First, I apologize for not posting in nearly a month. Alternatively, if you don’t like this blog, then I apologize for posting now.
Second, a summary of how my year is going so far: bleh.
I have decided that I am under a bad moon. December had two full moons, the second one being a blue moon, which I looked right at while taking out the garbage. So really, I have no one to blame but myself, as well as whoever is responsible for making me so superstitious. Fortunately, the next full moon will be on Saturday the 30th, so things should be completely fine in a couple of days, assuming that no one places a hex on me in the meantime.
Major events of January 2010 include my house nearly blowing up because of one malicious furnace repair person and two other non-malicious but fairly dimwitted tank replacement guys. I don’t want to go into the details because it will bore you while simultaneously making me crave empty carbohydrates fried in trans fat. Things are mostly under control now, except that the tank guys don’t seem all that eager to come out and finish the job, so presumably they already received the check from the insurance company and consider the job completed, the giant hole in my backyard notwithstanding.
Several of my other appliances are on the fritz now as well. My washing machine is making a noise like, “ka chonk eeeeeeeh! ka chonk eeeeeeeeh!” and it now takes about a month to dry a load of towels. My vacuum cleaner has a weird smell. All of my knives are suddenly dull.
Also, I had some kind of monkey flu or lemur flu that lasted about three weeks starting the day after Christmas. It was unusual in that I would feel perfectly fine every other day, alternating with a day of feeling like I had eaten a bucket of tainted clams. Maybe it was the clam flu. For about a week, I ate nothing but saltines and drank a vat of ginger ale. I think it’s finally gone, but I’ve lost six pounds and now my pants are baggy.
Hey! Do you know what you should not do when you have some kind of unidentified animal virus coursing through your system? You should not get an H1N1 Flu shot. Especially when you had not planned ahead to get one and instead jumped in line when you saw that the pharmacy at the grocery store had them and since you were wearing a sweater with sleeves that don’t roll up easily, you had to get a little bit naked right next to the dairy case. That was six days ago, but it’s only been three days since I’ve felt relatively certain that I am not going to die from getting the vaccine. See, the problem is that they give you a sheet with possible but normal and non-dangerous side effects that may include, “general body discomfort, headache, fever, muscle aches, weakness, or sore throat.” But they also tell you to CONTACT YOUR DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY, all in caps just like that, if you experience things like, “muscle weakness, headache, fever, or hoarseness.” Thank you for being not at all helpful, Information Sheet Author! There’s also a bunch of other stuff that’s even scarier, including the part where you have an allergic reaction and are dead within a few seconds. For much of Friday afternoon, I was convinced that this is what was happening. My eyes seemed a little puffy, which clearly meant that the rest of my face, including my throat was about to swell up and suffocate me. I spent at least an hour looking at my tongue in the mirror, convinced that it was getting larger. Of course, under normal circumstances I don’t spend any time looking at my tongue in the mirror, thus it’s hard to say if it’s actually mutating or if I’m just a deranged hypochondriac. My advice to all of you is that you photograph all of your body parts for future reference. You never know.
At one point, I decided I could no longer swallow. I was eating dinner at the time and the food didn’t seem to be collecting in my mouth or anything, so I’m not sure why I thought that. I was having dinner with my mom and she didn’t seem nearly as concerned as I felt was warranted, given that I was making a “GACK!” noise every few minutes. Additionally, being concerned about tightness in my chest, I would periodically burrow my knuckle into my sternum, in order to discern my lung capacity from the outside. Then — and totally unrelated to the knuckle in my sternum I’m sure — I started having chest pains. Clearly, my tongue had swelled up and blocked my airway, which was triggering a heart attack. Goodbye, cruel world.
Me: You know how to call 9-1-1, right?
Mom: Yes. I dial nine one one.
Me: You know what to tell them, right?
Mom: Yes. You’re sick.
Me: Not sick. Dying! I’m dying! I had an H1N1 shot and now I’m dying!
Mom: Stop reading things on the computer.
That’s why she’s the mom, and I’m just her dumbass kid. We did not call 9-1-1, but we did watch a movie that had a doctor in it and I felt much better afterwards. As it turns out, I did not have a bad reaction to the vaccine. Some of you probably figured that out before you even knew I had the shot, but when it comes to freaking out, I like to be proactive.
A lot of people are being pedantic about the notion that the decade is not over until next year because you start counting at one and not at zero. Although that’s normally true, it’s not true with years. With years you start counting at zero, except for maybe way back in the year 0, which I don’t think was called that and at any rate cannot verify one way or the other because I am old but not that old. When we say “the 1990s” we mean “1990 through 1999,” not “1991 through 1999 plus 2000 even though there’s no ninety in it or even nine, really there are just zeros and a two but it’s still the 1990s because we start counting at one and not at zero.” Or in other words, this decade ends tonight.
