blue coyote laughing

my sister and my niece

this is where my mind is today. where it's been for months. this was taken in a better time, about a year and a half ago. the red light is part of the spider exhibit.

tree top ten

Top 10 signs the Christmas tree you bought is too damn big:

10. The guy who sold it to you looked at your car and said, "How're you going to get it home in that tiny thing?"

9. You bought another set of lights knowing it would be bigger than your last tree.

8. It takes up a full third of your front room.

7. It is bigger than your exercise bike and your sofa. Combined.

6. Your cats usually look at the Christmas tree like it's their personal amusement park, all wrapped up in a sparkly bow. This year they seem afraid of it.

5. You had to buy two more sets of lights on the way home from picking it up. Just in case.

4. Your husband sends an email saying, "Had to refill the tree stand again this a.m. Was almost dry. That thing's drinkin' like a sailor on shore leave."

3. You can no longer open or close your curtains because you can't get to them

2. Pine needles have replaced cat hair as the largest proportion of debris in your vacuum cleaner.

1. You are going out today to buy two more sets of lights because the top third of the tree is still bare.

drag queen

I pull up next to you at the stoplight. You're a suit with the windows of your BMW rolled down. You're listening to the Ramones at top volume. I can respect that.

I rev my engine to get your attention.

You look at me. I smile. You smile. You lower your shades and wink at me. I laugh. I drop my shades. Raise one eyebrow. You nod.

That's right, baby. Right here. Right now.

Let's drag.

agnes sees pink

She first discovered she had the power while paying for her groceries at the Pick n’ Save. She was in the express lane because she had TEN ITEMS OR LESS.

If you counted things logically.

If you buy three tomatoes, the cashier manually punches it into the register as “3 @ .49..." One receipt line. One item. It follows that any duplicate, because it is tallied in one line on the receipt, should also count as one item. Logically then, if you buy six cans of cat food, they should be counted as one item. This is especially true if the sign above the cat food says “6 for $2.00”.

Today she had six cans of Pampered Cat, two tomatoes, four cans of Ensure, one box of ginger snaps, one pair of knee-high nylons, a book of crossword puzzles, three tabloid papers, a toenail clipper, shoelaces for her Nikes, and corn pads.

Ten items. No more. No less, she thought.

She heard grumbling behind her in line. She considered turning and explaining the logic, but thought better of it. She had attempted this last week, but a large, sweaty woman in a Hawaiian muumuu had gotten all huffy and called her an old bitty. Muumuu had then pointed to each of her items on the conveyor belt and counted aloud, “One, two, three, ...sixteen, seventeen!” All the other people in line had grunted in agreement.

You just can’t be logical with hurryheads.

That day, it was the cashier who had saved her. The sweet girl, who could have been her great-granddaughter, had said, “If you weren’t arguing with her, you’d already be checked through by now.” God love the brassiness of youth.

Unfortunately, her favorite cashier and savior wasn’t working today. Today she drew the nasty Pink Lady with the pinched face. Agnes always referred to her as “Pink Lady”, (never to her face) because she had long fingernails. The kind that curl back toward the palm like claws. They were always perfectly manicured. Always painted in some tacky shade of pink.

Maybe she grows those nails to pick her nose. Pick your nose at Pick n’ Save. I bet she can reach right up into the sinus cavity where those fire-ant tickles come from.

Fuchsia talons scraped the surface of the scanner with every passed item. This sound gave Agnes goosebumps. She wondered if the repeated scratching was slowly eroding the surface of the machine the way it eroded her confidence.

To make matters worse, Pink Lady insisted on scanning each of her items separately. Even the duplicates. Even the tomaters! And she counted them aloud, just as the huffy muumuu woman had.

Probably can’t use the keypad with those nails . Agnes tried unsuccessfully to distract herself with humor. She knew a storm was brewing, and she knew she was in the eye.

When Pink Lady reached ten, and there were still items to be scanned, she looked up at Agnes with a sneer. “You have more than ten items, why didn’t you check out at the regular check stand?” There were murmurs of agreement coming from behind her.

“Um, I...”

Agnes dropped her eyes and blushed like a child caught passing a love note in class. She had just wanted to get home before “Murder She Wrote”. She only had ten items, and she didn’t want to wait behind that man with the tax-exempt card and two loaded carts. Besides, her very-gross veins were already burning and she still had to walk home.

