So... Welcome?

Um. Hello.

So ... you found it. My blog. Hi.

My name is Shady. I live in the state of Colorado. Apparently we lost a pretty important sporting event. I think it had to do with football? I'm sorry.

If you are a previous follower (dad, english teacher, carrot bestower, chicken man, etc) I must now alert you that I am going to have to step up my game. Are there athletic blogging thimbles for typing? I'll have to look into that.

What happened is my mother found my blog.

She then shared it on her facebook page (of which I do not have) which resulted in this site now being filled with ALL OF HER FRIENDS WHICH IS SO COOL.

When I started this blog, it was sort of just me standing in a corner talking to myself, as usual.

Then some people showed up. Like, two, three, six, here and there.

So I sort of just kept talking to myself and figuring stuff out and telling stories with my back turned to the audience. Because it's really important to tell things the way they are, and it's hard not to lie when you know people are listening. So I closed my eyes and stood in the corner and kept talking.

And, a year later, I think hey, maybe it's time I turn around for a second, and I see

How did my mother make so many friends? I do not know. Facebook is generally a mystery to me.

So, after accepting the fact that I had been spotted and staged and must now perform, I decided on a list of things to do in order to appeal to my audience and avoid further embarrassment. 

With help from the stats bar, this will, from now on, probably be the best blog ever. (Note to previous followers: I was planning on a Homecoming Hindsight sequel for the Sadie Hawkins assembly, but I think this time you're going to have to use your imaginations.) 

So, to distant relatives and newly found adult friends, welcome! I will now post adult-y things about taxes and car insurance and we will all have a lovely time. 

Welcome to my blog.

-The Tree Monster

Ironing My Future

I was on my second cup of tea and I don't even really like tea and it was finals week and I should have been studying but instead I was ironing.

I am the only person left in the family who irons. Everybody else just stopped wearing clothes that required it. And the ironing board is just barely holding on to the wall with half a screw and I wait until the house is dark and quiet before starting because I don't want a kid to come dashing through the hallway and get burned.

And it was on this night when I ironed a crease in a shirt where it wasn't supposed to be and shouted

Then, it dawned on me.

It isn't that I am absolutely sure to fail. It's just that it's likely.

But this world doesn't really seem to appreciate most of these things.

There it was.

The night before finals.

The loophole.

I could marry a businessman.

This is what happened in my head that night:

Ironing? Totally useful.

(sometime in the future)

It was brilliant. All I'd have to do is get really good at ironing - I'm talking apron, oven mitts, the whole deal - and be able to pull off trophy wiving, and boom -- total success. Totally not homeless.

The only problem was - well, there were a lot of problems.

I'm not exactly a natural trophy wife. There are a lot of factors involved.

These are all things I am bad at.

I could be perfect at ironing, right? Like, totally pro. No creases. Ever. And then there'll be some guy in a flannel someday start telling me about his favorite authors and I'll have to say, "I'm sorry sir, but ONE of us has to marry rich. Or at least end up halfway successful. Somebody's gotta sell here. I'm sorry dude. Have fun with your wood carving career though. You're really interesting. And your shirt isn't ironed properly. But that's okay because you're an artist and it's okay for you to have creases in your shirt."

I continued my ironing that night with a new sense of purpose and a new set of goals. All I have to do now is get really good at enslaving men with my good looks and charm, and then the ironing will be like a surprise. Like a hidden talent. And I won't tell him until the day after the marriage papers are signed and all of his shirts will be perfectly ironed and he'll say,

"Shady, did you do this? Did you really do this?"

MORAL: There is no moral because I no longer need morals. I am going to marry rich and nothing is going to stop me.

(Just kidding. I couldn't ever really marry rich because I can't even do the tricking-you-into-thinking-I'm-pretty thing. I don't really even iron exceptionally well. Also I passed most of the finals and probably won't end up homeless. Don't worry, Christie. There's always the postal service.)

Boyfriends and Whales

I've never actually been 'asked out', which is something most students ages 5-10 have been. I'd like to think it's not because I am undateable in the eyes of a third grader, but really just because I'm not the kind of girl one would think to date.

