diSCr.eat|diSCr.ipt|diSCr.eem

September 28th, 2005

Up early (7.5), up late (10.5), today.

40 laps in the pool at a higher in-tent-city (no offense to Katrina or Rita evak-you-eees), but that was following a relative throw-down of money at the Taco Bell (aye, it’d been so long!) followed up by the cookies’n'cream hand-dipped shake that thing miss annabella shake at Har-D-Har-Hardee’s. It’s nice when fast food chains can compliment each other like that, but t’would be nicer still some one-stop shopping.

This was after walking like two miles to see the doctor. Man, a lot of doctor and hospital visits for a guy without insurance or a job. When you’re 5′8″ and 191 (I found out today. Whewee! That’s record territory for me.) and not accustomed to bicycling, and then you do it for 10 hours out of the blue, leaning over and supporting your weight through your palms on the handlebars. Your hands get sore and numb. And when the ring finger on your left hand doesn’t stop being numb the third day later and, in fact, your motor functions are weak and inexact and a tad unstable in that hand, especially as they involve your normally opposable thumb, it gets scary. I said to myself, “Self, this will quite likely wear off and go-away gradually with no residual effect.” And my self said back, “You’re probably right, son, but it’d be a damn shame to be told five years down the road that if you had only coughted [yes, cofted!] up the price of admission at the local Doctor(’)s Care [not apositive how they’re playing that punny euphemism, whether with the apos or no], you wouldn’t be dealing with this chronicky chronic now.” Pop Self convinced me and I went.

The doctor’s eyes widened and he breathed out a rush of rumbled laughter as he said, “You’re a crazy guy!” I’d like to believe him but I don’t think it’s true. He diagnosed–and this I believe–a tendon inflamed to the point of pinching the ulnar nerve. He said we could get aggressive, take the X’es, and stick a needle in with ass-kicking anti-inflammatory if I wasn’t afraid of the needle. Sheet, doc, I may be crazy but I ain’t that crazy. No, I actually told him I warn’t afraid of no pussyneedle but I was of the bill, not having any insurance papers, etc. etc. So he sent me for anti-inflammation pills and one a’ them OTC braces you can buy at the CVS/Eckard/Walgreen’s/whatever-chain-is-in-your-region.

I opted against the brace right off because there’s nothing worse than an old used brace lying around the house, even if it’s your own, and especially if you life light on your feet–and in somebody else’s house–like I do. They’re like crutches. You don’t want to throw it away because what if you might need it again–and you will, knowing you. No use spending good money again buying them all over again. So you stick it/them out in the garage. And everytime you see it/them, it/them’s gross, having injury and illness all over it’s beigey gauzy sickness and pain sponge. And when you go to put it on again–because you are that clumsy–it’s all the more gross for all the dust, spider webs, and mice shit it’s collected. Plus, I don’t wear that shit. I’m lucky–and damn proud!–if I can finish a bottle of amoxycillan. Add that to the budget issue (I did just get back from The Low [and expensive] Country), and I didn’t think I was going to fill my anti-inflammatories. I’d tough it out.

But I wanted at least to see how much it would have cost me. And I told the lady at Care Pharmacy as much.

Sixteen bucks I was quoted. Last I paid for a prescription, it was over a hunnert and I had insurance. I figured I could do a sweet 16 for a quick return to comfortable typing. This right here is feeling like a ham sandwhich right after a couple fillings.

So I was jubilant about the cheap south (especially after just being in the expensive debutante’s South) and told my attendors so, adding how nice it was to have a good old fashioned soda fountain and ice cream in a drug store. How you don’t see those any more but when I was a kid, we’d go get an ice cream soda or a shake. [This was only half true. Ice cream soda? That went out with horehound mollasses candy. Awful. But milkshakes. Hell yes indeed! Though this was in a small town in Utah when I was visiting cousins. I felt old, but really, there was no soda fountain pharmacy in Phoenix where I grew up! There’s nothing old there. And if they want to make it look old they put a dead cow’s head up on the wall, but without the skin, which has a little different effect than the dead head’s–mostly deer–they put up in middle Pennsylvania, and quite different still than the dead head and pharmaceutical combinations you might find in Eugene, Oregon. But I di-…I won’t say it…I hate hippies, and that keeps me forever young. Ah ha!]

