Things I Am Over!

Trendsetter

Since it's basically winter now, I've bought myself a gaggle of winter-type clothings, from gloves and scarves to this oddity I've never known before: the winter hat. I have three hats I try to wear interchangeably, and I'm still getting the hang of how to coordinate my outfits around them. Do I take the hat off when I get inside? Is it a part of the outfit itself, or an accessory akin to the purse or scarf? Does it stay on, or come off? I really don't know.

Today I donned one of my favorite new hats as part of my outfit and wore it all day long. Through brunch and shopping and a doomed trip to a suburban Wal-Mart in search of my self-worth (found it! Right in the men's leather goods aisle, next to the Cheetos), then on the way home I finally took my hat off in the car. My hair was a nest of sweaty unconcern, my forehead adorned with the imprint of a slightly too-tight brim. Embarrassed at my own reflection in the rearview mirror, I just sighed and put the hat back on, and kept going through my day.

Then I felt this odd prick on my forehead, almost like a bee sting, right under the brim of my hat. I rubbed the spot a bit and the pain went away, and I thought, "Huh. Weird. You'd think I got a bee sting while sitting here in my car in the snow in the middle of Chicago. Guess not, since I don't see any bees around."

A couple hours later, I was sitting on my couch watching 3 Tivo'ed episodes of 30 Rock and I felt that weird pain again in the same spot. By this time the had had been off for quite some time, and as I lifted my hand to touch my hairline, I caught a glimpse of my left thumb drawing close. And it, along with my index finger and half my palm, was covered in dried blood.

Panicked I jumped up and ran to the bathroom to look myself in the mirror. From the epicenter of pain where that imaginary bee had stung my forehead, splaying out and down my face were trails of blood, caked to my skin for hours. It wasn't a bee sting at all, apparently it was some weird phantom gash across my forehead that had been there for GOD KNOWS HOW LONG! While I sat around my house watching reruns I was also losing however many pints of blood it takes to PAINT a human forehead with dark, cracking red without them even noticing.

Since I'm apparently oblivious to my own pain, that means I was also oblivious to the fact that I had been bleeding from the face for hours, and when I picked up the hat I'd been wearing this feeling was confirmed when I saw the entire inside of it was also covered in my own blood. Then everything made sense when I noticed that sticking out of the inside of the brim of my new hat was THE OPEN SAFETY PIN used to affix the price tag.

How did I, #1, not realize that the price tag was still hanging from the inside of my hat? And #2, that the safety pin holding it to my hat was not only open but IMPALING me each time I put the hat on? Was I so obsessed with looking presentable in my new winter clothes that I convinced myself I was being stung by a bee each time I put a hat on? How could someone be so stupid, and why didn't anyone tell me the entire time I walked around the suburbs?

They probably saw me coming in my hoodie and Chuck Taylors and blood-soaked hat, face painted with bright red blood frozen to my skin, and said to each other, "That must be a new trend or something, I bet she got it from Hannah Montana."

The Miracle Worker.

My cleaning lady is Ukrainian, which has posed some ridiculous problems since the day we met. First, I should say I don't really know that she's my cleaning lady since she introduced herself in Ukrainian. She's either my cleaning lady, or possibly the president of the Ukraine was just walking around my neighborhood one day with a Swiffer mop and keys to my apartment. Either one. I still can't understand her.

The first day she was there I had just moved in and the place was a mess and she was very glad I had my own cleaning products for reasons I couldn't understand. For almost an hour she spoke nothing but Ukrainian, so I just kind of nodded along or said nothing at all. She would say something long and Slavic and I would just look at her kind of dazed, like I was really trying to process whatever she said in Ukrainian. I wasn't. Ever. I was just watching her talk and motioning to things, staring at her mouth twisted into foreign shapes as she cooed entirely unintelligible phrases to me. I just stood there, staring at her mouth.

Then, when she was about to leave, she said, "Two weeks Tuesday?"

Two weeks Tuesday!? Them is American words! I replied, "Yes! Tuesday!" Then she said, "Then once month after Tuesday."

