Sunday, September 29, 2013

Laundry and Loathing

This is getting old quick. For Steve, I'm sure it got old about a week ago. Much will be improved when that son of a bitch motherfucker Ed gets discharged.

I thought, early on, that I saw some compassion behind his eyes, belying the gruff, crusty exterior. But the more I encounter him, the more I realize what a son of a bitch motherfucker he is.

Not a kind word for anyone. Not a decent thing to say about any part of or item in the Universe. I always make a point of greeting him when I visit Steve. I always bid him farewell when I leave. Except for the one "Fuck off, Ed" that I intoned when Steve turned on the TV the other day, all has been civil.

On Saturday my friend Jessie came over to visit Steve. She lives over a Basque bakery in L.A. and was going to bring pastries over for a Saturday brunch. I made a point of asking her to bring a couple extra with her; one for Ed and one for his wife, Kit, in case she was visiting.

When we arrived, our friend Steve McCuen was visiting with Steve. Jessie and I started unpacking our bags, listing off the contents: four different types of muffins, three raspberry cheese danish, three apple turnovers, a piece of apple pie, a croissant and fresh coffee with cream and sugar. I asked Ed if he wanted something; he looked at me with surprise. "It would be rude not to bring enough for everyone," I said. He passed on the coffee but did take an apple turnover. "I'll save it for dessert after lunch," he muttered and put his nose back into his book. He's always reading a book; that's how he escapes the boredom of the nursing home.

We had a good visit, everyone had a little something, and as we packed up to leave, I noticed that Ed had finished off the turnover without a word.

It was really good to have Jessie over. She's had her share of sickness and dying in her family over the last few years, so I feel like I'm talking to a kindred spirit when she's  here. She had things to do, so she left for home and I got to work on some web stuff I'd been wanting to check on.

One thing that bothers me is Steve seems to be getting disoriented, which is understandable, since he cannot move more than his right hand and foot without assistance. He lays in bed all day staring at the walls, save for meals and a daily session of physical therapy in the bed. The highlight of his day is getting transferred to the wheelchair to go to the john. I try to spend a couple hours a day there, but there's nothing new to talk about, nothing to report when you go in the morning and then return in the evening again.

It's been 10 days that he's been in convalescent care, and I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with something—anything—that would be a distraction or entertainment for him. The problem is, all the possibilities I've come up with (DVD player, Kindle, jigsaw puzzle) require two hands.

Then it hit me: the solution is sitting in his room, up on the wall: TV. A remote control can be operated with one hand, but Steve's kept the TV off because Ed objects to profusely when he turns it on.

What a son of a bitch motherfucker asshole. In a few days, he's going to leave and go back home to the people who love him (or at least say they do), and Steve's stuck with at least another month of recovery. What kind of self-involved, bitter, nasty, vile person would try to deny a full-on cripple the one diversion he has available to him? Answer: Son of a bitch motherfucker asshole Ed.

And then I got angry: What kind of God takes a sweet, loving, gentle, compassionate soul like Steve when there are so many SOABMAs like Ed that the world can do well without. After pondering it for a while, I figured it must be because there's room in heaven but hell has a waiting list of these bastards and can't take them quickly enough.

I started imaging scenarios of revenge: Bringing in three or four outrageously dressed drag queens every hour of so for the entire day, every day, and let them fawn over Ed. I could do it with just a couple of phone calls. Drag queens have the biggest hearts on the planet.

Then I thought about how Ed would go home and, standing at the top of the stairs, push Kit away ("I don't need your help!") when she attempted to assist him. His legs buckle. He tumbles, twists and turns and ends up at the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck, paralyzed from the neck down (hold a book now, motherfucker!) or, better yet, end up a vegetable. Killing him off right away would be too merciful.

I took a mental step back and realized that I had been infected; I was thinking like a SOABMA. I've gotten too wrapped up in feeling protective of Steve, too wrapped up in trying to be the chipper, positive, supportive husband, taking over all the chores and duties of the household, taking time out to go and visit Steve, still working on my clients' projects and smiling through it all. That's tough to keep up for any period of time without another day of breakdown.

Usually in my life when I meet a person like Ed, I take a step back and say, with relief, "Thank God I'm not the one stuck inside that skull, driven to be that foul and detestable by nature." It makes me appreciate the insight that God and the Universe have taught me, and makes me pity that growling, nasty, angry person. One thing I know is that you have to accept people just as they are. If you can understand them, so much the better, because everyone has a lesson to teach.

