‘Plop’ is my favorite onomonopoea

It is also the sound of the Professor’s phone sliding happily into her beer.

I don’t care for Johnny Jump Ups mostly because I don’t care for Jack Daniels’.

The cute guy at the table had been slapped in the face by a boob at the same strip club Exador took me to. Ha, Exador just doing a favor for a friend has done more to give me good drunken stories to tell cute boys than he could have possibly guessed.

Heilsa, Ex. I drink to your health. You are a good man.

Tomorrow, Mack is going to cause my car to be magically fixed. I don’t know how. I don’t care. I’m going to get there first thing in the morning, write down everything he says, and follow those directions like they’re orders from god, and hand out money to whoever needs money handed to them. I will think about nothing. I will just do it.

And, as usual, I will owe the man big.

A drink to his health as well.

And one to Sarcastro, who came along like a tipsy teenage girl, bumping her hips against everything as she staggered to the bathroom. And there’s me, a record stuck in my groove, bam, skip, and on to something new.

I don’t forget that, Sar, not ever. Here’s to you, my friend.

All Over Tarnation

I walked all over tarnation today at lunch, which is good, since I didn’t get a walk with the dog this morning.  I’m feeling strangely calm and at peace.  Hopefully this means that, once I get this car shit straightened out, I will be able to settle into my birthday with nothing to worry about but getting the Butcher to the airport.

I went to get a copy of Invisible Cities, which I’m sure I’ve told you is my favorite book of all times.  The conceit is that Marco Polo is sitting around shooting the shit with Ghenghis Khan, telling him stories of all the cities he’s seen.  I loved the book already, but when I got to page 127 and saw that one of Polo’s cities was named my middle name (I spell it Teckla, though), I felt like the book was written especially for me.

The story of the city of Thekla goes like this:

Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fence, the sackcloth screens, the scaffoldings, the metal armatures, the wooden catwalks hanging from ropes or supported by sawhorses, the ladders, the trestles.  If you as, “Why is Thekla’s construction taking such a long time?” the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long brushes up and down, as they answer, “So that it’s destruction cannot begin.” And if asked whether they fear that, once the scaffoldings are removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they add hastily, in a whisper, “Not only the city.”

If, dissatisfied with the answers, someone puts his eye to a crack in a fence, he sees cranes pulling up other cranes,  scaffoldings that embrace other scaffoldings, beams that prop up other beams.   “What meaning does your construction have?” he asks.  “Waht is the aim of a city under construction unless it is a city?  Where is the plan you are following, the blueprint?”

“We will show it to you as soon as the working day is over; we cannot interrupt our work now,” they answer.

Work stops at sunset.  Darkness falls over the building site.  The sky is filled with stars.  “There is the blueprint,” they say.

God, is that not something amazing?

Here is the end of the book:

And Polo said: “The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together.  There are two ways to escape suffering it.  The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it.  The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”

Damn, that makes me tear up every time I read it.  Every time.  Hurray for literature!

Could I Love a Man who Hated My Car?

Yes.

Could I love a man who hated my dog?

No.  Deal breaker, that one.  Afraid, uncomfortable, ill-at-ease–fine.  Hate Mrs. Wigglebottom and I can only assume you secretly hate me.

Speaking of Mrs. Wigglebottom, I’m so tired and frazzled over the whole car thing and my need to be at work at a decent hour so that I can leave if I have to that I forgot to take her for a walk.

Also, there is no Dr Pepper in the house.

But, knock on wood, I think I am mere days away from being able to acquire tinycatpants.com.  I will then redo all my cafe press stuff and worldwide fame and fortune will be mine!

Here’s why I feel bad, because, in general, I have no real talent or special skills.  If your car breaks down, you’re not going to take it to me.  If you take the evening to address my car problems, it’s not like I can come out the next night in my overalls and lay under your truck and talk intelligently about how, if you just hand me those pliers, I’ll have you a new thingamabobber put on here in no time flat and I’ll need to machine you up a new dohicky, but damn, I can do that in my sleep.

No, America, my skills lie in writing things that amuse people, very simple crocheting, basic sewing, and Midwestern desserts.

There is literally nothing I can do to even things up.  I just have to graciously accept it.

I don’t know.  Maybe that’s a part of friendship that I’m shitty at, letting go of the idea that the scales must balance.  You just are in debt to each other in ways that can’t be repaid.

Okay.

Speaking of friends, since we’re just wandering around my uncaffinated brain, I’m secretly charmed by how square Coble’s trolls are.

I consider myself to be kind of square, but I always assumed that, if a married couple could think it up to do it, and everyone was enthusiastic about it, it wasn’t immoral.

Folks even squarer than me disagree.

Just to get a little “God the patriarchy sucks” on you, don’t think I didn’t find it very interesting that Coble’s troll would describe his fantasy of Coble’s behavior as “hateful.”

Let me just say that it doesn’t make a girl feel very confident in “Dan Menard’s” love of women that he perceives penetration as a hateful act.