If You Listen Closely

Very much did in the sense that I literally do not know where my job is at the moment. But, for the time being I haven't been let go because nobody else including the store owner knows where it is either.

So, I don't wanna risk doxxing myself by posting pictures but goddamn am I tempted because this is not a believable event. This is a cartoon problem. For looneytoons.

But yeah, so, I work(ed?) at a kiosk selling boba tea, right? Freestanding kiosk in the mall with full water and electrical hookups and multiple fridges and sinks and a mini kitchen and the works. Fully functional tea shop. Very important to note that it was there last night, The work chat was discussing another issue last night at closing time. I'll get back to this.

It's been showing signs of being on the way out with how business is being handled lately and I've been considering other options, which is probably why I'm not as torn up about this as I should be, but maybe it just hasn't set in yet, but that's not the point. The point is there's been a lot of shit breaking and not being replaced and nobody mentioning anything about it until I walk into work in the morning and have to figure out why shit like the fucking cash register isn't there today. So I'm kinda used to having to ask questions about big things that nobody bothered to update me on. I was out for two weeks recovering from a surgery, so I came to work this morning assuming there'd be some kind of bullshit, yeah?

So, the question I had to ask the chat this morning was:

Not a text I ever thought I'd have to send in sincerity, but there it is. Because what I found instead was a fenced off patch of discolored tiles and a few holes in the floor where my entire place of employment used to be.

And the answer? Nobody knows! It was there last night when the mall closed, and every single trace of the structure and all its contents including drink making supplies and our safe and cashbox was gone when it opened again. And when I say nobody knows, I mean everyone from last night's closers to the actual (former?) owner of the store jad no fucking clue about this until getting that text from me this morning. For once I am actually the first to know. 🎉.

So. I guess I didn't so much lose my job as had it stolen. Not by AI, but good old fashioned hands-on human beings picking it up and carrying it away somehow. All mall security would tell me was that they were instructed not to tell me anything and have us contact our management. Who also don't know anything. And later on I came across some construction workers around the gravesite of the kiosk discussing filling in the holes, asked them about it, and was told that they "weren't at liberty to say".

So, not only is my job gone in the most literal physical sense of the word, but it was taken in some kind of super secret kiosk extraction in the dead of night without any warning or witnesses and nobody is allowed to speak of it. The store owner said she was gonna figure it out 10 hours ago and still no word back.

My mother in law thinks the FBI took it.

Not any of the other stores around the state. Just the one little kiosk.

Why? Because she loves a conspiracy and is just a little bit extra.

Also because she was around for the massive crackdown on Yakuza-owned businesses in Waikiki (in her homestate) that did actually involve the FBI seizing stores (no confirmation of making kiosks cleanly disappear in the middle of the night though).

Still no word from my job on what's actually going on, but the most likely theory so far is that maybe the kiosk was on lease and got repossessed? The mystery continues

According to the owner, based on what she's been able to find out, the kiosk was not removed legally and they're starting a potentially long process of legal action. I hope she gets to sue the shit out of whoever did it but for now at least I know for sure I'm unemployed.

Really hoping for more details in terms of who/why/how, so I'll keep updating if I learn anything.

For now the summary is: An unnamed entity that is most likely mall management (on account of mall security cooperating with them) stole an entire kiosk and all the contents including money and machinery with barely a trace in the middle of the night grinch-style, with zero warning or explanation, and ensured the silence of both security and the construction crew, in an action that was definitely preplanned and illegal, and as far as I know nobody knows its whereabouts.

Enjoy the unintentionally funniest text I've ever sent in my life

Aaand a close-up:

HEY HI HELLO THIS ONE'S MY FAVORITE

And it pissed me off so badly that I spent the ENTIRE WORK DAY today compiling evidence from every project my team has ever done for her, pulling past emails she’d sent us, putting together an entire case proving that she had been the problem all along. That she got projects mixed up, that she’d made requests that were nonsensical, literally everything you could possibly imagine. Screenshots of emails, reports we’d submitted, EVERYTHING.

This woman in particular has been terrorizing my team for years, her name is almost a slur in my office, I had simply had ENOUGH of her.

I put all of this evidence together and sent it to all of my bosses at 4:30pm. Then I took a long break to eat a sweet treat and drink some tea.

After my break, my bosses all called in an emergency meeting with me and they said they read my report and fucking loved it. And I sat on a teams call with my boss’ boss as she wrote my nemesis the scathing email I had always fantasized about sending, using the evidence I’d compiled, and hit send.

For those of you who aren't familiar, I live in an exceptionally flammable part of the United States, and despite the fact that every goddamn year multiple parts of my state catch fire, destroy homes and kill people, the local assholes insist on getting drunk and setting fire to a bunch of illegal explosives anyway. In 2023, God granted me a Miracle that prevented my house from burning down.

Last year, I had to resort to Psychological and Chemical Warfare to keep the patriotic arsonists at bay.

This year is apparently An Important Birthday for the clusterfuck we have the nerve to call a nation, so despite the fact there is so much smoke in the air that the sun has literally been blood red for the last week, the pyrotechnic fetishists are out in force.

Last year, I hit upon the concept that if my neighbors were going to act like problem animals, it would make sense to use the management techniques on them that you might use on say, a Bear that was doing serious property damage. Thusly, I created The Stench, a nontoxic but FOUL smelling concoction that I could discretely spray around the flammable gatherings and render the area extremely uncomfortable to occupy for the rest of the night, forcing them to give up or move on.

If this seems harsh: There is no story from 2024 because a grass fire was started by fireworks less than 12 miles from me and the high winds put me in the evacuation zone in under an hour. Over fifty people lost their homes. Errant fireworks burning my house down is a very real possibility, and I pay the price in anxiety and insurance premiums.

The Stench is noxious but harmless, and also very effective at building a buffer zone around my home. But sneaking up to parties on foot in this heat is both exhausting and nerve-wracking. There have to be more effective ways to do this

-And there is! It involves Weeds and Business Cards :)

On one hand: FAR fewer fireworks parties this year!

- Only nine to last year's thirteen - three of them had the good sense to be firing their recreational explosives out over the local reservoir - That's far from foolproof - and really bad for the fish - also y'all are RIGHT NEXT to where the Bald Eagles are nesting - but congratulations on at least attempting some risk mitigation!

On the other hand.

This is a story of Man Vs. Machine.

---

Last March, my father attempted to file his Taxes.

My beloved father is a Boomer. Unlike most Boomers, my father is rather handy with technology because he was one of the people that had a not-insignificant hand in Developing a hell of a lot of it. He was studying Computer Science at Cal Poly before the computer science degree existed. I have many fond childhood memories of skipping through the aisles of various electronic and computer part warehouses while Dad described something that either terrified the staff or made them worship him as a God.  He taught himself how to use his smartphone.  Internationally.

So when he saw the option to file digitally with the IRS through the “ID.me” program, he leapt at the chance to celebrate the Federal Government finally entering the Digital Age.

It was all going swimmingly for about six hours, until he was ready to file and the system told him that it needed to verify his identity. 

“Very Well.” said my father, a man unafraid of talking to himself and getting something out of the conversation. “It wouldn’t do for me to get someone else’s return.”

The System told him that it needed him to take a “Digital Image ID”.

a.k.a: A Selfie.

While she escorted me back to the play yards, she explained that every time they have more than three Corgi, they have to put all the Corgs in a separate play yard because they turn into a little gang and bully the Very Large dogs by playing Cow Herding Simulator 5000 with them, and especially if Herschel is there, because corgis are bossy-pants dogs, and Herschel has the bossiest pants of them all and acts as leader.

Despite being a little Don Corgleone to the short bitch mafia, Hershcel is also a Huge Baby and will apparently cry and cry and try to climb the fence and cry and eat people's shoelaces and cry if he is separated from Charlie during playtime, so this means any time that "Corgi Party" is happening, Charlie also has to go to Corgi party, despite being full-height, running cat software and a senior citizen. he copes with being Gulliver amongst the Liliputians by climbing onto the roof of the playskool castle they have for a climbing structure in the yard, kicking the ladder down behind him, and stretching out to nap in the sun while the corgi frolic and gambol around him.

Corgi are dogs that make up and play games with secret rules, like kindergartners. "Everyone bark in sync" is a popular game, as is "follow the leader" and it's companion game "March in a circle around a tall structure like ants caught in a death loop".

