Giant Centepedes and Other Monsters

When we were in Hawaii, we decided to go for a hike (my previous Hawaii post is HERE.)

After a confusing bus ride, a short walk up a twisty road with no shoulder that had directions that made us walk WITH traffic (and thus made my mind say in no uncertain terms that I WAS DOING IT WRONG), we finally made it to the trailhead, and this sign:

In case you can't read this, it says, "PIG CONTROL IN PROGRESS"... some other stuff  blah blah blah and then "Full Moon Hunts Will Be Scheduled".  Well, that... sounds... interesting.

Sounds good.  Wait, what day is it?  It is awfully had to keep track of this stuff when hanging out in paradise for a week.

I had checked out the hike on the internet, and learned the following things:

1) Bring bug spray, the mosquitos will eat you ALIVE!

2) There is a such thing as 8 inch centepedes, and they exist in Hawaii.

3) There are no large predators in Hawaii, and no poisonous snakes.

4) Where we stayed in Waikiki averages about 20 inches of rain a year.  Where we were hiking, a few miles away, averages about 280 inches of rain per year.  We WILL get rained on.

5) There is a fantastic view at the top.

What could possibly go wrong?

Yeah...

Maybe I should make a list.

Or better, allow me to give you a small snippet from my brain...

Do you like steam of consciousness?

Ahem.

Well, here's the turnoff... away from the tourists and kids, shit it's hot.  Is that mud?  I hope the trail gets better, this shit's slicker'n snot.  Why does it smell like pooh?  Great.  It's probably pig pooh from the pig hunts.  Damn it's hot.  And humid.  Why did I wear a shirt again?  I should totally be hiking in my bikini top.


Wow, look at that, there's no one behind us.  I wonder if this is a real trail, or if someone's just leading us astray.  Shit, I wonder if "pig hunt" is a euphemism for hunting humans.  I don't think Hawaiians were traditionally cannibals.  No, I'm pretty sure I would have read something about that on the internet.  


Don't touch anything.  There are probably big bugs here.  Oh yeah, eight inch centipedes.  Great.  Big. Giant.  Fuckers.  Why did we watch that Animal Planet show last night in the condo?  The one with the Grasshopper Mouse that howls like a werewolf and hunts giant poisonous dessert centipedes. The centipedes here probably aren't poisonous.  It would have said on the internet, right? The internet is never wrong.


Those grasshopper mice were pretty freaking cool.  I wonder if they are like, descendants of were-mice or some shit.


Holy crap, FULL MOON HUNT.  They're totally hunting were-pigs, aren't they?  THAT'S what they're doing.  I wonder if it's close to the full moon.  Great, I almost twisted my ankle, is that how they get you?  Leave all these roots lying all over the trail so you can't outrun them?  Pigs would totally eat people.  I saw Hannibal.  I saw Snatch.  Fuck, I'm gonna die.  I should totally stop watching so many scary movies.

And who the fuck decided that were-animals were sexy?  I mean, come on, people.  What's next?  Sexy Ents?
(I'm looking at you, Laurell K. Hamilton and Charlaine Harris!)

Boyfriend is totally right.  It IS quiet out here.  I can't hear anyone.  The bamboo sure makes weird noises.  Like Ents or some shit, talking to each other, rattling and shit.  Or maybe that's the were-pigs signaling that they have some victims walking into their trap.

Fuck, I'm hot.  Oh, wow, this is beautiful.  I've never been in a bamboo forest before.  Why is this so hard?  The elevation is what, 500 feet?  I should be flying up this trail.

OH MY FUCKING GOD WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?

Eight INCH centipedes.  INCH.  INCH INCH INCH INCH.  Stupid brain.

It's a tree.  They said eight INCH centipedes, not eight foot.  What the hell is wrong with me?  


I thought this trail was only a mile and a half.  It feels much longer than that.  It's because the were-pigs moved the trail, they're totally going to kill us and eat us.

