Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 7/8/22

The Little Victories Edition

It’s been a long, frustrating week here at the bunker, and the staff has performed exceptionally well under grueling heat and low-grade anxiety in nearly every department. Trade and Commerce has been overworked trying to get a gaming book put together under a tight deadline, and the Department of Media Relations has put in requests for additional project space on the blog. With the administrator locked in his office, staring at pictures of the bunker mascot and trying not to cry, Bunker Ops has had their hands full keeping everyone and everything on an even keel. Anyone wishing to express their admiration for her efforts can do so with whiskey or vodka, the craftier and more artisanal and/or small batch, the better.

The Pupdate, Week 2

The bunker mascot spent several days at the vet on crate rest while we waited for a knee brace to come in. She got it fitted, and we got to try out our new sling designed to carry dogs up stairs. They both, well, mostly worked. My vet assured me there would be a learning curve for the dog to learn how to walk with the knee brace, so it was important to keep working with her and encouraging her to use the leg when she walks

I missed you, too, baby.

The other option was a surgery which would have left the leg immobilized for 8 weeks anyway, during which time she’s be on crate rest unless she is going out to the bathroom. This way, we are pretty confident she’ll get the use of her leg back as she gets more and more used to the leg brace.

We are getting our cardio in, that’s for sure. Carrying the dog up the stairs, hanging between us like cordwood, a dead weight at 65 lbs, in sweltering heat, is no one’s favorite thing. The dog especially. She wants to go out, wants to take the stairs, but there’s just no way for her to do it without help.

Jes and I are better at it the second day, and so is Sonya. She does better when I hold the leash, but Janice walks beside her. It’s got to be a group effort, apparently. Thankfully, she’s not trying to run around, or jump up on stuff like she normally does

We’re catching up while we wait for the brace to get fitted.

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Monthly Update from the Agency of Health and Wellness

Myself, on the other hand? I’m a nervous wreck. Janice had to practically prop me up this week to get me to do anything constructive, and my decision-making skills, meager as they were, have left me completely. I’ve got nothing in the tank right now. Only Janice’s council has kept me thinking positive thoughts and not stressing out the dog further with my moping and fretting. I’m marrying a wise woman.

It’s been difficult, mostly for the reasons I outlined last week, but also because this is giving me PTSD flashbacks of being a caregiver and constantly thinking that I’m not doing it well, or well enough, or at all, which is bullshit from a number of different angles, and what’s worse, I know all of that. Still, it’s an active battle, taking a conscious act of will, to keep from sliding into negative patterns of thinking, which leads to things like stress eating and stress sleeping and stress stressing.

Rather than continue the litany of complaints, let me instead regale you with a couple of anecdotes from the past two weeks you might find amusing.

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In Other News...

I’ve been using the elliptical machine at the local college, rather than try to navigate any kind of health regimen in this heat. When it’s 85 degrees at 6 am, what’s the point of even going outside at all, unless you’re curing pottery on the sidewalk?

It’s been easier for me, for a number of physiological reasons, starting with the fact that I’m not weighed down by my own personal rucksack. I thought I’d need to warm back up to it, but as it turns out, I can hit the two-mile mark in 30 minutes, no problem

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I first noticed this last week, when I saw that I had one virtual lap to go and I was well within my ability to beat 2 miles under time, if I picked up the pace a little bit. And that’s just what I did, grabbing the inner stabilizer bars and leaning down into it like Lance Armstrong at the Tour de France. I heard the machine beep at me and I thought “Oh cool, it just told me I did something good,” and then it beeped again, and again, and I thought, “Is the machine actually egging me on? Telling me I can do it?” It’s never done that before, but hell, what do I know? I leaned in harder and the beep became a beeping, rapid fire, like BeepBeepBeepBeepB-B-BeepBeepBeepB-B-B-BeepBeepBeepBeeeeeeeeep.

Suddenly, I hit the wall. My legs felt heavy and I was slowing way down, and now I’m in a panic, because I didn’t feel tired, but somehow, I was in slow motion. What the hell? I looked down at the monitor and saw my resistance had increased to 25 and it was then that I realized every time I leaned in to push harder, I was also pushing down on the button that increases the resistance. I quickly re-adjusted and sailed through to a victory, but not without feeling just a bit like a doofus.

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Notes on my Emerging New Career

I’m acquiring a new set of skills out of necessity that will never translate into anything other than a side gig with the carnival. I am talking, of course, about my tumescent scrotum. Urination is its own mini-game now, as my stream continues to be a powerful, turbulent force that is both marvelous and terrible at the same time, like a flash flood in Texas. Being that my flow is so uncontrollable, I’ve developed a system of dealing with my errant penis that minimizes both trauma and spillage.

Getting started is no problem. Flow happens, in both an arc and also a stream, and sometimes, it jumps around before it settles in, like when you notice a glitch in the Matrix. Once out of the gate, I’ve got one to two seconds to gauge both force and trajectory and adjust my distance from the toilet forward or backward to keep the stream in the bowl and not all over everything else.

I’ve learned to direct the course of events by pressing on both sides of the edema. It’s like playing the bagpipes, only a bit more musical in nature. This is the tricky part, because if I’m off by more than a foot, it’s a crime scene. I don’t think you understand the power behind my tinkle—suffice to say, the contents are under pressure. Some days, the only thing missing from this set-up is a clown head to pee into and make the balloon pop. I would win that big-ass stuffed panda every single time, I swear to God.

I’ve taken to wearing compression shorts, and they seem to be helping. I’ve still got a lot of weight to lose, and that will also help. It’s going to take a while. But I’ll do it standing up

Both the piper and the instrument are an apt metaphor.

There is one upside. The other night, while watching one of the many shows that now routinely features full male nudity, someone appeared in their birthday suit and Janice said, “I know this is probably wrong to admit, but now every time I see male nudity, the first thing I think is, ‘you call that a set of balls?’”

It’s good to be king.

Look for a double-sized Media Report on Monday