the sloppy copy

In anticipation of the soul-crushing void left in my soul once baseball season ends (not to mention this potential NHL lockout, boo), I’m contemplating giving this football thing a go.

It  seems like it’s pretty popular, no? A lot of folks seem to be into it. I assume based on its pervasiveness that it offers some kind of entertainment value. So, yeah! Why the hell not?

I mean, I’m not completely football-ignorant. I’ve participated in a family football pool for as long as I can remember, I can name all of the teams, know many of the players, know that a field goal is three points and a touchdown six. I think a safety is two. But don’t ask me what a safety actually is, because I thought it was a position on the team.

Let’s just say I have a long ways to go before I can actually follow a game properly. Stay tuned, I guess?

While dining at an upscale* barbecue establishment recently, I encountered this laminated Evacuation Plan posted on the wall near our table:

It’s unclear whether this is posted due to some kind of Building Code (have you ever seen one of these before, hotel room doors notwithstanding? Me neither, which is why I snapped a pic), or because it’s something the restaurant purveyor expects guests to read and study.

I mean, it’s a nice idea – theoretically. But as I took a closer look, I realized that tables 30 and 31, and 40 and 41 are, essentially, screwed. Absolutely no evac route for you. Guess you’ll have to stay and enjoy your pulled pork.

Something to keep in mind the next time I dine there.

*In this case, “upscale” means a roll of paper towels on each table and all the sweet tea my little bladder can handle.

A Reflexology/ Massage/ Income Taxes/ Ear Candling/ Pet Grooming/ Mani-Pedi parlor opened up in a 100+ year old building on the Historic Main Street of my parents’ town recently. This is nice, and probably appropriate, because I’m sure the folks who settled here back in the day would not have been freaked out at all by a bunch of tiny Asian women descending on their settlement to shove candles in their ears and poke at their feet to cleanse their auras.*

If you’re like me, you are a) apparently racist and b) asking yourself just what the eff is Reflexology and Ear Candling? I took the liberty of conducting some superficial intense Internet research in order to introduce these concepts to you, Gentle Reader(s). Because I’d like to think I ain’t nothin’ if not informative.

Reflexology
Our feet are important.** Aside from, you know, taking us every-damn-where, seriously could you just spring for a fucking pedicure ONCE before you die, you cheap asshole?, they have a lot of say in a lot of bodily…things. If you take a look at the bottom of your foots, you’ll notice – well, hopefully nothing, unless you’ve been spending a lot of time barefoot in public restrooms – er, you can imagine the sole of your foots separated into sections. Each section represents a different bodily…thing. And manipulating each of these areas will affect each bodily…thing. Need to kickstart your pancreas? Just give the upper-mid-right-pinkie-toe area a good pokin’. How about that sciatic nerve? Just work the lower-left-heel. Or something.

This is all fascinating to me, and without passing too much judgment, I will say this: the whole damn thing freaks me the eff out. Blaaaaaarfffffuugggghhhhmmmmllleh! is the sound I make when I think about it. I am super-dupes sensitive about the bottoms of my feet. I have a hard time touching them, much less anyone else. They’re ticklish as hell, yes, but it’s more than that. Something about having someone rubbing or poking at them just gives me the heebie-jeebies, and I’ve always been that way. Who knows? Maybe my gall bladder is misaligned.

Ear Candling
Oh, girl, this is a good one.
Do you like pursuing semi-dangerous alternative medicinal practices for the sake of a more-cleansed bodily…thing? Then is this the thing for you! Ear Candling involves you, um, laying down I think, and someone taking a lit-fucking-candle and, uh…. No, seriously. I don’t know what this is, only that every other site I saw about it talked about how dangerous it could be. To this I say: no shit. The thought of hot wax dripping into my brain canal gives me EXTRA-super-duper heebie-jeebies, and I don’t care if that’s not really how it’s supposed to work – the potential is there.  I’d rather have a stranger poke at the center of the sole of my foot with his index finger.

Maybe.

So, there you have it! The next time you find your duodenum in a tizzy, just check out your local Yellow Pages to see if your town’s Historic Main Street offers these amenities!

