In Twilight Regalia

I’m SO TIRED.

It’s been a hard 24 hours.  Yesterday at this time I was pretty much ok, pretty awake, but the City of Los Angeles has conspired against me since.  First, though, the database system I’ve been shoveling stuff into for the last three days decided to overload and close up inexplicably. Our IT and outside corporation that composed the program have been scratching their heads over glitches for weeks but yesterday was an official meltdown.  That left me with mind numbing little to do, which  is an uncomfortable feeling. I always have SOMETHING I need to finish.  Even did the filing.  But there I was with the only one large repetitive job left involving the meltdown morass, and so the rest of the afternoon was spent trying to look busy, which I do by websurfing and chewing cinnamon gum so I won’t stuff everything else in my mouth, and generally wishing I were somewhere else.  Can’t leave the desk. Chained to the phone.

Should I go across the street to just see a chick flick, alone?.  Decided, no, not today, I should get home, I should take that StrengthFinder test to find out where my strengths are and reassess my inclinations/skills/future.  I should TAKE CHARGE OF MY LIFE.

So FINALLY FINALLY TICK TICK TICK it was TIME to leave and leave I did, out into a row of cars that suddenly inexplicably stuck still in a place it never sticks.  It rained yesterday, a fact which hadn’t dawned on me till I was at that point in the line, and OH YEAH Californians can’t drive in the rain (I recalled out from under my fog), a fact which you would think I would connect by now with habitual chaos.  If you smell moisture, be prepared to stay in one place for a very long time, because some idiot has invariably slammed into the guy in front of him.  As was the case, it turned out.  But I didn’t find that out until an hour later.

I (having been sorely afflicted by the frustration of things not functioning all day long) had decided Oh so misguidedly that I should take matters into my own hands, make a right turn off the one street to which I attach all my mental compass functions (Wilshire Boulevard) and venture out towards that street only a half mile down the road, which I was certain existed, named Olympic, and which I have often driven on in fact so I know it exists, but for some reason had removed itself from Los Angeles’ infrastructure, or perhaps even the planet, since my GPS didn’t see it either.  Off I drove on what appeared to be a simple right turn, and in three slight jogs I realized I was nowhere near anywhere I recognized.  This happens to me fairly often, since the 20% portion of the right hand side of my brain which should have been allotted to “Internal Compass” was reassigned just before birth to “Melodic Recognition and Tonal Memory.”   Which means if you want me to join your band, I can play just about anything you can hum for me in a couple of tries, but don’t ever let me drive the bus.

So this bozo was driving the bus back around and got stuck again going apparently EAST, (how did I do that?  It must have been that evil Santa Monica Boulevard, Sheryl Crow be damned), got stuck again in a queue, and soon enough discovered I was en route to the 405 freeway, the STUCKEST FREEWAY IN AMERICA.  I looked in vain for anything that would suggest which way I was facing and found a TESLA dealership sign (ah how science finds new ways to mock me) which suggested to me that I was facing exactly the opposite direction I should be heading.  AHA! said I, of course, sheng jing bing!, crossed wires again.  I made yet another right, and ended up under an overpass which was teeming with homeless men packing it in for the evening.  Is there anything else depressing you can add to this day?, I said to myself, after locking myself in and proceeding a few blocks further.  Dumb dumb dumb.  Should NOT have asked that.

Eventually seeing I was running out of gas, I turned into the one on the corner and filled up, after waiting for four cars (who all happened to have their tanks on the same side as mine) needed filling.  Off I went, certain I was heading in the right direction, which I was pretty sure was West.  But Los Angeles is not New York, and no fair grid exists.  Two blocks later it was apparent I’d been actually going North.  When I when I intersected with another No Choice But This Road situation, I was….. back at work.  Pretty much.  It was about a 45 minute circuit for nothing.

Hungry and angry and ready to go straight to wherever my dead mother was hiding and blame her for all my genetic shortcomings, I did what E.T. would do and phoned home. “I really REALLY have to get a physical compass, a BIG one that GLOWS IN THE DARK, for my car. Or a chauffeur,” I said, safely back on Wilshire Boulevard, which had emptied during my little impromptu tour.

Husband said he would work on it, encouraged me to stop and eat something since he knows how angry I get when my blood sugar plummets.  I opted for the quickest cheapest (only 10 dollars in my wallet) place near home.  About 40 minutes later, I was nearly there.  FIRETRUCK.  GIANT FIRETRUCK BLOCKING MY TACO BELL.  15 minutes after I nearly had a three alarm chili heart attack, I had rounded two corners more and finally ended up in their ordering line.  Mercifully, I was heard and ordered the food without a hitch.

Back on the way home now, only six more streets to go.  Light.  Another light.  Idiots clogging our neighborhood gas station and lined up out into the street because we have the lowest gas for miles around.  They HAD to broadcast that on the nightly news during the skyrocketing gas price crunch recently, and we’ve been invaded by cars from the entirety of the state since.  Around them.  Swing around the vegetable truck that always parks across the street, and click the garage gate opener.

NOTHING.  I’m at my OWN FRONT DOOR.  NOTHING.

I click in different directions, nothing.
I call the manager.  “Mail box full.”
I call Husband.  He comes down and uses the other clicker.  Nothing.
I’m going to call the police, a locksmith, the Governor, Sigourney Weaver with a flame thrower and a loader, SOMETHING.  FINALLY it opens inexplicably.

Then I spend the evening hour or two in a carbed out fog, wake up with indigestion at 1:00AM to an escaped pet rat, scramble around looking for her in a bunch of towels in the bathroom, find her and return her to prison, and wake up at 6:20 and come to work and I STILL HAVE NO DATABASE.

If there is a circle of Dante’s hell that didn’t get named, this is it, and it probably didn’t get named because unlike my fantastic luck, Dante never found his way out of the traffic jam.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 8:44 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.