In Spite Of Weeds

(Plus late nights watching hospital dramas)

In spite of weeds having completely taken over my yard in seven foot tall patches of blinding arrogance, things are ripening and growing in the vegetable garden. This is cathartic as I am certainly not going through the best of times at the moment. A little nasty deja vu is difficult to shake. So I focus my vision down to the micro details so that I may ignore everything else. So look at these pretty little carrots! And the Romano beans are coming in now too. They are difficult to find in my densely tangled bean tee-pee, but I managed to gather enough for a dinner side of carrots and beans slathered in butter, honey, and mustard.

My bee balm is already almost finished with it's first round of blossoms. They are so fantastically weird, like air anemones from another planet. I'm wondering if I'll get another flush if I pinch the flowers?

This is one hell of an eggplant. It's called Rosa Bianca and I've grown it before. I tend to only get one eggplant per plant on this one but I enjoy the colors and the exquisite flavor of it so much it's worth it.

The dill is doing great. The flowers have all bloomed so it shouldn't be long before they're ready to use for pickling. The ladybugs are busy licking the heads clean of any aphids. I have to say they look pretty pest free, unlike the monster weeds growing right next to them.

This is my squash mound. I have learned some things about a big pile of squash plants:

• Pink banana winter squash plants get huge, are aggressive, and prolific.

• I'm happy they're prolific because maybe I'll get enough winter squash to get me all the way through the winter, but it's busy choking the life out of my summer squashes.
  

• Spacing really is important for summer squash. I should have thinned the summer squash and then stood over the mound night and day to direct the winter squash traffic.

To get through this stressful time of not knowing if I get to keep everything I have and love, and being afraid to appreciate it too much for fear that I am just about to lose it all- (why invest the love?)- I am staying up late watching old episodes of ER. Not only does Noah Wylie have a fantastic nose which I enjoy watching while chugging beer, but I really wish Eriq La Salle had been allowed to smile every once in a while. It must have been hard to play such a tightly wound serious individual.

I've come to a few conclusions about doctors and medicine that I'm going to share:

• People expect doctors to be miracle workers but rarely appreciate the miracles they work.

• Doctors make mistakes like everyone else, the reason they get paid so much is because they have a high risk job. When they make a mistake lives are at stake and people are not all that prepared to forgive them for it.

• Without doctors the population of people on this earth would be greatly reduced. Which wouldn't be a bad thing for the earth. Yet for all the lives they prolong and save, we generally only remember the ones they couldn't save. People are so crappy.

• I am deeply happy not to be a doctor. I'm not terribly squeamish about blood, but I prefer not to see people's organs exposed. Or their bones. I'm very squeamish about seeing exposed bone. I saw my own once and almost passed out. I cut my knuckle when a glass broke that I was washing and I saw the knuckle bone. It's incredibly creepy.

• Doctors aren't the enemy in the health care system, insurance companies are.

• Nurses deserve as much respect, OR MORE, than doctors because they do a lot of dirty work with less pay and recognition than the doctors get. I've met a couple nurse Ratchets in my time who I secretly suspected were trained S.E.A.L.s because of their ability to not feel any pain or recognize that other people do, but mostly I've just met a lot of compassionate nurses who remove gross medical implements and papered beds with smiles.

• If ever I am unfortunate enough to have to get surgery, I am going to listen to the undercurrent amongst the doctors and nurses and see if I can guess who is sleeping with whom, who is the most viciously ambitious, and who everyone secretly despises. Hospitals are clearly places ripe with intrigue.

Got Blood?

I went to the doctor for the first time in a year today. Don't be thinking I must be really healthy or something. I mean, it's not like there haven't been good reasons to go to the doctor, there have been good reasons. but the last time I went to the doctor was for my yearly exam which turned into a biopsy for cervical cancer. Ever had your cervix scraped with a wire brush? The doctor assured me it wouldn't hurt (much). I think she's never had it done to her. Why not just use a broken bottle down there? I know, it's possible that I am more sensitive to pain than some. I will only say to that possibility that it took me two weeks to take myself to the doctor when I broke my hip. When I finally came in my doctor sent me off to get x-rays and called me later to say that I must be a "very stoic" person because I had fractured my acetabulum in five places and had not been taking pain medication. Ha! So there.

Oh alright, I'll admit that every time I had to lower myself down to the toilet to pee it hurt so bad I kind of thought I might die.

That wire brush scraping morphed into a little slice of my cervix then being removed with a knife. Even though the biopsy came out negative, I'm a little reluctant to go to the doctor because I'm convinced that they're going to find something I can't afford to have.

Here's a list of my current ailments:

• Sharp pains randomly shooting through the ball of my left foot. (The good shoes have really helped with this)

• Right ankle is slightly swollen and hurts to walk on.

• Hip hurts after exercising.

• Back hurts after hip starts to hurt.

• My right hand ring finger is often stiff these days.

• Never got my bone density test after my hip healed.

• Head might explode at any minute.

• Can't sleep without having beers first.

• afraid I am a thirty seven year old living in an eighty five year old's body.

The Verdict: The back and hip problems are most likely musculature in nature and caused by having weakened muscles from the hip breaking incident. Strengthening them will most likely ease this problem. Lots of stretching and low-impact exercising. And time. There's nothing to be done about the foot. The ankle can be healed by balancing on that foot to help strengthen it up again.

So if you don't get the subtext, here it is: I AM WEAK.

However, just in case there is some systemic inflammation responsible for all my aches and pains, the doctor thought it wise to get some blood work done. I love that phrase: BLOOD WORK. It sounds like some kind of kooky procedure in which you cosmetically enhance your blood or something. The next rich person's fad: GET YOURSELF SOME BETTER BLOOD WITH A LITTLE BLOOD WORK. I can tell you that I am not fond of having needles shoved in my veins to extract the stuff that keeps me alive. Blood itself doesn't usually make me woozy. Needles don't really make me that woozy either. It's the combination that creeps me out.

Here are some highlights of my blood work adventure:

• Max and Rex came to witness the gore for the first attempt. They amused themselves with ghoulish noises and pretend passing out on the floor. This did not amuse the nurse who was trying to locate my veins.

• Apparently, my vein "rolled" away from the offending needle in a willful act of avoidance.

• After about six nurses asked me if I was OK as I waited for a new nurse to give my veins a try, I decided I must look much worse than I felt and should lie down.

• They all kept asking me if I "usually" have trouble having my blood taken, as though I do it all the time.

• I went through a total of three nurses. The one that finally got the blood told me why they had to keep trying to get the blood from the same spot, it turns out that when you have to take "a lot" of blood you don't want to take it from the smaller veins or they could collapse. She also explained that the reason the younger nurses were having so much trouble is that they were wearing surgical gloves which makes it more difficult to feel where the veins are.

So next week I get to get an x-ray to test my bone density to find out if I am, in fact, an eighty five year old.