dixie chicken with a spork.

This morning I went to the gym. I did not wear all blue. Once, a few weeks ago, I got to the gym and realized I was wearing ALL blue. The same shade of blue. If you could see the house across the street, you would know that it was the same blue as the house across the street. Sky blue. I wore sky blue shorts and a sky blue shirt. AND I carried a sky blue sweat towel and a sky blue water bottle. It was completely accidental and really hampered my run.

On the way out of the gym (today...when I was not wearing all blue), I passed a man sitting in his car in the parking lot wearing a suit and eating fried chicken with the windows up. I could not figure if he was eating fried chicken before his workout or after his workout, but decided that either way, Bob Greene would not approve.

I started to clean the house. I got through two rooms and decided that we either: a) need a smaller house; or b) need to move around a little less when we're here. We already have a pretty small house; and we are only two people. Where does all this stuff come from? I'm going to stop wearing clothes, because I hate putting them away. The act of putting something on a hanger or in a drawer is horribly offensive. But so is the mountain range forming in the upstairs bedroom (currently out of commission due to the scientific phenomenon of rising heat and its relationship with the physical effort required to install the window a/c unit -- directly proportionate.).

Sunday night -- and this has nothing to do with house cleaning or working out -- we went to the Rib America fest downtown. It was blazing hot. Everywhere I sat, I left perfect bun marks. I ate Dixie Chicken with a spork, drank a frozen strawberry margarita out of a nonbiodegradable plastic cup, and watched Jonny Lang -- who, in addition to being completely awesome and so cute I can barely stand it, is biodegradable.

And so are you.

single tasker.

I am a single tasker.

I hear that, as a woman, I am supposed to be genetically predispositioned to do many things at once. So maybe I am actually a man. With the wrong parts. Because I can only do one thing at a time. Just one.

I require large caverns of transition time from one task to another. So do kindergartners.

I regret these things are so. Productivity is compromised indefinitely. I have skipped the gym all week in order to clean the basement. When I lay out the hours in the day, it is illogical to think I can't do both -- that I can't spare an hour to temporarily change directions. I think my inner-power-steering is broken or out of fluid.

I have also skipped writing. To clean the basement.

Today I will write. It is a single task. But thickly partitioned, and by the time you get past the partitions, it will already be time to go to work. So there will be no basement. And no exercise. And I hope someone else goes to the store, because we are out of milk.

How am I ever going to raise kids?

My biceps are going slack.

self portrait of a VIP.

today, i am back to the basement.

it is a hazardous area.

i went spelunking once.

slithering through the belly of a mountain

i needn't nearly as much gear

as standing upright

in the underbelly of my house.

but at least here, i am a VIP --

queen of my own microcosm.

in a cave, swallowed by stalagmites,

i am equal footing with

insects.

a grunt.

how awesome is this post?

i want to post a link to today's big sur fires entry from my friend, lisa. i'm so excited by her writing and her insight; i just think she's fantastic and a genuinely inspired soul. i feel such a charge reading something that makes me nod and tsk and exhale audibly. so beautiful.
go here and soak it up.

mandibles, polish, asparagus. rabbit hunting.

small wine buzz happening here. please note.

today i went to my pappaw's house and planted things in the dirt. mostly plants.

in the digging, i unveiled a small, nearly perfect mandible, and its companion maxilla. too big to be a squirrel or rabbit. too small to be a labrador. perfectly intact teeth, including fang-like canines. (dental lesson complete). i noted how skeletons always look angry. i think it's because the teeth are bared. you never notice how pleasant lips are until they are gone.

i continued my planting only slightly afraid that i would uncover the remaining remains.

on the other side of the house, i dug up an empty nail polish bottle. i found this far more sinister than the body-less head.

and finally, pappaw pointed out asparagus growing among a bunch of unattractive weeds. i learned that asparagus is useless if it is overgrown -- that it must be harvested young and much shorter. that seems important.

later he told me about the gun he bought when he was 13 and he would skip school and go rabbit hunting. he had to give away his kills, because bringing them home would have proven that he didn't go to school. and then i got an idea for a story, so i took a bunch of notes on the square, yellowed paper that has been sitting beside pappaw's chair for at least three decades.

pappaw is my only living grandparent. i'm glad that he is still around. all of my other grandparents died before i understood how important their stories were. i wish i had not been so stupid and wasteful with my youth.