by Jenny Lawson
It’s been a week since the Rat Sorb, and the smell has finally dissipated, but a few minutes ago I heard something shuffling around in the walls. I can’t go through this again, so I decided to scare it out by screaming, and growling, and pounding on the walls like I was a vicious predator. But then I turned around and both of the cats were just staring at me disgustedly, like, “You’re embarrassing us all here,” and I was all, “Oh, fuck you, cats. At least I’m trying.” And that was when I noticed that our mailman was staring at me through the glass of the front door. I explained that I was trying to scare away the possible chupacabra that seemed to be making a home in my wall, and the mailman said, “Oh. It’s probably W. C. Fields,” and then I just stood there, because usually I’m the weird one in the conversation, and I wanted to appreciate the moment. Turns out, though, that there’s actually an escaped angry spider monkey named W. C. Fields who is stalking our area, and who just attacked a woman and trapped her in her garage for an hour. All of this is true, y’all.1
I looked up “spider monkey” on the Internet and apparently they’re afraid of pumas, so all this morning I’ve been playing the sounds of pumas screaming (on a loop) on my computer, and so far I haven’t heard any more noises coming from the walls, which I think pretty much confirms that we totally have a spider monkey in there. Victor says it just confirms that it’s impossible to hear anything when the house is filled with screaming pumas. Then he yelled at me about the kitchen being a wreck, but it was easy to tune him out because of all the pumas. Which? Kind of a bonus. Screaming pumas are my new sound track.
P.S. Actual MSNBC quote about W. C. Fields, the escaped spider monkey: “Don’t go outside. Don’t try to pet him. Do not befriend him.” Holy crap. The spider monkey has just become the hero from The Running Man.
You know what’s awesome? When you move into a new (to you) house and you smell something musty in your bathroom, and so you call someone to look at what you really hope isn’t black mold, and they’re all, “Shit, lady. You’re fucked.” And then a scientist comes out to take lab samples and says, “You haven’t been sleeping near this room, have you?” And they seal the whole section of that house off and put a zipper in it so that the mold spores don’t escape into the rest of the house. Then they get dressed up in the exact same outfits that the FBI people wore when they accidentally almost killed E.T., and they rip out Sheetrock and cabinets, and you want to take pictures but they won’t let you in unless you’re dressed in protective gear, and then they’re all, “No, ma’am, feetie pajamas are not going to cut it.” You try to sneak into the bathroom to get your toothpaste, but you trip over the opening, because it’s almost impossible to walk into a room that has a zipper for a door, and when you fall it hurts so much that you forget that you aren’t supposed to breathe, and so you take a breath of what will probably kill you. Then you start to feel sick, but you remind yourself that you’ve been showering in that room for months, so you probably already have tuberculosis anyway, and you’re not going to have enough money for hospitalization, because you’re spending all your money on air samples, and lab techs, and supporting the people who probably killed E.T. And then you go lie down and cry for a minute, and the mold guys are all, “You know, you really shouldn’t use this room.”
Yeah. That’s awesome.
P.S. By “awesome” I mean, “I’d like to go hide under the house but I suspect that’s where all the scorpions are living now that the chupacabras have taken over the attic.” Also, yes, of course I have pictures:
It’s like living in a camping tent—if the tent were filled with spores that could kill you.
This is what the mold guys look like when you sneak up on them. Also, they might hit you with a board. But not on purpose. Just reflexes, probably.
“I just killed your alien and stuffed him in this bag. I’ll leave you alone with him so you can cry and bring him back to life. Also I just ruined E.T. for you. Spoiler alert.”
Eventually they fixed everything and I was very relieved, until they told me that when they cut a hole in the wall a bunch of dead scorpions fell out. I’m never going to sleep again. Probably because of the combination of fear, concussion, and tuberculosis.
