No, you don't, unless you have

An acquaintence had a massive heart attack last week, and has severe brain damage from lack of oxygen during and immediately after the cardiac event. He can't speak at all.  It terrifies me.
A few weeks ago, I strolled up to the bike show just as they were doing the rev-up for the hp contest. I hadn't been around a really powerful engine since my surgery, so I wasn't prepared. From 100 yards away I could feel the wires that hold together my ribcage were beginning to vibrate.
People who claim to care about me get butthurt and pissy when I refuse to be around them when they're smoking pot, because I can not have anything illegal in my system in any bloodwork, or I lose my benefits completely.
Same thing about sodium content in foods, stress in general, going out "partying" or socializing with people whom empirical data has shown will end up with at least 1 person in handcuffs. Think felons R us, on parade.
But you don't know what it's like to be gasping, never quite getting enough air, knowing and often hoping that when you close your eyes each time, that you may not wake up.
Unless you've been there, yourself.
I do not owe anyone my health, my heart, my life. If I choose to jump in front of a bullet for you, that is one thing, but I refuse to let anyone's childish, selfish, petty, bullshit behaviour make me drop dead of heart related issues. And only until you've actually been there, do you know.

Murder, she whimpered

My treadmill just tried to kill me.
I hadn't been on Treddy - yes, that's what I call him - in nearly 2 weeks, since I have a sick cat (Yes, I'm a cat person, but that isn't what this is about) and also because my bro, Frank, was visiting to give me a break around the house, and because I gave myself a concussion last week. Yes, I'm that graceful. Not a long story - door, dog, leash, temple, doorframe. I know.
Anyway, I hadn't been on Treddy in 12 days. I had been doing 3 miles a day, every day, for months. That may not sound like a lot, but it is when you consider just a few months back I was on a table with my chest cut open for 17.5 hours to have a valve replaced and a bypass on another. It's been a long road, and I still have a long ways to go, but this also isn't about that.
This is about Treddy. The executioner.
I don't usually walk that fast, about 4 mph, but I have a long stride, so it goes pretty smoothly. Not today. Treddy was looming in judgement every single time I glanced in his general direction, so even though I didn't really feel like it, the cat was having a little better day, so I kicked my own ass onto Treddy. 6 minutes in I heard a pathetic whimpering. It took me a bit to realize was coming from me. 12 minutes in, I started crying. My back and legs screaming for mercy, I stabbed through sweaty blurred vision in the general direction of where I swear the OFF button used to be. It had traded places with the SPEED UP button in what I can only surmise was an attempt to take my life. I was prepared to stop; Treddy sped up. Graceful me, went zooming off the back and was only saved from certain death, or at least another concussion, by landing in the garbage can. That's right. Treddy tried to kill me, then dispose of my body.
My legs are now jelly, and my blood pressure that I'm doing all this to keep lower is now anything but. I've rarely been in greater need of a bottle or 4 of wine. And if my lasix kicks in again any time in the next hour, I'll just have more laundry to do tomorrow. When I can walk again.

Quiche and '76

Yes, in my mind they are connected.
I'm taking a MyDay today, which means unplugging as I see fit, from the world in general. But this is stuck in my head, and I have to get it out, so you, Lucky Reader, get a free trip into the psychotic amusement park that is a fraction of my mind!
You're welcome.
Ever hate someone so much that anything about them, or that reminds you of them, you also hate? Or at least can't really like?
1976.
1 of my exes was born January 5th, 1976. Yes, a few coughcoughcough years younger than me. I hate him far more than any other human being on the planet, for reasons it would take far too long to explain. We got married because of the chemistry - we were both extreme adherents to the chemical life, and I was weak. Same reason we split up, except I stopped the chemicals and became strong.
Anyway, I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate, okay I really dislike anything associated with 76. I won't even get gas from that station. And 1976 wasn't a bad year for me, originally. My family, being the patriotic bunch that we were, celebrated the Bicentennial by going to Canada! Right. Moving on.
I hate 76 so badly that when I hit that Powerball a few months back, my first thought was, Oh I'm so glad 1 & 5  were not my numbers and they cut off before 76! Okay, that was my 2nd thought. My first was, Huh.
Yeah, it takes a lot to shake me. I kind of accept anything astoundingly good as just payment for the incredibly shitty things that have happened, many of which I don't feel were justified. On that scale, I'm still due some amazingly wonderful things, and there's time since I seem to be unbreakable.
The quiche? Oh, yes. 1st, if your quiche seems dry, as my ex used to think until he tasted mine, substitute 2 tablespoons of plain Greek yogurt for your cream.
See what I did there? Yeah, I'm impressed I remembered it, too, but the cats and dog ate snoozing in sunpuddles.

Men are oranges

Okay, I had this insightful bit composed in my head, but by the time I got my connection back, it was gone. Stormy.
I'm honestly wondering at this point in my life, how much tequila must be involved for me to get to numb. More than a fifth, but that was enough for me to totally lose my train of thought. Or maybe it was that it took more than 6 seconds. I've never been diagnosed with A.D.D., but I have 2 cats, which is kinda the same thing.

Same basic concept but hugely varying differences in peel, skin, taste, pulp... something along those lines. I've become a connoisseur of oranges. I started gorging myself on them, unabashedly, when a friend swung by with some that had been on trees in his family's orchard 2 days before he arrived. 

Yeah, *that* kind of fresh.

They triggered my highly sensitive metabolism, and I started ..oh! I just discovered if you're in a dark room with only cell phone light while peeling an orange, you can see the spray as you release the peel! You can't see that in normal light. Wait, what was I... *sigh*

Anyway, turns out oranges also have a bunch of potassium, but nobody thought to tell me because most people prefer bananas to oranges. See! I remembered the point this time! I just lost the in between stuff. And my original analogy.

