Alien Judas

My backyard was overgrown, so I went to Home Depot for a weed whacker. After I tied the dog to the fence because he was hell bent on getting a Glasgow Smile from the whipping twine, I slayed the overgrown grass. Toward the end of the spool, the twine got loose, and came out much too long. So the whacker had an 8 inch diameter. When this started, shrapnel flung about, and my legs were cut up. The small gashes on my legs, and the quick accompanying pain wasn’t completely unwelcome. It was sort of invigorating.

It reminded me of this stupid thing we used to do in high school. First, we’d rip the safety out of a Bic lighter, then light the flame and hold the lighter upside down so the metal heats up. Once the metal was hot, we'd take the metal and smash it into our skin, branding ourselves with what looks like a smiley face.  A barbaric practice, but I don’t think it was really like “cutting” because there was nothing therapeutic or shameful about it. It was just crazy young people stuff. Maybe we did it to forget how bored we were.

My daughter was sent home from school last Thursday because she had allergies. I didn’t realize this was something that warranted a nurse’s visit, but I enjoy the company, and my kids’ sick days are really the only way we have one-on-one time. On the drive home, I asked her to go on a walk, and in a raspy voice she said, “I need to be inside because of my allergies.”

I replied, “I think you need more exposure, Kiki, thats why you’re having this sensitivity.”

She told me allergies don’t work that way… she sounded pretty confident, so I believed her.

My daughter wakes up every morning like she’s going off to a work camp, not elementary school. She gives very colorful speeches, about the campus and students. A personal favorite is when she screamed from her bed, “MY SCHOOL IS FULL OF HOBOS AND IDIOTS!!”

Between 6:30 and 7:30 am my daughter forgets all the perks of school, like free lunch and free counseling, instead she focuses on the awful. Ironically, she finds their “Positive Thinking” campaign to be a load of horse-shit, and laments in a mocking tone how they respond to any complaint with a blanket statement, “Think positive.”

It warms my heart I don’t have to give her a discussion on toxic positivity. She innately understands Buddha’s quote, “Life is suffering.” I’m not against positive thinking, and encourage it, but I don’t think “positive thinking” is an indoctrination, and it certainly shouldn’t be attributed as the root of success.

A few years ago, in a statistics class I taught, I started a project with the students about positive affirmations, but I had to stop the project because I read studies that showed this is very harmful because it encourages the belief that their lack or crappy circumstances is the result of their own thoughts. These are young adults, only 18-21 years old, so they are still reeling off the tides of their upbringing. It is not the same as life-coaching a thirty year old. So students in financial hardship, or dealing with family issues, are led to believe that these are the result of their own shitty thinking.

Wallowing in misery is also ill-advised. There’s no benefit to negative thinking, however, once you acknowledge feeling sad is sort of normal, then it makes feeling good great! Besides, I really believe great things are accomplished by interior suffering. That’s the Catholic in me.

I watched YouTube videos from people who micro-dosed shrooms. This was all first-hand accounts, and there wasn’t any science to it. The videos were entertaining enough, and the influencer discussed how after they took the micro-dose colors seemed brighter and there wasn’t any sadness in their heart.

I thought, “I’ve got to try this shit.” So we got a shroom chocolate bar that came in an Wonka wrapper. I ate the smallest dose and watched TV. It wasn’t any more enjoyable than watching TV after a gummy, and in the end I got a massive headache. So micro-dosing shrooms wasn’t some sadness-ridding ritual for me, but maybe I should have done something more meditative than four episodes of Shark Tank.

The kids and I watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory recently because G read the book in school. We were deciding which characters from the movie we’d all be. G is Mike TV, Kiki is Veruca Salt, and I thought I should be Charlie. They both nixed that idea straight away, but when I told them that I would share my birthday chocolate bar (traditional chocolate bar here) they countered I’m more like Violet because I punch them when they’re bad. These are not actual punches, I’d like to add. They are playful, non violent punches, but obviously Charlie doesn't embody such jest.

Geoffrey does like to go on walks with me, and we generally talk about Minecraft. The mosquitos have been out lately, and after we came back from a walk he counted five bites, and feverishly scratched them. I almost came at him with a punch, but stopped, and just said, “Stop scratching those bites.” And sounding like a Christian Scientist I added, “Leave it alone, and trust that your body is healing.”

