As the snow and the wind roar around the house, I have a chance to reflect on a difficult holiday week.
On Christmas Day, a little after 11:00 pm, I had to make the choice to ask my sisters and brother-in-law to get me to the ER. My constipation had reached the point of pain and impending explosion. It was a rough ride to a Cedar Rapids hospital that I had never been to before.
That resulted in a couple of hours of having my blood vessels, innards, and personal nudity exposed to female nurses, doctors, and technicians. I had a CAT scan, blood drawn, and finally, rancid-tasting medicine that had to all be drunk, even though the vaguely orange-tasting stuff was vile enough to be hard to get down.
So, after we got back to my sister’s house, four explosive expulsions of horrid liquid corruption over four hours improved my health significantly. Four hours of sleep the next morning helped a bit, too.
We got back home in the Belmond area later on Friday, in time to get to the grocery store before the oncoming blizzard got to us. The snow would start today, on Sunday. Around 9:00 a.m., the snow began blowing, probably about three inches’ worth, with almost all of it suspended in the air on the wind.
I called my daughter in Texas and joked about freezing to death, saw that the Cardinals lost their seventh football game in a row, and finally hunkered down under blankets to survive the heavy snow.
Catch a Falling Star 