Harold’s Room
Chapter 12
We’re getting well into March now. Still not writing as often or as much as I’d like, but I’ve been kind of busy. Harold has pretty much given up napping in The Fortress of Solitude. Now if he feels the urge he just plops down in a nice secluded corner of the enclave and goes into his dead turtle pose. Occasionally he plops down wherever it is he happens to be. One of his favorite spots is right behind the sub-woofer snuggled up against the warm transformers. He listens with his neck extended, occasionally turning his head left and right for optimum sound clarity, and then when he gets tired, PLOP, down he goes, and he lets the music take him away to dreamland. I do believe if he slept in the woods in the open like that with his neck fully extended at right angles to his body and his legs flung akimbo everywhere it would not be just a dead turtle pose, and some of the parts would be missing.
Since he hasn’t been sleeping in it, I am pulling The Fortress this afternoon and dragging out The Hut. We have started daily baths since he won’t sleep in his moistened bedding, and the water in the hot tub isn’t tepid yet. Fine for drinking purposes, but unacceptable to him for bathing. The floor heating gets it close, but close only counts in washers and hand grenades, as they say. This time of year he truly enjoys his nice, warm baths. It’s like plopping down in a puddle warmed by the August sun. First his head goes under, and then he wiggles around a bit getting comfy and cleaning his face. He then lolls about until the water starts to cool, paddles down to the deep end and poops, and then bangs around the tub to let me know he is ready to get out. Once he is back in his room he has a bit (quite a bit) to eat, and then finds a comfortable vantage point for his favorite early spring pastime of watching the birds, squirrels, deer, and the early-bird-special raccoons and ‘possums from his windows, but aside from them there is not a lot to see. The grass is starting to turn a bit greener, but somehow I do not believe that excites him much. He scans our neighbors’ foundation for lizards, and he watches the red plates out back for anyone who might show up to see what’s on them, female turtles in particular of course. It is much colder out there than it is in here, which is warm enough to suit him, for now, but the chances of him seeing any of his reptilian brothers, sisters, or cousins, or any groundhogs for that matter, are little and none I fear. We don’t start to see them until late June. I’m also afraid I’m not helping the “entertain Harold” situation much either. I have been corresponding via e-mail with my financial advisers and various representatives of the other institutions who have stewardship of my other eggs. Needless to say he finds this just as boring as my dealings with SSA and Medicare. Actually, even more so. There are a whole lot of forms that need to be read, filled out, signed, scanned and e-mailed or snail-mailed to all parties concerned in order to fulfill regulatory and corporate requirements to transfer funds. I agree Harold. So much fun and so interesting:
“Please fill out the attached form in full authorizing us to transfer your funds from specified accounts to an eligible account.”
A week later: “Thank you for your information. Please have the receiving firm fill out the attached form accepting assignment of the subject funds from the specified accounts to the eligible accounts.”
There were forms for the new annuity account, forms for transfer of funds from the original 401K/converted to IRA account to the new annuity account, forms for the 403 account, forms for the traditional IRA account, and then more forms for all of them: Back and forth, back and forth… “Holy Haysoos,” Harold cried as he once again dropped to the floor behind the subwoofer, watched a few chickadees and titmice, and then sprawled and dozed to Al DiMeola’s Elegant Gypsy album. Beautiful stuff, that. Calming, exciting, invigorating by turn. Wonderful stuff.
Al helped keep Harold contented, and me composed, as I continued to fill out and e-mail forms. Thank God for my friends Connie and Susan who guided me through all of this. It would have been hell without them. I’m afraid consolidation and reassignment of investments is not one of Harold’s areas of expertise any more than it is mine. I always had a solid basic plan, but due to a divorce settlement, and a market crash the following week, things had not come out as I had once hoped they would, so help with strategic planning from Connie, and a lot of assistance with detail work from Susan, were most appreciated when my retirement was thrust upon me. I was going to contact Connie in April to start planning for my 2017 retirement so we could just leisurely get the process started, and then BAM! Here we are. It’s crunch time like it or not. We had to put it all together in basically a month’s time, though TIAA-CREF, my half of the ex’s account, took a bit longer to deal with. They are quite picky compared to my original group of financial institutions, and that’s all I care to say about it. At any rate (There it is again!), thank you ladies. The sudden onslaught of requests for required information for disbursement, consolidation and re-allocation was still painful, but not nearly as painful as it would have been without your help. Make sure you prepare yourselves for retirement ladies and gentleman, and if possible find yourselves someone you can trust, like Connie and Susan, to assist you in the retirement process, or you will be reading a whole bunch of government pamphlets and brochures trying to figure out the meaning of the legalese, and wading through forms, and more forms, and more forms. A little help does a body good. Eases stress levels, too.
