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We're talking pain, people. Serious, gut-wrenching, horrible nasty pain... 3:30 in the morning there's-no-way-in-hell-I-can-sleep is-there-a-doctor-in-the-house PAIN.
Yes, at 3:30 am (Eastern Standard Time, of course), I suddenly sat up in bed and cried out. I gripped my stomach where the pain was located (Mistake Number One), which, of course, intensified said pain. I cried out louder. Hawthorne leaped onto the bed and Rich says in that half-asleep-adrenaline-induced-wide-awake voice, "Are you okay?"
I'm sure the words "Uh, no, duh!" raced through my mind on some subconscious level. But in what was to be a theme for the next three days of doing the wrong thing to try to get said pain to disappear, I uttered, "Get me some Tums..."
I do believe I chewed about 20. Which, if we have to keep count, was Mistake Number Two. I laid there, willing away the pain. Every two seconds, a "Baby, are you okay?" drifted across the painful universe of which I now inhabited. I would grunt occasionally, tried laying in various positions, all to no avail. At about 4:30 am, I went to the bathroom and grabbed the bottle of "Pepto Max" and proceeded to guzzle. ( Mistake Number Three...) I went out to the couch, thinking of giving myself a rest from the "Are you okay"s and him a chance to sleep before he went into work--neither goal of which was accomplished...
Even though I knew the doc wasn't yet in, at 7:00 I started calling the office every five minutes, just in case. I called work to say I wouldn't be there. I drank more Pepto Max. Chewed more Tums. Continued to grip and ungrip my stomach.
I got an appointment at 11:10 am. I left for the appointment to the doctor's office which was just 20 minutes away at 10:00 am, again, "just in case."
Along the way I continued sipping the Pepto, alternately hitting the passenger seat and steering wheel as the pain intensified. I groaned for 45 long minutes in the waiting room, and another 30 minutes in the little room.
And why--why o why o why--do doctors insist on asking how you are? Maybe it's just me, but it's not like I make emergency appointments just to catch up on my doctors latest round of golf, you know? But there it was and I grunted something which I hoped would convey the unnecessariness of small talk and the urgent need for medical care.
It took two more hours (prodding, poking, six X-rays, three vials of blood, and a chatty nurse) before TWO doctors came back in to my tiny world. The first thing to cross my mind was "Damn, who's the fox?" which was quickly followed by "Oh, shit--I'm dying!" (One: The fox was the new resident there to learn something new and exciting, apparently. Two: I wasn't dying...)
"You know how everyone keeps telling you you're full of it? They're right!" Ha, ha, very funny... PAIN!!!!!! FIX!!!!! NOW!!!!!! I smiled wearily (at least, I think I did...) Long and short? "Take a suppository--you'll feel much better in five to six hours."
Uh-huh. I run to the grocery store, buy laxatives, suppositories, three gallons of water, a case of Ginger Ale (with the punching of the passenger seat and steering wheel, of course) and run home to lay on my couch. I read the laxative bottle: "Take 1 pill every four hours until bowel movement is achieved."
I took three. (Still counting? Mistake Number Four.)
I read the suppository bottle: "Insert 1 into the rectum once a day until bowel movement is achieved." Done.
I sat and gripped my stomach. I turned on South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut until I found out laughter wasn't the best medicine in this case. Two hours later when I still hadn't "made a movement," I "inserted" another suppository. (Mistake Number Five.) Rich comes home, "How are you feeling?"
Grunt.
All through the night I grip my stomach, unable to sleep as putting any pressure on any portion of my stomach (front, back, left, right) causes pain. PAIN.
With my dark circles, tired husband, and now a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10 pain, I make a call at 9:00 am Tuesday morning. "Help..." I feebly whisper to the receptionist. "Go to the emergency room" is the advice I am given.
So I go. Rich drives, so I satisfy my pain by hitting myself in the thighs, the dashboard, tearing at the seat belt.
