Welcome to day 35 of the broken foot diaries.

This has been a rough week for a number of reasons, school breaks, big work lunches in the city, a small(ish) misstep on the stairs, this morning I woke up with my right eye swollen shut. No one here seems to now why, neither Dr. Mario nor PHD candidate Otis have the slightest idea but all three of us agree that I look like the victim of something nefarious right now.

But on the bright side I have learned a few important lessons!

I learned to break my 40-something year habit of always sitting on my left foot. This is, admittedly, a terrible and painful habit I should have broken years ago. Thanks to all the newly installed hardware holding said foot together its no longer an option. See even I can learn from repeated pain stimulus; maybe I am smarter than Homer Simpson after all.

I also learned that with the power of a credit card and internet access strangers will bring you groceries to you home. I know, I know, the rest of the developed world learned this a little over three years ago but up until earlier this week I was still a hold out that would drive to the store and walk the aisles… like a rube! Well no more, now some dude named “Kevin” gets to touch my avocados before me.

And I learned that you know your friends love you when they come out of their way to visit you during the day, to enjoy some relaxing down time and you casually mention that maybe the litter box needs changing and next thing you know… its out the door and new litter is in its place.( I’m hoping next week to teach this trick to the cats themselves.)

Other lessons have been less than stellar – like the maximum amount of dirty dishes that will fit in my kitchen sink, how easily a shower stool can be flipped over in a shower, how awful low calorie wine is and how you really need to check your on-line orders before you accidently pay for something so horrible.

Life is just one big classroom, I cannot wait for recess to get here….

There are things that you can buy online, like laundry detergent and paper towels and that cheap cat litter that only Amazon seems to sell, and there are things that you should never buy online: shoes, jeans and most importantly cars.

I understand why online car buying is a thing, there was a time when everyone was afraid of being around everyone, and also the fact that many of us don’t enjoy interacting with people. I am one of those people, I frequent restaurants that you can book a table online. I have spent the better part of a decade at work getting my office moved further and further back in the shadowy depths of the library, I don’t answer the phone except for three people and even then…

In November, as my old reliable Ford Escape was slowly leaking out its entrails all over my parking lot I decided to buy a car without speaking to or interacting with another human being. And you know what? It was remarkably easy. I found, financed and ordered a car to arrive at my house the day after Thanksgiving in a little under two hours.

I was elated and relieved that the Ford still started up when they came to take it away, I was even elated when they drove my new car off the flatbed and a piece of the bumper fell off (I can fix that!). I was even elated when I got into it and realized I was so low to the ground that I was basically laying on the pavement (I can get used to this!). I was elated until I had to take it to my mechanic that afternoon because on the way to a doctors appointment I started dragging parts of the car on the ground.

I became less elated when it seemed the entire underside had been spray painted to hide an excessive amount of rust.

Elation slowly turned to dread and panic as the more I drove my brand new (to me), low mileage, very dependable car (I’m keeping this one forever!) It became more and more obvious that it had been in an accident, or a flood, or both (probably both).

I spent several months trying to justify it (read trying to figure out how not to go back and have to interact with the seller and have conversations centering on ‘WTAF are you doing selling this car to anyone?!?’).

One day it occurred to me though that if I kept the Subaru I would eventually end up talking to my mechanic more often than I would a car dealer. I’d end up talking to him and to the people that administrated the “warranty” for the car. There were many phone calls in my future. Too many.

So, I took a day off work, put my big girl pants on, went to a car dealership. Assured them there was nothing wrong with my pretty, low mileage, dependable trade-in and proceeded to have conversations about adulty car things that I had googled the night before.

Several hours later, I purchased the prettiest and most comfortable car I’ve ever owned that makes me feel tall and powerful and will off road if ever I accidentally miss the road… And if I should ever lose my job, home and everything I have I’ll still have leather furniture and two skylights when I have to live in her (win/win!).

I was TERRIBLY remiss in my last post about my employment history in that I forgot to highlight the absolute worst job I ever had. Maybe I did this subconsciously because I knew it deserved its own post or maybe I have finally repressed this memory far enough into the back of my addled mind that it no longer springs forward without some prompting (thanks Mom!).

