Prattle Peach

creepy crawlies

They say there are eyelash mites found in bunches at the base of your eyelashes. They say that on average, 61.84 spiders can be found per home at any given time. They say 63% of homes in the U.S. contain cockroaches and their particles, including saliva, droppings, and decomposing body parts.

They say the average person creates 1/3 ounce of dead skin each week, which is about the weight of a car key. This dead skin combines with other particles to create household dust. While that 1/3 ounce doesn’t seem like much, the average home in the United States collects 40 pounds of dust each year. Many people claim to be allergic to dust, but in many cases they are actually having an allergic reaction to dust mites. These mites eat the dead skin and their dead bodies and fecal matter cause allergic reactions in people. Up to 500 dust mites can survive on just 1 gram of dust.

You can roll an entire strand of hair behind your eyeball and pull it out inch by inch, the pus in zits can pop out past three feet, and a blood clot from a nosebleed can reach eight inches (according to them).

You produce about 1.5 quarts of mucus a day, and swallow the vast majority. There is a lot to not need to know about mucus, snot, and boogers.

In conclusion: I have enough to worry about that is out of my control, so can you please brush your teeth so I do not need to smell your breath in public while my house is being secretly overrun by arachnids?

I know I’ll never really be alone because I’ll always have my snot to comfort me.

Can you PLEASE take a shower at reasonable intervals so I can focus on not breathing in the dead skin of myself, anyone who has ever entered my home, and the mites that have eaten and pooped it out?

the inaugural address of a girl who cannot cook (but is trying to learn)

Good morning my corn tortillas of ambition, waiting to be filled with the ground beef of knowledge, the spicy guacamole of wisdom, the shredded cheddar of good judgement, and the iceberg lettuce of compassion.

I have gathered ye all here today to hold me accountable. I am on the path to becoming America’s Next Top Above-Average Chef and although I will most likely never check in again on my cooking ability progress, I hope you will join me in sending the Good Vibes of Justice to whatever benevolent god grants cooking abilities to slightly lazy young women.

I have the Tools of Kitchen Utility: an instant pot, an oven, lots of mismatched utensils, measuring cups and spoons, a vegetable chopper that doth not fucking work and is on my laste nerve, and a magic bullet.

It is with these tools and the ingredients readily available at Trader Joe’s that I will craft the easiest and yet shockingly yummy meals that have graced this planet.

Haters, my good people, will say it’s fake but my cooking progress hit an upward spike this year starting at around summer. By summer 2021, I may be ready for one Michelin star. Only time will tell.

I am making the entire Thanksgiving meal this week and I can smell the fear on my family’s skin.

FEAR NOT, FAMILY. FOR I AM CONFIDENT IN A 70% EDIBLE MEAL.

We’ll see how it goes, xoxo gobble girl (yikes).

the heart rate of a mouse

But where’s the sweat? The blood? Life isn’t about smiles and forced politeness. Life is raw, it’s meant to leave marks on you.
Over the Tracks

A beach at night, without a moon. And me and you. The salt burned you right out of my eyes. Remedy clouds listlessly sailing through the night hid the words out of our mouths from our eyes. We were all newborns with blurred vision and no sense of direction.

Am I missing home or am I missing me.

I sleep in a cotton-scented coffin with mediocre dreams; seven days a week I fall back into vampire sleep.

This is why I push so hard. To see every outcome to its end.

I am closure in a red dress. I may never get this chance again.

Is it my jaw that is locked or is it your (E and F) dun-nuh-duh-nuh (or maybe F and F sharp) Jaws that are Locked.

You don’t have to lose me. You already did. At least enough to keep me smiling from San Francisco to San Diego.

It’s for lovers, orjustfriends.

I don’t want to keep you I want to win.

Timing and direction

I looked for someone to fall in love with and all I got was a quick-talking new friend who is maybe as smart as he thinks he is.

