Okay, I was not going to post anything on either of my blogs this week. But having gotten stuck on a short story about a drunken Santa Claus, I hit a Google Plus thing and saw Jerry's name, along with an attractive picture. So I begin to be drawn into more nice pics, then find out the bastard has his own blog.
So I click on his blog link and learn a lot more about Jerry than I cared to know. First of all, the guy's a master gardener, knows his way around a hammer and saw, and creates some of the loveliest metal works you've ever seen. Then, to make matters worse, the bastard is an excellent writer as well....and that really pisses me off.
Yeah, he's still a bit liberal in some ways...I blame that on his years of teaching in the public school system. Just as my ideology was formed around a life in the military, surely Jerry was influenced a bit by some of those unionized pin-heads running our school system. Still, he presents well founded arguments, even if they are sometimes wrong. And I don't like it a bit that he's so multiply talented.
Jerry is that rare fella who just happens to be a renaissance man, capable in so many different venues. He can pick up a pen, or pound a keyboard and create an intelligent sentence, then go out nourish his 50 year old mulch pile, create nearly pornographically attractive pictures of tomatoes, build his own house and put a roof on it every ten years or so, then wander out to his shop and create artistic metalwork. Sickening!
I am so jealous right now I'm about to boil! Feel like I have to go out to my quarter acre now and create a nature oasis comparable to his...a hard thing to do with my limited gardening skills and a yard blanketed with landscape rock. Hell, I have more trees than anyone in my neighborhood and still I couldn't create that garden of Eden Jerry's got in his back yard.
Well, being the masochist I am, I signed up as one of his blog followers and now will be forced to see what Mr. Renaissance man has come up with this week!
I gotta get back to that drunken Santa Claus...just now I find him a hell of a lot more agreeable than reading any more of Jerry's next project.
Mad! Damned Mad!
Ha, Ha, you are so funny! If you ever get that camper thing, you better head up this way for the full tour and a BLT! Thank you so very much, my friend! I am honored.
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure friend...and it was my pleasure to see what you are all about!
ReplyDeleteMy Blog experience began with a blog on my ArtWanted/slate site, if you can find it the best way to read it is to scroll to the bottom and read them in order.
DeleteIt is all about that freight train experience with Cancer. Then, midway I switch over to my current blog and that cancer blog. It is a dead subject now! LOL
And that's a good thing! My 7th year of survival of the lung cancer comes this Friday, the 4th of July. On July 4th, 2007 my wife was away, I was home alone, feeling punky all day...was washing dishes and coughed blood into the sink. Went to ER, got x-rayed, then MRI'd and they found the tumor. The ER doctor was optimistic while my primary doctor was pessimistic and I leaned on the pessimism solidly. I walked out of the ER that night, stood beside my car, looked out on a nearby park and contemplated nearly certain death. Didn't call and tell
ReplyDeletemy wife for a couple of days...so I had plenty of time to privately chew on it. Well, here I am, three days short of 7 years...and with the average survival rate of 15% I was extremely lucky.
did you blog during this time? It was an interesting experience, facing death, yet having tons of time to contemplate what that might all mean. You are clearly a tough, mean, bastard! glad the military taught you something! and glad you hung around so I could "meet" you!
DeleteJerry is one in a million... We found each other some years back via the blogging venture.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I live in Florida and he's in the northwest I had the chance to go out that way and I finally met him alive and in person...
He is better than online. Even though we differ on politics
.. I'm pleased to call him "my friend Jerry."
That's wonderful Barbra Joan....glad to hear him being praised. And yes, I am jealous, but maybe that's a good thing. Maybe I'll work a little harder on my yard. The hammer and saw and metal working are definitely out....it took me thirty years to realize I don't have those kind of skills. Nice to hear from you!
ReplyDeleteNo, Jerry...I didn't start blogging until January, 2011. My life evolved over time after that July 4th seven years ago. The first year I was just waiting to die..the six months of chemo was worse than the surgery and my body was (and is) out of whack. For example, whatever sutures they put in after taking out part of my left lung just kept abrading against something inside; scary and painful, then all the massive steroids and other toxics left me sleepless, bald and out of sorts.
ReplyDeleteIn the second year, post treatment, I began to develop some hope and became really agitated every time I went for a followup cat scan. And it seemed like forever until the results came back (clear).
I did begin to really appreciate my "bonus days" and became a little more active, but nothing like before the diagnosis. Finally, at the end of 2012 I was searching for the answer to why I survived when so many others didn't. It was at that time that I decided I needed to do something with these bonus days. I started my blog in January 2011. And have been a curmudgeon every since. Hope you have a good 4th. (I do have a blog for Friday).