Thursday, September 9, 2010
Unbridled Satisfaction...
Unbridled satisfaction is: entering an elevator full of salad-toting professionals at lunchtime and filling that elevator with the aroma of the sack of french fries and McChicken sandwiches proudly clutched by your meaty paw. The churning groans of 8 hungry stomachs betraying their owners' stoic expressions is music to the ears. Enjoy all of that lettuce, you suited mammals. :-D
Saturday, July 24, 2010
An Open Letter To The Ants That Have Seized Control of Our Apartment
To fill in the gap between my posts...A new one is brewing, I swear. (I need some mental fiber, though, b/c I've had a case of writer's block that's more stuck than a sideways turd.)...I give you: An entry from my old myspace blog and 2 apartments ago, when we were still living by the park in Brooklyn.
Dear Tiny Black Ants--
Let me start by assuring you that of all the types of ants that could be invading our home right now, I would elect your type for the job. Any other ants, especially your larger, fatter relatives, leave behind an unfortunate mess after being crushed under the quick whack of a shoe or a decisive swipe of a paper towel. However, your bodies are so small that initially it was hard to detect your presence as you began to infiltrate the perimeter of our bedroom. Pleasantly, killing you leaves behind no detectable stains, and that makes doing it easier.
Our cohabitation began about two months ago when I climbed into bed and pulled back our crisp new covers and laid eyes upon your small black spec of a body. Knowing you had been detected, you did what came naturally to you and froze, hoping your shiny black torso would somehow blend into the sea of creamy white sheets surrounding you. I was amused by your desperate attempt at survival and, rather than kill you on the spot for trespassing in my sterile sleeping space, I gave you a break and brushed you onto the floor.
Oh ant, what a mistake that was. Instead of fleeing our home, thankful for skirting the dangers therein, you instead mistook my mercy for hospitality and spread the word to your friends and family that my home was open to you.
First, you brought along a few pals with you on the return to my bed. I enjoy relaxing, too, but I don't lie around on my friends' pillows all day long and I most certainly don't keep them up at night by crawling up their arms and playing in their hair. You and your pals ruined snack time in the bedroom when 50 of you took the liberty of emptying the cup on my husband's nightstand. You forced me to eat breakfast in the living room every morning. It takes all meaning and fun out of the phrase "breakfast in bed" and if there's one thing you don't want to do, it's mess with my breakfast.
Things took a hostile turn when I found you pouring out from under our bedroom carpet and into the kitchen. Raid and ant traps along the walls apparently were minor setbacks because you soon began to appear in our dishwasher. I admire you, ants, for your uncanny ability to enter locked, airtight spaces. The famous Harry Houdini and street magician David Blaine would both be humbled by your powers of penetration and endurance. How did you manage to crawl into our refrigerator and survive? A magician never reveals his secrets…
You are like a chameleon. You blend into our black speckled faux-granite countertops with unsettling expertise. Only when I set my groceries down, do I notice your hundreds of black forms scrambling for cover so quickly that I can only kill three or four of you before the rest disappear from sight.
While I admire the skills, strength, and the ability of my opponent to make me itch on sight, these things are not enough for me to resign in defeat. Enter: the powers of the Container Store.
It may have taken me five hours, ants, but every morsel of food in our apartment is now encased in powers greater than yours, plastic containers with zero-access force fields surrounding them (aka snap-shut, rubber lined lids). Combined with my keen powers of observation, you are no match for these containers, even when you think you're being clever by hanging out on the sides, waiting for someone to open them.
Don't think for a second that I forgot about our refrigerated items. Everything has been contained. And the cabinets? All of them have been Lysol'ed, to mask the chemical odors of the trails you leave for your friends to find their way to my snacks.
And so, ants, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you may as well pack up and leave now. You've mined all the ore and forced me to turn this place into a ghost town. I see that a few of you have hung around, mostly at the bottom of our dishwasher, the crevices of the magnetic strip that keeps our fridge closed, and occasionally on the outside of our sealed garbage cans, clinging to your hopes that things will turn around. As a hopeful person myself, it might seem hypocritical of me to inform you that there is no hope. Not for you. Not after Saturday when the apartment is pest-bombed and your nest is uncovered and eliminated.
While this has been a lesson in the art of war, I look forward to seeing you only on the sidewalks and in the park. And, who knows, if I'm feeling generous, I may even drop a few crumbs for you.
Your admiring, but victorious, opponent,
Ruth
May 28, 2008
Dear Tiny Black Ants--
Let me start by assuring you that of all the types of ants that could be invading our home right now, I would elect your type for the job. Any other ants, especially your larger, fatter relatives, leave behind an unfortunate mess after being crushed under the quick whack of a shoe or a decisive swipe of a paper towel. However, your bodies are so small that initially it was hard to detect your presence as you began to infiltrate the perimeter of our bedroom. Pleasantly, killing you leaves behind no detectable stains, and that makes doing it easier.
Our cohabitation began about two months ago when I climbed into bed and pulled back our crisp new covers and laid eyes upon your small black spec of a body. Knowing you had been detected, you did what came naturally to you and froze, hoping your shiny black torso would somehow blend into the sea of creamy white sheets surrounding you. I was amused by your desperate attempt at survival and, rather than kill you on the spot for trespassing in my sterile sleeping space, I gave you a break and brushed you onto the floor.
Oh ant, what a mistake that was. Instead of fleeing our home, thankful for skirting the dangers therein, you instead mistook my mercy for hospitality and spread the word to your friends and family that my home was open to you.
First, you brought along a few pals with you on the return to my bed. I enjoy relaxing, too, but I don't lie around on my friends' pillows all day long and I most certainly don't keep them up at night by crawling up their arms and playing in their hair. You and your pals ruined snack time in the bedroom when 50 of you took the liberty of emptying the cup on my husband's nightstand. You forced me to eat breakfast in the living room every morning. It takes all meaning and fun out of the phrase "breakfast in bed" and if there's one thing you don't want to do, it's mess with my breakfast.
Things took a hostile turn when I found you pouring out from under our bedroom carpet and into the kitchen. Raid and ant traps along the walls apparently were minor setbacks because you soon began to appear in our dishwasher. I admire you, ants, for your uncanny ability to enter locked, airtight spaces. The famous Harry Houdini and street magician David Blaine would both be humbled by your powers of penetration and endurance. How did you manage to crawl into our refrigerator and survive? A magician never reveals his secrets…
You are like a chameleon. You blend into our black speckled faux-granite countertops with unsettling expertise. Only when I set my groceries down, do I notice your hundreds of black forms scrambling for cover so quickly that I can only kill three or four of you before the rest disappear from sight.
While I admire the skills, strength, and the ability of my opponent to make me itch on sight, these things are not enough for me to resign in defeat. Enter: the powers of the Container Store.
It may have taken me five hours, ants, but every morsel of food in our apartment is now encased in powers greater than yours, plastic containers with zero-access force fields surrounding them (aka snap-shut, rubber lined lids). Combined with my keen powers of observation, you are no match for these containers, even when you think you're being clever by hanging out on the sides, waiting for someone to open them.
Don't think for a second that I forgot about our refrigerated items. Everything has been contained. And the cabinets? All of them have been Lysol'ed, to mask the chemical odors of the trails you leave for your friends to find their way to my snacks.
And so, ants, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you may as well pack up and leave now. You've mined all the ore and forced me to turn this place into a ghost town. I see that a few of you have hung around, mostly at the bottom of our dishwasher, the crevices of the magnetic strip that keeps our fridge closed, and occasionally on the outside of our sealed garbage cans, clinging to your hopes that things will turn around. As a hopeful person myself, it might seem hypocritical of me to inform you that there is no hope. Not for you. Not after Saturday when the apartment is pest-bombed and your nest is uncovered and eliminated.
While this has been a lesson in the art of war, I look forward to seeing you only on the sidewalks and in the park. And, who knows, if I'm feeling generous, I may even drop a few crumbs for you.
Your admiring, but victorious, opponent,
Ruth
Friday, July 16, 2010
They're no Edward.
It was the hottest summer on record for NYC, or so Al Roker told me in between awkward back-and-forth shout-a-logues with overenthusiastic tourists. Yet, there was no way I could walk out the door in shorts. I was deformed. Hideous. The masses would recoil in fear at the sight of my gnawed legs.
Bed bugs.
Until somewhere around the 20th bite, I was unaware that bed bugs actually existed outside of the common mantra for tucking children in at night:
"Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite!"
I'd like to know: what sick person decided that this was an appropriate part of their child's night time routine?
"Good night, sleep tight, don't let the flesh-shredding, blood-sucking parasites that are crawling all over your mattress latch onto that vulnerable, snoring bag of hemoglobin, otherwise known as your body, tonight!"
Scratching yet?
I was. My nightly routine as an intern was to come back to Brooklyn after a long workday, sweating through my jeans, strip naked in the bathroom and scratch like a flea-ridden mutt for twenty minutes while sobbing incoherently over the phone to Andrew about how I'd just have to sleep in the tub tonight because rubber-banding my socks over my pants and sleeping on an air mattress sealed with a plastic zipper bag in the middle of the kitchen was still no defense against these thirsty. mother. fucking. bugs.
The two girls who subleased the apartment to my roommates and me bragged about how they'd gotten all of their furnishings at a great price: For free! From the oh-so-sterile curbs of our Brooklyn neighborhood!
"You'd be amazed at what people throw out!" they gushed after we'd already paid and signed on the dotted line.
