I was a good girl, then bad good girl, then a bad girl, then a good girl again, then I was a bad girl, then a very bad girl, and here we are today. Somewhere in that list, I bought baby furniture; somewhere else I married the Fabulous Ex-Husband(tm) and those events are unrelated. People have fine ideas about what we should do and when and how and I couldn’t care less. Too many rules! Moving on –

The other day, I found messages on my voicemail at work. At first I didn’t recognize the voice, then it dawned on me: that’s the voice of Miss Sasha’s bio-father. I tossed him out twenty-two years ago and never missed him for a minute because I’m much too selfish to care about grass stains on today’s synthetics once I’ve thrown them out on the lawn. Miss Sasha heard little or nothing much about him from me because her relationship with Mr. Collected His T-Shirts From the Sidewalk has nothing to do with his and mine. She has to forge her own relationships with her relatives and her own ideas. He has a son, so Miss Sasha has a brother, a teenager who wants contact with her. Miss Sasha thinks that’s marvelous. I think it’s fantastic that Miss Sasha has a sibling I didn’t have to crochet myself. They will have each other. Everybody’s happy, except for one thing…

My place of employment has chosen to put all sorts of information online that might not be in the best interests of its employees. Where we work, our schedules, our meetings, our phone numbers are all up someplace. Mr. Pot-Addled found my work phone number online and called it at 2 in the morning. While he’s no threat to me anymore because Miss Sasha is over 18, I felt vaguely queasy that I was so easily found. For more than ten years I had an unlisted home phone number. What a waste of money. If only I could call the phone company and say, “Listen, the job’s screwed me here. Can I at least have back my pittance?” If you’re a thoughtless department manager boldly publishing details about your employees, keep in mind they have lives you don’t know about and sometimes those lives find their way to your workplace with pounds and pounds of ammo.

Mr. Ancient History isn’t the type. I have one Ex who is the type. I didn’t know if he would let me leave until he didn’t kill me. So you see my desire for stabbing-free workplaces is an earnest one, and as such, I hope employers quit publishing directories and schedules before phone trees let us press 9 for our killing spree floor maps.

That’s too much customer service.

Horoscopically speaking, I was supposed to be deliriously happy Friday and who was I to argue with the cosmos even as the police cars raced into my apartment complex while I was leaving for work. Sure, I was curious but I decided to think about how some lucky people get to disrupt whole neighborhoods before breakfast with lights and sirens.

Midmorning, I drove out to a university farm in either East Brunswick or Milltown, depending on which of those “Welcome to…” signs is a bold-faced liar. Trout bought a share in an agricultural program wherein undergrads and and grads study growing stuff by growing stuff and once a week during the season picking stuff, which civilians pick up and convert from a weekly quiz into salads and seasonal herbs. It’s a popular program, especially since you don’t have to be affiliated with the university or drive a Volvo to buy in. Anyway, the sun was shining, the air was warm, my car was moving smoothly with traffic and a simple, meaningless song was playing on the radio. You have had a moment like this. One hot summer night twenty years ago, I was in the Melody Bar with Johnny and some other friends. The whole place was a dance floor that night. People danced on the stairs, in doorways and at the bars. It was utterly fantastic to feel young and beautiful, to dance to song after song we loved or had never heard before but it didn’t matter which with the heat, the booze, the flowing bodies, and after hours of this thrilling, sweaty trance and just before three, the DJ’s last song proved a silly, perfect surprise: the Monkees’ I’m A Believer. As one, everyone turned back to the people they were dancing with, laughing, and yes, what could one hope for on the dance floor at three but this simple faith in love, a song from our childhoods, but this gorgeous sense that this three minutes could be no more full and we could be no more alive? And Friday, with the sun shining, the air warm, the car moving smoothly and Billy Idol’s Mony Mony playing, I felt enchanted and free, buoyant and timeless – as if I could be no more myself, filled with simple joi de vivre, than I was at that moment. Then I turned in the farm’s driveway and was greeted by a young woman dressed in a fake fur Pebbles outfit, causing me such Unexpected Costume Glee I could only stand in the shade, jumping up and down. Back at work, one of my co-workers sent the daily absence list around and I was on it for half a vacation day I’d totally forgotten I had to take, so I went home and opened my windows to let in the afternoon breezes. A friend was arriving in on an afternoon train. We were meeting up with the – cough! cough! – editorial board of Blanton’s And Ashton’s for refreshing adult beverages later. I baked cookies for a party, washed clothes, polished my nails and watched soap operas. That’s my surreally joyful Friday. I am having an exceptionally happy weekend, all in all, and as I write this I’m sitting in the family store, surrounded by pretty things that smell great while the Dixie Chicks play on the stereo.

