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A Sign of Things to Come

I have found myself making raspberries as part of my vocabulary.

     The other day, in the Goodwill, I had a sudden prophetic vision of me--the tangle-haired old woman with a Goodwill shopping cart full of crap--making big, fat, farting noises with my tongue at every butt ugly holiday sweater I saw, including those on actual people.  

Look, I'm not going to go toe-to pointy-elf-bootie toe with you on fashion, but if you need a holiday sweatshirt to get you in the Holiday Spirit, maybe you deserve what you get, though.
     Occasionally, like the clothes in my closet, I have to do a certain amount of inventory and culling of personal habits--like going to the thrift stores every day, or chewing my thumb cuticles into bloody hamburger--after I get senile that won't matter to me so much, but right now, I've got to be at least a teeny bit vigilant, lest I stop showering or start muttering to myself in grimy subways or start putting children into stews and so on.
     I know how it started: people asked me how the writing was going, like they do, and the only answer that fit at the time, because it was just too dismal to verbalize, was to take my thumb and arc it downwards as though tumbling down a steep slope and make a long, wet-tish raspberry: "Thbbbbdbbthbthbthbddbp!"
     Then, I started using it--while I was alone, mind you--when thinking about a particularly annoying and high maintenance individual that I was dealing with...("What is they want from me? Can't they see they're making me crazy??? Oh, thbpthpbthpbtthhhbp. Whatever.")
     I got rid of the individual, I'm doing some writing work, but the verbal tic is hanging on.
     Now, let's get back to those holiday sweaters.
     Why? For those holiday wear fans out there, can you just answer that?
    
I mean, you can really (don't push it) only wear it for one day.
 "Let's see, I've brought that dish of green beans with cream of mushroom soup thing and there's Gramma and that lardass Uncle Bob watching the Cowboys...what day is it? What day is it? Oh! Thanks for the wardrobe cue, cuz! Thanksgiving Day. Phew! Because you know--tempis fugit and all that, right? And the food's getting cold. The little embroidered turkey definitely helped me remember what to do with it! We can be thankful for that, at least!" 


     Aw, hell: C'mon, Gramma: say it with me now:  THTHTHTHTHBBBLTHTHBDDDBLT!

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