Last night, I swallowed part of a moth ball, mistaking it for a xanax. It was a natural mistake. Usually when I find a small white hard object wedged between my couch cushions it’s xanax. When I first get my prescription, I feel rich and I’m careless with it. I think, “You know what would be really great? How about I take a xanax , have a little drinky and sit back and watch some bad reality tv. It SOUNDS like a great idea but it always ends the same way. Although, I start out sitting, I awake in the opposite position, my legs up on the back of the couch, my head on the floor, my hair sticky and stained pink by that last vodka cranberry I made for myself before passing out and spilling it. Next to the empty glass will be the topless prescription bottle which I refill with whatever pills are in plain sight, knowing that when I finish the bottle and REALLY need one, I’ll be able to fish some out of the couch or pry one out of a gap in the wood floor. It’s like money in the bank. Well, last night I REALLY needed one. I just swallowed the first pill like object I could find.

The problem is my girlfriend, Trudie Von Muggenthal. She is driving me insane. A couple of weeks ago, we went to see the movie version of the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Rosendale Theater down the street. We had a huge fight, after which she stormed off and we basically broke up. It all had to do with her insecurity. She played Columbia, in the Bardavon Theater’s production of the Rocky Horror Picture Show a year ago. In the movie, Columbia was played by the actress/dancer, Nell Campbell AKA Little Nell. Back when Trudie was playing the part, she always felt that she didn’t quite measure up to Little Nell. For one thing, she kept messing up the tap dancing bit. For another she didn’t think she had Little Nell’s great figure. Not realizing this, I made the mistake of mentioning that Little Nell had a great booty and it probably was from tap dancing. That didn’t go over well. She stormed out of the theater. She even threw her popcorn at me, first.

So, when she called and told me she had been using the time apart to get to know herself and get some therapy, I was pleased and ever so supportive. She told me that she had come to terms with her inability to tap dance and apologized for overreacting about it and I , in turn, told her that perhaps I had been insensitive. She told me she had learned that tap dancing is just not who she is and that just because she can’t tap dance doesn’t mean she should feel inadequate. She has learned to separate that from her ego. I can totally relate. I mean, when I was in high school, I had to take French and I practically flunked. It was humiliating. But now I just accept that foreign languages are simply not my forte’. I was in Norway for 6 months and all I learned to say is, “Where can I buy vodka?” which, honestly, is all I really needed to know. But, I digress. Back to Trudie. So, just as I think all is going really well, she suddenly starts projecting all kind of negative energy on ME! She starts telling me that I’M super competitive and condescending and that I was dismissive of her ‘art’. By art, she meant her doodles of LOL cats, which she would caption with kitteh talk, and ponies. OK, sorry but I don’t consider doodles of LOL cats riding ponies high art. Still, I admitted maybe I shouldn’t have made so many jokes about her being a closet Pegasister . Also, I did use the back of one of her doodles to write a grocery list. That was disrespectful. But, then instead of accepting my apology, she gets really insulting. She starts telling me that, if I want to make it as an artist, I need to stop painting dead guinea hens and photo realistic pieces of meat and, either paint stuff that sells or get some sort of real job because she is sick of paying for all of the PETA t shirts and herbal tea. So I just said, fine, whatever. I can buy my own herbal tea and I have enough PETA shirts. So then she starts crying. She tells me she misses Freddie, my three legged dog, and just bought him a really expensive evening ascot and she really wants to see it on him. I was touched. This was quite thoughtful of her. Freddie is a very elegant looking dog even with a leg missing, slender, mostly black with white paws and chest. Like a tuxedo. We once put a bandana around his neck like people do. It just looked wrong, like watching Martha Stewart drink milk straight out of the carton. Then she starts telling me she feels so conflicted about, once again, spending all the money and maybe I should reimburse her for it since he is MY dog. I pointed out that there is no way I would ever spend $200 on an ascot, even for Freddie. A casual daytime ascot for 50 bucks would have done just fine. Then, suddenly she goes from crying to screaming again and so I asked her if maybe she was feeling hormonal. Well, she hung up on me and, by then, I was having such an anxiety attack that I ran straight to the couch and swallowed the first white hard thing I could find.

The second it went down my throat, I knew what it was. In a Proustian moment, I was transported to my grandmother’s closet in 19 seventy something, going through her clothing, trying on her patent leather heels and exciting black lace and mesh veils that she had put away since whenever women wore them, stored in boxes with sparkly little white balls emitting a distinct odor that saved the lace from being eaten by moths. If I am going to stay in this relationship, the first thing I need to do is write down the number of poison control on the side of one of the couch cushions. I should probably put some towels on the floor, too.

Last night, when I arrived at the barn to let the horses in and feed them dinner, the rooster, Captain Salty, was cowering outside glancing, from time to time, fearfully toward the barn door. Captain Salty is a particularly disagreeable bird and I knew it must be something terrible indeed keeping him from his normal evening roost at the top of Dancer’s stall. I took a breath and entered the barn to see what horrible sight awaited me.

I don’t pretend to be an authority but, after spending 6 months in Norway, I should recognize a troll when I see one. That being said, it has been 10 years since I was there and trolls are scarce in this region. In fact, they are scarce in ANY region outside of Scandinavia and their presence anywhere else is almost always accidental as they are notoriously xenophobic and also too slow witted to navigate an airport. When they are outside of Scandinavia they naturally seek out woodland, particularly rocky woodland with caves. They are also drawn to small farms which, according to Wikipedia, they are likely to take over. A farm owned by people with a Scandinavian surname would naturally be enticing to a troll. It took me several minutes but I was eventually able to identify the specimen before me as a Grumbling Round Faced Troll, an exceptionally aggressive type, so named for its round face and tendency to grumble. This one had attempted to disguise itself by taming its usual bushy eruption of hair into a long thin rat tail of a braid. It sat in the middle of the aisle in front of a large pile of stones and grumbled testily upon seeing me after which it resumed its occupation which seemed to be testing the stones for palatability. It raised each stone to its round face, inserted it into its mouth and then, with a grunt, spit it out and threw it out the door, where the rejected stones formed a new pile. I needed to let the horses in but feared provoking it, as the Grumbling Round Faced Troll is known to have a fearsome bite. Having no fangs, it instead has enormous molars, which along with a significant amount of adipose tissue, contribute to its very round face. I decided to let it finish its gatronomous experimentation and go check on Wiley, the 26 year old thoroughbred, who had been very lame since the morning. He was near the house, having been allowed to graze out of the usual paddock which was rocky and too perilous for a lame horse. He hobbled slowly and, it seemed, painfully to the barn but, just as I went to halt him, broke into a trot, eluding me and entered the building where the troll sat with its stones. The troll grumbled indignantly at Wiley and then at me and then incomprehensibly tried to crawl inside a tack box. When it found it couldn’t fit, it grabbed a curry comb and hurled it at its own foot, yelping in pain at the impact. It then grumbled some more and trundled to the door where it broke wind violently before leaving.

This morning, when I returned to the barn, the troll was thankfully absent. The only evidence of it having been there was a large pile of stones outside the doorway and some large droppings which were definitely not equine or canine.