It’s not realistic to assume that tomorrow I’ll feel as good, or that good days in a row mean life is generally improving. Next week: I have three days off work and a family wedding two states away. Don’t worry. I’m assuming events will take a turn for the craptacular before breakfast. Too bad I don’t have lights and sirens.

I call Sears. Forty-five rings later.

Guy: Appliances.
Tata: Hi. I bought two air conditioners. When I opened the boxes, one contained an installation kit and the other did not. I called Sears Parts & Repairs’s galactic headquarters and they said I should march over and pick up the kit. Do you have one?
Guy: No. Some air conditioners don’t come with installation kits.
Tata: I bought two identical air conditioners so I’m supposing that if one required it then the odds are exceptionally good the other needed it too and perhaps at the factory, they were having a bad day with wood screws.
Guy: That would be very unusual.
Tata: I’m agreeing with you in the hope that you’ll tell me whom to call next.
Guy: Parts & Service. They’re here in the same building but they’re like a different universe. They don’t even keep the same hours.
Tata: Can you transfer me?
Guy: Oh, hell no. They’ve got their own phone lines, too!

Forty-five more rings. As Grandma used to say, “Tempis is fugiting!” She was too polite to say, “…you bastards,” but she thought it often.

Guy 2: Parts & Service.
Tata: I bought two identical air conditioners. One box contained an installation kit and the other did not. Can you mail this to me?
Guy 2: Model number?
Tata: Ah, the flaw in my plan! I left this at home.
Guy 2: Give me the model number and I can get this to you in a couple of days.
Tata: And they say true love is hard to find.

Last night, Lupe picked me up. We braved the permatraffic of Route 1 North after rush hour so we passed only two impeccably placed accidents – eventually – to turn around at Woodbridge Center and head south. If you have never traveled this particular stretch of road or met civil engineers, you should watch out for the trickster gods in more conventional forms like wolves and door-to-door Bible salesmen. The intersection of Woodbridge Drive and Route 1 has been reconfigured a handful of times in the last ten years to accommodate unchecked development and oblivious luxury item shoppers. It used to give me great satisfaction to avoid this mall, knowing it was at least for a time the mall in the continental U.S. where you were most likely to return from shopping to find your vehicle had been boosted. We turn onto Route 1 South. Lupe takes three short breaths, turns right and guns it for the invisible strip mall we know is behind the trees. Then, she parks.

We walk up and down the aisles. Neither of us is one of those crazy women with a Shoe Problem. Eyes focused, we make for the running shoes. Lupe picks up white shoes with pink trim.

Lupe: These are cute. Good padding. What do you think?
Tata: I can’t wear cupcakes. Do they have New Balance in colors not found in frosting?

Halfway across the room, we find Adidas, New Balance and a brand I’ve already forgotten in gray. I try them on quickly. The Adidas feel really good. In ten minutes, we found me a pair of running shoes. The purple trim is a bit of a compromise but at least I don’t have to beat myself up on the playground.

Lupe tries on pair after pair of black wedge heels because this season sandals are supposed to appear prominently on medical certificates as Cause of Death. In the meantime, everyone within fifty feet hears my running commentary on shoes made of rope. Women pick them up, look at me, then put them back down. Lupe finds a pair of sandals that fit and flatter, finds me a pair of black shoes to kick off under my desk and a pair of what can only be described as cute sandals. I do not have a Shoe Problem! I mean it! Sometimes, however, this leads to putting on something dressy and finding nothing in the closet but combat boots.

