Personal Agendas

I’m drugged…legitimately…due to an abscessed tooth and an inflamed ligament in my jaw. It was one of the more interesting x-rays I’ve seen. So my father is driving me to pick up my son. We leave at 2:15pm. Only he says We’ll be leaving at 1:15 pm to go by Sam’s (my left ankle).

So I shower at 12:15 and my only plan is to dry and curl my hair before departing at 1:15. P.M. So, I exit the shower and step out on to the patio (there is still no shower in my apartment) to go dry my hair and Dad says, “ready to go?” He, of course, is ready to go. And, of course, it doesn’t take him any time to get ready.

I merely look at him with my drowned chia pet hair and say, “I think something needs to be done up top here.” And thinking some urgent errand waits us, I merely dry the hair and stow the rest of what I can use to make my hair presentable (at a wild hamster conference) in my backpack and scoot out to the car. When he hops in, the first thing he says is, “We gotta hurry, mom said they were hanging up Hawaiian shirts this morning at the Senior Citizens Center.” They close at three. So there’s your heart-squeezing sense of urgency.

I start to wonder what obstacle is going to prevent us from getting there. These are four of the most creative miles in Texas if you ask me. What obstacle could possibly prevent us from making it before our desired departure? Cattle. Done it. Horses. Done that. Bicycle race. Did that too. Pig. Yup. Stray child—that one almost shaved off fifteen minutes. Downed tree, hay bales, water….just water and lots of it, parades(not worth mentioning since they occur at night), school buses, mail personnel (whee!), and all sorts of rural road paraphernalia both as they were born and clothed.

And he found nothing he liked. Thank God for the SCC. 2:21pm Starbucks and Krogers for his Vente non-fat xtra-hot Latte and no doubt some clear containers of celery and a random item that he’s worked into his diet somewhere. Sam’s, of course, where the obligatory Dr. Pepper, bulk Spinach and wine were purchased.

(Here the author falls asleep. The wine had less to do with that than the drugs for the tooth.)

Besides we can’t pick up Squib until 3:45 p.m.

Scat