Adventures Off Duck Island
It was a dark and stormy night... even for the cesspool of New Jersey!
The evening of Friday the 1st, we decided to try something new and—ahem—grab some fast food for dinner.
Riley and Taylor wanted McDonald's; and Athennia and I wanted Burger King. But that wasn't such an issue since, in true Montague vs. Capulet fashion, the two are situated just across the street from each other.
Also, the food at both establishments is basically a notch above literal poison—which lends itself nicely to Romeo and Juliet metaphors as well.
"All those sonnets are going to rot your brain! If you're not out hunting, you should be out gathering! What's next? Climbing flagpoles and pushing over cows?! Sort yourself out, lad!"
—parents in the 16th century, probably
Whew.
It took us a long time to get here: That was, like, half a dozen paragraphs... just to convey we had Burger King and McDonald's one night last week.
That's gotta be about the slowest "fast food" ever!
Hell, we haven't even made it to the part where, after an post-dinner family hangout around the table, Athennia helped Taylor with some coursework for her manufacturing class and I tutored her in some more algebra...
This time we had moved on to solving systems of equations—which is where they'll give you a set of [at this level, two] equations [in two dimensions] that you have to rework in order to solve them.
Something like... oh, I don't know—
\(2x + 3y = 12\)
\(3x + 6y = 18\)
—and then maybe you manipulate that second one a bit, into—
\(x = 6 - 2y\)
—so you can substitute that value for the \(x\) in the first equation:
\(2(6 - 2y) + 3y = 12\)
\(12 - 4y + 3y = 12\)
\(y = 0\)
Then you can plug this \(y\)-value into either equation to solve for \(x\):
\(2x + 3(0) = 12\)
\(x = 6\)
Considering how much fun we had doing math, Athennia and I almost didn't even need to watch Vikings before bed later.
But? We watched 'em anyway.
And if \(x\) were to represent the number of episodes we watched, then \(x = 2\).
Oddly enough though, the Vikings didn't do much math in these particular episodes: They pretty much just laid waste to entire villages and killed everyone they encountered.
...And comparatively fewer sonnets.
We got a late start to the morning on "Saturday the tooth."
Whatever. Some of us eat fast food and stay up late. Sorry, Benny Franks. We don't all grow up to be astrophysicists, I guess.
Athennia made some cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and then she and I braved the pouring rain to hit PetSmart and BJs—because, what better time to stock up on toilet paper, cat food, and a few hundred pounds of litter than in a downpour?
But, we didn't; so, we weren't.
We're not exactly healthy or wealthy, either; so we stopped and grabbed some fried chicken at GIANT on the way home and whipped up some mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese for an early dinner.
Taylor reached out to ask if she could come over yet again, to tackle still more schoolwork—which I told Athennia I was fine with, as long as it wouldn't end up being10:00 or 11:00 or midnight by the time they wrapped it up.
She promised that it wouldn't be...
...and, they finally called it quits just after 10:30 P.M. and Athennia got back around 11:00 from dropping Taylor off.
But I insisted that \(x\) still equaled \(2\) regardless of the hour... and we proceeded to watch \(x\) episodes of Vikings before we headed to bed.
Not much to report on from "Sunday the threeth" except that Athennia made chicken parm for dinner and it was phenomenal...
But it was of course the start of a new week, which called for an earlier bedtime than nights prior.
So, \(x\) only equaled \(1\) that evening.
Monday was... a Monday.
Boring.
Uneventful.
Not noteworthy beyond the fact that we had some sauted peppers and onions left over from the fajitas I'd made back on 28 February—which would in themselves be equally not noteworthy, except for the fact that we diced up a chicken breast, breaded and fried it, and whipped up a chicken, pepper, and onion pizza for dinner.
Not only was it out of this world, but we also managed to prevent some perfectly good leftovers from getting tossed.
It didn't even take all that long!
So, I guess haste doesn't always make waste, Kite Boy.
I found out later that night that it was "National Son's Day"... specifically, when my mom texted me to say,
"Hey, I just read that today is... National Son's Day?
So... Happy National Son's Day?"
Ah. What'll they think of next?
Am I going to be calling Riley on some random Tuesday in 2037, asking her to put Lucky on the line?
