How stupid am I?
I just remembered that I purchased a tasty cold bubbly Diet Coke from McDonald’s this afternoon, and then ran into the house with my arms full of stuff, forgetting the very full large Diet Coke in my cup holder in the car.
That was seven hours ago.
I really want to drink it now, but I’m pretty sure it’s all warm and shit.
God, I hate allergies…. they make me all weird.
resumes searching for her Zyrtec
Sometimes I really hate August.
Maybe even more than March.
August sucks for so many reasons. There’s that whole “summer’s ending” thing, which rots, since it only just begun and I haven’t done any of the things I planned on doing this summer, such as moving all my stuff into Computer Room #2 or planting an herb garden or flinging my lovely round naked body into a jet black lake at midnight and feel the water swell up around me like liquid silk whilst the frogs chirped and the northern lights pulsed above me–
Um, anyway…
For whatever reason, my internal clock somehow picks up on the fact that it’s this time I will call AlmostFall. The newspaper circulars all start showing homewares and I get the urge to begin knitting large all-natural afghans or what have you. It’s this weird nesting instinct that I believe is spurred on by the smell of newly sharpened pencils and stiff creased denim. The damn leaves haven’t even turned yet, and I’m getting the urge to start going to craft shows, bake pumpkin muffins, and eat hearty meaty meals with homemade biscuits. I’m feeling drawn to dark colors, heavy fabrics, solid well-soled shoes.
It’s sickening. I should be drinking Summer Hummers and chilled Cosmopolitans while lounging in the backyard. I should be living the life of the grasshopper, not the damn ant!
I think it’s the sound of cicadas. That’s what’s doing it.
Anyway, I’m having this weird urge to do indoor activities, like genealogy and scrapbooking and quilting. I found myself buying ingrediants to bake cookies yesterday. People, it’s 85 degrees outside… that’s not going to happen. I was tearing up Esteban’s office, looking for my original Sims disk so I could reload it. I only play computer games during the winter. It’s all a sign.
Another reason I hate August: allergies. August sucks for allergies. Esteban and I have opposite allergies for the most part of the year, but during August, we’re a sniffling, snorking pair. 65% of all asthma cases are diagnosed in August (including my own).
Right now, I have a sinus headache that could take down a bull moose. My nose is so stuffed up that I tried blowing it earlier and nothing happened, but then my nose made strange noises afterward, little squeaks and pops and chirps. I think it was talking to me.
I’m going to take a bunch of drugs. I’ll see you guys later.
Last night, we had wonderful sleep. I hate using the central air just for the sake of having air-conditioning, but Esteban prefers it cold. However, last night, it was nice pre-autumn weather and we slept with all of the bedroom windows open. I love open window sleeping. Esteban does too, he just doesn’t know it.
I had a weird dream though. I dreamt that we went to the Sunday breakfast buffet at Ponderosa and I had ham. Ok, not so weird, but then this morning, Esteban and I decided to go to breakfast. After driving around the entire city, determining that most of our favorites were too packed or what have you, we drove by Ponderosa, and Esteban says “How about there?”, and actually, it wasn’t full of people. Then I told him about the Ponderosa breakfast buffet dream and that I didn’t want to go there, because I’d been eating there all fucking night, but Esteban pointed out that maybe we were fated to go there. That’s bullshit, because Esteban doesn’t believe in fate, he was just using it to hasten our breakfast decision.
So, all right, fine, we went there.
And I had ham.
And that was about the extent of that. So much for fate.
One funny thing happened though. We were sitting in the solarium section with just one other couple a few tables away. We had finished eating and were talking. I had just offered Esteban my piece of chocolate cake, which I took for the simple reason that I knew he would want a piece of chocolate cake, but he wouldn’t want to actually go up and get dessert for himself. We’re codependent that way. Anyway, when I asked him if he wanted the piece of chocolate cake, he said “Yes” immediately in the way that meant that he’d been longing for my cake the entire time, but didn’t want to act on his chocolate desires.
Having just finished our desserts, we were discussing whether or not chocolate was elemental to survival and SHOULD it be required for all world leaders to eat some chocolate cake before making any major decisions, when SQUAP the sound of a fart being laid on a flat wooden chair!
