It Might Get Messy

Autumn. Time for many creatures to prepare to meet their maker. Personally, I try to always be prepared to meet my maker. It’s easy because I’m usually pretty ticked off at him, her, or it and anxious to meet so we can sort a few things out. Like how and why an all-powerful being can stand aside while 10s of thousands of children around the world pass their nights alone, abused, cold, hungry or sick. I mean what the hell kind of deity has it in its power to prevent shit like that from happening and does not do so? What does that say about the morality and/or intellect of said deity? I know what it says to me. It leaves me pretty pissed off is what it says to me. 

But that’s not why we’re here. At least not mostly. We’re here because this is now the…uh…second autumn since I was diagnosed and treated for cancer. An autumn I might easily not have survived to see. So I’m damned happy to be in attendance! Sure, we don’t have the sugar and Norway maples that give those gaudy reds to New England towns and hillsides, but the mid-Atlantic has its own, slightly more subdued, color palette. Oaks and hickories, sweetgum and tulip poplar, all give things a nice yellow-to-orange air for the season. 

And I continue to slip toward “normalcy”. Voice still impaired, check. Swallowing still clumsy, check. Fitness still sucky, check. But. My voice is actually getting noticeably better. Last week I had several lengthy conversations with people I’d never met and who were at distant ends of teleconferences and who managed to understand me all the way through. Spent a couple days in the field in the deep, deep south with people who all understood me for the entire time. Ate real food, sort of, on the road.

Actually, the food was a little humorous. Stayed at a Marriott property in an old high rise building on the fringe of Baton Rouge. Had fabulous lacquered wood escalators, BTW. Didn’t really fit in with any of the other décor, but that dark wood with the thick lacquer shine was absolutely gorgeous. Anyway, I was tired. Ordered a room-service burger on the first night. It was delicious. Handmade, high-quality beef, plenty of good blue cheese, perfectly cooked. I managed to choke down a quarter of it before giving it up and calling for the room service guy to come retrieve the tray. 3 minutes later the food manager was on the phone, horrified that I’d eaten so little of the burger. He was terrified that there was something wrong with it. In fact it was one of the best hotel burgers I’ve ever had. I ordered another one the next night. Managed nearly a third of that one. 

Gotten into a decent nutritional rhythm the past few weeks. I stick a frozen breakfast sausage biscuit in my brief case on the way out, eat it around lunch time with a weak and diluted mug of cold decaf instant coffee. Works pretty well. With that solid food going down every day, I feel ok about weakening and doing liquids for breakfast and sometimes supper. Seems to work pretty well. 

Almost makes me feel like a normal human being. I know I’m not. My Arabic CD instruction is being impaired by my destroyed epiglottis. Means my glottal stop—a key phonemic function in Arabic—is sloppy, doesn’t stop quite suddenly enough. Makes me sound, I’m sure, intoxicated. Which is also against the rules of Islam. 

Which takes us full circle to that “meet your maker” deal. In addition to the letting-children-go-to-bed-abused thing, I’m gonna have to discuss the fact that he, she or it invented high-quality whiskey and then made it a) physiologically destructive, and b) proscribed by certain religions. We live at the behest of a sick deity, my friends. Or at least one with a sour and none-too-funny sense of humor. But don’t worry. I’ll sort things out when, eventually, he, she or it and I meet up. Shouldn’t take long to sort things out pretty effectively. Maybe I’ll have that opportunity on the night of 21 December 2012, huh? I’ll try to be prepped. Send me any messages you want conveyed. I’ll carry them in for you. What the hell, if I’m askin’ questions and takin’ names, I might as well take some for you! Love you all, my friends. Holidays about to kickoff. Thanksgiving invitation is out in via email, the driving CD goes to the US Postal Service this week. Walking into another one. Who woulda thunk it?!?!?!