Necrotic Skin-Eating Disease

A couple years ago I started getting small, itchy red spots on my skin. Hmmm, I pondered, what new fresh Hell is this? Well, it did indeed turn hellish because my skin was soon blanketed with more and more dots that itched like insanity. I became Baloo the bear, rubbing my back against anything tall enough and standing (including people because I have no inner censor). Now it looks like my back and chest have been shotgunned.

So, I went to my regular doctor. Somewhat amused, she says, "try oatmeal baths."  The only good that did was it allowed me to multi-task by bathing and eating breakfast at the same time.

"Doc," I said, "It's not working!"

"Okay, let's do blood work," she says as I roll my eyes. "Blood work" is code for agony as the nurse drains me worse than Dracula, the fallback of all MD's.

The blood work came back. Nothing looked askew except for the obvious culprits: high cholesterol and blood pressure. But these wouldn't explain my necrotic skin-eating disease (okay, it's not truly a "necrotic skin-eating disease," but that's how I like to describe it because A) it appeals to my inner Drama Queen; and B) it drives my long-suffering, highly scientific-minded wife nuts).

"Well," says Doc MD, "how about you go see a dermatologist?"

Several days later, I found myself sitting in a lobby surrounded by acne-ridden teenagers. As the biggest "kid" in there, it reminded me of when my mom kept taking me to the "baby doctor" as I grew older. The extremely young (hardly older than the lobby teens), kinda cute (hard to tell with masks these days) nurse practitioner took me back and grilled me. Bored to the point of catatonia, sparks of life suddenly flickered in her eyes.

"Okay, show me the rash!" she shouted. "I like to see rashes! I want to see rashes!"

Hesitant at this sudden weird personality transplant (and because I was ashamed of my newly acquired "Covid curves"), I whipped off my shirt.

"Hmmm," she said, "isn't that interesting?"

"What? What, what, what? What's so interesting? Am I dying?"

She ignored that last question, because, well you know, liability. But she just shook her head and kept muttering "Isn't THAT interesting?" like she'd just discovered our next Pandemic (and maybe she had; looks like I'm Patient Zero).

"Well, I don't mind being interesting," I said, "but how do we get rid of this?"

I saw her every other week for a while as she kept trying out miracle cures. When they continued to fail, she'd totally switch gears every time. 

"Okay," she said, "I think you have Scabies."

"What??? Scabies? How in the hell could I get Scabies? I'm too young to have Scabies! And clean! And..." I continued ranting for a while, mainly because I didn't want to get branded with the big (dotted) Scarlet "S" of Scabies. And, frankly, I didn't buy it for a minute.

So, that treatment was fun. I had to smear this toxic junk all over my body, neck on down to my toes, and live with it for 24 hours.

Hey, whaddaya know, it didn't work! Next week, dejectedly, the NP said, "Hmmm, looks like you don't have Scabies." (Well, no kidding.)

Next, she pumped me full of steroids. For a few blissful days, I was itch-free! But it came with a major caveat: it wasn't permanent. And, alas, it wasn't.

She then proceeded to take pictures of my body to show her mentor/guru (and undoubtedly giggle about it over lunch). Later she called me and said, "we think it's a reaction to the sun."

I knew that was absolute hokum. I pretty much haven't left the house since Covid reared its ugly head. I told her as such and she said that that's how my condition represents. "Just to be on the safe side," she said, "I want to do more blood work."

Back to Nurse Wretched's Torture Lab! (This time someone forgot to run one test, so I had to go back a third time).

The results netted nothing. This farce continued on for a couple of months until I finally asked if I should go see an allergist.

"Hmmm, that's an interesting idea," she said.

Picture Mr. Rogers in a Covid mask and you have my allergist. Patiently, in a soothingly calm, Rogers-like voice, he drew pictures for me, explained things as if talking to a toddler, then later quizzed me. "Annnnnddddd...what causes this?" He cupped a hand to his ear, tilted his head, and urged me on by churning his hand.

"Ahhh, sorry, Doc, I didn't know there was gonna be an oral exam," I said, head hung in shame. No lollipop.

