Head in the clouds

I've been in sort of a daze the last few days, and part of it is because I discovered a new (old) addiction. I've always been a big reader-- writers who don't read don't make any sense to me, live vegetarians who hate vegetables. But I've had a rough time lately getting the time to really read. This week, though, I found a new thing. I can download books, especially classics, for practically nothing, and then read them on my giant phone which is almost like a Kindle. I have a phone that is so big people laugh when they see it and ask me how I use it as an actual phone. But it's great for reading, and even though I have always been staunchly old school when it comes to reading actual three dimensional paper books, I realized this week how handy the phone is. Because it fits in the back pocket of jeans and I can whip it out and read while I'm standing in the kitchen waiting for coffee to brew, or browning meat, or folding clothes. I don't even need two hands.

 Anyway--- I'm not abandoning my ideals of an actual flesh-and-blood paper book or jumping on the technology bandwagon, but I have read three books in three days. Consequently, I have done no writing. There are downsides too, major ones. I'm like an addict, like one of those crazy people that gets so hooked into video games that they just have a heart attack all of a sudden. Okay maybe it's not that bad, but it's a little crazy how much I love reading. It always cracks me up when people put down reading as a hobby. It doesn't feel like a hobby to me. Building little models of stuff or gluing macaroni to things is more hobby-ish in my head than reading. 

All this reading left a big store of useless but entertaining thoughts in my brain that I've been bursting to share with someone. So here they are, in no particular order:

There used to be this show on television called Medium, with Patricia Arquette. This is in no way an endorsement of that show although I really like it, and I spend a lot of time when I'm not reading, cooking, doing laundry, cleaning, writing, changing diapers, etc., thinking about it. Okay mostly this thinking time is when I'm in the shower, but don't let that debase it for you. I sometimes have my most awesome epiphanies in the shower. Anyway in that show when you die, you are wearing what you were last wearing in life. The main character, Allison, doesn’t seem to see naked dead people that I can recall, so I’m assuming the universe defaults to your last living person outfit.  I was in the shower thinking about how if that’s true I hope I don’t die in my sleep or wearing my laundry day outfit with the non-sexy boring white cotton panties and mismatched bra and ill-fitting t-shirt and holey jeans that are holey from real actual age and not fashionably holey. I don’t think I would like that for eternity. 

And maybe it's just me, but I sometimes think about what would happen if I died unexpectedly, or if the zombie apocalypse started very suddenly at night when everyone except the zombies was asleep. Zombie apocalypses in movies seem to start quite suddenly without much warning, like a tsunami. I think I would wake up pretty quickly but without shoes and a bra on I don’t know how long I would survive.  I never feel prepared without a bra on, but even if I wanted to be in a constant state of impending zombie preparedness, I couldn't sleep in a bra.

 I think zombies would go for me pretty quickly if I was ever caught off guard. I have the mad ninja skills and all but I’m also a realist and I don’t know this for a fact but I’m pretty sure that I taste delicious. I know this from mosquitoes. Those sucky little fiends love me. Love. I am a delicious tasty treat that even the hard core heavy duty cancer inducing chemicals designed to kill mosquitoes on contact have almost no effect on them. They think that DEET is like savory seasoning on my skin, making me even tastier. So even though nothing except mosquitoes has ever taken a nip of me and come back for more, like the alligator in Captain Hook or the bear in that movie with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin or the man-eating sharks that once they get a taste only search for human flesh, I’m pretty sure one little nip and I’d be a goner. 

Although maybe that would be more true in the case of a vampire apocalypse of some sort, but generally vampires are more sophisticated and intelligent and they know that if they wait awhile I would be all full of blood again and so they’d keep me around, maybe on a chain in a golden bikini like Princess Leia in Star Wars, and take a sip every once in a while. Or I’d be like a really fancy kind of wine, like Champagne, where they’d bottle and sell my blood because it’s just so darn tasty. I’m not trying to be vain or anything. I’m just being honest—my blood is really good stuff, which might be an asset to vampires but would probably be my doom when it comes to zombies.

 But back to the realm of reality. The show Medium and other unwholesome shows like CSI and Bones and Castle also make me worried, not just about dying without a bra or shoes but having something criminal happen to me, like getting murdered. I probably watch way too many crime dramas. Anyway, then I would want to be fully clothed because it would be super awkward should the likes of Nathan Fillion (from Castle) come to the crime scene. I wouldn’t want him to see my giblets. But if I was in super good shape, with rock hard abs I wouldn’t care probably. Which is a good reason to work out, or one of the most random and far-fetched reasons to work out ever. It's also a good reason to always have painted toenails and nice smooth legs and sexy underpants on at all times, because you just never know.  When I lived in Hawaii I only ever wore flip flops and shorts and a tank top with a bikini under it, because I was constantly ready to go swimming or surfing. Almost all the time. I don’t think I owned other clothes—actually I know I didn’t because when we came to Seattle for Christmas one year I had to buy a coat and long pants when we got there, because there were none for sale on the island. But anyway at least I was always ready to go swimming, and that’s how I feel about being murdered. I just always want to be prepared—that’s not morbid, it’s just good sense, like a Boy Scout. 

Julie Simmons-Wixom is currently unavailable for sane, rational conversation. Email her here if you want non-sane conversation or random ramblings of an otherwise preoccupied psyche.