Crazy-Pops

Monday morning. 5:00 am. Your oldest son comes in to your room; "Daddy, it's time to get up." At 5:00 in the morning? He persists, you lose the battle, and the week begins. From there, it's all downhill. You forget to put the coffee pot back on the coffee maker and the freshly brewed coffee spills all over the freshly cleaned floor. The idiot ahead of you in the left turn lane decides he'd rather sight-see in the middle of the intersection than actually turn left. The chicken you make for lunch smells like foot fungus so you throw it away and opt instead for a bowl of cereal. The Monday noon drop-in game at the ice hockey rink, which is usually hurting for players, is full by the time you get there at 12:05 so you aren't allowed to play. You drive to your favorite CD shop on the way home from meetings for a little serenity and it starts to rain while you're in there. And you've left the top down on the Jeep so everything in is soaked when you bring your new purchases out.

To top it all off, your head is congested, you're sneezing all day, and your oldest son informs you, after you get home, that yet another squirrel has taken up residence in your Jeep. What the hell is going on?

You look up at a calendar. Oh, yeah, it's Vegas Week. That's what it is. The week before a Vegas trip. It never fails. You'll pay and pay and pay and pay all week long; it'll be a surprise if you don't end up in a Turkish prison or in a bathtub full of ice with your kidney missing this week. And, at the end of it, you'll get on a plane and you'll go to Las Vegas and you'll eat and drink and gamble and read and write and hang by the pool and it'll all be worth it. Because, really, the pre-trip torture (not to mention the post-trip torture!) just serves to remind you that you're alive and that you should not take these trips for granted.

Sometimes you gotta work for things. Apparently.