inadvertent excellence

every so often (most of the time) my mind goes so fast that my mouth can’t keep up and the words come out in the wrong order or jammed together into gibberish. however, i am terribly pleased with today’s gaff:

“they couldn’t find their hand with two assholes and a map.”

one letter away from satisfa_tion

via email, the word of the day is “littoral”.

do try to use it.

in a sentence.

earthquake

i’m standing in the open balcony door and imagine the next big one hitting right now. how will that red honda blithely trundling around the corner react when the traffic signal begins swaying overhead?

i look at the old hills brothers building so squat and strong. but as the earth liquefies? i hear steel crack loudly, the substrate groaning. i think i see the mortar between the bricks shimmy, maybe the mortar is still and bricks are moving.

i’ll know i should get back from the door as i watch the bay bridge quiver, the tension cables slack and rippling, the roadbed undulating. instead i will lean forward gripping the vibrating handrail. i won’t want to miss the infinity building with it’s walls of mirrored glass shaking with the world.

will i be shocked if the gap building crumbles to the ground, chunks of brick, windows and next season’s argyle socks smashing into harrison street? i don’t think so.

i won’t be much damaged by the chaos of mass destruction. former permanence reduced to dust and twisted metal. instead, i will feel an odd sort of comfort: finally everything looks how i feel.

what has the world been waiting for?

i’m fine, really!

between the nasty customer calling about “my mistake” that wasn’t a mistake at all but he yelled at me even though i was trying to be nice and explain, getting snapped at by my boss/father as soon as he came in for i’m not even sure what, handling circuitous tech issues over the phone for my boss/mother and the turmoil i am creating in my own personal life which is progressively alienating me from already emotionally distant parents, on this friday the thirteenth i almost lost sight of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the friday the thirteenth death-by-car-accident of our family dog buffy shortly after we moved to new jersey.

hooray for milestones!

please excuse me as i weep quietly in the corner while attempting to hug myself; this is turning out to be a very long day. rest assured, i’m still getting my work done, it’s just wetter than normal.

semi filled with confidence

i know what i want. i have never been so sure of anything before in my life. i am wracked with doubts, fears and worry, but i am also brimming with resolve, a concept that is wholly unfamiliar to me. i am still scared. but i’m gonna go get what i want.

a brand new tea kettle.

returned

sigh.

i have returned the tea kettle.

i’m so sad boiling water in the pot again. it’s not big enough. the big pot is too big. i spill scalding water as i pour into the coffee press. the stove top looks drab and undressed. sigh.

how can i be so perplexed about such a basic issue? should i use my store credit (no receipt) to buy a new kettle? do i buy the same one or pick another that looks good, but is hiding it’s own issues?

if i go with the same kettle, do i want to risk the same failure in the future? am i likely to change the way i treat the tea kettle? sure, in the beginning and then on a occasion when i notice that we aren’t boiling water together with the same accord. but basically i am a creature of habit and selfish to boot! eventually i’ll break it down again. maybe i shouldn’t even have a tea kettle.

i could renew the search, expand my horizons, try other stores, or a different country. the english are pretty good at tea, i bet they make a good kettle. or the germans (good fountain pens). this sounds like a lot of research though, more than i am generally willing to do even for things like my car, which is expensive and sort of makes clunking noises when i accelerate from a stop.

oh sigh. is it worth the trouble? i might be able to keep exchanging the newest tea kettle for a newer one at the same chain of stores. to facilitate returns, i’ll never be able to move far away. i’d have to pick different locations to reduce chances of being banned. and they take down all of my details, so eventually corporate would catch on. unless i invest in fake ids. hmmm.

i’m not up for this kind of drama right now. i just want flipping pots of coffee and cups of tea. why am i asking so much from myself? gosh!

just buy a dang tea kettle, ernestine!

defective

after months of dithering i finally bought a teakettle. it was worth the wait: i absolutely love it. the mirror finish smoothly reflecting the kitchen, thereby the world; a whistle like a train hurtling down the tracks; a jaunty spout cover that is truly the jam in my jelly donut.

i’m preparing tea the other day when suddenly the lid and some rusty bits clattered right into the kettle leaving me with a plastic knob in my hand and a dumb look on my face. eight weeks and the whistle assembly sinks to the bottom in a vinegar-scented splash without any warning that it was tired of whistling in the first place.

how do things just fall apart? things i don’t expect because they were well made or expensive or swiss. there doesn’t seem to be any reason for failure until the item is examined and i think about how i used it. in this case, it was a pretty tight fit. maybe i used too much force. maybe the heat on the stove was too high.

there may have been a flaw, something overlooked at the time of purchase. something hard to see in the new, shiny surface and my excitement of boiling water. flaws masked by the lights in the store or loud music. but after a year of searching this one seemed perfect, whatever the shopping conditions.

what am i supposed to do now?

i could take the kettle back to the store. but where’s the receipt? i don’t think i have it. can i be one of those customers stridently demanding a new teakettle? because if i demand loud enough, i can get it. it’s the unspoken law of retail: get nasty, mean customers out of the store under any circumstance.

then i think maybe i can fix the lid myself. looks like a little super glue might do the trick, but why would glue hold it together? it might work for a while, but that stuff is pretty toxic and impermanent. this is tea i’m talking about.

of course, i can always use the kettle without the lid, but without the whistle a teakettle is just a misshapen pot. is that what i want to boil water in for the rest of my life?

i feel there’s a lesson in this, but i’ll be damned if i’m going to work it out today.

i am totally in control

rarhghaaaa, with angry light (click for big)

just how i’m feeling right now. it’s entirely possible i am distorting the space time continuum as you read this.

everyone feels like this on occasion….don’t they?

it must mean i’m ready

i ordered some clothes the other week and yesterday in the mail i received some of them including a navy blue polo shirt that looks pretty cute with pearls, the reason i picked it out. as i try it on, i see this is the exact shirt my mom used to wear, which i did not realize as i shopped.

i guess i’m ready to have kids, i’ve got the mommy-shirt.

p.s. have you noticed a trend? towards little people? methinks someone’s feeling her age around here…

hop to it, before you’re dead

i sat on the balcony this morning to jot some notes and inadvertently watch the sky lighten in what i’m told is an easterly direction (compass points one of many weaknesses).

i wrapped myself up in a big feather comforter to combat the chill and wrote until i just couldn’t hold the pen, whereupon i wrapped myself more completely in the feathers and thought, “i must look like a blood-filled tick. blood-filled ticks must be toasty warm with all that fresh blood under their skin. how nice for them, especially in winter.” gross, right?

hidden by pastel clouds, i compare the sun’s interplay on the sharp edge of low mountains across the bay to the fiery hues across the fields of idaho, and what runs through my head: the bridge is beautiful and useful but kind of blocking my view, this coffee is good and ticks must be warm with all that blood.

i don’t stop there. i wonder how it feels as the blood courses into whatever anatomy of a tick holds blood. if they know how silly their legs look when only a quarter of each sticks out of that blood-sac-body thingie. whether they enjoy being full or is it more like when you eat too much at thanksgiving and feel uncomfortable for two days. do they enjoy a good game of touch-football after?

someone will tell me they don’t feel at all. they are only parasites without conscious knowledge or subjective experience: eating, procreating, dying. someone will go on to say that the middle one is most important, we are all required to do so and to not do so is to deny our lives of all meaning. the end.

and that someone would be my dad who wastes no opportunity to impress upon me how important having kids is. i’d say he has completed this mission, yes?