Se7en

I guess I've been tagged to write up seven things no one knows about me.

Well, you asked:

1. I invented the word "rummage".

2. In 1973 I had a choice between quarterbacking for the New York mets or continuing my life as a three year old. I chose the latter, but was fired right about the time I turned four.

3. My favorite color is gunmetal jones.

4. I look very much like Paul Lynde when I'm not wearing make up.

5. I really don't need any badges, stinking or no.

6. Some people don't think there is a six. Well, there is.

7. I often dress my cats in hand knitted vests, which is criminal. They much prefer capes.

If you're reading this, consider yourself tagged.

Leave him alone [Warning: contains sexual vulgarity]

Many people are demanding that Mayor Sam Adams step down because he lied about a relationship he had with an 18 year old legislative aide a couple years back. I wish I wish I wish everyone, especially the news, would just shut up and let him do his job.

Of course he lied about it; he's gay, he's a politician and it's sex.

How did this question even come up? How is it in any way relevant to the administration of the city? When did Portland suddenly become full of holier-than-thou prudes? His detractors have said it's not about the sex, it's about his lying. Really? Because no one has ever lied about sex before. And certainly no politician has ever lied to get into office. This situation is so unusual.

Seriously, here's a question for anyone who thinks the Mayor should step down:

What would you do if your mother asked you: Do you like a finger up your ass when you fuck?

Do you think, just maybe, you might lie about that? I mean, what business of it is hers? What if she asked you that at a press conference?

Feel free to leave your answer to that question in comments. I'll be happy to let your local paper know so they can update your mother.

Disappointed horse*

I try not to be high maintenance. I try to be nice to any food servers or customer service folks. I don't want to be one of those people.

But sometimes, when it's my birthday, and the waitperson is one of those too-friendly types that sit next to you to take your order, and call you 'hon' and spend 10 minutes racing around a nearly-empty restaurant giving other people who arrived later than you their bread while you sit, blood sugar plummeting, sometimes I just get grumpy. And that was my main emotion during my birthday dinner. 

When our waitperson finally came to take our order, I ordered what I thought was not a difficult option for an Italian restaurant: cheese ravioli and a salad. 10 minutes later, the salad was delivered (but none of the promised bread). We sat eating our salad, all the while watching the waitperson flit from table to table (3 others in all), handing out bread and pouring more water to all the other tables but ours.

By now I had drunk half the wine. The hypoglycemia and brand new old age and lack of bread were beginning to put me in a bad mood. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the waitperson start to approach us (without bread in hand). She kneels down next to me and puts her hands on our table. 

"So here's the bad news, honey,"  she said. "Apparently our cheese ravioli are bad. Just... bad. So we need to find you something else to eat."

I blinked at her. It had been 25 minutes since she took our order. How long did it take to determine a bad ravioli? I guess I appreciate that they didn't serve me putrid, salmonella laced pasta-- or whatever made the dish unservable-- but could they maybe have figured that out sooner? While I looked at the menu, she started yelling out other options-- all of which I didn't want. Sausage? No. Calamari? No no no. She sneered when I told her I didn't eat red meat or sea kittens, like I was purposely making her life more difficult.

She started pushing this butternut squash ravioli, which seems to have avoided the other ravioli calamity, with some sort of spiced cream sauce that didn't sound like my kind of meal. Instead I chose the chicken parmesan. She shook her head.

"Oh, honey. That takes 20 minutes to cook. You don't want to wait that long." I considered saying maybe I wouldn't mind if we maybe had some fucking bread, but I didn't want to be a bitch. Again she pushed the butternut johnsons. The Husband was ever so slightly rolling his eyes (he thinks I'm picky at restaurants, but honestly-- I don't try to be), so I gave in and ordered the dish, even though it was built without any individual ingredients I actually liked. I asked if we could please get some bread.

"It's coming up," she hissed, "It's about ready to come out of the oven."

The dinner finally arrived, and one bite later I knew I was not going to eat it. So now The Husband and I are both in bad moods, eating (or in my case, drinking) in silence. 

Later on, our waitperson came by and I requested a box to go. She looked at me sternly and said "Only if you liked it." 

OK - wait a fucking second. I didn't like it, but I let myself be talked into ordering it, so it's on my head. Why the hell would you care if I liked it or not? If I said no, would you have taken it off the bill? I thought not. 

If she'd brought the bread and cut back on the attitude, I would have chalked up this whole thing as a bad choice. But she doesn't get to judge me for that. I tried my best to be nice and unassuming. I didn't throw the dish on the floor in a tantrum. Maybe I should have.

