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If You Need Me I’ll Be in My New Cave

19 Jun

I don’t know whether to file this post into the category “I did this so you don’t have to” or “when you think people are laughing at you they probably are and you should look in the mirror” or “Rebekah needs to buy a cave and stay there until 2015.”  Anyway, you can cast your votes after reading the next incredibly embarrassing thing that happened to me.  I promise I will laugh at this a few years from now.  Maybe.

So, I don’t know if you guys know this but for me, this year totally sucks.  It is the actual worst year of my life.  I thought that nothing could be worse than 2010, and I had really clung to that with every bit of strength that I possess in my entire body because at least then when something totally sucked I could be like “well, it could be worse.  It could be 2010 again!”  But now I don’t even have that because 2014 is totally worse.

I need to add here that I know that, relatively speaking, my 2014 has not been as bad as some other people’s 2014.  I know that probably I am sounding like a whiny little bitch right about now and people are gonna be all “well, those aren’t real problems” but whatever.  Those people can suck it.  So, let us continue.

So earlier this year, after I got back from Peru (which was really fun except for when my earrings were stolen out of my ears), I had an interview at this place that does community gardening.  I was really excited and totally qualified and the position was essentially made for me.  Anyway, I got all excited about it and then I got to the interview and in an effort to not sound like a raving lunatic because of all the excitement that I was feeling I dialed it back too far and I think came across as uninterested.  I knew it didn’t go well the second I left the office.  Anyway, I got home like an hour later (it was so far!) and looked in the mirror and discovered that my scalp burn from Peru had started peeling and there were like pieces of skin all through the top of my head.  I had looked in the mirror when I left, no skin.  But by the time I got there, skin everywhere.  So probably they thought I was this totally underwhelmed, totally boring, totally unmotivated person with serious hygiene problems.

That was a great day to be me.

So then fast-forward to this afternoon.  I had to go to this interview and it was sort of rainy outside when I left so I brought my umbrella.  By the time I got to where I was going it was not rainy but instead it was wildly humid. You know what does not do well in humidity?  Eye liner.  You know what would have been a good thing to do before interviewing?  Looking in the mirror.  Did I do that?  No, of course not.  So I talked to the lady for a few minutes, she seemed nice, and then I left and walked over to the Verizon store to deal with the fact that they had said they would send me a new phone in the mail but had neglected to do so.  Anyway, because of the earlier rain I had not brought my my sunglasses which, as it turns out, was a huge mistake because had I brought them I could have at least not looked like an ass while walking the streets of Brooklyn.  So I am walking down Flatbush and this woman in a car looks at me and starts laughing.  Like, seriously laughing so hard.  She was having the time of her life.  I thought to myself two things: (a) don’t be so insecure that you think some random person is laughing at you; and (b) did you sit on something?  You must have sat on something.  I looked at my butt, there was nothing there.  Why I assumed it had to do with my ass doesn’t actually make sense because I was facing her, so really logic should have told me that I looked like a total weirdo but no, I thought it was my ass.  Or that I had been shat on by a bird and didn’t notice because I get shat on more than the average person so it’s just like, normal these days.

So I logicked myself out of the worry and continued on to the Verizon store where I dealt with 4 different people, none of whom told me my makeup was fucked.  Also, I may or may not have had an almost mini-breakdown in the Verizon store because that is something I do these days at random places.  (As a side note, why don’t the people at the stores and at banks have direct access to someone who can help you at the help center?  Why do they also have to wait on hold listening to advertisements for mortgages and extra cloud storage and shit?)  Anyway, the lady on the phone was really nice and I don’t blame her for not telling me about my makeup because she couldn’t see me but I believe if she had seen me she would have told me about it.  Then I walked all the way home to my apartment.  I got home, walked through the door, went into the bathroom, looked in the mirror and BAM.  Disaster face.  I actually wish I had taken a photo of it because it was really something to behold.  So I immediately did the thing that I shouldn’t have done but it’s me so obviously I did it.  I sent the following text to the person I had just interviewed with:

“Thanks for meeting with me.  I just got home and realized my eye makeup had gotten all screwed up from the humidity and I am hoping that happened after I talked to you.  But if not, I am usually not that much of a mess and will not be leaving the house without a mirror in my purse for the rest of the summer.”

To which she replied:

“:) It’s all good. Very nice meeting you too.”

And then she said something else about shifts that’s not actually relevant to the story.  Her text led me to believe that my makeup was, in fact, at least moderately screwed up when I talked to her.  So, that’s good.  Go me!

