The journey of a thousand miles

Dr's visit yesterday was stupid.
I was an hour early, after having dropped off the boys at daycare.
I signed in, filled out some paper work.  About 20 minutes before my appointment they call me back to draw blood for my labs. Phlebotomist gushed about how great a vein she'd found to draw from... then missed. Eventually she has her vials full and I am back in the waiting room, waiting. 20 minutes after my appointment they call me back... but it's a doctors office, so there is nothing unexpected about that. They take my weight. 397lbs, dressed. That's 12 lbs heavier than was when I checked myself last week in my skimmies... but I don't think sweats and a tee weigh all that much, so I'm going to say this "last hurrah" eating may have been a little out of hand. They take my blood pressure and the nurse tells me the doc will be in to see me in a bit. After about 20 minutes of cell phone games pass, the nurse comes back in and says she needs this room to preform EKGs, since it has a table, and they are moving me to a room that doesn't have one. It's more than 30 minutes after that when Doctor Hoehn comes in to see me. "So, looks like we have you booked for the 10th. You start your liquid diet yet? Sounds great. You got any questions for me? Well then, lets knock this thing out of the park! See you in 2 weeks."
Couldn't I have handled that by phone.  I realize you had to draw labs today, but I really could have left after that.  Oh well.

For the next two weeks the most solid thing I'll be eating is Jell-O.  I have vanilla flavored Whey Isolate protein powder, that I can tell I'll be sick of by the end of this, to replace meals. And I am to consume no less than 64oz of "clear fluids" each day... and sugar-free Jell-O counts as a "clear fluid" but somehow vodka and light rum do not. Also on the OK list are broths, sugar-free sports drinks, crystal light and it's ilk, Iced tea, and of course, water.

Day one of that unpleasantness is nearly behind me  now. It was a day at home, feeding the kids without eating. Tomorrow I brave working in a grocery store with a food court, and going out to a restaurant without eating for the first time.

I'm told they will surgically remove my appetite at the end of this two weeks. If successful, a hungerectomy would exercise the greatest personal demon I face.  Not the only one, but the most critical.  I'm told that if I stick to the plan, that I could conceivably be a 200lb man someday. I'm not certain I can wrap my head around what that would be like. How that would feel.

Consumption has been tied to my identity so long, some of my friends are worried they won't know how to relate to me once I can no longer finish a pint of beer in less than a second... Sometimes their fondest memories of me where when I finished 10 of McDonald's double cheeseburgers though "Dave the Cave" thew in the towel after just 8 (one of mine was actually a triple... probably a mistake, surely the cook wasn't taking sides or placing bets); when I ate a third Chipotle burrito because the manager said It'd be on the house if I could. 2 1/2 large pizzas. 75 hotwings. 12 "blazin" wings in 42 seconds. Piles of this, gobs of that... times I had turned eating and drinking into an event.

In our highschool video it was nerds vs. jocks. I had some of the trappings of both sides, but really fit in better with the geeks, dweebs and dorks. So that's the side I was cast on, and in the training montage before the big showdown, my staring role was "no... no more... I can't... no..." and another nerd coaxing me on and handing me a snickers, which I shove in my face, gnash 3 or for times, then swallow mostly whole, as it pans out an you see piles of wrappers littering the area. That's what people think of when they think of me.

I was the slow fat kid on the swim team - the one leaving people gasping "why do Speedos even come in that size?" I got prank calls at home about that. In grade school, a nemesis of mine had taunted and teased me enough on one afternoon bus ride that I blew. I pinned him against the wall of the bus and punched him in the chest ribs and torso three, four, five times. "hit me again with those fat dough-y fists!" he chided. Instead of obliging I grabbed his head and rapped it against the window, spider-webbing the glass. Just then the bus driver pulled me off of him. Mom had to take me to school for 2 weeks. She was pissed.

My best friend in grade school was quite athletic. Along with being one of the fastest and strongest kids in our grade he could jump the highest and the farthest.  In an era of Michael Jordan worship, my buddy took the moniker "Air Rich." His heavy side kick? "Ground Mike."  In our weekly music class there was a hugely popular song (at our school) that all the kids would sing along to about some oddball superheros and the chorus went "Faster than a speeding hippo, stronger than an aging flea, taller than a Chinese bag-worm and thinner than... the Washington monument." after which my class took to calling out "Mike?" and turning to where I sat. I could go on indefinably.

