It Might Get Messy

Here’s one I didn’t see coming. Well, actually, first there’s the one I DID see coming. Thanksgiving was a riot as usual, maybe more of a riot than usual. I don’t know how many people were here for the Wednesday Night Seafood Supper, but it was a shitload. I whipped up a huge batch of drop biscuits with Old Bay, and Dan and Jeff made a huge pot of seafood gumbo and one of rice. All day, appetizers by the kilo left the kitchen and disappeared into the melee. The feeding was so frenzied that poor Colin, who arrived last on the late flight from Atlanta ended up having to forage for his supper—there were only scraps left on the table!

Then Thursday, of course, was a high-throughput mill churning out food, including the turkey, the ham, the spit-roasted full 7 standing rib roast of beef stuffed with garlic cloves and herbs (pretty sure I stuffed the turkey with garlic cloves as well), plus all the trimmings, the baked ziti, the eggnog, the fried oysters, the stuffed mushrooms, the deviled eggs…well, you get the idea. Friday was a lot mellower from the cooking perspective, but we saddled up and took a nice hike through the Patuxent Preserve over across town. 

Anyway, the deal is that after 3 days of standing up and working, I was frickin’ exhausted. Slept most of Saturday, and again a big chunk of today. I think I’m back to full strength, but man, I was tired. But I’ve known for a while how out of shape I am. My physical conditioning is just awful. Walking a speedy 5K leaves my hips sore. So I wasn’t surprised to find myself beaten down by a couple days work.

I was surprised to find my throat getting raw and swollen. Surprised mostly because I didn’t change my still-deficient eating habits—didn’t eat many solids, mostly lived on chocolate milk. Oh, I sipped little dribs of the good Scotch Eric brought and the fabulous dark rum whose origin I never did establish. But no wine or beer, and really, I just wet my tongue with whiskey once in a while around the fire in the evenings—didn’t do any serious drinking. 

What I did do was talk. And laugh. For pretty much 3 days straight (as the Peter Case song would have it). Plus sang just a few songs when the guitar fell into my hands Friday evening. Granted, the general volume of chitchat, given the number of conversations going on at any particular moment, was fairly high. Nor is my system conditioned to the particulate irritants of wood smoke before I subjected to long evenings at the patio fire pit. But still. Who would’ve thought that telling stories and laughing at others for 72 hours would make your throat sore and palpably swollen?

Certainly not me. One thing about being a cancer survivor—you never stop learning. Just another lesson on the long road to becoming an aged cancer survivor (well, assuming that the world doesn’t disintegrate on 21 December this year. In which case we would have just had the Best Last Thanksgiving Ever. Not a bad way to go, if you gotta go at the hands of a 5000 year old chipped stone calendar). Anyway, tomorrow morning I see Dr. N, radiation oncologist who stepped in for retired Dr. Z. Just a routine visit. I’ll alternate seeing him and Dr. H, along with my GP, every few months for the next year or two. Usually they’d break it back to 6 months at this point, but that sore spot that appeared in my throat a while back shook everybody up so they want to pay close attention. I’m afraid, like most things in life, the problems I’ve got now, including those associated with the cancer, are things I have to deal with myself—they’re not the kind of problems the docs can solve for me. I have to get my ass back into functional physical condition. Keep my weight down (yeah, its rising again). Make sure I get most of my calories from nutritious solid foods instead of goopy chocolate milk, no matter how uncomfortable actual eating is. Get my energy reserves back to where they’re not overloaded by 3 days of cooking. 

Blahblahblah. Good thing I don’t have REAL problems, huh? Time to crack the four Gospels and Revelation. Always takes me the whole time from Thanksgiving to Christmas to get through ‘em. But I’m least I’m here to take the slog one more year, and for that I’m most grateful.

Unless, of course, the world vaporizes on 21 December. Then, just before my molecules vibrate themselves into the interstellar strings that control all things physical from 19 asymmetrical dimensions, I’m gonna have a good ironic chuckle. Could be many, many worse ways to go, my friends. Hope everyone’s having a fabulous start to the holidays this year. Check out professional blog over at http://www.aehsfoundation.org/, and there are lots of Thanksgiving photos, cooking hints, decorating tips, and suggestions for easy entertaining with simple desserts and store-bought ingredients over at http://docviper.livejournal.com/ . Well, Thanksgiving photos, at least. Finally, I’m back hacking away at the urban ecosystems book, I’ll start posting chapters again in a week or so as I get a stock of new ones built up. Love to everyone. May your waitstaff get your order to your table in time when the Restaurant at the End of the Universe opens on 21 December!