During one of my recent bouts of prednisone-induced insomnia, my restless mind replayed the first time I went to see a doctor on my own.
I guess this was sparked by my thinking about all the doctors I've seen recently and my mind then struggling to remember exactly how my association with these strange people first started.
In any event, I think I was about 17 when I went out into the world all alone in search of my first consultation with a physician.
Not wanting to choose a physician more or less at random from the phone book and hoping for the best, I set off in search of the general practitioner whom I'd been told had delivered my sister nearly 30 years earlier. I guess I thought that any guy who'd managed to bring my sister into this world without accidentally killing her wasn't very likely to end up accidentally killing me, either. After all, I was much bigger.
Dr. D. had an office in an old house in a part of Toledo I'd not been to before and haven't been to since. I had to take two buses to get there. The second half of the second bus ride seems to have involved a canopy of trees swallowing the road. No one else on the bus seems to have been as excited about this as I was. I now wonder if they were inflatable dolls or department store mannequins scattered randomly throughout the bus by a bus driver who didn't want first-time riders of his route like me to feel quite so alone....
Dr. D.'s rather small waiting room was crowded with old women with mysterious diseases and younger women with crying children. I think I took the last available seat then did my best to blend in as much as possible by coughing at odd moments for no apparent reason and grimacing between coughs the way that I imagined savagely infectious people do. I certainly didn't want to draw attention to my oh-so-male and oh-so-young self by smiling maniacally, and I didn't want to blow my first audition as a patient by appearing too healthy.
Had I known the waiting room was going to be so crowded, I probably would have practiced waiting at home first....
Experienced patients may have already noted that one thing I did *not* do was go to the receptionist lurking behind the odd sliding glass window and let her know that I was there. I didn't know that this was what I was supposed to do - I just thought my name would be called when my appointment time arrived and that would be that.
When other patients came in and gave their name to the receptionist, I began to feel uneasy.
When those who arrived after I did were called back before I was, I began to squirm and sweat.
I felt trapped, not sure what to do. If I got up and gave my name to the receptionist after having sat there for what must have already been an hour or more, I'd be drawing unwanted attention to my oh-so-male and oh-so-young self. If I just got up and left, I wouldn't get to see the doctor - not unless he suddenly bolted out of the house and chased me down, which would have presented me with an even worse situation. So, I just continued to sit as the minutes slipped by, as minutes are wont to do....
As evening drew near and the waiting room slowly cleared out, I began to feel better about things. The air seemed cooler and less infectious, the sound of crying children became nothing more than a vaguely hellish memory, and - once I became the waiting patient with the most seniority - feelings of superiority and ownership began to wash over me. I welcomed newcomers with a knowing glance, sighed nostalgically as each departing patient brushed past me, and pondered at length the exact nature of the new carpet I would order for the place if and when I once again had access to a phone.
All these thoughts and feelings vanished in an instant when Dr. D. suddenly appeared like a white tornado behind the receptionist. Seeing me through the window, he practically yelled at the poor woman, "I told you to send him back to me as soon as he came in!"
She was flustered and probably flummoxed. I was perturbed and distressed. I certainly hadn't wanted to get her or anybody else in trouble with my behavior, yet apparently I had. And I certainly hadn't known that my condition was so serious that it required immediate attention. What else might I not know?
A waiting room appears to be such a simple thing. If such a simple thing could lead to so much confusion and trouble, what hope had I of ever learning how to deal with the much more complex human body?
Fortunately, I didn't have time to ponder that question at the time as I was quickly called back and escorted into Dr. D.'s private office rather than any of the cold, white exam rooms I'd seen on TV and had fully expected to end up in as appropriately dramatic music played in the background.
Did the rabbit hole I'd fallen down not have a bottom?
My mind now wants me to believe that his office was straight out of Dickens - a Victorian England parlor, lined with velvet curtains and curiosities from all around the world. In truth, it was probably nothing more than yet another too big, too cold, overly gray room of the sort I'd seen too many times already in my life as a temporary visitor to innumerable old homes in an old town.
