sickler

A I may be becoming a subconscious bulimic.
B Someone's getting their kicks slipping laxatives and vomit-inducing medications into my canned olives.
C I could be having a bad run of tainted food.
D I COULD BE DYING.

D is what I thought on Saturday night, head lolling off the edge of the bed when it wasn't lolling off the edge of the toilet. And D what I was thinking the Friday night three weeks ago, when I was doing the exact same thing.

I'm not encouraged by the trend and now in light of options B and C, I'm afraid to eat. Luckily, I've been feeling a little chunky, so this works just fine if the answer is A. (It's incredible how much weight one loses if one ceases to ingest solid foods for 48 hours or so.) Though given how wrenchingly painful the process has been thus far, I think I'll give fully conscious anorexia a whirl this go 'round and see if it works as well as its more projectile prone sister. Plus, that will knock out options B and C, too. Woo Hoo!

Regardless, if the pattern continues, I'm really going to have to train Fred to open doors without the use of opposable thumbs, teach him how to drive a stick, make him memorize directions to the store, and introduce him to the parrot a few houses down who absolutely must learn the phrases Ginger Ale and Chicken Noodle Soup.

(Makes it sound like I don't have friends. But I don't really have friends that I would -- even though I could -- call at 4 o'clock in the morning. And that's when I wanted the Ginger Ale. And that's when the chihuahua-parrot-driving caper seemed to make a lot of really sane sense.)

tired for coffee

There was a man standing next to Oprah last week who said that coffee was bad. According to Oprah and the man standing next to her, coffee and its insidious properties not only make us fat, but it also ages us prematurely. As I watched Oprah and listened to the man standing next to her pontificate I could feeeeel my cheeks sliding down my face to lap over the edge of my jawline. My ass actually inflated in my chair, the chair which suddenly let out a groan of protest at the excessive coffee-weight it was forced to bear.

My God, I cried aloud channeling the agony of the old testament profits as they wandered the deserts in sackcloth and ash-washed up-dos, May I not have even ONE delightful little vice with no adverse effects?!

The answer from on high -- you know, Oprah -- is no. And this is bad.

Because in addition to making us fat and making us old, coffee, if you failed to notice, ALSO MAKES US AWAKE! Apparently, however, I missed the jump wherein consciousness has become less important than youngness and thinness. As I understand it sleeping thinly went out of vogue along with the waking of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. Thing is, they were fated for the eventual happy ending. I have no such knowledge about my own future. So I must be awake to find out how it all ends. I've got to be awake to chase down that prince, tackle him off his horse and to the ground, if need be. I can't just be lying around, cooling my heels in dreamland.

And then the man standing next to Oprah (whose name I believe begins with a "P") explained that it wasn't the caffeine, it was the coffee itself. Caffeine is fine he said. Drink green tea instead, he said.

So I am. But let me tell you, tea ain't no coffee. I would have to drink a bathtub full of the stuff and honestly, who has the time to clean the bathtub that well?

I don't feel thinner. I don't feel younger. But I'm so much considerably more tired than usual, I just can't care.

undustable

When giving my Aunt Patricia a gift, you should always remember one thing: it should require no dusting. She doesn?t like objects that require dusting or actually, cleaning of any kind. There's too much cleaning to do already. And she would know, because she's always meticulously wiping out a soap dish or squeegee-ing the shower door or Windexing a decorative-flower vase or fastidiously brushing one of her four Bichon Frises (Rambo, Rocky, Hercules and Popcorn). Or worse, brushing their teeth. Or worse, having her husband, my exceedingly patient Uncle Ken do any of the above for her. And don't leave a glass unattended for more than a nanosecond either, because if you take too long between sips she'll clean that right out from under you, too.

"Oh," she'll exclaim innocently enough when after you've merely turned your head to look at something other than your barely-cooled cup of coffee, you find upon turning back that it's magically disappeared, "I thought you were finished with that."

