Awkwardly Social

If you weren’t sick of the daily posting for the month of November (most days, TWICE daily posting) you are certainly going to be sick of me come January 1st. “Why?” you ask, oh gentle reader. I’m doing this other thing called “Holidailies,” and look, I don’t come up with these twee names, I just choose to be a part of their wicked, wicked games*.

I’m doing it because I actually found some new (to me) blogs during NaBloFuckin’A and from judging from my e-mail box and stats, I also found a couple of new readers in return. I like new readers, it keeps me on my toes. It makes me bring the good stuff, or at least try to bring the good stuff. Also, as I twittered about, writing every day unlocks the attic in my creativity and everyone knows that if you can get beyond the cobwebs and black-widow-spider-scorpion-mummies, you can find some really cool shit in attics. Like hats. And magic cupboards, creepy dolls and unicorns. Also, did I mention hats?

So, I’m going to post for another month on a daily basis, and like I said if you aren’t already sick of me, get ready. I promise you’ll have a moment where you’re vomiting and pooping and bleeding from your vagina all at the same time from the sick**. Yippee!

*Two of my friends wrote for that show. I loved that title more than anything.

**This may or may not have actually happened to me. I’ll never tell.

Oh, if only there were just seven things that are weird about me.

1.  Up until one week ago, I mercilessly chewed the inside of my cheek.  It’s a nervous tick, and at one point, after 20 years of doing it, I thought I might actually chew a hole through my cheek.  I gave up the right side early this year.  I only allowed myself to chew on the left side.  Then a week ago, I made myself stop.  I love the taste of my own flesh, I guess, but now, I love to run my tongue over the newly smooth skin.

2.  I have old lady feet.  I don’t want to gross you tender hearted people who are squicked out by feet, but there are bunions.  At a young age I forced my feet into heels that were just a touch too tight, for a Key Club Convention formal.  (NERD!)

3.  I have a big ugly mole in the crux of my arm almost in my armpit.  Sometimes I want to shave it off, and sometimes I find myself twiddling it.

4.  If I carry a purse of any weight over my shoulder I get a fierce knot in my upper back between my neck and my shoulder.  I used to have to go to physical therapy for the knot.  Physical therapy made me feel extremely special.  Now I just carry my bag in my hand.

5.  I cannot stand the sound your mouth makes.  If I’m in a crowded restaurant, I can’t hear the chewing, but if it’s just you and me, look out, I might have to leave the room.  The smacking and the saliva and the crunching feels like tiny needles in my hairline and under every pore of my skin.  I made my dad throw out a package of gummy bears he was squishing through on a trip to North Dakota, I thought I would die if he ate one more.

6.  Ditto for the crinkling of a bag of chips or really any cellophane or plastic bag.  I even hate it if it’s my own bag that is making the crinkle.  The sound is unbearable to me.

7.   For about 10 years I could not stomach the sight of fat spaghetti.  I could only eat Capellini or angel hair.  I have no idea what brought it on, and no idea what made my disgust stop.

Now I’m supposed to tag more people, but that makes me uncomfortable.  I will say, the blogger who tagged me, Cake and Icing, is one of my new favorites.  Thanks, Shea!

Julia was tall and heavy and occasionally sullen. I was more than a little scared of her.  She would come to work with gigantic hickeys on her neck and smelling like last night’s beer. She was dirt poor and couldn’t read, could barely sign her name to get her pay check. One month she came to me and asked to borrow some money. She was so embarrassed and scared and she came to me anyway. She started crying when I blanched.  It was the first time as a boss that I felt like I didn’t ever want that much responsibility. I had no idea what to do. I asked our General Manager what I was supposed to do. I couldn’t let her go hungry. She had 3 kids. She opened the safe, pulled out two crisp one hundred dollar bills and gave them to Julia with a sad reminder that she wasn’t going to be able to do that ever again.

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This post is part of the x365 project.