The thing that is so sad about the whole situation is that I looked in the mirror when I got home and all I could think was “of course.”  That was it.  It’s like, obviously since I put effort into actually looking like a presentable human being today my eyeliner was like “sucker! You think you look GOOD?! Palease!”  So, that happened.  It has now been made clear to me that the only reasonable thing for me to do is put a bid in on a cave somewhere and move into it for the remainder of the year.  My friend Sarah tells me that probably I can just go into a cave and hang out there and eventually through squatter’s rights it will become mine but with my luck a bear will be living there already and would try to maul me but would only succeed in gauging out one of my eyes and eating my right arm.  I would defend myself with bear spray but, as we have learned from my experience with mace, I cannot be trusted with anything that comes in an aerosol can.

So, if you need me I will be in my cave.  I will be accepting visitors and snacks.

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No Room of Glass

2 May

Sometimes you just have to run.  Or, well, sometimes I do. I discovered running when I was a freshman in college.  My college didn’t really suit me so well.  It ended up being fine but sometimes I do think that if I had it to do again I would have done it differently.  I would have taken my mother’s sage advice to take a year off between high school and undergrad and gone and worked on a farm.  I would have used the time to really think about what I wanted out of my college experience rather than just going along with something that was expected of me.  It’s not that I regret it, really, because had I chosen differently I wouldn’t be here now and I wouldn’t have done the things I’ve done, met the people I’ve met and learned the things I’ve learned.  Sure, I would have done different things, met different people and learned different things but I guess I am happy with the end result.  I am happy, generally, with who I am.  The process, though, could have been fine-tuned.  Even still I feel, overall, thankful and content.

But then there are those other days.

There are those other days when all I want is this thing that I have daydreamed about for as long as I can remember.  This might sound insane but I have always wanted a spare room with brick walls, no windows and lots of glass items.  I have wanted some safety goggles and maybe some sort of a suit that would protect me from flying shards.  And then I have wanted to take those glass items and hurl them as hard as I possibly could across the room and just watch them shatter everywhere.  I don’t want to hurt anyone.  I just want to break shit.  I just want to have 10 minutes every once in a while, when the build-up of impatience and let down and frustration and confusion becomes so intense that I just want to scream but instead I could lock myself in my brick-walled room and just fuck shit up.  And then I would take a deep breath, call in a cleaning crew (because in this daydream I would have them on speed dial and I would be able to afford their services) and I would go back to my normal life as if nothing happened.  No tears.  No pillow punching.  Just a lot of broken glass, a sore arm from the force behind the throw and a better outlook.

Unfortunately that is not in the cards for me at the moment and so instead I run.

I have been, over the past few weeks, nearing that breaking point where I need the glass.  I have been maybe not taking the best care of myself.  Eating too many omelets and scrambled eggs because I am too lazy too cook something legit.  Watching too many episodes of Gossip Girl.  Today I hit sort of an apex of frustration with stuff and thought that maybe what I needed was to just go out, have a bunch of drinks, pass out like a sad sack and worry about it all tomorrow.  But I did the thing that I do, which is that I thought about how that would make me feel in the morning so instead I went for a run.  I ran by the water and there was, at that moment, nothing that could have been better than feeling the sun on my skin after a long and cold winter, feeling the cool breeze coming off the water and smelling the wonderful smell of salt water.  I couldn’t help but smile as I ran by the men with their fishing rods set up to catch whatever it is that swims there.  I didn’t even have an ill-fantasy about one of them casting without looking properly and accidentally snaring my eyeball which was, I have to say, a first for me.  I had one of those moments where I honestly felt like I could run forever.  My legs felt, I don’t know, springy.  It was like they just knew that they had to shut down the exhaustion and the soreness and the heaviness that sometimes aflicts them when I hit the double digit miles and just go with it because there is no room of glass (yet) and there are not enough drinks in the world to calm me the way a run can when everything is just right.

In those moments when I think about the decisions I made in the past and maybe start slipping towards regret, I try to think about some of the positive things that happened as a result of those decisions that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.  There is always something.  Always.  On top of the friends I made, the abroad trip I never would have gone on otherwise, my decision to move to the city and into an apartment with my best friend in the world, and all the other things that I just don’t want to bore you with, I found running.  And honestly, had I not I wouldn’t be half the person I am today.  And I would be a hell of a lot drunker.

