Veronica Brush's Blog, page 7

Where I See Myself in Five Years

“Where do you see yourself in the next 5, 10, 20 years?”

You get asked that question a lot in life: job interviews, therapy appointments, parole hearings, etc.

To me, life seems too unpredictable to know what the heck I’ll be doing next week, let alone in several years.  But I’ve given it some thought and I think I’ve come up with a pretty solid, realistic answer.

Someday, probably not too far in the future, I’m going to snap and become an evil villain.

This shouldn’t be too much concern to anybody because I’ll be very ineffective. My arch-enemy won’t even be a superhero. It will just be gravity.

There I’ll be, making my grand gesture of evil, threatening to push the button on my doomsday device unless all my demands are met (a zillion dollars in cash or the equivalent value in puppies).

But then, before my demands can be met, I will inevitably trip and fall, breaking the button.

Then I’ll have to say, “You may have won THIS time, Gravity, but I’ll be back!”

Of course that won’t matter because it was all really a bluff because I’d have already forgotten where I LEFT the doomsday device. I know I put it somewhere safe so I wouldn’t lose it.

“Putting things somewhere safe so I won’t lose them and then losing them in the safe place” will be the sidekick to Gravity. He’s going to have a lot of initials on his super suit insignia.

 

My evil escapades won’t even make the evening news because my story will get bumped by an adorable cat. (“You may have won THIS time, Cat…”)

This adorable cat plays the harpsichord with his nose.  Something that I myself can do, I might add. People just don’t find it adorable when I do it because I’m not a cat.

“Stop getting snot on my harpsichord,” is what they always say.

Or that’s what I imagine they’d say if I knew anyone who actually owned a harpsichord.

(You may be wondering how I know I can play the harpsichord with my nose if I don’t even know anyone who has a harpsichord. I just have an unshakeable feeling that I would be an incredible harpsichord nose player. And confidence is 99% of playing the harpsichord well with your nose.)

Anyway, after my defeat, I’ll retreat back to safety in my evil lair.

It won’t actually be a lair per se. Real estate is expensive. I’ll just take my laptop to my favorite Mexican restaurant, where I will yet again fill up on chips and salsa long before the food comes (“You may have won THIS time, Chips and Salsa…”)

I’ll review my plan for obvious flaws: “I didn’t wear heels. I was careful to make my stand on very level, paved ground. I wasn’t even trying to walk and talk. I was standing completely still and somehow Gravity still got me.”

Then I’ll have a moment of brilliantly evil inspiration. Using my laptop, I’ll draw up the blueprints for my latest evil secret weapon (using the Paint program). Then I’ll bring the plans to my evil minions (actually, they prefer to be called my sisters) and have them construct my secret weapon for me.

Of course then I’ll have to build yet another doomsday device, but this time I’ll leave myself a note so I can find it again.

Then I’ll get busy with other things and not find any time to be evil for a while. It’ll come up in conversation sometimes:

(At lunch with a friend)

Her: Hey, weren’t you thinking of taking over the world as some sort of dictator?

Me: Evil overlord, actually.

Her: Oh, that sounds interesting.

Me: Yeah, it is. I’ve just been pretty busy lately, but I do want to get back into it. It does take a lot of planning, though.

Her: I’ve heard that. I have a cousin who was into world domination for a while, but he said there was just too much planning. Now he’s an air traffic controller.

Me: Oh, that’s neat.

Eventually I’ll make time to have another grand stand. I’ll have lost the note telling me where my doomsday device is, but I decide to try bluffing again. Only this time, I’ve got my secret weapon: a chair.

I sit down in my chair on nice level ground.

Me (into megaphone): “Attention, world! I am here to take you over! You must give into my demands or I will push this button, which will activate my doomsday device, as far as you know! Don’t try to stop me! I have hidden my doomsday device somewhere you will never be able to find it! But if you do, please let me know where.

“My demands are as follows.

“First of all…

(Falling out of chair, breaking button and megaphone)

“Where did you even come from, Gravity? Oh, well. You may have won THIS time, but…do you like Mexican food?”

Walking to the Outskirts of Forever

I had some good news recently. It turns out I’m basically immortal.

So make sure you follow my blog now because in a million years, it’s going to be famous as the longest running blog in history. Then you can say that you were a part of it back near the beginning.

You’ll be dead, of course. But that shouldn’t stop you. By then someone will have developed the technology for people who are technically dead to still be able to brag to the living.

I come from a very tall family (this is my segway into immortality). Unfortunately my genes did not get the memo. I am what medical science refers to as “inconclusive”.