The cashier finally clucked her tongue and rolled her eyes. “Never mind!” She quickly and noisily pulled the remaining items across the laser and shoved them recklessly into bags.

She probably squished my tomaters, Agnes thought, but didn’t dare say it aloud. She was just thankful the tornado had dissipated. Maybe she’d see Jessica Fletcher’s latest caper after all.

“That’ll be twenty dollars and eighty-nine cents,” Pink Lady said. She shoved her upturned palm at Agnes, indicating that she should hurry and pay.

Mary Kay bear trap.

Agnes opened her purse slowly, her hands trembling with the realization that she had been wrong. The storm wasn’t over, it was just beginning. She had only gotten a twenty-dollar bill from the money spitter at the bank. She thought it would be enough, and it had been a struggle just to get that because she couldn’t quite read the sun bleached computer screen.

People were shuffling behind her. They had been merely impatient before, now they were getting plain nasty. Her sight might be going, but her hearing was 20/20. Maybe better. She heard every “Old bag” and “Blue hair” whispered behind her. She heard the cashier loudly expelling air through her nose in irritation.

She pulled out her checkbook. Someone moaned loudly in the background.

“No checks in Express!” Pink Lady said sternly, pointing at the sign above her register.

CASH ONLY.

Agnes put her checkbook back into her purse, pulled out the twenty, and set it on the conveyor. Then, she lifted out her little, red coinpurse.

You would have thought the home team just lost the Superbowl. The chorus of groans crescendoed behind her like a tidal wave coming to sweep away her last shred of dignity.

The cashier let out a long sigh and averted her eyes. She put one hand on her hip and lay the other on the plastic cover of the scanner. She then began to make the most degrading sound ever to echo in Agnes’ perfect ears.

It was the sound of soldiers marching in a line to some pointless war. Taptaptaptap, taptaptaptap. Pink Lady rapped her claws against the hard, black plastic, pinkie to pointer, over and over. Her pink platoon paraded in the metered cadence of impatient hostility.

Agnes felt nauseous. There was now only silence behind her. Maybe the hurryheads felt sorry for her. Maybe they had sneaked away, afraid of the marching soldiers. Maybe they’d all vanished in a huffy puff of snotty smoke. She was too busy to really care.

Taptaptaptap, taptaptaptap. She fumbled with her coinpurse, unable to unzip it. Why do these things have such small pulls? Even on a good arthritis day, it’s nearly impossible to open. Never mind trying to do it with the whole pink army bearing down upon you.

TAPTAPTAPTAP. The sound seemed to be getting louder as she finally released the zip. She peered inside, squinting, hoping against hope there would be quarters, knowing there were only pennies.

She peeked up at Pink Lady, whose eyes were on the coinpurse, face even more pinched looking than usual. She had never noticed how small and animal-like the cashier’s eyes were.

She opened her eighty-five year old hand (Steady old girl ) and poured a palm-full of pennies into it. She was dreading what pig-eyed, pink pincers would do when she saw no silver.

Maybe I’ll have the big one right here, right at the Pick n’ Save. Pick n’ Die. That would teach 'em a lesson. Hurry an old lady. Check through the Big Express Line in the sky. No waiting.

One item. No more. No less.

Agnes wished she could stop time long enough to count those pennies.

There was a sound. No, it wasn’t a sound. Rather, it was an absence of noise, the cessation of sound. It was the unexplained disappearance of something expected, and it was deafening.

Nothing. Not the clinking of pennies, not the taptaptaptap of the fuchsia brigade, not even her own breath. If anyone would notice the absence of sounds, it would be she. Her friend Mary Godresthersoul, had once said, “Agnes, when you’re dead, you’ll probably hear the worms nibbling at your fingers.”

She stopped counting and looked around. Everything was completely still and quiet. Frozen, just as she had wished.

“Great, now I have old-timers disease and I’ve gone deaf.” She said it aloud, but no sound escaped her moving lips. She decided not to speak anymore. Too creepy.

Good gravy Agnes, have you really gone and died? You didn’t even feed the cat .

Agnes looked around for the light.

THE LIGHT.

The only light she saw was a sickly sunbeam barely penetrating the streaky storefront glass around a faded sign advertising, “Tuna 3 for $1”. That couldn’t possibly be the light everyone talked about. Nobody would go toward that. Unless they wanted cheap fish.