Why won't it fucking rain already?  Don't touch that, there could be a centipede.  It's a trap!  Wow, my shoes are MUDDY.


Wait... really?  We're there?  Just in time for the rain.  Fuck, yeah, we made it.  This is absofuckinglutely beautiful!


So yeah, all in all, a good hike.  I even learned some things:

1) Anyone who complains about the mosquitoes in Hawaii has not been to Colorado.  That or we were EXTREMELY LUCKY, because mosquitoes LOOOOOOVE gnoshing on some Leauxra (I think it's because I have Kool-Aid for blood), and I never got bit in Hawaii.

2) DO NOT CONFUSE the word "inch" and "foot" in your head, or you will spend  the entire hike worried about eight foot centepedes.

3) There are no large dangerous animals in Hawaii, except probaby were-pigs, and that they hunt on Wednesdays, Sundays, and during the full moon.

4) There are places in the world where the rain is warm, and it isn't terrible to walk in it.

5) There really is a fantastic view from the top.

See?  Paradise.  Told you.

Celebrity Diet

I braved the Wal-Mart (and yes, there is a "the" in front of "the Wal-Mart"... it doesn't sound right if you don't say it that way) last weekend.

Originally we were going to go camping, but the sky was doing this:

Actual photo of the sky above my house.

So we decided to get the car out of the garage, and use the space to brew beer instead.

Sitting around the turkey frier while the wort boils is pretty much more awesome than camping.  Especially when it's in the garage with the door up and you collect 9 gallons of rain water in about three minutes from the one of the gutters for later use on the garden.  Especially when it is the first real rain in a few months, and the mountains are all flooding, and the lightning is making your teeth rattle it's so close.

We had such a good time, and another three empty kegs to be filled that we decided we were going to do it again the next day.

I decided, though, that we are also desperately low on cider.  The alcoholic kind, I mean.

So we went to the Wal-Mart for the main ingredient.

You really don't have to use organic, single-squeezed apple juice from happy trees in Eden.  Any old thing will do provided it doesn't contain any preservatives stronger than ascorbic acid.

Things are never as fast as you would imagine them to be at the Wal-Mart.  If you go to the express lane, you are guaranteed to be behind at least one person who is an extreme couponer, someone else using who wants to split the $12 total between cash, a card, and a check (I really was tempted to just pay for his purchase, but he was a little bit scary), and a checker who is so happy to be there that they are in a coma.

So...

I was in line for a Very Long Time.

"Is that your favorite drink?"

It took me a moment to realize that the guy behind me in line was talking to me.

I eyed him cautiously.  He didn't look crazy, or even weird in any way, which was strange in and of itself.  Just a normal young guy.

"Oh," I said, looking down at my cart.  "Yeah, well, I'm trying that new celebrity diet.  All apple juice, all the time."

He stared at me for a moment, confused, and then laughed.  "Good one!" he said.

I smiled.

I turned away as it was my turn in line.  "There's 8 of these," I said.

The cashier sighed, and swiped the bottle 8 times.  She was not interested.

How to Make Hard Cider:

1) Clean the shit out of all your stuff.  Uninvited Microbes = Bad Juju.

2) Pour your FuckLoad of apple juice into your fermenter.  In this case, a plastic carboy.

This takes concentration.  And a funnel.  Unless you really like sticky cement.

3) Admire your nearly 6 gallons of apple juice.  This is approximately 398,476% of your daily recommended value of vitamin C.

The foam is the cleaner/sanitizer, specially formulated to make the ale yeast happy.

4) Aerate the juice.  That means getting some bubbles.  Shaking 6 gallons of liquid is hard.

My head is HUGE in this picture.

5) Add the yeast.  Any old yeast will do, but we actually want this to taste good and not be too alcoholic, so we went with an ale yeast.

Stop staring at my wrinkly thumb.  They're double jointed so I have alien hands.

