I still got it!!

You know, no matter how strong of a relationship you're in, at some point you have to wonder, do I still have "it". To tell you the truth, it's been so long I don't really know what "it" is anymore. I have a feeling it harkens back to a time when I could lie in bed and immediately jump out when I felt like it and not stay there and plot which limb to move first that doesn't make my back hurt. That's not age, it's our mattress, Sealy's Torture-Master 2000.

No really, what about the girls I was attracted to in high school. Do they still remember me, have they even thought of me once in the years since I last saw them, and do their hastily arranged "orders of protection" still hold? There are a few websites I went to out of curiosity, and that weren't blocked by Net Nanny, that allow people to reconnect and constantly beat you over the head with "Guess who's searching for you now!". One of them is Classmates.com and the other is Reunion.com.

With Classmates.com you pretty much get a Xerox image of the dorks, dweebs, and overall pinheads you had no interest in while going to school and now see that YOU are amoung that group now who's actually inputted your name in their crummy site. "Hey! Look it's...ah...FAT kid...and....Math Geek...I wonder what THEY're doing now?".

The other is Reunion.com and they torment you with "Guess who's looking for you now...wink wink, nudge nudge?". I got time, I check. You'll see that if I decide to fork over the money to join this Ponzi scheme for social retards, I get to meet up with the people who've searched for me! One of them, lucky lucky me, is a SIXTY FIVE YEAR OLD woman from Bangor Pennsylvania. Bangor? No thanks. "Bah dum boom PEEESH!!".

Next, I need to ride in a helicopter

I always wanted to ride in a limo. Wait, let me clarify, I always wanted to ride in a limo sitting up and not in a casket, which is how I thought i'd eventually end up in one. But on a sales trip for work I had a limo ride too and from the resort they put me up in. Pretty sweet.

Yesterday, I scratched something ELSE off my list. I got to ride in an ambulance. This one, I could have done without.

It all started with a pretty normal saturday. I had a bunch of errands to run and I finished off with a trip to the grocery store. When I got home, I started to watch TV. I started to feel a little nauscious and I ended up with a few ugly trips to the bathroom. I had a couple episodes of the squirts.

When I went to lay down for the night, I had trouble slowing my breathing down. I decided to go sit in the living room for a while and watch TV just in case I had to make any more bathroom runs (hehehe...runs...get it?). The more I sat the worse I felt. My breathing would not slow down. I had numbness down both my arms and they were both tingling. My body, if felt like, would not rest. It was in alarm.

I started to moan which brought my wife out to see me. She asked me over and over again if there was anything she could do to help me. As much as I appreciated her, I couldn't give her any ideas. I started to feel even worse. I knew something was up. So she ended up calling my sister, who is a nurse, to come over in case we needed to head to the hospital.

After my sister was called, I knew I did need to go and my wife ended up calling 911. The first to arrive was the police. A policeman came in and asked me a few questions. I was terrified. I felt like my body was shutting down and I had no idea why. He instructed me to calm down or I was going to pass out. Truth be told, I would have preffered that. At least then I could get some rest.

The paramedics showed up and put all manner of gadget on me to monitor my breathing and heart. They tried repeately to assist me in slowing my breathing down. No luck. Finally they decided to just take me to the E.R. They told me they could take me out but the steps and driveway were very icey. I told them the guy who takes care of that sucks. That guy being me of course. So they helped me walk out to the ambulance.

I got strapped in and off we went to the E.R. Still couldn't breath normally though. I thought it was food poisoning but the medic thought it was a wicked stomach flu going around. She asked me if I feld nauscious and that was good timing because almost as soon as she gave me a plastic bucket I hurled into it very very violently. I thought my lungs were coming out.

After that I started to feel better but then she told me that it probably would return. Which it did, in the E.R. By the time I got to the E.R. I was just exhausted. No sleep, and my body was just a wreck. I couldn't get back to normal breathing and on top of this, I had to answer bullshit questions for a secretary asking me questions. I wanted to scream "You know what, my wife is out there....get my social from HER!".

They ended up putting me on some sort of nausea medication through an IV and finally I was able to close my eyes for a bit. If this was a flu, I might just have to change my policy of never getting a flu shot. I didn't want this ever again.

About 4:30 in the morninig I felt good enough to leave and they gave me a few prescriptions for nausea and the mother of all anti-diahrrea medicines too, Nopoopatall, i think it was called.

So Sunday, a day I had planned to make chicken wings, eat my wife's fabulous meatballs and just pig out while watching my Pittsburgh Steelers win their 6th Super Bowl, I ended up spending most of the day in bed with the chills. With the team they have, maybe I'll be lucky enough to see that again, healthy this time.

