Can you give children's Benadryl to plants?
On a whim I bought this giant Jiffy seed starter at Home Depot over the weekend. It's almost cool enough outside to replant my flower pots and get everything on the patio squared away for fall, and I'd been mentally throwing around the idea of setting up a greenhouse. It would never work, obviously; not only do I not have the knowledge, stamina, or interest to maintain a greenhouse, but it would be significantly easier to just cut to the chase, hand the giant spiders a thousand dollars, and save myself the inevitable heartache.
But this flimsy plastic tray full of dehydrated soil pellets looked harmless enough-- and it cost significantly less than a grand; worst case scenario, if the giant spiders moved in I was only out ten bucks-- so I grabbed it and some seeds of things I recognized and I spent Sunday evening jamming seeds into fake dirt. I was so impressed with myself for remembering to label what I planted where that I'd almost convinced myself I had any idea what I was doing.
Until I woke up this morning and everything's actually started
growing.
What the hell is
that? What's today, Wednesday? It's been like FIVE HOURS, how are there
plants in there already? I remember planting seeds in elementary school and they took literally
four months to sprout; in January we'd jam them seven inches deep in a dirt-filled styrofoam cup and then in April an entire plant complete with flowers would thrust its way out into the open air, gasping and clawing at the surface like a man trapped beneath an avalanche.
I don't know what to do with these guys now. Every time I go into the kitchen there they are; all alive and thriving and bionic and shit, "Look at me, look at me! I'm alive but if you touch me you'll kill me!" It's like I'm babysitting and all six hundred infants just woke up screaming. And all I wanted to do was make a few bucks, watch a little cable, and eat someone else's frosting.
David Blaine actually DOES sell the cookware.
Randy, Chris and I went to the Home and Garden Show on Sunday. Randy went out of habit, Chris went because it's part of his industry, and I went because I enjoy avoiding eye contact with hot tub and pool table salesmen.
Chris and I were discussing how expensive it would be for either one of us to actually sit through a
waterless cookware demonstration front to back, when suddenly we stumbled upon the drunken prom queen of the Home Show circuit: the
Sham Wow guy.
"SHAM WOW!" I think I actually screamed it. I couldn't help myself; I compare it to seeing The Beatles perform for the first time if The Beatles were bright orange and ridiculously absorbent.
Sham Wow Guy nodded. Sham Wow Guy started his Sham Wow presentation. Sham Wow Guy was the only dude at the entire outdoor show wearing sleeves past his wrists because Sham Wow Guy has a thing for tattoos. And, if the top of his left hand is to be believed, a thing for Andrea.
I watched our buttoned-down crusader soak a carpet square with water and lay a folded Sham Wow absorbent cloth on top, and with my own eyes I saw the spilled water suddenly turn tail and run. When he picked up the carpet to reveal the shiny, dry counter beneath it, I knew Randy was about to be down twenty bucks. It was like watching David Blaine.
No. It wasn't like watching David Blaine. But it was good enough to sell me five squares of processed German rayon, you're damn straight, and it was good enough to sell Chris five squares of processed German rayon, too.
The rest of the show was kind of a waste; all we did was talk about the various uses for Sham Wows and who was going to spill what as soon as we got home. Randy suggested I fashion a bikini top from a Sham Wow so I could jump into a swimming pool and instantly absorb it. Seconds later he came to the conclusion I'd be too waterlogged to climb out of the pool so he officially recounted that suggestion. On our way to the car we ran into a woman Randy used to live with and I was actually too busy daydreaming about a Sham Wow raincoat to get all needy and weird about it,
that's how serious I am about the Sham Wow.
When we got home, Chris left to go spill some shit on his floor and I whipped out a Sham Wow and a big plastic tumbler to show off for Chelsea. I told her about David Blaine and the carpet trick and she wanted to see a demonstration.
"Are you ready?" I asked. And then I unceremoniously dumped forty-two ounces of water onto my kitchen counter, followed quickly by a sturdy virgin Sham Wow. But instead of sucking the water into its countless magical fibers, my Sham Wow just lied there in the middle of an enormous growing puddle. Impotent, indifferent... it just sat there, damply mocking me. It was like trying to clean up a spill with Andy Rooney's carcass.
Chelsea understandably thought it was hilarious. I swept the flood into the sink using the Sham Wow as a dam and asked her to hand me the dog's full water bowl.
