THERE'S A POT OF CRAP AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW

Mom had her second of three carotid artery surgeries yesterday.

I'm not sure if I ... wait...I think I did mention the first one ... where they went up through her heart and her heart was too weak for the operation so they retreated and decided to go in through the neck?

Did I already mention that?

Anyway...that one happened last week.

Yesterday's was the first one where they went in through the neck.

They got in and her artery was 95% blocked. Five more percent and she woulda been dead.

And apparently it was pretty much full of plaque. I'm no doctor, but they had to clean out like two inches of her artery which I'm being told is a lot.

Then, while they were in there, Dr. Slippery Fingers accidentally stretched a nerve and now her mouth is all droopy.

Dr. Fingers assured my dad that the nerve will repair itself in time and that Mom will go back to looking like herself and not like she's about to scream "ADRIENNE!!!" like Sylvester Stallone in "Rocky".

But, to be on the safe side, Dad wasn't supposed to tell her about her mouth drooping. Apparently, had he told her, the whole vanity factor would have kicked in which could have resulted in her grabbing a phone book and start speed dialing lawyers to sue Dr. Fingers' ass.

Then...at about 6 last night, her blood pressure began to drop.

It dropped down to 40 over 20.

From what I've been told ... that's not good.

Technically, at that point, she should have died.

But they got her stabilized and the blood pressure went back to normal.

I'm not saying this to garner pity. The fact is that she's currently doing as well as to be expected. Hell ... they're talking about letting her go home today, which I'm totally against because she almost died yesterday and I would think she'd need a few days to stay monitored.

Then again, they said they may let her go home BEFORE the blood pressure flew south for the winter.

So that may have changed.

I hope so anyway.

But hey...thank God for NASA!! If it wasn't for NASA, I bet my Mom woulda died, huh??

GOD BLESS NASA AND ALL THE PEOPLE WHO WORK FOR IT!!!

Here...here's 15 billion more dollars...go back into space and see if you can find a cure for droopy mouth!!

Whoooohooooo!!

Goooooo DROOPY MOUTH!!!

Man oh man.

I'm not a big fan of roast beef.

When I was younger, my mom (you remember my mom...the one who almost DIED last night??) would cook a roast and since she liked her meat well, WELL done, she would cook it until it was dried out and just nasty as all get out.

I like my meat medium rare.

Anyway, found another recipe and decided to try it.

Covered an eye of round with all these different spices.

Put it in the crock pot/slow cooker last night at 10:00.

This morning....mmmmmmm... it smells sooooo good.

Now I have to make this horseradish sauce to go with it.

That's dinner for tonight.

And I'm actually looking forward to it. Or ... at least my nose is.

So hey ... let's say that I've got some in-laws.

And these in-laws bring their 15 year-old son over to my house every single Monday night while the rest of the family goes to Bible Study.

And let's say that this son has been caught several times looking up porn on my computer.

And ... I dunno ... let's say I started to call him "Pervy" in this diary.

And for the sake of argument, let's say that I'm tired of this imposition on our lives that each and every week we have to sacrifice our Monday evenings and have this worthless slug mope around the house because we refuse to show the same enthusiasm for Pokemon, the Cartoon Network, Travel Scrabble and internet porn that he has.

And just for kicks ... we try to think up one more thing that they can ask for that would really inconvenience us.

Like...oh... I dunno....borrowing one of our automobiles from Thursday until Sunday to go drive 300 miles north to take their Sissy Boy son to some sorta math tournament or something.

And let's say I'm married to a woman that has never been able to tell her family members "no" because she's the baby and doesn't like rocking the boat.

So let's just imagine here for a second that my wife lends her brother and his family the use of her mini-van for an extended weekend and in return, she gets to drive their mini-van which is a never-cleaned rusted out piece of shit that they WOULD take, but somebody broke out the driver's side window because they live in the ghettoist of ghettos and there's just a garbage bag taped there instead of a window because the window is "on order" but hasn't made it in yet.

Yeahhhhh.

That doesn't sound too bad...does it?

Nahhhh.

I don't think so.

Driving around in a van that is crawling with various diseases and has sandwich meat from 1988 wedged down in the seats with a garbage bag for a window ... no problem.

Babysitting Pervy from Thursday until Sunday while the rest of the family heads north?

P-R-O-B-L-E-M.

I learned how to say "No fucking way" in about a dozen different languages last night. Most of them were complete and utter gibberish, made up in the heat of anger, but still ... I think my wife was pretty impressed. I know my son was.

So my wife called her sister-in-law, who's Puerto Rican and said "Ninguna manera que jode!!" in her native tongue to let her know that there was no fucking way we were going to be saddled with a whiny annoying pervert for four days and four nights straight.

Grandma agreed to do it. I'm sure Pervy's not thrilled about this because at my house he's got digital cable, Play Station, Internet porn, 100 DVDs and 1,200 CDs to listen to.

The only thing that's fun to do at Grandma's is hold the ball of yarn while Grandma crochets. She refuses to get cable TV, isn't connected to the Internet and has several dusty old Broadway musical soundtracks on vinyl in the attic, but they're all warped from the heat and she doesn't have a turntable anyway.

Sorry Pervo.

But there's (say it with me) NO FUCKING WAY that I'm going to babysit this cretin for four days straight.

Ain't gonna happen.

It's bad enough that my wife has to cruise around our new neighborhood in a crack sled with a garbage bag whipping her in the face. That's already an injury.

But don't try to add an insult to it.

That's just wrong.

That's all from me today.

Oh.

Almost forgot.

Swappingtons.

"Bob".

...You do realize I'm only mentioning this to piss certain people off now...right?