Sucking Cockroaches

What do you do when you come home from a vacation? This is my To-Do-List:

0. Shower and nap
1. Take out the two bags of rank garbage you left in the kitchen for 3 weeks
2. Suck 30+ cockroaches up (live and dead alike) with your roommate's heavy duty Craftsman 3.0 Wet-Dry Vacuum hose
3. Clean out the 17 tupperwares of leftovers rotting in the fridge
4. Grocery shop for produce & dairy (no meat, because your steak-heavy vacation menu inspired you to become a vegetarian)
5. Scrub the layers of grime off your bathroom's sink and tub
6. Make a chalky To-Do checklist on the blackboard in your room (better late than never)
7. Empty out your overflowing mailbox in the apt. complex lobby, smiling at neighbors in the elevator
8. Change your sheets because you have spiderbites from napping in them
9. Take some pain meds for the anger in your right shoulder (from hiking in Yosemite? dragging bags all over the airports? housecleaning? all of the above?)
10. Want wine, make eyes at wine, but respect your liver and end the flirtation and go to sleep in clean sheets

Oh what a day. I am gloriously happy to be back, self-contained in this apartment. I am me again.

Keep Your Seatbelt Fastened While In Your Seat

My first in-flight blogging session, and I have nothing profound to say. All I can think about is not puking again. Infomercials are on every TV-station, I cant read the book I paid $17 for at an over-priced airport Books'n'Snacks shop (because Eat Pray Love --> Nausea Gag Wretch), and everbody on both sides of the country is too asleep to facebook chat with me. I hate right now. But not a lot. Just [ this ] much. There is a weird movie on Comedy Central (ok, so not ONLY informercials are playing) with the Doogie-Howsery guy from Glee, Tobias Funke from Arrested, the actress who looks like the red-head actress from Clueless but isn't (I think she was Steve's girlfriend on the old 90210 for a minute), and Anna Faris as a brunette (which is weird). And I'm too frazzled to actually try to watch it, but am glancing up from time to time to watch Anna Faris antics which never cease to amuse me. She is a funny girl. And this cast is curious. On another note, I have noticed that I never ever ever spell from correctly. I always spell it form. This annoys the hellouttame. I do everything in my life based on muscle memory, so when one of my muscles remembers a lie, it completely ruins my sense of order and well-being. It's like when I accidentally put soap on my toothbrush or pump 5x the shampoo I need or got off at the wrong Metro stop or think too hard to play the Moonlight Sonata by instinct. These occurrences makes me feel like I am about to go extinct. If I can't do most everything by muscle memory, life as I know it will cease to be possible. Typing Form instead of From is particularly bad because I do it every time. I have no hope for reform, either. That's how I feel about the matter.

I just read Seymour: An Introduction by J.D. Salinger and I liked it. (No I'm not shouting out to Katy Perry.) I liked it because I loved Franny & Zooey with all of my heart, and both novellas are centered on The Glass Family of 8 (?). (I acknowledge the fact that i'm capitalizing arbitrarily, but I feel to nauseated to care.) Most of Seymore: An Intro is told in parentheses (which may be why I am using a lot of them tonight/this morning). The narrator was entirely too self-aware to be described as anything other than self-aware. His purpose was to describe his brother S, who had committed suicide 10 years prior. (There is a lot of near-pornographic commercial time on Comedy Central at 3am. Girls Gone Wild adverts & such. It's kind of ewey.) My worst fear is that someone in my family (or someone I adore) will committ suicide. I have several theories about why this fear plagues me, not the least of which is that my great-grandfather (great uncle?) did just that. I won't go into the others (just imagine I typed them all out and then erased them all) because they typecast me as extremely neurotic. Which I'm not exactly. But I am hungry. Nutrigrain bars are all I brought, so let it be. Which is the definition of Amen. "So let it be." I like that. I always wondered what Amen meant.

I almost fell down an escalator tonight at the airport. Form the (from the) top to the bottom. I was talking on my cell phone to my Nicoracle and dragging a bag and wearing a backpack and failed to grab the railing. I felt all nervous to be riding without a firm grip on the rail, so I tried to get off, but it had already started moving down, so I dropped my bag and tumbled up to the top. Barely. A hush fell over the travelers sitting in chairs around this escalator. I laughed hysterically on the phone to Nicole and relayed the details (mainly to keep myself from having a panic attack, because I know I said I'm terrified of suicides but I'm nearly as scared of tumbling down escalators ((I am uniquely uncoordinated on steps of any kind)), but also to calm down my audience, most of whom probably soon texted at least one person, "I watched some girl ALMOST fall down an escalator tonight! It was so freaky."). If I had fallen, I would have died. No doubt. Neck broke, brain jellied, dead. But I lived. It might be a while before le prochaine fois j'approche un escalier. Oh no, I'm falling into bad French. That means I'm sleepier than I thought. 45 more minutes. Time for a snack a nap and a snap (because snack + nap = snap of course).