This was the part where I was going to submerge the Sham Wow into a half-gallon of liquid and end up with an empty bowl and a heavy, sturdy piece of blue cloth, right, only strangely enough it didn't turn out that way. Over and over again I plunged the Sham Wow into the bowl, and over and over again I wrung it out into the sink. Chelsea was in hysterics. I think my hand actually absorbed more water than the Sham Wow. I quietly refilled the water bowl and mopped the kitchen, shoving all five Sham Wows into the pantry. I talked to Chris yesterday, too, and evidently he had much the same experience I had: hard emphasis on the SHAM, seriously lacking in the WOW.
I'm a little surprised Randy hasn't given me more shit about the whole episode, frankly, but then again he's probably thinking that twenty bucks thrown away on five soggy cloths was a damn cheap way to avoid the usual fifteen-hour ex-girlfriend Q & A. And he's right. Kind of makes me wish I'd made a move for the cookware.
Dude.
Whenever I go back and scan over my archives, I'm always pissed at myself for starting blog posts with "I'm sorry I haven't updated", but whatever. I'm always pissed at myself for running over the giant blue recycle can with my car, too, but I keep doing
that. The can always manages to basically bounce back into a can shape so fuck it, really, no harm done.
Several months ago, a room full of overly accomplished, excited, motivated people paid me a lot of money to write a book about a certain dude, but evidently no one asked the dude in question if he actually
wanted a book written about him, right, so now that book is slowly and terrifyingly turning into a 180-page tome about canals. It's like watching a train wreck from
inside the train. And I can see Dude In Question just outside my smudged 2
nd-class passenger window; he's tipping his $700 hat at me and covering the tracks in brass belt buckles and cattle skull bolo ties.
I have a bunch of shit to write about: updated wedding plans, that time I went to New York and almost got arrested on a B and E, that other time I loaded my elderly grandmother into the back of a Chevy Suburban with a faulty oxygen tank and a really ridiculously complicated catheter and drove her eight hours to South Carolina, and some other random shit about my dog and maybe something I accidentally saw on 20/20. So I'm a little behind. Most succinctly evidenced by the fact that my grandmother passed away like three months ago. Yeah, and thanks for bringing that up, you guys suck.
So I guess Blogger has this new feature where people can sign up to "follow" your blog. I don't actually know what this means because my continued refusal to upgrade to the only version of Blogger compatible with the 21
st century is steadfast (albeit largely unfounded and based primarily on the whispered suggestions of liquor) and unwavering. But I can tell you I have three "followers": Amber (who immediately stopped following me so I'll take that hint),
Brandi, and
Lisa. We need a Candy, a Bambi, and a Crystal and we'll have one hell of a sorority. Or a strip club. I vote the latter, personally, but only because I've already got all these forged W-9s lying around.
If that's insulting, I apologize. I'm not quite myself these days. Frankly, I think wide-scale 20
th century arid irrigation is just a bad, bad influence.
Stacey's coming over tonight so we can take care of some Etsy business and she's bringing her little boy. Thus giving me the green light to run out and buy a literal
mound of caramel apple making supplies. I guess the thought of having a kid around validates my constant consuming desire to dip apples in caramel and chocolate and coconut and walnut pieces. Watch, he'll show up and be all, "Sorry, I'm allergic to apples." Well, roll up your sleeves and starting dipping your hands in, then, hope you aren't allergic to third degree burns.
Sorry, Stacey.
I'm listening to The Waterfall station on XM radio right now. Yeah. It's contemporary jazz. I think I like it because it reminds me of all the great parties my parents used to throw in the late-eighties when we still lived in Florida. I could probably ramble on for paragraphs here, faking some sentimental nostalgic dissection of what it is exactly I loved about those parties and thus why it is that I'm tolerating an all-saxophone rendition of Michael Jackson's "Human Nature", but since I've already pinpointed it I'll spare us the bullshit: I loved the unlimited cheese.
My parents blasted Wynton Marsalis whilst neglecting to monitor my late-night baked gouda intake when I was a child and as a Pavlovian result I now have the musical taste of an unmarried retired masseuse.
Or... the musical taste of my parents.
Sorry, parents.
Randy’s lined up to get a colonoscopy first thing tomorrow morning.
As hard as I’ve been pushing for this procedure, you’d think I would have been a trifle more on the ball in regard to managing the preparations. What with my being out of town last week, as an example, Randy had no choice but to immediately ball up the pre-procedural instruction sheet and throw it away in a Burger King bag, an act he then chased with a palm full of aspirin.
I read the newly faxed instruction sheet aloud last night, trying my best to convey the fact that he wouldn’t be able to eat anything at all today. I felt like a parent attempting to casually acclimate a three-year-old to the concept of a plane ride; if I talked about it enough beforehand, maybe I could lessen the blow of the actual event.
“So you know tomorrow you can’t eat anything.”
