The single bell on a string bangs harshly against the glass to signal my entrance into the local liquor shop.   Hey, it’s the weekend; I’m entitled.  The click my heels make seems magnified in this store.  I wasn’t even home for an hour and didn’t even change, from my business-casual work clothes, before I decided to make a liquor run.  I pick up my favorite flavored drink: Smirnoff Ice.   A 12-pack is necessary for this weekend, I decide.

I go to the front of the store and watch as a man stumbles into my peripheral.

“I here first,”  He slurs, cutting in front of me.  I step back suddenly, the mans’ breath reeking of rum.  He slams a 30-pack of Budweiser beer cans onto the greasy counter.  “Ring it up!”

The guy behind the counter is young and built.  He grunts in reply.

“Come onnnnnn,”  The drunk guys says, swaying.  He’s wearing a suit, well, partially.  His necktie is dangling off, threatening to sink to the floor, his shirt if halfway undone in the back; his leather belt, looping gracefully around his waste, is the only clean thing about him, remnants of this morning, I guess, so very long ago.

“How are you doing there Ed?  23.80″, The cashier says.

“Fine,”  The drunk guy says shortly, handing him the bills he had out.

“1.20 is your change”, The cashier says, “Don’t go drinking that all at once, alright?”

Ed laughs weakly and picks up his box of beer, stumbling towards the door.  He’s on the wrong side of the door, so it doesn’t open right away.

“Dammit,”  Ed shouts, trying to pull the door in.  The sign right where he is pulling glows in the setting sun, ‘PUSH’.  “Dammit Josh you gotta’ fix this damn door sometime!”

“Mhm,”  The cashier, Josh, says, motioning me forward.

“Isn’t that illegal?”  I blurt out after Ed makes it successfully out the door, his fourth try.  I place my own box of beer on the counter.

“What is?”

“Giving alcohol to a clearly intoxicated person,”  I deadpan.

“Oh, him?”  Josh says, laughing, “That’s just Eddie-boy, he comes in here all the time.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to sell him alcohol when he’s like that…”  I say, pulling out my debit card.  I tap it on the counter, thinking.

“He’ll be fine,”  Josh says, looking for a minute like he is worried about dear old Ed.  In the next moment (maybe it was a trick of the light), a shadow passes his face, the feeling is gone.  “Besides, he’s good for business.”

I frown, looking out the window.  I watch as Ed has trouble opening up his trunk to put his beer box inside.  If anyone should not be allowed to drink, it’s this guy.  The license plate on his silver Lexus gleams brightly as the drunk guy backs out and heads north on the main road; I notice the numbers and try to remember them.

“Hey,”  The cashier, Josh, says, bringing me back into the store.

“What’s the total?”  I say, whipping out my cellphone.

“I already told you,”  Josh says, sighing.  He tells me again.  I hand him my credit card and dial 9-1-1.

“What’re you doing?!”  Josh glares at me, watching as I dial the numbers.  He looks at me, panicked, “You aren’t reporting me are you?”

“No,”  I say immediately.  Honesty is the best policy when the guy you are talking to looks like he wants to crush your cellphone into a million tiny pieces.

“Oh,” Josh says, looking more relaxed.

“Nine-one-one what is your emergency?”  A womans voice says smoothly.

“It’s not really an emergency, sorry,”  I say, inventing wildly, “I would like to report a drunk driver.  He is swerving in and out of lanes, I’m about to turn off the road to get to my house, but he is heading north.”

The operator asks what street, and I tell her.   I give her his license plate number as well, along with an intersection a few blocks north of here.

“Thank you for this information, we’ll take care of it from here,”  She says, and I had a strong urge not to say, “No, really?  Are you sure you don’t want me to tail him and try to pull him over?”

“Great, now Ed won’t be back for weeks!”  Josh says immediately after I hang up,  he looks genuinely upset.

“At least he’ll get to sleep it off,”  I say sarcastically.  Josh breaks into a grin as he swipes my card through the terminal.

“What?”  I say, putting my cellphone into my purse.

