Category Archives: Fun & Humor

Invaders storm the walls of my castle (another bad clinic appointment)

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INT – Castle – afternoon

The lead knight rushes to Unknown with important news. 

It's time to visit my happy place tonight. It looks like this. Ah, that's better. Ocean breeze and salt water.

It’s time to visit my happy place tonight. It looks like this. Ah, that’s better. Ocean breeze and salt water.

Knight: The scum have surrounded the castle and are upon the walls, Sir.

Unknown: All right then, man, no need to panic. We’ve been here before. Piece of cake. Let’s drop some boiling oral cipro on their heads.

Knight: Been there, done that.

Unknown: What? What do you mean by, “been there, done that”?

Knight: We already tried the boiling oral cipro, Sir. It’s lost it touch, it has.

Unknown: Really? Well, that’s not good. All right then, Plan B. How about some flaming balls of IV tobramycin to knock them down? That’s always a game-changer.

Knight: Been there, done that.

Unknown: My God, man, would you stop staying that, please?

Knight: Been there, done that?

Unknown: Yes, that. Exactly. Thank you. It’s no time for negativity. Are you quite sure the last barrage had no positive impact?

Knight: Yep. Not this time. Quite surprising it was, if I must say so. Just bounced right off of them. Quite amazing to see. Tough little buggers and quite angry.

Unknown: I see. Brilliant. Well, what else have we got here?

Knight: For lunch?

Me: For lunch? Are you daft, man? For heaven’s sake. For lunch? Not for lunch, imbecile. To drop on them. To keep them out of the castle.

Knight: Hmm, let me think. [pause while he thinks, and thinks some more] Well, lunch was pretty awful. It might work.

Unknown: Oh, my god. That’s the best you’ve got?

Knight: Well, yes. The ham is quite spoiled. Damn awful. They’ll be throwing up for hours if they eat it. Buy us some time, it will.

Unknown: Oh, damn me. We’ve run out of tricks, haven’t we? I guess we have no choice. Drop the ham. Drop it now. Let’s buy a few hours before we’re buggered for good.

Knight: But we’re out of ham.

Unknown: What? But you just said we had ham.

Knight: Well, not technically. I said perhaps we’d like to consider dropping lunch on them. But we ate it all.

Unknown: Even though it was rotten?

Knight: We used lots of mustard.

Unknown: And the men didn’t leave even a tiny bit of ham for later?

Knight: No, I’m afraid not. We ate all of it.

Unknown: And you didn’t get sick?

Knight: Oh, we got sick all right. Right horrid, it was. Oh, terrible squirts. But we was hungry. What’s a man to do when his stomach calls?

Unknown: Skip the detail next time, my dreadful knight. So, if I’m to understand correctly, what you’re saying is that we’re completely screwed?

Knight: I guess I am. That sounds about right, Captain. Completely screwed. 100%.

Unknown: Very well then, I’m going to walk to that wall over there. And then I’m going to climb up on it, at which point I want you to give me a nice solid kick to the arse, sending me over the edge and into the intruders. I may as well take a few of them with me on the way out. Are you clear on the new plan, my good knight?

Knight: Crystal, Sir. It will be my pleasure, your royalness, to kick you in the arse. My pleasure indeed.

The End

I have no right to complain. Every day I grow old with CF is a gift, but some of those days have their challenging moments. Today was one of those days.

My PFTs are still down after IVs. Or, no improvement. And the reason I can’t hear higher tones anymore is because I’ve lost a portion of my hearing thanks to the dozens of doses of IV tobramycin I’ve taken over the years – one drop at a time. Ouch.

Tomorrow will be a better day. I have a shipment of ham on the way.

A guest link from Sir Sean

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So, my good friend in England, Sir Sean of Englandshire, decided to walk to his computer, turn it on, visit his own blog, and write a blog post. Happy days. And he wrote a good one. It’s about how technology is changing the way doctors monitor cystic fibrosis treatments.