'Amazed' wasn't the adjective I had in mind as I piled my entire wardrobe into the dryer to burn off any existing parasites before storing it all in garbage bags, which I would live out of for the remainder of my summer internship.
It hadn't taken more than one or two google searches to find out that the apartment contained bed bugs.
During my search, I learned of the mind-fuckingly disturbing characteristics of the bed bug.
Here are a few fun facts:
- Bed bugs typically live in--you guessed it--BEDS!, but also infiltrate other furniture.
- They feast on blood, first anesthetizing their victims with their spit, then sucking out life juice to their hearts' content.
- They are dark red/ brown in color because they're full of your blood.
- They communicate to other bedbugs through the use of pheromones: "Hey guys, this twit passed out drunk and won't be waking for another 12 hours! Open bar to raid! Dibs on the aorta!"
- When temperatures are colder, some bedbugs can survive for up to a year without eating. A year. I can't survive for more than 2 hours without tossing food to my gullet monster.
- Bed bugs molt out of their skin at least 6 times before reaching fertile adult hood. Fucking. Sick.
- Shells of their bodies, as well as their iron-laden blood poop, sink into your mattress, creating a visible brown line on the side: one of the clearest indications of infestation...aside from tiny blood smears on your sheets...yum.
- Male bedbugs impregnate female bedbugs NOT by gentle woo'ing and tender love-making, but rather by stabbing them in the torso with razor sharp genitalia and depositing semen. "You want kids? I'll give you kids...
Ahhhhhhh! I. AM. SPARTACUUUUUUS!" - There has been a resurgence of bedbugs in NYC since gene mutations promoted the flourishing of pesticide-resistant bedbugs. This means that many can survive a bath of toxic chemicals as though it was nothing more than an aggressive facial.
- One of the only surefire ways to kill bedbugs is to expose them to heat that's 115°F for no shorter than 7 minutes. (Aka--putting your clothes in the dryer...hence living out of sealed garbage bags.)
- Because of international travelers from countries with less-expansive health department regulations, these little creatures are often stowaways and are making increasing visits to many Big City, USA hotels. They only ever come with one-way tickets.
In summary, bed bugs are hideous, opportunistic, impermeable assholes that make it their business to feast on the most vulnerable subjects: sleeping humans. And there's not a whole lot you can do to stop them.
That's how the psychosis sets in. By the 3rd month of being feasted on every night and waking up every morning with 20 new bites, I was losing my mind. The exterminators had been in an out with no results, pest bombs had no effect, I had spent weeks obsessively drying my clothes and thereby only having a handful that still fit, and Andrew had begun, weeks prior, to expect a phone call around the same time every day from his hyperventilating girlfriend. My body was riddled with old bite wounds and new bite marks. My legs were so ravaged, it took the better part of a year for the scars to fade.
The bedbug: a tiny creature with the immense capability of upsetting some primal balance within. It's a humbling and downright fucking miserable experience. I was lucky to escape the situation in one piece (minus a few hundred flesh nibblets), but it's instilled in me a paranoia of hotel floors, old mattresses and any piece of furniture salvaged from the curb.
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Dedicated to a co-worker of mine who recently and involuntarily embarked on a similar journey into the world of itching and twitching. Stay sane, Nik!
Monday, June 7, 2010
DO. NOT. ENGAGE.
DAMN.
I could kick myself for not getting a picture...but at the same time, I'd feel horrible about putting it up. He was, after all, clearly homeless and either severely mentally disturbed or tripping his rancid balls off...
When I see psychotic homeless people, I tend to go into survival-mode: steering a clear path around them, sweating, avoiding eye contact, willing them to look elsewhere and not notice me walk past. This stems, not from a distaste for the down-and-out, but from harrowing brushes with dillusional derelicts in the past.
There was one instance of a homeless man in the 42nd Street subway station spitting on my shoes then chasing me down the subway platform, screaming obscenities, because of his completely random conviction that I had littered in front of him. I was shell-shocked. At the impressionable young age of 6, I would pick up scraps of trash along the road on my way home from the bus stop because I earnestly believed that, by doing so, I was single-handedly saving the planet. The thought of littering is barbaric to me, so my inner child wanted shout out in defiance of my accuser, but by the time we reached the end of the platform, he had begun ranting about conspiracy theories and I knew that defending my meek Midwestern white girl honor was useless. You simply can't argue with crazy. Thankfully he didn't throw me off the platform.
It was equally scary and embarrassing when a bag lady flipped-the-fuck-out on me when I offered to buy her a ride on the subway. She had been beseeching passing commuters to open the emergency exit door for her so she could wheel her junk into the subway station. Everyone was ignoring her, so I felt bad and offered to swipe her in. I didn't want her to get herself or anyone else in trouble for walking in through the exit. "Can I swipe you in?" barely escaped my lips before she lunged for me screaming, "SHUT THE FUCK UP! WHOOOORE! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME! AHHHHH! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!" Red-faced, I did as she said and got the fuck away from her, dodging through a crowd of curious onlookers.
By the time another homeless man (and looking back, it may have very well been the same dude who spit on my shoes years before) accosted me on the platform, taunting me with racial and sexual slurs, I had learned my lesson: DO. NOT. ENGAGE. Instead, I stayed put, kept my eyes averted, and did not make any sudden movements. I was able to duck into a train last-second after enduring a barrage of menacing threats and him closing the distance between us from 15 feet to 5 over the course of 10 minutes.
So when I walked out the office last Friday and saw a very dirty tall white male donning a child-sized wedding dress, fairy wings, years of scum in a chest-length beard, and wide vacant eyes that complemented his "schnozz-berries taste like schnozz-berries" pantomimes, I knew exactly what I was looking at...
...but the crowd, 50-Midwesterners-deep, that encircled him apparently thought he was off-Broadway entertainment. As I walked a wide arc around his "performance," I couldn't help but let out a hearty laugh when a few people in the naive audience began to clap.
-------------------------------------------
SHOOT. I can't find him in any Picasa or Flicker accounts, either! You'd think one of the tourists would have posted that magic...
UPDATE: Thanks to a fellow redditor, here's a video the guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFVbh5WvITM&feature=related
Just to clarify: I'm not trying to make light of a very serious problem like mental illness/ homelessness; just commenting on how bizarre and mildly humorous it can be to see it in action. Wow.
I could kick myself for not getting a picture...but at the same time, I'd feel horrible about putting it up. He was, after all, clearly homeless and either severely mentally disturbed or tripping his rancid balls off...
When I see psychotic homeless people, I tend to go into survival-mode: steering a clear path around them, sweating, avoiding eye contact, willing them to look elsewhere and not notice me walk past. This stems, not from a distaste for the down-and-out, but from harrowing brushes with dillusional derelicts in the past.
There was one instance of a homeless man in the 42nd Street subway station spitting on my shoes then chasing me down the subway platform, screaming obscenities, because of his completely random conviction that I had littered in front of him. I was shell-shocked. At the impressionable young age of 6, I would pick up scraps of trash along the road on my way home from the bus stop because I earnestly believed that, by doing so, I was single-handedly saving the planet. The thought of littering is barbaric to me, so my inner child wanted shout out in defiance of my accuser, but by the time we reached the end of the platform, he had begun ranting about conspiracy theories and I knew that defending my meek Midwestern white girl honor was useless. You simply can't argue with crazy. Thankfully he didn't throw me off the platform.
It was equally scary and embarrassing when a bag lady flipped-the-fuck-out on me when I offered to buy her a ride on the subway. She had been beseeching passing commuters to open the emergency exit door for her so she could wheel her junk into the subway station. Everyone was ignoring her, so I felt bad and offered to swipe her in. I didn't want her to get herself or anyone else in trouble for walking in through the exit. "Can I swipe you in?" barely escaped my lips before she lunged for me screaming, "SHUT THE FUCK UP! WHOOOORE! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME! AHHHHH! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!" Red-faced, I did as she said and got the fuck away from her, dodging through a crowd of curious onlookers.
By the time another homeless man (and looking back, it may have very well been the same dude who spit on my shoes years before) accosted me on the platform, taunting me with racial and sexual slurs, I had learned my lesson: DO. NOT. ENGAGE. Instead, I stayed put, kept my eyes averted, and did not make any sudden movements. I was able to duck into a train last-second after enduring a barrage of menacing threats and him closing the distance between us from 15 feet to 5 over the course of 10 minutes.
So when I walked out the office last Friday and saw a very dirty tall white male donning a child-sized wedding dress, fairy wings, years of scum in a chest-length beard, and wide vacant eyes that complemented his "schnozz-berries taste like schnozz-berries" pantomimes, I knew exactly what I was looking at...
...but the crowd, 50-Midwesterners-deep, that encircled him apparently thought he was off-Broadway entertainment. As I walked a wide arc around his "performance," I couldn't help but let out a hearty laugh when a few people in the naive audience began to clap.
-------------------------------------------
SHOOT. I can't find him in any Picasa or Flicker accounts, either! You'd think one of the tourists would have posted that magic...
UPDATE: Thanks to a fellow redditor, here's a video the guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFVbh5WvITM&feature=related
Just to clarify: I'm not trying to make light of a very serious problem like mental illness/ homelessness; just commenting on how bizarre and mildly humorous it can be to see it in action. Wow.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
WAX ON, WAX OUCH.
"WELP!" I heard myself blurt out. "THAT'S THE CLOSEST I'VE EVER BEEN TO A COMPLETE STRANGER AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW YOUR NAME!"
