What I’m Doing Right Now

Yesterday I had to leave the house and actually drive to the office for the proofread, a monthly annoyance affectionately known as the proof to those of us who must perform it, an all-female ensemble whose members rarely leave the house unless it involves picking up take-out food or buying computer parts on sale at Office Depot. For us, the horror of the proof begins in the morning when we face our closets and are confronted with the reality of our shabby wardrobes. When you work from home for years and years, your wardrobe can become shabby. I’ve already reported here that my daily uniform is a ragged sarong and a tank top. Going into the office is always a wardrobe crises.

I passed over a comfy T-shirt that proclaims My boyfriend thinks I’m at the movies and instead chose a sleeveless yellow top that makes me look as if I’m about to go door-to-door offering The Watchtower. But the bottom half of me was a trial to say the least as I could not wear a sarong. I settled on a pair of ragged painter’s pants cut off at the knees, figuring I’d be seated at a desk all day and no one would see my shame. I chose them for their myriad pockets, which I could stuff with cigarettes and candy, my cell phone, and my glasses.

Before leaving the house I grabbed Jimmy to bring for protection, Jimmy being my German Shepherd angel pin, because God help me if my eyes should glaze over and I let a typo or the word “motherfucker” get into the magazine, and also because the drive into El Paso is something I consider dangerous and, were the real Jimmy still alive, he’d be my co-pilot in my passenger seat. So I had to make due with his angel likeness. I’ve become really strange since moving here, stranger than normal, and while driving in the clusterfuck that is Cape Cod traffic doesn’t faze me at all, driving in El Paso gives anxiety attacks, and again, God help me if I have an anxiety attack on the freeway. While I’m not 100% positive about God intervening should such an attack occur, I have the utmost confidence in Jimmy. He’d never allow such a thing to happen to me. As a matter of fact, the start of my anxiety attacks began shortly after the death of Jimmy.

Jimmy was always a good companion and an alert watchdog, but in death his abilities have taken on mythic proportions. In life he weighed 150-pounds and could open doors; in death I’ve got him weighing 175 and driving a backhoe while smoking a cigar. If a dove wanders into our house and perches on my oriental rug I think to myself this never would have happened if Jimmy had been here. If I am shortchanged at the supermarket by a girl who cannot speak English I think to myself, this never would have happened if Jimmy had been here. Wind storm? Jimmy would have stopped it. Wrong pizza delivered by Dominoes? Jimmy would have prevented it. And so on. So when I drive into the city for the proof, Jimmy comes with me.

I stopped at the Circle K for a cold drink before I got on the freeway because you can’t drive anywhere in El Paso without some sort of drink with you at all times. You might think it’ll be okay to drive without a drink, but it’s not. You’ll get stuck in traffic and suddenly realize you’re so dehydrated you’re going to pass out. Or a dust storm comes up and you’re mouth is suddenly filled with dirt. So I needed a drink for safety reasons and I stopped to get one.

A couple ahead of me at the soda fountain were filling their Coleman cooler with ice from the soda machine. I’m pretty sure such a tactic is illegal, holding a cooler up to the soda machine for free ice while the counter clerk chats on his cell phone, but by the looks of these two it was not going to be me who ratted them out. Every now and then they’d turn around and look at me, so I smiled tried to be friendly, just to let them know that their stealing ice was perfectly fine by me. I said, “You’re very wise, you’re gonna need ice on a hot day like this!” But this got no reaction from them. They continued to fill their cooler at their leisure and give me an occasional glance. So I tried again and said, “Personally, I can’t go anywhere without a drink filled with lots of ice. I love ice!” But they continued to ignore me and the counter clerk continued to give his review of Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man over the telephone to someone named Skids.

Driving into work with well-earned Diet Coke, I paid strict attention to my surroundings. Two proofs ago, I didn’t have Jimmy with me and I was so stressed out I drove right past my exit and out into the desert. Waaay out into the desert. Surrounded by cactus and dirt and fearing I would drive right into Van Horn (home of the dreaded Tommy Lee Jones, whom I am terrified of running into because I blog about often), I pulled over to the side of the road and called Buck to scream at him to come get me. He refused and I ended up turning around in a rattlesnake patch and driving back into the city. Never wanting to repeat this episode, I now pay close attention to the city as I’m driving through, and yesterday I did so by announcing landmarks to my Jimmy angel pin. “Okay Jimmy, there’s UTEP and according to the sign they’ve got a summer camp for kids starting soon… Jimmy look! There’s California Waterbeds!…Now we’re coming up on K-Mart, but don’t get too excited, Jimmy. We can’t stop there today.”

And so on.

But I got to work safely, lived through the proof (even though there was construction going on outside our office a jackhammer gave us all terrible headaches), had my lunch from the vending machine, and drove home in a combination rain and dust storm (describing it to Jimmy the entire way).

Then I came home and threw myself down on my bed, watched a few episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer  while waiting for the Xanax to take effect, and tried to block the whole day out of my mind as I was passing out.

I’m hoping today is better.