I don't even know where to begin...

My life has been stupid lately. To the point where I'm starting to look for the hidden cameras...

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Thursday evening, I left my car window cracked open. Why, I don't remember. It rained all that night, of course, and my car seat was soaked... which I didn't notice until I was already driving to work. Huh-- this feels kind of damp... and squishy...

By the time I got to work, my pants were soaked through, all the way through my undies to the skin. Soaked and wrinkled, naturally, from my sitting in them. But because I work within a university, I have ready access to their bookstore, which sells tons and tons of over-priced school-branded crap. Including lots of sweatpants and even underwear. Lucky for me. So I shell out way too much money for a pair of sweatpants with the name of the university running down the leg, and a pair of panties that say "I heart (name of school)!" in a rather inappropriate place.

Needless to say, I do not love said school, nor am I affiliated with it in any way. (Even if I did love the school, I would prefer to have that written, say, across my chest or perhaps on a breast pocket. I mean, I heart Harry Potter but I'm not going to write that across my crotch, right? Because that is weird.) Nor am I supposed to wear warm-ups to work-- not what you'd call business casual. But I can't work for hours in wet pants in a chilly, air-conditioned basement so I did what I gotta did and changed into the new sweatpants while my stuff dried out in the back. Working in a bank in what to me are pajama bottoms is strange: at once extremely comfortable (warm! fuzzy! soft!) and uncomfortable (good grief I look ridiculous). Fifty dollars gone, just like that...

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Yesterday was one of those rare, golden days in which Don and I are both free. We took a long, meandering drive up in the mountains where it was cool, stopping to walk a few feet along the Appalachian Trail now and then just because it's there. Today I woke up with either a tremendous rash or a parasitic infection-- hard to say which. In 2003, I had a case of poison ivy so bad that I ended up in the ER; this is almost as bad. But I can't tell if it's poison ivy or not. For one thing, it seems most concentrated on my right leg, pretty high up, where my jeans should have protected me. For another, it seems to be spreading. For a third, I have found three tiny tiny little bugs walking on me, that I can't identify. Three insects and a rash seem awfully coincidental, right? I don't know. They aren't fleas (and I checked the dogs). They aren't ticks or bedbugs. I look like I've got chicken pox or something. I thought maybe an allergic reaction to the new pants and knickers from the previous indignity-- usually I wash everything before wearing as I'm pretty sensitive to chemicals and etc. But that would be quite a delayed reaction and wouldn't explain the teensy crawling bugs. We were in the woods for maybe 15 minutes!

So there's that. I saw the rash and went on with my day. Remember how I mentioned a post or two ago that our dryer is broken? Absolutely HAD to do laundry today so I decided to do a combination of line-drying and laundromat. Our down-stairs neighbor has a clothes-line and has said that I could use it whenever. She's been gone all weekend and I don't know where she keeps the clothes-pins, so I just washed all the towels since I could kind of fold them in half over the line. Right? I've never used a clothesline before but felt vaguely virtous about it-- letting the good sun dry my towels instead of nasty carbon-based electricity. Yeah.

Did that, gathered everything else, went to the laundromat. So far everything is good. (Except the rash, which is consistently getting worse as the day goes on.) I drop the clothes in the washer and take my car to the car-wash place so that I can clean out the interior-- the interior that got soaked in the rain when I left my window down. Remember? Clean, vacuum, wash the exterior, go back to the laundromat, dry clothes, watch a cute little family and realize that everyone has a baby except me.

Stop the pity party, fold the clothes, back to the car (it's all shiny and clean! Yay!) headed for the grocery store. Need Benedryl and cortisone for this rash-- not going to the doctor after what happened last time. (They prescribed a steroid to dull my immunological reaction to the rash-- I reacted to the steroid by spontaneously developing a throat infection, ear infection, and urinary tract infection. I had to go on antibiotics for those, of course, and reacted to the antibiotic by breaking out with a yeast infection. That was a fun cycle.)

Buy dinner, buy rash-fixings, buy self-indulgent magazines that I can't afford. (Come on, I'm all itchy. I deserve In Style!) Come out of the grocery to find that it's raining. All over my shiny clean car. All over the wash that is outside on the clothes line back at home.

So I give up. I'm opening some wine, taking the Benedryl, and letting Don cook the salmon. If this is some kind of cosmic joke... you win! You got me! I realize that a little heartbreak doesn't excuse one from the random indignity of life. I know that you can lose a loved one today and slip on a banana peel tomorrow. But come on. Can't a girl catch a break?