Guess who was thinking of his grand-cat all day today? Happy Federal Grandcat's Day there, bud! Didja poop somewhere special today?
It's back to work for the ol' mailmen and the bank tellers again tomorrow morning though; huh, bud?"
Insipidity breeds imbecility.
Was that among Benji's frankin-sense?
Well maybe it should've been.
The rainy morning of Tuesday the 5th, Athennia called me around 6:30 to tell me that she had just hydroplaned and done a 1080-degree triple spin across all three lanes of the turnpike and come inches from kissing the guard rail and getting T-boned by a truck.
Luckily, she and everyone else in her little pack of traffic had already been driving 10mph under the speed limit because of the rain to begin with; so, she was fine aside from being shaken up, and she just wanted to hear my voice.
Then she half-jokingly said she was probably going to be terrified of driving in the rain for the next six months.
No positraction. No anti-lock brakes. And the exhaustive list of safety features was basically "brake lights."
If there was even one drop of rain on the road, that car became sentient and turned into some kind of methed-out demon catfish who believed that even the tiniest rotation of the steering wheel had to be answered with a minimum 270-degree spin of the car.
So... I feel that, Kitten.
That evening, I made us all tacos for dinner—though it was somewhat of a tense meal: Just a few minutes before it should've been time to eat, Taylor realized that her phone had fallen out of her pocket either as she got in Athennia's car at Lou's or while they had stopped at GIANT for tomatoes and sour cream...
So naturally, the rest of us were just expected to put dinner on hold and wait around while Taylor (and Athennia, the chauffeur) retraced her steps to find the phone.
But, of course, this was just a short time after Taylor and Ahlina had skated out of here and basically quit the family; and so Athennia wasn't about to drop $1,200 on the new iPhone Taylor wanted: She bought a perfectly capable OnePlus running Android instead, at a sixth of the cost.
Two weeks in, Taylor started complaining that it wasn't working right...
And she rarely answers the phone when Athennia calls—constantly insisting that her phone is acting up, despite Ahlina's calls coming through just fine every 15 seconds whenever Taylor is with us. (Pro tip, by the way: When someone pays 100% of your phone bill every month out of the kindness of their heart? You should make it a point to answer that person's calls... lest they one day decide to pay a lesser percentage of your phone bill, such as 0%.)
Then, just a couple weeks ago, Taylor's phone just so happened to have a door fall on it (yes, a door—that's the story we've decided to go with), severely cracking most of the screen on the very same night Taylor tried to manipulate Athennia into giving her an extra night of homework help at the end of last month.
I would've shrugged and said, "Well, you're welcome to walk two minutes over to GIANT and look for it, or to check outside your grandmother's when we take you home later. Otherwise, the phone's gone, and that's nobody's fault but yours, and I'll wager that you end up taking much better care of the replacement you procure on your own dime. But, let's be real: You've never given a flying fuck about that phone; so why should I?"
Alas, that's not Athennia's parenting style—even with an almost-20-year-old—and so I kept the taco meat on the burner for another 20 minutes while they drove back to Lou's in rush-hour traffic to retrieve the lost phone.
Whew. That meal took about as long to get through as Burger King and McDonald's at the beginning of the month!
After dinner, I spent another three hours helping Taylor with more algebra. And then Athennia took her home just before 11:00 P.M. and it was right to bed for us once again as soon she got back.
Wednesday the 6th started off as a perfectly ordinary day.
Actually, that's not entirely accurate: It was raining—which is always a welcome blessing around here, since rainy days are delightfully thugless.
It's true: Thugs hate the rain. You know how all the worms will come out and crawl across the wet sidewalk like it's the greatest thing ever?
That's not gonna be me!
— thugs
I don't know if they'd melt like the Wicked Witch, or what; but, whatever the reason, the neighborhood thugs make their loud, trashy asses scarce anytime it's cold, or rainy, or cold and rainy...
See? No one in sight except my beautiful wife.
Alas, the quiet day was not to be followed by an equally-quiet evening...
Lucky had been hiccuping and throwing up for the past several days; and, even though he didn't show any signs of distress otherwise, we decided it was best to have a veterinarian check him out just to be safe.
It was late enough in the evening that all the standard veterinary practices were closed—and, for some reason, hardly any of them had any hours the next day either—and so we decided to employ a variation of the official tried-and-true "People from New Jersey" strategy...
