Last week I bought a new/old lamp

at my friend Kit's store
.
June. Cracking herself up with the period after the picture since two seconds ago. June, amusing herself with punctuation since the '90s.
I came home, moved the side table from one side of the couch to the other and set up the lamp. Yay. Then I moved the fancy tall lamp to over by the bookshelves. It was quite an afternoon.
Yesterday I got a migraine. Hormones. That's why I got a migraine. Because as per usual, I got sad and weepy and gained weight and said, I have no idea what's going on! What could it BE? Why am I like this? Then, boom. Scarlett has come to Tara. I hung up a picture of Red Skelton. I was walking along the beach in soft focus. If you know what I'm saying. And I used to be able to say this whole mood swing/Red River Valley was a surprise every month, but now it's a surprise every six weeks. Or two weeks later.
June. Telling everyone way too much about her girl time since the last paragraph.
So my point is I got a hormone-related migraine, which is par for the course, although I have to say for the last few months my headaches are a lot better. I have really cut down on caffeine, and perhaps the new wacky schedule at Club Menses is making my hormones less terrible, and really, do you hope I keep going on about this?
However, yesterday I was out of medication and I called stupid Target for a refill (sorry, Target Steve. It's the hormones talking). My head was starting to feel terrible, and by the time I got to the store I was decidedly ill. I stood there at the pharmacy while pharmacists ignored me for 10 minutes. I have never understood what TAKES so long at the pharmacy. Just throw my pills in a bottle and we can go. Besides, I had called ahead.
"Has anyone helped the woman at the counter?" asked the pharmacist, whose last name is Anemone. I know this because he has a plaque with his name on it that you can see while you stand there, and I always picture him kind of undulating and floating, neither of which he ever does in front of me at the pharmacy.
"Oh, I didn't see her," said the seven-year-old who works there. She has red hair, but I am not going to make it into a menstruation joke. Anyway I told her my name while the back of my head started to feel sweaty. I know I am in trouble when that happens. ohhurry, hurry, hurry, I was thinking while I started to look like Elvis in concert.
My migraine meds come in the largest box known to humankind. You could put Mama Cass in that box. And it's so convenient to carry around! Honestly, I don't know what men do who use this medication. Do they hang it from a chain on their belts?
I could see Old Red the Seven-Year-Old pawing through the called-in prescriptions and I saw the huge telltale blue box that spells relief. "There it is," I said to her. She pawed past it. "You just passed it. It's that big blue box."
It's like I wasn't even speaking. I was like a silent movie, and after every sentence a screen with old-timey font would pop up. "There it is!"
I really hate the font choices on Typepad.
After 46 times of me telling her my prescription was RIGHT THERE and her pawing past it like I was in another hemisphere, she found it. "That'll be $289."
WHAT?
I have been paying COBRA--and not a snake who has turned into a musical. COBRA!--since I got laid off, and it's like $5868483 a month. I have no idea why they make health insurance for the unemployed so effing expensive. "We don't have that you have any insurance at all," that ginger-haired tramp told me.
So I PAID the $289, with all my riches, and old carrot top told me I could come in and get a refund maybe next week. Apparently this happens all the time; COBRA the musical takes forever to acknowledge that someone is paying them $5868483 a month.
Oh I was irked. And I desperately needed coffee. Sometimes caffeine can help a migraine when you are not consuming it regularly. Also, I had this dead-tired thing that accompanies a migraine, and I had 11 million pages to proofread.
I went to Steak and Shake, which is in the same shopping center as Target. "One black coffee, please."
"Say that again, ma'am."
They NEVER understand me at drive-thrus here. Am I QUIET? Do I talk too FAST? What? "ONE BLACK COFFEE PLEASE!"
"Ma'am, we're out of coffee."
Out of coffee. OUT OF COFFEE. Come ON! There's a grocery store right across from you! GO GET SOME. Out of coffee.
Burger King sells Seattle's Best Coffee. I know this because there is a Burger King right next to Office Depot where I visit the Office Depot kitties, and I saw a sign, not to get too Ace of Base on your ass. I so prefer Seattle's Best to Starbucks, and it was on the way home, so I went.
"One large black coffee please." "Say that again, ma'am?" Anyway, they at least HAD coffee, but told me it'd be six minutes to brew it and could I pull ahead.
I hate everything. It's times like this I miss living in LA, where it'd be perfectly normal for someone to want coffee at 3 p.m. So I pulled ahead, but there was nowhere TO pull ahead. Just the narrow exit, which everyone who would not serve me coffee was also facing if I DID NOT GET SOME CAFFEINE NOW.
And I have no caffeine here at home. My coffee is decaf with a whisper of caffeine, like when you spray vermouth into a drink. Maybe I just should have gone somewhere and had straight vermouth.
So I sat there, FOR TWELVE MINUTES, in the driveway of Burger King, while giant SUVs minced past me and glared on their way out the drive-thru. Oh, stop driving such big, bad-for-the-environment cars anyway. And stop eating at Burger King. I don't know what's gonna kill you first--the environment you've clogged or your arteries.
I was cranky. And not feeling so well. Did I mention that?
Finally I SCREAMED out of there, turned left, and re-entered effing Burger King. I STORMED back through the drive-thru. "Sorry, ma'am. Your coffee's ready now." Oh, IS IT? IS IT???? Because you told me six minutes and it's now been TWELVE.
GIVE ME MY COFFEEEEEEEEE!
And he did. My large Seattle's Best, and flying to Seattle and growing the coffee beans myself would have been quicker. I realize they don't grow coffee beans in Seattle. Shut up.
So I drove home. And I did not drink the coffee in the car. Because those cups always spill and I did not want to burn myself while behind the wheel. The day had been pretty enough already.
I get home. Get on the couch. Yay. I opened the coffee and wooo! Seattle's Best.
Then I reached over and put my coffee on the side table. The side table, which I had MOVED from that spot to the other side of the couch.
Splat.
Sigh.