NOTE: The following was composed at Kate’s Landing early Thursday morning - at 3:34 a.m. to be exact. Caveat lector.

DARVOCET DIARIES

Gabby’s on drugs,
Gabby’s on drugs,
Gabby Gabby Gabby Gabby Gabby Gabby Gabby’s on drugs

Oh yeah – I went to the doctor today to shut up friends and family who had convinced themselves – and me too, nearly – that I had somehow contracted West Nile Virus (hey, I do live on the river and in normal years I’m sure my yard is a Mosquito Disneyland). As of today officially that is not the case, though the blood work won’t be in until Friday. Another fine benefit of nearly rural life.

No, it’s a sinus infection, a really really bad one, and strange for the lack of congestion and snot in my head but nonetheless just a really, really bad sinus infection that has my entire head enclosed in a vise two sizes too small and tightening and my neck stiff as it was lo these eight? NINE years ago when it whiplashed after an idiot came barreling around a long curve in his car in Groton, Mass., a curve he as a native and resident must surely have known ended at a stop sign but must surely have temporarily forgotten because he plowed into the rear end of the UMass entomology department’s Ford Escort station wagon that was stopped at said stop sign while traffic thundered through the cross street – plowed into it at about 25 miles an hour over the speed limit, the police estimated (I missed a week of work – hard to look down into the eyepiece of a microscope in a C-collar – and was sentenced to a week’s use of Northampton’s sybaritic East Heaven Pool & Spa. The workman’s comp money came a gratifyingly rapid 15 months later, but I digress because the drugs are kicking in) (indeed, in the original longhand manuscript of this account, I first called what I have now a “science” infection). Yeah, my neck feels like that and my whole body aches like when I had mono and my hands shake a lot and even undrugged it takes me four or five iterations at times to comprehend a page of English, though maybe that’s because I’m noodling around with Hofstadter again.

So anyway, because it’s a sinus infection, I now have two weeks of amoxicillin to choke down – and I do mean choke – the modules (calling them pills would be like calling those big fat WWII era grenades BBs) are 3/4 of an inch long, chalky and a shocking pink hue.

And because it’s really, really bad, I also get Darvocet, a welcome change from the usual codeine cough syrup in that it’s no an emetically malodorous syrup that tastes even worse than it smells and causes big time vomiting if the dose is even a little bit off (to prevent abuse, one assumes; it is an opiate. I can’t believe my man Mark Ames, of eXile fame, sucks down whole bottles of the stuff when heroin gets scarce over in Russia) and also in that I get maybe an hour before the coma sets in instead of 15 minutes. BUT it doesn’t really kill the pain, the Darvocet, it just makes me space out and sort of not notice it as much... so I can actually write a bit before passing out, too.

Oh yeah, Gabby’s on drugs.

By the way, apologies to Mojo Nixon for the ripoff of lines from his fabulous, immortal ditty “Elvis is Everywhere” that forms the epigraph to this entry. Bermuda Triangle – “Elvis needs boats, Elvis needs boats...”

Maybe half my readership got that. That’s okay, though, cuz that half is wondering, as they read and wait for some kind of trippy Lucy in the Skying like I did in college on Percodan after my wisdom teeth were removed in an Olympian feat of oral surgery for which the guy who took them out should have gotten a Nobel Prize or something, they’re wondering...

Who the hell is Gabby?

And of course the other half of my readership who missed my carpet crawling collegiate antics (I am SO susceptible to oral narcotics), is still getting a laugh at the Lucy-Mojo faction’s expense, because they know (to paraphrase Flaubert) Gabby... c’est moi!

See, back in the day when my own dear personal mom was the newslady in the family and my job was confined to hiding atop the garage reading C.S. Lewis, confusing my kindergarten teacher and other such irritating precocities for which I am still fondly remembered, she had this newspaper column. In which, as all writers wind up doing, she mostly wound up writing about her nearest and dearest, i.e. her own dear personal husband and her two fascinatingly weird children, i.e. my dad, my sister, and your humble blogger.

Knowing the fame this would bring us, perhaps before we were ready for it, she called her daughters by code names, Gabby and Gus (my father could not be so easily hidden, alas, but he was a big boy, she reasoned. I think).

And I, of course, because of my astonishing resemblance in mien, in manner, in character and achievement and megalomania to the Emperor Augustus Caesar who found Rome in clay and left her in marble, I was Gus.

No, really, I was.

Go ahead and ask my mom! Her e-mail is... Aw, heck, there I go with my recreational lying again. Blame it on the Darvocet. Or don’t. I really don’t care because the stuff is kicking in! At least, I think so! Maybe! My neck and head still hurt a lot and I’m too twitchy to sleep (obviously) but I just tried to convince you that my childhood nickname was not Gabby.

OK, wow. Every single muscle in my body just relaxed (good thing I went to the bathroom before I started writing). Well, except my neck. Maybe I’ll finally sleep now. Can I, please?

I was just going to tell you why my name was Gabby. Not a big deal. You can probably guess on your own. Yup, you got it right! I was named for Argentine soccer hero and Serie A superstar Gabriel Batistuta! No, really! I know he was born a few months after me – everyone does, sheesh. But what do you think fortune cookies are for?

OK, not fortune cookies. It was a ouija board.

No, OK, it was really a time machine they used to see his future and mine.

Oh, all right. I was actually named for Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Happy now?

Good. Now back to bed. This pen is starting to look funny.

POSTSCRIPT: You should see the handwriting!

FLU-HOO-HOOOOOO

My apologies, dear readers, but I am currently laid up with some kind of flu-like something that has kept me flat on my back in pain for four or five days. I still feel like roadkill, am only upright at this moment because I have been kidnapped by demented but well-meaning parents who persist in a quaint folk belief in the curative powers of the Denver Broncos (who tonight will play the Baltimore Ravens in Baltimore. Wouldn't care to be Shannon Sharpe tonight, nope, nope -- though I'm sure he'll give as good as he gets) and so have brought me to their home to watch the game, Kate's Landing being a designated NO TV zone.

I will resume posting here as soon as I have something worthwhile to say. Since I got many alarmed, disturbed and generally less than complimentary comments on my migraine post, I will spare you descriptions of my cranial and corporeal pains, nausea, fever, etc. that so far have defied all remedy save lying flat on my back in a semi-delerious state. Had I a working tape recorder at home I might later have something amusing to share with you, transcripted from my ravings, but alas.

They probably wouldn't make sense to anyone not residing in my head anyway.

Until later...

- Your humble blogger