"You are out of your mind"

Wyoming elk hunter, 1904.

So declared long suffering spouse.

On Wednesday I posted this item about my recent oral surgery:

An Insult to the Body

Yesterday was the first day I tried to avoid taking pain killers, which in this case means heavy duty Tylenol.  I'm weird about painkillers in general and very rarely take them.  I don't resort to them except as a last resort and I knew, even when they were prescribed, I'd never take them for the full period I could.  I just don't.  I don't take anything for headaches, which I rarely get, and even if I have an injury of some sort, I don't think them unless its really painful.

I'm not sure where I picked up this personal trait.  Unlike some in our current society, I'm not a medical advice skeptic except when it comes to painkillers.  I've always been this way, so its not a new thing.  For much of my single life you'd have been unable to find any of the conventional pain killers that most people keep routinely in a place I was living.  I wasn't going to use them, so I didn't buy them.

Occupationally I've become more skeptical, even paranoid, about them.  I've seen too many addicts who are slaves to painkillers.  I represented a guy a few years ago in a car accident matter who died last year from an overdose of them.  I think they're overprescribed.  

An added to that, I'm allergic to the heavy duty ones, which doesn't bother me, as I'm not going to take them anyway.

I note all of this as I didn't take them, so by late yesterday afternoon I felt pretty rough at work. Not as in I was enduring a terrible pain, but just rough.  And old friend called to visit at work and asked how I was doing, after he learned of the procedure earlier in the week, and I just noted mostly being extremely tired, to which he replied "that's because you're getting old". 

That might be right, but it might be more than that as well, in this instance.

Anyhow, this brings me around to long suffering spouses comment.

I didn't draw a deer tag this year.

I didn't draw any tags, in fact, and I'm not too happy about it.  I'll post more on that later.

Given as I didn't draw a deer, or elk, tag, the season crept up on me with me being unprepared for the general season.  I got out over the weekend and zeroed my daughter's rifle and took care of my son's, but that's about as far as I got.  In thinking it over, I just figured that I wouldn't be going out opening day anyway, so I'd take are of things, like zeroing my own rifle, this week. 

I haven't gotten that done.

But as my two kids are in university and I am not, it started to really bother me, and it still is, that I just figured I'd go on the weekend.  When I was first a lawyer, I'd go on opening day.  I don't anymore as I'm busy. 

Which gets me to this comment I made yesterday.

It is pretty amazing to me in a way as when I was a student I always promised myself that there were things I'd never let work get in the way of.  I know that you are probably thinking I'm going to say "family and friends", but what I'm really thinking of is hunting and the outdoors.  Well, I have let it get in the way of that and I still do. And more and more so as time has gone on.

In fact, tomorrow is the opening day for general deer season around here and I'm unlikely to get out for opening day.  When I was a younger lawyer, I always did. Now I have a harder time doing that simply as my weeks are so hectic that I don't conceive of myself having the week days to take off, and besides that I'm tired enough that getting ready for something outside the routine isn't easy.  We'll see, although this year that would additionally meaning shooting a rifle just a few days out of oral surgery, which might not be smart.

We'll see.

Well last night, I asked son, who has been here due to the pandemic, "you have school tomorrow, right?"

Right away, long suffering spouse knew what I was thinking.

I received a spousal rebuke, indeed a lecture, and she's right.  I had to end up taking the Tylenol last night in spite of myself, and my extracted teeth were on my right side, which means that part of my jaw would be against the stock.  I had trouble stopping the bleeding in the first place.

2020. 

The Annus Horribilius.