My bedroom wall neighbors keep me up with loud, grunty sex all the time, and so last night at 11:00 when I should have been counting sheep, but was instead wide awake and laughing so hard the furniture vibrated, I thought, “Deal with it, suckers.” It was payback.
Ari and I do not talk on the phone very often. Because we hate it. Phone talking, that is, not talking to each other. When we lived across First Avenue from one another, we used to spend hours sitting cross-legged on her chestnut leather couch dishing about everything from cads to coworkers to cramps. Throw in some cheap Chinese from around the corner and those sessions could go for days. Ever since I closed up shop and moved to Dallas, though, those blow-out snark-fests are few and far between.
But last night! Last night was like a raunchy reunion episode of your favorite love-to-hate reality show. Fetishists, the IRS, the company ink, and well, then I think we went back to fetishist, but nothing was off limits. I even filled her in on my new entrepreneurial scheme.
“After talking to Chris yesterday, I decided I should start a business sending dirty emails to people with Blackberries stuck in boring meetings.”
“God, that should be a public service!”
“But if it was a public service, I wouldn’t get paid. And highly-skilled flirtation is not free.”
“Hmmm… does the IRS do audits for free? I guess they do.”
“Take that back! I do not want innuendo connected to the IRS in any way. People would stop ending their sentences with, ‘…if you know what I mean.’ The Universe would collapse on itself.”
Honestly, can you think of a better way to pass an eye-gougingly boring meeting than feeling your PDA vibrate, only to have the message at hand be suggestions of… I don’t know… a good hair-pulling roll in the hay? No, you cannot. Unless the meeting was a hair-pulling roll in the hay. But life is not a Belle and Sebastian song. Unfortunately.
A couple of days after I wrote about gas and the passing of, and how I think, in appropriate contexts, people shouldn’t be nearly so uptight about it, Smart-Ass Coworker #1 came into my office.
“I saw something last night and thought of you.”
“Uh oh.”
“Yeah, I really wish I’d had your cell number so I could have sent you a picture.”
“Okay, out with it!”
“It was a bumper sticker that said, I heart – and it had a picture of a heart -” with this she drew an imaginary heart in the air in front of her chest. “to fart! It said, I heart to fart and I thought of you!”
“Somewhere my mother has just experienced a tsunami swell of pride.”
And then, the day I shared my jogging accident with the world (seriously people, we have to have a talk about how wide jogging paths are in relation to jogging strollers; the fact that people don’t have BRAKE LIGHTS on their BUMS; and if you’re speeding up to pass someone, tripping over the wheel of their gigantic stroller is fairly inevitable and not that ridiculous. But we’ll save that for another time.), Smart-Ass Coworker #2 emailed me.
To: Heather From: SAC#2 Re: Something Totally Inane, I’m Sure
I got this coming in the mail for you…
Har-har!
Points for creativity! Naturally, I’ve been expecting the video to show up in a little brown parcel on my chair, and have been a little disappointed that, so far, nothing. Because, as we all know, it’s the follow-through that distinguishes a true smart-ass from an amateur. And I’d hate to think I was working with anything other than pros.
We were winding our way from her hotel room to the elevator, discussing my advancing age.
“Do you feel anxious about the marriage and kids thing?” Stephanie asked, tossing a look over her shoulder and zagging left. “I swear, they must think I’m elevator-allergic.”
“No,” I said, giving the thought a frown and some real consideration. “I don’t. Should I?”
“No!” She meant it. And as someone who, with only two years on me, has everything (cranky* husband, beautiful babies, a couple books), you’d think she’d be the first person urging me to get while the gettin’s good.
“Just enjoy it,” she said, and then “Oh! Finally!” The elevator was in sight; discussion of my spinsterhood, over. At least, for the moment.
On Saturday, I dropped by Jamie’s to bring lunch for the folks who were busy hefting my friend’s belongings into a moving truck. I wasn’t there ten minutes before Jamie’s mom, Evie, got to mothering and tried to send me home with food.
“Here,” she said, bundling up one of the foot-long subs. “You can take this home with you.”
“No way. I don’t need that.”
“Not even for supper? You could have this tonight… unless you have a hot date.”
I laughed. “No hot date, thank goodness.”