The summer between my first and second freshman years of college I was in a tough spot not having anywhere to go for summer break. I had tried desperately to stay at school over the summer and continue to work at the pizza shop, but it was made clear to me that only foreign students could stay on campus. So, I did the next logical thing, I rented a damp basement bedroom in a house in Vineland NJ. Back in the early 90’s Vineland was a pretty rough town (I haven’t been there in 23 years so I hope it’s improved) but at the time it was not a nice place to be. The room was cheap and right down the road from a very bad decision I was dating named Shawn.

I moved in with exactly enough rent money for one week – I was desperate to find a job as was my landlady’s drug dealing son (Chris) who needed a cover for all of the cash he regularly had laying around. Chris and his hoodlum friends and I decided to carpool to a local temp agency the day after I moved in.

Whether it was because of the company I was with or because I looked like I had little potential but the only job the temp agency offered us was shift work at a local plastics plant. Desperate for anything I immediately agreed and I was told to report there at 11:00pm that very night. That very night? I had only gotten a few hours of sleep the night before. I was already tired and it was only 3:00pm. I went home, got changed, tried unsuccessfully to take a nap and drove with Chris and his friends to the plant for our 8 hour shift.

The first thing that hit me was the smell, walking in to the front door I was overwhelmed by the smell of burning plastic. I was told by the guy who did my new hire paperwork that I’d get used to it – that was not the only lie he told me.

I was given a very brief “safety” lesson and then taken out on the “floor” where they were making a number of different items from flower pots to dust bins to mops. I was started on the least popular machine the mop-head-put-er-on-er (probably not the official name). My job was the stand there all night and as the preshrunk sponges came down the line, I had to pick it up, melt a piece of plastic on the back (very hot!) and manually attach it to the base part of the mop head that would eventually get attached to a handle.

As simple as that sounds it was not easy, for one thing everything was hot hot hot, the sponges came at me with surprising speed and the process to attach them took amazing hand strength to get right. I was immediately overwhelmed but as I looked around the hot, smelly warehouse I realized that not only was it too loud to ask for help or guidance but I was also the only one not speaking Spanish.

How I got through that first night I do not know, never had 8 hours felt so long. My feet hurt, my back hurt, my hands were so sore I could barely stand it and I was TIRED. I was so tired that when I was give my 30 minute ‘dinner’ break (around 3:00 am) I sat down in a hard plastic chair in the breakroom and fell asleep sitting upright.

By the time I got out of there at 7:00 the next morning and limped to the car, I found a note from Chris telling me he and his friends had decided to go to Wildwood sometime in the middle of the night (clearly physical labor was not their cup of tea). I sat down behind the wheel but my hands were burned and blistered and I could not grab a hold of the steering wheel.

I managed to get myself home although at one point I did pull off the road because I was literally falling asleep at the wheel. I took a brief nap and managed to make it home without hurting anyone.

The next night was somewhat easier because at least I knew what to expect and I had slept the entire 12 hours between shifts and I brought food. I was once again on the mop machine but I made a game of it and with practice got fast enough that I had to wait for the next sponge to get to me.

The third night I worked another machine which I forget the particulars of but it was easier than the dreaded mop head. It was still a painfully long night and I remember I was positioned so that I watched the guys working the flower pots all night. Flower pots was by far the easiest job there; the pots were molded by a machine that dumped them into a giant cardboard box and the guys working it simply had to grab them before the box overflowed and stack them on a pallet next to their station, sure their hands still got burned but after a few days it got easier. A few lucky people had gloves, but they were personal property and not company issued –  I was much to poor too buy gloves and I looked at them as enviously as I looked at people who ate real meals during break time.

My 5th day there was payday, I cashed my check and had just enough money to pay my landlady for the week and buy a bus ticket to Maine. A friend had invited me to come visit for the weekend but once I got there I realized I couldn’t go back. I broke up with Shawn on a postcard and spent the rest of the summer rotating the 3 outfits I had packed while sharing a room with my friends younger sister, Meanwhile Chris and his druggie friends pilfered all of my worldly belongings – presumably to buy more crack.

