Things I Did Today (and last night, to be accurate)...or...Pucker Up!

1. Last night, because there was a threat of possible golf-ball sized hail, I moved things around in the garage until I again had parking space. "Moved things around" sounds so innocuous...there was nothing innocuous about what I moved, which included the 78" marble countertop for the master bath, complete with two attached, porcelain, undermounted sinks. The whole counterop is still fastened to the shipping crate...sort of...(I could build a sturdier shipping crate). It's not on wheels, and it's so big there was no way to maneuver either of the two dollies I own under it, so I applied various laws of physics and after about 90 minutes of huffing and puffing, I'd managed to push it to one side of my garage without putting my back out, no small miracle. The reason it's still in the garage and not yet installed is that I have a leaky shower pan in the master bath...more remodeling to be done.

2. I drove to work this morning. So what? you might ask...well, last night, when I was leaving, having heard that the aforementioned weather forecast for "violent thunderstorms" included not only hail but possible tornadoes...and because I've had the unpleasant experience, more than once (!) of being herded into one of several of the huge basements at work when the tornado sirens go off, and being "held captive" there (company policy) for over an hour, until the tornado sirens stopped shrieking, and because I had a doctor's appointment this afternoon that I didn't want to miss...last night I e-mailed my boss that I was taking my computer home so that if the weather was horrible this morning, I'd be working from home. But when I awoke the weather was mild, the streets were relatively dry (it rained during the night), and the sun was trying to break through. So I dutifully drove the 52 miles to work, where my boss smiled and said, "Why'd you come in?"

3. The plus side to the good weather this morning: the tree trimmer showed up and cored out both of the oak trees in my front yard. They badly needed it, as they hadn't been trimmed since shortly after the fire (October 2002) and both were very overgrown. To my relief, the guy did a good job, and the price was right, so I'm keeping his card on file.

4. I went back to my GI guy (gastro-intestinal GI) for a pre-colonoscopy (ugh!) check-up. I like this doc, though. He's the guy who scoped me and diagnosed my ulcers a couple of light years ago, and more importantly, after doing that, dosed me with the appropriate antibiotics so that finally, after 10 years of living with ulcers, I was rid of them. He's very low key, totally no-nonsense, treats me like an intelligent human being (which I appreciate) plus he has great art (water colors and photographs of wild places) on his walls as well as good magazines (Women's Health, National Geographic Adventure, and Outside, among others) in his waiting room. He was running late, and apologized for that, explaining that his first patient of the afternoon was an hour late. So we reviewed what's going to happen and I got out of there.

And the reason I finally made this appointment in the first place? In November, I had my first complete physical, EVER, at which time my GP, examining my...posterior...said

"Have you had a colonoscopy yet?"

"No," I said, smiling brightly, "I've been avoiding it!"

"Well," Dr. G said, "I think you should schedule it."

"Sure," I said, "I'll do that," (thinking, hoo boy, this lie is right up there with "Size doesn't matter!" and "The check is in the mail"...)

"I'm serious..." Dr. G said darkly (picking up on my flippancy, no doubt), and then she added mysteriously, "There's nothing to worry about, I'm sure, but I think I detected a little pucker back there..."

Instead of feeling worried I almost chortled. A pucker? Sheesh! She was examining my, uh...derriere, for chrissake! And I'm pretty sure, anatomically speaking, that part is supposed to be puckered...but what do I know? I'm just an aging baby boomer...so I made the appointment...