humor

Colonoscopy prep: The true and simple rules.

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(Happy Throwback Thursday! Today I am having my every-five-years colonoscopy, so it seemed like a good time to re-run this piece from Dec. 5, 2018.)

Some people throw parties on their birthdays, or go out to dinner. This year I went with a butt camera.

It’s not that “colonoscopy prep” was high up on my birthday bucket list, but rather that the appointment was the first one I could get.

Lucky for me that it hadn’t been scheduled first thing on Nov. 30, when we had a nice big earthquake. According to a staffer at the doctor’s office, they’d just finished one procedure and were beginning to sedate another patient when the 7.0 temblor hit.

That poor guy had to reschedule – which meant having to re-do the colonoscopy prep. Ack.

For the uninitiated, colonoscopy prep is a full-scale cleanout of your colon: a combination of light diet, then liquids only and finally a seriously effective cleansing solution. Apparently one brand of industrial-strength laxative is available in tablet form, but the doctor I visited won’t prescribe it. He says the results aren’t always optimal.

(Eeeewww.)

This time around I was offered the option of a relatively new product called Plenvu. It’s so new, in fact, that my insurance would not have covered it. However, the doctor’s office had some samples to give and I accepted one upon hearing the regimen: two 16-ounce doses of solution over two days, each dose followed by 16 ounces of your clear liquid of choice. (Mine was iced tea.)

Previous preps had required two 32-ounce doses of solution followed by two 16-ounce glasses of clear liquid. No wonder Plenvu’s slogan is “success with less.”

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S#!t my boyfriend says: He just won’t stop.

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Recently I read an article about feral hogs from Canada that might spread into the United States. Given my partner’s punny tendencies, you’d think a “Canadian bacon” joke would be forthcoming.

Nothing that simple issued forth, however. Instead, DF claimed there’s a group that wants to save those poor, downtrodden swine: “It’s called ‘Hamnesty International’.”

As regular readers know, my partner and I adore wordplay. They also know that every so often, I publish a collection of his best (worst?) efforts.

The habit was inspired by the “Sh*t My Dad Says” books/Twitter feed/television show. [As an Amazon affiliate, I may receive a small fee for items bought through my links.]

Obviously I don’t share all his puns. Some are too local, and some are too naughty. But some of them are too good (bad?) to keep to myself.

If you aren’t a fan of the lowest form of humor, you might want to stop here. The rest of you know what you’re in for, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Here we go:

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Junk food: Sometimes it just tastes good.

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(Happy Throwback Thursday! This post, originally published in 2014, celebrates something called National Junk Food Day. This year NJFD is on Friday, July 21, but my blog, my rules. DF and I are still eating quite well, thanks to frugal food hacks, our garden and our never-ending search for good deals. That doesn’t keep us from eating some junk now and then, though. Here’s why.)

It’s National Junk Food Day, apparently. And me without a single Moon Pie in the house.

In fact, I’ve eaten quite well today. Breakfast was oatmeal made with half yogurt whey and half water and flaxseed, plus half of the last banana in the bunch (shared with DF, because I’m kind like that).

For lunch I had rice topped with roasted vegetables – carrots, broccoli, Walla Walla onions and home-grown turnip, plus a dish of homemade yogurt mixed with a spoon of homemade orange marmalade and more of that flaxseed.

If only I’d known about the holiday. I might have gone to McDonald’s for breakfast and Burger King for lunch. Nothing says “bad for you” like a single meal that holds all calories needed for the entire day (with way too many in the form of grease).

On the other hand, I did eat white rice instead of brown. So am I junking out sufficient to the day?

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5 money lessons from “Jurassic World: Dominion.”

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I do love finding personal finance lessons in popular culture. Today I’ll take out after “Jurassic World: Dominion.”

Was it a good movie? Hard to say. Asking this is like asking, “Was your McDonald’s meal a good dining experience?” Answer: It filled me up okay but it was neither memorable nor remember-able. “Jurassic World: Dominion” is the same sort of cinematic non-feast: I remember enjoying certain parts of it, but on the whole it was just…long. If I’d been wearing a watch, I’d have been checking it after about the 90-minute mark – and the film lasts for 147 minutes.

The first film in the series, “Jurassic Park,” was a wildly entertaining film with plenty of action and terrific (for the time) special effects. But it also asked the hard questions. You know, stuff about humankind’s ongoing attempts to control Nature and our inability to look at something wondrous without wondering how much money it could bring us.

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2 illnesses (one COVID, one not).

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Let me say upfront that I did not have COVID. My poor niece has it, though, and she’s been suffering. Ever the momma, though, Alison opted to quarantine in a tent in the yard (more on that in a moment) rather than expose her two children to the virus.

My own illness was far more plebeian, though fairly uncomfortable in its own special way. It laid me low for most of last week and has left me fatigued and cranky. Which is one reason that it’s been, good grief, 11 days since I last posted here.