Instantly, I regretted this remark. Not only did it make me sound like a half-bred lecherous old hick (heeehawwww), but, damnit, it stung when I realized the walls to my room didn't reach the ceiling. I took a moment to get my 'religious' on and prayed to the sky guy that no one in the tiny adjoining reception area of Max Wax (NYC's all-waxing salon) had heard this horridly awkward exchange. A highly-arched eyebrow and thin snarl belonging to one malnourished, Hermes-purse-toting Upper West Side socialite met me on my way to pay. Clearly, my indiscretion was very audible. Fuck. Could the whole deforestation be heard from out here?
Jesus, Hayzeus. ಠ_ಠ Where were you on this one?
Ah, there you are, J-money.
While paying, I marveled over how anyone was able to make it through a waxing session. The entire time my leg hair was being abruptly uprooted from its follicles, a silent scream was swelling in my throat, just on the brink of escaping. Rather than make a spectacle of myself, which I would do later anyway, I focused on creating this list...
10 THINGS TO THINK ABOUT DURING YOUR PAINFUL CHEWBACCA-TO-HOWIE-MANDEL TRANSFORMATION:
1. MOJO MAGIC
Pretend you're a giant voodoo doll and each strip of wax is bringing some small amount of discomfort to your favorite FOX News personality. Rip. Take THAT Glenn Beck. You won't need Vicks VapoRub under your eyes for THIS one. Rip. Crybaby. Rip. Ahhh. Rip. I'll show you 'fair and balanced!' Rip. I am a fucking real American heroooo. RIP.
2. MAKE GEORGE BAILEY PROUD.
Imagine that for each patch of hair being savagely uprooted from your groinal area, an angel gets its wings. Rip. You like that pair, angel? Not big enough for you? Rip. There. That pair has GOT to be bigger. Rip. What do you mean you don't want terradactyl wings? Rip. Damnit, for claiming to be a pure and holy diety, you're sure being a picky twat. Rip. Agh, now I'm bleeding, imp! Thanks a lot, you unappreciative dick.3. APOLOGIES TO THE LATE ALEXANDER MCQUEEN
Every time the waxer rips, picture these shoes:
Now, imagine the people stupid enough to wear these horse hoove monstrosities face-planting on the ground multiple times. Rip. Rip. Rip. Rip. Rip.
4. SUPERWHO? I AM...THE HAIRLESS WONDER.
When the pain registers above a 5 on this scale...
...pretend you are a superhero who grows more powerful when someone inflicts pain on you.
Rip. Brace yourselves, jelly jars. Prepare to be de-capped.
Rip. Wow. Watch me curl 400 lbs.
Rip. Hooray. I can stop a train with my pinky.
Rip. KELLY CLARKSON.
Rip. I'll have two Alaskan pine trees and a side of flowing lava, please.
Rip. Orbit shmorbit. C'mon earth, time for a staycation. We're just visiting the next star over, not leaving the galaxy. Chill.
(Warning: self-inflicted pain will not work in this superhero equation, so ripping one's own legs off will NOT, I repeat: will NOT enable you to harness dark matter. Sorry.)
5. COLLECTIVE SPITE
Imagine traveling back in time to deliver a giant smack, on behalf of all present-day women, to whichever marketing douchebags decided body hair was "uncomely."
6. DOIN' IT FOR THE LOVE OF RAY J
Ponder the meaning of life in the context of E! or VH1 channel programming. Marvel at how good you feel about yourself in comparison.
7. YOU NEED TO MAKE A CHOICE, MMMKAY?...BETWEEN ELASTIC...OR SOCK SUSPENDERS.
Picture Dr. Phil naked. Gah! You can't unpicture it, can you? Neither can I. Now, whenever you begin to experience pain, you'll instantly think of black dress socks and bushy moustaches. You're welcome?
8. SAVING THE DOLPHINS ONE BIKINI LINE AT A TIME
Pass the painful time by figuring out the least awkward way possible to ask the waxing technician for your body hair back. You'll want to ship it to BP to help sop up that teeny little Gulf of Mexico gaffe. teehee Ooooops! ಠ_ಠ Be sure to mail it directly to the home of Tony Hayward.
9. LALALA JUST MINDING MY OWN BUSI--GAAAH! WHAT ARE YOU?
Play this on loop in your head:
10. ROYAL PAIN
Think of the Queen.
I found these strategies helpful for me, but somehow all of that latent hurt-y energy built up in my system and exited in the form of terribly embarrassing commentary, with gems like,
"Aargh--err--wow! That's not as bad as I thought it would be! Har har har! ow."
And, "So...do you enjoy your job?"
And, "I dunno...do a lot of your clients go for the pooper?"
It was my lame attempt to act casual and be funny while a sweet, quiet Swedish woman I'd never met before waxed hair I'd never seen before.
Luckily, Swedish lady was steadfastly polite and professional and kept the situation comfortable enough that, with exception of the socialite, I was only vaguely aware of how crass I sounded... that is, until I caught the receptionist smirking at my back in a reflection on the door as I walked out. Damn.
Well, I might not be able to sand wood with my leg stubble anymore, but I can certainly strip the stain off of any deck with this sudden diarrhea of the mouth affliction I have.
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*Is it funny to anyone else that a waxer is called a technician? I mean, it's not like they're building computer motherboards or fixing spaceships. Don't get me wrong, I know there is some serious skill involved in waxing. I just think a more appropriate term would be "waxing warriors" or "saints of taints" or "follicle finessers."
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Brief Encounters with The Living Dead
Few things are as chilling as your partner sitting up suddenly in bed in the middle of the night, eyes wide open, speaking in tongues for a few minutes, then plopping back down on the pillow to continue sawing logs as though nothing has happened. You're left staring down at them in fear and incredulity and you debate whether or not you should lock yourself in another room until morning comes so that you can have the comforting help of daylight when you assess whether they have or have not been possessed by a satanic spirit, à la Linda Blair.
As it turns out, Andrew and I both have really creepy sleeping habits. From talking to walking to odd gutteral grunting, tongue clicking, crying, and screaming, the two of us together are the super duo of fucked-up slumber. Initially, we both thought I was the only one with sleep issues. I frequently woke him up with frantic incoherent babbling or crisply delivered orders such as "Get it out of here!," causing him to leap to his feet so he could confront, in all of his bare-bellied glory, whatever was causing me to freak out. Much like Pavlov's dogs, Andrew gradually stopped taking the bait and is presently capable of sleeping through Brooklyn's toy xylophone being played in his ear (not that I've tried that or anything...heh).
Andrew has his own little sleep issue that made its debut appearance the night I went into labor with Brooklyn (methinks I'll have to repost that story from my old myspace blog...). Since that night, it has only become more apparent. Some mornings I wake up to an empty bed and find Andrew snore-choking (his own special brand of snoring) on the living room couch, and I wonder if he was mad at me for something. In actuality, he'll have zero recollection of leaving bed, while I'm left worrying about what else he does in his mobile sleep. I would love to attribute the cat-litter-strewn bathroom or the messy kitchen to some of his sleepwalking activities, but- ahem- that wouldn't be giving credit where credit is due...to our shit-factory cats and eating-machine selves, respectively. Thankfully, most signs point to harmless wandering to & fro between the couch and the bed, but there was one instance that sent shivers up my spine...
Brooklyn must have been less than a month old, possibly only days-old. It was the middle of the night and she was awake. My body was racked with exhaustion and after an hour of rocking and nursing her, I found myself weak and unable to keep my eyes open. It took five minutes of constant shaking and prodding to get Andrew to wake up, but once he awoke he was standing, eyes open, reaching for the baby so I could get some rest. I handed Brooklyn over, clicked off my nightstand light, and slumped back into my pillows, exhaling deeply, welcoming the sleep I so desperately needed...except, oddly, sleep wouldn't come. Chalking it up to being over-tired, I tugged the covers tighter around my shoulders and tried to relax, but this nagging feeling was making me uneasy.
My eyes struggled to focus in the dark as they searched for Andrew's form, but they eventually found him at the foot of the bed. His sillhouette swayed back-and-forth and on first glance it looked like he was lightly rocking our infant daughter to sleep. But as my eyes further adjusted to the dark, I noticed something funny about his stance. Rather than snuggling her close to his chest as he usually did, he was holding Brooklyn away from his body, as though his arms had locked up when I had handed her to him. I squinted up at his face, but couldn't see it, so I switched my nightstand light back on. An icy jolt of terror shot through my veins before escaping through my skin in thousands of hair-standing goosebumps. Through glazed-over, heavy-lidded eyes, Andrew was staring at me--rather, through me--and was shifting from one foot to the other, Brooklyn swaying lightly in his outstretched arms. He smacked his lips groggily.
*smack* *smack* *smack*
My husband looked like a brain-eating, baby-toting zombie.
My motherly instincts instantly snapped on and I snatched my oblivious infant daughter from the precarious grasp of this creature of the living dead. This sudden action on my part left him unfazed and he continued his Frankenstein auto-rock dance.
"Andrew ANDREW!"
No response. Just rocking.
"Andrew! Are you awake?" I stupidly asked.
No response. Creepy gaze unabated.
Turning my body so that my daughter would be further away from this Lurch-like creature standing before us, I used my free hand to whack him in the hip.
"WAKE. UP."
