Now Cut That Out!

I've had plenty of experience being the patient's patient husband: Quietly sitting beside the star attraction as she is repeatedly asked her name and birth date (to confirm the information on her wristband) and credit card info (to confirm that everybody's going to get paid).

Beloved has had --- ummmm --- several surgeries: three C-section deliveries (BuckEye, ActorBoy, and KayJay), a double mastectomy with subsequent breast reconstruction and clean-up, hernia repairs, and the absolute removal of all personal privacy issues. [I'm reminded of a hospital visit I made several years ago to the grandmother of a youth group member. She looked me in the eye and solemnly declared, "In 57 years of marriage, I never got undressed in front of my husband; but around here, people come in and take a look at anything they want to see."]

As I was saying, Beloved has had more than her share of surgeries and I've spent several hours of my life sitting nearby while she was being prepped for those surgeries. But even with all this experience under my belt, there are still new things to learn. For example, in conjunction with Beloved's knee surgery today, during the requisite 87 attempts to start an I.V., we were told that Beloved has "valvey veins." In fact, her veins are positively valvelicious in a valvtastic array of valvosity.

Immediately after the surgery, Dr. Golfpro took me into a broom closet to show me some pictures of the inside of Beloved's knee --- suitable for framing --- and explained what all he did. He jotted down the names of the unrecognizable shapes in the pictures, but I'll have to take them to a pharmacist for translation. I'm pretty sure he didn't work on Beloved's bimaternal armistice.

Here we see the arthroscopic picture of Beloved's autumnal manacle prior to scandalosis.

All in all, and in all true truth, being a patient's patient partner is a piece of pound cake compared to being the actual ---you know --- patient. So I will dutifully and gratefully and lovingly provide transportation, change bandages, cook dinner, and sign insurance forms while I pray that this is the last time we will need to have front-row seats at a valv-o-rama.

I Ain't Got Time to Feed

Saturday evening, I was the emcee at a silent auction and fundraising banquet for the benefit of Amnion Pregnancy Center. It's a great organization that focuses not on protesting abortion, but on providing help for the young men and women who find themselves in the unenviable situation of an unplanned pregnancy.

None of which is the point of this post.

What I am led to inform you about is the crackerjack staff at the Bloomington Sheraton banquet facility. There seems to have been a competition among the staff regarding who could be most influential in getting everybody home as soon as possible.

Let's begin with the Napkin Nazi. This blond-haired, blue-eyed wonder of efficiency waited all of 5.78 seconds after I sat down before taking the napkin that had been decoratively stuffed in my coffee cup and placing it in my lap. You heard me. Placing it. In. My lap.

Next was the Salad Dressing Drill Sargent. Forget that this was a banquet for a Christian organization that wanted to give a corporate prayer of thanks before eating. Forget that not everyone had been seated yet. As soon as my napkin had found its rightful lodging place, the SDDS decided I was the most pliable person of the ten folks populating my table and offered me the distinct privilege of being the first guest to use the salad dressing boat and then send it careening around our small circle of friends. This offer came in the form of said Drill Sargent grabbing the dressing boat and shoving it into my hands: "Here...use this!"

The Table-Clearing Track Star made several appearances throughout the meal, and made the phrase "Are you done with that?" second-in-popularity only to "Can you hear me now?" I made the mistake of dabbing my mouth with my napkin and could only whimper as I watched my half-eaten dinner roll speed away toward the kitchen.

I am still bruised from when my dessert was rammed into my mouth by a high-ranking officer of the Gitterdone Gestapo.

All in all, the fundraising efforts of the evening were fairly successful. As a bonus, I heard that a few people were even allowed to chew their food before swallowing.

"I, ActorBoy, take thee, SWAWOSH..."

The recent nuptials of our son (ActorBoy) and She Who Absconded With Our Son’s Heart (SWAWOSH), were so beautiful and fun and cold (they were in Canada, eh?) that I’ve been finding it hard to come up with a comic slant with which to report on it all. (I’ve also been finding it hard to come up with any spare time in which to report on it all, but that’s a function of being immersed in the current Giant Step Theatre production from the moment we arrived back in the U. S. of A.)

The funniest part of the whole soiree doesn’t have to be augmented by my almosting of the truth. It was laugh-inducing all on its own:

Knowing that both members of the newly-married couple are actors by trade and clowns by genetics, we shouldn’t have been surprised when the traditional clinking-of-the-glasses-to-induce-the-touching-of-lips-as-an-expression-of-affection-greeting-or-amorousness led to increasingly interesting displays of creativity:
1. A run-of-the-mill kiss.
2. A longer-than-normal kiss.
3. The bride and groom kissed the best man and maid of honor.
4. The entire bridal party kissed each other.
5. The bride and groom started kissing with sincerity and gradually sank to the floor behind the head table. When they came up for air, they were both fixing their hair and adjusting clothing.
6. ActorBoy took a sip of water and kissed SWAWOSH, who promptly spit a mouthful of water into her glass.

