I think sometimes that I seem smarter than I am. My head, sometimes she is a very spacious place. A designer might look at the real estate in my cranium and suggest filling it with armoires and four poster beds, going on Louis the Fourteenth on its ass. It takes a big space for tapestries, you know, but if you’ve got it, then, man, let’s go with the full floor-to-ceiling window treatments in brocade.
I don’t know what I’m talking about either.
But today, I have off. It’s sort of nice and all thanks to a beeper that I now carry instead of staying at work until it is dark and most children are asleep in their beds, dreaming about’ gah, I was going to say Pokemon, but I realize that is so, like, three years ago. Or more. I don’t even know. I’ve become one of those adults that were saying ‘Daddy-O’ when I was a kid and it was like, chyeah, like, I’m so sure.
Anyway, on my day off, I have this weird French thing going on. I’m listening to Edith Piaf and thinking about making popovers while reading some Lorrie Moore short stories (one of which seemed very familiar and then I realized that I’ve actually heard Lorrie Moore herself read it at a smallish Invitation Only Wisconsin literati event (smallish because Wisconsin has low Literati per capita (and here we go with multiple layers of parentheticals again))’ and then I had to switch to another book because I remembered that Ms. Moore had been kind of pompous and also kind of a jerk and when I complimented her on her reading later at the wine reception, she asked what my name was and when she hadn’t heard of it, and then I mentioned that I actually came to support two of the other writers, one of which was one of my friends, she got very disinterested and started looking around the room and then I swore that I would never act that way if and when I ever became famous or even famous in small circles, so there Ms. Moore, you poopyhead) and trying to remember what the French word for ‘sixty’ is, because otherwise apparently I can only count to 59 in French, unless I skip the sixties and then I can get up to 159. And my brain keeps insisting that it’s ‘sechsig’, but I think that’s sixty in German. Or the name of a Berlin strip club.
Last night, it was Cosi Fan Tutte (which is a lovely, less popular Mozart opera, and perfect for when you’re in the mood for some opera, but couldn’t really bear the thought of listening to something heavy like Don Giovanni. It’s perfect if you’re feeling, you know, opera peckish.) while I browsed home catalogs (aka furniture porn) and thought about taking pictures of rocks and using one to replace the only picture in our living room which is not a black and white photograph. I think I was munching on really old cheese and sipping 100% organic juice, too.
From a distance, someone might think I was one of those people. Those smart uppity Lorrie Moore kind of people. But they wouldn’t know about the pack of frozen raspberry zingers in the freezer. Or the two-week old copy of The Sun, with a compelling article about the shroud of Turin and also a lucky blue dot that will bring me thousands of dollars should I spend several minutes staring at it a day, visualizing myself having thousands of dollars. (I have not, however, tested that claim. I keep wondering if it just works for money, or if it would work for anything, say, cans of Campbell’s Chicken and Stars soup? If I visualized rows upon rows of lovely Chicken and Stars, would the magic blue dot bring them to me by the truck load? Or would it get confused?)
So, anyway, not so smart. Also, downloaded between the Edith Piaf and Charles Trenet, there lies a rather smarmy copy of Clay Aiken’s ‘Invisible’. Actually, two copies, because I’m too dumb to realize that I downloaded one already and hence, have now downloaded it twice.
Wait. Three times. Fuck.
And also a weird Elvis Costello cover of Abba’s ‘Knowing Me Knowing You’, which I had to download for the freak factor. It’s actually not that bad. It’s sort of Costello-y in that way that is almost the musical version of a post-coital deserted motel room containing an overflowing ashtray with three different types of cigarette butts in it. So this is a dirty Swedish Modern ashtray. And also, sort of makes me crave a Sea Breeze. I can’t quite explain that.
Esteban came home from Virginia last night. He asked me to meet him at the Ass Splinter Bar since it’s right by the airport. He wanted to get dinner after his tedious flights and layover in O’Hell. But his last flight was delayed, so I ended up sitting by myself at the Ass Splinter Bar for two hours, listening to truly horrific karaoke (and it wasn’t even Karaoke Gal and Karaoke Ma singing’ sadly the patrons themselves were making my ears bleed.) I figured since I was stuck there for at least an hour or more, I threw two slips at Karaoke Ma (who seems to get shorter and wider with old age, not to mention more compulsive about the song books) and then sat and stared at my Diet Coke and cringed at every karaoke stereotype that ever was (The Rose? Why the hell does that song even EXIST? And why does every bad female singer feel compelled to sing it? In public? It’s the karaoke version of a velvet kitten painting in a wood-paneled double-wide. It’s an auditory plague. No more The Rose! Say it with me! DOWN WITH THE ROSE!), including not one, not two, but FOUR mullets. Two on women. And one of the women was wearing white leggings (over apparently white Fruit Of The Loom Woman hipster underwear), tight to her cankles. She was fifty-two. And drunk. And chain-smoking Marlboros.
Esteban finally arrived at 10:30, but it turned out that the kitchen was closed, so we went home, where he dove into what is possibly the largest box of Lucky Charms I have ever seen. A bit of Esteban trivia: he is a dirty Lucky Charms slut. He never got sugar cereals as a kid and still really hasn’t gotten over the novelty. I rarely buy them because he will eat five bowls in one sitting, but this box was such a monolith (not to mention, on sale for less than a normal-sized box) that I had to buy it just so that Esteban would feel like a damned Czar with a treasure room filled with pre-sweetened cereal. And then after I stowed it on our cereal shelf in the pantry, I promptly forgot about it. So when we came home and Esteban prepped for his cereal dinner and withdrew his giant box of cereal from the pantry, he remarked ‘Whoa’ that’s a lot of Lucky Charms.’
I wandered into the bathroom to wash my face. ‘Yeah, I thought it was large too. In fact, when I saw it in the store, I thought I heard the faint strains of the 2001 Space Odyssey theme, only performed as an Irish drinking song.’
I then changed into my pajamas (Which, by the way, yoga pants are such a mystery. How is it possible that anyone actually does exercise in them? I put them on and boom–ass on couch. It’s totally cause and effect), and wandered back into the living room.
Esteban, between the blue moons and purple horseshoes, said ‘You know, I must be getting very stupid, because I just got that.’
‘What?’
‘The Irish 2001 thing.’
‘I thought it was funny.’
‘I’m not saying it wasn’t funny. I’m saying that I’m apparently stupid.’
So the question is: did I catch the stupid from him or am I the carrier? I would compose a theorem, but there’s a bowl of jelly beans in the kitchen. So yeah. That.
If I’m really lucky, there will still be some banana Life-savers in the mult-pack that I call Many Urpy Flavors And Also Banana.
My camera and I went to the second-hand store today, where I bought a desk but left the store without it (see above). Then we drove out to the ledge and pretended that we were artsy. So here you go.
