I love blogging, but the only thing that sucks about it is that I can’t talk about 80% of what I wish that I could talk about because my life runs a very close parallel to “Fight Club.”
#1 - The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club.
#2 - The second rule of Fight Club is, you DO NOT talk about Fight Club.
#1 - The first rule of Rachel’s Life is: you do not talk about Rachel’s Life.
#2 - The second rule of Rachel’s Life is: you DO NOT talk about Rachel’s Life!
I have a lot of good stories. I also like to write in order to revamp and process. I can’t do that a lot of times because of issues regarding confidentiality, so I wind up writing about things that either aren’t that important or aren’t that interesting. Just take my word for it. I have an incredibly rich and bizarre life. I should keep a personal journal of all of the weird crap that I experience. I used to do that. Moving on.
Yesterday was a dynamite day. It was terrific. I started out job shadowing at this place where I really, really want to work. All I will say about it is that the place is a career counseling facility. The thought of helping people, doing research, and administering assessments = pure joy. I never saw myself growing up like this- being excited about a possible career that would make a lot of people want to stab themselves (let’s face it. Very few people think find administering career assessments fulfilling)- but to me, this would be a perfect fit. This is also where I will stop discussing it because I don’t want to breach confidentiality.
Now, let me tell you about class last night. The fire alarm kept going off, so we had to leave class. When the firefighters cleared the building, we returned to class, but the alarm kept sounding. Eventually we just sat in our chairs with this ridiculous, loud alarm making all of our brains rattle around in our heads.
I was irritated, to say the least. We also talked about a bunch of meaningless issues as my prof. read off the power points. Read every single word on every single ppt. Really? Are we in grad school? Then, after my ears wanted to shrivel up and fall off my head and bury themselves under the ground, I decided instead of having a coronary, I would just start writing down everything my prof. said that was driving me effing crazy. Here is my abbreviated list:
“There is tons of cases…”
“There was four of you…”
“There is endless laws…”
“There is people in prison…”
“There is people on lists….”
“There is always many sides to every story.”
“There is a lot of stories in the news.”
“There is situations…”
Now you can see how stressed I become by sitting in a hard plastic desk for 2.5 hours. It isn’t just that the building is always 10 degrees and that I have scoliosis and sitting in that desk makes my spine warp into a slinky, but I am subjecting my very sensitive grammar filter to hearing a “mid-westerner” (Sidenote: everyone who is NOT from California says that they are from the “mid-west.” People accuse me of being from the mid-west. Drives me insane. If you are north of the Mason-Dixon line, you are a Yankee. If you are south of it, you are a Southerner. If you’re from the East coast, you say that, and if you’re from the West Coast, just say you’re from Cali. Everywhere in between can be called the mid-west. Thank you.) completely butcher the English language. Now, I understand that casual conversation may not have all of the proper uses of words that one would use while writing a paper, but saying crap like, “There is a lot of you in this classroom,” is just plain ignorant. My prof. has a DOCTORATE. I’m telling you. There are several people in my program who need to take a remedial, community-college level English course that teaches them the basics of how to speak and write.
Last night my friend came over and cooked a wonderful meal. Something about eating hot foot every once in a while is very comforting. Something about being tired and hungry and eating food that is hot makes me feel complete and safe and tired, and I like that. I slept like a rock. It meant a lot to me, too, that my friend would come over and cook for no reason. Not many people are so generous. God has blessed me with knowing really good people.
Right now it’s drizzling and all I want to do is sleep all day, but I’m not tired- just unmotivated by the weather. Homework time
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
Clarissa Explains it All
The past few days have been awesome and hilarious and weird. I hung out w/ my friend on Friday and we meandered down to Redondo where we got stuck in this carnival-esque arcade. Everyone looked like a member of hell’s angels. It was odd. I felt like we were the two stand-out hillbillies from Tennessee and we were going to get scalped any second.
We crashed a beach party at Dockweiler with a bunch of Mexican kids on Friday night. They were so nice. They acted like Southern folks. They let us bum around their fire and shoot the bull about nothing. I enjoyed it. We went for a drive around Mulholland and looked at L.A. at night. This is one of my favorite past times. Looking out and seeing all of those lights excites me. I get this glimpse of opportunity. I feel like one of those Oregon Trail people who finally made it to their final destination (after half of their party died of yellow fever and they lost all of their crap because they forded the 3 ft. river, of course). Something about overlooking the city and those lights stretching as far as I can see makes me realize how fortunate I am and how amazing it is to have my whole life ahead of me.
On Saturday, I did homework by my pool and saw about 7 hunky guys hanging out in the hot tub. I wasn’t sure if they were all gay or if they were all just trying to relax. I talked to a few of them and found out that some of them were from Alabama. I am not trying to stereotype here, but 7 hunky guys from Alabama all hanging out in a hot tub meant they were NOT gay. All of a sudden, my apartment complex felt like home. It was nice to engage in some down-home trash talking about Nick Saban.
I called my grandfather as I laid out. I heard my grandmother yell out, “Ask her how her boyfriend is doing!” PawPaw said, “Boyfriend? I didn’t know you had a boyfriend!” I said, “I don’t. I just told Miss Ruth last time I talked to her that I was about to go out with a boy who is my friend.” PawPaw yells back to Miss Ruth, “Ruth! She ain’t gotta boyfriend. She’s just hangin’ out with some boy that she’s havin’ a fling with.” Not exactly what I said, but priceless, nonetheless.
On Saturday night, I went to a comedy show. The last time I went to a comedy show, I was in New York with a few friends and my sisters, and we saw Tracey Morgan’s stand up, and he totally sucked, so my expectations were low. One of the best comedy shows I ever went to was when my buddy from L.A. did a stand up show in Memphis at some white trash ghetto establishment. The line up was great. Anyway, I went to this show with low expectations, but was blown away by the hilarity of the whole ordeal. There were a bunch of ridiculous sketches and a few improve slots (the improv sucked). I don’t want to spend much time on this because I want to get to yesterday.
Ok, yesterday, my friend and I went to church, and it was wooooonddddddderful. What I like about my church is that our pastor talks about real issues, real concerns, real doubt. He makes the messages applicable and talks about struggles. Of course, like I said in my last entry, we’re in Psalms, and a lot of those passages are pretty dark, so I’m not sure that the level of depth at my church is always so paramount, but anyway, I really felt connected yesterday. Post church was a super bowl party (sorry for not capitalizing. The thought of pressing the shift key right now exhausts me). I have never really done the whole super bowl thing. I don’t follow pro sports. I rarely pass up an opportunity to meet new folks, though, so I went to this shindig in Brentwood (where OJ Simpson used to live before he went to the pen).
My friend and I go to this party with folks who are all in their 30’s and 40’s. Everyone has a significant other except for me and my friend. We were the two young chicks. It was nice to be around an older crowd, because nobody was wasted or talking all drunk in my face, and though most of my conversation revolved around issues that had absolutely no substance, it was nice to talk to people who maintained direct eye contact and could form proper sentences. My friend and I are there for about 10 minutes when I finally figure out who this girl is that I keep trying to place. I saw this blonde haired girl who looked like your typical, middle class, American young mom- not necessarily homely, but not one of those chic Manhattan moms, either. Just a regular girl. I kept trying to figure out if I knew her from Memphis. All of a sudden it clicked. Melissa Joan Hart. Anybody remember watching “Clarissa Explains it All?” Or “Sabrina the Teenage Witch?” I was sitting on the couch next to her husband, Mark Wilkerson, who is apparently the lead singer of some band called “Course of Nature,” which I’ve never heard of, but he introduced himself to me, and couldn’t have been nicer. Here was this couple I’ve seen on the cover of magazines at the grocery store check out, and they are feeding their babies with bottles, their little boy is passed out in a stroller, and they look tired. It’s weird. I watched countless episodes of “Clarissa” growing up, and sixteen years later, I’m shooing people out of the way so I can help this mom get to her diaper bag and I’m looking at this girl’s booty crack as she digs through her purse to find baby toys. Weird, weird, weird.
I come home from the party and a few of the hunks are in the pool again. I find out that a few of them go to my church. Southerners are taking over. I have to go mentor now. More later.
We crashed a beach party at Dockweiler with a bunch of Mexican kids on Friday night. They were so nice. They acted like Southern folks. They let us bum around their fire and shoot the bull about nothing. I enjoyed it. We went for a drive around Mulholland and looked at L.A. at night. This is one of my favorite past times. Looking out and seeing all of those lights excites me. I get this glimpse of opportunity. I feel like one of those Oregon Trail people who finally made it to their final destination (after half of their party died of yellow fever and they lost all of their crap because they forded the 3 ft. river, of course). Something about overlooking the city and those lights stretching as far as I can see makes me realize how fortunate I am and how amazing it is to have my whole life ahead of me.
On Saturday, I did homework by my pool and saw about 7 hunky guys hanging out in the hot tub. I wasn’t sure if they were all gay or if they were all just trying to relax. I talked to a few of them and found out that some of them were from Alabama. I am not trying to stereotype here, but 7 hunky guys from Alabama all hanging out in a hot tub meant they were NOT gay. All of a sudden, my apartment complex felt like home. It was nice to engage in some down-home trash talking about Nick Saban.
I called my grandfather as I laid out. I heard my grandmother yell out, “Ask her how her boyfriend is doing!” PawPaw said, “Boyfriend? I didn’t know you had a boyfriend!” I said, “I don’t. I just told Miss Ruth last time I talked to her that I was about to go out with a boy who is my friend.” PawPaw yells back to Miss Ruth, “Ruth! She ain’t gotta boyfriend. She’s just hangin’ out with some boy that she’s havin’ a fling with.” Not exactly what I said, but priceless, nonetheless.
On Saturday night, I went to a comedy show. The last time I went to a comedy show, I was in New York with a few friends and my sisters, and we saw Tracey Morgan’s stand up, and he totally sucked, so my expectations were low. One of the best comedy shows I ever went to was when my buddy from L.A. did a stand up show in Memphis at some white trash ghetto establishment. The line up was great. Anyway, I went to this show with low expectations, but was blown away by the hilarity of the whole ordeal. There were a bunch of ridiculous sketches and a few improve slots (the improv sucked). I don’t want to spend much time on this because I want to get to yesterday.
Ok, yesterday, my friend and I went to church, and it was wooooonddddddderful. What I like about my church is that our pastor talks about real issues, real concerns, real doubt. He makes the messages applicable and talks about struggles. Of course, like I said in my last entry, we’re in Psalms, and a lot of those passages are pretty dark, so I’m not sure that the level of depth at my church is always so paramount, but anyway, I really felt connected yesterday. Post church was a super bowl party (sorry for not capitalizing. The thought of pressing the shift key right now exhausts me). I have never really done the whole super bowl thing. I don’t follow pro sports. I rarely pass up an opportunity to meet new folks, though, so I went to this shindig in Brentwood (where OJ Simpson used to live before he went to the pen).
