Wednesday, July 25, 2007

2 weeks

it is two weeks until Agatha-extraction. against my will and despite my best 'think positive-ness' my imagination is full of those awful NBC Deadline-esque news stories: Stone Philips fills the tv screen with his big impassive face and says, 'It was an ordinary procedure. One performed millions of times before on millions of ordinary women just like her. But, sadly, the family and friends of Ding would soon realize that sometimes tragedy strikes despite the ordinary."

or something lame like that.

i can't help but think that if the next two weeks was a plot point in a novel bought in the checkout lane at the supermarket, i'd be worried about Me about now. reading about the protagonist who has made some questionable decisions over the past year and blatantly flaunted a 'whatever' face to the world at large, i would be worried that the author would take this opportunity in the narrative to 'teach Me a lesson'.

in such a mass market novel, this would be the moment in the story where the hard drinking/smoking/sexing wench would be given the opportunity to learn something valuable about strength in perseverance as i recover from the stroke i've had because my anathesia was wrong and i struggle to read or form basic words; or i learn the love of a good man as the doctor, who accidentally removed all my reproductive organs because he's a drunk, falls in love with me as i sue him in a malpractice case that will change the shape of litigation forEVER; or maybe i learn the identity of the 5 people i'd talk to in heaven after i bleed out on the operating table because i forgot to tell my doctors i've been taking an aspirin a day to stop a toothache.

these are the stories that fill my days when i'm not paying attention.

needless to say, i'm a little stressed out.

(reading the above, i realize that this is exactly the whole point of that annoying TNT series with Holly Hunter: the drunk, adulterous lady cop gets a divine intervention and mends her hard drinking/smoking/sexing ways.)

7 comments:

liza said...

Apparently, Mexican Catholics have got nothing on Black Baptists as far as guilt is concerned. At least your angst makes for good story-telling; way better than not-sleeping or panic attacks. And really, if you think about it, the narrator's too busy really to punish you for having fun. This is what I used to think when my mom used to scold me to do whatever household chore "como Dios manda" as God commands--instead of doing it all half-assed.
I guess it's lucky for us that our lives are not novelas/trash novels/TNT series or god forbid, Lifetime TV shows.

Orange said...

Dude, if your imagination is going to run wild with Stone Phillips, at least have some fun with it. Put him on "Dancing With the Stars," teamed with John Stossel. Or Andy Rooney.

Delia Christina said...

liza: you have no idea the depth of my baptist guilt and superstition. i once had a professor on my committee stop me in the middle of one of my stress freak outs and ask, 'are you catholic?'

god is still the bogeyman in the closet, ready to jump out at me for not being good.

orange: is it even possible for anyone's imagination to run wild with stone phillips?

Orange said...

Well, it'd have to be imagination, because the reality is frightfully dull.

Delia Christina said...

our imagination would have to run sedately, then.

Dharma said...

Oh dang does your imagination run wild. Not really any wilder than mine, I totally do the same thing!

Delia Christina said...

if i wasn't so icked out by hospitals, you know? i've been this way ever since i was a kid. i call it the 'walter mitty syndrome.'

a splinter turns into gangrene.
a fibroid means i'll be paralyzed.
something will go wrong.

of course, this is not helped by all my friends encouraging to make my 'final instructions' - just in case. all of us who've gone into the hospital for some reason have put together an envelope with everying our friends will need to notify our parents, de-sexify our apartments and de-porn our laptops should anything happen to us.

we're perhaps overly prepped for the worst.