anticipating the ice cream truck

this just in: my hermit crab is officially missing. i looked under every rock and shell and sponge, expecting to discover a corpse under each. no corpse. nothing.

it's possible that she buried herself to shed her exoskeleton and move into a new shell, but i'm a bit concerned because something similar happened last year with my crab fihliwe. i didn't see him for a few weeks, so i assumed he wanted some privacy so he could get naked (apparently they can stay under there for up to six weeks). well, he wasn't getting naked. he wasn't in the tank at all. no shell, no exoskeleton, no detached claw. he up and disappeared. even when we moved out of the house, we never found any evidence of fihliwe's existence. my theory: one of the downstairs neighbor children popped him in her mouth one day.

i named my new hermit crab after the downstairs neighbor child. she came to seattle with me on the train. somehow she's survived the coldness of my room and being alone (which ironically hermit crabs don't like). once i bought her a companion from petco on a friday. that tuesday, his legs fell off. seriously. i hadn't even named him yet. we scooped up his shell and his legs and gave him a beautiful viking funeral on lake union. liz's late fish was on the boat, too. i wanted us to play "float on" by modest mouse while we set the boat on fire, but the cd player wouldn't work, so i asked all of the guests to hum it instead. and they did. that's why i love my housemates.

i guess we'll see. i had a dream last week about her being dead and in the dream i was sobbing. i wonder if i'll have that reaction in real life. damn.

last night our team actually came in last place for trivia night. we won a prize for losing. two shots of jager. bleh. no thanks. i failed my team at the bible trivia question, which is supposed to be my area of expertise. the question was, "what did saul require of david before he married his daughter?" the answer is the foreskin of 1,000 philistines. mmm...well then, of course we wouldn't have talked about it in church. the last two rounds were all televison questions, which is why we were doomed.

i spent hours and hours today cleaning my house, scouring every surface in our bathroom and kitchen with vinegar and baking soda. i couldn't seem to stop. our house is old and everything will always look dirty. but my mother instilled very thorough cleaning habits in me. i thought she was crazy growing up, making us wipe down the walls for godsake. today my housemates looked at me the same way i looked at my mother. as if dusting the baseboards is unecessary. geez.