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Not wanting to contribute to Ms. Morrissey's demise, one opts to visit Store #3 where, of course, the photo printer has no paper. Murphy's nowhere to be found to refill it, and no one else in the store knows how.

Now, at this point, one should just cut her loses and go for a nice cup of coffee, as it's too late for one to make it to the post office before the deadline to mail one's card to one's cousin. But one is stubborn to the point of psychosis, so one visits Store #4. There, one learns that, as one has drug one's sorry, sweaty carcass hither and yon only to be faced with the failings of both man and machine, one has been doing so with a flawed floppy disc, which doesn't contain the photo one wished to print.

Murphy, in cooperation with Ms. Morrissey, probably deleted the photo with the blackness of their souls.

Oh! But that's not all! Murphy had a big day, he did. Because when one finally staggers home, stinking of 95-degree heat and the bitter stench of failure, one finds one's husband fluttering about it a right tiz. It seems that one's air conditioning unit, at promptly 5:05 PM on Friday afternoon, opted to go tits-up in cardiac air conditioning unit death.

At this point, one once again displays one's inability to function more than 23 minutes in a crisis, and one promptly loses one's shit for what surely must be the 984th time this summer.

Okay, I'll stop with the third-person bullshit. It seemed like it might temper my incessant whining about suffering from mild discomfort and minor inconveniences. Suffice it to say, that was my Friday afternoon, and I was none too happy about it.

You'd think Murphy would stop there, but no. We did have a bit of luck in that one of our neighbors used to work as maintenance dude for an apartment complex. He took a gander at our croaking, gasping beast, diagnosed the problem, and told B. how to fix it. Of course, this was about two hours after the one place that sells the part he needed had closed for the day. We splayed ourselves out for a very sticky, very warm night.

Let me veer off-topic for one moment here. I refuse to bitch about the heat, because everyone is dealing with the heat. A lot of people are dealing with far worse situations than mine. However, it figures that the year my locale goes through bone-roastingly miserable heat, I would have done two things: 1) cut my hair into bangs that I can't pull off my face, thus creating a lovely sheet of permanently sweat-slicked fur on my forehead, and 2) gone on one drug that causes excessive sweating and another drug that bears a warning label that reads, "If you get hot, you might die." On the plus side, I'm enjoying lots of woozy headrushes, and people don't invade my personal space anymore.

Speaking of my drugs ... The one that makes me sweaty also makes me anxious, nervous, and gives me insomnia - conditions that I'm perfectly capable of attaining all by myself without chemical intervention. The heat-death drug counteracts these efffects. I take the hyper-pills in the morning, and the heat-death ones at bedtime.

Well, except for last night, when I was so exhausted from running in batshit circles all day while basting in my own juices that I accidentally took the up-all-night pill at bedtime.

I didn't realize my error right away. At first, bed felt so good. There was a bit of a breeze coming in, and the fan was doing its thing. Besides, I was so exhausted that I gladly would have slept on a hot engine block if it wouldn't mean certain death. It was only after lying in bed for a few minutes and thinking, "My God! I feel great! I think I'll go paint the kitchen! Or go fix the air conditioner all by myself!" that I realized the pill I had taken was white. Whitey wired, orangey passed outedey.

Clara Jane empathized by waking up very unhappy several times during the night.

Long, annoying story concluded: B. successfully repaired the air conditioner this afternoon, and the temperature in our house is finally lower than the temperature outside.

And since I've invoked her name so many times, here's a Murphy story for you. This Murphy:

Murphy has an injured tail. We don't know what's wrong with it, as she won't let us come near it. I was able to get a glance at it while she napped - no easy feat since she sleeps with her eyes open - and a portion of her tail has a great deal of hair removed and looks somewhat raw. Now, this missing hair is directly on one of her black spots, and I'm not convinced that she's got the brain power to know that you're not supposed to chew off your spots, Nimrod. Chloe the Basset keeps trying to investigate, but everytime she does, Murphy growls, which in Chloe's world means, "Play with me!". Chloe attempts to play while Murphy runs away, tail askew and fear-shedding.

Occasionally, she tries to outrun the tail. Murphy, if we could outrun pain, every single creature on this planet would be in prime marathon condition.

Today I broke the news to Murphy that, if she doesn't stop trying to eat her own tail, we'll have to send her to live with my grandparents, Viv and Chuck. You see, Viv and Chuck don't cotton to animals with fancy "tails". No sir. You won't find a single tailed beast in their company. Granted, their cat Bobbi showed up tail-free. But their other cat, Elmer, had to have his tail amputated.

Do you want to keep your tail, Murphy? Or do you want to move in with Viv and Chuck, surrendering your appendage at the door? If you prefer the former over the latter, I'd suggest you hold still and let me see what the hell you've done to yourself. Nimrod.

And that's been my weekend.