"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."
My Boog Pages
Sunday, December 11
The Best Vacation EVAR
No, not really. I had some vacation left over that I had to take by the end of the year or it would be gone forever, and the good days at the end of the month were already booked by my worthless coworkers, so I took 'em last week. Here is my story:
Wednesday: Crown Me. When I was in high school an old chum of mine popped me in the mouth, resulting in a dead tooth and a root canal, which required two or three lengthy and unpleasant trips to the dentist. But this fiend's plan to bankrupt me with medical bills wasn't done - I've been losing enamel off that tooth for a couple of years now, and it got to the point where I had to do something about it. So Wednesday morning I went a got crowned.
What fun. First they stick you about 40 times to numb your entire body from the chest up, then they grind your teeth down to little nubs, then they glue on some plastic caps that are supposed to last 3 weeks until the ceramic ones come back from the lab. Then the worst part: the bill.
The upside: as of January 3rd, I will closely resemble Tom Cruise.
Thursday: The Weather Outside Is Frightful. I was planning on driving to Houston for Duane Swizzlestick's signing at Murder By The Book, but the first winter storm of the year put the kibosh on that. If it's too dangerous to drive half a mile to our kids' school (closed for the day), it's too dangerous to drive 250 miles to Houston. So I went to Half Price Books instead, and picked up a couple of Ross Thomas books and one Joseph Hansen.
I also took The Wife along, and damn if she can't figure out how to spend too much in any kind of store.
So, taking the day off on a day when I would have gotten the day off anyway was "great", but even better was...
Friday: Perfect Attndance. As far as I can recall, I haven't missed a day because of illness in five years or so. Oh, I've been sick, I've just managed to do it on weekends and holidays. And on Friday, I kept that streak alive.
School was open, and since my wife got a substitute teaching gig, I was looking forward to a little time alone. Even before I crawled out of bed, though, I knew it wasn't going to happen. I was lying there, thinking about breakfast, when my stomach turned and I knew that something just wasn't right.
I still felt okay, so the wife and kids headed to school, and the youngest headed to the totally misnamed Mother's Day Out. I headed for the computer and, for once, got to crank the speakers until the house was filled with the joyful noise of explosions and gunfire.
Then, at 10:30, my stomach turned again, and bold glowing letters a foot high appeared in front of my eyes, reading YOU'D BETTER GO LIE DOWN.
So I did, until I had to go fetch the youngest at noon. It felt like someone had switched off my muscles. But, slumping around like I had Chris Farley's rotting corpse lashed to my back, I managed to get there and back again with incident. As I was taking off my jacket, I felt a pressing need to announce, "Daddy has to go to the bathroom for a minute," and I began, to use Dean's picturesque phrase, yodeling down the porceline microphone.
It was the baby's nap time, and he somehow managed to sleep through a later concerto, by which time I had remembered that bundling up is bad for a fever. So I kicked off the covers and shivered, but at least the puking stopped.
