Hey. Look:
Toehawk throwing zombies.
And maybe to church, what.
Entrenched in a cocoon of my own mucus. Every bit as pleasant as it sounds, trust. Earlier in the week, Randy would simply kick my snoring husk to roll me over in the middle of the night; he's since graduated to actually waking me up in order to deliver a three paragraph essay on how much worse my snoring is now than it was, and hence why I should start sleeping with bubble wrap in my mouth. Tonight I'm going to really turn it on, I've decided, no more Nyquil / Benadryl cocktails. Let's move this party in the opposite direction, let's see how fucking loud this shit can go.
And this morning Randy stopped me in the middle of pulling my green South District grocery store tee shirt over my head; apparently the amount of toothpaste smeared down the front was way past acceptable levels.
"Absolutely not," he said, kicking it into the laundry, "I meant to say something Friday at the Verizon store. And I definitely shouldn't have let it slide yesterday."
I still don't see what the big deal was, I was just going to the grocery store and the mall.
I love this: Chewbacca-- the Bringer of the Noise.
And a robot squid with a boombox.
P.S. Fire everyone in your marketing department immediately.
I was sorting through something like ten days of stockpiled mail this morning when I came across a thin, legal-sized envelope sent from a local spa. I'd used a gift certificate for a service there months ago, so for once I let the part of my brain screaming COUPONS! overrule the bigger part of my brain screaming COLLECTIONS! and I opted to open it rather than tear it in half and set it on fire. It was a business letter typed on formal letterhead admonishing me for not having returned to the spa for additional services.
"At the time of your service," it read snidely, "We recommended you schedule regular follow up appointments in order to maintain a high level of personal health." Having failed to make said appointments I was now, apparently, in danger of being mistaken for mold.
Wow, they seemed pretty mad at me, the spa people, pretty harsh. I reread the whole thing to make sure I didn't owe somebody some cash. But no, they were really just scolding me for neglecting my aesthetic health.
The treatment I'd gotten at the spa was a Vanilla Rose Sugar Glow body wrap. It was nice and all, kind of like being scrubbed down with a cupcake, but I'm pretty sure it didn't add anything noteworthy to my overall life span. It's not like I'm missing chemotherapy appointments. Thanks for your tough love concern, Spa, but from here on out I think I'll just do the best I can with Lever 2000 and a washcloth. If it helps you sleep at night, just tell yourself it's like methadone.
Seriously, does NASA make the liquicap packet?
I've sucked back so much Nyquil over the past three days, the whites of my eyes are tinged green. One day the superbugs will come and won't you know it, the only pharmaceutical agent in our entire human arsenal capable of fending them off will be the Nyquil Liquicap. Roughly sixty million of us will roll our overly saturated greenish eyes and prepare to be conquered, then, mumbling in hindsight how we knew we should have stuck with Benadryl. Everyone else will smugly pat themselves on the back, fighting a month-long sniffle but satisfied, finally, that their goody two shoes refusal to abuse over the counter cold medicine has paid off. But then all those people end up dying, too, because the superbugs are swift and fast-acting and no one can find a goddamn letter opener or a grenade or an acetylene torch to open the stupid liquicap packet.
Mostly Finished.
I am sick, sick, sicky. I started shotgunning Nyquil at the tail end of the party last night, and I coasted into bed on fumes. I fell asleep with a cough drop in my mouth, so now my tongue is roughly the size and texture of a raisin.
I finally took some pictures of the (mostly) finished patio:
From this--
To this--
Click on the pictures for the whole photostream.
Toe Horned Zombies
Hey, look:
Zombies with toe nubbins on their horns.
One kick means it's all clear, two kicks means "do you have a flashlight or some candles".
Before hosting my brother's wedding reception or Thanksgiving dinner, I volunteered to cohost the annual Christmas party for Randy's fundraising group. Randy's the chair of the social committee this year, and with one of our neighbors also in the group and volunteering their home, it seemed like a natural at the time to split the party down the middle and open our house as well. Of course "at the time" I hadn't already spread myself and my brittle hospitality so thinly that I was in danger of moving full time into a big hole in the yard and covering myself up with leaves. One of the many times I wish I had a time machine solely for the purpose of going back and punching myself in the face.
