We can rebuild it, we have the technology

So . . . this is probably the most unexpected, awesome thing.  Dr. Frankenstein has arrived to fix my household appliances.

My friends Heather and Casey came to town to visit (yay!).  Upon arriving, I informed Casey how upset I was that my very expensive, overly loved primo bar blender I got for Christmas 2 years ago has been dead, died, kaput.  For a while now.  Casey, being the guy that he is, asks if he can tinker with it.  Sure, I say.  Go nuts.

He informs me, after a brief inspection, that my blender has blown some fuse inside.  He holds it up victoriously and I say disbelievingly, “That was the problem??”

So after dinner, Casey takes a trip out to Walmart to see if they have a fuse.  He also picks up new vacuum cleaner belts that he happens to find there because I had been bitching how I couldn’t find any yesterday at Target.  He officially rocks.

Upon his return  the following happens.
Casey: Okay.  They didn’t have the fuse but . . . they had a $5 surge protector.  And some soldering material.  And a lighter that might do the job.  So, uh, I can try this and if I totally blow it up I swear I’ll buy you a new one. But it’s not currently working anyway, right?
Me: What are you asking me exactly?
C: Well, if this works, and it’s gonna work, you can use your blender.  It might glow a really neat light when you use it. Are you okay with that?
Me: What??

After 10 minutes, of asking if it’s going to blow me up or catch my kitchen on fire if I try to use it once they leave, accusing him of being a fly-by-night weirdo who makes explosive devices in the kitchens of friends, I agree to let him do it.  Heather assures me that after 2 years of living with him, she’s not been killed.

And he does the following (I had to quote him because I couldn’t possibly summarize this):  “I sharded a surge protector, cut out the fuse, soldered it in where the blender fuse used to be, heat-shrinked it, and turned it on.  And if the fuse blows out again, just open it up and flip the switch.”

Lo and behold, I have a blender again.  I admit to being a little terrified of using it, but I’m gonna have the fire extinguisher handy.  And it doesn’t glow, but I’m kind of okay with that.  That might have made me even more nervous.

If he didn’t have such a good job already, I would tell him he has a prolific, if scary and weird, new career.

Oh God, it’s true

I’m codependent.  I admit it.  When C is out of town, I start moping.  I’m fine during the day because I can pretend she’s at work.  But as soon as I have to go to bed and realize she’s not coming home, I deflate a little.  It’s kind of  sad.

Anyway, she went out of town because a family member quite suddenly died.  And upon her return we were talking about how badly we feel for his wife and children, especially now that the rest of the extended family is trickling back to their own homes.  They’re having to deal with this sudden emptiness, the silence, the loss that must seem gaping.

And I told her how I used to have nightmares about her dying.  Granted, they were more frequent when our lives were super stressful, and I was constantly worried about her.  But the nightmares have changed over time and now instead I have nightmares about her being gone.  Just . . . gone.  And dealing with that void.

C: But you’ve always had those.  And I have them.  It’s a normal fear, I think.
Me: It might be a normal fear, but I think it’s a little weird to have nightmares about that kind of thing when nothing is wrong.
C: Well then, we’re both screwed up.
Me: Oh my god, I’m codependent.  That’s what I am!  Crap, can I borrow your napkin? I don’t have one.
C: (smirking) Do you want a sip of my drink, or do you want your own?
Me: I’ll just take a sip of yours.  Oh.  Hey!! That’s not funny.

My girl, bringing it all into perspective.

It’s just so stupid

Last night I’m playing with my cat and her new favorite string.  Suddenly, and I don’t think this is my fault, she runs over my foot.  This results in long gashes going across the tops of four toes.  This quite naturally hurts, so I start screaming and carrying on like a giant girl.

C, hearing the commotion, saunters on over.  I pick up my foot and wave it at her.  She says, “Oh, geez, she just scratched you.”