Veronica was a tiny Guatemalan woman who worked for me in my past life as a hotel AGM. She wore thick coke bottle glasses and had a charmingly shy smile. She giggled whenever I tried to reply to her questions in Spanish, but was my best maid and my favorite employee. I was sitting in the break room one day listening to the Spanish banter going on between the maids and I laughed when Veronica made a subtle joke about one of our guests. The whole room turned and looked at me and Veronica blushed. Later when I was checking one of her rooms, she said in her perfect and only slightly accented English, “Your Spanish is too good, now. We can’t talk about you.”

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This post is part of the x365 project.

When I was a kid I had three very involved games that I would play.  They were as follows.

1. Restaurant - This is probably self explanatory, but I’m going to explain anyway.  My grandparents had one of those kitchens with a little window that had those wooden slatted folding doors you could open and close with a counter on the other side.  They also had swinging saloon type doors into the kitchen.  Since I grew up without cable, I watched a lot reruns and Mel’s Diner was one of my favorites.  Whenever we went to my Grandma’s I would make up elaborate menus, order tickets and start slinging some hash with a side of sass.

2. Paper dolls - My other grandparents had a lack of good toys around the house.  But they did have a book called “Marjorie’s Vacation.”  In that book there is a long description of how Marjorie would amuse herself by making her own paper dolls out of the Sears Roebuck catalogue.  She would take a shoe box and make a house for them too.  I think as soon as I read that description I went dashing to my grandma and asked for the Sears Roebuck catalogue.  They actually still made it back in the 80s and, of course, my grandma still received it.  Tavia and I would sit in the basement for days poring through it and the Skymall magazine or it’s equivalent.  Cutting out ladies in night gowns, dogs on plaid dog beds.  Comfy looking couches.  Anything our little houses needed we could deliver.  I still look at catalogues the same way.

3.  Library - I made little library pockets and library check out cards for all of my books.  Then I would check them out to imaginary people with due dates and everything.  I would sit for hours in my bedroom reorganizing my bookshelves in some kind of imagined Dewey decimal system.

I think it’s safe to say I had an active inner life as a child.

I worked with Maryanne at the Fountain Suites in Phoenix. She had this amazing long hair that was perfectly straight and the milk maid shade of blond. I thought it was exotic that she and her mother escaped from Utah in their big beater car on the run from the Mormon church. Her giggle made everyone love her, even the meanest of customers.

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This post is part of the x365 project.

For reasons I do not understand, there are three people in my neighborhood who choose to walk their dogs off leash. Only one of those people leashes her dog when she is around other dogs.  That one woman restores my faith in leash free dog owners.  The other two turn me into a cranky old lady that harumphs and scowls.

I understand people who want to let their dog run free from the chains of human society. That is why there are things called dog parks. There your dog can get all up in another dog’s grill and butt area without my withering gaze. My dog doesn’t like to be assaulted before her morning pee, and reacts poorly to rambunctious off leash greetings while she is trying to find the perfect place to lay down some poo.

One of the off-leash dogs is owned by someone I vaguely knew in film school. It’s a nice enough dog, and it sometimes listens, but Lula gets freaked out when it comes bounding towards her and sometimes she starts to bark, and then that dog gets all in a fuss and the owner looks at me like it’s my fault. I’m sorry? I’m the one in control of my dog, your dog is the one running around in a lawless state with no repercussions. Gah.

The worst of the two offenders is the overly friendly guy with the 100 pound ancient lab who doesn’t listen. The first time I met him, Lula was new to us and so extremely shy she hardly left my side the entire walk. I was walking down our street when the douche bag with the 100 pound ancient lab who doesn’t listen approached me from about a half block away. I moved over to the side and called out to him, “Is he ok?”

