That posting thing I do sometimes

There is this thing call NaBloPoMo (for those of y’all that know about this, bear with me.  My mom reads this and she’s not all into the interwebs like some of us are.), which is short for “National Blog Posting Month” wherein one must post something every day.  This is especially useful for those of us who sometime forget, like for weeks at a time, that they actually have a blog.  Whoopsie!

So for the last, I don’t know, like two years or something, I’ve been a little remiss in my blog posting thing.  (Don’t worry.  This isn’t one of those posts where I’m going to be all:  “you guuuuysss, I’m so sorry!  I’ve been busy and there has been work and stuff but I promise I’ll get to posting soon, love ya!  Thanx 4 the support!”  I hope you’ve all realized that when I say that it is utter bullshit.  If I was a man beating his girlfriend I would say:  “Baby, I’m going to keep on hitting you in the face.  I’m not going to change.  But you’ll stay with me because I’m rich and the sex is good.”  Except that I am not rich.  And the sex isn’t there.)  (ahhh…it feels good to have another tangent enclosed in parentheses!)

So, like three months ago I though to myself.  Hey!  I know!  I’ll participate in NaBloPoMo when it rolls around again!  That’ll kick my ass in gear!  And do you know what I realized today as I was scanning my google reader? (Which I just got to under 1000 news posts for the first time in ages!  Hurrah!)  That November is NaBloPoMo.  Why, that is THIS month!  Whoopsie again!

So, in honor of the forgotten NaBloPoMo, I present you with a post.  A brief and pointless one, which is a huge digression from my typical EPIC and pointless ones!  For me, I feel like this is a pretty damn impressive accomplishment.

Sarah Palin frightens me

If John McCain wins the election, I will turn into someone who prays.

I will pray every single night that he stays healthy and he doesn’t die in office.

Because the alternative is frightening.

I was wrong about her: she isn’t stupid, she’s an evil genius. 

All her gosh-darnin’ and gettin’ and hopin’ and Maverickin’ and winking (disgusting!  You are in the middle of a goddamn vice-presidential debate.  Try to show a little class.) made my skin crawl.  I could see straight through her, but there are millions of people out there that were probably just charmed right plumb to death.  That’s scary.  Really, really scary.

In lieu of an actual mother’s day post

Since I spent yesterday slaving away in a field (no, really!) building fences and digging up Jerusalem Artichokes, I wasn’t able to do a Mother’s Day post.

In all the glory that is my mom, she must have sensed my lack of being able to post so she graciously surprised me by essentially writing a post for me.

So here’s one from my mom.  Thanks, mom.  I love you very much.

_______

Taylor, your description of “working in the yard” reminded me of your now (amongst family and friends) famous gardening story…since it is Mother’s Day, I feel I have the right to share it with your blog readers…

So…. Taylor (who was around 6 years old) and I were planting daffodils and other miscellaneous bulbs in a newly dug flower bed in front of the house her dad and I were buiding…Taylor stepped back and took a long slow look at the house, the garden, the beautiful woods and the flowers we had planted…

“You know, Mommy…someday this will all be mine, right?”

“Well Taylor…you never know…when your dad and I get old we might have to sell this place to have enough money to take care of ourselves in our old age.”

Taylor looked up to me with her big, beautiful blue eyes and said in her wonderful little Smurfette voice…”Mommy, you don’t have to worry about that. By the time you get old I will be a rich and famous scientist” (she had not discovered history yet).

(Ed.  And also, I hadn’t discovered science yet, which I failed miserably at.  Who knew that science wasn’t about training dolphins and blowing stuff up?  There was like…math and shit.  What the hell is up with that?)

My heart swelled with pride…what a precious, innocent, unselfish child…in my mind I finished Taylor’s sentence…”and I wil take care of you…”

And as I was gazing down on her with the adoring look that only a mother can give to her child she said:

…”And I will put you in the finest nursing home money can buy!”

