Creepin’ Monday Blues..

Sunday in the PM, fighting off those creeping Monday blues..

wanted redemption from the Titans, but they gathered no moss

had to go and lose…

squabbling and fussing, a junkie needs his connection..

but the sign said CLOSED down at the Cupcake Collection..

Got those creepin’ Monday blues..

darkness clamping early, not in on the daylight ruse

too cold to walk it off, too little of  Sunday remains,

want a shake-em-up transition, but i get the whistle of the trains

leaving Sunday behind, a wistful backwards glance..

need some rocking and some rolling, goodbye sundown dance..

It’s those creeping Monday blues, getting in some licks..

feel like a city boy, taking wrong turns in the sticks..

 

 

From the top

When choices range from mouth to bend-o,

I prefer my torso-scopics, endo,

the coffee-less foodless short-term fast,

beats by miles the colon-cleansing repast,

but, the major concern is the photographic yield,

Renderings disclose my stomach healed,

Thanks be to my doctors and nurses

Right now, I don’t mind their fattened purses.

Night of the living 8 under, or was it something I ate

Last night when I was lying prone on the bed about 1:30 tireder than used dirt I realized that sleep was not going to be calling. Not wanting to turn on a reading lamp to disturb the snoring gently cooing wife, I trundled myself downstairs and fired up the tube. That movie about dogs abandoned in Antarctica was playing (8 Under, I do believe) and I was enjoying the dogs splendid efforts to beat this seal out of some whale meat when a woman backed her car down the street (on the TV) screaming. It seems zombies were chasing her, and I really wanted to see if she got away but then sadly I fell asleep for the rest of the night.

Now I don’t know if the dogs made it or the woman escaped the zombies. Stupid insomnia…I can’t seem to get anything useful out of anti-sleep.

How is it when you are so bone-tired you hardly have the effort to blink your eyes sometimes you just can’t sleep. Makes no sense to me.

If you got bad news, you wanna kick them blues; morphine..or morphine is bueno bueno..

Actual conversation at Baptist Hospital between my wife and the charge nurse after i was moved from ICU* to a regular room:

Wife: My husband is in 7625 …could he have a cup of water?

Nurse: He’s not there yet.

Wife: yes, they brought him down a few minutes ago

Nurse: no, he’s not there yet.

I had been there for over 1/2 hour at this point.

Needless to say, they also forgot my lunch, which in retrospect was probably a blessing. I eventually got a snack at 3:30, three and 1/2 hours after I was moved to the room. Within minutes after the remains of the snack were cleared, supper was delivered. Is there some late night infomercial that features a device that positively drains any possible taste remaining from over-cooked broccoli? I’m pretty sure that Baptist Hospital got a really good deal on said device.

*Oh yeah, I guess I’ve been blessed with a stomach lining that enjoys the holi-ness of the occasional ulcer. I was feeling less than chipper last Saturday, loitering around even more than usual on a couch near the new TV. As long as I just laid there, equilibrium was at least a distant cousin. At one point after an extended phone conversation, I got up to go to the bathroom and realized that something was really wrong. You really do see star-like apparitions when you are about to black out! I achieved a familiar prone position on the hardwood floor and asked my wife to call for an ambulance. Sadly, I’ve been in such a state before and realized fairly quickly that blood was not circulating normally through the old framework, and instead had chosen a small aperture to spill willy-nilly into passages not intended for circulation.

I made it to the hospital where the nice folks filled me back up with blood and stuck a camera downward (believe me, the downward spiral is much preferable to the upward method). A small geyser was quickly noted and patched. Ironically for the next 24 hours much blood was taken back for testing, usually moments after I had fallen asleep. A stay in the hospital is not for anyone who really needs rest.

I’m also convinced that the insurance companies have conspired with the chefs behind the hospital ‘cuisine’ in the hopes that said foodstuff would encourage the patient to quickly vacate the premises in hopes for victuals with more than a passing acquaintance with a spice or even taste. At one point a breakfast tray contained a bowl of gruel that even David Copperfield would have refused.

My stomach really wasn’t that happy about very much – cuisine, unwanted apertures and general invasion. The pain became quite intense at times and I was offered morphine as a palliative. Not one to turn down my host’s offerings, I nodded intensely and before you could say Pacman Jones, the warmth of the blessed Code3 pharmaceutical was channeling through the bloodstream so recently off-course. I don’t know how most people react to morphine, but I saw things. I saw real food. I saw the Knucklehead with a side of ribs. I saw more nurses than actually exist in Baptist Hospital. I saw Drew Barrymore and I did wonder what she was doing there. And cruelly, I saw my daughter with her best friend sitting at the foot of my bed. They seemed as real as the heart monitor wires attached to various parts of my body. I actually conversed with them, even knowing that it was pretty amazing that Erin had actually made it all the way from Peru.

