Yesterday I pulled my pants down to go pee and a nickel fell out of my underwear. I later used that nickel to fund a cup of coffee. What? I washed it off.

Just when I think I am at the top of the hobo heap, I encounter a real hobo and realize I'm playing in the minors.  

I went to the grocery to buy my weekly supply of ramen noodles. Then I got on the bus and went home. At my stop about 20 minutes later, when I stood up and picked up my paper bag of groceries, the bottom fell out. Because it was soaking wet.

And wouldn't you know, a super hot man sitting across the aisle tries to help me with my mess. I am so discombobulated and slightly embarrassed to have a hipster resembling Daniel Craig picking up my ramen, tampons, and sausages, that I don't see the pool of liquid they are all sitting in.

"What spilled?" asks Daniel Craig.
"You must be new to bus riding. Don't ever ask a question you don't want to know the answer to," I respond.

Then I see that my grocery bag was the dam in a river that stretches to the back wall of the bus where there is a man passed out, bent over, with a forty of beer spilling from the crook of his arm.

Daniel Craig reaches onto his seat and pulls a plastic grocery bag from his own pile of groceries. He hands it to me and says "I always double bag."

I grab the bag and flee. "Thanks!"  And I am out the back door of the bus, my tampons and sausages clasped to my chest.

James Bond sure knows how to treat a lady.

Sometimes when I am laying next to you, I don't really see you. I see tomorrow. I watch the sun rise slowly over the horizon. A pink and yellow stain creeps across the sky until everything is bright. If I close my eyes really tight, I feel the breeze against my arms, like an open window in a fast truck.

 

If I squeeze my eyes really, really tight, I feel the sun warm my shoulders and then I feel the shade of a thousand four-hundred year old trees bearing down like a cold blanket. And I walk up the hill. I climb, I go straight up. I skip the path, I don't smell the flowers or touch the leaves. I am Sisyphus.

 

But I like this hard work.

 

Because I am hiking to all the tomorrows and I need to reach the cloud break. To burst over the top of all the topiness until I'm standing and looking as far as I can see. And that is when I open my eyes, and I see you.

 

 

I looked for you when I walked by the window. I wanted to peek in and see you through the window. So sincerely. So serenely. Sitting atop the typewriter, with your one blue eye and one green, I imagine sneaking in and whispering "meowsters" as I run my fingers through your fur.

But instead I lumber behind Nugget, following her dark form and applying my chapstick, as I imagine floating into the sky.

I want to be a balloon on a string. Floating free. I will float up, up, up, and away. And you will reach for me, but your fingers will just barely grasp my trailing ribbon, the tail slipping through your fingers. And ten years from now, I will be the balloon that got away.

But for now, I am here and I am in the cold, cold, cold night and I need arms around me. A tight squeeze and the feel of a comforting chest for just the briefest moment before I am running away and giggling. And you give chase.  I run so fast. So fast.

But I'm gone. Because in the end, I don't need anyone. I keep running, until my breath dries up. And then I throw myself on the beach. And the waves rush in and the foam comforts me as I turn over on my back.

I watch the stars. They comfort me as I think about cats on typewriters.

I feel like I've been running down the stairs, carrying a load, so I can't see well. And I know the stairs are about to end and I think its the last stair, and as I take the last stair, I realize I misjudged the distance and it was just too much. Now I am off balance. I landed hard, I can't get my bearings.  My feet want to go back and try it again, but it is too late. The distance was covered. The only thing to do is to keep going and wait for my gait to even out. But my body remembers the misstep and every other step after is off kilter. Like I've forgotten how to walk.

They say growing old gets easier. I don't know about that, but I've been on grey hair watch for months and now I am starting to wonder if I should've been looking for a humpback too, because my posture is terrible. And my flossing habits are akin to a demented stamp collector. When memory beckons, I answer the call vigorously. flossing until I realize I've been staring at my reflection for hours, my arms so very tired. But who really collects stamps anymore?

And some days it is just so hard to get out of bed.

Life might be easier  if I didn't feel like I moved through it on a conveyor belt.

Last week I was shopping in one of those funky shops on Hawthorne and I came across a shadowbox filled with little miniature birds. The birds were hopping around with the faces towards the ground. Look up! Look up! Watch where you are going. I wanted to call to them, these clay figures trapped forever in a glass box. But hours later, when I was drinking my tenth cup of coffee and watching the rain fall, I realized the birds were eating.

 

I don't what love is. I just do as I'm told.

When I was a child, I would lie a wake at night pretending, fantasizing and dreaming about random things. Like how I would be a world famous book critic. Or how I was going to be super rich and buy my mom a Jaguar. I don't know why I always thought Jaguar, probably because a Jaguar was the car she always chose when we played MASH.

But my favorite thing to imagine was my death.

This is a bit macabre.

But it really was my favorite thing to do, aside from giving myself fake homework assignments.

I would lay in bed real still, with the blankets pulled up just above my waste but below my chest. The sheet would be folded over the top of the blanket just like they do at the hospital. And I would lay with my arms straight at my sides. I closed my eyes and tried to look serene.

Sometimes I was in a coma and I could hear everything around me. I would overhear people talking about how amazing I was and how much they loved me. During this scenario, I normally imagined my crush of the moment confessing his love and then later I would wake up and we would fall in love.

Sometimes when I was fighting with my friends, I would imagine I was in a coma and they came to my hospital bed to apologize for their behavior. Then they would tell me how amazing I was and how much they loved me and how I was their favorite. And I would wake up and forgive them.

Sometimes I wasn't unconscious, but in a lot of pain. And then one of the above scenarios would play out.

I really was an odd child.