Blood in the flowers.

Well, Tom and I dolled ourselves up as a cowboy and an elf yesterday and went to the great big green house of Colonial Heights. They have a pig there, and this was the main reason I was excited. Come to find out that this pig, whom we last we met was the size of a Nike is now an offensively unapproachable Omnibus who is kept in a pen in the backyard. They gave me a hot dog. I liked that. Also there were train rides available. For the children. Of which there were about four. I wanted to get into the train but the train consisted of six steel trash cans turned sideways, glued to wheels with holes cut in the top side containing what appeared to be children's training toilets. I would not have fit. We were there to promote the Christmas show at the Mill, so we had brochures. We've been over how I feel about handing out brochures. There were two Santas there. One was appropriate looking- had his natural beard, was pretty old, and he was set up all alone in the freezer section surrounded by pre-lit trees strung festively with papier-mache lizards and cans of budweiser. He was a bitter Santa, I observed after watching Tom talk to him for five minutes. He works at Dupont. He doesn't like it there. He does, however, get paid extra when he plays the Santa at the mall because of his natural beard. I later spotted this Santa deftly performing theft of several hummingbird feeders in the corner. He had put on his sunshades, so perhaps he felt no one would notice.

The other Santa was 17 years old, riddled with pimples, Canadian (Tom thinks he was from the Phillipines), and had a lovely fringe of  blank bangs hanging out from below the front of his wig. He was the Santa in charge of taking photographs with peoples pets. Lots of unhappy Rottweilers and pretentious weiner dogs with their nails done. At one point a jolly round little girl rolled up to me with her poodle on a leash. This poodle appeared to have been stained in blood. She continued her forward rolling motion up to the Santa table where she immediately almost lost her life in the battle that began between her nasty little poodle and the large shark with fur that was next in line. I do not know what kind of dogs those are that have no color and hardly any fur. But they are pink about the eyes, so perchance they are albinos of some sort. Anyway. She was pretty shaken up by that. You could tell because huddled into a chair in the corner and kept looking at Tom and I laughing with tears streaming down her face.

Then Tom settled down in one of the lovely sewage hued Adirondack chairs that lined the walk way and began genially emotionally scarring the grandmother sitting across from him. Her husband? was sitting next to her in his maroon elastic waist sweat pants and eyebrows that looked like toenail shavings giving me the lusty eye and explaining to us that his wife was morbidly afraid of snakes. So Tom proceeded to regale us all with tale of the three black snakes who were living on a shelf in the light booth at the Mill behind the mike cables and who were discovered by the light board op one dark day. Mid way through the story this poor grandmother with her off-white stretch capris, her off-white stretch cankles, and her snazzy orange gold studded flats covered her ears with her hands and got up and walked away. 

Then I had myself two yellow cupcakes from the vending machine I happily discovered secreted away in the corner after which I contracted the most violent hiccups of my life. I couldn't control the volume, and they were great gasping heaves of hiccups. I seemed quite drunk. I couldn't stop laughing, Tom couldn't stop rolling his eyes, and the poodle had denied us the thrill of dying a bloody death, so we decided it would be best if we left. We went to the nearby Wendy's because Tom knew if I ate beef it'd clog my hiccups right up. It did. 

Everyone should meet Sandy Dacus' mother. Everyone.