A Wild Scent

I surprised my daughter with the news she gets to attend a small morning camp next week. She is thrilled. Her vacant eyes indicated she'd withdrawn in the anticipation of seeing friends after 2 months of family. She grabbed her backpack and started gathering things around the house to accompany her on this long awaited girl-club time.

She picked up a tiny perfume from a kid cosmetic set, and asked, "Do you think I should wear perfume?"

Her excitement was intoxicating, so I said, "Yeah, why not!"

Then she said, "I'll wear a scent that drives the counselors wild."

My boyfriend sent me a text that an open mic is resuming next week, and then I felt the whirling stomach my daughter was just describing. I sort of enjoy the tiny bubble I'm existing in at the moment, and the idea of returning to normalcy gives me the sensation every speck harboring in my intestines is about to immediately evacuate from my body.

I remember a nonessential errand we ran before the shelter-in-place. We went to the carwash in Midtown. In the lobby, my boyfriend read his phone, and I watched some sporting event on the communal TV. When I say watched, I mean it was a nice scene to lock my eyes on, as I withdrew. The place was pretty crowded, and everyone was engaged in some variation of individual entertainment. When a woman stood up and walked through the lobby, we were all brought into the present moment. She plunked a couple coins in the automated massage chair, which was positioned in a theatrical way, where everyone had a vantage point. This woman laid back in that massage chair, closed her eyes, and had an orgasmic experience in front of a live car wash audience. Everyone then alternated between thumbing their phone and watching this woman's invisible lady boner grow to unbreakable strength. Her husband quickly tuned in to the display, and dealt with it like any partner would, he walked outside and decided to go without complimentary coffee and the pungent smell of mingling air fresheners, that might actually drive people wild.

There's so much to look forward to, that goes beyond eating and drinking on a restaurant patio. I woke up with a cold sore yesterday, which means I actually bookended this shelter-in-place with my overactive anxiety's physical response to change. Pick a side, Alicia. Do you want to be a cozy homebody or be a smiling scenester?

I don't know, I guess I want to be both. I do know that the carwash lady is living the right way; live like everybody's watching, and you don't give a fuck. It's more powerful than perfume.

She's So High

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As I scroll through Instagram, I get food envy from all the people out there flexing their culinary skills during this quarantine. I've consumed 50 quesadillas since the beginning of March. I hate dishes too much to start cooking like I believe processed food is poison, but I’ve written a decent amount of fart jokes.

A few days ago, I got high for the first time in almost a decade. It was a THC concentrate tincture. I took it an hour before an interview to do social media for a magazine. It's a volunteer position, so they can't be finicky about a person's recreational activities, but I started noticing it kicking in the last 10 minutes of our chat, and this made me feel uncomfortable nervousness I masked by incessantly talking.

The next day I had a horrible headache that lasted every waking second. It could have been from the THC concentrate, or maybe from watching 7 hours of TV after taking it, without my glasses on. I grew up in Lake Tahoe, so weed is a very normalized part of the culture. However, I stopped smoking pretty soon after high school because I made the conscious decision that I don’t enjoy crippling paranoia. 

I spent many an afternoon in a dense cloud, paralyzed on a couch, convinced I was reading everyone’s mind. These are not fond memories for me. A lot of potheads like to tell me that all I need to do is smoke more weed, in order to overcome this uncomfortableness. It just seems like a lot of work, when I’m already really good at lounging around and watching movies while eating quesadillas.

Thankfully, my kids were at their dad's that day, so I didn't have to homeschool with a headache. My homeschool strategy is to work as fast as possible, get it out of the way, because I have my own work to do, and I need some time for cooking meals that require minimal cleanup and writing fart jokes.

My kids are a good source of material though. My son asked during his writing assignment, "Mom, how do I spell 'do'? Is it D-O or D-O-O?"

"Well babe, it just depends how you're using it."