Victor is out of town and I keep hearing weird noises in and out of the house. Rationally, I realize it’s probably just the house settling, but I’m pretty sure we’re all going to die here, and I suspect we need an exorcist. In the last six months we’ve had scorpions, mold, murdered pets, and possible chupacabras in the walls. I suspect the house was built on an Indian graveyard. I wonder how much an exorcism costs, and whether it’s more expensive if I’m not Catholic. Is there a coupon code I can use? This is probably exactly the sort of thing they teach you in catechism.
The Internet recommended “smudging,” a Native American practice of burning sage in order to purify things, and so I burned a bowl of dried sage and I walked around the house with it, chanting biblical phrases I’d heard in The Exorcist, and wafting the sage smoke around. I also told the spirits that I wanted them to leave, but perhaps they should go check out Hawaii, because I heard it was awesome. Then I did some Gregorian-style chants, but I didn’t know the lyrics so instead I just substituted the words “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” Suddenly there was a deafening screeching, and I screamed and thanked God that Hailey was spending the night with my in-laws, because I suspected the walls would start dripping with blood next, but then I realized that the noise was just the fire alarm going off. It was pretty much the same thing that happened in our last house, except that this time it was caused by angry spirits rather than me catching towels on fire.
I called my mom to ask her how to turn off fire alarms, but it was so loud she could barely hear me. You sound silly when you tell someone that you’re burning sage inside your house to appease the Indian burial ground that might be under your house, but you sound fucking ridiculous when you’re screaming the exact same thing over the sound of fire alarms. I tried to explain that a poltergeist was the only logical conclusion in light of all the crap that had happened lately. She said that it was more likely a series of tragic but common events that just coincidentally hit at the same time. I countered that it didn’t seem “common” to have to protect your dead dog by going after a vulture with a machete. My mom said, “Don’t be ridiculous. Where would a vulture get a machete?” Not because she was stupid, mind you . . . simply because she didn’t see this emergency as important enough for me to start using sloppy sentence construction.
Then my mom pointed out that Native Americans revered vultures, so if there was an Indian graveyard under my house I’d probably really pissed them off, and she suggested I make an offering to the vultures, and I totally would have if Victor hadn’t given all of our hamburgers to the foxen. She told me how to disconnect the fire alarms, but it seemed very complicated, so I just nodded until she stopped talking and then got a broom and hit it like a piñata until it stopped, which was a relief for me (and probably for our neighbors, considering it was eleven o’clock at night).
The next day Victor came home and saw the wires hanging from the shattered fire alarm, and I admitted that I’d tried to smoke out the ghosts and that I suspected the alarms were a sign that the spirits were appeased. He stared at me and told me that it was more likely a sign that the smoke detector was working properly until I murdered it after intentionally filling the house with smoke. It sounded much worse when Victor broke it out like that.
This afternoon I sauntered into Victor’s office and said smugly, “So, apparently my ‘craazy’ plan for setting off the fire alarm to appease the ghosts worked, because guess who just found the dead bodies I’ve been searching for? ME, MOTHERFUCKER. I found the dead bodies.” Then I held up my hand for the inevitable high five, but instead he just hit the mute button on his office phone and dropped his head into his hands. Which was disappointing for both of us. And, granted, this probably would have been better received if I’d realized he was on an
important conference call at the time, but really, it’s not my fault Victor doesn’t know how to use a mute button properly.
Victor finally looked up, and then he told me to put my hand down, because he was not going to high-five me for digging up dead bodies, and that was when I started to think that Victor was a very strange man, because why in the hell would I dig up dead bodies? I explained that what I meant was that I’d finally stumbled on the lost cemetery I’d been searching for since we’d first moved in, and that the graves were so old that the bodies would no longer be a threat during the zombie apocalypse. He didn’t seem as relieved as I was, so I decided to be relieved for both of us.
Our extremely quiet neighbors.
