Where hydrogen is built into helium
Last entry, I detailed my sturdy plans for an afternoon of conscientious and responsible choices. I would tidy things up. Dishrags would be used. Elbow grease reserves would be tapped. By the twilight's last gleaming I would crack a beer and gaze with quiet pride at my humble, orderly home.
Raise your hand if you believed any of that had a paper dog's chance of chasing an asbestos cat through hell. If your hand is raised, hit yourself on the head with it.
Less than thirty seconds after I hit "post" and parked all my fancies on the internet, my cell phone rang, and the afternoon's good intentions evaporated as I walked toward Lyndale to meet up with Ben at Sacred Rearrangements. They were driven closer toward outright extinction as I decided to just go over to Ben's house as we came back from the mall, and the fact that it was a dark and stormy night was the padlock on the casket. I have a weakness for dark and stormy nights, especially so when they occur on dimly lit, tree-lined streets next to parks which, while a bit dull in daylight, become a fantastic mess of puddles in a good fierce rain. One field flooded to a depth well over knee high. There was a wading pool, and a slide, and the power even went out to the house for a few minutes. Ben spent a lot of time walking around and chanting, but I have learned by now to take these things as normal. I zoomed up and down the street barefoot, stomping in puddles to send a volley of droplets back up to meet the gunfire rain, and never mind any chanting in the background. It was fairly fantastic.
It also left me soaking wet in a white shirt and heavy jeans, which was a bit of a problem. I eventually talked him into lending me dry clothes, which turned out to be a pair of basketball shorts and a giant black t-shirt with a motorcycle on it, but my own clothes weren't dry by the time I woke up the next morning, and decided then and there I wasn't going to go to work smelling of cat and rainwater, decked out in orange shorts and a shirt the size of a circus tent, all while running on the four hours of sleep I caught on the couch. So I called in for an unprecedented second day in a row. Then we made banana pancakes, and I learned some valuable lessons about eating avocado with eggs (don't), and I didn't head for home until 7 that evening, which dropped another pseudo sick day straight down the tubes. In forty-eight hours of misappropriated time, I had succeeded in needing a shower really really bad and bruising my leg from failing to gracefully hop a short fence.
I think, given the right circumstances, I could really excel at middle management. Anybody who's ever seen me struggle with a common household tape dispenser may well marvel at the thought of the messes I could make with red tape. Tack an "acy" to the end, and my last name even sounds like bureaucracy. Give me enough disinclination, and there is nothing I can't not get done.
Raise your hand if you believed any of that had a paper dog's chance of chasing an asbestos cat through hell. If your hand is raised, hit yourself on the head with it.
Less than thirty seconds after I hit "post" and parked all my fancies on the internet, my cell phone rang, and the afternoon's good intentions evaporated as I walked toward Lyndale to meet up with Ben at Sacred Rearrangements. They were driven closer toward outright extinction as I decided to just go over to Ben's house as we came back from the mall, and the fact that it was a dark and stormy night was the padlock on the casket. I have a weakness for dark and stormy nights, especially so when they occur on dimly lit, tree-lined streets next to parks which, while a bit dull in daylight, become a fantastic mess of puddles in a good fierce rain. One field flooded to a depth well over knee high. There was a wading pool, and a slide, and the power even went out to the house for a few minutes. Ben spent a lot of time walking around and chanting, but I have learned by now to take these things as normal. I zoomed up and down the street barefoot, stomping in puddles to send a volley of droplets back up to meet the gunfire rain, and never mind any chanting in the background. It was fairly fantastic.
It also left me soaking wet in a white shirt and heavy jeans, which was a bit of a problem. I eventually talked him into lending me dry clothes, which turned out to be a pair of basketball shorts and a giant black t-shirt with a motorcycle on it, but my own clothes weren't dry by the time I woke up the next morning, and decided then and there I wasn't going to go to work smelling of cat and rainwater, decked out in orange shorts and a shirt the size of a circus tent, all while running on the four hours of sleep I caught on the couch. So I called in for an unprecedented second day in a row. Then we made banana pancakes, and I learned some valuable lessons about eating avocado with eggs (don't), and I didn't head for home until 7 that evening, which dropped another pseudo sick day straight down the tubes. In forty-eight hours of misappropriated time, I had succeeded in needing a shower really really bad and bruising my leg from failing to gracefully hop a short fence.
I think, given the right circumstances, I could really excel at middle management. Anybody who's ever seen me struggle with a common household tape dispenser may well marvel at the thought of the messes I could make with red tape. Tack an "acy" to the end, and my last name even sounds like bureaucracy. Give me enough disinclination, and there is nothing I can't not get done.
posted by Betsi at 7:14 PM
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