The guy responded, “Oh yeah, she’s totally friendly. I wouldn’t let her off leash if she wasn’t. Totally, totally friendly.” The ancient, humongous, kind of smelly and dirty lab geriatrically rushed towards us. I greeted the lab with a friendly pat and had Lula close on the leash. The lab started to aggressively sniff Lula and Lula backed away as far as she could, tail between her legs, clearly unhappy with the situation. She might have even given a warning growl, I couldn’t hear it, but I have human ears, not dog ears.

Guess what ol’ “Totally Totally Friendly” did then. That’s right, snarled and snapped and attacked Lula. So of course, Lula defended herself. Since douche bag who doesn’t believe in leashes was yammering about how awesome his dog was and not paying attention to his dog, I think he assumed Lula was the aggressor. I made it clear to him that “Totally Totally Friendly” was the problem. And briskly walked the other way, while he grabbed his dog’s collar and walked away looking back at me, like I had somehow wounded him. He said something to the effect of, “She’s never done that before, I don’t know what happened.” Yeah, your dog was off leash and not “Totally Totally Harmless.” That’s what happened.

Since then the douche bag who has a selective memory about his ugly-ass aggressive 100 pound lab and I have run into each other a few times, and now it seems we’re on the same morning schedule. Every morning his stupid dog that never listens to his verbal commands comes rushing towards Lula and every morning I have to remind him that his dog and mine don’t get along. How fucking retarded do you have to be?

This guy is the bane of my morning walk. I hate his dog, but it’s really not his dog’s fault. It’s his fault. His dog doesn’t listen to him, and she should put it on a leash. Case closed.

I have no solution to this problem, and we’re working with Lula to make sure doesn’t develop any leash aggression. She’s certainly not perfect, but guess what?  I have her on a leash, so it isn’t a problem.

I don’t know why I get so worked up about this.  It’s like getting mad at the teenager who only moves his tiny little bag from the only empty bus seat when you pointedly raise your voice and ask him if it’s his.  He’s inconsiderate.  He doesn’t understand.  He sucks.

Case closed.

She studied abroad with my sister in St. Petersburg and she traveled with us until we got robbed in Prague. Her Texan accent was unrelenting and watching people try to decipher her Russian was amusing and painful and embarrassing. She represents all that is good and bad about Texas to me: adventurous, funny, crass, tall, culturally insensitive, brash, chronically late and tanned. I remember the moment I realized she was not only my sister’s friend, but mine as well. She grabbed my arm and hustled me out the back door of a bar when we were trying to elude Claude. Our trip would have been so very different without her.

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This post is part of the x365 project.

Things my mom makes that I crave

• Chicken and dumplings
• Hungarian goulash
• Swedish meatballs
• Gugeré
• Bourbon balls

Things my sister made when we were kids that I crave

• Bean and cheese burrito
• chocolate shake
• Mexican lefse

Things my brother-in-law makes that I crave

• Ginger steamed fish
• Salmon on a plank

Things my brother-in-law’s mother makes that I crave

• Rendang
• BBQ Pork Buns

Things I’ve only ever eaten in a restaurant that I crave

• Spider roll
• Blue cheese French fries
• Chana masala
• Shaved ice
• Green corn tamale

Things I’ve eaten from a street vendor that I crave

• Hot dog with sauerkraut
• Hot pretzel
• Slice of greasy pizza
• Chicken Tamale
• Indian Fry bread

Thing I’ve never eaten from a street vendor that I crave

• Dirty dog

He would sit in his recliner in a still room and you could hear the rough skin of his thumbs rubbing against each other as he moved them back and forth in tiny circles. He was on the brink of being a scary horder, the Depression had made him that way, we think. He stored chocolate in the side pocket of his green station wagon because my Grandma didn’t like it when he had sweets. His favorite story was about how I helped him chop wood in our backyard one day, “You weren’t much use, but I let you help anyway,” and how he taught my sister to roller skate, “You weren’t so good at it, but your sister was a natural.” Sometimes I can hear his voice coming through mine when I scold the dog, “Heeeey.”

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This post is part of the x365 project.