Bow Tie o’ the Day and I went on a bit of a boring, pre-weekend erranding escapade today, which had nothing to do with shopping for new clothing. But as I erranded—from far across a crowded discount store—I spied out of the corner of my eye, this lonely SpongeBob SquarePants shirt on a clearance rack. You know I had to have it. More specifically, I had to have the embroidered SpongeBob Squarepants with his signature red Tie o’ the Day. Ah, the unmitigated exuberance of running across psychedelic striped attire I can’t possibly ever actually need! I feel like I’m wearing Lucky Charms marshmallows. I so win bigly!
Yesterday was finally my bigly lithotripsy procedure at the University of Utah Hospital. Technically, the procedure is called Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy (ESWL). The word “lithotripsy” is derived from Greek words meaning “breaking stones.” (Insert joke here.) Yup, a machine called a lithotriptor pinpoints the offending calcification/stone, then zaps high energy shock waves at it to blow it to smithereens tiny enough to pass through your system and be eliminated by your body. Thank the heavens I was sedated while the pulverizing occurred. I didn’t feel a thing at the time, but I sure do now. The left side of my upper torso feels like someone beat the HELLen out of me. And it looks like it too. My ribs appear battered, bruised, and swollen. I tried to take a snapshot of the gore to post, but I couldn’t keep my left breasticle out of the picture. I decided it was best to not post that on TIE O’ THE DAY.
Anyhoo…The lithotripsy procedure itself went well, but I won’t know if the stone in my Cranky Hanky Panky was sufficiently pulverized until I go back to undergo yet another scope-down-the-gullet procedure (another ERCP). I wish I had something more definitive to tell you about whether yesterday was successful or not, but I don’t. Welcome to My So-Called Pancreatic Life.
However, I consider my day at the hospital a screaming success for two reasons—neither of which really has anything to do with my Cranky Hanky Panky. The first triumph is that, just by being ourselves, Suzanne and I made professional healthcare workers guffaw, chuckle, and snicker for about 5 hours. We didn’t mean to be entertaining. We were just entertaining ourselves in our usual banter about whatever crossed our minds, and doctors and nurses happened to overhear us. A good time was had by all, as the saying goes. At one point, one of my anesthesiologists stepped back into my room and said, “I love to hear you both laughing in here. Your conversations are so strange. That stuff about the yellow, fungal toenails was something I never even thought about.” I guess he had heard me when for some reason I said to Suzanne, “If I ever get a thick, crumbly, yellow, fungal toenail, just grab the pliers and yank it out.” Suzanne and I are highly educated gals. We think deeply. Sometimes, Suzanne and I speak about profound philosophical complexities. Apparently, we were sometimes Shakespearean stinkards, engaged in coarse—but relatively clean—conversation at the hospital yesterday.
But my ultimate triumph yesterday was the pickin’ out o’ the perfectly appropriate Tie o’ the Day. For weeks, I had been asking myself what clever neckwear I should wear to experience this new-to-me thing called lithotripsy. I was stymied. And then, when I was in The Tie Room the night before the procedure, a tie caught my eye and my wit: my cartoon “BAM, BOOM, WOW, HEY” lightning bolts and stars print kids’ tie. BAM and BOOM was exactly what the lithotriptor machine did to my torso. Tie o’ the Day was so lithotripsy-y. 👔
Before the procedure.After the procedure.You can never make “kindness” disappear completely.I was feeling it.I was proud to know I owned an appropriate Tie o’ the Day for lithotripsy. It’s a real stone smasher.The ball-and-chain. My better half.
I spent yesterday at the University of Utah Hospital having a lithotripsy procedure directed at the pancreatic boulder my panky seems to have gone out of its way to grow. I’m moving gingerly this morning. Stay tuned for this afternoon’s Cranky Hanky Panky update, in which I regale you with details of my latest medical adventure.
FYI Excuse my fish-belly-white legs, but note that my socks reveal I am honest when I say I never go anywhere without books.🤓
I am so tired this morning. I won’t lie: I will be taking a long morning nap. I walked the floors last night, in what I can only describe as my own slapstick episode of the Keystone Cops. I blame my tinnitus. I blame a phone app. And I blame Suzanne. I blame everything and everyone except me.
