Unsurprising news

I stopped by House of Zathras yesterday and found this fun website with lots of clickable things, including this one:



Created by OnePlusYou - Free Online Dating


Maybe I should swear less. I mean, it's not like I don't know better, and it's not as if it would be terribly painful to swear in less (or is that fewer? Is "post" a count or a non-count noun? Could this be a more post-modern problem?) than 28% of my posts. Right?

More later. Papers to grade. Grammar to battle. Etc.

Sin of the week, 3/30/08

Well, anyway.

To be all official about it, the worst thing I did this week, probably, was call out sick when I wasn't sick. I was overpowered with having too much work to do of other kinds. So I did it. The calling out. I didn't even feel guilty about it. I still don't.


Other notable bad behavior:

1) swearing
2) drinking
3) eating too many jelly beans
4) upsetting my friends by not returning their phone calls and emails
5) having hateful thoughts about my headologist
6) drinking an entire 24 ounce can of beer at 2 o'clock on Friday afternoon
7) firing an unlicensed firearm (and indoors, too)

You betcha I'll be telling you more about that tomorrow.

Happy Sunday.

Me too

Of course I have done it. And if you have never done it, there might be something a little bit wrong with you. There IS such a thing as TOO GROSS to merit future proximity to your person - not matter how greatly the grossness quotient could be reduced with hot, soapy water.

(Welcome to my post about throwing away your dishes so you don't have to wash them. And you thought I was talking about my boyfriends. Shame on you! Oh and I will be writing about this topic, inexcusable as it is, in an inexcusably verbose manner. Thank you for stopping by).

Several months ago, we (meaning cat-head and I) went through a difficult period where we could barely breathe without snarfing up a whole nose-hole full of fruit flies. It was a heartbreaking time for us. You can read it about it here.

What we discovered, after we (I) had disposed of all their hairy, wiggling, multi-fanged bodies, is that fruit flies are tenacious of life. They hang on, even without food, water, reliable internet access, and affection or encouragement. They wait for you to change your mind about them. Sort of like has very often happened to me when I get a boyfriend and then I try to unget him. (I tend to date people who don't like to be broken up with. Stop changing the subject every other minute).

So anyway I deloused my tiny cubicle of an apartment and then I discovered the source of the issue: a tea saucer I had left in the sink with the merest tiniest smear of something on it. Yes, I know I should not have left my apartment for three days and neglected to wash the tea saucer. I know I am gross. I know. (Stop acting all like you can't believe anyone would ever even want to date me in the first place and STOP TALKING about how you'd be dying to get broken up with if you mistakenly (mistake! error!) started dating me. Cut that racket out, already).

So I decided, as any sane person would, to wash the tea saucer that had provided (apparently) an attractive breeding opportunity for what probably started out as two lonely fruit flies - until they had all kinds of filthy, dirty, perverted sex under my tea saucer, had baby flies and then proceed to have sex with them, too. One would hope, since they were having sex with their own children, that it was at least a little less filthy dirty and perverted. But you know what? You would obviously hope for that because you are a nice person, but you would also be (obviously) be wrong. Everyone knows that fruit flies are dirty, nasty, whores - lacking, obviously, my very fine and deeply felt moral tastes - you know - the ones that prevent me from dating men who suggest that we should get naked on the first dates. Or even the second. Because as girlfriends go, I am totally lame. (Note: it is usually this sort of creature that is so difficult to get rid of - you know, after he has discovered that he thinks I am lame because I don't think it's such a great idea to engage in certain reproductive behavior with him even though I am not certain I can remember his last name and I am unsure if he even is who he says he is - or is even single. Notable illustrations of this type: Grip Spitzer). But that's not the point and I wish you would stop interrupting me to talk about my lack of a love life. I get that you think I am gross and unlovable, already. Just stop talking about it for half a second. Please.

Anyway, I was waiting for the water to get hot and seeing as I had some time on my hands, I amused myself by using my very active, fine tuned imagination to call up images of fruit fly porn.

