Sharpness

You know those days where you feel really sharp? I love those. When you actually wake up before the alarm goes off and you have time for a good long shower, and your hair doesn't look like ferrets with OCD have been building a nest in it? Awesome.

Yesterday was totally that day. Rocking hair, got to work early...I was feeling it. Of course, these are the days I have to watch out most for. Because I usually have my guard up during a normal day. Actively scanning the sidewalk ahead for places I might trip. Careful mirror examination of my entire body for misapplied clothes/ink stains/unknown odd physical traits. Just the normal series of defensive stances that I need to make sure that my normality-to-fool ratio stays in line. I'm not saying it's very effective, but God help me if I didn't do it, y'know?

Anyways, when I'm feeling pretty confident, I get a little lax on the Checklist Against Folly, and bad things can happen. But really, what is the point of having a sharp day if you're constantly worrying about screwing it up, right?

So, I made it through the whole work day excellently. No mishaps, some good comments on some papers I wrote up, and a great word put in for me by a new client. Rocking.

I get home after a grueling drive through riot-level traffic. (There were actually people wandering across the highway. Like, seriously. 3 people passed in front of my car on foot during the traffic jam. You probably haven't been on Highway 75 lately, but there is no earthly reason for someone to be walking on 75. It's self contained. There are no stores, it's just a road with walls around it. It had a very zombie-movie-walking-dead-post-apocalypse vibe going on. Except I was listening/dancing to a Mandy Moore CD and then traffic started up again within 5 minutes. But it was totally creepy for a second in my mind. I have fallen off track completely here.)

God, where was I? Okay, so I get home. Theoretically this means that the good day is complete, because how could anything go wrong once I've hit home? I plan on seeing no one, all I need to do is watch TV, play video games and fall asleep. I rule this day.

No wait, I need to do laundry. And cook dinner. No problem, am master of both of these operations. So I collect all the laundry, pull out the ingredients for an actual meal and turn on the TV for some background noise. I go ahead and get the food started, since it requires a long oven time and boiling ingredients. I then grab the clothes and head to the laundry room. Master of Efficiency.

Problem the first: When I get to the laundry room, I see that there are people already there. This does not bode well for getting a washer, but it would look weird to not at least go in and check, right? One does not just get 5 feet from the room with a basket full of laundry and then sprint away at the sight of others. That would be odd. So I go to check the machines.

Unfortunately, I misjudge the great big step that one must take to get into the room. I bark my shin intensely against the concrete step, overbalance, and slam my whole body directly into the ground, with the exception of my face, which slams into the lip of the basket that I was holding. Oh, and my forehead, which smacked into the bottle of detergent in said basket.

It is one of those moments that seems suspended in time. Exquisite pain racks your body. At the same time, you watch as everyone in the vicinity turns in unison slo-mo to gape at you, writhing on the ground, covered in your own dirty laundry. There is no way to properly salvage your dignity anymore.

I brush it off as well as I can and wave off any inquiries of concern, mentally trying to cast it as some sort of intentional performance piece. Sure enough, there are no machines available and that spectacular flop to the ground was for nothing. Well not nothing. Now I have a bruised leg and two nice bright red marks on my forehead and lip. Sexy.

I slink back to my apartment, as you do when there are no washers available and you must admit your defeat to dirt publicly to the rest of the apartment complex. Sadly, this little bout of clumsiness and washer examination has taken far longer than it should have. The pot on the stove has overflowed and blackened whatever it was that I had planned on cooking, leaving behind no smoke, but a stench of something so powerfully awful that it continues to haunt me. It was a smell that defies both explanation and logic. No words can convey its power, and even experiencing it first-hand, you can't wrap your mind around how bad it was. If Guiness is what evil tastes like (as had previously been asserted) then that was what evil would smell like.

Recognizing exactly when to cut my losses, I clean up the horror that is the kitchen, bleach everything, deodorize as much as possible, and then spray air freshener to mask the pain. I then run for fast food (which was great fun to order with a swelled lip) and when I come back, things almost seem okay.

The rest of the night passed without incident, unless you count the death of my hunter in World of Warcraft due to falling out of a zeppelin, which is like one meta level of clumsiness removed from my usual antics.

So yeah, even in my sharpest days, I'm still a little dull. Rock out.