From My Brain to Yours | TheDustSeason

Advisory: the following contains irreverence for Star Trek, reference to bodily functions (aka toilet humor) and nearly-naked photos. You have been warned.

Just days before I was to undergo my hip replacement, this arrived in the mail.

I cannot tell you the relief of receiving the oddest looking thing ever to grace a commode. My first thought upon seeing my elevated toilet hover craft? “It looks like something from Star Trek.” Embracing my new command chair, I was able to boldly go to Spectrum Hospital and face the unknown. So sit back and enjoy this week’s episode of: Hip Trek. (Not a copyright infringement, at all.)

Spaced-Out: The finale to my front and rear! These are the voyages of the starship Enterpoop, Its six week mission: to explore embarrassing losses of dignity, to seek out new ways of putting on socks, to sleep like there’s no tomorrow…

Star Date: 0413.2015

Acting Captain’s Blog, First Officer Reporting: The captain has been relieved of duty by the medical officer. We arrived at the planet Spectrum for a brief layover to augment the captain’s hyperdrive by installing a new dilithium crystal stabilizer.*

Staff arrived disappointingly clothed in green jumpsuits—a total breach of Hip Trek protocol which dictates that medical personnel wear tight, crushed velvet blue shirts with black pants or mini dresses with Go Go boots. As the procedure would take some time, the captain donned a space suit designed to make her look like a Macy’s Day Float…appropriate considering some of the drugs later prescribed.

Macy's Float Kiri — As expected, the Captain’s bloated ego becomes more apparent out of uniform.

A nurse—most likely a vicious Romulan—by the name Phlebo ToMist attempted to excavate blood using an unnecessarily pointy object.

: SHO’VA SHAK! (Okay, help me out, I think this one is from Star Gate) Let’s try Klingon: Qu’valth! P’tok!

The Romulan seemed disappointed when she finally hit a vein only to discover the blood wasn’t green after all. The captain suffered this all in silence.**

According to tricorder readings, Bones (aka the surgeon)–plotted a star chart on the captain’s hip.

Insert your own 'map to Uranus' joke here. — Insert your own ‘map to Uranus’ joke here.

It looked as though he’d trained with Picasso. The captain was relieved to later awake from sedation to discover her nose reassuringly undisturbed.

The side effects of the procedure included a foggy-headed delirium wherein aliens appeared at odd intervals to monitor the implant and offer to take the captain to the head. The captain may have professed love to the anesthesiologist at one point. Fortunately Bones insisted she maintain near incapacitating level of narcotics in her system so any embarrassing details are but a blurry memory.***

Stardate: 0415.2015

Captain’s Personal Blog: Against medical advice, I have resumed my post. I will admit, Bones may have been right and the frag-bickle-lorum suggests I haven’t all my flurguls in a row. I won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he is right though.

It seems as though my body has been taken over by an alien force that requires me to relearn all of my former functions using a variety of odd devices.

There is the sock-o-nator which works only in one direction apparently—which required repeated humiliating lessons before I figured out what I was doing wrong. Fortunately the crew was much less medicated and on hand to help out.

Please ignore the First Officer's lack of uniform--it was pajama day on the bridge. — Please ignore the First Officer’s lack of uniform–it was pajama day on the bridge.

I have a new transporter that, while of limited distance, allows me to move my leg from the floor to levitate at a level that alleviates the pain in my port nacelles.

There is the claw-like apparatus I call the ‘payload retrieval device’; it has a myriad of uses but primarily helps me locate the Captain’s briefs.

Panties pictured may or may not actually belong to the Captain--she's not telling. — Panties pictured may or may not actually belong to the Captain–she’s not telling.

Lastly, there is my space shuttle which helps me to drag my carcass from one staggering location aboard ship to another until my body finally remembers how to function as a single, albeit sore, working unit.

I have the most humiliating habit of referring to this as my 'stroller'. — I have the most humiliating habit of referring to this as my ‘stroller’.

And now, my moment of reflection must be cut short as we are on course to the planet Vex-Lax; it’s time to resume my captain’s chair and boldly go. Captain’s log out.

Make It So Number one! — **Make it so, Number One!**

Asteroid Bedazzled Footnotes:

*In other words, to have an anterior hip replacement—dilithium crystal stabilizer sounds much cooler, doesn’t it?

**A total lie, but at least she didn’t scream “Get it out, get it out, get it out” as she did during a past similar hunt for a saline portal whilst preparing to produce her progeny. (This is 100% true. In my defense, the phlebotomist hit a nerve that to this day is funny when touched.)

***This entire post is brought to you by hydrocodone, tramadol and diazepam without which hallucinations such as this would not be possible.

Stay Tuned for Next Week’s Adventure: When the captain gets mortally impaled with a Bat’leth!

WARNING, a blatant and oversimplified generalization is about to follow. You may or may not recognize the fault of personality with which I am going to whitewash the entire human race. It doesn’t matter. Call me Tom Sawyer and pass me a brush.*

People learn lessons very slowly. In my case, make that very, very slowly and with rerun episodes that are so familiar I can practically recite the dialogue by heart. The reason I mention this is that today was a prime example of my tendencies of running myself into a rail and then over the edge of a cliff. I would say I didn’t see the warning signs …but that would be a lie. I practically ran the sign over as I sped Thelma and Louise-style toward the abyss. The sad part? I was trying to reach a perfect state of Zen.