I think everything happens for a reason, and we meet the people we are supposed to meet for a purpose. I could never date someone who expected life to just work out 50/50 all the time, but I can be friends with just about anyone. Read: I like the way you talk pointedly but you never kissed me.

I love an ambitious, smart man just ask much as the next girl but who is more emotionally intelligent – the accountant or a bag of carrots? Read: I wish you would have kissed me so I would have known if there was (a lack of?) something there.

I’m not necessarily private about my life but I do not bring up anything about myself unless directly asked. Read: Did you know I got into all of the universities you covet and did you know I have twice the ambition of your jobless, immature ex?

But I’m always a good listener, and you can talk an ear off. I think you spoke for us both too soon. I am cool, and I am much more. But you’ll never know now because we’re going to become the best of friends and I will always keep you at an arm’s distance. You’ll never know anything concrete about me, but if you did, I bet you’d fall to your knees and your glasses would fall off your face from the shock. Read: I hope the pavement tastes like regret, like trying to text me after revealing too much.

Maybe if you’d went in another direction. Maybe if it was a different time.

thinking about escaping

Last night at 2am I was looking through month-long Airbnb stays in Seattle, Nashville, Chicago, and New York. They’re all places a younger me thought I might end up. Young me thought I’d just be able to move across the country to somewhere I’ve never even been.

I was thinking about looking for a job in another state and just leaving and starting over. The only thing that has ever held me back is me missing my friends. When I was 19 my whole family moved away without me so I know I don’t need to live near them to be okay, but I definitely prefer living near them.

And then there’s the stupid part of my brain that’s more psychological, that doesn’t want to close any doors or finalize any maybes. By this I mean I’m afraid to leave because what if I was meant to be with one of the guys I dated, and if I leave to another state he’ll never get the chance to love me and I miss out on a relationship. I know that’s awful and that’s the worst part.

As if one of my dating app matches is Prince Charming. (But there’s never a 0% chance that he’s not…)

I can make new friends, get a new job, visit my family a few times a year. Maybe dating is easier in a place where there are actually seasons. Maybe my guy is waiting for me in a coffee shop in Portland or a bar in New York.

It’s actually laughable that I could ever imagine that my soulmate lives in Orange County.

I think I might explore the idea of taking a weekend here and there to visit a new city until I find the one that feels like home.

I have a thing for tall guys with glasses, maybe I should try Seattle? I love an English or Irish accent… should I think bigger?

I just watched The Holiday and I cried the entire time because I want to be Reese Witherspoon and have Jude Law sweep me away in a little cottage outside of London. I want so badly to just run away from everything I know and find something new and unexpected.

I really want to swap lives with someone for a couple weeks. I don’t know if I want to permanently vanish from life as I know it, but I definitely want to make a disappearance.

I remember staying a week in Ireland when I was 19 and I thought how amazing it would be to just move there. To have a little house near the neighborhood pub and meet up with my friends after work.

I’ve tried romanticizing my life but there’s not much to romanticize. I think I just need to do something soon to add some flair to it. I want just one good movie moment, especially before I get too old and it’s too late. Your 20s are supposed to be filled with adventure and I just haven’t done anything remarkable yet.

Have you ever done anything drastic like moved across the country or to another country? And what were the pros and cons?

1 a.m.

I met three men over the past three months and spent one month each with them, dipping my summer feet into their iced over swimming pools.

I know that I idealize everything, especially romance. I can create a spark out of nothing, but since it’s not real it never keeps me warm.

I had a birthday and turned 23 and there was no boy who belonged to me sitting across my table singing with my friends. I don’t belong to anyone, which is a wild and freeing thing, but also so lonely.

Why doesn’t anyone ever work out for me? I only think this rarely, like now, when I can’t bring myself to fall asleep.

I know I have years to give but I feel like I’ve been chipping away at it these past few months. Give me one good movie kiss and I’ll give you my whole entire heart on a platter served just the way you like it.

