Love Song

I am the perfect girlfriend for a criminal mastermind, I told you. Or any kind of dreamer or artist or feet-not-on-the-ground types or evildoers. They create their art or hatch their plans or raise their hell, and I keep things together. And it's not anti-feminist. Now if it was an accountant or a lawyer, THAT would be anti-feminist, but because there's hell-raising involved...

You laughed. Exactly.

And sometimes I get to join in, and that's even better, I said.

Long pause. You just have to be careful not to lose your identity in something like that, you said.

I think my identity is strong enough that it can't get lost, I told you.

Yeah, well, you said. I thought mine was too.

And one of many things I didn't say was this, though I wanted to: Sometimes that's best. Sometimes you get tangled up with one of those people who suck the identity right out of you, and those are the hard times, the ones that take years to get past, like what you went through with your ex, or what I went through with mine. But sometimes you give just a teeny bit of who you are, and the other person takes it and gives you a little bit of who they are, and things start to spin between you, and so you give a little more and they give a little more and pretty soon you've got this vortex, you see, and the bits you've given merge with the bits they've given and in that vortex, you do lose some small piece of your identity, yes--but you don't so much notice because what you lose is so much less than what you gain. And if all goes well, if something massive and awful doesn't intervene, this vortex builds and builds and all the things neither of you could have done alone, things that would have been impossible, suddenly become almost easy. You find yourself immersed in magic, surrounded by wild and majestic acts. And you hang on to those moments like grim death, because they are few and far between and when they're gone you'll miss them more than you can imagine.

Yes, I didn't say. There's always a little bit of danger. The best whirlwinds carry the tiniest twinge of self-destruction; fragments that, if mishandled, form the seeds of their own demise. But that's the spice that makes them worthwhile, as well--to feel the edge of the cliff under your feet and to know that you could fall at any moment--WOULD fall, if you were doing this alone, and might fall still. And then to still be standing--still immersed in magic, still surrounded by those wild and majestic acts, still clinging to that partner in crime.

It's just a matter of finding the right one, I thought but didn't say.

We talked about our exes for a while, and later on you said You know, there are three people I'm really glad to have met while working here. And I was one of the names you named.

I wonder sometimes if I'm imagining things. And then I wonder sometimes if I'm not.

You Know What?? People Are Total Assholes

Longtime readers may remember the saga of Bob the Plumber, who screwed me out of nearly $3000 just over a year ago. I sent him several certified letters, all of which were returned as undeliverable, and finally sent one to his methadone clinic, asking them to forward it. (I never knew whether they did or not; as we shall see, they did.)

Then I sent a package to the attorney general, with photos of the crap work they'd done, and a narrative of what had happened. Today I got a response, which included the notice from the attorney general (Fuck you, Lisa Madigan) that they weren't going to pursue it. And also included the response, which I recognized from the abysmal writing style as being written by Bob the Plumber's wife, to my narrative.

Hey, guess what, guys? According to them, my lifestyle and my accomodations prove that I am one of those people who sues people to avoid taking responsibility for my own mistakes! And also? According to them, LJ or one of his "unsavory" friends went to their house (which we don't know where it is, or wouldn't I have sent the certified letters to that address?) and burglarized their van.

And I've also apparently jeopardized their "constitutional right to medical privacy". (No; I sent a letter. The clinic was not obliged to forward it.)

I have never read a bigger pack of lies and bullshit in my life. Not once. And I read a LOT.

Lately, there are entire days, people, when the only human being I can stand is the Brit.

Stoopid Corporate America

Those of you who believe in "everything happens for a reason", would you please line up for your richly-deserved beating?

After weeks of anticipation and constant reassurances that yes, they still wanted to interview me, Best Job Ever just evaporated. Apparently there was another position, a more important one, that just opened up in New York, and they've decided to direct their energies toward filling that position. (Which sounds TOTALLY fishy to me--what, they can only fill one position at a time???) As the recruiter said (between apologies)--"When something's on the front burner, they'll put all their time into it, but once it's put on the back burner...." Also, "Would you maybe be interested in the New York position?" he asked. Which...okay, yeah, I thought about it for a second, but...no. New York is not one of those places I ever wanted to live. The flatlands of Wisconsin, in a farmhouse miles away from the nearest neighbors? Sure. But not New York.

I simply could not be more disappointed. And granted, I still do have one local possibility, for which I interview on Thursday morning--the one that I thought might be a wee bit over my head--but I really, REALLY had my heart set on this job. It's not 100% for sure that the job isn't being filled--I'm supposed to call the recruiter back a week from today for the final verdict--but it's not looking good.

I'm starting to wonder if all these near-misses and almost-had-its are meant to send me some kind of message. I've known for a while that I don't want to do tech support for the rest of my life. I want to do a bunch of small things--write, run my bakery, eventually open up a little coffee shop somewhere--but none of those will pay the bills immediately, and most of them require money to start up. And right now, I need MORE money, not less. It's not that I'm living a wildly profligate lifestyle--about the only thing we could cut out of the budget would be the extravagant number of cable channels--but the house costs a lot to keep running. And this house, expensive and crappy though it is, is maybe the only thing I can point to in my life right now and say "This was not a mistake." I know I made the right decision, but I can't get it to where I want it to be, where I can show it to other people and have them agree that it wasn't a mistake. And I've been counting on getting a better job to put me in a position where I CAN fix up the house...but now I'm wondering if maybe there's not something else I'm supposed to be doing.

Then I think, what a lot of superstitious hoo-hah. I need a job, I need money, I need to put my nose to the grindstone and suck it up and just do what needs to be done, and all these pipe-dreams aren't going to pay for a new roof. (Although--the HUD inspector called today, and he's coming out Saturday to take a look at just how badly I got rooked on this place, so maybe the roof will get paid for somehow...)

I'm just really, really disappointed about this job. I really thought I had it.

After All That Bitching

Remember when I got all bitchy about how I hadn't lost any weight due to my unscheduled diet?

Apparently most of what I was carrying there was water, because between the surgery and the fact that it is ENTIRELY too frickin' hot to EAT, much less to cook, I have lost 15 pounds. :::happy wiggle dance:::

Of course, part of the new "diet" is that we're totally broke til Thursday, and so even if I WAS hungry, I couldn't afford to get any take-out food. Which I'm sure helps the diet. But damn, I want some wings.