Anyway, after he determined I didn't have allergies, he tried several protocols as well, all of them dismal failures as I saw my life scratching away. Then he introduced a real Hallelujah moment in monthly shots.

I said, "Doc, if that'll give me relief, I'm down with traveling across the metro area once a month to get shots."

Two shots, each in the back of my arm above the elbow. A week went by. And then...slow relief! Day by day, the rash got better! At the end of the first month, it started coming back, so I hustled down there and got my next month shots. But then tragedy struck in the return of red splotches. The rash was back, angrier than ever.

I'm scheduled to go back to the doctor next week, but I'm honestly losing faith that they'll find long-lasting relief (I've pretty much given up on a bonafide "cure" as I've stumped every doc, NP, and specialist in town). It's really getting tiresome having to explain to everyone I meet that I'm not contagious, nor am I a Meth-head with my constant scratching.

While on the topic of unexplained things, they don't call Peculiar County "peculiar" for no reason! Come on down, stay for a while. Just look out for ghosts, murderers, witches, and things that shouldn't fly in the night sky. That's Peculiar County. Book your visit now.

 

Mr. Loomis' New 'Do

Meet Mr. Loomis. He's small and cute and old and can be a bit cranky at times. That's okay, he's earned the right to be that way, having lived a long life. Doesn't he look cute, cuddly, and innocent?

But we've had personal experience with a dog groomer who would challenge this assessment.

Not too long ago, we took Mr. Loomis into a new, untried groomer for a haircut, which he needs about once a month. The day slowly crawled by as I wondered just how long it takes to give such a tiny guy a haircut.

After lunch, we got the answer. The army of groomers couldn't finish the job because from the minute we dropped Mr. Loomis off, he fought and bit them. A team of three couldn't even get a muzzle on him.

Wait a minute, I thought. Surely, they have the wrong dog!

Nope! That's our Mr. Loomis. Looking at him, you wouldn't think he could scare off three adult "professionals," but that's exactly what he did. How? (It reminded me of stories back in the day of how Herve Villichaize used to beat his wife, and I always wondered, couldn't she have just outrun him? But I digress...)

So, heads held low, we went to go retrieve our dog of destruction, our preying pet, our tiny terror, our ferocious fur-ball. And the nightmarish stories continued. They claimed a ton of them tried, but couldn't get close enough to finish the job.

So...he came out looking kinda funny, like a Dr. Seuss nightmarish creature.

When I told my brother how Mr. Loomis had reacted, his response was, "Good boy!" At first I didn't agree with his proclamation, but upon investigating poor Mr. Loo, we discovered that somehow he'd had his dew claw torn off! I would've been pissed, too. A call to the vet reassured us that it happened all the time, and more than likely, he caught it in the cage. No wonder the groomers hadn't charged us anything.

A few weeks later, we managed to book Mr. Loo into another groomer (these places are crazy booked). All day long, we waited with baited breath for "The Call," but it didn't come. Finally, the phone rang and they said, "he's ready." Nervous, I flew down there, expecting to find a ton of shredded groomer corpses strewn about the building. But they said he was perfectly fine. In fact, other than dropping personal decorations in the building before and after, he'd been a perfect gentleman (okay, maybe that's not very "gentlemanly").

So Mr. Loo's new 'do looked too good to be true! His dew claw regrew! And somewhere there're three grooming "professionals" having PTSD about the lil' dog that conquered. Happy endings all around!

While the dog days of Summer keep on panting, why not check into beautiful Peculiar County for a stay? Be sure and check out the local hotel, where Mittens--a ghost dog--may just keep you up at night barking. C'mon, it adds local color!

 

Breakdown!

Smack dab on the heels of my extraordinary camping adventure, nature hadn't quite finished with me yet. Nature can be a vindictive and ironic so-and-so.

My wife and I were having a lovely Saturday afternoon date out in the country where we visited a winery and a cider mill. As we pulled out of the cider mill's parking lot onto the small highway, I suggested to my wife to punch it, so we didn't get stuck behind an oncoming truck.

Punch it she did and the results nearly caused her to punch me. Flooring the gas, the car started hacking, coughing and sputtering like a two pack a day smoker. The semi we'd attempted to beat drew up and passed us. The car died. And so did my hopes of getting home.