On this walk Geoffrey and I were talking about aliens, and we carried on the chat at home. With Kiki in earshot, Geoffrey told us he watched a YouTube video about a Tic-Tac shaped UFO. I said I saw a YouTube video about a cube-shaped UFO that shot out of the ocean.

Kiki was silent and wide-eyed, then she looked at me and asked, “Is the front door locked?”

I believe aliens exist, and will tell any available ear about a dream I had where I was sucked up by a beam of light, and then felt terrible pain while something was digging though my organs. When I woke up, my body hurt, and I thought, "Could it be?!”

It didn’t scare me, actually it was the opposite. I thought, “Holy shit, I’m important enough for aliens!”

But, when I looked at my daughter, and her heightening anxiety, I told her, “This is all baloney, Kiki. Aliens don’t exist, never have, and never will!”

I sounded pretty confident, so she believed me.

Groomed

 

I took my dog Max to a nationwide pet store for grooming, and after they checked his vaccination record (dogs have been doing it from the start) the groomer came over to meet him. She went to pet him, and he hid behind my legs and started barking. I apologized, like an embarrassed mom, and said, “He really is a great dog… he just assumes you’re evil.”

She continued the meet-and-greet by reaching her arm underneath him and brushing up against his penis. He nipped at her hand, and she stepped back with an appalled look on her face. My face went confused, and she said, “So yeah, we actually can’t see your dog because he shows sign of aggression.”

I replied, “But you just,” then whispered, "grabbed his penis! Does any dog pass this test?”

She shrugged, and I realized there was no convincing this dick-grabber my filthy dog who was stinking up my house was desperate for a shave. I left and made him an appointment at the other nationwide pet store, where they didn’t grab his wiener, and he got the needed haircut.

My aggression’s been tested lately by looking at stocks I bought after I sold my house in June. All of them went up shortly after purchase, and I thought I was a psychic stock exchanger, and should quit my job because I was about to become a millionaire. My daydream turned into a daymare, and all of them have tanked. It is depressing to see these stocks sitting well below half of what I paid for them. I decided to stop looking, it would be stupid to sell them and take the significant loss, and now I have to hope one of them will turn into some Forrest Gump gold mine when I’m sixty.

One stock is the most upsetting, Electra Meccanica. I decided to buy it after I saw a model in the middle of Arden Fair Mall. A single seater electric car that came from the future. I thought it was genius, but after watching the stock’s line graph’s steep downward trajectory, I wonder if there really is a use for a single seater car. Who is that accepting of their lonely life, they’ll buy a car for just one person?

If the car is intended only as a commuter vehicle, then the mileage isn’t sufficient. The battery can’t even get you from Sacramento to San Francisco in one go. I sent them an email, since I have invested interest, suggesting they make a two-seater model that looks like a Suzuki Samurai or a Geo Tracker. These cars are compact and absolutely adorable — it’s auto fashion forward under the guise of making a better tomorrow. We'll see if I hear back from them. I don’t need any credit for the design idea… I’d just be grateful to see their stock sky rocket from hip youngsters buying these vehicles to carry around their pet bunnies and hydroflasks.

My refrigerator broke this week. It's not even eight months old, but it stopped working, and after eating the approaching room-temperature food, I decided I needed to deal with Lowe’s. I must have made the purchase when Mercury was in retrograde because it was a headache from the start. It took weeks, two credits and repurchases, to just get the damn thing in my new house. The kids and I lived like Europeans with a mini fridge that kept me from shopping at Costco and producing any food waste. Calling Lowe’s is a minimum of one hour on hold, there’s a good chance they’ll transfer you and then have another hour-plus hold, then there is the likelihood the representative is training and has a “drop the call” panic attack. I endured, and the technician is coming tomorrow between 8am and 4pm.

Thursday is our only “activity-free” afternoon and I live for it. Geoffrey started Lacrosse, a foreign sport to me, that I’ve only seen in movies. After going to a few games and all the practices, it is a great fit for my boy since they spend an hour running around and beating each other with long sticks. I’m in awe watching the kids chuck a ball across the field where someone on the other side catches it with their tiny butterfly net. I don’t want to seem in such shock that I find this exchange borderline impossible, but I tell him to practice A LOT.

