a list of things i may tell you about:

eddy's birthday party-
wherein i only drank 2 martinis but ate three orders of crab and cream cheese wontons, then waxed philosophic to eddy's chagrin about the fact that he is old enough to be my father.

the annual erotic party at david and trish's-
wherein i wore a dress made out of bubble wrap and had a drunk woman grab my breasts with a death grip in order to pop the bubbles there.  they had already been popped, big surprise, but she didn't seem to notice and cackled loudly in my face as she realized she was grabbing another woman's boobies. 

wherein chris and matthew played dj and fielded requests from drunk people wearing expensive pvc/latex cat suits in various states of undress to play eighties music, when, as we all know, eighties music and an erotic party are not a match made in heaven. 

wherein my sister was talking to a guy named randy until he started to trace over her neck with his index finger, like in some cheesy porn movie, and breathed in her ear that all he wanted to do was to kiss her neck and she said, "okay, you're done." and walked away.

wherein our host david wore only a fishnet body stocking, a pair of high heels, and a mask.

my weekend in bend to visit my friend carl-
wherein he informed me that my exhusband(and his best friend) was getting remarried, with the intent to start a family like, right away.

wherein i took this information and simmered it in four martinis and some bad squid and then had to be piggybacked out of the bar early to avoid a drunken public breakdown.

wherein i had the best eggs benedict the next morning, eaten sheepishly with a pitcher of water.

printing out everything i have written since the year of our lord 2001 is starting to take its toll. my i-mac was one of the first off the line, teal and self-contained, so much so that it only has a cd-rom drive. no disk drive or exterior help of any kind. i have not hooked it up to the internet. and so my i-mac and i are adrift on this lonely raft with no provisions and i am thinking about eating it. or maybe just throwing it overboard so i don't have to watch it staring at me with that eerie teal glow anymore.

i have all these rough drafts of stories and final drafts and lists of ideas and a journal blah blah, and there is no way to transfer the information to any other os. so i am printing out a copy of everything on my hard drive, scanning it, and then filing it in a real live folder that coincides with a virtual folder in my runty teal box. when chris builds me a new computer, i will have to make a decision about whether or not i should RETYPE all of that crap into the new machine, or if i should just let most of it go and re-enter, say, only the good stuff or what.

so far, the only thing worth reading in my journal was that i referred to a friend of my ex-husband as having a "chum-bucket personality." that's it. three years of forcing myself to record the minutiae in my life and that's indeed all that it is. excrutiating minutiae. there's no way to make any of it interesting although there's maybe a brief flash of interest in that chum-bucket remark. but how can you use that more than once? you can't really.

but so anyway, i'm only into about hour three of this tedious process and i'm bored out of my mind, filing activity nonwithstanding. so i pull the plug and crawl into bed with my bill bryson book and fur pillow and almost immediately begin to drool and make asthmatic snorkling sounds as i dream of tossing the computer with all of the crap inside over the side of my raft.

chapter 3- in which jake tests our patience and then yaks up his dinner

i've got the dog for an extended weekend visit and he is busying himself by pacing back and forth and whining continuously. there is nothing we can do to comfort him. we take him for a walk, give him food, water, treats, love, what have you, and two seconds later he is up and running, sides heaving like an accordion, producing a whining shriek that sounds like we are torturing him. i guess if "torturing" him means rubbing his belly and sharing a peanut butter sandwich with him, then yes, i am. so we go for a walk to poop him, which he does not. poop, that is. he merely sniffs every bush and tree, lifts his leg to some of them, and nearly takes this guys head off who waves his ice cream bar in jake's face. i hear his girlfriend say in a voice she thinks i can't hear, "rob, next time just KICK the dog." i attempt to suppress a murderous rage which will come out next week in a torrent of tears about something inconsequential and undeserving of a full fledged break-down. jake is clueless and back to sniffing. my feet start to hurt so i steer him back in the direction of our house. it is clear that jake will not be downloading anything for me to pick up and carry back with us. we get back and i notice his food bowl is empty. did i forget to feed him dinner? no wonder he won't take a crap. i pour him some food and go to watch chris play silent hill 3. a few minutes later jake comes by and stands in the doorway to the bedroom and looks at me. i look back. "are you going to throw up?" i ask him. he cocks his head and then leans over and regurgitates all the food he has just snarfed down. chris says "i think jake just threw up," and goes to the kitchen for paper towels. i take a look at what is soaking into the carpet and notice that it isn't even chewed. whole dog food pieces and some slobber. now i better understand why my father always made our dogs outside pets.

