Travels with Grandpa

My dad has never been much of a talker. My wife's father doesn't talk much either. I remember when our son Scott was in kindergarten and the teacher called Belinda because she was worried about him. She said, "Scott doesn't seem to talk much."

My answer was that Scott might be like his Grandpas and one word a week might be all he wants to say. Anyway, getting back to my dad and our travels, it's a lonely ride if you're waiting for him to say anything. On top of that, he speaks very quietly and I often can't hear what he says anyway.

Over Memorial Day, we drove down to the Black Hills. There was Belinda, Grandpa and me. Belinda and I can visit. When we walk in the morning, we talk and we converse over meals, etc. But then there's Grandpa.

So I was a little dismayed when I found out that Belinda wasn't coming back to Mandan with us. Instead, it would just be dad and I. That would make the long trip even longer.

Since my heart troubles in March, I've been on water pills. I take them twice a day and they can quickly become your master...especially when driving. So we left Rapid City and I had to stop in Sturgis, which is maybe 30 minutes a way. It was a lucky thing I did because dad needed to stop also, but he didn't tell me.

Our next stop was at Newell. Same thing, I had to stop and dad did, too. Then we were onto Faith. We stopped at a little gas station that was full of people. Some of the men were standing in line to use the restroom. That didn't matter to dad. As soon as someone walked out of the restroom, he walked in. Who cared if there was a line. Since the water pill had already kicked in, I followed dad into the restroom myself. However, I was afraid of what might be awaiting us when we walked out. The crowd might turn angry.

So I thought up an excuse that Grandpa needs help when using the restroom. Actually, when we left the restroom, the line had subsided. My guess is the men had decided to use the women's can. Things like that happen in small town gas stations.

Our next stop was Lemmon. It is an interesting town because it straddles the North Dakota, South Dakota border. There are electric customers of MDU who live in Lemmon that have different rates than their neighbors depending  on what side of the border they live. No kidding.

However, I digress again. We ate lunch in Lemmon at the Alaska cafe because it was right on the highway. As I walked in, I noticed there were a lot of conversations going on but there would be none at my table because one of the twosome doesn't talk. I about asked a family if we could sit with them just so I could listen to them chat while I was eating my hamburger. You miss talking when you are living in a world of total silence.

After that, we got back in our car. Prior to Lemmon, we had been listening to country music on some CDs, but I was so lonely that I turned on KFYR radio and listened to talk shows. People were calling in about the pending flood. This isn't exactly the most uplifting conversation, but at least it's company.

A couple hours later I was pulling into Mandan and dad said something about his cat. I'm not sure what he said because I can't hear him. But I thought, wow, we drove six hours and the first thing he has talked about is Picasso. He didn't ask about eating, talk about needing to use a bathroom, or anything. But he was wondering about his cat at least enough to actually speak.

All I can say is, that cat is loved.

Confessions of a Little League Coach

In Mandan, they don't have Little League. They have Cal Ripken baseball, which is Little League on a budget. The coaches were dads who wanted to see their children play baseball and have fun. Well, some of the coaches wanted to have fun. Others wanted to win, no matter what the cost.

My boys were stellar baseball players, or at least I thought so. I liked Derek in the outfield and Scott at second base. The only problem was that Derek wanted to be a catcher and Scott a pitcher. However, dad knows best. Except that I didn't. Once I let Derek start catching and Scott start pitching, they both liked the game a whole lot better and played better, too.

But that's just the beginning of my foibles. Then, like now, I couldn't remember names. I had a center fielder whose real name was Nick. But do you think I could ever remember his name? No. He quickly learned to answer to anything that started with an "N." Once he made a nice catch in the outfield and I hollered "Nice catch, Nels!"

He doffed his cap at me...a recognition of his coach's appreciation. At that same moment, somebody on the bench jabbed me in the ribs and said, "Nobody names their boys Nels anymore."

We had two coaches on the team, me and another fellow who took the game way too seriously. He could quote rules from official Cal Ripken baseball rule book quicker and with more accuracy than Billy Graham can quote Scripture.

It didn't matter what the other team did, it was against the rules in the rule book...or so said the expert. However, the teenager umping the game never read the rule book either. So he never changed his calls just because the expert was quoting chapter and verse.