I have to fill out paperwork. I commit to answers that "sound good" as Rich tries to fill them out for me. As I sit the almost three hours with CNN blasting me from one side and a child who's cries you could set a watch to hitting me on the other, I gripped my stomach. The child continued:
wahhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhh
wahhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhh
uh-huh-uh-huh-uh-huh-uh-huh
wahhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhh
wahhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhh
uh-huh-uh-huh-uh-huh-uh-huh
Just as I was about to commit murder, I hear my name called out and I race for the escape from the clock-work child. I am told to wear one of those "gowns"--you know, the kind feared by those with less-than-perfect bodies but work great in porno's involving doctors and nurses? After a few more hours of X-rays and blood vials drained from my body (during which time the Clockwork Kid has been placed in the bed next to mine...), I am no longer "full of it" but "full of gas." Between the antacids slowing my metabolism and the laxatives and suppositories taken over the recommended dose, I have succeeded in going from full of stuck solids to full of trapped gasses! Should I even bother repeating here what the doctor at the ER said? ("They put directions on labels for a reason...") No shit, Sherlock. Cease my pain and I'll be glad to follow some directions! But until then? No holds barred!
Then comes to really, really mean part: "Absolutely NO Apples." Something about pectin. I dunno, I just know that my love affair with America's favorite snack is now my bane. My nemesis. My enemy.
That was followed by "...and for the next ten days, no carbs, no bananas (only TOO easy to give up--not that I've had one in 30+ years...), no potatoes, no rice, no bread, no pizza, no cupcakes, cookies, cakes, pies, APPLES... Only vegetables, vegetables, vegetables for the next TEN DAYS..." (Shoot me now, shoot me now...) "...and be sure to add the 5 P's: Plums, Pears, Peaches, Prunes, and Pineapples to your diet."
"Meat?"
"Chicken or pork, nothing red."
(Shoot me now, shoot me now...) "For how long?"
"After ten days, you may begin to reintroduce--slowly--potatoes and rice."
"And steak?"
"Not for at least three months."
"And apples?"
"Not for at least three months."
"You're killing me doc."
"Most people say that after I say 'no steak.'"
"You've never had my mother's Jewish Apple Cake..." (Sigh...)
"You're Jewish?"
"No..."
"Oh... No. Apples."
I now wonder what she would have said had I said "yes" to being Jewish...
The pain is slowly dissipating... through plentiful "emissions" both from above and below... And I may have diverticulitis! (For once, something bad inherited from my father, not my mother...) Hooray! A full CT scan is scheduled for next Saturday... A machine will virtually rape me from throat to butt to "get a sense" of "what's going on in there." They may even take more blood--who's to know?
So much for an apple a day...
After you've worked and almost 55 hour work week, you look forward to Friday night dinner almost reverently. You arrive at the buffet, greet your friends and family, and begin to chow down on lo-mien, General Tsao's, egg rolls, crab legs--you know, you stuff yourself silly with Americanized foreign foods. You're having a great time, laughing and talking. The bill arrives with a cookie for everyone, and per custom, we throw them into the air, and wherever the pointed ends face, that's the person who gets that fortune (within reasonable proximity, of course...)
We open them one by one and read off the little vague prophecies: "Careful what you wish for," "Happiness can only be found from within, "Unicorns dance in your shadows"--cheesy stuff like that.
... and then I open mine...
To get what you truly desire, you must work harder.
"Excuse me?!" I've just busted my ass all week meeting silly deadlines on green things for really awful people who feel they are important and I must work harder?!?!?! If I were a bit more superstitious--or religious, for that matter--I might think that the cosmos is having a great belly laugh at my expense (not that my friends didn't get a good one from this...), but what the hell? They could have at least flowered that shit up a bit--you know, something like "Hard work brings great contentment" or "To live for work is working to live." Hell, I probably would have even been okay with "Work sucks, get used to it." Okay, maybe not so much on that last one either...