What happens in Reno, gets temporarily stuck in Nebraska

Stephen Hawking isn't dead. Jackie Chan isn't dead. I'm not dead - to the point of it sticking.
I was reading the rumors of Hawking's death, and posted the snarky fb status, "You're nobody until false rumors of your death have circulated," then I realized, waitaminit, that happened to me.
I don't talk about it much. I'm still dealing with it, 7 years later.
Without revealing details upon which the statute of limitations would be called into play, I was murdered in 2008. Yes.
I've been shot 6 times, poisoned twice, stabbed, gassed, drugged with strychnine, been rattlesnake bitten, blown up (I swear I don't piss off that many people; I just end up in the weirdest circumstances, hence, Nebraska), 6 brown recluse bites (that came 2nd closest to killing me), 4 major car wrecks and 2 motorcycle wrecks from which no one else recovered, stabbed twice, etc. ad finitum, ad nauseum, and the only thing that really ever came scarily close was my own heart taking a powder last year. Except being murdered.
I was at Gold Dust West in Reno, having midnight supper with friends, and had to use the loo. I excused myself, was on the way to the ladies' room (it's all the flipping way across the casino from the restaurant) when I was urgently hailed by an acquaintance who had a faux-mergency outside. Normally I wouldn't have fallen for it, but I had dinner on my mind. And the bathroom.
His white van was waiting, and he urgently beckoned me over, exclaiming his 9 year old daughter (who was a great kid I knew better than I did him) need help. I stupidly fell for it.
I woke at a place I shouldn't mention, and wished I had never woken. I was tortured (No. Some things are still too painful) for what seemed years but I later learned was only 2 days - ONLY. Yeah, me too - then hotshotted with a gram each of heroin cocaine & meth, and left for dead as a supposed overdose (not well thought out considering obvious other injuries), in the middle of S. Virginia St. I'm told the paramedics argued over whether to transport me to hospital or the morgue. I wasn't actually alive, but I had no identification so no one could be called to ask for a decision about DNR. They put me on machines, keeping me going but with No brainwaves (shut-up) for 3 1/2 days until Reno's finest finally got around to running my prints and DING DING DING we have a name! They located my DNR, turned off the machines, and against anyone's expectations, I lived. Kicked back into play as it were.
8 days later I woke, with 2 name bands, 1 with the name I used then, and 1 that said, "Special Friend of S..... ......" I still have it. No, I won't talk about the afterlife, because I refuse to influence anyone's faith or lack, thereof, except to say, "You're all wrong."
My waitaminit comes from this: After I was out, I read my own obituary. Yeah, creepy factor 10. I saw a total stranger with a copy of 1 of my custom tattoos, with In Memorium Mama Vicky over it. I listened to people I'd never met tell anecdotes about my shennanigans down at the river, as I quietly absorbed healing sunshine. Want to know something about you that you never did? Be dead. It's bizarre. So I moved to Nebraska, for reasons that now seem equally bizarre. I'm out of here before the end of the year, thanks to Powerball.
What was the reason? I won't say. It isn't my secret to tell, not then and not now.
My point, and I do have one, is that... well, hell, I've forgotten my point. Maybe I am just rambling. Death is weird? Nope. It's totally gone.

Stage erm, blog fright

I got notifications that a few writers I really admire are following my blog, via twitter.  No pressure at all. And I was kind of (srsly) stressing, "what should I write? Should I go funny? Insightful? Profound?"
Yeah, my goofiness fixed that.
I was going to pee (lasix + way too much coffee + my daily recommended booze) when BratCat pulled a, "Oh? You need to get to the bathroom in a hurry? Remember how I wanted snacky treats? I'm a sudden doorstop!" and put on brakes in the bathroom door (for those who just got to the party, I'll cover 'steamies' another time. In the face of the CA drought, regardless of recent flooding here, it would just be mean. And I have the solution to that drought, btw, but no one has asked me. Yet).
Anyway, I had a beverage in my hand at the time (yes, I know. Still not as bad as the woman in the ladies' room at Eldorado Casino [next to the elephant's balls & if you've been there you know what I mean] in Reno, several years back who looked bleary-eyed at her bloody mary, slurred, "Fuck it, 'sgoin' there anyway," then poured her drink into the toilet), when I also had to slam on brakes.
The doorframe, Brat, gravity, and the beverage kicked my ass
I went in full Charlie Brown up into the air then OOF down, landing ass first, but with my beverage (Jack, since you ask) intact.
After that? Yeah, I'm kinda over blog fright.

Full throttle

Here a fun game I recommend most don't try, but I'm a trained professional:

Make a drinking game out of the internet. Everytime someone posts something so stupid you can't even explain to them why it's stupid, take a drink. I used to use tequila but the Cuervo people started actually worrying about how much of their product I was buying. They thought I was an unlicensed wholesaler. And I kept waking up in Nebraska, naked, and covered in kitty litter.
So now I stick to beer. Tip for the carb conscious - Miller Lite has the lowest carbs. See? Healthy lifestyle consciousness here.
I also recommend not going to any political, religious, sports, gender-biased, or news sites. Unless you want letters from Miller wondering if you're an unlicensed wholesaler. "But Vicat", you may gasp, "what does that leave me?"
Any other site not focused on anything. I don't care if they are discussing coffee, crop rotation, Galileo, the best kitty litter (Dr. Elsie's Precious), the temperature in Uganda, or the metaphysical aspects of Clive Barker's collected works, there will be somebody going full throttle twatwaffle to quench your thirst.
Cheers!