Today I:

• baked 10 pizza crusts.
• made 4 phone calls and answered one.
• wrote 2 e-mails.
• did laundry.
• drank a lot of tea.
• drew check marks on each line of my To Do list.
• read a book about cakes.
• added some recipes to my recipe books (to the one that was mine and to the one I stole from you).
• organized my files.
• found the receipt for the first present I sent you (german chocolate popcorn) and the ticket stub of the first movie we went to together (Wall-E).
• remembered we both liked that movie because it was sorta cute and there were robots.
• realized we’re almost out of pot stickers.
• painted my nails with a color named “Commander in Chic".
• thought of painting my desk.
• talked to my mom.
• ate when the cat ate (coincidentally).
• listened to music.
• started to plan my Halloween costume.
• went to get the mail.
• wondered which movie shall we watch tonight.
• was happy that you don’t get tired of subtitles.
• felt brave.
• didn’t let myself get in my way.

Now, I’ve met hunters before.
Hunters who shot deer and geese and ate their meat.
I’ve partaken of said meat and can attest it was the best jerky I have ever had.

In other words, I don’t belong to PETA.

That said, the huntress I met last night hunts in a whole other realm.
A realm where you don’t eat the meat, but leave it for the lions.

She skins the animals she hunts in Africa or Asia, then brings them back to the States to her favorite taxidermist.
She has a trophy room.
(I wasn’t in her house, so I didn’t see the room.)
Nevertheless she was kind enough to describe the room where she has, among many others, the 5th biggest hippo, a leopard and an 11.5 feet crocodile.
She laughed as she told me what a small brain crocs have. About the size of my fist.
In Tanzania, she shot her croc through the brain.
The croc, there were so many crocs in that river, but she HAD to have that one in particular because it wasn’t brown or green but grey, and it matched her trophy room better.

I learned a lot last night.
I learned the best way to pull a dead hippo from a river.
And where to shoot about a dozen wild animals to ensure the kill.
And thankfully, that rhinos are protected, so you can’t kill them.
What you can do is shoot them with a tranquilizer and make a cast of their horn while their anesthetized. Then a female German vet with very hairy legs will give it a shot of something and the rhino will walk away like nothing happened.

The whole time, I thought of my sister, who wanted to be a vet when she grew up, and of my dear T, who can’t stand the thought of an animal being hurt in anyway.
Of my ex-husband who would get upset when I would kill spiders “Those are good spiders!” he’d say.
I though of my niece who will put any insect she finds inside her home on a paper and take it outside.
Of the entomologist I met the other day, whose eyes brightened as he told me about ants and bees.

I kept staring at the huntress, whose eyes were also bright as she spoke about rifles, taxidermy and the thrill of the hunt.
For some reason, my thoughts went to Dexter, the endearing serial killer.

I let my mind reason a lie for me: we’re all the same.
My sister’s and T’s voices jumped up immediately to debate that, but I kept them quiet, safely tucked inside my head, and got a piece of cheesecake instead.

When I arrived at home, everything seemed safer than when I left.
The cat seemed more alive.
The crickets fiddled and the coyotes howled outside. And I appreciated them.

When, in the middle of the night Squeak pounced on my chest knocking the wind out of me, I petted her tiny, warm head and let her snuggle next to me.

Photo Credit: Real Mom Kitchen

You give me three choices and ask which I love the most.
August’s End, Blackberries or Words.
Why mess with life’s perfection by choosing one over another? I say.

But what I mean to say is that I’m perfectly happy on this first day of September, conversing with you over a blackberry breakfast.

Blackberry Eating

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry-eating in late September.

-Galway Kinnell

And for those of you who haven’t the faintest idea who the person above is…

there you go.

On other news, a mosquito bit me last night.
8 times.
I tried my best to find him, but I couldn’t.
I don’t know how it could hide considering that by the time it was done with me, he probably weighed around 2 pounds.

I was so upset and angry that I insulted it, locked it in my room, and went to sleep on the couch.
Nature has never been my friend.

Here’s a song I’d like to dedicate to the mosquito.
And here’s the censored version, for those of you with sensitive ears.
I sang it last night though I substituted the lyrics with “I see you flying around town with the blood I love", etc.
You get the gist.

At 8:16 A.M. my neighbor knocked on the door to tell me something about her dog and my yard and that she was sorry.

But before she said all of that, she stared at the glass I was holding, full of my orange vanilla tea, looked at her watch and then back to the glass.

Her rant about the dog began, followed by something about her mother also needing an eye opener, and the offering that if I ever needed to talk she would be glad to help.

I closed the door very confused.
Until it dawned on me that now she thinks I’m an alcoholic.

I guess I could resolve the issue this afternoon, inviting her to a cup glass of tea but then again, why not give the neighbors something to talk about?

Plus, it certainly explains my constantly wearing sunglasses…

Some days are so bad the only thing that can make them better is to apply sunscreen on yourself as if it were icing on a cake, draw your swimsuit on and swim until the sky goes dark.

Buying dresses online also helps.

And a hat, for good measure.

I bought the new pretties at ModCloth.

And now I’m going to get in the pool and swim until my muscles seize or I’m out of breath.
Hopefully chlorine can wash the ugliness of this day away.

For what it’s worth, I know a guy who could cheer me up by leaving work early-ish and bringing me an orange popsicle.

He always makes me feel like a kid in a candy store.
Heck, he always makes me feel like he’s the motherfucking candy and I’m the luckiest girl in the world.

He’s considering a position overseas.
Not really considering, more like entertaining the idea.

He asks: “Would you be ok living in another country?”
I stare at him with a half-cocked smile.

And then it dawns on him and he says: “Oh".
And my smile completes itself.

Paris. April. Twilight. A few flat clouds folded themselves like crepes over fillings of apricot sky.

- Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

There’s a Jitterbug Perfume Parlour in Hollywood, CA.

They are the proud creators of an Oscar Wilde Perfume Collection, a Vampire Perfume Collection and an Absinthe Perfume Collection (made with real wormwood).
They sell coffin shaped perfume flasks and perfume parlour teas amongst other very interesting items.
Their website is Opus Oils.

Despite being in Hollywood, the store manages to evoke smells, colors and shapes that belong in Parisian alleys or in Bernese basements.

It’s quite charming, if you are into that sort of thing.