I sat down in a chair in front of his large, undoctor-like desk. My mind now wants me to believe that he looked like a cross between Albert Schweitzer and Alan Alda's father but I know that that's a lie. What he actually looked like was something I have never been able to quite bring back into focus. The lie eclipsed the reality at the time; there is little chance of my now recapturing what was never really captured in the first place....
A severe bout of depression is what had prompted me to make an appointment in the first place. I'm not sure what I may have been depressed about. Maybe the Ford administration. Maybe disco. Maybe the sheer shock of being alive. It's safe to say that none of those things were helping even if they weren't the exact cause of my feelings of world-weariness.
I suppose I'd heard that doctors were now doing wonderful things for world-weary people and that we all owed it to ourselves to consult them the moment world-weariness crept into our minds.
I was surprised when those wonderful things began with Dr. D.'s bellowing, "What are YOU depressed about?! I see SICK people ALL day long. If anyone ought to be depressed, it's ME!"
Fortunately, he didn't leave that thought hanging long enough for me to suggest that we forge a suicide pact and make plans to off ourselves together.
Unfortunately, what he did instead was pull out some generic "Are you depressed?" check list and read it to me.
You know the type.... Are you sleeping ok? Are you eating ok? Can restaurants trust you to use a steak knife only for the purposes for which it is intended?
It was all so dry and mechanical, as if the human being who had so recently barked at the receptionist and me had been replaced by a carnival fortune telling machine.
And then he asked, "How's your sex life?"
I was stunned.
Taken aback.
Nonplussed.
I was 17. I wanted to say that I didn't *have* a sex life.
Instead, I croaked "Fine" or "Ok" or some such nonsense that quickly got lost as he methodically continue on down his list.
Soon I was out the door, probably with a prescription for sugar pills.
From that moment to this, I've often wondered what he might have done had I told him my sex life was lousy. Awful. The worst in human history.
Would he have prescribed a lover instead?
Would any doctor in any society from the Hopi to the Swedish have wisely declared, "Son, what you need is some fresh-squeezed pussy - three times a week to start with, and then as needed for the rest of your life. Here's the address of a pharmacy that will set you up...."?
I know, I know - that would be oh-so-wrong, and oh-so-terrible for oh-so-many, many reasons.
But you have to understand.
I actually somehow lived through the Ford administration.
I actually existed at a time when you couldn't turn on a radio without hearing Disco Duck.
You wouldn't deny your grandmother the pain-killing benefits of marijuana as she lay dying in agony on her deathbed, would you?
Please don't deny the 17-year-old boy that's dying a slow death in every man the pain-killing benefits of this fantasy.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Just Another Day In Crazytown....
----- Evangelist Torches Crow (Ghana News Agency; Nov 23)
TAKORADI, Ghana: Drama unfolded at the Takoradi Market Circle on Tuesday morning when a strange crow was set ablaze by some traders and an evangelist who suspected the bird was possessed by witchcraft.
Evangelist Nyame-Akwan of the Christ Healing Power Church and the traders poured 'anointing oil' (olive oil) on the crow amidst intensive prayers and speaking in tongues, around 1100 hours on Tuesday.
Speaking to the Ghana News Agency in an interview at the Takoradi Market Circle, Evangelist Nyame-Akwan said he daily goes to the market to preach and pray with some of the traders.
In line with this routine, he said, God instructed him to ask the traders to fast for three weeks because of their complaints about poor sales in recent times.
He said while they were praying, a strange crow flew frenziedly from nowhere and entered the stall of Mrs. Sophia Aggrey, who was praying with them.
The evangelist said they initially became frightened but they gathered the courage and prayed fervently on the bird, which desperately sprawled and rotated on the floor.
After the prayers, he said, they picked up the bird and brought it into an open place and poured anointing oil on it and set it ablaze with the hope that the person whose spirit it possessed would also die.
The incident attracted a number of onlookers, some of whom shouted 'anyen' which means witch in Fante.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
My Little Home Improvement Project
So, my S.O. and I have been talking about replacing our tired old kitchen floor for a long, long time.
