Dirty & Frantic

My day was really not as much fun as the title of this post might suggest. For starters, I spent the whole day at work, and as I am neither having an illicit office romance nor employed as a professional pig wrestler, the title is in fact a bit misleading. It was after work—walking home from work, specifically—that I got dirty, and after getting dirty that a brief franticness set in.

Regardless, I was wearing my coat on the walk home, because after I realized how warm it was out, I spent half the journey telling myself I could make it home before I got too hot, and then when I realized beads of sweat had popped out on my forehead I was only a couple blocks from home and it seemed silly to go through the whole ordeal of taking off my backpack, taking off my coat, tying the coat around my waist, reapplying the backpack—I mean, who needs that?

I soon, however, was forced to acknowledge that the beads of perspiration had trapped a number of tiny, winged insects that congregate beneath trees and beside flowering bushes this time of year, hanging like a roiling fog over the sidewalks and haplessly cruising into passersby. Not dissimilar to the Velcro Fly—but really more like the Sweaty Projectile Bug. Which, incidentally, would be an adorable name for a virulent airborne pathogen.

Needless to say, my skin took on the gritty texture of commingled sweat, dust, and bug wings. Which gives you a feeling akin to discovering in the middle of a relaxing soak that the cat must have been playing in the tub earlier that day because there’s now an even coating of cat hair floating on the surface of the water, and if you try to stand up, the hair will stick to your skin, and no amount of swirling or swishing the water will prevent at least some of the hair from attaching to some part of your body. Or so I would imagine. I’ve never had that happen to me. Really.

Checking my mail upon arriving home, I discovered that my parents, who had sold my car for me, had mailed me the seller’s report of sale, which I was required to submit to the Department of Licensing within five days of the transfer of ownership. The transfer of ownership, it turned out, had taken place six days prior. Naturally, I assumed the punishment for late submission of the report would be a flogging with wooden spoons and other similarly blunt-edged kitchen utensils (namely spatulas and butter knives), so I quickly got some shoes on and got in my car and drove to the DoL before it closed. On the way it occurred to me the DoL might be counting down to my imminent incarceration and death by Albanian firing squad in business days, but I figured ASAP would still be best. After, I went to the bank and made some phone calls. At a frenetic pace!

You know what kitchen implement it would hurt to get beaten with? A can opener. Especially one of those cheap, scrawny metal ones without the rubber hand-grips. Or a pizza slicer, in the right hands. I bet an apple corer would be an effective agent of pain, too.