Between the editing of GET LAMP and the hospital stay, January was a thin month for entries. Sorry about that.

Tasks on GET LAMP are now becoming longer, with longer breaks. (This is good.) So I have some time to at least write a bit here and get into the swing of things. I wanted to mention the good thing that came out of my hospital stay, since it’s notable how things have changed for me since then.

When we last left our historian, he ended up staying in the hospital for a few days because of an infection in his lower intestine. Oh, did he love that.

Bathroom breaks, which had been once every 40 minutes, became once an hour, then down to 30 minutes, then slowly back to what I guess most people would consider “normal”, i.e. once or twice every 2-3 days. This was painful and unpleasant, but I was in the hospital and an awful lot of people were checking up on me, and I found out how much my blood pressure medicine makes a difference when I was off it for a day, so as far as things went, all is well and good. I didn’t stay overnight in a hospital for years and years, until I was about 36, and since then I’ve done it three times. Either I’m getting sicker or I’m more likely to get myself somewhere and quick at the sign of medical need. Either way, I thought this hospital did just fine.

Everyone called it a bowel infection except this one doctor, who called it Dysentery. Bear in mind, calling something Dysentery is like calling it Hysteria. It might be vaguely accurate in a naming sense but it’s medically worthless – anything could fall under that, stuff that is totally at cross-purposes for treatment, and so it falls out of favor over the decades in favor of, you know, real terms. But he said Dysentery and somehow that made the whole thing hilarious.

It looked for a while I was going to get a Colonoscopy. Then it didn’t. Then they told me they were going to put me on antibiotics and send me on my way. Which they did.

I was given some pretty strong antibiotics, I guess. Cipro was one of them. I’ve since gotten rid of the containers so I couldn’t tell you the other. They tasted awful. I took them properly, and knew enough not to stop taking them when I felt “better”, since these things need to run their course and kill all of the bacteria/whosis.

But a strange thing happened a week later. I got back my sense of smell.

I didn’t even know I HAD lost my sense of smell, but I guess I did, because it came roaring back. Apparently I must have had a sinus infection or some other joy in my skull and the antibiotics wiped it out. I could breathe easier and I could smell, well, everything. I can smell trees when I pass them. I can smell car exhaust where cars have somewhat recently been. I can smell decay and smoke and grass and animals and clothes, and believe me, I couldn’t smell this stuff at ALL before.

Food tastes crazy now. I see why people like canned junk food, because I can suddenly taste the cartoon insanity of junk food, the bouquet of meat, the glissando of mixed liquids.

I really have no idea how long this veil has been over me – at least half a decade, but maybe much longer. I can’t remember ever being able to breathe this well through my nose, for example. And I can’t recall walking up staircases and smelling days-old scents of whatever cleaner was used on them.

It is an amazing situation, and one I will make the most of.

But more than that, there’s a feeling my brain has, where it has stumbled onto a whole new (or apparently long-forgotten) way of regarding the world. The whole thing has a veneer of newness about it – everything has a new way to be regarded and my mind is heavily geared towards exploring and enjoying new things. So now it is. That this situation would occur to me at my age is, well, a really nice way to make up for a week of hell with the sickness.

And how was your month?

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So, there I was editing a movie and being a historian. Around Tuesday, I started to feel a little unwell. I decided to take some rest. Later in the day, though, I REALLY felt unwell, and began a torrid lost few days involving a bathroom, an overused bed, and quite interesting dreams. After a few days with greater and greater pain, I checked into the hospital.

After a battery of tests, I have been told I got dysentery.

The best guess is undercooked meat. I’m pretty bad about cooking snack meat all the way through, and the lottery finally ran out. I’m now on antibiotics, I did not contract something really killer like E. Coli (that was what the battery of tests were) and I will probably be discharged out of the hospital later today.

That’s a few days I didn’t edit, so deadlines on the movie are coming up. I will be redoubling efforts. I was able to do some non-editing business for the film in my hospital (free wi-fi!) but other than that, it was a very unfortunate time in the penalty box, and I have definitely had better weeks.

Some of my weblog entries sit in a simmering state while I look them over, so this year has looked decidedly thin for posting, but now it looks really thin. Will do my best, but the movie must take priority. I have a lot of people waiting on this thing, and I want it the best it can be. I’ve assembled a great team of people working with me on the finishing moves, so it’s going to be something else.

Anyway, the moral of the story is DO NOT GET DYSENTERY. If I save one life with that advice, it was all worth it. Dysentery, kids. It’s not cool.

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Pete Chiola died on November 9th. If you were lucky, you knew him. If you weren’t lucky, let me make you a little more lucky.

