Also, I Have Had to Fire the Dog

After the Butcher sassed me about my pizza-making skills, I ordered Mrs. Wigglebottom to eat him.  You’d think that this wouldn’t be a problem, seeing as how she is such a vicious killer programmed by nature to destroy babies, children, and the good-hearted, but the dog utterly refused to eat the Butcher on my command.

So, I had to fire her.  As you can imagine, she was very excited to be fired, even when I spanked her bottom for both being fired and refusing to eat the Butcher

Now, the Butcher is sassing me some more and she’s just sitting there staring at him and wagging her tail.

I swear, it’s so hard to find good help these days.

Thanks to Jag

I can go around singing to Mrs. Wigglebottom:

My dog will not change.

My dog will not change.

She just runs around in circles

While I’m calling her name.

“Aunt B.! Aunt B.! Put on Some Music and Dance With Me!”

Nieces and nephews, today we’re shutting our office doors and dancing around to Doug Kershaw’s “Diggy Diggy Low.” Here’s what I recommend. Hit play, stand up, bend your knees, start your hips rolling north, east, south, west, with a little hiccup in each direction. Reach your hands up over your head, spread your fingers like they might go ahead and wiggle on you and go ahead and give those wrists just a little twist to get them started and let them roll around on the ends of your arms like leaves on a windy tree. If it suits you, give them a little flick every once in a while. Now, lift your heel and, as it comes down, turn on that foot. Lift your other heel, pivot on those toes. Turn, wiggle, flick. Giggle.

There, doesn’t that feel like an afternoon worth having?

Where’s Dan Savage When I Need Him?

Dear Internet,

Something is weighing somewhat heavy on my heart and it’s not something I can talk about specifically in public. But here’s what I ask you, dear internet, do you ever find yourself thinking that life requires a level of sophistication and maturity that you just can’t muster?

One Benefit to Our Landlord’s Approach

Because the grass isn’t growing, we haven’t seen a lawncare professional in ages.  And so, up the front of our place is growing some kind of vine.  It’s flowering.  The flowers are nothing to write home about.  They’re tiny white clusters and when they open up, you could fit the blossom inside any one of the “o”s you see here on the screen.  They don’t have a particular smell. 

But in the afternoon, when it’s so hot that you just want to get from your car to the front door before your shoes melt to the pavement?  It’s full of moths and butterflies.  Yesterday, both the Butcher and I were attacked by a monarch.

I haven’t seen a monarch butterfly in years.

I’m not sure the last time I saw a butterfly, period, that wasn’t flying outside my car or stuck to the grill of my car.

But here’s what’s weird.  I saw that butterfly and I could remember, clear as day, being out back of the farmhouse outside of Nokomis, where my parents had a huge garden and tons of flowers and I could feel my hands cupped around a butterfly or moth, depending on which one I’d managed to catch, before I ran over to show it to my mom.

That’s what I felt, clear as day, the soft brush of butterfly wings against hands that were so small they could barely cup around it.

I kind of have a bad memory and sometimes it makes me sad because the Butcher will bring things up that I can’t remember happening and I’ll feel bad that I’ve lost that.

But sometimes I think it’s all up in there still, those memories, so fresh that you have to shake your head a moment to remind yourself that that was almost thirty years ago and you’re in Nashville and grown and not in the country and small.  You just have to stumble across the right key to unlock them.