CrispyPastas

    I drink too much Diet Coke. It’s become kind of a running joke at the house; my kid calls it “Mommy Juice,” which is probably better than the whole Mommy Juice Is Wine thing going around. It’s only cute the first couple times. At some point, you just need to call yourself an alcoholic. Anyway, Diet Coke is my vice. And I know, I know, that much caffeine isn’t good for my heart or my kidneys or my waistline, but it helps me get through the day. It's probably a not a good sign that I reach for a can when I get stressed or tired or bored, though.      Anyway, this is to establish that it’s not unusual for Diet Coke cans to be rattling around near me and that I didn’t think a thing about it when there was a can on my desk at work. I just tossed it in the recycling and moved on with my day. I noticed it on the floor when I was heading out, so I tossed it in the recycling again. I’d probably just missed and then, like, missed that I missed, you know? I rememb...

  www.jeanines-haunted-dakotas.geocities.com /archives/cryptids/wombleflomp JEANINE’S HAUNTED DAKOTAS A Compendium of Paranormal Phenomena in the Upper Plains The Wombleflomp Posted by QueenieJeanie1964 on 03/04/2001 I first heard about this one from my great-uncle Ralph a couple years before we lost him to pancreatic cancer.  Uncle Ralph was a long-haul trucker for forty years, so he had all sorts of crazy stories from all over America, Canada, and Mexico.  But the last few years before he retired, he mostly only did short-haul trips.     So one day in the late 80’s, he was taking some farm equipment from Sioux Falls to Rapid City, an easy day trip on the interstate.  He picked up the equipment and was on the road before dawn.  Knowing Uncle Ralph, he was probably listening to a Patsy Cline cassette.  Or some George Carlin standup.  He loved Carlin.   Now, if you’ve spent any time up here, you know how we have completely ...

  I moved to Green Hills to watch my sister’s place. It was a little condo, one-bedroom but bright and roomy. I needed somewhere to go after everything with Ron imploded and she needed someone to watch the place while she travelled. win-win. I just had to cover utilities and keep an eye on her houseplants.  By “keep an eye,” it was very clear that that was all I should ever do without consulting her. Leda was a botanist and in her spare time she was trying to create new strains and hybrids of lithops. She knew every bump on her plants and once over drinks she told me she bought her place specifically because it had a large south-facing bay window for the plants to get natural light. (I brought it up later, when we were sober; she asked me never to tell anyone. “Everyone already thinks I’m weird… just bring up the original flooring if Mom or Dad asks.”) I didn’t see the appeal of her plants. They were small lumps, evolved to look like stones in extreme desert environments. Each...

There are no cardinal directions in the cities of the southern Piedmont.  The hills vehemently resist straight lines, forcing roads to meander like rivers.  You could turn at the Waffle House onto a street heading south – five Publixes later, you’ll find yourself at a Waffle House northwest of where you started.   Most development is private, self-contained subdivisions with roads that wind into cul de sacs.  Instead of an orderly grid, maps resemble a watershed of little tributaries curling off from larger waterways arcing off from even larger ones.  A less charitable person might say they look like scribbles by a manic toddler.   If this weren’t disorienting enough, the hills tightly ration the views, revealing only tiny fractions of the landscape as you move through it.  There are no expansive vistas of the strip malls that lay ahead; only myopic glimpses of the strip malls you’re currently passing.  There are no notable geographic fe...