We never even came up with a good way to refer to the years 2000 through 2009. A few people say “the aughts,” and I’ve heard “the zeros” occasionally, but nothing really caught on. Wall Street calls it “The Loss Decade,” which is a cute way of saying, “yeah, we were completely wrong about deregulation. Our bad!” I think part of the problem is that even saying what year it is has been cumbersome. For a hundred years, we said, “nineteen something,” but then it turned to “two thousand.” That was fine, but we didn’t snap out of it. “Two thousand one.” “Two thousand two.” “Two thousand …,” well, you can figure out the sequence. We’ve been waiting for tomorrow, just so we can say “twenty ten” and stop sounding like we’re mourning the end of the world every time someone asks us what the date is.
For me personally, I think of it these years as The Nothings, or at least I have since about two minutes ago when I started pondering it. In the 2000s, I’ve lived in a city I didn’t want to live in, and I’ve worked at a job that stopped being interesting about three minutes after I got it. It wasn’t a horrible decade; it just wasn’t what I would have chosen had it been entirely up to me. Fortunately, I learned a long time ago that nothing is entirely up to me, which results in less agita during the course of any given day. It’s those, “I deserve to be happy and fulfilled!” people who are always screwing up their lives, which is their prerogative of course, so long as they don’t impose it on anyone else, although they usually do, generally in the form of asking for a loan.
I don’t usually make resolutions, but I’m making a few this year, just to break out of the ten-year rut. I’m going to keep them to myself however, since I can’t imagine any of you are interested in whether I’ve decided to take up Pilates or not. There are some things that I wish other people would resolve to do, or, more pertinently, stop doing, including but not limited to the following:
- Stop mispronouncing “kibosh.” It’s pronounced “KAI-bosh” (and rhymes with “eye wash”). It is not pronounced “kuh-BOSH.” You sound like you’re Billy Mays trying to sell me toilet cleaner when you say it like that.
- Stop saying, “easy peasy.” Why is everyone saying “easy peasy” all of a sudden? Does Bella say it in Twilight or something? In the last week, I’ve seen it at least a half dozen times on blogs or in magazines. It’s not offensive in and of itself, but when you see it written somewhere every damn day, it starts to grate.
- Stop referring to everything as a “sex scandal.” Tiger Woods hits a tree and a bunch of skanks fall out? Fine, sex scandal. David Letterman is discovered to have slept with five different women between the years 1983 and 2009? Not a sex scandal.
- Stop giving Jay Leno TV shows. He says thing like, “as it turns out, Tiger is a cheetah who’s been a lion to his wife.” The guy is a hair’s breadth away from doing a monologue consisting entirely of knock knock jokes.
- Stop with the reality shows already. It’s not that I don’t love a good reality show, but even the good ones stopped being good about six years ago. (A task on the most recent season of The Amazing Race was to ride an elevator up to the top of a tall building and walk ten feet to the clue box. Will they push the right floor button? I am on the edge of my seat!) And the bad ones are just famewhore vectors, foisting the likes of Jon and Kate on a public that has nowhere to hide. I don’t even have MTV and yet I know that somewhere there exists a woman called Snooki and man called The Situation and that they are, respectively, a Guidette and a Guido. I did not seek out this knowledge, nor does it enhance my life in any way, yet there it is, taking up space in the cranium.
- Stop telling me to “support local businesses instead of evil corporate empires like Starbucks and Amazon.” Starbucks and Amazon are my local businesses. Starbucks gives health insurance to even its part-time employees and Amazon lets its corporate HQ employees bring their dogs to work. Whereas our locally independent coffee businesses, with names like “Knotty Bodies” and “Busty’s Top Espresso” are likely to be staffed by women in bikinis or underwear, and the last time I bought an allegedly new book at a small, independent bookstore, there was an unfortunate brown stain in the middle. I hope that it was coffee, unless the person who spilled it bought the coffee at one of the g-string coffee places, in which case, I hope that it was sewage.
- Stop expecting me to remember all the items on my lists. You know I am a weak finisher.
Well. It’s almost over now. In just sixteen hours and nine minutes, it will be a brave new world. Or more of the same. Hard to say. Happy New Decade, Everyone.
I forgot about Festivus. I forgot to air grievances. I forgot the feats of strength. I forgot to have meatloaf. Festivus is over and I spent the whole night in a pumpkin patch with a blockhead! No, wait … aw crap. I missed two holidays this year.
But today is Christmas Eve morning, and I have the sense that none of you are at work today, which means that I am mainly typing because I like the clicking noise and not because anyone will actually read this. In order to prepare for the horde of people (by which I mean, six people) descending upon my house tomorrow, I spent a good portion of yesterday cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms, which took forever because a crush of people (by which I mean, two people) dropped by to deliver presents and force me to wash all the Clorox off my hands and then make tea and put pfeffernüse on a plate and sit and revel in the joy and fellowship of the season and not think about how I really needed to rinse out the tub before the Clorox hardened.
I don’t know why I felt the need to scrub the bathtub anyway. It’s not like any of my guests is going to take a bath tomorrow. We’re going to eat, we’re going to exchange presents, and then they’re going to go home. There’s no bathing on the agenda.
But I can’t invite a drove of people over and then not have a clean house. If they come over uninvited, then they can get salmonella for all I care, but if I actually say, “you! Throng of people! Come to my house and eat Chinese Chicken Salad!” then I feel I have a responsibility to decrapify the place. The thing is, no one notices if everything’s clean; they only notice if it’s not clean. Except for one time when I was living in an apartment and something in the bathroom needed fixing, so the building engineer came up and then he looked around and said, “wow, your bathroom is really clean.” I would have married that man.