So what I was greeted with, when the attendant and I snuck out to the play yard, was the sight of Charlie, sound asleep and flat on his back with his paws crossed over his chest because sighthounds sleep in the stupidest fucking positions, on top of a faux-medieval castle with gargoyles on the corners, surrounded by approximately seven Corgi, all trotting in a circle around him, barking in sync.

"They look like they're preforming some kind of ritual!" giggled the attendant as attempted to get my phone to focus.

"Yeah, they're gonna summon Corgtulhu." I said.

Unfortunately, this made the attendant literally fall on her ass laughing, and distracted Herschel and his compatriots, so they didn't get to complete the summons, and I didn't get the pic.

The attendant kept laughing because apparently she's new to puns, and had mostly gotten it under control by the time we got everyone's leashes on and back out to the front.

The manager was watching the front desk, bemused. Did you get to see them doing the ritual?"

"YEAH!" shrieks the attendant, still excitable with merriment. "THEY'RE- THEY WERE-" The attendant ends up giggling on the floor.

"You okay there Katie?" asked the manager with minimal concern.

"We think they were trying to summon Corgthulhu." I eplain, and Katie screams from the floor. "Wasn't gonna work though, you need a virgin sacrifice and Charlie had an STD when we got him."

It was the manager's turn to shriek. and for Charlie and Herschel to start barking in solidarity.

"That's right Charlie! Your sluttiness saved the world!" I told him, as he jumped up and kicked me in the face.

Anyway, that's why Charlie's nickname at daycare is now "Superman(whore)"

---

Got woken up at 6AM by a phone call from a friend stranded in Montana because of the heat wave and almost no cell service because of their crap provider.

OhSoThat'sHowIt'sGonnaBe.jpg

Ok.

I somehow summon a week's worth of spoons and in less than 30 minutes and 5 phone calls, get them

A hotel

An appointment with a mechanic from 2 states away

A perscription refilled from 2 states away

and A Pizza

Go me.

But then it's 8AM and there are unscheduled live humans at the door and while EVERGENCY MODE is still on, I have already blown through a ton of spoons, and also probably shouldn't meet whoever it is wearing just a pair of bootyshorts that say "CRYPTID" in Gothic Font on my ass.

So I greet them in those shorts and a T-shirt that I manage to put on both inside out and backwards

#nailedit

It is, Fortunately, not the mormons.

it is, Unfortunately, two UPS guys trying to deliver my other in-house friend's new phone except the new guy doesn't know how to operate the "sign for package" device, and the old guy that's supposed to be mentoring him is like, 92, deaf as a post, and doesn't actually know how to operate the device either.

by the way

it is already

over 100 out

it takes almost 30 minutes to sign for the phone

when i get back inside, i discover that apparently the Corgi has learned how to open his kennel from the inside because he is now out of the kennel and waiting for me to come in.

he also has cat litter all over his face because while he was waiting for me he also learned how to open the baby gate to the cat's room and help himself to a cat shit breakfast.

He'll be fine

He's a cattle dog, they're legally required to have at least 1 really disgusting snack they love.

but

more to the point

i have no idea at what point he learned to open his kennel from the inside

has he been staying there out of politeness this whole time??

And

I got other shit to do today.

namely.

I'm seeing a realator

The Devils most pathetic yet effective demons

I get a reminder text that I have an appointment with her

at least

I think that's what it is because what she sends me is: "🏡⏰12:00 ❔"

With the time typed in the middle like that.

She is, according to her profile, at least 80.

so I reply "😎👍"

and then she sends me a string of GODDAMN POST-MODERN EMOJI HEIROGLYPHICS THAT TAKE UP MY ENTIRE SCREEN.

She's on an iPhone so half of them don't even translate across platforms

It takes me half an hour and three different software programs and goddamn wingdings to translate, but she has sent me the address and rules about masking and not wearing shoes inside.

in emoji

instead of like

literally any other format

I am

FASCINATED

It's not fairies

It's Doris.

I'm going to see a prospective house because due to various circumstances, I'm probably going to be moving to the other side of a major metropolitan area in the next few months, but that's not important.

I get to the house

I get a text from the realtor

The realtor is not the person who has been texting me in emoji

The person texting me in emoji is the homeowner, who the realtor says will let me in if I want, she's running late.

Sure

Why not

I put Herschel on leash and go to the front door

As much crime as he commits at home Herschel The Hanukkah Goblin has terrific public manners, and is Very Cute so I'm about 90% sure the emoji fairy is going to let me take him through the house

Door opens.

90-something blue haired old lady with a spine like a question mark and glasses that could be used as telescope lenses opens the door.

"OH [Gallus]! How lovely to see you!"

This woman clearly knows me because she remembers my anniversary was last week and that my sister is back from Australia.

Problem is

I know about 500 geriatric ladies with blue hair, scoliosis and extreme prescription glasses, because I am a member of 2 quilt guilds, the scientific illustration guild, the rocky mountain SCA and stagehand for three different theater companies, so I know everyone's grandma and fuck me if I can tell them apart.

Wait

There's a quilt in thekitchen, visible front hall

I don't know faces but apparently I can recognize applique techniques at 40paces.

"...Doris? From SAQA?"

"YES! Who is this handsome little man?"

Herschel speaks enough English to know that "handsome little man" means "this person will feed me milk bones and bacon if I'm cute enough"

Immediately does a Sit Pretty and Shake.

Doris is bewitched

This is fine, but I also know I'm about to severely disappoint the realtor because there is no way in hell I'm moving into this House.

Because

The reason Doris is moving out is that her neighbor is a Cunt Magnifique and has been harassing Doris and everyone else to form an HOA and "improve the quality of our residents" because this woman has nothing better to do than be a racist-ass busy body, and recently, she's set her husband, a county sheriff on Doris, trying to bully her into signing paperwork and threatening her with legal action and writing her up for bullshit property violations

Ain't putting up with that shit

And neither is Doris, so she's selling all her shit and moving out to live with her grandchildren in Santa Monica.

But she's technologically impaired, so the only indication that there is an estate sale happening is a small paper sign in her front yard.

"Doris." I say, as Herschel makes himself comfortable on the couch for belly rubs and pieces of ham. "Did you tell SAQA or FRCC or anyone on Facebook that you're having the sale?"

"oh, I don't know how to do all that!" She sighs. "I tried to call the Denver post but they just put me on hold for ages..."

"Watch Herschel for 20 minutes and he's only allowed to have that one piece of ham."

Pics of everything

Address, time and pics to Facebook, both quilt guilds she's in, two more I have contacts for, nextdoor, and the local SCA discord for good measure.

It's 12 minutes and Herschel persuaded her to give him at least three pieces of ham.

He is petitioning for a fourth by doing a little puppy dance on the living room rug.

"OK, that's enough ham, people will be here in 10. Where is your cash box?"

Because apparently I'm running an estate sale today too.

It's fine :)

There's about 7 minutes of quiet.

Then

They DESCEND

The first on the scene is DeeDee, who doesn't believe in speed limits. She's arrived with a horse trailer. I remember that she is also moving.

"HI DORIS SWEETHEART WHY DIDN'T YOU CALL I HAD NO IDEA THIS WAS TODAY I WAS GOING TO TAKE ALL THIS TO THE GOODWILL HERE LET ME SET UP ON YOUR LAWN "

DeeDee is 73, and has a special spiritual bond with Hello Kitty. She weighs like 98lbs, dresses exclusively in neon pink sanrio clothes and the kind of eye makeup drag queens aspire to.

She also speaks non-stop at a volume normally associated with jet engines.

Half the horse trailer is already spread out on the lawn.

Doris is putting price stickers on stuff

Herschel is trying to tear open a bag of cotton batting.

This, and the arrival of approximately 56 minivans, five more trucks with horse trailers and Corgi Excitement Screaming alert Cunt Magnifique that something is happening outside.

Madame saunters off her porch up to Doris and Demands to know what's happening, you're supposed to notify the neighborhood and get a permit to-"

Doris, surrounded by her pack of silver wolves, shouts. "OH HELLO! EVERYONE, THIS IS MARCIA. I'VE TOLD YOU ALL ABOUT MARCIA." >:)c

You know those high school house parties you see in movies, where the person invites only a few friends, but those friends call their friends, and those friends call THEIR friends and soon like 500 people show up to one house and someone calls the cops and that one John Mulaney sketch with "SCATTER!" happens?

Old people will 100% do this too, except instead of a house party it's an estate sale on a wednesday afternoon and when the cop shows up there are lawyers present and he is in DEEP SHIT because his wife just spent the afternoon admitting to doing a bunch of wildly illegal shit on tape.

