You Sneeze, You Lose
Greetings gentle readers!
Wow? Is that the time? I’m going to go ahead and pretend that it has escaped my notice that my little miracle is now officially overdue. I’ve been doing a great job ignoring these pesky contractions, (I practically stopped counting and don’t even know that it’s been FOURTEEN DAYS now since this started! Really! I am infused with a Zen-like calm that allows me not to kill people. It’s quite something!)
And I have to thank you all once again for sticking with me through this journey. You all rock the casbah!
However, in an effort to not only oh, get my mind off things, say, and also to show some of my newer readers that I can, in fact, blog about something else…..I am going to dig into the ol’ memory archives for a brand spanking new/old adventure from the dusty dormancy of the mayor’s brain!
This one has the added exoticism of taking place on foreign soil!
As very few of you know, I lived across the pond in the UK for several years. And yes, it was for LUVVVV. And no, it didn’t work out. (the short version: we ended up eloping after a year of back and forth and when it became obvious my new role was punching bag, I left him. I have no regrets and I still loves me some England. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.)
But this was much earlier on, when I had first gone to visit, and was still thinking in terms of ‘soulmate’ and blahsie blah.
And now, here it is: random backup factage!
I’m all about economy of movement. I’m not exceptionally lazy, per se, just that I like to accomplish as much at a time as I can. This often ends up meaning twice as much work for me, in fact, since I would much rather cram my arms full of grocery bags that are far too heavy, than have to make multiple trips. If I have to run downstairs for one thing, why not 10 things? It’s just how I roll.
Also, and this has very little relevance here, but one of my idiotic pet peeves is when I am washing my face, and cold water drips down my arms to, say, my elbow. Drives me batty. I have no explanation for this. It’s WATER for crying out loud. But there you have it. The mayor is nothing if not a freak.
So….to set the scene here….I am in the UK, preparing for sleep, and washing my face. The unthinkable happens, and I get the water drippage down the arms thing. So I am slightly annoyed, but I’m dealing. But then it happens…..during rinse number 1 of my face, a large chunk of hair falls into my right eye. (I hope I can adequately describe what came next, but it’s a bit tricky so bear with me)
Instead of simply reaching up and pushing the offending locks out of the way, I decided to enlist my pinky finger in this task AS I was going for rinse number 2. Economy of movement, right? Hand sweeps up…rinses face, and at the last second of the arc, there goes Miss Pinky to clear rebel tresses. What could be simpler!
Except, of course, this is *ME* we’re talking about here, and nothing is ever quite that simple. The hand came up and performed rinse number 2 just fine, thanks. Miss Pinky was the problem. Instead of performing her duty, she went completely rogue on me (at that point I could still blame jetlag) and decided to miss the hair entirely and DIG RIGHT INTO MY RIGHT EYEBALL.
Um….ouchie. And then ouchie some more. I blinked like a newborn calf for about 10 minutes and flushed it repeatedly to no avail. Ouchie was in for the long haul.
Now I’m CERTAIN I can’t be the only one on the planet who has ever scratched her cornea, but I’m equally certain all *your* stories are way cooler than mine. Most likely they involve daring feats or childhood accidents or hot metal shavings. I’m just saying.
If you *have* by some chance suffered this, you will know the truth of this statement: a scratched cornea is MUCH more sore when one’s eye is closed. But I was convinced that it would feel better in the morning…..and I literally had been on foreign soil less than 36 hours…and somehow a visit to Casualty didn’t seem like a tour I was prepared to make just yet. Call me a goof! (which you may, for oh, so many reasons….)
So. I spent a miserable night trying to sleep with one eye open. (hint: I didn’t sleep a wink, if you’ll pardon the pun)
In the morning, I was forced to admit defeat and had him take me to Casualty. And oh hey! guess what? The doctor confirmed it for me: I had given myself a nice scratch on my cornea! And quite frankly something about the doctor’s posh accent made me feel like that much more of a dumbass. But at least now I was a dumbass in a new place!
The best part, though, was that in order to reach this diagnosis, the doc put this BRIGHT ORANGE DYE in my eye so he could look at it under a special light. He gave me some soothing ointment for it and suggested in future I have someone else wash my face. (kidding)
Now he warned me that this BRIGHT ORANGE DYE would stain my clothes, and may leak out my nose and eyes for quite a few hours afterwards. Since he only put in a few drops, I wasn’t too worried. Little did I know that they were mutant drops that multiplied on contact! Good grief that crap not only got everywhere, but my nose started running to beat the band for some reason.
(I can only assume this reason is that I didn’t have *quite* enough going on at that time)
Now I know this is getting a bit long, but please bear with me here, gentle readers, since the best is actually yet to come.
See, my escort and ride back was actually late for a meeting, and wondered if I would be good enough to say, wait in the car while he went to this meeting, whereafter he would then drive us back. Sure. No problem! I was about ready to fall over and figured I’d do just as well napping in the car, tilting my head back, to preclude another river of BRIGHT ORANGE DYE.
And that is just what I did. Sort of.
There wasn’t too much available parking, so we ended up in a pay car park thingee. You pay, you park. Really a quite simple concept. He left me more money in case the meeting ran over, and we stopped and got some ‘kitchen roll’ (paper towels) so I could fashion myself a sort of bib to catch any random drippage. Oh, I was a picture, I can tell you.
So there I was, window cracked, head back, wearing a kitchen roll bib, BRIGHT ORANGE SHIT dripping slowly out of my nose (and an occasional orange tear, just to mix it up a bit….that eye was rather irritated, after all….), and despite all of this, the jetlag and the sleepless night finally caught up to me and I was down for the count. Mouth gaping, most likely snoring, oh, sometimes I wish I had a photo. But only sometimes.
Next thing I knew, I was awoken by a small but intrusive sound. I caught my latest snort, did that frantic “ohmigawdiwastotallydroolingewewew” swipe of my chin, and glanced up….just in time to see Mr Enforcer neatly tucking a ticket underneath the wiper. WTF?! He HAD to be kidding! I was RIGHT THERE! He practically had to tuck it in OVER MY FACE!
Oh, I was filled with one quarter-awake indignant fury! I was just reaching for the door handle when it happened…..an explosive sneeze the likes of which I promise you you have never witnessed. Not by a bib-wearing BRIGHT ORANGE FREAK you haven’t, anyway.
But wait! He was walking away! This wouldn’t work! Now I’m sure there is some official British term for these parking attendant types, but I certainly didn’t know it. All I know is that I frantically scrabbled with my now quite-stained paper towel bib after Mr. Pay Carpark Ticket-Me-Bobby.
And, with all the dignity I could muster with my orange-stained, bleary-eyed self, calmly explained that he had just given me an unnecessary ticket since hello! I’m right here! and hey look! I even have the money! here it is!
Mr. Pay Carpark Ticket-Me-Bobby apparently had no soul. Nada. He explained that the time had expired and showed me on the nice ticket where it could be protested, but that was all there was to it.
Have you ever been the recipient of a BRIGHT ORANGE STINKEYE? Well, HE was, I can assure you. What a prat! (dick!)
So I guess the lesson here, gentle readers, is that when you find yourself in a pay carpark, on foreign soil, after spending a sleepless night, after proving once again that you are your own worst enemy, put that extra dosh in the ol’ thingamabobby.
Thank you for reading.