AWK-WAAARRRRRDDDD....

Let's set the scene:

It was a busy Wednesday. I was bogged down at work - endless decks to pull together, meetings to run, cats to herd. I was down to the wire on a crazy-big project with lots of visibility. And, noticing Mickey's big hand was on the 12 on my clock, I realized with a pang that I was STARVING.

With less than a 20-minute window before my next meeting, I had no time to sit down somewhere. Worse, the secret pseudo-food health bar stash in my top drawer was depressingly empty. I had no choice but to run for some deliciously bad takeout.

The teriyaki place across the street is a far cry from the best I've had, but it's predictable, and thus was my choice.

My stomach grumbling, I entered the strip-mall-style shop to find every table full and a line at the register. Waiting to order, it registered that I had caught that magical lunch hour rush when the crowd in local restaraunts gets a little... awkward.

See, my company is very near a large high school with an open campus for lunch. This means that on any given day between about 12:15 and 12:45 the local establishments are the meeting grounds for many longing, lecherous businessmen suffering mid-life-crises in suits AND (the awkward part) herds of scantily-clad teenage girls. Cheerleaders and Lil' Kim wannabes abound, noisily giggling and madly text-messaging.

Hysterically, during these strange lunch hour mixings, these two different tribes do their best to pretend to completely ignore each other, at which they epically fail. At these moments, everyone is actually acutely aware of each other. I'd say there's a fair amount of eavesdropping, and more sideways glancing that is technically comfortable to watch happen. I was in the midst of musing about this when...

"What you want today, lady?"

Shaken from my rapt people-watching (people-judging, to be more accurate), I ordered the lunch special: a slab of sliced chicken covered in a sticky-sweet sauce, an ice-cream scoop of gluey white rice and a handful of iceberg lettuce covered in a mayo moonlighting as "dressing".

I stepped out of line after settling up and found a seat on the long bench between the register and the door to wait for my order to come up. In front of this bench, the distracted line of customers queuing up to order meanders from the register out onto the sidewalk. Further inside the restaraunt are tables for dine-in patrons.

A few minutes had passed when a woman from the kitchen made her way over to me, arm outstretched to hand me my white plastic take-out bag. I was shoving my pen and that day's NY Times crossword into my purse with one hand and taking my takeout with the other when I heard him.

"HI! I'M BEN!"

I jumped, startled by the inappropriately loud volume of his voice, and looked up. Meanwhile, the rest of the restaraunt's patrons did the same. His volume alone managed to hush the entire joint and, impossibly, capture the attention of all the teenagers and professionals in it.

I gulped, and slowly looked up. As I had feared, Mr. Mortifying was addressing me. Trying not to cringe, I smiled, said hi, and looked back down at the paper in my lap, silently willing him to dissappear.

Please, please... I thought, eyes squeezed tight.

"I WAS JUST WALKING BY AND SAW YOU IN THE WINDOW..."

Oh no, I thought. This can't be happening.

"...AND THOUGHT I SHOULD STOP TO TELL YOU I THINK YOU'RE REALLY, UH... BEAUTIFUL..."

Cue waves of crippling guilt.

Here he was, giving me a compliment, and just because he was SCREAMING IT EMBARASSINGLY AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS IN A PUBLIC PLACE, I was feeling all panicky and ungrateful.

But he just kept going.

"...AND I JUST WANTED TO KNOW IF I COULD TAKE YOU OUT SOMETIME!"

Fuck. There it was.

The restaraunt was tomblike in silence. I suddenly knew what it was like to be on-stage, the main event, one of those terrified dogs on bicycles in the center ring of the circus. The only sound was the fryers and grills in the back of the restaraunt. Every cheerleader, hoochie mama and corporate VP had his or her eyes trained on the train wreck-slash-soap opera in front of them, featuring me and my new volume-and-tact-challenged Romeo.

Handle this, I thought. Don't panic. Be cool. But I just couldn't stop it. It was coming out of my mouth before I even had a chance to take hold of my internal E-brake and yank:

"AAAWWWWK-WAAARRRRRD!"

My inner dialogue had escaped like some clever little yappy dog. Rather than gracefully diffusing the completely mortifying experience and politely declining this gentleman's clumsy advances, I had sprung a leak in my filter and instead yelled - YELLED - "Awkward!", volume 10, drawn out theatrically into a 7-syllable groan of disgust and embarrassment.

The crowd's response was a gasp, and then some giggling. The moment the word escaped, I clapped both hands over my mouth, eyes as big as saucers and frantically shook my head.

"No, no, I'm sorry. It's just... right here? Right now? Do you think..." I took a deep breath, getting a grip. "Uh, can we speak outside, maybe?"

I leapt up, took his arm and lead him outside into the parking lot like he was a bad child. The next few moments were a mishmash of apologizing and thanking him for the compliment but (obviously) declining the offer. Shockingly, he didn't seem even close to as humiliated as I had been, which helped, though he did mention that he realized he had yelled, probably because he was "nervous".

But we managed to somehow extricate ourselves from the conversation, and both turned to go our separate ways on foot, me in front of him.

And a few minutes later, as I opened the front door to my giant office building and glanced behind me, guess what? He was still there. When I turned to address him, he smiled sheepishly at me.

"Well, if you thought THAT was awkward, I can't imagine what you'll make of this... you work here too??!"

Can a girl please catch a break? I must have kicked a kitten in a past life.

"Talk about awkward...

"I'm wearing that shirt you like..."

I just got a second Blackberry and a second line.

Why?

Because back in July I had an experience that convinced me that any adult who would like to be perceived as responsible should carry separate work and personal devices. And, being a procrastinator, I just now got around to it. But the horror of my lesson still lingers.

Here's what happened:

My girlfriend Anne and I had plans to go out for a bite and a drink on a Friday night after work. We planned to meet at my houseand then head downtown.

I was home changing in my room, when she got to my place. She knocked on the door, I was upstairs. I didn't hear her, so she let herself in, having to pee. Not wanting to scare me, she sent me a text message from the bathroom to let me know she was in.

"I'm in your upstairs bathroom, FYI. Don't freak."

I got the message, and, picturing her sitting on the toilet texting me, giggled and
replied, telling her to come into my room when whe was done and mentioning the shirt I'd chosen to wear that night, knowing she'd get a kick out of the choice.

The shirt was a recent favorite addition to my wardrobe: a long, thin, dark blue silk number. It was perfect, except the last time Anne and I had gone out, 3 weeks prior, I had worn it and made an embarassing discovery. We had taken about a million photographs, and the following day when reviewing the pictures, we realized that the flash of the camera combined with the thin fabric of my favorite new top created a perfect storm - the unintentionally sheer-in-photos shirt. You could see my bra and a little cleavage in literally every photo. WHOOPS.


But I loved the shirt, and as I recalled its one downside, I chose a darker-colored bra less likely to make a guest-appearance in photos this time around, and made a mental note to ban flash-photography.

A few moments later Anne burst in, laughing.

"You're wearing the shirt!"

"Yep, couldn't resist," I said, dropping my cell phone into my purse before slinging it over my shoulder and pivoting in the mirror for one last check on our way out of my room. "I knew you'd get a kick out of it. By the way, who text messages on the toilet? Dork."

We headed downstairs, on our way out the door. On our way, I pulled my phone back out of my purse to check the time. But rather than being on the home screen, my phone was on the "sent text messages" screen, where I could see the last 5 or 6 texts I'd sent.

I must not have locked my keypad before dropping it into my bag, I thought, hoping I hadn't pocket-dialed anyone accidentally when my phone was in there squished against all the other hundred things I carried in my purse.

Hopeful, I looked more closely at the screen, at the list of my recently sent text messages. But something wasn't right.

