If art imitates life, please tell me which artist painted "Portrait of Two-Year-Old Pooping on Tile Floor," because I'd like to hang it in my husband's office.
Also, if it could be the version where just after the painter finished, the child steps in the poop, tracking it across the floor, so his mother scoops him up into the bathtub to wash it off, and while initiating said wash-off, the mother happens to turn around to see that the family dog has just eaten said poop, that would be great. If you could happen to capture the horrific look visible on her face at just that moment, that would be terrific.
Ahhh, art. Life. Children.
Other than the poop fiasco, things are going much better around here. I'm reading so much Chaucer that I'm starting to dream in middle English poetry, so that's weird but doable, but I found myself awake this morning at 4am. It wasn't that I just popped up on my own, but rather that I heard the sound of the dog wretching, so I jumped out of bed to let her out. While on the porch, I decided I'd have a cigarette: you know, celebrating 4am and all. What I hadn't considered was the internal conversation that would take place during the whole smoking thing.
I mean, we all know smoking is bad, right? That's been established. I remember my mom bringing reams of copy paper home when I was a kid - ones that had been misprinted or that they didn't need anymore. It was the paper with the holes in the sides, where each perforated sheet was attached to the one following it. The paper was a pale green. Anyway, I remember rolling out about 10 feet of the stuff and making these huge, obnoxious "No Smoking" signs, complete with pictures of blackened lungs and yellow teeth and dirty ashtrays with butts spilling out the top - you name it. I'm guessing they taught us that in health class - you know, "Fifty Ways to Aggravate and Convert Your Smoking Parents."
So 4 o'clock in the A.M., I'm standing outside in the pitch black having a smoke, waiting for the dog to finishing hurling, and I start thinking about my life and what I'm actually doing. And it hits me - I'm almost 40 years old, and I'm pretty sure I've heard news reports before about people in their 39's and 40's dying of cancer attributed to smoking. And I start asking myself why? Why can't I shake this? And part of me says, "Well, look at your mom. She's got good genes - she's still smoking and she's fine." And then the other side of my conscience answers, "Yeah, but your grandfather and your father died from throat cancer. And your other grandfather died of colon cancer. So that's three strikes right there in your family branch."
And then I just get mad and swear I won't smoke anymore ... and I don't ... until 7am when I wake up for real.
So that sucks.
Anyone else out there pushing 40 and still doing ridiculous shit they should have stopped doing right after high school? If you're one of the ones who successfully quit, how many times did it take you before it stuck? I've tried to quit before, and I'm good at quitting, but I'm horrible at not picking one up six months later and insisting I can just have one.
In other news, there's an open mic night at school on Thursday. I'm reworking one of my short stories, seeing if it can be spun down to a comfortable reading length. Hooray. :)
That's me, in a nutshell, and I'm out.
No comments:
Post a Comment