Then I told him that I wanted to buy the land the cemetery was on so that we could purposely not build over it, and that way if we were accidentally living in a house built over graves, this would sort of make it all cosmically even. Victor was unconvinced, but I put an offer in on the land, which was promptly declined, because it was apparently owned by the family of the people buried there, and they weren’t interested in selling their dead relatives. Which was awesome, because I didn’t have to spend money on land that I wouldn’t build anything on anyway, plus I got karmic credit for trying. Victor said that’s not how karma works, but then a few seconds later he mentioned that he’d found something that morning that he assumed was mine and pulled out the missing cigar box that contained the ten-year-old joint. I screamed, “OH, HELL, YEAH. I have been looking everywhere for this!” and Victor glared at me and I said, “. . . to throw out, I mean. I’m getting rid of this right now.” He still glared at me rather harshly for having a ten-year-old joint in a cigar box, and so I said, “‘From you, Dad. I LEARN IT FROM WATCHING YOU,’” and he just looked at me quizzically, because he apparently didn’t watch a lot of TV in the eighties.
The whole week had been a relief, and I felt that things were finally starting to look up. I took the cigar box containing the ancient joint and walked outside with it thoughtfully. I considered throwing it away, but after a moment I changed my mind and lit it, leaving it to smolder in the same glass pot I’d used to burn the sage in. I hoped that this would be the final, perfect peace-pipe offering to the vulture-loving Native Americans who may or may not have been throwing scorpions at us.
As the final ember burned out, I thought about our new life here. We’d lost our beloved dog, but had rescued a mischievous kitten who seemed gifted at finding scorpions. We’d struggled to fend off hordes of insects, but we’d adopted a pack of foxen, and had spent many nights watching dozens of deer walk noiselessly past our porch. We’d left old friends behind and made new ones along the way. We’d found a quiet happiness as we watched Hailey dance through the meadow, a flaming sunset stretching forever around our new home. Without even knowing it we’d followed in the footsteps of Laura Ingalls and found a bit of the simple but hard-fought contentment she’d written of a hundred years ago. I took a deep breath and thought, “I’m home.”
Then Victor walked outside and said, “Why do I smell pot? Are you smoking a ten-year-old joint? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?” He may have ruined a bit of the romance of the moment, but I suppose he created one that was more fitting for us, and I laughed and assured him that the Indians were the only ones smoking out in the backyard. He didn’t understand, but I didn’t bother to explain, both because I felt it would be impossible to describe this Native American version of pouring out a forty-ounce for your fallen homies without making it sound ridiculous, and also because I suspected I might have gotten a small contact high. Either way, I smiled gently and patted the chair beside me as Victor paused and then settled down on the porch with me to watch the hummingbirds buzz around the wild morning glories as we listened to the wind and understood why no one would ever want to leave here . . . even if given the chance to go to Hawaii.
Home. The view makes up for the scorpions. Sort of.
1. Actual title from MSNBC: “Escaped Spider Monkey Roaming San Antonio: ‘W. C. Fields’ Escaped from Primate Reserve After Storms Damaged His Pen.”
And That’s Why You Should Learn to Pick Your Battles
This morning I had a fight with Victor about towels. I can’t tell you the details, because it wasn’t interesting enough to document at the time, but it was basically me telling Victor I needed to buy new bath towels, and Victor insisting that I NOT buy towels because I “just bought new towels.” Then I pointed out that the last towels I’d bought were hot-pink beach towels, and he was all, “EXACTLY,” and then I hit my head against the wall for an hour.
Then Laura came to pick me up so we could go to the discount outlet together, and as Victor gave me a kiss good-bye he lovingly whispered, “You are not allowed to bring any more goddamn towels in this house or I will strangle you.” And that was exactly what I was still echoing through my head an hour later, when Laura and I stopped our shopping carts and stared up in confused, silent awe at a display of enormous metal chickens made from rusted oil drums.
LAURA: I think you need one of those.
ME: You’re joking, but they’re kind of horrifically awesome.
LAURA: I’m not joking. We need to buy you one.