The last two sent messages were not the ones I'd sent to Anne, though I hadn't sent any others after our little exchange when she was in the bathroom. Curiously, the texts I'd sent Anne were two down in the list - the 3rd and 4th most recently sent messages.

Looking closer, it all became clear.

"OOOOooooOOOOOOOH MYYYYY GOOOODDDDDDD," I wailed. April came running.

"What?! What?!"

I showed her my phone.

"Oh. OH! Shit!" she said.

I hadn't pocket-dialed anyone. Nope, it was worse. I had pocket-forwarded the last text message I sent Anne -- you know, the one about my shirt and where I was -- to my boss.

My male, married, BOSS. And worse, I hadn't done it once... I had sent it to him twice.

The messages were exact copies of the ones I'd sent Anne, and they read as follows:

"I'm in my bedroom. Meet me here when you're done. I'm wearing that see-through shirt you like."

Let me repeat that:

RIGHT AFTER WORK, I POCKET-FORWARDED MY BOSS A TEXT THAT SAID, FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES, "I AM A SCANDALOUS HOOCH. COME TO MY HOUSE AND SEE MY TA-TAS."

"Oh shit," Anne said again, as if that even came close to expressing the horror of the momen.

"Good, thanks. I am dead. I am a dead person," I said, not in the least dramatically. "What do I do? Oh FUCK, WHAT DO I DO???"

We silently stared at each other for a moment, me holding the phone like it was about to self-destruct, she just, well, gaping at me. I think we were waiting for what we thought would surely be the text response from our boss: "You're fired". Or worse: "On my way".

And then Anne, looking at me holding the phone away from my body like a grenade with a "doooo someeethingggg!!" expression, cracked. She burst into hysterical laughter, and I, seeing no other possible option, joined her.

It was the only thing that could be done. I had accidentally forwarded on an unintentionally seductive text message to my boss, with my butt, through my purse. Who in the hell do these things happen to besides me?

An hour or so later, when I hadn't recieved a response, I sent an explanatory email to said boss, explaining what had happened and falling on the sword for not having separate work and personal phones. He responded immediately (clearly he hadn't known what to say, a small relief in the big scheme of things) shrugging it off.

To this day, we haven't spoken about it. But, as I said, I now have separate work and personal devices. And I am locking my keypad for good measure.

Define "spare".

"What are the odds?"

Jim shook his head in exasperation.

We were standing in the parking lot of a grocery store staring into the open back of my hatchback. Pennies, nickles, dimes and quarters -- hundreds, maybe thousands of them -- were scattered in the car, wedged in cracks and crevices, and spilling out of the back into the parking lot, where they clattered and rolled around, making us quite a spectacle.

My car was like a treasure chest with wheels. Only our treasure was escaping.

"Well," I began sarcastically, "Do you mean what are the odds the giant ziplock bag of change would rip and spill while we were en route to have it turned into bills, or what are the odds that an adult male would have such an impressive coin collection?"

I got on my hands and knees in the parking lot and started recovering our change. Jim took care of the thousand and one coins in the car. After a good twenty minutes, we were satisfied that we had gotten every last one -- but it took some effort, to be sure.

**It is important to note that we were in Bellevue, an area outside Seattle that is often accused of being home to a host of Stepford wives and Ferarris -- where the most eggregious crime of the day usually has something to do with the sandwich Nazi at the gourmet sandwich shop screwing up your order. That actually made us, scrambling around on all fours after pennies, that much funnier, but it's also important to the story in a moment.**

As we walked towards the grocery store to the CoinStar machine inside, Jim holding a giant clear bag absolutely full of loose change, we chuckled about how funny we must have looked crawling around the parking lot like high school kids after a few pennies. But truth be told, Jim even looked silly holding it -- the bag was GIANT and clear, and he was holding it up like a kid holds a goldfish they won at the fair -- in a proud fist in front of them.

And then, out of nowhere, appeared the only transient I have ever seen in Bellevue. And he was walking straight towards us. Or, rather, straight towards the tall man with the giant bag of change next to me.

"Uh oh, he's coming our way," I said under my breath, like the bum was a pirate and was coming to commandeer our bag of gold.

Jim sort of nervously coughed and we continued to walk, not making eye contact, hoping the bum would just sort of pass us by. But of course, no dice.

"Hey mister, you got any spare change?" The bum was eyeing the bag. The jig was up. It was all over.

I looked over at Jim, who continued walking and lamely gestured at first the bag, and then the bum, in this semi-sympathetic, totally awkward sort of way, before stammering, with a surprised, uncomfortable look on his face:

"Uh...no... man. This is, uh......... my money."

And he just continued to walk with his giant bag of change, into the store. I, in shock that the whole scene had actually taken place, quietly followed him.

"Wow," I said when I finally recovered, bursting into hysterical laughter. "What are the odds of THAT?"

Man-Shave, anyone?

"You know what I think we should get your brother for graduation?"

My mom was driving, I was sitting in the passenger seat, fighting sleep, which was threatening to take me down like a rogue rebel force as we drove the 5 hours from our hometown to Washington State University, where my brother would be graduating the next day.

I shook off the dazed look and attempted to act like I'd processed the question.

"Um....what?"

"An old fashioned lather and shave," she said, all excited-like. "Except I didn't think about that until right this minute and graduation is tomorrow and so there's no way we can do it now."

My adorable mother is trapped in the stone age. She thought that because she'd not arrived more than a day in advance that there was no way she could now, in the car, figure out how/where she could send my brother in his college town for a fresh shave the morning of graduation. It never occurred to her that phones now have web access or that 411 might be a good place to start... instead, she was thinking the most efficient way to do this would have been to arrive in town, ask the locals, and go door to door until she found someone who a) provided the service and b) had a slot open the saturday of graduation for my brother.

She just -- JUST -- learned how to text message, in fact, and though she knows how to do it, she never does for two reasons:

1) she says it's ungodly expensive, and cents (CENTS!) per text, and
2) she can't figure out how to use the "shift" function on her phone, so all her messages are a strange combination of letters and numbers only sometime resembling actual English

Anyway, the problem: I was sleepy and needed a job in the car and my mother needed to find a barber shop.

Well, Liz to the rescue.

"No sweat," I said, pulling my shiny blackberry out of my pocket with a proud flourish. "I can take care of that for you in no time, flat!"

"Suuurrrree," she said, eyeing the phone warily. "We'll see."

I shrugged and started typing. Google wasn't turning up great results, but at least I got a list of phone numbers I could call in the Pullman, WA. area. Proud of my little progress and eager to show my mother that technology was, in fact, the obvious answer to this problem, I held up the phone, showing her the screen (nevermind that we were hurtling down the freeway at 80 miles an hour).

"There! See? A whole bunch of places we can call!"

I clicked the first link, calling a barbershop with a very masculine name. Surely, I thought, these folks would be the place a guy would go to get a...

a...

shit, what are they called?

As the phone was ringing, my mind was racing.

A straight shave?
A lather shave?
An old-fashioned shave?

My mind was blank. Though I could picture the service in my mind: man sitting in barber's chair, a hot towel on his face, then lather on his beard, then a straight-razor shave, I couldn't figure out what in the world that experience was technically called.

And then a man answered.

"Phil's Barber shop, this is Phil, how can I help you?"
"Oh! Hi!" I was far too enthusiastic in an attempt to buy me some time and hide how flustered I was.
"Hi," Phil said patiently. "What can I do for you?"
"Umm," I stammered, "I...I..." spit it out already! what were they called again? "I was wondering if you did those... uh... fluffy--er, I mean, soapy... uh... MANSHAVES!?"

There was a pause, then the sound like ol' Phil pulled the phone away from his ear and covered up the reciever, and then a snort.