Anway, I told the kind man that I’d purposely beelined for Care, skipping the CVS and Eckerd on either side precisely because I’d seen the soda fountain when I’d walked by on an earlier occassion–even though I had no intentions of ordering from said soda fountain. But that was enough for him, he offered me a Care Pharmacy refridgerator magnet. Without thinking, I said that I didn’t have a refridgerator.

“You don’t have a refridgerator?” he said.

“I live a simple life.” I think that’s where it came from, because I think of myself living a very simple life these days with very few worldly (or non worldly) possessions, but I certainly do have a refridgerator. Or, at least, I rent one. But I didn’t want a magnet.

“How ’bout a T-shirt, then? You wear T-shirts,” he said, and looked down at my sweaty T-shirt.

I saw that they were marked $9.95. And he saw that I saw that. And I saw that he… “You can have it. Wear it around town.” I took it.

And I’m taking now 21 4-mg tablets of MethylPREDNISolone from Barr Laboratories, Inc., Pomona, NY 10970. Six the first day. Then 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 the sixth day. A clean, cute slant that makes me fee, with all the explicit directions (eg. “Take 1 tablet before breakfast, 1 tablet after lunch and after supper, and 2 tablets at bedtime.”) like a woman (voluptous) on birth control. And I like that feeling. The feeling of femininity. The feeling of controlling birth. Also, in a long list of “adverse reactions,” the reading patient finds this: Tendon rupture, particularly of the Achilles tendon. This is the drug that may finally be my undoing. My great fall.

Anyway, after the pool session (during which–I’ll admit–I was performing a little for the mothers seated at the side), I made two on-the-way-home observations. Ready?
1. How fucking ass lazy it is, these people that go walk their pommeranian on the baseball field in their SUV golf carts (okay, sometimes they use the T). Long leash in the left hand, right hand on the wheel. I heard a guy recently call it a “sedimentary” life. Now I believe it.
2. The ducks here resemble the residents (not unlike the way we all know dogs resemble their owners–on who are the owners here and who are the owned I will not comment): a little scruffy, redfaced, and with a definite slow waddle.

I can pass these judgements now because now I’m eating soy sprouts with roasted soy nuts, kidney beans, and sliced canned beets. No dressing, and this shit is good. Who needs a Taco Bell-Hardee’s combo? To Taco Hell with it.

Really funny how this venue, this space (affine as it is–sorry, stupid inside jokish), was supposed to be a forum for my accountability in my process of quitting crack (and coke), and it’s the food that’s giving me the most trouble. I was thinking today “sober is better.” And was going to post that. But the preoccupation has been with diet (not as in “going on” but as in what mine is). I’ve gone a week to 10 without not only crack, or cocaine, but alchohol and tobacco, too, keeping the caffiene to a very minimum to boot (just some unsweet tea last night, I think is all in all that time). So, hmm…

***

From an email to a friend:

Okay, okay, it was more like 85, but I thought that if
I rounded to 90 people might like me better.

Love that cruiser. Not so much the hybrid, bro. At the very least, pick up the Harper’s out now. There’s also a reprint on how to make a killing in poetry. One of the funniest things EVAR. And then the two shorties by Margaret Atwood. And a long review of Zadie’s latest
novel. Oh lord almighty, the greatest woman in the world would be Zadie Smith mixed with PJ Harvey. Turned on by intellectual and creative intimidation. Oh man…

I’ll become David Foster Wallace mixed with Thom Yorke and love PJ Zadie forever.

It just hit me.

Entry Filed under: Lifin