We didn’t have any potatoes. The rain had fallen in patches that year, pressing its fingertips into rows of beans, fields of corn, the tomato plants and the peppers. The layer of soil over the potatoes stayed dry and pale as we stared and waited; little holes appeared in the dirt where the plants tried to suck the moisture out of the ground. In the evening we threaded fistfuls of beans through our fingers to boil on the stove for dinner. Our hands closed around tomatoes in the perfect rounded shape, and the ears of yellow corn folded neatly into our baskets. But late at night my palms began to itch, missing the rough skin of the potatoes. I tiptoed out of the house and around the barn to the spigot, where I filled my bucket until it was almost too heavy to lift. Back and forth from the spigot to the plot I went, dumping water on the soil and turning back for more until my legs stiffened with exhaustion and I stumbled back to bed. The next morning we found the potatoes risen from the ground, floating shriveled and small in their skins, having drowned in the night.

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As soon as I posted about my current and past stitches, I got messages from my relatives across a variety of media. My cousin commented on Facebook in response to my blog post, “Maybe you should not have dove into the shallow end of the pool…. Just saying” (thanks for the support!) while my mom texted me to say “Did you also have stitches for wisdom teeth…? I’ll never tell” (thanks for the…subterfuge?).

I don’t remember much about having my wisdom teeth out–no, that’s a lie. I remember pretty much everything, from the cowboy boots the oral surgeon was wearing to the last thing I said before the laughing gas pulled me under (something like “Take me with you!” when the doctor mentioned Florida) to the disappointment when, waking from the anesthesia, I felt “normal” (in contrast to my friend–of toothpick-in-the-arm fame–who said the most hilarious things when she emerged drooling and puffy from her wisdom tooth removal). (I couldn’t talk, so on the drive home I tried to mmmphhh mmppphhh  mmmphh to my mom all about how I didn’t feel weird at all, and finally she handed me my dad’s atlas and a pen…and when I looked back later, I had drawn a bunch of random lines.)

A little Google research shows that oral surgeons sometimes put in dissolvable stitches and other times they don’t need to…just as some doctors (like mine) prescribe Vicodin (I only took it for the first couple of days, but the main effect I remember is that when I woke up on my couch, I felt like my hands and feet were in all different corners of the room) and others prescribe Tylenol. I probably had stitches when my wisdom teeth were taken out, which would make them my third set of stitches and ruin my attempt at a fibonacci-esque pattern of stitch getting…or we could just say that since I don’t remember and there’s no way to know, I can still claim 1, 2, and 3 stitches on a technicality.

Technicalities are also what allow me to say I’ve never had a broken bone. I most likely broke my big toe on a trampoline when I was eleven, but I never went to the doctor so I can’t say for sure. I can only say that my toe swelled up right before our family vacation to Gatlinburg and it made donning my water socks VERY difficult, so I was the most grumpy creek-explorer of the 10 or so kids on that vacation (which was not actually my family vacation, but my friend’s family’s (yes, toothpick friend)). In college, I possibly broke my middle finger playing flag football, which resulted in me playing an orchestra concert as the harpist flipping everyone the bird with her silver finger splint. That time I *did* go to the doctor and had an x-ray…which turned out to be inconclusive because the radiologist couldn’t tell if the dark line she saw was a hairline fracture or a vein. (My roommate broke her middle finger–on the opposite hand–two days later, by dropping her bed frame on it–it was not a good time to be a hand in our household).

In conclusion: inconclusive.

But my tongue is starting to look like a regular tongue again.

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I currently have stitches in my tongue, due to a minor procedure to remove a fibroma from biting the side of my tongue/scar tissue forming (I think of all of the times I’ve bitten my tongue without this happening…and then I think about how counterintuitive it is that cutting my tongue intentionally would not just create more scar tissue–I guess it’s like resetting a broken bone so that it’s done right). The stitches are the dissolvable kind (I’m not totally clear on whether they’re even still in there–there’s a lot going on in that sector of my tongue at present), though I don’t know if they actually *dissolve* or just fall out.  

