• One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Pills for All Our Ills

    One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at life, aging, and the absurdities of it all.

    Mark McNease

    Too many episodes of heartburn after a meal? It must be GERD! Cholesterol numbers not what they should be? Here’s a statin!

    I don’t know about your doctor—how could I?—but my primary care physician is one of those nice, softspoken, well-meaning doctors with a great office manner who reacts to every ill I present him with by prescribing some new medication. Most recently, it was something for Restless Leg Syndrome, which I dutifully took as prescribed for several weeks while I kept reading about its applications and side effects. Two things stood out: it can increase my risk of deadly melanoma, and it shouldn’t be stopped without first weaning off it for an extended period of time. Hmm, I thought, finger to lips while I processed this information. I’m not interested in making myself more vulnerable to skin cancer than I already am, as a fair-skinned older man of British and Irish descent. And I really don’t want to take something I can’t decide to stop taking without lowering the dose first over a period of weeks. I don’t have the patience for it, and I don’t like anything that can have its hooks that deeply into me.

    Of course I stopped on my own, with just a day of real or imagined discomfort. The bigger issue for me is that my doctor, like too many others, made no attempt to determine if I do, in fact, have Restless Leg Syndrome. This kind of instant diagnosis happens all the time. Too many episodes of heartburn after a meal? It must be GERD! Cholesterol numbers not what they should be? Here’s a statin!

  • One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Cats, Kittens And Chaos

     


    By Mark McNease

    We recently lost another beloved cat, if you can refer to ending their lives as mercifully as possible that way. It’s both a euphemism and a truism: the space where Peanut had been for over five years is empty now. I left the soft orange runner on the floor by the kitchen sink where she ate, separately from our other girl Wilma. It reminds us of her, and it will always be where she had been. I’m also turning her litter box into a flower garden, with her name on a small marker. But she is gone, and it’s a sadness that will remain as long as we remember her.

    We’ve said goodbye this way to five other cats over the past 17 years, and it never stops being one of the most difficult experiences we accept into our lives in exchange for sharing them with animals. The only thing more I’ll say about it is that it always feels like a betrayal of their unwavering trust, and yet we are entrusted too with making sure they don’t suffer more than dying inflicts on them already. It’s a terrible guessing game.

  • LGBTSR,  One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another Column: So You Think That Hurts?

    Narration provided by Wondervox.

    A lighthearted look at life, aging, and the absurdities of it all.

    By Mark McNease

    Somewhere after our fiftieth spin around the sun our conversations begin to center less on our plans for the future, and more on our aches, pains, and possibly debilitating side effects of the medications many of us take. “What did you think of your weekend in the Poconos?” becomes, “Can this really cause crippling flatulence? My doctor said it’s rare.”

    I never really wanted to know about sleep apnea, or bad cholesterol, or Restless Leg Syndrome. Yet here I am, finally enjoying the benefits of turning 65—Medicare card, Social Security, a near-complete indifference to the opinions of others—while I visit one specialist or another for all these ailments. Need a new CPAP machine? Have to get another sleep test! Wondering why my legs have ached for months? Here’s a prescription that probably won’t harm you in the short term. It’s also used for Parkinson’s, but I don’t have that, so no worries. It’s just twitchy, achy legs. And that cholesterol drug you’re only supposed to take for a few months? It’s been five years.

  • One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Age Is Not Just a Number

    Narration provided by Wondervox.

    By Mark McNease

    Welcome back to the One Thing or Another column: A lighthearted look at life, aging, and the absurdities of it all.

    “Age is just a number!” How many times have we heard this uttered with grating cheer, as if getting older was just a figment of someone else’s imagination. To this way of thinking, I’m not really real, I’m a number-defying sprite whose bones, sinews, and brain aren’t in their mid-60s, but somewhere preferable, perhaps 40. I have the luxury of pretending to be any age but the one I am. I’ve always cringed when I heard this, and I always will.

    Age is not just a number. Age is empirical. Age is a measurement—how many times the Earth has traveled around the sun, with me on the bridge watching it all speed by. Age is the number of years my knees have carried my fluctuating weight, and how many mornings my eyes have opened to a new day. Age is the truth, and I’m not someone who wants to hide from it with platitudes, euphemisms, and make-believe.

