VI: How's Annie?

It's been a weird day. Warning... it contains gross medical terms.

Yesterday, I tied off a few loose ends from my recent matters. One was that I wrote... a lot. I was finding it difficult to express what I was trying to, but you don't beat that by crying about it. That shit, you get through by writing anyhow, letting the block on your creative abilities gradually erode. Then you go back and clip the deadwood (or, if you're me during NaNoWriMo, you let it stand.) I also polished off a story, part of my Collection of Curiosities, that had been left dangling for months. I didn't realize how creatively barren I've been all this time. It's come out in trickles, like the rain. When I last did the serious writing, (beginning that particular story,) it had just rained that morning. It rained yesterday, somehow giving me the wherewithal to get shit done. And done I got shit.

The other thing was that I finally decided to get a doctor's appointment. It was getting ridiculous and not looking like anything was going to happen, after more than two weeks. Mom hadn't been aware. I suppose I hadn't been obvious about it; it's not something people would notice if I didn't point them to it, I guess.

So I wake up this morning to the sound of a phone. My policy is that I don't get out of bed for phone calls. I just can't be bothered, we get so many bullshit telemarketer calls these days. But after a set amount of rings, the call started again. That's mom's style. Finally I went and muttered something that sounded like it may very well have been "Hello?"

"Scott, hi, you've got a doctor's appointment at 9:40 today."

"Um, what?"

It was about 9:08. Naturally, I was very pissed off at the suddenness of this. I didn't want to go to the doctor right damn now, I wanted to sleep. I asked mom, "It has to be now? It couldn't have been monday or something later?"

Her more-than-somewhat rude response? "Um no, you're going." I still can't believe she said that. What a thing to say! If I didn't want to, I probably wouldn't have gone, because I didn't much care for that circumstance.

However annoyed I was, however, I knew I had to get this done and it was as good a time as any. So I showered off and, by 9:30, headed off on my bike to make the doctor's appointment. Why my bike? A few reasons I suppose: It was a gorgeous morning. I've been cycling more lately. Oh yeah, and I had ten minutes before my appointment, the doctor is at least a 20-30 minute walk, and I like punctuality. So biking felt like a good idea.

Mind you, punctuality doesn't mean shit to doctors. My mom's insistent tone rang in my ears bitterly as my physician walked in with her files at about 10 or 20 after 10. For this, I rolled my ass outta bed?

Friday mornings, I usually meet up with Amanda. She has fridays off from her day job, and is basically the only Sheridan person left in Oakville, at least as I have contact with. We hang at Oakville place, get coffee, make chit chat... she usually shops and I tag along and do prop comedy routines to keep myself amused. I had told her I'd be there the night before, naturally unaware I was going to be at the doctor. I sat and waited impatiently. I hate being late.

She asks me how I'm doing, what brings me in today. I tell her I'm getting worried about "this thing on my neck." She takes a look and reacts pensively.

"It looks like a cyst." Fuck! What does that mean? "And it looks infected." She asks me various questions and I give her my answers, and she acts like there was something I could have done. It kinda felt like she was thinking, "You fucking medical layman, why are you such an idiot?" A bit judgmental. I don't know.

Bottom line, she gets me a prescription for some antibiotic and insists that she's going to have to see me again on Monday and that we may have to do a procedure to get this shit drained. Motherfucker. Just what I need. A fucking procedure. That would really make my summer. "What did you do this summer?" "Oh, I had an infected cyst drained of pus. It was a blast."

I'm not really sure why she wanted to see me on Monday, either. Any improvements I'm going to make are probably not going to happen over the weekend. But whatever. I play by her rules, because she's the doc, and I'm just some fuckin' layman. She closes by noting that she hadn't seen me in a while. This is true. The last doctor's appointment I had had been in 2005, and it was more of a meeting to get confirmation of my shots. It was actually a bit of a waste of my time and hers. At that time, she told me I should probably get a physical soon. And well, that just never happened.

So I ran down to the pharmacy and got my shit handled. They were timely enough about that, so I booked it on down to the mall, wondering if, at about 11:05, I could feasibly still get some hanging out done.

I did eventually catch her, after a brief back-and-forth around the mall. Actually in getting there and looking for the bike racks, I very suddenly hit the curb - from a near-still drifting position, and landed on my ass. I can be pretty friggin' absent-minded sometimes.

I caught up with another ole friend recently. She seemed very enthusiastic about my going to U of T, not surprisingly, because that's where she goes. I'm glad about this, and her interest mde me feel, well, like a good friend who hasn't seen her in many months.

This ain't an existential moment. It's just being. And me, I'm being tired right about now.

I spent a lot of yesterday, despite the conspicuously lousy weather, down by the lake. It was quite a scene, as the grey clouds gathered and the waves lapped up on the shore. I had come down to the area to get comics and stopped off just to see how bad it was. It was amazing, with the wind howling and everything. I thought I was gonna catch death of cold, but I appear to be fine. Go fig.

I was grocery shopping the other day. I have a box of Golden Grahams and deicded to replenish my milk supply for it. Then I noticed that the litre of milk I got had the same expiry date as the one I was already on. Blast! I now have 3 days to finish more than a litre of milk before it goes rancid. I don't even really drink milk (I prefer to destroy my teeth rather than reinforce them.) but I just had a big heaping glass. I feel kinda gross.

It's not places, nor times we become nostalgic for, but feelings. All we are trying to do is recapture them, through wherever we were or what we were doing when we felt that way.

Keep on rockin'
-Scott