(I'll give you a minute to do the same. Go ahead. Do it. Don't make me post photographs of breeding insects. Because I think you know I will totally do it if you don't comply).


And then, of course, obviously, I realized that really, the only sane thing to do was get that tea saucer, smudged or no, out of my cubicle as fast as I could carry it down to the garbage chute and listen to it clang its way down to the basement to be removed by the custodian, placed in a plastic container, bagged, loaded onto a truck, driven, and delivered unto a landfill, probably in New Jersey, where right now it is STILL disgusting because it was at least once the scene of a horrific three day fruit fly orgy.


You know what? Fine. If you insist on continuing to harass me about how I don't have a boyfriend, fine. We can talk about it. Or at any rate we could if you would stop making all that noise and listen to me for a change.


Certain recent events and also something that is at this very minute not in the trash, (even though other people might pretend to think it's gross) has convinced me - even at the cost of my sanity (was I ever all that sane? I mean, take a look at this post - wow) that no matter how much I like to think I am done, I am, in fact, probably not done. And yes, it's because I suddenly remember, as a direct result of one completely not disgusting object,* what is nice about having a boyfriend.

I can't even decide if this is good news. But if you think for one second of one second that I would carry it down to the garbage chute and listen to it clang its way down to the basement to be removed by the custodian, placed in a plastic container, bagged, loaded onto a truck, driven, and delivered unto a landfill, probably in New Jersey - horror! I will not do it, so you can quit acting like it is news to you that I am gross in this particular way. You knew perfectly well what you were doing and I might - get this - just not talk to you until you admit that you knew.

Thank you for reading.

*Don't worry about it if you are not the one person on the planet who knows what it is. I can't tell you. Because if I did then you would KNOW and also you might not get it (although I very much suspect you would) and then we might not feel the same way about each other. Why risk that?

Questions answered

Dear Nina,

1) How long will it be until you start writing real posts again? Lately it's all pictures and quizzes. What the F?

I am so overwhelmed by my various responsibilities that I consider every day that I don't get fired, get evicted, or get dead - an accomplishment. Wait, that doesn't answer the question. Seriously? May. As in when the semester is over.

2) When will you start responding to comments again?

All comments are loved, cherished, petted and given cookies, handmade socks, and beer. In my mind. Did I mention I am so busy I can barely find five minutes to give those gangsters over at Blog 365 their due? Seriously. If I don't post every day, they show up right in my computer (ok not really) and doing terrible things to me with their knowingness. Wait. Did I answer the question? The answer is "soon." (I honestly don't know. Thank you for your patience).

3) All your wanking self-pity is getting old. Get excited about something again. Go climbing. Get a life, ok?

OK. I will. Oh and for the record, I am happy today. Oh and I'll be blogging about why on Monday.

Purple. Or course it's purple.

I found this quiz over Em's place.

Why am I not surprised?

Fattitude and apathy

toothpastefordinner.com

I am too full of jelly beans and fapathy to write too much today, so will this cover it?

Love,
Nina

Bullets and bus drivers

No, no. Not THOSE kind of bullets.

I mean the kind you make when you are drowning in impudent commas and belligerent semi-colons and mis-appropriated dashes - and - dare I say it? subject-verb disagreements. The kind you make when the last little wisp of joy will escape from your soul if you see one more dangling modifier.

* I took a taxi this morning. It was because of Jesus. (No, I am never going to provide an explanation for that).

* Upon exiting the taxi, I lost my balance just a little, and my four dollars change slipped from my fingers and blew away into the street. That was because of Jesus, too. (Yes, someone needed that $4 more than I do).

* I took the bus home after having the last little wisp of... never mind.

* On the bus was a homeless woman, the kind with a sick, desperate smell of unwashed alcoholism emanating from her person.

* Three teenaged boys on the bus made fun of her. She could hear them and she was blinking back tears.

