When I was a little girl, I used to lie in my bed at night, totally awake, praying for sleep to come. It rarely did. I convinced myself that laying there resting was just as good as actually sleeping, but it wasn’t. Every night, while I tried to sleep, visions of ghouls and witches danced in my head, and I felt the icy fingers of death clawing at my eyeballs. My mother told me evil spirits were trying to possess me. My doctor, 20 years later, told me I have astigmatism. So, woot, the pain in my eyes at night has a totally valid medical reason. The delusions of screaming banshee demons sent from hell to steal away my soul were totally my mother’s fault.

Takes one to know one.

When I was in my 20’s, I worked the breakfast shift at one of those places you go to clog your arteries the way your momma used to do it. I was up at 5 every morning, and by 2 I’d waited on about 200 people. Then I went home and chased two toddlers all by myself for the rest of the day. I was never up past 9 at night, ever.

Now I stay at home with my kids and I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep because I can not sleep. I can not sleep right now and my boys can get up and make their own breakfast, and my daughter sleeps until 1030 every day anyway, so my body knows it’s going to get it’s sleep in eventually. But I don’t want it then…I want it now, while my eyeballs have bricks in them. I try; I lay there every night while my head spins. I’m tired, don’t get me wrong, I just can’t fall asleep. I think that maybe I’ll get up an have a cigarette but I don’t really want one. I fact, I don’t think I ever want another one again. It’s a digusting habit, and  I’m totally quitting as of now. It doesn’t matter at all that I have quit smoking every single night for the past 2,000 nights or so. I think about all the other things I could be doing, like the laundry, which involves way more thought power than I am capable of expending at 1:30 in the morning, or going to the gym, which is open 24 hours and would totally wear me out, but it is all the way (2 minutes) over there (from my house) and I’d have to dig my gym clothes out of the laundry piles, which ugh, and then the whole thing turns into a blog post and I don’t have a blog post for tomorrow and I can type one with one eye open except that one eye burns because I am beyond exhausted.

And there doesn’t seem to be a way for me to get sleeping pills to help this, because I’m totally too afraid to ask a doctor for sleeping pills because he’ll think I’m a drug-seeker. If he thinks I’m a drug seeker, there’s no way he’s going to give me the other prescriptions I need. If I can’t get the other prescriptions I need, I will go stark-raving mad and the demons will start poking my eyeballs out in the middle of the night again and I will never sleep.

And so I get up and I type. And eat some chocolate cake. I think should have just had a smoke and gone to the gym.

I am one of those ‘black thumb’ kinds of people. It’s almost a gift the way I can take any simple living thing and kill the shit out of it. Just ask any one of my 12 ex-hamsters.

I’ve been especially blessed in my talent for killing plants. My ex once bought my a lovely succulent glass-menagerie-arrangement thingy for a birthday or an anniversary or something, because the guy who sold it to him assured him that cactus and aloe and jade were nigh unkillable. And I’d feel much worse about not being able to remember why he bought it for me if I hadn’t killed the fucking thing in less than a week.

One of my best friends made a a series of window-boxes full of fresh herbs for my 27th birthday, and that I can remember which only goes to show you how much more important my girlfriends are to me than my lovers, but that doesn’t really make a difference when it comes to harbingering death.

The herbs made it two weeks. I am the shittiest friend alive.

But then I moved to Vancouver and maybe it was the optimal climate but realistically it was the searing loneliness that drove me to try my hand at growing plants again. I started small, at Ikea, with two $0.99 houseplants no bigger than my palm. I loved those things like I’d loved everyone I left behind in Denver. I named them and spoke to them every day. I encouraged them to grow. I fed them extra nutrients and pruned them. And I’ll be damned if those bitches didn’t THRIVE.

Two Ikea houseplants turned into a Red Emerald Philodendrons that I rescued from the grocery store window and a jade that I found crammed in the back of a book store and countless other stray plants that we looking for a reject like me to take them home and save them.

I did kill the jade. Bygones.

The rest of them lived, and how they lived. I eventually moved into my little garden at my little townhouse and planted all sorts of things. I got so fancy as to plant for seasons. I even planted fruits. I got good. And then I had to move to Texas and they don’t exactly let you bring plants across the border, so I had to leave them all behind.

It was arguably just as hard for me to watch all of my houseplants go home with the wife of my international truck driver as it was to say goodbye to the people I’d spent every single day with for three years. Which is just fucking ridiculous, but it’s true.

I’ve started trying to collect a few houseplants for our new home, but I just haven’t quite felt it yet. I haven’t ventured out to make any new friends, either, so there’s that. But sometimes in life, the right thing comes along from whence you least expect it and makes everything right again.

My son got a Chia Pet for Christmas. I think I’m in love with it.

I know it’s only going to live for four weeks or something and then it will leave me like everything leaves me and I’ll spiral into some horrid depression that can only be cured by chocolate ice cream and George Clooney, but for now I am slightly overly obsessed with this little miracle of dollar-store science. I water it every morning. I stroke it’s newly-sprouted, well, um….sprouts? and I talk to it. I encourage it to ‘be all you can be, little buddy!’ and then I realize that I need to take up drinking or skeet shooting or something because I’M TALKING TO A FUCKING CHIA PET but I don’t care, really. I’m giving something life again, and that’s what I’ve been missing.