It's inevitable that within moments of walking in her front door, before I've even put down my suitcase, that she'll helpfully inquire, "Do you need to do any laundry?" Which is to say, "Your laundry, even if clean, can't possibly be clean enough." Which is really to say, "You live in that rental house with that rental washer and you don't know what disgusting people have washed their verminous clothes in that very same machine. Don't you dare bring that bag of unlaundered infestation into my house."

Even her garbage is clean. I've thrown a tissue into the trash and actually seen it vanish in mid-air. Yes, she's THAT fast.

She's ruthless. Sentiment has no hold on her. If it's dustable it's trashable. No hard feelings, please. But her house sparkles in the sun and smells like spring and if cleanliness has any connection whatsoever to Godliness, one day she may very well unseat the Holy Ghost himself from his place at the left hand of the Father.

I'm sorry to say, I share no such affliction. My house generally tends toward the cluttered and the dusty. My laundry gets done when I run out of underwear. My clothes have not in fact, learned to fold themselves, despite all the wishing in the world on my part that they would, so most of the time they aren't. And as for my bathroom? Well, I'm convinced that while I'm out, Fred invites the neighborhood dogs over for group bathing parties. Because I can't possibly create the chaos that is my bathroom ALL BY MYSELF. It just isn't possible.

For this reason, my Aunt Patricia will never -- I repeat never -- come to visit my home. At least not until I move. She can come visit me then, but only within the first week of my residence, because during that time I can blame any filth on the previous tenants and after that I'm afraid my own dominant detritus gene will kick in and there's nothing I can do about it. Nothing. And this saddens me. But not enough to invest the time and money on the hypnotherapy and acupuncture necessary to overcome my addiction to disorganization. Instead, I'll invest the money in plane tickets to Albany, NY and have my coffee cup surgically attached to my person.

thwarting twarted

"What are you doing?" Montine called to ask Saturday afternoon.

"I'm sitting on my couch watching TV and eating sliced salami," I told her. Because that was what I was doing. Because that's the sort of thing I do when other plans have been thwarted and I feel too demoralized by the thwarting to do anything else productive with my day.

I was supposed to have gone hiking with friends of a friend, but the common friend selfishly pulled a groin muscle earlier in the week and so couldn't make it. Not a problem, because I rise above my friends' issues to pursue my own interests all the time and I still wanted to go hiking.

So I got up at seven a.m. and packed Fred a sweater, because he has no hair on his chest (Seriously. It's bizarre.) and it's chilly in the North Georgia mountains where we were to go hiking. I packed water and food and even remembered to bring cash because those hill people often haven't all heard of plastic credit and I didn't want to trade my body or Fred's pelt for lunch. But the meeting place had changed and since the only one with a comprehensive phone list was the common friend and since that friend had turned off her phone so that her groin might get a good night's sleep, I was left to wait and wait and wait in the high-rent mall parking lot with no interesting people-watching potential due to the ridiculously early hour and the fact that it was a swank shopping center where homeless people are actively discouraged. (Bastard entitled rich people ruining my wait.)

Friday night was no better. I was supposed to have met a work friend for a drink, so that I could interview her for a project she's coordinating at work that I'm coordinating another project around, but she was unavoidably detained. No big deal. And yet still. A thwarting.

And then there was Sunday morning. Sunday morning a bunch of us were supposed to go to brunch. And a bunch of us did, but it was an entirely different group than the initial crowd because half of the original crowd cancelled and while I would have happily sat on the couch and eaten a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios and a handful of raisins, Montine encouraged me otherwise. I should have taken the cereal and raisins, because while the food was good and company cordial, the experience could only be considered an ordeal. A THREE HOUR ordeal that consisted of a forty-five minute wait, a table that smelled of sour dish water, a server that could only have been slower had she been strapped into a straight jacket and weighted down with cinder blocks and at the end a weirdly tense moment over the check wherein our group of six adult people couldn't come to terms over the cost of two shared appetizers totaling a whopping eight bucks. Granted, like I said, the food was really good, but it left me with nothing to do after my nap later in the day as I was too full to even move, much less eat the treat of sliced liverwurst I'd bought or, God help me, make any kind of plan. A nap, I might mention, that was warranted by the ordeal of a brunch that hijacked -- i.e. thwarted -- my day.

