Birds are scary

I think I might be a little afraid of birds.

It's a new development, really, since I've never really thought about it before last night, when I was on a search for a little carribeener-type thing for Donnie and I really had no idea where to get it. So I went to this hobby store in our weird little Chapel Hill mall and the boy said they didn't have any but that I should go try a pet store; he uses one on the cage for his macaw, and he was pretty sure I could find it there. I was skeptical.

But it turns out that we have a pet store called Dubey's Pet World right in the mall, which perplexes me for a few reasons: old-school malls like this one don't actually have doors, just those grates like a roller shade, but of course they're only lowered at closing. Also, Dubey's has a couple of large tropical birds literally inches from the wide opening where a door should be protecting shoppers from sudden movements.

Last night, I was the kind of jerky shopper that shows up at 8:50 looking for a relatively obscure item. As I browsed the wall of bird items, I noticed a young East Indian couple looking intently at every animal in the place - first at the brightly colored parrot (I'm assuming, since I don't really know how to distinguish it from a macaw), then in the way-too-small glass room filled with tanks of reptiles and amphibians, then into the little glass cat room, where the woman let out a skinny white cat that rubbed all over her legs. Since the man seemed terribly interested in the big red bird, I thought he was the voice of the loud "goodbye" that I was hearing over and over. I thought he was trying to get the bird to repeat him, which seemed pretty irritating, not to mention embarrassing for him. But then I discovered it was, in fact, the bird, and eventually he stopped saying the word and began a slow crescendo of intense squawking, which his counterparts in the store - also just sitting on a branch out there in the open - quickly began mimicking.

Meanwhile, the nice helpful boy working there was digging through a fish bowl he had behind the counter that was filled with random things like opened cat toys and dirty leashes, most of which didn't look saleable to me, along with the occasional pen and paperclip. But at the bottom, he found 2 fasteners for me, so he started to ring me up and all of a sudden I realized I couldn't even hear what he was saying over the din of the squawking. It was ridiculously loud and of the pitch that breaks windows in movies. And I said something like, "Doesn't that make you insane?" He told me that they do this at closing every night. "How do they know what time it is?" I asked. He shrugged.

So I left, but there was a girl trying in vain to sweep off a rug that was underneath a pale yellow squawking bird, and she just stood in the way so I had to get way too close to it. I was pretty nervous, and I realized I was pretty nervous the whole time in the store.

I guess it means I'm scared. And it's not just of the big ones, either. We had this little parakeet named Jordie who would come out of his cage occasionally when some brave person would dare tempt the pecking, and I would generally want to run away from the room he was in. I nearly went crazy if he started to flap around and go up to the ceiling. Birds just seem so unpredictable, like are they going to come land on my head or try and peck my face? It's probably a pretty slim chance, but I prefer them in cages or in trees, high above my head.

Maybe it's more accurate to say that birds make me very uneasy, since I don't have the same kind of psychological and physical reaction as when a mouse or a rat even thinks about being near me. My toes curl up and I can't really breathe. That is what I call fear, and it sometimes causes me to scream loudly in small spaces when everyone else can calmly say, "Someone get a mouse trap." Give me a squawking parrot over that any day.

Thank God for your dirty dishes; at least you have food

In conversation, my friend Abby is all about transition. If someone is talking about, say, the most recent episode of Young and the Restless and how Chris blacked out the other night and may have killed Isabella, Abby might say, "Speaking of forgetting things, the other morning I woke up and realized that I forgot to shut the window of my car all the way so it filled up with water and now it smells like rotten upholstery." Not that Abby ever forgets anything like that; the point is, she can make a transition statement out of anything. (And I may be projecting a little there, since I'm bitter that my car smells like rotten upholstery at the moment.) It's a pretty endearing trait, even if sometimes the transitions are pretty convoluted. So, in honor of Abby, who wasn't at church today because she has left us for greener pastures, as it were, I will attempt to connect the random thoughts in my head in Abby-style.

Speaking of church, the title is from the backlit announcement board outside the Orange Chapel United Methodist Church up the road. Heh.

Speaking of orange and fruit-flavored things, I watched the guy named Steve sitting next to me on the plane last week consume eight pieces of Juicy Fruit in a half an hour, as he told me stories of his brief backup singing career with Stevie Wonder (cut short when Stevie caught him kissing his assistant, also Stevie's girlfriend, it turned out) and his only trip to Utah, during which the most memorable event was an extremely bloody hockey game. He folded them all into little packets before chewing, and he didn't seem to feel at all embarrassed that he was literally eating all that gum. Here's a tip, Steve: try JuJuBe's next time.