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The Full Monty

22 Apr

Sometimes I rack my mind thinking about what I could possibly write about.  I start a whole bunch of different posts and none of them really go in the direction I want. I spend hours on them, and then simply discard them uttering to myself the now familiar “that was stupid anyway.”  Then other times, I wake up in the morning simply FULL of ideas.  Well, not exactly full if you want to get specific.  Yea, let’s try that again.  Then other times, I wake up in the morning with an idea!  That’s better.  Anyway, this morning was one such morning and I wouldn’t quite say that I had an idea as much as an idea was sort of given to me.  Right when I woke up.  Thanks to my cat.

So my cat, Clark, has spent a fair amount of time over the past year attacking the shades next to my bed.  It’s as if he thinks that maybe all the slats are going to band together in the middle of the night and kill me with their blunt edges and their flimsy constitutions.  He has been so concerned about this that slowly, one by one, he has broken the slats in half, leaving them hanging off sadly until I get sick of how pathetic they are and throw them in the garbage.  RIP slats.  This slow and pain process has left my shades essentially useless.  The top is still robust, full of slats, but at the bottom, right next to where my head is while I sleep, there is a big gaping hole, an area devoid of any sort of protection.  I have toyed with the idea of purchasing some nice curtains – useful accent pieces, if you will – but have never found quite the right ones.  Also, I need a paycheck but that is a gripe for another day.  Suffice it to say that at this very moment, there is quite a bit of space on and around my bed where I have to be aware of my state of undress in case there is a Peeping Tom out there somewhere.  (Which, by the way, there is!  He talked to me once and it was terrible.)  Anyway, the Peeping Tom can see through my other window when I am irresponsible and don’t pull the shades down which, arguably, is my own fault.*  The lucky thing about this whole scenario is that the view by the broken shade is unobscured by other apartments, meaning that no one can really see through because I don’t have any neighbor-windows. The closest apartment window at the level of mine is a whole block away and unless someone sits there day in and day out with a telescope they would never be able to see me.

Oh my god what if someone actually DOES sit there day in and day out with a telescope.  I just totally creeped myself out.

Okay, moving along.  So this morning I woke up, looked out my window, and noticed that on the roof closest to my window there was a construction guy, just walking around.  I took note and was like

“Okay, Rebekah, whatever you do do not get dressed in front of that window.”

I think we all know where this is going.

I went down the hall, brushed my teeth, started the coffee machine (why would I drink coffee right after brushing my teeth?!) and then came into my room to get dressed directly in front of the exact window where I had, a mere 5 minutes earlier, told myself not to get dressed in front of.  Not only did I decide to get dressed there, but I also decided that my skin was dry so obviously I should stand, entirely naked, in front of the window putting on lotion.  Obviously.  About one leg in I realized the err of my ways, screamed, and ran to the other side of the room directly in front of the other window whose blinds I had left wide open because I was changing in an area out of the line of sight of any Peeping Tom’s who might use that window as their peep zone.  Also, by screaming, I potentially drew the attention of any additional construction workers who might have not already seen me in my birthday suit.

Sigh.

So anyway, I am fairly certain that this construction guy saw me naked and putting on lotion this morning which was not exactly the way I wanted to start my day.  But then I had this sort of descent into hilarity where I thought about how funny** it would be if the dude started like, yelling work out tips or brands of lotion that he thought might help me with my dry skin.  Like,

“Girl, you ever try that Jillian Michaels’ shit?” (and then he would demonstrate some of the moves)

or

“Girl, Jennifer Aniston swears by that Aveeno and her skin is positively radiant!”

Anyway, it was funny to me right when I woke up.  It was also funny to my sister Lucy who said, via text,

“Were you acting lude with food?  In the nude?!”

She told me she was quoting from a Flight of the Concords song but I like to think she was just quick on her feet.  Then she sent me a photo of herself looking “angrily disappointed” in a birthday hat when she was like 5 and that made me happy.

The end.

*I should say something here about victim blaming and stuff but I am too lazy so I just want to acknowledge that my starred statement was slightly problematic.

**Theoretically funny because in real life I would get mad about it and write a blog and a strongly worded letter to anyone who I thought responsible for the construction workers on the roof next door

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The Internet Does it Again

16 Apr

So I am having this funny thing happen right now which is that my blog has been getting lots of hits.  And it’s not because I have been writing lots of new and really great posts.  It’s because I wrote a letter to my Dad on his birthday and apparently there are a lot of non-creative people out there who are searching for a letter to a dad.  And it has left me wondering…has anyone given the letter I wrote to my dad to their own dad?  And like, what would their dad say about that?

Um…that’s really nice and all honey but I don’t remember any of these things happening.

