LOVE HURTS

Wednesday, a day of fast, not for religious reasons, not for lack of food in the house. No it was for the procedure. 

The procedure that every heterosexual male dreads. 

 I was able to eat some J.E.L.L.O.  and some broth. 

Problem is, I'm a carnivore, my body craves meat like a vampire craves blood. 

After 12 hours of meat depravation my sense of smell becomes as keen as a polar bear coming out of hibernation. I swear I could smell the ham salad through the refrigerator door. 

But that's not the worst part of the whole deal. The worst part is the prep which consists of Dulcolax pills and Miralax  powder that you have to mix with either Gatorade or Propel. 

The name Propel seemed like a fitting choice for this operation so I bought a 6 pack of the grape the week before.  Problem was I couldn't keep Jojo out of my Propel even after I told her to stay out of it. 

I ended up having to restock when she was out of town, so I mixed up the toxic powder into 4 bottles of the Propel and prepared for the worst.

 I thought what a waste, if the procedure would have been the week before when I had the stomach flu I would have been way ahead of the game. 

So I put the 4 bottles of spiked Grape Propel back in the fridge and waited for Miralax time.

Chugging half of a bottle of Grape Pooppel at timed intervals I kept reminding myself that the prep procedure has evolved greatly since my first one some 20 years ago. 

But it's still not much fun, by the time I got 3 bottles of Pooppel down I felt the desired results had been achieved so I left the last bottle in the fridge. 

All went as well as can be expected except for one near miss early on in the festivities. 

I had prepared the half-bath off our bedroom with all the accoutrements for an extended stay. 

All had been going well, then while standing in the living room and without warning I felt like I got hit with a Chernobyl reactor core meltdown. I literally went screaming through the house with every muscle in my body clenched for all they were worth.

After that, I tuned in the Republican National Convention on the TV in the bedroom and did not leave the perimeter of the bathroom for several hours. 

Jojo was out of town so my bro- in-law Rita's husband Bob took me to the hospital the next morning. 

Knowing Bob's sense of humor I knew I would be in for a great deal of mirth and merriment on the way to the hospital due to the nature of my procedure. He did not disappoint. 

When they wheeled me to the O.R. I looked on the table, there was a long black snake with a steering wheel on it. 

There was a radio playing softly in there and I immediately recognized the tune. It was Naserath's Love Hurts. I said "you know, I really don't think that's an appropriate song for what I'm about to go through. 

The doctor and nurses cracked up and the doc said "at least it's better than Another One Bites The Dust". 

Good point doc!

They got ready to slip me into Wonderland, they don't usually knock you out for this deal. They use Versed, pronounced (Ver said), it's kind of a legal date-rape drug, usually you have little to no memory of the procedure. 

I told the nurse with the hypo "don't be stingy with the pixie dust, this is one memory I don't want to savor. 

They obliged, the next thing I remember was the sight of Bob's big grin. Everything came out alright and I left the place with one less thing then when I got there. 

When I got home I saw the left over bottle of Pooppel in the fridge. That began a long struggle between my good side and my dark side that had me envisioning Jojo grabbing what she thinks is my Propel and chugging it down. I tell you for hours that day, I had an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other,  weighing the pros and cons of this plausible deniability. 

She was still out of town and the whole thing would look like just a silly accident that we could all laugh about some day. Yeah but how long would it take for that day to arrive? You see my quandary. 

In the end I appealed to what Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature". Or it just may have been what Shakespeare's Falstaff  meant when he said "Discretion is the better part of valor". 

Whatever it was,  it ended with me pouring the Poopel down the drain with a devilish grin imagining what might have been.