Farewell, Beloved Modoc Lane

This morning on the channel 4 news I saw the ashes of my old house in Lake Arrowhead, just north of the Arrowhead Country Club. The helicopter camera showed that our entire neighborhood is gone. Completely. Aside from a small cluster of homes just west of our old house, there's nothing left. Just dirt and burnt tree stumps. It was heartbreaking, and quite strange to think that our lovely old home is no more. Of course we feel blessed and grateful that as far as we know everyone we still know and love up there evacuated safely, and the pain and shock are much less than they would be if we still owned that home. But still. I'm surprisingly emotional. I'm still working from home this week, but maybe next week when I return to the office I'll scan and post some pictures in tribute to our beloved house and the memories we made there. I know some of you visited us in that house and loved it, too. Sniffle.

Gesundheit

This one was also from Dr. Jon. We laughed until we cried. And then we played it again and laughed and cried some more.

Punkins from Dr. Jon

Fun for Country Music Lovers and Haters Alike

Since Matt's been bedridden all week, some of our friends have been nice enough to send us funny emails and videos to help keep him entertained. Some of them are too good not to share, like this Brad Paisley video.

I'm Just Saying . . .

zombie: (n) A reanimated human body devoid of consciousness. In contemporary versions these are generally undead corpses.

Matt: (n) My husband and 36-year-old recovering surgical patient.
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Zombie Fact #1: They're usually brought back from the dead by supernatural or scientific means.

Matt Fact #1: Ok, so maybe he was never actually dead-dead, but he was knocked out for a good three hours by some powerful drugs that made him "dead to the world." And he was brought back by scientific means. Because doctors are scientists, right?

Zombie Fact #2: They eat the flesh or brains of the living.

Matt Fact #2: He eats what I bring upstairs for him. If he was hungry enough and I brought him sweetbreads, I think he'd eat them. And he has eaten hot dogs, and those are pretty close, no?

Zombie Fact #3: They have very limited intelligence.

Matt Fact #3: Is this in comparison to their level of intelligence before they became zombies, or no? I'm just asking. More info is needed to answer this one fairly.

Zombie Fact #4: They're slow, uncoordinated, and walk in a wooden fashion with their arms outstretched.

Matt Fact #4: Matt is slow, uncoordinated, and sorta teeters on his crutches when he hops one-legged to the bathroom and back.

Zombie Fact #5: They have limited ability to communicate and, lacking the ability to form words, often moan loudly instead.

Matt Fact #5: When he sleeps Matt makes an unearthly racket that sounds something like: GRUUUUGH GRUUUUUGH GRUUUUGH. And when he's awake it's not at all uncommon for him to moan to himself.

Zombie Fact #6: They frequently have open and/or oozing wounds.

Matt Fact #6: Ugh, yes, he has those too.

Our New Family Member

So early Monday morning Matt went into the hospital for surgery and later that afternoon we came home with a new family member: his new ACL. ACL replacement involves cutting open the knee, taking out the old torn up ACL (the muscle that runs vertically up the center of your knee behind the kneecap, and which gives your knee its stability), grafting a new muscle in its place, and closing you back up. The replacement muscle can either come from your own hamstring or from a cadaver. Matt chose the later--hence the addition of a third member of our marriage, whom we've named Zombie Sam. In his former life, Sam was someone's achilles tendon. But now he's been reanimated as Matt's new ACL. Hopefully he'll be happy with us, make himself cozy, and result in Matt being able to jump and play like a real boy once more! As for now, though, he keeps pretty still. Mostly because it hurts like heck. While the surgeon was in there he was also able to repair a torn meniscus (the cushiony stuff in your knee joint that keeps your bones from rubbing against each other--owie). That was a nice surprise, but it also makes the recovery a little longer and more difficult because now he can't put any weight at all on the leg for 2 weeks. Oy. Here's his leg brace. It weighs, oh, maybe a million pounds. Several times a day we take it off and Matt bends his knee gently about 10 times. It hurts a lot. Here's his nifty little "bag of joy," aka a device that pumps numbing solution through a tiny little catheter inserted in his knee. Later today we have to remove his dressings and I have to pull that "tiny little" catheter out. Something tells me Matt isn't going to think it feels "tiny" or "little." Which is why we're putting it off and haven't done it yet. Here's his Iceman. It's a souped up Igloo cooler.I fill it with ice and water, plug it into the cold pack in his dressings, turn it on, and it circulates ice water around his knee. It's our friend and we want to keep it forever. But if we had to choose between it and Vicodin, we'd pick Vicodin. We heart it a bunch.

