We saw a double rainbow while out for a walk during a gentle
rain. I know they’re not rare, they form because light bounces off raindrops,
and all that. I’m not after the science angle here. I’m just hoping this was a
sign of good luck to come. I’m pretty sure I’ve probably seen a double rainbow
before. I just can’t remember when. And I doubt it was as striking as this
beauty was.
Double rainbow!
These days I’m wondering what’s over the rainbow or the double rainbow. Going for a walk the other day helped me put things in perspective—at least for a while.
Out for a walk in the fall
My life is slower when I’m not on service in my role as a general
hospital psychiatric consultant. And I’ll be fully retired in June. I just came
off service earlier this week, when I was going at my usual fireman’s pace. Things
seem to move so much faster nowadays.
I’m on service at 50% time now. That feels a lot different
than the previous two years, when I was at 65% time. When I’m on, I’m going at a
dead run. When I’m off, I just mosey along. It’s a little jarring to go from 0
to 90 and back again every so often—even though it’s less and less often.
I don’t mind telling you, I get a little bored sometimes. It helps to do something different every once in a while. I hadn’t made a pizza from scratch in over a year and a half. I guess it’s not completely from scratch. I’m still better at just sticking a frozen one in the oven.
Ruthie is a good name for a beer. It’s a craft brew made by Exile Brewing Company in Des Moines, Iowa. It was named the official craft beer of the Iowa State Fair this year.
Who needs a tray?
There’s a cute picture of Ruthie on the bottle pouring beer
into a couple of glasses balanced on her bosom. Where else?
It turns out that Ruthie Bisignano was the owner of Ruthie’s
Lounge in Des Moines, open from 1950-1970. She was nationally famous for this
kind of serving style. She was married sixteen times to nine men, by her
account, according to a Des Moines Register clipping from 1988. This was the
year my wife, Sena, and I moved from Des Moines to Iowa City in a U-Haul truck
so I could start medical school.
Exile was established in 2012 and they serve community healthy living awareness as well as beer and food. For example, they started the Ruthie Breast Cancer Campaign in 2018 and for every case of pink-labelled Ruthie beer sold, a dollar was donated to Susan G. Komen Greater Iowa. They have a well-balanced attitude toward health and life—sort of like the well-balanced way Ruthie served beer.
We noticed that one of the menu items was something called
Mexican Rarebit. It reminded me of a
Gomer Pyle episode back in the 1960s. If you’re not a baby boomer, you might
not know anything about this old TV comedy involving the stormy relationship
between a naïve Marine private and his grumpy drill sergeant, Vince Carter. It
ran for 5 seasons and, while it was one of the few programs my mother liked,
Sena hated it mainly because of Gomer’s over-done North Carolina hick accent.
Anyway, one of the episodes was “Gomer the Welsh Rarebit
Fiend.” In it, whenever Gomer or Carter ate what Gomer always sounded like he
called “Welsh Rabbit,” they would sleepwalk and switch personalities. An
article on the web about the episode showed many snapshots from it, one of them
including a sign on which was printed “Psychiatric Unit.”
Of course, that piqued my interest since I’m a retiring psychiatrist. I didn’t remember that part of the episode. I searched the web and discovered that Welsh Rabbit was the original name of the dish, which is a simple dish of mainly melted cheddar cheese on toast. I admit I don’t understand the etymology of the name. Somebody either couldn’t catch rabbit or pronounce it.
However, it’s been associated with causing vivid nightmares, especially if you eat too much of it late at night. Maybe it’s the mustard.
In fact, there was an early 20th century comic strip called “Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend” by Winsor McKay. It was about spectacular dreams caused by eating Welsh Rarebit. The dreams often portrayed Freudian themes including phobias. Some speculated they might have inspired iconic movie creatures like King Kong.
Anyway, Exile’s Mexican Rarebit sandwich involves ground
chuck in a spicy queso, bacon, and corn salsa. I wonder if the recipe calls for
beer, which might be another way to enjoy the Ruthie. The web site doesn’t warn
the diner to avoid eating it just before bedtime.
You can find a lot of different recipes for Welsh Rarebit, limited only by the cook’s imagination.
