July 1—Klutzy Incidents, Now Brought to You in Color
Today's story comes prefaced with two relevant facts.
Relevant fact number one: As y'all know by now, I have two cats, Freefall and Bolie. Freefall is large and laid back; Bolie is small and a perpetual nervous wreck. Bolie slavishly follows Freefall around, which Freefall tolerates with only mild annoyance. Of course, Freefall follows me around, which means I usually have eight little furry black feet pitter pattering after me wherever I go. So it is that I am usually accompanied by at least one cat in my computer room.
Relevant fact number two: Cats like to rub the corners of their mouths on things to deposit their scent on them and mark them as theirs, as anyone who has ever owned cats knows. That's probably the majority of my readers since I tend to attract cat lovers, being somewhat feline myself via osmosis. Anyway, my dad and I refer to this feline territory marking as "gumming."
So. This morning, I sat on the floor of my computer room with my camera, fiddling with the settings as I tried to adjust it to take the perfect picture of the checkerboard. Since Freefall was already in the room, snoozing on a particularly hideous orange director's chair I refuse to get rid of and have variously rescued from the trash, attic, etc., Bolie naturally wanted into the room. I let him in, and, after checking to make sure Freefall was there, Bolie perused the usual spots, that being the windowsill, piano, and desk. Then he jumped back onto the floor to see what I was up to. I decided to take a picture of him, but then of course it happened. Rather than pose and look cute, he sniffed at my camera and inevitably gummed it. Horrified, I spun the camera around in my hands to investigate the damage, not realizing that my finger was still on the shutter release, which of course then clicked, taking the following photograph:
The picture is blurry only in part due to the fact that the camera was moving; it's also due to the fact that the lens was covered in cat snot.
I rolled my eyes, stood up, and walked into my dad's computer room with my camera in hand. I poked him on the shoulder to get his attention and said,
"Do you have any lens cleaner? Bolie just gummed my camera."
He asked no questions (he knows better by now) but simply reached for the lens cleaner, spending the next several minutes painstakingly cleaning the lens for me and handing it back without a word.
This morning I went to three different Half Price Books to work on restoring my book collection. I've let it rest for a couple of months since I'd pretty much bought out the local places, and I figured I'd better let them restock before trying to complete the project. So I went to the Half Price Books five minutes away from my house but didn't find anything, and then I went to the one at Anderson Mill, locating quite a bit of stuff. While there, I kept almost running into the same person over and over again, starting before I'd even entered the store. It was a young guy, probably a teenager, who was there with his dad. As I browsed the clearance carts outside the store, I heard them approach; or rather, I heard him. He was a somewhat stereotypical nerdy teenager, the kind without enough social grace to know that he was speaking far too loudly. I glanced up, mildly annoyed, till I saw him and realized he wasn't deliberately obnoxious but rather just didn't know any better. I went into the store and began walking around the fiction and literature sections. Apparently the boy had the same taste in books as I do, for every corner I turned, he turned the same corner from the other end of the short aisle, and I kept nearly running into him, and one of us got in the other's way perpetually. I decided to put an end to it and moved to the science fiction section. He had the same idea. Crap.
At length, I heard the boy's father say they should head to the Half Price Books on the south side of town. Damn it, that was where I was heading next. I went to a couple of craft stores first so as to avoid another disaster. I failed to locate any yarn to make a Firefly hat for my friend Cody; I also failed to locate any copper piping to build my scrapbook tree. All I found was hollow; I need solid stuff. Oh well. At least by the time I got to the other Half Price Books, the teenager from earlier and his dad were gone.
Sometimes when I look through my book collection, I wonder if I haven't perhaps missed my calling. I have, currently, around seven hundred books in my personal library, most of which are classics. I've always adored the written word, and I don't know anyone who can get as totally absorbed in a book as I can. I love everything about books—the comforting musty rainy day smell of old paper, the neat stacks of spines in order, the worlds contained in each. And, as Lemony Snicket observed in The Wide Window, there is nothing quite so sad as a ruined book. How I cried when my book collection got wiped out by that burst pipe.
So it is that I've been rebuilding my book collection, a few at a time. Of course, now I'm faced with the inevitable process of sorting them. They're jammed mostly into the closet of my computer room, plus double stacked on a small bookcase, and a box on the floor, and a few small miscellaneous stacks on the floor. The books in the closet are sorted roughly by category and then in alphabetical order by author. The books outside of the closet are simply alphabetical by author. Anyway, this is not a good storage system, obviously; I as yet have no proper shelving for them, and I have only a long list in the reading section of this site to tell me what I have and lack. I tried to move the list to an Excel spreadsheet, but Excel would not cooperate. It wouldn't put the two columns of authors and titles on a single page for me to print. And yes, it has to be printed so I can take the list with me to the bookstore while completing the restoration of my collection. Obviously, the spreadsheet wouldn't be a very good system anyway since I'd have to reprint it periodically.
Here we come to the point of today's story. As hinted above, I had some serious problems with Excel. I discovered that I could format the spreadsheet to display in two dozen different colors, but I could not force it to print both columns on a single page. I perused the help file and the Internet, but no dice. Getting a headache, I said fuck it. The printed spreadsheet wouldn't work anyway, I knew. So I decided, fuck it, I'll create a card catalog.
This was not my best idea. Then again, it's certainly better than a damn spreadsheet. I hopped in the car to go buy a bunch of index cards; then, halfway to the store, I turned around and went back to the house to check if my printer would print on 3x5 cards. I tested a small envelope, trying unsuccessfully several times to print something on it before realizing that I had it sideways. Then it worked. With that settled, I drove to the store and bought eight hundred index cards. Back at home, I browsed Office Depot's site looking for a storage compartment for the cards, and then I decided to check eBay instead. Sure enough, I found a small, four-drawer card catalog up for auction. The price will likely skyrocket beyond affordability before I get it, but there will be others.
July 4—I probably shouldn't have bothered to clean so thoroughly.