What the devil?

Pinks was in mid-tap. The people behind her were in various postures of irritation. A bag boy in the adjacent line was just about to stack cans of green beans on top of a loaf of white bread. Yes, it was business as usual, except for the fact that nobody moved.

Wouldn’t you know it, I have the power to stop time and it took me 85 years to discover it. Do I discover it to stop Kennedy’s assassination? To stop the bomb from being dropped on Pearl Harbor? To stop the cat from marking the credenza? No, I stop it to count pennies at the Pick n’ Save.

Agnes began to count. It unnerved her the way the copper silently fell into a pile on the register, but at least she didn’t have to hurry.

When she finished counting, she waited. She wondered how it would sound when time started again. It didn’t matter, she would just be glad to hear something. Anything.

She waited. Nothing happened… or something didn’t happen. She hoped it would be over soon because she was starting to confuse herself. She had assumed that this was temporary, due to her wish. This had all happened... or stopped happening, to allow her more time to count. But now she wasn’t sure.

Agnes waved her liver-spotted hands in the air, still holding the dreaded red coinpurse. Nope, that didn’t work . She tried to wiggle her nose back and forth. Nope, that’s not it either. She briefly contemplated the quick nod, ponytail move of that TV genie, but thought better of it. My head would probably just pop right off .

Nothing she tried worked. Time was stuck. She had stopped it, but couldn’t start it again. Prune juice. Time needs prune juice. Maybe even Metamucil .

Then something occurred to her. Maybe time hadn’t started because she hadn’t finished what she was supposed to do. What? What am I supposed to do?

She looked around. Maybe she’d miscounted the pennies. No way I’m recounting them . She counted out ten more pennies and added them to the pile. Time stood at attention like the Royal Guard. It didn’t even flinch when she dumped the entire contents of the coinpurse onto the conveyor belt, forming a little, copper mound.

Agnes’ legs were aching. Her prescription Nikes, which were currently laced with one white shoelace and one piece of orange yarn, weren’t helping. She shifted her weight back and forth, side to side. Mary Godresthersoul, had always called this dance, “The Varicose Rumba.” Agnes thought it was more like the hokey pokey.

She considered just leaving, she was paid up after all.

One Misses Hippie, two Misses Hippie...

When there were 20 Misses Hippies, Agnes snatched her grocery bags, and started toward the door in a slowly but surely shuffle.

Then she had an evil thought.

Opening one of the bags, she sifted through cat food cans, nylons and Ensure, as if looking for the surprise in a box of Geriatric Gems Cereal.

Ah HA! She admired then unwrapped her prize triumphantly.

When her mission was complete, she hurried toward the door with the speed of rusting iron. Time howled back into motion, accompanied by the shrill cackle of a vindicated woman. She felt 80 again.

No. Not a day over 75!

Behind her lay the spent weapon casing labeled, “Revlon Large Nail Trimmer”. Acrylic corpses littered Copper Hill. Ten dead pink soldiers on the Express Lane battlefield.

No more. No less.

The Little Record Player -end

In case you need a refresher (since it took me so damn long to finish) or have just arrived:

part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
***********************************************************************

Later, she was alone. Auntie had gone off to make dinner. Menudo, probably. She could smell the chile and posole simmering. The sound of tortillas. Rolling pin on wood. Slapping dough back and forth between floured hands. Sizzle and smoke as they hit the pan.

Her cousins had gone out front to talk to some boys. They tilted their heads. They giggled strangely. They slid their flip-flops on and off. On and off.

She quietly slipped into the bedroom and into the closet where nobody would hear her.

She cried.

Nobody told her be quiet. Nobody told her to stop being a baby. Most of all, nobody wrapped their arms around her and told her everything would be OK. She hated that most.

And when she finished crying, she went to the sink and washed her face and hands for dinner.

She heard the car pull up about halfway through dinner. She jumped up and was through the front door just as her parents slammed their car doors. She could tell they'd been fighting on the way over. She didn't care.

"Guess what?" she said.

Silence.

"Hey! Guess what?" she insisted.

"What?" her mom said in the voice that meant she wasn't really listening.

"I choose Grandma,” she said.

"What?" her dad asked.

"When you guys get divorced, I'll live with Grandma and Grandpa. I choose Grandma."

And she ran back into the house and shut the door.

brood x

Maybe you have or haven't heard. The swarms have emerged here in DC. Cicadas. Big, black, red-eyed, flying cicadas.