Sena just returned from the store and among the items was cheddar
cheese and pumpernickel bread.
I made what we’ll call Ruthie Rarebit today—with a heck of a
lot of coaching from Sena. The recipe was pretty traditional:
A stick of butter, about a tablespoon of flour; aged cheddar cheese, about one and a half cups, enough for both of us; a small carton of whipping cream; about a teaspoon of dry mustard, half of a 12 ounce bottle of Ruthie Gold Lager (could as well have used the whole thing); salt and pepper, a little paprika and cayenne pepper.
Toast a couple of big slices of bread (we used pumpernickel) with a little olive oil in a pan. Melt a stick of butter in a saucepan, add about a tablespoon of flour, a bottle of beer or ale, whipping cream, add the cheddar cheese, and keep stirring. Pour it over the toast and add whatever else you want on top.
Ruthie Rarebit
No Welsh Rarebit recipe calls for rabbit—that I’m aware of,
anyhow. I’m not expecting any nightmares tonight. In fact, I think it might be
as helpful for sleep as melatonin.
This is just a post to offset the grumpy one from a couple of days ago. Sena and I took a walk on the Clear Creek Trail and she broke me up with her shenanigans.
Along the way, we found a painted rock in a tree which had
the word “corridor rocks” printed on it.
It looked like something you could google—which I did. It’s a cute story titled “The Corridor Rocks! —Brightening Days One Stone at a Time” by Sara C. Painting rocks, hiding them and giving people like us a fun time discovering them. Sara says it was a way to stop and smell the roses.
It’s one way to remember how happiness works. It leaks…sort of. We put the rock back where we found it. The only clue we’ll give you is that it’s somewhere out there on the Clear Creek Trail. Have fun!
It’s been a long while since my last post. I’ve been busy looking for signs to help guide me in adjusting to this retirement gig. It’s a tough skill set to learn.
I saw this bug on our house the other day. It turned out to
be a Praying Mantis. Don’t quibble about the precious difference between mantids
and mantises—I don’t have the patience for that. Anyway, this one didn’t have
the typical pose, with the long forelegs cocked into a prayerful posture. It
looked more like it was just trying to find its way—kind of like how I feel.
I read a little bit on the web about the Praying Mantis. One
culture says seeing one is good luck and another says it’s bad. I read just
enough to hope there is no such thing as reincarnation. I hope never to come
back as a male Praying Mantis, if you get what I mean. Look it up.
What I really would appreciate is somebody telling me about
what would be the best way to adjust to retirement. Many days go by when I
struggle to shake the notion that I was never really any good at anything other
than being a doctor.
I need a sign. I need many signs, as a matter of fact. Just
to clear my head, I went for a long walk out on the Clear Creek Trail. I
noticed quite a few signs out there. Most of them seemed to have some special
significance. That’s just because I’m preoccupied with getting used to being
retired.
There were signs of September on the trail. Specific signs telling you to do something or not do something else. And there were signs that you generally see every September that tell you autumn is on the way.
It reminded me of that song, “Try to Remember,” which has always struck me as lugubrious.
I just need a sign and I don’t care if the Praying Mantis points it out or not.
We visited Hickory Hill Park today in Iowa City. We’ve lived in this area for 30 years and have been near it but never walked a trail until now. It’s full of trees, birds, and other wildlife, including deer, which seemed to pose for the camera.
Deer posing
I say we’ve been near it because we have visited Oakland Cemetery, where the famous Black Angel monument is. At least one of the trails leads to one end of the cemetery—which we discovered today.
There are many legends about the
Black Angel, most of which are in the vein of various curses and some of which
claim that the curses can kill visitors—not true, of course. Many take selfies
in front of the Black Angel and toss coins in the base (probably to ward off any
curses, just in case).
I was feeling pretty reckless on the day Sena took a snapshot of me in front of the Black Angel. I left a little pocket change. That was a few years ago. The object of the visit was not to visit the Oakland Cemetery but to take part in the picnic and Psychiatry Department Matball Challenge game, Faculty vs Residents at Happy Hollow Park about a block away from the cemetery.