Here’s what happened: I fell asleep the minute my head hit the pillow, so my night of rest started out just as it should have. I woke up a couple of hours later to the sound of water running. I got out of bed and walked through all the rooms on the second floor, pressing my ear to the walls, listening for running water. I could hear it everywhere and nowhere. I figured it was just my tinnitus acting up extra loudly, so I went back to bed. But the sound soon woke me up again. I investigated further and discovered the sprinklers were on outside, so that must be the culprit I was hearing. Back to bed again, I went. I wasn’t asleep for very long when the sound of water running seemed to get even louder. I looked out the windows—front and back—and saw that the sprinklers were off. I cursed my tinnitus, but I still wasn’t completely convinced I there wasn’t water running somewhere in the house. There was something not quite tinnitus-y about what I was hearing. I went downstairs to listen to all the walls I had not listened to yet. I was coming up with no answers. Finally, I crept back upstairs to try to ignore the water-water-everywhere-that-wasn’t-really-there, so I could get some shut-eye. It was 4:30 AM. The stoopid tinnitus in my head was real. The sound of water running was real, too, I tell you! I flew out of bed yet again, more determined than ever to locate the watery culprit that was causing me to lose sleep. I got down on my hands and knees while I listened to the bedroom floor. If the sound wasn’t in the walls, it had to be in the floor. And that’s when I heard the sound I was able to follow to the source. I slithered my way around the side of the bed to Suzanne’s bedside steamer trunk, upon which was her phone. Apparently, she’d had difficulty falling asleep and had decided to use her relaxation app to play water sounds to help her drift off to sleep. If I had only known! I can sleep to water sounds, if I know they are not doing water damage. It was the worry, not the sounds themselves, which had me on edge. Must. Sleep. Now.
Yup, I’m at Farmington Health Center again—for what will be my 4th COVID-19 test. The lithotripsy procedure I’ve been waiting for is scheduled for Monday, and to get into the hospital to undergo it, I must once again prove I do not have COVID-19. Hey, I’ve had my shots. I am not worried I have it. Regarding my test, Suzanne said to me this morning as she left for work, “Be positive, test negative!” She thinks she’s so clever. And she is.
After a pandemic year of not doing our weekly brunching out, Suzanne made us brunch reservations at Cafe Niche. I was relieved to embark on some of our “old normal” events—sort of. We still had to wear masks in common areas of the restaurant, but I have to be honest and say that I like some of the “new normal” that I hope will not go back to pre-pandemic times. I like that there is now more space between the tables in restaurants. I like that hand sanitizer is strategically placed throughout the restaurant. I really like that I don’t have to touch a physical menu that has a battalion of other peoples’ sticky fingerprints on it. It was such heaven to use my phone to scan the code at the table, then read the menu right on my personal screen. I like that salt-and-pepper shakers—and condiment bottles—don’t sit out on the table to be pawed by forty customers per day. I’m not an OCD germaphobe, but it has always bugged me that every diner who sits at a given table throughout the day touches the stuff to be used there. I like that the server now brings me a personal portion of whatever seasoning or condiment I ask for. I so hope I find these changes in whatever dining establishment where we end up brunching this coming Sunday. I’ll keep y’all updated on things of such high import.
FYI If I ask her next month, Suzanne might not even remember what she ate at brunch yesterday. However, if I ask her in five years about the foliage outside Cafe Niche in May of 2021, she will remember exactly what was blooming there. Just sayin.’
The LDS Primary songs of my youth continue to make it impossible for me to wallow in tedious labor. “Saturday” is a song that has gone through my head every Saturday for more than fifty years now. I can’t help it. It’s just there, being the soundtrack of one entire day of every week. Some people work all week long just to get to the excitement of a wild Saturday night on the town, but that’s not how it works for me. Because of the aforementioned song, “Saturday,” from the official Primary songbook, being permanently stuck in my head, Saturday is tasks, chores, and to-do lists. But it’s oh-so fun because there’s a song to sing about it.