Aaaaaand…moment over.  It’s a wonder she kept me around, right?  Doesn’t that make you want to run out and have kids, so that they will tell you they are going to throw you in a home when you get old?  What a little darling I must have been.

But they were pointy! And clickey! And cute!

I’m not quite sure what it was that possessed me to get up yesterday morning and put on those boots.  It must have been because it was 5:50 in the morning and I have been sleeping like a crackhead lately (I mean…I guess?  Do crackheads sleep erratically? That’s what I’m trying to say I’ve been doing…I AM AN AWESOME EXPLAINER).  My first mistake was probably getting dressed, because for some reason I decided that wearing brown pants and a brown shirt that were the EXACT same color that also happens to be the EXACT same color as my hair, which I wore down, and which is unbelievably long and sprawling at the moment, would be a good idea.  I was almost completely monochromatic, and the color that I was proudly wearing was “poop.”  HOTTT.

So anyway, in my stupor I say:  “ZOMG!  I have cute, pointy boots that are also this lovely poop color!  Let me put them on!”

(but, for real, these boots really are cute.  And, for the record, I really LOVE this color brown, but not when I am Lit-trally wearing it from head to toe)

The key issue about this isn’t the color (which makes it questionable that I am writing about the color so much, right? Once again:  AWESOME AT THE DESCRIBING OF THINGS.) (Jesus. Christ.  Enough with the goddamn parenthesis!  Why do I keep using these?), it’s that they have the little pointy heels on them too.  I do wear heels at work almost every day, but in my other life, heels are a rarity for me.  I love the way they look and sometimes pretty shoes in a store window will stop me in my tracks, but I just don’t wear them.  Before I moved here I wore flip flops every day, even in the winter, but now that I’ve decided I don’t want my toes to turn black and fall off, I’ve taken to wearing Merrils or boat shoes almost everyday.  Heeled?  Nope.  Cute?  Absolutely not.  Comfy? You bet your ass they are!  My  heels that I wear at work actually live under my desk at night, and I just change when I get here, so I never actually have to, you know, walk in them at all.  But I do walk quite a bit every day to and from the subway stations or from the train station if my train gets in a little early. 

I happen to work in a part of Boston that is rather “historic” which is a euphemism (is that right?  “A euphemism?”  Shouldn’t it be “An euphemism?”  That can’t be right though…) for “seriously wrecked sidewalks.”  There are bricks missing and unevenness and slick spots and all sorts of precariousness, which makes for awesome walking conditions.  Especially walking in clicky boots with high, skinny heels.  I, miraculously, did not actually face-plant into the sidewalk, but I was close.  And of course my feet are SCREAMING at me today for it.  Like, owy-owy-ouch, my feet motherfucking hurt like you wouldn’t believe. 

Now I remember why I’ve owned these boots for 6 years and have only worn them 5 or 6 times.  And why I generally don’t walk across Boston in shoes like this.  The warm weather is addling my mind and forcing me to make questionable fashion decisions!  My number one thing I am looking forward to about summer:  breaking out the flip flops again.  It can’t wait.

Ha!

Just dropping in to let y’all know that yesterday someone got to my blog by googling “old lady porn.”

 Which…eww.  And also they must be crazy dissapointed.  As are all the people who are now getting to my blog because I wrote the actual phrase “old lady porn.”

More than you wanted to know about a random subway guy

(First:  If already got this on your feed reader, sorry about that.  I formatted it all wrong and didn’t realize it until it was sent out.  Also, I know that the font is weird looking and small.  Sorry about that, too) 

Ok.  I know things are getting bad when my mom starts calling me to harass me about the fact that I haven’t updated my blog in a fortnight.  I mean, at least she isn’t calling me to harass me about getting married or having kids or something, because that would get old IMMEDIATELY and I would probably run out and have my girl parts fixed so I couldn’t have kids just to spite her.  Don’t you wish I was your daughter?

