beautiful, funny, sad & true

OneYearAgo

Yesterday was my mom’s birthday, and I called her last night.  We talked for a while, and one of the things she mentioned is that she occasionally checks in on my blog to ‘see how things are going.’  My mom reads my blog, and she’s apparently been doing it for some time now.

Great.

With all those posts I’ve written about Satan and feces and third grade memories, not to mention all the copious amounts of premarital sex weird dreams and my judicious but regular smattering of naughty words, she probably thinks that her real baby son must have somehow been swapped in the hospital for this devil’s spawn.

But the most egregious thing of all (for her, anyway) has to be my non-stop trash-talking about Yakima, which is decidedly well-deserved, but she can’t stomach it.  I have a kinda funny story about that, actually, which involves my niece’s favorite TV show, which we all couldn’t help but watch with her while we were at the beach a few weeks ago.

It’s a national show, which you probably haven’t seen, let alone enjoyed, if you’re over the age of ten.  It’s about PrecociousTeenageGirl, and it’s set in Seattle, where Niece lives.  The grandparents on the show even live in Yakima, where one set of Niece’s grandparents live.  The hijinks ensued in one episode when it looked as if PTG was going to be sent to live with her grandparents.  She didn’t want to go, and she kept making all these lame jokes about Yakima and how bad it is (“oh, the sweet smell of Yakima”, et cetera).  I kept waiting for them to actually take her there, and have some scenes set in the town, which I’m sure they would have filmed in Salinas, California instead, anyway.  It has the exact same feel and look as Yakima, except for the fact that Salinas has the brilliant John Steinbeck rooting for it.  Raymond Carver and I are Yakima’s vox populi spokespeople, and we have nothing good to say about the place.

But that’s neither here nor there.

I found that episode surreal and hilarious.  No wonder it’s Niece’s favorite show; the writers practically frickin’ wrote it for her, and set it in the two places she knows best in the world.  I couldn’t stop cracking up at the irony of the situation, so between my incredulous laughter and the show’s cloying laugh track in response to every generic joke, my mom got angry and had to go upstairs to get away from it all.

I couldn’t tear myself away from the stupid show, and I actually watched the thing in its entirety. You’ll be glad to know that PTG did not, in fact, get sent to live in Yakima, because GenXGuardian (her older brother?) came through in the end to prove that despite his slacker appearance, he really was quite the responsible young gentleman when it came to raising her.  Awww.  Wipe my tears and cue the organist.

I suppose I don’t have a real reason to feel weird about my mom reading all this.  She knows (pretty much) what I’m like, this is all real stuff, and I feel like it’s a good representation of me, slightly-glossed-over warts and all.

But it still does feel weird.  I’m sure you understand.

The other day I was parking near J’s place, and there was a red four-wheel-drive Jeep parked in front of a black four-door BMW, with just barely enough space for a Honda in between them.  It was tight, but I thought I could do it.  As it turned out, I wouldn’t normally have been able to make it, but for the fact that my car is so ridiculously low, and the Jeep is so ridiculously high.

The bumper of my car slid right underneath the Jeep’s bumper, and I glided into the spot without a scratch.  I had to capture the moment:

This hilarious two-minute video eliminates almost all of the dialogue from The Big Lebowski except for the various incarnations of the F-word. You’ve been warned.

OneYearAgo

I’m sorry you had to die. The thing is, I tried everything I could to NOT kill you. You were trapped behind the curtain, so I pushed it aside to let you out. I opened my bedroom door and turned on the light in the kitchen, MANY TIMES, to try and lure you out there so that I could shut the door and go to sleep. That tactic worked for your friend or brother or wife or whatever, but not for you. You kept flying into things and making that buzzing, flapping noise with your wings, and that shit kept me awake for hours just as I was drifting off to sleep, three or four times.

The thing you have to know about humans is that they get very irritable when they are deprived of sleep, and the more primeval parts of their brains become more active. When you stopped moving for a couple of seconds, I had already tried those other things, so I had no other choice but to squash you behind the curtain. I must admit that the sound you made when you fell dead on the windowsill was very satisfying to me, because it meant that I would finally be getting some well-deserved rest. Yesterday was very busy for me, you know, and this morning I’m driving to the beach, so I really needed that sleep.

Oh. . .and your friend/brother/wife? I killed him/her this morning. Just thought you should know. He/she was milling around on the counter in the kitchen while I was making breakfast, which is completely unacceptable. That’s another thing about humans; they get very testy regarding the preparation of their food. Some humans even get very fussy with EACH OTHER about the preparation of food. They think that things need to be cut a certain way, or washed a certain way, and many an argument has ensued. We can’t even work in a restaurant unless we’ve paid money and taken a little test to show that we know The Rules. Think about THAT. Well, I mean, think about that in your NEXT LIFE because you’re both dead now.

I’m going to try not to think about you while I’m in Astoria and Cannon Beach. The reason I say that is because I’m very tired, thanks to you, and that’s going to be affecting me all day, and maybe even tomorrow too. Whatever, you know? I’m gonna be having a good time (I think) and the weather is supposed to be beautiful, so I’ll be busy enjoying life, while you two are squashed in a paper towel in my garbage can.

Just remember that I tried hard to save you. It didn’t have to end that way.

OneYearAgo