It’s Time For a Change

I am moving my blog address. My new blog address is thebrokenmuggle.wordpress.com

I am making the move…well, head on over to the new site and read about why I am changing. I hope to see you all there soon.

PETA, Leave Me Alone

I would like to introduce you all to the newest member of our family, Slinky.

This was a Christmas present for the kids and they love him. Well, Mini-Babe is still not quite sure what to think of him, but the rest of the kids think he’s great. Their first question when we brought him out on Christmas day was, “Is he real???” I assume they asked this because he is so tiny. He is tiny but feisty. He is part Shiht-zu and part Yorkie. So, he is a Shorkie. The Yorkie side makes him feisty and he torments our other dog, Pig.

Well, on New Years Eve, I discovered a new game to play with Slinky. We call it Slinky Bowling. Great fun!!

I love how Mega-Babe has to tell The Bug that he is not allowed to do this in the video.

The Cane of My Existence

I have found that there are still some decent people left in the world. There is only one trick to making these people show their more humane side. You have to have one of these beauties:

Whenever I start to have “flare-ups” of MS, I have to walk around with a cane. This is not so I can walk, it is so I don’t fall down in public. People have the tendency to panic when they see someone hit the deck for apparently no reason. My legs just get weak and sometimes give out on me all together and I fall. It does not mean that I need someone to call 911 or be rushed off in an ambulance. I just need to get up, try not to look anyone in the eye because it is deeply embarrassing and walk away.

The cane usually prevents the fall from happening and helps me to keep what little pride I have left intact.

But it has also been a fantastic social experiment in human behavior. I have written before about the general rudeness that exist in our society. People like to take up the entire hall when they can obviously see someone coming in the opposite direction toward them and having no desire to make room for everyone. BUT, if you are carrying a cane, they will hug the wall like they are being frisked by the police when they see you coming to make room for you.

If I am walking toward any door, and someone sees me coming, it doesn’t matter if I am 100 yards away, they will wait for me so they can hold the door open for the cripple.

Same thing when I have to cross a street or parking lot. People will refuse to just drive right by and not let me pass first if I have the cane, but if I don’t have the cane, they will floor it just so they get by before I can try to cross and slow them up.

Today, I went to lunch with Halo and Big Head Johnny. It was an establishment where you go to the counter to place your order and then carry your food back to your table. One of the ladies INSISTED on carrying my food for me. I told her I could manage, but she was having none of it…..because I had the cane.

Twice now, I have been walking up to Wal-Mart and there have been employees driving the motorized scooters from the parking lot back into the store and when they see me, they ask, “Are you going to need this?” That one is a little embarrassing.

Actually it is all embarrassing. For all the ranting and raving I do about how rude our society has become, I almost prefer the rude treatment than the cripple treatment.

I guess Constanza was spot on as usual. When you have crutches, it is usually a funny story, but when you carry a cane, it is usually a sad story, and people seem to want to go out of their way to help the sad little man with the cane.

Personally, not a fan of the cane.

The Scary Tooth Fairy

So here I am today, sitting at work, minding my own business when all of a sudden, the shock of my life! The Tooth Fairy came around the corner……and scared the crap out of me.

I used to wonder when I was a kid how the tooth fairy was able to get into the house when I knew my parents always locked the door at night and we didn’t have a chimney (I actually wondered the same thing about Santa Claus.). Well, now I guess I know. I guarantee this guy knows how to break in.

Next time one of my kids lose a tooth, I am going to just leave it out on the front step so I don’t have to worry about this guy sneaking around in my kids bedroom.

Thanks, Tooth Fairy for being a good sport and letting me put you on my blog. I know maintaining anonymity is kind of a big deal for you.

Making My Peace

I guess I am a little past due for making my peace with the world. There is only so long I can sit here crying, “WOE IS ME!!”

To say that I have been a little upset would be an understatement. Mega-Babe is the only person who could even come close to telling you the hell that has been 2010 for me. I have been sucker punched, blind-sided, ambushed, cold-cocked, and any other metaphor you want to throw in here. I have been tight lipped for the most part except to those closest to me and have even left some of those closest in the dark. I got a none too happy voicemail on my phone last night from my brother (who I just realized doesn’t even have a nickname on my blog yet so I will call him…..Magilla. Not sure how I managed to go this long without giving him a nickname.) because he was having to get updates about me from my mom instead of directly from me. Sorry, Magilla, have kind of had a lot on my plate.

