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Thursday, Apr. 21, 2005 / 7:34 p.m. ~Wishing Every Day Could Be Like These~ "Survivor" minus 26 minutes and counting. Best to hurry. So here's a funny story. On my way back to work, from coming home at lunch, I saw an unmarked police car blocking the road outside my apartments. I wouldn't have been able to turn left, which is fine, I was turning right anyway, but I proceeded toward the main drag a few yards away and there were more police cars, blocking this road to oncoming traffic entirely. Fine, I was leaving. Sure, sure, I wondered, but I had a destination in mind, and there I went. No, that's not the funny part, although it could be, depending upon what drugs you've recently ingested. No, no, no, here's the funny part. I made an appointment for Gladys to go back to the vet, as she was having some post-op difficulty and I was angry and worried, well, maybe more angry than worried, or, well, it's hard to say, and no, this isn't the funny part, not yet, the exposition is slow in coming here. I was to come home after work, grab the G. cat and head to Dr. Handsome, but I pulled on to my street, see, here's where it gets funny, and some four hours later the cops were still here, or there, outside, and there were TV station news vans, and satellite dishes and women in suits carrying microphones and notepads, and plenty of cars parked willy nilly at the convenience store (home of multiple robberies, shootings, etc. - yes, I do live in the 'hood, thank you), and Looky Lous (is that how one writes that?), well, looking. I whip out my driver's license, all, "'Scuse ME, occifer, I LIVE like... THERE, and my CAT has to go to the VET, see, she had surgery, and I've got to get my CAT...", and I'm looking at my watch and telling him the vet clinic closes soon, and he is trying to tell me to park down the street, off the road, and I say, look, officer dude, let me go get my damned cat, and what the hell is going on anyway?, and he says there's a standoff down the street in a condo and some guy's got a gun, and inside myself my eyes are rolling up and back so high and low they're about to pop out of their sockets, and I'm thinking, fucking guns, fucking men and their fucking guns, how many lives is this asshole disrupting because he had to go whip out his fucking gun and get the goddamned SWAT team out here and cops blocking the road, and this is all apartments here, and we're all working schmoes and dammit to fucking hell. So I park on the side of the road, which luckily is sort of flat and gravelly, and my car is small and fits fine, and I trudge through the small stretch of woods to my apartment, all uphill and all huffy puffy on account of because I am old and I do not exercise, unless you count walking from my car to the timeclock every morning, afternoon and early evening (that's to AND fro) at work exercise, and sure, I'm skinny, yes, yes, yes, but this does decidedly NOT mean I am fit. With a capital FIT. And I get the cat, no, I don't call her 'the cat', but you know, this is for effect now, and I trudge back, and I'm carrying her carrier like it weighs five tons, and I show the officer who proceeds to tell me he is just doing his job and it is dangerous for me and etc., and I ask if I'll be able to drive back when the vet visit is over, and he says it depends on how long it takes, and I'm thinking, bag this guy, grab his gun, kill him, I don't care, this is not right, and he tells me he hopes my cat is okay. Sweet. The policeman is your friend. Do not forget that. There, funny story, huh? So Gladys gets fluids and a syringe of recovery food, and she is examined, and we talk and talk, or Dr. Handsome talks, and I interject every so often, and my anger dissipates, and I call G. a 'diva', and we recognize that actually neither she, nor I is neurotic, this is just a peculiar post-op sitch, and natch, due to the kidney disease thing, and now that's she's all gassed up again, everything under the hood checked and filled (like one of those Jiffy Lube things), she should recover as she was SUPPOSED to, thank you very much. And we rode back, well, I drove, she rode, and the cops and the TV station news vans, and the satellite dishes and the old cop with the crossed eyes who wished my cat well and wanted me just to be safe, are all gone. And it was too late to see what happened on the news. I have no idea. Life in the 'hood. Gotta love it. Last night I got home late and was actually semi afraid to park where I had to park (the lots fill up at night, especially on week nights), on account of the last armed robbery at the mailboxes. Whee! But I survived. I like to think I'm 'aware of my surroundings'. I've got about ten minutes left. Segue into 'it was the best of times, it was the best of times', and we encapsulate my job at the bookstore, years ago. The friends who are still my friends, even if spread a bit far and a bit wide, the oldest dearest, not terribly close, but we're about as much as you get, are people I met there. We were an incestuous bunch, we were a family in a way, and we came together last night for a reunion, some simply faces I'll never forget, and we, some of us, compared it to a high school reunion, only about a million times better, maybe what every high school reunion SHOULD feel like. So much smiling, and laughing, and people happy to see me (!), and people i was happy to see (!), and gin and tonics (for me anyway), and sitting down to eat (me anyway), and not getting to finish because of all the multi-conversing, and "Hey, I remember YOU!"s, and "So what are you doing NOW?"s, and the new line I adopted in answering that one, "I'm getting laid off!", as if it's my new occupation. "And what do YOU do?", "Who, me? Oh, I'm being laid off, next Friday is it, man, seven years, shot, sucks, really sucks, hire me?, no, really, I have resumes, hire me?" And I went on a real live job interview too. I know, it was a super big day yesterday. So big I don't think I need to elaborate. I mean, I know what happened, I was there. I wrote it in my paper journal, that should be enough. Okay, okay, Delta, payroll systems documenting for outsourcing. Should my conscience really let me participate at all in that? I thought he'd hired me, but it's a temp thing, and the temp agency didn't hear from him, and I made the guy laugh, I love to make people laugh, I think I aced that interview, I do, but I've not heard anything since yesterday's calls to the temp agency, their return calls, my return calls. And etc. And then, yes, there's more (running out of proofreading time... thank god for creating television commercials!), today I got to work and our site manager was playing his electric guitar and singing in one of the empty offices. My favorite coworker grabbed a lighter (wait, why did she have one in the first place?, she doesn't smoke...) and held it aloft, lit, natch. Then, on my front desk shift (this is a total freebie search engine find, this entry!), he serenaded the whole suite. It was insane. Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Bruce Cockburn, The Beatles, I was even singing along, watching for the corporate liaisons to walk in at any moment, waiting to get on the intercom and shout, "CODE RED, INCOMING!", but that never happened. And then there were the three chihuahuas this morning, walked by the Brazilian guy, and one tried to give me her little blue plushie toy. One wanted to kill me, and I just laughed. Some days are like these, everything that happens is just weird and noteworthy, wholly, and I want a portable tape recorder to talk into, say things like, "Three chihuahuas just assaulted me with kindness and curiosity", or "Hostage standoff down the street leaves me shut out of my apartment", or "Gladys sucks down a whole syringe of recovery food, and the fluids left a huge lump this time", or even "Sounds like he should segue on into 'Train Kept a Rollin', it's a natural progression at this point" - yes, some days are just like these. I wish they all were. I'd love to elaborate, I would, but it would take hours, and I must watch my reality TV. Cost of the War in Iraq
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