Ill-timed Aphasia

warning: BIG time bad words in this post.

Aphasia noun
apha·​sia | \ ə-ˈfā-zh(ē-)ə 

    medical : loss or impairment of the power to use or comprehend words

    etymology:  mid 19th century: from Greek, from aphatos ‘speechless’

***

Rissa and I stand in the checkout line at a Craft/Antiques Barn. Neither crafts nor antiques will be purchased. Today it's all about fudge. For David. On account of the fact that it's his first day teaching at a new school.

"I'm going to come back in November," I say.

"Oh?" asks Rissa.

"Yeah, they'll have lots of Christmas merch out then."

Around the expansive perimeter of the main floor there are high shelves showcasing a crap-tonne of Christmas inventory. All of it just waiting for Halloween to pass so that the entire barn can get its Christmas glow-up.

"Although," I say, wrinkling my nose at a 2-foot Santa in Buffalo plaid. "A lot of their stuff is cunt... cunt... cunt... cunnnnnnnt... cunnnnnnnnnnnt..."

Rissa's eyes widen at the first 'cunt.' By the fifth, she's holding her sides and almost falling over.

I'm not sure whether this is a migraine-induced bout of aphasia or if I can now add Tourette's Syndrome to my list of disabilities.

I take a breath. And another. No need to panic. 

"I... was... trying..." I close my mouth and take a breath in through my nose and release it slowly from my mouth. "To say... COUNTRY... Christmas," I explain.

"Ahhhhhh... that checks out."

I glance around. There are a few senior women in line, but none super close to us.

"Did I get louder with each one?"

"You didn't NOT get louder..."

"Can I help you?" asks the cashier.

"I'd like some fu... fu... fu..."

"We'd like some fudge, please," says Rissa.

I'm sweating WHERE now?

I'm at the kitchen table playing word games on my laptop. I have my Google timer set for 6.5 minutes of cool down. Cool down time is vital to surviving a HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workout. Otherwise, you're still sweating IN the shower. And you continue to sweat AFTER you've finished the shower. Freshly cleansed skin sweat somehow feels much, much worse. 

So here I am, typety-typing as I play Words With Friends, and I notice that my forearms - the UNDERSIDE of my forearms - are SLIDING on the table. Actually sliding. From all the sweat. 🤢

This here? Is why I choose not to exercise with other people. Inevitably, I look like ex-fighter pilot Ted Stryker when my heart rate climbs.  And no one wants to be in proximity to that gal.

Robert Hayes as Ted Stryker in Airplane!

Now that I've cooled down for 6.5 minutes, my forearms are no longer slidey... they're sticky.  

From all the dried sweat. 

Upon this realization, I spend way too much time pushing my forearms against the table and then then listening in horrified fascination as they SQUELLLLLLLLLCH when I unpeel them from the table.

I could use my forearms to lift cat hair from the living room ottoman!!! Which now, of course I have to try...

Surreptitious OCD

David, Rissa and I are in a charming French restaurant in Baldwin Village. 

Red walls. Black baseboards. Brilliant yellow door. Art everywhere.

We choose to sit inside. You know, because of the art. Instead of facing the wall displaying the larger artwork, my vista will be the opposite wall; the unexpected opportunity to gaze upon a gallery of many smaller pieces makes me very happy.

Every piece on the wall is askew. 

I'm doing my best to give my entire focus to the conversation; however, my peripherals are on high alert.

Do the restaurateurs not see that the vintage Asian paintings nearest to the door are both OFF?!? Beside a larger piece - also at least an 1/8 of an inch NOT straight? Next to three paintings arranged over top of each other - all OFF. And the next four paintings directly across from me...

"Ma," says Rissa. "You okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," I say, forcing my eyes to my club soda and lime. 

But my peripherals...They know. 

Rissa's talking about work. David's talking about...

The upper right corner of an 8x10 painting is angled towards the ceiling...

"Ma??"

"Huh?"

"Are you having a stroke?"

"No," I say, wishing for a pocket level. I smile broadly at them, my regular response whenever they ask this frequent question. Both sides of my mouth lift reassuringly.

