Scene-Setting
Today I accidentally dressed like Alice in Wonderland. I put on a pleated skirt to minimize ironing time, then added tights to keep from having to shave my legs, then the flat Mary Janes that that hurt my corn the least this week, and oops. Cakes saying “Eat me” have appeared all round my head.
In the nearby halls, someone has posted childen’s variations on a local company’s logo. A bevy of coloring-contest entries, I mean. There are three that are very clearly better than all the rest. On closer inspection, you see that those three were done by three children, all of whom belong to the same person. You go, unisexly-named person I’ve never met! Raise those artists!
People, People, People
So, like every single other time, I got thwarted in my lunch-time mission to be alone.
I no longer believe that my fellow citizens are doing this to me on purpose (mostly I don’t), but something’s going on. Long-time readers remember that I can no longer read and eat Jack in the Box tacos in my car, in a nearby normally-deserted parking lot, without party-poopers feeling the need to park right next to me.
So, instead of whining about that more than once, I began parking in a different spot, in such a way that makes it impossible for the lonely space invaders to park alongside.
Well, no. No, no, no. It’s not going to work out that way (me being alone, with privacy) because the strangers will just drive in circles near me, peering through their windows. (“What in the heck is that girl doing? Is she eating Jack in the Box tacos and reading a book? Weird!”) Or, like today, they will just park illegally, blocking the parking-lot entrance adjacent to my car. Why? I don’t know. I hope the person who did that today got immense satisfaction out of it, though.
So then, in the parking garage, I unintentionally inhaled the cologne/deoderant combo of the gentleman twenty steps ahead and wondered if I’m becoming a misanthrope. And, if so, if it’s caused by hormones.
The fragrant gentleman and his friend began a disjointed conversation that caused them to slow down. (“So what are you…” “What [turns face into cell phone]?”) They slowed down exactly long enough for me to reach them, then sped up to exactly the pace I was walking, so that we were all three walking abreast, as if we knew each other, and it became clear that some kind of rearranging would become imminent at the parking garage door.
So I walked very fast and got away. And I tried not to be a misanthrope about it. And I almost ran into another guy near the elevators. And we both paused at the same time to be polite and let the other go ahead. And he gestured for me to go. And I looked at his face and it looked like a nice face. And the spell was broken and I was glad.
In a huge, airy hall, me and several men walked along behind two women, one of whom had on a belt too tight for her tight low-rise pants. The two women talked loudly. Me and the men fell into silence behind them, awed by the belt and pants, I think. Something fell from the side of the belt-pants women. It hit the floor with a “blap!” She didn’t notice, but all the rest of us looked down at it. I felt us all wonder if we should pick it up for her, or at least maybe say, “Excuse me.”
The thing she dropped was a condiment packet. Psychically, I felt us all decide not to bring it to anyone’s attention.
As I stepped over the condiment packet, I could not resist noticing that it said “Sweet Relish.”
For some reason, this embarrassed me so much that I started to giggle. I couldn’t stop. Then, twenty steps later, I saw that Pants/Belt had lunch items in her hands. I felt bad, then, imagining her at her desk, wondering what the hell happened to the sweet relish she’d planned to employ.
Cakes Saying “Eat Me”
I’m not even going to talk about what the endocrinologist said yesterday, for fear that it will upset me to dwell on the fact that his diagnosis will most likely parallel that of my gynecologist last year. (In short, I’ve paid hundreds of dollars for him to very carefully reach the same conclusion, and explain it more fully, but offer no more underlying reason than she did, and treat it with pills that have all the same ingredients as the Pill she gave me, but without any contraceptive effect.) (Maybe. Won’t know for sure until after Friday’s test.)
But… I’m taking a special, multi-needle test on Friday morning. In the meantime, my endocrinologist explicitly instructs me to eat more carbs. “CARB LOADING,” he writes across the paper that tells me what to do.
And so I’ve thought of a new diet plan, which is “Have your doctor tell you to eat stuff that makes you fat.” Because, now that he’s told me to do that, I don’t want to. I don’t feel like eating any carbs at all, now.
And yet, dutifully, I eat a Halloween mini candy bar once or twice per hour. And I think doing that is putting me in a bad mood. Unless I’m already in a bad mood because I’m about to start my period – my third period of the month. No, wait, it’s November. First one of the new month, then. But anyway. Maybe that’s why I hate people, too. But, then again, conversely, what if that is why people like me? What if my smell – a heady combination of candy, testosterone, and impending blood – is what’s making people park, walk, and drop condiments next to me?
I don’t know. What do you think? Do you think I should maybe start a new book and become an endocrinologist? See about getting a radio show? Get a hysterectomy? Stop reading so much Kazuo Ishiguro?
I don’t know now, I don’t know. Everybody, stand back please. Just take twenty steps in the other direction and let me love you again.