In Which I Think God Hates Me, or a Monday

Monday I woke up at 4:30 am due to extreme thunder. I then finally fell asleep, and my alarm went off.

Then, in pitch darkness, I got out of bed.

I proceeded to make myself passable, as in clean and brushed and dressed, since there really isn't anything else I could do short of altering a shop vac to suck out my fat at home, because home is cheaper than hospital. And easier than, say, physical fitness.

Going into the kitchen, I bypassed the Plumbing Zone, where piles of dishes taken from our broken dishwasher and broken parts taken from our broken dishwasher lay on the counter top, and the sinks were filled with huge tubs to catch the water so the basement didn't flood.

It's a long story.

But the plumber is coming today (Tuesday) and it all might get better from here on in. Mom will be able to stop using the tubs to wash dishes, draining the tubs into the bathtub. And we will no longer live in the Third World.

Cholera, anyone?

Meanwhile, it was becoming abundantly clear that my poor dog was terrified of thunder. She had not stopped following me, tail between her legs, since I woke up, and when I looked at her, she wagged her tail as if to say: FIX THIS PLEASE, RIGHT NOW! All of this told in quiet doggie desperation.

Meanwhile, I knew there was water in my car, there just would be. It had been out all night with a leaky something, and my seat was going to be wet.

A long day passed. During which, I was told repeatedly that my eyes were bloodshot (no sleep) and asked questions there was no way I would know the answer to (What did we do last year for--well, I wasn't here last year...so...)

Then I went home, we ate dinner. Mom had done innumerable loads of dishes, so the kitchen was clean, if still broken. The plumber was apparently just coming to take pictures tomorrow (today) so this will go on.

And I decided I could sure use an Oreo.

Now, there is a doctrine to Oreos. Like, why make a chocolate cookie with two parts chocolate and one part filling? There is no purpose to that. I don't know how we lived before the double-stuffed kind. That was no kind of life. But at that point, I was willing to compromise. I wanted cookie goodness, and failing that, a cake of some kind.

I don't know why we did this, but we went to the local convenience store in search of...convenience.

No Oreos. Just those stupid cake things that Oreo makes like they're some kind of improvement. They aren't. Cake isn't cookie. There is no excuse for that. No addictive little powdered donut things, either. In fact, all they really had was milk. Oh, and Snicker's Ice Cream Bars, which are good, but not when you want a cookie with milk.

This was tragic.

I went home and put my ice cream in the fridge. I knew the day, if it had been at all good, had just become evil. I was sleepy, and I wanted a cookie. Was that too much to ask.

"Dad," I called down the basement stairs. "I may as well be dead."

He laughed at me. My family is used to minor dramatics in which I obsess over a relatively unimportant thing, sometimes for days, then get over it as if nothing happened.

"Will you just kill me, please?"

"Well, what's the matter, Laura?"

"If people aren't going to have Oreos, there just isn't anything I can do," I said. "I mean, Oreos are one of those staple snack products. And I just don't think people understand why you can't just not have them."

Dad still was laughing. I wasn't.

"Oreos are important. They impact people's lives," I went on.

"Would you like me to go with you to the little store in Urbana, and see if they have them?"

"No," I said. "Because the Urbana store only has Oreos that other people have already broken. And those people are scary, and the shelves are dirty. Eating food from there can give you dysentery, or cancer. I don't want to have to wipe dirt off my Oreo package before I open it. I'm not that kind of girl."

I continued, surveyed the kitchen, while Dad stifled more laughter, having realized that I was utterly serious about all of this, and laughter might push me over the edge and into tears--something that happens when I am sleep deprived and my will is thwarted.

"We aren't homeless, you know," I finished.

"No [choking noise that might have been laughter], I guess we aren't," Dad replied.

I went back and killed monsters in one of Paul's video games. Eventually, I ate my Snicker's Ice Cream Bar and divided for the arms of my cardigan. This cheered me up. Then Mom put on a BBC Mystery involving the worst kind of sexual sadism, the kind with conical devices and horrible, horrible things I should never see--EVER--and then I put away my knitting, giving her a look that I hope conveyed my belief that she never is to bring another one of that series of mysteries home, and went to sleep.

And here I am. I am still sleepy, there are no Oreos, and the dishwasher still doesn't work. In addition, there is no prospect of Oreos for at least six or so more hours.

But there isn't any milk here, anyway.