Ok, so in my last post I selfishly suggested that 2022 was off to a lousy start due to me hurting my shoulder and a few other minor inconveniences, but I was a fool. As usual. My little boo-boos were nothing compared to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, so I apologize for being a wimp. Also more significant than what I listed is the inflation rate, $2/litre gas, and the collapse of the Canucks’ playoff chances. So 2022 continues the recent trend of years that keep on surprising us with their ability to disappoint.
At work I have been re-assigned as a water meter reader. I love the job, and I can already feel my cardio getting better from walking six hours a day. What no one talks about, except us readers, is that the hardest part of the job is finding somewhere to pee. This is a pretty old problem for me as I have a bladder with the capacity of a shot glass. Once I worked in a planer mill, and I was pretty much stuck grading for two-hour stretches with no hope of a break. Then I began to have blood sugar problems as I morphed into a diabetic. The first symptoms, as you probably know, are the thirst and having to pee frequently. You can never get enough to drink, and it made going without piss breaks unbearable. To make things worse, the planer mill didn’t have its own plumbing, so anyone needing a leak just went over and peed in the Fraser River from the banks, taking a little cover from a shed with a hydrant in it. BCIT had a forestry program, and every year they had the students tour our mill. For some reason, the class was nearly all women. So there I was, in between breaks, dying for a piss when suddenly I was surrounded by about 20 women taking notes on everything I did. To my great relief, the planer stopped for some reason, so I dashed outside to donate some used Gatorade to the local fish habitat. I got to the river bank and was about to unzip when I realized I had a full class of students right behind me, pens in hand, taking notes. …The grader goes to the river bank when the planer stops… I think I said “This isn’t part of the tour,” but they kept on gawking. So much for that! I had to go back inside and clench and dance until the next coffee break, upset and surrounded by strangers. In meter reading it rarely gets that bad, but it’s something I have to plan for.
Now I take a once a week injection to keep my blood sugar low, and it seems to work quite well. Its main side effect is that it makes my stomach sour if I eat too much, or eat or drink certain things my all-knowing medicine decides I don’t like anymore. Tragically, it often upsets my stomach when I drink beer. The good news is I lost some weight which also helps the blood sugar stay low, but the bad thing is I am a wimpy beer drinker now. I have always thought a person’s alcohol habits determine their friends, at least to some degree. If a person doesn’t drink at all, it’s hard for them to socialize with those who want to piss ‘er up every time they interact. I used to drink quite a bit. I suppose if you lined up the drinking habits of people and rated them from 0 – never drinking, to 100 – drinking while awake, I would have been around 80 or 85. Now I’m about a 40, and it’s made me ashamed to see friends of mine who were my compatible 85 buddies and who would be well within their rights to ridicule my sissy tummy troubles. God knows, if the situation was reversed I may ridicule them. Maybe I will eventually get a tolerance to the medicine and will go back to my familiar 85th percentile. Time will tell.
As a side note, it might make an interesting sociological experiment to rate the alcohol patterns of people and their friends to see what range they can accept. For instance, would my 85th percentile buds hang around with a 75 or a 95? Would they keep it close, say 80 to 90th? Is there a 5 out there who can go have dinner with an 85 without judging? Maybe the 85 is doing the judging? I should get a research grant and do the math. This also might make a fun doctoral thesis for someone.