It was both a wonderful and mean Father’s Day trick of the drug. I never actually teared up from all the pain and the frustration of my utter helplessness, but I can tell you that I did cry when I realized she wasn’t there. But, I can also tell you that my cell phone rang late Sunday afternoon and miraculously enough I did hear her voice, and it wasn’t an illusion. The heart monitor wires were singing.

Visits from good friends and number one son were also quite the curative.

After two and 1/2 days of blood re-fueling and blood-letting with occasional side-trips on morphine, I was sent home, a weak, but blood-levelled man. I ‘get’ to sit around for a day or so here at home recovering. The blessed taste of real food and the unbelievably good fortune of being married to the most wonderful woman I’ve ever known and three kids I love more than life itself all pushes up against that tendency for me to feel sorry for myself and my stupid stomach lining. I’m luckier than I ever deserved.

Lounging at the Bounce B to Beantown Bash, or, I’m too much like Jimmy Swaggart (I like to watch…)

Here’s the sad deal. I can’t sing. I mean, I really really really can’t sing. I would love to sing. I can lip synch like a mofo. I really can’t dance, but I do understand where the beat belongs. I also can’t drink. It’s not a moral or religious thing. It’s a damn health thing. I won’t bore you, but between some very odd allergies and a very morose stomach, drinking just doesn’t work.

Soooo, when the party is at a karaoke bar, it’s gonna be a rough combination. Add in the fact that I far more enjoy sitting around with 2-4-6 folks than trying to figure out how to act at a party when everyone is drinking dancing or singing, this is not my strength.

All of this is to say..so what..it was a night for Aunt B..a night to toss some $$ in a bucket and send our playwright to Boston to see her own play. She certainly deserves the accolades.

Ms. B looked scrumptious in black and white. Ginger also looked quite fetching in black and white. I was also clad in those two non-colors, but it didn’t quite come off the same way.

I should add here that my wife looked wonderful, and I’m not just saying that because I’m supposed to…she’s got black and white hair and I love every follicle.

I wish I had the talent just to sing a little back-up for someone who can sing. I wish I had the balls just to get up in front of people and not care. Slarti and Ginger can sing. A whole lot of bloggers can sing better than they claim (Brittney and B doing ‘Jolene’ rocked the house). Shauna, who didn’t get up, but who works a good hairbrush can sing (I was loitering nearby).

Ivy who apparently skipped ‘inhibition day’ at her elementary school blew the roof off the place more than once (including leading a merry band of bloggers in a rousing ‘Love Shack’). Always enjoy the Ivy…

People I only know from initials and names from B’s blog shimmered amongst the crowd. Plimco, who looked to be around 15, has a great voice, and is apparently going to be in ‘the play’.

Coble has always been one of my heroes, with her honesty, faith, and nose for trouble, solidified her standing with a gutsy LouReedish version of Warren Zevon’s ‘Werewolves of London’. Kat apparently has a voice somewhat in my range, but damn, she did it, and hit the ‘ahhhooooooos’ nicely.

I jonesed on Jag’s new glasses all night and got to hang around with her some, which is always fun. My neighbors Kate and Karsten looked smashing, and may actually have been smashing at one point late in the evening.

Mack god-fathered the party, and I appreciate him macking the party together. He even got up for a little ‘Love Shack’ action.

My extended convo for the evening was with Mary Mancini…no occasion is in-apt to discuss politics imo, and that we did. I wish Mary would run for something! I should also mention that Mary did her own re-written version of Beyonce ‘to the left’, and left the audience wanting more. Her back-up dancers were somewhat directionally challenged (often going to ‘the other left’ instead).

It was also quite cool to meet ‘NM‘ and chat with her a bit (I love it when bloggers take on a more corporal form than just their words on a screen).

My wife, who is somewhat intimidated by blogger-nation, left after a couple of hours, and I hung around on the patio a bunch with primo-lens-man Chris Wage, who according to every woman in the house is now beyond cute without the beard. I was rather taken with his hairless chin myself.

So, what holds me back? I feel borrring, I feel borrrring, and sometimes I just don’t care. I could blame my age, my year’s attendance in inhibition class, my mom (what would the neighbor’s think), my depressing life of Sunday School, my head, which grew to adult size in the 5th grade (no one laughed or made fun, except in grades 6 thru 12), or the fact that my one discernible talent is a pretty damn good Bullwinkle imitation.

Someday I’m going to find a cartoon imitator’s bar, and then, dang it..i’m going to be something.