I looked at Esteban and he had the sort of horrified look on his face that said “Oh my, that wasn’t supposed to have been audible!”
Need I tell you that I lost it? Need I tell you that I was laughing so hard that I actually got a little high from lack of oxygen to my brain? I was drooling at one point.
Esteban did not fair much better.
To their credit, the other couple did not miss a beat of their conversation. They continued to prattle on about some unfunny thing. I don’t know how they did it, considering two hysterically shaking fools behind them.
When we regained our strength, we fled.
One of the first things Esteban asked once we had reached the safety of the Monte was “You’re going to write about this in your diary, aren’t you.”
“How can I not?” I gasped through my laughter.
The whole event was very funny and of the sort that bonds marriages. Then again, maybe it was fate and my dream was prophetic? Who knows.
The ham sucked, though. Other than that, it’s been a very fine Sunday morning.
The Guestbook knows better than to let one on a wooden chair
We have no water.
Currently, the bathroom renovation project has taken a strange tilt. Esteban has declared that all the plumbing in the entire house should be removed and replaced with plastic. It is the plumbing equivalent of an arterioscopy or something like that’. Whatever the doctors do when a patient’s veins are all full of Butter-Flavored Crisco and Velveeta.
It began yesterday at 7:30 in the morning.
I didn’t come home after work, instead stopped by the hospital to visit Betty for a little while and then took my little brother school shopping. We went to Old Navy and spent $55 on three things (one t-shirt, one regular shirt and a backpack’ heinous), ate in the food court and then I brought him home. Then I had to pee and realized that I would have nowhere to pee at my house, so I went to visit my sister, Mo and niece Abby and their very lovely toilet with its ability to flush. Then Mo declared that my feet stank, so I took the hint and went home.
My house was filled with men. Men with tools.
Luckily, I had a pitcher of Kool-Aid in the frig, so I took that into my bedroom with the latest People magazine which has somehow been arriving at my house. I’m not certain how I’ve started receiving People magazine. I didn’t ask for it. It’s empty brain calories, as when I finish reading it, I’m always looking for something else to read. It doesn’t fill you up.
I went to sleep and was later woken by the sound of yelling.
‘Oh god, TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF! GOD DAMNIT TURN IT OFF!!!!’
That followed by the insane laughter of another man.
I stumbled out into the kitchen to see Esteban looked harried and confused.
Had I been more awake, I would have immediately recognized this as one of the few times when it would be best to just leave him alone. However, I was not fully cognizant. ‘I gotta go bathroom.’ I whimpered.
He fixed me with his wild gaze and said ‘Listen, then you need to go to the gas station, because I don’t have time for this right now!’
‘I just have to pee’ can’t I just pee into the toilet and not flush?’
‘NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’ He shouted, running to the basement.
I waited. I was wearing my big grey Green Bay Packers t-shirt and my pink flowered boxer shorts, no bra. My hair looked very similar to that of Yahoo Serious. It was 11:30 at night.
No one around. They were all downstairs laughing and pointing at Joel, who had the great misfortune of standing in front of a weak pipe connection when they turned the water back on. Those men!
I contemplated peeing outside in the back yard. I would have peed in the tub, but that was full of various plumbing stuff.
Stealthily, I snuck into the bathroom and peed into the toilet. Then I went back to bed.
That’s me, folks. Rebel without bladder control.
We still have no water. We had to go to Ward and June’s house to take showers this morning. I’m crossing my legs as I speak.
So far, the little easy bathroom renovation project, which was supposed to cost us under $200 has cost us almost $1000 and will undoubtedly be more than that before it is completed.
The only reason this all started was because I wanted to paint the bathroom. That’s it. It was all downhill from there.
You have my permission to shoot me in the head the next time I suggest fixing anything in our house.
65 Diaryland users have “Shakespeare” spelled incorrectly on their profiles as one of their favorite authors.
I cannot even begin to point out the number of things I find appalling about that.
sigh
But then, I misspelled “Coraghessan” in a recent entry, so I really shouldn’t talk. After all, it is spelled correctly in my BLOODY PROFILE!!!!!
But still….
65 users?????
Bah.
That’s how I feel today.
Bah.
