Fabulous

Let's review my day, just for fun. No, actually, let's start with yesterday afternoon. Because that was such a joy.

For those of you who aren't local, Houston is a big freaking city. I'm not saying it's fat. I'm saying it's big. It covers some real estate. Some serious territory. My normal commute to and from work each day totals 73 miles, since I live in the equivalent of south Dallas and work in the equivalent of New Mexico. It's a high speed drive, which is a good thing, otherwise, it'd be unbearable. As it is, it's barely tolerable.

Then there are the bonus trips I have to make now and then to pick up equipment, drop off a key, or go meet an instructor. Yesterday was one of those days. I had lifeguard classes starting in 5 different locations throughout the city. And I had to pick up a key in Maine. Okay, it wasn't Maine, but it might as well have been. Because the trip that should have taken about fifty minutes took me two hours... and fifty minutes. That's right. I had my butt planted in the jeep seat for one hundred and seventy minutes. To cover 41 miles. Hell, I tell you. Hell.

Because it was raining so hard there shouldn't be a frog alive in Houston any longer. Not one speck of dust. Not one bit of trash. It all should be in the Gulf of Mexico by now, it rained that hard. And it sucked.

Anyway, the storms ended yesterday evening, right after I made it to my exit on the freeway.

Today started about the same way. Overcast but no rain while I was picking up donuts and kolaches for my lifeguard instructors. Then I headed over to the pool they were going to be at, and it started sprinkling. Then it drizzled a bit, while the students started arriving. Meanwhile I didn't have any instructors yet, but a half dozen phone calls found almost all of them. And more kids showed up.

Meanwhile, 3 other sites are calling in with problems from their lifeguard classes. Students in the wrong spots. Students in the right spots on the wrong days. And oh, yeah, it's raining like hell. And some missing instructors at another location. They got lost.

So I'm still at the first place and the instructors are getting the tv set up. It's a simple process. Only when we plug it in, the damned thing has a picture exactly 1 inch tall by 25 or so inches across. Fine if you're a smurf, but not so good for humans. So it's off to Wal-Mart I go. In the now strengthening rain.

Did you know the rat bastards at Wal-Mart stock about 10 of the 50 or so models they have on display? Sure, they show you an "old fashioned" tube television set that comes in a 26 inch model. But you can't buy it. You can't buy any tube tv at all, unless you want a little 14 incher for your kid's bedroom. I don't have a kid. I needed a tv that 27 students could actually see. So I had to buy a flat screen high definition LCD tv. Do you have any idea how fragile those things actually are? Because I'm about to find out, since we move the tv's to a new location for teaching about every 2 weeks. Five hundred bucks that is sure to be broken in a year. Or less.

So the class is calling me frantic to know where I am with their tv. Uhm, trying to buy it? And the other classes are calling me with problems too. Seriously, I used up the entire battery on my cell phone in an hour and a half.

Oh, and I dropped my wallet in the parking lot, so now there's a grease stain on it. And a matching one on the seat of the jeep where it ended up. My poor baby jeep. I'd pretty much say that everything that could have gone wrong between 8 am and 10 am did. And I was ready to cry.

I came home for a brief break, and some dry shoes.

Then I went back out to the location that was starting after lunch.

When I got there last night, one of the pools was green. Took care of that then, too. And today, the instructors were on point. They were all kinds of ready to teach CPR. And then they started unpacking the equipment the RED CROSS had rented to us. Rented fully prepared. And it wasn't prepared. No manikin faces. No manikin lungs. Crap. Crap. Crap crap crap.

So I was back in the jeep. And driving from Maine to New Mexico and back to Maine. Only now the rain was coming down so hard, so fast, and so much that the weather reports said we received 6 and a half inches in an hour. I was driving in it. People couldn't exit the freeway because there was 3 feet of water waiting for them on the feeder roads. No place to go for them, but luckily my route was clear, if treacherous, the whole way.

And while I was driving, my phone rang again. Turns out that another tv at another location died. And it was another trip to Wal Mart, and another five hundred bucks spent. It's been a damned expensive day.

I burned through a tank of gas in 24 hours and I wasn't on a road trip.

I spent 2 hours on the phone refereeing between lifeguard instructors.

I alternated between soaking wet and mildly damp for the past 24 hours.

And then, right at the end of the day, as I was finally driving home... the effing sun came out, like it had never rained at all.

Life kicked my butt today. Tomorrow looks to be more of the same.

I'm going to take a nap, since it's cheaper than taking up drinking. Ugh.