Life's Lessons Hard To Swallow

Look folks! It's the Huge Cucumber of Dismay! I had threatened earlier to post the HCD when I'd run out of material, but the truth is there is no lack of material, I just sort of fell apart yesterday. Well, not "fell apart", but there was a certain defined unraveling. It started with my bolus. Dr. Weaver suggested that it might be a bezoar, but no, I believe it distinctly to be a bolus, and that the doctor just wanted to use the word 'bezoar' and, honestly, who can blame him?

I swallowed a pill a couple days ago, and I must have been dehydrated from the day because it looks like it scratched my throat on the way down. This causes progressive esophagal dysphagia, or something, which gives you the sensation that you are in the middle of swallowing FOR ALL ETERNITY! In Heaven, a fine meal at the end of life is a great reward. In Hell you get the same fine meal but you can't swallow it. It kept me awake the night before last, which made yesterday somewhat tiresome, and then last night I went in to say goodnight to the little girl and fell asleep on her floor. I awoke later with difficulty breathing, and moved downstairs to the couch where I could prop myself up, and sleep in the uncomfortable pillow-reenforced-sitting-up fashion of the sick and dying. I don't know what woke me more -the need for a glass of water to temper the maddening bolus, or the need to get the day's blog up. I rested intermittently as a result of it all, so here I am Thursday morning. I did some web research on the swallowing problem, only to find horror stories of people who never saw the end of it, suffering the remainder of their days. They eventually lost a lot of weight, refused to speak, and were miserable just to gaze upon. Oh, the nightmare! It would be a wonderful Abu Ghraib torture, this dysphagia, allowing us to easily defeat the terrorist scum once and for all. At this point, I'd almost prefer electrodes to the genitalia. Almost.

I understand that it will go away in a few days (LORD HAVE MERCY) but I'm distracted by the pain in my left arm from the recent cat attack.

The day before hard-swallowing the infernal scratch pill, I was brushing the old cat when he gave in to his latent feline distemper and let me have it. I expected this, The Brushing is not a pleasant experience for the family cat, but it needs to be done. I suppose if someone started yanking the hair out of the back of my head, I'd turn and sink all my teeth into their arm as well. I've experienced this before, but to the bone, Rocky? to the bone?! He got me good, too. So good, in fact, I felt compelled to use the Bactine and Neosporin on the puncture wounds, which I normally would otherwise dismiss. I think, at one point, I actually lifted him in the air, his mouth around my wrist, the full weight of the cat dangling from bone and tendon. You are hereby warned: never underestimate the power behind the fanged maw of an aged Persian. I'm pretty bruised up, and now the cat passes me in the hall like nothing ever happened. Of course, he knows what happened, and I know what happened... Fine. Keep your matted dreadlocks, see what I care.

Back to work, this morning. I'm not sure how much more of this I can take. Some days the pain of the household outweighs the pain of the workload, and you happily get in the car and head off to the career since The Good Lord in His mercy made you to be The Provider and not The Nurturer, but other days you take the pain with you to work, glom it all together under the hot August sun, and try to burn it off.