I’m tired of hoping for this one to be the right one, and I wonder if I would be happier if I just gave up trying to find love. I have plenty of love. I have friends and family and a job that I am so happy at, but I crave being held sometimes. Kissing hello, kissing goodbye, and knowing another hello will come soon. If I was kissed today the odds would be slim that the same lips would grace mine ever again because they never stay long.

I fall in love for a month and it throws me under the bus. I don’t even think I fall in love with the person, but the idea that this person could be it!!!!! I wish I could keep my mouth shut to my friends about who I was dating because then they wouldn’t be so sorry for me when I tell them he never replied (again).

I wish I could staple my feelings into my foot and stomp on them every day until they died.

I wish I wasn’t so filled with longing all the time. I feel like I’m in the dark, reaching in front of me for something to hold on to and I just keep swinging my hands around aimlessly. Always reaching but never touching. Will I realize there is nothing there? Or will I just keep reaching forever?

I am so tired. I have work tomorrow. I have to make myself sleep.

heart attacks and Kerouac

I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.
On the Road, Jack Kerouac

*record scratch* I bet you’re wondering how I got here.

I’m feeling the writing bug again and hope to soon search for an artist I can commission to create the cover of my book. I have to first write much more of it than I have already.

I feel like I’ve done so many things this past month, like I’m learning too much at once but I also feel suspended.

I need a vacation but I also need to not catch a virus/pandemic. I feel like I’m yearning for a trip to Somewhere New with Someone Special. Is it okay to ask someone out on a trip for a date? Can’t we just stargaze from the deck of a cabin on top of a mountain while I learn what you do for a living and why you hate it?

I don’t want to date anybody anymore, and at the same time I keep wishing I was already in a relationship. I don’t want to be dipping my toes in the water at the 3 ft. part of the pool, I want to be at the point where I’m doing laps. Can we fast forward to the part where everything is easy?

I don’t know what I need or what I want. I don’t know. I do not know. I have nothing to offer anybody right now, except my own confusion.

invasion of privacy

How are we ever supposed to care about somebody when we’re so busy pretending not to care?

It’s cliche and overdone, but I want to go to the Louvre next year. I will either walk into the museum with my hand firmly planted into the palm of someone else’s hand, or I will walk in alone and happy. I want to explore Paris, in love. Maybe I’ll be with a beautiful tall man or maybe I will be with my beautiful tall self and either way I will be in love.

I think I set up these big brick walls so that nobody would ever make me feel vulnerable again and it’s just resulted in hours upon hours of boring small talk that makes me feel small when I am capable of big intelligent interesting conversations that leave me with more questions than when I started.

I want to commit an act of invasion of privacy. I don’t want to hear about how you secretly like long walks on the beach because everybody with a beating heart likes the sound of water, the colors cast on the sea while the sun sets, and seeing footprints in the sand. We live in California, goddamn it, of course you fucking love the beach.

I want to know if your parents are together or if they are divorced, and why. What did they teach you about life and love that you bring into your own? Did you get along with your siblings? What’s your full name and why did your parents choose that? Were there any other names they were considering and how might your life have been different if you were named Geoff instead of Jeff? I want to learn something from you that I didn’t know I wanted to know.

I want to let you pole vault across my big brick walls of safety and I want to tell you about hyperbolic discounting, and why I think we get anxiety from placing salience on the wrong things. I want to geek out over how much I know about my boy Ben (as in Benjamin Franklin himself), and admit that the second degree I got was for fun. I can tell you all about love and sex in the history of America, because I’ve read hundreds of love letters from dead American couples for my senior thesis.

Tell me about somewhere I’ve never been, about how it feels to be able to fix a broken watch and hear it tick again and know that you put something back together with your hands and how that’s when you decided you were going to be a good engineer.

Above all, argue with me. Tell me I’m not right, and prove me wrong. I’ve never felt challenged intellectually in a relationship and now it’s my top desire in a man. I’m tired of the first two weeks of knowing someone getting filled up with misspelt “your beautiful,” because they never specify exactly what part of me is beautiful and I’m left on a riveting cliffhanger that never gets answered after we have one boring date and never talk again but they always reply with heart-eye emojis to my selfies forevermore.

