Squirrel Shirt


Local news anchors barely feign enthusiasm for Squirrel T-shirt incentive gift during pledge drive. 

Rest of day follows suit.

Those are my headlines for this Tuesday. At 7:30am I woke up and could not fall back asleep. I decided to make a go out of it, so I went to my desk, opened my computer and drank some black tea. It would have been coffee, but we're reigning in the budget. After about an hour of sitting there tapping my fingers against my knees, I realized there was no reason to be awake. No reason at all that I could think of.  So I returned to my bed, pulled the blue sheets around me and looked up at the ceiling fan.

After a while, it appeared there was no reason to be there, either.

So I thought of the thing I wanted to do least in the whole world. Sometimes when inspiration is lacking, the best bet is to prove yourself right. Get up, get out there, and do the tedious stuff like arguing with health insurance or trying to convince a doctor that you really do need a refill of sleeping pills. Or anything involving the post office. That way, if you're feeling shitty about your self and the world, at least you'll feel validated. And, when you feel better the next day or maybe next week, you won't have to ruin a perfectly nice day.

So I went to the tire store and got my front tire patched. I waited there for two hours and ate an inappropriate amount of free popcorn. I caught up on Kate Gosselin and Casey Anthony and then I really felt depressed. On the way home it started raining. Then I turned on the radio and heard the two newscasters trying to entice listeners to donate by describing the free Squirrel T-shirt gift. But their hearts were not into it. One of them said, "Give over 100 dollars and you'll get this free squirrel T-shirt." The other said, "Not everyone knows what a squirrel T-shirt is." And the first one replied, "It's a T-shirt with a squirrel logo. I'm not sure why that's our logo but it is."

"Dang," I thought as I took a left at the restaurant that served me E.Coli and pulled onto my street, "Nobody can get it up for this day."

Now, back at my desk, I keep looking towards the bathroom, waiting for the inevitable to occur. In a few minutes, mark my words, I'm going to get up and run a bath. Then I will sit in the bath and dissolve into a human gel, and maybe tomorrow I'll reconstitute and feel a little better. Maybe I'll sell a story to a magazine, get a hundred bucks up front and donate it to 94.9 KUOW and get a rodent shirt. I mean who knows, maybe it's nice.

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ADDENDUM! This note is being added AFTER I hit publish. I never do this BUT just as I was drawing the bathwater I opened a letter from my insurance telling me they were discontinuing my health insurance. Not just my insurance but anybody with Premera Heritage Preferred Plus 30. The letter ends with this mocking little lie:  
We appreciate the opportunity to serve your healthcare needs.

I'm sorry Premera but WORDS HAVE MEANING.  You don't just write whatever sounds good. You just took away my insurance, why not just end it with a, "Blow off, loser!"

I'm sorry but DID I NOT CALL THAT. I refer to lines 10-11 in the above post.  This day sucks. I'm going to go into the bath and dissolve now.