And then Sunday NIGHT I was supposed to take an art seminar. I'm sure you'll be stunned to hear that the teacher didn't show. Thwart. Thwarty-thwart-thwart-thwart-thwarting.

So. Fred and I, Sunday night, blink blink blinking at the TV, exhausted by all our foiled plans, little question marks hovering over our heads, sharing a package of pre-sliced pepperoni. And I was a little down.

And then my mom called and she asked what I'd done this weekend and I told her, "ALL MY PLANS WERE THWARTED!"

But that makes for a really short and boring conversation. So I strained my brain and squinted my eyes and bit my lip and came up with a list of things I DID do this weekend.

And, amazingly, I did a lot! Despite the thwarting! I went on a couple long meandering walks around my neighborhood and through art galleries and novelty stores and of course, there was a romp through the park for Fred with a pack of cold-weather-happy dogs; I had a few truly fabulous shoe sightings and at least three delightful surprise encounters with friends and acquaintances whose associations stretch from the dark ages of my youth; even better, there were some delightful moments with people who may very well still be friends when this weekend is one day a dark age itself; I engaged in two full-blown naps of decadent proportion and spontaneously attended a couple perspective-generating charity events which left me feeling extravagantly over-privileged just for even owning pants; I had one really exceptional cup of coffee and an even better marshmallow at a surprise marshmallow roast! And all of it -- all of it -- unplanned.

What do they say? Life is what happens when you're making plans? In my case, it's what happens instead them.

of planks and petri dishes

This may be coming a bit late, but a friend asked my thoughts and these are they:

Yes, I'm upset. I'm upset and I'm heartsick. I really didn't think we as a nation were blind and ignorant enough to vote like we did. And don't mistake my meaning. I said like we did, not for whom.

You see, if the nation had voted in dear ol' GWB because it liked his economic policies or cared about education or truly believed in the righteousness of the death penalty or could legitimately laud his international and environmental policies, I'd be okay. I wouldn't necessarily agree, but I could in good faith say, "Yes, our system works. Tough luck this year. We'll do better next time." Unfortunately, however, that's not the case.

I'm so totally sick because I feel the slippery slope of the paradigm shifting under my feet and I can't seem to find my hiking boots. Who do I call for a belay? We've moved away from rational or even vaguely practical thought. This was an election grown in a Petri dish of fear and our nation is gobbling it up, skipping the forks and shoveling it in with both bare hands, no time to even pass the salt. We're like those disgusting world championship eater people, engorged and smeared with our fear.

Not that fear is always bad. It can be useful when deciding whether one should or should not go night diving in shark-infested waters while sporting a paper cut. Good use of fear there. But fear should be a motivated warning, not a way of life. And we as a nation have taken our fear to that life-defining hysterical level. (Sharks are now intrinsically evil, totally out to get us. Don't even look at the ocean! Who loves the desert, people!) We're thisclose from barricading ourselves in our homes, building bunkers and stocking canned food stuffs. Except that that's not our style. No, we go on the offensive. We tend to prefer imposing our will on others. We're oh so cool that way.

And let me just be clear -- I'm not talking about fear of the terrorists. According to the polls -- and you can take those for whatever they're worth -- the people didn't vote on the war or terrorism. No, the fear that motivated this electorate was fear of self, fear of our own humanity. Fear of any morality that doesn't look, smell and taste just like our own, but that maybe. . . just maybe . . . on some level reflects our own urges and proclivities.

Thing is, you can't legislate morality in a free society. And THAT's what scares me.


Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others,you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
Matthew 7:1-5 (NIV)
What if they legislated your plank?

rats in the basement

Typically, I don't let the bug man in my house. No pun intended, but he bugs me. As much because I never know when he's coming, so my house is always some sort of wreck as because the idea of noxious chemicals floating up from the baseboards to strangle me as I sleep freaks me out. But a couple years ago, when the bug man showed up I was forced to invite him in. I wanted him to tell me that I didn't have a rat.

