The Alien Kale Invasion

I just finished eating one of my junk-in-the-back-of-the-fridge omelettes. It was so good, I have to brag about it. Eggs, butter, sausage, spinach, tomato, onion, mushroom, and kale. Yes, I added kale.

See, I resolved to throw away less food. So almost every day, I eat some kind of junk from the back of the fridge. The other day, I made hot dog soup.

Even Nick admitted that it was delicious, all those little bits of leftover food thrown in together with a couple of diced hot dogs and some beef broth.

Here's the thing - when I look through the back of the fridge, it doesn't always look so great. Kale, for example. I have never looked at kale without first thinking of the original 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' movie. That stuff does not look like normal food. Remember at the end of the movie when the doctor saw the pods in the back of the truck on the highway? Yeah, when I look in the back of my fridge and find old kale, I see that scene all over again. Every single time.

Endive too. It's all those veins.

I try not to think of the veins when I slice the tough stem out of the kale. If I do, I just try to imagine my surgery is to assist the good doctor in his attempt to eliminate the pods.

But then, I cook it and eat it.

Onions, butter, leftover meat from dinner are all okay, but some vegetables, when you look at them closely, don't pass the alien invasion test.

Asparagus. The tight little bunch of pods at the tip of a long reach. What plant do you know that grows that way? And the white ones? I can't even make myself buy the white asparagus.

And with enough asparagus, there's that pee smell afterward. You know what I mean. You're half way through a pee shiver the next morning when that smell wafts up to you. Not you. No, that smell is not you. It's an alien smell, an awful smell that means you've been taken in by the alien asparagus but you just don't know it yet.

There was a show on the cable the other night, something about aliens living among us. I didn't even watch it. I knew, just like when I stared at that bunch of kale at the back of the fridge, that if I watched too long, something would shiver, just a subtle shift so I could see the alien life right here on the couch with me. Who was my husband Mike anyway? Where did he really come from?

One of those curly leaves at the back of the fridge would roll into a tentacle for an instant, stretch out, and grab me by the face. Then it would slowly drag the whole bunch of kale toward my mouth and make me swallow it all in one bite.

Then, I would be an alien too. Never trust a woman who likes kale.

Thank you for listening, jules

World Dominance

My kitten misses me. Last week, I started a new part-time job and was gone more than usual. I feel bad about that. He's getting fat again because he's not getting as much exercise as he usually does. Now he nags me whenever I'm in the kitchen even when he has food, water, and I just finished petting him.

Who would have thought that the whole of my previous job was to feed, water, exercise, and pet two cats and a dog. This just confirms my theory that cats and dogs rule the world and humans are in denial about it. Aliens that arrive on Earth will attempt to communicate with the species that has the most power, the ones that subjugate everyone else.

That would be the cats.

Dogs are the next tier down. People are third and after that?

Mosquitoes are probably the clear winner. Mosquitoes could drive me to leap off a cliff if I were out without a bottle of Deet to cover any bare skin. Who cares if I die of cancer in ten years. I have slathered that stuff all over me for days on end to the point I tasted it. I know I'm going to die of cancer, but with my dying breath, I will say, "At least the mosquitoes weren't biting."

Did you know that mosquitoes are responsible for more deaths than any other animal on the planet? I wonder if ThoughtCo, the people who made that assertion, included humans in this calculation. It's a good question, what with all the genocide in Myanmar and Syria, don't you think?

Did you also know that carbon dioxide is how mosquitoes find their victims? They fly back and forth through my plume of carbon emissions until they find the back of my neck. Well, as carbon dioxide levels rise, maybe the female mosquitoes will get disoriented like the poor moths at our porch lights looking for the nectar of white flowers in the night. Wouldn't that be a small mercy?

I think I got bit by a mosquito while I sat on the deck earlier. I was only there for a few minutes because I got too cold, but it was warm enough that I saw a mosquito flying by. The bitch. We'll get you. We'll release so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that you and your whole species will eventually starve to death. It would serve you right. I hope we don't starve to death too.

Thank you for listening, jb

The Danger of Half an Ice Cube

This morning, I got my smoothie mug out of the dishwasher and it wasn't clean. Crap. This new dishwasher sucks. Just because I put a big flat muffin carrier bottom in the top rack, none of the water got where it needed to go.

Then, I realized that the little dishwasher tablet was still in it's tiny drawer and I hadn't even started the thing last night. Great. Operator error. My dishwasher is fine but my brain is broken. Just what I needed since I have an interview this afternoon. Five hours of sleep and I'm fine. No really, I'm fine.

I had to set the dishwasher on delay so I didn't use up all the hot water before the guys got into the shower. That would be so sweet, wouldn't it?

