A Non-Exhaustive List of Things I'm Over

• Digestion
• Moisture
• Google alerts
• Motorists
• Instagram
• Native flora
• The super moon
• Blueberries
• Using question marks
• My flat iron
• Men with feelings
• Street youths
• Gatorade
• Naming things
• Slideshows
• Four way stops
• Facebook messenger
• Moving around

Apocalypse Manifesto

I'd make a great post-Apocalyptic dictator. 

My rise to power would be swift and merciless. Meteoric, the historians will call it, because I'll make them.

I would impose harsh yet necessary order upon the remaining population, and eliminate potential threats at the first sign of dissent. My rule may be described as "terrible" by an unhappy, short-lived few, but that's only because they're not smart enough to understand that it's for their own good. 

I owe a lot of my future success to Cosmos: A Space Time Odyssey. 

At first I found the show bone-crushingly depressing. Everything beautiful in the universe is only cold, lifeless gas and hot, deadly radiation, and things are vast on a scale to the point that nothing even matters anymore. Numbers cease to mean anything. We are basically pointless.

But then, huzzah. A breakthrough.

We are so tiny. In the grand scheme of things we are basically just a tiny speck. That means it would be so easy to just take over. One apocalyptic event to wipe out most of the competition, and I'm on top.

Who's with me. 

More importantly, who's not.

Patio Postulations

I decided to force myself to spend more time outside this summer. I'm outside right now, accomplishing goals. #happinessadvantage

In an effort to beautify my outdoor living space, I planted a flower. It was awful, the dirt was hard, and in the end I just gave up and kind of mashed it into the planter. Now there are mysterious holes appearing in the dirt overnight. Is something digging in my planter, or did something inside come out? I hate both scenarios.

Also, every time I open my patio umbrella I feel like a shower of worms is going to pour down. I don't know why. How would worms even get up there. Unclear.

Yesterday, there was a large bird of prey in my backyard. A raptor, if you will. 

Basically a velociraptor. I made noises at it until it posed majestically. Photo journalism.

A couple days before that there was a praying mantis. I didn't get a pic, because I was more afraid of that and wouldn't go outside. 

My citronella candles protect against nothing.

Neighborhood Paranoia

I'm starting to suspect that the people across the street from me purposely and maliciously keep their window shades open to different levels just to make me anxious every time I look out the window.

I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt and pretend they aren't aware of the problems they're causing, but let's be serious. You can't have your window shades open to such dramatically different levels and not know it. It's anarchy, and it must end.

In addition, I also believe our garbage collectors and landscaping company have entered into a conspiracy to oust me from the neighborhood. Here is my evidence:

• Every Thursday (garbage day), my garbage can is left rolling through the streets like a tumbleweed, while all my neighbors' receptacles are lined up neatly along the curb.
• Once, last summer, the landscapers left their pruning shears on my patio. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it seemed vaguely threatening.

I think I already have enough to build a good case, but I'll continue collecting evidence throughout the summer.

Irrational Fears

• Things with long arms (i.e. – aliens, spider monkeys, tripod robots from War of the Worlds)
• Parasites (i.e. – everything on Monsters Inside Me, most of which come from cats or Africa)
• Random things decaying around me (i.e. – my car, my skeleton)
• Butterflies (I like the idea, not the execution)
• Touching raw chicken (I go through a whole bottle of hand soap when I cook)
• Not having my windshield wipers on exactly the right setting when it rains (no further explanation needed, I assume this worries everyone)
• Sharks in swimming pools (no one expects it until it happens)
• Eyeballs (touching, watching other people touch, eye drops, contacts, thinking about, etc.)
• Apocalypses of any nature (zombie, epidemic, nuclear war, super storm, comet, Rapture [I assume I'll be left behind], etc.)
• Being abducted by aliens (in its own right, separate from the long arms thing)

Grocery Store Anxiety

Grocery shopping is a source of great anxiety for me. After reviewing my reasons, I’m sure you’ll see why.

1. I have a very strict and well-planned rotation for each grocery store I frequent. This allows me to hit all the important aisles, swing around to the dairy, pass through the frozen, and end my trip at the front of the store by the checkout. Every now and then, however, I screw up my rotation. This can play out in several calamitous ways:

• I end at the back of the store instead of the front. This forces me to double back through frozen to get to the checkout. It feels wrong.
• Very rarely, I forget something. Doubling back is not part of the rotation. I leave the store without that item.
• Turning mid-aisle to retrieve a forgotten item found in that same aisle is also considered doubling back. See above.
• Sometimes I find myself circling COUNTER CLOCKWISE through the store. I don’t even know how this happens. I don’t know who I am anymore.

2. Sometimes I accidentally sync up with someone who is clearly doing my same rotation. This forces me to either slow down or speed up to avoid walking with a stranger, wondering the whole time if I am required to make small talk or comment on the cleverness of their rotation pattern. Sometimes I just panic, abandon my cart, and try again the next day.

3. They are renovating one of the grocery stores I visit. That in and of itself is a problem, given my general abhorrence of change. This reno is especially troublesome, though, because they moved the wine section. I just figured out what kind of wine I like (it’s been a big year for me, beverage-wise – I also started drinking grown up coffee) and where it is kept. Now I need to relearn their wine organizational patterns and re-locate the one I like. They have been uncooperative with my requests for a schematic of the area.