Cold shit sammich.

It's been one of those weeks where the life in general shits the bed. I have a raging urinary tract infection, which I'm sure you wanted to know all about, and even more irritating, our ancient furnace died in a blaze of glory that has left our house without heat in Indiana December. And we won't have heat again until Thursday, when an HVAC tech will come and install a new boiler and all the trimmings for the princely sum of $4,000.

Merry Christmas, ya'll.

You'd think they'd knock some sort of discount off after the show the tech caught today when he came over to do an appraisal. I'm just putting on a show left and right these days. I mean really, if you haven't figured it out by now, my life is pretty much one woefully embarrassing situation after another.

I knew we were off to a bad start when I showed the HVAC repairman our boiler, which was corroded beyond recognition and obviously dead, and I could just hear the air suck in through his teeth and before he even opened it up, said, "I'm going to bet this is going to need replaced."

Embarrassed by the sad, pathetic state of my basement (still soggy from the boiler's wet, heat-sucking death) and the obvious state of disrepair of the boiler (apparently you're supposed to service them every year? Go figure.), I went upstairs and left him to do his job. I heard him tinkering around downstairs, so I let Bodhi out of the bedroom, where I'd unceremoniously tossed him to keep him from assaulting the repairman via ear-piercing YIP YIP YIP's and frantic laps around the house. That's when my UTI reminded me of it's pleasant presence, and I had to pee. Punky was down for a nap, Bo was content to lay in the sunshine on the dining room floor (pretty much the only warm spot in the house), repairman was busy seeing what a mess A.'s and my neglect had created, so I went to the bathroom and settled down for an agonizing piss.

I've discovered it's always when you think you're in a position to slow down for a minute, that's when life kicks your ass and catches you bare-assed on Life's toilet. Some cases are more literal than others.

The repairman came upstairs from the basement, setting Bodhi, who didn't know he was here, into a maniacal frenzy. Bo will never work as a guard dog, because when he is confronted with strangers in the house, he runs laps, runs up walls, barking and going crazy. He went into one of his crazy lap races around the house as the repairman rounded the corner of the dining room where there's a clear shot down the hall -- where the bathroom is at the end of the hall -- and Bo's lap took him down the hall.

Bo took a running leap into the bathroom door, which has a crap latch anyway, and the door went flying open. And in a split second that took what felt like eons to process, there I was, sitting bare-assed on the toilet, doubled over in pain and scrunch faced as I was trying to piss out the blades of the UTI, and there was the repairman, with a full, albeit very brief, view of me sitting on the toilet.

Somewhere on our quote there's a $200 credit. I wonder if that was for the ass shot. In which case, it's good to know I've still got it.