So, I had a really crappy night. The next morning I called in sick to work, and not just because I had a sore throat (though I did, for a time). Mostly I was just depressed. That single experience, where I had the pleasure of paying $60 to leave a restaurant hungry and angry, ruined my birthday. I know part of it was my fault for thinking that just because it was my birthday everything should have been perfect, and it was also my fault for not sticking up for myself and maybe sending the dish back for something more suited to my apparently difficult taste buds. 

But goddamn it, she could have at least brought the bread in a timely fucking manner.

* To make sense of this entry's title, please click here. Please, please click. There.

On the eve of a certain age

This past Saturday while talking to my 7-year old niece , she referred to herself (for whatever reason) as "young monk". I don't know why; she's just an enigma smothered in silly sauce. Anyway, later on she referred to me as "old monk".

Nothing like a 7-year old to put everything in that really awesome "no really, you're ancient" perspective.

I turn 39 tomorrow, though luckily I'm not one of those women who feel the need to add "for the first time". I hope to never be so fearful of irrelevance that I start doing that.

I've been told that I look much younger than I should ('much' being relative, of course), but this just makes me embarrassed and a little suspicious. That still hasn't stopped me from buying all those schmancy creams and oils to fight wrinkles I don't have yet and bags under my eyes that I've had since grade school.

I don't remember ever trying to imagine what I would be like at thirty-nine. That seemed so far away, so impossibly remote that I must have assumed I would end up like all my teachers who were, of course, polyester-slacksters with a confounding lack of pop culture knowledge.

Well, my pants are pajamas and I'm nothing but pop culture references. So tomorrow is my birthday and I will answer truthfully when anyone asks my age, although I'm sure we will both leave the conversation disappointed.

Brand spankin' new embarrassment

This one is quick and terribly fresh. 

A new person started in the marketing department today and, as usual, he started his computer training this afternoon. While I oversee the training, I'm not doing most of it, now that my two "trainers in training" are taking over piece by piece.

I met the trainee before the class started. He looked like Paul Rubens and when he shook my hand he made eye contact and held my hand far too long. I don't consider myself overly sensitive, but this really creeped me out. 

So, before he came in for class, I shut the door and whispered to both newbie IT people that I had just met the new guy and he seemed to me to be a little creepy.

To which the boy newbie (who is creepy in his own right) said, "He's my best friend, you know".

Well, of course he is.

Keystone Kommute

An all-zone ticket for the Tri-met busses and Max lines costs $2.30. When I have certain doctors appointments, I have to leave work early and take a half-hour, multiple zone ride to Beaverton, then walk nearly a mile to the office. Since the husband occasionally has to take Max to his office in Beaverton, we maintain a cache of all-zone tickets.

Since I had an appointment after work today, I was pleased that I managed to remember to grab two tickets before I headed off to work.

"Look at me," I thought as I tucked them in my back pocket, "with the thinking ahead, etc."

I was nearly at the bus stop where I catch the bus every morning, ready to board as I usually do with my Zones 1 and 2 bus pass, when I reached into the pocket of my brand new awesome hoodie and did not find the wallet that I had tucked into it four blocks ago.

Well, poo.

A neighbor I had greeted as I left the house this morning found my wallet whilst walking her adorable pointy dog, and she met up with me as I was retracing my steps. Wallet back in hand (and NOT in pocket), I headed to another bus stop, this one for a different line that is usually busier than I like. I prefer not to stand or sit next to anyone when I am commuting, as I try to avoid interacting with anyone, at any time.

Well, the bus was full of snotty young whippersnappers storing their weirdly irony-free Strawberry Shortcake backpacks on the empty seats next to them, and so I stood with all the other worker bees who really didn't want to start a ruckus with the rude and mopey teens and I didn't really want to sit by the guy who smelled like dog shit, anyway.

Skip forward to lunch. I'm off to the place down the street for an egg salad. Nervous that I'd lose my wallet again, I check my various pockets for my accoutrements: phone, iPod, wallet, bus ticket.

Ticket? I stop and discover that there is only one all-zone ticket in my back pocket.

Crap. How does something fall out of a back pocket? It's not like I spend my days hanging upside down from a jungle gym.

Well, having experienced missing a train because the stupid machine wouldn't print the ticket fast enough, I thought I'd buy my replacement ticket in advance from the machine at the stop before I picked up my egg salad. I carefully tucked my purchase into one of my front pockets and headed off to the sandwich place. I spent the rest of the day suddenly wigging out and checking all my pockets in a panic. Everything seemed to be in order.

Work continued and finally let me go. As the train approached the stop at its appointed time, I reached into my front pocket and pulled out my ticket. And it was then I noticed the note at the bottom that read "EXPIRES AT 2:14 PM".

Shit. I'd forgotten that tickets bought in the machines, rather than at the Tri-met office, expired after two hours.

Well, I still had the one that survived the trip this morning, but not wanting to have to buy another ticket for the return trip, I risked getting caught by a traffic cop and boarded the train without buying another ticket. I managed to get to my stop without incident. Huzzah!