You have to wonder how bad the economy is when even fortune cookies are filled with doom and gloom...
Thanks to lol god. Click on the pic to enlarge.
Um, if you don't have a Facebook account, you probably won't get the full effect, but... whatever...
Winter holds me prisoner, dear reader. As I stare out at my (mostly) lifeless yard at the grave blanket someone gave the cutesy name of "snow" (it sounds so cuddly, doesn't it?) I dream of walking once again in lush grasses, smelling my flowers, mowing my lawn, watering my vegetables...
There isn't much I can do about those things. Spring is something you have to wait for, you know? It isn't like I can construct a giant bubble around my house (I wish!) and grow fresh tomatoes year round (my neighbor mentioned something about his property value living next to a bubble, but I was only half-paying attention...).
But I've started the steps to changing other things--you see, I had this weird and crazy idea of a "three year plan" (I tried thinking of a cutesy name for it, but for some reason, Rich didn't get what I meant when I said "Restructured Life Planning"...): in brief, to declutter and streamline our lives. Get rid of the hundreds of boxes of crap in the attic, junk in the garage, and the hundreds of other items in this house that we don't use, don't look at, don't need, and are cleverly hidden throughout the house. Dishes, candle holders, VHS video tapes, clothing, etc. Also included in this grand "3 Year Plan" is to reduce debt by using all proceeds from selling this crap for credit card debt only, to "use or lose" the precious weight equipment collecting dust, and (this is where I received some hesitancy) severely cut back on "collectibles" that we have moved with us through five residences and now reside in the attic (this portion of the 3 Year Plan may take 5 years... or 10...).
I'm tired of waiting, you know? I'm tired of the excuses, the "Next Saturday's" and the "On my next day offs" and the "This Springs" that we constantly tell ourselves when it comes to this stuff. This is Clutter. This is Junk. This needs to change.
And I think I finally got Richie on board with me on this. I've already started, personally. Tonight alone I listed three things on eBay that I was holding on to for no good reason whatsoever. A Fisher Price basketball net, a Fisher Price Circus Train, and two Fisher Price Ferris Wheels. These are things that gave me fuzzy-warms about my childhood, but the nieces and nephews could care less about when they come over to visit. Images of them playing with these used to run through my head, but I realize they have different toys, newer toys to play with.
And I'm out of excuses to keep these things. Yes, it's nice to have the memories, but that's what pictures are for. What getting together with the family is for. Not to sit on a shelf and collect dust. Someone out there will treasure these items as I did, and hopefully, will be placed into the hands of a child who will love them as much as I did.
And even if they don't? I won't have to move them, dust them, or worry about them in any way anymore. And my life will be just a tad bit simpler for it. A tad less cluttered, a tad less time-consuming, and just a touch easier to keep neat and clean. And hopefully, just a little bit closer to being debt-free.
I've wasted enough time living with these things and not using them as they were meant to be used. And while I'm sure there's a collector or two reading this and thinking, "He's getting rid of that stuff? What a fool!", then I request you go to eBay, look up the seller dragonkeeper25, and buy those items. After all, my newly-designated trash can be your new treasure.
No more waiting for dead dreams--I'm off to make new ones happen with the 3 (to 5) Year Plan.
Well, that, and a hope this will keep me busy enough in February not to notice the cold...
Rich: Hey, can you take the ash out?
Me: ... No.
Rich: Wha-- Please?
Me: No.
Rich: You are going out to smoke, right?
Me: Yes.
Rich: Why can't you take the ash out with you?
Me: I will next time.
Rich: Please?
Me: No.
Rich: Please?
Me: Who are you, my nephew? N. O. No. I will do it later.
Rich: But I need the room!
Me: My mistake, your actually baby Jesus, not my nephew.
Rich: Ha-hah. Now, please?
Me: I could have been done with my cigarette by now, and you could have already taken it out yourself by now.
Rich: And you could have taken it out by now.
Me: Your point? I'm not the one who wants it empty "right now," am I?
