Hospitals

You know, when you're sick and/or in pain, sharing a room with a putz and his family of putzes is nigh on murder-inducing.

The Beast's roommate has issues (some of which are gross, so skip if you're queasy):

1. He has an obstruction in his esophagus that's blocking both air intake and food intake. He can eat, but it doesn't all stay down. Much of it comes back up as saliva-etc. It's bad enough to consider having the condition: listening to it is pretty appetite-suppressing.
2. He has the loudest voice in the world. I think part of the problem is that he's hard of hearing and/or doesn't realize how loud he's talking. Whatever: he talks loud. When Beast's mom called this morning, he finally had to hang up--he couldn't hear her over the discussion about recent movies going on across the curtain.
3. His wife is younger than me; he is at least 55, probably closer to 65. In recent discussions we overheard with their friends, it appears that they just got married. Some honeymoon! And he is occasionally being 'cute' about their personal stuff. Ish ish ish, ick. I don't even mind the age difference, and she seems pretty nice, but I don't need to know about their personal life. Really. At all.
4. Their friends? Also loud. On top of being obnoxious and rude. One is an attorney: need I say that he's the worst? [sorry Amy--you know what I mean... I hope] Any more discussion of water rights and land deals and I will be actively searching for duct tape, or tossing the lawyer out the window. No kidding. In fact, the other guy visiting--with his kids in the room--told him flat out to stop swearing because he's "got two kids here." Seriously, it's bad enough that I've just asked the nurse for a transfer. Beastie can't even rest with these clowns in the room. They've been there for over 90 minutes.

Oy. Welcome to communal life. Could be worse, I suppose: we could still be on the old 'ward' system, with 20+ people in a big room together.

Wish me luck. I'm going back up to the room. It's really possible that Beast has had it and started yelling by now. At least I can walk out....

...and I'm going outside to call the inlaws and pass along the most recent news, and suggest they call again, when Idiot's friends leave.

[Still no personal news from Europe...except that The Cataloguer is safe and sound.]