AT SOME POINT we stopped joking about it.
Our joke was that when we drove out of town, I’d start off behind the wheel and drive until we got as far as Joda’s.
Joda’s was an icon restaurant located exactly where the Fina gas station is now on the Murfreesboro highway. I figure that both of my regular readers will remember Joda’s.
At Joda’s I’d pull over and Jane would take over driving because I was getting too sleepy to be behind the wheel. We weren’t even out of the city limits, yet. I had been driving probably two minutes, tops.
Well, we exaggerated, but there was a nugget of truth. I WAS sleepy a lot of the time. Sometimes I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and I sure didn’t need to be driving then.
The condition kept worsening, and I finally went to a ‘sleep lab’ in Texarkana to find out what was wrong.
I learned that I had ‘sleep apnea,’ a condition in which I always woke up before reaching deep, refreshing sleep. It made me snore bad. Real bad. Real, real bad.
My wife said I made the house sound like a World War I Red Baron bi-plane dogfight was raging in the living room where I was now spending nights in a recliner. She also described it as sounding like the soundtrack from that movie, “Dueling Chainsaws.”
The doc recommended that I have surgery to remove some of the needless stuff in my throat. When I relaxed in sleep, the ‘stuff’ kept collapsing the air passage and blocking the oxygen to which I had foolishly become addicted.
I still cannot spell or pronounce the name of the surgery, but I had it in the old St. Michael Hospital on the Arkansas side in Texarkana. The doc removed my tonsils and uvula (that thingy that hangs down in the back of your throat).
Oh, yeah, he also said it would work better if I lost some weight. And kept it off.
Let’s pause for a moment and chuckle at the ridiculousness of his suggestion.
I knew that wasn’t going to happen, and he probably did, too.
The surgery worked real good for a couple of years, then I had to go see the sleep doctor again and go through the sleep lab again because I had put on just a tad of weight.
The bi-planes were circling again, and I was not sleeping.
This time the verdict was that I needed a machine to help keep the air passage open at night. It’s called a C-PAP and it uses air pressure to keep the throat open.
The theory has worked well for 20 or more years. In that time I’ve worn out at least one machine, and my current machine isn’t doing me much good.
Here’s the problem. The folks I bought the machine’s facemask from (truthfully, my insurance company bought it) sold. And the new owners only want to sell me stuff over the phone. But I no longer take phone calls because I don’t want to hurt Heather’s feelings by not purchasing her extended automobile warranty.
Therefore I do not pick up the phone when the sleep machine people call. The bi-planes are circling again. Neighbors are beginning to complain about the late night noise coming from my house.
Joda’s is no longer there, but I often get sleepy before I get halfway to Murfreesboro. And I no longer have a backup driver.
If I did, she’s say it’s now HER turn to get a device to help her stay asleep.
She’d go buy a taser.
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BLOODLINES.
Ty Cobb, a Washington, D.C., attorney who is now representing Comrade President Trump in the Russian blowup, is second cousin to none other than our town’s own Eddie Cobb.
Before he joined Tyson Foods, Eddie worked at the GN&A Railroad where for many years he was in charge of strikes, cost overruns and derailments. He’s a sports contributor here.
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ANIMAL CRACKERS. Something awful happened. I set out a mousetrap to catch one of those critters seen scurrying around in my patio landscaping.
I checked the trap Monday afternoon, and there was a sparrow with its bill caught under the spring-loaded copper wire.
The bird was dead and I feel guilty. Why do I hate mice so much, and love almost all birds?
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THINGS I LEARNED from opening email: I almost had a psychic girlfriend ….. But she left me before we met.
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WORD GAMES.
The twins: Lock and Load. Fierce defenders of the constitutional right to bear arms.
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HE SAID: “Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States
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SHE SAID: “You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.” Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