We recently finally got around to going to Lowe's and pricing some of our options and asking what it would cost to have them do the installation.
Yikes!
In the end, I decided it would be cheaper and faster just to re-do the floor myself using materials I've collected over the years.
Here's the final result:
Not too bad for a first timer, eh?
We recently finally got around to going to Lowe's and pricing some of our options and asking what it would cost to have them do the installation.
Yikes!
In the end, I decided it would be cheaper and faster just to re-do the floor myself using materials I've collected over the years.
Here's the final result:
 |
Not too bad for a first timer, eh?
Friday, December 3, 2010
Still Learning
When I was a child I thought that every adult knew everything.
I looked forward to the day when I was all grown up and knew everything, too.
A good chunk of my childhood was spent being secretly afraid that I was going to be the first person in the history of the world to grow up without ever learning how to tell time or comb my hair.
I'm proud to say that after many years of effort, I've managed to master one of those two tasks.
The effort to learn everything else continues.
Here are a few of the things I've learned since posting my last update on this subject on Nov 21:
----- Some 50 films have been nominated for Best Picture in the last decade. According to Time magazine, nearly 60% of them were set in the historical past. More than 10% were set in Britain. (You know that chart of the brain someone made in which the number of neurons devoted to each body part are depicted proportionality so that tongues and lips and thumbs and genitalia are revealed to be where our interests primarily lie? I've often wished someone would do the same for pop culture, history, etc. The horrors of the Holocaust would undoubtedly be the size of our tongues while the horrors of the Hun invasions would be something akin to the dead zone of our backs. And tiny Britain would be as huge as our thumbs while all of Africa would probably amount to part of an earlobe, maybe. Got time? Please develop this further for me.)
----- After ceasing to be president in 1909, Theodore Roosevelt went on a year-long safari in Africa. He bagged 296 animals. (Roosevelt is known to this day as one of the Republican Party's biggest conservationists. Please hold your applause until after the next Great Extinction so as not to give any doomed species any undue hope.)
----- The premiere episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" drew 5 million viewers. The next episode drew only 3 million. (No word on how many people might tune in to see "Sarah Silverman's Alaska.")
----- Americans bought (and presumably used) 1.7 million coffins last year. That's down from 1.9 million ten years ago, but still seems like an awful lot of coffins to me. If you laid them all out, end to end, they'd form a line about 2000 miles long - and you'd probably be arrested for blocking traffic. (If you simply MUST block traffic, please do so in a somewhat less disturbing way. Thank you.)
----- The average cost of a traditional funeral is nearly $8000. That's roughly how much it costs to keep a cat or dog alive for 8 years.
----- 25% of US households lack a computer. That's some 28,000,000 homes without a single PC or Mac. (As tempting as it may be to make fun of the people in these households, I'll refrain. It isn't nice. And it's not really fun if they can't read what I'm saying about them.)
----- US businesses replace aproximately 40 million computers a year. About 75% of those computers being replaced are just 4 years old or younger. (I guess this means that if the Statue of Liberty had been a computer owned by GM or GE, she would probably would have been replaced by 1890.)
----- According to the latest research, there are about 300 sextillion stars in the universe. That's about how many cells are in all the human bodies on earth (50 trillion a body times 6 billion bodies). This not only proves there's a gOd - it proves that he wants each of our cells to have its own star. (My neurons are smart enough to have hired an agent, however, and are holding out for TWO stars each, plus a $100,000 signing bonus.)
----- "The Young and the Restless" is now the #1 soap opera on TV. It has some 5.15 million viewers. I've never, ever been one of them. (Since it's been on the air for nearly 38 years now, I suppose its first stars have been spun off into a series entitled "The Old and the Tired.")
----- Deer season began here in Ohio on Monday. I'm told that exactly 37,805 deer were shot dead on that one day. I didn't shoot any of them. (And despite what some people may think, I didn't talk any of them to death, either.)
----- There are an estimated 750,000 deer in Ohio. (Or at least there were before Monday.) There are 34 "Welcome to Ohio!" signs on the roads coming into Ohio from other states. If there had been only 30 such signs in 2010, would there now be 10% fewer deer? Explain.
