All I Need is THIS PASSPORT... and this paddle game, and that's ALL.

After a weird couple of days, I’m leaving today for Germany, and following on with some days in London. I’m still in a sling, and still wincing mightily all the way through my day. The slightest motion makes me cringe like I’m thinking about root canals, and it doesn’t seem to matter whether I’m in a sling or not.

Something struck me as very odd: why is it that an x-ray taken in Pennsylvania, which I know is digitized, and which I saw on a computer monitor when the doctor pulled it up at her workstation, can’t be emailed to me?? Tigger said it had something to do with HIPAA (look up for reference…) but I’m just aggravated.

So, in this modern world of digital X-Rays, yours truly had to get a fax sent over, attach a photocopy of my driver’s license, and send it back to them by fax. All of this required filling out forms with my gimpy arm. Right, that’s a really effective method of getting people their radiology documentation.

Anyhow, I went to a follow-up with a regular (non-emergency) doctor here in New York, and they used a fluoroscope to re-do all the X-Rays I had already had done, so they could tell me what I already knew, and send me on my way with another prescription similar to what I already have (but slightly less heavy, apparently.) Also, it seems that the practice in this place was to have the receptionist fill in and sign the prescription slip. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what happened.

So, off to the fatherland and my mother’s home town for a few days of Christeningtastic Excitement! I guess it goes to show that the old saying is wrong: you CAN go home after all.

Except when you try to go back to the playground you used to use as a child, and find out that it’s tainted with dioxins in the sand. Precious!

This was a few years ago, the last time I was out there, and I went to go look at said playground, saw said signs with previously unmentioned skulls &c on them, and spoke with an older guy who was walking his dog in the dioxin laced red sand. He just waved it off and said that he’d been coming for years and he thought he was doing fine, so screw it, in his mind.

I’m not sure I’m so certain.

I will, however, be sure not to eat any sand at any childhood loci of memory. Just in case, it’s best to be safe.

I had hoped to tool around, go to the swimming pool we used to frequent, see the sights, but with an arm in the crapper (ugh, not literally, thanks) it’s less likely to be feasible. I will try and shoot some pictures, but I’m not sure how readily I’ll be able to manage that. Stupid me for getting an SLR, it means I need two hands, which is not so much so good a thing at the moment.

Also: it’s official, I may be becoming an adult (read as: I hate our moth-eaten couch, and have now looked online at new sofas. Oh Lawdy. Heaven forfend.)

Also: I’m a little sad about this trip, as my grandmother has been declining with some speed, and I wonder whether this might be the last time I get to be there with the whole family, and it’s hitting me a bit hard from time to time.

Hypothetical reader, the background here is that we spent every second summer from my first to my eighteenth birthday over in Germany with family, initially split between my father’s mother and my mother’s mother, with the final third of the time being spent on some junket elsewhere. As time passed, my father’s mother had a bit of a hard time getting comfortable with having guests, as she was older and quite particular about, well, everything. So, we spent more time with at my mother’s childhood home, and I have lots of memories that fill me with warmth even now. Paper lanters in the yard, an actual swingset, the local Olympic sized swimming pool, trips into town to go to the music store (yes, I know, I was a weird kid, and somehow staring at instruments when I was young totally geeked me out, though since it still does I guess it’s just a warning sign for those of you with youngsters to be aware of as to future spending habits…)

Anyway, just wanted to give a thought or two to those times, and reflect on how it feels a lot like an era is ending for me, and I just wonder whether I feel like enough of an adult to make sense of the changing of the guard.

My parent’s are obsessive grandparents now to my nephew.

That’s what I’m talking about here. And it’s weirding me out. Kind of.

So, in a little while I’m going to be heading out to a train, to a monorail to JFK, getting on a plane, then off of it, then onto another one, then off of THAT one, and then aboard a train, and then off of that again, into a cab and then into a mattress to mutter and whimper for a while, jetlagged in a foreign country.

Pain medication of the prescription variety will be included somewhere along the way, to be sure.

Keeps me from enjoying a beer on the flight, but never forget that which may be true everywhere EXCEPT airplanes, and the reason why I'm going to be feeling no pain as the drink cart mauls my shattered shoulder:

“Sleep - the most beautiful experience in life – except drink.” W.C. Fields