That's what the Craigslist ad admonishes. And I love it. I want to post my own series of ads:
Tired of excess rat hair? Try my patented Brazilian Rat Body Wax. $19.95
Want a sexier rat line? I will shave your rats hair so close you will think it's a mouse. See you at the Salt lick! $20
Be as bald as an (uneaten) baby hamster. $20
You can see what my day amounts to. I hate my job. I could be someone in the rodent grooming world. I can feel it.
My friend Allison is having a hard time trapping a man. Or, as she likes to say, "finding someone to have a relationship with"... which is exactly what I tell wasps when they approach that screaming yellow hanging thing on my deck, full of rotted meat and pepsi.
"I'm just looking for the right swarm to settle down with! Go on in and have some cola!"
I used to do the same with rodents, livetrap them and set them free in other people's houses, like I do with my husbands, but I was wrong. Now I have mice, and men, as pets. Which wouldn't be a bad alternative, but Allison won't hear of it.
"What the fuck, are you mentally ill?" she asks. One of us is. One of us is happy and healthy and never has to worry what to do with our old cracker crumbs. One of us is adored.
Allison can lure her prey in, but they just nibble the cheese and leave behind an empty unsprung expectation.
"You need to get pregnant," I told her. "Not just 'with child', either. Children. Many. Fertility pills by the fistfull and canned tuna fish heated in number 7 plastics will help you build your litter of freaks. Damaged babies. Get X-rayed on a weekly basis and huff paint thinner. Clean cat boxes. You need a squeaky pram full of malformed infants."
"...?...what will this accomplish?" she asks, "Are you drinking?"
Of course I am. It helps me see things that aren't there. Things Others can't see.
"You're welcome," I say.
It's easy to leave behind a woman, or even a woman with a baby. Especially a woman with a baby. But an angry woman with a van load full of handicapped babies, each one more horrible than the last...Who wants that thing following them around? Parking out front of where-ever they happen to land? Its better to secure a home and stash them away out of sight.
"No one can afford that sort of child support. Not emotionally, not financially. Together, however, you are sitting on a gold mine. Great parking, extra organs, people pay to see things that may be bad enough to portend evil...like a 2 headed snake baby. Times are ripe for a 2 headed snake baby."
I want it so badly for her.
"Think of how the babies will love you," I tell her, picturing crooked smiles on half formed faces, attached to torsos or arms. Shoes bought singley.
"If nothing else. Damaged babies will never leave you."
I think its not just great thinking, excellent desperate family planning, but its also a great bumper sticker. Totally trumps those fucking Honor Roll issues.
Plus the parking. Did I mention the parking? Sometimes its the little things.
Patricia's fat little hands ball into fists which she flails constantly in the air.
Filthy little things, covered in spit and food and Lord knows what all. The horrible little beast eats constantly. I cannot throw enough cheerios and rice cereal onto her plastic tray. Yet, it's the only way to shut her up, the babbling, the screaming. She is fat and lazy and incoherent. She smells horrible. That it's all contained in a smiling duck embossed leotard just seems all the more hideous. My friend Barbara suggested that I find something that 'snaps at the crotch'…but is that legal? I mean would I need a special license?
"CHANGE HER DIAPER!" my husband says.
As if it was that simple. There is no diaper. That's why booster seats are made of (recycled) plastic, why I regularly let the neighbors dog into the house; and why I've had a drain installed in the cement floor of the nursery/garage. If she doesn't like wallowing in shit, she'll do something about it. We have 4 bathrooms in this house, for fuck's sake. She has 3 litter boxes to choose from.
Matthew blames me that the child is stupid. Although he claims that she isn't stupid, that she is "neglected"…that I'm "unfair" and "harsh…" "Insane," even!
This from the man who won't sleep with me until I've lost 80 pounds and stopped drinking rubbing alcohol (with a splash of vermouth and 2 sticks of gum – a Dentini, if you will. To lose weight it's an unparalleled buzz/diuretic. Plus, four out of 5 Dentists recommend it.)
"You wanted a child, Hillary!" Mathew says.
No, I wanted a choice. Somehow it's my fault that she isn't clean and cute! That she is NOT unconditionally lovable. He acts as if there is something wrong with me! I think I could love a blonde baby with ringlet curls and huge blue eyes. Something photogenic. This one has a huge bald head at the center of which sits two beady sea-green holes. She already needs her chin worked on.
I saw an Asian baby on tv that I wouldn't mind having.
"You could do something with her," Mathew whines, and for a moment I am encouraged. I may even have clapped. I know I looked at the wood chipper.