Today I will be dusting and polishing. I bought a box of 48 Swiffers because it said on the box
THREE TIMES MORE THAN BOX OF 16
and it reminded me of the time I was walking up Powell Street in San Francisco one Christmas time and stopped in front of a little shop to look at some wooden cable car tree ornaments that were very cute. The shop owner came out and said, “that’s two dollars! Two for four dollars! Three for six dollars! Five for ten dollars!” I wonder how much it would have been for four.
I will also be wrapping presents and doing some cooking today, both for tomorrow and for tonight’s Christmas Eve dinner of turkey drumsticks and gruel. It’s just stuffing, but “gruel” sounds more Dickensian. I’m also going to turn down the heat and not give any money to orphans today. It’s tradition.
My favorite Christmas Eve memory is from about fifteen years ago. I was working at the medical school and our supervisor decided that all administrative staff had to stay until 5:00, even though hardly any of the faculty were there and there was absolutely nothing to do. At about 3:00, we were all just sitting around looking despondent, when Dr. Kringle (not necessarily his real name) walked through the office. He had twinkly eyes and a gray beard, but for the purposes of this story, his beard was white and he was wearing a red velvet suit. Just go with me on this.
“What is this?” He exclaimed as he came into sight, “you should all be at home. It is Christmas Eve night!”
“Fran said ’tis not so. She said we must stay. She said Dr. Winters wants it this way.”
“What nonsense,” he cried, as he reached for the phone, “I shall speak to Miss Fran!” and he dialed her … extension. (Shut up. Rhyming is hard.)
“You are a Scrooge, and a liar most frightful!” Our mouths were agape; it was much too delightful. “I am sending them now! I am sending them home! You ridiculous creature!” Then he slammed down the phone.
The End. Oh, except Fran took it out on us later, but that was okay. The “ridiculous creature” remark made up for a lot.
Well, now that we’re in the mood, there’s only one thing left to do and that is howl out some Christmas carols.
Merry Christmas, Everybody! Merry Christmas, Building and Loan! And to all our friends at FOX News: Happy Holidays!
I took today off so that I could do all my Christmas shopping, but then last night I fell asleep on my couch and awoke at about 1:00 AM to see that there was a fat, hulking, short man with a pointy head standing in my living room, in front of the picture window where I normally put the … oh, never mind, it’s just the Christmas tree. But for 30 seconds, it was half-wakeful terror. Then I couldn’t get back to sleep for another three hours, so today I am feeling somewhat Night of the Living Dead-ish and have decided to put off shopping until Monday. I could go tomorrow, but the last weekend before Christmas is for shoppers only slightly less masochistic than the shoppers who wait until Christmas Eve.
I don’t have much to buy, since my list runs mainly to gift cards and food. There are no children to buy for this year, so I don’t have to worry about going three rounds of bare knuckles boxing with some kid’s mom over the last Zhu Zhu Hamster, although I’m expecting that one of my siblings will give me a Zhu Zhu Hamster about which I will say, “Oh, excellent! I’ve heard about these,” while thinking, “you do know I’m 46, right?” This is the problem with being the baby sister. No matter how old you get or what you accomplish in life, your older brother and sister will always treat you as if you are still seven years old and also maybe a little slow.
For years, I have been trying to get my siblings to agree not to exchange gifts, but they won’t go along with it. They have even said, “you don’t have to give us anything! But we wouldn’t feel right if we didn’t get you anything!” And thus they are completely missing the point. It’s not the giving I object to; it’s the receiving. I would happily give gifts if I knew that in return I would be getting nothing because when it comes to gifts, my brother and sister are clinically insane. They are otherwise fine people, but they view Christmas and birthdays as occasions to spend way too much money on crap no one wants. One year, my brother was too busy to shop, so he gave me an Amazon gift card, and I was so overcome with happiness that it wasn’t a long leather coat with a zipper and belt very similar to the one Richard Roundtree wore in Shaft that I may have screamed and danced around the house and stood out in the front yard brandishing the card and singing, “I got a gift card! It’s good on A-ma-zon! You got a sweat-er! It’s un-attract-ive!”
The problem is that our philosophies on gift-giving are fundamentally different. I think you should try to give things that the recipient would want. My brother thinks you should give things that you would want yourself. And my sister thinks you should give things that no one would want because that is what a gift is: something that no one on Earth would ever ever ever buy for him- or herself.
Thus, I know that even though I may want a normal sweater:
I will get a hideous sweater:
And I may want the autobiography of Edward Kennedy:
But I will get an Obama chia head:
And for good measure, the other Obama chia head:
Also, I might want shiny red rain boots, or … one shiny red rain boot at any rate:
but others have determined that what I really need is gummy foot candy:
On second thought, maybe I won’t go Christmas shopping on Monday.