"ManShaves?" Phil was sweetly trying to contain a laugh.

"Yeah... uh, you know..." It was over. I realized I'd just said "man shave" and completely lost it, bursting out in hysterical laughter.

"Fluffy?!!" he gasped.
"MANSHAVES??" I screeched.

Phil did the same. For two minutes at least -- a long and intimate time to be laughing on the phone with a dude you don't at all know -- Phil and I snorted, howled and tried to contain the waves of hysterical laughter that kept rolling back and forth between us.

When I finally composed myself and he courteously did the same, I of course apologized.

"Sorry, I didn't know what they were called," I said. "I cannot believe I just said 'man-shave'. How embarassing."

"No, it's cool," said Phil. "It's just that we're an equal-opportunity shaver. We prefer to call them 'PersonShaves'."

"Oh, of course," I said. "My mistake!"

Cue laughter again.

God bless goofy strangers.

And what the eff is wrong with me?

This is my 250th post, and there is a mouse living in my car.

Let me repeat: THERE IS A MOUSE. LIVING. IN MY CAR. Is that both horrifying and disgusting? Yep, that’s what I was afraid of.

There is a mouse living in my car. And this dirty, disgusting little imposing mouse has a squeaky clean mouth (sorry for the pun).

I know both these things because this morning, when Jim and I were commuting to work, I reached into a little coin tray where I keep change and gum in my car for a stick of delicious Orbitz gum, and when I pulled out a stick, it had teeny tiny little bites taken out of it.

A goddamn MOUSE broke into my goddamn CAR and ate my goddamn ORBITZ. For the record, this did not give me a good clean feeling no matter what, as advertised.

“Oh…my…god…” I held one of the evidential sticks out to Jim, while not at all maintaining the 10 and 2 position with my hands on the wheel and only partially paying attention to the road.

“Looks like you have a mouse,” he said with utter disgust. “Eeew.” (Yes, Jim said “eew”. Priceless.)

“I do not have a mouse! There just IS a mouse! How did he even get IN here?”

I was immediately indignant. Nevermind that I have gone though periods where I could have been mistaken for living in my car, having someone bear witness to the fact that there was/is/had been a mouse living in there was a thousand times worse. Because mice are, well, icky. And I have it on good authority that mice only like really disgusting, dirty places. So that meant, in my head, that “my” mouse said something not at all flattering about me and my ability to maintain a car.

Just after I processed that thought, shaking my head and muttering, the next terrible one hit me:

“Oh shit! Do you think he’s still in here?!”

(As you can imagine, I was paying even less attention to my free right turn and the 5 key rules for safely operating a vehicle while processing this thought than I was before, because I was at that moment increasingly certain that there was a mouse – no, MANY mice, maybe hundreds – scurrying around under my seat, next to my feet, across my headrest, along the backseat. I was utterly convinced that they were everywhere.)

I couldn’t get us parked and out of the car fast enough. I scrambled to the elevator, imagining a torrent of rodents racing frantically behind me, worked to ditch the heebie jeebies and formulated my Rodent War battle plan:

1. Get car detailed, by a professional. Do not opt for the cheapie where they just vaccum your carpet, bite the bullet and request the full-on shampoo treatment, complete with bonus search for dead, dying or (eeew eeew eeew) alive rodents.

2. Lay a food booby-trap shortly after detail mission is complete.

2.a. At first sign of teethmarks, purchase 6 mousetraps – the kind that catch and squish the mice. (NOTE: Do not poison, as you have heard too many stories about people poisoning car-mice and then suffering through dead-mouse scent for weeks when they’re unable to find the body).

2.b. Have a nice strong drink. Consider setting up a hidden night-vision motion-detection camera with which to catch the mice in the act and determine their mode of entry.

2.c. Have another drink and reconsider motion-camera tactic, as it sounds like a lot of work.

3. Rely on the traps to catch and squish the mice.

3.a. Throw bodies away as needed, screeching "eeeeeEEEEEEWWWWWWWW!" the whole way to the garbage can.

4. Repeat as necessary until they wave the white flag or someone gives me a better idea.

5. Go shopping.

I do anticipate some problems. For one, I apparently live in the rodent capital of the universe. Mice have been a problem for some of my neighbors and even the previous renters of the house I currently live in (which, for the record, is VERY CLEAN AT ALL TIMES) and is so far free of mouse-sightings.

Secondly, mice breed like rabbits. Or cockroaches. Or something. I think they can have like a hundred babies in 10 minutes flat. Which means I may have to dip into the 401K to afford all the mousetraps this war may require.

Third, the irony: I have a cat, but she has no claws and lives indoors and poops in a little sandbox and owns a pink bedazzled shirt with the word "bitch" on it.

Finally, I don’t like killing things.

This is perhaps my biggest weakness as a person. It’s so GIRLY it’s unforgivable. I don’t even kill spiders – I make my cat do that (you don’t need claws to kill spiders). Hell, I go fishing and am happy to snag the fish and reel them up, but you will never get me to be the person with the bat who whacks that poor fish on the head to kill it. Nope, I’d rather put it in the cooler and know it’s slowly, painfully dying than just end it myself. I used to pluck and clean like 50 chickens every spring with my family growing up and I loved looking at all the guts, but I could NEVER handle that axe. So IF I get to step 2 and have to buy the horrible old fashioned mousetraps and I actually catch a mouse and find it in the trap the next day, squished and dead or worse—squished and not yet dead, I’m in trouble. Because there is NO WAY I’ll be able to a) open the door to the car in order to b) pick up and dispose of that trap.

Which may mean I’ll have to just give up and turn the car over to the mice and start jogging to work.

Wish me luck. And please, if you have any advice, I’m all ears. But not Mickey ears, because he’s the Enemy.

I've done a lot of stupid things while drunk...

Including but not limited to:

- initiating a giant cake fight in a house that wasn't mine, with cake that wasn't mine
- missing the cup and instead pouring a drink into a friend's lap
- getting lost on a beach
- sending mass-texts to everyone I know and then not remembering the next day
- drunk-dialing (shocker, I know)
- drunk-MySpacing (worse, I assure you)
- bar-fighting (that's a really good story, actually)
- locking myself out of my house
- ordering $100 bottles of wine when what I really needed was gatorade and a cheeseburger
- buying a shirt of a large black man's back
- dancing with a transient
- etc.

...but I've never threatened to blow up a city with a TV remote.

And that's something.

Happy Friday!

Actual virtual conversation

Pat: Can animals join al-Qaeda? I'm just curious if they'll take anyone, or some poor saps get turned away...and/or animals.

Me: As long as they hate modern clothing and the baby Jesus.

Pat: Why am I in a predicament that involves me needing scissors to open scissors? Terroristic animals are the least of my worries now!

Me: This morning, I almost had to pull over and ask the construction workers to assist me, using power tools, with the opening of an Advil + Sinus pill blister pack. Fucking technology. In other news, I'm throwing a karaoke-housewarming party and I wish wish wish you didn't live in god forsaken TEXAS.

Pat: I rocked Montell Jordan the other night at karaoke like nobody's business. I'm talking standing ovation type shit. Texas, particularly San Antonio, blows. What a great representation of this fine state! It smells like Antonio Banderas, which I think is who it's named after.

Me: Well, THAT was random.
---

Happy Friday!

"It's a race... and I'm WINNING!"

This image has literally nothing to do with the post that will follow, except it has the word "race" in it and the quote with which this post is titled is from the movie "Rat Race". (That was like a free association exercise, and I apologize, but now that it's there I'm not taking it back because if you're reading this you clearly don't have shit to do, anyway.)