My wife drove off onto the shoulder, leaving us broken down in the gawd-awful heat. First things first, she called Triple AAA. Now, Triple AAA has come a long way; they can  pinpoint your exact locale via the interface of Smart Phones and longitude and latitude coordinates. That was the LAST thing I'd be impressed with AAA about.

"Ma'am," the operator said, "we'll have someone out there within two hours and I'll make your case a priority."

"Two hours?" I moaned. "What're we gonna do for two hours?"

The sun beat down. Sweat drenched my chest and back. Sitting in the car was akin to a hot dog exploding in the microwave. Yet standing outside the car there was no escaping the sun's stabbing heat. Usually my wife has a couple bottles of water stashed around the car. Not that fateful day. I found one bottle that had a few small drinks in it that we rationed and shared. Water had never tasted so great. Pretty soon I thought we might have to go all James Franco and drink our own urine.

Some idiots passed us and honked, apparently our broken down status annoying them to no end. A few good Samaritans actually stopped, asked if we needed help. "No, but thank you," we said early on when hope was high, "we have a tow truck coming."

Except, of course, it wasn't.

Soon, boredom kicked in. We resorted to playing a trivia game on my wife's IPad. Then a sense of desperate delirium kicked in at the two hour mark.

"We've gotta call AAA," I screamed to various hallucinations wiggling in the heat.

After going through the endless barrage of telephone robots, we finally connected to AAA's humanity. "I'm sorry, ma'am," said the not-very-helpful operator, "we haven't been able to find anyone."

"And you couldn't have let us known that?" asked my wife. "I'm worried about heat stroke! Never mind, I'll call a tow truck myself."

First call, my wife got a tow truck. "I'll be out there in about...thirty or forty minutes," he said.

Deflated, we collapsed in each others' arms. Then I remembered something important: my wife didn't have any bottles of water in the car, but she had four umbrellas. Why? Beats me, but I was sure happy for them that day. Out popped the umbrellas as we stood beneath their small arc of shade under the beating sun while drivers sped by us, honking. Doesn't take much to rile up America these days.

The phone rang. I braced myself for another worst case scenario. My wife answered, then started chuckling and shaking her head. After hanging up, she said it was the AAA manager apologizing. Which was about as helpful as men's nipples.

Another nice person stopped, this time with two bottles of water in hand. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you..." My groveling continued until I scared him off.

Finally--finally!--the tow truck showed up. "Well, I'm surprised I even answered the phone," he mumbled. "I was mowing the yard and couldn't believe I even heard it. I was gonna finish mowing before I came, but you sounded hot."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank..." I stopped shy of hugging the guy.

He tells us to get in the truck where it's cool. Easier said than done. Tilted on the shoulder and as spent and dehydrated as I was, I had a devil of a time hoisting my big arse up into the vehicle. Of course my wife popped right on up before me, not a prob. Embarrassed, I kept attempting to get into it until the guy came running over to help me. But I needed to retain a tad of my manhood and finally made it on my own.

All the way back into the city, I pretty much worshiped the ground the guy walked on. Then another terrifying thought crossed my paranoid, cynical mind.

"What do you do when the tow truck breaks down," I asked.

The guy looks at me and solemnly says, "Call a bigger tow truck."

Eat it, nature.

Speaking of nature and its eating habits, why not check out my werewolf, horror thriller, dark comedy, mystery, Corporate Wolf, where you'll learn much more about a werewolf's dietary needs than you ever wanted to know (unless you're like me, of course).

First World Problems

The other day, I was driving my wife around when she suddenly groaned.

"What's the matter?"

"Oh, these stupid frogs," she said. "I hate when they interrupt my game."

We continued to discuss the pain, the agony, and the excruciating unfairness of our telephone games.

She said, "Honey, these sound like such first world problems."

Suddenly, a cloud opened up above me and drenched me with shame.

While still in development countries are suffering famine, war, poverty, and corrupt leaders, here we were griping about telephone games. In our big car. One of two autos we own.

Okay, except for maybe corrupt leaders, we haven't suffered any of these problems. So the next time I find myself griping about poor service in a restaurant or some other such unimportant petty "issue," whoever is in my vicinity, please feel free to come slap me.