The games are fun, and the enthusiasm from the parents is next level. This east coast sport migrated over to sunny California, and the crowd cheers like were ringside to an AEW match watching Sammy Guevara flip off the top of a ladder with perfectly sculpted hair while wearing purple leopard print briefs. One mom’s passionate yelling sounds like she's in the bedroom; loud screams and moans, followed up by her kids name. Hilarious.

Kingsley finds the practice and games to be inconvenient. She roams around whatever park were in until she finds some other bored sister to play with, which entails chewing gum and talking about the injustices of not having a sister. I don’t get the pleasure of stewing in this misery because I have two sisters, but I downplay it. I haven't told Kiki that nothing tops getting loud-mouthed drunk on Silver Bullets with your sister. Ah, the good ol' days.

In the morning I get up 15 minutes before the kids to have coffee and write in my journal. I start by writing dreams I had down so I don’t forget them, and then I get into whatever shit my mind’s brewing on. The other morning I was fixing breakfast and Kiki came up to me and said, “You had a dream you were talking to Pops about moving to New York?” 

“Oh, you’ve been reading my journal.” I’ll start writing about how much I miss my sisters to deter her from continuing this invasive practice.

The last few weeks have been isolating, hence the uptick in dreams where I chat with dead relatives. I’m not about to purchase a one-seater vehicle, but it's not a good sign I hope the fridge technician likes to talk. My usual Wednesday morning meeting with Love Horrors has been cancelled. We make scrambled eggs and sourdough toast, discuss fun ideas, projects and jokes, then have a weekly cigarette. It's a slumber party packed into a couple hours. 

    I talk on the phone a lot, but it’s exhausting when the call is dual stream of conscious chatter. I gauge how close my period is based on the tolerance I have for these calls. If I only make it five minutes before hanging up annoyed, then I’ll probably spend the next day eating a box of Reeces Puffs cereal and then tell myself the cure to my upset stomach is an animal-style cheeseburger and French fries.

I take to the streets to socialize, walking my dog. There are the power-walkers who give a wave, but then there are the meandering. If I give myself time, I can turn the walk into quite the social adventure. I recently met 82 year old Will, a widow, retired from the LAPD. We talked for an hour yesterday. I told him about the dog’s Petco visit. He's a cop, and bored out of his mind, and even he thinks dick-grabbing is lousy way to make an introduction.

Max

Graphic Novels and a Revolution

 

I bought Kiki a new comic on Amazon. As I pulled the graphic novel from its package, I announced its arrival and she came running around the corner to get it from me. On the cover was the title, “A Girl From the Sea” and on the back was a drawing of two girls kissing.

I groaned, “It’s about lesbians.”

She said, “That’s okay, I love lesbians. You’re the one who hates lesbians.”

“I don’t hate lesbians, I didn’t know if you’d be interested in a romance story,” I retorted.

She snatched the book from my hands before I could add, “I love lesbians too… I agree with Germaine Greer,  for Pete’s sake, but I’m just too much of a pussy to commit to the revolution, and I feel like a betrayer of my sex every time I bask in hetero post-coital pleasure.”

It seems revolutionary for kids to be such advocates of the sexuality spectrum because it’s about sex. By the time I was their age I already read The Joy of Sex, and leafed through Playboy magazines, which likely contributed to the construction of my sexual self, but if there’s a rating scale, my early exposure would be G rated compared the what the internet provides.

We were driving around the other day and Kiki announced, “I don’t know if I’m straight yet, so that’s why I say I am bisexual.”

I gave a heavy sigh, and didn’t know what to say, although my instinct was to shout, “You’re asexual. Alright, all ten year olds are asexual.”

The internet is the only thing holding me back from ever wanting to buy my kids cell phones. It was in fifth grade I came home from school, and asked my mom, “What is a blow job?” She looked at me and said, never say that word again.

“So, it’s one word!” I thought to myself, as I pranced upstairs to my older brother and sister who told me exactly what a blowjob is. I don’t even remember thinking, “Blowjobs seem weird.” Actually, I can’t remember thinking much about it after they told me.