I’m also short.

Added to that, I’m the youngest in my family.

All that together means that I spent most of my youth scrambling with my little legs to keep up with all the older, taller people.

Have you seen those little tiny dogs that have to move their legs so fast that they become a blur just to keep up with a casually sauntering human? That’s basically what it was like for me growing up.

But when I did become at least slightly taller, my legs were already used to moving at that speed. So now when I walk, it is inhumanly fast. Now I leave all the older, taller people in the dust.

I’m not an athlete, but I’m pretty sure I could easily show up Olympic speed walkers if I could just keep from falling down laughing because of how goofy Olympic speed walkers look.

If you’ve never seen Olympic speed walking, your life is not complete. Picture a child at the pool who has to pee really badly.  He’s already gotten yelled at for running by the pool, so his solution is to slow to a stiff jog while trying to maintain the air of someone who is just walking. That’s what it looks like. Only it’s adults.

Recently I found this scientific study that says basically the faster you walk, the longer you’ll live. And this study is serious because they have both graphs AND tables.

And just look at this graph about accuracy of studies that have graphs and tables:

First of all, I’d like to say “Neener-neener” to all the runners out there.

Secondly, this is not new information. Even our prehistoric ancestors knew that the faster you walked, the less likely you were to be caught in a rock slide. Or hit over the head and dragged back by your hair to some prehistoric guy’s cave as his new bride. (Yet another reason I’m still single). Or trampled by prehistoric telemarketers riding mammoths (because phones hadn’t been invented yet, so telemarketers had to chase after you on mammoth and shout at you that you’d won a trip to Mexico in a contest you never even entered. Then if you tried to cut them off to tell them you weren’t interested, they might just trample you with their mammoth. We’re lucky to live in modern times.)

The examples continue throughout all of history.  Only fast-walking Victorians were able to escape vampires. My European ancestors obviously managed to walk briskly away from the Black Plague. And all those people in those time periods we didn’t cover in public school (most of them), walking hurriedly away from all those dangers that were dangerous in those days, whenever they were.

Why, even the famous Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan knew that fast walking was important to keep from getting eaten by sea monsters.  If you saw a sea monster, on one side of the boat, you needed to get to the other side of the boat where it couldn’t reach you (sea monsters had shorter arms back then). But you couldn’t run, because that might cause the boat to tip. A brisk walk saved your life while also keeping you afloat!

Unfortunately, Magellan failed to realize that the same principle applied on dry land.

(That was some highly educational humor. I apologize.)

The point is that, based on this study and the fact that I walk faster than everyone I know, I figure my life span is going to be nearly forever.

Which leaves me with quite a bit of time to fill.

Maybe I’ll study some history.

Or eat ice cream.

Fit For a Dog

You know those commercials for the dog food that’s all natural? You know the ones. They brag all about how their food is made with real stuff like blueberries. Apparently these people have gotten confused. I don’t think they own a real dog. I think they somehow ended up with a vegetarian for a pet. Because when my dog eats blueberries, I get them back again in the most unpleasant ways.

Some of the natural dog food commercials say they are “the food your dog would pick if your dog had a stable job that made her eligible for a credit card, and could figure out which bus goes to the pet food store”.

First of all, I can’t even figure out which bus goes to the pet food store. Buses are confusing, no matter your species. Cities do this on purpose. They can’t just have people riding the buses all willy-nilly.

Secondly, I question anyone who tells me that my dog, armed with a credit card, would buy food made of blueberries.

For one thing, she’d probably max out the credit card paying random people on the bus to give her belly-rubs.

Secondly, my puppy is not a cat. She does not have discerning tastes. The second most common phrase she hears (after “You’re so adorable!”) is “Hey, that’s not food! Don’t eat that!”

I’ve had to say it in the bathroom, in the backyard, in the basement, and various other locations where I know for a fact there is nothing edible.

This is how a dog’s discernment works:

So, assuming she had any credit left, my puppy would buy whatever dog food was closest to the front door. Even if it wasn’t technically food, but still fit inside her mouth.

Then there’s the commercials that say their dog food is made with the ingredients your dog would choose.

THAT is a horrifying concept. Imagine for a moment the sorts of ingredients a real dog would cook with.

You don’t have to imagine it because here it is:

That is why I have had to take up cooking. My dog is no longer allowed to cook. Or order pizzas. (“Does lint topping cost extra?”)

My point is if God had intended for dogs to be responsible for the production of their food, he would have given them (1) better taste buds and (2) whisks instead of paws.

