5:30 a.m. Our kitchen.

Wife Cat due at hospital this morning for operation at 7 o'clock. (Thanks for loving notes yesterday!!) Me, up. Check. Dressed. Check. Wearing lucky shoes. Check. Not feeling sacrilegious due to declaring the possession of lucky shoes. Check. Lined up and ready to go: laptop, Sedaris book, wallet, watch, glasses, camera, phone, DVD's, headphones: check, check, check, allrightalready.

Breakfast of scrambled eggs with bell peppers and onions in stomach: check, even though bizarre cuz Cat can't eat. (She's upstairs showering with some weird Sani-Soap she had to lather up with and then stand there for five minutes before she can rinse off, a process for which she's turned on the heat in our place, temporarily turning me here in the kitchen into Sweatsy the Wonder Boy.)

Peppercorns sprayed all over kitchen and dining room because I brought this pepper-grinder combo thing at Trader Joe's and then tore it open like a maniac about two minutes ago because I wanted pepper on my eggs  and now I'm sitting in the middle of all these pepper balls feeling like a cobb salad gone berserk.

Identification with lettuce-based entrée. Check.

Okay, don't panic! We're leaving in a half hour! I have to go! I don't know if I'll be able to connect with the outside world once we're there! If I can, I will! If not I won't! Life's like that! Whaddaya gonna do! We're out of control! Everything's up to God! We all die anyway! But let's not think about that right now! LOVE TO YOU ALL!

Insanely yours,

John

From yesterday: Top 10 Things I'll Worry About While My Wife is In Surgery Tomorrow.

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As I yesterday wrote a bit about here, tomorrow my wife Catherine is going into the hospital for a little Major Surgery. I can already tell that while she's under the knife, the top 10 things I'll be in the waiting room worrying about will be:

1. The surgeon sneezing at a critical moment in the operation.

2. One of the nurses saying, "Hey. Where's my other glove?" after the surgery is over.

3. Cat's anesthesia wearing off about half-way through the operation.

4. Cat's anesthesia never wearing off.

5. In an administrative snafu, Cat getting confused with another patient who is suffering from advanced gangrene.

6. The surgeon and nurses secretly being part of a Russian gang of black market organ harvesters.

7. The night-shift worker who was supposed to sharpen all the surgery tools calling in sick the night before, and no one being assigned their tasks.

8. The surgeon not being able to make the surgery, and sending in her stead one of the top two or three students in her advanced physiology grad class.

9. During the operation Cat, a great napper, imagining that she's sleeping, and trying to roll over.

10. That before we left the house I forgot to turn off the stove.

(What I'll be worried about today is that anyone shows the poor girl this blog post.)

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Why don't my wife Catherine and I have any children, you ask?

Actually, you totally didn't ask that. In the past two-and-a-half years, some 15,0000 comments have been left on this blog---and not once has anyone asked me why I don't have kids.

Laggers. You know my life is an open book. I can't imagine what you could ask me that I wouldn't answer.

Wait. Yes, I can.

Yikes. Thank goodness you guys would never ask me anything about that.

Anyway, yesterday the fellow who runs this blog here did ask me why my wife and I are sans youngins. And on the very off chance that you, too, are curious about that, here are the reasons that, some thirty years ago, Cat and I decided to fashion our lives in the way that we did.

1. Cat and I knew that it was going to take the rest of our lives to understand and (frankly) heal from the unbelievably awful childhoods we each suffered. I'm not generally keen on beginning one thing until I've concluded the first.

2. Like Cat, I have no emotional model in my head for Family Togetherness. I know a lot of people are motivated to have a family as a way of perpetuating the good, healthy family relationships they've always known. And what a beautifully nurturing thing that is! But for us, that would be like trying to sing along to a distant echo of a song we've never heard before. It's a great song---maybe the great song! We just don't know it in that personal, build-your-life-around-it kind of way.

3. All my life I've known that I had to be an artist whose medium is the written word. (I'm not proud of that, and I'm certainly not saying I've achieved anything in that regard. I'm only saying that I've always known that I would spend my life trying to produce art through writing.) Dedicating your life to one thing means not dedicating it to anything else. (Plus, I knew that being an artist could very well mean spending my life entirely poor. That had to be okay. And I knew that wouldn't be okay with me if I were a father.)

4. This'll sound insane (and insanely negative), but here it is: When I was about 10, I sort of all at once understood (and I'm not saying I was right, just that in my little 10-year-old brain I felt it true) that our planet was doomed. I was walking to school; I looked up at the mountains in the distance; and whooom: I knew we'd clog this earth beyond its capacity to recover itself. Talk about ... stopping in your tracks. From that moment until now I've watched for evidence of it being Actually True that our race would fail from us destroying our planet. The fact that I've always been sure that would happen is why I was okay with not having children. I know it sounds terrible to say, but if our current system hangs together for just another 40 years or so, I'm good. But if I had kids of my own, I wouldn't be even almost okay with such short-range hopes. Having no children leaves me free to shut the book on this story without really caring how it ends. (I want it to end well, of course! But people need to do whatever they do. And they/we will, as ever. Maybe that'll involve saving the planet. Maybe it won't.)

5. Cat and I figured we could always adopt. Why have a kid of your own, when the world's already filled with perfectly great kids no one wants?

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Yesterday whilst zipping about the web I saw a story headlined, "Psychotherapist Analyzes Why Church is So Boring." I didn't read the story because who gives a sprung couch spring---but then this morning I woke up imagining what Dr. Pill wrote in his notebook as he sat in the church service he analyzed. Maybe his notes looked something like this:

Benches too hard. Pew. P.U. Potty issues?

Men in suits. Church just another job?

Opening song: Awful. Rock of Aged. What about Stones, Clapton. Bob Marley? Polka? Anything.

Church announcements/biz. Meetings, meetings, meetingszzzzzzzz. Need scandal, gossip! Missed opp.

"Kidz Tyme." (Why can't Johnny's dad spell?) Years for kids to finally gather up front. Mr. Child Relate tells story about choosing right present, or presenting right choice, or righting present choice. Yawnfest. Kids seem to enjoy! But at what cost?

Another song?! Worst rock concert EVER!!!

Sermon. So this is how Christians condition selves to experience eternity. I miss music.

People asking for prayers. Not boring. Cried a little. (Pray for cancer lady.) Put in more of this.

Another song. A.N.O.T.H.E.R.F.R.E.A.K.I.N.G.S.O.N.G!.!.!.!. I would buy this church a karaoke machine. Will.

Pass hat time. Please, God: buy music lessons for Lead Zeppelin.

Bread and wine time. Wine to vinegar if any slower. Seconds on wine ok? Cheez Whiz? Lox? (Hell for me?)

Final goodbye---go, be blessing to world, bore people into believing etc. Procession out: Plod of the Half-Dead. Must shake pastor's hand. (Germs?)

Verdict? Not exactly Circ de' Soul.

And yet. (!!!)

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