Today I unwrapped a pack of the index cards I'd purchased yesterday to commence work on my card catalog project. I decided, after all the trouble I'd gone to with fiddling with the printer settings, that I didn't want to print them on the computer—precisely because of all the trouble I'd gone to with fiddling with the printer settings. So I dug out the typewriter, dusted it off (which was a considerable effort), and began typing up all the cards manually. I'd done a bunch when I discovered that I'd been aligning them not to a mark on the margin scale but rather a small splat I'd missed when cleaning it. I erased the splat and redid the cards.
July 5—This is why I love typewriters.
Today I printed out my list of books. I abandoned the Excel spreadsheet and simply printed out the giant HTML document. It took forever to reset the printer after the envelope incident, and even then I didn't do it right; I accidentally set it to 8.5x13 instead of 8.5x11. I had to toss the first thirty-page list into the recycling and begin again. Even then, the printer mysteriously botched the first few pages, which I had to print again, nearly accidentally printing the whole list again.
July 6—So I'm fuel inefficient; at least I'm not killing baby dolphins.
I went to a couple of used book stores today, searching for a few places I'd not been to in addition to the usual places. I drove up and down one stretch of I-35 at least six times before locating one of the places. Another was closed, and another did not exist. I drove for two or three hours total and accomplished nothing. Stupid Google Maps, wasting my gas . . .
This morning, in a bid to remain closer to home, I went only as far as the local mall to procure for myself a new pair of slippers. My old ones were falling apart and held together entirely with gaff tape, which was coming undone. They've taken to flying off my feet, resulting in me not wearing them half the time and just walking around irritably in my socks instead, which resulted in me stepping in puddles of water on the kitchen floor. Thusly, it was time to get new slippers. I tried on two pairs, different sizes of the same style. I couldn't decide between the medium and large. The former was a snugger fit, but I was worried it might be too snug, especially with socks on. I hopped around awkwardly on the shitty indoor outdoor carpet in the store, wishing desperately that the slippers weren't held together by a small piece of plastic. I tripped over my own feet and ripped my headphones off several times (the cord kept catching on my knee every time I bent down to adjust a slipper), and I knocked a pair of slippers off the rack and, when I went to replace them, couldn't get them back and shoved them with such a vengeance that I nearly knocked down the whole display. Nearly.
July 8—This is what we used back in my day, before the all-powerful backspace key.
I worked some more on my card catalog this morning, making progress as best as I could using a Qwerty keyboard. I haven't had to use a Qwerty keyboard in at least a year and a half, so I made many typos and was extremely grateful for the typewriter's correction tape. Until I used it all up and couldn't find anymore, that is. I tried to keep working, carefully so as not to make any typos. This of course did not work, and lacking the appropriate correction fluid and carbon paper, I ruined several cards. I shall have to abandon it for another day. The day the correction ribbon comes in the mail.
Lacking an appropriate clumsy mishap of the day beyond the expected "I tried to type without correction tape again and failed, again," I have for you a story I have somehow thus far neglected to relate. It is a tale told by an idiot of clumsiness of truly epic proportions; almost up there with the Papasan chair incident, the fish, or the school bus on the first day of tenth grade. Possibly not quite as drastic as all that, but still quite awkward.
I was in eighth grade. As you might expect, I was not a graceful or popular child. Still in awkward recovery from my parents' divorce and my disastrous elementary school years, I had trouble adjusting to normal preteen life. This was made all the more difficult by the fact that my dad and I lived in a dump to which we could not invite people, straining my social life still further. I wasn't that interested in most of my classmates anyway, though, since we had nothing in common. Not only did I not fit in, I didn't even care that I didn't fit in. I just wanted to finish school and get the hell out.
Therefore, I was quite surprised when I learned that my teachers had nominated me for membership in the National Junior Honor Society.
After a bit of research into exactly what membership in the NJHS entailed (*gasp* extracurricular activity), I sought my school counselor and begged the faculty to reconsider. I did not want to join. I was not, as the NJHS core values glibly presumed me to be, a leader among my fellow students (not unless you counted occasionally getting stuck doing all the work in group projects). I disdained most of my classmates. I despised most of the students already in the NJHS. I loathed school. Spending more time at school would be like detention; it never occurred to me that it might be fun. I wanted no part in extracurricular activities; I had shit to do. I didn't want to stay late at school when I had dinner to cook. No matter. I would join.
Later, I complained to my dad. He, of course, took the school's side and said I should join because it would look good on a college application. I said I didn't think colleges gave a shit about middle school activities, not that any branch of the National Honor Society counted toward anything. I didn't even know what the NHS meant, really, anyway—my teachers and counselor had not been very forthcoming on that part. There were a lot of nebulous platitudes about learning and knowledge and so on, but as far as actual goals or objectives . . . they were a bit vague on that bit. All the more reason not to join, really. But I was a helpless pawn in the game of . . . forcing children to do what they don't want to do because you think it's in their best interests, never mind the children's own interests.
We NJHS inductees gathered together for a tedious meeting in a classroom after school one day. The meeting explained nothing about the nature of the NJHS and only detailed some awful assembly in which we would have to participate. I lurked in the back, listening only nominally and stuffing the handout about the upcoming assembly into my backpack after giving it only the briefest of glances. Then something caught my attention, and I did a violent double take.
We would have to get dressed up.
Oh dear.
I worried and fretted all the way home, breaking the baleful news to my dad with the faint murmur of hope that having to take me dress shopping might dampen his vicarious ambitions for me. No such luck. He trundled me off to the local department stores that weekend to purchase me a dress and dress shoes. The dress was a hideous floral affair—actually, I suppose it was fairly nice, but I have always detested floral prints, and it just made the whole procedure that much more intolerable. Sadly, young girls' dresses are rather spoilt for choice, so I had to live with it. The shoes were better, basic flats that didn't pinch horribly as so many dress shoes are wont to do. I took care to break them in, deliberately scuffing the bottoms on the concrete of the back porch so they would not be slippery. The last thing I needed was to face plant in the middle of the stage in front of a large percentage of the school, their parents, and their parents' video cameras. More importantly, I could not face plant in front of the runner-up for position of my arch nemesis, the really tall guy whom was widely considered a heartthrob by the girls in our class but whom I considered a giant douchebag. He was already a member of the NJHS, and I knew he would likely be there—especially since his mother would be assisting the proceedings and would inevitably conscript his scowling, superior assistance. It was crucial that I not fuck up.