I wanted him to tell to me in that condescending way that plumbers and electricians and yes, bug men have that I was just paranoid crazy. I wanted him to give me the same look that the electrician gave me when he explained, "Lady, that burning smell is just some charred cheese on the bottom of your oven. It wouldn't kill you to clean your appliances once a decade, but it won't kill you if you don't either."

I wanted something like that from the bug man. But one does not always get what one wants. No, the bug man took one look at what I had identified as rat droppings, picked one up, rolled it around in his fingers, smelled it with the delicacy of the finest sommelier and confirmed, "Yep. You gots a rat. You want I should kill it?"

Kill it? Kill it? Oh dear. I hadn't thought that far ahead. I mean, I wanted it gone, but. . . .

"I don't. . . I mean, can't you just. . . it's coming in. . . in the house. . . but I don't want it dead. . . not necessarily. . . ."

You see, while it may be some sort of foul vermin in my eyes, I couldn't help thinking that the rat had a mother (just like I do) and that mother in her own way loved the rat. And it probably had a little rat family and times were tough and the weather was turning and it probably just needed a warm place to camp for a bit and it didn't really do anything bad. And for this, it should die?

". . . I just don't want it in my house," I stuttered to a finish.

"So whats you want me to do?" he demanded, standing there in my four-by-four foot kitchen rolling the rat turd round and round in his fingers.

What did I want him to do? What did I want him to do? I wanted him to make the rat go away. I wanted him to maybe post tiny "Please do not enter" signs where the rat was coming in. Perhaps place little round-a-bouts or mesh grates in front of the opening to my home. What I didn't want him to do was make me responsible for its death! My shirt isn't the one with the word "exterminator" written on it.

Thank you.

Very much.

So why was the bug man standing in my kitchen and placing the life of this poor rat in my hands? That was his job. This should be clear. (DUDE! Read. Your. Shirt.) But apparently it wasn't.

"Well, um. . . what are my options?" I hedged, wishing with all of my being that he would stop toying with the rat poo already.

"Options? Well, I can puts out the traps."

"What kind of traps?" I wanted to know.

"What kind of. . . ?" Now I got "the look." "Rat traps," he said slowly, "The kinds that kills the rats?"

"Yeah, but I mean. . . like the kind that clang down on them and break their backs or those sticky pad thingies I heard about on NPR?"

And now "the look" with the rolling of the eyes and the sucking of the teeth and the woosh of an exhale that means the other person is silently praying for patience and simultaneously cursing the day you were born an idiot-child whose parents were too soft-hearted to leave you in the fields for the wolves.

"Lady, you gots a rat. You wants me to kill it, I will. You wants to live with it, that?s okay by me, too."

Oh God. Live with it?!

"No, no, no . . . I don't want to live with it." Big, deep breath. "Put out the traps."

So he did. And for several weeks I'd check the traps two or three times a day, every time SO AFRAID that the rat would actually be there, dead. Or worse, not dead. And just alive enough to express to me its agony of pain and rat recrimination.

But all the traps seemed to collect was dust and a few unfortunate bugs. And still I checked everyday and every night laid in bed, eyes wide open, jumping at every little squeak and clatter. But nothing.

Nothing but my dread.

And then a couple weeks later as I was leaving for work, my landlady stopped me. "So I hear you had rats in your basement," she says, sticking her thumbs in her belt loops.

"Rat," I said. "Singular. The bug man said there was only one. And it came in the house."

"Oh," she said, tilting her head to the side and squinting one eye, "you don't know?"

"What don't I know," I asked, picturing the dug-out crawl space with just enough head room for a midget with scoliosis and a host of unresolved childhood fears. Less a true basement, more a cave, with one corner large enough to hold the washer and dryer. I pictured it crawling with beady-eyed rat hoards and shivered.

"You had some rats in your basement," she explained carefully

"Oh no. Really?"

"Human rats," she clarified.

"What?"

