If you hear something on the Detroit news about some crazy white lady dressed in baggy sweat pants and a snot-stained shirt going postal with an armful of used tissues and diapers on some neighbors partying in their yard...
...you'll know where I'll be staying for the next few days.
Seriously, they've been playing their dance music with the driving bass that pounds through the earth and into my head with the force of the Millennium Falcon ALL FRICKIN' DAY. And since I looked out the window and saw about ten zillion people dancing under that white tent with about two zillion more climbing out of cars with what looked suspiciously like some 40s in brown paper bags, I'd say they're in for a long night.
This on a day when I've been trying to persuade DramaBoy that he really just wants to hang out in the Skyhouse all day watching videos and trying out some new body art with (non-toxic, thank God) colored markers so that I can focus on The Widget, who has a vicious cold that has turned him into a writhing, whining, whimpering snot-covered limpet who screams bloody murder if I detach him for ten seconds. It's hard enough to convince one's bladder to pee faster than usual, much less when there are spine-chilling screams coming from the other room that cause one's muscles to involuntarily spasm and clench.
Add in the discovery that sometime during DramaBoy's foray onto my desktop (he isn't allowed to touch my work laptop) to play Zaboomafoo he managed to send the computer into a death spiral. It now vacillates between a five second flash of The Blue Screen Of Death and the start-up screen. My brother says either a driver has gone bad or there are two hard drives and DramaBoy somehow managed to convince the Master to become the Slave. I have no information to offer him, as I can't even remember whether it was using Windows XP or Vista, much less whether it had a second hard drive. I certainly didn't know I was possibly perpetuating the slave trade on my PC.
Oh, and of course I can feel the viral hand of doom. Whatever this strain is, it's catchy. DramaBoy and The Widget came down with it simultaneously on Thursday, and if I didn't know my science better, I'd swear it was Jungle Java's fault. They were fine until we entered that madhouse, and they were both starting to drip and sneeze by the time we left. I suppose I should issue a public apology to all the families that will now no doubt contract our Creeping Crud, but I'm feeling too bitter. My throat is scratchy, my sinuses are starting to tickle, and my head was already throbbing before the inconsiderate bast--ahem, individuals across the street decided to crank up the volume.
The timing is, of course, perfect. Wednesday I report for work and we'll be taking our official school pictures as usual. I always love photos that look like I've either been on a three day bender or contracted Ebola. They give one that highly professional je ne sais quoi that just inspires confidence in everyone who sees one's ID card.
Also, church tomorrow is out of the question. This means, with one thing and another, it will have been over a month since I've been to my regular church. They'll start wondering if I've abandoned them. Annie will be lonely in our pew again. And the tentative plans to head to the Renaissance Festival tomorrow for the Highland Fling weekend? Done. Gone. Kaput. Instead I'll be calling up He Who Was shortly and asking him to be merciful and pick up DramaBoy tomorrow so The Widget and I can have some quality misery together. We'll have to see if he can even go to daycare on Monday, which may mean my plans to set up my classroom and prep with my collaborating coworker and tutor in the afternoon are also out the window.
Oh, now they've moved from dance music to rap. Joy. My night is now complete.
Do you think a jury of my peers might consider it self-defense? Especially if my lawyer stacked it with parents of small children?
I'm going to turn up Hell's Kitchen as loud as I can without ticking off my housemates and waking my children. Maybe all the bleeping will drown out my own rage.
10 years ago
9 bits of love:
The clink! That's where you are headed, right?
Hope you and the kids are feeling better soon!
It would be easier (but only the slightest bit) to have sympathy for you if you didn't write about it so humorously and so well.
I hope you and the kidlets feel better pronto.
See, if you don't embrace Christianity, love thy neighbor is more of a platitude and not so much an actual directive, leaving you more free to act in accordance with your own desires. But wait, don't listen to me! I am generally law abiding. But I hate loud music that I didn't pick. Do you have some Tylenol p.m.? And nighttime cold and cough syrup for the Widget? You're going to need it, and nurse Ginger hereby gives you the prescription: drug yourselves and pretend it isn't happening.
Ah, poor widget. Those play centre things are usually to blame. I stopped going to them in the end, got fed up with the viruses.
Ok, what exactly does 'going postal' mean? That phrase has not yet made it over the pond into Britishness!
Now, I think I did warn you about this particular danger in our neighborhood there . . . the annual block party up the street that afflicts the entire surrounding mile. SIGH. Hope you survived the night, that your debrief (blog) helped, that you and the Widget are beginning to feel a bit better. Dad and I have had similar issues here with the M special speaker two weeks ago, blasting away by PA a few hundred yards away ALL NIGHT and that lovely Jula music, then this week, and all night soccer match with a commentator who LOVES to hear his voice. Forever. Until noon the next day even. We gave up and slept over at the station again. Too bad you don't have an easy solution like that. I'm praying for you!
When our neighbors were insensitive enough to keep the techno music pulsing throughout the night, I encouraged my oldest to take her CD player outside the next morning and blast as loud and as long as she could her Britney Spears music.
Feel better.
Yeah - don't you have some Jula music on cd or something that you could fight back with? Oh but then YOU'd have to listen to THAT, too? Ugh - my sympathies.
There are times I would love to have 1,000,000 watt speakers and direct them, not at the bar or the soccer match or the various events that happen out here, but where the people live who own, run, and organize these things LIVE at about 2am, 4am, 6am . . .For the bar accross the way I could come down to 500,000 watts and play 1812 Overture or something like that! But alas I am not vindictive or anything like that!
First: "I always love photos that look like I've either been on a three day bender or contracted Ebola. They give one that highly professional je ne sais quoi that just inspires confidence in everyone who sees one's ID card."
Great lines.
Second: Turn up the volume on a Bach concerto or the 1812 Overature and point your speakers out of the window.
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