Sep
10
September 10, 2006
In the years I’ve been keeping an online journal, I’ve only had a few angry comments. I’ve chalked this up to the fact that I’m too uninformed to be very opinionated, and therefore incapable of much shit-stirring. If only I were smarter, so as to have a longer, more useful stick with which to stir the shit! But alas.
As it turns out, being kind of stupid can be controversial too. I don’t think posting my horrible idea of a Steve Irwin Halloween costume was quite on par with, say, fooling hundreds of people into replying to a Craigslist sex ad and then publishing all of the responses, including their email addresses (which, oh my god), but I admit it was pretty obnoxious. I actually didn’t feel remorseful about it at all, though, until Jem–who I like very much–mentioned that the joke hit too close to home for her, as one of her close friends is related to Steve and is in mourning right now. Then I thought about Terri Irwin reading my retarded blog post, as improbable as that would be, and…yeah. Sometimes there are things you should probably just keep to yourself, or only share with your equally-awful husband.
However, if it shook loose a few readers whose immediate reaction to the entry was to tell me I had no morals or heart, and that they certainly hoped no harm would ever befall Riley (insert Ominous Tones of Deserved Retribution), well, I don’t mind that one bit. Begone, froth-mouthed crazies, to a land where no one ever does anything to offend you. I recommend one of the outer rings of Saturn.
Something kind of interesting: my daily traffic on that website has nearly doubled in the last couple days. One of the Irwin Post comments asked, “Are you not getting paid for this site?”. I’m not positive what the relevance of the question is – I guess the implication is that I should avoid any subject that has the potential to upset the readers I am being paid to write for. My guess is that ClubMom doesn’t have a real big problem with the boost in viewers. Presumably whoever is currently paying for that big-ass ad tower on there (at the moment, Home Depot, I think) doesn’t mind it either.
I get paid by the month, not by number of viewers, so from that perspective I don’t care if people go away, and in the words of one reader, “tell all of their friends about my pathetic lack of taste and decency” (wait, so you’re going to send around a link to my blog with the instructions to avoid it because it contains a lack of both taste and decency? Jeez, warn me ahead of time, why don’t you, so I can ask for more bandwidth) and never come back.
But I do actually care about a bunch of people having such vitriolic anger towards me; if every entry I posted – here or elsewhere – had comments like that (setting aside the question of what objectionable content, exactly, I’d be consistently producing to generate that sort of feedback) then it wouldn’t be rewarding at all. It wouldn’t be worth the check, and it certainly wouldn’t be worth the time I invest in it.
So my sappy, lame-ass point here is, I’m awfully grateful for the lack of hateful comments you leave me. You have helped me feel confident enough to write about things I never could share with strangers (you don’t feel like strangers). Thank you for being the most supportive, sane, non-butt-kissing, non-burn-her-she’s-a-witching, stupendously cool group of readers a person could hope to have.
Finally, to Jem: I’m sorry about that post.
:::
Today is Sunday, and it was a fine, fine day. The temperature was, in my Northwesterner’s opinion, completely perfect: 71°; the skies were clear and bright and you could just barely smell the onset of fall in the air, that crisp cool delicious odor of firewood and apples and leaves.
Lately we’ve been noticing an odd number of people who seem to be poking around in the tiny section of woods that skirts a park near our house, and JB finally asked someone, “Hey, are you looking for a geocache?” (They had that guilty look about them, a contrived sort of nonchalance, and of course the GPS is a dead giveaway.) They allowed as how they might be, yes, and so we looked it up – sure enough, there was a tiny cache hidden there, which we found this morning.
We hadn’t been geocaching in a long time, and I had forgotten just how fun it is. We packed up Riley and searched out two more in the neighborhood, discovering a park we’d never seen before in the process. That’s my favorite thing about geocaching, you find all kinds of cool trails and parks and places to come back to.
We also visited Old Navy, where JB updated his jeans wardrobe and I picked out some ridiculously cute shirts for Riley, and later we found a new cheap rug to replace the cheap white shag. I like this one much better, so now we have an extra rug. Clearly, we need a dead body to roll in its dog-fur-coated innards.
Rug, 2.0.
Old Navy shirts. I love the one with the fox: WHAT!
In case you were wondering, the boy continues to be cute. It’s getting harder and harder to take pictures of him; man oh man, he’s always on the move, rarely staying still long enough to stay in frame.
