In Search of A Quiet Place

It's time to write something.  If only I had a spot to do it.

I tried to blog in the living room, but my wife is watching Cupcake Wars on the Food Network and always does a running play-by-play of that show as she watches it, even when she knows I'm trying to focus on something else.  She just can't help herself. 

That's ok.  I knew this when we got married.

I moved to my study to write, but as I've mentioned before,  there are frogs in my neighbor's dilapidated, uncared-for, above-ground swimming pool.  They returned tonight, and they are once again croaking too loud for me to concentrate. 

I shut the door in hopes of drowning out the frogs, but that meant I isolated myself with my aptly named cat, Trouble,who was formerly napping on the futon but is currently pawing at my leg with remarkable endurance, only taking occasional breaks to scratch my chair. 

I'd move her to another room, but then she'd just scratch relentlessly on the office door, and that would be even worse.

My front porch is a nice place to blog, but then I'm back to the frog issue.

I'd go to a coffeeshop, but it's 9:54 and the ones near my house close by 10.  I think some of the fast food places near my house have WIFI, but they probably close at 10, too. 

Of course, I could just drive somewhere and blog in my car, and then come home to post it when I get back in the range of my local network.  But my computer battery is almost gone, so that doesn't work either. 

I could drive to my office, find a parking spot in downtown Nashville, pass through security, unlock my door and blog from work, but that's probably a violation of some kind of obscure conflict of interest law since I work for the State.

What other place with electrical outlets are still open? 

There's the bus station, the airport and a 24-hour Walmart.  There, I could probably park myself in the electronics section and at least get half an hour before an employee chased me away.  If I needed a nap in the process, I could just walk over to the furniture section, or maybe the camping tents.

But actually working in any of these places isn't nearly as fun and writing about the possibility of having to.

So, in the midst of all these complications, I'm only left with one option:

Shut down the computer and go kill some frogs. 
I'll see you next week. 

What to Expect When You're Expecting a Colonoscopy

I never expected to see the inside of my intestines.  Now, I have.

Hold your jealousy for just a moment. 

Ok. 

I had my first colonoscopy yesterday.  For the uninitiated, a colonoscopy involves emptying out your entire bowels, followed by a doctor shoving a camera up your back end to dig through your intestines for abnormalities.  It's really a wonder that medical science hasn't come up with a better method than this, but here we are.

People warned me about various things (the worst part is the preparation, stay near the bathroom the night before, you won't remember anything), but there's no way to describe this process until you actually do it. 

But I'm still going to try:

Monday night: enjoy my last real pre-operation meal and mentally prepare for what's to come.  Try to make the process easier by substituting popsicles for side dishes to my entree. 

Tuesday morning/afternoon:

Savor a single piece of bread for breakfast. It's the last solid food I'll get for two days.  Distract myself at lunchtime by walking to the building where Michelle Obama is speaking.  See the First Lady exiting the back of the building wearing a purple dress, walking by about 30 feet away, to no fanfare whatsoever.  She looks surprisingly delicate in person.   Weird. 

4:30 p.m. Tuesday:

Marvel at the size of the 4-liter container with mixable powder at the bottom that I have to ingest before the procedure, for the purpose of emptying out everything in my digestive system.  Mix with two pitchers of crystal light.  Remember that nurse warned me that drink taste would be a negative 2 on a 1-10 scale.  Pray. 

4:35: Stock all bathrooms with toilet paper.  Feed the cats.  Do the dishes.  Run out of things to use for procrastination.  Wonder how on earth I will be able to drink 4 liters of this stuff.  Pray.  If the world is really going to end in 2012, this would be a pretty good time.

4:40: Glass 1 of 9 commences.  This stuff isn't all that bad...

4:52: Glass 2.  Oh wait, this stuff is actually pretty terrible.  My first glass must have been mostly crystal light.

5:05:  Glass 3.  If I had to describe the taste of this stuff, I'd say, "drinking chalk." And somehow each glass of this is worse than the last.

5:15: Starting Glass 4, and nothing has really happened yet.  I wonder if I didn't mix this right? 

5:35: Glass 5.  Still no fireworks.  Chug down my final glass of Day 1 and prepare for the worst.  Wonder why nothing is happening

6:05: Ok, this is weird.  Is there nothing in me to empty?

6:15: Here it comes...Bathroom.

6:25: Run to the bathroom.

