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Last Tuesday I took Diana to the Elysium Tonsillectomy And Auto Repair Center to get Diana a tonsillectomy and get the oil changed in my convertible. Both were a major success. We arrived at 7 a.m. and were back home at 10 a.m. I’ve been working from home until today, so that I can nurse her and parent the kids.

It turns out that adults take ten to fourteen days to recover from a tonsillectomy. I’m not quite sure why this is, but I do know that after the operation raw muscle tissue is exposed to the air. Diana mainly slept at first, so nursing mainly involved giving various medicines at the right times. A few days after that nursing mainly involved making her go back to bed, drugging her with codeine if necessary.

Before the operation I went shopping for tonsillectomy food for Diana and regular (Midwest) food for the kids and me. I didn’t know exactly what to get, so I made a few mistakes: frozen lemonade popsicles (too acidic), tomato soup (too acidic), mocha chip light gelato (little chocolate chips), cheese (what was I thinking?). The Midwest food I got for the kids and me was all perfect: bologna, sandwich-sliced pickles, regular potato chips (not the weird gourmet ones or the ridiculous baked ones), bread and butter pickles, regular oatmeal (the good brown sugar and maple kind). One major overlapping food that was both Midwestern and tonsillectomy-approved: Cream of Wheat.

Through painstaking trial and error I arrived at this set of tonsillectomy-approved food for the discerning vegetarian: Cream of Wheat, rainbow sherbet, mango sorbet, fresh and mushy brownies, vegetable broth, Slurpees from 7-11, Diet 7-Up with ice chips, and vegetarian ramen.

The ramen comes from Whole Foods by the way, which shows how much I love my wife because I don’t like going there. It’s all cramped and everyone there is morally superior to me. But I didn’t mind it so much this time because (1) I was on a mission of mercy and (2) I brought my son, who I let put random food in the cart. Matt’s random food list: chocolate cupcakes, cheesy bread sticks, one apple, brie, and a can of ravioli.

Aside: I have a rule that if I pick a cart with an old shopping list in it that I have to buy everything on the list. (This is somehow related to my collection of pictures that I found on the ground.) I don’t go shopping that often, so I’ve only had to follow the rule a few times. The main thing I have noticed about shopping lists with no context is that they are very vague. It will just say something like “pickles,” which could mean anything on 5 shelves in a space about two feet wide. In that case I try to get the version of the item that would most likely be the illustration of that word in a children’s book. We philosophers refer to this as the “Platonic ideal.” For pickles, this would be a big jar of deli pickles. For bread, I would buy a baguette (and if it were possible, a bike with a basket and a full-scale model of the Eiffel Tower to ride in front of).

I was going to mention a bunch of books that I recently bought with my birthday money but I don’t have time. (Did I mention that I turned 40????????? Well I just did, so kiss my 40-year-old butt!!!!!!!!!!11) Since “books” is already in the title, I will briefly mention two books: I just finished reading Founders At Work, which is a collection of interviews with founders of tech start ups. It’s strange to think that people exist with that much drive. At the age that these people were selling their companies for millions of dollars, I was watching TV trying to remember which beer can I had peed into. I think a good subtitle for Founders At Work would be “Founders At Work: What Was That Sound? Only The Starting Gun Ten Fucking Years Ago.”

The book that I am reading right now is Ideas: From Fire To Freud. This is the perfect book for us philosophers, and I’m trying to limit myself to just one chapter per night. I don’t know why, but lately I am crazy for summary histories and overviews of civilization. Somehow it’s scratching a brain-itch that I’ve had since I was a surly teenager. It also helps me understand why I find things like Whole Foods so annoying.