Author: Bruno

Ahh… woke up this morning with a sick child (actually she’s been raspy-coughy for weeks but we finally decided we’d had enough) who we were going to keep home from school and take to the doctor. Then I went downstairs and peered out the front door window, where I noticed the dim glow of the streetlights was not illuminating my car. And the place where my car had been was marked only by a snow berm where the plow had gone around it.

To Alicia, who was upstairs getting dressed, this sounded like “Ohhh, ohhh no. No no no. Where’s my car? Ooohhhhhh…”

Also, today is our three-year wedding anniversary.

So I spent the morning at the St. Paul police impound lot (along with three hundred other people), patiently standing in line for the privilege of handing over $250 as a way of saying thank you to the city for moving my car 3/4 of a mile. That’s right, we live within rolling distance of the impound lot.

Then I took our lovely and incredibly tough but explosively grouchy daughter to the doctor’s office, which she’s now old enough to remember as the place where they shove sharp objects in her thighs, arms, and butt. Between the crying and screaming and prodigious quantities of snot covering her face, she looked like the creature from Alien. With a blankie.

Doctor diagnosed a probable staph infection, which is not the 15th episode of the TV comedy series Arrested Development, but the asexually-reproducing microbe that causes 500,000 hospital visits a year in the U.S. Remedied by a prescription of Zithromax in oral suspension, which is fine by Ayla since it tastes like sugar and doesn’t involve any stabbing.

So, now we’re home, getting ready to celebrate the three-year-long beginning of a very long endeavor (see my earlier thoughts on starting long things) with a rotisserie chicken, green beens, and, for me, a beer. Glamorous we are not.

But my car is back, my wife is here helping with the Alien, and I’m feeling remarkably good.

Oh man, I so knew day two would be way harder than day one. The first day of doing anything is hazardously easy. Like: I’m going to start training for a marathon! Or: I’m going to become a brain surgeon! Yup, until tomorrow when you realize doing those things involves countless repetitions of something that was underwhelmingly  fun the first time.

(Oh, hold on a minute while I go help Alicia corral Ayla in the bathroom, where she has unspooled three quarters of a roll or toilet paper. Ok, I’m back)

As I recall from my previous years of blogging, day two-hundred-and-whatever isn’t any better than day two; just more pressure, since you’ve managed to keep up an amazing unbroken chain of daily blogging, and now you addled mind can’t come up with one coherent (never mind interesting) thing to say. Or else you break your index and middle fingers on your left hand; try blogging daily with that shit.

Also, today the local news told me it’s officially the saddest day of the year, according to the national council of total assholes (or some group of psychologists, I can’t remember). The combination of suffocating winter, broken new year’s resolutions, mounting holiday bills and looming unholy-crappiness of February is cited as the reason. When I heard that I was like “What the fuck, News.” Out loud. In front of my two-year old.

Fortunately the also mentioned the happiest day of the year is June 17th. Only one-hundred-and-eighty-two not officially the saddest but still pretty depressing depending on your circumstances days from now. Of course, by then I’ll have nearly a book-and-a-half’s worth of complain-y blog posts in the bag, barring absurd finger injuries.

And also, for the record, today was a fine day. Better than average, even. I had coffee with a friend, did some work, played with Ayla and put her down for a nap, then played some tennis in the afternoon. At dinner Alicia and I listened while Ayla belted out children’s songs (Wheels on the Bus, etc.) as loudly as she could.

Shove it, psychologists. You may have local news on your side, but today we’re happy, and I’m not letting you bring us down with you.

… your daughter coughing and sniffling in her sleep on the baby monitor. How she moans ‘mommy, mommy’ when the discomfort finally is enough to wake her up. Her heavy, labored breath after you go up, feed her Tylenol with a dropper, and pat her back to sleep.