Irony

Over the weekend, I had dinner with a friend, who told me a story about going to a costume party for Halloween, where she forgot she was wearing a tail, sat down on a toilet, and then peed on her own tail. She noticed when she wiped and found extra matter in the way of her girly parts. I was grateful she shared this story when I had finished my meal or I’d have had food and drink coming out my nose. As it was, we were both sobbing into our napkins, well beyond laughing. I teased her about it, how she stunk up the party with her drippy, ammonia-scented tail, and asked about dingleberries as well. She told me to shut up a few times, but we were laughing so hard that I couldn’t understand her shut-ups and kept going. It wasn’t pretty. We laughed for so long, I thought I’d pee myself too, but I proudly stated I wasn’t the sloppy pisser she was.

Twas a delightful discovery the other day to be in the washroom at home, having run in the door after getting home from work, frantically throwing down my really long skirt and sitting rapidly on the toilet, only to find the hem of my skirt sopped through in the toilet bowl when I went to wipe. Thankfully, I was at home when it happened and quickly kicked the soiled skirt off and threw it in the sink. I went my whole life and never dipped my clothes in the toilet bowl while peeing, and I somehow managed to do it just days after ribbing someone else for doing the same thing. Karma sucks.

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I’m currently reading the Flat Belly Diet! Cookbook, and I went to a program I co-run with another coworker, in which I had nothing to work on while attending, so I brought the cookbook with to copy recipes into a notebook before the book is due. While sitting at the table with a group of people chatting about their craft projects and why I didn’t bring one, I noticed I’d used pieces of a Hershey wrapper to mark the recipes in the book that I wanted to write down.

Um, yeah, that’s probably why I need this cookbook.

If it had been a dark chocolate wrapper, I would’ve been okay because of the MUFA, but alas, this was a king size wrapper of milk chocolate from my last bout of PMS.

I hate irony.

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With such unseasonably warm weather, my brother has embraced the idea of global warming and suggested we get a cow, which he volunteered to spend his day squeezing. You know, to help increase greenhouse gases. I love that guy.

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Tonight we had a woman come into the library who needed to use a computer and browse the DVDs, but she had some kind of problem with her foot, so she asked if we had a wheelchair to lend her while in the building.

Why yes! We do!

This was likely the first time that anyone used it since it was purchased. It was bought a few years ago after our former wheelchair was found totaled in a ditch near the railroad tracks. Some not-so-handicapped folks had taken it for a joy ride, trashed it, and dumped it by the train station. Either that or it was trying to get out of town fast and ended up as roadkill. Sad.

So, we have this nifty new wheelchair to offer our patron, and I was quite proud.

Until I got a look at it.

This wasn’t a usual wheelchair. It was like the handicapped version of a real wheelchair. Chew on that.

First of all, the pedals were gimpy. They dragged on the floor and the patron wasn’t able to fix them.

Then there were the retarded wheels. This was a transport chair, not a true wheelchair, so it had two pairs of training-wheel-sized wheels.

They worked if you ignore that the assembler neglected to tear the plastic and tape off the wheels before putting it together, so the wheels were slow and made terrible noises when they turned. However, how is a person who needs a wheelchair supposed to propel that thing? Bend all the way over and push those little 6-inch wheels around? They can’t! I found our patron sitting in this lame wheelchair, using her heels to pull her body in the chair forward, six inches at a time. I spent the evening wheeling her where she needed to go, and someone at Circ was kind enough to wheel her out the front door to her car when she was ready to leave. The problem was, I dropped her off in the DVD section and had to leave her there, but how would I know when she was done? She had to call the library on her cell phone, get the call transferred to my desk, hope I was available to answer, and then tell me she was done in the DVDs and needed to be brought to Circ to check out.

Seriously, this tool meant to aid people with disabilities nearly crippled our entire library for the evening.

This isn’t even addressing the fact that while transporting her, I rounded a corner where we keep a cart for patrons to put unneeded books and I crashed into it with the wheelchair because there wasn’t enough room to get through. I’m no expert, but I don’t think a public building is allowed to block their aisles so that wheelchairs cannot get through. Also, moments later, one of the dragging pedals spontaneously fell off and we couldn’t reattach the severed limb. The injured foot our patron was trying to stay off of was now without a pedal and she had to put both feet on the other pedal, causing it to drag on the carpet more with the doubled weight.

It’s rather amazing that someone made and we purchased a wheelchair that renders one immobile.

While I have no idea how much money this debilitated vehicle cost the library, when I did a search on Amazon, I found one almost identical, wrote down the price, and searched for one with an user-friendly wheel, made of more sturdy material, and the difference in cost was about $40. Perhaps the able wheelchair was not available when the purchase was made, so the handicapped wheelchair was the only option. I can’t say. All I know is tonight I was deeply ashamed of a service our library offered, and that doesn’t happen very often.

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While helping someone at a computer, I experienced something new tonight. After 17½ years here, I can go years without having anything new happen, so this was a bit of a treat. In a facepalm kind of way.

She was trying to print pictures on someone’s website, so I instructed her to right click on the image to copy it.

She left clicked and nothing happened, so I reiterated to RIGHT click.

Her hand came up off the mouse, positioned itself on the keyboard, and she then typed out the word “click”.

Well, she followed my instructions. She wrote click.

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Marina told me The Funniest Thing today. Her friend used the following as his status message on Gmail:

You know what really gets my goat? Chupacabras.

Nothing funnier, in my book. Nothing at all.