Rambling

About a week after my purse got stolen at work, I got an email from a guy who said he found all of my credit cards scattered across a parking lot in Hollywood. He said he googled me and found my work email address. At least now I know I didn't hallucinate. My purse, indeed, was snatched from under my desk while I was in my boss' office. Laaawd, hep me.

In between dealing with all of the crap that comes with having your purse stolen, half the staff quit at work, so I'm doing the jobs of multiple people and still make the equivalent to what I made as a first year teacher in Memphis. I am starting to think that I should try my hand at cleaning lady jobs. Then I could see the physical results of my work and I wouldn't have to pay taxes. I also have extensive cleaning lady experience. Let me explain.

I remember when I taught a few years ago in Memphis, we worked with a bunch of OCD kids who had a myriad of emotional and psychological issues, and because we were some sort of nomadic, traveling school without a real building, we wound up having school at a church building in the middle of po-dunk NOWHERE Tennessee where people were always wearing "Kix 106" shirts splattered with dirt and paint and everyone smelled like fried catfish and crickets. Well, anyway, one day the director of the school asked me if I would help her scrub the racquetball room down with clorox because the kids just couldn't stand the sight of black smudges on the walls because they were all OCD. So there I was, with a decent education, fresh out of college and the only one of my friends who wasn't married, thinking "FML" the whole time I scrubbed boogers and racquetball mank off the walls of a hillbilly church.

The job after that, I worked as a personal assistant/slave for a humongous, sweating, foul-smelling charismatic woman who SHIT THE BED in her sleep and asked me if I would clean her diarrhea sheets for her. I almost fainted the morning I walked into her house. It smelled so foul that even a corpse would have puked. That was my last day.

I often tell people that I currently work in a haunted house. The combination of CERTAIN people around here openly flagellating in my tiny, dingy, peach walled office with poor ventilation, this person having the breath of an open sewer, and cockroaches scrambling around all over our kitchen, I just don't know how else to describe it. It's a haunted house. A couple of weeks ago, my boss asked me to take everything out of the kitchen cabinets and put it all in boxes because the exterminator was coming to "take care of" the cockroach problem. It is during moments like these, when I am being talked down to like I'm freaking Rainman and asked to do disgusting jobs like remove 1970's tupperware from asbestos coated cabinets, that I feel like going to graduate school was an enormous waste of time and money. Every time somebody asks me to do some menial, bullshit, waste of my time task, I want to scream. The thing is, I don't really mind doing stupid stuff like reorganizing or cleaning. The task itself doesn't piss me off. I can do it all day long if I'm asked to do it with respect... But if I'm asked to do something as a way of being patronized, it sort of makes me want to punch somebody. Oh, and P.S. The cockroach problem still isn't resolved. I made my client a cup of coffee the week afterwards, and I handed it to him and said, "Would you like anything in your coffee?" and he said, "There is already something in my coffee." and he pushed the cup away and I saw a dead cockroach in his cup, floating upside down. FML.

So, back to the purse caper. I drove down to the hood to fill out a police report that I knew would do me no good, and a guy came in who'd been stabbed by his wife about 30 times. They made him take off his shirt and they took pictures of him as he stood there, all cut up like some emo rocker. A few minutes later, some big hunky Hollywood actor looking jerk came in and had to file a report because his girl friend and her new boyfriend stole his sports car. That was sort of interesting. Then an Asian lady with a baby strapped to her chest walked in and filed some papers about identity theft. It sort of made me want to hang out there all day. The officer who was helping me gave me some big long speech about how I should never carry checks or a debit card and told me he hates L.A. and his family is from Florida and he's been a cop since before I was born and I should get the hell out while I can. And the whole time he was talking to me, he spoke in these abrupt, monotone sentences, and I sort of felt like he was faking it, like he was on Dragnet in the 1960's and he did such a good job at acting like a cop that LAPD felt bad for him and decided to let him sit at the desk and fill out paperwork on stolen purses.

I got really paranoid about the purse thing since my photo ID with my address was in there, so I got my locks changed and got the remotes changed on my car. I know that most purse snatchers aren't also into home break ins and grand theft auto, but a single white girl gotta watch her back. So. Let's talk about the car place. I was at Car Max, and I was the only white girl there, and none of the men would stand up and let me sit in their seats because they were all trash. And, of course, when I eventually got a seat, it was right in front of a 100 year old disgusting man with a TRAKE and a little kazoo looking thing sticking through his neck hole where he coughed and hacked big yellow loogies through it FOR HOURS. I just about puked. I wanted to sit outside, but I forgot to put a shirt on that morning, and was only wearing my hoodie, and I was so effin hot sitting in the sun with that hoodie on that I just decided to sit there and let old Trakey Mc Trakerton blow his kazoo loogies at me all day long.

