The Day of Reckoning

• 24-hours of nothing but granola bars to eat.



• Consequently, nightmares of 100-foot high stacks of pizza tumbling down all around me into inedible ruin.



• Also a dream that I kissed Tom Waits but was sorely disappointed (and a little grossed out) because he had the most disgustingly dry, cracked, flaky lips ever.



• Oil light coming on RIGHT as I leave for my two+ hour drive. Mild hysteria, reassured by my mechanic.



• Oil light does not come back on 'til I am 2+ hours from home. Goes off every 10 minutes or so the whole rest of the trip, complete with blinking light and ear-piercing alarm noise.



• Pop explodes all over my crotch within the first 10 minutes of driving. Spend the next 2+ hours with squishy underpants, certain that there will be tiny bottles of Dr. Pepper blossoming within the damp and yeasty recesses of my vagina.


• Vegan pizza place not open.



• Forget pajamas.



• Apparently Dr. Pepper smells like piss when it soaks into your shorts. Spend 10 minutes trying to scrub piss-smell out of shorts with body-wash in hotel sink since they are the only pants I brought. Drape crotch of shorts over hotel fan to dry.



• Hotel bathroom smells inexplicably like urine and has a floor that sticks to my feet as though coated in urine. Shower also creaks everytime I move and I am convinced I will fall through into the depths of the earth while butt-nekkid.



• Break my no-texting ban just to hear reassuring words from a couple folks and keep myself from crying.



• Wake up every 1/2 an hour all night.



• Fully aware of my luck with cars, I leave the hotel an hour early (for a ten-minute drive) in order to factor in possible break-down time. (So sad that I live my life in constant preparation for being stranded in the middle of some freeway.) Rip the cab-page of the phone book out and fold it up into my wallet, just in case.



• Realize I only have $.90 left on my cellphone. Spend 20 minutes trying to figure out how to put more money on it in case I break down and need it.



• Exit is closed and we received no warning. Spend 15 extra minutes driving around through shady neighborhoods, trying to find where I'm supposed to be, oil light going off all the while.



• Strange bout of agorophobia--the place is so very large, and there are so many people, that I have to stare at my table so as not to hyperventilate.



• Blood sugar crashes from eating nothing but granola bars. Spend fricking $2 on the world's tiniest bottle of apple juice.



• Ridiculous amounts of cigarettes.



• Gluconeogenesis or glycolisis? Gluconeogenesis or glycolisis?



• Ankylosis or arthritis? Ankylosis or arthritis?
  
  
• Is it really POSSIBLE that the nose is not technically INVOLVED in respiration? Strangely, I think this may be the case.



• Oil light and piercing alarm noise go off every 10 minutes the whole way home.



• Hysterical exhaustion.

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