*Or… whatever.
**Unless you’ve lost one or more to disease or shark attack. In that case, feet are overrated, whatever, you’re going to be fine, sorry about your loss, hang in there slugger, Oscar Pistorius, et cetera, et cetera.

I recently found a bunch of old flash cards – some dating back to eighth grade! – and realized something truly amazing:

At one point in my lifetime, I knew all this shit!

So where did it go?

If I think hard enough, will I be able to come up with TESTS THAT MUST BE MET TO PROVE LIBEL or how to find the cosine of x?

Part of me says sure, of course, it’s in there somewhere!
The rest of me – most of me – says no fucking way, Einstein.

I realize that this is a matter of repetition and use; while I am by no means fluent in any language other than gibberenglish, I think about Spanish enough that I’m fairly confident I could score at least a 50% if I went through those particular cards. But as I’m not the journalist or newspaper editor I once thought I might be, I could give two fucks about proving libelousness now.* And don’t get me started on this sine-cosine-tangent shit. I’m not 100% sure I even understood that stuff in the first place.

But is this knowledge really erased from my brain? Have those neural pathways atrophied and died? This thought truly frightens the piss out of me. Being (sometimes) smart and knowing (some) shit has been part of my identity for so long that if, God forbid, I sustained some sort of traumatic brain injury… Well, I’d rather not think about it.

As I age and become further and further separated from formal education, I become less and less sure of what I actually know. Is it because my world is continually expanding around me?

Probably.

And is this actually a good thing?

Yes, though it doesn’t always feel that way.

*See also: using actual words

When called for, I can be extremely, painstakingly, patient. But the one thing that gets me every time – that final straw that shatters my titanium-alloyed even-temperedness into an exasperated, slushy mess?

When no one around me is able to be patient with me.

No seriously, during [sometimes-long] moments of work down-time, nothing irritates me more (think: to the point of physical violence) than hearing someone complain they are bored, or that there is nothing to do. Reminding them, hey, in approximately twenty minutes it will become so busy you won’t be able to think in a straight line so relish the quiet now? It never works, even when repeated a dozen times.

Maybe I will try a blow to the head next time.

More cases in points:
The majority of items in my Netflix queue are television shows, because, as I like to say: “movies can rarely hold my attention that long.”

Which is funny, because I will think nothing of watching several 45-minute episodes of a show in one sitting. “Play next episode? Oh, okay. But just one more…”

Fast forward to three hours later…

I also say, with little irony, that I’m not really a fan of football because it moves too slowly. The final minutes of a game seem to drag on for hours. Ugh. Who has time for that nonsense?

In other news, my beloved Cardinals played a six-hour, fifteen inning game a few months ago. Had I not been working, I had tickets. And would have stayed for the whole thing.

Unless Juanita started bitching about how long it was taking. Then I would have had to have been escorted out of the park. Something about assaulting my mother.

As a child of about eight or nine, my brother was a member of the Afghan Olympic Archery team.

No, not really. But this was an key component of last night’s dream.

(Incredibly) sadly, the rest of the details are fuzzy at best. I can normally recall the sequence of events in vivid detail, but a dose of diphenhydramine citrate before bedtime seems to have muddled the specifics. I mean, Brother and I were part of some sort of Olympic planning committee,* and I think the Olympics in question were being held in some sort of college student union building, and Dave Franco and I agreed there was nothing good to eat in the cafeteria, and one of my coworkers was hanging out on the stairs of the union doing crossword puzzles and completely ignoring me which made me very sad, but the rest? No clue.

* His former Olympic-athlete life being the “in” we needed for the committee, of course.

Sometimes, a girl wants Chinese take out, but just a little bit. Like a half order of shrimp fried rice. That’s all.

But sometimes, the Chinese takeout place has some kind of thing where there’s a minimum $5 charge to use a credit card. And your half order of shrimp fried rice is $4.95.

And also, you have only $4.25 in cash.

So sometimes you just look at the menu on the counter before you, point randomly to something else, and say “I’ll take this too, then.”

