December 2007

Or… “How the Gallbladder Stole Christmas”

A 15-Step Program by Balou

1) Plan a trip to Disney World four months in advance.

2) Charge $300 in hotel and admission ticket costs to your Visa.

3) Request vacation time from work, check the burnaby condos for sale and buy one of them, or check Twiddy obx rentals and rent a house for a couple of days, or just request two camping days, go on the Survival Cooking site and get the best camping equipment – like that camping knife I’ve been dreaming about.

4) Drive 3.5 hours from Miami to Orlando.

5) Get to Disney World and immediately commence abdominal pain sequence.

6) After 12 hours in pain, force your sister to drive you to the E/R in Celebration, Florida.

7) Spend six hours in the E/R getting ultrasounds, x-rays, blood work and urinalysis.

8 ) Get diagnosed with Multiple Layering Gallstones, Gallstones in the Common Bile Duct, Massive Pancreatitis and Severe Anemia.

9) Leave the E/R “AMA” (Against Medical Advice), go back to hotel, pack and drive the 3.5 hours back to Miami.

10) Get admitted to local Miami hospital.

11) Receive nothing but intravenouse Potassium Chloride, antibiotics and hemoglobin for 9 days. (Day 5 allows for jello and a cup of chicken broth.)

12) Wait for antibitoics to kick in and bring down pancreatic swelling in order to have surgery. Go to this page to learn about addiction treatments in rehab centers to learn more.

13) Have two surgical procedures within 24 hours of each other, on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

14) Make sure first solid food consumed in 9 days is a runny, egglike substance that makes you gag.

15) Viola! Seven pounds gone and you now fit into your pretty New Year’s Eve party dress.

The Eye

One Missed Call

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

What happens when you admire someone so much that you would give them anything to make them happy, and the one thing they want is something you have, but you don’t think it’s the right thing for them? This is a conundrum, yeah? How do you fix it?

Life can be kind of funny, and I don’t necessarily mean in a LOL WHAT kind of way. I had a blog post half written/outlined in my head about something that had been consuming a lot of my brain power lately, and a series of events that, depending on how much you read into it, may or may not even have been events at all, let alone related to each other. But to me, they were important events and they were related for a reason. I was having a hard time figuring out if my view on the matter was legitimate/realistic, but I was unable to put myself in anyone else’s shoes to get their point of view. Then this morning I had a pretty important realization that helped make some other pieces fall into place, which was exactly what I was hoping for by making the blog post in the first place.
BUT… Instead you’re reading this post because, like I said, life can be kind of funny.
So there you are, skating along at a pretty good clip, full of pride, and feeling really good about pretty much everything. I mean, you’re mostly unstoppable now. Nobody can derail you. A juggernaut, really. But then YOU slip. Nobody pushes you. You don’t hit a patch of bad ice… You make the mistake yourself, and you fall. HARD! And you lose your breath. And your eyes almost well up. And the embarrassment rolls in, along with an unbelievable amount of disappointment in yourself. Because you know this place. You’ve been here before. The shame makes you wear your hat low over your eyes, because there is no way you can face anyone at that point. And that thing that had been taking up so much of your brain space is shattered and probably gone forever. And if it’s not gone forever, then it’s changed in a way that you never wanted. And there is no reset button to press. No undo keystroke to go back in history. And the worst part of all is that you KNEW what you were doing, and you knew that it maybe wasn’t such a smart thing to do, but you did it anyways. And you did it to such an UNDESERVING person. Because you’re a goon.
I think the worst thing about doing something to someone or disappointing someone is that you don’t do it to just them. You do it to them, and everyone that has their back. And in this case, the people that have this person’s back mean a lot to me too. And I was supposed to be one of those people that has this person’s back. I guess my actions show that I don’t. And that adds another layer of disappointment. And you’re searching and searching for a reset button that you know isn’t there. And all you can really do is say you’re sorry, but the fact of the matter is that if you were really sorry, you never would have done the thing in the first place, right?
This has happened before, and I’m sure it will happen again. It had been so long since this last happened… So long since I’ve felt this terrible, I think I really believed that I would never have to feel this way again. I guess I thought I had enough things figured out that I would be able to avoid ever having to feel like this. Clearly, I was wrong.
And I’m still sorry.
Really!

Widmer!, originally uploaded by brandonbeightol.

It is a little dark, but that is a 1/2 yard!

I can not wait to see this movie! Only 1 month to go.

stuckonthepalmetto.blogspot.com
=(