What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate

The following conversation actually occurred yesterday over lunch with my bosses:

After receiving a plate of spaghetti carbonara with small strips of meat on top, Boss #1 remarked: "Oh! They must put Canadian bacon on their carbonara here!"

ME: You know, in Canada they just call it ham.

Boss #2: But it's still from the lighter portion of the meat, right?

ME: Ummm...sure. All I know for sure is that they call it ham.

Boss #2: Huh. Well how do you know that?

ME: My boyfriend's from Montreal.

Boss #2: Well how does he know that?

ME: Ummm...he's from Montreal?

Strategic Planning

I had a very odd lunch today. My program director was taking my boss, the program assistant, and me out to lunch for a year-end wrap-up and to plan ahead for the fall. The odd part was that I am leaving in two weeks so we spent the majority of the meeting planning out all the things that the new me will have to do when he/she takes over the hallowed position by the front door that I have occupied for the last two years. I had nothing to contribute since I have essentially checked myself out of the equation for the past several months, and now that I am down to two weeks you couldn't get me to care if you tattooed a transcript of the conversation onto my forehead.

Sitting in on a conversation in which your absence is the main topic is kind of like dying and floating around listening to people talk about you. There is some talk of what you do well, which is nice to hear, but it's certainly not meant to be praise. It's more of the "Shit! She won't be doing that for us anymore! How can we avert disaster?" And then of course there are always the random things that didn't work out quite so well...but since you're not really there, they don't mind saying right out into the open that trying to have me share database duties with the assistant didn't work out AT ALL.

And then to top off the strange lunch, you get the fake smiles and the strained voices congratulating you on your next venture...but you know (from the conversation you just had to sit through) that what they're really thinking is "We're fucked, and it's your fault!!!"

Please Don't Do That Again

OK, I just want to say for the record that even though my parents may a) be way more religious than I am (which is not at all), and b) be way more politically conservative than I am (which again, is not at all), and c) have way more kids than I want to have (which is none at all)...they're still all right people.

My parents and I have never been close at all. I certainly would never call them up if I was upset over not getting into a grad school program or a bad breakup. I never told them about the people I was dating until I found out near the end of college that my mom thought I was a lesbian because I didn't talk about the guys I dated. Hell, I didn't even tell them I was having nose surgery until after the fact.

So it was a little surprising when I was getting ready to leave our family's Father's Day party last night and my dad pulled me aside and told me he would really like to take me out to dinner sometime near the end of July, before I head off to school. I was thinking, "Sure. That'll happen. The last time you promised to take me out to dinner, for my 16th birthday, we never went out until two and a half years later." The fact that he made such a statement wasn't surprising. What was surprising was what came next: Tears started welling up in his eyes as he said, "Because you will probably never move back to Minnesota and you'll be off around the country. And I'll miss you. Because you will always be my daughter."

Then he stood up to give me a hug, another rarity in my house, while I mumbled something about Happy Father's Day and that I would come back in December to visit.

The whole thing left me feeling a little odd. Seeing your dad cry is the worst. Please, don't do that again.

Never Again

Sorry, guys. I had all kinds of magical pictures to show you, but Blogger is being a pisser and I can't get them to post. This should be good news to everyone who asked me to warn them if there was anything graphic that would make them lose their lunch.

Never ever ever ever EVER again will I have surgery.

But what if you will die of gangrene unless they cut off your leg?

Nope. Not gonna do it.

But what if you will lose all function in your arm unless they operate NOW?

Nope. Can't make me.

But what if, after moving out to LA, you decide that to "compete" you MUST get liposuction and a boob job?

You did not SERIOUSLY just ask me that.

Why am I so against surgery? Surely I can breathe better now, right?

Yeah, sure. NOW I can breathe better...better than I could when I had giant plastic splints rammed up my nose and a guaze-filled sling hanging out under my nostrils. Yeah, you would be able to breathe better now too! But let me give you a list of reasons why I will NEVER HAVE SURGERY AGAIN.

1) My Friend Joe.

Joe and I have been friends for 8 years now. Joe is a great guy. Joe had septoplasty and turbinoplasty a few years ago and I called Joe a week before my surgery to get the low-down. Joe didn't call me back until two days after I had my nose sliced and diced. Joe's message to me? "Lies! All lies! They tell you it's an in-and-out procedure and you can go home the same afternoon! They tell you that you can go back to work in two days! They tell you that recovery will be a piece of cake! If I had known what it would be like before I had surgery, I wouldn't have had it...but once it was all over with, I was very happy to have it done."

He was right. Lies, every single one of them. Go home the same afternoon, my ass.

2) Anesthesia.

