Something About You Girl That Makes Me

Because I am full of sore muscles, arthritic joints and smartness, I drive myself over to the massage therapist’s office once a week and turn myself in. I explain what parts of my glorious person are laughing at me and not with me, then do half an hour of stand up comedy lying down, because if I stopped telling jokes, I might go a little screamy. Therapeutic massage, as practiced by Merciless Mark, can be very painful, but it forces me to come up with new material on an urgent basis.

Tata: This spot here feels wider after the surgery.
MM: Any chance the surgeon gave you a new body part? I hear that happens.
Tata: Why didn’t I ask him, “Hey Doc, can you make that narrower? I wouldn’t mind narrower hips.”
MM: Shake his hand and slip him a little something?
Tata: “My friend Mr. Lincoln would like you to take off – say – two inches?”
MM: “And his friend Mr. Washington would like to thank you.”
Tata: “What if Mr. Hamilton joined this party?” Sixteen bucks! I guess you could make up money.
MM: “Mr. Taft would like you to make the scar reeeeeally small.”
Tata: He’s on the one million dollar, right? No, the $250 bill!
MM: What’s Kennedy on?
Tata: The fifty cent piece. You flip that to your orthopedic surgeon and say, “Here, kid. Don’t spend it all in one place.”
MM: “Susan B. Anthony nominates you for Surgeon of the Year.”

Dang. He’ll be here all week.

Say the Next Big Thing Is Here

When I got home from work, Panky was rolling across the couch with his shoes on, Buckwheat demanded I unwrap her toothbrush, the kitten was huddled in the kitchen, the other cats shivered in the attic and Miss Sasha was holding the dog. I don't have a dog. The TV was on. South Indian food was spread out across the table. So I unwrapped the toothbrush and told the kitten I was doubling her allowance.

When I got home from work, Panky was rolling across the couch with his shoes on, Buckwheat demanded I unwrap her toothbrush, the kitten was huddled in the kitchen, the other cats shivered in the attic and Miss Sasha was holding the dog. I don’t have a dog. The TV was on. South Indian food was spread out across the table. So I unwrapped the toothbrush and told the kitten I was doubling her allowance.

See That Destiny You Sold Turned Into

It's not all glamor, but mostly, yeah.

It’s not all glamor, but mostly, yeah.

This is a tweety thing of beauty:

Great. Now I’m overdressed for street food.

Or not so much. After work today, I put on my play clothes and shoveled an entire bale of peat moss over my potato plants, but that was not enough to cover. My potato plants are growing like a herd of little green growing prodigies that are doing some award-winning growing. Tomorrow, I am going to buy a bale of hay and stuff that in my Grand Am, the one I haven’t glued metallic spray-painted macaroni to yet, but that day will come. In the meantime, the plants’ reward for all that growing is a ground cover of golden hay.

You Singing Through the Wires

Last Friday, I saw three improbable things in the space of ten minutes.

1. On my way to physical therapy, I drove out of a parking deck and saw, parked on George Street between the dorms, a car carrier the top level of which was filled with golf carts. I had never seen a car carrier layered with golf carts, so I was immediately paying attention. I made an illegal left turn because shaaaa, went through the jughandle, up Huntington Street, down College Avenue to the canal, all in the space of less than a quarter mile. Directly in front of me, where the bike path across the Lynch Bridge ends in gravel and tears,

2. two tall men on golf carts stared back at me in panic and with no idea what to do. This is the exact spot where, just the night before, I’d told Pete I see someone get off a bicycle every day, and every day it’s a different person. These two guys had crossed the river on the bike path under the terrible misapprehension that no decent architect or civil engineer would build a bike path without an exit and they had discovered to their horror they were both tediously right and mysteriously wrong. I drove away before anyone could ask my advice, because no one needs that, by which I mean I’d explain golf carts make great submarines – briefly. Four turns later, I pulled into the PT building’s parking lot, where a delivery truck blocked the front door. A whole lot of identical boxes lay on the ground,

3. right side up, upside down and on their sides. From a distance, this looked unremarkable. Up close, I could see the driver wrestling a wooden pallet inside the truck and it looked like the pallet had a shot at the championship belt. The boxes on the ground were spread out like a map of Lower Manhattan. I walked down Varick and took the tunnel into the gym where I wear zebra print bedroom slippers and my lovely therapist Ghenghis throws medicine balls at me for fun.

Sure, that was odd, but this evening, I was making dinner. Also: beyond the coop, the people of the chickens suddenly freaked the fuck out. They live in two houses separated only by a driveway and these two women are sisters-in-law and I did not hallucinate this all this shouty shouting.

Brunette: Hey! Hey! The chickens are eating my green peas!

Blonde: I am so sick of this! *bursts into tears*

Pete was watering the garden in our backyard, dropped the garden hose and marched through the kitchen on his way to NOT LISTENING somewhere further away. I couldn’t believe my ears so I looked across the yard, where a little girl stood, bored and not crying. The blonde appeared to be talking and crying and for a second I was trying to match up the sounds with the face and yes, yes, the blonde was making these impossible noises and in my brain, all I could hear was No, no, this is not happening. I quietly reached for the door handle and closed the door without a sound because I’m sorry, that is a person crying about live chickens. And that was really improbable.

Thursday I Go Waltzing To the Zoo

We’ll be lucky to find ourselves in the doctor’s office tomorrow, wearing at least some pants and murmuring, “Lovely to see you again. We left the mime and all three penguins at home this time. Hard to tell them apart after parties. You don’t mind, do you?”

Just kidding!

In other news: Poor Impulse Control is nine years old. Guess I should quit drinking its college fund, huh?