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Ask Dr. Babooner

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We are ALL Dr. Babooner

Dear Dr. Babooner,

I’m so glad that Thanksgiving and Black Friday are over with.

Required gratitude and culturally enforced consumerism annoy me, and after enduring the build-up to those two days I was hoping my life would return to the predictable, mundane slog I love so well.

But I just found out that today is Small Business Saturday where I’m supposed to spend money at mom-and-pop stores, and the week will begin with Cyber Monday when I’m told I have to buy things online.

Suddenly I’m faced with four days where my actions have already been decreed by outside forces, with the only opportunity for independence coming on Sunday, a day which traditionally provides no relief at all in the freedom-of-thought department.

After all that, I’m expected to go out and get a Christmas tree, put up lights and decorate the house with cherubs, elves, holly, and Santas, attend parties, go to concerts and shows, and be of good cheer until New Years Eve when I’m told I should drink too much and start 2015 feeling exhausted and sick.

But Dr. Babooner, I feel exhausted and sick already!

Can’t I just skip the whole month of December and jump ahead to January 1? So much time and trouble would be saved, and it would make the winter seem shorter too!

Hopefully,
Time Shifter

I told Time Shifter that all people yearn for freedom but they also long for community, and sometimes the two don’t sit well together. Aside from the fact that jumping ahead one month in time is not physically possible, December-haters must think of it as something to be endured so they can enjoy the freedom of January, where nobody wants to do anything at all.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner? 

86 thoughts on “Ask Dr. Babooner”

  1. Good morning. I hope there will be a bunch of good suggestions to help Time Shifter make it through December. Time Shifter would like to skip December and so would I. I am not good at doing Christmas shopping and preparing for Christmas celebrations is not my favorite thing. I will do my duty by making an effort to do the necessary shopping and help with other holiday things.

    I think you should also do your best to participate in the holiday activities, Time Shifter. Also, try not to be to grumpy. Nobody likes a person who is grumpy during the holidays. I’m going to try keep myself from being to grumpy.

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  3. I will visit the local Ace Hardware store today to get daughter an electric kettle for her dorm room. Her roommate moved out, taking the microwave, so she needs a kettle for tea. She doesn’t want a microwave. I like to support the Ace store as they stock really nice kitchen ware (Le Creuset and such) and that means I don’t have to drive to Fargo for sturdy and/or esoteric kitchen gear. The owner went to high school with my son, and his mother was an OB nurse who helped deliver daughter.

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  4. Time shifting? I think I’d go back to my younger days and do some things over. Not that I have a lot of regrets – there are just some things that I’d like to do over. I’m grateful for those experiences, though. I wouldn’t be who I am without them.

    Today is my Wednesday before Thanksgiving because I worked Wednesday through Friday this week. I cooked a huge, traditional Thanksgiving meal for my six guys. They loved it. When I put a third plate of food in front of one of them (who loves to eat), he really just beamed at me and thanked me in sign language. I’m grateful today for his smile.

    Today I’ll roast the turkey and make several side dishes for my family. They’re coming here tomorrow. I’m grateful for my mom and my brothers and their families. I’m grateful that we have dogs and that we really, really love them.

    I’m still grateful for all of you too. I know I’m not here as much as I once was. I still hope to change all that. Sometimes I just need a little more time. Sometimes I’m just too darn tired. Thank you for being here. You’re still a voice of humor and sanity for me and I really it. I’m very grateful to be a small part of this group.

    Gotta go roast a turkey. Have a grateful day.

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      1. Me, too, Krista. Having a personal forum for a few lines or a long story means the world to me, especially given that posting opinions on the Strib countless times each day has lost its luster.

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  5. Time Shifter needs to be told that just because a day is called Black Friday or Cyber Monday doesn’t mean you have to do what is called for! I might participate in Small Business Saturday, but not on Saturday which is already full. Where’s yer fightin’ spirit, TS? – be a rebel!

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  6. Now is the winter of money all spent
    Made more inglorious by the lords of pork;
    And all the stores found with a mouse
    In the deep bosom of the ether buried.
    Now are the crows bound with victorious wreaths;
    Our bruised arms hung with bags of mammon
    Our inner alarums dispel merry greetings,
    Our dreadful marches to find spurious treasures.

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  7. OT, sort of, but maybe not. Yesterday i received the Sanford Hospice bulletin that contained all the memorial gifts that had been given this autumn, and there were the names of numerous baboons who so kindly gave a memorial to my parents. Thanks again, everyone.

