pay for gas
MORE WIN FOR THE WINNERS
Nor and I ran a tiny little neighborhood 5K, one that gave out medals for the top three finishers in each age category. The age categories were tiny, too—they started out just “under 14” but after that it was in 5-year intervals. There were more people there with medals than without, which was just fine with me because I like getting medals. Second place in “medium-old mom” category! (Nora won her division handily, of course.) It was humid and windy and a leaf blew into my mouth (ptooey!) but I had a personal best and came away with something to hang around my neck, so yay. It is silver and features a winged* shoe and the word RUNNING. What activity did I perform to earn this medal? *looks at medal* Oh that’s right, RUNNING.
*Please pronounce that with the grave accent, as in time’s winged chariot etc. I want some Shakespearean emphasis on my winged-shoe medal.
Afterward Nora took the longest bath in history, making hooting noises and “potions” concocted from various personal-care products, which she pours into tiny containers and stirs with a kabob skewer. Don’t ask me. The cleaning lady and I have a private understanding that she will throw these away every so often, and that I am allowed to blame her should Nora notice and feel grumpy about it, which she rarely does. The fun is in the concocting, I suppose. I took a regular shower (no fun was had). Then we went to friend’s house to watch football, eat snacks, and drink Korean beer. Hite! The label says, “Clean and Pure” and is more suited to laundry detergent, both in tagline and graphic design, than it is to beer. But it is inoffensive and you can have a lot of it with few ill effects, so shine on, Korea.
ACT IT OUT, BITCHES
Has anyone noticed that touchdown dances/sack celebrations* now seem to involve a lot of mime? There is that thing where you pretend to rip open your shirt like Clark Kent turning into Superman, the “putting on the championship belt” mime, some sort of “digging with a shovel” thing that I guess means something like “we just buried you.” This weekend Jason Hill played hopscotch. Here are my suggestions for future NFL celebratory acts of mime, and the possible messages they could send:
1. Knitting (up a victory)
2. Feeding the fish (and if we overfeed you, oh well. There’s more of you at the pet store.)
3. Getting an ice cream headache (from the awesomeness of the touchdown)
4. Putting together IKEA furniture (we assemble a victory, get it? Victory comes packed flat. You need an Allen wrench.)
5. Stirring more broth into the risotto (because we’re breaking down your starch, opponents. You will become smooth and creamy.)
*Oh! Another possible Depeche Mode parody! “Sack Celebration,” a sad and mopey song about scrotums.
HOBO HAD IT COMING
As exhaustively documented on this here blog, I am a bit of a freak magnet. People like to talk to me. I don’t always talk back. Sometimes I don’t feel like getting involved in someone’s crazy and just do the urban-warrior “eyes on the book at all costs” thing. Or the “suddenly something is very interesting on my phone” thing. Or the “pretend I am hearing-impaired and absorbed in the view out this train window” thing.
Sometimes I feel the crazy needs a smackdown but I can’t think of anything great to say. Until long after the event, of course. It is guaranteed I will have the perfect thing to say in the middle of the night.
Occasionally I say something and it doesn’t go as planned, and the person only gets more crazy.
But sometimes, I talk back to a crazy person and everything comes together. Those are the times that usually get written up here, because who doesn’t love success?
The other day I was going home from work. I had my purse and my bookbag and a box of my beloved Trader Joe’s red. A very drunk, very smelly guy was flopping about in a seat across from me, muttering all kinds of bullshit, and suddenly he was talking to me. “Hey! Girlie! You gonna drink that box wine?”
“Yes I am,” I said, staring straight ahead.
“Oh lord that stuff is poison. Oh lord you gonna rot your guts out.” And so forth. On and on and on. I refrained from asking him exactly what kind of poison he had been drinking, since he smelled like old lunchmeat marinated in Colt 45 and left in a hot bathroom. Instead I ignored him until the train pulled into my stop, put on my best fancy-lady voice, and snapped, “Do not diss my box wine, hobo.” I think I was more pleased with the sentence than the insult. Do not diss my box wine, hobo. You can use it for the title of your next album or chapbook, if you want.
Speaking of box wine, every time I buy the red box at Trader Joe’s (and we will not speak of precisely how often that is), they try to put it in the bag with the rest of the stuff. It’s really too heavy for that and the box has a convenient carrying handle in any case, so I usually say, “No thanks, I’ll just carry that separately.” Then I usually make a joke like, “Or maybe I will just drink it on the way.” And every time, seriously EVERY TIME, the cashier is not amused but rather slightly horrified, and says something like, “Oh, I hope this day hasn’t been that bad!” or “Gosh, that would be a lot of wine for one person!” or something grotesquely sincere like that. Note to self: do not party with any Trader Joe’s employees.
Although Trader Joe’s employees, as well as regular folk, are welcome to come to the Hideout on Friday to see me humiliate myself on stage! Or you can come for the rest of the lineup, composed of people who are actually talented. Either way, stay to share a post-humiliation beer with me, because as a wise woman once said, “It’s only humiliating if you remember it.”
—mimi smartypants remembers nothing.