"I wonder if this is a seven or a nine..." CRASH.
Ever since I've known him, Randy has been wistfully dreaming of the day when the parched Salt River would fill with barely melted snow and rage with rapids through the canyon.
"It's amazing," he'd say, "One of these years there'll be enough snow and we'll do it, we'll get up at four in the morning and we'll go up and white water raft the Salt River. It's thirty-five degrees, you'll love it, it's exhilarating."
Part of my role as "girlfriend" is to nurture the hopes and dreams of my partner, and to share in his passions and personal goals. Or, in layman's terms, to bluff my ass off. Which I did. For like seven years. Until
this stupid year when all the stupid snow melted and stormed the stupid Salt River Canyon. I guess I must have this whole global warming shit backward because I seriously thought I was good on this one.
Randy's daughter, Chelsea, came home from school to go with us. This isn't surprising; Chelsea has an innate (and genuine) sense of adventure. Plus, Randy took her to Thailand when she was something like four years old and fed her raw chicken and hay in a canoe for three days. Or something, I probably have that story wrong. My point is that Chelsea is hard core. And that every dangerous opportunity or crazy experience pales in comparison to eating an alive chicken and some ferns on a barge when you're four.
Christopher came with us, too. He
also went to Thailand, but Chris' daily life generally makes downtown Thailand look like a McDonald's playland. To give you a rough idea, this is a list of everything Christopher did the night before we picked him up at 6:30 AM to go rafting:
1) Got dressed up in a friend's dad's double-breasted suit, added a pink shirt and slicked back hair a la Don Johnson in
Miami Vice,
2) Filled empty Grey Goose and Ketel One vodka bottles with bottom-shelf plastic bottle swill; convinced a flock of sorority girls to do a thousand shots because top tier vodka is so smooth,
3) Went to bed, hammered, but in classic Chris fashion emerged an hour later wearing track shorts, cowboy boots, and ski gloves; ran down the street to a neighboring party.
4) Convinced a girl to "trade clothes", at which point said girl stripped down to completely naked,
5) Ripped girl's size-2 jean shorts into multiple sections after yanking them above his knees,
6) Threw an eighteen-pack of beer and an entire patio furniture set into someone's pool,
7) Stole a thirty-rack of Bud Light, an
Endless Summer poster, a sombrero, a goldfish bowl full of condoms, an "I Love Beer" hat, and an ASU chair (later destroyed),
8) Sang Karaoke, namely
Total Eclipse of the Heart and then a whole lot of freestyle,
9) Made no friends.
I learned all of this on the ride to the canyon as Randy wound us tighter and tighter up into the mountains, almost driving off the road a total of fourteen hundred times because Randy's top priority behind the wheel is to make sure his passengers see every abandoned asbestos mine and every lizard hustling along in the weeds. His
second priority behind the wheel is sudoku.
Having lived through twenty years of her father's "care", Chelsea is now essentially a walking prototype of the "survival of the fittest" theory; as such, she opted to bring along her scuba
dry suit. In order to get it on, she had to jam her head through a rubber neck hole the size of a ping pong ball. I couldn't even watch-- I get claustrophobic wearing a
hoodie-- but she could have had a wedding dress on underneath that thing and she wouldn't so much as gotten the hem damp. Likewise, Christopher smartly borrowed his older brother's full-length wet suit. It turned out to be lined with flannel or goose down or something because Chris spent a large portion of the day alternately begging someone to unzip him and submerging himself in thirty-eight degree water to keep his heart from exploding.
Randy and I both suctioned ourselves into the bib-style bacteria farm wet suits the
rafting company provided, and then I-- along with, you know,
every single other person-- pulled a long-sleeved waterproof shell over my head. To which Randy said, "
Pffffft," and decided the only real way to white water raft in thirty-eight degree water is bare armed.
So that's how he rolled. Sleeveless. On a raft. In water that was snow like an
hour ago. He rode behind me and whenever I had a chance I'd turn around and make sure his arms hadn't cracked off. He claimed to be comfortable but I don't know how that's humanly possible. I don't really
care, though, either, because at the end of the day I have this photograph:
Shit yes. That's Christopher leading us in front there, Chelsea's behind him (in a long-sleeved waterproof shell), I'm behind her (in a long-sleeved waterproof shell), and I think you can figure out who's behind
me. Sleeveless McGee. I'm going to make him go sleeveless all the time now, I think. I'm going to get him a barrel and a set of suspenders and that's it, forever.
The whole day was amazing, of course, proving yet again that Randy's a genius and I'm a giant disappointment. The rapids themselves were fast and exhilarating; you really had to be paying careful attention to what was going on around you so you wouldn't fall out of the boat. It was easy to tell when something serious was coming-- it was usually when Randy would point with his paddle and yell, "Hey, look way up there at that bald eagle!"
