My mom was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. She's going in for
her second surgery today; the first surgery exhumed the malignant tumor,
this surgery will get rid of cancerous tissue and lymph nodes. If I haven't
mentioned this before now (and I know that I haven't) it's because I'm
pretending-- we're
all pretending (my mother included, as she didn't even
tell me about the second surgery until two days ago)-- that everything is
fine. I
can't talk about it, so I
don't talk about it. I'm shaking right now
as I type this, and I'm at work, so I need to finish before I completely freak out. I
only bring it up now, really, to give you a heads up that posting could
potentially be even more sporadic than it's been over the last week, and
that the Jumping Jake pictures (while fabulous) are really more in my
peripheral vision right now. I'll get to them, I swear, but I just
can't concentrate on them. Nothing's very funny right now.
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For Real.
2:42 am.
[quiet.]
[quiet.]
[The Jake shrieks.]
R: "I'm sorry, Jake! I'm sorry, Buddy! Did I step on you? I'm so sorry! I
didn't even see you! Why are you in the hall?"
[The Jake goes back to sleep. Because he's The Jake. The Jake cannot be
killed by conventional means.]
ME: "You need to SHUFFLE YOUR FEET. Like you're looking for stingrays!"
R: "Shit, why's he in the hall? He's always in the bathroom. Why'd you close
the door to the bathroom?"
ME: "He wouldn't quit licking the wall."
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If you think it was hard for me to convince my boss that I was seriously calling in sick today because of a bleeding-out-my-ears, dry-heaving, vampire migraine, imagine the difficulty I face tomorrow when I try to explain that my lip is split, swollen and bleeding because my dog jumped up and slammed his stupid skull into my face.
For what it's worth, R has offered to call and tell my coworkers himself that he didn't backhand me. In exchange for getting to tell all our friends that he
did. I think that's fair.
Watch: five gets you fifty that I find a way to break my nose or get a cauliflower ear between now and seven tomorrow morning.
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Stock Options? I've Got Your Stock Options...
I was standing in my cube today, reaching up into a cabinet for a binder, surrounded on all (albeit invisible) sides with fellow cubers, when, lo and behold, I sneezed and farted at the same time. Loudly. And all I got was the standard, estrogen barbershop quartet "bless you". The humanity is THICK, my friends.
Made me wish I hadn't tripped that pregnant girl earlier.
Keep sending in the Paint renditions. You guys rule.
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Ode To The Jake
or
Taking "Dumbass" To A Whole New Level
I want to preface this by saying that I'm not an animal person, not particularly. My allergy to cats is of a mythical power, something that only those who are allergic to bees or penicillin (like both of my genetically defunct parents, thanks) or anyone else who has ever had to mutely wave a clutched medical ID bracelet in front of a paramedic can appreciate. And I'm not much of a dog person, probably because of
this. I like dogs, okay, I do, but I don't call them "kids" and have them over for "play dates" or scramble eggs for them or anything. You should know, in all fairness, that I'm having to type this with one hand so I can pet The Ears of The Jake. What I'm saying is that I'm a big liar. I scramble eggs for Jake and his friends all the time, except for that one kid who likes his hard boiled.
And I think we all know that
The Jake Loves Him Some Chicken Insides.
Anyway. Jake's a good dog, if soft dogs who lick a lot and groan when they lie down and sigh and pout and pirate socks are "good". He's The Jakiest of all The Jakes, and he's particularly Jakey in Mexico, where he prances and frolics and refuses to swim like only The Jake can. This is winding to a point, I swear to Christ.
The place in Mexico is a charming four-story walk up. Jake takes the stairs like a champ, meaning that he stops and lunges and pulls my arm off at every single landing. This is going up. If he's that excited to get
inside, you can only imagine how stoked he is to get down where all the dead fish are.
So Saturday morning, almost 6:00, and it's me and R and The Jake and two of us are sleeping but one of us has his head mashed on the top of the mattress and he's
this close to shitting himself, partly because he knows we're at the beach (the place with all the carcasses) and partly because he just likes to shit himself. R either coyly pretends to be sleeping or actually IS still sleeping because he's so completely insensitive that he doesn't have to fake it. Either way. I get up, grab the leash, and try to unlock the door through all the jumping, scrabbling paws.
