You are currently browsing the daily archive for October 13th, 2007.
giggle |ˈgigəl| verb [ intrans. ] laugh lightly in a nervous, affected, or silly manner : they giggled at some private joke | [as adj. ] ( giggling) three giggling girls. noun a laugh of such a kind. • ( the giggles) continuous uncontrollable giggling : I got a fit of the giggles.
She sits there. She is aqua in color. You can just see how lonely she is. Poor, sad, tired old Escort station wagon. It’s better this way I think. Let me, for a minute, depict a trip to town in good ole’ Mary for you. I must mention that I have no idea what Andy has named his god forsaken car but Mary seems like a fitting one. First off. . . . the road, no wait . . . hill; better yet mountain that we must climb and descend in the vehicle has never been leveled for the purpose of driving. It is made up of rock and pineapples, diapers and twigs. I even saw a few chicken bones mixed up with the dirt the other day. The decline is so steep that it actually bends inwards and upside down requiring passengers to tighten their seatbelts and hold their breath. Seriously. For the majority of the ride, and I use the word ride like in the Carnival sort of way, Andy is required to straddle the cavernous holes that make up this road in which we must travel. This is about the time when I only watch through the spaces between my fingers stretched across my face. This is because I know what is coming next. There is a bolder. Damn the bolder and it’s sharp, jagged fingers pointing upward. It sits smack dab in the middle of the road. As we trek downward the bolder forcefully drags itself up the entire length of Mary’s vagina. She makes the most excruciating sound, as one might expect. This is not the end. Once reaching a seemingly normal stretch of road Andy is required to maneuver around all sorts obstacles including trash, holes in the earth, small Mexican boys carrying sandwich bags of orange liquid, suicidal taxi cabs and Latin livestock not to exclude donkeys and chickens. Most importantly he must pay special attention to the giant speed bumps that appear without reason or warning. These are not normal speed bumps. They grow in size the closer you get. Andy hit a bump so hard it launched Mary two and a quarter feet into the air where her only choice was to take the pavement mouth first upon reentry. She lost 3 teeth and bruised her throat.
We reserve taking Mary out only when absolutely necessary. The bus system is phenomenal and much easier on the tailbone. Well that is for me, not necessarily for Andy at the moment. I will explain.
We love our apartment. Who can complain about waking up every morning, looking out the window and seeing, as Andy describes it, “ a jungle on the side of a mountain.” There have just been a few things we have had to deal with. Well, we still have no hot water. We have called Noemi, our property manager, but no luck so far. Currently we have an indescribable funk the smells a bit like vinegar staining our skin that a cold shower doesn’t seem to tackle. Last night we were dealing with two things, the lights and open windows. I was changing all the light bulbs from sanitarium ice white to a softer eggshell while Andy was putting up the mosquito screen in the living room. The only way for him to reach the window was to stand about 3 feet off the ground on our built in windowsill. The only way I could reach the lights was to balance myself on a chair on top of another chair. I was attempting to change the bulb inside our hanging Mexican hat light when the bulb between my boobs fell, exploded against the concrete floor resulting in me pulling too hard on the bulb in the hat, which also broke.
“Fuck,” I yelled, carefully tip-toeing into the living room only to find Andy on the floor.
The confusion was more than my brain could deal with. I saw our only working lamp in three pieces on the floor, a hammer still clutched in his right hand and Andy lying motionless, except his eyelids, on the ground. I thought I was the one who just had an accident.
“Ummmmm, are you okay? What the hell happened?”
It took him a minute to speak. Slowly his lips separated and sound came out, “I thought there was a chair behind me. There wasn’t. I stepped back. I fell directly on my ass bone. I might not be okay. I really don’t want to know.”
I felt them come up. There was nothing I could do. It was unavoidable like the time I accidentally ate bananas and had to go to the bathroom and stick my finger down my esophagus and throw them back up. The giggles were present. There were inappropriate and appeared to be anything but sympathetic but I couldn’t help it. It happens every time someone has fallen, or tripped or slipped, as long as I know they are going to be okay. I couldn’t stop giggling. I held my face straight but my cheeks met my lashes and the giggle tears started building up.
“Noooo. That’s great. Laughing. Of course you’re laughing.”
“I’m sorry. Are you okay? I’ll help you up,” I managed to get out before the laughing become harder.
Appalled he began to move,“Nope. I’m fine. You just sit there and laugh. I’ve got it from here. I could be seriously hurt and you are just there laughing at me.”
“I’m so sor. . ,” I tried.
He cut me off before I had a chance, “No. There’s no use apologizing now.”
We left the window unfinished for the rest of the night.