I suppose that could work if this person’s dad has amnesia or is an alcoholic or drug addict and therefore doesn’t remember certain details of their kids’ upbringing.  But even still.  I mean, I called out my siblings in my post and I would be very, very surprised if there was someone who had a dad who was an addict or had amnesia who also had siblings (and a super awesome sibling-in-law who is more an actual sister than a sister by marriage) named Aaron, Lucy and Claire.  It’s possible, I suppose, but extremely unlikely.

I mean, I don’t know, I just can’t imagine going on The Internet and being like

Wow, it’s my dad’s birthday and I want to write him a letter. Maybe someone else has written a letter that I can use.

And then coming across my letter.  I then wonder whether upon reading my letter they are like

Wow, this girl is strange.

Or if they say

What an interesting letter!

And then they go ahead and read other posts on my blog and come across this one about poop or this one about the time I accidentally maced myself in the face and then they’re like

Wow, this girl is strange.  Also stupid.  And totally disgusting.

I don’t know.  The possibilities are endless, really.

In other news, did anyone else learn about the US Airways tweet containing a photo of a girl with a model airplane stuck in her vagina?   I just…The Internet.  It has so many things.  So many weird and inappropriate things that just pop up randomly in very unexpected places.  Sort of like there you are, lying in your bed, and BAM! Boeing 777 in your vagina!  And you have no idea how it got there!  That’s what The Internet is like.  It’s like, you start searching for something about population growth.  Then you end up on something about population control.  And then you wind up on some article about forced sterilization.  And then you find a horribly racist conversation between a bunch of skinheads saying terrible things and you just want to go hide in a cave because, as I have said before, they let anyone on The Internet these days.  And then you berate yourself for reading the comments because you should know to never, ever, ever read the comments.  Even on an article about how cute bunnies are the comments are not safe.  Somehow someone will take bunnies and go somewhere incredibly racist with it and you won’t even know what happened and then you will look down and BAM!  Boeing 777 in your vagina.  Well, not literally but you get the picture.  No pun intended.

I don’t know how I got from people reading a letter I wrote to a girl with a model airplane stuck in her cootchie.  See?  The Internet did it again.

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I have some NEWS

9 Apr

Hey so you guys.  You know how the other day I said that some crazy things were happening which had led me to looking at reviews for the InterContinental Hotel on Marine Drive in Mumbai?  Well, I feel as though now I can offer you all some (extremely limited) information.

I got offered a job.

And I took it.

So here is basically how it all went down.  I had gone over to my friend Emily’s house to talk to the super about some shit that has been going on in the building.  I also had to talk to some people the building brought in from outside the management company about the shit that has been going on.  Apparently, I scared the person in charge of the people brought in about the shit. How do I know this?  Because the guy in charge (who, I have to tell you, was a little scary himself) said to me:

Guy: On a scale of 1 to 10, how serious do you think you are? Because to me, you seem like a very serious girl.
Me:  Well, I mean, it really depends on the circumstance.  I can be pretty not serious a lot of the time but this is a serious matter so I would say I am about a 9 on the serious scale right at this moment.
Guy: Well, I have to tell you, and I don’t intimidate easy, but you are actually scaring me.

I felt really proud.  I was like on cloud nine.  I have always wanted to be a little bit scary.  It was like I had reached my goal in life and everything else was just gravy.  I celebrated by eating a spinach pie from my favorite store.  Then I took a big long walk over to visit my friend Kendra.  In the midst of this walk I received a call from a number I didn’t recognize so I ignored it because I get oh so many spam phone calls.  But the person left a message!  So I listened and it was this entrepreneur who my Uncle Scott had sent my CV to earlier in the week and he wanted to talk to me about the job.  So I called him back and he told me about it and it sounded really amazing.  And I was like, wow, this is really amazing.  It cannot possibly be true.  But you know what? IT WAS!

I get to go traveling!  And talk about ways to help the environment with these really amazing new products!  And I get to do all this while I am getting paid!  And all the while I am not serving drinks to people who throw things at me!  It is like, a dream come true!

So I don’t have all the pertinent information as of yet.  Like, you know, when I leave.  But the answer, as far as I can tell, is very soon.  I will still be based here so I am not moving, just taking a small leave of absence.  I will fill you all in as things start happening.  I am sure there will be some fun adventure stories.

I am telling you all this because the tenor of the blog might change a tad.  But I am pretty sure it will be even more awesome than it is now if you can imagine it.  So keep reading!  I can’t wait to fill you all in on the next exciting chapter!

