A Day In The Life Of Katie

 

 

Getting Ready

 

 Deciding What To Eat

 

 

 Going Online

 

 

Exercising

 

Chocolate

 

Martial Arts

 

Video Games

 

 

Leaving My Door Open

 

Bedtime

 

 

 

Note: Just doodles. I have more stories to come. :)

My First Kiss

A first kiss is a magical thing: There’s sparks! There’s lightning! There’s glistening fountains and dancing fireflies! 

At least, that’s what I hear.

 I could tell a story of when I was three or four.  My family would get our hair cut in the basement of a lady’s house. Her mentally-challenged son tried to make out with me. Well, he was successful. I was so upset; I pushed him down and spit repeatedly on his bed to get the “icky” out of my mouth. Running into the next room, I cried my angry little eyes out to my mom. She tried to explain that it wasn’t his fault. That was beyond my comprehension. All I could do was seethe with unfathomable hatred toward the boy who slimed me with his love. We never got our hair cut at that house again.

 

 

But that was when I was little and naive. Teenager-hood is when I expected kissing to happen. 

When I was seventeen, I was part of my High School’s all-girl choir. There were about 14 of us. We were amazing, if I say so myself. All of us had to be perfect on every note for it to sound good. It was one of the most fun and fulfilling things I had ever participated in. We sang at many places, including old folk’s homes.

At one such particular compound for the elderly, we had a lovely performance around Christmas time. All of us girls went around and shook hands with the oldies afterward. Even though they all reeked, we were happy to show appreciation for their perseverance in staying alive. 

I was separated from the other girls when I first saw him.

Wheel-chair bound, wrinkled beyond comprehension, he lifted his shaking hand in the air. He was beckoning me to come over to him. Pity overwhelmed me. Poor old thing! As I put out my hand to shake his, he pushed it aside and motioned for me get closer.  I assumed he wanted to thank me for the performance with one of those soft, quiet, old-person voices. To hear him better, I leaned down to his level. 

With haste, for such a decrepit old man, he grabbed the back of my head with both hands and pulled me toward his face. Seeing his puckered lips, I knew what was going to happen. I had only just a moment to turn my head slightly so it wasn’t a full-on spit fest. But he still got half of my mouth. I could only think, “Old dude lips! Ew! Ew! EW EW EW!!!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

When he let go, I didn’t know how to react. I looked down at him, reasonably horrified. Contorting his face into a more crinkly mass, he grinned at me. Maybe he just thought I was pretty. Maybe he was senile. Maybe other old people tasted bad. Whatever the reason, I knew I couldn’t be mean to a person who would probably be dead the next day. I gave him a forced half smile, turned around and walked back toward the other girls. 

While I wiped putrefied spit from my steaming-red face, one of the girls asked, “What’s wrong?”

 

“He kissed me.”

“Oh… I saw that.” Then she started to giggle. I felt my entire head throb. That was not how I imagined my first kiss would go.

War of the Leash

Walking my dogs was hard work. Not only were there two of them, but they were big and strong. They knew the leash meant freedom from the backyard. I would get pushed to my limits. They would drag so hard they’d be choking themselves, front paws flailing in the air. Getting them to heel was always a losing battle, but one consistent fight for dominance will never leave my mind: The cows.

 

In my neighborhood, there used to be a cow field. It was next to the church and had a chain link fence dividing it from the parking lot. The cows did nothing but eat grass all day long. I remember once when one of them actually came over and almost ate grass from my hand. It sniffed my bundle, turned its nose up, and walked away. Ungrateful, picky cow!

 

My dogs had differing opinions about the cows. Girl Dog thought every other animal was her friend. She would just stare vapidly in their general direction, wagging her tail. Then she’d get bored and sniff at small circles of dead grass. (So fascinating, animal urine is.) 

Boy Dog, on the other hand, was anti-social. He wanted to destroy everything that wasn’t human or Girl Dog. The cows were his special enemy.

Every time I walked my dogs, we would pass by the cows. Boy Dog’s tantrum would come first. It would begin as a series of frustrated “turkey gobbles” and end up as blood-thirsty screeching. Repeated attacks against the fence soon followed; he’d jump, smash his face against the chain link, throwing his head back and forth. The cows kept eating.

It took all my strength to pry Boy Dog from his tantrum-fence. All he wanted to do was kill those cows. If he ever did somehow manage to get past the fence, he’d never actually be able to achieve cow-murder. One kick from those beef machines would’ve been enough to end his tantrums forever. Yet he tried. Every. Single. Walk.  He wasn’t the brightest four-legged stinker.

 

These incidences might not have been so bad if they weren’t usually paired with another bit of horribleness: Cow poop. I had to avoid stepping in any whilst Boy Dog dragged me around during his freak-outs. I’ll never know how those cows managed to get it on our side of the fence in perfect, soft-serve piles. There were usually around five-ten of these massive globs sitting, undisturbed, on the grass that borders the fence and parking lot. 

It’s as if the cows left their enclosure just for the pleasure of leaving their dumps in a place where humans could admire them. 

 But that’s not what I remember most about the poop.

If the cows weren’t close enough to the fence as a distraction, my dogs would beeline for those mounds of muck. I would always pull my hardest on the leash trying to stop what I knew was coming, but I was like a rag doll. When they knew there was cow poop around, their strength was unrivaled.

The result was inevitable. 

My dogs would eat it. They loved it. They ate it like it was a prized delicacy. Plunging their snouts in that glorious buffet, they wouldn’t even bother chewing. They especially liked the mature manure; piles that were crusted over with goopy insides. (It must have tasted better medium-rare.) I would fruitlessly pull the leash and beg them to stop. “Don’t eat that! That’s not healthy for you! What is wrong with you?”

The feasting would go on until either all the poops were gone, or they had eaten so much that they started to vomit. I was powerless against their intense desires for cow excrement. And there were new piles every time I walked the dogs. I hated those cows.

When they would finish licking their stained faces, they would continue the walk like nothing was wrong. They’d even lick me after.

And I let them.