Uncategorized – Prattle Peach

sea monkeys and illegal tiny turtles

When I was a kid I had a very precise fascination with small animals. It all started with sea monkeys. I remember my dad going to Fry’s Electronics often, although I can’t remember what he ever needed to go for. My family would split up and while my dad looked for whatever it was we went to Fry’s for, my little brothers and I would go wreak havoc on the toy aisle. One of the toys was the Amazing Live Sea Monkeys: The World’s Only Instant Pets.

I cannot eloquently enough explain the grip that those brine shrimp had on me, but I wanted them with every fiber of my being. I had never had a pet, but I knew I would be an excellent raiser of sea monkeys. I would beg him to let me buy the box that came with a watch that you could put the sea monkeys in to bring them with you everywhere you went. I wanted to hatch them and show my friends at school that I had leveled up from Nintendogs and gotten real-life pets.

Eventually, he let me get them, and I did hatch them. They didn’t actually do anything but float around, and there weren’t as many of them as I thought there would be, but I was very proud that I followed the directions and got my very own pets. I did attempt to put some of them in the clear watch tank, but it had a leak and the poor shrimp were lost somewhere on my walk to elementary school. The rest of the sea monkeys died when I tried to clean their little tank and my dad poured the glass I put them in down the sink.

I ended up setting my sights on a pet that was not nearly invisible to the naked eye.

During the summer, my family would go to the swap meet most Sundays. We would browse the tents, listen to whatever live classic rock cover band was playing, and my mom would let us get Slurpees. I received an allowance of $5 a week for vacuuming the house and had saved enough allowances to buy a turtle from a vendor at the swap meet who also sold little bamboo plants. I named him Pistachio, although I never did learn the gender of the turtle. It was very little and ate pellets that fogged up the water in its tank very quickly, smelling up my room so badly that it became a large point of contention in my household. My pet was stinky, but I loved him.

I only learned later that the turtle was likely very illegal to sell/buy/own, and it turns out that the same type of tiny turtles resulted in kids getting salmonella. I never got salmonella from him or from eating raw cookie dough (which I did very often as a kid), and the next time we went to the swap meet, the turtle seller was no longer a vendor. Pistachio stopped eating after about a month, and one day he closed his little eyes forever.

I came home to find his little corpse and the agony and grief my little 11-year-old self felt wracked my body for weeks. Today, at 25, I don’t think I would ever get another small pet like a turtle or hamster, but I have found myself researching sea monkeys.

old man sickness voice

I have a love/hate relationship with my voice in the morning. I can’t tell if it’s a very hot and sexy phone sex haver voice or if it’s an old man with a chronic illness voice. Probably somewhere in between.

For the first hour after I wake up I am either a raspy goddess or an old man who isn’t exactly surprised he woke up to another day on the earth but not happy about it either.

I very seldom speak for that first hour to make sure no one tells me I am the latter. It’s my secret chameleon voice that only lasts 60 minutes before it disappears.

wind and roses

I love my old cardigan that’s too stretched out to fit my shoulders and that has the huge hole in the right pocket. It isn’t white any more, but has turned into this cream color.

I like that now the sky isn’t immediately dark, but stays light enough that you can see the clouds at 8 p.m.

I can see the velvety roses and watch the wind blow the flag across the street and listen to the quiet. I’m always surprised that my street is so quiet because it’s so close to such a loud scene.

I love when the sprinklers come on when I walk by, and it feels silly but I smile every time my heels just make it across before a puddle forms behind me. Like I am this untouchable thing, a mini sun that cannot be washed away by the sprinkling rain. Maybe since it’s at night I’m instead a mini moon and my phone is the glow.

I wonder if there are still rainbows forming in the moonlight but we just can’t see them. There are probably little rainbows all over but the cones and rods in our eyes are too dumb to see them.

I want to run through sprinklers holding sparklers and not get itchy from the grass at all.

I would walk very far without my phone if I wasn’t so bad with directions. I love to leave my phone behind places so I don’t have to talk to anyone but I would never find my way back to it.

genius only comes along in storms of fabled foreign tongues

It feels like taking melatonin and getting slowly sleepier and sleepier except I don’t feel like going to sleep I just feel comfort and like I am testing my own patience like a rubber band.

In my head I am sending you waves of pink and red and white and in person I am snapping the invisible rubber band against my wrist again to literally snap out of it.

Talking to you feels like lighting a candle and feeling the warmth and smelling something clean and strong like fresh laundry, but from someone else’s house so I can’t pinpoint the exact brand.

You are not soft but constant and bold. I have always hidden my softness and hidden my strength and I worry that you still can’t, will never see either.

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).

Clear-rimmed glasses

I don’t understand why in California, optometrists are not considered essential. I have really bad eyesight, and I ran out of contacts in March when the whole pandy really took off.

I found a pair of old clear-rimmed glasses and I like the look of them but I think they’re too strong of a prescription. The first time I wore them a couple years ago, I fell down a flight of stairs and twisted both my ankles. I had to call my roommate to help me walk back up the stairs and I skipped my classes for that day, half out of embarrassment because I didn’t want anyone to see me attempt to go back down the stairs again.

I like the way these glasses look, and I do see everything in a crisper way, but I also get a little bit of a headache.

My current glasses are all scratched up and I think I stepped on them at one point or something because they also don’t sit flat on my nose. There’s a tilt to the upper left and that throws me off sometimes.

