Archive | |My (Awkward) Day| RSS feed for this section

My Friends. So Happy About Them.

23 Jan

Hey guys.  I know I just wrote yesterday and normally I don’t post two days in a row but this is a special occasion.  Before we go any further though, in order to understand what is about to happen here, you really ought to read the post from yesterday.  It’s not long.  Maybe 500 words?  It will take you all of like 5 minutes.  And it’s sort of amusing.

This sentence is the link to the post from yesterday.

Okay, so, in response to the post from yesterday I got the best comment I have gotten so far in over two years of blogging.  It was from my friend Elizabeth.  I read it 3 times, one time to the friend I was out for dinner with last night who’s name is also coincidentally Elizabeth although she goes by Liz, or Lizzie, depending on who you ask.  I laughed each time.  So, without further ado, here is the comment:

“I have the least comforting responses to this EVER! But first I’ll just say that your dry patch sounds just like the one I have on my arm at the moment, and mine is definitely just a result of the dry, wintery weather. I think some serious moisturizing will fix you right up. (expert opinion, obvs)

“That said! You just reminded me of so many things! Or two, really. When I was 16, I woke up one morning with a strange rash-like thing going on all over my face. Throughout the day, it crept down my neck, covering me in red, scaly spots. Within a few days, it had covered my entire body. I went to three different doctors trying to figure out what it was. Finally, a grouchy old dermatologist correctly informed me that what I had was psoriasis, and that I could easily be covered in it for the rest of my life. By this point, I had it from scalp to toe, smack in the middle of my high school years, three months after I met my first boyfriend (who was on vacation at the time but would soon come back to spotted lizard girlfriend). Dr. Terrible Dermatologist followed up the possible life-sentence by trying to assuage my sadness—”you should be thankful! If you lived during Jesus’ time you would have been thrown into a leper colony!” I think it was time for that guy to retire.

“I only spent six months covered in what’s called “guttate” psoriasis, thanks to the diligence and excellent treatment of a different, caring doctor. But it’s part of my genetic makeup, so there’s always a little worry that it’ll come back. So far, so good.

“Google image it! It’s one of the only skin diseases I’ve googled whose images are pretty well reflective of reality. What I had looked like most of the pictures that pop up—bright red spots crowded together against a backdrop of pale white skin.

“My psoriasis did start on my face, but it was nothing like you’re describing, which I hope helps you feel better. And since I realize that what I’ve written thus far probably in fact makes you feel worse, I’ll spare you the second thing you reminded me of. :)

“Now you can write a blog post on rules for being a good friend! When your friend tells you she’s worried she has something terrible going on, don’t talk to her about how it reminds you of this one time when you were worried about the same thing and it turned out to be true!! But… um, I think it’s a good story. And I really think you just have a dry patch on your forehead.”

Okay, it’s me again.  Anyway, as an update, I woke up this morning not looking any more like a lizard than I looked when I went to bed last night which is to say not like a lizard at all.  Except for the one spot on my face that has in fact gotten smaller.  So, lotion is the answer.  Also, I did google image guttate psoriasis and it looks terrible.  I was really taken aback by the number of photos focusing on people’s derrieres.  It looked in a few of them like maybe sitting would be out of the question?  I once had a rash on my ass that made it impossible for me to sit on my right buttcheek and I have to tell you it was wildly inconvenient.  That experience is the reason why I don’t get flu shots and also is a story for another day.  In summation, I am glad that I do not have guttate psoriasis and I feel badly that my friend Elizabeth had it especially during high school.  But I am kind of glad that I have this dry patch on my head which I subsequently wrote an anxiety-fueled blog post about only because I received that comment from Elizabeth which made me smile.  My friends are so great.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Rules for Life

22 Jan

The other day I looked in the mirror and discovered that I have a weird red, scaly, dry patch just above my right eye.  It doesn’t hurt or itch or anything, it just looks a little weird.  Also, two days ago I accidentally scratched it and it was terrible.  I don’t really know what it is but I am pretty much convinced that it is going to take over my entire face, slowly at first and then more aggressively as it builds confidence.  I will go to sleep Rebekah and wake up the next morning in a new form:  LizardRebekah.  I was informed by my friend Beth that if I in fact turn into a lizard my cats will cease to recognize me and will probably eat me because cats eat lizards.  She knows this because she lives in Arizona.

Okay, okay, okay, so maybe I am overreacting.  But seriously, where did this thing come from?  I woke up one day and there it was!  So I did what I always do when something creepy happens, I broke one of my “Rules for Life.” There are, up until this point, only three Rules for Life although a new one can be added at any time.  I have actually been working on a rule concerning the consumption of airplane food (it should never be eaten!) but I haven’t managed to get the wording exactly how I want.  Anyway, the existing Rules are as follows:

1.  No fighting in the car or other places from which you cannot make a speedy escape.
2.  The nose is an out hole.  The only exception is for the use of Neti Pots and Nasonex.
3.  Never diagnose yourself using the internet because you pretty much always get diagnosed with some form of cancer.

Obviously, I broke the third Rule for Life.  I always, always, always break that rule.  It’s like, I simply can’t help myself.  One time* I ate beets and was convinced the next morning that the fact that my shit was a weird color was due to the fact that I was obviously dying from some sort of stomach cancer.  The internet agreed.  I wasn’t, obviously, but I really scared myself.  I was about halfway through dialing my parents’ house to tell them about my life-ending illness when I remembered dinner.  Come to think of it, I should probably make a rule about setting some sort of reminder following the consumption of beets.

Anyway, so I broke the rule and I started looking through WebMd and it doesn’t say anything about a dry skin patch slowly taking over my entire face, maybe even body, and morphing me into a lizard.  It mentions psoriasis which is scary but that doesn’t come on the face. It mostly impacts elbows and knees and hands and stuff.  Also, eczema.  Same thing.  So I have come to the conclusion that either I have a new, fatal skin disease that has never before been diagnosed or else it is just a dry skin patch caused by exposure to the elements.  I will put lotion on it and see what happens.  In the mean time, my cats will be locked in the closet.**

*I am being really generous saying this happened one time.  I think that this panic happens about 50% of the time that I eat beets.  Embarrassing, but true.

** I am totally kidding about that.  I love my cats, even if they do want to eat me.

Tags: , , , , , ,

That Time I Looked like Groucho Marx.

15 Jan

When I was in grade school I got this assignment to write an essay about a word.  Just one single word that each of us were able to pick.  I picked the word “hate.”  I picked the word hate because I used it all the time in all sorts of different occasions.  To describe my feelings about steak and asparagus, about this kid in my class who told me I had a mustache (thanks for years of insecurity, asshole), about the three weeks in school when we had to line dance in gym class.  My grandma, Bama to us, always said to me, “Bekahboo, hate is a very strong word.  Just say that you dislike line dancing in gym class very strongly.”  I tried it.  It lacked a certain, how you say, panache.*  So being a stubborn jerk sort of since birth, I decided I would write about hate and prove Bama wrong.

In the process of writing the paper, I realized that Bama was right.  Damnit.  In order to hate someone, like really actually hate them, you have to dehumanize them.  It’s what I always come back to whenever I read about the horrible things people do to other people.  In order to treat someone terribly and feel no remorse, you have to hate them.  You have to think of them as somehow less valuable, less human.  It is an emotion I never want to really, truly feel.  I never want to get to a point in my life where I dislike someone so intensely that I am able to cause them extreme pain, be it physical or emotional.  I don’t ever want my heart to go there.  But I think that for me, coming to an understanding about the word hate has been helpful, especially considering that I got both my undergraduate and graduate degrees in international affairs.  I spent a lot of my time, and still do actually, reading about how people are shitheads.  The only way for me to grapple with some of the truly awful things people are capable of was to put it in the context of that long ago written paper.  It doesn’t make my stomach not turn, or make me not want to throw my computer against the wall, but it offers up a starting point and I guess that is something.

So the whole point of this was not to give you a rundown of my fifth grade assignment (or whenever it was), although to be fair I would love to read that paper now.  (Hey, mom, do you think it is in one of those cardboard boxes of things from my yoot?)  Maybe if I find it I will even type it out on my blog somewhere for all of our amusement.  I will even leave in all spelling errors and grammar issues.  I think it could be fun.  I really hope that somewhere in the paper I talk about the kid who told me I had a mustache.  I am actually still mad at him about that despite the fact that I haven’t seen him since my high school graduation, lo these many years ago.  I hold a grudge.  Learned that from Bama, also.  Kids can be really mean, you know?  The mustache thing is actually a funny story.  So there I was, with a ridiculously thick head full of hair (as I still have today), and no idea that I looked like a young, female Groucho Marx.  And this jerk came up to me and was all

“Rebekah has a mustache, Rebekah has a mustache!”

And so I said,

“Whatever, idiot, only boys have mustaches!”

And I ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror and *gasp!* there is was!  I spent the rest of the day walking around the school trying in vain to cover my face from my mouth to my nose.  Obviously, I looked foolish.  I didn’t want to talk to my mom about it because she had red hair and clearly knew nothing from mustaches so I went to the source:  the Frank side of the family.  We all have dark hair and, I would venture to guess, we all have a little ‘stache going on.  Except maybe for my sister.  I feel like my sister does not have a mustache.  Anyway, so I went and I talked to Bama and my Aunt Mindy about it and they told me to bleach it.  Of course, they didn’t realize how explicit they had to be, or how good I have always been at pretending like I know what someone is talking about, because I thought that I had to take Clorox to my face and that sounded like a terrible idea. I wasn’t a stupid kid.  There was no way in hell I was putting that shit anywhere near my mouth.  So instead I suffered through another few years of looking like Groucho until at the pharmacy I discovered Sally Hansen bleach.  So that’s what they meant. I bought some and for the next few years instead of having a dark mustache, I had one that was blondeish-orangeish that really showed up in the sun.  So, that was pretty fun.

Anyway, I wax it myself now.  Sometimes.  At this point in my life I don’t really give a shit about it.  It’s hair.  It isn’t going to like, jump off my face and gouge someone’s eye out or anything (although that would be an amazing super-hero power).  And actually, I don’t think it’s even all that bad.  There is this old lady on my street with a SERIOUS mustache and I gotta tell ya, I think she is sort of amazing for just not giving a shit.  I like to imagine that if I was as great as her when I was in grade school I’d look at that kid and be all,

“Yea, well you don’t have a mustache.  Prepubescent wuss.”

And then I would secretly have a complex but at least he would have one also.  Until he went through puberty and started growing facial hair and then found me in the hallway and rubbed his creepy little boy mustache in my face.  Not literally, of course.  I guess by that point I would have already discovered the bleach, AKA facial hair highlighter.  And I’m sure he would have found something else to pick on me about.  I feel like he used to pick on me a lot. Not often, but he would just kind of materialize out of nowhere and say something mean that would stick with me and then he would disappear again. Like the time it was hot in school and I was wearing a long-sleeved grey shirt and I had some sweat in my armpits and he came over and was like “you have sweaty arm pits!”   And I was like “so?” because that was all I could think of and then he laughed in my face and then for years I was afraid of wearing long-sleeved shirts.  Whatever, my body is very efficient at cooling itself.  Fuck you.

Well, this blog post went in a surprising direction.  I’m not actually sure how to tie this whole thing together because not only do I not hate the guy who used to poke fun at me growing up, I don’t really even dislike him very strongly.  I’m just a little mad at him.  He was just an asshole kid who, odds are, grew up to be a very nice adult.  I wonder if the internet knows.  Rabbit hole, here I come.

*Did you know that in Canada they use the word panache to describe antlers?  Or as a synonym for antlers?  Or something?  I love writing.  Always learn such interesting and largely useless things about words.  Oftentimes that you have been using them wrong.  Kind of like my use of panache.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

What I’ve Learned So Far in 2014

6 Jan

I know, I know, 2014 is only 6 days old.  But, whatever, I’m like a sponge.  A sponge of learning.  And since I have found these new tidbits of information so titillating, I figured I would share them all with you.  Isn’t that great?  I think so.

1.  As many of you know, or have read, I have an intense dislike for companies that call me with fake credit offerings and the like.  Over the past few months, I have significantly altered my approach to these calls.  Instead of reporting said companies to the National Do Not Call Registry because it is fucking useless, I have simply been blocking the numbers from my phone!  Every time I get a bullshit call <BAM!>, blocked.  Of course in my case I don’t often receive calls from the same number more than once but still, it is so empowering.  I really feel like I show them, you know?  Anyway, that’s not what I learned.  Here’s what I learned.  I received a call the other day from a restricted number which I answered because my landlord calls me from a restricted number and I like him, he’s nice.  But it wasn’t my landlord at all.  It was a company asking to lower my interest rate.  So, obviously, I got mad and I was feeling sassy so I pressed a number to talk to a person to give them a piece of my mind.  After I had finished telling the dude on the other end what he could do with his lowered interest rates I hung up the phone, feeling good and strong and righteous.  Then I went online to see if other people had received calls from this same dubiously named company, “Card Member Services.”  In my search I found a very useful bit of information:  whenever I press the button to talk to someone to tell them that I think they work for a morally bankrupt operation, their computer algorithm thing thinks that I am a sucker and am actually interested in the “service” the company provides (AKA having them steal my money) and puts my number up towards the top of the calling list.  Then I get more calls!  I am my own worst enemy!  So this is what I learned: do not talk to a representative no matter how sassy you are feeling because, in the end, the joke is on you.

2.  I am not good at email.  This is something I have known for years.  In fact, for the past five years in a row my one and only New Years resolution has been to be better about email.  Every other year I have failed.  Considering it is now the 6th of the month (and year!) and I just checked my email for the first time, I am not feeling much more confident in my potential for success.  See here’s the thing:  my email is mostly junk.  I go in there and delete like a million things and then I have 4 or 5 actual emails that I want to respond to but by that point I’m so frustrated with the junk that I don’t respond to the actual emails.  The result of this is that emails go unanswered and then those people emailing me get frustrated and stop emailing, and then all I have is junk.  Just a bunch of stupid things from Yelp and Madewell and The Center for Food Safety.  So you know what I learned?  Unsubscribing is Life!  I just went on an unsubscribing-fest and it was AMAZING.  Goodbye Yelp! Goodbye Madewell! Goodbye Center for Food Safety!

3.  It’s really cold outside because of something to do with the arctic circle.  It’s so cold, in fact, that tomorrow we will supposedly experience a high of 13 degrees.  For those of you who are a little slow like me, that means that the warmest it will be tomorrow is 13 degrees.  That also means that at times it will be colder than 13 degrees.  Colder than 13 degrees.  I learned that tomorrow is going to be terrible but you know what is worse than tomorrow in Brooklyn?  Today in Minnesota.  The governor of Minnesota closed all the schools in the entire state due to cold weather for the first time since 1997.  So this lesson is two fold.  The first fold is that even though tomorrow is going to be insanely cold at least I can go outside without my face getting frostbitten within 2 minutes.  The second fold is that I never want to live in Minnesota.

4.  Last night I had a really hard time sleeping.  I felt sleepy when I got into bed but then I was wide awake.  I was just lying there, surrounded by cats, unable to move because despite the fact that each of my two cats only weighs 10 pounds they manage to take up all of the space.  I really believe that if I had a bed that was the size of the entire universe, my cats would still sleep in such a way that would leave me curled up uncomfortably in a ball.  Part of the reason I was having trouble sleeping was because I kept having itches. There was the itch on the bottom of my foot.  One under my left arm.  Another one in my hair.  I became convinced that I had bedbugs.  Then I thought, what if the ants escaped!  (They didn’t.)  Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I had the following thought: it would be terrible to be pregnant.  Not that for other people it is terrible.  For other people I think it is great!  I really do.  I love when my friends have kids.  But honestly, whenever one of my friends tells me they are pregnant (which is happening more and more often these days), after I am very happy and excited for them, I think to myself “better her than me.”  So here is the other thing I learned:  I probably should never have children.

5.  The other day I went to a bar to have a glass of wine and read my magazine before I went home, ate vegetarian chile and spent too much time watching shitty television.  There I was, minding my own business, reading about eating horses (???) when I caught the guy two chairs down staring at me.  I decided to pretend like I didn’t see him and went back to reading.  Unsuccessful.  The inevitable happened: he talked to me.

Guy:  Um, excuse me Miss?  I would like to buy you a drink.
Me: Oh, thank you but I actually think I am just going to have the one.  But if I change my mind you’ll be the first to know.
Guy:  (At this point I noticed some slight slurring)  Are you sure?  Because I was going to leave and then come back but only if I can buy you a drink.
Me:  No, I think I’m good.  I’m going to go home and eat dinner.
Guy, staring:  You have just the most beautiful hair.
Me:  Oh, thanks.
Guy:  It looks just like my mother’s.
Me: ……..

My philosophy, by the way, is to never accept a drink from someone at the bar because, aside from the fact that I am seeing someone,  you are then obligated to talk to them.  I mean, despite his obvious mommy-issues I am sure this guy was perfectly nice but no thank you.  Another thing that I learned: avoiding eye-contact with guys at bars is not always effective in combating off-putting pick-up lines.

So I guess that is it.  I guess those are the things that I learned so far in 2014.  Stay tuned because I am sure there will be equally interesting lessons to follow.  And now I will stop procrastinating writing this article that I am supposed to write by rambling on my blog and start procrastinating the article by making the Super Bowl pool thing for my job.  Okay, wait, here is another one.

6.  I love to procrastinate and I am really good at it.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

An Average Day.

17 Dec

WARNING:  I am just sort of typing.  Typing about my day.  Connecting it to past days.  This may or may not make any sense.  Whether or not it makes sense has nothing to do with the peach juice vodka thing I made.  No, but seriously.  I’m hardly even drinking it because it tastes bad.  Anyway, proceed with caution.

Hi guys.  So here I am.  Sitting at my desk drinking this weird concoction of vodka, peach “juice” (which is actually quite similar to baby food, a fact that makes me feel a little weird) and water.  Honestly, it’s not very good and I think I might dump it out.  I am having A Day.  You know the kind.  It’s one of those days where you like, reflect on your life and think about where you thought you would be at this point which is maybe living in some foreign land doing something great for humanity but instead your are sitting at a bright blue desk which is actually made out of an old door that you painted like 6 years ago, drinking vodka flavored baby food.  You’ve never had a day like that?  Even without the oddly viscous liquor?  Oh, okay then.  Carry on.

I, for one, am having one of those days.  I think it is due to the fact that I spent the better part of this sleety, snowy, cold Tuesday in front of my computer reading the 247 slides of a bar-required tips certification course.  It’s this thing where you learn how to not serve underage people and also how to cut people off.  Interestingly, a lot of the male “characters” depicted in the accompanying videos are a little bit rapey.  There is the rapey manager who tells the hostess that she “did the right thing” by informing him of a drunk couple seated in Sherry’s section and the rapey bartender who tells a drunken bar-goer who turns down the snack of cheese that he offered her because she thinks it is too fattening that she “probably doesn’t need to worry about that.” I don’t know.  Maybe you had to be there.  Or maybe the hours I spent reading about R. Kelly prior to the 247 slides impacted my thought processes.  Either way, it has been one of those days.

I decided to go to the gym, put my foot in my shoe, thought it was a dead roach but discovered it was instead an errant hair clip.  Crisis averted!  I have heard about people having dead roaches in their shoes and it is something I do not want to experience myself.  It makes me think of this one time, actually. So there was this one time where I was feeling really sick so I decided, in a moment of overwhelming logic, to go lay on the floor.  I think I thought that if I looked as pathetic as I felt then maybe I would start feeling better.  Anyway, as I lay there, left cheek resting on the cold wood, garbage can at the ready, I noticed this thing only inches from my nose.  What could it be?  It wasn’t moving.  It looked like maybe it had legs. But I couldn’t detect a head.  I called up to my boyfriend who was in the bed curious as to why I decided to lay on the floor, and in the most pathetic voice I could said,

“There is this thing here right by my face and I think it might be a huge dead roach.  Is it a roach?  Tell me it isn’t a roach.  I don’t think I could go on if I knew that I was lying inches from a dead roach.”

I sometimes get a little dramatic when I am feeling sick.

He came down, scooped it up and told me it was no such thing.  Maybe I should just get off the floor.  I did.  But the next day I looked in the garbage can and saw a decapitated roach halfway covered by a tissue.  I am so happy that he didn’t tell me while I was lying there because I think I actually might have died.

Anyway, my day.  As I was saying I decided to go to the gym.  I had started a text thread with my coworkers about the lack of diversity in our tips certification course and also all the rapey dudes.  The thread devolved into some sort of argument about Batman.  I know nothing about Batman.  I’m not girl who’s really into super heroes.  I got to the gym and ran on the treadmill for awhile and didn’t think about Batman once.  Or roaches.  The television in front of me was stuck on ESPN so I was trapped watching NFL highlights and imagining what my life would be like if I gave a shit about football.  I think it would be roughly the same only I would eat more nachos.  Come to think of it, that might just make it worthwhile.  I LOVE nachos.

Then I came home, took a shower, ate a giant bowl of taco salad and watched a few episodes of Weeds.  And now I am sitting here, writing the most pointless blog post ever and all the ice in my weird vodka flavored beverage situation has melted.  In case you were wondering, this dilution hasn’t made it taste any better.  Slightly less like baby food, though, so that’s good.

Tags: , , , , , ,

The Perils of Novelty Pet Ownership

4 Dec

I think maybe recently I have been overdoing it slightly on the bartending posts but, as I mentioned, when it rains it pours so we must prepare ourselves for the oncoming drought.  Today, however, I am not going to recount to you the ridiculousness of my job but instead I will talk about something even more pressing:  my ant farm.

When I was little I never had an ant farm.  I had a dog and a cat. I had hamsters, gerbils, mice, a guinea pig, Charlie, that I inherited from my friend Alisha when she and her mom moved to Utah.  Charlie was cool.  One summer while I was at camp my mom got sick of Charlie and donated him to the local nursery school where he was very popular.  I don’t recall being overly pleased about that particular turn of events.  My mom has always had this tendency of just like, donating things without asking.  One year she donated all of my Care Bears and Popples.  I LOVED my Popples.  When I was really little I would walk around downtown Maplewood holding between 5 and 10 Popples by their tails, a big puff of stuffed animals that could be turned inside-out to reveal their alter egos:  soccer balls!  Baseballs!  Balls of no distinguishing characteristics whatsoever!  Granted, when my mom got rid of my Care Bears and Popples they had been sitting in plastic cartons in the basement for the better part of two years but then one day I wanted them and they were gone.  Same thing happened to my dad’s electric fry pan that he used no more than two times a year to make fried matzoh.  Nevermind that you can make just as good fried matzoh in a regular, non-electric fry pan.  It’s the principle!  If you don’t nail it down, off to some fundraising sale or another it goes!  NOTHING IS SAFE! I bet if I still lived at home I would one day wake up to find myself with a $5 sticker on my forehead in the basement of St. Francis during it’s annual garage sale, my mom standing with some perspective buyer saying

“Yea, she’s in perfectly good condition but at this point she’s just taking up space.”

Anyway, back to the farm.  I never had a farm.  On top of the multitude of normal-kid pets, I had one of those see through frogs.  Remember those?  My see-through frog initially came as a tadpole with teeny tiny legs and I got to see him morph.  Then he just hung out at the bottom of the tank with his arms outstretched, looking dead.  One time in the middle of the night I thought he WAS dead and I had a total meltdown and ran into my parents room screaming.  He wasn’t dead but I think it made my parents concerned about the depth of my attachments to animals that were either stuffed or imitated being dead about 95% of the time.  Then they bought me sea monkeys.  I ordered them from the back of my older brother’s comic book and you know what I discovered?  They were not monkeys AT ALL.  They were microscopic specks (AKA brine shrimp) that you could only see using a magnifying glass and even then I was fairly convinced the company had just sent me a tank with some specks of dirt in it.  Even with all these ridiculous mail order pets I never had an ant farm.  That is, until about 3 weeks ago.

So there I was, out with a few friends, talking about this and that (and ant farms), when my friend Mike went on his Amazon Prime account from the bar and ordered not one but two ant farms.  Two days later I received the following text, with accompanying photographic evidence:

Mike: So…2 of these Ant Farms showed up at my apartment on Sunday! Do you still want one?
Me:  ANTFARMMMMM!!!!
Me: I’m so excited!
Me: Did you put your ants in???
Mike: It doesn’t come with the ants so I ordered them separately. Probably get them early next week.
Me: Why wouldn’t it come with ants?
Me: What good is an ant farm with no ants??
Me: Are you excited about the farm?!
Mike: I am, but I want the ants!
Me: Me too!!!
Me: Antzzzzzz!

For anyone wondering, this conversation is typical and is a reason why no one should ever give me their phone number. Ever.

Fast forward about a week and, you guessed it, arrival of the ants!  They came from Utah and they have no Queen because apparently it is illegal to ship the Queen into New York. Also, they bite.  Mike found out the hard way.  You have to transfer the ants from a tube into the farm and in the process one escaped, bit Mike and then, in all the surprise and hubbub, got smashed.  RIP ant.  Obviously, being afraid of death by tiny ant pincer, I made Mike transfer my ants into their new home which is not made up of sand like the days of yore, but is instead comprised of this weird blue goo that is like the trifecta of awesome: tunnel component, food, AND hydration.  Ant super food!  The first few days of ant ownership were blissful.  My ants were busy at work, tunneling away! Sometimes they made tunnels that brought them back up to the surface, sometimes they made tunnels that for some reason they didn’t like and abandoned, and sometimes they made tunnels that were secret passages to previously made tunnels.  Ants that perished along the way were deposited in the discarded pile of blue goo on the east side of the farm to where other ants occasionally came to pay their respects.  Then, one day, the ants stopped.  They had built all the tunnels they wanted to build.  They found the deepest most section of the tunnel and now many of them crouch there, in eager anticipation of the arrival of their Queen.  Only she will never come.  She is stuck in Utah.  The few ants that have come to understand this reality have now set upon excavating the rubber strip that secures the lid onto the farm.  This is both sad and alarming.  It would be terrible to be bitten by this now bitter and angry horde of ants.  Realistically, I don’t think they will manage to escape because the rubber strip is big and is affixed to extremely hard plastic, plastic that event insects capable of carrying 50 times their own weight cannot contend with.  So now I avoid looking at my ants because every time I do I feel like a horrible asshole.  So now the question remains:  do I free them into the wilds of Brooklyn where they will surely die, or do I leave them inside their prison where they will also surely die?  Sigh.

In conclusion, owning novelty pets as an adult is fraught with feelings of anxiety, guilt, and internal monologues about mortality and the meaning of life.  And to my ants:  I am sorry.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

When Life Gives You Lemons…

17 Oct

It has been a particularly warm fall here in New York City. So warm, in fact, that today, October 17th, I am sitting here at my desk wearing shorts and a tank top.  You might ask why I am not outside, traipsing around, enjoying the weather.  Well, for your information I already did that.  And I will do it again just as soon as I finish writing this blog.  Moving on.

This past Tuesday, after doing the important morning things (coffee, snacks, newspaper reading) I decided to go out in the world and have myself an adventure.  I wandered down fifth avenue and then I said to myself, “self, today is the perfect day to go admire some furniture you cannot afford.”  So I walked down 9th Street to Find, my favorite unaffordable furniture store, where I found the most beautiful mirror I have ever seen in my life.  So beautiful that I took photographs of it.  Photographs that I will not post here because if one of you sees it, loves it, and then goes and buys it I would be so jealous that I don’t think I would be able to be your friend anymore.  After ogling the mirror for some time, and then wondering to myself how much I could get the store owner to lower the price if I paid in cash, I went on my merry way down to Red Hook to visit Fairway for the first time since it reopened post-Sandy. I love Fairway.  Mostly, I love grocery stores and it is the biggest one with the most things (smoked salmon ends!  HUGE pickle bar!  All of the cheese!) so I love it the most.  On my way there, and just as I was approaching the Added-Value Community Farm, a pick-up truck made a right hand turn in front of me.  As they went into their turn, the passenger leaned out of the window and yelled

“You can walk all over me in those boots any day, baby!”

They subsequently sped off, leaving me alone, on the side of the road, wearing my boots, face as red as a lobster.  There I was having a perfectly wonderful Rebekah afternoon when some motherfuckers in a pick-up truck have to go and piss all over it.  I stormed the rest of the way to Fairway, thinking mean thoughts.

Upon arriving and seeing the vast array of vegetables, the anger started to melt away.  And then I saw them: papaya chunks!  I know that they are not endemic to New York and that some people think they taste like vomit, but I love them and they remind me of happier times.  So, I grabbed them, thought about the other things I wanted to buy and then realized I was in dire need of a basket.  I quickly stashed my papaya chunks on top of one of those wire coupon racks when I saw the most wonderful sight:  the assholes from the pick-up truck walked right by me into the store.  It was like a gift from above.

My mind started racing.  What should I do?  Should I say something?  Then my heart rate picked up.  I knew there was no way I would let myself leave that grocery store without giving them a piece of my mind.  I wandered around, plucking things off the shelves — salmon ends, some soy sauce, black licorice — trusting that whatever had delivered these upstanding individuals to me would insure that we crossed paths at an opportune moment.  And then, it happened. I went to check out and, wouldn’t you know it, they got in the line right next to me!  I was hoping that the timing would work out and that I would finish checking out first, head out the door, and then wait for them like a creeper outside to let them know what was what.  In the meantime, I figured I would give them the stink eye.  I have a really good stink eye.  But then the thing that always happens to me happened.  I picked the slowest checkout line ever and so, despite having gotten in line first and having fewer items, the two men headed out the door.  My only recourse was to burn holes in the backs of their heads with my eyes.  I felt defeated.  Saddened.

But then, I had a realization!  They have a car.  And a rolling cart which, after being unloaded, needs to be returned to its home.  My spirits immediately improved.  When I was done paying for my items I headed quickly out to the parking lot and, lo and behold, there was the maroon pick-up from some 45 minutes earlier.  I strode defiantly across the parking lot, eyes glued to the offending dude wearing those stupid reflective sunglasses that should only be warn by actors playing police officers on television.  He was wearing a wedding ring.  Of course.  When he looked at me and acknowledge my rapid approach I slowed down, smiled and said:

“Maybe next time you decide to yell your opinion on someone’s outfit out your car window, you will consider the fact that you might see her at the grocery store 10 minutes later.”

I stayed long enough to see the shock register on his face, turned on my heel, and walked in the direction of my house, huge grin plastered on my face.  It was the moment I have waited for.  I felt like a super hero.

—

Just as a little extra something to make you laugh, today when trying to send a text with the word “city” in it my phone inexplicably autocorrected it to “butt.”  I was really happy I caught that one.  Otherwise the text would have read:

“You leaving the butt now?”

I have been laughing for at least 10 minutes.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

After this Post I will Let Happy Overshadow Sad

10 Oct

For all time going forward, yesterday, October 9, 2013, will be known (in my mind at least) as the day I met one of my closest friend’s new son, Theo.  But for the purpose of this blog post, in this moment, and as a way for me to allow my head to move beyond a very disturbing event, yesterday was the day I saw a guy get hit by a bus.

Okay.  I didn’t actually see him get struck, luckily.  I was walking down Ditmas Avenue at about 5pm when I heard a loud noise.  I looked to my right and saw a bus, stopped somewhat crooked in its lane as if it were just pulling away from the curb or had just completed a turn, a slowly building crowd, and a lump on the ground.  It took me a second to realize that the lump was a man lying in a heap in front of the MTA bus, the B103 I think, that had just struck him. I called 911, hoping the person who answered my call would thank me and tell me the accident had already been reported.  Instead, she asked for my exact location – Flatbush, in between Ditmas and Newkirk – and told me to stay on the line, she was going to connect me to a different person.  I held for what seemed like an eternity, though it was probably closer to one minute, until another woman answered the phone and again asked me for my location.  I reported it and then she peppered me with questions:  Is he moving?  Can you see him breathing?  Is he awake?  Are his eyes open?

The accident had occurred close to Newkirk, and I was nearer Ditmas.  I was hoping to be able to report the incident from afar, never getting close enough to see the damage that a bus can cause a human being.  Unfortunately, I was out of luck.  I ran down the block towards the incident, looking for any sign of movement.  Initially I had thought I saw the man move, but I quickly realized that the movement I thought I saw was likely not made through his own power, but was instead the result of him being struck by a huge piece of machinery.  By the time I got close enough to see the growing blood stain on the concrete, there was no movement to detect.  He was facing away from me so I couldn’t tell whether or not his eyes were open.  Although he was lying on his left side, his face appeared to be almost entirely in contact with the asphalt.  I reported to the dispatcher what another bystander had told me:  he was not moving but he was alive.  I also told her about the state of the bus:  the windshield had a spiderweb-like crack that had spread to cover, in various densities, almost the entire expanse of glass.  She told me she had assigned a job number, that help was on the way.  She took my number and I said I would stay there as long as it took first responders to arrive.

As I waited, I did all I could to not look at the man lying in the road.  I have no medical background; calling for help was really the only thing I could do.  I surveyed the growing crowd.  There were people standing in front of their businesses, looking.  And then there were people standing around the man, not touching him, taking his photograph.  There were all these people with their cell phones out and yet I was the first person to call for help.

I remember learning about the Kitty Genovese case from from the 1960s which became the most commonly used example of the bystander effect.  The idea is that oftentimes people don’t call for help because they assume someone else has already done it.  The more people present, the more likely people believe it is that someone else has already stepped up.  I suppose I have the benefit of having learned about Kitty Genovese.  I have sat in classrooms and wondered to myself whether or not I would do something if I encountered someone in need of help.  And to be honest, there was a moment in my mind where, upon noticing the mounting crowd, I assumed someone else had already called 911.  I assumed they were already notified and that another call would simply be an annoyance.  But then I thought well, what if no one called? Could I live with myself if I left the scene and it turned out, although I likely would never know, that the man laid there for more time than necessary?  So I called and I’m glad I did.

I waited until the first fire truck arrived and I rushed off, trying to get out of there before they either lifted the man onto the stretcher or declared him dead.  I thought I had already seen enough and I was concerned about what the injured side of his body might reveal to me.  I was of no use at that point, and the last thing I wanted to be was yet another person standing there, watching, as a man experienced the worst moment of his life.  So I fled, eyes burning as I finally came to terms with what had just happened.

So that’s it. And now that the experience is out there in the world, I can remember yesterday as a happy day.  I can now stop searching for information regarding the fate of the man I saw and I can stop wondering why in the world anyone would want a photograph or video of someone lying on the street, possibly dead, after being struck by a bus.

Tags: , , , , ,

Sick Brain

3 Oct

So this past Monday I came down with a cold.  It started as exhaustion, turned into a massive earache, and ended with crazy sinus pressure and a stuffed nose.  This illness is not the result of a change in weather.  It is not due to the germs that have been running rampant through my bar and beyond for the past few weeks.  And it certainly has nothing to do with the fact that, even though I was aware of said germs and the crazy weather, I drank a little too much after working really hard at the Atlantic Antic.  No, it is not because of any of those things.  I blame my sickness entirely on the government shut down.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, I would like to talk to you all a little about the past few days.  The first thing I did on Tuesday upon waking up with a nose that was so full of snot that it felt like it weighed about 50 pounds was to make myself a big cup of coffee.  Obviously that is the smart thing to do.  So, I went into the kitchen, scooped out a ridiculous amount of ground coffee, and filled my pot up with the correct amount of water for the million cups of coffee that I planned on drinking.  I then pressed the button to turn it on and went to take a shower.  After the shower, I walked back into the kitchen to pour myself a cup when I noticed that my coffee was clear.  It was so clear that it looked just like water.  How could that be?  After a close and in depth investigation I realized that, due to the government shutdown, I neglected to pour the water into the coffee machine and therefore only succeeded in creating mildly warm water.  But the government doesn’t control me or my coffee intake so I quickly remedied the situation.  I then proceeded to drink All Of The Coffee and gave myself a stomach ache.  I blamed my stomach ache on the government shutdown

The rest of my week was spent trying to understand how in the world the government was shut down.  When I think about the jobs of our elected officials, and I think about writing a list of their responsibilities, the first thing I would write would be to keep the government running.  But hey, what do I know.

That last paragraph was actually inaccurate.  Well, not the whole thing.  I do think that if I were to write our lawmakers a list of responsibilities the number one item on the list would be to keep the government running, but I did not spend the rest of the week thinking about why the government shut down.  I spent the rest of the week intermittently feeling sorry for myself for being sick (while cursing my lady bits because obviously my period started in the middle of the cold — thanks, government) and watching episode after episode of The Good Wife because it is so good and I am literally obsessed with Dan Rydell.  Dan Rydell is not a real person, you say?  (By the way, for this I also blame the government shutdown.)  Well then, fine, I am obsessed with Josh Charles who played Dan Rydell in Sports Night and now plays Will Gardner in The Good Wife, who I also love because he is really just Dan Rydell pretending to be a lawyer.  I love Dan Rydell, I mean Will Gardner, I mean Josh Charles so much that I had the following text conversation with my friend Kendra just yesterday:

Me: I’ve been watching a marathon of The Good Wife for the last two days.
Kendra:  My mom is obsessed.
Me: You have to watch it. I’m in love with the guy who plays Will Gardner.  Literally obsessed.
Kendra:  He’s a hottie.
Me: Right? I almost cried when I saw he was recently married.  I thought I had a shot.
Kendra:  Ha.  You never know.  People get pushed in front of a bus every day 😉

And that is one of the many reasons why I love Kendra.  I do not blame Kendra for the government shut down.

Another thing that I have been doing during my self-prescribed quarantine has been to start making videotapes of myself hanging out with my kittys in the room.  My boyfriend tells me that I should make a YouTube channel and that probably my videos would go viral.  So I put one of my videos on YouTube last night and then subsequently lost it because I am terrible at the internet (which, surprise surprise, I blame on the government shut down even though my lack of internet abilities predated it).  But then I had this great idea!  I looked on my phone where I had tried to link the video for one of my friends to see, something I failed at because I had inadvertently made it private which mostly wasn’t inadvertent at all and was more an attempt to shield myself from embarrassment because in this video I sort of look like an alien.  So before you watch the video I need to make some things clear:  (a) I know that I look like an alien; (b) I am just as bad at technology as this video makes it appear; (c) If you watch this video and are like “Rebekah, what are you talking about you don’t look like an alien at all that is what you actually look like” then please don’t tell me because if you do I will either cry or respond with the following thing:  how the hell did you let me go through life looking like an alien without ever telling me?  That’s like letting someone go to a job interview with a huge herb in her front tooth because you are too embarrassed about the ensuing conversation to save her from embarrassment.  If I do, in fact, look like an alien in real life I am aware there is nothing I can do about it but it would be nice at least to know.  Then I would at least know why Dan Rydell chose to marry Sophie Flack instead of me.  Also I would have another thing to blame on the government shutdown.

Anyway, without further adieu, my video.

So, that’s it.  For a recap of my week thus far.

1. I have successfully made it through the entire first season of The Good Wife.

2. I have made three videos, only one of which I have managed to upload onto YouTube because I tried to create a channel but now I can’t find it so I made another channel and my video isn’t on that channel but I don’t know how to upload it to the correct channel using my phone.  None of this would ever have happened if it weren’t for the government shutdown.

3. I have blamed a few things not mentioned here on the government shut down but not nearly enough things so please excuse me while I get back to work.

