It Might Get Messy

10,000 years ago, when the Wisconsin glacial epoch was at its peak, what is now the southwestern U.S. was cooler (duh) and moister than it is now. Not like a swampy Siberian forest, mind you, more like a tall grass prairie—say, Iowa before corn and wheat. The big marshes and shallow lakes of what is now Los Angeles were attractive water sources for the flotsam and jetsam of ice age wildlife. But it turned out that the ponds were teed up on pits full of sticky petroleum goop—the La Brea Tar Pits. 


When a wooly mammoth stepped off the bank and got stuck in the goo, the more it struggled, the harder it got to escape. Since failure to escape was often accompanied by a back full of dire wolves and saber tooth cats (which contributed to the sinking of the entire biological ship), finessing your way out of the increasingly difficult trap, finding a way to spend less time glued to the cartoon-concept landscape, were important.


For me, hospital stays come with a large measure of time-in-the-tar pits analogy. It took me two separate sets of multi-night visits to get my gall bladder excised. After my chemo and radiation, my quick visit to stem the dehydration and anemia ran most of a week. And this week’s trip was scripted as an hour of surgery in the afternoon, overnight observation, out of here first thing in the morning. 


Now running into third night here, with more already added to the schedule, and about to start the odd procedure of being issued some sort of individually designed food mixture via intravenous drip. It is apparently customary to start such drips at bedtime. 


I’m guessing that’s not a good sign for the culinary quality of the stuff….