Okay, this thing is tomorrow. I am sitting here blowing up balloons. Wouldn't you know it I got my period TODAY and I lost my cellphone yesterday. And tomorrow I am going to Mexico to get my stomach cut out. I am sitting here thinking...maybe I can just go on another diet. Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe I'll get to Mexicali, get on that table, and there will be a huge earthquake while I am under anesthesia and I will wake up in the rubble with no painkillers. Maybe I'm not ready. Maybe I should go on a huge diet and lose fifty pounds and eat wheatgrass and Water before I do this so I'm like really REALLY healthy before I go. Maybe this is all a internet scam and what's down in Mexicali is a tin shack and some upsetting looking types who are in the kidney business...

Help help help get me off my ass and packing please....

. hey all.

I'm in the hospital. Hospital Almater in Mexicali Mexico, and of course because it's me everything happened this morning was random. The shuttle was supposed to pick up all the fat people at the hotel at 7 AM ( I keep thinking about this vanful of overweight americans on their way to get weight loss surgery and I wonder how we're described every once in a while, privately, in spanish. Hey, got another busload of fat white people from the airport, where do you want me to put them?) but I was not among them because I asked for a wakeup call at six and slept right through it. I told them to leave without me and so for about half an hour I was floundering outside the system with the recurring thought that I could just leave.

I missed the bus! Missed the bus, couldnt make it to have my stomach cut out, sorry.

The problem was that I had not slept at all the night before. I was so tired by time they released us to the hotel last night I was crosseyed. They told us we could have anything we wanted to eat and drink - I could barely even make it downstairs so I sort of used exhaustion as momentum to propel myself to the restaurant bar. " Okay listen," I told the lady behind it. " I haven't slept in 24 hours and I haven't eaten all day. I've got no juice to even order off this menu so could you just feed me? "

So she did. In minutes I had these awesome quesadillas and a cheese plate and bread and some kind of chiles in front of me, plus a nice hefty glass of cabernet of which I had two. It was green and manicured and pretty outside the plate glass of the restaurant, and some of the other people from the group, couples, were eating too, far in the distance in a place my legs would not take me to even to say hi. When I was done I weaved attractively back upstairs to my room and turned on the tv. It was seven oclock. I remembered to put everything in my bag, call for a wakeup call, charge my phone and take my two mgs of ativan and then friends I remember no more.

The Crowne Plaza is okay. I'm not a fan of big industrial hotels. They have a kind of signature darkness to them. There is a cavernous marble entryway that seems way too big for the furniture in it, or maybe they sold off the stuff they used to have. There are two restaurants, also cavernous - one was closed and one was empty. However the grounds were well watered and cheerful and the pool glittered blue and sterile. It smelled clean. All the staff would approach you in Spanish but when you answered in English they'd answer back perfectly as if they were from Manhattan Kansas. The walls and decor on the residential floors were a dusty pink, probably the same color they painted then in 1982 when the place was built. Rooms were huge, also dark, lots of dark wood everywhere. But like I said: Clean. And I didn't care, anyway, I was drunk with exhaustion with the whole time I was there.

Anyway so back to this morning. I was lying there on a bed at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Mexicali Mexico. The sun was clear and bright outside the window and I thought, you know....this is a pretty nice place...I could use a beer....I could just stay here for a day or two and then get someone to drive me back to san diego, hang out there for a couple days and catch a plane home....yes that's what I'll do, I missed the bus, I've been left behind...oh well, I'll call them and get my money back, they can have the deposit...

Then the phone rang. It was Yolanda. She said -- WHAT are you still doing at the hotel???

I said...um...

She said, well you need to get here AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, the internist is going to be here before eight.

So that was that. No shower. I swished some Water in my mouth, brushed my teeth and went down to the lobby. The front desk receptionist told he'd be there in a few minutes so I took the side door past the man who was cleaning the walk and my foot slid way way past where I expected it to go and I fell right on my face into the parking lot. The guy who was cleaning the walk studied me with scientific interest.

And then the shuttle came.

I walked in, asked the front desk for Dr. Aceves' and got Dr. Campos who handed me off to the nurse, who got me x-rayed and settled in my room. We had our 45 minute speech from Dr. Aceves and it was decided that one woman would go first. She's already gone. So here I sit on my hospital bed, locked into my fate.

I called my brother and told him I had made it here. He said, what are your thoughts? I said, I am trying not to have any thoughts.

So far none of this stuff has been the least bit uncomfortable. I had a blood test, an x-ray, a conference with the anesthesiologist and a nice drive through san diego. If I hadn't been so exhausted and freaked out, not to mention menstrual, it actually would have been kind of fun. So far.