We watched a dinosaur video on YouTube, and I did not need to be high to think, "OOOOH WOOOOW, Dinosaurs are fucking aaaamazing!"

But, I am grounded enough to think the timeline for dinosaurs sounds like a load of horseshit. I emphasize to my children, "They are trying to tell us that that bone is 60 MILLION YEARS OLD?!"

I expand my argument on why they should question this theoretical timeline. “We haven't ever found a lawn chair capable of surviving a single Sacramento summer. The people of Pompeii were buried alive by Mt. Vesuvius erupting was 2,000 years ago. Now lets consider multiplying that by 30 MILLION!!"

My kids were probably like, mom, you sound high, but they don't have that sort of vocabulary. Just like how I don’t have to capability to translate to them that 60 years ago academics were recreationally taking LSD.

I gave them a probable scenario. Dinosaurs are enormous lizards that live inside the earth’s layers. Air bubbles within the planet allow them decent living spaces and access to water. These dinosaurs die, and their remains work themselves up to the surface. I came up with that L. Ron Hubbard shit, and I’ve never even done LSD.

The other day I drove by Starbucks, and saw a drive-thru line a mile long. I imagine most of those people don’t have any hopes or dreams, but I understand the need for high impact caffeine. Making coffee is the only culinary skill I can flex at home, so I can enjoy it while working on flatulence humor.

Tie Dye People

Two months ago, I gave my brother my treadmill. That was a mistake. Now when I run at the park, I have to go like a workhorse because it’s few and far between. Thankfully, I’m carb loading.

During my long runs, the conversations I have with myself become even more active. My thoughts are too confined by my little mind, and they just burst out of me. I see the usual people as I run around McKinley Park, and inevitably make the mistake of waving hello to one or more of them, and then awkwardly having to do it eight more times as we pass each other doing our laps in opposite directions.

I ran by a car with a painted rear window. “Covid-19” was written in the middle and around it were things like “FCC” and “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” pointing to it. There was a blonde hippie lady in the front seat, just hanging out while spreading her message.

The start of this week, I was really rallying against the government, irked by their deciding what is “essential” and what isn’t. I found myself joining the anti-government bandwagon, thinking Californians are blindly handing over their rights, and all the while patting themselves on the back for it, repeatedly being told, how smart they are. Then, I read about doctors claiming it’s way too soon to lift any social distancing policies, and I become very confused. The most confusing part is how sure both sides are of themselves. I can’t make heads or tails of it, and just like how we were all led to feel compassion for vile Joe Exotic, I wonder why are were all led to feel insecure about our forced shelter-in-place?

Animal Farm is free to read on Amazon Prime, and that seems too coincidental. I took the bait, and read it to my kids. They didn’t understand it, getting to the final pages my son asked me if Napoleon is a pig. I was like, “Yeah G, that’s pretty important to the story.”

Kiki started muttering to herself while I read the other night, and I asked her, “What was that?”

And she replied, “It’s nothing,” aggressively, like I was interrupting her.

After she did it a couple times, I was relentless, “Kiki, please, tell me what you’re talking about.”

She said, “Sometimes when I think about things, words just come out. I don’t have anything to say though, really.”

I don’t know why I was angst at the beginning of the week; shelter in place is not bad for me. I’m working, and enjoying quality family time. My kids seem at ease with our very low stress lifestyle. Today my daughter’s online therapy session was laughable. I half listened in the kitchen because I’d occasionally need to intervene, after hearing the therapist say, you probably shouldn’t put on so much make up. Then I walked into the room and saw Kiki generously applying metallic blue eye shadow while staring at herself on the videoconference screen.

I took away the make up and confidently told her, “You need to listen to the doctor!”

