Heather Christena Schmidt

When I was in college and worked at a pharmacy as a pharmacy technician, I came to work one day with what was clearly a bladder infection. I had been working like crazy, both at school and in the pharmacy, and genuinely not taking care myself – so it was no surprise. I will never forget what the pharmacist said to me when I asked what I should do, though. He said to me “call your doctor and say ‘doctor, my pants are on fire … there are flames shooting out of my urethra.’” These are the types of memories that I keep. And this is what I think of whenever I hear “pants on fire.”

No, I do not have a bladder infection, not even close. But I seem to have some sort of hot pants lately – hot pants in the sense that people are awarding me blogger awards for fanning my bitchy flames all over the place, which is by far the nicest and most wonderful thing a fellow blogger can do. To the Glass Half Fool, for nominating me for the Leibster Blog Award; to Finally … Wendy Wanders, for nominating me for the One Lovely Blog Award; and to Mrs. Sasu, for nominating me for the Blog on Fire Award – my whole hearted thanks. You people are amazing. I hope you enjoy my blog even 1/8th of the amount that I enjoy yours. Thank you a million times over.

But your awards are gratuitous. Clearly you people have not gotten the memo yet that I am a blazing asshole. My pants and brain are so on fire that people typically cannot stand to be within a one block radius of me. The majority of the world hates me; no jokes, I’m pretty sure something like three people in my community actually enjoy my company. And none of them are my husband or father – who know me best. I am sure eventually the blog awards will stop coming as you people wise up. Regardless, I appreciate them immensely. They fan the flames even more – and I don’t mind the fire.

To the point of my brain: it – like my pants – is burning like gang busters at this point. What I mean is not that I have all kinds of great thoughts going on, or am working on high speed at this point doing anything productive. I mean that I’m going insane. Seriously, I am going bonkers. I have a few ostensive examples for you faithful blog followers:

1) Bizarre eating habits. This morning I sat down with a baguette that appeared to be getting hard and just ate the thing straight from the package. I didn’t cut it up all neat-like and spread my low fat, canola oil butter on it. I just bit right into it and kept going until the damn thing was gone. It reminded me of that scene in The Bell Jar when she cracks an egg into a bowl of raw ground beef and then eats the whole thing. Of course there was nothing genuinely dangerous about eating a baguette such as I did this morning (especially without the butter); and I am sure people do this all the time. But if you know me, you know this means I’m losing a little bit of the grasp I previously had on my very carefully put together daily existence.

2) A’ napping and a’ snoring. My allergies have been bothering me a lot lately. This is one of the big reasons why I cannot stand California so much – I am allergic to so much stuff out here, most importantly palm frond. Yes, faithful blog followers – I am fucking allergic to palm. This might be why I’m feeling a little screwy lately – usually when the wind blows and the palm tree bull shit starts flying in the air, I feel a little cloudy in the head. Well today I was sitting on the couch, waiting to head out to take my grandmother to the doctor and I let myself do something I never do – I dozed off. I never take naps – never ever NEVER. It isn’t that I dislike them, it’s just that I dislike the groggy afterwards. But today I took a nap and apparently snored my allergen-clogged nose so loud it could be heard outside.

3) Excessive Simpsons episodes. I have been working on watching all of the episodes of The Simpsons for a number of months now. It has taken quite a while and I realize that I am watching it too much when I fit a Simpsons analogy into almost every conversation I have (which may not be saying much since I don’t talk to many people). The crazy thing about it is that I don’t usually watch television, but to me The Simpsons just seem different than your average Jersey Shore-Bachelor-humdrum Prime Time TV crap.

4) Cleaning control. So my husband was on vacation last week, which was a “stay-cation.” In other words, it was a “welcome to my daily hell, Nick” also known as “let’s try not to kill each other” time for us both. For the first half of the week, we ignored each other for the most part. He sat on his email and read stuff about work; I dicked around on Facebook, Twitter, and my usual cleaning and cooking crap. Around the middle of the week, though, I realized that the disconnect was almost a little bizarre, so  I asked and we decided we were going to go no-computer, no-cell phone, no-Internet of any sort until the vacation came to an end when he returned to work this morning. In doing that, though, Nick had to start looking for things to keep himself busy, and he got in the way of my cleaning control. He refolded the towels the way that wrinkles them up. He changed the Febreeze Plug Ins in half the rooms but not the other half. I know – entirely stupid for me to get up in arms about stupid things like this, but I have a very careful control of the system of cleaning in this place. So I followed him around and undid the damage he had done. Yes, I did just refer to it as “damage;” yes, I followed him around. Like I said, I’m losing it.

5) Abstract distractions. Lastly, in the last few weeks I have found myself getting more lost in my thoughts and ideas than probably ever before. At heart, I continue to be a philosopher – graduate school coming to a conclusion did not erase that from who I am. I may be taking it too far, though. Today I was so distracted by a book I was reading that I put a pair of socks I was folding in the freezer, and was later so upset and disturbed (and deep in thought) by the death of Lonely George that I missed my exit by ten miles.

I know, I know. I am probably reading far too into these things as signs that I’m losing it; that my brain is on fire. Maybe my brain is on fire in that I’m really becoming an idiot. So my next stop is either the insane asylum or the stupidity bin. I just hope that wherever it is, they can take the heat.