I should have known something was up on the last day of Spring. I sat in my cab at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday, thinking I would cruise around Albuquerque one more day before performing opening night at a short play festival that night. The call came up for a ride from Socorro, New Mexico (about an hour south of Albuquerque). I knew there were enough rides in town to make as much as I would from that ride, but after no one would pick up the call for five minutes, I decided to do the little road trip to start the day.

As it turned out, this call would keep me all day for a grand total of twelve hours. I brought her to town and waited for her at a doctor's office, waited for her at water therapy, drove her to Belen & waited for her at another doctor's office until I told her I had to take her home because I was going into overtime with this ride. About six hours of driving & six hours of waiting time in 95 degree heat. It beat the old record of a ten-hour ride from Roswell, and I was a little loopy going into opening night of the play.

Fortunately, my involvement with the play festival consisted of an experimental ten minute piece where played Man. Go figure. I had a minute monologue and a minute of singing an off-key punked out version of "Hush Little Baby." At best, people said they liked my moments but didn't understand the play at all. Even I would whisper to audience members after it was over "So what was this play about?" Pretty much being experimental, that's what it was about. I would perform the play five times in four days (actually the last two will come today after I write this).

On Friday morning, I woke up with a headache, which I assumed came from drinking a few beers the night before and having no coffee in the morning. I wanted to hydrate after my heated cab days, but the headache would not go away. I took three naps, and it would not go away. I broke down and drank an old Mountain Dew that had been in the house for a year (in case of emergency). I got it to subside a little by the time I performed that night, but the moment I started rocking out to "Hush Little Baby," it returned again with a vengeance. People continued to not get the play, and my head hurt.

As I sat in the green room unwinding from the show, the artistic director came up to me and asked if I had a cell phone. I said no. He handed me his phone and said call your girlfriend. It turned out that the plumbing at our place had backed up into the tub after washing baby clothes in the washer, and she then flushed the toilet which overflowed. The bathroom was flooding.

I told her how to turn off the toilet with the valve in back and made my way home. After ten minutes of calming down my pregnant girlfriend (No, you cannot go to Wal-mart to pee. Use our toilet & don't flush.), I dumped a bunch of Drano-esque stuff with Lye into the tub and told her we would wait & see what would happen overnight. Welcome to the Summer Solstice.

On Saturday morning, we had Baby Basics class at 10 a.m. I drank some coffee and poured hot water into the tub. It backed up. Damn. Well, time for class. We'll deal with it when we get back.

Baby class was actually calming. We did a quick practice of changing & swaddling our fake babies, learned to burp, and most importantly, discovered what the different cries babies make & what they mean (i.e. "Neh" means I'm hungry & "Owh" means I'm tired). We used the public facilities to their fullest, ate lunch at The 66 Diner where my girlfriend used to work (and it seemed like everyone knew at least one of us), got more Drano and came home to the stopped-up tub.

My girlfriend remembered that her dad used to stick a garden hose in the toilet and tub when they backed up, and it made sense to me. The hose barely fit into the tub from outside, and we blasted the toilet and tub. By the fourth try, we blasted whatever was in there through. Hooray! Amateur plumbing at its finest.

As a reward, I watched Russia upset The Netherlands in Euro 2008 and passed out. My headache was now just a minor discomfort. I started to think those heated days in the cab affected me more than I realized. Then dinner with my brother at the Irish pub Two Fools and off to the theatre. I was more relaxed with my monologue than ever before, and people still didn't understand the play. I like that sort of consistency.

I hung out at the theatre until about midnight and began driving home when my car died going up Lomas from downtown. I checked the fluids (all good), it would start then die, but everything look okay under the hood. I didn't have a lot of gas, but it said I had some. So I jogged down to the 24-hour Circle K and called my girlfriend to come get me. I then realized the last time this almost happened was when my gas gage said I had a little gas, but I really needed to fill up. I bought a gas can and six bucks of gas. My girlfriend picked me up and we went back to my car.

A cop was already there with his lights on and had ordered a tow truck. My brother complains regularly that we live in a police state in Albuquerque, and I was gone from my car for only twenty-five minutes. Sure enough, the police were ready to pounce. Once I showed him the gas can, poured in the contents, and the car jumped back to life, he cancelled the tow truck, shook my hand and went on to his next task of finding cars at the side of road. I went to a gas station, put thirty bucks of gas in and was home around one in the morning, where my girlfriend and I laughed about the adventures of the last few days.

You could take many lessons away from this, but in the end, I know it's really just one overarching thing. The seasons are changing. What was Spring is now Summer. The art can be confusing, babies can cry for different reasons, work can be dehydrating, the toilet can overflow and the car can pass out. Here comes Summer, folks. Ready or not.

Chris Jungle was a summer baby and turns 34 on Saturday.