Olympic Pursuits

It feels strange to sit and stare at the screen and have nothing of medical portent to report. What is going on here? This does not mean that you get to stop reading and move on to other useless endeavors, you must complete this bit of uselessness first. Only then may you return to your far-outvilles, mafia chores, downloading mobile phone apps and flipping channels between rocks’n’brooms and men in tights in jealous rages over a hunk of jewelry. “Oh, that brute can’t even do a quad and besides the gold goes much better with my eyes.” High drama in Vancouver, I agree, but you can DVR that stuff and avoid the relentless Marriage Refs promos for the few precious hundredths of seconds it takes to slog through the slush here.

Renee still has not rescheduled her Cleveland Clinic trip, which right now looks to be nothing more than a perfunctory follow-up visit with no additional testing necessary. It sure was touch and go for a while there, but it looks like everything is working as advertised a few years back when her colorectal doctor first broached the subject of surgery, knock on mahogany. Yes, mahogany, not just any wood. Go out and find some solid, smooth, polished mahogany, dagnabbit! The bar in an Irish pub is usually made of the stuff. Order a Guinness while you’re there knocking and toast to the passing of Renee’s colon. We never did give the little bugger the proper Irish wake it deserved. It is time to make up for lost time.

There is also nothing to report on the Cassidy front. Her check-up at the endocrinologist was postponed due to the whiteouts that blew through here. Based on the tidal waves of mood swings, the (gulp!) feminine blossoming and the fact that she’s still growing with the help of the daily hormone injections, we think the doctor will be pleased with the progress and only make minor adjustments to the doses of medication.

Polly, the wonder dog, has also been healthy of late but is starting to show some signs of aging. Her roughhousing has diminished. Her bursts of energy are very short-lived. Those squirrels on the lawn trying to tease her don’t even rate a raised whisker. There are only flashes of the rambunctious puppy that that ran endless laps around the house like Apollo Ohno, bumping and scratching and clawing o’er the slick carpet. She is content now to just plop down in one spot and sleep through most of the day. Ah, the dog’s life!

So where does that leave Invasive Maneuvers? If the reporting on things I set out to report have all been reported, what else is there to report? Does the old dog need a new trick? Should other useless endeavors be pursued? Am I done publicly humiliating my immediate family? Am I out of ass jokes? I think I may be having a mid-blog crisis.

Perhaps though, your reporter just feels as if a new milestone is approaching. Decades of intense training is coming to a head. The game clock is ticking. The crowd is mesmerized. He stands poised against the battle of time. He lunges through the falling flakes of man-made snow for the five interlocking rings …

And then ….

And then …

“Hi, I’m Bob Costas. We’ll return to the real, tape delayed, live action after we interview a few polar bears and pelt you again and again with clips of Jerry Seinfeld’s teeth. Whoa, that’s laugh track funny.”