Like any good kid song, it is simple, and so it easily accommodates new lines about the real-life Saturday tasks I find myself engaged in. One of my best “true” lines came about because my dad—not too long before he passed away—had been on his back in the driveway, fixing something underneath his forklift. Later that Saturday afternoon, he was puzzled because he couldn’t find his lower dentures. Mom was poking around in every nook and cranny of their house to find them. I asked Dad where he had been working. I got the rake and headed for the forklift. Dad was yelling to me out the front window that he didn’t have his teeth at the forklift, so I didn’t need to look there; meanwhile, Mom came outside to give me a run-down of all the places where she hadn’t found his lowers; and just at that moment Suzanne called from Ogden, needing something. My dogs circled my feet, wanting me to throw the ball for them. My head was full of all these voices. I answered the phone and said to Suzanne, “Whatever it is, handle it. I can’t talk to you right now because I’m busy raking the gravel for Dad’s dentures. Click.” Thus, the following line was born, and I forever added it to “Saturday:” “We rake the gravel, and look for Dad’s teeth,/so we can be ready for Sunday.”
I did, in fact, find Dad’s lowers in the gravel under the forklift. My instincts were correct. He had put them in the chest pocket of his overalls while he worked, and they had slid out of the pocket as he tinkered. Suzanne later told me she thought I was drunk on the phone, because it didn’t make any sense to her why I would be raking gravel to find Dad’s teeth. Like any really good story, it didn’t make any sense at all. Of course it didn’t make sense: It was true!
I’ve been wearing my COVID-19 model Mask o’ the Day quite a bit lately, as my way of acknowledging the wind-down of the pandemic. I think it pairs nicely with purple/lavender Bow Tie o’ the Day.
I got a FaceTime call from Gracie and her parents last night, during which Skitter and I got to watch Gracie open the birthday gifts we left for her earlier in the day. Among the books and sweets and star-shaped sunglasses we thought she’d like, we gave her some balls and a tee-ball mitt—clearly her first mitt, cuz she had no idea what to do with it. Like the whip-smart gal she is, though, she immediately figured out how to make dandy use of the mitt. She decided it was a hat and wore it on her head. I like that girl’s style! She looked smokin’ in the tee-ball mitt hat. I see bigly things for her in her fashion-forward future.
Remember how my phone inadvertently and repeatedly called 9-1-1 yesterday? It shaped up for a while—until I decided to play another game of solitaire on it. An ad came across the screen again, and the dang thing froze up again, and it dialed 9-1-1 again as I attempted to shut it down. The solitaire app had to go. I dumped it and my iPhone hasn’t frozen up for at least 24 hours. I’m no fool, though. No phone lasts forever—although they are tougher than they used to be. I always prepare for the worst, and hope for the best—like the cliche says to do. This is why I always have a Phone Fund slowly building up in a piggy bank. It’s right there by the Fun Fund For Travel; the Mom Fund, in case she needs something; three College Funds For Family Who Can’t Afford It; and the Gambling Fund for when we go to Las Vegas again. Oh, and there is also the Bee Piggy Bank Date Night Fund for nights out on the town, which we have not used for over a year. I tell you about these savings stashes so you can see that my spare change already has lots of places to go. My Phone Fund is not quite bigly enough for me to need a new phone right now. I hope keeping solitaire apps off my phone will make it possible for my phone to live a much longer life—at least until my Phone Fund is equal to the cost of a new iPhone.
Interestingly, I have recently realized I’ve been using a terrific investment strategy for decades, which I wasn’t even aware of until now. I’ll let you in on it, in case you want a sure bet as you follow your road to prosperity and obscene wealth. Three words: wood bow ties. Do you know what lumber is worth right now? It’s worth exactly… a lot of money. It’s certainly worth more than it was worth a few weeks ago. I could build—and sell—a wood cabin with the bulk of my wood neckwear, or I could just sell the bow tie wood outright and move to Ireland right this minute. But you know me. I’ll hang on to my wood neckwear collection because it makes me happy. However, with wood prices what they are today, I’m buying a gargantuan gun safe to house all the wood critters in my neckwear collection. I must remember to leave room in the gun safe for my gun.