Today, Lupe and I both have New Shoes Glee. I have glee! My everyday shoes resemble Paulie Gonzalez’s Bruno Maglis, which is amusing by itself, but they also feel cushiony and sort of rounded across the bottom. I walk a few steps, laugh hysterically, then walk some more. Lupe’s wedge sandals are just a little higher than she’s used to so she caught herself descending a long staircase with both hands on the banister like she was climbing Everest. The whole world is more interesting when one is flush with new physical sensations. From my co-worker Bob Hosh:

As most of you probably know we have umpteen pairs of Barn Swallows nesting at Hageman Farm. There are, in fact, two nests on the beams of the carriage house above where I keep the riding mower parked when not in use. The barn swallows are now into raising their second brood of the season and they get very antsy when I’m moving the mower in or out of the carriage house. They do a lot of frantic flying and swooping toward me, but never really attack me and I tend to talk soothingly to them and they seem to have learned that I intend no harm to them or their nestlings. So yesterday evening when I was completing mowing the last 3rd of the 2 acre lawn I became involved in an adventure with the swallows! As I was mowing the grass around the horse and dairy barns dusk began to fall and the swallows came out to feed; lots of them not just the four from the carriage house, but many more from the lower section of the horse barn. As I chugged along on the Deere suddenly the air around me was filled with beautiful barn swallows on the wing catching the hundreds of insects flying up and escaping the blades of the mower. What a sight it was to to watch the birds approach only a foot or so above ground catching insects and swerving at the last minute to avoid hitting me on the mower! Flitting past me their mouths stuffed with food I could have reached out and touched them easily. They were having a ball and so was I!

Now if I could only develop such a relationship with the resident groundhog!

I had no idea other people had complex relationships with groundhogs but I’ve bought running shoes for the first time in 26 years. Isn’t anything possible?

Yesterday, in my office.

David: Where’s Lupe?
Tata: I don’t know. I turned the corner and she was invisible to me, too.
David: Do you have dibs on her next?
Tata: Can we claim our co-workers? Because if so, I dibs Nina. Hey Nina, this afternoon I’m taking the cat to the vet. Hope you didn’t have any plans!
David: I dibs Mathilde.
Tata: Where’s my kickball?

In the Good News/Bad New Department, a German man was spared serious injury when he fell off his bicycle and a car ran him over. The bad news is when he got up he weighed 440 pounds.

A 440-pound German man discovered that being overweight can be good for your health – if you get run over by a car.

Police said the extra body mass prevented the 30-year-old man from suffering potentially fatal injuries when a Volkswagen Polo drove over him after he braked suddenly on his bicycle at a crossroads and fell off in front of the car.

“It certainly helped him in this case,” said Sven-Marco Claus, a spokesman for police in the western town of Gifhorn on Monday. “Someone smaller would probably not have been so lucky.”

Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, where to start? A 440-lb. man on a bicycle? I’m already afraid for his safety. So what happened, huh?

The man dislocated his hip, which local doctors put back in place, but otherwise suffered only scratches and a bloody nose from the underside of the vehicle, police said.

Christ on a cracker, that guy’s lucky. Judging by the next item on the page, MSNBC has strong feelings on the subject.

Click for related content

17 beers a day keep prostate cancer away

Crap, I don’t have time for 17 beers a day or a prostate.

Last week, Mom called in a bit of a huff.

Mom: Last night, my friend and I went to see An Inconvenient Truth.
Tata: (spitting coffee) You did?
Mom: It was important we see it opening weekend.
Tata: It was?
Mom: Our male counterparts were unavailable so we just went.
Tata: You did? You know what? I don’t sound any smarter. What did you think?
Mom: I want you to see it. I want everyone to see it. It’s too important to be missed by anyone. How can we trick your sister into seeing it? Offer to babysit?
Tata: Look at you scheming for the Greater Good! Sure, buy tickets and stuff popcorn in their pockets.
Mom: That Ford Excoriator has got to go! I can’t believe they’re still driving that monster.
Tata: Mom, Tyler thinks Ann Coulter’s misunderstood.
Mom: Then he misunderstands Ann Coulter.

Huh! Look at Mom go! In other news, I have given up trying to think of ways to get my apartment complex to start a compost pile. I’d really like to. I mean, who couldn’t use the free mulch? Anyway, I wait until dark and toss aging lettuce into the forsythia below my living room windows and then I feel weirdly ambivalent and carrots would be a dead-giveaway. When I open my bedroom screens to sweep out grime, I feel like Snow White when the groundhog gives me the eye, the birds tweet madly and a squirrel flies in for an up-close-and-too-personal afternoon snack.

Scraps might just add to the confusion.