My sons weren't the only brothers on the team. There was another set of brothers who came with a dad. The dad wanted to be a coach but didn't want the responsibility.

So he just sat on the bench and made rude comments...mostly about his sons. When one of them asked him if he could impart some words of wisdom, the dad said sternly, "Don't suck."

Wow, so much for "Let's win one for the Gipper."

Another memory I have is watching my oldest son get plunked with a baseball from a tall lanky pitcher on another team. It didn't matter who was on base, what was the score or whether the game was starting or ending...the lanky pitcher always had it out for Derek and never missed hitting him with a baseball.

Finally, I said enough was enough and even warned the umpire before the game that the pitcher had it out for my son. "So keep an eye on the pitcher and his bean balls," I hollered.

Sure enough, Derek got plunked with a high inside pitch his first time to the plate.

I came unglued on the bench and threatened to wring the pitcher's neck if he ever did that again.

Much to my chagrin, Derek and the "head hunter" later became good friends. So I asked the pitcher one day if he was aiming at my son on purpose.

"No sir," he said, "But the more I tried not to hit him, the worse my control got. I just got something in my head that I couldn't get out and the more I thought about it, the worse I pitched."

You know, I felt sorry for the pitcher. Eventually, his family left Mandan and all was forgotten. He was a nice boy. They were all nice boys. And I'm glad I had the chance to coach them in Little League...er, Cal Ripkin league.

Tips on expanding your vocabulary and becoming a better communicator

"If your only tool is a hammer, then every problem will look like a nail." That's an old saying, but how true. Likewise when speaking or writing, if you have only a limited vocabulary, it's hard to explain or describe the richness of life or the specificity of an event.

So it's up to us to expand our vocabularies, especially if we want to be improve our communications skills.

I learned a few years ago that the size of a person's vocabulary can often be tied to their socio-economic status. For instance, children growing up in a poor home may not have access to books (and parents reading to them) that children in a middle-class family would have. Stated another way, a single parent raising children may not have the money to buy books or have the energy to read to the children, especially if the mom or dad is working two jobs to make ends meet.

As a child, I had two loving parents along with older brothers and sisters and was surrounded by books and parents and siblings that would read to me. Still I feel the need to learn more words...basically because there are so many words to learn.

So what can I do? The easiest thing would probably be reading Webster's dictionary, but that's not very fun. However, there are lots of dictionaries that are fun to read. One of them I own deals with things that help us understand our social culture, a second gives definitions for euphemisms. Both are lots of fun, and expand your vocabulary and knowledge along the way.

A second tried and true method is to read good literature. For instance, I like westerns. There is a big difference between reading a Louis L'Amour western and a Zane Grey novel, such as "Riders of the Purple Sage." Even though Louie is a native of North Dakota, if you've read one of his novels, you've basically read them all. On the other hand, a Zane Grey western hits all the high notes and paints the most brilliant pictures, especially of the southwest United States.

But I just don't stop with westerns. Another of my favorite authors is Stephen Ambrose. He writes histories and my favorite is "Undaunted Courage", which is about Lewis & Clark and the Corps of Discovery. Mr. Ambrose is now dead, but he used to come to North Dakota and especially Fort Mandan north of Bismarck to speak about Lewis and Clark. If you ever heard him speak, his written prose sound just like him...a little bit staccato and with a certain fierceness and bravado.

However, perhaps my favorite way to learn new words is through crossword puzzles. Every morning before leaving for work, I at least start the crossword puzzle in the Bismarck Tribune. I generally don't give myself enough time to finish the puzzle before I go to work, but sometimes I do finish it, and I consider it a good omen.

Every puzzle offers me a couple of new words or new uses of old words. For instance, the puzzle today contains the word "legumes", which I know as peas. However, the definition is for a "cover crop" -- meaning that legumes can be planted to hold the soil together and provide nutrients to the soil while producing a crop...peas.

Another clue today was "Cochise's tribe". Now I could look this up on the Internet, but it's more fun to have the word appear by answering other clues. First I had found an "a" when I wrote "taro" as a "South Seas edible root." The next letter was a "p" because the clue was a "well known cartel" and the answer was 'OPEC." It wasn't long before "Apache" appeared as the answer.

