My happy neighbor

I played golf last Friday with my next door neighbor which happens reasonably frequently. This was at a beautiful course up in Danville, VA that was new to us. Afterward we drove down to Greensboro to the Wyndham Golf tournament and saw Tiger woods and Davis Love play through right in front of us. I even saw myself on TV in the Saturday morning reports on Morning Drive, when they showed Tiger hitting his second shot on the 5th fairway. Lo and behold, there I was standing behind him at the edge of the fairway! How exciting!

My neighbor and friend is a PhD Chemist/College Professor, so he's got some serious smarts. He grew up in British Guyana before coming to the US to get his college education. And he's been here ever since. He's now a wiry upper middle-aged guy with slight graying hair and an aversion to chiggers.

As many times as I've enjoyed playing with my friend, this time was a bit more impressionable for me as I got fully present to his on-the-golf-course demeanor.Without any intention to be in any way critical of Mr L, I thought to share some things I noted about his demeanor when golfing.

One, he's got a heightened sense of bodily self expression.  He leans way over backwards with one leg way up in the air when his putts come near the cup as though he can will the ball to curve into the cup by body language alone. He's very limber.

Two, he cheers his own shots! Can you imagine? His standard cheer is "whew" but it's sung in a high pitch rather than just being said. When he's really wants to emphasize his cheer he adds "wee", so it comes out ,"woo wee", then a slight pause, then, "Yeah!"

Three, when he hits a good drive or iron shot he may break into that celebratory cheer along with a little jig sort of thing.

Four, he laughs a lot, and always seems happy.

I really like my neighbor a lot, but sometimes I wonder how much of this celebration and happiness I can take! After all, it's just golf'.

The Creepy Crawlies

Does anyone else experience this? Last night I woke with a start. Something was crawling down my arm which was out and above the covers. It felt like a spider, at least like some sort of small bug.

Before I was fully awake I snapped my arm up in the air to rid myself of the creepy crawler that was invading my person. Now here's the thing. These creepy crawlers visit every now and again. Not every night, nor even every month. But it's not rare.

I have in the past been so sure I was experiencing a bug infestation that I've jumped out of bed, turned on the lights, thrown back the covers, and hunted everywhere to find the invader, ready to pounce and kill the invader. But surprised as I been, I've found no culprit!

This hasn't just happened once or twice. *\*-My middle-night safaris have occurred maybe four or five times in the past say four years. Usually after my fly-swatter-in-hand-ready-to-pounce-exhaustive-searches, I settle down enough to go back to sleep, thankfully without bug invasion night mares.

 A couple of years back there was a spat of bed bugs going around the neighborhood and I was sure that was the source of my attacks. However upon close inspection, no such issue. So what's going on?
When I looked this up online here's the causes I found: Morgellon's Disease, Menopause, Allergies, Certain Medications, and/or Withdrawal Symptoms. Thank God, after some serious reading I ruled those out. Next I came upon this:

The medical term to explain the crawling sensation on skin is formication. Many researchers believe this is a form of tactile hallucination..

Ok, so now I'm left with that I'm hallucinating.

 Damm!

No complaints day

I have this friend, Marlyn.

Now I dearly love Marlyn. At least I did until she invited me to participate in a No Complaining Day!

I responded to the invitation by complaining that I couldn't possibly give up complaining.

I love complaining. Complaining is cathartic. It points responsibility toward the person or issue that has annoyed the complainer. I mean who wants to be responsible? I don't wake up that way. I wake up into someone else is responsible, maybe wrong, certainly the problem.

 Among us grumpy old men complaining is sort of a daily ritual - seeing who can come up with the best complaints, the most dramatic complaints, maybe the complaints we've so far haven't yet voiced, and that when newly shared, are instantly recognizable by all the other geezers! That's sharing at it's best!

Sorry Marlyn. Giving up complaining is worse than giving up sex - as though that's an issue anymore.

My special spot

I have this spot. It's a special spot. You might say it's a life impacting spot.

The thing is, this spot drives me nuts! Now I'm guessing most people have their spot(s). I expect they are different - in different locations. I call my spot my "be with" spot. That's because the only way I can control it; well maybe the word isn't really control, maybe it's more like have some peace with it - the only way I can do anything that works is to "be with it".

 I learned this exercise back in 1979 in the Est training. The example they used to demonstrate this exercise in the training was the example of how to disappear a headache. But my spot isn't a headache. It's an itch.

This itch occurs on the bottom of my left foot, just in front of and to the left of my heal bone. The thing about this itch is that it's not on the surface, as in, on the skin of my foot. It's like under the skin, inside my foot, maybe about say a quarter of an inch in. So it's not your everyday run-of-the-mill kind of itch.

My itch does temporarily respond to scratching, if the scratching is really hard, like using a screw driver, or maybe the bristle pad I have in the garage for cleaning the bottom of my shoes. When I say temporarily, I mean something in the order of maybe 30 seconds or so. Then it's right back under there.

But here's what drives me nuts about the spot. It seems to only happen during the middle of the night, most noticeably when I wake up and have to get up to pee. I come back to bed in a half stupor, hoping I can craw in and drop right back into that great dream I was having, when that dammed itch shows up.

Lest you think this is funny or ridiculous, knock it off. This isn't funny! This nemesis can and has kept me awake for a couple hours. I've sharpened the big toe nail on my right foot to a point so I can use it as a scratchier. I've tried a half dozen different long handled scratchers. And I've gotten up and visited that bristle pad out in the garage.

I went to the doctor to see if maybe they had some sort of magic potion that would grant me itch-freeness. No such invention! Each technique has given me momentary relief, only to be revisited by this deep internal itch shortly thereafter.

So finally, one night a few months back, I found myself doing that disappearing exercise. You know the one : "Locate that itch in your body. What shape is it? What color is it? Is it constant or does it fluctuate? Now be with that itch and begin to shrink it in size. Get it down to the size of a quarter. Now shrink it to the size of a nickel. Then a dime. and finally about the size of pea, or maybe a BB.

And then wallah! My itch has disappeared. Aaaaahhhh. blessed relief.