I Feel Like Alexander

One of my favorite childhood books was Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. It's still one of my favorite children's books, along with the likes of The Five Chinese Brothers, Mike Mulligan And His Steam Shovel, and The Story About Ping. My mother never read these books to me, so how did they become favorites? Captain Kangaroo read them. But I didn't come here to talk about children's books.

In the book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, the title character wakes up, and everything goes wrong for him. He drops his favorite sweater in the water, his cereal doesn't have a toy in it, there is kissing on the TV, and the cat wants to sleep with his brother--among other things. Well, my day wasn't quite as bad as Alexander's, but it wasn't great either.

I dropped a hunk of steel right on my big toe, and it hurt so badly I cursed--almost out loud. I went up to the first aid room and put ice on it right away, so it didn't swell or bruise much, but it did hurt. That was at 8:00, so I still had to get through 7 hours of work--all on my feet.

After work, I had to go into town and get milk, so I decided to try to get my car inspected while I was there. I drove all over town. The dealership had cars backed up to the middle of next week. Another gas station I went to didn't do inspections. The one place I found that did them was out of stickers. The place I'd always gotten them done before has closed down. So, I didn't get my car inspected.

By that time, I was tired and hungry, so I went through McDonald's because I really wanted an Angus bacon burger. I got home, and ate about half of it when I remembered I had to do laundry. So I went and put a load of clothes in, and Rylea got up on the table and ate the rest of my bacon burger.

I told her if I hadn't dropped a huge hunk of steel on my toe, I'd be kicking her from one end of the house to the other.

I contacted the Dallas Cowboys Star magazine to try to find out why I hadn't been getting my magazines, and found out my subscription expired last month, only I hadn't gotten a renewal notice or anything. (They said they sent one, and are going to send me the issues I'd missed. Really, if the government can't deliver a simple letter, do we really want to trust them to make life and death decisions for us?).

Jake is walking around limping, and I don't know what he did to himself. I don't see any cuts or anything but he does have a pronounced limp. He's had to stay shut in his kennel, because I want him to stay off of it, and he doesn't like that, so he's fussing about it. By the way, he's bigger than Rylea, and days like today I really miss Katie.

Katie wouldn't have eaten my hamburger.

Now I'm tired and I want to go to bed, and Rylea is looking at me like she wants to be walked, but I'm still mad at her because she has my hamburger in her stomach and I'm still hungry, and I think I could write a book of my own about very bad days.

But at least I didn't accidentally call Australia.