The leg bone is connected to the...something?

And here we are with yet another exciting post from the land of the Lemon.  I apologize again for a delay in the posts; however, I have cooked up a good excuse this time!  As most of you may know, I recently went under the knife and had my hip replaced.  The formal procedure is called a “total joint replacement”.  Basically, I now have a shiny, new ball and socket hip joint on the right side of my body made up of titanium and ceramics (yes, it sure will be fun going through airport security the rest of my life).

Anyway, I went into work for the first time since my surgery to have lunch with some coworkers and make sure my key still unlocked my office door (I thought for sure it would have turned into a break room or Wheeler would have taken it over or some third thing).  While I was there, Cara reminded me that I should be posting more on my blog since I haven’t been at work.  Well, that would have been a challenge the first few weeks since I was either sleeping or heavily medicated.  I wrote down a bunch of ideas and have no idea what they mean whatsoever.  So instead of trying to interpret my drug induced ramblings, I decided to stick with what I know best which is…um, I have no idea, but it sure as hell isn’t narcotic related.

I’ve had a lot of people asking questions about what happened during the actual procedure, but then they cringe when I start talking about dislocating my hip, bone saws and staples.  So I’ve decided to tell you the entire story of what happens, but in a nicer, friendlier way that hopefully won’t be as cringe-worthy as the actual (uncensored) process.  In this version, I’m going to pretend that you, the readers, are all 5 years old:

 

Well it all starts with the surgeon using a nice, sharp “feather” to “tickle” my leg open.  He will continue to “tickle” my leg and shift muscle around until he can find my bone:

Now, I know what you’re thinking – how can I take such “tickling” without the urgent need to “laugh hysterically”?  Well that, boys and girls, is a great question!  I can take this intense “tickle” because a “funny man” put a needle in the base of my spine which makes me lose feeling from my waist down.  To be extra careful, he also puts a “tickle blocker” (read: nerve blocker) into my leg to also make sure I don’t feel anything from deep within my leg.  Even after all that, they also add lots of “happy juice” into a tube in my arm to make sure I fall asleep.  Even though I may wake up and hear certain “goings on” during the replacement process, this “happy arm juice” will make sure I have no memory of it…aren’t science and chemicals fun kids?

One more thing to add about  all of these fun things sticking/hanging out of me:  they also add another long tube into my leg to help me drain and catch all the access “gummy bears” that will be encountered during the process (NOTE:  We’ve secretly replaced Chris’ blood with “gummy bears”…let’s see if they notice).  This bag will go home with me and I will be responsible for emptying it for several days until it needs to be taken out (I call it “Mr. Thirsty”).

Anyway, on with the story…are you still with me kids?  Because now is where it gets really exciting!  So once I’m asleep, feeling nothing and fully “tickled”, it’s time to separate Mr. Femur from The Happy Pelvis.  Now keep in mind, these two bones are meant to be together forever and they never want to be split from each other…EVER!  So it’s going to take a lot of “persuasion” to get these two lifelong BFFs away from each other.  You know how when your parents want you to do something you don’t want to do like clean your room or get a booster shot or chop off your arm?  Well they will try just about anything to get you to do it including lots of candy, later bedtimes and all the television you can watch, right?  Well that’s sort of what the doctors do to get these two bones apart.  Do you remember that big word kids?  That’s right – persuasion:

Oops, sorry about that boys and girls…I guess there are images even this blog won’t show (really?!).  Instead, please enjoy this tamer picture of a stupid penguin that is about to die:

Penguins sure are silly, dumb animals aren’t they kids?

Once Mr. Femur and The Happy Pelvis are no longer friends, it’s time to take off the head of Mr. Femur.  This is done with a special lollipop that looks a lot like a bone saw:

 

Ever wonder what they do with that leftover Mr. Femur head once they cut it off?  I do too.  I asked about it a lot before this whole thing started, and all they could tell me was, “no, you can’t keep it you weirdo”.  Surgeons sure like to make you feel special don’t they kids?  Well I figured that there are starving doggies in third world countries that would love to have a bone to chew on, so I’d like to think that I am donating to helping those poor doggies enjoy a little happiness in their lives (and we’ll find out next April if that is tax deductible).

So now it’s time to make a large, deep hole down the center of the now shortened Mr. Femur.  This is done with a special drill-like tool called a…wait for it…a DRILL:

Once the hole has been drilled, it’s time use a special hammer to “pop” in the metal rod into our newly drilled hole.  This “pop” hammer looks nothing like this:

But at least it’s good imagery for our story right boys and girls?

