A Midsummer Comedy in Three Acts

Act One - Mid-May

UCC: Did you know that DOB’s truck has three flat tires?

TCG: Yes. It’s been like that for a while now.

UCC: Well, I just noticed it because I was working in the front yard. Why don’t you inflate the tires?

TCG: Well, I can’t start it because the battery is dead.

WISIMH:  Non sequitur altert!

UCC: Which means the tires won’t hold air? Who knew?

WISIMH:  Battery died because you can’t manage to run it for a few minutes each month like you used to do.

UCC: Then either get it running or get rid of it. We already have one derelict vehicle crapping up the carport. I won’t accept two.

TCG: OK. I’ll take care of it.

UCC:  I’ll depend on it.

WISIMH:  There is no longer any point to this. It’s as far beyond my waning powers of imagination to envision a scenario where you will actually accomplish something as complicated as inflating some tires as it is for me to imagine the dawn of a day when the urine smell from DB’s room will not waft violently down the hall like screaming banshee on a flying broomstick when the door to her room is opened. It’s breathtaking - and not in a good way – to actually venture into her room when I have to pick up her dirty laundry once a week. Inevitably, posted by her doorway (where it will have maximum effect as an air unfreshener on my side of the house) is always a garbage bag waiting for the trash gods to take it outside. TCG will take care of the trash too, eventually. Don’t put off until tomorrow something that you can put off until next week are the words we live by here in the Fortress of Attitude.

Act Two - Mid-June

UCC: Can you give me an Estimated Time of Action on the truck tires?

TCG:  (Checking his day planner on the iPhone)  July 27.

UCC:  Be still my beating heart.

WISIMH:  By which I mean: Dear My Blood Pressure, Please stop pounding so heard it feels like my head will explode. My right arm is going numb again, and I was planning on using it to beat someone senseless with a chair. Fondly, UCC.

Act Three - July 30

We managed to get to the store yesterday where TCG bought an electric plug-in air compressor to inflate the tires. En route home:

UCC:  So, did you talk to your sister J2 about giving her the truck since she needs a vehicle and we don’t need more than one derelict car in our yard at a time?

TCG:  (Non Sequitur Alert) Well, you know I talked to DOB about this (since the car was technically registered to her before he stopped bothering to renew the license tags making it impossible to drive on the street even if it didn’t have a dead battery and flat tires).

UCC:  Yes, I was there. That was last month. Have you talked to your sister?

TCG:  (Second Stage Non Sequitur Alert) That would be a good idea. Let me get the tires taken care of first.

UCC:  Sure.

WISIMH:  And let me have another evening trip to the ER with chest pains. Another good idea since we’re on the subject would be to save a date for actually inflating the tires. And then, since we all know the car won’t start, setting a date for replacing the battery. By the time all this happens, in the event it doesn’t just happen in my fucking dreams, J2 will have left town again to live with her daughter in Lime Disease, MO for several years or until she again needs to move back to her spouse’s gun and ammunition stocked trailer to use his health insurance. So I ask myself, why do I bother? The side effects from my latest heart medication make me feel like a crack whore who has been beaten up by her pimp, but without the preceding crack high. It’s actually not dreadful hyperbole to say I’m losing the will to live here. A stroke might be preferable to being squashed to death by a poorly balanced pile of hoarded crap while threading my way between the teetering piles trying to get to the shower before being overcome by the poisonous fumes from the DOB’s lair.  Or suffocating to death by the CO2 from the large volume of scented candles necessary to permit me to use the shower - a mere two rooms down the hallway from the entrance to said lair. Or being led away in handcuffs, blood-soaked and laughing manically to a nice quiet room painted in calming institutional green and smelling like pine-scented cleaner instead of piss. Alas, what stinky fools these mortals be.