Just pour it in.  Millions of little yeasties will eat sugar and shit alcohol and carbon dioxide.  Appetizing, yes?

6) After mixing again, put a bung in the top (that's what's the lid is called, I promise), and add some way to let air out.  If you don't do this, your bottle will explode and you will have a juice fountain in the basement.

In this case, we used a food grade plastic hose, and a small bucket of water.  This will allow carbon dioxide to leave, but no nasty little bacterias or wild yeasts to get in.

7) Store in a cool, dry place until it stops bubbling in about 2 weeks, or you're sick of waiting.

Two beers and a cider hanging out in the basement.

8) Later, we will put these guys into kegs and pressurize with CO2 to give it bubbles.  There are other ways to get the bubbles, but that is the easiest.

Apparently in Colorado, you can homebrew something like 200 gallons of beer per year for "personal use".  This is about 15 gallons, or 13 twelve-packs of beer (and cider) brewing in the basement.

Whoever it is that needs 200 gallons is some kind of impressive, really.

No Sharks No Sharks No Sharks

I tried to force my breathing to slow down. Calm down calm down calm down. There is no such thing as sharks.

Just float. Just float.

That Australian tourist said there was a turtle over here, but the water was so close to the coral that I kept worrying I was going to slam into it. I couldn’t seem to get use to the tunnel vision of having the mask on. I can’t see! I can’t breathe!

The world was silent except for little splashy noises and my Darth Vader breath.

Just float. Stop splashing, you’ll attract sharks. No I won’t. There are no sharks in Hawaii.

Fact.

Is this what drowning feels like?  Note to self: don't drown.

The snorkeling almost didn’t happen for me. The first mask the tour company gave me was a piece of shit that had a mask that was really good at filling up with water, and a snorkel that I couldn't breathe through. Crying, panicking, nearly screaming, I was making my way back to shore when Boyfriend stopped me.

He traded masks because apparently he doesn’t mind the feeling of drowning as much as I do, and he really wanted me to have a good time snorkeling. I stood there for a minute or two, trying not to feel like a failure or embarassed by my freak out, pulled myself together, mostly, and tried again.

Yes, I can swim.

I took lessons as a child because I was so afraid of water my parents could barely bathe me.  One of my earliest memories is my mom dipping me in a kiddie pool and me getting water up my nose.  Another early memory involves banging my elbow in the bath tub and passing out, and waking up with my brother holding my head out of the water and screaming for Mom.  She left for a minute so my older brother could pee, and I nearly drown.

Go me.

So. Swim lessons when I was 7. I was older than the other kids in the beginning class.  I remember those lessons with a combination of fear and embarrassment.  I think the next oldest kid was about 4.

I was so afraid of the water, chest tightening fear would hit me at random while we did our lessons, that I would wake up in cold sweats the night before swimming lessons.

And then they forgot about me and I almost drown.

They wanted the kids to swim from one end of the pool and back.  And I didn't make it back.

At first, I couldn’t believe it. Why couldn’t I touch the bottom? Where is the edge of the pool? It should be right there… Then my body wouldn’t respond, and I got even more scared. I couldn’t lift my arms. I was going under. Where was the teacher? I was drowning. No, this isn’t right! Why can’t I move my arms?

Through the water I heard a whistle and shouts, and splashes, and suddenly the instructor yanking me up by one arm. “What are you doing?” she shouted.  She was angry with me because she forgot to watch me.

I couldn’t speak as I gasped for breath.  I'd almost died! If I'd had the strength, I would have punched her in the face.   Once she righted me, I found out that actually, I could touch the bottom.  I huddled on the side of the pool for the rest of the day, and went back the next week.

But I learned to swim.

I won’t drown, probably.

A slightly larger wave pulled me away from the coral, then back down. I bobbed along the top in my life jacket and rented snorkel gear.  Remembering the time I almost drowned was a bad idea, but there was a similarity here.  I felt helpless.  I felt scared.  But I wanted to like it. I wanted this to be fun.

I tried to relax.  This is fun, goddamnit.

This wasn’t the chlorinated pool water at the civic center. This is the huge wild ocean. I was thousands of miles away and almost thirty years from my childhood drowning experience. I haven’t had a problem swimming in years and years. And since I got my eyes Lasiked, I actually like swimming.

But the panic was there, just underneath.

No such thing as sharks, if I don't look they aren't there, I CAN'T SEE YOU.

I tried not to imagine braining myself on the sharp edge of the reef. Or getting sucked out to sea. Or sharks. Or giant squids. Leviathans. I made little movements, and tried to propel myself with little mermaid kicks with my feet.  Look!  A clown fish!  And what was that!  That fish was yellow! Neat!  I want to see an octopus.  Where the fuck are the damned octopusses?

Calm, calm. Breath in, breath out.

Shit, why did I think of mermaids? Those bitches are going to fuck you up.

Deep breath, but not really through the snorkel mask. Darth Vader.

And then the coral dropped away from me to the sandy floor, and there it was.

It’s a motherfucking sea turtle, y’all.

"'Sup, bitches?"

My eyes saw it, but it took a moment for my brain to sort it out, to understand what I was seeing.

I let myself float over it, and past.  Holy fucking shit.  That thing was huge.  And it was watching me!  It's real!

I pulled my head out of the water.

I called out to my boyfriend, who was maybe 20 yards away. I waved at him, and then stopped. I didn’t want to look like I was drowning, even if I did just inhale a mouthful of seawater and turtle pee.

He looked over.

I pointed down. “Turtle!” I shouted.

And then I put my mask back in and my face down because I was choking on the water and I didn’t want to touch the reef but it’s too shallow to just swim with my head out of the water like that.

Saw it.

Hellz yeah.

Time to go in.

Relief washed over me as I took off the mask and flippers. I tried not to feel guilty for barely being able to tolerate snorkeling. My fear had been unexpected.

As I waded up on the sandy shore, I glanced back out to sea.

Holy shit, look where I am!

Not to scale*

*Holy crap, I should illustrate more, it's so slimming!

A Quick Note to Crayola

Dear Crayola,

I have always been a huge fan of Crayola colors.

I have more crayons than any adult has right to.

And colored pencils.

And markers.

If I ever have a daughter, I will name her Crayola Pavlov*.

Recently, I decided I was going to start illustrating my posts on this here blog with markers and colors.  It was going to be completely damned awesome.**

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home.  I had an excuse to go down the school supply aisle!  The yellow and green Crayola packaging glowed out at me, the logo smiling its rainbow smile.

Not only are these the best and most brilliant colors, but unlike the fancy shmancy Prismacolors that "professionals" seem to like so much, these were cheap, easy to find, and washable.

After some back and forth, I went with the largest package I could find of Crayola SuperTips.

Sure, I noticed that there were some "fun scented" markers in the package... it did not escape my notice that there were absolutely no large packages of markers from you that didn't have "fun scented" markers included.

I'll be honest, though... I thought when you said "fun scented", you meant something more along the lines of, oh, I don't know, fun for children in some way.

But honestly, I didn't think much of it.  I assumed that the scented markers would be mostly fruity smells and it would be akin to coloring with my old Strawberry Shortcake dolls' heads.

Mostly, I was just excited.  So many colors!  So.  Many.    I couldn't wait to get started.

I was a little disturbed that these so-called fun-scented colors were dressed all in black, like some kind of biker gang coming to crash the local debutant ball, but I still wasn't too worried.

In fact, I looked at them with growing excitement.  They might be fun.  I started opening them up and sniffing them without even coloring with them.

Yes, Crayola.  You did this.

You got me sniffing ink (and they didn't get me high (not that I was trying)).

And despite the little marks of red and brown around my nose, I was still mostly OK with it.  Cherry!  Oh!  That one is burnt marshmallow!  How fun!  

And then we got to the blues and greens.

I don't know about you, Crayola, but when I think "Forest Pine" or "Fresh Air" or "Bay Breeze", the first thing that doesn't come to mind is an opium den.

What ever happened to Raspberry, Lime, and Blueberry? Why did you do this to me?  Why?

If you are going to perfume your markers with THAT kind of fun, you should just be honest:


Fresh Air: A Teenager's Bedroom

Bay Breeze: French Whore

Forest Pine: Lysol

I would appreciate it if you would please update your labels.

Thanks so much for listening,

XOXO LOVE AND KISSES XOXO,

Leauxra

*I will also train her to respond to bells and whistles.


** Why YES, Virginia, Leauxra IS working on some new posts, and she's ILLUSTRATING them.  With Crayolas.  And  ***SPOILER ALERT*** They're about Hawaii.  First one comes out on Thursday***


*** I am trying to get back into a twice a week schedule... Mondays and Thursdays.

5 Shades of Gray

I'm talking about pens, here, guys.  Pens.

I managed to find my favorite Faber Castell pens in Hobby Lobby recently.

Please stop staring at my strangely shaped thumb

I can tell you aren't nearly excited enough about this.

Maybe you don't know what can be done with gray pens.  Your ignorance pains me.

For example, you can make a lot of dots and draw a picture of the scary thing in the woods using thousands upon thousands of dots.

Want to know why I haven't been blogging lately?  

Well.

I was making dots.

Move over, Pisarro.  I have gray pens and I am not afraid to use them.

The title of this piece is, "I Know, Let's Go for a Hike in the Scary Woods".

I was also traveling for work last week in sunny California. I had to pretend to be a Responsible Adult for four days in a row, while my brain kept trying to get me arrested (It puts the wallet in the basket, or it gets the security pat down from TSA again).  It was pretty stressful, and I spent most of my free time there playing my ukulele.

Why yes, I do play the ukulele.  And I bring it with me when I travel.  And take it with me through airport security.

Ukuleles are cool.

I was so busy making dots and keeping my damned mouth shut, that I failed to keep up with my imaginary friends here in the blogoverse.

It turns out that while I was away, I won some awards.

What the hell, y'all?  It's like you want to hear what I have to say or some shit.

The first award is from Erica over at Touch of Embellishment.  Erica is one of those overachievers that actually illustrates her blog (just like almost everyone wishes they could), and is ridiculously funny on a regular basis.  She consistently makes me laugh, and also makes me think I should be doing more with my blog:

She has nominated me for the "Beautiful Blogger Award", which makes me incredibly happy in so many ways.  Thank you so very much.

The second award that I received while I was out gallivanting around the countryside is from BeeBee at  Beebee's Blog.  She is the only blogger I have ever seen who has illustrated a picture of her unicorn impaling Chuck Norris in a single blow.  Seriously.  Thank you, BeeBee.

So both of these awards have all these rules and things, but I thought it might be fun to just combine these into the single most awesome blog award of all time.


I call it the:

I Want to Wear Your Head for a Hat Award:

It might not be quite as prestigious as the "Your Skin Would Make a Nice Rain Coat" award, but this one is still full of awesome.

The rules:

1. Link back to the person who tagged you.  Say what you will.  It doesn't have to be nice.  Just know that I will find you.
   
2. Run like hell and hope that that crazy bitch who is following you doesn't saute your tongue in a butter and garlic sauce.
   
   Wait wait.  That isn't right.  That should read, "that crazy bitch that 'joined' you in Google Friend Connect."
   
   Or circled you... or whatever the hell these crazy kids do these days.
   
   Aw, fuck it.
   
   Run.
   
3. Nominate some OTHER bloggers and ensure that they will never sleep again.  

Were you nominated?  Hrm.  Let's see.  Is your blog over on the right there, under "Stuff I Read"?

