How was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

Your eyes are healthy, but you need bifocals.

I like my optometrist a lot but am a little confused. Can a body part be healthy if it can't do the one thing assigned to it?

It's like my primary care doctor saying I am generally healthy. Well yeah, if you ignore the massive disability that is going to kill me.

If my eyes were healthy,  I wouldn't need bifocals. But as it is, I will put off the books I got for Christmas till I have old-person glasses.

A few good men, and women

All right, first off, the paucity of the Nativity has absolutely nothing to do with the cold I have had.

I had hoped to have a Matt and Fame action figure in the Nativity this year, but the not-so-awesome digital printers at Awesome Con took my photos but never got in touch with me figure-wise. Very sad. I did get a new action figure this year. He was from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, in theory. But he never made it beyond the cutting room floor, so but he was deemed Nativity-unworthy. Actually, he is still in his box — that’s the real reason. I also got Captain America from someone at work. I never found out who. He is at the office, though.

But look who is here!

Jesus, Mary and Joseph and Santa, stalwarts all.

Silver Surfer is watching over things. I know it ignores Aunt May’s turn during one Assistant Editor’s Month, but he is the coolest herald of Galactus.

Next to him is Buffy the Vampire Slayer to provide a little slayage if any “forces of darkness” show up. I watched the first two episodes of Buffy recently, Awesome. I can’t wait to watch the best show ever with my niece.

Next up are the Big Three.

Then there is the cowboy who rides an ostrich from the Island of Misfit Toys. I can’t believe I left him out this long.

Shaggy is in mainly because we moved a plant when I put up my tree, which meant I had to move Shaggy, which meant he was blocking my clock. But maybe he has some Scooby snacks in case folks get hungry.

Finally, stepbrothers Juggernaut and Professor X. Really, they are. The Marvel Universe is a mite incestuous.

Here are the ones from 2007,  2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. These posts also have some background. And God must be amused by this because I have not been struck down yet.

Wow

Add wheelchair repair to the always-growing list of things friends at work do for me.

I was in the bathroom using my chair arms to push myself backward when the right arm just collapsed. I got it to sit on another part of the chair and drove into my friend's office to ask her to take a photo, so I could get it repaired. She did, then added, I see what's wrong. She fiddled with it for a bit, called someone else to help her, and they fixed it.

Last week, it was pancake-cutting and foot placement (I could not get my feet to stay on my footplate).

Before that, it was keeping me company while I waited for a wheelchair-friendly shuttle (hint: We don't have any).

And so on: picking up dog poop, getting Fame water, picking me up off the bathroom floor.

It is not awesome that I need all this help. It's decidedly unawesome, actually. And it is so hard to ask for help. With the pancake-cutting and foot placement, I honestly didn't. I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable. My friend asked me!  And then when I thanked her and told her how hard it is, she said I can ask her for help with anything!

I am trying my hardest not to say I am lucky, but I am not sure what else to say.

Music in my head

It is too soon to tell whether these new hearing aids work or whether  I have the world's most expensiveit  AirPods, but the AirPod aspect is pretty cool: My phone and laptop play music right into my hearing aids.

They don't play it audibly for others either, so if a meeting is boring, I can listen to Bruce Springsteen.

I  am hopeful these will help. They're another company, better doctor, and things do seem louder.

We'll see.

Forget waterboarding

I was watching a James Bond movie the other night, Spectre, which was awesome.

But it doesn't really matter which one. You don't really watch a Bond movie for innovation. They're all great, and they generally follow a familiar script:  Bond is shown to be dedicated to his truth, lots of beautiful women, crazy car chases, gun battles, gadgets, a supervillain, more beautiful women and elaborate torture device Bond escapes from.

Now, the best way to deal with a captured Bond would be, as Scott Evil says, to just shoot him, but bad guys tend to have their idiosyncrasies, so I'd like to propose the torture that sent me to the ER Wednesday and still hurts.

Put Bond in a power wheelchair. Drive him up to a keyboard tray. Raise tray to upper sternum height. Drive him into tray, not fast or anything, just consistently.

It doesn't sound like much, but it is probably the worst pain I have experienced. I had to take a few seconds to regain my composure and convince my arm that moving to the joystick and moving backward was  better idea than passing out or crying.

The doc at the ER suggested I just bruised everything in there, and because I could breathe OK, he didn't think an X-ray was needed. "Ice and Advil was his advice.

It's OK if I don't move my chest, but as you might expect, I cough, yawn, use my arms to move, burp, etc. Then it hurts like #%#^.

And I write this to keep myself from thinking about the other aspect: the "Hey God, give me an effing break" one. I have a broken, or injured, rib. I hit my head this week before this debacle. And it'S not just me, but everyone it affects. Fortunately, for me anyway, a lot of people help me, so it affects a lot of people. But come on!