Piston mummy bag

I was excited about today.  I really was.  I am.  It started earlier that I thought and at ten thirty am, I am already at my keyboard – that makes me happy.  It has been a long couple of weeks, a long couple of months, and a really long year. Before this year, everything was easy. Well, by comparison at least. It’s all relative.

I went to bed last night thinking about solving problems and taking out the garbage.  I’ve been thinking about planning ahead- not a five year plan, or a next year plan.  Maybe a next month plan, but really- (and, let me interrupt to say: I try not to use the word “but”, but sometimes “but” is the proper word, when I mean for the reader to ignore the first half of the sentence, usually. But everything has exceptions.) Okay, where was I.  I’ve been thinking about a next week plan.

My time here at Corpus Christi is up on the eleventh, so by then, I have to take off.  Ha, and there is that topic back at us – that seems to be the only problem I can’t solve.  Also, planning ahead for the morning.  Temperatures change and I can change my clothes for bedtime.  I have been sleeping well, the mattress is great, pillows – the space is tight, yet it makes me roll less and sleep better.

Yet, since my incident, I still have some urinary issues.  Not much of a problem, and like everything else, it is getting better.  So far this has just been a doctor conversation, but sometimes things happen in a story and the story doesn’t make sense unless you add more things into the story.  So, the piss problems.

I think it is in my mind at this point.  I know my bladder can hold one thousand mm.  That is my record, I measure.  I also know my bladder will wake me up promptly to empty it.  According to my known skills last year. However, my at-sleep brain does not seem to know that I am not at full capacity yet in the legs and movement department.  It seems like it would know we had a problem.  I burst my bladder and pissed in myself at the moment of impact – all good, it was sanitary.

I did scratch my colon, just a nick really he said – the surgeon – so minor he fixed himself without even a notation in my file, three stitches in the first of three layers. Clean and easy, almost not even necessary he told me in my conversation.  With each surgeon you’re given few minutes to ask questions – if you know the right ones, have pen and paper ready, or else- you’re left to read your file notes.  I preferred my bladder surgeon, who I never did meet.

I liked his notes though.  In his notes, he was called in by the above surgeon who had noticed urine inside of my abdominal cavity.  In his notes, it said he presumed my consent for treatment.  In consideration of such, he noted his assessment of my condition – unconscious on an operating room table with my exploratory laparotomy incision spread wide open with a demonstrated bladder issue.  Proceeding, he found a three cm wound around the back side unseen by the first and repaired it. Finally, he marked my file for thirty day and three month checkup of his work.

No doctor will every be able to check up on the work of the first surgeon, apart from the laparotomy itself.  Oh well, was just a few stitches and I did get to keep them.  Okay, sometimes I like to dance before I speak.

Where was I, getting out of tent is no easy task, especially for me I guess, in the middle of the night, while trying not to wake up… so I don’t.  I use the same (well, not the same, repurchased as necessary) hand held urinals as I’ve used since my catheter was removed in late January.  Of course, I use them much less now- there was a time when I carried them always- all day, everywhere as my bladder, with a record of one thousand mm now, was striving for two or three hundred in May. And with other medicines, when I had to go, it was always now.

I knew it was going to be cold, and I thought I’d go for the mummy bag last night.  Rather a little warm than a little cool. Okay, so this morning at about four thirty, I had to go. Unzip the mummy bag on my left opening to my right.  Reach over the pile of mummy to unzip the tent on the right.  Unzip it enough to reach through grab the urinal pulling it into the tent, re-zip tent.

I’ve been leaning to the left to pee, though with the mummy bag top piled up on that side, it wouldn’t work, so I leaned right instead – just as fine.  Get into position and let it go.

Ahhhhhh….. Shit.

I don’t know if I actually tipped it back on myself somehow or if I might have fallen back to sleep in a blink of my eye; in any case, I can accurately guess I spilled about five hundred mm into my mummy bag.  I gotta say this was another one of my worst fears all year.  Pissing myself or having some kind of urine accident.  Now I have two for nighttime and one is just a spare.  Before I had four and they were used all day and had to be emptied by someone with legs.

Sidenote: I will never be able to look at my son and say “Don’t you know I changed your diapers?”   Which firstly, his mother changed more than I and secondly, he was was my caretaker who emptied more urine bottles than anyone else for me.

So I layed there for a second, damage done.  What to do. Four hours of sleep, I’m saturated inside, it’s dark, I’m naked except for my soaked shorts and my clothes are in the car. Building a list.. flashlight, shoes? No, the slippers are closer?  Where is the bag in the car? I’m too tired for this. Can’t I deal with it in the morning?

Okay, get up, crawl out in my wet shorts while keeping mummy from spilling, pull mummy bag out; one blanket tarnished, pull it out.  Grabbed my clean skydive undersuit, the bathroom bag, towel and headed to shower.  Ugh. I hate dealing with problems that can’t be ignored.  It’s like oh, what did you want to do? NO. Do this instead, NOW.

