so unmusical

If you are looking for hobbies I recommend these:

Taking photos of other people's dogs.
Sometimes discreetly and sometimes not discreetly. These photos will be worth millions someday, when dogs are extinct.

Walking around the city early in the morning, eating food out of a bag.
Almond M&Ms, snap peas, dried coconut flakes, the type of food doesn't really matter as long as it can be transported in a bag.

Running in the middle of the night.
It's the perfect temperature and noise level and the sun never gets in your eyes. And after you fall a few dozen times because you can't see the ground, you hardly notice the falling anymore.



Talking to strangers.
I like finding out if they have interesting stories, and also I like their shoes or skateboard or hair or dog and I need to tell them immediately. The bus is the best place on earth.

Planning elaborate fitness regimes in Google Docs and never ever doing them.
Next week I'll run prime-number mile intervals on odd-numbered days and run my weight in roman numerals at the speed of the earth's rotation on even-numbered days. Let's title this one "new idea" and put it in a folder with the others.

Watching tv and practicing my cursive by transcribing every line with a paintbrush.

People I like when I have a bruise on my face

People who somehow can't see it

Lately I'll be talking to a stranger - a girl walking a dog, or a cashier, or a woman on the bus eating Cheez-its dipped in hummus - and I'll realize something's off: they're treating me normally. Because they have a superpower that allows them to not notice things on people's faces. These people are incredible and I never knew it until this week. I wish there were a parade for them. I wish there were a celebratory breakfast. If I become a scientist and invent a pill that simultaneously cures the hiccups and gives you a tan I will name it after these people.

People who act like they can't see it

"Hellooooooo! What a nice… earrings! Wow! Are those real diamonds? You have fantastic ears has anyone told you that? Ears are great for hearing and hearing is better than seeing, who needs seeing not me I'm not looking at ANYTHING right now not looking at anything at ALL!"

People who tell me embarrassing stories about themselves

I learned once that pets and babies are the two things that make people break social norms, but add "temporary face injuries" to that list because all lists should have at least three things. Strangers come up and tell me about accidents with baseballs and bikes and bunk beds and coworkers show me bruises they got from running into doorknobs, and holding people's hands too tightly, and trying to jump on a glass table. Both those lists have three things.

People who make jokes

Do you think you have a good joke? I would love to hear it. Go ahead and swing for the fences because guess who has been spending two hundred times as long thinking about this topic? Me! Chin-girl! I have an endless amount of material. Very few people can say that they woke up this morning knowing exactly what 100% of their conversations were going to be about. I can say it. It hurts a little to say, because my jaw is still pretty swollen. But I can.

goat with beautiful eyes

Today a woman came up to me and stood really really close to me then even closer and said "I love that one of your eyes has a blue square in it!" so I wrote her off as insane, along with the man with a blanket at the crosswalk who told me "Today is a beautiful day to die!" and the taxi driver who told me that every time I sneeze my life is shortened by one heartbeat. And I hoped for her well-being until I remembered her in the bathroom hours later and looked in the mirror and realized she was right.

I need you to answer all these questions but you can answer them in any order you want.

1. Do eyes go blue the way hair goes gray?
2. Can I see the color blue better now? I hadn't noticed, but I also haven't looked at many blue things recently.
3. Do your eyes have blue squares in them? They might now, or they might tomorrow.



If you search "goat with beautiful eyes" that is the first photo that comes up. And this is the fifth:

I ruined three notebooks this afternoon.

It rained really hard in Portland today.

The sort of rain where when you come inside you need to change your shoes and your pants, and also your socks, and also your underwear.

I took it as a challenge to get as soaked as possible, and walked around for an hour in the sort of rain where after a while the raindrops aren't making you any wetter, you're just spinning your rain wheels and you might as well be swimming.

And when I came inside I took my gray Converses off and they were so dark I thought they were my black ones.

Some deep thoughts here.

Other thoughts include thoughts about small warm places, like forts, and caves with deers in them, and the Borrowers, and why all of the places I like that are small and warm are things I liked when I was small. When I was small my family would get extremely competitive about snow fort building, we saw a documentary on people living in Antarctica and used their technique of blowing up a dozen garbage bags and piling snow over them, then popping the bags to make a fort more fit for survivalists than suburbists. The forts never collapsed on me, but I have memories of one collapsing on me because I've seen so many movies where forts collapse. Sometimes I wonder how many of my memories are real and how many are made up and whether I've ever seen snow in my life.