So you know tomorrow we’re going to get on an airplane to go see Grandma.“And I mean all day tomorrow, the whole day. You can’t eat anything at all. No food.”
You see airplanes up in the sky all the time; we’ll be inside one of those!“You can have clear liquids, so I’ll make you some chicken broth and get some Gatorade.”
And I’ll be there and Daddy will be there and you’ll have a bunch of toys and gummy bears and it’s still going to suck and you’re going to freak out all over the place and here’s a hundred dollars.Randy got up early this morning so he could put in a few hours at the office before his noon laxative.
“No food,” I mumbled from bed.
“Just a little piece of pita bread,” he whispered back.
It’s 11:13 now and he’s not answering his phone. I can just picture him out there somewhere, alone and preoccupied, filling up on unpasteurized cheese and borscht.
And god, those legs.
I know I'll have a lot more to say about the
Cringe book party and the amazing trip to New York in general, but for now I'm just going to post this video that
Danielle took of me reading my own sexual fanfic at the Cringe party. I'm so glad she took this because five minutes offstage and my subconscious was already trying to convince me I hadn't actually read my diary in front of a room full of people. But you can't repress video proof so take
that, brain.
My flight to New York leaves tomorrow morning at 6:40. You know I sat in front of my monitor for four hours in disbelief when it came time to book it, hitting refresh every ten seconds, waiting for the 9am departure / noon arrival flight to miraculously appear but it never did. So now I get to wake up at, what, three? I don't even know.
I don't handle mornings gracefully. I need to know how much Benadryl I can take to rack out at 6:30 tonight without dying. I must have missed that day at Science Camp for Failures.
I just painted my toenails for the first time in a year and halfway through I gave up and just started painting my whole toe. I hope there's a loophole in the "everlast topcoat" clause somewhere or else I might never be able to bend my toes again.
When I get back into town I'm going to have to make an appointment with Honda's service department because I can't figure out how to lock the door from inside the car. Here's how I expect that conversation to roll:
"Yeah, I can't figure out how to lock the door from inside the car."
"Are... are you serious?
"No. Forget it, I was just joking."
I need to pull out the manual, I guess, which on some level disgusts me. It's a DOOR LOCK, how hard can this possibly be? I stop at gas stations or the bank or the Safeway and I'm sure I look like an idiot, sitting as I am with my feet in the parking lot, carefully examining the entire car door and jam for some secret hidden lever or knob or something. Maybe I just wave my hand in front of the handle and it locks itself, like an automated toilet. I can remember when the height of technology was Natalie Cole making that CD with her dead father, I think it's safe to say we're getting a little ahead of ourselves, here. Let's start LEAVING SOME SHIT ALONE, HOW BOUT.
Cringe!
When I told my mom on the phone yesterday that I'm going to New York to help
Sarah celebrate the long-awaited release of the truly amazing
Cringe book, her response was immediate:
"Oh, God," she said, "is your part about me?"
"No," I told her. And I figured I might as well go ahead and tell her what "my part" is actually about because really, it's either spit it out now on the phone or wait until she reads it in my own ridiculous eighth-grade handwriting. "It's part of a sexual fantasy I wrote about William."
You remember
William, your married friend? Who was and will always be twenty-five years older than I am?
"Wait,
what?"
"A sexual fantasy I wrote in the third-person."
I couldn't tell then if she was laughing or barking or throwing up. Maybe a combination.
"When I pick a fetish I really commit to it," I said.
Mom could barely respond. "What fetish?" she wheezed. "Potentially homosexual sailors? With... with
poodles?"
Oh, right. The poodles. I'd forgotten about the poodles.
"I actually meant
older men, Mom."
"Well, yeah,
that," she said, sobering up.
Betsy and Trixie. Those were the poodles. Fuck.
Anyway. I'm going to be in New York starting Sunday. Email me if you want to buy me a drink. Just kidding, you don't have to buy me a drink. We could just go jogging or to mass or something instead. I'm going to be hanging out with my awesome friend
Danielle who's already assured me that if we happen to hook up with some internet serial killer, she'll find a reason to peace out and give us some privacy. What's the equivalent of "cock block" for serial killers? How about "knife block". She wouldn't want to knife block me. True friend, right there.
They have a landscaping service, so I'll have to get up early.
Randy and I went to Crate & Barrel yesterday afternoon because we bought eight drinking glasses there a year ago and sometime between then and now we've managed to destroy six of them. I remember personally dropping one on the kitchen floor, but that's it, that's the extent of my culpability. I thus have no choice but to assume Randy made the other five explode with his uncontrollable mind powers a la
Firestarter. Because I know for
damn sure he didn't slam his giant destructive man knee into the coffee table five different times. I'd remember all that eye rolling.