I believe we've discussed here before that I am at the very least unpredictable, and at most the human embodiment of the word "contradiction". Totally put together on the outside, while secretly stupidly scattered. Great at taking care of other people, almost genetically unable to care for myself. Great at parking, terrible at driving. Torn between city and country, summer and fall, passivity and aggression. Super flirty but impossibly prude.

And, above all, at once graceful and incredibly accident-prone, both at all the wrong times.

Which is where this story comes in.

I recently went with Jim out to lunch. We met in my office, and as we walked towards the elevators, we were joking and laughing about God knows what. It's important to note that the long hallway leading towards the elevators is set up as follows. On the right: wall. On the floor: carpet. On the left: an expanse of windows that looks in to the engineering department at my company (in other words, a bunch of computer nerds staring at their screens, iPods on, facing the window.

"Hey!" Jim said, stopping in the middle of our banter, "I have an idea!"

"What?" I was intruiged as I saw his eyes light up. Whatever it was, it was going to be fun.

"Let's race---"

At the word "race", I knew it was on. In an attempt to get a head start to the elevator, I leapt immediately, yelling "GOOOOO!" AND swinging my heel-clad right foot forward violently -- the first step in my inevitable sprint to victory.

But instead of catapaulting triumphantly forward, I was shocked to discover myself instead flailing violently, unable to get my right foot on the ground. My right heel, on a clear path to glory just a moment before, had firmly snagged in my wide-cuffed kick-ass herringbone trousers just before making contact with the ground, resulting in a "hog-tied" affect -- both my feet together, neither able to move independently.

This, combined with the enthusiasm with which I thrust my body forward behind my first step, resulted in a sort of fishlike wiggling and then a very dramatic faceplant, barely involving my arms, onto the carpeted hallway.

It was horribly quite "Free Willy" -- I sorta dove/slid on my belly down the hall a few feet before coming to a complete stop directly in front of the window looking into the office, and right in front of the baffled, mortified Jim.

"Please," he said, his face a mixture of 80 percent humiliation and 20 percent amusement, "PLEASE tell me you meant to do that."

Unhooking my foot and rolling onto my back, I burst into laugher -- again, right there on the floor in front of the window and in my office hallway. I had, of course, not meant to do that. Jim's great white hope that I had intended that contortionist act of physical comedy made the situation that much funnier. Combined with the look on the face of one engineer dierctly in front of the window, who removed an iPod earbud and was staring, agape, and I couldn't stop laughing.

Realizing the Great Floor Flop of 2007 was unintentional, Jim's face fell. "Oh, God," he said as he swiftly walked away from me and to the elevator, pushing the "down" button rapid-fire, "Get up."

Apparently Jim got his sense of humor back the second he wasn't being associated with me in a publicly mortifying situation, because this is the story that's been told nonstop for the last few days, while the fact that I did the splits and two back handsprings when I got up goes completely unreported.

Either way, I swear to God I would have won that race if not for the disqualification. I'm presently negotiating for a rematch. In a less dangerous outfit, of course.

My GynoCarnival

I sat in one of 14 lined-up gray chairs in a gray room, legs crossed, flipping boredly through Parenting magazine, steadily getting more pissed off as I watched the clock tick steadily past my appointment time. The irony of my reading material was not lost on me, as I was there to... um... not get pregnant.

About halfway through the article on how to potty train a stubborn child (and 20 minutes after my appointment for the single most horrifying day of any above-18 woman's year -- the pap smear), a stubby nurse in a horribly flowered set of scrubs opened a door and called my name.

"Oh, that's me," I said, scrambling to stand, shove my blackberry into my bag and stuff the magazine back in the rack with the other "YAAAAY! Babies are FUUUNNN!" magazines.

"Right this way," she said, predictably, gesturing down the hall to one of many doors with little numbers in pink on the outside. I was in room 3. "Now just get undressed, drape this over you," (here she hands me a blue cloth approximately the size of a hand towel) "And crack the door when you're undressed. The doctor will be with you shortly."

"Great," I said. "I thought for a minute he was standing me up!"

I always think it's a good idea to try to be funny at these things, which never goes well. The nurse grunted in my general direction while fiddling with a clipboard. "Oh," she said over her shoulder on her way out, "I've got an extern here shadowing me for the day, so if you don't mind, she'd like to observe your procedure."

Well, if that wasn't a loaded question, I thought. What am I going to do, say no to science? That's like not donating organs, which you simply can't not do, because what kind of person won't give their organs away if they're not using them? Jesus. "Uh huh," I nodded. "Sure."

The door firmly shut behind me, I disrobed, as instructed, piling my clothes under my purse on the chair across the room from the exam table, grabbed the tiny drape and strategically placed it so I could go to the other side of the room, crack the door, and sit down on the papered exam table without an incident of indecent exposure.

Once safely on the table, door partially open, I became aware again of the tiny size of the drape. Either I am a larger than normal-sized person, or this thing wasn't capable of properly draping over a female body and covering enough to keep the examination room rated PG-13.

As I tugged and considered my nakedness, the clock kept ticking. After 10 minutes went by, I started to anxiously look over to my purse, where I could hear the steady "buzzzzzz..... buzzzzzz" of my blackberry, indicating I had recieved email from work.

Now a full 40 minutes after my appointment had passed, the buzzing continued, and I was on the brink of a meltdown. I simply. couldn't. stand it. anymore. So, taking a deep breath, I strategically repositioned the drape, and barefoot and naked with the door half open, raced across the room to my bag where I dug frantically for the blackberry before sprinting back and leaping up onto the paper-covered table again, gasping and re-adjusting the useless piece of cloth while people talked in the hallway just outside the partially open door.

Back to safety, I distracted myself from the fact that my appointment was already technically over by sending 15 work emails (again, while effing naked at the effing gyno. Can you say workaholic?) And then, at last, the doctor entered, frumpy nurse and 12-year-old extern in tow.

"Get your emailing done?" he said sarcastically, noting the blackberry in my right hand; my only accessory. I nodded sheepishly. "Alright," he said, "This should go pretty quickly." I leaned back, feet in stirrups, and tried to relax.

And then, a few seconds into the exam, my phone rang, blaring out a Rufus Wainwright song titled "Rules and Regulations" for which the chorus includes "Theeese are just the rules and regulaaations/for the birds/and the bees...". And as I scrambled to silence it in the middle of my exam, it occurred to me that there was a huge mirror in the room, which reminded me of the many E.R. and Grey's Anatomy episodes where classes of snarky 20-somethings sat behind one-way mirrors to watch procedures, and I pictured myself being the subject of this observation, with my ineffective drape and my gay songwriter "birds and bees" ringtone and the nurse-extern-doctor medical triangle at my feet.

I just couldn't stop myself. I burst into a fit of giggles.

This thoroughly confused the doctor and the nurse, who exclaimed "It's okay, honey! It's like getting the hiccups in church!" to which I laughed harder. By the time the exam was over, I was teary eyed and heaving.

And then, I remembered that two of my work friends and I had recently been discussing all the new birth control methods and had vowed to ask our doctors for their opinions of all the options so we could compare notes, you know... just in case. And as the horrified nurse and extern stood there, I, half-naked and having just experienced the strangest pap of my life, asked my doc about birth control.

He ran through a couple types -- things I'd never heard before -- with names that I swear sounded like spaceships or military acronyms. (By the way, thanks a lot, public education system, for the stellar sex-ed). And then, he came to "The Ring".

"The Ring" I was familiar with, having actually remembered that from human sexuality in college. Doc ran through a couple little bits of information about that particular method, noting that the only possible inconvenience was that some people liked to remove it before... uh... intercourse.

"Oh, really?" I said, trying really hard to be all adult and stuff about this super-weird topic in front of my audience of three and still chilly and naked. "Why would you remove it if you don't have to?"