In the grand scheme, it’s really not all that bad. I mean the part where I have to pretend to love getting yet another Pixar movie and sheepskin-lined slippers that even Nanook of the North would say make his feet all sweaty isn’t my favorite part of the day, but, I mean, it is the thought that counts, even if the thought was, “hey, this is ugly and/or useless, I think I’ll give it to my sister!” The main thing is that it’s Christmas, and we’ll all be together for a few hours, and then everyone will go home before anyone cries. The crying will come later, when we can’t find the gift receipts.
This week, my office is having its holiday party at a restaurant where I once ordered seafood ravioli and was brought a plate with two ravioli, each the size of a dinner plate, one filled with lobster and one filled with crab. Just thinking about it makes me giddy with delight. Nonetheless, this dinner promises to be less wondrous, considering who my companions will be and also, because I had no input on what would appear on the abridged menu that they give to large groups, there’s no guarantee that The Gargantuan Ravioli of Undersea Happiness will be on it. I wonder if it would be rude if I snuck out and had dinner in the main dining room. Probably.
As I understand it, there was a bit of drama over the menu. We have a picky eater in the group, so every time her presence is required at any food-related event, it’s like the Five Stages of Grief.
Denial: There’s nothing there I can eat.
Anger: THERE’S NEVER ANY CHICKEN!
Bargaining: If you let me have my way, I’ll stop acting like a giant baby over this.
Depression: No one cares about what I want. It makes me question my value to the firm.
Acceptance: It’s fine. I’ll go. I can just drink water.
Evidently, this time was no different, but I wasn’t involved, so I don’t care.
It doesn’t matter to me if someone is a picky eater or doesn’t eat a particular food, so long as they understand that the rest of the world isn’t required to revere their preferences. (Not counting people with food allergies or religious restrictions, that is. I don’t want anyone to die or be eternally damned because they didn’t know there were peanuts and shrimp in the kung pao.) For example, I have a friend who doesn’t like eggs or mayonnaise (because it’s made from eggs) and you can never eat anything with him without this fact coming up in the conversation. In fact, every waiter in every restaurant in which he has ever eaten knows that he does not eat eggs or anything with eggs in it. A few months ago, he had some people over to his house and one guest brought spinach dip, which I love. I think I expressed my love for spinach dip by saying something like, “I love spinach dip!” To which he replied, “Ellie brought it.” Then he and Ellie exchanged looks while he said, “she and I have already had a conversation about how it was nice of her but it has mayonnaise in it, so I won’t be having any.” She looked at me and nodded in confirmation. Seriously? He couldn’t just say thank you and then not eat it? He had to have a conversation with her about how he wouldn’t be eating it? And then he had to tell other people about the conversation? See, that’s just rude. Although it’s possible that Ellie did it on purpose because, seriously, shut up about the stupid eggs already.
I have another friend, J, who doesn’t like mushrooms. I know this because over the last 34 years, she’s told me approximately seven million times. Once in a restaurant, she bit into a quesadilla that contained mushrooms and then spit it onto her plate. This wasn’t 34 years ago. This was maybe five years ago and thus long past the age where spitting food onto your plate in public is not completely disgusting. J was always a food spitter though. When we were in high school, another friend, L, got a box of Valentine’s chocolates from her boyfriend that she, J, and I were eating one day. J kept biting into chocolates, saying, “ugh, a cream,” spitting it out and then picking a different one. Finally, L got fed up and told J that if she bit into another chocolate, she better eat it and she made her face all squinty and evil, which was kind of funny. J bit into another chocolate and announced, “cream.” L instructed her to finish it. J refused. L got more squinty. “Eat. It.” J ran out of the room with L in hot pursuit. Eventually, L got J pinned down on the couch, screaming, “EAT IT! EAAATTTT IIIIITTTTT!!!!”
Good times.
Once I said in an admittedly impolitic way that picky eaters who make a big deal over their pickiness were just being immature. A woman I didn’t know very well replied, “well, I don’t like onions and I don’t think that makes me immature! I suppose you think I should eat onions just because you say I should! If I eat them I WILL THROW UP! Oh, but I’m the immature one here, right?” Um. Yes. Not because she doesn’t eat onions, but because she’s a person who says things like, “if I eat onions, I WILL THROW UP.” What is she, four? I think I made my voice all fake-apologetic and said something like, “oh no, I wasn’t talking about you,” but actually I was. I just didn’t know it.
Whenever there’s something I don’t like, I try it periodically just to see if I still don’t like it. I used to not like avocados and bell peppers, but now, I will snap your hand off if you’re reaching for the last tortilla on the fajita platter. And I used to find cilantro offensive, but then I had a Vietnamese spring roll and saw the light.
Most recently, I’ve overcome my indifference to tofu. It’s the food of my people or … half my people, I suppose, so when I saw a recipe for Mabo Dofu written by a person who said that she never liked tofu until she tried it like this, I decided to try it myself. Then I noticed that if I followed her recipe and tried to cook in sesame oil, I would ruin a pan, and if I used an entire tablespoon of cayenne pepper I would ruin my digestive tract. So I ended up writing my own recipe, but it turned out to be nice and I didn’t THROW UP or anything and now I like tofu. It’s no giant lobster ravioli, but still.
This is the recipe, in case you’re interested. There’s no photo because it’s tasty but fairly unattractive.
Mabo Dofu
The Tofu of Prior Indifference
2 Tbsp. minced fresh ginger
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 Tbsp. red miso paste
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. toasted sesame oil
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 cup water
1 16 oz. block of tofu, rinsed, drained, cut into 3/4 inch cubes
1 small white onion, roughly chopped
1/2 pound ground something (pork is standard, but beef or turkey is also fine)
1 Tbsp. canola oil
In a small bowl, combine the ginger, garlic, miso, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, red pepper, and water. Set aside.
In a large pan or skillet, cook the onions in canola oil over medium-high heat until translucent. Add the pork and cook until no longer pink. Stir in the sauce and reduce heat to medium. When sauce is slightly reduced and thickened, fold in the tofu gently so you don’t break it up, coating with the sauce. Continue to simmer for a minute or two until tofu is warmed through. Serve over white rice if you’re under 40, brown rice if you’re over 40.
Serves 4, or me and two other people.
It turns out there was water in the oil tank, so I will probably have to get that replaced, but thankfully, I had it insured.
They sent me one of their competent repair guys, so I have no complaints, except for the minor incident where we were both trying to read tiny numbers stamped onto the metal plate of one of the parts and he said, “if you think it’s hard for you to read, imagine how I feel. I’m 55! You’re only, what? In your mid-40s?” Ha. Bastage.
I want to make a growly sound right about now, but meaner. “Grrrr” is a little too mild, “auggh” too anguished, and “arggh” sounds like Charlie Brown.
Remember ten months ago when I had my furnace repaired and the five days of fun and interaction with Heating Professionals that that entailed? Well, my furnace is broken again. Did I mention I had it repaired ten months ago? “Ten months,” as in “less than one year” ago? Sssssssssss. Oh, that’s the sound I want to make. More hissing than growling.
Yesterday morning when I woke up, there was a faint oil smell in the house, which seemed to be a less than optimal situation, but I had a bunch of stuff I had to do in the morning, so I turned the furnace down and left the house. I stopped at Home Depot (Hello, Home Depot Corporate Headquarters Employee! I see you are reading my blog again! Please make the store directory by the entrance less useless!) on the way home and got a carbon monoxide detector. The CO detector registered no deadly gas in the house, so I consulted the online world to see if there was anything else I could freak out about. There were a variety of possibilities from “exit your house now; your death is imminent,” to something to do with the wind making the oil go sideways (or … something) and it will clear up on its own after a few cycles. It did seem that sometimes when the furnace ran I could smell oil and sometimes I couldn’t, so I opted to see if it would clear up. Instead, it got worse.
By this time, it was after 5:00 and the heating company was closed, so I did what you should do first when your furnace is wonky and checked the air filters. Hmmm. Filthy. Which is weird because I just put them in two months ago, and normally I can get through an entire winter on one set. So, it’s back to Home Depot (seriously, Home Depot Corporate Headquarters Employee, the store directory by the door! I am begging you!) to buy air filters. I will pause now and say something nice. Even aside from the furnace, I had a crap day yesterday. It was one of those days where everyone on the road had made the collective decision to drive particularly badly, and every person I talked to decided that I was to be the receptacle for their bad attitude and attendant bitchface, and then, THEN I’m stuck walking around Home Depot for the second time in one day and I go up to the row of ten checkout lanes and there’s one employee there, with a face on her, and I am not in the mood. And then … she just talked to me so nicely. She was so polite and sweet and she counted my change back instead of just dumping it all into my hand with the receipt and then she told me to have a nice evening and … I don’t know. It picked me right up. A little civility goes a long way.
Shortly thereafter, I change the filters and check the oil tank (it went like this: “yep, that’s the oil tank”) and the furnace is running and there’s no oil smell and everything is lovely and I watch a DVD and I go to bed and I wake up at 4:00 AM and it’s cold and I go down to the basement and I hit the reset button and the furnace turns on for a minute and then turns off and I renew my curse on my furnace company. So now, it’s 7:26 and I am going to sit here shivering for 34 minutes until they open and I can call them up and speak to them sternly.
Also, I have a new template. Happy Effing Holidays.
In a couple of days, it will be Thanksgiving and most of us will be gathering with our families to eat until we develop the gout. It’s an American tradition. Some families also like to go around the table and have each person say what they are thankful for, but my family doesn’t do that because we are not mawkishly sentimental. We do have some Thanksgiving traditions, but they mainly involve dividing up the leftover potatoes.
I do have a lot of things to be thankful for, but they’re less satisfying to write about than the things I’m not thankful for. Thus, I now present, for the second year in a row:
Things I Am Not Thankful For (A Partial List)
1. Paying for Air
Gas stations used to have air and water pumps so that customers could do some of their own routine maintenance, like putting air in tires or water in the radiator or battery. Gas stations also used to have guys who would do those things for you, while they were pumping your gas and cleaning your windshield and attaching the bathroom key to an old tire in order to make using a gas station bathroom just that much more special, but I’m not sure if I can actually remember that time or if I’m thinking of Back to the Future. As I discovered after an hour of driving around to various stations last week, most places have done away with the air pumps entirely and when I finally found one, it was a coin-operated machine that charged 75¢ for three minutes of use. I don’t think everything should be free, but I do think air should be free. It annoys me to pay for air. I can almost see the justification for charging for water (really, I can’t, but I’m pretending to be reasonable), but the idea of charging for air seems patently ridiculous to me. People aren’t going to take more air than they need just because it’s free. Also, the hose is not long enough.
2. Anyone who, upon reading the previous sentence, thought to themselves, “That’s what she said!”
You know who you are.
3. The people who are outraged over this:
Seriously, Outraged People, calm down. Our president was merely following the customs and respecting the culture of the country he was in. He wasn’t, as Dick Cheney would have you believe, signaling weakness to our enemies. Also, and now I’m speaking directly to Mr. Cheney who sometimes reads my blog: perhaps you hadn’t heard, but Japan is not our enemy. Just so you know. Also, I really enjoyed your work as Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life.
Obama’s not even the first president to bow to a head of state. Richard Nixon exchanged bows with Emperor Hirohito:
Dwight Eisenhower was a big fan of bowing. Here he is bowing to Felix Houphouet-Boigny, who was the first president of the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire.
And here he’s bowing to Charles de Gaulle:
Although I’m not entirely sure about that one. It’s possible that Ike just dropped a quarter.
When George Bush met Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah in 2005, he favored hand-holding over bowing:
as well as a little kiss:
What? They’re just good friends!
In 2000, Bill Clinton showed his respect for the Vietnamese people by bowing to their flag:
and in 2006, showed that he likes Americans as well by bowing to Bush 41:
Bush 41 topped them all, however, when he combined bowing with bowling:
See! It’s fine! Bush is kowtowing to the pins, and yet the sports equipment of the world still respects the United States.
4. Man on the Street Interviews.
Nine times out of ten, the man on the street has nothing worthwhile to say. Neither does the woman on the street. Stick a camera and microphone in their faces and it becomes ten times out of ten. Therefore, I am not thankful that my local news stations feel the need to ask various men and women on the street what they think about recent local events such as a woman who got stabbed walking to her bus stop (“It’s scary! When I walk to my bus stop, I’m like, ‘am I going to get stabbed?’ I’m like … scared!”), or another woman who was found dead on the sidewalk (“That’s scary! I mean, was she like murdered? Or what? It makes me kind of like scared to walk around here!”), or some dumbass who shot himself in the leg at a downtown mall today (“Yeah! We were over at the Panda Express and then we heard BLAM! We didn’t know what it was, but then the police were all over the place! Yeah! It was just, like, BLAM! What? Yeah! I was scared!”)
Honestly, news people. All I want to know is where did it happen and did they catch the guy. I can infer that dead people on the sidewalk or guys with guns at the mall is scary without taking a poll first.
5. Black Friday.
Retailers are reporting that because they got stuck with a lot of excess inventory after the last Christmas season, they are going to restrict their inventory this year. So you can get a new 42″ flat-screen TV for twelve dollars and some pocket lint, but only if you are one of the first two people in line when the store opens at 4:00 AM. And the second person is probably not going to get one. The second person is going to be trampled to death by persons 3 through 746. Thus, the official start of the holiday shopping season? No thank you.
That’s it for Thankswithholding Day 2009. I hope you didn’t appreciate it as much as I didn’t.
My jury duty is complete, and it was muy interesting. For two days, I sat in the jury pool waiting room; I read two books, I talked to two people, I wore two new sweaters, and I was called out on zero panels. Except for lunchtime on day one, when I went over to the Bank of America Tower and ate a Cobb Salad in the food court, I never left the room.
There were about 60 of us, and when a panel was needed, the clerks would use a randomizer on the list and send down 15 people, six of whom would be selected for the jury. I know there was at least one other person who was never empaneled; he and I bonded over the fact that even if we were sent down to the courtroom, we’d never get seated because he was a retired police officer and I used to handle criminal cases, so the whole exercise was a gross waste of time for everyone concerned, by which we mostly meant us. He also said he was going to buy Sarah Palin’s book as a gag gift for his brother for Christmas, which proves that police brutality is alive and well.
The only other person I talked to was an elderly man who looked like Lloyd Bridges. I was writing something, and my pen came apart in my hand. I put it back together, resumed writing, and then it came apart again, sending the cartridge and the spring flying over towards Lloyd Bridges, who was seated nearby. He tore a small piece of paper from his lunch bag and handed it to me, telling me to wrap it around the barrel before screwing the pen back together. I did, it did the trick, and I promptly decided that I was adopting Lloyd Bridges as my third grandpa. Later, after we’d all been sitting in the chairs for a couple of hours, he stood to walk around, then paused to massage his own buttocks for a good thirty seconds. Grandparents can be so embarrassing.
