Itchy and Lumpy
My apologies if I’ve seemed like an asshole the past few days (or at least like more of an asshole than usual) on message boards or elsewhere. I’ve had trouble sleeping and between being exhausted and being in pain (more in a moment) and having a little bit of cabin fever from the “stuck in a submarine with a baby” syndrome. The pain and the lack of sleep came from a lump that appeared, disappeared and reappeared immediately behind and below my left ear. It felt like it was about the size of a bottlecap, but it was resting right on that bone, putting constant pressure on it…hence constant pain. I think to put it charitably I’ve been impossible this week. Also, having a lump suddenly grow on you is very unnerving with or without the pain, so off to the doctor I went. Turns out that it’s an infection that’s set up near the glands back there, so now I’m on these horse-pill-sized antibiotics…and I’m still just having to rough it where the pain is concerned. I can tell that the swelling is going down, but it still hurts like hell. So at this point I’m not much better behaved than Evan is when he’s feisty, only I know more colorful four-letter words than he does (but I certainly can’t do the cute BAH BAH BAH BAH BAH! that he does).
Funny thing about the doctor I saw: I went to elementary school with him. He was the first kid I knew who had a TI 99/4a, and he introduced me to Tunnels Of Doom. I think I may have sold him on the PDF DVD while I was there – I probably need to start carrying a couple of them with me for these kind of eventualities. 😆 We also had a mutual friend with an Astrocade, so with me and my Odyssey2, we were kinda like The Kids Who Don’t Have An Atari and stuck together pretty closely. I’ve wondered more than once how in the world I came across to someone I haven’t seen in nearly 30 years. If I try to look at it from outside the sphere of my own interests and hobbies, it’s like I’m suddenly this fat nerd who’s still playing the games that were out in 1982. I tried to explain that I’m a bit of a historian in that regard, but I’m not someone who’s got an acclaimed book to back up that claim – just a self-published DVD, most copies of which are labeled in Sharpie. I don’t have any regrets for my own life choices, except maybe the Eating Too Much part, but I kinda wonder what the discrepancy was between what he expected to see and what he did see. Really more out of curiosity than any sense of being self-conscious. I am who I am, and I look like what I look like, and I’ve grown into a sense of comfort about both of these things.
Anyway, I’ve taken enough stuff to knock the edge off the pain from this thing (which is still there), so I’m gonna go to sleep.… Read more