Dear Naughty

5 Apr

So I have been having a very weird week.  Things are maybe on the cusp of happening and when they do, or don’t, I will inform you all about it.  But in the meantime, and sort of related to this whole thing, I have found myself on the website of the InterContinental Hotel on Marine Drive in Mumbai.  I decided to look at the guest reviews because, for whatever reason, I always find it really amusing to see reviews of really fancy places.  I like to see what people who can afford these places complain about.  I know this makes me sound a little bit like an ass because, I mean, just because you have money does not mean that you don’t have the right to complain.  Maybe you have more of a right because you pay so much for the places you stay or the things you do?  Of course, as a percentage of income maybe it really isn’t that much at all.  Maybe, relatively speaking, staying at the InterContinental Hotel on Marine Drive in Mumbai is equivalent, percentage of income-wise, to the time me and my then-boyfriend stayed at a Super 8 Motel off the highway in Dallas.  Let me tell you about that disaster.

Okay, so this was like, 2009 or 2010 or something like that.  We had flown down to Dallas for the wedding of an old friend of my boyfriend’s that was being held at the friend’s sister’s super awesome house.  We decided to stay at the Super 8 because I really liked saying “Supah 8!” and throwing my hands up in the air.  Seriously. That was the one and only reason we stayed there.  Anyway, so we get there late after our flight, after renting a car and after getting lost and the hotel had somehow lost our reservation.  We were tired.  We were maybe a little bit grouchy.  We were being helped by someone who, it seemed, had no idea what he was doing.  We also happened to have arrived on the weekend of some really super important college football game or something so all the rooms were booked up with bros toting cases of Miller Lite.  The only room that was available at the point was a smoking room.  Let me tell you this room reeked.  It was the smelliest room I think I have ever been in.  But whatever, we were tired and figured we could maybe move into a different, less stinky room the next day.  I got in my pajamas, I crawl into bed, pull the covers up to my face, breath in and holy hell.  The sheets smelled like fucking dead people.  Serisouly I am not kidding.  I shot up out of bed, covered my mouth and pointed at the sheet.  My boyfriend, not overly shocked by my behavior, smelled his portion of the sheet.  It didn’t smell.  I told him to smell my portion.  He smelled it.  Dead people.  I mean, to be honest, I don’t think either of us had ever really smelled a dead person up close and personal but if I had to tell you what a dead person smelled like, you know, if I had to imagine it, it would be that portion of that sheet in that Super 8 in Dallas.  No joke.

So the next morning we woke up, after switching to the other double bed in the room and not getting into the blankets obviously, and I saw a roach run across my pillow where I had literally just been sleeping.  Just then.  Like a second before.  With my head.  On what was in actuality maybe a roach highway!  It was horrible.  Obviously, we switched hotels.  I have never been the same.

Anyway, that was a complaint.  What sorts of complaints are on the review page for the InterContinental Hotel on Marine Drive in Mumbai?  This one:

Really not happy with the Room service.Had ask for curd and change of buttery in remote of Set top box.
No body has turned up for the same.Very Very disappointed with the room service.

I think I would be sad if I had to ask for curd with my food or a buttery remote.  (Don’t make fun of spelling errors, Rebekah, it is not nice.)  The thing about this that was SO amusing to me is that this person called himself “Naughty” on the complaint.  I think what he meant to do was imply that he found the room service to be “naughty,” which is kind of a weird and sort of dirty way to describe it.  I am assuming this is an English as a second language situation.  But what makes it funniEST is that the hotel then responded to the complaint and addressed their response to Naughty.  Like, as in, “Dear Naughty…”  I have a lot of respect for Dhan M, the Case Manager of the InterContinental Hotel on Marine Drive in Mumbai for taking Naughty so seriously and writing Naughty a letter.

I wonder what Naughty would have said if he(?) had been sleeping in death sheets on a roach highway.

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A Piece of Advice: Don’t Mace Yourself in the Face.

28 Feb

So tomorrow I am leaving for a week long trip to Peru with my friend Carrie.  I decided that now, the day before I leave, would probably be the right time to start packing for my trip.  So, I burrowed into the closet and found my backpacking bag and pulled it out only to discover that I never actually fully unpacked the bag from my trip to India…a trip I took in the summer of 2011. In case you were wondering, that trip occurred approximately 2.5 years ago.  So, you know, clearly I am a responsible and reasonable adult.  Anyway do you know what I found in there??  Aside from my Chaco sandals and a pair of super old running shoes I discovered mace in a pink leather holster sort of thing gifted to me by my awesome and hilarious friend Kendra.  So now let us take a little trip down memory lane, shall we?