The night of the dread ceremony arrived. My dad drove me to school and deposited me with my fellow inductees in the library before making his way to the cafeteria with the rest of the proud parents. I hovered uncertainly near the bookshelves, eyeing the various cliques suspiciously, uncomfortably greeting classmates I recognized. I glanced furtively around for my not-quite-arch nemesis, only growing more worried when I did not see him. I jumped when a teacher announced that it was time for us to prepare for the ceremony. They reiterated the circumstances of the ceremony: We would each take a candle, walk across the stage with it to the lit flame on the table in the middle, light our candle, and then sit down—still holding the lit candle. I had a sinking feeling that my near-arch nemesis would be passing out the candles. I prayed that I would not set fire to myself.
I eventually deduced that the candles represented knowledge, for the NJHS's motto was "Light is the Symbol of Truth." The flame on the table represented the fount of knowledge, and our candles metaphorically imparted knowledge to us. I wondered bitterly why fire had to represent the fountain of knowledge: Couldn't they have had us fill a miserable paper cup from a dirty drinking fountain in the hall and have done with it? It would have been safer. Probably.
I was shaken from my reverie by the sudden bustling of several dozen students being shuffled around by pushy adult hands. They arranged us in alphabetical order by last name, which put me second in line, behind a friend of mine I considered fairly annoying and in front of a handsome guy whose ego outstripped his looks. A few places behind him was a bubbly girl in my art class I liked quite a bit. The rest of the inductees melted away into a blur in the background.
The long line filed slowly down the school's main hallway. I concentrated on the back of the head of the girl in front of me and fretted quietly.
Abruptly, I slipped and fell flat on my face.
My new shoes were not, apparently, as broken in as they needed to be to handle the slick hallway in the school. I went down like a falling tree, my hands flying out before me and my dress flying up behind me. I blinked at the sudden contact with the hard floor, stood up, and dusted myself off, hastily rearranging my dress. The girl in front of me heard the commotion behind me and turned around, appalled. The guy behind me smiled indulgently; the girl from my art class blinked confusedly and asked if I were okay. Behind her, the remainder of my classmates alternately laughed and tried to figure out what had happened. People toward the back of the line began bumping into one another, not realizing that the line had stopped moving. I collected myself and laughed it off, red as a beet, and began moving forward again, taking rather smaller steps toward the cafetorium, holding up the line and ignoring the frustration I caused in so doing.
Once seated in the cafeteria, we waited for the ceremony to begin, gossiping amongst ourselves, mostly laughing at my mishap in the hallway. I silently ordered myself not to slip and fall in the middle of the stage, in front of all those video cameras, definitely not in front of my not-quite-arch nemesis, and definitely not with open flame. I clenched and unclenched my fists, wiping my sweating palms on my new dress, trying not to crumple it and vaguely wondering exactly how much of my underwear had been on display in the hallway.
We did not remain seated for long, for, after the obligatory ploces, platitudes, and pleonasms were pronounced by the plethora of pedagogic perfunctories, the principal prompted us to stand by the stage.
I hovered anxiously stage left, trying not to have a heart attack as I spotted my near-arch nemesis. He was, as I feared, passing out the candles to each inductee before we ascended the three steps to the stage. I gulped and forced myself to meet his eye when he handed me my candle. He scowled down at me with his lips pursed, I supposed in a poorly-concealed effort not to say something nasty. I glared right back at him, took my candle without a word, wheeled around, and, with a Herculean effort, did not stomp up the stairs to the stage. I placed each foot squarely on the ugly brown indoor/outdoor carpet, hell bent on avoiding another face plant. I stood in front of the fountain of knowledge—a plain ceramic bowl with a large candle in it, surrounded by a tacky plastic flower display—and held my candle to the flame.
It wouldn't light. I stood there for a long, terrible second, refusing to look up, ignoring the suddenly tense teachers sitting behind the table (some of whom were nervous for me, the remainder of whom had gotten wind of my klutzy tendencies and feared the worst), until the wick caught the flame.
I sailed off the stage (not into the large easel on display stage right) with my head held high and took my seat without further incident.
The remainder of the ceremony dragged on. I watched with flagging interest as the other inductees took their candles, lit them, and sat down. There followed a number of speeches I ignored, possessed of a keen desire for it all to be over with as quickly as possible. I had been dreading it anyway, but the whole thing was terribly disenchanting.
As I suspected, my brief time with the NJHS did not result in any further school involvement. Once they called us all to a meeting in the library before school. I sat on the floor, ignored most of what was said, and did not participate in whatever activity the meeting was about. Thus ended my teachers' attempt at involving me in anything extracurricular.
Incidentally, my near-arch nemesis from that evening, who went through high school perpetually scowling at me and acting all butch, now designs clothing for a living. On his website, he had a photo of himself trying to look all badass holding up a large pair of sewing shears, nearly the size of Edward Scissorhands' hands. I wish I had a photo of me running the chainsaw or helping lift set pieces; I'd so email it to him. "That's how it's done, boy. But, you know, congrats on the running your own business thing (I hope it runs into the ground)."
My typewriter correction tape came in the mail today. I went around and around with it, trying desperately to figure out how it was supposed to fit in the typewriter and failing. I dropped it on the floor, accidentally unwinding some of the tape in the process. I abandoned it at that point and got my dad to put it in place for me.
July 11—There Will Be Blood Cake
Today I made my birthday cake—Black Forest.
It was . . . a mess. I mixed the ingredients for the cake itself together, realizing far too late that I was supposed to whip the egg whites separately and then add them. Oh well. I didn't feel like throwing away and redoing the batter, so I left it, telling myself that if it didn't turn out well, I'd deal with it later but take my chances for the time being.