I’m still not sure why I’m expected to produce my own food.

It Happened in Aisle 5

It’s been over 3 days and I’m still on my cooking kick. It’s like I’m playing russian roulette. Every time I cook and manage to not ignite anything, I feel excited and enlivened and want to cook more, not realizing that every meal I make is one meal closer to my kitchen burning down.

I have become so intoxicated with cooking, I made a meal plan for the week. Here it is:

Sunday: Bacon-wrapped steak

Monday: Tacos

Tuesday: Bacon tacos

Wednesday: Bacon-wrapped bacon

Thursday: Buy more bacon and eat it

Friday: Same as Thursday

Saturday: Find interesting new recipe to make. Or bacon.

The only problem with this meal plan is that I didn’t have all the ingredients I needed. I don’t normally go grocery shopping on weekend mornings. There tends to be other people at the store on weekends and I don’t do well in social situations. When in doubt about the proper behavior for a given social encounter, I tend to juggle whatever is nearby. Grocery stores don’t like that.

But I decided to risk it and went shopping during “peak” hours.

And you know what happened when I got there?

I bought bacon.

Well, that was anti-climactic.

I thought that story would have more punch to it.

It seemed really dramatic when I was buying the bacon because I was humming music from “The Lord of the Rings” at the time.

Seeing it in writing now, though, it just wasn’t that exciting.

I probably should have skipped that story and told you about the guy who tried to pick me up.

A guy tried to pick me up at the grocery store.

I thought TV had made up that idea of singles picking up other singles in grocery stores. But there I was, standing in the poultry section, when this guy was passing by, and there was just something about me that told him I had to be single.

Maybe it was the wistful look in my eye.

Maybe it was the way I was having an audible argument with a package of uncooked chicken wings.

Yeah, that was probably it.

(In my defense, the chicken wings started it by being ambiguously priced. And you should have heard the language the chicken wings used. Quite fowl.)

So the single guy wandered over, not knowing that I was in the throws of a cooking fever that really could not be interrupted.

And so our conversation went like this:

Single Dude: I don’t mean to be forward, and I’m not even flirting, but has anyone ever told you that you have beautiful eyes?

Me: Yes, actually. Do you know where they keep the coconut aminos?

Single Dude: I don’t, but maybe if we wander around together, we’ll be able to find them.

Me: Better yet, do you know what coconut aminos even are?

Single Dude: We could go back to my place and look it up.

Me: I mean, if I had a coconut, which part is the aminos? Coconuts don’t even have that many parts. Is it the inside or the outside?

Single Dude: Look, I was lying before. I am flirting with you. I want to take you back to my place.

Me: The recipe only calls for 1/2 a teaspoon of coconut aminos. That’s such a small amount! How can that even make a difference? And this recipe makes 8 servings. So everyone’s getting an 1/8th of a 1/2 of a teaspoon per serving. Coconut aminos just seem like busy work at that point. They couldn’t think of enough ingredients, so they just kept adding little insignificant bits of random things to make it sound like a fancier meal than it is.

Single Dude: You know what, there’s a lady over there picking out avocados, and I have some great avocado-related pick up lines. So I’m going to head over there.

Me(to the chicken wings): You don’t suppose those little hairs coconuts have are the aminos?

Chicken Wings: I think that *(Expletive deleted)* guy was trying to pick you up.

Me: What guy?

Spoiler alert: I’m still single. But that’s okay because I honestly believe that for every crazy person like me, somewhere out there waiting, there is a package of coconut aminos.

Crime and Punishment

Me: Thank you for agreeing to meet with me today.

Puppy: I always come when you call because sometimes you have a treat!

Me: Yes, well, not today. I assume you know why I asked you here today.

Puppy (excitedly): Are you going to feed me again?

Me: No.

Puppy (more excitedly): Are we going to the vet? Because I love the vet!! Except when she asks me to do really impossible things, like stand still.

Me: No, this has nothing to do with the vet.

Puppy (so excitedly, she might explode): ARE YOU GOING TO FEED ME AGAIN?

Me: No! Okay, apparently you don’t know why I asked you here. How long have you been a part of the team here at our house?

Puppy: Umm…forever?

Me: Actually 7.5 years.

Puppy: How long is that?

Me: You know when I make you sit before I give you a treat?

Puppy: Oh, my gosh, that is so long.

Me: Yes, well that is approximately 4 seconds. 7.5 years is a lot of 4 seconds. Suffice it to say, you’ve invested a lot of time here. And they’ve been good years. Overall we’ve been quite pleased with your work. You’re always very supportive of your coworkers…

Puppy: What are coworkers?