Randy, almost always not as stupid as I am, immediately realized the fallibility of this plan; he actually got in touch with our neighbor and backed out of the deal. But I, in my infinite belligerent wisdom, insisted we go forward with the original plan. If I had a time machine I would totally have black eyes all the time.
So the party's on Saturday. A hundred and fifty people. Randy and I are slowly marinating in our own delicious stews of denial. Randy wants to lock all the doors and put a handwritten sign on the door: "COME AROUND BACK". I decided to pass on renting tables and chairs-- at some point people will get tired of standing around freezing in formal wear and they'll wander across the street to the other house.
Each new realization of shit we need to do is like one more reason to take a nap. Last night Randy mentioned that I need to get the portable crib out of the family room and all I could do was throw my head back and sleep it off. When I woke up, it occurred to me we should probably get a CHRISTMAS TREE, at which point Randy curled up on the floor with a bag of polyester fiberfill and started snoring.
Another example: I've been fighting with all of the exposed cords in the office. I hate exposed cords. It's a genetic hatred handed down through my mother's side. I've spent hours trying to twist-tie the cords back, I've run cords under the baseboards, I've hidden cords with plants... none of it works. So I decided on a plan this morning: I'm going to unplug everything and throw it all in a closet. Fuck this, seriously. What are the odds someone's going to mosey into the office and want to shred something? Or turn on a lamp? You know what lamps are? They're distracting, that's what. It's still light outside, stranger, get back out in the yard.
As a timely bonus, Randy has recently contracted some kind of unexplained illness that is apparently only cured by changing all the light switches and outlet covers in the entire house. Some of them are bisque, you see, while others are ivory. Personally, I'd like to know where exactly this keen sense of color hibernates on mauve shirt / green pants day, but hey, if he wants to take the time to change them all out, it's his exploding cerebellum. I think the bulk of his motivation is knowing the electrician charges fifty bucks per outlet, so each time he finishes one he adds that to the total amount of money he hasn't handed over to the no good money grubbing idiot who punctured our water heater. Look, Erin, I'm up seven hundred dollars! Awesome, babe! You're five hours late for work and we can only turn the bathroom light on from the garage, but yee haw! Fuck that guy!
Hey, somebody do me a favor: go to this party and tell me how it went. I'll just be in this hole over here. Kick some dirt on me when it's over.
It does explain all those copies of L.L. Bean under the mattress.
Randy was watching TV in the family room last night while I made chicken tacos. I heard him fumble for the remote to stop and rewind what he was watching, and then he called me.
"You've got to come see this!" He was jazzed enough that I, concerned he might exceed his nightly excitement threshold, stopped shredding chicken and went to see.
"Look! It's porn!" And before I could realize he was watching NBC, he replayed this:
It's an Old Navy Christmas commercial.
I think somebody just earned a raise in his excitement threshold.
We're going to start taking Maxim again, for starters; in hindsight, he's been spending way too much time reading the J. Peterman catalog.
I Hate My Cheater Boss Chili.
I used to work in the training department for a national grocery retailer. I wrote about it a lot-- it was a horrible job and I was a ridiculous employee who clearly didn't care about getting fired, so there was a lot of material there. One example: You can usually judge the fundamental misery of a workplace by how many mandatory participation contests and pot lucks it orchestrates, and we had something mandatory and unpaid happening around every three days. You barely had time to recuperate from "Homemade Christmas Hat" Tuesday before you were getting busted for not bringing that head of wilted lettuce for "Somebody's Terrible Variation Of Tacos" Friday. It was infinitely worse around the holidays when our calendar of events reached a forced joviality crescendo, requiring every employee to prepare marginal, unrecognizable, and borderline unsanitary baked goods and bring them to work every single day for a solid WEEK.
Seeing as how this was December, right, and I quit that hell hole the following February, I wasn't really feeling the philanthropic baking vibe. But with fifteen "100% participation" emails in my inbox staring me down like a human resource guillotine, I had to do something. So I signed myself up for the end-of-the-week chili cook-off.