Of course, that’s when blood starts gooshing out of my foot. Hahaha, that’s what happens when you make light of my injuries!  She sprints to the bathroom and returns with a considerable wad of toilet paper which she then strategically smooshes around on my foot.  Thusly staunched (sort of), I announce that I’m going upstairs to stick my foot in the tub, pour some peroxide on my foot, and clean the cuts out.  She tells me that she has just finished putting Drano in the tub, but I can certainly hop up on the teeny wittle counter in the downstairs bathroom and put my foot in the sink.  For those of you without a visual, the counter pretty much is the sink, so what she’s actually suggesting is that I either: 1) do a weird combination ballet move/flamingo stance and clean my foot or 2) somehow stick my foot into the sink that my ass would be sitting in.  Neither of these options is sounding really attractive, and the blood that had been held at bay by a wad of Angel Soft is now threatening to end up on the carpet.  So I demand that she go into the kitchen and fetch the big pot.  Which, of course, turns into “What pot?” “The BIG pot!”  “The one you make pasta in?” “No, the OTHER big pot!”  “The new one?”  “NO, the one that would fit a foot!!”

Correct pot having been located, she fills it with water and somehow hits my foot because while I’m expecting her to, you know, put it on the floor, she’s holding it mid-air and raising it to meet my foot.  I swear, she defies all logic in my world.  The cool water feels lovely, and it’s really neat how little pink bubbles seem to be coming out of my toes.

She goes upstairs for supplies and comes back with the following: a roll of gauze, some Neosporin, handsoap, a giant pack of bandaids, and an Ace bandage. For real.  She’s nothing if not prepared.  She then attempts to wash my foot which means she’s attempting to not only touch my foot but she’s about to touch the things that hurt and that is not allowed.  Ask my mother how many times I locked myself in the bathroom with an injury as a child.  No one touches my scrapes, my splinters, and certainly not the bloody cuts that hurt.  So I snatch my foot away and, okay, yes, splash her in the face a little.  It isn’t on purpose so I don’t see why she gets all huffy.

Once I feel sufficiently de-germed, she pats me dry with a towel (after I object, of course, to the first towel because I claim it’s too “linty”).  And then I am gracious enough to let her put bandaids all over my foot.  I decline the gauze, tape, and Ace bandage, though it’s a sweet gesture.

And then, for the rest of the evening the cat stays near me and even sleeps next to my foot on the ottoman.  It’s a weird sort of protectiveness, even though she’s the one that did it.  C claims that the cat feels bad, but I know better.  I caught her sniffing the bandaids and trying to claw the back of my foot when she thought I wasn’t looking and I’m keeping an eye on her.

It’s always something

Well, Austin finally made good on the rain. And I was enjoying it until . . .

So I’m cooking, watching Dead Like Me, looking forward to the party. It’s storming. And eventually the rain noises sound a little louder, a little closer, a little inside.  So I start hunting, searching for the source of that dripping noise.

I find it on the stairs. The ceiling in my stairwell is leaking, which means there’s a leak in the attic-ish area and dammit. I grab a Tupperware and stick it on the stairs to catch the water. I call the apartment office.

Man: Thank you for calling —–. How can I help you?
Me: Hi, are there any maintenance people around today? My ceiling is leaking.
Man: Yeah, it’s raining really hard.
Me: . . . That’s right. It is. And that’s why there is a leak in my ceiling?
Man: We’ve gotten a lot of calls today about this, actually.
Me: Okay.
Man: Oh, we can’t actually do anything about it, not until it dries out.
Me: Uh . . . huh.  So do you have a list of all these people that have called? Can you put my apartment number on it?
Man: Oh, no.  Why don’t you just call back on Monday? We’ll take care of it then. Thanks for calling!

And then he hung up on me. I hate this apartment.

My reality can be skewed

Since we returned to Austin from our Louisiana trip, the lack of humidity here has just been killing us. Really, we had a few blissful days of sticky air and no cedar pollen back home, but as soon as we crossed the state line into Texas, the dryness just started to kill us.

So I’ve been fighting an impending sinus infection for the last few days. Last night I was feeling all feverish and blah-y and just, UGH. I was up until 4 in the morning and decided to lie down in the guest bed since C’s alarms were set for 4:30 (seriously).