Me: They’re people who…

Puppy: I LOVE people!!

Me: Exactly. And we’ve seen you put in long hours, weekends and holidays. Your adorability output is consistently over quota. And that time I was sick, you put in a lot of overtime taking care of me.

Puppy: I licked away all your germs!

Me: Well, you certainly tried. Unfortunately there was this incident today. I know, after all these years, you are aware of the cardinal rule of this family.

Puppy: Oh, yes. “Don’t ever wake Veronica up in the morning unless something is about to come out of either end or else she may not be able to love you anymore and may in fact cause the destruction of the entire planet because there is not enough coffee in the world to make her safe to be around early in the morning.”

Me: Well, yes. That is a very important rule. But there is an even more important one. I have not said it often, but that’s because I sort of assumed it went without saying. The number one rule is, “If you find a dead snake, don’t roll on it.”

Puppy: That’s a rule?

Me: Yes.

Puppy: Has it always been a rule?

Me: Yes.

Puppy: Buuut…what if the snake smells really good?

Me: Why would that matter?

Puppy: Don’t you want me to smell really good?

Me: A dead snake does not smell good!

Puppy: How would you know? You refused to smell it. You just got all screamy and were pulling on my leash, which was very rude, by the way.

Me: I hate snakes!

Puppy: But it was dead!

Me: AND YOU ROLLED ON IT!

Puppy: YES! WHY CAN’T YOU JUST BE HAPPY FOR ME?

Me: BECAUSE IT’S DISGUSTING!! Look, I don’t want to argue about this! The fact of the matter is I don’t see how we can possibly move forward from this incident. And so I’m going to have to let you go.

Puppy: Let me go to the vet?

Me: No. I’m saying you’re fired.

Puppy: You can’t fire me!

Me: I’m afraid I just did.

Puppy: I have a contract!

Me: You never signed any contract.

Puppy: I’m a dog! I can’t write.

Me: Maybe you should have considered that before deciding to roll on a dead snake.

Puppy: I’m a dog! I can’t use critical thinking skills! I’m not just going to take this lying down or rolling over. I’ll start a union!

Me: We don’t have any other pets for you to unionize with. You can’t start a union with just one dog.

Puppy: Haven’t you been wanting another dog?

Me:…

Puppy:…

Me:…dang it! Alright, you’ve won this round. But this incident is still going to be a black mark in your permanent record.

Puppy: I chewed up my permanent record yesterday and hid the pieces somewhere you’ll never find them!

Me: In your crate?

Puppy: *GASP* Who told you about my crate?

Me: Would you please just get out of my office!

Puppy: Fine!

(Crawls into my lap)

Me: What are you doing?

Puppy: This is my office. Now would you mind giving me some privacy, by which I mean belly-rubs?

Me: Fine! I just hope I don’t die of a horrible snake-related disease. You know more people die every year from second-hand snake cooties than in karaoke related accidents. And that’s possibly a fact!

Puppy: Well, did you know households with dogs that smell like ferocious snakes are 62% less likely to be attacked when the squirrels make their play for world domination?

Me: I did not know that.

Puppy: You’re welcome.

The Joy of Burning Things

I’m cooking. Like right now. You think I’m writing this blog post, but mostly I’m cooking. I like to do other things while I cook my food so I can forget about it. That way I’m not just cooking, I’m also testing the efficacy of my fire alarms.

My cooking skills are…well, calling them skills is generous. Cooking is to me what designing the Titanic was to that one guy who did it. Only way more people died horrible deaths, obviously, because of my cooking.

So usually I leave the cooking to the people who will later issue a recall for the food.

I’m not a wasteful person in general. I use all the parts of the animal that the store presents me with, from the nugget to the bacon.

I rub chicken grease into my leather chair. Not because it’s good for the leather. I just like to eat greasy chicken. And apparently, despite my enjoyment, I’m not very good at it.

I also eat ice cream straight out of the container because I care about the planet! If I used a real dish, I’d have to wash it and humanity’s dependence on water is killing the planet!

Recently I went to the store and had the brilliant idea of buying lettuce that WASN’T already chopped up and in a bag. I don’t know when they started making it that way, but I thought I should try some. I thought it would be easy to find:

-Green & leafy = lettuce

-Round and other colors = probably not lettuce

But there were so many green leafy things, I had no idea what was lettuce and what was something else, like fennel.

I left with salad in a bag.

