John Holdun

Admittance

Are you curious about what happened to me last night? Were my toots not enough. Okay. I will tell you the story.

I’ve been having foot problems since last Friday, when I flew to New York. I was wearing new shoes. I like the shoes but they need some serious breaking in. I had to run a little due to a delayed flight and a connecting flight that could not have been farther away in the connecting airport. They cut me up! There were cuts on my heels from the shoes. It’s happened before. I bought some bandages that night and started wearing them all week. I was sore, but it was manageable.

They weren’t healing, though. The left foot was okay but the right one, there were in fact two sores and they were gross. It hurt to put water on them! From the shower! I kept bandaging them and also I bought some sneakers. I thought it would be cute to not bring any sneakers with me, and also my sneakers that I wear are disgusting because they’re almost three years old now. My new ones are almost three days old, and while I was trying them on I noticed that my ankles were swollen! Ack!

The swelling was surely just due to having walked more this week than at all in the past year, combined with the sores. Like, my body knew things were going wrong down there so they sent some backup.

But then it started hurting. It had been hurting for a while but it was just the dull shoe-on-wound pain. You know the one. Now it was just actually difficult to walk. Grimaces and curses and limping.

Rob and Kaela joined me for dinner my last night in the city at Sammy’s, one of my favorite restaurants in New York! And by favorite I mean I’ve been there before. We were finished and going to go get some fro yo (frozen yogurt (ice cream)) when Mom called. She reads my toots now. She asked what was going on with my foot. I said the toots back to her, roughly. She said I should go to the hospital, okay fine.

We walked out of the restaurant (AFTER PAYING of course) and started walking toward St. Vincent, which luckily was close! I started having–if it wasn’t a panic attack it was the closest I’ve ever come to one. I was shaking like an alarm clock and my whole chest felt tight like my ribcage was closing in and I couldn’t breathe. I was going to the hospital for a thing about me that hurt. I don’t even take Tylenol.

We saw a lot of strange characters waiting in Triage, including a homeless man who kept digging around in his pants and flicking things out of them, like lint or fleas. Also a guy who was a regular Chatty Cathy. They told me that since this wasn’t an emergency I should expect to wait a while. I said okay that’s fine, and then covertly to Kaela and Rob I said let’s just leave soon, it’s not that bad, I’ll put some Neosporin on myself and that’ll be that.

Eventually I got a bed and a robe and blood tests and an IV and then they moved me into the ER because the place where they put me closes at midnight and there were people on streetchers all around me and I was on a stretcher and at first I was horrified, but then I chilled out and just watched all the people. Michael Crichton had it right, you guys. Also there was a drunk man who had been in the Marines and just got back from Afghanistan and he wanted them to let him leave but he could barely walk and they strapped him down in a room and he kept yelling at people.

Turns out I have Cellulitus. They gave me an informational sheet about it but it is essentially an infection under the skin (I think; I haven’t read the informational sheet). They gave me a prescription for some antibiotics that I take for a week and then I’ll survive. They didn’t need to amputate, which for a short time in my panic I decided was a reasonable outcome.

Here’s a problem that should be solved. I fly alone. It’s almost always a matter of situation but I do, in fact, prefer it. Occasionally, like right now, there are long layovers. This one is two and a half hours. I’m okay (I’d be better if the WiFi was free) but if I need to, say, go to the restroom, I need to pack up all my things, put my laptop to sleep, unplug it, stuff it in my bag, try to close my bags again, pick them up (they are heavy), and take them with me. Plus then I have to come back and possibly find another seat if mine was taken in the few minutes I was away! It does happen.

I understand the need to make people carry their things around with them because bombs, but I feel like there must be a solution to this. Maybe the solution is just packing less.

Airplanes are so big but they roll on such little wheels.

There is a permanent blue line running vertically on the screen of my MacBook, about an inch from the left side. It’s been happening for a long time but usually I can jiggle the hinge and it goes away. It’s apparently due to a kink in the cable leading to the display. It could certainly be a lot worse (it might get worse) but diggity damn is it ever annoying.

I still have an entire hour until my Final Flight, but also I don’t have innanet right now because I’m not paying for that shit, so I won’t even post this until I’m back. I received a card entitling me to free WiFi on the plane (WiFi on planes, you guys) but the battery in my computer lasts ten minutes at most. It’s hosed!

Useless battery, busted optical drive, and now malfunctioning display, and the logic board has been replaced twice in the two years I’ve owned this guy. I mean I love Apple and no one does anything better than them but is my guy just really unfortunate or what?

I forgot about unattractive people. I really did. There are so few in New York, or if they’re unattractive they’re also crazy so it suits them. Generally when I say unattractive I mean slovenly. There are people with unfortunate physical flaws but I can overlook those (how gracious of me) but what I can’t overlook is bad taste, or lack of taste. Bad taste is Ed Hardy; lack of taste is camo sweatpants and slippers and a daughter wearing giant flared jeans with white ankle socks and soccer sandals that cause her to walk like a crazy person and no, it doesn’t suit her.

It was unseasonably warm today and yesterday on the East Coast (or at least in New York and Atlanta). Upper sixties. To some this might be interpreted as a nice going-away present–“Hey John, we were glad to have you, here’s some nice weather to see you off by.” No, in fact, for me it was quite the opposite! “Hey John, you’re leaving now, and you’re going back to boring, uncomfortable weather kind of like this!” My coats are packed right now. I’m not wearing any of them.

To the guy with the shirt that says “Ask me how to lose two sizes in ten minutes:” No. In the back of Sky magazine (AKA some advertising for your in-flight menu) is an exercise machine that costs precisely $14,615 and pledges to help you get not only fit but ripped in four minutes a day. Their ad is super wordy and defensive, and the thing just looks atrocious.

SkyMall’s wording, on the other hand, is pretty perfect. No products have names; just definitive titles. “The teak bathroom furniture set.” “The pen with a covert recording device.” Or as such. Every product sounds so grandiose, or so I thought until making some up just now, and now they come across as incredibly nondescript, like the way a person would describe some piece of junk they saw in SkyMall to a friend who would then buy it, just because…wait. Shit. Geniuses.