Kitchen midden

[mallorys_camera]

I desperately need a vacation. The kamikaze strike on Disneyland with Robin, Kodiak, Griffin and Grandma Nancy planned for early next week is not the vacation I need (nor, as it turns out was Mortal Love which loses it big time in the last 100 pages) but hey, I’ll take what I can get.

When the smoke cleared, the store’s gross sales for the month of September were well over five figures, down 25% from the halcyon months of summer – you loved the sleeping pill, now thrill to the onset of the actual weather conditions! – but much higher than I feared they would be in those last listless days of August. Cash flow numbers are not quite as reassuring: I had to wring quite a bit of money out of the business to pay Max’s tuition. After a couple of months of sleeping like I was dead, I’ve resumed bolting awake at 2 AM when infomercials sing their siren song.

As always, I’m really impressed by the infomercials’ ingenuity. How To Make A Million Dollars While Sitting Around At the Kitchen Table In Your Dirty Underwear. (Unclear how dirty your underwear has to be before the Big Buck$ start rolling in – are we talking skid marks or just a little ring-around-the-elastic?) Why You Should Pay $160 A Bottle For An OTC Weightloss Pill That Doesn’t Contain Amphetamines. (Presumably the secret here is that you’re so fucking embarrassed about how much you paid for them that you can’t bring yourself to open your mouth.)

This sense of kitchen midden is growing stronger and stronger. Just so fucking much to do, lists to maintain, piles to sort, important papers to file, figures to extract from one set of coffee-stained documents and enter into another. I feel overwhelmed.

Still, a guy drove all the way from Atwater yesterday, two and a half hours in the rain, just to come to the store.

“You’re going to the aquarium too, aren’t you?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“But the baby shark –“

“If I want to see a shark, I’ll rent Jaws,” he said.

“You’re going out to lunch?”

“Nope. I mean maybe I’ll grab a burger at MacDonalds. But I came here to check out the hot sauce store.”

“And…? I mean – do you like it?” What I wanted to say was does it meet your expectations? but I figured a word like “expectations” might label me as a pointy-headed intellectual, not the Mad Dog-packin’ Mama of chilehead fantasy. Festively, I readjusted a fallen bra strap and beamed.

He grinned back. “It’s great. Outstanding. I’m definitely gonna spread the word.”

Jesus couldn’t have given the Sistine Chapel ceiling a better review.