I'm Tired

3 9-inch apple pies, a double batch of chocolate walnut biscotti, a double batch of cherry almond biscotti, 3 cranberry crunch coffee cakes, and 4 loaves of cinnamon swirl bread (BTW, the recipe for which continues to baffle me: Cooks' Illustrated recipes are usually dead-on for accuracy. WHY is the baking time so absurdly inaccurate for reaching an internal loaf temperature of 180F? Why? Chris...? Help?)

I think I possibly feel a little better now. The basement is dry as a bone. I've mostly stopped obsessively ridiculously thinking about what could have happened to my Favorite Plumber On The Planet. Sheer exhaustion is good for covering up all kinds of things. And all that production was for a bake sale at work to benefit the family of a lab employee who was diagnosed with colon cancer about two years ago. He fought valiantly. Yesterday, he finally gave up the fight and it claimed his life.

Have I mentioned I have a huge chip on my shoulder with this disease? I realized I was mixing and baking almost angrily yesterday. It was hours after I would have normally gone to bed. I had both ovens going. The sun was brilliantly shining, a shocking contrast to the gray sodden weekend, and for just a minute I remember looking up and thinking about Richard. Then I went back to my mixer and my apple slicing and mental calculations of how much sleep I would reasonably expect to get before having to go to work. I thought about Dad.

The plan for today is to fall face-first into bed shortly. Then this evening, and how's this for irony, I start my prep for a colonoscopy tomorrow. I just finished the last solid meal I will have for 36 hours. Clear diet from now until tomorrow night. I know it's not that long, and I should just stop being a pussy about it.

The upside is that I now have 5 DAYS OFF WORK IN A ROW.

The definition of a clear diet is being able to see through it. And I can see perfectly clearly through the glass of Chardonnay sitting to my right.