In which we lose a bet

 

Well that was stupid.

As I mentioned in the last post, I high-tailed it off to Houston for my high school reunion. I got there, checked into the most hilariously glamorous room I've ever seen in a hotel, and settled down to the very demanding task of visiting with my family.

I love them, I do, but they are very high maintenance.  This trait I have for long meandering stories apparently is genetic because all of my nieces and nephews have it too.  Plus they're much louder than me.  You get all of this around one table and it sounds like urban warfare. My niece Willow and her son came in from Phoenix and my other niece Amber came down from the far northern reaches of Texas. Plus I have yet another niece and a nephew living in Houston along with my older brother.  It was quite a gang.

Everything was going swimmingly.  Diane von Austinburg blew in and was an immensely welcomed respite from my lunatic blood relatives.  I've mentioned before I take pain medicine every day.  Instead of pills, it is a small piece of tape that I cut into eighths, tiny, tiny little bits. I take one of the little bits twice a day.  I had been taking them regularly and then Friday morning I opened up the medicine minder box I carry and discovered five of the pieces were gone.  I only had two doses in the box, enough for Friday and that was it.

I have no idea what happened to those goddamn itsy bitsy pieces of tape which are all that keeps me from being crippled.  I flailed around all day Friday trying to replace them.  My pain doctor turns out to not be able to prescribe controlled substances outside of California.  Great. My regular doctor was out of the office for the weekend.  Great.  I went to the very nice emergency room a couple of blocks from the hotel and discovered ERs cannot prescribed opiates either.  Again, great. I appreciate how all the pharmacies and doctors and nurses I spoke to never took the position that maybe I was a junkie trying to just cage extra meds off of them.  

And so yesterday afternoon I just surrendered and decided to come home early, this morning in fact.  Perhaps you remember in the earlier post how I sniffed at Diane's joke that she was taking bets that I wouldn't make the reunion.  How very galling to now have to admit that I lost that fucking bet.

On the other hand the flight back this morning had those seats that recline fully into beds and so I was able to sleep most of the way here.  It is the only way to fly.

Naked men welcome me home:

I'm too tired from traveling to make up snappy lines about these guys; you get the idea.

So glad to be home.