May Is The Cruelest Month

Obviously T.S Eliot and I disagree on that point, but since this is my blog I'm going with it.  This year May has absolutely been the cruelest month and if I could bottle the excitement I have surrounding this long weekend, we would never have to find another alternative energy source again.  It is the gateway to June and let's just say Mama needs a new month!  Although I am not even a mama, by the way, so I don't even know what possessed me to even say that.  My brain is fried like an egg in those 1980s drug commercials.  Please send help! 

It all started at the beginning of the month (and if that's not the most uninformative sentence I've ever written, I'll be damned!)  You see the first week of the month was last minute preparations for Garrett's birthday party,  which means for at least 7 days I was a curious cross between  domestic whirling dervish and a chicken with its head cut off.  It was just as ridiculous as it sounds, I assure you.  But then on May 7th we had the party!  And we survived!  Hell, we even had a good time! Our stress was over, right?

Not so fast.

For starters, my kitchen sink backed up first thing that next morning.  And there is nothing quite like waking up hungover to a house full of food covered dishes in the sink as you watch the water back up.  Obviously this made the 11 AM Sunday Brunch, to which 10 people were going to be in attendance, seem a bit more complicated than it needed to be.  Thank god we have a sink in the laundry room that is deep and I had a good friend staying over who not only wakes up early but also knows how cracks good jokes in a shitty situation or I may have just killed myself right there.  But brunch prevailed -- even if I did burn a few bagels -- and it seemed like there was going to be a light at the end of the tunnel. 

On Monday May 9th we called out a plumber and he talked us into spending $300 to hydroflush our pipes in order to remove the clog.  Upside:  Having it fixed.  Downside:  Spending $300 the day after you throw a food + booze filled party for 50 people.  But whatever.  Life would go on.  Well until the following morning when we woke up and tried to shower and that was now backing up.  It hadn't been clogged AT ALL the day before, but suddenly it is plugged tighter than Rick James' Jheri curl.  Coincidence?  Yeah, we didn't think so either.  Especially since the plumber had warned us that hydroflushing sometimes moves grease and debris to other areas of the house, but never enough to cause damage. 

So we called the plumbing company again and they were just shocked!  And boy did they try to convince us that it MUST BE a coincidence.  But they would be glad to help us out...for $175 more.  And then when Garrett asked to speak to the person in charge we were told he was "far too busy" to talk to us.  Ahem, noted.  From now on I am far too busy to recommend Bonney Plumbing.  What actually was a coincidence though -- an awfully timed coincidence, in fact -- was that some seal on our guest bathroom toiled busted that day too and started leaking.  We were a hot plumbing mess and at this point, I pretty much tried to convince Garrett to move to a plumbing-free yurt in the woods, where we could braid each other's hair, marinate in our natural musk, and eschew all of society.  After he puked in his mouth a little, Garrett talked me out of it and the short story of the plumbing problems is that they are now all fixed:  NO THANKS TO THE STUPID PLUMBING COMPANY.  But I trust no one even wants to hear the long drawn out verrsion of that story, because I am still telling this story and so far we are only May 10th.  Are you exhausted? Because I'm exhausted just remembering it. 

Speaking of exhausted, when I woke up the following morning I felt like I had been hit by a truck and proceeded to need to call in sick to work for the next 3 days because I was fully convinced I was either dying or that a Brazillian Rainforest had settled in and made its home in my sinus cavity.  Something useful to know about me at this point?  I don't EVER call in sick.  I'm just not a person who does that unless I physically can't make it in.  And I couldn't.  For those 3 days, plus the entire weekend following I was a giant pit of deathly sickness who could not move about the house without duct taping a box of kleenex to my face.  It was very pretty.   

So since I was teetering on the brink of death, you can assume that our house was just full of life and beauty and energy and rainbows for that entire week.  But then one day it was May 16th!  We were halfway through the month and I was beginning to feel normal.  So normal, actually, that it was almost blissful.  There was breathing!  THROUGH MY NOSE!  I mean it was a miracle, happening right there on my face.  Is there a more grateful feeling than that of being returned to health after a yucky illness?  I argue there is not.  And I was so damn happy that Monday to go back to work.  Our house had returned to its stasis of awesome, and we could finally get back to the regular routines of our lives.  But on Tuesday when I woke up, Garrett was perched on the precipice of death threatening to jump unless I got him some duct tape so he could go to the damn bathroom without flooding our house with snot.  He was very pretty too.
That ass-shaped dent that I had left in the couch was apparently just a primer for the ass-shaped dent that Garrett ended up leaving the following week.  And we are completely out of duct tape.

Just when you'd think all was lost though, finally last Saturday we were both able to go to the same BBQ at the same time!  Garrett was just starting to recover and it was lovely to have a nice night out.  Our gym had an Anniversary Party so we showed up and put our party shoes on and it was a blast!  Also, it was the night I decided to try Sweet Tea Vodka and Lemonade for the first time, which was uh...an experience.  The jury is still out on whether it was a pleasant experience.  I mean, it was definitely pleasant while I was drinking it.  But the morning after?  Um, not so much.  A Paleo diet has improved my body in every single possible way, except in its response to a wild night of drinking. 

Hangover city, baby.  The entire next day was a wash.  And then it was May 23. 

I was staring down the barrel of a long week, ready for this month to just be over already, when my back started to mysteriously hurt.  Not my lower back, mind you, but the middle of my back on the upper right side.  It felt like a crappy pinched nerve in the neck, except right smack in the middle of my back.  Luckily my uncle is a retired chiropractor, so I had him adjust me and things were ok for a day or so.  Then, on Tuesday it popped right back out of place, only this time it was SO. MUCH. WORSE.  It wasn't just a twinge of discomfort, but major pain (no Wayans Brothers in sight) that could not be relieved.  It hurt to stand, it hurt to sit, it hurt to lay and most inconveniently -- it hurt to breathe air.  No big whoop, you know, if you are an sea creature, but the last time I checked I WAS NOT.    

It was back to see my uncle again who asked what the heck I had been doing to throw my back out in such a grandiose manner?  My back was crunch-tastic!  Obviously there had been some major trauma in between my first adjustment and my second.  So you can imagine my embarrassment when I had to tell him this second injury was brought on by this new eXXtreme sport I'm doing called:  getting dressed.   Yeah, it happened when I was putting on a pair of pants.  It was so quick and awful that I walked by a rack of jeans this morning and had PTSD flashbacks just thinking about.  I'm lobbying to go into work pantsless from now on, but so far nobody is in my corner.  

Three days, and many Advil later, I would say I'm feeling 90%.  But that 90% is about to go into a 4 day weekend where I plan to do nothing more than read a stack of trashy magazines, take bubble baths, go to brunch, babysit my adorable baby cousin, pour through library books, and watch as many episodes of DVR'd Bravo TV as my little brain can handle...and it can handle A LOT.  I'm so thrilled that when I come up for air it will be a new month, a new season and I'll have a host of new things to focus on. 

So Goodbye May, and good riddance!  

Don't let the door hit you on the ass...
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