Small town life . . . enough to make a shy, bald Buddhist reflect and plan a mass murder
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Germs
OK, I'm already pretty paranoid about germs and such. I'll admit to reading a few disgusting books guaranteed to make you paranoid, like Robin Cook's novels. But now, thanks to this, things are going to get worse. I never use sponges, that's a given. But really, I can't believe that only 34% of people wash their hands before they cook.
Annoying customer(s) of the day (week, year, whatever)
In no particular order.
1. People who hand you their money and say, "That's out of 5" or whatever denomination they have. Thanks, I never would have guessed.
2. People who will not let go of their money. I have to yank it out of their hand. What is up with that, Captain Tightwad?
3. People who touch my hands. Strangers should not touch my hands.
Homeschooling in the news
At CNN, there's this story. Homeschoolers going to college. And I don't think the phrase "homeschooling for religious reasons" even shows up in this article.
Real life
In passing. The things we say.
Kitchen clean-up
My son made himself one of those little Totino's frozen pizzas the other night. I couldn't figure out where the dirty dishes were. He told me he just rolled up the pizza and ate it like a burrito. Yay, fewer dishes!
Small town life
From this week's police report, "Call for animal feces on the road near Ocean and Main." Were they supposed to bring it or clean it up?
And the police are still trying to track down the people who are vandalizing our "antique" light poles. That has been going on for weeks.
Going to hell in a handbasket
From A Girl's Gotta Eat, the decline of French civilization. And here as well. "Jus de chaussettes" indeed.
More beefy (or dairy) goodness
I was reading this article at the Daily Gullet that mentions the great old TV episodes of All Creatures Great and Small.
Before he has the chance to explain that the ruminant in question has a suspected ear infection, Herriot is stripped to the waist, arm lathered up, under the tail, and in like Flynn.
It reminds me of the ABS guy I see almost daily when he comes to get his coffee. His hands and arms are clean, but he always has a big brown ring around his right shoulder. At least nowadays they have really long plastic gloves they wear. We (in the store) always joke about how the cows are so happy to see him they probably sing "Slow Hand."
Small town life
We just took the dog out for a walk. We went past a lot that's right here in town where people have a couple of cows. There are a few lots and backyards that people use to raise cows or sheep or horses in town. One cow (not a very big one, really) was curious about the dog and came trotting up to see her, ready to put her head through the fence. The dog hightailed it across the street. She's a dachshund and she does this funny leaping thing when she's upset. She looks like a dolphin on land.
Beefy goodness
OK, this was in Mark Morford's Daily Fix, and it's fascinatingly freaky. Deep-fried cow brain sandwiches. And if you haven't subscribed to the Daily Fix, you really should. You get juicy yummy run on sentences delivered to your emailbox.
Olivia Goldsmith
Died following a facelift operation. Look at the difference in tone between these 2 articles . Her name changes are interesting. Born Randy Goldfield, changed her name to Justine Rendal, wrote under Olivia Goldsmith.
My grocery store
Well, not exactly mine, but I do shop often at one of these. It's sandwiched between 2 housing projects and has great prices, a pretty good selection, and lots of interesting people. I was disappointed today because I wanted leeks for the main dish I made tonight, ham cooked in cider from How to Eat. They cost $3.79 for a bunch 3 leeks. I needed 8. Needless to say, I used onions this time. They were really tasty. It's the first time I've boiled a ham, as opposed to roasting it. And I have lots of stock now.
Chocolate education
A customer told me today that she is switching from milk to soy milk for her regular latté. She said she feels better without dairy. And she was virtuously swearing off the usual heavy sprinkling of chocolate shavings she gets. I was happy to tell her that the dark chocolate doesn't have any milk in it.
Annoying customers
My choice for the day: men who wear really tight jeans. Because when they give you their money after digging way down in their front pocket, the paper money is damp. Gross. And the coins are warm. Ewww.
Food and books
I just added The Daily Gullet to my links. There are often amusing articles like this one by Rabbi Ribeye.
White bread was spoiled. This was a particularly bitter pill for a tot under the daily influence of Howdy Doody, who was sponsored, as you might remember, by Wonder Bread. The taste of white bread did not cross my vestal lips until I was six, when the doctor recommended -- before the days of fiber and oat bran -- that it would be healthier for my grandmother. Obviously. My grandmother lived to a crotchety 93; her well-intentioned doctor dropped dead of a heart attack at 48.