So, lets get on to the ugly part of this post in the interest of full disclosure. I am not going to share every little ugly detail and sickness that I have had this year, but I will give you the highlights.

1. For starters, I have or have had a ruptured valve in my heart. I have an appointment tomorrow to have it looked at to check on the progress made if any. This is not something new. I have been dealing with it for a couple of years now, but it causes a whole host of problems. This is obviously one of the bigger concerns with my health and one that I try to monitor fairly closely

2. Also, last spring, we went out to eat at one of my favorite restaurants which is basically an all you can eat steak and meat buffet. Upon swallowing one particularly grisly piece of steak, it got caught halfway down my esophagus….for a couple of hours. Nothing I could do would dislodge it. So…..I went to the hospital and they had to do an endoscopy, or go down my throat with a scope. The trick was, that since there was not an anesthesiologist on staff that late in the evening, they had to do it without putting me to sleep. I started throwing up in buckets ALL OVER THE PLACE!!! I became an instant legend in that hospital. I had people coming into my room going, “OOOH!!! That was you?!?!?!?”

The doctor, who was from some place south of the border just kept telling me, “It was too much food!! How did you even eat that much?? It just kept coming and coming! Its too much!!”

After another endoscopy the next day, they discovered that I had ulcers in my esophagus and a restriction that was blocking food from getting down to my stomach. So, I had to go on an all liquid diet for the next few weeks. That was fun. I wish I could say that was the only time food got stuck, but it wasn’t and I have had 6 endoscopies done since then to dilate that spot in my esophagus.

3. For the past few years, I have had off and on problems with my back. Earlier this year, I got a kidney stone that really set off the back pain that did not really cease even after the stone was long gone. So, I went to the doctor and found out that I have something called ankylosing spondylitis. I had never heard of this before, but basically it is arthritis in my back. There is not an interesting story behind this, it just sucks. Notice I went with a reputable source of information on this rather than Wikipedia? That’s progress.

4. But the ankylosing spondylitis leads me to my final and easily my most brutal battle. I have been pretty sure I wanted to do this post up until now, and suddenly, I am finding I don’t want to. I just want to delete the whole thing and forget it. I would love to put a funny spin on this and laugh this off, but I haven’t really been able to do that yet. It kind of feels like I am letting my beloved readers down, but I’ve got nothing funny to say and going into detail about how this came about is not easy. Partly because I don’t remember some of it, but also because it has been such an all encompassing battle that it would take too long and I don’t feel like reliving it now.

So, I will just tell you…..I have multiple sclerosis. Three months ago, I would have given anything for a diagnosis and to know what this is, but the answer I got is a hard one. I haven’t wrapped my mind around the fact that this is something that is never going away. I haven’t found any kind of silver lining in this cloud. Yes, there are medicines that help with this, but my other health problems limit these options significantly.

So, you wonder where Bro-Ken has gone? Why has the blog posting slowed to a crawl and sometimes to a dead stop? Why have I hinted at health problems that I didn’t want to go into? Well, now you know.

I hope to come out of this whole thing smiling on the other side. There are struggles I have that will never ever end up on this blog. I am not looking for anyone’s sympathy or condolences or whatever might be the right thing to say in these situations. I wanted to put this down so that I have it. So that one day when I have struggles that pale in comparison, that I can come back and read this and realize that I have overcome worse. So that one day my kids might be able to read this and understand why it is that their dad sometimes wants to sleep all day instead of playing soccer with them in the backyard. So…..maybe I can stop being a stubborn idiot and let people that I love into my life a little, which is not an easy thing for me to do.

Broken

I went with the name Broken for a reason….a few reasons actually. It is a little play on words that works out nicely and describes me well. But not only am I broken, but, especially this year, things around me seem to be broken as well. For instance, this is has been a very bad year to be my phone:

The other night, I forgot to take my phone out of my pocket and I left my shorts on the floor. I am guessing I stepped on it, but I am not the best at taking the blame, so I will blame it on one of my boys. I just know I got up in the morning, took it out of my pocket and it looked like that.