I almost had karmic clothing justice for my Chocolate boob incident. This morning, I wore a white $7 t-shirt and came into work and found that someone had brought Mr. Donut doughnuts. Which Mr. Donut treat is my all time favorite doughnut? That would be the Vanilla Angel, which sort of like a jelly doughnut, only it’s filled with a vanilla amalgamation of frosting and whipped creamy goodness. And covered in powdered sugar.
If I eat this culinary wonder, I am left with cleavage that is finely dusted in confectionary white. This is fine if one is going to an 18th Century ball dressed as Marie Antoinette, but when I’m attired in my normal somber tones, it leaves for a impression that I’ve either been shedding dandruff from only my bangs, or have indulged in a little sloppy nose candy.
Neither impression, I assure you, are acceptable.
However, today I am wearing a white t-shirt, so I munched away happily on my Vanilla Angel, gloating over the Gods of Boob Spillage. Until a drop of Diet Coke besmirched my pristine white t-shirt.
It’s not good to gloat. No good comes of it.
My own hubris, I’m certain, is to blame. I was taunting the Gods of Boob Spillage. They showed me.
Bah.
Buffy will be on F/X starting September 24th. They’re starting at the beginning. If you haven’t ‘gotten into Buffy’, I want you all to watch. This is your assignment.
Think of it like Oprah’s Book Club, only with television, not pseudo-literate trash.
My husband redeemed himself again yesterday. He phoned me in the early afternoon and asked what I wanted to do last night. I’ve spent every evening thus far in the hospital with Betty, and there was no change, so I was going to spend the evening at home last night. I told him that I was hungry for steak.
‘Going out steak or staying home steak?’ He asked.
‘I don’t care. Either.’ I said. I really didn’t care.
‘I could take you out somewhere.’ He offered.
‘Whatever.’ I’m having a hard time caring about such things right now.
I assumed that we would be going out to eat, since Esteban just finished the dishes on Wednesday, and in effort to keep the kitchen clean for as long as possible, he generally doesn’t like to actually cook in it.
I walked into the house and the oven was on. I could smell the unmistakable smell of potatoes cooking.
‘Are you cooking something?’ I asked from the door.
‘Yeah. Potatoes.’ He said.
‘I thought we were going to talk about dinner?’ I said. Did. Not. Compute. I had assumed that if there was steak to be had at home, I would be in charge of wrangling the steak and putting together the side dishes.
‘We did. We talked about it. You didn’t care. I decided to make it.’ He said.
Stunned. Stunned I was.
‘So you bought steaks?’ ‘Yup’ ‘Tenderloins?’ ‘Yup’ ‘Baked potatoes?’ ‘Yup’ ‘Sour cream?’ ‘Yup’ ‘FAT FREE Sour Cream?’ ‘Yup.’
Could someone be any more perfect? How lucky am I?
See. It’s all karma. Get a big snotty chocolate mark on your shirt, have your husband cater to your every whim. It all evens out in the end.
I did very possibly the grossest thing to myself yesterday.
It was so stupid that I could see it possibly being used as evidence in some landmark case whereby the District Attorney questions whether or not Weetabix is too stupid to live.
It was a food day here at work yesterday. There seems to be some consternation about the proper title to a food day. Some people call it a ‘potluck’. Some people call it a ‘pig out’, or possibly ‘pig-out’, as though the hyphen indicates a more serious fest of gluttony. Although I’ve always been a fan of calling things what they are, I hesitate to call it a ‘pig out’, with or without the hyphen, simply because it just seems to be driven by those very thin people who consider any form of eating whatsoever to be ‘pigging out’. Plus, I’ve revolted long ago from the idea that just because there is a large amount of food present, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you must eat a large amount of food. It also implies that when women see food, they will lose control of themselves and pig out. My ‘Abbie Hoffman’ brain-voice is then sullied by my ‘Gloria Steinem’ brain voice who shrieks ‘SEXISM!!!’ and then reads quotes from Fat is a Feminist Issue.
Anyway, I was eating a piece of chocolate cake while I was working. I needed to make a phone call to a client, checking up on their status. I got her voice mail, so I began leaving a detailed message, basically using far too many words to say ‘Just checking in on you, call me back’. In the middle of this, I started to feel as though I had to sneeze. I certainly didn’t want to leave her with the very unprofessional sound of someone sneezing into her voicemail, so I tried holding it off until I hung up the phone.