Knowing how cake layers typically work, I knew better than to assume that they would turn out of the pans evenly, so I cut two circles of tin foil to fit in the bottoms of the pans. Of course, cutting the circles did not go at all well, but at least I got them to fit on the first try. The cake layers didn't rise quite as well as I would have liked, but, knowing how gigantic Black Forest cake is, I didn't let that bother me. I cooled them and sliced them in half to make four layers, which of course involved a great deal of crumbs all over the counter, but that was to be expected.
I prepared the cherry filling and had to run to the grocery store for a second can of cherries. Then I realized I did not have enough kirsch to make both the cherry filling and the chocolate mousse, so I had to make the chocolate mousse with a mixture of kirsch and Kahlua. Luckily, it tasted fine.
I made the butter cream frosting without too much fuss, and then I assembled my cake layers, again without too much mess aside from a little cherry juice running onto the cake platter. Oh well. Then I coated the cake with the whipped cream, which was fairly messy, especially on one small area where some of the cake filling was making a valiant attempt to ooze through the side. Then I retrieved the baking chocolate from the cupboard and grated four ounces to make my chocolate curls, and that was where I ran into trouble. The chocolate melted in my hands, stuck to itself, and stuck to everything but the whipped cream on the cake like it was supposed to. I did, as you can see, eventually succeed, and I then put dollops of whipped cream on the top with a maraschino cherry in each dollop, à la the Portal cake. Then I placed a single white candle in the middle of the cake, again à la the Portal cake, photographed it, and then covered it and placed it in the fridge for tomorrow. I will be amazed if I succeed in moving it again without dumping the whole thing on the floor.
July 12—Happy Birthday to Me. Yes, it's my birthday, dicks.
Today was my twenty-seventh birthday. It did not go well: All the people who forgot my birthday last year and swore to remember it this year failed to do so, and not one person on Facebook acknowledged it despite the reminder I know Facebook sent them. I got three instant messages later in the day, at least in part due to grumpy bitching on my part, which rather negates the sincerity of the regard. Thusly I deleted my birth date off Facebook and will not be reminding anyone again. The odds of me bothering to remember anyone's birthday again are slim to none.
Of course, I don't actually care about birthdays all that much and hate to see people make a big fuss about them, but nevertheless.
July 13—The Real Reason I'm Reluctant to Wear Short Skirts
One spring day in my junior year at UT, I donned a pretty floral mini dress (I secretly hated it, but I knew I looked good in it) with ivory stockings and little strappy flats. I arrived on campus at nine a.m. and walked down Speedway toward the UTC, where I had my first class of the day, the History of Russia Since 1917. Abruptly, my shoes slipped on the gravel sidewalk, and I violently collided with the pavement, landing on my hands and knees. I picked myself up and hobbled to the restroom in the auditorium where I had my astronomy class, since I was right in front of it at the time. I peeled off my stockings in the stall and resignedly eyed the gaping holes in the knees, feeling a woeful sense of deja vu as I recalled a similar disaster as a small child: I was on the way home from a ballet lesson and slipped on the sidewalk, ripping my tights and leaving a fair-sized scar across my left knee. I had howled piteously; my dad had griped at me for ruining my tights. I rolled my eyes at the memory and stuffed the muddy, bloody stockings into my bag. I wiped my knees off with damp paper towels that seemed to have been made from recycled cardboard and limped to class.
I had a shawl with me, not that I ever really needed it in class—I always kept a shawl with me because the buses were inevitably over air conditioned, which grew quite uncomfortable on the hour-long ride home. I took my shawl and spread it across my lap as I sat through the History of Russia Since 1917, trying to camouflage my scraped knees and hoping nobody would notice. The guy who sat next to me likely did, as I kept fidgeting and wishing I had a bandage instead of paying attention and taking notes on Bolsheviks and things, and Professor Wynn only a few feet in front of me probably noticed as well, but luckily nobody said anything.
My next class, astronomy, was luckily in a dimly-lit auditorium where nobody could see me well enough to detect my misfortune, though I did collect several stares on the way there. I collected still more stares as I crossed the west mall on my way to lunch. I sat at my usual table at the Cactus Café with my shawl over my knees, sipping petulantly at my Earl Grey and hoping that the good looking ROTC guy who always sat behind me wouldn't choose today to start a conversation. (On a side note, we never exchanged a syllable, and I eventually deduced that he was something of a dickhead. Probably he didn't like klutzy tea drinkers who knitted in public. Either that, or he had caught sight of the ripped stockings stashed in my bag. I checked hastily—they were still stuffed into the bottom.)
After lunch, I stopped in the restroom before heading to my audio post production class, a three-hour lab in CMB (the big brown windowless building on the corner of Dean Keeton and the Drag, for those of you familiar with Austin). While in the restroom, I opened my bag to make sure my ripped, bloodied stockings were still in place and not dangling embarrassingly out the top. It was then, some four or five hours after the initial catastrophe, that it dawned on me that the holes in the stockings were not going to wash out with the dirt and blood, and I should have just thrown them away that morning. I closed my eyes for a long second, gritted my teeth, and looked over my shoulder to make sure I was alone. I pulled the stockings out of the bag, wadded them up in my hand, and crammed them into a tiny, overflowing trash can in a stall. I washed my hands thoroughly—rather metaphorically, I mused—and left quickly.
My RTF class took place in a small sound studio in the basement with fifteen guys: Space was limited, and chairs were scarce. We always wedged ourselves in with a great deal of tripping and muffled swearing and apologies and occasional scuffling for the limited seating space. I did want to sit on the floor in my short dress, so I took care to arrive early and snag one of the only chairs available. I pulled out my notebook and pen, supposing I could get away with not hiding my knees since we sat in near darkness.
I of course supposed incorrectly, for almost immediately, one of my classsmates arrived, sat down next to me, and then pointed at my knees with a horror-stricken look on his face and bellowed,
"What happened to you?"
I cringed. Everyone stared.
