I’m Not Sorry I Said It

Preceded by arbitrary conversation, in which I happen to mention going to grad school in Virginia, as I ring up groceries…

Him: So, what did you get your degree in?  Or, did you not finish?

My Head: Presumptuous asshole.

Me: No, I finished a Master’s in Creative Writing.

Him: So, Sarah, what do you do with your life?

Me: Work in a grocery store.

Him: Well, what do you want to do with your life?

Me: Work in a grocery store.

Horribly uncomfortable silence.

Fin.

Three things:

1) Disconnect is a verb, not a noun.  Thank you.

2) Cellulite happens.  Get the fuck over it.

3) Ice Road Truckers.  Google or Youtube.

There’d be more substance to this post if I weren’t, at the moment, focused on the question of who decides the color schemes for prescription pills.  I do think Cymbalta would look better with a black/white contrast, rather than navy/white.  Who likes navy blue, anyway?

B, where aaaaaaaaaare you?

It’s nearly midnight; after napping from 5 pm until 8 pm, then spending time dicking around on the computer, I made a Jewel-run.  Here’s what I bought:

-The one bunch of kale that wasn’t slimy.

-A bag of russet potatoes.

-Organic Peanut Butter Newman-Os.  Like eating vegan airplane food.  I pretend that processed, animal-free junk food replaces the void left by my memories of a good steak.

-Chili powder.  I wanted to buy the glass bottle instead of the plastic, but it was a difference of two dollars.

-Disposable toilet-scrubbers; I judge myself horribly for buying something so toxic and full of plastic and non-recylcleable but I just can’t deal with reusing a toilet brush.  I’m going to eco-hell for this.

As I stood in line, there was more scary shit on the television above the conveyor belt.  Instead of an egg planter, there was a baby with a detached head, bobbling about.  Well, it wasn’t detached–it was placed where it was supposed to be, but it was bouncing back and forth as though it were just a ball with eyes on top of the digital-cartoon-body.  It was a reminder to all those in line to buy a mother’s day card.

The guy at the register was really intent on getting me to sign up for a Jewel card.  Sure, why not.  But then he told me that even though he knows so many people, he still feels alone in this big world.  He used those words, pretty much exactly.  He should go watch some Hal Ashby movies.

I don’t want to get up to do my dishes because I know there’s several inches of mold awaiting me in the sink.  Well, it’s confined to a pot from which I forgot to empty the leftover potatoes–and yes, that pot’s been there for a week, now.  Mold grows so quickly…It can’t be helping all my allergies.

In the past twenty-minutes, I’ve eaten half a package of peanut-butter-creme-filled cookies, even though I don’t really like them.

I never get bugs in my apartment because my cats kill them all.

Your turn.

Standing within the rocking hell of a fluorescently-lit pseudo-happy-pirate-ship-type-thing (yes, I work at *that* grocery store, where we get to wear the ohsoverycool Hawaiin t-shirts, and the bells, don’t forget the fucking bells), I’m grateful to be on cleaning for the hour before lunch.  I welcome any task that allows me to keep to myself, especially on the heels of register time, but my much-needed chance at some introversion is sullied by the presence of a certain manager whose IQ is inversely proportional to his need to show everyone just how much big! mighty! power! he possesses.  Said manager looks like a giraffe–long neck, no shoulders, and no chin, though he tries to hide that with an ill-kept goatee.  He combs the front of his hair into somewhat of a tidal wave, as though he’s channeling David Silver.  The giraffe walks like a jellyfish, slinking creepily and quietly around corners, trying to catch as many employee mistakes as he can.  His laugh is consistently robotic–one note, two beats, that’s it.  Loud.  Huh Huh.  Big voice for the jelly-raffe.  First on my cleaning list is the emptying of the trash cans at each register.  We’re out of trash bags in the “pit” (get it?  It’s a ship metaphor!) so I go to the back room to look for more.  He’s standing back there, writing his order and he looks at me not suspiciously but accusatorily.  I must be up to no good.  I round a corner and am out of his view for about thirty seconds, during which I begin to climb on the shelves and move around boxes.  I like to arbitrarily move around boxes.  He rounds the corner and, without relinquishing his accusatory tone, asks, “what are you doing?”  I answer, “looking for  trash bags.”  His mind-melding powers piercing my brain, he continues, “really?”  Shit!  I forgot about the mind-meld.    He’s caught me.  I take a deep breath.  “Oh Mighty Shoulderless One, I’m sorry.  You know I’m not really looking for trash bags.  I’m trying to find a portal to Pluto.  I think the key lies within the mop-heads.”  But it’s not a reasonable excuse–the employee handbook clearly states that looking for portals is grounds for an automatic write-up.  He’s probably already completed and submitted the paper work for my reprimand–after all, he’s pyschic too.  He knows everything about all of us.  Except for one thing–one very, important thing.  He knows nothing of my power to instantaneously conjure Richard Simmons.  He is no match for the Richard Simmons. 

