After flying back to Atlanta for doctor appointments including two back to back squamous cell skin cancer surgeries on both 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 working hand. The so called MOHS surgical procedure and the two highly acclaimed surgeons who own the practice in Sandy Springs and who havent visibly aged in ten to fifteen years take measured “deli slices” of the previously biopsied skin, ie. “Yeah thats gotta go” and then deftly stitch or superglue you back together …BAM! unless of course they need to take another deli slice or two or twelve. The standing room only crowd of bandaged patients in the waiting room all look like they were either in a WWE fight, a Sex Pistols mosh pit or a corporate commercial for Band Aid brands. Talk about taking a pound of flesh. I know it sounds gruesome but overall it’s fairly painless … 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 life like the following (just one example).

Its almost funny. Skin doctor says, “Ok so do not get your hands wet or wash them with soap for a week and dont lift too much either because both could weaken or tear open the incision”. Other (different specialty) doctor said “Um yeah we need a fecal sample. You can do it at home and bring it in to the lab. If lab is closed then keep the stool samples in the refrigerator over night”.  Wait dont wash my hands?? And wait, keep my poop in the refrigerator??  Argentine is gonna love that. So I’m leaving that last part out of this particular story but if anybody needs a weird plastic bedpan thing with measurement lines on it and a set of extra large wooden “dipsticks” you might find them listed on Facebook Marketplace tomorrow. Also who besides an elephant is able to reach the highest marked line?

Back to the cardboard box story. Ok I say to myself, “I will be smart, not overdo it with these sore post-surgery hands 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 one hand is really throbbing. I need an empty cardboard box and cant find even ONE box in my entire 5000 sq ft suburban house because, well we “recycle” and someone near and dear to me is into “elite decluttering” 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 brand new box at the stupid USPS post office. The box they gave me at the grocery store was originally for bananas so it has holes. No problem.  After first checking obsessively for deadly banana loving Brazilian Wandering Spiders who can kill you instantly i remember that I have 30 rolls of old masking tape at home. Right?  I then proceed to pack everything like carved wood turtles and bird sculptures originally ensconced in my parents Longboat Key condo and other random Cliff and Argentine stuff that i dont want to shlep with my semi functional but very sore wings. Then i wrap the living shit out of the big banana box…. Just in Case. Brazilian Wandering Spiders dont play. Are you still with me?

Then i find out that all thirty rolls of tape are impossible to see or find the end of the tape due to the previous user (me) having ADD (Impulsive/Frustrated subtype) and when you do locate the end (or beginning) of the masking tape it breaks off immediately and then you need an electron microscope ordered on Amazon Prime to find the new end again. Im hurling useless Dollar Store reject tape rolls everywhere in my kitchen but manage eventually after 2 hours to not only hurt my one day post-surgical hand but also wrap the banana box until it literally now looks like a rectangular 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 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 customers 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 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 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 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 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…