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I will carry all the weights tonight

@wetgrassbelowblueblackabove / wetgrassbelowblueblackabove.tumblr.com

I'm Adam. I like to get drunk and dance badly to New Order.
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mitchclem

Let me actually tell you about this goddamn doctor’s office: I knew my insurance would be running out soon, so I knew I needed to squeeze in a checkup as soon as possible. I hadn’t gone for a checkup in literally years, and so I had a list of things to ask about. 

First off, I’m waiting in this room with paper thin walls so I can hear all the nurses outside gabbing about how hot they think the Rock is. Okay, fair enough, but slightly nerve-racking since I know I’m about to have conversations with the doctor about like MY BODY and stuff, and so I’m more nervous than I should be, and that was BEFORE the doctor finally came in and straight-up left the door open and asked me what was up.

So, okay, I feel like you guys probably know I’m not so great in weird social situations, right? I’ve probably made this clear by now? I very. VERY nervously asked the doctor if the door should maybe be shut maybe for the physical? And, without looking, he tells me the door IS closed. It’s not. It’s, like, it’s not WIDE OPEN, you know. But it’s ajar. And I happen to KNOW how much sound travels from where I’m sitting to the nurses station even with the door closed completely. But he tells me it’s closed and… It’s this thing, I didn’t want to have to even ASK about it in the first place, that made me nervous and uncomfortable, so I SUPER DUPER do not wanna have a fucking argument about it. But I say, “No, it’s, it’s actually still open a little.” And the doctor super weirdly looks to the door, and turns back, “It’s fine, no one can hear you.”

Hi. My name is Mitch Clem, this is my life, constantly, ALL THE TIME. Is this how hard things are for everyone? Like, I know I’m kinda nuts, I get that, but am I imagining how goddamn weird these scenarios I’m thrown into are? Maybe I’m overreacting. Probably. Usually.

So anyhow, I proceed to go down the list I brought of things my body did that may or may not require medical attention. And I don’t want you to think I’m some hypochondriac or anything, I wasn’t asking him if I had cancer or anything over and over, but, you know, I’m at the doctor, I have questions, he should have answers. And yet every thing I brought up to him he kinda laughed and shrugged off like, “Yeah, things are weird, right?” No explanation, no investigation.

Three questions in we got to a weird pain that I’d been having in my lower back at the time (it’s gone now) that was, like… okay. So, I apologize for this part, but it HAPPENED and it’s RELEVANT and I WAS TALKING TO A DOCTOR. But this pain kinda went from my lower back to one of my testicles. Like, I could feel it in my right testicle, a very sharp pain whenever I stood for too long. Which, I know, probably nothing, but, you know, I’m not supposed to have to be embarassed to talk to a DOCTOR about things like this, right? I say the word “testicle”, though, and this guy’s face runs blank. I am not kidding, I could see him get uncomfortable and totally check out. Without even addressing what I just said, he stood up, pretended to look at my file and told me what room to go for my blood work.

This was a physical. Like, you know, a checkup. I was thirty at the time and hadn’t been to a doctor (well, besides one STD screening - WHICH YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO ANYWAY, PEOPLE - and that had all come back clean so I knew this issue wasn’t some STD thing) in years. They didn’t touch me, they didn’t look at anything, they didn’t make me turn my head and cough or anything, and when I brought up something that could EASILY be a very obvious symptom of either a hernia or, god forbid, testicular cancer (you know, that thing that kills everyone with a Y chromosome?) the dude got all fucking weird like I was coming on to him or something and practically ran out of the room.

This story isn’t even finished yet, you guys. Buckle in.

I did the blood work, whatever, we’re fine. I get a notice in the mail: YOUR BLOOD WORK IS ABNORMAL. CALL US IMMEDIATELY.

Oh shit. So I call, and the woman on the phone asks when I can come in. Now, look. I’m not a wealthy man, and every time you go into the doctor they charge you like thirty bucks for a copay, which IS NOT AN INSIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR ME. Like, that’s a week’s worth of food, you dig? So I told the lady exactly that and asked if they could just tell me what the results were over the phone, she says only the doctor can do that, okay fine so can I talk to the doctor, no just come in, blah blah whatever. They fucking got me, you guys. They sent a scary note just to bilk me out of thirty more bucks.