Instead: peanut butter and jelly. :::sigh:::

Unembellished Quote

This made me smile from about 5:30 onward.

"God, I love your sarcasm...I really missed this!!" --the Brit, riding home from work with me for the first time in two weeks.

Again: REALLY Frickin' Hot, Yo

Heat index: about 100. Seriously damn unpleasant, so I was kinda--dare I say?--GLAD to get back to work today. Because in my office, there is air conditioning.

Everyone was glad to see me, to one degree or another. Big Boss Beverly, I have decided, is just a grotesquely insincere human being; she told me how glad she was that I was feeling better, but her expression was like someone talking to a plate of rotten meat.

Everyone else, though, was sincerely glad to see me, and surprised by how healthy I looked, and they all loved my haircut ...so I'm reluctantly accepting the consensus here. It's tolerable. I'll grant it that much. And it IS easier to deal with in the morning.

There were a couple of subversives--most notably Sara and the Brit--who, when they saw me, expressed a mild and facetious level of disbelief as to whether or not I'd ever actually BEEN sick. Sara: "We did some research, when they said what was wrong with you, because we weren't really sure you just didn't stumble on the only possible way to get two weeks off around here." I only wish I'd thought of it, I told her.

And then this: "You look amazing," said the Brit, which (you know what's coming here, right?) ::::SQUEEEEE:::! Because speaking of looking amazing...oh, MAN. I walked into the summer office and he was sitting there, looking overheated and frazzled and harried, with his glasses on (extra hot)...and then he looked up at me and smiled. And then the rest of the staff took a couple of rolls of paper towels and blotted me up from my little puddle on the floor, and wrung me out and put me back together...He is just too damn cute. Once again--it is NOT cool that he has a girlfriend. Especially not a pretty, political one. If he HAS to have a girlfriend, why couldn't he have some ugly shrewish hypocritical bitchy slattern? That would make my life much easier. :::sigh::::

The higher-ups left me mostly alone today; I question whether that will be the case tomorrow. But hopefully I won't be there much longer anyway...I'm still waiting to hear about my new interview date.

I'm going upstairs now, where the air-conditioner now mercifully dwells, to watch the rest of "Hit Me Baby 1 More Time". Which Wang Chung SO should have won last week, IMHO--any 80's band willing to take a swing at "Hot In Herre", and actually CARRY IT OFF, deserves MAJOR recognition. Stoopid Irene Cara was nowhere NEAR as good.

By the way--it's REALLY frickin' hot.

And The Light Shone Down Upon...

As of 11:30 this morning, we once again have electricity.

But ComEd is still a bunch of bastard people.

Everything in the freezer survived, fortunately, because I had it packed together so densely that nothing could thaw. If anything HAD gone bad, I was gonna hand it to the ComEd guy as he left. Nothing like a pile of rotten pork chops to say "Thanks fer nothin'." Thank heavens, there was no need.

Tomorrow, back to work. Yeccchhh.

I Have No Obscenities Strong Enough For This

Guess where I am right now?

Hint: it's not my house. Because my house has no electricity right now, because ComEd is, taken individually and collectively, a pack of something something censored something et ceteras.

Seriously, y'all: I have run out of cuss words. To do this situation justice, I would have to weave a blinding tapestry of profanities, and the depth of my rage is such that the current vocabulary does not suffice. I would have to invent entirely new perversions, not to mention individuals, concepts, and orifices upon which to perpetrate them; and frankly I'm just not up to the challenge today.

A chronology: Yesterday my electricity got cut off "for non-payment" at about 10:30 AM. By 1 PM, the remaining balance had been paid in full and ComEd had been notified that a payment had been made at one of their agents. At 7 PM last night, I gave up on the hope of having lights before morning, and came to Mom's to sleep in the A/C.

At 8:00 this morning, I got up and hopped the bus back north, figuring that I'd be there when the lights came back on. You know, so maybe I could get something done. I got home at 10:15 AM and promptly called ComEd to confirm that yes, they received my payment and yes, they had scheduled the reconnection. "Do you have any idea of when that might be?" I asked them politely.

"Well, our techs work til 7:00, and you're on the list, so you should be reconnected by the end of the day."

At 1:00 I called again, since I was still without light. At 4:30, I called again. Each time I was given the same piece of information: "You should be reconnected before 7 PM."

At 6:45, still without lights, I called AGAIN. This time I was substantially less-polite. I wanted an explanation of how I could be told three times that my lights were scheduled to be reconnected by 7:00, and yet it was 15 minutes before quitting time and I was still in darkness. I wanted an explanation of why, exactly, they can terminate my payment plan and cut my lights off if I don't have the payment there on the tick of the dot, yet once the payment is made, they can be so very vague about when, exactly, I'm getting reconnected. I wanted an explanation of why, EXACTLY, I could have gotten the same implied promise of reconnection from three people throughout the day, only to be told at the last minute "Oh, we don't make those kind of guarantees." I wanted to know why the people at the end of the phone lines could not contact the dispatcher to find out where, exactly the crew was, or when, exactly, they might be reconnecting me.

I got no answers to any of those questions, needless to say. What I got was this: "If it's not done by the end of the day today, it'll probably be done tomorrow."

"PROBABLY"???!!!???

I've never actually "seen red" before. It was an interesting experience for me.

At 7:30, I gave up and called Mom and told her I'd be spending the night at her place again. And that's where I am right now.

The worst thing about this? No recourse whatsoever. I am at the mercy of the giant monopoly that is ComEd, and they have me over a barrel. No one can do anything about this; they are the only choice we have for electric service, just like those filthy People's Energy bastards are the only choice for gas. The Citizen's Utility Board, ostensibly the ombudsman for consumers, is really more of a news source and an occasional sympathetic ear in situations like this; they have no real regulatory power. Because I sent in a payment FIVE DAYS late, I am now in a position where ComEd can do whatever they want, or not do it, on whatever schedule suits them. There is nothing to protect the consumer.