And here is where my appointment ended with a bang:

"Well," he said, "You don't have to, but sometimes if you leave it in... well... you might just ring yourself a penis!!"

I immediately snorted with laughter and the extern began to giggle, us both certainly picturing some sort of carnival game where if you "ring a penis", you get some huge, overstuffed pink elephant, a goldfish, or a bunch of stick-on tattoos. Unbelievably hamming it up, Doc continued, now gesturing as though plucking low-hanging fruit from a tree:

"...and then you'd have to say (here's where he uses his female falsetto)'whoops! i'm going to need that back!'"

...

I swear to God, sometimes my life is like an episode of Sex in the City gone wrong... way, way wrong, only with less sex, less money, and in distinctly more practical shoes.

Tuesday, we get to laugh. Over and over. And over.

Oh, South Carolina, I am so, so very sorry.



Also, really, Michael Vick? I mean, REALLY?

I live in a jungle but there's good music there

My "indoor" cat which now spends the vast majority of her time outdoors brought me this lovely present the other morning -- a shrew, it's tiny belly pressed to the carpet, little scooper hands splayed out to the side, right there in my living room. It looked asleep, almost. So much so that I stood over it and stared at it for a good four minutes before getting up the nerve to pick it up with my paper towel-wrapped fingers and toss it out.

And Keelah sat there watching me watch it, and then watching me dispose of it, the whole time purring violently and making figure-eights between my feet like she was so proud of herself. I gotta give it to her, though, for being a three-pound cat with no front claws, she's a helluva hunter.

Later that day, she killed a 3-inch spider in my sink and laid it up on the counter for me to find in the morning.

I didn't realize, until my cat started hunting, that I was surrounded by bugs and vermin. Reassuring, isn't it?

Oh well. She may be a pain in the ass, but at least she brings home the bacon. Which is significantly more than I can say for one of my roommates.

Monday playlist:

Night Swimming -- R.E.M. Just try it. You'll like it.

Brighter Than Sunshine -- Aqualung. This song makes me feel desperately, irreversably, incurably in love, even when I'm not. But just for the record, I might be.

Almost Lover -- A Fine Frenzy. They're a band led by a lilting, dramatic, piano-playing female vocalist. They opened for Rufus Wainwright at the Moore, and were a distinctly non-sucky opener. This song is pretty much the saddest "almost love" song ever. My boyfriend wants to sleep with the redhead. For all the above reasons minus one, I love them.

No Love -- Team Facelift. Thier name is Team Facelift. They have a song called "Lotion in the Basket". The three rappers in the group are called Machine, Fat Jew and Ginger Ale. They care most about, according to their MySpace page, "not giving a fuck". I like that.

Control your beaver!

I just like the headline of this article, and the fact that there's a blog called "Arkansas Blog".

Hot checks, beaver pelts, deceased (?) balding middle-aged crooks, Arkansas... it's a tale full of titillation and debauchery. I think. Full disclosure: I stopped reading at "Beaver Controller".

Also, thanks, D, for this bizarre story.

"Nobody drink the water! The water has gone bad!"

Don't talk to me when I'm glistening, please.

I looked up from my second set of leg presses to see a mid-thirties man I'd never met standing over me at my feet, his mouth moving, but no words coming out. I looked quizzically at him, and he gestured to his head.

I touched mine, realizing my headphones were in, music blaring, which would account for the fact that this man was making zero sense to me. It still didn’t account, though, for him talking to me when I was clearly busy working out.

I jerked out an earbud and glared at him.

“Yeah?” I said, too loudly of course, due to the other bud still crammed in my right ear.

“Um, I was just wondering if I could hop on there for a quick set in between yours,” he asked. “I just have one more to do, and…”

I hadn’t realized I was hogging the machine in the near-empty gym, but apparently this whole sharing equipment thing was status quo for homeboy, so I nodded cautiously, standing. “Sure, no problem… but you might wanna—“

Before I could suggest wiping down the machine, as I had just completed a 3 mile run and was… glistening , we'll say, he was on his back, legs up, lying in my little sweatmarks, in the middle of his first squat.

I stretched while he finished, and when he got up, I was hit with a dilemma: Either I could lay down in my/his sweat and finish my last set, something I really didn't want to do, or I could walk across the gym floor to the nearest little sanitization station for a papertowel and some of that pink weird equipment spray, which might come off a little insulting, as this guy hadn't seemed to mind my sweat at all.

I paused for a moment, and then... fuck it. I layed back down on the machine and started pressing. I figured if he could do it, I could do it.

And then, four reps in, there he was again at the foot of my machine, mouth flopping.

I jerked up, plucking out an earbud again.

He leaned over and handed me a paper towel, already covered in the weird pink stuff. What the hell? I thought. Now he wants to clean the machine? “Uh, thanks?” I said, wishing he would just go away so I could resume my workout in peace. But instead of leaving, he stood there, expectantly.

He wanted me to wipe the machine down while he was there, when I was already in the middle of using it again.

Flustered and completely weirded out, I twisted around, wiping down the back of the seat, then the handles, and crumpling up the towel like There. Happy?

“Thanks for sharing,” he said, and reached out his hand.

“Sure,” I said, again willing him to vanish. But he continued to hold out his hand. I was totally perplexed, unable to think of anything else to do with it but shake it. So I did. Kinda a “Well, see you later,” shake, I thought.

But instead of shaking back, he kinda half-pumped and then let go, wiping his hand like I might have just given him some sort of disease.

“No, I meant I’d take the towel now,” he said, all uncomfortable, like I was some strange gym girl hitting on him when HE was the one who approached ME and then layed on MY sweaty machine and insisted on talking to me instead of just waiting 30 goddamn seconds for me to finish my set.

“Oh.” I said, ever-eloquent, fumbling for the crumpled, sweaty, pink-stuff covered paper towel. “Right.”

I am clearly a master of interpersonal communication; an example for all people interested in having non-awkward interactions with humanity; a veritable book of rules for those who want to go gracefully in this world amongst their fellow man.

God I hate it when strangers talk to me at the gym.

Don't sign any legal documents.

There I was again: paper slippers, all jewelry removed, in a sea-green gown with an open back and a hair net, jiggling my foot nervously as a doctor, for the second time this year, went through the pre-surgical pep-talk. This surgery, unlike the last, which was a shoulder repair, was necessary to go from a diagnosis of "possibly cancerous" to "we actually know something, and by the way, you're fine". In other words: not optional.

Like last time, though, I was buzzing with nerves.

"I see you're still under the mistaken impression that green is flattering on everyone," I said, trying too hard to be funny as I fingered the papery fashion faux pas that is the required wardrobe, pre-surgery.

"Yeah," my (adorable but married) doctor smiled, "but it is an appropriate springtime color, is it not?"

I nodded. Thank God he was playing along. All the ways I could die over the course of the next three hours ran through my mind, alongside a mental montage of all the ways one could possibly do it in a hospital waiting room*.

(*To be clear, the death fantasy was an actual fear and the sex fantasy was an attempt to distract me from the death fantasty. It didn't work, and neither were more than 1 percent likely. I know this because I read the disclaimers before I sign, and because I'm a prude.)

A nurse entered the room, holding a clipboard and pushing one of those funny coatrack-looking things with a baggie of liquid hanging from it... a bag that would soon be attached to my arm and wheeled with me into the metal room where they do the cutting.

"Okay," Dr. Death cleared his throat, taking the clipboard from Nurse BaggieofFluids (sorry, I couldn't come up with anything clever). "You have a driver picking you up, right?" he asked, snapping me back to reality.

"Oh, yeah," I said, a little glazed, still jiggling my foot like it was my job, curled up in a chair across the room. "My girlfriend. She'll be here at 2."

