Thanksgiving approaches, and that means only one thing for me: a few days off.
Obviously I'm looking forward to family and food; these things are important to me, and will always be important to me. But I'll get a few days off from work, and that will indeed be something to give thanks for, because there's a lot I have to get done.
Those stupid online grad classes I signed up for back in April? Yeah, I didn't get to those this summer, and time is running out, so I need to finally buckle down and get them finished.
The remount of the radio production of
It's a Wonderful Life is going on right now, quite swimmingly, but it takes up a bit of the ole free time as well. (November 29th and 30th, folks, if you have a hankering to see the show. I even get to be Uncle Billy this year, because seriously, is there a better part for me than the lovable alcoholic uncle?
And then there's
Heroes and Villains. I think I may have found a writing partner, which should be quite interesting and enjoyable. Plus a collaborator on some short films that I want to create for the show, which should add an additional layer of awesomeness to the show. More on that as it develops.
Instead of just writing about why I have no time to do things such as blogging, and commenting on other peoples' blogs (
Bicyclemark! I miss you, man!), I should give you a story. So here goes:
Last Saturday I woke up with a horrible fever. 101 degrees, couldn't even get out of bed. Called around, trying to find someone who could bring me some necessary items for my sick bed (7-Up, French bread,
Simpsons DVDs, etc.), and eventually made it downstairs to the couch. I probably should have gone to the doctor right then and there, as it turned out to be strep throat, but I didn't even have the energy for the short drive to the doctor's office up the road from my house.
So I was sitting on the couch, watching one of the several episodes of
The War that I had recorded, when I hear a knock at my door. Now, I don't normally get many unannounced visitors at my place, but this was the third knock at my door that day. (One other being two very nice middle-aged women who undoubtedly wanted to save me from the horrors of the Planned Parenthood clinic recently opened up the road.)
There was a Chinese woman at my door, cradling a small, white dog in her arms. She is my neighbor. She doesn't speak much English, but tried as best as she could to explain that her dog was sick and that she needed to go to the hospital, and since she didn't have a car, could I drive her and her sick dog to the animal hospital?
Now, I would love to say that this story ends with me driving a scared Chinese woman to the nearest veterinary office, where I heroically sit with her in the outer office while her little white dog is examined. That would be a good ending to the story, and had situations been a bit different, maybe that's how it would have happened.
But I'm standing at the front door, unwashed, unshaved, in an old bathrobe and my head dizzy with fever, and all I can get out is, "I don't know.....I......I don't know if I can help. I'm sick, too."
She apologizes for bothering me and goes to another neighbor's house for help.
I stand there for a minute, trying to process what had happened. I feel horrible, not just from the fact that I'm sick with the strep, but that I wasn't able to help this woman. It had happened all so sudden, I didn't know what to do.
After a minute or so I come to my senses, and decide that I'll get dressed and drive her to the vet despite my ill health. I throw on some clothes, flipping through the yellow pages as I pull my coat on, and walk out the door, looking for the scared Chinese woman with her little white dog.
I knock, and ring the doorbell, and hear the other 3-4 little white dogs she owns, barking and yipping on the other side of the door. No answer. I look up the road, wondering if she's going door-to-door, like the middle-aged women from this morning, but I don't see her anywhere.
Eventually I go back inside and collapse on the couch, where I resume my combination of sleeping and watching of WW2 documentaries.
Later that night there is another knock at my door, and it is my Chinese neighbor, letting me know that she made it to the vet's office, and that her dog was being taken care of. She apologizes again for bothering me, and I try my best to apologize as well, all the while wishing that I could have helped her, or else that the whole thing had just never happened.
As I close the door and return, once again, to the sick bed that is my living room couch, I think about my inability to help the Chinese woman. How much of my reluctance had to do with the fact that I was, truthfully, very ill, and how much did it have to do with the fact that those goddamn dogs always crap on my lawn.
I guess I'll never know.