Which I did. As I reached up to hit the ‘release’ button on my phone, the sneeze came on my full force. I didn’t have a free hand to cover my mouth, so I turned my head to the side.
And sneezed directly onto my left boob.
I’m certain that you’ve sneezed while having just eaten something dark, like luscious gooey chocolate cake? So you know what happens?
And need I even tell you that I was wearing a powder pink t-shirt (one of my cache from the $7 T-Shirt Bonanza)?
I grabbed for emergency supply of Shout Wipes and began to scrub voraciously, but the chocolate, when mixed with snot, apparently forms a cohesive bond with cotton. It wasn’t budging. And now there was the weird ring that the Shout Wipes leave, sort of like some sadistic halo around my breast. Not to mention that my shirt was now wet. And you all know what happens with wet lightly-colored t-shirts, right?
Strangely enough, my box of Kleenex was of the light pink variety, and I draped a tissue over my breast. It was so close to the color of the shirt that no one noticed. Those who did thought that it was a slightly sloppy pocket on my shirt.
The things you do when you’ve got a wet chocolate-covered boob.
Man, one can only guess at the Google hits I’m gonna get off of this baby.
Oh, Esteban found out why the neighbor’s car is tweeting. Apparently, one of the four kids put a whistle in the tailpipe and it made them laugh so much that the dad didn’t have the heart to take the whistle out.
Um. Ok. No comment.
I want to move.
Does anyone want to buy a slightly older home in a semi-remodeled state? But I have to warn you, I live in a tweeting neighborhood.
Yep. You read that right. Everything in my neighborhood tweets.
First of all, a little background. We are somewhat an anomaly in our neighborhood, as everyone in our neighborhood falls into two categories: retirees or divorced parents (mostly moms) with older children or teenagers. And then there’s us. I don’t think that our neighbors know how to deal with us, as they can’t talk about the high prices of membership in AARP and they can’t discuss how all men are bastards, so they pretty much leave us alone.
However, I cannot escape their chirping.
I’m not just talking about the birds, although we’ve got a powerful lot of those things too. And not nice tweeting birds. There’s one bird who lives in the tree above our bedroom. Its mating call is the sound of a fax machine trying to establish a link. Beeeeeeeeeep Crhstchhhhhhhhh. I’m afraid to leave our business line off the hook’ he might send a fax.
No, it’s not just the birds. It’s everything. Everything tweets.
First of all, the neighbor’s kid thinks he’s some skateboarding wizard. His skateboard wheel has a squeaky wheel. Thus we have squeaking from the east. I offered Esteban twenty bucks to take a can of WD-40 over there, but he doesn’t want to piss off his mom, who is very nice and has a boyfriend who often carries around a large pipe wrench.
This same neighbor has a parrot. The parrot offers all sorts of strange chirps and trills, but he has also learned how to imitate the sound of their portable phone, which, incidentally happens to be the same make and model of OUR portable phone. Thus, we are constantly chasing after phantom avian phone calls.
Next, we have the developmentally disabled grown child of a retired couple up the street. Think Warren in ‘There’s Something About Mary’. He rides around on his women’s three-speed bike with enormous saddle seat and sticker-covered safety helmet. And they gave him a bell. Which he rings. Every. Five. Feet.
I try to be politically correct. I feel for the problems of retarded citizens. Hell, I grew up around several mentally-handicapped people in my grandmother’s home, where I spent large amounts of time. Betty is a very beloved member of our family and she has the mental capacity of a six year old. Just take away his bell. That’s all I’m asking. Have a heart, people. We don’t need the ‘Warren Warning System’ employed.
Finally, our neighbors across the street. Fine people. Wonderful people. They used to blow the snow out of our driveway before we had a snow blower. Even now on winter mornings, they’ll clean out the snow from the snowplough so we can get our cars out of the driveway. They are the other demographic anomaly in our neighborhood. They are former hippies with four kids and a bunch of cats and dogs. They also keep their Christmas lights up all year round. Lit. It’s Christmas 365 days a year in our neighborhood. To their credit, they do put up MORE lights during Christmas than most times of the year. And they also light different sets of lights for different holidays. They have the red and white ones for Valentines Day, the red and orange ones for Halloween, inexplicably, the blue and yellow ones for Mother’s Day.
