Not Even Remotely Dumb *


For the past few weeks I've been enjoying the spring-like weather and going out for morning walks. During this time it has also occurred to me that God slash the Universe slash Nature was speaking to me in code. It has taken me up until yesterday to decipher it and it is not good.

It started when I noticed that the animals were extra friendly to me. The squirrels ran towards instead of away, the ducks honked hellos and waddled closer. The cats rubbed against my legs and dogs sniffed happily, wagging their tails. Even the dreaded hawk that spies from the dead, spanish moss covered tree was a no show. I began to suspect then that I was about to receive a message from the divine.

And one morning I found it.

I was rounding the bend of the smaller "pond", though they call it lake Evelyn, when I looked to my left to see if there was the familiar shape of the alligator ridges, poking from beneath the water. That's how I spotted it, in the water, it was spelled out, using the leaves from the water lilies. What was ingenious about it was that it needed its own reflection in order to create sensible ciphers. So that, at any other time of day the shadows would be slightly off and it would no longer create a letter. I knew then that it was only meant for me.

It spelled: K.R.O.D.

I tried every combination of words to decipher this dubious acronym. At first I thought it was a hearty cheer for me to continue my binge reading, thus shouting "Knowledge! Read Or Die!" or perhaps it said cryptically, "Know rest on days". Should I nap during the day? Or did it stem from my Catholic school upbringing and really say "King rightly outsmarts devil"?

Then I began to wonder if it really spelled out a full message and I was just not looking hard enough. What if it really was saying "LooK RODents!" or "LinK ROD Serling" which meant I should be wary of rodents of unusual size or do something about the Twilight Zone, possibly linking to it somewhere or other. So I looked around but couldn't see any other letters that could make fuller words.

I walked by every morning and spent my days thinking it through. And Eureka! I had the solution. Employing Rich's patented IF/THEN formula I came up with: If I could only read it because of its inverse in the water, then perhaps I should use its inverse to come up with the word. Got it!

And it spelled out...




DORK.

Hahahaha very funny God slash Universe slash Nature.

Maybe, instead of spending weeks on it, I should have just gone to Urban Dictionary and read the second definition of KROD.


So I took this picture today and you can sort of see how it used to spell something that might have been KROD if you kinda squint at it, in the left side middle. But of course it was windy and rainy the past few days. Ah, why do I always feel like the Warner Bros. cartoon man who owns the singing frog?

Me.

* P.S. It should really say "not even remotely dorky", which is of course a NERD, but I didn't want to spoil the rest of the story.

In The Shade

His name was Oscar Rivera. I knew him since kindergarten and this is the fifth grade. Nothing was ever said. One day on his side of the street, hugging Our Lady of Mercy's brick wall. And the next day, on my side of the street, following Carpenter Ave. four blocks, to and from school. Everyday for three months he walked behind me, sometimes having whispered conversations with himself, or kicking the dead leaves.

Once, he stopped to tie his laces and my shadow suddenly shrank, the extra arms disappeared, flagging me to stop. I watched him, bent over and I brazenly touched his shadow's hair with my shadowed fingertips. Then turning away, I ran to my building, and rested within the entrance. It's chill, tiled, interior cooling my flaming face. Every day after, I secretly delighted in knowing he walked behind me, our shadows touching, even darker where they met, cool and flimsy and insubstantial.

Carving Out Pumpkins


There is a place called the pumpkin diner. Here the pumpkins go and sit at the counter or in booths and order oven-roasted pumpkin or pumpkin pie, or pumpkin ice cream topped with pumpkin seeds.

They can't eat it but most enjoy it nevertheless. There are a few saddened that their friends and neighbors have been made into such delicious treats but they come to the diner anyway. They believe that this is the compensation for life.

There are other options, such as staying home, but many cannot fathom this and insist on dining at the pumpkin diner. The ones who do stay home are ostracized, called disloyal and traitorous, unpumpkinlike. There have been known smashings, but no one claims the guilt or heroism.

When it's time to leave, the pumpkins on the stools roll off and inevitably chip pieces of themselves on the hard floor. Some have managed to break into smithereens and gush soggy pulp, the tiny seeds clinging in terror to the strands holding them together, inches from the green linoleum, where the hulls lay, lifeless. All the other pumpkins turn away.