 So I’m actually not going to spend this post writing about how busy and tired and worn smack out I am (except that: Y’all, I am so busy and tired and I am worn smack out by all of this!  When does the getting used to waking up at 6:30 5:30 start?  When do I get to be able to actually function during the week and do all the cooking a cleaning and laundry and such that I need to?  Because it’s starting to kinda pile up.  Like, I need to win the lottery right now because this whole working thing?  Not so great.  I wish starving to death wasn’t so bad, otherwise I’d still just do that.) 

But we’re not talking about that, remember?  I actually have a story to tell you about Boston!  So, if you look over in that little sidebar over there you’ll see a link to one of my all-time favorite websites: Overheard in New York.  If you haven’t been there before, then you should probably do that (and by do that I mean WHY IN THE HELL AREN’T YOU TAKING MY WEBSITE RECOMMENDATIONS SERIOUSLY??).  This website is a collection of thousands and thousands of random snippets over conversations that have been overheard around the city of New York (they’ve also branched out now into an “overheard everywhere” site, but I haven’t really been checking that one much.  The “overheard in the office” is also very funny).  Some of them are funny in their own right, but most of them are funny because they are taken so far out of context that it’s a riot.  Anyway, go look at it for a bit. 

Now as soon as I started commuting (like a big girl!) to work, I was all excited because I figured that I would hear all sorts of hilarious things on the subway . That hasn’t been the case so much, though, because apparently people on the subway are filled with a glum distress that manifests itself with nothing so much as blank and/or bitter stares and the occasional grunt as someone crushes them into a wall or elbow or bar or something else uncomfortable.  The subway rides here are very quiet (and mercifully quick).  They are also very crowded, especially since I am in them at the worst possible times of 8:15 and 5:00. And then, last week, I finally got my wish as I overheard what was one of the most hilarious things I have ever heard. 

I was on the Orange Line at 5:03 and it was very crowded.  Being one of the first people in, I was able to get a seat before the car filled up too much.  A group of three 20-ish guys got on right at the last minute and stood in front of me, maybe 6 inches away from me.  It was very crowded.  One of them was taking about his roommates and he was complaining about one of them. 

Guy #1:  I just hate him so much.  He’s so obnoxious

Guy #2:  Why don’t you just move out?

Guy #1:  Well, I really like all my other roommates and the house is great

Guy #3:  How many roommates do you have?

Guy #1:  Four

Guy #3: How many bedrooms?

Guy #1: Only two bedrooms and we just have one bathroom

Guy #2: Yikes!  That must be really crowded

Guy #1:  Well, it’s good because we all keep different schedules.  We aren’t on top of each other all the time.  I mean, you know, I’ve got time to shave my balls. 

 Guy #2:  *shocked silence*

Guy#3:  Dude.  I cannot believe that you just said that on a packed train.  Dude. 

I mean really!  Can you even BELIEVE that he said that?  And there were at least 20 people about 7 inches away from this guy’s head!  And he wasn’t speaking quietly!  I thought that I. Would. Die.  I tried SO HARD not to dissolve into uncontrollable laughs that I think I probably ruptured my duodenum, whatever the hell that is.  

 That shit is the reason that I’m willing to get up so early. 

Brief, yes, but that is all the time I can spare

OK, sorry for the rapidity of this post, but believe me when I tell you I am simply too busy.  That isn’t just lip service, I swear!  This is actually the first time I have had more than 5 minutes to sit down at my computer since Friday, and I had a lot of emails to sift through.

Here’s the gist:

1.  Was in Alabama.  Lovely, chilly, and I came home with about 6 pounds of beef that was at one point hand-fed by my mother.  If the cuteness of the cow was any indication, it’s going to taste delicious.

2.  Started work on Monday morning, but only after not getting home until 2:30 AM due to the rapid accumulation of snow on our back-country roads and the total lack of snow-plowing.  And we didn’t have Pete’s giant truck with us.  Needless to say, I think I left permanent indentations in the dashboard of his mother’s Volvo (because there was no way in hell we could take my little Kia home, which was left at his parent’s house when they took us to the airport) and probably lost years off my life.  There was much skidding.  And y’all know what happened last time.

3.  Am more exhausted than I have been in a very long time, what with the previously mentioned lack of sleep on Sunday night and the fact that I’ve been getting up at 5:30 AM.  I have never in my life gotten up at 5:30 AM on any kind of regular basis.  Especially when I’ve spent the last 4 months languishing in bed until 9:30.  ( I know, cry me a river and such.  I’m not trying to make you feel sorry for me, just trying to make you understand my exhaustion)  Last night I was asleep by 9:30 PM, and it was perfect, but I’m still slight deprived.

4.  Um, Boston is full of germy people, and I have to be thisfuckingclose to them for my entire subway ride.  The crush of people is both exhilarating and alarming, but I have found myself washing my hands obsessively every day.  I am TERRIFIED of their yucky germs.  Now I know what happened to Howard Hughes.  I’m about 3 days away from peeing in bottles and wearing kleenex boxes on my feet.

(I really wanted to insert a picture of Mr. Burns when he went through his Howard Hughes faze, but I just don’t have the energy to do it right now, and my bed is looking mighty comfy.  Just google it yourself, k?)

(Was that rude?  I didn’t mean it to be rude.  I’m sorry.)

5.  Loving the job so far.  Still very hectic and I don’t know the names of 75% of the 49 people who work in my office.  Lots to learn.

6.  I walked outside this morning and it was 41 degrees outside and there is still a very thick blanket of snow.  So I says to Pete, I says:  “Holy shit!  It’s so warm out here.”  I am slightly concerned I might be losing my mind.

Now sleep.  Later more posty, maybe.

My day so far

11:58 – Leave for post office to send sister’s birthday present

11:59 – SNOWING!

12:05 – SNOWING VERY VERY HARD!  Already accumulating!

12:10 – Have they salted the roads?  Everything is sticking an awful lot.

12:15 – Arrive at post office

12:19 – Leave post office.  Holy Shit!  It is snowing really hard.

12:22 – Pull up at traffic light.  Only going 15 miles an hour.  Apply brakes.  Brakes do nothing.  *skid skid skid SKID SKID SKID*  SHIT SHIT SHIT!  *CRASH!!!*

12:23 – Very lovely old lady is super nice.  There is no damage, so we go our seperate ways.  I am shaking.  A lot.

12:25 – Continue SLOWLY on my horrified, shaking merry way.

12:30 – No longer able to see the boundaries of the road.  Drive slower.

12:40 – Big truck turns into the road going the opposite direction.  Skids INTO MY LANE.  I apply brakes (slowly!) and start to skid.  Car behind me starts to skid.  TURN INTO SKID!  TURN INTO SKID!  Manage to re-gain a modicum of control to keep me from smashing into telephone pole.  Somehow all three cars avoid hitting each other.  Is a miracle.

12:58 – Finally manage to get home.  Relatively unharmed but suddenly HATING snow and terrified of the outside world.

1:01 – Officially become shut-in.  Write this post.

I am the missing link!

Saw the hand surgeon. News isn’t good. Looks like I’ve severed the flexor tendon in my thumb, which means I will need “major reconstructive surgery” to put things back in working order. However, he also told me that there was only a 20% recovery rate, and that I would never get full movement back.

Goddamn, fucking New York apples.

He also informed me that it is a very expensive procedure (especially when you add in the need for an overnight hospital stay, etc.) so I had to go down to the financial offices to see if I qualify for free care. I won’t know that for 2 weeks, so I’m sorta caught in limbo at the moment.

I’ll keep you updated.