Still trying to form coherent thoughts, as well as to catch up on assignments whose deadlines I missed. I’ve also been dropping off things I think my niece could use: ice for the cooler, washed grapes, chicken noodle soup, Ritz crackers and, for fun, a sleeve of Otter Pops. (We’d been reminiscing about freezer pops recently, so when I saw a box of 80 OPs for just $3.29 in the “manager’s special” bin, I snatched it up.)

I don’t go into her home or her tent, or even near them. Instead, I set the stuff near the front door and text her kids to come get them. They come out with masks on, chat briefly (from a distance) about how it’s going and go back into the plague house.

About that tent: A friend of Alison’s referred to the quarantine tent as “the ’Rona Cabana,” and that earworm* would not leave my head.

The only way to get it out was, of course, to write about it. 

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Being an adult: What they don’t tell you.

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I keep seeing a meme along the lines of, “No one ever told me that being an adult means having to decide what to fix for dinner every single night for the rest of your life.”

You know what else they didn’t tell you? That you’d also have to shop for that food, and to pay for it.

And for extra credit, that if you’re the main cook in the household you’ll have to listen to other people’s complaints/criticisms regarding the food.  

However, once you pass the age of 18 (or in some cases, never) you’re supposed to start acting like an adult. And being an adult isn’t always fun.

It can be fun, and it can even be great. But no one tells you that it’s also by turns terrifying, irritating, annoying, depressing, occasionally gross and often overwhelming.

They say that the trouble with life is that it’s so damn daily. Ditto adulthood. No one warns you that being an adult means a daily parade of stuff that sometimes you are not equipped to face, from the hazmat quality of an overloaded diaper to the daily drumbeat of, “How am I going to keep the lights on, the kids out of jail and my retirement secured?”

Am I complaining? Not really. Being an adult is what adults do. But sometimes you just want to be seen, as the kids say. You want someone to notice when you’re on the ragged edge, and you want that someone to say, “You know what? Siddown and eat this cupcake. I’ll handle things from here.”

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S#!t my boyfriend says: The next generation.

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DF is at it again. As in, he never really stopped. The man never met a word he couldn’t play.

He cannot help making terrible puns, and I cannot help writing them down.

Some of them, anyway. Some are a bit too risqué to share, and others are so obscure it’s too hard to explain them in print. The fact that I understand them myself clearly shows that he and I were made for each other.

Every so often I publish a collection of them, inspired by the “Sh*t My Dad Says” books/Twitter feed/television show. [As an Amazon affiliate, I may be compensated for items bought through my links.] Each time, I can hear the groans of anguish (and sometimes admiration) from my readers, yet I can’t stop posting.

Sorry/not sorry. Some of these things are too good/bad not to share. This is your cue either to run screaming from the virtual room, or to stick around and be amused/buffeted by the volume of nonsense that the man emits on a regular basis.

Me, I can’t get enough of them. You, however, have been warned. 

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Giveaway: “Tundra” calendar.

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Continuing with my “support the local economy” string of giveaways, I give you…a wall calendar made by Alaska’s funniest guy – and signed by him, too. If you squint real hard at the photo on the left, you’ll see the signature “Chad Carpenter” in silver Sharpie at the top, just above the “Tundra” logo. Carpenter … Read more

The Talkeetna index.

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In years past I’ve done both long-form writing and mock-tweet compilations about the Talkeetna Bachelors Auction and Wilderness Woman Competition. And this year I did Talkeetna in six pics.

Today I realized that wasn’t nearly enough coverage, given how many other photos I still had to share, and how many experiences I hadn’t yet described when I put up the six pics. After all, that post went live the same night we arrived in Talkeetna. Surely there was more to tell.

So I decided to tell it, in the style of the long-running “Harper’s Index” from Harper’s magazine. But I’d be doing it Talkeetna-style.

For the uninitiated: The Harper’s Index is a list of random facts, sometimes connected, sometimes not. Rather than draw from multiple sources, I will of course focus on the bachelors auction and wilderness woman competition.

Some of my index items will be illustrated and some won’t. One of the photos will be not suitable for work. You’ve been warned.

 

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Six pics of Talkeetna.

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For the first time in three years, Linda B. and I are attending the Talkeetna Bachelors Auction and Wilderness Woman Competition. The drive up was smooth sailing, with hardly anyone else on the road. It was also gorgeous, once the fog burned off – especially the eye-popping vistas of Mt. Hunter, Mt. Foraker and Denali (see below).

It’s 13 degrees below zero right now, but that’s all right because we’re indoors. If anything, it’s a little too warm in our hotel room. Pretty sure I won’t be needing the blanket and comforter tonight, or maybe even the top sheet.

Thus far we’ve viewed the annual parade (made up mostly of emergency vehicles, plus a flatbed truck with some shivering bachelors), eaten not wisely but too well, and chatted up some of the old-school auction folks. One of them pointed out that this is the 40th annual event, out of 41 years (the pandemic nixed large indoor gatherings last year).

The Wilderness Woman Competition is a large outdoor gathering; it takes place tomorrow. The Talkeetna Bachelor Auction will be indoors, but tickets were limited. They sold out in six minutes flat. Fortunately, Linda B. was ready to pounce the moment they went on sale.

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