Now, before all this mental activity, I had gone to visit Steve around noon today. I was still in the find-something-for-him mode, and asked if he would use a Kindle. He looked at me kind of sheepishly and shook his head. While I was there, Kit came in (obviously coming from church) with two women in tow. The ladies chattered and Ed was morose and mute, speaking only to correct them on the name of a novelist he read. All three were out of there in under five minutes flat: They were visiting to make Kit and Jesus happy, not to spend time with someone they liked.

I came home and started the laundry, since I was on my last pair of reserve underwear. (Women may not know this, but men keep underwear forever: When the elastic separates altogether is usually when they get chucked. The philosophy behind this is "I might run out of clean underwear, and then I will have backups just in case." I have seven pair of backups, and all but one was in the clothes hamper, the last pair being on my body). With Steve being gone, the hamper just never filled up.

I forgot to set my timer for the washing machine, and so forgot about it until I went down to clean the cat box (which is outside the door to the garage). In any case, I realized I would be washing well into the evening if I wanted to get everything done (towels, sheets, etc.), so I called up Steve and asked him if he didn't mind me skipping an evening visit. He was OK with that. And then the subject of SOABMAEd came gushing out of me.

I told Steve that it was bullshit that Ed should lord it over the room. "You have every right to have that TV on all day, if you want," I told him. "And if you don't want to tell him that, I'm more than willing to read him the riot act."

Steve said I should calm down, and that he would take care of it. I then mentioned he might check and see if the hospital had remote earphones so he could watch with the sound off in the room. He said he would check. See? Even when I'm trying to be a SOABMA, I still end up looking for compromises that will keep everyone happy, no matter how vile and undeserving of happiness they are.

As with every other SOABMA I've met, I'll be more than happy when the bastard is out of our lives forever. Now I have a name to check for in the obituaries. I only hope that Steve's next roommate likes television, or at least can tolerate it being on.

As for me, the last load of laundry is going into the washer, and I have clothes to fold.

Bastard.

Friday, September 27, 2013

I'll Have a Breakdown
With a Xanax Chaser

"To weep is to make less the depth of grief."
—William Shakespeare

Today was my implosion day. I've had plenty of explosion days since Steve's original diagnosis in March, but those blast out of me and they're over in a few moments. Emotional implosion takes a lot longer to work through.

It started with Steve calling, thinking that he had a doctor's appointment this morning when, in actuality, it's on Monday afternoon. It's a fairly big thing for him, as he's still working on moving from the bed to a wheelchair; still only one hand to use.

I had had a tiff the day before with the convalescent hospital folks. They were adamant that I bring them a check for $50 as soon as possible to cover the two-block ride to and from the doctor's office (and not even in an ambulance, but in "medical transport"). Since the check was made out to the transportation company, the desk at the hospital wouldn't give me a receipt for it, and wanted me to wait until the transport company got around to faxing one over ("There's nobody there now," explained the receptionist at 11 a.m. on a Thursday: the fact that I cannot find them anywhere online makes me think it's probably somebody's brother driving a modified VW Microbus).

After I explained to Steve that the appointment was Monday afternoon, I could tell he was not feeling good about getting something so simple so wrong. There was a little pain in my heart that he is in a situation that is so monotonous, so limiting, so stultifying, that he's slipping on facts like that.

About 10 minutes later, a woman from Dynamic Metric, a "digital marketing" company called. They have been sending me their e-mail newsletters, unsolicited, almost daily for the last month. The fact that they are ripping off mailing lists from the chamber of commerce and bombarding everyone with offers of "free eSeminars" shows how little regard they have for Internet business ethics or taking the time and money to develop a genuine target audience: I'm the last person in the world to use online marketing to "grow my business." And yet they bombard me with their aggressive, pushy and blatantly black-hat online techniques.

"Hi. Could I speak to Mark?"

"This is Mark."

"Hi. This is Karen from Dynamic Metric; how are you doing today?"

Without a beat, I replied, "Take me off your mailing lists. Good-bye," and hung up. So my day started with worry about my husband's deteriorating mental condition in hospital and anger at this obsequious telemarketer. (I known damn well she was calling because no one is signing up for her "free eSeminar.")

