Elvis Lives. In My Yard.

There is this squirrel who has been visiting our yard quite a bit. I've been hoping to capture him on video or even just a picture - but no luck.

We've named him Elvis - after I had thrown some squirrel friendly food out into the yard:

"Look honey, the squirrel!"

"Yeah, he doesn't appear to be too afraid of us. I think he's like Elvis. I bet he plays all the yards . . . for all the nuts he can get."

This morning as we Zooms were getting ready for work, our telephone rang. Our neighbors, who have started a huge construction project, wanted to talk to us about the common wall. Although they wanted to talk NOW.

When we didn't call back within 60 seconds, they called AGAIN and even knocked on our door.

Mr. Zoom was not pleased. I tried to create a solution:

"Tell them we've adopted Elvis. That we've converted to his nut church and are donating all of our money to trees."

I Didn't Really Want You To Do What I Asked You To Do. Everyone Knows That.

When I started here, I didn't find the Rosetta Stone to my fellow co-workers' e-mails among my welcome package contents. Know why? THERE SHOULDN'T HAVE TO BE ONE.

I have failed to properly de-code just about every e-mail sent to me in the last 6 months. Silly me. When my name is in the "TO" spot, I usually think I am supposed to respond/act. Not the case, it turns out.

Several times I've responded to be notified that "I wasn't talking to you, that was so that ______ would do it..that..whatever."

I am now paralyzed with indecision when any one of the 150 daily e-mails arrives. I bet you can actually see me freeze when the notify screen shoots out that teeny, almost transparent preview of the message in the corner.

I've actually had telephone and face to face conversations like this:

Person: "Did you get my e-mail?"

Zoom: "Yes. But I'm not sure who needs to do what."

Person: "But it's right there in the e-mail"

Zoom: "Is it.?. Because I never know what is straight forward instruction and what is heavily veiled attempts to do...what ....I'm not really sure - hence the hesitation."

Person: "OH, you are so funny. Yeah, I can see your eyes moving back and forth, trying to connect the dots when I tell you stuff.

Zoom: "So that's what it looks like on the outside. Ok. But still... I'm not any clearer on what I'm supposed to do..."

Person: "I know. Ok bye!"

FANTASTIC!!

I am just not cut out for, nor am I willing to learn, art of subtle hint reading. If you want something out of me, I need in-your-face straightforward notification. If you want to be mysterious, just re-name something in the sentence like my mom does.

My FAM called last night to say she needed help with her digital pictures. I was short on time, so I specifically told her "Look, what I'm about to do? Don't try and follow it. Don't try and learn it. I'm going to apply a quick fix to this situation and we can go over it some time next week when we both have some time."

So what's the first thing to shoot out of her mouth after I start working? "WAIT! Don't you have to hit the CURTELL key for that?"

CURTELL?!? What the? - my entire body seized when just a second later I knew she was talking about the CONTROL key [CTRL]. I had to keep from outright laughing - she uses this term with such determination, as if Bill Gates himself whispered it in her ear. She's got a good sense of humor, but not when she's so frustrated at the computer that she's called me for help. My life depended on holding on to this little re-naming gem she's got going until a later date.

She might be formerly Amish, but that doesn't prevent her from handing out the pain when one "wrongs" her.

I waved her off, saying something about that key not working in the program I was currently using. So I fibbed a little to get her off my back? I was running out of time and she won't remember that "instruction" at a later date anymore than she'll figure out that the Curtell key is actually Control.

If only my co-workers were so easy to figure out.

Fear and Loathing in my Frankenstein Uterus

My uterus has the ability to cramp with alarming strength. Like, it is Frankenstein and I am a much larger little girl he(it) squeezes to death.

I take medicine for that so I can get through my work days and fun days with minimal down time. Lately though, I've needed more drugs than usual. My doctor decided to give me a new medicine to try - something stronger and unfortunately, something that would knock my sh*t out.

I'll try anything, and I figure that once I know how I respond to medicine, I just work around the instantaneous sleep side effect. That's terrific...unless the medicine is making me see and hear things that cause me to run around the room .... AS IF I AM ON FIRE.

Mr. Zoom was sleeping soundly at 2 am when I came charging into the room, snapped on the light and shook him awake. "heeeeelp meeee. I'm having an attack." He shook the sleep off and tried so hard to calm me down. "HEEEEELP MEEEEE THE MEDICINE IS MIXING!!!" "CALL 911! I need crackers!!"


Now, what he DIDN'T know was that I was freaking out because I was seeing and hearing things that weren't really what they seemed. All he knew is that I was flipping out, randomly eating Ritz crackers and begging him to call 911. In my head, if I ate crackers I could get the medicine to stop "attacking" my senses - soaking it up I suppose.

This hallucination thing happened to me once before when I was in my 20s and I had some Nyquil to help me sleep during a bad flu. I woke up to purple spiders, dinosaurs and other random stuff. And all of it was purple for some reason. I haven't had Nyquil since.

