Wednesday.

Usually when one spends the day addlepated with sedation, or the leftover effects of sedation, there’s little to recount. Ah, but I not only left tracks, I had witnesses.

If I haven’t mentioned this before, I highly recommend – pun not intended – conscious sedation for any sort of dental work. I recommend it for watching a bad movie, for that effect. You enjoy yourself and forget everything afterwards.

I took the little pills at 8 AM – three of them, small as a period in 100-point type, and sat in the passenger side while my wife drove (G)Nat to the bus. We saw her off, and that’s all I remember for a while. Apparently my wife had to help me back to the car. Hi, hon - enjoying this here foretaste of the six years before the death-do-you-part business? I was very happy and chatty, and nothing I said many any sense, but it was interesting enough to keep her from telling me to shut up. Like a Bleat, I suppose. When we neared the dentist’s office, she told me, I got out my iPhone and tried to call them to tell them to meet me downstairs with the wheelchair, but I couldn’t operate the iPhone. I kept putting my finger on it and sliding it but I was too goofed up to operate a touchscreen. It's like I didn't exist. A ghost cannot operate an iPhone: make a note of it. I told my wife to drive to the top of the ramp. She did. She saw no way to get down to the dentist’s office two floors below, and asked why I’d sent us up here.

“This is where I always park,” I said. "Because there aren't any cars to ding your door." She said that wasn’t useful at the moment, drove down to the street, parked, and told me to wait while she ran in.

Apparently I gave her the most mischievous grin. I'm sure I sat there and said Ding the door, ding the door, door the ding, pussy's on the willow tree, drinking sasparilla, ding the door, ding the door - who's knocking on the window? Oh.

When the wheelchair arrived, I said, and they quote, “It’s just like 1939 in World War Two in old Englandy.” Yes, Englandy – as if I was trying to say “England” and “Blighty” and fused the two. Or perhaps it was the adjective form of England. Up we went to the office; I remember wishing everyone good morning, and I remember everyone being very cheerful - probably a dim recollection of everyone trying to keep from laughing in my face, because I'd undone my fly and was stuffing my keys in my pants like they did in old Englandy. During the war. Dreadful time, don't you know. Spot of bother. I have a recollection of being eased into the chair, and Dr. A handed me a cup of something I think I called "Clown Sauce."

Then recalling I was supposed to send a twitter from the chair.

So, of course, I did.

Upon reading what I send, I thought I’d left it the iPhone in my pocket and the dentist had activated it by leaning over and pressing it, but all the tweets came too close together for that. First I wrote:

Three pilso

This is a reference to the three pills I’d taken.

O

That was the extent of message number two. A statement of wonder, perhaps. Or maybe “oh right, I’m supposed to take a picture.”

So I did:

My thumb, over the lens. Nature may abhor a vacuum, but it loves a gradient.

Next:

Yggdr

I think that’s a reference to the ancient Norse God of being high as a balloonist’s toupee. Next:

Thtre pilldlsbv and I csvzzzz

Three pills and I can’t? Three pills and I (cartoon sound of sawing logs?) Next:

In the cchio

In the chair, I think. Or slang for being taken care of by a gullible old cobbler - it was "in like Pinocchio," but it was shortened over time. The final cryptic message from Major Tom:

Meati tobbtsirv I mr-tobsatmn iysbnivrbnjnlvbbnb. Okay A moo

Okay a moo, indeed. It's almost Russian until it goes all Cthulhu on you, then ends with a chipper bye-bye: Okay a moo!

Then I hit send, and it was radio silence until I got up. The dentist drove me home, and I remember thinking: hoorah! It’s done, and now it’s time to eat. Haven’t eaten anything all day. Not since last night. Starving! Make a sandwich!

But how? I looked at the cupboard where the bread was kept, and could not even begin to think how I’d do that. Get it out, open it up, find something to put on it – man, forget it. I recall making my way downstairs very carefully, and I looked in the freezer. Nothing made sense. Nothing made sense at all. But some ancient buried instinct clawed its way to the fore, and shouted TV DINNER. USE THE TV DINNER. Sure enough, there was a Swansons’ Salisbury Steak I’d gotten on sale, and I took this and put it in the microwave and set the timer on four days, one hour. A while later I took it out; the potatoes were still cold. Ate it anyway. (Found it later in the living room; the dog had taken it away and finished the gravy.) I also found this picture on my phone:

For some reason I felt the need to establish that I had eaten it with a blunt plastic Hello Kitty fork left over from (G)Nat’s early years.

Then I went upstairs and set the alarm for a week later and fell asleep. It was like being wrapped in warm cement, that sleep; it hardened as the hours passed, and when I woke I was more or less clear-headed, but it would take another few hours before I was myself again. (I must have played Roller Coaster Tycoon somewhere in there, because there are crazy roads everywhere, 45 of the same type of food stand, rollercoasters half-built running into mountains.)

So there you have it. The story of the day.  I don’t think I’ve been that messed up since a night in college when someone slipped me some PCB, and I spent the night under the sink the bathroom, afraid of Kraftwerk. I also remember thinking Jack Webb would come in the bathroom at any moment and look down on me with disdain and disgust and pick me up, saying “c’mon, snap out of it.” He would have, too. That was his style.

I’ll  bet that’s the stuff they give condemned criminals before they get the needle. If that’s so, it would be pleasant enough; there’s no moment when you go over. Before you go you’re already there, and where ever you go, there you aren’t.

And that was my day.

I may have the Minneapolis update up later this morning; it all depends. But I will be at buzz.mn for the morn. Interesting juju coming in that department, by the way. Stay tuned. Twittering here and there, as usual. Thanks for coming, and have a grand day.