I ran out of contacts in March, right around when California went into a lockdown. I really wish optometrists were considered essential. I don’t see how getting a haircut is different from getting a prescription to see.

I can’t wait to hear “which one is better, one or two?” and not know!! I like being able to do my eye makeup and see, not choose one or the other.

centrality preference

Why don’t you just meet me in the middle? Or why I only go pee in the first bathroom stall.

I read an article a long time ago that has stuck with me for life. It said that the first stall in a public bathroom is always the cleanest, because people tend to skip it for one further back to have more privacy.

The middle ones have the most germs, because of a weird human trait called “centrality preference.” According to a study published in the Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology, it is an implicit rule that makes people prefer items located in the middle, but not those at the extreme ends.

Things in the middle are looked at longer, and remembered better than things on the extreme ends so it makes us feel more comfortable to choose middle things.

The study asks you to imagine a bowl of coffee beans and you have to sort out good ones from the bad ones. You would usually put the good ones in a pile right in front of you and leave the bad ones in the bowl or put them to either side. We put important things in the middle of the photograph when we take pictures, too.

I wonder if it’s more significant in other ways too. Does centrality preference dictate even more things in my life? Beyond where I pee?

I always sat in second row in class, towards the front but not the actual front. I never sat in the back or the middle. I think half of the reason is because of my shitty ass eyesight (I can never see the board) and the other half is because I like to know things. I like learning. I like class. I don’t want to slouch in the back or blend in with the middle kids, but at the same time I’m not a front rower.

Everyone knows if you don’t know the answer to a multiple choice question you pick ‘C.’ You just do it, and you feel like it was a wise guess.

Grocery stores stock their shelves with the least expensive items at the bottom because we’re least likely to buy them. We choose what’s in the middle of our line of sight, probably a more expensive name brand instead of the affordable generic brand.

I would never pick the first thing off the menu at a restaurant. I tend to scan through the rest of the page before ultimately deciding. The best thing is never the first thing.

I really wonder how far this thing goes. How many times have I picked something just because it’s in the middle? And was it really the best thing I could have picked?

limitations: working out and throwing up

HIIT me.

This morning I woke up at 5 a.m. and instead of going back to sleep I threw on some workout clothes and started a HIIT routine.

I didn’t eat dinner last night and I started a 2 week shred routine from Chloe Ting, which is such a guood workout if you want to try something new. (All of her workouts are free and I’ve seen a lot of results, here’s a link.)

I pushed a little too hard (read: way too hard) and I ended up throwing up and feeling awful. Then I was so mad at myself for not being able to handle it that I started the whole thing over and almost passed out at the end.

I’m feeling restless (because of the pandemic) and there’s nothing else to do. None of the things I like to do are available to me any more. I’m throwing myself into testing my limits and I’m throwing up and getting angry and repeating it twice a day.

I tried to distract myself in so many different ways – people, music, projects. But there’s nothing like exerting yourself physically over something and letting out all of the emotions you’ve built up.

I’m mixing it up with different types of workouts. I hate running and yet I’m running until the sweat stings my eyes and all I can hear is my heartbeat swelling in my ears. It’s like I’m running because I hate running and right now I hate a lot of things so it makes sense for me to do it and use it as fuel. The only difference right now is that I’m not really feeling better I just keep getting angrier and I don’t know why that is.

I’ve reached my limit on other things so I’m pushing my limits on what I can control. I can’t decide when concerts and movies will be open again, but I can do jumping jacks, sprints, high-knees, and Spider-Man planks in a circuit until I puke.

I won’t have a date who takes me to the beach this summer but I will have a flat tummy and heat in my bones.

Little things to love that aren’t love

I’ve never had a valentine, so when Valentine’s Day comes up every year I don’t tend to think about being in love with somebody or wishing I had somebody I was in love with. Instead, I like to think about all the things I love and make a list.

getting complimented on your work
trying a new drink at a coffee shop
finding a new favorite author
getting to the last chapter of a book
listening to an entire album start to finish
cleaning your apartment before leaving on a trip and coming back to it
watching a vine/tiktok compilation on YouTube and every single one was funny
having an inside joke with a friend
learning how to cook something new
pets greeting you when you come home
when you can’t predict the end of a movie or tv show and get surprised
getting your hair cut and washed at the salon
finding the perfect new perfume
asking for help at a store and the sales clerk is knowledgeable and friendly
walking the two mile loop at a regional park
helping somebody without them knowing
hearing a good phone voice
singing happy birthday to someone
catching up with an old friend
getting tagged in a good meme
being right about someone
using a good pen
getting useful advice
a really, really good sneeze
rinsing off a face mask and patting your skin afterwards
going to the beach when it isn’t crowded
discovering a great new restaurant
waking up feeling rested before your alarm goes off
finding something you thought you lost or forgot you had
donating and clearing out clothes and old items
fixing something by yourself
putting something you’ve learned into practice
seeing results from your workout or diet plan
going to bed early or sleeping in
petting a cat’s tummy without it attacking you
picking the winning team or award nominee
sitting down next to someone while they play piano
feeding carrots to animals
lighting a candle on a rainy day
feeling the dip on a rollercoaster
hiking up to a high point and looking down
going to a place where the night sky is clear and you can see constellations

It’s not always about letting one person be your whole life, but it is always about you being one person for your whole life. You get one lifetime to soak all the things you love up, so I hope you do something on your little love list this week, no matter how big or small.