Burned. By Life, The Sun and a Flip Flop ~ 2017 Reprise

There are those of you who tease me in a semi-snarky way about never making a misstep. Of projecting the illusion of a perfect life.

This post is for you.

Sunday started out like a cream puff of perfection if a day can be such a thing. (Don’t get mad. Keep reading, it’s gonna go south fast.)

After the brutal heat of the past week, this morning dawned clear and cool. The sky was so blue it hurt my eyes.

My coffee was perfectly creamed, my bed head only mildly Einsteinian, and even though we’d splurged on some fried food the night before, the little white shorts I’d found in the back corner of a bottom drawer fit like a glove. Okay, so maybe as tight as the OJ glove—but fuck it—I didn’t have to wear my Spanx (I have a ‘no weekends’ rule with them) and even then the Velcro stayed closed—so I’m calling it a win.

After spending an hour watching Sunday morning politics, I put my head in the oven to stop the madness but nothing happened so I had another idea—food numbing. I texted my friend the “Hike Nazi” about meeting me for breakfast after she was finished hiking (any cardio in temps over 68 degrees is unacceptable to me)—and she agreed.

On my way up the hill, I could see that the temp had already climbed up into the eighties so I made a pact with myself. After breakfast, I would complete all tasks that required being outside before noon. First, I had to water the plants in the back and then run to the market. Once that was finished, I would spend the rest of my alone time (Raphael and the whiny little brown dog had left early for a car show) watching movies in our den which for some unexplainable reason gets as cold as a meat locker when we run the AC.

Say what you will, at least I know myself and the fact that this older 2.0 version of me has a very low heat tolerance, ask anyone. I am a delicate flower and I no longer have the stamina for triple-digit heat.

Up at the top of Beverly Glen is a little deli my friend frequents so we met there and that is when she introduced me to Mrs. Harris.
I’m in love with Mrs. Harris.
I want to lick her all over.
Before you barf up your bagel let me explain. Mrs. Harris is a scrambled egg and cheese sandwich on rye bread (because any bread other than rye would be a crime against humanity) that completely erased any memory I had of Trump, Mitch McConnell or that miserable snake woman, Kelly Anne Conway.

Life was good.

(Insert sound effect of a needle scratching across a record, the air being let out of a balloon, or a giant dog fart.)

I went to pay for my Mrs. Harris when I noticed that my debit card was missing from my wallet. No big deal, I thought, it’s probably at home or in the car or…anywhere other than my wallet. Nevertheless, I had like seven cents on me and when I pulled out the pockets of my tiny white shorts to check for change there wasn’t any because pockets that small are strictly for decoration and are never meant to hold money, keys, or a phone. In other words, my friend paid for breakfast.

On my way down the hill, I forgot about it completely because Prince was on the radio. Right? I mean, come on, Prince!

Anyway, when I got home I immediately went online to check and make sure that some culprit hadn’t absconded with the gigantic balance in my checking account. You see, my much too enormous to talk about health insurance payment gets automatically taken out this week. I’m never sure exactly what day that happens, so I could picture the money being spent on somebody else’s idea of fun, like buying taxidermy or taking a road trip to see the world’s largest sticker ball in Longmont, Colorado, and Blue Shield having no other recourse but to order the hospital to put my uterus back in!

I could picture the crooks furiously hacking their way into my account only to experience emotional schiophenia—hysterical laughter followed by unexpected feelings of pity—and then rage—at the colossal waste of their time. Minutes later I see my card being thrown out the window of their fast-moving car and getting lost in the dry brush on Mulholland.

Anyway, after I was assured that my vast fortune was intact, that my uterus would remain just a memory, and that there had been no activity since Thursday, I felt bad about my boring life and the sad fact that I hadn’t been anywhere or done anything that cost money in three days— then I breathed an enormous sigh of relief and started wracking my brain while I watered my plants.

Where in the fucking fuck was my debit card? 
I don’t normally lose things. I misplace them, that’s different. It’s one of the quirks that makes me delightful.

You know that sinking feeling that grips you in the guts when you can’t find your wallet or your credit card goes missing? I had that. The dreaded where-in-the-hell-is-my-stuff gut grab.

I mentally retraced my steps (there weren’t many so it didn’t take long), called a couple of places, struck out, and finally decided I’d cancel the card and then just let it go. But alas, I couldn’t let it go. In the supermarket, I appeared to anyone watching to have a nasty case of Tourette’s. I’d walk halfway down an aisle, stop, think of a potential debit card scenario, yell “Shit!” or “Fuck it!” when I’d realize that it wasn’t a viable solution—and then keep walking.