So the day started shitty. I got up, showered, sat down to check out where the household bills stood (since Steve has handled the lion's share of them these past eight years). Most of them are hooked up to online Bill Pay on Steve's bank account. We have connected accounts so we can transfer back and forth, but we can't access one another's Bill Pay services. so I signed on as Steve and tried to cypher out what had been paid, what hadn't been paid, what was scheduled for automatic payments, etc., etc. And at some point I started crying.

Finally, that well-built and expertly crafted bubble of brave ebullience burst, and everything fell apart in my head.

Being emotionally mature (well, mature), I realized it would be awhile before I would have another such breakdown, and so I had better make the best of it: I played Barber's Adagio for Strings, followed by Rutter's Requiem. Just my luck, there were only two tissues left in the Kleenex box, so I ended up blowing my nose with paper towels.

After 20 minutes or so and some rehydrating, I calmed down and returned to the bill paying. I tried to sign on to Steve's bank account via my iPhone so I could make a mobile deposit of a check I found on his desk. The bank did not recognize my "device" as matching up with his account, so it asked me in what town his mother was born. Even carrying around his wallet, that was information I didn't have, so I called him but he didn't answer, so I left a message. About 10 minutes later, he called back.

Just talking to him again got me going, and the waterworks returned while I was on the phone: I miss him so much. The house is so lonely without him here. It's been two weeks since I've been able to hug him, much less touch him without fear of causing pain, and it will be weeks more before I can have him back home with me. As I hung up, I hoped that he didn't feel dumped on.

Robert Bailey, the salesman for the chamber directory ads, called later and was wondering why I hadn't updated the information on the ads—which ones were in, which were approved, which needed to be built. I reminded him about my situation and Steve, and asked him what he needed to know. He wanted to know if Kaiser Permanente had sent in their ad.

So I opened my files and gave him a rundown of each and every ad that was in, which ones had final approval, and which needed to be built by me. I rattled them off, as I am very organized with my clients' stuff, and he sounded genuinely impressed. So I told him, "If you have any question at all on ads and I haven't sent the updated information in, just call me and I'll keep you updated. At some point I'll get this info on the spreadsheet and back to the chamber for updating."

Around 4:30 in the afternoon I stretched out for a short nap, slept until 5:30, and then went over to the hospital. Steve was snoozing when I got there. Kit was assuaging Ed in the next bed, and he was grousing, as usual (although after she left he was more than willing to ask me for help getting his tissues within reach for him).

Ed plays a radio all day long and the content is exclusively "easy listening" (what I call "elevator music"). It's simply assumed that everyone else wants to hear it. So while I was visiting with Steve, he finally picked up the television remote and turned the TV on (Ed hates television, just like he hates computers and most of the modern world, I'm sure).

"Aw, Christ!" he yowled from behind the privacy curtain.

"Fuck off, Ed," I answered in a blunt and authoritative manner. There were two or three beats of silence.

"At least turn it down," he grumbled.

"That I agree with," I said, and Steve brought down the volume. When a commercial came on, I said, "Muting the commercials will help a lot, too."

Ed is scheduled to be discharged on Monday. We will be very happy when that happens, because, at times, I'm more than ready to bitch slap him for his nasty attitude. I'm crossing my fingers that Steve will have the room to himself for a while before they fill Ed's old bed. And when someone new comes in, Steve will have seniority, as Ed did. If a decent sort of person arrives, hopefully they will respect that and cooperate rather than trying to dictate and dominate (as Ed does with his wife and attempts to do with everyone else).

The sun had set. Steve and I sensed that we were both getting bored with "visiting," so after a kiss goodnight, I left and drove home, cried a little bit more, and took a double dose of Xanax. Right now, I'm feeling pretty mellow.

I look up at the clock and there's only an hour left in the day. Another 24 hours passed, never to return. Why are we so mystified by the past and the future: They really don't exist, you know, and only the future can ever become something we can anticipate and experience. The past is gone, with only nostalgia lessons to be gleamed from its memories.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Box o' Food Just No Good

For the first time in my life, I tried Hamburger Helper. Perhaps I was feeling daring. Perhaps because I'm eating alone these days. Perhaps because I had this wicked cheap coupon for three boxes.

Yes, three boxes. Actually, two of them were Hamburger Helper and one was Chicken Helper (with the same zaftig white glove on each box—no doubt the love child of Poppin' Fresh and the Platex Gloves hand model): Sweet & Sour Chicken Helper, Three Cheese Hamburger Helper and Stroganoff Hamburger Helper. I cooked the Stroganoff.

