Juxtapose

Due to insufficient pith tonight, I'm going to spare you all most of the gory details of my weekend, especially since I've already unloaded the horror of The Day That Was Last Friday onto two very dear friends who neither laughed in my face, nor decided never to speak to me again, as could have been the case when Sar, The Eternal Friend, called to tell me the woes of her day (and they were an interesting bunch of woes too, trust me), and I, en route to pick up a giant Elmo costume, announced, "This days sucks." I never say anything sucks. I don't think I've ever used the word to describe anything besides a vacuum or a fish. Not because I'm too pious or anything, but because it's the dumbest word ever, and also because it's designated to be "a swear word for people who have two-year-old siblings." Or so says The James, anyhow. Anyways, as I told Sar, if ever I was to say that something sucked, that day would be it. One of those when nothing went right, pretty much. But I digress. I told you I would spare you the details, did I not? I'm gracious, see? Don't tell me I never did anything for you...

Anyhow, my father's Birthday Gala Extraordinaire was on Saturday, and this just so happened to coincide with a wonderful event, Kids Day America, or which I was a part of due to my status as an employee of my chiropractic office. This event, meant to encourage child safety, health, and environmental awareness for children in the community, was quite taxing on all of us. I?ll tell ya. The work that goes into planning a free community event is immense. In any case, it all came to a rapturous culmination, after running around like chickens and/or kangaroos with our heads cut off, on Saturday. I was told to be at the location at 9. I came at 8:45. Silly. Of course, everyone else was rather late and ended up arriving at 9:30, which was really fine, since it gave me some time to relax for a few minutes before more chicken/kangaroo running. We had three hours to set up stuff for 12 noon when it all was to start, and we had it all almost completely under control. To put it mildly, the event brought in probably two-hundred more people than we ever expected to come, and we?re crossing our fingers to hope that all this work and hair-tearing will bring us some new patients into the office. This is what I did for most of the day ?made appointments. It felt rather strange, since, after all, I haven?t done receptionist duties for ages now. All my time prior to this has been spent pitching the darn KDA event and picking up flyers and asking for money and taping things and schmoozing with local bigheads and making eyes at Aubochon Hardware store employees in order to get them to let me put up a flyer to ?help raise awareness about a children?s event we are holding!!!!? It has been degrading, really ? how low we have sunk ? I have, in essence, participated in a non-profit telemarketing position, and I have smiled sweetly at crabby people to get them to like me, a solicitator. I don?t know how this makes me feel. So, anyways, I did appointments for the first time in a good month, only this time, the doctor of the practice called me the fancy name for receptionist-appointment-scheduler-flunky: ?Spinal Screening Assistant.?

In other news, Chaz was getting depressed by all the little children running around and following him. The high price of fame, I hear, is that you have a perpetual crowd of groupies around you. Unfortunately, many stars succumb to the pressures that be and begin substance abuse, in a move that will ultimately ruin their career. For the first day on the job, I have to say that Charlie really has not been coping well.

To end off this whole schpiel nicely and tidily, I?ll just say that for my Dad?s birthday Gala, we went out and had some fun this afternoon. We ate cake and sub sandwiches, we drank Market Basket tonic, we relaxed, we played darts, and we enjoyed the post-thunderstorm day atmosphere. We also did some other fun stuff, as evidenced by the following three reasons that Twinkie rebellion is usually so short-lived in my family (we squelch it pretty fast): one, two, andthree