Ranting Rex

Much of my father’s and my relationship was like most father/son relationships.  He told me what I should do, and I ignored him completely:  Often to my own detriment.  When I was 11 years old, I watched as my father gave the eulogy for his father.  He swore then, and many times hence that he didn’t want a funeral because, for one thing, he never wanted me to have to go through what he went through.  Therefore, in keeping with tradition, I’m ignoring him completely.

Dad was a giant of a man, for many years in stature, and certainly in personality.  Few people have the ability to befriend individuals from any walk of life.  Dad had the ability.  He could carry on with lawyers, doctors, politicians, rich, poor, young, and old with equal skill.  It’s likely why he was able to deal with a wayward teenager without killing him.  

Part of this skill, I have no doubt came from the fact that he was born to a construction worker with a 6^th grade education and a school teacher.  That kind of lineage tends to offer opportunity rarely found in today’s world.  You get to see two sides of an argument and understand them.  That’s a rare skill, and one that is in short supply today.  He could be kind and caring for sure, but he could also be obstinate and unreasonable.  It’s a good thing none of that rubbed off on his children.  

With that said, he absolutely loved all of us.  He loved talking to his kids, and our spouses equally.  Sometimes the spouses even got top billing.  It was no matter.  He adored hearing from us and talked to anyone within earshot about what we were up to.  I’m sure many people knew more about what his children were doing than his children knew.   He was proud of all of us, and happy he could rely on us when he needed us.  We certainly relied on him when we needed him.  Over the years he helped us with cars, cash, food, and even school supplies.  This is how most men of his generation said I love you.

He lived almost his entire adult life near his family.  He loved all of you by the way, every niece, nephew, grand niece and grand nephew and loved it when he could see and talk to you.  Visits and calls were talked about for weeks after, and he was proud, very proud of everyone’s accomplishments.  While he was the last of his surviving siblings to pass, he never forgot them, or his parents for that matter.  Especially granny.  As with all of us that remember her, especially her.  

He adored his grandchildren as well.  He loved talking to you all on the phone and listening to what you were up to.  I’m sure he would have loved to meet his great grandchildren as well.  They certainly would have loved him.  It was hard not to love him.  

Dad was always happy to hear, and distribute, the latest gossip, and more than generous with his advice, whether you asked for it or not.  After a point we learned that rather than being annoyed by it, we found it entertaining.  Eventually we found it endearing, and in the end, loving.  

You know, it’s funny but my parents divorced when I was just out of high school.  However, they stayed close even until his death.  One time when dad was very sick, this was decades ago, I wanted him to go to the doctor or the hospital, and he refused.  My parents were divorced of course so I called my aunt Rose for assistance.  She laughed and said 

“are you kidding?  Honey, the only person that could get him to do what he doesn’t want to do is your mother.  She’s the only person he’ll listen to.”  She was right.  

When dad could still drive he showed up at mom’s every Sunday for years with donuts, a news paper, and a carton of camel non filters.  When he could no longer drive, he got others to drive him there.  He was very grateful for that, for sure.  

Dad either called, or came calling on mom at every opportunity to talk about his day and complain about whatever came to mind.  In reality It didn’t really matter the conversation, it just mattered that he got to speak to her.  He adored my mother until the end.  She was his first love, and his last.  She deeply cared for him as well.  Their mutual feelings of love and respect taught us that no matter what the disagreement.  No matter what the conflict, with love, patience, and a little time, anyone can come together.  Relationships change, but the core values, the important things that brought us together in the first place remain the same.  If anything good comes from the loss of my father it is this:  You don’t always have to like someone.  You don’t always have to agree with them.  But if you love them, and are always there for them, that’s all that matters. 

We love you Dad, thank you for all you did for us, and for all that you taught us.   We will miss you and love you to the end of our days.

Rest in peace

How do I say goodbye to the one person who is completely and utterly responsible for everything that is me? I was, am, and will always be a mama’s boy. My mother was my entire world and I can’t begin to reconcile what it is to not have her here to talk to, lean upon, and generally discuss for hours on end the one subject to which she was even more expert than I…me.  

As with most children, my relationship with my mother went full circle. When I was a toddler, she was my world, a pre-teen my teacher, a teenager, my jailer, a young adult, my cheerleader, and a young man, my confidant, and a grown man, again…my world. She was the first person I went to for a problem and the first I went to with my successes, and she was the voice and soul of comfort in all things.

