How To Go Nowhere On $50 A Day

Ever since I first mentioned having a vacation from work this week, people have asked me where I was going. And sadly, I've had to answer, "Nowhere."

And the main reason for that is simply that I couldn't afford to go anywhere.

I scheduled the week off knowing that. Well, almost knowing that. I thought, "Hey, I'll do a lot of cleaning and get all those household things done that I normally neglect, like cleaning windows. I'll pressure wash the outside of my house. Then maybe on Thursday or so I'll just take off and go somewhere for the weekend."

Those plans went by the wayside very quickly. Somewhere around Friday evening last, approximately one hour into my vacation, I thought, "Screw that. I've worn myself to the bone at work. If I wear myself to the bone at home, I'll go back to work just as tired and depressed as when I left." So I amended the vacation plans to trying to clean the house over the weekend, get it out of the way, and spend the week resting, getting some sleep, working on Comfy Chair movies, and then maybe taking an overnight trip around the end of the week.

I liked that plan a lot, but it didn't last.

By about Monday I realized I was just too damn broke to go anywhere, even overnight. And so my vacation plans became, "Screw it all. I'll stay home all week, hang out, rest, do what I want, watch a lot of movies, and work on my own Comfy Chair movies. How much could that cost?"

More than you'd think, really.

Monday was OK. Monday was fine, because I didn't leave my house. Unless one is on the phone ordering stuff from catalogs, one can't spend a lot of money confined to the house. It was a lazy day, bordering on boring, but I got some laundry done and got some rest.

Tuesday saw me having my car fixed, that's $74 I took on myself. It would have been paid by my car insurance, but I'd just turned in the big-ass hail claim on podmobile2, so I figured, "Under $100, I'll handle it myself." And I did. Then I decided that I wanted to be near greatness and headed out to try and catch a glimpse of Barack Obama in Lebanon, which didn't work out, and cost me a tank of gas.

Yesterday was interesting. As you'll remember from last week, I got a rather nasty bee sting (my second) while mowing the yard on Tuesday. It was on my head. The base of my head. It hurt, and itched, and I cussed, and I really hate both mowing my yard and the bee species, and one would think that surely by yesterday, a week and a day after the fact, all would be well. All is not well, and I'm perfectly willing to admit that at least part of that stems from the fact that I can't leave it alone. I pick, probe, prod, poke, and any number of other things that begin with p. It's just a rotten place to have a bee sting, mainly because it's where my neck bends, but also because it's in my hair and I can't see the damn thing.

So Tuesday night it was still bothering me as I went to bed, and I did my nightly routine of slathering it with Neosporin. And yet when I woke up yesterday morning, my neck hurt. It wasn't the kind of hurting neck that comes from sleeping funny, it hurt in a specific spot. I reached up to feel my neck, and about a half-inch south of the bee sting was a knot. A painful knot. I began to poke the knot, thinking, oh, I don't know what I was thinking, I guess I was thinking I could poke it back down into my neck. I couldn't, a fact that comes as no surprise to anyone with a brain, which apparently I was not at the time.

Wednesday is band night here in Betland, and so I headed out to B'burg to practice. I left early in an effort to go secure Hackensaw Boys tickets for next week, then do a little window shopping at the stores in the area. The good part of all that is that I didn't have to pay for the tickets up front. I was put on a list, deferred of payment till next week when I go to the concert. Also good, though it sure didn't seem so at the time, is that the little town of B'burg was so teeming with students and traffic that it took me a good hour or so to get in, get parked, get to the venue, and get out. So that curtailed any window shopping that may have turned into actual shopping. The bad, however, was that I went to B'burg at all. Another tank of gas.

Band practice was abysmal. It's the new fall season of band, and I suppose it's a good thing that our membership drives are paying off, but the band is growing by leaps and bounds, and frankly, it's getting way too big. We have been completely overrun by flutes, so much so that they now take up the entire first row, and the first clarinet players (which includes yours truly) have been moved into the second row. The second row, as you might imagine, has the dubious dinstinction of sitting in front of the third row.

Our third row is the saxophone section.

Mr M once made a confession to me. It went, "The thing I'm most frightened of in the world is that I'll be on my death bed, and the second before I go the saxophone section of the Blacksburg Community Band will pop into my head, and that will be the last thought I have before I die." It would be a horrible way to go.

And so there I was in band, in a room so full of people there wasn't enough air to go around, it was hot, my knotted neck was in pain, and I was listening to two hours of absolute saxophone hell.

It wasn't worth a tank of gas.

And that brings us to today. I woke up today with my neck in more pain and the knot in my neck bigger. It looked like a ping pong ball had been embedded there, slammed into my neck by an Olympic ping pongist. I figured it might be time to look into a visit to the doctor.

I did not choose my old friend and nemesis Smokin' Dr Javier. I haven't seen him in ages. I didn't choose him today because he's only in in the mornings, and his office visits are outrageously expensive. It was already afternoon anyway, so I called Joe. I know "Joe" just sounds like some guy down the street, and he is down the street, but he's a real doctor and everything, he's a nice guy, and he's a client of ours. It's easy to just call and walk in, and that's what I did. I called, then I walked in.

I got in very quickly, and was immediately found to have a fever, which is very odd for me. Then Joe came in and looked at my head and said, "That's ugly," which is something one doesn't like to hear a doctor say. He poked and prodded too, and I felt very justified in my p, p, & p actions, and said, "Oh, yes, you're infected." He also vindicated me by saying nearly all bites and stings carry some form of bacteria and mine seemed to have taken up housekeeping in a lymph node. The fact that I was p, p, & p'ing it all week certainly didn't help the sting site heal, but it didn't necessarily cause the knot.

I was given a high-powered antibiotic and wished well. $52 for the visit and drugs. I had to make a quick $25 stop by the grocery for a few provisions, where I leaned on the grocery cart like a zombie. Then hey-ho, bang-zoom, back home. Where I - did absolutely nothing. Dammit, I felt bad, and I sat in the Comfy Chair and napped off and on, the cheapest recreation going.

I still have tomorrow and the weekend to go. I have to pop out to the post office tomorrow to mail something for Mr M. Pre-paid postage. Thank God.

If I can get away without buying a stamp, maybe I won't have to declare bankruptcy.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* OK, before you start sending me cans of food, I must say that this poverty is hopefully only temporary. Note to self: A credit card balance of $900 is not a federal crime and it doesn't have to be paid all at once. Still - bring on payday Monday.