My friend and I go to this party with folks who are all in their 30’s and 40’s. Everyone has a significant other except for me and my friend. We were the two young chicks. It was nice to be around an older crowd, because nobody was wasted or talking all drunk in my face, and though most of my conversation revolved around issues that had absolutely no substance, it was nice to talk to people who maintained direct eye contact and could form proper sentences. My friend and I are there for about 10 minutes when I finally figure out who this girl is that I keep trying to place. I saw this blonde haired girl who looked like your typical, middle class, American young mom- not necessarily homely, but not one of those chic Manhattan moms, either. Just a regular girl. I kept trying to figure out if I knew her from Memphis. All of a sudden it clicked. Melissa Joan Hart. Anybody remember watching “Clarissa Explains it All?” Or “Sabrina the Teenage Witch?” I was sitting on the couch next to her husband, Mark Wilkerson, who is apparently the lead singer of some band called “Course of Nature,” which I’ve never heard of, but he introduced himself to me, and couldn’t have been nicer. Here was this couple I’ve seen on the cover of magazines at the grocery store check out, and they are feeding their babies with bottles, their little boy is passed out in a stroller, and they look tired. It’s weird. I watched countless episodes of “Clarissa” growing up, and sixteen years later, I’m shooing people out of the way so I can help this mom get to her diaper bag and I’m looking at this girl’s booty crack as she digs through her purse to find baby toys. Weird, weird, weird.
I come home from the party and a few of the hunks are in the pool again. I find out that a few of them go to my church. Southerners are taking over. I have to go mentor now. More later.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
"I'm Mad as Hell, and I'm Not Gonna TAKE IT ANYMORE!"
I think I have mono. One of the funniest things my friend said while my sister and I were partying it up for New Year’s was, “How in the world do you two girls NOT have mono?!” I keep taking naps and passing out for no reason. It’s been nice to oversleep versus under sleep for a change, I guess. I’ve been job searching, homework doing, internet carousing, serial dating, and sleeping a rather ridiculous amount. On to new things.
Ah! The great job scam of oh nine. So I send out about 39083493 e-mails a day inquiring about jobs. I fill out online applications that take a million hours to complete. I file through business cards and old records to fill out addresses of former employers only to discover that I don’t meet the undereducated, over experienced qualifications (“you must be a high school drop out and have 14 years of experience organizing paper clips”). And this is how I roll, day after day. I e-mail people until my eyes feel like they have diarrhea and then I blow aliens’ heads off via Halo 3 or perform face melting drum solos via Rock Band to slip back into Funemployment Land.
So I get called in for a closed call for a modeling agency a few Saturdays ago. I meet with “Kurt,” who is about 6’4” and has beautiful eyebrows. I mean, these eyebrows looked like they were painted on by DaVinci. They were perfect. So he looks me over, has me walk for him, asks me if I’m interested in doing music videos, tells me to call him at 3:30 and he’ll let me know if he’s interested. He harped on my “beautiful skin, great legs, great energy.” I am shuffled in and out like I’m a car part on a conveyer belt. I call him at my appointed time; he says, “I definitely want to work with you. Come in at 1:30 on Monday- and parking will be free because of the MLK holiday.”
I came in at 1:15 and was met by a very grouchy parking attendant who spoke approximately zero percent of English. I told him that my parking is supposed to be free. He talked a bunch of mumbo jumbo and I ditched him and got on the elevator. I went to the 6th floor and waited and waited and waited. Finally, this disgusting, Botox-infested alien faced woman came and got me. Her name was Rhonda. Rhonda looked like Priscilla after she got her botched Botox job in Guatemala or wherever the crap she got turned into an alien. Her lips were swollen full of collagen and her face was dramatically stretched over her bones. Her eyebrows were crazy high. She was squinty. Her boobs were about the size of bowling balls. I was afraid.
So she goes through this big, incoherent speech that I DID NOT FOLLOW pertaining to signing with their agency and all of this crap. Her sentences were fragments. She kept using profanity. She kept telling me about being a single mother. I wanted to give her a Lexapro. So eventually she tells me that their company ONLY works with “Omar” in Hollywood and “Omar” charges 895 effing dollars for comp cards. I laughed in her face. Then I told her I changed purses and just happened to not be carrying the 895 in cash that I normally have on me. I asked her to validate my parking pass. She said “I don’t know anything about that.” Her rude ass did not even walk me out. I left and the parking Gestapo asked me for FOURTEEN EFFING DOLLARS. Yes, 14 bucks to park. I almost knocked that little mumbling midget’s teeth down his throat. But I didn’t. I just sent a scathing e-mail to this stupid company and I sent a follow up hate letter with my receipt.
Despite the jobless depression of 2K9, a few nice things have happened. Let me tell you what God has done. I haven’t actually purchased NEW clothes in years. I really mean that. I am the thriftiest person I know. I can make something out of nothing, and I enjoy doing it. I have really needed some new jeans for a long time, but I have been holding off on buying jeans because I have had to use money to buy school books and stuff like that. A few weeks ago, I was going to church with my friend, and she said she had a bunch of stuff in her trunk that she needed to take to the Goodwill. I rummaged through it and came out with a “new” dress, a FEW pairs of “new” jeans, and a couple of shirts. It was like Christmas.
God has met my needs in other ways, too. i.e., I am a huge fan of Rock band, but considering my unemployment status, I did not want to go out and buy this game. The main reason that I wanted to buy it was because I like to have something to “do” at a party. I am very big into hosting parties. I like building a sense of community, and L.A. doesn’t offer that environment much. Out of the blue one day, my friend Steve-o came over with Rock band. FOR NO REASON. He just bought it and we jammed out all night.
This is when I recognize that God always, always meets my needs---and he doesn’t just meet my needs. He meets my WANTS. He goes beyond making sure that I am fed and have a roof over my head. He gives me free jeans and Rock band. My bird came back, too! I have a dove on my porch right now sitting on two little eggs. So whenever my little bird came back to live in my potted plant, I was flipping through my book of Psalms, and this is what I came across:
“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the LORD, "He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust."
Surely he will save you from the fowler's snare
and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.”
Psalm 91:1-4.
Now, the whole 91st Psalm will knock you on your face, it’s so good, but it was so sweet to me that right as my little bird came back, and I have watched her protect her little babies, that God sent me a message about how HE will cover me with his feathers, and I will find refuge in HIM, and HE will be faithful to me. How much more will God protect me than Doris the dove will protect her eggs? The analogy might seem simple, but to me, it was revolutionary.
My church has been going through a Psalms series and I have felt very connected to the messages recently. I have always loved David in the Bible. He’s always been my guy. I like his sense of passion and his desperate love for God. The warrior poet. His faith was unbelievable. Now if we have to get down to the nitty-gritty, Peter might be the guy that I can relate to the most, because he seriously needed anger management and he chopped that soldier’s ear off for Jesus. Haha. Peter was a total hot head with a potty mouth. I love the fact that he was who he was and he didn’t try to be something else. I also like that Jesus so radically changed him that he was in love with the Savior. But what I like most about these guys is that they TOTALLY screwed up, were completely unfaithful to God, and at the end of their stories, you can see God’s faithfulness. This is what I have been learning recently- that God is faithful, even when we aren’t.
Off of my spiritual soap box and onto my personal need for anger management: I started school a few weeks ago and it’s been a big adjustment getting back into the swing of things. During my first week back, I noticed that the crazy cooing pigeon woman was in my class, and she cooed and nodded and laughed inappropriately during the ENTIRE class. I thought that I was going to lose it. This is also the class where my “educated” professor wrote the following on the board:
“Have you ever ran a counseling group before?”
Uh, really? Wrong verb tense, woman, and we don’t end sentences in prepositions. All of my professors this semester also DO NOT understand the concept of subject-verb agreement. I hear them say stuff like this ALL THE TIME:
“There is many of you…”
“There’s options..”
“There is a couple of things to discuss…”
I want to teach a remedial English course for my professors. Now, I may sound like a hypocrite here because I sometimes end sentences in prepositions, I write in fragments, I use contractions, and I don’t always punctuate or capitalize correctly in my blogs, but let’s keep in mind that I am NOT teaching graduate level courses and I am simply keeping a personal “journal” which is informal and a means of venting. Sigh. Wears me out.
I only have about three more scenarios that I’d like to discuss. I realize that this is the longest blog in the history of mankind. First of all, I do NOT understand the crazy people in L.A. who post ads on craigslist for work. This one man called me who really liked me because I sent him a hilarious email. Then when he started with the job description, he went on and on about selling dietary supplements which increase your sex drive, selling disposable phone numbers to dating websites, posting youtube exercise videos for in-home personal training, and writing acting and producing documents. What? WHAT? Everyone in L.A. has AD/HD.
That was weird scenario number one. Now, let me tell you about the most insane person I have EVER met. I will not use his real name because I do not want to hurt his feelings. We’ll call him….Jeff. Jeff and I grew up together in Memphis and he’s always been completely bonkers, but he’s hysterical and a really good guy. He visits L.A. all the time because he’s trying to make it in “the business,” and he is an aspiring director. So the other night, I had gone to class, I was LATE for class because it took me 25 minutes to find a freaking parking spot (I am never late. I was completely humiliated. By the time I got to class, my hair was sweating and my heart was beating so hard that I could see it through my shirt. Serious anxiety.), I had come home, there were zits all over my face, and I was in no shape to be social. I was over it.
So Jeff calls me and says, “I’m in L.A.! I’ll be at your place in 5 minutes.” I told him I didn’t want to see him, but he hung up on me too quickly to absorb the fact that I DID NOT WANT TO SEE ANYONE. So, just as he promised, he showed up about 5 minutes later, and he was lingering around the front door to my apt. complex. I let him in and he came with his trail of AD/HD up to my apartment. He swung open my closet door, pulled out an outfit for me to wear, told me to get ready, and proceeded to talk to my dad on the phone, which was weird, but they knew each other from way back when, so it wasn’t TOO weird. I got ready and we walked downstairs. He opened the door to a bright red mustang. It was very “16 Candles.”
So we pick up some fellow Memphians and eventually make our way to Beverly Hills to some fancy-pants hotel lounge bar. Our waitress was the rudest person I have ever met. Some girl shows up who is a friend of a friend and it is quite clear that she HATES each of us because we all have southern accents and apparently she thinks we all hang out on our front porches in our whitey-tighties drinking moonshine and making out with our cousins. So she proceeds to say,
“American culture is so….different (scowl on her face). In the Chinese culture, we will bend over backwards to make sure that you feel at home. I mean, I walk into an American (scowl) person’s house, and they tell me to make myself at home, but if you come to MY house, in the CHINESE culture, we will stuff you to make sure that you feel welcomed.”
I asked her if she’d ever been to the South. She said she’d been to Texas. Idiot. She has no clue. My mom will stuff you like a Thanksgiving turkey if she’s made her biannual treck to Costco.
So.. “Jeff” says to her….
“I bet if I went to your house, you’d make me go out back and pick up a 2 by 4 and have me nail it up to the wall so I’d have a place to put my glass of water.”
None of us had any idea what that meant, but the look of sheer disgust on this woman’s pompous face made me laugh so hard that I cried a little. And this is why I love this guy, though he completely invades my personal space and DOES NOT CARE if I tell him to leave me alone.