It was fairly brainless. The results were dismal. If I'd taken 10 extra minutes I could have made the dish from scratch and it wouldn't be sitting in my stomach, a chemical clod daring to be digested. I've always eschewed food stuffs and mixes out of a box (especially cakes, cookies and brownie mixes), and now I am once again reminded why.

Things are really lonely around the house with Steve in "the home." It's only about a 10-minute drive from here, and I try to get over there twice a day (though sometimes I only make it once). Steve is looking really good, and you can tell little bits of mobility are returning as the bones heal. I think we've both pretty much emerged from the emotional devastation of this whole experience (although Steve has most of the physical recovery still ahead of him).

His major frustration right now is being unable to move much of anything. He has his one good hand (the right, and he's left-handed) and he's unable to move the other arm at all, so there is very little he can accomplish. I can't bring books because he can't easily hold them and turn the pages. I mentioned downloading the Kindle app for iPhone, since he does have that with him, but he didn't seem to enthusiastic about the idea; he had the same reaction to my suggestion of a DVD player, or mentioning the fact that he can download movies on his iPhone and watch them with his ear buds in so as not to disturb his roommate, Ed.

Ed also broke his hip. He has a studied crotchety, sour old-man façade, but he's really a pretty nice guy. This evening his wife was visiting and I finally got introduced: Her name is Kit. I told her the tale of the Kitties in my family (great aunt, aunt, sister, niece) and how the name's passed down, a sibling naming his or her first female child after his or her sister Kittie. Ed's wife's is a family surname, Kitson, but the generational thing is still true.

It's really a relief to be on speaking terms with everyone in the hospital room. They know I'm Steve's husband, and I'm not shy about kissing him goodbye when I leave. Ed's a retired architect, and he loves to complain about how computers are ruining the art and craft of design. He may be a technophobe, but I do see him eyeing Steve's iPhone with jealousy, as there are no phone extensions in the rooms.

I'm feeling slightly a shambles: the house needs a good cleaning, I haven't had a decent meal in a week, and all I can think about is getting Steve back home, with a walker or not, because I am so crazy-lonely for him. Having other folks drop over just isn't the same thing as being with the person you love.

The cats still yowl every evening for Steve. The get up on the couch where he usually sits and circle round and round, like dogs making a nest for the night; after a bit, they hop down, get a bite to eat, make a pit stop at the litter box, then head back upstairs to sleep.

In the studio, I'm starting design work in earnest on the chamber of commerce directory, but it's slow going. It's very important to take time in building the master template, since the entire book relies on it for visual consistency. Building type styles and graphic styles and the element library is important, so that revising a style updates all 96 pages. Along with that, I have a new website I'm building for a local poet, which should be a lot of fun and super artsy-craftsy.

My friend Jessie is coming over on Saturday moring, and we're taking a danish and coffee brunch over to Steve's room. I'm really looking forward to that, since she brings such great energy with her, and I'm hoping Steve will get infected by it. I'm sure she'll bring great danish, as well.

Not much else to report. It's been almost two weeks since Steve's slip and fall. I'm hoping that means only four to six weeks more away from home. Still, that will be around Halloween. At least we'll start the holiday season with my honey home.

If anyone wants to send Steve a card or some flowers, the address is:

Californian-Pasadena Convalescent Hospital
120 Bellefontaine St.
Room 15-D
Pasadena, CA 91105

You can also give him a call on his cell phone: 818-807-7077.

I know for positive certain he would love to hear from you. If you'd rather send things here, I can ferry them over with me when I visit.

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Lifeboat

John Hodiak and Tallulah Bankhead on a lobby card
I'm thinking of the Alfred Hitchcock film now, a World War II propaganda piece that takes place all in—ready for it?—a lifeboat. It's the only film with Tallulah Bankhead that I can remember, and its characters are as two-dimensional as propaganda symbols need to be.

Not that it's bad writing: John Steinbeck wrote the script, though later tried to get 20th Century to remove his name, since they had distorted key characters and incidents to turn it into the palatable propaganda it is.

But if you look underneath the Nazi baiting and patriotic chest beating, it's also an intimate film about life: its values, virtues, vices, shortcomings and possibilities: As many layers of understanding in art as in life.

