Dr. G-Diddy says that the knife sticking out between two ribs right below my sternum is probably a “pain flare.”  

Ah.  Such a remark reminds me of my dear friends in California who refer to their mountainous miles long hills they like to ride their bikes over as “rollers.”   As in, “oh, the route is pretty flat, just some rollers.”   When, interpreted out of California-speak into proper New Jersey speak: “you better lube your ass pretty well with junk jam because you are going be going straight up the side of a fucking mountain for about 4 hours.”   Rollers.  I can not properly articulate the rage that phrase puts me into when spoken by a South Californian… oh, wait, I’m sorry, a “SoCal” rider, when referring to the ride of the day.  Of course, the amazing creativity and artistry by me in utilizing the word “fucker” “cocksucker” and “motherfuckercocksucker” when trying to get up a “roller” is never realized by others, because I am too winded and usually on my back next to my bike collapsed on the side of the road to actually have enough air to utter the words.  

So, when Dr. G says “pain flare”, I imagine it has such a nice, fluffly, cutesy stuffed animal intonation to it.  “pain flare.”   Flare.  Like, flair on a Friday’s servers uniform.  Or, Ric Flair.  Or, the attitude exhibited by Evel Kneviel.  Kinda cool, and shiny!   Just like a roller.  It’s all fun and cutesy, and neat-o, until you’re Garmin has shut off because you can’t even maintain 5 mph on the incline, and you come out of your seat to peddle and you still can almost not keep the bike going forward, so you decide to stop for a minute, but you are going so slow, when you finally realize you want to stop, you realize you can’t get your foot unclipped soon enough and you just fall over on your side.  People passing are only concered about the condition of your bike.  And, I think they really mean it when they assert they “WERE NOT LAUGHING AT YOU FALLING, BUT INSTEAD, WERE LAUGHING AT SOMETHING THEY JUST REMEMBERED HAPPENED AT WORK.”  

My daugher turned 10.  I have made it to my daugher being ten!!!   WOOPWOOP!!!!  My wife and I saw her participate in her winter concert tonight.  She played the violin, which she has been practicising for 2 months, she sang in the chorus, and she narrated, or MC’d, during the chorus portion.

It was spectacular.  I’m not sure either my wife or I knew what to expect, because, let’s keep it real here, kids who have only played the violin for 2 months have a certain, shall we say, “quality” to their playing.  Violin is not a forgiving mistress, and she suffers no beginners.  However, the orchestra sounded like symphonic genius.  They were a well polished, jingle belling maching.  And their angelic voices soared right through the hearts of every parent and guardian and interested party there when their chorus reminded us about the pure joy of silver bells and rocking around the Christmas tree.   We thoroughly enjoyed the entire performance.  It was a special performance, perhaps all the more special, because we were not expecting something so enjoyable.  I pause to reflect, should my sweet pumpkin ever read this, to note that I have NEVER NOT COMPLETELY BEEN ENTHRALLED AT EVERY LIVE PERFORMANCE SHE HAS PARTICIPATED IN.   But, again, let’s lean in and share a little thing we call honesty….   we all know that our own children are goddamn brilliant savants in whatever performance we are bearing witness to.  However, it is only with committment, resiliance and fortitude that I am able to sit politely through the completely mediocre performances of every one elses child.  However,  tonight, the entire ensemble plugged into that sweet spot where they just nailed it.  Wifey and I were just floored and filled with pride. And, did I mention that she spoke wonderfully, and articulately and with poise when she performed her narration duties?  The acorn has not falled far from the tree with the wee pumpkin.  And not my tree, the wife’s tree.  She stood in front of about 400 people and spoke strongly and clearly and performed her lines.  At 10!   Just amazing.  

Wifey speaks all the time for work. And she is good at it.  What makes wifey and a double threat, is that she is good at it, AND will practice with focus.   And to see wee sprite with the same blossoming talent is just fucking cool.  