Why doesn’t my US CF clinic have anything like this?

I imagine one day sending information from my daily treatments and FEV1 to my clinic. My PFT graphs won’t have dots placed every three months. Instead my peaks and valleys will be smoother, and I’ll see trends soon rather than getting a nasty surprise at clinic. Perhaps my blood pressure won’t skyrocket on clinic days if I already know what to expect.

This is Sir Sean as young man getting ready for his mandatory military duty for Queen and country. Oh, England, they love those old-school battles still.

This is Sir Sean as a young man getting ready for his mandatory military duty for Queen and country.  England, how they cherish old-school war technology and sword battles still.

I’ve read a few articles on doctors using iPhone apps to measure patients’ heart rates and other body functions. I’d really like it if I could go to the doctor but not go to the doctor. That’s my dream.

So, please click on the link at the bottom and check out Sir Sean’s post.

BTW, Sir Sean is a big fan of the West Ham soccer team. I haven’t had the courage to tell him I played FIFA 13 on Xbox with my 11-year-old nephew and I chose West Ham. They lost 1 to nil. Sorry about that Sir Sean. They bite virtually too. It clearly had nothing to do with my soccer playing skills.

Here’s the link. Get ready for more technology to help us battle cystic fibrosis.

https://www.tumblr.com/seanset/41292567739/i-neb-insight-online

I fail a sleep test and O2D2 comes to live with me

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Here are the fantasy and reality versions of my recent sleep test:

Fantasy: I enter a room that resembles a science lab with machines beeping, beakers of liquid bubbling dry-ice steam, and scientists with clipboards taking notes. A large one-way glass wall hides the doctors. The bed is round with a vibrating feature that costs 50 cents. A stack of quarters waits on the nightstand. Jackpot. A 72-inch flat screen is mounted to the ceiling and a Die Hard film festival is playing.

Reality: I enter a dim hospital room with one small overhead fluorescent light glowing and a king-size, rock-hard bed covered in 25-count white hospital sheets with old blood stains covered by a thin, crappy blanket. Ah, prison, I remember thee, my second home. The cushion on the single, lonely “not J-Crew green” chair has a torn fabric seat and would sell on Craigslist for a maximum of $10, which I know because I measure everything in Craigslist value. Crappy hospital flat screen: $45 – $60.

Fantasy: I’m greeted by two nurses who model on weekends. They insist on giving me a shiatsu massage to make sure I’m relaxed and ready for a good night’s sleep. They talk softly and compliment my muscle tone and how solid I feel. Yep, ladies, keep dreaming, I tell them, this ab table is reserved for one woman, my wife – but don’t stop the massage just because I popped your dream balloons. And they continue, little tears falling from their sad blue eyes.

Reality: I’m greeted by a young male lab-tech who just graduated college, looks 10, and speaks in a monotone, as he explains every technical detail of the test at a volume I stopped being able to hear when I was 18 and sat in the front row of a Who concert. Why can’t I sleep through this drone of medical detail, God? Why? Tell me.

Fantasy: After my massage, I’m dressed in Hugh Hefner Collection black and red silk pjs and tucked into bed by the nurses. Two electrodes are placed on my head, Bruce Willis shoots bad guys above me, and the ladies sing Beatles songs until my eyelids can no longer resist their siren powers. And I dream of . . . .

Reality: The lab tech robs Home Depot of every foot of wire they sell, then uses a thick gel-like glue to plaster all of it to my face, head, shins and stomach. The process takes 45 minutes and feels like watching King Lear in German. Worst of all, he asks personal questions of me. I’m grumpy, tired and want to sleep. I don’t like telling him about my life but can’t escape his suffocating, questioning captivity, while wishing he might accidentally stick one of the wires in a live socket and electrocute me.

Fantasy: I sleep like a rock.

Reality: I sleep like shit.