In other words, I was mildly obsessed.

I bagged my milk and frozen stuff together at the self-check-out, stuffing everything in a ‘cooler’ bag, and made my way back out into the one-hundred-degree heat. By the time I got to the car, I was a mumbling, twitchy, sweaty mess. Since I only brought my car keys (which this high-tech vehicle only has to smell to open and start) and my wallet with me, I threw them in the bag with the groceries and then watched in horror as the back hatch of the station wagon clicked shut…and locked.

With the keys inside.

Not surprisingly this had happened to me once before and the experience was burned into my memory. In a frenzy I had called Raphael, my savior, my rock, and my McGuyver whose reassuring response went something like this: “How can that happen?” and “What am I supposed to do from here?”

For some reason, the doors won’t lock if the keys are in the front of the car but I have it on good authority (The Google) that the car can’t sense them when they’re inside of a bag—all the way in the back.

So, that’s when I went full batshit crazy. I ran around the car, desperately trying every door. while cursing a blue streak. Nooooooo!!!! I screamed. Dogs barked, car alarms went off, and birds fell out of the sky—but my car remained locked. It was so hot I could feel the skin sizzle on my shoulders. That’s when I realized I didn’t even have my phone with me to call Raphael so he could say the same damn things and offer the same useless solutions. Finally admitting defeat, I threw my hands up in the air as an act of surrender. That exposed my Casper white belly and caused my boob sweat to trickle in streams through my tiny white shorts, down my legs, and pool at my feet.

I knew what must be done.

That’s when I started the one-mile hike home. In my stupidly small, white, shorts and flimsy black flip-flops. Wondering why it felt like August in the Sahara Desert, and why in god’s name I was dressed like a seventeen-year-old Daisy Duke impersonator who was judging the best butter sculpture at a 4H State Fair. 

Looking at the big picture, the whole thing was kinda funny. I mean, I was so wrapped up in the debit debacle, that it distracted me enough to make me do something I swore I’d never do again!

The lock and walk. 

Then the unthinkable happened. I hadn’t even made it fifty feet when I experienced the mother of all fails. The fucking flip-flop fail.

My flip-flop chose that exact moment to fall apart causing my bare right foot to hit the superheated black top, scalding it in an instant. Imagine being barefoot on hot sand or walking across hot coals. Yeah, like that.

“Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck!” I yelled, hopping backward on one foot in the middle of the parking lot while awkwardly bending over like some ridiculous French fried Flamingo to pick the thing up, fix it, and nonchalantly walk away. “There’s nothing to see here!” I yelled. But I had to admit…there was.

Soldier on. Keep walking, I told myself.  Three steps later it flew off again! Foot burned. Fucks flying.

Always a quick study, I hopped over to a postage stamp sized bit of shade to assess the situation and that’s when I started to laugh because:

A: I was shit out of options. I knew I’d have to hop on one foot the entire mile home or just burn the shit out of my foot and deal with it.

B: Once momentum gets going in a downward spiral you’d better figure out a way to change its course—or else. (Or else your clothes start on fire and your shoes explode.)

C: I’m sure I looked beyond ridiculous! A sweat-drenched fifty-nine-year-old woman in tiny white shorts, one flip-flop, and a scarlet red right foot hopping down a busy street. I mean, I can’t even!

Holding the irreparably broken flip-flop in hand, I hobbled home praying the entire way for Raphael to be there so I could beat him with it, he could hug me, kiss my blistered foot, and give me a ride back to my melty groceries. He wasn’t, and I couldn’t walk on my right foot it was so burned, so I grabbed better shoes (ouch), and the spare key, jumped into his big van, and drove myself back to the scene of the crime.

I figured we could pick up my car later.

I was gone all of five minutes, but when I got home he was there—wondering how one person was driving two cars. He just figured the van had been stolen. As I told him the story of my adventure in hell, he shook his head (because he knows I’m crazier than Lucy Ricardo) and gave my poor fried foot a ton of sympathy.

But wait!… Did you ever think you’d read a story where the antagonist was a flip-flop? (I never thought I’d write one!) Don’t you want to be me? Don’t you wish you had my glamorous life? And is anybody out there still worried about the debit card?…ha! exactly!

#flipflopfail
#Sundayfootfry
#animperfectlife

Carry on,
xox