So now that we have our hole, we have our hammer and we have our metal rod, the surgeon “gently” and “calmly” hammers the rod into place.  This is an easy task and not a hard, frustrating process whatsoever:

Once the rod is in place, the surgeon uses a GPS satellite to make sure my legs are the same length and then we’re done.  It’s time to close my “tickled” area using staples to help keep everything in place.  Where are the pictures of that?  Well, while the GPS part is pretty cool and the staples were the most cringe-worthy part of the story to most people, I have decided to leave this part short (that and I couldn’t think of anything creative to draw for them…call me lazy).

Now all I have to do is wake up.  To do this, they move me under a giant lamp that they shine in my face to make me think it’s now morning time:

It’s very important to wake up as soon as possible because it’s not good for me to stay asleep for too long.  So if the light just isn’t working, it’s time to use other measures to get my sleepy butt awake:

Once I’m finally awake, it’s time for a tantalizing meal of pretzels and ice chips.  My tummy will be pretty woozy for a while because of all the “happy arm juice” pumping through my system so it’s a good idea to eat so I can have something to throw up later.

And finally, before they send me home (yes, this was outpatient!), it’s time to meet with the surgeon one more time so he can reassure me that everything went according to plan and I should be fine:

And there you have it.  Once all of this, I head home for an afternoon/evening of sleeping, narcotics (morphine, oxycodone, and vicodin), and peeing in a Taco Bell cup because I’m too “happy” to hit the toilet from a standing position and I’m not allowed to sit down.  Sounds exciting right kids?

Maybe next time I’ll share more about what happens after I wake up, the exciting visits I had from the nurses and physical therapist and of course, more adventures down the rabbit hole with my good friends Morphy, Vicodini and The Oxy Twins.

Until then, I leave you with a final picture of Adler trying to steal my cane from me:

He loves this thing and cries when he can’t have it.  I also think he gets a kick out of watching me fall down when he yanks it out from under me.  Kids can really suck the life out of you (and have the potential to really do some physical harm)…remember to pay it forward!

-Cheers!

Occam's Razor

Before I get into this latest post, I need to update everyone on several items.  First, yes M is pregnant.  Sorry for those of you (Jim and Jason, looking at you two) who may not have caught the subtleties of my previous post.  Second, I have recently gone in for surgery on my hip (total joint replacement).  While it's going to someday soon be a great thing, the recovery has been difficult.  I was not fully prepared by myself nor by my surgeon of what to expect in regards to pain, fatigue and the wonders of narcotic medication.  That last part has played the most havoc on my lifestyle in recent weeks.  If you've known me most of my life, you may be surprised to hear that I actually don't like taking drugs that make me feel out of control of my own body.  So having to take both morphine and Oxycodone to manage my pain has been an interesting experience for myself, M and the kids.  Regardless, I have come up with tons of new ideas and sketches and material for this blog, but since I don't have a way to conveniently dispense narcotic medication to you the readers, I'm sure most of the crazy stuff I've come up with won't make any sense.  So I'm sifting through the mountains of "what the heck does that mean" type material to see if there's something I can salvage for a more sober reader population...stay tuned.

For this post, I wanted to follow the theme of Occam's Razor.  For those of you not familiar with Occam's Razor, it's a principle that suggests we should tend towards simpler solutions to solving our problems.  Now there are going to be "Occam Snobs" out there that may cry foul and accuse me of oversimplifying the intent of the principle.  To those people I suggest you look elsewhere for intellectual debate...I don't care and will offer no rebuttal to anything you have to say in regards to your thoughts on the teachings of Father William of Ockham.

So how does it work?  Well again, we want to keep the theory as simple as possible as it will most likely be the correct solution.  For example:

One good theory, but let's make it more complex:

And now let's apply the Occam's Razor principle:



So which one do you think it was?  That's right, it was an Asher fart all along.

Recently I've noticed a trend in some of the more common children's songs that we play for the kids.  We have a nighttime noise machine that plays just the music (no singing) to some of these more popular songs.  M's mom recently stayed over to watch Adler one night and she made the same discovery:

For those of you who just stopped to sing each song, yes, it is the same melody.  So while some bands out there can play the same three chords and call it their latest album, all of that inspiration comes from these children's songs.  Our kids are capable of singing an entire repertoire of songs, but can only whistle one?  If you're as outraged as I'm sure you are, I suggest writing your congressman as I have (on several occasions).