Probably not best to try to wake a sleep walker, but I was so freaked out I didn't think about that; I just wanted the psycho-zombie that had staked claim to my husband's body to fuck off and leave the father of my child behind. My rationality at that time posed a frightening example of what chronic sleep deprivation (a hell-blazing zombie in its own right) can do to the mind of a young mother.
The smack snapped Andrew back into wakefulness and, blinking, he held his arms out for me to hand over Brooklyn, completely unaware of his brief period of bedevilment.
"Here honey, I'll rock her to sleep."
Yep. That wasn't going to happen.
I now give Andrew ten minutes to get his bearings before assuming he's awake enough to get out of bed. This still doesn't prevent the weird things he does when he's awake, but it seems to have helped curb some of the sleepwalking.
;-)
Side thought: I'd love to see what Andrew and I look like on the nights we're both sleepwalking/talking at the same time. I imagine him walking into the bedroom wall over and over and over while I'm sitting up in bed, facing the opposite direction, speaking in unintelligible sentences that are sprinkled with gems like "bag the giblets" and "wet that fart!"
-------------------------------------------------------
Let's make like a preschooler and share. Post your sleepwalking/talking adventures/ experiences/ horror stories in the comments section! You know you've got 'em!
As it turns out, Andrew and I both have really creepy sleeping habits. From talking to walking to odd gutteral grunting, tongue clicking, crying, and screaming, the two of us together are the super duo of fucked-up slumber. Initially, we both thought I was the only one with sleep issues. I frequently woke him up with frantic incoherent babbling or crisply delivered orders such as "Get it out of here!," causing him to leap to his feet so he could confront, in all of his bare-bellied glory, whatever was causing me to freak out. Much like Pavlov's dogs, Andrew gradually stopped taking the bait and is presently capable of sleeping through Brooklyn's toy xylophone being played in his ear (not that I've tried that or anything...heh).
Andrew has his own little sleep issue that made its debut appearance the night I went into labor with Brooklyn (methinks I'll have to repost that story from my old myspace blog...). Since that night, it has only become more apparent. Some mornings I wake up to an empty bed and find Andrew snore-choking (his own special brand of snoring) on the living room couch, and I wonder if he was mad at me for something. In actuality, he'll have zero recollection of leaving bed, while I'm left worrying about what else he does in his mobile sleep. I would love to attribute the cat-litter-strewn bathroom or the messy kitchen to some of his sleepwalking activities, but- ahem- that wouldn't be giving credit where credit is due...to our shit-factory cats and eating-machine selves, respectively. Thankfully, most signs point to harmless wandering to & fro between the couch and the bed, but there was one instance that sent shivers up my spine...
Brooklyn must have been less than a month old, possibly only days-old. It was the middle of the night and she was awake. My body was racked with exhaustion and after an hour of rocking and nursing her, I found myself weak and unable to keep my eyes open. It took five minutes of constant shaking and prodding to get Andrew to wake up, but once he awoke he was standing, eyes open, reaching for the baby so I could get some rest. I handed Brooklyn over, clicked off my nightstand light, and slumped back into my pillows, exhaling deeply, welcoming the sleep I so desperately needed...except, oddly, sleep wouldn't come. Chalking it up to being over-tired, I tugged the covers tighter around my shoulders and tried to relax, but this nagging feeling was making me uneasy.
My eyes struggled to focus in the dark as they searched for Andrew's form, but they eventually found him at the foot of the bed. His sillhouette swayed back-and-forth and on first glance it looked like he was lightly rocking our infant daughter to sleep. But as my eyes further adjusted to the dark, I noticed something funny about his stance. Rather than snuggling her close to his chest as he usually did, he was holding Brooklyn away from his body, as though his arms had locked up when I had handed her to him. I squinted up at his face, but couldn't see it, so I switched my nightstand light back on. An icy jolt of terror shot through my veins before escaping through my skin in thousands of hair-standing goosebumps. Through glazed-over, heavy-lidded eyes, Andrew was staring at me--rather, through me--and was shifting from one foot to the other, Brooklyn swaying lightly in his outstretched arms. He smacked his lips groggily.
*smack* *smack* *smack*
My husband looked like a brain-eating, baby-toting zombie.
My motherly instincts instantly snapped on and I snatched my oblivious infant daughter from the precarious grasp of this creature of the living dead. This sudden action on my part left him unfazed and he continued his Frankenstein auto-rock dance.
"Andrew ANDREW!"
No response. Just rocking.
"Andrew! Are you awake?" I stupidly asked.
No response. Creepy gaze unabated.
Turning my body so that my daughter would be further away from this Lurch-like creature standing before us, I used my free hand to whack him in the hip.
"WAKE. UP."
Probably not best to try to wake a sleep walker, but I was so freaked out I didn't think about that; I just wanted the psycho-zombie that had staked claim to my husband's body to fuck off and leave the father of my child behind. My rationality at that time posed a frightening example of what chronic sleep deprivation (a hell-blazing zombie in its own right) can do to the mind of a young mother.
The smack snapped Andrew back into wakefulness and, blinking, he held his arms out for me to hand over Brooklyn, completely unaware of his brief period of bedevilment.
"Here honey, I'll rock her to sleep."
Yep. That wasn't going to happen.
I now give Andrew ten minutes to get his bearings before assuming he's awake enough to get out of bed. This still doesn't prevent the weird things he does when he's awake, but it seems to have helped curb some of the sleepwalking.
;-)
Side thought: I'd love to see what Andrew and I look like on the nights we're both sleepwalking/talking at the same time. I imagine him walking into the bedroom wall over and over and over while I'm sitting up in bed, facing the opposite direction, speaking in unintelligible sentences that are sprinkled with gems like "bag the giblets" and "wet that fart!"
-------------------------------------------------------
Let's make like a preschooler and share. Post your sleepwalking/talking adventures/ experiences/ horror stories in the comments section! You know you've got 'em!
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Raja: Spawn of Satan / Treasured Family Jewel
"Open the door, peon, or I'll fuck up your dreams."
Hmmm. That feels misty. How odd.
Pssssss pssss
That definitely feels wet, like a spray bottle...
PSSSSSS
What is that awful smell...and...why is my face wet?
PSS--
WHY IS THE CAT'S ASS ON MY FACE?...
OH DEAR GOD, THE CAT IS PISSING ON MY FACE! FUUUUUUUUUUUU---
I launched out of my bed and was on my feet faster than Elizabeth Montgomery on "Bewitched" could blink, wink, or do that strange nose waggle she was so famous for.
--UUUUCK!
My chest heaved and I choked through the asphyxiating stench of that which was presently dripping from my face. Cat urine is most admirable in its potency. The noxious fumes of amonia are enough to render a gag out of the manliest of men and, in my case, the badassedliest (Yes, it's a word...No, don't bother researching it...No--it-- well, you're not going to find it in any dictionary other than the Dictionary of Ruthlessisms) of women.
Two o'clock in the morning, pajamas ruffled, hair a mess, face sheening with cat piss, I stood there stupidly, gaping at Raja, my family's cat, in disbelief. She remained seated, back awkwardly hunched, ass firmly pressed into my pillow, peering pointedly over her shoulder at me as she continued to finish the deed she had so audaciously started. I'm not a violent person, but images of her being thrown through the window momentarily flashed through my mind before I abruptly scooped her up and gently tossed her out the front door.
I suppose it was partially my fault. That night I had repeatedly ignored her urgent meows in my ear and the cold wet-nosed nudges to my face, favoring sleep over responding to her needs. Raja has trained us to let her in and out of the house at will. Though we've put one in the basement of my parents' house, she does not use a litter box. In her estimation, the world is her litter box and we are to open the door to let her out into her domain at her will, even if that will is executed at 2am.
She is a royal bitch, but she possesses this uncanny ability to bewitch all of us into believing she's the most magnificent creature to ever grace our presence. I've never seen anyone or anything reduce my father--my no-nonsense, stoic, rigid, masculine father--to a driveling, baby-talking feline fan quite like Raja does. She has everyone in the house wrapped around her de-clawed little paw-finger and I shamefully admit that even I am not invincible to her black magic charms...
- What's that sound I hear at 1am? Oh, Raja's scratching on the screened window to be let in? Be there in a jiffy, Your Highness!
- This water is not to your liking? Allow me to refresh the--Oh, yes, if that's what you prefer, go ahead and knock that glass of water over and drink out of the puddle while I sweep up the shards of glass from the kitchen floor.
- Royal cats don't like toddlers now? Toddlers are so teetery anyway. Quick! Everyone! Toddlers are no longer fashionable. Please leave them at the door.
Like any benevolent ruler, she occasionally descends from her lofty throne to engage in play time with her subjects and, even more occasionally, flop dramatically on her back, gracing those present with an adorable look from between her paws, and allowing one person the divine opportunity of running their fingers through the massive bur-twined tufts of dread-locked fur on her belly. Careful; pet too long and she'll nip at your fingers to keep you in line. Yet, the whole lot of us gather around, ooo'ing and aaaah'ing like a bunch of giant oafs. She is our family's first "real" pet, which makes her, in our collective estimation, the most captivating creature in the entire world. She is very aware of our ignorance and frequently takes advantage.
Her supreme reign extends to the entire block and neighboring streets. Neighborhood cats shrink back into their homes when Raja is outside. In fact, I'm quite positive I saw one cat bite itself as an act of self-flagellation for not exiting the area quickly enough. Entire colonies of moles have been exterminated from my parents' front yard, rodent by squirming rodent at a time, all at the clawless paws of Raja The Regal. She charitably leaves their bloody, quivering carcasses next to our shoes in a manner that suggests we are to consider them gifts, but I suspect she can't be bothered to eat something as unsavory as a common mouse.
