I have to admit it.

I hate to admit it.
But I have to admit it.

I love me some crazy.

Sure, I enjoy the occasional weird or strange or bizarre, but deep down, at the end of the day, I’m all about the crazy. When I was getting my psychology degree, I took every abnormal psych class they had. And I would pester the professors for real-life, worst case scenario stories; the crazier, the better.

That’s probably why I was totally over the Michael Jackson death news coverage. His mom, his ex-wife, Diana Ross, Neverland, the poor kids who didn’t think looked like him due to their glaring whiteness, but everyone else said had his nose or eyes or something. Yeah yeah yeah…

But what’s this?

Diprivan?

Some kind of mind-blowingly dangerous instantly unconscious sedative!?

Some kind of mind-blowingly dangerous instantly unconscious sedative that can only be administered by an anesthesiologist!?!?

TRAVELING with your own, personal anethesiologist on tour?!?!!??!!!??

Coma by night, jazz hands by day.

Wow.

That’s f-ing CRAZY.

And I kind of love it.

Thanks Wacko Jacko.

I should have known I could count on you.

No one on anything less than sixteen not-to-be-combined substances could dance like that.

Last year I had a surgery on my bladder, and there was a MAJOR build-up around the anesthesiology part.

I literally was counseled for around 10 minutes that I could wake up in extreme emotional distress and thinking I was a panther or Courtney Love and did I have anything weighing on me that I wanted to talk about now, before they put me under?

(I was so seriously stressed that by that idea. I thought I might confess to killing Kennedy or something.)

Anyway, I don’t know what they used, but here’s how the day went (so that we can all vicariously pretend to be Michael Jackson).

I had to quit eating at 10pm the night before.

• Kind of worked and mostly fretted all day.
• My procedure was scheduled for 3:15pm, and arrival at the hospital was at 2:30pm.
• Sat in chair.
• Time passed.
• Someone came to get me, and realized that no one had taken my blood.
• Blood-taking lady was kind of mean.
• I was so hungry I could cry.
• Aforementioned counseling about hte ravages of anesthesia and a general disussion about kayaking (unrelated).
• Anesthesiologist was named Dr. Wolf and he’d recently been to Africa and I liked him a hell of a lot better than my bitchy urologist.
• Sat in bed a nervous wreck waiting to wheeled into operating room and drooling over the smell of toast because it was now 4:15pm and I was insanely hungry.
• Woke up in serious pain…and hungry, but not hysterically crying or confessing all my deep, dark secrets.
• I don’t recall whether I felt rested or woozy or groggy or anything, because everything was eclipsed by the pain. (It was a procedure where apparently not everyone wakes up hurting, so they wait until you wake up to determine if you’re going to need pain medication.)

Ate toast, and learned my surgeon had long gone home without ever even seeing or talking to me. Nice.

So there you have it!

Anesthesia ROCKS!

(or maybe it doesn’t?)

This also leaves me wondering: Did he ever eat?

You have to starve before getting anesthesia so that if it makes you puke, you don’t choke to death on the ham sandwich you had for lunch. If he did this every night, when the hell did he eat!?

I guess that explains the Skeletor physique…

Meanwhile, the year before last I had to have a gum transplant (where they cut a chunk out of the roof of your mouth and attach it to your gums by your molars) and they gave me this pill beforehand and it was HEAVEN.

I was blissed out and doped up but without any ill-feeling side effects and my brain would notice something and then quickly move back to just spacing out. It was like achieving Zen without even trying.

I remember the procedure…but not really. I remember it as a very hazy series of moments.

I basically just sat there and thunk happy thoughts whilst they sliced and diced my mouth. And although that sounds awful and probably was awful, I honestly kind of remember it like a good day.

What am I trying to say?

If I ever get super rich and super crazy, I’m demanding some of that stuff. Stat.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but since getting here, I have slept an obscene amount.

Me at Parc Guell in Barcelona

The first night – and thirteen HOURS of sleep later – wasn’t so shocking, as I’d slept maybe nine hours in the two day prior. Obviously I was paying off a sleep debt.

But last night? And the 11 hours I slept then? Until 1:30pm? And five feet from the super noisy, mopeds screaming by at 120 kmh and at all hours? How is that possible?

Tomorrow it will not be possible, as we have to catch a 10am train to Valencia. And need to leave the apartment by 8:30 am. And have a dinner reservation for tonight at 11pm.

I think that’s the only thing that makes getting up so ridiculously late in the day seem less wasteful…knowing you’ll be eating dinner in the middle of the night. It’s sort of like the Spanish have skewed the entire day forwards four or five hours.

No wonder they need a two-hour siesta in the middle of the day.

If you were up eating dinner until well past midnight, you’d be tired too.

As for me? I like to combine my sleep and my siestas into one long, uninterrupted Sleeping Beauty-esque slumber.

He's a bold little fellow.

In other news, my cat Siddhartha is missing.

If your first reaction to that statement is “You have a cat?” then you are probably not alone. He doesn’t get much press coverage because he doesn’t tend to open pantries or ravage countertops or eat poison or do much of anything to give me a heart attack…apparently because he’s been waiting the nearly five years of his life to pull a real doozy (a.k.a. disappear for four days) and give me a possibly fatal heart attack just for show.