I had that experience this evening sitting in Steve's hospital room at Huntington Memorial, waiting to transfer him in the ambulance.

But let's back up and catch up on the zaniness of the week:

The broken hip was repaired in surgery on Sunday. I showed up and sat for four hours: seems the surgeon overslept or something, and the procedure didn't start on time.

I learned my lesson. Show up about 15 minutes before the surgery is expected to be completed: Sitting through the whole thing in the waiting room is maudlin and a waste if time: even if your loved one dies on the table, you're not going to hear about it right away.

No, its wisest to find out when they arrive in the recovery ward, then plan your entrance about two hours after. You'll still sit through hours of drugged snoring, and when your loved one comes to, they won't remember you were there, even if they hold an extended conversation with you.

On Monday, Natalie, who handles post-care arrangements, gave us four options:
1. Stay at the hospital while receiving physical therapy (but Medicare would not cover the $180 room cost);
2. Transfer to a local extended care facility that would provide the physical therapy needed (20 days covered by Medicare w/remaining stay at 20% copay;
3. Transfer to VA extended care in Long Beach; or
4. Return to home after installing adaptive devices.
No rush: we didn't have to make a decision for a day.

Surgery on the broken shoulder occurred on Tuesday. Fighting back the guilt, I timed my arrival for 3 p.m.: Still spent hours watching Steve sleep. At one point, his blood oxygen content monitor went off (very loudly) and he woke up, looking around the room as the nurse came in to fix it. He looked at her. She began firing questions at him:

"Do you know where you are?" she asked him. His eyes wobbled around, taking in the room. "No," he replied.

"Do you know what your name is?" His head bobbed a tad. "No," he said.

"Do you know who I am?" He looked at her with mild affront. "I have been taking care of you all week." His sniffed. "No."

"Do you know who that is over there?" she asked, pointing to me. Steve's gaze bobble-headed over in my direction. His eyes focused a bit and he smiled. "That's Mark," he said. "He's my husband." And with that he fell back asleep.

I was stunned to realize I penetrate that far into his psyche and his consciousness: He couldn't remember who he was, but looking at me brought him together, made him happy. The feeling is mutual. It brought tears to my eyes to realize how strong love is, the kinds of primal pathways it carves into our heads, and the spiritual, emotional and psychic strength it provides.

Wednesday, Steve was in great spirits, all things considered; the staff were telling him he would be discharged in the next day or two. We had decided on local extended care, since we can afford the copays, and six to eight weeks of round trips to visit him in Long Beach seem infeasible to me. Natalie found a bed in a facility just two blocks from the hospital.

Thursday and Friday Steve got more and more agitated: they kept changing the discharge dates; they were starting to talk about Saturday or Sunday instead.

On Friday morning, Physical Therapy got him out of bed and sitting up in a recliner. I visited about 2 p.m. He said as far as he knew, they were transferring him Saturday morning, so I told him I would put together a set of clothes, toiletries, etc., for his new digs and drop them by around 6:30 or 7:30. I said my good-byes and went home.

A not long after, Steve called to say they were moving him tonight, and he needed his stuff as soon as possible. Having just cleaned out a neglected cat litter box, I was not in a good mood to start with, and I snapped about it. Steve started crying and apologizing for what he's putting me through.

Hell, I'm the whiney baby ballerina man; I'm going through stuff, yeah, but Steve's the one who bears all the inevitability and suffering here. I'm just sharing a slice of it; interfacing with it, we would have said in the 1980s, but not having to own it.

I got the clothes and toiletries he requested together, put them in a shoulder bag and drove off to spend my last $8 on valet parking ($7 plus $1 tip; with the self-parking at $6, why not valet?).

I got up to Steve's room and sat down. There are so many people who come and go in the room, it's rather confusing; I'm sure even Steve didn't know who all of them were. In all that hubbub, that's when it happened:

While we were waiting for the ambulance to arrive (they take their time on non-emergency runs) I looked over at Steve and I realized who contented and fulfilled I was, sitting here with someone I really loved and just sharing the moment; all the incredible physical and emotional and spiritual layers of what has gone past, what is happening and what is yet to come.

I'm not even sure he was aware of what I was feeling; like I said, he's the one with the real troubles: I am Goofus to his Gallant as well as yin to his yang.