So, I walked to my appointment, whined to my therapist, scored some sleeping pills and started my trip home. As I walked past the bus stop half way to the station, I checked the arrival table and saw that there was one due in two minutes. Well, wasn't that handy? I watched the silhouette of the bus lumber toward me, I reached into my back pocket. My empty back pocket.

Fuckity fuckerson! What? Why? Argh!

I dug into my bag trying to find my wallet, which of course had settled underneath every single thing I had in it, simultaneously reliving my sandwich purchase, trying to remember how and how much I had paid for it. Did I pay cash? How much did I pay? Did I have any enough left to buy another goddamn ticket?

Well, turns out I bought the egg salad with my ATM card and I had exactly 3 dollars-- three soft and crumpled dollars that are difficult to stuff into the bus fareboxes. The machine finally took my fare, but its initial resistance allowed the driver to lecture me for wearing a black coat while waiting at a bus stop at night while she handed me my transfer.

I sat at the transit center waiting for the train that would finally get me home, clutching my transfer with both hands, and I wondered where my lost tickets ended up. I decided that if they weren't found by an indigent person desperate to get to Gresham, I imagined they were riding the wind in poetic circles like a plastic bag in nineties a movie.

'Tis a gift?

Every year at xmas, I start to get a feeling of excitement and dread. I like presents and I like my family, but xmas doesn't come with just family. It comes with That Woman. And what comes with That Woman at xmastime are creepy, horrible gifts.

There have been some doozies (The husband once got a book on county fairs, because everyone knows how fascinating county fairs are to the youngsters these days-- unlike those dirty state fairs; State fairs are Sodom and/or Gomorrah with ferris wheels!). She once gave my six year old nephew a figurine of a bear doing taxes. You can count on her giving at least one person something she's received as a free gift.

This year I was afraid she wouldn't live up to her reputation. And then I opened this:

That grey blob is a cat, and I suppose that's why she thought to give it to me, since any time you're at a loss for a gift you can always give a cat lady some sort of cat-related thingy.

This is creepy, right? I gotta say, when I saw this little clay faceless lady holding a blob-- the first thing I thought of was Dr. Who:

And everyone knows Dr. Who creations make great holiday stocking stuffers. Order yours today!

Night fever

Once again, I find myself up at nearly three in the morning, unable to sleep. It seems like it's always the same: I head off to bed between 11:00 PM and midnight, lay awake for two or three hours, then finally get up to waste another hour before heading back to bed and trying again.

I used to think I knew why I couldn't sleep, but after trying various combinations of drugs (2 of these kind, none of those, let's treble this one and halve the other, etc.) I'm left baffled and irritated.

And sleepy, but only at times where I don't want to be sleepy: at work, on the bus, in a planetarium.

[We interrupt this blog post to point out that the picture above is of the caption I added to the existing Shag cat tattoo on my left arm. I got it on New Year's day with Sisters J and K. Well, K was just a spectator, as were my niece and brother in law, but it was nice to have an outing with all my sisters-- it's been a very long time since we've been able to do that.]

I realize that posts about sleep deprivation aren't very exciting unless they are being written after many days of no sleep at all, so I'll recap how things have been during this holiday period:

Xmas: We were snowed in all week, so we didn't make the trip to the Bay Area. While I was bummed that I missed some of the family functions, I wasn't so upset about missing out on the airport experience. Flying during the holiday season is a pain in the ass no matter what the weather, but maneuvering through an airport flush with stranded passengers is not my idea of a merry xmas.

New Year's: I am well beyond the age where New Year's Eve means bushels of drink and dancing in a venue packed with drunks and dancers. The last time we went anywhere public for the changing of the years was the big '99 - '00 deathwatch down at Pioneer Courthouse Square. Once we found out the party would not be ringing in the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Camel of ATM Failure, we headed home for microwave mac & cheese and bed after that. Anyway, this year we went to K's and played board games. It was really fun.

But the husband and I forgot to kiss at the stroke of midnight, so I'm not sure how that bodes for this new year.

Belated family xmas on 1/2/2009: After going out with the sisters for a quick tattoo, as mentioned above, we met again the next day to open all the presents from xmas that we missed while being marooned in the house the week previous. Because my birthday is just three weeks after xmas, I had more presents mixed in, to the point of embarrassment, really. I had six or seven more presents for everyone else, which made me feel like a gift glutton surrounded by piles of empty boxes and mountains of ripped wrappings. Counting the xmas gifts alone, we received far more than we gave. I really do feel like a cheap bastard who gamed the system of xmas gift giving.

Still though: we made out like bandits, although not on New Year's where one expects to make out.

Thanks, sisters. Thisters.