And, story numero tres: last night, I met a girl at Starbucks for a cup of joe. This was some girl from my church whom I did not know, so it felt like I was on an online date as we texted stuff like, “I am wearing a green jacket and have long brown hair,” bla bla. So we meet up, talk about the church and volunteer opportunities, etc, and then after about an hour, she leaves. I realize that I have no coffee in my house but I have a Starbucks gift card and so I thought I’d buy a pound of their coffee. So I’m talking to the little barista about which coffee to buy, and he tells me that if I trust him and buy such-and-such coffee, he’ll give me his employee discount. Probably roofied coffee, but whatever. So the other girl says to me, “do you want your free cup of coffee?” Apparently, I get a free cup if I buy a pound. I had already had a cup of coffee. So, this little guy walks into Starbucks, and I say to him,
“Sir, what kind of coffee are you going to buy tonight?”
He turns around and looks behind him.
“I’m talking to you.”
He looks at me like he’s afraid.
I said, “look, I get a free cup of coffee with this pound that I’m buying, but I’ve already had a cup of coffee tonight, so I’d like to give you my free cup. Tell that lady what you want.”
He almost dropped dead. After a few minutes of confusion, he says,
“And I was told that all people in L.A. are rude! I guess that isn’t true at all!”
And I said to him,
“Oh, honey. I’m not from L.A. I’m from the South.”
Then all of a sudden I realized how bi-cultural I’m feeling these days. I don’t feel connected to Memphis at all, but a few weeks ago when we were talking about MLK and we watched a little video that had the Lorraine motel on it, I all of a sudden felt proud to be from that awful place. Then when I was in Memphis for Christmas, I kept wanting to come back to L.A. I can’t imagine how tough it must be to come from another country to America or whatever. I am having an identity crisis just being a Southerner and trying to assimilate in L.A. So weird.
Oh! I lied. I have one more story. So last Friday, I was babysitting, and right after I had put the kids to bed (and this was after I got the whole “Kindergarten Cop” speech from the 5-year old about how “boys have a penis and girls have a vagina,” yes- I was mortified and thought that kids shouldn’t be so clinical… Californians are weird), there was a huge BOOM! Out of nowhere. I thought that it was a driveby. Why? Because I am from Memphis.
So the kids jump out of bed and they are terrified and the big golden retriever runs into the room and we’re all sitting on the bed trying to figure out what just happened. Then the phone rings and I talk to a relative of the family and she said we’d just had an earthquake. Well, how about that? What the crap do you do if you’re in an earthquake? My immediate thought is to get into the closet, because that’s what we do during tornadoes, but then I remember that you don’t want crap falling on you from the shelves in the closet, so you get under a desk, right? I have no idea. So the kids freak out and I have to do some relaxation therapy on them to wind them back down and get them in bed again. Sigh. I need to google how to survive an earthquake. In closing, I leave you with the following youtube clip to keep you from going postal during the recession. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao3FuGEGcU8
Ah! The great job scam of oh nine. So I send out about 39083493 e-mails a day inquiring about jobs. I fill out online applications that take a million hours to complete. I file through business cards and old records to fill out addresses of former employers only to discover that I don’t meet the undereducated, over experienced qualifications (“you must be a high school drop out and have 14 years of experience organizing paper clips”). And this is how I roll, day after day. I e-mail people until my eyes feel like they have diarrhea and then I blow aliens’ heads off via Halo 3 or perform face melting drum solos via Rock Band to slip back into Funemployment Land.
So I get called in for a closed call for a modeling agency a few Saturdays ago. I meet with “Kurt,” who is about 6’4” and has beautiful eyebrows. I mean, these eyebrows looked like they were painted on by DaVinci. They were perfect. So he looks me over, has me walk for him, asks me if I’m interested in doing music videos, tells me to call him at 3:30 and he’ll let me know if he’s interested. He harped on my “beautiful skin, great legs, great energy.” I am shuffled in and out like I’m a car part on a conveyer belt. I call him at my appointed time; he says, “I definitely want to work with you. Come in at 1:30 on Monday- and parking will be free because of the MLK holiday.”
I came in at 1:15 and was met by a very grouchy parking attendant who spoke approximately zero percent of English. I told him that my parking is supposed to be free. He talked a bunch of mumbo jumbo and I ditched him and got on the elevator. I went to the 6th floor and waited and waited and waited. Finally, this disgusting, Botox-infested alien faced woman came and got me. Her name was Rhonda. Rhonda looked like Priscilla after she got her botched Botox job in Guatemala or wherever the crap she got turned into an alien. Her lips were swollen full of collagen and her face was dramatically stretched over her bones. Her eyebrows were crazy high. She was squinty. Her boobs were about the size of bowling balls. I was afraid.
So she goes through this big, incoherent speech that I DID NOT FOLLOW pertaining to signing with their agency and all of this crap. Her sentences were fragments. She kept using profanity. She kept telling me about being a single mother. I wanted to give her a Lexapro. So eventually she tells me that their company ONLY works with “Omar” in Hollywood and “Omar” charges 895 effing dollars for comp cards. I laughed in her face. Then I told her I changed purses and just happened to not be carrying the 895 in cash that I normally have on me. I asked her to validate my parking pass. She said “I don’t know anything about that.” Her rude ass did not even walk me out. I left and the parking Gestapo asked me for FOURTEEN EFFING DOLLARS. Yes, 14 bucks to park. I almost knocked that little mumbling midget’s teeth down his throat. But I didn’t. I just sent a scathing e-mail to this stupid company and I sent a follow up hate letter with my receipt.
Despite the jobless depression of 2K9, a few nice things have happened. Let me tell you what God has done. I haven’t actually purchased NEW clothes in years. I really mean that. I am the thriftiest person I know. I can make something out of nothing, and I enjoy doing it. I have really needed some new jeans for a long time, but I have been holding off on buying jeans because I have had to use money to buy school books and stuff like that. A few weeks ago, I was going to church with my friend, and she said she had a bunch of stuff in her trunk that she needed to take to the Goodwill. I rummaged through it and came out with a “new” dress, a FEW pairs of “new” jeans, and a couple of shirts. It was like Christmas.
God has met my needs in other ways, too. i.e., I am a huge fan of Rock band, but considering my unemployment status, I did not want to go out and buy this game. The main reason that I wanted to buy it was because I like to have something to “do” at a party. I am very big into hosting parties. I like building a sense of community, and L.A. doesn’t offer that environment much. Out of the blue one day, my friend Steve-o came over with Rock band. FOR NO REASON. He just bought it and we jammed out all night.
This is when I recognize that God always, always meets my needs---and he doesn’t just meet my needs. He meets my WANTS. He goes beyond making sure that I am fed and have a roof over my head. He gives me free jeans and Rock band. My bird came back, too! I have a dove on my porch right now sitting on two little eggs. So whenever my little bird came back to live in my potted plant, I was flipping through my book of Psalms, and this is what I came across:
“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the LORD, "He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust."
Surely he will save you from the fowler's snare
and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.”
Psalm 91:1-4.
Now, the whole 91st Psalm will knock you on your face, it’s so good, but it was so sweet to me that right as my little bird came back, and I have watched her protect her little babies, that God sent me a message about how HE will cover me with his feathers, and I will find refuge in HIM, and HE will be faithful to me. How much more will God protect me than Doris the dove will protect her eggs? The analogy might seem simple, but to me, it was revolutionary.
My church has been going through a Psalms series and I have felt very connected to the messages recently. I have always loved David in the Bible. He’s always been my guy. I like his sense of passion and his desperate love for God. The warrior poet. His faith was unbelievable. Now if we have to get down to the nitty-gritty, Peter might be the guy that I can relate to the most, because he seriously needed anger management and he chopped that soldier’s ear off for Jesus. Haha. Peter was a total hot head with a potty mouth. I love the fact that he was who he was and he didn’t try to be something else. I also like that Jesus so radically changed him that he was in love with the Savior. But what I like most about these guys is that they TOTALLY screwed up, were completely unfaithful to God, and at the end of their stories, you can see God’s faithfulness. This is what I have been learning recently- that God is faithful, even when we aren’t.
Off of my spiritual soap box and onto my personal need for anger management: I started school a few weeks ago and it’s been a big adjustment getting back into the swing of things. During my first week back, I noticed that the crazy cooing pigeon woman was in my class, and she cooed and nodded and laughed inappropriately during the ENTIRE class. I thought that I was going to lose it. This is also the class where my “educated” professor wrote the following on the board:
“Have you ever ran a counseling group before?”
Uh, really? Wrong verb tense, woman, and we don’t end sentences in prepositions. All of my professors this semester also DO NOT understand the concept of subject-verb agreement. I hear them say stuff like this ALL THE TIME:
“There is many of you…”
“There’s options..”
“There is a couple of things to discuss…”
I want to teach a remedial English course for my professors. Now, I may sound like a hypocrite here because I sometimes end sentences in prepositions, I write in fragments, I use contractions, and I don’t always punctuate or capitalize correctly in my blogs, but let’s keep in mind that I am NOT teaching graduate level courses and I am simply keeping a personal “journal” which is informal and a means of venting. Sigh. Wears me out.
I only have about three more scenarios that I’d like to discuss. I realize that this is the longest blog in the history of mankind. First of all, I do NOT understand the crazy people in L.A. who post ads on craigslist for work. This one man called me who really liked me because I sent him a hilarious email. Then when he started with the job description, he went on and on about selling dietary supplements which increase your sex drive, selling disposable phone numbers to dating websites, posting youtube exercise videos for in-home personal training, and writing acting and producing documents. What? WHAT? Everyone in L.A. has AD/HD.
That was weird scenario number one. Now, let me tell you about the most insane person I have EVER met. I will not use his real name because I do not want to hurt his feelings. We’ll call him….Jeff. Jeff and I grew up together in Memphis and he’s always been completely bonkers, but he’s hysterical and a really good guy. He visits L.A. all the time because he’s trying to make it in “the business,” and he is an aspiring director. So the other night, I had gone to class, I was LATE for class because it took me 25 minutes to find a freaking parking spot (I am never late. I was completely humiliated. By the time I got to class, my hair was sweating and my heart was beating so hard that I could see it through my shirt. Serious anxiety.), I had come home, there were zits all over my face, and I was in no shape to be social. I was over it.
So Jeff calls me and says, “I’m in L.A.! I’ll be at your place in 5 minutes.” I told him I didn’t want to see him, but he hung up on me too quickly to absorb the fact that I DID NOT WANT TO SEE ANYONE. So, just as he promised, he showed up about 5 minutes later, and he was lingering around the front door to my apt. complex. I let him in and he came with his trail of AD/HD up to my apartment. He swung open my closet door, pulled out an outfit for me to wear, told me to get ready, and proceeded to talk to my dad on the phone, which was weird, but they knew each other from way back when, so it wasn’t TOO weird. I got ready and we walked downstairs. He opened the door to a bright red mustang. It was very “16 Candles.”
So we pick up some fellow Memphians and eventually make our way to Beverly Hills to some fancy-pants hotel lounge bar. Our waitress was the rudest person I have ever met. Some girl shows up who is a friend of a friend and it is quite clear that she HATES each of us because we all have southern accents and apparently she thinks we all hang out on our front porches in our whitey-tighties drinking moonshine and making out with our cousins. So she proceeds to say,
“American culture is so….different (scowl on her face). In the Chinese culture, we will bend over backwards to make sure that you feel at home. I mean, I walk into an American (scowl) person’s house, and they tell me to make myself at home, but if you come to MY house, in the CHINESE culture, we will stuff you to make sure that you feel welcomed.”
