enough already....

i don't believe in burning bridges, but i'd be lying today if i said i didn't wish that i pissed gasoline and that i could shoot sparks when i snap my fingers.

knowledge is power....

having knowledge of something, does not necessarily give you power over it.

root of all evil....

they say all it takes is money. too bad i don't have any.

truth....

the fear of failing prevents me from beginning.

now, where was i......

i can't begin to tell you what things have been like lately, without sounding like a whiny broken record - especially about work. hence the lack of posts. combined with the lack of time. suffice it to say, i've had some indicators that this has not been my best week:

• like a sign from the devil, as i walked up the stairs toward the office today i found a little white tube sitting on a stair. i picked it up. i fondled it. i smelled it. i held it gently in a caress. i put it between my lips, closed my eyes, and inhaled. i imagined. i thought about lighting that fucker up. it's been 8 years since i last quit. i put it on a shelf above my desk and left it there. (actually, i forgot about it.)
  
• i required (yes, REQUIRED) a quad mocha from starbucks this morning. i actually spent $6 on a cup of coffee. yes, you got it.... four shots of espresso in a mochachino. it lasted less than 20 minutes in the cup. several hours in me :) :) :) :) :\ :\ :( :( :( :p :p :p
• laughing maniacally as i walk down the halls at work. often shortly after speaking to my manager - just as he's leaving the area. often for no real reason.
  
• spending more time with my department director than my family.
• massive projects with random deadlines and no resources (see... told you it would sound like a broken, whining record.....)
  

i've also been revamping another web-site in my spare time, and working on other interests.

however, i will leave you with a few reflections that relate to my last post:

• out of all the exchanges, the nurse got the last (and best shot in). as she was applying the dressing, she made the comment "guess what! you get a free ass wax."
• i felt like part of a sigfried and roy act when the packing came out - you pull, and pull, and pull... and it just kept coming.... all 6 feet of it. like magic.
  
• she was wrong. even after a week of taping dressings to my butt, it never got a full wax. hah! so there!
  
• the skin removed from the dressings was infinitely more painful than the incision. imagine a slightly painful x shaped incision surrounded by a square of scabbing skin and you'll know the good times you missed.
• life is funny. just as the back end starts to heal - i come down with a massive head cold.
  

yah, i know... time to spray lysol on your brain and scrub. take comfort in the fact that i will not be posting photos.

more later when i've recovered from the last two weeks of hell.

madcap recap....

oh yeah... happy anniversary - it's been a year. the post you've really been waiting for follows this one below.

flashback. madcap recap:

the start:

• intention: reflection and personal growth. that was part of the reason for starting this blog. (well, that and providing technical support to someone else who had just started blogging - since i had never seen it, i needed to sign up.)
• reality: that kind of shit takes time, and space, and quiet - and frankly between home with a 3 year old, hours of driving in traffic, and a job that... well, leaves no time for anything other than panic - it hasn't happened. it needs to, it just hasn't happened. besides, it's work.

personal:

• meh. had a good vacation :) [click here to read about it - but it is long]
• personal growth: nah - mostly covered that.
• survived another year of work - barely. since the major benefit of my medical plan is that it covers the two drugs i need to control my stress induced hypertension..... well.... you get the picture. (you can lookup the labels suckage, job, interviews, and anger management - they'll probably cover mostly work.) edit: i take that back - suckage turned out to mostly be me just whining about my personal life.
  

medical (you know... the fun stuff):

• july 2006 - vasectomy. i spend the morning with an old polish doctor with ice cold hands cupping my testicles. am pronounced sterile 6 months later.... 6 months. The average is supposed to be 30 days, or you can "assist" by spanking the monkey around 20 times to clean the system out. apparently i was "quite fertile" according to the doc', because i slapped that little furry bastard around almost daily for those 6 months. i almost cried from relief when the test finally came back clear.
• september 2006 - dislocated shoulder. let's just go with fuck that hurt. and was of course two weeks before my vacation. thankfully i was out of the sling and able to drive.
• october-december 2006. colds. flus. various illnesses. some we seem to have brought back from the states. others i traded at work. everyone in the house sick at the same time. various times. culminating in a bout of hacking so bad i almost barfed up a lung on my manager. luckily i got to skip a bunch of budget meetings because i was contagious.
• december 2006 - minor chemical burn in the left eye. i don't think blogged about this one... but in going to prep my mom's christmas gift, i had an issue where i went to mix some old primer that had skinned over. the skin popped and i was splashed with oil based chemical goo from tip to tail. after running the eye under water for an hour while waiting on the phone to speak with medical assistance, i was told to head to the emergency room. where i wound up with my eye under running water for another hour and a half, until someone had a chance to drop by and see me. minor chemical burn - put these eye drops in for the next 3 days, and try to be less stupid next time. yes, paraphrased, but not by much.

which leads us to this episode......

an ode to my ass....

this may be somewhat rude and offensive - in more ways than one. i'll let you decide if i opted to go for "blood & gore" or funny..... hell, once the percodan wears off, i likely won't remember just what the hell happened here anyway.

oh, most beautiful, and under appreciated appendage. no wait... it's not really an appendage, is it? oh, most beautiful, and under appreciated anatomy.....
my ass, which feels like raw fucking hamburger.
x marks the spot where they did plunder.
where the fucks my drugs.
ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch.....

do you really want to hear more? onward then......

to digress, someone i worked with once asked me where all the pretty nurses are. i'll explain that so it makes more sense. i work at a school, that offers nursing as one of it's undergraduate degrees. most of them aren't too hard on the eyes. yet experience has shown that there are many a nurse out in the field that have sucked lemons for a long, long time.

i think of it like part of the speech my wife's grandfather gave at our wedding.... "i've been to many weddings. and at every one, there's always been a toast to the beautiful bride....." (here he paused for dramatic effect, as you could see many women almost in tears at this point) ".... it makes me wonder where all the ugly housewives come from." ah grandpa.... the tears sure disappeared pretty fast.

but i digress....

i seem to have located the cute nurses. they were all gathered around my fat, hairy ass on tuesday. thankfully, i couldn't see anyone's expression, as i was lying face down on the bed whilst the doctor carved a large 'X' into my ass.