In general, people didn’t talk to each other much. Everyone sat quietly, reading, using their laptops, sleeping, or staring out the windows at downtown and Elliott Bay. Early on the first day, I looked around and named a few people using the Michael Scott method. There was Leona Helmsley, Bald Spot, Froggie, Synthetic Weave, Beavis, Veneers, Lazy Eye, Stink Eye, Wig, and Puffy Coat. I had been behind Puffy Coat at the security screening at the building entrance. To the amusement of everyone present, she put her bag on the x-ray machine loudly telling the guard that he could look inside if he wanted (prompting him to say, “yes, I know. That’s why we have x-ray.”), removed her wedding rings, took off her puffy coat, and began to unlace her shoes before one of the guards took pity and stopped her. I’m just glad no one ever told her that underwire bras can set off the metal detectors. That could have caused a spectacle. Other than Puffy Coat, Grandpa Lloyd, and that woman who couldn’t figure out how to work the microwave, no one else did anything remotely noteworthy, thus making my insulting nicknames for them utterly superfluous.
The main thing that happened over the last two days is that I now have a renewed commitment to avoid public transportation. Parking near the courts is expensive and scarce, so I elected to ride the bus, which I haven’t done for a while. It is mostly as I remember, except that now there is a pervasive and unexplained aroma of curry on all routes. Seriously, what is with the curry smell? The curry smell is worse than the crazy people, because at least the crazy people get off the bus before the Free Ride Zone ends.
Fortunately, I did not find myself sitting near the crazy woman who was asking people, “is that your hair?” presumably meaning the stuff on their heads, and then using that to segue into telling them that she’s 24 years old and has a boyfriend, both being items of information I’m going to guess are not strictly the truth.
Not so fortunately, I had an insane driver on one ride. At one stop, a woman got on and sat on the sideways bench next to the door. She appeared to be developmentally disabled; she was childlike and removed an assortment of bus transfers from various days from her pocket, displaying them proudly to the other passengers. So naturally, the driver told her to “watch the bus!” then exited, sprinting into the building we were stopped in front of, leaving the bus running and one passenger alarmed/seething (hint: it was me). A couple of minutes later, he returned, asked Transfers if anyone tried to take the bus, loudly stated that he used the bathroom (which: congratulations), and we resumed on our way. I guess having peed or whatever put him in an excellent mood; he began honking at every other car on the road in a friendly yet aggressive fashion and asking all boarding passengers if what they were carrying in their bags was for him, even reaching out and pretending to grab at purses on a couple of occasions. At one point he laughed and stated, “people are going to think I’m on crack!” Well, sure. Now. Eventually, we reached my stop without crashing, and I disembarked as he called after me, “Much love!” You are incorrect, sir.
I’d started to write three different posts this past week, but abandoned them all mid-sentence once I realized that I had no topic. I haven’t even checked my front page to make sure I didn’t hit “Publish” instead of “Save Draft,” as I normally do in a somewhat obsessive-compulsive fashion whenever I stop writing in the middle of a post. This is how little I care. For further evidence, I now present to you: a meme. Exciting, isn’t it? Wait, does it help if I say it’s the Vanity Fair Proust Meme? (Which: what?) No, I know. It didn’t help me, either.
I know which blog I saw this on, but I don’t know if I should link to it or not. It’s something I saw as I was was randomly clicking around from blogroll to blogroll, but I don’t know that blogger and she doesn’t know me. Some people are annoyed when strangers link to them and others are annoyed when they don’t get credit. The social fabric of blogging is complex, yet stupid. I think I won’t link. She’ll never know.
Anyway. Here we go. Oh, also I should say that Proust was one of the most boring writers ever, so I will also be boring, as a kind of homage.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Already, this meme is making me tired. Because, really, “perfect happiness”? Is regular happiness no longer sufficient? See, this is exactly the problem. Remember when you could just eat a cheeseburger? You could eat a cheeseburger and be fine. Then it had to be a double cheeseburger or it simply wasn’t good enough. Then it had to have bacon on it or it would leave you vaguely unsatisfied. People will be happy when they stop wanting everything to be more than it is. And they will be also be happy when they stop thinking that constant happiness is a normal state of being. Happiness is an outlying emotion, much like sadness. You shouldn’t be sad all the time and you shouldn’t be happy all the time. It’s okay to just be regular sometimes. Be the cheeseburger. Hell, be the hamburger.
What is your greatest fear?
I am a little bit afraid of everything all the time, so there’s not one thing that stands out. I can’t decide if this is better or worse than having one big fear of something that is statistically unlikely to happen. I tend to worry about things going wrong when there’s no reason to worry, but unlike the Greatest Fear people, I don’t, for example, get hysterical when I see a circus clown. He will not kill you, Greatest Fear Person; at worst, he will throw a bucket of confetti on you.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
I can procrastinate like nobody’s business. I sometimes put off doing the thing that I was going to do in order to put off doing something else. In my defense, Plants vs. Zombies isn’t going to play itself, you know.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
It’s hard to pick only one. There are a lot of things that are equally deplorable. Intolerance. Cruelty. Greed. Selfishness. And sometimes Aroma.
On what occasion do you lie?
NEVER!
Okay, that’s not true. I will lie to get out of social gatherings that I don’t want to attend, but only if the other person forces me to. Normally in that situation, I will simply decline with no reason, but if they want a reason, I go with the unspecified, “I have plans.” Which is true. I have plans not to participate in their plans. If they want more of an explanation, then I’m happy to make something up. I figure once they start getting pushy about it, I’m not obligated to tell the truth.
What is your greatest extravagance?