They initially told me that it was no worse than having my wisdom teeth pulled. They told me it would take an hour and a half, and then I could go home. They told me (as Joe said) that most people returned to work in 2 days. At first I thought, "Hey, that doesn't sound so bad. Sign me up for a local anesthetic!"

But then I reconsidered and called back in a panic. Was I CRAZY!?! Be wide awake while they stretched my nostrils out, made incisions inside my nose, cut pieces out, jammed plastic supports waaaaaaay up there, and stitched everything back together?!? Actually, it was Chris' idea to be put under. Good thing that (on occasion) my boyfriend is smarter than me.

But beware, because general anesthesia can lead to things like...

3) The Hospital Stay

Basically, when they put you under at 2:00 for the quicky surgery, they expect you to clear out of the recovery room by 5:00 or so. When, at 9:00, you still can't open your eyes or rock your head back and forth without vomiting, they stick you in a hospital room. As a joke, they keep an IV pumping saline solution into your body, even though they know you are too nauseous to get up to go to the bathroom. I can only imagine how funny they think it is to walk you to the bathroom 12 hours later and stand outside the door with a stopwatch to time how long you go to the bathroom. Answer: I don't know, you asshole! I'm in an open-backed gown with a bloody nose sling attached to my face, trying to pee out 12 straigt hours of saline feed while simultaneously trying not to vomit all over my lap! (But you can ask my boyfriend, since he's the one snickering in the next room.)

4) The Nose Sling

Since you're not allowed to blow your nose, let alone dab at it, after surgery they send you off with a handy dandy little nose sling. This nifty contraption allows you to hook the elastic loops around your ears and place a giant gauze pad in the plastic sling that goes underneath your nose to absorb all the blood and other good stuff that leaks out constantly for the first couple of days. The pad must be changed every couple of hours because it fills with blood and scares children. After a day or two of wearing it, your ears start to hurt from being pulled on, so sometimes your very helpful boyfriend takes surgical tape and tapes the gauze to your face instead. Then he feeds you hot soup. Then he has to rush over to help you pull the gauze off your face when it starts to scald your lip because it got soaked up by the gauze. It hurts. Nose slings suck.

5) The Antibiotics

Antibiotics are like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're going to get. In my case, over the course of a week and from three different meds, I got: 1) nausea and vomiting, 2) red, swollen, itchy skin, and 3) immense headaches accompanied by the most foul taste imaginable. Seriously. I had to keep eating all day just to keep the taste from returning. And going to sleep? Fuggedaboudit. How would you like to wake up to the taste of burning gasoline and bile? Not fun.

6) Nose Splints

Yeah, this was fun. After surgery, they insert plastic nose splints up your nasal cavity to keep things from collapsing and so on. They are stuffed so far up your nose that you can just barely see the bottoms of them. They are stitched in place and left for a week. A little uncomfortable, but nothing too bad...oh, except for when the swelling goes down and they start to press on your sinuses. That's fun. Or when one of them is sitting on a nerve or something and you can't feel anything in your front teeth. That's a good one too. But I think the best part about them is being at the doctor's office with the boyfriend a week after surgery to have them removed. The doc cranks open your nostrils and reaches back with a scissors to snip the suture. Then he reaches waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay up with a tweezers to pull the thing out. Imagine how it feels to have your boyfriend say, "WOAH! That's HUGE! You have to see how BIG these things are!"

No. I don't. I'm not opening my eyes. I don't WANT to see how big these things are, I just want to pretend that they did not just come out of my nose!

7) The Rules

Yeah, the rules suck too. Like the rule that says you should sleep with your head elevated for a month. Screw that! A few days, maybe, but once the swelling is down so am I! How about the rule that says you can't blow your nose for 2-3 weeks. Puh-lease. You try sitting there like a baby and just letting your nose run a river down to your mouth without doing anything. I don't think so! Oh yeah, then there's the rule about no intense physical activity (running, biking, etc.) for at least two weeks. That one blows. My favorite rule, however, is that you can't wear glasses for 6 weeks--you're supposed to tape them to your forehead!!!

8) Sutures

Having 5 or 6 stitches running up the inside of your nose would be annoying if they weren't so darn attractive. Nothing like the long tail of a stitch hanging out of yoru nose to let people know that you're sexy and you know it. No, really. Nothing hotter. 'Nuff said.

9) The Bad Jokes

Actually, it should read 'joke'. As in one, singular joke that I keep hearing over and over from everyone who finds out I had my deviated septum fixed: "Well, now you can say you got a nose job!" Followed by the kind of laughter that only comes from people who convince themselves they just thought of the funniest thing on the planet...except they're the only ones laughing.