Good morning. I'm first.

Well, it's Minor Medical Procedure Week in my immediate family circle apparently.

Yesterday, my father finally went in to a local "surgical suite" (which almost sounds inviting, doesn't it?) to have an object removed from his lower left leg.

When I say "object" it's because a.) I don't yet know exactly what it was, in terms of proper medical terminology and b.) there's really no other way to succinctly describe it. This thing developed approximately three years ago, and my father, who is good at ignoring things that have the potential to inconvenience him, ignored it as it started out looking like a pimple, and then a boil, and then a clementine.

My father, who is Israeli and is, consequently, a VHB (Very Hairy Bastard) had another one of these things on his back which my mother made the mistake of lancing one evening when I guess both of them were bored and Masterpiece Theatre was a repeat. It got severely infected and my father developed MRSA, a life-threatening staph infection that requires massive doses of antibiotics and regular visits from Jehovah's Witnesses. He recovered, but the wise decision was made to put the kabash on any other at-home surgery surrounding the Titleist on his leg.

This object on my father's leg has been the source of constant joking in our family since it grew to a jokeable size around a year-and-a-half or so ago.

"Dad, I didn't know you were hiding a Volkswagen Beetle inside your leg-- that's pretty cool."

"Hey, do you think you've got an underdeveloped twin in there?"

"Oh, so that's where my old Super-Ball went."

"Jesus, Dad-- why didn't you tell us your leg was pregnant?"

And so on and so on.

My father would take it all in stride, laughing amiably and responding with his trademark line,

"I'm seeing Dr. Rose about it in a couple weeks."

My father first started this line in 2006. After about a year, I was convinced that "Dr. Rose" didn't actually exist, and he was just some figment of my father's imagination that he employed to placate us when we would bring up the golf-cart-sized growth on his leg.

"Seriously," I said one night at their house for dinner, "I can't eat with that thing in the room."

"Honey," my mother said, "please shut up and eat your chicken. Daddy's seeing Dr. Rose about it next week."

Fast forward to yesterday. It was the big day. We were all finally saying goodbye to this adopted member of the family. I felt kind of sad in a way. We had never even bothered to name it. I think, had I been on my game enough to provide it with a monkier it would have been "Burton."

I called my father on the phone after the procedure had been completed.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," he said jovially. "I'm great. The only thing that hurt was the fuckin' Novacaine shot. After that, it was great. Listen, I'm not trying to be a big man and say, 'Oh, it didn't hurt,' but, really, it was great. Mummy, what a nice place it was! Like getting surgery in the living room. Actually, I think it was even smaller than our living room. But very nice. Fucking comfortable chairs and sofas, tables. Like a living room with big lights. And you can go in and get a soda, you know. You don't have to sign in with some ugly nurse and go up to the fourth floor, fifth floor-- make you all nervous. Not like a shitty hospital with old fuckin' people-- men in gowns, women in gowns-- disgusting. This was very nice. Very convenient, too. Right in Devon, you know. Across the street from the Whole Foods."

You'd think he was doing a commercial for this place, if it wasn't for the profanity.

I called my mother last night to see how my father was doing.

"He's a tough patient, your Daddy" she said.

"I know. So how'd it go really?" I asked.

"He told me all about it afterwards. He told me that, when Dr. Rose saw it he cringed and said, 'Jesus, that's really big.' And Daddy told him he'd better wear goggles when he cuts it open and Dr. Rose just laughed, but, when he cut into it, Daddy said the thing exploded all over Dr. Rose's face. Daddy said, 'See?! I told you you should have worn goggles!' And Dr. Rose said, 'Oh, it's okay, I have glasses on.' He was very explicit."

Earlier in the week, when my sister and I were joking about the impending procedure (the prescription for the surgery had been up on my parents' refrigerator for at least two months, so we could all count down the days) I said that the operating room would probably resemble the audience at a Gallagher comedy routine, with curious med students and onlookers cowering under plastic tarps as they get showered with a tsunami of cyst juice. She cracked up and then we both got quiet, realizing how old we are for being able to reference Gallagher.

Today, I went into the hospital at the bumslice of dawn to get vial after vial of blood taken. My cardiologist sent me there after my stress echocardiogram in order to get my cholesterol and other levels checked. He wasn't pleased that my good cholesterol levels were low from a blood test I had done three years ago. The blood lab opens at 7am, but my father, who routinely gets bloodwork done for his own cholesterol, advised me to buck the system.

"Mummy-- listen. When you go for your bloodwork, get there at around 6:15. That way, chick-chack, you're the first one there and you'll be done faster. Don't sit around and wait with those old fucks, okay? Just get there quick, write your name down on the sign-in sheet and then, boom, at 7, it's you!"

He told me that, sometimes, he gets there so early all the lights are off and there's nobody at the reception desk, and there's no sign in sheet. I asked what the fuck do I do if I get there and that happens to me.

"No problem," he said, "do what I do?"

