Cirque du So'Gay

My deepest apologies over the lack of original material as of late. I'm not sure if what I've got counts as an excuse per se, but I'm sticking to my guns. I took this past Friday off from work for a number of reasons: a) my coworker is taking two goddamn weeks off from the week before Christmas to the day after New Years. Now, this is totally within her right, and she has been there longer than I have, and she's generally an awesome person, so whatever. But, it means that I don't have a day off until FOREVER, and I'll still be drinking like it's the holidays. Cowboy up. b) I've been working INSANELY hard recently. We just the week before last received an assload of blood samples from our Brazilian cohort that needed to be processed the day they arrived... this means that I left work at 10:30pm, having worked hard since 8:30am. And I mean like "Phyllis Diller scrubbing the smell of cigars our of her labia" hard. (Make a yogurt commercial out of that, you Yoplait assholes.) We were also recently audited by the administrators of a clinical trial we're carrying out (results so far would indicate that you still don't want to catch the hepatitis). c) I had a number of errands to run that could only be completed during the hours that others were working. This included the post-office. And Bob's Discount Furniture (although they're technically open on weekends. and late at night... I Doubt It!!!). d) I fucking earned it. Whatever, I do what I want!
So I woke up cozy and content on Friday morning to see snow falling outside, which I worried might foil my plans to borrow Annie's car and drive her to work and then breeze on out to Stoughton to pick up a desk from Ikea and a mattress for a real boy at Bob's Discount Furniture. Would the snow stop me? "I doubt it," I chuckled to myself and went about getting back to our apartment to shuttle Annie to her personal waking nightmare. When the T was having trouble getting up the hill in front of Fairbanks street, I knew I was in for some fun. I aborted the idea and let Annie shuttle herself through the wintery mess. I walked to Washington Square to get my hair did by Geno at Salon Bimala (the only straight male I've ever seen cutting hair, and the only male to cut my hair ever... what a disappointment. although he did a good job, and didn't make fun of me.), and then walked to Brighton Center (about 20 minutes in the crazy snow) to pick up a certified letter. I was sort of excited-- certified mail! It was actually just an old letter from my father's company informing me that I was no longer enrolled in their insurance. I had figured this when I got my new insurance. No big deal, but it would have been exciting to get a check for a million dollars. Or $150, ahem. This brings me to the biggest mistake of the month (so far), grabbing a commuter rail out to Framingham in order to walk 4.3 miles round trip and purchase a real-sized bed in under 3 hours. In a fucking blizzard. You owe me this, at least: I have HEART.
Unfortunately I didn't have snow-goggles, boots or goretex. Functionally this meant that I was trudging up the main drag in blinding snow, completely caked in it, and stumbling over rapidly forming snow drifts as cars spun out around me and sidewalk plows made no dent in the 8ish inches of white death. Minutes seemed like hours, and the carnage taking place on the road not four feet away was muffled by the density of snow in the air, coating my face-- the most serene disaster I've ever witnessed. Valiantly I passed the community playhouse, the CVS, the Dunkin Donuts, and I went onward. And onward. Coated in snow, my nose running down to my chin, I finally give up and saunter into the Dunkin Donuts, there to drown my anguish in a medium regular. Of all the places I never thought I'd spend an hour. Quite the cast of characters at this dunkin donuts. I ought to have gathered this from my first pass: In the parking lot an older woman was wiping snow off her windshield and shouting to her companion in the car...
"There was this old fucking man in there just laughing at me. So I says 'What's so funny?' and he says, 'Oh no, ma'am, I'm not laughing at you, but it's a funny thing. Is that person with you in the car a man or a woman?' Fuckin asshole." Leave it to me to find gender trouble in a blizzard in Framingham.
At the DD, there was an elderly man seated in the corner, playing dirge-versions of popular christmas songs. His "little drummer boy" was particularly mournful. It did lend a holiday spirit to the whole thing, coupled with the anemic decorations strung about throughout the seating area. It was almost like a scene from the Alf Christmas special... what Mr. Foley MUST have been doing before he decided to jump off the bridge. Isn't this picture HORRIBLE, btw?There was another old man there too-- I watched as he poured sugar into his small coffee, his chapped hands shaking with concentration and effort of grasp. I watched as he stirred slowly, looking outside at the wintery tableau, thinking to myself "Rosebud." Then I watched as he ever so slowly began to fold up on himself-- his head teetering forward to his chest, his arms lightly resting on the trash receptacle particular Dunkin Donuts, his knees slowly dipping, never rising, but moving just so slightly as the seconds passed. My good deed for the week, I went over to ask if he was alright. "Jesus!" He sort of barked. "I must have fallen asleep. I've been awake for almost 45 hours. I dreamed I was in a Western movie... but now I see that's not the case." "The harmonica, perhaps?" I suggest, and sit back down in my corner, pissed off that I'd be spending another week on my childhood bed, that I'd spent 10 dollars to get nowhere and a cold, that the hobo wasn't playing God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.
To top the whole affair off, I made one of the more embarrassing purchases at the CVS, thinking to myself, what the hell, it's not like they'll see me on the green line and whisper to their friends. Have you ever played that game, the convenience store/drug store game? It's WONDERFUL, depending on who you ask. I don't think Emily liked it very much though. Basically in a group of people you go around composing lists of three items that when bought on their own probably aren't too remarkable, but when bought in tandem give the cashier the willies. My perennial favorite is white bread, tunafish, and desitin. On that particular day it was Astroglide, Prep H, and a mini-pak of Kleenex. Luckily the cashier appeared to be somewhat mentally challenged, so I didn't get judgement from him. Unfortunately, he took forever to bag the above items, and the entire line behind me stood and watched, constructing my story, the tall guy covered in snow with shattered plans written across his weary face, and presumably an urgent hemorrhoid problem.