Friday night failure

She’s had this camping trip scheduled for months.  When the weather report came out and said it would be freezing, she wanted to cancel, I agreed.  But on Wednesday, the troop voted to go camping anyway.  So they packed up the gear and got ready.  So did I.  I had the house to myself for the weekend.  I’ll finally get some quiet down time!  I even made plans to record a new AVCfH show on Friday night with some guest hosts.  Not that the “house to myself” thing is really a big deal, it’s just that I get to unmask my real self and I’m allowed to have a little bit of fun.  I don’t have to watch “CSI” or “Chopped” when I go to bed, I can watch what I want to watch.  I can listen to my music without them telling me to turn it down.  I don’t have to have a god-damned box fan running in my fucking ear all night!  I can cook strange new things for dinner…  I can live a little…

But Thursday night, reason finally prevailed as Teresa and her fellow leaders decided they didn’t want to fill out the police report about how these small girls froze to death in the middle of the night.  Good.  I was worried about them going out there.  I’ll gladly trade my “free weekend” for the knowledge that the girls were home and safe.

But Teresa decided that the camping trip wouldn’t have to be a complete wash, why not have the girls over to the house?  Fourteen girls running around the house?  I’m not looking forward to that.  Then Teresa decides that she will have me set up the tent in the backyard so they could show the girls what it would be like if they had camped out…  That big bitch of a tent is not just thrown together.  I have to work at it and no one ever helps…

After I get the tent up she sends me to the store for supplies like marshmallows and shit.  This is not the Friday night I had envisioned.  I don’t get to order her around for things I want to do… WTF?

Finally, I’m home and relatively left alone.  I see a long evening ahead with me planted in front of my computer all night.  Until the computer dies.  I’ve called it my “Zombie Jesus Computer” for a long time now because it’s been resurrected from the dead over and over…  Back when we had money I kept upgrading it so it’s not as old as it looks but it’s been time for a new one for a couple years now.  I tried to get that Mac running last year but it died too.  I bring up my work laptop to find out what’s wrong with the ZJC.  Turns out I need a WindowsXP install disc to fix it, Dell ships their computers without CDs.  So I’m fucked.

Okay, night alone, surrounded by squealing tweens.  No computer.  I go down stairs, open a bottle of wine (throw away the cork as I intend to down the entire fricking bottle!) and I grab a couple DVDs and close the bedroom door.  I’m halfway through re-watching the new StarTrek movie when I just can’t take the door chime any longer.  I started counting after it became annoying and I was already up to 37!  These girls have come in and out of the house 37 times in less than an hour.  I pause the movie and go downstairs (open a second bottle of wine) and see what the girls are up to.  Teresa looks like she’s having fun.  She’s bundled up and sitting with two of her friends talking around the fire pit as the girls scramble around the yard.  I go back upstairs to finish the movie.

The DVD player is broken now.  It will play the video but the audio is choppy.  I tried resetting, I tried power cycling, I tried new DVDs…  I spend almost an hour screwing around with cables and DVDs, nothing works.  In the middle of this, Teresa comes bounding into the room saying, “We need you downstairs, now.”  I go down and find that somehow, one of my tiki torches is now a large ball of flame.  The fuel bottle is melted at the top but thankfully still intact at the bottom but the wicker/bamboo holder is on fire.  It won’t be long before the bottom of the fuel bottle melts and all that lit tiki torch fuel splashes on the ground.  I grab the fire extinguisher and douse it just in time.

I can’t watch movies now.  So, I grab my phone to return a phone call I missed while setting up the tent.  The phone’s locked up.  At that point I threw the phone across the room, turned the TV to the music radio channel and rolled over to go to sleep.

The only thing that would have made the night a perfect storm is if I had opened the wine and found vinegar.