Sitting in the backyard, I caught 11:11 on the clock. I catch it pretty much daily. I could attribute it to having a clearer mind, and being more in touch with the cosmos, or it could be that I am looking at my phone 900% more than is recommended by the FCC. I announce the time, and the kids loudly shout their wishes, G asking for 10,000 cats and Kiki asking for a puppy. I make a silent wish, but it’s just as outlandish. We were dressed in our finest tie-dye shirts, unplanned too. When I pointed it out to the kids, they asked, what is tie-dye? I said, “It’s this brilliant rainbow like print on our shirts. It helps you identify really nice people. Or the kind of people that can’t help talking to themselves in the park, or the kind of person who uses their rear window as a news platform.”

Social Construct

The kids and I made a lemon cake on Monday morning. We celebrated my daughter’s half birthday. As I cut off small piece after small piece, at 9 am, I said, “Dessert is just a social construct. You want to have cake, just have cake. Besides, we could call this a muffin, and how does that make it any different?”

Eating cake for breakfast, and drinking coffee at night. I ramped up my coffee intake, and started giving myself headaches. When my kids are gone, and I just feel like thinking, I have coffee. It’s 7 am somewhere, am I right? Who cares if I’m watching TV till 2AM, time is just a social construct.

I’m not working a farm here, I don’t need to adhere to a color coded white board schedule to make it through the quarantine. I always have a list of stuff to do, and never really suffer from a lack of motivation. It could be the coffee. I see this color-coded white board in my head. Sometimes, it’s annoying because the list is always there, lingering, like those people who only Russell Crowe can see in A Beautiful Mind. There tends to be one toe that’s not willing to stay in the present moment, and it’s never a good idea to cut your toe off.

This list was on my mind as I was driving back from McKinley Park the other day. I wasn’t even looking at my phone, but I drove thru a four-way stop, and then heard this man yelling at me, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?”

It scared the shit out of me, and then I had a heart wrenching moment of panic when I realized, I almost ran that guy over, his accompanying woman and dog. So, how could I explain that to an officer, I was looking at the road, driving the route I’ve driven four thousand times before, and this fucking trifecta of Patagonia wearing folks just appeared out of nowhere.

Thank God, I didn’t hit them. I was so startled after the guy yelled at me, that I felt a knee jerk reaction to yell back him, but how do you tell someone to fuck off you almost just accidentally killed. Luckily, I stifled the urge, because one of my toes would stay on that moment for much longer than it needed to.

Last night my son was seriously distressed because he felt like he had to pee but it wasn’t coming out. Eventually he cried himself to sleep. This morning we called the doctor, and had to go into the office so they could get a pee sample. We moved through the office like we were in a bubble, excessively squirting ourselves with the hand gel.

Hopefully, he doesn’t make a habit of peeing in cups, because he found that to be very exciting. Luckily, he doesn’t have a UTI. The doctor thinks his bladder gets irritated from too much sugar. He really went for that cake yesterday, having his fifth piece right before we went to start bedtime reading. Watching the sugar intake was just added to the mental color-coded white board.

My kids go back to their dad’s today. After getting a lecture from him on how to properly social distance, I’ll probably drink a Monster energy drink and pick apart my busted ass manicure. My finger nails will end up jagged and flimsy, but it’s not really worth a complaint, since, well, people are dying, and of course, because beauty is just a social construct.

Last night I dreamt that I ate my own poop! Just straight out of my underwear, like a burrito wrapper. It is disgusting, but in the dream, it was just like, whatever, I’m eating this doo. My kids found this to be incredibly fascinating, and so did I. An online dream dictionary (so there, it’s more common than you think!) says, to dream about eating your own poop means that it is time to think about a change.

Well, there has never been a better time for this task. I will move it to the top of my mental color-coded white board. I think I’ll make myself some coffee and start on this now. Thinking of change, and so it starts, a personal construct.

Royal Rumble

Overlording the castle with my judy

Last night my kids watched WWE Royal Rumble. Kiki started out by saying she didn’t want to watch because the wrestlers hit each other “in the nuts!”

As Brock Lesnar started tossing dudes over the net, my kids went from their normal hyper selves to completely ballistic; groaning, jumping, fist pumping and throwing their faces into couch pillows.

Kiki was floored to see the next wrestler in leather briefs. “Oh, no! This guys wearing tighty whiteys.”

She whipped her finger over to her little brother and commanded, “Show him what a real man looks like, Geoffrey!”

And, he ripped his pants off and started hula-hooping his hips around to show off his boxer briefs.

My kids are living their best lives during this forced stay-in. In addition to canned corn being their favorite vegetable, they get to play nonstop. I admit, the stay-in has been nice for me too. I spend 80% of the day in deep thought, the dishes don’t pile up, and the laundry is always done. My work though, it takes a lot of motivation to get my ass in gear.

Working from home isn’t something I ever sought out because I live in a fantasyland when I’m at home. Pre-quarantine, my alarm clock for work goes off at 5:30 am, and I need to be in the classroom at 8. I spend the majority of that 2.5 hours drinking coffee, talking on the phone, day dreaming and writing in my journal. I give myself enough time to brush my teeth and put on a Sac State sweatshirt (approx. 2 minutes and ten seconds) and show up to class looking like I rolled out of bed ten minutes prior. My students are great, I think we should just give them all A’s for their non-major related classes, but I’m not in charge, and will do what’s expected of me.

I certainly think we should do that for our own kids! I must not be homeschooling right because I only had to do thirty minutes of work with them last week. Which reminds me of a conversation I had with my mom a couple months ago, when I explained we have to do homework after we get home at 6, and my said, “Well, what the hell are they doing at school all day? They’re just playing all day, and then the school sends all the work home for you to deal with!”

Starting to feel my temperature rise, I said, “Mom, don’t get me riled up right now!”

Someone will email me if we’re doing it wrong. My kids’ classmates are lovely, and their classmates’ parents are lovely too, real hyper competitive types, so I do worry the students will all come back speaking German and doing calculus. So far, in addition to the thirty minutes of homeschooling my kids had, I taught my son how to make me coffee, and add numbers “Carrying the 1” which is probably going to make his teacher mad next year.

In order to prevent brain fatigue and lethargy, we have to implement some strict TV rules. We can’t start watching it till 5. My kids don’t have tablets or video games (at my house) so I don’t have to sledgehammer that stuff to keep them from being screen zombies. This forces them to play, all day. And when they loose interest in pretending to own a surf shop in Hawaii or choose the best Barbie doll to reenact peeing her pants at work, they read or just sit and think.

Yesterday, I walked by my daughter, who was staring off into space, and I thought I had seen her frozen in that pose twenty minutes earlier, so I asked, “You ok?”

Then she cracked a giant smile, and looked at me and said, “I think I’ll name my bunny Chocolate Chip.”

With one child in her brain cave, manifesting her future bunny, the other one was really feeling the loss of his playmate, so I had to pick up the slack, and I pretended to beat him up while he laughed till he peed his pants. Then he put on fresh boxer briefs, and we did it again.

My Quarantine Baby

First day of quarantine was pretty typical. I watched two movies, four episodes of the docuseries McMillion$, and a documentary on autistic savant twin sisters. I also ate a good portion of my candy ration and took three naps.

Spending the day falling in and out of sleep when you don’t have the flu, is such a treat because the dream scene gets ramped up. It was all fun until I woke up from my last nap; I was having an orgasm dream where I was humping on a fence! Yes, a fence! It was a low, picket fence, not really anything special to it. Sometimes any piece of wood will do, I guess.

I didn’t feel shame after waking up, but I didn’t feel good about myself either. I decided to stop napping.

I am not equipped for isolation; I work two jobs, practice comedy, and really enjoy the morning gab session with parents and teachers at my kids’ school. Here I was on day one, flailing.

The inactivity in my day was offset by yet another active dream scene that night, and I woke up on Day 2 of quarantine from a nightmare that I was playing very much the fool in my current relationship.

