Past Tense Present Perfect

I've been trying to do journal entries for our trip to Italy, which was -- according to my calendar -- an event that took place almost two months ago. My calendar can't be trusted; it isn't so much that it lies as it is that I'm wretchedly incapable of reading one accurately. Chalk this up to one of the failures of my public school program, which also signally failed to teach me in the art of tying my shoelaces. 27 years after I was scheduled to master the skill, Sweet Pipes finally showed me how to knot, bow, and maintain an unraveled perfection on my shoes that would not slip under duress or, dare I say it, the stress of actual walking. She demonstrated on my shoelaces, which continue to be as perfectly tied today as they were when she showed me the art -- partly because I haven't had the courage to untie them and put my hard-won skill to practice.

Anyway, I've clean forgotten how she did it. I'm comforted by the thought that she'll be in the US again next month. I'll schedule some time for her to come over and tie the rest of my shoes before she goes back to Italy. I'm not sure what I'll do if I acquire any shoes after that. I suppose there's a great deal of velcro in my future.

As it turns out, the pictures of our trip are plentiful, but rather devoid of human interest. If they are to be believed, at some point in mid-April, a flying digital camera went on a jaunt to Europe and hopped about taking indiscriminate snapshots of buildings and museums and cathedrals without the distracting company of actual people. They are rather spectacularly anonymous. It's true that I'm photophobic, but this goes beyond that to a kind of nihilistic hostility.

The real problem with photographs is that they never seem to match my image of myself. It's not that I'm a vain person, precisely, but there are only two times during the day when I actually look at myself in the mirror. The first occasion is when I've just woken up, and am in the bleary-eyed process of splashing water on my face and brushing my teeth. (This is, in case you're wondering, about as far as I'm willing to extend myself to look good for others. It's not that I'm interested in inconveniencing the people who have to look at me all day. It's just that I'm more interested in conveniencing myself.)

The second occasion is when I get out of the shower, and glance at the mirror on the way out. This is mostly to make sure that I haven't forgotten to rinse the shampoo out of my hair -- don't laugh. This sort of thing happens to people. Really. Shut up -- or to make sure I'm not walking out of the bathroom with a sliver of soap stuck to my face. (Shut UP. It DOES TOO happen.)

The significant point of both these occasions is that I never get a clear picture of myself. At no point do I look at myself in the mirror while wearing the glasses that are essential for the other activities of my daily life, like driving and being able to see more than two feet in front of my face. My brand of myopia lends itself to flattery. The face I see in the mirror is not only attractive, it has a kind of celestial halo effect. In the wake of showers, when steam conspires quite cheerfully to enhance the phenomenon, the face in the mirror is actually effulgent.

That this conforms to every megalomanic opinion I have of my own greatness is only a convenient side-effect. The point is that my face glows. It's radiant. It is possessed of a divine beauty.

For some bizarre reason as yet unfathomable to me, cameras completely fail to record my glory with any degree of accuracy. The person in the pictures is short. Round. Silly-looking. Possibly cute, in the way that pug dogs are cute, but definitely not awe-inspiring, and certainly not likely to strike terror in the hearts of sinners everywhere.

I cannot understand the intransigence of the inanimate. The ruler at my doctor's office claims I am 5'1". In my mind, I straddle galaxies. How is it that technology fails to see this?

This isn't progress.

Bob

We have been married for two years now, as of 6:00 pm today, PST.

As an anniversary present to myself, I bought Bob.

This is Bob.

Say hi, Bob!

That is all.

...oh. And I suppose I should say something about The Guy, too.

I'm still married to him.

And now that really is all.

Slugs

I've been trying to explain about the slug in my hair for a while now.

Admittedly there are a lot of things I've been trying to explain, lately. There's the fact that I've moved, for one thing. Before that, there was this whole arson thing (funny story. Really. I'll get around to that someday. Maybe.) And then there was the trip to Italy, which I'll write about as soon as I finish fixing up the pictures.

The slug, though. This was special. It's not often that things happen to me. Most of the interesting stuff I write about is stuff that happens to people around me. This is inevitable, when placed in context with my family. My mother and my sister are people who invite weirdness. They wallow in strangeness; they inhale the odd and exhale the bizarre. Me, I'm like the spoon in the Ben & Jerry's research lab. I may touch and taste the exotic flavors of Strawberry-Salmon Sherbert, but I'll never be the Strawberry-Salmon sherbert.

As a story, it's fairly short. I was outside. I ran a hand over my hair. There was a slug in it. It squirmed. I flicked it out. It slithered away. I went home and washed my hair. End of story. Not, I admit, a gripping narrative. However, it's one of those things that start getting a little strange after you've thought about it for a while.

Well. Okay. Maybe even before you've thought about it for a while.

Slugs are sort of a cultural heritage for me. I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Slugs are a thing there. We know slugs. We have, in our time, squashed them, dehydrated them, poked them, played with them, even -- once upon a time and let's not linger on this more than is strictly necessary -- eaten them. What we have never, ever done is seen a slug fly.

This sort of begs the question, what strange convulsion of physics and biological improbabilities would result in a slug landing on my head? Seagull droppings, I could understand. There are seagulls to be seen from time to time up in the sky. Perhaps (and this is still a remote possibility, but nonetheless feasible) a chunk of frozen waste dropped from a passing plane. Our new offices are near San Jose Airport. There are planes. They fly. This, I could understand. But a flying slug? Is this some new perversion that nature has seen fit to inflict on us? Or are they jumping now like frogs, bounding across Northern California in great, graceful leaps in search of more fertile hunting grounds and nubile mates with which to frolic in connubial bliss?

My coworkers are inclined to think I am making the entire thing up. "A slug?" one says, baffled. "Are you sure you weren't mistaking it for something else?"

"Like what?"

"Maybe it was a ... grasshopper?"

I've come to the conclusion my coworkers don't have a high opinion of my intelligence.