Lobsters

I feel bad for my mom; I've spent the last 30+ years watching her with a magnifying glass. Judging. Wincing. Watching. Like a hawk. No one should be watched as closely as children watch and observe their parents. More specifically, no one in their right mind should watch another person eat closely; Devouring another creature is brutal and barbaric. No one looks great doing it.

Anyway. On special occasions, my mother would order the lobster and I had the moral obligation to watch her go to town on this sorry crustacean. As a little cherry on top was when she would SAY crustacean. CRUST - TE - SE - IN. I was so mean. This woman gave me life, put her body through hell and gave up so much just so my crumby little ass could sit there smugly judging her pronunciation.


Lobsters supposedly mate for life. Supposedly. I'm getting this information from an episode of Friends. My best friend Steffie really liked that episode and frequently told me that whatever guy I was dating at the time was my lobster. When I finally met and married my lobster, she never mentioned it.

What the f, Stef.

Lobsters reportedly live to be in their 60's. Whenever I think of this, I think of how lame old lobsters must seem at weddings dancing around like old crustaceans. And then, Im like "what an agist i am!" 

David Foster Wallace wrote a short story that was actually a food review, called Consider the Lobster. "Originally published in the August 2004 issue of Gourmet magazine, this review of the 2003 Maine Lobster Festival generated some controversy among the readers of the culinary magazine.[3] The essay is concerned with the ethics of boiling a creature alive in order to enhance the consumer's pleasure, including a discussion of lobster sensory neurons." In short, lobsters probably feel all that pain from boiling to death. If thats true, there are a LOT of sayings comparing boiling lobsters to stresses of human life that out there that are just downright INCORRECT.

Time

Albert Einstein's proved that time is relative. It speeds up, slows down depending on how fast one thing is moving relative to something else.


In the 70's, they tested this out by setting Atomic clocks (extremely accurate clocks that can measure tiny amounts of time—billionths of a second). Science folks (read: nerds) used two atomic clocks to test Einstein's theory of relativity and time. One atomic clock was set up on the ground, while another was sent around the world on a jet traveling at 600 mph. At the start, both clocks showed exactly the same time.


As Einstein predicted , the clocks no longer showed the same time. The clock on the jet was off by a few billionths of a second. In essence, if you are moving fast towards something time actually goes by faster and thats some heavy stuff.


Sometimes, when my social calender gets filled up, I feel like time went by quick. Indeed, time flies by when your having fun. Einstein would say, it goes by even quicker for you if you ran there, took a train, biked, or flew there.


I was absent the day they taught time in school. When I ask someone what time it is, they tend to show me their watch and I say "okay, thanks". What I'm actually saying is thanks for showing me your watch. Big hand, little hand. I dont know and Im too nervous to care to learn.


Thank god my iphone prevents me from having to ask people the time anymore.


My husband bought me a beautiful watch for Christmas. It is not digital, so I wear it as jewelry.

Im the kind of person that is passionately moved by theory of relativity but completely thrown into a frenetic panic whenever people try to teach me how to tell time.


Recently, I pleaded with my husband to slow down. He has a habit of rushing through stuff and this makes me feel like life is going by too quickly. I want to savor the moment. It also means we can not have nice dishes because his tendency toward multitasking, speed and efficiency means we break a lot of glassware.


I cant live in a world of plastic.



Time is a very strange and special thing, it brings you closer to death and makes you look uglier as it goes on. It's also the basis for which we live and manmade. or it is. i sound like i smoked pot. forget it.

Dogs

I always wanted a dog. My parents finally got one when I was 18. It was vicious and required antidepressants.

In fourth grade, I started a dog walking business with the smelly girl from school. Business shut down after our first dog. Frankie - a sloppy, unkept french poodle, slipped out of his collar across Harding Avenue and got struck by a white pick up truck. The dog lived, but his pelvis was shattered. I was told he would never have children again.

We told the owner the walk "was on us".

I like to look at dogs, especially koala looking, shaved pomeranians.

I don't want a dog ever again. Dogs are a major commitment I am not willing to make. Besides, they shit on the floor.

Blenders

When I was 21, I bought a beehive blender to make my kitchen look "retro". I bought one for my friend Emma as well for Christmas, but I never gave it to her.

Months later, the glass pitcher broke and I used Emma’s as a replacement. That broke too. Now I have two beehives, no blender.

Blenders are called mixies in India. Even more interesting, a Polish person invented the blender. Seeing as milkshakes are delicious, Polish jokes are no longer welcome in my home.