Of course, it happened to everyone at some point. A cute little note passed under a desk, slipped into a lunchbox, stating in cute little handwriting something equally cute such as "I like you" or "Will you be my girlfriend?" And I was always such a magic-killer I'd say there's no point to being someone's girlfriend unless you get married or something, and no one should get married because marriage doesn't work.

Granted, this was the same kid that got dragged out of kindergarten for actively shunning the belief in Santa.

So I guess you could say there's this piece of my childhood missing. And I never really felt it was there, of course, until yesterday.

Things are always getting thrown at me. Usually on accident. And though I always pick up every piece of paper I come across, I have learned that most of the carefully folded and crumpled notes students throw to one another have nothing inside once you open them. Plus you look really stupid while doing it.

So I turned and looked and saw one very wide-eyed, very frightened boy and one laughing-mouthed, excited-looking friend.

I ripped a piece of paper to throw back. (Spanish is a very boring class.) Just as a thought, right before launching it, in case they might think to open it, I drew a whale.

And, a few seconds after throwing it, heard this:

"Oh my god. Oh. My god. How did this happen. She didn't OPEN it? How could it not have worked?! Our tactics were so certain to succeed! The plan was so sure! Oh my god!"

So I frantically searched under the desk until I found an almost invisible little folded up scrap of paper which read, with all the eloquence of a prince...

This really isn't the kind of thing that happens to me. I had no clue how to react. So I drew another whale and threw it back.

And got a second attempt:

And sent this:

And got this:

And sent this:

At one point, one of the pieces of folded-up paper hit the kid sitting in front of me, causing such a loud and sudden panic from the three in the back of the classroom that he quickly and nervously gave it back to me.

Class was almost over and I was very confused. This is because,

1- Keegan is a complete stranger,
2- No one ever wants to date me anyway, and,
3- This kid would probably run and cry if a girl held his hand.

And as I packed up, I overheard the friend coaching this Keegan kid:

"Dude. Dude. Dude. You have to go over there."
"I can't!"
"You have to get an answer OTHER THAN a whale."
"No."
"It's the only way, Keegan. She can't answer with a whale drawing if you ask her in person."
"But what if she does?"
"It's a chance we're willing to take."

After the bell rang I called Lafflin for advice.

He explained the situation of the whales to his mother, who was laughing loud enough for me to hear, and asked her what I should do.

"She said to be honest."

"Tell her she is very wise."

There is only one way to be honest.

MORAL OF THE STORY: When you can't say yes and you can't say no, say sea mammal.

The Story of Stolen Carrots

I hadn't packed a lunch on the day the carrots were bestowed upon me.

It was windy, I think, and I was sitting in the grass as the others ate their lunches, and I was trying not to think about food when, suddenly, a bag of carrots fell out of the sky at my feet.

"Holy cow," I thought. "Carrots."

I waited for someone to come claim them but no one did.

People were filing into the building then, and lunch was almost over, and though my conscious will fought against it, my stomach reached out and I took the carrots off the grass and stuffed them into my hoodie.

Just then, a small group of girls walked over to where we were sitting, and one of them said,

"Dude, where are the carrots? Where could they have gone? They aren't anywhere,"

and I looked into my jacket at the poor bag of carrots, pleading to rejoin their beloved master...

and I said nothing. I watched them walk away and held it all in and let them believe their beloved carrots were gone forever and ever.

I was a thief and a kidnapper, and there was no going back.

I ripped the bag open like an animal, furiously eating the stolen food against my own true will, which was slowly being torn apart with each and every carrot consumed.

They were far from gone by the time I got to class, and so I ended up sneakily eating stolen carrots during a geography test.

Carrots are not passive in their death. They do not accept their tragic fate, giving in to the fact that they have been taken from their homes and will be eaten by someone they do not belong to. Carrots die in protest, yelling and fighting their way to dust.

You do not notice this is the case until you have tried to eat carrots silently in a silent room.

Even if you succeed in muffling this sound even a little bit, the smell will give them away. I knew it would. It must. Nervously tapping pencil to paper, reaching from pocket to mouth, I continued eating carrot after carrot, constantly awaiting the teacher to, at any second, suddenly leap from her seat and shout, "THAT IS THE SMELL OF STOLEN CARROTS!"