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  8. Also OT: One of my tactics for avoiding “post-holiday let-down” is to schedule a couple of fun things in January… to that end, I wouldn’t be broken-hearted if our BBC (baboon book club for the uninitiated) took a month deferral, and happened in January. On the other hand, I may be the only one who feels this way – other thoughts, baboons?

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    3. a non book or a quickie book of your choice could be added to the one at jacques. you place with a new years read by anne lamott would be good and heart warming

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    4. Hey all Blevins folk – I will bow to group pressure but personally I would love to spend a nice afternoon chatting with my baboon buddies in the midst of the holiday season.

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  9. O/T – After having three of my attempts yesterday vanish, l finally succeeded in having one post just now, but it occurs to me that baboons probably return to the previous day’s fun and l just couldn’t stand the idea that my Xmas story might escape notice. So, l’m gonna post it here:

    The only drama of each Xmas holiday for me is doing all my shopping in one day at the mall in my Ms. Santa costume. Little kids rush me to say what they want. Parents beg for pictures. For me, this just provides an excuse for getting attention and showing all those old farts how to inject joy into shopping.

    We had 50 Xmases in the cottage until the late 90s, at which point my daughter, Mary, took over hosting. l don’t decorate and barely cook, so it was a relief for me. She has five kids, so not hauling all of them, along with gifts and food, made sense.

    When Mary takes over, she REALLY takes over. The first Xmas there she decided that everyone should make home made gifts. That was tough. The second Xmas, we were to buy gag gifts based on her chosen theme for the day. This girl’s Martha Stewart’s clone times two! She’d mail each of us a clever hand made item portraying the theme. Once, she mailed crystal clear tree ornaments with colorful dots and a splash of glitter. We were all to bring gifts based on polka dots. Worse, the gift had to be gender neutral because she made us play the “steal my gift” game!

    The next Xmas, we just drew names out of a hat for one other adult, while all of the kids received presents from everyone. This made me pout inside because l’ve been accustomed to mounds of gifts my whole life until mom and dad were gone. One gift?? Only one gift??? Being the so-called matriarch, shouldn’t my three kids at least go in together to honor the oldest family member? l’ll confess that this hurt my feelings every year.

    We’re now at a place where all five of her kids have jobs and four of them own cars, so it occurred to me that they should damn well join the one-gift-only club. When l brought this up with Mary on T-Day, she said, “Why don’t we just skip gift giving from now on?II”

    Excuse me?! Now my one gift is looking more compelling than no gift at all. l guess that l’ve never quite gotten over the incredible abundance of being over-gifted all those years by my parents. l really miss the way it was.

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      1. Sorry, but “nutcase” means a whole other thing to a therapist! l see her as a perfectionist, an over-achiever, and, unfortunately, a person who’s never felt like she’s good enough unless she’s giving out far too much to everyone around her. At 50, l can’t help but worry that her lifestyle will come crashing down on her. All it’d take is being kicked by one of her 93 horses and breaking a leg. Or having one of her brood in a bad accident. Or completely going bankrupt (she’s been living on that edge for many years). Mary does more in one day than most of us could do in one week. She’s my polar opposite. l do less in one week than most do in one day. Now that she’s in nursing school full time while still running the ranch, l worry more than ever.

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  11. Today I am a seller. (note this tim). Three years ago I listed some items for sale on Craig’s List and got not one bite. Three weeks ago I listed three carving items that I can no longer use with my bad hands. Today I sold the last of the three. So Craig’s List caught on in Mankato. Good. Today I man paid with a $100 bill. I have never before seen a new one. Quite complex. A work of art. Now I have $ to help out in Washington.

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  12. OT Liam update: He is living through an amazing breakthrough on language. Spelling and writing and reading are suddenly making sense. His little brain explodes over and over with the thrill of this. He has inexhaustible energy for attacking the grand mystery of language. (Is this typical, experts? I’ve never witnessed it in such pure energy before.)

    Yesterday we took him to a three-hour Christmas concert. He was anxious about the noise levels. His mother had him bring his warm earmuffs, the ones with fuzzy foxes over his ears, suggesting that they would filter out some of the noise.

    “Earmuffs?” asked Liam as we drove to the concert. “Earmuffs? Or is it earmugs?” Everyone told him the word was earmuffs. “Earmuffs, not earmugs? So it is earmuffs with an F, not earmugs with a G?”