Right now I am all gung-ho to learn how to cook. Just like any natural disaster, I just get the urge to learn to cook every few years. And every few years, on approximately day 1 of me learning to cook, something goes horribly wrong. Pretty soon things are on fire and I get frustrated and I have to console myself with Mexican food take-out.

In my defense, I think most cooking instructions are not understandable unless you’re part of the secret chefs club. To even get into the chefs club you have to pass some really rigorous tests, like cutting an onion without crying and/or screaming “It burns!”. Or you have to look at a whole table full of stuff and be able to properly identify which one is fennel.

For example, in this recipe I’m making right now, step 4 says “Add some lemon zest”. That’s not very specific. I mean, I know generally how to make some lemon zest:

But should I have made my lemon a cummerbund? I don’t know. The recipe didn’t say how much zest to give my lemon. These are the kind of details that keep me from being able to become a great chef.

I also needed “Smoked paprika”, which the internet says cannot be interchanged with regular paprika. But I don’t smoke. So I had to go down the street and ask that neighbor to smoke my paprika for me. He looked at me funny. It was like he’d never heard of herbal cigarettes before.

I’m just glad the recipe didn’t call for “Stoned paprika” because I don’t like that stuff. The more you eat, the hungrier it will make you.

This recipe also calls for scallions. That was horrifying. I didn’t want to eat a scallion. Wasn’t Black Beauty a scallion? I can’t eat Black Beauty. That book already makes me cry hard enough.

After much Googling, I found out that a scallion is not horse meat, but an ungodly mix of onion and garlic. I don’t know why they they decided to call it a scallion. If you cross two things, you’re supposed to make a delightful mix of their names, like labradoodle. They should call it gonions. Or Oarlic. Maybe Onlic. Or if they were going to name it something completely different, it should have been “Scallidoodles”, because it’s so much fun to say! (I also recommend yelling “Scallidoodles” the next time someone’s yelling at you. Just to see what the other person will do…)

Another problem with cooking is all the equipment. You need a lot of equipment to cook these days. Grills to burn your food on all at once, slow cookers to burn your food over the course of a day, basters to squirt people who get in your way in the kitchen, and the elusive food processors. I don’t know what a food processor does, but it sounds amazing. I imagine I could present my food processor with cream cheese and tell the food processor to not bring it back until it’s cheesecake. For the amount of money a food processor costs, it had better work that way!

I don’t have any of this fancy equipment. I have a microwave and a cutting board.

Okay, I have a microwave and a paper plate.

I’m not even allowed to use my sister’s mandolin for cutting fruits and vegetables anymore. She started to complain it was making her strings sticky. So now I just use a guitar and hope that’s close enough. I still don’t understand why I can’t just use a knife.

Well, it smells like my home-made ice cream is burning, so I’d better go add the scallidoodles and enjoy!

Monsters and Doubt

The other day a friend suggested that if I didn’t waste so much time procrastinating on the internet, I might actually get some of the stuff on my “To-Do” list accomplished.

What this friend didn’t understand is that I’m not procrastinating. #1 on my to-do list is view the entire internet. She was interrupting.

The internet can be useful. You can learn a lot of things that you will not find out for years aren’t actually true.

For example, I get the majority of my history from those little cartoons Google puts up on their home page.

Don’t judge me.

Usually I feel like they’re very informative. When I go to parties and don’t know what to say, I can bring up interesting historical facts:

Him: (Awkward silence)

Me: Did you know Marie Curie was awarded her Nobel Prize 113 years ago last Thursday?

Him: Who’s Marie Curie?

Me: She’s a lady who used a bunch of chemistry equipment to spell out ‘Google’.

Him: And she won a Nobel Prize for that?

Me: I guess it was a lot easier back then. In those days, people were shorter so it was harder to play basketball, and you couldn’t watch Star Trek reruns. So they had to give out more awards to entertain people.

Him: I didn’t know that.

Me: You’re welcome.

This system obviously works pretty well for me.

But one time Google put up a picture celebrating the 81st Anniversary of people hunting for the Loch Ness Monster.

Now I don’t like to publicly question our Supreme Leader, Google, for fear of what they will do to me. But how do they know exactly how long people have been hunting for the Loch Ness monster to the year, let alone the day?

Is there some sort of journal entry Google knows about that none of the rest of us have seen? It would have to go something like this:

April 21, 1934

Dear Diary,

How are you? I am fine.

I’m starting to think there might be some kind of creature living in the loch. I know it sounds crazy. No one has ever suspected anything like this ever before. EVER.

