Mrs. Hillbilly Mom Really Needs To Invest In A Monocle

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom has not been having a good week. There were entry forms to gather and put in the mail, projects to present, finals to be graded...and the universe has been conspiring against her.

Is it not enough that on Wednesday, within ten minutes of donning her soft blue sweatshirt, which she had just taken from the dryer after washing it to remove a salsa stain, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom incurred another salsa stain? Maybe she needs to eat less salsa.

Today at school, during her next-to-last class, Mrs. HM was happily reading out loud for the group who is averse to bonus points for reading out loud...when she went momentarily blind, and heard a CLUNK! Yes, my online acquaintances, that was the sound of the left lens dropping out of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's bifocals. Perhaps she has mentioned in passing that these are the worst glasses she ever purchased, with the near exception of those attached to a Groucho Marx nose and mustache.

After scrambling to grab it off the floor, Mrs. HM wedged it back inside the loose frame, and tilted her head just so, and continued. The show must go on. After several more falling-outs, Mrs. HM requested the services of the nearest student who looked like he possessed a steady hand and a modicum of mechanical ability. "Do you think you could put this back in? Here are the parts, and a screwdriver." Yes, indeed. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom keeps an eyeglasses repair kit in her top desk drawer. There are none so blind as those trapped in a classroom for fifty minutes with twenty adolescents.

Then, on the way home, after tussling with the Pizza Hut order taker over false website promotions, after passing through the second roundabout...was the crowning glory, the plastic-frizzled toothpick thingy holding the crap sandwich together, the icing on the urinal cake of Mrs. HM's day...a flapping black entity hurtling towards T-Hoe.

It was creepy, I tell you. Like something that would come flapping up out of a well where Nicole Kidman as Ada Monroe would lean her head in backwards to look for a sign of Inman. But instead of some bad-omen crows, it was a human. Dressed all in black. Billowing sleeves. Black hood. Face covered by a pinky-purple winter face mask. ON ROLLERBLADES! Yes! Coming up the center line just past the bowling alley.

Let the record show that this entity did not come from, nor go toward, the bowling alley. It came from the direction of the church with the sign out front proclaiming for the past two weeks accusatorily: "Jesus died for a reason...and you're it." Yep. Coming from nowhere, headed toward nowhere, down the center line where the gravel of ten snow days has accumulated.

I wonder what's in store for me tomorrow?