Fantasy: The nurses gently wake me in the morning with soft kisses. You taste like maple bacon, they say, delicious. The doctor interrupts and tells me she watched my brain waves with great interest last night and has never seen anything quite like them. Would I mind coming back next week when her colleagues from Austria will be visiting? They’d like to study my magnificent brain. Of course, my good doctor. Of course. Anything for science and my two nurse gal-pals. 

Reality: I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t sleep. I see the infrared camera and decide to give him the tech something to watch. So, I squirm around the bed, stretch, and dredge up any and every memory I can, flipping back and forth from childhood to adult memories, from terrible events (coughing up blood on a plane over the Atlantic Ocean) to the best moments (my daughter being born). Back and forth I go, lighting up my brain waves (so, I think), living my life over in my head, expecting the tech to come tell me the computer is on fire and to stop thinking before I burn down the entire hospital.

The air hose they gave me is probably long enough for me to walk to the grocery store a mile away.

The air hose they gave me for O2D2 is probably long enough for me to walk to the grocery store a mile away.

Fantasy: I am a perfect sleeper. No farting, snoring, no scratching body parts, nothing. Perfect lamb, I am.

Reality: My oxygen dips below acceptable levels and I’m given 1 liter of O2 for the remainder of the test. Four days later, R2D2’s little brother, O2D2, shows up at my home and starts humming and burping in my bedroom each night delivering oxygen.

Fantasy: I fly home instead of driving.

Reality: I don’t let this new milestone rock my world. My new positive attitude of “one day at time” shields me against bad thoughts and self-pity. I am grateful. I am lucky. I have so much to be thankful for. I repeat this over and over until it sinks in and life goes on.

Lightning Strike

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Having cystic fibrosis is like getting struck by lightning on a sunny day.

Where did that come from? the onlookers say. I don’t see any burn marks, where’s the damage? Did that really just happen?

There I was, living my life, feeling good, not a care in the world. Then, BAM, lightning bolt to the arse. How embarrassing.

I had made it out alive through the holidays, with their rainy days, crowds looking at Rose Parade floats, and the mass of tourists and humanity at the Farmer’s Market in L.A.

I dodged a cold that infected my daughter, then my wife.

I was made of steel. Rock solid.

I refinished a kitchen table. I started building a bench from reclaimed wood. I could have been a lumberjack and toppled trees with my manly bare hands.

Then I went for PFTs.

And failed. With a capital “L” for loser.

Blow, blow, blow, keep it going. Go, go, go. Take a breath. ARGGHHHHHHHHHHH.

Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200, but do collect your suitcase, iPad, UCLA t-shirt, laptop, stash of reserve meds, and nebs.

You’re going in.

Roger, five-zero to base. We’re over the drop zone. Jump, jump, jump.

And here I am five days later, an IV pump humming its annoying song next to me. And the drone of the hospital that reminds me of flying on a plane. Bite me.

The icing on the cake of pain was watching my Broncos choke when they had a 97% chance of winning at the end of regulation.

Oh, the blood. The suffering. The heartbreak.

That’s what I get for wearing metal pants.

The best Christmas ever (and I understand Charlie Brown much better now)

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Here are my very simple criteria for what makes a Christmas, “the best Christmas”:

  1. Was I alive during it?
  2. Did I stay out of the hospital?

Check off both of those boxes this year. Thus, best Christmas ever. Check back next year and if those two boxes are checked again, you’ll see a post with the same title.

Though my present was Luna's bionic knee, I did get some stocking stuffers, like this BBQ mitt to keep me from burning the hair off my arm each time I cook the fish.

Though my present was Luna’s bionic knee, I did get some stocking stuffers, like this BBQ mitt to keep me from burning the hair off my hand and arm each time I cook fish.

You’ll notice there’s nothing on my checklist about the gifts I received during the holiday. Just living to see another Christmas and not being in the hospital are the only two gifts I care about now. When I was younger it was about the “stuff,” which would make the year I received a Sizzlers racetrack the best Christmas ever.