(Really I’m OK though. I was a little shocked at first, because I wasn’t expecting him to say, “we may not be able to fix this,” but I’m trying to keep things in perspective. It could be so much worse.)

typing has become a challenge

So I had a post all written out. It was long, too. It was all about my adventures taking the commuter rail into Boston on Friday dressed up in my big girl suit for an interview with a big Federal agency, and then spending the weekend in Saratoga NY at a big reenactment. I was also going to tell you about our wonderful trip home on Monday when we drove through the mountains of Vermont stopping at every general store and antiques shop that struck our fancy. I was also going to tell you about picking a bushel of apples in upstate New York OFF THE TREES. It was so incredibly fun and fally and New Englandy and y’all were going to be so impressed with my mad apple pickin’ skills.

Then yesterday I set out to cut up some of those delicious, perfect apples with my brand new sharp-as-all-hell knife. On the VERY FIRST APPLE I slipped and sliced into my thumb. Before I had time to lose my shit, I looked into the gaping wound and thought to myself: “how odd. I’m actually looking into my thumb. I wonder what those stringy white things are.” At the emergency room and hour later, they informed me that those stringy white things were tendons, which I had severed. “Ah Ha!” Says I, “No wonder I can no longer move my thumb.”

So now I’m all trussed up, and sometime tomorrow I get to consult with a hand SURGEON to see what needs to be done.

Fucking New York apples. This is what I get for trying to embrace New England! And now I have a damn bushel of apples sitting in my kitchen that I am afraid to even LOOK AT. Oh, and the best part is, when we got home from the hospital, Pete picked up the apple I had been cutting (and left sitting on the counter) and ATE IT. He ate my severed thumb apple!

Well, at least I know we bought good knives. Their new add campaign should be, “So sharp, they’ll cut clean through your apple AND your thumb.”

If this is “low pressure” why is it stressing me out so much?

Ah, shit. This is starting to look worse and worse:

Two days ago, only one of those paths was even coming close to SC. Please follow light blue! Please follow light blue!

More info and maps on Brian’s Blog

So that is what “lewd conduct” means!

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho):  “I’m not gay, I just like to sexually proposition strange men in airport restrooms. “

OK, so maybe not an actual quote, but it is close enough.

I love that his response to the arrest was pulling out his business card, which shows that he is a U.S. Senator and asked “What do you think about that?”  Uhhh…I think you’re nasty.  And also, I think your career is OH-VER.

What a damn moron.  What kind of Senator actually thinks he can get away with something like this?   Especially a senator who’s main support base comes from people who are terrified that teh gayz are gonna steel ther babbies!??!!?!?

So, so stupid.  And mon dieu this has entertained me today.  All I can say is keep the sex scandals, bribery, blistering idiocy, and general lack-of-human-feeling coming, because each and every step is bringing that Democratic presidency closer.

It’s like some cruel joke

When I come into work in the morning, and check the weather, I do not like to see things like this:

Admittedly, I did alter that slightly.  You know what this makes me want to do?  Move my ass to Massachusetts, that’s what!

If you live in Charleston, I sure hope you don’t die today.

Yeah…wow. I pretty much suck.

So have you ever had someone call you, and when you see that they called you think, “oh man. It’s so late right now. I’ll call her back tomorrow?” And then you forget about that the next day, and then the next, and then by the time you forgot that you’ve called, it’s 11:30 PM and you just really really want to go to sleep. And then the next day you are really busy and you never quite get around to it. Well then, you just start to feel awkward, because now you’ve passed into the “bad friend” territory. And then it just festers and gets worse and before you know it, it is a week and a half later and you still haven’t called back your awesome friend who stayed up until 4 AM to come pick you up at the airport that was an hour away from her house, and then about and hour later, woke up from her nap and walked you to the subway station and even gave you a subway card so you didn’t have to pay for the trip? That friend? That awesome friend?

That’s kinda how I’m feeling about my blog right now.

(And also: Liz, I am so sorry I haven’t called you back yet! I PROMISE I will do it. You are awesome and I adore you and Me: I suck!)

So, hey there guys! How ya been? I really do feel bad that it has been since June that I wrote anything, especially after I promised you tales of fun and adventure and lots of pictures! For the record, I did not come back with a sunburn, but I did come back with a really fierce head cold that has keep me in bed any moment that I wasn’t trying to slog through work for the past week. (So you see, I’ve been SICK! That’s why I didn’t post!)

