Wednesday, March 31, 2004 The shame!
After I moved out of the old apartment, I left Plant with my trusted friend K. She had several other houseplants, and the ex-mate and I thought Plant would find a good home with her.
At times, I like Plant better than either the foster cats or the late Robocop. Plant never wet the carpet or woke me up in the middle of the night. Instead, it sprouted new leaves and grew taller, even though I took minimal care of it and sometimes did things which were bad for it, such as putting it (in its pot) on the couch with the cats and the dog and I when I would play the "Everyone in the room has to get on the couch" game (popularized once I could no longer afford cable).
The next to last time I saw it, it was thriving.
This evening I saw it, and noticed that the plant it was next to had an infestation of horrible, warty little flat insects. The internet tells me they are called "scale". They slime around and leave stickyness behind them, and they suck the juice from leaves!
Then I noticed that Plant, too, was sticky!
I started looking for parasites, and I found them. I picked off all that I found, and then washed the stickyness of the leaves wish a wet rag. Before I was done, K. began to offer gentle hints that it might be time for me to go home. For example, she went and brushed her teeth. She also yawned several times. I continued scrubbing plant: K. allowed Plant to get scale. I didn't leave until she promised to move it across the room and take special care of it.
If I ever have kids, and those kids ever come home from school with head lice, I'm just going to have to disown them and be done with it. I'm not going through this again.
Also: this is the second time within a few months that Plant has contracted a social disease.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 3/31/2004 04:24:00 AM
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Tuesday, March 30, 2004 Now it can be told
Once, when I was eight or nine years old, I was amusing myself by stretching a rubber band between my big toes. And see, that would have been enough for some people, but I took it up a notch and stuck a sharpened pencil in the rubber band, and twirled it up so that it would spin fast when I released it.
Then the doorbell rang, and I jumped up to answer it, because I was still into that kind of thing back then.
Of course, my feet were connected at the big toes, so I tripped, and I also punctured my leg on the pencil.
I tried to get my mother to take me to the emergency room, and she wouldn't do it. I spent a couple weeks dreading the onset of lead poisoning, which never arrived, although to this day I have a small, blue scar.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 3/30/2004 03:15:00 PM
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Sunday, March 28, 2004 News to note
I know where one can acquire a mini horse for $25. I am so serious.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 3/28/2004 09:33:00 PM
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Friday, March 26, 2004 Act Casual
I transposed the aliases once. I've fixed it now.
Recently, I went to a restaurant and had coffee with (lets call them) "Sniff" and "Scurry". One of the staff (I don't know his name, but let's call him, "Umberto")would walk by our table and sneer, but they do that there, and I didn't think anything of it.
Later the same day, Scurry, Sniff and I left. Scurry went off to a previous engagement. Sniff and I went to do some errands, and then went to her home, where she received a phonecall from "Brad", who wanted to spend time with Sniff.
Sniff wanted to spend time with Brad, but she wanted a chaperone and a public destination, so as to pre-empt any romantic advances from Brad, who pleaded that he was broke, and could only afford to do something like watch videos in a location with mood lighting and maybe some essential oils.
Sniff was way ahead of him, and suggested coffee, and even Brad admitted he wasn't too broke for that. Maybe Sniff likes the jitters.
We'd already been to the one place, so we went to the other place.
We sat there too long. Brad told anecdote after anecdote about people I don't know, who are not even famous. I jittered.
Then, the door opened, and a several people walked in, including Umberto. He saw Sniff and I, still sitting. Still drinking coffee, in a different location. He walked by and sneered.
This is why I don't leave the house. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 3/26/2004 01:03:00 AM
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Tuesday, March 23, 2004 mayhem
I walked down to the drugstore with my mother and her murderous dog. The dog tried to bite a bus, which was moving.
That was unclear.
I mean, "The bus itself was moving," not "I was moved by the spectacle of the dog attempting to bite the bus." I was more horrified by that, because my mother thinks the dog responds to voice commands.
