Except I do have some words. Here they are.

I go up to cover the receptionist’s afternoon break and she has a news page up with a picture of Michael Jackson. I shudder at the frighteningly disfigured “face” on the screen. She tells me had had a heart attack.

My reaction: indifference

I do what a good little socially acceptable person does and crack the requisite jokes at his expense. You know the routine. Black to white. Fake nose. Child molestation. Right down the line.

Another coworker flies out of his office and announces, “Michael Jackson just died!”

My reaction: get totally fucking wigged out

I mean, that’s kind of intense, no? When a person who is that famous (read: well connected and wealthy) can’t survive passed 50, it just reminds you exactly how mortal we are. And besides that, there’s just something a little weird when an icon dies. It’s TOTALLY intense. There are debates already on the radio between this person calling him a pop icon whose influences have reached far and wide and that person claiming he’s a psycho. This really rubs me the wrong way, because of all the pointless arguments in the world…. Seriously. It’s like having an argument about whether someone was tall or has blue eyes. Like you can’t be both.

::shrug::

But all in all it’s just a little surreal. It’s like announcing Mickey Mouse has died.

I was going to marry Michael Jackson when I was six. Go ahead and crack all the jokes you want about how he would have been willing (but note that I was never a young boy), but the dude made some good music and he is a household name.

A little surreal for sure.

So, I get these headaches, right? I started getting them a little over a year ago. Since then, there have been a small handful of times when I have hit a bad streak and they won’t let up for an extended period which, I would argue not surprisingly, drives me absolutely mad. And when this happens, I become unconditionally desperate to find any kind of solution. Take these supplements? Fine. Lie on this special pillow? Okay. Climb the nearest tree and yodel? Consider it done. Rub newt testicle on my eyeballs? I started last week.

I recently found myself in one of these ruts. The constant, mild undercurrent was stubbornly unending and so I started trying some new avenues. (It turned out that the second I finished my last pre-vacation day at work, this dissipated, which brings some interesting things to light, but encompasses a whole other story under a whole other rock which is currently being left unturned for practical reasons). I ended up seeing a naturopath who recommended, among other things, that I take a food sensitivity blood test which would test for antibodies built up against certain foods. Basically, an unofficial allergy test.

I was given a list of foods to have in my system come test time, and off I went. The list included several dairy items, and a long list of vegetables, fruits, and grains/legumes. Some were knocked off in the normal course of things, and others I tabled for after vacation. I wasn’t going to spend my precious days off stressing about finding a restaurant that offered lima bean pâté or amaranth crackers. Sounds reasonable, no?

And suddenly, somehow, it was already Sunday. Test is Tuesday. My neurotic brain wheels start gliding with ease – doing what they do best – and I decide I have to have eaten all these things by Monday night so I have at least 12 hours for my body to process the food and get it into my blood. I run to Whole Foods and attempt to find as many compound foods as possible to knock down the increasingly heavy basket. I get home and hack into a thousand vegetables and fruits to get just a few bites worth, relegating the bleeding corpse remnants to the fridge to be dealt with later. I now have the nut cup, the bean/grain cup, four various cheese sandwiches, a fruit salad, and a vegetable salad. It is an exceedingly daunting sight.

I am so not even hungry.

I select the salad bowl for the evening as it is the most intimidating item and stare it down like an arm wrestling rival. I WILL win, dammit.

I sit down with a book and force feed myself, little by little, the whole everloving thing. I am supposed to be trying to catch up on sleep, but I’m still eating at one a.m. If the literal jokes boys over at SNL need a new skit, they should try this one: I’m literally CRAMMING. Guffaw. Get it? Cramming my mouth with food to prepare for a test? Guffaw guffaw.

::sigh:: Ridiculous. And the worst part? When I still can’t sleep at 3 a.m. because I’m so uncomfortably full, the only thing I can think is:

For fuck’s sake…if I throw all of this up, I just have to eat it again tomorrow…

So as we’ve already covered numerous times, as in here and here, I have The Anxious. Therefore, one can imagine that when I landed a job involving reviewing medical records which highlight all the sometimes horrifically life changing things that can happen to you when you are:

1. dumb,
2. in a motor vehicle, or
3. mortal

I was a tad bit concerned that it may accentuate my angsty qualities.

