I lead such an intriguing life that y'all are never going to get caught up on the adventures of the last few days. Perhaps I should reduce it to prose poetry.
Key phrases
Highest pollen count ever.
Snot vs. stuffy nose. Sweating in bed.
Pollen continues to coat the cars,
the cats, the Koko, my head.
No Adderall until after surgery.
And on the third night I rose again
from the bed at two in the morning,
sleep a dream, nowhere to be seen.
I was bored with counting my own breaths,
with thinking about Mother, my dad, the dead coal miners,
the quilt I can't concentrate enough
to sew, the everlasting laundry.
I walked, that night and since, hither, thither, nowhere.
Sit, stand, lie down; it's all the same: I'm awake
and watch dawn lightening the far side of my blinds.
Bring your C-PAP machine;
you'll need it in the recovery room.
The woman who delivered my C-PAP machine
in 2006 said good-bye when she left. I
never heard from her again and thus did not know
that the facemask needs replaced each quarter,
the gel pads each month, the tubing every time
you turn around. At pre-registration, when I learned
the machine will help me to regain consciousness,
I checked into things, called around, got the information,
found a company interested in providing service along
with equipment and in exchange receiving payment.
Now everything plastic or gel is new, as is the machine's humidifier,
which broke who knows when; and also I learned that
ever since the twelfth of March I've worn that alien space gear
on my head to no avail, the original product too aged to do any good.
Now I'll not die before I wake,
at home tonight or in recovery tomorrow.
Note: in telling you this, I by no means am suggesting
there is anything positive about cancer. Cancer is not
our friend, no matter how many pink ribbons
you drape upon it.
Due dates.
Funny to think at one time "due dates" meant the power bill
and my daughters' coming births. Now they're the Louisville Slugger
banks are using on our headlights to keep those coins rolling in.
It's the economy, stupid, and the poor bankers and other former
stalwart upright citizens are going to get their pieces of silver
off all our backs. I have three checking accounts, because
being ADHD I want my life as complicated as is fuckingly possible,
and none of them had quite the number of dollars I needed, and
my government funds have not yet been deposited,
although often they arrive early, and so at 4:48 I was
on the phone making cancer jokes with my friend at the
brokerage house after we figured out how to move the five bucks
or so I was short; and we almost forgot to hang up in time
to keep my APR at its new usorious rate, established when Congress
voted to protect me from credit card companies.
Antibacterial soaps.
The nurse at pre-registration didn't believe
we have no antibacterial soaps.
"Like Dial," she said, "but anything you've got will do."
"I don't have any, but I can get a bar," I say.
"Any you have at your house already will do," she said.
"I don't have any at my house," I said. "I don't use it."
Apparently she doesn't know bacteria is our friend;
and the random slaughter we commit on it means that soap
she wants me to use won't work when needed,
except for me, once I go buy a bar to use tomorrow,
which I would have done an hour ago except --
in honor of my surgery being tomorrow --
my car ran hot as I sat in the drivethrough at
Starlight Diner awaiting my loaded hot dogs.
"Broken gizmo" was the diagnosis.
Yep. There's a lot of that going around.
We're out of ice cream. I want a Mountain Dew Code Red float but can't make one because even if I run to one of the three nearby stores for ice cream, I still have to travel to Kroger's for Mountain Dew Code Red, which is actually a very fine addiction. Like red Kool-Aid but you can make floats with it.
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