January 1 , 2013

Happy New Year
I didn't quite make it through Dec without a mishap. I finished work in November and decided I wasn't the man my boss needed for that job, so I will no longer be driving a gravel truck from April to November. I am unable to retire so I've managed to latch onto two jobs to help make the ends meet. It was during my second job when the mishap occured. On December 3rd, two days after visiting Las Vegas (the luck I had down there should have been a clue), I was tiling a house and was carrying a bucket of cut tiles down stairs when I lost my footing at the bottom of the stairs. The brain is an amazing thing, in the micro second during the fall, my brain, being good at geometry, calculated the exact angle my foot needed to be at to land squarely on the floor thus preventing a sprained or broken ankle. Unfortunately, during that calculating it neglected to tell my arm about the unfinished newel post it was about to collide with. You guessed it, big gash from wrist to forearm, and, the house is out of town so no emergency room visit available. Not to worry, I have some clean rags for grouting and a roll of duct tape, hey, and not that dollar store tape or Canadian Tire red tag special, this is the good stuff. I have a couple marble clamps with me so they can close up the gash while I wind some tape around it. Voila! As good as a gashed arm in duct tape. I took the rest of the day off and drove myself home before my brain got over the shock and realised I was in pain. Once home, the demerol tricked it into thinking I still wasn't in pain.
Now, I knew when I duct taped my arm I would have a wee bit of trouble getting it off so was prepared to wait a few days for the adhesive to lose some of it's strength. I managed to scrape it off before midnight mass Christmas Eve, took a little bit of hair with it, that's ok, it matches my head now. The gash had welded itself shut, the arm itself looked a bit aged. If they ever use Regina to shoot an episode of "The Walking Dead" they could use my arm for a zombie arm, no make up required. I wear long sleeves now. Not because of my arm, it's damn cold here, what were you thinking, it's January for heaven's sake.

I was watching a movie the other day and a father told his son to have a great day at school, his mother said that was too much preasure to put on him so his father said...

Have the day you have

Loved

Dec 1

Deanie and I just returned from Las Vegas today. I really can't put into words the experience, we took in a couple of shows, LOVE -Cirque du Soleil and Jersey Boys, both were exciting shows. We walked a total of 47 miles along the strip in the 4 and one half days we were there, had some really great dining experiences. I admired the the amazing  hotel and casino floors and envied the installers who got to work on them. We got a lot of Fun and enjoyable slot play on a limited budget and I kept an 18 cent voucher to cash out on our last morning so the slots didn't completely tap me out, but I ended up donating it to the homeless on our last stroll down the strip. So I have to say Vegas broke me, but, boy, what a great time, and the weather was super. Intense is a good word for it, it is good to be home.

Have a great day.

Loved

November 1

TOOTHACHE!!!!! Arrrrggghhhhhoooowwowo. Here's another strike against evolution, in fact, let's make it three, that's right three strikes you're out. Oh. Wait a minute that leaves it God's doing. Hmmm? Yeah, that'd fit, a way to punish us. i must be guilty of something, some price i forgot to pay, I must of did somebody wrong somewhere along the way. I did my time on the weekend, yeah the weekend. It was Thursday night I thought maybe I had cracked a tooth, it was sore so instead of taking the chance it might get worse over the weekend I thought I'd just yank it, picked up a pry bar from my hardwood tools, jammed it between two teeth and gave it a go. Ya know, they don't come out easy, when my eyeball felt like it was coming with I figured maybe the root's a bit long. So off to the dentist. Squeezed me in Friday morning. "Oh no, let's not pull it, you'll lose chewing surface." He says. I say, "Doc, I'm not using this side, I'll gain the use of these teeth when it's gone". He didn't buy the argument and proceeded with a "Root Canal". "There'll be nothing to feel pain on the weekend". He says. He was real happy with his work and I was on my way. The freezing came out later on in the day ,I monitored the pain throughout the entire night. BECAUSE I COULDN"T SLEEP. I call first thing in the morning and my dentist was gone for the weekend but they  could get me some painkillers. I can pick them up from the drugstore later in the day. So now I have to practice some mind over matter. I'm in a mind to have popcorn and a slurpee at Heather's this afternoon and it doesn't matter that my tooth is painful. On the way home I pick up Tylenol 3's with codeine and an antibiotic and drown some when I get home , they don't work, I monitor the pain for the entire night. Sunday morning I'm unable to make it to mass and think oh boy this isn't good. I actually survive Sunday, Deanie has hidden all the knives and other sharp objects around the house. Then around midnight Sunday she brings me a dose of morphine, I didn't ask where she got it, I didn't really care. Monday morning 3am I drop off, maybe the morphine, maybe pain exhaustion. I'm awake 6:30, the morphine has worn off, at 7:30 the dentist office has been expecting my call. I'm in the chair by 8:20, the dentist stands there with a syringe of freezing in his hand, says he doesn't understand. Stick the needle in my face and then we can discuss it doc." Raise you're hand if you need more freezing" he says. I almost hit him in the jaw when my fist goes up, the morphine, tylenol,advil cocktail Deanie fixed me has slowed me down, he sidesteps. He's found the problem, there's another root. "Yank it" I say. " Oh no" he says "we've done too much work on it" An hour and a half later he's done, he's real happy with his work again. Just in case he says he will give me stronger pain killers, asks me how I feel about demerol. Let me tell you a little something about demerol, I had a colonoscopy a few years back and the doctor comes in to do the procedure, says "Do you need medication?" "I don't know." Is my reply. " Ya, you do" she says. I don't remember the needle reaching my vein. If she had said count done from one hundred she wouldn't have heard the first n. Next thing I know it's 4 hours later and Deanie is driving me home. "Demerol will do Doc" I say. I actually have to sign for them at the pharmacy. So I'm home now and I'm not hesitating taking one of these little gems. I get a really, really, really good sleep. Wake up to birds singing, Deanie can't hear them but I'm pretty sure I can. I know you're probably concerned because Demerol is a narcotic and can be habit forming.  Not to worry, I have 19 more of these little gems to wean me off the first one.