----- When Ohio's new governor takes office in January, it will cost the Ohio Department of Transportation a total of $7500 to put his name up on these "Welcome to Ohio!" signs. Would a true fiscally conservative Republican just say, "Oh, that's ok - just leave the old name up"? Why or why not?
----- About 17,000 deer end up as roadkill in Ohio every year. State workers spend about 29,000 hours annually (at a cost of about $725,000) to remove the carcasses. How much time and money could we save if we outsourced this work to India?
----- The brain chemistry of Siberian hamsters is more like the brain chemistry of humans than the brain chemistry of mice is. (If you find it easier to pick up a Siberian hamster in a bar than a mouse, that might be why.)
----- It takes about 3 apples to make 1 cup of cider.
----- Nebraska is the only state in the United States with a unicameral legislature. It seems to get along just fine with just half the number of chambers of a standard legislature. How much money could all the other states save if they followed suit? (Why haven't I ever heard a single fiscally conservative Republican advocate this?)
----- There are about 13 million hotel and/or motel rooms on earth. Only 400,000 are allegedly in the "luxury" class.
----- There are supposedly 650 million adult Pacific salmon in the ocean at any one time. (This means that our hotels and motels could accommodate them all if they don't mind staying 50 to a room. And judging from some of the rooms I've stayed in, they don't.)
----- 90% of the food mammals eat goes to maintaining their core body temperature. (I guess this means that cold-blooded killers need to eat less than other people.)
----- The largest mammal ever was the rhino-like Indricotherium. It was about four times as large as today's elephant. (If it wasn't now extinct, how many do you think would end up as roadkill on Ohio's highways?)
----- There are 793 plants and 578 animals in the US that are considered to be threatened or endangered. President Obama's administration has added 51 to the official list. (How many of these do you think President Palin will serve at her first state dinner?)
----- Despite the often repeated claim that smiling takes fewer muscles than frowning, at least one plastic surgeon says that it's actually the other way around. Smiling may take less effort, however, because our smile muscles tend to be in better shape. If less effort is your goal, though, you should know that frozen, insincere smiles involve just two muscles and take the least amount of effort of all.
I looked forward to the day when I was all grown up and knew everything, too.
A good chunk of my childhood was spent being secretly afraid that I was going to be the first person in the history of the world to grow up without ever learning how to tell time or comb my hair.
I'm proud to say that after many years of effort, I've managed to master one of those two tasks.
The effort to learn everything else continues.
Here are a few of the things I've learned since posting my last update on this subject on Nov 21:
----- Some 50 films have been nominated for Best Picture in the last decade. According to Time magazine, nearly 60% of them were set in the historical past. More than 10% were set in Britain. (You know that chart of the brain someone made in which the number of neurons devoted to each body part are depicted proportionality so that tongues and lips and thumbs and genitalia are revealed to be where our interests primarily lie? I've often wished someone would do the same for pop culture, history, etc. The horrors of the Holocaust would undoubtedly be the size of our tongues while the horrors of the Hun invasions would be something akin to the dead zone of our backs. And tiny Britain would be as huge as our thumbs while all of Africa would probably amount to part of an earlobe, maybe. Got time? Please develop this further for me.)
----- After ceasing to be president in 1909, Theodore Roosevelt went on a year-long safari in Africa. He bagged 296 animals. (Roosevelt is known to this day as one of the Republican Party's biggest conservationists. Please hold your applause until after the next Great Extinction so as not to give any doomed species any undue hope.)
----- The premiere episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" drew 5 million viewers. The next episode drew only 3 million. (No word on how many people might tune in to see "Sarah Silverman's Alaska.")
----- Americans bought (and presumably used) 1.7 million coffins last year. That's down from 1.9 million ten years ago, but still seems like an awful lot of coffins to me. If you laid them all out, end to end, they'd form a line about 2000 miles long - and you'd probably be arrested for blocking traffic. (If you simply MUST block traffic, please do so in a somewhat less disturbing way. Thank you.)
----- The average cost of a traditional funeral is nearly $8000. That's roughly how much it costs to keep a cat or dog alive for 8 years.
----- 25% of US households lack a computer. That's some 28,000,000 homes without a single PC or Mac. (As tempting as it may be to make fun of the people in these households, I'll refrain. It isn't nice. And it's not really fun if they can't read what I'm saying about them.)
----- US businesses replace aproximately 40 million computers a year. About 75% of those computers being replaced are just 4 years old or younger. (I guess this means that if the Statue of Liberty had been a computer owned by GM or GE, she would probably would have been replaced by 1890.)
----- According to the latest research, there are about 300 sextillion stars in the universe. That's about how many cells are in all the human bodies on earth (50 trillion a body times 6 billion bodies). This not only proves there's a gOd - it proves that he wants each of our cells to have its own star. (My neurons are smart enough to have hired an agent, however, and are holding out for TWO stars each, plus a $100,000 signing bonus.)
----- "The Young and the Restless" is now the #1 soap opera on TV. It has some 5.15 million viewers. I've never, ever been one of them. (Since it's been on the air for nearly 38 years now, I suppose its first stars have been spun off into a series entitled "The Old and the Tired.")
----- Deer season began here in Ohio on Monday. I'm told that exactly 37,805 deer were shot dead on that one day. I didn't shoot any of them. (And despite what some people may think, I didn't talk any of them to death, either.)
----- There are an estimated 750,000 deer in Ohio. (Or at least there were before Monday.) There are 34 "Welcome to Ohio!" signs on the roads coming into Ohio from other states. If there had been only 30 such signs in 2010, would there now be 10% fewer deer? Explain.
----- When Ohio's new governor takes office in January, it will cost the Ohio Department of Transportation a total of $7500 to put his name up on these "Welcome to Ohio!" signs. Would a true fiscally conservative Republican just say, "Oh, that's ok - just leave the old name up"? Why or why not?
----- About 17,000 deer end up as roadkill in Ohio every year. State workers spend about 29,000 hours annually (at a cost of about $725,000) to remove the carcasses. How much time and money could we save if we outsourced this work to India?
----- The brain chemistry of Siberian hamsters is more like the brain chemistry of humans than the brain chemistry of mice is. (If you find it easier to pick up a Siberian hamster in a bar than a mouse, that might be why.)
----- It takes about 3 apples to make 1 cup of cider.
----- Nebraska is the only state in the United States with a unicameral legislature. It seems to get along just fine with just half the number of chambers of a standard legislature. How much money could all the other states save if they followed suit? (Why haven't I ever heard a single fiscally conservative Republican advocate this?)
----- There are about 13 million hotel and/or motel rooms on earth. Only 400,000 are allegedly in the "luxury" class.
----- There are supposedly 650 million adult Pacific salmon in the ocean at any one time. (This means that our hotels and motels could accommodate them all if they don't mind staying 50 to a room. And judging from some of the rooms I've stayed in, they don't.)
----- 90% of the food mammals eat goes to maintaining their core body temperature. (I guess this means that cold-blooded killers need to eat less than other people.)
----- The largest mammal ever was the rhino-like Indricotherium. It was about four times as large as today's elephant. (If it wasn't now extinct, how many do you think would end up as roadkill on Ohio's highways?)
----- There are 793 plants and 578 animals in the US that are considered to be threatened or endangered. President Obama's administration has added 51 to the official list. (How many of these do you think President Palin will serve at her first state dinner?)
----- Despite the often repeated claim that smiling takes fewer muscles than frowning, at least one plastic surgeon says that it's actually the other way around. Smiling may take less effort, however, because our smile muscles tend to be in better shape. If less effort is your goal, though, you should know that frozen, insincere smiles involve just two muscles and take the least amount of effort of all.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Variations On A Theme
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Where's The Rest Of Me?!
As autumn grows increasing cold and dark here in Ohio, people are doing whatever they need to do to avoid going insane.
Most seem to be eating more.
