1st World

I could take this image into an A.I. program and turn it into an illustration, but I'll leave it as a simple photo.  I never know what the fuck people are going to like.  This, my friends, is an illustration of how I dealt with a horrible 1st World day.  Seriously.  I kept thinking about Jamaica while I "suffered."

I like to whine with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek.  As the old saying goes, "They told me to cheer up, that things could be worse, so I did.  I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse."

"Sure as shittin'," as my hillbilly relatives like to say.  

The day started with an early morning trip to the pain doctor.  My mother will need to go every month so that the doctor can keep getting paid and my mother can continue to be a legal junky.  But if you ask my mother, the pain meds aren't helping.  Who knows?  You never know how other people experience pain.  

A young boy, probably eleven or twelve, dressed in medical attire, led us into the examination room.  He had the big computer stand in front of him and began asking my mother questions she couldn't answer, not even the "on a scale of ten, ten being the highest, what would you say your pain level is?"

"What?  I don't. . . when?"

"Mom. . . what is your pain level right now?"

"I don't know.  I just took my medicine.  Five, I guess."  She shrugged her shoulders as she likes to do.  

The boy asked me if I was in pain, if I wanted to go for some pain meds, too.  I am not kidding about this.  

"What's the strongest stuff  you've got, boy?"

That is not what I said.  I laughed in astonishment and told him maybe later but not today.  

"O.K.  Just let us know.  The doctor will be in shortly."

And he was.  He's a big, jovial guy who obviously gets botox and whatever other beauty treatments are available.  He is obviously on good meds.  He asked my mother questions that again, she couldn't answer.  

"O.K., dear. . . I've just sent your prescription in.  I'll see you in a month."

On the way out, my mother asked, "Why did we have to come here?  What did he do?"

"He made money."

As we were leaving, the receptionist called out to me.  

"Did you need to make an appointment?"

"Oh, shoot, yea."  I turned and walked back in.  She was all smiles, both her and the younger woman who had booked us on the last visit.  The music in the waiting room was too loud, and I was in agony when we got there.  Dolly Parton's "9 'til 5" was blaring.  So I said to the two women and the fellow working at the computer behind them, "I'd need pain meds to listen to this music all day.  Do you just not hear it?"

All eyes popped and everyone laughed.  

"What kind of music would you want us to play?" ask the older woman.  Not old.  Late forties, early fifties.  Just older than the young Black woman who was in her early teens, perhaps.  

"Jazz from the 1950's," I said.  

"Ohhh." 

Yea. . . makes me a real classy guy.  So the two women, the teen and the older woman, were smiling and trying to out flirt the guy behind them who was probably gay.  

Getting my mother in and out of the building was a hassle.  It is a big place, fourteen stories of orthopedics and neurology with giant glass windows and huge lobbies.  But the drop off for the lame is crowded, and there are always buses bringing people in from the old folks home blocking the line of cars waiting to drop off their own old person with their wheelchairs and walkers, and once you get in line, another car pulls in behind you and you are stuck.  It was probably not a good idea, I realized later, to beep the horn.  

On the way home, I asked my mother if she wanted an Egg McMuffin.  When we got home, we feasted.  Bing!  One meal I didn't have to cook or clean up after.  We sat outside and all the neighbors came over to talk.  I needed to get to the gym so that I could meet the carpenter at my house.  He'd been texting and calling me.  He'd ripped some of the siding off and he had lots of information and questions.  

Before I went to the gym, I had to go to the drugstore to pick up another load of mother's many, many meds.  Then the gym.  The gym was the gym.  I talked far too long with gymroids before I did my aerobic--oops--cardio workout, riding the stationary bike then climbing hills on the treadmill.  I was good and sweaty when I left to go to my house and take a shower.  

But I'd forgotten that the cleaning crew was coming.  I had a text.  Maybe they were done.  There wasn't much to do since I have been there only a few hours in the last two weeks.  And they were.  Gone, I mean.  But the carpenter was just leaving as I pulled in.  He didn't see me so I called him. 

"Please leave a message."

O.K.  I went to look at the frame beneath the siding.  Thank god--no monsters.  The beams were good.  When the carpenter called back, though, he told me all the things he was going to do--remove more siding than he'd planned, pour footers to bolster the frame, replace window sills. . . . 

"But it's all good, right?" I asked.  "I mean, it's not bad, right?  No rot?"

Cha-ching.  

It will be expensive, but I don't need Xanax to counter my panic.  

Oh, my. . . look at the time!  I'd better hurry this narrative along as the time for our early appointment is fast approaching.  

As you may or may not remember, I got stranded in the Xterra about a month ago.  The starter was bad and the battery boy who came out was no help, but the tow truck fellow got under the car and tapped the starter with a hammer and it started.  O.K.  So I drive the Xterra when I go to my house around the neighborhood to keep the battery alive, but I don't stop anywhere.  I bring it back to the house.  And each time, the car starts, so I decided I would drive it to the Fresh Market to get some real good treats for my mother's house.  The car started.  It would be fine.  

I bought a pound of shrimp, some rich, creamy yogurt. . . some banana nut bread. . . some milk chocolate peanut butter cups. . . some dark chocolate nonpareils.  I kidded the checkout lady.  

"I told my friends I was coming here to be bad.  This is a dangerous place."

She agreed.  She liked me just as much as the receptionists did earlier.  Yup.  I could have my pick, I giggled.  

I carried my booty to the car.  

You guessed it.  It wouldn't start.  WTF?  Piss shit fuck goddamn.  

