Honey, I’m Going To Kill You

The number one question I’ve been asked lately is, “How are you liking your new place?” or some variant of it. Really, what I am being asked is, “Are you ready to kill your boyfriend yet?” since I just moved in with him at the beginning of last month.

That question is understandable, since if you’ve spent any length of time with us, we might have slipped up and said to one another, “I am going to kill you,” while in your presence. If that is the case, let me explain.

I don’t know who started it, but it’s really an endearing expression of affection between us. If we start to drive each other nuts we say, “I’m going to kill you. No really. I. Am. Going to kill you.” Sometimes we accompany that with graphic details about how, when, and with what. Other times this will be punctuated with noises like “AAHHHRRGG!!”.

I’m sure that’s this is inappropriate. A couples counselor, if we saw one, would shake their head and put little notes in their pad. They may tisk and ask us, “How do you feel when she says she’s going to kill you?”

“With a super sheep,” I add helpfully.

“With a super sheep-”

“-from the game Worms,” I add to make sure she has the proper context.

“From the game Worms-”

“You know, that will probably just end up killing both of us, and maybe even the cat,” I muse out loud.

“…”

“I feel… frustrated,” admits the boyfriend, “It’s so easy to blow up yourself in Worms. The more fun the weapons, the easier it is to destroy yourself. It’s confusing. I don’t know if the point of the game is to actually win or just blow everything up. You know, either way I also feel like it’s kind of fun. So to answer your question, it feels frustrating, and confusing, but also fun.”

I squeeze his hand because I know exactly what he means, “We can play a different game if that makes you feel better, sweetie. We don’t have to play Worms.”

Our couples counselor, who we don’t actually have, scribbles down some more notes. I imagine it would have in all capital letters, with a lot of punctuation, a circle, and a underline. It is probably the word worms. I’m going to assume that is because she hasn’t played the game and is going to download it when she gets home, but I might be wrong.

On the bright side, neither of us ever make good on our threat. I feel like it makes me feel better to say it, and it makes me feel better to laugh in his face when he says it.

“I’m going to kill you.”

“Hee hee hee.”

“No really.”

“Aw, you’re so cute when you’re homicidal. Let me pinch your cheek!”

But really though, if he doesn’t clean whatever crap he spilled all over our stove I’m going to kill him. I don’t even know what it is. It’s yellow. What could he possibly been cooking that is yellow. It’s kind of gelatinous in some spots and crispy in others. So I asked him what in the name of names he spilled all over our stove that was freaking me out so much,

“Yeah. I don’t know what that is.”

“There’s a lot of it.”

“Yeah, hun. I don’t know.”

“You must have done it last night. But what is it?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t look like anything I cooked. I don’t remember spilling anything.”

When I lived by myself I was annoyed enough about cleaning up after a cat. Now I have a big hamster with opposable thumbs to look after too. No, he doesn’t chew the sides of his house or anything like that. I don’t know why I’m calling him a hamster exactly. I just wanted to call him a pet of some kind. Otherwise I’d have to call him a child, and I don’t need a child that’s almost thirty. Then again, I don’t need a really tall hamster either.

He’d say something like, well at least this hamster can cook (if he’d ever play along and call himself a hamster).

And well, I like his cooking. However, cooking is fun. Scraping a yellow entity off of our stove isn’t. If I cooked, this inter dimensional being now attached to our stove would never have been called into existence. I am very good at both cooking and not summoning disgusting other-worldly beings that adhere to kitchen appliances. I’m convinced that when the boyfriend cooks, he opens a series of portals, and instead of being useful portals that allow him to reach across the kitchen while still standing at the stove, they are portals to other planes of existence which allow things like whirlwinds from the Elemental Planes of Air to come swirling into the kitchen and take everything out of all the cabinets and scatter them all over the counters. Air Elementals are notoriously messy eaters and will also taste everything and leave tiny bits of it all over the floor, counters, and stove.

I don’t think the yellow thing on our stove was from the Elemental Planes. I think we need to look in H. P. Lovecraft books for this one folks. This worries me because I have enough to deal with without Cthulhu running around our apartment fighting with the already present Air Elementals.

Did I just hear the yellow thing on the stove mutter Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn? I swear I did.

I mean, if someone said, “Hey, I’ll do all the cleaning if you do the cooking,” I’d say yes too. That sounds amazing. I’d be the next Master Chef. I’d cook even when I didn’t want anything.

On a serious note, I’m not saying that the boyfriend is a slob who sits around who does nothing. He does a lot. I know not everything is going to be a 50/50 split. It’s impossible, and we shouldn’t be keeping score anyways. But if I clean everything else, I do want to be able to say, “Hey, I did everything else in the apartment- can you clean the kitchen floor please?” and have him say, “Of course! After you slayed that ochre jelly monster (turns out it was a Dungeons and Dragons monster, not Lovecraft) and saved me, I am eternally in your debt. It is the least I can do. Let me also make you a mojito.”