I’ve never been more proud.

Geronimo!

To celebrate Beloved's 50th birthday in September and 10th anniversary of giving breast cancer a smack-down in December, several friends and I got together and gave her a gift certificate for a tandem skydive. So there's no misunderstanding, let me explain that a tandem skydive does not...and I repeat...does NOT involve a bicycle-built-for-two.

What it does involve is a second mortgage on your house and the signing away of all rights and privileges in case of accidental death or dismemberment. This total lack of legal recourse in the event of a disaster was explained to us in a video by the owner of the skydiving establishment, Chutes and Bladders: Fill One or Empty the Other, who looks like he has either been locked in someone's attic for 30 years, or has been playing bass with ZZ Top for that long. Seriously, the man wouldn't need a parachute...he could just hold his beard over his head and float gently to the ground.

After taking care of the legalities, Beloved was shoe-horned into a nylon jumpsuit formerly worn by a resident of the county jail and given a full five minutes of thorough training before she was whisked away to The Spirit of St. Louis. Okay...the plane wasn't quite that old, but let's just say that as I sat in the co-pilot's seat, looking at the grass landing strip through the hole in the floor and getting dizzy from inhaling fumes, I wasn't exactly overflowing with confidence. It also didn't help that there was a piece of duct tape holding the instrument panel in place and displaying the hand-written message, "THIS END UP."

Once airborne, Beloved sat in the lap of her jump master/partner, Byron, as he engaged the series of buckles, straps, snaps, and voodoo enchantments that would hold the two of them together as they plummeted toward Earth from 8,000 feet up. The next thing I knew, it was the pilot yelling, "Go! Go! Go!" and Beloved and Byron doing a strange ritualistic penguin waddle to the open side hatch of The Flying Deathtrap, and ... she was gone.

At exactly that moment, the pilot must have thought that holding the broken latch of my door closed was getting boring for me, because he put the plane into a dive that would make Greg Louganus die of jealousy. I, on the other hand, almost died of asphyxiation as my lower intestine suddenly blocked my air passage. We actually beat Beloved to the ground; sliding into our spot at the end of the landing strip like Pete Rose diving into home plate.

I crawled out of the plane, changed my pants, and walked back to the landing spot, being grateful that Beloved had lived through the jump and now could go back to behaving like a 50-year-old woman. Ha-ha, silly boy...the first words out of her mouth after catching her breath were, "Now I know what my kids felt like when they said, 'Again, Mommy! Again!'"

The Holy #$@%! Bible

Two weeks ago, I began a Bible-reading schedule that will take me through the Old Testament history books and every word of the New Testament in a year. (Feel free to join me. Check it out at http://www.usefulbreath.com/.) Now, I'm no stranger to reading the Bible, but I'm finding it very...um...interesting...to revisit the stories in Genesis about Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, Abbot & Costello...

Don't get me wrong, I sincerely believe every word of the Bible is true...but why God chose to make permanent the stories of some of these guys is beyond me.

Take Lot.

Please.

Lot was Abraham's nephew. They wandered around Palestine together until their families, flocks, and fortunes got too big for one area of land to support them. So, Abraham, being the kind, generous, naive guy he was, gave Lot first dibs on where he wanted to live: Let's part company. If you go to the left, I'll go to the right; if you go to the right, I'll go to the left. (Genesis 13:9)

And what does Lot do? He looks around, sees that the plain of Jordan is green and healthy, and says, "Yeah...I'll be takin' me some o' DAT!"

That's character flaw number one.

Number two: Lot is living in Sodom and is visited by two men--who are really angels--and who Lot apparently recognizes as being more than normal men. When he welcomes them into his house all the men of the city surround the house and say...you're never going to believe this, and you'll think I'm being needlessly crude, so let me just quote: Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them. (Genesis 19:5)

To Lot's credit, he refuses to honor the request for the gang rape of his visitors, but guess what he suggests to the mob instead? Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like to them. (Genesis 19:8) Meanwhile, Lottina and Lotette are standing behind the door thinking, "Thanks a lot, Dad! Why not tie raw meat to our faces and throw us to a pack of wolves while you're at it?"

Even though Lot's great plan didn't pan out, damage seems to have been done anyway. Sometime later, after Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed and the whole thing about the establishment of Mrs. Lot's Supernatural Salt Emporium (Genesis 19:26), Lot and his daughters were living by themselves in a cave. The daughters gave up on the idea of ever finding men to marry them and take them away from their cozy little cavern, so they decided to get their father drunk and have sex with him so they could raise families of their own. The plan worked, and the sons born as a result started two nations that were thorns in Israel's side for hundreds of years.