the next morning as the first tendrils of sunlight are filtering in through the venetian blinds, jake sticks his nose under the covers and puts his tongue up my nose. it is 5am, much too early for this shit. but this is his schedule at home with his dad, so i get up and walk him around the block in my bathrobe, bedheaded and scary of breath. he will not let me go back to sleep either, instead, he starts to play his infernal internal accordion again. not wanting chris to kill us both, we go out into the kitchen and eat peanut butter and talk about me taking a shower without being serenaded by the aforementioned instrument of his choosing. i wash my hair, take him out for a more brisk, lengthy walk, and leave to catch the bus, picking the innumerable jake hairs out of my hoodie as i walk. what a wonderful day!

guy came up to my desk at the library today, asked for a certain 306.766, which is, to those of you unlucky enough to work outside a building filled with books ruled by the dewey decimal system, the gay sex encounters section. that's right. smut masquerading as legitimate social science. i am not, in any way, freaking out about this. i happen to love gay sex porn in all its many many forms(with a sharp spiky interest in gay vampire porn, but for most of you reading this, it is a fact that you are well, well aware of. i digress.). but so anyway, the guy does not look like what you would call an upstanding citizen. he looks like an unemployed, unshaven, slobby addict of some kind, and he's asking me to find this book for him cause he can't find it over there on the shelf. i look it up and lo! it is a collection of gay travel "erotica" that i myself have checked out right now. without thinking about who i am talking to and where i am, i blurt out-"i have a copy of this at home!" so glad am i to have a kindred prurient spirit in front of me that i do not even hold social decorum to any height, nor my dignity, for that matter. as soon as the words have escaped my lips, i realize what i have done and clear my throat, hoping he will not have heard what i said, but he has indeed locked onto it like a stray dog with a shank of beef. he is now raising his eyebrows sort of rhythmically and making weird noises in his throat. he tells me he likes my hair color, that purple is his favorite. then he makes more weird noises that sound like bad pop music being played far away. i stand fully erect and inform him (very professionally) that he will need to leave and come back to check with me in 10 minutes and that i will hopefully be successful in locating his materials for him in that amount of time. he is easily run off, my authority is restored, and no one has to know. except you.

i set chris' pillow on fire last night. i had moved the lamp from the nightstand to the pile of magazines i was gutting and got up and left the room, knocking it over so its honed lazer-like light bulb was right in the middle of his pillow. a few moments later i ran in the bedroom to grab my glass and whoa! behold! there were torrents of smoke, chemical-scented tendrils from hell, or so i thought, as i grabbed the superheated appliance and threw it off the bed. a few brisk strokes of pounding and the damage was not as bad as the smoke led me to believe. thank god the pillowcases are black, you can't even tell...

