My Summer of Ass

I was really looking forward to this summer. Thought it might be a true summer vacation like I've not enjoyed in many years, where you can loll away the warm days doing whatever, whenever...

All in all, things were going pretty well. Before David accepted a great new job, we enjoyed many afternoons running together on Bay Farm Island... going to BBQs... seeing movies... Had a nice trip to Oregon with the family... Then things took a bit of a dark turn... meteorologically and, uh... rectally.

The fog came in. Hardcore. Weeks of cold, dark, overcast days.
That turned out to be the least of my problems.

This is not a post I want to write, but I feel I must as I have learned so much about colorectal health in the past few weeks, I'm compelled to share if only to maybe help just one other person avoid a truly heinous hemorrhoid experience.

First - almost everyone on this planet will deal with this situation at some point in his or her lifetime. All you people walking around with a smile on your face but a slight hitch in your giddyup - we know. You're not fooling anyone. It sucks. But I have information that may help you.

Second - if you're not sure what's going on back there, get thee to your doctor and make sure everything is copacetic. With the prevalence of colon cancer in our country, better safe than sorry.

Third - stone root. Buy this herbal tincture, thank it for all it's going to do for you, and use the ever loving shit out of it. More on this in a moment.

Fourth - fiber. Duh, I know, but getting enough can be a challenge and it can take a little time to acclimate your body to an increased amount.

Finally - water. I've gotten into a bad habit of not getting enough every day. Working on improving that, as staying hydrated is a huge advantage in warding off constipation.

Which brings me to my sad, painful story. This whole thing started not because of constipation - it was quite the opposite. Something made me ill and I was making frequent visits to the john. It seemed to be an effortless purge, but evidently my insides were not happy. Diarrhea can cause hemorrhoids - I never knew that before.

But whatever - it wasn't any big deal - we have the typical OTC ointments and creams - I was sure those would take care of it. I was wrong.

For some reason, this internal swollen vein was very angry and not going to go away quietly. I tried everything we had on-hand and nothing helped. Witch hazel - meh. Prep-H - useless - and it smells awful.

The only other thing we had was a benzocaine ointment, which, as it turned out, I may be allergic to. It seemed to work at first, and then things took a troubling turn. In addition to the venous problem, I now had an ass rash. Just the way you want to spend your summer, am I right?

You can't imagine how uncomfortable it was going for a run with THAT going on back there. Makes me cry all over again just thinking about it. And you can't scratch - you can't - you'll regret it - trust me. [still crying]

So I scoured the internets for information. The very best thing I found, a true miracle herb, is stone root. Get the tincture and follow the directions on the label, usually 1-2 dropperfuls (30-40 drops) in a small glass of water, 3-4x a day.

Not sure if that's a daily maintenance dose or a 'medicinal' dose during troubled times... I'll use a smaller daily dose for maintenance & see how it goes.

After just one day, it helped me immensely. It didn't take care of the ass rash, but thankfully I found Tucks at Drugstore.com - hydrocortisone - and that cleared it up pronto and killed the itch.

Also - huge thanks to my good friend "Sacajawea" for recommending Calmoseptine. She endured horrendous hemorrhoids (and a fissure) while pregnant. As its name implies, it's a wonderfully calming salve that feels utterly delicious on suffering skin. I might start using it all the time just because it feels that good.

But - but - I tried something else with the stone root that I can't recommend, of course, but I didn't think it would do me any harm. I put 4-5 drops on a damp cotton ball and used that as you would witch hazel, and I'm telling you - miracle.

But beware, the tincture has a good amount of alcohol in it and if you have any sensitive areas, it will sting like a bastard, but that's how you know it's working.

Really, I didn't care about the sting. I just wanted to speed up the process and I'm convinced it did. Shit, if I'm drinking it, what harm can it do to my ass? In just a few days' time, it totally cured my problem. I'll keep using it for maintenance and hope this never happens again.

So, with your stone root, take your horse chestnut and butcher's broom (I took a double dose) - you can find both in one capsule from Planetary Herbals - I'm sure there are other, similar products - and get your fiber & water.