I was thinking that, in light of the day’s humidity and the fifteen thousand errands I had left to run, nothing could be less appealing than getting gussied up. Hot dates, they are a lot of work. But Evie just sighed one of those motherly sighs and put down the sandwich.
“I forgot. You girls don’t need men.”
Wait, what? Jamie was coming down the stairs and I threw her a glance that said, “I hope you caught that. We shall discuss later.” Need? No, I guess not. But like? Oh yes. Yes I do. But by the way Evie said it, I began to think maybe we’d thrown around one too many jokes about being each other’s platonic housewives. Evie was starting to worry that Jamie and I were going to file for domestic partnership.
“Oh, that isn’t true at all,” I said, reassuringly. “We need them sometimes.”
I saved the bit about ‘dead batteries’ for when she was out of earshot.
*Cranky is, in my book, an entirely positive attribute. As evidenced by my love for gems like Detective Stabler and House MD.
I get a lot of comment spam – probably two or three hundred a day when the Internet jerks are on their game. Usually it’s garbage about “performance enhancers” and nudie pics of gals from such exotic and far away locations as Russia and… Phoenix. But over the last couple of days, my spamming friends have really stepped it up. They’ve done their research, and now, NOW they know what makes me tick.
In the last 24-hours, I’ve gotten upwards of one hundred spam comments that all begin with text from Jane Eyre. Do you even know how just the name Rochester thrills me? They sure do! Because I have read every single comment. Marked them as spam, sure, but I read ‘em! The best part is, that after the initial delightful grabs from some of the best chick lit of all time, the message dissolves into gobbledygook – I mean, pure and absolute nonsense – with dirty words inserted here and there. No links, no products. Just Jane Eyre and profanity.
I woke up this morning in a geriatric state of mind.
Geriatric, says my mother, is not about how old you are; it’s how old you feel. Just yesterday, my mom was grousing about Sally Field shilling for osteoporosismeds, and how, despite only a 6 year age difference, such a thing makes Sally geriatricand my mother, decidedly not. I’m now curious about Mom’s bone density, but that is neither here nor there. This morning, I feel old. Like, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up old. I can’t turn my head in either direction (I shouldn’t have been allowed to come anywhere near the I-75 on-ramp) and I’m lowering myself into chairs. Even Sally Field doesn’t have to do that shit, I bet.
And all because of… a jogging accident. Right? So silly. I was trotting along, do-do-do, minding my own, thinking about some crazy article I read on folks who prefer to run barefoot, when the mom-jogger in front of me came to a dead stop. Just like that. She didn’t glance over her shoulder; didn’t pull off to the side. Just stopped, right in the middle of the pedestrian only lane – with a double-wide stroller. Over which I then proceeded to tumble rather awkwardly.
“Oh my god!” she said.
“No kidding,” I said, recovering into a hop-skip. I rotated one ankle, then the other. Everything seemed sound.
“You should really be more careful.”
“I… what?” I looked at her to check for sarcasm face. I got angry rich lady face, instead. “But you stopped! Without looking! In the PEDESTRIAN ONLY LANE with a stroller with like, 18 wheels. Not feet. WHEELS.”
She looked confused and annoyed. I wanted to explain that unless she planned on dragging her kids down the trail on foot, they did not belong on the squishily paved black top. Instead, I shook my head and rearranged my earphones. She muttered something about an apology. As in, she wanted one.
“Okay, ” I said.”I’m sorry you haven’t lost your baby weight?”
Fine. I didn’t really say that. But I sure wanted to. If it were Ari, she’d have said it and her delivery would have had that lady sputtering and flustered. But I’m me, and I’m really only mean and funny when I’m certain no one is going to hurl a sippy cup at me. So, being me, I just ignored her and went on with my run.
And by “ignored her” I mean, I might have flipped her off. Which, considering I woke up broken and geriatric, seems like the least I could have done.
When Stephanie was preparing her speech last night, I kept telling her just to wing it. One of my favorite things about her is you never (seriously, never) know what’s going to pop out of her mouth. Absurd, dirty, silly. Naturally, she charmed the pants off of those library folks, and I loved watching it. The publisher’s rep looked at me, gestured toward the table where Stephanie was signing books and said, “You two are insane.”
Yes. Yes we are.