  • One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Age Is Not Just a Number

    Narration provided by Wondervox.

     

    By Mark McNease

    Welcome back to the One Thing or Another column: A lighthearted look at life, aging, and the absurdities of it all.

    “Age is just a number!” How many times have we heard this uttered with grating cheer, as if getting older was just a figment of someone else’s imagination. To this way of thinking, I’m not really real, I’m a number-defying sprite whose bones, sinews, and brain aren’t in their mid-60s, but somewhere preferable, perhaps 40. I have the luxury of pretending to be any age but the one I am. I’ve always cringed when I heard this, and I always will.

    Age is not just a number. Age is empirical. Age is a measurement—how many times the Earth has traveled around the sun, with me on the bridge watching it all speed by. Age is the number of years my knees have carried my fluctuating weight, and how many mornings my eyes have opened to a new day. Age is the truth, and I’m not someone who wants to hide from it with platitudes, euphemisms, and make-believe.

  • LGBTSR,  One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Brave New Retirement

    By Mark McNease

    It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

    “What day is it?”

    It took me very little time after retiring from full-time work to ask this question, common among the post-job legions. After spending years with a life organized around a work schedule, one of the first things you may notice when the schedule is gone is that you’re uncertain if it’s Monday, Sunday, or some other day of the week you used to spend punching a time clock of one kind or another. For myself, I’d invested the previous five years staffing a deli counter at a grocery story, Thursday through Sunday. I’d called it my semi-retirement job, since I only had to put in thirty-two hours a week in exchange for benefits. The main reason was to provide health insurance for myself and my husband, and I’d promised myself that as soon as he was on Medicare, I was out of there. And I was!

    It’s early days for me in this less restricted life. I can go to weekend festivals again. When we take our two-night getaways, they don’t have to be early in the week, when the hotel rates are cheaper but most of the restaurants are closed. I’d enjoyed that for a long time, but now we can book a room somewhere for whatever nights we want to be there, and it’s almost an overdose of freedom.

  • One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Brave New Retirement

    By Mark McNease

    It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

    “What day is it?”

    It took me very little time after retiring from full-time work to ask this question, common among the post-job legions. After spending years with a life organized around a work schedule, one of the first things you may notice when the schedule is gone is that you’re uncertain if it’s Monday, Sunday, or some other day of the week you used to spend punching a time clock of one kind or another. For myself, I’d invested the previous five years staffing a deli counter at a grocery story, Thursday through Sunday. I’d called it my semi-retirement job, since I only had to put in thirty-two hours a week in exchange for benefits. The main reason was to provide health insurance for myself and my husband, and I’d promised myself that as soon as he was on Medicare, I was out of there. And I was!

    It’s early days for me in this less restricted life. I can go to weekend festivals again. When we take our two-night getaways, they don’t have to be early in the week, when the hotel rates are cheaper but most of the restaurants are closed. I’d enjoyed that for a long time, but now we can book a room somewhere for whatever nights we want to be there, and it’s almost an overdose of freedom.

  • One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Reunited And It Feels So Old

    By Mark McNease

    Shared from LGBTSr.com.

    It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

    If you’re reading this you’re probably old enough to remember the 1978 hit, Reunited, by Peaches and Herb. That song came out a year after my high school graduation, and it seems an appropriate choice now that I’ve been invited to our 45th reunion. I can’t make it this year because we’re going on our annual vacation to Provincetown. Had I been able to attend, it would have been a first: I have not gone to any reunion since leaving Indiana three days after snatching my diploma and packing up my orange Gremlin to head to California. It was a stick shift with no spare tire, but I made it across the continent, and only went back every year to see my parents until they passed away. After that, Indiana became a place to store memories, some of them great, many of them deservedly faded.

    I’m not someone who insists that age is a number—tell that to my bones. Age is real. Days pass, weeks pass, years pass, and every living thing ages in the march of time. I’ve also given instructions to euthanize me on the spot if I ever say that anyone is so-many-years young. I would be mortified as well as humiliated if, should I live that long, anyone calls me ninety years young. It’s patronizing and patently false.