Plus, I got a gift card to spend on books for Christmas and was thinking a cookbook or food book might be good idea. They have some recs here. Okay, yes, I feel weird because the card for that damned Borders that just built a monstrous façade over plain the old defunct JC Penney store. But hey, it's a gift, so I must use it.
Anarchy in the kitchen
A great place for it (punk rock cooking). So glad I didn't misspell that.
Love and marriage
Mark Morford on Bushco and the Christian right's plan to promote "healthy marriages."
I mean, what the hell is the world coming to? And what, pray tell, is a self-righteous, homophobic, God-thumping, conservative administration that constantly kowtows to the preening Christian Right to do about all this?
Why, hurl $1.5 billion of your tax dollars at the problem, that's what. Educate them dumb poor people on how to fly right and learn more "interpersonal skills" so they can get married -- you know, just like their much happier and more heavily narcotized, sanctimonious, Botoxed, Zolofted, blank-eyed Republican masters -- er, fellow citizens.
And, hey, if that $1.5 bil happens to reinforce the inviolable God-approved mega-sanctity of all-American ultra-hetero man-woman marriage, if it shows those icky gay people a thing or two about what this country truly values, all while appeasing a perpetually terrified right-wing contingent of BushCo voters, why, all the better.
Pink ladies rule
When I was leaving hospital #1 I was wearing my Carleton sweatshirt. A teeny little pink lady was working at the desk and she asked me if I had gone to Carleton. I told her yes and asked her if she was from Minnesota. She told me no, but that she had nieces and nephews from Minnesota who had gone there. "It's a damned good school," she said. I have to agree.
Small town life
From this week's police reports:
Citizen reported a stolen 22-caliber pistol from his front porch.
Rural gun safety.
Spring out of season
My first narcissus is opening today. The daffodils will still be a while.
Hospital #2
Went home and rested for a couple of hours, then went to hospital #2. I was pretty wiped out walking in from the parking lot, had to get a wheelchair. Then they took me to the wrong place, oops, had to take me to short stay surgery. Got changed and got another IV. It took a while to find a place to put the new IV, but this nurse numbed each areas first, so it wasn't nearly as bad. Plus she called the surgeon from the other hospital to find out why the hell they hadn't sent me home with any pain meds. She got everything set up so we had a prescription waiting back in our small town. She was righteously mad.
They took me to the surgery place. I met the anesthesiologist, another Captain Suave. I remember him talking to me about how he's going to sedate me, not put me to sleep, but that I probably won't remember anything. And that's all I remember. I am glad because I did not want to remember them putting 3 tubes down my throat. Afterwards, the doc came and told me they got 2 stones. I hope they found them all. I got to go home pretty soon after that. My throat was incredibly sore, but I felt pretty good.
Today is Tuesday and I feel pretty damn good right now. All the bloating is gone (from when they pumped my abdomen full of carbon dioxide). My 4 incisions feel okay. They're starting to itch. I don't feel sore inside my abdomen from them digging around in there. And I have no pain or burning from my gall bladder/stones, which is a relief. I just get tired kind of easily and I can't pick up anything heavy for a while yet. Life is good.
Day 2
I had my surgery in the morning. Everything went well. Very good pain meds. But when the doc came by to see me in the afternoon he said that I had stones in my bile duct also and they wanted to send me to another hospital to have an ERCP. They wanted me to wait there until they could get everything set up. I was so disappointed because I was ready to go home that afternoon. They did finally take my off the IV by the evening. It was a drag in that room because I couldn't unplug my IV by myself and I had to call someone evey time I needed to get up. I got to eat real food in the evening, the first in a couple days.
Everything went ok until that evening. I wonder why there aren't more incidents of people offing their roommates during a hospital stay, maybe they're just too weak to manage it. First she complained about the food and had the nurse and the aide running in an out bringing her different things, which then she decided she didn't want to eat. Then she had visitors who stayed until after 11:00. With the TV on too. Then she fell asleep. Great, even with the snoring. Then after a couple of hours she woke up, told the nurse she hadn't been able to sleep a wink, she needed something for pain. They brought her something. 20 minutes later, she needed something to sleep. They had to go call the doctor, but then they brought her something. 20 minutes after that, she still couldn't sleep, she wanted dilaudid. Well, they had to check on that. In the meantime, I would have oh so gladly given her a massive shot of dilaudid myself. I would gladly have taken a massive shot of dilaudid myself. Finally they came and gave her the shot and she is out like a light, but I was really awake. So I took a little walk up and down the halls, then went back to bed. Roomie was snoring like a freight train. I got a couple of vicodin.
