Feb 1, 2008

Dominoes, And I Don't Mean Pizza



I am a creature of habit. That wouldn't be so bad except that if my routine gets thrown off, I get all messed up.

For instance, I take a medication to lower my cholesterol. It contains niacin, a lot of niacin. If you have ever taken niacin, you know that it makes you flush because it is a vasodilator. Flushing is what the medical community calls it, I call it itching like crazy.

To combat the effects of the niacin, my doctor told me to take the medicine at night, when I wouldn't notice the itching, presumably because I would be asleep. That worked fine for more than a year until I got the shingles which came with their own type of itching. The dreaded double dose of itching.

Since it has been scientifically proven that one can sleep through the double dose of itching, my solution was to start taking the cholesterol medication in the morning, and itching be damned. I would just have to man up.

That didn't work out so well either because about a hour after taking the medication, I would be throes of the full-body itches. Luckily for me, it turns out that if you take an aspirin with the medicine, it stops the itching. So I bought the gigantico size bottles of aspirins at Costco and the itching problem was solved.

What, you might ask, does this have to do with Merle Sneed being a prisoner of his routines?

Glad you asked. My morning routine is to apply the cosmetics necessary for others in the world to stand me, take a pill for different condition, brush my teeth and tidy up my hair. Now, of course, I have to, add an aspirin and two cholesterol pills into this well-oiled system.

These extra pills in my morning routine have thrown me off to the point that I walk out of the bathroom in the morning and only then realize that I have forgotten to brush my teeth. This has happened about a half dozen times. It's just weird. And yes I go back and brush my teeth.

So now you have another insight into my freakishness and I can move on to the point of this post.

This morning, as I was reading the news, Son Sneed came into the room and reminded me that I had promised to take him to the grocery store before I left for work at 8:45 am. This was a major disruption of the sacred news and coffee routine. I had to stop reading and hustle to get dressed to take him. I forgot to brush my teeth and had to backtrack.

We rushed to the ATM so that Son Sneed could get some money for his groceries. We used the drive-up ATM and after I conducted the transaction, and tried to put up my car window, it stopped halfway up. It would go all the way down, but only go halfway up. Now I was stuck in 35 degree weather with an open window and another major distraction to, well, distract me..

We finished shopping and rushed home. I called our mechanic to get on his schedule for Monday and hurried off to work, arriving just in time. Just in time that is, to realize that I left my store keys at home. Just in time to discover that I couldn't get into my locker to get my work stuff. Just in time to have my work routine totally messed up by exasperated coworkers complaining that I wasn't ansering calls over the radio, which was locked in my locker.

Fortunately, the Lovely Mrs. Sneed graciously brought the keys to me on her way to work and life returned to normal, which is to say only a couple of clicks to the left of actual normal.

This is my life. One thing goes wrong and the dominoes start to fall.









Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

4 comments:

Kurt said...

You have GOT to quit that job.

Bobby D. said...

Yeah, I agree with Kurt, your life is way too crazy now.

Jams said...

I have to agree. Without the job your life would be less hectic, but look at the bright side. Your blog content is great. This is good stuff. I don't know why your miseries made me laugh so hard, but I think it has something to do with being able to relate. It couldn't have anything to do with misery loving company. I'm just not like that.:)

Rob said...

I also faced issues related to my cholesterol profile, and I have been successful with a variety of natural solutions. I take niacin at lower doses that prescribed by most doctors, but I couple it with a variety of other scienitically proven nutrients--plant sterols, soluble fiber, Omega-3s, monounsatured oils in lieu of saturated fats. And, the good news is most of this does not come in pill form, but incorporated into my daily eating preferences.

We are building a community on a mission to promote natural cholesterol management over at www.kardeanutrition.com. It would be great if you came on by on posted on our blog.