I'll start knocking over all the furniture, you start breaking windows.
This morning I knocked our
Canon SD550 off the kitchen counter and broke it. I didn't realize it was broken at the time; it didn't
crack! or
snap! or cry out in agony, and nothing splintered off and shot across the room or anything, so none of my highly sophisticated mechanical alarms were triggered. Imagine my surprise, then, when I tried to use the camera only to discover that the entire LCD screen is shattered. I guess I need to add "Visible Glass Parts: Shattered" to my List Of Shit To Check After Dropping Magical Technology. Somebody hand me a stone tablet and an ice pick.
Believe it or not, this is the second Canon SD550 I've killed. The first one had the bad luck to be jammed in my sweatshirt pocket on the day
Randy flipped the sandcar and the little lenses filled themselves up with sand. Ordinarily the fact that the camera was on my person at the time of its demise would automatically pin me as the blamable party, but when Randy made the decision to roll the car I was sitting in he effectively superseded my blame. I suppose if maybe a giant Sand Beast had then risen out of the desert, picked up our wrecked car, and shaken it like a screaming purple snow globe, we could hold
that bastard responsible. Sadly, the Sand Beast failed to materialize so the buck stopped at Randy.
When the camera store later verified that thirteen pounds of sand could not be extracted from our unit, Randy and I stood at the counter, heads down, quiet. Randy fighting the urge to mention that he suggested I leave the camera back at camp in the first place, me praying he
would mention it so I could resume wildly slapping at him and shrieking. And that's how our second camera was born-- in the crazy-eyed silence of repressed accusation.
So here I am with Camera Number Two, now. Busted. And, as deduced after thorough scrutiny, not fixable with tape. Quick, what's the best way to convince a man that he flipped over a whole house?
Annoying Questions To Which I Received No Response: Part 8 of 17
[asked of Randy, who no doubt sat down to do his own taxes on January 5th with nothing but two freshly sharpened number two pencils and a chorus of "This Land is Your Land" and who, upon the accurate and truthful completion of said taxes, immediately marched them down to the post office where he held the door for a third-grade field trip, surrendered his place in line to a pregnant woman, and saved a mewling kitten from atop a shimmering flag pole, all without wrinkling his ivory linen suit:]"Hey, remember when I told you I was putting all my tax crap in one pile, and that you shouldn't touch, look at, or even think about that pile because you always lose everything? Yeah, do you happen to remember exactly
where I was in the house when I said that?"
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7
Over the years, Randy and I have established a Weeknight Routine in which we do, wear, watch, and eat pretty much the exact same things from night to night to night. It's easy and familiar and unerringly consistent, our routine. I assume most couples fall into similar patterns of habit. Maybe not, though; maybe when you guys get home at night, you spin a giant wheel of Random Adventure and then end up gleefully hitchhiking to Florida or having sex in a tree or something, I don't know. The only wheel we're spinning over here has "Red Gym Shorts / Blue Gym Shorts" on it, and Blue Gym Shorts is crossed out.
My part of the routine essentially entails piling up on the couch with a stack of zombie skins to sew while periodically piping up to criticize Randy's piss poor Tivo forwarding skills. ("Where Did The Time Go: A Life Completely Skipped Over With Three Bloop-Bloops" is going on that man's tombstone.) But lately I find I'm having a really hard time seeing anything. I'm wearing my glasses but I'm still squinting a lot, and I'm constantly hovering directly underneath the table lamp.
"It's fucking
dark in here!" I yelled last night, throwing a zombie skin at Randy. "I can't fucking
see anything in this
room!"
Randy appraised me calmly over his nightly cashew ration. Just one more impulsive, spastic complaint to add to my portfolio. Right in between "IT'S FUCKING
HOT IN HERE!" wherein I punch the air conditioner button in the car with both fists and hang my head out the window to dissolve the rabies foam in my mouth, and "IT'S FUCKING
COLD IN HERE!" wherein I commandeer the entire bed comforter in one furious yank and then bury myself in it, shivering and foaming with the rabies.
"It's not dark," Randy said evenly, no doubt on foam alert, "You're just getting older and your eyes don't work as well."
Randy wrongly took my ensuing silence-- a silence I was using to gather vocal strength and maximum foam-- as a cue to continue this riveting explanation as to the hastening collapse of my body and its functions.
"As you get older, your corneas begin to change shape which prohibits light from focusing on the retina. So it gets harder to see. Especially you," he went on. "You have a pretty pronounced astigmatism, so light's going to bounce around unequally on your retinas, anyway."
I don't remember if that's actually what he said. It doesn't really matter; Randy knows me well enough to know that I can be disarmed and shooed away from just about any argument with this scary futuristic spaceman talk. He could have said, "As you get older, electromagnetism binds with the chemical components of strawberry jam, causing your lymphatic system to refract into gravitational acceleration, proving once and for all the Coccyx Theory of Choo-Choo Trains," and it would have had the exact same effect on me: mute fury.
