Regular Life

Sometimes I make up words, usually because they’re fun to say. Most of the time I don’t give them definitions. What might this word mean?

carmagudgeon (or karmagudgeon)

Please keep it clean, or at least clean enough that it goes over a child’s head.

It feels good when, after 16 years of marriage, I still can make my wife laugh. Obviously, for years she’s been chuckling at some of my jokes without my noticing. Lately, thanks to recent surgery, she can’t do that because it hurts to laugh.

In the immortal words of Ralph Malph, I still got it.

Because laughing makes her hurt, I would like to say I’m precariously walking that fine line between cracking jokes and not, but that would be a lie. Quips are part of my nature, things I utter without really thinking, “Oh, this will make her laugh.” In fact, some lines that I consider throwaways get the biggest reactions.

We’ve laughed together a lot lately, thanks to time spent with Ben and without him. Shannon smiles through the pain and seems to enjoy herself. As long as I get that reward, I probably won’t stop.

The day after I backed over a perfectly innocent mailbox, on St. Patrick’s day I didn’t have the luck of the Irish. Thanks to my son’s indomitable spirit, I didn’t explode.

After playing Mr. Mom at a playdate and checking in on Shannon, I took a tip from one of the mothers and told Benjamin we needed to leave to go see Bolt at a local cheap theater’s 75-cent day. He didn’t whine at all when I told him it was time to leave the park.

I noticed that the van’s fuel light was on, but we were in a bit of a hurry and the needle showed we had plenty to get there.

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Our heart goes out to Lady B today. Her father passed away Thursday after a tough fight against cancer.

I proved this week that Friday the 13th is unlucky, and never have I done such a great job of suppressing every curse word in the known universe. This and the next two posts demonstrate that, with the help of visual aids.

Benjamin and I had a few days to ourselves while his mother rested in post-op pain following Friday’s surgery. Yes, she required some assistance, but usually only while moving. Once she was resting, we took off.

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Update on Shannon: She’s at home now, still in pain, but recovering. More detailed write-up later.

At the hospital on Friday night at about 10:30, I needed a snack and I had a dollar burning a hole in my pocket.

The vending machine on the ground floor had nothing I wanted, but a staffer told me there was another one in the ER’s waiting room. I followed his simple directions down a long hallway to the double-doors into the ER.

The vending machine offered nothing new, so I carefully fed it my dollar bill and punched the number of an old classic — donut sticks. This particular pack was Dunkin’ Stix, by Hostess, but I had shown no brand preference while enjoying countless numbers of the sweet snack in years past. As the corkscrew mechanism pushed the snack over the edge, I anticipated its sugary dough melting in my mouth.

After I pulled the package from the vending machine’s trough, I flipped it over to read the nutrition information.

I wished I had punched a different combination of keys. The three donut sticks inside constituted one serving, featuring 490 calories — more than I usually eat in my entire lunch. It boasted 38% of the daily serving of fat, with more than half of that coming in the form of saturated fat. I hope that only in Texas — one of the “fattest” states in the country — would a hospital allow a vendor to stock such fare.

On top of the other horrifying numbers (too numerous to itemize here), there were 40 grams of sugar. That’s more than in a 12 oz can of any leading soda.

I couldn’t bring myself to eat the whole package, especially so close to bedtime. Instead, I ate one stick, and so far I’m still here to type about it. Either Saturday or Sunday I grabbed the remaining two and threw them away.

On a related note, on Monday Benjamin and I went out for a mid-morning snack before running errands and going to the park. Our first stop? The donut shop, where we ate a respectable one donut each and then went about our day.

Friday, March 13, 7 p.m. CT

I’m sitting here by the phone in the surgical waiting room. A divorced couple, fresh off an argument over weekend custody of their son, shares with me that their daughter is having a tumor removed from her spine. It is touching how they forget everything else to act as one when talking about her predicament. Almost like a married couple finishing each other’s sentences. I suppose that’s something many couples never outgrow after divorce.

I internally thank them that they asked me first why I was here, because spinal tumor is hard to follow with something as routine as gall bladder removal. Even more so when they tell me that the first tumor on her spine was cancerous and they’re hoping this one won’t be. She responded well to the chemo the first time, they say.

“She had a mass removed from her lung a while back and it wasn’t cancerous!” the father tells me as he jubilantly raises his fists and his eyes squint from his huge smile.

How heartbreaking that a father has to derive excitement from something like that.

He continues, “Her surgeon is amazing. He got started a little late because he removed a tumor from someone’s brain earlier today and it went a little long.”

Wow.

