Sitting in Cottonwood in a Best Western one gummy over the line . . .
. . . Seriously, if you sing it to the tune of ‘One Toke Over the Line,” that title totally works. (Also, if you click that link, this is a most disappointing video for a song that is ostensibly about getting too high — I was expecting more.)
And I am in Cottonwood.
And I may have ingested a wee bit more of the medical gummy than I had intended.
And the television in this hotel doesn’t work. Which makes me angry because what is this? The 1950s? And ALSO what is the joy of a hotel room if you can’t watch television in bed the way the good lord intended! (I’m fervently anti-exclamation point, but COME ON.)
This place calls itself “Lux Verde.”
I see nothing green.
What the fux does “Lux” mean?
This is a Best Western. Cottonwood is trying to play the usual Arizonan semantics game that all towns in this state play. You know, the game where you have a big sign that says “Bumble Bee Creek! Five miles!” (Yes, the highway signs in Arizona have exclamation points just to piss me off.) (No, they don’t.)
Anyway
Arizona lies constantly about what things are. You know what Bumble Bee Creek is? A bone dry crack in the mountain or desert.
Bone. Dry.
Or they have roads called like “Bloody Basin Road” (seriously, I think that one is a name of a road in Arizona) and there’s nothing — just no-thing — scary or mysterious about it and nobody ever explains to you why this dusty hole in the middle of a cactus field is called “Dead Bug Lake” — what I’m saying is “Lux Verde” can call itself “Lux Verde” until the cows come home, but it’s just a fucking Best Western — and really a “Worst” Western on account of the busted t.v.
***Mid-post, I called the front desk, per DirectTVs instruction. I was told to “unplug the television and plug it back in.” It’s like a stay at the Ritz. ***
Anyhoo. My wife and I moved this weekend. To Tucson, not to Cottonwood.
Our new home (rental) is a sweet little thing, built in 1948, all concrete (even the floors! Wild! I didn’t know people had concrete floors in anything other than basements — which don’t really exist in southwest homes), huge backyard, my very own office that overlooks a bush that is busy with little desert sparrows all day, BUT THE BEST PART?
Dishwasher.
Just kidding. The dishwasher is great, but it’s not that great.
Best part is being back in a city of some sort. I know,
I know,
tEchNICALLy FlAGstaFF iS a CItY!
(did I do that right? Trying to stay hip to the online gestalt — too late? Was that sooo 2018?)
But Tucson has that gritty, old, slightly mean “city” feel.
*** The un/plugging of the television worked. CNN on tv because I don’t have enough stress in my life. All the anchors look badly in need of haircuts and I’ve just realized that that will be the new “woke” look for 2020/2021 — that “I never get a haircut, and if I do, I do it myself” look. Because it shows you’re a responsible, caring person and citizen. Because you’re not supposed to get a haircut during a goddamn pandemic even if Mike Pence says it’s “perfectly fine” (I don’t know if he’s actually commented on the safety of haircuts, so don’t come at me for libel, Mr. Outgoing VP.) Do you have the “responsible citizen” non-haircut or DIY covid cut? I have hte “responsible citizen” non-haircut currently, but am planning on a DIY covid cut this weekend. In our gigantic back yard. Which does not face a busy road. In a neighborhood that’s so quiet I can hear windchimes and distant conversations instead of jackhammers, “Sweet Home Alabama” cranked at an unholy volume, and mufflers that, in the perfect words of my friend Virgil, “sound like a prolapsed anus.” Seriously, I hate the latter shit. I think most of us hate it.
You know what I’m talking about —
the mufflers on bikes and certain cars that has the (usually white, male) occupant under some bizarre spell that causes them to believe that loud sputtering makes them seem cooler? Tougher? Manlier? Is that like a white man growl? — Anyway, we can stop this. Next time you see someone at a stop who has one of those loud ass revving mufflers, roll down your window, up nod, say, “Hey, man. I love how you’ve made your car sound like a prolapsed anus. Super cool.” (Also maybe don’t do this because people who operate such motorcycles/cars are often deeply insecure and aggressive — not a safe combo.) ***
I digress.
I digress because my neck and shoulders hurt like motherfuckers from stress.
Only once before in my life have I been so stressed/distressed that my body started to hurt. I was twenty-one, about to graduate from college, and I had a massive nervous-breakdown-adjacent thing happen because there was tons of shit going on for me that year personally and otherwise. And back then, I couldn’t do better than an Advil for pain relief, but thankfully (I guess?) it’s “Modern Times” and I can legally have Advil AND cannabis. More specifically one-and-a-half gummies.
Approximately
30 mgs of THC (who ARE these people running around taking 100 mg edibles? seriously? What happens when you DO that? I probably should never know.)
I think my threshold is probably in the 20 range because I definitely feel a bit too “lifted” tonight.
