It’s admittedly long overdue, but I’ve finally posted a new series of photos of kids and family. Go visit Ringing Out 2003 to see how big our brood has become, and to get some inkling of what sorts of mischief they’ve been causing.

Well, that was a bit of excitement.

The kids were tucked in bed, Kathy had dropped off to sleep, and I was playing Grand Theft Auto, enjoying the pyrotechnics as I caused cars to burst into flame and explode. At about 12:30, someone started ringing the doorbell insistently. Annoyed at what I expected was some college drunk or neighborhood kid playing a prank, I went to the door. Opening it revealed less of a change of atmosphere from the game than I expected: a woman shouting “My car’s on fire!” and a Ford Explorer parked on the opposite curb with flames licking out of the engine compartment.

I ran around back where we keep our hose, disconnected it, and ran around to the front with it. (With its reel and multiple lengths, it probably exceeded the 20lb lifting limit that my doctor imposed for another week, but I figured if there was any circumstance that justified slowing up my recovery, this was probably it.) We pulled it out to the car, and the woman’s husband started dousing the fire. It quickly became apparent, however, that a garden hose wasn’t up to the task.

I popped inside and called 911, and then went back out to see the fire growing. Though I expect it wasn’t more than a minute or two, the wait until we heard sirens seemed interminable, as the fire began to spread. By the time the fire trucks arrived, the interior of the car was full of flame, and the horn started sounding as the wiring shorted out. There were several dramatic showers of sparks, collapsings of glass, and other pyrotechnics, and I doubted for a while whether the fireman were going to win out before the surrounding trees and grass caught fire.

Fortunately, they were able to contain the fire in about five minutes once they had the big hoses turned on it. We stood around for another 20 minutes or so waiting for the wrecker to haul the charred carcass, now lacking seats, windows, and a dashboard, back to the owner’s house.

Given the sirens, flashing lights, and sounding horn of the flaming car, I was somewhat amazed that the neighborhood didn’t show up in force, but evidently I live on a street of sound sleepers. Mercifully, everyone was uninjured, though a bit in shock, and was able to return home an hour or so after this crazy adventure started. And I have determined that I unequivocally prefer simulated car fires to the real thing.

The iTunes Music Store has been sitting on my computer, touting its ease-of-use charms, it’s alluring per-song purchases, for months now. But I was strong! I knew I could get the same songs without DRM cheaper on eBay! I could just put the discs I wanted on my wish list, and someone would eventually get them for me. Patience would be rewarded. I can do this! I can…

And then this came along, and I was undone. I bought my first song through the iTunes music store. Farewell, virtues of patience and self-restraint. Hello, instant gratification. Who knew the price of a soul was only $0.99 plus tax?

There is nothing — I repeat, nothing! — that this great nation of ours cannot assimilate and turn into a breaded, fried nugget! Kathy brought home Pizza Bites recently, which look for all the world like wee meat McNuggets, but compellingly and disturbingly taste like pepperoni pizza on the inside. They’re nearly as cognitively dissonant as those clear New York Seltzer root beers from a few years back.

We use Apple’s iPhoto to manage our photo library, which as of this morning is 6,000 photos strong. Unfortunately, iPhoto has grown slower and slower as time goes on, and had become nearly unusable by the time I added the latest batch of photos.

So I did a little strategic web searching, and found two suggestions that have helped immensely:

1. Turn off drop shadows and borders in the program’s preferences.
2. Organize your photos by roll, and then collapse all the rolls you’re not actively using by option-clicking on one of the little collapse/expand arrows.

After doing these two things, iPhoto has sped up by about an order of magnitude. Ah, relief.

One of the great purposes of that arts is to make us see things we already know with new eyes, to bring a freshness to subjects that, while important, may have grown a bit threadbare with repetition. With that in mind, I recommend a reading of the just-completed The Christmas Story Uncut, a Houston pastor’s creative retelling of Mary and Joseph’s extraordinary experiences two millenia ago.

A few random thoughts:

I love the Christmas season for a variety of reasons. As a Christian, it’s a recognition of God’s love for his creation and his participation in it. (Yes, yes, I realize that Jesus probably wasn’t actually born on December 25. Work with me here.) As a citizen of my community, it’s a treat to see people giving thought to giving to each other, caring for the needy, and getting outside of themselves a bit more than usual. And as an individual, I’m delighted to get to spend time with friends that I often haven’t seen since the last time the holidays rolled around.

And yet, even the joy of seeing dear friends is tempered by the knowledge that even as we desperately try to catch up on each other’s lives in the span of a few hours, we’ll leave zillions of important things left unsaid, uncommunicated. While those few hours are infinitely better than nothing, they still pale next to the vitality of the relationships we’re able to purse on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis. So many dear people — so little time.

Once again, I’m reminded of Sheldon Vanauken’s description of heaven in A Severe Mercy as timeless. (Thanks again to Chris for lending me the book.) He revels in the thought of being able to dally with friends and with his wife with no sense of urgency, no rush, no frantic mental search for those vital items you’ve left unsaid — for no matter how long he takes, there will always be more time. Indeed, he echoes C.S. Lewis’ thought that the reason we humans have such difficulty with time is that we’re ultimately destined to escape it. Something to look forward to, indeed.

