Red fingered step child, the smell, where the f is my wallet

So on Tuesday night I had managed to get fire ants on my sneakers in the few seconds it took to grab the trash bins.  It took them awhile to make their way to my shins, I didn’t feel the bites until I was inside.  I looked down and saw a number of them crawling on my sneakers.  I quickly go out in the garage, rip off my sneakers, and start beating them together furiously, swearing loudly with each impact for emphasis.

Well about 15 minutes after that I noticed my right ring finger looking swollen.  It wasn’t painful but the swelling  made the finger stiff.  I dismissed at as odd and carried on.

Well yesterday I looked down at my finger and realized it was now discolored, a reddish pink that stood out like a sore thumb.  It still didn’t hurt and only felt slightly swollen.

I posted the pic to FB and got all sorts of opinions, mostly bad.  This also just happens to be the finger that I cut badly last week.  If it was an infection I would have other symptoms and the discoloration would spread beyond the finger.  It still is just confined to that digit.  My noneducated  guess is when I was banging the sneakers I managed to sprain/damage something in that finger which is causing the discoloration. Of course I will keep an eye on things but if nothing changes I will just expect it to fade away.

So I had Cindy’s Miata at the house because of the iffy brakes.  Last night I planned to pull a wheel to take a closer look at the brake pads.  I pulled down my floor jack and quad lug wrench to the car to accomplish the task.  There was one problem, my lug wrench didn’t fit.   The custom wheels on the Miata had very minimal clearance around the lug nuts but that wasn’t the biggest problem.  Upon closer inspection I saw the lugs were the splined variety, requiring a special adapter to remove.

Ok no problem, surely the prior owners included the adapter with the car.  I looked in the console, the glovebox and the trunk, three times, looking for anything looking like an adapter.  Nothing was found.  Fck…  I texted Cindy and asked her is she recalled ever seeing anything like a lug adapter in the Miata, nope…..

Great. So I decided I would head to AutoZone to see if they sold the adapters for this style of lug nut.  I took the Miata there so I would have a visual reference handy.  There was good news and there was bad news.   They did indeed have the adapter I needed to remove the lugs. Unfortunately the only way I was able to get my hands on it was to buy a complete new set of splined lug nuts. Argh.

I had done a visual inspection of the brake pads, the best I could, at home with the wheel still on.  The back pads looked good but the front pads appeared to be thin.  I picked up a pair of front pads along with some Brake Klean for the job.  I returned home confident I had the stuff I needed to complete the job, hopefully tonight after work.

When I got home and opened the garage I immediately was hit with stench, the same stench I had smelled for a few days.  I assumed there was something in the trash that was stinking although I had no idea what that would have been.  Well as my nose was getting stuffed with the foul odor I just happened to look down at the corner where the garage door is seated.  There I saw a flat toad that was in the process of being taken apart by fire ants.

I recognized this toad, it was the same one I scared out of the garage several days ago.  He was a rather large toad probably the size of a racquetball. Evidently he ignored my verbal warning I gave him as I shoo’d him away and returned.  The idea of him getting inadvertently squashed by the garage door made me sad and guilty.  However I had to get his carcass and the associated smell out of there.

I grabbed my wonder bar to pry the pancaked carcass off the floor.  As I did, maggots started to spill out from the inside, it was f’ing disgusting.  I quickly flipped the poor toad into the middle of the yard like a sand trap chip shot.  I then sprayed the spot on the floor where it was with WD-40 to discourage ants from scouring the area for crumbs.

Unfortunately during my 12 years out at the house I have probably been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of frogs/toads inadvertently.  It’s a sad reality of living on the edge of the Everglades.

So this morning I was running behind schedule thanks to playing a couple games of Hearthstone before getting ready.  I grabbed my stuff and headed out the door and into the Miata.  As I put my stuff in the passenger seat I felt my pant pockets as I normally do, feeling for two things, my phone and my wallet.  Phone, check, wallet, wallet, wallet? I did not have my wallet.  Oh silly me, I must have left it inside.

So I head back inside, say hi again to Tuki and look at the spots where my wallet would reside.  All these spots came up empty.  Hmmm, that is odd.  So I did a quick retrace of when I had my wallet last.  I paid for the stuff at Autozone and then headed home.  Autozone is the last conscious use of my wallet I could recall.  Maybe I left it in the Miata?

So I head back out to the Miata and rip it apart, looking everywhere for my wallet, under, beside the seats, in the console, glovebox and even the trunk even though the only way it would have gotten in there was via magic trick.  No wallet.

So now I am entering freak out mode.  I start thinking about what a monumental pain in the ass it was going to be if I actually lost my wallet.  I went back in the house one more time.  SURELY I just wasnt seeing it.  I look everywhere, even places that made no sense for my wallet like the bathroom, nothing.

Ok my last hope was that it somehow fell out at Autozone in the parking lot.  Perhaps my wallet was still lying there or a good Samaritan turned it in to the store.  I hauled ass the best I could in the Miata, cursing out the school buses that were clogging the traffic along the way.  I pull in the lot and park in the exact same spot as last night, no wallet was there.  I walk inside and ask the manager if a wallet was turned in last night.  He checked the safe.  He had a wallet! It wasn’t mine. DAMN IT!

So I walked back out to the lot despondent, thinking about just how in the world I was going to replace everything that was in my wallet.  I literally have dozens of id’s and cards in there along with cash and credit card receipts.  I was so desperate I even dug through the Autozone trash cans, thinking maybe someone cleaned out the cash but tossed the wallet. Nope, only trash was found. For the THIRD time I reexamined the Miata, thinking perhaps somehow I missed it.  I moved both seats forward and felt around for anything resembling leather, nothing…..

I even opened up my lunch box, wondering if perhaps I shoved it in there for some reason. Nothing but food looked back at me.  I then unzipped my gym bag just because it was the only other thing I hadn’t checked.  There, nestled in my t-shirt was my wallet!  Relief flowed over my body like 6 foot wave.  What was moments before going to be an awfully dreary and frustrating day suddenly transformed into bright blue skies with rainbows everywhere.

I have no idea why I would have dropped my wallet in my gym bag last night.  I am just beyond thankful that I found it before I started the credit card cancellation parade.