The past few days, the media has distinguished itself by dancing like Astaire on the grave of Zarqawi. Our Ginger Rogers in this pas de deux is a military that seems shocked it attained its target, which is not exactly the response you want in your military. Personally, I’d like the boys and girls dropping bombs so well-trained hitting a target is not-worth-mentioning second nature, and I want them so well-adjusted they have the decency to express regret that a job well-done required loss of life in the first place. Unfortunately, my society has gone to war with the press corps it had, not the one I’d like, and not the government, justification or outcome, either.

Human nature is messy, ugly stuff. Humans like the pick the winners and spike the ball. Humans like to kick a man when he’s down, and once more for good measure. Humans like to humiliate a loser and pinch his wife. Humans, basically, are bumfuck cruel and at some times more than others the veneer of civility chips and peels. This is such a moment. A great many people are sick of hearing that children are dying for no good reason while the economy’s tanking and the federal deficit mushrooms, and these people are looking for a ball to spike, a winner, a loser and a fleshy woman to pinch. Cue the kickline.

This would be an excellent moment for us to take stock of what the hell we’re doing. The war doesn’t make any sense. Destroying a city to save it is the reasoning of madmen. If our government’s aim is to win over the populace bombing the shit out of it comes up short as strategy. If our government’s intention was to spread democracy it ought to be noted that desire must arise from the hearts of a people. It cannot be imposed from outside. If our government intended to free a captive society and form a satellite state it will not succeed. A nation cannot simultaneously occupy and release; in the Middle East, we are occupiers, and we are seen as occupiers. Rhetoric is foolishness now. More people will die. More of our brave children will die. More of our treasury will disappear. Our own people will remain divided. This is simple human nature at work.

It does not befit a powerful nation to wage war against a weak one. Any strike against the oppressed does not bring glory – it brings mutual humiliation. The powerful nation loses its brave and patient mien. The weak one may discover its soul in resistance. No good will ever come of it. None is coming, here. Zarqawi’s death accomplishes exactly nothing for us except to bring us more footsoldiers willing to die for our defeat. You know this. You know all this. And yet we see dancing on his grave.

There is a great deal of talk about what a great many people think we are doing. What is it we are actually doing?

Yesterday, the faithful gathered at the Court Tavern in New Brunswick a week after the funeral service for our friend Freddy, also known as The Mad Daddys’ singer Stinky Sonobuoni. Last week, we heard speeches, antic and tragic; we laughed and cried. This week: Trout picks me up in jeans and a cowboy hat. She tells me an excellent story from when Freddy and his wife had just met. In accordance with WFMU’s announcement that Sunday’s hoedown would be “a New Orleans-style send off,” I’m packing a bag full of Mardi Gras beads. At the bar, we find dozens of people, more every few minutes, talking and raising a glass. Someone found a box of Mardi Gras beads at a garage sale the day before and everybody gets some. I lay a bunch on the bar like a festive placemarker. Trout has issues of her own and fights back tears now and then – which fighting is good because it’s tough to drink a Bud bottle with a runny nose.

Paulie Gonzalez takes a chair next to Trout at our end of the bar. When Trout gets up to go talk to someone, a woman Paulie and I can’t stand stands between us. As I tell Marcia, next to me, “She’s a pig but she thinks she’s just the ginchiest.” Marcia is shocked that I’d say that with Martine right there. It’s okay, though. In Martine’s mind, we only exist when we’re admiring her. When Martine sits down I point to a pair of patterned underpants hanging over the bar.

Tata: Those yours, Martine?

Paulie drops his beer.

Martine: Those? Those are so ugly.
Tata: Just sayin’.
Paulie: Stella Artois, please…
Tata: Marcia, who is that guy? Is he in the band SUX?
Marcia: Which guy?
Tata: The tall guy.
Marcia: The guy in the black t-shirt?
Tata: Marcia, every guy in the bar is wearing a black t-shirt.
Paulie: One time, I was puking in the men’s room and because I was wearing a black t-shirt everyone thought it was Marcia’s husband. I said, “Beer, please.”
Tata: Awesome.
Marcia: Where is my husband?
Tata: Standing behind that guy in the black t-shirt.
Marcia: You’re right! That directionality really worked for me!

Trout returns from talking with Freddy’s widow. She tells Paulie a story.

