Bad news - good news - bad news day...
That's yesterday I'm talking about. Today is going to be simply a good news day.
Shortly after I uploaded the entry yesterday, I heard Kim calling from the top of the stairs: "Doug, can you come up here a minute?"
When I got to the top of the stairs I saw Karen in the back yard, consoling a red-headed girl that I didn't recognize but who looked a lot like Lisa Rogers. This confused me a bunch. They were standing in the back yard and the girl was talking on the phone and she was absolutely hysterical.
Seems like she had wrecked her father's car on the street in back of our house, slammed into a utility pole going about 40. She appeared to be physically unhurt. There was a younger kid with her, about 15, who had some facial lacerations from hitting the windshield, but nothing major.
This girl was maybe 17, and terrified about what her dad was going to do to her. She was making up stories about how fast she was going and pleading with the kid to corroberate with her, but he was just shaking his head, either in amazement or disgust, I couldn't tell.
A little later, I watched as she tried to get her dad to buy the story... that she hadn't been going very fast, and that the steering had locked up. The female cop pointed out that there were eighty-foot skidmarks, and that the car, a jeep, had still been going pretty fast when the pole stopped it. The girl continued lying, digging the hole deeper and deeper. The younger kid, her boy-friends younger brother, had decided to walk home and was gone by the time her folks got there.
So that was the excitement for the morning.
A little later, I decided to mow the grass, and I realized something that I have been avoiding realizing: my legs are in worse shape, artery-wise, than they were before I had them reamed out. They were really hurting walking behind the mower at my regular pace. So I slowed down and they were pretty much all right...
My experience with having my coronaries reamed out has been pretty good...100% success rate. It seems that my iliacs/femorals did not remain open, though. Which means that I need to go get them done again, and probably get stents put in this time. The problem is... the lesions are too close to the bifurcation, and the successful placement of stents is not really likely. Which might mean that a surgical procedure is the best bet... and I don't really want to think about that.
Of course, the problem is just that... I don't want to think about these things. I've known in the back of my mind for probably two months that my legs weren't right, just from how they felt at work after a hard night. I have just avoided thinking about it, since if I didn't really know there was something wrong, I wouldn't have to worry about fixing it.
And yes... smoking does have something to do with it. It creates high blood pressure, which starts the whole cascade of changes that puts plaque on the artery walls, narrowing those arteries until they can't carry enough blood to supply the distal portions of whatever they are supplying blood to... legs in this case, heart muscle in the case of the coronaries.
I am, right now, smoking my next-to-the-last cigarette. The last one will follow shortly. I'll let you know...
And I have the feeling that, this time, I'm going to be a real bastard about it. I'm generally a really happy guy, but right now I'm not happy. With a lot of shit about me. I haven't lived my life very well, what with smoking and alcohol abuse, and other shit, like being really sedentary when I knew full well that I was hurting myself. So I don't really have the right to bitch about it.
Rights be damned, I'm gonna bitch about it anyway. However, to properly bitch about it, I need to find a scapegoat. Bitching about your own past actions is not proper form, y'know.
Society. That's it... society has fucked me all up. Society and the Big Tobacco Companies. And the Republicans. Yeah. Gotta get them in there, too. And the xians, too. They made me over-react! It's their fault!
Aw crap, I just can't do it. I'm just too used to taking personal responsibility for my life. It was me, nobody else. Just stupid old me.
The last cigarette is lit.
The last cigarette has been smoked.
My life is now different than it was three minutes ago. I do not have to look forward for the next opportunity to smoke. There will be no more opportunity... that's not the right word. I am no longer forcing myself to smoke.
And right now, I am going to clean up the area around the computer where I have been smoking. There are ashes strewn all over the place, lighters, matches, the ash tray, the trash can... they all need to be gone.
Later, the tale of the Casino...
09:06... this is going to be one of those constant-entry days. I just got back from the bank and Walgreens to pick up some pills for Karen... and I went wild with candy! Two hersheys with almonds. Two hersheys Special Dark. One (very) large package of Black Licorice... the only kind of licorice there is... anything else is just candy... and a 10-pack of Winter-Fresh gum. I am not, by nature, a gum-chewer, so this will be something different for me.
Damned reflexes reflexing against me. Reaching for a cigarette every time I get in the truck, every time I get out of the truck.
Some very nice, encouraging email. Thanx, buddies! You know I need that!
I should be out cleaning out the truck, but I wanted to write about the casino.
But first... I put up a non-smoking time clock at the head of the entry.
Now...
Anyhoo... the Casino. Harrah's has excellent food. We ate as soon as we got there; we pretty much sampled everything, and nothing that we had was not excellent. Jeez, I hate 2x-, don't u?
We both got $20.00 worth of quarters and set off to find two quarter machines next to one another. Soon we were feeding the quarters in. It took Karen about ten minutes to lose hers, while I ran mine for about 15 minutes. So, after a little consideration, we each decided to do another $20.00. The machines took bills of all denominations and they even take credit cards. How convenient...
Anyway, I ran my machine up to 200... $50.00. I decided that 300 was going to be my break-point... and then, after I hit 220, it was all downhill from there. Shortly, Karen and I had lost all we had taken with us, $80.00.
And you know what? It was fun, kinda. I don't know if it was eighty bucks worth of fun, but it wasn't as bad as I thought that it was gonna be.
It would have been more fun to win, though... came back with more than we took with us. Maybe next time.
And right now, 16:20... I'm going slightly crazy. But that's OK, I kinda expected it. No problem at all.
So... crazy it is. I can do that. Witness: beard is gone. Lacee's suggestion.
I did take a nap today... from about 11:30 until 14:30. Then I had to get up and go pick up Lacee, the babysitter had somewhere to be at 15:00.
Something is making me awfully sleepy. I think that it's time for another nap... and it's only 17:45! Maybe I will be able to turned back around for going to work tomorrow night... that would be nice.
Hmmmm.... sleeping is also a good way of not smoking. So far, since I've quit, I've had two three-hour naps.
Right now (22:52) I'm feeling shaky and just a little desperate. Actually, my hands are shaking. Too much caffeine and sugar, probably.
I think that I'll be able to stay up most of the night OK. I need some salt... something like sunflower seeds. Nah, that's probably a bad idea, I'll start retaining fluids then and feel worse.
I just need to calm down some. My heart rate is about 100 but regular right now.
OK... some better now, down to 60. a little mind control there.
It's strange, I'm used to having an irregular heartbeat... I kinda miss that extra thump! occasionally.
Well, since I will be doing this all night, I think I'll call it a day and start on tomorrow's entry!
IT'S A DAY!