I asked her if she’d ever been to the South. She said she’d been to Texas. Idiot. She has no clue. My mom will stuff you like a Thanksgiving turkey if she’s made her biannual treck to Costco.
So.. “Jeff” says to her….
“I bet if I went to your house, you’d make me go out back and pick up a 2 by 4 and have me nail it up to the wall so I’d have a place to put my glass of water.”
None of us had any idea what that meant, but the look of sheer disgust on this woman’s pompous face made me laugh so hard that I cried a little. And this is why I love this guy, though he completely invades my personal space and DOES NOT CARE if I tell him to leave me alone.
And, story numero tres: last night, I met a girl at Starbucks for a cup of joe. This was some girl from my church whom I did not know, so it felt like I was on an online date as we texted stuff like, “I am wearing a green jacket and have long brown hair,” bla bla. So we meet up, talk about the church and volunteer opportunities, etc, and then after about an hour, she leaves. I realize that I have no coffee in my house but I have a Starbucks gift card and so I thought I’d buy a pound of their coffee. So I’m talking to the little barista about which coffee to buy, and he tells me that if I trust him and buy such-and-such coffee, he’ll give me his employee discount. Probably roofied coffee, but whatever. So the other girl says to me, “do you want your free cup of coffee?” Apparently, I get a free cup if I buy a pound. I had already had a cup of coffee. So, this little guy walks into Starbucks, and I say to him,
“Sir, what kind of coffee are you going to buy tonight?”
He turns around and looks behind him.
“I’m talking to you.”
He looks at me like he’s afraid.
I said, “look, I get a free cup of coffee with this pound that I’m buying, but I’ve already had a cup of coffee tonight, so I’d like to give you my free cup. Tell that lady what you want.”
He almost dropped dead. After a few minutes of confusion, he says,
“And I was told that all people in L.A. are rude! I guess that isn’t true at all!”
And I said to him,
“Oh, honey. I’m not from L.A. I’m from the South.”
Then all of a sudden I realized how bi-cultural I’m feeling these days. I don’t feel connected to Memphis at all, but a few weeks ago when we were talking about MLK and we watched a little video that had the Lorraine motel on it, I all of a sudden felt proud to be from that awful place. Then when I was in Memphis for Christmas, I kept wanting to come back to L.A. I can’t imagine how tough it must be to come from another country to America or whatever. I am having an identity crisis just being a Southerner and trying to assimilate in L.A. So weird.
Oh! I lied. I have one more story. So last Friday, I was babysitting, and right after I had put the kids to bed (and this was after I got the whole “Kindergarten Cop” speech from the 5-year old about how “boys have a penis and girls have a vagina,” yes- I was mortified and thought that kids shouldn’t be so clinical… Californians are weird), there was a huge BOOM! Out of nowhere. I thought that it was a driveby. Why? Because I am from Memphis.
So the kids jump out of bed and they are terrified and the big golden retriever runs into the room and we’re all sitting on the bed trying to figure out what just happened. Then the phone rings and I talk to a relative of the family and she said we’d just had an earthquake. Well, how about that? What the crap do you do if you’re in an earthquake? My immediate thought is to get into the closet, because that’s what we do during tornadoes, but then I remember that you don’t want crap falling on you from the shelves in the closet, so you get under a desk, right? I have no idea. So the kids freak out and I have to do some relaxation therapy on them to wind them back down and get them in bed again. Sigh. I need to google how to survive an earthquake. In closing, I leave you with the following youtube clip to keep you from going postal during the recession. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao3FuGEGcU8
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
My radiator in my car cracked and I had to get a new one today. I’ve been pretty concerned about my finances recently. There’s rent. There’s gas. There are groceries. There are books. There’s tuition. Then there is a broken radiator. I keep clicking through craigslist and a million other websites trying to find a job- ANY job, just so I can cover all of my mounding expenses. I get sick over it. My nerves are shot. I knew I was at my all-time low when I considered an ad that said this:
Can You Stomach Crime Scene Cleaning?
“The police, the fire department and crime scene investigators who arrive at a crime scene perform crucial tasks in the aftermath of a violent death. But they don't, as a general rule, clean up. Mopping up after someone who dies violently is the responsibility of that person's family. And until recently, there were very few cleaning companies that would handle that kind of job, so the family members ended up having to do it themselves. Crime scene cleaning companies typically charge up to $600 or more an hour for their service, and most people would pay much more…”
It was at this point that I realized that I might as well sell crack or be a hooker if I wanted to clean up guts and puke from the aftermath of gang shoot outs on the streets of L.A. RACHEL! WAKE UP CALL!
Sometimes I wonder if I am doing the right thing. Unless I become a MAJOR success, I will never make a lot of money in the mental health professions. Psychologists aren’t notorious for driving Bentleys. Despite the ideas that I keep generating to pursue jobs in marketing and advertising and areas where I could maybe make big bucks, things keep happening to help me remember why I want to do this and why being broke for a while (until I meet my 96 year old bajillionaire husband) is okay.
I drove my car to my buddy Raoul at the car place this morning and sat outside waiting for the diagnosis. I sat with a woman who looked 60 but she was probably in her 40’s. She started smoking the second she sat down. It was 8:15 A.M. She was puffing away on her cigs like nobody’s business. I wanted to pry one from her grasp and burn her on the eyelid with it. I hate smokers. I think they are the rudest people ever. Some guy in a beamer drove up. I was wearing my LSU hoody. He approached me and said,
“Did you go to LSU?”
“Yeah.”
“So did my parents. I am from New Orleans. My name is Tony.”
Then he shook my hand, told me to have a nice day, and drove off. I like it when people make an effort to establish a connection or sense of community. It is inconvenient, so it means a lot to me when someone goes that extra step.
Smoker lady’s husband walks up. He looks rough. Then their buddy who was clearly wearing dentures walks up. They all smoked like trains. Dentures asked them for ten dollars. He really, really, really needed ten dollars. Smoker lady said they had to pay rent today and it was $750 and she did not have ten dollars. They kept talking about being broke. Boy, aren’t we all? Something about them made me really sad though. I mean really, really sad. They were talking about this friend who died and that friend who made it and how they are going to be late to go to the doctor’s office today and they had to take the bus across town. How depressing.
Something about watching three people who have meth mouth smoking like trains and talking about how they had no money made me wonder what went wrong with them. I watched this special on Charles Manson the other day. I didn’t know that his mom was a complete whore and kept sending him away because she didn’t want him. I got really choked up watching this show. The narrator kept reading excerpts from Manson’s journal. For the first time, he seemed very human to me. I’ve always looked at him like a total nutcase, which invalidated his humanity. Hearing things like, “I have never been so lonely,” and “All I want is my mom to love me,” made me sick and sad. I got a glimpse of who he was before he became who he is.
A few nights ago I watched a special on Al Capone. I didn’t quite have those feelings of sympathy for him since he kept cheating on his wife and wound up dying of syphilis, but I felt sorry for him, too.
Right now I’m watching a show called “Going Postal: The 15 Most Shocking Acts of Violence.” What makes these people spiral downward and go on killing sprees? WHAT HAPPENS?
I am taking a “strategies of crisis interventions” class right now. Last night blew me away. It was only the first night of class, and already I felt like things made sense again. I want to know what triggers devastating events, I want to know how people get to that point of madness, and I want to know how to prevent these things from happening.
So I guess I found my calling again and won’t be auditioning for the Real World or cleaning guts off the street for $600 bucks a pop. It’s helping professions or bust. It’s paying off student loans right before I kick the bucket and it’s recognizing that whether or not the money is there, this is where I am, this is who I am, and this is where I feel fulfillment.
Can You Stomach Crime Scene Cleaning?
“The police, the fire department and crime scene investigators who arrive at a crime scene perform crucial tasks in the aftermath of a violent death. But they don't, as a general rule, clean up. Mopping up after someone who dies violently is the responsibility of that person's family. And until recently, there were very few cleaning companies that would handle that kind of job, so the family members ended up having to do it themselves. Crime scene cleaning companies typically charge up to $600 or more an hour for their service, and most people would pay much more…”
It was at this point that I realized that I might as well sell crack or be a hooker if I wanted to clean up guts and puke from the aftermath of gang shoot outs on the streets of L.A. RACHEL! WAKE UP CALL!
Sometimes I wonder if I am doing the right thing. Unless I become a MAJOR success, I will never make a lot of money in the mental health professions. Psychologists aren’t notorious for driving Bentleys. Despite the ideas that I keep generating to pursue jobs in marketing and advertising and areas where I could maybe make big bucks, things keep happening to help me remember why I want to do this and why being broke for a while (until I meet my 96 year old bajillionaire husband) is okay.
I drove my car to my buddy Raoul at the car place this morning and sat outside waiting for the diagnosis. I sat with a woman who looked 60 but she was probably in her 40’s. She started smoking the second she sat down. It was 8:15 A.M. She was puffing away on her cigs like nobody’s business. I wanted to pry one from her grasp and burn her on the eyelid with it. I hate smokers. I think they are the rudest people ever. Some guy in a beamer drove up. I was wearing my LSU hoody. He approached me and said,
“Did you go to LSU?”
“Yeah.”
“So did my parents. I am from New Orleans. My name is Tony.”
Then he shook my hand, told me to have a nice day, and drove off. I like it when people make an effort to establish a connection or sense of community. It is inconvenient, so it means a lot to me when someone goes that extra step.
Smoker lady’s husband walks up. He looks rough. Then their buddy who was clearly wearing dentures walks up. They all smoked like trains. Dentures asked them for ten dollars. He really, really, really needed ten dollars. Smoker lady said they had to pay rent today and it was $750 and she did not have ten dollars. They kept talking about being broke. Boy, aren’t we all? Something about them made me really sad though. I mean really, really sad. They were talking about this friend who died and that friend who made it and how they are going to be late to go to the doctor’s office today and they had to take the bus across town. How depressing.
Something about watching three people who have meth mouth smoking like trains and talking about how they had no money made me wonder what went wrong with them. I watched this special on Charles Manson the other day. I didn’t know that his mom was a complete whore and kept sending him away because she didn’t want him. I got really choked up watching this show. The narrator kept reading excerpts from Manson’s journal. For the first time, he seemed very human to me. I’ve always looked at him like a total nutcase, which invalidated his humanity. Hearing things like, “I have never been so lonely,” and “All I want is my mom to love me,” made me sick and sad. I got a glimpse of who he was before he became who he is.
A few nights ago I watched a special on Al Capone. I didn’t quite have those feelings of sympathy for him since he kept cheating on his wife and wound up dying of syphilis, but I felt sorry for him, too.
Right now I’m watching a show called “Going Postal: The 15 Most Shocking Acts of Violence.” What makes these people spiral downward and go on killing sprees? WHAT HAPPENS?
I am taking a “strategies of crisis interventions” class right now. Last night blew me away. It was only the first night of class, and already I felt like things made sense again. I want to know what triggers devastating events, I want to know how people get to that point of madness, and I want to know how to prevent these things from happening.