Thinking about my stitches (which are, by the way, the third–I think–time I’ve had stitches; the first two were 1) When I needed one stitch after being grazed with the c-section knife during birth; 2) When I needed two stitches after cutting my philtrum just above my upper lip on the bottom of a swimming pool (don’t ask; it was the great shame of my eleven years and frankly my greatest shame for a while longer); now I have three stitches in my tongue, or I did at one point) makes me think about the other medical devices that live, impermanently or permanently, in people’s bodies. A stent in the heart. A metal rod in the leg. The silver retainer backing my bottom teeth. Ashes to ashes.

My friend has a piece of toothpick petrified in her arm. When we were seven or eight, the two of us and another friend were being babysat while our three sets of parents were out to dinner. (This babysitter, who was my mom’s preschool student and whose mom was my preschool teacher, introduced me to Metallica and Nintendo–and not that my parents ever blamed him for what happened, but even if they had, he already had tremendous goodwill built up from Enter Sandman and Kid Icarus.) Our other friend was showing us something with a bunch of toothpicks–I don’t know, one of those kid party tricks like “How do you make nine out of ten?” but when we couldn’t figure it out, my other friend got bored and started sticking the toothpicks upright in the carpet like little stalagmites. When we heard the door signaling that our parents were back, she jumped up to go greet them, tripped, and landed on one of the toothpicks. 

I remember a lot of screeching that night back at her house when her mom tried to remove it with scissors. She got half of it. The doctor said the other half would dissolve and be reabsorbed (what’s this RE? The toothpick wasn’t part of her body initially) by her body. Nope! It’s still in there, and if you catch it at the right moment, it stands at attention, a little landmark on her forearm.

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There’s a pharmacy in my neighborhood that I would describe as either an old-school drug store or a magical font of whatever I happen to need at a given moment. I’m sure I could tempt things by going there looking for something really outlandish, but to date I’ve gone there–sometimes on the same day–looking for compression tights, an international outlet converter, face oil, a specific and uncommon hair dye, a zebra hat, and a computer case, and have found ALL of them.

Recently, I discovered that this pharmacy is now a UPS Delivery Point, which means that if UPS can’t deliver my package because I’m not home and I have no stoop to compensate for a tiny mailbox, I’m not faced with the option of a) letting the package get returned to sender; b) trekking to the UPS facility many trains away from me in Brooklyn. Instead I go to the pharmacy, make my way to the back where there are shelves full of braces and splints for every body part, and show them my UPS notice. They are, generally, more consistent than the local post office.

In contrast, I present the Electronics Store at the Amsterdam airport (I went there looking for a macbook cover…because although I’d found one at my pharmacy in addition to the necessary international outlet converter and compression tights). At the Electronics Store (that was its title), you could buy a MacBook itself, numerous renditions of iPad covers, a vibrator, or A SEGWAY…but not a MacBook cover.

Now I’m thinking about things that we cover in order to protect them–even if that sometimes means covering up the thing we want to see, such that it can never be taken from us even if we never get to enjoy looking at it–and things we cover so that we don’t have to be in contact with them. In column A: tables, couches, MacBooks, hair. In column B: mattresses, toilet lids, cold tile floors. It seems like there probably isn’t any overlap, since the two categories are at direct odds, but if I can ever think of something that fits in both I’ll make a Venn Diagram for it. And by “for it,” I mean in its honor.

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Sometimes I feel slightly cheated when I tune my harp but then don’t play it before it goes out of tune again. Several points against me here: one, I should have played it after tuning, or at the least the next day when it’s still in reasonable tune; two, it’s good for the harp to tune it every day even if I’m not playing it every day–the more regular the tension of the strings on the wood, the more likely it is to stay in tune longer/require less involved tuning; three, those were actually the only two points against me and I misused the definition of several. Though in adding the third point, I corrected my definition of “several,” which then negates the third point…so essentially, this is a feedback loop of lies (and wouldn’t *that* be a good title for a Lifetime Original Movie about an audio engineer who’s cheating on her husband).

