A Bad Day

When I awoke this morning the first sound I heard was nothing. Meaning, no wind. The dawn was just shaking off its own slumber though, so I couldn't quite see what further information the sky might give me. It was a uniform dark gray growing lighter by slowly turning up the dimmer switch increments. Gray is a nice color I suppose, for business suits, what with your white shirts looking so snappy and fresh contrasted against the darker backdrop, but as a sky color it doesn't do much for me so I waited patiently for the dawn to play out and reveal what the day truly had in store. My thought, you see, upon the hearing of no wind, was that golf might be in the offing. Alas, poor Yorick, (one of my older readers) the sky is still, well, at least mostly, gray. And the breeze has freshened, which I think means begun again or, if television is to be believed, something women do that men are not supposed to be in on. And what's that, raindrops on the window? No, Yorick, there will be no golf today.

Which doesn't make it a bad day. Monday was a bad day. Monday was a day that called for a "do over." Here's how it started: I've been working on a story that I've been dragging out of my subconscious at roughly the same speed as Bush is withdrawing troops from Iraq. It just wasn't happening. Monday, suddenly, it was there, all whole, fully formed, just waiting for me to type it out. My fingers began to do their happy dance on my computer keys and order was restored to the universe for, oh, a good five minutes. Immediately following that happy time our electrical power chose to leave for lunch or wherever it goes when it just goes away. I was left with a black screen and a blank mind. That's how it started, the bad day.

About three hours later, while our power was on its third martini and calling off the whole day, Woowoo Charly and I headed to downtown Boquete to do some errands. One of our neighbors had returned from there and said that their power, the downtown power, was diligently hard at work surging about. Our first stop was to the bank where we were hoping to pick up a letter from them that was part of our land purchase deal. It was to have taken two weeks in preparation and two weeks were now up. (It had to be authorized, stamped and approved by Global Bank's main office in Panama City) "No," says Ana, our banker. "We can't get that letter until your lawyer sends us a copy of the contract." "But," I say in rebuttal, our lawyer can't finish re-wording the contract until she has the letter." (Wasn't "Catch 22" a great book?) We get Fatima, yes that's our lawyer's name, on the phone and the two ladies work it out. We will, though, have to wait two more weeks.

Next we head for Mailboxes are us, where a computer message has told us our new golf pull carts have arrived. Wrongo Bogie Breath. The carts are being held for ransom in Panama City where some official wants to know what's inside the boxes marked "golf carts" and how much do they cost. We are told we need an invoice to send to P.C. to secure the release of the hostages.
Sheesh. Must be a lot of people smuggling things in golf cart boxes from Amazon.com.

Screw it, we'll go get a bite to eat. Our favorite restaurant is closed. Alrighty then, we'll pick up a few things at Romero's, our grocery store. It's Flower Festival week and the store is decimated. A half dozen things on our list are not available. Never mind, we'll just head back home, have a glass of wine and watch the telly. Surely the power will be on by now.

And it was. This time for about a half hour. Then it went out again and didn't return until the dead of the night when it popped on our clocks, television and lights and woke us from deep sleeps.

So today is not a bad day, the sky is bluing up as I speak, but Monday surely was, because what else apart from physical disasters could have occurred?

Did I mention we realized that we are missing one of our debit cards? When, did that happen, you say? Oh, that would be Monday.