Now, this is what I remember from this morning as C came in to tell me goodbye before she left for work.

C: Hi babe, did you sleep okay?
Me: No.
C: Are you feeling all right?
Me: No, I went to bed all crappy feeling and I thought I had a fever. I still feel kind of hot, actually. All my joints are achy, isn’t that weird? I don’t think I have the flu, though. Which is good. Who gets the flu in August?
C: (turns around and exits the room while I’m still talking)
Me: Bitch! I’m talking to you!!

So C gets home from work and this is what she says really happened:

C: Hi babe, did you sleep okay?
Me: Ungh.
C: Are you feeling all right?
Me: I’M SO HOT!!! (followed by a rolling over and burying my face in a pillow, signaling the end of the conversation).

Okay, that’s not at all how I remember it. I recall being very lucid and eloquent about the exact nature of my discomfort and even offering various theories on why I could be feeling so badly. But . . . that does seem optimistic, doesn’t it? I’m going with C on this one.

Aiding desperation

Even though I’ve lived in Texas for just over 2 years now, I have yet to change my cell phone number.  Not that this is the point, I’m just saying.

This afternoon, I received a text message:

“this ace? *l&k, denise*”

I don’t actually know what that means, but I ignored it.

10 minutes later, my phone rings.

Me: Hello?
Female caller: Hellooo.
Me: Um, hello?
FC: Hi, who is this?
Me: (I really hate when people call ME and then instead of identifying themselves, ask who I am). Who are you looking for?
FC: Well, this is the deal. I accidentally gave this guy your number instead of mine.
Me: Uh huh.
FC: Has anyone called you?
Me: No. Bye!
FC: WAIT!!
Me: What.
FC: If a guy calls you asking for Brooke, could you give him this number and ask him to call me?
Me: Are you kidding me?
FC: Just give him this number. You’re sure a guy hasn’t called you?
Me: (laughing before I hang up)

Oh please, now I’m a dating/answering service? No way. No way in hell, lady.

UPDATE: It’s 12:33 a.m. C just got home and I was relating this tale to her. Suddenly, my phone rings! C says, “I bet it’s the guy!”
I answer, lo and behold a guy asks if Brooke is there. “Wrong number!! CLICK.”

C says if he calls again I should answer “Brookview Convent, may I help you? Oh, I’m sorry, she’s taking her vows right now, not only of chastity but also silence. You should have called earlier today. Go with God!”

FUTHER UPDATE, Monday: The same girl starts calling my phone today. Like 10 times, seriously. I don’t answer. Finally, she texts me.

“Hi i talked to you yesterday about a number callin u…has anyone called you yet???”

I respond, because I am sick and tired of this shit: “You have got to be kidding me. I’m not your answering service. Stop contacting me.”

Which prompts this from her: “Umm there really is no need to get rude…i was just asking u a simple question & yesterday you could hv told me u didnt want to…obviously u having some damn problems today…but no problem dude. — ima be aiight.”

Can you even believe this? Is this actually my life? YOU IMPERTINENT LITTLE TWIT SHIT. Really now, I am shocked at the behavior of some people.  Soon after that, she started calling me again so I wisely blocked the number. People are WEIRD, man. But I’m absolutely thrilled to know she’ll be “aiight.” Tiny little idiot.

Late night offers

It’s no secret that I stay up VERY late at night. Sometimes I don’t go to bed until after the sun comes up. I try to reverse this and sleep along with the normal people. Sometimes it works for a while. But, left to my own devices, I snap right back to being a night owl.

That’s not the point. The point is that last night (this morning) I went to bed at 4 am, which is early for me! I had been lying there for a bit, about to fall asleep, when I had a sneezing fit. Of course, C wakes up a little bit.

Me: (sneezing uncontrollably)
C: (groggily) Blarg. Y’ok?
Me: Yeah, I’b fide.
C: Really?
Me: Yup, just sneezing.
C: Ok. Do you want a towel?
Me: Um, no. I’m going to get a tissue, though. I don’t think I need a whole towel.
C: (suspiciously). O-kay.

At that point she quite literally falls back into her pillows and begins snoring.

So I asked her about it this morning (she’s making me us breakfast right now!).

C: Oh yeah! I remember that.
Me: Why would I need a towel though?
C: Because when you sneeze, you get really snotty and gross.
Me: Wow, thanks.
C: Just looking out for you.

I don’t know whether to be flattered at her attention to detail (though she’s exaggerating) and concern or be kind of insulted.

Stubborn

I just got off the phone with my mother (hi Mom!) and had to tell her that I didn’t plan on walking in the graduation for my Master’s in May.  I could have sworn I told her this before, but she’s apparently been under the impression that I would be.

Well, I’m not.  For several reasons.

First of all, graduations are just boring as hell.  Second, UT is a huge school and even if they break up the ceremonies by department, it is going to last forever.  Third, I just don’t feel like it!  I still don’t know for certain if I want to stay for a doctorate and if I do, I don’t really want to walk for what wouldn’t be my terminal degree.

Now, I have walked in two other graduations.  One high school (okay, GED, it was lamer than you could imagine) and my undergrad.  But the second one was special and I wouldn’t have missed it anyway.  It was the Katrina graduation, January 2006, and UNO had pulled a fall semester out of thin air following the storm.  Professors scattered all over the country came together and made online courses and crazy satellite campuses and just did the damn thing.  It was very cool.  And that graduation was so celebratory for so many reasons.  We all cheered at everything, no matter how small.  We heard how the president of the university convinced the Coast Guard to bring him across the lake to the school, he and others hiked over the levee and rescued the servers.  We all cheered when they said the name of a department as the graduates walked in.  We cheered for hours at everything, but mostly our own perseverence.

However, we invited lots of our friends to that (C and I were both graduating, a feat in itself) and NO ONE CAME except for MY parents.  I would just like to point that out.  I guess I’m still a little bitter about that.

Anyway, I don’t feel especially motivated to walk in this graduation for tons and tons of reasons and no amount of persuasion is going to change that.  I told my mother that we will be visiting in May for a combined birthday celebration, we’re bringing M with us (maybe) and she can just roll graduation into all that.  Yippee.  Give me some crawfish, a poboy, and a daquiri and I say that’s good enough.

Of course, then my mother mentions that I could get presents.  I tell her I own so much crap that C and I are actually trying to declutter.  Then she switched her game and tried to tell me that my father was crying in a corner due to my new status as an ungrateful, horrible daughter.  I said, “This is neither the ending of The Natural nor The Benny Goodman Story, so I know he’s just fine.”

Not doing it.  Can’t make me.  So there.

Learning the Rhythm

A conversation with A made me remember one of my greatest friends tonight.  Not that he’s ever too far from my thoughts, but still.  I still miss you like mad, babe.

Eddie was a sensualist. Not in the sexual way (although that certainly came into play as we grew older) but because of his love of beauty. All beauty, especially music. He could be brought to tears by a good guitar riff, or a spectacular piano melody. But rhythm was his true love and he engulfed himself in it. One day, when I was fourteen and he was sixteen, he arrived at my house. I was in a mood, one of those moods that spontaneously pounce upon fourteen-year-old girls, and was sulking in my living room. “Field trip!” he announced. We went to New Orleans and walked to a corner near a construction site. He grabbed my arm to stop me and closed his eyes.

“What are you doing,” I asked. “Are you sleepy?”
“Shut up for a minute,” he said patiently.
“If we’re just gonna stand here, I came out for nothing. There are plenty of construction sites in Slidell. Aren’t we gonna DO something?”
“I said shut up. Have I ever brought you out here and not shown you a good time? If you shut up I can find it.”

Suddenly, he did. He opened his eyes and smiled.

“Okay, do you see that big yellow thing over there? The one that’s pounding the street?” he asked.
“Uh…yeah. So?”
“That’s the bass drum. Hear it? It’s a real slow beat, in 4/4. Now pay attention.”

I looked at him with my right eyebrow cocked in sarcastic bemusement. I had no clue what he was getting at. My early teenage attitude was on the rise and I was about to say something, but he beat me to it.