Holy crap, this whole time she spoke some English and didn't tell me! Here I was pantomiming Mr. Clean Magic Eraser when I could have just said, "Mr. Clean Magic Eraser." I was so excited I just repeated to her as she walked down the stairs, "Two weeks Tuesday! Two weeks Tuesday!"

Two weeks Tuesday she came back, this time again speaking only in Ukrainian for almost an hour. I helped her scrub some lingering scum off my range top and at one point she stopped, faced me and touched my shoulder and said slowly, "No. BL. Each. On. Sto. Ve." For a moment, afraid she might be having a stroke, shook my head sort of panicky and said, "What?? What?? What??" She repeated herself a little faster, again touching my shoulder but also tapping her lips, as if to make me look at her mouth. "No bleach on stove. Never. No bleach on stove."

I gave her a look of acceptance and thanks and nodded, thinking I got it, lady. No bleach on the stove.

Later, as I walked past her she grabbed my arm, pointed to her mop and said just that, "MO. P. Mop." She tapped her lips and pointed to mine.

"Mop?" I said.

"MOP!" she said.

Mop. Let's alert the media to the profundity of the moment.

She left soon after, I chanted "Two weeks Tuesday" as she tromped down the stairs and continued to think that perhaps she's just learning English now, maybe that's it. I came up with this whole sympathetic story about her coming to the US on a limited work visa, living with distant family in a cold shack across town, taking the bus to my house every two weeks Tuesday to clean my grimy stove and try her darnedest to speak in my native tongue, the tongue of the Americas! Of liberty and justice for all!

When she pulled up this morning in her Mercedes SUV, I felt less sympathetic.

Her sympathies for me, however, had not shifted at all, which was obvious when she set down her cleaning supplies, came over to me with a wide smile and presented a book she'd brought with her for us to read together: "Working With The Deaf and Dumb: Easy Illustrated Sign Language For Everyone!"

To Perfection

I was just at the bank getting a cashier's check which, in and of itself, is a sign of obvious maturity. You really only need a cashier's check to pay off your bookie, buy a new-to-you Saab, launder some money for one mob family or another, or (in my case) pay the deposit on your new home. (The money laundering thing I took care of last week.)

At the bank the Russian teller was more than nice, more than accommodating, she was in fact the nicest person I've ever met. So nice that I didn't even notice it taking her 37 minutes to complete my transaction. I just stood there talking with her about my hoodie, then about Russia, then about how hoodies would be great for wearing in Russia. During a lull in the conversation after we agreed that hoodies would probably be bulky under all that fur, she asked, "So are you on a break from school?"

Perhaps this question was prompted by my elbows resting precariously on the counter in front of her, my legs dangling on tippy-toes as I stretched to seem taller than natural, or the hoodie we'd spent so much time discussing that is a child's size large and has giant birds and pink and purple hearts embroidered to it. Or the pigtails. Or the fact that my chin is broken out in a pubescent pre-menstrual constellation that if looked at properly under a telescope easily spells out the phrase, "ASK ME ABOUT HOW I AM 16 YEARS OLD."

I took a big sigh and responded to her, "No, I'm not in school. I am. Actually. Nearly 30."

With the sound of that little number breaking through the space-time continuum, she was shocked into staring at me in silence, a flag of incredulity waving behind her violently as the winds of my confession bowled her over. I just stared back while she stared at me, and all I could think to say was, "I know." She just stood there staring at me, that Russian gaze of disbelief piercing my soul.

After the storm died down and I explained to the Russian teller how I'm often mistaken for a 16 year old, she said casually, "Oh no, I would have said 19." Which of course gave me great relief because at least she didn't just start processing a cashier's check for thousands of dollars for someone who could barely drive. The idea of a 16 year old needing a cashier's check is scary to me, but a 19 year old, well that's more likely, isn't it? At least she has some professional standards. Then she told me about how when she turned 30 she already had two children and been married ten years, and then handed me the cashier's check she'd written out to Crappy Apartment Leasing Agency For Pathetic Single People Who Have Given Up On Love, LLC.