So I guess I found my calling again and won’t be auditioning for the Real World or cleaning guts off the street for $600 bucks a pop. It’s helping professions or bust. It’s paying off student loans right before I kick the bucket and it’s recognizing that whether or not the money is there, this is where I am, this is who I am, and this is where I feel fulfillment.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
There's no place like home sweet L.A.
I planned to write a lot throughout my stay in the South to keep me from going postal, but that never happened. Every second was a three-ring circus, to this person’s house and to that person’s house. I’d rehash it but I don’t want to have a nervous breakdown.
I went up to school today to work out all of my financial aid stuff. I ran into one of my friends who is from South Carolina. She told me that she gained 17 pounds per day while she was back “home” and that one morning she ate artichoke dip for breakfast. I didn’t realize just how “L.A.” I had become until I start obsessing over not having access to a gym. Who does that? Every day all I could think about were those commercials for Draino where you see pipes full of mank and hairballs--- and that’s how I imagined my arteries were clogging as I ate all of that holiday crap. Every second of every day was encompassed by an anxiety-induced stomach ulcer. So much for a “break.”
Today I went to big lots. I bought some crappy curtains there a while ago that were too short, so I decided to return them. The lady working at customer service went on and on and on about how all I could receive was store credit and not a refund and I had no idea what she was talking about. She closed with “you get sto’ credit or get nuthin’” so I went with the store credit. As I was leaving, some old black guy said to me,
“Lori from the Hills!”
First of all, I don’t know who that is, second of all, I have never watched that show, and thirdly, I’m pretty sure that there is nobody named Lori on it.
There seems to be a recurring pattern for 55+ black men macking on me. Last week, I went to the DMV to get a new driver’s license. Always a good time, right? Everyone loves to go to the DMV. So the first attempt I make at going to the DMV is my triumphant entry into a parking lot full of homeless people who I was pretty sure were going to attack me with Hepatitis C infested needles. I walked in, waited in line, and found out I did not have my passport, so I had to go back home, go back to the DMV, park about 390834 blocks away, and wait in line again. So I finally fill out all of the paperwork and wait in line again. And wait and wait and wait. As I am waiting in the picture-taking line, some Latina lady behind me says,
“Excuse me. You have…. Mirror?”
So I had her a compact from my purse while she attempts to spruce up her hair and fix up.
“I forget I have picture taken today.”
She hands it back. I smile at her and tell her no prob. I see a lady walk by with a mole on her chin which is approximately the size of a quarter. It is pitch black. It has 40 hairs growing out of it which are all a few inches long. It looked like she had a tarantula on her chin. I threw up in my head a little bit.
So Hector or whatever his name is takes my picture and says,
“Dang. I did good on this one. Rachel, go stand in Line B to take your test.”
“Um… My WHAT?!”
“Your test. You have to take the written test.”
I wasn’t sure whether to hit Hector in the face or to puke. I have mad test anxiety. I see paper and a pencil and I want to puke on it. I scanned through my Governator Driver’s handbook for a few seconds and wait in the test line. Then Hector YELLS at the top of his lungs,
“WRONG LINE, RACHEL!”
Phones stopped ringing. Children stopped screaming. All was quiet and the patrons of the DMV stared at Rachel the hick who was in the wrong line.
I moved to the correct line to receive my test. Here is part two, where the AARP black man macks on me.
“My, my, my, Rachel. Are all women in Tennessee as beautiful as you? You are absolutely gorgeous.”
Rachel’s life-changing response:
“I am embarrassed. I do not know how to respond to this. May I have my test please?”
He hands it to me with a sly wink and I want to puke and I’m sweating and my hair feels hot.
I attempt to fill in the correct responses while the phones ring, people are talking to each other, faxes are coming in, effing babies are screaming, people are tapping on desks, I hear the scribbling of pencils, I WANT TO STAB SOMEONE!
I go back to the line with my 60 year old boyfriend and hand him my sheet. Hector the photographer now sits next to my old man. Hector says,
“So, when you getting off work?”
My boyfriend says,
“Right now. I’m taking Rachel to dinner. Rachel, where do you want to go to dinner?”
Hector says,
“You better pick somewhere cheap, Rachel, cause you gonna wind up waying for both of you.”
I say,
“Sorry. I’m married.”
My old man boyfriend said I passed the DMV test, which to me seemed impossible since I don’t know the first thing about mudslides and HOV lanes, but I guess it all worked out.
So now I’m waiting to receive my license from Sacramento.
This past weekend was insane. I went to a UCLA MBA party where I dominated rock band (not really, but I did have a small crowd of fans), and then I went to a rocket scientist post-holiday holiday party where men in suits walked around with Darth Vader helmets on.
How do I wind up in these situations?
Some middle aged man’s wife was completely wasted and kept yelling,
“I WANT A CIGARETTE FIRST!”
In front of EVERYONE. Coworkers, bosses, you name it. This lady was a stumbling mess fool.
I kept thinking about that scene in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” where the little short guy is going postal in group therapy because he wants his cigs. I WANT MY CIGARETTES NOW, NURSE RATCHETT! I WANT THEM NOOOW!
So yeah. The great job search of 2009 continues. I’ve been on craigslist and other search engines nonstop trying to find something that pays well while also allowing me to complete my degree. Great thinking, Rach. Try to find a job in the middle of a recession. I called this lady the other night and we prayed together on the phone. She was saying stuff like, “God, you promise to take care of your children, so we trust in You and know that You will provide the perfect job for Rachel.” It made things make more sense to me. I have this really bad habit of trying to work out every single detail in my life like I can handle it all, but I can’t. It will all work out. God sees the big picture when I don’t.
I just burned my thumb on my quesadilla so I’m going to nurse myself back to health with some ice. Peace out.
I went up to school today to work out all of my financial aid stuff. I ran into one of my friends who is from South Carolina. She told me that she gained 17 pounds per day while she was back “home” and that one morning she ate artichoke dip for breakfast. I didn’t realize just how “L.A.” I had become until I start obsessing over not having access to a gym. Who does that? Every day all I could think about were those commercials for Draino where you see pipes full of mank and hairballs--- and that’s how I imagined my arteries were clogging as I ate all of that holiday crap. Every second of every day was encompassed by an anxiety-induced stomach ulcer. So much for a “break.”
Today I went to big lots. I bought some crappy curtains there a while ago that were too short, so I decided to return them. The lady working at customer service went on and on and on about how all I could receive was store credit and not a refund and I had no idea what she was talking about. She closed with “you get sto’ credit or get nuthin’” so I went with the store credit. As I was leaving, some old black guy said to me,
“Lori from the Hills!”
First of all, I don’t know who that is, second of all, I have never watched that show, and thirdly, I’m pretty sure that there is nobody named Lori on it.
There seems to be a recurring pattern for 55+ black men macking on me. Last week, I went to the DMV to get a new driver’s license. Always a good time, right? Everyone loves to go to the DMV. So the first attempt I make at going to the DMV is my triumphant entry into a parking lot full of homeless people who I was pretty sure were going to attack me with Hepatitis C infested needles. I walked in, waited in line, and found out I did not have my passport, so I had to go back home, go back to the DMV, park about 390834 blocks away, and wait in line again. So I finally fill out all of the paperwork and wait in line again. And wait and wait and wait. As I am waiting in the picture-taking line, some Latina lady behind me says,
“Excuse me. You have…. Mirror?”
So I had her a compact from my purse while she attempts to spruce up her hair and fix up.
“I forget I have picture taken today.”
She hands it back. I smile at her and tell her no prob. I see a lady walk by with a mole on her chin which is approximately the size of a quarter. It is pitch black. It has 40 hairs growing out of it which are all a few inches long. It looked like she had a tarantula on her chin. I threw up in my head a little bit.
So Hector or whatever his name is takes my picture and says,
“Dang. I did good on this one. Rachel, go stand in Line B to take your test.”
“Um… My WHAT?!”
“Your test. You have to take the written test.”
I wasn’t sure whether to hit Hector in the face or to puke. I have mad test anxiety. I see paper and a pencil and I want to puke on it. I scanned through my Governator Driver’s handbook for a few seconds and wait in the test line. Then Hector YELLS at the top of his lungs,
“WRONG LINE, RACHEL!”
Phones stopped ringing. Children stopped screaming. All was quiet and the patrons of the DMV stared at Rachel the hick who was in the wrong line.
I moved to the correct line to receive my test. Here is part two, where the AARP black man macks on me.
“My, my, my, Rachel. Are all women in Tennessee as beautiful as you? You are absolutely gorgeous.”
Rachel’s life-changing response:
“I am embarrassed. I do not know how to respond to this. May I have my test please?”
He hands it to me with a sly wink and I want to puke and I’m sweating and my hair feels hot.
I attempt to fill in the correct responses while the phones ring, people are talking to each other, faxes are coming in, effing babies are screaming, people are tapping on desks, I hear the scribbling of pencils, I WANT TO STAB SOMEONE!
I go back to the line with my 60 year old boyfriend and hand him my sheet. Hector the photographer now sits next to my old man. Hector says,
“So, when you getting off work?”
My boyfriend says,
“Right now. I’m taking Rachel to dinner. Rachel, where do you want to go to dinner?”
Hector says,
“You better pick somewhere cheap, Rachel, cause you gonna wind up waying for both of you.”
I say,
“Sorry. I’m married.”
My old man boyfriend said I passed the DMV test, which to me seemed impossible since I don’t know the first thing about mudslides and HOV lanes, but I guess it all worked out.
So now I’m waiting to receive my license from Sacramento.
This past weekend was insane. I went to a UCLA MBA party where I dominated rock band (not really, but I did have a small crowd of fans), and then I went to a rocket scientist post-holiday holiday party where men in suits walked around with Darth Vader helmets on.
How do I wind up in these situations?
Some middle aged man’s wife was completely wasted and kept yelling,
“I WANT A CIGARETTE FIRST!”
In front of EVERYONE. Coworkers, bosses, you name it. This lady was a stumbling mess fool.
I kept thinking about that scene in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” where the little short guy is going postal in group therapy because he wants his cigs. I WANT MY CIGARETTES NOW, NURSE RATCHETT! I WANT THEM NOOOW!
So yeah. The great job search of 2009 continues. I’ve been on craigslist and other search engines nonstop trying to find something that pays well while also allowing me to complete my degree. Great thinking, Rach. Try to find a job in the middle of a recession. I called this lady the other night and we prayed together on the phone. She was saying stuff like, “God, you promise to take care of your children, so we trust in You and know that You will provide the perfect job for Rachel.” It made things make more sense to me. I have this really bad habit of trying to work out every single detail in my life like I can handle it all, but I can’t. It will all work out. God sees the big picture when I don’t.
I just burned my thumb on my quesadilla so I’m going to nurse myself back to health with some ice. Peace out.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Nashville is not Memphis
I am currently sitting in the Nashville airport. Aside from Memphis, Nashville is probably the second most hated city on my list.
My dad called me in a complete twit earlier. He had jetlag and was completely wasted (not drunk wasted- wasted like he was in a circadian rhythm coma). So I sit at my gate for about 30 hours, getting extremely annoyed by the stupid blonde valley girl sitting next to me as she made hand gestures and talked on her cell phone. Idiot face, the person on the phone cannot see your hands.
So my dad calls and says, “I just bought you a ticket on Southwest to Nashville. Flight leaves in an hour!” Keep in mind that there are at least 40 billion people in the airport. I am not checked in. I have no ticket. I have a huge bag, I have been dancing in place for ten minutes so I’m working up a good sweat, and I feel awful after eating my very heavy disgusting breakfast where I had to interact with the 8 Mile cast.
I run out of security, run downstairs, out the front doors of LAX, searching desperately for the Southwest sign. I find it, and there are 4098390482034 people in line. So I ask the stupid idiot woman working there, “My flight leaves in less than an hour- is there any way I can check in now?” She says, “No.” I almost punched her in the throat.
I’m about to puke. I’m sweating. I’m having a panic attack. My phone is ringing. I can’t get to it in time. It’s buried at the bottom of my bag under my laptop, chapstick, a huge book, and 309 other items. My feet are on fire. I have my Alaskan snow boots on and it’s 80 degrees outside, but when I left my house at 4 AM it was 40 degrees. My armpits are wet. I want to puke. Someone will inevitably get shanked in about 3 minutes.
Finally I check in. Next is security. There are 3209028203 people in the security line. I quickly move with the cattle line and they run out of mother effing plastic bins right as I get up to walking through the canopy of violation. I shove all of my stuff on the conveyer belt. Then I get yelled at. And I say “WE NEED SOME MORE PLASTIC BINS. MERRY CHRISTMAS,” at the top of my lungs, in a hateful voice.
So I get in trouble and have to go through security again and I yell, “MY FLIGHT IS LEAVING IN 15 MINUTES. CAN’T SOMEONE DO SOMETHING!?!?!?!”
The guy felt bad for me. So he says, “Ma’am, just take your stuff.” I think he knew I was about to chop his head off. I shove on my snow boots as fast as I can, and RUN like Kevin’s dad in “Home Alone” across the entire dad gum airport. I am sweating, my hair is disgusting, and then I hear them page me. I have never been paged in my life. I was mortified. I was embarrassed. I am just not one of those irresponsible retards who misses her flight.
I shove my way to the front of the line and get my ticket. Thank you, Jesus.
As I start down the jet way thing, I am met by a wonderfully flamboyant African American gay man who is talking to me about getting drunk at the airport and drinking bourbon. We bonded. He said (sassy),
“Girl I don’t drink nothin’ but Maker’s Bourbon! I’m a man’s man. When my bartender axed me if I wanted a double, I just said, BITCH! YOU JUST MAKE DAT UP RIGHT!”
He was holding a little battery-operated cooling fan that looked like a flower. It had little pink foam blades.
I get on this flight and am squished in between two men. They didn’t smell gross, so that was good. The one on my left was weird. He was like 40 and had braces and when he smiled there was spit all stuck in his grill, like a valossa raptor. Sick. The guy to my right was awesome. It was hard for me to understand him a little bit because he was a mumbler, but I did make out a few of his comments. He told me he used to play the trumpet in the circus and he and his friends got kicked out because they’d all start playing jazz and blues whenever they were supposed to play circus songs. I was laughing my head off.
Then my little gay friend across the aisle pulled out some candy from his airport goody bag which was bulging with National Enquirer magazines and candy. He gave the candy to the little boy sitting next to him and said a very enthusiastic and lispy, “MERRY CHRISTMAS!”
Then my circus trumpeter says, “I think he be like Little Richard. If you know what I mean.”
I just about fell out of my seat I was laughing so hard. Then when I told him I was going into counseling, he said,
“Oh yes. I used to be a psychiatric aid. And you know what? There was this girl who was there. She had 4 personalities. I mean. 4. real. personalities. And you know what? People, they made fun of her. They show nuff did. And you know what? One day she just straight up hurt one of ‘em. Yep. She did. And they was HURT.”
The flight attendants were wearing Santa hats and Christmas apparel and they went through a “Night Before Christmas” routine for the safety information. It was hilarious. “Twas 7 days before Christmas, and all through the plane, everyone was seated, and stored were their trays. Should the lights go out, we’ll help with a smile, for peppermint lights will light up the aisle!”
I think I fell asleep for about 10 minutes and drooled on myself. I am so classy. No wonder my dating record is so awesome.
At the end of the flight we came to a big huge THUMP onto the runway. I think I broke my tail bone. No joke. I heard it crunch. Everyone on the flight screamed bloody murder.
I got off the plane and immediately felt like getting right back on and flying back to LA. Everyone is obese. Like, type 3 obese. And everyone is wearing a Christmas sweater. Mind you, last week I hosted an 80’s tacky Christmas sweater party, but it was in complete jest. EVERYONE here is wearing one. And they mean it. For real.
Also, some country-hick hillbilly keeps making announcements about watching our bags so “we can do our neighborly duties, downnair at the ur-port.”
I might have Nashville more than Memphis. Actually, I know I hate Nash more than Memphis. I mean, at least in Memphis, there’s a little diversity. Everyone here is white, wearing a Christmas sweater, cowboy hat, cowboy boots, a big gaudy cross necklace, and they’re all fat. It’s very weird.
One cool thing that happened today, though, amidst all of the insane crap—my parents got me an Ipod for my birthday. I didn’t really want one- I mean, it wasn’t at the top of my list, but now I really dig it. I know, I know. I was the only person in the united states under the age of 30 without one until November, but cut me some slack. Anyway, so I ran through the airport listening to all kinds of awesome 80’s music, and I felt like I had my own soundtrack. RIGHTEOUS.
Now I am waiting for my parents to come pick me up. Apparently there was bad fog on the interstate and so I have been sitting at the airport for an hour and a half. Sigh. I got to hear a nice all-white Baptist choir earlier. That was enjoyable. They gave me a free CD. I must look pathetic.
I will probably blog a great deal on this vacation because I am experiencing reverse culture shock. I need a healthy way to vent instead of engaging in escape behaviors.
My dad called me in a complete twit earlier. He had jetlag and was completely wasted (not drunk wasted- wasted like he was in a circadian rhythm coma). So I sit at my gate for about 30 hours, getting extremely annoyed by the stupid blonde valley girl sitting next to me as she made hand gestures and talked on her cell phone. Idiot face, the person on the phone cannot see your hands.
So my dad calls and says, “I just bought you a ticket on Southwest to Nashville. Flight leaves in an hour!” Keep in mind that there are at least 40 billion people in the airport. I am not checked in. I have no ticket. I have a huge bag, I have been dancing in place for ten minutes so I’m working up a good sweat, and I feel awful after eating my very heavy disgusting breakfast where I had to interact with the 8 Mile cast.
I run out of security, run downstairs, out the front doors of LAX, searching desperately for the Southwest sign. I find it, and there are 4098390482034 people in line. So I ask the stupid idiot woman working there, “My flight leaves in less than an hour- is there any way I can check in now?” She says, “No.” I almost punched her in the throat.
I’m about to puke. I’m sweating. I’m having a panic attack. My phone is ringing. I can’t get to it in time. It’s buried at the bottom of my bag under my laptop, chapstick, a huge book, and 309 other items. My feet are on fire. I have my Alaskan snow boots on and it’s 80 degrees outside, but when I left my house at 4 AM it was 40 degrees. My armpits are wet. I want to puke. Someone will inevitably get shanked in about 3 minutes.
Finally I check in. Next is security. There are 3209028203 people in the security line. I quickly move with the cattle line and they run out of mother effing plastic bins right as I get up to walking through the canopy of violation. I shove all of my stuff on the conveyer belt. Then I get yelled at. And I say “WE NEED SOME MORE PLASTIC BINS. MERRY CHRISTMAS,” at the top of my lungs, in a hateful voice.
So I get in trouble and have to go through security again and I yell, “MY FLIGHT IS LEAVING IN 15 MINUTES. CAN’T SOMEONE DO SOMETHING!?!?!?!”
The guy felt bad for me. So he says, “Ma’am, just take your stuff.” I think he knew I was about to chop his head off. I shove on my snow boots as fast as I can, and RUN like Kevin’s dad in “Home Alone” across the entire dad gum airport. I am sweating, my hair is disgusting, and then I hear them page me. I have never been paged in my life. I was mortified. I was embarrassed. I am just not one of those irresponsible retards who misses her flight.
I shove my way to the front of the line and get my ticket. Thank you, Jesus.
As I start down the jet way thing, I am met by a wonderfully flamboyant African American gay man who is talking to me about getting drunk at the airport and drinking bourbon. We bonded. He said (sassy),
“Girl I don’t drink nothin’ but Maker’s Bourbon! I’m a man’s man. When my bartender axed me if I wanted a double, I just said, BITCH! YOU JUST MAKE DAT UP RIGHT!”
He was holding a little battery-operated cooling fan that looked like a flower. It had little pink foam blades.
I get on this flight and am squished in between two men. They didn’t smell gross, so that was good. The one on my left was weird. He was like 40 and had braces and when he smiled there was spit all stuck in his grill, like a valossa raptor. Sick. The guy to my right was awesome. It was hard for me to understand him a little bit because he was a mumbler, but I did make out a few of his comments. He told me he used to play the trumpet in the circus and he and his friends got kicked out because they’d all start playing jazz and blues whenever they were supposed to play circus songs. I was laughing my head off.
Then my little gay friend across the aisle pulled out some candy from his airport goody bag which was bulging with National Enquirer magazines and candy. He gave the candy to the little boy sitting next to him and said a very enthusiastic and lispy, “MERRY CHRISTMAS!”
Then my circus trumpeter says, “I think he be like Little Richard. If you know what I mean.”
I just about fell out of my seat I was laughing so hard. Then when I told him I was going into counseling, he said,
“Oh yes. I used to be a psychiatric aid. And you know what? There was this girl who was there. She had 4 personalities. I mean. 4. real. personalities. And you know what? People, they made fun of her. They show nuff did. And you know what? One day she just straight up hurt one of ‘em. Yep. She did. And they was HURT.”
The flight attendants were wearing Santa hats and Christmas apparel and they went through a “Night Before Christmas” routine for the safety information. It was hilarious. “Twas 7 days before Christmas, and all through the plane, everyone was seated, and stored were their trays. Should the lights go out, we’ll help with a smile, for peppermint lights will light up the aisle!”
I think I fell asleep for about 10 minutes and drooled on myself. I am so classy. No wonder my dating record is so awesome.
At the end of the flight we came to a big huge THUMP onto the runway. I think I broke my tail bone. No joke. I heard it crunch. Everyone on the flight screamed bloody murder.
I got off the plane and immediately felt like getting right back on and flying back to LA. Everyone is obese. Like, type 3 obese. And everyone is wearing a Christmas sweater. Mind you, last week I hosted an 80’s tacky Christmas sweater party, but it was in complete jest. EVERYONE here is wearing one. And they mean it. For real.
Also, some country-hick hillbilly keeps making announcements about watching our bags so “we can do our neighborly duties, downnair at the ur-port.”
I might have Nashville more than Memphis. Actually, I know I hate Nash more than Memphis. I mean, at least in Memphis, there’s a little diversity. Everyone here is white, wearing a Christmas sweater, cowboy hat, cowboy boots, a big gaudy cross necklace, and they’re all fat. It’s very weird.
One cool thing that happened today, though, amidst all of the insane crap—my parents got me an Ipod for my birthday. I didn’t really want one- I mean, it wasn’t at the top of my list, but now I really dig it. I know, I know. I was the only person in the united states under the age of 30 without one until November, but cut me some slack. Anyway, so I ran through the airport listening to all kinds of awesome 80’s music, and I felt like I had my own soundtrack. RIGHTEOUS.
Now I am waiting for my parents to come pick me up. Apparently there was bad fog on the interstate and so I have been sitting at the airport for an hour and a half. Sigh. I got to hear a nice all-white Baptist choir earlier. That was enjoyable. They gave me a free CD. I must look pathetic.
I will probably blog a great deal on this vacation because I am experiencing reverse culture shock. I need a healthy way to vent instead of engaging in escape behaviors.
Traveling like a Slattery Sucks.
I have been bumped twice in the past 8 hours.
Because my dad is a pilot, people have this dumb idea that I get to ride through security in a golden golf cart and that flight attendants throw rose pedals on the ground as I walk through the airplane. I sit in first class with a mimosa and a plate of caviar and I never have to show anyone my ID. Bulllllll sheeeeeeet. In reality, most of my traveling has been a lot like being one of those low class folks on the Titanic, being shoved around like cattle with the commoners, getting frisked every five seconds by some pervy TSA agent, and having to take my shoes off and on a million times. Not a fan.
I am watching a 200 pound black woman stuff her face full of Burger King French fries at 8:30 in the morning, talk on her cell phone, and pick crap out of her teeth with her long silver fingernails. She is now licking her thumbs. The lady next to her is an 85 year old red headed lady talking at the top of her lungs on her cell phone. She is wearing a full length fur coat. It matches her hair. Maybe her hair is a wig made from the bottom of her coat. Recyclable alterations?
I was at the airport last night and had to deal with all sorts of shenanigans. Last night feels like a million years ago. I see some of the same people who got bumped last night waiting here with me. They got bumped this morning, too. I effing hate getting bumped. First of all, there were about 30 million Asian people with little carts, running around, bumping into me, stopping in the middle of the walkways, and blocking all entrances. Fire hazardous, rude punks. I almost punched one of them. Normally I am pretty understanding about cultural differences, but after driving around in the rain, never finding adequate parking, cutting my date short, rushing around trying to get everything done, I was fed up. Last night I just was not in the mood to be Carl Rogers. Or Mr. Rogers. Mr. Carl Rogers? I had this mentor party the other day, and my mentee’s mom told me that she went on a trip to Singapore a few years ago. She told me that the people over there had never seen a black woman before, so they stared at her everywhere she went. She told me she wanted to scream at someone by the end of her trip. I felt very empathetic all of a sudden.
Last night I waited with the lady who was the guidance counselor in “10 Things I hate about You.” Apparently she has some TV celebrity daughter, too, because people kept coming up and talking to her and telling her how wonderful the “season finale” was and they kept getting their pictures taken with her. I am all of a sudden completely irritated with “famous” people. They are just people who do their jobs. Why is that a big deal? I don’t get it. I saw Scary Spice last week. She was nice. I didn’t go up and throw up all over her and try to kiss her butt, though. I don’t get it. People are just people. Why do we make them more than that? Anyway, despite my night of madness, I did have one perk. Some crazy lady sitting across from me kept saying all kinds of crazy funny stuff. One of her monologues was as follows:
“My husband, he be downstairs. My daughter, she work for da Fed Ex in Muuurmphis. Well, one time I done got on the plane with my son. This here’s my son. Say hello, Josh. Make Diego say hello, too.” (Diego the Latino doll waves hello)
“Well, I had done been on the plane one time and they had pulled me OFF. I mean they pulled me RIGHT OFF. And you know the whole time it was my dumb husband’s fault. He downstairs. I kept sayin to him, I says, ‘We gotsta go! We gotsta go!’ and he did nothin’ but crap around. You know how they do. They just crap around.”
I want to make sure that everyone who reads this knows that this was her exact conversation with me and I am in no way fabricating. She was quite possibly the highlight of my week.
This morning I woke up at 4 AM. I am not even remotely conscious. I got bumped and watched about 10 other paying passengers curse out the gate agent, who was a little Asian woman named Sook. Poor old Sook. Some crazy Mexican lady kept yelling in Sook’s face. Imagine this: two four foot tall women, both from other countries, neither of them can speak English well, both yelling at each other and grabbing each other by the arms in complete frustration. Pushy pushy pushy. I thought I was going to have to referee. Instead I just sat there, watching them, trying to figure out how either of them wasn’t wearing a house arrest anklet.
So, crazy Mexican lady comes and sits down by me after her encounter with Sook. I had no idea what she said. I understood about 5%. She begins to tell me,
“My dwah-ter, she works in da Meemphees. You whaaant, you whaaant coffee?”
I tell her no thanks on the coffee.
“I get for you. I take you for coffee. You whaaant, you whant tea?”
No thanks, Lady. She is wearing platform sneakers and bright blue Princess Diana eyeliner.
“You come whiiiiiith me. We get coffee toghhhhether.”
I have to make a phone call.
I called my mom. Then I decided that I was pretty darn hungry. I ditched Crazy Martinez and went to one of those restaurants in the airport that charges you about 30 dollars for a hamburger that tastes like it’s made out of a skunk.
Of course, I end up sitting in the white trash section. This very homely white family sitting next to me looks like they were in the cast of 8 Mile. This woman is all lumpy and obnoxious and is wearing a scrunchy. A SCRUNCHY. They stopped making those in 1994, so who knows how she got this thing. She has a little raggety kid sitting next to her. He’s about 4. Her other son is about 8 and he’s dressed all trashy, too. The dad is sitting next to the 8 year old and he has a terribly vacant, middle-aged look on his face. You know, that face that says, “Man, when I first married this woman, I had no idea that 10 years later she’d be wearing a scrunchy and have a FUPA (Fat Upper Pubic Area).” Anyway, Dad keeps leaving every few minutes because his wife is such a moron. There’s a baby in a stroller parked next to the table.
The kids are super annoying. Especially at 7 in the morning. Kicking the table, smacking their food, getting their disgusting germs all over the place. I almost got up and threw my scalding coffee on the stupid mom’s face. She kept allowing the little 4 year old boy to be obnoxious. She’s laugh and coo all over him and hug him until his face was purple, but when the 8 year old boy would try to do the same obnoxious stuff, she’d yell at him and show her teeth like a German shepherd. It was apparent that big brother wanted the same love that little brother got, but when he tried the same tactics, he was reprimanded.
HOLY CRAP: NEWS FLASH. I am watching this man board the airplane. He is wearing black sandals with black socks, wearing black jeans, is wearing a Southwestern print Hawaiian style shirt, and this is the best part: HE HAS A SIR-LANCE-A-LOT HAIRCUT THAT IS HAIR SPRAYED LIKE SNAP-ON LEGO HAIR. This is magical. Seriously. His hair is stiff as it can be and looks like he could take it off in one piece. It is like a little mini mullet with bangs. Glorious.
Now, back to the white trash encounter. I heard scrunchy mc scruncherton say this to her son:
“You are getting on my nerves. There is no point in spending thousands of dollars on a vacation if I can’t have fun. You are keeping me from having fun. I can’t handle it. You better start acting right. You know how to act right- you go to school, don’t you? DON’T YOU? You better make sure that mommy starts having fun so that she isn’t wasting all of this money on this vacation.”
Let’s decode the family injunction:
Don’t be a little boy; don’t act like your brother. I don’t love you because you aren’t as cute as your little brother. Little brother is my favorite child. You are a complete doofus and I hate you. Love, Scrunchy Mom.
I hate that crap. You can’t be inconsistent with kids like that. It makes ‘em all crazy when they get older, and they spend their whole lives trying to figure out what’s “wrong” with them. I wanted to just say, “Kid, your mom is a total B-word, and if you just do exactly OPPOSITE of everything she says, you’ll turn out juuuuust fine.”
Plus if you’re such a tight wad that you can’t just enjoy your time together on your family vacation, heck, don’t take a vacation. Stay at home and keep on living your same old white trash life. Eat some ho-hos and watch Mama’s Family all day.
Stupid idiot.
The trailer park family got up and left. I was finally left alone in my immediate section, with an older guy and a young guy sitting to my left a few tables over. They were gawking at me. I gave them a hateful look.
The old guy says to me,
“We weren’t staring at you. I was staring at the picture above your head.”
“Suuuuuuuuuure.” I said.
Then he proceeded to leave his seat, come inspect the picture above my head, and tell me a bunch of weird info about this car that was in the frame, and how there was a movie made about this car, and the plot had to do with the car going across Route 66, and the police chased him all across the U.S., and blah blah blah. When I realized what a dork he was, I also realized that the guy definitely was not lying. He was staring at the car, and not me. Shwew.
So now I’m sitting on the floor of the LAX airport, trying to avoid the crazy Mexican lady who is talking on her cell phone and popping her gum.
There is also this obnoxious red headed two year old running through the airport screaming and acting like a little twit. I want to throw him on the jet way.
I think that I am exhausted. I’m tired as all get out. YIKES! I just saw the scariest woman ever. Her face had so much plastic surgery that it looked like she sucked a balloon over her face and she was inhaling. SCARY SCARY STUFF.
Anyway, I’m exhausted because I got 4 hours of sleep, I just finished finals a week ago, I partied like crazy on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, and the rest of the week I have been wrapping up work, job hunting, figuring out bills, etc.
I want to be rich so I can buy plane tickets like a normal white American person and not have to ride standby with all of the Titanic cattle.
Maybe there is an upside. Maybe because I have slept so little, I will be able to sleep tonight, for once, without the help of any sleep aids. Two nights ago I couldn’t sleep and I was watching Fight Club on cable. I started watching at the part where Jack says,
“You wake up in LAX, JFK, Dallas Fort Worth. Gain an hour, lose an hour. If you wake up in a different time, in a different place, are you a different person?”
Good question. I have felt all incoherent and weird like that recently because I have slept so little and I’ve been so edgy. It’s rough. Plus my skin is a nightmare. I have the complexion of a brick. I get all stressed and I have constellations all over my face. Rough, rough, rough. The stuff about acne just being an accessory of puberty is a big fat lie.
I think I am going to wrap this up and play with my Ipod.
I’m at a point now where it isn’t even worth trying to go back home. I hate Memphis. My whole life goal has been to escape. Now that I’m out, I really would be fine if I never went back ever again. I miss my sister and my cat. I miss a few of my friends. I do miss the culture sometimes, but right now, this whole ordeal just is not worth it. Gain an hour, lose an hour.
Right now I am listening to this flight attendant tell this mom about this kid who had an asthma attack on the plane. She’s going on and on and on. The kid looks like a fruit cake. He’s standing here in this dorky outfit and he talks like a little goofus. Way to really not live up the “kid with Asthma” stereotype, kid. Apparently this kid had an allergy or something and the mom clearly does NOT CARE but I think that the flight attendant is worried about getting sued, so she keeps talking about how they got a doctor to tend to the kid’s needs and he was very helpful and blablablabbla.
These airport people. They’re crazy.
Last night there was this lady in a full length sweater coat, a long purple and black wig, a big sparkly costume jewelry ring on every finger, big gold-rimmed Elvis glasses on her nose, red lace panty hoes, some black house shoes, and some sort of weird outfit underneath the knit sweater coat. Oh yes, she also had shoulder pads the size of Montana. She’s here again today. And she is wearing bright red lipstick. It matches her lacy panty hose.
