I am not wearing underwear today.
Oh, I’m wearing a bra. That goes without saying. When you’re sporting the load that I’ve been granted, there is no going out in public sans support. I think if my house caught on fire in the middle of the night, the first thing I’d grab is my underwire. That’s probably wrong but so it goes.
But the panties. The only clean panties I had were my sport thongs and I just couldn’t bring myself to be shifting and un-thwacking on a vacation day. A day of what is supposed to be filled with rest and frolic, but will instead be filled with my attempts at bringing my domicile to a standard higher than that of the howler monkey cage at the damn zoo. I take that back. Howler monkeys would stick their noses up, preferring to groom each other for lice in the comfort of the street than my shoe and empty Dasani bottle filled living room.
The main problem is that we’ve been living as though our parents went on vacation and left us alone in the house. Or more correctly, I’ve been living that way. I suspect that it is Esteban’s modus operandi.
When I was a kid, my mother would rent this lovely A-frame cottage on the shore of Lake Michigan in Door County. It was a lovely time, usually during August over the week of my mother’s and her hippy boyfriend’s birthdays. However, during my sixteenth summer, I was unable to attend because I had driver’s ed. That meant that I got to be alone in the house’ a first in my sixteen years. Oh, I had been without parents before but usually I was supervising Mo, which is not the same thing as being completely alone.
It was a wonderful summer. I spent evenings on the deck, ate a lot of microwaved soy dogs (we had just gotten a microwave that year’ a first for the hippy family) and took my bike everywhere. I seem to remember that Ms. Tschuss hung out with me a lot that summer too, which was always a blast.
My official job was to watch my mother’s two little pekingnese, Max and Tiera, and my own Saint Bernard, whose unfortunate name was Bernardo Dioggi (pronounced D-O-G). Bernardo was a dog capable of enormous waste potential. I had no idea. I dutifully let him out every day and was somewhat aghast at the large amount of ex-Bernardo accumulating in the backyard.
There was a mound of sand near the deck, part of a patio project that the hippy was engaged in during that summer, and Bernardo had decided that the sand made a nice comfortable toilet for him. Day by day, the mound grew in size, the ratio of sand to poo slowly shifting toward the favor of the excrement. I was befuddled. I figured that it just went away somehow. I wasn’t certain exactly how. Maybe it had to rain out. Then one night it rained and that morning I was shocked to find that the sand pile had now turned into a gelatinous mound of unmentionable horrors. You couldn’t even see the sand anymore because it was covered in a poop slurry. It was almost as though a ginormous St. Bernard deity had come along and left a benediction. Flies started to lounge on the lovely deck area, shouting ‘Oh cabana girl!’ I stopped hanging out on the deck. Then I kept the door to the deck closed, despite the summer heat and the fact that we had no air conditioning. At that point, it had begun to dawn on me that I should have picked up the poo when it was in the more manageable solid form, but at that point it had gotten so completely disgusting that I decided a better plan would be to never go in the backyard again for as long as I lived. And when my family returned, they would also see the wisdom of this plan immediately.
Three weeks later, when my mother returned, she asked why I hadn’t picked it up. I explained that I just thought it would decompose somehow and then I thought that it needed water. She then proceeded to relay the story to my Mafia Grandmother, twisting my logic to claim that I had expected a ‘Poop Fairy to come along and gather it up and take it to her Poop Kingdom.’ Nothing of the sort. I just thought that my duties were done when I let the dog out. No one ever explained that I would then need a bulldozer to pick up after him as well.
It’s just not a Weetabix entry if I don’t talk about poo, non? And we’ve already had talk of boobs. It’s more Weetabix for your money.
Oh. That’s right. This is free.
Anywhoo’.
Now, however, the cicadas are strumming every day and the moon hung low in the sky, golden and somehow a beacon to bring about the nesting instinct, almost audibly calling ‘Winter’s coming. Gather your crops and make your house habitable because you’re going to be stuck in it for possibly eight years.’ This brings forth a creature I detest. A creature that stirs fear in Esteban’s heart. A creature he has dubbed ‘The Cleaning Nazi’. Gah.
But she’s not coming full on for another few weeks. Until then, I guess I’ll go commando and struggle through a summer’s worth of procrastinated housework and projects. First order of business’ wash laundry. Or I’ll have to be naked tomorrow. Hmmm’ that should make for some interesting lawn mowing. I’d be willing to bet that the Sexually Frustrated Wood Chopper next door will be outside, splitting logs during that little adventure. I’m pretty sure that operating a large spinning wheel of death while naked is probably not the wisest course of action. Ah well.
OH! Get this. I went out with Joel, Cheri and Jason last night, to the Ass Splinter bar, where they had karaoke with the tone deaf Karaoke Ma. Born To Run Guy was there. He didn’t sing Born To Run, though, which was a bummer. And he had a different shirt on, bringing the total number of shirts I’ve seen him wearing to THREE, yes THREE for those of you keeping score on the home version of Dumber Than A Box Of Rocks. Last night, it was a plain white t-shirt, the kind I suspect he got out of a package of three for $8.95. He had paired it with black jeans, black tennis shoes and white socks. I know. It made me want to faint from terror. I think he wants to believe that Billy Jean is not his lover. It horrifies me that he makes me so strung out when he sings. It’s not Beer Goggles, it’s an Audio Blindfold. I can’t even help myself. He’s not very good looking. He reminds me of that trucker in that beer commercial, you know the one where the guy is hitching a ride with the trucker and then he brings out his ventriloquists dummy? Yeah. I know. I have the shame, you don’t even need to say it.
When I went up to sing some Fiona Apple, he actually made eye contact with me for the first time in ever. He lifted his fist to show approval to my song choice. I made the devil rock and roll sign back at him, in kind of a joke since it was FIONA APPLE that I was about to sing. I don’t think he got it.
I must have been in fine form though, because I did notice that I had a mooney-eyed boy staring at me from a back table every time I sang. However, I was denied when he left without doing the normal mooney-eyed thing of coming up and complimenting me. I’m such a diva sometimes.
Joel and I did the Barenaked Ladies song again and one of the other singing divas (who sang ‘Can’t Live Without You’ in what had to have been some homage to American Idol and made me roll my eyes) yelled up ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this song, Weet’ It’s so beneath you!’ HEE! Joel was tipsy and couldn’t remember how it went. And then I made him laugh, which then made me laugh. So unprofessional. That’s probably why Mooney didn’t come up and fawn over me. I’m a lousy karaoke diva.
Joel did tell me one thing though. He said that he’s been reading my diary but he only reads the first couple of paragraphs. If it hooks him, he continues to read and if it doesn’t, he skims down to see if there’s a dialogue bit. And then he said that I should take that as a tip to make my diary more interesting. Weirdo. It’s MY diary. It can be as boring as I want it to be.
Just for that, I put this mention of him at the bottom.
Hope you all have a super Labor Day weekend. And if you aren’t in the US, you can just have a good weekend and make the most out of what you’ve got, because you’re going to have to go to work on Monday just the same.
Gah. I’ve got to find some underwear. I doubt I can go grocery shopping this way. I’ll freeze my ass of in the dairy section.