Finally, as situations like this always end, she had to ask the same questions I'm always asked when the subject of my age comes up, Do I like looking so young? Does it ever frustrate me? Has it ever hindered any choices I have made in life? I answered her questions as I aways do, by reciting her the essay I wrote to get into college ELEVEN YEARS AGO that revolved around my struggles as a 5-foot-even person with facial features that resemble a Disney-drawn chipmunk. I capped it off with, "In conclusion, I have learned a lot from looking like a child as a grown adult. Specifically, I have learned never to talk too long with men in bars, because if they're attracted to me, that means they're child molesters. (But always get them to pay my tab before I leave.)"

Donde esta aqui

The past 7 days have been incredibly productive for me as I transition from office life to home office life and fulfill my dreams of telecommuting during endless Tivoed episodes of Silver Spoons and 21 Jumpstreet. This has been one of the most disappointing themes of my adulthood, missing all the daytime reruns of my favorite childhood tv shows because I had to sit in a square box eight hours a day in order to pay my cable bill. But now that my paycheck is dependent on me sitting on my couch all day with a computer on my lap, avoiding all signs of human life for the majority of the day while I stare into the oblivion that is the internet, I can listen to the drone of Ricky Stratton in the background and finally feel whole again.

In order to get my home office in working order, I persuaded myself to enforce Extreme Home Makeover laws in my house this past week, which unfortunately meant incurring a long and lonely trip to Ikea on a hot Wednesday afternoon. I needed a dresser, a desk, some shelves and some tables, easy enough since I had it all written down. It would have been a much quicker trip if when picking up the five foot long fold out map to the premises I'd noticed that I'd grabbed the Spanish/Russian version, instead I circled the first two floors in a sweaty panic repeating to myself "Estoy aquí. ¿Donde está aquí?" I donde esta-ed myself for an entire hour before finally realizing it didn't matter if I knew wherever I was going in Ikealand, holy shit aquí I was.

I managed to make it to the self check out warehouse in the bowels of modular furniture hell only two and a half hours after arriving. All I had drawing me to the exit was the smell of meatballs wafting from the cafeteria below me. What kept me there another two hours was the list of 5 pieces of furniture I'd decided to buy in my left hand while my right hand stroked my chin incredulously as I wondered how the fuck I was going to get it all into my car. You see at Ikea, they don't help you with anything, including but not limited to getting furniture off shelves, showing you how to get furniture off the shelves, and holding your flimsy cart steady as you attempt to fill it with heavy boxes of particle board only to shove said cart to the very end of the aisle with the awkward momentum of a single woman about ready to go ape shit on the world because NO ONE IS HELPING HER.

When I did ask a woman in a hideous yellow polo shirt for assistance with at least holding my cart still, she replied by saying, "I guess Tom's on his break, of course." I don't know who the fuck Tom is but at this point I didn't care, all I could think of was shoving meatballs down this woman's throat until she kept my cart from rolling away again. In a polo shirt that ugly there was no way she had a man at home, of course she knew how difficult this was for me!

The dresser I bought, the highest priced dresser at the cheapest furniture distributer on earth, came unassembled with 216 total pieces. Before I even opened the box that I'm sure was made of the same material as its contents, I had two obvious options: 1) hang myself right then and there in my own garage; or 2) assemble the 6 foot high dresser and then hang myself, since I could easily climb atop it to reach the rafters and given my shoddy craftsmanship, I'm sure I wouldn't support my weight. That way, at least I wouldn't have to worry about how to kick the box out from under my feet, I could just cough and let nature take its course as the dresser crashed upon itself below my dangling feet.

Determined to be independent and self-sufficient, I spread out all the pieces in the first box on the garage floor and confidently pulled out the instructions. The instructions that had. No. Words. Just pictures, and bad pictures at that, and I was right then and there totally screwed. I managed to interpret the charades included in the box for some semblance of direction, and muddled my way through 216 pieces for each of the five separate pieces of furniture.