I recently witnessed an interesting display of "David and Goliath" a few months ago during one of our last big snowstorms.  It was around the same time as the height of the union war going on in Wisconsin, so I couldn't help but post the following status on my Facebook page (which resulted in some amusing responses) :

If you read the entire string of comments, you will see that my friend Nik has requested that I turn this into a blog post.  Well, Nik, this one is for you:

Now please don't get mad.  I by no means am comparing my situation to the one in Tienanmen that looks similar to this.  It is more of my way to non-politically point out that we live in a society of rules and bureaucracy that has caused most citizens to sit back down and say "f*ck it, it's not worth the effort".  That one man with the means and the drive can accomplish the same as the bigger people as long as there is something worth standing up for.  That we all need to be held accountable for our actions, to stop playing the victim, and stop blaming others (teachers, unions, employers, government, law enforcement, big business) for our current state of the world.  That change starts right here with each one of us and I yearn for the day when we all can stand up and say, "I am a part of the problem and the solution starts right the f*ck here!" 

And we're back...sorry about that.  I try so hard to keep my political views to myself as much as possible.  Why?  Because I'm usually wrong.  I'm not fully on the right or the left side of the issues so when I voice my opinions, I have both sides telling me why I'm not seeing the issues for what they are...not a fan.

Anyway, back to the reason for this post.  I tend to over engineer the heck out of my life when I really shouldn't.  I wouldn't call it a curse, but there are times when I wish I could apply Occam's Razor to my life more often.  I have a mentor in this plight who goes by the name of Mike Wheeler.  If I'm too complicated in my actions, Mike is the antithesis of that.  He sees and exploits the simple points of any situation in a way I can only covet.

Folks, meet Mike Wheeler:

And of course, one of my favorites:

The entire Express Scripts Implementation team spent some time together during our annual Team Building event.  For some reason, we always schedule it over Wheeler's birthday.  So this year we wanted to make it up to him.  When the dessert came out one night at dinner, the entire team received a bowl of raspberry sorbet served with a mint leaf on the side.  It was delicious, but we wanted to acknowledge Wheeler's birthday and try to make it special for him.  So he received a piece of cake with candles and the whole team to sing Happy Birthday to him.

Course, in typical Wheeler fashion, this was his reaction:

So there you have it.  Occam's Razor, my views on the irrelevancy of choosing sides, and Mike Wheeler all in one giant post.  Again, once I can get my head back from the "Oxy Pixies", I hope to share with you some of the more obscure observations / experiences I have endured over these past few weeks.

In the meantime, I will leave you with the answer to an open item I'm sure is still on your mind - yes, Mike Wheeler did get his raspberry sorbet after all.  Cara was nice enough to track down another bowl so he wouldn't feel left out.

Before I end this post, I'd just like to make a comment about the recent earthquake in Japan.  We have some friends that recently moved to Tokyo for a job opportunity.  While CNN can attempt to tell you what is really happening, nothing can be more eye opening than the recent posts made by our friends who have had to evacuate Tokyo for a safer place.  People like Anderson Cooper can give stats and show colorful graphs and charts, but when they start making room in their display case for their next award, they neglect to mention that each one of those statistics is an actual person with a real story to tell.  Every statistic has a name and three of those names are Erik, Tami and Kjerstin.  Be safe guys, we love you and glad that you're all okay!

-Cheers!

Lemon Quickies III - The One Where M Gets Pregnant

Before you say it, I know that I've been neglecting my duties on this blog thing.  Hopefully this one makes up for my absence.  There's an underlying theme with this one.  I have sprinkled subtle clues throughout this post hinting as to what the surprise might be.  If you can't figure it out by the end, all will be revealed to those who never caught on.

So starting with some new toons of the kids, I recently took Ash with me to get my haircut.  When Ash goes to get his hair cut, we usually cut it really short and there's a chance he will come home with a mohawk.  Well he thought it would be funny the throw out some direction to the lady who was cutting my hair:

Needless to say, I wanted to keep it long, Ash wanted me to have a mohawk, so we compromised and I had it cut short.  For the record it is way too short, but it will grow back...oh yes, it will grow back.

As the kids grow older, you really start to see the differences in their play styles.  Yes, they both still like to play Horsey and Moon Ride, but they are starting to disagree on the more gender related games during their make believe sessions:

Poor Ayris, all she wants is to play Princess and marry a handsome prince.  For her sake, I hope the next one is a girl.

Now that Adler is teething, we've been feeding him more solids.  The exciting part for me is I get to try everything we give him to make sure it tastes good.  I recently tried some of his banana flavored puffs, which tasted exactly like those bland, melty wafers churches serve during communion.  Obviously I had to get M to try one of these too.  Since she's going through this phase of strange food cravings, I thought it would be better if I masked it as me trying to give her communion:

I chased her all over the house trying to feed her one of these puffs without success.  Ah well...more for me, I mean Adler.

