Snoring and Hospitals

Last night in the hospital was not a good time for me, but I went because Brenda asked me to be with her. The only other place that I can think of as being more depressing is a nursing home. The look and the smell of both places just bothers me. I can sense the dying all around me when I am there. Frail decaying flesh attached to machines is everywhere I look. Suddenly everything on the television becomes the most gripping thing that I have ever seen, because I really don't want to look at the people there. Besides a person can only shuffle their feet and make small talk for so long.

When Brenda and I first got there, we went to the intensive care unit to look for her step father, because that is where we were told that he would be. Minutes later we are wandering around what I consider a death watch and I am starting to feel like the grim reaper's sidekick. I felt as though I should have slung a body bag over my shoulder to enhance my appearance. I can't remember the last time I was so uncomfortable.

If anything being in a hospital makes me far more aware of my mortality. It becomes blatantly obvious that life is very fragile and can end at any time. Or it can slowly ebb from a body that has suffered for years. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Dying is not poetic or romantic to me and I never had any desire to make a career of being around people who are dying. A medical career was not an option for me. Da Vinci made have found anatomy fascinating, but I like people better with their skin intact.

Okay, its time for a quick review. I have a low tolerance for hospitals and psychology, yet my mother is an occupational therapist and my brother is pursuing a career in psychology. I can understand the need for both of these fields, but I still see them as areas where people are stripped of their dignity. Oh, well, what can I say except that they see life a little differently than I do.

Near the hospital is a custard stand that is famous in Milwaukee, so we had to make a stop there since we were in the neighborhood. Its one of a group of stands that was the partial inspiration for the television show Happy Days. The funny thing is that I never made the connection between the show and where I lived when I was growing up. Obviously I didn't grow up in the fifties, but the show certainly didn't look like Milwaukee to me. Happy Days always looked like California to me or how I imagined California might be.

The morning started out on a somewhat sour note, because the first thing I heard from Brenda this morning was how poorly she had slept. Then she went on to say that it was the worst night of sleep that she has had in months. It seems that my snoring kept Brenda awake most of the night. I, however, slept fine. Now I could dwell on this for three paragraphs, but I will let it go. So she had a bad night and blamed me for it. All is forgiven, because its all a part of the sitcom like existence that we lead together. I believe that I have been snoring for the past four months and I doubt that I will stop snoring tomorrow.

Since I am such a rebel, I decided to take a slightly different route to work this morning. Both routes go north and are parallel to each other, its just that one road is further east than the other one. I took the three lane road that I used to take until my road rage incident last summer. Naturally they move faster on the three lane stretch of road than the two lane road further to the east. I am proud to say that I made it to work in plenty of time and without incident.

Last summer shortly after I acquired my new car, I had a brief encounter with two men that had a bad day and decided to take it out on me. I was in the right-hand lane when I saw a disabled car in the lane. Since I was unable to get out of my lane and over into the next one, I had to stop behind the disabled car and wait for the traffic to pass. While I was waiting, a car stopped behind me. Why they stopped behind me, I do not know. They must have seen that I was stopped and waiting to get over, but I guess not. When I made my move, they decided to go at the same time. Now there are only two lanes left and I am in the middle one with a car coming in the left-hand lane. The morons behind me nearly sent me into the disabled car and I let my middle digit fly in their direction, because I get a little upset when someone nearly kills me.

The finger did not go over well with them. They stopped their car directly in front of mine while the traffic flew by us in the other two lanes. When I attempted to move around them they changed lanes. So I waited as they laughed. I knew that I would probably be able to get around them with the next wave of traffic and I did. Then they decided to follow me.

The chase went on for a few miles and I would have lost them if I would have blown through an intersection, but I stopped because I needed to turn. So now they are immediately behind me as I make the turn. At the next intersection, they pull alongside and make the roll down the window motion with their hand. Then the driver begins telling me his version of what just happened a few miles back. I just shook my head and said that I had to get going when the light changed and they turned to go back to wherever they were going in the first place. My question is if he was in such a hurry than why did he have the time to play cat and mouse with me for twenty minutes.

I refused to drive that road until this morning and actually I went east toward the other road before I got to the place where I met the morons.

Work went surprisingly well this morning and I had plenty of things to do. I hope that everyone realizes that I don't spend everyday sulking in my cube counting down the hours. I do manage to bullshit with other people in the office on a fairly regular basis.

I want to take a moment and thank the people who wrote me yesterday about my hit count dropping. Its always nice to hear from people who read my stuff. Plus I even heard from some new people who I had never spoken with before and that made it even better. It also occurred to me that a fair amount of my audience is from colleges, so maybe people are busy with finals and have cut back on their web time. Whatever the reason might be for the fluctuation, I just want to say thanks again for reading.

I might be shifting to an update schedule of in the morning after the day of the entry instead of the early in the night of the entry schedule I have adopted in the past few months. In the beginning, it was more of a late night update schedule. This new schedule should work well for me, because Brenda is not a morning person and since she sets the alarm clock so early I have enough time to upload in the morning. I'll probably still have to keep reading other journals at night when I have more time.