You couldn't make this stuff up. You also couldn't make a movie about it without it being R-rated. Which is not the biggest reason I think it's true, but it points in that direction.

The hills are alive...

Since May, 2008, when I first wrote about the phenomenon of earworms...those wicked, heartless, snippets of music that go swimming through your brain uninvited...I've been keeping track of what song with which my brain is occupied upon a morning's return to consciousness. Translation: I've kept a list of the earworms I've woken up to over the last four months. If you can make any sense out of it, you're a better man than I am, Jim Lange.

5/16 - Father & Son (Cat Stevens)
5/19 - Driving Along (Nilsson)
5/20 - Up in the Morning (Lost Dogs)
5/21 - Candida (Tony Orlando & Dawn)
5/23 - We've Only Just Begun (Carpenters)
5/27 - Mandy (Barry Manilow)
5/30 - We're All in This Together (Disney's High School Musical)
6/2 - Never My Love (specifically, the 5th Dimension version, not the original, and highly superior, Association recording)
6/3 - You Can Have Anything (Giant Step Theatre's Aladdin's Lamp)
6/6 - Stiff and Bitter Wind (Eric Peltoniemi)
6/8 - Fill My Cup Lord (worship song)
6/10 - John Brown's Body Lies A-moulderin' in the Grave
6/11 - Up On the Roof (James Taylor's rendition)
6/13 - Fool's Wisdom (Malcolm & Alwyn)
6/14 - Anything Goes
6/15 - Since I Opened Up the Door (Love Song, one of the 1st "Jesus music" bands of the early 70's)
6/18 - I Feel Pretty (West Side Story)
6/19 - Na-Na-Na-Na, Hey-Hey, Goodbye
6/24 - A Whole New World (Disney's Aladdin)
6/26 - Oh Very Young (Cat Stevens)
7/24 - Fool's Wisdom (Malcolm & Alwyn)
7/27 - Get Me to the Church on Time (My Fair Lady)
8/1 - I Can Feel Your Presence (Casting Crowns...or Mercy Me...can anyone tell them apart?)
8/4 - Savior, He Can Move a Mountain (worship song)
8/5 - I Can't Tell You Why (Eagles)
8/8 - New Kid in Town (Eagles)
8/10 - Shiloh (Neil Diamond)
8/11 -Savior, He Can Move a Mountain (worship song...Two Mondays in a row...hmmmm)
8/12 - God Bless the Broken Road
8/15 - Gotta Get a Message to You (Bee Gees)
8/21 - He is Lord (worship song)
8/26 - Prairie Sun (Sons of the Pioneers)
9/3 - The Beauty of the Lord (worship song)
9/5 - Wonderful, Merciful Savior (worship song)
9/12 - How Can I Keep from Singing? (Chris Tomlin)
9/16 - Come, Thou Fount (worship song)
9/17 - Your Name (worship song)
9/19 - Fly Me to the Moon (Frank Sinatra)
9/20 - I Just Wanna Stop (Gino Vanelli)

The hills are alive...and it's quite annoying...

Broadband Services

The headline from The Wall Street Journal reads: FOR U.S. CONSUMERS, BROADBAND SERVICE IS SLOW AND EXPENSIVE

Apparently, there are certain churches out there in the vast crazy-quilt we like to call Today's Progressive American Religious Scene that are using all-girl music groups to lead their worship services. Some traditional congregations are still doing the whole "organ" thing. Others have gone to a piano. Still others utilize a kind of rock-pop combo of drums, bass, guitar -- maybe a keyboard or a saxophone, with someone on the side playing harmonica or flute or cowbell.

Well, now the big thing, it seems … the novelty attraction … is to have your worship services led by bands whose members are all female. It's called a broad-band service. You know, the Catholic Church used to have what they called a folk mass or a youth homily? Well, this is called a Broad-band Service.

I've got no problem with this, but it seems that some of the church-going public has been complaining. According to this Wall Street Journal piece, these girl-led services aren't very energetic. In fact, they lean a bit toward the lethargic end of the scale. They just aren't peppy enough for a lot of folks' tastes. Here, read it again: FOR U.S. CONSUMERS, BROADBAND SERVICE IS SLOW AND EXPENSIVE.

Slow -- and expensive. Apparently, they expect you to put more in the offering at these things, too. Or maybe there's now a cover charge for attending the female-led celebrations, I don't know. That seems a bit over-the-top, if you ask me.

You want a broad band to lead your worship? You want only females up front during your song service? Fine. Fine-fine-fine. But pay for it through the regular offerings! Church services have become too much of a spectator sport the way it is. Don't start charging admission! It's not a concert; it's a congregation, for cryin' out loud!