I sighed quietly and explained—not quite loudly enough for everyone to hear—that I had wiped out on Speedway that morning. I waited several minutes into class to pull my shawl over my knees once more, trying in vain to make it look like a casual maneuver due to a chill, but, if the muffled snickering from the other side of the room were any clue, it was not convincing. I shook my hair to conceal the muscle twitching in my jaw and stared straight ahead.
Once at home after a mercifully uneventful bus ride, I bandaged my knees properly, and I wore long skirts for the remainder of the semester. I also threw the treacherous shoes away.
July 15—The Real Reason I Keep a Change of Clothes with Me
Nothing interesting today, at least not compared to a couple of the epic stories I've relayed recently. I cooked some brown and wild rice this evening, and I was sitting on the couch to enjoy a bowl when I inevitably tumped half of it down my shirt, which inevitably found its way into the couch cushions, onto the carpet, and even down my pants.
July 18—Interrupting an Interruption
Today I have Vintage Klutz for you yet again, though not of my own making this time. Indeed, this tale is, like so many others of mine, actually a tale detailing an astounding lack of social grace—not, for once, mine, but rather a college professor.
I was a junior at UT, and I was in a class in a fair sized lecture hall. I don't remember what the subject was, but it can't have been terribly interesting, otherwise this incident wouldn't have occurred. As is frequently the case in large, dull classes, a number of students doodled or did the crossword in The Daily Texan or even dozed. Apparently the professor—some irritating woman I am grateful not to remember—finally had enough of this and called out one guy in the class for doing his crossword during the lecture. Only the one guy, not everyone who misbehaved.
"Either put that away or leave," she told him right in the middle of the lecture, causing a general stir of guilty shuffling and curious, confused glances.
"Okay," he said, immediately gathering his things and departing to the tune of poorly-concealed snickering. The professor blinked and attempted to continue her lecture, but not on very steady footing.
I've often thought of that incident as an example of how not to hold a crowd's attention. She had a point—don't bother attending class if you're not going to pay attention—but I thought he made a better one: Don't interrupt your lecture to bust one guy who wasn't bothering anyone, distract the class, derail your lecture for the rest of the hour, and give that guy the perfect opportunity to make a fool of you. Because he will. I've always particularly despised public humiliation; that was one of the all-too-rare instances of a glorious backfire.
July 22—I hadn't even been drinking, yet I reeked of rum.
My dad made a couple of piña coladas this evening, only he overdosed mine with grenadine and didn't use as much rum as I prefer. I grimaced at the sweetness and repaired to the kitchen to repair the recipe. I reached for the rum and lifted the bottle, failing to notice that the cap was not properly attached. My dad had not closed it properly, and I spilled rum down the side of my hand onto the counter. Oh well; at least I made myself a palatable drink.
I worked a show at the Erwin Center today. I had trouble falling asleep the night before, compounded by the event of Bolie stampeding across my face at four o'clock in the morning and scratching my ear in the process, which bled onto my clean pillowcase. At eight o'clock I woke up and cooked some pancakes, burning the second batch on one side as I ate the first. I put them in the fridge and got ready to leave, whacking the hell out of my shin as I got into the car.
I arrived at the Erwin Center on time and knitted a bit on a UT hat for PAWP. Then I went to help unload trucks, which was slightly delayed due to the fact that the trucks were coming from El Paso, which is a nine and a half hour drive away. They left last night's gig around two and had to arrive for the earliest call at nine a.m., so they were hauling ass. The last truck arrived just as I did at eleven.
Almost immediately, with impeccable predictability, I tripped when we were putting a stick of truss on the floor, and I caught myself on two other stagehands. Also predictably, the coworker who doesn't like me witnessed it. Oh well.
A few minutes later, I saw aforementioned coworker again. I knew he knew I was there, but he hadn't said anything to me yet, as I expected. I remembered uncomfortably that after the last show, I had told myself I would put an end to this nonsense by talking to him the next time I saw him. I gulped and decided to keep my promise to myself, and thusly I helped him move a road case, and as we walked back to the truck, I asked,
"Hey, how've you been?" I paused, deliberately looking at him and waiting for a reply so he couldn't ignore me without seeming rude. It worked. He blinked awkwardly. He looked so shocked that for a second I was afraid I might have accidentally asked to fuck him. That would have been counterproductive. But he said hello, and there ensued a brief, albeit slightly stilted conversation. Talking to him is much less awkward than not talking to him, I've noticed, so I'll work at it and, with any luck, find myself without a nemesis in a couple of months' time.
Actually, he's not a real nemesis since I don't dislike him at all. I do dislike a different coworker, the idiot who was bounding around on top of the video carts at WWE. To my horror, the WWE moron was there this morning, and I immediately pointed him out to the stage manager. I predicted he would do something stupid on the call, and I was right: He listened to his iPod as we unloaded trucks. WTF. You cannot listen to music on a job like this; you need to be able to hear the roadies' instructions, people around you, people yelling "heads up," etc. A couple of people told him to remove the iPod, which he eventually did. This section of the story to be continued later.
We went on break after unloading trucks, and I headed over to the coffee table. Somebody in front of me bumped into me and knocked half a cup of coffee down my (of course) white shirt, drenching my bra. The coworker who doesn't like me saw the whole thing. *sigh* And then of course I got donut glaze everywhere, but that was to be expected. I ate the donut, washed my hands, and decided against trying to rinse my shirt since I didn't feel like wearing a soaking wet white shirt in an arena full of guys.
Once back at work, I set to work helping build video screens. Aside from the confusing, incomplete instructions for the screen, it went well enough. Then the steward sent me up to the sixth floor with another video hand, whom I predicted would not do any of the work since she never does. I was right, but luckily it turned out to be a one-person gig anyway. We were to operate the winches that move the wingers (large drapes) up and down. I was shocked—and petrified—at the seeming responsibility. I foresaw, with grim clarity, dropping a drape that weighed a ton (almost literally—the fact that it takes a large winch to lift it should tell you something) on someone's head. Mercifully, operating the winch turned out to be nothing more than pressing a button. As I had initially suspected, my coworker rather fell down on the job; she kept wandering away from aforementioned button. Also, her voice didn't project as well as mine did (despite me being soft spoken), which meant I was the one doing all the yelling. We had a radio, but 1.) Nobody downstairs was using his, and 2.) You need to yell that the drape is coming in so everyone in the area can hear, not just the one person with the radio. So I found myself bellowing that the north or south wingers were coming in or going out.