I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good child. When I was in junior high, my father used to say that he was sure of one thing; It was that he made it to more of my classes than I did. In fact, on more than one occasion my mother would drop me off at one door, and I’d walk out another. However, if my father’s statement is true, then my mother made it to even more, for she was the one who was always there, making sure I was doing the work, even if I wasn’t making it to class. In fact, when everyone in the world, teachers, social workers, family even the occasional police officer had given up on me, and written me off as worthless she was there to tell them, no. He is not worthless. He is not worthless because he is smart, he is kind, and he is my son. He has just lost his way. He will be fine.

After graduating college at 33 (If you haven’t been paying attention, I was a bit of a late bloomer), I got a pretty decent job in Colorado Springs which enabled me to live in the mountains above the city, doing the things I love to do and living the life I always dreamed of living. Today I lead many efforts in the delivery of healthcare information to clinicians around the world including the use of cognitive and AI technologies to help clinicians treat patients in the field. In fact, our work is used today to help clinicians treat victims of the recent pandemic. I only bring this up to make my point that there isn’t anyone who knew me from middle school, high school, or even me, who would have bet a nickel 40 years ago that this would be my life. My mother would have, and she is the reason, the only reason, I have had the confidence, and the perseverance, to achieve any of the goals I have today.

I called mom one time after I moved to Colorado and I said “You know, when I was a teenager, I swore, I mean I SWORE, that when I was eighteen, I would leave Iowa and never speak to you ever again. Now it’s 20 years later, I live 800 miles away, and I call you at least once a day, if not more, and talk to you more than ever I did when I lived there. Without skipping a beat, she said “I planned it that way.”  

Mom had a wicked sense of humor. My brother has five children. I didn’t marry until I was 47, too busy trying to raise myself, than even thinking of trying to raise any other children (again…late bloomer). On one of my daily calls to mom she answered the phone and I said “Hi, it’s your favorite son,” again, without skipping a beat she said “How are the kids?” She wasn’t about to let anyone get the upper hand. I knew better though; I am the favorite;).  

Actually, that’s not true. My mother loved every one of us regardless of our gifts, or out faults. She was there to celebrate us when we won, pick us up when we failed, and kick us in the ass when we more than deserved. She was 4’11”, usually weighed in at a total of 97lbs and even my 360lb father toed the line when she laid down the law. One of the many times I was in trouble I made the mistake of lipping off to her, as an idiot 16-year-old. The police officer in the room told me later that he feared my father was going to come over the table and throttle his idiot son and there was nothing he could do about it. I laughed. That’s funny, I said. He and I were worried about the other one.  

My mother was not perfect, nor was she a saint, which are the exact qualities you want in a good parent. Parents lead by example, and perfection is impossible to achieve, and saints aren’t four steps ahead when you’re trying to put one over on them. 

One thing is for sure is that mom was one of a kind. She gave us love, made us laugh, and taught us the greatest lesson of all: to be human. I love you my mother. I am forever in your debt. I will miss your hugs, I will miss your laugh, and I will miss the way you say “Hi honey” after I say “Hi mama.”  

So with that I will say Bye mama. I love you. 

Rexy

I’m pretty sure the collective group of liberals have lost their ever lovin’ minds. Don’t get me wrong, I have considered myself a liberal for years because I felt that liberals were educated, logical beings who considered their positions beyond the end of their nose.  Maybe now I have to rethink that position.  I always thought that liberals looked at a problem, did as much research as they could, and then through logical and unbiased non-emotional analysis reviewed that information and made a decision.  In no way did I think they would fly off the handle, have knee jerk reactions to hyperbole, and basically put their hands over their eyes and ears before putting their head in the sand so they didn’t have to listen to anything that didn’t fit into their pre-determined political agenda.  But here they are…killin it!

When COVID-19 first hit the U.S. shores it was pretty clear that the Republicans and the President weren’t too worried about it.  Should they have been?  Duh.  It’s obvious to anyone with a second-grade education and a heartbeat that had things been done sooner, this wouldn’t be the cluster fuck it is today.  But is it as big a cluster as the liberals want it to be?  Not really.

