Next up, a plague of locusts

What kind of day was it? Verily I say unto you, it was the kind of day where I thought "Well, at least I have a blog so I can write about all this badness" but then I thought "But I only have an hour before I go to bed and I don't know if I can write it all down in just one hour."

So.

This morning I got up and started doing dishes. I poured out yesterday's coffee and almost a whole bottle of wine (yes, I know that wrecks my credentials as a dyed-in-the-wool lush because a real drunk never wastes alcohol, but it just wasn't very good. Beaujolais-Villages).

The drain started running slowly...can you hear the shark music playing?

DUH-NUH. DUH-NUH.

I walked into the bathroom and the former contents of the kitchen sink now occupied the bathroom sink. Coffee, wine, hot soapy water, bits of verdure, oat flakes...oh it was glorious. And stinky! Hot coffee wine soap water at 6:30 AM!

I had to leave to take the car to the shop because of the busted white trash car window. I asked the shop to finish ASAP because Goldie's ear was swelling up I had to get her to the vet, and they gladly agreed.

I got the shuttle home and called the vet.

Suebob: Can I have a late afternoon appointment?
Vet office girl: How about noon? Is noon ok?
Suebob: I was thinking of something late in the afternoon. Do you have anything later?
Vet office girl: One PM?
Suebob: Have you begun to reproduce yet? Because I will pay you to not contribute to the gene pool.

Ok, maybe I didn't say that exact last sentence. But.

We settled, after some several rounds of further negotiation, on 4:50 pm.

Then the auto shop called. Of course they did. And was the car done? No it was not.

They called to tell me that the thieves not only broke the $335 window (genuine Honda parts and labor), they also broke the little arm that attaches the window motor to the window.

The little arm is a part that the shop does not stock, but somewhere in a galaxy far, far away does and can FedEx it at an enormously large charge so I can have my car back sometime before the next Pleiades meteor showers. And it isn't going to be $335 any more but now it will be more like twice that. Haha.

"Can I at least have my car back until then?" I asked plaintively. I was plaintive by that point.

No, because the door was in pieces. Of course. So I had to rent a car to take my dog to the vet.

Please read that sentence again and absorb the full fun content. I had to rent a car to take my dog to the vet.

I mean, it could be worse. I could live under the Taliban. But it still seems to be adding insult to injury. Because my car got robbed and broken so some crackheads could steal a free gym bag and dirty socks, I had to rent a car to take my sick dog to the vet. That ain't right.

And when I asked the rental place for their oldest, dirtiest beater because I was going to be transporting a large, furry, drooly beast in their rental auto, they said "All we have is this really nice one with a black leather interior."

Oh, leather -- like the leather seats that Goldie punctured with her claws in the exMrStapler's car? Why, yes, leather seats just like that.

(I am not going to mention my work day other than to say: If people would just listen to me the first time, things would not go like they do. But no.)

So I lined the interior of the car with bathroom rugs and sheets and comforter covers and put t-shirts over the seats - basically anything I could find to keep Goldie from befouling the interior of the rental car - and took her to the vet, where she had her aural hematoma drained, the one that the vet had said on Saturday would probably drain itself. But no, it didn't.


Click thru and look how thick her ear is. Eeew.

$100.93 worth of drainage. So I'm down $850 for the day, more or less, and the plumbing is still backed up because I just can't deal with it today. Can not.

But dinner with your BFF will cure everything, right? And it almost did. CC and I talked and laughed over Vietnamese food for 2 hours, which was great -- until we came out and found her keys locked in her car in the dark and lonely parking lot.

No. No! Yes.

Triple A, phone call, half an hour. Done. We called the tow truck driver, Chris, "our hero" and gave him a hug and he blushed nicely.

So that was my day. My dog's ear is flat, my car is still broked, my dad is alive and well, and I...I am surviving. How are you?

First Monday of the year

Epic insomnia last night. There was no cause. No worries. Just no sleep. Wide awake from 1 to 4 a.m. and none of my usual tricks - like trying to remember all the dog breeds in alphabetical order - worked.

So I formulated a plan to sleep as late as possible, 6:25 am, and skip showering and skip eating and just drop Goldie at Mom and Dad's, drop my car at the shop so they could fix the still-ghetto plastic window and take their shuttle back home to work all day in my glorious grubbiness.

When I got to Mom & Dad's, the front door was locked, which made me cranky. Dang, I get there at the same bat time every bat day and they can't even remember to unlock the door? I gave the handle a good bashing about, rattling the door hard and through the blinds I could see Dad still lying there in the recliner.

Oh, great, I thought. He's gotten so deaf he can't even hear me at the door. I pounded on the window and he kept ignoring me, so I pounded even louder, more irritated.

"I'm coming! I'm coming!" my mom yelled, and suddenly I knew something was up. Mom doesn't get around so good and door duty is all Dad, all the time.

