To celebrate, Maia, our friend Andy, and I biked down to Moose Lake State Park on the Willard Munger State Trail.  Actually, Andy left us for another woman at TJ’s Country Corner in Mahtowa, but Sherry, Kylie, and Maritha met Maia and I at the park and we had our first and last camp of the summer.  A good time was had by all.

Round trip, we biked just under 100 miles in two days.  Here’s proof that I was there.

Here’s Maia in front ot Ske’s in Moose Lake (ask Kylie).

And here’s the crew in Andy’s front yard.  We look fresh, don’t we?

Snakes were sunning themselves on the trail – must be the season.  Other highlights were singing “Redemption Song” in the TJ’s parking lot with Towa from Mahtowa (random Belizian guy with a drum just jammin’), perfectly cooked hobo dinners on the fire, and a moonlit canoe paddle with my woman.  Nice.  Nice.  Very nice.

Last Saturday night Sherry and I were awakened about about 4:00 a.m. by our sobbing 19-year-old.  Recently returned from a year in college in Mexico, she’s back living at home.

Anyway, she collapsed on the bed with us beside herself (on top of Sherry beside me, to be more accurate), and I think it took a good three minutes (trust me; that’s a long time in that context) before she could control herself enough to tell us what was going on.

It turned out to be a bad dream about me dying.  I wasn’t expecting that.  The three of us lay there together like the last three pieces of flatware on the planet as her sob spasms spent themselves, and as weird as it may sound, I felt pretty happy.  I haven’t cuddled with my daughter until she went back to sleep since kindergarten.  I didn’t know I missed it, but it’s clear to me now that I do.

I told a lie.  She didn’t go back to sleep.  Adults unaccustomed to sleeping together can’t cuddle and go back to sleep.  Dang.  It was still nice, though.

The next day I watched her as a bride’s maid in her best friend’s wedding.  I could make parallels to the kindergarten Christmas program, but I’ll just count my blessings and move on.

Instead of a boyfriend, she has also aquired a kitten named Caramela (Mela for short).  She just booked tickets to return to Puebla in August for two weeks.

We’re not sure who will clean the litter box while she’s gone, but Mela is slowly winning even Sherry over.

Regarding daughter x, though, who has been re-enacting the whole Romero cannon and its sequels with her friend cuacho at an undiscolsed location (stiff-limbed H1N1 victims roam the streets, moaning and pawing at the cuacho family casa where la familia brava waits behind sofa and table barracade with heavy artillery – daughter x with the Derringer), I’m unable to give too many details due to facts that I’m not at liberty to discuss.  I will, however, share what I can:

• There is a plan to get daughter x out alive
• It’s a good plan
• It’s a secret plan
• By the time the plan unfolds, it will be obsolete
• All parties are agreeable to the plan
• Kiefer Sutherland is not part of the plan
• Lobo is not part of the plan

Hopefully this satisfies all curiosities.  Sorry to rhap so mysteriously enigmatic, but one must sometimes abide by codes of conduct that can only be explained by a Federal Commission after the fact.

Less than six hours later, Kylie called to say that Mexico City has closed its airport and UDLA has closed its campus.  As of this moment, she’s literally stuck there, washing her hands frequently and not kissing anyone.  That’s all I know.

I don’t know much.  Aargh!

I’m not.

Here’s an update.  My digestive specialists et al can’t seem to identify my problem.  To review, I feel a regular bloating sensation regardless of what and when I eat.  It starts out slowly each morning, gets worse as the day progresses, and dissipates over night.  Repeat.  It’s been going on now for hearly a year.  I’ve been CAT Scanned, scoped from both ends, tried wheat free and then fructose free diets, and nothing has alleviated the symptoms or revealed any serious problems (good news).  I don’t have cancer or an ulcer, anyway.

Dr. Mother has now recommended acidophilus, which is a bacteria that supposed to aid digestion and decrease vaginal yeast infection, among other things.  I’ve been taking it for four days and think I might be experiencing some mild relief.  It might be in my head, or it might be in my abdomen.  I’m going to keep it up for awhile, anyway.

Ironically, the doctors have me scheduled to take a breath test for an over-production of bacteria, but I won’t have that for over a month (scheduling challenges). 

One final note: Gax-X also seems to give me slight, but not total relief.  I hope you can sleep better now.

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In some parts of Canada, they’d call this a snow chesterfield.

