Tag Archives: raised by wolves

Rhubarb

Oh mercy and muskrat love. I am nearly at the finish line in my race to wear the same pair of shoes every day this summer. Of course I count summer as June 1 to August 31. Meteorological summer. Hey, at least I’m wearing shoes at all.

I’ve got God talking to me again, and you all know what that means, and Jessica Simpson told me to start doing squats. So I started doing squats, and my butt hurts. She is right to tell me to improve myself. I am glad the celebrities of this nation are looking out for me. It only hurts because I am weak and useless.

Anyway, God said to have Kraft dinner for lunch, and I can’t argue. He helped me find my book of stamps. That’s more love than some parents show their children in a lifetime.

My own mother recently let me know she is reading a book that reminds her of our life in the woods. She said “There is a description of drowning a rat in the toilet, and lot’s [sic!] of references to Green Acres and about every backyard having a willow tree. (Ours would have had a willow tree except the deer ate it twice so it was still pretty small when we left the country. It was the tree we planted to commemorate Cara’s birth.)”

She has such flair, and she doesn’t even know it. The rat in the toilet was my discovery. I was about six. I just opened the lid, and there he was, swimming around all beady-eyed. We never figured out how he came to arrive in the toilet, but there was a complicated theory involving the septic tank and a ventilation pipe. My dad held him under the water with the fire tongs until he stopped swimming. He was much too big to flush.

It was easy! Because In stinked.

Gah, internet, gah. I woke up with my head wrapped up in the covers, like mummy. I think I was secretly trying to smother myself. I don’t know what’s up with the universe these days. I am constantly spotting 11:11 on the clocks, and last time that happened, we spent our life savings. Who needs Vegas when one comes factory-equipped with a lifetime supply of stupid ideas?

Some things are clearing up, however. The battle of the printer was won decisively, by getting a new one and kicking the old one. The mystery of “Who’s Been Pooping on the Stairs?” was solved. It was the woodchuck all along! And I thought it was the raccoon. A real novice move. And I wondered where the clean laundry was hiding, but Zellweger left it in the dryer.

Hey, let’s talk childhood. I was on the phone with my mom the other day, and we got to discussing my old drawings. I asked “Do you mean the Easter Island ones?” She read me and Loves-the-Bus the story of Thor Heyerdahl, and since I couldn’t sit still, I was allowed to draw. I drew the natives skulking through underground tunnels and rolling logs under those giant stone heads.

No, my mom was referring to the drawings she made me do for a contest. A children’s theater company in Richmond selected a drawing for the cover of the program for each season’s production. I recall determinedly scribbling about Cinderella and Pinocchio and Peter Pan and Charlie’s Angels. And then my mom said “And your drawings were so wonderful, so full of life.”

“Yeah? Well how come I never won?” That used to burn my ass every time I saw some other kid’s drawing on the next cover. Even at age six, I had a strong sense of injustice.

“I don’t know, I guess they never had the same feeling after I made you go back and correct them.”

“You what?”

“It was like your pencil never left the paper on your first pass. You just had all these details in your head, and you just let them flow. So I’d have you go back and straighten out lines and things like that. You always drew windows crooked.”

“….”

Ethicist: should I bill her for therapy, plus my usual hourly consulting rate for time spent in therapy?

peoplewhoamitoargue.com

Well, today marks some damn hell day in the countdown to Chrismakwanzukkah. We at Vomitola feel it is appropriate to present some holiday memories, and maybe some Top Ten lists as the filthy pagans do like to read those. My sister the moose already started unveiling dirty laundry, so why can’t I?

Let’s see, back when we were just tots, my parents would pile the presents (likely to include collections of Garfield comic strips) on the couch, with a note saying “From ‘Santa.'” That’s right, there was no Santa Claus. We didn’t go in for that. I really don’t remember much else, until a few years later. Then we had a house with a mirrored fireplace, and some poinsettias would go in there. We had this crap-ass navity scene where you mixed up the plaster yourself and molded it and then painted it. Parts of the figures broke off when we tried to punch them out of the mold, so that was one afflicted-looking heavenly host. I don’t know why we even had this since we didn’t go to church. Anyway, that would go on a TV tray in the fireplace with the poinsettias. I have some pictures of that after my sister and I knocked all the figurines over and drew a mushroom cloud on a piece of notebook paper and hung it behind the manger. My favorite figure was the camel.

Then I don’t remember a damn thing for another ten years. Wait, one year I think we had to go decorate a nursing home with tinsel. Lambchop came back to Virginia with me one year during college, and we amused ourselves by seeing the Beavis & Butthead movie. We got Chinese food on Christmas day with my family and some other stragglers, and later my cat had explosive diarrhea on poor Lambie. Oh, at the Chinese place, a giant roach crawled out of the center of the lazy susan that bore the pu-pu platter. We dispatched him with terriyaki skewers and roasted him in the little flame. My dad got a free Heineken from the unmoved owner. My mom also made a chocolate fondue, which consisted of melting a can of Betty Crocker frosting over some sterno. It was uncomfortable to say the least.

A few years ago, Mr. H and I went to Virginia, and my mom had made little construction paper stockings and scotch taped them above the mirrored fireplace. Inside there was cash!

Last year Lambchop came over, and we made a turkey at my house. Then we went to the movies and got nachos and beer.

This year, who the hell knows! Lambchop and I have the heebie jeebies. I am shaking like a leaf. I hope we get to watch some porn.

And I promised you maggots a Top Ten list, so here goes:

Vomitola’s Top Ten Numbers of 2004

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Yeah, the order just worked out that way.

What’s your tragic flaw?

I am in the midst of an irresponsible creative writing project with my sister, discount the moose. I would love to explain, as I am now more sure than ever that I am just marking time until someone phones with a Genius Grant, but some of you milksops might steal the idea.

The term “creative writing” alone is enough to make my throat grow tight, as I associate it with all kinds of ridiculousness. I took a college creative writing class, and one of the group exercises involved plausible lying. We had to go around the room and offer two false biographical sketches and one true one. Most people lurched into the lies, giggling and blushing, “Um…one summer? I worked as a life guard?” No one could pick mine out, but I suppose I had the advantage of a completely bizarre childhood. Everyone thought the story about doing a screen test for a commercial for a chocolate company was true. They were taken in by my description of having to spit out the chocolate without eating it between takes. My true story was about getting attacked by a nest of yellow jackets, but everyone was skeptical until I showed them the scars on my shoulder. Those were actually from chicken pox, but what are you going to do?

I suffered my only other creative writing experience at the age of six. My parents were not big on activities for children save sitting quietly or hobbies and interests beyond “living off the land,” but one shocking day I was enrolled in a program sponsored by the county library. It was billed as a potpourri of creativity. For an hour we plucked the strings of child-sized violins, and then we did our creative writing. Here is the story generated by allowing a group of kindegarteners to shout things out at random: “One day, a bird, no, a peacock! Went down the hill. (What did he look like?) And he had oily, watermelon feathers. (Did he have any friends?) And he had a friend. And they did things. At the store. The end.”

Clearly my tragic flaw is that I am just like the little tapir who never got over his past. Oily, watermelon feathers will haunt me until the day I die. Also, during the “fine arts” portion of the potpourri, we had to draw a charcoal portrait of Michael Jackson. The teacher kept pointing out that his head had a perfect egg shape.

-xxoo