Rich: You're in a mood.
Me: See you in five.
Rich: But--
Yes, I, too, can be a bitch. But you knew that, didn't you?
It must be too much to ask for five minutes of peace, you know? And I don't even have kids! (Well, actual kids--I have plenty of mentally-aged children, however...) All I want is to finish one thing that's been sitting on my desk all week. Just. One.
I'd also like to come home and not hear Hawthorne pretending to be Jeff Gordon as he speed-races with that freakin' ball back and forth, back and forth...
And is it too much to ask for one day above 35 degrees? I mean, seriously--unless the magnetic poles have shifted that much this past year, this is not the North Pole, am I right? One. Day. Above. Thirty. Five.
On the brighter side, Obama is beginning to clean up that disastrous mess Shrubya made--you know, with everything. Closing Gitmo, disassociating the United States with torture (when did we stop respecting individual rights and human dignity? Oh, that's right--when the "compassionate conservative" was in the White House...), helping soldiers to do their jobs by making them adhere to the U.S. Army Field Manual with regards to detainees, getting the lobbyists (mostly) out, pay freezes within the government to stem the hemorrhaging, halting the disastrous Mexico City Policy further ensuring that women will have the same freedoms and choices as our men... His first two days have made me happier than--well, happier then just having Shrubya out of office ever could have done.
And while most of my conservative friends bitch on Facebook about how they will "miss a man of principle" in the White House and continue to doom-say an administration less than two days old despite the fact that he himself is a Christian--well, I don't know what to tell them...
Obama has a lot to live up to, granted. A lot of promises and pretty speeches were made, and the honeymoon period in which he is accomplishing all of this won't last forever. Shrubya set the bar so low a goldfish could do a good job as president at this point--but I'm hoping Obama sets it so high it'll be hard for anyone to surpass him in action, eloquence, and the prestige he is beginning to return to the highest office in the land.
If only I could be so effective at work... But then again, I'm not president... Yet...
Thorn: It's... people... Soylent Green... is people!
Okay, so it's been about two years since Scribe recommended this movie to me. Yes, I have that many movies que'd in my Netflix. So sue me. There's a lot of movies I want to watch.
I forget even what conversation we were having over at God V. Darwin, but I'm sure it was a hum-dinger (they usually tend to be over there...), and Scribe mentioned something about this movie that (horrible actor) Charlton Heston was in, Soylent Green. Having never seen the movie, I added it and (two years later) I was surprised to find that sometimes Charlton is a semi-decent actor (it lasts about five minutes in one of the beginning scenes...)--much better than he was in The Omega Man (remade into I Am Legend, starring Will Smith), but I died laughing at the end--partly because Rich hates it when he can't get closure, but mostly because it was just sooo over-the-top!
And--perhaps this was just me, I'll have to ask Rich later--I wasn't the least bit shocked, surprised, or even remotely disgusted at the end. (Perhaps I should send in a resume to the Donner Party?) But one thing kept running through my head in this not-really-post-apocalyptic-but-certainly-seems-like-the-end-is-near movie: Do you think the Catholic church (or any rabid, controlling fundamentalist church-like organization including but not strictly limited to evangelical Baptists and the like...) would change their stands on sex, procreation, abortion, or birth control, if the world ever does get to such a state of being? China herself has very strict birthing laws due to just such over-crowding type problems! (DISCLAIMER: I am not condoning the practices and laws, just pointing them out...)
I mean, listen: Right now the position is "All life is sacred," ergo, "Abortion is murder," thus "All women must be incubators whether they want to be or not," and as such, "Women cannot have the right to determine when and if they give birth to another human being" or "They are murderers." (One wonders what keeps them from supporting an amendment to the Constitution which states as much...)