You're it.

Congratulations.

Is anyone else hungry for some fava beans and a nice chianti?  Is it wrong that I'd rather have beer?

Thar Be Trolls in Them Thar Woods...

I haven't been talking about the trolls as much as I should.

No, I am not talking about people who make inappropriate comments on the internet.

I am talking about the large angry beings that live in caves, or deep in the woods, and generally hate us and maybe want to eat us.

They do too exist.

Let me start at the beginning...

Boyfriend and I decided to go for a little walk in the woods.  Being in Colorado, this means that we were going for a 2,500 vertical foot, 6 mile one way climb up.

...just a relaxing walk in the woods...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Where should we hike?" I asked boyfriend, "The Park, maybe?"

"Hmm," he replied, "It says here that there is a lot of ice on the road up to Bear Lake because of the storm last night."

"Yuck," I said, "Maybe not."  I hate driving on good days, going up a narrow, curvy, slick road with big drop-offs was not my idea of fun.

We were quiet for a minute.

"What about..." I said, "Signal Mountain?  I haven't been up there in years."

Signal Mountain is at the end of a dirt road that turns off a county road on the highway that heads into the mountains.  It is only about 45 minutes from my house, and rarely has anyone on it.  In the summer, the switchbacks up the west-facing hill are brutal, and it climbs something like 1000 feet in the first mile.  This time of year, it should be pretty nice.

Once you get to the top of the ridge, it's a much gentler "up", and has nice views of the Divide to the west.

We packed up our backpacks and headed out.

It was a fantastically beautiful day out.  The chill in the air was just enough to keep us from overheating.

I was feeling pretty strong, and we made it up the steep part in a relatively short amount of time. The breezes kept it from being too hot.  It still got cold enough at night that the trees hadn't budded out and the grass was still dead from winter, but it had a stark beauty anyway.

I believe this is a misprint.  It should be "Bullwark's Ridge" because the troll's name is Bullwark, and this is his ridge.  Obviously.

The open meadows gave way to lodgepole forest, and we came to a fork in the trail.  Signal Mountain, that-a-way.

"I always think this part of the trial is weird," I said.

Boyfriend, "Huh?"

Me: "It's so quiet.  When M. and I climbed up here we got totally creeped out."

He didn't answer.

I know, let's go for a walk in the scary woods.

We were quiet for a while, and walked a bit farther.

Our footsteps were muffled in the deep pine needles as we went, when I heard a strange noise.

It was the sound of something... big.

I froze, and looked back at Boyfriend.  "Did you hear...?" he started to say, when something made a deep groaning noise.

"What the fuck was that?" I said.

"I don't know," he replied.

"Was it a bear?"

We both fell silent.

"MAYBE WE SHOULDN'T BE QUIET!" I said in a loud voice, "SO WHATEVER IT IS WILL GO AWAY."

"PROBABLY NOT A BAD IDEA," said Boyfriend.

"What should we do?" I asked.

We looked at eachother helplessly.

"If it can smell fear, I totally reek right now, I just started sweating like a pig."

Boyfriend snickered.

We stood quiet for another moment, and then started up the trail.

Immediately, there was another thick noise from the woods.

"Shit," I said.  "What is that?"

It feels like there are eyes everywhere, watching you.  Maybe the forest was awake. Or maybe there are trolls.

I scanned the trees, my heart racing.  They were too dense to see more than a few hundred feet. There could be anything out there.

We looked at each other and turned around and headed home.

There are other places to hike.

"Do you think it was trolls?" I asked.***

"YOU ARE NOT HELPING, LEAUXRA," he replied.

I fell silent.  For about a minute.

"It's really quiet," I said, "I'll bet the other animals are afraid of the trolls."

"Is there a such a thing as wood trolls?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said, "I am not up on my troll lore."

"That probably pisses off the trolls, don't you think?"