“It’s ironic, really,”  Josh says, looking at me as if seeing me plainly for the first time, “It’s ironic, that you would call the police on him, I mean, most of the customers who come in here look like, well…like you. And all of them are drunks, too.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,”   I say, shrugging as I adjust the sleeves of my business casual shirt.  Josh hands me my card - the transaction is over.  I pick up my flavored beer and walk towards the door, my shoes clicking with every step as I walk over the threshold, and into the night.

Who knows, maybe Ed was thinking of getting drunk and beating his wife, maybe he is just a lonely alcoholic looking to relive his party years.  Maybe he has kids who don’t talk to him.  Sure, it may have been inappropriate of me to call the cops on him, but I like to look at it as helping a potential victim of his if he were to run a red light or forget to stop at a stop sign.  Who knows.

I was going to post a funny video I found on the Internet, but I decided that since I have not posted in about a week, that the people deserve more than just some silly video, right?  RIGHT?!

Right.

Lately I have had SO much time on my hands, it is hard to figure out what to DO with all of that time.  Because, there is only so many times one can vacuum with a new vacuum cleaner (6 times in a week…I have a problem), and there is only so many times one can reformat a harddrive.

So lately, I’ve been trying to find things to do.  First thing I did was buy a table and chairs, and, thinking I could save 68 bucks on shipping and get rid of a day’s worth of boredom, I decided to pick it up and put it together myself.  Well, that was successful, if only for a day.  Now I have the rest of my life to figure out what to do with my time.

Sure, it looks pretty, but I will confess here that I only sat in the chairs to test them out, and I sat in each of them for about five minutes.  And the chairs came PRE-MADE.  As in, no assembly required.  I’m almost afraid of putting anything heavier than 5 pounds on the table itself, though, for fear it will collapse in an almost cartoonish style.  Because that is the one thing that I DID assemble.  With my own hands.  Using things called a WRENCH.  Sounds like a kind of pancake if you ask me.

Well, that took care of one day of fun, with my carpet covered in shreds of packing material, and cardboard boxes all over the place, I would like to add that I was able to use my vacuum cleaner again.  However, I decided that I still need something for sustaining fun.  So, I started thinking. What is the one thing that could give me both a panic attack AND is helpful to other people?  It took some time and thought, but I think I’ve come up with the perfect solution -

And, now I give blood - in a vain attempt to try and get myself to not be so afraid of doctors for irrational reasons.  So the other day, I made an appointment to give blood to the Red Cross.  Sounds perfectly reasonable, right?  I go in, and a lady takes my blood pressure, after I sat in the waiting area for about 5 minutes.  Not NEARLY enough time to calm myself, I might add.  Of course, the first thing she asks is if I am nervous.

“Why?”

“Because your blood pressure is slightly elevated,” She says, writing down some numbers.

Wow, is it that obvious?  I mean, I can practically feel my heart about to BURST FROM MY CHEST. Hellooooo doctor, please have the defibrillator ready for your nervous blood-donor, thank you!

And before I know it, I’m lying down, giving blood, and the lady comes over and adjusts the needle a bit.

“Um, ow,”  I say, feeling a weird sensation in my arm.  Kind of a pinching and pulling inside, all at once.

“Yes, I had to adjust it,”  The lady in the white coat says.

“That’s fine, but it feels weird,”  I say, “Are you sure that I’m still ‘donating’?”

“Yes, of course,”  She says.  She fiddles with something out of my vision, just below the chair.  “Hmmmm I don’t think it is moving along…Do you feel alright?”

“If by ‘alright’, you mean: ‘feels like you inserted the needle with a 9-gauge shotgun’, then I’M FINE THANKS,”  Is what I thought.

“It hurts, I think more than it should,”  I say, clenching my teeth.

“Oh dear,”  She says, and without going into too much details, she takes her SWEET TIME adjusting the damn plastic tube and needle.  Pretty soon her frown turns into a reassuring smile. “It’s good now.”

If by “good” you mean “you will have a bruise the size of Texas” and by “now” you mean “by tomorrow”, then it’s crystal clear.  Not even the largest band-aid I have was able to cover the bruise, and now I’m forced to wear long-sleeved shirts to work every day this past week.

Click here for the picture of the bruise (not for the faint of heart).

Annddd with a gigantic bandaid.

Giving blood is awesome, and I definitely recommend that everyone donate to the Red Cross! (Reassuring smile, Thumbs up sign)