. hey all.

I'm in the hospital. Hospital Almater in Mexicali Mexico, and of course because it's me everything happened this morning was random. The shuttle was supposed to pick up all the fat people at the hotel at 7 AM ( I keep thinking about this vanful of overweight americans on their way to get weight loss surgery and I wonder how we're described every once in a while, privately, in spanish. Hey, got another busload of fat white people from the airport, where do you want me to put them?) but I was not among them because I asked for a wakeup call at six and slept right through it. I told them to leave without me and so for about half an hour I was floundering outside the system with the recurring thought that I could just leave.

I missed the bus! Missed the bus, couldnt make it to have my stomach cut out, sorry.

The problem was that I had not slept at all the night before. I was so tired by time they released us to the hotel last night I was crosseyed. They told us we could have anything we wanted to eat and drink - I could barely even make it downstairs so I sort of used exhaustion as momentum to propel myself to the restaurant bar. " Okay listen," I told the lady behind it. " I haven't slept in 24 hours and I haven't eaten all day. I've got no juice to even order off this menu so could you just feed me? "

So she did. In minutes I had these awesome quesadillas and a cheese plate and bread and some kind of chiles in front of me, plus a nice hefty glass of cabernet of which I had two. It was green and manicured and pretty outside the plate glass of the restaurant, and some of the other people from the group, couples, were eating too, far in the distance in a place my legs would not take me to even to say hi. When I was done I weaved attractively back upstairs to my room and turned on the tv. It was seven oclock. I remembered to put everything in my bag, call for a wakeup call, charge my phone and take my two mgs of ativan and then friends I remember no more.

The Crowne Plaza is okay. I'm not a fan of big industrial hotels. They have a kind of signature darkness to them. There is a cavernous marble entryway that seems way too big for the furniture in it, or maybe they sold off the stuff they used to have. There are two restaurants, also cavernous - one was closed and one was empty. However the grounds were well watered and cheerful and the pool glittered blue and sterile. It smelled clean. All the staff would approach you in Spanish but when you answered in English they'd answer back perfectly as if they were from Manhattan Kansas. The walls and decor on the residential floors were a dusty pink, probably the same color they painted then in 1982 when the place was built. Rooms were huge, also dark, lots of dark wood everywhere. But like I said: Clean. And I didn't care, anyway, I was drunk with exhaustion with the whole time I was there.

Anyway so back to this morning. I was lying there on a bed at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Mexicali Mexico. The sun was clear and bright outside the window and I thought, you know....this is a pretty nice place...I could use a beer....I could just stay here for a day or two and then get someone to drive me back to san diego, hang out there for a couple days and catch a plane home....yes that's what I'll do, I missed the bus, I've been left behind...oh well, I'll call them and get my money back, they can have the deposit...

Then the phone rang. It was Yolanda. She said -- WHAT are you still doing at the hotel???

I said...um...

She said, well you need to get here AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, the internist is going to be here before eight.

So that was that. No shower. I swished some Water in my mouth, brushed my teeth and went down to the lobby. The front desk receptionist told he'd be there in a few minutes so I took the side door past the man who was cleaning the walk and my foot slid way way past where I expected it to go and I fell right on my face into the parking lot. The guy who was cleaning the walk studied me with scientific interest.

And then the shuttle came.

I walked in, asked the front desk for Dr. Aceves' and got Dr. Campos who handed me off to the nurse, who got me x-rayed and settled in my room. We had our 45 minute speech from Dr. Aceves and it was decided that one woman would go first. She's already gone. So here I sit on my hospital bed, locked into my fate.

I called my brother and told him I had made it here. He said, what are your thoughts? I said, I am trying not to have any thoughts.

So far none of this stuff has been the least bit uncomfortable. I had a blood test, an x-ray, a conference with the anesthesiologist and a nice drive through san diego. If I hadn't been so exhausted and freaked out, not to mention menstrual, it actually would have been kind of fun. So far.

Haha! I don't think Ernesto, the driver of the Almater van, really takes any digs at us Fat Americans as he was once very overweight and had the sleeve, too. Did he not show you his 'before' picture?

Wow, that is wild about missing the shuttle. Glad they came back and got you

Hope today is better for you!

Well good luck! You will be fine. No more atavan for you!!!

I love reading the stuff you write, Crosswind!

I'm glad that your sort of mis-adventure with the wake up call problem didn't keep you from getting there. I can't wait to hear the next step as you roll out of surgery!

All the best to you!!!

How did you make out crosswind?