The Journal of Prolix Footle

A quick preface: On Saturday, March twenty-third, Two Thousand and Three, Miss Lindsay became Mrs. Lindsay. A very nice, very brief ceremony. She was lovely, the Bald Man was handsome, everyone was impressed. A lovely reception took place after. Drinking, dancing, loads of fun. We left fairly early, as we must arise fairly early (tending the farm, you know). She has been off all week on her honeymoon. I hope she’s having a wondrous time.

This week has been moderately horrible. It started on Sunday, which was my birthday. As you may or may not know, I am not a big fan of birthdays, and I prefer to keep celebrations of my natal day to a minimum or to none at all. In fact, I took last Friday off from work in a (futile) attempt to avoid festivities staged by my co-workers… more on that in a minute. SO, on Sunday, my darling wife decided that we needed to the grocery store and then go out to dinner for my birthday, AFTER a half-hour lecture on the sorry state of our finances. I said that I really didn’t want to go to dinner if we didn’t have the money, to which she said, “It’s your BIRTHDAY, we should go out,” to which I said, “Let’s just go to the store and then come home and fix dinner. I didn’t really want to go out anyway.” You can no doubt sense the direction this was taking. Suffice it to say that it culminated in her storming out of the house to go to the store alone, and we ended up having hamburgers and Kraft Dinner for supper.

On Monday, I went to work. My Illustrious Leader call in sick, so I thought, “Great! No natal day celebrations! I dodged the bullet this year!” Unfortunately, sometime during the morning, a co-worker, nicely but mistakenly, mistook my diligent (if quiet) working for distress over not having festivities, and so, at lunch, went out and purchased a birthday cake, which I had to distribute to the personnel in the room. Yipee.

On Tuesday, my Illustrious Leader returned, bearing, YOU GUESSED IT! Birthday treats and a gift. Again the treats needed to be distributed. Nice gift though, $40 Gift Certificate to the local Borders. Also on Tuesday, my mother went into the hospital for surgery. Now, please understand, my mother is a hypochondriac. She’s not yet sixty, and she’s already bullied her doctor into two arthroscopic surgeries, two total knee replacements, and a partial colonectomy. Plus she’s been hospitalized several other times for mystery ailments. She uses illness to get attention. She goes on and on and on and on about her various aches, pains and surgeries. So, when they found a cyst on her pancreas, and she decided IMMEDIATELY to have surgery, we figured “here we go again”. Turns out it may be cancer. They took part of her pancreas, her spleen, her gall bladder and various connective tissues. The results should be back today.

Wednesday, my darling wife was ailing. She insisted on going to work, (such dedication!) but went directly home and went to bed.

Thursday, we went to visit Mom in the hospital. She was so whacked out on Morphine Monday and Tuesday that there was really no reason to visit. So we went on Thursday. Dad was there when we got there, but literally ran out the door and went home as soon as we arrived. So we visited for about an hour, until she gave herself another jolt of Morphine and started to zone. Even though the lab results aren’t back yet, she’s convinced that its cancer. Also, her back and neck hurts from sleeping all the time, her nose hurts from the oxygen, and she can’t stand the tube down into her stomach. “I didn’t think it would hurt as much as when they did down below” (her colonectomy). These were repeated continuously throughout our visit, with little or no variation. Now its not that I don’t have sympathy, but please, I got it the first time! As my darling wife says, my mother is hard to take. Oh, and she also informed me that, had it been HER mother, she would have been there for the surgery AND visited every day, leaving me to believe that I am a bad child. Eh, maybe I am.

It is still relatively early today. I wait with baited breath for further developments…BLEAH.