Carter’s Little Pill

Spamming jackasses. Grr.

GRR!

Don’t view the “See who is looking at your profile” application. It will spam your friends.

Lodge a complaint. Kick someone in the shins. Eat your broccoli.

… when I tried to read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

You’ve probably seen it, but if not, watch!

It was the Target parking lot. 6-something pm. Partly sunny. I pulled into a parking spot and was just listening to the tail end of an NPR report. A dog sat in the back window of the car opposite me. I had to roll down the windows after a minute–it was humid and the sun was strong when it wasn’t behind a cloud.

The dog climbed down from the window. A man and a woman parked next to the dog’s car and he, the driver, seemed interested in something he saw in that car. He peered through the window, gesturing to the woman with him. Then he walked away.

I wanted to know what he saw. I wanted to know where the owner was. I decided I’d go into Target and if the car was still there when I got back, I’d do something. I walked past the car and I too peered through the window. I couldn’t see anything but a fabric doggie carrier.

How hot was it? I couldn’t tell. The car windows were cracked, not enough for a forearm, but enough for a slender dog nose. And it was a slender dog. A small, yellow dog, shaggy and mutty.

I was in and out of Target in under 10 minutes. Nothing had changed in the car. I decided it wasn’t really that warm and turned on mine, but as I pulled out of the parking spot, I felt how good the air conditioning felt. It was warm out. It had to be warm in that car.

I pulled back into a spot, this time right next to the car, and I dithered. I called my boyfriend just to get a second opinion, but he didn’t answer. Should I tell Target? Should I call the cops? Should I mind my own business? Was I overreacting? Probably. Was the dog going to die? Probably not. Or was he? Where was he?

My boyfriend called back, told me the temperature, waited while I dithered. And dither I did.

I saw her as soon as she left Target. She matched the peace sign on her beat up car. She hadn’t bought anything.

She climbed into the car and looked over her shoulder, then pawed through the clutter on the back seat. I didn’t see the dog. She was tossing things around. No dog.

But she drove away calmly. Someone couldn’t drive away calmly with a dead dog in the back seat. Someone would have to feel something with a dead dog in the back seat.

So, the dog was alive, and I am officially the world’s worst guardian angel.

I went to the grocer yesterday, came home, quickly started dinner because I was hungry, and forgot to put the groceries away. I had to throw away quite a lot of chicken.

I have developed a head-slapping dance as a result. Set to David Bowie, of course.

I used to cook quite a lot and enjoyed making experimental recipes. I’ve definitely fallen down on the job when it comes to cooking lately, but the urge has returned in a big way. Hurrah!

This week, I hope to tackle:

Scalloped leeks (perhaps with celeriac)
Greek chicken and lemon soup
Italian wedding soup

I love soup and I love casseroles, so this is a good start.

The older I get, the less I can eat of the types of food I adore, so it’s time for me to establish some new, mild recipes that my digestive system can handle. I’ll still whine about it, though.

There was an insect in my office. I don’t really know what sort it was. It buzzed. It was shaped like a wasp, but striped like a bee. I’ll call it a basp.

There isn’t any way to get a trapped basp out of your office without a basp-keeper suit and, surprisingly, I don’t have one of those.

So I just sat and listened to it ping off the screen on the window and felt bad that it would die there. And there’s something worse about dying when no one knows or really cares what species you even are.

I have a wasp sting on my hand from a few weeks ago. Occasionally it puffs up a bit, like a mosquito bite.

The stings last longer than the basp will, I reckon. There’s a hell of a metaphor there. A hell of one.

Last week I went to LA, then it was my birthday, then I got sick, then I got better but my boyfriend got sick, then I came home and had a million things to do, then I got sick again, then it was election day and I was presiding judge and left home at 5:30 am and got home at 9:30 pm and then I was still stick and my Indians suck and wah. I’m whiny.

That’s all.

Laurels
for Chris

I would take it with me, take a shovel to the soft
bucket of earth that hasn’t quite healed over

from the last time I dug and pulled out thistle
or the spindly stalks of grains that bobbed

their heads in a breeze too light for my hairs.
I would take it somewhere else to die. I know

that it takes the acid of deep Ohio soils but I
have killed the others–mowed them or let them

drown in burdock–before the pink beads of their
flowers could pop open like peppermints, spiraling

out in red and white. Because my husband
gave me three and I killed two. Because he

gave me three and nothing sent me to the back
yard and the yellowjackets and the yellowsun to guard

them and two died, and the third will die when I
leave, like a memory I am no longer here to keep.

I forgot to post this one from March’s Whup-Ass challenge:

Scuttled

I picture him sinking now into the water,
a sad trombone wah wahs along on the soundtrack.

He clutches a flag and he waves it despondently.
A captain goes down with the ship, sure. But since he

is made all of ashes his hands are so tiny,
his fists formed from only one crystal of salt.

We wave to each other. My eyes burn so sharply.
There’s no fear of drowning. The fishes pass through

.

Surely someone can make it so my body thinks pollen is actually, I dunno, chocolate or something? That’d be cool.