She's so royally unbending that it took 3 operations to successfully remove ALL of her front claws as she had rebelliously retracted them so deeply before surgery that the vets didn't "get" all of them. And while I whole-heartedly do not support nor endorse the de-clawing of a cat (my own cats still have theirs), I shudder to think what would become of a few of the neighborhood cats, should Raja have had full use of her cutlery. One neighborhood cat was sent to the animal hospital more than once, due to complications from battle wounds inflicted by Her Clawless Majesty.
After overcoming the initial shock of the golden shower my cat had just given me, I gathered my wits, took a very long real shower that exhausted nearly a whole bar of soap, changed the bedsheets, and--at last-- finally snuggled back under the covers...
"MEW." scratch scratch scratch "MEW." scratch scratch scratch
For fifteen minutes I successfully ignored her pawing at the screen window downstairs, a heavy chip on my shoulder.
But just as I was drifting off into dreamland, my senses were suddenly attacked rapid-fire by images of cat asses, phantom fur tickles on my face, the faint smell of amonia. Feline chuckles rang in my ears. Raja was like Freddy Kreuger, slipping into my dreams, twisting them into a horrific nightmare. Again, I launched out of the bed, rousing myself to wakefulness, thankful that I wasn't actually experiencing a golden shower encore, but breathing no easier, nonetheless. For fear that she might work the same spell on my sleep, I ran downstairs and opened the door to let her back inside.
She slept on my chest until morning. I lied there subserviently, cat napping....
One eye open.
Friday, April 16, 2010
If I'm 35, You're Pushing 50, Jerk.
"How old are you?"
Here we go.
The age question comes up every time I go out. Somehow the conversation is always steered toward the topic of age and it never fails to leave me feeling both ancient and indignant, but for whatever stupid masochistic reason, I walk right into the trap and always find myself answering with another question:
"How old do you think I am?"
A long time ago I was told for the very first of many times that my maturity makes me seem ten years older. Back then, I accepted it as a compliment. After all, I was underage then and it meant that my odds were that much better of passing under bartenders' radars. Today, it's a different story. Especially because I know my actual level of maturity is easily trumped by 15-year-old boys whose comical reserve, mind you, contains only farting-on-command maneuvers and "that's what she said" jokes.
Giving away my age isn't necessarily a problem with me. The only time I'm not comfortable doing so is when I'm in the city. Manhattan, in particular, is teaming with single, childless 20 and 30-somethings who like to fake-choke on their martinis and clutch their hearts when they find out I'm a 26-year-old married mother of one.
"But you're a baaaaby!" they exclaim. Then...
"Wait, you're from the Midwest, aren't you?"
When I confirm this, they assume a smug expression that immediately indicates their underlying feelings of superiority. I've instantly become to them a typical country bumpkin who did what other country bumpkins do: marry early, birth a few younguns, raise goats...but I had clearly made a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in a city that's far too sophisticated for my britches.
"God, it must be next to impossible to raise a kid here. I couldn't even imagine," they say, banishing the horrid thought with a dismissive wave of the hand, "You must not have ANY time for fun at all."
I swallow back a gag, smile, and quietly regale them with a few of the finer points I've experienced of motherhood and marriage, hoping the happiness in my voice and the serenity in my face will make them want to run home and hang themselves with their office-dress-code-safe Ralph Lauren neckties, or at least weep into their empty Coach purses and wonder why they still can't snag a man who won't cheat on them with every malnourished 21 year old model-wannabe who struts past.*
Then, there are the people who take it upon themselves to follow up the "How old are you?" question with,
"Wait. Don't tell me. I'm REALLY good at guessing."
They suck at guessing. People suck harder at guessing my age than they do when trying to get to the chocolately fucking center of a Tootsie Pop.
"But, no, I'd rather you didn--"
"Thirtyyyyyyy.....four!" they say with narrowed eyes, naively smiling like happy idiots into my stormy expression.
When I don't respond...
"Thirty-three? Wait. Thirty-five?"
Keep digging that hole...
"No, I've got it, Thirty-two. You're thirty-two, aren't you?"
Asshats thinking they're being generous = far from cute.
Try six years younger, dick.
Fed up with having my age constantly over-estimated, my stock response is now:
"Wrong. I am 51 years old, sweetie, so is Madonna, and we're both old enough to be your mother."
The responses I get tend to vary. From dropped jaws, to applause, I've seen it all.
Last night, the response was: "Wow. Um, are you joking? I can't really tell."
To which I should have replied, "I'm 26 years old and you're officially an overgrown fucktard."
Instead, because I'm a lady with a fucking unlimited supply of class, I said simply, "I'm 26, but it's okay, people in their late 40's, like you, usually start losing their grasp on complicated things like age..."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*I should clarify that I see and understand the benefits of the single life and waiting to settle down, waiting until later to have kids. No one should box themselves into any pre-packaged idea of happiness. The Happiness Train just happened to roll into town early for me in the form of Andrew and, because of my innate gangstatude, I chose to board before the train left the station. I don't look back because I don't need to. It was the right move.
Here we go.
The age question comes up every time I go out. Somehow the conversation is always steered toward the topic of age and it never fails to leave me feeling both ancient and indignant, but for whatever stupid masochistic reason, I walk right into the trap and always find myself answering with another question:
"How old do you think I am?"
A long time ago I was told for the very first of many times that my maturity makes me seem ten years older. Back then, I accepted it as a compliment. After all, I was underage then and it meant that my odds were that much better of passing under bartenders' radars. Today, it's a different story. Especially because I know my actual level of maturity is easily trumped by 15-year-old boys whose comical reserve, mind you, contains only farting-on-command maneuvers and "that's what she said" jokes.
Giving away my age isn't necessarily a problem with me. The only time I'm not comfortable doing so is when I'm in the city. Manhattan, in particular, is teaming with single, childless 20 and 30-somethings who like to fake-choke on their martinis and clutch their hearts when they find out I'm a 26-year-old married mother of one.
"But you're a baaaaby!" they exclaim. Then...
"Wait, you're from the Midwest, aren't you?"
When I confirm this, they assume a smug expression that immediately indicates their underlying feelings of superiority. I've instantly become to them a typical country bumpkin who did what other country bumpkins do: marry early, birth a few younguns, raise goats...but I had clearly made a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in a city that's far too sophisticated for my britches.
"God, it must be next to impossible to raise a kid here. I couldn't even imagine," they say, banishing the horrid thought with a dismissive wave of the hand, "You must not have ANY time for fun at all."
I swallow back a gag, smile, and quietly regale them with a few of the finer points I've experienced of motherhood and marriage, hoping the happiness in my voice and the serenity in my face will make them want to run home and hang themselves with their office-dress-code-safe Ralph Lauren neckties, or at least weep into their empty Coach purses and wonder why they still can't snag a man who won't cheat on them with every malnourished 21 year old model-wannabe who struts past.*
Then, there are the people who take it upon themselves to follow up the "How old are you?" question with,
"Wait. Don't tell me. I'm REALLY good at guessing."
They suck at guessing. People suck harder at guessing my age than they do when trying to get to the chocolately fucking center of a Tootsie Pop.
"But, no, I'd rather you didn--"
"Thirtyyyyyyy.....four!" they say with narrowed eyes, naively smiling like happy idiots into my stormy expression.
When I don't respond...
"Thirty-three? Wait. Thirty-five?"
Keep digging that hole...
"No, I've got it, Thirty-two. You're thirty-two, aren't you?"
Asshats thinking they're being generous = far from cute.
Try six years younger, dick.
Fed up with having my age constantly over-estimated, my stock response is now:
"Wrong. I am 51 years old, sweetie, so is Madonna, and we're both old enough to be your mother."
The responses I get tend to vary. From dropped jaws, to applause, I've seen it all.
Last night, the response was: "Wow. Um, are you joking? I can't really tell."
To which I should have replied, "I'm 26 years old and you're officially an overgrown fucktard."
Instead, because I'm a lady with a fucking unlimited supply of class, I said simply, "I'm 26, but it's okay, people in their late 40's, like you, usually start losing their grasp on complicated things like age..."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*I should clarify that I see and understand the benefits of the single life and waiting to settle down, waiting until later to have kids. No one should box themselves into any pre-packaged idea of happiness. The Happiness Train just happened to roll into town early for me in the form of Andrew and, because of my innate gangstatude, I chose to board before the train left the station. I don't look back because I don't need to. It was the right move.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
My One-Fingered Salute To The Dude Who Invented Car Alarms
I'd like to personally thank the genius who invented car alarms. If I ever had the opportunity to meet this person, I imagine the conversation would go a little something like this:
Inventor: (probably wearing a power suit and $1000 cuff links. Jerk.) "Hello. Why, yes, I am the incredibly wealthy genius who inv--"
Me: *SMACK!*
Inventor: ...
Me: "WHY, YES, I DID JUST MAPLE-LEAF YOUR FUCKIN' FOREHEAD, SON!"
Then I strut away like John Travolta on Saturday Night Fever.