Very like Steve's room, except his is warmer,
sports green walls with white leaves
After several technical delays and remedies, the paramedics showed up to take Steve by ambulance the two blocks to the Californian-Pasadena. I arrived there first (since I had no paperwork before leaving, save giving the valet my card). In a few minutes the ambulance arrived, and we got Steve situated in his new bed. He has only one roommate (not a jolly-looking fellow, but perhaps friendly; it's hard to tell when people are really ill). We shall find out.

As for me and my days, the house is terribly lonely without Steve. I look around and remember a time when I still didn't feel quite at home here, before marriage was a possibility in our lives, when the cats still looked suspiciously at me, the longterm interloper in their domain.

Now one cat has died, replaced by a young female named Patty. The other cat is now old, and has actually chosen me over Steve as his favorite person. They both look at me nightly with an accusing gaze that says, "What have you done with him? Did you put him in a burlap bag and throw him off a bridge into the river? We heard that happens."

So while Steve contemplates six to eight weeks of physical therapy, I contemplate six to eight weeks alone in this house. I have work to keep me busy, but the thrill of absolute control of the remote wears off after a week or so. At least there's a timeline penciled in before us. Goal: getting Steve back home and mended.

And the saga continues…

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Nose Plugs With My Dip, Please

Steve's in the hospital again. This time it's not the Long Beach VA facility, but Huntington Memorial Hospital right here in Pasadena. The drive's a lot shorter, but the parking costs $6.

Steve was supposed to start another round of chemo last Tuesday, but on Monday he asked to go to the Emergency Room at Long Beach, because he was feeling so dizzy and wobbly. He had fallen several times over the previous week.

He was admitted to the VA hospital for transfusion and, by Tuesday afternoon, the medical consensus there was that the problems were caused by a combination of postural hypotension (standing up too fast makes your blood pressure drop) and anxiety (an M.D. finally uttered the word).

I have kept suggesting that he make a point of walking up and down the stairs a couple time a day, just to keep from becoming atrophied. After he started falling and passing out when standing up, I suggested he stand up at the couch every so often (like whenever ads came on) to "harden" his system again. He agreed these were all really great ideas, but did nothing about them.

Finally, today, I took out the kitchen timer (it's a little chrome tea kettle), set it at 30 minutes, put it by the TV and told him, "When it goes off, you get up, set it to 30 minutes, and sit back down." When it was presented that way, he simply did what he was told, and it seemed to go fairly well.

Another thing I had insisted on was his return to AA meetings, especially the Friday night meetings, because he has so many friends in that group. And I wasn't going to take him; he had to ask someone to take him. He ended up calling Bob McBroom (his ex and a really sweet guy), who picked him up at 7:20.

The meeting starts at 8 p.m., then there's a speaker for about an hour, then group sharing, and things wrap up around 9:30. I got into my robe, since I figured Steve would be pretty worn out after the meeting.

A little after 9 p.m., the buzzer from the front gate goes off. It was Bob: Steve was laying on his back on the sidewalk, looking Kafka-esque. His legs had buckled and he fell. He was pretty sure his left arm and leg were broken. I called 911 and went looking for Steve's Medicare card, which he said was on his desk.

I couldn't find the card, and by the time I got back outside, they were working on getting a back board under him. I didn't have his card, but I did retrieve his "hospital bag" (a small shoulder bag with two books for reading, a fresh pair of underwear and his cell phone charger, among other things). I knew this was going to be more than a treat-and-release situation.

About midnight, Bob dropped me off at home, I got the car and drove back to the hospital, making the mistake of not noting in which parking structure I had parked. I still had my visitor's badge on, so I got right back in. By that time, the nurse had been in and said that Steve was being admitted and was on a pre-operative regimen (no food or water).

Around 1:30 they finally administered some morphine, and Steve dozed off. He woke up about 2 a.m. and told me to go home. When I got outside the ER, I couldn't remember from which direction I'd come. I walked to the parking structure Bob had parked in, but it didn't look familiar. After about 20 minutes of wandering around the buildings and parking structures, I found the car.

I'll try to keep you updated here about things as they happen.

A scene from "Who Frames Roger Rabbit?" comes to mind here, I'm not sure why: the villain has Roger by the throat over a barrel of "dip" (acetone and benzene; the only way to kill a 'toon), and he asks Roger "Any last requests?" to which Roger replies, "Yeah; nose plugs would be nice."