We recently celebrated some milestone birthdays in our household.  As you may have seen in previous posts, Ayris is now 5 and M just turned 30.  One morning Ayris was commenting on how her neck was hurting after sleeping in an uncomfortable position all night:

Apparently one of them is aging more gracefully than the other...

For one reason or another, M seems to be going through this phase where she has to clean...almost like she's nesting or something.  Unfortunately, this also comes with a high frequency of forgetfulness (like the blood that is usually going to her brain is going someplace else now):

To be fair, schools and government offices seem to have more days off than they are actually open.  "Happy National Bacon-Pants Day!  We're going to take the rest of the week off..."  Actually now that I type this, I too would proudly stand up and celebrate a day dedicated to pants that were made entirely out of bacon!

M seems to be going through a phase where she is constantly tired.  It's almost like her body is working overtime or building something.  All she wants to do is sleep (mostly) and she doesn't want to have special time with her special man anymore:

It's getting so bad, she doesn't even want to lavish me with admiration like she used to:



And even worse yet, the Joneses are starting to catch up to us:

Then of course, there's her inability to keep a secret:

Thankfully my aunt Tammy realized that M was too trusting of the intimate privacy known as Facebook wall posts and deleted the string before anyone caught on (thanks Tammy!).

So there you have it.  Did you figure it out yet?  That's right, M is Facebook friends with my aunt Tammy, she's always tired and she still doesn't find me funny.

Oh yeah, and she pregnant...again!

-Cheers!

Have an AWESOME Day!

When I was in high school, I used a clock radio as my alarm.  I would set it to play music which would calmly sooth me out of my nightly slumber.  Unfortunately, the noises from the outside world sometimes make their way into my dreams which could cause a lot of bizarre "plot twists".

One of my first memories of this was when I was having one of my reoccurring nightmares of being chased by Barney.  For some reason, that purple dinosaur scared the hell out of me and in my dreams he would chase me down trying to become my friend and turn me into one of his mindless minions.

Creepy stuff.  But this one morning when my alarm went off:

The strangest thing happened in my dream:

That's right, Barney stopped chasing me and we started singing together.  To this day, I still have trouble listening to Motley Crue's Home Sweet Home without a chuckle (or a shudder).

While turning a bad dream into something sort of freaky and funny was fine, I knew I had to make a change when it started to interfere with my good dreams.  When I was 17, I was madly in love with Alyssa Milano (as were many teenage boys my age at that time).

One day, that stupid radio alarm ruined it all for me:

And here comes the alarm:

That was the end of it all for me.  I have never used the radio as an alarm since.

So here we are in the present day.  Alyssa is now a distant memory and Barney no longer haunts my dreams with cruel intentions of brainwashing or duets to rock ballads.  But I am still hearing noises in my dreams.  It's usually Adler since he's still getting up several times a night to be swayed or adjusted or someone to rub his head and assure him he's not abandoned or alone in the Universe.  On one particular night recently, he was having a hard time with things.  Not sure if it was his ears or his teething or he was growing and hungry or what, but he was getting up more often than usual. 

The strange part of this night, was somewhere hidden within his pile of toys came a message I had never heard before:

It's not uncommon for toys to jump out of their restful state and come to life with one of their programmed movements or recorded messages (my friend Sean calls these "random toy encounters"), but I had never heard this one before.  I had no idea which one of Adler's toys was even making this confidence boosting comment, so I just decided that it was meant to be.  That this night (knowing it was going to be a rough one) was actually supposed to be AWESOME and I should give thanks to whatever toy it was that was making it so.

Unfortunately, as Adler continued to wake me up, my enthusiasm starting to ween as the night/morning went on:

So where am I going with all of this you may ask (or maybe you're not, but whatever).  Well, going back to my previous part about noises interrupting my dreams, it happened again with this toy.  Since I had AWESOME on my mind apparently, I had a dream about Chuck Norris (for those of you new to the internet, Google "find Chuck Norris" sometime).

In this dream, we were playing lots and lots of table hockey:

When suddenly this happened:

Strangely enough, I have yet to find which toy it was that was speaking up that night, and even stranger, it has stopped talking altogether.  But for what it's worth, I definitely did have an AWESOME day that day.

-Cheers!

Grown Man Watches Cartoons

For those of you who don't know me very well, I like to watch cartoons.  That's right, I said it - I like cartoons.  And not just Sponge Bob, Family Guy or The Simpsons, I like Futurama, South Park, Venture Brothers, Metalocaplyse,  Robot Chicken...the list goes on (I know that Robot Chicken is more stop motion than cel animation, but let's just put our "pretend hats" on and think outside of the norms for a second m'kay?).  Cartoons are no longer for just children.  In fact, there are several of the ones I just listed I would not allow my kids to watch.  Cartoons have become a fun medium in an otherwise stale world of craptacular television programing.

