One of Those Days…

Started at 4:00 a.m. Bathed, painted, dressed, answered emails. Read copy for an hour. Got tired of that around 5:30.

Hungry. Had a breakfast meeting this morning, but a) I wasn’t even supposed to leave the house for another hour and 15 minutes and b) I had to give the dog & pony show for this morning’s chivaree and so would bolt down a pressured restaurant meal around that. Decided to fix my own food and just have coffee at the shindig.

Howcum what used to take minutes now takes half a lifetime? Feeding the dog & then fixing a meal and eating it occupied the hour & something. Late as usual racing out the door.

Hideous traffic. Took 45 minutes to make the 20-minute drive to the Scottsdale meeting. But everyone else was running late, too, thank goodness.

Delivered a half-baked presentation.

Was reminded by a client, who also belongs to this group, that I haven’t done his project yet. He handed me more stuff in a large manila envelope.

I just realized, as I’m sitting here, I think I walked out of the restaurant without it. Shit.

Forgot my checkbook so couldn’t pay this month’s dues. One of the guys was collecting for popcorn, holiday fund-raising for some charity he supports. Couldn’t pay for that, either.

President wanted to know who’s slated to present next week. Would I e-mail him when I get home with the list of the next few weeks’ speakers. “Okay,” I said. Make a note:

• send check for dues
• send check for flicking inedible popcorn
• feed popcorn to students
• email Marshall with next month’s speakers.

Just called the restaurant. They close at 2:30 p.m. Whaaa???? What kind of chain freaking restaurant closes at 2:30 in the freaking afternoon????

Got home. Hungry. Had to eat something more than a snack before doing battle with noon class. Defrosted a small steak and threw some frozen hash browns into a puddle of hot grease while grilling meat over propane. Reheated tea in microwave. Good. Highly satisfactory. Left dirty dishes all over kitchen.

Changed clothes. Raced to campus.

Finished listening to 101 students explain exactly what it is they think they’re going to do in their respective papers. A week ago they were asked to brainstorm ideas for their paper, select an idea that looked feasible, and turn in a note describing that. These reside in my car, because I don’t grade them and have had neither time nor inclination to look at them.

Not one but two students asked me to find their note on their final paper, a stage of which was due at 5:00 p.m. today, because — get this — they could not remember what they thought they were going to write about. So the little twits accompanied me out to my rolling office in the parking lot, thereby to remind themselves of whatever it was they imagined would be the subject of their final flicking paper, which is now due in less than a week.

WTF?

Home again, searched for the calendar with the business group’s presentation dates on it. Couldn’t find it.

Shoveled out the mound of papers that’s duned up on the closet shelves. Threw out a lot of old student papers. Found no calendar.

Rifled through the drawers, searched the car, tossed the mounds of papers on the desk. No calendar. Dug through the file drawers. Found the hanging file for the bidness group; found a calendar: out of date. Wrong calendar.

Edited copy for several more hours.

Fielded a call from financial adviser. Reported that I’d just lost a regular client; doesn’t pay much but I may have to make up the lost editing income with a larger than planned drawdown. He advised that this would be an extraordinarily bad idea. Set up meeting for next week.

Prepared and sent copy to clients; sent bill. Updated billing spreadsheet. Sent a late notice to another client. Figure to see that money about the time I see the lost calendar.

Knocked off around 6:00 p.m.

Fed the dog. Returned call to SDXB while emptying dishwasher and piling more dishes into it. No answer.

Took dog for walk. Beautiful evening, a big fat harvest moon rising up in creamy glory behind a veil of backlit clouds against a black velvet sky.

Followed up the feeder street by two shady-looking males evidently drifting in from the slums across the main drag. Gave them the slip — not a bad trick for an old bat with a small, stubborn dog in tow. Shot up a neighborhood street, running on extremely sore foot, into the light from Pretty Daughter’s garage, where her son was working on a car.

Got mail on the way up the front driveway. Found not one but two notices from the police, still being misdelivered to Manny’s house. {groan!} What NOW?

Remembered M’hijito set a lot of the debris that accumulates on the van’s front seat into a back seat so he could ride somewhere with me the other day. Check back of car. Find calendar.

E-mail Marshall that we don’t have anyone scheduled to speak after this week and so we’ll need to recruit a presenter for next week and then get the rest of the members to sign up for meetings through next month.

Open mail from cops. Interesting. It’s not about Mr. Mejia, the perp who’s allegedly in the slam over the late, great armed robbery. They just arrested another one of these creeps (you may recall that the original heist was pulled off by three accomplices), a Matthew Jason Avery. This is the guy, it appears, that the SWAT team caught in my garage. Mejia may still be in the slam, but this one was not, at least not as of November 25. That’s when they hauled him back to the jailhouse, charged with kidnap, assault and battery, and second-degree burglary.

The latter would be for the theft of my valuable used clothing, gardening hat, and muddy clodhoppers, to use as his lawn-man disguise.

So, you realize what this means?

Well, it means a number of things.

a) Mr. Mejia, the character to whose trial I was summoned, is not the one about which I have anything to say.
b) Mr. Avery is. Therefore, I will also be summoned to his trial.
c) Therefore, it’s not altogether outside the realm of possibility that I could end up testifying at the trials of two of these sh!theads.
d) And while Mr. Mejia may be unavoidably detained in the slam, Mr. Avery has been out on the street. And he knows where I live.

Charming. Here’s what he looks like. Isn’t he a sweetie?

Tomorrow I’m committed to spending the entire day at the Tempe street fair with KJG. Therefore I will not be able to burn a quarter-tank of gas tomorrow a.m. driving to the Scottsdale restaurant to pick up the package my client gave me, assuming they found it and haven’t thrown it out.

That means I get to spend Saturday morning traipsing out there. Assuming they found it and (etc.).

Eight-thirty at night. Phone just rang. The “Attention Power Company Customers” robo-bastard. God, how I’d like to get my hands on the perpetrators of that nuisance scam.

My foot hurts.