AH-HA. *cue moment of clarity*

So it’s either talk to the Chia Pet like a crazy woman, or have another baby. And move into a shoe.

You know those naked at school or work dreams you have sometimes that you wake up from in a cold sweat, kind of dying a little inside? Yeah, you work in a restaurant for long enough and those dreams keep the crowds but lose the naked bit and get replaced with lost checks or burnt steaks. And they’re horrifying.

And it doesn’t matter how long it’s been since you’ve worked in a restaurant, because that shit will haunt you for the rest of your natural days. Perhaps more. I’m pretty sure the 6th layer of hell involves a buffet line and Mother’s Day.

Last night, I had a 9 table section and it was full. Like, full full. There was one table I kept forgetting no matter how hard I tried to, and one table of two that were fairly regular customers who came in with a double pork chop and a chocolate cake made with garbanzo bean flour (shockingly good, I’ve learned. Thanks, Zoeyjane. I’m totally waiting for that recipe.) They wanted the pork chop cooked to medium and the chocolate cake served to them in 5-7 minute intervals, each at a different style. And they had an evaluation form. And they were filling it in as the night progressed.

I realized this was a dream when I didn’t tell them to bite me.

So, it was 20 minutes before the kitchen closed and the dish racks were all full and lined up in front of the kitchen door so I had to go outside, enter through the alley, and cook my own food. The pork chop got thrown on the grill with two steaks that someone wanted stacked up like a double cheeseburger with a side of defibrillator and I got started on the chocolate cake.  I got round one plated up and ready to go, then had to run next door to the crack house to sit on the couch with the crack momma and her social worker. I wish I knew why. I was offered tea, and I can’t say no to tea, and before i knew it, more than a half hour had past. I ran back, got the heart attack stack out, checked the pork and ran the first cake. And the people weren’t at their table. So I took the cake back to the kitchen.

I wasted another thirty minutes looking for a hammer and chisel to open a coconut I was suddenly carrying around before I remembered the pork chop who’s asian glaze I hadn’t even begun to make. I ran back to the kitchen to find all of the lights out, every cooler locked and an empty grill. Romero (his name was Romero) (because I name imaginary dream people) threw the pork away when he left.

That’s the point in the dream when you wake yourself up because you’re about to hit the ground and if you fall that far in a dream and actually hit the ground, you’ll die in your dream and in real life. If you’ve never worked in a restaurant, you’ll hate me for wasting your time with this whole post but if you have, odds are you’re puking right now, just like I wanted to when I woke up.

My husband and I have never been on an airplane together. Our version of a honeymoon was leaving the 5 month old human who looked like us with his grandmother and staying the night at The Oxford. And getting into the World’s Biggest Fight. And me packing my bags and storming out the door. And him dragging me back into the room, packing his bags and storming out. And then a hangover the likes of which you couldn’t imagine if you wanted to, which you don’t. It wasn’t even make up sex in the shower the next day; it was more Oh My God Get The Toxic Vodka Remants Out Of Every Orafice As Fast As Possible.

TMI. Good morning, folks.

He flew once with a child, 1of3 aged 1 year, without me but with, oh yes you guessed it, his mother. I was pregnant with 2of3, not really super hot on the idea of vacation with, oh yes you guessed it, his mother, and even if I’d wanted to go, I could not be spared from work for even one day because really, the world would collapse in on itself and the polar caps would melt and their would be hurricanes and pestilence and tsunamis of armageddonesque proportions if a bunch of ancient men and drunk doctors didn’t get their corned beef hash and eggs by 7:30 am, stat.

I guess I should have just gone, huh?

I have flown internationally multiple times with three children. I have flown domestically with them more times than I can count. Today, I was going to secretly slide the ticketing dude a $50 and a nipple-flash to put me in first class so that The Donor would have to do the whole flight to LA by himself with the kids. The flight tomorrow to Mexico wouldn’t work because his sister is coming and she’s a Virgo. This whole thing will be orchestrated like the Boston Philharmonic.

And then I had to take a meeting. In LA. With my boss’ boss. Like, the dude who writes the paycheck I am about to blow on fast woman and the drink crappy souveniers. So I left the house at 4 this morning to hit the airport and buy my way onto an earlier flight to LA for this meeting. And I wore a seriously low cut shirt. I could use a raise.

That means that my husband’s first flight alone with children, ever, will be today. On our way to Mexico. Neener Neener. Of course, I currently have in my possession everyone’s luggage, all the presents we have to bring, 18 mini bottles of Axe body spray and Axe shampoo and Axe deodorant and you can judge me all you want, but Axe sells because it is slightly more pleasing in fragrance than a pubescent boy, and it’s the only thing strong enough to drown that unholy smell out. Well, except Mexican tequila, but we’ll get to that later.