So I went back, and that’s when the above comic happened. My “abnormal” blood results were that a couple of my levels were so goddamn barely above normal that the doctor was hesitant to even tell me to change anything. “Eat a little better, you know, drink a little less, whatever.” Thirty bucks. Sixty, really, when you count the first half of the experience with Dr. Feelsweird. Ugh.

So yeah. Anyhow. What were we talking about?

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Linger by the Cranberries except it’s 1993, and you’re lying on your bedroom floor, listening to the song on repeat on an old tape deck. Your heart’s in your throat as you think about your crush, just vaguely cognizant of your family living their life downstairs.

requested by @travelerblessed

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That night I had a dream. I dreamt I was as light as the ether—a floating spirit visiting things to come. The shades and shadows of the people in my life wrastled their way into my slumber. I dreamt that Gale and Evelle had decided to return to prison. Probably that’s just as well. I don’t mean to sound superior, and they’re a swell couple of guys, but maybe they weren’t ready yet to come out into the world. And then I dreamed on, into the future, to a Christmas morn in the Arizona home where Nathan Junior was opening a present from a kindly couple who preferred to remain unknown. I saw Glen a few years later, still having no luck getting the cops to listen to his wild tales about me and Ed. Maybe he threw in one Polack joke too many. I don’t know. And still I dreamed on, further into the future than I had ever dreamed before, watching Nathan Junior’s progress from afar, taking pride in his accomplishments as if he were our own. Wondering if he ever thought of us and hoping that maybe we’d broadened his horizons a little even if he couldn’t remember just how they got broadened. But still I hadn’t dreamt nothing about me and Ed until the end. And this was cloudier cause it was years, years away. But I saw an old couple being visited by their children, and all their grandchildren too. The old couple weren’t screwed up. And neither were their kids or their grandkids. And I don’t know. You tell me. This whole dream, was it wishful thinking? Was I just fleeing reality like I know I’m liable to do? But me and Ed, we can be good too. And it seemed real. It seemed like us and it seemed like, well, our home. If not Arizona, then a land not too far away. Where all parents are strong and wise and capable and all children are happy and beloved. I don’t know. Maybe it was Utah.

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“I am more of a romantic than Dan and David. I kinda want him to just leave Cersei! She is bad for you and it’s not healthy and clearly you are in a relationship where you are more in love with her than she loves you.. so, you know.. And what about this Brienne of Tarth?!? She is, like, more a great..” - Nikolaj Coster Waldau

BONUS:

I don’t go here, but DRAG THEM, NIKOLAJ

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25-35 is such a weird fucking age because you’re 100% a bread-and-butter Standard Edition Millennial but the cool teens are like “ok boomer” because you have a Real Job but the actual Boomers at your job are like “I’m not going to listen to a literal fucking child” as they download 16 self-replicating viruses and meanwhile the Gen Xers are telling you to refinance a mortgage for a house you don’t have and you’re sitting there at the Adults Table with the pretty tasty casserole you cooked because you’ve finally figured out how to do that now but everyone is eating the Boomer’s store-bought macaroni instead and admittedly they do sort of taste similar so it probably wasn’t worth all the trouble of cooking from scratch and you’re trying to comfort the freshly-graduated sobbing 22-year-old next to you because she just woke up here and doesn’t know where she is but you have like maybe 5k dollars in a savings account labelled RETIREMENT that grows approx. twelve cents a year and you keep eating dry macaroni while smiling incomprehensibly and periodically blacking out like ??????????

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Okay so I went to the source article and here’s the paragraph where the guy tells his secret:

First, there was their daily diet: on top of dry commercial cat food, a home-cooked breakfast of eggs, turkey bacon, broccoli, coffee with cream, and—every two days—about an eyedropper full of red wine to “circulate the arteries.” Then there was his effort to ensure the cats were sufficiently stimulated: a garage he’d converted into a home movie theater, with a working reel-to-reel projector and actual movie theater seats, where Perry screens nature documentaries exclusively for the cats (with previews, he added). Last, and perhaps most important, he swore that love and close, personal relationships helped his cats live longer. Perry adored his cats so much, he remembered each of their birthdays.

Blessed cat dad

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