yelling “Who want a postcard?! WHOOOOOOOOOOO want a postcard?!”, because that’s what I think of every time I type “Who wants a post card?!?!”
* * *
Last night I read for a little while after Fred went to bed, and then I turned out the light and snuggled with Miz Poo for a little while. I was about to drop off to sleep when I heard my cell phone ringing from the computer room.
I thought about getting up to run for the phone, but I was sleepy. The only one who would call me that late at night would be the spud, and if it was an emergency, she knows the home phone number and could call me on it.
I was again just about to drop off several minutes later, when I heard the chimes that indicated either a text message or a voicemail. Since the sound had jolted me awake, I decided I’d get up and pee, then check my phone to see what was going on. I expected that it was a text message from the spud, who’d decided she wanted to tell me something, but it wasn’t important enough to wake me up.
I got up, shuffled to the bathroom, then went into the computer room and grabbed my phone. To my surprise, it indicated that I had a voicemail, so I called to listen to it.
Now, I haven’t been drunk in perhaps 13 or 14 years (the very last time I was drunk, I was living with my sister on Goddard Street, I’d had a fight with Liz the night before she left for boot camp, and Debbie and I visited her friends who lived out in the country, and I got SHITFACED (the spud and her cousin were spending the night at their grandparents’ house)). But I remember very clearly that shitfaced feeling, when everything that’s going on around you fades into a white noise with the occasional word chiseling through into your brain, so that the next morning you wake up and think “Did someone say something about fuzzy trees? What the fuck?”
That’s exactly what listening to this voicemail message was like – a white noise of various sounds, with the occasional word breaking through. I listened for at least two minutes and the only clear thing I got out of the message was someone saying “Red velvet. Red velvet!” I hypothesize that someone was in a bar or at a party, tried calling a friend, and didn’t realize they hadn’t hung up the phone.
I sat and listened, but after two minutes it was starting to mess with my head – I was beginning to feel a little spaced-out – so I deleted the message and hung up. Then I checked to see the number that had called, did a reverse lookup to see who it was (someone in Alabama, but it’s either a cell phone number or unlisted), and then went to bed.
I should totally post the number here so y’all could call it, yell “Red velvet. Red velvet!” and hang up. I should, but I won’t.
(I’m no fun.)
I think we all know that if my life were a movie or a book, this would only be the beginning. This morning the cops would have shown up bright and early and asked me what my connection to Howie LeBlanc was, how I knew him, and “Lady. Don’t LIE to us. We’ve had enough of the bullshit. You had a five minute conversation with him!” and my “No I didn’t! It must have been a wrong number! I only had a voicemail!” protestations would have been met with “I think not. Who leaves a five minute voicemail for someone they don’t know? And how is it that fifteen minutes later someone shot Mr. LeBlanc in the head and no one saw anything? The last thing he did, apparently, was talk to YOU on the phone!”, and they’d drag me off to jail.
I would have used my wiles and intelligence – but more likely, pure dumb luck – to escape from jail, pursued by a cop-gone-bad, intent on getting me alone to find out just WHAT secrets Howie LeBlanc told me during that five-minute conversation, and that cop-gone-bad (but secretly only PRETENDING to have gone bad, he’s undercover, see? He’s really a good guy!) WOULD NOT REST until I spill the truth.
(And if the cop looks like
Neal McDonough and has to take his shirt off or something, well, that’d be okay with me!) (It’s okay, he’s on my list. And my list is
laminated!)
Then, after my manymanymany protestations of innocence, of not knowing Howie LeBlanc, I SWEAR IT, OFFICER, riiiiiight as the fuzz was on the verge of believing me, he’d stumble across some small piece of information – probably imparted by Fred, who cannot tell a lie – that blew my story WIDE OPEN and it’d come out that Howie LeBlanc was in reality my half-brother – my father’s son with a stripper, shhhhh, don’t tell Mom! – and he was taking money from me, threatening to tell my mother about his existence, and I was giving him hush money so she’d never have to find out.
And the code phrase for “Give me more money, bitch”, can you guess it? “Red velvet. Red velvet!”, of course.
Mister Boogers and I would have to go on the lam until we could prove that Miz Poo did it! In the library! With the candlestick!, but all would end well and I’d be back at Crooked Acres bitching about having to do the dishes before you knew it.
* * *
I guess it’s a good thing Fred and I have separate rooms – ’cause there ain’t no way two people and all these cats (usually Sugarbutt comes up and sleeps next to me for part of the night, too) would fit on one queen-sized bed.
* * *
Previously
2006: Ooooh, my blood pressure is rising just thinking about it.
2005: the line “I ate 212 almonds last night really fast and then puked them back so they were still kinda whole. I just washed them off and ate ‘em again. I’ve seen dogs do it.” made Fred shoot applesauce out his nose.
2004: No entry.
2003: “Hey, little kitty!” I said excitedly, as I am prone to dorkdom.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: I will.]]>