 You're welcome.

While on the topic of problems, pity poor Shawn Biltmore. He has women problems and works in a dead-end, corporate drudge of a job for a bunch of nincompoops and sadists. And he's a werewolf. Read his tale of horror, mystery, dark humor, and romance in Corporate Wolf. 

 

 

Whippet, my arse!

In February we adopted two dogs, a bonded pair. The cranky old man of the duo was most definitely, as advertised, a Lahso Apso. The other dog, very pretty and a lot younger, was purportedly a Whippet.

I don't know Poodles from Whippets (other than the Devo song), so I investigated and hired Detective Google to uncover what a Whippet is. 

Hmmm. Nope, no sir, I don't see it! No offense to Whippet worshipers, but c'mon, the dog's kinda got that alien other-worldliness to it, looking at you with those huge extraterrestrial eyes. Brrrrrr. Not like our dog. (Although, come to think of it, she's kinda peculiar in her actions. We bought a seat cover for the living room chair where she likes to hold watch next to the bay window. The cover was accompanied by two hard plastic "noodles" that you tuck into the sides to keep the cover taut. Our dog didn't like the noodles because they went missing. Where she buried them in the house is anyone's guess. But I digress...)

My wife took my intensive Whippet investigation one step further and actually sent off for a doggy DNA test (getting the swab was fun).

The results were shocking. Get this...she's 28% Australian Cattle Dog (which explains why she herds us all over the house, nudging us with her nose), 15% St. Bernard, 13% Australian Shepherd, 8% Siberian Husky, 7% Staffordshire Bull Terrier, 6% American Staffordshire Terrier, and a slew of other breeds I've never even heard of. Nary a hair of a Whippet. However, the DNA company was kind enough to supply us a family chart of what our dog's parents, grandparents, and great grandparents might have looked like. Man, I don't want to go "dog-shaming," but our dog's ancestors got around, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, not only did we not get a Whippet (for which I'm kinda glad), but we got a bonus ear and skin infection along with our dog. Score!

Well, here we are in the dog days of Summer, ready to jump back into our masks because of that pesky Delta variant, so, hey! Why not read a good book? When you're done with that, check out some of my books on my Amazon page.

Camping!

I don't camp. Never have, nor did I believe I ever would. Even in cub scouts I feigned being sick so as to miss a camping trip. And boy, am I glad I did! My fellow cubs came back hornet stung, sun-burnt, and scratching their poison ivy rashes. So it's no wonder I don't fancy myself a camper. 

That is, until a couple of weeks ago. Suddenly--inexplicably--I found myself deep in the mountains of Oklahoma (spittin' distance--as the locals say--from Arkansas) in a cabin in the woods. Horrors! 

How did our pioneering ancestors ever make it under such barbaric circumstances?

Just how had this happened? I dunno, not really. My wife probably told me we were going on this trip with her family while I was knee-deep into a movie or something. Doesn't matter. There I was...camping.

Typical camping activity: Everyone fiddling with their phones

 

Now, my family still claim that I wasn't camping. My father-in-law laughed and told me I never would've made it camping with his father and father-in-law. He's right. After hearing his tale of how he had about froze to death in a tent while deer hunting, I couldn't think of anything less appealing.

I don't EVEN want to know what this strange creature is.

 

"Dear, this is hardly 'camping,'" said my wife.

I said, "But...but...we're in a cabin in the woods! And there's nature stuff, and Dick and Perry, and serial killers, and Deliverance psychos, and lotsa crap surrounding us! We're camping!"

Roughing it around the campfire with a Margarita

 

My sister-in-law added, "Don't forget about the tree-frogs."

"TREE FROGS?" I shrieked, while whirling around on the deck, looking for these insidious creatures to start falling upon me. Just as I don't believe that sticks should walk (a terrifying sight), I'd never heard of such a frightening prospect before. I like my frogs on the ground where I can see them, definitely not waiting to bombard me from the huge trees above.