I haven't been in too much of a hurry to replace our psychically exploded glassware since I tend to tackle most of my liquid consumption from one of two receptacles: my Little Ass Lady's Glass or Big Cup.
The Little Ass Lady's Glass came from a bar on the ASU campus called the Timber Wolf. Timber Wolf was one of those bars that doubles as a dare; they had seventeen thousand beers on tap, and if you somehow managed to slog all the way through the suds roster, you were handsomely rewarded with a 3" by 5" personalized plaque on the ceiling. And probably divorce papers. The bar managed to look shockingly like a 1800s bayou fishing shanty and was, I maintain, constructed entirely out of balsa wood.
I was one-third of the way through the beer list when
someone pulled the trigger to turn Timber Wolf into the parking permit administrative office. One of the worst decisions ASU has made, frankly, not only because of my own personal stake in the business, but also because I can't even begin to fathom how sober people can operate inside that structure on a day-to-day basis. The building is held together solely with gellified Thai ale and it smells like a hungover sewer. I only wish I had strapped giant balsa wings onto that fucker and hooked it up to a rubberband slingshot before it was official university property.
Big Cup is a jumbo plastic cup I stole from Zipp's, a sports bar roughly one point three miles from my house. I was sitting at the bar, the Arizona State game having long since ended, when I decided, slump shouldered, we should all just
walk home. If we got tired along the way we could stop and sleep in some random but doubtlessly beneficent stranger's front yard-- and I was genuinely excited about this part, about cashing out on some dude's sprinkler-dewy front lawn at three in the morning, cherub hands folded under asshole head, only to wake up to said dude's automatic garage door fifteen minutes before Motorola roll call-- and if Randy hadn't pried the wine/martini/shot glass out of my hands and replaced it with this giant plastic water goblet right before he called a cab, I probably wouldn't be here right now, I'd still be backpacking all over suburban south Tempe. Avoiding loitering warrants. Eating out of the local Whole Foods dumpster. Okay, not the
dumpster, probably still the deli. But I wouldn't be hogging a four-top table all by myself like the housebound Erin of yore, that's for goddamn sure. But Randy
did call a cab and I ended up sleeping in my own bed that night, Big Cup clenched in my wannabe hobo fists; a plastic testament to my inner backpacking, lawn sleeping, Whole Foods table sacrificing, suburban tramping ASU football fan. I like having Big Cup around. Big Cup reminds me that there's always time to stop and drink some water. And that sometimes you can straight up steal a cup and no one will say anything if you just shut the fuck up about sleeping in the parking lot.
So anyway. We bought six replacement glasses yesterday. Not one of which is personally meaningful or symbolic of anything at all. To fix this I'm thinking I'll drive three of them down to ASU and fill them up with some lager that was brewed in a casket while trying in vain to buy a parking pass for Structure B, and the other three I'll cuddle for warmth while I'm sleeping on the lawn of the people who live across the street.
Who, incidentally, don't really seem to like me.
Backfire.
I signed up for Twitter again. I had an account last year sometime but I was a genius and signed up under my full name with public updates; a month later I found fifteen pages of my nonsensical tweets lodged in Google's cache with everything but my social security number as a reference. I don't know why I was surprised, I know how the internet likes to hoard shit. I've gone to great lengths to keep this site from being indexed in the search engines and other bullshit directories, it stands to reason I'd have to do the same thing with Twitter.
I genuinely like the application, though,
so I signed up again-- only omitting my last name and making my updates private. Here's hoping the Google bots don't catch on. Keep on walking, Google. Nothing to see here.
Randy got tickets to see Tom Petty in concert tonight. I like Tom Petty well enough, but it's hard to pass up an excuse to make fun of Randy's jump start on age.
"Who's opening?" I asked last night. "Buddy Holly?"
"I'm looking."
"The Beach Boys? Wait, who was that guy in the PBS special you made me watch the other night? Roy Orbison! Is it Roy Orbison? Roy Orbison and The Bison Orbs?"
"It's
Steve Winwood. Who the hell's Steve Winwood?"
And then I crammed some potato chips in my mouth real fast because I fucking LOVE Steve Winwood.
The Little Ass Lady's Glass came from a bar on the ASU campus called the Timber Wolf. Timber Wolf was one of those bars that doubles as a dare; they had seventeen thousand beers on tap, and if you somehow managed to slog all the way through the suds roster, you were handsomely rewarded with a 3" by 5" personalized plaque on the ceiling. And probably divorce papers. The bar managed to look shockingly like a 1800s bayou fishing shanty and was, I maintain, constructed entirely out of balsa wood.