Blood Orange

The universe has been trying to get me down.

I'm knitting a sweater. It's beautiful. I have most of the knitting done--just the bottom band, button band, and collar left. And it's radically too large. I'm still not sure what's going to happen to it. Right now it's in time out--the second time for this sweater, let it be known--until I figure out what to do next.

I had my follow-up appointment with the surgeon this morning, who said that my incisions look fine. This is good, but I really intensely dislike going to the doctor and therefore got myself all whooped up about it for no real rational reason. As an added bonus, then I got whooped up at myself for being irrationally whooped up, sending me into a cycle of whooped-upness.

The surgeon told me at my initial appointment that he wanted me to have an endoscopy done to make sure my esophagus wasn't damaged from the years I've been fighting GERD and taking acid-reducers/blockers. Today I scheduled the endoscopy for May 30 because I'll be off work. I guess that's a benefit of being a nonJew working at a synagogue: I can schedule endoscopies for Pesach because I have the day off. I don't want to have an endoscopy. I don't want to be made loopy and not be in control. Control is good. No control is bad.

At work, the database crashed in a spectacular and fire-filled manner.* I spent a long time trying to find the corrupt records and reconnect the front and back ends all whilst muttering, "Master's degree in THEOLOGICAL STUDIES, fortheloveofallthatisholy. No technology degree. Computers run by black magic. How come nobody ever asks me about women in Buddhism? THESIS on women in Buddhism. No thesis on networks." The real bitch of this is that, although I did fix the corrupt records and got us up and running, the underlying problem of why we lost the connection in the first place hasn't been fixed or even identified. And I don't know how.**

I ate lunch at my desk while sifting through thousands of records in various tables. It was one of those lunches where you don't really remember eating and so your body spends the rest of the afternoon telling you you're hungry while you pointlessly try to remind it of what it ate for lunch.

However, there are some good spots I would do well to remember:

• I ate a blood orange. I find them incongruous and intriguing. It amuses me how much eating an orange that is not orange messes with my head. I'm looking forward to putting the peel in my compost bin. I feel it adds a bit of je ne sais quoi to my compost.***

• We're grilling out for dinner, and I'm going to try to grill pears. I love grilled food. I love pears. I sense something good coming out of this experience.

• The garden center I like has giant bags of vermiculite, which I needed to find for my Gardening Plan. (Dudes, much, much more about that later, I assure you.) I've read that people have had problems finding it, and I found it on my first try. It's also under $30, which feels good.

• I had a giant frozen coffee beverage after my doctor's appointment. It was delicious.

It's just one of those days on which I have to work hard to remind myself that the glass is half full. It is, though. Except for the coffee beverage, which is definitely empty.

*Okay, okay. There were no actual flames. It burned up a few hours of my life though. Does that count?

**See aforementioned theological education

***No, I don't really get out much. I'm comfortable with that.