There's another trick I know, not for expanding your vocabulary, but for becoming a better story teller and writer. The next time you are watching your favorite show, such as "Modern Family" for me, sit with a tablet and pen and look for colorful or witty phrases and write them down. Many TV shows are very well written and by listening to them and paying a little extra attention, we can learn from some mighty clever writers.

I hope you enjoy this blog because it allows me to show off some vocabulary and writing techniques that I've learned by applying these tips.  

Without salt, sugar, fat, carbs and soda, life gets tasteless

I know a man who suffers from a debilitating disease. He's like a walking chemistry lab as the doctors work to keep his body in balance, literally through science and pills. In the last several years, he's lost a lot of weight. I asked him what his secret is and he said, "food doesn't taste good anymore."

I laughed when I heard the answer because food has always tasted good...until now. My latest setback came Tuesday afternoon when a nurse told me that I was "mildly diabetic and had kidney failure probably due to higher than normal blood sugar levels so for the next three months I should restrict my sugar and carbohydrates and then we'll test you again."

Regarding the kidney failure, the nurse told me to stay off coffee, tea and pop. Only drink water. I was already off of caffeine so I haven't been drinking tea and coffee, but I did enjoy the occasional diet root beer or diet, caffeine-free Mountain Dew, but those choices are now gone as well. Like a line from one of my favorite movies, the dad says to his mis-behaving little boy, "Gee, your water looks tasty."

Really, I thought...what can I eat? My darling wife called my doctor's nurse and suddenly we were registered for two classes in May. One is with a dietitian and the other is with an expert on diabetes.

I haven't had the classes yet, so to be on the safe side, my meals have become pretty bland -- as in no taste and no reason for eating. Suddenly I feel like my friend with Parkinson's. There are times when I get up from the table and I want to go throw up because the meal tasted so badly.

All I want is something that tastes fairly close to what it used to taste like. My wife is a real trooper and works very hard to make sure I comply with the doctor's recommendations. So what I'm saying is no knock on her cooking skills...but honestly, sometimes I think my tongue is covered with wax because what I'm eating has no taste.

There are exceptions. A tuna fish sandwich on no salt bread still tastes pretty good. In fact, it tastes better than it did when I was eating other things. See, that's all I ask for. Just give me food that tastes like it used to.

I've already whined elsewhere about my attempt at homemade, no salt sausage and how terrible it was. I ended up throwing out most of it.

Well, my dear wife tried it again...thinking she could add a few more ingredients and it would taste better. Well, it didn't. She made it for lunch one day along with some "applesauce" pancakes. I had to put peanut butter and sugar free syrup on the pancakes to give them some taste and then cut up my sausage patty and eat a piece with every bite of pancake. I know dad hated it as well as he was more than willing to give away his sausage. Generally, if you make an attempt at some food on his plate, you'll end up with a fork in the back of your hand.

A week ago, I had lasagna with low sodium spaghetti sauce at my sister-in-law's house, and that tasted pretty good. In fact, I had a second piece and a second slice of garlic toast. But that was before I was cutting back on my carbs.

So tonight, dad and I will be dining on baked fish, baked potato (only pepper and low fat, low sodium margarine) along with a small salad. Yeah, that's right...I'm on a blood thinner so I have to also watch how much green leafy vegetables I eat as that seems to counteract the blood thinner.

Every day I drive by seemingly endless restaurants and fast food joints that I used to patronize. Now, they are only fond memories...like your first kiss or your first true love. They cook with way too much salt, and the portions are gigantic compared to what I get to eat.

So to sum it up...if you can eat and enjoy food, go get 'em. But please understand if I'm walking a little slower to the dinner table now days and leaving less satisfied.

I saw a lot of changes and I was against them all...

The title is a quote from an old man who retired about 15 years ago from a pipeline company in eastern Montana. At the time, I thought, "What a scrooge." But as I get older, I'm starting to feel more and more like him.

So I was thinking back to all the technologies that I've seen come...and a few go.