To be continued…

EDIT: Never try to write something humorous about a hated job, at least not a job in which you’re still currently stuck.  Gah!  If you really want to feel better, just get back at your boss by later taking a nap in the stockroom when he isn’t looking.  Hey, you’re tired.

“How are you today?”

“Paper.”

Last night:

Outside the gallery, in the damp of a half-rain, P rolls a cigarette as I talk about all the unconnected things I can think of.  He’s a few years younger than I, and it’s the first time one of his paintings has hung in a public space.  I’m happy to see his painting on the wall and he’s nervous and uncomfortable with the crowd.  I’m right there with him–neither of us drink, neither of us are particularly fond of schmoozing (excuse me, networking), and the pretty, dyed-groomed-stilleto-capped gallery-goers are a bit intimidating.  I’m trying my best to create good conversation but it’s a little difficult in this context.  So, disjointed sputterings it is.  I’ve already talked about the guy from my grad-school days who was moved to tears by his own work, and I’ve already pointed out to P that at least he didn’t make a collage or rely on defecation references to make some sort of statement.  At least wasn’t the appropriate wording but I can’t give P direct compliments without making him uncomfortable.  So, at this particular point, as he rolls his cigarette, I talk about a particular song running through my head, about how I love the musician so much because of the utter lack of all pretension in her music; even her self-effacing lyrics are honest.  It’s a musician we both like, and we talk about how the convergence of genuinity and real talent is rare and hard to achieve.  While I mean what I say about the songs, it’s lost on P that I’m really directing the words towards him.  His painting is damn good, though he’s already told me he submitted it mostly because it fit the theme and size requirements of the show.  He says he’s painted a lot better.  Regardless, it’s a good painting, even if the person who hung it misspelled its title.  But he’s too nervous to be talking much and I’m talking too much because I’m nervous about how to be good support for him.  So, I interject with an ongoing joke about gay unicorns because, everyone loves gay unicorns.*  I’ve used the joke one too many times, though.  We wait for friends of ours to show up.  There’s always more safety in numbers.

Post-show/Middle of the night:

I leave after others show up.  My intention is to grade papers but I’m exhuasted so I fall asleep with my clothes and the lights on.  I dream that my mother is dead–it doesn’t occur to me that I’m dreaming, despite the ridiculous setting of the dream–according to my subconscious, my mother worked in a diner, and collected kitschy mugs emblazoned with pictures of fifties pin-up girls.  That is definitely not my mother, but asleep, I didn’t get the joke.  I’m pretty sure this dream dragged itself on for about four hours.  I’m pretty sure I thought I was actually sobbing. 

Waking up:

Relieved that my mother is quite alive, that I was just dreaming.  Pissed that I didn’t sleep well and I’m still tired.  Mad at whatever god of dreams made me think my mother was dead–it was a horrible joke to play.  Then, shit!  It’s 10:00.  Fuck!  I was supposed to move my car before 8:00.  I’ve already received two tickets this week.  $110, to be exact ($60 for being parked in a no rush-hour parking zone, and $50 for an expired meter).  I run outside, in my short sleeves even though it’s chilly, and pry the expected ticket from underneath my wiper blade.  I open the car door and shove the ticket into my glove compartment.  I feed the meter–no sense in trying to move the car.  There’s nowhere to park on a Saturday.  And now that I have three tickets, I can’t ignore them (see, they don’t boot your car unless you have three outstanding violations, so I can usually make it through about three months of warnings before finally paying–now, I need to pay at least one of them before I forget about the others).  How to deal with a near-instant debt of $160?  Pretend it isn’t happening.

But, in the midst of continual debt and poverty, of bad dreams, of balancing multiple jobs, of cruel people, of working at a fucking grocery store, there is the concrete existence of a black-and-white painting devoid of all pretension, full of honesty, and a quiet kindness.

If that isn’t love, well…

Fuck cliche.  It is love.  Absolute.

*A Mirah Song.

*I have my former roommate to credit; she sent me gay unicorn stickers in the mail for this very reason.

