Our air conditioning broke, which is a shame. We have a “coolant leak,” which seemed easy enough to fix until the HVAC workers came to our house and couldn’t find the source of the leak. Now they have to come back with a black light to find the leak and oh whoops the “black light guy” is on vacation. MUST BE NICE, BLACK LIGHT GUY.
Which is all to say, we’re quite sweaty and unhinged.
It’s lovely to have central air, and we enjoyed it for about 15 minutes. But let me tell you, it sucks hot, moist balls when it breaks. Especially when the black light guy is out of town, and you don’t know when he’s coming back.
Both pets seem undaunted by the heat and determined to lie in the shafts of blazing sun. I offered Hazel an ice cube and discovered that Hazel reacts to an ice cube the way that I might react to, say, a live scorpion. I put it down in front of her and I have never seen her scramble to get away so quickly. Then I tried putting a cold pack on her head, as per the Internet’s instructions, and she was like, the fuck you think you’re doing? and I was all SAVING YOUR LIFE.
I have to say, I seem to be less miserable than I was last week, when I felt so stupid I couldn’t put together a recommendations post because who can recommend things when they’re literally melting omg. Am I… acclimating? Is this a superpower? Now I just feel mildly stupid, like normal.
Last night there was a toad hanging out right outside our sliding door to the backyard, which also happens to be where Hazel is let out every night so she can kill our grass. Just hanging out, right there! And I didn’t want to let Hazel out, because I thought, what if she grabs it? I do not have the stomach to pull a live toad out of her mouth. It would be much worse than, say, fighting a dog for a chicken carcass using only my bare hands. Then I was like, this toad is not moving. This is a dead toad. Horrifying. I can’t do anything about it, so I guess I have to die, too?
To solve the problem, I went away for a while. And when I returned, the toad was gone.
I know: This is a great story!
OKAY LOOK, the country doesn’t give me the material that Brooklyn once did. It doesn’t reek of garbage here, we hear bird song instead of 24/7 screaming, the supermarket is wide-aisled and plentiful instead of shabby and claustrophobia-inducing. Am I weird that that just made me miss Brooklyn?
CHANGING THE SUBJECT
I was hanging out with my sister Liz and brother-in-law Dominick when Dominick mentioned that during a business call, someone he’s working with said something “so stupid” that the other involved parties were like, that’s it, we can’t work with this guy anymore. This made me laugh and continues to make me laugh because 1) it’s my worst fear in any and all business-type interactions, and 2) what did he say?!?!? I need to know.
According to Dominick it was “business related” and “you wouldn’t understand” and “let’s talk about something else now.”
“Was it ‘MY FARTS SMELL LIKE PINEAPPLE’?” I asked Dominick, who claimed it was NOT “My farts smell like pineapple.” Which is good, because seriously I’d be interested in hearing more about that! How’d you get that to happen, was it your diet or is something wildly amiss with your microbiome or?
Despite Dominick being pretty insistent about how boring the stupid thing was, I continue to think that the stupidest thing anyone can say would have to also be wildly entertaining. “Sometimes I think I’m a kitty cat” would be right up there, right? I mean, still fascinating, though. I would want to hang out with that guy, or at least ask him some questions. Or: “Hey, I just found some butterscotch!”? And then he held up a notarized document, which is of course dripping with butterscotch?
Back in the 00's, when ringtones were A Thing, I was in court with a bunch of other lawyers for boring case management stuff when the silence and boredom were ripped asunder by the dulcet tones of KC and the Sunshine Band. I'm Your Boogie Man, to be specific. One of the other lawyers, a very tan and sketchy looking gentleman, had forgotten to silence his phone. I knew right then that I could never take that guy seriously and in fact he ended up being disbarred a few years later for cocaine addiction related issues.
Not butterscotch, per se, but close.
howling