Speaking of eating bizarre things, tonight some people from church made dinner and served it to the residents at the Ronald McDonald House in Durham. The girl who orchestrated the event decided that meatloaf was a good idea, and so we all made these rather perverse-looking meatloaves (which, by the way, is a terrible word) and laid them out on this counter to be consumed by people with already too much sadness in their lives. However, one strangish girl, bless her heart, decided to contribute a tuna loaf to the party, so out of a teflon loaf pan plopped this dark brownish gray, burned-yet-soggy pile of what looked like cat food on its worst day. It was horrible. One brave guy ate a piece and came back in the kitchen and said, "Wait, wasn't that salmon? It tasted like salmon." Heaven help his intestines tonight.

Speaking of horrible things, I love the South and all, but with summer come cicadas, and their mating call back and forth is the rhythmic deafening sound of a power line being dragged across the epiglotus of a snoring man. Aside from being hideously ugly and having a revolting life cycle, the noise makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out.

Speaking of needing your eyeballs intact, I watched The Restaurant tonight. It's pretty compelling stuff. It's been a long time since my last celebrity crush (hi, Mulder), and boy howdy, they're milking this beautiful mug for all it's worth. And it's worth a lot.

Speaking of beautiful people, I am so tired. Good night.

Something is seriously wrong with me

Right now I am sitting in my office. Though it is well past 5 pm, I am sitting here still because I am afraid to go home. The reason is not anything horrifying like a mouse infestation (I'm looking at you, Sandy and Park City apartments) or because it's even that messy and I'm avoiding it (owing to approximately 7 straight hours of cleaning the other Saturday).

The real reason is that in the past month I have become something of a disaster-prone girl. It's very bizarre, and I have caused some pretty tragic and expensive destruction at my house lately. I really can't figure it out. When I was complaining about it over chicken tenderloin salad at Saladelia the other night, Heather said, "You're ovulating." Which had been true, but surely wasn't true this morning and on Friday night. There's this one episode of Felicity where Megan puts a clumsy spell on Felicity and I just watched it; maybe I've been vicariously cursed.

Story #1: Dishes broken or maimed

1. Big chip on the side 70s glass cake plate given to me by Steph, given to her by some cheapo at her wedding, as it still had a Kmart old school price tag on it in, back when the K was all slanty and big and back in the day when retailers weren't yet familiar with the bar code.

2. Fabulous square stoneware platter, large chip off side trying to shove it into the cupboard right into, it turned out, the lid to the cake plate. Chip glued on with super glue; looks very bad and is obviously poorly repaired.

3. One of set of 4 pasta bowls with gourds painted on them jumps out of my hand unloading the dishwasher onto the wood floor; shatters into a lot of pieces.

4. Ugly (but sweet) pottery mug given to me by Robbie for Christmas, full of pens, knocked off the counter to the floor while trying to turn up the stereo. Shatters, sends pens flying.

5. One of brand new antique set of 5 milk glass goblets falls out of the shopping bag onto the cement as I'm taking it out of the car; stem breaks off cleanly so I can glue it back together, but glass has a large rough chip which is unfixable.

Story #2: The 2 days of destruction

Sunday morning, 7:55 am, just out of the shower, putting on my robe, flush the toilet, feel my robe hit something on the counter on its way up the arm, wonder if I've maybe knocked something in but decide it's too preposterous. But then the toilet is acting strangely and I look all around the house, in vain, for the small squatty bottle of Sea Spray for the hair. It has been flushed. So I avoid the toilet and vow to call Chris Vickers, the plumber, and negotiate in my head how much I'm willing to pay for him to come and remove the bottle from the curvy part of the porcelain. I decide it's worth $200 at the most so I don't have to tell Murch. I am 20 minutes late for church because I get the bright idea that plunging like mad will make the thing pop out. No luck. Murch comes up later, sticks his hand up the toilet's hole for 5 minutes, and removes the bottle. I'm pretty sure I don't want it, but he doesn't throw it away, so instead it sits on the sink, and Monday morning I decide that since there is no apparent poo residue, it maybe could be used after a good sterilization. It is, after all, a brand new bottle, and it's been discontinued. So I soak it in a sink of blazing hot water and go to get dressed.

Monday, 9:15 am, look at horrible chipping toenails and dash in the bathroom for a quick coat of Vino. It's in the medicine cabinet, a brand new bottle, purchased only weeks ago to replace the one that shattered on the tile floor and dyed the grout around the toilet pink. It was $13. It's my favorite color. Open the medicine cabinet, take out the bottle, watch it jump from my hand, hit the faucet, top breaks off, bottle pours on the white counter, brush does a spinning leap and splatter paints the purple wall, my $9 Wal-Mart jeans, the white bathmat, the tile, and lands choking out 2 more splatters for the brazilian cherry. In my haste to get out the remover, the bottle dumps into the sink, filled with scalding water for the Sea Spray, and dumps in a strange and surreal pattern, like blood. Cleanup is successful on counter and sink, but not on the wall, the rug, or the jeans.

Shall I go to bed and never get out again? This place needs protecting.