"The artwork... It's... ahhhhhhhh... it's a bit... off."

Rissa takes a look. David turns around.

"Ooooh, yeah," says Rissa. "Wow." She tilts her head this way and that, scanning the entire wall. "I think the larger painting might be straight. Wait. No. I think it's off too."

I swallow. My fingers clutch the edge of the table.

Rissa glances at me. "You want to fix them all, don't you?"

"DON'T YOU?!?"

"No."

David snorts. "Do not do it."

"I'm not going to," I huff.  "I will disregard it."

David and Rissa share a glance before rolling their eyes.

"I will." And I do.

Until my delicious chicken salad is finished and I and no longer have food to distract me. Whereupon, I ever-so-casually rise from the table and saunter over to the first pieces of art on the wall.

"Heather!" David whisper-chastises.

"I'm just admiring them from closer," I say, leaning in to look at the signature, my hand resting delicately against the frame. My back blocks the waiter's view. I adjust the frame.

Rissa smirks. "Uh-huh..."

I move to the next painting, and the next.

"She's actually being quite subtle," begins Rissa.

SLAM! My thigh bangs into the corner of the table. The very pointy corner. Bruising. There will be much bruising. My head spins around to see if the waiter is paying attention. He isn't. I quickly straighten the two painting behind the table. Can I get to the next ones?

"That artist is very famous," calls the cook from behind the kitchen counter. 

Busted. 

"Oh?" I ask. I haven't even been looking at the actual artwork. All I can focus on is the frames. The cook tells me the artist's name, which I immediately forget. 

I calmly walk back to our table.

"Until you whacked the table, you were very inconspicuous," says Rissa.

"Right?!? I can be sneaky when I need to... Oh, for the love of..." In my haste to straighten the last two paintings, I overcorrected one of them.

"Serves you right," says David.

"If I were a super hero, I would be The Leveller."

"You mean instead of being able to fly or have super-human strength, you would straighten artwork?"

"And furniture. It would be multi-purpose. And I could do it just with my mind."

David Malki's WONDERMARK

I am patenting this RIGHT now...

WARNING: SO MUCH FEMALE STUFF

In the summer of 1997, David held my hand as I sat at the triage desk of the local hospital. He looked concerned. I looked like I was going to pass out. The nurse looked wiser than Nicodemus from the Secret of NIMH.

"Are you a new couple?" she asked, after hearing my symptoms.

"Relatively," I replied in a haze of fever and abdominal agony.

"Pee after sex."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I am 99.9% sure that you have a UTI."

"I have a, what now?"

"A urinary tract infection. Sometimes ejaculate can get into the urethra and you get a UTI. Pee after sex."

"Like right after?"

"Right after."

Now, the last thing this woman wanted to do after she'd had a wham-bam-thank-you-man session with her new live-in boyfriend was leave the bed to go pee. When my mind had been blown - along with other parts of my body - I wanted to snuggle. I didn't want to swing my legs over the edge of the bed and totter in the bathroom and then pee away misplaced ejaculate. 

Twenty-five years later? I still don't want to. Nothing wipes the blush of satisfaction away more than having to prophylactically (not be confused with practically) pee. 

But I do it, because my urethra is a prissy little... princess, and I've had enough UTIs over the years to know not to gamble with these particular odds. 

Still though. The post-coital-paranoia that now has me leaping out of bed to flush out my lady bits continues to put a damper on snuggle time.

That's why I will patent the VAGI-VAC. A mini vacuum that one can use while still in bed and just apply to the... area... to eliminate any evasive ejaculate from the UT area. Possibly a keyboard vacuum they're meant to suck up crumbs and dust - maybe they could have a stronger motor... Or... is there such a thing as a Mini Wet-Vac? And instead of sounding like a vacuum, it will sound like wind in the autumn trees, or maybe there can be some sort of musical accompaniment - perhaps Floyd's Comfortably Numb? Oooh, maybe I can just retrofit one of the vaginal sex pumps - there won't be a soundtrack, but then you wouldn't have to worry about cords or batteries!  Lower tech.

I am excited to share this idea with David.