He does make me mojitos, but so far the asking for help has been met with mixed results. I understand that Skyrim has been enslaving a lot of the geek race recently. However, what about my video game needs? If I’m spending all this time slaying real life ochre jellies who want to be the next Master Chef, when do I get time to decompress and play the new officially released Minecraft?

I’m also not asking for the privilege of redoing tasks later. “You want your floor clean? Here. I dumped some water on it. The cat even helped me. You know how he loves to knock over his water bowl. Problem solved!”

Maybe my cat isn’t being a jerk. Maybe he is trying to help me clean the floor. He has no thumbs. That’s so sad. I just realized this whole time I’ve been yelling at my poor cat who has a no thumb disability but still insists on trying to help me with chores. I’m a terrible person. My cat is the Tiny Tim of cats.

I also don’t want to hear, “I got the worst of it” meaning that all the dirt was swept under the rugs. We don’t have rugs, but I’m just thinking of those cartoons where people sweep all the dirt under the rug. Don’t they realize that they’re putting as much effort into carefully sweeping under a rug as they would to sweep it into a dustpan and empty it into the trash? This is doubly bad since we don’t own rugs. Imaginary rugs don’t conceal dirt at all.

I’m not asking for perfection. Depending on who you ask, I am either a neat freak or a slob, so taking an average, I think I’m moderately reasonable about how I want the living space. The boyfriend, however, has a sight disorder when it comes to whether something is clean or not. He doesn’t notice. He cares and knows how to clean. He just doesn’t know how to tell when it’s time to clean. I can help here. Honey, it’s dirty. YOUR WELCOME. And if you don’t help me, I’m going to kill you.

Uber Microbes

I asked the little brother to help me vacuum my apartment, as I helped him clean his room earlier this weekend. He was a little reluctant,

“The floor isn’t even that dirty.”

I wasn’t going to let him off the hook, “Oh, it’s dirty. I have an indoor cat. You see bits of his cat littler in places, right? That means every bit of this floor could potentially have microbes of cat poo on it.”

Whining conquered with dramatics, he decided if he had to do it, he’d at least enjoy it.

“Okay. I’ll pwn those microbes with my uber micro,” a few weeks ago he watched all the Pure Pwnage episodes.

“Um, okay,” I went to pick up my laundry in the other room.

“I’m at the next level,” he called to me after a few minutes.

“Oh-kay,”

I walked by him in the living room.

“Boss fight!” he pushed the vacuumn towards me until I gave him a stern eye, and he though better of it.

When the vacuum whirred down and I heard “PWNED!” yelled from the other room.

I don’t know if I was as cool as my little brother when I was eleven, but I sure hope so.

Dreams: Busy Night

It’s no wonder I don’t feel rested sometimes- and this is only the stuff I can remember!

—–

I’m dragged out of bed by my dad while I’m still sleeping. I’m so tired that I can’t hear anything for the first several minutes. Dad pushes me out the door. I have no socks or shoes on and no bra. Dad lets me buy shoes on the way to where we’re going, but not a bra. We stop at a convenience store and he goes to the clerk pay.

“Why do you need a bra? You look fine!”

Scoff.

“I don’t care how I look. I need support,” I look at the clerk, “Am I right?”

“She’s right, you know,” agrees the clerk.

I’m at a friend’s house now. She lets me borrow socks and a red bra. It’s late afternoon. There’s a hooking-up and dating BBS she wants us to try. I told her I thought of trying it once with a two mutual friends of ours, but I chickened out.

“Nevermind,” she says and goes to finish doing the dishes.

I stop her and tell her I’ll think about it. She smiles and asks me what’s different about this time. I tell her that I think it would be okay if I was with people I trust and I trust her. I also start to tell her about something that happened this past summer, but she gets excited and runs off to hurry up her house work. I’m on the fence, but if I’m with her and out mutual two friends, It’ll be fine. When the desktop PC finishes loading I dial the BBS. She logs in on her account. As we start to look through the profiles of groups of people I start to get excited. It has brief descriptions, sometimes pictures, of who they are, what they’re looking for, and interests. Finally we settle on one we both feel good about and know our friends ill be too. The group consists of Asian American 20-somethings who in general like Asian food, video games, and anime. My friend registers us as interested and describes our group. We’re given a time and place to meet today. We get ready, call our friends, and head out.

There is more than one group that was interested in the one we picked, so there is a foot-race to determine who gets the chance to meet them. I run as fast as I can and finish in a decent place, but most of my group is slow, so we lose. I’m sort of disappointed but figure we can just go back to her apartment, log in, and find another group. My friend tells me it’s too late in the day and the Board will be closed by the time we get back. I didn’t know it had hours. It’s a new thing, I’m told.