"What's that," I asked, "do you stick the fucking needle in your own arm and leave the blood all over the table for them?"

"No, honey. I don't. I take a piece of paper out of my pocket, and I write "SIGN IN SHEET" at the top, and I write "Name" and leave a space and, next to it I write "Time of Arrival" and leave a space next to it, and then I write my name, and I write "6:15" next to it and I sit down and read their stupid fuckin' magazines until the bitch gets there. And she comes in, you know, with her coffee and her Dunkin' Donuts fuckin' bagel. By this time, a couple other people have come in and have written their names under mine, and they're all sitting there and she looks at my sheet and she gets real pissed and she goes, "Who did this?" And I smile and I say, "I did. Good morning. I'm first."

And, this morning, so was I.

Gas Leak

One of my worst fears came true last night.

(No, the Monkees are all still alive and I don't have AIDS. Try again, please.)

We had a gas leak in the house.

Mrs. Apron called me at work at around 5:50pm, her voice quiet and shaking:

"When are you coming home?"

As soon as I walked in the front door, the odor almost knocked me down. I could taste it.

I called the PECO emergency number, and they were knocking on our door eight minutes later.

Sidebar: I find it amazing/appalling that PECO can have a truck to a residence in eight minutes for a gas smell, and the Philadelphia Fire Department has problems getting an ambulance to a residence in under forty minutes for a cardiac arrest. End of soapbox.

The PECO guy carried a device that looked like a game-boy attached to a dildo and he stuck it inside our stove, oven and all around our boiler, our hot water heater, and all along the pipes leading to the washer and dryer. Mrs. Apron and I stood in the basement and I held her close as the dil-boy contraption made ticking and clicking noises and then, when he would put it by one of the pipes leading to the dryer, it made a noise that sounded like an air-raid siren mated to a freshly-raped cat.

"I guess that's the bad noise, huh?" I said to the guy.

"Yeah, that's what all the customers say."

Oh. Pardon my lack of originality, the house we just bought is seconds away from becoming the next Hindenburg.

Of course, I shouldn't be giving the guy such a hard time. He did, after all, prevent us from dying in a way that would have made Hitler smile had such a tragic demise occured. After identifying the source of the gas leak, he isolated it and shut off the pipe leading to the dryer, and so our avacado-green Lady Kenmore had the night off.

I then made the mistake of contacting my parents for help. All I wanted was the phone number of a general contractor to replace the pipe fitting. My mother answered the phone.

"Hi. Everything's fine, okay? (pause.) We've had a gas leak in the house."

Fortunately, I didn't hear the dreaded thud on the other end of the phone signaling that my mother had just collapsed like a bulldozed tree in the rainforest. After I explained everything and asked for the phone number of a general contractor she says,

"Talk to your father."

"But, I don't want to," I whined. Ah, how quickly we regress. Twenty-eight years old to five-and-a-half in under 3 seconds.

I told him what happened.

"Well, mummy, you know, this is not something you could have predicted. It's okay. These things happen-- I mean, shit-- if you'd bought our house, you would have had some big problems, too. So, you know-- don't feel bad--"

"Dad?" I interrupted, seeking instant clarification, "I didn't call you because I need a pep-talk. I called you because I need the phone number of a general contractor who can fix our fucking pipes."

My father decided that you do not call general contractors for this kind of job, you call a plumber.

"But the PECO guy said--"

"FUCK HIM, OKAY?! Let me tell you what a general contractor does, you idiot! He comes, looks, and he says, 'Oh, well, fuck! I can't do all this.' And he hires a schvartze plumber who comes and does it, and then you get TWO fucking bills!"

He told me he would find the name of a plumber, and then he hung up on me.

Four minutes later, I get a text message from my father:

"Call us thanks dad c"

We were just on the phone together-- why is he texting me? And what is "c?" My father's text messages always contain at least one extraneous character, usually a full word, that has absolutely no relevance to the preceeding text message. It's a mystery, just like everything else about him.

I called him back.

"Do you have a phone number for me or a pep-talk?"

He had the number of a plumber. He charged $39.00 for a house visit, but then he applies that cost to whatever work he does.

Sure you do.

"Old pipes leak, the way old people do," my old landlady once told me, while thoroughly intoxicated. She was undoubtedly speaking from experience, on both counts, being the owner of a 122-year-old house and the owner of 67-year-old internal waterworks. The plumber who came to our home this morning showed me some very old pipes, corroded like a Chrysler product from the 1970s. Four pipes and their connectors had to be replaced, as did the antiquated and now illegal plastic connector for our clothes dryer. He was there from 9am-1pm, and the bill was painful, but now my wife and dog and I aren't all going to die together in the home in which we plan to live together for a long, long time.

While the plumber was hard at work, infiltrating our pipes and bank accounts, my phone buzzed. It was you-know-who.

"Hi r the gas pipe
fixed? Love dad mcnab"

I think I'm going to start calling him that from now on. I kind of like it.