"But then won't you have to leave the bed to clean the vacuum?" he asks. "And how would you even clean it?"

"Both good questions. One - yes, of course you would have to leave the bed to eventually clean the vacuum, but after snuggling. Long after snuggling. And two - the VAGI-VAC would have a special easy-to-clean suction repository that you could just clean it in the bathroom sink."

He looks skeptical and a little grossed out. Note to self: I definitely have to find a new word for "repository."

"Dude, you are not the only one who becomes nearly comatose after a good orgasm. I too, should be able to melt into the bed and be all blissed out. And you know there have been more than a few times when you've had to half walk/half carry me to the bathroom after sex thereby ruining your own bliss time."

He can't help but nod his head. 

I have several shopping tabs open now, I'm sure that I can MacGyver something by the end of the week.

It appears I've been catfished...

 "You've what?" asks Rissa, slightly laggy on her end of the video call. "Who have you been talking to? What did you do?"

"Nothing," I say. "I think it's just my age."

"It's what? What do you mean it's your age?"

"I think you just get to a certain age and..."

"You think there are people specifically targeting* 50-something women? What did they do? Did you cancel your credit cards?!?"

"Huh?" It takes me a second. "No! Oh, no, I haven't been catfished like that."

"In what way have you been catfished?"

"In the way that I am slowly becoming a catfish."

Now Rissa pauses. And blinks. 

"I am developing jowls." I indicate my jaw line. 

She blinks again. "How does this having anything..."

"I have the jowls and now there are more whiskers here." I point to the corners of my mouth. "And here." I point to my bottom lip line.

"I can see no whiskers, Ma."

"They are there. I can feel them." My tongue touches each side of my mouth, back and forth, feeling for the whiskers. I lick my bottom lip line. I can still feel them, even though I spent a good 15 minutes plucking those suckers earlier in the day.

"There are no visible whiskers, Ma."

"That's because they're mostly white and I pluck them. But they're there, and if I let them grow, between the whiskers and the slight jowls - total catfish."

"You are ridiculous."

"That's as may be, but I'm either going to evolve into a catfish or have a very stylized Fu Mancu moustache."

            *Side note - why does targeting only have one 't' before the 'ing,' but getting has two??

Pardon me while I SHE-HULK out

This week (and it's only Monday - it's only MONDAY?!?), I find myself wondering what caused She-Hulk's transformation from regular woman-about-town, to big green rage monster. 

'Cause I've had three instances today where I found myself fighting to maintain my equilibrium between rationality and absolutely losing my shit.

This morning, I'm moving from the bathroom to the master bedroom, the vacuum's power cord got trapped under the bathroom door, and I find myself lifting the vacuum into the air, prepping to throw it down the stairs. 

I don't. 

But for a good 10 seconds I am sure as shit contemplating it.

Later, I am typing and my fingers are nowhere close to the 'asdf' or 'jkl;' home keys. I have to try nine times to finish a single sentence. I am milliseconds from launching the keyboard through the back window.

And just now, as we begin prepping dinner? I find a rogue hair - my rogue hair - trapped between the fingers on my vegetable-holding-hand as I'm chopping cucumbers for our salad. I visualize myself heaving the chef's knife across the room.

David hears me growling.

"You okay?"

"How old was She-Hulk when she started transforming?"

"I'm not sure."

"By any chance was she in menopause?!?"

His eyes widen slightly.

"Uhhhhh..."

"Never mind," I say. The rage has ebbed. I reach into the refrigerator to take the cherry tomatoes out of the crisper drawer. They fall out of their container. I wonder how heavy the refrigerator is and what the repairs to the second floor will cost when I propel it through the ceiling. I count to 10. Twice. Then I rinse off the tomatoes in the sink.

"I think it might have been menopause," I say, drying off the tomatoes.

"Why do you think that?"

"Because I'm seriously considering heaving appliances because of dropped cherry fucking tomatoes and there was a fucking hair on my hand when I was cutting the fucking cucumber and I wanted to throw the fucking cucumber and the fucking knife..."

David bites his lip.

"What?!?"