The dog responds to things she wishes to chase or bite, she responds to a certain goofy voice (but only by becoming very agitated), and she responds to not being able to run beyond the length of the adjustable leash. She also responds when the doorbell rings on television.
Anyway, long story short, the dog lived (she did not actually make contact w/the bus), and I am working on my grammar.
I got a grammar book and everything. I picked one that seemed to make no effort to amuse its reader. I hate it when learning is fun, and I know I am not alone in this hatred. However, it seems that most people enjoy it when cartoons tell them interesting facts about things, or when writers adopt this "OMG, I'm quirky! Crrrrazy! and!!! fun!" persona, so that's how books meant to teach adults how to do things are structured.
But this book! This little gem doesn't even have sidebars!
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 3/23/2004 12:35:00 AM
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Sunday, March 21, 2004 There was a party. at the beach
These are the rules:
* When your old college roommate calls you up and invites you to lunch, you have to go.
* And after lunch, when your old college roommate's band (and their friend who is your friend, too, but was the band's friend first) is supposed to continue to Myrtle Beach, SC to play a show, and they tell you that you're coming too, "Because it's funny," you have to do that, too, even and especially when there is clearly not room in the car, because that's funny, too.
I curled into a very small ball. My giant frame aches. I was not meant to occupy small spaces.
The show was in a bar, where people kept wanting to exchange high-fives, which aren't really my "thing." Those people made fun of me. I was really just waiting in line for the bathroom, but they were very insistent, and then very mocking. This is called Southern Charm.
They didn't seem to "get" the fog machine, either. It's like, excuse me, South Carolina, but your indoor air is like 74% tobacco smoke anyway. Grow up, Myrtle Beach.
Later, I put my toes in the ocean, and it was cold.
Before we could get to the ocean, we hit some traffic, and that's how we remembered we were in a party town during spring break.
We remembered because people were saying, "Party" and "Spring Break!" and disparaging my friends' "ride".
On the way back, we ate boiled peanuts; these taste like beans, only more delicious and more wrong. You have to pick them out of their slimy shells. They are best when served with scalding and corrosive gas station coffee.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 3/21/2004 10:10:00 PM
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Thursday, March 18, 2004 Finally!
Comments!
Enjoy!
I wish I could generate more content, but it is late, and I am tired. Unfortunately, I spent all day drinking coffee. All day. I'm not going to be sleeping any time soon.
I fear I have acted foolishly, but I cannot change the past.
Last of all, I give you a St. Patrick's Day miracle:
Only one person told me an Irish-joke all day, and when I try to remember it, I find that I can't.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 3/18/2004 02:31:00 AM
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Wednesday, March 17, 2004 "It's like the channel keeps changing in my head!"
I really enjoy the commercial for adult ADD that features a woman being oppressed by:
an image of herself shopping at the grocery store
a man yelling
other stuff, life at the office; ho, hum
and!
like, a five second shot of somebody in a bunny suit. Everything else just flashes up there, but the camera (and poor Anne [for that is what the character in this commercial is named, according to her mean old tv-boss]) loves the bunny costume.
If my life included vivid memories of someone in that terrifying rabbit suit (the eyes!), I think I would get distracted at the important board meeting, just like Anne.
Perhaps "attention-this" and "disorder-that" are the least of Anne's problems.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 3/17/2004 01:23:00 AM
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Thursday, March 11, 2004 flavor country, always flavor country
Today I went to the corner store where I used to buy cigarettes, back when I was a minor. I knew I was in Virginia, because throughout the whole transaction, the man behind the counter and a couple of other people who were just hanging out were smoking.
The clerk looked at my purchases and said, "It's nacho night!"
It wasn't really nacho night, but I didn't want to disappoint him, so I lied, and I said it was nacho night. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 3/11/2004 12:30:00 AM
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Wednesday, March 10, 2004 But can he bake a pineapple upside-down cake?