Everyone thinks I’m out of my mind because it’s a well known fact that “Loch Ness” means “This water is completely monster free” in that one language. All of our stories and legends revolve around there being absolutely no monsters living in that specific loch. So no one has ever even considered that there might be a monster living in there, let alone hunted for one.

Despite everyone’s skepticism, I’ve decided to become the first person EVER to go hunting for this beast. Because it lives in Loch Ness, I’ve decided to call it, simply, the “Michael Nesmith Monster” (He was one of the Monkees for those of you reading this journal in the future who may not get that joke).

I’ve got all my supplies and am ready to get going. 81 years from now, they will talk about this historic day: the first time anyone ever hunted for a monster in Loch Ness. And you can quote me on that.

My hunt begins today. Or maybe tomorrow. But probably today.

XOXO

Steve

Until Google can produce a journal entry similar to this, I may just have to disbelieve them.

(Awkward Silence)

Did you know Kafka wrote Metamorphosis 104 years ago? It’s about a cockroach who spells out the word “Google”.

Poetic

Reading the fine print is important. If you sign things without reading all those boring words, you may find you’ve agreed to payments you didn’t realize or, worse, have to get up and read your poetry in front of people.

You laugh, but it happens.

It happens to me.

It happens to me a lot.

Upwards of one time.

So far.

I entered a poetry contest at the local library on a whim. I found out about it on the last day of entry. The biggest draw was the grand prize: a cash award of 2,500 US pennies.

Being unemployed, that was a lot of money to me. I could stretch $25 into a week’s worth of food. Just like this:

Day 1: Go out to a Mexican restaurant. Fill up entirely on chips and salsa. Doggie bag the whole meal.
Day 2-7: Mexican food leftovers.

The poetry contest also sounded like fun. Mostly it sounded like money.

So I spent a couple of hours and wrote a poem. Then I submitted it, wildly clicking the “Okay” buttons without really reading everything that they were in reference to.

6-8 weeks later, I received an email, thanking me for my entry and informing me I was one of 8 finalists. I was so excited.

“When did I enter a poetry contest?” I asked.

But in an excited sort of confused way.

The email went on to invite me to the awards ceremony where they said there would be light horderves and then the winner would be announced and presented with their prize right after a brief presentations wherein all the finalists would read their poems.

I was surprised to read that and not in a good way.

I started shouting at my email, “Now wait just a minute! Just because I entered your poetry contest, now you think you can make me get up in front of people and read my writing? Audibly? IN PUBLIC?!? WITHOUT VOMITING?!?”

It’s not that my poem wasn’t good. I’m just pretty sure the poem loses a lot of its charm when more than just the voices in my head are listening to it.

On the other hand, 25 dollars is 25 dollars. Maybe more. And so I resolved to do it.

I got all dressed up, watched a YouTube tutorial on how to put on lipstick (I don’t wear makeup a lot), and poured myself a good stiff Dr. Pepper to calm my nerves and almost guarantee that I would have to belch at the worst possible moment.

Once I was there at the awards ceremony, I was actually glad I went.

That lasted about 11 seconds until I noticed a couple across the room. I recognized my ex-boyfriend and what was either his new girlfriend or an overly affectionate sister reenacting the scene between Luke and Leia in the Empire Strikes Back.

I wanted to turn around and leave, but he saw me. He didn’t just see me. He saw me seeing him. Then the girl saw him seeing me seeing him. Then I saw her wrapping her arms possessively around him and kissing him again. Then I belched quite loudly and everybody saw me.

I mingled awkwardly with some empty chairs for a while. I did my best to keep up my end of the conversation while trying to also figure out a good exit strategy.

But I couldn’t back out now. Not after how many horderves I had eaten. I had no choice.

I’m sure if you’ve read my blog, you can imagine the sort of poem that I wrote. It was less Edgar Allen Poe and more Po from Kung Fu Panda. I am a silly person, so I wrote a silly poem.

Poetry, it turns out, is not a silly art form. Like ballet. You would not walk into the famous Russian Bolshoi Ballet studio and start cracking jokes about ballet. I mean, I certainly would, but I’m crazy. Which is exactly how I ended up in this mess in the first place.

So this is how the line-up of finalists’ poems went (complete with photographic representations of each):

Poem about death of a spouse
Poem about death of a parent
Poem about death of a baby
Teenager’s dark and graphic poem about having sex that made everyone uncomfortable
Poem about dying of cancer
Veronica’s poetic equivalent of farty-armpit noises
Poem about suicide
Poem about a decaying body

I like to think I expanded the horizons of some of the poets that night. Or at least weirded a few people out.