Now, where were we? Oh! Harold! This is supposed to be about Harold, not me. But he’s still sprawled out behind the stereo, listening to Annie Lennox now, and there’s nothing very interesting about that. Well, Annie is damned interesting. Yes, PLEASE Annie! We want you to sing now!! Start with I Need A Man! and go on from there. We both love Annie to death and will listen to her for hours, which means he is comfortable and content again, but that still doesn’t make for a very good plot or storyline. Let me think. Is there any more Digging In The Dirt I can do, or Dirty Laundry of his that I can expose? (My humble “thank you”s to Peter Gabriel, Don Henley and Danny Kortchmar.) Hmmmm. Ha! Got it! Harold is a gluttonous pig!
As I have mentioned previously, Harold has munched a bit this past winter, which he has never done before, said munching due of course to the unusually mild weather and his corresponding physical activity. Well, now that Harold is fully awake, or mostly fully awake as Miracle Max might say, he has been even more active and has been going through mealworms at the rate of twenty to twenty-five a day, along with a reasonable portion of twelve-grain bread, and even the occasional banana chunk and/or a few grape halves or some tomato. Once the gluttonous binge started I knew that hibernation, and even multiple day napping, were truly over. His usual intake of sausages and toast during the summer is half of what he is eating now per day, divided by a factor of approximately two point five days between feedings during the summer, and deduct a major portion of the fruit and vegetable matter, much to my chagrin. He needs his veggies. Anyway, he is pigging out. As I mentioned he is also being bathed every day to keep him hydrated since the furnace is still running, his hot tub isn’t warm enough to suit him, and I prefer to let him expel his copious intake into the tub once his digestive tract is finished with it, rather than on the floor where I have to deal with it. Better to put the shower head on pulsate and spray it down the tub drain than get out my rags and bucket. Need I say more?
He takes his daily “hygienic bath” whilst I clean his bowl, prepare his meal, and sometimes clean and refill his hot tub. Upon retrieval from the tub I set His Majesty before his platter, pour the cup of twenty plus mealworms upon his bread, fruit and veggie sides, and then I retreat to my station as a good server should. He eyes them for a bit, peers back at me, watches them some more, and then abruptly begins to circumnavigate the bowl to observe them from all sides. Then, he pauses. His right front foot slowly reaches to the top of the bowl rim, and then his left. He peers in to the left, then to the right, then left, then right, and he “STRIKES!” Okay then, the truth: He clumsily clambers into the bowl and starts snapping up and munching mealworms as quickly as he can, like a competitor at a professional hot dog eating contest. Chomp, chomp, next one, chomp, chomp, next one, chomp, chomp… Nibble some bread, next one, chomp, chomp, next one, chomp, chomp, nibble some banana, next one, chomp, chomp… It has been like that every day for the past two weeks. I can feel he is getting heavier when I pick him up to take him to his bath. The boy is packing it on. You’re getting fat Harold! But that’s a good thing. He needs to recover from even a frequently interrupted hibernation. Gobble them up my little friend. Chomp, chomp away. We have more, and the little secondary worm farm has been started up for the summer. That’s the original one you’ll remember, the one we had before we figured out just how many mealworms one little turtle can consume, and so decided we needed another worm farm, and a bigger one to boot. At the rate he is going through them it appears the procurement of the larger one was a wise move, but I am beginning to believe I should not have retired the small one for the winter. Last year it worked out okay, but he was fast asleep. Since late last year and early this year he has been nibbling off and on through his usual hibernation period we may find we are running low earlier this year. I believe I would be well advised to keep both of them going next winter. If Harold sleeps through and we have too much of a surplus I can always feed some to the bluebirds, and I’m sure they will appreciate the bonus. Harold will be asleep, and what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Hmmmm. That sounds like I’d be following the lead of our “government by, of and for the people” these days. “We believe it to be in your best interest that we record and store everything you look up, and read, and say, and write, and post, even though we don’t think you or the courts need to know that we are. When we get a chance to look through our data, we’ll be in touch with you.” I should probably check in with Harold before I give his worms away. That wouldn’t be right. Those are his worms, and he hasn’t broken any laws, so he should have a say in what goes on with them. God bless you and protect you Mr. Snowden. Harold, Lisa and I admire you for your courage.
Darkness has fallen. Harold is dreaming to Mickey Hart’s Planet Drum album now. It’s also very pleasant music to write by during the evening hours, and I expect that if I keep going for a while there will be two or three more Mickey Hart albums played. If I’m still going when Lisa retires for the evening I’ll have to turn Mickey down. Way, way down so we don’t keep her awake. This wall between Harold’s Room and our bedroom must not be insulated as I thought it was, because sound goes right through it. I thought it was formerly an exterior porch wall and the porch was turned into a sunroom later, but now I think not. I have been seriously considering putting a layer of acoustic panels or tiles on the wall of the bedroom. I believe that would be far easier than pulling the vinyl siding off of the wall next to me and doing it in here. Let’s see. I’m retired now. Maybe if I can get the credit card debt I am about to accrue to support my needs and wants until my SSA payments start in late July paid down to an acceptable level I can afford to do that next year. Harold says he is all for that. He can’t feel the subwoofer vibrations when we are turned down to our current “Lisa is in bed” level. And of course if I put on my headphones he can’t hear or feel squat. We have discussed this several times, usually right after Lisa pounds on the wall. “Two thumbs up for some sort of sound deadening material and a few more decibels at night,” he says. I believe all we need now is one more vote from you know who on the other side of the wall to achieve a consensus. The surface of said wall will have to meet her approval, and so the materials we use will depend on that aspect of the project. I suspect we’ll be using some sort of smooth faced material to match the other walls, but she might surprise me and want some texture there as an accent. I hope if that’s the case it’s not too difficult to clean.