Sure, Shannon’s surgeon bumped her up to tonight instead of the following Wednesday morning, but those poor parents are going through emotions I can’t imagine. And, despite their being divorced and their argument earlier, they seem to be leaning on each other.

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Friday, March 13, 11:30 p.m. CT

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Above is the window view from Shannon’s hospital room, stitched by Hugin (free) from several photos. She’s still in enough pain that only the stuff from the intravenous line gives her any relief, so we’re staying overnight. The hearts on the left are on the nearby heart hospital’s exterior walls, and a walkway between it and this hospital runs across the frame.

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Saturday, March 14, 11:30 a.m. CT

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Above is my view from my little corner of Shannon’s post-op room, again stitched by Hugin (albeit badly because I wasn’t nearly as careful about how I took the pictures). As you might see on my laptop, I watched the first episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” today and I think I’m hooked already. Darn you and your cleverness, Joss Whedon!

Nothing taken orally puts a dent in Shannon’s pain, so they might not release her today. I’m about to go switch places with her mom so that I can hang out with Benjamin and go get some things Shannon needs from home.
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On another note, Shannon’s anesthesiologist must have been a model in his former life. Sheesh. Maybe the medical shows aren’t so far off when they depict doctors as the best-looking people in the working world. I make that distinction because modeling isn’t real work compared to saving lives.

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The groom, who used to live next door to us, confirmed that had they done this in India, he could have ridden an elephant. More of this wonderful Indian wedding to come, but I wanted to wait until I had the other files (sound, etc.) ready.

Call this a glass half empty observation if you must, but I believe that social networking sites (i.e., Facebook) have killed much of the fun of class reunions.

Before all that, what’s the one thing that everybody knew about everybody else at a high school class reunion? Their age. Regardless of the level of contact you had maintained throughout the years, you knew before you arrived that all of you were approaching 30, 40, 50, 60, or some other number divisible by 10. Some have reunions more often than that, but the concept is the same.

It is a lot easier now to know more than a person’s age before the family-friendly midday potluck lunch. The Internet is so much more pervasive now than it was in 1999 that nearly everyone has their own page, albeit one designed by Facebook or MySpace and subject to the complex user agreements therein. The number of digital cameras also has increased dramatically since then. Pictures of kids and other family members are easy to share with only your group of friends or that stranger in the white van.

All of this has eliminated much of the mystery of class reunions. We already know who moved away, who has eaten too many Bloomin’ Onions, and how many (if any) kids they have. If you’re diligent, you can know what they eat for breakfast, what time they work out, and whether or not their cat is shedding.

What’s left to talk about at the reunion? I’m hoping that the few holdouts who aren’t online will be fascinating enough to keep us all engaged. Q: What made you decide to have an extra nose installed? A: You stink. Get away from me.

I volunteered to put together a DVD slideshow of pics from the past to show at the reunion. This poses a challenge because classmates will have to scan in the photos before they can send them to me. If only digital cameras had been around back then, this task would be a whole lot easier. As a backup plan, I could go to each person’s Facebook albums and go crazy with the right-click, Save As, and then put the results together for a “what are they doing now” slideshow. But that might be creepy because I don’t really know their families.

As of right now, the show will feature lots of pictures of me and my small group of friends, many of whom weren’t in our class. That is, if I ever get around to scanning in my photos. The Dr. Pepper fights won’t mean much to those of you who weren’t there. Sorry.

Despite all of this electronic communication, personal interaction still counts for something. I suspect that after the reunion, Facebook friends lists will again change. Some adds, some subtractions.

I created a web site for our 10-year reunion, and used pictures that a few other people shared. I suspect very few people actually saw it, but it was fun. If you weren’t there and didn’t visit the site, then you’ll never know why we had to hold the reunion at a different site this time. Now, scan in those photos and send them along. The more embarrassing, the better!

Both of us chewed our bites as we looked at the crispy rice bar package.

“Why is there a 2-8-9 right there?” Ben said.

“That says 28 grams. That’s how much it weighs.”

“How much it weighs?”

“Well, actually, that’s the mass.”

“What is mass?”

I was fortunate that after just a few seconds of silence, the boy changed the topic. I enjoyed high school physics as much as any other class, but I wasn’t prepared to explain mass to a kindergartner.

I’m pretty sure I know just the man who would have been up to the task, if anybody. He happens to be the boy’s maternal grandfather, and we have visual proof that he has addressed small children at least once.

This note was made by a second grader (click to enlarge), and the proper salutation would have addressed Shannon’s dad as “Dr.,” but we’re not here to quibble over such details. I blurred out anything that would implicate the innocent.

It makes me glad that even today kids still use crayons and pencils, because who knows where a jpg will be in 33 years?