Howdy Y’all!

It’s been a week, and it’s only Tuesday here in the overcast rainy Kingdom of Cambodia. The school year started on Monday, and I’m teaching four subjects: ELA, math, science, and social studies. I’ve never taught math before, and I haven’t taught the social studies curriculum at this school. It is a steep learning curve.

Also, my kidney stones are giving me heck for the first time ever. I usually pass two or three stones a year. I never know until they’ve passed. They get hung up in a ureter, now and again — three times this year alone — but until this last time, they’ve never caused me significant discomfort much less outright pain. That’s bad because you don’t want urine backing up into your kidneys. That pain tells you to get your butt to a doctor to figure it out. Instead, I’ve had to do periodic ultrasounds of my abdomen to monitor the passage of stones.

After we got back from Europe, I had surgery to remove a large stone from my ureter. So large that it had to be cut with a laser. I think I mentioned that before. Then I had the Muhammed Ali treatment three times in five days. By the third treatment, my left kidney was felt like a wet rag. Wet with blood. Usually, I sleep while they punch my kidney for 8,000 times over two hours. This time I felt each and every one of them.

Now I’m passing the shattered stone. I can feel it coming down the ureter, pause at the foyer to my bladder, hangout and party in my bladder, and then mosey on out. It isn’t excruciating, but it ain’t fun, either.

Suffice it to say. I’m exhausted.

And, I’m dying to write about the Jacksonville shooting as THE example of what happens when Republicans promote racism and violence. We’re seeing shootings everywhere. We’ve had the most mass shootings in the first eight months of a year ever. Gun violence is the leading cause of death for our children. Gun deaths and injuries have gone up substantially year-on-year since 2021.

The fruits of loosening gun laws, stand your ground laws, hateful and violent rhetoric have come home to roost, and all I can do is whine about the pain in my lower left abdomen and hustle to cobble together my lessons for the week. The horror of being a part-time blogger and a full-time citizen.

Huzzah!
Jack

Image Attribution

“Drown” by margot.trudell is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.