last night while waiting for my sister to show up, i fell asleep face down on this cordouroy pillow i have named tim. when kristi buzzed me, i stumbled to the door and flung it open and she said "what the hell happened to your face? looks like you and tim got into a fight." i had scarface sweeping across my cheeks and forehead in a stripy pattern. it took 20 minutes with the aid of hot water and vigorous rubbing to erase the marks. that happens to me alot. i sleep like i am heavily drugged. i am scarface.

reading this poorly written vampire novel, on page thirty with no believable plot is sight. i know i know, believable schlemievable. all vampire books are a stretch, right? even though this one sucks, it is way better than that romance series of vampire books that i guiltily read, called something like, "his immortal embrace." bleck!

chris is out of town for a few days to see his dying grandfather. drove him to the airport at 4:30am and the only thing i could think of as i was driving back was "i need a chocolate croissant." cold-hearted to be sure. i caught the early bus to work to be sure to get one and the coffee shop was out. brutal.

obsessively sniffing. can feel sort of a scabbed up bit of booger inside my left nostril and it sort of pulls at the inside of my nose when i sniff. i don't want to pick at it because then it might bleed and take even longer to heal. but my nature is, of course, to dig in and root out the truffle like a pig. agh!

riding the bus to work one morning, i was delighted to find i was the only passenger. i sat in my favorite seat, halfway back, and put my foot up on the tire hump. i dug out my book and sunk deeply into a mass transit induced hypnotic state. the bus pulled up to a stop with a large woman and her many bags, and she boarded, huffing and puffing. she moved very slowly, appraising all of her many choices of seats. i figured, what with all her crap, she'd sit up front and sort of spread out. but instead, she walked directly up to my row, gave me the once over, and nestled herself in right beside me, pushing me over with her girth, and trying to squeeze all of her bags into the seats with us. i am normally a pretty claustrophobic person and i also happen to generally not like people, especially if they are in my immediate space. basically, if i can feel, or in any way smell, their breath, i freak out. this lady didn't know this, but why had she chosen to sit right next to the only other person on the bus besides her? why? i didn't feel like i could move without deeply offending her, although looking back, i don't know why i cared. i was so uncomfortable that not only was my skin crawling, but i was almost losing control of my bladder. her bags were plastic and damp, smelling of the mystery food probably stashed deep and rotting within them. she was still panting heavily, and an oily smell was emmenating from her...well...from HER. i flipped out. i let out a small "aaaaa..." which involuntarily rose in pitch and volume until it was way louder than polite conversation would allow an offended noise to be. i sort of jumped straight up and clambored over the seat in front of me. her massive thigh sort of oozed into the space that i had just occupied. she grunted. i kicked my backpack up the aisle and clutched my books as i breathlessly told the driver to stop asap. i had to get off this bus and start my decontamination process. i felt like an ass, but obsessive-compulsive disorder waits for no social niceties. i just do what i have to do.

i grew up on a farm in rural minnesota. there was more than one "chicken incident" when i was a kid. i want to like chickens, but because i was chased around my own yard by a murderous hen who wanted nothing more than to peck out my eyes, i have a slight phobia about them up close and personal. one of my secret pleasures was to hang out when my grandfather was butchering them and sort of...play with the heads. sometimes the beaks would open and close on the disembodied heads and i thought that was the greatest. there were also a few times, although i don't remember each specific incident, where the chicken would fall off the block and run around for a while with no head, which was also pretty gruesome but cool to a farm kid. those chickens that my grandfather cooked every sunday were the best chickens i have ever tasted. the only time i ever really like them was when we got the chicks in the spring. there were boxes and boxes of tiny yellow cheeping puffballs all begging to be held. my mom would always bring a bunch of them to my classroom at school and i was the most popular girl for the day. some little pansy city girl would always want to hold one of the baby chickens and then completely flip out when she realized it had sharp claws or crapped on her hand or something. that made me feel tough.

last night i dreamt that my tattoo artist gave me an infectious vampire hickey on the back of my neck. in order to hide it, i put a flesh colored bandage over it. i went home and began to get ready for bed. chris yelled, "what is that on your back?" and i thought "oh crap, he knows i'm a vampire now." but he was really talking about the enormous pen drawing that had been done in tattoo style on my back. it said "FIFTIES STRIPPERS BREAK MY HEART" and underneath the letters was a picture of a stripper from the 50's. we worked hard to wash it off, but it had been drawn with so much force that it sort of scarred onto my back...unfortunately, when i woke up this morning, i hadn't been made into a vampire by my tattoo guy. but luckily, no pen version of a stocky cupcake was carved into my back either.

i love my dog jake and here's why:

when we first brought him home from the humane society, we were so excited. here was a Constant Companion, a creature to love us unconditionally, caring not about whether we put the milk container back in the fridge when it was empty, or forgot to pay the water bill for three months. to be loyal, and come when we called his name. it was all so very american dreamy that in retrospect it sort of makes me gag. but that is neither here nor there. we loved him, robert and i, and we found it difficult to leave the house at all, for fear we would miss something cute that jake might do. in one extreme instance of this overprotective maternal manifestation, i actually left my little sister at the emergency room all by herself, in pain, holding a soggy washcloth on the edge of her eye, where she had developed an unfortunate wind blister, causing her so much distress that she ended up having me take her to the er, as i've said, and then after almost an hour, i lept up when i realized that the puppy had been by himself for all that time, and was probably dying of loneliness right then and there, and i left kristi and rushed home and bundled jake into my arms, all squirmy and not the least bit upset at all, really.