Is it true that strange things happen when nature is about to strike? Is the equilibrium of our existence sent into a tornado of imbalance just because a ‘hurricane’s a’ comin’’ [citation: Sophia Petrillo]? Let’s see…
Thursday night, Danny was going to stay up late to make a cake to bring to work the next day. So, I decided to be the considerate partner and place three cans of Wild Cherry Pepsi in the fridge for him to help give him a little energy boost. I put them in the freezer so they would get cold faster, and let him know they were there. He immediately reached for one, even though I insisted it would be gross while still warm—but he insists on eating food that should be hot, cold and drinking drinks that should be cold, hot. I give up. Anyway, after watching Jersey Shore, I fell asleep.
We woke up the next morning, Danny took his cake to work, I went to work. Got home that afternoon (I’d forgotten how much half-day Fridays rule for the 4 years I was in hell—in fact, I forgot how much getting out at 5 every other day rules…) and opened up the fridge and freezer to see what’s for dinner. Turns out, Danny never got around to drinking those other two cans of Wild Cherry Pepsi. Know what happens when you leave cans of soda in the freezer? They EXPLODE. The walls, the ceiling, the floor, and all the contents within my freezer were COVERED in frozen drips of Wild Cherry Pepsi. How exactly does this crap freeze in mid-drip??? So, I put cleaning the entire freezer—and fridge—on my list of chores for the hurricane weekend. Perhaps it was nature’s way of telling us it was time to do it, because after I was done, the fridge was so sparkling clean I was embarrassed about how it had looked beforehand. But it really killed me to see all those frozen chunks of Wild Cherry Pepsi go to waste. How badly I wanted to just suck that caffeine juice right off the walls of my freezer. But I’m strictly off caffeine…because of what happened later Friday night…
I’m watching TV, minding my own business, when suddenly, I feel an all-too familiar pain: a pain of the intensity that landed me in the Emergency Room this past year. Problem is, my health benefits at my job don’t kick in until the 1st of September, so when Danny runs over to me asking, “Do you want to go to the ER???” I croaked, “I can’t afford it! Let me die in peace!!!!”
I then keel over from the pain of a kidney stone attack—that glorious feeling like someone has stuck a spear straight through your side, and there it remains, jammed through your front and protruding out your back. Pain so bad that you involuntarily vomit—for the rest of the fricking night!!! Tragically, as soon as I felt the pain coming, I popped a handful of Ibuprofen to stop it. Said handful became the first casualty of the first upchuck. More tragically, not 15 minutes before this attack, I had downed a delicious bowl of the amazing Target brand of ice cream, Archer Farms, Belgian Chocolate flavor. Doesn’t quite taste as good coming back out. MORE deliciousness wasted in a 24-hour period!!! The fricking humanity!!!!
So I finally pass out from the agony, and wake up the next morning feeling like I’d been pummeled to death and gone to hell (aka: back to my former job). My throat is burning with acidic residue, my eyes are puffy and swollen—but my kidney feels fine! I get out of bed, notice a light drizzle outside, and then hear noise in the yard. I go to the back door—and there is Danny with my two dogs still on their leashes just back from a walk, looking quite confused as Danny grabs the hose. He urges me to bring out the dog shampoo.
Turns out, Miss Fine decided to smear herself in her favorite perfume out in the woods during their morning walk—the luscious scent being that of unidentified woodland animal excrement. My whole yard stinks of it, Danny stinks of it, Sheffield is begging to come in and get away from it, and Miss Fine is trying to act all cute and innocent, but knows she’s done a bad thing. So she doesn’t even TRY to run from the hose.
Now we’re all out in the rain, we are spraying her down with chilly hose water, and then drowning her in Oatmeal Honey doggy shampoo. Finally, she’s ‘clean’, so we all go in, we dry the dogs off with doggy towels, Danny jumps in the shower, and I take his clothes, the dog leashes, and the doggy towels and throw them in the washing machine. But Miss Fine now has a ripe Honey Oatmeal Pooh fragrance about her.
So when Danny’s shower is done, we give Miss Fine another bath, this time in the bathtub with hot water, hoping it will kill the smell. We’re scrubbing away, but the Oatmeal Honey just isn’t destroying the pungent pooh completely. Now we’re thinking we might have to go the Tomato Juice route like the Partridge Family did when a skunk snuck onto their tour bus—or does that only work on skunk odor? Meanwhile, Miss Fine looks like a miserable wet mop, wondering, “What did I do to deserve 2 baths while Sheffield gets none???”
We finish the bath, dry her off again, and HOPE that when she dries, things will be better. About 12 hours later, we noticed a significant, but not complete, improvement. It wasn’t until Monday that I’d be able to go to the store and get something more potent to obliterate the clinging odor completely.
Sunday was the day of the big hurricane—which pretty much skipped over our block. We had no flooding, no trees down, no power outage…and even the cable stayed on. Now THAT is a miracle. We figured the storm just wasn’t as bad as predicted….until we ventured out with the pups in the middle of the day for a walk to find some houses covered in trees and telephone poles. We really lucked out.
The remainder of Sunday seemed to pass with no further incidence…until the great passing. Yep, that dang kidney stone from Friday apparently kicked around my body for two days, and without any side effects, simply washed right out of me and into the bowl Sunday night. How is it that something that was so much agony on my great big kidney passed through my little wee-wee tunnel without issue? My wee-wee tunnel is telling me to shut up and stop jinxing it right now…. Especially since I just passed a fricking pea-sized stone at work two weeks ago…yeah, I peed a pea. And it hurt like hell!!! And BTW, you KNOW you love your job and that it offers a totally positive environment when you pass a pea-sized kidney stone and then just brush it off and go gladly back to work….
Finally, Monday comes and it’s back to work! So I drive all the way there—only to find that the 50 or so people who actually bothered to show up are all standing outside the building because we have no power—and since the phone lines were also out, they couldn’t leave an emergency voice message to prevent us from driving there!!! Pretty short story shorter, it was going to be hours before power was restored, so I was sent home for the day.
I took advantage of the found time, and hit the weights in my basement—literally. I smashed my forehead into on end of the barbell on my bench press. There was a throbbing ache in my head (no, not another kidney stone—I mean on my forehead), there was blood, there’s now a big gash over my left eyebrow. This morning, Danny’s talking to me as we prepare for work, and he says, “You look badass like that…” This gives me a fleeting feeling of sexy hyper-masculinity, until he concludes, “…like Harry Potter.”
I survive witnessing the destruction of Wild Cherry Pepsi, the wasting of heavenly Archer Farms Belgian Chocolate ice cream, an all-night kidney stone puke session, a poop-dipped dog, rock through the wiener action, and a barbell to the head while pumping major iron, and the best he can do is compare me to a geek with a wand?
But it’s a very long wand.
Great story.