My Boo Boo

My cat just jumped up on the desk. It was unexpected, sure, but nothing akin to, say, an air raid drill or anything. I mean, I do know I have a cat. However, this time his sudden appearance before my eyes sent me into the air.

Not a big deal, except for the fact that I have a massive mosquito bite/wound on my left hand. (I am allergic to the little suckers, and you don’t want to know what the thing looks like. Suffice it to say that “red” and “puffy” would actually be a step-up in cuteness from the black/blue/brown/purple/red/green/puce balloon that is currently residing at the end of my arm where my hand used to be.)

I know that mosquitoes have a place in the ecosystem, but one really must question the hellishness of a system in which things like that not only play a role, but also seem to have some preternatural knowledge of the human anatomy. (As in they seem to find and tap a vein in like two seconds with no hands, when it takes bloodletting nurses in clinics about ten minutes and a million arm-slaps to make it.)

Wonderful. Nature. Screw you.

Anyway, when the cat jumped down, I jumped up, and I banged this throbbing, feverish mess against my desk. After about a solid minute of silent scream and catching my breath, and another minute of rapid-fire curses in several Indo-European languages, I came to realize something:

I am way too freaking jumpy for someone at my age and in my stage of life.

I realize that I have bill collectors, profs, competitors, hillbillies, and now even nature, stalking my every move, but I really needn’t be such a pessimistic and paranoid bundle of nerves wrapped in a dry heaving layer of fears and obsessions.

I know I tend to see life as one enormous hot plate upon which I dance for the two-bits-a-gander sideshow crowd that is my fleet of audiences and critics, but it doesn’t have to be this way!

From now on, I plan to live life to its fullest!

Starting with smearing a sh*t load of medicinal creams on this poor mound of hamburger that once was my second favourite hand.

Whoopee! We’re really living now, fellas!