A goose, a flashlight and a bottle of beer.

No, it’s not the setup for a disturbing joke. It’s a summation of my evening night-before-last, and one of the reasons I’m so sleep deprived this week (so much for all that rest I got while I was sick). We live next door to a family of Asian immigrants (I don’t know which Asian country specifically; if my life depended on making a guess I’d throw out Cambodia, but I wouldn’t be able to articulate why) who keep a couple of extremely yippy little dogs and a pair of geese.

I have no idea whether the geese are legal to keep in our neighborhood (if they are, then I want to get some chickens), or whether they’re pets, or kept for their eggs, or if their life spans are set to expire the day before some celebration dinner (they’re very fat geese). All I know is that one of them thinks the grass is greener, or perhaps that the bugs are tastier, on our side of the privacy fence, and found a hole big enough to poke its head through and help itself.

We didn’t think too much about this, except for worrying a little about the ever-widening radius of grass that was disappearing around the hole, and making sure Speedy Pete didn’t venture close enough to get snapped in two by a beak almost twice his size. We just thought it was weirdly cute, this disembodied goose head with it’s long, goosey neck randomly appearing from underneath the fence like a silent impromptu puppet show; and also pretty hilarious, the way Pete freaked out and ran to us for protection whenever the goose appeared. So we didn’t see this coming, although I’m sure that you, oh savvy reader, are way ahead of me.

That’s right. Lucy Goosey (or possibly Larry Ganders; I don’t know how to tell the difference) got stuck.

It was there when I got home from work on Monday, its top half all the way to its wing-shoulders just sitting there, serenely, apparently resigned to its situation. It was so calm that I didn’t even realize it was stuck, and we had an appointment to keep (see below), so we didn’t have time to go check on it. By the time we got back home, we forgot all about the poor thing. It wasn’t until I was getting ready for bed that I thought to go turn on the back light and see if it was still there. It was. The poor thing.

If you’ve known me very long, then you know my tendency to drop everything for an animal in distress (see previously: dying cat, big-ass turtle with cracked shell, wild finch that couldn’t fly, Fizzgigg, etc. Oh, and I didn’t even tell you guys about last month’s pack of small wild dogs in the middle of the highway median that I first mistook for an abandoned litter of puppies, but that’s a whole ‘nother post), and you will not be the least bit surprised that I immediately grabbed a flashlight and started to go outside to try and save it.

Husband, ever cautious and wise, reigned me back in. How, exactly, did I propose to help it? Wasn’t I scared that it might bite me and break my fingers? It looked filthy and might be germ-ridden, and I just got over a bout of dysentery (see below again) and couldn’t afford to be sick anymore. But it wasn’t a wild goose, I reasoned. It was domesticated and used to people handling it, and I would wash my hands after and be very, very careful not to touch my mouth in between. We discussed simply going next door and telling the owners, but we weren’t sure they spoke any English, since our only interactions with them up til then had been friendly smiles and waves and nods, and they otherwise kept pretty much to themselves.

We had no choice. We had to try. And so there we were, well after 10pm on Monday night, me holding a flashlight while Husband tried to dig Lucy-or-Larry out with a garden trowel. The goose, for its part, stayed pretty calm, except for honking right in Husband’s ear a couple of times. Otherwise, it accepted his help and his petting and both our gentle cooing and shushing in the spirit intended. The beer, that was to help Husband stay calm.

So he dug, and we cooed, and we shushed, and we petted, and we could not get Lucy out of her hole. I told you she was very fat. Finally, we decided I should be the delegate to go next door and explain the situation. Which I did. And I was right that they didn’t speak a lick of English. Fortunately, just as I was about to panic over having to pantomime a goose getting stuck in a fence, they produced a young girl who understood enough English to translate, sending Mr. Neighbor into action. By the time I returned to tell Husband that they were on it, the goose was already set free and Mr. Neighbor was alternately shouting broken English thank yous over the fence and affectionately baby-talking the goose, which I was glad to hear, because after all that bonding time with Lucy I hated to think of her as someone’s dinner. We filled in the hole and blocked it to make sure it wouldn’t happen again, and then I washed my hands and went to bed. The end.

My only regret is that I didn’t think to take pictures.