I also increased my vitamin C to 4 grams daily, as C is the foundation of all our connective tissue & speeds healing.

Vitamin A is supposed to be beneficial for vein health, so I concocted a vegetable fruit smoothie with lots of fiber & colon-happy stuff. Such as...

- the juice of 3-4 carrots or enough to make 1/2-1 cup juice

- 1/4-1/2 cup of the fine carrot fiber from the juicer bin

- 1 medium (or two small) apples, peels included, cored, diced

- 1 banana (for texture, vitamins/minerals)

- 1 scoop Organic Frog Greens Today or a 2-3 cups fresh greens

- 1 cup crushed ice

- 2-3 Tbs ground flax seed

- 1-2 Tbs honey

and if you want it, a scoop of protein powder (I use brown rice as I don't like soy & am allergic to dairy/whey.)

Blend the crap outta that for a few minutes then enjoy slowly. It's a meal in a glass, not a quaff. It'll take you some time to get through it, but it's worth it. And it's not so high-fiber that you'll be cramping in an hour - it's mellow

But if you're not used to high-fiber meals, leave out the flax seed and the carrot pulp at first - add those in gradually over time. Keep the apple peels though - lots of good stuff in those.

Finally, if you can, get yourself a standing desk so you're not sitting all day long - that's no good anyway, especially for your ass. And do your Kegels - helps keep all those muscles down there toned, and you can do them anywhere, any time.

I never thought I'd have such a problem, being fairly active, never sitting still for long, eating as healthy as I do (the occasional doughnut aside) and being as regular as Old Faithful. Just goes to show you, you never really know what's going on in your butt.

U.S. Dept. of Redonkulous

The full name is Department of the Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Division of Middle Management Authority, Feet Dragging and Hemhawing.

What a ridiculous exercise this has been. This goes into the If Its Not One Goddamm Thing Its Another file. This is one of the things that sent my stress level through the roof last month and had me hyperventilating daily between bouts of spontaneous crying and hand-wringing.

Here's the thing... we're moving... again. We're moving the household back to Alameda so I can be close to family and go back to work. It's a long story.

I thought it would be somewhat complicated but not redonkulous. We hired an actual moving company this time that will magically load the giant trailer for us and clear our stuff back through customs - all good and a huge relief to have professional help.

On a hunch, I asked our moving coordinator if I had all the proper paperwork to move Henry - the blue-fronted Amazon parrot - back home. My little voice kept nagging at me to make sure. She didn't know but offered to ask around. Thank gawd she did.

See, when we moved here, I took all the kids to their vets and had them checked out, vaccines updated and received State of California Department of Food and Agriculture certifications for international movement of household pets. That's all the vets said we needed. Great!

I don't know why I thought that might not be enough to get Henry home, but I'm glad I asked...

Turns out, we NEVER had the required permits to travel with/move a pet bird. Our vet didn't know about such permits nor did the Canadians who helped us move here. When no one knows about such permits it's tough to obtain them.

I scoured the web trying to make sure we'd have all the required paperwork/certifications when we came into Canada. No website - US Customs, Canadian Customs or any other - had any information about these permits. If they had, well, I wouldn't be writing this post.

If you own a pet bird and are planning to go ANYWHERE outside the U.S. with that bird at ANY TIME - moving, road trip or whatever - you MUST have the following permits:

• a CITES permit for the transportation of live animals or animal products (pet parrots usually fall into the Appendix II category).
  
• a U.S. Dept. of Fish & Wildlife Export Permit for a pet bird (PDF form). You may also need an Import Permit as well, to get the bird back into the States.
  -- no ifs ands or buts --
  

So, I found out about these required permits at the beginning of June. The CITES Export Permit from Environment Canada takes 4-6 weeks to process. The U.S. Import Permit takes at least 4 weeks and up to 90 days to process. The moving truck arrives next week.

Amazingly, Environment Canada was fine with a faxed application and required no fees. The U.S., of course, would not accept faxes or email. Everything had to be FedEx'ed (or snail mailed) and they require a $50 processing fee.