"Give her a bath! Put some of your little outfits on her!" he gestures at Mr. Pats carpet-covered bureau, overflowing with kitty coutier. Scarves, furr hoodies, sweaters… mostly last season's stuff. Still, I'm sure I gasped.
As if the cat's cashmere sweater and matching tail cozy would fit that round little shit roast. I couldn't squeeze Patricia into two of Mr. Pats stretchiest funsies (like onesies, only with a hole for the tail!) sewn together!
Mr. Pats is just a baby, too, really, and yet he is adorable and fun and self-sufficient. At least he doesn't shit himself and expect someone else to clean it up. He buries his messes in scented sand. He licks his own ass clean. I have a purse that matches his collar.
Patricia eats kitty litter. Jabbers at the turds.
She screams when I turn the hose on her.
If my television volume didn't go all the way to 65 I think I'd go insane…
God, it is so much work. I'm sure we wouldn't be having this problem if Mathew had ethics about screwing something tits up and minty-fresh 2 years ago. I'd have a Prius or a Labradoodle. Something I could put on Craig's list.
I get to go to Texas next week. Austin. I've never been to Texas. Although I've heard that as far as Texas goes, Austin is not a good representative sample. I've heard that Austin is very fun and 'hip'...like the shoes CIenna made me buy last year. The ones that my puppy has made into chews. I still wear them. They look dangerous. Like my feet are crazed; angry toenail-wielding digits of doom.
I'll be there for a meeting, of course. A Working Team meeting. Our team is comprised of 13 people, luckily. Half of whom I really enjoy, half of whom I either don't really know or that I like to mock so much that it's almost a condition. There is one person about whom I am completely neutral. He will be our notetaker. Occassionally I will ask that he hold a marker up to my twitching nostril. Just to see if he can step over that line.
I've manuevered it so that the RIght People are Dependant upon ME. I'm renting a car and I will drive my group around to where *I* want to go. I've made the motel arrangements so that the people I like are staying where I am staying and the others are staying far away at a La Quinta. Under an overpass. Or so I imagine. Me and My Group will bond and form alliances while the other group eats at Denny's and has a daily continental breakfast together. The only thing more blan than their steamed eggs will be their conversation.
I've only been a member of this group for a few months, really. I've sat in on it unofficially for years. I have never volunteered for anything. For meetings, I usually stay way off in the hinterlands by myself.
This is Texas and I will be big.
Left to Right, Hank (Australian Cattle Dog) - Prior to rescue, Hank lived in a small squirrel-infested yard. Forced to sleep outside in the cold, damp elements, without pillows or the ocassional snausage, she endured hardship and cheap kibble. A recovering obsessive compulsive, Hank is predisposed to rolling in shit and rotting animal carcuses, biting at sprinklers and is injury prone. Hank's pick for 2008 is John McCain.
Jasper (Red Border Collie)- barks incessantly at neighbors, has a history of sneaking things that belong to others and hiding them under the bed or in a bush next to the fence. Vacuum cleaner attachments, car keys, underwear...Turn-offs include male lawyers and the other dogs having fun. Loves water and carrying shoes. Jasper likes Hillary.
Zeke (Australian Shepherd) - Standoffish with people, Zeke will tolerate strangers who don't make eye contact and who come into the house only under the embrace and constant praise of his family, which makes having casual friends and acquaintances over a little awkward. Zeke loves sheep shit and any of the verbs in the 'to go' family. Sleeps on the bed. Has bad gas. I'm afraid he's likely to lean toward Ron Paul.
Scout (Black/White Border Collie) - 
Enjoys chasing and biting. Not old enough to vote. Obama is her clear pick.
My Day: Even the Butter Can't Fill the Sucking Hole
I made cranberry nut orange bread from my new Vegan cookbook last night. Today I'm eating it, slathered with butter, at my desk, while on yet another conference call... I have no idea what's being said, the nuts are very crunchy. Almonds; blanched, like the people on the other end of the line(s). Periodically there is a lull in the call while everyone speculates on who is chewing in their ear.
"Husan..." I say,"...Susan Godwin. She's bulemic too, so...if you think this is bad..."
There is silence. She isn't on the call today. Sadly everyone know this because Susan is one of those types who always says her first and last name loudly and distinctly when the recorded message tells her to upon entering the call. I never do. If I say anything at all its likely to be, "Fuck, I wish there were more pound keys..."