full catholic mass wedding yesterday. i took communion with everyone else and was not rooted out by the priest, did not burst into flames when i took the wafer and let the wine wet my lips. i did break into a cold sweat waiting for the priest to look me in the eye and say, "this is the body of christ, given for you..." thinking that he would know that i was lying, not really believing that some crusty bread cake could 'become' the body of a man who lived 2000 years ago. ack! i hadn't been to confession...what would i say anyway? where would i begin? the only thing i haven't done is kill someone, and of course i have in my mind. "forgive me father for i have sinned. it has been 18 years since my last confession. i have fornicated, lied and cheated. i have stolen things i did not need from people who didn't need them either. i have rolled my eyes at my mother and wished that my father would just keel over and die already. i have divorced. i have smoked bushels of cigarettes to look cool and drank copious amounts of alcohol to get happy and have eaten more than my share of food that isn't good for me. i have looked at people less fortunate and then looked the other way. i have made fun of fat people. i have been selfish and rude and have kissed a girl. i have taken the lord's name in vain. i have envied my neighbor's possessions and relationships. i have peed in a public swimming pool. i have lived in sin with men i barely know. i have taken drugs to change my personality instead of trusting in god to know what's best for me. i have led people on to get attention and have slept away the most productive hours of the day. and that isn't even half of it! this represents only what i can remember in the last five minutes. and of course, i don't believe any of this crap, father. so tell me, is it hopeless? how many hail marys to atone for all this selfish shit? and i don't really want your forgiveness, i just want to stop feeling so guilty for doing what comes naturally. can you help me out with that?"

a quick rundown of the inanimate objects in my house that have become anthropomorphised because of my proclivity to form unhealthy attachments to things rather than normal, productive relationships with people:

fur pillow- he is a fur pillow, as you might have guessed by his name, made by my sister in her first attempt to sew fake fur(which is really really hard, btw). he is approximately 1.5' by 2' and lives on the futon in the living room. he is so soft that when i put him on my lap, i can't stop stroking his fur until he is forcibly removed from my grip. this is how he came to live with me. every time i went to my sister's house, i would pick him up and pet him until i left, ignoring betty(a real cat) the whole time. finally, my sister just told me to take him home with me. there may have been a degree of disgust in her voice, but that's okay. i love fur pillow.

tim- another "male" presence, tim is a body pillow that i bought at target. i figured that since i draped my leg over him every night that i should name him. 'tim' is one of the few male names that doesn't instantly bring up bad connotations for me. i like his corduroy side the best.

sleeping bag- again, not really original in the name department, but it's functional. sleeping bag is my boyfriend's sleeping bag, but i have sort of co-opted him for the time being. i like to get zipped up in sleeping bag at all times of the day and in all locations. i have camped out on the couch, in bed, and on the floor of chris' studio. that time i had fur pillow with me also. you can never have too many fuzzy friends around.

spooner and mr fuzzy- these are stuffed animals. i admit it. i have stuffed animals. i am a freak. and yet i love them. i am not ashamed of my love.

moping on a national holiday:
memorial day was spent zipped up in chris' sleeping bag(to which i have developed an unhealthy attachment) watching movies with the sound off so i could read my trashy novel. i ordered a pizza from pizza hut and as i waited anxiously for the delivery person i prayed hard that no one i knew would see them come up to my door. i felt like i had ordered out for some crack. embarrassment level 4. the guilt of spending almost $20 on something so disgusting also weighed heavily on my crack-addled mind. after i slunk back into my bedchamber with my junk food, i lit a bunch of vanilla candles to start the odor-masking process i knew would need to happen. after two hours of being locked in a room with those 2 smells, they sort of mixed and became each other...the original spicy meat scent had begun to tango with the soggy cardboard of the pizza box, and the candles lent everything a skanky, cloying edge. i hopped, still ensconced in the sleeping bag, to the door and flung it open. i spent maybe five minutes contemplating taking out my newly acquired violin or maybe getting started on a draft of a new story and quickly put both of those productive ideas down, as i wouldn't be able to continue to stew in the sleeping bag and do either of those things.

i hopped back into the bedroom and collapsed face down on the bed. i did not roll myself over, but fell asleep like that for over an hour. i woke up to the smell of vanilla marinated pepperoni emanating from the now almost liquefied pizza box about an inch from my head. i blew the candles out.