The head of my department, Lisa, had won the chili cook-off every year for three years with her famous green chili. It really was delicious; slow cooked pork and freshly roasted green chilis... it deserved to win. But Lisa didn't make that chili-- every year before the contest, she'd strong-arm one of our company's in-store deli managers into making the chili for her. Using his own personal recipe. So while I was home Thursday night, slaving away over the stove, Lisa was home relaxing, breathing on marshmallows and making smores.
Friday morning, I got up early, duct taped my crock pot shut, and drove to work at twenty-two miles an hour. I plugged it in on my desk and stirred and cooed and stirred and cooed until contest time. Lisa sat in her office, shopping online and making fun of my pants, waiting for the deli manager to get his lunch break so he could deliver her chili. When another employee happened to spy him in our parking lot, lugging a crock pot to the door, Lisa avoided disaster by introducing him as her husband.
Well, I'm proud to report I won the chili contest that day. I don't remember who came in second. But Lisa came in third. She didn't speak to me for days. Just so it's clear-- my boss was so angry I had won a contest that she had entered and CHEATED in, she refused to say hello to me.
I Hate My Cheater Boss Chili
2 Tbs. olive oil
2 cups chopped onion
10 garlic cloves, chopped
2 lbs. hot ground sausage (I use Johnsonville)
2 lbs. ground beef
5 Tbs. chili powder
1 T. cumin
1/2 tsp. oregano
2 28-oz cans crushed tomatoes
1 6-oz can tomato paste
14 oz. chicken broth
dark chocolate to taste (I use about a 1/4 - 1/2 of a bar-- a normal sized bar, not a crazy person sized bar)
a bottle of Guinness (a normal sized bottle, not a crazy person sized bottle)
2 cans chili beans
salt and pepper to taste
- Heat the oil in a large dutch oven; cook the onion and garlic until transparent.
- Add the ground beef and the sausage and brown, breaking up any clumps that form.
- Pour the extra fat off the pot, add the chili powder, oregano, cumin-- stir.
- Add tomatoes, tomato paste, broth, chocolate, and beer-- stir.
- Cook for a totally indiscriminate period of time. Preferably a couple of hours or more.
- Add the chili beans-- cook another thirty minutes.
It's not even that great, as far as chili goes, but it's deeply, deeply satisfying. Don't burn it. Serves thirty-two. Hundred. Thirty-Two Hundred.
Captain The Jake Actually GETS The Horse.
--as told by my dog, Jake, and the horse next door
Jake: You know, a lot of people go their whole lives without ever getting to live at maximum potential, and I personally count myself privileged to now be among that chosen class.
Horse: You're not a person.
Jake: Okay, well, a lot of humans, then.
Horse: I think you're making too big a thing out of this.
Jake: [winks at interviewer] Says the guy who's never gotten anything, ever. It was beautiful. A thing of beauty. A beautiful thing carved from a beatific mountain of beautifulness. I still can't figure out how it happened. I mean, I know I rocked it, but--
Horse: Your electric fence was down.
Jake: What? I don't know. I just know things stopped beeping. Usually when I try to get Horse there's this terrible beeping that happens when I get close and I stop. It's awful, the beeping.
Horse: It was down for like six weeks. [Turns to interviewer] I'm not kidding; it took him a month and a half to figure this out.
Jake: But it stopped! Beeping!
Horse: Our little Albert Einstein.
Jake: And it was like... it was like the skies parted and... and suddenly Horse was there, and I went for it!
Horse: Our little Stephen Hawking.
Jake: Hey! I don't remember you being quite this droll when I was GETTING YOUR ASS.
Horse: [snorts] Hay is for horses. [high-fives himself]
Jake: Dude. Come on.
Horse: Alright, yeah. You surprised the hell out of me, what can I say. There I was, standing by the fence, hoping for Apple Time--
Jake: Apple Time?
Horse: Yeah. Sometimes when I stand by the fence someone'll bring me an apple. Or they'll bring a skittish little kid over with an apple. I like it better without the kid, but hey, Apple Time.
Jake: I didn't know about Apple Time.
Horse: Well do you stand by the fence?
Jake: What the fuck do you MEAN 'do you stand by the fence'? You fucking KNOW I stand by the fence, I spend like forty hours A DAY by that fence!
Horse: Look, do you want me to tell this or not? Do you want me here or not?
Jake: Well, it's bullshit, is what I'm saying.