And also, maybe I’ve been horribly, terribly depressed and just haven’t had the nerve to actually write anything.

Because, see, here’s the thing. Maybe last Saturday (wait…I think I mean last LAST Saturday, as in, the Saturday before this past Saturday), Pete and I got some really good news. The kind of news that was so good I actually cried a little bit and jumped up and down yelling and squealing and the kind of good news that made it feel like the world was the happiest, warmest, most fabulous place that I could possibly imagine.

The kind of good news that made Pete tell me to take this picture:

 

And what he is saying here, in this picture is:
“Look! This is where our house is!”

 

Yes. This is where our house is. This is where we are going to live. TOGETHER. In Massachusetts. And what you can’t see in this adorable little picture is that this place had an incredible ocean view that looked over Boston Light. And that it was on a little spit of land where all the energy came from windmills. And that I would get to ride a ferry into the city. In other words: It was pretty goddamn perfect.

And so this is where you insert me having conniptions of joy and doing the happy dance and all that.

And then I came home on Tuesday and I oh so wanted to tell you all about it. But I withheld the news, because we had an inspection on Friday and nothing was entirely official yet. But, we were assured that there was no problem and that it was 99% certain that this would be our place. And that we would live here. In fact, I was so sure and certain that I already started writing the post! I called my boss and asked her to come meet with me on Friday afternoon so that I could give her my notice. And HOLY SHIT, Y’ALL. I WAS MOVING TO MASSACHUSETTS.

I called Pete at about 11:45, 15 minutes before the inspection, to basically say: SQUEEEEE! and told him to call me as soon as it was over so that I could be all gushy and excited.

And then, naturally, because I cursed this from the very beginning, and built it up to the point that there was no other alternative than for something catastrophic to happen, it, of course, did.

At about 12:15 Pete called me and said, “I have bad news,” at which point I turned into mush on the floor and he proceeded to tell me that there was “very significant” structural issues, which the owners had assured him was “nothing but the retaining wall!” at first, then when pushed admitted that the entire building was actually slowly sliding into the Atlantic Ocean. Yeah, I’d call that a pretty fucking significant structural issue. So, naturally, the deal collapsed right there.

Now, I should point out that we aren’t actually buying this place, his parents are. They wanted to get some investment property up that way while the market was in shambles, and when Pete told them that he asked me to move up there (back in April! How sneaky am I that I’ve managed to keep THAT quiet!?) they decided that it would be perfect for them to buy the place, then just rent it to us for the cost of the mortgage payment. That way it was staying in the family, you know, and we weren’t throwing our money into the unfillable pit of rent.

As soon as Pete told me, his mom got on the phone and said “Oh Taylor, I’m so so sorry about this!” At which point I promptly burst into tears and muttered something incoherent and get off the phone as quickly as I could. Because seriously? Crying on the phone? Hi, I’m so pathetic! Keep in mind, that I am at work through all of this. I work in tourism, so I need to be happy and fresh and peppy! Tourists don’t so much like dealing with weeping girls, especially girls who get all snotty and gross when they are weepy. And remember that head cold? In combination with the weepiness? Y’all, the snot? It was copious.

So, essentially I was a wreck all weekend. And then on Friday night when I was talking to my mom, she said something that was true, but not what I wanted to hear at the moment, which upset me further and made me even more of a disaster.

For some entirely inexplicable reason, the way that I dealt with all this was by cooking, which is not my typical way of de-stressing. I baked a chicken on Friday night, then made 6 cups of chicken stock out of the carcass (mmmm…carcasses….) (which, holy mother of god is delicious!) and then made chicken and dumplings for dinner on Sunday night. And when I wasn’t laying in bed crying or sleeping, I read a bunch of my cookbooks. So at least I was productive.