Judging from their behavior, many seem to be drinking more.
Me? I've taken to weighing myself before going to bed at night and then again when I get up.
I'm not sure what first prompted me to start doing this. I suppose the fact that I was full and the knowledge that drinking invariably gives me a headache had something to do with it. Throw in the fact that weighing myself costs me nothing and the fact that it gives me an excuse to parade around naked in front of my teddy bears and I suppose it was darn near inevitable.
I started Sunday night.
On Monday morning I discovered that I'd lost 0.8 pounds while I slept.
This was unexpected - and more than a little disconcerting. The average human brain, after all, weighs maybe 3 pounds. Could my body really have shed more than 25% of MY brain's weight while I slumbered? (Wait - did I do the math right there?) Could I have lost my appendix?? (I'm told those weigh a mere 1/6 of an ounce. Maybe I lost a dozen or two!)
I decided to search my bed very carefully before going any further.
Finding nothing unusual proved to be both a great relief and extremely troubling.
If I hadn't shed any body parts during the night, how had I lost 0.8 pounds?
Had I really exhaled and/or sweated away that much water? Unless I'd experienced one incredibly horrendous yet completely forgotten sneeze while I slept, that seemed the likeliest answer. But it still didn't seem very likely. A gallon of water weighs about 8 pounds. Had I really lost 1/10th of a gallon while just lying there in the cold, cold dark?
I decided to search my bed again.
Nothing.
Stymied, I decided to see what the next weigh-ins might reveal. Maybe it had just been a fluke.
As it turned out, it wasn't.
Between going to bed Monday night and waking up Tuesday morning, I'd lost another 0.6 pounds.
As tempted as I was to immediately call the police and report this fractionally missing person, I somehow managed to get a grip and tried to think things through.
After much cogitation, I realized that I'd worn a sleep mask for the first time ever that night in an attempt to block out all artificial light and get rid of the last bits of insomnia I've been suffering lately. It seems to have worked - I slept *very* well - but I found myself wondering if maybe that mask was also inadvertently responsible for my having lost only 0.6 pounds overnight instead of 0.8 pounds.
Had I unknowingly cried out 0.2 pounds of tears the night before?
Had 0.2 pounds of eye worms unknowingly exited my maskless head??
That way lay madness.
I stopped thinking altogether.
I awaited the results of another day.
Today.
And those results revealed that I'd somehow managed to lose 1.2 pounds last night despite wearing my mask again!
I quickly searched my bed again - in vain.
So I quickly searched my entire house. If part of my body was hiding anywhere, it's important to me that I be the one to find it - not the cable guy, not the plumber, not the lady I hope to hire someday to give my pet chicken private belly dance lessons.
Nothing.
Now, really.... Do you know how much 1.2 pounds is? When I get a pound of sliced turkey at the deli, I pretty much have to use both hands to put it into my cart. Ok, sure, maybe that's because I'm a "Safety First!" belt-and-suspenders kind of person, but still.... That pound of turkey will last me almost a week. How could my body be losing that much and more during a single night of non-running, non-walking, and non-hacking-away-at-itself-with-a-machete?
I don't know. I just don't know....
But I've been eying my scale with suspicion. I think it might be toying with me. It's a relatively new digital scale that I picked up over the summer. I'm not sure where it came from, exactly - or which of my other digital devices it might have taken a fancy to. Maybe it's been spending its nights thinking about how much easier it would be to connect with those other digital devices once it's driven me crazy and I've gone running off to live in the woods, eh?
I guess the future will tell. It usually does, being a real blabbermouth and all. In the meantime, I plan on eating a bit extra while I'm awake in hopes of reducing the odds of my waking up one morning without any weight left at all.
I suggest you do the same.
***********************************
TMI NOTE: Yes, I've weighed myself each morning *before* doing anything else. This morning - just out of curiosity - I also weighed myself *after* doing something else (i.e, pissing). That took me down another 0.4 pounds.
Being in no mood to get naked again at the moment, I can only guess at how much lighter I am now that my head has spewed out all these thoughts....
Most seem to be eating more.