That’s not the problem. Honestly, the snob in me has gotten over the tackiness of having Christmas lights lit all year round. However, they also own a fleet of $400 vehicles that they regularly rotate in their driveway.
And one of the cars has developed a tweet.
Each night, the dad goes out and revs the car’s engine, causing the tweet to vary in pitch. up and down, up and down. It’s driving me insane.
So if anyone would be interested in a lovely four bedroom bungalow with a dining room and attached two-car garage, let me know. It’s cheap. Really cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
Today, I have actual track marks from my multiple blood-lettings yesterday.
I feel so bad. I feel like I should be wearing a leather halter top and too much eyeliner.
Or not.
I believe that the ghost of Chris Farley is exposing himself to women in cemeteries around our area.
It’s possible. The late comedian is actually buried here in Wisconsin, albeit several miles away from the scene of the crime. I feel for any local chubby blond guys right now. Dere’s gonna be a witch hunt. I can feel it already.
More tales of woe:
My grandmother is pissing me off.
Yesterday, my mom left the hospital before my grandmother and aunt got there. Honestly, the emotion had gotten too much for her. My mother is not one for showing emotion. She feels that it is a weakness, so she fled. Mo and I stayed until Mafia Grandma and aunt got there.
‘Has anyone seen your mother?’ M.G. asked, as soon as she walked in the door.
‘Yeah, she was here earlier, but she had an appointment to keep.’ Mo said distractedly, standing at the side of the hospital bed, holding Betty’s hand. Which was true’ Mom had mentioned that she had to pick up my little brother to get his haircut before school started.
‘What kind of appointment?’ M.G. raised her eyebrows, not even trying to hide the skepticism in her voice.
I felt like grabbing Mo, stopping her at that moment, but I couldn’t move. Actually, I knew what was coming, but I didn’t want to believe that M.G. could be so petty. I should know better. I really should.
‘She had to pick up Jonathon to get his haircut’.’ Mo started, then tried to backpeddle as M.G. raised her eyebrow. ‘She had made this appointment like two weeks ago and it was really hard to get in&AO8AvwC9AO8AvwC9- She faltered and then gave up.
M.G. snorted in disgust and said nothing, but we all knew that this was being written down on the lengthy imaginary list that my grandmother keeps of each of our transgressions. In permanent imaginary ink. There it would be stored until she was able to get back at us somehow through a slight or backhanded comment. It would never be erased, though. Each of our sins are immortalized in her brain. My mother, her oldest daughter, has always been the black sheep of the family, refusing to buckle under her mother’s controlling nature. My sister and I are constantly wavering in and out of her favor. It’s a constant dance that we unwittingly take part in. I’ve refused for the past two years and thus, I am persona non-gratis.
Then, as if that wasn’t already painfully obvious, M.G., who is subtle like a fucking sledgehammer, says ‘Boy, this sort of brings back the days of Great Grandma’.
You think?
So, anyway, she’s pissing me off. And the fact that I’m getting pissed off pisses me off. A woman is dying and I’m getting pissed off at my grandmother. It’s inappropriate and I’m making myself more upset. The psychologist in me says that my psyche must be uncomfortable with the feelings of grief therefore it’s channeling it’s emotions into something that it feels more comfortable with’anger. Whatever, dude, it’s just pissing me off.
I also handled something very badly yesterday. Some young girl signed my guestbook with some comments which were not of the nice nature. They weren’t offensive, persay, just basically said that my page was boring and ‘not fun’ and that my life was boring. She then stated that if my page was so boring, it made her realize that her own diary must be pretty crappy too. I don’t know why this incited me so much but for whatever reason, it did. I shot off a cold email to her and then felt bad about it. It basically said that I never claimed to be a ‘fun’ diary, just more fun than “a lobster in your pants” and that wasn’t exactly fun, with the claws and such, and I wasn’t sure what intent she had when she signed my guestbook in that manner… and then some other mean stuff. I almost wrote back and told her that my email had been uncalled for and to send me her diary’s url and I’d be happy to take a look at it, but I didn’t. It’s what I should have done, but I didn’t. I didn’t because I just didn’t feel as though I had the energy to be kind to someone I don’t even know, especially after I didn’t have the energy to be kind to my own family at the hospital. So later last night, I received an email back from her, stating that she never asked for my opinion, she had just felt that maybe I didn’t know that my diary sucked and she wanted to make sure that I knew that my life was considered boring. Basically, it was full of defensive language and I knew that I had probably done far more hurt to her than she had to me.
