I used to joke with Sharaun that I must have some sort of internal “timer” that finds me visiting the emergency room whenever it runs down and resets for the next time. Sitting in the crowded waiting room now, I can remember the last time I was in a place like this – nearly a year ago. Hospitals suck. They suck bad.
This weekend was a whirlwind of travel. Sharaun and I flew home to Florida for our ten year high school reunion. Took the redeye into Orlando, leaving Thursday arriving Friday, and then flew back to Northern California Sunday morning. The trip wasn’t as long as I wanted, more run-run-run than relaxation, but it was good. Without going into the long of it, the short of it is that we had a great time. Saw some folks I literally hadn’t seen in ten years. Cheap beer and wish-I-hadn’t cigarettes filled two social-centric evenings with old friends. Since we were in Florida, we dined primarily the standard hot wings, southern barbecue, and sweet tea fare – stuff you just don’t get here in California. Fried alligator tail and Bud Light make for one hell of a fine southern meal.
I guess I’m not much in a writing mood. It’s late, I’m grumpy from flying and not getting enough sleep for the past three days. My Economy Plus seat wouldn’t recline on my last connecting flight home, which made getting my much-needed rest more uncomfortable than it could’ve been, and then our luggage somehow ended up on a flight coming in four hours after us. Since it was after 10pm, the next time they could deliver it to the house would’ve been mid-morning tomorrow (Monday). All Sharaun’s bathroom junk was in there, and it’s her first day of school with her new class tomorrow. That means we’d have to make the 45min drive back to the airport just hours after leaving, to stand and wait by the carousel for our bag to come off some flight we weren’t even on.
This place is somewhat surreal. Is it my imagination, or does the societal underbelly seem to need “urgent” medical care more than others? Right now, there’s a completely skeezed-out woman making a series of frantic calls on the payphone trying to locate some cigarettes. Something about leaving the older kids at Taco Bell and taking the younger kids home, then coming back for the ones left earlier. Bottom line though, is that she’s got to get those cigarettes. She’s got a pot-leaf embroidered on the right back-pocket of her size-zero jeans from Gap – Crack Whore. The young girl in pink terrycloth pants at the registration counter has multicolored hair and is giving her profession as “MT,” massage therapist. Cigarette-woman’s hands are soot-black, and her feet shoeless. I feel completely out of place sitting here with a portable computer on my lap. Emergency rooms are sad places, I don’t like them at all.
‘Night.
Also written on this day...
- a segue-segue - 2007
- wasps in the grass - 2006
Are you all right??? Did your “boys” check out ok?