Trout: I can’t read Poor Impulse Control. It’s like a Russian novel with yoga pants –

No, that’s not it.

Trout: My college boyfriend shared a house with Carmen (Freddy’s widow) and another guy and they also had a band called XEX. You may have heard of it. No? Okay, one day, my ex-boyfriend came home and found Freddy and Carmen in a “Ride ‘Em, Cowgirl” situation. I told Carmen that’s why I’m wearing the cowboy hat. She said, “Girl, we used to have fun.” Everybody back there laughed.

A few hours later, I’m sitting in my living room when the phone rings. It sounds like Siobhan’s purse has called me again. I shout, “SIOBHAN! SIOBHAN! SIOBHAN!” but nothing happens. I sing a verse of “Dixie”. Nothing. I hang up. A few minutes later, I call her and leave a message that her phone’s running up her minutes again. This morning, she checks her messages.

Siobhan: Where was I when my phone called you?
Tata: Bridal shower, I guess. It was pretty loud and I was shouting your name. You didn’t hear me.
Siobhan: Wait, what time was that? I didn’t call you after lunch and my log says my phone didn’t call, no matter how much she loves you.
Tata: It must’ve been Paulie’s pants! They’ve called me before!
Siobhan: Maybe…
Tata: From his perspective, Paulie’s pants were shouting, “SIOBHAN! SIOBHAN! SIOBHAN!”
Siobhan: I was drinking water when you said that. And I remain parched.

A few weeks ago, a story circulated that bothered me on general principle: MSNBC’s For Wiccan soldier, death brings fight.

Nevada officials are pressing the Department of Veteran Affairs to allow the family of a soldier killed in Afghanistan to place a Wiccan symbol on his headstone.

Federal officials so far have refused to grant the requests of the family of Sgt. Patrick Stewart, 34, who was killed in Afghanistan in September when the Nevada Army National Guard helicopter he was in was shot down.

Honoring a person in death should be consistent with the person’s life. Sgt. Stewart gave more to his country than just his sacrifice –

Stewart enlisted in the Army after he graduated from Reno’s Wooster High School in 1989 and served in Desert Storm and in Korea. After completing his active duty, he enlisted in the Nevada Army National Guard in 2005 and went to Afghanistan with Task Force Storm.

– he gave his entire adult life to our military. Doesn’t he deserve our respect and veneration?

Stewart, of Fernley, who was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart, was a follower of the Wiccan religion, which the Department of Veterans Affairs does not recognize.

Wiccans worship the Earth and believe they must give to the community. Some consider themselves witches, pagans or neo-pagans.

The Veterans Affairs’ National Cemetery Administration allows only approved emblems of religious beliefs on government headstones. Over the years, it has approved more than 30, including symbols for the Tenrikyo Church, United Moravian Church and Sikhs. There’s also an emblem for atheists – but none for Wiccans.

Stewart’s widow, Roberta Stewart, said she’s hopeful she’ll receive permission to add the Wiccan pentacle – a circle around a five-pointed star – to her late husband’s government-issued memorial plaque.

While Memorial Day services are scheduled Monday at the Northern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Fernley, Roberta Stewart plans an alternative service at Fernley’s Out of Town Park. She’s calling the ceremony the Sgt. Patrick Stewart Freedom for All Faiths Memorial Service.

“This is discrimination against our religion,” Roberta Stewart said. “The least his country can do is give him the symbol of faith as he would have wished,” she recently told the Daily Sparks Tribune.

Sgt. Stewart was killed in September 2005 and the article was dated May 25, 2006. I Googled his name to find out if there’d been progress in the matter. Wikipedia offers no new information. I hope for acceptance, because in the wide world it never hurts us to live and let live. And damn it, I’ll drink to that.

My sisters, those fools with excellent taste, have left me with the keys to the family store. Sarah Vaughn plays on the stereo and verbena perfumes the breeze, now and then tickling the wind chimes. Everyone went to Dunellen for Anya’s son Ezekiel’s birthday party. Corinne accidentally left me half a snack-size bag of salt and vinegar potato chips. I’ve made coffee. It’s like I died and went to shinyshiny-sweet-smelling Heaven. With chips.

