Flour Girl

If you want to see an extremely disconcerted dog, take a bag of his human-quality dog treats into the bathtub and eat handfuls of them while you cry. Chaucer wasn't sure whether to be more anxious about my tears or that fact that I was eating his fucking cookies. His head nearly exploded. And don't judge. Do not judge. Those things are delicious.

—-

Lately I've been taking some very large checks to the bank. I keep getting the same teller, a very polished and pretty young woman. She gets a look on her face that belies her curiosity is to why this sloppily-dressed woman in dire need of a manicure and root touch-up is plunking down such heavy coin. So far she's processed the transactions without comment, but yesterday afternoon she gave in.

"I don't mean to be nosy," she started, through the window. And then she trailed off, letting me volunteer helpfully, "My father died." It was at this point that the bullet proof glass suddenly thickened up another inch or so, preventing her from hearing me. She cocked her head and frowned. What's that?

"MY FATHER DIED," I announced, at about ten decibels louder than I'd intended. I could tell by the hush that fell over the crowd of paycheck-cashing weekend revelers that they really enjoyed that uplifting start to their weekend.

—-

My neighborhood is filled with familiar characters. Homeless persons, some mental, some just destitute. Shopkeepers and small restauranteurs that step out onto the sidewalk when business is slow. Street vendors selling melted popsicles and bags of fruit.

There's this one old man who sells water. He stands on corners and under awnings and hawks bottles for half a buck. I think he might be a little bit crazy. He'll call out, "Water, fifty cents!" and then mutter something vaguely ominous under his breath like, "You gotta drink water. In this heat? You'll get dehydrated, you'll see." or "The pipes. It's bad water, in those pipes. People don't know. They'll find out."

For some reason, I love this. His fear mongering sales angle delights me, I don't know why. Probably for the same reason I love doomsday and dystopic movies: I not-so-secretly want to watch the world crumble. Anyway, I kind of want to buy his water, stand nearby drinking it, and nod in agreement at his prognostications. But I'm afraid he'll tell me what's actually in those pipes, and I'll have to find Erin Brockovich.

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Everything I own keeps breaking, and it's making me feel like a character in a Philip K. Dick novel. There is nothing more depressing than having a house full of expensive broken shit. In the past six months, the following things have crapped out on me, or gotten effed up in some way: My dSLR (in the shop now) My vacuum cleaner (which now emits sparks when I vacuum, adding an exciting element of danger to my housekeeping duties) My french press (which, haha, I knocked over with the vacuum cord and shattered) My electric tea kettle (since replaced) My lamp shades (Chaucer flung brown drool on them) My upright clothes steamer (just straight up stopped working) My floor lamp (the floor step-on switch came apart).

Today, the “unbreakable” container my five-pound bag of flour was in broke. Can you guess how long I let the mess sit on the floor before I finally cleaned it up?

a) 3 seconds
b) 3 minutes
c) 3 hours
d) I'm just going to wait for Chaucer to develop a taste for flour. I

If you guessed d), you get a human-grade-ingredient dog cookie.