So when we left off, the party had really started getting underway, because Marcia the Cunt Magnifique had decided to crash the estate sale and whine about "we're supposed to coordinate garage sales as a neighborhood" and "your friends are blocking traffic on this cul-de-sac while nobody is home" weh weh-

DeeDee is about ready to throw hands but she is nowhere near the most dangerous of the Silver Silver Wolves.

That's Dr. Ruth.

Dr. Ruth turned 99 this year and went paragliding for her birthday

So you understand just how hard she goes

Dr. Ruth sort of hobbles over and point-blank asks "So I understand you've been trying to start a homeowner's association?" :3c

Marcia

Entirely misunderstanding how much danger she's in

Starts enumerating the TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS of trying to start one, because SOME PEOPLE DON'T RESPECT AUTHORITY and all the paperwork and talking to people and she even had to ask HER HUSBAND. A SHERRIF. To go around and hand people stuff to sign.

Some people, right?

Dr. Ruth nods. Some people. She agrees.

You know.

Her son is a lawyer.

Why doesn't she give him a call?

Marcia, a Moron: Oh that'd be great!

Dr. Ruth, hobbling back to Doris: "Don't worry. David will handle this."

Meanwhile

The Friends-Of-Friends and the Friends-Of-Friends-Of-Friends are arriving, lured in because they heard the words "Longarm Sewing Machine" and "Hand-made quilts"

Various factions present include but are far from limited to: -Probably Six Quilt Guilds -The Denver Art League -The Denver Leather League -The Vikings -The Klingons -The Colorado Wild Game Share -A Pack of Scientific Illustrators -A Pack of Assorted Scientists they brought with them -The Sheep Lesbians -The Horse Lesbians -Three Extremely Competent Finnish People (My Scientific Illustration Professor and her sisters) who immediately take over the estate sale and turn it into an auction to maximize profit and keep the taxes in order.

Someone brings two additional Corgi called "Cap" and "Bucky"

They are Pembroke Corgi, and weigh about 21lbs apiece

Herschel is a Cardigan Welsh Corgi and weighs 42lbs because he's hug even for a Cardigan, and is Delighted with his New Minions.

They worship him as a God and follow him around so every time he sticks his face in something two smaller corgi faces immediately follow, like some kind of adorable cerberus.

Pelts and meat shares are being traded out of the backs of trucks and vans

Someone is making bratwurst.

Intrigued by the Brouhaha, Doris' neighbors emerge.

They are also Geriatric and very nervous, because Marcia has been harassing them too.

They are telling this to the members of these factions that are also lawyers.

There are at least 5 of them so far and David isn't even here yet.

I realize my realtor isn't even here.

I decide to text her.

She is somewhere in the crowd and having a nervous breakdown because She's SO LATE!!!

Ma'am.

It's 103 out.

I was just handed a freshly grilled Brat

Some bitch is incriminating herself on the lawn.

Nothing scheduled is happening.

Come sit in the yard and watch the Corgis play on the Palyskool plastic slide set. They're disassembling it like tiny furry engineers.

Have a bratwurst.

One of the Klingons appears, having physically carried my realtor through the crowd, and gently deposits her on the lawn before handing her a Bratwurst.

Diane, the Realtor, is not much older than I am, and from the preppie swaths of society that has "Never had a dog growing up" and "Didn't Know People Could Just. Make. Blankets?" and "What is this? It's like a hot dog but spicy?"

She is having a LEARNING EXPERIENCE.

One of the Horse Lesbians comes over and compliments Diane on her Dior handbag.

Diane thanks her ans compliments the apparently expensive brand scarf she has on. Do you. Know all these people?

Horse Lesbian explains that she's part of the SCA, and what that is, and that why yes. Her girlfriend Tasha is an armorer. Yes like for knights.

More Livestock Lesbians assemble.

They are pulling off shirts to show off livestock and battle scars, and biceps.

Diane is LEARNING A LOT TODAY.

I am just getting everyone's contact info and making sure Herschel does not consume his weight in bratwurst.

BWOOP!

Uh-Oh.

Marcia's Husband is here.

I step out front.

He has used the siren to largely part the crowd and pull into his driveway but it has closed around him and there is No Escape.

He starts huffing and puffing about blocked traffic and permits and the like, but this is not his usual Can-Bully-Without-Consequences crowd.

These are Grandmas.

Veterans of the 60's protest front who never let up.

He's starting to turn bright red and looks like he's about to cry and I've got my phone out to record whatever Incident is about to occur.

-And a Mercedes pulls up.

It's David.

Dr. Ruth's son.

The Lawyer.

And I emphasize that The because David is not some mere ambulance chaser.

David is the guy that the state sends to prosecute Corporate Fraud and Organized Crime and Other State Departments.

David was part of the team that took down the CO Branch of the KKK.

David is all of 5'4", very round and a balding little man that looks like the Dictonary Definition of "Nebbish" that moves with such intense confidence and authority that he pretty much has the Pillar Men Theme Blasting behind him at all times.

So when he and three other lawyers from the state's office step out of the car

Mr. Sherrif goes from red to while like color-changing octopus and I am like 50% sure he shit himself.

Because what he and Marcia have been doing is Very, Very, Very, VERY, Fucking Illegal.

"mArCiA!" he garbles. "sHuT tHe fUcK uP!"

Marcia is standing in the middle of the cul-de-sac, having spent the last 3 hours recounting to anyone who will listen about the 'measures she's had to take' and now the 5 lawyers that were here are delightedly handing over the paperwork that she had forced on Doris and her Neighbors, and pointing at all the doorbell cameras and witnesses out to the state's top prosecutor.

Friends

I ugly laughed.

FOUR HOURS LATER: -Auction wrapped up with a solid $40K to Doris' name plus pending sales on some of her larger furniture and antiques

Plus whatever David gets in damages from the county sherrif's office.

Marcia and husband are fucking busted

Herschel spent all afternoon running around and eating snacks and is passed out on the floor

Diane is "meeting up with" one of the Horse Lesbians next week.

The sewing machine went to someone else but I did open my purse and found out Doris or someone shoved a bunch of cash in there.

I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT FUCKING HOUSE THAT EMU CAME FROM.

I THINK I KNOW THAT EXACT BIRD.

Except.

It's a RESIVOR.

THAT THING THEY DRAIN WATER OUT OF.

So for a few years there every late summer the city would draw down the water, and the Emus would go "ooh! beach!" and they would go have an amble around the beach and peek in the neighbor's windows and generally terrorize everyone who was not ready to have a 6' dinosaur in thier vicinity.

I know this because when I was still living with my parents, My Dog and I were stalked by one for the better part of a week before they caught him.

So, apparently emus don't live much over a decade, and this was about 15 years ago now, so it's probably not the same bird but likely one of his offspring, but one morning I woke up from a weird scratching and bonking noise outside my bedroom window, thought the squirrels were having particularly Robust Intercourse outside, and rolled over to see an Emu looking in my window.

My bedroom was on the second floor.

Now, part of the roof is less than three feet from the ground which is how I guess he got up there, but now he couldn't work out how to get back down, and had taken to pecking at random bits of roof and window in hopes a solution might present itself. The dog we had at the time was Cody, a 90lb German Shepherd with a personality made entirely of Mashmallow Fluff. He was the sweetest of boys. Ceritifed Therapy Dog. Scared of Mice. Slept on my feet every night.

I recall rolling over, seeing the bird, thinking 'Man, I really hope this is one of those really vivid dreams because this would suck in real life' rolling back over, and seeing Cody on my other side, attempting to hide behind me, crying.

"Aw fuck."

So I go wake up my parents in the next room.

"Hey mom. There's an emu on the roof."

"...What?'

I pointed out the window in my parents room, where the Emu had helpfully followed me. Mom sat up, looked at the Emu, rolled over and asked Dad what the number for animal control was.

It took them

THREE HOURS

to get the Emu off the roof and Honestly I Do Not Blame The Bird, becuase that's a long way to the ground when you are six feet tall and have a brain the size of a peanut, and all Animal Control sent over was two High School Interns with Brooms. Eventually, he more or less fell off the short end, and immediately did a runner out of the yard and down the street, presumably homeward bound.

The next morning, I wake up.

Guess what is outside.

This time, Mom decides she's perfectly capable of hitting things with a broom until they fall off the roof by herself, and the emu is sent sprinting away in much shorter order.

Day after that he's not on the roof but instead in the garage. On top of the car. Stop Climbing things. We name him Jerry, because he feels like a Jerry.

He does not return the day after that.