Earlier this week, I had the immense pleasure of listening to a car alarm go off right outside my window for fifteen minutes at 10:30pm. A record total for a single vehicle around here. It seems my block is the designated parking zone for delicate mid-sized sedans and pansy sports utility vehicles whose security alarms sound at the slightest change in environment, be it a 2 degree temperature drop or any gust of wind above 5mph. At least five alarms go off every night without fail. Though, most of them go off on the street at the front of the apartment, a few go off right outside Brooklyn's bedroom window.
In this instance, I had finally gotten B down for bed. She was being particularly resistant to being put to bed, and because she's the pants-wearing CEO of this family, I spent the remainder of the evening chasing her around the apartment and coercing her into sitting on my lap with bottles and promises to read her "Happy Baby Animals" book 10 times back-to-back. At long last, she rubbed her eyes and gave herself away. That was my cue to tuck her in, so without a moment's hesitation I did just that and slipped quietly out of her door.
Ahhhh, sweet silence.
I tiptoe'd to the kitchen and fixed myself an intricate, gourmet dinner (i.e. PB&J and a Pabst, because I'm cultured like that). Cracked open the beer, plopped my springy, youthful, non-cellulite-ridden ass on the couch (what?) and prepared to enjoy the fuck out of the serenity that had settled up in this joint. In the very moment that I slid my teeth into that sandwich, a car alarm sounded in the grocery store parking lot right outside the windows to the living room and Brooklyn's bedroom. No amount of Jiffy-crunchy-peanut-butter-chewing could muffle the sound that pierced through the walls and filled the apartment. Good lord, it was loud. I reluctanly paused my delicious nomming to silently will the car alarm to stop, waiting for the owners to find the panic button on their keychain. Find it... Find it... Find it! My ears turned like a cat's, twitching back and forth between the window and Brooklyn's bedroom. Frozen in a half-standing crouch with my Pabst in my right hand and my plate in my left, I was prepared to go full Rambo mode on someone's windshield if that alarm woke my sleeping child.
I stayed in my disgruntled hillbilly stance for a full five minutes before turning to the window to get a visual on the idiocy below. The urgency of the alarm was reminiscent of a break-in at Fort Knox. I scanned the line-up of cars, expecting to see a Bentley or a Benz or, at the very least, a souped up car, but what my eyes landed on was far from expected. The perpetrator: a 1997-ish two-door Toyota Tercel in "rust," as in actual rust. Why anyone wants to protect that tetanus hazzard on wheels with any kind of alarm is beyond me, but they apparently treasured it enough to outfit it with the loudest alarm on earth.
For ten minutes longer I waited, glaring out the window, grinding my teeth, pondering over the "boy who cried wolf" phenomenon that the car alarm tends to produce. Who really takes these things seriously anymore? They're so touchy that everyone just assumes they're all triggered by accident. Couldn't there be a better system for this? Like wooden fists situated in random unpredictable areas (like doorside crotch-level) and pop out unexpectedly when the glass on a window has been fully broken?
A grocery store security guard walked over slowly and took down the plate number before sidling back in to the store where he probably made an announcement over the intercom that someone's prized possession was acting, er, possessed. Only momentarily was my ire softened when I spotted another shopper approaching his car, which was parked next to the Tercel. He was glancing around nervously as he loaded groceries into his trunk. Clearly paranoid that everyone must think he's to blame, he unloaded his cart and shot out of the parking lot like water out of a deep-fryer.*
At last, a couple in their late 40's came teetering out of the automatic doors and I knew instantly that the Tercel was theirs. They hobbled quickly toward the car, the man briefly pausing to pull up his greasy sweatpants and throw a case of Mountain Dew in the trunk while the woman rooted around in her enormous purse for what felt like eons before pulling out a plump fist full of keys and triumphantly waggling them in the man's face.
Push the alarm button or, so help me, I will burst through my brick wall like the juiced-up love child of Snooki's assaulter and PopEye and, by brute roid-rage force, I will squeeze your tin can car into a diamond, which I will then grind up with my teeth and spit on the ground at your feet.
BLIP. BLIP.
Silence.
I exhaled a deep sigh of relief. Thank. You. Jesu--
BLIP. BLIP-BLIP. WWWWWWWWEEEEEEE--OOOOOOO-WEEEEEE-OOOOO...
At this point, I'm positive a few blood vessels burst in my forehead and I may or may not have turned green like the Incredible Hulk.
BLIP. BLIP.
And it was over for real this time.
The alarm, in it's 15 minutes of splendor, never did wake up Brooklyn, but it did awake in me a beast of rabid hatred that can only be tamed by the satisfaction of smacking the inventor in the forehead with my open hand and/or all car alarms being outlawed and amassed in a pile and melted down into something more productive, like sound-proofing for my walls...or plastic miniature figurines of myself for my own vanity and enjoyment.
I suppose this is the end, for now. Until next time, car alarms.
And, until we meet in person, Sir Douche, Inventor of Car Alarms--here's my one-fingered salute to you...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Dumping water into a deep-fryer is explosive. Trust. Try it, pal, and you risk looking like Freddy Krueger's uglier twin brother.
Inventor: (probably wearing a power suit and $1000 cuff links. Jerk.) "Hello. Why, yes, I am the incredibly wealthy genius who inv--"
Me: *SMACK!*
Inventor: ...
Me: "WHY, YES, I DID JUST MAPLE-LEAF YOUR FUCKIN' FOREHEAD, SON!"
Then I strut away like John Travolta on Saturday Night Fever.
Earlier this week, I had the immense pleasure of listening to a car alarm go off right outside my window for fifteen minutes at 10:30pm. A record total for a single vehicle around here. It seems my block is the designated parking zone for delicate mid-sized sedans and pansy sports utility vehicles whose security alarms sound at the slightest change in environment, be it a 2 degree temperature drop or any gust of wind above 5mph. At least five alarms go off every night without fail. Though, most of them go off on the street at the front of the apartment, a few go off right outside Brooklyn's bedroom window.
In this instance, I had finally gotten B down for bed. She was being particularly resistant to being put to bed, and because she's the pants-wearing CEO of this family, I spent the remainder of the evening chasing her around the apartment and coercing her into sitting on my lap with bottles and promises to read her "Happy Baby Animals" book 10 times back-to-back. At long last, she rubbed her eyes and gave herself away. That was my cue to tuck her in, so without a moment's hesitation I did just that and slipped quietly out of her door.
Ahhhh, sweet silence.
I tiptoe'd to the kitchen and fixed myself an intricate, gourmet dinner (i.e. PB&J and a Pabst, because I'm cultured like that). Cracked open the beer, plopped my springy, youthful, non-cellulite-ridden ass on the couch (what?) and prepared to enjoy the fuck out of the serenity that had settled up in this joint. In the very moment that I slid my teeth into that sandwich, a car alarm sounded in the grocery store parking lot right outside the windows to the living room and Brooklyn's bedroom. No amount of Jiffy-crunchy-peanut-butter-chewing could muffle the sound that pierced through the walls and filled the apartment. Good lord, it was loud. I reluctanly paused my delicious nomming to silently will the car alarm to stop, waiting for the owners to find the panic button on their keychain. Find it... Find it... Find it! My ears turned like a cat's, twitching back and forth between the window and Brooklyn's bedroom. Frozen in a half-standing crouch with my Pabst in my right hand and my plate in my left, I was prepared to go full Rambo mode on someone's windshield if that alarm woke my sleeping child.
I stayed in my disgruntled hillbilly stance for a full five minutes before turning to the window to get a visual on the idiocy below. The urgency of the alarm was reminiscent of a break-in at Fort Knox. I scanned the line-up of cars, expecting to see a Bentley or a Benz or, at the very least, a souped up car, but what my eyes landed on was far from expected. The perpetrator: a 1997-ish two-door Toyota Tercel in "rust," as in actual rust. Why anyone wants to protect that tetanus hazzard on wheels with any kind of alarm is beyond me, but they apparently treasured it enough to outfit it with the loudest alarm on earth.
For ten minutes longer I waited, glaring out the window, grinding my teeth, pondering over the "boy who cried wolf" phenomenon that the car alarm tends to produce. Who really takes these things seriously anymore? They're so touchy that everyone just assumes they're all triggered by accident. Couldn't there be a better system for this? Like wooden fists situated in random unpredictable areas (like doorside crotch-level) and pop out unexpectedly when the glass on a window has been fully broken?
A grocery store security guard walked over slowly and took down the plate number before sidling back in to the store where he probably made an announcement over the intercom that someone's prized possession was acting, er, possessed. Only momentarily was my ire softened when I spotted another shopper approaching his car, which was parked next to the Tercel. He was glancing around nervously as he loaded groceries into his trunk. Clearly paranoid that everyone must think he's to blame, he unloaded his cart and shot out of the parking lot like water out of a deep-fryer.*
At last, a couple in their late 40's came teetering out of the automatic doors and I knew instantly that the Tercel was theirs. They hobbled quickly toward the car, the man briefly pausing to pull up his greasy sweatpants and throw a case of Mountain Dew in the trunk while the woman rooted around in her enormous purse for what felt like eons before pulling out a plump fist full of keys and triumphantly waggling them in the man's face.
Push the alarm button or, so help me, I will burst through my brick wall like the juiced-up love child of Snooki's assaulter and PopEye and, by brute roid-rage force, I will squeeze your tin can car into a diamond, which I will then grind up with my teeth and spit on the ground at your feet.
BLIP. BLIP.
Silence.
I exhaled a deep sigh of relief. Thank. You. Jesu--
BLIP. BLIP-BLIP. WWWWWWWWEEEEEEE--OOOOOOO-WEEEEEE-OOOOO...