Turns out, it really hasn’t. Some days I review exceedingly unpleasant things (whether gross or depressing), but I don’t seem to be any worse for the wear. All I do is cluck at their unfortunate positions.

Like the other day I happened to be working on a file that involved a story that goes like this:

Once upon a time there was a house.
And at that house there was a party.
And at that party at that house there was a keg.
And at that keg at that party at that house there was a minor.

And then bad stuff happened.

The end.

And I’m sitting at my desk, tksing and thinking why, oh why, silly kids did you do something so irresponsible which had such dire consequences? I’m making the trumpet noise the adults make in Charlie Brown.

And then later that night I was looking at this and thinking oh you silly college kids with your crazy drunk antics, as I shook my head and my old-lady beaded spectacle chain swayed back and forth in step (I don’t really have a spectacle chain).

And THEN I suddenly had a flash and remembered that I have an entire section of a photo album from college that documents the sports we created. I wasn’t drunk in any of said photos because I’m a disgustingly boring rarely-drinker, but I would argue, probably to the detriment of my rep more than anything, that I have done some fabulously stupid things withOUT the aid of intoxicating substances.

We had an activity called Mud Sliding which is perfectly self-explanatory and involved going to find hills on campus after a good rain. I will note that the jeans “prewash” in the bathtub after said sport turned many gallons of water into chocolate milk and so I think I only participated once due to the ensuing hassle.

But the other sport we invented was pure genius if you ask me. In college they hand out free condoms and free lube samples like water and we were thinking, “What – besides the obvious – will we do with all of this lube?”

And it just so happens that when you live in the dorms the bathroom floors are all tile and slope gently to the center where there is a drain.

And it just so happens that lube luging was born:

Step 1: Squirt all the samples you have on the bathroom floor.*
Step 2: Take off shoes and socks.
Step 3: Roll up pants.
Step 4: See how long you can avoid getting a concussion.

*Only use water-based lube, because if you go to the sex shop and purchase a whole bottle of whatever lube is cheapest and it happens to be silicone-based, you will require soap to wash it off and down the drain, and you probably won’t get it all and one of your suite-mates might slip and get mad at you. I’m just saying. Hypothetically.

And I’m not saying that lube luging is anything like getting wasted and very, very broken at a house party, but I AM saying that I used to do fun, weird, slightly stupid, nonsensical things. Moi. What happened to that? Is this me getting old or is it inevitable? Does crazy fun exist after school or is it doomed to wither and die in the post grad phase?

Oh my god.  Am I going to start telling these stories:

Me: You will not BELIEVE what HAPPENED. It was INSANE!
Them: What happened?
Me: I was alphabetizing my spices, and for a second, I put CILANTRO before CHIVE…
Them: Uh-huh…
::silence::
Them: And then what?
Me: No. That’s it. Isn’t it CRAZY!?

I’m going to be sick.

The other night, don’t ask me what possessed him, but the boy decided to find this. And we proceeded to stay up way, way, way too late playing it. And for some unknown and unforeseeable reason, it was some of the most hilarious fun I’ve had in quite some time. I mean, the little program even has that part when you have to “flip the disk”. Remember those disks? The large, black floppies that seem to be just the perfect size and hardiness to be a high school punk band’s CD sleeve for their self-released, self-titled first album? Of course, you don’t actually get to flip a real disk, but still…

And the whole thing is just so utterly and pathetically entertaining. What with the shrill, piercing music, and the “would you like to look around” which, if you answer Y allows you the joys of surveying a stream and grassy hillside displayed with, in total, about six pixels.

Such beauty.

We went as carpenters at first, which is the equivalent of level medium. And do you remember how HARD the damn game is? We thought we had plenty of everything, but we kept getting lost, bandits stole all of our clothes (literally ALL – we assume we were naked), and the kids kept breaking their legs or getting the measles. And THEN we ran out of food and, literally every day, had to try trading for food (mostly useless) or hunting. We took turns with the hunting. No sexism in this frontier family.

And we both sucked. Royally. We attempted to shoot through rocks, turned our generic avatar left to shoot a buffalo licking our right elbow, succeeded in bringing home a squirrel (“You have brought home one pound of meat!”) and other such hunting atrocities. We’d never survive back in the day.