Have a great day

Loved

October 1 2012

Accident free for the entire month of September.

Loved

SEPT.1 2012

 Unloading the loader yesterday the chain binder snapped on me and drove my funny bone into the loader bucket, which is about as immovable as any object not bolted in place, my arm went numb from the elbow to the fingertips. I realized the fingertips still had feeling when, my arm, ricocheting along the deck of the trailer, a fingertip picked up a sliver. The good news is I didn't need a tweezer to get it out. The bad news is it was closer in resemblance to a stake. Left quite a gouge, luckily it's not the finger still healing from the last mishap, it's on the other hand actually. Oh, that funny bone business, there's nothing funny about it.

Have a great day

Loved

August 2012

Ya know, life isn't fair. All of you probably knew that already. I mean, you smash your finger in the tail gate of your gravel truck, you not only have to suffer the pain but you have to endure the humiliation of being dumb enough to have injured yourself that way. Next you have to deal with the frustration of not being able to use the finger properly for the next few weeks while the pain subsides.Then, then, just when you're ready to use it again, you have this nail flopping around, threatening to drop off, except only 93.5 % is ready to fall off, the other 5.5 is settled in to the nail bed like a bad molar in a healthy jaw bone. Now with a rogue nail ready to take out an eye when putting on your glasses or nip your juglar while adjusting your shirt collar you have to deal with it. You cut it back as best you can but you're left with the 5.5% that has that little hook that catches everything in the vicinity, slipping on a t-shirt, it catches the sleeve and you find yourself in a Brazilian Ju-jitsu arm lock, blowing your nose, you're left with a shredded tissue and a palm full of boogers. COME ON!
I know what you're all thinking too. You're saying, oh boy, Edweirdo is so flustered it's messed up his mathematics, his numbers don't add up, but you'd be forgetting the 1% I burned away with that paper clip.

Have a great day

Loved

Happy Canada Day!

Now listen, try not to misunderstand what I'm about to say. I have nothing against birds, in fact I think highly of them, they are quite the creature. Just imagine back an eon or two ago when we slithered out of the primordial ooze and started the process of natural selection and we selected arms how the little microbes beside us must have thought, "THEY SELECTED ARMS , THEY SELECTED ARMS ,GO FOR THE WINGS, GO FOR THE WINGS." Now, I will admit wings would make it much tougher to to pick up that morning cup of coffee for that caffeine buzz, but I've flown in my sleep and I gotta say skimmimg the tree tops and swooping down a valley wall tops any caffeine buzz I've ever had. The thing is, at four eleven in the morning, I know it's 4:11 because my evolutionary clock has a digital display so there's no mistaking the time trying to make out the pathetically lit ' glow in the dark ' hands of my old analog. So once again the thing is, it's eleven past four in the a.m. and there's a bunch of birds in the back yard yapping, "We're going flying today, we're going flying today, o-boy, o-boy, o-boy, o-boy. we're going flying today, but not for a couple hours so we'll just sing until then". Little bustards.

