retrograding

Oh my god, my day yes­ter­day. It could best be de­scribed as be­ing like Mar­i­anne Williamson:

Crazy.

First, I showed up to my ap­point­ment with my op­ti­cian, which was at 8:15 am. She splits her time be­tween Olympia and Taco­ma and for­got she had an ap­point­ment with me down here, so that didn’t hap­pen. (I ac­tu­al­ly wasn’t mad at all. It was fine for var­i­ous rea­sons, the least of which not be­ing that the poor woman is try­ing to wear sev­er­al hats at once due to them be­ing un­der­staffed, and I re­al­ly want­ed to get down­town and go to cof­fee with a good friend — who also had lim­it­ed time in the morn­ing –  be­cause …)

… She need­ed a friend, so I sat with her and we talked and I was moral sup­port be­fore she had to go. Then I went to my soak­ing tub and mas­sage. But it wasn’t un­til I walked more than halfway to the mas­sage place that I re­mem­bered I didn’t ride the bus, I drove and parked down­town, AND my park­ing was ex­pired.

So I ran all the way back to my truck, and thank­ful­ly didn’t have a tick­et, but I had less than ten min­utes to dri­ve there and hope­ful­ly find a park­ing spot down­town near the shop. And I did, yay. Whew.

Then I’m in my soak­ing tub ap­point­ment, and last time the tub took a re­al­ly long time to fill up, so I turned on the wa­ter be­fore I took my cleans­ing show­er, think­ing I had this down. But the faucet was a lit­tle wonky, so it filled up with ice cold wa­ter, which was to­tal­ly my fault for not mak­ing sure it was po­si­tioned right. So I had to drain half of what was there and get the hot wa­ter go­ing.

I got to soak com­fort­ably for only about ten full min­utes be­fore my mas­sage. What­ev­er no big deal, priv­i­leged first world white peo­ple prob­lems.

Got my mas­sage, grabbed lunch, went home, mea­sured some win­dows, made a shop­ping list, drove to this blinds place I’ve been mean­ing to go to and fi­nal­ly had time for yes­ter­day, aaaaan­nd …

… They’re closed. But, their hours are 9–5 M–F. So I call num­ber, a shop guy picks up and tells me every­one from the show­room is out mak­ing ap­point­ments. “Do you know when any­one might be back?” This guy sounds like Bill AND Ted: “Uh­h­h­hh I’m just the shop guy!” Nev­er mind.

Go shop­ping, E V E R Y  old per­son in Thurston coun­ty is in Fred Mey­er. Oh. My. God. Good thing I’m on meds! It takes twice as long as it should.

Go home, start mak­ing chili, to­tal­ly un­der­es­ti­mate how long it’s go­ing to take me. At this point I prob­a­bly shouldn’t be tak­ing on an­oth­er task but I was re­al­ly feel­ing up for it and want­ed to seize upon my sud­den am­bi­tion and was ex­cit­ed to make chili from scratch. Was sup­posed to meet the friend from ear­li­er again for beers at 5:45. Due to crazi­ness for both of us, it gets moved to 6, then 6:30, then 7, be­cause …

… Not only is the chili tak­ing longer than I thought it would, but while mak­ing it, I re­mem­bered I still need­ed to go pick up my pre­scrip­tion at Safe­way be­fore they close at 9. And it’s su­per im­por­tant be­cause I haven’t tak­en my Sin­gu­laire in a week and my asth­mat­ic al­ler­gies are act­ing up, AND …

… I ran out of Lexapro last night. Which is my anti-de­pres­sant. No prob­lem, it’s on auto-fill! Right? I call up just to make sure it’s ready for me. The phar­ma­cist tells me 1) it’s not on auto-fill and 2) I’m out of re­fills. “So we’ll fax your doc­tor,” he ca­su­al­ly says in a friend­ly but obliv­i­ous man­ner. I must have said the mag­ic words when I told him that’s my anti-de­pres­sant and I’m com­plete­ly out, ei­ther that or he heard the pan­ic in my voice, be­cause he said “We’ll loan you three against the fu­ture re­fill to get you through the week­end” with­out any hes­i­ta­tion what-so-ever.

I end up hav­ing to toss *some* of the chili be­cause it won’t all fit in the crock pot. Hh­hhnnnnn. “We’re gonna need a big­ger crock pot.” Oh well. Les­son learned. Halve the recipe. (Or get a big­ger crock pot, which I’ll prob­a­bly do.)

Jump in the truck af­ter clean­ing up the dis­as­ter I made in the kitchen, get there and grab my pre­scrip­tion in record time, thank the phar­ma­cist pro­fuse­ly, get back in the truck, should be home in time to fresh­en up real quick and catch the bus down­town to meet my friend for a beer when …

… the truck won’t start.

Aaron and Di­ane (my an­gels) come to my res­cue – Aaron just to make sure I’m do­ing okay and Di­ane to give me a jump. We try jump­ing it with both the Hyundai and her Sub­aru. No luck. Great. Is it the starter? Just a su­per dead bat­tery? Who the fuck knows. Go back in­side Safe­way, give them my make and mod­el, li­cense plate, phone num­ber. They tell me no prob­lem if it’s there overnight.

The three of us go to my house, Di­ane fin­ish­es do­ing what she needs to do on her lap­top, I fin­ish clean­ing up and start some laun­dry, we all head down­town and have a de­li­cious din­ner at my fa­vorite cock­tail bar, Dillinger’s, and I have three very much need­ed, well made, stiff cock­tails.

I want­ed to write all this out last night but when I got home, I brushed my teeth, put on my jam­mies, and fell into bed. I didn’t even fuck around on my phone or play any of my goofy mo­bile games. Lights out. Good night. Com­plete­ly done with this day.

Any­way, the moral of the sto­ry is to love your peo­ple, keep them close, and help oth­ers. Friends are im­por­tant. It’s fit­ting that we fin­ished watch­ing Train to Bu­san (2016) on Hal­loween, just the night be­fore.

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2019 Emi­ly Duchaine.

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