Foolishly, we are relieved

NEXT MORNING, JERRY IS KICKING AT THE BACK DOOR, INDICATING HE WANTS TO BE LET IN.

Cody is in hysterics. He is a gentle creature, full of love, and desn't like it when there are mice in the house, or the rabbits fight in the yard. This massive, home-invading dinosaur is too much for him. Measures must be taken.

The Neighborhood website has been abuzz with Jerry sightings, and by now everyone knows to which address he must be returned. Also, that the guy has not put up a fence and jerry will be back again tomorrow.

Jerry is currently in the back yard. I am tasked with preventing Cody from having a total nervous breakdown while my parents chase him around the yard with brooms and a rake, until they herd him into the back of the minivan. Mom comes out with a bowl of peas (google indicated it was ok as a treat) and a piece of paper.

YOUR BIRD WILL BE RETURNED WHEN YOU POST PROOF OF A REAR FENCE

it read, in 72-point font, and she propped it in front of him where he sat, Dad taking pics while mom tossed him peas until they got one where he looked suitably bewildered, and posted it anonymously to the neighborhood website.

I assume he started building the fence when Jerry first went missing, but part of me also believes he installed a 10-high (to account for water level changes and the slope of his yard) 300ft long chain-link fence in less than three hours while Mom drove Jerry around to every vet clinic in the city to see if SOMEONE would hang onto him. I was tasked with sitting in the passenger seat with a broom and making sure Jerry stayed in the back. Which he did, actually. he sat very politely and looked out the windows the whole time, having a grand adventure.

He was returned to the house and the owner given an extremely loud and public lecture in the front yard about the responsibilities of animal husbandry and How Resivors Work.

I can only assume that the fense has fallen down and that the Son Of Jerry is having an even grander adventure.

(As usual, all the names have been changed to protect people’s privacy.  LONG POST so press “J” to skip or start scrolling because I can’t make cuts work for Moblie, sorry.)

Back in 2004 I went to a cousin’s wedding and my mom got into Fandom.

Ruth, my Mom’s-college-roommate’s-daughter was getting married to a man of mixed reputability in what had been for several months had been the primary sitcom of the family- mushroom vs. champagne draperies, the bride wanted a small ceremony and the mother of the groom wanted to invite every business contact she had, and then there was the problem of the Rabbis- Ruth’s rabbi had mostly retired but had promised to marry her in her youth, David’s had promised the same and the current Rabbi of Ruth’s synagogue wanted in too, so they agreed to be married by all three Rabbis.  Furthermore, any Jewish wedding requires a Chuppah- a canopy under which the ceremony takes place.  Mom agreed to make one for Ruth and David’s wedding, (MUSHROOM-colored of course, not champagne) and escort it there personally as we were attending the ceremonies.

Alas, the wedding was in Columbus, a terrible place. 

Southeast Ohio is generally a rather nice place- on the far northern end of the appalachia it has lovely rolling hills of deep hardwood forests, a spectacular zoo and many other things a scientifically inclined teenager might enjoy but I was not going to those, I was going to a Wedding, where I had been guilted into being a flower girl on account of being the youngest available cousin, along with my sister.  I spent most of the drive from Colorado in a state of spectacular teenage misery, which was almost entirely obliterated when we got to the hotel.

The guests of the Hotel consisted thusly:

My family (4)

A small herd of fancy-suited businessmen there for some obscure finance meeting (30ish)

A jolly and boisterous horde of Gamers, Cosplayers, Geeks and Freaks present for the World Of Warcraft convention immediately across the street (several hundred)

I didn’t actually know a damn thing about WoW, other than it was something my geekier friends in middle school played, and that it had elves with ridiculous eyebrows, but I know how to make friends with the kind of people who wear nothing but bodypaint and prosthetic ears in public and started talking to the gang of Blood Elves at the breakfast bar while the businessmen huddled together at their table like a group of musk oxen forming up against a pack of wolves.

Eventually mom wandered over and joined in the conversation- after years of making Halloween costumes, stage props, miscellaneous fabric constructions like the Chuppah and so forth, she’d gained an extensive knowledge of what fiber can be made to do, but wanted to know what marvelous things these people were doing with plastics.  She hit it off particularly well with the Troll over his teeth, and they decided to confide in her.

“Hey, here’s a fun thing to do-” Said the blood elf, before trotting over to the edge of the mezzanine overlooking the lobby.  

“LOK’TAR OGAR!”  she bellowed as loudly as her tiny, corseted frame could manage. “FOR THE HORDE!!!” Roared back several dozen Warcrafters, shaking their con-safe weaponry and causing several of the businessmen to duck for cover.

“Yeah, if you need anything, just yell that.”  she nodded, before we parted ways.

Later that night, Mom slipped in the shower and sprained her ankle, which resulted in a moderately panicked but ultimately boring visit to a clinic to get it X-ray’d and acquire a wheelchair.  The next morning, however, we had to proceed to the wedding, and discovered that the elevator was out of service.

A Chuppah, if you’re not familiar with one, is roughly the same dimensions and weight as those pop-up tents they use at gentrified outdoor craft fairs, or about 9 feet long and close to 60lbs when folded up.  This one was closer to 100 once all the memorial images and sentimental fabrics and special tent poles had been added on.    Mom was stuck in the wheelchair, Dad was in a state of near panic at Mom being injured and also having to be somewhere On Time, and my sister and I were liquefying in the summer heat and the bride-mandated mushroom-colored seven goddamn layers of itchy-ass tulle flower girl dresses, barely able to lift the chuppah between us.

In short stairs were not happening and three quarters of us were about to riot but Mom is definitely the smart person in the family because she remembered-

“LOK’TAR OGAR!!”

“FOR THE HORDE!!”

“I NEED SOME HELP!”

Instantly the cosplayers from the night before were there, along with a dozen more.  Two beefy trolls carried Mom down the stairs and clean out to the parking garage, someone else got the chuppah, and the Blood elf managed to get concierge to bring our car around to the curb with our destination already programmed into the (VERY PRIMITIVE) gps.  I thought my dad was going to cry with relief.

“So [Gallus].”  Mom asked me on the way to the wedding.  “People who like videogames. Do they all have Magic Words?”

“Yeah most of them have some kind of phrase like ‘may the force be with you’ or ‘live long and prosper’.  Why?”

She just nodded, storing that fact away for later.

The wedding turned out to be an event in and of itself- The mother of the bride fainted when they kissed, the rabbis nearly got into a fistfight, the mother of the groom fell off the chair and needed stitches, uncle Larry tore his pants on the dance floor then elected to remove them and keep dancing- and I managed to forget entirely about Mom’s question.

*

Last year, we were doing theater set-in at the same time the local theater and culture complex was hosting the small city convention.  It was July, hotter than satan’s own asshole, and the stage pieces were too large for both of our 5’2-and-under asses to move.

I came back out from wresting a Magic tree into the complex to find mom squinting calculatingly at a group of Marvel cosplayers.

“What are their Magic Words?”

“Huh?”

“The words you say when you want to summon them- ‘Use the Force’ or something?”

I blinked a few times, as my heat stroke-addled brain translated that.  “…Avengers Assemble?”

“HEY AVENGERS!” Hollered Mom. “ASSEMBLE!!”

INSTANTLY, an Iron Man and three Captains America sprinted over.

“What can we do Ma’am?” asked one of the captains, sticking rigorously to character.

“We need help moving these set pieces in and you have muscles.”  she explained, and without question everyone pitched in to move a magical forest, the front half of a castle and a dragon’s cave into the Children’s Theater backstage.  The Iron Man politely answered questions about painting metallics on Cardboard for her and all three Captains America lines up and saluted her upon emptying the truck.

“You’re dangerous.” I teased her as they returned to Con.

“Tell me more Magic Words- I need that tall one in purple to help with the lights.”  she said, gesturing to a Waluigi that was about to become familiar with the Children’s Theater Lighting System.