The ex-mate called today to let me know the people at Hopkins were lonely or something and trying to reach me at his number. He's on the way to Reno, Nevada to begin a new life as something like a mail-order bride. He's getting a free room in an apartment, and his lucky hostess is getting an activity partner.
It is wrong to laugh. At either of them. I mean, if it works, that's cool. I guess.
I'm writing this from the basement of my parents' house. I spent many childhood hours here, because I'd been brainwashed at an early age into thinking the sun would kill me within a few minutes. At day camp, I had to explain to the others that I wasn't wearing a shirt in the pool because I was an idiot, but because I was fragile. They didn't believe me.
I'm here to tell you, though, that today it all paid off. I was at the dentist's office this afternoon, and during the phase of smalltalk with the hygenist, she said I had nice skin. Then she went on to compare it to her own sun-baked skin.
As awkward as that was, it was a nice respite from trying to explain what I've been doing with my life for the past several years. The lady with her hands in my mouth, like the rest of the staff at that office, remembers exactly what I told her I was planning to do two or three years ago, when she was last sluicing things things along my gumline. "Weren't you going to take time off school and go on a roadtrip?"
"Um, yes?"
"Where'd you go?"
(I have no idea what lies I've told this woman in the past, and I kind of resent having to remember them.) "Uh, Florida? Maybe?"
Then she berated me for not replying in more detail. Then for not flossing deeply enough.
Years ago, I found out that the boy I was dating at the time went to the same dentist. We decided that we could never tell them the connection, because if we ever broke up, it would kill them. I think this is what people mean when they talk about the sense of community you get in the South. I think it is also what people mean when they talk about former KGB agents who are still trying to stay in practice.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 3/10/2004 01:46:00 AM
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Monday, March 08, 2004 Aloha, car
Oh, money-eating car! No one can believe I've gotten rid of you. No one.
Certainly not the good people at City Hall. They thought we'd last forever.
They IM'd DMV and were like, "OMG, did she sell that great car????" (I'm assuming that's what they were doing. It's what I'd do in their position.)
And DMV denied the rumor.
Eventually, I convinced them, and they were pretty shaken up, but eventually they calmed down enough to tell me that I owed them $3.52, for some reason. A farewell snack for the car.
Meanwhile, the car, last I heard, is still functional in Colorado. Perhaps the thinner air is doing it good. It is still accompanied by the ex-mate.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 3/08/2004 11:23:00 PM
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Friday, March 05, 2004 has sprung
It is warm and pleasant here. I've been playing with my parents' dog, Stormy. My mother stole her from the next door neighbors a few years ago. Now instead of spending all day running in circles on a rope in their back yard, Stormy spends the day running in circles inside the fence in my parents' yard.
When Stormy is excited to see you, she greets you by running in circles around the yard. When she is really, really excited, she picks up some object (say, a frisbee that the neighbors tossed in for her to eat) in her mouth and runs at you as fast as she can. Then she drops the object at your feet.
Later, you try to pick it up, and she lunges at you, growling. She is a kind-hearted dog and does not mean to be menacing. It is just her way. The correct way to procede is to run in another direction, then loop back and pick up the object, and throw it far away from you very fast, because by this point this monster-dog is coming to take it away from you with her teeth.
This is how we play "fetch." posted by Frenzy Lohan | 3/05/2004 06:47:00 PM
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Wednesday, March 03, 2004 thump my gentle fist
Have you ever wondered which Democratic presidential candidate fictional characters and forest animals were endorsing? Now you know!
If only I'd found this and showed it to America sooner!
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 3/03/2004 02:29:00 AM
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Tuesday, March 02, 2004 lost in America
Specifically, lost in Baltimore. I was looking for a branch of the bank that I use so that I could deposit my study check, and I ended up far away from neighborhoods I recognized. I did find the Poe house by accident. I drove on by. Poe lived in the 'hood.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 3/02/2004 11:58:00 PM
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