Horse: So I'm standing there.
Jake: Goddamn 'Apple Time'.
Horse: ...
Jake: ...
Jake: Yeah. Okay.
Horse: I'm standing there, right, waiting for someone to drag a scared little kid over with some fruit, and suddenly there's this giant, hurtling, hairy, black and white thing lunging at me. And I was all, "Hey. Wait a second-- that's not an apple."
Jake: HA HA HA DAMN STRAIGHT.
Horse: It took me a minute, it really did. I mean, for years we've had this arrangement: Jake runs toward me as fast as he can, stops ten feet away from the fence, and barks his head off.
Jake: Sometimes I kick.
Horse: [nods] Sometimes you kick, true, [to interviewer] sometimes he kicks.
Jake: And I growl and stuff, man. I feel like you're selling me short, here.
Horse: Bottom line? Whatever he does, he keeps it ten feet away from my ass.
Jake: But then suddenly the beeping stopped!
Horse: [rolls his eyes] Yes. The beeping gods deemed you worthy.
Jake: The beeping stopped, and I saw my chance to bring the fury. The fury that is THE JAKE.
Horse: Dude, please-- you brought it for like eleven seconds. I was surprised and all, don't get me wrong, but it's not like you hung around long enough to knife fight or anything.
Jake: Yeah, so here's the thing about horses? They're friggin' GIGANTIC.
Horse: There's a reason they don't call me Goat.
Jake: Just really, really unreasonably large.
Horse: You're not tiny yourself, there, Fatty. And you're not as quick as you used to be, either.
Jake: Well...
Horse: [pulls a crumpled pack of Camels out of his left flank pocket] You should get some exercise. Start eating better...
Jake: I... try, I mean, I eat everything I find on the floor...
Horse: ... Maybe start eating more apples.
Jake: I should get your ass right now, you apple holdout son of a bitch.
Horse: [to interviewer] You got a light?
Status:
I've been neglectful in posting pictures of the completed patio project because it's not quite completed and when I post the pictures, I want to post them of the finished-finished product. I have a ton of planting to do, there are some trim pieces for the firepit and the BBQ that need to be chosen and inserted, and half of the granite on the BBQ counter has to be recut. The installers blew the cut the first time and it doesn't fit right so the tile company is paying for an entire new slab. That should all be done by the end of this week, and when it is I'll post a before-and-after photo extravaganza.
On a completely different subject, I quit my job in October because I somehow landed the job I never dared even dream about. Sometimes in my dreams, my dream-self would fantasize about it, but then I'd immediately jolt awake, laughing at the implausibility. But I actually got the job, right, and I signed a contract stating I would write a 170-page book over the course of the next year with the initial research and interviews to begin mid-October / early-November. But it hasn't started yet. And that makes sense, really, considering the way the world works; it's a giant project with a lot of money and a lot of people involved, so I should have planned for a delay. I thought about the possibility at the time, but I also wanted to make sure I gave my current employer enough time to hire and train a replacement in the event that the project did start on time, so I gave my notice.
Word on the street is that we'll be starting sometime in the next two weeks. That's a lot of time I've spent out of work. Even when I was doing accounting, I usually had some freelance technical writing work to do-- safety manuals, employee handbooks, other projects outsourced by various human resource departments-- but again, I made sure I wrapped all of that up in anticipation of this.
So! Two weeks! Until then it's me and some socks and buttons and more socks and some other socks. And that sock over there. Yeah, bring me that one.
Thirty.
Hey. Look:
Pocket Zombies.
Twenty-Nine.
Day Twenty-Nine. I'm tired. I deleted thirty-one voicemail messages from our home phone today without listening to them. On the upside, I've never felt so free. On the downside, if anyone in my family needs an organ or something, you're gonna need to call back. Leave a message.
Twenty-Eight.
I finally got around to calling the Mazda dealership to make an appointment to have my newly arrived speaker and stereo installed. Just in time to add a new and exciting complaint to the progress report:
"So now? Out of nowhere, whenever I roll down the driver's side window it goes, 'SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH!' and something inside the door actually scratches the glass as it goes down."
"Really." Service rep is tired, so tired of me. Service rep wishes I would stop touching things.