And this is why you need to make sure your kids stay in school.

Aw snap… you thought I was done, but this horse isn’t dead yet. Call this story “the lost years part 6 and a half”:

Do you ever find yourself doing unspeakably crazy things? Like you are watching yourself from afar and you are powerless to stop it? I can think of three distinct times in my adult life that I have gone bat shit crazy and as much as I wanted to stop myself I was unable to – this is one of those times.

It was the end of the 90’s – probably sometime mid 1999ish, who knows? I was living alone in my one bedroom on University Ave and decided one day that even though I loved my apartment and my solitude I was 24ish and maybe I should think about being around people my own age, in a setting that was somewhat less responsible than the one I had created for myself. I decided to find a roommate and move closer to the beach.

I put an ad in the Pennysaver, something along the lines of “want to find the perfect apartment, with the perfect roommate? Call me!’ I was bound to find someone good, right? I got hundreds of calls – I got calls from a lot of scary sounding people. I got a call from an entire platoon of marines looking for somewhere to ‘live’ when not on deployment, I got a call from a man I’m pretty sure wanted to pimp me out and offered to get me any place I wanted – I got so many calls that I eventually pulled the ad and stopped answering my phone.

But I got one call from a reasonable sounding girl who was also in her mid 20’s who lived in Ocean Beach but had recently found an available two-bedroom townhouse seven blocks from the ocean that she could not afford on her own – it sounded perfect, it sounded too perfect. I immediately went to meet this person whom we will call Samantha. She was living in a tiny one bedroom ‘cottage’ that was tastefully decorated, she seemed like someone I could get along with, she had a small dog that after a trial meet and greet was tolerated by Ruka.

We toured the two-bedroom townhouse that was big and bright and just a little bit 70’s mod to be fun – we picked bedrooms, I filled out an application – in my head I was already blending our living room furniture and determining how the new commute would fit into my work and school schedule.

I was on my way out the door with my landlord’s notice in hand when I decided to call her to confirm move-in dates and that’s when she tells me that she thought I should know she was still interviewing other potential roommates. WHAT? THE? HELL? I had already filled out the application and paid the application fee, I had already taken boxes from work – I had already created a new life in my head. I was beyond pissed off.

Without stopping to think about what I was doing I immediately grabbed my keys and drove to Ocean Beach ready to confront her in person, I thought maybe I could still be reasonable and talk this thing through. I called her from a pay phone around the corner from her place and told her I’d like to meet with her  – she got so outraged that I had come ‘into her neighborhood’ that she basically hung up on me.

At that point what I should have done was turned my car around and head home, cut my loses and be glad I dodged a bullet, but fuck Samanatha, you know? She called me, she asked me to see this apartment she found, she asked me to fill out an application. I nearly gave notice and lost the last affordable, rent controlled apartment within easy biking distance of my office. OMG – I WAS MAD!

Instead of going home I stopped at a dollar store bought a pad of paper and a pen, made my way to a corner bar, ordered the cheapest thing they served and proceeded to write Samanatha a letter.

I was in that bar for hours, the first couple pages went smoothly but by the time I was on page 4 or 5 I knew I was out of control – I remember seeing myself scribbling injustices to this girl that I barely knew and realized I had crossed a line. Whatever inhibitors that should have fired in my brain telling me to stop where asleep or deeply zoned out because I wrote Samantha a 16-page letter basically telling her how awful she was – like I said up front I was powerless to stop myself.

I stormed out of the corner bar and put my manifesto under her windshield wiper of her car and headed home.

She called me after work the next day to tell me that I was insane and that she never wanted to see or hear from me again, and I said something clever like, “yeah, well tell your new landlord to rip up my application – I already stopped payment on the check I gave you, bitch.”

And that my friends is how I almost lived Ocean Beach.

And… we’re back. It’s 1997 I’m about to (kinda, almost) start getting my shit together.