I walked in and Dad was sprawled in his chair, pale, clammy, no dentures, breathing rapidly. I asked him what was wrong and he could barely answer. He looked scary. Skinny and old and sick with his cheeks caved in.

Mom explained that he had been throwing up and was feverish and in pain. Classic food poisoning symptoms, which is never good, but when you are weak and 90, even worse.

What made it all even finer was that I probably caused it. I had brought some handmade sausages from Farmer's Market that didn't have any preservatives in them. The woman had told me to cook or freeze them within 8 days, and it took me 4 to bring them over, then a few more days for Dad to start eating them and then he took his time before finishing them...Mom didn't eat them and she was fine.

I was petrified that he was going to die. He LOOKED like death. But as usual, he didn't want to go to the hospital.

I brought in my laptop from the car, sat down in the spare room and waited for whatever chips to fall where they might, greasy hair, no breakfast, white-trash car and all. First things first.

But that Dad is a wiley one. By the time I was buried in the morning's conference calls, he was sitting up and feeling better, his voice strong, the fever gone. I went back home at noon, crisis averted.

Last time I got food poisoning I was about 35 and really healthy. I threw up for two days, couldn't work for four and didn't eat for a week. Mom just called, saying he wants a vanilla shake delivered. They made them tough back in 1918.

Taste Like Burning

My friends and I exchanged gifts in the parking lot of church in the rain and wind after Christmas Eve service, so there was a little confusion. Things were wrapped in plastic bags and tags and cards were lost in the process.

Two of my gifts were boxes of candy from a fine local chocolatier. Being Christmas, I had such an abundance of high-sugar, high-fat treats already that I did not open them right away. I took them over to share with my parents.

Then I went on vacation for 5 days.

My mom called me while I was on my trip.

"Where did those chocolates come from?" she asked.

"I'm not sure, Mom. The cards got separated from the gifts, but I know they came from Trufflehounds downtown."

"Well! I wouldn't give them to my worst enemy!" she said.

"Whaaaa?" I asked. Trufflehounds makes really, really good chocolate.

"I don't know what is wrong with them, but I ate a piece and I thought 'I AM IN HELL!'"

"What was wrong?"

"It was burning me! At first it tasted like chocolate but then oh my god it was awful, burning!"

It hit me all at once. A few months back, Ish had enthused about Trufflehounds' chili chocolate - bars of dark chocolate liberally laced with chili powder. We both love hot, hot food, but my mom is the kind of person who claims that mild salsa is "So spicy!"

I had inadvertently poisoned my own mom.

Ah well. One man's meat is another man's poison, as they say. I have polished off almost the whole rest of the box by myself.

As Ralph says at about 22 seconds...

Thankfulness x1000 miles

I love to travel. It delights me to wake up somewhere else, no matter where it is. I especially love hotels. I know half the world is freaked out about the germs on hotel bedspreads and remote controls, but I'm not. As long as the room looks clean, I can settle in and relax in a way that I can nowhere else on earth.

A hotel room is a blank slate, a place where I can kick back and enjoy goofing off with no responsibilities and no demands.

It has always been that way. When I was a little kid, I saved and saved my money. When my birthday rolled around and I got a few checks from aunts and grandparents, I could finally tell my mom what I wanted to spend the money on: a night in a hotel in the nearest tourist town with my best friend Marcy.

I think I was nine, and I remember how shocked I was when my mom said "no." I had already planned how much fun we were going to have bouncing on the double beds and going to the swimming pool by our 9-year-old selves. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with the idea of two unaccompanied children spending the night on their own in a motel.

For the week between Christmas and the New Year, I took a thousand-mile road trip. I first went to my old town, San Luis Obispo, then saw my nephew in Santa Rosa, went to Sacramento to see both blogging friends and old IRL friends, travelled back south to spend a really quiet New Year's Eve with my brother in Coalinga, then back home today.

I have never been filled with so much gratitude for my many blessings. I have a job that gives me paid vacation and allows me to afford to travel a bit. I have a car that could make the trip. I live in a gorgeous state that is lush and green with winter growth. I am healthy enough to travel. I have parents who love to take care of my dog. I have friends and family who want to see me. All of those things added up to a journey that reminded me, mile by mile, of how fortunate I am.

I saw: my sister Paula and her family; my college roommate Stacy and my old friend and ex-boss and supergenius Brian Lawler; pals Curt and Gael and their Airedale Gracie; nephew Lyal and his dear 4-year-old daughter Bethany; Suzanne and Husband and Count Mockula and Zadie (with a special guest appearance by Monkeygirl); my former love and longtime friend Joe; and my sweet brother Al. I talked my mouth off.

There are many, many details (photos, mostly of things not people, are over at Flickr but I am tired and just glad to be home and in my jammies. I had a great time, and I wish you a wonderful, fun 2009.