"It's a physically painful sound. I've almost murdered two In-N-Out people and a bank teller with it."
Service rep wishes I would just go deaf and leave him alone.
I was so excited when I bought this car. Part of that excitement was just the upgrade factor; I'd been driving a Nissan Sentra for eleven years, and I'd always wanted a Miata. And this wasn't any Miata-- this was the Mazdaspeed one, the turbo one. Why not, right? I had a steady, well-paying job, it was only like three grand more, and hell, I was financing pretty much the whole thing anyway. Exactly the kind of caution-to-the-wind situation they warned us about at Bankruptcy Camp.
And it is fast, I'll give it that. It's fast as hell. If someone pulls out in front of me, I can pass that asshole and cut him off faster than you can tell me it's a bad idea. But it's also very, very small. I was so blinded by rebates at the dealership I didn't grasp how tiny it really is. Randy can't even ride in it, he physically can't work it out, his organs and his cartilage object too strongly. I think if I had thought it through at the time I might have reconsidered. I'm not a fan of small places. I get claustrophobic wearing a hoodie. Thinking about it now, I'm surprised I don't get panicky about the tight squeeze in there more often. But I guess I'll chalk that up to all the adrenaline I release just trying to stay alive in it.
You know what won't save your life if you roll your car at seventy on the highway? A canvas roof. I remember asking the salesperson what I was supposed to do if it rolled.
"It won't."
I wasn't even that curious, I was just trying to appear mildly prudent in front of Randy. I felt I should do something to make up for the fact that I'd just come ridiculously close to signing off on an $800 tint for two tiny windows.
Financing, you see. Apparently Bankruptcy Camp didn't take.
"No, seriously," I pressed. "If it rolls, what are my chances? Ballpark me."
"It won't roll."
I'm going to scramble out on a limb here and say you don't want to roll one. The salesperson did everything but clamp his hands over his ears to avoid the question.
So... for real, what happens if you roll one? As the woman who rides around with the top of her skull approximately one quarter inch ABOVE the steel frame of her car every day, I'LL tell you what happens: NOTHING GOOD, that's what. The time I don't spend passing people at ridiculous speeds I spend calculating my odds of catastrophic failure. Given that whole "quarter inch" thing I mentioned previously, I've come up with an alternative rolling game plan: if some uncontrollable freeway situation dictates I roll the car, I will simply lean over ninety degrees into the passenger seat, thereby sparing the top quarter-inch of my skull the inconvenience of scraping off.
There.
Problem solved.
The paramedics will arrive on scene-- sirens off, as witnesses to the wreckage will have assured them there could be no survivors-- only to find me lying there, scared to death, supine and sideways underneath the tattered canvas top. Alive thanks only to my ninja reflexes and a smart, totally feasible game plan.
"Wow!" the fireman will say, peering down at me, "That's amazing! I can't believe you're alive! You have to be the smartest, most attune driver I've ever seen! Hey, let's get you out of there!"
Then he'll reach his strong, gloved hand into the smoking wreckage of my Miata and he will attempt to lower the driver's side window. At which point both our brains will obviously leak out of our ears and our skulls will spontaneously explode.
Twenty-Seven.
The comments on the last post reminded me how much I prayed to break a bone when I was little, which in turn led me to remember the one time I actually did break a bone during my freshman year of high school.
I acted in two school productions my freshman year, not because I had any acting skill, mind, but because I was still far enough behind the social evolution eight ball that I didn't mind making a complete fool out of myself in front of hundreds of people. Plus I was loud, to this day I can project like an air horn in a coat closet, and in the freshman drama program that's a close second to talent. The first play was Life with Father. The most recent movie version was released in 1947. I can only assume the play was written in 1159. It was seventeen hours long. I played Cora, the character who was supposed to bring a spark of vital comic relief, but unfortunately for everyone I failed. I should have tried a little harder; I still blame myself for those fourteen people who fell into unresponsive comas during the second act.
I can't remember the name of the second play. It may not have even had a name, we might have just referred to it as Seriously? It took place in the early 1900s (who was picking these plays?) and there were only three characters: a farmhand, played by a guy named Craig whom everyone called "Stinky"; a maid, played by my gorgeous friend Christina who actually could act, and who tore it up in improv all through college; and a lonely widow woman. Me. Three characters. The play was seventeen-and-a-half hours long. I remember having to memorize a FOUR PAGE monologue. No doubt when I'm unconscious and on my deathbed those four pages will come rushing back in a riveting, unrelenting clarity.
