Things That Done Happened This Weekend

1. I had an eerie run-in with a squirrel this past Friday, one that was reminiscent of the infamous one-eyed squirrel incident.

I'm sitting outside Friday afternoon, still only on page 350 of Infinite Jest, sucking up some much needed sun and reading my beady little heart out. My laundry is whirring away in the house behind mine, and I am curled up on the bench outside the back house. As I'm reading, I notice with amusement two squirrels chasing each other around the neighbor's yard. One is the fattest squirrel I've ever seen. The other is a normal skinny squirrel. The skinny squirrel seems to be trying to drive Obesely Fat Squirrel out of its backyard, and Obesely Fat Squirrel is pissed and screeching and chattering at it like mad. I'm kinda grinning to myself and laughing because the squirrel is JUST SO GODDAMN FAT. So Skinny Squirrel chases Obesely Fat Squirrel over into my yard and glares at it from its perch atop the fence dividing the two. Obesely Fat Squirrel screeches and chatters at it angrily a few more times before Skinny Squirrel wanders off down the fence and out to the street. I chuckle to myself again and then return to my book.

About five minutes later, I notice that Obesely Fat Squirrel is running around in my backyard. As I sit watching it, it starts running towards me, and I kinda smile to myself again as its fat pendulous belly jiggles to and fro as it runs. And then the fat fucker JUMPS ON ME. I kid you not. This fat little squirrel beelines straight at me while I sit smiling like an idiot and waiting for it to swing to the right or left to run around me. It lands on my curled up legs and I eke out a feeble 'Jesus Christ, Squirrel' when it lands and it then pauses and stares at me for a second as though to say 'That's what you get, bitch, for sitting on MY bench.' It then leaps up into the tree and sits for a minute, shouting down chattered squirrel obscenities at me. I cried and ran home. The End.

2. E and I decided we were going to open a bar of some sort and spent Saturday night leaning over beers and pizzas and trying to decide on a name for our bar. Winning suggestion: 'The Man on the Rotating Platform' (the 'theme' of which would be a different man sitting on said rotating platform every week while patrons came and went. Other runner's up: 'The Flaccid Wiener,' 'My 10-foot Pussy,' 'I Kissed Your Girlfriend,' 'Octopussy,' and 'I Fucked Your Mom and She Sucked.' Keep your fingers crossed for funding.

3. Went down to Antioch to visit my sister and see her give her senior project which was a fantastically good video she'd created to give women a safe space to discuss themselves as survivors of sexual abuse. It was damn hot out and I now have a trucker's sunburn.

4. A new noise has arrived into my neighborhood. It resembles the sound of a tennis ball being whipped at the side of a brick house. I have no clue what is making this noise, but it is mildly maddening listening to it as you're trying to fall asleep.

-------