thinking the other day about my dad, how he didn’t make his 69th birthday and how I have already blown past mine. I was thinking about Silvio who also didn’t make that number. Retirement is funny in that it is simultaneously freedom on a magnitude I cannot ever remember having. My earliest recollections are of going to school, thus being on the clock and having tasks to perform in a timely manner. So from the age of about 6, which is when that started, until the very end of my 68th year, I have spent my life “on the clock” in one way or another.

Those thoughts, along with an email received today from a friend, about a relative, brought me to the titular vision. I do remember various forks in the road over the years, and in most cases, I was temporarily frozen, not knowing which way to go. I did, in each case make a decision and each decision created more forks, and more roads and yes, more fear. Now, there really is no more fear, though there will always be forks.

The most recent major forks were whether to fully retire from 47 years of teaching and then to sell, pack and move 900 miles from everyone and everything we had become close to…talk about frozen with fear.

I found most often when in that decision mode the best approach was to treat it like entering the ocean….make the choice to go in and run into the waves headlong.

That brings me to the idea of looking back…after 47 years, what exactly did I leave? Did I leave the planet a better place than I found it? Did I build anything that has legs? Was I able to plant any seeds that might grow and flourish? I guess, unlike creating music, literature, buildings, parks, that I’ll never really know.

I’ve turned the professional page, and have no intentions of reopening that tome, but the latest crossroad is one that actually does not have me frozen in fear, every day I smile and realize how lucky I have been in so very many ways….healthy, an incredible spouse, amazing kids, grandkids, a life my father dreamed of but was never able to actually fulfill [largely in his case, as I recall, it was succumbing to the fear he faced about making significant changes] and a future filled with more promise than worry…

When I made my decisions
My visions became my release.

So…..we left Colonial Williamsburg early in the morning on, got some coffee and some breakfast sandwiches at Dunkin’ about 2 miles from the Colonial Houses, and headed north. The wonderfully reliable GPS recognized a boondoggle around DC and rerouted us very nicely, it was a slower route but it was constantly in motion so that was very much appreciated. We stopped at one of the Maryland Houses on 95 for a break and got some sandwiches and filled ye olde gas tank so as not to have to stop again. The journey continued up the Turnpike to the Garden State Parkway, and over the TZB very seamlessly and with great hopes that we would arrive in more than enough time to take a breath and relax before heading out to dinner. Well, we were heading to CT remember….and as it turned out, not really a great surprise, the Merritt Parkway was at a dead stop from Greenwich on up.

Sue texted Tori at that point (I was driving) to tell her we were stuck…she suggested we get off and let the GPS pick us and guide us in (it was NOT rerouting us at that point). We did that and were lucky enough to get to Wilton before dark. We had just enough time to get all our stuff in the house, freshen up and, in my case, have a very stiff drink. Max, Tori’s son, was kind enough to drive us to Rowayton Seafood where we had a reservation for dinner with Tori, Paul, Laura, Tracy, Amy and Dan (basically the Hawaii/Napa/Tuscanny travel gang). The dinner and the conversation was fabulous. Josh, the general manager and sommelier (and someone who has become our friend) had set us up in the Crow’s Nest to make it even more special, and he came in on his day off just to say hi and spend a little time conversing with us. Gene, our server, also a friend and also made the evening very special.

Wednesday was a day to relax and run a few small errands. We were able to return a small bit of Tori’s hosting kindness by helping her deliver flowers to a client, Sue got her car washed at Splash (nothing like that down in SC), I got a much needed pedicure at my favorite and deeply missed, Sun Spa nails, and…drum roll….managed to get the last two bottles Ancona’s had of my favorite Greenhook Gin Smith, Old Tom gin!!! Tori made a kick ass chicken pot pie type dinner (all the while getting ready for the big feast the next day) and as a bonus, Tori’s Uncle Richard Seff arrived and we spent hours catching up with him and being entranced by his many stories of the stage and simply of his life.

Thanksgiving day!! After a decent night’s sleep (though truth be told, in a queen bed, it’s always avoiding the body blows), some morning coffee and bagels, a bonus…The Point, a wonderful independent VT radio station we stream, played the original version of Alice at 8:33 am….what a great start to the day. Then beginning at 10 AM, Fred did his usual Thanksgiving special show and yes, another version on Alice at exactly Noon (when tradition says it MUST be played).

Football, conversations, jokes, chopping vegetables, snacking, sipping, all throughout the day. More time spent talking with Richard, and eventually, Jill and Mark arrived adding to the list of folks we had missed over the past few months.