X marks the spot. here there be treasure? treasure is also known as booty. a large X carved in my booty. is cosmic karma fucking with me? argh....

where was i? oh yes, digressing.

i was suffering from a pilonidal cyst. this one was particularly bad. after a couple days of it slowly getting worse, i hit the walk-in medical clinic for some antibiotics - which have minimal effect. they seemed just as happy i knew what it was, and would be following up with my doctor. no one even bothered to look at it. they handed me some antibiotics, and shooed me out the door.

it kept getting worse, so i followed up with my doctor. what can i say... the man gets the bad end of it in all of our visits. his assessment was it needed to be lanced. they phoned the emergency room, and sent me off.

now, if you can imagine sitting on an infected abscess the size of a plum, buried just off centre by your tail bone, oozing bloody pus - you can imagine the irony of diving yourself to emergency, and paying to park while you will now spend hours sitting in a waiting room. it's also wildly exciting to be expected when you walk in to emergency because your doctor was kind enough to call ahead. thankfully - this part was short. after an hour, i was in a bed in the minor treatment area.

of course, the short line in the waiting area was an anomoly that was made up for in the treatment area.

cute little nurse shows me to a bed. hands me a gown. and then says she'll be back after i've changed. 'everything?' i asked, knowing it was likely to be a bit of a wait. 'yes' she answered, followed by 'the opening goes in the back' as she walked away. sigh. i didn't see anyone for almost 2 hours after that. dear god... there really are people that put them on wrong, aren't there.

i left my socks on. i also donated a couple bucks on the way out so they can afford some heat. i paced. i wandered to the bathroom every half hour to break up the monotony. i read the only book i had around at work.... dale carnegie's how to enjoy your life and your job.

at around the two hour mark lying on my side in the hospital bed, a second nurse (also cute) rolled up a tray with a bunch of surgical tools and mumbled something about it not being long. i assumed at the time, she meant the wait. but it was cold, and those gowns are thin, and she might have been referring to something else. i don't know. i didn't care.

funny, there's no mention of spending 5 hours being ignores and freezing in emergency at the hospital in a drafty gown. i finished the book and checked in the index. no hospital entries.

3 1/2 hours into the bed wait (4 1/2 hours total now) i managed to flag the original nurse down as she walked by... and bless her little heart... she realized i'd been forgotten about. up went the end of the bed and out came a blanket. to be honest, i just wanted to know if i could slip down to the cafeteria for some lunch if the wait was going to be much longer. nope.... as luck would have it, i was up next.

which was good, because after staring at the surgical tray for the last hour, i was starting to think i had accidentally ordered the do-it-yourself kit. but was bad, because they were going to freeze and cut when i hadn't eaten in 9 hours and was getting shaky.

finally the doctor shows up. i warn him about my not taking freezing very well.... i think he was humouring me, but he doubled up the freezing. and he even went out for more..... accidentally leaving the curtains wide open with my heine out enjoying the cool evening breeze, and on display for anyone walking through the ward.

"this isn't going to be fun" he says, proceeding to shove a needle full of local anesthetic into my backside in a dozen random locations. and it wasn't. although.... oddly, it was better than many days at work.

i'll admit, i was thankful that the freezing took. he seemed to spend a fair amount of time cutting, and i was somewhat startled when i heard him say "finally, there it is...." large, deep, hard to find pocket. and then began the fun. spray of water. and the doctor using his weight to get leverage and squeeze. and squeeze. and squeeze. and dig. and squeeze.

queue the cute nurses at this point. one of whom notices the curtain partly open to the public, and opts to close it so that only paid medical staff have to suffer cornea damage and scarring. at this point it is 'clean' and drained, and so that it heals properly they are going to stuff it full of packing material so it starts to heal from the inside out.

what i hear is "more. no, more. no, i'm going to need more." when i turn my head what i see is the nurse pulling packing out of a container an arm's length at a time. it's like a woven gauze, about 1/2 an inch in width, and green. the doc then proceeds to stuff this into the open wound - fitting 6 feet. as the freezing begins to come out. joy.

so for 36 hours i had to have that packing in place. they threw a dressing on, and told me to change it thursday when i removed the packing, unless it soaked through before then.

and then they offered additional dressing, percocet, and a sheet on after care for the wound. i sat forgotten again, until one of them noticed me out of the corner of their eye. handing me the percocet they told me i was free. i guess out of those last 3 items, i got the right one. free. free!

i hobbled out of emergency, and through the hospital to the car. collapsed in the car and laughed bitterly when as i shelled out the 10 bucks for parking. i headed home.

i crawled in the door and collapsed. feeling odd, i decided to check the dressing - and realized i had blood soaking through the dressing, 4 layers of clothing, and into the car upholstery.

so much for thursday.