  • One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Out With the New

    By Mark McNease

    It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

    As another year begins and we make promises to ourselves, if not outright resolutions, why not stop and consider the changes we don’t want to make? The things about our lives that we’re pleased to have in them: events, people, situations, even qualities about ourselves we would not change. I quite like most of my life, and while I want to lose some serious poundage for health and vanity, I can’t say there are many other things I would change about it.

  • One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Why November?

    By Mark McNease

    It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

    November seems like an orphan month, stuck between the festivities of Halloween and the extravagance of Christmas. It’s that month when we wave goodbye to moderate weather, and say hello to furnaces and fireplaces. We watch leaves fall helplessly, their spectacular colors melting to a dull compost brown. November has a way of confirming our suspicions that nothing lasts forever. We get the tires checked or replaced, knowing they’ll soon be slipping and sliding in winter weather. We twiddle our thumbs, waiting for sleigh bells and gift ideas. November is just there, like a stretch of time spent in a waiting room. Eventually the door will open and we’ll be invited to the party, but in the meantime we’ll be reading a magazine on dental hygiene and hoping for the best.

  • Columns,  One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Why November?

    By Mark McNease

    It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

    November seems like an orphan month, stuck between the festivities of Halloween and the extravagance of Christmas. It’s that month when we wave goodbye to moderate weather, and say hello to furnaces and fireplaces. We watch leaves fall helplessly, their spectacular colors melting to a dull compost brown. November has a way of confirming our suspicions that nothing lasts forever. We get the tires checked or replaced, knowing they’ll soon be slipping and sliding in winter weather. We twiddle our thumbs, waiting for sleigh bells and gift ideas. November is just there, like a stretch of time spent in a waiting room. Eventually the door will open and we’ll be invited to the party, but in the meantime we’ll be reading a magazine on dental hygiene and hoping for the best.

  • Columns,  One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Cooler Heads (Hello September)

    By Mark McNease

    It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

    I’m not alone in my preference for seasons. Most people have their favorites, and at least one they put up with because they have no choice.

    I’m not a summer person, and when my time comes to buckle up and speed away from this crazy planet on whatever form of transportation the afterlife provides, I will depart having never liked the hot season. I tell myself it’s my Viking blood, although I can’t say I have any. Ancestry holds no interest for me whatsoever—and I’m adopted, so whose ancestors would I research anyway?

    I’m not alone in my preference for seasons. Most people have their favorites, and at least one they put up with because they have no choice. For me it’s when we’re closest to the sun and farthest from a parka. When June arrives in earnest I know the humidity can’t be far behind, and with it the heat that amplifies its discomfort. If you’ve ever wondered what meteorologists mean when they offer the ‘feels like’ temperature, it’s the moisture, the dew point, that awful stickiness only a powerful air conditioner can neutralize, and only when you stay inside. Walk out the door on a hot, humid summer day, and that refreshing coolness is forgotten in an instant. Ovens are dryer, and at least you can make dinner with them. Speaking of ovens … don’t. When summer is blazing, my rule at  home is no cooking that requires heat of any kind. It’s possibly the best thing about those record-setting hot temperature days.

  • Columns,  One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Cooler Heads (Hello September)

    By Mark McNease

    It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

    I’m not alone in my preference for seasons. Most people have their favorites, and at least one they put up with because they have no choice.

    I’m not a summer person, and when my time comes to buckle up and speed away from this crazy planet on whatever form of transportation the afterlife provides, I will depart having never liked the hot season. I tell myself it’s my Viking blood, although I can’t say I have any. Ancestry holds no interest for me whatsoever—and I’m adopted, so whose ancestors would I research anyway?

    I’m not alone in my preference for seasons. Most people have their favorites, and at least one they put up with because they have no choice. For me it’s when we’re closest to the sun and farthest from a parka. When June arrives in earnest I know the humidity can’t be far behind, and with it the heat that amplifies its discomfort. If you’ve ever wondered what meteorologists mean when they offer the ‘feels like’ temperature, it’s the moisture, the dew point, that awful stickiness only a powerful air conditioner can neutralize, and only when you stay inside. Walk out the door on a hot, humid summer day, and that refreshing coolness is forgotten in an instant. Ovens are dryer, and at least you can make dinner with them. Speaking of ovens … don’t. When summer is blazing, my rule at  home is no cooking that requires heat of any kind. It’s possibly the best thing about those record-setting hot temperature days.