And that has left me completely speechless. Because any name I choose to call them will not be vulgar enough; any degeneracy I might accuse them of performing would nowhere near begin to express the depths of hatred I feel for this particular group of people.

So in the immortal words of Corky in "Waiting for Guffman", I say to ComEd..."You're just a bunch of...BASTARD people!"

And now I'm going to go bite my pillow.

July Can't Come Soon Enough For Me

Because June? Continues to be a cesspool.

This morning I woke up bright and early. And as I was sitting in front of my computer, checking my blogroll, with "Between the Lions" on cable beside me...

...the power went out.

"Well shit," I said, and went to check the circuit breaker.

On the way to the basement I noticed that there was a man in our backyard, just under my window, right by the electric meter. And it was not a man I knew, which made me uneasy.

"Hello?" I said. "What's going on?"

"Disconnected for non-payment," he said.

"WHAT?" I said. "That cannot be right. I'm on the payment plan."

For a ComEd employee, he was a very nice man, and he went out to the car to confirm my story. Which he did confirm--I was on the payment plan, yes. And they had received my June payment...but not my May payment, apparently. The May payment was due on May 27th; they received it June 2nd, which (in their stupid, ridiculous, we're-a-monopoly-so-we-can-do-anything-we-want world) made it the June payment, which put me in default for the May payment, which in turn closed out the payment agreement. Which means I owed them $325, now, before I could get reconnected.

Needless to say, neither LJ nor I had $325. We came up with $150 between us. The rest--you guessed it: Mom.

And of course, it came with the responsibility lecture, which I felt entirely grateful for under the circumstances. Not that I'm NOT responsible--this is another bullshit utility power-play, and I will never concede that they were right to cut me off, particularly since I actually paid OVER on the May payment which they said was the June payment, so it was about $10 short of covering BOTH payments, if they actually handled payments like human beings instead of corporate fucksticks. But for the amount of money I just borrowed from Mom, she can give me any lecture she wants and I'll just say "Thank you very much."

Getting the money from Mom involved driving out to her house, following her to the bank, then driving home and paying the bill at a currency exchange. Then I had to run home, call ComEd to tell them they had their money, run back out the door, and go to my doctor's appointment. All of which I did, with the car windows open because the A/C on the Tahoe is like most other things about the Tahoe: iffy at best.

The result of this? The top surface of my left arm is absolutely TOMATO-red. Either I'm going to have to get LJ to drive me around as a passenger for four to six hours just to even things out, or I'm going to have the world's dumbest-looking farmers' tan for the rest of my natural days. I mean, this looks STOOPID. And also, it's very very warm.

The doctor's appointment went well, and then I ran some other errands, and then I went home. And even though the customer "service" line at ComEd had said it might take til the end of the day tomorrow to get my lights back, when I'd talked to the nice ComEd guy who cut us off in the first place, he'd assured me that if I made the payment immediately, they'd probably get me cut back on today. "We work til 7:00," he said. So I sat out on the porch for the rest of the afternoon, hoping against hope that ComEd would return.

At 6:55 I conceded, and went into the house, and got some pajamas and a few assorted items, and hopped the Pulaski bus to spend the night at Mom's. I can't sleep without the fan--it's just too hot in that room. And I'm pissed, because WITH the fan, this would be a PERFECT night for sleeping.

When I got to Mom's, it finally happened. The storm that's been brewing for weeks and weeks now, the elephant in the middle of the living room, the Thing We Don't Talk About.

The Haircut Argument.

Worse yet: this time, she won. I found myself in a kitchen chair with a fluffy blue towel around my neck, and the -snip snip snip- coming quick and fast. And my hair, which was formerly down to just below my shoulder blades, is now about 3/4 inch below my earlobes.

Mom says it's "cute". I am reserving judgement until I can get home and get some mousse into it and see if I can make it scrunchy. But right now? Oh....man. Think pageboy. Think RELUCTANT pageboy, because the ends want to flip UP instead of DOWN, and meanwhile my head feels WAY too light and I don't think I like this, people....

Maybe I'll get used to it. Maybe all it needs is a little product and some distance from Mom, who just wants me to look "professional" as opposed to my own personal leaning toward "punk".

Maybe we could glue the ends back on. Any ideas?

There are only ten more days in this month, and that's about nine-and-a-half too many for me. Unless something drastically changes before June 30th and I am showered with hundred-dollar bills, adorable fuzzy kittens, and hot monkey-lovin' from the Brit, I'm writing this month off completely.

Bad Biology

Now HERE is something for which I need an explanation.

The day before I went into the hospital, I got on the scale. The scale said 235, which is what it's said for a couple of months now. That was Tuesday morning a week ago.

On Tuesday I ate a bagel, half a muffin, and half a roast-beef sandwich. Everything came up when I got sick Tuesday night. From Tuesday at 7 PM til Sunday morning, I ate and drank NOTHING. No water, no food, no nothing. And everything came up. Input was zero; output was greater than zero. I mean, okay, yeah, I.V. fluids and morphine--but morphine has no calories, does it?

I was also, through most of this time, in a major fever. Like 101 or above. So it's not like my metabolism was completely shut down or anything.

From Sunday through Wednesday, I ate maybe ten bites of solid food, plus some jello. But that was IT.

So someone tell me why, when I got to Mom's and the FIRST thing I did was to get on the scale, and after SEVEN DAYS of all of the above, the scale STILL said 235?

Now seriously. If I have to go through barfing and fevers and pain and surgery and NOTHING to eat for days in a row, I think the LEAST I should be able to expect is to drop a size or two. I don't think that's too much to ask, do you???

Unfair, I say. Unfair!!!

Happy Birthday Ms. Gladys

When last seen, our intrepid author was lying inert on a gurney, praying for the merciful hands of oblivion to come and pat her on the head for a while. Or at least not to try to shove tubes down her throat.

They left me on my gurney for an hour or so, then came in and took me back down to the Torture Room. Unlike my last trip down, I had been robbed of all cheekiness; they had me, they were going to do whatever they did, and I wasn't gonna say a damn thing either.

Next thing I knew I was back in my room, it was 11:00 at night, and the whole ordeal was over. And at least 75% of the remaining pain was gone, too. Of course, my throat hurt like a total bitch--as would yours, I suppose, if someone had crammed it full of industrial-strength garden hose, TWICE.

