Another one Bites the Dust... literally

Here is what happens when the world is trying to tell me to chill out and slow down, a story of my life beginning at Noon of Thursday, August 20, 2009:


My boss leaves to go have tea with Royalty, bringing his wife and daughter along. I am left with nothing to do, so for three hours I watch television via hulu on my computer. I am bored. My mind goes back and forth over whether or not to cut my hair short – an agonizing decision.

It is time to leave, finally, so I do and metro home. On the walk home I talk to the boy who is supportive of the haircut and I come up with a fabulous schedule for our fabulous weekend. I get ready to go to yoga, walk to the car, and it is covered in ants. I mean the interior is crawling with them. Now, I have a personal war against the armies of Ants-Where-They-Should-Not-Be. I have no problem with; even encourage the presence of, ants out of doors. Even in picnics. But two places they do not belong is IN MY KITCHEN and INSIDE MY CAR. So I run and get the ant spray, which has been such an effective nuclear bomb against them in my apartment, and re-enact Vietnam in my car. Clearly I cannot healthily drive to yoga in a car smelling of ant spray and let it sit enclosed in the sun for an hour and a half, and get back inside of it to go home. So I go to the gas station and vacuum the car. It was needed. Clearly.

So I don’t make it to yoga, and decide to go home, change, and get my haircut instead. So I rescue the roommate from reality television and drag her along on my hair-cutting adventure, where she graciously rescues me from receiving one of several optional Mrs. Brady-type haircuts. I now have 10 inches of dry, strung-out hair to donate to some poor kid with cancer. I do so love doing this. And now I am left with not enough hair to pull into a ponytail. It is lighter, and healthier and that is all I care about right now.

Anyway, I go to my mom’s to drop off laundry, and she is sad. I hate it when she’s sad. She is perhaps rightly sad at what she is sad about, and is more than often not sad about it because she is a strong and admirable lady, but also human with more than any human should be stuck with on her back, and therefore sometimes sad. I hate it when she’s sad.

So we go home, I try to buy tomato soup at the grocery store on the way (which is all I wanted period to eat yesterday but everywhere was out!) but the lines were too long, so I ate crumbs from the fridge, and went to sleep.

Today I wake up at 5:45 excited to run. I love it when this happens because it is rare and the fact that it is happening makes it even more exciting. So I put on my shoes, etc. and head out. Five minutes in to it, I pass the auto mechanic’s, and faceplant. That’s right, I trip on a glass bottle someone had thrown out there on the sidewalk the night before, and since the sun is not yet up, I cannot see it, and fall down. It is not yet 6 am and I am laying on the concrete, crying like a child, because I am tired, with a skinned knee and a severely twisted and terribly painful ankle, and no means of finishing my run. I am a block from home.

I compromise and tell myself if I go home and ice this ankle, I can still do my long run tomorrow (we will see), so I hobble back. I make myself an ice pack, and read a bit of Dostoevsky, and fall asleep. When I wake up I shower (which is hard when you can’t put pressure on one foot) and, since I am unhappy with my food source, put the rest of my edible groceries in a bag and walk out the door, with the hopes that since it is still early I will have enough time to stop at Starbucks and get something to eat to make me feel better. Halfway to the metro I realize something spilled in my bag.

But no, it’s not that something spilled. The cold I feel is actually vegetable oil secretions from the cooked sweet potato in my bag, leaving a giant fist-size oil stain on my rear. There is not enough time to go back and change pants, so I continue on the metro with this stain, trying to cover it up with my dirty lunch bag.

I arrive in Starbucks, excited because they have food, and not really wanting coffee (because work provides it), but order a latte anyway. I grab some yogurt because the place is uber-rushed, and realize that the guy did not charge me for my yogurt and it’s too busy and loud to correct him so I end up walking out with just a latte. Bummer. So since it is still early I go upstairs, drop everything off, and leave again to go grab a bagel at the rival food/coffee/lunch spot next to Starbucks.

So far today at work I have been corrected on three things that my predecessor did wrong, and two things that I had no control over. But at least I am learning.

Up in line for this weekend: Inglorious Basterds, a long run/hobble in Annapolis (10 miles of walking? Sure), consulting work for the sail loft, a great-ass-party with the roommate, a pre-dawn trip to Ocean City on Sunday, and my mother’s birthday.

This is the second week in a row that I have felt I could just throw to the birds because they were so unproductive and frustrating. Next week will not be better since the boy leaves. Perhaps my spa weekend next weekend will make up for that. I see lots of cheap champagne in my future.