Dear Chest Cold,

It's not at all nice to infect all of us at once; I mean, how many horrible hacking coughs can one hoursehold have? Too many, I say. How about you let up on a few of us? I'm getting real sick of being sick, and certain members of this family cough way too loudly way too often for the rest of us to sleep.

Sincerely,
Me

letters to the aether

Dear Dirty Street Emos,

I'm glad that making shallow comments about strangers as they walk by entertains you. Good for you, deflecting your anger over the fact that you had an entirely ordinary middle class upbringing onto something that makes you happy. I hope you find it fulfilling.

But know this: You don't know a damn thing about any of the people walking by. You don't know anything about anything, really, and one day, in two years or five or ten, you'll realize what a douche you are, and you'll be so embarassed you'll have to change your whole look and become someone else, because right now, you're stupid and shallow and mean, and so are all your so-called friends. As soon as you wake up, they'll turn on you. Don't deny it; you know that truth somewhere deep inside you.

So go take a damn shower and shut your mouth. Suck it up and do something useful. Or at least leave this place alone.

Love and spikes,
Me

letters to the aether

Dear Universe,
It would be nice if the drama would back off for more than just a few days. I have enough on my plate right now, and I don't need more of this crap. Also, it's alarming how many ambulances have been coming downtown this past week. If this is the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, I'm so not pleased.
Spikes,
Me

ps: it would be nice if I had a nice boy to hide away with while I waited for all this mess to blow over.

letters to the aether

Dear people who gave the Welsh a written language,

Why oh why did you play such a mean joke on them? Cwmtaff = Koomtahf? WTF?

Love,

Me

letters to the aether

Dear Everybody,

As you may or may not know, I sell Avon, and I think it's about time that I kicked it up a notch, as I'm going to be needing money for travel and grad school soon, so for the new year, I'm offering several Specials!

If you live somewhere I can walk to, I'll give you 10% off orders of 20$ or more, and every time you refer three people who place orders, I'll give you one item free with a cost of up to ten dollars. After three orders in six months, you can join the Customer Appreciation Club, which will eventually have a cooler name than that, I'll give you something cool on your birthday, and each order will build points toward more free stuff! If you work downtown or go to Flagler, I'll give you an automatic 10% off.

Don't live or work somewhere nearby? No fear! If you order through my online store (www.youravon.com/sholcomb), your order can be shipped directly to your home, and if you contact me first, I'll give you a code for free shipping! If you order through me directly, I can offer you all the above deals and benefits, but I'll have to charge you shipping through the USPS-- I use flat-rate shipping boxes, so whatever will fit in each box or envelope will all ship for one low price. Contact me for details!

We carry all sorts of neat makeups, tons of really great perfumes, men's colognes, clothes, shoes, housewares and kitchen goods, natural skincare products, children's things, and advanced anti-aging products. Come see what we can bring to you, and feel free to ask me any questions you have!

Love,

Me

Your local Avon Rep

letters to the aether

Dear puppy,

Please quit pooping by my door. I'm tired of stepping on it first thing in the morning.

Love,

Me

Dear calendar-in-my-brain,

Please stop making smug little noises only I can hear as I sit here shivering in 55 degree weather, wondering how the hell I'm supposed to survive Pennsylvania in the late fall next year. Also, stop reminding me that it's secretly winter (because the Winter Solstice is Midwinter, so it has to be winter now for that to be the middle) as I'm walking to work on legs that don't want to work right because it's too cold.

Love,

Me

Dear stomach,

WTF? I mean, really. Since when have we not been able to handle even two days of Thanksgiving leftovers? I do not appreciate the late-night pains and the all-day nausea, and I'm not buying that it's a cold until other symptoms start showing up, so you and gall-bladder better tighten up before I scoop you both out with a spoon and build my own mechanical stomach out of old computer parts, a bit of fishtank tubing and a ziplock bag.

Love,

Me

Dear bank account,

You could stand to be a bit fatter.

Love,

Me

letters to the aether

Dear Semi-Anonymous Weenie,

It's not your job to patrol the internets. I think you have a skewed idea of what this is: We pass on information when we find it and in our free time; this means that sometimes things will get phrased poorly and / or one letter will be switched for another. Deal with it. Because if you want to be taken seriously, this is not the way. And I'm going to keep deleting your comments until you learn that being critical does not mean being a dick, and a civil human being with real concerns is more likely to get responses. Other things you need to learn: this is not a personal attack against you, so shut up with the personal attacks against me; I get paid by you clicking on my page, so if you don't like what I have to say and don't think I should have a job, you can very well bugger the fuck off and leave me in peace; information travels at different speeds for different people, so if you think you can do better, you're more than welcome to start your own page and then you can worry about whether a date was announced already.

