Lion and Magic Boy

Don’t mind me, I’ve been hitting the Benadryl tonight. And I’m such a lightweight, too. So I have no idea how this stuff might react in my system, but I am guessing from my delayed reactions and the weird way things look all of a sudden and the fact that it took me three tries to click on the right button that reads “write a post” that I could be in for a veeeeeery interesting night.

I have no update on the worm situation. None. I am still shuddering from, frankly, TMI. You people are far less squeamish than I am, I’m afraid. So I have decided that what I don’t know won’t hurt me. But she did mention casually today that she had been seeing the worms (INTHEPOOP!) for weeks now.

Ba-dum-bum.

Oh. The Benadryl. I bet you’re wondering about that? Or is it for purely recreational purposes, you may be asking yourself. Well, no. The hope was to alleviate some of the itchy lungs which have escalated somewhat into REALLYITCHYLUNGS. And coughing and stuff. Because that ragweed, it has friends, and they are all out playing. And they hate me.

This probably woouldn’t have been an issue had I remembered to get my car inspected last month before the registration expired (oops). Because then the ragweed isn’t out and I would have stayed indoors today and held my breath instead of riding my bike to go pick up the car that hadn’t even been fixed.

Well, they did put four new tires on it. These were tires that were looking pretty bad a year ago when I bought the car (which, for the record, STILL smells like that), so the fact that I successfully drove on them for a whole year despite needing to be replaced makes me look like quite an excellent driver, really, and thrifty too! kind of stupid.

Oh, and they changed the oil, too! Since I haven’t done that since I’ve had the car. (KIDDING! Well, not really. But I have checked the oil. Twice!)

But the clunking noise it’s been making since the day I drove to the airport in July and wondered what that sound was and was it going to prevent me from getting to the airport in time for my flight or was the entire front axle or maybe just a wheel going to fall off while I was driving 75 down the highway hasn’t gone away. It turns out I needn’t have worried so much about making the plane but now I need a new sway bar link to pass inspection. Because it’s completely broken! Not only that but there is “play” in my right front inner tie rod. I’ll bet there is.

(I don’t know what those things are exactly, but I know they have something to do with keeping the wheels attached to the car, so I wasn’t far off actually)

But the itchiness in the lungs could have something to do with the tremendous ego that made sure everyone in the auto shop (two people) knew that I was making a great sacrifice (as if it was really nothing) by riding my bike the 4 miles back to the shop to pick up my tired but un-sway-barred car.

Because no one here rides their bike to do anything. A couple people do for exercise, but for running errands? Things are too far apart.

So I was breathing diesel exhaust (those trucks go by FAST!) and thinking to myself how nice it would be to live somewhere that was accessible to bikes and that it would actually be a viable alternative to driving. Because I haven’t ridden my bike to do an errand since I got my driver’s license when I was 16.

And I made sure those car fixing people knew how speshul I am and they likely enjoyed the sight of me wrestling the bike into the back of the car afterward (I weighed the relative merits of the bother of taking the front wheel off versus just shoving the bike into the back, and guess which won?).

[cough]

And the car fixing lady was kindly advising me to have those new tires rotated every 6000 miles and I nodded sagely as if I was not only hanging on her every word of brilliance but also as if I could actually be the sort of person who gets their tires rotated every 6000 miles, but really I was thinking FAT CHANCE LADY! Because I can barely remember to put water in the cats’ bowl even when they stare balefully at me from time to time and then scope out the sink to look for errant drips that have fallen there randomly, their little kitty lips dry and parched, barely able to croak out a pitful meow. Let alone remember to have tires rotated and to even know when 6000 miles have elapsed.