Ugly Desire

Yesterday, my lack of sleep caught up to me and throughout the day I'd blank out into mini naps.One minute with keyboard in lap, the next with neck snapping back up and an involuntary "huh" sound forced out of the trach tube I know the sleep thing bothers me because I'm typically a regular customer. Finding that i like to work out early (way better on a college campus, too), I've been going to bed between 10 & 10:30pm and waking at 5am for years.

Last night, also egregious, I got 3 1/2 hours sleep.

I know it will get better when I don't have oozy staples all over me (at least one hundred of them), when I don't have a trach tube, and when I'm not running a humidifying mask on a compressor unit in the bedroom. Not to mention that lying on my back isn't favorite sleep position, but so much easier when one has a huge plastic splint on the right calf.

Desire used to be a straightforward business too, and almost always egregious. Rarely did I desire anything mundane or accessible, rather I desired situations and products that would be, even in situ, difficult to arrannge--like a tin of sturgeon roe on the shores of the Caspian, a bottle of tight-bubbled Veuve Cliquot to wash it down.

Post cancer, though, the desires that move me are of an entirely practical, visceral, sense. A slight reaching back in time to when I could have what I wanted to have, barring only cash and effort to achieve it.

Peanut butter is s Siren, Even prior to surgery, my tongue motility had decreased to the point that I couldn't eat P butter--what a god-awful thing! Chocolate--who am I kidding? even if I could let it melt in my mouth and swallow (which I can't right now), I would be disappointed to find myself doing so. Part of my enjoyment of chocolate is shoving as much of it as fast as I can down the pie hole, I was the kid whose Easter rabbit was pretty much gone by noon. My brother Matt used to try to keep his. Good luck with that, sucker!

Scott and Charles keep apologizing for eating in front of me--no need for that. I can't do it, even if I wanted to, so I see no reason for them to not do so. Luckily, neither of them are practiced gourmands, or inclined to place more into dinner than dinner should place into them. I'm not about to be jealous of potato leek soup--potato leek lahtkes, perhaps, but not a can of low sodium soup.

Charles did stop at Sahara Mart to get some Guatamalean coffee (so good), and bought himself a small bag of dark chocolate bridge mix. We should review here--bridge mix is a simple concoction of nuts (often a tropical/domestic mix) covered in chocolate, In my chart of food fabulousness, this rates about a 45 out of 10. It takes the protein filled, fantastically satisfyijng chew of a handful of nuts and introduces them to chocolate, which will cover them, until they look like the questionably healthy defecation of a small vibrant animal.

Yes, they took my tongue, but they didn't take my nose, and long before I could see this bridge mix, I could smell its eau de vie. When I spotted that incredibly cheap green plastic film that only Sahara Mart uses for its products, I opened it, placed it around my chopped up neck like a feedbag and took a few deep breaths. Heaven.

Desire is ugly when it makes you do things you wouldn't normally do--act or think in a way contrary to all common sense and dedication you've ever applied to your life. My doctor said--"nothing by mouth" and certainly that phrase was in my head as I took a chocolate covered raisin (also available as a stand alone) and popped it in my mouth.

Well, it took about 3 hot seconds for me to figure out that what I did was ugy and desperate, but I promised myself that I would write about the buzzkill in common sense that accompanies cancer diagnoses. That supple little raisin with its brown, sweet overcoat, had to be laboriously shipped back out to/from whence it came

That should be the end of the story--ha ha, stupid Mark can't remember that his mouth is MIA and jacked up ten ways to Sunday--and Charles wasn't thinking deeply when he brought this into the house.

Of course I was disappointed not to be able to slip and slide one tiny piece of chocolate fabulousity down the gullet when I started to get other ideas--why not blizzard the milkshakes I like to make? Of course! Into the blender with a bit of ice cream and milk, a handful of bridge mix and pound and grate and complain and thin later--I was ready: Bridge mix and vanilla...ready, set...

But wouldn't go. No matter how small or insignificant the pieces seemed, they still overwhelmed my feeding tube's filters which are tiny. Great protection for me from ugly desire--bad news for the me who needed to cheat the abstemiousness of tube cuisine.

You'd think that failing twice would be enough, but of course I'm way too smart to fall to such simple procedural problems--why not completely flatten the bridge mix with a hammer and plastic bag? Of course! So I pounded the bridge mix into what seemed a powder and mixed with some ice cream and...

Nope. For this to work, my pounding must render what's left as smooth from piece 1 to piece 2 to piece 230,000. Good as I am automation, the same cannot be claimed for my self-automation.

Scott is back from Switzerland. He brought some truffles. They smell incredible...

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So, off my posting ethos--sleep really has been that difficult to achieve. I've been veering between 1-3 hours, non consecutive. I've been falling into mini sleeps during the day, and then, when I reread what I've tried to post, the logical leaps are so vast that I can't just rewrite or correct. This piece I had to actually think in several places why certain images came up--and why I had to take them out.

Anyway, we're working on the technical issues here...nothing that a few decent sleeping shifts wouldn't cure amazingly well....

MAP







































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Optimal temperature pour salad: 42; presently 38, go for it;
Best Temperature, Mark: 97.4, just a bit more at 97.7, Blood sugar 116...see, there's a way, and now I was about to set and prove there was a way, too