I get so burned out. I get burned out for multiple reasons. I love living by myself, but it also sucks, because I feel like I can't ever completely let my guard down. I have to take care of EVERYTHING by myself. I can handle it, and I don't mind it so much, but it makes me tired.

The week before the great purse caper of 2010, I had to go the doctor to get my annual physical, but I couldn't go the gyno because the closest gyno who approved by my bull crap insurance is an hour away, so I went to a general practitioner instead. I got to the doctor's office and all of the signs were written in Spanish and I was the only white person around and nobody spoke English. I waited for an hour. I finally got called in. When I went to put the gown on, I laid down on the table, and some old Asian doctor walked in who spoke very limited English, and he started beating on my stomach like it was some sort of tribal drum, after I told him that I wasn't active and there was no way in hell that I had a baby in there. I said, "What are you DOING?!" and he just kept beating away, smacking me on my stomach. Maybe he was trying to hear if it was hollow. There weren't even stirrups or anything. I just sprawled out on the table like a starfish, completely humiliated and being beat to death and afraid that I was about to be sacrificed to the pap-smear gods. This guy also swore up and down that I had diabetes and said that I needed a blood test. The problem is that they dont do blood tests at this make-shift, fantasy doctor's office. So he gave me a list of blood test centers in Compton and Inglewood and said to go there. I'll risk it. If I have diabetes, I'll just lay off the Lucky Charms. My options are to have diabetes and risk it until I get some decent insurance or get shot in a drive by in Compton attempting to get a blood test.

Despite all of the crap that happens, and the fact that my ears CRINGE every time my boss pronounces words like a total fruit cake (examples: she says fortune like four-TOON, liaison like lee-ay-ZON, and niche like NEESH) and flips out if I call my cell phone a "phone" instead of a "telephone" or I say I have to take an "exam" instead of an "examination" and there are cockroaches everywhere and she yelled at me because I threw away her black banana that had hairy gray mold growing all over it and I got the worst physical of my life and my purse got snatched, good things happen, too.

For example, I got bumped in Dallas over Memorial Day weekend and I met a fantastic old Asian guy named Eddie, who I sat next to on the airplane going back to Memphis. He was like Mr. Miyagi. When he talked, it's like I could hear wind flutes and everything sort of had a pumpkin/amber color and time stopped. He said to me, "You look worried." and I said, "Yeah. I'm always worried. I'm always anxious." and he said, "You must let the Holy Spirit control your worry. You must keep your faith in God. He is the one who will take care of you. You call on him 24 hours a day." and I started to cry. Right there on the airplane. Then he told me I needed to drink red wine and eat dark chocolate because of the anti oxidants or something. Then he said, "My father is turning 90 years old. He say the secret to long life is to not worry. To be happy where you are right now." Old Eddie and I wound up talking the whole flight and he even sat with me at the gate when I got to Memphis and was waiting on my flight to LAX. He lives in New Orleans. His dad lives in Long Beach and he sent me an email a couple of days ago inviting me to his dad's 90th birthday party in Long Beach. I love airplane friends.

Another good thing is that my boyfriend came to visit last week, and I haven't felt so relaxed and comfortable ever. It was so nice to be around somebody who came from where I came from and had my same values and knew what I was talking about. I dont know how to explain it. I randomly met some girl at a bar last week, and when I shook her hand and said, "It's nice to meet you," she said, "Ooooh my gaaaawd. Are you from f-cking ALABAMA?!" and I said, "I'm from Tennessee. But you must be from here, because you clearly have no manners." My boyfriend "got" it. I don't know how to explain it. He just gets it.

We went to The Tonight Show via a hook up of my writer friend, and it occurred to me that I've seen Jay Leno 5 or 6 times in real life now. It's so weird. When I was a kid, I'd watch his show, and all I could think of was how I wanted to grow up and have a job like that, or be that kind of person where I could be funny all day long, and now I've seen him in real life several times. I grew up and moved to L.A. and now I've seen Jay Leno multiple times. It's so weird. It's like my life has panned out exactly the way it's supposed to have panned out, and now that I've ridden the L.A. wave, I'm just ready for my life to be calm again. I'm ready to go back to my roots. Maybe it's like how elephants get old and go back to the place where they were born once they're ready to die. I'm not really ready to die, but I've had a good run, and like any good TV show, there just comes a time where the series is over, and it's time to move on. I'm ready for that now.