Thursday, January 07, 2010

Day of the Graft

It’s the end of an era.  I tend to be a bit late for some things, especially here, and as my increasingly-lengthy hiatuses (or “hiati") may suggest, I’ve been busy.  That is to say, I’ve been busy, dammit.  As far as I’m concerned, the new year starts tomorrow.  I’ve been busting my butt and getting huge amounts of everything done, working from my too-early mornings to my get-the-hell-to-bed nights.  It’s been a long hard slog since New Year’s, but I’ve persevered - and tomorrow I get to reap the benefit of my personal inner strength: I am going in for foot surgery.

Food surgery?

No, that would be interesting.  Me, I’m having foot surgery.  A cyst.  In my toe.  Not so interesting.  But it will be serious, I’ll be put out under general anesthesia, and afterwards flat on my chaps for several days, relieving myself into a garden hose hung out the back window and chewing anti-inflammatories just for the flavor.  It’s not the mere cutting, people - it’s the drilling.  They drill into the ankle to get bone to graft into the toe.  Graft.  Drill.  Two surgical sites.  The doctor’s initials are already written on my foot so he knows which one to cut and drill and graft when I’m unconscious.  I can’t eat again till I wake up tomorrow evening, and by then I’ll be on crutches for two months.  Right now everything seems basically normal - I’m fine except my foot hurts a little when I use it, or a lot if I bend the big toe back.  Tomorrow, it’ll feel very different.  Vacant.  Irrigated.  Clean.  Tomorrow, life begins anew - a cystless life, in a newly-grafted universe.  Plus, I get some fun new scars.  Does that not verily enhance my coolness? 

To prepare for this great event I’ve been cleaning, cooking, working longer hours, clearing out old things that were just dusty and in the way… it’s been gratifying, but it’s been loads of work.  Each day I’ve wanted to take a few minutes and close out 2009 by dumping a bunch of little bits of the literary tourettes I’ve inscribed into my memopad, as I do from time to time when my fascination with my own inherent wittiness grows too intense to bear.  Well this time it’s not because I’m so gol’durn wittish, that I want to offload these shimmering fruits of my ferbrile mind.  It’s because, as of this time tomorrow, they’ll be from my past.  They’re cystic words, from a time of cyst.  I can’t take them with me.  I need to start afresh.

We’ll switch back and forth between notes I wrote and cell-phone photos I took.  They all must be purged.  The future is too big for me to paint it with the colors of the past, whether with words or pixels.  Like Lucky Charms, it is magically delicious.  But unlike Lucky Charms, this time it comes with bone grafts and drilling.  Let’s dig in.

It is unfair to leave Miette bags lying around, without their having Miette products inside of them.  One should be required to place disclaimers on empty bags.  Or, preferably, french macaroons inside them. 

This fellow was found at Ft Funston, in the Spencer Battery.  He was scratched into the moss.  But then again, aren’t we all? 

Zach is too small to be Doc Octopus.  He is well-suited, however, to being Doc Cuttlefish.

Also at Spencer Battery, rebar and concrete.  It doesn’t have to suck. 

Promotional copy painted on the window of a local dentist: “Opalescence Boost - The Power of a Professional White.” And here I’ve been being white for free all this time like a yutz. 

Last one from Ft Funston: near mr mossyface above, this little ode was carved into the living carpet of the walls:

Who wakes up from anxious dreams to discover he’s been turned into a hard-sided suitcase?
Gregor Samsonite!

Here’s a little more verse for those who like their literature inscribed on the walls of public places.  I found this beauty while getting a burrito with a friend after work.  I rather like the imagery, once I get past the fact that the medium itself is a bathroom wall. 

Jobberwocky Tech Support - for when you need the Mome Rath’s upgrade.

These guys hang out in children’s playgrounds!  Won’t somebody think of the aliens? 

The other bald guy in a black jacket at the bus stop, giving me that “Step the hell away from me, you O.B.G.I.B.J.A.B.S.” look. 

Here is my eldest at the spidernet playstructure outside the bug museum at the SF Zoo, flush with the thrill of leaving a room filled with bugs the size of my massive podiatric cyst. 

Spaulding Voit: sporting goods scion

I took this shot shortly before christmas.  It’s full of holiday cheer.  You can’t have any, though.  So get lost.

Only humans feel shame.  And even then, only the shameful ones.

Jesse, actually, took this shot of Zach.  Yes, Jesse will be two in two weeks.  Yes, I’d blown four shots trying for one this nice.  It’s at the Academy of Sciences aquarium.  It otherwise speaks for itself. 

Finally, my holiday litany: Here’s a roundup of what went down during the xmas-nye nexus this year.  It felt like a lot. 

Made: Egg nog (heart-cloggingly luxurious), egg nog pancakes (highly recommended), egg nog cake (also not bad at all).  Gingerbread house; gingerbread men; gingerbread blobs.  Borscht, with cubed beet, shredded beets, shredded parsnip, shredded carrot, cubed celery root, chopped skinned tomato, beet greens, beef stock, caramelized onion, and chopped leek.  Just to counteract the other stuff. 
Museums visited: Academy of Sciences, Hiller Aviation Museum (actually pretty cool and fun), Ft Point (always extremely cool and fun)
Cleaned: large portions of house, thoroughly, including four hours on hands and knees scrubbing kitchen floor
Kindergarten Applications Submitted: one, but it was a biggie. 
Resolved: Problem with iTunes occasionally deciding to playing from a library that’s about two years old.
Watched: LOTR1, LOTR2, Volcano High.  One of these was a very goofy, basically unintelligible jumble of idioms from other more successful movies; the other two had hobbits. 
Waiting for me during recovery: Team of Rivals, a fat book by William Whyte about factors determining the success of different public spaces, Bubba Ho Tep, LOTR 3, The 300.  Plus a whooooole bottle of generic vicodin.  I’ma work on my short-story-with-gigantism, a few other writing projects I’ve been putting off, and I may even grow some fresh bone in the new hole they’ll be drilling into my ankle tomorrow.  Who can say.  I only know this for sure: the day of the cyst is behind us.  Long be the day of the graft.