I’ve also left him with nice neat piles of passports and permits and consent letters and flight schedules, the kids clothes for today laid out, and all of the instructions everyone will need in my absence written out and signed with a heart and a little slice of love. Because I like to overestimate my importance in the household, that’s why. I’m like a dominatrix, only in fleece with a Dyson.

The Dyson gets less us than the whip would, for the record. But fuck me, it’s dead sexy.

Anyway, this plane is getting ready to take off and I’ve only had three hours of sleep, like you couldn’t have guessed that already, so I leave you with this in case you want to pretend you’re my kid or my housesitter today, because I like to overestimate my importance in the internetowebosphere, that’s why, and bid you all a fond farewell. I’m going to go drink all the tequila now.

Dear Asparagus,

Who exactly do you think you’re fooling? Do you think there is not any way I’m not on to you? Because I am, I most certainly assure you.

I first met you in the summer of 1986. I was at my regular Saturday night babysitting gig, and the family I sat for invited me over early that night for dinner. I glanced around the table, eyed the roast, oogled the potatoes, and then my eyes wandered to a large white serving platter containing something the likes of which I’d never seen before.

You sat in a bowl, long and pointy, the shade of green that strikes terror in the heart of anyone under 5′ tall. The father of the family asked, “Wanna try some?” I, not yet quick-witted enough to weave a tale desperate or agonizing enough to escape such horrors, politely obliged. I took one small, calculated bite.

“Well, it appears we should call it asperGAGus, huh?”, he chuckled. I countered his chuckle with one hearty chuck. The “le” alluded me that night.

I never saw you after that fateful day of my twelfth year (my family’s poverty did have its upside) until nearly 20 years later. I was employed at a dark, smoky, posh little bar in downtown Denver that thought way too highly of itself, and on the Saturday night of the fall menu roll-out, our paths again crossed. On the new menu, which consisted solely of over-ingrediented (is TOO a word) tapas, you smuggly sat, glaring at me with a thick air of superiority surrounding your pointy little green head.

Asparagus. Wrapped in prosciutto. Drizzled with strawberry compote. Oh, how you mocked me as you defiled all those fine, innocent young ingredients. How you smirked as you rubbed up against a perfectly good slice of almost-bacon, as you soaked in the sweet juices of the most sensual berry. I turned my gaze away from you that night; why feed the fire? No one would order you, and you would sit cold, alone, and slowly growing flaccid in a stale downtown refrigerator.

How foolish I was.

Table after table oooh’d and ahhhh’d over your pretentiousness. Customer after customer indulged themselves in your vitamin-laded, urine-toxifying stalks. I was brought, nightly, to your putrid alter, but I was stronger than you thought me to be. I never did succumb to your mind games, whiskey shots and drunk-munchies be damned.

I began seeing you rear your ugly head around town. On tapas, in soup, mixed with pasta, you had no shame or discretion. You even dared to appear one morning in the middle of my beloved Eggs Benedict, as if you thought I wouldn’t notice you under a sea of hollandaise. Your worst offense, however, happened only days ago when you spied me nearing the refrigerated section at Safeway, pushing a full cart and simultaneously carrying a dead asleep, 5,000 pound almost three year old. As I came closer to you, sweat pouring from my furrowed brow, distracted by two pre-teens desperately seeking cookies, you wiggled your way up to the front of the ravioli section, cleverly hidden amongst cheese raviolis. Knowing there was no way for me to actually read what package I batted into the back of my cart, you made certain you were front and center, the easiest choice.

You made it all the way into my home, sat comfortably in the back of my fridge, and almost saw your scheme to fruition as I boiled water and tossed a salad that one night, only days ago. However, your evil plans were thwarted at the last minute; even though I have no glasses and can barely see, I saw YOU. You underestimate me, and that is a sad mistake to make, my friend. I’m on to you, and I always keep emergency hot dogs on hand. I don’t NEED you.

It would appear that you chose to bring some of old cohorts back to the mainstream with you, possibly to deflect some of the attention away from yourself in your attempt at a Retro Resurrection. I will fight, hand over fist, until your asparagus eating, leg-warmer wearing, hairspray using, New Kids on the Block touring, Care Bear collecting, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle animating, Camaro driving, Wayfarer and jelly bracelet wearing posse is disbanded, drawn, and possibly quartered, depending on what time of the month I find you. The 80’s were only cool in the 80’s, and you, like avocado colored appliances, should never have made it out.

Once, in your prime, you were a valuable source of vitamins A, B, C, folic acid, and an excellent source of torture for parents, but this is the 21st century. We can make something just as vitamin rich as you out for cardboard, and old muffler and some duct tape. And it would be shaped like a teddy bear. And taste like chocolate. And we still have brussel sprouts, and at least they don’t run around trying to be all phallic.

Your usefulness has seen its last days. Your welcome has officially worn out. Anything that can make my children’s stay in the washroom a more smelly experience is not fit for modern society. It is time to remove yourself from it, before I am forced to do it for you. Asparagus, you are on NOTICE.

Yours in Christ,

Mr Lady