* To the first teenager, I said, "Watch your language, there are ladies present," indicating the half-dead homeless woman.

* To the second and third, I said, "I am ashamed of you."

* Gosh, they were bad-ass. All staring at the floor acting like nothing happened.

* On my way off the bus, I turned to say thank you, as I always do, and the driver said, smiling, "You go on, pretty white girl. You go on."

* Jelly beans are on sale.

s a painless as this. I really didn't mind it half so much as I make it sound.

Thank you for reading.

Green fields of Unicorns

This post has nothing to do with green fields. Or unicorns.

It has to do with a memory I had this morning while a twenty year old student was, just for me, explaining the procedure for getting high using a nail and a can of whipped cream. What a nice kid.

So while he was telling me of this and many other common household items that can be used to psycho-pharmacological advantage, I remembered, suddenly, that way back when I was a sorority girl, we had a, um, sorority rush ritual we used for weeding out people who were not funny enough to be our official branded college BFFs.

What we did, on the third night of rush, was lead our prospective members into a candle lit room. There, we would solemnly chant the code of values our national headquarters held so dear. At the moment of highest possible solemnity, we held up cans of hairspray that we conveniently placed on the table, flicked a bic lighter, and produced a plume of pure flame in front of the dear faces of our possible future official branded college BFFs.

Any potential member who failed to laugh was cut. You simply couldn't be one of us if you didn't get why that was funny.

Yes, it was a violation of fire code.

Yes, we were reprimanded by "national" for doing it.

Yes, we continued to do it anyway.

I used to think that sorority / fraternity membership was bullshit. Truthfullly, I still do. But I can't ignore that fact that sixteen years after graduation, the only people I keep in touch with from college are sorority sisters. Chand, Newsy, and Tree, and Zard. Just yesterday, Chand told me I could move in with her if I needed to get out of the city and not deal for a while. I wouldn't even ask that of my own sisters, and she offered without me asking.

Despite the fact that sororities are elitist and stupid and despite the fact that I am now Jack's medulla oblongata, I really do have some good friends.

(Give me a break. It's Tuesday).

The point was... what?

Why did I post a bunch of quotations from Fight Club?

I did it because I realized at around four in the morning that my life had become a lot like the movie, except where the part where I get to smash people in the face.

Let's review the similarities:

1) I haven't been able to sleep for about six months.
2) I have been forgetting things. A lot of them.
3) My employers are "concerned" about me.
4) I have developed an imaginary friend who lives in the computer (hint: her name is Nina).
5) Nina, despite real me's grief and terror, is trying to hit bottom.
6) Nina, despite real me's grief and terror, does not believe anymore. In anything.
7) Nina, despite real me's terrible fear of basically everything, is branching out, colonizing, taking risks.
8) Slowly, surely, Nina is making real me's decisions.
9) It is not yet known to real me whether Nina's sway over me is damaging to real me.
10) Nor is it clear to real me that Nina isn't just me. With a different name and more courage.

Neither of us will be building an army or blowing things up. But Nina very much wants to get out of the city. Nina very much thinks it is time we moved to Canada or Utah or Mazatlan or Cuzco.

Nina wants out, wants to start over.

Scared of me yet?

Well, don't worry. Tomorrow, I'll talk about rainbows and unicorns and fields of green.

Promise.

I think his name

"With insomnia, you are never really asleep and never really awake. Everything goes thin and papery. Everything is copy of a copy of a copy."

"No, no, I want bowel cancer!"

"Marla's philosophy of life is that she might die any minute. The tragedy, she said, is that she didn't."

"On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone goes to zero."

"Have you ever heard a death rattle before? Do you it will live up to its name? Or will it'll be just a death hair-ball... Air to evacuate soul... 10, 9, 8...5, 4, 3..."

"You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. In all probability, he hates you. It's not the worst thing that can happen."

"It is not until we have lost everything that we are free to do anything."

