Things I don’t like on salads but keep putting on there anyway
Garbanzo Beans
Turkey
Bacon Crumbles
Grape Tomatoes
Bleu Cheese
Radicchio
Iceberg Lettuce
Things that I love but always forget to put them on my salad
Dried Cranberries
Cucumbers
Mandarin Oranges
This is to remind myself that I should just stick with the basics: romaine, baby spinach, feta cheese, cucumbers, broccoli and sunflower seeds. Don’t throw on the garbanzo beans, thinking all “Protein! I need protein since this is my lunch!” because they just taste’ I don’t know’ as though someone dug them out of a dusty chest in their grandmother’s attic. And instead of being food, they are actually pieces of a dead vacuum salesman from the fifties.
I have hives. I noticed them on Sunday but thought that I had maybe gotten splashed with Esteban’s Kool-Aid (he lost his seltzer addiction when he was in the hospital and has replaced it with Sugar Free Tropical Punch flavored Kool-Aid) but the truth has come out and yes, they are hives. It started on my right hand, which is where my hives like to start and have blossomed into a gorgeous hot pink and now my left hand is getting in on the action. I would admire the splotches if the very act of looking at my hand didn’t remind me of how much it fucking itches. Or, more specifically, feels as though someone is pricking me with very thin, very warm needles. My sister came over and gave me some of her emu oil, which she’s been using for our collectively inherited eczema problem (thanks Mom!). I have some emu oil myself, but honestly, it skeeves me out. There is a distinctly funky smell (like, one would assume, rendered emu) and it’s sort of cloudy and yellow and it just screams of WRONG. I want a person in a white coat to hand me clinical little tubes with a black Times Roman font. I do not want to buy it from a hippy at the farmer’s market who writes down my name with a pen decorated with a fucking plume. This is not science! Give me nameless technology that comes from mysterious sources or give me death.
In other news, Esteban, who is like a whole other man with all the blood and iron and stuff, has been very industrious lately. He has done yard work and used the Weed Whacker and declared war on earwigs (who feast upon my clematis plants as though they were a $2.99 Vegas sirloin buffet) and also has volunteered me to take the Clampett’s cousin’s senior picture (huh?). I really can’t complain about this, because he has finally cleaned out his office. AKA Computer Room #3. I KNOW! I am shocked and amazed. He moved the server to the basement, so there is no longer a steady hum of industrious technology soundtrack to our lives in the living room. The house is, dare I say it, quiet for the first time ever, and the open doors! It’s such a fucking delight!
It’s too bad that I can’t convince him to move back into Computer Room #1 so that I can turn the much larger #3 into a library/guest room. I may work on that a bit, because he likes darkness and the front of the house is not very dark at all. I may install industrial spotlights in the front of the house, aimed through the windows directly at his LCD monitor. Cleverly camouflaged, of course.
Two months ago, I cleared out enough vines to fill a 55-gallon trash can but the Rosebush had redoubled its efforts. Last week, I looked out the window and couldn’t even tell where I had been. Naturally, I knew that I either had to allow the Rosebush to claim the backyard as its own kingdom, or admit that I was powerless and submit to a higher being. Enter Hurricane June. While Esteban’s parents were helping him move the server around to clear out Computer Room #3, June noticed that the Evil Rosebush was once again out of control. She called to ask if I wanted it gone. I gave my blessing, with strict orders that she not “tidy up” anything else and try not to eviscerate the peony that was doggedly trying to live under the canopy of serrated vines. It’s fought so hard against oppression and it didn’t seem fair that it meet its end as collateral damage.
When I got home from work yesterday, it was finished. June had attacked the Bush with every tool in her arsenal, including a fucking power saw. You really have to admire her efficiency, as she stuck a Saws-All right into the dirt and cut it like she was slicing a lasagne. Within the course of a business day, she had vanquished every last vine and thorn to the bed of our truck. She also managed to save the peony (Viva la Resistance!) and has now staked down thick black plastic over the bare earth so that any leftover shoots won’t work their way back up. I suggested that we also sprinkle the ground with holy water, because given the Rosebush’s thirst for blood, one never knows.
While she was doctoring my hives with her crazy voodoo oil, I told my sister about Esteban’s office and the landscaping plans for summer, as well as my intent to rip the carpet out of the dining room and convert it into a den.
She said, “Wow, you know’ you guys have done so much to that house. It used to be so shabby and I don’t even remember what the kitchen looked like before you expanded it. And your office and the living room. It’s taken a long time, but it’s really like you’re–‘”
“Like we’re grown ups?” I finished for her. We laughed but so it is. We have insurance and stock and take vitamins and the parties we attend no longer are no longer BYOB. We are refinancing and have great credit scores and are fully vested and get a little stressed out by what might be cluttering up our drainage gutters. We no longer get furniture just because a relative is replacing their couch. Laziness is no longer a goal, or even an option. We get to bed at a reasonable hour and I can no longer sleep until noon because the idea that I’m sleeping the day away bugs the shit out of me and have to watch the spicy food and the sugar at night because I get heartburn otherwise.
We just might be grown ups now. Only fifteen years behind schedule.
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The comments want to know what you’re feeling guilty about.
