Typhoid Maurice

I started coughing Tuesday evening. I thought I had escaped my yearly lung crud from Hades. Really. "That's all." I dug up some cough syrup that saw me through the last bit of lung garbage (probably expired, I know, thx) and took some and retreated to my favorite bed on the planet (because it's actually a bed) and started watching a movie until I dropped off a bit. I coughed. I slept. I coughed. I slept. Ad nauseum (kinda literally).

I felt right awful by morning and decided I might be getting ill. I was summoned by the occupants of the Big Red House for a summit on monthly expenditures and crawled through the door a little before ten thirty and waved the sign of the cross over the electricity co-op bill and took note of some checks written before making my escape again. I worked on balancing the ledger for the day (yes, the day, these people are sneaky) and continued to cough my head off. The formal thought began to form in the back of my mind that perhaps I really was officially ill.

I attempted to stay in good form for the day. I completed my usual tasks and chores. I even patted myself on the back a little bit, but by two o'clock I felt as though I'd coughed up half of a lung and I was thinking of my Wednesday night commitments with loathing. Only a smidgen better than "fear and loathing." Defeated, I canceled my follow-up neurology appointment on Thursday in favor of Dr. Carly the Saver of Persons Dead From Local Flora and Fauna. It's quite a title, no? She's earned it.

When Thursday arrived I when to Dr. C's place. They crammed swabs everywhere. I was flu negative and (drum roll) strep positive. Strep? Strep! It was surprising given I was rolling around so much garbage in my chest and my throat didn't hurt. Even Dr. C got excited about that one. My throat was red, but she thought it could be from the cough, but once I was tested positive she was amazed. She started rattling off the statistics of strep infection in the county over the last two years and, apparently, the last two weeks has eclipsed that of the last two years combined. She set me up with an in-office breathing treatment since she, "really (didn't) like the way (I wasn't) moving air in my lungs," stabbed me with a jump start of steroids and medicated me for everything under the sun: antibiotics, oral steroids, and cough syrup that required a driver's license to take out of the pharmacy.

I was sitting there, though, after I tested positive, and trying to put my finger on this niggling factoid that I couldn't quite access. She asked if I had been directly exposed to anyone who is flu positive. The answer is/was no. But she didn't ask if I had been around anyone who was, OH! I texted (it's a word, now, so you'd best get used to it) Buddy in the waiting room and told him I had strep. Baba had strep just two weeks ago. I should have gotten sick earlier, but it made sense. Then I got this back:


So NOW he tells me his glands are swollen and he has a low grade infection. It's so not funny I can't even muster a single feeling about it at all. Not even the frustrated desire to knock him in the teeth or shove him over the spillway. We have a houseful of people that are immunosuppressed.

This was when I *eversogently* smacked myself in the forehead. You see, when I was a little, little little Dad had an infection in his hip that was almost debilitating. In the absence of all other evidence to the contrary, the diagnostician treated it as though it were strep and he got rid of it. Consequently, my mother and I stopped getting strep throat infections as well. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

About ten years after the hip strep incident, my brother and I started having what you can only call serial strep infections and my mother finally managed to impress upon our doctor that perhaps he should go the way of our previous diagnostician and treat Dad. Which he eventually did. I never got strep again. Until this week. At which point I pulled Dr. C aside and said, "You're not going to believe this, but there is a strep carrier with a low grade infection and seriously swollen lymph nodes in your waiting room." She made "that face," but rather than burn him at the stake, she did a swab test (positive, duh) and medicated him into oblivion whilst shouting to her nurses of tracking all the strep cases, this, maybe on a map, that.

I heard Dr. C scream at him when he tested positive. It was only half as loud as me screaming when I heard her scream. Fortunately, Buddy is mostly deaf.

I'm going to kill you, Typhoid Maurice!
Scat

Erm...

This is just to say. Again...

I am no mind reader. I definitely cannot read yours. Whoever you might be. It should also be readily apparent that I can't even read my own.

We, the Group Conscience of Scat's brain are attempting to convert the information stored here into some sort of permanent fashion as opposed to, say, the bloody chicken scratches on the walls of the third ventricle. That must have happened the last time we tried to shunt Imelda into the spinal chord. Oops.

We apologize for any delays you may encounter. Please enjoy our rendition of Sweet Home Alabama for fife and bagpipe while you wait.

Scat

I Was Thinking

I know. That's usually the point at which *something* happens and then *sometime* later I find myself *somewhere* and I'm not entirely sure how I got there. I literally kinda wake up and have no idea how I got there only I'm never really asleep and, well, that's all...the rest is real...