From sunrise to sunset I had traversed the barren wilderness of Swedish particle board alone, and I had come out alive with only two bleeding fingers and a very sore back. At 5:48 that evening, six hours and forty five minutes after I tore through the first cardboard box and dove into an afternoon of loose screws and wooden dowels, I had a 6-drawer dresser standing before me in a wobbly stance of accomplishment. It was a pathetic success, sure, but it was my first success as a single, home office having person who didn't need Tom or anyone else on their break or not to help me through it. That night I was so swelled with pride that I even had people come see what I had done, smiling as they said, "It looks good!"

My only reply was, "Yeah, it looks good! Don't touch it, move away."

First World Problem, Part 9

Today I was "working" while sitting on my couch which really means I was Googling things while eating a teriyaki wheat noodle steak bowl and adjusting my bets in my Britney Death Pool '07 contest. Then I got a piece of steak stuck between my teeth, but Britney was being admitted to rehab which meant I couldn't very well leave the room to get some floss, but I had a drink sitting next to me with a nice plastic straw in it. A plastic straw that, thanks to evolution, was produced to match the exact circumference of my left incisor while also having an edge that could be folded to fit directly in between my teeth.

It was the perfect ad hoc floss, and since I was in a desperate situation I started gnawing away on it to wiggle the ends between my teeth in a furious attempt to dislodge the piece of sirloin that was becoming increasingly aggravating. As Britney's manager issued a statement asking for her privacy, an act that's as much of an oxymoron as the news anchor saying how shocking the new rehab news was, my hand slipped and I stabbed the straw up into my gum line, affixing it snugly around my tooth under the piece of steak.

This was just great, because not only was the piece of steak still there, but now I had a whole drinking straw stuck on my tooth too and it refused to budge. About five minutes later after wiggling and yanking it the whole time hired lawyers on TV were playing out a make believe custody battle for Britney's children, the straw would not move! Suddenly I had this flashback from a time when I was about 7 years old and I was chewing on a Ziploc bag and the bag slipped up over my front tooth and lodged itself in my gum and I ran through the house screaming and crying because I was certain if the bag was pulled out, my front tooth would come with it. There I was 20 years later in the exact same situation, only this time I had steak stuck in there too.

This is where I put down my teriyaki bowl and moved the computer off my lap and frantically started pulling on the end of the straw. I sat there alternating between the panic of losing a tooth over a piece of chewed steak and stone cold lucidity that all I needed was to decrease the friction between the tooth and the straw to eliminate the vacuum that had formed and was currently causing me to see my life flashing before my eyes. I saw myself lying there prostrate in front of the TV, Britney spotted at rehab in a pink tank top and shaved head sparkling in the sun, with a drinking straw sucked down my throat capping off my windpipe. The only logical thing for me to do would be to take a pair of sewing scissors and start snipping away from the bottom to top at the straw, which I did while remembering every bad episode of Rescue: 911 and wondering why I didn't have a trained dog in the house who could call for back up.

Before I broke the straw free from the death trap in between my teeth, I had a fleeting and shocking vision of this straw and this  bit of steak being the death of me. I saw myself sitting next to Britney Spears in hell, she only two years younger than me but a millionaire with a shaved head and toxicology levels off the charts, wearing something neon green and ultraviolet, certainly something she will probably die in that would be rolled around her belly and covered in mud when we met.

I saw myself asking how she checked in, trying to be kind and hide my jealousy over her premature wealth while avoiding the obvious disaster of our afterlife fortunes, and she'd tell me it was the bacon wrapped Cheeto chaser she had after a 32-ouncer of liquid TrimSpa that did her in, and the vodka-soaked waffle she used to lap it up didn't help either. Then we'd bond in our demise and she'd ask me how I got there, and I'd sheepishly make up some grand lie about a Ferrari accident while I was distracted curing cancer on my laptop in the drivers seat.

She'd laugh and say, "Yeah, those Ferrari's are tricky when you shift!" I'd laugh along with her and rub my tongue against my sore gums and taste steak.

Yay self employment!

Awesome: Filing my taxes February 1 and already getting one of my two ENORMO checks from the government.
Not Awesome: Realizing February 2 that I forgot to claim TWELVE THOUSAND DOLLARS of my income and will most likely be giving both checks right back.

The Green Monster.

