the money is mandatory, the hoes is for the stress
August! How did that happen but also how is it only August? Because it has been approximately eight years now of working from home and not going anywhere fun and being a boring sad loser person. Also of going up a pants size, which is kind of terrifying because if I can get fatter in spring/summer it stands to reason that I can get even fatter in fall/winter. On the other hand I am trying to remember that (a) women’s sizes are crazy bullshit; (b) I am probably not the only one in the developed world with quarantine fluff; and (c) who actually cares. Who cares. WHO CARES.
I do not care. But I can only aspire to this perfect hair and no-nonsense attitude
It is blessedly cool today for a Chicago August. Being awake in the very early morning, in cool summer weather like this, reminds me of family vacations. Your dad wants to get an early start and is packing the car. You pretend to be still asleep and listen to your mom moving around the motel room, putting things in the cooler and collecting wet swimsuits off the shower curtain rod. Eventually you’re in the back seat, kind of chilly in a t-shirt and shorts, with a tiny can of pineapple juice and a hard-boiled egg or maybe one of those individual boxes of cereal which are too expensive and wasteful to buy for everyday.
I was awake even earlier than my normally insanely early awake time because of spousal allergy snurfling, ladytime cramps, general anxious complaints. Also for the ridiculous whiny privilege reason of the full moon, hitting my eye like a big pizza pie through the bedroom skylight. At certain times of the year it seriously shines right on my recumbent self, safe and warm on a memory-foam queen mattress, and I get trapped in a terrible brain-cycle of being crabby about it and then hating myself for feeling crabby about it, oh no the MOON IS INCOVENIENCING ME. I feel like if I even think a crabby thought about this non-problem the Central Committee will (and should!) redistribute my wealth, or there will be a raffle where 100 Syrian orphans win the right to come throw stones at me in the public square, or maybe I will be forced to write a lengthy self-criticism (this scenario is actually happening right now! Hello and welcome to my blog!) Anyway, yeah. Stupid moon.
The moon got me back, though. I went for a very early morning bike ride and as I was hauling my FUCKING heavy ancient mountain bike up our basement steps I encountered a tiny baby bird in the stairwell. Not the bald closed-eye kind that just go splat when they fall out of a nest, but an apricot-sized fledgling, and so motionless and so close to the outside basement door that I nearly ran it over with my bike tire. “Oh,” I said. “You do not look good, dude.” But I was all helmeted up and unready to play Baby Bird Nurse at that moment, so I steered around the baby bird and left.
Then three bad things happened in a row:
A homeless guy yelled “YOU SUCK” at me as I went past him on the bike path (behind me a minute later I could hear him yell “YOU SUCK” at someone else, so at least I am not the only one who sucks).
As I walked my bike back through my gate, a slat of wood (with nails still in it, like a zombie-fighting weapon) fell off my starting-to-disintegrate back stair rail and hit me on my head. Ridiculous! What are the odds? I still had my helmet on and was not hurt but I was very startled so that was the first time that morning I screamed a little in the backyard, sorry neighbors.
The bird was still there and looked even worse. It had sort of rolled on its side and was not moving at all. Of course I flashed on the childhood fantasy of a shoebox and an eyedropper and being the baby-bird Hero Angel but more realistically I just don’t want a dead bird in front of my basement door, so I went inside and got gloves, a paper bag, and an old rag in preparation for getting rid of the bird corpse (and for not getting any bird diseases). Scoop it with the rag, drop it in the bag, except when the bird went in the bag it let out a huge SHRIEK and so did I (sorry neighbors, again). I was going to put the bag in the trash but I CAN’T PUT A POSSIBLY ALIVE BIRD IN A BAG IN THE TRASH so once I was done having a heart attack I went to the alley and shook the bird out of the bag and into a patch of weeds, where I ascertained that it was very very definitely dead and that the weird shriek must have been its horrifying death-scream, so then I had to repeat the WHOLE DAMN PROCESS with bird in bag and bag in trash. It was just a lot when one hasn’t even had breakfast yet. Told you suck, hit on the head by falling wood, shocked by screamy death.
HERE ARE SOME THINGS I LIKE
Books: The Poison Garden (Alex Marwood); The Paper Wasp (Lauren Acampora); On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane (Emily Guendelsberger).
Music: String Quartet No. 6, A Minor, Antonin Dvorak and no, I don’t feel like making either one of those accents so shush; Demon’s Claws (60s-style garage stuff from Montreal); Swirlies, remember them? Specifically this album; Strange Ranger; No Vacation
—mimi smartypants possibly contributed to a bird’s death.