Garlic and Bile

Friday 8:19 p.m. Post previous blog entry. More radio silence in comments. Wonder if all blog readers suddenly dead like male mammals in supercool comic book talked into reading by Ex-Boyfriend. Pesky headache. Loll around. Feed pets dinner. Finish off the last of the cat food, only one bowl of kibble for both. Eh. I'll go out in a little while and buy a bag. Too lazy to make self dinner.

9 p.m. Headachey, cranky, decide not to pack for overnight trip to Lancaster to meet with florist. Forget loading car. Loll. Lolling. Work on wedding client stuff on laptop while lolling.

10 p.m. UUUUHHHH, sick. Sick, I say! And hungry. I should go buy cat food. Joel can pick up cat food on his way home from Mets game. Mucus in sinuses becoming boiling cauldron of pain and pressure. And goo. Watch Lost episode on iTunes. Smokey the Black Smoke Monster's greatest hour.

10:50 p.m. Cats whiney. Well, Fred is whiny. Ollie doesn't have a proper meow. He mostly squeaks like a mouse being stepped on by a lumberjack. He is making big sad hungry kitty eyes at me, a move I call "Ollivander Twist." No sir. You can not has more. Not right now.

10:52 Check Closet of Enchantment and Mystery for extra cat food. I went through a phase of buying food when we already had food, which made me think we'd always have some laying around. We do not. Headache. Headache. HEAD. ACHE.

10:53 p.m. Need painkiller. Need sandwich to make pleasant cushion in stomach for pill. Eat half of sandwich when....

10:55 p.m. Phone rings. Joel's car is dead. Dead dead dead. Snapped s-belt or other such thing that manly men know about manly things like cars. He is trapped in Queens. I need to come get him and drop him off at subway first thing in the morning on my way to Lancaster for wedding planning weekend.

Friday, 11 p.m. Grunt. Search for shoes. No shoes. Headache. Where is pill? Goddamn dog ate my goddamn sandwich while I was on phone with fiancee with goddamn broken car.

Friday, 11:05 p.m. Drive through increasingly shady neighborhood toward Stop and Shop for cat food, pill, sandwich. See youth giving friend piggy back ride out of alley while friends watch. Um, strike that: See kid getting jumped while gang stands by with yelping malnourished pitbull. Keep driving.

11: 09 p.m. Purchase cat food, disgusting fake chicken Lunchables, watermelon chunks and Tylenol.

11: 25 p.m. Drive while trying to open hermetically sealed Tylenol bottle. Spill Tylenol all over car. Find single Tylenol in my own jean-clad crotch while in driving. Scarf it down, wolf down fake chicken Lunchables.

11:26 p.m.-11:57 p.m. Witness ten acts of heinously dangerous New York driving. Headache.

11:58 p.m. Locate fiancee in Long Island City in rain. Move j.v. baseball team's worth of bats, balls, bases , and portable defibrillator out of dead car, into my car. Snap at each other and sit side by side while mutually loathing our idiosyncratic lives.

Saturday 12:07 a.m. Witness four acts of heinously dangerous New York driving.

12:19 p.m. Slow rainy traffic hell. Churning stomach. Headache. Joel and I try to sing the "Yay, Pepto-Bismol!" commercial, but can't we remember what symptom comes between "indigestion" and "diarrhea" in the "nausea heartburn indigestion upset stomach diarrhea" song. We snap at each other about it. It's a very mature and productive exchange.

1:11 a.m. Almost home, sweet home. Joel asked if I walked the dog before I drove out to Queens to pick him up. No I did not walk the dog because it is your turn to walk the dog and I was feeling sick, so sick I was going to make you pick up cat food and no I can't carry the enormous bag of baseball bats because I! Am Carrying! THE CAT FOOD, JOEL. It's heavy, and I'm in real danger of crapping my pants here.

1:12 a.m. Joel laughs uncontrollably and it's contagious and I remember why this is the man I want to share my life with 'til I'm 90.

1:13 a.m. Fall laughingly into apartment with big plans for bed, early wakeup call, packing and subway dropoff en route to parents' house with dog for fun wedding planning la la la-laARGGAH

1:13 a.m. DOOM! I left the Closet of Enchantment and Mystery open when I was looking for the invisible bag of cat food and got distracted by Joel's emergency phone call and Bella tore open the big bag of organic, earth-friendly wheat kitty litter and ate a lot of it while I was gone picking up Joel. I have no idea why she think that stuff is like Cream of Wheat, but she does, and when I see this, I know the next 24 hours is going to mean a lot of diarrhea and not for me. (Yay, Pepto-Bismol!) One of our cats- and I won't name names but it rhymes with OLLIE YOU PUNKASS CAT I AM GOING TO KILL YOU AND WEAR YOU AS A HAT- couldn't resist all that fresh litter and PISSED and SHAT in Mount-Spill-in-the-Closet.