I didn’t realize the severity, until I on went on Facebook afterward, but I went to yoga. I went straight there, and straight home, where I showered. I had to, my mental health was feeling piqued. I bumped into the owner, and asked her if they were closing. She said, she didn’t know, but they had to implement in the 6 feet distancing rules.  It was really unintentional, when I started crying, while we talked my eyes welled-up, and to my surprise, overflowed.

The same thing happened a few weeks ago, when I stood up in my storytelling class, thinking I’d tell a funny story about my cousin who passed away two years ago, and to my unexpected horror, ended up just crying my eyes out in front of a group of people I didn’t know.

The yoga studio owner, like a room full of performer artist types, is a completely safe person to accidently start crying in front of. She was really nice, and told me to do the online classes every morning when I wake up, and stick to a schedule.

I didn’t feel embarrassed as I walked away from her, but I didn’t feel too good about myself either. The day before I mocked Tom Hanks for being a whiny bitch, and here I was, being a whiny bitch.

My retail job called and told me I’m off the schedule for two weeks, and tomorrow I start moving all my courses to online for my students to finish out the term. I won’t be at a loss for things to do with that undertaking, and in addition, I have to figure out homeschooling my kids.

All comedy has come to a screeching halt. With no where to go for the next two weeks, I’ll have plenty of time to work on my writing project babies. There will be a lot of actual quarantine babies born from this period of isolation. And after the action I was getting during my third nap on day 1 of quarantine, I expect I’ll birth something ten months from now, probably a brown log, and that’s not a metaphor for my manuscript.

Ground Zero

Last week I talked to my sister daily. We talked so much shit, a fire extinguisher of Binaca couldn’t mask our butt breath. After I locked my keys in my car, an hour before needing to be at work, I had a come to Oprah moment, and realized the sick pleasure I was getting in our cackle-fest was starting to turn against me.

Saturday I started my period, Sunday I woke up with a cold sore, and Monday, I’m in love. After I got out of the shower the other night, I forgot two of the three above, and stumbled toward my boyfriend looking like a ground zero case for the upcoming outbreak. Arms outstretched, leaking fluids, with an open sore on my face, I turned on the charm, and hoarsely whispered, “Get over here, you big galoot.”

Horrified, he just shook his head and muttered, “Nah uh.”

It’s his birthday week, and now I’m going to have to get him birthday gifts that cost money.

I woke up this morning and got right to chores. It lifted the grey cloud that showed up when my son woke up at 5 am on a Saturday. I sang to myself as I worked, “It’s the freaking weekend, baby, about to have me some fun.”

I took care of the sink full of dishes, trash and recycling, scooping out the litter box and starting the weekend laundry cycle, and I felt much more calm. We all made avocado toast, and sat around, basking in the nothing-to-do and nowhere-to-go day.

We tidied up the kids’ room. The time is approaching for them to start sleeping in their own beds, instead of us curling up like a pack of dogs every night. My kids are getting a bit too comfortable, demonstrated by my son walking around running his mouth like Kevin Hart.

I don’t know if I should be flattered by how relaxed he is at home, or horrified at how loose I let the reigns go. He macarana’d up to me in the kitchen, shaking fake maracas, and asked, “Will you make a fried egg sandwich?” And then he smacked his butt and made a fart noise.

I shook my head, “Nah huh!” Then I added, “I just washed dishes for 40 minutes, we aren’t eating anything but granola bars for the rest of the day. We have options, you want a chewy, fiber or sweet & salty?”

He reacted with a drawn out, “Oh shit!”

I asked him, “Does your daddy let you walk around talking like that?”

Kiki said, “Dad lets him say fuck three times. Then, he needs to say “Farmer John” instead of fuck.”

“For the love of God, will you please stop saying that word!”

I picked up my phone, looking at them, “I don’t understand where you got that from!”

Then I called my sister.