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    2. l fell in love with this little boy within 10 minutes of meeting him. Really. While there, l bought him a big floppy stuffed dog – he loved it. When l was about to leave, l asked him if he’d miss me. To my surprise, he said, “No l won’t”. Stunned, l asked him “Why not?”. He said, “Because God is everywhere, so when you’re not here you’re here anyway”. My heart has been won by this 4-year old.

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  13. Nice. Is it typical? One of the common traits of giftedness is sudden leaps of understanding, especially in language. Seeing language as well as hearing it is a leap all kids have to make which is not well understood, which is to say how reading develops in the brain is a mystery. The joy of the discovery and the feeling of power from it is common in gifted kids. Also, gifted kids are typically very metacognitive, which means they know how their brain works, how they learn, can tell you what is going on in their brain. Now watch him play with it, joke with it, pull and push it, like manipulate sentence structures.

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    2. It was touching to see Liam at his first concert. When he saw the big concert hall and heard how loud the music was, he panicked and wanted to flee. My daughter was patient with him. She managed to calm him. Soon he was back in his seat, singing with the tunes, dancing in the aisles and laughing at the jokes.

      One song involved an ancient tuba that blatted out the lowest tones I ever heard from an instrument. It was weird and would have been annoying if the musician had not limited the tuba to one tune, a merry and fast Christmas carol that was howling funny when played that way.

      Band members stood with the audience after the concert while people were milling about, going to their cars. Liam approached the guy who had played the tuba. Liam introduced himself by name, then said, “It is a good thing to play a musical instrument.” The tuba guy smiled but seemed to doubt Liam really meant to compliment his playing. “Do you remember,” he asked, “what instruments I played?”

      Liam, with no hesitation, stuck out his tongue and formed his mouth into an “O” around it, then blew out a deep honking sound that was an exact copy of the tuba’s sound. Everyone about collapsed laughing.

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  15. I like December well enough but I really hate present buying. Homemade is best but it’s hard to create things that techie thirtyish men would appreciate. (I’m not a knitter; that might be acceptible)

    This will be the first Christmas without Son#1 as he will either be taking care of a baby or wondering when the heck he will be born (due 12/17). I have been working on a quilt which I hope I’ll finish by the time I visit (sometime in January). It has put me off Christmas presents even more. I’ve thought about suggesting we just not exchange and I know my sister would go along but, like CB (did), my kids and I have received presents all our lives.
    The last few years, my real motivation for giving several gifts to each person has been to have Christmas morning last as long as possible. Without presents, who knows if the “kids” would just retreat to their electronics. With must son#2, my sister and me, it won’t last long no matter how you slice it. So we’ll see.

    I won’t be visiting grandson#1 until January for a couple of reasons. First, DIL and son#1 have said they don’t want visitors right away (I respect that). Second, I’ve decided that, as the PATERNAL grandmother, I am not high in the pecking order. So her parents have first dibs on visiting. When I said I’d be visiting in January, my DIL said, “Wouldn’t you want to wait a while until the baby’s cuter?”
    I guess she can’t understand a grandparent’s desire to see him as soon as allowed AND to see him again when he’s “cuter”. What I really want to see is my son holding his son.

    More time to work on the quilt…

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    1. ive seen a lot of ugly babies that people coo over endlessly. there is a cute one every now and then but usually they look like winston churchill and the major accomplishment is focusing on the thing 6 inches in front of them. a month or two isnt gonna help much.

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      1. My dad used to call all infants “Slugs on a lettuce leaf”. There was a 4-year old who asked his dad where babies come from. ln a check out lane at Target. His dad, caught by surprise, said, “Well, the stork brings them”. The boy then exclaimed, “Then who fucked the stork” 🙂

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    3. You are right, of course Lisa, to wait until your grandson’s parents welcome a visit. But I cannot understand that notion of waiting until the baby passes some level of cuteness. Somebody doesn’t understand how a grandparent loves a grandson. Someone seems to think this love must be earned. In fact–cute or not, clever or not–a grandparent loves these little guys totally and in a sort of spontaneous gush like an oil well coming in. You love, love, love them because they are there.

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        2. I think that’s very bad advice, tim. I don’t think parents have the right to ignore the expressed wishes of their adult children and their spouses. It doesn’t lead to harmonious and good relationships. Lisa’s d-i-l may very well be iterating not only her own wishes but those of her husband as well. I’m afraid that many conflicts between d-i-ls and s-i-ls with their respective in-laws are the result of the older adults who don’t respect their adult children’s boundaries or wishes.

