I've Lost My Nerve

Well, I went to see my “doctor,” Dr. Quacky McQuackenstine, today. My left thigh has been numb and tingly* for a few months, but, you know, that $20 copay is a 30-pack of Bud Light with enough left over for a bag of peanuts, so I’ve kind of been putting the visit off.

Anyway, he came into the examination room after the AMA-required 45 minute delay had expired, and asked what’s bothering me. I told him that I’m quite disturbed that, by all accounts, President Obama is in violation of the War Powers Resolution by continuing hostilities in Libya, and furthermore, the Minnesota Twins seem to be waking up in the AL Central. “I … I mean with your leg. Jesus Christ.” he said, after a few moments of apparent confusion.

So I explained my symptoms, and … get this … he fired up the googletubez and searched online. Seriously. He diagnosed me using the same interwebs that I use to find talking dogs and pygmy goat porn. After a few pokes and prods that were presumably to give the impression that he was serving some purpose, he gave me the bad news:

Meralgia Paresthetica.

“How … how long do I have, doc?” I managed to ask through the sobbing. He rolled his eyes, muttered something that sounded like “jesus fucking christ, I could have been an accountant ...” and explained that there’s likely something pressing on the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve that innervates that area, and though it could be an issue at the L2-L3 disc, it’s more probable that it’s simply some pressure.

After about 5 minutes of weeping with ecstatic joy over learning that by god, by GOD! I WAS GOING TO LIVE!, and imagining all of the things that I was going to do, all of the places I was going to go, all of the things I was going to say to people that I should have said years ago, he started to explain the treatment:

Q McQ: Well, you should stop riding your bike for a while.

Dead Acorn: HAHAHAHAHA okay. And no more beer or watching baseball, right? HAHA thassa gooder.

Q McQ: Really. (Shows me the web page that specifically lists cycling as a potential cause.) The pedaling motion can put pressure on the area through which the nerve travels.

Dead Acorn: Well, paint me blue and throw me in the ocean!

Q McQ: WTF?

Dead Acorn: Anything else?

Q McQ: Yes – I’ll give you a prescription for Tryptamine, which is an antidepressant, but can be effective in low doses for your condition.

Dead Acorn: How is it effective for a nerve problem?

Q McQ: We're not really sure.

Dead Acorn: So to sum up - I come in here with a numb thigh, and you tell me I can’t ride a bike and put me on voodoo antidepressants?

Q McQ: That is correct.

Dead Acorn: Would you mind if I just took a quick look at your license?

I hopefully look forward to this going away without too much more than a few weeks of pill-popping. Some other possible causes, according to the never-wrong googlewebz, are pregnancy, age, diabetes, and tight clothes - I’m pretty sure I’m not pregnant, I’m pretty sure I AM old, I have no idea about my situation re: diabetes, but I’m damn sure that my “doctor” would agree that it’s permissible for me to continue riding my bicycle as long as I get some of those loose-ass gangsta jeans that will hang down around my ass, like the kids wear.

Tru dat, yo. Word. Acorn OUT, bitchez. (I’ll need to practice my hep-cat phraseology so as not to appear silly on the streets.)

* The saddest thing about this is that I carry my cellular telephone in my left front pocket, so every time I feel a tingle, my heart soars and I get all giddy over the idea that someone wants to interact with me. No one ever does. Dang.

The Politics Of Insanity

Idaho politics can be a very entertaining thing. Our state has a long history of sending whack-jobs to the U.S. Congress, from George Hansen (who tried to independently negotiate the release of the American hostages in Iran, and who later served 15 months in prison for failing to file disclosure forms), to Helen Chenowith (who claimed that the Feds were landing black helicopters in Idaho to enforce the Endangered Species Act), to Bill Sali (who introduced legislation to reduce the Law Of Gravity by 10%).

State-level politicians can provide laughs as well, as documented in today’s Idaho Statesman. It seems that a state senator got all liquored up after a round of golf, stole a truck and trailer, wrecked them, and appeared to be seeking The Promised Land. He also claimed that the robed woman into whose yard he crashed was an angel (the Statesman did not report on her attractiveness, so that cannot currently be verified).

Anyway, we haven’t had any awful poetry on The Dead Acorn for a while, so without further ado:

We've all played golf like John McGee,
and had too much at the 19th tee.
But angels he did claim to see ...
Was it alcohol? Or LSD?

Seeking God, he stole a truck
But crashed it quickly, darn the luck
So crazily, he ran amok
as his wife (full facepalm) muttered "ffffffuuuuuuuuuuck ..."

I sense that I can delete the “Income From Poetry Sales” line in my cash flow statement.

If It Weren't For Those Pedalling Kids ...

The Live Acorn and I rode in the Bob Lebow Bike Tour on Saturday. It’s a fundraiser for a Health Clinic in a nearby town that provides care and services to all, disirregardless of a patient’s ability to pay or insurance situation, yeah, yeah, it’s all goody-goody stuff, blah blah blah ... none of that noble charity crap, however, excuses them from creating the situation in which I got my ass kicked by a 15-year-old girl. That’s just bullshit.

I believe that this is the 6th year we’ve ridden it. There are a number of distances from which to choose: 3 miles (mostly training-wheeled 4-year-olds, though I did notice a couple of guys suspiciously sans children), 10, 35, 62, and 100 miles. The 10-miler seems kind of pointless (that’s basically 5 trips to the pub, only without beer), and the 62-miler … well, I’m not the athlete I once never was. So we’ve always gone the 35 mile route, and it’s worked out well (by “worked out well,” of course, I mean “I haven’t thrown up or died…”). Most importantly, I’ve been able to take it fairly easy, avoiding actual strenuousosityishness.

O, that I could live those days again. As it turned out, I got my hat handed to me. She was flying. I tried to be cool about things and all … you know, not gasping or crying, trying to maintain a conversation, but it hurt. In my defense, she wasn’t drunk hungover tired from feeding the orphans at the shelter into the wee hours the night before, and she was on a fairly new sweet ride that a friend had loaned her, whereas my old Colnago is literally twice her age, so as I do so often in all aspects of life, I’ll construct some internal fiction wherein I’m the victim, but yeah, I know … I got smoked. Damn it.

It brought memories of “The Great Santini,” in which Robert Duvall is finally bested by his son in one-on-one basketball, and I would have reacted similarly, except that my house doesn’t have stairs, and bouncing a bicycle off of her head from behind as she walked away seemed like a little too much work anyway.

I think next year, I’ll suggest we do the 3-miler, then loosen up her front quick-release so that her wheel falls off early on. That just might give me enough time to sprint across the line ahead of her.

There’s no shame in drafting off a 4-year-old, right?