I was pretty excited when I first heard about it. I mean, huge numbers of huge bugs seen only every 17 years. Totally cool. I even planned my little trip so that I'd be back in time. I pictured bugs in my hair, bugs covering my car. Standard sci-fi stuff. Hooray.

I guess it's actually like that in some places, but not here.

Thank God.

OK, I pride myself on not being a girlie girl. I dig most of the hairy, crawly, scaly, and otherwise scream-inducing things other girls hate. I like mice. Used to catch wild ones and keep them as pets. Snakes, lizards and frogs, too.

Spiders. Fascinating. The bigger, the better.

There are, however, two things I can't stand. Flies and roaches. They really get my hairs up. My gag reflex, too.

Imagine my surprise and disgust to find that cicadas look like giant flies. Giant flies with big red eyes.

eauuuuwwww!

People EAT these things.

I'm totally grossing myself out.

But, because I'm a dedicated blogger and reporter of the happenings in my new city, I braved the nausea to take some pictures for you. Not art or anything. Just dinking around with the macro on my consumer-grade digital camera. Lighting insects isn't as easy as you'd think. Even dead, immobile ones (was that redundant?).

I had planned to go to the botanical gardens tomorrow and try to take swarm pictures, but I just don't think I can stomach that. Literally.

They EAT them!

Gag.

Here's a great NPR report that will give you sound samples. The noise is really pretty amazing. Like thousands of maracas in the distance. For weeks. It's the perfect soundtrack for the hot, humid weather we're having.

Just as long as none fly into my hair.

The Little Record Player part 4

part 1
part 2
part 3

Auntie Pauline's house was full of laughing and cheering, and she was at the center of it.

The faded, striped couch was filled with cousins. Auntie sat on a kitchen chair, pulled in from the dining room. Her smile was big, and her eyes said, "You're special and I love you". Most grownups eyes said other things. "You have a dirty face." or "You're making too much noise." or "I'm pretending to think you're cute, but I really don't want you to touch me." She could always tell, and she always tried to make them happy. Whatever they wanted.

She never had to do anything for Auntie Pauline, though. She just did whatever she wanted and Auntie's eyes always loved her.

Today, Auntie's eyes were particularly shiny. They were looking at her, sitting in the middle of the front room, playing records.

Just playing records.

Her cousins had taken all the covers and had them on the couch. She sat on the floor with the record player and several stacks of records. Her cousins would look through the covers and call out a song. She would shuffle through the piles, find the record, put it on the player, and put the needle at the start of that song. Then they'd cheer and everyone listened to the song. They'd cheer and laugh even louder if she sang the song, too.

It was so much fun, but she didn't really understand what the big deal was.

"She must know how to read"

"All the records look the same. They all have yellow labels. How else would she be able to tell them apart?"

"Can you read, mijita?"

She didn't know what to say, so she shrugged. She didn't know what the letters on the labels said, but they were different from each other. There were other things besides the labels. Like the big scratch on the Do Rea Mi record from the time she accidentally tripped on the record player while it was playing. And there was a little chunk missing from the Sesame Street from when she picked it up from the wrong side and it slid out of its cover, onto the sidewalk. On Peter and the Wolf, the label had been peeled back a little. She was curious what was under there.

All the records had damage of some sort. Some was from her. Some was there when she got them. Some happened when she wasn't looking. But that's mostly how she could tell them apart. A long, deep scratch here, a small knick there. She traced them with her finger. She got up to move the needle before it started to skip. She knew each flaw by heart. They made each record unique.

part 5

The Little Record Player pt. 3

part 1
part 2

She knew it was late and she shouldn't be up. She thought if she was very quiet, nobody would hear her.

She knew how to be quiet.

Dad was in the front room, asleep in front of the TV. Mom was in the bedroom. Had been ever since the fight ended. At first, she could hear mom crying. Then it stopped. Nothing but the sound of the TV and her dad snoring. She switched the record player on in the dark and found the record she wanted to hear. Carefully, she set the needle down. The children whispered, "Sunny day. Everything's A OK."

She loved her records. She loved the happy songs. She loved the funny songs. She loved the part in Peter and the Wolf where you find out the bird is alive after all and the storyteller says, "Happy day. Oh, happy day." The stories and the friends. She could be there. Really in there with the people and the music and the laughing. She could go there when there was yelling in her house, and she wouldn't hear it anymore.