'Honey, the fucking dishes are clean, but you get to have a cold shower on a Friday morning,'

I imagined the look on Mike's face if I told him that.

I had to start and cancel the cycle three times before I figured it out. I couldn't press the start button twice like I do to make sure the elevator comes because it canceled the delay and started the wash cycle immediately. Three times. Now, it's counting down. Yes, I'm sure. I got up to check.

I got the spare smoothie mug out of the cabinet, but I hate that mug. All but one of the little tabs have broken off so it's an operation to get my Nutribullet to spin with it. Cashew milk, a splash of half and half, cocoa, stevia, rice protein, and ice. Yummy, right? You betcha. I have a chocolate milkshake for breakfast every single damned morning. Don't tell anyone. Plus, it's only ten grams of carbohydrates. We love our Nutribullet.

But I'm moving slowly this morning. Did you know that I can hold six ice cubes for my smoothie in each hand? I have big hands. I don't know why I have to brag. I only need ten but today, I dropped an ice cube on the floor. I do that when I'm tired. It broke in half and I could only find part of it. I know I need more sleep when I plan to leave half an ice cube to melt under the stove figuring that it's just water and it'll dry up on its own.

Not lazy, just tired. It's-Friday-and-I-haven't-done-any-good-work-all-week kind of tired. Netflix-binge-watching kind of tired. You know what I mean. I know you've gotten up off the couch after a marathon of Mad Men with that special feeling. Your eyes burn. Your butt is so damned sore from all the work of sitting on the couch that you wonder why butts don't get callouses. Your mind is so settled into the cigarettes and misogyny of the show that you have a bad taste in your mouth. Or maybe you forgot to brush your teeth that morning. You can't remember. It's a special kind of exhaustion. Get used to it. With robots taking over our jobs within the next century, we'll all be hot-wired to Netflix or whatever embedded-brain technology that takes over when Netflix becomes obsolete.

I know. I've lived through eight-track tapes and five channels on a black and white TV. I've seen VHS, cassette tapes, DVDs, CDs, and audiobooks become obsolete. But will people be able to walk around, work, and shop for groceries while they watch all these shows that screen straight into our brains from the chips we allow to be embedded under our skin? No. Couches will endure. Couch will never go out of style. Did you just picture the little pods on Matrix? Cozy, right? We're voluntarily moving toward that scenario. Very low carbon footprint. Good for the environment. We could take up so little space in the world that we could use our internal energy to power the storage unit we house ourselves in.

Then, I realized I was staring into space as I stood in my kitchen. Did I look like Robert DeNiro in Awakenings? Blitz meowed at me and I woke up. He does that. He nags me in my own kitchen.

'Play with me.'

He brought his green paracord into the kitchen where I'm sure to step on the hard little burned knot at one end. It's like having Legos on the floor again. He sat on his string and meowed at me while I tried to think of what I needed to do next to finish my smoothie. I ignored him for the moment.

Screw driver.

I needed the screw driver.

See, the Nutribullet is great, really spins those ice cubes, except for the half lying under my stove, and there are no little annoying nuggets left over when I drink it. But Mike and I are both a little, shall we say, conservative with our money.

Cheap? No we're not cheap. We just don't run out and buy a new Nutribullet whenever a tab breaks on the best mug for our old one.

Okay, we do. We bought the next version of Nutribullet in case that last tab breaks off and we can't even start the thing with a screwdriver at five in the morning on a Friday. But we're not using that yet. We still have one tab left on one mug and all of the tabs on another.

 So, I screwed in the part with the blades, seated the whole thing upside-down in the base, plugged it in, then used a screwdriver to push down the plastic switch where the little tab at the edge of the mug would have gone if it existed. That little tab will probably end up in the belly of a dolphin in the ocean. This operation required dexterity. If someone in the house was asleep, I had to pick up the whole shebang and cradle it in my arms to keep it from rattling through the wooden bones of the walls and waking people up. Resonance. It works like the sounding board of a piano. That blender was so much louder when it sat on the counter. But when I cradled the thing in one arm and tried to hold the screwdriver in that little slot where the plastic switch expected the mug-tab, it was a test of dexterity.

At that point that I hoped I hadn't overfilled the thing because something in the design loosens the grip the blade-part had on the mug when I overfilled the mug. Then, smoothie goop could fly all over me, the inside of the Nutribullet base, and splash on the counter and anything on it. When I cradled the base in one arm, used the screwdriver to spin the thing, and this overflow thing happened, I got smoothing goop all over my pajamas. It sucked.

Today, somehow, I managed without getting smoothie goop all over my pajamas.