This morning, a person in the form of the blogger known as DBK came to my apartment with a toolkit and installed an air conditioner in my living room window. This was exciting because I can generally assemble stuff with power tools and a bottle of merlot and yet when I opened the boxes containing my air conditioners, I knew immediately installation would be a two-person job and extra personalities don’t count. Mr. DBK volunteered to help, if only to make me quit complaining. So I’d opened one box, dragged everything out of the box and when I looked up styrofoam was settling on every surface in my bedroom like a gentle, toxic snowfall. My cat took one look at this and, muttering, slunk off to nap somewhere softer and furrier. I tossed the box and went so far as to paw the manual like it might read itself to me before bedtime. I even looked at the pictures. When the pictures didn’t help I knew merlot wouldn’t either. Merlot gives me a headstart on an attention span when I forget for a while that I don’t have one. Then I commenced whining until Mr. DBK stuck fingers in his ears and volunteered to help me, which was very funny considering this was all over email and how did he type that?

Last night, to prepare for his visit, I opened the second cardboard and styrofoam container and realized right away I had a problem. On top of the unit itself sat a plastic bag full of little parts. I knew no matching bag of little parts sat on top of the air conditioner in my bedroom. Merde!

At 9 this morning, I phoned Sears to ask about a replacement of my goody bag but no one answered. Perhaps my complaints can only be heard by the ears of men holding tools and the guys in Appliances knew better than to pick up. At Sears Appliance Repair’s interplanetary headquarters a woman answered the phone who, like many civilians, at first did not understand my problem.

Tata: Okay okay okay so last night I opened Box Number Two! Sitting atop the whatsis was a bag full of teeny pieces, and I don’t have a twin from the other box. I am vexed!
Lady: What’s in that bag?
Tata: A bunch of these, two of those and a plastic thing.
Lady: The air conditioner has over two hundred parts. Can you be more specific?
Tata: The bag says “Installation Kit”. Does that help?
Lady: It doesn’t! I don’t understand this. My parts list does not list these parts.
Tata: The manual has a list of 14 wood screws, two more wood screws, two more after that, two braces and a plastic jobby. Should I just march myself over to my local Sears and ask if they have an extra one?
Lady: Extra nothing, those parts are yours.

I’ve got a convert! Anyway, it would have been nice to get both whatsii installed but no dice. The living room was obviously the place to start and by obviously I mean in the apartment in which I’ve lived since September I’d finally noticed someone had already drilled air conditioner bracket holes in the living room window sill. Mr. DBK rang the bell just after 10, while I was washing dishes. Wide-eyed, he stares at the adjacent building off to my left.

DBK: Have you noticed the crack that runs up the side of that building nearly to the top?
Tata: No. I bet the front of those apartments peel off like a banana peel that is especially ready to be peeled. Like a banana.
DBK: And the orange spot. I’ve read about it and now I’ve seen it.
Tata: That means neither of us is imagining you’re at my house. Please come in!

About five minutes later, Mr. DBK is holding the manual and swearing. I sit on the floor and shrug. If installing the air conditioner were an ordinary puzzle I would have solved it myself. I built the cabinet in my bathroom and ended up with extra pieces. He is pleased to hear this and hopes I’ll take up cabinetry, the art form of my ancestors. No, really. They made cabinets and knives and carved sculptures and Mr. DBK goes a little spastic.

DBK: Is that a Thighmaster? I’m so embarrassed.
Tata: Yes, my cat loves it.
DBK: Are you talking dirty?
Tata: No. See the cat? He finds it cushiony. One of my exes gave it to me because he used it and that made it funny. While you’re here, will you help me medicate the cat?
DBK: Sure!

Holes drilled by someone else for another air conditioner prove a blessing and a curse when some of them are in the right spot and some are too large to provide any grip. Mr. DBK and I put the air conditioner in place and he affixes it to the windows from all sorts of angles using little chunks of wood he brought with him. Then I corral the cat and Mr. DBK, a veteran cat-medicator, squeezes droplets of a foul-smelling elixir into the mouth of the cranky pussycat. Larry, the little black cat bent on stealing your soul, then climbs over my shoulder with claws fully extended and makes a break for it.

Tata: I’m sorry. One more thing: will you help me move the credenza two feet that way?
DBK: Sure. Howcum?
Tata: When I move it myself it gouges the floor. And I need a handstand wall.
DBK: People say that to me all the time, they say, “I need a handstand wall,” and I say good for them! What does that mean?
Tata: It means I am an Upside-Down American and I’ve been right-side-up long enough!
DBK: By all means, it’s upside-down for you.