It started Tuesday night when he missed dinner. Sid loves to eat and has missed no more than a single meal in his entire life, so the sight of his still-full food dish Wednesday morning before I left was upsetting. Since word from home is that he still hasn’t appeared, and I can still see the food dish in my mind’s eye… it’s still upsetting.

See? Remember the egg thing I was talking about? Why can't they do this in America? Take the guesswork out of it?

It’s times like these I wish I was a pet psychic (or knew a pet psychic or cat dowser or a feline empath or any kind of far-out resource of that kind), as the worst part of a missing pet is wondering if they’re still alive. I’m vacillating between thinking positive (he wandered into someone’s garage or basement or shed and is stuck there, and they just haven’t figured it out yet) and extremely negative (a hawk grabbed him).

In the net, and as I’m both a believer in positive thinking and unsettled by the idea that anything painful would ever befall my furry kids, I’m choosing to visualize that Sid is currently wearing a velvet tuxedo, a large purple Mad Hatter top hat, and eating tea and krumpets and sharing a hookah with Alice and the Caterpillar, while the White Rabbit anxiously urges him to hurry up, as he’s now been sitting there for four days.

And knowing Sid, that’s not entirely impossible.

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.

Mel Brooks

Oh crap. They’re onto me.  

Illinois mystery: Placentas found in sewage system

A sewer system. (I found a picture of a placenta, but I couldn't bring myself to post it. Let's just say birth is gross and leave it at that.)

 

 

Someone is disposing of placentas in a central Illinois sewage system and authorities want it to stop. Workers in Urbana on Thursday found a placenta in a filter that keeps large objects out of the sewage treatment plant — the third such find this year. So police have enlisted medical experts.

 

 

 

Champaign County Coroner Duane Northrup said the placentas could be from home births, but he’s not ruling out hospitals. “We don’t believe they were specimens kept for research or testing,” Northrup said. “They appear to be fairly fresh, so to speak.”

State regulations allow parents to keep their baby’s placenta, said state Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman Maggie Carson. Some parents may want them for a post-birth ritual, she said.

“But it is never acceptable to put placenta into the sewer system,” Carson said. “Never.”

The thing is, throwing placentas into Illinois sewers IS my post-birth ritual. Not any child I’ve actually birthed myself, mind you. Just a celebration of birth in general.

As a side note, and for your edification, here is a partial list of other things it’s never acceptable to put into the sewer system. Ever.

• Used mufflers
• Baby alligators
• Migrant workers
• 6,000 pounds of yak fur (I found that one out the hard way!)
• Old mattresses
• Black holes
• Any members of the Blue Man group
• Plutonium
• Broken trampolines

Weird price. Who ends a price in .89 cents?

I don’t actually own a copy of ‘The Secret’, nor have I read it, but I think I get the concept behind it: Think positive thoughts and focus on your goals, visualize yourself reaching those goals in the future, and eventually they become part of your reality.

It really is that simple.

Just think it, believe it, and it will happen.

As an example, last night before I went to bed, I visualized that I would not die in my sleep and I would be here tomorrow.

And what do you know?
Now it’s tomorrow, and I’m still alive.

Then this morning, I visualized myself eating eggs, enjoying them, and not feeling hungry anymore.

And then that happened.

I know. Crazy.

I tell you, ‘The Secret’ is powerful stuff and not to be messed with.

In fact, I’m using it right now. You see, I just paused and visualized you coming to this website and reading this. And then, in my mind’s eye, I saw you pulling out your wallet, emailing me your credit card number, expiration date, and CVV security code, and telling me to buy whatever I want with it: This one’s on you.

And then I e-mail you back and say, “No, no. That’s much too generous. I couldn’t.”

And then you would e-mail me and write, “I insist.”

And then I would get that e-mail and think, “Well, if you insist. I don’t want to offend you or anything…”

And then I would buy some airline tickets to Fiji, two weeks in a luxury oceanside cabana, and a new bathing suit.

And then I’d buy you some flowers – and I wouldn’t cheap out like I usually do and get the ones that are delivered by UPS and then you have to assemble them yourself. No. This time I’d get the good ones.

Because you deserve the best.

I've never had this done. Looks painful.

No seriously, that thing is rock hard. It’s like it’s made out of diamonds. I think it could stop a bullet.

What’s that? It saved your life TWICE?

That’s what I’m talking about…

Hair Weave Stops Bullet, Police Say

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Police said a woman’s tightly-woven hair weave saved her life. Other than having a bit of a headache, a Kansas City woman is uninjured after a bullet fired at her ended up tangled in her hair weave.

I suspect an entire village may be living in that hair.

I hate it when I’ve worked myself into a nice lather of jealousy and rage, and I’ve successfully channeled that mood into trying to gun down an ex. And then, wouldn’t you know it, I’m thwarted by bullet-proof vests, body armor, and elaborate hairdos.

If it weren’t for the beehive, I would have taken Amy Winehouse out a long time ago…