"I probably shouldn't even go there. But right now it seems like you might be suffering from a hair trigger..."

"Now?" I ask. "You're choosing to make bad puns... NOW!?!"

"Right, right," he says, glancing around to make sure that the chef's knife is out of my range. 

"I've been so good," I say. "This kind of shit hasn't happened in years." 

When I was younger, maybe 14 years ago, and the rage monster came to visit, I took some herbal pills to keep me from committing felonies. But lately, even during night sweats and hot flashes, I have been way less ragey, and more just... frustrated and apt to burst into heart-wrenching sobs over the injustices of the hormonal impact on the female form. I haven't been this mood-swingy over next-to-nothing in more than a decade.

Inspiration strikes. "What if this is a side effect of COVID?" I ask. 

"Runh?"

"What if there are other middle-aged women who have..." (I make air quotes) "Recovered from COVID, but are now no longer rational beings? Could that be a thing?"

"Possibly?" David responds, obviously trying to keep me calm.

"How do I find all the menopausal women who have Long COVID? The ones who now, weeks or even  months later, are still getting headaches and chills and are as exhausted as fuck, but who are also suffering from bouts of violent mood swings?"

"Ummmm..."

"Why are you backing away from me?"

"I'm not." 

3:30 a.m. Pounce Parade

"Prrrrrrowl?"

"Prrrrrrrowwl??" 

"Prrrrrrrrrowwwl??"

My eyes open.

"Prrrrrrowl?"

Why am I even surprised? Lola had been staring at the bottom of the refrigerator when we went to bed.

"Prrrrrrrrrrrowl?"

That's the sound of a cat with its mouth full of mouse.

Bat. 

Bat-Bat. 

Bat-Bat-Bat-Bat. 

And that is the sound of a cat playing with a mouse. On our bedroom carpet. At 3:30 a.m. I look down beside the bed. She's still batting at      And it just ran under the closet curtain.

Crap. Live mouse. Time to distract a cat. I leave the bed.

"Good girl Lola. Good girl. You are a such a great predator. We are very proud of you, but now it is time to    "

Mouse runs out from under the curtain.

Bat-Bat-Bat-Bat.

Mouse runs under the blanket box. Lola seems stymied. 

I crawl back into bed. 

Please, stay under the blanket box little guy. Wait it out. Hide there and then you can... eventually escape to the basement. I am delusional. It will probably die of heart failure, under that blanket box then two days from now, I will move the blanket box and give it a proper burial.

Bat-Bat. 

Bat-Bat-Bat-Bat. 

Crap. I'm going to have to    

"Prrrrrrrrowl?" Pah.

And that is the sound of a cat spitting out a mouse. I peer over the side of the bed. Even in the middle-of-the-night light I can see Lola gesturing to me. "See? See what I did for you here? I got it! You no longer have to worry about that mouse. I have kept you all safe... from that mouse."

"Good cat Lola." I keep my voice modulated in a sing-song-proud-of-your-accomplishment tone. "I know. I know you are a cat and this in your DNA. I recognize that this is what you do, but you are a serial killer, dude." Easily a dozen mice have been killed in this very room. Because why would she kill them in the living room? Or the kitchen? She has to SHOW us that she's killed them. In the middle of the night. 

I look down at the poor wee little booger. Lola continues to gesture proudly. "Yeah, yeah... You're brilliant."

I grab a tissue. I make the same walk that I do every few weeks down the stairs, through the kitchen to the back door and I deposit the mouse onto the deck. I don't do mouse burials until morning. "Sorry, buddy. I'm sure you were a lovely rodent."

Lola has followed me downstairs. "Prrrrrrrrrowl?"

"If I started making you write their eulogies would it be any sort of a deterrent?"

"Prrrrrrowl."

"No, yeah... you're right. You're a cat."

David cracks an eye open when I crawl back into bed. "Huh? What?"

"Go back to sleep. Lola gave us another mouse."

"Another one?" 

"Yep." And now all I can see is Lola, piloting a fighter plane with dozen rodents stenciled on the side.

"Prrrrrrrrrowl?"

Oh for the love of