"Four of 'em. Homeless guys come in to get out of the cold."

"WHAT?!" I said louder.

"Don't worry. They're gone now. And I put a lock on the door so they can't get in no more, but I just thought you should know."

"How long were they there?!" Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. . . .

"Far as we can tell, 'bout a week."

"I WAS DOWN THERE THIS WEEK!" OHMYGOD!OHMYGOD!OHMYGOD!

"Yeah, well. Chances are they were more scared of you then you woulda been of them."

"Not if I'd known they were there! I would have been plenty scared!"

"Well, I'm real sorry about it. But here's the key, so you can get in if you need to."

"Thanks." A lot, I muttered under my breath, blessing every saint I knew that the laundromat was just around the corner. Oh. My. God.

The next day I told my neighbor Adam about my erstwhile roommates. "I knew it," he said. "I knew someone was in your basement! Elka (his Siberian huskie) was howling and barking at the door all week. I should have listened to her. She always knows. Oh, God. I'm sorry, Jill. If I'd just listened to her I could have done something about it. I'm so sorry. I really should have paid better attention."

Adam's a sweet guy, but sometimes he takes things a little too personally.

"It's okay. It's not like you could have really done anything," I said.

"I could have gone in with my gun and told them to leave or I'd shoot them like tin cans off a fence post," he answered, hand going unconsciously to the bulge on his hip. Really, he's very sweet.

"I didn't want them dead, Adam," I said. "I just wanted them gone."

And thankfully, they were. And without bloodshed.

I never saw any of my rats again. But sometimes I think about them and hope they've found their ways home. Home to their mothers and the families that love them. Even rats need a place to call home, right? But as open-minded as I'd like to think I am, I'd just as soon prefer they didn't choose mine. Because apparently, I'm just not do or die enough to deal.

spin cycle

Dude. I have been mis-er-a-ble for the past couple of weeks. For good reason, of course, but still. At this point I can't run away from the ick of it fast enough. Because it's gross. So gross. Like a big gob of slobbering Great Dane dog slobber gross. Curl your shoulders up around your ears and upper lip to your nose gross. Insides on the outside gross while kneeling in the bathroom from Trainspotting gross. Gross. Gross. Gross.

Gross.

Ever want to scrub your soul with a Brillo pad? Dip it in hydrogen peroxide and watch the bubbles go to work on whatever depressive germ's infected it? Zip it off like a religion-revealing wet suit and send it to the dry cleaners?

Wouldn't that be fabulous?

I should have listened to Mahatma -- I will not let anyone walk through my mind with dirty feet -- Ghandi and made people take off their shoes before entering my brain space. Because lately I've been feeling like I've been saddled with a baked-clay afro six inches thick. I'm a dirty-knoggined Bobble Jill. And I'm foul.

This week I'd begun to enter the dangerous territory of understanding the siren call of the hermit's life. Of the agoraphobe. Of horsey-people. I was beginning to see how a hip-high pile of manure, a Sappho-inspired fashion sense and a Pig Pen-suggested hygienic code could be fair trade for the insidious sadness, insanity, misplaced anger and insecurity that we inadvertently expel and ingest like a toxic respiratory cycle. I'd begun to get that horses could be better company than people.

Except that I really don't like horses one little bit. I don't like how they smell or how it's necessary to wear those silly ineffectual helmets when riding them. Or their scary, yellow teeth.

And I'm not down with eating bugs ala hermits of the Bible.

And I really do like the sky.

But I do want to feel shiny again. I want to feel skinny-dipping free and floaty. I want to feel squeegeed-windshield clean. And all the past week or so I've been struggling with myself and my grimy mood and wondering if a dash of Woolite might just do my lighter half right.

Still, as I write this, I hear my friend Eddie saying, "Life isn't hard. We make it hard."

And my friend Cherie reminding me, "Walk easy."

And my friend Potocki encouraging, "Shine on."

No true answers exactly. But no harsh abrasives either. Just a little gentle outside spin from some squeakily clean-footed friends.

And you know, my head feels lighter already.