this morning i bought a violin. i do not know how to play the violin. i have never even picked up a guitar. but a year or two ago i had a dream in which i was a tragic gypsy woman with twisted caramel hair who wiled away the evening hours in front of an audience of a bonfire and a horse playing tragic gypsy pieces on her one material possession: a violin. okay, so i'm embellishing the great hair detail and the horse being in the dream because i've always wanted beautiful thick buttery hair and it goes without saying that i have always deep down in my heart of hearts wanted a horse because i am a girl. yes, yes, i realize it's a stereotype about girls but it wouldn't be a stereotype if it wasn't a little bit true, right? but i digress. so my dream self was so able to express herself by playing this instrument that it sort of resonated into my consciousness. i woke up feeling like if i picked up a violin, the sadness of the girl in front of the horse and fire would come spilling out in the vibrant tones that i heard in my dream. why i felt this to be true as opposed to say, me waking up with the sexy hair that i've always wanted is, i suppose, related to the fact that i assume that the physical world is going to be the same when i wake up as it was when i went to sleep. there is a mathematical term for this but i'll be diddled if i can remember what it is...hmm... anyway, i understand that there is no such thing as santa claus or the toothfairy and that my hair will be the same fine, purple clump that doesn't quite hit my shoulders because i understand that hair doesn't just grow two feet and get lustrous overnight unless you've got a kick ass fairy godmother, which, as it happens, i don't. my fairy god mother is drinking in front of an all day monster movie fest in her birdhouse or wherever it is that she lives and is staunchly ignoring my presence.

the same thing applies to the horse. i know that in order to unlock that secret desire, i'd have to win the lottery, move to the country and wear dungarees, actually have to go out and BUY the horse, blah blah.

so, knowing that i'm not going to be nuzzled awake tomorrow morning by a mare searching for the sugar cubes i keep under my pillow, i turned my inner cretin, always hungry for fantasy and something to put her grimy little bit of faith into, to the violin portion of that dream.

i have heard stories of people suddenly stumbling upon their life's calling. horsing around in the public swimming pool with friends and taking a dare to dive off the highest diving board and fuckin a'! you're a natural! you plip back into the water, toes automatically pointed, body stick straight, barely a ripple in the water where you disappear. and so it is because that "these things happen" that i am able to justify spending $150 on an instrument i don't even know how to hold. i am not expecting to pick it up tonight, rosin the bow, and whip out a concerto, although that would be nice, and certainly i did feel like it was possible the day after i had that dream. but i do feel like if i hunker down and spend time with my new wooden friend every day that i will eventually be able to reconnect with that gypsy dream self of mine.

i've also sent a letter to my mother requesting that she raid my cedar chest in the attic and send me all my model horses from when i was a kid. that way when i find myself playing for the druggies under the esplanade i can plant one of my little horsies in the dirt by my feet and my dream will become a reality. maybe i could even get a wig.

i now have, um, purple hair.

the bugs in my bathroom are springtails, and now that i know what they are, i have been able to back burner my obsessing over them and boil some other interesting tidbits that have for too long not seen the light of day. like the tiny fine hairs that grow around my belly button. why do they grow slightly darker there? and why do i feel the compulsion to rip them out by the root? social conditioning? medication withdrawal? why?

there are these little fucking bugs in my bathroom. i think they are coming up out of the drains. i have plugged the tub and the sink, and yet i still find them crawling around the counter, the tub, the toilet paper on the back of the toilet. they are small and i know they're not going to hurt me, but i don't like them. in fact, i think it's safe to say that i hate them. hate. them. they are small enough to not be noticed by my boyfriend, who wonders why i notice them in the first place. i know that if they are scuttling around in the bathroom where i can see them, they are also burrowing deep into my belongings, setting up camp, breeding. i don't think they're cockroaches, because they're too small and shaped more like they have segments, although they do have these disgusting feelers that are as long as their bodies. i tried to take a bath last night to relax, but it took me twenty minutes to search the tub and floor around it before i could get in and then i couldn't lean up against the back of it as i was afraid i would get crawled on. spiders are no problem. i've even started to let the ones i can't easily reach live, in hopes that they will eat the little freaky bugs that i can't stand. i feel claustrophobic every time i enter the bathroom, like getting on a crowded stinky elevator where i can't breathe or think. all i can do is bend down and scan the tub like a nutjob, looking for tiny squirming things. when chris came in the bathroom this morning, he caught me doing just that, and i stood up fast, like i'd been caught doing something inappropriate. i'm embarrassed about my obsessing, but i can't help it. i wish i could obliterate the bugs and live in a people only zone. help me, because i can't help myself.

