nines' spectacularly strange mlk day

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Okay, dudes, the old girl is crackin' up for sure. I think it may have started at bedtime last night. I could not get comfortable. My legs were having long rolling contractions, bad crazy, and I flipped and flopped and had great difficulty getting warm in there. I leapt up and went back down, leapt up and went back down, having at length to put on the TRUDELL playlist to settle down.

There was at last a bit of rain last night, but it was gone when I awakened and it took till nearly 10am for the frost to melt off my neighbor's roof. It was a gorgeous day. Bright, with boofy white clouds and deep blue sky. I had an appointment with the doctor in charge of all the impostors down in Crescent City. I had a couple bills to pay. I needed to go to the grocery store. I felt very strangely wonderful and alert and completely up to it... which, you will agree, is very strange indeed.

Doctor thing went well, and it seems he's decided to keep me, that he will be my doctor, even though he doesn't do patients except for fill-ins for his staff. I have let him know in no uncertain terms what I think of his staff. He seems oddly willing to deal with my occasionally lethal thyroid thing. Kah. Zaart.

So then there was a ridiculously long line of little old ladies at the cable company, most of whom needed technicians to come program their remotes, despite the clerk demonstrating that the remotes were programmed correctly, some ten minutes of advanced senility movies flickered before my eyes before I could pay my bill. The clerk alerted me to the fact that we expect to get washed to sea tomorrow by at least five inches of rain. I did not ask her if the HAARP guys had this on a special TV button to push to get the scheduled weather. I just exclaimed that I better be sure not to forget anything at the grocery store and ran off to pay my insurance.

The plan was to stop for a coffee before but I drove right past it. A few blocks later it registered. Pfeh. A few blocks on it registered that the courts building parking lot had not one single car in it. It kind of freaked me out. I got to the insurance guy's place and the door was bolted closed with LOUD rock and roll blaring from inside. I thought he must've closed for a bank run or something. Started to go look around the corner to see if he was on the street when it struck me.

It's Martin's birthday.

I don't remember ever forgetting until this late in the day. I don't remember the prospect of the date in January even crossing my mind since last year. This is creepy. But it explained why everything in town seemed askew. That was a relief.

Headed north to get some more injun cigarettes and hit the big store up in Brookings where I can get all my healthy food and my regular food and just about anything else I might need all in one spot. For a couple of days I have been getting flashes of Uggs in my head, feeling some urgency about getting some new ones, even though the ones I have are perfectly good, still in great shape... but maybe too great, maybe better to have a pair I can get grubby with overuse... and danged if I did not head straight upstairs to the shoe department, almost as though propelled by the gods... almost not even consciously.

I get up there, there are the Uggs... on sale... on sale at 50% off. Holy shit!

Only, no sooner do I finally find my size and color but I'm starting to feel really, really uncomfortably hot. I think I may start sweating. I'm asking some kids waiting for the elevator down if it's hot in here. Yes, yes, they say, and I am relieved that I am hot and not the only one who is hot. We have a nice, companionable ride down. I am sweating now. By the time I've gotten to the dairy section I'm really sweating. By the time I'm at the frozen berries I'm beginning to worry about barfing before I can get out of the store. I am leaning hard on my cart, sweating profusely, and finally seem to have at least enough to tide me through until the rescue boats can reach me after tomorrow's storm. I'm in SUCH bad shape that the checker is not even pleasant while we're checking out my Uggs and groceries. I'm thinking he's probably worrying he's being slimed with malaria germs. I'm giving him a pass on etiquette because I'm definitely not supposed to be standing up, let alone in front of him. He can tell this is not a great moment.

Getting out of that building made the nausea go away, but getting my stuff in the car was still pretty much in oh-no-oh-no-I-do-NOT-feel-well mode, and I'm strapping in and wondering if I'll make it home in one piece. Had to turn on the air conditioning to blast me in the face. When ice started forming on my cheeks I turned it off. Seems to have knocked out my intense feeling of illness.

How motherfucking odd.

Now I'm bumping back into my house with an anomalous-looking envelope in my hand. It's the bank. They are closing their local branch. I can go to Crescent City or Brookings, but the one here in town is pau by the end of the month. Sheesh. They just closed up the video rental counter a few months ago. Will the post office be next? This made me feel insecure and unhappy, despite my temporary wave of malaria having passed.

I decided to come here and report all this to you, but my computer kept insisting I was not connected to the internet. No amount of trickery would convince it that it was connected. I called my ISP. I had to follow the seriously irksome instructions of one of those obsequious computers. It had no effect and eventually turned me over to a human. Thence followed a long sequence of turnings off and screwings in and flippings on and crankings out, but at length and post calisthenics and telling the tech support woman the color of my first car, voila, my computer acknowledges again the internet.

It's a plot.

It's CI-fucking-A mapping in my IP and planting code in my modem.

So having swung from feeling fabulous and lucky to feeling near death and frightened and back and then seriously vexed and mystified, now to a sort of exhausted quakiness, I think I'm just going to try to do this movie and see if I can get through the day without dialing 911.
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