And then on the few occasions when we were actually successful in killing something, it would be over one hundred pounds and the narration would inform us that we could only carry the first hundred pounds back to the wagon. So there we are cussing out the kids for not helping and wondering why on earth it never occurs to us to come back for the second batch of meat when we know we’re just going to starve again in 20 days (if we’re eating on the bare-bones plan). And with the amount of trail losing going on, 20 days was, like, every five seconds.

Ridiculous.

So about this time I realize I haven’t eaten any dinner in real life and go to make myself a bagel. I’m not gone five minutes and I hear from the bedroom in a matter-of-fact voice:

Moe has the measles.

Moe is dead.

…

Louinda has a broken leg.

Louinda is dead.

…

Jebediah has cholera.

Jebediah is dead.

…
…
…

Everyone is dead.

I am livid. This is a CHILD’s game. Come on people. We can do this. I rearrange the large fleece mumu I wear for pjs when it’s cold in the house and settle in.

It’s time to get down to business.

This time, we’re going as bankers. This time, we’re buying HELLSA food. Like, maxing out the food option. We bought HELLSA sets of clothes. Lots of parts to trade later if we need them.

Start out on meager meals. Start on strenuous pace. None of this meandering shmeandering.

And folks…we just FLEW. It must have taken us an hour the first time to go two thirds of the way and then die. The second time, we got to Oregon in probably 20 minutes. No fooling around. We didn’t hunt once.

Lesson learned? Be rich. Life is much, much easier when you’re rich.

I’m bad. A day late. And probably a dollar short. Apologies.

Since this is late, we’re that much closer to Saturday morning. And Saturday morning is when we go to The Breakfast Spot.

I’ve never really been a regular at a restaurant before. I’ve been a regular at a coffee shop, deli, or food cart where I routinely buy something quickly to eat on my way to or from work. But I’ve never been a sit-down regular. I love Thai food, but by god I wouldn’t want to be stuck with only that. Same for Lebanese or sushi…

But we’ve found this PERFECT breakfast spot. The food is great. But what’s really perfect about it is that it’s a small, cozy place, and it’s never busy. It’s so nice to go somewhere sans restaurant din and hour wait. We play cribbage or read books. It’s all very leisurely and I love it.

When you arrive, there is a crooked and weathered old tree out front that I would like to put in my pocket and take home with me so I can water it and pat it and whisper reassuring things to it.

And when you get inside, it has things like bowls of tiny adorable onions for decoration

and do-it-yourself loose leaf tea with these weird tea holding sticks of which I am proud to say I’ve finally mastered the use.

Then there’s the kitchen. One of those lovely homey kitchens you kind of want to have in your own house with pots hanging haphazard and full view so you can see the cooks making your food.

(In the center you can see the white cake, which is a red velvet cake, and I eat it. And it’s good. And cake for breakfastdessert should become a cultural norm.)

And almost every Saturday, the other regulars are there. We can’t figure out if they own the place (literally) or are family of a guy who works there who always comes out of the kitchen to smooch the kid, or what. But they are a dad and a mom and a baby. Baby is adorable and quite well behaved. He has his same bowl of Mashed Stuff every time. And Mom always speaks in Spanish and wears insanely colorful platform shoes that look to be made out of Fimo. She says hi. We say hi. I love them too.

And our waitress is so sweet. And she knows our routine. And we make small talk and she relays stories of trekking allllll the way across the river to have outings in downtown even though downtown is literally 28 blocks from the restaurant.

But then there’s this guy who works in the kitchen. A portly and friendly kind of a guy. A guy who should be everyone’s neighbor. And he wears his little white apron and has rolled up sleeves and a potbelly and he cooks yummy foods.

And see, there’s this comic, and he does this one bit (see 2:45) where he talks about how you could work it even while working at McDonalds that we just ADORE (and if you like that, watch this). Because everyone knows what it’s like to take some song you really like, some song that really pumps you up, and stick it on some headphones while you do something mundane. Like walk down the street, or pay the bills. And you just feel like a million bucks… And so we thought it would be fun to take the song and make our own music video of people we know doing their version of the fry shake.

And there is no one higher on our list to star in this video than this guy who cooks at the breakfast place.

Because every Saturday morning, when we walk into our little joint, wouldn’t you know he’s just HUSTLIN.