CHOCKTAW DRIVE

In order to leave Adelaide and still be able to afford a decent place we needed a roommate and a after much disagreement discussion Shane and I moved back in with Malcolm into a really sweet 1920’s apartment located at the back of a quiet, sleepy complex just barely off El Cajon Blvd. The place was great, with beautiful hard woods, built-ins everywhere, a vintage stove you could fuel with firewood (if you wanted), it was small but adorable. I knew moving back in with the two of them was a bad idea but at the time I had no job, no money and few other options.

Shane and Malcolm spent most of their time playing video games and hypodermically injecting watermelons with hard alcohol to serve at parties we would throw every few weeks when a new ‘punch’ concoction was ready.  Malcolm had also started a very sucsessful hydroponics “garden” in his closet. Because the apartment was small I spent my time watching them play video games or wondering how long it would be before SDG&E starting questioning why a 700 Sq foot apartment was running a $300 monthly electric bill. In order to get away from my living situation and the ever pervasive smell of Hindu kush I started frequenting  the pub at the corner – Kelly’s. Kelly’s was my first regular hang out bar, it was a quiet Irish Pub that only served beer, just beer. I didn’t particularly like beer then but I enjoyed the dim, smokey air conditioned atmosphere of the pub (a love that has withstood the test of time).

Very shortly after moving I interviewed for a job in the office building that separated my apartment from the Boulevard, it was a job less than a 2-minute walk from my front door, and I got it. It was my first real 40 hour, 9:00-5:00 job that didn’t involve a cash register or require me to wear a name tag. Ironically this job that was in sneezing distance to my back door did required me to have a car, so I did what anyone desperate for a job would do – I lied and said mine was currently in the ‘shop’.

I lied, but I scraped, and borrowed and cajoled some money together. I paid my friend Heather $200 of the $500 she was asking for her 1988 Pontiac Grand Am and then promptly never spoke to her again. Sure, I felt bad that I had ripped her off but in my defense the car was a piece of shit and really not worth $500. It was white with a red junk yard hood, it had front end damage from hitting a deer full speed on the freeway. It came to me with outdated Michigan registration, it would never pass California Emissions tests and therefore never be legal in the state. I decided to forgo insurance as an unnecessary expense and this began years of owning crappy, illegal, uninsured cars (that’s probably another six-part blog series “Shitty cars I bought off lien sale volumes 1 through 14”). I drove with one eye on the road and one on the lookout for the CA highway patrol – I only ever got caught once but it was Christmas night and I managed to embarrassingly half  cry/flirt my way out of it.

I started working and everyday got to drive loads of mail to the back entrance of the post office where I would wait to be let in while looking at my old townhouse on Seminole Dr. It was like I had come full circle – sort of.

The apartment on Chocktaw Dr. was surrounded by thousands of little lizards, Ruka took it upon herself to terrorize them –  everyday I would come home to anywhere between 10 to 20 tails on the doorstep, she’d bite the tails off them, present them to me as trophies and the lizards would scurry home to grow another one.

Also around this time Ruka stopped eating dinner, I was worried about her for several weeks before I discovered that one of my neighbors, a blind older woman was using her Social Security checks to buy my little cat fresh chicken livers and feed them to her while I was at work. This was fine until we moved again and Ruka became indignant at the idea of canned cat food.

So, I was working full time and taking evening courses at school, Shane was still, well, Shane. Feeling empowered by my new job and awesome coworkers I decided it was time to stop thinking that I could change people and start thinking about my own future with out him. I put on my big girl pants and broke up with him – in a letter – that I left for him when knew I wouldn’t be around.

to be continued…

If you don’t know what’s going on by now… pay attention! I’m about to turn 21 and making excellent decisions. Read here & here.

SEMINOLE DRIVE

I thought I was being really grown up when I decided to move in with my boyfriend and his best friend, whom for the purpose of this narrative I will refer to as Shane and Malcolm. I thought having my own kitchen and leaving the “real world” culture of Alice street was the mature thing to do… hindsight, my friends, hindsight…

Shane didn’t have a job or any tangible means of supporting himself and Malcolm worked part time at the college arcade and part time selling dime bags to the college kids that hung out at the arcade, because I was just scraping by selling dusty souvenirs to lost tourists the only place we could get was a dark roach infested townhouse that was mostly inhabited by section 8 families, living on subsidies and spending their days shouting to each other through the thin walls of the complex.