At this point, I'm positive a few blood vessels burst in my forehead and I may or may not have turned green like the Incredible Hulk.
BLIP. BLIP.
And it was over for real this time.
The alarm, in it's 15 minutes of splendor, never did wake up Brooklyn, but it did awake in me a beast of rabid hatred that can only be tamed by the satisfaction of smacking the inventor in the forehead with my open hand and/or all car alarms being outlawed and amassed in a pile and melted down into something more productive, like sound-proofing for my walls...or plastic miniature figurines of myself for my own vanity and enjoyment.
I suppose this is the end, for now. Until next time, car alarms.
And, until we meet in person, Sir Douche, Inventor of Car Alarms--here's my one-fingered salute to you...
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*Dumping water into a deep-fryer is explosive. Trust. Try it, pal, and you risk looking like Freddy Krueger's uglier twin brother.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
A Bite of Wisdom From the Big Apple
~Train station bodega owners have terrible grasps of subway geography...until you buy a soda from them. Fuckers...~
Thursday, March 25, 2010
If The Neighbor Complains, Catch Him With His Pants Down. Problem Solved.
As both luck and irony would have it, we have become the "upstairs neighbors."
Andrew, Brooklyn and I hadn't occupied our new Jersey City apartment for three days before there was a knock on our door. Our sitter, Gina, was home with Brooklyn at the time and took a message through the cracked door for us.
"The neighbor downstairs came up today and asked that we keep it down up here," she informed me when I arrived home that evening. "He said it's too loud up here and he can't concentrate."
My stomach dropped. I was surprised...and a little angry.
"What does he mean, 'keep it down?'" I asked. "We're the quietest tenants ever."
"Apparently he can hear us up here every time we move. He complained about Brooklyn walking around up here, saying it was too loud and if we could keep her from running around when he's sleeping that would be preferable. I just told him I'd pass on the message to you."
Great. I envisioned the next year being spent in misery as we tiptoe around in fleece socks and speak only in whispers....
"Brooklyn, put down your blocks and get in your new padded cage now, the charming pitter-patter of your tiny feet is making too much noise for the downstairs neighbor to bear as he gets his beauty sleep until 4pm. Oh, hi visitors, I need to ask you to remove your shoes and wear these slippers and if you could keep your voice at a steady 30 decibels or lower, that'd be great, thanks. Also, if you need to fart, cough, or sneeze, please do so into this designated noise-dampening pillow."
I stewed for the next couple of hours. We weren't even close to being noisy up here...most certainly not like our old upstairs neighbors (see the clog dancers entry below). Hell, we weren't even a quarter as noisy as they were. And as loud as those neighbors were, I never dared tell them to keep their kids quiet. You simply don't put a cap on how much noise is appropriate for a family with young kids, unless you have proof that they're deliberately trying to be loud and make you miserable...or jumping off of chairs and clog dancing past midnight.
When Andrew arrived home from work later that evening, I filled him in on the news, being careful to keep my voice low. If Brooklyn walking through the apartment was too loud for this guy to handle, who knew if he could hear our conversations. Andrew was not so careful.
"Who the fuck does this guy think he is?" he blasted. "Brooklyn is one year old! One! What are we supposed to do? Lock her in a cage and yell at her every time she drops a toy?"
"Keep your voice down, Andrew," I scolded, "I don't want to start anything with this guy. A bad neighbor can make our lives miserable. Promise me if you see him, you'll be polite."
Grudgingly, he agreed.
It turns out he would have to practice his politeness skills a little sooner than either of us expected. At 7am the following morning, there was a knock on our door. Andrew, who had been up for no more than 5 minutes with Brooklyn, sidled up to the door wearing only his underwear. I hadn't been able to pull myself out of bed yet, so I can only imagine the groggy death stare Andrew probably had on his face when opening the door. I heard him utter a few words before shutting the door.
"Who was that?" I called from my pillow.
"Who do you think?"
"Ugh. What now?"
"He's complaining about Brooklyn running around up here. He said it's too early for all the noise and asked if we could keep it down, especially in the mornings."
My stomach sank again. Brooklyn's feet hadn't touched the floor for more than a few minutes and he was at our door lickety-split, ready to pounce.
"What'd you say to him?" ("Were you polite?" my tone implied.)
"Not much. I just said that she's a baby and it's hard to tell her anything, but we'd do our best."
Relieved that Andrew hadn't unleashed his temper on the guy, I figured we could at least make more effort on our part to perhaps keep her hard toys out of reach for the first hour of the morning and distract her with books and breakfast to keep the running around to a minimum. It was annoying to feel like every move was being amplified, but having just escaped noisy lower-floor living, I understood.
That is, until I spoke with the landlord later that day.
I had stayed home for part of that day for a cable appointment. The cable guy needed access to the lines in the basement, so I had to call Brian, our landlord, to figure out where those were. He verified their location and just as I was getting ready to hang up, Brian said,
"Oh, by the way..."
Somehow, I knew what he was going to say and had to quickly muffle an involuntary snort.
"I wasn't even going to mention this to you because it's really not a big deal and it's something he can talk to you about himself, but your neighbor downstairs just called and said something about it being really noisy up there. Now, I'm sure you guys are fine. Maybe he's just hearing your little girl. I have my own kids and I know there's not much you can do about them making noise, but I just thought you might like to know that he contacted me about it, in case he hasn't said anything to you yet. He's a really nice guy, though. Maybe you can go down and talk to him."
My jaw clenched. I thanked Brian through gritted teeth and got off the phone. I was livid. It was not easy to hear this after I'd spent all morning meticulously combing the floors for Brooklyn's hard toys and keeping her occupied with quieter activities. This was the third time in less than 24 hours I had been informed of the downstairs douche's supersonic hearing and my penchant for politeness was dangerously frayed. I didn't want to tell Andrew. He is far less concerned about politeness than I am when someone angers him and won't think twice about telling that person off. Regardless, he heard the strain in my voice when I spoke to him on the phone later that day and he pulled it out of me.
Later that night, I rang the intercom buzzer to be let in the door since I had left my keys with Gina. Andrew answered.
"Yeah?" Despite static crackling in the intercom, his menacing tone could not be disguised.
"Honey, it's me. Let me up."
I dragged my feet heading upstairs, speeding up only as I passed apartment 2, Douchebag Habitat. I already knew what news was waiting for me at the top of the stairs.
"The asshole came again."
"Hello to you, too." I said kissing Andrew as I squeezed past him through the front door.
"I wasn't home for one minute and I knew, I just KNEW he was going to come up! This is his fourth fucking visit. Unbelievable." He was launching into a full blown tirade.
I sighed.
"What'd you say to him?"
"Well, I swung open the damn door so he could see Brooklyn and told him to go ahead and try telling a one-year-old to be quiet. He kept saying some bullshit about how he deserves to live in a noise-free environment. I told him we'd be happy to trade apartments if he'd like to fund the move. He just turned on his heel and stormed back downstairs."
I had a feeling I'd eventually be on damage-control, but despite that expectation I was no more ready to face the beast. I was pissed, too, but knew that if I didn't smooth out the situation now, it would only get worse. Andrew may not have regretted his approach, but that didn't mean it didn't bother him to be at odds with a neighbor, so when I told him I was headed down to talk to the guy he didn't argue; he looked slightly relieved. I took five minutes to calm my nerves as much as possible and then ventured down the stairs. I knocked.
There was some frantic shuffling from somewhere deep in the apartment and then the sound of floor boards slowly creaking as he quite obviously was creeping up to the door to sneak a look through the peep hole. I did my best to look as nonthreatening as possible, standing there hands folded behind my back, friendly smile playing lightly on the corners of my mouth, eyes focused away from the peep hole. La la la, harmless neighbor here, just stopping by to blow some sunshine up your ass.
As I waited, I tried to imagine what he must look like and could only conjure up images of a neurotic balding older European man-child who's wardrobe consisted exclusively of Burberry slippers and turtle necks that he wore religiously to hide his weak chin. I could just picture him listening to Bach on vinyl and waving his finger in exaggerated conductor-like motions, eyes closed, his grotesque shiny head swaying in time with the symphonies...
The door cracked open slightly, just enough for a head to poke through. After a small pause, the neighbor's face appeared from behind the door.
"Yes?" he asked, his face both tense and skeptical. He looked nothing like I had envisioned. He was a young black man with stylish glasses, dressed casually in jeans and a button-up, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. Imaginary turtle-neck dweeb wouldn't have dreamed of wearing denim or putting any creases in his starched sleeves. I noticed the apartment behind the neighbor was pitch black and for a moment I worried that I may have awakened him. Fantastic.
Affecting the most cheery tone of voice I could muster, I extended my arm forward and shot my hand right through the darkness beyond the door frame, "Hi, I'm your neighbor from upstairs, Ruth. It's so nice to meet you."
"Oh, hi..." he said meekly before hesitantly opening the door a little wider and weakly shaking my hand.
Leaving no room for awkward pause, I launched right in:
"Listen, I want to apologize for all the noise you've been hearing upstairs. I won't apologize for my husband. He's a big boy and can do that for himself if he decides to, but he was just on-edge today and you came at a bad time. Anyway, just so you know we both really do care and we're doing everything we can to dampen the noise."
