April 2009 Archives

I've got some serious baggage.

I recently cleaned out my closet. I keep two categories of things in my closet - things which can be donned, and luggage.

I went through the don-ables first. (Shirts, shoes, sweaters, pants, jeans, blouses, socks, underwear, coats, hats, gloves, scarves. I don't have a dresser in my room. Makes finding things and putting things away really easy. If it's not in the laundry, my suitcase, or on my body, it's in the closet. End of story.)

Gave away things I haven't worn in a while or don't need. Put things too ratty to wear in the rag bin or trash. Easy.

My baggage, well, is the baggage. To wit:

Maybe not really so bad for someone who travels a lot.

However.

When I remove the bags that are inside the bags, the picture changes ever so slightly. Meaning I have to back up about three more feet to fit them all in the picture.

I gave away many. Make that many, many.

And no, that's not my closet. That's my office.

Recognize the light fixture?

It's the one I brought with me from my house in Milwaukee.

I brought a window frame from there too that I found in the basement. Didn't know what I was going to do with it, but I liked it.

It's been cleaned up and now frames one of my favorite things.

When I was 10, my dad made us four kids each a wooden storage box for Christmas. This was the tag that was on the box under the Christmas tree. Dad wrote it.

To Angela From Santa
Light a light
Take a seat
Read my books
And keep it neat
Merry Christmas

Of course I still have the box. It holds all my cherished childhood trinkets.

I used to play Triple Yahtzee with my sister and friends for hours. I've looked for online versions. I found one. Sometimes, simple is best.

(Although you may want to play with sounds off. Homer Simpson shouting "DOH" when I put a zero in a column doesn't do it for me.)

So for those folks in my peer group, if you already haven't gone through this, then you likely will in the next year or two. It's not so bad. For me it was totally true when people said the prep for the colonoscopy is the worst part.

But even that wasn't so bad. The hardest part for me was choking down that last glass of orange flavored chalk. (It tasted like Alka Seltzer cold medicine.)

It took two and a half hours for the stuff to start working. (Literature said anywhere from 1 to 6 hours.)

I started early enough in the day that by bed time the stuff had done all its work and I slept soundly the whole night. Got up Monday morning, missed not being able to drink coffee, and was hungry, but I felt fine.

Got to the doctor office. Changed into the little gown, and the nurse got an IV started. (Anyone who has to find a vein on me, well they love me. You can see the vein in my right arm from space. Even the newbies can get it right the first time.)

I waited on the bed for a few minutes. The nurses came to get me, wheeled me into the exam room, hooked up a heart monitor and all that stuff. They explained something they would put in my mouth to guide the EGD tube down and protect my teeth.

Then they put medicine in the IV, and said, "now this works really..." I think they said fast but I was already out. Opened my eyes and was in the recovery room looking at my mom.

Mom drove me home, I wolfed down a bowl of cereal and some juice, and spent a low, slow day at home. By Monday night I felt fine, albeit a little more tired than normal, but I slept all night again.

Don't dread the procedure. You won't remember any of it.

Don't dread the prep. It won't do you any good, anyway.

Instead, read Dave Barry's take on the whole thing.

I'm watching the Masters, and have been playing games on the computer since getting home from Easter lunch at Mom's. I'm in the midst of the preparation for a colonoscopy and EGD tomorrow.

I had vegetarian vegetable bouillon for lunch. My niece was saying how she had never had a bad meal at my Mom's house, so I tried to hand her my excuse for soup. That, and the Gatorade well they aren't exactly sticking to my ribs. (I know that is part of the point.)

I had to take two pills a while ago, and soon I have to start drinking the bucket of chalk. I've chosen orange flavor to add to it. Don't expect it to make a BIT of difference.

But the thing is scheduled really early in the morning, so by this time tomorrow I should be napped and fed.

The whole purpose for doing this is to see if there is something causing these bouts of gastroenteritis. Cause they suck pretty bad too. Worse than not eating for a day, and far worse than the little stomach ache those two pills gave me. And the bouts, well they offer the added bonuses of ER visits and violent vomiting, and nothing in the literature I've read says I can expect that in the next 12 hours or so.

So I figure I'm ahead of the game.

And that's all I have to say about that. (My family, primarily my ex, got in all the jokes earlier today.)

Penguin one, lady driver, 0.

The music to this is worth it alone.

I wonder.

What was the FIRST procedure that wasn't followed, that led to this.

Does Coke allow employees to videotape their operations.

Did anyone lose their job.

What was the plant manager's reaction when he or she went walkabout that morning and found this.