Then again
I haven’t slept properly in three days.
The night before our actual move, my mother-in-law (saint that she is, drove up to help), wife and I all fell asleep in our bed (felt a bit like the grandparents in Willy Wonka) while watching this really soothing show called “The Repair Shop” and I woke up in the night vomiting. Like, I woke up because I was starting to wretch. I got barf on the door. Seriously. It was like that.
This went on well into the next morning.
I was supposed to drive the UHaul truck, Sarah was to drive the Honda.
I was puking and weak
(I think I puked because I ate two slices of pepperoni and mushroom pizza — with real cheese and real meat and real grease — and that’s the sort of thing that happens when you’re in my condition at my age: you eat pizza and then violently projectile vomit for twelve hours. Enjoy old(er) age, kids!)
So.
Sarah had to drive the truck and I drove the Honda because in some weird logic world we felt that would be “safer” — like it’s ever “safe” to be operating any vehicle while vomiting, weak, and potentially faint.
Whatever. I’m still here.
(Also, Flagstaff, I’ll have you know I cried most the way down the mountain because I love you, too, just as much as I love Don Lemon — probably even much more.)
When we got to our new house? I sat down in the yard and started crying because I was so. fucking. tired. and. sick.
Later, I learned my father-in-law asked my wife, “Is Allison crying because she’s in hell?” (The answer, from Sarah, was a correct affirmative.)
Moral of the story: my neck is all jacked up and I took too much cannabis in the form of a gummy that tasted sort of like mango and also sort of like weed. And now I’m sitting in Cottonwood in a Best Western one gummy over the line.
I’m in Cottonwood to see my oncologist. (I don’t have a new oncologist in Tucson, yet. There hasn’t been time.)
So.
Today, I woke up at 6 a.m. with our Siamese cat sitting on my night table, meowing in my face, as he had done all goddamn night — hence I barely slept. (In fairness to the cat, I also barely slept because I was dreading today and because I kept dreaming that Abe fell off the bed onto the concrete floor and waking up in a panic only to find, repeatedly, that Abe was just fine and sound asleep between Sarah and I.)
So.
I got up.
Threw my legs over the side of the bed and wept for a moment (as one does), made some French press coffee, and drove to my in-laws’ place across town to teach my classes because we didn’t yet have internet at the house.
In classes, I was sleepy and was bringing up all sorts of random shit like GG Allin and the fact that the name “Bertha” will never come back the way some of those Depression era names have come back.
(Later, I discussed with my friend Megan — who is about my age but much, much older by a month — that if you were a teenager in the 90s, you were, at some point, going to have to see GG Allin’s tiny penis — whether you wanted to or not, whether live in “concert” (I put that in quotes because, though he died young, Mr. Allin was never headed for Madison Square Garden, much less The Ravinia Festival) or vis-a-vis a grainy bootleg VHS your friend bought from some rando in Chicago when none of you kids were supposed to be in the goddamn city . . .
And when classes were over, I drove back to our new, cute adobe, frantically packed a bag, said goodbye to Sarah, the dog, the cats, and got back in the Honda to trek back up the mountain. Sore neck, underslept, tense as fuck, I arrived at the Worst Western around 4:30 and realized I hadn’t eaten since the night before when I picked at some salad and a little pork loin made by my wonderful mother-in-law, and did the unthinkable (for me, at least) and declined dessert because I wanted to avoid puking anymore this week.
Starving, sore, under slept, emerging from a four hour drive (Phoenix traffic), I went to my sad room at the sad Worst Western and took an Advil and then took one of the gummies the guy at the dispensary told me were “great for pain and sleep” and now here we are. I’m just plain “slightly too stoned” AND in pain AND not asleep.
*** I must say, though Don Lemon is, even sober, a handsome man — whatever this cannabis strain is makes him look even more beautiful to me. Like I just want to touch his face. Sorry if that creeps you out, Don Lemon. It’s strictly platonic.
But also, if you are reading this, Don Lemon, I am really honored and humbled, and I love you because you’ve been one of the people who has seen me through this horrible year.***
Tomorrow: Teach my classes from the Worst Western (there’s something so gross and wrong about that, but whatever — it’s 2020. Everything is fucking gross and wrong). Drive to the cancer center. Talk briefly to onco. Get a shot in the ass (literally), then sit on said ass, in Honda driver’s seat, for four hours back down the mountain to Tucson. Where, apparently, I live now.
I think I just bored myself to sleep with my own thoughts.
Hope you feel differently, reader.
May all of your sleeps be cozy and tight (unless you like a loose sleep; some do). May you never throw out your neck. And most of all, may you never have to move again. Seriously.
That shit sucks.
Stage 4 cancer.
Barfing.
Moving.
All are about the same.