His mom emailed me on Friday evening to let me know that the search was still continuing and that they actually have appointments this weekend (today, in fact!) to look at two other possible places, so that I shouldn’t give up. Truthfully, I wasn’t so upset about place itself as I was about the fact that I finally was done with all this long distance nonsense. We actually planned a date for me moving up and everything! It was happening! No more airports and frantic weekends and stupid, awful goodbyes. No more phone calls and no more missing each other and all that terrible frustrating crap. All done! Except then, not. So you can see where I was having a hard time coping with this, right?

Pete was actually out of town this weekend, so I didn’t get a chance to talk to him again until yesterday. We sat down and had a very long, multi-hour conversation in which we decided that the place was unimportant. What really mattered to us was that we were together, wherever that was going to be, and if we needed to rent a place for a while or we needed to stay in his (teeny, tiny) little apartment for a while, we could do it. So after all that crying and teeth gnashing and everything else: I’m still moving to Massachusetts. We decided to stick to the same time-line, and hope that between now and then we would have the house all worked out. And if not, we’ll just stay somewhere else for a while.

So there you go blog readers: A very long story about why I abandoned you for two weeks and how I came to be moving to Massachusetts. It won’t be until September, because I need to give a lengthy notice to my boss, but by my birthday, September 26th, I’ll be living just outside of Boston, on the lovely South Shore of Massachusetts.

 

And all my hopes of being a wildlife wrangler are dashed…(part II)

Continued over from part I…

About 30 minutes later I hear the dogs downstairs freak out, so I know that Leezle is home. I bound out of my room to meet her at the door, because surely she needs help carrying her bat-obliterating gun or oversize industrial rabid-bat catching machine, right? Or at least so that I can finally feel like there is someone to solve this problem that isn’t ME because I have FAILED.

I am slightly concerned when, instead of coming in hellbent for leather (wait, is that the right saying?) and ready to CATCH SOME FUCKING BATS, BITCHES, she pokes her head in the door and wide-eyed and meekly whispers: “Where is it?”

I stop dead. “Wait!” says I, “You can’t be scared! I’m scared! You have to be tough and scary and use your fierce lesbian powers! If we’re both scared of this then we are screwed!”

Says Leezle, “Well I was all tough while I was sitting in that dance recital, then I asked my brother-in-law to come help and he said Hell No! because he’s afraid of bats, which made me a little nervous and then as we got closer and closer I realized that I’m scared of bats too. NOW WHERE IS IT?”

“I locked him in the kitchen!” I say triumphantly, because I know that is the only intelligent thing I have done this whole time.

“Where in the kitchen is he?”

“I don’t know! I haven’t had the courage to open the door for the past hour and a half!”

We crack open the kitchen door and peek in, but he isn’t flying around anywhere. I spy a brown speck in the corner and step in to find that he has managed to cram himself into the most inconvenient place ever, right at the top of the window, but behind the venetian blinds. He looks tiny, about the size of a small egg, and he’s all huddled up. It kinda actually broke my heart just a little bit, because I could tell he was scared.

Leezle is surprised. “He’s so small!” “Hey now! That’s because you haven’t seen him flying around! He may look like a small, hairy, black egg right now, but when he flapping about, he looks like a goddamn bald eagle!”

We quickly realize that we aren’t ever going to be able to throw a towel over him, as has been so helpfully suggested, because there is no way he is going to leave his cranny without some prodding. We decide to tape a garbage bag over the corner of the window that he is hiding in, so to make a sort of windsock that he will fly into when he comes out. Since we’re both too scared to actually touch anything near the bat, we manage to tape the bag up by awkwardly using a yard stick and a piece of wood which, for some inexplicable reason, was lying around somewhere. We rattle the bag, then the blinds, but he doesn’t move.

We quickly realize that we are going to have to actually prod him into the bag, so I climb on the washing machine (which, yes, is in the kitchen) and reach the yard stick back behind the blinds. I have to stop about 19 million times because I am shaking so hard that I can’t hold the yard stick, but I finally manage to reach up and poke him just a little bit.