Dinner was a triumph!! Turkey, with all the fixings, punctuated by the MOST delicious pignoli cookies.

As the evening closed down, it was time to think about and get ready for the trip home the next morning. (I took a LOT of grief for the planning and the timing, but you’ll see in Act 3, that not only was it worth it, it was totally necessary)…

A wonderful couple of days in this whirlwind trip. The most magical of all was the opportunity to spend a lot of time with an incredible gentleman who shared so much of himself and his life that I can only hope to have 1/100 of the life he continues to lead.

Well, it has been quite the week! I don’t think I’ll put all of it here but will break it up into two or maybe even three parts. The first leg to Williamsburg, the second to CT and the third being the trip home. So let’s begin:

Sunday 3/22, in the morning, we packed up and set off for two days in Colonial Williamsburg. Sue had never been there and was really interested in seeing it. We really wanted to stay at the Williamsburg Inn, but it had nothing available for the two days we wanted to stay so we settled on another part of the property: The Colonial Houses. They are part of the center or the historic area, walking distance to everything, especially the couple of restaurants we wanted to try out and were recommended to us so we made the reservation about a month or two ago and off we went. The seven or so hour drive was pretty seamless, our GPS routing us around a slowdown and we arrived around the time we would have had we been able to go straight up 95 and then over to 64. The address brought us directly to the magnificent Williamsburg Inn as the main check in was there, talk about a tease…it was exactly the kind of place we had hoped for, however, upon checking in we were given the directions to the Colonial Houses about a block or so away, we were cheerily told that we were going to be sleeping in the same location that Thomas Jefferson had stayed in back “when” [should have been red flag #1, but we were tired after the drive and it didn’t register]. We parked where we were told and just like James Stewart in “Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation” (if you don’t know the reference, shame on you), we schlepped from the parking area over uneven cobblestone paths to the back of the Tavern that we would be staying in…upstairs…. Now, it was not too bad except that Sue had one bag, one LARGE, wheeled bag, fully packed, and it needed to go up stairs that had not been changed since 1776 or so…

Well, up we went to find a room that perhaps Mr. Jefferson had slept in not in 1776 but the night before. The mattresses were on a sheet of plywood on a bed frame that likely predated the signing of the Declaration of Independence. There were two chairs that perhaps Ben Franklin was sitting in when contemplating electricity, two dim lamps that likely he tried his first electrical charge in and a bathroom, though containing all three necessary fixtures, was equally tiny. There was a small dorm size fridge and a tv but really no room to move or sit comfortably in (more about that later).

We were tired so we opened a bottle of wine and sipped in preparation for out 5:30 dinner reservation (the only thing we could get for that night and we planned that a few weeks earlier as well).

The first thing we discovered as we were looking at the map and planning the next days events was that over 50% of all the places were CLOSED on Monday and Tuesday, as were ALL of the restaurants and pubs within walking distance. So off to dinner we went, (about 1.5 miles away, the closest we could find). It was decent, the oysters were great and because we were so early, we hit the happy hour so it was only a buck a shuck, the meal was ok, the server was an absolute delight. We returned to the room and planned, as best we could, the following day based upon what seemed to be open, a bit more wine and off to sleep.

We woke up the next morning to an incredibly chilly rainy day, weather that was forecast to continue through out the day. We found out that the ONLY place open for breakfast was in the Williamsburg Lodge (as nice as the Inn, but also with no rooms available), so off we went hoping to start the day relaxed with maybe a nice Eggs Benedict and perhaps a Bloody…NOPE..only the dreaded breakfast buffet and no Bloody on the menu.

After breakfast we took off under our umbrellas and walked to the ONE exhibit we actually found open. The walk took about 8 minutes, the exhibit about 4 minutes. So we decided to simply wander the streets only to find just about everything closed, [remember it was raining steadily so even the outside places that were listed as open were not in action due to the weather]. We decided to simply stroll to a nice pub hoping to have lunch and a libation in front of a warming, colonial fireplace…NOPE…all closed..every…..single……one….

So we went back up to the room….and passed the remaining 5 hours till dinner playing phone games, joking, and trying to warm up a bit….in the uncomfortable chairs….

Dinner was actually great, it was a pub type restaurant (Blue Talon), and the food was really good {as was the martini I so badly needed}. We decided to get up early the next morning, earlier than we planned, and simply pick up some coffee on the go and head to Tori’s in CT…where we were very excited to be having dinner that night with “the gang” at Rowayton Seafood..and to top it off, in the Crow’s Next as arranged by Josh the general manager, sommelier, and someone we also call a friend.

