My Weekend or Lesson Learned: Never Touch a Pussy Unless You Know Where It Has Been

The weekend started out swimmingly.

Paul and I met with Nicole and one of her friends for a quick dinner and drinks at Malibooz before the Dropkick Murphys show. Although they did not have the bite sized pierogies in old bay seasoning, the crab fries and pints of Magic Hat Circus Boy were fantastic.

We headed to the Silo, a nearby club, which was already packed. We paced around the upstairs before heading back downstairs and settling on a spot near the soundboard. There were two opening bands, whose names now escape me. One was of the typical punk variety. The other was reggae. Nicole and I had a discussion on the intermingling of punk and reggae between acts. Then the Dropkick Murphys came on.

They rocked. It was very hot. Sometime around their rendition of "No Nay Never" we moved back by the merchandise table. I bought a shirt from an angry guy working the table (Free advice, dude: If you hate your job that fucking much, quit!) and ended up exchanging it twice because the size never seemed right. I was obsessing and fixing during this whole thing and wasn't able to fully enjoy "Kiss Me I'm Shitfaced," most of the reason why I was there to begin with.

I remained fairly sober that night. The next day, I was to meet up with my sisters and my brother in law for a hot air balloon ride. I was afraid of getting sick, so I took it easy. So, in a turn of events, Paul got very drunk for a change.

We got home. The shirt didn't fit. I went to bed angry.

Three hours later, I woke up to get ready for the balloon ride. My stomach was a little queasy, but I was really excited about the ride. I pushed through. I grabbed a granola bar and a bottle of water and headed out the door. I rocked out to some excellent songs on the radio (Who knew that the radio was that good at 4:30 am? The last time I listened to the radio at that hour was when Steve What's His Face worked at the Pottsville station and played something like 26 or 27 U2 songs during his four hour shift). I was in good spirits.

I followed my sister's vague instructions on where to meet on LCCC's campus, but couldn't figure out exactly where I was supposed to go because I was the first one there. I drove around until I found my sister and followed her, to where we were supposed to meet, dodging herds of deer on LCCC's campus, talking to maintenance men. Finally, we sat and waited, figuring that we could just let the balloon people find us. My sisters joked (ok, maybe not, but I'm going to tell myself they were joking) about being afraid of being with me up in the balloon. After telling us stories of how she traumatized her daughter, Lori convinced me to put my medical card in my pocket, just in case.

The balloon people showed up, set up and we all jammed in. We were hoping for a sunrise sail, but due to clouds, this was not as striking as it could have been. However, the clouds made it no less beautiful and being up in the air over 15,000 feet was breathtaking.

We came down lower and cruised over trees and houses. Bart, our pilot from Air Escapes Ballooning warned us to watch what we say because the balloon serves as a gigantic amphitheater and the people on the ground would be able to hear us. As we flew above a dumpy looking house, a lady with curlers in her hair came out and snapped our picture. "What a beautiful sight!" she yelled to us.

"Wish we could say the same," Bart said. So much for watching your mouth. Overall, Bart and the rest of the staff, including his wife Toni were extremely nice and funny. They really made the trip extremely enjoyable.

My sister Lori looked down at the outside of the basket and mentioned that it looked a like it had a few rough spots. This was not the time or place to bring this up. We landed and hand to help drag the balloon down. Lori just followed along. "I didn't pay to do manual labor," she said later. That's our girl.

As they packed up the balloon, Toni set up a table and gave Karen a cake for her birthday. She brought out a cooler with a bottle of champagne and realized that she didn't bring any orange juice. My sisters and I convinced her that that was quite all right and mimosas were for sissies. We drank the champagne straight up with our cake at the ripe ol' hour of seven AM.

As the chase vehicle drove us back to the take off site, we joked about cats, Chinese food and astrology. I had a nice, warm fuzzy feeling. I would highly recommend ballooning with this company to anyone who is interested. This was one of the best days ever and it wasn't even eight AM.

Or so I thought.

We said our good-byes to the nice ballooning people. As I exited the campus and turned onto the highway, I saw a kitten in the middle of the road, limping on only two or three of its legs. I stopped in the middle of the road, clearly unable to move. It was at this moment that I decided to have a conscience. I couldn't just let the poor thing get hit by a car. My vet wasn't too far away. I thought maybe I could get it into the car and take it to them.

I pulled my car over and approached the kitten. At first it tried to run, but made it only to the other side of the road. I watched in horror as it was almost hit by a bus. When the road was clear, I went to it again and picked it up. It bit me, hard. I screamed "Fucking thing!" and dropped it. It ran a little more. I was bleeding and started to freak a little. I ran to my car and rinsed my hand with my water bottle.

I called Paul and asked him to call the doctor. They couldn't take me and suggested I visit the ER. As I pulled off, I could still see traffic trying to avoid the kitten, which was now going into convulsions in the middle of the road.

I actually debated going to the emergency room while I stopped off and picked up breakfast for Paul. Was it really worth the pain in the ass? They'd probably have to treat me for rabies and really what are the odds that the cat had rabies? Paul read the symptoms of rabies to me: Irritability (how would we know?), fever, blindness, coma, death. I guess it was a pretty big risk. So I sought wise advice from my dad. He freaked, especially because of the kitten's convulsions and told me to go to the hospital right away. My sister Karen also called after speaking with him and suggested going to my doctor. They'd probably just prescribe and antibiotic. No big deal.

Of course, I was already driving to the ER by the time she said that. I wandered in, told everyone how ridiculous I felt being there for a silly cat bite, but was assured that I was better safe than sorry. I checked in, answered a bunch of questions and sat in a hospital room for about an hour watching E! News when the nurse practitioner told me that they would be giving me rabies shots. Great. And since my last tetanus shot was in 1994, I better get one of those, too. Extra great.

What he didn't mention was that the rabies series would consist of four shots in the ass. Owie! I started bleeding after one of them. The nurse cleaned my blood off the floor using a Clorox wipe and no rubber gloves. Then I had one in the arm in addition to the tetanus shot. I was told that my arm would be sore from the tetanus shot, but nothing felt worse than my ass. I couldn't sit. I ended up sleeping for most of the weekend. All other plans were cancelled.

And I will have to go back for four additional shots in the arm. One of which is tomorrow. I better get to bed. This sucks