Another note, for my friends without children: these little rascals are what I have committed to make one of the top priorities in my life for several decades. Scarce hours go by that I don’t think of them, talk about them, and invest a part of myself in their budding lives. And while they’re anything but relaxing to be around, there is little that brings more joy than seeing them excited and thrilled with the world that we’re helping them to be a part of.

So forgive me if I give you a blank stare when you want to see me, but not my offspring. They are a huge part of me, and I of them, and not only in the biological sense. It’s hard for me to imagine that you wouldn’t enjoy their company (though perhaps you wouldn’t), but harder still to understand what it means to know me without knowing them.

That’s not to say, of course, that I don’t have a life outside of my kids. They will one day move on to have their own families, their own lives farther removed from Kathy and me. But if I want to know you, I want to read what you write, see what you paint, enjoy the photos you take, and enjoy the fruits of your creative energy. That’s part of knowing you. And at this point in my life, I’m privileged to be able to work out some of my creative energies on living canvases. If you don’t look at those canvases, you’re missing some really interesting work.

The surgery went off largely as planned, and I’m home again now. Kathy and Liam dropped me off at the front door to the hospital yesterday morning at 9:00am, and I went through about 30 minutes of registration, orientation, and signing the “you might die” disclaimers. I then ended up with about two idle hours in the preop room, where I grew increasingly nervous. I was starting to think about backing out of the surgery, but flipped on Conan O’Brian, which managed to keep me distracted until they started giving me anesthetics.

I woke for the first time around 2:30pm, only lucid enough to eat a couple ice chips and fall back asleep. I drifted in and out of consciousness until 3:45, when I called Kathy to let her know I was awake and doing fine. She wasn’t answering, so I left a message. Five minutes later, she came into the room, evidently having grown impatient with waiting at home. It was nice to have some familiar human company, even though I wasn’t yet up to staying awake for long at a stretch.

I’d been hoping to get home Friday evening, but the doctor ended up vetoing that idea for reasons that are still a bit unclear to me. As a result, I had the amusingly incongruous experience of trying to fill a specimen cup while listening to Christmas carolers sing in the hallway. Ah, the joys of hospital life! Kathy brought Liam and Abigail by later on in the evening; their visit was quite welcome.

After a night of regular pokes, probes, and measurements, my surgeon dropped by to check up on me. He gave the all-clear, so I donned my clothes, called Kathy, and got on home. Now I’m home with a sore belly and some renegade CO₂ in my system, but all is well, and I’m glad to be in familiar, friendly environs once again. Thanks to all for your support and prayers.

Many thanks to my good friend Daniel Priest for sending me this reassuring image on the eve of my surgery.

9:00am is when I go to the hospital. I’ll post on my well-being as soon as I’m lucid enough to do so, which, since I’m having general anaesthesia, might be a bit. Though it’s supposed to be a minor surgery, prayers are still welcome from those of you who incline in that direction. Post-operative pizzas will be welcome from the rest of you. And nachos. And deep-fried cheese, baaaaybeeee!

A few months back, I started getting weird abdominal pain once in a while. It would start off with stomach cramping, and then proceed to spread around to my back, where it would hurt outrageously for 20-40 minutes, and then stop very abruptly. Since the incidents were pretty infrequent, I ignored them for a while, but finally got off my kiester to go to the doctor and have them checked out.

My doctor’s first suspicion (which mirrored that of Mom McMains) was that I might have some gall bladder issues. He sent me off for blood work, which came back normal, and an ultrasound, which showed a bunch of tiny gallstones. The recommended treatment? Gall bladder removal.

The gall bladder is a small, hollow organ that stores bile from the liver. Bile is used to metabolize fats, and when you eat a big or especially fatty meal, the gall bladder contracts and squeezes out this emergency backup supply of bile to help your body deal with the influx of fat. Apparently most people’s livers can pump out enough bile quickly enough that the gall bladder isn’t essential, and can be removed with very minimal, if any, effect on one’s metabolism.

I thought it rather curious that I would get gallstones. Evidently, the high-risk group for gall bladder disease is fat, sixty year old Hispanic women — a demographic I fall squarely outside of. But I have little doubt no that the diagnosis was correct, as my most recent attacks occurred after having a big plate of nachos or greasy pepperoni pizza for dinner. (Ironically, I had an attack at Maggie’s birthday party before I knew what the cause was, and tried to help myself feel better by scarfing down as many pieces of Chuck E. Cheese pizza as I could lay hands on.)

My surgery is scheduled for December 19. (The doctor’s office wanted to schedule it for the 16th originally, but I figured spending my wife’s birthday in the hospital would be impolitic.) While gall bladder surgery used to be more of an ordeal, the procedure is now generally done laproscopically, which means that instead of cutting your abdominal wall wide open, the surgeon instead makes several small incisions, and works a camera and his tools in through those small holes. As a result, recovery time is greatly reduced.

I was pretty nervous about the surgery at first, but my surgeon has lots of experience with this kind of work (which is now the most commonly performed procedure in the United States), and did a fine job of explaining what he’ll be doing. (His answering service, however, sucks.) Further, Chris assures me that general anesthesia is safer than driving to the hospital to get it.

Until then, I’m carefully avoiding fried foods, cheese-heavy dishes, and drinking olive oil. I’ll post an update on this after the surgery’s complete, as there won’t be much more action in the interim. You can read more about gallstones here.