And I had turned 35, somewhere during this long and medically-fraught day. Now I have had some rotten birthdays--birthdays forgotten by men, birthdays spent drunkenly preventing friends from getting the shit beat out of them, birthdays spent waiting for unwanted guests to come move in and ruin my relationship further--but I think on the all-time Ways I Really Would Have Rather Not Spent A Birthday list, the whole "mild sedation" story will keep this one at the top of the rankings for a while at least.

But that, really, was the end of the gross unpleasantry. They put me back on broth and jello for the next morning's breakfast, then onto "real food" by dinnertime. And nothing exploded, though that may be because "real food" was actually "unpalatable swill" and I only ate five bites; and then the next morning they told me "okay, you're going home today" and took out all my needles. And it is worth mentioning here that, at least around the arms, I look like someone held me down while three or four other people took well-aimed licks at me with rubber hoses. I am splotchy purple from fingertips to shoulders from all the infiltrated IVs, abortive blood draws, and late-night heparin shots. And my hands hurt, which I remember from the worst of my junkie days; miss enough shots and you're bound to nick a nerve or two, or encroach on a tendon.

The first couple of days at Mom's were rough. Everytime I'd try to eat or sleep I'd throw a fever and end up drenched in sweat, soggy and miserable. After a couple of times, I started to get a very familiar vibe from the whole sensation, and I realized that there's some element of this which with I AM very familiar--some of it may be post-surgical, but some of it is dopesickness, plain and simple. They had me on whacking big doses of straight morphine for five days, Vicodin and morphine the rest of the time--impossible NOT to have developed a little habit in that circumstance. So when I came home this afternoon (and believe me, I almost kissed the sidewalk--god I missed this place!) I put away the Vicodin they gave me--I'm not having any real pain, anyway--and fixed myself a dose of methadone, which has settled the whole works down. I'll just taper myself down the way I did when I got off heroin; I can't imagine it taking more than a week or two.

Then there's the whole dietary side of things. Apparently, or so they tell me, I don't need to change my ways too much in terms of what I eat--no fat-free diet or anything weird like that. I gave it a test today--a cheeseburger and fries from McD's, only because I was in bad shape and it was there. I don't have an appetite, really, but if I don't eat something small every four hours or so, my stomach hurts. So I've been making friends with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And even those make me belch...like, a LOT. Like Barney on the Simpsons. (We won't even talk about things at the other end of the digestive spectrum. I've heard it improves with time...god, I HOPE so.)

But I'm HOME, with my cats and my guy and my very own bed and blankets, and all my own books--the stuff in my mom's bookcases is just past redemption. Yes, I know bodice-ripper novels are de rigeur for sickbed reading but...just NO. And the streets at Mom's are just too quiet at night--I can't sleep without street noise anymore. And Mom ALSO doesn't have cable. It was just so good to get home...even if home needs a new roof and has a tore-up bathroom, and even if Whitey isn't speaking to me and only gives me the cold kitty-shoulder when I make the "pets" sign.

So yeah--I'm okay. And the guys in New York still want me to interview, probably the last week of June or the first week of July. They obviously already interviewed the other candidate--the one who was supposed to fly the same day I was--so the fact that they still want to talk to me makes me very optimistic indeed. My bag is still packed, as a matter of fact.

It might end up being a decent summer after all.

Thanks for all your comments, concern, and kind wishes, and to Firefly for being the bearer of news in my absence. It's good to be loved.

Omniam Galliam and Other Vestigials

Previously on Generally Bad Hospital:

Our heroine, infected gall-bladder and pancreas still attached, was sprung from the confines of 'Hood Hospital by her devoted and dedicated mother, who used to be a nurse and has better sense about some things than her daughter might often admit. She rode in the first ambulance of her not-quite-35-years and was delivered to Big Private Hospital, which, unlike 'Hood Hospital, had both morphine AND air-conditioning in abundance.

Oh, wait. There's another fun part to this story. Guys, you might wanna go read something else for a few--this gets into the girly-bits.

So back at 'Hood Hospital, on Wednesday afternoon when they admit me, they put me in a room
and strip me, and stick me into one of those funny-looking back-ass gowns. And I get into the bed, and I sit there for a while, nekkid in my back-ass gown, and later on I get up to pee and there's a faint mark on the sheet. And then in the bathroom I discover: My period has started. In the midst of all this vulgar bullshit chaos of puking and sweating and heaving and retching, my period has chosen THIS particular moment to start.

Okay, big effin deal, every twenty-eight days, inconvenient but whatever, you say???

No.

Unless I am religiously taking pills prescribed for the purpose, I DO NOT have periods. I have gone as long as eighteen months without a single period. It's a diagnosed condition that I've had since I was fifteen, and it's also pretty much nixed the chances of ever getting spontaneously pregnant, without medical intervention. And I have exploited both these facts from time to time--the no-periods one especially has proven convenient. But now? Every body system is clearly in revolt. This is WAR.

So they give me some of those "maternity pads" (translation: diapers) and another discomfort is added to my growing list. And once I get to Big Private Hospital, they also give me some "underwear".

Remember back in the 80's, those mesh t-shirts that hairy fat guys always seemed to be wearing with seven or eight gold chains--the ones that showed their fat AND their nipples to the greatest disadvantage? The ones made out of the same open-weave fabric as really cheap dishrags?

Okay. Now. Cut those into panties. THAT's the "underwear". I'm assuming there were issues of ventilation or something involved in this design. But fugly?? Oh hell yes. And uncomfortable? That too. So here I am, sick as a pig, in an open-backed gown wearing dishrags and diapers over my ass and the threat of surgery hanging over me.

Honey, we're havin' FUN now.

At Big Private Hospital, troupes of Assorted Medical Personnel wander into and/or out of my room twice an hour, pat me on my morphine dispenser, and give either me or mom--depending on who's looking most coherent--an update. Or a shot, or a thermometer in the ear. Whichever. On Friday the Big Doc, the guy who was kind enough to take me in and rescue me from my eventual fate as Next Tuesday's Stew at OLHCWWYT, came in and told us that they were going after my gallbladder the next day. Well, HE wasn't; one of his assistants was. Didn't matter a whit to me. I was done with it; I wanted the little fucker gone, ASAP, and whoever did the deed would be aces with me.

So Saturday, sometime, they came with the stretcher and scooched me over and wheeled me down to surgery, and I woke up and there were several small holes where small holes hadn't been before, and the pain was 90% less-excruciating than it had been when the whole ordeal started.

As well it should have been. The surgeon told Mom: "Oh, it was nasty in there. It was all full of gravel and one big stone, sitting right on the main duct, about this big..." And she put her fingers into a circle the size of a ping-pong ball. No wonder I felt like shit.

There was, however, some bad news.

"While we were in there," said the surgeon, an interesting woman who I think I'd get along with quite well in real life, "we shot some dye into the ducts leading to the pancreas? And those are blocked too. So there's one more procedure we'll need to do. It's simple. We'll sedate you, put a fiber-optic tube down your throat, clear out those ducts, and you'll be done. You won't be under anesthesia, but you won't remember anything. No problem. We do it all the time."

So Saturday and Sunday passed in a pleasantly morphine-addled haze, and they let me have Jello on Saturday night--and water. Sweet, sweet, ice-choked water. Then on Sunday, back to NPO, in anticipation of The Procedure. But I felt so much better, and it was only a small procedure left to do, and all would be well.

Monday dawned, the morning of my 35th birthday. And about midday, they came for me for the fiber-optic deal. On the way down I talked to the orderlies, flirted a little, was generally charming and cute and upbeat. When they put me on the table I asked a bunch of questions about the equipment and in short, acted like my normal, non-sick self.

The next thing I remember, I was on the gurney, gagging as what felt like the last thirteen feet of fiber-optic hose was yanked out of my throat, and I was drenched from the top of my head to below my waist in my own saliva. I'd bitten almost all the way through my lips on the right side.

Apparently? I don't sedate. I either fight, or if you pour enough sedative down me, I stop breathing. But I do not sedate. They had fought with me for three hours, and it was give-up time. They were gonna have to do the Simple Little Procedure under general anesthesia.

They told me this somewhere along the line, though I have no first-hand recollection of it. I was OUT, yo. There was nothing left. I was a wet rag and the dogs had been chewing on me. I was done the hell up. I didn't even care about the Michael Jackson verdict, which I opened one-third of an eye for as it was handed down.

Next: The End Of The Story

Mmmm....Tasty

So when we last left our spunky heroine, she was spending her early Wednesday morning not on a plane to New York, but in a cubicle at Our Lady of Holy Christ, What Were You Thinking?, one of Chicago's premier Hood Hospitals.

(A word about Hood Hospitals. Chicago has many, many hospitals IN the 'hood. Many of these are absolutely gems of their kind--treating people in the most difficult of circumstances and doing it well. OLHCWWYT is not one of them. OLHCWWYT could be in Lake Forest and it would still be 'hood. Except it wouldn't be open, because Lake Forest-ites wouldn't put up with that shit for a second.)

Anonymous Medical Person #1 shows up with a bunch of vials and informs me that we need to run some blood tests. Okay, I say. And it is here that we learn a most-important fact, one that will recur, often, during my hospitalization. My junkie days? Are long behind me. Because every. single. solitary. vein in both my arms and both my hands has, apparently, shrunk up like a raisin. A small, shrivelled, fragile, impossible-to-pierce-effectively raisin. They had to go with the BABY baby needle and about seven tries to get those four little vials full. Then--because that's what happens in hospitals--they decide to start an I.V. to rehydrate me. Which, fine, great, whatev, don't care. I was sufficiently out of it by that point not to know or care how many stabs that took.

So I sit/lay there on my table, occasionally retching to pass the time, and Anonymous Medical Person #2 eventually shows up somewhat contemporaneously with Mom. Anonymous Medical Person #2 hands me a tiny cup of "Maalox and lidocaine", which he says will "help" although he does not say what it will help with, then tells me that the blood tests indicate that I have gallstone pancreatitis. Apparently this is something to do with ducts and gravel and all sorts of other aquiferous metaphors, and the end translation is: yer sick as a dog, kid, and you need surgery. But we can't do the surgery right now--you're too sick--so we have to get you better first and THEN do the surgery, and etc. Mom exudes typical high-octane Mommish caring and concern, Hospitalized Child Variation. I do not notice this, necessarily, because I have drunk the contents of the tiny cup and am making the international facial expression for "Holy shit, that tastes like ass."

It is an expression I will repeat with almost everything that passes my lips over the next seven days. Which--to be fair--is nearly nothing, because I am immediately put on "NPO" status. NPO means "nothing by mouth". And that means water, and that means ice chips, and that means, like, EVERYTHING. My last contact between my mouth and the world outside is that little cup of Maalox and lidocaine. Which....who thinks these things UP?? Lidocaine, y'all. You want a taste of lidocaine? Go into your medicine cabinet and spray your tongue with Bactine. Seriously. There's your lidocaine. NOT delicious.

However, Anonymous Medical Person # 3 now appears with a syringe in hand. "What's that?" I ask, as she approaches my newly-installed I.V. with it.

"Morphine," she replies, and presses the plunger.

And the heavens opened up, and the light shone down, and choirs of angels sang, and...Okay, maybe not. But damn--still nice. And the pain went from "blinding and incoherent" to "excruciating" in nothing flat.

We'll hear much more about morphine later. Believe it.

It was about this time that Mom started to register her objection to the idea of her only child having surgery at the Hood Hospital. Now, her only child is well over 30, and well-versed in the art of making her own decisions, and is also in blinding and incoherent levels of pain (hey, morphine wears off). And the last fact totally wipes out not only the first two, but any personal consciousness of the third. So I THINK I can make my own decisions...but, well, no. And my decision, such as it is, is "Let's get this shit OVERwith, posthaste. I don't want any red tape, I don't want any drama, I don't want any of this bullshit about changing hospitals, I want this shit dealt with and I wanna go home." Mom listens, but is unconvinced. Mom wants me to go to Big Private State-of-the-Art Hospital Ten Minutes Down The Road, which (had I been thinking coherently at 5 AM when I left the house in the first place) I would have gone to instead of OLHCWWYT. I'm not against the hospital she wants me to go to--I'm against the act of moving.

