Another filthy 90-day checkpoint has staggered into view like a drunken moose wandering across the highway at 2 a.m.—all wild eyes, bad intentions, and absolutely no respect for civilized traffic patterns. Against all odds, and much to my genuine delight, the results came back negative again. Not “pretty good.” Not “encouraging.” Negative. In the twisted arithmetic of modern medicine, they call that “good news,” but to hell with understatement—I consider it magnificent news. The kind of news that deserves loud music, bad decisions, and at least one stiff drink before noon.
The rat bastard charlie has once again declined to make an unwelcome appearance. No telegrams from the underworld. No smoke signals from the pathology lab. No grim-faced phone calls asking me if I’m “available to discuss the findings.” Just another quarter-turn around the sun with my internal organs still operating somewhere within factory specifications.
Like I said before, I’ve stopped letting this damned sword of Damocles swing over every waking minute of my life. There comes a point where you either laugh at the monster lurking in the basement or you spend your remaining years curled up in a recliner chewing antacids and reading survival statistics written by joyless cemetery clerks in lab coats. That road leads nowhere worth going.
So now it’s merely another milestone. Two full 90-day increments stacked up like empty whiskey bottles on a motel dresser somewhere outside Reno. Ugly, maybe, but still evidence of survival.
Of course, every increment cuts both ways. The longer this streak holds, the better the prognosis gets—and simultaneously the louder that dark little voice in the back of my skull starts whispering that the rat bastard could come crashing back through the wall at any moment wearing brass knuckles, mirrored sunglasses, and a fake grin. That’s the bargain nobody tells you about. You don’t really defeat the beast. You just convince it to wander off and terrorize somebody else for a while.
In the meantime, life continues barreling forward with all the grace and stability of a carnival ride assembled by fugitives using duct tape, old bolts, and blind optimism. This month is especially packed because an Alaska cruise looms on the horizon—a floating monument to excess, elastic waistbands, and questionable liver management. Four days in Wasilla before the ship even leaves port, followed by seven glorious days of “all-you-can-drink,” which veteran cruise survivors know actually translates to “far more alcohol than any responsible mammal should attempt to process.”
Still, cruise-ship civilization has its charms. There are no laws requiring a man to wake up early, wear structured pants, or delay cocktails until some morally acceptable hour. Breakfast simply begins whenever you decide the first Bloody Mary counts as a fruit serving. If a man wants bourbon at 9 a.m. while staring at glaciers the size of office buildings, who exactly is going to stop him? Certainly not the cruise staff. They’ve seen far worse.
I’m actually entering this expedition in reasonably good shape. The new goat fencing appears to be holding, which frankly feels like a greater engineering accomplishment than most NASA projects. Those four-legged anarchists have now spent an entire week incarcerated without successfully unleashing their usual campaign of destruction, sabotage, and psychological warfare. No overturned troughs. No shattered gates. No midnight escape attempts. No demonic screaming sessions at sunrise that sound like Satan himself getting electrocuted in a dumpster.
Frankly, the silence is unsettling. Goats do not surrender quietly. They plot. They organize. They stare at you through the fence with the calculating patience of prison inmates planning a riot. I fully expect they are engineering something catastrophic even now, but thankfully the dog sitter will not be tasked with trying to wrangle those devils in the evening or release them in the morning. That burden remains mine alone, as nature intended.
By the time I return, I assume the grass will have reached baling height and the property will look like an abandoned roadside zoo after a minor flood. But that is tomorrow’s problem. Right now I’m honestly pumped for a solid week with my drinking buddies where the primary daily responsibility is simply managing to stumble back to the cabin each night without falling overboard or accidentally joining a Canadian fishing crew.
And who knows—I might even take a moment between cocktails and reckless storytelling to actually look at the scenery. Alaska has a nasty habit of humbling people. Somewhere between the glaciers, the mountains, and those endless black pine forests, a man can almost forget his medical charts, his deadlines, and the various beasts stalking him from the shadows.
At least until the next filthy 90-day checkpoint rolls around again like a crooked carnival inspector demanding another ticket. Piss on it,
Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler
