New Orleans Diary: Week Eleven

13 Feb

Goal: To write a weekly blog post about the nonsense that I notice as I go about my life here in the Crescent City. I have decided to move my weekly posting to Monday since I work all weekend. So in case you were wondering, I post on Mondays now.

A New Word: This past Tuesday there were tornadic activities! And through these activities I discovered that tornadic is, in fact, a word (although one that is not identified as such by my WordPress spell checker since every time I type it out I get one of those bright red squiggly “you spelled this wrong” lines underneath it). Who knows, maybe with the environment being all fucked up there will be more tornadic actitivities and it will become the American Dialect Society Word of the Year (WotY) for the United States. Let us take a trip down memory lane and explore some past WotY’s, shall we? (Oh my god I am looking down the list and it is hard to just choose a few because they are ALL SO STUPID and also oftentimes not just words but phrases. I will try though. And I will include some phrases.)

1991: “mother of all” (as in Saddam Hussein’s “mother of all battles”)
1992: “not!” (meaning just kidding) <—- this is not a joke
2006: “plutoed” (demoted or devalued, as in what happened to the former planet Pluto) Although I think Pluto might be a planet again? Or maybe it was a planet again and then it got redemoted to dwarf planet. It’s really hard to keep track.
2013: because introducing a noun, adjective, or other part of speech (e.g., “because reasons,” “because awesome”) <—- This is really dumb.
2016: dumpster fire (an exceedingly disastrous or chaotic situation)

Apparently in 2012 the WotY was almost YOLO which would have made me spit my coffee angrily all over the kitchen because never has a stupider thing existed. YOLO. So dumb. Drake and I are in a serious fight about that one.

Since I am down this particular rabbit hole, did you folks know that in 2009 PETA attempted to rebrand fish as sea kittens? I didn’t. Clearly that effort failed. But! I can add it to my list of reasons as to why PETA sucks. Also, the American Dialect Society decided that the 2015 “most outrageous” word was “fuckboy” or, alternatively, “fuckboi.” I would like to respectfully disagree with this categorization, especially as seeing it is in the company of other words/phrases such as 2010’s “gate-rape” which is a pejorative term referring to the invasive airport pat-down procedure and 2014’s “second amendment” as a verb. I’m sorry but anyone who uses the word “rape” pejoratively needs to have a conversation with me and also I wish people would stop verbing things all the time (see what I did there?). Alternatively, I find the term fuckboy(i) to be incredibly useful and I would ordinarily trade it with the actual WotY for 2015 except that the word for that year is, amazingly, a good one:

2015: Singular they (as a gender-neutral pronoun, especially for non-binary gender identities)

Good on ya, American Dialect Society.

Just one more thing though before I move on. I decided to double-check my spelling of tornadic just to make sure that the red squiggly lines were in fact due to WordPress not recognizing the word and not me being unable to spell it. While I was doing my research I discovered the Urban Dictionary definition of tornadic. It is as follows:

when your titties start bouncing so hard in a tornado circular motion you are jet propelled off of the ground, often landing in unfamiliar areas.

You’re welcome.

Speaking of the Weather: There were actually tornadoes here (thanks to all those who checked in!). It was weird. Here’s the thing: in the northeast we don’t really have weather events, by and large, which is one of the big appeals of living there if you ask me. There is an occasional super storm or frankenstorm or snow-pocalypse or arctic freeze (is that what they called it or is that some sort of delicious frozen beverage from DQ?) but for the most part we never get the real deals. Not many hurricanes, very infrequent tornados, the blizzards can be intense but not like how they are in the midwest, no creeping lakes of ice that appear at your back door. So getting alerts on my phone that said

Tornado warning in effect. Do not go outside. Take cover.

was alarming to say the least. And you better believe I took cover. I do not fuck around with weather events, especially ones I know fuck all about. Luckily for me and my friends we were all safe in the end but it was really scary. A lot of people in the area lost their homes and businesses, had properties that experienced severe damage or sustained injuries. It’s really fucking awful and my heart goes out to all of the people impacted. Orleans and Livingston Parish were both seriously effected by the storm which was categorized as an EF-3 tornado. For those of us not all that familiar with tornadoes (such as myself), let me fill you in on some information that I gathered.

  1. The EF scale is short for the Enhanced Fujita Scale and it is used to rate the intensity of a tornado based off the damage they cause. As an EF-3, this was the strongest tornado recorded since record keeping began in 1950.
  2. The winds from an EF3 tornado reach between 136 and 165 miles per hour. Wow, that’s fast. The strongest tornado, rated as an EF-5, have 3 second wind gusts reaching over 200 miles per hour. Jesus fucking Christ. Stay away from us please EF-5 tornadoes!
  3. Even though tornadoes happen in different countries around the world, they are most devastating here in the United States and specifically in Tornado Alley which includes Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi and, you guessed, good old Louisiana. This area is impacted due to the effects on the atmosphere of the Rocky Mountains to the west and the Gulf of Mexico to the south. Basically, and I don’t actually understand this fully so I am going to quote from this tornado guy from the University of Oklahoma, “a strong westerly jet stream across the Alley creates instability and a trough of low pressure that draws in warm, moist air from the Gulf. Conditions for the supercells [large, powerful thunderstorms] that spawn tornadoes require strong vertical wind shear [changes in wind speed and direction with height] and lots of instability — as happens in Tornado Alley.

I did some more research and it all basically led me to the following conclusion: tornadoes are scary as fuck. And they usually don’t come until the spring! But we got one this past Tuesday, February 7th which is decidedly not the spring time and supports the fact that global warming is actually a thing and the weather is going all bonkers now. Did you hear that SCROTUS? Scott Pruitt? Are you assholes listening? Watching the weather channel? Visiting Tornado Alley? Anything at all?!

White Dudes Gonna White Dude: (I cannot take credit for that statement. It came from my friend Beth but I pretty much use it all the time now.) As it turns out, stupid, young white dudes are the same everywhere. When I was in Brooklyn I worked with this kid who drove me bananas because (a) he sucked at his job but still thought he should make all the money and be promoted; (b) he was insanely lazy and spent more time on the phone, smoking and bullshitting with people than actually doing what needed to be done; and (c) he would not take instruction from women, under any circumstances, ever. One time I yelled at him for disappearing for over and hour and he asked me if I was on my period. Because, you know, that’s relevant, his business and not sexist at all. I was so pleased when I stopped working there and never had to deal with his stupid face ever again. Until now. Because I have a new coworker who is basically exactly the same. Lazy, know-it-all, loves to benefit from a tip pool because he can make half the money and do less than half the work, and he will not take instruction from women, under any circumstances, ever. So, in conclusion, this particular brand of white dudes are the same in Brooklyn and New Orleans. Raise your hand if you’re surprised. What, no hands? Shocking.

Actually Not Done with the Tornado: While I was watching the weather channel, one of the things that the meteorologists kept talking about was how the weather was going to effect those living in FEMA trailers. Where they have been living since Hurricane Katrina. Which happened in the year 2005. This summer will be 12 years since the storm and some people are still living in FEMA trailers. This is something I already was aware of but the thing that is shocking to me here is that it was just mentioned so nonchalantly on The Weather Channel. That particular population is obviously a serious concern when it comes to such powerful storms because there is nothing really keeping those trailers on the ground except their sheer weight. And as I learned through my research, when a serious storm touches down nothing above ground is safe.

Nothing above ground is safe.

I don’t really have the space in this post to go through how incredibly fucked up it is that in this country we have people living for over a decade in disaster-relief housing. You would think that there would be room in the national budge to help these Americans, these people, who have been treated as subhuman for the past going on 12 years, after they were entirely overlooked in the time leading up to, during and directly after Katrina hit. It’s really sickening. But yeah, sure, keep the Muslims out. Build a goddamn wall. Make abortion illegal. Make America White Again.

Oh, and also, FEMA is pledging aid following the most recent tornadoes. That is until SCROTUS further defunds it. Kaaaaaay.

Conclusion: This was an intense one. I learned a lot about words of the year and tornadoes and I got mad about white dudes and the fact that our country doesn’t give a fuck that people have been living in FEMA trailers for over a decade. Maybe next week I will return to plastic bags and nutria rats. Either way let me say this: there are a lot of ways in which this world impresses and amazes me, and a lot of ways in which this world, the one we all inhabit day in and day out, makes me absolutely sick. That the earth is capable of creating such intense weather events seemingly out of nothing is scary but incredible. And that we are able to forget the suffering of others and decide, through either our action or inaction, which people are valuable and which are not, is really disheartening. But here we are, folks. Living in this world for better or for worse.

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New Orleans Diary: Week Ten

4 Feb

Goal: The original goal was to write about my New Orleans-specific observations. As the weeks have gone on, however, this whole thing has sort of morphed (some might say devolved) into a documentation of my misadventures. So there are less posts about plastic bags and bad drivers and way more posts about nutria rats. I don’t know whether that is better or worse. You tell me.

My Ears are Fucked: That mostly sums it up. I have been having some ear problems for awhile now whereby every time I wash my hair my left ear gets all clogged up with water and I can’t really hear all that well for a few hours. Well, in the past few weeks it has gotten way worse. Initially I decided to take matters into my own hands and try to sort the problem out myself. (Note: This is never wise.) This involved putting a whole load of drops into my ears in hopes that they would just magically become unclogged. Much to my surprise, dismay and searing pain, this did not help solve the problem but instead made it worse. I went to the Urgent Care Clinic to try and see what was what. The verdict? Double ear infection. (Way less awesome than that double rainbow video.) The doctor took one look in my ear and was like

Woah.

When the doctor says “woah” you know you’re in trouble. So anyway now I am on some medication and I have to go back into the Urgent Care to get my ears flushed out. I am very concerned about what all is going to come out of there and so, depending on the outcome and how disgusted I am by the capabilities of my own body, I either will or will not fill you in.

Nutria: So in related somewhat related news (and you’ll see why soon) there was a nutria rat in my backyard. Please refer back to last week’s post about nutria or else look at the picture that I posted in here for your viewing (dis)pleasure. Or you can do you very own internet research! It’s fun. And also horrifying.

nutria2_502672_7

Gross, right? Anyway, a couple of nights ago I was eating popcorn in the backyard and I got popcorn everywhere. It looked as though I had a popcorn fight with myself but I think maybe I was just having some issues with hand-mouth coordination. I blame my ear infection. I just figured, whatever, it’s the out-of-doors, I will just leave the popcorn there and let nature take its course! When I said that I thought that perhaps the wind would blow it away but no. Instead, a giant, disgusting, orange-toothed nutria waltzed through a hole in my fence, into my yard, and ate up all the popcorn with its gross little mouth. Then it turned around and left. Now there are nutria germs all over my backyard. So then I thought to myself,

Self, what else would the nutria eat? Would the nutria eat one one of these ginormous amoxicillin tablets I have to take to clear up this double ear infection? Would the nutria eat that giant waterbug that was tormenting me a few weeks back? Or, if given the chance, would the nutria eat me?!

This sort of devolved into an imagination game I like to call Rebekah vs. Nutria. It’s a fun game. I highly recommend.

The Mysterious Appearance of the Magnet: I think someone broke into my apartment! Okay so here’s what happened. I was covering a shift at Mimi’s on a Sunday. Eric was visiting and he spent the entire day, as he loves to do, mopping the floors. He says he doesn’t like to mop but he does. He came to meet me at work at like 3ish, I got off at 5, and then we had a drink and walked back to the apartment. We probably got back there around 6pm. Upon entering we immediately went into the kitchen so I could open and close the refrigerator like 6 times in hopes that something delicious would magically appear inside there. (It never does but I remain hopeful.) As I went to open the fridge I noticed this kind of weird, kind of cute, little cat-sheep hybrid magnet thing stuck to the door. It was fuzzy and stuck out a good 1.5 inches off the front of the fridge. This is not something I would miss. Because let’s be honest folks, if there is anything that I know for certain, it is what the door of my fridge looks like. I looked at Eric with excitement.

NEW MAGNET YAY!

He was confused. It turns out he didn’t buy the magnet (shocker). It had just…appeared there. Randomly. While we were gone. So there are two competing theories here:

Theory 1: Spirit action. Which makes me laugh because I have this image in my head of this funny little magnet sort of like floating and bopping through the air before landing on the door to the fridge sort of like what happens in cheesy ghost movies. I know this isn’t how it happens with spirits IRL but I’m all about the giggle.

Theory 2: Some previous tenant, or a vengeful ex of some previous tenant, entered the apartment using their key that still works and left the magnet on the fridge as a way of saying

I’m here. And I am watching.

Or alternatively

Hai girl haaaiiii.

So I don’t know. Obviously since we watch too much crime shows we bagged the magnet (because finger prints!) and put it somewhere for safe keeping that I now think of as the Evidence Cabinet. I am hoping there will be no more updates to this story.

CheeWees: Those of you who know me well know about my love of cheese balls, cheese puffs and cheese doodles. I always invite cheese balls to my birthday party and when I get stressed out about life the only solution is to eat cheese balls or throw them at things. Here in New Orleans they have a delicious local version of cheese doodles called Chee Wees and obviously I love them and want to eat them all the time for every meal until I turn orange and die. And then you guys, I had an epiphany. Maybe our current presi…presi…..president (sorry I couldn’t stop dry heaving every time I typed that) also has an affinity for cheeseballs. So then I asked the following questions:

Does Donald Tr*mp also love cheeseballs? Does he also eat them when things go wrong but also sometimes when things go right? Does he invite them to his birthday party in place of actual friends? (For the record I invite friends and cheeseballs. And cheeseballs for my friends. Everyone eats them. It’s what the kids call a community building exercise.) Do Donald Tr*mp and I actually have something in common?!

…………..

I had to lie down for a minute. But I’m back. While I was lying down, though, I did some serious soul searching. Not to make light of this situation but SCROTUS has taken quite a bit from us since he entered the White House. But I will not allow him to take away my love of cheese balls, or cheewees, or whatever. So whatever. I still love them and I will continue to eat them and SCROTUS be damned. No, but really. Be damned. You’re a fucking scourge.

But also, would nutria eat cheewees? And even better, would the nutria eat Donald Tr*mp?!

Conclusion: In conclusion it has been an eventful week full of spirits or people or animals breaking into my house and my backyard. Also, ear infections. Two of them. But I’m on the mend, folks! Stay tuned for next week’s post. Same bat time, same bat station.

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An Open Letter to the Women in My Life

31 Jan

Dear Women in my Life,

Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You are my sanity and my strength. You are why I get up in the morning. No, you are how I get up in the morning. You are my sounding board and my support; you are my protection and my reinforcement; you are in my corner pretty much always and when you aren’t, and for good reason at times, you explain why in the most compassionate ways to make me understand my mistake, but to still ensure I never feel abandoned. With all of you, I am never alone.

These past few months have been tough, for all of us. Every single time I open my eyes it feels like a brand new affront, a brand new injustice, another way our government is being taken from us, used against us; its intentions hidden under layers of lies, or alternate facts, or fake news, or whatever the fuck they are calling it today. And for a moment I feel like it is too much, like it is me against everything, like I am living in this world where up is down and injustice is being legislated and a plagiarist is running the Department of Education. (Because, actually, that is the world we are living in excuse me while I scream.) But then I remember the women I am lucky enough to call friends and family and I breath a sigh of relief knowing that you are all there, that we are all going through this, and that we will somehow get through it with the love and support of one another.

So let me say this again: thank you. Thank you for your support, for your ears, for your understanding, for your analysis, for your dismay and anger and sadness and disbelief about all that is happening around us. I feel that too. And I hope that I have been able to provide even a small percentage of all that you have provided me. Because here’s the deal, ladies, we have a long haul. And women do a lot of emotional labor.

A lot of emotional labor.

A fucking lot.

And that emotional labor is unpaid and, more often than not, expected but underappreciated. And so let me say that I appreciate that emotional labor, that work, that we are all doing for one another. I notice it and I would not be able to live without it. But let us all remember that in the midst of all of this work, and all of this struggle, and all of this pain and disbelief and heartache, to take care of ourselves. Let us not forget to ask for the support of those around us. There is nothing shameful in it. Believe me there is more than enough emotional work to go around. And it is okay, too, to take a step back and say

Hey, this is all too much, I need a minute.

Take that minute. You deserve it. We all deserve it and more than that, we all require it. I had a conversation with a few of my core women today about the importance of self care and the importance of remembering that we cannot put in the work, we cannot be the best us in these horrible times, if we don’t take care of ourselves, and of one another. If we don’t ask for an ear or extra support and love on an especially tough day. If we don’t say,

Hey, friends, I need you to just check in on me today. Today the hurt is too much.

Because sometimes it just is. Our strength comes from our ability to admit when it is all just too much to handle alone. That’s when the rest of us can come in and be reinforcements, that’s when the rest of us can give you what you need – be that an ear or a drink or a joke or the biggest most heartfelt hug we can muster or some shared tears.

So again, thank you. For everything you have done and for everything you will do going forward. Because as I said before, there is a lot to be done, a lot to be endured, and we will need one another more than ever. And let me also say this: I am here for you as best as I know how. And every day I try to be a little more here, a little more supportive. I am trying to be the friend you all have been to me. I am trying to recreate for you the support that you provide that I could not live without. And I am trying to remember to say thank you, and to say it louder and more often.

And so thank you from the bottom of my heart and the depths of my soul and the recesses of my brain. Thank you. I survived these past few weeks because of you and I will continue to learn and to fight and to be part of this amazing team of women for the next 4 years (chaos butterfly help us) and then beyond.

I love you. For all you are and all you do.

Forever grateful
And with open arms ready to give a giant hug,
Or a tissue to dry a tear,
Or some pointed words directed at the asshole that made you feel shitty,
Your friend,
Your Support,
Your Cheerleader,

Rebekah

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New Orleans Diary: Weeks Eight and Nine

27 Jan

Goal: To write a weekly post documenting my time here in the Crescent City. I didn’t post last week because it was the inauguration AKA the end of the Free World and I thought that my self-indulgent posting was inappropriate and no one would read it anyways. Also I was probably crying. If you want to know all about me crying, you can read my post about that here. Otherwise, here we go. Combined Weeks 8 and 9 start NOW.

Safety: I have been receiving very different reports on the safety levels in this city depending on who I ask. For example, at work the other day there were a whole bunch of sirens and police cars racing all over the place and my coworker goes

Someone done got themselves shot. Happens all the time.

So I thought to myself,

Okay, not safe.

And then a few minutes later I said something about being nervous walking alone at night and the exact same coworker says

Nah, you’ll be fine. Ain’t nothing to worry about.

So then I thought,

Okay maybe safe?

So you can see my confusion, right? My manager told me it would be better to take a cab home when I work the night shift (not safe), but a different co-worker told me not to bother, I would be totally fine walking (safe). Of course at the same time my friend Katie was in town visiting and we took a Lyft home and the driver was a woman and she had a baseball bat in the front seat for protection. So I was like,

Oh, okay, totally not safe.

But then I was on the phone with my brother telling him about the lady with the baseball bat and explaining this whole safe vs. not safe conundrum and he told me how he was one time walking through NYC and there was some sort of an altercation and one dude went to his car, opened the trunk, and pulled out a baseball bat at which time the other guy went to his trunk and pulled out a baseball bat. The two guys menaced each other for a little while and then, realizing that they were matched equally, they put their bats away and continued going where ever they were going. So maybe bats are actually a thing that everyone should have in their cars as a baseline, sort of like ice chippers in the north. Because goddess forbid you end up in a bat altercation without a bat. I am a firm believer in the deterrent power of mutually assured destruction so I think maybe this afternoon I will head over to Modell’s and buy myself a Slugger.

Anyway, the jury is still out on the safety thing. Maybe some people can weigh in. But in the mean time, I am just using the strength of my gut, honed over years of navigating this world as a female. #blessed *

Fireball: My friend Rob (Hi Rob!) was training me behind the bar at the fantastic spot he works at yesterday and I learned a new thing: people like their Fireball cold here. We always kept our Fireball out of the fridge in Brooklyn. Sometimes I would chill it for people when they did shots, and sometimes I would put it over ice, but a lot of times people just wanted a regular room temperature shot. But not here! It is kept in the fridge along with the Jager and Rumplemintz, if you are in the unfortunate situation of even having Rumplemintz. One thing that is the same: every bar at some point ends up with a bottle of Rumplemintz that likely gets thrown in for free by the poor liquor rep who is tasked with the Rumplemintz account. That bottle then sits there for fucking ever because no one drinks that shit. Eventually the bar either just dumps it to make space for something else gross but at least marketable (ie Jager) or turns it into some sort of special wherein shots cost $1. Then when that doesn’t work they throw it into some sort of a mixed drink that is nasty and no one orders it so you just end up giving it away for free AKA dumping it down the drain.

So in summation: Fireball is kept warm in Brooklyn and cold here in New Orleans. Rumplemintz is pretty much reviled the country over.

Nutria Rats: I learned about nutria rats the other day. Um….these things are fucking huge and they have these massive teeth that basically look like when you take baby carrots and shove them under your upper lip and pretend to be a walrus only in the case of nutria rats they aren’t baby carrots they are actual teeth. Actual huge, orange teeth. Google them. Seriously. Tell me they don’t look like baby carrot teeth.

But seriously, nutria rats. They have been described as a cross between a beaver (hence the teeth) and New York sewer rats (hence the disgusting) and they are a real problem! So admittedly I didn’t do all that much research on them because they make me sort of queasy, but I will tell you what I learned. Nutria rats came here in the 1930s when some asshole named E. A. McIlhenny brought 13 of them to Avery Island for their pelts. Then there was a hurricane, as there are here, and some of them escaped and since they have no natural predators they just had baby after disgusting orange-toothed baby. (Think possums in New Zealand. Although I think New Zealand also might have nutria rats. Poor New Zealand.) The extra big problem is that they love to munch away on the plants that are indigenous to swamp lands, the very same plants that help protect from coastal erosion. So guess what happens when nutria rats run-a-muck and eat all the plants that stop coastal erosion? You guessed it: the coast erodes! So now there are like 5 million of them living on Louisiana’s southern coast and it has been estimated that they are contributing to a rate of soil erosion pegged at 40 square miles per year. Wow! That’s a lot of miles! And a lot of squares!

So what is to be done? Some people are trying to put nutria on menus, but the thing is a lot of people aren’t super keen on eating swamp rats. I get it. I wouldn’t want to eat any rats, swamp or otherwise. And not just because I don’t eat meat but because, ew, I have seen what rats eat, I lived in New York for 12 years. Rats will eat other rats if given the chance. Or they will eat your face. Nope, no thank you. The other approach has been to try and sell their fur, which was the original reason for them being brought over here anyways so it is sort of like making the whole thing go full circle. I mean, they have to kill the things anyway to protect the marshland, so might as well sell their skins I guess? I don’t know. And you guys, you will never believe where these furs have become popular. In the center of hipsterdom itself: Brooklyn. I wonder whether I could make a living selling their teeth as necklaces and shit. There has to be a market for that, right? Weird orange carrot teeth rings? Etsy, here I come!

Job: I got a job. I have to wear suspenders and a tie which makes me feel sort of dopey. Also, I had to buy some black pants but I didn’t want to have them hemmed so I bought pants for tall people that are I think supposed to be capris but since I’m not all that tall they hit just above my feet. So they’re sort of short, especially when they are constantly being hiked up by the suspenders. The result of which is that I look even dopier than I would have otherwise. Sigh. I can, however, make a damn good Sazerac now if I do say so myself. And I do. If you’re into that sort of thing. I refuse, however, to employ any sort of “flair” into my bartending. I shake with a normal shake, I stir with a normal stir, I don’t light things on fire and I do not throw things into the air unless someone scares me or I trip or something. I am committed to this position.

Politics: It is like a minefield. A minefield, I tell ya! I spend a lot of my time getting all outraged about the state of the world by visiting The Internet and my only real expression of this is through talking on the phone, mostly with my Mom, and sending outraged text messages to my friends, specifically a few of them (love you gals). Most of you readers know me personally and know that I am rather outspoken on issues of equality and justice and opportunity and all that. So you might be surprised to know that here I more or less keep my mouth shut. The result of this is that I cry more because I am so frustrated and also there is the constant repetition of

FUUUUUUUUUUUCK

running through my head at basically every single moment. This is made especially annoying by the fact that my ears are clogged and so I am living in a weird world where everything is muffled except for my own voice which is REALLY LOUD. So if I return home 75% less sane than when I left, you all will know why. It’s basically FUUUUUUCK and my loud, screaming voice all the time. Help.

Conclusion: I have to go because I am taking up a table at a cafe and it is getting a little rude at this point. I don’t want to be rude. So I have to cut this post short. Hope you enjoyed! Stay tuned! Xx

*That hashtag was sarcastic.

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How I’m Dealing

26 Jan

This has been a really rough few days, friends. Hellish, I would venture to say. And I am going to be completely and totally honest with you, as I normally am, and tell you how I have been handling it. Not well. Not well at all. Here’s a recap:

Thursday: Trained at a new job from 9am to 4:30pm. I tried to gage where all my coworkers stood on the issues by asking them some questions that I will not divulge here because I am actually afraid that some agents for the government might arrive at my door and whisk me away under the cover of night. That’s where we live now, folks. After work I headed off to a bar that my friend works at and had a few very necessary drinks in preparation for the end of the free world.

Friday: Trained again at the job. This time for 12 glorious hours. The benefit was that this allowed me to entirely miss all the fracas surrounding the inauguration of Tr*mp or, as my friend Ben suggested we call him, SCROTUS. My friends Emily and James came into town so that was great, but there was still just a very heavy gloom that hung over everything. When I got home that night I turned on The Internet, read a few things and cried myself to sleep.

Saturday: Women’s March day. I went to the march with Emily, James and Emma. I wore my “unpresidented” shirt (thanks Beth!) and we all carried signs. I would like to acknowledge here that there were some problems with the marches in general (underrepresentation of POC being high on that list and something I will get into in another post because it is way too important to be just a talking point in an overview) but overall it was nice for me to be in the company of friends and surrounded by a bunch of badass women and men who disagreed with the inauguration of SCROTUS and were just as apprehensive of what the future would likely hold. This was especially important for me seeing as how I just moved to a new city and lack the sort of support system I had in New York. Also, the South is different.

Sunday: Had to be at work to train at 8am.  At a restaurant. I know, I know. But the people must have brunch, after all. It was a really hard day. I hadn’t slept enough, but I had certainly read a lot about what all has been going on. I had the time to have conversations with a lot of good friends who feel similarly to me and it was all just crashing down. The reality of it all. Like a giant, horrible wave teeming with dead sea creatures who could no longer survive in the increasing temperature of the oceans. The shift was awful. Not because of my coworkers or the managers, who are all lovely, but because everyone is politically charged these days, and down here a lot of people voted for Tr*mp. It isn’t like in New York where those people are few and far between. They are everywhere here. Especially when you work in a restaurant that is in a highly touristed area and has a lot of domestic tourists from cities and towns that are significantly less progressive than New Orleans. There were some things said. Like the young white women who insisted that women (read: them and the white women they know) already have equal rights and what the fuck were all those idiots marching for. (I summarized.) I had to keep my mouth shut. It felt like my soul was just melting. Luckily Emily and James were still in town so I was able to run to them after work and decompress. I also called my dad and started crying on Canal Street amongst all the normal New Orleans revelers. No big deal.

Monday: I woke up crying and basically didn’t stop all day. I tried to quit my job because I felt like everything was horrible and I wanted to just hide in my house forever. My managers would’t let me quit, though. Apparently I’m okay at my job. Who knew. But in the process of trying to quit I entirely lost my shit in front of not one but TWO managers at work and, if my estimates are correct, about a third of my coworkers and now I feel sort of like a crazy person. Lots of tears, lots of eyeliner running down my face. Great first impression, Rebekah. Luckily my friend Carie is awesome and I called her and we spent the day doing fun things interspersed with me crying. By the end of the day it dawned on me: there was a good chance that, for the next four years, whenever I wasn’t otherwise occupied (or even sometimes even when I was) I would likely be crying. That seemed to me rather unsustainable.

Tuesday: Woke up still feeling like everything was totally fucked. Kept reading The Internet and panicking (but at least I wasn’t crying?). Carie and I ran some errands which helped to take my mind of our impending collective doom. I was supposed to go to running group but didn’t because I am pretty sure I had cried out the entire salt content of my body and was exhausted. I went to bed early.

So, I mean, needless to say if you are wondering how I have been handling all this the answer is, as I said before, not well. I have sat down to write about 5 different blogs in the past few days and nothing comes out how I want it to. I think that is partially because I am so overwhelmed with the onslaught of information and, honestly, an intense feeling of loss. It is like I am in mourning. And, you know what, I am. I am in mourning for the world I thought that I lived in now that I live in one that operates under a completely different set of rules, if we can even call them that. Here’s what I realized (with a lot of help from friends) and how I am going to operate going forward.

I cannot longer assume that I live in the same reality that I always have. Our government operates largely through precedent and the moral foundation of those who work within it. Regardless of whether we agree with the politics and whether we feel the person him or herself is of good moral character, there was a general area in which people operated, and that area was largely predictable and normalized. We might not agree with it, we might find the actions themselves morally bankrupt, but there was still, for lack of a better phrase, a general code of conduct within which people operated.

That is no longer the case. The code is gone.

We have been shown, throughout the campaign itself and now during these first few terrifying days, that Donald J. Tr*mp does not abide by any code outside of whatever one is guiding him in that particular moment. And for those of us, myself included, who believed that there was something codified in law that required a certain level of behavior, there is not. So all those times we scream

But how can he do this? Can he really do this?

The answer, it seems, is that he can. The rules of the game have changed. He can remove information from government websites regarding climate change and LGBTQ issues as if they no longer even exist. He can demand that the National Park Services stop tweeting from their official handles, but he cannot stop them from making a new one that is not associated with the government, and he cannot stop the 1.8 million followers and counting from supporting that action. He can appoint cabinet members with little to no relevant experience and they can somehow get questioned and confirmed regardless of the fact that many of them have not yet passed ethics screenings. He can become President of the United States of America without releasing his tax documents and he can repeatedly say that the only people who care about that information are reporters, which is patently untrue. I am not a reporter and I would like access to those documents. He can shut down the media and send us all into a tizzy with these fucking “alternative facts” which makes us doubt every single bit of information that we read. If this administration is known for one thing, it will be known for the number of synonyms for the word “lie” it uses on a regular basis to justify the man that they, and Russia, and James Comey, and all those fucking white people, empowered.

Our President, is a man who has never heard the word “no.” People have said it to him I’m certain, but he has never heard it. “No” is simply not a word that applies to Donald J. Tr*mp. And when you have a man for whom the word “no” doesn’t apply, you have a man who can not compromise, you have a man with a huge temper, you have a man with the social mentality and awareness of a 5-year-old. That is who we are living under. We are living under a 6’3″, 240-pound toddler who pouts and stamps his feet at the mere smell of any sort of negative feelings cast in his direction. And yet he is quite possibly the biggest bully to ever darken the doors of the Oval Office.

So no, this is not normal. But it is even less normal than we previously thought. There are no rules, there are no precedents, there are, it seems, no laws that can touch Donald Tr*mp. And so then the question becomes:

What do we do now?

We cannot use the normal routes, we cannot take the same actions, we cannot think this will change or our displeasure can be registered in the same ways they have always been because this is not the same reality. This country will never be the same. We will never be the same. It’s as if we have been living in a world with a ground that is made of rubber, only before we thought that it was made of steel. And he is pushing that ground, stretching it, and we are all off balance and we have to walk differently. Because you cannot walk the same way on something that moves and changes and thins out as you can on something strong and flat and secure. So again I ask,

What do we do now?

And honestly, I don’t really know. I wish I fucking knew. But for me just wrapping my head around the fact that everything is different, and that I mean that word everything to be all encompassing, is helpful. Because it means I have to open my mind and stretch it and challenge it to respond to all the changes that are coming at me, at all of us. Because we, friends, have brought knives to an unregulated gun fight. So we have to be smarter and quicker and we have to use our bodies to keep coming at them again and again and again. And honestly, as much as I loved to hear Michelle Obama say “when they go low we go high,” there is no low or high anymore. There are those with morals and those without morals and those are two completely unrelatable realities. There are those who care about the future of the world and those who care only about the immediate future of themselves.

So, what do we do? Seriously, what do we do?

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An Open Letter to the Girl Scouts of America

17 Jan

To whom it may concern,

When I was a young girl growing up in suburban New Jersey, I was a Girl Scout. My mother was the Troop leader. Although I did not participate past elementary school, the camaraderie I felt with the other girls in my troop had a lasting influence on me. When it comes to being female in this world, I have always been a believer in the importance of surrounding myself with other smart, caring, strong, empathetic women. It is, honestly, how I have managed to live what I consider a successful life. So you can imagine my dismay when I was informed that the Girl Scouts of America, a group I have always respected and felt played an important role in the healthy mental and emotional development of thousands of women, announced it would be participating in the inaugural ceremony of Donald J. Tr*mp.

Donald Tr*mp simply does not respect women. He has demonstrated this time and again through his vile language, his proud admittance of sexual assault and his objectification of anyone with a pair of breasts and a vagina. To think that you, an organization that has always celebrated the strength and abilities of young girls, would parade them in front of a man so heinous is unfathomable to me. There have been a lot of statements and actions taken by organizations that have made me question their moral standings and ethical foundations but this? This takes the cake. How dare you dehumanize our girls like this? I thought you were better.

Sincerely
Rebekah Frank

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New Orleans Diary: Week Seven

13 Jan

Goal: I am trying to keep a weekly diary about my time here in New Orleans! My friend Katie is here right now (HOOORAY!) and we are having lots of fun and so this diary entry might be slightly truncated so I can get back to fun. Not that this isn’t fun but, you know.

Weather: So I moved down here because New York gets really cold and when I get really cold I get hives. It totally blows. Right now I am sitting in a very uncomfortable stool at the island in my kitchen in shorts and a light long-sleeved shirt and it is the middle of January. That’s pretty great! And hive-free! Last week, however, we had a frost

Dun, dun DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!

It got so cold. SO cold. And it’s like 150% humidity here all the time and so when it gets cold it really feels cold. You know those days in New York when the wind is blowing and you’re wearing all your layers (but not one of those puffy jackets that look like a sleeping bag because although I am sure they are very effective they look really silly) and the cold just seeps into everything and makes your bones cold? Well, that’s what it is like here. Anything below 50 is just bone chilling. And the houses aren’t insulated and so if you don’t have house slippers (which obviously I do because I am an old lady in disguise) your feet freeze when they touch the floor. I one time went into the kitchen without my house slippers on and my feet got so cold that I couldn’t feel them and I felt like I was walking on pieces of wood with toenails that could really use a good painting. Anyway, so this past week it dropped below freezing and do you know what happened? My plants froze! I had just bought two really awesome hanging plants to decorate my place and just like that

BAM!

deaded. And the extra sad thing is that one of them is called a Purple Wandering Jew and I thought of it as my soul sister and then it died from the cold (kind of like I do) and now I feel like maybe that is a bad omen. RIP Wandering Jew.

Driving: I think bad driving might actually be contagious. I consider myself a pretty good driver. I use my blinkers, I put my headlights on when it is dark out and also whenever it rains and I have to use my windshield wipers (Wipers On, Lights On!), and I generally abide by all traffic laws. But it is really hard to abide by all the traffic laws when it sort of seems like there aren’t any. And also when the streets are so pock marked that every time I take the car out I am reasonably certain I am going to get a flat. It’s like a game of frogger driving around here, trying to avoid all the massive pot holes. Anyway, in the past few weeks I have found myself rolling through stop signs, changing lanes willy-nilly (still using blinkers, though!) and on my way to the supermarket the other day I almost ran a red light! I need to re-center myself. Just as I refuse to stop calling the corner store the bodega, I will not allow the poor driving practices of this city to affect me any further! I am from New Jersey, god damnit, a state where people can drive!

Tulips: The other day I was walking around when I saw some kitties through a fence. They were so cute. So I stood outside the fence and I watched the kitties for awhile as both of them tried to fit into one pot that really only had room for 1.5 kitties. One of them was already in there all curled up and cozy and the other one, a bigger one, decided it also wanted to be curled up and cozy and so it tried to get into the pot with the first kitty and hilarity ensued. I was happily watching the progression of events when all of a sudden from behind me I heard,

Come back in a few weeks and see my tulips!

I turned around and there was the owner of the house who erroneously thought I was checking out his landscaping when actually I was watching some feral cats roll around in a planting box. But because I didn’t want to be rude I asked him about his tulips. Apparently they were a few inches out of the ground already and he had planted a few hundred of them. It’s going to be really pretty! But then I thought to myself, didn’t we just have a frost the other day? And didn’t the frost claim the life of my Wandering Jew? Couldn’t we potentially have another frost and wouldn’t the tulips succumb to such a change in weather? Also, tulips in January?! I will take photos of the tulips when and if they bloom and share them here.

Little Boys, Ew: Yesterday Katie and I were walking through Louis Armstrong Park and some 12 year old boys whose balls hadn’t dropped yet if the high pitched nature of their voices were any indication asked us if we wanted to suck their dicks. Um, ew? First of all we could be their mothers. Seriously. We are actually old enough to have birthed these boys. Second of all, gross. And third of all, this is the world we live in where this sort of disrespect and hyper sexualization of women begins at such a young age. It’s really fucked up. I guess the conclusion is that groups of boys are the worst everywhere. They are the worst in New York, they are the worst here in New Orleans, and I am going to venture a guess that they are the worst everywhere in between.

Conclusion: I know this isn’t my best diary. Sorry! But next week will be good, I swear! I have some things to write about, like the Lyft driver who drove Katie and I home after dinner last night. Also I think I got a job and I may or may not have to wear a stupid outfit at my job so I will tell you all about that. And I have about 3 drafts that I am hoping to post within the next week or so. Stay tuned!

New Orleans Diary: Week Six

6 Jan

Goal: You know the deal. Write a weekly post that hopefully has some meaningful content only to realize week week that I am only writing about my mostly meaningless observations. Catch up on the earlier diaries here if you are so inclined! Week One, Week Two, Week Three, Week Four, Week Five.

Saga of the Lost Pants: If you remember from last week, I lost my pants. Well, 2/3 of my pants, anyway. I came to the rock solid conclusion that the bug that had previously been tormenting me had likely made away with them but that theory had yet to be proven. The other theory was that I had in fact left my pants in Houston, Texas over Christmas when I was there seeing my friend Carrie and my Texas Family. In order to either prove, or disprove, this second more reasonable theory, Carrie offered to text her mom to see if I  had left my pants at her house. She checked and, alas! I had not! Clearly my initial response was

I knew it! The bug took them!

But then I looked in my closet and realized that they were folded up on a shelf in there underneath some curtains and a scarf. Perhaps, you might be saying to yourself, I should have investigated the closet before making Carrie’s mom search through her house and also before accusing an innocent insect of theft. And you might be right.

In other news I am wearing my pants right now.

Hipster Bikes: So this is not just a New Orleans post because I also saw these same bikes in New York only far less often. They are those stupid high off the ground bikes. Those really tall ones. You know the ones:

hipsterest-bike

Anyway I see these bikes a lot and it’s like, why?! Why would you ride that stupid thing? First of all, you look like an asshole. Second of all, how do you get on and off? Third of all, it is really far down to the ground when you inevitably fall. And fourth, see the first point. They are just so….annoyingly, laughingly hipster. I just sometimes want to tell people that something ceases to be unique and cool and interesting when all your friends are also doing it but I guess that is a waste of breath. So instead I will just continue to do what I have been doing up until this point: shaking my head with complete and utter disdain.

Food Handler’s License: I am now the proud owner of a New York State Food Handler’s License as well as a Louisiana Alcohol Vendor Permit. (Hold the applause.) Obtaining my vendor’s permit here was, shall we say, eye opening. I know a lot of you readers are from New York and also probably had to go through all the stupid steps to get your food handler’s license. But for those of you who haven’t, here is a brief overview.

You have two choices, you can either take the class in-person or take it online. To take it in-person costs $114 and requires you to attend 15 hours of classes. Online is free. Either way you have to travel all the way up to a filthy building on 125th Street or something in order to take the test itself. Here’s the thing about taking the classes online, at least when I did it. There were a bunch of different sections and each section had a whole lot of information and at the end of the section there was a quiz. You couldn’t go on to the next section unless you successfully passed the quiz by answering all 5 (if I remember correctly) questions right. You also couldn’t go on to the next section if you hadn’t been working on the previous section for something like 2 hours. So if you answered something wrong on the quiz? You had to have the browser open for another 2 hours and then take the quiz again. And if you answered all the question right but hadn’t had the browser open the full 2 hours? Well then you waited. It was one of the most boring, most tedious, most unnecessary processes ever.

In New Orleans, it is totally different. I signed up for my class on Wednesday morning and was sitting in the upstairs area of Saints and Sinners at 3pm. The class costs $25. It takes 2 hours. And then you take the test which is comprised of 20 multiple choice questions, the answers for which have literally been fed to you in the moments preceding. I walked out of the class at 5:15 with my temporary permit, a permit that is valid for the next 4 years. Easy peasy.

So, in summation: New York makes everything so much more time consuming and annoying than is necessary. Also, the Office of Health and Human Services where I had to take the exam was so incredibly disgusting and was infested with cockroaches. And the guy taking the test next to me kept picking his nose and eating what he found. I know that isn’t New York’s fault (the nose picking) but still it was rather unpleasant. New Orleans, on the other hand, was a breeze. I didn’t see any bugs (Hallelujah!) and no one picked anything out of any of the orifices in their body.

Rain: It rains a lot here. It is raining right now, in fact. And it has also rained a lot of the other days since I have been here. But at least it is not snowing. I think this week I will buy one of those nifty bright yellow raincoats that I was embarrassed to wear when I was a kid but now want really badly. Also some galoshes.

Conclusion: So that is it. Week Six is in the books. I have a feeling there will be BIG news next week and hopefully that will not involve my car flooding which is a real concern, a concern that keeps me up at night.

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New Orleans Diary: Week Five

30 Dec

Goal: To keep a weekly diary of my time here in New Orleans. This is Week 5! Which means I have been living here for over a month. And also it has been almost two whole months since I left Brooklyn which is pretty crazy. Hi, Brooklyn. Do ya miss me?

Waterbugs, Information: You may recall that last week I saw a waterbug in my bathroom and subsequently hid from the bug, also the bathroom, for a considerable amount of time following the sighting. Then the bug mysteriously disappeared. Dun dun duuuuuun. I then posted about the bug on my Facebook page at which point I received all kinds of comments. Some of them were full of concern, some were full of disgust and vomit emojis, and some were from people welcoming me to Life in the South. As a result of the post, I also received a few bits of information.

  • My friend Heather told me that New Orleans-style waterbugs fly at your face. AT YOUR FACE! Which, since my face is the face that is currently here, means that they will most certainly fly at my face which is not something I hope to experience. She told me to get the Raid in the silver can because it is full of chemicals and the shape of the nozzle allows for pretty good aim which means that you can, from a distance, spray that noxious shit and hopefully hit the attacking bug in mid (at my face) fly. That sounds like a really great idea until one remembers that time I accidentally maced myself in the face. I decided, as a result, to forego airborne chemical warfare and simply go for some traps.
  • My friend Rob told me that here in New Orleans they call these bugs “palmettos.” I am glad to know what they are called here so that when I tell people about The Bug and they think I am talking about silver fish (also ew!) I can use the appropriate regionalism to correct them so that we are all on the same disgusting, flying-at-my-face page.

Waterbugs, The Update: Following the initial sighting I was living if not a carefree life at least one seemingly free of waterbugs. That is until the day before yesterday! I walked into the kitchen to grab something when <BAM!> There it was! Sneaking around on the floor like the huge and disgusting flying hunk of roach that it is. Naturally, I screamed, ran into the bedroom and jumped onto the bed which clearly wouldn’t have helped me one bit if the bug had decided to fly at my face. Luckily for all involved it did not. I’m pretty sure it actually also screamed and retreated under the refrigerator. What to do?! I quickly mined my brain for information and remembered a story my friend Carrie had told me in which her basement apartment became ground zero of a short-lived waterbug infestation during a huge rainstorm and she lined the inside of her doors with duct tape. It worked! And so I snuck into the kitchen and, looking out for monsters (AKA waterbugs), I retrieved some gorilla duct tape – extra sticky! – and laid it out all around the refrigerator so that if the bug decided to try and sneak out it would get caught! Inhumane, I know, but it was the only way I would be able to sleep.

And then I waited. And slept. But also waited.

When I woke up in the morning I went into the kitchen to see if the bug had in fact gotten stuck. I discovered the most awful thing. Not only had the bug not gotten stuck, but it had used its brute strength to actually move the gorilla tape a good 3 inches away from the fridge and then somehow dislodge itself to live another day. It also left behind one leg on the tape. So gross.

In summation the waterbugs down here are like other fucking level. They are like terminators. Seriously if we could train waterbugs to do our bidding we could use them to fight wars. These fuckers are no joke. And this said by someone who now has a 5-legged waterbug wandering around her house, waiting for the next opportunity to fly at my face.

Clothing: I have lost all my pants. I was putting my clothes away yesterday and I can’t find them. I know I had them because I recently wore them but now they appear to be missing. Has anyone seen them?

Driving: But seriously, people cannot drive here. Or, well, they can’t drive in a different way from the ways in which people up North can’t drive. So here is the new thing I have noticed. You’ll be moving along at a steady clip with all of the other people except for the one guy who is driving 25mph above the speed limit and is, like everyone else, allergic to the use of blinkers. And then, as if from nowhere, there is the person driving 20 mph below the speed limit. I don’t think I have driven on a highway in Louisiana once without encountering this person. And he/she is always in the middle lane. ALWAYS. Which is an extra big problem here where the right lane oftentimes goes from lane to exit only lane and back again with basically no warning whatsoever. So it actually isn’t really a lane at all. But the slow person isn’t in the next lane over, oh no. The slow person is in the other middle lane. So this is what happens:

  • The right lane is oscillating between exit only lane, new cars merging in lane and regular right lane where slow drivers are supposed to live so they don’t bother the rest of us.
  • The middle right lane becomes this lane where no one really wants to be because you have to be aware of the constantly changing status of the right lane. That being said this would be the perfect lane for a slow driver because all the other drivers who are merging and exiting and generally confused by signage can easily move into the slow driver lane because the slow driver is, well, so slow.
  • The middle left lane is where the slow driver now lives for reasons that I am not entirely clear on. This messes up all the other lanes because now there is a serious slow-down in the middle left lane resulting in a lot of tailgating. People love to tailgate here.
  • The left lane is basically the only lane that operates under normal lane procedures from what I can tell. The slow driver generally doesn’t venture over there. Although there generally is someone in a mini-van using cruise control at exactly 8 miles over the speed limit which can be problematic.

The result of all of this is a complete and total free-for-all. Every lane is a passing lane. Every car is tailgating some other car which means that every car is simultaneously tailgating someone else while trying to lose its own tailgater. And then there is the asshole who drives like he/she is from New Jersey. You know the guy. Driving really fast, weaving in and out of traffic with no warning whatsoever, squeezing into teeny tiny spaces. This person is almost always in a busted up coup with tinted windows. This guy has watched Fast and Furious too many times. I don’t not like that guy.

Conclusion: That’s all I’ve got for right now. The New Year is fast approaching and everyone seems pretty pleased that 2016 is over since it gave us Tr*mp and pretty much killed everyone that we love. And I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but unless 2016 flexes its muscles yet again, we will be inaugurating Tr*mp on the 20th day of January. And then we are stuck with him for the next 4 years unless he gets impeached at which point we are stuck with Mike fucking Pence. So I am sorry to say that 2017 is not looking like it’s gonna be all that much better. But there will be more New Orleans diary entries so that’s something, right?

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New Orleans Diary: Week Four

23 Dec

Goal: To keep a diary of all the haps and observations of every week. This is my fourth diary entry, and therefore the fourth time I have managed to successfully reach my goal. This is a big deal. Hitting goals I make for myself is not my strong suit. Maybe all this not having a job is really helping me out in the life skills department. (Speaking of, someone want to pay me for this?)

Laundry: So I posted a photo of this the first day that I moved into my new apartment (AKA Palace) but for those of you who are not my Instagram or Facebook friend or managed to miss it here’s an update: I have a washer/dryer in my kitchen. IN MY KITCHEN! My friend Katie used to tell me years ago that she will know she has made it as an adult when she has a clawfoot tub in her bathroom. I replied that I would know I had made it when I have a washer/dryer in my building. (I set my sights sort of low. New York livin’, am I right?) Well paint me green and call me a cucumber because I have surpassed my wildest dreams. Yesterday I did 3 loads of laundry and I didn’t have to carry a huge bag around the corner, fight for a washing machine that barely works or avoid tripping over someone’s kid who is riding around the laundromat on one of those stupid scooters that I hate. Nope, I just stayed home. And now my whole house smells like freshly laundered clothes. Aaaaaaahhhhhh……

Waterbugs: I found one in my bathroom. I really had to pee so I did but I didn’t flush the toilet because I was afraid the noise would scare the bug which, in turn, would scare me. I hid from the bathroom for the rest of the night despite the fact that I had drank a lot of water. So much water, in fact, that when I woke up in the morning my eyeballs were swimming. I went into the bathroom and made a whole bunch of noise in hopes that the bug would come out from where ever it was hiding when I was semi-prepared for it and not when I was in mid-stream, but to no avail. Now I have no idea where the bug is. I am starting to rethink my previous inaction. Will update as necessary. But suffice it to say that if this blog goes dark it is because the bug killed me.

Some People Don’t Like New Yorkers Here: And I get it. I totally do. Also, despite the fact that I spent the last 12 years in Brooklyn I was born and raised in New Jersey. I am not sure whether that helps me or hurts me in this situation, tbh. But just in case it helps maybe I should bust out that neon green and yellow New Jersey trucker hat that I bought at the Palisades Mall back in the year 2002. Feel free to leave your thoughts about that in the comment section. So anyway the reason I say this is that the other day I was visiting my friend at work and he introduced me to some of the people sitting at the bar which was very nice of him since I know approximately 5 people here and one of those people is me. The dude at the bar seemed all interested in the fact that I had just moved here until I told him I had moved from Brooklyn and he goes

Yeah. The seems to be the trend.

And then he turned his back on me. Just turned his back. He behaved as if I told him a string of those crazy outdated and not funny “yo mama” jokes. On a slightly serious note though, I get that the city is changing really fast. I spent the last 12 years in Brooklyn, for chrissakes. But the people we should turn our backs on are the people who somehow think they are god’s gift to where ever they moved to, people who need the city to adjust to them rather than the other way around. I can tell you all about them. We’ve got plenty of that type back home. Listen, if I wanted this city to be just like Brooklyn I would have stayed there. I had it good. I left for a reason. I needed a change. And let me just say this one other thing: if it was someone turning their back on me who actually would be impacted by the arrival of a youngish white woman, I would have accepted it. That, however, was not the case. If you pick up what I’m putting down.

Waterbug Update: I was informed by my friend Sarah Jane that there are A LOT of these bugs here so, I don’t know. We will see how this all goes. The odds are not in my favor.

The World War Two Museum: I went there on Monday and it was really intense, especially when put in context of what all is happening in our country right now with Tr*mp and the crazies and how much they hate the Jews. I am not going to go into it here though because I wrote an entire blog about it that I am really proud of and I would love it if you would go over there and read it and maybe share it with your friends and family.

Hive Update: As some of you might already know, part of the reason I came down here was that I kept breaking out in hives. The crisis started when I went to Iceland last March. I was at a loss. I had no idea what was causing it. Was I allergic to the sulfur (AKA eggfarts) in the air in Iceland? Did I have some sort of food allergy? I went to a doctor and went on this crazy diet to try and figure out and then one day I did. Through sheer happenstance I discovered I was allergic to the cold. Even my friend Katie (different Katie from the clawfoot tub Katie) told me it was possible and she’s a nurse. Anyway so I moved down here to get away from the cold and also the hives. And the first week or so I was here I broke out in hives a few times but recently even though it has been cold they haven’t appeared! Which makes me think. When Katie told me that she thought my hives were caused by the cold she also said that I should be concerned about the underlying reasons for that. I kind of glossed over that in the moment because I was just really excited that I said something health-related to Katie that she thought wasn’t a load of shit. I come up with absurd theories all the time. Katie even thought up a really funny idea for a TV show based around this particular part of our friendship. As I was saying, even though I sort of tucked what she said in the back of my head I didn’t dismiss it at all. And so now I am thinking that maybe lack of sleep is one of the things increasing my histamine levels, leading to an uptick in hiviness. I have been sleeping A LOT here. This, by the way, is still a working theory.

Conclusion: So that’s it! Week four in the books! Up top! (In the interest of full disclosure I just gave myself a high five.)

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