zeldafitz

Friday, April 07, 2006

My Life as a Midwestern Industrial Town

Uh oh! Today seems to be, “someone-just-looked-at-me-funny-and-now-I’m-going-to burst-into-tears” day! You know, when you go to someone’s desk, with an unbelievably magnanimous offer of selfless and martyrific proportions, and they look up from their computer huffily—impatient—this person! Who has always been so gracious, so friendly—and says, brusquely “Hold on a minute.” And me, grown up person, aka adult, feels a lump begin to rise in my throat.

Why yes it is raining, and I did oversleep, why do you ask?

Yes it is the 10th straight day our own darling Daisy Belle has woken up at 5:30 a.m. screaming, “I want to sleep in Mommydaddy’s bed!” You must be clairvoyant!

We had to fetch her sweet darling angelic self, breaking ALL of our carefully patented parental rules of No Kids in Bed, as we complacently loaded her under the covers, like the spineless worms that we are. Each of us hugging the farthest parameter of the bed, balanced on sore, overslept-on shoulders, while our little fairy imp-ress slumbered obliviously.

And just exactly when do toddlers lose that angelic sugar breeze baby breath and supplant it with Regular Adult Morning Breath? Whew!

Do I also need to reiterate that the Woman Who Plays Cannibal Beats has the damn thing going this morning? DESPITE the fact that I had to suck it up last week and ask her to turn it down, which I found agonizing, but it had to be done. You know, before the chicken feather altar wanton sacrifice thing happened, or something.

Did you ask if it’s rainy, and gray and dismal?

Did I answer you?

Do you ever have days when listening to someone speak a foreign language suddenly becomes THE MOST IRRITATING THING IN THE WORLD? And you feel like Archie Bunker because all of a sudden you just want to scream SPEAK ENGLISH GODDAMMIT!

You say that never happens to you because you lovingly embrace all cultures and the melodic sounds of other tongues merely reminds you of our own insignificant place in the greater scheme?

Oh.

Do you ever get the feeling that if you have to remember ONE MORE THING, it just won’t be pretty? Like the “wafer thin mint” thing. You know?

That’s where I am. I’m just like, oh, I’m so sorry, but I will be unable to put one more piece of “to-do” data into my sagging and flaccid brain! It is saying, “Uncle!” It is like a vacuum bag that has accommodatingly continued to store dust and crap well beyond the initial red light warning, but now we have reached critical mass.

There’s steam emanating from a roof across the way. I feel like I’m in Gary, Indiana. No, wait, I feel like I AM Gary, Indiana.

And no one likes me anymore. It’s really sad. Everyone is short and impatient and they clearly have moved on to other friends and people. I am alone.

I AM ALONE IN GARY, INDIANA!

And for some reason, everyone is speaking Spanish and all I want to do is sit in a frayed armchair and call people epithets and drink beer out of a yellow generic can and watch TV.