Did the cardiology stress test and echocardiogram this morning; I messed up their test by being too used to a treadmill. (Not complaining!) Two weeks of on and off chest pains–granted, it was during air alert days–and today they couldn’t induce a single one, not a single cardiac cough nor shortness of breath.

Well then. Might as well combine trips like a responsible driver during Spare the Air and finally go order my new glasses across the street.

The possibly-as-much-as-40-ish fellow taking care of me asked about insurance blahblahblah, the usual, and then took me completely by surprise by asking if I were a member of AARP.

Okay, I must be getting old, that took me straight back to a mental connection to it, fair or not, now, that I have never been able to shake: to the scene in the news of well-dressed well-to-do old people rioting–there is no other word for it–with Dan Rostenkowski, then chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, cowering in his car in Chicago as they pounded on it. They were angry at his quite reasonable bill proposing to modify Social Security benefits for those who have utterly no need of the money. (Let’s see…checking Wikipedia… A version of that bill passed in ’83? Sounds about right.) They found it the highest insult that their monthly checks might become tainted in their own minds as, you know, welfare, their pride more important than any appeals to generational fairness. Tax their benefits?!

Right. And Warren Buffett needs those SS checks too. We’re still arguing over that, aren’t we.

Threatening to throw Rostenkowski out of office wasn’t good enough–they started rocking his car to the point he thought they were going to flip it over.

(Side note, added later: from that Wikipedia page, I’m guessing my memory was wrong and that it was actually the seniors being asked to help pay for their new Medicare prescription coverage that caused that scene. Anyway.)

Knowing it would take far more words and time to relay or explain any of that than the situation at all called for, I stifled, swallowed, nearly lost it, and then finally said in just the very mildest voice you could imagine, “That would be a loud No.”

He’d been watching my face, waiting for an answer, and at that the guy lost it, laughing, and then I did too, adding, “And besides! I’m only 52!”

He tried throwing in a “You can sign up at 49 these days” and I motioned, Cut! Cut! Noooooo!

He was rolling.

And dang.

There it was. Chest pain. Just enough. (And how’s that for irony.)

I tell you, the thing is as wily and obnoxious as a squirrel with an open jar of peanut butter in sight on the counter and the kitchen door left open. Thank you very much, with the help of my doctors I am keeping that lid on tight and the door firmly closed.

I spent the afternoon puzzling at great length over a pattern idea that had been bouncing around in there for a year, reacting to the day by trying to finally get that unfinished idea to become one with the yarn.

Got it. Good. Time to buckle down and get to work.

p.s. I have to come back and add: watching your heart valve on a screen is really, really cool. You’re seeing the physicality of your very life in front of you, and it’s clapping its hands for joy.