i would like to state for the record that i have achieved something of a small personal best: i have not actively picked at my face, or any subsidary thereof, for an entire week. oh the freedom in not acting like a monkey!

chris and i were playing a video game called 'thunder and lightning' that stars a japanese looking pig-man and his super gorgeous, way-taller-than-him girlfriend. the premise: a dark demon-thing flies down to the beach where this couple is walking and kidnaps the non-mutant lady from her porcine-esque boyfriend. then the pig-man has to bounce ping-pong balls off of what appears to be a snack tray that he holds above his head in order to break down magical walls piece by piece so that he can follow the winged bad guy and rescue the super model. only the first level of this is played on land. then he has to do the same thing underwater. and of course then octopussies attack him and sit on his snack tray, keeping him from going as fast as he normally could, and sometimes he will wander in the path of a magic tidbit that will give him special powers, like, say, make his snack tray sticky enough to hold onto the ping pong balls when he catches them or split his pin-pong ball into three or more so as to better assault the magic walls. i only made it to level 2 after playing the equivalent of 12 quarters(i'm talking old-school here, too, like when a video game at the rollerskating rink only cost 25 cents) chris was blasting through the levels as if he had been born a pig-man and was somehow transported to this world and into a human body so that he could do things like play thunder and lightning really well without having put in too many practice hours. i am, of course, notoriously bad at playing video games. the only one i've ever been any good at was 'stampede' on my atari 2600. rope them doggies! yee ha! i guess i did alright at 'frogger' too, although i never made it past level 3.

last night my estranged father called me.

"i have to ask you something. do you hate me?"

he, the man who dug graves for twenty-odd years, taught me to shoot a gun, and told my mother that if he hadn't left her by just disappearing one day, he would have killed himself, was asking me if i hated him.

what to say...

"okay, how bout this: how do you feel about me?"he revised.

"um...i don't know. i feel fine about you. i mean, what do you want me to say?"

our conversation lurched through yet another vague explanation for his sudden departure and his weird philosphies of life rewritten with four letter words, and ended when he stated that my sister and i were living in times that were complicated and implied that we just didn't see where he was coming from. the other unspoken implication here was that we would never understand anything, really, because we weren't men. we were women. and not just any women, but my mother's flesh and blood, and that gave us an unhealthy disadvantage.

and yet still here he was, lonely and cracked, awkwardly asking his oldest daughter if she felt anything so strong for him that could be considered hate. christ! i started to need a drink. my father, the man from whom i could count on having heard about 500 words out of his mouth my entire life, sounded like he had had a tough session with his therapist that day.

we had left the keys for the apartment in the mailbox for the guys from the appliance store, so they could bring in our new stove while we were at work.

chris was called out of town suddenly to go to a funeral in utah.

i was alone, at night, in our sort of spooky victorian apartment.

i decided to take a bath. i also left the phone in the bedroom, all the way across the house. i got in, started reading my book of vampire stories, and scared myself wondering if all the creaking i heard was caused by members of the undead. then i started thinking about the keys. i have heard innumerable stories about women giving their keys to the mechanic, only to have their houses broken into later, their vcrs stolen, their privates defiled. i started to seriously freak out. for real, not the fun kind of freak out i had been subjecting myself to previously. the creaking of the house settling became quite ominous. every sound i heard felt like a door opening, a crazed gas stove appliance installer creeping in with a glint of nutball in his slightly crossed eyes.

i realized that i didn't have a weapon, not even a phone. i stood up as quietly as i could and fumbled for the linen closet. i grabbed a pair of scissors with a blunt end and a metal pair of tweezers. brilliant. i got back in the tub and put my weapons on the edge. then i thought i would have a better chance of stabbing someone in the throat if they didn't know i was armed. so i eased them under my butt and sort of sat on them. for the remainder of my bath. of course no one broke in. my vcr remained where it was. my private parts were untouched by the criminal i had imagined so vividly while naked and wet.

still, i called up my ex-husband the next morning and got a loan on the dog for the rest of the weekend.

chris is sitting and chewing comtemplatively in his room when i join him.