Also, I loved drinking cocktails with Tomie dePaola. We had a very serious conversation about polygamy, a less serious one about the government implanting microchips in our brains, and at one point, I do believe I encouraged the (74-year-old) children’s book author to go commando. The man loves his vodka, and with all that vodka lovin’ comes some intense mirth, so it was probably one of the best “celebrity” encounters I’ve ever had. When he left the ballroom at the end of the night, he stopped at the door, turned, waved at me and hollered his good-byes.
I figure, now that we’re so close, it won’t be at all weird when I ask him to be the godfather of my unborn children.
Last week, I ate my very first crawfish. You should understand that this was monumental. I’m the girl who washes her hands a lot while she cooks, or even, makes a sandwich. It hasn’t reached an OCD level (yet), but I really, really hate the feeling of food stuff on my fingers. And when you snap the head off a crawfish, you definitely get stuff on your fingers. And on your clothes and occasionally squirt! right in the eye. Everyone around me at the industry party looked like they were having a great ole time dismembering their dinners, but I couldn’t help inwardly screaming, “Oh my god, get it off! GET IT OFF!”
By the time I’d touched my fourth crustacean, I had demolished two paper towels and a short stack of napkins. Honestly, if I hadn’t been so hungry, and had there been more than just a few Altoids in my purse, I would have stopped right there.
As much as I dislike the parts of my personality that are uptight and inflexible, and as hard as I try to live in the moment and enjoy life as it happens, that is one of life’s little moments that I’m going to make sure doesn’t happen again. Because being the spaz at the table ripping handi-wipes from her purse in a fit of clean freak is really no way to endear oneself to new coworkers.
Not to mention the unsightly, full-body shudders that gripped me from seeing all that gunk under my fingernails. Not. Pretty.
Tonight, I’m joining Stephanie at a librarian convention dinner. She’s speaking; I happen to provide top-notch moral support and look good in a dress (i.e. I am the perfect date) and I am really looking forward to it because I haven’t seen her in many moons. And, a little, because I’m pretty sure I’ll get to eat my dinner with silverware.
My mother never owned china. Where I grew up, mothers just didn’t have those sorts of fancy things. Even the neighbors who had more than we did, didn’t have that much more. I mean, the Have-Mores might own two cars (cars that ran!), or a trampoline. They might watch cable TV, and wear jeans from the mall instead of Kmart, but they did not eat off of china. And in our house, where parents went without wedding bands until I was in junior high (they hawked them to give us Christmas one year), the fancy dishes were, if memory serves, Correll, and probably hand-me-downs from grandparents. They had yellow flowers on them. And my mother who holds onto things still drinks her tea from one of those cups every morning.
One day last month, she decided it was high time she owned some china. Real, delicate, fancy lady china. Truthfully, I was more than a little surprised at the purchase. She really isn’t one to do frivolous. I know it’s a throwback to those all those years when we could barely do necessity, much less frivolity. Because even now, it’s hard enough to get her to ‘splurge’ on a pair of forty dollar shoes that she could wear every day for the whole summer. So buying expensive plates that may see the light of day once a year was really something to celebrate. We put on dresses, dressed the table up in white lace, and had us a dinner party. On a random Sunday.
I have a tiny hope that this is just the beginning of things, and that one day, all on her own, my mother will come home from the mall with something… she paid full price for. And all the villagers will cheer, because she will have singlehandedly restored the economy.
You know what amuses me? When I walk into the ladies’ room, and there’s a woman in one of the stalls, sitting very, very quietly, obviously pretending that she isn’t attempting to do a Number Two, and waiting for me to hurry about my business so she can go about hers.
Ladies, I’m no expert, but from what I understand, everybody poops. Bathrooms are simply not genteel spaces; they’re designed to take care of the most… indelicate of human functions. There’s a lot of ick that goes on in there. Noises. Smells. But – and maybe I’m lacking in a few refinements, or maybe I’ve just spent too much time in the uncomfortable potty silence – I say, if you gotta go, GO.
Yeah, I might wrinkle my nose in the next stall. But it sure beats all that silly, uncomfortable pretending.