So anyway, if you’re reading this (not that I think you are, because I probably pissed you off), my email to you was uncalled for and I’m very sorry. If you send me your address, I’d love to take a look at it and if you’re having problems with the html, I’d be more than happy to help you out with any little tips that I have found.
Well, I’ve got a lot to catch up on. Yesterday’s entry got flumoxed (see how I’ve been working that word “flumox” into two diary entries in a row? I’m certain that this is a record of some sort… I’m not even certain that it’s a word, actually.) when Esteban accidentally turned off the power to my computer as I was entering. I got so cheese off that I didn’t have the tenacity to retype everything, hence no entry yesterday. Then today was completely out of whack, so no entry this morning. So here’s a recap:
Drafting for the Fantasy Football team was so-so. Here’s one of the nasties of being a female pioneer in a male-oriented venture: I made my first draft pick. “Jamal Lewis”, I declared. Esteban relays this over the phone to the commisioner in Mystic, Conn (where the other half of the draft was being held) who happened to be that harmonica playing, Biker Bar Semi-Trailer stage singing Phil. As the words “Jamal Lewis” were leaving my lips, Joe mentions, “Oh, he’s out for the season”. Esteban says “Oh, wait, he’s out for the season… does she still need to keep him?” to Phil over the phone.
I kid you not– I was over ten feet away from Esteban and the phone and I could actually hear the gloating tone of Phil’s voice through the phone. Esteban didn’t even need to tell me what he said. I actually summed it up thusly, “Let me guess…. ‘she should have done more research and it’s her own fault’ or something along that lines.” Esteban nodded sadly, and the draft continued.
Fast forward several rounds… a team owner from the Mystic contingent made a draft pick and then realized that he already had someone from that team and recalled it, picking someone else.
“What????!!” I sputtered. “Isn’t that like finding out your wide receiver is out for the season?” I mean, Christ, that’s just stupidity, since you’ve got it all right there in front of you and you’re just not paying attention that you were drafting two guys from the same team. It’s not even against league rules to do that, it’s just not a good idea strategically. You wouldn’t be as screwed if you, say, drafted someone who was out for the entire season.
Esteban poo-pooed me and the draft continued.
Fast forward several more rounds. Another team owner from the Mystic contingent drafts and accidentally drafts someone who is sick for the next four to six weeks. “Oh, wait,” says the commissioner, “He’s picking someone else.”
“WHAT????????!??!!” I mime to Esteban.
“Um, Phil,” Esteban begins, “In all fairness, when Weetabix did that, you made her keep the player.” I could hear frantic back-peddling from the other side. “No, no it wasn’t….. Yes… Yes, she did…. No, you didn’t….. Jamal Lewis…. Ok….Ok…”
So, apparently, Phil’s side of the issue was that another team member in Mystic had already made his pick by the time I wanted to cancel my draft pick of Jamal Lewis. Esteban begged to differ, but the ruling stood. In reality, not two seconds had passed between my asking to recant my pick of Lewis to the point when the cackling of “Be More Prepared” began from the East Coast.
Sexist Bastards.
Doesn’t matter. I’m going to skunk them all and they can just chew on a little crow while they’re nursing their sad little egos.
The Congested Hedgehogs will reign supreme!!!!
Now, today:
This morning, I was to have my blood sugar tested. I haven’t been feeling my normal chipper self recently, and my doctor feels that possibly I am hypoglycemic or some ‘cemic’ type thing. I dunno. Anyway, for this test, I was told “don’t eat or drink anything after ten o’clock on Sunday.” Ok, I can do that. So last night, I had dinner at six o’clock and then didn’t eat or drink anything after that, including water, because hey, water is an “anything”, right?