We relocate the credenza and I am happy to say there is plenty of room for inverted me. Now, I’m at the store and the sun is shining, and I’m smoooshing little grape tomatoes between my molars. It’s been a good afternoon for me but tomorrow morning, when I can do head- and handstands in my own living room again, will be better.

Larry, the little black cat bent on stealing your soul, likes nothing better than to find me tapping away at the keyboard. This means I have to stay put, at least temporarily. He leaps. He stands on my lap. I type around the pussycat while he bumps my hands. Half the typos in Poor Impulse Control are cat-related accidents I failed to notice during proofreading. I don’t mind them. Nobody becomes a decent artist alone, we know. One must learn to accept criticism.

In this picture, Larry, the little black cat bent on stealing your soul, offers a withering critique of my decorating skills. My weights are extraneous to his happiness. You’re so selfish, he seems to say, On that spot, you could put a heating pad, kippered herring or a six-pack of pink mousies.

Perhaps he has a point. If you have use for some of the heavier weights, write me. I don’t need them anymore. If no one wants the weights, I’ll give them to a school or a Y with a free weights room. Best to release these creatures back into the wild.

For one of those December holidays, Siobhan gave me a giant orange chef knife of the brand shilled by Rachael Ray. Siobhan knows I despise Rachael Ray but my kitchen is a non-toxic mottle of yellow and orange. The knife’s handle is orange but even better: the blade is really sharp. I have a pineapple and I’m armed. Since I shot my mouth off, I’m betting life-threatening injury that I can combine pineapple, knife, cutting board and a simple carving technique I saw on television, and end up with fresh fruit.

Some methods sound a little dangerous. Gee, I hope that pineapple’s a cube. I saw Alton Brown make short work of a whole pineapple with an electric carving knife. Last time I saw one of those in action my grandfather carved up an ice cream cake. Poor Fudgie! There was crumbled cookie everywhere! So while I have no intention of training for my killing spree with fruit and a six-foot cord, there’s still plenty for me to learn from how Alton did it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a decent online demonstration or even a crappy online demonstration of the technique. FoodNetwork seems stuck on the idea that pineapple comes in cans. Roll up your sleeves and put on your 3D glasses. We’re going in!

If you’re old like me, you remember the scene in Diva in which the hero, while buttering a baguette, explains to the sweet, misguided kid that life is art. That is possibly the most economical bit of zen sensuality on film. It also helps that the apartment is a warehouse and there’s a girl roller skating around the living room. If you’re paying attention, you’re panting. I’ve always wanted an apartment I could skate in. As I approach the pineapple, I am aware that a firm grasp of the knife, a clean, steady surface and focus on the task at hand are essentials. For instance, this would be a bad time for the cat to adore me but he is asleep. I checked.

I am lefthanded. Your mileage may vary. I lay the pineapple on its side with the top facing right. Firmly holding the pineapple in place, I briskly slice off the bottom, then grasp the spiny top and slice it off, too. It is delightful to work with a really sharp blade. I discard the top and bottom. I stand up the now-barrel-shaped fruit. Slicing down the side and turning the barrel toward me, I remove the prickly outsides off in two- to three-inch strips all the way around, turning it around again to remove any thorny patches I may have missed. The flesh falls away easily and offers little or no resistance.

I’m not done yet. The core of the pineapple is fibrous and very exciting to eat if deliciousness doesn’t count. I cut the pineapple in half straight down, and cut the halves in half, straight down again. Then I cut off the center point. I now have fresh fruit that smells fantastic, and is nothing like the stuff that comes out of cans – nothing against the stuff in cans but this is different, and better. Life is art.