Dreams

I have weird dreams. But I don't sit around like some people do and analyze my dreams. Like when I dream of flashing lights, loud noises, and people screaming, i refuse to submit to any form of dream interpretation. I DO, however, beleive it is not a good idea to fall asleep while driving.

Thoughts on the holidays

I was commenting on my buddy John's BLOG on a post he did for his feelings on the holidays. The longer it went, the more creative I got I thought, why not "re-gift" this for myself and post it right here. I'd recommend reading John's BLOG though. If you like zombies and space shuttles, you're in for a treat. I'm waiting for the space shuttle PILOTED by zombies. Now THERE's a tale. I'm kidding John.

I normally head to John's blog to leave a sarcastic remark, a witty retort, or a casual guffaw. But for this time I came to bring you news of hope. John wanted to know with all the commercialism surrounding Christmas just where Jesus fits in these days. Why he's all over. All you need to is stop, pay attention, and perk up your ears as you hear people say "Jesus, is this line long" or "Jesus, who'd a thought I'd be in line at Best Buy for four hours".

But the news isn't all bad. It's during the holiday season where you do see the good in people as they kindly let you merge in on the highway. Perhaps this is due to their good natured feelings coming from some upcoming days off from work. Rest assured though, they know deep in their hearts that come January 2nd, if you were to try that in front of them....they'll send you and your car straight to hell first before they give you a break. I'm talking to you blue haired old lady who PRETENDS she can't see me. I KNOW YOU CAN SEE ME GRANNY!!!

Me, I got to spend some quality time with my family and got things I really need. Not that Christmas is about what you get. We all know as adults that Christmas is for the kids. I know it, you know it, and several marketing firms on Wall Street looking to sell your kid whatever crap toy they've bought into pumped out of Taiwan by some guy who just two weeks ago was hawking live chickens on a steet corner. He knows it too. I got an interesting assortment of gifts. From one of my sisters I got some jeans, from another a car emergency kit, and from my parents I got a fine bottle of whiskey. This of course means my New Years resolution to be drunk and shirtless on the side of a road waiting for AAA is right on track!

Happy New Year!

The doctor will see you now

Any recurring pain that you can't explain away with excuses like arthritis or the occasional taser attack from that female coworker who thinks you're a bit too "grabby" should most likely be investigated. This is the case with my mysterious "tail bone" pain.

Every once in a while I would get a dull ache about four inches above, how should I say it,...awe who cares, we're all adults here, above my poop hole. It would radiate around the area and actual inhibit my walking for a few minutes. Events like this have been happening a lot and since I had the day off, I thought I'd have it checked out.

The worst part of the whole doctor visit thing for me has to be the waiting room. There are the usual characters. There's soccer kid, still in his uniform accompanied by a parent who will at some point tell him to "SETTLE DOWN!". There's the adorable old couple, the 80'ish folks who look so cute you want to put them on top of a very old and smelly cake. Then there's my all-time favorite, "personal-space" lady. The large woman who scans a room full of empty seats only to put her porky biceps 6" over your arm rest all the while breathing as if she just ran a marathon. When they call my name, I'm overjoyed to be sprung from this Star Wars bar of aches and pains.

So I go in and get usual barrage of questions that I have just ONE big answer for. No. "Smoke?". "No". "On any medications?". "No". "History of werewolfism?". "No,...wait, what?!". "Just seeing if you were paying attention".

So I describe the pain I was feeling to the doctor and the reason I came in was that being over 40, I thought I should be checked out for something. I honestly had no idea where my prostate was. I have no excuse for that, I have internet access, it coulda been easily found out. The doctor assured me it wasn't that because my prostate is located directly up from the old "taint". I apologized for my ignorance and not knowing where my prostate was. She said no problem and that most men don't know, adding that women know more about men's anatomy than they do. Hmmmm...........really? Bah-LONEY! Men know JUST as much if not more about WOMEN's anatomy. There are just some things we, well, just don't listen to. When my wife was told about the side effects of the pill, stroke, heart attack, lowering your expectations of a mate, all I heard was "You are CLEARED for lift off captain!".

So my doctor visit as it turns out WAS for nothing, not if you don't count the requisite weigh-in before the visit. I am grossly overweight and it's my goal now to lose 40lbs in 6 months. I am determined, I CAN do it. As I sit here eating my pizza and sucking down the last of a delicious chocolate shake I am reminded of all the great doers this country has seen. I can do this. No where's my elipitcal machine? AH! There it is, now I need to find another place for these coats.

Our new family picture.

Tell the truth, if you HAD to imagine what a,...oh I dunno....cookie jar with glasses would look like, that guy in the middle would JUST about cover it, right?

Open up and say AAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!