My nephew wielding weapons so as to fend off the deadly Tree Frogs

 

All week long, my claims of camping were ridiculed. Okay, okay, the cabin had air conditioning and even Wifi, but for God's sake, the signal was really spotty! Talk about roughing it! And sure there were wineries and breweries twenty minutes away to occupy my great outdoors-man daytime activities, but at night, a myriad of critters, varmints, and who-knows-what buzzed, clicked, shrieked, hooted, hawed, cawed, and laughed. Camping!

The great outdoors-man finds himself inside a winery

 

I should count myself lucky, I suppose, as I only had one truly tragic camping mishap. Half asleep one morning, I reached for a tube of toothpaste on the bathroom countertop, squeezed some out, and brushed my teeth. Thinking it tasted..."funny"...I checked the tube. I'd grabbed my bro-in-law's hydrocortisone. More shrieking ensued. Camping.

Just one of the many, many dangers of camping

Inexplicably, the locals seemed to have kinda a crush or something on Bigfoot. Everywhere you looked there were Bigfoot statues, Bigfoot shops, and Bigfoot beer.

Getting chummy with one of the locals

For God's sake, we were in such savage country, the locals even took to eating the Bigfeet (Bigfoots?)! When in Rome, do as the Romans do...We ordered a plate of Bigfoot Balls. While certainly not as ghastly as Rocky Mountain Oysters (nothing is), I imagine there's an entire mountain full of castrated and angry Bigfoot guys roaming around.

So much for the camping tradition of pork and beans

The wildlife wasn't content to stay outdoors either. One look at the room my wife and I shared with our nephews shows the obvious proof that a wild, enraged beast of some sort (maybe a castrated Bigfoot?) went on a rampage strewing clothing and other items everywhere! Camping!

When animals attack!

I was glad to get back to civilization after having braved it in the woods for several nights, living on the edge of danger, and barely escaping with my life. Now that I've actually--finally--been camping, I think I'm pulling up my big boy outdoors man shorts and ready to do it again. Although next time, I'd prefer a cabin with a hot tub. Yeah... Camping!

 

Speaking of Bigfoot, there's a rousing tale of the big lug in my short story collection, Twisted Tales from Tornado Alley. It features tugs to the heartstrings and limbs ripped from bodies. Bonus! Read it while camping.

The Problem with "They"

I'm going out on a limb here, but...I really don't understand the whole gender neutral and/or inclusive pronouns deal.

Okay, okay, before you start hurling your internet bricks of outrage, let me explain. Of course I empathize with peoples' otherness and respect their wishes to not be trapped within gender specific pronouns. (I can't say I actually legitimately "understand" it...I believe that's true for anyone who's never experienced a specific situation just as I can't "understand" what it's like to be a person of color. A thin person can't understand what it's like to be overweight and on and on.)

What I'm having difficulty getting past is the grammatical number disagreement in referring to one person using the plural "they" or "them." Put away those pitchforks of social media ire, people! It's just that as a writer, it hurts my ears to designate one person with a plural pronoun. (Except for maybe "Sybil," of course). 

There. I said it. (Ducks and covers...)

I brought this up to my wife, the English major.

She said, "Yeah, I was that way at first, too, but I got over it."

As will I. It'll take a little bit of practice for this old, stodgy fart to retrain my brain, but I vow that I will. The problem is my stodgy, old farty brain can't possibly keep up with the lightning quick and ever changing new developments in pronoun propriety.

Now, there are a slew of new pronouns to learn. There's zie, sie, ey, ve, zim, em, ver, zis, hirs, eirs, virs, Tad(?), and tons more! I'm not alone in being confused. My spell-checker is having a meltdown right now.

Again, I empathize with being made to feel otherness. More power to the social advocates for making changes and righting past wrongs. But there are so many new pronouns now, the thought of learning them all (and conjugating in Spanish!) strains my wee brain.

Man, for something called "gender fluid," I wished it flowed through my mind with more liquid clarity. Maybe using "they," as opposed to the numerous other new pronouns, won't be as hard as I originally thought.

Speaking of "otherness," there's an entire different other type of "people" living beneath the streets of Kansas City, ones you should pray you never meet. I'm talking about "The Underdwellers," my novella that many critics have called the scariest thing I've written. You can read it (along with a buncha other tales) in my collection, Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley.