It was a Cold and Windy Day

And on cold and windy days, I don't do my hair. It's a waste of time. Completely. So instead of washing, gooing, drying, brushing, gooing and styling, I yank that crap back into a big old ugly clip and call it good.

What makes that hair-fixing-up thing totally pointless is that the building where I am imprisoned for . . . . um . . . . the building where I gleefully and cheerfully scamper to work Monday through Friday, sits on the corner of a street that, in an earlier life, was a wind tunnel testing ground for NASA. I shit you not, on a day when there isn't even a breath of air anywhere else, on my street, you can't wear a wrap around skirt unless you have your bail money for that indecency rap that's sure to follow stuck somewhere out of the wind. It was that kind of day. And it was cold. AND it was raining. And I couldn't con anybody else to deliver a few documents for me, not even with my bail money. So I went.

Going was OK. The wind was at my back and my umbrella was shielding me from the worst of it from behind. But it's like that "what goes up" theory. At some point, you gotta turn around come back, no matter how many bars you pass on your way. You gotta come back. It's a law or something. So I came back.

I dunno about your town, but in mine we have the holdovers from an earlier era evident on our sidewalks. Bug ugly drainage grates and those metal cellar door looking things that are flush to the sidewalk that some establishments still use for their deliveries. Those bitches are slippery. And it's raining. And the wind is blowing. And they don't call me a dancing moose for nuthin. I tip over for lesser reasons than this.

As I came trudging up the street into the wind, I kept tucking my umbrella down lower and lower to my face to keep my eyelashes from blowing off (my real ones - I ain't kidding about that wind) and I was almost there, baby, I was mere yards from the front door when my shoe hit one of those slippery metal cellar door things and --- WHHOOOOPS! -- and I felt myself going down. But I am woman, hear me roar, and I caught myself. I stood there for a second to gather up my thoughts and round up my dignity and as I went to carefully step away, I attempted to lift my umbrella a little. And couldn't. And I yanked again and it HURT so naturally I yanked harder and hollered a little. Little metal rods inside umbrella were now entangled firmly in the ugly hair clip. So what does any rational person do when they're stuck inside an umbrella? You spin damnit, you spin. So I spun, and I yanked and I realized I hadn't quite moved off the cellar door, so I slipped and I spun again and I reached up there to try to loosen up the stupid thing and naturally my hand hit the button that releases the umbrella, which promptly collapsed over my head and around my shoulders. So there I stood. Feet spread like Bambi on the ice, soaked to the bone, hands dangling at my side with a catastrophically ugly umbrella collapsed down around my shoulders. And what did I hear?

I heard the voices of my pals as they passed me by, giggling madly, saying "Hey G, gimme yer hand" and like a bumbershoot challenged child, I allowed myself to be lead off the street, to the elevator and shuttled back off to my dark, sheltered cell where I'm kept for reasons which should be painfully obvious by now.

Took me half an hour to get that friggin thing off my head.