When it's quiet, I hear a ringing that doesn't seem to exist. I'm pretty sure that tinnitus is just a sign of my ears gradually ossifying. My solution to that is to turn on the radio. I still hear the static, but at least then I can pretend there's a source.

That's not the only time I hear things. Sometimes I think I hear someone call my name or dogs barking when there can't be anyone around to call my name or my dogs are sleeping beside me. This has to be my mind playing tricks on me, right?

I probably shouldn't be typing any of this. Everyone knows that hearing voices is a bad sign. A little over a decade ago, my then across-the-street neighbor told her friends that she could hear people having conversations in the basement when no one else was there. They put her in a home.

She was nearly 100. I'm only half that age. I'm too young to be put in a home. But at least in a home there would be other people who could be calling my name. I have to admit that, technically, that solves the problem.

In the meantime, if you call my name and I don't answer you, know that I probably did hear you; I'm just in denial.

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Mom came down with a 24-hour stomach virus on Thursday. She's feeling much better today, but they say these things can continue to be contagious for a week or more, so I've been mostly hiding in the basement.

Will it work? Or will I be puking my guts out within the next few days? I think the anxiety might be worse than the illness; Mom assures me it's not.

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I have a migraine. (Today's symptoms: headache, loss of vision, numbness in left hand.)

That is all.

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It's Little League World Series time again, hooray!

Now if only I could figure out how to work the remote control without a thumb....

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While we were changing my bandage yesterday, I asked Mom to help me get a picture for the blog.

"No one wants to see your wounded thumb," said Mom.

So nothing to see here. Move along. Move along.

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Sometime in the past decade, before the Pandemic, I'm sure, I badly cut my left thumb near down to the bone on a piece of sheet metal while installing a new stove. I say "sometime" because I'm not sure exactly when, and I didn't seem to document it here on my online diary. Maybe it was something I didn't want to remember. It took a month to heal.

The reason I mention that is because I have now badly cut my right thumb, this time on a food processor blade... while I was trying to put it away on a shelf. I should have been paying more attention. It was just last week I was blogging about how clumsy I am. But since nothing can ever be my fault, I'm blaming Mom for leaving a food processor blade sitting face-up on the shelf where the food processor goes. Curse her!

Even though this cut is much shallower and less painful than the last one, I'd say it's in some ways worse because just last week I bought a new trackball mouse with a left-click button designed to be used by my right thumb! D'oh.

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It probably won't come as a surprise to you if you've seen my latest poodle strip, but as is usual for springtime, I have a terrible case of poison ivy. This year's bout, no doubt thanks to the helpful paws of underbrush-romping Louis, is the kind of rash that makes me wonder how much life is actually worth living. (There must be some reason so many people are taking fentanyl, right?)

Most people seem to think that cortisone cream makes poison ivy feel better, and maybe it does... for them. For me, all cortisone cream does is take the itch away so that I can feel only pain. "Burning" and "stinging" sensations are on-the-warning-label common side effects of cortisone cream, and I feel both. I'm left with the choice is to scratch myself to death or self-immolate like a Vietnamese war protestor. Thank you, medical science.

I've always had a problem with poison ivy. As a child, I believed it must be contagious, and for many years after, I believed that the rash spread through the bloodstream. In about 2010, a very grumpy doctor finally convinced me that "contact dermatitis" can only result from surface contact with the irritant, but that only deepens the mystery of how I get rashes where I get them. Last month it was on my scalp. It was ugly; even Sitting Bull wouldn't have taken it.

My current worst rash spot is right on my belt line, which makes makes the socially-approved custom of wearing pants feel like something out of the Spanish Inquisition. My solution, obviously, is to not wear pants, which would only be acceptable if I lived in a society that still killed criminals with hemlock. I have a rare, in-person meeting scheduled for this tomorrow. Boy, are they going to be surprised.

If the march of human history is leading us to a global warming heat death, bring it on. So long as all the world's vegetation dies with us, great! I hate poison ivy.

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"I can't tell when my feet are swollen," says Dad.

That's swollen, Dad.

And may I suggest that you also get your eyes checked?

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I was already having a bad day — Dad continues to be A) confused about what medicine to take when, and B) very resistant to any means to address that problem — and then I saw that the new Powers That Be at the recently merged mega-corporation Warner Bros Discovery have decided to axe TCM Underground, effective immediately.

Dear whoever made that decision: Fuck off.

If you weren't aware, Underground was TCM's wee-hours-of-Saturday-morning block of programming that presented... shall we say "niche" movies. The kind that were generally made by or for unconventional audiences. You know, the kind of movies film nerds traded on VHS tapes and college art professors showed to their impressionable students to stimulate creativity. (Rest in Peace, Bill Marriott!)

I'd be more disappointed than I am if I hadn't already enjoyed TCM Underground for nearly 2 decades. Everything has a natural lifespan. (As they say, "Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky.") Underground's 18 year-run was a very, very long time in the entertainment industry, which only thinks in terms of how much money it can make today. It deserves praise for its longevity more than mourning for its passing.

There were great things before Underground, and there will be great things after. It's the same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea. All we are is dust in the wind.

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More True Tales from the Hospital

NURSE: Sir, have you experienced any domestic violence?

JIM (pointing at me): Only from him.

WALTER: He's kidding.

NURSE: I can tell.

WALTER: And if he says anything like that again, I'll shut that smart mouth of his for good.

...

For the record, that completely true conversation took place when Dad was being introduced to his seventh-floor ward nurse... after six hours spent in the hall of the overcrowded ER. His hematologist didn't like something about the looks of his blood test so a CT scan was ordered, and his nephrologist didn't like something about the looks of that. They agreed that Dad should go to the ER for more tests. When we got there, the attending physician asked, "Why are you here today?," and Dad answered, "I don't know."

The only thing Dad says he's really worried about is being discharged in time to watch Monday night's UGA game from his own recliner.

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