Let's Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir)

 

1. My mom just read this chapter and asked me to clarify that the goats are outside animals. They don’t live here in the house with us. I’m not sure why I have to clarify that, but then I reread the chapter with new eyes and I guess that goats sleeping at the foot of our beds wouldn’t be that strange, comparatively. So, yeah, the goats don’t live in the house with us. That would be weird. And unsanitary. Plus, the goats aren’t even ours. They’re rented goats, because my dad has too much grass, and his friend has too many goats. This all makes sense if you live in the country. Probably.

 

2. Please ignore this sentence if Lance Armstrong is dead when you read this. I swear, he looked totally healthy when I wrote this, but the guy isn’t going to live forever, because he’s not a vampire, y’all. So I thought I should clarify that as of this moment Lance Armstrong is awesome. Even with only one ball. Hell, especially with only one ball. I’m going to stop now.

 

 

 

 

 

Stabbed by Chicken

 

A couple of years ago one of my fingers swelled up like an enormous wiener. The kind you get at the ballpark that plumps when you cook it. Not the other kind. That would be weird. I don’t even know why I’m clarifying this. You know what? Let’s start again.

 

A couple of years ago one of my fingers swelled up like an enormous vagina. Kidding. It actually just swelled up like a giant swollen finger. It looked like I was wearing one of those “we’re number one!” foam fingers, except that I wasn’t. Sometime during the night I had been struck down with a case of lethal finger cancer. Victor rolled his eyes and muttered that I was a chronic hypochondriac, and I glared at him and rubbed my enormous nonfoam finger down his cheek, whispering, “Thinner.” Then he made me go to the doctor. Alone. Because apparently he thinks I’m strong enough to handle a finger cancer diagnosis with absolutely no support. Or because he’s emotionally shut down and didn’t want to consider my own mortality. Or because he thought I’d just injured it again, like the time when our dog stabbed me with a chicken in the finger. Probably the last one.

 

This is the point where I would go into detail about my finger cancer, but my editor just read this and told me that you can’t claim that your dog stabbed you with chicken and not logically explain that. I told her that logic didn’t enter into it and she agreed, but probably not for the same reasons. So, fine. Here is the prequel to the cancerfingersplosion story, which I pretty much just pulled from my blog because it happened years ago and I only vaguely remember the details. Because I blocked them out. Because my dog tried to kill me. With chicken.

 

Blog entry: I can barely even type this because my hand is all swollen, but I was just carrying my pug (Barnaby Jones Pickles) into bed when he suddenly did this flip that almost broke my middle finger, and then he ran in between my legs, and I fell so hard that I couldn’t even move. And just to make it more festive, the dog was jumping on my head (probably to make it seem like we were just play-wrestling and that he wasn’t trying to murder me, in case witnesses were watching), but I wasn’t falling for it, so I yelled for Victor, who found me lying on my stomach in front of the fridge. He was all, “What. The fuck. Did you do?” and I said, “The dog tried to kill me.” Then Victor leaned down and raised an unnecessary eyebrow as he said in disbelief, “Our dog? Our tiny little dog did this to you?” and I was all, “HE’S LIKE A NINJA!” Then Victor said, “He’s a fucking pug. He can’t even reach the couch,” and I was all, “I’M VULNERABLE, ASSHOLE,” and then Victor tried to help me up, and I screamed because I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to move an accident victim, because they could be paralyzed.