I've put enough butter on this bread to make a definate statement about the vegan part. Why did I buy a vegan cookbook? I didn't! My neighbor did and it was delivered to my house on accident. OR WAS IT? That's what I THOUGHT! There are NO ACCIDENTS! Jesus wanted me to have it, like Jesus wanted me to have an extra recycle bin and the neighbor's sunday paper. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Every dog in the neighborhood shits on their lawn. They are Cat People. They have a flag hanging near their door that has a cat and a ball of yarn embossed on fake silk. The cat appears to be either batting or saluting the yarn. Creepy. It's like, what do you do with a flag like that? Is there an anthem? Why do the other neighbors object to my Canadian flag so much? Canadians aren't shitting in everyone's flower beds. Killing our songbirds! I don't even LIKE Canadians, particularly. I do love maple syrup, though and that seemed to be preferable to casting my lot in with these murderous string-happy beasts. All it takes for Evil to prevail is for Good People to do nothing.
The agenda for this call was so broad that I am beginning to worry that it will ever end. I don't see how it can without intervention. Things like "Discuss Future"...WTF? There are 9 items. The call is supposed to last an hour and has already lasted 38 minutes and we're still on the 2nd item, "Communication Plan"....
In our neighborhood, we have a quarterly newsletter entitled Highland Neighbor News or some such thing. I keep suggesting that we ban cat flags and yarn. I don't even know what it means for sure, but I know its bad. They print everything else, including childrens poetry(!), (ShA-IT!), but never anything I submit.
I disconnected myself from the call after inhaling a nut and choking for about 3 minutes. I let the other callers hear most of it, including the actual horking part where the nut was eventually, dramatically, spit into my trash can. Then I hit the pound button a couple of times and hung up.
Yarn. I'm telling you, our sweaters are not safe.
I had a check up last week. A 'health screening', as they say. Actually, it was me who said it: I changed the name from the 'Pissing Blood Death exam' once I figured out that it was eating 2 pounds of beets that caused my initial colorful self-misdiagnosis. Ahhh, the internet. It giveth and it taketh away. Anyways, I hadn't been to a doctor in about 5 years, so I figured, What the Hell, give the woman a treat.
I picked my doctor initially because her office was around the corner from a health food store, in an old house, and she is a lesbian. I figured this would all translate into medical pot and chrystal prescriptions, no matter what my affliction. I was willing to put up with wearing a slab of quartz the size of a baby's bladder around my neck if it meant that I'd be the only one at my federal facility toking up true in the smokers shack. I'd wear medical tye dye, so no one would hassle me. Reefer Medness ...Sadly, not the case.
Dr. Hern specializes in a 'holistic' approach to 'medicine', which means no coffee in the waiting room, or heat, and she brings her dog to work. A 'therapy dog'. The dog, Penny, some sort of cockapoo or small mixed breed, is next to useless. Trust me. Despite gentle verbal coaxing, a snausage bit lure, and finally sternly screaming, "SNIFF IT, GODDAMN IT, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? WHO HAS CANCER -- ME OR THE PREGNANT WOMAN!?" that dog wasn't giving up an opinion, preferring instead to wag and look sadly at the snausage as if it were a medicaid voucher. Fucking specialist. Tandie, the RN knocked quietly yet frantically on the restroom door the entire time, which may have been a factor. She whisked the dog away and put the 2 urine samples back in the little cupboard before escorting me to my little exam room.
"Why isn't Penny coming in?" I asked Dr. Hern.
"She likes to stay out in the waiting area with the patients, or sleeps in my office..." Dr. Hern answered. She stared at me. She held a clipboard. "You don't have to be undressed, yet, you know..."
Or in the stirrups if that dog wasn't coming in. I scooted back to the top of the table and covered myself with a childrens book. Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. It took me awhile to decide. Dr. Hern waited patiently.
She asked me a series of standard questions, What Medications am I taking? History of Heart Disease, Epilepsy, Cancer...
We exchanged a look. "I have herding dogs," I clarified.
"You what?" she asked.
"I have herding dogs. If I need a cancer dog, I'll get a labrador or a blue tick hound...something that can look appropriately sad if needed. Something that doesn't mind dipping its nose in a jar of pee when the occasion calls for it."
"Yes...welll..I'm asking you about your family history."
"My dad had colon cancer. And he had a spaniel mix. Barked incessantly. He never flushed. My grandmother was an alcoholic and she liked cats...Peed with the bathroom door open."
"Okay. Do you smoke?"
"Only by prescription..." I said, cheering up a bit.
She stared again. "What do you mean?"
"I don't smoke tobacco, no."
"Alcohol?"
"3-4 drinks"
"A week?"
"A day. Sometimes I break the day into halves or quarters. Mid-Afternoon, Evening....I DO NOT have a cat."
