I’m lying on my back on the couch and it’s one A.M. From the kitchen I hear the steady drip drop of our leaky faucet and can make out the glow from the turtle’s (named Frog) heat lamp. I can’t sleep.
I can’t sleep because my stomach is having issues and using the microwave I’ve just melted a plastic bag into the folds of a wet washcloth inside the bag and then laid that sucker on my stomach and burnt a half-moon blister right above my belly-button.
And as I’m thinking of my self-inflicted tattoo, I think about how I get when things seem to hit the fan like they have recently--- and how I get is like this:
I get distracted.
I get so distracted I just might become a hazard not only to my own health but those around me: At Trader Joes I loaded up a bunch of groceries, unlocked Honda’s trunk and then balanced the hatchback on my head while I piled the groceries into the back. (The thing that holds up the hatchback no longer works so I have to get creative.)
Well, as I’m doing this, the stupid cart gets away from me and I’m too busy listening to my phone tucked neatly between my ear, neck and my head holding up the hatchback, to notice.
And I wonder why I have neck pain.
Our Trader Joes is located at the top of a winding parking structure and I was parked at just the point where the lot dips southward. Gravity, therefore, inevitably had its way with my shopping cart. Only….my cart was headed straight for the side of the shiniest BMW I’ve ever seen.
I pulled my head out of my trunk and with horror stuck in my throat, stumbled after the bloody thing yelling out loud to my own embarrassment “Oh Sh--! Oh Sh--! Oh Sh--!” into the mouthpiece of my phone (oops), as I went. This was, apparently, much to the amusement of the schmuck casually striding alongside the opposite end of the slope who couldn’t stop chuckling as I dove for the stray cart.
Jerk.
I also forget what people say when they’ve said it two seconds before and I ask them to repeat it over and over again until they stare at me with their head cocked to the side and say “are you for real?”
I also call out “me too!” from my cubicle when I hear the strange man who always keeps his office door closed mumbling to himself, “I’m going to the gym…I’m going to the gym….I’m going to the gym…I’ve decided…I’m….”
I also fail to know what to do when the strange, stalker-like guy at work slaps his dirty fingernails up over the top of my cubicle, follows with his head, and asks:
“Do you live alone?”
I mean, honestly? The proper, not-someone-who’s-going-to-hack-you-up-into-pieces question is: “Do you have roommates?”
Who asks if you live alone?
And rather than responding with:
“Uh, no. Actually I live with a 6’5’ four hundred pound weight lifting male who constantly carries a machine gun.”
When I get like this, I respond with a simple, apathetic:
“Hey dude.”
And once all of these thoughts of how I get when things hit the fan wash through my mind at this hour, and I forget about the blister on my stomach (and the bag of water that is now leaking everywhere) I remember something important buried beneath the pieces:
I’m most certainly not alone.
I can’t sleep because my stomach is having issues and using the microwave I’ve just melted a plastic bag into the folds of a wet washcloth inside the bag and then laid that sucker on my stomach and burnt a half-moon blister right above my belly-button.
And as I’m thinking of my self-inflicted tattoo, I think about how I get when things seem to hit the fan like they have recently--- and how I get is like this:
I get distracted.
I get so distracted I just might become a hazard not only to my own health but those around me: At Trader Joes I loaded up a bunch of groceries, unlocked Honda’s trunk and then balanced the hatchback on my head while I piled the groceries into the back. (The thing that holds up the hatchback no longer works so I have to get creative.)
Well, as I’m doing this, the stupid cart gets away from me and I’m too busy listening to my phone tucked neatly between my ear, neck and my head holding up the hatchback, to notice.
And I wonder why I have neck pain.
Our Trader Joes is located at the top of a winding parking structure and I was parked at just the point where the lot dips southward. Gravity, therefore, inevitably had its way with my shopping cart. Only….my cart was headed straight for the side of the shiniest BMW I’ve ever seen.
I pulled my head out of my trunk and with horror stuck in my throat, stumbled after the bloody thing yelling out loud to my own embarrassment “Oh Sh--! Oh Sh--! Oh Sh--!” into the mouthpiece of my phone (oops), as I went. This was, apparently, much to the amusement of the schmuck casually striding alongside the opposite end of the slope who couldn’t stop chuckling as I dove for the stray cart.
Jerk.
I also forget what people say when they’ve said it two seconds before and I ask them to repeat it over and over again until they stare at me with their head cocked to the side and say “are you for real?”
I also call out “me too!” from my cubicle when I hear the strange man who always keeps his office door closed mumbling to himself, “I’m going to the gym…I’m going to the gym….I’m going to the gym…I’ve decided…I’m….”
I also fail to know what to do when the strange, stalker-like guy at work slaps his dirty fingernails up over the top of my cubicle, follows with his head, and asks:
“Do you live alone?”
I mean, honestly? The proper, not-someone-who’s-going-to-hack-you-up-into-pieces question is: “Do you have roommates?”
Who asks if you live alone?
And rather than responding with:
“Uh, no. Actually I live with a 6’5’ four hundred pound weight lifting male who constantly carries a machine gun.”
When I get like this, I respond with a simple, apathetic:
“Hey dude.”
And once all of these thoughts of how I get when things hit the fan wash through my mind at this hour, and I forget about the blister on my stomach (and the bag of water that is now leaking everywhere) I remember something important buried beneath the pieces:
I’m most certainly not alone.
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