So, this Christmas was pretty awesome. We didn’t make any parental missteps like last year’s bicycle gift to my daughter. My wife and I gave her a bunch of eclectic gifts this year, including a messenger bag that she loved and carried around downtown Ventura two days later, which is amazing considering she’s allergic to carrying anything, especially groceries from the car to the house.

The art supplies Santa (my wife) bought her made her happy. And I went off the reservation, so to speak, this year, and ordered her several gifts without asking for my wife’s “voice of reason” opinion, which would have killed some of them. I just ordered stuff I thought my daughter would like: an origami book, a logic puzzle book, a scientific cookbook for kids, and a book on cupcakes.

Jackpot! I received zero, “Why is there a bicycle wedged in my stocking?” looks this year.

If there was one melancholy moment, it was at dinner the next night when my daughter challenged us to a logic puzzle. Both my wife and I made the big mistake of attempting it while we continued to eat, not paying attention that my daughter ignored her turkey and mashed potatoes and gave 100% of her young, healthy brain’s attention to the puzzle.

The two of us were halfway through it when she yelled out, “done.”

My favorite quote from the movie Aliens seems appropriate here: “What do you mean, THEY cut the power? How could they cut the power, man? They’re animals!”

So, my response was somewhat similar: What do you mean you finished? You did the entire thing? How did you do it that fast, you’re only 10?”

What happened to our little girl, the half-pint sponge who dressed up as Snow White and loved tea parties? Hello, computer-brained daughter whose main goal now is to have a mental throwdown with her parents, with little thought and compassion for their fragile adult self-esteem. What the heck are they teaching kids in fifth grade these days?

Round two. With fresh copies of a new puzzle in our hands and full concentration – dinner set aside – the three of us went at it again.

I also received a Kreg Jig Jr. I can go "pocket hole" crazy now.

I also received a Kreg Jig Jr. I can go “pocket hole” crazy now.

The scene: clock ticking loudly, sweat dripping off my brow, collar feeling tight, pencil slowly etching the paper, scribbled notes, stomach churning.

The result: My wife finished first, followed by my daughter two seconds later, followed by me – later.

Defeat, failure. Smashed by the two females in my house, an event that is happening way too often these days. ARGH, Charlie Brown, I know how you felt, my man. I know how you felt.

But if there is a silver lining to the beat down, I’m still the person they come to when their computers don’t work, or something in the house needs fixing. Luckily, the logic puzzles don’t extend to real life, and I still have some purpose and value left.

All hope is not lost yet, Charlie Brown.

Happy New Year to all.

Unwanted house guests – Ben and Willard

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Friday morning, with our daughter at school and yellow lab still at the animal hospital, my wife and I started noticing little 3/4-inch, rolled-up mud-like pieces around the house and on the furniture. Now though my wife is much smarter than I am (I only use 2% of my brain on my best days), I was the first to identify what we were seeing.

But it took a process of elimination and overcoming denial to get there.

Cali is a true care-free California Labrador. She is yours for free. Pick up only. Call 555-5555.

Cali is a true care-free California Labrador. She is yours for free. Pick up only. Call 555-5555.

Theory #1: Cali, our crazy black lab, dragged them in. She likes to eat poop. She must have spit them out, or kept them up in her cheeks or something.

My response to my wife: I don’t think so.

Action: We rolled Cali over on her back, checked her paws and fur, and looked in her mouth. Nothing there but a confused dog wondering why were inspecting every inch of her.

Theory #2: They fell off of my wife’s running shoes. It has been raining here for days. She must have stepped in mud and it somehow found its way onto the floor and furniture during the night.

My response to my wife: I don’t think so.

Action: My wife inspected her shoes. No mud. Tread pattern different.

At this point, I knew what they were. Thousands of years of hunter/gatherer evolution led me to the answer. But now, unlike my cavemen brothers who only had fire, I had a greater tool – the Internet.