And so the time passed, and various medical types pop into and out of my cube, and eventually, by some process I cannot currently recollect, I was put into a room. I had a roommate--I know I did--but damn if I could tell you anything about her. Oh--wait--she had pneumonia. That's right. So she hacked and I gacked, all through the long dark night.

The long dark HOT night. Because the air conditioning was not working in OLHCWWYT. And it was like 85 degrees. And they kept telling me "Engineering is looking at that" whenever I asked why, exactly, I was being forced to simmer to death in a bed of my own juices, and not even a spice rub or a rib of celery to help.

Okay: so, pain management. Implies that pain will be managed. Implies that the goal is NOT to be in pain, rather than the contrary. Such is my interpretation.

The Morphine Fascist, however (possibly the Piss Fascist's sister) has a different interpretation. Her interpretation is: You can push that call button as often as you want, lady, but you get morphine every three hours. Period. End of discussion.

But, I say, it only lasts 45 minutes.

Every three hours, she says.

But it HURTS, I tell her. I can't sleep; I can't even lay down.

Every three hours, she says. And then, with a magnanimity that makes me want to kick her shins: I GAVE you a thirty-minute advance, she says.

Needless to say, by morning (seventy-five hours later). I am much closer to my mother's opinion of this hospital, and agree to be transferred if she can work it out. Also by morning: the I.V. that they started the night before in the back of my hand, after my previous I.V closed up on them, has now "infiltrated". This means that my hand has blown up to twice its size due to fluids leaking out of the vein. They manage to start another I.V.

I don't remember Thursday. Seriously. Friday morning I only remember because my mom came in and she was practically in tears, telling me the hospital wouldn't transfer me til they had the name of a doctor at the second hospital willing to accept me as a patient, and nobody was calling her back and so on and so on, and she had one other name--which she called from my room and was promptly told "Yeah, we'll take her." So Friday afternoon I made the first ambulance trip of my life. My first words upon being pushed through the doors of Big Private Hospital: "Ohhhhhh. Air conditioning. That's niiiiiice."

They put me in a room, started a brand-new I.V, and hooked me up to my Very Own On-Demand Morphine Provider. Push the button--2 mg of morphine. You have to wait ten minutes between pushes, but that's not as long as you'd think. (And yes, I made my junkie history very clear. But apparently when you're pain-crazed, no one so much cares what happened 5 years ago. This is a pleasant discovery.)

Friday night was MUCH easier than Thursday or Wednesday nights. And also: Fever dreams are interesting. Fever dreams with morphine? Even MORE interesting. Fever dreams with morphine and the Brit? ::big evil grin::: I actually called him, when I regained my senses a couple of days later, and slipped in a gratuitous "thank you" which I'm sure he didn't register, but it felt necessary.

Up Next: Ping-Pong Balls Do Not Belong There!

Let's Never Do This Again, Shall We?

Okay, I'm back. And I am expected to survive, and I've still got the interview sometime within the next couple of weeks. Right now I'm at Mom's, where I am being taken care of with scary nursing precision, and by tomorrow at this time I fully expect to be insane from so much fussing-over. But just at the moment it's kinda nice to have my Mommy bringing me milkshakes.

This will be a long story to tell, so I can't imagine finishing it all tonight; there is so much fertile snarking material in the health system that I may NEVER finish this post. But my summary--my main idea, for those of you who remember third-grade comprehension classes:

Don't get gallstones. They suck.

Or, stated otherwise:

Holy shit, that hurt.

So I wrote my post the other night about the omens, and I decided the shower would better wait for morning and I'd just deal with what I could and not worry about the rest of the interview stuff. It would work or it wouldn't, and I'd live either way. And I went to bed.

Around 1 AM LJ came home and we started talking. Or rather, he started talking and I started noticing a distinct pain in my belly and an overwhelming desire to puke again. (This had nothing to do with LJ.) So I ran back and forth between the bed and the Ghetto Turkish Bath, barfing and hurting and barfing and hurting and finally realizing that maybe I just needed a little something on my stomach--a peanut-butter sandwich, maybe. So I go downstairs, realize we're out of bread, smear some peanut butter on a rice cake, take two bites, and....yeeeeeccccccchhhhh. Not happening. Everything that goes in is coming out, at escape velocity.

But I AM, goddammit, going to this interview. I will FORCE this stomachache to go away. I will not be cowed--I am Gladys Cortez, Slayer of Pain!!!

Yeah right. At about 5 AM, after a couple of remarks from LJ to the effect of "Man, I've seen you bad, but I ain't NEVER seen you THIS sick," I said "Give me the keys--I'm going to the Emergency Room." (Firefly and I have had a running debate ever since over whether or not he should have driven me. I still say no, largely because I had no idea which hospital I wanted to go to and wasn't in the mood to communicate, on this point or any other. I don't mean "argue"--I mean "speak".)

So I point the 'ho at the nearest hospital of which I am aware, which will be referred to as Our Lady of Holy Christ, What Were You Thinking??? I mean, this hospital? Is HOOD. Even people from the hood think this hospital is hood. So--bad choice. But remember: I am GLADYS, Slayer of Pain, and there's nothing wrong with me that some industrial-strength Maalox won't fix. Hood hospitals do not deter me--they can dispense meds, right? Because meds are all I need, because there's Nothing Wrong.

I park in the Emergency lot and totter into the ER. I am the only person in the ER. But it's 5 AM and that doesn't seem too shocking. I flop into the chair by the window, blather out my name, and shove my insurance card at them. "What's the problem?"

"Abdominal pain and vomiting." I am doubled over, sweating profusely, and gasping for air. I pause the discussion to fling myself into the nearby bathroom and puke a few times.

"Take a seat." There are two people behind the window and neither of them seems terribly excited to be helping me. Nor do they seem moved, several minutes later, when I flop back into the chair and straight-out BEG them to help me.

