November 8, 2016 - a bad, bad day

It is the day of the 2016 US election.

It has been a long and ugly time coming. We are counting the hours now.

And my back is really sore.

We pop down to the local Urgent Care GP for a diagnosis. The doc does not win a personality contest. He needs only a curt glance at my back and confirms Bruce’s diagnosis. He prescribes anti-virals and oxycodone. Says if the pain gets too bad, go straight to ER. Could last anything from 10 days to a month. Probably 2 weeks since you had the Zostavax. You can keep travelling. Goodbye.

Bummer.

We drive into Sedona town and wander around. Funny little town full of crystal shops, vortexes, astrologers, psychics, aura readers, etc.

Those mighty red rocks rise all around. They are stupendous. Vivid. Of course they have attracted all those alternative types who think they are magical. One can go on vortex tours. Bruce laughs. He says these people don’t realise that the plural of vortex is not vortexes but vortices. This is how much they know.

Then we discover

Snoopy Rock and everything changes. It looks just like Snoopy up there.

Snoopy vortex.

Bruce drops me at the Chic salon where I have an appointment with one Harmony.

She is a bit on the ditsy side. I am scrolling my phone to show her a photo on my phone of the way I wear my hair. but I never quite finish. She has me in the shampoo chair and is bubbling away about how she does not believes in vortexes but loves all the serious stuff like astrology. I should have left then. But no alarms had gone off. I told her how I had changed to a bob after years of long hair.

I say, It’s grown a bit long now. If you cut it on the natural wave, I don’t have to work at maintaining it… Perfunctory shampoo. More perfunctory condition. Over to the chair and straight into the cut. Snip! Just like that, she has chopped my hair right up at ear level. She sees the shock on my face. Oh, didn’t you want it that short, she says. Er, no. And it has been cut now. I thought you wanted it cut to the ear lobes, she says. Er, no.

She is ever so sorry. I am not that sort of hairdresser, she says. I won’t charge you.

I just want to get out of there.

She hacks away at the rest of my hair and produces an amateur hour haircut of spectacular ugliness.

I can’t even brush it. It is just not me.

Dear old Bruce says he loves it.

Fuck. What a day. First shingles. Now this.

What else could go wrong?

Er, the election?

Well, actually, its the pain meds. The doc has given me oxycodone. It is making me feel ill.

I hole up on the big sofa at the beautiful Adobe Grand Villas. The television is rather small for the huge room.

I have already said my bit about the Trump factor. A lot.

Travelling across this great land, I have watched and counted and talked and found the Trump factor to be riding very high. In glum

ill humour, I have predicted him to win. Bruce thinks I am negative and all the polls say Hillary is ahead. Polls lie, I say. Bruce puts money where his mouth is. We have a huge $1 bet riding on the election.

I would love to have lost.

We sink into deep grief as the counts put Hillary out of play.

We keep watching the awful train wreck of American politics deep into the nightmare night.

I feel sicker than sick. I can barely move.

Next day I do not take the pain meds and rally, by lunchtime going so far as to eat a kiddie cheeseburger at Maccers. Never had anything more delicious.

Here we come, Las Vegas, to drown our sorrows.