I looked around the car for a tool.  I had no tools, of course, and I should have put a hammer in the car rather than trusting chance.  I grabbed a stick and crawled under the car and found the starter, or what I took to be the starter, and I hit it.  Nope.  That wasn't going to do it.  I needed a hammer or a wrench.  I got up and walked around the parking lot like I was going to find one lying around somewhere.  Then I had an idea.  The car was on a rise.  I would put it into neutral and when it began to roll, I'd slam it back into park.  Sometimes that moves the starter.  I did it three times.  Nope.  

I had another idea.  Every time a pickup pulled in, I asked the driver if he had a tool, a hammer or wrench.  None of those man-babies had a tool in their fucking pick up truck.  

"They need to take your truck driving privileges away," I joked.  

I had texted my carpenter to tell him I was stuck at the grocers and would probably wouldn't see him.  He called.  He said he'd bring me a hammer.  I declined but he insisted.  I told him I was at the Fresh Market.  OK, he said.  Fifteen minutes later he called.  He was at the Whole Foods in the other direction.  Still, he said, he was coming.  

The day wore on.  

When he finally got there, he told me to get into the car, that he would hit the starter and I was to turn the key.  A few fruitless minutes later, we gave up.  I gave him the groceries and asked him to put them in my refrigerator.  

I called AAA.  I'd been at this since 2:30.  They said they'd have a tow truck there by five.  Fuck.  

I sat in the car with the door open.  A car wanted to pull into the spot next to me, so I closed the door.  It was a woman.  She looked over, smiled thank you and waved.  I sat in the car and watched her make an avocado sandwich and eat it.  Odd, I thought.  She pulled out another avocado, mushed it up in the half shell, and spread it on another thick piece of bread.  When she had finished, she did it again.  I was stunned.  She'd pulled in to make and eat three avocado sandwiches.  I don't know.  It was really something.  

It was just past four.  I was sitting in my car when there was a Fresh Market steps away.  What was I thinking?  I started thinking.  I went back in and got a free cup of coffee.  I sat at the table by the window and watched the crowd.  When the coffee was gone. . . the photo at the top of the page.  Huh?  Pretty smart, right?

My tenant had called.  Her car wouldn't start.  She had to call AAA.  She was distraught.  Wasn't it strange, she said, that both our cars wouldn't start?  I could tell she thought there was something nefarious about it.  

"Chill.  It's a nice day.  This is a minor inconvenience.  If you didn't live in the U.S. you'd wait for days to get someone to come out and look at your car."

That had been my attitude with my carpenter and with a neighbor who I saw while sitting in my car.  I was being cheerful.  Things could be worse.  

I've got to finish this quickly.  No. . . I'll have to finish it later.  There's still a little ways to go.  I'll write an addendum later on.  OK?  

Yea.  

* * * 

I'm back.  I took my mother for her fasting blood test early this morning. Oops.  Mom got confused and ate some banana bread. Wasted trip.  We had to reschedule.  We get to go to the spine specialist later today.  Her legs are swelling so I called her cardiologist.  Friday at noon.  The trips keep coming.  

Meanwhile, back to my story.  Where was I?  I'd drank Prosecco and eaten spicy cashews and waited for AAA.  OK.  The tow truck showed up.  It was the kind that carries rather than tows.  It took a long time for the driver to let down the truck bed, hook up the cables, and pull the car onto the platform, unhook the cables and secure the car with straps, then raise the bed back up.  Time was ticking away, but the mechanic said he'd be at the shop until six.  We would make it just in time, I hoped.  

Traffic was bad, of course.  I chatted with my brother, found out all about him.  Born in 1974 right here in my own hometown.  Wife went to FSU for a year.  Two kids, a boy and a girl, both at FSU.  We talked sports.  As we drove, he showed me where he and his bros would play pickup football, what used to be here or there.  

As always--ha!--he knew nothing about me.  

We got to the mechanic's shop just in time, and to my amazement, the driver backed that truck up through an opening the width of a two car garage.  Did it on the first try.  Lowered the bed, rolled my car into the bay.  

"Hey, can you take me to my house?"

"No."  

I chatted with the mechanic, a roly-poly guy who'd been in business at this same location for 23 years.  He'd have my car ready tomorrow.  

I called my tenant to see if she could come get me.  I do her lots of favors.  Standing out on the side of the road in the weeds, my legs got eaten up by mosquitoes.  

Back home I showered and dressed.  I grabbed the groceries and headed back to my mother's.  Those shrimp were stinking up the car.  Had they already gone bad?  They stunk, and I wasn't going to eat them.  $$$ in the garbage can.  But I was beat and didn't want to go to the grocers.  Halfway back, my mother called.  

"Where are you!?!!?"

I'd called her all day without luck.  She answered once but hung up.  

It was almost seven when I got there.  I poured a cocktail and said the shrimp weren't getting cooked.  I'd make rice and eggs and canned soup.  I did.  Dinner was dreadful.  

Oh, there is more.  Hearing aids and telephones and blah blah blah.  You know how it goes.  And sure enough, it does.  

Still, 1st World problems although more and more the U.S. feels like it is becoming 2nd world.  My finances are strained.  I'm sure you are doing fine.  I never learned to make money.  I am no good at managing it.  I like fucking around, reading, writing, making pictures, traveling.  I kind of remember that sort of thing still.  

No time to look for music now.  I've got a lot to do and so little time in which to do it.  And so. . . the tale is told.