When all the pumpkins have left and are heading for home, the broken rinds and flesh and pulp are cleaned up and mixed with cinnamon and sugar and nutmeg and eggs and milk. Turning these casualties into something all-American, something appetizing, something sweet.


-Me.

Like Sands Through The Hourglass...

Living at our new place for almost a year now and we have neighbors, though not as exciting as "the whore and her sister" and "the cougar who lives below us" from our previous abode. Here we have "the douche bag" or "DB" for short, the old lady and her son, and the lonely, old woman who pushes her dog in a pink baby carriage.

DB is a man who has a hairy chest, (and we know because he likes to wear open shirts) a lovely fake tan, receding hairline and just tries to emanate a "cool" persona but fails and only succeeds to exude "douche bag".

The lady and her son live across the hall and he is maybe 50, has down syndrome, and runs away from me whenever he sees me. She is a sweet, southerner who often parks her car crookedly.

The pink-carriaged dog lady lives below us. She once tapped on the ceiling at midnight when we were banging on the bed. We were literally banging on the bed because we just bought it from IKEA and had to assemble it with hammers and nails. Rich and she never got along well after that. Although, she's very pleasant to me. Her dog likes to jump on my leg whenever it's not secure in it's carriage.


More newcomers, haven't really met them all and saving my opinions and vignettes for another day.

Me.

Kink-os

We have a wireless printer that is sitting up in my little "office" area. For a long time I thought that it only printed on random occassions, whenever it felt good enough to print. I found out, after careful study, that it prints only in months that are numerically divisible by two, contain no "u" in their names and have more than 30 days. Also, it will only print the amount of sheets to correspond to the day and date. For example, it is Wednesday the 10th, which is then converted to:

Wednesday = 4 (counting aloud from week's beginning, Sunday being "1")
Second week of the month = 2 (which becomes the exponent, also known as "to the power of")
10th day of the month of September which is 9 = 10 *9
The formula is then seen as:

10 x 9 / 4*2
Written as: 90/16
And quite literally it will print up only 5.625 pages, no matter that you only wanted 2 pages or that you have 8 pages.


Of course, this would never work out because it is September which does not fit two of the three conditions, aforementioned.

To Staples!

Me.

We've come closest to a hurricane yet. Tropical storm Fay has hurled insults at our windows and thrashed against our walls. We endured days of howling winds and slashing rains. At dusk she would repent and let us see a glimmer of leaky sun, a poached egg on grey toast.

There is a black and white cat that lives around our building. It's tail is half lopped off. For weeks I brought water and food, tempting it to scurry warily from beneath the shade of a car. Then I began to notice that there were other bowls placed by tires, beneath the scraggly trees, pushed into bushes.

One day, before the storm, I met a fellow tenant who had a bowl of kibble in hand and a yowling cat following. She told me that "they" had named it Louie. I preferred Louise.

While the winds sneaked through cracks and moaned in desperation, I worried about the stray cat who has deemed our building a refuge. Today, I braved the gusts and set out to bring food and water.

I saw I was not the only one with the same idea.

On the soaked grass were strewn about several dishes and bowls brimming with water and debris. A wet homage to our building's demigod.

So in two months and 11 days I will be 28 and still I am baby-less. Gah. We haven't been trying because we're still in phase "so how do we pay for the medical bills?" We have come up with a plan but now we're at "so is this economy gonna get any better in the near future?". What looms in my head is the idea that what if we go through all this only to find out we can't have kids anyway. How should I look at that? As a learning experience? As a sign from God? As just another block and move forward to plan "let's adopt!"? I always figured that we would eventually adopt children once we had a few of our own, but if we couldn't we'd just move through to the next step.

I worry alot about not being able to get pregnant and I worry a tad about being pregnant and feeling the symptoms. I only had two people who told me that it didn't hurt one bit, one was mom (she said I popped out no prob.) and the other was a co-worker who loved every minute of it. I have had about 30 or so people tell me that it was beyond painful "but worth it". I know I'm pretty above average in a lot of ways but I'm thinking that I may just be average when it comes to pain. Although, I think I may have a higher pain tolerance than most people. I do have my teeth drilled at the dentist with no novacaine or any other anesthetics.

Well, gotta make kids first before the pain. Besides, doesn't the pain make you feel alive?

Me.