The Many Faces of Me

I am Jer
So it's Tuesday night at Bailey's, which just happens to coincide with the Red Wing's first playoff game, and, to be frank, I am not overly impressed with their play. So I don't wait for a commercial or period break to excuse myself, I just wander off towards the ladies'. And while I'm there, you know, taking care of things, I hear the horns and the cheering and what-all that coincides with a Red Wings goal and I think to myself "Oh don't even--I am not spending the entire playoffs in the bathroom."

In my younger days, I used to watch the Wings with a group of crazy, superstitious, slightly unbalanced friends of mine. We payed obsessive attention to all the signs, portents, and omens we could find in the hope that in some small way we could influence to cosmic mojo and, if not help the team win, at least not somehow screw it up. If some perverse demon made us think that it mattered if FlyGuy came down my basement stairs walking on his hands then By God he was going to handstand down those damn stairs. I'm not even kidding here, during the 2001-2002 Cup run, we noticed that the Wings tended to lose if Commander Pop was watching. This could not stand. Therefor, Commander Pop was exiled to a back room where he could, if it did not prove disastrous, listen to the games on the radio. The rest of us played euchre and drank beer and screamed at the TV and didn't feel the least bit badly about one of our best friends sitting alone in a room with a radio and a copy of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

So perhaps you can see my point about the bathroom.

Luckily--and I don't say this often--this group is scattered to the four winds, off living in Minneapolis or having babies or doing something else much more sensible than wearing their jersey inside out on Tuesdays if it's an away game. Falstaff showed up at the bar later that night and I didn't bother to mention the bathroom thing. We are beyond such silliness, right?

Except. . . except. . . if I have seen a single Wings goal scored since the end of the regular season, it's been in a game that they've lost. I forget there's a game on? They win. I go to bed early, because seriously, this one's over? They come from behind at the last second. I get up to let the dog out? HESHOOTSHESCORES! I know the right thing to do here is to stop watching. I know that, now that I've made this public and the Wings are getting smacked around by the Ducks, Falstaff is going to nail the bathroom door shut at Bailey's tomorrow night. So I have no idea why I'm telling you this.

I am my mother
I've been pretty good, for me, about finishing one knitting project before starting another one. I've got a couple things that need to be pieced together yet (I hate that part) and one sweater that I've been picking up and putting back down for over a year now. But beyond that, it's been start a hat-finish a hat; start a scarf-finish a scarf; start a camera bag-finish a camera bag; start a sweater-finish a sweater.

Aaaand then came Friday. Well, first came Thursday, and a package full of yarn I ordered off of eBay. Then came Friday, and a second package of yarn from eBay and a Wings game to watch (2 goals scored: one while I was letting the dog out, one while I was counting stitches). I couldn't decide which I wanted to start first so I just dumped everything--three kinds of yarn, tape measure, two pattern books, big old roll of knitting needles--into a box and parked myself on the couch. First period? First project. Second period? Second project. Third period? Mostly spent trying to talk myself out of starting a third project, just to be perverse. Out of curiosity, I asked my mom what was cooking in her knitting bag. Answer: "Oh, a pair of socks, another pair of socks, some baby socks, this sweater, this other sweater. . . "

It runs in the family, apparently.

I am Wiley Coyote.
You know how, in Looney Tunes, someone will run straight off a cliff, but not fall until after they look down and realize nothing is beneath them?

Welcome to my eyeballs.

I've been thinking lately, I need new glasses. Not because I've noticed any deficits in my seeing, just because it's been about two years and I'm kind of bored with these frames. It wasn't a pressing need or anything, just a thought. Something to put on the to-do list for the summer, maybe.

And then. . . and then. . . I was at the bar watching a hockey game with Commander Pop and Boop and it occurred to me that I couldn't see the score that well. On the big screen. That was maybe twenty feet away. And BIG. "Huh. New glasses it is, then," I thought.

Yaaaahaaaaahooooooeeeeeeeeeeesplat

It's everywhere! It's everything! I can't see the TV screen at home clearly, from the couch! Street signs are getting fuzzy! The clock across from my desk at work! I'M GOING BLIND.

I am Tippi Hedren
I hate pigeons. I hate them a lot. If I weren't deathly afraid of whatever feather-born mutant mange seems to be attacking Detroit pigeons, I'd run amok in the streets, kicking pigeon asses like so many soccer balls. I hate the way they squawk, I hate the way the twitter, I hate the way they congregate in so many creepy clots, I hate the way they never scatter like they are supposed to--hello? Top of the food chain coming through! Move, you damn mangy bastards! And I really, really hate the way that they always seem to be pecking at the chicken bones that litter the park behind the soup kitchen on Washington Boulevard. Think about that for a moment. Pigeons. Eating chicken. Looking up at you with their beady little eyes, unashamed of their borderline cannibalism, daring you to make something of it.

All last week, they were on the attack, for some reason. I'm sure you noticed--the flocking. The chirring. The flying in your face. I'm walking down Michigan, past the Coneys, minding my own business, and this trio of pigeons is blocking my path, pointedly not making way for The One With Thumbs, and when I finally give up and move to go around them (what I wouldn't have given for a pair of Doc Martens and a Hazmat suit, I'd've shown those little . . . ), one of them flies directly up into my face causing me to shriek out loud and wave my arms like an idiot being attacked by a pigeon!

Hood number one: Man, did you see that?

Hood number two: Awww hell no. I'd kick a pigeon's ass.

North: Seriously? I'd give you a dollar.