Confessional

Inspired by B's "dirty little food secret" post and spurred on by Molly's plea that I shape up and make a new post already, I offer up this: A confession of my secret childhood drug habit. Yes, you heard me right. I was a preadolescent druggy, dope fiend, strung out on drugs of all sorts. There, I said it. (And I apologize now to all the mothers out there who will read about this and from this day forward live in terror of their precious little ones being just like me.)

Ah, I feel better now.

What led me to make this confession now, you wonder? I found out I wasn't alone in my secret shame. Nope, I've discovered I have a kindred spirit, a sister sufferer right in my very own circle of friends. Here's how it all went down.

Yesterday morning when I should have been devoting my time to working like a good little office bee I instead found myself trading emails with a friend who shall remain anonymous. This woman is an attractive, clean, respectable, upstanding citizen as (on a good day) I fancy myself to be. The conversation began innocently enough: I mentioned that Matt is one of those "strange anti-medicine people" whereas I am more the type to pop a Midol at the very first sign of PMS bloating, 2 (or 3 or yes, dammit, sometimes 4) Advil with just the slightest twinge of a headache coming on, etc. After all, as I told her, "If God didn't want us to take drugs why'd He invent Nyquil, the sweet nectar of sleep? Hello?" She replied that her husband is also, like mine, one of those odd creatures who shys away from drugs--prescription or otherwise.

Then the floodgates opened and before I knew it we were making confessions to one another about our own secret shame: Childhood drug addiction. (Ok, maybe that's a little strong. We're not Drew Barrymore or anything, after all.) I revealed that as a kid I would sneak sips of the grape and orange flavored Robitussin. And to snagging one or two of the kiddy aspirins that tasted like chalky cherry goodness. And to munching on the chewable orange-flavored Vitamin C tablets my mom kept in a big jar under her bathroom sink. Thinking I was dirty and shameful and sick, I tentatively hit "send."

Then in her reply she made her confession. And I let out a sigh of relief. For, friends, I believe her addiction was deeper than even mine! Not only did she sneak gulps of the cough medicine and snack on the chewable vitamins like mad because she "thought they were candy," but she'd also eat the aspirins "by the handful" and chug the Chloriseptic when her mom wasn't looking. Gads!

For those of you who may be reading this, utterly horrified and thinking this was the most irresponsible thing in the world and how our moms should have been arrested and that my friend and I should have forced sterilization so as not to ever bring more pill-popping babies into the world, take a deep breath and relax. We turned out just fine. Yes, we did. And in discussing it we eventually remarked on how dangerous this behavior truly was, blah, blah, blah, and how when we someday have kids we'll have to keep all drugs under lock and key and so forth. So don't worry.

But how about you? I'm sure some of you engaged in similar behavior. Or perhaps you have some other childhood confession to make. Let it out, you'll feel better. If you do and then don't feel better, take a swig of Nyquil and go lay down for a nap. When you wake up everything will be better. I promise.

A Brilliant Idea

In an effort to expose a new generation of moviegoers to old movie classics, some organization or other (their website blows goats and gives very little info) has instituted "Old Movies for Young People"--a program that will show one classic film every Tuesday night for the next 6 months. The showings are at the AMC Century City, and reservations are required. The first showing is tonight when they'll be screening 1955's Mister Roberts starring Henry Fonda and James Cagney.

You Can't Leave the Lights On

While listening to NPR on my drive in this morning, I heard a piece on "Lights Out L.A."--an environmental awareness campaign that's organizing a city and county-wide voluntary blackout on October 20. Here's the deal: They're challenging all businesses and homeowners to install one compact flourescent lightbulb and turn off all non-essential lighting from 8-9:00pm on the 20th. They estimate that doing so will save 10-15% of the energy consumed on an average Saturday night. At the original "Lights Out" event in Sydney, Australia, back in March, 2.2 million people participated, resulting in a 10% drop in electricity use. It also reduced 25 tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to taking nearly 49,000 cars off the road for 60 minutes. L.A. is piggybacking their event along with San Francisco, which has been planning for 6 months (they'll be shutting off the lights on the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and other landmarks), but L.A. has to get the word out in just a matter of weeks. So start passing it on, friends! We've already replaced most of the bulbs in our house with CFLs and I'm fanatical about turning off lights, so it won't be much different from any other night at our house . . . .

Iron Man

I love eye-candy comic book movies, even ones for books or characters I've never heard of. Which is, well, most of them.