_________________________________

okay. so. this is actually how i got into botany in the first place; i got an unpaid internship at a greenhouse in high school and realized, very quickly, that we live in a jurassic park hellscape where big companies breed plants solely for their looks and performance, and i found that so fucking weird that i couldnt get enough of it and fell down the rabbit hole. i don’t find them bad per say; i find them weird and how they manage their product in terms of policing their retailers is very sketchy to me, but they’re not like, monstanto-level off the shits (yet). with mother’s day next weekend we’re coming up on one of the biggest greenhouse/ornamental plant industry sales days of the year, next to valentines’ day (which favors the rose industry especially), so this is an exceptionally convenient time to talk about this. 

proven winners is one of the biggest ornamental plant companies in the united states, possibly the world. you might know them from their patented white flower pots. they’re centered in california (as, actually, a lot of these large flower producers are) and they manage a HUUUUUUGEEE network of giant industrial flower greenhouses. 

like, you have to understand, all garden retailers have to buy their shit from somewhere, and although the centers and local greenhouses selling proven winners stuff are often small and independent (unless ur talking like…flowerama or something), a large portion of the plants themselves, like many things in capitalism, form an industry of their own dominated by a handful of oligarch corporations, of which proven winners is one. small retailers order bulk products from these companies, should it be through full-color paper catalogs (which exist, btw, and are wild in and of themselves to look at; i actually have a few back home that i keep around solely bc they’re incredibly fascinating in a slightly offputting jurassic park kind of way), online, or through a sales representative for their region. 

it depends on what they’re ordering, but they can buy seeds, plugs (the black trays of like….tiny plants you buy at garden centers to put in planters? the ones that come in, like, six packs? those are called ‘plugs’), and in the case of perennials, woody plants of various ages, among other things. these plants are bred, marketed, and sold on a goddamn industrial scale. it’s wild. 

now….this is where it gets absolutely fascinating to me. this isn’t just proven winners, but proven winners is one of the top contenders of this. some highlights of how plants are actually marketed on an industrial scale: 

-plants come out in collections. like, you have horticulturalist designer people who put their names on some stuff and they all go out as like, The New Hot Thing™. 

-they always promote their top selling stuff, and the plants that won awards, and like, the most popular flower arrangements and stuff. this in and of itself, again, isn’t like…..bad, it just feels weird how plants are marketed as objects rather than living things, you know?

-these plants are 100% bred and optimized for their commercial value and how they look. see the above point about how it feels like they’re treating them as objects. 

-every year, there are new plants, which are put at the front of the catalogue and like, show them off as the Hit New Products. these are all part of the year’s collective collection, so like, proven winners has their 2019 collection all ready on their site in a special little tab: 

FUN INDUSTRY SIDE STORY: looks like they have some new orange petunias this year, which reminds me fondly of the 2017 purge ordered by the USDA of a ton of illegally GMO orange petunias….

you see, orange petunias don’t exist naturally, so what companies do is either 1. systematically breed orange into them, which can take years, or 2. take red petunias and just put in some coding for yellow from the maize genome, which makes them orange. usually, you have to submit all this paperwork and go through a ton of government red tape to sell GMOs, including required trials conducted by the federal government, but what some of these large ornamental seed companies were doing was just….not telling the government and just kind of…pretending that they bred them. so in 2017, a netherlands team noticed that these were like….kind of Suspicious™, and started doing some tests….and accidentally uncovered like, this huge international orange petunia scandal across all these companies, over 30 varieties of illegal petunia being sold internationally. they had to alert the actual EU, which then alerted the USDA, who then gave an actual government order for these large companies to literally burn, bury, or otherwise destroy all their industrial stock of the proven illegal GMO orange petunias. 

small retailers who had bought them assuming that they were legal were allowed to keep and continue selling what they bought, but the actual producers were ordered to just fucking. violently destroy everything. the USDA informed these companies that they could sell them again, but only if they were put through the proper government channels and received proper certification. i checked the old recall list and didn’t see these, so i’m assuming they’re like…Legit, but. im 👀 somebody test these lol

AAANNNNYYway that aside, if you would like to see the Proven Winners 2019 Flower Collection Showcase™, they have a bunch of……weird kind of ads on their youtube channel showing artsy pics of their new shit. to this day i can’t pin down exactly what about them makes me feel slightly uncomfortable, but you really do get a sense that they’re selling an object to preform, which i guess is the point, but…idk, it’s just a very different view of plants, i think, then i personally have. very sci-fi-y, if you will. all their ads are like this; these video are essentially very similar to what you get from their print sales booklets, but in video form.

see, last but not least, my biggest beef with proven winners is the weird way they handle their company. 

you get inspected by the plant police.

im not kidding. for those not very familiar with plant reproduction, you can grow vegetative clones of plants through a process called taking cuttings, where you cut off a part of the plant and put it in a new pot under the right conditions, and it develops a root system and becomes a genetic clone to the parent. obviously, anyone can do this with a lot of the proven winners plants, especially because PW plants, as i’ve noticed, tend to be bred to be more vigorous. 

ok so a couple years back I worked at a local greenhouse and we sold Proven Winners and they were HANDS DOWN managment’s least favorite company to deal with because:

The aforementioned Plant Police, who are the worst possible version of ‘police washout mall cop’ and ‘geriatric bitchy HOA snitch’.  Our local Plant Cop was this woman named “Elise” and her picture was stapled up in the breakroom with instructions to Radio 3 if we saw her.  

I’ll get to Radio 3 in a minute.

their product was uhhh… kind of crap? everything we ever got from them was real leggy, prone to carrying Sudden Death Mold, and frankly just didn’t do as well as some other brands in CO. 

They attracted the WORST customers.  You know the kind- the infamous haircut, knows more about plants than the people with actual horticultural degrees and sixteen cupons but only two of them are for this store, and either on their phone or screaming at their children at the register instead of checking out.

The only reason managment dealth with them at all was  1. People would request PW by name, so managment maked it up a ridiculous percentage and made bank on brand loyalty 2. PW’s delivery trucks would actually show up when scheduled with what was actually ordered so they could be relied upon to deliver, unlike pretty much every other grower :/ 

So it’s fucking MOTHER’S DAY, aka Hell On Earth for greenhouse retailers, and we’re understaffed in Greenhouse because some popular band was playing at the local indie bar Saturday night and everyone but me and Kate called in “sick”, so it’s two of us and sometimes assistant manger craig dealing with literally 3K customers an hour. 

Fucking Elise decides it’s a good day to do a surprise inspection. 

I’m breaking up a fight over at tomatoes when this woman grabs my arm, physically pulls me away from the woman whose order I’m writng down and hisses like a rattler at me “I need to see your greenhouses.”

I winch my arm out and get gouged by her nails. “Sorry, our greenhouses aren’t open to the public, and I’m working with her now.” I’m seven hours into a twelve-hour shift so far after coming in at 5 to unload the trucks, I can’t hear myself think over the echo in the greenhouse, and my panic over crowds has reached such a frenzy that I think my heatbeat could rival a hummingbird’s. I’m dehydrated despite my best efforts, hallucinating smells and my forearms are bleeding profusely from moving roses earlier. I no longer expirience pain or fear from exhaustion, but this woman makes me uneasy.

“I’m with Proven Winners and I’m here for an inspection.”

“Proven Winners are over there by the fairy garden supplies.” I say, still not sure what she’s on about.  I don’t do faces at the best of times and in the current retail-induced feuge I barely register her as a human being. I go back to trying to write ‘amish paste’ for what feels like the fortieth time, and Elise grabs my arm again and DIGS HER NAILS IN, before physically pulling me out the back door and towards the greenhouses.  

The first of the Quanzat huts/greenhouses is filled with columbines, one of the few non-crop plants that’s grown on-site because they’re in such demand and grow well here. Elise points at the rows and shakes my arm.

“WHERE ARE THESE FROM?” she demands. 

“Here? Ma’am this place is off-limits for customers, if you have questions I can get the greenhouse manager-”  I fumble for my radio (we all got walkie-talkie type radios because yelling over a 13-acre property is impractical) , and try to call the manager.  “Radio Adam? There’s a lady who needs some questions answered in Greenhouse 1?”

“NO I NEED TO SPEAK TO JEFF.” she shrieks, name-dropping the owner. “TELL HIM ELISE [REDACTED] IS HERE FROM PROVEN WINNERS AND IF HE DOESN’T GET HERE FOR AN INSPECTION I’LL HAVE THE POLICE SHUT DOWN THIS ENTIRE FACILITY!” she howls at me.

This Woman, I decide, Is Out Of Her Goddamn Gourd.  The mangers are all up to their armpits today and even if they could hear me wouldn’t be able to physically wade through the crowds for a good 10 minutes.  I click my radio over to Channel 3.  Channel 1 is for directing delivery trucks. Channel 2 is for staff. Channel 3 doesn’t work- it doesn’t connect but it DOES make your radio make a very loud higher-than-most-people-can-hear EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE noise.

This summons The Dogs.

