Life Plan #319

Jobs Ill-Suited for Those Who Need to Bathroom Break Frequently

Truck driver, Broadway star, cross-Atlantic pilot, crop duster, star NBA forward, distance tightrope walker, mountain climber, in-home carpet shampooer demonstrator, trapeze artist, Sumo wrestler, racecar driver, hot air balloon tour operator, bus driver, hot dog eating contest champion, roofer, broken toilet consultant, Celine Dion, grave digger, tractor driver, newborn triplet babysitter, dog show judge, televangelist, Simon Cowell, parade grand marshal, train conductor, boom operator for Paul Thomas Anderson movie on location in the desert, elevator repairwoman, front desk receptionist at MTV Headquarters, 911 operator, open heart surgeon, Catholic priest, Madonna.

Life Plan #318

Making fonts is a great source of pleasure for you, and always has been, since the first time you discovered the slick thrill of elongating the v in “love” with red crayon, circa 1965. Since then you have become somewhat of a font snob, publicly denouncing the uptight rigidity of Helvetica in favour of the unexacting Bodoni. Menus, receipts, your father’s will—no printed word escapes critique. When someone asks you to recall the main character’s name in Nausea, you close your eyes but can only see the sass of a capital R, poised like a hand on a hip, expectant.

Life Plan #317

When it’s time for tollbooth operators to go to work, they get on a special bus that takes them to the section of the freeway they are responsible for. They climb into their booths as the sun is coming up and they put on their glasses and wet their thumbs.
When tollbooth operators have to go to the bathroom, they hold it as long as they can. When they’re just about to explode, they ring a bell only the other tollbooth operators can hear. They hang a sign that says CLOSED and cross four lanes of traffic, carefully, like turtles.

Life Plan #316

The GAD upsets the GERD and the GERD triggers the GAD, so you try to avoid pizza, caffeine, roller coasters, love, stress, and heights. It’s hard to avoid pizza, caffeine, roller coasters, love, stress, and heights when you work in the Fiddlesticks Family Fun Park in Tempe, Arizona. But you manage, somehow, by ripping the tickets, chewing Rolaids, and keeping your eyes on the flat patch of cement in front of your booth. You are so out of there as soon as they hand out summer bonuses in July, but until then it’s just you, the cement, sun and heartburn.

Life Plan #315

Pop Star born. Pop Star cute. Pop Star dance. Pop Star admired. Pop Star pinched, tousled. Pop Star stretched. Pop Star pants. Pop Star glove. Pop Star monkey. Pop Star misunderstood. Pop Star striped pants. Pop Star understood perfectly. Pop Star microphone. Pop Star timeless. Pop Star commercials. Pop Star applauded. Pop Star pop-tarts. Pop Star hair on fire. Pop Star lawyer. Pop Star nose. Pop Star married, divorced, married, divorced. Pop Star children. Pop Star questioned. Pop Star pajamas. Pop Star tree. Pop Star envied. Pop Star envy. Pop Star quiet. Pop Star stretched. Pop Star sleepy. Pop Star.

Life Plan #314

1979 – Move to Austin for a job. Buy a house near Sixth Street.
Tumor size: raisin

1984 – Meet new Account Manager. Swoon. Begin parting hair on left side.
Tumor size: grape

1986 – Quit job but keep Account Manager. Give house fresh coat of paint.
Tumor size: plum

1987 – Marriage. Freelance work. Mornings in the garden (artichokes, rhubarb, carrots).
Tumor size: artichoke

1989 – Baby. Evenings on porch swing. Account Manager spouse receives promotion. Celebrate with a bottle of Lambic, porch swing.
Tumor size: grapefruit

1991 – Listen to Baby squeal over moth fluttering in corner. Squeeze his fat foot.
Tumor size: melon

Life Plan #313

I have a goatee shaped like this on my chin: [::] and with this part above my lip: ~.~ and every morning I cook a hardboiled egg to take to work at the plant. Yesterday I found a kitten underneath my truck, and I took him home and put him in a shoebox next to my bed and every few minutes I woke up and looked over the edge to make sure he was still breathing. In the late 1980’s I had a motorbike and I rode that thing everywhere. But then I sold it to pay for the surgery.

Life Plan #312

If I’m going to be your Sober Companion, I cannot leave your side. I am going to be with you every second of the day. That’s what I’m paid for. I’m talking on set, between takes, in your trailer, red carpet. Bathroom breaks, too. Especially bathroom breaks. I brought my own cot, which Nancy is setting up in the hotel room as we speak. It’s orthopedic. For my back. If you wake up in the middle of the night with the sweats, we can talk about it. If you don’t want to talk, that’s cool. But me, I’m a talker.

Life Plan #311

The dismayed politician is dismayed. His brain is separated into distinct compartments, each color-coded according to its ethical opacity. In this way he is able to quickly assess any issue in-situ and confirm or deny its moral implications. Every morning he takes his cat for a walk. The cat wears a harness with red sequins. The dismayed politician has been up for election of the same post twice now and cannot decide whether or not he should give up. His cat flattens against the lawn and prepares to jump on a praying mantis. The dismayed politician jerks the leash back.

Life Plan #310

When you first become a cat-sitter, you feel a little awkward about making small talk with the creature who figure eights around your legs, purring and sqwacking like a duck. “Oh, hello kitty,” you say. “Meow, meow.” But after a few months, the sqwacks seem to sound more discernable, you sort of start to see the cat’s point, and the conversations become more meaningful: “Oh, cat, is that true? Don’t you think you’re being awfully judgmental?” Later, when you talk about your day over beers at the corner bar, your friends squint and say, “What? Denise, why are you sqwacking?”