Giant Dwarf vs Beverly Hills

So there was a time, not that long ago, when I lived in an area called "Beverly Hills Adjacent."  It was actually Los Angeles, but my apartment was about a block and half from the border of of Beverly Hills.  Benefit?  I lived a mile from the Beverly Hills Public Library and being "adjacent" to the city allowed me to have a BHPL library card.  I really liked that library, despite the fact that they falsely accused me of stealing (okay, not "returning") a Buena Vista Social Club CD and I had to buy them a new one.

I moved out of the area six years ago.  I still work nearby, but it's rare that I go into the shopping area in Beverly Hills for which the city is so famous.  However, in an effort to lure my friend Shannon to LA to watch "Phantom of the Paradise" with me (borrowed from....wait for it....the LIBRARY!), I agreed to take her to the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills, a well-known establishment on Beverly Drive.  This being my old "backyard," I didn't think today would be much of a challenge.

I was wrong.

Good news:  Beverly Hills has parking garages with 2 hours of free parking.  Of course, we picked the one where we had to drive all the way down to the Ninth Circle of Hell to find a spot.  It's all good.  We're now off on our adventure.

We walk up Beverly Drive and notice a few other places we might want to stop.  But we were steadfast on our journey and walked into the revered cheese shop only to be met with......silence.  No greeting, no "how can I help you?", no acknowledgement whatsoever.  I'd been there before and I remembered how much the place stank like cheese.  It still does.  But that's not a problem.  It IS a cheese store after all.....but customer service is also expected.

There were two other customers (possibly) in the store and they were together and just chatting amongst themselves.  We started shopping.  There were three people behind the counter.  Not once did any of them address us.  We browsed, noticing that none of the cheeses were labeled, but you could see the names on some of the wheels.  Just no descriptions, no prices, nothing.  So I pick up a wedge and ask about it; the man behind the counter (who I'm pretty sure was the owner, Norbert) tells me the name of the cheese (which I can clearly read by myself).  I try to start the conversation again by asking where it's from; "France," he responds.  Then.....nothing more.  From no one.  Not one single person behind that counter offered to help us....ever.

Cheese Store of Beverly Hills, you are fired.  We are not returning. 

So we walked out of there profoundly annoyed, but I then I thought it might be a corrective consumer experience to go to the Nespresso boutique bar down the street.  My husband and I are Nespresso holy rollers......we discovered the machine during our honeymoon in Paris and bought one less than a year later.  I drink Nespresso almost every day.  We know the flavors (though I truly believe they don't vary that much) and I am an online club member.  I might as well be working there, which, after this experience, I can tell they would benefit by my presence.

Now, no one was rude or snobby there; everyone was friendly and when we bypassed the cafe and headed to the retail area in the back, a very nice young man (yes, I'm old enough to say that now) approached us and started talking about the coffee options.  The problem was, he knew nothing about the product.  Nothing.  He, in fact, knew nothing about coffee and even admitted to not being a coffee drinker.  He tried to sell us products he couldn't explain, but he was so sweet and sincere, we listened and actually helped his sale pitch.  I taught him what "crema" meant in the espresso world.

Then on to Crate & Barrel for a nice neutral experience.  I spent the 6 months before my wedding there, playing laser tag with the items that we were adding to our registry and everyone there has always been nice, which, apparently, is a novel idea in Beverly Hills.

Now we're hungry.....so we head to a place I used to go to back when I lived in the area:  M Cafe de Chaya on Brighton Way.  On the way, we are ordered to walk on one side of the sidewalk by two tall douchebags on Bird scooters.....riding them on the sidewalk.

Once we arrive at M Cafe, we both ordered their Curry Udon Bowls and I got my daily iced tea.  I love iced tea and prefer it unsweetened.  So when I took a sip of their black iced tea and tasted literally nothing, I returned to the counter where the cashier condescendingly told me that "it's unsweetened."  Yeah, duh, I know that......but there is no taste whatsoever.  "May I exchange it for the green tea?" I ask.  He allows me to do so and I think I'm okay from here on out, but I was wrong.

After a pretty long wait, the curry udon bowls arrive and after I give all my red peppers to Shannon and she gives me all her mushrooms, we dig in.  They are delicious and just as I'm thinking I want to order these for lunch when I'm at work, I find a piece of plastic in my bowl.  It looks like a wrapper for the udon noodles, and when I call over the waiter, he says that's likely what it is.  I ask him to let the kitchen know and then I never see him again.

No corrective action offered.  No manager, no offer of money back or comped item, nothing.

What the fuck?

We waited for a while, then I saw someone who looked like a manager.  He wasn't out there to talk to me.  So I beckoned him over.  I told him about the plastic and this was news to him.  He apologized and excused it by saying that the cooks must have dropped the udon wrapper into the bowl.  Yeah, I got that.  He also didn't offer any compensation of any kind.  He walked away.

M Cafe de Chaya, I am also done with you.

At this point, Shannon and I were over the whole thing.  We already planned to go to two more cheese stores in West LA for a more enhanced corrective cheese consumer experience, but as we descended into the Ninth Circle of Hell to get back into my car, Shannon uttered the words that most appropriately summed up the afternoon:

"Beverly Hills is cancelled!"

And off we went....westward, on our cheese quest.

Giant Dwarf vs. Hot Buttered Pretzels

I grew up in Philadelphia.  Every Thursday at school was Pretzel Day.  At lunch and at the end of the day, a table was set up in our school cafeteria where we could buy pretzels for 10 cents each or three for a quarter.  My mom would give me a quarter every Thursday to buy three pretzels:  one for me, one for the Golden Child, and one for her and my father to "split."