Being on the sixth floor of the Erwin Center is a strange experience. It's about one hundred feet up, and from that height, people look like ants, and even the larger road cases resemble so many Legos. Thank God I was on the concrete walkway behind the catwalk, and thusly I had several feet and two guardrails separating me from the drop. It's dark and fairly dusty up there, though the railing I was leaning against was surprisingly clean—probably from all the riggers leaning on it and climbing over it all the time. The winches themselves were impressive affairs; great spools of wire half the size of my car. The wires resembled the shrouds of a sailboat and ran around the winch, across the roof, and down to the pipes that tied the wingers in place. I've never really noticed how enormous those drapes were until I saw them today. I liked being on the sixth floor, but then the other hands forgot about us when they went to lunch. My useless coworker radioed the steward and told me that I was to stay up while she went down. This was not the case: As soon as she got down, the steward radioed me to go to lunch as well. Of course, me being twenty minutes late to lunch meant that I was twenty minutes late back from lunch, and, because my coworker had thankfully been sent home for the day, everybody had to wait on me to operate the winch. Oh well, their fault.
I stood alone on the sixth floor for a while, just barely able to identify the people five floors below. I watched in slight dismay as a bunch of people got cut, including most of the people who'd come in at eleven with me. They hadn't forgotten about me this time, though; they just weren't finished with me yet. I came downstairs after a little while and spent the last hour or so of the call helping to set up barricade, gaff tape down some yellow jackets, and hide road cases out of the way. I left at six and walked up MLK to the Drag so I could catch my bus back to the park and ride. While walking up MLK, some guy with terrible English (he was Asian, but I don't know what ethnicity) approached me and asked me where the Manor garage was. I had no clue, so I walked him to the Brazos garage since I was walking past it myself, and I helped him ask the people working there where it was. He thanked me, refused any further help from me, and walked away in the wrong direction as I watched in dismay. Oh well. I got on the bus, went home, got out of my coffee-soaked clothing, showered, and got something to eat.
Back at work at ten thirty, I saw in horror that the loudmouthed woman who'd been working with me on the sixth floor had for some reason brought her daughter and baby granddaughter to work with her. The daughter, who looked about my age or younger, was . . . unattractive and had streaks of KoolAid-colored dye in her hair. Before finding out who she was, I felt a twinge of dread that she might have been a new stagehand. Thank God she was only a relative. The baby was also, impossibly, ugly. Without knowing whose grandchild it was, I took one look and thought it looked retarded. Upon learning whose it was, I remarked to a coworker that the thought of that stagehand contributing to the gene pool terrified me. He couldn't stop laughing but had to agree.
I got to work with the other video hands, coiling cable. Almost at once, the creepy idiot from earlier inserted himself into our crew, though I was certain he was meant to be a pusher. He took over the cable from me without asking. He coiled too fast; I felt sorry for the poor sap in the next city who would have to un-spaghetti it all. That was the least of my worries, though, for he was once again listening to his iPod at work—after he'd been told already that day not to do so. He was listening to that instead of the people around him, and he was moving backwards with the box of snake and not looking where he was going, and he almost hit me with it, panicking the roadie. I set my teeth and moved away.
A little while later, on the other side of the arena, we were getting ready to take the drapes down. I saw the stage manager and said, "I hate to be a tattletale, but [that idiot] was listening to his iPod at work—and he was doing so this morning even though he got told at least once to stop—and he almost hit me with a box of snake." Needless to say, the stage manager was not pleased. She tossed me her radio so I could call in the drapes and stormed over to stage left to deal with it. Luckily, she returned before we got to the drapes, so I didn't have to deal with the radio or yelling.
Finally, the call wound down and we all moved to the trucks to push road cases into them. I saw one of my fellow video hands pushing a case toward the wrong truck and yelled, "Stop!" The entire arena went dead silent. God, it was awkward. I blinked, tried to ignore the stares, and added lamely, "Um . . . the video truck is over there." Then he pushed the case back, and three or four people instantly began arguing about which truck the case was meant to go on, pushing it two or three feet in about six different directions without actually taking it anywhere. I rolled my eyes and walked away.
Minutes later, the idiot I'd told on earlier found me and sat down right next to me—way too close—on a road case. I immediately stood up and walked around to sit on the other side of a different hand, who laughed and teased, "Unsubtle!" "Not my strong point!" I sang back. Though of course subtlety would be lost on a fool such as that guy anyway.
All in all, it was a day of classic klutz, consisting of all the necessary elements: a self-inflicted bruise, tripping (with the added bonuses of it being over other people and in front of someone I would have preferred not to have seen), a spilled drink (again with spectators), a creep hitting on me, and unwanted attention thanks to my big damn mouth.
July 24—Twenty-five Years and Counting
Today I made chicken enchiladas. I choked on enchiladas in Veracruz when I was two, and I have never liked them since. I decided it was time to learn to like them—twenty-five years has to be long enough to re-obtain a taste for something, right?
No.
I thawed the chicken, diced the onion, and then discovered I did not have any chiles with which to make the chile sauce. I put on my trench coat, grabbed my iPod, and hopped into the car to drive to the store in the rain to purchase the necessary chilies.
Once in the car, I discovered that the iPod's battery was dead, so I could not listen to it via the adapter. I shrugged, unplugged it, and left it on the car floor. I purchased my chilies without incident at HEB and returned home, whereupon I could not locate my iPod. It was not in the car, my purse, or my coat pockets. Weird. I shrugged and made my chile sauce.
Of course, I made the sauce as the recipe called for, only to discover far too late that it was far too hot, even when watered down. I had to scrape most of it off when eating the enchiladas, and even at that, I found that I still did not much care for them.