We’re in Houston for my great uncle’s funeral. We’ve just dropped our luggage at our hotel room near the airport, and walked across the parking lot to a sports bar, where we pack ourselves (mom, dad, sister, brother, me) into a booth. We’ve ordered our dinner. We suspect this meal will be about as good as one can reasonably expect from a sports bar in a hotel parking lot on the edge of Houston, but we’ve been in transit for hours and just want to eat. Our conversation turns to the subject of my brother’s left index finger, the tip of which he recently severed while cutting limes in a bar. He peels back his bandage to show us the carnage. It looks like a raw cartoon steak. My sister, to our delight, is horrified1. I grab the salt shaker from our table and begin to mime the act of throwing salt upon my brother’s wound2. I cease to mime the act when the cap becomes dislodged3 and a heap of salt pours out onto my brother’s fingertip, eliciting a guttural howl that draws the attention of all the patrons in the bar. He is rocking, holding his own hand, sucking air through his teeth. I try to apologize, but he isn’t listening; he’s staring through his teary eyes at the shaker with a look of incomprehension. The shaker has fallen on its side. Affixed to its bottom4 is a sticker that reads, simply, “LYE”. In a tiny, throaty voice, my brother moans, “Oh, why is there lye on the table?”5

Today, I saw an ad for the assisted living facility in which my grandfather lives.  The same facility to which my parents pay $1500 a month (and that’s not counting what my grandfather’s social security covers…I believe the actual rent is twice that).  The ad said “We have a special on human life.”

 Special, indeed.

I’m at home for a week.  How to explain home in one sentence?  For at least seven years, my parents’ cd player has turned itself on every single day at 3:30 pm, regaling the listener with anything from opera to LeAnn Rimes. 

The Jewel by my house* has televisions in every single manned line, so customers can be entertained while waiting.   The migraine-inducing fluorescent lighting is bad enough, as is choosing between the robotic self check-out and the line with an actual person (questionable at times) who gets paid for the work, even though the company’s trying to save more money with the robots (good thing for the real people that the self check-out malfunctions approximately 92% of the time).  Long-windedness aside, I’m watching the television as a perky lady tells me how to make an “eggshell planter.”  Why?  Because it’s creative!  And easy!  You just crack open an egg (carefully, because you only want to crack off the top), empty out the yolk, fill the hollowed shell with a bit of soil and grass seed, draw a face on the egg shell and Ta Da! You have a little punky green hair-do on your egg man!  Now, where’s the walrus?  The Ta Da! is what sent me to the robot line…I just couldn’t take it.  Perky is the devil.

But on to another fabulous use for eggs–teaching fifth graders the importance of being heterosexual and not having sex until married!  What an awesomely weird idea!  Maybe it’s because in 1990, we were all secretly watching 90210 when our parents weren’t looking.  The teachers heard us talking about Brenda’s false alarm with Dylan, and behold! an idea was born!  Hard-boiled egg-babies! (after all, the egg-man was once a wee pup).  So, the boys and girls paired up (my nerdy self was paired with the very popular teacher’s son, who,  even at the age of ten looked a little like Brandon Walsh and a lot like Rick Astley), drew faces on their eggs, and prepared to take care of them for a week without dropping them or allowing them to be hit by those red bouncy-balls on the playground (Wall Ball was exceptionally popular between the years 1988 and 1991).  Some kids’ mothers even sewed little diapers and decorated baskets for the eggs.  I gave mine a blanket of scrap fabric so it wouldn’t be cold.  But guess what Mrs. H’s son did the first night it was his turn to take care of little eggy-egg?  He dropped him.  Bad father.  Bad.  But, since he was the teacher’s son, he was allowed to make a new one and pretend the replacement baby looked exactly the same as the dead baby.  That’s politics, for ya.   It was a pointless exercise–even if I had been thinking about sex instead of, say, how I was going to make it through an entire day without picked on too terribly, I definitely wouldn’t have fantasized about doing “it” with Brandon Astley.  He was the spawn of a woman who told the entire class it was illegal to make fun of the president (Republican wench) and who referred to my orthotics as “orthodontics”.  We were also required to complete a series of “critical thinking folders”–one question I still remember is “if you could create your own 24-hour line-up of television shows, what would it consist of?”  Critical wha–How does talking about all the television you like fit into the category of critical thinking?  Especially when popular television includes 90210 and America’s Funniest Home Videos? 

And my mother wonders how I grew up to be so cynical.  Egg-babies, ma.  Egg-babies.  They grow up to be grass-haired egg-men who make me want to cry in a way so horrible.  It’s a sad, mad world.  Kill the egg-babies.

**By house, I mean crappy studio apartment whose window overlooks the alley and at which homeless people sometimes yell inanities about werewolves because I didn’t put anything good in the trash.