Oh well, it was shower and bandage day anyway.  So did that, incisions look great.  Kinda look like they could use some air.. might do that tonight. Back to camp wondering what to do at five am besides freeze to death (in the forty eight degree morning.) Took a look at the tent with two good blankets still and thought I’d make the best of it and try to sleep.  Surprisingly, I feel right back asleep just past five am.

Woke up just before eight feeling good, clean already, dressed already in my undersuit, I just got up and threw on my jeans.  Though about my tea, then I had the thought, that with my morning, I had earned some McDonalds.  On the way is a small convenience store named Huffs.

At this point – I would like to remind the audience that I am writing a novel – day by day – page by page – post by post.  This novel is based on my life and based on real events..  very loosely sometimes..  written by myself now, with diagnosed brain damage – truth and fiction merge easily, and although I do put my hand to God on some of my posts, which ones is a matter for me to be asked in court of law for me to ascertain which one or another of my posts could serve as my sworn testimony, and until then I would suppose, as with anything on the Internet, this should be assumed to be a work of fiction.

So coming from Michigan I have lost my sense of supply in terms of marijuana.  It’s available when you want it.  You don’t need to worry about stocking up in any way.   Didn’t plan so well for Texas.  I just thought, I’ll pick some up along the way.

Nope, didn’t work out.  And I should probably be more okay about that.  However, I did pull a hundred from my stack to carry in my pocket when I got here.  You know, in case I ran into a bag of weed that needed finical liberation from its oppressors.  Just trying to share freedom with a preserved and cured vegetative life form, okay?

Whatever, I smoke pot.  Not always since I was a teen, though that is when I started.  Years on, years off, phases of life, social circumstances, sometimes pot fits into my life and sometimes it doesn’t and shouldn’t.  Knowing the difference is the key.  This go around, I’ve been smoking regularly since October of two thousand and eighteen, minus ten days off in January of last year.  Oddly, both times it was the same good friend with a safe and legal’ish hookup.  And coming though for me in that hospital room was key to my recovery at that point by allowing me to eat, get off the IV’s and the drugs.

This week though, I’m the only pothead in Texas that can’t find a bag of weed.  I asked a woman with gauges at gas station in Oklahoma on the drive. Yet with the cane and the limp, the first look in her eye, I changed my words and mumbled something about the weather.  Once in Mathis, I visited local the local head shop to see if I could get the lay of the land.

They laid it down, Texas is strict though it does have but barely, a compassionate use program for residents, at a high cost and with high restriction, ‘designated quality standards’ (aka, shit government weed,) etc, etc.. and won’t recognize outside state cards, even if I had one.  Well I do have an expired one – OMG who didn’t just spend the $140 to get one just for old times sake.  My first pot license came from Spensors in nineteen ninety two for probably five dollars or less.  Maybe two for seven with the FBI wallet card too. Ha.

So I asked them about the black market.. (as that is a common topic to be spoken of in Michigan) and they clammed up quick- politely- and kept going about Texas laws, kinda strict even for small time stuff.  No fines here, they are serious – when they want to be.  As always, and as it always should be, there is an element of discretion in all law enforcement. Okay.. so, I bought some fake pot vapes and left with no tips for where to look next.

That was also the day I went to family dollar for whatever I bought.  Walking in I could smell a major burst of some amazing flower, looking right ahead to the store worker he nodded welcome, which I returned by nodding, inhaling, and grinning.  He grinned, I went and shopped.

Checkout time, I had to mention the flower.  “Dude, smells nice in here.”  He was like, “what?”

“The flower, little skunky though.”

He paused, tilted his head, squinted just a bit and broadened his grin.  “Sorry, it’s a dead skunk outside, people have been complaining all week.”

“My bad.. I thought…” I said, as I laughed and grinned, slightly embarrassed I guess.  He smiled and laughed as I continued, “No, I’m sorry, I thought that you ahh..”  A young Mexican man, he laughed knowing exactly what I thought – and did not deny it.

We chatted for a while, friendly, to the point I was blunt.  Where can I find some? All he would say was I should go asking around Hoffs.  Not knowing what that was, I asked.  Just a convenience store on the way out of town, the one on the way to the state park.  He wouldn’t say much more and I didn’t want to impose more questions, we parted ways and I walked out to my car.  Sitting there, as I usually do looking up my next GPS destination, I saw him coming out to me, so I exited my car to greet him.

He told me, man.. you can’t go asking around in that though.  “In what?” I said.

“That mustang man, with those antennas? People are gonna think you’re the five oh.”

LOL, he was right.  Looking at myself from the outside, ha.  We parted again.  I did go to Hoffs though, on the way back to the site and pick up some beer.  I coyly asked the Mexican lady there, and she grinned with a little “white guy said what” look, and pointed to the fake marijuana joints they sold.. two for ten she said with a grin that dared me to laugh.

So I laughed, she laughed and I gave her ten bucks.  We chatted, I told a bit of my story.  And I’ve stopped there every day since.  Beer.  Vape.  Wood.  I asked the gentleman one day about flower, he smiled.

“You want the good stuff?” he asked me.

Already seeing his grin, I replied “The best!”  He smiled twice as much once he knew I saw the gag and gave me detailed directions and a wink, to the local flower shop.  We laughed as he told be their bouquets are the best in town.

Though really, the McDonalds made me move this morning, I did need to pick up a fresh vape.  The lady was working, she is nice.  She helped me pick a new flavor of vape (new brand, different story,) then I asked for two more of the fake marijauna joints.  They do look good, and smoke good.  I would even venture to say they almost taste okay, and maybe work as well as an O’Douls.  Just something to puff on at dusk I supposed. She smiled and grabbed them from the display and still chatting with me, she began to tap each one down and tightened the twist for me. I had told her why I asked her, on direction from family dollar, and she laughed and said it’s not us, it’s this neighborhood, pointing out back of the store as she shared as story or two herself.  She is nice.

“They’ll smoke better this way I heard” as she half laughed and finally handed them to me.

Shaking my head and laughing I left the store and began to sit down in the car.  Just then, another car had driven up from that neighborhood behind the store.  The driver walking to the entrance, a young Mexican man maybe twenty years old, commented on my car, and I was back out of my seat before my whole butt touched.

“She’s a two thousand, twenty three years old now.”

“Wow, that’s really nice”.

I told him the quick story of Pat and her car and how it came to me.  Only six years mine now and only a hundred and thirty thousand miles.

Impressed he had given me his full attention and I used it for a question: do you know where to get some weed?

The answer was obvious on his face and he was honest with it: yes.

On with the story again, I’m from Michigan, it’s been a week since I toked weed.

“Dude, my buddy just rolled the blunt – you need to hit it?”

Shocked, I was like “Dude, for real, yeah man.”

He motioned for his friend Trey, who stepped out smoking a just lit blunt.  Coming over, Jason told him to “hook this dude up”, and it was passed to me, standing in the parking lot of Hoffs.  We talked, he invited me to puff up again and I took another and thanked him.

Says it’s no problem to get whatever and took my number.  Should I be expecting a call?  Ha I’m not sure, but he said I’ll have to hook up on his lunch break!  We’ll see.  I thanked him again – cool guy and handed him his blunt.  “Nah, keep that one man have a good day.”  Everyone in Texas is so polite and kind, top to bottom, I love this place.

I snubbed it, headed to McDonalds and ate a glorious breakfast that was so good.  Back to the campsite by ten and smoked half the blunt.  I sat here and honestly thanked God for it.  It was good, little weak and tasted great.

Opened up my iPad to check on Jackson before I went to write- don’t know why, all I wanted to do was get high and write.  And look at this AMAZING person I saw a photo of for the first time.  Those who know know, and I won’t mention those names here as to not confuse them with my story – but this is LIFE.  This is LOVE.  And this family, OMG those that know know.  I seriously just looked at this photo for ten minutes at least.  I asked the parents if I could share it and with permission granted, please: look at this photo and see the beauty of LIFE. I thought the deer was beautiful and a beautiful animal it is.  This photo is a person.

Yeah, God is with me, my blood brother, my friend. It’s a weird path I’m on and I don’t fully understand it and yet I keep on walking.

Just regular weed he said it was, twenty five a quarter; or primo could be had for ten per gram.  I ordered up a hundred dollars worth.

This isn’t the same hundred from last week though.  On Sunday when I went to mass, I had changed my pants (to dress proper for mass!) and left my two twenty in the change pocket of my other jeans.

When the tray came around I realized I had no cash and was sad until I realized I had the hundred that I was going to give for weed, so I gave that at Mass.  When the second tray came around, I had to honestly apologize I had no more to give.  The usher then even asked, did you know you put in a hundred, not saying but saying he could correct the error.  No error.  That was all I had to give and I gave it very willingly.

After Mass I put a new hundred from the stack in my pocket.  Maybe today I will get to buy a bag of weed.  If not I’m cool. Actually, it might be better if he doesn’t call.  Free blunt and get to give the hundred to the local parish.  Their bulletin indicates I could have doubled their loose collection.  So either way, I’m high now and good for later.

How many days in your life do you get handed a free blunt because you pissed yourself in bed?

Just a roach left now. Twelve fifty three pm now.  Good day.  Let’s make a list.  Finish the roach, go for walk until I get hungry or get a call?

Time to walk..