(FreeDigitalPhotos.net, James Barker)
It might help if I explained my brain to you for a moment. Uh…perhaps a visual would help. Imagine a giant warehouse somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Even GPS can’t find this spot with any accuracy. Now picture this building stuffed to the rafters with squeaky hamster wheels, rusting in place because all the little hamsters died of starvation while the owner was lost looking for kibble. That is my brain…oh…and it’s located on a fault line that occasionally threatens to suck the entire works into a massive sinkhole. In other words, I live a frantic existence. Now, back to the search for Nirvana.**

I will sometimes have one of my hamsters spring to life. (Side note: these are zombie hamsters and are not to be trusted out of their cage!) The zombie hamster will insist that I absolutely need to do something like, say, learn how to make an origami lotus flower. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfMGjjW4avc] I will search for a how-to video and I will immediately plunk down hard earned cash on the most expensive paper you will ever find. It might have been cheaper to make lotus flowers out of actual currency, if dollars came in the right dimensions. I followed the step-by-step instructions and, voila, success. I made a perfect replica of the one on the video. I am the Queen of Arts and Crafts. All bow down. The zombie hamsters are activated by this achievement and immediately start churning out all kinds of ideas: Maybe we could make a bunch of these flowers, figure out how to laminate or waterproof them and turn them into floating lotus lanterns and host a summer river festival of lights. You will be happy to note, the other zombie hamsters captured and ate the one that produced that idea. Yes, they are cannibalistic zombie hamsters. It saves on buying kibble.

Now, you may be wondering why I insist that this beautiful and perfect moment was such a disaster? Allow me to explain. Once one zombie hamster has risen it makes more zombie hamsters…that is its sole motivation. After the idea to create floating lanterns died a grisly death, the zombies got together and decided… “If she can make origami lotuses, she should be able to make ANY kind of origami flower.” So I am back at the YouTube altar, trying to find a way to make roses. How hard can it be to make roses? Do you want to know HOW hard it is to make an origami rose? I’ll tell you how [expletive deleted] hard it is…Making origami roses is harder than raising hamsters from the dead. It is also as far from approaching Nirvana as you can get. I tried four videos with different instructors. I folded, I crimped, I re-folded, I re-ran the 18-minute video (I kid you not) trying to recreate what these disembodied hands made as if they were manipulating the dna of the paper to transmogrify it into a rose in full bloom. I failed, repeatedly and spectacularly. The zombie hamsters were booing and goading me to find a better video. Things were getting ugly.

I was getting frustrated. “Why can’t I make the stupid fold slide into the slot the way the guy on the video is doing it?” I was aggravated and the zombie hamsters were running amok. Meanwhile, in the background my poor son has restarted his favorite concerto for the 330 millionth time and I just SNAPPED. I yell at my son. I threaten to melt the CD if I have to hear it one more time. I just absolutely lose it. My son ran off to his room crying. Even the zombies laid down and pretended to be dead.

And this is the moment when perfect clarity strikes. I should have stopped at success. Success for me is a recipe for disaster. I’ve done this before.

I once played a carnival game that I now know is so stacked against the player the odds of winning are probably astronomically against it. I am not sure, I do not have Stephen Hawking on speed dial to corroborate. The game involved throwing quarters and having them land in a square on the board. Sounds easy, right? (The zombie hamsters applaud.) Well, in my case, it was. There was this stuffed unicorn I wanted so badly, I could taste it. I had a few dollars in my pocket burning to be thrown away. I plunk down a dollar and I get my four quarters. The first quarter lands in a square with a 3 in the middle. The man frowns. “Okay, you got a three. That will get you a prize in this row here.” He points to the worthless crap that even zombie hamsters would turn their noses up at. I point up to the delicate and beautiful unicorn floating overhead. “I want that one.” The guy, probably used to whining, sniveling brats, just says, “The unicorn is 7 points. You need four more points.” I get out my next quarter and boom, it lands in a box with an X. Now, if I have failed to mention it, the quarter has to land exactly in the center of the box. The box has a relative dimension just a hair past of the width of a quarter. I look up at the man and say, “What’s the X stand for?” I swear, he looked at me like I had two heads. “That’s worth four.” He reaches up and grabs the unicorn and hands it to me. I take my unicorn, ecstatic to a degree that I have never quite managed again in my life, and I am about to turn away when one of my hamsters (they aren’t dead at this point) squeaks: “Maybe you can win more?” I turn back, and plunk a few more dollars worth of quarters on the board and every single one of them misses. The man in the booth says, “Maybe you should just stick with what you already got.”

To this day, that is probably the best advice I have ever been given. What a shame zombie hamsters just don’t listen.

You would think that, knowing I am ruled by undead rodents and knowing they are pernicious little fu… that is to say, annoying little pricks, I would cut their tiny heads off and leave them on stakes as a warning to all the other mad ideas that try to crawl from the crypt. You’d think that wouldn’t you. Sadly, I often feel helpless in the face of the zombie hordes. It can take reaching a point of insanity for one of them to raise its little paw and say, “Uh, Boss. You might want to reel it in. You’re scaring your family and mangling the origami. Maybe it’s time to give it a rest?”

What have we learned from today’s lesson, kiddos? If at first you succeed…stop. Oh…and if someone offers to teach you how to fold an origami rose…RUN. Don’t Walk. Or the Zombie Hamsters will be eating your brains too.

Asterisk Bedazzled Footnotes:

*For those of you who are wincing, thinking, “But Tom avoided the responsibility of painting the fence by tricking someone else to do it. That analogy makes no sense.” You are correct. You are also welcome to go rant about it on your own blog

**Not the band by Kurt Cobain, but instead, the state of peace achieved by reaching a perfect stillness of the mind…but not a space filled with dead hamsters either.