everything is going to burn. we’ll all take turns.
FIRST THE BAD THINGS
- My intermittent difficulty in obtaining El Milagro tortillas at the grocery stores in my area. This never used to be an issue but I’m starting to feel like I should go down to Pilsen and stock up. El Nuevo León is not a terrible substitute but why are they wildly different sizes? The substitute tortillas are made in Hammond, Indiana and the lack of quality control seems like just another bullet point in the list of things that are wrong with that state. Stop hiring the drunk and/or visually impaired tortilla makers, El Nuevo León. You are making my enchiladas weird.
- Anxiety is real and I have some, but I am working on being more granular and specific about naming my exact feelings and not just throwing them in the Anxietybucket and going on my not-so-merry way. I tend to use “anxiety” for any sort of discontent, whether acute or persistent. What I really want is some 19th-century German poet to invent a whole bunch of Feelings Words (maybe some of them are just words stuck to other words, German-style) that will work for all my interior situations.
- This is how sheltered I am: I had no idea that there was such a thing as a TWENTY- or THIRTY-DOLLAR SCRATCH-OFF LOTTERY TICKET. Holy hell that is so much money. Aaron and I were at a grocery store, waiting in line to use the Coinstar thing and turn his jar of change into a more useful item like cash or a gift certificate, and the lottery machine was right next to where we were waiting. I watched a woman, probably in her mid-60s, sensible hairstyle and elastic-waist denim shorts and a flower-appliqued t-shirt, basically every person’s Midwestern-lake-house great-aunt, feed a twenty into the machine, step to the side to do the required scratching, then toss it in the trash and buy another one. So I basically stood and watched someone throw several twenty-dollar bills into the trash, and it did not even look fun. I personally think gambling is dumb and boring but at least at the tables or slots you can order a drink or something.
- LT, while attempting to carry Too Many Things, fell down our basement stairs about a week ago and fractured his fifth metatarsal. (Who needs all these metatarsals anyway, come on. FIVE???) There has been an ER visit, a CT scan, some crutches, a walking “boot,” and now about 50% walking boot and 50% cane. He can manage the stairs okay but I still carry his coffee cup into the office for him because that seems safer, and the RRRIIIPPP of the goddamned velcro on the boot violently awakens me on the nights that I go to bed first, but those are minor annoyances.
- Driving is not something LT is really supposed to do right now. This is not wonderful, as we need to drive our only child to college and help him move into his dorm, incredibly soon. Part of me was like, “maybe LT should just stay home” but of course he wants to be part of this Parenting Transition and I would not insist on that if he were truly disabled, instead of in this temporary way, so is that fair? No it is not. Now there is a much more complex plan involving a rental van (to accommodate the extra driver we’ll need to bring) and it all gives me anxiety (which I think I am labeling correctly in this instance).
- Around this same time, Lola had some sadness in her litterbox, as in being unsuccessful at doing what cats are supposed to do in there, and then when she did pee it was on my kitchen floor (boo) and there was blood in it (extra boo). I got her to the vet and she has a UTI, which we are treating with antibiotics. They ran all the usual tests at the usual cost of eleven billion dollars and the news is the same as usual: Lola is a 4-pound, 15-year-old cat with death’s-door kidney-disease values, an inflamed pancreas, irritable bowel disease, and hyperthyroidism. Every time a vet sees Lola they find some kind of delicate way to express surprise that she is not dead and in fact seems to be enjoying her tiny little life at the moment (eating, sleeping, demanding pets, yelling for treats). I know in my heart that we’ll be Lola-less pretty soon and that she is not an indestructible beast. But isn’t it pretty to think so?
THEN THE GOOD (?) THINGS, THEY ARE KIND OF SMALL BUT PLEASE PRAISE ME FOR FINDING THEM
- Last week I had the best workday moment I have had in a long while. It became necessary to change the publication schedule, and a certain writer person was mildly inconvenienced by this—they had to get their copy to me earlier than originally planned. This person felt peevish and wronged and said, “That wasn’t the deal,” and then I got to say, out loud, on camera, and in front of other colleagues: “I have altered the deal.” I just used my normal voice and the reference went unremarked but I enjoyed it SO MUCH.
- Went down a strange rabbit hole and ended up reading a large part of the Meese report. Remember that? When the Supreme Court looked at a bunch of pornography? I don’t think you should necessarily read the Meese report, but you might get a kick out of the strangely poetic lists on pages 49 to 52 or so.
- The garden is going apeshit, lots and lots of tomatoes and zucchini OH GOD THE ZUCCHINI MAKE IT STOP. We only have one plant but it is prolific. I have made zucchini bread (several kinds) and the melty zucchini pasta and a zucchini breakfast casserole thing and there is still more. Some of the zucchinis are about the length of a newborn baby so I was thinking of wrapping a few in receiving blankets and dropping them off in one of those Safe Haven baby boxes at fire stations and hospitals. Actually my first thought was to stage a zucchini-based murder-suicide tableau as in Jude the Obscure (“done because we are too many”) but that seemed dark, even for me.
- I successfully lobbied (in the form of an overly emotional website comment) my local sushi place to put oshinko maki back on their menu. Maybe I was the only weirdo who needed her pickled radish but they should (and did!) cater to me, it cannot cost that much in overhead to keep a pickled thing around. Hooray!
THEN THE FEELING ALL THE THINGS THING
The dining room is a staging area now for Aaron’s college stuff, and very soon we’ll be dropping him off at his dorm. I do not want to be a dorktastic helicopter but I do want to make his bed, hang up his clothes, and help as much as I can before we hug goodbye and I run out of there to cry in the car. He is going to do so well and have such a good time and us empty-nesters will…I don’t know. Put raw onions on everything we eat and have sex with the door open, I guess? We’ll figure it out.
—mimi smartypants, naked blogger.