Not The Most Successful Morning.

You know, sometimes you think you’ve experienced an emotion, only to find that you’ve never really experienced it at all. You have an experience that calls up that emotion so strongly, that it’s completely different from anything you’ve ever known.

Today I had that experience. The Emotion?

Aggravation.

Ok, that might not be an emotion, per se, but close enough. Let me explain what happened.

I’ve had a headache for about three days. One of those headaches that will spend a few hours lurking quietly at the back of your head, before springing forward and trying to burst out your forehead every couple of hours.

So to begin with, I’m not in the best mood.

Now, I live a nocturnal lifestyle, so about 8am is my bedtime. Today, Sunny was taking her son, Frank, for a job interview at 9:30, so she arrived home from work, changed her clothes and headed straight back out of the door. I didn’t go with her, because at this point, it felt like my head was getting ready to explode.

So I waited for Sunny to get in from work, cooked her some breakfast, and got into bed at about 10am. The bedroom was about 30 degrees, so I turned on the electric blanket, threw an extra comforter on top, and burrowed under the covers.

Fantastic, I was warm, comfortable and my head began to slowly ease up. I was just dropping off to sleep when:

RIIIIIIIIING….RIIIIIIIING….RIIIIIING

The phone starts ringing, my headache wakes up before I do, and the shock of it makes me sit bolt upright in bed.

I drag myself up, put on my robe, and head to the living room. I pick up the phone.

“Hello, Can I speak to Mr or Mrs Malone please?”

“Speaking.”

“This is MCI, you recently cancelled your phone service with us, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to sign back up if we offered you…”

“No, we cancelled because you screwed us over. We wanted long distance service only. You cancelled our entire service, which cost us more than we where paying, completely fucked up my dial-up internet service. Our two weeks with you cost us over $200. Not interested.”

“Oh, that was a misunderstanding sir. We can offer…”

“Why don’t you offer to hang up? Not interested. Piss off.”

(Click)

I head back to the bedroom, taking the phone with me in case it rings again. (I should point out here that our answering machine isn’t working. Sunny accidentally unplugged it to plug in the Christmas tree, and an down the backup battery…a ‘backup’ that the machine refuses to work without).

20 minutes later, I’m nodding off again. The phone rings.

“Hello?”

“Am I speaking to Mr. Malone?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m pleased to tell you that you’ve been pre-approved for a Mastercard! You’ve also won a holiday for two at…”

“No I haven’t.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“In case you can’t tell from the accent, I’m an immigrant, and still going through the process for my greencard. I can’t get so much a library card without it. Oh, and I’m not interested in your holiday, which will turn out to be a two day, high-pressure time-share sales seminar.”

“Oh, errr.”

(Click).

I put the phone back down. I mamange to go twenty minutes without a phonecall. I actually get to sleep. I’m just starting to dream when the phone rings, again. It takes me a minute to work out whether I’m dreaming it, or if the phone is actually ringing:

“Hello?”

“Uhhh, yeah. Lemme speak to Tony.”

“There’s no Tony here, you’ve got the wrong number.”

“Click”

No apology, no nothing. I start to drift again...

RIIIIIIING!

“HELLO?!?!?”

“Yeah, put Tony on the phone.”

“What the Fu…?!? Wrong fucking number. There’s no Tony here!”

(Click.)

Nodding off again, when five minutes later, the phone rings again.

“Uhhh, yeah, I need to speak to Tony.”

“Are you FUCKING RETARDED!?!? Okay, once, I can understand. Twice, you thought you’d mis-dialed the first time. But three…fucking…times? Do you even know how to use a fucking phone? FUCK OFF!!!!”

(SLAM!)

By this point, I’m pretty aggravated, as you can probably tell. I’ve been in bed for nearly 2 hours, and got the grand total of a minutes sleep. I get up, put on my robe, find some Migraine tablets, get something to drink and smoke a cigarette.

I get back into bed. About half an hour later, I’m on the very cusp of sleep.