My booty is asleep. Time to walk around. If one more nasty disgusting person yawns, coughs, or sneezes without covering his or her mouth, I am going to punch him or her right in the teeth. The end.
Because my dad is a pilot, people have this dumb idea that I get to ride through security in a golden golf cart and that flight attendants throw rose pedals on the ground as I walk through the airplane. I sit in first class with a mimosa and a plate of caviar and I never have to show anyone my ID. Bulllllll sheeeeeeet. In reality, most of my traveling has been a lot like being one of those low class folks on the Titanic, being shoved around like cattle with the commoners, getting frisked every five seconds by some pervy TSA agent, and having to take my shoes off and on a million times. Not a fan.
I am watching a 200 pound black woman stuff her face full of Burger King French fries at 8:30 in the morning, talk on her cell phone, and pick crap out of her teeth with her long silver fingernails. She is now licking her thumbs. The lady next to her is an 85 year old red headed lady talking at the top of her lungs on her cell phone. She is wearing a full length fur coat. It matches her hair. Maybe her hair is a wig made from the bottom of her coat. Recyclable alterations?
I was at the airport last night and had to deal with all sorts of shenanigans. Last night feels like a million years ago. I see some of the same people who got bumped last night waiting here with me. They got bumped this morning, too. I effing hate getting bumped. First of all, there were about 30 million Asian people with little carts, running around, bumping into me, stopping in the middle of the walkways, and blocking all entrances. Fire hazardous, rude punks. I almost punched one of them. Normally I am pretty understanding about cultural differences, but after driving around in the rain, never finding adequate parking, cutting my date short, rushing around trying to get everything done, I was fed up. Last night I just was not in the mood to be Carl Rogers. Or Mr. Rogers. Mr. Carl Rogers? I had this mentor party the other day, and my mentee’s mom told me that she went on a trip to Singapore a few years ago. She told me that the people over there had never seen a black woman before, so they stared at her everywhere she went. She told me she wanted to scream at someone by the end of her trip. I felt very empathetic all of a sudden.
Last night I waited with the lady who was the guidance counselor in “10 Things I hate about You.” Apparently she has some TV celebrity daughter, too, because people kept coming up and talking to her and telling her how wonderful the “season finale” was and they kept getting their pictures taken with her. I am all of a sudden completely irritated with “famous” people. They are just people who do their jobs. Why is that a big deal? I don’t get it. I saw Scary Spice last week. She was nice. I didn’t go up and throw up all over her and try to kiss her butt, though. I don’t get it. People are just people. Why do we make them more than that? Anyway, despite my night of madness, I did have one perk. Some crazy lady sitting across from me kept saying all kinds of crazy funny stuff. One of her monologues was as follows:
“My husband, he be downstairs. My daughter, she work for da Fed Ex in Muuurmphis. Well, one time I done got on the plane with my son. This here’s my son. Say hello, Josh. Make Diego say hello, too.” (Diego the Latino doll waves hello)
“Well, I had done been on the plane one time and they had pulled me OFF. I mean they pulled me RIGHT OFF. And you know the whole time it was my dumb husband’s fault. He downstairs. I kept sayin to him, I says, ‘We gotsta go! We gotsta go!’ and he did nothin’ but crap around. You know how they do. They just crap around.”
I want to make sure that everyone who reads this knows that this was her exact conversation with me and I am in no way fabricating. She was quite possibly the highlight of my week.
This morning I woke up at 4 AM. I am not even remotely conscious. I got bumped and watched about 10 other paying passengers curse out the gate agent, who was a little Asian woman named Sook. Poor old Sook. Some crazy Mexican lady kept yelling in Sook’s face. Imagine this: two four foot tall women, both from other countries, neither of them can speak English well, both yelling at each other and grabbing each other by the arms in complete frustration. Pushy pushy pushy. I thought I was going to have to referee. Instead I just sat there, watching them, trying to figure out how either of them wasn’t wearing a house arrest anklet.
So, crazy Mexican lady comes and sits down by me after her encounter with Sook. I had no idea what she said. I understood about 5%. She begins to tell me,
“My dwah-ter, she works in da Meemphees. You whaaant, you whaaant coffee?”
I tell her no thanks on the coffee.
“I get for you. I take you for coffee. You whaaant, you whant tea?”
No thanks, Lady. She is wearing platform sneakers and bright blue Princess Diana eyeliner.
“You come whiiiiiith me. We get coffee toghhhhether.”
I have to make a phone call.
I called my mom. Then I decided that I was pretty darn hungry. I ditched Crazy Martinez and went to one of those restaurants in the airport that charges you about 30 dollars for a hamburger that tastes like it’s made out of a skunk.
Of course, I end up sitting in the white trash section. This very homely white family sitting next to me looks like they were in the cast of 8 Mile. This woman is all lumpy and obnoxious and is wearing a scrunchy. A SCRUNCHY. They stopped making those in 1994, so who knows how she got this thing. She has a little raggety kid sitting next to her. He’s about 4. Her other son is about 8 and he’s dressed all trashy, too. The dad is sitting next to the 8 year old and he has a terribly vacant, middle-aged look on his face. You know, that face that says, “Man, when I first married this woman, I had no idea that 10 years later she’d be wearing a scrunchy and have a FUPA (Fat Upper Pubic Area).” Anyway, Dad keeps leaving every few minutes because his wife is such a moron. There’s a baby in a stroller parked next to the table.
The kids are super annoying. Especially at 7 in the morning. Kicking the table, smacking their food, getting their disgusting germs all over the place. I almost got up and threw my scalding coffee on the stupid mom’s face. She kept allowing the little 4 year old boy to be obnoxious. She’s laugh and coo all over him and hug him until his face was purple, but when the 8 year old boy would try to do the same obnoxious stuff, she’d yell at him and show her teeth like a German shepherd. It was apparent that big brother wanted the same love that little brother got, but when he tried the same tactics, he was reprimanded.
HOLY CRAP: NEWS FLASH. I am watching this man board the airplane. He is wearing black sandals with black socks, wearing black jeans, is wearing a Southwestern print Hawaiian style shirt, and this is the best part: HE HAS A SIR-LANCE-A-LOT HAIRCUT THAT IS HAIR SPRAYED LIKE SNAP-ON LEGO HAIR. This is magical. Seriously. His hair is stiff as it can be and looks like he could take it off in one piece. It is like a little mini mullet with bangs. Glorious.
Now, back to the white trash encounter. I heard scrunchy mc scruncherton say this to her son:
“You are getting on my nerves. There is no point in spending thousands of dollars on a vacation if I can’t have fun. You are keeping me from having fun. I can’t handle it. You better start acting right. You know how to act right- you go to school, don’t you? DON’T YOU? You better make sure that mommy starts having fun so that she isn’t wasting all of this money on this vacation.”
Let’s decode the family injunction:
Don’t be a little boy; don’t act like your brother. I don’t love you because you aren’t as cute as your little brother. Little brother is my favorite child. You are a complete doofus and I hate you. Love, Scrunchy Mom.
I hate that crap. You can’t be inconsistent with kids like that. It makes ‘em all crazy when they get older, and they spend their whole lives trying to figure out what’s “wrong” with them. I wanted to just say, “Kid, your mom is a total B-word, and if you just do exactly OPPOSITE of everything she says, you’ll turn out juuuuust fine.”
Plus if you’re such a tight wad that you can’t just enjoy your time together on your family vacation, heck, don’t take a vacation. Stay at home and keep on living your same old white trash life. Eat some ho-hos and watch Mama’s Family all day.
Stupid idiot.
The trailer park family got up and left. I was finally left alone in my immediate section, with an older guy and a young guy sitting to my left a few tables over. They were gawking at me. I gave them a hateful look.
The old guy says to me,
“We weren’t staring at you. I was staring at the picture above your head.”
“Suuuuuuuuuure.” I said.
Then he proceeded to leave his seat, come inspect the picture above my head, and tell me a bunch of weird info about this car that was in the frame, and how there was a movie made about this car, and the plot had to do with the car going across Route 66, and the police chased him all across the U.S., and blah blah blah. When I realized what a dork he was, I also realized that the guy definitely was not lying. He was staring at the car, and not me. Shwew.
So now I’m sitting on the floor of the LAX airport, trying to avoid the crazy Mexican lady who is talking on her cell phone and popping her gum.
There is also this obnoxious red headed two year old running through the airport screaming and acting like a little twit. I want to throw him on the jet way.
I think that I am exhausted. I’m tired as all get out. YIKES! I just saw the scariest woman ever. Her face had so much plastic surgery that it looked like she sucked a balloon over her face and she was inhaling. SCARY SCARY STUFF.
Anyway, I’m exhausted because I got 4 hours of sleep, I just finished finals a week ago, I partied like crazy on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, and the rest of the week I have been wrapping up work, job hunting, figuring out bills, etc.
I want to be rich so I can buy plane tickets like a normal white American person and not have to ride standby with all of the Titanic cattle.
Maybe there is an upside. Maybe because I have slept so little, I will be able to sleep tonight, for once, without the help of any sleep aids. Two nights ago I couldn’t sleep and I was watching Fight Club on cable. I started watching at the part where Jack says,
“You wake up in LAX, JFK, Dallas Fort Worth. Gain an hour, lose an hour. If you wake up in a different time, in a different place, are you a different person?”
Good question. I have felt all incoherent and weird like that recently because I have slept so little and I’ve been so edgy. It’s rough. Plus my skin is a nightmare. I have the complexion of a brick. I get all stressed and I have constellations all over my face. Rough, rough, rough. The stuff about acne just being an accessory of puberty is a big fat lie.
I think I am going to wrap this up and play with my Ipod.
I’m at a point now where it isn’t even worth trying to go back home. I hate Memphis. My whole life goal has been to escape. Now that I’m out, I really would be fine if I never went back ever again. I miss my sister and my cat. I miss a few of my friends. I do miss the culture sometimes, but right now, this whole ordeal just is not worth it. Gain an hour, lose an hour.
Right now I am listening to this flight attendant tell this mom about this kid who had an asthma attack on the plane. She’s going on and on and on. The kid looks like a fruit cake. He’s standing here in this dorky outfit and he talks like a little goofus. Way to really not live up the “kid with Asthma” stereotype, kid. Apparently this kid had an allergy or something and the mom clearly does NOT CARE but I think that the flight attendant is worried about getting sued, so she keeps talking about how they got a doctor to tend to the kid’s needs and he was very helpful and blablablabbla.
These airport people. They’re crazy.
Last night there was this lady in a full length sweater coat, a long purple and black wig, a big sparkly costume jewelry ring on every finger, big gold-rimmed Elvis glasses on her nose, red lace panty hoes, some black house shoes, and some sort of weird outfit underneath the knit sweater coat. Oh yes, she also had shoulder pads the size of Montana. She’s here again today. And she is wearing bright red lipstick. It matches her lacy panty hose.
My booty is asleep. Time to walk around. If one more nasty disgusting person yawns, coughs, or sneezes without covering his or her mouth, I am going to punch him or her right in the teeth. The end.
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