Waiting

A little bit later, I get to repeat the day before my surgery.  No, I'm not in Trinidad; I'm surrounded by all the charms that Jamaica, Queens has to offer.  What I get to relive is the joys of not eating after breakfast and of drinking that stuff that tastes like Elmer's glue sprinkled with salt.  You're supposed to drink four liters of the stuff at ten-minute intervals. On The Day Before, I didn't drink it all.  I don't know of anyone who has.


At least this time they gave me a packet of lemon flavoring to mix with the stuff.  So I guess I'll find out what Elmer's glue sprinkled with salt tastes like when you add lemon-flavored powder to it.  What is it about lemon-flavored stuff that's always sweet.  No lemon I've ever tasted was like that.


All right.  I'll stop whingeing.  Tomorrow, after I've reprised the least pleasant part of The Trinidad Experience,  I'll do something I was supposed to do last year but somehow managed to forget (though my doctor didn't):  a colonoscopy.  To all of you young people who are reading:  this is the sort of thing you have to look forward to when you get old(er).


Then, I'll probably be out of commission for a while.  Some time the day after tomorrow, I'll get on my bike and maybe I'll meet someone for tea.  The instruction sheet the doctor gave me lists a bunch of things you shouldn't do within twenty-four hours after the surgery.  Bike riding is one.  (At least I don't have to wait four months, as I did after the surgery!) Driving and operating heavy machinery are two others.  Also, it says not to make "important financial or other life-changing decisions during that time."  Hmm...Maybe I shouldn't mention that here.  After all, the wrong sorts of people might be reading this.  One of them might decide to have his way with me.


Imagine:  Some day, I could be walking down the aisle and wondering, "When did I say 'yes' to this?"  I wonder: How many other women have asked themselves the same question?  I did, but I wasn't a woman then, at least in the eyes of the state.


I have a class in a few minutes.  It's funny:  Students came to see me right before my office hour, when I was sitting through a presentation by a candidate for another job in the department.  It actually was a very interesting presentation; I just wish I weren't so tired or felt the tugging at my sleeve I always feel when I'm campus, even when no-one is within fifteen feet of me.  But during my office hour, I was reliving, not any of the experiences I've described so far, but Waiting for Godot.  I haven't thought about that play in a while.  Here's something I never thought about until now:  There are no female characters in that play.  I'm sure that some critic or someone else has cited that as proof of the play's homoeroticism. 


Maybe I should read it again.  Maybe I should read everything I've ever read again.  I know some things will seem very different to me from the way I saw them the first time I read them. 


Anyway...Time for class.  The next time I write in this blog, I might be a little woozy.   Will that make a difference?