I'm Developing a Twitch

I dare to blog tonight because I have discovered the anti-cat. It's a color-free, calorie-free, caffeine-free, low-sodium, natural white grape-flavored carbonated beverage containing sucralose that hisses so loudly when you open it that B.C. goes fleeing in terror into the next room, which is currently an obstacle course. Maybe he knows something I don't. I read today on the Internet that my cosmetics are probably toxic, but then, everything is. I had microwaved popcorn for lunch, and that's toxic, too. So is the air I breathe and the sunlight my skin absorbs and the blue liquid fabric softener I can't live without. I wish I could just install an underground tank for it in the yard and spray the house with it twice daily. Anyway, all I have to do to deter B.C. ― who likes to be on my lap when I'm at my laptop, which makes him a frizzy, 14 lb. hindrance ― from interrupting my blogging is wave a fizzing tumbler full of the stuff at him and he takes off again.

Last night when I went to bed I could smell smoke coming from Dean's apartment, but it wasn't the usual horrid brand of cheap cigarettes we suspect he gets from someone on a reservation by midnight delivery. It smelled like something burnt, like charred food. As I was contemplating the possibilities, I heard the boy upstairs walk across his living room, out his door, through the vestibule, out the front door, down the steps, around the house, down Dean's staircase, and there he knocked on the door. Through my bathroom wall I could hear Dean growl, "Burned it in the microwave." He sounded agitated. I went to bed knowing the house wasn't on fire.

Something else actually was on fire, though. While we were playing a birthday game of cards at the Woody family's kitchen table Sunday night, Kindra leaned forward to discard a card and her long hair fell into the apple cinnamon-scented candle she had parked in front of her. As she leaned back and the air hit the sparks in her hair, a tiny blue fireball exploded forward from her shoulder and Kelly and I both lunged at her from either side. It evidently extinguished itself, because the only sign that something odd had occurred was a pile of shriveled ashes on her chest and the unmistakable stench of burnt hair.

I am studying. I am cleaning. I am painting. I am dieting, but not really. I am dogwalking. I am scheming. I am avoiding people. I am invincible.

I am resisting the siren call of the tanning bed just for you, Morgan.