Now, I can’t text, I can’t see who I am calling, I can’t see any of my contacts, and I can’t see if I have a missed call or who it was.

I will say that I am not usually this hard on my phones, but this year, well, this is my 3^rd phone of the year and it is now basically useless to me. Like on Saturday (the day I discovered it broken), a movie called Frankenfish came on the Syfy Channel and I wanted to call J-Dawg to let him know, but I couldn’t because I never bothered to memorize his phone number.

My first phone’s display went out. I am not positive of the cause, but it could have been me getting a little mad at it when the alarm went off in the morning to wake me up.

To my credit, my second phone died because I wanted a phone with a “qwerty” keyboard for texting, and this phone did not have one, so Halo gave me an old phone of theirs’ (pictured above) so I gave this one to my boys who might have used it as a baseball or something and they broke it.

So, now, I am in need of a new phone to get me through until we get a new phone contract in December. If you happen to have a T-Mobile phone you are no longer using, preferably one with a “qwerty” keyboard (but I am not in a position to be picky) and you want to donate it to me, I will take it.

I think I might go with this theme this week and show you all the things around me that are broken. Tune in tomorrow for more.

My Facebook Regret- Updates

Kudos to Halo who jumped right on this. She found Chris Baldwin for me. One down, two to go. Who’s going to find the “holy grail” for me?

Update 2- Gabe Vasquez has been found. Two down, one to go.

My Facebook Regret

Welcome back, baby birds. I took the day off yesterday for our “team retreat” here at work, which is actually a pretty fun thing. Not a bunch of handholding and singing Cumbaya (Is that how you spell it?) out in the woods and doing trust falls. No, we did a service project, a delicious lunch at a Cajun restaurant, then an Amazing Race type game around town that OG did a WONDERFUL job of putting together. A good time was had by all.

But today, I am back to the “grind,” which means a new blog post for you….ahhh….group hug. (I just threw up in my mouth.)

I am going to be breaking my own rules today and mentioning specific first and last names of people I used to know. I would like to pull this off without really destroying the anonymity I have tried so hard to build up over the past 10 months or so. So, that means I am relying on people that I know and that know me to not leave any comments that might reveal who I am. If you have specific phone numbers or email addresses, please just email them to me. If you don’t know my email address, leave a comment for me that tells me how to contact you and I will get it down somewhere else and delete your comment as fast as possible.

With that all said, I posted a while back about how I was leaving Facebook for good. No more awkward conversations with people I barely remember. No more hearing every little detail about 250 people that I could care less about and what they had for breakfast. No more emails from girls I used to know who just went through a divorce and they are wondering what I have been up to. (Yes, I am THAT good looking.)

One of my main initial reasons for wanting to get on Facebook was to see if I could find three specific people and see if I could start keeping in touch with them again. These three guys were my absolute best friends when I was a kid. Most people have best friends as kids, but it is usually only for a couple of years and you spend time switching who is your “best” friend and hanging out with other people for a while.

For the most part, me and these three guys were inseparable. From as early in my life as I can remember until we moved away from my hometown when I was 16, I was best friends with these 3 guys. Even after we moved, I continued to keep in touch with these guys. One of them came and stayed with me after I got married even, but has since disappeared and I don’t know how to find him.

The first two guys should not be terribly hard to track down as I know that some of my family members still keep in touch with family members of my friends and can probably track them down pretty easily. Their names are Gabe Vasquez and Chris Baldwin. Both of these guys went to church with me. I can remember spending my whole summers at Gabe’s house during the day when his parents were at work doing stupid things like sliding down their stairs in a cardboard refrigerator box until we slammed into a stack of pillows at the bottom. I think Gabe dubbed it the “Paco Express.” We would also watch movies a lot or play Nintendo. Our favorite movie was Goonies. Great show!

Chris was a kid that was 3 times my size, but I still managed to flip him off my back during one of our wrestling matches when we were quite young and he hit the couch and broke his arm. I felt a LITTLE bad, but mostly, I felt like THE MAN!!! He was huge compared to me. He was a great guy though.  Time at his house was usually spent playing “war” of some kind, jumping on their trampoline or riding their go-kart or watching some kind of old war movie. His dad grew up going to some Marine Military Academy and was a former fairly high ranking officer in the armed forces. He was kind of a scary guy, but he was cool. Chris grew up loving anything that had to do with guns, being sent to a Marine Military Academy himself as a kid, like his dad.