I saw Dr. and Nurse exchange these tiny glances -- you know, the ones you exchange just barely, in order to say "did you notice that, too? we'll talk later..." and suddenly it occurred to me that they thought, when I said "girlfriend", that I meant "girl I perform sexual acts with". In other words, while I was refering to one of my friends, who is female, they did the whole really quick "she's a lesbian" secret look at each other.

But by the time I noticed their little exchange, too much time had passed for me to smoothly say "my roommate..." or "we've been friends since childhood" or something to more accurately deliniate our relationship. And, by the way, I only cared a little at the time. Remember, I had death and sex fantasies to get to, not to mention a surgery.

Everything went smoothly. As usual, I woke up laughing about what awesome dreams I had. By the time I was recovered and in a secondary waiting room, I was halfway through a diet Pepsi. A little weak, definitely glazed over, but in pretty good shape.

My friend was shown into the room by a different nurse and a pharmacist -- both quite stern and humorless, neither big talkers. Everyone sat, and the nurse and drug lady rattled off, to my friend, a long list of things to watch for, be concerned about, and do in the 24 hours after surgery. They handed her a baggie of pain meds, antibiotics, etc. and gave her those instructions, too.

I mostly giggled.

They didn't really look at me the whole time, until they came to the last set of instructions before they wheeled me to the car:

"Don't, under any circumstances, drive or sign any legal documents today," said stern nurse lady. Immediately I started giggling again, because, like, what legal documents would I possibly sign immediately after surgery?

And then my friend thought of one. Always a comic, she quipped:

"Damnit! We were going to sign those divorce papers today."

"Oh, shit, that's right," I said, playing along, thinking we were so funny, putting on a little show for the nurses in the room, thinking they'd appreciate a chuckle, "sorry about that... I guess we'll have to do it next week, hon."

We both cracked up, waiting for a response -- something, anything agknowledging our joke -- from the nurses.

I blinked, looking around the room, and exchanging a "what the??" glance with my friend. It was like the Twilight Zone.

::silence::

The nurses had visibly stiffened, and were awkwardly putting things away, shuffling papers and bustling around, all quiet.

No more than three minutes later, I was in the car and we were out of there without so much as a "get well soon!"

In under four hours and four sentences (all completely misfired jokes), I managed to convince an entire surgery center I was a lesbian, and learned that makes people really, really uncomfortable.

...

Just another afternoon.

The future is now, and I'm pissed about it.

I went to opening day at Safeco yesterday and watched the Mariners win their first (and likely last) game of the season. The stands were packed with 40 thousand some odd fans all swilling beer and cramming hot dogs and peanuts in their faces. My seats were good - 16th row on the first baseline. It was sunny. Sunglasses were on. Laughs were had. All around a great time.

Halfway through the game, the retractable roof went on. In minutes, tens of thousands of people suddenly had a roof over their head. Which really struck me as funny: we've got the technology to put a retractable roof over a stadium in less than 20 minutes, but it still takes my hot water that long to get from the laundry room to my shower -- a whopping 1-story climb.

What the hell? It's 2007 and I'm still waiting for decent non-static-y in-shower radios to come out and spending hours driving 15 minutes across a bridge in rush hour traffic while listening to CDs -- antiquated, skipping, scratched up CDs! (Which, by the way, are the worst-executed invention ever. Why couldn't we put them in
protective cases like the old floppy disks so they wouldn't scratch after three listens? I mean, doesn't that seem like a pretty obvious solution to you?)

Where is the future everybody was talking about in, like 1979? By now weren't we supposed to be zipping around in spacecars wearing tinfoil suits and telepathically communicating? Where's my damn Jetson's wardrobe? And what about the spacefood? And teleporting? I'm SUPER pissed that we're not teleporting yet.

But oh no, instead of investing in stuff we really want, like the technology necessary to use something other than liquid gold to fuel my car, which I drive to work so I can afford to pay money to watch roofs magically appear on top of sports stadiums, we're spending millions of dollars a minute to stomp around the planet in our Army boots policing the rest of the world, who by the way are getting pretty good and sick of our whole elementary school bully posturing thing and are calling us out as the one trick ponies we are.

Can somebody please explain this to me? And if not, I understand, but in that case, can you just please come over to my house with two to three bottles of wine and some Cheese fish crackers so we can at least get drunk and tell bad dirty jokes and play Scrabble and watch Family Feud reruns and pretend everything's totally cool?

...


Thank you.

Me and TV

My relationship with TV has been a little weird since my childhood. I was raised by a mom who had a few basic rules around our house, like most kids. And, like most kids, my little brother and I didn't really mess with them, because these were the hard core basics.

The thing, though, is that in most households these might include things like "Go to church every Sunday" or "No premarital sex" or "No raising your voice to your mother". But traditional rules weren't so much our mother's style. She was a badass with a wide hippie streak. Sex, foul language, religion and debauchery weren't so much her concern. What she DID concern herself with were such classics as "No soda in the house -- or anywhere near the property", "Lunchables might be 'cool', but if we didn't grow or kill it ourselves, it's not going in your sack lunch" and "No more than 30 minutes of television daily" and, worst of all: "Absolutely no cable TV".

These rules outraged my brother and I. Sure, we didn't have to go to church and we could dissappear into the woods from sunrise to sunset on a Saturday like a couple banchees and not get in trouble, but with all the wisdom of 7 and 12 year olds, we felt socially crippled.

Of course, we were crafty, and devised a sophisticated plan to beat the system: Every weekend, we tromped through the woods (yes, literally) to our neighbor's house.

The neighbors had two kids exactly our ages, and their parents kicked major ass. There, they had a television in every room, including the kitchen, they ate off wonderful things called "T.V. trays", they had four or five different tins in their pantry full of different varieties of junk food, and they almost neverhad to talk to each other or go outside, preferring instead to sit in front of cable television.

We were in heaven.

I knew it was wrong, even back then, but I just. couldn't. help. it. My brother and I spent hours of our precious youth on the floor in their living room, gorging ourselves on all the crap my mom wouldn't let near our house and stuffing our minds with garbage, from M.C. Hammer videos to Singled Out and The Simpsons. But we didn't passively watch -- we were, like, in the lean-forward position, the whole time. Picture a chubby kid with a candy bar when he sees his bully older brother approaching to snatch the treat away. You know how he suddenly starts cramming the thing in his mouth, trying to swallow it before it could be taken from him? That was us. We were transfixed, and my mom would've been pissed.

Reminders of those days remain with me, though now what really gets me are documentaries and infomercials. For a while there, when my hippie ways were still in their nascence, I banned T.V. from my home, recognizing my tendencies to fixate on the contraption and believing it would help keep me from spacing out, when I had time to do so. Later, I decided this wasn't financially prudent, as it caused me to have to go to theatres to watch movies, when with a TV you get basic channels and can use a DVD player to watch as many documentaries (and/or episodes of Sex and the City) as you like. And, when I find myself home alone, just me and the TV, I do.

To wit: I watched EVERY SINGLE EPISODE of Alone in the Wilderness when it aired on PBS, because the person I lived with at the time loved it. That's right, I skipped reading or socializing or excersizing and instead watched a very old man make a doorknob with his bare hands, with such riveting commentary as "Today, I built a doorknob. It took me fourteen hours with this here chisle and wood file." followed by, well, nearly fourteen hours of an ancient man whaling on a chunk of wood.

Yeah.

Last night, I found myself completely sucked into a documentary on morbidly obese people.

Have you seen this? It's the one with the two guys -- one's in Mexico and the other the US -- and they both tip the scales at something like a thousand pounds, but they're medical miracles. Their hearts are normal, their blood pressure, organs, everything is just ticking away in there, while these guys can't even get out of bed, much less their house.