Granted, ever since the mid- to late-seventeen hundreds (Okay, okay, probably earlier, but this isn't exactly a history lesson...), the church hasn't been exactly on the "cutting edge," so to speak, on the advancement of knowledge and scientific truths, granted. In fact, most times the church in its various forms and splinters seems hell-bent (no pun intended) on preventing any type of knowledge or thoughts which don't flow directly from that which they hold sacred--their interpretation of their holy book (Note, not the book itself...), and thus we are left with this unbreachable schism between "those of faith" and "those of reason," with a moderate number floating about the middle trying to make sense of it all, hoping to stumble on the Holy Grail of speech and reason that will appeal to everyone and end this silly debate over who killed who...
Of course, the eating of Soylent Green could just be like communion every day--except for the part where they aren't all really the body of Christ. But if you're Catholic, just get a priest and Sha-Zam! it suddenly IS the body of Christ (you sick little cannibals...), and I suppose that would be one way for the Catholic Church to get behind the whole "let's use our dead for food" position while still allowing for the over-population as a blessing, a "quiver of arrows," as it were. Can you hear it? The official Vatican pronouncement?
"Thus, as has been ordained since the beginning of time,
as homosexuals cannot procreate, no Soylent Green for them
since they did not produce the food which God has blessed
us with; But no condoms! For man shall know woman and produce
after their own kind so that their kind may eat them as small
green wafers upon their demise as they are transmuted into the
body of Christ for our salvation and nourishment."
Of course, there'll be a lot of kneeling, a holy hand grenade or two, something in Latin for the older folks who haven't been made into Grinch-wafers yet, and a boys choir who had to eat their own balls as Grinch-wafers just to hit those really really high notes, but you get the picture--there's nothing a religion can't spin to keep the crowd under biblical control... Their version, of course, not those guys or them guys or those really far out guys...
If you're Baptist, I suppose the best you could hope for was that this future Earth was the reign of the Anti-Christ and you just happened to miss the rapture...
And if you're anything else? Ask your rabbi, pastor, imam, whomever--I'm sure they can find a verse or platitude to ease your troubled mind. After all, that's what they're there for...
But I digress at this point (I know, too late...) simply to point out that, even in the future?--all the Furniture could play with was a very bad imitation of Pong...
How odd is it that I find the lack of good video games in the future worse than people eating Sponge Bob-shaped people guts?
You're right--I suppose I will send that resume off to the Donner Party now...
If you haven't noticed, I've been uploading older (as well as ancient) family photos onto my MySpace. After all, I have hundreds--no, thousands! of photos from the family dating back at least to the mid 1800s. Quite the treasure trove, if you're into staring at pics of people who are long since worm food that are your ancestors...
As I reached for the third box, ready to start placing them into the appropriate manila folders by name in the hanging file rack, I pull out a plastic baggie labeled, in my grandmother's handwriting, "Old Zartman Family Photos."
I dump the baggie onto the coffee table, and the picture above is the first photo I see...
A big hairy dog sitting next to a monkey with the label "May 1956." No names, no locations (although I do believe this is my great-grandmother Zartman's backyard...), no nothing...
You have to wonder about a woman who places such a photo into a baggie and labels it "Old Zartman Family Photos." My grandmother didn't exactly take the "Zartman" name willingly, but...
There's a story here, I can feel it... (That IS a dog, isn't it???)
This is a great shot my friend Trace took at our house at the holidays, the puppy lying peacefully under the holiday tree...
And I shouldn't call him my puppy so much as my dog--after all, he will be nine years old this May...
(sigh...)
As my mother says, only the good die young. So we should have him around for a while yet... :)
Just wanted to share this. Working on something lengthy, so enjoy the short posts while you can. ;)
So first, dear reader, let me upload the fantastic photos of the new bathroom as promised. As someone mentioned earlier, yes, it is quite the--hmmm--"bitch" to keep clean, but only because my dog is mostly white haired and loves to spend his days apparently lying on the floor in there... Be that as it may, however, I love the new colors as--if I had the wherewithal and gumption to have taken some "before" photos, all you would have seen was white walls, white linoleum, white ceiling... Very blah... Presenting my "Sexy Back" bathroom:
In keeping with that theme (sexy, not... ya know, "bland bathrooms"...) imagine my surprise when I slipped on a pair of size 36 jeans... comfortably! Just slightly over a year since I started my "I-can't-believe-this-is-a-diet" diet, I've gone done from a tight size 42 to a comfortable 36, am now on the last notch on my size 44 belt (meaning for the first time in... FOREVER... I have to buy SMALLER clothes!!), AND, feeling deliriously optimistic, I also put on my ARMY T-shirt today and...