While this second play was in pre-production, I was also gearing up for the annual school-wide dance recital. I had taken modern dance to get my requisite P.E. credit out of the way because it seemed like the option least likely to lead to merciless humiliation and/or put me in the hospital.
Yeah, no.
To say I was bad at modern dance does an injustice to people who are bad at modern dance. I'm not kidding; at one point the instructor divided the class into two groups, and the girls who found themselves in my group went home and complained to their parents, resulting in the groups being dissolved. One girl in my short-lived group-- a friend of mine, Melissa-- actually pointed at me and said, "I'm not as bad as she is." She said this OUT LOUD. And I think I just nodded, defeated and resigned: "True, she's nowhere NEAR as bad as me, this is BULLSHIT."
The recital was mandatory, though, not to mention for a grade, so they had to let me participate. And one of the dances incorporated into our routine was the Roger Rabbit. I could not do this dance to save my fucking LIFE. And it wasn't for lack of trying because I tried my ass off. For three weeks if I had to go somewhere, I got there by slowly flapping and piercing myself backwards. It broke my mother's heart. I looked like scissors.
When Seriously? got closer to its opening afternoon and we started rehearsing in costume and on the auditorium stage, I found I suddenly had literal hours of time backstage alone, in the dark, waiting for Stinky and The Maid to finish whatever they were doing on stage. Alone, in the dark... LET'S DANCE!
And I did, I jutted and poked and skipped my tiny pathetic heart out, inexplicably not getting even an ounce better, and then one day during a dress rehearsal I tripped over the back hem of my costume and went down, catching myself with my extended left arm.
I was so instantly humiliated-- and so used to falling-- that I didn't realize any harm had been done. Minutes later, though, when I was cued onstage to rail and rant at Farmhand, I reached behind me with my left hand to snatch and throw a book and the ensuing pain was crippling. It took three days to get my parents, lifelong supporters of the "Just Move It As Much As You Can" camp, to take me to the hospital. Where I learned my arm was indeed broken and required a cast.
"I just fell," I lied, "I tripped over my dress."
My mom rolled her eyes and laughed, I shit you not: "You were probably trying to do the Roger Rabbit backstage in the dark."
Goddamn it.
"I WAS NOT I TRIPPED THIS DRESS IS LONG MOM COME ON I WAS NOT I JUST FELL OKAY GAH!"
To this day, more than ten years later, if you happened to mention my broken arm to my mother she'd laugh and tell you I tripped over my ridiculous pointy Roger Rabbit self. And I would immediately and indignantly counter with MY version, the version in which no one (me) comes out looking pitiful and pathetic.
But here it is. I'm laying it out there, Mom. You were right. God help me, I don't know how you knew, but your sharpshooter psychic mom vision was 100% on the money. I was doing the Roger Rabbit backstage, and at one point my shoulders came down so low in the back that all the ligaments in my spine slacked up and my head almost touched my kneepits. I then caught the hem of my dress with my heel and went down. It was terrifying in every imaginable capacity.
I did finally get a cast, though. So there's that.
Twenty-Six.
I've started wearing my glasses again. I really don't need them. Unless I'm reading. Or driving. Or awake and standing upright. I spent my entire elementary school existence praying I'd be one of the lucky chosen few who had trouble seeing the board. All to no avail, my vision was perfect. I was crushed. Then I got to high school and things finally started going my way-- my eyesight turned to shit, hurray! So I got my glasses. And I was very excited for approximately ten minutes, the time it took for me to get dizzy and sick to my stomach. I put them back in the case, slammed them in a bathroom drawer, and I went back to squinting at shit nausea-free.
College. Squinting, squinting. Giant lecture halls, tiny chalkboards, I practically had to sit on the professor's lap to see anything-- and that only flew in like three of my classes. My glasses were in pristine shape, what with having been worn exactly ONE TIME, but the prescription was outdated. Yay, new glasses! I probably wore them less than a week before I just started using them to hold my hair back when I washed my face. A $245 headband.