Then – while the employees are making your food and yelling angrily into the phone and at each other in what I assume is, after all, Chinese – you sometimes start to worry. What did I actually order? I think it had one of those red pepper icons next to it. Will my tongue fall off when I try to eat it? Is it noodles? Is it rice? Wait, is that my order? Why are they putting so much food into my bag?

So then the lady who cooked your food puts a gigantic paper sack on the counter and gives you a “Uh, are you going to take this or not?” look so you scoop up 45 metric tons of food, packaged in several containers, and head on your merry way.

Still a bit concerned, for the record.

So then you get home and change out of work clothes that will forever smell of garlic and vegetable bouillon and unwrap your Mystery Meal.

And sometimes, you are greeted with literally mouthwatering aromas of garlic and yumminess and kind of squeal in delight at the sight of literally mouthwatering broccoli florets the size of your fist in some kind of delicious-looking sauce.

And sometimes blindly pointing at something on the menu turns out happily ever after.

*from the classic Bob Newhart Show episode “Over The River and Through the Woods.” (1975) – one of the funniest things I have ever seen on television. In. My. Life. I tried to find a good link, but failed. Apologies.

So first I have to climb up this 500-foot rock wall and now this asshole expects me to carry him down? Fine, fine. Whatever, jerk. So I piggyback him all the way down. God, my back hurts.

But wait – this was a paved road before, right? The first time I went up here, I was going back to the house of that family I babysat for in seventh grade. I mean, the road kept getting steeper and steeper until it became the vertical climb, but this schmoe was definitely not here the first time around.

So why did I climb back down, only to climb back up again? And again?

Fifth time’s the charm. Or something. On the fifth try, I find Mr. Lazy Ass.

Mom and Dad are waiting for me at the bottom. Mom’s packed my bags for summer camp. Pretty spectacular of her, really, but I decide that I should probably take a peek.

She’s packed my clothes inside a duffel bag big enough to comfortably contain a family of four. I dig through the contents. Sweatshirt. Sweatshirt. Sweatshirt. Sweatshirt. I am becoming irritated. Surely one sweatshirt is enough? And where are my pants? Oh, good, you’ve packed all of my thong underwear. Thanks, Mom.

Why are we in the checkout lane of Target?

I think I need some gum.

Those men were totally following me. I think they want to know what’s in the duffel bag. Just be cool. Don’t make eye contact.

Then I woke up.

Happy Best Freaking Day Of The Year, y’all!

No joke. I’d gladly trade Christmas, my birthday and anything else just to get more holidays with fireworks, cookouts, baseball games, parades and and an overwhelming love of my country.

I love, love, love, love it.

July 4, 2009: Baby brudder and the snakes.

But be safe, y’all. That bucket next to Brudder should be filled with water, not more fireworks.

Growing up, I didn’t really get the chance to experience all the Awesome Stuff that comes with grandparents but I did luck out with some Really Cool Aunts.  My Aunt G, gifted / cursed with only sons, used my presence as an excuse to do Cool Girl Stuff that her boys were too busy playing basketball or hitting each other to do: namely, crafts.

Fondest memory: buying cheap white canvas tennis shoes and puffy paint at the Venture and taking them back to her house to decorate. Oh my Lord that woman knew the most direct path to my heart. Side note: Do kids even use puffy paint anymore? I certainly hope so. How depressing if they don’t. Anyway, she watched patiently while I covered each shoe in random red, blue and yellow squiggles – could it have been more 1989? – her hands slowly moving ever-so-closer to the bottles of unused paint.

Suddenly, her hand snapped up a tube of red, making her own squiggles on the shoe. “Oh, the Devil made me do it! The Devil made me do it!” she yelped as I giggled, not at all upset that she was sharing in my delight.

Again and again this happened, each time blaming her loss of self-control on Satan himself. And each time, I howled with laughter.

By the time we were finished, those shoes were probably one hot mess of a pair. But unlike the paint, which I probably picked off in a weeks’ time, the memory has stuck with me. Maybe – hopefully – one day I’ll sit down for a craft-a-palooza with someone else’s child. I know that I, too, won’t be able to stop myself from joining in the fun.

But why would I want to?