I assume this means financially, but I’m pretty conservative about money. The exceptions are for business suits — because there is no clothing sadder than a cheap suit — and shoes because cheap shoes are a bad idea all the way around. Otherwise, I don’t spend much on clothes. I get excited when Old Navy has a sale. I buy my jeans at the same store where I buy bananas. And since I work mostly at home, I don’t see why I shouldn’t wear a t-shirt with a picture of a donkey on it that says, “I lost my ass in Las Vegas.”
I will also overpay for papayas and sashimi, but the latter is just good thinking. Beware the discount fish.
What is your current state of mind?
I don’t understand the question, but other than that, I feel fine.
What is the quality you most like in a man?
Being Clooneyesque, I suppose. More realistically, kindness. Thrift is good. Common sense. Open-mindedness. Generosity of heart. Not having a bad smell.
What is the quality you most like in a woman?
See above, except for the part where she looks like George Clooney.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
When and where were you happiest?
Again with the happiness! Be the hamburger!
Who are your favorite writers?
I’ve answered this question at least twice in previous memes. One of my favorite writers will be the person who writes a meme that does not include this question.
Which talent would you most like to have?
I’d like to be able to draw cartoons. I often doodle little animals during boring meetings, but they usually come out disproportionately sized and generally ungainly. I have the idea, totally unjustified by the way, that I would be good at brush drawing and can picture in my head the things I would paint, mainly of various forest creatures having tea parties, but I’ve never tried it because I don’t want to be disappointed when it turns out to be disproportionately sized blobs having tea with ungainly smudges.
If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
My brother would stop giving me ski socks for Christmas. I went skiing once when I was twelve. I do not now need multiple pairs of ski socks.
If you died and came back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
I would just be a regular person. I hope I can draw next time.
What do you dislike most about your appearance?
Let’s not dwell, please.
Where would you like to live?
Somewhere warm, with yellow sand beaches and coconut palms. And I’m not saying that because a series of thunderstorms has been giving us near-constant rain for the last several days; I’m saying it because, to quote IB, “Jesus help us, we’ve got 9 months of this bullshit in front of us.”
What is your most treasured possession?
Cat. Even at 3:30 AM when I hear her yakking up a hairball, that’s still my answer.
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Oh good, the emos are writing questions now. I guess it’s better than those sad little poems they put on their MySpace pages.
What do you most value in your friends?
I am trying to decide how this is different from what quality I like best in a man and what quality I like best in a woman.
What are your favorite names?
This is a stupid question.
What is it that you most dislike?
I don’t know if I dislike it more than any other thing that’s ever existed in the history of forever, which is apparently what I’m being asked here, but I’m starting to have negative feelings about this meme, if that helps.
What is your greatest regret?
It’s not something I talk about because I regret it. I swear, these questions are getting dumber by the minute.
How would you like to die?
What the hell kind of question is this? Don’t be morbid.
What is your motto?
I’m ignoring you now, Meme.
Or at least it was when I wrote that title. I completed one paragraph of this post yesterday then got distracted by a dull object, and before I knew it, it was the second day of the rest of the month. I had big plans for November! But it’s too late now.
I love the first of the month the way some people love the new year or springtime. The first of the month feels like possibility to me, as though I finally have the opportunity to accomplish every single thing that I failed to accomplish in my previous four plus decades of life. Clean closets, one lasting and vital contribution to society, and the laughter of all the little children of the world completed in a mere 28 to 31 days.
Then I spent a good chunk of yesterday napping, so the hell with it.
Besides, my month is already pretty well-scheduled with the sort of mundanities that provide a brief, yet false sense of accomplishment. When the month is over, I will be able to look back and say, “eh.”
In addition to my normally strenuous schedule of doing as little as possible, the following things are on the docket for November:
- jury duty, otherwise known as “three eight-hour days of sitting around reading a book and trying to avoid conversation with my fellow citizens who are bored because they neglected to bring their own damn book”;
- comparing prescription drug plans for my mom since her current plan just changed its copays from $12-$40 in 2009 to $57-$270 in 2010, followed by 96 hours of wondering exactly how amoral a person has to be to work in the health insurance industry these days;
- a meeting with the financial planner, which I need to prepare for by looking in the mirror and practicing my, “I completely understand what you are talking about and I would like to hear more about dollar cost averaging, it is so interesting, really I mean it” face;
- twenty-five minutes with the optometrist in order to ensure the health of my eyes and safeguard my vision for years to come;
- three hours with the optician in order to select eyeglasses that look almost but not quite identical to the eyeglasses I purchased in 2006 and also the ones I purchased in 2003.
- twelve hours of cooking Thanksgiving dinner;
- twenty minutes of eating Thanksgiving dinner;
- two hours of wishing my family would just go home already because Thanksgiving dinner is over and Survivor is about to start;
- thinking about how I should get my Christmas shopping done early so that I can spend all of December baking cookies in the shape of snowmen and watching holiday movies;
- feeling guilty about not getting my Christmas shopping done early;
- deciding that December will be a new month during which I can accomplish all my Christmas shopping as well as every single thing I have failed to accomplish in my previous four plus decades of life; therefore, I better rest up.
So, as you can see, November will be chock full of fun and excitement.
