The Food Chain of Haters

I am a little concerned for the birds who inhabit the trees outside my building. This isn’t the kind of concern I had for the singing birds who lived outside my bedroom window when I shared an apartment with my brother. That kind of concern stemmed more from my desire to kill every last one of them and my fear that even if I managed to peg them all with my brother’s gun, there was some endless supply of night-singing devil birds that would swoop in and take their place. I spent months shoving various ear plugs down my ear canal in the vain hope that it would block the amplified twee-tweeeeeee-tweeing that began every morning at 3am. And then one day I lost my godamned mind and grabbed my brother’s BB gun from his closet and stomped outside in my pink nightgown and flipflops. I only got two (unsuccessfull) shots off before I noticed my neighbor staring at me from her driveway, ushering her children into their oversized Suburban monstrosity. Ushering in the way you usher unsuspecting bank patrons away from the Crazy holding a gun to a tellers head. No sudden movements, don’t break eye contact, keep your voice soothing and low. I gave her my sweetest smile and told her I was just looking for some breakfast.

Those singing birds were the bane of my existence, they were the rat poison in my coffee, the dirty finger in my eye. The current birds haven’t quite made it to that level, but they are quickly moving up the Hater Food Chain. Right below People Who Don’t Understand The Proper Use of the Interstate On Ramp but above Stepping in a Puddle of Cat Vomit with Bare Feet.

I hate that I have such a horrible relationship with these animals, because for the most part I’m a sucker for anything covered in fuzzies. However, I am comforted to know that other people feel just as repulsed by glorified flying insects and once watched a movie where Zoey Daschenel stole my life. Besides her seriously lacking interpersonal skills, she had a collection of singing devil-birds outside her window and even though the movie was terrible, totally without purpose or other redeeming value, there’s a line she utters while taking a swig of beer:

“What kind of devil bird sings at night?”

Exactly. WHAT KIND OF DEVIL BIRD SINGS AT NIGHT. It’s unnatural. And then she tries to shoot one with a BB gun. And I thought, “What the fuck, this has happened to someone else? Someone ELSE shot at the singing devil birds with a BB gun? VALIDATION IS MINE.”

But the current birds don’t sing, at least not where I can hear them. And if I can’t hear them, no one else can. I hear people two blocks away, just because they thought about blinking. So there’s no singing. I can vouch for that. No, these birds have some kind of crazy, chucktastic diet that gives them serious cases of bird-diarrhea. Runny, chucky messes of bird shit. And it’s not like they can crap on the ground. Maybe even on the roof. These are wily little birds and they know, THEY KNOW, how much I hate cleaning off bird crap from my car. So that’s where they go. On my car.

Before you think, meh, whatever, everyone gets birdshit on their car, STOP. Stop thinking. It’s not like that. I washed my car last night because it set in airport long term parking for four days while I was in Phoenix and it was covered in dirt and airplane funk. This morning I go outside and there are twenty-seven (I counted) separate glops of bird excrement on varying parts of my car. As an added bonus, the biggest chunky mess was on the driver side door handle. Tasty snack for later.

And in case you were curious, like me, I’ll save you the trouble: All you ever needed to know about bird shit

A Lethal Injection of Christmas Cheer

So you might have noticed that I never actually finished that whole Look At Me I’m Dying story. I should point out that the events of that story transpired way back in August, when the weather was still flaming hot and I still had a (relatively) scar-free body. Now it’s December and I keep traveling to places like Minnesota, where the weather actually defies human logic with its inability to rise above Fucking Freezing (actual scientific name) and I have this newfound ability to predict the weather with my abdominal tingling.

Because I’m looking to finish talking about the events of this year by the time this year actually ends, I need to get on the ball and do a sum up. Here goes.

After my mother showed up and reaffirmed my conviction that mothers can hear you when you scream in your head, my dad rolled in roughly three hours later. Timetable: Before the surgery. Or even the mention of any surgery. Still vomiting/dry heaving into popcorn buckets but had acquired a private room so as to remain uncontaminated by the Poop Bomb lady.