Where was I? Ok, so I was in my new tub. Just being in the tub is an epiphany in and of itself. You should try it. Try it without the water and with your clothes on because I'm pretty sure most of you don't want to know me any better than that. Also, the "casters" Buddy made for the feet are having Physics problems. It's really great mathematics and stuff to explain the use of them by saying that they distribute weight/force (semaaaaantiiics) across the entire area of the the caster, but when the caster is a porcelain tile (actually two of them in a layer like the pyramids only not as awesome) that's been injected with the dye(s) that makes it look like slate then the biophysicist in you should say something like, "How certain are we that this material is consistent throughout?" Also, given that the upper and lower surfaces of said casters are not precisely smooth (since they are playing like they are slate), "How flat are the surfaces of the casters?"

The answer to both would be, "Not very." And that could be "bad." I was reclining in said tub ('member?). Each foot (oh noes, I think the tub's name is going to be Peg Leg if we don't work hard at something else) is squarely propped on it's tile casters except for this one that isn't there. I know, I left that out. It's there, but it isn't a claw foot like the others. It was missing. We looked for a single foot on eBay and Craigslist, etc. They were both hideously priced and difficult to classify as to type of attachment. So Dad and I gave all our options a thorough examination, declared ourselves stupid (because you can't fix that), and went with option two. Option two was to lop off a hunk of caruan which we've been toting around since the mid-90's and stand the posts of the fourth foot on that. In the back. So you don't notice (but you know it's there).

At this point, I am still reclining. You know that sound you hear when ice is about to break and you're standing on it? "Tick." "Criiiick." It's a really crisp sound. And, apparently, porcelain makes a very similar noise. And this is the point at which I lost my mind.

I blame stress. It is conveniently located. I could also blame my friend Drea. She is conveniently located as well but we have a not-so-secret telepathy project we're working on. I think it worked. I really thought for a second that the tub was going to tip on that corner like it did the whole time it was being refinished. I had a shockingly, amazingly white but at the same time gorgeous vision of myself rolling...we'll call it west, ok?...and ending up like my favorite egg dish in a giant pool of water. And a momentary flash of Drea saying, "Well. (*sniff*) That was lovely." Then, she'd make that face.

So I started to laugh really, really hard and I bumped the tub and immediately woke up from my momentary insanity or telepathy (which sounds way better) and started to think about how I might get out of there because even though I'd be the one naked and wet and cleaning everything up in the middle of the night. You-know-who would still be cursing the placement of that (stupid therefore unfixable) pegged foot.

I decided I should check it before I got out. When I was scrambling around under the tub placing the casters and the peg the day before, I was told to push it more toward the far wall, but if you're actually seated in the tub, the two points where the tub sit on the peg, are exactly on the very edge of the block/peg now rather than the center (which was the goal of pushing it toward the wall). So, I sit here totally confused. They make rulers for this. And even though I could have looked at the casters to determine their state...I am pleading female-ish-ness so as not to be totally at whatever when we see what is up under there.

Pegleg. No. Tripod. No. Gimpy? Tippy? Ohhh cripes no.

For reasons I hesitate to describe, I'm leaning toward "The Cauldron." Just based on the noise. :)
Scat

Which Would You Rather?

It's a goofy game played my gamers in forums Internet-wide. Which would you rather? 1,000 bees or 1,000 ants? I'd say ants because I could brush them off and squash them more easily. A knife or a fork? Pants or a shirt? Hair or fingernails? Any two oddly juxtaposed things you can imagine and usually they're way more interesting than I can come up with.

So, which would you rather? Lose a finger and know now or find out after two additional months whether or not your child has a brain tumor. Well, two of them. It isn't that cut and dried, but so far, my nerves are voting unanimously for the "lose a finger" option. I would take that terrible drive back down to Texas Children's Hospital, wait in the waiting room, donate the finger under a local, wait on Squib's doctor, and take my bloody stump with me tumor or no tumor.  Add the 1,000 ants and bees, a knife, pants, and my hair.

I really don't care what it is because I've been on this ride enough times before to tell you that the very next thing I want to do is get off of it before it starts going any faster. We're already going fast enough that I'm not able to hang on to all the things I normally carry. Anyone who knows me knows exactly what I do when that happens. Haven't used that this week? Can make do without it next week. *pi-chong!* Don't even recognize that. *doooing!* That is still making that noise. *eerrrrr!* This is edible. *put in backpack* This is trash. *sweep sweep* This could be trash. *sweep sweep* This would be better if we lost it. *sweep sweep* I don't even know what this is. *sweep sweep*

Laundry? Yes, have some. Are you ok? No. Are you fine? As in F.I.N.E? Then 0.75 of a yes. If you mean fine = ok, then no. Dinner? That's why we have a freezer and a microwave. "Want to eat out? I'm sure there's a Happy Meal toy collection that's still lacking pieces. Maybe. "I'm sorry, were you asleep?" I'm not sure why, but a lot of people ask me that. Not just Baba. Sleep. Hahahahahaa.

I just need to know, you know?
Scat