Actually, the scan was a non-event except for the half gallon of iodine solution I had to down in the preceding hour.  I can see why the stuff isn’t available in vending machines.  My bladder didn’t fill until precisely the moment that the spacey bed whirred me into the heart of the donut.  A digital voice commanded me to hold my breath a few times, putting additional pressure on my bladder, while the machine took pictures of my abdomen, but I remeained continent.  They’re looking for evidence of what’s causing my chronic bloating.  I suspect they’ll find Sherry’s cell phone that she lost last month, a permission slip that Maia was supposed to return to school, and some paper clips.

“Does this bedsheet make me look bloated?” I asked Lori the technician.

Lori assured me I looked fine. She also said the pictures were very good, and that the doctor would have to show them to me.  I’m waiting by the phone.

On my way home, I killed some time at a downtown coffee shop between busses.  I sat at a table next to three “suits.”  Truthfully, only one was in a suit, the other two in sweaters, but they were in the set of business professionals that populate downtown Duluth, along with the local homeless population (it’s a nice mix).  I had no choice but to listen to their conversation about Obama’s press first conference last night.

“I’m so tired of this.”

“It’s just the same old bi-partisan stuff.”

“All I heard from Obama was ‘I…I…I…I.’  It’s all about him.”

“We just need to throw all of the bums out and start from scratch.”

Note:  We’d actually planned to watch the conference, but were thwarted by Wolfe Blitzer, who earlier had said it would be on CNN at eight.  Of course, we didn’t adjust for the time zone difference.  Morons!  Anyway, we watched some of the pundits analyze after, but fell asleep.

I found it comical that these suits, clearly bastians of the status quo, were advocating out and out revolution.  I briefly considered we board the #9 bus together, hijack the driver, head for DC, and get ‘er done!

Instead, I finished my bagel.

I was walking the four blocks to the nearest bus stop when it happened again.  My friend Kevin, on his way out the door, asked, “Are you headed to work?”

I decided on candor.  “No.  I’m catching a bus to visit a digestive health specialist,” I said, to which he responded with typical apologetic mortification that he could give me a ride, err, at least part way there.  It’s a Midwestern cultural phenomenon that I’ve experienced many times.  Riding the bus is seen as some kind of pathetic act which prompts people to fall all over themselves to offer assistance.

“Thanks,”  I said, “but the bus takes me right past the clinic, and it’ll be here in three minutes.”  All perfectly true.

“Well at least let me pray for you then, ” he said.

“Well sure,” I said.  He was wearing neon green gloves, and he laid one on my stomach as we bowed our heads in the street and he prayed eloquently that God bring healing to my digestive tissues.  I was a little disappointed that no one drove by, but I was more than happy to have some devine assistance with how my body is processing nutrients.

“Amen.”

I had just enough time to walk the remaining block to the bus stop, and in short order the #9 was rumbling its way downtown.  At the clinic, I was given a pager in the waiting room, and when it did its thing, I headed through the designated double doors, where a confused looking nurse waited.

“Are you Steve?” she asked.

“Yeah?”

She looked over at the scale where a grizzled gentleman was being weighed by another nurse.  The two nurses exchanged puzzled glances and one of them said to the gentleman, “You’re not Steve?”   He grinned sheepishly and they traded files,

“He said his name was Steve,” the nurse whispered as the other nurse led a smirking Melvin away.  I’m not sure I want his digestive problem, but I liked his style.

In a few minutes, Deanna Bakken NP grilled me on my persistent stomach bloating that normal acid reflux treatment doesn’t seem to touch. 

“One possibility,” she said, “Is celiac sprue.”  I liked the sound of that.  I made her write it down for me so i could say it later with authority.

“We’ll probably have to do an upper GI scope, so our office will be calling you.”

Back at the bus stop below the clinic, I waited for the #13 in the -2 F shelter.  A young man – long black hair, safety pins in his ear, black Yakee’s cap half cocked, black hoodie, cigarette – stopped in to share it with me.

“Dude, it’s cold out here, but I had to get outta there for awhile,” he said.

“Are you visiting someone up in the hospital?”

“Yeah!  I had a baby!”

“Congratulations, man.  How’d it go?”  He told me all about it.  It was a happy story.  She’s named Madeline and is a big baby.

“I said I didn’t care what it looked like as long as it was healthy, and she is, man.  She’s just beautiful.”

“She was born on a good day,” I said as the #13 pulled up.  “It’s my birthday.”

“Happy Birthday, man!”

“Congratulations to you and your woman, man!”

That night I celebrated with some great homemade cards from Maia and Maritha, Kylie’s powerhouse poem arriving from Mexico via Skype, strawberry rhubarb pie, and a very personal, top secret card from Sherry.  A good time was had by all.

I got the call the next day, yesterday, that the digestive folks want to do an upper GI scope, a colonoscopy, and a CT scan.

Here’s to you, Madeline!