“I said shut up. You can give me that shit when we get home, but for now I need you to listen. So, we have a bass. Alright, hear that glass? Like a crashing, tinkling sound. Those are the cymbals. The hammer over there, that’s the snare. The heels, hear em? Those are the rims. Now close your eyes and listen.”

I did. I closed my eyes, before he yelled at me, and leaned my head back for good effect. I stood there, thinking what a moron and then…I heard it. I heard it. I heard the beat of the bass start it off, I heard the clicking of a woman’s high heels at a faster tempo. Someone threw a bag of trash somewhere, crash.  Glass broke, cymbals shivered. I heard something new: swish, swish. A street sweeper had come along. I opened my eyes and looked at Eddie. He was thrilled; he’d always wanted to try brush sticks. He pulled me in front of him and began to beat a rhythm on my back. We stood there, audience for the street corner concert, and listened.

You know you’re from Slidell

Some of these I’ve heard, and some I made up.  I guess I’m feeling nostalgic and homesick today.

We all once feared Bayou Liberty when we first started driving. We conquer our fears.

The bridge over the railroad tracks at the end of Front Street scared us all at one point.

You were scared shitless in Drivers Ed by crooked-toed Anna Merryl and her husband with the bump on his head.

You don’t understand why the DMV is past a hairpin curve in the road, which makes the driving test worse.

You’ve gotten drunk at the Point.

You miss the old playground stuff at John Slidell. Like the fort and the giant tall thing with the ladder rungs too far apart for anyone and the only way down was the scary fireman’s pole.

You found a piece of cardboard and slid down the hill at John Slidell.

You waited in your car for 30 minutes to get a snowball on Gause even though there was nobody at the walk-up. It was just too hot to get out.

You think the speed bumps on West Hall are a joke and get mad when the person in front of you actually slows down for them.

You know how the Bayou Liberty/St. Genevieve bridge sounds and you can imitate the noise.

Whenever you drove over that bridge and it creaked, you always kind of thought you might fall in.

You feel reassured every year you see the old guy with the white beard on his bicycle collecting cans.

Ditto for the hat/rose lady on I-10.

You’ve ever had to grab a pirogue or a canoe to paddle down your street to the store following a thunderstorm.

You still think Check-In-Check-Out has the best shrimp poboys.

You remember when they actually had guards in the stands in front of Eden Isles.

You still wish you could make Frank come back and open the Soda Shop back up.

You still have your blue Soda Shop punch cards just in case one day, he does.

You’ve ever seen a woman get out of her car at a blocked intersection to kick a turtle out of the road.

If you had to attend a softball game at Fritchie Park, you were a little sad because John Slidell was more fun.

You’ve participated in a cake-walk at the Saint Margaret Mary fair.

You snuck out to New Orleans and tried to get back before curfew.

When sneaking out to the French Quarter, you knew you were taking the right exit (Canal) because you saw the Rosenberg’s sign. (1825! Tuuuu-lane)

You were mad as hell when Rite Aid bought out K&B.

You can still identify (and use as a standard) K&B purple.

You made a mad rush for Boiling Point on Thursday nights because that’s when they had a dozen oysters for $3.25

Your school went to Skater’s Paradise for special occasions.

You ever performed in a recital or a play at the original Minnacapelli’s.

You were shocked on the day when you turned to the Zephyr (106.1) and heard country music.

Not only do you know the difference between “old” and “new” Kingspoint, you have lived in each.

You still refer to the current Hobby Lobby as the old Walmart.

You’ve gotten dizzy on the yellow spinning thing at the park behind the old K-Mart (now it’s a gym?)

You’ve suddenly had to shout your conversation over a train.

You’ve ever had to pick up a friend in Pearl River and the directions include turning either before or after “the big chicken.”

Going to dinner at Doug’s on Robert Rd. was considered really fancy.

You still call Lakeview Rat’s Nest Road.

You would go out of your way to GG’s because their vending machines were cheaper.

You’ve been to a bonfire when it’s over 80 degrees outside.