Why I Hope the Post Office Stays Afloat

I have an 8 year-old pen pal.  I've known her since before she was born and was stubbornly refusing to vacate the womb.  I remember watching her poor mother (who was my downstairs neighbor at the time) marching up and down the street trying to shake her loose.  I used to call to her, "Hey, you're late!  Come out of the darkness and into the light!"  And, eight days later than predicted, she did just that.


Since I'm good friends with her mom, I got to spend lots of time with her in her early years.  We'd go to parks, play on swings and slides, walk dogs together, make lemonade, go to the beach, take funny pictures, and cook meals.  She and I are both Leo females, and therefore have big personalities (and are completely fabulous, of course), so we were always great fans of one another.  However, after several years, she and her mom moved away to San Francisco, and not long afterwards, I moved to Oregon.

:-(

About a year ago, I went back to California for a brief visit and spent a night at her mom's, but my young friend was with her dad for the weekend so I didn't get to see her.  I left her a little note just to say hi and let her know I was sorry to have missed her, and about a week later I received this response in the mail:


"Thanks for writing the note.  Guess what I am reading one hundred and fifty words per minute.  Maybe we can do stuff like I write you a note and you write me a note.  That would be fun.  Guess what I have a wiggly tooth.  Say hi to JR."


[This was the first directive my pen pal gave to me regarding JR, my husband.  Since that letter, she has offered further instructions including:  "Say BOO! to JR," and, "Tell JR bak bak like a bird."]


We began writing back and forth from that point on.  Her letters contain critical biographical information such as:  "My friends names are Iris, Camille, Nick, Nick, Benito, Talia, Eleanor, Pah, Zuzu, Xaria, Max, Starla, and Shavonne plus Vontre."  She recently shared this feedback about her experience with a broken wrist:  "One thing I like about it is it is fun.  Because I don't have to wash the dishes and I can stay in bed and watch tv."  Also, sometimes I get bonus works of art like this:

This:

And this:

At one point, my pen pal decided she was going to write a book of jokes.  Here are some of the jokes that she shared with me:


Knock knock
Who's there?
Cash
Cash who?
I prefer peanuts.


[Side note:  ????]


Here's another one:


What did the chicken say to the cow?
Coward.


[She told me that one in a few different letters, but I still don't get it.  I think I've just become imaginatively deficient in my old age.]


After a few months of working on her joke book, however, my pen pal sent me this sad update:


"I've decided I am not making the book because it is too hard.  Knock knock.  Who's there?  Peace.   Peace who?  Peace out."


The funniest thing, though, was her response to my question about whether or not she'd heard of the book or movie Anne of Green Gables.  Here is what she wrote:

Well, that's not exactly what Anne of Green Gables is about...but close!

While I'm not quite sure how to respond to her ideas about Anne of Green Gables (and I think L.M. Montgomery might be rolling over in her grave), I must say that having a pen pal brings great joy to my life.  I think, if all adults had young pen pals instructing them to tell other adults, "Bak bak like a bird," the world would be a happier place.

Modern Day Neanderthals

For someone who appreciates thoughtful, community-minded individuals who regularly utilize at least a basic level of intelligence, sports bars can be somewhat problematic.  They can also be excellent fodder for blog topics, such as:

You Might Be a Neanderthal If...

• You laugh hysterically at beer commercials.  Even if the same commercial has been aired during every single break (and there are a bazillion breaks), you laugh at each viewing with the same manic intensity, as if it's your first time all over again.  [This is also a sign that you might be a goldfish.]

Okay, it was sort of funny the first time...except not really.

• You yell, "Whip 'em out!" whenever you see young, attractive females on TV.  These females could be engaged in any number of activities (e.g., watching a sporting event; driving a car; testifying at a murder trial) and will all receive the same request to bare their bosoms.

Whip 'em out?  You got it, Pal.

[Quasi-tangential side note:  Have you ever been in a crowd of people and suddenly wished you had the world's most gigantic scythe, so that you could lop off all of their heads in one fell swoop?  But I digress...]

• To express your most passionate emotions - such as joy that your team has succeeded, anger that the opposing team has succeeded, joy that the opposing team has failed, or anger that the refs are blatantly discriminating against your team - you hoot, pound your chest, growl, jump up and down, and scream.  Seriously.  You actually do these things.  It's really something special.

What do you mean, pass interference?  I'll kill you!  I'll kill your whole family!

• After your team wins, or loses, you respond by going on a violent rampage, which could include any or all of the following activities:  beating people until they are hospitalized or dead; setting your town/city on fire; looting local businesses; tipping over cars (perhaps even your own).

Yay!  We won the Super Bowl!

If this sounds like you, take heart - there are millions of others like you sitting in sports bars everywhere, grunting, chugging crap beer, and throwing poop.  Just try to avoid anyone carrying a giant scythe, and you should be fine.

I Am A Monster

Every once in awhile, I will engage in an activity reminding me that, despite the fact that I generally try to be appropriate and hygienic, I am actually a completely revolting individual.  One of these events occurred about a month ago.  It went like this.


The Dead Ratscapade


My husband came into the kitchen, where I was preparing dinner, and informed me that our dog Libby (referred to in a previous post as Cujo) had killed a giant rat and left it on the side of the house.  [Side note:  Go, Libby!  You rock!]  My husband is not a fan of rodents in any form, or stage of life, and asked for my assistance in disposing of the dead beast.