Judging from their behavior, many seem to be drinking more.
Me? I've taken to weighing myself before going to bed at night and then again when I get up.
I'm not sure what first prompted me to start doing this. I suppose the fact that I was full and the knowledge that drinking invariably gives me a headache had something to do with it. Throw in the fact that weighing myself costs me nothing and the fact that it gives me an excuse to parade around naked in front of my teddy bears and I suppose it was darn near inevitable.
I started Sunday night.
On Monday morning I discovered that I'd lost 0.8 pounds while I slept.
This was unexpected - and more than a little disconcerting. The average human brain, after all, weighs maybe 3 pounds. Could my body really have shed more than 25% of MY brain's weight while I slumbered? (Wait - did I do the math right there?) Could I have lost my appendix?? (I'm told those weigh a mere 1/6 of an ounce. Maybe I lost a dozen or two!)
I decided to search my bed very carefully before going any further.
Finding nothing unusual proved to be both a great relief and extremely troubling.
If I hadn't shed any body parts during the night, how had I lost 0.8 pounds?
Had I really exhaled and/or sweated away that much water? Unless I'd experienced one incredibly horrendous yet completely forgotten sneeze while I slept, that seemed the likeliest answer. But it still didn't seem very likely. A gallon of water weighs about 8 pounds. Had I really lost 1/10th of a gallon while just lying there in the cold, cold dark?
I decided to search my bed again.
Nothing.
Stymied, I decided to see what the next weigh-ins might reveal. Maybe it had just been a fluke.
As it turned out, it wasn't.
Between going to bed Monday night and waking up Tuesday morning, I'd lost another 0.6 pounds.
As tempted as I was to immediately call the police and report this fractionally missing person, I somehow managed to get a grip and tried to think things through.
After much cogitation, I realized that I'd worn a sleep mask for the first time ever that night in an attempt to block out all artificial light and get rid of the last bits of insomnia I've been suffering lately. It seems to have worked - I slept *very* well - but I found myself wondering if maybe that mask was also inadvertently responsible for my having lost only 0.6 pounds overnight instead of 0.8 pounds.
Had I unknowingly cried out 0.2 pounds of tears the night before?
Had 0.2 pounds of eye worms unknowingly exited my maskless head??
That way lay madness.
I stopped thinking altogether.
I awaited the results of another day.
Today.
And those results revealed that I'd somehow managed to lose 1.2 pounds last night despite wearing my mask again!
I quickly searched my bed again - in vain.
So I quickly searched my entire house. If part of my body was hiding anywhere, it's important to me that I be the one to find it - not the cable guy, not the plumber, not the lady I hope to hire someday to give my pet chicken private belly dance lessons.
Nothing.
Now, really.... Do you know how much 1.2 pounds is? When I get a pound of sliced turkey at the deli, I pretty much have to use both hands to put it into my cart. Ok, sure, maybe that's because I'm a "Safety First!" belt-and-suspenders kind of person, but still.... That pound of turkey will last me almost a week. How could my body be losing that much and more during a single night of non-running, non-walking, and non-hacking-away-at-itself-with-a-machete?
I don't know. I just don't know....
But I've been eying my scale with suspicion. I think it might be toying with me. It's a relatively new digital scale that I picked up over the summer. I'm not sure where it came from, exactly - or which of my other digital devices it might have taken a fancy to. Maybe it's been spending its nights thinking about how much easier it would be to connect with those other digital devices once it's driven me crazy and I've gone running off to live in the woods, eh?
I guess the future will tell. It usually does, being a real blabbermouth and all. In the meantime, I plan on eating a bit extra while I'm awake in hopes of reducing the odds of my waking up one morning without any weight left at all.
I suggest you do the same.
***********************************
TMI NOTE: Yes, I've weighed myself each morning *before* doing anything else. This morning - just out of curiosity - I also weighed myself *after* doing something else (i.e, pissing). That took me down another 0.4 pounds.
Being in no mood to get naked again at the moment, I can only guess at how much lighter I am now that my head has spewed out all these thoughts....
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