I hate the denist. I'm saying that as a general statement of course, I'm not singling out one dentist. It's more like I dislike the chance I'll be in pain and not "Don't you hate Bob! He's always like.."Oh I'm so great, I'm a denist!". Got it?

Going to the dentist has got to be the most hated appointment you can make, at least when your not one of those flossing suckups who take YOUR appointment just so the hygenist can fawn all over their whiter than a Pat Boone Christmas special teeth. Shitheads. For guys like me who have teeth only a member of ther Royal Family could love, it's a nightmare.

For starters, I have more metal in my mouth than the entire audience a BET award show (Hey-Oohhhhhh!!!). My visits usually involve some bad news. This last time I went because I was experiencing some pain, off and on, in one of my molars....or was it a bicuspid.....OH NO, maybe it's an incisor. Let's just call it what my insurance company calls it, a deductable.

So the dentist (f*ckin BOB!!) tells me I need a root canal.......followed by a temporary crown........followed by a REAL crown. The temporary thing kills me. I still haven't had that one explained to me. They don't do that with any other part of your body. Your heart doesn't go and some doctor says "We'll need to wait for a transplant for you, in the meantime, I'm installing this veal in your chest".

So I go home to decide what I'm going to do. One, two....four years pass and it starts to hurt again. Now I'm in a new job with new dental benefits which I see as a blank check. "Crown? Sure.....gimme one of them gold ones like P-Diddy has". So I schedule all THREE procedures. I show up at 7am in the morning for this and they take me right in. As soon as the doctor shows up he starts to prep me and the area he's going to work on. Part of this is him (not lying) shoving a 3" square piece of rubber down near my windpipe. I, being the pain in the ass patient I am, start to gag. And what a pain I am, imagine, he needs to shove a rubber square RIGHT WHERE I AM BREATHING and I make a fuss. I mean really. He then has the nerve to ask me "Do you gag easily?". Nope, I'm fine. Why don't you shove a few tennis balls in my mouth to see how I do then.

So he procedes on without the big square rubber sheet and roughs it. Then my favorite part of drilling begins, and by that I don't mean the bullshit lie that if we drill in the Gulf tommorow that means $1.00 gas the next day (Oh no you didn't!). No, I mean the rancid odor of burning tissue. That's gotta be the worse smell ever. When I tell you I gripped those arm rests like they owed me money, beleive me. I was as steady as a rock......I kept going to my happy places.

Next stop, temporary crown. I'm already researching a way to get Nike to sponsor it to cover my deductable. If it's "temporary" why not a nice Nike swoosh on it!

Things that make your day suck

Houses are funny. They provide you a roof over your head, a warm bed, and a chair to watch football, the three basic needs. But they have a habit of jumping up and biting you in the ass when you least expect it.

Last Saturday, on my wife's birthday, I had my drain snaked. "Why of course Ray, you ARE over 40 after all, don't all men your age have that done?". To that I say "They do, but that's not the drain I speak of". And besides, anything you have on your person you can classify as being "snaked" most likely has you in one of any number of institutions in our fine prison system sharing time with a man of questionable character and an even more questionable sexual orientation.

On Friday my wife pointed out some water on the floor of our laundry room and it being late I quickly passed it off as a leak local to the room, perhaps the washer, and classified it as an "i'll deal with it later" problem. Well, later came quicker than usual (shoulda put it in the "when I feel like it" column) and I was forced to examine the reason for the water. It turned out to be water coming back in to the house through the drain in the laundry room. I'm not "Mr. Fixit" by any means, but I thought right away, that had to be bad, right?

So we called a plumber and luckily one agreed to show up on Saturday. So this guy shows up and grabs his snake and proceeds to insert it into my drain. HOLY GEEZ!! Does THAT sound gay. Take two. Okay, this guy comes in my house and sticks a thing in my hole. HOLY SHIT!! Okay okay......there's gotta be a way around this. Okay. Let's try this. A guy came to help me with my problem (sounds good so far) he showed up on time (good) and when he did he reached into his truck grabbed his tool and........ah forget it!!!

I want to tell you, I was pacing like an expectant father. I had nightmares of my front yard being dug up because of this. Everytime he would poke his head back into the garage I'd wait for an update. "How we lookin' in there" I said in my best macho small talk. "Good, I think we hit a few roots". I'm sorry, roots? Yes, not only do my huge trees in my yard scare the crap out of me when we have high winds (like the 79MPH winds we had recently, thank YOU Hurricane Ike) but they seek out any place they can find water. The guy finishes up and I find out that this might only be temporary, I might have to do this 2 years from now too thanks to those roots.

But the day finished off pretty decent. My wife got to go out with all of us for her birthday and I got some great video of my daughter at her party. But I am a homeowner. I'm just left to wonder what's next. What's the next thing to come....and.........and........well, "snake me up the ass"?