Last night was of the good though, even if only from a one-step removed vantage point.

You go B!

Are they making Twitter fitter, or is Twitter now litter? Now that I’m addicted, I’m bitter

The wizards behind the curtain up in Twitter server-land are supposedly beefing up the gerbils, tightening the wires, soldering the philiotropes, etc. etc. etc. I’m not a cat lover by any means, but I rarely threaten violence against the felines of this world. I’m going to make an exception here. If I have to look at this damn cat one more day, the cat dies*.

Seriously, Twitter twits…lose the cat. Lose the cute. Fix yer product, or you’ll be as dead as a downtown ballpark for the Sounds.

*reverse euphemism for rescuing the cat from the clutches of Twitter.com and giving it a good home that doesn’t believe that cats are a delicacy.

I used to hate being sick because..

well, number 1…being sick is not a whole lot of fun, especially when you are really really sick and having to spend time in the hospital.

Another obvious reason is that one is not feeling good enough to enjoy any good thing that may be passing you in the street of life, and then there’s the work thing.  I love my job.  When I go back there after missing a day or two (i’m up to two days now), it feels overwhelming…everyone is in the middle of some project or meeting that i should supposedly be up on, but now it just feels like one of those dreams where things keep happening and you just can’t ‘get there’.

On top of all this, is the blog thing.  The blog world revolves a couple of times around, and you miss a cycle or two, and whatinttheworld is everyone talking about.  I’d like to stay upright and read about it, but the world is starting to spin again and the stomach is making fun of my up-right-ness again.    I just hope I didn’t pass this on to anyone I can into contact with over the last 48 hours………later.

Nearly barefoot in Nashville, or really, where do they go..I mean really..

This one is really for the Home-Ec 101 women. This one has been the subject of every two-bit-brick-wall-lame comedian that has ever appeared on the comedy channel. Where do the socks go?

Some of this story may relate to the fact that my wife has been missing from the house for over a week (she knows where she is…). Not that she is supposed to be keeping up with my laundry, but the thing is..I’ve had more time on my hands than usual lately and I decided to take on the sock issue..

I normally do the laundry. Over the years, socks began disappearing during the laundry cycle at some indiscernible point. Tonight, while watching my basketball bracket begin to bleed (Texas A and M losing to Memphis), I decided to do a complete sock audit…gather em’ all up in one pile..launder them and attempt to sort them out. I now have 19 single socks that have no hope of a mate…kinda like singles night at the Battle Star Galactica clubhouse..

I can’t comprehend this. I don’t go places and take off my socks unless by some odd chance I’m actually within walking distance of an ocean, and even then, I don’t throw my socks into the waves. I don’t take my socks off at work, I don’t roll them off eating lunch at the arcade, I don’t slip them off for the walk home after work and I don’t toss them on the front lawn upon my arrival home. When I take them off I do what every red-blooded American does..I throw them on the floor. And then I put them in the laundry hamper (those last two actions aren’t necessarily linked closely by any space-time continuum). They always eventually get into the hamper. Eventually, I take the hamper downstairs to the laundry closet.

I don’t take the laundry out in the back, and I don’t take the laundry hamper for rides in my car. I dump the clothes into the washer. After the washing is done, the socks along with their clothing kin go into the dryer. After they are dried, they go into the laundry basket, where things are either folded or mated. There is no variation here, there is no alternative route.. Yet..socks continually disappear..not both socks in the pair..just ONE sock in the pair.

Yes, I realize that this is an age-old cliche and prosaic problem, but I remain buffaloed, befuddled, and bemused.

Yeah, I do have friends that pin their pairs of socks together before washing, but good gravy, washing is mundane enough without adding that chore before the chore. Is there any other trick, is there any other ploy?

I need hep.

signed, Somewhat sock-less in Nashville .

.

My wife is leaving me..

to go to Peru to see our daughter. She has to be at the airport tomorrow (Wednesday) morning at the ungodly hour of 5 freaking A.M. International check-in sounds like it’s going to be just loads of fun We all know that elementary school art teachers pose such a threat.

She’ll be gone for over a week, and I may have to mitigate my loneliness with lots of barbecue, and then some more barbecue. Luckily for me, the NCAA tournament starts Thursday. Since I pretty much disappear for hours and hours at a time once the tourney starts, the mere separation of a thousand or so miles will merely add a new dimension to my annual zone of solitude. This year, at least, I’ll have the bonus of not having to answer the question ‘who’s winning’ to a person whose apathy palpably precedes her entry into the room and remains cloud-like upon her exit. Actually, by the 12th straight game, I just might miss some of that apathy.