Don’t have anything in particular in mind for today’s words, so I guess it’s personal update time.

Let’s see. Oh, my “earaches” are under control. Quotes because they are probably more than just earaches. Whatever they are, as long as I keep my nose blown and my sinuses empty, they are not a problem. I have not had a serious attack for a while.

That doesn’t mean the problem is solved, of course. Whatever the hell that is wrong with me that caused them in the first place has not been fixed. I only have the symptoms under control. I still need repairs.

Speaking of which, I haven’t heard from a surgeon or my doctor’s office about seeing a surgeon to fix up the big holes in my abdominal wall yet. I am going to call my GP’s office tomorrow to ask about it, and to make *sure* they have my phone number right. I have all these problems (fucked up knee, hernias, earaches) and I want to get them all fixed if I can.

I am falling apart, and nothing seems to be happening about it.

I am perfectly willing to endure whatever I have to endure to get myself patched up. I am not exactly eager about it, but I am willing. I know there will be unpleasantness ahead. Things that are scary, things that are weird, things that are uncomfortable, and things that just plain hurt.

But irresponsible as I can be, especially towards myself, if I know I have a problem, I am going to want to get it fixed.

In a weird way, it is nice to have some problems that can actually be repaired. Things like diabetes and depression can’t be surgically corrected. There is no way to have your insulin resistance patched up, or have your depression removed. They are long term problems which may or may not be entirely solvable.

The abdominal hernias, at least, can be repaired. Who knows what good that might do me? I have no idea how long I have had those hernias. They might be quite old. Maybe they are the whole reason I have digestive issues in the first place.

It’s not hard to imagine that these “soft blockages” I have talked about before, where things get backed up down there and end up compacted and causing all kinds of trouble, might just be the spots where the food is going through the part of my small intestine outside my abdominal wall.

Seems like the natural place for a bottleneck, is what I am saying.

So it could be that, once I am all patched up and healed up, I am a much happier dude, with way less intestinal instability. I have kind of felt like my guts were hanging out for a long time, but I just assumed that was metaphorical.

Turns out, it is literally true, in a way.

Boy, I hope my feeling like there’s a cold wind blowing through me never becomes literal. That would be fucked up.

Anything else to report? Well, the reason I am doing all my bizness around seven hours earlier than usual is that today I will be going to the monthly BCSFA meeting, despite the omens.

Omens like the fact that the hallway in Ray’s building have recently been repainted, so there might be a fumes issue. I am all over the place with paint fumes and my reaction to them. Sometimes they don’t bother me at all, sometimes they annoy me a little, and sometimes they make me feel like I am going to pass out and/or throw up and/or die.

So we will see if I can even attend the damned thing. I would hate to be a cause for complications. For example, I would not want my inability to handle the fumes keep my roomies from doing so. So I have a backup plan.

If that ends up being the case, I will just get someone to drop me off at the Skytrain station in New West and I will Skytrain my way home. We live two blocks from Brighouse station, so it is not that big a deal for me to Skytrain it. The only complicated bit will be switching Skytrain lines. But I can figure it out.

The other ill omen is that Kathleen fell and cracked her shoulder. Poor dear! I hope she is okay.

Besides her personal suffering, there is also the issue that she is usually the person who brings most of the snacks. So I am guessing that there will be no snacks. And there is usually quite the spread.

The snacks are not necessary, of course. All you need for us nerds to have a good time is a big room with enough chairs for everybody. We will entertain ourselves with our vibrant and scintillating conversation.

But still. Kathleen’s mishap makes the whole thing feel ill fated. Silly, I know, and completely irrational. Probability does not work that way. Bad things happening does not, without a causal link, make other bad things happen.

Spilling milk on your shoes at breakfast did not make that pigeon poop on you during lunch, and it doesn’t mean that something bad will happen to you at supper either.

Despite that, we humans are a superstitious lot. No matter how hardnosed a skeptic or rugged a philosopher you might think you are, you have superstitions nevertheless.

Anything else to report? Not that I can think of at the moment. Life has been going fairly smoothly lately, especially since I got that GST cheque. Before it, I was very tense about money and worried about making it to check day this month.

But now, I am serene and calm on the subject. I will be just fine.

Oh, get this : I still haven’t ordered that Airbake cookie sheet I want because I fucked up when I gave the lady at Money Mart my postal code. So I have to go in again.

God as my witness, I will have unburnable cookies!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.