In the morning, they decided I could go home, but I just needed to show up at the other hospital in the early afternoon. Of course, I couldn't eat or drink anything until then. I still had no appetite, thank god. Roomie had her breakfast, complained at length about the food. The aide finally told her they didn't have what she wanted, grabbed up her tray, then slammed it down on the cart outside the room. I smiled.
I had a wonderful shower in this gigantic shower, with heated towels and all. It was a highlight of being there. Meantime, the nurse told roomie she could get washed up when they helped her to the bathroom. Roomie said she didn't want to. Nurse said, "You need to wash between your legs, and there's no way I'm doing it for you." So glad I didn't piss anyone off. This woman had been very ill and in the hospital for a pretty long time, I sympathize, but she was also amazingly obnoxious. Perhaps that was a sign of her recovery.
Hospital #1
At the hospital I waited awhile, and a while longer. Got prodded repeatedly all over my abdomen, had an ultrasound, an IV which left a good portion of my right arm bruised, and finally, I got morphine. The thing I was waiting for, the thing that could almost make me believe in God. The thing that made bearable the moaning and crying of the other people in the ER.
So from the ultrasound we found out that my gall bladder was all filled with stones, infected, inflamed, thickened, whatever. I had to wait until my gall bladder got less disgusting and my white count went down before I could have surgery. The problem was there were no beds available so I had to wait for a while in ER. Then they sent me to ICU, because that's the only place they could stick me. It was better than a hallway.
ICU was not too bad that night, with the morphine and all. But by the morning I was really aware that it was really loud in there. There were people coming and going all the time, nurses yelling across the room, plus the nurse's desk is sort of right in the room. It was like they're having a party all the time. I mean, I was the only patient in there who was "awake," so I guess being quiet was not a priority. I heard all about their husband problems, PMS, the doctors they hated.
They thought I was cute because I was ambulatory ("We're not used to patients who can walk in here") and I could unplug my own IV and hobble to the bathroom on my own. Which I did constantly because they were pumping me full of fluids and letting me have a lovely clear liquid diet. Plus I was so thirsty. The doc came to visit me and told me that they had scheduled surgery the next morning. Or I could go home if I wanted to. Staying seemed like the smart thing to do.
Finally, in the evening, they found a regular room for me. I got settled in my room with my toothbrush and personal slippers from home and met my roommate. I quickly realized I probably would have no control over the remote. More visitors to see, and finally around 11:00, the surgeon came in. He told me all about the laparoscopic cholecystectomy , the possible intraoperative cholangiogram, and all the things that could wrong. Luckily, he had another patient to see and he wasn't able to draw the little diagrams he wanted to.
Small town life
Last Monday night I felt really bad. I had lots of pain and burning in my abdomen. I decided I should go to the hospital. My husband was driving me there and on the way I thought, "Now I'm going to puke." We pulled over, I stumbled out of the car next to some cow field. That's all there are on the way, cow fields. When I breathed in the wonderful aroma of cow manure, I promptly puked my guts out. I felt a little better and we went to the hospital. Luckily I did not step in any cow pies during my stop.
I am sick
I made it through the holidays without getting sick, but now I have a bad sore throat. I think it is a virus. I hope I do not have strep. Keep clicking through there and there is a nice gross picture.
UPDATE(frum me the 14 yer old son): moms in the hospital i dont know whut it is
More flotsam
In the spirit of Found Magazine, The Grocery List Collection.
Purple prose
The 2003 Puffies, via Bookslut.
Larry Brown's writing is beyond seductive - it's addictive and nearly narcotic. His spare lines ring clear as single bell notes. Linked together they are hypnotic and alluring.
I just love words strung together for the hell of it.
Question of the day
How does my son (who's 14) eat SO MUCH FOOD? Like everything in the house (that he likes).
More found stuff
Grocery list blog.
Jackie Chan
When Vibsen was here, we went out to dinner at the teeny Mexican restaurant here in town. My younger daughter thought she was in heaven. She shouted out, "Jackie Chan, it's Jackie Chan!" when she saw our waiter. Alas, it was only a Mexican guy who really looked a lot like Jackie Chan.
Kitchen duty
Had a great day yesterday in the kitchen. Made a sour cream coffee cake for breakfast. Then we made pizza and focaccia for lunch. Then Swiss Steak with roasted tomatoes (instead of just regular ones), mashed potatoes, and Boston cream pie for dessert.
