I look down. A lot. I fall, I run into things I trip - a lot - so it’s a good idea to look where I’m going. I also look over my shoulder - a lot. Checking to see if I’m followed. Or second guessing if I went the right way. I seldom look up. Until now, until we moved here. Now we are in a place where I can look up. I can take a moment and breathe and look around me instead of just where I'm going or where I came from. Because I’m looking up, I see the owls. I get to see the birth of their owl babies and watch them hunt and watch me and grow. Having owls in my life is awesome. Because I'm looking up, I spend time watching birds on the feeders, chipmunks attempting to get on the feeders, deer sticking their tongues into the feeders. I watch people doing their weird people things. Because I’ve been looking up, I even saw a pair of hawks flirting along side my car while driving to get gas. Because I'm looking up, I breathe. But even in a place where I think I’m taking time to see things, there are things I miss. Our garden, for example, is mostly forest and weedy grass with a few flowers thrown in here and there. When I look at it, I seldom see the good in the yard. I see the weeds. Or the rocks that I need to dig up. Or the holes that the chipmunks have made and Tigger the Dog has made bigger. Or the deck that is totally not finished and won’t be for years. I don’t see the flowers. I don't see. Take for example, these flax-like plants I planted last spring. I put three of them in front of the patch of ground where one day, there will be a deck. I was totally surprised they survived last summer, let alone this last winter of 2° snowy cold horror. I’ve ignored them all this summer except for the times when I've occasionally attempted to weed around them and they’ve stabbed me. You better believe I notice them then. And then, this week, this stem appeared. Or rather, this week, I looked, really looked at the garden and noticed that this stem had suddenly appeared in the middle of one of the pokey flax-like plants. And a few days later, this is what the beauty looked like. And after the spectacular thunder and lightning storm we had a few days ago, it still stood tall. I'm excited to see what happens next. To see where these flowers grow and who comes to visit them.
This is what you see when you look up, people. Look up!
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Continuing on the BEST EMAIL EVER theme, I got this email yesterday afternoon - Now I've often been mistaken as being male in email before. Initials can be confusing. I've even been mistaken as being male in person before. From the behind, that is. Once I turned around and they were faced with my lady lumps, they usually stuttered, apologized and tried to continue as if nothing had happened. But this would be my first email where they've assumed I was female based on our back and forth correspondence. I must dither in email as much as I do in person. This gem of an email from Amazon followed that - I’d been looking for children’s books but not one of them was Japanese or Asian in any way. Amazon apparently thought I’d been remiss and this is their attempt to remedy that. I am concerned that, even in this month of me trying to not do anything on the Internet but a quick research search here and there, they are still targeting me in some weird and culturally inclusive way.
It's freaky to think that one innocent search would wind up with multi-cultural books peppering my Amazon suggestion feed. What the heck will the Internet make of the search I did last week during a discussion with Husband? We were trying to clarify whether a eunuch was always castrated or not. I'll save you the search; some eunuchs were not castrated but were just impotent or celibate. Based on that search, what will the dear Internet start sending me now? I've already been invited to grow my penis. What else could they send me? On a not so related note, I forgot one of the best lines to come out of Husband post violation trauma. While we were in the car on the way to pick up his antibiotics, Husband turned to me and said, "I'm afraid to fart. I'm too well lubed." He is all mine, folks. ALL MINE! Now, let's see what the Internet does with that. Yesterday, in the car on the way to lunch, Husband turned to me and said – Really. THE BEST EMAIL EVER!!!! A new friend and I were trying to set up a coffee date. We had several emails back and forth about time and place and then I got this one - Yup. She called me Ejaculation. I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed... Then, hours later, I got this email - Her autocorrect changed my name from ej to Ejaculation and she was horrified. Me, not so much. I'd just thought I'd told her the story of the guy who tried to pick me up in a bar by asking me if ej stood for Ejaculate Joyfully.
It doesn’t. But years and years ago, when the toothless drunk guy in the bar asked me what ej stood for and I wouldn’t tell him, he came up with Ejaculate Joyfully. And then laughed his toothless face off. I turned to my friends for help getting rid of him but they were useless because they were laughing their stupid heads off. I had no choice but to join in and laugh too. I mean a guy; a old toothless drunk guy had just tried to pick my cute twenty-one year old self up by implying that my parents had a twisted and totally inappropriate sense of humor. Can you imagine going through customs with that on your passport? Or getting pulled over by the cops? Or having a background check to work with children? Or going home with someone with no teeth who thought that was your name??? To this day, any time anyone asks what ej stands for, that’s the first thing that crosses my mind. I don’t say it. Most people are not toothless drunk guys in bars or twelve-year-old boys or me and won’t find it funny. And I’d have to explain. And funny isn’t funny when you have to explain. Except maybe here if you were trying to explain Ejaculate Joyfully to one of the white haired southern ladies who already look at me with confusion then the situation would be hysterical… But most of the time, not funny anywhere but in my head. And my in friend's most awesomely autocorrected email. It's the little things people. The text I got from Husband while I was sitting in the doctor’s waiting room and while he was in the examination room read simply: No sign of a gown.
I burst out laughing. People looked. I thought about explaining the saga of Husband and his Y-fronts and the missing gowns but decided against it. Probably a wise move on my part. Most of the crowd sitting in the waiting room was over eighty. I’m not sure they would have understood let alone cared that Husband was about to be “violated again” because of me. When I saw Husband half an hour later, he was blushing. And walking funny. Sort of a wide-stance hitch-wiggle as he walked. As soon as we left the room, he started sharing his trauma. I heard all about the squishing. I heard all about the poking. I heard all about the humiliation. I heard about everything. “Didn’t she give you a tissue?” I asked, as Husband walked awkwardly to the car. ‘”Nope. There was no cuddling after.” More than the missing gown, Husband was quite horrified that the nurse was called into witness his violation. I forgot to warn him that would happen. That in a world where everyone is suing everyone, the doctors have to protect themselves, hence the second set of eyes in the room. “Well, Dr. Jerry Springer never did that,” said Husband, still pink with shame. It’s turning out that Dr. Jerry Springer did a lot of things to Husband that real doctors don’t do. It has not helped my case trying to convince Husband to make this physical an annual thing. Anyway, Doctor asked Nurse to come in and observe the procedure. Husband dropped his pants, bent over and held onto the table. Turn cough. Finger in. Finger out. Done. Husband said to Nurse, “Is this your punishment? “Nope.” she replied, “It’s yours.” Point to nurse! Pants up and buckled, blood taken, pee given and a prescription for antibiotics, we were done for the year. Husband has his appointment for next year all lined up in the calendar but whether or not he goes is up to him. I can’t take the suspense - or the laughing. |
AuthorMy name is ej. I'm a girl. I say that because with the short hair and the short initials, folks aren't always sure. More brilliant insights to who I am in About me Archives
April 2019
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