So, while my wife tested theories 3 – 50 – asteroid dust – check for a hole in the roof – to Google Images I went. And sure enough I had a perfect match on my first try. Now I just had to tell my wife. Being the communications expert that I am, I let her know in the kindest, gentlest way possible.

“Rat poop.” [See how I softened “shit” to “poop.” Genius, I say.”]

“What?” she said.

“Rat poop. They’re rat poop. And those little wet spots: rat pee.”

“You’re kidding me?”

I wish I were kidding her, like I dreamed up the grossest prank I could to get in her good graces and mom jeans, which she doesn’t actually wear, but they sound funny. But I wasn’t joking. Sometime during the night, while our fierce black lab was sleeping on the floor of our small house, rats entered through the dog door and had a party.

[Please check out Craigslist, Los Angeles today and take home a free 1 year-old black lab with zero rat-hunting skills.]

The exterminator was there by noon, and he set traps inside our house, and promised to return next week with a Rat Death-House: rats go in, but they don’t come out. Two cat paws up for that.

Luna, recovering and wasted on sedatives and pain pills. Black spots courtesy of my daughter using the camera and getting the lens dirty.

Luna, recovering and wasted on sedatives and pain pills. Black spots courtesy of my daughter using the camera and getting the lens dirty.

My favorite exterminator quote: “They usually don’t enter houses with dogs.”

[Craigslist, Los Angeles posting: Free black lab to rat-free home.]

My wife and daughter hung out all day in the bedroom/office. And my daughter wore her boots at all times, lest some human-hunting rat with a taste for a 10-year-old took a run at her.

Then I had another brilliant idea last night, hunter that I am. I slept in the leather chair in the middle of the war zone, Ping 7-iron at my side and black lab on dog bed at my feet.

If you’re a husband, then I’m pretty sure you’ll appreciate this next statement: No one can put a pin in your ego and deflate it quite like a wife can. Especially when we try to do heroic things, like sleep in the middle of rat-infested battleground to protect females sleeping like little princesses in the bedroom next door.

Me: “So, I made it through the night. No rats. All clear.”

Wife: “But you left all the lights on.”

Me: “Yeah. So. What difference does that make? They come out with the lights on. When it’s silent, quiet. They have to go to the bathroom at some point.”

Wife: “They can go where they are. They’re rats.”

Me: “They’d come out to go.”

Wife: “How would you have noticed them?”

Me: “Cali barks, I wake up.”

Wife: “Oh, like you woke up when I came out to feed her this morning and she ran all over the place, whining and barking? I turned off the alarm too, which is pretty loud. But there you were sleeping like a baby, with one slipper hanging off your foot” [acts out what I looked like sleeping on the chair].

Me: “You came out to feed her this morning? Really?”

Hmm, yes, I am a heavy sleeper. And, yes, I didn’t notice any of these events, which made me think how lucky I was that I didn’t wake up thinking my dog was snuggling with me during the night only to discover she was back in the bedroom with my wife and daughter.

Ah, heroic plans dashed, crushed, smashed by the love of my life.

The woolly mammoth I brought back to the cave was undersized and couldn’t feed the clan. And I got a beating for it.

It’s not the thought that counts when you’re a hunter. It’s showing off a blood-covered Ping golf club and a dozen rat carcasses to your wife when she wakes up that matters. It’s scrambled prehistoric vulture eggs with chunks of fresh rat meat that matters. Yep, it’s feeding the clan.

However, later today, when I said to my wife, “I suck at rat-hunting,” she replied, “Were there any rat-poops this morning?”

“No.”

“Then you did your job.”

Ego restored. Just like that. Magic.

Yes, yes, I did my job. I could be a caveman after all.

My neighborhood – redux

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I tell people that if the real estate boom had just continued a year longer, my neighborhood would be fantastic. The houses would have fresh paint, lawns would be bright green and flush with rich fertilizer, not brown and decaying, and fences would be standing, not leaning and cracking. Butterflies would flutter from manicured yard to yard, and hummingbirds would drink from flowers, not puddles of radiator fluid.