(Thing about me: I'll barf, yeah. I'll sweat and double over. I may even whimper. But if you get me straight-up begging??? Know these two things for certain: First, I am in extremis. Second: Oh, you'll get yours, buddy. Maybe not right away, and maybe not even so you'll remember it's me--but I WILL get my revenge. Except under specially-mandated and consensual conditions, Gladys Cortez does NOT beg.)

They take me back to triage after maybe half an hour. Then the Piss Fascist starts in with the specimen jar. I have sweated, retched, and heaved out every single last iota of liquid in my body by this point, but this bitch wants to start coming after me with threats of a Foley catheter?? Um, no. You will get your piss jar when I am capable of forming the full and coherent thought required to complete a piss, uninterrupted by the need to spew. How bout THAT, Pee Mussolini?

Yeah, she got her pee jar. But it was begrudging.

So I'm in triage, in one of the little curtain cubes, sitting on a table cuz I can't lay down, with a big pink emesis basin at my feet. (Emesis basin=barf bin.) And I am using it for the purposes for which God created such a thing. There's literally NOTHING left in my insides right now. I am a dry well. But my insides are still commanding "Retch! Retch!"

And here's where Gladys, Pain-Slayer, gives up and admits that yes, we're totally in the shit. All the signs say "no cell phones", but I have at least two calls to make. I call the recruiter and leave him a message, finally admitting defeat: I won't be making that flight, I tell him. I'm in the Emergency Room. And I call Mom, telling her where I am. She says she'll be right over.

Next: Maalox and Lidocaine: Paris Hilton's Trendy New SoHo Club Drink!!!

Newsflash

Hey fans,
G has been laid up in the hospital this week- apparently on some gallstone puking fest.
She's ok, although, i'm sure she could think of 101 better ways to spend the big birthday!
she should be back home next week some time.
She wanted me to let you all know

-fireflyfree

I'm Glad I'm Not Superstitious...

If I believed in omens I'd be really worried right about now.

This afternoon the power went off at work. We were told that we could go home at 3:30, but that since the other building had power (but no network, since the network is housed in our building) that they had to stay. In solidarity with my oppressed comrades (okay, okay, I really just wanted to ride home with the Brit) I stayed til 5.

So during the downtime, I'd gotten the call from the recruiter telling me that my itinerary was in an e-mail, which I couldn't read from our building--no power--and couldn't even check at the other building--no network. And this was at about 3 PM--I'd been waiting for two days to hear, but I guess the travel department (this place has a TRAVEL department, y'all) were having trouble getting me a flight or something.
I'd been stressing about it all day, checking my e-mail every ten minutes in the hopes of something coming up.

Also during the downtime, spurred on by the it's-only-June-7th-and-I-now-have-$9.47-to-get-me-to-the-end-of-the-month status of my bank account, I called my mother and told her I finally knew what I wanted for my birthday: the clothes I bought on Sunday. Which came to nearly $170. So we made arrangements for me to meet her at the Pulaski Orange Line stop, roughly halfway between her home and mine.

With all the stress--the itinerary being only a small, small fraction of today's fun and games--I had worked myself into a major tension headache. My shoulders were up around my ears. So I rode out to Pulaski trying to make it go away, and--as usual--pretty much only making it worse.

I got into the car, and as Mom is driving me home I start to have a familiar sensation. Oh hell no, I told myself. I am NOT going to have one of those stomachaches. Not tonight.

But I was, and I did. By the time Mom dropped me off I could already tell it was going to be a very long night. Every time I took a deep breath it hurt. I did my usual head-it-off-at-the-pass maneuver--three or four Rolaids and a simethicone tablet; even though it never works, the Rolaids take the edge off the acid, which I've learned is an important benefit once the inevitable puking starts.

It lasted the usual two hours--but what a two hours. This one was ROUGH, is what I'm saying here. First of all--it may be nice outside, but inside this house it's still really hot. So all this barfing and yacking was done in the ghetto equivalent of a Turkish bath. My stomach muscles feel like I've just used them to lift a small industrial building; my throat is raw; and as an extra bonus, I now have little red spots around my eyes where the capillaries popped from heaving. At least I'll get to see how well my new concealer works in extreme conditions.

Not that anyone will notice, because my left eye looks like I've been the test subject for a new eye-care product: Jalapeno Visine. Apparently sometime during all the peristaltic violence, my left contact lens detached a little crumb of itself, no larger than a pinhead, and said pinhead is floating around in my eye regardless of my best efforts to flush it out with saline. This has happened before, so I know it will eventually go away. It doesn't hurt, but it makes its presence known. And my eye looks like fresh hell.

After my stomach quieted down--two hours of bile and battery-acid later--I fell asleep for about an hour and a half, to be wakened by a phone call from Tim. Who is, and who has been for several days, an inmate at the Will County Jail. That's a whole 'nother story, but suffice it to say he's gonna be there for a while. $300 to him might as well be 3 million, and I can't do a damn thing to help right now, other than maybe put $20 on his books for commissary or something. So instead I'm answering his collect calls, and passing info along to his other friends, none of whom can help him either.

I fly out from O'Hare at 9 tomorrow morning, which will necessitate leaving the house at 6 (I'm catching the train) and my return flight lands at 8 PM. The recruiter says I'm up against one other person, who's also flying out tomorrow, and that they'll have their decision Thursday.

I've had no dinner--obviously, and I'm not prepared to take the risk of trying to eat right now. My clothes are ready--but nearly nothing else I'd planned to do (paint my nails, put together some CD's for the plane, spend some time doing some more research) got done.

If I were superstitious, I'd say these were bad signs. As it stands, I think they just indicate that finally, just for a change, something's GOTTA go right tomorrow.

At least, I HOPE that's what it means.

Pray For the Soul of the Lowly 'Ho, and Other Monday Randomness

After months of mostly-impeccable behavior, the Tahoe has gone to hell on a handcart. (We needed the handcart because the wheels would have fallen off had we tried to drive it to hell.) I have only received the very basic diagnosis, via an early-morning cell call from a very sleepy LJ, but the very basic diagnosis included the phrases "twenty-eight hundred dollars" and "not covered by the warranty", so I know everything I need to know for now. Which is: stuff is broken that we can't afford to fix. We're apparently going to fix the most-pressing issue first--an entirely new suspension, which we began to suspect we needed when each of us, independently of the other, noticed that there would be moments in any given journey where it felt as though the chassis and the wheels each had different opinions on where we might be going next. It turns out that they have $850 worth of different opinions, which...My second divorce cost less than that. Maybe that's something this truck should consider. The chassis gets the steering column and the radio, the wheels get the funky seat-warmer feature and visitation with the fuel-injectors on the weekends.