No love at all (and alot of pity that your life is so empty that this is what you do with it)

Me.

bleargh

This is a conversation I had with my Uterus yesterday:

Me: (at work doing at-work things)

Uterus: Hello! Remember me?

Me: Why does my back hurt so bad all of a sudden?

Uterus: I said hello! I know it's been months and months, but I thought I'd pop in and see how you're doing.

Me: T-- I need to go to the bathroom right now can you take over my register?

Uterus: Look, I brought this gift for you! You can still have babies!

Me: Uuuugggghhhhhsssssssss....

And so here I am, my only day off work this week, all sore and squishy and not really up to doing much of anything. So I think it's time for a Letter to the Aether!

Dear Uterus (I'm going to call you Bertha from now on).

Dear Bertha,

It's nice to know that at least one of my ovaries is still functioning, true, but it'd be nicer if you'd give me just the teensiest bit more warning before dropping in after three months. Like, an hour before hand when I'm getting ready for work, and noticing that my bra isn't fitting right-- that's not enough warning. You're just lucky I had a pad in my purse, because that's my only pair of khakis for work, and I'd be very put out otherwise.

Love, Me

ps: If I wind up on I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant because of you, we Will Have Words.

letters to the aether

Dear Body,

I know it's been years since we had an official yoga class, and I know that it's not often that we intentionally contort ourselves like that, but come on. Where did all our balance go? Where did all our stamina go? When did our thighs get so fat that we can't bend easily over them, and when did our boobs get so big that we can't do any of the chin-to-chest poses without smothering ourselves in them? And when did our butt get so huge and heavy that even attempting and failing a shoulder-stand is exhausting?

This cannot be allowed to last. Tips better be good so I can afford at least one class a week, or we're never going to get back in shape. Because the threat of diabetes and the already-present hormonal imbalances are made worse by all this fat, and now they're saying that people who don't exercise have higher chances of breast cancer, and I've got too much breast tissue to be messing with that.

But on the other hand, there were only a few poses that we totally gave up on, and I'm proud of us for that. We're not as flexible as we once were, and Kate is much rougher on us than Lupinetti was, but even getting near to the Warrior poses was pretty awesome, and even when drenched and dripping with sweat, Downward Facing Dog is still pretty great. And during Om-ing, we all came into tune with each other and rang those walls like a bell, and during cool-down meditation, I started feeling my way back into the old balancing pathways, and that was a welcome skill to find I still had. Thank you, body, for that one.

Love,

Me

letters to the aether

Dear cats,

That's just a lizard, and it's on the other side of double-insulated glass, and it doesn't even notice you. I know you're aware that there are approximately seven billion lizards on the back porch, because you crash into the window about seven billion times a day trying to hunt through the previously-mentioned double-insulated glass.

Continuing to do so only makes us think you're incapable of learning, and we know that's not true.

Wait until one of the little beasties crawls through that gap by the door, then have at it; the rest of the time, kindly stop knocking everything off all the desks.

Love,

Me

letters to the aether

Dear storms,

Are you on the same schedule I am? Because it sure seems like I'm spending alot of time leaving for work early or late to avoid getting drenched. It's kind of awkward, and it's a little agravating-- I mean, I don't mind so much getting soaked on the way home because I can just jump in the shower as soon as I get there, but I can't at work, and that makes it very chilly and horrible. I work with freezers. It's rough.

Love,

Me

letters to the aether

Dear body,

We've got a long way to go together. It'd be nice if we could agree on things sometimes-- like digestion. And having a functioning reproductive system. And keeping a decent dopamine balance. You know, just to make the years skate along a little easier. You're not getting out of this without me, and I'm not ready to go for another century, at least. I mean, with medical science what it is / what it looks like it's going to be, we could be around for ages. Especially if those Futurists are right and the Singularity is only twenty years away. Don't worry; in a post-human world, I don't have much interest in giving up a physical form. i'll just decorate the crap out of you. If I get you some iridiphores and chlorophyll, will you behave? How about a prehensile tail? Think how convenient that'd be.

Love,

Me

another new segment!

I was going to start a sixteenth blog called Letters to the Aether, but that name's already taken on Blooger by someone who hasn't even updated it and picked much uglier colors that I would have, so I'm going to instead make that a new segment here. Any time I feel like writing random letters, it'll be on this poor little blog that hasn't quite found it's voice yet.

Like this one:

Dear Alexander Skarsgard,

On the off chance that you have a Google Alert on your name, I'd just like you to know that you're adorable. And so much taller than me that I'm overcome with strange urges: I want to climb up on your head and look into second-story windows and touch them with my hands. I want to paint you green and make you feed me peas and greenbeans. I want to sit on the ground next to your feet and look up, up, up, like I'm looking at a mountain. These are all good impulses, in context, I assure you.

I posted something like this almost a week ago on another blog, and I can't get these thoughts our of my head. For all your height, you fit quite nicely in my skull.

Love,

Me