The Bad Day

You know, looking back, for a day that included a car wreck, illness, and the Booger getting hit by a car, things could've been a whole lot worse.

No, really.

It actually started out somewhat promisingly.  Having finally reached a breaking point with my eczema and sleeplessness, I had managed to wrangle a walk-in appointment with my doctor, schlepping the Baby Chicken and her gear into the city to get checked out.  Normally, the idea of an impromptu trip to the city and the doctor with Baby C in tow would not register on the fun scale, but traffic was minimal and Baby C was happy to explore the examining room while eating Cheerios.  And as we returned to the calm, measured pace of suburban life in the Bay (which, by comparison with our old life in NC, is only a few orders of magnitude higher on the busy and crowded scale), I eagerly stopped by the pharmacy for brand new, sweet, blessed drugs.

But then things started to go south.

In retelling the story, I have insisted that my decision to pull out into traffic from the pharmacy parking at the time that I did was a decision I would make on any other day.  Whether the car I did not see was going too fast or the driver was not paying attention or my reflexes were too slow to see that car coming or I was too sleep-deprived and exhausted to make smart vehicular decisions....it's all irrelevant.  I hit the car.  Smashed it, really.  At very low speeds.  But it was smashed, nonetheless.  My car on the other hand, just kinda shrugged it off.  For a second, I was certain that my car had left a lot of vital components in the street and in the wheel carriage of the other car, because there were bits of metal and plastic all over my hood.  Those apparently belonged to my license plate holder, the only true casualty on my end of the encounter.

Baby Chicken was less concerned with the wreck than with my getting her out of the car seat, squeezing her, and apologizing profusely to busting up our license plate holder.

So, yes, we got in a car wreck.  The "victim" of the incident was perfectly civil, and we sorted out the mess after all the requisite calls to insurance companies.  And compared to any other day, that would've been more than enough to qualify it for "bad day" status.

But an hour after returning home and spending more time on the phone with insurance-type people, a pest control man showed up to eliminate Skittles.  It was disappointing enough that he found Skittles to be only a figment of my imagination, but in his last check around the house for points of entry, he left the back gate open for the Booger to escape into the street.  Corralling an obnoxiously stubborn dog while holding a baby is not particularly easy, I've found.  In this case, it ended with the Booger running across the street, trying to shoulder charge a red Buick's rear tire.

When I saw the Booger limp away from the ill-advised tackle attempt, bleeding from her foot, I reacted as any other person would.  I wanted to kill her.  But instead, I took her to the vet where they found she had a cut and a fractured nail and hopefully a deeper respect for both my authority and the uncompromising mass of moving vehicles.

So, the day's drama was over.  I got the Booger and the Baby Chicken back to the safety of home, where I could watch both of them and the only cars I would have to worry about were the matchbox ones that Baby C liked to play with.

But, of course, that was when the fever and chills and body aches started.

As a parent, you get used to improvising.  You have to be flexible.  Bend, don't break, that sort of thing.  And in this case, almost broken from the days events, I did the only thing I could think of to endure the illness while limiting my exposure to Baby C.  I popped in a Pixar DVD and let her go into a trance while I sat in the corner of the room trying not to fall asleep while waiting for the Wife to get home.  Whatever works, you know?

But, you see, it wasn't really a bad day at all when you think about it.  Nobody, dog, man, child, or stranger, died or was hospitalized.  Really, it was just an amusingly crappy day that I would not care to revisit.