Boo!
A number of things have been haunting me this month.
- Suck it up. I hurt my knee mighty fine last month while working at this year’s grape harvest. But [heroic look toward the horizon] they needed me, so I pushed on. Now my knee isn’t hurting me anymore – it’s freakin’ killin’ me! I’ve called a doctor, but the appointment is still a way off. The worst part is I didn’t even get a lousy medal or nothing for ‘bravery in the face of adversity.’ I mean, sheesh!
- Child-care centers are simply over-sized petri dishes for developing the latest in childhood sicknesses. Since Lloyd started going full-time on October first, he has spent more days at home than with his co-toddlers. Some boys collect rocks. Others collect bugs. Ours collects viruses.
- So-called ‘childhood’ illnesses are nothing more than illnesses you’ve never had because you haven’t hung out with 16 other babies lately. Now that Lloyd shares pre-slobbered toys at the childhood-disease-petri-dish-care-center on a daily basis and then comes home and sneezes on us, Katrin and I have become unwilling participants in his immune-system-strengthening regimen. Colds, ear infections, fevers, 24-hour flus, frazzled nerves – our doctor has written so many sick notes for our family, his wife is beginning to suspect an affair. Why am I getting all these childhood sicknesses over again anyway? Didn’t I learn anything the first time?
- Friend-discounts are bad business. A year ago a German friend of ours asked me to translate his published book into English. I made him a decent offer, but he replied his independent publisher couldn’t possibly afford that. Aw, shucks, what’s several thousand euros between friends, right? The original plan was to do the job over the three winter months – at a time when I had few other jobs and was desperate to escape a screaming newborn. His publisher hemmed. His publisher hawed. By July I was writing e-mails warning that if they procrastinated much more, I’d have to bail. September is my most lucrative month, and this project was cramping my style. They called my bluff, and I flinched. Heck, I couldn’t say no to a friend. Now here comes the part where you toss up your hands and walk out of the cinema because that would never happen in real life: When they finally sent me the file to translate just recently, it was accompanied by an e-mail informing me they were on a very tight schedule and needed it next month. Tell ‘em to bite it! you implore me? Make ‘em squirm! Say it’s too late! Look out, the monster’s behind you! I signed the contract. I should have my provides-goods-and-services-in-exchange-for-money license permanently revoked.
- Every silver lining has its cloud. A month ago I applied for an English teaching position at a local college that I really wanted. I got the job. Whoopee. Now, on top of having to translate a 200-page book in less time than it would take me to read it, I have to prepare for, teach and grade about 20 teaching hours a week. Maybe I can plan lessons while laid up in bed with one of Lloyd’s take-home biohazards.
- Democracy. While it hasn’t kept me out of finer restaurants or relegated me to the backs of buses, the burden of sharing our current president’s surname these eight long years has certainly made me an easy and frequent target of the handful of witless wisecracks one would expect to find in any hobby comedian’s uninspired repertoire. And just when I thought I – not to mention the Office of President – couldn’t suffer any more insulting a humiliation than to be associated with that ignoramus, McCain chooses as his Number 2 (and she does stink) the most anti-intellectual blather-bag this side of, well … Bush. And those two could actually win! Why? ‘Socialism.’ Suddenly, people who could sooner tell you how many Cheesecake Factories are in the tri-state area than how many members make up the US Senate are experts on the inherent evils of a staggeringly complex economic and social theory.
Boo!