Red-eye flights are over-rated. I've never felt less human. Eat it Virgin America.

Wilted Lettuce

After ordering belated Christmas cards @ Costco and sitting in the car on a Wachovia+Wells Fargo conference call... I thought I was going to die. My body felt like it was full of termites, eating away at its integrity. And then I realized. It was 2pm and I had not had a SIP of water all day. Aha! My suspicion was correct: Dehydration is indeed the root of all evil. Three glasses later, I am chipper and only mildly depressed. God bless the sea.

Layer Cake

The only way I can convince myself to pay $30 to get my hair cut is if I try and fail to do it myself first. Like, oh no, you can't go any where looking that choppy - you HAVE to see a professional to fix this mess. That's why I trimmed my fringe tonight, I guess. To subconsciously bully myself into an expensive chair, into the hands of someone who can make me beautifuler. And absolve me from the guilt of paying for "beautification" when I really can't afford it right now. If I knew how expensive these $10 shears would end up being in the long run, I would have... Well, I still would have bought them. Let's be honest.

"Masochist"

by Ingrid M

She says you're a masochist for falling for me,
So roll up your sleeves.
And I think that I like her, 'cuz she tells me things I don't want to hear,
Medicinal tongue in my ear.

When will it stop? When will it stop?

When will I feel all soft on the inside?
When will I feel all soft on the inside?
When will I feel soft, soft?

You say that my skin feels like no one else's,
That it's different somehow.
But I don't understand, isn't a hand just a hand?
No you don't understand.

When will it start? My broken part?

When will I feel all soft on the inside?
When will I feel all soft on the inside?
When will I feel soft, soft?

She says you're a masochist for falling for me.

Huh?

Sometimes it feels like trying to be excited for people getting married or buying a house or having a baby is like... being excited for an alien to houd a frulringter rumbelrsand.

“Water is the only drink for a wise man”

~Henry David Thoreau~

Tonight, after seeing It's Complicated with my mom (who actually announced "this movie is too grown-up for you"), I got a headache. Last week, my grandmother spiked a 100.8 fever after spending the day at Costco. Yesterday, after gardening & playing tennis (sweeping all three of my competitors 40-Love), my muscles became sore.

What do these three incidents have in common?

I automatically concluded that dehydration must be the culprit. Tonight, while driving home from the theater (and not listening to the radio because I had a headache), it became clear that I actually believe all ailments are caused by dehydration. Which is slightly ridiculous. I mean, if I had a heart attack, I would probably fall down and count how many glasses of water I had drunk that day.

Water is this magic potion, in my mind. It keeps your insides clean and spotless, and your skin beautiful, and your mind sharp. Without it, you die. And, in hindsight, I know the problems I blame on dehydration are often ludicrous... Arguments, running into walls, poor handwriting, a cold. But maybe not. Maybe it really is magic. Water. Like an earthy version of the communion wine that turns into Jesus blood when you drink it.

Earthly things seem so common by now, it's particularly exciting to mystify them. When I was driving through "the woods" tonight, I imagined I was Gretel, walking with Hansel and happening upon a witch's candy house. When I was driving along the cliffs of Palos Verdes, last week, I imagined the ocean and nearby islands were in fact filled with the mermaid kingdom I was so obsessed with as a child.

I think my fascination with the mermaid world was a pre-cursor for my interest in international cultures & people group. Before I had met Asian and African people, sea people were The Other. And their environment is filled with the magic potion I so revere: H20. I had countless dreams about visiting the oceanic community & learning to belong. A friendly mermaid would coax me through the bathtub drain, or the grate at the bottom of my pool. Or mermaids would wake me in my sleep and invite me to trade my legs for a fish tail. By the time I was 12, I had scoured the library's card catalog and read every Young Adult book ever written featuring mermaids.

At some point I left that ambition behind to face more realistic cross-cultural opportunities. And now I have been hired to work at the International Student Services Office at George Washington University, which is along those lines. Mermaids / International Students -- same difference, right? I am beyond excited about this job. I will be planning field trips around DC, fun events, orientation. I wept when I got the Job Offer email, totally freaking out my mom. I wanted the position so badly-- had all my buttons in this basket. Didn't apply for anything else. I still can't believe it. Oh la.

Oh

Oh

Oh

This dehydrated head of mine aches and begs me to close my eyes.

Yes, head, I think I will. Here's hoping my first 2010 dreams will involve an underwater opera, a handsome merman, and a seaweed feast. That would be unreal.