Blinded as I was by this one-two punch of anatomy and science, I found myself accepting that maybe he was right. Maybe all my squinting was just a natural consequence of age. I imagined my corneas flattening into tiny saucers full of jam and miniature choo-choos.
"We'll just have to get you a little magnifying glass to wear around your neck."
Oh, were my flat ass eyes deceiving me, or was Randy actually
smirking? I looked around the family room then, a 30' by 30' space we were attempting to illuminate with two ten-watt light bulbs and a smoke alarm. Fooled! By an old man and his fake science! I felt a foam resurgence.
"You're full of shit," I countered. "It's pitch black in here. We're getting some lamps."
My eyeballs are flattening? Yeah, nice try, Randy. Watch, next he'll try to convince me that I can't hear as well because my "ears" are weakening with "age". Like I don't know that Planet Earth is just getting quieter. Or that the reason we can't have sex in a tree is because of "gravity", not because one of us is a chicken shit.
Dirty bathmats be damned.
Last night Randy eyed me over the paper.
"Business is slow," he announced. "You know what I think we should do tomorrow?"
"Take you to get a colonoscopy and a prostate exam?" If I'm marrying the man, I'm damn sure going to keep the warranty active.
"Close," he said. "They're opening Horseshoe Dam and pouring water into the Verde River. We should drive up and see it."
Randy wisely tries to spring these outdoor rambling excursions on me with little or no notice, as I tend to uncontrollably manifest imaginary obligations in my ensuing panic. It was late, though, and I was in weak form; "But I have to wash the bathmats," was the best I could come up with and
that wasn't fooling anybody. We don't even
have bathmats. I don't think.
So we went to Horseshoe Lake, home of the Horseshoe Dam. Click on the picture for the whole detailed stream.
Thank you, Mrs. K!
Last week I sent a couple of superior
zombies to a relative of one
Mrs. Kennedy. It turns out we should have maybe put a card in the package, though, since apparently not everyone thinks bloody, skull-bearing sock dolls sent anonymously through the mail are funny. Just ask my dad-- or anyone else with my last name in Arizona-- who received a frantic, early AM phone call from said relative wanting to know what exactly the fuck was going on.
It was really, really funny. So funny I might start arbitrarily sending zombies to unsuspecting people. Preferably elderly people who live alone. Is there a database or something I could search?
Anyway, then I got these crazy chocolate potatoes from Mrs. Kennedy! Who doesn't know I get weird accusatory phone calls from people all the time. Only they're usually from MasterCard.
Click on the potato to see more potato.
Tips and Tricks! Part One of Seventeen.
When your boyfriend calls from the office at like nine in the morning but you can't get to the phone because you're frying tortilla chips, don't later explain via email that you were in the shower unless you're ready to commit to
actually showering.
And also don't be curled up on the couch with filthy hair eating nachos when he comes home unexpectedly to get a client's file because you wouldn't answer the phone.
Next time on
Tips and Tricks!: If you finally just lie about getting your passport renewed because you keep forgetting to get your picture taken on the one day a week you don't look like a homeless person, congratulations!
You can't go to Mexico this weekend.
Housekeeping.
Not a whole lot going on over here.
My writing job has been postponed again, this time until May. It's a good thing I was born without an innate sense of logic or I might just give up on this gig. In the meantime, I've been sock zombie-ing my fingers to the bone.
Art Detour is this weekend and I'll be there with bells on, selling zombies, trying to convince my paper-thin crystalline ego that I'm still capable of paying for my own basic survival. When I'm not sewing sock arms on sock torsos, I'm doing website work for Randy. So he can continue to
actually pay for my own basic survival. Please don't tell my delicate subconscious.
I was at the store earlier, and I strolled down the pet supply aisle in pursuit of dog treats for The Jake. Ultimately I turned my nose up at everything, though, because I've been reading a lot lately about how most dog foods are ridiculously unhealthy, and I didn't want to inadvertently give Jake something that might not be good for him.
So then I come home, right, and when Jake runs to the door to meet me, I see that all four paws are now dyed florescent green-- evidently I should have locked him in the house before the guy came to spray our entire yard with weed poison. If he's still alive tomorrow, I think I'll swing back by the Safeway and pick him up some Beggin' Strips.
I was in Safeway earlier because somehow our Nacho Alarm System failed and we'd managed to run out of all the shit you make nachos with, and there was a little girl in line ahead of me with her dad. Probably nine or ten. Old enough to walk, not old enough to drive. And she's dancing around with her eyes squeezed shut, one hand clutching a pink mp3 player, the other flailing around in the air, and she's singing along:
"
Ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma-MI-CRO-SOFT! Ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma-MI-CROSOFT!"
The best part is that I'm 99% sure she was clutching an iPod.