4.  I have spent an awkward amount of time watching this government shut down-inspired PandaCam and feeling sad that I am not the person who thought of it and also not friends with the person (people?) who thought of it.  Thanks a lot, government shutdown.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

#ObservationOfTheDay

26 Sep

Recently I have been bad at the internet.  I have been really bad at email* but even more than that, I have been exceptionally bad at my blog.  I think maybe I have been having sort of a self-sabotage moment, something to which I am no stranger.  I had my best blog day ever last month which led to my best blog month ever, hits-wise anyway.  I was really excited! I was like, yea, things are maybe happening.  Maybe if I write a few more relevant blog posts some of those readers that read my one socially relevant post will visit back for another fix and be like, hey, this girl is funny.  Or smart.  Or annoying but I can’t seem to stop reading.  But then I pretty much didn’t write anything at all!  I totally missed the train.  Like, I saw the train coming, I heard it’s train whistle thing, it started to slow down and just at that moment I dropped a dollar on the ground and instead of being like, “whatever, fuck the dollar” I looked everywhere for it because I really needed that dollar and then the train sped off and who knows when the next one will arrive.  Or, wait!  This is a better comparison and maybe more realistic.  It’s sort of like when I train for a half marathon (or a marathon but, really, that hasn’t happened since like 2007).  So I train hard for the half marathon – but not as hard as I could because I am sort of runner-lazy and also unmotivated – and then the race comes and I do a good job!  And I am having so much fun!  And I am like, “yea, this is great, and if I train even harder I can really kill this distance.”  So for half of the race I am running I am day-dreaming about how much I want to run the next race even better.  And then the race ends and I go about my day.  And then the next day I decide to give myself the day off because my legs are sore.  And then the next day it’s the same thing.  And all of a sudden it’s 3 weeks later, I’ve run like 5 times and now I have to try and get back into shape again.  It’s like, there this is crescendo of excitement when you work towards something and then the music just dissipates and rather than building immediately to the next crescendo, because the musicians are all there in their chairs already so you might as well take advantage of them and besides, they’ve already been paid for the next two hours, you say “fuck it! Consider the extra money an early Christmas/Channuka/non-denominational holiday present!” It’s just stupid.  I mean, I’m sure the musicians appreciate it but that doesn’t even matter because I just made the musicians up.  In the real-life version of this story I am not actually helping anyone, only hurting myself so the story is a little more sad.

Anyway, moving on.  So despite the fact that I haven’t really been writing on my blog, I have been thinking about it.  I have come up with all sorts of fun things to write about.  Things that I think you might enjoy reading.  But I have also come up with this new thing that I am doing on Twitter which is what I was planning on writing about today when I sat down at the computer and before I got distracted talking about trains, running, and musicians.  This thing is called “#ObservationOfTheDay.”  Basically what I do is quite obvious.  Every day I make some sort of observation and then label it with my very own hashtag!  Pretty neat, right?  So on the first day of observing, I tweeted, “Twitter brings me more stress than joy and yet I know I will continue to use it.”  Why would I do this?  Well, I will tell you.

So when I had that one really big post where I got all the hits (most of them from Belgium) it was because of Twitter.  It was because I hashtagged something appropriately and somehow it found itself in the Twitter feed of a Flemmish-language web based newspaper and voila!  The entire population of northern Belgium (minor exaggeration here) was reading my blog!  I thought to myself “wow, this Twitter thing really does work!”  But then I realized that Twitter stresses me the hell out for some of the same reasons, in fact, that I am stressed out by email and regular mail.  It’s like, no matter what you do things are always being hurled at you.  Sort of like when we used to play dodgeball in gym class.  I hated dodegball.  Why would anyone want to go stand on a basketball court and have those big rubber balls thrown them?  It makes zero sense to me.  Anyway, I am constantly getting emails (major exaggeration here) and lots of credit card come-ons and clothing catalogues in the regular mail.  And people are always tweeting.  And when they tweet, they link to articles that look interesting so then after like 10 minutes on Twitter I have like, 25 tabs open with articles I want to read.  I always want to read all of the things.  It’s very stressful.  As a result, I don’t go on Twitter all that often which means that my presence on Twitter, as a tweeter, goes largely unnoticed.  That is a problem because, as I mentioned earlier, Twitter is useful for my blog but only if I have followers or I write about something culturally relevant.  I basically have no followers and I often write about nothing of consequence (this blog post being a perfect example of that) and so therefore my blog just sort of disappears into the world of interwebbery without making too much of a splash.  And so, in an effort to try and fix that, I have decided that I will tweet at least once every day.  (Hooray for structure!)  And thus was born #ObservationOfTheDay.

So yesterday my observation was,

“Dudes look silly in skinny jeans. Therefore, they (the jeans, not the dudes) should be thrown in a pit and burned.”

And then something great happened!  On only my second day of observing, I got a response!  (Granted, it was from one of my few followers who also happens to be a friend of mine from high school with whom I occasionally have amusing twitter-sations, but still!) He responded with the following hilarious bit of information:

“I know a guy who had a serious finger tendon injury from trying to remove his own skinny jeans.”

So I know that finger tendon injuries are no laughing matter (my brother had one from playing dodgeball – see what I did there? Full circle, bitches – and he had to wear a homemade finger-splint for months!), but seriously?  That is hilarious.  And I mean, I don’t want to say that he deserved the finger tendon injury but like, if you injure your finger taking off your skinny jeans then I am left to wonder how in the world you got them on in the first place.  And also, what technique this individual uses to remove said skinny jeans.  As a result of finding out this information, I became immediately happy that I had started my daily observations and had observed this one specific thing, but also sad that I have gotten this far in my life without knowing that someone experienced a serious finger tendon injury from removing his pants.  Better late than never, I suppose.

Anyway, observing is fun!  You should try it!  Also, you can read my daily observations @franklyrebekah.  Today my observation involves rice pudding.

*This is nothing new.  I am often bad at email.

Tags: , , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →