Rescue, 911!

As I mentioned earlier, I was hopefully anticipating meeting this doctor that Josh had told me about. I woke up after my first night in Myrtle Beach. My appointment was at 1pm. A glance at the clock told me it was about 10am Eastern time, but the clock in my head insisted that it was really 7am PACIFIC time. Anyone who knows me at all knows that I am NOT a morning person!! In fact, I'm never tracking on all cylinders until about 4 in the afternoon, and that's when I actually have some tracking ability! Despite this, I was excited (as excited as I could be considering my state) about what lay before me, and I fervently hoped that this guy could/would help me get back on track. I crawled out of bed and wandered down the hallway into the kitchen.

Now Tia, or 'T' as I call her, has what I consider to be a beautifully clean and tidy house. She works full time, but comes home each evening after work and dutifully tidies things up. She sweeps the floors, cleans up any stray dishes and generally makes sure things are in their rightful place. Her house SMELLS wonderful. Keep this in mind as I relay the following:

(Cut back to me, stumbling down the hallway.)

I wander into the kitchen and decide I need to eat something. After all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and I'm beginning to think that possibly, this might be my first day on the road back to mental health and wellness. I need to make a good first impression. I choose the most nutritious, delicious breakfast I can find - HONEY BUNS. Of course, any person who's ever eaten a honey bun knows that the only proper way to consume one is to heat it up first. I find a saucer, trip over to the microwave and toss my first meal of the day inside. Now I have been using microwaves since about 1984 and I feel pretty adept at it. I close the door, hit 2-30 on the keypad and "start" it up. I look up and realize I've just ordered this time-saving device to cook my honey bun for 2 hours and 30 minutes!! I find the 'stop' button, open the door (I guess to see if my "meal" was still in there (?)), then close the door, stare at the keypad for a few seconds, hit the keypad and then 'start'. Once again, I'm nuking my bun for 2 hrs and 30 minutes!! "Oh well", I say to myself, "I'll just watch the darn thing and pull it out in 25 seconds". (No rebel microwave was going to get the best of me!) I thought it was a great plan, however I "forgot" that my brain had the attention span of a 5 month old child. I almost immediately walked away from the microwave to glimpse out the window. After gazing out for, oh, probably 5 seconds, it occurred to me that I had left the charger on my cell phone all night and OMG, I'd better go unplug it before the charger becomes the monster I had heard it could be and suck all the chargie-ness back out of the phone!! Down the hall I go. I locate the phone right away (which in itself was a feat). I grabbed the phone and jerked the charger out of the wall, saving the cell from impending death. Of course, I had to check it to make sure my phone was in working order, so I hit the power button and stood there staring at it until it connected with its mother ship (or whatever it is that cell phones connect to that makes them spring to life). Feeling satisfied and just a shade heroic, back down the hall I went, ready to receive my just reward, the breakfast of champions, my honeyb---!!! OH HELL, MY HONEYBUN!! I hightailed it out into the kitchen (meaning I walked as fast as I possibly could to avoid a prat fall). I looked up at the microwave and what I saw was not pretty. I threw open the door and a HUGE ball of smoke, shaped not unlike a mushroom cloud, came rushing out the door at me! Waving arms and hands as furiously as I could, I tried to dispel the smoke enough to check the status of my honeybun. Now, you know how great cinnamon rolls or honeybuns smell when they're heated? Well, this was SO NOT THAT SMELL!! And the honeybun itself? A smoking, steaming pile of goo. I stood there in awe, looking at it for a few seconds, then grabbed the plate to remove it. Oh, the stench! Oh, the smoke! JOSH AND TIA ARE GOING TO KILL ME!! I inhaled, my olfactory lobes desparately searching for the clean, beautiful essence of the home I'd entered only one night before. My mind goes into self defense mode, and for a fraction of a second I think 'well, maybe they'll think the dogs did it'.

"Think, THINK!" I pleaded to my brain. "You've GOT to cover this faux pas before one of the kids find out what you did!" Out I went to the garage and trash bin to destroy the evidence, smoke and stench trailing behind me as thick as a vapor trail. I get to the garbage, honeybun still dripping with smoke, and attempt to dump it in the trash. But the damn thing wouldn't dump!! It clung to that saucer for dear life, not wanting to be banished, uneaten, to a landfill! (By this time, I'm pretty sure the thing was not even a food product anymore. It was as hard as a carp and a whole lot darker than it was when I put it in the nuclear oven). What to do....What to do? I grabbed a knife and tried to get under the thing, but somehow the chemicals in the bun and the saucer had melded to form the strongest super glue known to man!! I chiseled that bun off the plate in record time though (along with just a little of the plate's pattern - SERIOUSLY, it was barely noticeable!), and raced back into the house to find some air freshener. I looked high and low and couldn't find anything resembling any kind of freshener! I did what I knew I had to do and called Josh at work. Certainly HE had to have incinerated something in that devilish microwave! Of course! He would probably just chuckle sympathetically and let me know where I could find some air freshener to mask the ODOR FROM HELL. I grabbed the phone and began dialing...............

After just a few rings, the phone is answered and I hear a cheery "Quantum Talent, this is Peg". In the most casual tone I could muster, I said "Hi Peg, this is Dawn, Josh's mom. Can I talk to him for a minute please?" After a few moments of dead air, Peg stammers "Um, well Dawn, I thought he was with YOU!" Upon hearing these words, I realize that Josh must have stayed home with me and was somewhere in the nether-regions of the house. It then occurred to me that Peg had become a tad bit, well let's say, concerned? Before I could say "Oh, sorry Peg....", she was verbally trying to reason that possibly he'd just gotten a late start and would surely be arriving momentarily. "Well if he's not there, I'm sure he'll be here shortly and I'll have him call you right away, Dawn". "Thanks, Peg" I manage to stammer in a raspy voice and hung up the phone. As I turned around I found Josh casually walking down the hallway, hair still dripping wet from the shower. As he turned the corner, a look of alarm came over his face and he, not so casually, flew through the dining room and into the kitchen. "Je_ _ _ Ch_ _ _ _, mom, what in THE HELL did you do?!!" "I tried to cook a honey bun", I said, in the most pitiful, sorrowful-sounding voice I could muster. Josh surveyed the damage, grabbed a fresh honey bun, tossed it in the microwave, and pushed ONE button. He looked back at me and said "Haven't you ever used a microwave before?" "Come here and I'll show you how it works". I shuffled over, tail between my legs, for the tutorial. "Oh, ok!" I said, trying to sound convincing (I still didn't have a clue). He looked at me for a few seconds, his frown began to fade and, shaking his head, let out a little chuckle. In an embarrassed and dejected tone, I squeaked, "Do you know where the air freshener is?"

After a few moments, Josh walked back into the kitchen and plucked a perfectly cooked honeybun out of the microwave. He walked me to the dining room table and sat my breakfast in front of me. He then disappeared around the corner in search of the air freshener. As I ate my honeybun in silence and rejection (even the dogs were keeping a safe distance), I remembered that I had made an odd 911 call to Peg and that it was quite likely that by now, she had deployed the National Guard on a search and rescue mission to find Josh. "Oh my GOD", I thought to myself, "How do I explain THIS?" Smoke still slowly evaporated into the air, filling the house with that horrible stench. Moments later, Josh re-appeared and announced that they didn't have any air freshener. He quietly moved to couch in the living room and sat down. I realized that my only hope was to open some windows and pray that the smell would filter out by the time Tia got home. Ten minutes later, I bravely stood up and walked toward the living room, carefully maintaining a safe distance from the couch. "Josh", I called out, "I think I'll go take a shower and get ready to go to the doctor". Josh made a half-turn toward me and muttered "ok". As I rounded the corner for the bathroom, I said "Oh by the way Josh, you might want to call Peg so she'll know you're all right". Before he could process what I had just said, I was in the bathroom behind a securely locked door.