ME: The five-foot-tall one was three hundred dollars, marked down to a hundred. That’s like two hundred dollars’ worth of chicken for free.
LAURA: You’d be crazy not to buy that. I mean, look at it. IT’S FULL OF WHIMSY.
ME: Victor’d be pissed.
LAURA: Yup.
ME: But on the plus side? It’s not towels.
LAURA: Yup.
ME: We will name him Henry. Or Charlie. Or O’Shaughnessy.
Insert inappropriate cock joke here.
LAURA: Or Beyoncé.
ME: Or Beyoncé. Yes. And when our friends are sad we can leave him at their front door to cheer them up.
LAURA: Exactly. It’ll be like, “You thought yesterday was bad? Well, now you have an enormous metal chicken to deal with. Perspective. Now you have it.”
Then we flagged down a salesman, and we were all, “What can you tell us about these chickens?” as if we were in an art gallery, and not in a store that specializes in last year’s bath mats. He didn’t know anything about them, but he said that they’d sold only one and it was to a really drunk lady, and then Laura and I were all, “SOLD. All this chicken belongs to us now.”
So he loaded it onto a trolley, but Beyoncé was surprisingly unstable, and the giant five-foot metal chicken crashed over onto the floor. And Laura and I were all, “CHICKEN DOWN! CLEANUP IN AISLE THREE,” but he didn’t laugh. Then the manager came to see what was causing all the commotion, and that’s when he found the very conservative salesman unhappily struggling to right an enthusiastically pointy chicken that was almost as tall as he was. The salesman was having a hard time, and he told everyone to stand back “because this chicken will cut you,” and at first I thought he meant it as a threat, like “That chicken has a shiv,” but turns out he just meant that all the chickens’ ends were sharp and rusty. It was awesome, and Laura and I agreed that even if we got tetanus, this chicken had already paid for itself even before we got it in her truck.
Then we got to my house and quietly snuck the chicken up to my front door, rang the doorbell, and hid around the corner.
“Knock-knock, motherfucker.”
Victor opened the door and looked at the chicken in stunned silence for about three seconds. Then he sighed, closed the door, and walked away.
LAURA: What the fuck? That’s it? That’s the only reaction we get?
ME: That’s it. He’s a hard man to rattle.
Victor was surprisingly pissed that I’d “wasted money” on an enormous chicken, because apparently he couldn’t appreciate the hysterical value of a five-foot chicken ringing the doorbell. Then I said, “Well, at least it’s not towels,” and apparently that was the wrong thing to say, because that was when Victor screamed and stormed off, but I knew he was locked in his office, because I could
hear him punching things in there. Then I yelled through his door, “It’s an anniversary gift for you, asshole. Two whole weeks early. FIFTEEN YEARS IS BIG METAL CHICKENS.”
Then he yelled that he wanted it gone, but I couldn’t move it myself, so instead I said okay and went to watch TV. Then when the UPS guy came I hid, but he was all, “Dude. Nice chicken,” and Victor yelled, “IT IS NOT A NICE CHICKEN.” Which was probably very confusing to the UPS guy, who was just trying to be polite, Victor. Victor seemed more disgruntled than usual, so I finally dragged the chicken into the backyard and wedged it into a clump of trees so that it could scare the snakes away. Then I came in and Victor angrily pulled me into his office so that I could see that I’d stationed Beyoncé directly in front of his only window. And I was all, “Exactly. YOU’RE WELCOME.” I told him that he could move Beyoncé if he wanted to, but he totally hasn’t. Probably because of all of the giant rocks I piled on Beyoncé’s feet to dissuade burglars. Or possibly because Beyoncé is growing on him. Still, I can’t help thinking that we wouldn’t even be having this argument if Beyoncé was towels. Honestly, this whole chicken is really a lesson in picking your battles more carefully. Plus, he’s awesome and I can’t stop giggling every time I look at him. Beyoncé, that is.