"what are you eating?" i ask him. he looks down, then back at me, sheepishly.

"i don't want to tell you. you'll get upset."

"what do you mean?"

he opens his mouth to reveal a large, purple, rubber cockroach sitting on his tongue. most people don't like cockroaches, but i spend almost 20% of the time i am at home scanning the cracks and corners for them as i hate the little fuckers worse than anything else in the world. i never find any, but, you know, better safe than sorry.

anyway, back to chris, sticking his tongue out at me loaded with bug, and i scream, like a girl i am ashamed to say, and then i call him by his full first name. "CHRISTOPHER!" i leave the room, disgusted, mostly at myself, for turning into the type of person who would get upset about something like that.

later, as i am soaking in the tub and reading my trashy vampire romance novel, he comes in and sits near me and puts the rubber roach on on the lip of the tub.

"get that thing out of here. i'm serious."

"what would you do if i put it in the water with you? would you be mad?"

"you don't even know how mad. don't do it."

"but would you be really mad or just sort of joke mad."

"you're not respecting my boundaries."

"yes i am."

"not if you put that thing in here with me, you're not."

so here i am trying to have a psychobabble conversation with my boyfriend about why he should not but a big purple cockroach in the tub with me. as if i needed a reason. but i'm also feeling conflicted. because situations like these are exactly the reason i love him. i mean, he's 30 years old and spends his time chewing on toy bugs. woo hoo!

chris' grandpa had a dog named glueface. aptly named because it was one of those long-haired show dogs that no one ever groomed and so it would get eye slime build-up sort of smeared across it's flat little face, looking like boogers, and if anyone tried to clean it off, it would bite them.

my aunt had an african gray parrot who used to fall over if someone sneezed. one time he was perched on the edge of the counter when it happened and he fell all the way to the floor without even opening his wings. it was like he was drugged or hypnotised or something.

my dog jake peed like a girl dog until he was almost three years old. we're not sure why.

my sister's last cat would walk until it bumped up against the wall and then it would just stand there, head pressed to the sheetrock, not even trying to turn around. for hours.

i once tried to make a white mouse and a hamster cohabitate. the hamster, named pooky, practically eviscerated the mouse. she eventually recovered and gave birth to 11 baby mice, and they all lived happily in a laundry basket in the basement of my parent's house until my mom found out.

my friend brendan had two chamelions, one twice the size of the other. one day he came home from school to find the smaller one had choked to death in an attempt to eat the bigger one, legs and tail jutting out of it's mouth. there were no more chamelions after that.

when my sister and i were very young, probably too young for the responsibility to keep something alive, we had a few rabbits that we kept out in an old chicken coup. a week went by and we realized that we hadn't fed or watered them in a really long time. they had died, of course. our mother was seriously pissed off. we felt so bad that we never played out in that old building ever again.

my mother named her cats 'skittles' and 'boots.' these were the replacement animals that took over for my sister and me when we moved out. am i 'skittles?' am i 'boots?' hopefully i will never know.