Kendra gifted me my stylish mace one night when we were out having a drink.  Or maybe she gave it to me and then I went and had a drink.  I guess it really isn’t important.  The important part of the story is that I walked to my house 10 blocks from the F and G stop with my mace, slightly inebriated, all the while wondering what I would do if someone were to approach me in an intimidating manner.  I decided that when I got home the first order of business was to make sure my mace worked and figure out how to spray a possible assailant quickly and efficiently.

Fast forward about 10 minutes.

I could hardly contain my excitement!  I got home, took the mace out of its cute little pink house, and looked at the instruction booklet.  It said not to spray the mace into the wind because it would be blown right back into your own face.  Not ideal.  It was a little windy and I didn’t trust myself, in that state, to figure out the direction the wind was coming from.  So, sadly, I put my mace back in its house and moped my way up the stairs.  But I had to know if it worked!  I just had to!  So you know what I did?  I went into the bathroom and sprayed the mace into the sink.

So you know something about sinks?  They are bowled which means that if you spray an aerosol thing into them the spray just sort of bounces off the sink and, you guessed it, goes directly into your face.  Do you know what hurts?  Getting maced in the face.  Do you know what makes you an idiot?  Macing yourself in the face in the bathroom.

So, just let that sink in (no pun intended) and remember:  I did this so you don’t have to.

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#TBT to April 2002

27 Feb

You guys!  I wrote this in college!  When I was 21 years old! Man was it tough to be me back then.  I did a pinch of editing to make a few things more clear but this is HILARIOUS.  Also, incredibly dated.

Harsh Realities of Theft Jade Trinity Students
April 16, 2002 <—- I feel so old now!!

In my high school, as well as all other high schools across the nation, we had fire drills once every other month to make sure the students could exit the building quickly and to ensure that all the alarms and lights were in proper order. After the tragic events at Columbine High School, my school even had a few bomb threats by sick students who wanted a laugh at everyone else’s expense. Whether we were out on the football field for 2 minutes or 2 hours, the actions by the students were always the same. Instead of worrying about our own safety and quickly fleeing the “burning” building, every one of us opened our backpacks and grabbed our expensive TI-83 calculators and whatever pricey items we happened to be carrying with us. The “leave everything behind” rule just didn’t apply.This may seem silly to people reading this, but in my graduating class we were lucky enough to have a few “businessmen” who came up with the ingenious idea of stealing people’s calculators and posting them on E-bay. It was pretty much guaranteed that if your calculator was suddenly missing, you could go online the next day and locate it and, in effect, buy it back for about half of what you originally paid. So, coming from a town where your belongings weren’t safe during fire drills, I was pretty much used to the idea of people stealing.

When I decided to come to Trinity, my father gave me a few helpful pieces of advice. He told me to never walk alone, never talk to strangers, don’t take drinks from people I don’t know, and never leave anything of value unattended. I rolled my eyes, as daughters normally do in situations such as these, and disregarded the entire conversation with a quick smile and the ever popular response, “whatever, Dad.” I should have known that, as I have been told my entire life, my father is always right.

Up until a few days ago, I had kept track of virtually everything I arrived with, save a few t-shirts and socks that mysteriously disappeared in the black hole that is the Little laundry room.

Unfortunately for me, everything changed one day this spring. During the half hour break from my 3 hour long design class, me and a couple of friends wandered over to the Bistro to rest our eyes from the tedious work of gluing pieces of wood together or hanging paper clips from a piece of masking tape. Not wanting to return to the shack that houses our classroom, we hung out in the Bistro for a few minutes longer.

When we finally returned to our classroom, I opened my backpack to get my discman and CD’s. To my utter dismay, they were nowhere to be found. It appeared as though someone had forgotten to lock the door to the class and a person, either a resident of Hartford or a student at Trinity had come in off Vernon Street and snatched my discman, all my CD’s, a wallet, and smashed an art project.

I stared in disbelief for a few minutes and then ran over to my friend and asked her if I was blind or if my belongings actually were gone.  Unfortunately, my eyesight was as good as ever. After standing silently for a few minutes, I, with another member of the class, went over to Campus Safety and reported the incident. By the sound of their voices there seemed to be nothing they could do to help me. I talked to my teacher and gained permission to leave class early to call my parents and grieve the loss of my belongings.

After an hour or so of sitting in my room fuming, I decided the only thing I could do to relax was to run off all my aggressions at the gym. I quickly changed into my work-out clothes, grabbed a water, and, forgetting the reason I was going to the gym, looked over at my desk for my discman. It obviously wasn’t there. Reminded of the horrible events of that afternoon, I stormed over to the gym and jumped onto one of the free treadmills. As I was running, I thought about the days when I would grab for my calculator before leaving for a fire drill and wished, sadly enough, that I trusted the people of Hartford (or Trinity) as little as I did the kids in my high school graduating class.

