Scientific Proof I Have Guts

I'm glad that's over. I know it's necessary but that won't stop me griping about it. All the other no-fun things about colonoscopies are pretty well known but in my case there was extra suck and fail.

See, after midnight you don't get any food or water. The prep directions specifically tell you no water, gum, hard candy, etc. So by the time I got back there I was pretty dehydrated, and add to that the fact that I have smaller veins than most people and ... yeah, they had to try three times to get an IV into me. When I woke up, I was pretty convinced there was a cat in the recovery area but I think I was just seeing some nurse's grey sneakers passing by the curtain. I managed to stay awake until seven last night when I gave up and went to bed. I feel fairly normal this morning.

Fox is going into Jax today for a team lunch. I was going to pass on going with him and wandering around St Johns Town Center anyway, but then he found a computer part he bought is being delivered today, signature required. So I'm going to run a few errands early, then be home around the time he needs to leave. I wanted to get stuff done around the house anyway, since I did almost nothing but the bare minimum to keep things running here Wednesday and Thursday. Fox brought in fire starter and everything, but today is warmer, so I'm saving that for tomorrow.

Depending on how I feel after I eat lunch I may get a strength workout in. Something easy just to see how everything feels. I feel like I'm pretty well "over" the marathon, but now I've got to be ready for Dopey. I know I can finish without getting swept, I'm just a little gun-shy of it since I know how much pain I can be in. I'm also looking at buying myself a good rucking pack (again) as now it looks more like we really will be doing some serious hiking and I would like to be ready for it.

I feel dumb just realizing this but my VOID 1680 radio station could be WFLX, broadcasting to St. Felix and Calisto County. At the beach, in the car, or wandering the Swamp Between Worlds. Your favorite hits, and songs you never thought you'd hear again. You know, this is kind of prompting me to start studying for my ham radio license again. Fox got his, I bet I can do it, too.

Breath and Memory

I'm doing Writer Stuff this morning and I've been reading up on unmarked graves, abandoned cemeteries, and how they located unmarked grave sites.

I grew up in east Tennessee, in the mountains. Not IN the GSM, but close enough that I went to school with kids who were literally birthed in houses inside the National Park. The woman who raised me, Carolyn, did a lot of genealogy, and she used to tell people that by the time I turned three, I'd been in every cemetery, churchyard, and family plot in the county. She'd push me around in a stroller while taking gravestone rubbings and such. In case you ever wondered why I'm like this. :D

Anyway, there were always rumors and creepy stories among kids at school about this or that place being haunted. You might not really be surprised how many of these places had unmarked graves in them. Not anything nefarious - just family burials from way back, graves that probably had a wooden marker that eventually rotted away. We knew an older woman who claimed to be able to find these graves with dowsing rods, but I never saw her do it.

The TVA had to move a lot of burials when they were building dams and needing to move towns. Douglas Lake filled up over a settlement, for example. One thing they had to do was move graves, and my history teacher told us a story about needing to go identify her father's remains so they could be moved. They had to open the coffins in front of someone, usually a family member.

A different teacher lived in a house that had been built pre-Civil War, and one of her front rooms had a bullet hole in the wall where someone shot a guy who'd been doing abolitionist work in the area. And yes, I got to go see it. That was the same teacher who had some geese, and one time we were visiting when I was very small and a goose chased me all the way back to dad's truck. Geese are terrifying when you're the same size they are.

(no subject)

All hell's broken loose here because an anole lizard got inside, and Feisal saw it when I was trying to catch it to put it back outside. He grabbed it, but I was finally able to get him to drop it, and I think the lizard is more or less unharmed, but it ran off, and now both cats are patrolling around the couch, which is the last place they saw it.

I feel like one of us is going to wake up to puked-up lizard remains tomorrow morning.

Sorry lizard. I tried.

Update: The lizard threw its tail, which Feisal found and is now watching with great interest. This is a red-letter day for him.