Don’t get me wrong, no one wants to get sick and no one certainly wants to see grandma die a week earlier than she needs to but come on, it’s not like this disease is going to end all life as we know it.  That’s reserved for this massively ridiculous reaction to it.  Look below here for some simple facts from the CDC:

The following was a study of a cohort (look up the word) of 44,000 patients who had the disease.  Given that someone from China currently has a .008% chance of getting sick, the chances of you dying from Covid if you live in China are statistically insignificant.  So…if by chance you even get sick here’s how the condition plays out:

• Mild to moderate (mild symptoms up to mild pneumonia): 81%
• Severe (dyspnea, hypoxia, or >50% lung involvement on imaging): 14%
• Critical (respiratory failure, shock, or multiorgan system dysfunction): 5%

So…if you happen to get exposed (very unlikely…even your chances in the US are actually less than .3%), and you happen to get sick (again, low percentage if you are healthy), you have a 5% chance of being critical.  If you become critical…guess what…you still only have a 2.8% chance of dying and that’s only if you’ve been smoking all your life, have a constant diet of twinkies, or already have one foot in the grave.  Still, the news likes to find that one person who has had the disease with no pre-existing conditions.  They have to dig deep for those.  It’s rare.  However, I surmise that it is likely they have some underlying condition formerly undiagnosed.  However, the news never seems to report any findings AFTER the autopsy.  

Add all this to the fact that New York needed less than 6000 of the 30,000+ ventilators that they claimed they needed makes me think they doth protest too much.  No matter though.  Now they say they will need them because this will all come back with a vengeance unless they get more.  For those not privy to politics “we need to keep this crisis going until Trump is out of office.”

Democrats hate Donald Trump and, ask them, they would even crash an economy to ensure he is not re-elected.  The left has their base so afraid to leave the bathroom for fear of losing toilet paper that it’s likely none of them will vote in November anyway.  However, I have a theory that ALL the Democratic governors will open the flood gates come November just to get their base out to vote.  Then, if their guy loses, they will lock the gates back up and claim all over again that the world is ending and it’s Trump’s fault.  So really, the only way we’re getting out of this is if Biden wins.  If that’s not the case, we’ll be stuck inside until 2024.

In a CBS News report recently the Urban Institute found that because of this fiasco millions of Americans can’t afford food and rent.  They quote that “More than 4 in 10 of Americans whose work was affected by the pandemic said they weren’t able to pay the rent, mortgage or utility bills; skipped medical care, or were at risk of going hungry.”  It’s that last one that is the greatest risk to the country.  Even Trump and is second grade mentality is capable of knowing that little gem.  USA Today reports that Trump plans to order meat packing plants to stay open during this crisis.  He knows for sure he has to at least keep the base in red meat.

To further stress how this cluster has impacted the community and how remarkably silly and unproductive the lockdowns are, here are two physicians who practice today making the argument that what we need to do is open up the economy before things get much, much worse and use this time for us to build up a tolerance to the threat.  I mean really…having a partial lockdown is like having no lockdown at all.  This isn’t communist Russia, no matter how much Mitch McConnel wants it to be so. Two independent physician groups the ACEP with the AAEM put out a joint statement refuting the claims by the two physicians, however their claims are based largely on CDC data so not sure who they are disputing.

We need to get everyone to calm the fuck down.  Guess what, you might get sick.  Then again, it’s more likely that you will not.  However, if we keep up the current status it is guaranteed that more people will die from child abuse, spousal abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, or whatever other iction they might have long before they ever even get exposed to a virus that, while can be deadly to the weakest among us, is really not as much of a threat as they’d like it to be.

Rex

I am officially done with this stay at home bullshit.  I live in a community that has one person for every square mile.  In New York there are 27000.  We’ve been sheltering in place since c1840.  Treating this place like its New York city is the most idiotic decision since New Coke.  Still, has my life changed much since this all happened?  Nope.  Do I fear I will catch some incurable disease and die over all this?  Nope.  Do I think there is a chance that I could be carrying something that might kill someone?  Yep.  And the reason I’m carrying it is because people have lost their fucking your minds!