Environment Canada was great. I got the direct number for a lovely woman, Lynn, who helped process my application and couldn't have been nicer. She took the initiative to communicate through email, keeping me updated and letting me know when the permit was issued and on its way. Canada took about a week to process the CITES Export Permit.

As I sit here writing this sorry tale, I'm still waiting on the U.S. permits. They've had everything they needed to process the paperwork for four weeks and I've not heard a word about status.

The woman I've been calling in Virginia - I'll call her Slow Suzy - is no longer returning my calls. Early on, she sounded somewhat sympathetic and like she might make this happen within a month - imagine that - issuing TWO WHOLE ONE-PAGE DOCUMENTS in a month's time. CRAZY!

At first I was told I would only need an Import Permit to get Henry home, but after talking to Suzy and explaining our situation in detail, she said I would need a "retrospective." I believe she meant "retroactive" - a retroactive Export Permit.

Because we never had the proper permits, I moved Henry out of the country illegally. Had Canadian Customs seen him in my car at the border, they would have confiscated him. Without the right permits going back, the U.S. can confiscate him.

To be clear, the bird was never hidden, nor were the cats. When we crossed the border they were all right there in the car. No one asked me for any paperwork or any sort of documentation about ANYTHING we had with us. No one even glanced into the goddamm car to see what was in there. I was ready for them to inspect the car and to hand them all the documents I had - no one asked for anything.

To make matters worse, when Suzy learned we've not been out of the States for at least 12 months, she told me "Oh no, you have a real problem." Why? No one can explain why. Why a U.S. resident cannot return home trouble-free in one month, five, or 15 no one can explain. Free country? I guess not.

So now I'm waiting on Slow Suzy to figure out a way to issue a retroactive ("retrospective") Export Permit and an Import Permit, all by next week. She's had a month to get it done.

Maybe she's required to make the paper on which the permits are printed, then make the ink with which the letters are printed, then weave a decorative border out of flaxen linen and spun gold. Whatever she's doing, she's doing it as slowly as one can move without being declared legally dead.

Bottom line, I cannot leave here with my bird without those goddamm permits in my hand. This is when we should pack Henry a little satchel of food and Gatorade and tell him to fly his ass home.

Even more annoying, I'm playing by the rules and I'm getting screwed up the ass for it. I'm not trying to pull a fast one or cheat the government out of $50 critical dollars. They didn't catch me - I contacted them to get this squared away, and what are they doing? Nothing.

Slow Suzy is sitting on her lazy, government-job-time-wasting ass filing her gaudy acrylic nails and telling her girlfriends about her corns. If I ever meet Slow Suzy one day, I will punch her in her lazy goddamm neck.

p.s. If you ever apply for such permits and your bird does not have a microchip or a leg band, you'll need a letter from your vet explaining why this should not be done - both are very dangerous for birds. But in that letter you can have your vet provide a description of whatever identifying characteristics your bird might have that should help identify your bird as YOUR bird.

Stupid in a Can

There was some serious stupid on the roads today. A jackass in Napa, upset that he ended up behind a truck on a two-lane road, felt it necessary to flip off the truck driver once he managed to get around it. Nice.

Later, I was cruising down Highway 12 when a TOTAL dumbshit turned onto the highway directly in front of me. It wasn't a blind turn - it was a wide open side road joining the highway.

He drifted right into the lane of traffic, totally unaware that he was merging onto a major thoroughfare, though "merging" isn't the best word - it was more like a giant dump thrown onto the road.

In that moment I clearly understood the rage of the road. Not only was it incredibly rude and inconsiderate, it was dangerous. Someone with slower reflexes (or bad brakes) would have slammed right into his lame ass and sent him and his equally blind passenger to the ER.

Then, THEN - at the ONLY passing lane there is on that stretch of road, he friggin camped in the left lane and made it impossible to pass him - because a capable driver in front of him had already moved into the right lane, leaving no space to maneuver around him on the right. AND HE WASN'T PASSING ANYONE!!!

Omigod, if only I'd had a rotten egg-shooting bazooka, that Hyundai would have been slathered in stinky egg carcasses. Seriously - someone please make me a rotten egg-shooting bazooka.