Spoiler alert: I didn’t throw up. (Well, maybe a little on the inside)

Also, I didn’t win.

I did get an honorable mention (although that apparently got lost in the mail because I never received a mention, honorable or other wise)

Guess who did win?

Miss Kissy-Face-With-My-Ex.

Pardon me. MS. Kissy-Face-With-My-Ex (If she’s reading this, I wouldn’t want to offend her)

And when they called her up to the stage, I noticed she had the same last name as my ex.

“Ha!” I thought. “It is his creepily affectionate sister!”

And then I saw she was wearing two rings on her left ring-finger, one of them a VERY large diamond ring.

That actually made me feel better. I may write goofy poetry, but at least I’m the not the kind of guy who gives his sister a diamond ring.

And that’s why I always read the fine print.*

*Sometimes.

Acupuncture

I have decided to try acupuncture. Why? Because it’s there. It’s supposed to be able to help a variety of problems. Maybe it can even help me with this writing addiction I seem to have.

I’m also hoping it will be like couple’s therapy for me and my liver, who have not been on good terms for some time now.

Me: You never appreciate or even acknowledge all that I do for you!

Liver: Oh, like what?

Me: I don’t drink, just for you!

Liver: You don’t even like the taste of alcohol! And what about all that Dr. Pepper? That cannot be good for me.

Me: You leave Dr. Pepper out of this!

Liver: If you love Dr. Pepper so much, maybe I should just leave and let Dr. Pepper handle all the toxins in your body!

Me: I bet he could do it, and with less complaining!

Liver: He can’t handle toxins. He is a toxin!

Me: You shut your mouth!

Liver: I’M A LIVER! I DON’T HAVE A MOUTH!

Me: THEN WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS ARGUING WITH ME?

Liver: BECAUSE YOU HAVE AN OVERACTIVE IMAGINATION!

Me: MAYBE YOU HAVE AN OVERACTIVE ANTHROPOMORPHISM!

Liver: YOU NEVER MAKE ANY SENSE!!

Me: OH, YEAH? WELL, SO’S YOUR FACE!!!

And it just gets uglier from there. Sometimes I think we only stay together for the sake of the kidneys.

Having never had acupuncture, I’m not sure what to expect. Other than pokeyness.

Speaking of pokeyness, do you remember in elementary school when boys would take anything sharp they could get hold of (staples, thumbtacks, safety pins, etc) and stick it into the skin on their fingers and then show all the girls to gross them out? This was their form of flirting. It is a step above some of the pick up lines I’ve heard from theoretically grown men. In fact, I often hand these theoretically grown men sharp objects and tell them where to stick it. So I’ve come full circle.

I never went for the guys who did this finger mutilation. I did, however, have a crush on the guy who would pretend to jam a short pencil up one nostril, then sneeze it out the opposite nostril. My primitive senses told me that guy would be a good provider for our children. At least as far as we’d never be low on pencils.

Remember when we were talking about acupuncture? Let’s relive those moments.

I’m not really afraid of the pokeyness. I’ve had lots of blood drawn for tests and even gave blood once. I kind of had a bad experience giving blood, though.

The guy collected all the blood they needed and then he was checking my vitals.

Then he called someone else over to check my vitals.

Then they called two other people over to check my vitals.

I asked if something might possibly be wrong that I should know about. That’s when they admitted that they had lost my blood pressure and couldn’t find it. I guess they had removed my blood pressure to get better access to my blood, then someone had set it somewhere and now they couldn’t remember where. Anyone could have just walked off with it.

So I ended up having to sit in the chair for another hour while they tried to find my blood pressure and checked online to see if they could buy me a used one off eBay.

Spoiler alert: I didn’t die. And the used blood pressure I got from “

My blood draws usually go much smoother.  Except my last one.

I recently went for a blood draw with a phlebotomist-in-training who they said had done this lots of times before. I don’t like to call a phlebotomist a liar, but she had the sweaty brow and shaky hands of someone who was about to jam a needle into someone for the very first time. Or perhaps a drug addict who has not jammed a needle into someone in too long of a time.

Either way, she did not inspire confidence. She had a lot of trouble finding a vein.

Let’s face it, she was so nervous, she had trouble finding my arm. But I talked her through the process and gave her a sticker afterwords, so she was fine.

Needlesstosay needles don’t scare me. Did you read that “Needles-to-say”? Because I did and I knew what I had written.  Which leads me to my next point:

You can’t spell “Needlesstosay” without “Needles”.  Or “Stosay” for that matter.

Back to acupuncture.

