Possumblog

Zzzzz

I'M AWAKE!

Not that I want to be.

Whatever I've got is doing a number on me like a light switch--one minute I'm perky and obtuse and irreverent, the next minute I feel like my brain has turned to molasses and all I want to do is sleep. The congestion is breaking up, which is both good and bad. Breathing, after all, is a good thing. Hacking up giant wads of mucilage? Well, it's certainly satisfying on some level, but still, socially awkward.

A busy evening last night didn't help. Reba needed gas in the van, and Boy needed a new pair of ugly gardening shoes to fit in with all the other kids. ::sigh::

You might recall I'd gotten him a pair of mock-Crocs a while back, which were not quite the high quality one would normally expect from a $5 pair of plastic shoes made by Chinese child labor. The strap on one came loose. It had a little retainer button that was supposed to snap onto a corresponding plastic snap on the shoe, but the plastic was messed up and it would never stay snapped. He'd walk around with it flopping, and so I finally just took it off for him so he wouldn't look so bedraggled. The problem was in leaving the other strap on the other shoe.

Apparently, the lack of symmetry bothered him--one shoe with a strap, one shoe without--because sometime over the weekend, I noticed he had something threaded on his shoe and wrapped around the back of his heel--

"JONATHAN! What have you got on that shoe!?"

"Nothing!"

"Well, what's that red string on there!?"

"It's not a string!"

"But what IS it!?"

"It's a pipe cleaner, Dad."

Oh, well, of COURSE.

::sigh::

I realize we don't have great wads of cash, but there is a certain stubborn pridefulness in me that will not allow me to have one of my kids walking along with a shoe--even a cheap $5 pair of Chinese-child-made plastic shoes--tied on with a wire pipe cleaner.

"Jonathan! No. No, son, we AREN'T going to do that--I'll GET you another pair of shoes, but you will NOT go to school looking like that!"

"I wasn't going to go to school with it like this!"

Wasn't, won't, whatever. Anyway, I told him when we went to the store Monday to get supplies for our weekend Scout campout (coming up this weekend--oh boy!) that I'd take him and get some shoes.

But I forgot his shoes in the midst of all the food shopping.

SO, last evening I arrived to pick them up from Grandmom's house after an afternoon of feeling pretty darned chipper, and Boy asked the moment I got in the door if we could go get his shoes. Tenacious little booger, he is.

I agreed, got us all home, got supper started, welcomed Mom home, found out the van was out of gas, told her I had a shoe chore to fulfill, found out that Oldest needed a foundation garment that required the assistance of Mom, and further Oldest wanted to go to the second night of an audition for the local theater group, and at that very moment we had a nice pile of fish baking in the oven, meaning that this was going to turn out to be something of a tag-team effort.

SO, out the door in a rush with Boy in tow, stopped at Academy so I could check on a few supplies that I needed to replenish in my camping stuff and walked up onto a whole pile of Crocs, so we found a black pair that fit him, and THEN...

The Holy Grail--The White Whale--The Brass Ring!

"What!?" you might ask, fearing the answer.

AS well you should.

Bright yellow rubber shoes! IN MY SIZE!!

Some of you might recall that many seasons ago, while Pam the Liberal still worked here with me, that our department was beset by a hollow husk of a human whose sole purpose in life seemed to be promulgating stupid department-wide regulations. Why? Well, he never could quite get the idea that if someone was making trouble, you deal with that person. His idea was that you make EVERYONE unhappy by layering on another layer of ridiculous work rules intended to curb the troublemaker. You all know how these things work out--the troublemaker continues to make trouble, and you're left with a bunch of policies that are ignored. Until some little martinet wants to make trouble.

ANYWAY, one of the things was a dress code, which was a marvel of incoherence and oddness. I always dress like a bureaucratic drone anyway, so the idea of wearing torn blue jeans to work or tight, revealing workout clothes wasn't really high on my things-to-do list, and I do happen to bathe on a very regular schedule so flies rarely find me more than momentarily attractive, and I do wear shoes. So, the whole idea of such a silly bit of rank-pulling chafed me, and I swore to Pam the Liberal that one day I was going to come into work wearing a kilt (since they were not prohibited) and a pair of bright yellow rubber garden clogs (since ladies' shoes were so rigidly prescribed, but mens' were not) and just see what the reaction would be. I was only half-joking, but as time wore on, it became a running gag betwixt Pam and myself as to when I would be showing up in my garb.

The problem? Well, the kilt was not a problem since there's plenty of places you can get them, but I really DID want a pair of nice gardening shoes to wear out in the yard, and for some reason, I was averse to ordering a pair online. I have no idea why--I've ordered other stuff--but I never did really want to go to the trouble of ordering a pair of clogs. THEN when the big Croc craze hit, and the kids wanted some, I started looking around for a pair for myself. Although a black pair would be much more suitable, in the back of my mind, I told myself that only yellow would do. The problem was finding anything in yellow in a man's shoe--large-sized yellow shoes I suppose generally being the choice of clowns or the disturbed.

BUT LAST NIGHT--I finally found yellow rubber garden clogs in my size! YAY ME!! So, I got Boy a replacement pair of black ones, and I now have a pair of yellow. Which I didn't wear today since I had a very serious meeting to attend. And anyway, when I do wear them I want Pam to be able to see them. BUT AT LEAST I HAVE THEM NOW!!

SO, after that and after some other shopping (running through the store) at Target and after filling up with gas at the foot of the hill, we zipped back home, sat down to eat, and I was suddenly in that complete shutdown mode.

Everything seemed to move in slow-motion. Ashley came back in from the audition, she and Mom left to go bra-shopping, I put things in the dishwasher, the kids went and took their baths, and I draped myself on the side of the bed like a sack of wet plaster.

Sometime later, Reba and Ashley got home, I think the kids went to bed, I turned around and stuck my head between a couple of pillows, Reba showered and came to bed, and all night long I dreamed of the usual decrepit old small towns I usually dream about (one of the places was an old ball park that had a faux Norman tower that had been built in 1909 and the whole bottom of it was gone--somehow) and then I woke up this morning with a plan.

I would get up and go in for my meeting, then turn around and come right back home and go to bed and sleep the rest of the day.

I got up and stood in the shower half-asleep for nearly twenty minutes, and decided I might should go in to the office after the meeting just so I could finish up the paperwork from the meeting, then tell my boss I was going home for the rest of the day.

Got out, got dressed, got the kids rousted (somewhat), kissed Reba 'bye, and wondered if I would actually get any sleep if I went home after the meeting. Daytime sleep is always a hit-or-miss thing, you know. You hear stuff you don't hear at night, like dump trucks and day laborers.

Drove in to work, admired the lurid dayglo sunrise, had the meeting, took copious notes while nursing a Diet Coke, packed up afterwards and got here. Hmm. What a pile of junk to do. Maybe after lunch?

Nah. I guess I'll stay for the duration. Maybe I'll sleep in late tomorrow. Or go to bed extra early tonight. Or mableke,,,,,,,,,,,,, WHA!? Sorry. Maybe I could just rack out under my drafting table...

Posted by Terry Oglesby at October 25, 2006 11:14 AM