Tag: Me Myself I

Personal stuff

Lifetime Curse

Men & Women

I have written elsewhere that most of my problems in life have generally stemmed from three sources, which on occasion have overlapped substantially:

  • my total inability to accept authority figures and/or their pissy little rules
  • my stubbornness and refusal to respond (positively) to ultimatums
  • my love of the female of the species

The first two are pretty self-explanatory, but as for the third… well, it has various layers.

My infatuation with the female sex was documented at an early age.  In first grade I became infatuated with a lovely Jewish girl named Lynette, and tried for ages to get her to kiss me, but to no avail.  With that abject failure to guide me, I left off any kind of physical approach for years thereafter, but the infatuation for for the opposite sex stayed with me.

I kissed a girl for the first time at age 13, while on our annual summer holiday on the Natal north coast.  (Thanks, Ingrid!)  That a very attractive blonde Dutch girl allowed me to kiss her, nay even to French kiss her, made me realize that maybe just maybe things weren’t going to be horrible and I wasn’t going to end up, in today’s terminology, as an incel.

At age 14, my housemaster referred to my attitude (correctly) as “cherchez la femme ” — I wasn’t even aware of it, but he obviously saw the signs:  longing glances at the few female teachers at our boarding school, and the fact that I was one of the first guys in my class to actually have a steady girlfriend (hi, Ethne!) who nearly got me into serious trouble when a teacher caught me making out with her not clandestinely but right out in the open at a school rugby match.  Luckily for me, he was a cool teacher and just told me to stop doing that (as opposed to shopping me to my housemaster, which would have ended badly — caning, suspension, you get my drift).

I once faked an injury to avoid playing a weekend sports match against a rival school, just so that I could skip school and go to the movies with my girlfriend — as I recall, the fourth or fifth after Ethne (hi, Althea!  or was it Bridget?).  Sadly, I was busted by another teacher who saw me holding her hand at the bus stop;  and guessing (correctly) that I didn’t have a “pass” (we called them an exeat ) to leave the school grounds, he turned me over to my housemaster who promptly flogged me and “gated” me (kept me at school over the weekend) for three full weeks.

I’ve already told about the time when, in my final year at high school, I was found to have entertained my girlfriend in my dorm room — as it turned out, quite innocently in that there was no romantic activity, but which very nearly got me expelled.

And on and on it went over the years thereafter:  a catalogue of romantic catastrophes, broken hearts, failed relationships, infidelities, divorces etc.

All driven by my insatiable infatuation with women.  Fortunately, as I’ve got older, the problem has become milder (thank gawd) but I still love women, even though the actual interaction with them has softened to merely flirting (a constant source of irritation to New Wife, who is blessedly aware that it’s quite harmless).  Here’s an example (and it’s quite harmless, as you will see).

I was shopping at the supermarket some time ago, and as it happened, on the list was a female-oriented product which I was unable to locate.  (Not sanitary protection, of course — I know where to find that — but it was something like a sewing kit or maybe needles.)  Because I’m a man, I don’t ask for directions and in any event, the store people were nowhere in evidence and I wasn’t going to go searching for a specimen.  But there was a woman shopping in the aisle, so I walked up to her and said, “Excuse me:  I’m sorry to bother you but you are a lady — a very attractive lady, by the way, but that’s a topic for another time — and so you probably know where I can find [this product].  Can you help me?”

Of course, this being in the South, she was properly appreciative of the compliment and didn’t think I was oppressing her or trying to rape her or whatever the Modern Delusional Woman thinks when confronted with this kind of situation.   Instead, she smiled (dimples!), thanked me for the compliment, and told me where  to find the thing.  And that was the end of it.  (By the way, she wasn’t very attractive, but hell, it cost me nothing and might have made her day, so whatever.)  Just an innocent encounter, with no ulterior motive whatsoever.  (Had this happened when I was in my twenties… well.)

This behavior has persisted even into my advanced years.  I call it Vestigial Testosterone Syndrome (VTS):  vestigial because it’s not the raging forest fire of my youth, but yet there are still a few embers glowing amongst the ashes.

I can’t even stop looking at attractive women when I’m out and about.  The habit is completely ingrained at this point, and I’ll probably never stop.  On my deathbed I’ll doubtless be flirting with the nurse.

