The One Where Someone Stole My Shoes (and the Resurrection of A/C)

I swear stuff like this only happens to me.

This past weekend was 4^th of July. Trying to get rid of all the confused negative feelings and shake off some of the stress and anxiety that has resulted in this damn year, (stupid 2011) my weekend filled up fast and I played along. My friend came up from Richmond to visit. A group went to the Nats Pirates game. The Pirates lost. Already buzzed after metro pre-gamming (this is how we tailgate in the city, kids), a sizable frozen beverage, a New Castle, and some Red Bull vodka fed corn hole, we headed to our bar. And by "our" bar, it’s like cheers – they know our name(s) – only slightly more debaucherous.  We close the bar, then go to the 24 hour diner and eat inhale country fried steak (and whatever else they put in front of us. That toast never stood a chance.)­.

Pass out. Wake up. It’s fucking hot. I realize my A/C (window unit – the house I live in has no central air) is broken. It’s still cold air, but only creating it for it to drip out and fall than actually being blown around the room. I become convinced it’s temporary, that the fan is just messed up, and will fix itself – and that I will wait, because if I go out and buy a new unit today, then the damn thing will just start working again. Once at BBQ 1, I become concerned by the heat and how it was hard enough to sleep drunken in the hot room, let alone sober. We discuss giving up, going to Wal-Mart (::gross::) and buying a new unit so we can sleep in a normal climate. By the time we decide, Wal-Mart is closed. (Evidently they are not all 24 hours. This is how often I shop at Wal-Mart.) So then we go to the bar to celebrate a friend’s birthday. Afterwards, we head home and sleep in the heat.

The next day he planned to leave. But I convinced him to help me swap out the old A/C unit with the new. We depart for our purchase, as I state “I know it’s going to turn on as soon as I get a new one”. We return, $140 later, with a new unit. I state, “I swear to god this thing better not turn back on” as I go to I do the final pressing-of-the-power-button-to-make-sure-it’s-still-broken maneuver. Lo and behold, the god damn fucker works. Like there was never a problem. It taunted me, I swear. So, we put the new unit back in the box and reload my trunk. He leaves.

I take a shower to get ready for BBQ 2. After the shower I lay in bed in my robe (as is one of my very favorite things to do), and enjoy my nice cool room again. I’m watching TV when a storm rolls in. The power flickers. “Don’t you dare…”, I say. The power comes on. Then back off again a few minutes later. This goes on for a while while the storm rolls through. The lights go off again. “You’re going to come back on, lights,” I demand pleasantly, appealing to the electricity gods. They didn’t listen. Thirty minutes after I got it back, I lost my cool air again (for twelve hours).

I put on some clothes and make-up in the dark, then head over to the BBQ with wet hair and a straightener in my purse. I would have preferred (having been so tired from the hot, restless sleep the night before) to just say home and veg out, but without power, I was powerless – so there I was: BBQ 2, which lead to another night out, which ended up at “my” bar. There I proceeded to dance a lot, and what I can only conclude was: Spill on my shoes so they got slippery and forced me to take them off to continue dancing on the bench. Priorities people! Later, in a timeframe of which I cannot recall - as Jager tends to steal timeframes and run away from me with them, giggling - my shoes were gone. I looked for them, but, alas, there’s a little blond girl at 3am on Sunday, in the middle of the District, clearly drunk and hailing a cab in her bare feet. Typical.

The following day was July 4th: BBQ 3 was relaxed. It figures I’m sober on the day the world 'Merca is drunk off their bottoms and celebrating “independence”. My feet were far too swollen from my dehydrating weekend; it’s okay, I’ll be different.