This Is Leah's Brain On Drugs

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, here is a sample.

I was on heavy painkillers for a few weeks. I don't generally take drugs, and I was in enough pain that I didn't really have any psychological effects from them at all. In a way, I guess I was high, but I kind of didn't realize I was high. Mom has told me several things I said and did which I do not recall, not even a little bit.

One day (see above) I guess I decided to write in my journal. I then abandoned it for weeks and when I picked it up again I nearly laughed myself out of my hospital bed.

At some point during my hospital stay, I got a pink slip from the post office. Mom was home at that point and our good friend Joanne was in New York, staying in my apartment and coming to the hospital every day. I know I have shared post office stories with some of you. The pink slip is like a bad penny. We call the Sunnyside PO "The Borat Post Office." There are often lines out the door, nobody speaks English (including the employees). Everything takes forever and everything is a problem. Once I got yelled at for putting a return address label on the back of an envelope.

Sometimes we just call the post office "Borat." As in, "Fuck. I have to go to Borat now."

The somewhat exaggerated example I always use that kind of sums it all up is that when you are on line at the Borat Post Office, you will likely find yourself on line behind three old ladies who are mailing live chickens to Romania (note that I said somewhat exaggerated.)

Anyway, when the pink slip arrives, it fills us with dread. The trick is to try to get them to redeliver to the building super and avoid visiting the post office altogether, which generally involves several phone calls, notes taped to doors, etc. Sometimes it still doesn't work.

So, when Joanne brought the slip to the hospital, I groaned and warned her about the adventures that might await her. She was game, but I wanted to save her the pain and trouble, so I made my post office phone calls and instructed her to tape the slip to the door with "PLEASE DELIVER TO BUILDING SUPER" written on it. The slip disappeared the next day.

Just a side note: Joanne turned out to be a Borat champion when she successfully reversed a temporary change of address that I had hastily set up when mom was away. She gets the Borat gold star of bravery and persistence.

Anyway, the package never arrived and I kind of forgot about it. A few days before my release from the slammer, I mentioned to mom that I thought I had a package floating around in the Borat stratosphere somewhere. She said, "Maybe it's that stuff you ordered from Amazon."

What? I had no memory of placing an Amazon order. My head spun for a minute and I saw myself on that A&E show "Intervention," addicted to prescription pills and online shopping.

"What amazon order? I didn't order anything from Amazon."

"Yes you did," she said. "Remember? You ordered a couple of things but you wanted free shipping so then you got a Mark Bittman book."

MARK BITTMAN?!

Mark Bittman is a food writer who we despise. We talk every week about how stupid he is, how consistently wrong about things, how he's systematically destroying the Wednesday food section of the New York Times with his idiotic food, bad writing, and lousy advice. It was as if I had drunkenly subscribed to The New Republic, or donated money to an organization that hates cats.

I was fairly indignant. "I didn't order a fucking Mark Bittman book," I told mom.

"Yes, you did," she said. "It was a cheap book and you thought it would be funny. I thought you had lost your mind, but you're the sick person. You can order what you want."

I still didn't believe it. I looked it up in my Amazon account, and there it was. Quick Cooking by Mark Bittman, along with The Simpsons on DVD (season eight...why ?) and a copy of "In Cold Blood." Undelivered. Sitting at Borat, no doubt.

I made the necessary calls, and by some miracle, the package was redelivered by the time I arrived home.

To be fair to Mr. Bittman, his book is pretty entertaining. The introduction states that nobody wants to spend more than 30 full minutes cooking (oh, really?) Many of his "recipes" involve cooking very expensive cuts of meat and fish in a pan with butter and sprinkling some parsley on them. Real artistry. I could go on, but I will spare you. If you want to read the book, I have a copy. Please don't buy it.

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Health-wise, things remain in the pretty-okay zone. Blood counts are good, energy is decent. We have renamed the donor cells, which we used to call "The Boy". They are now called "Mister Man." Martha coined this. "Mister Man" is also one of my nicknames for my cat Johnny Cash, coincidentally. Johnny Cash is kind of the ultimate good guy. One of my friends described him as a "nice young man." So "Mister Man" it is.

Thanks for staying tuned...love and thanks to all.

xxoo L