Aorta stop eatin' junk food

Dad’s surgery was “smooth and easy” according to the surgeon—who may or may not have been referring to the fact that the hospital shaved my dad from the neck down before they poked him in the aorta—and he’s now recovering/waking up in the recovering/waking up room as we continue to stuff our faces in the waiting room.

You might say he’s on the mendo from his endo. But please don’t. Never say that.

Yup

Rude.

SWEAT POO

Dear LORD

We’re all stocked up for our last weekend of Elf!

This haul should at least get us through tonight’s intermission:

This is the Evil Dressing Room Holy Shit I Look Fat Mirror, which has nothing to do with irrelevant sugary snacks or drinks that may or may not sit resplendent in their spectrums of crimson deliciousness on its premises

Never look at this mirror or engage in its childish, manipulative games.

When you’re staying late at the office

and there’s a tornado warning so you have to go to the tornado shelter which happens to double as a chic little magazine lounge when it’s not protecting people from catastrophic death and you have the presence mind to bring Blueberry Bevita crackers and Diet Mountain Dew to help keep your spirits and your energy up while you (hopefully, but you never know) barely survive Certain Tornado Death!

The secret to looking fit and trim at work is ... um ...

Oh, what the hell are you asking ME for? My desk is a dumping ground for insulin cataclysmia and regret.

Five not-quite-right-in-the-head gay gays

One completely unstructured weekend in a rented house. Lots of unhealthy snacks. Hours and hours of smeared mascara.

Urp.

My sheets are clean, my bills are paid and I’m on the slippery, headachey slope of an epic sugar crash wrought by zero self-control in the face of those awesome-o malted-milk Easter eggs with the crisp candy shells. But I just took a halfway decent selfie so the night’s ending on a high note. Sleep well!

My. Skin. Hurts.

While Productive Cough and the Why Does My Skin Hurt When I Move Pestilence would be a catchy name for an Eastern European boy band, it’s an even catchier description for how I woke up this morning. But I’m too miserable to go on a boy-band tour right now. 

I did just go on an emergency-clinic-to-pharmacy tour though. The clinic was only taking walk-ins and I was told I’d have a 35-50 minute wait when I got there but I was called right in and after the nurse took my vitals and left the room, the doctor came in and OH MY GOD HE WAS HANDSOME and he looked in my ears and throat and did other things that I’m sure in some cultures count as pitching woo but WHY DOES HE ALSO HAVE TO HAVE A SHY SMILE AND A SELF-EFFACING DEMEANOR he had on a jet-black wedding ring THAT MADE HIM EVEN SEXIER IF THAT’S EVEN POSSIBLE which I took to mean he piloted jets or something because that makes sense right AND HE WAS WEARING KICK-ASS RED RUNNING SHOES BUT HE KIND OF IGNORED ME WHEN I COMPLIMENTED HIM ON THEM BUT I’M SURE IT WAS BECAUSE HE WAS HUMMING “TRUMPET VOLUNTARY” IN HIS HEAD BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT HE WANTED FOR OUR WEDDING PROCESSIONAL and anyway STOP IT WITH THESE INSANELY HOT DOCTORSCEDAR RAPIDS BECAUSE I’M RUNNING OUT OF CAPITAL LETTERS TO SWOON OVER THEM.

His verdict, unfortunately, was the flu.

You might say I opened the window and influenza.

But you shouldn’t say that. Nobody should say that. Ever.

So anyway, this week brought us Mom’s aggressive UTI and Dad’s COPD exacerbation plus pneumonia plus staph plus MRSA plus five days and counting in the hospital and the only thing our family was missing on our sickening scourge scavenger hunt was the flu so now our punch card is full and we all win a chalupa.

Speaking of chalupas, the pharmacist told me I needed to eat before I took my Tamiflu and it’s almost like we were having a cosmic mind meld because I’d picked up a package of Chips Ahoy! on my way to the pharmacy counter partly because I like using exclamation points in the middle of sentences and partly because pestilent people deserve partially hydrogenated pastries but mostly because I was stocking up on food items to be a responsible Tamiflu taker and WHY ARE YOUR DAMN BLISTER PACKS SO DAMN HARD TO OPEN, TAMIFLU?

So now I’m home eating cookies and drinking Gatorade and listening to Sunday morning 88.3 kcck jazz, which is the balm that cures all ills, but I’m still coughing up hearty chunks of lung and I’m still so feverish that I’m unsteady on my feet and I’m modeling the latest trend in face masks which makes me catnip to the ladies but can you really blame them and MY SKIN HURTS WHEN I MOVE WHY THE HELL DOES MY SKIN HURT WHEN I MOVE?

Dear Universe,

I know I whine relentlessly about how big my approaching-50-years-old tummy is getting, but I just took my mom to the doctor and then stopped at the grocery store on the way home because she wanted popsicles and raspberry sherbet and I accidentally walked through the bakery aisle on the way to the popsicle-and-raspberry-sherbet department and they had fresh cream-cheese brownies and I’m helpless around fresh cream-cheese brownies so what can you do but anyway I’ve earned a tiny little cheat snack so please don’t judge me for what I’m about to eat as my late lunch.

(P.S. I also wiped off the kitchen counter real nice for this photo.)

Mommy, why doesn't Jake have a boyfriend?

Because he eats too much sugar, Timmy. And because he thinks dappled roseate colorways make sense next to earthy brown colorways.

Things I’m not totally hating but not hoard-level loving so I’m sharing them at work:

When restraint and common sense completely abandon you in the regret-filled canyons of Target

Because we have inclement weather and I need calories to keep my strength up in case I get snowpocalypsed in

Also because I don’t have a boyfriend to give me gentle encouragement to rediscover and nurture my latent abs.

Flashback Friday: Jingle Balls Edition

I don’t mean to dig up old photos of my younger, speedo-waisted self in a speedo (whoops!) but a photo me running Chicago’s first annual big gay Santa Speedo Run in 2011 made it in the TimeOut Chicago events calendar promoting the second annual Santa Speedo Run in 2012.
(*cheers and applause woooo*)

Now it’s 2017 and I just slept through the gym and I’ll probably eat Chips Ahoy!s for breakfast.
(*Diet Cokes and burps woooo*)

I vaped! Or however you spell it

Now I’m going to ride that can-do momentum all the way to installing this TV wall mount that I bought on my way to vote. Or maybe I’ll just take it out of the box and at least make sure it’s compatible with the TV. Or maybe I’ll just post a selfie with the box as a note to myself to remember to maybe start thinking about doing it someday. Or maybe I’ll just look for funny memes on the Internet. I’ve already accomplished a lot today what with all that voting and stuff. I should probably relax and take it easy the rest of the night. Or week. Or until the next time I have to vote. I’m exhausted just from typing all of this. Does anyone have any Oreos?

Moo!

Mom just re-read the box for the scalloped potatoes that are currently baking in the oven and noticed that she’d slightly misread the directions to add one tablespoon of butter to the sauce and she instead added one stick of butter to the sauce. Which is understandable; both options have the words “of butter” in them. In the meantime, my casual pre-dinner Chips Ahoy! nosh has escalated into a feral Chips Ahoy! genocide. But there’s still most of a row of Chips Ahoy! left and there’s still a 20-minute wait for the scalloped potatoes to stop mooing (oops ... BAKING) if anyone wants to come over and join us in our mass heart attack.

On a side note: Check out our new sleek, chic, simple, versatile, non-Revolutionary-War-era dishes!