Last year in LA the rain was a special occasion and people put on Bean Boots at any sign of moisture, and in this sentence a sign of moisture includes an especially good lotion. Here in Portland, fall asleep during the rain and you won't miss anything - it's going to rain again tomorrow, they say. How great is that. I want to high-five everyone else walking around in wet underwear because WE ARE SO LUCKY GUYS.

I'm going to write this down and put it in a waterproof container and look at it in six months to remind me, when it's still raining, that it rained really hard in Portland today, and I loved it.

one percent of a moon

Speaking of things you don’t care about, my plan to walk a different route to work every day has been a huge success. Today I walked past a fake fire hydrant made especially for dogs to relieve themselves on, and a Batmobile that I guess could be used for the same thing in a pinch. Everyone I saw smiled at me, I don’t know why and I’m not going to look into it.

Anyone who’s ever walked with me has commented later that I walk way, way, way too fast. Today I was wearing (the very cutest) leopard print flats and there were puddles everywhere so I had to walk so slowly I saw everything seven times. I liked it. I will never do it again.

Stuff you Bret stuff you Jemaine

Before I moved here I made a list of things I wanted to do and some of them seemed pretty far-fetched. One was to get lost and another was to walk a different way to work every day. GOOD NEWS apparently I'm great at doing the first thing subconsciously, which forces me to always take an unexpected route not only to work, but everywhere I go.

This morning while I was lost AND trying a new route I saw two wienie dogs (I hate that word but I hate trying to spell their real name even more) attack a sheepdog.

“Those are cute dogs,” I told their human companion (this is the hip new politically-correct term for “owner”) as she wiped the blood off their mouths (joking). “They think they’re tough.” she answered. Is there more to being tough than thinking you’re tough? I hope not. I’m tough.

Also while lost and on an adventure I saw a woman at Starbucks get in a fight with the manager because he couldn’t take the sausage out of the chicken sausage in her sandwich to make it just a chicken sandwich. Sausage is the noun and chicken is the adjective, ma’am. It’s like trying to take the dog out of a sheepdog so you can walk a sheep around town, stirring up trouble. Only scientists and linguists are trained for difficult tasks like these.

can your lipstick do this?

Today I had nothing on my calendar so I wrote "wear red lipstick" and I walked around town for three hours in silent protest of my shin splints that don't let me run anymore. No word from the shin splints yet but I think they go the message.

About once a week I wear my hair in a weird freakish-looking bun on top of my head, which makes people do this hilarious thing where they say "Hey Brookeeeeee..." When they hit the Br we solidly lock eyes and by the ee's they've trailed up six inches to the top of my head and just kind of rest there.

I feel like I owe it to the rest of my sex, who are greeted with eye contact and a glance twelve inches down no matter how they wear their hair. It's the least I can do.

But today I did the lipstick. Nothing exciting happened except that THREE people asked if I could read things for them because they had forgotten their glasses. That's three more than usual.

One woman asked me to read the size on a shoe she was trying on. She couldn't figure out why all of the shoes were so big. I pointed out she was in the men's section and she got very flustered and thanked me. She really should not be leaving home without her glasses.

One woman asked me to read her horoscope to her. It said she should take more time to herself. Is it just me or are horoscopes and fortune cookies getting fluffier than they used to? What happened to the horoscopes that said things like "If you wear red lipstick on the 10th you will get hit by a car? And if I can't trust a horoscope to let me know something like that, who can I trust? Scary times.

 

If I do get hit by a car, I have a feeling the woman in the men's shoe section will be driving it.

my computer doesn't think saggy is a word.

Last week at the grocery store the lines were a nightmare - about fifteen minutes long, and the worst sort of fifteen minutes, where you get stuck behind a lady buying a decade's worth of shampoo because there was a newspaper special. But I struck gold in aisle three. Even though it wasn't labeled "Express" or "No Shampoo-Hoarders," the only person in front of me was an old man covered in tattoos, who I guess no one wanted to stand behind.

A lot of my friends have awesome-looking tattoos, and given the permanence of tattoos I'm assuming they'll still have them when they're old. People always say "oh you think tattoos look cool, wait until you're old and saggy and covered in tattoos - what will your grandchildren say?

Here's the thing about that.

A lot of my friends have awesome-looking butts.

Which will also become saggy. A lot of my friends have awesome-looking hair, which will either turn white and inexplicably short and fluffy, or just disappear. And did you know that your nose keeps growing your entire life? According to my albeit limited research, none of these things are caused by tattoos. You can get old and saggy with tattoos, or old and saggy without them. And I don't know about you, but I don't much care what my grandchildren have to say. I'm going to have things to tell them.

