Val Should Have Stayed In Bed, Perhaps Until Now

Some days, it doesn't pay to get out of bed at 6:40 a.m. Especially when you left a wake-up call for 7:00. And your waker upper further misleads you by justifying that it's really 6:50, which is almost 7:00.

There really should be parking spaces closer than the last row, when you arrive at 8:40 for your 9:15 doctor's appointment with a nurse practitioner. And the phlebotomist surely knows that she only needs to enter the vein, and not jab all the way through it, twist it around, and come back in on the other side. Plus, using my favorite color (she must be psychic) of lime green stretchy wrap does not negate the pain of her pokings, nor excuse the tiny scrap of gauze meant to staunch the torrent of my life fluid released by her gouging.

Yes, my day did not start out well, and it continued downhill from the third floor lab after my blood siphoning. I reached up to smooth my lovely lady mullet, and felt the hair on my crown (of my head, silly, but wouldn't it be fabulous if I actually wore a crown!) matted with a crispy substance. Huh. I guess the tick I plucked out of my hair the day before had actually chomped on my scalp before capture, and my morning shampoo had dislodged the healing scab, leaving my platelets and fibrin free rein to start over. It felt like they might actually be building me a crown!

I was able to stop by the bank without incident, and switch a ten for a roll of dimes, two rolls of pennies, and four ones. That correct change for my magical elixir isn't going to make itself.

From there it was on to Walmart, the suckiest place on earth. Only four out of 20 checkouts were open. I thought I had a good one. Only a lady already paying, and a couple behind her with three items. THREE ITEMS! However, the paying lady couldn't get her card to work. Or the next card. Or the next. I don't know if she wrote a check, or found a working card, but she was baffled by how to sign her name on the chip-reader thingy. So the man of the couple showed her. Meanwhile, I couldn't get to the conveyor with my multitude of items, because the couple did that thing Hick always tries when he goes with me. Meaning he goes ahead of the cart, and stands there to pay, while the empty cart and woman pushing it are in the way. Not out by the bag carousel where they should be. That little trip cost me an hour of my life that I'll never get back.

At the Gas Station Chicken Store, I was 5th in line to pay for my 44 oz Diet Coke. Everyone but an old feeble guy used their card in the chip reader, which takes three times as long as cash. AND the lady two ahead of me bought the two scratchers I had planned to get. So I switched, because I'm superstitious like that. Good for me! One of the new picks won me $15, and the other won me $25. I swear this was the high point of my day, cashing in a $15 winner and winning back $40. Although I didn't know it yet, because I don't scratch until I'm home, sitting in my lair with my beverage and lunch.

Which, had I only known, was going to be much later this day. I still thought my luck was on the upswing, though, because Hick was in the yard on the Gator when I got home, and came to carry in the groceries! I was so hot and tired that I sat down to chat with him after putting stuff away. He was in a hurry to get to town, but sat down to list the camper on some form of media for sale.

We had been chatting for only five minutes when the lights went all disco with a power about-to-be outage. Ain't that the way it goes? After 6.5 hours of Not-Heaven, our electricity went off at 1:10, when I was ready for a well-earned lunch after fasting all morning for the blood test and then errands. Did you know that our house is totally electric? No air conditioner. No water, because the well pump runs off electricity. No internet even for HIPPIE with a charge, because of the magical non-seen juju of the router. At least I knew I had a flush in each of the three toilets. Hick said I had two. Then he abandoned me for town, saying "Oh, well. They'll get it fixed sometime." You know what else doesn't work without electricity? The ice dispenser on the door of FRIG II.

I couldn't figure out how to text my electrical outage to Ameren Missouri. It kept saying their procedure had changed. So I called them, using the contact I'd had The Pony put in my phone, which Genius had ridiculed. They said 53 homes were without electricity, and it should be back on by 3:15. So I set about writing out six checks for $1699.20 each, to take to school to cover our health insurance premiums for the next six months. Have I mentioned that I don't trust the mail? And I sure don't want to drive over to school once a month. They keep the checks in a file, and take them out as they're due. My best old ex-teaching buddy Mabel taught me that trick.

At 2:20, I saw an Ameren truck drive up the gravel road. I called Hick, but can you believe he didn't want to chat with me? Even though I had nothing to do except wait to bake as the temperature rose to the 88 degrees that was the outside temperature. I sorted through our casino offers for an upcoming palooza. Then at 2:35 decided to go get my lunch ready and put limes in my 44 oz Diet Coke and be ready at the stroke of 3:15 to head down to the lair.

At 2:39, the power returned. So I wasted good electricity time getting my lunch ready. Oh, and of course when I tried to squirt out mayo for my sandwich, it gave a farty noise, and a gob plopped down onto my Croc. You know how a Croc has holes for ventilation? Apparently, they're actually magnets for blobs of mayo. Because that's where it landed. I slid my foot out, and the mayo was in a perfect circle on my black sock. So there was some cleaning up to do.

I had barely gotten New Delly fired up, and had not even gotten to my sandwich when Hick returned. He had led me to believe that he wouldn't be home until around 6:30 (by saying "I won't be home until around 6:30"). As you might imagine, I was a bit apprehensive about the footsteps I heard pounding down the stairs. I was in the NASCAR bathroom at the time, without the door closed, and wondering if I should holler, "HEY! Is that you?" Or try to be quiet and hope the thief would go into the workshop and try to carry off three safes bolted to the floor. I decided on the quiet route, and returned to my lair, where Hick found me and started babbling about something I don't recall because I wasn't really listening, since he had not wanted to talk to me on the phone when I had nothing better to do.

Anyhoo... I finally got those scratchers scratched, and thought the bad luck was over, until I went upstairs at 6:30 to make Hick some supper. That's when I noticed it was awfully hot, and saw that the thermostat said the house was 76 degrees, even though the air conditioner was set for 74. Hick went out and checked the unit (heh, heh), and said the coil wasn't cool, and we probably need freon or coolant or something that is regulated and he can't do. So he's calling the cooling people to see if they can come Friday.

Of course Hick is never home on Friday. He is taking This Guy to his back therapy, and then going to his Storage Unit Store, and then to his weekly doctor appointment, and then driving around to shoot the bull with his buddies like he does every Friday. So I guess I'm stuck letting in the cooling guy.

Yeah. It doesn't pay to get up at 6:40 a.m., unless you count $40 as good compensation for a series of unfortunate events. I'm pretty sure I'll be seeing that woman from the Gas Station Chicken Store on the news for winning the top prize on one of those two tickets I had planned on getting...