I’ve had one of those days. No no, one of those days.
It all started last night, actually. I went out for dinner and the barbecue place I’d decided to visit had a sign on the door: Kitchen is closed, bar is open. It was 8:30.
Dubious of the sign, I asked a woman working there if, in fact, there had been some closing event, perhaps an astronomic singularity or perhaps a sous-chef flu or maybe even a health department shutdown that had taken place.
Yes, they were closed. But for none of those reasons. It was raining, she said. (I can verify this.) And they let the kitchen staff go. They’d given up the idea of making any money, apparently.
OK then. My money is good elsewhere.
Oh, but … oh.
So I drive back over the mountain and go to Chili’s, where Destiny’s Child In 30 Years is waiting to be sat. Finally someone comes to help them. The hostess walks them to the right side of the store, and this is found lacking. She walks them to the left side of the store, and that is not desirable. She brings them back to the middle and then they decide to reverse course and go back to the left. By now people that came in after me have given up and wished me luck.
After some time the hostess comes by and says she’ll be right with me. In about five minutes. I can see four tables with people. Everything else is dirty.
So I leave there. And find myself at Outback, where I enjoy an altogether delicious albeit overpriced sandwich. But when everyone else is rolling up the sidewalks before 8:30 Outback can control the market.
So that just carried over into today. I’m still not feeling very well. The throat thing is getting more pronounced. As the day wore on I began to feel that body ache and fatigue: white blood cells have been summoned. Now I’m just hoping this is merely a sinus attack. I don’t care for them, but I can deal with them.
Then I saw this story and — look, I’ve covered a lot of terrible stories and I’ve read even more of them so it takes a lot to get me worked up but — this is ridiculous:
A Prattville mother of young, twin boys who received several broken bones before they were 1 year old, has been granted youth offender status in her pending child abuse case.
[…]
When the boys were 1 year and 1 week old, Jabril was taken to Children’s Hospital in Birmingham to receive treatment for a broken arm, testimony showed.
Doctors then discovered that Jabril had at least seven fractures, some in various stages of mending. Jacob also was examined and it was found out that he had at least two fractures, also in different stages of mending, according to testimony.
Here is a woman who is married with two kids. Dad is doing 20 years for this. She could get just three now. I don’t know much about parenting. I probably know a bit less about criminal law. I often find that my concepts of sentencing vary, both directions, from judicial guidelines for reasons beyond my understanding. But I propose a simple, new rule: If you have children you forfeit youthful offender status.
That’s not too much to ask.
So, yeah, I’m not my normally chipper self today, and I apologize. But I’ll make it up to both of us with the most ridiculous video on the ‘Net, courtesy of my fellow ridiculous Web finder and Auburn grad, Victoria Cumbow:
Tomorrow, I promise, I’ll be in better spirits, despite 32 percent more coughing.