Two of my nearest neighbors dream of running me over in their cars. Or another way to dispose of me where I suffer a slow, painful death while they watch, delivering a kick to my kidneys when needed. One of those neighbors parks his cars on his lawn. A classy sight. And I ask: What two houses have the police visited the most in my 15+ years of living here? Hmm, let me think.

What’s black and gray and cracked all over?

Can you blame me for wanting to build a wall around my house?

Police helicopters find my neighborhood enjoyable to visit. Maybe I need an opaque bubble, not a wall.

At over 1,800 square feet, our house is well below the national average of 2,480 sq ft in 2011. I want a bigger house so I can fill it up with junk and long for an even bigger house.

The city recently replaced the corner curbs with handicap-friendly tapered corners. I’m happy they did. Unfortunately, they forgot to fix the broken sidewalks, which are cracked and raised, making it a Disneyland-like adventure to charge down them in anything with wheels. Scootering requires one’s complete attention to avoid the 6-inch raised sections of concrete that come out of nowhere and cause your heart to skip a beat when you fly off of your scooter like a circus-cannon performer.

Empty shopping carts litter the streets. Neighbors play a game at night and move them in front of someone else’s house. Good one, you got me, Mr. Joker. This goes on until the day the basket-wrangler shows up and herds them back to the store.

My neighborhood reveals an ongoing recession, not recovery. Where there used to be large construction waste bins in front of every other house, there is only one now. It’s reminds me of the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It stands out, the giant, ribbed-metal container, a reminder of more prosperous times. I threw a stick high into the air, but it came back to earth and missed the dumpster. Bad shot.

People in my neighborhood don’t say hi when you walk past them on the street. (Or, they don’t say hi to me, which kind of makes sense, especially when I’m wearing my “I’m contagious, stay the f**k away” shirt.)

People half a mile beyond live in larger houses with green lawns and park their cars in driveways and garages not filled with items for 10 year’s worth of garage sales. Okay, it’s a not a scientific study. I’ve fixed it to support my case. I admit that. Maybe. I’m not sure. I can say this: the houses a half a mile away are in better shape. The ratio of brown lawns filled with dandelions and weeds to nice houses with maintained grass is 1 in 30 houses. In my neighborhood, it’s closer to 10 in 30.

This may not look like much, but hitting one while riding a Razor is like hitting a wall. And this is a mild one.

“Romney for President” signs grace many of the lawns cluttered with car parts and rusty lawn furniture. I don’t have the heart to tell them they will be in the 47% of us churned into Soylent Green when he becomes king. They pray for the second coming of Reagan, at least that’s what one of them told me today. Mitt Reagan or Ronald Romney? I like the latter name. Catchy, like Richie Rich.

On the upside, there is not one plastic pink flamingo to be found in my neighborhood. Garden gnomes, yes. But pink flamingos, no.

Life is good after all in my neighborhood, though I suspect if someone did place a pink flamingo on their yard it would get stolen.

(BTW, please visit my eBay page. I’m having a sale on Pink Flamingo lawn ornaments. Mention this blog post and get 5 for the price of 1. You’re welcome.)

Conundrum

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It starts with waking up to read my work email in the morning. I don’t look forward to it. There is something about it now that makes me wonder how valuable a lot of what I do really is. I don’t think it was always this way. And I don’t think it has to do with my having less enthusiasm for work email. It’s the email that’s changed. Economy, people worrying about their jobs, tracking everything, measuring and justifying one’s existence, busy work. I don’t know. I just know the quality and quantity of it is painful at times. A distraction from work that matters.

My life will be coming to an end in an unknown amount of minutes, hours, days, weeks, years. If I could find out exactly what day I will die, it would allow me to allocate my resources. 3 months, 6 months? Hmm, perhaps I’m done wasting my time with pointless work. Hello, Las Vegas. Hello, speeding tickets. 5 years to 10 years left? Well then, work is good. Keep on trucking. Benefits, a paycheck – all good. No reason to risk anything.