— every person from New Jersey, ever
Egad!
Hey Kitten! Hey Molerat! Why don't we pretend that there are no emergency animal hospitals in Pennsylvania whatsoever; and we'll pop over the bridge into the sewers of Trenton and make the 45-minute trip to the hospital in Mount Laurel?
Genius, genius, genius!
Sure, there's a minute chance that Lucky may be dyin'; but it's not like he's dyin' in the next 45 minutes.
But, once we had a couple Whoppers in our bellies, we were on our way to not having all sorts of adventures... like pumping our own gas, and turning left.
At some point we saw a sign for Duck Island and thought, "Well, that sounds cool; maybe we'll head there instead"...
I mean, it'd be a real rarity for someone to get murdered a stone's throw from Trenton.
Fuggit. Onward to Duck Island!
Did you know that Camden is currently the safest it's been in 50 years?
Now then... just where was this elusive island of the ducks?!
Oh. Right here...
We weren't sure how we were supposed to get there, with the entire thing being fenced off—nor did we know why the sky looked like Chernobyl out in the distance.
No matter how we sliced it, it seemed that we were destined to remain... well, duckless mainlanders.
So, we just did a 180 and settled for checking out the Mount Laurel Animal Hospital that just so happened to be directly adjacent to us.
Welcome to the ENTRANCE—whose font size was literally bigger than that of the actual name of the business...
As we walked to the front doors, I wondered to myself why they designed the building to look like a rest stop on the side of the turnpike...
...But, it turns out they just needed the extra headroom because they're growing Yggdrasil in there...
'Cause, like, it's not clear to me why this couldn't have been a giraffe...
Anyway, the girl at the front desk somehow sent subliminal messages implying that we were going to be there for the next 72 hours; so we found ourselves a quiet corner...
...Made the patient as comfortable as we could...
...And hoped to God that the next four hours of our lives would be spent sitting on discount IKEA waiting-room benches, playing mobile games, and gazing at the aquarium...
Despite it being almost 9:00 P.M., there seemed to be a full roster of veterinary professionals on the premises.
We were only there two or three minutes before a nurse came out...
Alrighty guys, I'll be glad to take Lucky back behind closed doors and not let you see him while we do absolutely nothing for three hours or so.
Otherwise it's just called doing absolutely nothing for three hours or so.
Nice!
I sure hope we get to pay them almost $900 at the end of the night.
They had pictures of the staff all over the walls...
Needless to say, Lucky was not seen by Dr. Turbo—otherwise, we might've actually made it out of there before midnight.
But, the doctor took an x-ray and said that all of Lucky's vitals looked terrific; but for some reason, his entire intestinal tract was filled with gas...
The doctor gave Lucky some fluids and an anti-vomiting drug and told us that someone would "bring him right out"...
Half an hour later? Someone brought him right out!
All in all, it was probably a good 35-45 minutes' worth of work, spread across four hours' worth of nothingness triaging.
Final diagnosis?
Your cat is gassy and needs to fart, like 300 times in a row.
You can try squeezing him, feeding him a fart-friendly diet, or even farting in his general direction as a show of solidarity.
Final invoice?
$876.
Finally we were free to go...
...And we have a 45-minute drive home...
...And Athennia wakes up for work at 4:30 A.M...
So, yeah... guess who's calling out tomorrow? Or rather, today?
We got home so late, even the thugs were all sleeping!
The parking lot was nearly full, and we got stuck parking all the way out next to Drew's Crew!
I had never been in such close proximity to the majesty of the Drew's Crew van: I asked Athennia if she wanted a picture to commemorate the occasion, but she hid behind Riley's Burger King cup instead...
Jeez! They look like the shadow demons that came to drag people off to hell when they died in the movie Ghost...
At any rate, nobody got dragged off to hell that night—not even all the people around here who probably should be.
That second part was kind of a bummer. Why hire shadow demons if you're not going to make use of their skills?
Lucky seemed to be doing much better by morning though...
...And, to reassure him that everything was back to normal and A-OK (despite him being taken away from us for several hours the night before), we decided that some company might lift his spirits.
And so we sent in the Beetlejuice of the cat species: the furry little ball of mischief and hyperness that is Odin...
Something tells me he's going to be just fine :)