mimi smartypants
Seriously, though: what's with the penguins?

every damn thing makes a beeping noise

NO, ICE CUBE, IT WAS NOT A GOOD DAY

The day after Christmas. Inevitable letdown that I am not going to have another day of wine and sugar and being silly with my family. I got up, took ibuprofen for the holiday hangover, drank a bunch of room-temperature water with lemon, fed Nora, and got ready for work. Tried not to feel resentful that LT’s office is closed for the week and he got to stay home and build robot kits with the kid, while I ventured out into the cold world of commerce.

Outside did well and truly suck, not least because of the sheet of ice on all the sidewalks that forced me to walk like a hip-replacement penguin. Road salt, my neighbors. Have you heard of it? On the (very slow) walk to the train I also saw a…chunk of inside-out squirrel.  It appeared to be the tail (still furry) and the back half (just meaty), so on top of my other woes there is a possible chupacabra in the area.

Work was more or less uneventful except for a few bitchy and passive-aggressive emails (happy holidays to you too!) and an author who thought that his March 14 publication date entitled him to lightning-fast editing. I was tempted include in my reply a count of every single manuscript I have with an earlier deadline (37), but decided I did not want to become like the aforementioned person. Fight the power! Remain a decent human being! Oh office environment. You make it hard sometimes.

Then I came home and started to have a stomachache. Hey does this sound familiar? Because it did to me! It ended up being exactly like this, except with less vomit because we went to the hospital earlier. I am starting to really enjoy Dilaudid. I am not enjoying noisy IV machines, answering the same questions over and over so that residents can look things up in their little pocket medical books, or not knowing exactly when I get to go home. I am not enjoying the vagueness of all my imaging results. (Well, there’s inflammation, but who knows why, and hmmm hmmm hmmm herda hadda.) I am not enjoying this hospital gown, although I did defiantly put yoga pants on underneath. I am enjoying LT’s foresight to add this here netbook to the bug-out bag. Look, I can type and receive fluids at the same time!

Lonely, sad, and uncomfortable, the inpatient’s trifecta. Visit your friends in the hospital, folks. And get me the hell out of here. If you read about a big noisy fuss caused at a Chicago hospital, it was likely me.

—mimi smartypants against medical advice.