Tag: Me Myself I

Personal stuff

What’s In A Name?

Communication, The Worst

It’s small wonder that I tend towards the irascible, having the name that I do.  Because, quite frankly, it’s a fucking pain in the ass.

Let’s start with the first (Christian) name.  Kim.  Easy to spell, easy to say, mostly it’s pronounced as written.  (There’s the occasional “Kym”, but that’s — I think — an affectation, like Tyffynny instead of Tiffany.)  My parents named me thus because they wanted a single, easy-to-pronounce, easy-to-spell appellation and in that, they were largely successful.  However:

“But that’s a girl’s name!”

This is the first of the many crosses I have had to bear, and my personal history is replete with stories of me taking a swing at people — okay, boys — who taunted me thus.

In fact, “Kim” is one of those gender-free names, in that it’s not a name, but a title.  In most versions of the early Anglo-Saxon language, “kim” means “chief” or “chieftain”, and as those ancient Anglo-Saxons didn’t care whether their ruler was male or female, the title bears no gender.  (Boudicca, she of the anti-Roman rebellion, was actually “Kim Boudicca” because the tribes of those days had no monarchy:  chiefs were elected leaders, not always hereditary ones.  (Mostly, but let’s try to avoid wandering down that branch line.)

And that’s just my first name.  (Also, in traditional English parlance, it’s my Christian name, but gawd forbid Americans are so intolerant as to use that when there are Muslims etc. in the populace who might take offense.  In addition, there’s no established church, so despite the “Under God” and “So help me God”, anything Christian is doubleplusungood, government-wise.)

Also, because my parents saw no need to give me one, I have no middle name, which causes endless issues with U.S. officialdom.  When I fill in the foul ATF 4473 form, for example, I have to put the idiotic “NMN” (no middle name) acronym, because to leave it blank or put in a “–” might screw things up totally.

And on we go.

My surname (“last” name in Murkin) is Du Toit.  So my full name is “Kim du Toit”, because if the name is preceded by a name or “Mr.”, the “d” is not capitalized.  But that’s only the beginning, because now we get to the Space Issue.

You see, there’s a space between the “du” and “Toit”.  (However, in modern-day France, it’s mostly spelled “Dutoit”;  go figure.)  But there has to be a space, as you will see.

An aside:  “toit” in French means “roof”, so my name literally means “of the roof” — perhaps because back in the mists of time, there was a Pierre who was a roofer, and so the family name might have become “Pierre of the Roof” (e.g. the Carter, Smith, Mason or Wainwright surnames).  However, as far as I can make out, the family originated in the south of France near the Pyrenees mountains, so “toit” could also mean “high place”, and the “de/du” has an alternative meaning of “from”.
The family motto, by the way, is “Dios y El Rey”, a Spanish term meaning “God and the King”, making the Pyrenees origin still more plausible.

Back to the pesky last name.  All my South African documents (birth certificate, passport, I.D. etc. are spelled “du [space] Toit” or if capitalized “DU [space] TOIT” (see the family crest).  So when I came Over Here in the Great Wetback Episode of ’86, that’s how I continued to spell my name.

Which is where the problems began.

You see, a great number of databases don’t like a space appearing in a name field — and by “don’t like” I mean they fall over or reject the spelling.  Worse still, it depends on which entity’s database we’re talking about.  The DMVs of Illinois, New Jersey and Texas will not accept the space — so my name always becomes DUTOIT on my driver’s license, except in Illinois where it’s DU_TOIT (!) — but the State Department has no problem with the space, probably because they have to deal with all sorts of strange names, so in my naturalization certificate and passport it’s spelled correctly:  DU [space] TOIT.  Ditto the IRS and SocSec, thank gawd.

Another aside:  some time ago I had occasion to visit the friendly folks at the local Social Security office (no kidding, they are totally unlike other government apparatchiks) and just for the hell of it, I asked to see my personal details.  Imagine mu surprise when the SocSec screen showed my birthplace as “Johannesburg, Saudi Arabia“.  I shared a merry laugh with the person on the other side of the counter, and luckily (for no reason I can explain) happened to have my passport with me, which showed my birthplace as Johannesburg, South Africa.  The guy laughed, and said, “So which one is it?” whereupon I offered him $10,000 if he could find in any atlas a town named Johannesburg in Saudi Arabia.  Then I asked to see the data input screen, and lo! “South Africa” appeared just below “Saudi Arabia” in the “check appropriate box” section.  He changed it on the spot.

Now let’s talk about other entities, e.g. banks.  You guessed it:  on a couple of bank cards, the space is elided, and on others, the space appears without any issue.  The problem comes, however, when I’m buying something online and have to enter my name As It Appears On The Card — because woe betide me should I add the space where there is none, or leave out the space when I shouldn’t.  So every online purchase necessitates me asking (usually out loud, with only a few Bad Words) “Now which [insert Bad Word here]  card am I using now?”

