the indignities of (age)?

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Originally uploaded by madabandon.

Mabel is at the groomer's, getting her pre-travel haircut. I want her to look her best in stylish Montréal next week. While she is there I take advantage of her absence, strange as it is, and do the things that are more easily accomplished without her. For example, the laundry is in process now. She becomes crazed and barks madly when I take the laundry out. She has never outgrown or changed her attitude about laundry--or the trash--since she was young, and clearly I have not done so well as a parent to cure her of that particular quirky anxiety. I also went to the pharmacy to refill my psych meds. She doesn't like coming and going, getting upset each time I leave.

The young hipster boy with the pierced lip and pageboy hairdo waited on me. He took my prescriptions, and after a rather long delay, announced to me that it was too soon for refills; they had just filled them mid-month. I knew that this was not true. I was nearly out of my ________. But I could not offer proof to counter his claim, so I went home thinking that I have slipped so badly into prescription-drug abuse that I have finished more than a month's supply in just a few weeks. How could I have let myself get to this state? I felt distraught and a little sick.

When I got home I checked the pill bottle. The label clearly stated "filled June 18, 2007." Ahah. Of course I wasn't a pill abuser. I would at least know it if I were. Annoyed but also relieved, I called the pharmacy and spoke to the managing pharmacist, who confirmed that my label was correct. So back I went, out onto the steaming street (it was quite hot today). This time I asked Mr. Lipring they fill the two `scrips right then and there. Lipring was apologetic. I said that the best way he could make it up to me was to fill them. Now. I was rather gruff about it, as I can be.

It is easy for me, since I fulfill so many of my daily tasks with my head somewhere else, to imagine that maybe I am a pill-popper. But I am gullible, able to talk myself into the most ridiculous things.

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Later: Mabel looks adorable. Y wants me to go to some huge crazy underground party out in Bushwick, but it would be one of those all-night type things, and I think I am just a little too old and a little too sleepy and it's really hot out tonight. So I will pass. But damn. I wanted to do something tonight.