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So, that appointment we had to keep? Was to finalize the deal on a new (to us) car and put the final nail in the coffin of our transportation woes. It is used (2005), and it’s a Chevy (but at least it’s not another Ford), but it is cute and red and shiny and efficient and when I filled it up yesterday it only cost $22, and it’s the first car I’ve ever bought taken on a large amount of debt to own myself. And here it is, my very own car in my very own driveway.

I feel like such a grown-up.

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I’m a very tired grown-up. Remember last week when I had a sinus infection? But I was better, and ready to get back to work? Well, I tried, but it was Wednesday, a.k.a. Bus day, and my first bus was almost an hour late (again), and it got me to my connection stop too late to catch my connection, and the next bus for that stop wouldn’t be along for another hour, and by the time I managed to catch all of my buses–IF the third bus was running on schedule and I got to it on time–I would be over three hours late for work. By this point, in addition to spending nearly two collective hours sitting on bus stop benches and sucking up traffic fumes, I had also walked about six collective blocks, and I already felt like poo and just wanted to go home. So I did. I called my supervisor, doing my best to hold back tears of tired frustration while I explained things, and she was very understanding, and even offered to come get me and drive me home so I wouldn’t have to ride any more buses that day. I didn’t take her up on it, since it was getting close to time for the return bus to swing back by, but eventually I made it home, where I cried and cried and told Husband that we had to fix the transportation situation, and this is why we now have a shiny red car. So that worked out okay.

I finally made it back to work Thursday. I woke up and felt fine, the best I’d felt all week. I got dressed, played with the puppy, ate breakfast, and headed out to face my day, feeling like it was going to be a very good day. And then, as I pulled into the office parking lot, it hit me. I will spare you the details and suffice to say that I spent almost the entire day in the ladies’ room, with very few, very short breaks, until around 3pm, when I was finally able to shuffle out of the bathroom and ask my supervisor if I could go home, and again, she was very understanding, and again offered to drive me. My supervisor is mostly* awesome, y’all.

Instead of going home, I went to urgent care, where they wanted to send me to the hospital for tests and an IV. I thanked them and went home to pick up Husband and have him take me, but once I got there all I wanted to do was lie down. By this point I was reasonably certain I wasn’t going to die (although earlier in the day I wasn’t so sure), and after last fall the last thing I wanted was yet another trip to the ER and a bunch of expensive tests (we’re still paying for last year’s battery). And since the only reason I went to urgent care was to verify that I wasn’t in danger of dehydrating to death, and whatever-that-was** seemed to have run its course, I chose instead to drink a lot of water, eat some potassium-rich fruits and veggies, and then go to bed and sleep it off. As you can see, I did not die. So that also worked out okay.

*Only mostly, because there was that one time she told the admin department that we were replaceable, so that lost her some awesome points right there. But it was a stressful situation at the time, so I don’t hold it against her too much. Besides, it’s mostly true.

**I don’t think I was food-poisoned again. The night before I’d eaten spaghetti with sauce Husband made using ground turkey that was a couple of days past its expiration date, but it looked and smelled fine, and he ate more of it than I did, and he was fine. Our best guess is that Pete transmitted something vile one of the times he reached up and put his cute but filthy little paws on my mouth, which we have since trained him not to do (we’re still working on surprise-licking us right on our lips, though–we should probably stop holding him so close to our faces). But since I opted out of testing, we’ll never really know.

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Lest you think that I’m done being afflicted for a while, let me tell you about my rash. Don’t worry, I can wrap this one up in one paragraph. I saw my regular doctor, a.k.a. Dr. Awesome, on Tuesday, and she started me on a new med for my sleep disorder. I obediently took the med at bedtime, and woke up yesterday morning with red splotches and spots all over my face and body. It is very unsexy, which is decidedly NOT awesome. It’s still there today, too, despite stopping the med and loading up on antihistamines, but at least it doesn’t itch, and if I’d been told last week that I would get sick with ONE thing and that I could choose, and these three things were my choice, this is definitely the one I would pick. At least I can be spotted and still get some work done. Most of it blends in with my freckles anyway, and from a distance the face rash just looks like I went a bit heavy on the blush. So I can live with it. I just hope I won’t have to for much longer.

I hope the rest of you had a better week.