How To Fight Off A Mountain Lion

I haven’t been sleeping well.  I have some sort of upper respiratory whatever-thingy and can only sleep as long as I can breathe, which turns out to be the four hour window during which nyquil is effective.  So, for the past four or five weeks, I’ve been drag-ass tired all the time. As luck would have it, my son is a teenager so he doesn’t require my attention to stave off boredom and my unemployed-ness means that I can nap during the day while my husband is off doing good things and bringing home the bacon.
Yesterday, I got narcoleptic while trying to read my Twitter timeline, so I decided to make it an official nap.  As I was drifting off, I started thinking about random things we do in Arizona when we aren’t driving into haboobs. This thought train led to the people who get attacked by mountain lions while out hiking, which happens a lot in southern AZ.  I don’t know if it’s because the people in Tucson smell more tasty than the ones in Phoenix, or not, but I immediately thought about what I’d do if I were attacked by a mountain lion.

• First, I’d regret taking that nature hike.  Sure, it seemed like a good idea in the planning stage, but in retrospect, it was a terrible decision.
• Second, assess the damage and quickly respond to the threat.  Mountain lions seem to attack from behind, bite you on the head and drag you into the bushes to finish chewing on you, so I’ll need to get its teeth out of my skull.
• Next, make the mountain lion let go of my head.  By now, I’ve most likely tried crying and wetting myself and neither action has disgusted the lion enough to spit me out.  I’ll try flailing around wildly, until accidentally hitting him in the precise spot that ensures my release.  Shark Week has taught me that sharks don’t like to be poked in the eyeballs and mountain lions are like furry land sharks, so I’ll try to poke out his eyes.  If I can’t reach the eyes, due to of my lack of dedication in yoga class, my secondary target is the nose.  Neither dogs nor I like to be punched in the nose, so I’m guessing the mountain lion isn’t a big fan of it either.
• Oh, no!  What if the lion tries to claw at me while I’m flail-punching him in the face?  You can’t worry about that now, bitch!  You have a freaking mountain lion dragging you into the bushes where he’ll continue to chew on your head, thus ruining both your day and your chances to audition for America’s Got Talent.  Concentrate on escape!
• Okay, focus on eye gouging and nose thumping.  If I’m lucky, a little throat punching too.
• Partial success; your Three Stooges style of fighting has temporarily stunned the cat into dropping you.  Do. Not. Run.  That will only trigger his predatory instinct which will make him stop laughing at your pathetic escape attempts and cause him to, once again, bite your head and chew on you as he drags you into the under brush.
• Scare him off.  This is no time to be realistic; you have to pretend to be the biggest badass this cat has ever run into.  Sure, he can tell by your wardrobe  and poor decision making that you don’t have your act together, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t crazy-good at street fighting giant cats.  Raise your arms to make yourself look bigger and come after him yelling like a trailer park bride.  Make a scary face, too; he’s probably already caused some brain damage when his teeth punctured your skull, so capitalize on that.
• Get help.  This is when you’ll regret taking that nature hike again; you’re surrounded by wilderness and you know that the mountain lion is going to realize you pose absolutely no threat to him and he’ll soon return to pounce on you from some other goddamn bushes.  Stay on the trail and call out for help.  With any luck, a human will find you before another mountain lion will.

Okay, now I’ve systematically detailed my hypothetical attack by mountain lion and resultant escape.  I feel somewhat more prepared to fend off an attack in the instance that I break with routine and suddenly decide to try outdoor sports in our unforgiving desert.
Now I can’t go to sleep because I’ve just been attacked by a mountain lion in my bed. (Goddamn it!)

Fermented

My allergist told me this morning, in an off-hand kind of way, that I should not ingest anything that has been fermented.  Then she paused, slowly pivoted, and turned to look me fully in the face.  She emphatically repeated, “Nothing that has been FERMENTED.” 

The room grew dim as a swirling inter-dimensional vortex cracked open behind her; sucking all the fun and optimism out of the world while simultaneously providing the perfect backdrop to her suddenly robed and cowled figure. 

(Que evil laugh. Now make it echo!)

As her shadow grew both in size and volume, it merged with the vortex - nearly swallowing the room into darkness and despair.  She began to tower over me as she raised her clawed hand, index finger pointed menacingly.  Her voice, raspy as a crypt door, grew in volume as she began listing off bounties that would be henceforth denied to me, “Beer. Wine. Hard Cider. Yeast Breads. Aged Cheeses. Mushrooms. Soy Sauce. Vinegar (I’m okay with that). Yogurt. Miso. Your Will To Live. Hope for a Bright Future.”