And then the words dreaded by all teen-agers popped into my head: “If only I had listened to my father.”

I guess the moral of this article is that as much as you think it can never happen to you, it can. Your belongings might not be sold on E-bay, but nothing will stop someone from taking what isn’t theirs.  So, until we come up with another penal colony somewhere, keep an eye on your belongings, even if that means grabbing them during a fire drill.

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Happy Bloody Valentine’s Day, Folks.

14 Feb

It’s Valentine’s Day which, as far as I can tell, is just as good a day as any to get my blog rolling again.  So, here we go.  I have no plan (except to stir up zero controversy) so let’s just see where this takes us, shall we?

Things have been stressful around here recently but, never fear, while all of the stress has been raining (snowing?) down on my head, embarrassing things have not stopped happening to me.  I don’t know if you have noticed but embarrassing things happen to me often.  And I find that I become less embarrassed if, rather than skulking around feeling like an ass, I broadcast my embarrassment to all who feel compelled to read about it.

Before I continue I should probably let you know I am about to write about my period.  For those of you who are weird and don’t like reading about such things, you should maybe just stop reading now and then go in the other room and grow up a little.  Then come back and try again.  You’ll get there eventually.  I believe in you.  (Dad, maybe you get a free pass on this one.)

This past Tuesday I returned from my annual friends-visiting trip to New Orleans.  My period always comes on vacation.  Always.  No matter what time of the month I go, no matter when my last period was, it always always always comes.  I know this and yet I never pack accordingly.  It’s like a game of chicken I insist on playing and my period always wins.  Every single time.  When I was packing I even thought to myself, “Self, you should probably pack some tampons. Nah. There is no way it’ll come.” Stupid.  I was just like willing it to arrive.  Taunting it.  You know what periods don’t like?  Being taunted.  Take my word for it.  So there I was, on Monday morning, realizing that perhaps it was coming.  But did I do anything about it?  No, of course I didn’t.  I just went about my day, casually passing all manner of store, not stopping in to buy the appropriate gear.  I made it through Monday unscathed and then Tuesday came.  All morning I was good to go.  I decided that it would probably be in my best interest to buy a box of just-in-case tampons.  But I was on a time crunch so instead of walking to where I knew there was a pharmacy with all kinds of choices, I went to a little store in the Quarter to buy a box of “regular” tampons which, when I am in the midst of my flow, are utterly useless.  But did I think about that?  No.  And did I think about the impending danger when I put one, yes one, useless little tampon in my shoulder bag and the rest of the box in my bag that was checked under the plane?  No, if course I didn’t.  Because I am a smart and reasonable human being.  I bet you can guess what happened next.  But in case you can’t, I will tell you all about it.

Cue dramatic music.

It was exactly halfway through the flight when I decided to stretch my legs and take a walk down to the bathroom.  I stuck the one solitary tampon in my pocket and moseyed on down the aisle.  I got into the bathroom and wouldn’t you know it, blood everywhere.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is my worst nightmare.  Being on an airplane in a teeny tiny bathroom with a toilet that I am always afraid is going to suck me in and spit me out into the open air, impossible to use sinks, no maneuvering room, clothes packed up and locked under the plane, and one stupid ass tampon with the absorbancy of a fucking cotton ball.  Obviously I had a mini panic attack.  And of course there were like three dudes waiting to get into the bathroom when I emerged after trying, in vain, to blot all the blood away.  And to bring the trio of terrible home, there was only one female flight attendant and she was without supplies.  I took a stack of napkins to sit on for the rest of the flight in an effort to not run the upholstery.  She looked on in pity and said “we’ve all been there.”  I don’t know if we’ve all sat in a pool of our own blood on the plane for over an hour, but I appreciated the sentiment.

And then the plane landed. Hurrah!  I felt lucky that I had worn my darkest pair of jeans but sad that my sense of style did not allow me the foresight to wear a long enough top to cover my ass.  I also cursed the vanity that simply would not allow me to tie my sweatshirt around my waist.  I figured if I walked really fast to the bathroom people would be none the wiser.  Only do you know what they no longer have in the bathrooms at John F Kennedy International Airport?  Tampon and pad vending machine things.  Do they think only bionic and pre and post-menopausal women travel by air?!  Clearly yes.  Obviously all of the women in the bathroom fit into the latter category.  As I ran to the door to go to my flight’s assigned carrousel to check and see if my bag had miraculously not been the last one to emerge from the depths of the plane, a woman appeared, as if from heaven itself, and handed me a pad.  Oh, happy day!  Of course I was wearing a (ruined) thong which meant that when I stuck the pad to my underwear and walked around it just burrowed further and further up my ass.  Not terribly comfortable but better than blood dripping down my legs, am I right?

