After flying back to Atlanta for doctor appointments including two back to back squamous cell skin cancer  surgeries on both of my hands I spent the last day trying to pack up and bring a bunch of items back to the place in Florida…all with one semi ok hand. The so called MOHS procedure and the two skin surgeons who own the practice in Sandy Springs who somehow havent visibly aged in the last ten to fifteen years take carefully measured “deli slices” of the “yeah we better get rid of that” previously biopsied skin and then stitch or superglue you back together …BAM! unless of course they need to take another deli slice or two or three or twelve. Talk about taking a pound of flesh…  i know it sounds a bit gruesome yet overall fairly painless and it is… until it isn’t which is usually the next day when the lidocaine and methamphetamines (or whatever else they numb you with ) wears off. I dont know how anyone including my son Eli after his two serious motorcycle accidents manages this kind of discomfort without going insane as well as other ongoing insanities that go with it like the following (just one example).

Its almost funny. Skin Doctor said “Dont get your hands wet or wash them with soap for a week and dont lift too much because both will weaken or tear open the incision”. Other (different specialty) doctor said “we need a fecal sample. You can do it at home and bring it in to the lab. If necessary keep the samples in the refrigerator over night”.  Wait dont wash my hands?? And wait, keep it in the refrigerator??  So I’m leaving that last part out of this particular story but if anybody needs a weird plastic bedpan with measurement lines on it like a pan/bedpan for baking a cake or an unusual set of large wooden “dipsticks” you might find them listed tomorrow on Facebook Marketplace. Also who besides an elephant is reaching the highest marked line? Back to the box story. Ok I say to myself, “I will be smart, not overdo it and just send a simple cardboard box full of stuff by mail rather than take multiple suitcases to the airport or God forbid carry them on the flight back to Florida. Next day (today) my hand is really throbbing. I need an empty cardboard box and cant find even ONE box in my entire 5000 sq ft house because, well we “recycle” and someone near and dear to me is into “decluttering”.  (sometimes) but Im not gonna stress. So I go to the grocery store (Publix) and get a free box. I’m feelin’ kinda clever and good about the free box versus getting ripped off paying for a new box at the post office. The box they gave me at the grocery store was originally for bananas so it has holes. No problem.  After first obsessively checking for deadly banana loving Brazilian Wandering Spiders who can kill you instantly i remember I have 30 rolls of old masking tape. Right?  I then proceed to pack everything like carved wood turtles and bird sculptures originally in my parents Longboat Key condo and other random Cliff and Argentine stuff that i dont want to shlep with my semi-busted but very sore wings. Then i try to wrap the living shit out of the big banana box…. Just in Case. Stay with me on this life lesson. (More coming)

Then i find out that all thirty rolls of tape are literally impossible to see (or find) the end from the previous user (me) having ADD and when you do find the end (or beginning) of the masking tape it breaks off immediately and then u need an electron microscope to find the new tape end again. Im hurling useless dollar store reject tape rolls everywhere but manage eventually after 2 hours to not only hurt my one day post-surgical hand but also wrap the banana box until it looks like a rectangular shaped mummy..or possibly the mummy’s severed head.   I take the mummy head/box to the infamous Sandy Springs Post Office only because i thought UPS would be ridiculously overpriced. I wait in line. Miraculously there are only 3 people in line but I have literally despised the same single post office veteran employee there for 20 plus years who constantly bullshits, wastes time, shamelessly flirts, illegally asks for tips and purposely enjoys making people wait. I want him dead. Many people do. People with packages walk in, see him and give out an audible groan or even exclaim out loud “oh hell no …not him!” Also there is also the same predictable one guy customer at the very front of the line who for some reason actually enjoys bullshitting for hours rather than take care of business and move the damn line exactly like the predictable Millenials or GenZ customers at Starbucks and other unnamed coffee shops who are like, “um what’s a Frappacinno again?” “Hey arent you the guy with the #^<¥ electric bike? So how are you liking it because I…” What the fuck!? I want them all dead. 25 min later an older lady behind me at the Post Office says, “You know he wont let that box go through. They changed some rule or he did about what tape or kind of box they allow”.  I said …“Really ? Because I’ve mailed dead bodies wrapped in cardboard and cheap-ass duct tape from the Dollar store here for many years.” She didnt even flinch at the dead bodies reference and instead said, “I KNOW! Me too but this guy thinks he’s God and this is his federal employee magic kingdom and we’re all his loyal subjects”.  Im like DONE at that point because the box is heavy, the hand is hurting and the handwritten address i had carefully scratched into the tiny NOT TAPED two-inch square part of the cardboard box from Publix using the only marginally working pen in the post office had now bled out into a completely unreadable blob of like invisible ink mixed with a cloudy black or brown permanent magic marker stain now beginning to run towards the counter. The side of the banana box looked like Rudy Guiliani’s bad hair dye slowly dripping down his old perv lying cheating politician head during his “Trump is permanently innocent of everything” speech. Finally i snapped and said for anyone willing to listen “Im outta here” and carried the damn taped to shit box with one decent hand to the UPS store right next door where they helped me send it to Florida in around seven minutes tops and for a reasonable price too…which at that point I would have either paid to have any passing Lyft or Uber driver take to florida all by itself or just heaved the frickin’ mummy head thing off the side of the road or out an open window on I -285 (like everyone else) into a ditch or maybe even just offered it to a random homeless guy, “Hey do you need a new iron? Its a Black and Decker.” “No? Well what about these carved Southwest style wooden turtles and a hand painted heron my mother had in her condo in Longboat Key?  Kind of ironic Im shlepping it all back down there again for the THIRD time dont you think?? Um Sure, I’ll give you $10 for coffee if you just take it off my hands which coincidentally is throbbing like a motherfucker as we speak . So hey yeah have a blessed day!!” Anyway that’s it. Let’s see what tomorrow brings…