July 25—I need to spend more money next time I buy furniture.
This afternoon, I sat on the couch in the living room with my feet on the footstool as I worked on a hat for PAWP. I stood up to go reheat my tea, and I went to push the footstool out of the way, but nothing happened. I pushed at the stool with increasing violence, but nothing happened. Finally, my dad stopped me, bent down, unhooked it from the carpet, and hammered the small loose piece back into place. When I sat down again, I somehow managed to snag my sock on the loose piece, and the whole footstool attached itself to my foot and dragged across the carpet. I had to take my sock off to rid myself of it, and even at that, it was not before a sharp piece stuck through my sock and stuck my foot.
July 27—The Greenbriar Post Office
I have yet more vintage klutz for you today.
It was in late spring of 2008, and I was living with my old roommate Kirston in Houston. We lived in Montrose, an area with one hell of a reputation, for those of you not familiar with Houston. Montrose is best known for being a gay community, which it isn't specifically; it's home to everyone: yuppies, punk rockers, immigrants, and so on. It's popular since it's close to downtown and is a pedestrian area with excellent bus service. It's a beautiful area by day, but it's scary by night. A lot of Houston is like that, but I can't really say I mind since that's what makes it home.
Now, for those of you who are familiar with that most glorious city—This story is for you. This story is highly geographically detailed, complete with photos stolen from Google Earth. As I was saying, for those of you familiar with Houston, I lived near Richmond and Shepherd. I used to walk down Richmond to get to work every day; I worked at a comic book store on 59 just past the Red Cross and Holiday Inn. Sometimes if it rained I would walk the five or ten minutes to the bus stop at Richmond and Hazard, in front of Sound Exchange, and catch the 25 to Richmond and Kirby and walk from there to the comic book store. Riding the bus took exactly the same amount of time as walking, though, so I typically didn't bother in nice weather. I had no car at the time—it stayed behind at my dad's when I moved since it needed repairing so often. The car probably would have been stolen had I had it with me—pity I didn't think of that, really. Anyway, so I walked or took the bus everywhere, which, as I discovered on this day, had its drawbacks.
It was my day off, and I was using it run errands. It was a bright sunny day, and, free from my restrictive work wardrobe, I decided to dress for the occasion. There actually was no dress code at work, but there were a lot of creepy guys, and I had to do a lot of bending over, so I voluntarily always wore pants to work. But not this day. This day was special. I donned a black ankle-length skirt with slits up both sides to the thighs, beneath which I put on a silky pink side tie thong. The thong was a delicate slip of a thing, a work of art made for any lithe young seductress: It consisted of little more than the thread-like ribbons on the sides; the small triangle of fabric itself wasn't much larger than a large postage stamp. The material was of the smoothest, sheerest, sheen; a peachy pink cream that contained all the whispered subtleties of the boudoir. It caressed me gently as I walked, begging for its opportunity to be seen and untied. Before you say, "Shame no one got to see it"—Keep reading.
I left the house with a shoe box and headed to the post office. I had ordered a pair of Converses on eBay, but they were too small, so I was sending them back to exchange them. The shoe box was not heavy, but I knew it would become annoying if I walked from the house to the post office with it, especially since that bright, cheerful sun would become positively sadistic within six blocks. So I hopped on the bus in front of the Sound Exchange.
I stared out the window at the trees flicking past, enjoying the freedom of my legs in the skirt and the silky feeling of the thong beneath it. I always wear sexy underwear for just that reason: You can't feel truly good with ugly underwear. And this was my day off; it was to be gloried in.
I disembarked at Richmond and Greenbriar, relieved I had taken the bus since by the time I had made the relatively short walk to the post office, I was uncomfortably warm. I was greeted with a rush of cool air as I opened the post office door, but it was a cruel deception. It was stifling indoors. I waited impatiently in an interminable line, trying to ignore the large man in front of me who kept turning around to stare (at what?) and the aggravating woman behind me with her two even more aggravating kids who were running amok, to the clear distress of the sweating postal clerk. I remembered the thong and felt better. Nothing might bother me; I was beautiful today.
At last, it was my turn. I somewhat impatiently answered the clerk's questions and sent my shoes back to be exchanged. I left very quickly, ignoring a couple of people staring (again, at what?) and began the trek back to Richmond to catch the bus back home.
I walked away from the post office, tripping gaily down the steps.
And then my thong betrayed me.
I was walking up Greenbriar, with Freebird's in my sights, when I felt something a little ticklish and awkward around my crotch. What was it? Oh, no—the HORROR—it couldn't be—Yes. My thong was untying itself.
I shifted uncomfortably, trying desperately to think of a solution to my rapidly worsening situation. I prayed that nobody in Freebird's paid me any mind as I hopped past with my legs clenched together. I considered entering the building to borrow their restroom, but a sudden vision of my underwear falling off in the middle of the lunch rush en route to the restroom changed my mind. I squeezed my legs together and took tiny, hobbling steps up Greenbriar, keeping my hands firmly pressed to my sides, which only made matters worse. I figured I could probably make it to the bus stop at Richmond and Greenbriar, and then I would deal with it on the bus. It made sense at the time.
It was, of course, not to be. I remember passing a white fence when it happened.
I was right about where the telephone pole is when the tie on my right side came completely undone. The left one soon followed, but by keeping my hand pressed against my side, the thong fortunately did not fall off. Or unfortunately, perhaps, for now the ties on the right side dangled down my leg, just visible at the top of the slit in my skirt, waving gayly in the sunlight. I face palmed—mentally, of course, for I didn't dare move my hands—and dove behind the white fence. I crouched awkwardly in the grass behind the fence, wriggling out of the thong and bunching it up in my hand as unobtrusively as possible, briefly flashing the building when the slits on my skirt hitched around.
It was not until much later that I realized that the building behind the white fence was used by the local chapter of St. Germain's Foundation, a religious cult. Of course. Only I would expose myself in front of a church.