Anyway, I retrieved my bag, got in a cab, got home, threw my underwear out, used that shout stain guard stuff that works pretty well and also gets this song stuck in my head for days (still singing it!), and took a shower.  I haven’t had the guts to look at my pants to see whether or not they are ruined foreva.  They probably are.  And that, my friends, is what happens when you taunt Aunt Flo.  She eats you alive.

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I Want to Be Friends with the Person Who Runs the Jet Blue Twitter Account

4 Feb

I figure that since my blog is sort of blowing up thanks to a rather, um, unkind message I got on an old blog post, that I would take advantage of the situation to share with some of you readers, both new and old, a bit about the minutiae of my day.  So come along!

Tomorrow I am going to New Orleans.  Well, let me reword that.  Tomorrow I am supposed to go to New Orleans.  For those of you who don’t live on the East Coast and/or don’t program the location of some far flung friends into your phone so you can obsessively check their weather and alternate between intense jealousy and a sort of self-righteous belief that you made the superior geographic life decisions, there is a storm a’coming.  But didn’t the we just have a storm, you might ask?  Yes, yes we did.  It was yesterday.  Starting this evening we are supposed to have a sleet and snow extravaganza.  I decided that, given the forecast, I should probably go on the Jet Blue website and check the status of my flight.

Canceled.

Damnit.

So I poked around the website and since at that point I had not received any information about how I might get to New Orleans as soon as possible, I decided to call them up.  I was informed by the prerecorded lady that it was going to be at least a 30 minute wait.

Damnit again.

So I did what any other reasonable person who lives in this technological world but is also tied to the phone and its accompanying hold music:  I took to Twitter.  What happened amused the hell out of me and made me come to the following three conclusions:  (1) Twitter is an incredible source of entertainment; (2) I want to become friends with the person who runs the Jet Blue Twitter account because that person is hilarious; and (3) I will make even more of an effort to fly Jet Blue because clearly they know a little something about staffing.  Like I always say (or, well, like I am going to start saying now): make me laugh and you’ve got a customer for life.  So this is what went down:

@franklyrebekah (that’s me!): Stuck on hold with @JetBlue.  Seriously, “The Power of Love?” Please do something about this hold music.
@franklyrebekah: AND now it’s Benny and the Jets.  Talk about instant gratification. Thanks @JetBlue #onhold #sobored #canceledflights #travel

(At this point my old high school friend, Seth, asked if it was Huey Lewis, Marty McFly, or Jimi Hendrix.  Unfortunately, it was Celine Dion.  I hashtagged that my ears were bleeding)

@JetBlue: @franklyrebekah Sorry about that one…
@JetBlue: @franklyrebekah… but we’re glad it got better so quickly! Thanks for hanging in there.  Someone will be with you as soon as possible.

Anyway, blah blah blah, then I told them that I talked to someone and she was really nice.  Then they told me to send along my confirmation number and they would pass the compliment along.  Then I admitted that I don’t understand how to use Twitter properly.  Then they managed to not mock me.  Also they sent funny hashtags like #NoMoreHoldMusic and, in regards to my flight actually taking off on Thursday AM (I got on a new one!) #FingersCrossed #ToesToo.

You know, this all seemed a lot funnier when it was actually happening.  But I guess here is the actual thing.  Sometimes it is easy to forget that on the other side of the computer is a real person.  I guess it was a nice thing to know that I (potentially) amused the person in charge of the Jet Blue Twitter account and that they, in turn, decided to amuse me right back.  In a world overrun by anonymity, it is nice to know that there are people out there that, even though they are anonymous in that they are the voice of a company and have to represent and promote a specific image and message, they still find the space to express a little good humor.  Also, and this is sort of an unrelated lesson that I learned this week, we should always assume that the person we are talking about online could potentially read the words that we type.  So we should be aware of whose feelings might get hurt and decide whether or not we care.  I know that, going forward, I will continue to write my posts with my opinions and observations and I will continue to put my name on it, but I will take a step back and really think about the impact my words might have on the person I am discussing.  With some people, honestly, I could give a shit.  But there are some who I don’t think I have necessarily been fair to.  So, I will work on that.

Anyway, thanks to the person who is in charge of the Jet Blue Twitter account for amusing me in the midst of an otherwise disappointing situation.  Keeping my fingers crossed for a Thursday departure.  New Orleans, here I come.

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