I have been so sick, I can't even tell you. Seriously. I spent all weekend
in bed, and all week I've been driving to work all coked out on Alka
Seltzer Cold and Cough (citrus!), and I sit here all day, sluffed down in
my chair, glazed over, mouth open, wheezing, ears all hot and clogged, not
hearing things, coughing on stuff, making stuff sick, and I drive home
(again, totally under the Alka Seltzer radar), pet The Jake with a wet
shaky hand and then climb into bed with my clothes on.
And then it's the next day.
The whole week has been like this.
Don't get this flu.
I'll be back in a couple of days when I'm well. And when I'm out of detox.
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GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY AND I'LL GO BUY SOME SLINKIES!
I get all of these bullshit catalogs at work, right, and they're all just trying to get me to buy politically correct corporate holiday cards ("Platonic Warm Greetings To You and/or Yours During This, The Latter Part of the Year!") and motivational certificates ("Reach for the Liquid Hot Blistering Sun!", "The
Best of the Best Soar Above the Trash and the Sewage of the
Regular Best", "Keep Up the Good Work! You'll Never Get There If You Don't Keep Fucking Killing Yourself!"), and mostly I just throw them away... right after I flip through them page by leisurely page, because shit, they came in the mail, I'm ALLOWED to read them... but I've
never actually bought anything.
Until yesterday.
I'm not ashamed to tell you people that I ordered a 6 gallon "Autumn Leaves" tin drum full of cheddar cheese popcorn.
I am ashamed, however, to tell you that I had it Next-Day-Aired.
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BRING IT, MOTHERFUCKERS. And by that I mean, can I write you a check?
I just checked my referrals, and I saw my company's very specific server listed. An hour after I left for the day.
So after I had applied a damp cloth and some pressure to my bleeding ear, I went in and frantically deleted the last two posts. R's trying to have a conversation with me while I'm doing this ("Hey, 'Nip / Tuck' is on!" and "Where's the remote?" and "Are you suffering from some kind of brain bleed? Why are your teeth chattering?"), but the only thing I could focus on was the inevitable Human Resources meeting tomorrow morning wherein I try to defend and/or DENY TO HOLY JESUS the last week of posts. And the first step to a successful denial is burning the shit out of the evidence.
So the last two posts went first. I was on the shaky brink of going through EVERYTHING ELSE I'VE PUT HERE IN THE LAST YEAR when I realized that my time zone was off an hour.
And that the visitor was me. Right before I left work.
Because I'm fucking awesome with time like that.
So thanks, everyone, for your comments. I apologize for my hasty erasure.
I'm going to go see if I can slow my heart rate down with some rum or some rock salt or something.
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The Jake thinks that maybe-- just maybe-- jumping might be a kickass idea this time.
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Where Dead Fish Flow Like Wine. And Beer Flows Like Wine. And Whine Flows Like Dead Fish.
The beach! We
love the beach. The Jake has a
soft spot for the beach, a spot made out of dead carp... a spot that is now (fool me once) forcibly controlled with a choke collar and a business grip.
(
Ahem.)
All in all a fabulous holiday respite... dawn walks with The Jake, pockets full of overnight-new shells that may or may not be crammed with something nervous and alive, Dos Equis in a Solo cup... and evening walks with The Jake, a plastic bag full of soft and fuzzy green sea glass, Dos Equis in a cracked Solo cup... and afternoons spent begging for intimidatingly enormous paintings of watermelons. Over foamy Dos Equis. In a thermos.
ME: "Remember when we were here last time and they had that picture? Of the watermelons? The big one?"
R: "The one in the shed?"
ME: "And I totally fell in love with it but you hated the shit out of it but then the tag said like seventy bucks and I was like, 'ABSO
LUTELY' and you were like, 'I still hate that'?"
R:"I remember that the shed was
locked, and you crawled in through a broken
floorboard..."
ME: "But the tag was wrong? And it was really..."
R:"Eighty million dollars?"
ME: "IT'S STILL HERE. And it's half off!"
R:"Forty million dollars for a painting that wouldn't fit on the wall in the garage. A painting of watermelon."
ME: "It's $450. And it would fit anywhere. If we don't need windows."
R: "You have insulation in your hair. "
ME: "Ow! I
know. Hey, wait... where's my thermos?"
Alas, I have no watermelon. Which, you know. Side as you will. R
did get the termites out of my hair, so when you judge, judge kindly. If anyone in this hemisphere needs to go and spend some time in Mexico for a while and maybe needs a The Jake, a partial map of commercial storage facilities, a headlamp and a melon dream, call me. I have a thermos. It keeps cold things cold.
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I have this blouse from The Limited that my mom bought me for Christmas
when I was a senior in high school. It's this burgundy raw silk, and I've
been wearing it consistently for, what, eleven years? It's a good looking
shirt, even if it is like 89 in shirt years. So recently I've noticed that
the material seems to be eroding or disintegrating or something because
both cuffs-- though still handsomely starched-- are in pretty serious
danger of coming all the way off the sleeves. You can't really tell at a
glance... or maybe you can, whatever. Given that I'm using like fifteen
paperclips to hold my hair back right now-- and I did this at HOME, mind,
this was my original PLAN-- you should probably ask someone with a more
sophisticated innate sense of upkeep. My point is that every time I take
this shirt off, it's for the last time, right? I mean, noticeable or not
(and let's get crazy and assume noticeability) when the cuffs fall off your
clothing, it's over.
But R keeps sending it to the dry cleaners.
And it keeps coming back, sheathed in the plastic of the reborn, as
resplendent and crisp as a teenaged shirt, and I pull it down and I think,
"Yeah, I can probably pull this off one more time." And I carefully slip my
hands through the sleeves and gently button it up and then I try really
hard not to arch my back all day.
I'm not really sure where I was going with this, except that I once
accidentally had my pajama pants dry-cleaned so I felt obligated to wear them to a
banquet.
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I went to the doctor today for a follow up to some blood work that my health insurance asked for. Apparently my cholesterol has gone up 39 points in eight weeks. Which is a lot, particularly for a 29-year-old who's as pointy as I am. What I know about cholesterol is "eggs" and spell check, and even
I know that 39 points is a lot. So what's my plan of evasive action, you ask? Oh, I'm on it. Tonight I came straight home, ate an entire bag of potato chips and stirred a gin and tonic in a paint can. Next.
So I don't make a lot of mix tapes. Part of having absolutely no character or individuality when it comes to music means that I'm forced to sit outside of the mix tape circle. I made one once, but really I just copied an entire album onto a blank tape. I thought it was brilliant... but really it was just "Wham". Again.
But the other night, for some totally inexplicable reason, it seemed like an inordinately good idea to make my parents a mix tape of songs that remind me of growing up and good feelings and family and ... shut up. So I kicked two empty paint cans out of my path (squished limes rinds skittering wetly across the floor like so many... squished lemon rinds) and stumbled to the computer.
In two hours I had four full CDs. And another CD with two songs on it. Because I'm fucking awesome. Ask me how many times my mom and dad are going to have to listen to "
Wildfire". The paint can guessed "four", but paint cans are notoriously bad guessers. Especially when they're trashed.
(The cholesterol thing is a weird side effect of my latest birth control pill. Which I'm now off of. I'm not sure why I was still taking it. I mean, R's had a vasectomy, so that's gotta cut my chances of getting knocked up, what, in half?)
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