He looks like he’s dancing here, but I think he’s just in mid-wild-step. Rug 1.0 blinds us all with its shaggy whiteness.
He digs the straw action, but every other sip comes with a near-death experiences as he hacks on the inhaled liquid contents. Babies! They’re, like, soooo clueless.
As for the dwindling remainder of this day, JB and I are going to continue on our marathon of watching the first season of Rescue Me, which despite some overall cheesiness, I’m really enjoying. Did you know you can say “shit” on FX, but not “fuck”? Just a little wisdom-nugget for you. You’re welcome, and good night.
Sep
8
September 8, 2006
I am declaring today Fiction Friday here at sundrymourning.com, for no particular reason other than it’s been a long time since I tried to write a story. So, here we go, rusty fingers and all:
:::
DOG DAYS
It’s surprisingly cool in your hands, even on this hot, end-of-summer day. Indian summer was what you called this weather as a kid. It’s probably not okay to say that now. Dog days, that’s better. It’s a fuckin dog day for sure.
Cool, yeah, not cold. Cool like the other side of your pillow. It feels pretty good, really. You shift in your seat, turn it over on its side, hear the small clicks of the objects in the chambers as they move, slightly.
Alloy frame. Stainless steel. Satin finish. Rosewood grips, shining just as pretty as a new-polished floor.
Whatever. The important thing is that it’s loaded.
Somewhere in the house a phone starts ringing. It’s a jangling, painful sound; one of those old phones that still has the holes you stick your fingers in to dial. You can picture it: dull scuffed plastic that was once clear, the edges rimmed with dirt from a thousand finger-insertions. That buzz when you let go each hole, short or long depending on whichever number. Zero, man, that one took forever.
The man you’ve tied up in the corner is yelling again. Well, trying to, anyway. It’s kind of hard to yell through a dishtowel, although he’s giving it the old college try. “What,” you say to him. “You expecting a call?” And you laugh a little. Jesus, it’s hot.
The phone stops, which is nice, because it was starting to get on your nerves.
He’s looking at you now, all pleading wet eyes, like some kind of cartoon character. Like fuckin Bambi, except not nearly as cute. He pissed himself about five minutes after you yanked the last zip tie tight, maybe around the time he first saw the gun, and the kitchen has filled up with that acrid piss-smell. Ammonia. Fear. It’s as familiar to you as the cicadas humming outside, that smell.
“Hmmmmm,” he’s saying behind that towel. “Hrrrrmm! Hrrrrrrm!” He’s straining at those ties but they don’t have one bit of give. Keep the raccoons out of your trash, keep a grown man from moving his arms and legs.
“Go ahead,” you tell him. “Bark all you want.”
That bad old sun isn’t giving this day any kind of break. You turn your face into your upper arm, rub off a long runner of sweat, grinning as you do so because the fact that your gun hand is kind of waving around is freaking his shit.
Outside the insects drone, the afternoon throbs. Inside the kitchen the air doesn’t seem to move. Okay. Okay.
“Listen,” you say. “Listen up.”
You start talking. You had this planned, sort of, but once you get going it’s like some big heavy truck rolling down a steep hill: you can’t stop. Your voice gets louder and louder, until you can’t hear those bugs no more. He’s staring back and moaning and that piss smell is everywhere and your guts feel like they’re turning inside out.
And then there’s nothing left. No more words. Your face feels gross: tears, sweat, snot. You sit back in the ugly white chair with chipped paint that you could sketch with your eyes closed. Your breath comes in hiccuping gasps.
He’s on the floor, an old man with a piss-stain on his work pants. Pitiful, really. He don’t look like he could hurt anyone. One of your hands is in your lap. The other is raising, almost all by itself. Your thumb is moving, pulling back that hammer.
Now he’s crying, his eyes are pinched shut and he’s making little choking sounds.
“Open your eyes,” you tell him. You put your index finger on the trigger and feel the ridges in the metal.
It’s getting late. The buzzing is so loud, it’s everywhere. The sun is a giant ball of fire dipping slowly behind the horizon. Maybe what you hear isn’t cicadas after all, but the hot static sound of the sun burning everything alive.
“Open your eyes,” you say.
The Bible says to forgive but the Bible also says an eye for an eye and what happens when someone takes something more important than an eye?
“Look at me,” you say gently.
It’s the tiniest of movements. Just a squeeze. That’s all you have to do.
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