Dig if you will the picture, of a pipe burst in my duplex neighbor’s bathroom. As we discovered with the other pipe-bursting fiasco, the water shut-off is in the neighbor’s house. Since he had water running down his walls, he decided to shut it off. So here I am, who just happened to start my period for the first time in two months (hooked on IUD worked for me) and my hair licked into the shape of an ice cream cone by a drive by llama licking. OKAY, that is a lie. But there are filthy children who cannot be washed, filthy dishes that smell in my kitchen, toilets that cannot be flushed, freshly planted tomatoes that cannot be watered, and filthy me who is bleeding and covered in sawdust from working on the henhouse all weekend. O Modern Conveniences I am your bitch.

Last night I kept dreaming about my gay high school boyfriend and that I tried on all these really holike promdresses. I think it’s because I was in Ballard on Friday night with my friend and we kept seeing white stretch Hummers. I suspect the white stretch Hummer market is now exclusively taken over by high school kids and Mariah Carey, and I know that wasn’t Mimi cruising up and down Market Street.

I was standing on Ballard Ave. and I loaned some drunken middle-aged guy my pen, and followed him out to use it since it has sentimental value. He had that kind of hair that looked sculpted or perhaps injection-molded, and like his name was probably Bill or Harold or Fletch. He claimed the person he needed to write his phone number down for disappeared and I socked it away back into my purse. He took a look at me.

“Nice tits!” he threw my way.

“Alright!” I said. “Nice complete lack of guile!”

I forgot to tell you: Yesterday the girls were playing in the hose and filling up a bucket. Over the winter not one, but both sprinkler heads have disappeared, leaving them with only the plant sprayer. Franny yelled at her sister: “Let’s play Mad Jesus!”

I immediately stopped sawing and listened, pretending to work.

“Okay, Strudel, Mad Jesus is a fun game. Here is the sea,” she said, indicating the bucket. “You are The People and I am The Jesus. The Mad Jesus. You act like a people.”

Strudel obediently waggled her hands in the water, acting like the innocent and sinful masses.

“Mad Jesus! I’M MAD JESUS! I’m spraying The People to Death!” Franny drenched Strudel and her sinful hands. “Okay, The People are dead. Now you be Mad Jesus.”