"This is your life your life, and it's ending one minute at a time... if you wake up in a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?"


What was his name again?

Easter, Blog365 style

I think if I tried for rest of my life to top last week's sin of the week, I would fail. I don't think it gets better than metaphorically and otherwise disrespecting pretty much everything about God. Therefore, this week, no sin reporting. If you wish to report one of yours (as some of you do), go for it. If not, just look at these mildly funny pictures, have a jelly bean, and watch some basketball. Happy Easter.

My Day in Pictures

Merry and I met for coffee in Union Square today. We were just about to order the coffee when we realized we were around the corner from Max Brenner, a chocolate shop/lunch place we both like a lot. And the idea of hot chocolate with schnapps in it was oddly appealing. So off we went.

On the way, we crossed Union Square and discovered that in the middle of the square, the ground was six inches deep in goose down.




Intrigued, we walked a bit deeper into the fuzz. In the middle of it, we found a swarm of about 50 people engaged in a violent, yet joyful pillow fight:





And then walked through even more fuzz:



*sigh*

And then we ate chocolate:



And then we climbed the escalator in what passes for a mall in Manhattan, so we could take these pictures of discarded pictures on the roof of the train station:




So there you have it. No bus rides, no limping, no disorderedness - not much of anything, really, except a bunch of people beating each other about the head with pillows. Oh and there was chocolate and a cheese plate and I tried on a pair of shoes later. Oh and I had popcorn for dinner. Oh and did I say thank you yet? Thank you for not walking out on me for being absolutely terrifying? Thanks. It means a lot to me.

Hope y'all had a good day.

So anyway

In the spirit of not breaking my internet promise to post every single day, I will describe the second half of my terrible Thursday, the part I find most funny, and the part that I think you will find, well. Whatever.

Background:

I haven't been sleeping well for six months. I suspect the cause is the many issues, obligations, and dramatic events of the last three years. I resolve, after two hours of restless sleep and many events, conversations and items misfiled in my brain, that I must get control of this problem. So I call the headologist and tell her I NEED to see her. She says come at 2:15.

Additional Data:

I have had, for about a week, a really sore right knee. I don't know what I did to it, but it hurts. Also, I have $10 left on my metrocard, and each bus ride is $2. Also, I have spent a heartbreaking amount of money lately on electronics - not because I wanted to buy electronics but because I had faulty existing electronics and need them pretty desperately to do my job. Also as a general rule, I am anti-taxi. Taxis are for rich people and I am not rich. (I do take them when it's late and I am drunk, but that's for a whole other safety reason). I also spent a terrifying amount of money this week on a trip to Africa. Moving along then.

What happened:

I did what I normally do on Thursday mornings, only it didn't go well. I needed to get to 5th Avenue since there is no bus up Park Avenue, but the blocks are short in that part of town so I knew I could hobble and probably make it on time. I was already in a desperately sour mood when I hobbled to the bus stop at 57th St. I waited seven minutes for the crosstown variety, and boarded it at 1:57. The crosstown bus went about half a block, and then it stopped to pick up a person in a wheel chair with no left leg and half a right leg.

Now, most people would understand that losing five entire minutes so the bus driver can activate the lowering platform, move the wheel-chair onto the platform, raise the platform, wheel the legless creature into the bus, raise a bank of seats and wheel the chair and the legless creature into position and apply the stabilizing straps to the wheels of the chair is no special inconvenience next to spending the rest of your life with the exquisite inconvenience of having no left leg and half a right leg.

As you almost certainly already know, I am not most people.

So then it was 2:03, and I was agitated about making it to 5th avenue and getting a northbound bus. We got moving again and two blocks later, at Broadway, the legless creature most deserving of my compassion and understanding needed to get off the bus. So that entire process of stabilizing, wheeling, positioning, activating, lowering and pushing had to be performed in reverse. About the silliness of this process, I will only say that I, with my sprained right knee, could have pushed that wheel chair two blocks in less time than it took to perform these ministrations.