Finally, there’s the matter of its pronunciation.  Oh FFS. In South Africa, it’s pronounced “doo toy” because over time it’s become an Afrikaans name, and the Dutchies never found a French name they couldn’t fuck up.  Seriously:  “François” (“frahns swah”) becomes “”Franche Wah” and “Labuschagne” (pronounced like champagne) becomes the awful “Laboo-Skachni” — the -ch pronounced like the Scottish “loch”.

When I came over to the U.S. I decided to revert back to the (correct) French pronunciation because nobody could spell it anyway, and I happened to prefer the French manner because it sounds kinda classy and it’s all about branding, folks.  Also, the chicks thought it was super-sexy, and that’s all that counts, really.

On the day I was sworn in as a proud U.S. citizen, the clerk at the federal court asked me, before printing out my certificate, whether I wanted to change my last name.  Clearly, this would be popular with someone named, oh, “Krmczyl” or “Psmith” — or “du Toit”/”Dutoit”, for that matter.  Had I known this was possible ahead of time, I might have considered it quite seriously:  Dutton?  Dawson?  but that would have created problems should I ever have to get access to any South African documents (as I did, much later).  For continuity’s sake, therefore I said, “No, let me keep it just the way it is.”

So here we are.

And people wonder why I swear so much and am perpetually irritable.

Update:  a couple of folks have asked for a phonetic pronunciation of “Du Toit”.

Doo Twah (with a short “ah”)

RFI: Powdered Wig Stuff

Legal Stuff

I know that there are more than a few [sigh]  members of the legal persuasion among my Readers, so if I may ask, could those who qualify drop me a quick note ([email protected]) when you have a free moment?

The matter is not criminal, not financial, and nor has it anything to do with New Wife’s immigration issue.  It’s more of a “What the hell do I do now?” situation, and it involves me vs. Global MegaCorp Inc.

Many thanks.

Same Story, Different People

Health

Here’s an Ozempic story.

I know that I seem to be talking about this topic a lot, because my own results have been pretty pleasing.  But as Nadine Dorries describes her own journey towards going this route, I’m pretty sure that a large number of my Readers are in a similar situation to hers — I know that my own symptoms were pretty much parallel to hers — and maybe this will help you.  Here’s Mrs. Dorries in a pre- and post pic:

Just as a reminder:  I went from 277lbs peak to just over 220lbs, although it’s taken me a while longer — about six months — but there have been other benefits.

After a quarter-century of taking blood-pressure meds, I may not have to take them for much longer.  (According to the last doctor I saw a couple weeks ago, my BP of 113/90 was better than hers — and because I’d been feeling so rotten, I’d forgotten to take my BP meds for two days beforehand.)  Here’s hoping.

I have had absolutely no side-effects from Ozempic.  I was briefly concerned that (please pardon the graphic description) that I’d gone from an everyday, set-your-watch bowel movement to very occasional visits to the toilet.  But as my doctor explained, my daily food intake had been reduced by two-thirds (maybe more, even), so that wasn’t unexpected.

Which leads to this point:  my relationship with food hasn’t changed.  I still have cravings for a particular taste or type of food;  but when it comes to actually eating it, I eat far less of it — sometimes as little as 25% of it in terms of quantity.  (Four cheese sticks becomes one, two fried eggs become one egg, half-finished, and so on.  Daily bread has turned into once a week, and one slice of toast instead of two per sitting withal.)

But all those other horror stories that people have ascribed to Ozempic?  Not one.

I will admit, as I’ve said before, that my muscle mass seems to have gone down along with the saddlebags of fat, but I’ve always been muscular — even over-muscled, perhaps — so that hasn’t bothered me at all.  My ass seems to have, shall we say, slackened somewhat.  But FFS, I’ll be turning 70 in November (!) so “old-man-flabby-ass” was always going to be in my future anyway.

I’ve been told to exercise, but that’s not going to happen.  My sole “exercise” is a 100-yard daily walk (uphill both ways, uh huh) to the mailbox to check the mail, and a similar uphill distance to our garage to get the car.  The new apartment is actually walking distance from a bakery (I know, bread ungood shuddup), so I’m planning on walking there whenever I need to get more bread;  the only problem is that north Texas is not, as we say, pedestrian friendly, so it seems that the health benefits of that quarter-mile walk may be somewhat offset by becoming some F-150’s hood ornament.  But I’ll give it a shot anyway.

The biggest bummer is that insurance does not pay for Ozempic and the other drugs of that ilk even though, as in my case, its original purpose is absolutely medical:  to address pre-diabetic or Type 2 diabetes conditions.  I have no idea why this is so.  But as New Wife puts it, it’s better than dying from diabetes-induced problems (heart attack, organ failure etc.).

So there ya have it.  It’s all food (or, less food) for thought.  Hope this helped.

Health Update

Health

No, I haven’t been able to shake off this little (ahem) cough that has kept both me and New Wife from sleeping for over a week.

So last night:  desperate measures.  I cut my throat went to the local ER place, was given steroids, various stout cough suppressants and a “Z-pack” (antibiotics) which knocked me out…

…until 4 this morning, when I woke up coughing, and of course waking up New Wife as well.