The last guy is going to be a little tougher. I don’t know anyone who keeps in touch with him anymore, but I am throwing up an enormous Hail-Mary in the dark here and hoping someone who reads this blog can help me. His name is Jon Files. He was a very special friend. Not just a best friend, but a special one. He did not go to the same church as me, but he was highly faithful. His mom, who was one of the nicest people I ever met in my life, died several years back now from a very long and painful bout with breast cancer. I rarely cry when I hear about people who pass away, but I must be honest, I cried for quite a long time when I heard about Rhonda. She was like a second mother. His dad helped my dad coach our baseball teams when we were growing up. I would spend days and days at a time sleeping over at Jon’s or him coming to my house. My dad used to call him “Jonathan GET DOWN Files.” One of my boys has his name as their middle name. Mega-Babe will tell you it was just a name we liked, but I would be lying if I said that my friend didn’t make the name more appealing to me.

So, I do not have Facebook as a tool, but let’s see what kind of tool a decently popular blog can be. Help me out people.

What Does It Mean???????

Sorry, I have too much work to do today for a long post, so, I am going to let Foxtrot do my blog for me today. GREAT stuff!!

If you click on the comic, it will make it big enough for you to read if you are having trouble.

Also, if you don’t know why I put this up, go read my post from a few days ago here.

My Milkshake/PSA

Man, you guys hit this blog like it’s a twitter account sometimes waiting for my new post of the day. Hold on, baby birds, I’ll feed you.

First off, I would like to start my day with a little PSA for all you health conscience people.

1)      Do not EVER buy this kind of ice cream:

It is horrible!!!  It is like trying to eat chocolate frozen chewing gum.

2)      If you do happen to buy that kind of ice cream,  DO NOT  try it, decide you don’t like it, leave it sitting in your freezer for 4 years and one night decide you are really desperate for some ice cream, go pull it out and decide to eat it 3 years after the expiration date.

PLEASE, take my word on this one. That was single handedly the worst 12 hours of my life, and my stomach is still rumbling (not out of hunger) today. I had NO idea the human digestive system could hold that much nasty disgustingness that it is desperate to evacuate out of your body. I could go A LOT more into detail about the damage I have sustained and how horrible it was, but I will drop it there and let you use your imagination. It was BAD!!

Now, on to the better reading part of the blog.

I have often thought through my life that I should really write a book. I’m sure I am not alone in this kind of thinking. I’m sure a lot of people think they could write a pretty good book if they had the time, but I am not most people. I honestly think I could if I could take a good amount of time off work to sit down and do it. I’m sure my book would get torn to shreds in most literary classes of most colleges and some better than average high schools, but I bet a lot of people would be able to relate and find humor in something that came out of my very unique mind.

I know, I am being so humble at the moment. Mega-Babe loves it when I do this, but I honestly think I could pull this off.

The question is though, what kind of book would I write? What would it be titled? Would it be fiction and based loosely on me and my own life? Or would it be non-fiction and I just tell my not too abnormal of a life in a manner that people could relate too and maybe even be inspired by. I mean, if a 5’4” guy who’s parents thought he was a midget as a little boy who overcame his height and all odds, married the prettiest girl in the world, had the most gorgeous kids in the world, and managed to become not terribly successful financially but still lives in a nice house with lots of nice things doesn’t inspire you, what could? I guess I should have said “The questions are….” I wouldn’t want my literary correct wife or my English teacher mother to be disappointed in the colossal literary mistake I made at the beginning of this paragraph.

I figure a book written by me could be titled something like, “What the Heck Are You Laughing At?” or “Your Average Moron” or “Lazy and Skinny” or “Memoires of a 5’4” Guy Who is Hairy Like a Chimp” or “I Crack Myself Up” or as some people at work like to call me, “Odd Little Man.”

What about you? What kind of book would you write? What would it be called? Or, to stay on my favorite topic, me, what would a book about me or loosely based on me be called? Whichever you prefer.

I know, my book could be called “My Milkshake Brings All the Girls to the Yard.” Sorry, I couldn’t resist. How could a song that is as ridiculous as that not be the title of a book about me?