My ex (the infamous J) used to say that one reason girls get so grumpy is that they’re not allowed to pass gas like guys are. I mean, allowed isn’t really the right word, but you know what I mean. It’s not socially acceptable for a girl to climb onto the living room sofa, beer in hand, and let one rip. Guys hive-five over that stuff. Anyway, to even things out a bit, J used to encourage gas-passing. And not needing much encouragement (I love a good belch) I often got a, “Nice out, sister!” But for the record, I never participated in the other kind of gassin’. In my book that’s a whole different level of gauche.
Though, if you want to silently judge me from the other side your computer screens, I do think one of the nicest things about jogging outdoors is the freedom to err, break wind, if the need presents itself. Hell, if anyone ever noticed, I’d just blame it on the nearest golden retriever.
I looked forward to the day when my Bally Total Ripoff contract expired. Fifty bucks a month for three years is a lot of money. I mean, absurd, really. But in a city like New York, where weather, sidewalk congestion and safety make say, going for a jog no small ordeal, you pay. You pay because you know very well that the alternative to having a gym membership is being forced to replace all your clothes with a larger size. I know this from sad, squatting in front of my mailbox and feeling the lining of my best suit rip from tush to thigh experience. I cried right there in the lobby of my apartment building.
Anyway, now that I live in Dallas, where one may get all kinds of outdoor exercise – for free! – all year long, I don’t need to numb my brain on a treadmill. I have the Katy trail. It has trees, and birds, and puppies, occasionally, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman. Does stupid Bally have birds or Troy Aikman? No, indeed. So when the last payment was automatically deducted from my account last month, I did one of those little leprechaun heel clicks. Free! Free of that ridiculous financial burden!
And then the letters started coming. I ignored the first couple. Look, I’m glad you leotards want me to come work out on your aged and infirmed equipment – your persistence is flattering, really – but no. Just no. I’m moving on. But then yesterday something made me open one. And, inside, amid all the mumbo jumbo about the exciting! exclusive! offers they had for me, was the sentence that read,
If you decide not to take advantage of our offer, then this letter confirms your approval to continue automatically deducting renewal payments in the amount of $49.00.
Wait. Just wait. If I had just ignored them, they’d have continued to charge me for services I neither wanted nor requested? Can they DO that? That is so shady. Shady enough that by the time I got a cancellation rep on the phone, I was not inclined to be nice.
I’ve seen that episode of Friends where Chandler tries to quit the gym. It’s funny when he and Ross get the run around. It was a little less funny when I started smacking the handset on my desk this morning. No, no, no.
“I want to work with you to retain you as a member,” Enrique, the cancellation rep said.
“I don’t want you to work with me. I want you to stop taking my money.”
How could I explain to dear Enrique that I would rather be morbidly obese, stuck to my living room sofa and be paraded as a freakshow on 60 Minutes than give those jokers another cent of my money?It’s like, they’re kissing cousins to the IRS.
“I can send you offers in the mail…”
“No,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I’ve asked nicely, and now I am going to insist that you cancel my membership.”
Wouldn’t you know, it still took another five whole minutes, with my coworker looking on, baffled, for pathetic, corporate beggar Enrique to finally understand that it was over. Bally and I were finished. It’s exasperating, but I guess some folks simply have a really hard time with rejection.
My brother sent me this. I cannot promise you’ll find it as funny as I did, but it’s certainly a better start to your Monday morning than whatever’s awaiting you in your Outlook inbox. Keep it low or use your earphones, ’cause this dude says the eff word. A lot.
“It was easy. I just opened up the front of the copier and said, ‘HeeEEeeey!‘”
(I listened for a snap! but it never came.)
* After a quick poll of the gay folks I love and cherish, it has been determined that the term ‘homo’ is not offensive, especially in cases, such as this, where there is clearly no offense intended. However, should you insist on being offended anyway, go ahead and leave me nasty comments. They’re good for traffic.
Clicking around CNN this morning, I landed on this story about cheating bastards and the sweetness of revenge. I am not interesting enough to have a lot of experience with revenge ( I’ve got tons of experience with vengeful thoughts, mind you, but I lack the follow through required for any sort of satisfaction). And reading about Terri Garr smashing windows with a hammer filled me with a pretty even mix of awe and horror. You know, like “Holy shit, I wish I could do that! But boy am I glad I didn’t.”
