unmoderate
- Today I learned that separating banana stems from the bunch prevents them from ripening too fast, because I guess the banana peer-group influence is strong and bananas tend to follow the crowd. In a bunch, one banana will start getting into makeup and terrible tween sitcoms and then suddenly the rest of the bananas get self-conscious about their stuffed animals and Lego. They start checking their skin for brown spots and noticing that their friends have more brown spots, and then they feel bad about themselves and sometimes lash out and start to bully the bananas who have even fewer brown spots. Oh bananas. If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you…well, I guess you would, if your stems are all joined at the top like that. Pro tip: separate your bananas.
- Probably the subset of rappers and the subset of cultured-dairy fans does not overlap a whole lot, but when I have my kefir in the mornings I sometimes freestyle about it:
Get out of here/with your flavored kefir/all that sugar ain’t good for ya insulin could appear/plain is where it’s at/don’t make me get my gat/gut bacteria we ain’t feared of ya (real G’s say: true dat)
- (That is kind of weak but I can’t remember the acidophilus/flaccid waffle bus part. At some point my freestyle protagonist persona went a bit off the rails with the random nouns.)
- I was walking near all the Northwestern Hospital construction and waiting at the light with me were all these burly construction workers. Really typical-looking construction workers right out of Richard Scarry (well, except for being human and not raccoons in overalls)—boots, jeans, t-shirts, muscles, hard hats, etc. They were talking loudly right behind me and from the dance-club names they dropped and the anecdotes they related I realized that they were a group of gay construction workers. Hooray! Someone’s sex dream just came to life! I mean duh, of course there are gay construction workers just like there are gay accountants and gay zookeepers and gay phlebotomists, but being gay in a profession literally represented by a porn trope must add an extra layer of fun.
- In addition to hockey, Nora just started track (specialties so far: standing long jump, 400, and 4×400 relay), and watching her at practice the other day I realized: she is a coach’s dream. If you yell, “Huddle up” or whatever, she RUNS to comply. Granted, she runs just about everywhere, but man, coaches love it when you run. I feel like I should get used to bleachers and duffle bags.
- I had a nice time in Montreal and a good conference with a bunch of other science publishing nerds. My hotel room was a bit worn and dinged-up but the bed was lovely, good-quality sheets and so many pillows that I could build a set of comforting ramparts around me every night. And the city is pleasant although there was a sick and wrong and prejudiced part of my brain that got slightly weary of people speaking French all the time. That thought had never once crossed my mind in France, China, India, or the Middle East—but something unsavory like, “Come on man, this is CANADA” kept sneaking into my mind.
- Unfortunately, Montreal was not a respite from all things medical. The radiologist who did my last CT scan had posted the report on the system, and I read it, and it mentioned a thing, a mass, a very small tumor of some kind. I messaged the gastro to say, “Uh…what?” He called me and explained that yeah, there is a thing there, but it’s nowhere near the sites of any of my obstructions, and to be frank he is downright annoyed because this growth is likely a side issue and has nothing to do with any of my problems. Modern medicine: the more you look, the more you see! Regardless of its relevance!
- However, if you do look and there happens to be a goddamn tumor right there in front of you, it would be irresponsible not to follow that to its conclusion. So basically we are on parallel diagnostic tracks here, doing more investigations for this whatever-it-is, while also continuing to try and find out why I end up in the hospital all the damn time.
- Monday and Tuesday I have the incredibly time-consuming two-part cancer scan. Would you like to hear about it? Sunday I get to not eat and take a bunch of laxatives, yaaaaay. Monday I go to the hospital, get an injection, go home and sit around radioactive for a few hours. Go back, get scanned. Take a bunch more laxatives and starve a little more (for crying out loud, I’ve lost 12 pounds since January and already none of my pants fit) that night. Go back to the hospital on Tuesday for a THREE-HOUR series of scans. Find out eventually if I have cancer or just plain old Mystery Guts.
- Surprisingly I am not freaking out about this as much as one might expect. I am worried, and annoyed, and very, very tired, but perhaps we can thank my teeny dose of Lexapro for the fact that I am not following the threads to Conclusions of Doom every minute of the day. I still pull an Ariadne in the dark of night sometimes, which is where Ativan comes in.
- One last thing about this nonsense: the radiology report describes my lumpy gut-thing as “stellate” (Latin for “star-shaped.”) I have a My Pretty Pony tumor! Are we sure I didn’t just swallow a sequin?
—mimi smartypants, intriguingly intestined.