          Lisa, I think you’re doing the right thing by respecting the young parents’ wishes. This isn’t the time to introduce conflict into their relationship. I think it’s unfortunate that your d-i-l used the excuse of the cuteness of the baby as a reason for deferring your visit. If she had simply stated that she feels overwhelmed and perhaps a little anxious, and would like a little time to bond with her baby without having to worry about visitors, I think it would have been easier to accept. But I’d give her the benefit of the doubt.

          Having once had a m-i-l who disliked me from before she ever laid eyes on me, and who did everything in her power to create conflict in our marriage, and routine ignored our expressed wishes, I fully understand that there are two sides to the in-law equation. I also know that the older in-laws, simply by virtue of age, aren’t always wise.

          Now I’ll get off my soapbox.

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  16. if all you can do is fast forward you are in trouble. the future is not all its cracked up to be. remember time machine where yvette mimmoux is stupid and the books have gone untouched for 100 years and turn to dust as they are touched? go backwards and relive a pleasant time and do it correctly ala groundhog day. it can be liberating to know that the traditions that apply to the masses neednt apply to you. what are the consequences you might ask if you fail to comply? thats such a good question it deserves a moment of contemplation. home made gifts are cool but the need to get it done for the holiday is over rated. more noted are handmade gifts at other times of the year. there was a company back in the old days who instead of giving one more bottle of booze to the buyers at christmas to stack up next to the others. (i had one buy with a table set up to leave gifts on because he was going to be goen and didnt want to miss his haul. there were 30 bottles on the table at 3 in the afternoon.) this company gave a 5 lb box of pistachios on 6/25 every year. 6 months off the norm. what a great idea.
    my uncle used to make stupid hand made generic gifts. wooden pens form sets sold at the wood workers shop. 3 legged stool again form the wood workers shop. then he stopped after realy ugly candle holders. it was so obvious it was being done as an obligation rather than an act of love that it made a statement of how not to do it.

    if you skip a month and then get bumped forward to an area in time when you dont like it and get bumped up again it may not work well.to go back and work your way up is my suggestion. advancment through readdressing is less open to the unenduarble schitzophrenia of the possibleities in the furture. granted january is only a short hop but what the heck feb march and april are no ones favorites lets do may june and then on to next may and june. i do like may and june dont you?
    tutt tutt could be trouble.

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  17. December is time for me to take a couple of weeks off and stay at home to bake, sleep, and regroup. Contrary to the popular thought of holidays being a time of mental health crisis, it is January, in my experience, when clients need more support. By that time, either family has driven everyone nuts or the lack of family has got to people and increased the sense of aloneness.

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  18. Renee, it is interesting to see how different professions have different annual calendars. Fishermen arrange their work lives according to the patterns of fish movements. Farmers arrange their work lives around planting and harvesting. Now you tell us therapists arrange their lives around holiday seasons because holidays drive us crazy with either too many or too few human contacts. I didn’t know.

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  19. As a child therapist, the busiest times for me are after parent-teacher conferences, right after school starts in the autumn, or right after school lets out in the summer.

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    2. If my daughter still lived out there, you would have meet Mr. Tuxedo by now.
      tim, children need therapists not because of the conference but because of what parents learn at conferences. Mr. Tuxedo went to a therapist after his first grade conference through the summer. After the second grade conference he went back for a few weeks. The teacher told his parents things which re-enforced what they knew about him. The therapy was very important for him, for one thing it taught him that people have problems with which they need help and that taking help is a good thing.

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      1. Teachers get to know kids in ways parents might not be able to do. They see them mixing in with others and tackling various kinds of challenges. My grandson is one kind of kid at home and another kind of kid at school. My daughter relies on teachers to tell her this.

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      2. i guess it hadnt dawned on mwe thwat the parents werent aware until conferences.
        all of mine have been to therapy, family for all individual for some. i am a believer. it just surprises me that the conferences were the bearer of news rather than confirmation.
        i enjouyed my time with my shrink,
        i wore her out. she awas a wonderful littel italian canadian from my favorite part of alberta. she was kind of susan lucci like in that she was a timeless beauty and then one day her eye went to hell then her stomach then her nerve with her stomach growling and making all sorts of funny noises that i would try to overlook but i imagine the patients other than me who were there to have excahnges that werent trying to be squeezed in between stomach moans and drones were a little discombobulated.i probubally should go back but i am not sure i have the patience to break another one in right now. when i start explaining how i want to be healed they roll their eyes and throw up their hands. i go home and perscribe my own behavior modifacation ideas.
        its been a while maybe its time again.