1:20 a.m. Joel and I bitch and moan and scoop out the animal waste and find a fresh bag to hold the giant mountain of clean litter. I am literally up to my ankles in the stuff. Joel takes out Bella, and I start sucking up the mess with the Wicked Hella Expensive Dyson Animal Vaccum Cleaner.

Dyson Animal Vacuum: *kerplatck*
Me: Kerplack? No kerplatck. Whoosh, not kerplatck! ENOUGH WITH THE KERPLATCK!

Time of Death: 1:26 a.m. Wicked Hella Expensive Dyson Animal Vaccum Cleaner officially dies. Turns out there was a popsicle stick in one of its main arteries. No one could have known. *sob* It was so young!

1:27 a.m. Beat vacuum into submission and it roars back to life. I look at the clock, smile grimly and know deep in my heart of hearts that the downstairs neighbors are plotting Joel's and my slow and painful demise.

1:41 a.m. Get ice water for bed and notice that an entire bag of garlic croutons- which I pulled out of the pantry while making sandwich at 10:53 p.m.- has been eaten by someone with teeth that tear stuff. I can't decide if I should just take the dog to the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo and leave her there or just stick her outside with a "Free To Bad Home" sign.

1:42 a.m. Turn to Joel to say goodnight, remark that tomorrow will be another day, embrace him gently, smile sweetly while looking deeply into his eyes and tell him that his fly is down and with his black greasy hands (from pulling the shredded s-belt away from his car engine) that he kind of looks like a homeless person. He is not amused.

7:43 a.m. Wake up, and run around apartment packing for overnight stay. Grab clean shirt, pjs, underwear, but figure I'll just wear the same jeans on the way back on Sunday. Wedding planning bag o' stuff, Purse. Camera. Laptop. Chargers. Sparklers, swatches for florist, where is diagram of tent? I hate morning. Joel walks Bella.

7:45 a.m. Hear Joel gagging in hallway. Nothing good ever, ever happens when I hear Joel gagging in the hallway. Open door, get out of way. Dog has puked croutons and semi-digested wheat kitty litter on stairs. Hallway smells of bile and garlic. Certain now that the neighbors may try to kill us in our sleep.

7:46 a.m. I clean the mess because Joel is dry-heaving.

8:05 a.m. Miracle of miracles, we're ready to leave to take Joel to the subway so he can go back to his dead car to have it towed to Pep Boys. There is a kerfluffle over keys, a sick dog hauled to the car, a forgotten cell phone upstairs, and my urgent need for a clean shirt now that I dribbled mouthwash all over the one I'm wearing.

8:17 a.m. Joel dropped at subway in Bronx. Turn on GPS to find nearby entrance to 1-95. GPS unit dead. Can't find charger. Head in direction of very tall McDonald's sign that I know can be seen from 1-95. Mmmm, hash browns.

8:21 a.m. Self-medicating with fast food breakfast. They even threw in ketchup for my hash brown, bless them. Hash brown? Where *is* my hash brown? I don't see a hash brown. You know why? They forgot to GIVE me my hash brown. Sullenly eat Egg McMuffin while glowering.

8:38 a.m. Turn on AM radio for traffic report.

Radio: "1010 WINS bringing you bridges and tunnels five times an hour on the 8s. Inbound and outbound all around the city looks pretty clear at the moment, with the GWB being our only exception this beautiful morning. Lower levels on the bridge closed for construction which means you! Hey, you! Yeah, you, in the red Suzuki with the sick dog! You're going to spend your childbearing years trying to get to the New Jersey Turnpike. Ha ha, sucker!"

Me: I hate you.

9:17 a.m. Traffic moving, panting dog. See Vince Lombardi rest stop approaching. I should let Bella out because she hasn't shot semi-digested wheat out of her ass at high speeds in over half an hour and I'm sure she needs to, but I'm only just moving steadily with the flow of traffic and YURK-

9:18 a.m. There is dog vomit everywhere- the gear shift, emergency break, my jeans- MY GOD MY ONLY PANTS that only a mere hour ago seemed enough to get me through 24 hours in Lancaster are caked in dog vomit. The car stinks of garlic and bile.

9:32 a.m. Vince Lombardi rest stop. I try to salvage car with items bought at rest stop- baby wipes, windex, napkins, evergreen-shaped air fresheners (You know what flavor those things NEVER come in? Garlic and bile. No one wants their car to smell like garlic and bile!) while dog has rampant, quivering diarrhea on grass outside car. Awesome!

9:35 a.m. Call mom, ask her to please go to mall and buy me clean pants to war to the florist. She does, because she loves me. (Thanks, Mom!)

4:20 p.m. Return from florist to find that my dad has detailed my car, because he loves me. Car now smells of Industrial Lemon with undernotes of garlic and bile. (Thanks, Dad!)