My Beautiful Disaster

So I moved cross country in 4 days. It was an adventure that I wouldn’t trade for the world. I wish I had money and time to continue to do this.

I got lost in St. Louis (sort of,) crashed on the couch of someone I hadn’t met yet (we planned a get together prior,) I got free beer from someone in Oklahoma City, I got stuck in a standstill for 2 hours outside of Oklahoma City due to someone wrecking in the heavy rain. I hit some of the heaviest, most constant winds across the panhandle of Texas where I couldn’t get above 70 miles per hour. 60MPH was the norm. I missed the last gas station for 60 miles, pulling off to find an abandoned one and and one under construction. I stalled 13 miles from the nearest station in New Mexico. I hitchhiked in the same tough wind and met a nice contractor who not only took me to a gas station, gave me his spare gas can (I had one but left it empty – DOH!) and took me back to my car and waited to make sure I was going. He was from Louisiana, I see Southern hospitality at its finest. We never even exchanged names. He wouldn’t take money either. I made it to Abluquerque where nothing exciting happened. I have now seen snow in the desert though. Travel was somewhat better as the wind was way down until I hit Arizona. It was like de ja vu but worse because I hit a full blown monsoon outside of Winslow. It turned into a blizzard right quick. I couldn’t see 3 feet in front of me. It cleared up into Flagstaff where I hit a icy spot and did a fish tail across three lanes of interstate. I almost shit myself. I crawled the next 25 miles at 35MPH as did most traffic because of the whiteout conditions of yet more snow. The interstate was covered.

Today I found an apartment. It isn’t clean by my standards but I have to take it for the short term. Tomorrow will be the move in and cleaning. Day after I’ll start looking for jobs.

It’s all about the journey for me. I have no idea what I’m doing into the future. I’d love certainty but this is exciting and I need that. My heart was left in a gutter, my outlook bleak so I took it upon myself to change my fortune. I don’t care if I’m poor, I’ll see what I can do to change that.

I’m typing on one hand here.

The surgery appears to be successful. I was in a cheery mood I suppose - I joked around to put the staff at ease. I’m sure they love an easy patient and I was sure to thank them all.

I woke up from surgery and it’s really hard because you want to sleep. I remember last time with the nurse bugging me so I tried hard. I was semi-conscious most of the time. I asked what I had to wake up for and immediately a name popped in my head. Whoops, oh well. I wanted to tell her about my nurse missing my vain twice, she would have gotten a kick out of that. Ha, the nurse even said I had good veins – they’re large and easy to see. Yet she was digging around in there with the needle. No big deal. I’ll get back to this later, my hand is tired.

Update: Where was I? The nurse brought out the lidocaine which I told her was unnecessary. She insisted and stuck me with it and proceeded with the 20 gauge in my hand. She poked around but couldn’t get the vain. I was teasing her making her more nervous. She mentioned something about her kids at home would be getting sick or something. I told her needles didn’t bother me like that and to take her time. So she tries again this time up on my arm. She finds the vain and I tell her “no” for sure on the lido. She sticks me and I can feel her tapping the vain but not sticking it. She tried for a few minutes frustrated and with me laughing. This reminded me of two incidents before – one was my own. I know it helped ease the tension since I wasn’t freaking out but she insisted she wasn’t doing it a third time. I told her practice makes perfect and to go ahead but she grabbed a male nurse. She teased me back saying they should use me for practice rounds for the trainees and I quipped right back that she might want to go first. We all laughed. The male nurse got it the first time though he took his time also commenting on my veins. I ought to use that as a future pickup line “check out my good veins.” Ha, whatever. He was cool too, I saw him in the recovery area and bade goodbye to him as I left.

Needles and blood don’t bug me. She looked at me weird when I didn’t want a nerve block and even moreso when I wanted to be awake for the procedure. The latter was a no-go but I did forego the block and am happy that I did.

That took forever to type one handed and I’m beat. Oy.