How's that stomach Cugat?

Well it's getting better. I discovered (through my continued obsessive reading about all things gall bladder) that the doctors had to pump my up with CO2 in order to get in there and poke around. This explains why my stomach was distended considerably more than usual. I thought I had actually gotten fatter since the surgery. No, they inflated me like a balloon. How pleasant.

So aside from enjoying the lovely pharmaceuticals I've been swallowing like M&Ms, I watched Rescue Dawn (in the middle of the day!), the awesome Werner Herzog Vietnam movie. I want to like his movies a lot more than I do, but he's hit and miss for me. Grizzly Man, for instance, was one of my least favorite movies, and while the d00d who went to Alaska fits the profile of a Herzog character perfectly, he was pretty annoying and I honestly wished he had gotten eaten by the bears a lot sooner (as a character I wished that, not as a person; there are very few people who I truly wish to be eaten alive; I just found this guy irritating and completely inarticulate and uninformed about bears, and most other things about which he opened his yapper). Maybe if it weren't a documentary it would have been better. Maybe I just saw too much of myself in him. Maybe deep down I know that he's the gentle hippie I was destined to become if I had not graduated high school, joined the Marines, gone to college, got a job, had a kid, got another job, traveled extensively, learned languages, and had a gall bladder operation. Whatever, Rescue Dawn is really good.

I also read four Moliere plays. They're great, but god help me if I ever have to sit through one of them. Beckett has more action. Moliere is very witty though, very clever, and I bow to his superior ability.

I also read O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away. Why haven't I read this sooner? Nobody told me to. I've read all her stories but for some reason I never got to the novels. She only wrote a few so it won't be hard to soon say I read them all.

And I will say that. Soon.

Apparently I have to go back to work tomorrow. I wonder if there's another organ I can...no, there's not.

Goodnight gall, goodnight bladder

Surgery is over, gall bladder is out, and I am finally home. Due to some bleeding I had to stay overnight in the hospital. Apparently the gall bladder was stuck to the liver and when they yanked it out the bleeding began. So I stayed overnight which was fine due largely to some wonderfully mothering nurses with their ice chips and morphine. I was hoping for a sponge bath but perhaps I set my sights too high. Nurses don't do that I guess. But nurses work hard and whatever they get paid it's not enough. I was largely silent in my delirium so it's not like I was bothering them, but I could hear people vomiting and groaning elsewhere and if I had to put up with that every day I'd go nuts. So more money for nurses. And more sponge baths for patients.

Morphine, by the way, is awesome and I can totally understand why someone might get hooked on it. I felt really good in addition to not feeling any pain, and when they switched me to percoset that was fine but morphine, yeah, a little euphoria going on there. That's not something I have every day.

And then I guess because I'm inappropriate or stupid, or both, when I got home I took my prescription to to the pharmacy, and when he asked me what I need, I said, "Some delicious percocets please." The lesson I learned today is that the pharmacist (who sees me just about every morning waiting for the bus) doesn't like to joke about drugs. My bad. Now give me my drugs bitch cause I need to get high and go online. W00t!!1!

Where I've been

Not having my gall bladder out, that's where. I get that done tomorrow. Until then I just spend time dreading the idea of being cut open, albeit with very small holes. But taking off my clothes and being knocked unconscious...I'm drunk when that happens. But I can't be drunk for surgery.

I was drunk this weekend though, which is usually a good thing, but this time not so much. I shouldn't go to parties where I only know two people because, even though I meet some interesting people this way, I also meet some douchie people who kind of ruin my day, and I can't seem to get drunk enough to make that go away.

Douchie people aside, I've also been carrying buckets of water from the basement to dump outside. Something is going on with the drain spout out back and a pipe connected to it which hilariously empties out into the basement. I'm no expert, but I think letting runoff from the gutters drain into the basement is a little, shall we say, foolish. But only if it rains, like it's been doing the past three days. Otherwise I'm sure it's a great idea.

In the meantime, I will carry buckets of water until someone cuts me open.

I sobered up for this?