I’m lucky to have a wife and daughter, two dogs, a job, a house, a car, health insurance. Knock on wood. Life’s checklist is good. I’m lucky. Good too. But what do I do with the rest of my time? It feels like I should be doing more and that I know better than to waste time and worry about trivial stuff. It could all end tomorrow. But one has to survive. Artists and musicians glamorize this situation, as if I should be driving a VW van while lip-syncing to Katy Perry’s “Firework.” I suck at making the most of life. I must have slept through that class in school.

Ah, Ms. Perry, What was Russell thinking?
Photo by Eva Rinaldi – Creative Commons

My garage is full of crap. It’s a warehouse for items I may need once in the next 5 years. It feels like a ball and chain. Stuff weighs a lot. I don’t have the courage to throw it all away. Who knows when I’ll need that spare insulation or scrap of plywood.

I surf the Internet too much. It’s a distraction, has ruined my concentration, and keeps me from doing anything that takes effort, such as writing a blog post. It is escape. I’ve mastered it.

I dislike Yahoo! and its headline stories about nothing. Yahoo! – it’s your brain on cotton candy. “Levi Johnson Poses with Baby Daughter.” At what point is that story worthy of a major headline? Have you ever noticed how many stories are about celebrities’ new hair styles?

Yapoo!

I’m tired of Apple mania. I dig the new Samsung Galaxy commercial poking fun at waiting in line for an iPhone. It’s pitch perfect. I own Apple everything, but now I’m wondering if I joined a cult and they’ll be asking me to drink iKool-Aid soon.

I fear failure, but have nothing to lose, or everything. I’m not sure.

I have ideas. Always have. But I was born without the gene to make shit happen.

This is my conundrum.

Hospital Communication Tales

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There are certain things an attractive, charming, intelligent woman should never say to a dying man locked up and trapped in a room the size of a walk-in closet. At the top of the list is, “if there is anything I can do for you, anything at all, please let me know.”

Yes, one of the few RTs I have ever liked said this to me the other day. And I had to do a double take, my first thought complete confusion. Did I miss something? What does that mean? Was there some hidden meaning to it?

That’s the problem with saying something like that to a guy. Or to me. I’m not bright enough to understand an ambiguous statement. Does it mean you’ll get in your car and drive to McDonalds for me, buy me two McGriddles, and hand feed them to me while I recline in the hospital bed?

I’ve obsessed over the statement for two days now. And I’ve kicked myself for not simply asking, “What do you mean by that?” I’m sure it would have been innocent and harmless, as I look like . . . and smell like . . . five days of hospital grime and fevers. But I am a curious person with a vivid imagination set loose by ambiguities.

But that wasn’t the strangest thing said to me this week. It doesn’t come close. Here’s my favorite.

A nurse conducted her assessment – blood pressure, temp, pulse ox. And then she said this: “Turn around please and let me listen to those pretty little lungs.”

Yes.

I can’t make up something like that. Well, I guess I could, but I’m not sure I’d want to because it’s kind of creepy. And that’s what I said to her: “That may be the creepiest thing anyone has ever said to me in the hospital.”

But I said it with a smile on my face. I love odd statements, especially here in the pits of Hell. And when I joked about calling the HR department, she did a double-take. “I’m joking,” I said. “It’s all good, my lungs weren’t offended, but they aren’t feeling very pretty today.”

Awkward silence. Not sure she’ll be saying that to another patient now after I batted it around verbally for five minutes. Too bad. I ruined it for others. Or did I? Or are only my lungs pretty? I’d like to think so.

I’m not sure why I speak to doctors who work the weekend shift. There’s really no point. They’re here to collect the $300 or $400 for entering the room, and only want to make sure you’re still breathing and not lying on the floor in a pool of your body fluids with the word “anything?” written in your own blood on the board that reads “Pain Goal.” (Mine is in the photo.)