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    3. A story for Steve as well: 30 years ago a group of junior and senior girls held their own Bible study and talk session in my classroom over lunch but I had to be there by school rules. (By the way, this is not a violation of the first amendment.) One day they read and talked about the ten-talent man in a parable. They talked about their talents. The other girls named one girl, I will say Anna, the ten-talent person. They kept joking about it, in some amount of envy I am sure. After the others left Anna stayed in my room and cried and cried about her ten talents (and she could do almost anything well). What was she supposed to do, which talent to pick? What did God want her to do with all her talents? (this was before I was a pastor) She was afraid she might bury talents. It hurt that her friends were envious. People thought it was all just easy. She had been given so much, so many opportunities and so many people had so little. (That may sound odd to you but very talented people often struggle with this, Christians or not.) I did my Karl Rodgers. Then when she got control of herself, I said that I wanted to call her father (a doctor) to see if he knew a good therapist. She agreed.
      I know she did go to a therapist but she never talked to me about it. Her parents thanked me for the call.
      This story sounds odd to many people. But I could tell similar stories.
      Today she is very successful and I well-balanced.

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      1. Thanks, Clyde. It is one of life’s surprising lessons that the people who are most envied are often troubled in ways that don’t show to others. It is dangerous to assume life is “easy” for anyone.

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  20. Morning all. Never got online yesterday as Nonny and I had a busy day. We had coffee and pastry at SunStreet and then went to a Small Business sale that I had been anticipating. Then we spent the rest of the day baking cookies and watching holiday movies.

    Like Linda, I adore December. I think I’ve talked enough on this forum (in this forum?) about why.

    Here’s my advice of the day. Let go of what we are told by Miss Manners about what is right. If it saves you time to print out your card labels, then print them. If you don’t like shopping, then do gift cards. Almost any place sells gift cards these days, so you can make it personal and then spend a little more time on the wrapping. If you don’t like holiday parties, then don’t go. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I’m overbooked on Saturday” always works, especially a year like this one, in which there are fewer weekends. If you are starting out a sentence with “I should…” re-think it.

    Gotta get moving… I can hear Nonny downstairs already. Tree goes up today and we have a couple more kinds of cookies of make.

    HAPPY NOVEMBER 30 TO ALL MY BABOON PALS!!

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    1. ive alway thought gft cards were unnecessary. why dictate where to spend the dough? give em the dough let them pay bills if they want to. i personally have lost every gift card i have ever received. it goes in the black hole and is never heard form again.
      looking forward to the christmas shindigs.
      hohoho

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      1. Hmmm………..to me, gift cards feel more like a gift than hard cash, plus they up the chances that the receiver will actually buy something they like rather than fritter cash away on basic necessities. Especially if the gift card is for their favorite stores, restaurants, or movie theaters.

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      2. I like to give gift cards partly as a way of supporting a business that I’d like to keep around.

        I like to receive them because, if the giver has chosen well and I like the store, I enjoy the experience of going there and spending some time choosing something to spend the card on. The experience itself is a gift, in a way that can’t be achieved with cash used to pay bills.

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  21. I’m a fan of December, but mostly because I like baking. And December is a good excuse to bake. If you don’t want to go to parties, do like was suggested earlier and beg off – no one needs to know that your “prior commitment” is to you finishing a really good book.

    I used to make shopping a social event – a pal and I would choose a day, mid-week, take a day off of work and shop together. Day would start with a “stick to your ribs” breakfast, plans for who we were shopping for and where we wanted to go, then off we went. We did this for enough years we were able to shop for folks on each others lists (hey, would your brother like this? Is this something your cousin needs?…). Changes in jobs put the tradition on hold – but, as they say, it was fun while it lasted. 🙂

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  22. I too like December, the Advent season. In truth shopping has never been an issue for me, except what to buy for the one gift I bought. I have never really been in a Christmas shopping rush. Sandy, as I have said in previous years, makes a four month feast of Christmas. I like the music, except for The Pain-in-the-ass Little Drummer Boy. I used to love going to Miller’s cafe in Two Harbors for lutefisk. But cannot eat it anymore–heartburn. And Millers burned down. I love Christmas and advent with kids. As a pastor Advent was a favorite season for services and sermons.The church I served did an advent party and craft session at the pavilion in Split Rock Park–four generations together. I like the shortening days. Being out and about doing business in the dark had a feeling I liked in a small town (the sun goes down much earlier up north in December.) I used to do things with the season in my classes. Two weeks off from teaching and time spent with the family was a joy. The kids and I and Sandy when she could would slide, hike up North Shore rivers, build flying saucer trails from the back yard around the house, walk the woods. We used to go cut our tree from the woods behind us, with the owner’s permission. Sometimes we would have a fire and wiener and marshmallow roast on the beach in the dark with some neighbors. This year I wonder how many Chritmases I have left with Sandy. Next summer is our 50th anniversary, which makes me think about longevity. No, this is a good month ahead of us, especially if some things break right in Washington.

