RIP duck & shitbrella

Hi. Hey. Over here. Yeah. That's me, the barely visible gurgling speck beneath the eight-hundred pages of freelance, twenty-eight student papers on video games, twenty-eight student essay journals, twenty-one student poetry journals, and unwritten three-hour lecture to be given... when? Oh, tomorrow. Hi! Welcome! Do come closer.

Today, despite this sizzling fiesta of work, I somehow decided to take a one-hour break to let Rudy cut my hair. Rudy's hair-cutting zone is sort of like an indoor jungle, loaded with painted wooden faces on the walls, beads, palm trees, and gold-rimmed photo frames. Josh was there, too, because he's on worker comp after having hurt his back on the job this week. Josh sat in the chair and watched my hair get cut while we talked about Oakland, where they are looking for a house, and Phoenix, where we will all imminently go for Michelle and Nate's wedding. I needed my hair cut because a) I'm going to be in that wedding, and b) I look like a bird of prey shat on my head and then made a sand castle out of what was produced. It was pouring down rain while I was walking there.

I lost my beloved umbrella, The Duck, on the BART last week on the way to work. Upon realizing my mistake (unprecedented!) I frantically called the BART police from my office phone while a student waited in the doorway, no doubt extremely amused. But: Silly me! The BART police are too busy shooting innocent people in the stations to help me find my lost duck. ("It's... umbrella shaped... it has a duck head...") I thought about what a full life The Duck had led, from its origins in Maryland to its end in Millbrae. (Millbrae! Good God, the injustice!) The Duck had gone to high school with me and had endured sad, wet trips on buses to and from tennis matches. It sat for some time in my parents' dark hallway closet filled with coats (whose coats? so many coats! who could they possibly belong to?). It even spent two months kept prisoner in the trunk of S.'s car last spring, where he forgot it week after week until I announced he wasn't welcome Fortside unless he finally had duck with him. That's how much I loved him. The duck, I mean.

So I was walking to Rudy's with the Backup Umbrella, a shit-colored thing I bought at Walgreens last year when David F. was visiting and we got caught in a downpour. We bought matching shit umbrellas then. Today the Backup Shitbrella, prompted by a small gust of wind and not bolstered by the presence of David F.'s Twin Shitbrella, delicately split in two. I stood there for a few minutes on the sidewalk getting soaked. It started to feel sort of good. Here I was, out on the sidewalk, getting soaked. It was afternoon. All the work was inside. The papers were inside. The manuscripts were inside. My lecture, yet unborn, was inside. I stood there until I realized I was going to be late for Rudy, and pneunomia hasn't gotten me out of anything good yet.

So I have this new dumb umbrella that I got on the way. It's purple, and it has hearts on it. Red hearts. It was the only one in the only store I could find selling umbrellas for less than the contents of my entire savings account.

In other words, I'm not sure things are getting any better.

The only bright spot in all this (Duck! May your new home be warm and superior!) is that my hair is shorter and last night I had the scariest and best work break ever. I was sitting here going blind, having copyedited for about nine hours straight, when I heard something banging against the door of my apartment. This is it! I thought. I'm going to die with unfinished freelance! Every copy editor's nightmare. Part of me was also thrilled to be able to die. That meant I wouldn't have to go to work this week.

Terrified, I ran to the door with the Shitbrella in hand for protection. I would poke out the eyes of the intruder, or maybe offer the Shitbrella as a congratulatory prize for gaining entrance. In, however, walked -- quite unexpectedly! -- the heroic Bay, released from his work obligations. I dropped the umbrella.
"You!" I said, thrilled.
"I sensed you needed me," he said.

So what I'm really saying is maybe things are getting better all the time.