Irish Alzheimer's

On NPR today a guy with a new book is talking about memory and I remembered (duh) that someone said I have Irish Alzheimer's: I only remember transgressions. Not completely true, but not completely false either.

However, I prefer the other saying that the Irish ignore whatever they can't drink or punch. That was kind of my experience when I lived in Ireland. Lots of drinking and punching there.

Also in St. Petersburg. That experience is still a bit Rashomon-like. Did I insult a guy in a bar? His woman? Did I spill his drink? Did I then spill my drink? Maybe I was completely innocent. I prefer to think that Russians are sensitive souls and are easily offended by things like spilled alcohol.

The one thing I do know for sure is that I bleed profusely. Important to keep in mind next time I drink among strangers. But I drink to forget so who knows what will happen in the future?

All I know is that tonight I drink copious amounts with Lithuanians who are friendlier than Russians, and that's all that's important. I have never been punched by a Lithuanian. Not that I remember anyway.

Lies!

To be fair, there are no Hillary posters in the neighborhood to deface, but still. Ron Paul?

















And someone (or maybe--probably definitely--the same person) knows something about him that I don't. (You have to click the picture to see the truth written on his forehead.)














Just for future reference, a nice wide Sharpie makes for a whole lot better defacing. This looks like it was done with a Bic. I've done my share of poster defacing in the past and I always had a Sharpie in my pocket.

Also, I was just glad to see you. I'm the whole package.

That said, Ron Paul is a doctor and I might vote for him if he would take out my gall bladder. And if he didn't make me pay him in gold.

My Gall Bladder Myself

Funny thing happened when, after a week of calling and waiting, and finally being told officially that yes, I have gallstones. I was told to get them out as soon as possible and was referred to a surgeon. I was asked first if I have preference for surgeons and I said my only preference was for someone who could successfully locate said organ and then, with equal success, remove the fucking thing. In short, no, I do not have a surgeon on retainer and would thus need my doctor to recommend one. So the girl who works at the office gave me the name and number of someone who does this all the time.

After leaving a message at the surgeon's office, I got a call back and the woman asked me when I want to schedule my colonoscopy.

Eh? Is that necessary? It's not really connected to my gall bladder.

She says, "We do colo-rectal surgery here."

Oh my. Well that's very different than what I need. Ok then, back to my other doctor.

Haha, the office is closed until Monday. Please call back.

Oh I will. You can bet I will.

I wonder if my doctor was even looking at the results of my tests. For all I know, he could have me confused with someone who has...I don't know, a really diseased ass or something.

In any event, no more attacks since I've basically been eating veggies and everything low fat. And I'm slightly less fat too so in that way we're all winners in this.

Last night was at a Moroccan restaurant with about 25 of Eulalia's teacher colleagues, something I usually avoid lest I be subjected to endless discussions of English department protocols and tales of student papers, but given there were so many people I could move around when that sort of thing started.

Then the belly dancer showed up, which made it vastly more interesting than if, say, a juggler had shown up. I drank a lot, she made me dance (she made me, I swear, I would never dance in public. Never!)

Sometime during the belly dancer's shimmying the guy next to me was talking about Ralph Nader and getting him on the ballot, and yes, he should be allowed on the ballot, I voted for Ralph before, he's the only one addressing the real issues, etc., and before I knew it, this morning the doorbell rang and there he was, the guy from last night, he was in my living room with a bunch of petitions for me to get signed. He wants me to stand out on the street and collect signatures for Ralph.

Wha?

Apparently I will agree to anything if there is a belly dancer and a bottle of wine in front of me. I smell a conspiracy.

Also, I'm not collecting signatures. I love Ralph and all, but I hate being approached by people with clipboards while I'm going somewhere, and I'd rather not be on the receiving end of that hatred. Our democracy needs fixing, but I don't think I'm going to be the one to fix it.

However, if Ralph can recommend someone to take out my gall bladder without going in through my ass, I'll get him some signatures.

These days

In the absence of anything meaningful to say, a song I never really liked until I heard this version of it.