I Never Want to See, Smell, or Taste Jell-O Again

 

7:00am: Monday morning. I've fed Scout and while she eats, I eat my breakfast. A half cup of bright, lime green Jell-O, and a cup of black coffee. I made two packages of lime Jell-O on Sunday in preparation for my colonoscopy fast. The instructions are no solid foods, but Jell-O is okay just as long as it isn't orange or red Jell-O. I guess if the doctor comes across something red in your intestines, he'll be confused.

10:30am: Jell-O fills you up just fine, for about sixty seconds and then the hunger returns. So, I ate some more Jell-O. In fact I've already eaten half of what I had made on Sunday.

11:34am: I'm at Lowes shopping for Christmas wreaths. Hunger has returned and I feel very lightheaded as find myself telling stupid jokes to the cashier. The cashier does not seem to appreciate my jokes since she has to work the register in the garden department and it's like forty degrees out there.

4:22pm: I'm sick of the flavor and smell of green Jell-O. That's all I have had to eat today. Now it's time to start taking the twelve pills that will leave my colon "Clean of stool." I opted for the pills because fifteen years ago I took the 'lemon' flavored liquid and I hated it. In fact I didn't finish all of it as prescribed because I didn't like the taste of lemon flavored vomit. It still worked fine. So I start taking the pills which I would describe as horse pills. They're very big. They go down just fine until I try swallowing the sixth pill. Oh well, I thought. At least I have something solid in my stomach, not just liquids and green Jell-O. Twenty minutes later I have washed down all the pills, but I used twice as much water as the instructions said to use. I'm now bloated and nauseous, and the instructions tell me to take even more water in thirty minutes. We're talking forty eight ounces of water all together, and I've already drank too much water.

6:50pm, a feeling in my gut says to run to the bathroom. I won't go into details.

11:00pm: After a break from the 'clean out' I have to take twelve more pills. I assume with similar results. 

 Tuesday, 12:40am: I can't go to bed because I fear I might fall asleep. I don't want to fall asleep. Not after I saw what happened six hours earlier.

Good Night

LGBTQ+

 

Fifty years ago I walked into a rundown house on Elm Street in Chicago and I think I joined the Chicago Gay Alliance. I don't remember any membership application or rules, nothing like that. You just kind of showed up and you were in. It was definitely a big sausage fest, no women in the place. However, in June when the big Gay Pride Parade and rally was held, there were women everywhere. Lesbians, also drag queens, bi-sexual people, and trans people. All under the same banner. 'Gay Pride'. Sometime in the last forty years everybody has wanted to be included in the description of who we are. First it was LGB, then they added the T. I thought that now we were only up to LGBTQ+, but I recently saw this, 'LGBTQQIP2SAA'.  Adding new letters every couple of years is causing confusion and  really makes it difficult for television news reporters. I've watched a few of them trip over LGBTQ+ a couple of times over the weekend. It's time to pick one word that encompasses everybody whose sexuality has been marginalized, and excluded from society. Stop with the alphabet soup already. I have a bunch of alternatives already in mind, but I seriously fear backlash if I put them down here. Like this one. the Free And Good Society. You could shorten that to an acronym just to make it roll off the tongue easier. I'll have to check with homo headquarters about that. Yes, we have a headquarters... a whole hierarchy just waiting to take over the world. 

Did You Hear the One About the Shoe Salesman?

 

You know how there is the question, if you could go back in time what would you tell your younger self? I would tell young Alan, "Always wear decent shoes. Good shoes that fit and support your feet. Don't wear crap." Unfortunately I wore mostly Sears cheapo shoes as a teenager, and crap shoes in my twenties. I worked for a shoe wholesale shop back then, and the shoes were almost all imported from Poland. This is back when Poland was still a communist country with no quality or standards. Just a bunch of comrades slapping leather together. My boss let me buy my shoes for cost, so they were dirt cheap. Mostly I got the work boots which actually didn't look too bad, but boy did they fit like shit. So I started out as a kid with flat feet that splayed outwards, and ended up making them even worse as an adult. I now have worse flat feet, a neuroma in my right foot that the doctor says he can't fix, neuropathy in my toes, and a chipped ankle bone. This has made me very particular about what shoe I buy. Now I go to high end athletic shoe stores and try on shoes until find the pair that is just right. I did that last Thursday. I was the first customer for Lauren, the shoe sales lady. Poor Lauren, she had no idea what her morning was going to be like. She brought me four shoes to try on at first. It was like Goldilocks but without the 'just right' part. I hated all of them. So Lauren says, "I'll go down and get you some more to try on." Yes, the shoes in this store were all in the basement. That lady had to go up and down the stairs at least ten times, not counting the trips back down there to return the dozens of shoes I didn't buy. I did finally find a pair that fit me thanks to Lauren. And kudos to her for not just having the stamina and good nature to run up and down those stairs. No, she also listened to my stupid jokes for nearly an hour.

I Do Like Chocolate Malts

 

Fifteen years ago my doctor told me to get a colonoscopy. So I got a colonoscopy. Like everybody says, the actual procedure isn't so bad because they put you in fantasyland with the nice drugs. What I hated about it, and why I never got another colonoscopy in fifteen years, was the preparation. From what I remember, I had to drink about three gallons of a disgusting liquid that tasted like a vomit milkshake. I shudder just thinking about it. Of course the reason they have you drink that stuff is to clean you out, and clean me out it did. Like a fire hose.

A couple of months ago I did the Cologuard thing, which is like doing a school science project with your own poop. That also is disgusting. Anyway, the results came back and I was told that I needed the colonoscopy again. So I have it scheduled in three weeks, right after Thanksgiving. I did tell my doctor that I didn't want to drink that preparation goop again, that I had heard of a pill you can take instead. The doctor told me that was my choice and wrote me a prescription for the pill. But, it isn't a pill. It is twenty four pills the size of my pinky finger that I have to wash down with gallons of water in two thirty minute periods. These are supposed to be about six hours apart with the second of those thirty minute periods at midnight the night before the procedure. So I'm expected to get a good night's sleep with the preparation pills knocking at my back door all night. I'm sure it won't be an easy night for me. However, at least I don't have to drink three gallons of vomit flavored milkshakes.

Shhh... it's listening

 

I have four Amazon Alexa things placed around the house. As of right now, all I can figure what she's good for is to turn the lights on and off, set a timer, and play music. I'm sure it can do more than that, but things get complicated beyond telling her, "Alexa, light off." Seriously, getting her to sync with the smart plugs I bought for the lights was a challenge. Kind of like the challenge of me not calling her a bitch as I write this. Why would I call an inanimate electronic device foul names? Because I don't think she is completely inanimate. I don't think Alexa is an innocent contraption that is only here for my own good. I think Alexa is always listening to me. I will simply think about something and moments later, on Facebook, ads for what I was thinking will show up. I spoke with Dennis recently about places that old people can move into, where every whim is taken care of for ten thousand dollars a month. Within an hour ads for 'retirement' homes started showing up on my Facebook page. Yes, I know. Amazon and Facebook are not the same company. They have different super rich assholes running them. But I think the super rich assholes all get together and are in cahoots. I think they put Alexa in my house to further their goal of owning a million dollars for every penny I own. Why else would Alexa suddenly stop playing my hillbilly retro music when I quietly tell Scout that she's a good girl? I think it stopped playing music to listen to what I was saying. I don't have any proof, but just an hour later I started getting ads for Farmer's Dog, dog food. I'm telling you, they're in cahoots.... Aw crap, now I'll get ads for bars named Cahoots.