How to Disappear Completely

Two weeks tomorrow.

I spend most of the day clearing out the office, going through all of the drawers and little corners where things collect. I go through every pocket thoroughly, even when I get so weary of the task that I want nothing more than to close the drawer back up, put the lid back on the box, come back to it tomorrow. I sort through every stack of paper, pull down every picture and postcard off of the memo board, read every letter and birthday card. Many of them go into a box in the garage. I cannot bring myself to get rid of them, but I am compelled to pull all of them down.

I move around the rest of the house, but there isn't much left anyway. One drawer in the buffet and half a dozen snapshots in frames. I change out all but two of the pictures. If my printer worked, it would all have been done today. I resolve to find another printer tomorrow. I clear out the buffet, and there isn't even anything significant enough for me to set aside for him. Expired coupons and a handful of screws. Only clutter.

I wander around again with a home staging eye. Have I missed anything? If someone new walked through, someone who had never met us together, would they have any idea? Did I leave a note tacked on the refrigerator, or some little trinket that hinted at a marriage? But no, aside from those two photos on the stairs, there is nothing.

I have erased him.

A Conversation via Text Message #2

August 28, 2011 - Operation: Absent Accountant Boy, day 5 -

Me: Deadbolt done, but the door’s giving me a little trouble.

Doc: Good news on the deadbolt! Which door – garage to outside world, or laundry to garage??

Me: Laundry to garage. The mechanism is too long, so the latch is sticking out. Wonder if it’s adjustable. Reading directions now.

Me: “Enlarge hole with file if necessary”? You f&$kers! F&$kity f&$k f&$k f&$k your f&$king file! I should probably stop and get a bite to eat, huh?

Doc: Which hole do you have to enlarge, btw?

Me: The round one. I think it has to be slightly more oblong so that the knob and the latch will fit.

Doc: That’s a big hole to make bigger. Does it have to be lots bigger?

Me: Figuring that out now. Weird how it doesn’t just work. The old and new are both Weslock.

Me: Ah! There is an adjustment. Yay!

Doc: Phew!!! That’s good news.

Me: Well, don’t get too excited, because I can’t figure it out. :-(

Me: Except that I just did. What is it with doorknobs and bad instructions???

Doc: Kind of like IKEA instructions. :-) Glad you got it, tho.

Me: I just pierced my own nose with a screwdriver. No kidding. Please come over.

Doc: O jesus.


You might be wondering how I managed to pierce my own nose, from the inside out, with a screwdriver while installing a doorknob. Here's the deal. I was trying to lever the mounting plate loose with a pair of slotted screwdrivers, because I didn’t realize that I could take the handle and the rose off after I’d snapped them into place - not having tried on the old knobs, because it was easier to cut the roses off with tin snips than to read the directions - and the smaller screwdriver snapped back and…you know what? It doesn’t make much sense when I try to explain it. The important part was that I pierced my nose from the inside out with a screwdriver, staunched the copious bleeding with a shop towel full of ice, then went looking for a bigger screwdriver so that I could exact my revenge on the doorknob. And by "copious bleeding" I mean "it won't stop long enough for me to tell if I've torn my whole nostril away from my face, so I guess we just keep going about our business and apply pressure". Which is what I did. Hardcore.

I was victorious, by the way. The new knob looks and works great, and my nose healed without too much trouble. I thought about popping a stud through there while it was open, a sort of jaunty reminder of my accomplishments, but the hole closed up too quicky.

When Accountant Boy saw the post on Facebook, he commented "Please for the love of God STOP! Somebody go over to our house and lock the tool chest!" I could almost hear him screaming from Australia. Sensitive to the fact that he might worry, being all the way on the other side of the world while I did God-knows-what to myself and the house, I managed to stay injury-free for the remainder of his trip. I got a lot of nagging projects tackled so that we wouldn't have to think about them every weekend.

I think he liked all of the work I did during Operation: AAA. I hope he did. It's hard to tell. Things have gone a little strange. But that's not today's story.

Where Do I Put This Jacket?!

From: SuzannaBanana
Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2011 11:06 AM
To: Doc
Subject: Reverie del Taco

I had a dream last night, a dream too involved for me to thumb-type it out. It’s already fading from memory, but here’s what’s left.

I’m backstage at some event, a dance or club, or maybe the EE Ball 1997. That seems about right, since it was at The Gift Center and this looks like an antechamber I passed on the way to the ladies’ room. The room is small, with primed but unpainted sheetrock and beige office carpet. There are clothes racks, a box that used to hold t-shirts, and a couple of chairs. People are queued up, presumably to drop off their smoky garments to be dry cleaned while they go back out to the darkened, noisy club. There are two girls working at this makeshift dry cleaner, and they are dressed like extras from an episode of Law and Order, any episode of Law and Order where Brisco and Curtis have to go to what Dick Wolf imagines a rave would look like. Plastic skirts, four or five asymmetrical pony tails each, purple lip gloss. The line isn’t moving, because everyone in the line is too intoxicated to figure out how to move.