Now, should I have stopped and hooked the leash up? Oh. Absolutely. Did I? Oh. Nuh-uh. Why? The Jake
pulls. And who's he going to bother in the open-air hallway, right? If there are any unprotected toddlers smeared with butter and Doritos downstairs, I figure I'll strap him in there. So Jake takes off down the hall, and I'm sort of trudging after him, and he rounds a bend, and I follow, and he rounds another bend, and I follow, and then there's the end of the hall and the staircase is on the left and the giant window is dead-ahead and I watch, ten paces back, as my eight-month old The Jake leaps cleanly out of the window on the fourth floor of the complex without missing a stride.
I stand where I am for a beat, and I'm thinking too many things. First, I'm thinking that this CLEARLY DID NOT JUST HAPPEN. My dog did most certainly
not just take a forty foot jump out a window. I'm also thinking that, given that it did in fact
occur, there's no way that he's coming away from this with anything but critical injuries. I imagine the groundfloor schematic, and I know it's comprised of a chain link fence, a concrete seawall, two square feet of grass, a brick sidewalk and a concrete sewer cover.
The landing was a second later and audible. Jake screamed, and I screamed, and I attacked the staircase. All the way down I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to move The Delicate Jake Who Still Weighs Fifty Pounds Even Though He's All Broken by myself, and where in the shit I can TAKE him. It's almost six in the morning. On a Saturday. IN ROCKY POINT. I can either get him drunk or get his hair braided. I'm not sure I can get him x-rayed.
So I bolt out onto the ground floor and Jake is huddled on the grass-- ON THE GRASS--on all fours, but
crouched. He's not moving and he's curled up on his legs. I run to him, crying and sobbing, and I hug him and kiss his little face and cry some more because my dog is dying and there's nothing in the world I can do about it because I'm a shitty person who didn't leash my dog and he jumped out a window.
The Jake looks at me in the eye, and it's still the same look, only it's more "DID YOU SEE ME JUST JUMP OUT THAT WINDOW?" than usual, which I take as a
great sign since I had decided that the eyes still being in the
head would be a
good sign. I wipe my nose and I shakily tell The Jake to "wait", and I start backing away from him. Where am I going, you ask? To blindly throw shells at the fourth floor until I randomly hit our unit's patio? Where said shell will skitter softly to a halt and fall into a shell coma, totally NOT waking up R because it's not a ten-pound boulder and I'm me?
No. Shut up. And it doesn't come to that, because once I get about twenty paces away, The Jake cocks his head and takes tentative steps toward me. Which is the most positive sign yet, not because he's able to move, but more because The Jake has never "waited" more than three seconds in his whole Jake life. This is normal behavior. He walks and then wags and then PEES. I'm in shock. I take advantage of what has to be the calm before the internal hemorrhage storm, hook his leash (fool me once) and take THE ELEVATOR back upstairs.
The crying begins again once I get within sight of our unit. I'm out of control. R thinks I've been stabbed.
"Jake just jumped out the window."
"What?"
"ON THIS FLOOR."
He looks at me and I look at him and we both look a the dog (who's staring at both of us like we're big pussies) and then we sort of laugh. Because, you know, with the dog right there and ALIVE and everything, it is pretty fucking funny.
We spent the next thirty hours watching The Jake for any signs of forty-feet fall behavior. Without finding much. Every so often I'd look at Jake pouncing into the ocean, half a crab in his mouth, and I'd say to R, "he really should have broken his legs. Like, all of them." And R would reply, "He should be dead." Or I'd see him guzzling down the Iams and I'd remark, "Wow, all of his teeth should have been pulverized. His jaw should have shattered." And R would say, "He should be dead." Or he'd be sleeping curled on his side on the tile and I'd look at R and say, "All of his ribs should have been crushed. I look at that window and I look at the ground and his
ribs should be
fucked." And R would turn the TV up and say, "Jesus, Estella, he's a DEMON, okay? He's the goddamned devil. He should be DEAD.
DEAD WITH NO RIBS
OR TEETH
OR LEGS." That answer makes more sense than LUCKY.
In conclusion, The Jake is fundamentally fine. He's the antichrist. He has had some issues which I've dealt with medically, but I'll spare you the gory details until you Microsoft Paint me your rendition of The Jake jumping out the fourth floor of the condo complex. Jumping, landing, after... whatever. Paint it. Make it a reasonable size. Save it as a GIF. Send it to me.
I'm tired now. And I feel like a bad person. A bad person who can't believe that she forgot her fucking camera.
