Death by Misadventure

As I peeled  the mandarin orange this morning and watched the juice gently pour down the front of the only shirt within reach for the balance of my day, I paused and considered just how I had offended god, the god I don't really believe in.

This was just one more pebble of foreboding in a week in which I had witnessed many such pebbles piling up and threatening an avalanche on the Sommers slope. Hows that old line go, when the almighty  says, "Sommers, something about you just pisses me off."

My despair started a few days ago when I pulled one of my more valuable paintings, which had just undergone a meticulous and expensive cleaning, out of the van only to find that it had somehow obtained a large quarter sized divot which had laid the canvas threadbare. I wet a rag, not having an available spray bottle and dampened the back of the painting and put it out in the sun to contract, an old art dealer's trick. The mountain lessened somewhat and thankfully it is in a fairly  inconspicuous region in the right foreground. Chalk it up to fate and keep on moving.

I bought some interesting material during setup and managed to sell a few things, a rare occurrence for me during setup, the dealers avoiding me like the plague as my business and demeanor is more calibrated towards the retail buyer.  I brought a bunch of junk and it sold. Wonder of wonders.

Fridays are pretty uneventful. The huge rain that was forecast never came, the one that I have seen turn the parking lot into a kiddie pool but we got some small tempests during the day. Temperature is supposed to drop by about twenty degrees from the balmy rapture that I encountered earlier in the week. I can feel the change.

Didn't sell a painting all day. The most interesting thing about the day occurred during a bathroom break, when I thought that I actually did hear a rain squall only to sadly discover that the sound I heard was me pissing on my own shirt tail. I walked over to the sink and gave it a good soak and stuffed it back in my jeans, ecstatic knowing that the pleasant odor would follow me around all day as a reminder of my poor aim and incompetence. Another dealer told me not to worry, he was once drunk and had done the same thing. Unzipping his fly and mistakenly grabbing his thumb, he ended up pissing his pants.

Disaster struck once more late in the day, not long before closing. I was yawning, snapping my head forward trying to stay awake when I heard the cacophonous sound of the paintings crashing down on the wall behind me. I always put them on the masonite walls with at least two screws and I played cute this time and thought I could get away with one. As I said, four paintings came toppling down, busting their wire hangars like gossamer webbing but miraculously surviving without any real damage. I couldn't even begin to deal with the repairs and stuck everything on the floor to await today's remediation efforts.

I have been fighting serious sinus problems for about five years. I had sinus surgery the first year, being in the state that is known as total whiteout, but unfortunately it didn't take. I wake up throwing up many days, not being able to breathe. I went to a pulmonary specialist at Scripps who stuck me in a glass chamber and asked me incredulously how long I had had my asthma and how it was possible that I could climb up a set of stairs with my 28% working lung capacity? His bills zoomed out of control, his fixes didn't, and I have been trying to deal for about the last six months.

I had a doctor I know write me a script for Leviquim and it largely cleared it up way back when. I saw her again last week and she refused to give me another script, or should I say strongly suggested that I do the Sambucol elderberry stuff instead. Apparently the Leviquim stays in your liver forever and causes serious tendon damage. All of my aches in my heel, wrist and knee suddenly made sense and I had the sudden epiphany that I was morphing into my hypochondriac mother.

Anyway I was throwing up this morning and unfortunately it happened once while I was driving fast on a busy street and I could neither stop or spit and just sat there driving looking like Dizzy Gillespie with my puffy cheeks, ignominiously holding back the torrent of bile like a gourami with the ick. Really a class act.

If I had better sense I would go back to my crappy Holiday Inn and just hide under the covers for the rest of the weekend but I have this sick compulsion that wants to know which shoe is going to drop next. Leslie is flying up for my birthday dinner and we are going to the classy and swank restaurant on Skyline Drive, the Bella Vista in Woodside with a few friends including Millard, Warmboe, Flynn and maybe BigD.

Had some wonderful friends and sometime customers come by the booth yesterday. One of them is an atheist. Asked him a question I had heard recently. Could an atheist sue their insurance company, in good conscience, to recover damages attributed to "acts of god?" Quite the epistemological quandary.

Have a great weekend, wherever you are. I have a lot of thoughts about the current political situation bubbling around and will write something, hopefully of substance, as soon as I am able.