My one and only attempt at revenge solidly reaffirmed everything I’d always known about myself: I would make a terrible criminal. I’m just not cut out for it.
It wasn’t exactly B&E because I still had a key*. And one weekend when I knew he’d be away, I went to his apartment with a friend (whose name will be omitted because anything truly deviant about the night was totally her idea). For me, it was a mostly innocent diversion/fact-finding mission. I thought I’d drop in, do a quick toothbrush count (what better way to confirm my suspicions?), take advantage of his superior real estate, drink some champagne and call it a night. My friend, being more mischievous and in possession of a set of brass balls, had some other ideas. Involving porn.
It’s important to note that the fella in question takes himself very seriously. I wish I had the time and patience to elaborate on this for you, because so. much. eye rolling. But I don’t, so I’ll just say that there are few things that would embarrass him more than to have a guest at one of his Celebrate My Greatness parties notice dirty adult films among his very carefully selected reading material. Image being so intensely important to this guy, that as much as he liked having sex, he couldn’t ever actually talk about it without the cushion of a flowery euphemism (“making love”). Clearly, this is not a man who would admit to watching/owning porn.
Thus motivated, while I ordered sushi, my friend went to work collating. Pretentious literature, porn, literature, porn. Catcher in the Rye, Brown Eye for the Straight Guy. It was a beautiful thing to behold.
We giggled (like you do when you’re up to something really ill-advised), drank too much and went home. And a few hours later, when the champagne buzz cleared, so did the feeling that what we’d done was funny. Or even justified. So, for what was probably the best part about my adventure in deviant behavior, I felt so icky that not only did I spend my lunch hour the next day busting my ass over to his apartment to remove all evidence of our mischief, I emailed him and came clean. He was understandably annoyed. There were exclamation points. I apologized again, dropped his keys into a Fed Ex envelope, and did a mental brow swipe. Thank god I’d left out that bit about Brown Eye for the Straight Guy. He’d probably have pressed charges.
* Seriously, if you can’t keep it zipped, don’t give the girl a key. I’m just sayin’.
I know, you don’t want to hear about the dream I had the other night,but I’m gonna tell you anyway. Because this is my blog and I’ll boreyou into a glassy-eyed stare if I want to. Drunk with power, I tellya. Anyway, I’ll keep it short.
Begin foggy dream sequence.
Aftercrawling through ventilation ducts (and performing various maneuvers Iprobably picked up from having seen Lethal Weapon a few too manytimes), I drop down in front of a locked door. I pick the lock, rush inand find a small blond boy who looks like he belongs on an oatmealcommercial. I am there to save him. A very bad man (who I will later,in an after-hitting-the-snooze-button sequel dream, defeat with more ofmy Martin Riggs moves) is holding children captive. I have an inklingof what’s gone on. It’s bad. He has, though, left the childrensandwiches to eat while he’s away doing other dastardly things. We sitcross-legged on the floor, the little boy and I, as he shows them to me.
“Thisone is Annie’s,” he says, holding one of the wax paper wrappedsandwiches, then laying it at his feet. I wonder where Annie is beingkept. “This one is Kevin’s.” Again, he lays it down. “This one ismine.”
“And this one,” he says, looking at me with doe eyes “is yours.”
The door slams shut.
End foggy dream sequence.
Whatthe hell. Seriously? This is my dream and I’m getting captured by apedophile psychopath? Not. Cool. My mom says it’s about rejoining theworkforce (the sandwich being my paycheck, capture being employment).But I don’t feel trapped. I kind of actually like working. Ithink it’s a warning against falling for blond boys with big eyes. Andthat sandwiches are bad. I like to keep things literal.
I was perfectly sober when I hit send, if it makes any difference.
In the months since that was that, I never tried to contact you. I didn’t call – though at first I wanted to – and instead, wisely deleted your number from my phone and got on with living. The thing about smart-phones though, is they’re smart – they remember. All I had to do was type your name. I didn’t say I missed you. Nothing mushy or pathetic, just that I thought of you. And naturally, you had no response. I didn’t expect one. All it could do is open a big can of worms, and who wants to do that? I do, I do, I do. Lying in bed last night, eyes squinting against the glow of my cell phone, I was all too anxious to pop the lid, reach in and grab a wad of fat, writhing night-crawlers. A fistful of worms has to be better than this… nothing I’m holding onto.
Not seeing you at the jewelry counter that day did it, you know. Opened the floodgates. Up until then, I’d been too preoccupied to give you any mental space. But things are quieter now, settled, and I’m no longer worried about where next month’s rent check will come from, or what would happen to me if I got hit by a bus. And in that lull, where fear has been replaced by steady routine, there is suddenly all this room for you. It’s like what happens when your body, after being used to constant stress and strain, slows down and finds a moment of rest – a moment of weakness, actually, because that’s when the virus you’ve been fighting takes over.
And you’ve all but taken over. I’m not sad, really, but I am unsettled. There are things I didn’t indulge before – memories better left undisturbed, that now keep me awake a night. You, kissing me, your fingertips light on my throat. My brain sighed, “squeeze,” and your hand, hearing, obeyed. It’s not something you can teach someone, to read another person like that. You just knew. And you, later in the dark, suddenly quiet.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. I’m just smiling,” you said, the truth of it in your voice. “I’m just very happy.”
It appears as though Alan Cumming (if you don’t know who he is, I am sad for you) has linked to a post I wrote for my travel blog, in his post, “How to End the Myth of the Ugly American” on Kenneth Cole’s Awearness Blog.
You know what this means, don’t you? That someone will likely find my lifeless body in a heap on the office floor this afternoon, because my life’s purpose? Fulfilled.
The other day, I was thinking that if I’d had any religious reason to forgo something – some sort of indulgence or sin - for Lent, I’d have given up American Idol. Or, at least, I would have martyred myself trying. It was getting a little bit disgusting how much I needed to watch that show. Like, the power of David Archuleta compelled me. In fact, after five years of not watching, American Idol was suddenly, out of the blue spotlights, beginning to rival my Scrabulous addiction. And people, playing Scrabulous comes right after “breathing” on the list of things I do to sustain life.
Breathe in. Breathe out. E-Q-U-A-L-I-T-Y for seventy-one points. You get the idea.
Then this morning, I realized, that in a mere six days, being employed again has cleansed me of my sins of addiction. Oh, I’m still Scrabblin’ online with anyone and everyone who will indulge me, but I no longer have the luxury of hovering over it for hours at a time, callousing my index finger by hitting F5 every few seconds. Refresh! Refresh! And as for AI, well, by the time I get home at night, I’m just too tired to watch it. I know. Who knew there was such a thing as too tired to… watch television? I didn’t. But after I kick off my shoes, wrastle with the cat and put a little food in my belly, I just can’t tolerate any more stimulation. Unless it’s from my heating pad and good piece of fiction.
It’s been over a week now, and as much as I miss my American Idol fellas (forget the girls; they’re hacks), the separation might just be a positive thing. Who knows, I may even cancel my cable subscription. Or not. Turns out, I couldn’t even type that sentence without flinching. Probably has a little something to do with my love for Detective Elliot Stabler.
I promised table dancing, but when it finally came time for Friday’s Yay! I Got a Job! happy hour, I was fairly psyched just to be sitting upright on my barstool. It’s the lovely kind of tired, but it means fewer drinks, fewer shenanigans and a severely compromised ability to tell an even sort of amusing anecdote. Aside from good hair, I didn’t add much to the evening.
Good thing the Universe stepped in and provided some new and assorted characters to keep things rolling. By the time I found myself doing dangerous pineappley shots at the bar with total strangers once removed, I had all the stories I needed.
Dr. Funk (name totally unchanged because it is too freaking awesome) has got to be one my favorite people I’ve met in the last year. Definitely top 10. He reminds me of J.D. on Scrubs, only not so Braffish. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean. Anyway, by the time the guy had been at our table ten minutes, he’d already firmly established his reputation as a funny man and a pervert (when is necrophilia not hilarious? Never.). Add beer, women’s sunglasses and Flight of the Conchords, and hilarity ensued.
Then we were introduced to an entirely different sort of character.
“My friend is coming,” Dr. Funk announced. “He’s going to have to sit by you. And he’s really hot.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” I said, dismissing it with a roll of my eyes.