She stared. "That's not good. One drink a day for women. Men have better livers, they can handle two drinks."
"I should trade livers with my husband because he is NOT utilizing his to its fullest."
It was pretty downhill from there. She took my blood pressure, looked in my ears, made me undress, and without the dog present she did the internal exam. She sounded surprise when she said that I appeared healthy. I shrugged.
On my way out, the dog, who was busy being therapy-petted by an old woman in the waiting room, avoided making eye contact.
The park near my house has a dog area. Mostly small dogs and their overweight or elderly owners. The owners smoke while their dogs sort of loiter about sniffing half-heartedly at the sparse vegetation..the piles of dog poo. The occasional ball is thrown. Its sad. All that untapped potential.
From now on I'm saving my urine and bringing it there. I don't need a doctor.
Every few years, like an emotional plague of mormon crickets, Cyndee pines for Kenny. Seen pictured with me and Cyndee above, Kenny was present in the relationship almost exclusively as a metaphor or reference. He wasn't really tangible as a partner. He was more like dating a donor organ, on its way to its recipient...or someone's donor organ card, that you found on the street and kept checking the obituaries for payoff; the someday maybe promise of a lung or something collapsible; probably something that we all have an extra one of anyway. I know...i'm reaching but my computer only has 12 minutes of battery left.
During the two years they went out, Cyndee actually probably only dated kenny 6 or 7 times, and the last 6 months she saw him once, fleetingly, at Home Depot, which in their sad little romance counted as the 7th date when he spoke to her, briefly, in the checkout line.
"Why do you want to see Kenny again?" I ask, "You never really saw him the first time..."
"We like all the same things...skiing, biking, boating...."
Kenny liked these things theoretically.
Which is why i always got to bike and boat with Cyndee back in those days. Great trips that Kenny wouldn't take. He never did. Not once. Kenny liked television and talking about himself at great length.
i don't know why I try to dissuade her from attempting a doom-fated
reunion with Kenny, since I did nothing but profit from their
ridiculous relationship the first time.
I could use another good trip.
Sylvia hasn’t spoken to me in five years. Mother wishes we would patch things up before she dies, and God knows I’m willing, but Sylvia is very stubborn. Always has been. She clings to a grudge as if it were the last snack cake, that’s for sure. It is what she is probably best known for. That and her yearly family Christmas photo. Besides, Mother won't die. I've tried. She'll be around longer than Syl'Via, for sure, with all her problems.
When we were young, I remember Syl'Via once not talking to me for weeks because I’d cut her new dress into pieces to make work clothes for my Barbie.
“Barbie can’t muck out the horse stalls in a disco dress or ball gown! She needs clothes made from material that is common to the working class.” I explained.
Even then, as a child, things were so obvious to me. It frustrated me that Sylvia just cried, unwilling to listen to reason. She wailed, holding the torn remains of brightly patterned cotton in her grubby little fist. The leftover cloth could still be used for something. A handkerchief came to mind. I could not hear my own good explanation over Sylvia’s sobbing and snorting. She was hysterical. Like on television. So, I stabbed out one of her eyes with Barbie’s hard plastic leg.
“Kristin gets frustrated because she’s gifted,” Mother explained to Sylvia and the Doctor at the hospital, “Plenty of good people only have one eye.”
“Like Cyclops!” I added.
Mother smiled, impressed by my early knowledge of Greek Mythology. The doctor smiled also, but less at me, and he patted Sylvia’s leg.
Sylvia’s eye socket got infected and they ended up taking off part of her nose. Still she forgave me eventually. She wasn’t stupid, just average.
As we grew older, I liked to include Sylvia in things; things she was good at, like cleaning up after a party or driving me around; accepting blame. She wasn’t asked out much, because she was so hideous to look at. Her friends were mostly the fat kids and misfits; people who smelled strange and moved about in furtive clusters. They didn’t get together outside of school. Mother paid me to take her places,
“Sylvia will be so grateful for any attention she gets, Here...” she’d say, slipping me a $20. "for gas money."
'It’s not that ugly people don’t know the difference between good and bad attention, it’s that they don’t care.' I had that stenciled on a t-shirt for Sylvia when she was in Juvie for burning down part of the school so I could have a 3 day weekend. You’d think $20 worth of gas in those days would have gone farther.
“I wish ugly people would at least accept responsibility now and then for their actions,” Mother chided when Sylvia wanted to plead Not Guilty. “And say Thank You to your sister!”
Sylvia blew her nose on the t-shirt. Looking back now, it was probably the beginning of the end.