6:36: SPRINT TO THE BATHROOM!

6:42: Still in the bathroom. Begin to curse those who withheld critical details about this experience.  No one told me you only get 30 seconds of warning before this stuff makes your stomach explode. Or that the sprints to the bathroom wouldn't be the only kind of "runs" I'd be having all night.  Or that bathroom trips will be spaced out just far enough to prevent you from just staying in there.

7:12-25: Abruptly end two separate phone calls when nature makes calls of its own.  Wonder how anything can still be left inside.  Pray for death. 

7:30-9:00: Alternate prayer and bathroom trips, often multi-tasking the two.  Things eventually settle down.

9:00-6:00: Sleep in one-hour increments on the couch by the bathroom. 

Wednesday:

6:00 a.m: Glass 6.  This stuff tasted better yesterday.  Most be losing its freshness.  They should really put some preservatives in here.

6:15: Glass 7.  Consider whether its safe to take a shower before Medicine of Doom set in.  Take fastest shower in history.

6:25:  Let's just say I finished my shower just in time. 

6:33: Glass 8.  One glass left.  There's a light at the end of the tunnel, but no matter how much I force down, the glass is still half-full.  I swear this stuff is multiplying like the fish and the loaves.  And it isn't tasting any better.

6:45: Glass 9.  Chug the whole final glass so I can be done.  Run immediately to bathroom.

6:46-9:00:   Bathroom. Prayer.  Rinse and repeat. Literally.

9:00-12:00:   Alternate between bathroom trips, short attempts at naps, and worrying whether it will be safe for me to drive to my appointment at 12:45. Briefly flip by the Food Network, but can't stand to watch. 

12:40: Bathroom.  Really hope it's the last time, but pack change of underwear just in case.

1245-2:30: Leave for hospital, arrive and get prepped for operation. 

2:45: Still waiting in pre-op area for scheduled 2:30 procedure.  Worst part is that woman next to me won't stop talking to me, asking personal questions and giving me way too much detail about her various ailments. 

2:52: Now she's recounting the last 10 years of her medical history. 

3:00: She's now talking about solar flares and what the astrologers say they mean.  God help me.

3:10: At least the nurse is talking to her now.  I get a moment of peace.

3:15: She's telling the fourth different nurse about the proper method to stick her with a needle. Why doesn't my little bed come with a mute button?

3:18: Finally.  I get to have a colonoscopy to escape the torture of listening by this woman.

5:00: Wake up.  Ask questions that I won't remember shortly thereafter.  Reportedly commit myself to getting a tattoo of a dragon on my face and eating 3 entire pizzas, but have no personal memory of these statements. 



8:30: Wake up and ask the same questions once again.  Turns out I had two small polyps that had to be removed, but no other apparent damage.  Have the best toast ever made, and take some calls.  It's finally over.    

10:30: Sleep is calling.  Wonder whether the worst part of the experience was the lack of food, drinking 4 liters of the Laxative of Doom, the bathroom trips, or the operation itself. 

10:42: Decide the answer is "waiting in the pre-op area next to that annoying woman."  Fall asleep.
 

Colonoscopy Day

I take this pause from constant colonoscopy-preparation-related bathroom trips to let you know that the blog will be late this week, for reasons the blog title indicates. 

I'll be going into an induced sleep early this afternoon, and I'll be very glad to be knocked out, because the doctor will be sticking a camera into my innards. 

Maybe I'll post pictures right here!

Anyway, when I come to, I'll be posting right here.

Just give me time to eat first, because I haven't had solid food since Monday. 

I'll meet you back here soon.  I'll be the guy with the cleanest intestines in town.

Life is Hard, Live it to its Fullest

It's that time of the week when I post a new blog. 

There's only one problem: I got nothing. 

So rather than churn out something out of obligation that isn't very good, I'm just going to re-post one of my old favorites that seems infinitely fitting these days.

It's a post I did after a summer of bad luck and overwhelming obligations, about living life to its fullest.  You can find it here:

Life is hard. So go live it.

As you might know, my brother is fighting cancer, my wife's job is unstable, and we have an out-of-town house that we can't sell for what we owe on it.  On top of all that, I'm having trouble keeping up with the constantly running treadmill of work, writing, and volunteer obligations. 

Life can be hard, as I've recently been reminded.

But it can also be rewarding.  Enjoy it to the fullest when you can, and the hard times will seem a little more tolerable. 

