Everything Done Brook

When I was an EMT, I once noticed a request-for-repair form filled out by a pre-literate co-worker of mine. Apparently, his ambulance was in less-than-praiseworthy shape. While my vehicle repair forms were unusually descriptive pieces of prose that were often three handwritten pages long, this request was right to the point.

"Truck done brook. Breaks brook. Need break."

Don't we all?

I was reminded of this quaint little document yesterday as I started tallying up things in our new home that were "brook." Our oven and our computer monitor immediately leapt to mind. Our dog.

The oven is an unpredictable little biatch. You try to bake cupcakes in it at 350 degrees and, four minutes later, it's smoking like Morton Downey, Jr's stoma. You open the oven door and the thermometer inside reads 500. Wha-wha?! Now, instead of cupcakes, you have moon rocks. Remember to politely decline when we invite you over for dessert.

The computer monitor done brook this morning, y'alls. We like to check email after our morning lavatory rituals are completed, because we're so 21st century with our blogs and our hair and shit. I don't know who we think is emailing us at 4:10 in the morning, but every now and then, some idiot does, which just reinforces our behavior.

"Did we have a power outage last night do you think?" Mrs. Apron called to me from the "office."

"No," I said. Then I thought about it and, because I was still asleep I answered, "Yeah. Probably. It was windy last night."

Yeah? Then why did the alarm go off at the right time this morning, sleepynuts?

I stumbled into the office and the CPU lit up correctly, but the monitor's screen stayed black, and the power light was yellow, not green. I guess yellow is the color dead electronic things turn, unlike dead human things which turn... other colors.

This monitor is an old butt-style monitor of indeterminate age. It had been flickering for months, which was apparently its way of writing out its will. I had asked my wife if we could buy a flatscreen monitor and ditch this piece of shit before our move, but she was not into that idea and, after several dozen requests/nags, I relented. This morning, as the carcass of the late butt-style monitor sat inert between us, we looked at each other.

"I know you've wanted a flatscreen for a long time," she said to me, as if to accuse me of poisoning, starving or otherwise hastening the demise of the butt monitor.

"I swear, I had nothing to do with it!" I said, the precise way all guilty people say it on TV.

"But I want to check my email and my nose is stuffy and I'm hungry," opined my bereaved wife. Yes, her expression may sound plaintive and slightly immature (we're all that way sometimes, especially first thing in the morning) what it really said to me was, "I'm tired of things breaking."

Unfortunately, though, that is what things do. Though not really a thing, our dog is broken, too, at the moment, with a double ear infection. Of course, fixing him is no cheaper than fixing the oven, or the computer monitor, but it's decidedly more important. I tried to save a little money on this front by calling the vet's and asking them to write me a prescription for Mal-Otic, the same goopity goodness I've used on his ear infections for the last six years. They refused, citing the fact that Finley required a doctor's visit and that their records indicated that I was overdue for a wallet-cleaning. But that's the way it is when things done brook.

Sometimes, though, you just need break.

(P.S. This just in-- according to Mrs. Apron, there's another gas leak. Yay! Pipes done brook! Just add it to the motherfuckin' list!)

(P.P.S. Gas leak = false alarm. New 22" flat-screen monitor [open-box special] = awesome)