One thing I really hate is when people are all, "OMG I've got some awesome news! But I can't tell you about it yet!" This is annoying to me in the same way that saying, "Guess what?" is annoying, because I don't want to guess, I'm tired of guessing, but I can't stop telling people myself to guess what.

I find that there's a lot of things recently that I do on a continual basis that I'll immediately declare I "can't stand," or vice versa. God, I can't stand it when people pull through parking spaces at the grocery store, of all places! Oh look, a pull through spot! Cha-ching! Hey, it's Sarah, just leaving you a voice mail message. Jesus, I hate it when people leave me voice mail messages.

To top it off, there's some pretty cool shit going on in my life right now that I can't talk about yet. But there's a reason I can't talk about it, and that's not to build anticipation or anxiety or make you think what I'm going to tell you is worth you waiting around two more weeks to hear. It's just because once you start talking about things, things start to suck. You absolutely can't talk about something that's impending without the matter at hand completely sucking when it finally executes itself, it'll just suck and suck and suck. The lesson here, for you guys, is if you have a new girl you're anxious to get to know, start talking about her all the time.

These precious moments of anticipation are a great relief from the horrible first week of 2007 that I had, the week where I couldn't eat and barely slept and my horoscope kept telling me to not even leave the house each day because of the torture I was about to endure. Then on Monday of this week it was like the universe was all, "Just kidding!" and everything fell from the sky, bounced on the grass, and slowly rolled into place before me. I turned my head to the heavens as one might do in a bad psuedo-religious themed movie like Bruce Almighty, and the heavens looked down and reassured me with the voice of James Earl Jones, and then bought me a plane ticket.

This isn't something I'm going to let start sucking, not so soon into the relationship. In short, I'll be telling you more on February 1, 2007. At approximately 10am, Eastern Standard Time. Until then all I can say is guess what? God, that is so annoying.

News In Brief: Corrections and Omissions

Boston, MA - Reports have surfaced that MySpace user Brad Smith indeed changed his social network profile marital status from "In a Relationship" back to "Single." After months of speculation, Smith finally acknowledged the change in status during a recent email exchange with his longtime MySpace friend, Sarah Hatter.

"All I could think to say was, 'Oh no!' when I found out," Hatter said. "But then it was kind of like, 'Oh, score, Brad’s single!' So, you know."

In response to the newsroom questioning his current status, Smith replied, "What has my status been updated to now? It should stay single." When asked to further elaborate on his answer, he added, "I guess I should double check just to make sure."

Smith’s camp declined further comment about this radical change to their otherwise upfront policies on dating. They instead pointed to the items of interest in Smith's MySpace profile listed under the heading "General."

The one that stood out to this reporter was simply, "Girls."

Life Taught Me to Dieeeeee.

A few weeks ago my friend Amy offered me a ticket to a Damien Rice show, and even though I've never seen him live, I was so excited I immediately jumped in the car. Then Amy said, "Oh, it's not for a couple of weeks," and again in my excitement I just said, "It's ok, I'll wait here!"

In preparation for the show, I probably should have done some homework. Sure, I really like Damien Rice, and I have one of his albums and it's great on rainy days when your window is clouded with tears from the sky and your entire self-worth is wrapped up in some song lyrics from 2003. And he's Irish, and you can't not like an Irishman who sings, plays piano and wears corduroy. But still, as I learned after the show, I should have bought his B Sides album before sitting in the car for two weeks anticipating a quiet night of acoustic melody.

I think he did three songs like that, all soft and sweet like, between sips of wine and stories about bottled water. Anyone who's seen his show is starting to chuckle right now because they know what's next: they know that right after one of the most heartbreaking, gut-wrenching songs ever put to pen and music staff, all of the sudden he just. Starts. Screaming!

For two hours! Belting out "FUCK YOU!!!!!!" into a mic full of feedback and distortion, with great big drums pounding behind him and a guitar screeching into oblivion. And after about 15 minutes of ear shattering emotional regurgitation, he'd just casually sit down at the piano and sing about love again. WTF!? I had no idea. All I know is when some girl yelled out, "Play Blower's Daughter!" he took a minute before saying simply, "No." Which to 80% of the audience meant they'd just wasted $40 and an episode of Deal or No Deal.