This most recent event started out just like any other middle of the night wake up and have to pee experience. The problem though? When I pulled a new tampon out of the cupboard and saw the wrapper, the texture in the wrapper attacked my head. You read that right. The teeny little dimples in the plastic around the tampon suddenly grew huge - I'd guess about 20x their original size, and appeared to float up around my head. The texture literally undulated as it kept growing and seemed to be drawn to my head like a bird from the coffee shop protecting it's nest!

ALTHOUGH, the yellow swirls that are the decor on the plastic - and the ones that you'd think would be the trigger - stayed right where they were supposed to be. Sober examination of the box a day later revealed this text: Discreet purse resistant [their bold, not mine] wrapper with easy-to-open tabs. I think if Tampax interviewed Mr. Zoom, there'd be a whole new paragraph on the box.

To make the situation worse, I also had a line to a song running in my head. We've all had that, and generally no big deal. Only, it wasn't my voice or even the singer's voice saying/singing the line. And I couldn't get it to shut off no matter what I did - and for some reason the fact that I couldn't identify the "voice" was upsetting me. Ok wait, it wasn't running in my head while I was being attacked by my tampon wrapper...but the minutes (felt like hours) before that event it was.

And this is the weirder part. I'll try and explain it... the line of the song running in my head was from "Bleed it Out" by Linkin Park. Truly appropriate, yes. BUT, I only knew the second half of the line until just now when I googled it to get the first part:

"I bleed it out, digging deeper just to throw it away."

THIS IS WHAT I HEARD: "La la la la la la ...just to throw it away." over and over and over and over again. I know we had heard the song on the morning radio show we listen to on our ride to work Friday morning. I did NOT know it would half stick in my consciousness and come out later as a sanity repellent.

Mr. Zoom did everything he could to keep me from calling 911. He is supposed to do this. I don't know for sure, but I think at one point we had somewhat of a stand off where he stood between me and the bedroom phone - trying to get me to calm down before I made a call I was going to regret. I think I might have had crackers in one hand while making a few attempts at the telephone. It had to have been like fighting off a giant toddler holding soggy finger foods.

Horribly embarrassing. Although in the days that followed, I've been able to laugh at it. I realize, again, how lucky I am to have Mr. Zoom. I don't know of many people who would allow themselves to be jolted awake at 2am by unreasonable - ney - lunatic behavior - and through everything thrown at them, hold on to both their wits and their spouse without one single condescending, judgmental or patronizing word. All without a 911 dispatcher on their side.

But I Don't Want To Share My Entree!

I am the biggest sucker in the whole world. No, really. I know better than to watch a Linklater film, yet in the last year I've done it twice.

In fact, I truly need to IMDB that guy. In addition to Slackers, A Scanner Darkly and Fast Food Nation, I bet he's also linked (bah!) with other films I hate. FFN was the last steaming meanderfest I picked from our cable provider's Movies-to-Rent-from-Couch service. I know he's trying to say something poignant by overstating the blasé. I get that. Or at least that's the best explanation I can come up with on my own, without googling him and his movies. BUT OH MY GAWD there has to be a better way. I've seen it with my own eyeballs in other films, I know it can be done.

Linklater film is like a road trip where you drive for 90 minutes to 3 hours, and nothing happens. Literally nothing. The road is straight and free of everything - even scenery. There are no fellow vehicles to look at. There is nothing on the left, right or behind you to look at. Only you can't speed. You are forced to drive the same speed the entire trip - and it's old people speed. Like 50mph. you reach your destination and the car quietly and almost imperceptibly dies. And that's the ONLY way you know you've reached "your destination."

What just happened? Is that the end? Did I just spend money on that experience? Did I even care about any of the characters? Because if I did, I missed both the story and the being interested part. Yes - yes you did, my friend. You just watched a Linklater film.

There is only one thing more disturbing to me than Linklater. That would be television specials on String Theory or M Theory. It's not that I'm annoyed that I got nothing out of the experience. Quite the opposite. I was very happy to have 3 dimensions. Unfortunately, there are these people that say there are actually 11.

I recently tivod and stupidly watched a special on parallel universes. I came away from that show with the following knowledge: M Theory means that our universe is nothing more than a zit on the ass of membranes that collided. And we aren't sure, but it just might be prom night. It's only a matter of time before we get squeezed out of existence.

AND, there are possibly worlds just like ours (in the membranes or out, I don't know), but physics might be totally different there. Like when eating at a Chinese restaurant I won't be expected to share my entrée? Do you know how annoyed I'd be if there was a world like that and I couldn't live in it? Because a feature of these parallel places is that "you" might not exist there. Or something.

That's a Knowledge Wedgie - right there...is what that is.

And Mr. Zoom is always gone when I cue up this kind of show. Or he'd (rightly) block me from doing this to myself.

"What's wrong? You look wonky."

"I watched a show about String Theory."

"Why do you do that?"

"...I thought it would be interesting...."

"Are you ever going to sleep again?"

"Apparently not in this universe, I'm not."