It’s not some kind of leering silliness, either.  I appreciate the female form in all its beauty and wonder, much as I appreciate a nice-looking car, or a painting.  It’s beauty — sometimes flawed, sometimes exquisite — and I love it, all of it.

If this causes some people to have the modern-day apoplexy at my gall in having male tendencies, I don’t care.

Which, come to think of it, may well be a fourth trait of my personality to cause me trouble:  my total indifference towards other people’s opinions of me and my actions.

Un-Cluttering

Friends and Family, House & Home

The last time I spent in the company of The Divine Sarah (and her hubby, shuddup you dirty-minded sods) was when she lived in her Colorado house.  It was a lovely place, and I have to confess I did feel the occasional pang of envy.

Her new place?  Apparently, not so lovely.

Of course, what hurt Sarah was that she moved the entirety of her old house’s contents into (I assume) a house of similar dimensions, and she and Dan brought everything with them.  That, I could have told her, was always going to be a mistake, because a rule of thumb when moving is that you always repeat always de-clutter before the move.

When New Wife and I moved a couple years back, it helped that we were losing a bedroom (and its closets and its bathroom), so we had to get rid of an unconscionable number of things that we decided we were never going to need again.  (Sarah talks of a couple SUVs of stuff headed to Goodwill:  that’s beginner activity where I come from.)

What’s interesting is that of course I had to de-clutter bigly, back after Connie died and I had to empty our enormous Plano house (seven 30′ dumpsters… how’s that for clutter?) so I could remodel and sell the place.

And New Wife and I moved into an apartment, she bringing only a couple of suitcases-worth of her stuff from Seffrica, and I bringing only the remnants of the stuff I’d kept from the old house (less than a quarter of a single-car garage’s worth).  And we still managed to accumulate possessions during our time in that apartment so that when we last moved, there were many trips made to Goodwill etc.

I might as well have been in the Army for all the moves I’ve made in my lifetime — the biggest one being from Seffrica to the Land Of The Free in The Great Wetback Episode of ’86 (three suitcases, from a huge townhouse in Johannesburg), and the next biggest was the aforementioned one from the Plano house.

Obviously, in terms of stuff let go, the Seffrican move caused the most:  stereo set, a thousand or so albums, furniture, 400 bottles of wine — what the hell was I thinking? — clothing, a garage-full of tools and two cars.  (Now that I think of it, even the relinquished clothing was ridiculous:  a dozen suits, a dozen pairs of shoes, two dozen dress shirts… oy, it hurts my brain just to think about it.  And by the way, all the clothing still fitted me, so it wasn’t even that any were particularly old or threadbare.)

Recently though, I’ve learned to be absolutely ruthless in paring back stuff.  It helps that we have an apartment that cannot contain anything more than what we have, so whenever we see something we’d like to buy for the house, the first question is always what we’ll have to toss out — new stuff is replacement, not additional.  This includes clothing, even.

Anyway, let me just give y’all an example of what I’m talking about.  This is our breakfast nook/dining room:

And no, it wasn’t posed or set up, but completely impromptu:  I was lying on the living-room couch and thought it would make an interesting still-life pic.  (That’s why the side pieces of art aren’t hanging symmetrically, sue me.  They are now, though.)

In Comments, feel free to share the details of your most wrenching move.  Or just tell me what caused you the most anguish to let go…

Granite State Call-In

Disaster

I may need a little personal help from my Readers in New Hampshire — it doesn’t involve me, but someone very dear to me, and it is not financial.

So if you live in New Hampshire, please drop me an email and I’ll supply the details.

Many thanks.

Transplanted

Lifestyle

This story (ordinarily the type I’d ignore) really struck a chord with me:

I decided, four years ago, to leave London, selling the flat I owned in Dalston and moving to Somerset.

The life I’d been building in London evaporated and I felt broken. The country seemed to offer a gentle place where I could retreat, lick my wounds and start again. After all, the countryside is where I had always been happy. Or so I told myself.

Of course, the reality blew a ten-foot hole in that dream, because of course life in the country isn’t as idyllic as it’s often painted.  Read the thing for the details.

Anyway, the reason why this silly woman’s article interested me is that I’m a little like her (minus the foolishness).