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I Wrote This Whole Thing Before I Realized That I'm The Hulk.
1) If you can believe it, I did, actually, have to cut myself out of my own tank top today. With my left hand.
So dangerous, by the way, even if you take away all of the embarrassed wincing and distracting muttering I was doing. I bet millions of people die that way every day... just face down on the bedroom floor, one arm tucked into a skintight fabric sling like a stroke victim, scissors sticking out of the chest cavity. There should be a hotline. And you call and go, "I... (laugh)... I really don't know what's happened here. I got
in okay..." and the guy would nod understandably (you couldn't see that, but he would, he would nod, it's in the training) and he'd go, "... but you're missing an arm hole now, aren't you?" and you'd scream, "YEAH!" and then you'd wince because two ribs cracked. No screaming for you, Pinchy.
2) The Jake and I are going to the beach this weekend so I can clear my head with shrimp tacos and limey beer and The Jake can keep not bringing back the tennis ball I keep throwing. I'm pretty excited about it. And I KNOW The Jake's excited: he's been practicing not bringing shit back all week.
3) I think I have a bladder infection. This would have potentially been brought on by the fact that the pants I wore yesterday were SO UNBELIEVABLY TIGHT IN THE CROTCH that it was the genital equivalent of suffocating an old woman with a pillow. All day I kept picturing my vagina all panicky and mash-faced, screaming a muffled, "nooooooooo...". I don't know if that can actually LEAD to a bladder infection, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't lead to anything vaginally positive. So I've been drinking Mike's Hard Cranberry Lemonade for like an hour now and I don't feel better at all. Lying homeopathic bastards.
See you Monday.
Oh. The Links page is down because I fucked it up and didn't have enough energy to fix it. I'll fix it when I get back. I need to figure out a way to put the links into categories. Or maybe put some on the main page and others on the links page... something. I just changed the logo on my header picture like three weeks ago... I can't be expected to do anything else constructive for awhile.
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There's A GIANT Woman Outside Being Pulled In A Chariot By A Shetland Pony And She's Screaming, "ARRRRREEEEEEEEBA!" Over And Over Again. Surprisingly Enough, This Is Not The Highlight Of My Day
or
I'll Finish This Later. But If I'd Somehow Forgotten To Document That Chick I Never Would Have Fucking Forgiven Myself.
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Yes, the Chicken Dragon post DID, in fact, buy me a whole week off. So shake loose of my invisible sack.
1) I'm the loudest bitch in the WORLD at my office. Think about your office for a second... you know that
one bitch whose cell phone keeps ringing that fucking polyphonic "Pachelbel Canon" bullshit at like
3,000 decibels and she
never fucking answers it, and she calls everyone "Hon" and keeps putting this "get well soon" card on your desk for the chick who had a brain aneurysm and LIVED even though she had her head pealed back and went through brain drilling surgery but who
you've never even met (what? I mean, "Feel better"? "See ya soon"? Signed, "A New Girl"? Goddamn.)
Yeah, so kick
that bitch in the balls.
But you know that
other chick; the one who was sweet and funny at first and you thought, "Yeah, this'll work," but who you now want to throw through the refurbished cubicle wall? Even the stressed-out, bald "walks around with a cup of coffee all day cinching up his pants and leaning on shit" guy, who talks incessantly about his separation, his four kids, and how he's thinking about getting a thirty pack and chillin' at his mom's community pool tonight, even HIM, he's like, "Jesus, could she BE any louder on the PHONE?!?"
That's me.
Despite the fact that when I call my eardrum-defying mother I physically crawl UNDER my desk and hide behind my CPU like a gopher. When I told my mother this, huddled as I was in the dark with my hand cupped around the mouthpiece, she shriek-laughed like a headless banshee, sending four of my coworkers outside to the sidewalk for a fire drill.
2) I dreamed last night that I bought a new car. A convertible one. Lime green. With 7 gears. I parked it in the living room. It cost me $11 a week. I thought this was exceptionally reasonable. I woke up pouting and whining that I didn't
really have a Lime green car parked in the house. R convinced me that sex would lessen the disappointment. He was wrong. It did, however, lessen the pouting, which in retrospect may have been the primary motive. I was tricked.
3) Does anybody know how to quilt? I have this really unbearable urge to
quilt. Like I need to drive to Michael's RIGHT NOW and buy $150 worth of quilting crap. Which would be a shame; I hate to blow almost four months of car rent that way.
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