Earlier this year, I went to Vegas with some of the guys for our friend Jim's bachelor party.  Since I had an assload of frequent flyer miles, I decided to use some for the trip.  While Delta has a decent frequent flyer program, they don't allow you to upgrade your flight to first class if you're using your miles to fly.  This was fine because it was an empty flight (had the whole row to myself) and my friends Jerry and Jim were sitting right behind me.

After takeoff, it was time to settle down for the long haul to Vegas.  I pulled out my PSP and started watching an episode of Family Guy.  I was about ten minutes into the show when the flight attendant wandered by.  She was an older woman who appeared to be in her late 60s.  She glanced at my little movie player and bent down so she could get a closer look at what I was watching.  All of a sudden, she jerked back like someone just smacked her in the face.  She then turned to me, shook her head and walked away. 

About five minutes later, she comes back with the following comment:

I was shocked, I didn't know what to say.  Before I could react, she strolls away, up the aisle, leaving me dumbfounded with confusion and soon to be brewing angst.  I was thinking to myself, "Dude, what the hell?  Haven't you ever seen or heard of this show before?"  I then realized that while I may know adults who watch cartoons, this woman apparently didn't.  I was starting to feel a little silly about my initial reaction to one person's opinion about cartoons, but then I started thinking about it more. 

There is a lot of crap on TV these days.  Yes, there has always been crap, but we're really starting to flat line cater to the lowest common denominator in all of us.  Awful "talent" shows that make 3rd rate, one-time famous "stars" attempting to do off the wall activities just to not get voted off by the viewers.  Seriously, we are about two Nielsen points away from Farting with the Stars. 

Other shows like Biggest Loser can be motivational / inspirational, but I feel a sharp hint of guilt every time I sit down to watch it.  While I understand the premise of the show and that really hasn't changed, I can't help but think that the network execs are doing nothing more than pitting large, overweight people with low self esteem against each other for my entertainment...and what's worse, I enjoy it.  Yes, the finale is always emotional which is full of "good for you" type moments, but throughout the season, I can't help but roll my eyes when the trainers make someone cry just to build them back up again with new found sensitivity and tough love.

But what's worse than this (and I am guilty of it too), are these fake "reality" shows where fake "real" people, go through fake "real" situations and the cameras just happen to be there to capture their fake "real" emotions, reactions and outcomes.  You know these shows, the ones where the women can't hold onto a single thought and blink at the same time.  Where all the men are meaty douche bags who love themselves more than anything else and where everyone talks about their fake "real" problems and how "hard" life can be.  Like I said, terrible stuff, but I'm just as guilty of watching as much as anybody else.

I digress, back to this flight attendant and her arrogant comment.  After thinking about all the rest of the crap that is currently polluting our televisions, I started to realize that cartoons are not the root of all evil and a grown man watching them is NOT the sign of the apocalypse.  Throughout the remainder of the flight, I continued lamenting about my lack of response to this obvious calling out of my maturity and challenging my role in the Universe.  I had a series of those "I should have said this..." type moments which made me start to feel a little better about letting this one go and not retaliate.

My first thought was to be kind, sincere, and intellectual about the whole thing:

That was a good first try, but I could come up with better responses if I gave it some more thought.  I then decided that since this was a flight to Vegas and I wasn't sitting in first class, she probably thought I was some infrequent flyer that she can say anything to because who cares what "Joe Flies Once a Year" feels about the hospitality of her airline.  I then wanted to pull out my Delta Diamond Medallion Sky Miles card and shove it in her face while I act like a total prima donna:

If my status with the airline program didn't mean anything, I thought I'd follow it up by bragging about my overall banked miles/points:

Course, since I was heading through all the stages of my downward spiral, I couldn't rule out the offensive and unoriginal, but always effective:

But I think my friend Wheeler had the best comeback of them all:

Yeah, I should of said that!

So there you have it.  One comment almost ruined my Vegas trip.  While I'd like to say I got over it quickly, I was still fuming about it as we got off the plane.  I cordially said goodbye and wished the flight attendant a good day and never looked back.  20 minutes later, Jerry, Jim and I were having a beer in the Vegas airport waiting for Derek's flight to land before we could begin our fun filled weekend of Vegas excitement (or Vegacitement).

Incidentally, on the way home I got called up to the ticket counter before we start boarding.  The ticket person told me she had never seen this happen, but I was somehow upgraded to first class for the flight home.  Not sure how that happened either, but for what it's worth - thanks Universe!

-Cheers