Make Me An Offer

Chalk this latest first experience of mine as a "swing and a miss". Today, we had our first (and most likely last) garage sale. The word "garage" is from the French "garer" which loosely translated means "attention all neighborhood freaks, please show up at my doorstep".

I had been threatening to do a garage sale for quite some time and when a flier came around announcing a neighborhood garage sale that would be advertised and I had to only show up, I was on that like stink on a monkey. THIS, would be how I finally get some clarity in my life by getting rid of all the junk I had. This would be great! I could get that new PC I wanted, why I might even be able to buy that Apple iMac I had been looking at!

I got very organized. Vases, dishes, and pots went into a specific area of the table. That was housewares. The old tennis racket and roller blades comprised my sporting goods, and for those wandering bookworms, I had a small collection of books.

But after so many nice sunny weekends, this one decided to be muggy and rainy. Ah, hopes and dreams. How you DO like to be dashed. We went ahead with it anyway, putting the tables at the end of my garage. My wife, bless her heart, manned one side of the garage and I the other. Soon, people started to show up.

One of the first guys picked up a rifle scope my dad had dropped by with. He was either cleaning out his junk or hiding evidence he didn't want the feds to get, one or the other. So the guy picks up the rifle scope, buys it, and they asks if we have any military supplies. Ah, no. Then he wanted some rifles. Makes sense, what ELSE do you put a rifle scope on, right? No again. THEN, he asked if we had any knives. At this point I thought he is either a weird collector OR he's accessing our ability to defend ourselves should he decide to come back while we're sleeping. We got so many off the wall bizarre questions I was close to putting a sign up saying "Attention: We currently do not have any medical supplies, artificial limbs, hernia belts or deer antlers" just to filter out the wandering ghouls who were showing up.

About a half hour later a portly man in a t-shirt that left little to the imagination and a long white beard shows up to check out our wares. He spies our daughter's fold up playpen and asks "how much". I tell him $10 and he says "Oh that will go. We just bought four of them for a day care me and my wife opened up". So he walks away and I quietly thank my in-laws for providing a safe haven for my daughter during the day so that I can avoid sending my daughter to the "John Wayne Gacy" school for girls for THIS guy to watch her.

The rest of the crew that stops by was enough to make you want to call a contractor to put iron bars and your windows pronto. I got the feeling that everybody was on the lookout for that one treasure, that Van Gogh tucked into the back of Dogs Playing Poker or something like that. Then you had the folks who wouldn't even stop. They'd just slow down, try and dechipher what you had, and just continue on their way.

And how did we do? Well, let's see. We sold the scope for $10 and a couple of DVD's at 2 for $1.00. And I did make enough to meet my original goal though, albeit slightly altered. Now, unlike the one I had in mind, I'm unfortunately only able to purchase an actual "apple", not of the computer variety. Oh well. Looks like it's going to be an early Christmas for the folks who pick up our garbage next Friday!

My hierarchy of useless knowledge

I had a revelation today and it came while my wife was watching The Young And The Restless. No, that revelation was NOT I am a giant pussy who watches soaps with my wife. That came long ago. No, this one was a revelation on how polluted my mind is with useless information.

We got into a discussion about a character on the show, one who's been with the show for years. When my wife had trouble remembering his name I thought for a few minutes then blurted it out. As appreciative as my wife was of me ending her torment I couldn't help but think, has this ability to remember useless crap hampered my growth, my career?

I don't know how memory works, but I imagine it like a series of compartments where information is stored. Empty compartments are ripe for storage while occupied compartments are there to keep information that your mind deems valuable. Who am I? What do I do for a living and why did that lady at Arby's stop and ask me "Do you like the onion bun?" when I asked for a Beef n' Cheddar, only to sell me an NON-onion bun equivelent to "save me some coin". Where did she get the idea that she could go off the script? "I'd like that". "Okay, I will get you that". It's simple. But I digress.

When information comes into your brain it searches for an empty compartment. My problem, I think, is that I am running out of open compartments. Someday I'm going to learn valuable information at work and it's going to want to go to one of my "brain compartments" only to find that it's occupied with "Donny Most played Ralph Malph on Happy Days" or my personal favorite "Buckner and Garcia sang Pac Man Fever". Really?!? Pac Man Fever? I doubt Buckner and or Garcia would own up to that today and here I am carrying that shitty factoid around in my head!

So as I envy the A.D.D. set with their set in stone diagnosis I will sit and wait that someday "I" get my equivilent of Ridilan, a drug that helps me wipe from my head all those deliciously funny memories I have from shows like Different Strokes. "What chew talkin bout Willis!".


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