Category: My stories

A wise person once said that if Plan A does not succeed, there are 25 other letters in the alphabet.
Well, our alphabet. There’s a lot of other alphabets out there, so Plan Alpha and Plan Zhe are available.
There’s an infinite number of numbers, too. Although you may not want to go with Plan 9. Unless your plan involves space aliens raising zombies from the dead.
There’s also a rainbow of colors available. Plan Green, Plan Red. Even Plan X-Ray if you don’t limit yourself to the visible spectrum.
But by then, you should hire a professional wedding planner.

Fred and I went to the opera the other evening.
“Check out the set of pipes on her,” whispered Fred.
Sure enough, there was a singer on stage wearing a dress made out of plumbing conduits.
“What about this one?” I said, pointing at a diva wearing a dress made out of organ pipes.
Fred smiled. “Oh yeah? What about this one?”
A woman walked on stage, wearing nothing but laced-together crack pipes.
“Amazing,” I said. “Who knew that opera was all about fashion.”
That’s when a fat woman wearing a Magritte painting came on stage.
“Show’s over,” Fred said.

My grandmother died recently.
She gave me a lot of advice over the years.
Her best advice was to never take any shit from anyone.
Always pay fair market value for it.
And keep the receipt, just in case you want to exchange it for something else.
Like a sweater, or a coffee pot.
Or, if they give you the shit, be courteous and give shit right back to them.
Be sure that it’s a fair exchange of shit.
In volume, quantity, and velocity.
And, I suppose, ferocity.
When she died, she shat herself.
And left it all to me.

It used to bother me when the Catholic Church canonizes Nazi-appeasing scum like Pius the Twelfth.
But then, I realized that their entire denomination of Christianity is just a business.
A front for child-molesting old men and misogynistic moralizing miscreants.
If there is a God, he won’t care what people think of these moral cowards they revere so much.
He’ll send them to Hell, to suffer for all eternity, like they deserve.
But then, he’ll also send the good ones to Hell, too.
Because to them, what difference is suffering, when you have God’s love in your heart, right?

If you have to eat a shit sandwich, don’t take your time eating it.
That just makes things worse and prolongs the taste of shit in your mouth.
Instead, eat it as fast as you fucking can.
And put as much ketchup and mustard on it as you can get away with.
Anything to mask the flavor of that shit.
If you’re lucky, you can blend it into a shake. You can drink that sandwich down in a few gulps.
When you’re done, you can go to the bathroom, stick a finger down your throat, and puke it back up.

How was my day?
Fine? Okay? Great?
No.
My day was not mine.
I was my day’s.
If you asked my day how was your person, my day would say “It could have been better.”
Not fine or okay or great.
What could I have done to make it better?
I don’t know. I tried, but nothing went right.
I probably could have done something, but I didn’t.
And that’s what happened.
Maybe tomorrow will be fine or okay or great.
Maybe not.
Best to sleep on it, and see how things turn out.
Until then, dream of better days.

When I was young, I’d go to the playground.
All day long, I’d play on the swings, the monkey bars, the sand box, and the slide.
Sometimes, I’d fall off of something, and I’d scrape my elbow or my knee.
Now that I am older, I feel like I have become an emotional playground.
And I have mood swings, mood monkey bars, a mood sand pit, and a mood slide.
But now, when I fall, I don’t scrape an elbow or my knee.
The hurt is much deeper and painful.
And I have no choice but to get back on.

People tell me that I should only weigh myself once a week.
But I weigh myself daily anyway.
It’s not the individual measurements that matter, but the overall trend on this bar chart.
As long as I focus on the trend, I’ll be fine.
Because those individual numbers will drive you mad.
Eat a little something that takes a while to pass, and you’ll build up a bit of a peak before it all flushes out.
Still, that number after you take a huge dump feels like an accomplishment.
Until the next time you overdo it at the salad bar.

My grandmother died last week.
She was ninety-nine years old.
My father sent me an email to let me know.
“Call your mother,” he said.
I was in the checkout lane at a local grocery store.
My grandmother checked out while I was checking out.
Sat down on a curb in the parking lot and tried to call my mother.
The line was busy.
She called back while I was driving home.
I called her back when I got home, and we talked.
Then, while I was in the tub, she called again.
My family doesn’t have very good timing.

Tinny hurt her tail the other day.
Most of her tail is limp.
The vet did x-rays, and used a hemostat to check sensation in the tail.
Two of her tail vertebrae are compressed together, and she still has sensation in it.
So, the vet gave Tinny a painkiller, and we’ve got tiny cortisone pills to give her.
Tinny’s not a cat that eats treats out of your hand, so we use a pill-popper.
It’s a stick with a plunger that you put deep in a cat’s throat to force the pill in.
She writhes and resists, but it works.