I glanced behind me.

"STOP DOING THAT!" he said.

"I feel like something is looking at me, you know?  Like eyes on me."

Boyfriend gave me an exasperated sigh.

Obvious evidence of troll activity.  Trees knocked down and strewn about.  No, it wasn't the wind.  It was trolls.

"Check it out," I said, "Evidence."

Boyfriend looked at me.

"OBVIOUSLY, the troll got pissed and knocked down some trees."

Boyfriend didn't respond.

A spectacular view through burnt trees.

"Maybe we should get some bear spray," I said.

"Do you think that would help?"

"You're right, a troll would probably think it was seasoning, but it would make me feel braver if it was a bear."

"You know," he said, "It was probably just an elk or something.  Remember when we climbed Ypsilon?"

"Huh," I said.

We saw a grouse.  No, it totally wasn't a mountain chicken that scared us.

"I wonder if it was a chicken of the woods," I said later.

"What?"

"Check it out.  A grouse!"

Boyfriend said, "Never speak of this."

"Don't worry," I said, "I'll tell everyone that I hurt my knee or something."

"You're planning on blogging about this, aren't you," he said.  It wasn't a question.

"It's why we hike," I replied, "So I have something to blog about."

So in the spirit of truthiness, I have to say... ahem...

"I hurt my knee while hiking, so we cut it short."

The End.

***Reason #45 why dating me is hard: I have an over active imagination and I share it.  Sorry.

I'm Gonna Melt Old Age Right out of my Skin

I’ve been hiding at my desk this week, hoping nobody notices me.

This is not because I accidentally melted my face off earlier in the week, although I will admit that that was a bit disconcerting.

It was an honest mistake.

I use to have this awesome lotion/exfoliating soap from St. Ives that smelled like apricots and felt like loving sandpaper. It would scratch the top layer of dead skin off my face and make me feel young and beautiful again.

Of course, I had that stuff back in about 1998, and apparently things have changed since then (I still think of the late 90’s as “recent," so I may be a wee bit out of touch).

My skin has been unusually dry and itchy lately, and it was getting to the point that I was scratching my face constantly throughout the day and I was a little worried that I might wear through my cheeks.  I had to do something.

So... I borrowed my mom’s St. Ives Apricot Exfoliating Face Wash to use before I moisturized the shit out of my face.

I just assumed that it was the same apricot shit that I used back in my 20’s, and that the only thing that had changed was the packaging.

Let me repeat that.

I put some chemical shit on my face and just assumed I knew what it was without reading the label.

Anyway.

The next morning, I noticed that my "treatment" didn't seem to work very well because my skin was still way too dry, so I washed my face with it again.

I woke up the next morning, and I looked like I had a five o’clock shadow, only instead of stubble, it was my SKIN molting off. Or sloughing off? Is that a word? Sloughing?

My whole lower face, just flaking, and painful, and burny.

The part of my faces that I used the Apricot shit on.

Maybe I should look at the motherfucking label, you know?

Yeah.  That Apricot Scrub shit was was completely different from what I thought it was, and the active ingredient was Salicylic acid and I had just washed my face with freaking alien blood.

Twice.

Because chemical burns are really good for removing dead skin and acne.

And live skin. And my flesh.

But no, I am not hiding because of that.

And no, I am not hiding from the office zombies that want to eat my brains. I mean, seriously, those things have an awesome sense of smell, and would totally find me at my desk, especially since I keep putting this Oatmeal and Shea Butter lotion on my burny face… holy fuck, y’all. I just noticed this lotion is totally from St. Ives, too. Those Swiss bastards are probably going to give me boils or some shit and call it “invigorating” for the skin.

Anyhoo. What was I talking about?

Right.

Hiding at desk.

And failing.

It turns out, you can’t actually hide from your email, especially when you are sitting at a computer all day, even if you are getting up every five minutes to add moisturizer.