Well, I have seen in the past few days that I have amazing friends and family and should actually go to them with problems instead of letting “easy to talk about” issues fester into nightmares, insomnia, and anxiety. Duh Jess. I’ve found when you shut everyone out and seclude yourself from real reality, you create your own little reality and no one wants to wonder far down the bunny hole. Then things would just be weird. It’s a gorgeous day today. I’ve been looking outside at the dogs and cleaning the house and am considering fetching some friends to go play catch at the park or something. I try to play catch with Caleb but he’s not very good at catching balls yet so with him it’s more like fetch. Caleb is better at fetch than Jake and Bella because he doesn’t drool all over the ball. Makayla used to be a pretty good little catcher and I’d play with her in the dugouts during softball games but she got hit in the face with a ball one time and still refuses to play. Matt and I went to go grab lunch earlier. He picked some random Chinese place which I believed I would be disappointed with considering there were only eight or ten items to choose from, none of those items being gravy or cheese. As I was making my tea, I heard Matt chuckle.
“What?” I asked him.
“Sometimes I just want to record you as you do stuff. You’re so cute.”
“You’re face is so cute,” I said and placed the spoon I was stirring my tea with into his cup for him to use. We watched as the tiny spoon disappeared to the bottom of his large tea glass.
“I did not really think that through all the way, I think,” I told him.
“I see that,” he said as he fished the spoon out with a straw. We sat down and waited for our food. We discussed Oprah and Dr. Phil because those people were on the TV. I did not share with him that my biggest desire ever is to have my own talk show and get paid millions of dollars a year to have a blast on TV. I would not have one of those tacky shows. No baby’s daddies or cheating people or horrifying acts of repulsion on my show. We would discuss for real stuff that most people go through. There would be more fun stuff than anything and my audience would be more than just bored, grouchy, stay at home mudders. There would also be puppies and horses and baby pigs and all of the animals I like to cuddle with on set. No birds. No exploitation of people’s pain to gain profit. I’d probably have to exploit something though because naturally I do want a huge profit. I believe I might not have a problem with self exploitation. Is exploiting the joy and happiness of others exploitation? People do love misery so my show might fail…unless I change the way daytime talk shows are viewed FOREVER! But then who would I be entitled to share my massive wealth with? All of my family and friends obviously but what about people I just kind of know? I would buy my grandpa a brand new tractor and give my grandma a mansion I think. I believe I would find a way to put millions in their bank account and then claim I had no idea how it got there when they protested. I would pay for the college education of my little cousins and give my aunt and uncle millions. A million dollars says they would use millions to travel the world doing charity or something. And I would give my parents millions and mom would be covered in jewels because she loves that kind of stuff. But if I’m busy doing talk shows, who would run all the businesses and charities I open?
“Babe,” Matt said.
“Huh?” I asked.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing.”
I considered asking him if he would ever be my employee if I became massively wealthy but figured he’d just work for free. We ate and it was super and I saw a lady getting into her car that reminded me of that rock guy on some action movie. The Fantastic Four I think. I marveled at her and wondered how she got so pebbly looking. I thought if I painted her gray she would look like a majestic statue but then scolded myself for being mentally rude. I wondered what Matt would do if I looked and moved around like that.
“What would you do if I became a stone. No, half a stone. What would you do if half of my body was stone?”
“That is impossible,” he said.
“But let’s just say I turned half into stone. My left side was all stone. Would you still love me?”
“First of all, that is ridiculous. You won’t turn into stone. It’s impossible and-“
“Let’s just say it’s possible. Imagine I was half person, half eloquent statue.”
He grinned and said, “OK hon, yes, I’d still love you.”
“Really?” I asked, “because that might be a deal breaker for me if you turned into a rock. Gross.”
He started talking about his job and a few minutes later I blurted out, “Hahahhaha! Then you’d be super HARD all the time!”
He ignored me, or didn’t hear me. I figured he didn’t get I was still talking about the rock thing. He left for work and told me he’d be home in an hour, which is when I sat down to write this here thing. “Taking a break from cleaning,” I told myself.
Matt can be a very strange guy. He gets annoyed by the very realistic “what would you do” questions I ask him.
“Those are not realistic!” he’ll say, “asking me whether or not I would eat you if we died in a plane crash over Antarctica is not realistic. We will NEVER be in that situation. I would NOT eat you.”
“If you knew for a fact that rescuers couldn’t get to you for like, two months and my body was the only one that didn’t explode in the crash and the only way to survive was to eat me, how can you say you wouldn’t? You don’t know. Which part would you eat first?”
“This is ridiculous,” he says and refuses to answer any further questions “about this stuff.”
Or one of my favorites, “Jessica, I will never be in the position to have to choose between you personally and the entire world.”
“OK, just America then. You love America. If you had to push one button and one exploded me and one exploded America, which would you choose?”