It never happened.

What happened instead was an empty plastic bag that smelled like dirt and a terribly empty conscience.

Because, see, I had expected to feel guilty. I had expected to repent of my thieving ways and swear to never again eat such a thing as stolen carrots, to await my fate of inevitable punishment and take it more graciously than the carrots.

But I didn't choose the carrot thug life.

The carrot thug life chose me.

And there was no going back.

I saw the carrots' rightful owner in the next class, and by this time, my stomach was no longer in control of my mind and I could do as I pleased. For I was now a carrot thief and carrot thieves do what they want.

"So, um..." I put the question forward. "You been missing any ... carrots?"

And she laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed. And laughed. And I laughed too because maybe the carrots had fallen from the sky and maybe I wasn't a thug and wow what a day to be alive.

"This girl brings these disgusting carrots to lunch every day," she said, "and never eats them. And every day, we end up just throwing them at each other, waiting for someone to eat them. The carrot war got so bad today, I took the bag from them and held it to the sky and shouted 'THIS HAS BROUGHT US NOTHING BUT MISERY', and I threw it as far as I could.

"That was the last we saw of the carrots. And we hoped they had found someone who could put them to better use than we had."

MORAL OF THE STORY: Don't steal things even though it sometimes turns out perfectly because most carrots that fall from the sky are already cursed.



(The worst part of this story is that my parents had forgotten to tell me that we qualify for free school lunches.)

There is a Moral to this Story.

Last night, I found myself with the urge to rip up scraps of paper and write "positivity messages" on them. Such as "Happy autumn" and "Your life is beautiful". These would be distributed through wind and curiosity, ending up with whoever finds them, in the hopes of brightening someone's day.

It's a good thing, right?

Right.

Full of good intentions.

Last year, I followed a kid around everywhere in fear of his getting hurt. This ended in a strange and unusual friendship consisting of me following him home and him not getting hurt and me being called "creepy" and me continuing to be "creepy". Bad stalking is following someone to hurt them. Good stalking is following someone to avoid their being hurt. Like Spiderman.

It's a good thing, right?

Right.

So very full of good intentions.

I have my first class off every other morning, and this morning I decided hey, why not go for a walk around the neighborhood and stick these little paper slips around in little places people look - you know, on windshields, in the flags of mailboxes, cracks in the sidewalks, things like that. So I did.

I walked for a while, spreading nice things.

Then I turned a corner, by unconscious muscle memory, and realized it was a street without any mailboxes. That meant I couldn't actually stick pieces of paper in the flags of the mailboxes - which is, by the way, probably illegal. Do not repeat this.

It was then that I noticed, you guessed it, Lafflin's house.

In front of his house is a white electrician's van. And on the van is a warning illustration of a man being electrocuted. But when I passed by the first time, I was walking too hurriedly to really get a good look at it, my logic being that I didn't want Lafflin's brothers to come outside because I was suspiciously looking around their car.

In the end I decided I had really better get a closer look so I turned around and came back the other way, circling the van, when I looked at the house and noticed that the blinds were no longer drawn.

And I had almost gotten away when I heard a "Shady?"

And I turned around and said "Hello."

"What are you doing?"

At which point I should have explained about the positivity messages but instead I just said, in a voice of an extremely unconvincing lie,

"I have a class off, and I was going for a walk, when I saw this thing on the van, and ... I ... wanted to see it."

"..."

"Is it a guy getting electrocuted? ... Yep. ... Guy getting electrocuted."

It kills me how completely honest I was being and how awfully it must have been received as a total lie. "No, Mrs. Lafflin's mom, I was actually just walking around the front of your house because I am the opposite of a danger to your son and if we can all just learn to get along and if such things were socially acceptable then I wouldn't feel so nervously guilty for doing the not-wrong thing and I would sound less like a paranoid phony."

"Um."

"So how are you doing?"

She was wearing morning clothes. Maybe they were pajamas. Or they were just everyday clothes. Mostly though they just looked like morning clothes.

The sun was slanting and I was wearing the exact same thing I had been wearing the last time she had seen me three months ago.

"I'm good, how are you?"

"Good...good."

