blessed beyond measure

When I was a teenager, our family went on what I think was a lower eastern seaboard road trip. Mom liked to plan, Dad liked to drive, it's just what we did. It was in Georgia, I believe, that we parked and walked out on a beautiful white sandy flat beach, beach chairs and picnic lunch in hand, to just enjoy the day. We enjoyed the ocean a while, chased a multitude of seagulls, and probably were mentally formulating some sandcastle blueprints for after we ate. Partway through our meal, a seagull swooped down and snatched Dad's sandwich right out of his hand. The whole thing. It was shocking and hilarious all at once, and obviously has made its way through the decades as a great story to tell. But poor Dad. Had the lunch rug pulled right out from under him. Not life altering at all, but come on. That was his sandwich! That's kind of what this year has been like for us so far. Just living and breathing, working and doing, bam! Over and over and over again. Not li...

We will call the last three weeks surreal, because that seems to be the only word that can somewhat-neatly package this strange detour we find ourselves on. And out of surreal must come random. So my apologies ahead of time for the utter stream-of-consciousness to follow. It's all I know right now. Today marks two weeks since my gallbladder was slurped through my belly button, and I'm healing nicely. The only pain is usually at the end of a busy day when I've probably overdone it, but where is that line exactly? You don't really know until after you've crossed it. Pain meds are a thing of the past, and after coming home from the hospital, I only took the good stuff before going to sleep the first few nights. Ice packs have made all the difference in the world. In theory, I no longer have to worry about what I eat, because there's no angry organ in there to keep me up all night moaning in the fetal position. But I'm still a little scared. Why? I ...

It was a short, intense, indescribably painful sequence of events that had me in the ambulance on Wednesday morning, ER through the day, then a very nice third-floor room by that evening. Sparing you the projectile, moany groany details, let's just cut to the part where I got some very necessary surgery done sooner than expected and am recovering well at this moment. Spending fifty hours in a hospital, during some of which I was doped up on some pretty high-profile stuff, made my mind go a thousand directions. Here are the ones I remember. ER sounds Beeping, shuffling, rolling, blood pressure cuff doing its thing, chatter outside the curtain that you can't really make out. It was a surprisingly soothing combo, as easy to sleep to as the background mumble of a baseball game. If I was more motivated, I'd invent a white noise machine with an ER setting for sure. Nurses Nurses could be paid Lebron James' salary and it still wouldn't be enough. Those folks, at ...