“I’m not answering that.”
“I’d choose America,” I told him, “I don’t know why these questions are so hard for you.”
Or, “Jessica. If someone kidnapped you and held you captive and demanded money, I wouldn’t have to find millions of dollars. I’d just go find you and rip their faces of by pieces and rescue you because I’m super jacked.”
“No, Matt, that’s cheating. You don’t know WHERE I am. The only way to get me back is to obey their orders and you can’t call the police and you have to come up with like, three million dollars. You are really unprepared.”
“That will never happen!”
“You’re probably right. You’re not near loaded enough for anyone to find monetary value in kidnapping me.”
I told him the other day, “I have a plan and it’s a good one.”
“What?” he asked, all hesitant and not even trying to be polite and hide his apprehension.
“We’re going to need therapy afterwards but I think it’ll work out.”
“I don’t want anything to do with whatever it is you’re talking about,” he said.
“Matt, hush. Listen. What we need to do is marry the oldest, richest person we can and make them fall madly in love with us. That part will be more challenging for you because I’m hotter-“
“You’re not hotter than me.”
“Whatever. So we marry them super, super old. Like, they’re about to die old. And we befriend their families so we don’t have dumb court crap after our spouse dies. And after they’re dead, we reunite and live like kings forever. TaDa!!!!!”
“If we marry them we’ll have to sleep with them.”
“That’s disgusting. Old people don’t do that. We just have to keep them company and read to them and stuff.”
“That won’t be how it works.”
“You ruin everything.”
He ruins some of my most romantic attempts too. Months ago I was asking friends on how to be “more romantic.” Matt’s very good at it. My ability to express lovey dovey stuff is on the same level as a potato.
“Just tell him how you really feel about him,” my roommate said, “tell him EXACTLY how you feel about HIM.”
So the next time we hung out I braced myself for the humiliation that comes with expressing private emotions and said, “Matt, if we were on a mountain…not a mountain a hill. If we were on a hill and lightning was about to hit you I would push you out of the way and get in front of it with my own self.”
“You wouldn’t have time to do all that,” he said, “that’s impossible.”
“I would actually prefer to push you out of the way on then jump out of the way myself. I mean, if I had already pushed you out of the way, why should I just stand there like a moron and get struck?”
“You wouldn’t even see it coming,” he said.
“Well, if you were dying then I’d give you all of my organs I could. Even half my liver. And if you were in a horrifying car crash and you broke every bone in your body and were paralyzed from the neck down I would still love you and not leave. And if your whole face burned off in a horrible fire, I would still love you too.”
“I think I’d kill myself if I was paralyzed from the neck down. And I don’t think we could have sex anymore.”
“You can do anything you set your mind to,” I told him.
Anyway, so Matt just got home and started messing with his dying indoor plants and I read this to him.
“Awww, I didn’t know you were trying to be romantic when you said that stuff. How sweet.”
“I should have just said that I love you with my whole self and want to be with you forever. I believe my romantic attempts are not romantic at all but clumsy and weird.”
He found this hilarious. I looked outside while he muttered about his plants. I liked how green the trees were getting. I have grilled my biology professor about the “awareness of plants” and he does not believe they are aware of anything but react to certain stimulants. When I was little I thought the trees I climbed in were friends and I talked to them all the time.
“Jess, who were you talking to our there?” Mom would ask.
“My trees. I was climbing and was about to fall and he moved his branch to save me.”
“That did NOT happen,” she said, “stop talking to plants. That’s very strange.”
At seven I believed she was strange. I smiled over that memory as I looked outside and wondered what it would be like if a tree was aware of stuff but was stuck in one place all the time and couldn’t go anywhere. It could uproot itself and lurk around but I believe that might kill it. I believe if I was a tree and had a cognitive brain and knew I was stuck I would probably commit suicide by un-rooting myself.
“What would you do if my feet grew into roots and I became stuck in the same place forever?” I asked Matt, “would you still love me if I was like, a human tree thing?”
“Yes,” he said, focused on his plants.
I was irritated that he didn’t want to discuss this further. Usually he would say something like, “you are not going to become rooted to the ground or become a human tree,” and we’d have a whole discussion over it.
“Why aren’t you annoyed?” I asked him.
“I know how to pick my battles baby. I’m so used to you and your random questions.”
How annoying. I get a lot of pleasure when he gets so frustrated and worked up over the insane things I come up with. I nearly said if he became a human tree I’d chop him down but didn’t want to hurt his feelings just because he didn’t want to play my silly game.
“Well I just love you I guess,” I told him. He quit messing with his dead plants and gave me a giant kiss.
“I love you too.”
I considered blowing air into his mouth to get back at him but decided to annoy him another time. I smooched him for a little bit but didn’t want to get him all hot and bothered so I wiggled away. He went to class and I vowed to actually clean the house and then study. Which I am going to go do…right now. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment