A Weekend of Cleaning, Fatigue, Knee Surgery and Gay TV

Another weekend over already! Weekends are way to short and should be, at a minimum one day longer. It would be more equitable with the workweek. I am all for working four ten-hour days to have three off all of the time. Most everyone’s job wants him or her to work ten-hour days as it is. Oh, but they want five ten hour days! Bastards! I see lots of advantages to the four-day workweek, such as less traffic on the roads on Mondays and Fridays, a savings in fuel, and more time at home with family and friends for the working man/woman. Yeah, I know business will spout some hogwash about a loss in productivity, but you know what? I don’t care. Anyway, the weekend is over yet again and five days of work are staring us in the face. The weekend was kind of a blur and I consider myself fortunate that I remember it all. Here’s a quick recap.

Friday night, Jenne and I went to Outback Steakhouse to celebrate her bonus. We go to Outback once a year and it’s always when Jenne gets her bonus. After dinner, I headed over to Steve-O’s to watch the season finale of Battlestar Galactica and play video games. We were joined by Steve K., who gave us each a copy of the Colonial Presidential Ballot! Sweet! Headed home very late, crawled into bed and slept until almost ten AM. I had a few errands to run after a breakfast of Honey Bunches of Oats. I stopped at the auto parts store for car cleaning supplies and the Home Depot for a new toilet seat and weather stripping for the front door. Red 5 got a good cleaning inside and out and the grime of winter has been washed away. I have the Mr. Clean car wash system and I can tell you that it works GREAT! You can read a review here, and I agree 100% with it.

http://housekeeping.about.com/od/productreviews/gr/mrcleanautodry.htm

I am really happy with the Mr. Clean system, even though, when I originally saw it advertised, I thought it was a gimmick. I bought based on the recommendation of another MINI motorists who swore by it. After washing Red 5, I have had other MINI owners and car enthusiasts say to me, “wow, you must have spent hours waxing your MINI (hehe that sounds kinky). How many coats of Zaino wax did you apply?” You should see the surprised looks on their faces when I tell them I used the Mr. Clean system. After washing Red 5 and getting her all spiff looking, I installed the new toilet seat. I always have some amount of trepidation when it comes to fixing anything in the house, even something as simple as a toilet seat. Most all past projects, no matter how small, always took a turn for the worst (or is that worse?). Fortunately this was the exception and the job took less than five minutes. After that it was time to clean up and have a little lunch. Immediately after that I felt very fatigued and a little jittery. The jittery fatigued feeling is one of a few side effects of increasing my 10mg does of Lexapro to 20mg at the direction of my psychiatrist. The dosage was upped Wednesday and the side effects kicked in pretty quick; fatigue, dry mouth, jaw clenching, teeth grinding and a jittery feeling. I was warned of the side effects and did a lot of reading, so I knew what to expect. I also knew better than to be driving for extended periods of time while I got used to the new dosage. They have subsided significantly since then. It’s also helped that I switched to taking the med in the evening instead of the morning. Hey, if fatigue is a side effect I figure better to take the meds before bedtime than before commute time. Why the increase in dosage? I slumped into another serious depressive episode about two-weeks ago and my regular dosage wasn’t helpful. I walked into my doc’s office last Wednesday and she said, “So tell me how you’ve been. What’s been happening in your life?” And at that the floodgates opened and I talked more in an hour than I had in two weeks. Long story short, I feel much better now. Better living through chemistry. Although, having suffered with major clinical depression for almost thirty years I am about ready to take off for Peru and give this a try.

Well, I woke up at six and did my share of the house cleaning. I was going to make pita bread pizzas for dinner, but the Pitas had started to become a biology project, so that idea was scrapped. Instead of making our pizzas, we did something we haven’t done in over two years. We ordered a Hawaiian pizza from a little mom & pop place. With the dinner and cleaning out of the way by eight PM, Jenne went off to do homework and I jumped into the World of Warcraft. Surprisingly none of my personal friends were online. So instead of completing quests with friends, I played in pick up groups at two of the battlegrounds, and did a dungeon run (AKA an instance run) at the Scarlet Monastery with some new friends I made in one of the battlegrounds. We finished the run through the monastery a little before two AM and I headed off to bed. I was up at 9:30 AM Sunday and met Jenne for breakfast with God by 11:00 AM. They were short a staff member for the service, so I volunteered to help out during communion. I carried the wine chalice (no, not the one from the palace) and presented it to each person while saying, “The Blood of Christ, shed for you.” At which the person would respond, “Amen.” And take a drink. Jenne even received the wine from me. Given where I am in my own personal faith walk, and given how my depression has beat upon my faith over the past twenty-eight years, the irony of my administering one of the sacraments was not lost on me. After church we headed to Manchester, MD to visit my father who just got out of the hospital from having knee surgery. We stopped at the Westminster, MD Five Guys Burgers & Fries joint on the way for lunch. That’s twice in four days we ate at that Five Guys. If you are looking for a really good burger and great fries, we suggest giving Five Guys a try. Just don’t go if you have peanut allergies. They have boxes of roasted peanuts all over the place and they cook their fries in 100% peanut oil! Otherwise go and have a really good burger in a no frills joint. It’s been a while since we’ve seen my folks. My brothers and their families were there as well. So the whole family was together and it was a pleasant afternoon. Dad has lost weight and despite just having had knee surgery he looked okay. The docs put in two titanium plates and some other parts after scraping away bone and other material. I didn’t get into the details, but it wasn’t a replacement. More like a repair. He’s got some nice pain meds. We met my parent’s two cats for the first time. Tigger II and Buffy. Buffy is not named for Buffy the Vampire Slayer – we all thought that – but for her buff color. After about an hour and a half with no TV, a new record I think, my dad decided to turn it on and went some enthusiasm he went right to Logo TV! The TV network for the LGBT – read LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL and TRANSGENDERED – community. My dad was unusually enthusiastic (understatement) about LOGO and knew a bit more about the programming than a long time homophobe should. He seemed to know quite a bit about this show in particular. He gave us a quick synopsis about the show and pointed out cast members. At one point during the show one of the gay guys was doing a bit of home improvement to surprise his lesbian friends. Wearing the typical work belt, he knelt down to repair a base board. His pants slid down like typical workman pants, BUTT instead of butt crack he displayed his bright red Calvin Klien thong! My dad said something like, “now there’s some underwear for ya, eh son?” The moment was very surreal to say the least. It didn’t just strike me as odd, but Jenne and my brothers and my sister-in-laws as well. I didn’t catch the reaction from my mom. Well, soon after he changed the channel, but there was still some brief discussion about the Logo network. I really don’t know what else to say about it. Did I mention how surreal it was? Oh yeah, I did. let me say again that it was very surreal. Well, we stayed for a good bit of the afternoon and early evening, and then headed home. We caught the first hour of the History Channel show, How William Shatner Changed the World. It wasn’t that great and it also wasn’t anything we haven’t heard before about how Star Trek influenced many people’s lives and a lot of our technology. Shatner does know how to make fun of him self though. We headed off to bed and now here we are at the beginning of another workweek. Oh joy.