If you don’t think this government is a cluster looking for a fuck, then you’re not paying attention.  At every turn they have made decisions that put lives in danger.  COVID-19 is one thing but shutting down a global economy to get people to take a bath is insanity. Not only that people who buy thousands of rolls of toilet paper, drink bleach and fishbowl cleaner to cure a disease, or who think that some fake billionaire daddy’s boy gives a flying fuck about them should be enabled to allow nature to take its course.

Crashing the economy is a friggin danger.  I know you left wing mamby-pamby breast feeding wannabes think that hiding under your parent’s couch is a good plan, so just cover your eyes and think of safe spaces on your college campus so no one can disagree with your warped, fake, fluffy unicorn world.  Go on princess…hide your eyes.  Mommy will be by to feed her little boy his bottle.  Jesus…no wonder we need gender neutral bathrooms.  You’re all wearing your hear in a bun so it’s impossible to tell which of you has the vagina.  

The danger we are in now is crashing an economy that runs a planet.  That’s right, WE run the planet.  We keep the majority of the world fed.  We keep the masses from turning into a group of armed, frustrated, uncontrolled, hangry wackos.  Think a zombie apocalypse isn’t possible?  Oh the fuck it isn’t.  You should see me if I miss an afternoon snack.  It’s a wonder I haven’t stabbed someone.  Keep me unfed for a couple of days and I’d become such a killing machine that World War Z would seem like a comedy.  There’d be more bodies on the deck than you could count, and I’m just one guy.  Add millions to that number and you’d have a mass riot that no military in the world could control.  Remember, we’re not Russia.  We are not China.  We’re the United States of America!   330 million pissed off wholey entitled assholes!  

I’m not kidding.  If you think this virus is the biggest danger to humanity, then you need to read up on some history.  Almost every revolution in this world was caused because people were poor, hungry and pissed the fuck off.  Just you wait.  If this shit lasts for another 18 months and millions of people are out of work, children are dying from mal nutrition, and families going hungry because they can’t buy food, then the virus that you so fear will massively pale in comparison to the utter destruction you will see when man begins to prey on man for no other reason than they need a simple meal. 

As we sequester ourselves in our homes, a lot of us are with our family and secretly plotting their death.  Being in close proximity to those you love can cause an enormous amount of stress in the best of times.  When you’re sitting there waiting for the next guy who didn’t wash his hands to come knocking at your door to infect you and your family, then nerves get a little on edge.  With me it’s a little different.  I love being with my wife, and our two dogs.  She is my lover and my best friend (you’re singing Rod Stewart right now…you’re welcome). 

The problem now is that we are not together.  Every year on Halloween weekend, my wife leaves me to go trick or treating with her grandkids and then sequesters herself to a beach condo in Ventura County California until Memorial Day.  That means that with all this craziness my wife and I are separated.  While everyone in the world is complaining about spending too much time with their family, I’m in the opposite boat.  I’m not spending enough time with mine.  My family is my wife, and our girls, and I miss my family.

I absolutely adore my wife.  I miss her dearly, and I want her to come here where it’s safer.  It’s really easy to benefit from social distancing in an area that has hundreds of square miles of wilderness area.  A city outside of L.A., not so much.  However, she’s a bit stubborn, and really hates snow, and the weather here was 32 degrees this morning.  So, listening to the sound of the waves, getting some Yolanda’s Mexican food, and chillin with her oldest grandson even if you can’t walk on the beach is more important to her than me and the cold. 

I guess what I’m saying is that if you are stuck in a house with your family, consider yourself lucky.  I’m over a thousand miles away, alone in a house with nothing more to keep me company than the sound of my own breathing.  I do love my alone time, but I always look forward to getting back to see my wife.  In the entire time we have been together I have never come home and wished she wasn’t there.  I have always taken for granted that she will want to go out and see a movie and eat popcorn, even if she’s stuffed to the gills with whatever we had for lunch or dinner. 

That’s why very shortly I will be taking a trip to California.  I need to see my wife.  I need to know she is OK, and I need to make sure she is safe, because in the end if she wasn’t there, I’m not sure I’d know what to do with myself. Obviously I wouldn’t be able to clean the kitchen right, mop the floors right, or well…do anything right.  I’d be lost.  I love you my girl.  In spite of you thinking I only want to be alone.  Well…you’re not wrong.  I do want to be alone.  I just want to be alone with you.

Rex