Thursday Thirteen

Things Not Allowed in My House

1. Coconut anything. If it smells like sunscreen or tastes like disappointment, it stays outside. Coconut odor is enough to make me hurl. Why? I blame some medication I took when I was a child that smelled like coconut, but I could be misremembering.

2. Dogs. I’m allergic, they shed, and they always want to “just say hi” by humping my leg. I love dogs, I grew up having dogs, and I owned a dog for the first 17 years of our marriage, but she stayed outside. The house is for people; the barn is for animals. No dogs allowed.

3. Barbed wire. I don’t care if it’s “decorative rustic.” It’s a tetanus shot waiting to happen.

4. Poison ivy or poison oak. Check your shoes, check your pants, and if you are oozing in places from being around it yourself, please stay home, or go to urgent care for a steroid pack.

5. Ticks. If you show up with one, I’m burning your clothes and maybe the porch. These things now carry so many diseases that they're like a mini-monster just hiding in the grass waiting to get us all. Talk about the walking dead. Crikey.

6. Snakes. Live, dead, rubber, or on a T‑shirt. Absolutely not. Those things slither, slide, and flick out their tiny little tongues in ways that give me the heebie-jeebies. No way no how.

7. High wind. If you open a door and the house tries to leave the foundation, close it.

8. Anything that smells like "ocean breeze." That’s not a scent. That’s a chemical lie.

9. Tech that insists on “helping.” If it auto‑corrects, auto‑plays, auto‑syncs, or auto‑anything, it can auto‑stay outside. I don't need my microwave, stove, refrigerator, or washing machine connected to the Internet so it can talk to me. I have Alexa for that.

10. Anyone smoking or smelling like smoke. If you walk in trailing a nicotine weather system, you’re turning right back around. Sorry, but my asthma can't take it and honestly, you shouldn't be smoking it anyway.

11 Plants. If it needs feeding and watering and has dirt that routinely requires changing so that it doesn't smell like compost, it’s not compatible with my lifestyle.

12. Food described as “fusion.” First, I don't even know what that means. It sounds like you're making a nuclear reactor. Pick a cuisine and commit. My kitchen is not a laboratory.

13. Anything that sheds glitter. I don’t need to sparkle. I need to not vacuum for the rest of my life. And if you're the person who thinks putting things in birthday cards so that the stuff spills everywhere when the envelope is open, you're not particularly welcome, either.

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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while, and this is my 974th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.