Nothing.

I poke him a little bit harder.

Nothing.

I say: “Goddamn you Fred (we’ve named him Fred because this is supposed to make him seem less scary. It fails)! Get the hell out of my kitchen!”

I really don’t want to hurt him, and I can imagine how fragile he is, so I don’t want to poke him very hard, but he isn’t moving at all with these little gentle nudges, so I give him a firmer push. Fred does not like this, y’all, and he lets me know my making a really terrible noise that sounded like two pieces of gravel being rubbed together, and BITING the end of my yardstick. Like seriously opening up his big bat mouth and gnawing (I told you!) on what was poking him. Not only does he not fly into the garbage bag, but he somehow manages to make himself even smaller and now I can hardly reach him at all.

Obviously this is not going to work, so we decide to call good-old wildlife Mike. His friends actually call him Cooter, and anyone named Cooter sure as shit better be able to get a damn bat out of a window. He has the brilliant plan of just reaching up there and grabbing him, with our bare hands, which has the same likely-hood of happening as me just deciding to turn out kitchen into a bat colony and populating it with bats who have flown out of my ass. In other words: not so bloody likely.

Leezle and I stare at each other for a minute and she says: My mom told me we should call the police.

I say: My mom said we should call the fire department! Can we actually do that?

Leezle: Sure we can! We pay taxes!

Me: Well, at least they can send animal control or something.

Leezle calls the non-emergency number number and after the lady at the police station stops laughing, she tells us that animal control has already gone home for the evening, but that the police do actually do stuff like that if they have time. She says that she’ll put out the dispatch that we need some help, but that it might be awhile since this is low priority (LOW PRIORITY MY ASS! I shout in my head), which is fine since we aren’t being robbed or murdered or anything like that.

We kinda just gave up for about 30 minutes and sat around and chatted, though any sudden noise made us duck and gasp. Eventually we went back to doing the same thing, because we couldn’t think of an alternative, and by about 11 PM I was getting flustered and frustrated. I called Pete, because, as I told him, I was locked in a mortal battle with a bat and was being defeated and I needed him to give me some moral support. Just as I said that, Leezle, who had been outside smoking (boo!) threw the door open and in walked two of Charleston’s finest!

The first cop, a guy about 25 came in first. He was pulling on black leather gloves and said to me, clearly enjoying himself immensely, “I hear you’ve got a bat problem!”

I leap off the washing machine, joyfully wielding my yard stick and scream (as was later referred to as”at the top of my voice” which I contest.  I could have been much louder.) “HOOOOORAYYYY! The Po-LEEEECE are here!” I hear Pete shockingly choke out “you called the police?!” before I yell “I have to go now. Iloveyoubye!” into the phone and hang up.

I snatch the trash bag off the window so that he can see where the bat is and quickly back out of the kitchen as he pulls out a baton. He reaches up and pokes the bat a few times, which starts making that awful squawking noise again and then erupts out of the window, and starts flying through the kitchen. Both of the policepersons (one of them as a woman) duck and Leezle and I both scream and we dive for cover. I just huddled into the corner of the hall while she ran into the living room and slammed the door. A few moments later she peeks her head out and squeaks out through her laughter, “I think I just peed a little bit!”

The bat has managed to fly on top of the stove vent, so the policeman had to climb onto our stove (which is most precarious) to reach him. He grabbed the trash bag, threw it over the bat, and yelled triumphantly, “I’ve got you, you little bastard!” as he snatched him up and neatly wrapped him in the bag. He jumped off the stove, ran down the stairs, and dumped the bat out of the bag, sending him off into the night. Leezle and I both cheered and profusely thanked him as the lady cop asked sarcastically, “well, anything else we can help you with tonight.” “God, I hope not!” I replied.

Those people are heroes, y’all! And now our house is (hopefully, please god hopefully!) bat-free. And that is how I ended up with a policeman on my stove holding a (potentially!) rabid animal at 11:30 PM. Good times!