IT FITS!!!
All this, and I haven't lifted a weight or kept from eating something I really wanted...
It's amazing what you can do when you exert a little self control, you know? I'm almost giddy about going to a doctor just to get weighed to see how much poundage I've actually lost... [Knock on wood...]
Maybe I'll just buy a scale at Wal-Mart or something...
Something to go with my sexy new bathroom... and my sexy new waistline...
Another year, another broken promise...
Remember the 80s, dear reader? Perhaps some of you are too young. Those of us fortunate enough to be born in the early- to mid-seventies have such fond memories. Blade Runner had us easting sushi while technological pyramids stood stark against the smog-filled sky and hover cars flitted about with all manner of life. Robocop had crime-ridden streets and half-dead cops running around unable to overcome their programming but still able to stand for truth and justice. Back the the Future gave us the ability to make a better future for ourselves with time machines that looked like cool cars, skate boards that hovered, and televisions that changed channel on command... There was Running Man, Demolition Man, Total Recall, Terminator, Alien, The Fifth Element... Okay, some of those are verging into the 90s, but you get the idea...
I still can't afford that robot that fetches the paper for you in the morning--and I don't even get the paper! Yet the movies promised me hover cars...
A trip to Disneyland at Epcot in Tomorrowland had giant arms slowly moving up and down rows upon rows of corn fields, testing the soil, maintaining the crops and feeding the world. A purple dragon named Figment extolled the virtuous land of tomorrow where disease was extinct, Earth was the breadbasket feeding the colonies of Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn, and wars were played out in a virtual reality where no death occurred. (Granted, I was maybe seven or eight at the time, and the ride probably didn't extol near this much virtue, but that's what makes reminiscing so wonderful--it's as glorious as you remember it being, not as cheesy as it probably was...). Did I mention Tomorrowland had hover cars in the near future...?
Science fiction has always held a special place in my heart. I grew up reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and many other titles of various authors, and I always had imagined my first car would be a hover-stang that could change color every day if I so desired, talk to me like Kit, and shoot torpedoes out of the headlights... (Okay, that last one I added after I started driving--I never realized how many idiots pass the drivers exam every year until that point...)
I remember one year in seventh grade, the teacher, Mrs. Sassaman of the blond-hair-so-bleached-it-was-greenish, caught one of my classmates drawing a picture of a snowman. Mrs. Sassaman held up the drawing to show the class and proclaimed: "You see this? Good, cause in the near future there won't be any snow, or snowmen!" (I wish...) Did I mention that, even as early as 1988, we were learning about climate change and global warming and man's impact on that? (Perhaps that's why it seems so odd to me that people still don't face the reality of climate change when it seemed scientifically proven enough to be taught in 1987...)
Even though most times our fears show the future as pretty damn bleak, I can't help but believing in humanity and our ability to make the future better than our fears imagine it to be. I can't but believe that we will find ways to cure the common cold (not to mention cancer), that we will end world hunger and that no person should ever starve, that we will learn to cope with the population issues by colonizing other worlds, that we will make contact and eventually coexist with other intelligent life (not to mention with one another!). It will all just take time...
And a facing of our fears...
Hell, I may even get a hover car out of the arrangement...
We're talking pain, people. Serious, gut-wrenching, horrible nasty pain... 3:30 in the morning there's-no-way-in-hell-I-can-sleep is-there-a-doctor-in-the-house PAIN.