I do have to wonder what will happen if I sneeze? Will I shoot needles like a porcupine? Cuz that would be kind of awesome.

I would like to have that power in everyday life. For example, if I see a drunk driver on the road, all I have to do is roll down my window and sneeze until I blow out his tires, and just like that, I’ve saved lives.

In summation, I have a lot of thoughts that have nothing to do with acupuncture, am not afraid of needles, and would like to know the effects of sneezing while acupuncturizationing.

Post-Accupuncture update: It was in fact pokey. And, sadly, the only time I sneezed while I was there was when I was still in the waiting room. So the world may never know.

Alone and Internetless

Day five without internet.

Is the world still out there?

I don’t know if Kim and Kanye are still together.

I don’t know who’s going to appear on what controversial magazine cover.

I don’t know what insulting things my friends have said to each other over political debates on social media.

But that’s all the upside.

I think the hardest part is knowing Google is out there somewhere with information I would like to have, but we just can’t get to each other.

For a while, I was calling my sister and pretending she was Siri:

Sister: Hello?

Me: Movie times, theater closest to my house.

Sister: I looked those up for you an hour ago.

Me: I failed to write them down. And don’t talk back, Siri. Also, I need coupons to the Mexican restaurant by the theater.

Sister: I’m a thirty minute drive away from you.

Me: Wow, that’s a long time to download. I’ll wait. Play me some music while we wait.

Sister:

Now not only is my internet down, but my calls to my sister aren’t going through either for some reason.

So whenever I really need to Google something (ie: “Could you even make a great dane chihuahua mix? And would the puppies all be different sizes?”), I’m driving to the nearest coffee shop with free wifi. Then I go in, find my answer, and buy a small coffee for the use of their wifi.

I don’t even like coffee. I’m not saying I don’t drink it. I like mornings less than I like coffee. So I drink coffee, but I don’t like it. I have also needed to Google a lot lately, which has had the unfortunate side effect of me not being able to sleep/sit still in the last 36 hours. If my internet is going to be down much longer, I think I’m going to have to find an alternative source of free wifi that sells something I actually want to buy. Like a puppy rescue.

I know what you’re thinking: “Why did I buy a shirt that was dry clean only? I don’t even know where the dry cleaners is.”

There’s a simple answer to that: I am able to keep posting to my blog despite my lack of internet access through the generous support of my sister, umm…wow, I should really know her name. If I could just log onto facebook, I’m sure I would recognize her picture and could get her name that way. I think it starts with a ‘P’. Well, let’s just call her Siri.

Siri has great internet access and, as it turns out, poor password-choice. I got “Please_don’t_use_my_wifi_Veronica!” on my second guess. That was her first mistake. Also, she entrusted me with a key to her house. That was her second first mistake.

So, regardless of how long my home internet access problems take to solve, I will be able to keep posting as promised, provided Siri keeps working later than I do. And doesn’t keep a close watch on how much ice cream she has. And doesn’t find it strange that there’s dog poo in her backyard when she doesn’t have a dog (I can’t write this without my puppy. She keeps track of all my syntax for me.)

I don’t think Siri’s very observant, though.

If I’m thinking of the right person.

I have a lot of sisters to keep straight. I have…at least two. I bet Google could tell me for sure.

The worst part of not having internet, besides not being sure who you’re related to, is not being able to obsess over how my blog is doing. Blog analytics are more addicting than crack. I can’t cite the study that proves that right now because I haven’t finished my cup of coffee yet from when I wanted to know why you’re not supposed to eat re-frozen ice cream. But you start out checking your blog analytics only once in a while. And then you start to think, “Wow! 2 views in Greece! I don’t even know anybody who lives there. I wonder if they like puppy humor in Greece?” So then you have to check your analytics more to see if your blog is going to go viral in Greece.

Pretty soon you’re spending more time pouring over your analytics than you are writing blog posts.

Me: (Typing)”Umm…My puppy is adorable and she does some really funny stuff sometimes. Something about my puppy acting like an angry flamingo. (Insert picture of angry flamingo here).” Post.

Alright, Netherlands. You’re not going to let Greece have more views than you, are you? You’d better hurry or you’re going to fall behind Romania.

As it stands, I have no idea if anyone is still reading my blog. I haven’t been able to promote it and it’s easy to disappear on the internet when you don’t want to (yet hard to when you DO want to). Without my nudging, will people forget about me? Even in Greece, where they obviously love me?

I hope you’re still there and I hope I have gone viral in Greece and I hope my heart doesn’t give out from all this coffee.

Please share my blog with your friends since I can’t right now! Thanks!