I for one was kind of surprised, but oddly I still liked the show. Which is fascinating to me because I typically have no patience for bipolarism or overtly emotional people. In fact it's mysteriously pleasing for me to watch people go from irritated to angry to indignant! simply because I don't really give a shit and that just eats them up inside. Emotional people want so badly for someone to validate their feelings with pats on the back and "I'm sorrys" and for someone else to take all the blame for their inability to keep their shit together. I'm basically not like that, I wasn't one of the people in the audience nodding slowly through Damien's screams with an emphatic sense of understanding. I was sitting there going WTF!? Seriously? This is happening?

Then at the very end he decided to make it up to everyone. He brought all the house lights down save for the flickering of five small candles around his feet on the stage, and for the next 10 or 12 minutes strummed softly by himself with the occasional help of a cello and just sang so beautifully, I was stunned. We all closed our eyes and drifted off into a fantasy of green fields and long lost loves coming back, and it was like the entire cycle of hurt and anger we'd just witnessed made sense. We got it, we were there with him, it was healing!

And the best way to end a song like that is to turn on these enormous flood lights and point them right at an audience who's just sat sleeping in their chairs in the dark and start screaming at them again while loud drums start up again and scare them shitless. Because the next five minutes won't be uncomfortable for anyone, especially when you end the song and walk off stage and everyone just sits there like those flood lights just molested us in public and we can't even get up out of our chairs because our ears are ringing and all we see is spots.

That totally makes sense.

Dropping Balls.

Though it might seem incredibly early, this week I started preparing for New Years. Since I'll be house sitting for the long stretch of time between Christmas and January, I won't be doing anything that requires me to be away for more than five hours at a time, unless Wendy doesn't mind coming back to a house full of rotting food and dead cats. I'm guessing this isn't on her agenda, therefore an overnight jaunt across the timezone and back to experience New Years twice in one night probably isn't going to be on mine.

Instead, I'm already planning a Sunday afternoon and evening full of sitting on the couch and watching TV. While this sounds like any normal day for me I can say with certainty that it won't be, mostly because it'll be someone else's couch I'll be sitting on and someone else's TV I'll be watching. Furthermore, my friend Steven will be joining me on said couch, and since Steven lives in Indiana it's not like he sits around with me commenting on Laguna Beach every Sunday. I mean, it's not like he sits around with me commenting on Laguna Beach every Sunday in person.

We have decided that our mutual affinity for all things Dog the Bounty Hunter will oversee most of New Years Eve weekend. Add to this our deep and personal needs for a Food Network Challenge marathon and a very specific kind of TGI Friday's Cheddar and Bacon chips, we'll be spending two bloated days in Wendy's living room moaning over full stomachs about how the world is changing right outside our doors and we're out of guacamole. Dick Clark will be wheeled in front of the TV for one of his last slurred appearances in life, and we'll be in the kitchen mixing Kool-Aid with gin and playing rock-paper-scissors to see who has to taste it first.

I don't like to spend my vacations sight seeing. I prefer the opposite, the relaxing in strange beds and taking taxis to restaurants close enough to walk to. Last winter after a night at the beautiful aquarium and the beautiful Hancock Tower and seeing all the beautiful things of Chicago, I got really huffy and annoyed when Jason made me walk through Grant Park in THE SNOW at MIDNIGHT to "experience things." Jason is cute and all, but I was experiencing frozen jeans, and took a cab 1.5 blocks back to the hotel where Steven, incidentally, was napping. This sounds lazy, I know, but I assure you it isn't. Rather, it's the Lorelei Gilmore School of Travel that dictates, "Why do you go to different countries? To watch their TV and see how their Coke tastes."

While our friends line the streets below guzzling chilled bottles of champagne and cursing the snowy Chicago skyline, Steven and I will be warm upstairs, asking each other if we should order take out Chinese, or perhaps Thai. As the clock ticks forth another year of our Lord, we'll look down at those many all drunk with pleasure and freezing cold, and we'll think, "Poor people! When they get home they'll have to change into their pajamas! Tsk tsk."