Be grateful that I'm sparing you from a more realistic image

I have no issue with rats, particularly when they're dead, so I went out into the yard where my husband was standing about 20 feet from the rat, holding a pooper scooper and a brown paper bag.  I walked up to the corpse, kicked it to shoo away the flies, lifted it up by its tail ("OH MY GOD," remarked my husband), dropped it in the paper bag, and went back into the house.


About a half hour later, my husband and I were eating dinner, and he informed me that he'd planned for me to use the pooper scooper to pick up the rat and drop it in the bag.  He said he couldn't believe I'd touched it and that he hoped I'd washed my hands very carefully, preferably more than once, when I came back into the house.


At that moment it occurred to me that I had NOT washed my hands AT ALL after handling the rat.  In fact, my routine that evening had consisted of:


Wash hands
Begin cooking dinner
Pick up & dispose of dead rat
Finish cooking dinner
Serve & eat dinner

Perhaps someone could buy me this book for my birthday

The good news is that my husband and I did not sicken or die from this experience.  The bad news is that he will never look at me the same way again.  However, that is only because he met me after other tell-tale experiences indicating that I am actually a filthy, disgusting monster, including:


The Ear Wax Horror Show


Okay, folks - please prepare yourselves.  This is really gross.  If you are a friend or family member of mine and would like to retain the ability to look me in the eye, you might want to stop reading now.


It was my freshman year of high school, and I was cramming for a history midterm in a study carrel.  The history class I was taking was extremely difficult and demanding, and I had a wonderful teacher who I desperately wanted to impress.  I was so anxious about the midterm that I was clearly not breathing well, thereby reducing the amount of oxygen needed for optimum brain function.  [Note rationalization to excuse behavior about to be reported]


While I was going through my history book and taking notes with my left hand, somehow the index finger of my right hand made its way into my ear.  Eventually I pulled out the finger and noticed that it had a huge glob of ear wax on it.  What the hell?  thought I absently, primarily focused on history.  How much more of that is in there?  And so, for approximately the next 45 minutes, while my left hand continued following the text and taking notes, my right hand began diligently harvesting about a pound of ear wax from my right ear and depositing it onto a piece of white paper that was in the carrel. 

Why the hell would you put your elbow in your  ear?

When the bell rang, I dashed out of the study carrel and straight to my exam.  It wasn't until after school that day that I realized I'd left the ear-wax-covered piece of paper in the study carrel.  I don't know how much our school's custodian was paid, but I'm absolutely positive it wasn't enough to be worth having to discover such a thing.  Poor dude.  If I had his contact information now, I'd send him a fruit basket or something.


The Crowd Was In Stitches


When I was 19, I was in a terrible car accident in Jupiter, Florida.  After the accident, I ended up with 17 stitches in my arm.  When I was discharged from the hospital, I was told to return to a doctor's office within 2 weeks to have the stitches removed.


The healing process for my arm was really gnarly.  For awhile, it seemed like the arm wasn't going to heal at all; it was just going to sting and fester and do other horrible things.  But after about a week, the wounds visibly began healing and new skin started growing.  However, it didn't take me long to notice that the skin seemed to be growing over the stitches, submerging them.  I began to wonder, when the time came for my stitches to be removed, if the new skin would need to be cut through in order to reach them.  Considering that I'd just gone through an accident, surgery, and a painful recovery process, that prospect did not thrill me in the least.


Because I believed there was an impending, stitch-submersion crisis to be prevented, and because I was on some serious painkillers (again, note attempts at rationalization), I decided that I needed to take matters into my own hands and get the stitches out as quickly as possible.  [Really, I could've gone back to a doctor, but after my experiences in Jupiter, I was determined never again to seek medical treatment, especially in Florida.]  After some experimentation, I realized that, if I grabbed the loose ends of a stitch and pulled it up gently, I could pull the knot high enough above the new skin to untie it.

The process would've been much easier with one of these

Unfortunately for the people in the waiting room at Sears Optical in Key West, I made this discovery while sitting in that very spot.  While my mother had her eyes examined, I sat in the last chair in a row of about six seats, pulling each individual stitch out of the new skin, untying the knot, pulling the thread out of my arm, and dropping it on the floor.  


After performing this procedure about 6 or 7 times, I looked over and noticed that no other chair in the row of seats was occupied, although there were lots of people standing around waiting.  I looked up at the people and realized that they were staring at me with looks of horror and disgust much like the look that the custodian at my high school must've had on his face when he found the abandoned paper in the study carrel.  When I then realized what I had been doing in a public place, I promptly stopped and wondered what the fuck is wrong with me.


When we got home, my mom told my dad what I'd done at Sears, and he decided to take the rest of my stitches out himself, using his fly tying tools.

Please note my dad's snazzy, magnifying headgear & glass of wine

So there ya have it, folks.  While I usually manage to mask them, I apparently have monstrous tendencies.  It makes me wonder why I bother doing basic stuff like wearing deodorant and flossing my teeth.  If only flossing regularly could make up for cooking dinner with dead-rat-tainted hands...but clearly, it doesn't.