Ahh, January 26th. The day before my mom’s birthday.
We actually decided to slice the cake last night. I was bent over the bathroom sink putting in some eye drops, and I heard my parents doing their midlife crisis thing around the corner in the kitchen. My dad pokes his head in the doorway and goes “Rose, we’ll celebrate mom’s birthday tomorrow.”
“No, Joe, because Rose won’t be here tomorrow and you’ll just be in a foul mood and…” the rest was muffled. Dad had removed his head from the doorway for two seconds, and then it appeared again: “Rose, we’re celebrating mom’s birthday right now.”
So Joey and I were just kind of sitting at the table, not saying a thing. I couldn’t really say a thing even if I had wanted to, because my throat was so sore. Dad said “Let’s see a little cheer, guys…” but everyone looked truly depressed, except for mom, who was hopping around going “Is the monkey going to be here?”
Every year we do this. Mom seriously wants a monkey. This last Christmas, she sighed very loudly and went “Well, Santa didn’t bring me a monkey, again.” So she blew out her candles and wished for monkey, and also that the angry looking spot on her collarbone isn’t cancer.
I felt pretty bad about the whole thing, so today after my writing class, I mosied down to the campus store and bought her a black squirrel plushie. Dad’s been feeling a bit emasculated lately, since I’ve needed his car for school and mom has had to drop him off at work every day, so I sent him a text message saying “squirrel acquired.” I thought the spy lingo might cheer him up.
As I was sending the message, I was climbing on board one of the campus buses with hopes of getting back to my car. I slipped my phone back into my purse, and it occurred to me that nearly everyone on the bus was speaking french. What? I panicked for a second. For all I knew, I had jumped on a one way french bus to french land. You may recall that the last time I had a fever, I condescendingly uttered ‘fscking fish box’ and mom took offense. I had to tell someone. I wanted to text dad, but I was afraid he’d start crying in his cubicle, so I texted Steve instead.
I thought about how Frank told me I should major in french sign language. Half of me wanted to introduce myself as “Fellippe Falloppe”, but the other half was wagging its finger at the first half. Finally, Summit East appeared like a beacon of hope, so I pulled the signal and shook ass off of that bus.
I went directly to the gym, since I was at the mercy of my body not wanting to move at ALL yesterday. I was just telling Lana that the size difference between my left butt cheek and my right butt cheek may have finally been neutralized. Lana, I just want you to know that whenever I talk about my ass, I’ll be thinking of your mom.
When I came home, mom was delighted to have the black squirrel plushie. She put it right next to her grey squirrel plushie that is nearly the same size, which is next to some smaller grey squirrel plushies, which are lined up next to a photograph of the squirrel we used to have.
