Black Holes and Revelations

Well, so much for writing more regularly. When I last left you, the loyal reader (a.k.a. bored friend with nothing better to do), I was giving you a progress report on the new apartment at 2208 South St. Sadly, this apartment is no more. Well, that’s not true – it still exists in the technical sense, it’s just that no one of any importance to me resides there any longer. I guess it was a good run while it lasted, but life seems to pull in all sorts of directions these days.

The strangest part is that, as of two months ago, it seemed like we’d be living at 2208 for another year. But, to get to the story of how/why we moved out requires at least glossing over what happened in the months leading up to the great South Street exodus. So, please indulge me as I provide a brief review of the happy-happs (translation: happenings) of the last few months.

I just realized that’s been almost 9 months since I last wrote – that’s a lot more monthage to cover than I initially expected. If that’s how it has to be, then that’s how it’s going to be. To be honest, aside from a few major events here and there, everyday life has been pretty uneventful. I guess that’s just an artifact of graduating from college and having work take up 40-50 hours of your week – in the struggle to adapt, I kind of became a boring person. Hopefully, one year more experienced, I’ll be able to resume the exciting life I probably never had to begin with.

In essence, the period between January and April was brutal. I was pretty damn unhappy with my job at Penn, and alternatives didn’t exactly seem abundant at the time. To make matters worse, my own performance began to tank. I’m far from a perfectionist, and I can live with failing to meet someone’s expectations if they’re lofty or unreasonable, but I really can’t stand fucking up in situations that I have no business fucking up in. Call it a belief in my own general competence. But here I was, coming to work every day and feeling pretty damn useless. I was exhausted - inexplicably so. At first, I thought I was simply burnt out; having a job you’re not fond of and lacking a direction to escape said job could easily have caused this. And yet, even when I wasn’t working I felt kind of disconnected and hazy… life seemed to lack lucidity. I was a walking zombie, minus a thirst for brains, the mobility of an 85 year-old, and an eerie resemblance to Nicole Ritchie.

At one point, I started getting intense headaches and was exhausted beyond belief, so I decided to see a doctor. I was fairly convinced that I had sleep apnea (accumulated evidence seemed to point to this), and it turns out I was half right. I did have apnea, but it was being caused by my tonsils. Fucking tonsils?! As it turns out, my tonsils were so swollen (quoth the doctor: “These are the biggest tonsils I‘ve ever seen!”) that, when I slept, they practically stopped me from breathing. Recent studies indicate that breathing is good (I’ve always been a fan) so, by extension, not breathing is, well, not good. My quality of sleep was shite, and going several months without quality sleep unsurprisingly turns you into a vegetable (albeit a vegetable with feelings and vital organs). I came pretty damn close to making a Terry Shiavo joke just now, but hopefully the fact that I couldn’t think of one means I won’t go to hell. For Terry Shiavo related reasons, anyway.

So yeah, I had the joy of a tonsillectomy to look forward to. First of all, all of that crap we’ve been fed on TV and movies about what happens when you get your tonsils removed is 100% bullshit: you do not get to eat ice cream. That’s right, NO ice cream. This, my friends, is malarkey, pure and simple. If there was ONE thing that made the thought of surgery palpable, it was that it would immediately be followed by pain-killers and untold quantities of ice cream… a dynamic duo if ever there was one. I had my tonsils removed, and all I got was some lousy sherbert. This was not the same as having all the ice cream I wanted. Sherbert is, at best, the Godfather III to ice cream’s Godfather I and II – maybe it’d be OK if you were unaware of the other’s existence but, given that the other DOES exist, it’s craptastic at best.

Let me tell you, the contrast between the sleep I was getting pre-surgery and post-surgery is unbelievably stark. The fact that I finally feel refreshed after a regular night’s sleep is beyond insane, it’s orgasmic. And because my tonsillectomy cured me of my apnea, I no longer snore when I sleep (or when I do, it’s slight), a fact that comes as much of a relief to Lisa, who until the surgery had to put up with my cacophonic snore sessions. I wish I had had the surgery sooner, if only because that’s something that no one should have to tolerate. To those of you who accompanied me in my European wanderings following graduation, I apologize for not having the surgery done sooner – perhaps we wouldn’t have had to institute the “Ed has to go to sleep before everyone else” rule if my snoring hadn’t been thunderously loud.

And now, rather than allowing this post to become even more burdensome than it already is, I will proceed with the rest of the reflection in a future (and soon forthcoming) post.