Category: Uncategorized

SNACK

Some people get stung by a wasp and they shrug it off.
I’ve seen it.
I am not one of those people.

We got take out burritos for dinner,
And were going to zip down to the lake shore to eat them.
I turned south onto a side street and with my right hand pulled my hair back out of my face.
Then I screamed,
Bloody murder.
I slammed on the breaks and looked at my hand.
There was some sort of stinger at the base of my ring finger.
I pulled it out and flung it out the open window.
“Was it a bee?! Was it a bee?! Oh my god, IS IT STILL IN MY HAIR?!”
I put the car in park so I could make my escape.
Before I could, though,
My husband said, “Yes it is!”
And he started swatting at my head with a fistful of paper napkins.
“Where is it now?!”
“I don’t know. Get out of the car!”
I was already on it.
I swung the car door open all the way and ran over to the sidewalk,
Where I proceeded to shake out my hair,
And then drop to my knees screaming and crying.
Because it HURT.
Also, I don’t know if I’ve ever been stung by a bee before (or was it a wasp?),
And what if I’m allergic,
And wasn’t my whole hand swelling up now?
And was that the tingling sensation of death running up my arm?
I was flailing.
Traffic was now backed up on this sleepy side street,
Because of course I stopped the car right in the middle of the road,
And the driver’s door was still wide open.
I got myself together enough to get back in the car and pull away.
Soon the pain started to subside,
And I turned to my husband and said,
“Did you really have to throw all the napkins out the window?
What are we going to use for the burritos now?”

SNACK
(formerly known as Daily Snack, but now less daily)

We bought a run down dump of a 100-year-old house.
The walls were a special shade of hospital green meets 50 years worth of cigarette smoke.
Add hordes of stray cats peeing all over the place,
And you start to get an idea of how it smelled.
Also, no kitchen on the main floor, two layers of vinyl tile over hardwood on the second,
And waist-high weeds covering the property.
Believe it or not, it was not abandoned.
There were people paying rent to live here.
But good bones, you know?
Refinish the upstairs floor, wash and paint the walls, do some weeding,
Put in a kitchen,
And voila!
It’s only slightly dumpy.

But sitting near the dining room now,
I notice the window sill has been finished with random strips of ill-fitting molding.
Really, what is up with THAT?

DAILY SNACK

Irene is now the same age Colum was when she was conceived.
It makes sense.
She has been waking up and playing with her baby dolls.
She sits on the couch and “reads”.
She does a lot of cooking on her play stove.
She fights with her brother,
And sometimes she wins.
She is more girl than baby now.
And she needs me less.
I’m getting so much done!
So it makes sense,
That at 21 months of age,
You might start thinking about another baby.

And, no, I’m definitely NOT pregnant.

DAILY SNACK

There was a little graduation ceremony,
Replete with a three-song performance,
For Colum’s two-week-long kindergarten readiness program.
He’d been practicing these call-back songs for days.
In the car he started to sing them again.
But this time he got Irene to echo every line.
“With their hands in their pockets,”
“Anns in pockis”
“And their pockets in their pants,”
“And pockis in panz,”
“All the little fishies doing the hootchie kootchie dance.”
“Fissies do kootzy kootzy dense.”
It was pretty much the cutest thing I’ve ever heard.