Jeff’s family is from West Texas where the land is vast, the coyotes are many and nobody fixes thier animals, which is how he found and adopted two of the strangest dogs I’ve ever worked with.  Teddy and Bob are Anatolian Shepherd/Rhodesian Ridgeback hybrids, which is to say they clock in at 125lbs each, with body-bulder like reddish gray bodies, black masks and mane of fur that tapers into a full-body mowhawk of long hair along thier backs.  Jeff had to dock thier ears and tails for health reasons which really only adds to the illusion that Jeff has a pair of hyenas.

I can hear the crowd outside shouting as they race out from thier hole under the potting shed and they barrel into the Quanzat hut and stand on either side of me, snarling and bristling like they were trained to, which makes Elise finally let go of my arm and back up.  In an impressive feat of teleportation, Jeff turns up three seconds later.

“YOU!”  Elise and Jeff mutually bellow at each other.  The Dogs snap at the air.

“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU STILL HAVE THOSE THINGS.”  Elise shrieks, picking up a potted columbine to throw.

“I’M SURE THAT YOU STILL HAVE A RESTRAINING ORDER.  GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE AND LEAVE MY STAFF ALONE.” counters jeff.

“oh shit i’m bleeding.” I say, belatedly realizing she’s gouged holes in my arm that have been freely bleeding for at least three minutes now.  Everyone takes a moment to stare at my arm which is looking like a prop from a Tarintino film.

“Actually, go have a seat in my office.” Says Jeff, suddenly, coldly calm. He takes out his cell phone and dials 911.

Elise screams, throws the potted columbine, and is promptly tackled by assitant manager Craig, who had gone around the back. Jeff ducks and the pot clips me in the face becuase that’s just how this day was going.

Anyway, I got a zillion pictures taken of my arm, had to give a statment and then went back to work because it was literally me and Kate covering the entire greenhouse on our busiest day of the year and as shit as that was I couldn’t abandon her to the Hordes.  Got double overtime and hazard pay for the full day so I wouldn’t narc to the labor board over it, and The Dogs refused to leave my side which really improved customer’s attitude towards me. 

It’s time for another Installment of Family Lore from my wierd-ass childhood!

Story contains: poor childhood decisions, profanity, extremely poor animal handling practices, and a semi-graphic description of an injury.  Mind the content warnings, your health comes first. As usual, all names have been changed to protect everyone’s privacy.  rest of the story under the cut to avoid a five-mile post.

*

This is the story of the first time I said the word “Fuck” In front of my mother.

When I was a kid, my parents would drive to Ohio from California every other summer of so to visit my Mom’s family, who never figured out that they can escape. Four days is a long ass time to be a small child in the back of an unairconditioned van with a bunch of rotting bananas but it was worth it for being able to more or less run wild through the Ohio woods.

My mother’s family consisted of my grandparents Polly and Bobby, and her younger brother, Bobby.  Bobby has a saint of a wife named Stephanie, and three children.  My sister was very fond of cousins Samantha and Amanda.  

Due to a combination of Ye Olde Misogyny and post-delivery drugs, for about five generations there, the men had been naming all the children, so literally every AMAB person born into the family was named “Robert” and immediately shortened to “Bobby”.  Uncle Bobby very nearly did this to his firstborn, wich would have brought the total number of Bobbies to 8 between the miscellaneous cousins and uncles, when Stephanie put her foot down and named him Jonathan Jackson the second she found out what sex he was.

Cousin JonJack is still my favorite cousin- he has a heart big enough to house every creeping and crawling thing on this planet, and a quiet determination to make things right with the world, even if that means doing something completely batshit insane.

We were camping at a place near West Branch State Park, at what is advertised as a “Luxury Campground next to a Private Lake” but is really an RV collection next to a glorified sump.  It has the extremely redeeming feature of being smack in the middle of Northeast Ohio’s dense hardwood forest, and since we had parents that grew up in the area and had passed a reasonable amount of scouting knowledge onto us, we were turned lose after breakfast and told to return by dark or if anyone got hurt.  This was splendid, as the woods were full of interesting things like nests of day-old rabbits, their hearts visible as they beat against their delicate rib cages, shimmering black rat snakes longer than we were tall, hives of wild bees, intricate in their geometric structure and remarkably patient as long as you didn’t poke them.

The Sump was even better- it had dozens of baby snapping turtles for the catch-and-releasing, catfish twice the size of any cat, a plethora of bugs and worms and crawdads and families of duck and best of all, Arthur, The Swan.

has given thier child

an airhorn.

Lovely family.

Around this time last year thier grandmother came to visit and gave them honest-to-goodness home-made black-powder Cherry bombs direct from Texas, which the boys immediately took to the most flammable patch of chaparral in the neighborhood and set off six of them at once, resulting in a small wildfire, seven emergency response units and a helicopter, a Long Stern talk from the fire department and Karen getting in a screaming match with Child Protective Services and a sizeable crater in the middle of the field.

At least according to Olivia the ER nurse and neighborhood gossip. I was out of town at the time and believe about 80% of that becuase I saw the crater where there had not been a crater a week before, and becuase karen threw a shoe at me the one time I asked if she was alright when she was having her weekly drunk-cry on the porch.

But I Digress.

1. It’s been pointed out to me that Golden State is an NBA franchise and not an institution of higher learning. To be fair, Diane is 84 and in an Alzheimer’s unit, and I know fuck all about sportsball. Perhaps her grandson lives in San Francisco.  Regardless, we all had a good time and I was sent home with leftover bean dip.

2. I sometimes misspell things becuase I have multiple learning/reading disorders and Public Education in the US is terrible. I’m funny anyway.

3. Last I heard, Richard had gone to live with the other, less pyrotastic set of grandparents, so maybe there is hope for them yet.

(As always, all names have been changed to protect people’s privacy):

The neighborhood consists of a 206 pallette-swapped versions of the same three houses surrounding the largest hospital in the next six counties in any direction, surrounded immediately by three ranches on one side and roughly 100 miles of uninterrupted rocky mountain wildreness on the other.  It’s seperated from the main city (If you can call a city with only the bars and Denny’s open after 9PM a city.  Which you can’t) by a large mountain ridge and connected via a small canyon highway.  Hence, the neighborhood consists primarily of:

Middle-Class Suburban White People ™

People who’d be too poor to afford this neighborhood normally, but are subsidized by the hospital.  Olivia the ER nurse, for instance.  They’re terrific.

People with Major Medical Conditions and Their familes, who live nearby, also subsidized by The Hospital.  

Old Rural People who remember when Durango had only the train track and no paved roads and was mostly populated by cattle and will tell you they were present at the Alamo if you let them keep talking.

Wildlife that was here first and has no intention of moving.

This is a story about the first learning about the last. 

Staci-With-An-I-From-Ventura-California introduced herself to me as that while I was walking the dog by the playground, as I tried to keep her preschooler twins (there are SO MANY goddamn twins in the neighborhood.  I mean, we’re right next door to an IVF clinic BUT STILL) from jamming thier fingers up Charlie’s nose but fortunately he thinks children are hilarous and decided to lick what I sincerely hoped was jam off thier faces.

“Hi I’m [Gallus]. Hey, kids, be gentle with dogs-”

“Do you live here?”  She asks in what I would find out later is her normal interrogative voice, but sounded to my untrained ear like a member of the spanish inquisition had reccived operatic training then took up chain smoking.

“Yeah?”

So when I was in second grade I broke my leg.  Or more accurately, the girl I was head over heels in love with broke my leg.  We were in after school care, milling about the playground in the september heat, and Erica decided to liven things up by telling me to lie down on the ground while she jumped off the top of the playset because she saw it on TV and If I Really Loved Her I’d Do It.

In my defense, I was seven.  In hers, Erica had problems the way most people have family heirlooms.  

She was probably aming for my chest but thankfully missed and slammed her 65lb body feet-first onto my leg, then tumbled forward and got a piece of tambark in her eye.  Being concerned that she might have hurt herself jumping on me, I tried to get up and…

I don’t recall my leg hurting.  It was more an intense and sudden lunge of panic that something was WRONG but I was unable to identify what, beyond my foot not obeying my brain anymore and sticking out sideways at an angle I’d normally have to work for.  I called out to the two teenagers that were supposed to be watching us and eventually they disentangled long enough to come look at me, shaking and only holding myself up with the aid of the slide, and declared that if i wasn’t bleeding I should shut up and walk back to the outbuilding with the rest of the kids.