A friend introduced me to an app called Three Wins. It’s a simple conceit: type in three things that you want to accomplish on a daily basis, and check them off as you complete them. I save my paper lists for weekly tasks or ongoing projects and I don’t always get to check them off, so to have an app that presents me with a burst of confetti if I–1) harp 2) Duolingo 3) wash face–daily is reliably exciting. Originally I had “writing” as one of my three tasks, but that was too intimidating. And yes, I need a small digital incentive to actually wash my face with face wash and water at least once a day instead of relying on face wipes that smell like cucumber.

I enjoy having things that staple me to different points in my day, my week, my year. (months feel less predictable to me. They each have such different characters.) It’s always nice to have a structure to hang things on.

(I once had a dream that someone stapled me to a wall–by my clothes; nothing violent–so that I was just sort of hanging there, and it was incredibly soothing).

Today is pi day. It’s 3/14, 1:59 pm! Pi day was always one of the two days on which we were allowed to eat in the lab during chemistry in high school (I say always because I had this particular chemistry teacher for Chem and AP Chem and then was a lab aide for his Chem class during my senior year; also, I’ve already abused the definition of “several” in this post, so I might as well be consistent in my disdain for the accuracy of time words). The other eating-in-lab day was Mole Day, less frequently known as Avogadro’s number day. Conveniently, no matter which nomenclature you prefer, both titles lend themselves to punny dishes that have to do with avocados or guacamole.

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She was stretched against the castle, one arm shielding her face from the sunlight. Somehow she had managed a relaxed sprawl even though the concrete banks of the empty moat wedged her in. Windows like pinpricks let the light through in threads, wavering across her t-shirt and faded jeans, teasing the outlines of her arms and hands. Above her, the towers cast disproportionate shadows, appearing to loom high and away though they would reach only to her waist if she stood.

When she awoke the concrete beneath her was beginning to cool; its cobblestones had left their pattern imprinted on her back. She pressed an arm against the castle’s wall to stretch, bracing her foot against the ground. As she stood she leaned against the middle steeple, holding onto its scalloped edge for balance. After brushing the bits of dirt and leaves from her pants, her hands searched for, found, and patted her hair, rumpled from sleep. She had been dreaming of tiny horses, the pin-drop clatter of miniature hooves and the tossing of manes the size of her fingertips.

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A subway story

Two middle-aged women on the train:

Woman 1, complaining about her husband’s kissing style: “I want all lip! Nothing but lip. Did they get BIGGER in the last seven years? I did not sign up for this. I shouldn’t feel teeth. I don’t want to feel your goddamn teeth!”

Woman 2, making best efforts at sympathy: “Well, James is not the best kisser. He’s a sucker.”

An exchange

Me to young student: “What do you want to write your poem about?”

Student: “Well, I thought of three options: a princess, a stuffed lamb, or my hatred for Donald Trump.”

A cartoon idea

Young crow rolling eyes at old crow while group of other young crows loiters by: “It’s called a squad, Dad! No one says murder anymore!”

A definition

Snackered: exhausted from eating too many finger foods

Some options

Everybody wants to:

A) Feel important

B) Be a cat

Cure is a good word for:

A) Meat

B) Feelings

C) Diseases

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You can make almost any title better by taking a cue from nature TV and bestowing the subtitle “Spy in the Huddle.” (I actually wish they had confined that brilliance to Penguins: Spy in the Huddle rather than extending it to a trope. Spy in the forest! Spy in the nest! Kind of dilutes it.) But I also like to play with the Lifetime Original Movie structure and add “The __________ story.” E.g. Serious Colors: The Claire Dunnington Story. Or Herd Subjectivity: The Internet Story. Or what have you. Why do I like that calculus–phrase, colon, the (person’s name) story better than the repetition of Spy in the _____? I can’t say. Maybe the placement.