I forgive easily. Too easily, I suppose. I was very popular, of course. I’m gifted. I have all my birth organs. During our senior year, I got Sylvia a date for the prom. We laughed with her, not at her, as she’d later claim. We were laughing at Mr. Garcia, her date. English being his 2nd language, at best, he did not understand that it was an invitation and not a work order that he’d received. He showed up to the dance as he always did: in his janitor uniform with a toilet plunger and some vomit absorbing sawdust.
We gave Mr. Garcia and Sylvia the floor as the band played, “Always and Forever”….
The sawdust came in handy because several of us pissed ourselves.
Sylvia stopped driving me after this, stopped cleaning up. Completely. She moved in with her fat friend Kathy-with-Psoriasis for the summer and shortly after she left for college a half mile away. Community college because she was not gifted and so why waste the money. She got her associates degree in something or other.
Of course, being gifted, I went back east. Mother gave me the money she was saving to fix Sylvia's nose so that she didn't get ice cream headaches when it snowed. We agreed that Sylvia could continue to wear stocking masks and plug her face hole with bits of maxipad. I needed to be challenged. My future was very bright.
Somehow in my junior year Sylvia got married. She married a doctor. A neurologist. He was a little overweight, and Asian, but not bad. They bought a huge house on a sizable lake. Mother sent pictures, but I accidentally threw them out with some advertisements. I accidentally burned them. I inadvertently sent the charred burned photos and ads back with their wedding gift: A set of knives and a kitten. The kitten barely survived and it was ungratefully suggested that I shouldn’t have shipped a live animal across the country 3rd class ground, with a gram of cocaine up its ass. It was the drug sniffing dogs that caused the most damage, apparently.
When I found out that Sylvia was pregnant, I came home. Immediately. I pleaded with mother, I begged her almost handsome doctor husband: DO NOT LET A ONE-EYED, HALF NOSED WOMAN RAISE A CHILD! BEFORE ME!
“Maybe instead of the brain-damaged cat, she’d like a puppy!” I suggested.
“Don’t be silly,” mother said. "We're cat people!" Don’t be silly!
Sylvia got larger. Mother doted. “I’m going to be a Grandmother!” she told her friends. “The one-eye thing is not genetic!”
My grades suffered. Sylvia caused me to not be on the dean’s list that semester.
When the baby was born, Sylvia came home so that Mother could “help” for the first few weeks. She and the baby stayed in my old room because it was the biggest. I flew home and got a suite at a hotel downtown. On the 2nd or 3rd day, I visited Sylvia and the baby. Sylvia’s one eye shown with demented misguided pride over this helpless infant, who looked like WC Fields a few hours into detox. I’d brought her a puppy, which she just ignored. It was a registered pit bull, I pointed out, and his face was already scarred from fighting.
“Sort of like you! His name is Carl,” I told her, lifting the 50 pound dog onto the bed, “He’s not good with kids.”
He wasn’t. Not at all. Nor with Asians.
Still, in the end, the result was a truly symmetrical family photo.
I don’t like talking people into anything. Especially with the flowers. People generally come into my shop wanting something, but not quite knowing what, and I help them to know…. but really I just guide them to the decision that they have already tucked up inside their heart. These days a person has to be good at seeing into another person’s heart. Flowers are easy. I do believe, have always believed, that the flower picks you.
There’s a type, alright. I can spot a Rose Person a mile way, they tend to be unimaginative in a middle class way, one season behind in everything; I know a Wildflower Spring Bouquet when it walks through my door looking hurried and badly shod; and anyone who wants those creepy vines mixed in can’t be trusted, Wandering Jews is what we call ‘em and I refer these folks to the big Fred Meyer down the way…
It’s so much better if the shopper comes to his decision on his own, be it with the flowers, or the firearms. You show them your pre-arrangements, you let them flip through the catalogs at the little stuffed bears and coffee mugs, the hollowpoints shells with WWJK stenciled on, the paper targets in the shape of gay boyscouts… In then end, it’s a thirty dollar basket of mixed colors or a dozen red roses every time. But you’ve made them think. Throw in the bear, tie on a balloon…ask them if they are proud of their white race. You can tell if they came just for the flowers by how much money they spend and by the questions that they ask,
“I like roses, but do you have anything with more thorns?” or
“I’d like to tear the heads off those fucking pink tulips….”
These are good indicators that the person might be interested in seeing what I’ve got in back. I love weddings. A room full of spring bouquets can take my breath away. But that don’t feed the baby, honey. And I’m not going to be caught with my pants down holding a hand full of pansys when the Big Whitey Meltdown comes to my town.
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
