My trip home this time around was not entirely vacation-related; Robert had surgery yesterday, so we've spent the last two days at the local hospital. All went well, and after spending the night there last night, he's back home and doing the one thing the hospital environment didn't allow him to do: sleeping. The two of us had experiences that were, to say the least, different. For one thing, all the good television was on before Robert even went in for surgery. We had the pleasure of watching Maury and Jerry Springer when we first got there, two shows that, if nothing else, make for amazing conversation pieces.

But then he got carted off to surgery, and during that time, I had to stay behind in the waiting room, wishing that they could share some of the happy juice he got for the surgery. First, there was the whole part of waiting. And waiting. And waiting. To the point that I was intimately familiar with the clocks in the waiting room.

Then there was the problem of some fellow waiters who decided to change the channel on the TV. You know, to something "light-hearted", like America's Funniest Most Fucked Up/Lame Home Videos and some other shows that showed people's pet hamsters eating food, replete with poorly conceived voice-over captions like "...And this hamster is hungry enough to eat a horse." And then they'd just loop the video and play a laugh track.

When we finally got a room all set, and hoped that it would be a good because that way Robert could rest, get some sleep, and speed up the whole recovery process. Only remember that sleep thing I mentioned above? I'd like to say, just for the record, that hospital rooms should all be individual rooms, or else they should invent some fucking soundproof curtains.

As luck would have it, Robert got set up with the perfect roommate: a poor guy who I learned (via eavesdropping) had just had stomach surgery. He was gaunt and thin, with long disheveled hair and a scruffy six-inch-long beard. I figured either he had decided to spend three months wandering the woods opting not to eat anything, or else he was perhaps an addict. To what, I don't know. But when he wasn't being swarmed by nurses drawing blood, he was either a) in bed groaning and wailing, b) in bed clicking buttons and changing his bed settings, c) standing up to walk around, or d) standing up and pulling off his hospital gown.

One of my favorite parts of the ordeal was the ice cream. It was fun walking the halls together and trying one of each of the chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream cups they had. It certainly was more peaceful than hearing the guy wailing in the hospital room, and helped pass the time too. It's amazing how tiring this all is, and as I'm typing this I'm fading quickly. And, this "Flower Power" infomercial isn't helping me any, either.