THE SONIC BOOMER
Where is my comfort food when I need it? Where! There is not a potato chip nor a can of aerosol cheese in the house. Even the ice cream is gone. How am I supposed to get back on an even keel here?
It’s only a matter of time before I lash out, yelling at my husband Mark or kicking some kid’s jack-o-lantern down the block (no, I would never do that — kick a kid’s jack-o-lantern — that is really too much). But things are pretty bad.
Oh, wait. Here’s something I hid a long time ago underneath the kale where no one ever goes — string cheese! Yay!
Wolfing it down.
Feeling better.
I’m mad at myself, mostly. Remember when I told you I’d decided to paint the house? Got the front door and one window done and everything? Well, Mark stopped me because, evidently, there is something called “prep” where you halt what you’re doing and stuff your good mood down into your shoes and, instead, spend your time removing shutters and screens and going to the hardware store to rent a pressure washer. Then, the next day (a day when you no longer feel like painting the house) you have 24 hours to blast old paint and scum off the entire thing (a house-size house!) before letting it dry so that maaaybe you can actually begin painting the next day.
Geez.
But I was motivated to get this done because my shutters were lying on the front lawn and the screens were propped up against the garage and passers-by were starting to ask questions. So, in record time I thought, Mark and I pressure-washed the place, and you know what? It looked good. It looked so good that I decided to pressure-wash my car.
When my next-door neighbor came out and complimented me, casting a hopeful eye at her front walk, I offered to pressure-wash that, too. I was about to start on her driveway when Mark stopped me, hurriedly turning off the machine and wrapping up the hoses. (Will he never let me have any fun?)
And that’s when I saw it — a gigantic gaping hole in my car’s front bumper! What? How did that happen?
Well, it happened when I pulled my car up way too close to the pressure washer and let the big machine’s red hot little muffler melt its way through the plastic bumper, all the way down to the car’s steel frame while I was busy saving money by avoiding the car wash and racking up brownie points by being a good neighbor.
And now it has taken three sticks of string cheese, a glass of iffy chocolate milk and two popsicles that were stuck to the floor of the freezer to calm me down. Was it worth it?
I’ll let you know when the house is painted.
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