There was only one thing she wanted to do more than listen to the records. Read. Her grandma read to her all the time when she visited. Her cousins read to her too. She could see all the books on the shelves and she wanted to get inside them, like the records. Walk in those other places and see what she was missing.

The light flipped on right when the wolf was sneaking up on Peter. She jumped. She hadn't heard anyone come in. She was with Peter. Her dad stood in the doorway. He didn't look mad. He had a half smile and his eyebrows were high above his glasses.

"What are you still doing up?"

"Playing records."

"In the dark?"

"I didn't want to wake mom up."

"Your mom could use less sleep anyway." He sat on the bed.

She thought about mom's messy hair. Her makeup all smeared around her eyes. The funny lines that were always across her face from the pillow. The loud squeaks when someone woke her up and she clenched her teeth together tight. And her eyes. Her angry, hating eyes. How could he want to wake her up?

"All she does is sleep. And when she's not asleep, she's crying or yelling at me about something. Nothing's ever right. She's talking about getting her own place now. Just taking off and leaving the two of us here. I told her not to let the door hit her in the ass on the way out. We'll be just fine without her. Who the hell does she think she is, anyway?"

He sat there rubbing his chin with his big hand. Making a scratchy sound. He put his glasses on top of his head and rubbed his nose where they had been sitting. His eyebrows were low. His other hand was making a fist. She tried not to cry. She knew how he hated that. The record ended. He looked at her. She looked at the record player and picked up the needle. She didn't want it to break again. Last time it broke, she couldn't play records for a long time. It was lonely. She heard the yelling.

Her dad got up and left the room. She heard him go down the hall into the bathroom. He came back out and shut the light. Went into the bedroom. Soon, she heard him snoring.

She removed Peter and the Wolf. Put on a new record. "Come and play...” it whispered.

part 4
part 5

The Little Record Player pt. 2

part 1

She was the center of attention, but she didn't know why.

It was a pretty, spring day and her mom took her to buy a pretty, spring dress. It was yellow with no sleeves and a pink bow on the front. She didn't really like dresses. You spill something on them and everyone's faces turn. And your legs get scratched up when you climb tress and stuff. But she was happy anyway. Because mom was happy. No yelling. No sleeping. Happy.

It was heaven. Mom was so nice. She even got to pick out shoes. The ones with the buckles because mom liked them and called her a little lady when she tried them on. She wanted to wear them home to show dad.

Then they went to the food court to get a hangerburger. And fries. And a coke. She hummed as she ate and mom never told her to shush. Not even once.

"Are you having a good time?"

"Yup."

"Like your burger?"

"Uh HUH!"

"It's fun spending time together."

"Yeah. I like the dress. I won't get anything on it, I promise."

"I know you won't. You're a good girl."

She hums. Eats the last french fry. Licks her fingers. She could do this every day. Every day.

"If your dad and I got a divorce, you would want to stay with me, right?"

part 3
part 4
part 5

The Little Record Player pt. 1

She was the center of attention, but she wasn't really sure why.

This morning she'd been packed off to her aunt's house. She liked going there. There were always people around. Her cousins. Their kids. Their friends. It always smelled like beans and bacon and tortillas and coffee. Mmmm coffee that her parents said she couldn't drink and would grow hair on her chest but Auntie Pauline let her drink anyway. It was mostly milk and sugar, but it was brown like her cousins, and that made her happy enough.

Today, she'd brought her record player and a stack of records. It was easy, because her record player came in its own little suitcase. It was white, nubby plastic with an orange plastic handle and a little plastic fastener that popped when it was shut tight. Pop, pop, pop. She liked to open and close it just to hear the sound.

Inside, it was orange, like the handle, except the turntable and the arm that held the needle were white. There was a little switch that made it go different speeds, 45 or 33, and a little black pop up thingie in the middle so you could play the records with the big holes in the middle.

She had lots of records, but she didn't have all the covers. So she carefully put those in her suitcase, wrapped in towels, so they wouldn't get scratched. They were mostly educational stuff, ABC's and Do Rae Mi, but she also had several Sesame Street records and Peter and the Wolf. Her favorite was, I Love Trash sung by Oscar the Grouch.

Most of the records had pretty, bright yellow labels in the middle.

She wished she could read them.

part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5