I'm sorry...was I babbling? That could have something to do with the total lack of sleep I experienced last night. For those of you in Places Other Than Chicago, I shall hereby present the Condensed Version of the Chicago Metro Area Weather Report:

It's REALLY FUCKING HOT, yo.

Or rather, it was R.F.H all day yesterday, which allowed an almost oven-like quantity of heat to build up in our house. It got so bad that I took my laptop and my water bottle out to the front porch so I could work on the book--though I'll also admit, it's helpful, while writing, to be surrounded by exactly the sort of scene I'm writing about. I'm getting to know the drug dealers by name--to say nothing of where they hide the pack.

But even though I could sit outside, write outside, even eat dinner outside, the one thing I couldn't do outside was sleep. So at about 10:30 I went into the house, took my shower, and went to bed.

What a waste of time. Even with the windows wide open, even with the fan on high, even wearing a tank top and boxers and throwing all the blankets to the ground first thing, it was like trying to sleep in an industrial laundry. It was STEAMY, is what I'm telling you. And it's all the fault of the cats.

See, were it not for Whitey and Foof, we could leave the bedroom door open at night and get a decent crossbreeze working. But Whitey, especially, takes sleeping humanity as a personal affront, and devises various ways of righting this wrong, mostly by stomping on their faces. And I was not in the mood to open my bleary eyes and gaze upon enormous cat-ass, which is his other perennial favorite. So--door, closed. Heat, stifling. Gladys, tossing and turning and getting ZERO sleep.

This, as you might imagine, has made for a fairly random day. I am tired and scatterbrained in the extreme, and to top it off I have blisters on the soles of my feet because as I took the first few steps in the new sandals I planned to wear this morning, I heard this strange sound every time my right foot came down. So I took a few more steps, listened to sandal-farts, and decided to scrap the whole production and put on my old shoes--forgetting that they take a few weeks of getting used to before I can walk all day in them.

Now I have to go home and withdraw my last $70--left over from a clothes-shopping spree of epic proportions, urged on by my mother of all people!--to contribute to the fund to repair that damn truck. But at least I'm going home--back to my industrial laundry, my cat-ass, and my new friends on the block.

But I really, REALLY need to get some sleep tonight.

You Thought I Gave Up, Didn't You.

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Things I Totally Fail To Understand, Footwear Edition

Even though I can't wear them nearly as much as I would like, I love me some Chucks. And I'm in a decent state of mind right now, so I figured I'd do a little shopping, see what was new in the land of hi-tops.

Mixed in among the really happy colors and the "what crack was the design team smoking?" patterns, I found this lovely little oxymoron:

"Goth" Chucks.

If the Brit was just a Goth American, this would be a long conversation for a ride home, but one of his charms is his woeful unfamiliarity with peculiarly-American concepts: lawn jockeys, plaster porch geese, and the cultural significance of Chuck Taylor hi-tops being three that leap immediately to mind. Chucks are many, many things, but "Goth" they are not. Lincoln-Park-Trixie-pretending-to-be-Goth, perhaps, but authentic not at all.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have this:

Chucks for Jesus. Because nothing says righteousness like slapping a Christian symbol on a consumer product, yo.

The funny thing about the proselytizers of the world is this: these are the SAME PEOPLE who accuse gays and lesbians of "rubbing everyone else's nose in their lifestyle". Last night while I was waiting for my chicken wings at Uncle Remus, there was one other customer in the store, a man maybe a few years younger than me, on his cell phone, talking to one of his friends. The ENTIRE conversation--no joke--was about the intensity of his personal relationship with Jesus. It was a masterpiece of ego--almost every other sentence contained some reference to the speaker's implied superiority over those who did NOT have a similar relationship with Jesus. And let me tell you--getting chicken wings at Uncle Remus? It takes a while. I got to hear a LOT about Jeebus. And it was a good thing I was in a sparkly happy not-going-to-work-tomorrow mood, or I might have pulled out my own cell and feigned a conversation about my personal relationship with Lucifer--complete with sexual details, if circumstances warranted. Which they SO did, and I only wish I'd thought of doing it at the time. God, I hate not being able to think on my feet!

Of course, maybe if I had a cross on my Chucks....

Escape Velocity

Not to jinx it or anything, BUT...

I had two interviews this morning. The first one went pretty well (though the job seems like it might be an eensy wee bit over my head); the second, the one for Best Job Ever, went OUTSTANDINGLY. And I just got a call telling me that they will be flying me out to New York one day next week for another interview. AND that there's only one other person being considered, and that I have "a slight edge" at the moment.

One: I have never been to New York.
Two: SQUEEEEE!!!!!!
Three: There's a good chance I'll know by the end of next week. The guy I met today, one of the hiring guys, is getting married next Saturday and will be off for ten days as a result; they want to fill the position, and so...well, you know the rest.

(I have a long and impressive history of getting jobs right around my birthday. And that's in eleven days, y'all, so you need to start planning how you're going to send my cake. I'm partial to lemon cake, or yellow with caramel frosting. Just so you know.)

The best part of this, and the part which clearly makes me a bad person?

If--hypothetically--I were to find out next Friday, the 10th; and if---again hypothetically--I were to give my 2 weeks immediately (and you KNOW I'm gonna just about embarrass myself with joy when THAT moment comes!), that would put my last day on the Friday BEFORE the summer season kickoff.

There could be more organizationally-inconvenient times for me to be leaving...but not many.

And THAT, despite my normal veneer of civilization and team-player-ness, would make me grin so hard my face hurts just thinking about it.

Fortunately I'm not the only one. I found out yesterday that at least 80% of the rest of the staff is ALSO looking to leave--which tells you a LOT about how horrible things are at Place Where I Work. My ideal world, of course, would involve everyone leaving on exactly the same day...but that's too much to ask for.

Isn't it? ::bwahahahaha::::