The next day I have to drive into town to attend a thing for my old high school. The event is in a very large auditorium. The people attending don’t even take up half of it. The proceedings are long and boring and I can’t pay attention. I start playing with a rubber band. I play with it simply at first, then hook it onto the ceiling and start using it to bounce and do aerobic tricks. I realize I should probably stop before someone notices. It’s with that thought, while in a back flip, I get tangled up in the rubber band. I can see how I can untangle myself, but I think the rubber band will snap. I’m worried it will fly at someone and poke their eye out. I do it and it doesn’t hit anyone. I end up spinning a bunch and get very disoriented and sick (like merry-go-round meets cliff-face vertigo). I crouch down to keep a low profile and crawl to where my old high school classmates are seated. I see a guy I used to know and go to sit by him. He helps me into my seat, probably thinking I’m drunk even though I explain. I’m suddenly reminded that I have a form that someone at this presentation has to sign to prove that I attended. I ask him if he could, give him the form, and show him which check boxes to check and where to sign. I lean over to point and he starts groping me. I push away, but my balance is still off and I stumble into the isle. He catches me, help me up (still groping), and helps me into a seat. He checks the wrong boxes on the form as blackmail. I say screw this and leave.

I have one more errand to get done today. I’m going to be early. According to an email it’s voluntary extra work day at the children’s museum I used to work at. I’m hoping to see some friendly faces and earn some brownie points- who knows- land a new job. I go to the front desk where my old supervisor is. She is busy talking to someone, but stops to introduce me. She says she’ll be right with us to start soon, but meanwhile I could fix up my finger nails. She thinks it’s important and there is a bin across the room full of nail polish. I look at my nails and they are worn at the tips- black with a clear coat of silver sparkles on top. I look through a bin with another girl who I start talking to. I tell her whose job I used to have. She says she likes my cow shaped purse. I open in and show her a cow shaped coin purse inside that says “moo-lah” on it. She says she has a friend who collects those. I tell her that I didn’t know they were collectible and I got it from my aunt on my birthday. She tells me she wishes I still worked here because I seem so nice and friendly. I thank her for the compliment and wish I had thought to grab food before I came.

While working we find a bunny outside. It’s not a wild one, but someone’s lost or abandoned pet. It’s big, tan and white in the belly and I pet it until it trusts me. Then I try to put it in a cage and it freaks out. I catch it again and put it in my truck where my cat is in his carrier.

It’s late when I get done. I’m driving on a rural road banked by trees. A large truck hauling logs comes up the road towards me and I realize he’s on the wrong side of the road. I try to go to the left, but still get hit on the right side, flipping my truck over. I’m okay. I check my bunny and cat. The cat seems fine, but my new bunny is dead. I call 911 with my cell phone and say what happened and where I am roughly. I tell them I don’t know if I’m hurt, my shoulder and knee don’t feel too good. I’m angry and say,

“That driver must have been drunk, because no one is that dumb.”

They tell me to get out of the truck and off the road. I take kitty with me. I go to take the dead bunny, but realize it doesn’t matter. The police and ambulance arrive. They drill me with questions about what happened until Mr. Gruff Driving a Logging Truck fails his breathalyser. The ambulence crew wants to put me on one of those stiff boards in case I have a neck injury. I tell them my neck is fine and I’ve been walking and bending it for twenty minutes. They still want to and I tell them no way am I getting in one of those things. Last time I was in one, I was left in one for a few hours. I saw my sister lay in one for two. My shoulder and knee hurt and it will make them hurt more. And my bunny is dead and I’m pissed. I ask the police if they think the driver will have to pay for the vet bill when I get my cat checked out. I ask them if I can sue for hurting me, my cat, and killing my bunny.

Sexy Brow Stubble

I’m not exactly someone who’s followed the pack- catching on never, embarrassingly later, or so far before that I’m over it by the time it’s cool.

So, yeah, I miss things, and every so often I’m quite shocked to discover what it is that I missed. This story is in reference to a good, long close up look I’ve had at a few good friends lately.

Fred approaches the mirror. He thinks “Damn, I’m a strikingly, amazingly hot stud and user of adjectives.” But then, he furrows his brows in disappointment: his thick, bushy brows that some might say frame his deep, dark, fall into and sprain your ankle eyes. He stares at those brows and a bit of water begins to caress one eye and then the other. “I hate myself,” he states to his complexion, his eyebrows staring back, “And it’s all your fault.”

He reaches for a weapon that will scar his face with stubble for life and put a bandaid on his ego. The tweasers remove the offending bit of hair whose only crime was being where God damn well put it and meant for it to be.

“Much better. Now they are super thin like the ones in this here underwear ad. But, something’s missing…” his pointy-thin, dotted-line eyebrows stare back in earnest like a . . . ., “They’re thin… too thin… too weak.”

His self esteem plummets and the tweezers fall to the bathroom’s tile floor, bouncing with a resonating clamor that echoes between Fred’s ears in a mocking cacophony.

It is then that he sees Jane’s head shaking in the mirror, arms crossed and breath sighing, “It’s okay, Fred,” She approaches with what looks like a pencil and tilts his head down towards her, “There,” she states moments later after drawing upon his well-sculpted face.

And his brows are great, sexy, pencil thin and strong…

…until tomorrow when the dots appear around his new brows, growing in defiance.

“You could always get surgery for that,” suggests Jane nodding to herself.

A black cat on the sofa stares for a moment and then goes back to sleep, thinking how humans are such stupid, silly pets, but he loves them anyways.