Behind my rolled eyes, though, I quickly engaged my Hot Guy Defense Systems. Because, please, this girl has lived long enough to know that “hot” inevitably means “somewhat dull and lots and lots of trouble.” And as far as trouble goes, I was dead on. This guy was worthy of an emotional portcullis. And chain maille. I mean, it took me most of the evening, but somewhere around midnight it finally hit me. “Oh, that’s who he reminds me of!. Brad Pitt!” See? Danger!
But as for dull, well, boy did I misjudge. Dull boys do not take pictures of their hook-up partners in compromising positions after they’ve fallen asleep during… you know, stuff. Criminally-minded boys do that. His frank admission left me open-mouthed and stunned. I mean, I shudder to think! After all, I’ve dated some pretty shady characters. They hid their dysfunction behind male pattern baldness and lame tattoos and I still fell for it. Imagine if they looked a little more River Runs Through It? God help me, I’d still be putting up with douchebaggery and knocked-up interns.
What? I said I had Hot Guy Defenses. I didn’t say they were impenetrable.
(FYI: The title has absolutely nothing to do with the post; it’s something Jamie’s mother said over brunch. It made me snort pink lemonade which, incidentally, hurts quite a lot.)
It wasn’t you that I saw, standing tall and rail-straight, just on the other side of the jewelry counter. But it didn’t matter; it may as well have been, with the way I felt the room lurch and spin. I dug my nails under the polished metal rim of the counter and ducked my head, not wanting to make eye contact with you. My fingertips left steamy smears on the cold, clean glass.
I pretended to care about tacky heart-shaped pendants, knowing I should look up, say hello and feign that I wasn’t all at once stumbling drunk with missing you. I thought about what it might do to me to hug you. I remembered how, if there was anything unsatisfying about touching you, it was that you never left your scent behind. You didn’t stay on my clothes or my sofa cushions – the only evidence you’d ever been at home with me, an emptied wine glass next to my own.
I swallowed your memory, pushing it down into my uneasy stomach and finally looked up. But like I said, it wasn’t you. Too old, too wide about the shoulders, too not you. So I rang for the sales clerk, finished my business and drove home slowly, feeling suddenly lonesome and a little hungover.
I came home from work yesterday, burnt some dinner, sent out some senseless emails and then fell into a drooling heap on my bed where I slept the sleep of… well, someone who hasn’t technically worked in almost a year. Getting up at 6Am was no sweat (I’m capital c-h CHipper once my feet hit the floor), but staying awake for 12 hours without a nap or a wee lay-down by the pool? Well, who knew that would be so damn hard.
Remember when I worked at the monkey firm? That’s what I’m doing again, only for engineers. Ish. The details aren’t important. But you may want to know why I’ve headed back into the exciting world of marketing, rather than take a writing job. Here’s why: I learned, after my last job, that I don’t want to be a full-time writer. Writing has always been personal and fun for me. To do it as a task – having some bozo who once wrote a really boring book about web design (and thereby imbued with writerly superiority) dismantle everything I produced and turn it into uber-boring robot speak – well, that just all but killed my enthusiasm for it. Turns out, I’m the kind of gal who needs to keep her hobbies and her work separate. Very separate. Like, they should never even pass each other in the hallway when they get up to pee in the middle of the night, separate.
The coolest thing about this job (aside from the 4.8 mile commute and the Starbucks coffee and Splenda in the break room) is how it all came about. The short of it: the Internet. The long of it: I got a comment one day, in the middle of my very frustrating job search, informing me an exciting (!) and immediate (!) job opening. Let me tell you, I was skeptical. In fact, I said out loud (a la Billy Madison),
“No, Anna, I will NOT sell Amway with you!”
But I followed up anyway. And as coincidence would have it, not only was the job was legit, it was right up my alley. They weren’t all that excited about interviewing me (having already completed the first round of interviews), but I headed in, determined to up their enthusiasm levels. I was successful. Most of that success I owe to the recommendation of the above-mentioned Anna (who is super fantastic and has great shoes), but I like to think that some of it was due to my overall cuteness.
So, that is the story of how I came to rejoin the ranks of the employed. I’m happy, tired, and relieved. So relieved. My unemployment benefits were due to expire on Thursday.