But Blitz wasn't done. He never realized how fucking underfoot he was in the kitchen. I stepped back and turned to rinse the blade-part so it would be clean when Mike made his smoothie. I felt my foot coming down on a paw or a tail, something soft. I twisted that tender spot in my right knee trying to step somewhere else while Blitz banged off my ankle in exactly the wrong direction trying to get out from underfoot, literally.

That cat has no survival instincts. The only thing he has to worry about regarding survival in our house is how to keep from getting stepped on. He doesn't get it. He's afraid of the UPS truck driving half-way up the driveway, but he's immune to lessons in protecting his tail from the crush.

He ignored my little ACL-tearing dance and stayed focused on a spot under the stove. Not a mouse in my kitchen. Please. God. No.

Do you think that God gets annoyed at these kinds of prayers? You know, the stupid ones that fall out of our minds when we're being honest about what we want? Do you think there's a special kind of hell in my future for all of my misdeeds? Yesterday, I forgot a good friend's birthday in all my morose binge-watching busyness. If God is really an angry God, my penance for it could be to eternally have to clean against the potential for hanta virus whenever a mouse got into the house and found my Cheerios. Yes, in my special hell, there is a lot of cleaning required and dirt and disease is everywhere anyway.

Hmmm.

What was the cat looking at, pawing at, under the stove?

I leaned down. My knee cringed.

It was white, not grey with big ears and sad eyes.

Blitz found my half-ice cube under the stove. I picked it up, but then put it back down on the floor for a minute. He tapped it with one paw, then shook his foot. He put his nose to it then backed away. I kicked it and it slid a couple feet. He chased it, paused, and tapped it with one paw again.

He shook his paw and looked at me.

'Is this dangerous?'

I stood there supplying no answer. Meanie. He touched it one more time. Then, I thought he might lick it. He didn't. It was too scary to lick it. Might kill him. He looked at me again. Why wasn't I answering him? He stretched his neck out to sniff it and backed up.

'This has got to be a trick.'

It was like the first time my cat Angel walked in grass when she was a kitten. She shook her feet with every step. Eventually, she fell over in that pathetic way a cat has of giving up. When it didn't kill her, she lolled about in the grass stretching her forelegs up over her head.

Blitz never rolled in the ice cube. Finally, he backed away and my fun was over. That shit was dangerous. Ice cubes. Awful. He looked back at it before he left the kitchen.

Maybe I wasn't so tired after all.

Thank you for listening, jb

Breaking the Fourth Wall of Writing

I feel so pathetic today. I wish I could say I have a thick skin. I don't. Maybe I should have spent the rest of my life writing in deep obscurity. I shouldn't have to worry about relative obscurity. I'm there.

As a writer, I feel ridiculous.

So, I got onto Twitter and posted a bunch of shit this morning. That was supposed to make me feel better, but now that my phone's battery is dead, I don't feel much better.

Yesterday, someone who read my book, Angry Housewife Fights Tyranny, my reaction to Trump's election, told me she thought it was repetitive. Of course it was repetitive. The news was repetitive. I didn't tell her that. Instead, I wondered if I should try to fix it. Someone I don't know also wrote that it was pathetic in my Amazon review when the book first came out and that word has stuck in my craw for months now. How do you fix pathetic? Never mind all of the encouragement my friends and a few strangers have given me. Why can't I blot out the hate? Because of this book, someone called me promiscuous. He didn't know a thing about me. He just said it because I support Planned Parenthood and wrote that they had helped me when I was young. His words didn't make sense with regard to who I am, but they still hurt.

The day before yesterday, Mike said I needed to get a job. He's said this before so I thought we were really hurting for money but then yesterday he suggested that we fly to Las Vegas for spring break. I've been making my espressos at home for months now because I thought we were broke. I'd been thinking I was causing trouble in our house because I didn't bring in cash to the equation. Then, he says we're going to Las Vegas on vacation, hotels, shows, and gambling? Does he think that walking away from my dream of making a living as a writer and getting a 'real' job is going to make me feel better?

I know he's not trying to be mean. I know he thinks I'll feel better if I earn a paycheck for a while. He may be right about that since my royalties are a joke. But there's a part of me that wants to keep trying, to keep marketing, to keep editing, to keep writing until I get somewhere. I feel some kind of compulsion to do this job even if it is hard, even if I am ridiculous for continuing to try when I'm obviously not succeeding. I'm pretty sure that Mike will never understand my passion for these projects. I'm not completely sure I understand it myself.

Three days ago, the agent who was interested said that my wild kitten book, Dirty and Afraid, was warm and funny, but also languid so she couldn't sell it. Since when should a book about a kitten keep you on the edge of your seat? The problem is that she doesn't think she can sell it. Can't sell it. CAN'T SELL IT.