Right before my parents left to go back to my apartment for the night, I had a sudden flash of the empty cigarette box lying on my kitchen table. Not because I smoke in my house but because I periodically empty my purse of it’s residual crap and the empty box(es) take up valuable space that could be utilized by FULL cigarette boxes.

Normal people would have a) told their parents about their smoking habit many years ago, or b) would have been busted by their parents many years ago. But I’m the child who was so secretive I somehow managed to keep my eighth grade boyfriend under wraps until I was twenty-five. No reason. Just for giggles. So imagine what I can do with a little tobacco habit.

We had a very awkward non-conversation where I told my dad that he was going to get in my car and it was going to smell like an ashtray in an old McDonald’s bag. I also told him he was going to need to move the three or four Virginia Slim Ultra Light Menthol boxes (empty) that would be scattered on the driver side floorboard. Then I looked at my mom and told her that there were going to be empty boxes on my kitchen table. Maybe some in my bedroom. You never know when or where the urge to clean out your purse will strike you. I wished them both a good night and acknowledged that I’d been smoking, off and on, for around a decade.

Two days later they cut out my gallbladder (such a hideous name for an organ). I stayed in the hospital an extra three or four days because I kept passing little alien zygotes in my urine. Before I left a urologist wrote me a prescription for Flomax, a drug that I later learned is designed for MEN with PROSTATE TROUBLE. As I am not a man and I do not have prostate troubles, this ended up being a bit of a concern. Especially when my vision started to go a few days later and WAIT! Let’s google this drug on the internet! Side effects include loss of vision (sometimes permanent). That sounds fun.

A week after the surgery I was still weak and nauseated and oh-so-miserable. So my mother took me to the ER, where they gave me more drugs. And I spent another week following the doctor’s regimen of pills until I decided that those people were morons and I stopped everything. Morphine, Phenargran, Xanax, Valium, Odansetron, Sucralfate, Flomax and Lexapro. Done.

Now that the surgery story is complete, we can move on.

Points of Mild Interest:

1) I have a new scar on my forehead from where my coworker accidentally shot me in the head with a plastic spring-loaded airplane. See the following conversation:

Boss: Don’t point that at Robin – you know liberals and their gun control laws…

Coworker: Oh whatever, I’ve got it totally under contro—WHAP!

Me: SON OF A BITCH!

Coworker: Holy crap you’re bleeding!

Me: SON OF A BITCH!

Coworker: I’m so sorry! It just went off!

Me: YOU SHOT ME IN THE HEAD YOU CRAZY REPUBLICAN!

And now I’ve got a thin half-inch raised scar on my forehead just above my right eye. Gives me a jaunty, rogue-ish look.

2.) My hair is falling out. HA HA HOW I WISH I WAS KIDDING. Apparently this year isn’t through shoving its unlubed fist up my ass. According to my doctor, this can happen to people after a “body trauma.” In my case, the “body trauma” would be the ill-received gallbladder surgery. Anyway, I was doing okay with it, laughing with Mother Nature as fistfuls of my frizzy mane ended up swimming down the drain or coming out in my brush until one day I realized that my hair was falling out. Don’t ask me why one day it just punched me in the face like that, how on Monday I was all, ha ha! my hair is falling out! and then on Tuesday I was all ohmygod I think I’m having a heart attack, my hair, it is falling out.

I ended up sending my hair dresser a frantic text message begging for a hair appointment the next day. I needed bangs. Big, long bangs to cover up the now visible thinning at my hairline.

She obliged. I now have bangs.

If I put in my jaw splint and fluff up my bangs a little, I find myself looking at the 11-year-old me. Just so we’re clear, the 11-year-old me was tall and chubby with frizzy permed hair, braces and a bit of a lisp. I occasionally had to wear head gear. I was a sexy beast.