It is worth noting here that I was a supremely unattractive child, bones growing almost too fast for my skin to keep up with, with joints that bent too far and the physical coordination of a three-legged gazelle on an an acid-coated escalator, so I was also nearly constantly hurting myself doing one dumb thing or another.  Maybe Tiffany and Dylan had legitimately forgotten thier first-aid training.  Maybe they didn’t care or thought I was faking.  Regardless, I had to listen to them, so I stood up as best I could and tried to follow.

I lurched along after the group like a particularly pathetic zombie, growing increasingly distressed about not being able to perform normal motor functions, eventually managing to convince Tiffany that we should call my mom to tell her to pick me up early.  She couldn’t be bothered to look up my parent’s work number, so I ended up calling the home number and telling the answering machine that I hurt my leg and couldn’t walk.

Mom, being at work, wouldn’t hear the message until she got home three hours later.  In the meantime, I crawled onto the aged futon and lay there listlessly, watching the ceiling times twist and contort as I tried not to have a meltdown in public.  I distinctly recall wondering if I was going insane like in the movies, and if they made straight jackets in my size.

What had actually happened was that Erica had broken my Tibia (the big lower leg bone) in two which is a serious fucking emergency in anyone but particularly in a chronically underweight and anemic child.  So for three hours, I lay there, slowly bleeding out.

So Mom arrives at Five PM like normal with the kiddie wagon because she assumes I’ve twisted my ankle or some other kind of nonemergency and finds me “actually gray” on the futon, which you may recognize as a color healthy human children aren’t.  She hauls me home post-haste and immediately into the car to go to the closest Urgent Care, not wanting to wait for an ambulance to Stanford hospital in rush-hour Bay Area traffic.  

We arrive, and mom begins describing my symptoms to the admitting nurse, who interrupts her to demand paperwork information.

“What’s the Kid’s name?”

“[Gallus] [My Dad’s last name], I’ll write everything down for you just- I think she’s going into shock-”

“And your name?”

“Lucy [Mom’s last name]”

“…are you this child’s legal guardian?”

“Yes! Here, this is my ID and Insurance, just please get someone to see her I’ve never seen her like this-”  Mom offered her, getting frantic.

“Sweetie.” Nurse Horrible leaned over the counter to squint at me over hier horn-rimmed glasses.  “Is this your mother?”

“Yes?” I replied, watching her wobble and distort like an owl on acid, vision going black around the edges.

“What’s your parent’s anniversary?”  She demanded as I melted over the edge of the wagon like one of Salvador Dali’s watches.

In Nurse Horrible’s defense:

1. Mom was already professionally known by her maiden name when she married Dad, and since he’s not a stick in the mud and name-change paperwork was a fucking pain in the 90′s, she’d never changed it.

2. Mom is a round, soft-faced woman with pale eyes and rosy complexion and at the time I looked like Brown-eyed Gollum in a  He-Man wig.  I don’t look like her. I don’t look like my dad either.  I look like my Dad’s sisters. Kind of.

3. You are supposed to keep an eye out for kidnappings and abuse.

On the other hand:

1. I was able to recite my parent’s anniversary, my home address, knew both of Mom’s middle names and like five other things that a kidnapped kid probably wouldn’t know.

2. I was very obviously fucking dying.

Eventually Nurse Horrible sat back and told my mom to go wait with me and the doctor would be out soon.  Mom compiled, and sat with me, trying to keep a conversation going with me about how I’m being so brave and yes those plants are fake, you don’t have to go to school tomorrow, no they don’t have a fish tank here but that would be a good idea-  

Until I started blacking out.  

Mom’s admittedly very good “Don’t Panic In Front Of The Injured Child” snaps when she has to start shaking me awake, and starts screaming for help, anyone, anyone please my child is dying-  Which summons a doctor from the back, where she’d been wondering why it had been so quiet.

Dr. Awesome immediately has me transferred to a gurney, hauled into the back and…  I only kind of remember what was happening at this point, but I remember the big old bag of blood, getting sticky pads on my chest and a plastic mask on my face.  

Some time later I remember waking up and feeling MUCH better, at which point I wanted to sit up and ask everyone what they were doing to me out of legit curiosity.

Dr. Awesome did a very good job of explaining

that we were going down to get an X-ray

what an X-ray was

That my not getting radioactive fire breath from X-rays was kind of a loss

WOW OK

So this bone is called your Tibia, and this is where it’s broken.

That IS a really big gap for what’s supposed to be a sold bone, and all my blood was leaking out of there, so we’re going to have to reset your leg and put it in a cast-

Yeah you won’t be able to walk but you should eat as much ice cream as possible

Tell your mom that the Doctor said that-

What’s all that noise?

MEANWHILE, out in the waiting room, Dad had arrived to comfort Mom and be there to see me, followed shortly by the Police.

“Sir, Ma’am, can I see your IDs?”

“Sure, why?” Said Dad.

“Is the child that was brought in here earlier yours?”

APPARENTLY, when Nurse Horrible told Mom to sit and wait for the doctor, instead of telling the doctor there was a dying kid in the waiting room, she’d called the police to report a kidnapping. So  now the cops are there, Horrible is trying to convince them that My Own Mother Has Kidnapped Me, Dad is beyond confused, Mom’s ready to cut a bitch and Things are getting real tense when Dr. Awesome stops the conversation with:

“[HORRIBLE], THAT IS NOT THE PROCEDURE, AND THAT KID CODED. CONSIDER YOURSELF FIRED. PLEASE ESCORT HER FROM THE PREMISES.”  then hastily explained to my parents that my heart hadn’t stopped for long and given that I was asking informed questions about the nature of radiation, I probably didn’t have brain damage.

“YOU CAN’T FIRE ME!” Shreiks Nurse Horrible, and while she might have been right about the correct precedeures regarding the firing of a medical professional in the state of California, she was wrong to pick up and throw the vase of fake flowers at my Mom, which even I managed to hear from the back where I was eating Jello with the Much Cooler Nurse.

At the sound of the Crash, Much Cooler Nurse ran to the doors and started giving me a play by play:

“Aw, now she’s done it the crazy B-” She glanced back at me. “…uh, butterfly.”“Yeah, Yeah! Dogpile!  Get her out of here!”“Oh great now I’m gonna have to stich up his hand too.”“C’mon what did they teach you at cop school?  Cuff her!”“Your momma is fine, sorry kid.  Been waiting for her to lose it for a while now.”“Yeah that’s right, walk away and leave me with all the paperwork again.”“Ok Sweetie your parents can come in now, do you need anything else?”

“Was Dr. Awesome right that I should eat as much Ice Cream as possible?”

“Yeah, also you should get sprinkles.”

“I like oreos better.”

“Them too then.”

I ended up being in the cast for five months and my foot STILL sticks out sideways.  

Welcome to another family Lore! Content warnings for Insects, drug use (medical, not illicit), aliens, alcohol mention, really poor life choices and leather.

As usual, all the names have been changed to protect people’s privacy.  If you want to share this story on other sites, PLEASE include a link back to the original post!  Thank you, and enjoy:

A couple Octobers ago, I had to do some yard work.

One of the side effects of mom keeping a stocked bird feeder is that the sides of the driveway and entire section of front yard that touches the street have been seeded with several hundred sunflowers by the birds, who like lunch to go apparently.  It’s really nice- they don’t need any more water than summer thunderstorms bring and make a pretty privacy shade between my parent’s house and the street.  It’s full of birds and butterflies and local bees and is just generally awesome.

Until about October.

Once we have the first frost, the sunflowers start to die, slowly collapsing under their own weight and the lovely birds and butterflies all scarper because the yellow jackets have realized that they can chew holes in the stems of the dying sunflowers and lap up delicious sugary plant juice.  Being big fans of Sugar water, the wasps then defend their sunflower stalks with the vigilance and aggression to rival a dragon on it’s hoard.  My family is pretty live and let live when it comes to wildlife but ALL of us are very allergic to yellow jacket stings, so this is a bit of a problem.

Since the Yellow Jackets are very territorial and tend to just stick with their favorite snack, we theorize that if we just lop the stems off and pile them in the back corner of the yard, all the wasps will stay over there and we can use the driveway again in peace.  It’s a family plan of action, but since mom was recovering from hip surgery, dad is even more allergic than most of us and my sister was in the Philippines, it was a job for Me, specifically.

The Yellow Jackets would be angry with me moving their sugar buffet, naturally.  I could barely go out the get the mail as it was, God help me if I started thrashing the sunflowers.  So I did some research, and came up with a plan.

