texting with my brother

him: I have a gift for you. I neither picked it out, nor paid for it.

me: Your lack of enthusiasm is the greatest gift of all.

my medical file

doctor: It says in your file that you're gay.

me: That's in my file? You keep track of that? Why is it even important? I've dated men and women. And sometimes both at once. A while ago. Briefly. It was a short-term thing. And they knew about each other.

I'm thinking, "Goddamn. Keep it together, Thea."

doctor: So, anyway. There's no chance that you're pregnant? Because the drugs we're giving you could be a problem if you are.

scratch offs

When I was a little kid, a family friend who didn't understand our religious background bought us all lottery tickets. They were gifts. My mother saw us kids scratching off lottery tickets, and tried to find an expression between "horrified" and "grateful".

dinner

My father made a nice dinner. We had a guest over. Dad served enchiladas.

The guest took a few bites, and then said, "Oh, I just got something hard."

Dad ruined the meal by asking, "Toenail clipping hard?"

Another time, my father made clam chowder. He didn't care about my seafood allergy -he just wasn't a fan. He lit two candles on the kitchen table, and we all sat down to eat.

I asked, with my mouth full, "What's in this?"

One of my brothers had to translate for us.

Dad started with, "Well, clams. And there's ..."

I spat out the soup. Actually I spewed it out. And in doing so, I extinguished both candles.

childhood

I ran over a snake with the lawnmower. The sight of it caused me to throw up. Repeatedly. Into the uncut grass. I then had to mow through my own vomit, while crying.

Popcorn

I did a quick internet search, to find out if I can survive on just popcorn.

I can! But not indefinitely.

Crap. Now I have to walk to the grocery store. Eventually.

furniture

In my current home, I have $60 worth of furniture. Most of what I have, I got for free. Nearly everything is second-hand.

Side note: My couch had another, larger, matching couch that couldn't fit through the door. We donated it to the house across the street. That house exploded and burned down. It was a meth lab.

In my childhood home, we didn't have enough chairs in the kitchen for everyone. If the entire family happened to be home for dinner, I had to go searching for something to sit on. Some random stool. I sometimes ended up sitting on a piano bench, with my brother.

We had enough seats in the dinning room. But, no. The dinning room was for *special occasions*.