I pulled onto the freeway this morning, checked my mirrors and saw a van in my rearview. The van was far enough away that I could pull in and accelerate before he caught up to me. Except I didn’t factor that he would be going 75 mph during morning rush hour! I pulled into the lane and before I knew it he flew right up my ass. I had to quickly whip back into the exchange lane so he could pass.
He could have moved to the left lane or slowed down, but he didn’t.
Now I am pissed because he was ruining my beautiful morning and he was so damned inconsiderate. My mind turns to revenge. Revenge, sweet, dark, bitter revenge, like cherry cough syrup flowing down a junkie’s throat.
1)
FANTASY: I would speed up and catch up with him. Surprise him. Force him off the road, whip his door open, pull him out and kick his ass. Tears would cut rivers through the blood on his face when he wept at my superior prowess.
REALITY: He is driving a big 8-cylinder van which gives him more power and quicker acceleration. I am driving a 4-cylinder Saturn. While I do have a lighter vehicle which allows the engine to work less hard, the considerable power difference in his engine more than makes up for the excess weight. I would never catch up with him
2)
FANTASY: He gets into an accident farther up the road. I stop to help the innocent victims. His DoomMobile is rendered inoperable by the impact and he is forced to wait. As the authorities arrive, he weaves a web of deceit around the officers, making them believe it was not his fault. Indignance flares and I rush to set the story straight. He is vilified in the media and I am duly rewarded.
REALITY: Being a tattletale is really very trite and juvenile. Best to take the high road and allow fate to work on him.
3)
FANTASY: This one is more television than the others. Quietly, I insinuate myself into his life. Show up in places. I serve him his coffee at Denny’s. Follow him through his neighborhood. I am the parent next to him at the 3rd grade recital in which his son plays a peapod and my daughter is the infinitely more talented mushroom. He sees me everywhere, he sees me nowhere. His guilt eats at him. Why couldn’t he have just slowed down, he wonders constantly. In his distraction, he drives into the river. I am the paramedic on scene. He pleads with his eyes. Forgiveness is a pair of defibrillator paddles.
REALITY: TV always forgets to tell you how the revenge-driven find the information on the revengee. I didn’t even see what company he worked for.
In the end, I just went to work. Seemed better than trying to become a paramedic on the off chance our paths would cross again.
Crap
I am having a really cranky day today.
The weekend in food
Get ready to be appalled…
Friday night we decided to go to the drive-in (more on that later). We drove to the grocery store and stocked up on drive-in food. That night I ate salami, miracle whip, licorice, beef jerky, hawaiian punch, malt cups, triscuits, and gummi peaches.
The next day I had the rest of the salami for lunch, then ate snacks the rest of the day. The big snack of the day was Cheez Flavored Puffcorn Curls (you know Puffcorn Curls…Yeah you do…Your grandma makes that weird caramel corn with the plain variety). At 1 a.m. my blood sugar hit dangerously low levels and I ate a handful of triscuits and a cherry yogurt after I ate an entire bag of licorice whips while lying in bed reading a book.
Sunday was better, Burger King chicken sandwich, their new fries (even crappier than their old fries – they need to stop coating them with various forms of cardboard dust, I mean who do they have taste testing these things anyway? Pudding experts?) and a frozen Minute Maid Cherry thing. Then I got a giant doughnut from Tobies (if you dont know Tobies, I am sorry). Then off to my inlaws for fathers day bbq’d chicken.
A little bit of advice for today
If you are lying in bed about to get up and you hear the person you live with (girlfriend, spouse, terrorist kidnapper) talking to the cats saying this:
C’mon, eat it…eat it Chiva…you too, Cocoa, kill it…eat it…come on I don’t want to pick it up with toilet paper…ack…aaaaack
your wisest course of action is to stay in bed. Just roll over and feign sleep or death, whichever is more convincing.
For the record, it was a big centipede out there. Considering my near phobic level of fear for centipedes, I think my decision to stay in bed was a good one.
This is the second monster-sized centipede in as many weeks. All the extra rain is driving them inside.
Ant Farm: Part 2
A NEW ANT FARM!! When I purchased the ant farm for the office here i also purchased one for home. It took forever but my ants finally arrived. A little bit of cosmic irony that on the day that I find my beloved ants dead, the mail brings me a whole new set. In death there is always life.
Setup should have been fairly easy since I had accomplished it once before, but my decendancy from apes is fairly short and of course I had issues. The village is a cylinder within a cylinder. The inner cylinder stays sealed and the ants don’t go in it. Its purpose is to keep the sand pressed firmly against the outer clear cylinder. If you are an 8 year old boy you can accomplish the assembly of this simple product but I suck and I cannot. I don’t notice how poorly I have put this together until the very end when I cannot snap the top piece in place. This would be after I wet the sand down.
I put the inner cylinder in at a slight angle, thought nothing of it and added the sand and water. When I realized my mistake I tried to move the wet sand around to the other side. Impossible. I had to break the whole thing down, scoop the wet sand into a bowl, reassemble it and then try to get the wet sand into the narrow space. Second time was a success. A messy, irritating success.
Since I was home I had access to sugar to make the requisite sugar water. I added a few drops and dumped the ants in. When they awoke and discovered this simple nectar of the gods they made a huge pile of ants on this little drop of water and not a one of them drowned. Seems ants enjoy making seething piles. I also enjoy seething…oh nevermind
After about 45 minutes they had their fill of sweet liquid and moved on to the task of entertaining me. As we know, ants aren’t all that different from farm to farm. These ants started the same way, checking the place out, moving the dead, trying to escape. Though similar in style, I am sure these new ants will bring me another 3 weeks of irrepressible ant joy.
Wish me luck as we start on our new journey.