It is frequently apparent to me that not only don’t I know what day it is or what’s going on but I also have no idea what coded messages I’m missing in ordinary conversation, possibly even with myself. This morning, I dreamed my sister Daria had brought her secret agent friends to Grandma Edith’s apartment and the three of them were being followed by assassins. Edith’s tasteful apartment had been redecorated in circus tent colors and I was sitting on the kitchen floor, trying to avoid being seen from the front windows. Family members reading these words are already suffering seizures of laughter because no sliver of light ever passed through the trees concealing those windows, but I digress. The assassins get into the apartment, now filled with people who should not be there. Edith, for instance, has been dead nearly fifteen years but she’s sitting on a couch next to one of my co-workers and a son the co-worker does not have. The whole room is like that. I’m sitting on the floor cross-legged, with my fingertips arranged in the dharmacakra mudra. I know we are all going to die. The shooting starts in the other room. People are falling dead. A tall, shaggy haired man who looks like Bruce Dern after the coke runs out walks toward me pointing a pistol at my head. He walks around to face me. I say, “Please, just make it quick.” He kisses my forehead and places the gun against my teeth. I relax and wait for the headache but instead I am suddenly wide awake at 4:30. It’s still dark out. Instantly, I regret that my last words weren’t, “Let the little boy go.” Damn it, I’m editing my last words! And I can’t fall back to sleep. Because Siobhan and I start work while birds are still hitting the snooze bar I call at 7:45.

Siobhan: You have got to be kidding.
Tata: No, I’m pissed! My subconscious has a secret it’s not sharing with the class!
Siobhan: The Jewish old wives’ tale is that when you dream your death you’re getting married and when you dream your murder you’re eloping.
Tata: I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have no intention of sharing a bathroom on any but a temporary basis. Damn bathroom hogs!
Siobhan: I’ve decided your cousin Monday’s wedding is bothering you more than you let on and your brain wants to put this behind you.
Tata: I made reservations. Auntie InExcelsisDeo informed me that the hall runs shuttle buses to the hotels and no one will be driving drunk. I need a camera for pictures of the right and left Darias lying across the seats in formalwear.
Siobhan: Which you take from the floor?

By then I’ll have given up holding a camera in favor of looking at someone and saying, “Click!” Everybody wins! On the other hand, perhaps everyone can still lose if I understand this sage and our docile pussycats are plotting the end of civilization as we know it.

Anyway, my first inkling that something was amiss in the Human vs. Every Other Animal Species sweepstakes came this fall, when I noticed that you could not drive more than a mile on an Iowa highway without seeing a deer carcass.

At first, I thought, “How dumb can a deer be? Don’t they know the difference between a busy highway and a quiet forest?”

And then I thought, “It’s a deer, you idiot. They don’t know about highways.”

And then I thought, “You probably shouldn’t be sharing these ignorant debates with yourself in the newspaper. People might begin to worry.”

I figured the deer were innocent until I saw several reports that they seemed to be “attacking” vehicles, by waiting until a car happened along and then running full speed into it.

Which is why I, for the first time, actually cheered for the hunters during the most recent deer season and proposed that they be allowed to use machine guns.

He seems smart. Maybe he knows what’s going on.

For much of the winter, Des Moines served as the Crow Capital of the World. (New city motto: “Welcome to Des Moines. Don’t look up.”)

Half the sidewalks in town were covered with so many crow droppings that they resembled a Jackson Pollock painting.

These birds knew exactly what they were doing. I left my car parked on a street for five minutes and found, “Surrender, Funny Boy” written on my windshield – and it wasn’t in ink.

I haven’t seen the crows lately. They probably moved to Waukee like everyone else.

It would explain a lot if I’d moved to Waukee, Iowa without my knowledge. Damn sneaky subconscious! No wonder I’m eloping to get away from me!

In the beginning, I found it charming that the [giant monkeys] had cute names like Kanzi, Panbanisha, Matata and Nyota, although I kept confusing those names with those of the McCaughey septuplets.

And, yes, it was amusing when Sen. Tom Harkin visited the facility, and the creatures immediately signed a petition to impeach the president.

But I’ve watched enough bad movies to understand what’s really going on: The apes are telling the other animals to attack us.

Snap! How will we save ourselves?

The fact is, I think the apes are so incredibly smart that they are participating in one of history’s greatest scams.

During the day, they tease the researchers by showing that they’ve learned another simple phrase, like “pizza delivery.” At night, they send out complicated telepathic instructions to crow and deer on how to release all the animals in the Blank Park Zoo.

I know how troubling this all sounds, so I promise to stay on top of the story. The last thing we need is for your pet cats to scratch your eyes out as you sleep.

If my cat gets a gun permit it’s him or me – no matter what the monkey says.