Colonoscopy, I am reminded of just how difficult it was to be in high school with an undiagnosed case of Crohns Ileitis. The trick was trying to get through all of my classes whilst also having to make upwards of eighteen or more trips to the toilet on any given day. Every day I can get chills thinking of that building pressure in my abdomen, just churning away. It made me wish for one of those relief valves they put on cows with an open flame, when they get too much methane trapped in their stomachs, and you can lie the cows down, and they go off like a gut powered Bunsen burner. Oh, the relief that would have provided me at the time. I could have killed for something like that. And I will tell you what, you may think, ‘Oh, you wouldn’t do that, in high school? No way! , you’d feel too ashamed or indignant!’ , and I’d say, after the twelfth pit stop in the men’s room, that I frankly don’t give a shit, and I want this bloating and belly crushing pain to go away, if only for a few hours at a time. I had some real doozy days in high school. I puked all over the inside of my principals Benz on a trip to my doctors office at one point. I know I’ve thrown up inside the office a few times. Had to race home in order to change clothes on many an occasion. IBS and the like are not glamorous maladies. Not to mention all of the fatigue and depression that follows closely behind. Oh, some of it was just awful. Any one with stomach or bowel issues understands the adage of “Never trust a fart”. All too well. But I’m a lucky one, I’ve been in remission for the better part of a decade or more. I had one flare up several years ago, but that was brought on by Mono/Epstein Barr, and I don’t really count it. It still lasted about three months, and required a nine week course of steroids, but eh, not my doing, so I don’t count it. If you want to hear some funny and embarrassing stories, get into a room full of people with moderate to severe Crohns or Colitis and listen to them tell very humbling stories of missed body cues and being mere steps away from the salvation of a toilet bowl, sink, drain, bush or a bucket. We’re a riot when we’re not laid out with a thousand yard stare, and intestinal cramps that feel as though they could crack vertebrae. Here I am, one of the lucky ones, so… yeah. Get yourselves looked at if something feels amiss.
Month: November 2021
“The frame on the stroller is bent…
How the hell did you manage to do that!” He shouts from the front door, his voice carrying down the length of the hall to the occupied bedrooms. His breath steaming in the icy morning chill air. “Sweet cheese babe, the two swing arms that are supposed to move up and down are bent entirely outwards. It’s a steel plate you’ve bent, how? Just how? Why would you – why on earth, just what were you even trying to do?” The stream of consciousness is rambling out of the man in an irritated staccato. Followed intermittently by loud sighs and and gasps of suppressed rage. “You had to unfold it to use it, didn’t you look to see how the mechanism worked when you set it up?” With a sudden whoosh the front doors shut, and loud stomps across the front porch can be heard. His voice fades into muffled exclamations of indignant confusion. It is Friday morning. The sun is shining, though mostly obscured by wispy clouds on a brisk early morning breeze. Life moves on.
It’s seven o’clock on a Monday evening,
In mid November, and the day was dreary, grey and cold. The leaves have long since fallen from the trees, and everything is a mucky mixture of crushed leaves and water logged grass clippings in mud. The wind has started to pick up and what was a bland flat lit day is now quickly deteriorating into a murky black dusk. Perfect timing for it to begin to down pour now that we have to pack up all our things, muster the kids into the car, and head home after the impromtu long weekend spent at the cottage preparing for the coming of winter. It has been a bitterly cold, and long weekend spent out of doors, tackling chores that were better suited to the warmer days of late September or even early October. But alas, priorities for all involved were not exactly aligned at that point in the year. So here we are, two tired and mopey children, a cascade of rain hammering down in sheets, and the prospect of a three hour drive home, and then school early in the morning. Our youngest has napped fr the first time in two years today. Not a good sign. But she doesn’t have a temperature and isn’t coughing or sneezing, so onward we press, towards home. Fifteen minutes into the drive, she begins to vomit all down her front, and into her car seat. She manages to do this in near silence. But my wife, whom is driving, notices her rolling forwards in the glare of the rear view mirror. “She’s throwing up!”. She says, nudging my arm. I turn to look into the back seat, and there is the eldest, hands on chin, deeply engrossed in her movie. “Not her, it’s Ashley!”. Twisting to look directly behind me, I can see the dark grime on Ashley’s chin and chest from where she has thrown up her chocolate milk and what looks like a first full of Cheetos. “Oh!” I say. I frantically dig around at the kids feet to find any old containers. Finding an old cookie tin I hold it up to Ashley’s face as she bucks and heaves into a coughing fit followed by a glob of vomit. “No…. no… I don’t want it daddy….!” She screams in between heaves. “It’s ok baby, this will keep you cleaner, I can tip it out once we stop off the highway.” Variations of this follow until we pull off the rural highway, and come to a stop under a street lamp outside of a road side restaurant. Opening the door to assess the level of destruction. It’s not too bad, a bit on her chest, face and hands, and a glob on her leg and a dribble or two on the chest harness of her car seat. In a wave of miasma the smell hits me full in the face. To my dismay I then realize, our Ashley has been out of diapers for more than a year, and we no longer travel with a diaper bag, or wet wipes. Thinking quickly my wife hops out of the drivers seat, while my eldest quivers at the sight and smell of her younger sister’s stomach contents. Rooting through her luggage to hand me an old worn t-shirt. I unstrap Ashley and proceed to wipe her down, face, chest, hands and legs. I pick her up for a look over and shuffle her off to the back of the car for a change of clothes. A few heart beats later we’re strapped back in, she is sound asleep, and we are back on the road. It is still raining heavily, and the night is both dark and cold. The youngest, Ashley, will not be attending school the next day.
A Slight Change of Plan.
Due to my missing a summer and early fall deadline for my hand built screen door build, I’m going to shift gears for a bit and move on to refinishing a table for my in-laws that has some water damage, fifteen layers of paint and needs some TLC. I’m going to break it down into the smallest allowable pieces and then sand the hell out of it, before I decide if I’m going to repaint it white, or stain it to make it look a little more classy. I had hoped to get further along on my screen door build, but my hand cut mortise and tenons are taking forever, and I can’t seem to cut a straight line for shit. On the up side, the reason I didn’t meet my warm weather deadline to hang the screen door, was because I used those eight weeks of school term without kids around to tackle every other home DIY project, so I’m not too upset about it. I may very well be worth it for me, to practice some of those mortises before committing to an exterior door. If I can remember to i will attempt to take some photos of the table to be finished, but I doubt I’ll remember. I was fortunate enough to get through one of this weeks two marketing reports over the weekend, freeing up some time to do more woodworking. I thought I’d have to wait to start until next week, but nope! I hauled ass, and did page by page proofing as I went. It also helps that I spent some time on the front end building up my pages so it could be a smooth process to build out my reports with actual, factual data sets. Time to clean up the yard, and put away the summer toys, as we’re in Canada and it could start to snow at any minute, and we’ll not come out of it until late April. Cheers! to you all!
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 