Have you ever been overwhelmed by life?

If not, skip to the bottom, this post is not for you, and it might even compromise your well-ordered life. And by the way, I’m blocking you.

Did you know there are thousands of variations in color for a single tile? It’s enough to send one off to the loony bin? I’m not exaggerating, send in nurse Ratchet, “You are in this hospital…because of your proven inability to adjust to society,” clearly.

I just want to go ostrich and bury my bewildered head in the sand but that is never a long-term solution because life always catches up with you. Right? I call it a design flaw but God probably programmed that one in as a reality check, let me just say Her dedication is excessive.

So, as an alternative to a psychiatric ward, I’m going to purge my angst right here and let you deal with the consequences of too much information, often referred to as TMI. When I need to let it out, I write. When I reach times of overwhelmingness I take a deep breath and allow it to slowly escape like gas.

The first of the formidable decisions on my list was the scheduling of our couples colonoscopy, which as you know requires a lot of unpleasant preparation, but we wanted to put it behind us so to speak.

“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” Jim Rohn

We scheduled our consultation a few weeks ago as if I had to be consoled before preceding, which ends up being true, because the first thing the doctor asks of us is to “step on the scale.” It’s located in the main hallway, in clear view of the world, well at least those of us milling around the space, which happened to be Larry, the nurse, the doctor, and me. But still. I would rather my husband avert his eyes when I’m standing on a scale than if I were standing naked before him. At least then I can hold in my stomach but the scales are a whole new level of honesty and I don’t believe our relationship is ready for this sort of rectitude.

When it comes to my weight I’m all about rounding down, starting with my driver’s license, to be fair I’m no longer a blond, and I believe the height listed is a total stretch. Aging issues.

I’m torn about taking my shoes off or not because I want the most bang for my buck, meaning when they ask the anesthesiologist how much to give me based on my weight, I want it to be enough to put me out, so more is better in this case. I leave my shoes on and lean into the scale ever so slightly.

In all fairness the doctor was rather debonaire, I hopped off that contraption the second the number flashed on the little digital screen and I noticed the doc made an unreadable notation on his chart, it’s the little things that count. When Larry stepped on the scale the doctor actually announced the poundage claiming Larry had not gained a single pound in ten years. He said nothing about me. Screw him.

After being escorted into a small room the doctor confirmed we were not allergic to any medications, recently constipated, or suffering from enlarged organs. He thought it was adorable that we were scheduling our scopes together, he made some lame comment about Larry’s idea of a romantic date, if he only knew! On our last date night he hired some lady to walk all over me, literally! I would say his dates are going from bad to worse, but sometimes things that seem uncanny are what shield and protect us from the worst situations in life.

When we get to the scheduling part of the appointment, Larry selects my next day off, which means I’ll be teaching on our prep day (no food or red liquids), and I’ll be teaching the day after the ghastly procedure. Perfect, the last classes I will ever teach in person will forever be cross-pollinated with a couples colonoscopy, no wonder I was reduced to a blubbering puddle of snot as I exited the campus of Notre Dame.

The prep was anything but romantic but at least we had two working bathrooms which was key. Not to get too detailed but it involved dozens of horse pills, massive amounts of water, and lots of lientery. Repeat at 5:00 am. Enough said.

“If Mr. McMurphy doesn’t want to take his medication orally, I’m sure we can arrange that he can have it some other way,” nurse Ratched.

Julie dropped us at the office, and after we were processed, stripped of our clothing, tucked under a warm blanket, our mobile beds were moved into adjoining rooms with a curtain divider, which we pushed aside so we could discuss our frayed nerves, and hold hands. The nurses thought we were adorable. If they only knew.

Ladies first, thank God, because there were a few complications with my procedure, and apparently forcing air where the sun don’t shine became a necessary evil. Thank God I was too drugged up to care. I could no longer discern what was real and what was fake. Clemantine Wamariya describes it well, “everything, including the present, seemed to be both too much and nothing at all.”

Larry was rolled in to the “procedure room” after I was rolled out (imagine dealing with asshole after asshole on a daily basis), he’s already full of it, no forced air necessary. As we’re coming off the anesthesia they push you back into your prep room and tell you to get dressed? I have no memory of dressing myself, but my shirt was on backwards, so there’s that. This is also when you’re given the results, which seems irresponsible, but from what we could piece together on the ride home, chauffeured by Julie who could not stop laughing, we were both given the all-clear.

It will be a decade before we have to starve, void, or be inappropriately inflated again. Praise be to God.

I got in my pjs and went straight to bed, Julie brought me the best plate of scrambled eggs I’ve ever eaten, and sourdough toast dripping with melted butter. I slept for five hours, Larry painted the entire ceiling of the kitchen and old dining room? Clearly, I should have taken my shoes off.

While I prepared for my final classes amongst the chaos and the dust, there was nothing I could do to dim the super gases being stored in my inner sanctum, it was an endless chain of intestinal firecrackers if you get my drift. It passed, let’s move on.

As I was recovering from the trauma of “the procedure,” I also had to pick out the shade of black I wanted for the tiled backsplash in our demolished kitchen while simultaneously preparing for the long Memorial weekend at the lake with the entire Oreglia clan. No pressure.

As noted in previous blogs I’m going for a dramatic look, white cabinets, marbled stone counters, with a black backsplash. Why not? The counters were installed on Tuesday, and after discussing the look with a designer and tile installer, we settled on the perfect shade of matt black for our project.

Off we go on our much-needed weekend away, but while we sipped local wines, roasted marshmallows, and barbecued burgers on the grill, our tile order when though a bit of a snafu. To start with Larry texted the contractor the wrong size (slip of the finger, blind as a bat sort of thing), which couldn’t be found in the tile we selected, which then required a new selection by the tile guy who doesn’t fully grasp my vision. He wanted something in stock, something close to the desired color, something installation-friendly. When we arrived home we were greeted with ten boxes of chalky blue-grey tile, narrower, and longer than I wanted.

Yeah, no.

Larry suggested I sleep on it, not the tile, the idea that a chalky blue-grey skinny tile could work with my vision. As if I’m a sizest who finds the color grey offensive, and he thought we should also rethink the grout. I didn’t sleep a wink, and by morning the grey was well still grey?

Larry called the contractor and we went back to the tile shop to start all over again with the agonizing decision on the perfect shade of black. We ended up with the tile we selected in the first place, but it will delay the project another week, and we had to make a few charming adaptions to the bar area due to a stock shortage. It should all work out in the end, and that seems to be the case for just about everything these days, colonoscopies included.

I’m really going to miss being a teacher, designing kitchens, emptying my bowels. Not!

I’m Living in the Gap, the struggle is real, care to join me?

Anecdotes:

• “Such harsh truths so early in the morning cannot be good for digestion.” Will Herondale”
• “In understanding the basics of digestion, you’ll discover who’s in charge. Here’s a hint. It’s not you.” Nancy Mure
• “Whereas chimpanzees spend five hours a day chewing raw food, a single hour suffices for people eating cooked food. The advent of cooking enabled humans to eat more kinds of food, to devote less time to eating, and to make do with smaller teeth and shorter intestines.” Yuval Noah Harari.