I know this is tough to believe, but my vision hasn't gotten any better left totally unattended. I have to get off the couch and stand in the middle of the room to read the program guide on the television. If I'm embroidering something, I have to take the lampshade off and thread the needle by the light of the exposed bulb. Don't even jokingly ask me to help navigate somewhere-- Styro put me in charge of reading street signs on our way to Florida last summer and we ended up lost somewhere in Alabama for five and a half hours. She ultimately took the map back, thank Christ, or we'd still be driving around out there, me going, "Is that Pioneer Street? Or a fucking pine tree?"
So I'm in Costco last weekend, and they had a display of reading glasses; the kind where you can walk up and mash your face into one of five or so pairs of greasy frames to see which strength suits you. And I mashed my face into every one, each time going, "Oooooooh," as I was overwhelmed by the majesty of WORDS and shit. I seriously almost bought a pair until I came to my senses and realized I had a pair of glasses at home, my latest pair, a pair that cost four hundred dollars and didn't come in a ten-pack.
But then I pooh-poohed that, right, because they make me sick to my stomach, those glasses. The ones the doctor deduced perfected my vision. THREE TIMES. I've never worn them more than a week because my eyes get confused when they're not straining to the point of blowing capillaries and I get dizzy. Well, you know what? I bet if you threw a Neanderthal inside a 727 and flew his hairy ass from Los Angeles to O'Hare he'd get pretty goddamn sick to his stomach, too, but that doesn't mean we should ABANDON TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS.
When I got home, I dug my glasses out of the bathroom cabinet and I put them on. And left them on. I've stopped having to take my usual eight Tylenol every day for headaches, and my ridiculous face making percentage is back down in the low twenties. So this is how you people live, you people with glasses! You wake up, put the glasses on, see stuff all day, take the glasses off, and go to bed! I GET IT. Next I'm going to try one of those newfangled toothbrush things. It can't hurt worse than this twig.
Twenty-Five.
My friend Casey and I were emailing about zombies earlier and she was kind enough to outline the pertinence of the resulting gmail Google ads:
I don't see anything about a vaccine on that list. That would have been helpful. GOOGLE.
Google is helping the zombies.
Google is not part of the solution.
Twenty-Four.
There are not enough Tums in the world to help me. Apparently when you eat every ten minutes on the ten minutes, things can go very very wrong. How did the cavemen ever survive Thanksgiving without Immodium?
I'm finishing up a new batch of zombies tonight and tomorrow, and I'll be sending a bunch to a kickass gallery in New York that's hosting a handmade toy show through the first of the year. The goal being to offer creative, individualistic alternatives to the standard mass-produced toys. It's a valiant effort and I'm thrilled to be a part of it.
I've also decided to start shipping first class versus priority mail on all US zombie orders; the shipping time doesn't vary greatly between the two, and first class is significantly cheaper than priority. So what I've done, essentially, is strip your LAST excuse away from you. There is NO REASON why you shouldn't own your very own sock zombie.
Huge thanks to everyone out there who has already succumbed to the zombie sickness. I hope you love your zombie(s) as much as I do.
Twenty-Three.
A few months ago, Randy bought Cell from Costco and read it in the mornings while he rode the stationary bike. About a week in, I saw him sitting there, sweating and reading and pedaling away, and I asked him how it was.
"It's pretty good," he wheezed. "It's a lot like Stephen King's stuff. I guess this guy must be his son or something?" He flipped the book around to look at the cover. STEPHE KING.
The Costco price sticker was covering up the "N" at the end of STEPHEN.
It was, I believe, the point-and-laugh highlight of 2007.
So this morning I was browsing through the books at Costco, and I saw a paperback by Michael Crichton that looked like a good bike book for Randy. He's forever bringing home little things for me out of nowhere, simply because he was thinking about me, and this seemed like a nice way to reciprocate.
The best part is that the price tag is covering up the -EL in MICHAEL, so for the next few weeks I get to go, "Yeah, I don't know, I guess MICHA CRICHTON must be Michael's daughter or something. Real up and comer, eh? I hear she's going places."
Twenty-Two.
Happy Thanksgiving! ASU v. USC on ESPN! I'll wave to you!