Spectacularly shitty day

The squeamish may want to avert their eyes. I'm just saying.

This is a tale of woe. I wallow in self-pity. I'm not seeking sympathy. This is more of a primal scream. Or something like that. I've never viewed psychoanalysis with anything less than a cynical eye, after all.

Woke up this with a fever blister forming on my lip. Which sucks under normal circumstances, but this one snuck up on me because it didn't come with the traditional tingly feeling of pressure which warns me that I need to apply the Abreva. Which I did liberally apply once I realized what was happening, only to quickly discover that this was one of those outbreaks that Abreva only arrests for a brief period and that once the drug is fully absorbed the blister begins growing again instead of being stopped in its tracks. I really, really hate fever blisters, and to compound the indignity, I know the specific woman I contracted this affliction from during my college years. Had I received a proper sex education growing up, I'd have know that fever blisters are a communicable viral disease rather than something people happen to manifest whenever they have fevers. Duh. Too late now, huh? Shit.

I despise Texas Governor Rick Perry with every fiber of my being. He's scared shitless of Kay Bailey Hutchison whomping his pandering ass in the Republican primary next year, so he's whipping up the wingnut conspiracy fringe with talk of secession in hopes of winning another trainwreck term as governor. Call me crazy, but talk of secession (even Perry's chickenshit version whereby he doesn't actually advocate it, but implies that he does) strikes me as un-American and borderline treasonous. Besides, I seem to recall a war or something 150-someodd years ago that settled this question definitively. Not that Perry's shit-headedness has any direct relation to my bad day, but I'm in an ornery mood and he's a convenient target. Just so you know.

So. The Bug contracted ringworm a while back from the kitten Santa left for the kids at Christmas. He had a nasty patch on his scalp, which we had a exhausting 6-week treatment regime to cure him of this fungal affliction. He's got a bald spot on the top of his head that makes him look like Friar Tuck. We'd thought it cured, but The Wife noticed the bald spot had grown reddish of late, and we feared a re-infection. She was going to call the doctor to get an opinion over the phone this morning. No biggie. So I'm almost in to work (I have a 25-minute commute) when my cell phone rings. The doctor's office wants him to come in that morning. There's an opening at 8:30. So I turn around and drive home. The Wife takes him in. The receptionist at the doctor's office acts shocked The Wife and Bug are there at 8:30, since they have them down for a 10:30 a.m. appointment. Let me say right here that this is NOT the first time the doctor's office has botched an appointment time. The doctor eventually sees them, and suspects a bacterial infection has taken advantage of the situation. An antibiotic is prescribed. Yay. The Wife heads over to the pharmacy. Said prescription has not been called in. After an hour of waiting, she gives up and comes home. I turn the guardianship of the daycare kids over to her, and get in my car to drive to work. It's approaching the lunch hour.

A large storm system has parked itself over central Texas this weekend, for those of you out of the area. We've been in an extended and severe drought, so the rain is welcome. For the most part. At the tail end of my commute, about five minutes from work, I experience a flat tire. No problem, I'll just get out and change it. It's not even raining. Well, it's raining a little bit. Hmm, it seems to be raining harder--I'll have to put on my overcoat. Crap, this is something like a downpour--water's sloshing around inside my waterproof hiking boots. This isn't a downpour, it's a freaking monsoon! I have never, ever been so wet in my life. The parts of me that aren't drenched by the frigid rain are soaked through by my steaming sweat. My back aches, my legs hurt and it's unbelievable easy to smash your fingers when all the metal tools are slick and slippery from the rain.

I finally drag my sorry self into work and actually have a productive day. I don't want to be there, but I manage to clear out a backlog of releases. Plus, I win a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 mark I lens on Ebay for $142. I've been after this lens for a while for infrared photography, but have not been successful at winning one for a price I'm willing to pay. This is a deal I'm happy with.

Okay, ray of sunshine interlude over. I come home and after a number of amusing events involving the kids and/or The Wife, I go the the pharmacy to pick up the Bug's prescription. When I get home, we discover it's an antifungal shampoo. The doctor specifically told The Wife the inflammation on his head wasn't a recurrence of the ringworm, that she was prescribing an antibiotic for bacterial infection. WTF? And of course it's Friday evening, so there's no way to get ahold of the doctor until Monday morning to figure out what the hell is going on with this prescription that's 180 degrees opposite of what we were told we were getting.

Right. At this point I quite unexpectedly learn that my estranged father just had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his lung.

Didn't see that one coming, did you? I'm all about the plot twist, see.

This is the same father who had the heart attack a couple of months ago and acted like he wanted to mend fences until he was actually released from the hospital, at which point he suddenly forgot all about it. The same father who, although I don't hate him, still provokes knotted muscles in my shoulder and back and elevated blood pressure in me whenever I hear his name. It doesn't help that this was sprung on me almost in ambush fashion. So now I'm at a loss for a proper course of action. How to navigate that fine line between rewarding bad behavior and clinging to a self-destructive bitterness?

I feel obliged to point out (this being something of an impassioned, ill-advised confessional, after all) that I do not harbor (much) bitterness directly attributable to our own tension-filled relationship. Father/eldest son conflicts are traditional, after all. If it weren't for that, the ancient Greeks would only be known for their comedies. No, my beef comes with the abysmal treatment he's inflicted on my mother, sister, youngest brother (middle brother too, probably, although I'm not privy to such information at this time), my mother-in-law, my daughters... well, pretty much everyone in my life that I care about, he's gone out of his way to be an ass to.

So... that was my day. How was yours?

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