It has occurred to me that I have told you a bit about Lisa’s family, but not mine. I should rectify that because they are mentioned, but you know nothing about them, other than a bit about my father, and I believe I mentioned my first wife, Fran, the mother of my three sons, or my three Johns as I like to call them. As I believe I have said before, she is a wonderful person and I still care for her a great deal, and so does Lisa. Regarding the progeny produced in our twenty-three years together, the first one is Sean, twenty years younger than I, born in August of 1971, who I grew up with, and he with me, and he remains my best male friend in all the world (Lisa is of course my best female friend, and I must differentiate so as not to offend her), and Lisa and I both believe he is one of the finest human beings we have ever known. Sean David was the first John, though I did not know it at the time. He was actually named after Sean Connery, who I have loved as an actor since I first remember seeing him as a child at the Columbia Theater with my mother Virginia’s brother, uncle Ray, Junior as he was called, and my cousin Mike, in Darby O’Gill And The Little People. The banshee still “haunts” me, but I love it. Sean Connery haunts Lisa. Sorry Mr. Connery. She does not care for you very much and refuses to watch anything you’re in if she can avoid it due to some comments you made regarding women, and we’ll let it go at that.
I have digressed again. Back to my sons. Sean was thirteen when Ian Bruce David was born, He is named after Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. You know how Harold and I feel about them. Bruce is a dear friend of mine, a fine man, like a second father to all three of my sons who call him Pap, and his wife Chris, one of the sweetest humans I’ve ever met, who they call Nan, is like a second mother. I decided, with Fran’s consent, that we also add the David as a common bond between my sons, and myself, since my parents chose that for me, and in correlation with the House of David. I guess my early church going days got the better of me on that one, but it just felt right. (Thank you Ginny!) Ian is an exceptionally intelligent, multi-talented young man, who, like me, has a bit of trouble deciding what he wants to pursue, and is somewhat volatile in his reactions to the madness of modern society. He has been making great strides lately in learning to take things with a grain of salt, and I am very proud of him for that. He can better focus on what he wants or needs to do when he can hold his anger and frustration in check and think things through before he reacts. Of course that is true for all of us.
Evan Michael David was born two years and two weeks after Ian. Mike and Karen were our neighbors who lived in a small cabin down the hill from us. You could not ask for better. We got along famously, and we had a lot of good times with them, and Michael (think archangel Michael) is an excellent middle name. We missed them dearly when they moved to Newburgh. Evan’s first name came about because Fran and I thought, we have one son with an Irish name, and one with a Scottish name, so we need another Celtic name, and so we bought a baby name book. Lo-and-behold! Sean and Ian are both derivatives of John! And Evan is the Welsh derivative of John! We loved the name Evan, and so we had our three Johns. Evan is just as smart and talented as his brothers, chose graphic arts as his focus, and I have seen some remarkable work he has done. One thing about Evan: he is the quiet one. You have heard to be wary of the quiet ones? Believe it. You do not want to do anything to make Evan angry. He will not forget it, and unlike his brother he believes in the saying that “Revenge is a dish best served up cold.” Sooner or later, there WILL be a reckoning. Ask Ian about that.
I have not mentioned my granddaughters Alex and Zoe prior to this point quite simply because they have no interaction with Harold. Sean’s daughters are unfortunately somewhat famous in pediatric medicine circles. I won’t go into the details because it would take a whole different book, but they are the only two children in the world as far as the medical community knows who are afflicted with both Cockayne Syndrome and Trichothiodystrophy. They are sweet, wonderful and happy girls, both in their mid-teens, and a joy to be around, and like their father and grandfather they both love music. Neither of them speak, though Zoe does know some sign language. Their bodies are aging rapidly, and Zoe, who once ran through the house like a wild child raised by wolves, now walks as if she were a ninety year old woman with severe osteoarthritis. Alex has never walked. They can’t go out to play because their skin will not tolerate the sunlight for anything but short periods of time, as in bus rides to school, or trips to Riley Children’s Hospital. We love them both dearly. If you want the full details, just do a web search: Alex and Zoe Appel. That simple. It’s all there in newspaper articles and such. The girls shame me in my concerns for my silly little mundane problems. They both have more fortitude and courage in their pinkies than I do in my entire body. I would gladly trade my own life if they could be miraculously cured and could lead full, normal lives themselves. Gladly. They would take good care of Harold for me if they could. I believe Harold would understand. I keep telling you, he’s special, one of a kind, as they are special, and the only two of their kind. They would understand too.