Surgery Day

Max is having surgery today on his neck/back (cervical spine) to help with his ongoing degenerative arthritis issues and pain. He’s had this surgery once before a few years ago but they didn’t do these discs (is it disks?) or maybe the surgery was only half successful. I’m not sure. I’m worried that he’s going to be in a lot of pain after this surgery, and he refuses to take any opiates, just Tylenol. I’m also worried that he’ll die. I’m worried that he’s dead right now, sleeping upstairs at 4:45 am. He’ll hate being woken up by me at 7:30 to go to the Surgery Center.

I don’t know how long this surgery will take. I guess I’ll leave him at the Surgery Center and come back here to wait and walk Polly. I think I’ll make some banana bread to take the edge off.

I’m taking the day off from work, after a bad day yesterday in which the woman whose title I screwed up in the cc list in my memorandum to the heads of the Agency (see yesterday’s post “Serenity Prayer”) returned my memo to me not only editing her title, but line editing the entire memo for grammar, form, and content. Since this is an internal memo with a legal recommendation, and she’s not an attorney, I was really flummoxed, and frankly, pissed off. I wrote her a very polite email telling her in so many words she needed to get back into her swim lane and there is no way in hell she has editorial privileges over my work.

I wish I could just say to myself, this woman is terribly insecure and had to assert her status in some passive-aggressive fashion because I inadvertently messed up her title, which is important to her. And let it go. That would be great, wouldn’t it? To understand people and not react when they act rudely and disrespectfully because it’s really all about them? I think I’m good at the understanding part, but I’m still working on the not reacting part.

It would be great not to react to other peoples’ problems and to just be happy more of the time. Max keeps pushing me to try meditation, and maybe I should take up yoga too and go to one of those retreats at Kripalu where you get in touch with, well, whatever you need to get in touch with. I’m trying to be nicer to myself. I’m not perfect.