I cannot deal with it when people cannot stop talking. I am shy beyond reason, and almost can never muster up even a word unless I absolutely have to. Doing comedy doesn’t really count as conversation. I’ve already thought it through – I know what I am going to say. I try to go for the absolute minimum amount of words to relay the maximum amount of information. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time and I don’t want to talk more than is necessary.

I met a man who seemed interesting – until he opened his mouth. He wouldn’t shut up. And he kept going. Time slowed down. The seconds dragged. It was boring and monotonous but also incredibly inappropriate – telling me things I didn’t want to hear, and moreover shouldn’t have heard. Family secrets and sexual indiscretion is my trademark, yet I am uncomfortable with others revealing too much. I know it’s not fair, but I can’t help how I feel. I am prudish in ways I don’t care to admit, and I keep to myself in a way I wish would be reciprocated.

This guy wasn’t into that. He wasn’t into give and take. He took the floor and then wouldn’t wouldn’t wouldn’t stop. He went on and on and didn’t seem to notice that I was tuning him out, fading away, diminishing and depleting. I felt as if I was steadily losing air, like an inner tube with a pinhole puncture. My heartbeat started to slow down and dark circles appeared under my eyes. It was beyond boredom. It was like a creeping death, surrounding me and suffocating me. His words and his voice were like weapons, bludgeoning me into oblivion. He went on and on and I felt like I was doomed.

He was vaguely aware of it, and kept saying “you can just tell me to shut up….hee… hee….” and I would have if he hadn’t utterly depleted my strength. The more he talked the less I could respond. Every time he told me to tell him to shut up, the more he talked. He spoke of all his ruined relationships, bad boyfriends and relatives – the unspeakable (yet spoken over and over) cruelty of those who were supposed to love him, but my heart went out to the villains in his endless stories – I could see how he abused others with his small talk. His incessant need for chatter was nothing short of a nightmare.

When he finally left me alone I heard his voice in my head, shattering my peace with musings about shows and films and bands and books and foods and fashions and fads and fabrics and festivals and countries and all things he felt didn’t live up to the hype and albums that he listened to from beginning to end, never song by song, never skipping, hearing them not piecemeal but whole, as the artist had intended him to hear. I was surprised he ever heard anything beyond his own voice. I can still hear him and it is driving me crazy.

Do you ever really think about the times when you are happy? I don’t. Happiness to me is just an unnoticed state of mind, something we drive through to get to lonely and miserable, or ecstatic. Happy is just kind of normal for me, and so I don’t even greet it with a smile. It’s something I take for granted like the sunrise. It’s light out, I am happy – these things don’t register.

I am guessing this is bad because whenever I am unhappy, then I search my mind and heart for memories and evidence of past happiness, and I cannot find it. I didn’t save anything because I didn’t care.

Well today, I am happy. And I did laundry, so everyone around me is happy.

I can no longer deny that I have dry feet and now I am taking matters into my own hands (feet) and I broke down and ordered a Ped Egg and some foot moisturizer in a weird push up stick. It’s kind of like a yogurt push up or a deodorant, neither of which I have experience with. I have never eaten yogurt that is pushed rather than spooned and I have never put anything under my arms (even though everyone wishes I would).

My new foot regime came in the mail all together and I had a hard time opening the ped egg at first. I thought I might crack it and separate it like a real egg, but finally it yielded to my relentless grip and opened up. I grated my dry foot and was disgusted/amazed to find that the chamber held the dry skin flakes just like parmesan cheese and this device would probably do really well in my kitchen, although it’s probably wise to purchase another for that use.

I then took a stridex pad, already in my beauty arsenal, and wet down my dry, scale-less feet with the acidic solution. On top of the stridex I rolled on a layer of the foot moisturizer, on the handy stick. The stick is important because l gave myself a pedicure not long ago, and the continuous bending gave me a terrible neck ache that I had to get a chiropractic adjustment for. It was going down those 2-3 inches to reach my feet that made the biggest difference. If I had the foot moisturizer on a stick, then I wouldn’t have had to have my ribs cracked.

I have put a sock (dirty, but of course) on top of the whole thing and now my feet are kind of stingy, kind of menthol, really wet feeling. I don’t know if this will work. I hope so.