my whole athsma story gets shittier:
i now have to use a peak meter to gauge the flow of my breathing capacity three times a day and record the data in a little graph book for months so we can see if there's a pattern. when i'm feeling unable to breathe, that is. i was also strongly encouraged to keep a diary of the things i do everyday like exercise, how much, what kind, work, exposure to cold air, rain, dust, bugs, whatever so we can check the activities against the graph info, AND keep a little tabulature somewhere of how many times i use my different inhalers so i can have an idea of how empty the canisters are so that i can get my prescriptions refilled before they run out. whoa nelly! i'm suddenly feeling really frail. my doctor assigned me these tasks and i guess i just sort of google eyed him because he then explained that plenty of people my age still die from not taking athsma seriously. now everytime i feel a rattle in my chest i feel like i'm about to go into a victorian swoon, like my dress is cinched up too tightly. I have to admit though, after a couple of days of recording my breathing strength, it is interesting to see how different times of the day are the same everyday, and yet so different from other times, AND YET I DON'T FEEL ANY DIFFERENT! oh, and if anyone knows how to get around the albuterol shakes, please please please let me know: ohthedrama2003@yahoo.com

confessions:
i once lost my engagement ring at the airport.
sometimes i buy too many tomatoes.
i watch myself in store windows as i am walking past them. i have also been known to adjust my clothing or fool around with my hair but try to act like i'm not.
i drink decaf. all the time.
sometimes when i smoke, i think i look cool.
i am more afraid, for some reason, of the next ice age swooping in on civilization than i am of losing my job at the library, which is certainly more plausible.
i like stephan king.
and david duchovny.
i don't see my dog anymore, even though i have been encouraged to by my exhusband, because the thought of picking him up from the house that i used to own and seeing it redone in the new girlfriend style etc. is way more than my petty mind can handle. plus i just plain don't want to deal with the stress of the weird triangle that is formed there. i guess if you add the dog into the equation, it'd be more of a parallelagram.
i think i ate someone else's yogurt in the employee fridge a few weeks ago. not on purpose or anything, but still. i didn't leave a note.
after a near collision with a parked van, i drove away with my heart pounding and adreneline making my teeth buzz thinking, "man, if i would have hit that guy, i would have probably just sped away! i am a horse's ass!"
i judge my mother's lifestyle and yet expect her to just roll with the punches when it comes to mine.
i have cried in frustration when i couldn't open a jar.
the thought has crossed my mind, in all sincerity, that i am out of some people's league, romantically speaking(as in: "look at that nutjob! if he asked me out i'd have to try not to laugh in his face...")
i have looked at fat people and thought, "whoa!"
a girl with a black eye and bad posture looked at me once, the kind of look that is really a silent plea for help, and i didn't ask her if she was okay.
allegedly, i once told my sister that girls with mustaches don't get jobs.
at seven years old, my passive-agressive nature germinated when i put my friend melissa's apple in the freezer because she wasn't letting me wear the cooler pair of fake vampire teeth, the ones that didn't make you drool all over, and then i got angry when she threw it away after one bite saying it was 'too cold to eat.'

miasma:my asthma. two scary middle of the night emergency room trips later, it turns out that my allergies have a companion. i cough and wheeze and just try to respirate. amazing how the stock in everything else goes down the tubes when you have to think about breathing, forcing it in and out. i have had two breathing treatments(very victorian, where is the bowl of leeches?), intramuscular shots of cortisone, chest xrays, friendly nurses bringing me graham crackers and apple juice, rolling veins, steroid tablets, steroid inhalers, preventers, relievers, no sleep. i have snored, i have heard a small child scream that he was really feeling much better when the doctor attempted to insert tubes into his ears. i have been sternly talked to about not drinking anything before having my temperature taken and then been sternly talked to about being dehydrated. i have been told to avoid animals, dust mites, pollen, dust, germs, cold weather, stress and have been advised to change my salt intake to sea salt. i have worn the same clothes for almost three weeks. i have slept on my face for four hours at a time. i have napped through lunch at work and have stayed awake at night sniffling and hacking. i have grudgingly inhaled lots of albuterol and been disturbed by how much it makes me shake. i have eaten three times as much food as usual because of all the steroids. i have an inhaler that tastes like rotting grapes and one that tastes like melting plastic. neither of them are what you'd call gateway drugs or something you'd take to have a good time. i have calculated what my expenses for two er visits and medication would be if i didn't have insurance and i can say that the attack the bills would have given me would have killed me.