This was also the first time I lived with boys in close proximity and it was a real eye opener, one time I remember Shane got so drunk that I woke up to find him peeing on my computer (a classic Apple2 E circa 1986)… We had a powder room with a stackable washer/dryer  next to the front door and it was so full of dirty clothes ALL.THE.TIME. that no one ever used it as a bathroom.

But above and beyond the grooming habits of 21-year-old boys the most annoying thing about the townhouse was that it was located directly behind the post office. I could literally long jump to the back door and I don’t jump very far. But despite this I never got my mail correctly – I got a lot of other people’s mail but hardly anything of mine, this was super inconvenient because it was about this time that I decided I needed to go back to college and I was applying to school – through the mail because it was 1996 and that’s what you did.

Not all was bad though – it was in this filthy townhouse that Ruka entered my life, walking in through our back patio and staying with me for the next 19 years. By the way the back patio sounds nice but I could never go out there because my roommates had filled it with furniture they found on the side of the road or fished out of dumpsters – furniture like old lazy-boys that were never meant to be outside – it was like a bulky waste dump that was home to a number of wild animals.

While living there I finally left the crappy gift store at the mall and got a job at a hair salon that I could walk to – this not only gave me slightly more money but also eliminated an hour long bus ride everyday (still carless!) I could be at the salon in 5 minutes – on foot. Of course the salon would eventually go down in history as the worst job I ever had because I worked for a misogynist a-hole who never learned my name and only referred to me as “girl”, but at the time I was thrilled to get out of the mall and help pay my boyfriends bills. Like I said… hindsight.

to be continued…

If yo are just joining us – the year is 1995, the place in San Diego CA and you should probably read this first.

ALICE STREET

I left the valley and moved up the hill to the College area, what I really wanted was less of a ‘roommate’ situation while still reaping the benefit of cheap shared housing, what I found was a big old Spanish house with 5 extra-large bedrooms rented separately – the price was right and I practically skipped out of Christina’s two bedroom while she pretended to wait for her nonexistent brother to arrive. The house itself was cool with large terracotta tiles on the floor and a fireplace in the living room was big enough to walk into, not that anyone ever hung out in the living room. Our rooms were our sanctuary where we all lived as though they were small studio apartments (exiting only to forage in the kitchen). I started on Alice street with one of the ‘smaller’ bedrooms (still bigger than any master I’ve ever had) but eventually upgraded to the actual master-master which was triangular in shape and sported two huge walk in closet and its own bathroom with original art deco tile. As luck would have it very shortly after moving there an old friend of mine from high school reentered my life and by the time I had upgraded to the master she moved in with me full time – the room was big enough for my king size bed, her double bed and all the various crap that two 20 year old girl have (mostly sandals, sundresses and taco wrappers).

One of the great things about this house was its proximity to a coffee shop called the Livingroom. The Livingroom was awesome and completely changed my world. Up until that point, I had drank coffee but mostly for medicinal purposes – to get through an exam or wake up after a cheap red eye flight, the Livingroom taught me that there was coffee and there was good coffee and good coffee was great. They served GOOD coffee in giant mugs the size of my head. The Livingroom became like an extension of my own living room. I went there every day despite the fact that I had to sell souvenirs for an hour to afford one cup of their milky way latté. I budgeted the shit out of every penny I earned.

Residents of the house came and went but for one perfect bubble in time there were seven of us there that all got along and generally liked each other, it was a comradery not often found in nature. We set up Wednesday night ‘family night’ where we all took turns making dinner for everyone and staying up late waxing poetic about… everything. We began leaving the sanctuary of our own rooms and actually socializing with each other. It was a perfect situation like the ‘real world’ but without all the cameras and social commentary – but as these things do our group eventually fell apart. Aaron the cute blond engineering student moved out and Kenny the Japanese exchange student moved in – Kenny didn’t speak any English but he played the electric guitar and he played it LOUD at all times of the day and night. Several times we had to call the cops to come inside our own home to get him to be quiet enough that we could sleep.

Kenny pretty much ruined our mojo and right around that time I started seriously dating someone. I started thinking in might be time to leave – in addition to Kenny and his guitar there were some major drawbacks to the big house, food in the kitchen often went missing even when obviously labeled, no one ever remembered to lock the front door and sometimes I would come down in the morning to find it ajar and stray animals nesting in our papasan chair.  Also there was our landlord, Alex who came and went as if he owned the place (see what I did there?), he would walk in unannounced and trying to keep up the pretense that my high school friend was really my lesbian girlfriend and not actually living there was getting harder and harder as our boyfriends started hanging around more and more.

to be continued…

Last spring when I was out of work and sponging off my husband I managed to talk him into green lighting a trip back west, to the city of my misspent youth.  San Diego shaped me in many ways, in the 1990‘s it was a great place to start adulating, there was no internet, no feeling of constant social injustice – just a free spiritedness that bordered on hippy but was years away from its counterpart in San Francisco. At the time it was a sleepy seaside town not yet the sought after destination that has raised housing prices astronomically and clogged up the freeways – my first apartment cost me $200 a month in rent.

I thank my shitty teenage work ethic and bad follow-through that allowed me to walk away from a somewhat promising college education and throw caution to the wind –  to sink the last of my pizza slinging money into a carton of Marlboro reds and board a slow train to the west coast.

While I was out there this spring reconnecting with some amazing friends and swigging back cocktails like I was 20 years younger I did manage to stay sober long enough to go on a mini tour of all of my various residences I inhabited in America’s finest city. Here for your enjoyment is a rundown of 7 years’ worth of late rent checks and unpaid security deposits.

A little background:

In 1994 I started my second year at West Chester University – this should have made me a sophomore but since I only passed three classes my freshman year (thanks beer!) I was really a third semester freshman – a title that did not sit well with me.  Also, my second freshman year I got a new roommate – gone was my first year roomie who had taught me the wonders of rap music, how to chug colt 45 like a pro and how to feel comfortable in situations I was until then unaccustomed to. My first year roommate was awesome and even though we may have been each other’s mutual downfalls, we had great fun doing it.

My second year at school I was paired with Chrissy – Chrissy was great, she came from an unbroken family that got together every Friday night to hang out with each other, she had a long standing boyfriend who her Mother loved and a younger brother who was captain of his football team. Chrissy was WHOLESOME. I wasn’t really sure what to do with Chrissy, she was… off-putting. That’s not to say that we didn’t get along, we did, we just never clicked and it was really nice that she was gone every weekend.

The day I decided that I wanted to drop out of school and move to Southern California, Chrissy, instead of trying to talk me out of it immediately offered to drive me to the train station! Either she was trying to be really supportive or just really excited to get rid of me (probably the later).  She helped me pack and even stood in line with me at the registrar’s office while I dropped all of my classes and walked away without hearing the part that I had missed the add/drop period by 2 days (several years later while trying to get back in to college I would realize my mistake and be presented with a large bill from a collection agency who had been trying to track me down for a long time). At the time though – who cared!

I had $227 to my name – I bought a one-way ticket on Amtrack’s Sunset Limited line, a carton of cigarettes and a 12 pack of Mountain Dew, I had $6 leftover when all was said and done. Most people would have been worried that $6 wouldn’t feed them for 4 days on the train, but if I’m being honest the thought never even once crossed my mind – I was 19 and my head was already on the beaches of San Diego.

The ride out there was truly an adventure – and yes for most of it I was starving but I was also delirious from a lack of sleep and the chain smoking helped.  At one point I had become close with a group of 20 something’s that were on their way to work on fishing boats in Alaska – they were transferring trains in Los Angeles and heading North to make their fortunes, they offered to bring me with them and I have to tell you I seriously considered it. Up until we actually arrived in LA a large part of me was saying “come on, you’ve come this far – how amazing would Alaska be?” Sometimes I still wonder what would have happened if I had decided to take them up on their offer. But alas I did not; I was 19 and sure that many other wild opportunities would make their way to me. I took that train two more times across country in the ensuing years and never again was offered such an opportunity.

My first six months in San Diego was something of a mixed bag, I fell in love instantly with the wide palm-tree-lined streets and the cheap taquerias on every corner, I got a job selling $600 Mont Blanc pens to people that would one-day star on the real housewives of San Diego (is that a show? I have no idea…) I lived for a while above my half-brother’s garage, a situation that did not end well and doesn’t bear retelling.

LAURETTA AVE

My first actual apartment was a small two bedroom in Mission Valley that I found by responding to an ad in the paper (yes, the paper – this was long before Apartments.com was invented). I had seen a bunch of places at that point and even with my super low requirements (had to be by a bus line, had to have laundry) the list of options in my price range (dirt cheap) were mostly unacceptable. The last place I visited was a lovely Spanish style two bedroom rented by a man named Craig, Craig was creepy in a maybe-he’s-a-child-molester sotra way and clearly stoned out of his mind when I got there, but after touring the place I realized that even living with creepy stoner Craig would be infinitely better than any of the other places I had seen. I think, however, that Craig felt my hesitation and mentioned at the end of our meeting that his ex-girlfriend Christina was also looking for a roommate, I didn’t stop to think what kind of girl would date a man like Craig, but she was female and lived in the same neighborhood as the mall I was working in – I agreed to live with her sight unseen.

Christina was horrible, in a way that privileged young Californian’s who have no depth or worldly experience can be – she worked at a tanning salon and spent all of her money on expensive skin creams. Her best friend’s name was Pilar, Pilar carried her dog around her in purse and was an au pair to a family in La Jolla – this was back before au pairs where a thing, she learned that was what she was because this family took her to Paris and because she had been to Paris, she knew everything, Seriously, PILAR KNEW EVERYTHING, she was insufferable, also she was over a lot. It became clear right away that Christine and I could only get along if we were under the influence of well… anything.  I wasn’t a big drinker back then but– hell I would have huffed paint if it meant that we could just have a pleasant evening together.

Because at the time I was making $6.50 an hour working at a defunct gift store at the mall, didn’t have a car and was dating a guy whom I was pretty sure was dating a host of other people I was home a lot. The situation went from bad to very bad to intolerable and the day that I came home and found a note that read “I have news, good for me bad for you – my brother’s coming to live with me”* (did I mention Christina was a real asshole?) I nearly shouted for joy.

to be continued…

*Christina didn’t have a brother.

So… I lost my job on Friday. Well maybe not lost – I know where it is, it’s just not mine anymore. This is the second time I’ve been laid off and I have to tell you it doesn’t do anything good for one’s self esteem. But I get it, really I do, I might not be a CPA but even I know if you have more debits than you have credits than you are in the red and it’s hard to pay people when you’re in the red.

To answer all of your burning questions regarding this situation here’s a mock interview I just conducted with myself:

Interviewer: So you just lost your job, how do you feel?

Me: Meh, I think working is over rated. Sure it gives you money to buy thigs like food and wine and stuff but as a concept working is total bullshit.

Interviewer: What are you plans now?

Me: Well, without the daily pressure of going to a job I’ll probably just hang out – you know, do things I’ve been meaning to do like wash the inside of the refrigerator – those glass shelves get really dirty!

Interviewer: Do you have a long term plan?

Me: I don’t understand that last question.

Interviewer (getting frustrated): Let’s switch topics do you have anything that you would like to say to the people/person that laid you off.

Me: Oh yes – I do! So glad you asked this question. I have three pieces of advice for woman the who just canned me – 1.) Next time if you know you are going to let someone go don’t harass them to complete their yearly self-evaluation form that you know you are never going to read. 2.) If the person you are letting go takes the train home try and coordinate the firing with their train schedule, otherwise that poor person is just sitting underground for over an hour trying to text all of her friends with a really weak cell phone signal. And finally don’t try to hug that person as they are leaving the office, no one wants your hugs.

Interviewer: Anything else to add?

Me: Nope that about sums it up.

Interviewer:  Can we get serious about where you want to go from here?

Me: Well, it’s 5:30 am Sunday morning, where do I want to from here? Mostly I’m going to head to the kitchen and heat up some of yesterday’s coffee.

Interviewer: You are very exasperating.

Me: Is that a question?

Interviewer: Can you share with me one of your goals now that you have all of his free time.

Me: I can share one with you. Are you asking me if I will share one with you? Sorry, honestly I don’t know why I’m being so hostile you seem like a very nice person. But truthfully I don’t know, I think that spending more time with my child and husband is certainly a goal – but at some point that’s going to get old for all of us. So I’ll probably have to like get a job or something.

Interviewer: What kind of job do you see yourself getting?

Me: I don’t really know – I seem to be pretty good at this interviewing thing. Maybe I can just pretend to interview people from around the world and write a book about it. You know something like “fake interviews about real things”

Interviewer: Huh. I’m not really sure what to say.

Me: Say you’ll buy a copy.

…

The interview really went downhill from there.

As usual I have no good way to end this post. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’ll be around if anyone needs a reliable daytime drinking buddy.

My Mom tends to overuse words. In high school everything was a ‘struggle’ until one day in a shining moment of self-assertiveness I asked her to please stop using that word. I believe my request left her speechless for approximately three minutes until she ran through her mental thesaurus and came up with something equally as annoying.

I love you Mom.

Since she’s gotten old she’s starting making up words – she uses the word ‘Chockablock’ like it’s her job – as in “I don’t know if we can get the leftover turkey in the fridge that thing is chockablock full.” This drives me crazy; it (spoiler alert) drives everybody crazy.

Recently I instituted a rule where the word in banned in our house – this (of course) forces my husband to run around the house yelling at me “chockablock, chockablock, chockablock!” It’s very reminiscent of Miracle Max and his hatred of Prince Humperdinck.

Lucy, of course, thinks this is great and sometimes also gets in to the action and also runs around yelling chockablock for no apparent reason. And all of this is good and harmless except that I forgot to tell her it’s a game we only play with Mommy and Daddy.

Fast forward to last week when my parents were visiting and Nana says to Lucy “Your room is chockablock full of toys” and Lucy looks at her wide eyed and says “No Nana we aren’t allowed to say that in this house!”

Whops.

How do you explain to your Mom that her idiosyncrasies have become fodder for family fun time? With wine – that’s how.

This past week my husband and I took a long hard look at all of the social engagements and family obligations we have coming up over the next few months and we correlated that with the seating options in our house and we came to the not-so-startling conclusion that only 3 and a half people can  sit comfortably in our living room. On a day to day basis this is just fine, but there comes a point in adulthood where you shouldn’t have to drag folding chairs in to your main living space or make your in-laws sit on the floor if you want to all hang out together.

Thus began a round of furniture shopping. Now I love my husband dearly, he is by and large an excellent human being but he has a taste level I find…. Atrocious…difficult to deal with…Differs greatly from my own.

My husband’s idea of ultimate comfort and style involves anything from the lazy boy 80’s collection. New furniture that looks old. OLD. And the more recliners and drink holders involved the better. Corduroy and tweed did not seem out of the realm of possibility either and at all of this I drew the line. I am a reasonable person, but only up to a point, you know?

Furniture shopping is terrible; there is no joy in walking around large warehouses, being accosted by pushy and desperate sales people. Add to this add a rambunctious four year old who only wants to pretend that she’s a cat and it makes it 600 times worse. Plus we had the added pressure of waiting until two days before our first round of guests were to arrive before we made it out to the store. Nothing like opposing design aesthetics, a hyperactive preschooler and an unreasonable time crunch to really bring out the best in people.

We began at 5:00 on Friday night and essentially shopped all weekend until mid-morning Sunday in a delirium we pulled the trigger and bought something neither of us expected. It is a weird amalgam of sleek and modern, overstuffed and comfy. Made of microfiber without a single cup holder.

It wasn’t until we made up our minds, arranged for transportation, and finally felt freed from the pressure to make a decision that we realized  our new lovely sofa and love seat combination matches nothing (nothing) in our house, in a sea of taupes and creams and browns we are going to introduce a large dark, slate gray monstrosity.

I would worry about this – but at this point I feel like it is simply easier to repaint our house and replace our carpet than go back to the furniture store.

Maybe we could just sell our house and move in to something that better matches our new furniture.