Instead, they watch jazzercize videos from the 80s in bed and sorta wiggle along to the music. And run internet businesses. One of them sells designer jeans on Ebay to pay rent.

This was, of course, really sad. Also, a little hard to watch, with moments of complete hilarity. (I'm sorry, YOU try not to laugh at a 1000 lb man gleefully doing arm circles, naked in bed, to Madonna's "Holiday". It's priceless, people.)

And a couple weeks ago, I decided that what my kitchen really needed was a Magic Bullet, but before I could purchase the miracle salsa/sorbet/peanut butter maker, my friend snatched the phone out of my hand and clicked off the television, sucking me back into reality.

(Now if I could just figure out what to do with this juicer, food dehydrater and Bowflex System...)

The Note, Part II: Why I'll never write another

It was my first year of college. I was fresh and alone at a school far enough from home that I didn't know anyone. The campus, though only mid-sized, felt huge. I was awash with the power and excitement that comes with being anonymous in a brand new place.

I knew only one person at the university -- a girl I'd become friends with through sports in high school. She was a year older than me and I always looked up to her -- she was that girl who seemed to have it all figured out. Every high school boy with a pulse was simultaneously a little afraid of her and completely obsessed. She had gotten a scholarship to play ball at the university I attended, but during my first couple months at school I was busy getting settled in my sorority and breaking up with the then-love of my life (a whole 'nother story), so I hadn't seen her, though we talked occasionally on the phone.

One late weeknight a few months into school, I found myself in the campus library late, writing in a computer lab. There were people at every computer, which were laid out in rows with computers back to back. As I worked, the guy in the computer facing me caught my eye. He was tall, had hazel eyes and sandy blonde hair and rakish, crooked smile. He was a couple years older than me, I guessed, from all the muscles. Clearly an athelete, and brazen; periodically he leaned around his computer to catch my eye and sort of half-smiled and nodded.

I was flattered by his attention, but it was a computer lab and I was a goody-goody 18-year old who had had a grand total of one long-term, intimate relationship, like, ever! I pretended not to notice, all the while my thoughts were racing: what do I do? How do I act? Holy Christ! My life is AWESOME and TERRIFYING all at ONCE!!

Nobody was talking, so saying something clever wasn't an option (both because it was dead-silent and I was not clever in the least). And I was supposed to be working. I was in waaay over my head, but was determined to "sieze the opportunity" and "make the most of my college experience" and shit. And then, it came to me. A note.

A Note.

Discreetly, I wrote him a Note right there in the computer lab. It was too long, and went into too much detail about how I didn't know anyone here and what, hypothetically, we could get together and do, like maybe coffee or a movie or something. (I am SO cringing as I write this). Worse, I remember leaving TWO numbers at the bottom of the paper -- one to my room and one to my cell phone. TWO NUMBERS! Can you imagine? I might as well have left him a lock of hair, blood test results and a pee sample too, but I thought I was being verrrry cool.

I finished up at the computer, and, very smooth-like, stood up, walked around the table, and slipped my note into his Biology book on my way out.

I barely made it out of the library before being near-paralyzed with dread. I had been so confident a moment before, all hopped up on hormones and adrenaline -- but once I stepped outside the library into the night, the reality of the half-page long note I left for some random athelete in my new university library was enough to nearly break me out into cold sweats. If I could have burned the place down with him in it, I would have.

A few days went by and that Sunday morning, I got a phone call around 9:30 a.m. It was my old friend from high school on the other end.

"I had the craziest night! You'll never believe it..." she launched into a story about the night before, focusing particularly heavily on a handsome basketball player she met there. "So we went to his house," she continued. "No funny business, but this morning, I hopped in the shower with him." (At this point, I shriek as if my virginal ears just caught on fire. She SHOWERED with a GUY. Holy shit.)

"And when we got out," she continued, but at this point she starts laughing, so words are coming in bursts, "On the floor... by his wallet... was this crumpled up paper... and the handwriting looked familiar, so I... picked it up... and..."

I about died on the spot as she, between fits of laughter, essentially read me the note I'd left with my little library crush a few days before. She thought it was the funniest thing in the world, and, if his hysterics in the background were any indication, so did he.

"Wait a minute," I gasped, between my own horrified gulps, "You mean... you... took... a SHOWER with HIM?!!"

Yep, the only person on campus I knew not only beat me to my library crush, she SHOWERED WITH HIM, and then they, naked, read the most embarrassing note I have ever written. And then called me to replay the incident with me as their witness.

For the rest of my college existence, every time I was out, I inevitably ran into GooglyLibraryEyes and all his buddies, who mercilessly gave me shit, and somehow magically never fucking forgot it or cut me some slack. Let me tell you, by the end of my college career, he wasn't looking attractive anymore. I don't think. To be honest, I never looked at him directly again, afraid my eyes would be burned by the reflection of my own stupidity shining off him like a "neener-neener" beacon forever.

That was the end of my Note-writing career. Thank God I had a sense of humor or I mightn't have survived it.

Lesson: The Note gets read. Often. And by way more people than you intend.

So now its your turn to share hideous come-on stories. Can you beat this? I doubt it, but could really use a little morale boost now, so if you wouldn't mind trying...

:)

The Note (a tale of a misguided come-on tactic), Part I

[Before we begin, a note: I love how I can write about pretty much anything and elicit a response from y'all, but the day I actually get hit by a bus and write about that? Nothing. A couple emails along the lines of "are you okay? because that's pretty funny..." but other than that, radio silence. You guys kick ass.]

...

"So I'm having a little bit of a crisis," she said. "I tried to lick the company stamps, or whatever, and now I'm paying the price."

My best friend and I are sort of regulars at this little Mexican restaraunt near her house, where we meet sometimes once every couple weeks, sometimes a few times a week, to eat chips and salsa and drink beer with lime in it and talk about... well... everything.

Last week, the topic was Workboy. We'd run into Workboy a few weekends ago on a night out on the town. He'd recognized her as the girl who works in the office building next to him, and described her black Audi and where she parked in their small, shared parking lot. He'd bought her a drink and they'd laughed and flirted. He was doing that thing where you touch the other person when they say something funny. At the end of the night, they exchanged numbers and went their separate ways.

The following week they bumped into each other a couple times, talked about getting together again. So, in an attempt to keep the momentum they'd begun during the weekend, she wrote A Note to Workboy.

Now, the Note is a notoriously female move. And my friend, bless her heart, did exactly what every one of us known Note-Leavers does: First, she wrote The Note four days before she worked up the nerve to leave The Note somewhere for him to read. The Note was, though totally premeditated, intentionally a little sloppy and very short, in an attempt to look, well, not premeditated.

"...it was just very cool," she said. "I mean, very casual."

After obsessing for the obligatory three days about exactly what words should go in The Note, she finally worked up the considerable nerve it took to slip it under his wiper on her way out to her car one day after work.

Just after she did, she saw him come out of his building on his way to his car, and panicked, essentially sprinting to her car and racing off before he could read the note in front of her, the whole way home wishing she could go back, run him over, and snatch the note back out of his adorable, lifeless hands.

"Well," I nodded, "I think you handled that pretty well. So?"

"So he hasn't called. And it's been two weeks," she moaned. "And honestly, I'm dissapointed, but more than that, I'm completely fucked, because I see his car every day and he walks past my office every day, and we haven't spoken since, and it is the most awkward thing EVER!" Cue wailing.

I agreed. What? Well, she was right. It was a completely awkward situation, and after some discussion, we determined that not only was it awkward, it was totally possible he had a girlfriend who he showed the note to, in addition to everyone he works with and possibly also my friend's boss and co-workers. Which led to a whole 'nother bout of wailing.