Firstly, Yellow Jacket stingers aren’t that long and can be repelled with sufficiently heavy clothing, like my mom’s old motorcycle jacket, gloves and chaps.  If it can repel gravel flying at you at 70 miles an hour, it can probably stop an angry wasp or twenty, right?  Lacking her helmet, my choice of facial protection is a plastic respirator, reflective swim goggles and a gimp mask from the props closet.

My parents do political comedy theater.  The gimp mask isn’t even in the top 10 of weird shit they have in the props closet.

Next, they’re sensitive to strong odors and most bug sprays, so I douse my idiot ass in high-grade DEET, completely failing to read the warning label about not exposing yourself to fumes for extended periods of time OR remembering that I am on bipolar medication that leaves me supremely fucked up when exposed to DEET.

Additionally, it’s widely recommended that you take benadryl beforehand if you think you’re going to be exposed to an allergen.  It’s NOT recommended to take anything like benadryl at all, ever if you’ve got any kind of dopamine/serotonin problems, like the aforementioned Bipolar Disorder.

Also, the best tool for hacking hundreds of overgrown sunflowers off at the base is a Machete.   That’s like, an actual fact, not me being an idiot, for once.  I collect my machete, Brutus, from his usual place in the back of the Ford POS.

Finally, Yellow Jackets are exclusively Diurnal and sluggish when it’s cold out, so I’m gonna take my stoned, leather-clad, machete-wielding ass out there in the middle of the night to do this.  Since my hands will be full of Machete and Sunflowers, I won’t have a free hand for a flashlight, so I take my dad’s oversize book lamp and clip it to the back of my jacket collar.

So, you know.  Totally Normal sight if you happen to be up at 3 AM.

And for about the first… half hour or so it actually goes great.  The DEET hasn’t leaked into the respirator yet, I’m slashing away and making good progress on the sunflowers and the wasps are sluggishly crawling over me, half-hearted buzzes of rage, but can’t find a way in through the head-to-toe leather.  Most of them are distracted by the light, crawling distractedly over the lamp and occasionally across my goggles, looking as bufuddled as an arthopod can look.  I’m a fucking genius.  

I start to feel giddy with success.  I have outwitted an entire swarm of insects! I am engaging in successful terraforming!  Given that one sting could send me to the ER, I am dancing with death iteslf!  It’s 3AM and nobody else is out, so I decide to start singing.  I have the voice of a tone-deaf crow and I pick Bean Pháidin by Planxty to sing, probably for the tempo.  My half-assed attempt at gaelic and off-key corvid voice probably sound extra hilarious through the respirator.

It is at this time that Todd comes out.

The more sensible among you were probably wondering earlier why the hell my family just didn’t ask a neighbor or hire a service to come clear them if we’re all allergic.

1.  Absolutely nobody short of an exterminator will come out once the word “wasps” is said and that’s expensive.

2.  My neighbors consist of:

Mr. Drossel, the Lawyer who while a legal genius, is somewhat lacking in the physical coordination department can’t be trusted with anything sharper or larger than a spoon

The Stoffels, who are good and competent people but were away in Uganda at the time.

An old folks home full of Alzheimer’s patients

Todd

Todd is in his forties and probably reasonably competent with yard tools but there is little love lost between my family and Todd-  He’s trained his dog to shit in my parent’s yard so he doesn’t have to pick up after it, parks his horse trailer in the middle of the road so traffic can’t get through, throws semi-weekly house parties that have to be broken up by the cops and leave broken glass everythwere and mows his lawn at 11 PM.

Additionally, Todd  is prone to the mental complications of many a mediocre man, namely that he would much rather live in a paranoid an dangerous constructed reality wherein he is the subject of many fictional persecutions because that means he’s Important rather than admit that his life is pretty ok and that he’s not doing anything that would warrant men in black suits chasing after his ass.  If there’s a conspiracy theory out there that could potentially be worked into a victim complex, Todd believes it hook, line and sinker.

I am alerted to Todd’s presence by a soft, awed “Oh my god.”  

I turn around to find him standing in the middle of the road wearing a t-shirt, boxers that need adjusting to hide his penis better and a single flip-flop.  I can smell nothing but DEET and my own marinating flesh but it’s a fair bet he’s been into the Pabst Blue Ribbon again.  We stand in silence for a moment, one of the several dozen wasps swarming on me making the best go it can at my respirator in a misguided effort to sting me inside my nostrils.  I am about to speak up and assure him that I am only doing horticulture and not felonies when he interrupts.

“You’re an ALIEN.”  He gapes.

I stand there for a minute.  I’m nearly done, but the fumes are getting to me and I’m covered in impotently furious wasps.  It’s 4 AM now and I haven’t slept in close to 30 hours.  I don’t want to try to explain this to Todd.

“Sure.” I shrug, before going back to the Sunflowers.  Why deny this poor man a drunken fantasy?

“I- I’m an important human.” Todd says, still wearing dirty boxers that are falling off his ass and a single flip-flop. “Lots of connections. Government connections.”  I slash faster.

“Maybe you don’t speak english.” He realizes after a few more minutes of standing in the road.  “You’re from like.  Quasar or something.”

He drunkenly watches me for a few more minutes.  Normally this would be a cause for worry but I have a machete and he has inadequate footwear so I’m feeling good about my odds.  He wanders off, and I take the next load back to the far corner of the yard.

When I come back out he has a camera.  Like, one of those cheap disposables that still has film.  It’s 2016. I don’t even know where he GOT that thing.  And he’s standing out in the road, still in his shorts and a single flip-flop.  Man can locate a goddamn kodachrome but can’t find two shoes.  

So I do what any chemically altered and sleep-deprived person does, and strike a pose.  

Todd goes BANANAS, and starts snapping away on his crappy little camera, and we have ourselves Milkyway’s Next Top Model shoot out there in the yard.  I pick up random objects and pretend to be confused by them. I stand on the roof of the car and hold a USB up at the night sky like I’m looking for a cell signal. I fucking vogue because why not.  

Todd is crying with happiness.  “I KNEW YOU WERE REAL.”  He sobs, snapping away. “I’M GONNA BE SO FAMOUS.”  He loses his flip-flop in the excitement as I climb on top of the mailbox and make a Peace sign at him.

It’s 4:30 AM and we’re out in the middle of the road and I’m doing my best Tyra Banks despite the fact that I’m 5’2” and wearing motorcycle gear that’s three sizes too big for me when the guys who deliver the paper roll up.

Jamie and Miguel stop the truck, leaning out the window and over the cab (Miguel drives, Jamie stands in the bed and tosses papers out the back because fuck OSHA) at us two morons in the headlights.

“¿Que cojones estás haciendo?” asks Miguel, entirely reasonably.

I pull the mask and goggles off and walk up to the truck.  “I was doing yard work and didn’t want to get stung by wasps.  I dunno what he’s on about.  If you have my paper I can take it in.”  I probably look like hell and am still covered in wasps, but I don’t care.

Jamie hands me my paper, I wave bye and go into the house, leaving three extremely confused men in the road.

And that’s how I made, then completely destroyed my neighbor’s night.

Content Warnings: Religion, food, symbolic cannibalism, symbolic gore, penis mention, Blasphemy, SO MUCH BLASPHEMY, weapons, war mention.  Mind the warnings and your health always comes first. Its a HILARIOUS story, I promise.

As always, all the names have been changed to protect people’s identities.  This is a long one, so Press J now if you want to skip it.

When my dad was a young man and still a practicing catholic, he participated in a small church communion that nearly got him and six other people excommunicated.

Father Patrick ran a small church outside of California Polytechnical and tended to be… rather more liberal in his interpretations of scripture than most of the church was, which made him something of a hit with the local students and liberally-inclined populace.  Pat went to all manner of civil demonstrations, condemned the shit out of the vietnam war and the politics that lead to it and so on.  In January of 1969 a series of incidents lead him to start exploring “nontraditional” means of holding Mass as a means of reaching out to his community and exploring his own faith, which ultimately culminated in the 1969 Easter Mass Incident.

For those of you who weren’t raised catholic, Communion is this ritual where you become one with Jesus by eating a really horrible bland wafer cookie and taking a shot of wine (called hosts), which then *literally* become the flesh and blood of jesus in your mouth, allowing him to become one with you.  It’s big McFucking deal, and you have the opportunity to take communion at every mass.  All this had to be explained to me second-hand because after this and Dad’s 51 days in the army, Dad decided he wouldn’t inflict religion on any children he might have in the future.

*

“Hey dad,” Six-year old me asked the first time he told me this story after my practicing friends were talking about getting wine at church. “Isn’t that cannibalism?”

“We’re getting to that.”  He waved.