This isn’t her. My possum was much scarier with sharper teeth. Bagpipe Man surprised her in the act of gobbling up cat food on the porch and for some incomprehensible and unchivalrous reason, shooed her directly at me. I was coming up the path just as the possum came galloping down it and had to leap over the fanged marsupial lest she collide with me and bite me with her horrid teeth. I wonder if she knows anything about the missing Pinkerton.

The fluffy cuteness is gone, replaced by pokey feathers and gangly legs. I remember a similar stage in my own development. Of course, I didn’t have a swanky Charles Shaw box to live in, so it was worse for me. I lived in a yellow and brown mobile home (not to be referred to as a “trailer") and I collected unicorns. I had frizzy red hair and stick legs just like my peepertons, but that’s where the similarity ends because I never ever shat in my water dish.

Here are some highlights from the end of July:

Teen Angst grew this crazy Romanesque broccoli. Pay no attention to the cat butt or the sinewy hand model, this is a picture of broccoli. We ate it raw and I found it a little bitter. She may have let it get too big or maybe that’s just what they taste like. In any event it was cool to be eating the fractal of vegetables.

Scooterboy arrived the other day with 2 milk crates full of homebrew that he’s trading Bagpipe Man for a bookshelf. It’s a lambic, tart and bubbly, so needless to say I’m taking a wee break from my vodka diet. Speaking of breaks, I also went to the Oregon Brew Festival last weekend which majorly sucked. It was so crowded that it took half an hour to get my first beer and after that there was no pretense at least on my part of trying to taste specific beers. I jumped into whichever line was shortest in order to use up my tokens. That’s how Peanut and I ended up swilling Roots Calypso Ale which,as it turns out, contains scotch bonnet peppers. I would have appreciated a heads up, you know like calling it “Flaming Inferno in Your Mouth Beer” instead because we ordered full ones, not wanting to wait in in long lines for samples, and then we were stuck drinking the tabasco sauce of beers.

And apropro of nothing, here’s a picture of my living room houseplants taking a shower. I like to pull the curtain closed and leave them in there to drain, and also to scare people.

A raspberry vine is trying to live here in the house with me. It may look like it merely got closed in the window but that window doesn’t even open. No, this intrepid explorer pushed its way through a crack. I wonder how long it will be before this house just crumples in on itself.

Walking by the bathroom yesterday I happened to notice Dashman, pants around his ankles, madly plunging the toilet. As “HEY LET ME DO THAT!!!” left my lips he flushed for what may have been the 15th or 16th time judging from the amount of foul water on the floor. I have never seen so much water come out of a toilet. It was inches deep on the floor and still coming. ” STOP FLUSHING THE TOILET!” “TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS” “GET OUT OF THERE!” NO DON’T BRING THE PLUNGER” all came out of my mouth at once which sounded to some people like “OH NO..FUCK…SHIT…EWWWW POOP WATER…DON’T TOUCH ME!!!!” but I handled the situation with considerable aplomb. Well I did for the 10 seconds it took to get to the basement for the mop, and see toilet water gushing from the ceiling in 5 or 6 places, raining down a literal shit storm on laundry and a bunch of stuff I was storing. Then I became less calm.

So much water was pouring out of the ceiling that I thought a pipe had burst so I made Teen Angst run through the toilet water shower to turn off the water to house which only can be done from her bedroom. Then I called Bagpipe Man at Poekeolan and told him to come home right away because I was covered in poop water and so was the basement and maybe the sewer was backing up into our house. Then he came home and told me that the toilet had overflowed and pretended that this was not one of the WORST FUCKING THINGS TO HAPPEN TO ANYONE EVER. He even had the nerve to imply that I was overreacting but when I offered to give him a hug or sit on his lap he declined my advances. Then we spent a long time dragging soggy boxes of knicknacks outside, mopping, and poisoning ourselves with bleach fumes. It was really gross.