Give me a few hours to unscatter my brain, iron some clothes and run to Target to buy an alarm clock (I start at 8AM tomorrow!), but the short of it is, the Internet is a marvelous place and because of it, I will not have to resort to selling my body on the streets of Dallas. An idea, which when I suggested might be a viable though desperate option, my sister said,
“No, Heather. Something where you can MAKE money.”
I thought it was going to be like all those other times the Dallas weatherfolk forecasted a big, scary snow storm and the pavement never even got wet. They get really hyper about precipitation here. But in the two hours my friend Katy and I sat in the Mexican restaurant, holding a table hostage while we caught up, it actually snowed. I mean, really snowed. Big, wet soggy flakes that stuck to the ground and the buildings and the cars. From inside the restaurant it looked magical and enchanting, like being inside a snow globe that smelled like corn chips and fajitas. Outside, it was another story.
We made a mad dash to the car (I had only my suit coat), climbed inside and shook the snow from our hair, laughing at how crazy it was. It wasn’t until I’d turned the car on that I realized we were in a bit of a pickle.
“I forgot about that business,” I said to Katy, motioning with my head to the back windshield. It was covered by almost three inches of snow.
“Here, let me go do it,” Katy offered.
The look I gave her should have been enough of a response, but still she persisted.
“You’re in heels!”
“Uh, Katy? You’re pregnant! What kind of person lets a pregnant person scrape her car while she sits inside all warm and cozy? Nuh uh. No way. I don’t need the Karma from that.”
So in my heels, I slid to the back of the car and beat the snow from the windshield with a flimsy, collapsible umbrella I’d bought for too many Euros on the streets in Rome, growing less enchanted with every wet snowflake that landed, whap! against my face. The drive from Katy’s house to my mother’s apartment twenty miles away was even less enchanting. After a few miles crawling down the highway, tapping my breaks on the icy roads, I really started to miss my Mexcian food snow globe.
Remembering the last time I drove in a blinding snow storm, I eased my car behind a semi and followed slowly along in the deep impressions its wide tires left in the slush. Things were slow but steady going until I reached the stop sign a few blocks from my mom’s place.
After waiting for my turn to ease through the four-way stop, I pressed my foot to the accelerator and… nothing. My wheels spun against ice and slush. For a brief second, I thought I was going to be stuck there, listening to the frantic swishing of my windshield wipers forever. Or until I ran out of gas.
“Oh come on!” I yelled, gripping the steering wheel as I watched a line of cars form in my rear-view mirror. “I didn’t make the pregnant lady scrape my car!”
I tried the accelerator again. Tires met asphalt and I crept through the intersection, glad that someone was listening when I cashed in my Karma.
My only regret is that we missed seeing the leprechaun.
Despite having told my mom earlier that I’m not really festival people, on Saturday afternoon, Jen and I wound up at the Irish Festival at Fairpark. Because why not? We like kilts and Guiness and pirates, and we didn’t have any other big plans for the afternoon. And yeah, there were pirates. While we were standing on the sidelines watching Battlefield Band (Jen happened to know the band from her early years cavorting in New York), I turned to Jen and whispered,
“I got you a pirate.”
Jen looked up just in time to see an elaborately costumed swashbuckler saunter by and give us the eye. You know, somehow, it’s not nearly so lecherous being mentally undressed by a guy wearing stockings and breeches. It’s just comical. Not always true of the un-costumed menfolk, though. There’s something about celebrating one’s Irish heritage that brings out the flirt in a man. Jen and I hadn’t even paid our entrance fee before a stranger was taking our picture. And then, the moment we were inside the gates, we got a
“Heeeeey. How’re y’all doin’?”
It was Joey Tribbiani with a drawl. A man in his sixties picked up on Jen by telling her she looked like a girl he went to high school with – “a real looker.”
Between the serving wenches with their shelves of breast, the angst-ridden emo bagpipers and the un-costumed masses, the people watching was exceptional. And if you haven’t before seen a man in a utilikilt and motorcycle boots, it’s time you explored this brave new world of hot. Drooool. Tattoos required.
It’s Star Wars according to a three year old, and I cannot get enough of this little girl. She may have actually replaced “Charlie bit my finger” as my go-to YouTube pick me up.
Apparently, she’s only seen the movie once, and paid much better attention than I ever did.