When I was in college, we wrote stories using a typewriter and then took our stories to someone who would set them in type. My first job out of college was at a small newspaper in a small town in western North Dakota, but the newspaper had better equipment than the college. It had something called a "Compugraphic" where you could write your story and it would come out of a computer ready to be waxed and put on a "dummy" page of a newspaper. I remember thinking that the Compugraphic would probably be the end of my career because I had a hard time learning how to run it, let alone master it. But the threat of starving to death without a job somehow persuaded me to learn to operate it.

From the newspaper in Beach, ND, I went to a newspaper in Baker, MT, and back about 10 years...at least when it came to technology. I was back using an electronic typewriter to write my stories, which I handed to a lady named Susan, who worked on the Compugraphic. But then I took a job at Mid-Rivers Telephone Cooperative in Glendive, and they had a state-of-the-art Compugraphic. They also sent me to Denver to learn how to operate this beast. After some training, I became proficient at it, but probably not an expert. I remember the paper was expensive for the Compugraphic so you didn't want to make a lot of errors.

Mid-Rivers also was the first company I worked for that had IBM PC's. I remember going to training on the PC's that required floppy disks to store data. The trainer told us that floppy disk was a "car" and we had to remember to put the "car" in the "garage." In other words, the training was very elementary. But it beat writing stories on a typewriter because it was so much easier to make changes and edit.

From Mid-Rivers in Glendive, it was on to MDU in Bismarck and back to the Selectric typewriter. Again, we had a lady who used a Compugraphic in the printing department, and she had the exact model of what I'd used in Glendive. If we made a mistake on the typewriter, we would make our changes with a pencil edit, and then hand it off to our secretary who would retype it before we sent it to an executive for final edit.

And then we got a computer. That's right. One computer for about 10 of us in the communications department. The slogan at MDU must have been, "We'll spend no dime before it's time."

Having one computer is like begging for a fight. Let's face it, computers are far superior to typewriters so who wants to use a typewriter if there's a computer available...although generally it wasn't available.

Then there was a retirement and a promotion and suddenly MDU had a technology champion as president and we all had shiny PC's sitting on our desks. Also, the floppy disks had given way to the compact disks. Writing was easier and more efficient with a computer. In time, we would quit using the compact disks and start saving our work to a large computer through a networking system.

So with everyone using a computer, except for those that retired or would soon be retired, we were introduced to e-mail. This again was about five years after I first heard of e-mail. Suddenly, we didn't have to talk to anyone anymore. We could just send them an e-mail. I liked this technology.

Another technology I was introduced to was the pager. If you handled calls from the media, you had to carry a pager so the media could get a hold of you. It generally wasn't a happy week if you were carrying a pager and it went off. Once, it was in the middle of the night and the pager beeped. We were in the midst of a bad thunderstorm and the media was calling because of outages and downed power lines. So I called the MDU dispatch office and got the latest information about how many crews were out working and relayed this to the media that kept calling throughout the night for updates. I also had an angry newspaper publisher call me because the Bismarck Tribune was without power and they wanted to start printing the morning paper.

In 2002, I went to work at the Lignite Energy Council and we had computers and a network along with e-mail, so I felt write at home. They didn't have pagers so I was extremely happy.

Until I learned that pagers were yesterday's news. Today's technology was cell phones and I would be required to wear one in case the media came calling.

Like the Compugraphic years ago, I'm proficient on the cell phone, but I'm not an expert. I don't know all the bells and whistles, but I do know that cellphones can do a lot more than just make calls. I can now text my sons and look up things on the Internet. I can also take pictures.

So in the last 30 years since I graduated from college, I've learned a lot about technology and how it has shrunk my world and made me more efficient as an employee. But I've got probably 15 years left to work. I'm sure there will be more changes. And like the fellow that retired back in the 1990s, I'm less interested with each passing year to make changes and be more technology savvy. My guess is that the decision about when to retire will be brought about by some new technology. I'll throw up and hands and finally say, "Enough is enough."

The benefits of procrastination

Last December I bought a new suit, new shirts, pants, etc. I had every intention of throwing away all the stuff in my closet that no longer fit. However, tomorrow always seemed like a better day than yesterday, so I didn't do it.

Now having lost a considerable amount of weight and needing to lose a lot more, I'm counting the benefits of procrastination. Because of my lack of action, I also don't have to buy a new wardrobe. I have one...or two...and they are good ones.

Luckily, I don't have any leisure suits or striped, bell bottom pants and flared silk shirts from the 1970s, but I do have clothes that I doubt meet the fashion standards of today.

For shoes, let's start with the classic black wing tips. Going north, we have argyle socks. Then there are suit pants and suit coats of different colors and styles going back 25 years. Let's face it, suits wear like iron.

I have a variety of dress shirts starting with white and moving all the way to cream. Actually, I also have a shirt the color of every arc in a rainbow. But I've been limited to white and cream because those have fit. Now they all fit...except for the big ones.

Where this weight loss really hurts is in the jackets and coats. Because all of my outerwear have been up-sized over the years and the old ones wore out, I'm currently stuck between a rock and hard place. My big green puffy winter coat -- that I've had since the boys were in high school -- kicked the bucket a week or so ago when the zipper blew out. I know they were in high school because I was taking them to school one morning when the zipper blew out on my big puffy blue coat.

However, the good news here is that Spring is expected to arrive in North Dakota some time in the next month. So I won't need coats and jackets for a couple of months and maybe by next fall, I'll have a better idea of what size I should buy.

Now the best news is that my belts are also looking way too big. However, I don't know yet what size belt to buy, so again, to be on the safe side, I'm comfortable walking around with my pants down to my knees until I settle on a size.

Turns out, I'm finally fashionable with the low hanging pants and clear view of my boxer shorts.

"It is what it is..."

On March 16, I left my hospital room, my wife and dad for a little exploratory surgery known as an angiogram. As I was being wheeled downstairs to see if I had blockage or a heart attack, the only words I could think of was "it is what it is...and we'll make the most of it."

You can't believe my joy to hear the cardiologist say that I had no blockage and had not had a heart attack. This gives me a better chance for a recovery as none of my heart had died from lack of oxygen. What I did have was cardiomyopathy, which is a diseased heart muscle. In my case, the cardiologist said it could have been caused by a virus. My heart was weak, scarred, enlarged and beating irregularly.

Still, I was uplifted by the number of heart medicines and the people I know who have made miraculous recoveries from heart failure.

My saga begins probably back in January after we returned from Hawaii. I don't remember being short of breath when we walked the breadth of Waikiki, but I do remember being short of breath when I saw my pulmonologist in Bismarck. He oversees my CPAP machine, which reduces my apneas when I sleep. I think that appointment was January 18 and at the time, I chalked up my shortness of breath to walking up a hill in the cold January air.

My next excursion to a doctor came at the end of February when I thought I had bronchitis, which is something I have a proclivity for. My doctor prescribed a steroid and an antibiotic, much like he had in the past. But something was amiss as I went in a week later to find my ankles and feet had swollen. This time he added a week to the antibiotics since my lungs were still filled with gunk and changed my water pill to something stronger.

Still, I felt my condition worsening and a week later went in again. This time, however, the doctor found that my heart rate was more than twice as fast as normal. Thus I earned a trip to the hospital.

There I  had x-rays, an EKG and an echocardiogram along with the angiogram to determine what was going on with my heart. Three days after entering the hospital, I was more or less being tested to my tolerance and how well the different heart medicines would perform. To do this, I had to wear a heart monitor and have my blood checked every so often.

Now I really can't say enough good things about the nurses and doctors working on my case. They did their best to make me feel at home, but a small hospital room is not my home and you don't enjoy many freedoms when tied by a four-feet length of plastic tubing to an I.V. pole.

So when my release came on March 21, I was more than ready to go home. The last thing to be removed was the I.V. from my left arm. I had been stuck like a pin cushion as my veins wanted to "roll" or "collapse" about as soon as a needle came in contact with them.

Now I'm recuperating at home and learning all about my new low sodium, water restricted, low calorie diet. It will probably be a couple of weeks until I return to work. However, when I do, I hope my body is in harmony and my heart is beating properly.

A lot changed in the last week. I look at it as having "crossed the Rubicon."

I just thank my lucky stars that I have a supportive family, co-workers, friends and a great staff of medical experts who work very hard on my behalf.

Thank you to all who whispered a prayer. It wasn't the least you could do, it was the most. And I'm very grateful.