Isn't it weird how when somebody asks how you are, you always, always have you say you're good? Even when you're not? I tried saying "well" for a while but it just freaked everybody out.

"That's good."

"Sorry for running away last time."

"Oh that's okay." She was smiling and wearing glasses that I don't think she had been wearing last time.

Their three dogs were barking hysterically in the front window. The last time I had been there the dogs had loved me. Then I figured, with a flash of brilliance, that these dogs were probably the cause of why Lafflin's mother was standing on her front porch talking to a girl who called her son her son. It was a paradox, a horrifically awkward paradox - talking with my son's mother.

She went on, smiling confusedly, begging forgiveness. "I'm just not yet used to this whole...social...interaction."

Almost as awkward as me in the situation, really.

"Oh me neither. I'm not too used to...having...friends."

This is a lie. I am very very used to having friends. I do not, however, walk to their house accidentally on purpose while they are in school and have to explain myself to their mother.

(I may also have been playing the innocent-lonely-teenage-girl card to avoid a restraining order.)

A loud, nervous laughter followed, and a sudden shiver of sameness came between myself and the woman standing on the porch.

I waved a little and shuffled sideways, wishing to leave the situation WITHOUT literally bolting (as I had last time), and she waved back, calling, "I'll tell Lafflin you stopped by."

I shrugged, shoulder over shoulder, hands out as if weighing the options, saying, "Or...not...?"

"Or not!"

"Okay cool."

"Bye Shady."

"Bye."

I did not say her name though I knew her name because I did not want her to know how much I knew.

And I laughed the entire way back. Laughter being a nervous response to pain.



There are many morals to this story. One of which is

and another which is

but mostly just

The Limited Resource Theory

So there was this raccoon book I read when I was little.

It was about this baby raccoon and his mother raccoon, and every day the mother raccoon would kiss his hand and it made him feel all happy and loved and junk. Then this random jerk baby raccoon shows up and the mother raccoon gives him a hand-kiss too, and the first raccoon is like "what the junk?! That was my kiss and now I have no kiss and no one loves me and my life is over." And he goes through this like raccoon puberty where he's all goth and hateful and the mother raccoon is like "No, you stupid raccoon, love doesn't work that way. Stop being such an idiot." And the raccoon gets over it.

But I think the mother raccoon was wrong.

Here's the question I'm asking - Is love a limited resource?

Everyone I've asked has said it isn't. A mother raccoon can love two baby raccoons. They can both get hand kisses. Sure. But here's what I say - what if she keeps having baby raccoons? What if she ends up with ten? Twenty? A hundred? A billion? One billion hand kisses? I don't think she could pull it off. Ain't nobody got enough love in their heart for a billion kisses.

Here is a diagram of a pie.

It is made up of mass and volume and grams. And cherries. I hate cherry pie. Let's make it cherry.

Now here is a diagram of the pie cut up into pieces.

Seven people get pie. Then you run out of flour and lard and cherries and that's what you got so y'all better deal with it. Right? Now here is a human heart.

Okay maybe a human heart doesn't exactly look like that. I don't know. I hate research.

But anyways, when we split the human heart into pieces like a pie here's what we have:

(There are only six pieces this time. Whoops. My bad.) So you divide your love into parts. You love this person, and this person, and this person, in different ways and different levels. Blood and flesh and little flappy things all cut up and passed around. Beautiful, isn't it?

Beautiful.

It's not like you could ever love more than six people. Logically, it's just not possible.

So obviously love is not an unlimited resource. It's not like you can go devoting your heart to every person on the planet. Of course, you can reserve a piece of it for the idea of the entire population. You could say you love humans in general or whatever. Be one of those people. But I mean come on raccoon, after a while you're going to run out of kisses.

That is why, after much thought and research, this small discovery has been made: 

According to logic, love will collectively one day run out. Just like the oil in the earth and the gas in the sun. The stars will blink out and the water will run dry and the last piece of love will, some time in the next billion kisses, be unrequitedly spent.

So, when asked openly why I try not to be loved:

But, just like how we're still using fossil fuels and the sun is still shining, no matter how correct this scientific theory is, it won't change what happens. 

And even though love will inevitably blink out of existence, 

we can't help but disappoint each other.