3 brothers down

Painful truth from the rooftop 

    ROOFTOP -- I dread getting our water bill next month. At the rate those birds are drinking and splashing around, we’re going to be raised to the next higher water usage category. Forget the suet and the seeds; those song flyers are abusing their water privileges.

    The only birds I see out this late evening are the tiny wrens. Maybe finches. I don’t know, but they’re getting feisty. I don’t know if it’s mating season or they’re playing tag and grab. Do we ever know what birds are really doing? I mean really?

    I didn’t intend to do a roofsit for another week or two, but it turned out to be too perfect at dusk. Clear sky, stars deciding to peek out a bit, the wind visiting elsewhere; and me with a cigar that I’ve just decided not to light up. If I smoke this cigar I’ll have to put my clothes in the wash and take another shower. Too much trouble for not enough enjoyment.

    By the way, I found two cigars while looking for the remote in the recliner hidey places. Dennis must’ve left ‘em during his visit last week. Two cigars falling out of his pocket is weird.

Speaking of Dennis, the guy is recovering from rotator cuff surgery. He doesn’t know how he tore it, but I’m assuming it’s related to weightlifting. He and our big brother Larry compete at the gym on occasion. Al and I respect our rotator cuffs too much. Somewhere in the shoulder. Who knows?

Dennis isn’t supposed to keep his arm stable. He carries it in a sling. It’s still attached to him, you understand, or he else he wouldn’t be carrying it around. When he’s driving he has to take his usable hand off the steering wheel to turn on his wipers or his lights or the radio. And, it is so much harder for him to eat soup while driving. See why I don’t lift weights?

Larry hasn’t messed up his rotator thing yet, but he lost a knee. He had it replaced a couple of weeks back. I don’t mean to put Larry down, but the guy doesn’t suffer fools or pain well. His knee surgery was much worse than my best buddy, Virginia. She had both of her knees replaced, just not at the same time. If she did that, she would’ve had to recoup in a psycho ward.

Larry’s surgery was much worse than Virginia’s… or anyone else’s for that matter. I would rather be a trail boss leading a herd of musk ox to Abilene than to be Larry’s therapist.

As far as I know, Big Al is doing fine. His muscles and bones were okay when Dennis and I saw him at the driving range last weekend. Dennis wasn’t smoking a cigar because someone or some thing stole ‘em out of his pocket when he was sitting on my recliner. None of us were hitting golf balls. Al works at the driving range, so he wasn’t practicing his swing.

I couldn’t work on my goofy swing, because of my arm. Yep, shortly after Larry and Dennis had their surgeries, I ended up tearing a tendon in my biceps while helping a stranger get a couch out of his truck. Turns out I didn’t help all that much. My end of the couch hit the pavement right after my arm popped.

What’s weird about my accident is the fact that I haven’t seen my biceps since I turned 50. Maybe 40. All I saw was the top part of my arm. No bulge there. But, now there is a bulge in the top part of my right arm that feels almost muscular. By the way biceps are plural because it takes two of ‘em to make one. It’s like scissors. If you take scissors apart, you end up with two knives with holes in the handles. Half of one biceps is a long muscle. No handle or hole.

The accident was Kay’s fault. She had me drop off some stuff at the Assistance League facility in downtown Conroe. I saw a guy and his wife about to wrestle a couch out of a pickup, so I shoved the woman aside and set about to catch the back of the couch shortly before it left the bed of the truck. Unfortunately, it was heavier and moved faster than I had anticipated. This resulted in me grabbing it in a way foreign to my regular grab. Pop!

Next week a surgeon is going to go in and find the end of the tendon and stretch it back to it’s place and nail it down. Something like that. After that I’ll be wearing a sling hopefully as good as the one Dennis is wearing. It’s even got a pocket. I guess for french fries.

The only thing I can’t do right now with my torn arm is extend it and then turn my palm up. If you have something to hand me, you’ll need to balance it on the top of my hand.

After the operation I don’t know if the doctor is going to want me to get on the roof for awhile. With my luck he’ll tell me that I need to exercise my arm. Start lifting weights.

I’ll worry about that later. Right now we need to think about getting off this roof. Somebody give me a hand getting up. Hey, I need assistance here. No, Mildred, I can’t help you up. I’m more disabled than you. -- That sweet old woman is going to break something, and then this house will belong to her estate. – I’ll catch you next time… somewhere at ground level.

End
Mark@rooftopwriter.com