Then around midnight when Esteban came to bed, I stumbled to the kitchen and, without thinking, guzzled two big glasses of water while I was half-asleep. Whoops! Well, that shouldn’t be a terrible thing. It had another eight hours to get out of my system, so I wasn’t too worried.
Then in the morning, I got up and went to the doctor’s office, where they were fucking late as usual. At quarter after eight, I went up to the window and asked what time my appointment was supposed to be, since I’d come ten minutes early and now I had been there twenty-five minutes and I hadn’t eaten in 14 hours and was a little, shall we say, TESTY!
Finally, they come and get me and draw my blood the first time. That was my “fasting” blood. Then they brought out some orange soda pop looking stuff. She opened it and it made a “pffft” sound.
“Oh, is it carbonated like soda?” I asked, making conversation.
“Yes, it has a little fizz to it. They found that if they made it fizzy, not so many people threw up afterwards.”
Oh.
Yeah. I’m reallllll excited to try THAT shit.
The idea behind this test is that they test your blood without any food in it, then they give you mega-refined sugar and then continue to prick you over the next two hours to see how your body deals with the sugar.
Do you remember when you were a kid and liked the taste of overly sweet things? I remember I used to make a Orange Tang sludge that was six ounces of water and three tablespoons of Tang. Well, the stuff they made me drink tasted a lot like that, only moreso and with bubbles.
Then I had to wait. A half hour later, my hands were starting to shake. 30 minutes after that, I fell asleep for an hour until they needed to pick me again. I’m not talking a light sleep either. I was snoring and drooling. That’s some mofo breakfast drink, let me tell you. They need a warning label on stuff like that. Now I know why they won’t let you leave the office during that test.
So, after being pricked five times, I bust out to a grocery store and pick up some pineapple, a bagel and cream cheese, some celery/carrot sticks and dip, and a sandwich. Because at that point, I was in a feeding frenzy. Then I went to work and several of my coworkers were afraid to actually come near my desk for fear that they would lose a finger.
Then I get the email from my sister.
Warning: what follows is pretty depressing… you don’t have to continue. Just so you know.
“Betty’s back in the hospital and she probably won’t last the night.” was all it said.
So immediately, I send out an email to my team saying that I had to leave again due to a family emergency. I felt really bad since I had only been there two hours by 1 o’clock, but it was, after all, an issue of life or death.
Mo and I actually got to the hospital at the same time as my mom. We went up and Mafia Grandma and my aunt had left, so we spent some time alone with Betty. Her nurse came in and told us that she had acutally suffered a heart attack yesterday and was no longer on any sort of life support, due to a decision which was made by my Mafia Grandmother and my Aunt. She was only on some morphine to make her more comfortable and some oxygen to make it easier for her to breathe (as opposed to breathing for her).
It was disturbing. The entire solution of legalized ethanasia is disturbing. It is legal to allow someone to whither away without food and water, but it is illegal to give them something to ease their suffering, to allow them release. It is somehow more humane to starve a person to death or deprive them of water so that they die of thirst. That is essentially what is happening. They die of thirst in most of the cases where “they removed the tubes”. The difference between giving someone an injection to ease suffering in minutes and withholding fluids so that they linger over eight to eleven days is simply semantics. There is no difference. Only cruelty. And if anyone has anything other than that to say about it, fine, I will respect that IF they have ever watched a loved one go through it. Only then. Because only a monster could watch their beloved falter due to a lack of something as essential as water and then tell me that it was more humane than giving them a chemical release. I just can’t believe it.
So anyway, it became too much for my mom, so Mo and I stayed and held Betty’s hand and sang to her, moistening her lips with ice water. She’s more or less alert, but I know that that will be only for a little while. I cringed when I realized that all of the signs of dying were coming back to me, filtering up through the repressed regions of my brain. The whole deal about the heart beat, how it gets remarkably slow and the blood pressure drops and the temperature rises to a fevered pitch. The way that the hands will start to pull toward the body into almost an embryonic embrace. When my great-grandmother died, she reminded me so much of a little baby robin in a nest of hospital whites, mouth open, eyes rolled back, and I don’t know if I can watch Betty get to that state.
I don’t know that I can do this again.
It’s so very hard.