So, even if I cut off two of my own fingers and glued them to my head like a devil on Sunday, the weekend doctor would take one look and say, “you may want to mention that to your doctor on Monday.”

That’s it. It’s been a rough two days of not feeling well. And that damn statement? “Anything” with emphasis? What did that mean?

Yes, I have problems. I know.

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More kitchen appliance shopping – death of a salesman 2012

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I ordered all of our new kitchen appliances on the Internet.

And though I’m thrilled to be finished with this dentist-visit-like step in the kitchen remodeling process, I feel bad about it.

I passed on the three retailers I mentioned in the previous post. It’s hard to buy something from a store when you’re not approached by anyone. I do, however, give Sears some props because when I tweeted about it they were concerned and wanted to know more about the experience. And Lowes tweeted too.

But that’s not why I feel bad.

Here’s a sample kitchen we like. It’s a lot of fun trying to pick the right shade of green. Almost as fun as sticking your hand in a running garbage disposal.

Our contractor gave us a tip on a family owned appliance business here in the valley. I called the store and spoke to a very helpful and knowledgeable salesperson. Tom, we’ll call him for this post. He gave me a good price on the appliances I wanted and was responsive by phone and email. I did the math and they were around $400 more than what the appliances would cost me on the Internet, figuring in no tax, but higher shipping costs.

My wife and I discussed it and decided it was worth it to buy locally and have better peace of mind should one of the appliances break down.

After looking at tile and more granite (don’t ask), and quartz, we went to the appliance store and met Tom. Again, super nice. And I had my credit card out and ready to go. But the stove I picked out didn’t have the hood style we liked and back in my wallet went the AMEX card. We drove home to research generic range covers and new stoves, telling Tom we would be back the next day to purchase the appliances.

I spent more hours Saturday night looking at stoves and reading reviews, which by the way was a killer, going back again – how many stoves and stove reviews can one wade through? Food for thought: angry people always take the time to leave negative reviews. And they always tell people not to buy anything from the brand they’re upset with. I soldiered past these.

Sample number 2 with green and white.

Up early Sunday morning, I continued reading and researching, wading through comments to sort out key points, like if a stove had a fan noise problem, or the dials melted (some do), or if the LED displays petered out over time. My OCD comes in quite handy at these moments.

Finally, I upgraded the stove, which made my wife happy because it’s all silver, no black, has a griddle feature, which made my daughter thrilled for the future pancakes she’ll try to flip but miss, turning them into taco shells.

This is the most I’ve ever spent on an appliance. It better cook like a charm and come with a personal chef to make me my McGriddles each morning.

I looked up the price of everything on the Internet. The local store doesn’t match internet prices. And the difference was at least $900, with 2/3 of that tax. I thought about calling the local store and seeing if they would match them, but I didn’t, as they told me the day before they didn’t match online-only prices. So, I ordered them off the Internet. And I felt very bad, but was thankful the Internet wasn’t around when I was a salesperson, which leads me to a question that may seem anti-American.

How are brick and mortar retailers supposed to compete with no-tax internet retailers?

It doesn’t seem fair that I can order a Whirlpool refrigerator from ABT and save sales tax, but if I order it online from Sears I pay tax for my state. I understand the early argument about wanting the internet to succeed in its infancy. But it seems well established now. I also understand why sales people stand around in these stores. They’re tired of spending time with customers who are milking them for research, then purchasing the items off of the internet – ask Best Buy how this is working out for them.

We’ve now moved to the “picking out countertops and backsplashes” stage. It’s even more painful, but in a different way. There are a lot of moving pieces. And I now understand why people resort to white subway tile backsplashes – simple, easy choice, and less chance of a mistake.

I wish it were that simple for us, but we like making things in life more difficult than they have to be. And we’re really good at it.