This Grocery and Sedation

This grocery represents the higher-end offerings in this town; the patisserie has desserts seemingly created by a 3D printer and does not blush at $7 a cupcake.  The meats are individually packaged in a sheet of plastic wrap that graduated from college.  Produce speaks correct English, and the frozen food section knows the Pledge of Allegiance.  You may enter the beer section if you have a passport; and the service folks are super super friendly as if you were the one they wanted the most at their birthday because you can make animal shapes with your hands.  I can make a shark, a dragon, and a crab.  But I'm worried.

I am currently sitting in a cold puddle of water on the couch which leaked from the melty ice pack for my stitches.  Last night, I slept sitting up in the IKEA Poang with a bag of frozen spinach on my head after putting the bag in a ziploc taped with paper towels.  Chopped spinach is more pliant than frozen peas, and molds more accurately to the terrain involved.  As is my nature, I refuse defeat concerning household objects, thus I now sit damply, stubbornly, convinced that the water is evaporating faster because of my angry brain powers sizzling it away.  Pray I do not alter you further, damned water.

Of course it isn't drying quicker, but you see, the cat on the pillow would have to move if I took the dry part, necessary for the power cord to reach this laptop.  So I sit, not admitting that the semi-wet cushion bothers me, nor that waiting for ice cubes to form in my inner-plastic-doored refrigerator freezer takes a glacial age but for crying out loud, I use ice cubes like I use business sense, which is next to never.  But they do well in medical science, better than the chipped-off with a steak knife foamy ice which forms inside the manual defrost freezer unless you defrost it every week, which HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  You see.  This formation of puffy ice is a notch below frozen cut green beans, which are listed beneath frozen peas, which are topped by the frozen spinach. Real ice cubes are the pinnacle, with crushed ice as manna from the gods in an ice pack.  Buy some from the store?  I am NOT going outside as I can't lift anything heavier than five pounds and if anyone saw me, they'd get a shovel to thwack my ass.  I look like something the dog dug up and rolled in.

But back to this grocery, you needed some background as to the mood of victorious rebellion associated with stubborn tenacity, as well as the fact that the intravenous sedation had some seriously glorious Versed, a benzosomethingorother that induces not only drowsiness but amnesia so you forget  the pain that occurred during procedure except I remember that part, prilocaine, bupivacine, candicaine, and michaelcaine.  I'm still on the good ship lollipop, and look forward to further safe landings over the next three days, when I go back to work with two weeks of lesson plans and restructuring a ten page APPR due Monday.  Pass the Versed.  Maybe I can hide in the freezer, now that the built up ice has been chopped out.

Holidays are a nuisance.  Holidays can go eff themselves.  That's another story, one that you probably won't hear.  However, I knew that the building I live in would have turkeys roasting in ovens, and the aroma would bring back desire of a day when my Mom and brother were here, and we would enjoy what she prepared.  I was at the fantastical food grocery, getting post-surgery food (dark chocolate Dove squares, the foil wrapped ones with little messages inside..."Keep them guessing,"  Right. Go sit on a flagpole, you self-congratulating twee morons and make these things bigger); inside a refrigerated case there were individual meals of turkey, stuffing, potatoes, a vegetable, gravy and cranberry relish.  Why not?  A slice of roast turkey is as good as a band aid in some sitches, so I grabbed one and parked it in the home fridge.

Now, another sideline of the anesthesia is that I think there was a muscle relaxant in there so I couldn't flail at the doctor when that little bit near the tail end starting to hurt in real time.   There was snipping and sewing and a smell of burnt me.  But this relaxant has produced nausea, and when I cough, which is often, my bladder says hello, nursing home! and does a little soft shoe.  The past two days have been filled with sleeping, watching movies in a daze, and cutting pet pads into strips.  Go ahead and laugh; I am, as life lessons continue to emerge from corporate candy wrappers. "Accept a compliment", "Sweep them off their feet", "#Ignore hashtags".  Every movie I have watched is The Best Movie that I have seen in years.  I buy them and don't watch them, so there is catching up to do.  Zoolander.  Loved it.  The Bridesmaids. Almost blew out a stitch.   Good times, I was looking forward to the small clamshell tray of giving-in waiting in the fridge.

Welp, I opened it and a whiff that said industrial floor disinfectant slapped out; whoa.  Mayybeee heating it up will help.  This shop has a good rep for prepared food; everything looked nice except for the gray, gooey eggplant as part of the vegetable corpse medley.  A zap in the nuclear reactor, and bam!  It smelt godawful, as if these turkeys were raised in the Post War forties, injected with soap, then frozen and shipped from South America to a warehouse run by unhousebroken walruses.  It Did Not Taste the least bit like turkey.  The potatoes were okay, the cranberry relish was made by angry quasi-religious church people who enjoy suffering as penance, and the vegetables came from an armpit.  I was disappointed but was not going to let them win and so ate all of it, dammit.  Kai happily ate some turkey, so I'm guessing I'm still visiting the Beebleberry Patch; better go cut more pet pads.

The worry comes from why did I eat something that tasted dangerously awful?  Did I want something more to keep me occupied?  Am I going to grow a tail from radium-tainted turkey, or end up in hell for being critical of the scraped from between dead bodies' toes relish?  If anything, it made me feel oogy but probably did me good with getting something in there.

I remember few of the images when semi-sedated: yellow explosions of broccoli shapes which grew into fractals, then becoming yellow crossword puzzles.  Little bits, pieced together, square by square.  The best part was the cab ride there, just after 6 a.m.; the full moon was setting, deeply orange and hovering through bands of clouds just above the horizon.  I am thankful for these images, as ancient as theory says, 4.5 billion years.  It will continue on after all the leaves have left the trees, after we pull our windows closed and have curtains drawn.

Don't you worry, it all works out in the very very end.  Sleep well, without spinach.