Life is hard.  So go live it. (just read the link above first.)

Good Friday

This blog was born on Good Friday two years ago. 

Things here have changed a lot since then.  For one, I write less often now than I used to (once a week, usually on Tuesdays).  For another, hundreds of people actually read this thing now. 

Perhaps there's a connection between these two points.

The tone and content of what gets posted here has changed too: there's no more sports or politics, and some of the running bits I used to do that didn't get read much probably won't return. 

One thing that hasn't changed, though, is the meaning of Good Friday, and how that relates to what I'm going here in this corner of cyberspace.

Here's what I wrote about it last year.

 http://www.andrewsmithsthoughts.blogspot.com/2011/04/good-friday-means-one-year-of-thinking.html  

I'll be on the road today, but I hope you all have a restful and contemplative day, and that you'll take a moment to think gratefully of a time that someone in your life made a sacrifice on your behalf. 

I'll see you soon.

Horsing Around

Whoever it was who said "a horse is a horse" was a blooming idiot.  Horses in fact have different motivations and life goals.  The one pictured above, for instance, wanted me dead.

I'm not kidding.

Here's what happened:

My wife and I naively accepted an invitation to go to horseback riding at the house of a friend who owned four of them (horses, that is.)   Our only prior riding experience had been at one of those touristy places in Gatlinburg where you pay $50 to ride a pre-selected route, and the horses already know every step of the trail and exactly what they are supposed to do, even if they are being ridden by a jar of ketchup.      

We came expecting roughly the same, except that maybe by now we'd be capable of handling an occasional trot. We had vague ideas of what we were doing, but we needed horses with low self-esteem who desperately sought their riders' approval. 

To our surprise, these horses, were just... well, horses.  They were good horses, they just weren't trained to adhere to the beck and call of strangers who didn't have a complete idea of what they were doing.  These horses didn't mind being ridden by their owners, but they had the same reaction to being sat on and told what to do by a 200 pound stranger that you or I would. 

As we ventured into a partially blazed trail in the woods, my horse for the day, Comet, decided that she would protest my presence by making a habit of clearing the trees on our wooded trail with only four inches to spare on the righthand side. This meant she cleared each tree just fine, but my right leg slammed into each and every one.

Thankfully, she stopped doing this after three of four trees, but it didn't feel much better when she switched to banging me against trees on the left side.

After a couple collisions, I pulled her reigns to the opposite direction each time we started getting close to the edge of the trail, but this only cause her to temporarily stop and laugh at my misfortune before continuing on exactly as planned.

Mr. Ed would have never done something like that.
 
My wife faired slightly better on her horse until it decided to enter a near sprint to keep up with the horse in front of it, one ridden by its owner, and thus who actually liked the person who was riding it.
When that horse started moving, our horses behind it followed fast on its trail, and the speed and bumpiness of the trail caused my wife to fall off to the left side.

At that point, Comet, whose only two gears on Sunday were "slow walk interrupted by long sessions of grazing" and "homicidal sprint" decided that it would be fitting to buck me off while engaged in the latter and dispatch me to the left as well, just beside my wife.  It was a chivalrous gesture on her part, I suppose, and she somehow even caused her (Comet's) saddle to break in the process. 

At least now when I go to the beach next month both sides of me will have roughly equal bruising. 

In fairness, not all my bruises are attributable to Comet. I can't blame her for waning a more  competent rider.  Had she not almost broken my wrist by violently throwing me to the ground at full speed, I'd say I feel bad for her. 

My body looks like a peach that's just ridden a roller coaster and feels like a pinata, but it wasn't all Comet's fault.

Almost half my cuts, scrapes and bruises stem from a series of low hanging branches along the trail, and as a result of those same branches my wife and I currently sport matching neck scrapes that resemble what we would look like if we assaulted each other with butterknives. 

I have gigantic red marks on both my inner thighs from saddle abrasion.  Riding uses a series of leg muscles, and my leg and groin muscles hurt in spots where I didn't even know muscles existed.  I suppose that's just as well, given that I won't be using any of those groin muscles anytime soon, considering the location of my wife's saddle-abrasion bruise. 

When we finally got off our horses and hobbled to car to drive home, my wife asked if I had a good time and if I'd do it again. 

"Yes," I said, "but next time I want an idiot-proof horse." 

Because my bruises testify that I need one.