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
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
No comments:
Post a Comment