Category: Uncategorized

Dear whackadoodle ex-friend: thank you very much for the lovely gift you managed to have laid across my desk even though the door was locked and no one was around, it was not at all creepy or disconcerting to find there. However, I’m not really sure where my messages are getting crossed. After I deleted you from Facebook, blocked your phone number and ignored all emails I was pretty sure the signals I was sending were NOT, “I am just depressed and down, please keep contacting me.” but more along the lines of, “you are bat shit crazy and I fear for my life in your presence.” How exactly can I make this clearer without buying a wooden stake, silver bullets and a garlic necklace? I would sit down and explain to you why I no longer enjoy your company but I fear that your temperament would go from Looney Tunes straight to Single White Female with a side of Fatal Attraction and this is unfortunate as I am very fond of my rabbit and my life. If you see me in the hallway backing away from you and holding up my fingers in the sign of the cross in front of me I promise it is not some new girlfriends gang sign that means me + you = woo hoo!! It’s just my silly way of saying you scare the piss out me and I have no idea how to release myself from your clutches without sparking the scorching wrath of scorned psycho ex “bestie” upon myself. You have a great day and don’t mind me over here trying not to make any sudden moves and backing away slowly.

I think I might need to give up on the attitude that, I’m just running into Kroger’s, no one shops there so I don’t need to be presentable. Twice now I’ve gone in looking bad and both times I’ve run into someone I know. Not like “people of Wal-Mart” freakish, more like, just-broke-out-of-prison-and-am-wearing stolen-clothes-that-don’t-fit-right-and-am-super-sweaty-and-look-shady kind of bad. Which is still bad, just not, muffin top-with-a-g-string-and-skinny pants-and-patriotic pasties-and-dragging-a-goat-around-like-a-seeing-eye-dog kind of bad. Anyway the first time wasn’t TOO awful. It had been raining and I looked like a drowned rat stuck in a sewer grate but thankfully everyone I saw was either too busy going through self-check-out or wrangling stray, heathen offspring so they just waved and went on and didn’t really notice my rainy day ho look. (I hope) The second time however I’d been weeding the garden, without gloves of course because that would make sense, and was all hot and sweaty and covered in garden filth and bugs. I tried to clean up with the garden hose but figured I was just going home and it didn’t matter. Then halfway home I developed a powerful hunger for microwave burritos and cottage cheese and was drawn against my will to the grocery store. (Cue REO Speedwagon song here.) I made it almost all the way to frozen semi ethnic food without seeing anyone other than mangy pot heads also looking for cheap snacks. But then, just as I thought I was home free, I saw a very dear old friend whose mother-in-law had just passed away and while I have happily done some tacky-ass crap in my time I draw the line at yelling condolences for lost loved ones down aisle 7 passed the laxatives and feminine hygiene products. So off I went to speak to him in all my dried sweat and caked, stinking garden mud glory. Thankfully he is a lovely, well-mannered person that totally pretended not to notice that I was standing there, nails full of dirt like a serial killer that doesn’t think ahead enough bring a shovel to work, hugging burritos and cottage cheese. I am super grateful for his lovely, old school manners but I still think it’s a good idea to stop going to the store looking like a bridge troll with a bad case of the munchies.

Wednesday was my turn to cook night so being the gourmet chef that I am I tossed some crap in the crock pot and headed down to Dave’s house. I’ve had that nasty ear and throat ache for a few days and wasn’t feeling like getting all gussied up just to drive down for dinner and Duck Dynasty (it’s been a year, he knows he’s already seen the best it’s gonna get and it’s all downhill from here) so I threw on my lounge wear (monkey pajama bottoms and a ratty Bass Pro sweat shirt) and dragged myself into the car. Now, smarter people than me know that when you put something filled with hot food in your car you should probably pack things around it to keep it from turning over. Especially if “it” is your mother’s 30 year old crock pot that sits on wobbly legs and is bizarrely top heavy. But we all know my chronic lack of forethought and common sense so of course I just sat it in the floor and blissfully went on my merry way. I hadn’t even made it to the highway before it turned over. So there I was on the shoulder of the off ramp racing around my hooptie in baby blue flannel pajama bottoms that are 3 sizes too big and covered in frolicking monkeys and that I have to hold up if I’m moving very fast because the elastic waistband is all worn out, crusty old flip flops and swinging free in a faded, hunter orange Bass Pro sweat shirt trying to salvage chicken and rice from the dog hair in the floor board of my Honda. After I finished scorching my hands shoveling unsavable dog dander casserole on to the pavement I had to schlep back around the car while being passed by nosey travelers not even pretending not to stare. I could just FEEL the “hey you’re going the wrong direction, WalMart is back that way” jokes being told. Jerks. I’m starting to get the feeling the universe is trying to tell me to stop going out in public looking like a washed up hooker. Pft, like that’s gonna happen.

Walking out of the building yesterday three men in a windowless van stopped
next to me in the parking lot. They were all wearing uniforms so of course I
blithely walked up to them when they rolled down the window asked if I could
help them find an address. Because nothing bad ever happens to lone women in
deserted parking lots that talk to strange men in windowless vans.
Thankfully they really were just soldiers that needed directions and I
walked away safe. But hit me when I was almost to my car that it hadn’t been
a good idea and that maybe they were some sort of mini gang of crazed
lunatics that just weren’t interested in portly, middle-aged women wearing a
ratty Batman t-shirt. (Honestly, who is?) They HAD acted kind of strange and
giggly for grown men and the one closest to me had looked at me funny then
wouldn’t make eye contact.
It wasn’t till I sat in my car and happened to catch a look at my face in
the mirror and realized it was covered in powdered doughnut sugar and that the
scab had come off the giant, gaping cold sore on my mouth when I was
devouring a doughnut like a wild animal and now the sore was caked with sugar
mixed with cold sore goo. Yep, seriously attractive. No wonder they let me
go. The last living member of the Donner Party wouldn’t have touched this.
It really is a mystery how I’ve made it this long without bigger calamities
happening.