One block later, at 2:10, the bus driver got a call on his secret wireless informing him that it was time for his union-mandated coffee break. He parked the bus, disembarked, and vanished into Starbucks for a full four minutes. He returned, looking caffeinated and happy. I was the opposite of happy in at least nine ways, but I think you could probably infer from all my previous ramblings that I would almost certainly be near hysterical when at 2:13, the bus broke down at 6th Avenue. We were all ordered off and we were not given transfers because the bus driver was "out" of them.

I considered walking. My right leg really, really hurt. So I waited until 2:17 for the next bus, paid another $2, and we got to 5th Avenue uneventfully. It was then 2:23. Between me and the headologist, there remained 1 long block (which I already knew I had to walk) and twenty two short blocks. That's 1.1 miles, total. If my knee had not felt like it had been Nancy Kerriganed, I could have walked that in about 17 minutes. But I had gotten mysteriously clobbered right square on the knee. I just couldn't remember who did it or how it happened because I am suffering from sleep-deprivation amnesia.

So I waited, and waited, and waited for a northbound bus. It got to be 2:30. It got to be 2:32. I hailed a cab and spent the last $5 I have to get to the headologist's office, where I arrived to find that since I was a half hour late, I would have to be worked in whenever she had a spare moment. It was then 2:45, and I needed to get to Soho by 4:40, which might as well be Kansas as far as transportation in New York City goes. I was getting very nervous.

At 3:00, I was given a questionnaire to fill out. It asked me circle words that describe my feelings.




I won't sport with your intelligence or violate patient confidentiality by telling you what my form looked like. Go ahead and assume I circled a lot of words. Including stupid.

I turn in my form and after a number of minutes I can't recall, I was called into Headologist Bootstraps' inner chamber. She picked through my file, read my form, looked back at my form, and then gave me the compassionate perfectly mentally well smile that lots of people give me. Don't have any problems? Come on over. You can have some of mine, and then maybe you'll stop smiling at me like that.

Anyway, here is a truncated version of the conversation we had.

Headologist B: I think we must get your sleep problem under control.

Nina: I agree.

Headologist B: I want you to try Restoril --

Nina: WAIT! Isn't that an anti-psychotic???

Headologist B: (compassionate smile) No, it's a sleep aid. You are thinking of Risperdal.

Nina: It was just a tuna-fish sandwich! I didn't really throw it! It was more of, like, a toss! A gentle toss!

Headologist B: (compassionate smile) Restoril is a sleep aid. Have you been throwing things?

Nina: No.

Headologist B: (compassionate smile, raised eyebrow) No?

Nina: Absolutely not. I have no idea what gave you that idea. As ideas go, that's the wrong idea.

Headologist B: would you like more Xanax?

Nina: yes, please.

Headologist B: OK. We could also try putting you on a very low dose of anti-depressants. Does that sound like a good idea?

Nina: What would be wrong with a whole big walloping mouthful of them?

Headologist B: I suspect that you have a mood disorder, and anti-depressants might aggravate the problem.

Nina: I don't have a mood disorder. I just have problems.

Headologist B: Don't you have a cousin with classic manic-depression?

Nina: Yes, but I have not talked to her in years. We are not friends, so I couldn't have gotten it from her.

Headologist B: (flipping through chart) I see that you once described your mother's behavior as erratic.

Nina: My mother was Mary Poppins. Shut up.

Headologist B: Did you throw a tuna fish sandwich at the wall recently?

Nina: Gentle toss.

Headologist B: (compassionate smile) Would you like to try some Lexapro?

Nina: Would you like me to try some Lexapro?

Headologist B: I am more concerned with your insomnia. Let's try to solve that first.

Nina: I agree. But can I still have Xanax?

Headologist B: Yes, but not the big ones.

Nina: (scanning the room for things to throw) You totally don't get me.

Headologist B: Actually, I do. (hands me a pile of prescriptions with notes and directions on them).

