{"id":1459,"date":"2015-07-31T16:14:06","date_gmt":"2015-07-31T16:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/?p=1459"},"modified":"2015-07-31T23:43:53","modified_gmt":"2015-07-31T23:43:53","slug":"watch-your-step","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/watch-your-step\/","title":{"rendered":"WATCH YOUR STEP"},"content":{"rendered":"

We call it a \u201cworking vacation<\/em>\u201d which I think, in retrospect, are two words that don\u2019t belong in the same sentence. Hubby Craig and I embark on a whirly-windy ukulele tour that takes us from Modesto and Sacramento to San Jose where I re-discover, not for the first time, that I don\u2019t really, REALLY, relax until the \u201cgigs\u201d are done. This leaves us a day and a half of \u201cahhhhh,\u201d hunkered down in an oak-filled canyon somewhere near California\u2019s only nuclear power plant.<\/p>\n

\"Craig-and-Cali-2015-11-x-17-postert-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So we are plenty exhausted when we roll into Culver City in our rented Hyundai Elantra. Before we get home I take a quick detour to our local post office to pick up the mail in my P.O. Box. I suppose I could have waited. And truth be told, I wish<\/em> I had waited, but a prophet I am not\u2026<\/p>\n

I did a retirement home gig several months ago and they still haven\u2019t paid me so I\u2019m anxious to see if my money arrived. And pissed off. I hate chasing after checks–making the calls, sending the emails. Making more calls, sending more emails. I bring the subject up periodically on our\u00a0working vacation<\/em>. \u201cThose bastards\u2026\u201d is usually how I start the conversation\u2026<\/p>\n

I send Craig into the post office as I wait in the idling car and a few seconds later he appears waving the check over his head. Elation turns to shock as he tumbles face down onto the sidewalk. I wait for him to get up. He always gets up.<\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t get up.<\/p>\n

I leap from the car and run to this sweet man, sprawled on the cement, unable to lift himself with his arms. A kind gentleman passing by helps me get my big 6\u20193\u201d husband to his feet and back into the car. His right wrist is askew; his left arm is throbbing. My husband was a corpsman in the Navy. \u201cIt\u2019s broken,\u201d he moans.<\/p>\n

We turn the car north and head to U.C.L.A. I have no idea where the emergency room is. U.C.L.A. is crazy big, like a little city. And it seems like they are always building some new building. I break my personal \u201cdon\u2019t do it\u201d decree and make a call on my cell phone while I\u2019m driving. I punch in 911. It rings and rings but finally I am connected to a very nice fireman who gives me the address of the ER and adds that he has no idea where it is\u2026 All this as I am negotiating our rental car through some of the busiest intersections in the whole damned United States of America.<\/p>\n

Right after I yell at a defenseless valet guy at the first wrong U.C.L.A. building I pull into, we find our way to the Emergency Room\u2014during an afternoon lull. Before the rush hour bedlam begins. They take Craig in right away. I ask the admitting clerk if a lot of people come to the ER because they tripped on a sidewalk and she guffaws at her computer screen because, apparently, our crumbling pedestrian infrastructure in Los Angeles keeps the ER docs busy setting bones 24\/7.<\/p>\n

We are quickly escorted to a small examining room. The attending physician orders X-Rays and then we wait. And wait. What to do? Now here is where the story goes all baby-boomer weird. This is where we see, first-hand, how social media has reprogrammed our brain synapses.<\/p>\n

\"ER\"<\/a>
Emergency Room at U.C.L.A. Cell phone attached to hand.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I take Craig\u2019s fricking picture with my cell phone camera. \u201cPost it on Facebook,\u201d he says. And I do, like that\u2019s the most normal thing in the world. What have we come to? My husband, a musician, facing the prospect of a broken wrist, another broken arm, wants to \u201creport\u201d our travails to our FB friends as they are unfolding. And me, I go\u2014hey good idea!<\/em><\/p>\n

Let me back up a little\u2026<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have kids. Craig\u2019s parents are gone as is my father. My mother has dementia. So we reach out to our tiny circle of friends and far-away family. We don\u2019t like to ask for help. (I bet most of us don\u2019t.) So Craig and I, we rely on each other. But people text and call back–with good wishes, offers to bring food, to drive us, to do\u00a0whatever<\/em>. It\u2019s a revelation.<\/p>\n

Then the circle widens. Facebook. We have lots of FB \u201cfriends\u201d because we are active in the ukulele cyber world. But most of these people–I will never meet them. Ever. Then again, I HAVE met a few of them, on this trip even. And they are kind and warm and have stories that are engaging and interesting. And almost immediately there begins a cascade of responses to the picture we posted. They offer support and good thoughts, prayers. The comments help us feel a whole lot better as we sit in this dreary, cheerless room\u2026 They make us feel not so alone.<\/p>\n

Years ago I worked in an emergency room and those three years on the graveyard shift changed my life. The stuff, the bad stuff we see on the local news, it played out in the bowels of this place. I got it. Into the marrow of my bones. We are all just hanging by a thread? Do we really know what\u2019s going to happen in the next ten seconds?\u00a0For sure<\/em>? Our lives can change in the time it takes to breathe in.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s scary to think about. And in all honesty, when I hear about someone else\u2019s troubles, I feel badly for them, terrible sometimes. AND I\u2019m grateful that it didn\u2019t happen to me. AND I\u2019m also afraid that someday\u00a0it will<\/em>. I feel a little tug of OMG in my stomach. Maybe I\u2019m super neurotic. Or just human. Well\u2026both. My husband has traipsed across the uneven sidewalk in front of the post office thousands of times. Up to last Thursday afternoon his record of safe passage was spotless.<\/p>\n

The lyric from Monty Python\u2019s \u201cAlways Look On The Bright Side of Life\u201d has been playing in my head as if the needle is stuck in an acetate groove.<\/p>\n

You’ll see its all a show,
\nkeep ’em laughin\u2019 as you go.
\nJust remember that the last laugh is on you. \u00a0Ha ha ha…<\/em><\/p>\n

In the big picture, none of us are on stage for very long\u2026 Things get goofy and awful, boring and beautiful. And if we are lucky, there are circles upon circles of dear ones, of friends, to share the whole mess of it.<\/p>\n

\"Recovery<\/a>
Recovery Room after Craig’s surgery. Cell phone attached to hand.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Medical Post Script:<\/strong> Craig\u2019s broken left elbow is healing quickly. Unfortunately my right-handed sweetheart crushed his right wrist and spent two hours in surgery. We are so lucky to have U.C.L.A.\u2019s best hand guys \u201con hand.\u201d Craig gave them both a copy of his new ukulele CD at our initial consultation. A\u00a0not-so-subtle<\/em>\u00a0reminder that this is the wrist of a musician\u2026 We hear later that they played the CD in the operating room during his surgery. Ukulele is\u00a0everywhere<\/em>\u00a0these days\u2026<\/p>\n

\""Somewhere."<\/a>
“Somewhere.” Craig’s new ukulele instrumental CD. A hit in operating rooms too…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We call it a \u201cworking vacation\u201d which I think, in retrospect, are two words that don\u2019t belong in the same sentence. Hubby Craig and I embark on a whirly-windy ukulele tour that takes us from Modesto and Sacramento to San Jose where I re-discover, not for the first time, that I don\u2019t really, REALLY, relax until the \u201cgigs\u201d are done. This leaves us a day and a half of \u201cahhhhh,\u201d hunkered down in an oak-filled canyon somewhere near California\u2019s only … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","kt_blocks_editor_width":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[118,119,117],"class_list":["post-1459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogentry","tag-broken-wrist","tag-musicians-hands","tag-tripping-on-sidewalk"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":2,"label":"blog entry"}],"post_tag":[{"value":118,"label":"broken wrist"},{"value":119,"label":"musicians' hands"},{"value":117,"label":"tripping on sidewalk"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"Cali Rose","author_link":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/author\/crbauthor\/"},"comment_info":18,"category_info":[{"term_id":2,"name":"blog entry","slug":"blogentry","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":2,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":139,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":2,"category_count":139,"category_description":"","cat_name":"blog entry","category_nicename":"blogentry","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":118,"name":"broken wrist","slug":"broken-wrist","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":118,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":119,"name":"musicians' hands","slug":"musicians-hands","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":119,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":117,"name":"tripping on sidewalk","slug":"tripping-on-sidewalk","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":117,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1459"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1465,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions\/1465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}