In addition to having titles swirling around us at all times, it would be fun to have chyrons floating around us with our personal brand slogans, like TV networks do. By fun I mean interruptive, and Philip K Dick-y, and cluttering to personal space, but also fun. I guess chyrons and slogans are two separate things. We could have both: a logo and a phrase.

Once we have all of these things…we should probably each have our own four-note (or thereabouts) personal jingles. I am still baffled when I think about how much major companies pay for those. Every time I remember I spend the next 20 minutes thinking about why certain things are valued so highly and others are not. (But really: the first four notes of this cost an absurd amount of money. Or am I wrong? Maybe that amount of money was for the entire 21 second songlet?)

None of this compares to my ultimate childhood dream of all people having their own combination barbershop quartet/Greek chorus to follow them around and sing about their lives. Don’t worry; you could make it disappear if you tired of it. Possibly by clapping. It would function under the same technology as “Clap On” (clap clap) “Clap Off” (clap, clap clap) lights. And I’m sure the jingle for THAT one was a kingly sum.

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Every Valentine’s Day–or when I realize it’s coming–I put on Outkast’s “Happy Valentine’s Day,” and every year I find myself wishing for more date specific songs. There’s Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “September,” which narrows down to the particular day (21st) within its lyrics, and there’s “Oh What a Night,” which never actually specifies which night in late December but does get bonus points for naming the year (1963). I’m sure I could find others via Google, but I guess I’m content enough to let them come to me one by one.

“Date-Specific Songs” joins a number of half-populated playlists in my iTunes. I think I like coming up with categories more than I like actually curating the lists. I have totally empty playlists titled “Killer Key Change” and “Kick in the back of the knees” and “Spin around in desk chair songs,” along with “Questionable Life Decisions,” though I have to say that one actually has a fair number of songs in it.

I also enjoy the Venn diagram union of themes + specific dates in the clothing arena. Holidays are a great excuse to dress monochromatically, or in a combination that wouldn’t ordinarily present itself. It’s like having constraints put on your writing: it makes getting started much easier and is paradoxically freeing. Sometimes I give myself a color assignment on a random day just to narrow things down. Sometimes I title a playlist and never put anything in it.

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Being a child is confusing, and there were numerous things that confused me as a kid, but only a few that truly baffled me.

One was Groundhog’s Day. Okay, if he sees his shadow he gets scared and goes back in the hole, and that means six more weeks of winter? But if he’s seeing his shadow, that means the SUN is out. If he DOESN’T see his shadow that should mean more winter.

Also: poinsettias. It was utterly beyond me, when I was five and my aunt told me that poinsettias are poisonous, why they were poisonous. “But no one eats them!” I kept saying, which must have been really fun for her to try to rejoinder. “What’s the point of a flower being poisonous when no one eats flowers?”

The greater than and less than signs really gave me fits in first grade. I understood what “greater than” and “less than” meant, but I couldn’t figure out how you could tell the two signs apart…wasn’t one number always greater than and one always less than? The crux of the issue was: I didn’t realize that you were supposed to read them left to right. So 4 < 12 … sure, I know four is less than twelve. But twelve is greater than four. So which is it? A greater than or less than sign? I couldn’t articulate my problem to my teacher, so I think that remained a mystery for a while longer.

Then there were the things that didn’t confuse me because I had no idea I was getting them wrong, or that there was a different – correct – interpretation. I believe I was in my twenties when I realized that the lyric “Call it sad, call it funny – but it’s better than even money! – that that guy’s, only doing it, for some doll!” was making a gambling reference: even money. Until then, I thought they were saying gosh, it’s just so great, it’s even better than money!

…I also thought that my devoutly religious relative’s car had an LED screen on its CD console that said “LORD” in digital type when the car started. It actually was commanding the driver to “LOAD” a CD, so I may not be the most reliable narrator.

(Come on! I figured you could probably program it to spell out whatever you wanted, or something along those lines! It was the 90s.)

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