Had we had a clue what we were getting into at Williamsburg we would not have made the stop there, the information was not really clear when we were making the trip. We realized it would be rustic, but we didn’t think we’d be living like actual residents in the restoration given the rather large “tariff” we paid. However, we were tired, frustrated, cold and wet but really none the worse for wear…Off we went on the next leg of the journey….home to see friends in CT….a tale for another day…

I actually CAN wait to get on the road again, however, tomorrow it will be exactly that…on the road…

It was less than three months ago that we packed up and moved to SC…my incredible son helped me out big time and we drove through the night (well HE drove most of the way…likely 9 of the 13 hours), with Abbey THE dog along for the ride. We drove overnight and avoided all traffic issues. Sue arrived a few days later, having broken her trip up into three stages. We unpacked, settled in and have really started to enjoy being here.

Then we started to talk about continuing a tradition of Thanksgiving dinner at Tori’s in Wilton. It sounded like a fabulous idea, so we planned a trip. We leave tomorrow morning and will stop at Colonial Williamsburg, since Sue has never been there and has wanted to go. That’s not too bad, as the 480 or so miles are all south of the DC/Baltimore boondoggle. Then, Tuesday morning…we leave for CT…and have 7 pm dinner reservations at one of our favorite places, with friends we’ve not seen in the three months away….through the DC/Balt area, followed up by the TZB and more going into CT…I’d be lying if I said I was not dreading it…THEN….Friday morning, to keep ahead of all the OTHER holiday travelers we leave to come back…this time the goal is to get through the DC/Balt. area and pull up for the night in Virginia , the rest of the trip the following day.

Couple this with the fact that we are leaving Abbey THE dog with a petsitter that we are not quite sure of for a lot of small reasons…however, it was the best arrangement we could make for this trip.

I’m sure I will regale you with tales of the trip sometime in the next two weeks…for the time being, keep a good thought for us for a smooth, seamless trip both ways…

Happy Thanksgiving to all!! I am truly thankful that we even have these options.

I simply cannot seem to wrap my mind around the current state of the nation. The election cycle has again brought to the surface the fissure in seemingly all of mankind. Left, Right, Blue, Red, Patriot, Snowflake, constant labels being put on people by those who believe differently and the labels are always negative, always derogatory, always meant to inflame and insight further animosity.

I also cannot seem to come to grips with the fact that so much is spewed out of both sides of the mouth: Example: I was born and raised a catholic (long since “lapsed” or perhaps more accurately “recovering”) and for all my life I have heard and read about how god loves us all, in fact, for the past 8 years I spent my post “retirement” working in a catholic middle school. The reality is that in Catholicism, we are actually shown the opposite of the words spewed…God does NOT love anyone LGBTQ, I actually know them to have been referred to by an administrator as “fags” and as “disappointments”…this from someone who represents the archdiocese of Bridgeport…. This same school also loves to talk about how they are family, well that’s a nice thought, but other than in Stepford, show me the family that all marches to the beat of the same drummer (something you are expected to do in that “family” setting. It is also a “sin” to marry someone NOT of the catholic faith, and if you are given “dispensation” to do so they must promise to raise children as catholic or it’s a no go… Why?? if they don’t are the children then “condemned”? if you actively discourage a different belief system is it because you are afraid someone will see the faults in yours?

Then we have the “my body-my choice” anti vax and anti mask people….who are constantly using that slogan to support their own version of idiocy…YET many (dare I say MOST) of those very same slogan spitting buffoons are the same ones protesting in front of Planned Parenthood clinics and doing everything they can to limit and ultimately overturn Roe v Wade. seems kinda contradictory doesn’t it?

I could go on with more examples and anecdotes but you already know the drill so I won’t. The truly distressing thing for me is how much worse it keeps getting. There is no reason anyone should believe the same as everyone else, diversity and difference of opinion based on real facts is healthy and productive. Debate and discussion, discourse and dialog all very good, but when it becomes epithet tossing, name calling, screaming, blocking, filibustering and denial of change for the better simply because you are somehow in power over others, that is unhealthy and unproductive for all of us.

To close this series of thoughts yet more song lyrics that I heard today that kind of fueled this post it’s really about love but I still think it fits:

“Feeling forsaken
Broken in two
How did this ever happen to you?
Taken for granted
Bruised and betrayed
Lonely survivors
These promises made.” Dan Fogelberg