Those words keep going around and around in my head.

What now?

What the hell am I supposed to do now?

Here's the plan I keep telling myself to implement:

• edit the kitten book for its pacing,
• send queries for the kitten book to other agents,
• casually continue to market my Tyranny book,
• protest to protect our country-I'm probably missing a Seattle DACA protest right now, and
• edit my next book. 

But there's this rotten little worm that keeps boring through good wood. Why bother? What if all the silence means I'm not a good writer instead of one who doesn't know how to manage search engine optimization? Does the devil work in this way, selling doubt as truth, diminishing the light of joy that comes from creating something for the world?

This is not the type of thing I want to write in a blog, but it's what's on my mind.

I feel broken, so I'm breaking all my rules about the fourth wall. Here I am staring into the camera at you. I admit that I'm a writer. I always will be. Yet, I'm a writer who's broken. It's hard to put it all out there, to stand naked on the stage speaking the lines. It's hard to put my whole heart into my work only to think the audience might stand up, pick up their coats, and leave the room. This isn't an easy path.

Thank you for listening, jb

It's Okay Not to Be Cool

It's been a while since I was here. I've been...

... I've been looking for a job. It's hard when you realize that your dream doesn't provide a viable income yet and your husband deserves to have a contributing partner where money is concerned.

Can you hear the tinkling of broken dream-drops falling around me? I'm not giving up. I'm just not as optimistic as I was a few months ago. I have always written because I need to write. I have always loved the sound of words well crafted. I still need to see if my words will ever fly.

So, thank you, all eight of you who read this.

I'm not giving up. I'm just not going to be able to focus solely on this thing that made me so incredibly happy. I'll still stop by when I can, because, well, of course I will.

The good news is what has been happening with Blitz.

Lately, he's a little shadow, sitting near my chair in case I need to lean down to pet him, bringing his favorite green string into the kitchen so I might stop to fling it around while the orange sauce thickens. It's been so long since we went out to eat that I learned how to make orange chicken. It's not bad. And since I'm standing around in the kitchen waiting for the rice to cook and the sauce to thicken, I might as well make myself useful and play snake and twirl and leap with the string. That's what Blitz thinks anyway. You should hear him nag me to pick up the string. That boy NEEDS to play.

Blitz really hasn't learned the fine art of getting out of the way when my bumble-feet threaten to smash his poor crunchy tail. When I rinse snow peas and carrots at the kitchen sink, he sits behind my heels. When I turn chicken in hot olive oil on the stove, he sits on my toes. When I pull cooked chicken breasts one by one onto a cutting board to cube, he stretches up the side of the cabinet and actually looks like a long lean cat for a moment. He cries. He begs. It's Mike's fault. When Mike makes his lunch, he drops a bit of meat onto the floor because it was the only way Blitz would come to him when he called. Now the little cat is the big cat and when Mike gets up in the morning, Blitz is the first one to run to him and ask to be picked up. Blitz is getting a little thick around the middle from all the snacks.

He actually looks like the 'dough rising' cat, sort of fluffy and spread out when he lies down. Only he's not the color of rising dough. He's the color of a brown mushroom. Well, if mushrooms could be striped.

So the only problem I see that Blitz still has is that he's still cautious of Nick.

I have to tell you that Nick has tried so incredibly hard to get Blitz to relax around him. Maybe that's the problem. Nick will come into the room on tiptoe, staring at Blitz in the hopes that he won't run away.

"You're stalking him, you predator," I said one night.

"I'm not stalking him," Nick protested. "I'm approaching him gently."

Gently. Right.

I grant you that. When Nick usually moves through the house, it's like each footfall weighs three times what it should. He's not quiet. He's not light-footed. Blitz used to react to his heavy footfalls, but I'm not sure he does any more. It's funny what you do and don't notice, isn't it? I think Blitz has gotten used to Nick's normal gait.

But now, whenever Nick tries to be light-footed, Blitz goes into escape mode. The boy is trying to pet me again. I'd better skedaddle.

He's a lot more relaxed than he used to be. Sometimes it looks like Blitz is playing a game instead of escaping marauding beasts. Still, Nick's cautious approach makes him nervous.

I would guess that if Nick walked around the house completely ignoring Blitz the way Mike used to do, Blitz would eventually approach him. But Nick hasn't done that yet. He so acutely wants to connect with this cat. You should see the look on Nick's face when he manages and Blitz lets him pet him. It's a bit of a heart-break.

And that is the problem, I think.

Blitz is a cat, after all, and has to set terms for himself. Nick is trying too damned hard for the whole thing to be cool. I wish I could tell Blitz that it's okay not to be cool.

Thank you for listening, jb