Ewwwwwwwww

Yesterday I had to deliver a gel mattress pad to a woman in Santa Rosa. When I got to her apartment building I drove past a sign that said "Caution, Speed Humps." I took a picture. I'll post it eventually.

Anyhoo, I unloaded the gel and put it on my little hand truck and made my way though her apartment building. I realized how eerily similar old people apartment buildings are to dorms except that they are much, much quieter. The halls look the same and they both have crappy elevators which smell like pee (but I'm sure for much different reasons.)

I arrived at her door and knocked, and she asked who it was as if it were anyone other than the guy who just called her to be buzzed into the building. Maybe she thought I would slip up and change my story.

She answered the door and I was greeted with a strong ode de ashtray and a woman wearing an old flannel nightdress and slippers. She invited me into the hallway which was almost entirely dark, yet not so dark that I couldn't see the massive brown stains on the ceiling and the grunge on the walls.

I rolled the pad into the bedroom and donned my blue vinyl gloves. To get to the mattress I had to pull of sheet after grubby sheet interspersed with not-so-blue-anymore chucks. (Absorbent pee pads.) After I placed the gel pad I made the bed again and we set off to the living room to sign the 20 pages of paperwork.

As she sat down she gave a big sniff and wiped her hand across her nose, and then across the back of her nightdress, then took my pen. While signing her way through the Medicare paperwork an ever increasing stalactite of snot hung ominously from her left nostril.

When she was done I picked up the clipboard from her lap and felt something slimy. It seems that the middle and ring fingers from my right hand had landed in a clear puddle of mucus on the back of the clipboard.

I rushed down the hallway back to my van, a dangling stringer of snot stretched between two of my fingers. Safely inside my van I applied copious amounts of hand sanitizer to both my hands and my clipboard. Then I drove to the nearest Jack in the Box to wash my hands with real soap.

For the rest of the day I kept thinking that everything I touched felt a little slimy. I would cut those fingers off, but then I'd never learn to play the banjo.