Depending on the nature of a divorce and the circumstances afterwards, and the age of any children and a whole bunch of factors, the addition of new strangers into your family can be taken any number of ways.  In my case, I took the policy that if a guy put up with some woman’s kids, spent a lot of time with her, and did so for years on end, then stepfather he was. And in that realm, Pete was a stepfather to me.

For over a decade he was a part of my life, from my barely-double-digit years through to when I went off to college. This was post the shock of divorce and in that wasteland that filled my days with discomfit and awkwardness.  Years before I’d found solace and joy in computers and still do. With a father in the technical field and a mother in the artistic one, I was a strange blend of poetry and programming.  Running around and sports was not my preference, and I was more likely to shut myself up in a self-constructed kingdom of recovered TVs and Atari hardware in the rooms I shared with my brother.

While I don’t recall being particularly awful to Pete when he started showing up, I’m probably just kidding myself. I’m a bristly person, and I am sure that lacking any real say or choice in 1981, I was just as strange and withdrawn as anything else.

Date the mom, know the kids. Anything else leads to a lot of big trouble and a lot of unpleasantness. Pete did his best with the three rambunctious children that were part of the package, and which were an additional three on top of the kids he’d had with his own failed marriage.

What I remember most about Pete was his voice and his swagger. He was older than my dad, and his skills were in building and working with his hands. I’d been told by my mom that he’d lost some of his hearing over the years, and that explained his volume. His volume was loud.  “Jeezus Christ, kid!” was the prefix to a whole host of inquisitive questions, like why I was inside all the time or what I was up to or even passing the time. Imagine puckering your lips a little and raising your head up and to the right, and then snapping it back – this was Pete’s reaction when I dropped some sort of silly whopper of a tale or made some crazy statement.

I remember a couple points in there where there was some attempt to integrate the shuffling little Jason into the rhythms of life as Pete knew them. They were all failures, but I have not forgotten them.

I recall an attempt to bring me on a worksite, to help with some basic aspects of lifting things and holding stuff up. I was not built that way, didn’t have the upper body strength and definitely didn’t have the stamina. All I had was my ability to talk constantly, and contrive more and more exquisite excuses as to why I couldn’t be doing actual physical work. Pete was not impressed.  I was, however, wowed by his stamina, our getting up early in the morning, grabbing coffee, and heading down to the site in Pete’s pickup truck. That truck was a part of my life for a good long time.

Pete was country. Loved country music, and passed that to me – it might seem strange, for those who know of me and the stuff I do, but I love country as much as I do a lot of other music. Pete had favorite songs, songs by George Strait and Willie Nelson and I got to hear all of them, joyfully sung to himself or out loud while working on various stuff. At one point, my Mom and Pete made money on the side as country line dancing teachers. I remember a couple lessons teaching me the basic steps. I never got into it, but I did buy some boots for myself, and I had a pretty swell cowboy hat for a time. Yes, I am not making any of this up.

I didn’t know him as “Pistol Pete” – he was just “Pete” to me, but a hell of a lot of people knew him, hung with him, spent time out on his boat or working with him, and they were better for it.

We butted heads, sure. He’d already raised kids, and wasn’t into raising a whole other set again. I was a bizarre enigma of a kid, and my love of microcomputers was weird and strange. Again, I don’t recall any all-out fights, but I do recall raised voices. Still, I got some really sweet computer gifts from my mom under his watch, so there was some approval there, or at least a tacit sign-off to what the eldest was into.

After a while, he and my mom split up, and I didn’t see Pete much at all again. I was in college, like I said, and so I had my own trails to ride on.

I’d thought about Pete every once in a while, occasionally blasted “Okie from Muskogee” by Merle Haggard, and lived my life. His print was indelible and a part of what I am. I’m sorry we didn’t spend more time together. I’m glad for what we got.

Here’s the obituary:

Peter L. Chiola lifetime resident of Bedford Hills, NY died on November 9, 2009 He was 79 years old. Mr. Chiola worked as a machinist for Kensico Tube in Mt. Kisco. Mr. Chiola was born June 29, 1930 in Mt. Kisco, to Peter and Carmella Placona Chiola. He was educated in Bedford Hills, NY where he graduated from high school. He earned an associates degree from Westchester Community College in Valhalla, NY. Mr. Chiola served in the Air National Guard stationed in Newfoundland. Mr. Chiola will be remembered for his devotion to his family and friends, his love of country music and dancing. He was one of the first dance instructors in the tri-state area and was known to his dancing friends as “Pistol Pete”. He also had a love for boating, fishing and blackjack. He is survived by his beloved daughter Laurie of Bedford Hills. Devoted son Peter J. (Barbara) of Bedford Hills, Cherished grandchildren Taylor and Justin. Caring former wife Terry Chiola of Bedford Hills, and loving long-time companion Cathy Mastracchio of Peekskill, NY caring sister Grace Teixeira of Mt. Kisco, and many loving nieces and nephews.

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