I have come up from a dive with no air in my tank.  This, for a diver, is a major embarassment.  Actually, you probably shouldn’t be diving if you come up with no air in your tank, and there was not a mechanical failure.  

I was looking at a little shrimp.  It was about half inch long, and hiding down in some coral.  I had been heading upward, to begin my safety stop, and I noticed that folks were gathered around a piece of coral, and pointing.  My thought process should have gone thusly:  you are running out of air, you can not breath underwater, you should no longer be underwater.   Instead, my thought process went thisly:  critter!!!!!      I tried to get a picture, and then resumed my heading upward to 20 feet.  I started upward with about 400 psi in my tank.  If you are a diver, you are shaking your head and whispering: “dumbass.” You really shouldn’t head upward with less than 1000, although, sometimes we play with these numbers, depending on the depth and length of dive.  I was ascending from a dive that had been deep enough that I absolutely needed a safety stop for 3 minutes.  400 psi is really not adequate to ascend to 20 from 40/50 (after having already come up from deeper), hang out for 3 minutes to offgas, and then slowly ascend to the surface, hopefully with some air to expand the BCD and bob if the boat is not right there.  I was lucky in that it was a static, or moored, boat.  I did my 3 minutes and then came up right at the ladder to the boat.  I like to keep the regulator in my mouth until I am entirely on the boat, in case I should fall back in after I have taken off my fins.  As I broke the surface of the water, I felt that it was a very difficult pull on the regulator, and then, as I put my foot on the bottom run of the ladder to the boat, there was nothing there to pull from.  The tank was bone dry.  Whimsically, I can say, I got my moneys worth on that tank, and why should I come up when I still have air on my back.  But, this was extremely reckless and dangerous, a point that wasn’t as poignant as it could have been, because of my safe return to the boat.  But, often the boat is not there.  If I have nothing in the tank, you have to inflate your BCD manually.  You are a smooth, tuned machine under water, with proper buoyancy.  However, on the surface, you have about 50+ pounds of metal and equipment on your person.  If you can’t get that BCD inflated, you can get pretty fatigued trying to tread water at the surface with that kidna weight.  Especially if your boat is off picking up other divers.  

Other than never coming up with less than 500 PSI back onto the boat, I’m not sure this event is taken as seriously as it should be by me.  I’m even trying to write about it to impress upon myself how close this was to potential calamity.  But, maybe it’s not so different from events we undertake every day, only more memorable to me because it occured under somewhat infrequent circumstances.  I only get to dive about 10 – 15 days a year.  Yet, I drive every day, looking away from the road for a variety of reasons while hurtling over the speed limit.  Deer are constant.  The roads are windy and narrow and one lane each way.  It is of constant happenstance that circumstances don’t align from these less than perfect actions on my part to coalesce into tragedy.  It’s a random chaos just accepted by us all.  We could randomly be felled by freak horrors every day, yet they so infrequently happen that they are of no moment to us.  We are truly shocked and affected everytime a 4000 lb car drifts over the yellow line into the other line, striking a car head on and killing a mother or child or nun.  Yet, even though  an army of tort attorneys will try to convince us otherwise, often times this is just random bad luck.  

We don’t accept random bad luck in our society.  There is always a why, or  a how, or a who done it.  And if there’s not, we’ll assign it.  It’s her fault, his fault, the bar’s fault, society’s fault, the churches fault, nature’s fault. But, sometimes, a tree just falls suddenly and kills someone walking underneath it that had only been walking there at that time because she was going door to door collecting cans of food to donate to the needy.  

I have stage IV cancer and it’s no ones fault, and it doesn’t really matter the who, or the why or the how.  I keep wondering if there is a deeper lesson to be learned, that the closeness of being 60 feet underwater with no air, and no ability to do a safety stop shouldn’t make me pause more.  But it doesn’t.  I now try to be committed to coming up on the boat with at least 500 PSI (well, at least 300), but, if I’m being honest, I’m still going back to see the critter.