The Sun Also Sets On Atlanta

I'm not Ernest Hemingway. I don't like to drink, couldn't really care less about hunting and have no good way to write eloquently about all the piles of pebbles that turn life into a quarry of concern. Kidney stones, obviously. And then dogs with torn toenails, leaky faucets, microwave short-outs and another dog whose blowing his coat all add up to....ordinary. Not the troubles of giants. So this paragraph is all I'm writing about any of that. I haven't anything nice to say. So consider this my version of saying nothing at all.

I do have nice and positive things to say about this last week, though. What good are trials if you can't come away with a nice memory or two? I had several people offer to drive far out of their way to bring me things. I couldn't take any of them up on it, but the fact that the offers were made just really made me feel loved in a way that meant a lot during all of this.

The other "positive" thing is that I seem to have lost my taste for soda. That may not seem like a big deal to most people, but I crave soda the way Hemingway craved his whiskey. (Or rum. Or whatever he drank.) I haven't had a soda for a full week now. And at the risk of sounding like I'm whistling past the graveyard, I don't miss it. The worst of the caffeine headaches were also when I was getting the anesthesia out of my system, so I killed two birds with one stone. I'm trying very hard to not be one of those zealous converts, and I'm not here to say all manner of bad things about Demon Coke. Because I enjoyed drinking it for many years and I don't think it should be illegal or heavily-taxed or whathaveyou. I'm just really glad to have eliminated it from my diet. Ironically, it's doubtful that I had the type of stones caused by soda, so cutting it out of my diet may have little effect on whether or not the whole thing happens again. Regardless, I have better skin, my eyes are clearer and my hair seems less brittle. Although there is a part of me that thinks I'm imagining all of these goodies as a way to talk myself out of getting back on the red-and-white wagon. Heh. We'll see, I suppose.