Strangely Naked

This weekend was a real asshole to me. I welcomed Monday in defiance of everything Garfield taught me as a child who wanted to look smart by reading the newspaper (kids, the newspaper was this giant paper thing that was poorly printed so that you couldn’t read one, complete article on one page, you’d have to flip to an unnumbered page somewhere toward the back to finish reading the article you started on the front and the print would get all over your hands and this was something people did over breakfast and now we wonder where cancer came from).

On Friday afternoon, a large, violent storm swept through and disrupted my life, like that time your Uncle Tim came over for a barbecue and after 12 beers his wife asked him to “maybe slow down” and the cops had to sort out the results. The storm was quick, brutal and for most people forgettable, like the majority of movies starring The Rock (shots fired). This particular storm had a deleterious affect on my weekend. Sure, it was much worse for others in my community, like the person who had a tree fall through their house and camper while our house is totally fine, but that person is probably against teaching evolution in schools while I am pro-learning, root for me!

What I’m saying is that out of nowhere a storm wrecked a very geographically specific area. Thankfully, my spouse and child were not at home when our diseased tree decided to shed its hollow limbs upon our life-style-sustaining utilities. Trying to inch my way home through rush hour on Friday was a nightmare. Beside the anxiety of if my spouse and child are safe. I have catastrophic thinking, meaning that I think and obsess on thinking that the worst thing possible is awaiting me.

Thankfully, it was just a couple of giant branches that broke off and landed on all wires in its path. Not so thankfully, those branches have turned out to cost us over $2,000 (adjusted for inflation, that’s roughly the cost of a child slave–I think–I assume–You know, based on potential future earnings–I’m told–No, YOU’RE the monster. Maybe, uh, because you assume I’m making light of child trafficking and not shining a light on a real problem. Yeah, that’s it.)

There were ups and downs, like our friends opening their home to us yet there was a super creepy picture of what appeared to be the adult version of the girl from The Ring movies totally nude hanging over the guest bed; the baby being very mellow except barfing up an astounding volume of recently-eaten breast milk all over everything/one in a 5-block radius; and us having a place to stay that was air conditioned but there were at least a baker’s dozen opened cans of cat food for the phalanx of whiskered toxoplasmosis distributors lurking around every corner.

I guess what I’m saying is, you take the good, you take the bad, you take them ALL and there you have, the facts of life.