Skip to main content

Text From 4:22 PM

The following is a brief text conversation I had with my man a few minutes ago (you'll note he's saved as Eric Smith in my phone, so as not to be confused with all the other Erics I'm always getting texts from).

Eric Smith: The gas station im [sic] at has a donkey fenced in a pen. You can place a quarter in a machine and get feed.

Me: Oh, that's a blog post, baby. Please feed and send pic.

Eric Smith: Baby, this is a business stop. No frills. [translation: Kimberly. I am at work. With men. Big men. Full of sperm. I will not be feeding cute animals with my quarters. I'll be buying condoms in the bathroom because men think condoms are hilarious.]

Me: Well who's going to tell that to the hungry donkey? [translation: I don't believe you and I want that picture!]

Eric Smith: Good question. There is also a llama.

Me: Naturally. I bet the llama's hungry too.

Eric Smith: Maybe it could eat the donkey? [translation: you're not getting the picture, woman.]

It's 4:48 and that's the last I've heard from Eric Smith. Next time I talk to him (maybe tonight, maybe in two weeks), he'll tell me they went out of service. Translation: when men are at work, they don't have time for donkeys or women--which are basically the same thing to the working man.

OK. That's not fair. In reality, Eric Smith goes far out of his way to make time for me. He climbs to the tops of mountains to get one crappy bar on someone else's cell phone to give me a call. He drives an hour and a half from Monument just to spend a few hours with us. He leaves his friends and coworkers behind on his days off and spends all that time chasing Ayana around the couch. Um, yeah. I'm bragging. He's a good man.

And as though to prove this point...it's 4:53 and I just received this picture:


There's a donkey in there, folks. I don't see the llama, though. Probably the donkey ate him. Even more probable is that he's off somewhere, eating the handful of feed Eric Smith got for his quarter.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ode to Ennui

Some years back, my friend and I discovered the word ennui. I don't mean it hadn't been in our vocabulary up that point. We were grown women. I had a child. We'd heard of it. But by some miracle, we hadn't experienced it yet. Or if we had, we didn't know it. But suddenly, there we were. Both in the throes of ennui—our only relief the bougie label we could attach to the feeling. Ennui felt grander than the doldrums or good old fashioned boredom with life. Ennui felt like something one could declare over a martini. Something one could use as a proper excuse for failing to bring a gift to a party. Or show up to the party at all. Something one could succumb  to. I'm not positive, but I think our mutual delight with the word itself pulled us out of the pit of despair. We enjoyed the idea of ennui so much that suddenly we had something to live for again. And when one has some thing worth living for, it's not such a leap to acknowledge that one has many  such thing...
1 comment
Read more

In the Background

Judging by my Instagram feed, K-12 kids are starting back to school in CO. After approximately 18 years at home in 2020, some are headed back into the germy trenches and others are unsuccessfully logging into 26 different apps and carefully choosing which Zoom background will go with their new sweatpants. And the question for parents across the nation is: How are you feeling? That's a lob, right? Pretty damn terrible ought to cover it. No choice was a good choice and many (most?) didn't get to choose anyway. OK, sure. There's maybe two people reading this who think COVID is a hoax. Hey, guys. I see you. I'm glad you keep reading my blog even though we're really different people. I'm also glad you'll be able to enjoy your kid-free time for the first time in 6 months. Truly. Mazel tov. For the rest of us, it's a fraught day. And when I try to think of how to answer that question— How are you feeling?— all I can think is that this feels just like getting s...
3 comments
Read more

A Rush of Gratitude

I know this will be an unpopular opinion among my peoples, but upon his death I am forced to reflect on a certain degree of gratitude I feel for Rush Limbaugh.  I grew up listening to him from the back seat of the car. My dad would tune in to his AM station all the way across Kansas, often turning it up loud to make out his words through the static. From a very young age, Rush's program taught me to question the adults—the "experts"—around me. I would hear his words and think to myself: That can't be right. Those words sound like hate, not love.  My childhood was confusing. Whose wasn't? I spent a lot of time trying to parse all the mixed messages in a brain that really wasn't sophisticated enough to do that kind of work. As a result, I often felt confused. Out of place. A disappointment to the people I was supposed to be pleasing.  But all that melted away whenever I heard Rush speak. Even through the static I could hear a message loud and clear: "Resist...
1 comment
Read more