Happy Happy

Thank you for the birthday wishes. I'm older but not old. Josh is thrilled by my grey hairs, so I'm thrilled by my grey hairs. My grandfather has white hair and lots of it. Josh taps the table in patience. I'm only 28.

I almost shared a birthday with my sister-in-not-legal-in-Missouri's newest son. A day apart, but he's still a Taurus. Even if you didn't know that, you'd know he's going to be a good one. He was passed around to all arms but mine and never cried. I have a personal code where I don't hold babies. I've had nightmares I drop them. The closest thing to a baby in my house is a small plastic newborn I found in a cake. Aside from that, I have a preserved tadpole in a jar. It's almost a frog, but it retains a tail. One of my friends thought it was a chicken leg.

Necessary Fiction asked me some questions about writing. I learned answering questions about writing makes me nervous. I'm still at the stage where I'm waiting for someone to knock on my door and take it all away. Sometimes my mail delivery person will be loud on her headset out on the front porch, and I'll think it's "the authorities." Also, there are no authorities. No one is going to take my writing away (I keep chanting to myself).

Well, I ran yesterday. Not much, but. I was in the grocery after, and a woman hurried up to me and demanded to know what cologne I was wearing. I wasn't wearing anything but sweat and shorts. Pheromones, I imagine. This makes the second time this spring. People are insistent I smell like spices.

There was a brown recluse in a sink last night where Josh and I were staying. Spiders scare me more in sinks. It's the shape of the sink, the bowl of it, and the suggestion that the spider crawled up and out of the drain. Josh says he found a snake in a sink once. The same principle but larger. The snake slipped over the lip of the sink, down the base, onto the floor, and into a hole in the wall.

Josh told me to do something about the brown recluse. I did something.

This Beard's on Fire

There was some sort of doctor/healer at the Indian buffet Saturday. He was a crusty old white guy who took brief appointments at his table. Another crusty old white guy came in and got down on one knee in front of the doctor and received a cross between a massage and a blessing. Our server stood there and watched like she was about to see sex or a miracle. Neither at all, it turns out.

I saw a miracle once when my friend pinned a spider to the wall with her hand. The miracle was that the spider was crushed before it got a chance to bite my friend. I inspected the little body. It was a brown recluse. Their venom can necrotize flesh. My grandmother was working in her garden once when she was bitten by a brown recluse. I saw the bite after it had a while to spread out and eat. It was a black, sunken space like the skin on a bad peach.

I know I already said, but I'm in Kansas City for Christmas, not Kentucky. I'm still going to make sausage balls, though. It's a Southern thing. You either get it or you don't. I'm not here to convert you. I try to keep my roots to myself. I don't speak with an accent, though sometimes Josh says I sound like molasses being poured from a jar. That's about as antebellum as I get.

My literary mistress, xTx, has a book that won't stop. It's called Normally Special and I told you to order it when it came out, but you probably didn't. I bet you're just looking for a reason. At The Lit Pub, I give my reasons.

Wherever you are, I hope you're doing all you can not to succumb to winter ghosts. It's pretty hard because they're everywhere. What you do to survive is you watch anything with Michael Fassbender in it. He's the ginger beard we've all been waiting for.