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    1. And today one of my “other sons” and his wife come. We will go to New Ulm, which does not have the feel it Christmas it once had. But we will have fun. It is impossible not to have fun with those two.

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    2. When I ran the mile in high school track, a mile was four times around our cinder-covered track. The first lap was the hopeful one. The second lap hurt more because by that time you were a bit tired and it was clear you would come in a bad loser again. The third lap was sheer misery, for your body was screaming in pain and yet you had a long way to run again. The fourth lap was not so bad because you could just let it go and do your best, as lame as that was. December = the first lap. January = the second lap. February = the third lap. March = the fourth.

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  23. There’s one thing l’ve always liked about the winter months: every bit of outdoor property work goes dormant for a few months. No weeding, no mowing, no chasing down the guy who exchanges yard work for docking here, no plants/flowers to water, no trimming overgrown shrubs
    ln other words, l have an excuse to be my unmotivated, lazy self.

    lt seems like Minnesotans take pride in being rugged survivalists and snicker at the utter chaos a 2″ snowfall in states where it never snows causes. l guess we either have to feel a bit smug about being able to live in 20 below zero weather or insane to stay here.

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      1. I used to think that, too, but the oil boom here has shown me that many former riff raff are here out of desperation and are managing the cold very nicely, thank you very much. I just wish more of them would wear seat belts. We lose a couple a week to mva’s because they are unbuckled on our dangerous roads.

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      2. In the early 1970s I was struggling through knee-high snow in subzero temperatures. As I reeled about with a runny nose and frostbitten cheeks I felt sorry for myself. Then the words came to me like God speaking from a burning bush: “At least this keeps the riff raff out.” Many years later I was stunned to hear those same exact words from someone else. And then I heard them again from someone else. And again. And now from you.

        What was for me an amusing original observation is apparently something else. Person after person grasps at the limp comfort of that observation. In other words, this notion of bad weather keeping riff raff out is a core conviction for Minnesotans, one of those handful of articles of faith that keep us from committing suicide when winter weather strikes.

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  24. lt’s December 1, 2014 at 5AM and l’m glugging down half a gallon of salty liquid gunk. Since there’s no new story/topic for today’s forum, l felt like getting us launched on a pleasant dialogue about colonoscopy?

    This will be my third one. The first one was a breeze; the second – well, suffice it to say that had #2 been the first one, l’d never had another one again! They didn’t give me enough anesthetic that time and l yelped my way through the whole thing, feeling every twist and turn. Today, l’ll demand adequate sedation.

    The complaint this time around is that the prep never bothered me the other two time, but this time is just intolerable. They’ve switched the gallon of gunk from some sort of Gatorade; this time it’s tasteless salt water. Yuck!

    l couldn’t understand until this time why everyone complains about the prep – until today. So, my advice for those of you facing this ordeal: demand that whatever powder required be ONLY used in flavored Gatorade.

    Here’s hoping that you all have a better day than this!

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  25. I just told my Oregon primary care doc that I will not be having a colonoscopy. I had one a decade ago, and one was one more than I’m prepared to endure. They all said the prep was difficult and the procedure would be a breeze. They lied.

    Skipping many revolting details, I found myself at one point halfway sedated. “Halfway” because the doctors had a bizarre notion that I would want to watch the procedure on a little black and white TV. I never saw such a revolting show and I’d pay money to not see a rerun of it.

    At one point I was mostly naked, lying face down, when the doctor came in to do the exam. When I saw that she was a gorgeous woman I squawked in protest. I’m too Victorian to have that kind of procedure done by a pretty woman, and I said so. She replied, “I cannot deny being female, but I don’t think of myself as pretty when I’m working. And anyway, I do this kind of work every day.”

    I said, “So you are saying that all men look like a*****s to you.” The doctor’s only answer was to dial up the gas to send me deeper into lala land. She’d heard more from me than she wanted.

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