To my surprise, rather than begin to snivel about the issue and how the situation had been addressed on the part of my gruff husband, he visibly relaxed, opened the door wide, and smiled. Despite his strange initial approach (4 times in 24 hours), this time he very gracefully explained what he was hearing and what times he preferred things to be a little more quiet. We hashed things out, both of us conceding a little to satisfy the other's schedule. It was clear that we were both going to walk away satisfied, so we eventually changed the subject and made friendly small talk.
As we were wrapping up our talk, and just as I was relishing in the fact that it had, overall, been an awkward-free, and dare-I-say, pleasant, conversation, my eyes were suddenly and inexplicably drawn to the crotch of his pants. There they landed with horror on his gaping, wide-open fly and the thin stretch of underwear that very poorly concealed his junk. I instantly diverted my gaze at the very same second that he realized I had just received an eyeful of information one doesn't normally get when meeting their neighbor for the first time...or any time thereafter. He took a not-so-discreet step back behind the door to shield his lower half and extended his hand in a hasty gesture of goodbye, which I grasped weakly this time.We said goodbye. I walked back upstairs, shut the door quietly, and washed my hands. Twice.
We haven't heard from him again.
Monday, March 22, 2010
The Geography of Los Angeles in Relationship to George Michael's Weiner
Maybe I've been living in NYC for too long because whenever I'm anywhere else in the country late at night, I am incurably baffled by the lack of 24-hour businesses. I always find myself asking,
"How is it that the only thing open within a 15 mile radius is a single gas station?!"
Somehow, my 20-something years of prior experience in Ohio with "normal" business hours has been wiped from my memory, replaced by expectations of convenience provided by The City That Never Sleeps, such as 4am bar closing times, liquor stores open until midnight, restaurants open all night, 24-hour grocery stores and bodegas...
This is, perhaps, indirectly why on a recent Monday at 4am, I was in the back seat of a pimped-out VW JettaWagen helplessly allowing myself to be carted at illegal speeds down the 405 from LAX to my hotel in West Hollywood by a random driver, who, I realized too late in the ride to hop out, was full of uppers.
I had been standing on the taxi pick-up curb for a while without seeing so much as a single car roll by. My flight had just landed seven hours late due to a combination of weather delays and two malfunctioning airplanes and I was exhausted. Five minutes felt like 50. The taxi attendant was absent and the phone at his station would not connect, much to the frustration of myself and the other passenger who was waiting next to me.
Just as I turned around to head back into the airport to check on other options, a man with slicked back hair, wearing dress pants and a button-up, holding a car service sign approached me and the other woman I had been waiting with, asking us if we needed a car.
"I promise you. You are not going to find a taxi this early. Not for at least another viente minutos..."
The other woman and I looked at each other and then at the still-vacant taxi lanes. A second later, we were walking side-by-side in silence, following this man to his parking spot, as he regaled us with a long-winded monologue about the lack of taxis at that time of night.
This might sound incredibly unsafe- to follow a random dude to his car and get in- and perhaps it was, but it is typical for off-the-clock drivers to try to earn an extra buck on their own by trolling the airports for commuters too impatient to wait in long taxi lines. For the other woman and I, there were no other options in sight. There were two of us (power in numbers) and we had both just experienced the same frustratingly long commute. We were not to be fucked with. Not at this hour nor after the day we'd just had.
BLIP BLIP
The sound of the car doors unlocking snapped me out of my jet lagged daze. My eyes settled incredulously on this pimpmobile of a car that was now being opened by our driver. I nearly laughed out loud at the absurdity of such a car being touted as a livery vehicle. From the chrome spinner hubcaps to the tinted windows and two-tone custom paint job to the rear-view camera and bottled beverages in the doors, nothing about it cried "professional car service!" I sensed the other woman's pace slow as she, too, realized what we were about to be driven to our hotels in. Again, we gave each other a look, which was cut short by our still-rapidly talking driver grabbing the other woman's bags and throwing them in the trunk. We both sidled into the low-riding back seats.
"I can't believe there were no cabs," she said, nervously watching the driver cross around to the driver's side door while she buckled her seat belt.
"This is the second time this has happened to me here," I replied, following suit and buckling my own seat belt.
"You've done this before then?"
("This" meaning hopping into the car of a random driver without a livery license?)
"Yes." But never one who drove a car like this. I omitted that specification. I didn't want her to feel any more nervous than she already appeared.
The driver hopped in, still chatting excitedly, lit up with a glow that I assumed was related to the thrill of nabbing two customers at the same time who were both traveling to the same area of Hollywood. We pulled out of LAX and he continued talking, barely pausing to take a breath. For a little while, I appreciated the non-stop conversation he was having at us. It kept at bay the awkward feeling of responsibility to keep up small talk for the duration of the ride. He was so cheerful that I allowed myself to laugh generously at some of his jokes. I sensed my riding companion begin to relax and even she contributed a few chuckles.
Then we hit the 405. And I watched with horror as the speedometer hit 100 and kept going.
"...and over there is South Central L.A.." The driver waved his hand toward some general direction off of the highway while I silently willed both of his hands to remain firmly on the wheel. "Some of the neighborhoods there? Not so good."
My amusement quickly turned to concern over the uncomfortably fast commute I was experiencing. Refusing to reveal my nervousness for the sake of my back seat friend's fragile sanity, I entertained the driver's haphazardly delivered tour of the greater Los Angeles area by nodding weakly back at his reflection in the rearview mirror and chuckling at appropriate intervals. The woman had fallen silent and I noticed her hand engaged in a white-knuckled grip on the door handle.
"What hotels are you going to again?" the driver asked us both.
We spouted off our hotel names for the second time. He had never heard of my hotel. I wasn't sure of the intersection so I whipped out my phone to pull it up on Google Maps, but he stopped me.
"It's okay! It's okay! I will just call the hotel and get directions from my route," he said, already dialing Information.
As his phone was dialing, I tried to give him the intersection details which were already pulled up on my phone, but he kept cutting me off, telling me he would get exact directions from the hotel. I was too tired to try any harder and just wanted him to keep his eyes on the road instead of on me in his mirror, so I let him make the call.
As his call was connecting, he had finally exited the 405. Hallelujah! We were on local roads again! He continued to push all silence out of the car and fill it with his endless monologue.
"Oh! You guys want to see where George Michael got arrested the first time?" He was so excited for this part of the tour that I humored him again,
"Uh, sure?"
"Sure!" the woman beside me echoed, a bit more enthusiastically than necessary. I stole a quick glance at her face and found it oddly lit up with interest. Ultimately, I chalked it up to her clearly being relieved to be traveling under 100mph again and, as a result, owning her new lease on life. Because, surely, nobody cares that much about George Michael?
The driver pulled up to a red light and pointed across the intersection at a small brick building.
"You see that right there? That's a public bathroom. That's where he got arrested. Can you believe George Michael was dumb enough to pull out his wiener right there? Right next to a busy street? Ha ha ha! Stupid! Dios mio!"
The woman beside me laughed uproariously. Sheesh. So maybe it was mildly funny (in more of a bizarre way) back in '98 before pop singers were frequently making public journeys out of the closet, but in 2010 at 4am? She was obviously slap happy now.
"And look! Right across the street from a police station, too! What an idiot! Ha ha ha," he laughed, exposing a mouth full of gleaming gold caps, while breezing past the LAPD station doing 20mph over the speed limit. Idiot, indeed.
As he finished chatting away about George Michael, I could hear a perturbed voice coming through the earpiece of his phone, saying "Hello? Helloooo?" before finally hanging up.
Five minutes later, the driver said, "Oh! I better call the hotel for directions again! I think they might be mad at me because I didn't answer! ha ha ha."
Ten minutes later, and not a moment too soon, we arrived at my hotel.
"That will be $56."
I hated to prolong the moment any more, but needed change.
"Oh yeah! I have change. One minute!" he said, running around back to the trunk.
Bidding the woman adieu, I got out of the car with my purse and my backpack, my only two bags for the short trip, and met the driver at the trunk, assuming that he was getting change for me back there.
"Which one's your bag?" he asked.
"Oh, I have both of them already. Do you have that change?"
"You don't have a bag back here? I could have sworn I put one back here for you!" He began digging around feverishly.
"No, just these two bags right here."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
"Are you positive?"
Good God, man! Just give me some damn change and let me go so I can get 3 hours of sleep before the day-long shoot ahead of me!
"Absolutely positive." I said, instead, with a strained, but polite smile on my face.
"Okay, let me get you change," he finally said and, to my disbelief, marched ahead of me through the hotel doors and up to the concierge to ask for change.
The concierge replied with a look of annoyance, clearly recognizing the driver as the man who called earlier, and disappeared in the back to grab change. The other front-desk attendant began my check-in process, but was repeatedly interrupted by the driver making small talk while drumming his fingers loudly on the counter. Seeing him face-to-face under the unforgiving brightness of the front desk lights, it was painfully apparent that he was probably brimming full with something a lot stronger than caffeine. I wanted to kiss the floor of the hotel lobby and thank all things holy that I made it. Bad weather and two faulty airplanes were nothing compared to the commute I had just experienced in the pimp-mobile.
The driver went on to make a show out of counting the bills before we finalized our transaction. I tipped him a little more than I should have just to get him out of there quickly and comfortably, but of course, it backfired. He ran back in the door twice more: once to tell me thank you and then again to give me his card. I sent an apologetic look to the other woman, who was still waiting in the back seat, and mentally wished her a safe trip down the remaining block to her hotel.
"...and make sure you call me when you're ready to go back to the airport!" he said before, finally, parting.
"Will do."
I most certainly did not.
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