...
Tried to get everything done down in Crescent City before the storm... and would have, but for that goddam bad juju hospital that tried to kill me a few years ago.
Stopped at the post office, and wrestled my cheaper but still healthy food order box out to my car.
Made it to the pharmacy to tell them I need more chill pills and can I come right back and pick them up once I'm done getting my lab test at the hospital? Yes, yes, we're open till 7pm, no problem.
Okay, good. So off I go to get the blood test, and BAM. The parking spot fucks the bumper of my car AGAIN! Eeeven though it appears that I've still got all kinds of room before that might happen.
I go cursing from the parking lot into the hospital... where the juju is bad again, still, and everyone seems to be off for a coffee break. I check in, and then I go prop myself up against a pillar to try to convince my spine everything will be okay.
It's yelling at me because I got so pissed off that some involuntary tightening of some aggravation muscle tugged at it to make it yell like that. So I'm pressed up against that pillar and bending a bit forward by turns while whispering to my crunched discs down in the L's that, honestly, this is nothing to get hung about.
Finally, I feel the tiniest indication that the vertebrae involved shifted back into place. A very fat and crabby woman appears to be returning from eating muffins and sipping soda pop. She goes in and puts down the remnants of her break at her computer, boots it up, comes back out, and calls my name.
I go to her little booth and shove the lab order through the little hole at the bottom of the window, and notice that she's smiling sweetly now. It's fake. She was just a surly hippo less than a minute ago.
I sign the magic tablet with the magic pen to let the world know it's okay for them to draw blood, and the insurance know that it's okay to pay them for it. Proceed to the lab. Hand over the order. Sit down. Get the blood drawn. Leave.
Bumper dangling, and an edge is about a quarter of an inch from poking my tire.
The only really positive part about this is: I finally figured out WHY the hospital keeps doing this to me. There's some rubbery plastic business under there that works its way down, looking vaguely like a spoiler on some ultra-low rider's ride. THAT makes the gentle scrape noise when it seems to me there's still another foot or so to go, AND it's what keeps pulling my bumper almost all the way off when I back up from it.
Dan's repair shop is only a few blocks away. I decide to hold my breath and do it.
Dan's mad. He's got customers coming out his ears, and here's his favorite destitute old broad with yet ANOTHER hospital-inflicted bumper wound. I think he was somewhat mollified when I told him I'd figured it out, but he made me wait an hour until he got the young bucks to wrestle it back on for me.
I was starving and so, during that hour, I hobbled over to The Mail Room, where they have candy bars for starving people made to wait for Dan. Hobbled back to my car and sat in it to eat my candy bar and smoke a cigarette.
Then I went in and read the Bible in Dan's waiting area. The storm arrived. Which inspired them to recommend new wipers because my wipers were practically dead.
So I did, and FINALLY it's safe to go back to the pharmacy and get my chill pills. They were nice.
I'm not going to goddam Safeway in this terrible weather. I'll just go to the hippie store and grab some half and half, some bread, and an onion.
Get home. Wrestle everything from the post office and pharmacy and hippie store into my house, move my watering can out from under an ultra-loud drip in my mudroom.
Everything put away. Set back down at my desk.
I forgot the onion.
Fuck.
pipe up any time....