I am holding the jacket from Accountant Boy's favorite suit, the silvery olive one that he wears to summer weddings. I walk up to one of the girls and ask, “Where do I put this jacket?” She stares at me stupidly. I look down at the white folding chair in front of us, which has another sport coat draped across the padded seat. “Look, I see other jackets, and I’ll put this one with them, but I need to know that this is where they go. Is this where we are supposed to put the jackets?” She blinks at me, then starts talking to her friend. I ask everyone else in the room, but it is as if they are unable to process the words I’m saying. It’s not that they’re ignoring me. It’s that they cannot comprehend what I’m asking, as though they don’t speak my language, so they stare at me after I say something, then just turn in another direction. I am so frustrated that I begin to cry.

The scene shifts subtly, and now you and I are the ones working. I get the impression that you’re wearing some type of Be-Dazzled™ bra top. It’s got dark sapphire “gems” all over it. It looks lovely against your skin and with your hair. I am wearing something similar, but I can’t remember what it looked like, other than that we look a bit like cocktail waitresses at the Stardust.

I am still holding the jacket, and I ask you where it’s supposed to go. You keep responding in a way that isn’t a completely relevant answer. “Where does this jacket go? THIS one? The one I’M HOLDING?”

“We take in jackets. That is a jacket.”

“WHERE DO I PUT IT?! Am I not asking the question correctly? O.K., Suzanne, be clear and concise.” I stop and take a deep breath. You look at me intently, ready to try to listen and understand. I say, in as slow and measured a voice as I can muster, “I am holding a jacket. I would like to put the jacket down. Where do I put the jacket?”

“We clean jackets.”

“DOES IT GO ON THIS CHAIR?”

“There is a jacket on the chair.”

“But do I put THIS one there, too???”

“You are holding a jacket.”

This scene is interrupted, thank God. Two guys come in and drop a very large suitcase on the floor in front of us, the kind that zips open from the side, like a trunk. There is a pile of cloth tied into a long, crooked roll in the middle of the case. Something wriggles under the thin canvas, and at first we think that it is a person. We look up at the men as they walk away. “Hey, you can’t leave that here!” They keep walking. When we look back down at the suitcase, the canvas has changed into long bolts of silk in tropical colors, saffron, lime and blood orange. The wriggling continues, then a tiny, tawny dog pokes its head out from under the fabric.

“Chihuahuas! Look at that one! He’s a little badass!” The little badass Chihuahua steps out a bit further from under the silk and looks up at us. He has big ears, big head for his body, and enormous eyes, but he doesn’t look weird for it, not alien. He’s clearly a puppy, but he’s already got some pretty good muscles on him. He stares up at us with cheerful defiance and wags his tiny tail at us. We laugh, delighted at his bravado.

And then I woke up.

We All Float On

So close. So very close to having a picture of the completed Fluffy Angora Menace. I have the arms done, and most of the ends woven in. I don't love the waist bind-off, but I could have lived with it. In my haste to just get it finished so that I could work on something more colorful and less allergenic, I made a calculation error on the neckline. I crocheted into every stitch along the v-neck, not every three out of four. It's way too loose. I know I'll be able to redo it tonight in about half an hour, and I could redo the waist pretty easily as well, but now I'm mad at it. And I feel too soft in the middle to wear it, anyway. And it's 77 degrees outside right now. Dammit.

In brighter news, I won a contest! This contest! I'm so excited! I've already got the perfect pair of jeans to go with it.

In light of my winning a contest for a close-fitting knit vest, and of the aforementioned state of middle softness, I thought it'd be a good idea to go ahead and register for Bay to Breakers. We did it last year, and we pledged to start training for this year as soon as we'd recovered, and then...well, just read the entries between then and now. There were disfigurements, both sports-related and clerical. There were huge changes at home and at work. There was very real sadness and loss. Everything went sideways. We're recovering, but we now have a little less than two months to train, and we're not in nearly the same condition that we were in at this time last year. Ah, well. Now that I've gone through the experience of losing a toenail, I know it's not something to dread. That's pretty much my new motto. "Now that I've gone through (x), I'm not dreading it anymore."

Finally, another missive from the strange world in which I wander. There's always something a little off in my world, something going on just beyond the corner of my eye. I like living in this world, because it's an endless source of entertainment. Sometimes, it's about hauntings. Sometimes, it's about corporeal things that are not quite right. Usually, as is the case today, it's about my cat.

Buddy may have learned to command Winston using our hand signals. Last night, I watched as he raised up his paw and wagged it around a little bit in what I thought was a precursor to a slap across the nose. Winston threw himself to the ground and rolled over repeatedly, as though Buddy were giving him the signal to do so. Now, maybe it was a coincidence, the paw gesture and the response. Maybe Win was trying to use every trick that he knew to ingratiate himself with the tiny king, and I happened to read too much meaning in his playful maneuverings. Maybe. But I know what I saw. Even if nobody else ever sees it, even if he never does it again, I'll never be convinced that it was anything less than Buddy commanding the dog and the dog obeying.