I'll use this paragraph to mention that I don't have any tattoos and don't plan on ever getting any. Yet I will still age.

Tattoos when you're old just mean that when you were younger you were awesome. Or I guess this guy could have gotten them last week. He didn't tell me. He did tell me that the groceries I was purchasing were all available at the dollar store a couple blocks over for just a dollar. I thanked him, and then hid my shame with pretend fixation on a National Enquirer cover. It said Demi Moore was trying to commit suicide. I wonder if Demi Moore ever thinks "Wonder what the National Enquirer is saying about me!" Probably not.



Then I walked my overpriced groceries next door to the drugstore to get band-aids.

Unnecessary detail coming up: I needed them because I have a scab the size of North Carolina right between my eyes, that would have healed weeks ago if I could stop touching it. I've been considering a dog cone or constantly wearing mittens, but then I thought of band-aids, and decided to pick some up a the drugstore.

For reasons I no longer remember I ended up in the first aid aisle, absentmindedly picking up all of the creams and reading the labels. I jumped when I heard a voice behind me.

"If you're looking for hydrocortisone don't waste money on the name brand! Look on the back - they've all got the same ingredients!" The man who owned the voice picked up a box and deftly flipped it around "This one's 3%, cheap, perfect, that's what I want!" and threw it confidently in a basket already filled with medications.

This is actually one of my favorite topics, so I jumped right in. "It's all a marketing game," I explained. "I bet you anything there's just one big factory out there making one kind of cream, and all the companies need to do is decide how they're going to package it and market it to make the most profit."

He liked this idea but topped it: "I got bitten by a poisonous spider last night and now my body is filled with its venom." I asked whether it had been in his house or whether he had been out in the wilderness, and crossed my fingers and silently chanted please say wilderness please say wilderness please say wilderness please say "Right in my own home!" he answered and the drugstore changed the radio from oldies to sinister without missing a beat. "It bit me while I was sleeping. You don't like thinking about THAT when you go to bed at night."

I can definitely work with the topic "Things you don't like to think about at night" and specifically remembered a youtube video I'd seen where someone put a vibrating machine in an old house. The vibrations bothered the spiders who were hiding unseen in the thick hollow walls and came pouring out of air vents and cracks by the thousands.

But I was obviously playing way out of my league and couldn't imagine the stories this guy would tell to top my spiders-in-the-walls video, so I bit my tongue. The momentary pain reminded me why I was there, and I picked up a box of bandages.

"Ah, Band-aids!" (what a great way to start a sentence!) "I buy a lot of those." he continued. He explained that he was 62 and bruised very easily, and pointed out a large raisin-colored spot on the back of his hand. "I'll just be doing things..." (he half-heartedly mimed reaching for a box of band-aids) and if my hand gets tapped it will bruise." I asked if band-aids helped prevent bruises - as soon as I said it the idea seemed stupid, but I couldn't think of any other reason.

"No, I wear them to cover my bruises when I go out, because I don't like people having to look at them." He looked down sadly at his hand, and the excitement of talking about spiders and how marketers were screwing with us was gone. My raisin-friend sighed. "I hope that doesn't happen to you when you're older."

Something about a man hoping a complete stranger would be able to avoid all the inevitable pitfalls of age, just because she had interesting opinions on pharmaceutical products and a healthy respect for spiders was so sweet to me that I couldn't think of a better response besides something stupid like "It happens to everyone." Would you hope the same thing for someone so clueless and naive? I remember when I was 15 my younger sisters would always tell me how disgusting my pubescent self was. "You're so gross! You're covered in spots!" and I would think just you wait. Just. You. Wait. The point is I'm not half as good as this man is.



And then I wished my scab were twice as big, because even though that would make it so large it would obscure my vision, it could remind him that these things don't matter. I had a scab the size of a state known for its fantastic wood furniture right in the middle of my face, and now that I'm at home typing I have an off-brand band-aid in the middle of my face, and at the end of the day that is not the most important thing about me. It's a shame that people see our bruises and our tattoos and our horrible self-infliced facial disfigurations before they have time to ask us what we know about spiders or what we're most scared of or what our favorite aisle in the drugstore is. Everyone has things they're not proud of about the way people see them.

And according to most people, all of these things are caused by tattoos.

Hello everyone who skipped to the bottom. Here is a song by the Magnetic Fields. If you're waiting for some water to boil you might want to watch that instead of the visuals in this video.



And here is me with a band-aid on my face. You probably don't get the reference.