No kid escapes his schooling without emotional baggage. Much of mine is centered around my stomach.  I am looking forward to life after food.

A long night.

My two year old refuses to sleep. We let him stay up a half hour past bedtime. We put him to bed and tuck him in. Ten minutes later he's laying at the edge of the hallway staring at us in the living room. Send him back to bed... and again... and again.  An hour and a half after our initial attempt at bedtime he lets me know he's pooped his diaper and needs a new one. An hour after that I find he's snuck into another room to play on the tablet Beeba and Papa got him for Christmas.  (The fact that my two year old got a tablet before I did could be the topic of a separate blog post sometime.) Back to bed and lock the tablet away. 11:30 at night he's up again, telling me his room is scary.

Behold the dreaded FireMonkey

!

"Your bedroom is scary?"
"Uh-huh"
"Why is your bedroom scary?"
"Fire-Monkey is scary, dada."
It took me a moment to remember that "Fire-Monkey" is his name for the humidifier in his room. Okay, perhaps a monkey with steam billowing from the top of his skull watching over you as you slumber might be unsettling, maybe. I go and show him how to turn the humidifier on and off, ask him if he wants it off tonight, and we leave him vaporless, pile blankies on the boy... again, wish him good night... again, and go back to hacking away at the interwebs for about another hour. I'm wrapping up and have heard not a yip from my son since we extinguished his monkey, I briefly considered that mayhap our issues had been resolved and he had drifted off to slumberland following my last intervention. Alas, as I headed to the restroom for my bedtime preparations, I realized things were amiss. The boy's bedroom door was ajar. I peeked in to find him absent from his "big-boy-bed." He wasn't playing in the bathroom, hadn't padfooted past me into the livingroom or guest room. There has been times where he as attempted to sneak into my wife's and my bedroom to sleep on the floor next to our bed, so I check there next... and the little cuss didn't settle for the floor...

No. He hauled his little ass up into our bed and nestled down into my spot! If I wake him, we might just go all night without any sleep! Well, at least he's unlikely to crap the bed since he just let loose a couple hours ago. I go pass out in the arm-chair in the corner. Toddlers are Assholes, but adorable assholes.

As cute as my kids are, and as biased as I am, the Cutest Toddler of the Day award would have to have been given to the 3 year old who's conversation with his father I overheard in a public restroom today.
"Gee Willikers!"
"Really? 'Gee Willikers'?"
"It means 'Wahoo!'"
"Wahoo?"
"Uh-huh, 'Gee Willikers' means 'Wahoo' in Spanish."
Aaaand I try to stifle a chuckle.

That was while I was on a 15 minute break at work... you want to know what no one needs to hear the moment they return to their department after a brief break like mine? "Oh thank Jesus you're back!" Yeah, I was nearly ready to about-face as soon as that left the mouth of my co-worker. Turns out he was just less than half competent and I could clean up his mess in about 60 seconds. It's not his fault he was incompetent, he hasn't been trained to work in my department, but they botched the break schedule and they needed a warm body to stand in for me, and Jordan got the short straw.

Storytelling

I feel like sometime near the end of high school or maybe early in my first attempt at college, I allowed my creative storytelling muscles atrophy.  I feel confident that when properly motivated I can craft a descriptive enough sentence, or properly employ simile and metaphor, bring to bear a diverse vocabulary... but I rarely create from nothing a scene of the fantastic.  I was once a worldbuilder. In 3rd grade I purchased the rights to a concept around which I constructed a nearly rules-free role-playing game that literally entertained me and dozens of my acquaintances for about a decade.  In my mind was the universe in which they trounced about on hundreds of ad libed adventues. The price I paid for this potent seed of inspiration was a green Hotwheels car.

This one on Ebay may actually be THE car I traded him.

Gone are the days of anthropomorphic animals with comic-book super-powers, evil geniuses, pocket universes, Diamond-wing Starfighters, Spell tomes in esoteric languages, and marathons of mental chess with my friends and frienamies.

I feel like I need to be a worldbuilder again.  I need to make up flavorful characters experiencing wild scenarios in funky places.  I need some of my youthful mental energy back.

The world does not need the drivel I will spew, any more than it needs the images I capture and create, but I have a need to freeze and manipulate light, and I have a need to craft word...  I make for me.