I don’t know how to ask for these things and I‘m afraid that I come across as someone that may be incapable of connecting on a deeper level.

I don’t know when it’s appropriate to politely say, “Obviously we both find each other attractive or we wouldn’t be on this date, so let’s skip to the chase and peel back the layers of heartbreak that made us so tough to get to know and let’s really get to know each other for the next two hours so that we can make an informed decision on whether there’s something here or not and decide if we should see each other again or not waste our time.”

Is that not recommended? It’s not in my copy of the Why Men Love Bitches book, and it’s not in the “What Guys Really Want To Hear” articles in Cosmopolitan. I know I’m supposed to only be available two-thirds of the time so that he finds me mysterious, and that I have to wait four hours before replying to his Snapchat, but how am I ever supposed to care about someone if I’m busy acting like I don’t care about them?

I live a fulfilling, exciting life. I have the job that I want, my own apartment, a nice little cat, and the best friends ever. I am comfortable with myself and I am proud of my accomplishments. I want to learn more, travel more, and I want to fall in great love with someone that I get to experience new things with. I’m not in a rush, but I am so over 50 First Dates with 50 Boring Guys.

I know it’ll come at the right time, and I guess the right time isn’t now, but lately I’ve been wishing it was. Being in love would probably make this pandemic suck less. For now, I’m just going to live vicariously through Zac Efron’s Down to Earth show and keep trying to perfect my homemade gnocchi recipe.

sleeping well

Lately I have been getting the best sleep, and I think it’s because of my new sleep routine.

Before I go to sleep, I mentally end my day. I lay on my back, and I think about my day and let go of everything. I think about the events of the day, and I rate them. What did I do well? What could I have done better? If something good happened, I focus on it and I feel gratitude and happiness for that moment. If something bad happened, I take a mental note on how I can mitigate that in the future, and I move on. What’s done is done, and it’s already the past. I do not focus on the past any longer.

Next I think about my goals for the next day or the coming week. I visualize them happening, and I feel the happiness and excitement of my goals being met. I channel the law of attraction. I am so happy that I have this promotion. I love my new car. I am thankful for everything I have and everything I will have.

The past and future focus only take about five minutes each.

Presently, I want to sleep well so I set my intention for a deep sleep. I get into my sleeping position, usually on my side or stomach, and I count down from 100. I usually don’t wake up until my alarm goes off the next day, and I feel very well rested.

I think this is some form of meditation on the past, future, and present but I don’t pressure myself at all into doing any of it a certain way. I give everything the attention it deserves and I sleep well knowing that I did what I could and that I am striving to do better. The best feeling is knowing that all that is expected of me right now is to sleep, and I’m an excellent sleeper.

on re(a)d

I am currently in the market to buy a new (used) car. I want a Volkswagen Beetle convertible, and I can’t decide on the color. Red cars have a 7% higher risk of getting into an accident than other car colors, according to a google search that I just did.

Is it because red stands out the most? I don’t see too many red cars on the road, maybe because it’s a well known fact that the red car is more likely to get hit by oncoming traffic.

What is it about society wanting to take out something that stands out more than the other boring things? Red, the individual, inevitably gets dented by the much less cool, less vibrant grey.

Autolist.com says that silver is the most popular car color, next is white, with black in fifth. Bright red cars become more likely to be driven if the car in question is a convertible (double the difference).

I wonder if people that get into car crashes while driving their red cars end up buying a different colored car the next time they’re shopping around. Did the crash discourage them from standing out? Make them want to fit in?

If I crashed in a red car I would simply buy another red car out of spite. Hit me baby one more time. Miss me in the red.

Sometimes I feel like I’m the red car on the road of proverbial life. Easiest to see and most likely to get taken out by oncoming traffic. Very likely to stay left on re(a)d.