The Black Angel of Oakland Cemetery
Anyway, it was pretty hot today,
in excess of 100 degrees with the heat index. We kept the walk short for that
reason. It was warm, but the tree canopy kept the heat down a little. There’s
something about walking through a thickly wooded area in which most of the
sounds you hear are of nature. It tends to make me a little reflective.
Because I’m in my last year of a
phased retirement contract and will fully retire next year, I’ve been thinking
about transitions, the end of one era of my life and the unknowns about the
beginning of another. There are a lot of unknowns. Sometimes I feel a little lost.
Retirement tends to lead me to
think about death, which is pretty morbid, I know. I don’t ruminate about it,
but walking past some of the park benches, some of which are memorialized to certain
persons, got me to wondering about the next bend in the path. On one of them
was a small plaque bearing a quote,
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
JRR Tolkien
There was a baseball on the bench.
And not long before we got to that bench, we saw a shoe, apparently lost by someone—who might have been lost. Hickory Hill Park is big. A person could get lost in there.
Lost shoe
We followed a path that others seemed
to be taking. It led to the back of Oakland Cemetery where we saw a couple of
headstones which puzzled us. The names were very familiar; man and wife, with
only the birth years carved in them. But the strange thing was—as far as we
knew they were still very much alive! The man had been the closest thing to a
mentor that I could remember ever having.
Naturally, later I realized that
it was just that they had thought through their own transitions a lot farther
than many of us do. They had planned not only for retirement. They had planned
for their own deaths. But until I finally got it, I actually searched on the
web for obituaries.
Strange, I actually found a pdf
file posted that sort of sounded like one—an exquisitely written letter from a
relative who described the person we knew in enough detail that it seemed to
identify him beyond much doubt. Why would such a beautiful and presumably
private remembrance be posted on the web?
Maybe because the relative wanted the world to know how deeply loved this person is—while he is still alive.
Just a short post on the Gerbera Daisy (common name Gerber).
Sena planted it in our garden recently and it is firetruck red. They symbolize innocence,
purity, and, most of all, cheerfulness.
When I need a little cheering up, I just look at the Gerber Daisies.
I don’t read the news much at all these days. It’s almost always bad, anyway. I was a paperboy in my youth. I delivered the Des Moines Register and Tribune for a year and earned a certificate as Honor Salesman.
My paperboy certificate
Let me tell you a little something about being an Honor Salesman back in those days. First of all, I had to cross some railroad tracks to pick up my papers at the drop up the street from my house. Evidently, tree swallows like to nest around railroad yards sometimes, because they dove at my head like bombers. I had to swing my paper bag at them to fend them off.
And I had to deliver my papers in a little red wagon on Sundays
to get the big Sunday edition out. My paper bag wasn’t big enough to carry
around my skinny neck with all those supplements, ads, and tons of news.
In the winter, it was twice as bad. If I’d had a sleigh, I
could have made like Santa Claus. But I didn’t. All I had was the wagon and
dragging it through a foot or more of snow did not put me in a holiday mood.
I learned a little about business. One of the lessons was
that you sometimes meet some pretty strange people on a paper route.
I was embarrassed a few times when I had to collect, which
was to gather payment from my customers for a paper that one guy said wasn’t worth
a shit. In all fairness, he’d been drinking and had fallen on hard times—but he
paid me anyway.
Another awkward moment was collecting from a young newlywed couple
who always answered the door while wrapped in large bath towels. “Large” is a
relative term, especially on the young lady. It left a little to the imagination,
but not much.
I folded my papers, which is, of course, a lost art nowadays
since everybody gets their news on their electronic devices. I didn’t pitch
them on to porches though, because that was frowned on at the time by my boss. We
were taught to place it carefully inside the storm door so it wouldn’t get wet
or dirty.
Dogs were not as much of a problem as bumblebees,
particularly at one house on my route where the guy raised fields of Hollyhocks.
They were well over 6 feet tall and they covered his back and front yard, crowding
around his front door which I had to open to deliver his paper. The air was
always alive with the drone of bees, some of them as big as golf balls (well,
it seemed that way). The place scared me to death—but I had to do my job.
I didn’t really develop a head for business but it was good
training for life in general.