I heard a baby crying in the distance somewhere, but I was powerless to help it - even if I was the type to save babies, something more dire was happening here.  I couldn’t tear my eyes off the evil specter that had once been a friendly, non-threatening woman.  Tears and bargaining didn’t sway the demon as she slowly continued to name off basic essentials of life that I could no longer partake of; her eyes growing larger and more hateful, until they became the only things I could see.  Then, finally, darkness.

I have no memory of my escape; the details are a blur.  As I slowly came back to a fully conscious state of mind, I found that I was parked at a convenience store, sipping a cold diet pepsi and holding a receipt for the enormous amount of money I had paid her to shatter my dreams.  No one would make eye contact with me; all being too cowardly to look into the eyes of one who has faced a great evil and was still feeling the effects of the resulting temper tantrum.

If I were one of those in-your-face optimistic types, I’d say something inane that makes me sound like a giant asshole to normal people.  I’m not one of those overly-optimistic-because-I’m-hiding-a-deep-rage people.  Right now, I’m a realist, and as a realist, I will tell you that the hero of this story was Fun, and that hero was brutally murdered.  There is no happy ending to this story. 
No. Happy. Ending. (Echo)

This is an old one, because I'm lazy...

(I may have edited a few words. I don't know because I don't really read this garbage.)

I have witnessed one of the signs of the apocalypse… my mom blogs.

I remember a time when Mom viewed electric can openers with suspicion and a cell phone with open hostility. She even told me once that she refused to drive an automatic transmission car for years because she didn't understand how it worked - therefore found it untrustworthy. So I ask you, world, how in the hell did Mom figure out how to blog? I assumed that mom thought a blog was something that you wiped away with a tissue, but no, apparently my mother is well on her way to becoming a veteran blogger.

So, how did I make this miraculous discovery? Did I read one of her titillating stories on the web? Was she featured on the news as an undercover crime-fighter who broke up a local drug-running cartel using only her wits and her blogging ability? Nope. Mom told me about it in a round-about manner; sort of a duh-what-were-you-thinking, you-should've-already-known kind of way. You see, I was going to make a surprise visit to mom for mother's day to drop off a gift and parade around my kid like a trick pony for my parents to admire, like the wonderful, and smugly perfect child that I am.

While traversing the dangerously slick floors of IKEA, and discussing with my mostly-naked male love-slave, Chance, what time we should go to Mom's house, Mom calls to wish me a Happy Mother's Day. (Okay, so Chance was wearing clothes and the legal term for male love-slave is husband, but you get the picture.) So I casually ask what she's up to on such a fine day, not because I think she's actually doing anything, but so that I can find out where she is and when it would be just the right time to swoop in and present the very finely wrapped gift I've prepared for her. She pauses, significantly, and says, "Well, I'm in Show Low," in the tone of voice reserved for speaking with either the developmentally challenged or a man while he's looking at big boobies. Her tone clearly conveyed that I should already know this and she couldn't believe that her daughter could be such an imbecile.

I'm stumped, not so much because Mom is in Show Low, but because of the you-should've-figured tone she used. Since mom is hitting me over the head with verbal cues, I rack my brain - did she tell me this a few weeks ago? Did I “accidentally” delete a email from her, mistaking it for a chain email? Then, before I can figure out how to ask her about it in a way that still makes me sound like a good child who keeps in touch with her parents while admitting that I somehow didn't know she was going away (through no fault of mine), she matter-of-factly said, "Yeah, I wrote it up in my blog days ago."

You know the sensation you get when all oxygen is sucked from a room, rendering it impossible to breathe or even hear any noise? The absolute void of atmosphere that must exist only in space? That is what actually happened in the patio section of IKEA. Literally. Yep, a siren went off, red flashing lights dropped from little trapdoors in the ceiling and a giant spinning vortex appeared in the store flinging European merchandise and thrifty shoppers far and wide. You see, that's what happens when you negligently break the laws of both physics and reality. Her unfounded claim and completely illogical actions created a worm-hole of chaos.

Now, in her defense, I don't think Mom realized that her wildly irregular actions would have such far-reaching and disastrous effects, but they did. I think a few people may have even died, or at least were transported to an alternate dimension. I don't remember many details about that dark time and how we escaped. The next thing I remember is sitting in the snack bar, desperately clutching a life-giving cup of Diet Pepsi and questioning reality. Thank god Chance-the-love-slave was there to pull me through the disaster and find me nourishment. I just hope all other victims of the disaster are able to eventually find their way home. Mom has a lot to answer for.