Nina: I don't have a mood disorder.

Headologist B: You might have one, and you might not. But I do have a feeling about you.

Nina: What is your feeling? That I am crazy?

Headologist B: (compassionate smile) I have been doing this a long time. Don't worry about labels. We'll discuss this after you try this new sleep medication. Come back next week.


So I left Headologist B's office at 3:30, thinking that surely I could hobble over to 2nd Avenue and catch the M15 bus down to the pharmacy and at least drop off the prescriptions before trekking over to Soho. So I board the bus with my slips of paper and my backpack and my sore knee. The bus goes two blocks before... care to guess? No?

A woman in a wheel chair (this one had legs but hers didn't work) needed to board the bus. So I lost an additional five minutes watching the bus driver activate the lowering platform, move the wheel-chair onto the platform, raise the platform, wheel the legless creature into the bus, raise a bank of seats and wheel the chair and the legless creature into position and apply the stabilizing straps to the wheels of the chair. I am pretty sure you know that we got stuck in traffic around the 59th street bridge and that the wheel chair passenger most deserving of my compassion and understanding had to disembark somewhere in Turtle Bay. And that it was fully 4:00 pm before I got within hobbling distance of the pharmacy, and that by then I knew if I got off the bus instead of taking it all the way to Houston St and catching an M27 bus to Spring St, I would be late.

So I remained on the bus, rolling the words "mood" and "disorder" back and forth across my brain. In the hour and fifteen minutes I was on that bus, which, by the way, only travelled four miles in that amount of time, I discovered the appalling truth: worrying about whether you have a mood disorder can seriously disorder your mood. I had slumped against the window and closed my eyes, determined to shut it all out. Right about the time I started to feel slightly less disordered, a woman boarded the bus carrying a duffle bag with two cats in it, two very pissed off and uncomfortable cats. She sat down across from me, and the two cats poked their heads out of the top of her bag, looked me square in the face, and screamed at me for forty of the minutes I was on the bus. It was as if someone had picked up cat-head, cloned him and wrapped both crazy felines around my head. By the time I got to Soho, I was twenty minutes late and very nearly crying. As I got off the bus, I turned to the driver to say thank-you, as I always do. He put his hand on my arm and said, "It's gonna be ok, baby."

This concludes my narrative of my terrible Thursday. I only told you about half of it. The first half I won't be talking about.

Have a good pre-Easter Saturday.

Pulling the cage to pieces

"I was interrupted... with a voice which I took to be that of a child, which complained: 'it could not get out,'...and looking up, I saw it was a starling hung up in a little cage. I stood looking at the bird, and to every person who came through the passage, it ran fluttering towards the side which they approached it, with the same lamentation of its captivity--'I can't get out,' said the starling. God help thee!--said I--but I'll let thee out,cost what it will; so I turned the cage about to get at the door; it was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces... The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his breast against it...--I fear, poor creature, said I, I cannot set thee at liberty.--'No,' said the starling; 'I can't get out--I can't get out.'

I vow I never had any affections more tenderly awaked."


Don't google it. Or do, as you wish.

Boring, much?

I wonder if you nice people ever get tired of seeing different versions of the same things:

1) me bitching about anything from noises in my head to faulty electronics to my backside, and

2) me posting pictures I took while leaning out my window.

Today I'll assume that you can stand two more pictures. I took the first yesterday at 5:45 in the morning, after I had given up entirely on going back to sleep:



When I got home at 9pm, I took a picture of this third and rare kind of sparkle hour:




I am trying to construct a narrative of the events of yesterday and still be entertaining.

Preview: an unexpected guest, a lot of limping, one angry oh wait make that two angry letters, a one hour bus ride, a surprising (not in a good way) conversation, two yowling cats, a lot more limping, another bus ride, and a whole lot more money going away capped off by a sad-making email.

But I did sleep last night. Perhaps this is all you ever needed to know about yesterday, anyway.