When I smoke cigarettes around other people, I fan the smoke away from them and apologize the whole time. When I use a blender around people, I get nervous the sound will bother them and apologize the whole time. I don’t like to bother people.

A blender is one of the few appliances you can't substitute. If the recipe calls for a blender, and you don't have one: you are completely screwed. You can't crush ice; you're not the Hulk.

Air Conditioners

My sister and I always shared a room. 7 years my senior, Tara usually operated with complete disregard for my state of slumber during her morning routine – blow drying her hair in our room while I slept, and, essentially moving about as if I did not exisit.

In hindsight, I got even by moving to her bed once she left for school. Her bed was located next to the air condition which was, presumably, on purpose. After, she left, I’d throw my blankets on her bed and relish in the comfort of being under a thousand layers of cotton and rayon in a freezing room, sometimes squealing with delight.

This one particular morning, I delayed in going to her bed feeling immobilized for no apparent reason. Laying in my bed, day dreaming about being older and the fancy, exiciting life I would have, I heard a sound I never heard before: actual electronic sparks. It looked and sounded like lighting bolts from a cartoon shooting out of the air conditioner and onto my sisters bed.

I screamed my bloody head off.

Known to be little melodramatic, it took a while to convince my parents of what happened.

My father, Ed, whom was employed by Con Ed phoned in a complaint. Luckily the sparks didn’t cause a fire, but Con Edison came to take a look at what happened as a favor to my dad.

They said two things that day that blew my mind: a. this resulted from a squirrel messing with the poles outside my window and b. I would had been electrocuted. In other words, I would have been killed by a squirrel.

After that I never went in Tara’s bed.



One would assume this would never happen again, but two weeks later, it did. This time, the sparks just happen to miss my sister by a hair of a second. Tara and I plotted the death a squirrel clearly spawned from Satan. As usual, because it happened to my sister whom my parents loved more than me, we moved our beds after that and went easy on the air conditioner for once.

Whenever I think of this, it confirms my belief in divine intervention and rodents are satan henchmen as are bed bugs and colicy babies.

Fainting

I fainted yesterday.

I woke up and said "what the fuck just happened", like a lady.

I fainted last summer after riding my bike for 10 hours; that time, I said "always cocacola" when I came to. I was thristy.

That time, I knew I passed out from dehydration; this time, the doctor said I got up to fast. My insurance paid a guy to say that to me. That's the problem with America.

When you tell people you fainted, they usually tell you a story about fainting.

When I was about 12ish, I learned how to make yourself pass out. From then on, my friends and I used to passed out all the time - on street corners, sleep overs. Someone told us a story about a boyplaying the same game and dying, so we stopped. None of us were interested in dying.

My sister fainted once when we were on vacation in Wildwood. I was 13, she was 20. She leaned back on a car and started shaking. I thought she was dancing and was so mortified. "Right now? You're going to do this right now?"

The people in the car got out and told me to call an ambulance. I called my mom instead because she's a nurse. My mom brought her to the dr who said Tara was allergic to the....sun. She passed out from overexposure to an allergen. 17 years later, my sister has son who is also allergic to ridiculous things.

I think fainting is what it must feel like to die; and thats, mad dark.

Fireflies

Fireflies were my favorite thing when I was younger. Samantha Barr and I spent every summer night collecting them and every summer day developing intricate little bio domes wherein they would live forever. At night, before bed, I dreamt about keeping one on a leash and sauntering about on Tremont Ave.

My mother wouldn’t let me have a dog.

Once, on my way out the door, my mother called me back in to find out where I was going. I stole her crystal sugar pourer or syrup thing (I don’t know what they’re called), thinking it would make a beautiful home for my pets. I shoved it in my underpants and explained that I was going to Samantha’s.

Running out of the house, crystal in hand, I screamed: “I have such a full life”. I was 7 and had no idea what that meant. I watched a tremendous amount of Oprah. As I screamed, I crashed into a fence, presumably blinded with glee. The crystal shattered everywhere - in my hair, all over the ground and piercing my arm leaving me with a thick, short scar that still remains.

My mother never noticed the her missing crystal pourer thing or the cut on my arm much to my relief.

I forget who, but someone’s brother – either mine or samantha’s- taught us what happens when you step on a firefly and slide your foot. After that, we collected them and stomped on them all night long, showing each other our caucus’ glow – as if we’d never seen it before.

After you you learn how to kill something, you stop appreciating its life, it beauty. That was the last summer we collected fireflies, but every time I see one of I think of Samantha and our very full lives.