Social media is scientifically proven to be awful for young people’s mental being, so it seems like a no-brainer to deny them the time-vacuum of scrolling through meaninglessness. Young boys have uncontrollable, wall-punching, rage when their cerebral cortex isn’t being hijacked by screens, and girls are lured to cut all their hair off, dye it green, and make everyone call them by a chosen name, like “Pickle.” The green hair and name change are a lot less terrifying than untethered aggression.

I wonder how long it took for gender theory to trickle down from academia to now being on the forefront of young people’s radar, and how Greer’s theories never seemed to make it. I suppose The Female Eunuch has to combat capitalism, and the gender spectrum embraces the free market, since you can buy a t-shirt at Target labeling yourself as fluid.

I have a t-shirt that says, “I’m the Boss.” My t-shirt lies, and I don't wear it often, mostly on laundry days when I’m down to wearing crotchless panties and twenty year old stained sweatpants. My laundry’s been elevated lately after buying amazing fabric softener beads at Costco. I’ve steered clear of fabric softener the last eight years because my sister told me, “Fabric softener causes vaginosis.”

“Say no more. Vaginosis sounds horrible, I’ll stop using it.” But the little pink pellets added to the wash make it smell amazing, and there hasn’t been a medical side effect yet.

I’m going off social media for lent, and we’ll see if it decreases my anxiety. I’m not a stress case, but I’m no poster child for calmness either. I’ll give my boyfriend an early birthday shoutout before I make my non-Irish-exit, because he’ll appreciate it. Reading comments on his active social media accounts sends my anxiety through the roof because I read some of them as creepy desperation from people slobbering at the mouth over his key strokes. They’ve ruined the internet for me, and I guess I should thank them, but their strange inclination to insert themselves into a person’s reality makes me consider them wayward soldiers. Consider if they put that energy into the revolution, or anything progressive for that matter.

If Greer’s plan to abolish monogamy for the sake of the revolution didn’t trickle down, I’m grateful because it’s nice sharing a bed with someone, and late-night planning the inscription on our massive shared tombstone. I missed him when he left town last weekend for work. I had big plans to walk around and fart freely, but it was boring at night. The kids were excited for his return too. When he was back he played Barbies with Kingsley, and was directed to play the Barbie whose hair is all chopped off and colored with a permanent marker because she lost all her Ken dolls. I told her I turned some of my Barbies into Kens too, when I was a kid. They even used the proper pronouns and called the desecrated Barbie they/them. 

I received a terrible phone call this week that my Grandma fell over in the parking lot in Carson City, and is in the hospital recovering from a fractured pelvis. I told Johnny, and he said Geoffrey asked him to get three tickets to watch a King’s game, so they could take Grandma J because she loves basketball too, and it made me feel so proud of my little boy and his beautiful heart.

I told my kids about their Great Grandma, and they were relieved the news wasn’t worse. I said, “Always have the thought of Grandma’s healing in your heart, and picture us all at her 100th birthday party.” I want her to be a great-great-grandma one day. She is so close because that’s what happens when you get married at 15.

Greer would despise her life, but she’s a perfect example of living without stress. A non-technological existence, she never has to worry about announcing to her kids, “I have to take a poop,” bored, during a zoom meeting, not realizing her microphone is turned on. 

My reliance on technology isn’t all bad. I get embarrassing joy playing Sudoku on my phone, and I told my boyfriend I play to get comments, “You’re faster than 95% of players” or my all time favorite, “You’re brilliant!” And he told me he gets the same joy from playing golf on Xbox, and lately the commentators have been calling him “The greatest golfer to ever play the game.” 

With our growing dependence on technology, a part of me advocated for Ted Kaczynski in the new biopic, and I wondered if he’ll be viewed as a revolutionary in 100 years when the people of the world abandon wearing t-shirts with labels and slogans for the sake of saving the planet. 

Like Ted K, I’ve convinced myself there’s a war to wage on technology, but I haven’t conjured up a plan. Given my lack of tenacity with last year’s lent, making it one day in before I thought, fuck it, I’m eating gummy worms, I doubt I will be able to do much more than stave off depraved google searches from my kids and learn never to read comments on social media posts. A very small revolution.