Monday, June 26, 2006

rain, rain, go away

By the time I get to the checkout line in the grocery store my kids are practically doing cartwheels. I have a massive headache. It's raining. No one's showed up yet to come look at the roof. There's a big blue tarp over part of it and yet, it still rains steadily. I'm buying my first carton of caffeine-free Coke. I feel like an ad for certain migraine medications.

When you have part of your roof missing you start paying a lot more attention to other people's is what I've learned in the past four or five days. I've never realized what varieties there are in roofing. In tin or metal roofing alone the color spectrum is awesome. I've seen white roofs, green roofs, barn red roofs, even (yesterday) a yellow roof. Very nice.

The clerk interrupts my reverie (and the din of two screeching children) to inform me of the purchase total. I realize I have no pen.

"Do you have a pen* I can borrow," I ask very formally.

"Of course," she says, rummaging around the register.

"Because I need to stab myself through the ears with it," I finish.

Behind me I hear two women laugh in a startled kind of way.

Interestingly enough, she still hands it over.

(It was a blue PaperMate, medium point.)