RIIIIIIING!

“WHAT!?!?”

“Uh, Hey Paul, it’s Clay.”

“Oh, sorry, hey Clay, what do you need?”

“I was just wondering if Frank went for that job interview this morning.”

“Yeah, your Mom’s took him up there.”

“Ok, ask him to give me a call when he gets in. Where you sleeping?”

“I was trying.”

“Oh, sorry about that, see you. Bye.”

“See you later.”

(Click)

Clay is my other step-son, and the one who set up the job interview for Frank this morning. Usually, he doesn’t call when we’re usually asleep, but I guess today he assumed I’d have gone with them and we’d all be up.

It’s now nearly 2 in the afternoon. I’m falling asleep when Sunny comes home, walks into the bedroom, tells me that they’re back, and that she’s brought some food home.

I’m a little hungry, and definitely not sleeping, so I get up to eat it and ask how the interview went. So I stand in the living room, eating a Jack in the Box burger (Which was really, really good…one of the few nice things to happen to me today). My head feels like a 4 pound box filled with 5 pounds of angry bees. Sunny says something to me about tires. I just say “Uh-huh.”

I finish my burger, grab a drink and get back into bed. I’m nodding off again when I hear Sunny’s voice:

“What?! Are you back in bed!?!?” She sounds pissed.

“Of course I’m back in bed! My head feels like it’s about to explode, I’m fucking exhausted, my aggravation level is, on a scale of 1 to 10, about eight hundred and sixty four. Why wouldn’t I be in bed!?!?”

Well, to be honest, I thought that, but what I actually said was “Uh-huh.”

I hear her stalk off, grumbling a little.

“What?” I shout after her.

“I just asked you if you would come with my to get my car tire plugged! You said yes.”

The phrase that went through my head rhymed with ‘Brother-clucking Bun-of-a-sitch, rastarding bell!’

I literally drag myself to the end of the bed, I sit up, and grab the clothes that have been on the floor of a 30 degree bedroom for over four hours. I pull them on. It feels as thought they’ve been skillfully woven together by liquid nitrogen. I mean so cold, that I start dry-heaving (and it was only through the grace of God that those dry heaves didn’t turn into a full on pukeathon.)

I slump into the living room. Neither Sunny nor Frank are in there. I check the Kitchen. Not in there either.

I open the front door, just in time to see the back of Sunny’s car vanish around the corner. She didn’t know I was getting up.

If my head didn’t hurt so much at this point, I would have screamed. I go back to the living room and hug the heater for a few minutes while I smoke a cigarette.

I get back into bed. I get comfortable. I start to drift. The phone rings. The phone is also back in the living room.

I get up, stamp into the living room, and just as my fingertips brush the phone, it rings off.

Now I should point out that Sunny’s Mom has diabetes and isn’t too well. We can’t ignore the phone in case it’s an emergency, and since the MCI debacle, we no longer have caller ID (Our phone announces who’s calling verbally), and with the answering machine out of commission, we can’t screen calls.

I head back to bed. The second I get in, the phone rings again.

“Right! This had better be good!”

“Yeah, uh, let me speak to Tony.”

“(Content removed to save from offending pretty much everyone)”

I seriously consider unplugging the phone. Or failing that, taking it outside, and putting about 50 .22 rounds into it. Instead, I manage to control myself.

20 minutes later, Sunny comes home and gets into bed…and starts snoring.

I wake her up. (She has the amazing ability to be asleep within seconds of getting into bed.)

“You’re snoring.”

“No I’m not, I wasn’t even asleep.”

(Yeah, I just imagined that amazingly snore-like machine gun fire.)

“Whatever. Just turn over or something.”

15 minutes later…more snoring. I give up and just bury my head under the pillow.

Statistics:

Time in bed: 10am to 9:30pm = 11.5 hours.

Actual sleep obtained : 3 hours 15 minutes, spread over 11 hours in 5 – 10 minute stretches.

Mood : Extremely pissed off.