My wife and I were watching an episode of Antiques Roadshow
this evening and saw a spot about a pair of cufflinks that turned out to be
worth a lot of money.
That reminded me of the first and only pair of cufflinks I ever owned. Back when I was an undergraduate in the mid-1970s at the private, historically black Huston-Tillotson College (now H-T University), in Austin, Texas, a wealthy, successful white businessman who was fond of my English professor bought me a suit, dress shoes, tie, and cufflinks.
I was ambivalent about the gift as I was being fitted for
the suit at the men’s store in downtown Austin.
I wasn’t sure what cufflinks were supposed to do for me. I
suppose I shouldn’t judge the guy too harshly. After all, he was just trying to
be generous—and probably trying to impress my English professor.
It was the 1970s and it was not a great time for black
people in America. There was violent racism of course. There was also a sort of
paternalistic generosity which may have emphasized superficial symbols of
economic success.
Anyway, after a while the shoes started to squeak. I outgrew
the suit. Despite those losses, I became successful through hard work and good
luck.
We were out for an adventure today, shopping for a retirement
home. That’s what it was, really, although we really didn’t make any hard
decisions or commitments.
Nowadays there are considerations for whether to build from
the ground up, buy and modify a spec home, buy an older home, go condo, even rent,
move to a retirement village, and whatnot.
You have to think about mud rooms, pantries, walkout basements, whether to finish the basement or not, lot size, square footage of the house and the yard, two car or one car garage, Jack and Jill sinks, lawn sprinkler systems, Home Owner Associations (HOAs), fences, ceiling fans, gas fireplaces, whether or not you want to live next door to a high school baseball stadium and more even beyond that.
What you don’t have to think about is whether or not there’s
indoor plumbing.
When my brother and I were little boys, our pastor and his
family took us on a long drive up to the sticks somewhere in Minnesota in the
dead of winter. Man, it was cold up there. The object of the visit was to visit
a family who lived out on a farm and they didn’t have indoor plumbing.
There was an outhouse and a well. I remember the pastor’s
little girl and his brother and me and my little brother stood by the well and
talked about how pure the water was in the well. While we were talking, the
pastor’s daughter picked up a rock and, before anyone could stop her, dropped
it into the well—just to see how it would float down to a bottom nobody could
see.
Her little brother was pretty annoyed. The member of the
family we were visiting had just remarked how clear and pure the well water
was. After the rock spiraled out of sight into the water, her brother spat out,
“Well, it was but now it isn’t!” She just snickered.
Because we were staying the night at the farmhouse, we went
to bed. There was a large pan for urinating but if you had to move your bowels,
the only option was the outhouse.
I had to go. I waited as long as I could because it was really
cold out there. Finally, I just couldn’t hold it any longer, and I had to pull
on some clothes and trudge over the frozen ground to this shabby little shed
that I could smell long before I got to the rickety door.
There was some paper in there but—it wasn’t real toilet
paper. It might have been magazine pages. I was so cold it was impossible to
relax enough to let go.
I had problems with constipation after that for a good long
while, well after we returned home.
Things have changed a lot—mostly for the better in many ways but you still have to pay a high price in other ways.
I’ve thought about my weight over the past few days and decided to look at a few pictures. I had not realized that I had lost about 20 pounds over the last several years. This was all intentional and I’ve shed about 7 of those in the last six months—due mainly to daily exercise including planks.
Planks are good
As a consulting psychiatrist, I thought I was getting plenty
of exercise running all over the hospital, up and down stairs and whatnot. The
trouble is that it’s stop and go, fireman-type activity that often isn’t
sustained over much time.
I’ve got a few pictures of me before I lost my paunch. It’s
funny that I’m not climbing 20 or 30 steps and getting a couple of miles or so
on my smartphone step counter—yet I’m probably a lot more fit off the job than when
I was on. That could also partly be from not eating quite as much for lunch
when I’m not working.
Retiring has overall been better for my health.
It just occurred to me while writing this post that a couple of the pictures might not make much sense. They were taken during a Psychiatry Department Residents vs Faculty matball match and picnic several years ago. If you don’t know what matball is, you can find out more about it here.
I didn’t play, but I suppose that’s obvious. Maybe it’s also why Faculty lost.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 