box of light
WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO
I am avoiding a big dumb work thing. It is the sort of thing that had no deadline for a long time but now it’s starting to have one, and what I should do is write a really crappy draft. If I had a really crappy draft I would at least have something to work on, but instead I just have a deep anxious hole of not having done the thing, plus a real deadline starting to form on the horizon. So! Naturally! I will procrastinate with blogginess! It is time for tea and headphones and Google Docs and WordPress and a timer that says YOU MAY TYPE FOR 37 MINUTES AND NO LONGER. (Thirty-seven is just because I overshot the 30 on my phone timer and didn’t feel like fixing it. I do not expect that the extra 7 minutes will make this blog entry 23.33% better or anything.) (Did I do that math right?)
HELLO CREATURES OF THE CITY
I am glad it is spring but the melting snow does uncover all sorts of unpleasantness and wakes up all sorts of vermin from its verminy slumber. One day I went out into my backyard and discovered an entire chicken ribcage, dragged out of the garbage by a creepy nighttime thing that apparently had a gleeful evening ripping shreds off and flinging them everywhere. I kicked the main carcass back into a garbage bag and got it back into the can, telling myself I’d be back for the other gross bits later. But slack yardkeeping has its benefits, because the same or a different Something came back and ate the gross bits the next night, so no clean-up was needed.
THE DUMBEST (PHYSICAL) THING I’VE DONE LATELY
I was leaning down to tie my shoes and not looking at my hands because I am an adult and can tie shoes without much concentration on the task. First shoe went smoothly, but for the second one I did not notice that the fringe-y edges of my long scarf had somehow been tied into the shoelace knot itself, so that when I went to sit back/stand up I nearly strangled myself, Isadora-Duncan-style.
OH THE HEAD COMES OFF OH THE FACE COMES OFF, LA LA LA LA
Nora had received a small animal eraser for winning some in-class math contest. I found it on the counter and noticed it was the kind where the various limbs and stuff come off. I don’t know what Japanese eraser company decided that all these dumb little items must disassemble, but that seems to be the trend. Anyway, I found the eraser while I was cooking dinner and Nora was sitting on the family room couch with her laptop and one earbud in, which I’d like to think is that so she can still participate in conversation in the middle of all those YouTube videos but really it’s probably just the 6th-grade fashion. I was enchanted with the easy destruction/re-creation of the little cat eraser, and so while I cooked and drank a glass of box wine I sang a song about it. You can make up your own tune (I certainly did) but here are the lyrics:
Oh the cat’s head comes off
and its face comes off.
Its head comes off
and its face comes off.
Take the head off the cat.
Take the face off the cat.
Oh my god
what’s going on?
The legs come off toooooooooo
Later at dinner I mentioned the cat eraser and Nora said, “Oh you saw that? Also, it’s a dog.”
Me: I thought it was a cat. You were sitting right there while I was talking [singing] about it being a cat.
Nora: Oh yeah, I remember that now. I didn’t know you were talking about the eraser. It’s a dog, though.
Me: So…earlier you thought I was just randomly singing a song about taking a cat’s face off?
Nora [shrugs]: Nothing new there.
—mimi smartypants, utterly predictable.