Now commando, I straightened up and walked more freely yet simultaneously more inhibitedly away from the scene of the crime. I decided that it would be in my best interest to walk in the opposite direction of the building I had just inadvertently flashed, so instead of continuing up Greenbriar, I turned onto Farnham. I followed it past my popular haunts, the 59 Diner and Le Peep, which had never looked less welcoming. I prayed none of my friends who lived in the area would happen to be eating in one of those places and see me walking past with a thong in my hand. It was bunched up very tightly, yet I was convinced everyone who saw me knew. It did not occur to me to stuff it into my purse.
I followed Farnham up to where it turns into Shepherd, right at the intersection with Richmond where my bus stop was.
Those people were not there at the time. Three or four other people were instead. As surreptitiously as possible, I threw the thong into the overflowing, fly-haloed trash can. I hissed in indignation at the thought of flies coating my once-glorious thong, or, worse still, the thought of anybody finding it and believing it a relic of some disease-ridden prostitute's encounter. I tried to ignore the other people at the bus stop and carefully avoided looking at the trash can until the bus arrived.
I boarded the bus, swiped my Q card (which, thank God, was not empty), and sat down, hastily rearranging my skirt so I did not flash the other passengers, who looked at me curiously. As the bus pulled away, I stared wistfully out the window at the trash can that held my once-precious thong.
Back at home, I put on pants and threw away the other side tie thong in my possession identical to the first but in a different color. I still had two other side tie thongs in a different style, but I would, of course, only be wearing them with pants from now on.
Just incidentally, Guy Ballard (who founded St. Germain's Foundation, some of whose followers I may have flashed that afternoon) preached that ascension meant being able to enter heaven alive, but after his death of natural causes, his followers conveniently altered the definition to mean they could rise to a higher level of heaven after one's death than the average person. In other words, they're better than everyone else. Yeah, well, they weren't better than my thong. Ha.
July 28—And y'all thought I was organized.
Y'all may recall that I could not locate my iPod when I went to HEB the other day. After a thorough search of my car, trench coat pockets, purse, and backpack (where I knew perfectly well that it wasn't), I concluded today that my iPod had to be lost. Not willing to fork out for a new one, I ransacked the house, but alas, it was nowhere to be found. I could only conclude that I must have dropped it in the HEB parking lot without noticing. FUCK.
So off I went to Best Buy to purchase a new iPod. I entered the store and made a beeline for the iPod/mp3 player section and eyed the iPod nanos until an employee came to ask me if I needed help with anything. I said,
"I'd like to get an iPod nano, please. Black if you have it."
"Okay," he said, unlocking the case and supplying me with my new iPod nano. I briefly debated whether to get green or black, but since the green ones were a fairly obnoxious shade, not the glorious deep forest green as this text, I went ahead with black.
"I'll carry it for you," the guy said.
"Uh . . . okay," I replied, wondering if there were some security protocol involved.
"I understand these things can get heavy," he told me with a grin. Oh dear. I would have minded his flirtation less had he been thirty years younger, but as it was, it was just awkward. I gave him a strained smile and began heading for the cashier. "Also," he continued, to my growing discomfort, "I hear that if you load this thing up with Willie Nelson, it increases the battery life." I smiled politely and quickened my pace. Noticing my agitation, he added, "Or maybe that's only if you skip all those tracks."
"Ah, so that's the trick," I laughed. He surrendered the iPod to me, and I hastily checked out and left.
Once at home, I plugged in my new iPod. When iTunes asked me to name the iPod, I typed in "the Titanic," hoping that iTunes would then display it as "the Titanic is syncing." Alas, it just said "iPod is syncing." Fine. I renamed it "nano" and loaded it with songs. Ah, bliss.
July 30—No good day ends with lying face down on the kitchen floor.
I've been meaning to get new curtains for my room and computer room for a good long while now. As in, a couple of years. The vertical blinds in my bedroom have been slowly falling apart, a process which my cats have helped speed up. The vertical blinds in my computer room have suffered a similar fate. I was content to let it slide until the morning. I pulled the cord to draw back the blinds in my bedroom, and the bottoms of the blinds swung out and knocked one of my cacti off the windowsill. The plant landed sideways on a pile of old journals on the floor next to my toy box, and dirt scattered through the notebooks and onto the carpet. I glared and made a snap decision.
I'd been planning to dispose of the old journals in spectacular symbolic fashion, preferably in a large pyre, but now I was mad. I scooped up all the journals, swept downstairs and out the front door, and dumped them unceremoniously into the recycling bin. Then I vacuumed the dirt off the carpet, got out my tool belt, and removed the vertical blinds, tossing them into the trash can. That done, I grabbed my new iPod, hopped into the car, and sped off to Target. Target sucks, especially since they fund homophobic legislation, but it's cheap.
The Target nearest my house didn't have what I wanted, so I drove to one farther south, where I bought four sheer panels and a bronze café rod on which to hang them. Driving home, I passed another Target and realized I'd gone out of my way. Oh well.
Back at home, I borrowed a drill from my dad, who followed me upstairs to offer me a hand. I showed him my new curtain rod, almost taking out the ceiling fan (which, yes, was on at the time) and my dad with the box. I decided it would be best to deal with the rod on the floor after that. I set to work, only to discover the drill sucked. I hate hanging things with a drill; I always drop screws on the floor, plus even on the top of the stepladder, I could barely see what I was doing. I gave up and resorted to a screwdriver instead. I hung my sheers, only to discover that they were . . . too sheer. Being light in color, they didn't provide any privacy. I decided to return to Target and buy a double rod and some sturdier curtains; that way I could keep the sheers since they are pretty, after all.
After I finished with the drill, I returned it to the garage and then, passing through the kitchen, saw that the cats needed some food. As usual, Freefall ate what he was given, but Bolie sniffed at it and trotted off. Finicky little cat. He hates eating out of the bowl, but he has no problem eating out of my hand, the little spoiled runt. I grabbed a handful of food and beckoned him, but he kept walking away. Finally, I lay face down on the kitchen floor and tossed pieces of cat food at him, one at a time, across the tile. At least he ate most of those. Skittish little git.