So I took MOAR DRUGS and went to the living room to write this.  I should be okay by the weekend, but that’s what I thought before last weekend.

We shall see.

Worst part is that I had to curtail my range activities lest I alarm a dozen heavily-armed men with my gut-wrenching, organ-expelling coughs.  Tomorrow, I’ll talk about what I’d planned to shoot .  Right now, it’s back to bed.

Laters.

That Weight Loss Thing

Health

Several people asked about this when I revealed that I have lost over 40lbs since October last year.  My simple answer is “Ozempic” (which is true) but I need to give a little background, I think.

My long-suffering family doctor — a lovely man, by the way — has been hammering on at me about my weight for many years, yea even unto when it reached the upper-270s.  I’ve always responded flippantly to his worries, saying that I’ll do anything to address that concern as long as it didn’t involve

  • a change in diet, or
  • exercise.

Well, it all caught up with me when after studying the results of my last blood tests, he informed me that I was developing Type II diabetes.  He wasn’t kidding this time — I’d also developed the irritating-but-not-critical feelings of partial numbness in the soles of my feet, which is a symptom of diabetes and of advanced age (which is why you so often see old geezers wearing slippers around the house and sandals with socks outdoors — bare feet, apparently, are no longer an option lest one step on something sharp and doesn’t notice it).

Anyway, I still wasn’t interested in changing my diet or doing exercise, so he prescribed Ozempic.  It’s a once-weekly self-administered jab in the stomach.

What it did for me was reduce my appetite by about 60%.  Now I have to say that since my gastric surgery all those years ago, my appetite hasn’t been all that great anyway, but my food choices have been… deplorable.

What Ozempic did for me was reduce all food cravings — not eliminate them altogether, but make me less likely to eat (say) a whole slab of Dairy Milk over three days, and take two weeks to consume the same amount instead.

On regular foods, my portion sizes were reduced by about two thirds, and breakfast disappeared altogether, replaced by (maybe) a piece of cheese, a couple of grapes or a small handful of Honey-Nut Cheerios, and only if I felt really hungry.  (“Peckish” disappeared completely.)  I found myself becoming totally disinterested in feeding myself, much to New Wife’s concern.

Here’s the good part of all this:  I have been feeling better.  More energy, more stamina, and much less effort in just doing stuff like getting out of chairs or even just sitting up in bed.  Some people have reported that change in body shape has also resulted in change of personality, but that’s bullshit.  If your personality is going to change just because you’ve lost weight, then you have bigger problems to worry about.

Losing all that weight was a salutary event, but I was warned by FamDoc (and Doc Russia) that I needed to do at least some exercise because one of the side-effects of such radical weight loss is concomitant loss of muscle mass.

I’ve pretty much ignored that advice too, because to be frank, I’m heartily sick of my muscles.  I’ve always been a beefy kind of guy, even at Army weight (210lbs) — and I’m quite frankly sick of having to find shirts with an 18″ collar (since leaving high school), trousers that look like bell-bottoms (calf muscles) and shirts with sleeves that squashed my arms into stovepipes.  Cowboy boots?  Oy, I’ve been forced to get boots that are a half-size too big just so I can get my calves (again) into them.  Less muscle?  Fine.  I’m still as strong as I want to be — just this past weekend I helped Daughter pack some heavy stuff into her SUV, without any problems.

And so on.  My clothes fit better and feel more comfortable, and I’m using the first hole on my belts rather than the last one.  I may have to get some smaller clothes when I lose the last thirty-odd lbs I’m targeting, but then again maybe not.  Whatever.  If I end up walking around in baggy clothes, I don’t really care.  New Wife, however, may feel differently about it, but I have enough clothes that I bought when slimmer (and never threw away) that I shouldn’t need to change much.

It’s not all sunshine and light, however.  Belly fat has turned from a basketball into folds (okay enough under shirts, but ugh when uncovered), and my face has also become… well, droopy would be the best description.  (I know I know, exercise… shuddup.)

Anyway, that’s the story of the film so far.  Appalled by the cost of Ozempic, by the way, I switched to Rybelsus, which is a (foul-tasting) once-a-morning tablet, but it hasn’t worked as well, and I felt my weight starting to creep up again.  “Never mind,” says FamDoc, “I’ll just up the dosage of the Rybelsus.”

Except that the increased dosage of Rybelsus is more or less the same cost as Ozempic (~$220 per month ugh) so as of this very morning, I’ve gone back to the weekly jabs in the stomach.

(As an aside, I should point out that I am easily one of the least-squeamish people on the planet, and sticking a microscopically-thin needle into my own gut every week doesn’t bother me in the slightest.)

I really don’t care what people think of how I look, and maybe this is why I’m so blasé about this whole Ozempic/weight loss thing.  It was never about losing weight;  it was all about dealing with Type II diabetes, and that’s about it.

As with all activities of this nature, what has worked (or not worked) for me may not be the same for you.  So be my guest, if this is the road you want to walk down, but be careful.