Have a great day

Loved

June 1 / 2012

I would like to talk about the simple paper clip and it's use in the medical field. I'm not talking about it's use to hold together reports of a patients history, or by straightening the ends the loop formed can be used to clean wax from an ear canal, of course, I suspect all doctors and nurses would frown upon that practice, besides a bobby pin works as well if not better. No, no, what I'm talking about is it's use as a surgical instrument. You may scoff or have your doubts but I have first hand expereience, the first hand being my right when it comes to tasks requiring manual dexterity, and my right being the one I caught in the door of a van many years ago. You don't need to know the details of the accident, besides they were lost in the mind numbing pain. Anyway, back to the paper clip, oh first I should add, the pressure of the blood building up under the finger nails and having no where to release causes memorable pain. You can actually count your heart beat by watching your fingertips. I seem to remember brushing the hair from my brow, yeah, yeah, I know, but it was that long ago, catching the bright flashes of my fingertips in the rearview, I thought the cops were pulling me over. Back to the paper clip. At emergency I was ushered into a treatment room and the nurse left a paperclip on the table, hum. A few minutes later the doc came in took a quick look at my fingers, squeezed them so I would fall to my knees in pain. He wanted me closer to the floor in case I fainted from the sight of blood. He should have read the Antonini name on the folder, if you were an Antonini and passed out every time you saw blood you would have missed seven of your first ten years. Then the next thing he did, without a word of a lie, was heat that paper clip to a glowing red hot and proceeded to pop it through each finger nail, the ensuing fountains of blood and the release of pressure delayed my amazement. Yes sirree a surgical instrument.
You might ask yourself, how does he remember after 40 years? Glad you asked, because the other day my finger was caught between a rock and...well, another rock. Lucky for me it only pinched the skin, the nail was safe, but the resulting blood blister reminded me of the paperclip incident. You would have thought I would have been more careful the next day when I was trying to release the locking clamps on the gravel truck the tailgate slammed on my finger...nail.They say in certain instances a persons reflexes are like lightening, unfortunately for me they needed to be like greased lightening, which supposedly is very much faster. Now, I don't know why a person hops around on one foot after smashing a finger, perhaps the concrentration it takes to hop across a gravel pit on one leg some how deminishes the message of pain the synapses are emitting. It would have worked to if I hadn't gone over on my ankle.
Anybody out there got a paper clip and Bunsen Burner, oh, and a tensor bandage and maybe a crutch?

Have a great day

Loved

I had good intentions. Deanie went away for the weekend and my plan was to paint her bedroom while she was gone, it would be a nice surprise. The moment she left I started getting it ready, tapping off the trim and moving the furniture around. The lighting in our bedroom is poor so I set a trouble light with a bright halogen bulb on the floor shining at the first wall. It went great, the paint rolled on evenly and covered the existing color completely. Second wall. Move the light, yep, this is when things turned. I have to ask, what genius invented the hellogen bulb. I only touched the casing surrounding the bulb, and, I only used my index finger and opposable thumb, which us primates are so proud of. Also, I only held it for a nanosecond before dropping it, not only were my finger and thumb burned, my other fingers, my palm, wrist and half way up to my elbow were also. I headed to the medicine cab for some solarcaine, it's supposedly better than the butter we use to use as kids. I was lathering it on when the smoke alarm went off, yep, Deanie's favorite bedspread was on fire. I'm actually pretty good at putting out fires, i think most of us Antonini kids are, although there's a couple that may be better at setting them. I grabbed the extinguisher from the hall closet with my nondominant hand, because the other was burnt, and proceded to drop it on the hardwood floor, not before trying to stop it with my foot of course, now I know why firemen wear steel toed boots. I hobbled the fire out and in all the commotion lost track of that bulb, it had fallen off the bed into the can of paint, it had manage to boil off the paint before shorting out. I may have inhaled a little too much smoke, i wonder if the ambulance could make a stop at Wal-Mart, they sell paint, bedding and steel toed shoes.

Have a great day
Loved

April 1

March 1, 2012

Do any of you have little scares that make you think you're losing what is left of your brain cells. It has happened to me. A number of years back, for Christmas, Mia made and hand painted a ceramic box for me. It wasn't a large box, smaller than one of those small Pringle containers that hold 10 or 12 Pringles, Deanie could make one of those last 3 or 4 days, I can't make one of the tubes last more than 23 minutes, actually 37 if I have a slurpee with. Back to my scare. I took that little box and set it on a side table in the living room. Each time Mia would come over, she would find a little treat in it, it wasn't long before there were 3 more boxes on the table, a watch box, a jewelry box and a music box. We're still looking for my watch and Deanie's jewelry, the music mechanism we found in the junk box with my screw driver. Another box has been added for Beata. I've forgotten the point of my story...oh yeah, the depletion of my grey matter. One day I decided to send them through the house following clues that would eventually lead them to their treats. They were up and down, up and down the stairs in a little train of bodies, not unlike the little puffer billies all in a row, I just didn't make them sing the song. They found the treats in the bottom drawer of a dresser in the basement bedroom and that's where they've stayed. On Wednesdays, Beata comes over right after lunch and the kids come after school. This is where my scare starts. Last Wednesday, Lui came upstairs to report that I had forgotten the treats. I could hardly believe it when I found the boxes empty, I was positive I had 5 little lollies in my hand that morning, now I had to remember where I had absent mindedly set them down. I checked every where, even under the kitchen sink. I thought I was losing my mind until I spotted... a bare naked lolly stick beside the toy box, another in front of the TV, one in the crayon box, the 4th under the kitchen table, I have yet to find the 5th. No wonder Beatsy was buzzing around before she crashed for her afternoon nap. The boxes are now in a drawer out of her reach. A brilliant move...I`ve still got it.

Have a great day

Loved

Feb 1 2012

Oh...you can't get to heaven

January 1, 2012

HAPPY NEW YEAR!