Asshole MVP

Not fifteen minutes ago, I added another tally mark to my rather impressive "Asshole Moments" scorecard. If people traded these like baseball cards, mine would be a gem in anyone's collection. I am the MVP of sticking my foot in my mouth, and then once it's there, adding a little mustard and making a meal out of the whole leg.

Just now, in a semi-social setting where I was meeting a bunch of new people I came across someone studying to be a brain surgeon. This does not happen to me every day, in case you're wondering, and my enlightened comment was, "Dude! Wow. Well I guess if I find anyone with a brain tumor, I'll send 'em your way." As these words danced the air above my head, eliciting a mild chuckle all around, one member of the group quietly cleared his throat and said, "I actually have a brain tumor."

(Cue the iron safe falling from three stories above, creating an ever-widening shadow over me instants before I am ground deep into the sidewalk.)

I gaped at this person, waiting for the punch in the arm and the "Ha! Just kidding-- you should have seen your face!" but it never came. Instead, I mustered all my eloquence and managed, "Oh, holy crap, I am so sorry."

Other highlights from my Asshole Moments scorecard:

Working at a bookstore in Florida, I was assigned to reorganize the computer programming section. All the books in this section have maddening acronyms for names, like ASP and CCSII and C++ and MySQL and BFQR2D2, and the little subcategories and hierarchies within the section are vague, repetitive, and cryptic.

In an effort to bond with a coworker and seek a little commiseration for my task, I quipped, "God I hate these books. I mean, who would curl up on a snowy evening with this and a cup of tea? These things are about as dense and boring as computer programmers themselves." Ho, ho, ho.

Without missing a beat, my coworker replied mildly, "Well, I majored in computer programming and I loved it."

More! More!:

On one of our first dates, an old boyfriend of mine was asking about what kinds of organizations I was involved in during college.

I said, "Well, I wasn't a sorostitute, if that's what you mean."

He said, "Oh, I see. My sister was the president of her sorority."

In other news, my little cat went to the vet this week so we could investigate a suspicious lump in his stomach. I had, of course, googled cat lumps, as is my wont with anything vaguely medical and mysterious, and had immediately located all the worst case scenarios, so by the time we made it to the vet's office, it was probably a tie between the trembling cat twining himself around my neck and me for who was most nervous.

The vet and his wholesome looking female assistant (why are vet techs always girls who look like they came straight from Bible study?) wrangled Linus onto his back and promptly began poking him in the belly whil shoving a thermometer up his ass for a temperature. He stared straight at me the whole time and only meowed twice, very small meows, but still ice cold indictments.

It turns out that Linus got shivved in the gut during his tangle with Janet the Feral Welfare cat during his grand adventure out, and his shiv wound was deep enough to cause some mild herniating. Whether the lump is subcutaneous fat, intestine, or a pocket of pus (mm! had a meal yet?), is yet to be determined, but for now, I'm to shove antibiotic pills down his gullet twice a day. This is a very involved process requiring two people, specific choreography, and slices of smoked provolone cheese to ease the pain for all three parties.

Abby, the hyper-alert Australian shepherd, stands guard during the whole process looking for all the world like the kid who knows the answer if you would just call on her. Abby will take any kind of pill, injection, or whack in the teeth (just kidding), if she knows that that is her task and that she will be rewarded for completing it. Every month she bounces in circles for her heart worm pill and anti-flea treatment.

Linus is like me though-- very interested in the process leading up to treatment, but then wracked by spasms of horror whenever anything must actually intervene with his body.

And last, best, the SUN CAME OUT YESTERDAY! It was great-- I sat out in the back yard with a cup of hot tea, read a book about sociopaths, and let my body process vitamin D through exposure to ultraviolet rays. Nothing better, truly.