And that's the thing about The Note. It always seems like such a good idea to us women, but the second you leave it, you realize the gravity of the mistake you've made in leaving it:

You hit on a man like he was a woman, and left cold, hard, physical evidence of your transgression.

It's like we take the biggest mistake men make in hitting on women (the pick-up lines, sometimes some grabbing and and hi-fives with the boys and a few pelvic thrusts) and do completely the opposite thing. We hit on men coyly and nearly anonymously in an attempt to risk as little as possible. Consider the fact that most women's repertoire of moves when it comes to attracting a man (mine included) borrow heavily from deaf, dumb and mute: we ignore them completely, believing this makes us more attractive to them. Nice.

Meanwhile, I suspect a man really wants us to come up to him unannounced at a bar, grab his junk, wrap a leg around him, press our chest against his arm and tell him his legs must be tired because he's been running through our sex dreams all night. But noooo. Instead, like the classy but clueless broads we are, we take the leave The Note angle, thinking it will be sweet and clever and mysterious. Which gets us into BIG trouble. Women want mystery. Men want exactly the opposite. I know this firsthand.

[Next, in Part II, how I know this firsthand.]

...and I was all, like, "What the...??!!!" (Hit by a bus)

You know that thing that people do when something embarrassing happens to them in public? I know you know what I'm talking about. That thing people do, for example, when they randomly trip while walking down the street?

I'm not talking about the people who start running and try to play it off. (Those people are their own breed, requiring their own separate post. They're the type who do the thing where they raise their hand and wave to someone down the street, thinking they know them, but then realize they don't and instead use their hand to slick back their hair, all, like "What? I'm cool... just fixing my hair!". This is unacceptable behavior for anyone other than Guidos, and real Guidos only live in Little Italy and are drunk and fat and leacherous most of the time, anyway, so their bad judgment doesn't count. By the way, I'm part Italian, so don't call me racist.)

I'm talking about the other people. The people who get pissed. You know, when they trip on their own feet, but instead of laughing their clumsiness off, they stop, and turn around, and, like, glare and the sidewalk, all "What the...??!!" like it purposefully tripped them. Or they point, which is always funny. Or examine the street closely for the crack that obviously caused them to stumble. Or -- better yet -- they kick the curb. God, I love that. It totally ridiculous, because regardless of what they do afterwards, they almost just tripped, and nothing they do is going to make that go away.

Tara Reid is really good at this. Or maybe she's mostly good at just falling and being coked up and skanky. Either way, a photo, because I think it's funny (and hear it encourages you guys to continue reading... thank you, US Magazine):



Anyway, this "What the...?!" behavior didn't make any sense to me until this morning, when I was (wait for it...) HIT BY A BUS.

Yup. A huge articulated bus -- carrying what seemed like a thousand commuters -- ran a red light and met me in the middle of a crosswalk -- head down in the rain, minding my own business -- half a block from my office building.

I'm okay and everything. In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to admit that it's not like it plowed me down, it just sort of met me. The moment it was less than 10 inches from my right shoulder, I looked up and stiff-armed it while jumping sideways, effectively pushing off its front left corner before it knocked me down.

The first nanosecond after the bus hissed to a quick stop, the first moment I knew I was going to live, I was embarrassed, convinced it was all my fault, because who gets hit by a bus unless they're doing something idiotic? What the fuck? I thought. I am so oblivious to the world that I just almost got hit by a bus? I mean, how embarrassing! Surely, I thought, I must have been jaywalking. But when I looked up at the crosswalk, I was stunned. No red STOP hand. Instead, a bright green WALK man. And this one was animated. His legs were moving. He was, like "WALK! LIKE ME!! SEE? DO IT!"

Just like that, (I snapped right there, in real life, while typing the word "that". So please, when reading this, snap, so you can get the full effect of my enthusiasm for this story.) Just like that (thank you), my embarrassment turned to anger.

How in the fuck does a BUS run a red light and almost hit a GIRL who clearly has every right to WALK in that crosswalk, with her legs moving and carrying her across the street just like the blazing green WALK man? That WALK man was suddenly my shining beacon of right-ness. And, to add to my anger, I noticed that on top of the sign, there was a speaker playing piped-in audio instructions for the blind. The piped-in audio woman was saying this, still, even in the seconds after my near-death-experience:

"Walk signs are on for all crossings. Walk signs are on for all crossings. Walk signs are on for all cross..." etc. etc. etc.

God damn that bus! Now I was really pissed. My bright young life was nearly smeared across the bumper of a public transporter, and it was totally not my fault.

I was going to show that effing bus driver.

Yeah, I was.

I was gonna.

Show him.

That effer.

So you know what I did? I'll be damned if I didn't, almost instinctively, do that thing.

I stopped, mouth open in shock as I realized the audio and visual signals were all telling me to walk and the bus to stop at the moment of near-impact, and gave the driver the "what the...??!!!" look, with my forehead all scrunched up like he was an idiot, then pointed to the green WALK sign, then pointed back at the bus driver, shaking my head and again doing the "What the...?!" face before disgustedly throwing my hands down at my sides and marching the rest of the way across the street, shaking my head.

You could almost hear the spectators crowding the sidewalks giggle and whisper. I actually saw a few point. I was that girl. Doing that retarded "What the...?!!!" thing.

But I didn't care. It felt good. Not as good as swearing at the driver, but good enough to satisfy me as I stomped across the street and into my building, brushing my hair back all cool and calm. All, like, "What? Nothing! I'm cool, and stuff. Just fixing my hair..."

____________________________________________

A tale of two come-ons is coming... but forgive me, the bus incident took precedence today, as it was practically a near-death experience. Have a good day, and please--look both ways.

Or, you could just wear your shirt...

I have talked to two different men in the last week who say they take off their shirts when they go number two.

Yep, I know. Bizarre, right?

And they both say this isn't restricted to just their homes. Public restroom? Shirt off. Work men's room? Yep. Porta-Potty? (Actually, I didn't ask either about a Porta Potty, but now I wish I would have. Meanwhile my general rule is to stay a minimum of .25 miles away from Porta-Potty's at all times, no matter how badly you have to pee. As for the other function? No way. )

This clothing removal thing disturbs me for two reasons. One is the basic concept. WHY would you remove clothing to use the bathroom? It's unnecessary, and the mental picture is so icky. Also, this is totally inconvenient. Imagine a man in a shirt and tie: he enters the bathroom, removes his tie, hangs it on that little hook on the door, unbuttons seventy million buttons (and those ones around his wrists), takes off his shirt, then his undershirt, and hangs those both over the door. He's now been in there for 4 or 5 minutes. People are coming and going and watching his clothes be flung over the stall door. He then sits down on the sani-paper, a weird, pasty-white man with his shirt off in a cold work bathroom, and does his deed. (Both shirt-removers are white, so by default, that's my mental picture. But a brown man shirtless on the pot is just as icky). Then, when he's done, he reverses the process. Clothes go back on. Does he tie his tie in the mirror with all the other guys watching? Do they know he just disrobed? And if he's taking off his shirt, why not go the whole way and get rid of the pants and socks, too?

[Actually, come to think of it, I think I did have an ex-boyfriend who took his shoes off when he went number two. I feel like I remember him saying something to this effect, and I just didn't ask more questions because it was weirding me out. Then again, this is also the ex who ate lasagna in the bathtub, so maybe the whole relationship was weirding me out, truth be told. But I digress.]

What's worse about my discovery of this strange male behavior is that I heard about it twice in one week from two different and unrelated men, which makes me believe it stands to reason this isn't a rare occurrance at all. Is it possible there are lots of men out there doing this? Or--gasp--women?

And why were both these guys -- one of whom I barely know, who made this revelation in a big group of people out on a Saturday night -- so willing to share this perverse and private detail?

It's like i'm in the twilight zone. Anyone?