I very much enjoy getting weird video podcasts to my little Bean pod but you know what I really hate? The guy on the VHI Best Week Ever. The man has more gums than Meg Ryan and also, embarrassingly enough, reminds me of a guy I dated once. I don’t know who to write to, however, and complain about the man showing too much gummy mess when he smiles. He’s got an oyster mouth.
Mmm’ oysters. You know, I don’t know if they really are all sexilicious but man, I just can’t stop smiling when I’m eating some fresh raw oysters. Oh. Look at that, it was actually a meaningful segue. Wow. That doesn’t happen very often.
It is officially spring. I have commenced my joyous lunchtime ritual of driving around aimlessly for 40 minutes with the sunroof open, followed by fifteen minutes of ‘Oh shit, I should probably eat something’ and then a sad trip through a drive through in which I get something I don’t really want because there are no drive throughs with delicious bowls of ripe watermelon and Quorn chicken nuggets (which, along with cereal and toast, is another food I would totally live on would that I were single) and peanut butter sandwiches. (Today, the furtive trip was through McDonald’s, only because I wanted a bucket full of their Diet Coke (but sadly, they do not offer the bucket-sized cup, only the half bucket). I ended up ordering a cheeseburger just ketchup (because those onions are wrong, I’ve never acquired a taste for mustard, and their pickles taste neither dilly nor garlicky and strangely lack any vinegary zing and therefore have no business being on a burger) but then threw it out because apparently I had gotten some kind of wallflower plain hamburger that they then bathed in ketchup.) (Fucking McDonalds.)
It seems to be an either/or conundrum. I could easily go to a grocery store with a fabulous salad bar and procure some of these items (although probably not watermelon, since grocery store deli watermelon has more pickley flavor than McDonalds pickles) but then I would miss out on the joy of the aimless driving, the warm sun beating on the part of my hair, the strange and glorious sounds pouring out of my Pod, the utter absence of the soul-sucking long fluorescent lights that buzz constantly above my cubicle like ivory mutant bluebottle flies.
Of course, I drive around aimlessly on my lunch hour during the winter, but that is really just avoidance rather than the joy of driving.
Today, I forgot my sunglasses, however. It’s been so long since we’ve seen the sun that I got out of the habit of grabbing them. I squinted my way through the drive, seeing people where there were none, feeling like I was experiencing a constant atomic flash. Proof that Wisconsin winter turns you into a mole. Note to self: put the tortoiseshells in the car.
Last night, Esteban’s belly button chased me around the kitchen, making crazy lewd suggestions involving Tom DeLay.
Yeah, I think the boy is feeling better.
Mopie calls me the Wildlife Spotter. I hadn’t really noticed any beyond average ability to do this, but apparently it’s an unusual gift. I’m sure I’m lacking in other, more important survival skills, like, for instance, I’m totally easy pickings for panhandlers in big cities. My face goes all sympathetic and sad and broadcasts the fact that I am sad that I cannot take them home and give them my house and then make them a pot roast before I leave.
Many many years ago, I was driving home from college one weekend and saw a turkey vulture. The only reason that I totally checked it out was because it was standing on the opposite lane of the highway and didn’t even flinch when my Monza flew past it going 85 mph. It was so startling that I stopped the car, turned around, got out and tried to approach the bird (which, had that really been some kind of mutant and we were in a horror movie, I would have been buzzard fodder before the opening credits rolled) and the thing waited until I was twenty feet away before it gave up on its dinner of mangled opossum and took off for the prairie, wings unfurling to a span of what had to have been six feet, making a shum shum noise as it flapped away. For a moment, I wondered if it hadn’t actually been a pterodactyl, but after checking with a biology hottie in the dorm, I had confirmation that it was a turkey vulture. Esteban, however, did not believe me, and teased me for years that it had actually been someone’s chicken. Someone’s gigantic black carrion-craving zombie chicken. He refused to admit that I possibly may have spotted a turkey vulture, despite empirical evidence to support my claim. Eventually I let it drop. I can only be the Vulture Mulder for so long.
Fast forward to yesterday: Esteban and I were going to cross the river in De Pere, but we realized too late that the bridge was closed for some maintenance. We could have easily backtracked a few miles to the one midway between GB and De Pere, but since we weren’t in a hurry and it was a really beautiful day out, I suggested that we drive up to the next little town up the river and cross on that bridge. Esteban, always happy to have an excuse to drive his truck, obliged and we had a lovely drive up one side of the river and down the other. However, winding along the west bank, not too far from the site of the now-demolished shooting location of the horror movie I costarred in when I was sixteen, we startled a large black bird on the road, pecking at some road pizza. It lofted to the top of the bare tree and joined its mate.
I assessed the classic bald red head, the wing span and the coloring, then looked at Esteban and said one word.
And that word was ‘Vulture.’
Of course, the man accused me of seeing things and suggested that it was a crow. A crow with a craggy red head? That was three times bigger than any crow had a right to be? Excuse me! Why are you doubting the Wildlife Spotter?
You can lead a bore to vultures and he still wouldn’t blink.