I’ve often thought about finding a small place out in the boonies — “small” in country terms, i.e. just large enough to where I could make a short .22 range where I could bang away for hours on end without disturbing the neighbors — but of course there are several factors which have always stopped me from doing just that.

The first is that I’m a city boy by inclination.  I mean, most of my life has been spent in the ‘burbs, but the times when I’ve really enjoyed my life was when I lived in downtown Johannesburg and Chicago, and spent lengthy periods in places like London or Vienna.  I liked having a dizzying choice of places to eat out and drink, the movie houses and auditoriums, the shops which sold pretty much anything I needed (outside the gun world, of course), and even art galleries:  all within walking distance of my living room.  For that, I was prepared to put up with the noise of the city, the proximity of neighbors and all the things which would drive other people away.

Likewise when I’ve traveled abroad, I’ve always preferred to stay in the great cities (London, Paris and so on) over the small countryside towns.  Then again, it must be said that I really enjoyed living out in rural Hardy Country at Mr. Free Market’s country estate as well — probably the first time in my life that I’ve properly lived out in the sticks.

I have no illusions about living in the city, because I’ve been there and done that, on two continents.  Also, having spent half a year out in the company of The Englishman and Mr. Free Market, I have no illusions there too — although it must also be said that the Brits do a good job of making their small towns very livable, as anyone who’s ever been to places like Marlborough or Devizes will attest.

So while I often ask myself the question:  if you won the lottery, where would you spend most of your time?  the answer is probably “close to or actually in a city” more than “out in a country retreat”.

If for some reason I did choose the country option, however, I know I’d make a better job of it than the stupid woman who wrote that article.

Big Fat Hairy Deal

Health

…and I use the word “fat” advisedly.

Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk officials have agreed to lower the cost of GLP-1 obesity drugs for Medicaid and Medicare recipients and those who pay directly and make treatments more accessible, President Donald Trump announced Thursday.

Medicare will begin to provide coverage for the obesity drugs for some people in mid-2026, which also might cause more private insurers to likewise add coverage for them.

The deal could lower the cost of the drugs to $150 per month for prescriptions that are available in pill form and that contain the lowest doses.

I remain skeptical, and here’s why.

I remember doing the math for Ozempic, and calculated that the cost per month (including the little single-use syringe) was about $5, for the .25ml shot.  What you actually pay is about $150 per month.

As anyone who knows anything about this business knows, the .25ml (the “lowest” as quoted above) barely does anything to you, weight-wise:  that’s the dose which prepares your system to handle the drug’s effects.  The serious weight loss starts with the .5ml double dose — well, it did for me, anyway — and guess what happens to the cost.  It increases exponentially with each increase in dosage.

I’ve had to quit taking Ozempic shots — as of last week, actually, because frankly, for someone trying to live on a fixed income amidst soaring inflation and prices of, well, everything except gasoline (which is still too expensive), I just can’t afford it.  (New Wife, by the way, wants me to continue to take it because she thinks if it keeps me alive, that’s worth it.  I remain unconvinced that it’s a lifesaver.)

My annual physical exam is late next week, and I’ll be discussing the matter with my GP.

Anyway, here’s the thing.  Under Medicare, my BP meds, my gout meds and my statins and others cost me…$11 per month.  Those drugs, I’m pretty sure, are actually saving my life;  the weight-loss stuff?  Who knows.

Maybe I’ll regain all the weight I lost (about 50lbs), or maybe I won’t.  Maybe my diabetes has responded well to the weight loss, or maybe it hasn’t:  the blood tests will tell.  One thing Ozempic did do for me was change the way I thought about food, or at least the quantities I consumed thereof.  I’m not sure that stopping the drug will make that attitude revert to its former self;  I don’t think it will.

We’ll see.  All I know is that as currently priced, the GLP-1 regime of drugs are unaffordable so I’ll just quit taking any of them until the cost comes down to what I can afford.

And if that decision ends my life, I don’t care.  I’m 71 years old, next week, and as anyone who’s reached that Biblical age limit can attest, the prospect of death no longer frightens one as much as it may have done in earlier times — which is what I’m going to tell my doctor next week.

Let’s see what he has to say about it.

In the meantime, though, my reaction to Trump’s much-heralded “price reduction” of this stuff is pretty much encapsulated in the title of this post.