For those of you not from Philly, let me explain what these pretzels were like:  They were not hard snack bowl pretzels.  They were not New York corner Super-Pretzels.  And there were NOT slathered in butter.  They looked like this:

They were perfect.  (Oh my god just posting this photo is making me crave them.)

These pretzels were ubiquitous throughout Philly.  School was only one place to get them.  You could buy them in brown bags outside of sports arenas (RIP Veterans Stadium and the Spectrum) and you could get them off a cart anywhere on the city streets.  You could even get them at a Wawa.  And why I'm using the past tense, I don't know.  They are still there.....(except at Veterans Stadium and the Spectrum).  And they are mother's milk to me.

But they are not anywhere else.  We moved out West when I was in high school and the Philly pretzel became a rare treat, either brought on the plane by family members coming to visit us, or chowed down on a daily basis during our annual visits back to the City of Brotherly Love.

So I learned to like the decidedly-NOT-Philly-pretzels offered out here.  Super-Pretzels are acceptable, if not perfect, alternatives.  When I moved to Los Angeles, I discovered Wetzel's Pretzels and in my graduate school fervor, I would double park just to pick up a cinnamon-and-sugar-covered large pretzel.  However, I would order these without butter, and they would usually have to make mine to order, since butter-slathering seems to be the thing for mall pretzels out here.

I tried Auntie Anne's, not asking for non-butter.  I hated them.  Even more slathered in butter than Wetzel's.  WHAT IS THIS FRESH HELL?  I practically fainted when I landed at the Philadelphia International Airport 10 years ago and saw an Auntie Anne's in the baggage claim.  Et tu, hometown?

(Side story:  Philly was our pit-stop both ways for a trip to Europe; our stopover on the way back was through Münich and when I saw pretzels hanging from hooks in a bar, I ran over and asked "Eine pretzel, bitte?"  They guy responded to me completely in German, at which point I had to admit those were the only words I knew in his language.  That pretzel was awesome, by the way.)

Fast forward to the holiday season of 2017.  My whole family is visiting for my big birthday and we are in Palm Springs.  What to do in Palm Springs?  Hit the outlet malls.  The Spazz and I join the Golden Child and his wife to do some post-Christmas shopping and, as we pull in to the parking lot, a conversation much like this ensued:

GC:  Oh, I love Auntie Anne's.  I think we'll have to get some of those.

Me:  Ew, I won't even DO Auntie Anne's.  They're disgusting.  Too much butter.

GC:  Wait, you eat Wetzel's Pretzels!

Me:  Yes, but they have less butter.  And most of the time, I request no butter and that makes them tastier.

GC:  There is no difference.  I don't understand why you eat one and not the other.

Me: There IS a difference and Auntie Anne's is gross.

(This actually goes on for quite some time because, as you will see if you stick with this story, neither the Golden Child nor I can let things go easily, especially when we are challenging only each other.)

So we split up and go shopping.  When we are near the meeting time, I grab some coffee while the Spazz runs out to get a snack.  He comes back with a bag of Auntie Anne's and, before I can say anything, the Spazz informs me that he requested "no butter" and they were special-made for us.  

So we ate them and they were good.  Not great.  Not Philly pretzel, but adequate and curbed the shopping hunger we built up.  Enter the Golden Child and his wife.  The look on the Golden Child's face would have been hilarious if it wasn't so accusatory.

GC:  I can't believe you're fucking eating Auntie Anne's!

Me & Spazz, in unison:  THESE HAVE NO BUTTER!

Fast forward a couple of days later.  The feud has been continuing all the way into the next portion of the family trip and now we have just finished a family portrait at a mall in Arizona and it turns out that this mall has BOTH a Wetzel's and an Auntie Anne's.  Since the argument is so well-known among the entire family, I agree to a taste test between the two brands, a la the Pepsi Challenge (in which I chose Coke).

Various family members run to each vendor and buy a bag of the pretzel nuggets from each.  Not doctored, not specially-made without butter, just the regular bags from each.  

I am blindfolded with a slightly oversized hat (and I squinch my eyes shut......I want this to be completely fair).  

I taste each sample....twice.  

And I choose........

Auntie Anne's.

I am mortified.  The Golden Child is vindicated.  I have to admit defeat.  

And then my mother says what we all know in our hearts:  "They're still not Philly pretzels."

Giant Dwarf vs. Mornings

About 10 years ago, my brother came to visit me but I had signed up for a weekend-long continuing education class before I knew he was coming.  We were making plans for the weekend and my brother asked what time the class started.

"8:00 am," I replied.

"8:00 am?!?  Do you even know what that looks like?" he exclaimed.

I sort of did, but not really.  High school did start at 7:30 am.  I would wake up at 5:00 am every morning to shower and do my hair, which didn't work anyway.  My French class in college was at 8:00 am (even though I registered for the 9:30 am class...they bumped me!) and that was the demise of any possibility that I would master the language.

I had some dance classes in college at 8:00 am (that was really the only time they were offered), and I dislocated my knee in one of those classes.  Mornings were not kind to me.

In my professional career, I was able to avoid an early start time for many years.  First, I worked in theatre, and no respectable mid-size theatre in the 1990s opened their administrative offices before 10:00 in the morning.  When I changed my career to social work at the end of the millennium, I realized that I may have to start waking up earlier.  My internships and first jobs started at 8, or 8:30 or 9.  I dealt.  I worked 8 hour days back then, would come home, nap, and then have a regular evening like the evenings I had when I started work at 10.  I adopted a kind of mini-Spanish-siesta lifestyle.

And then I took a job in the Emergency Department.  As the only social worker there at the time, they required two unusual work changes:  work one weekend day a week, and don't start before 11:00 am.
Wait.  What?!?

Sign me up.  For 10 years, I worked this schedule, and for the last 6 years, my bosses have been chipping away at my lovely late morning lifestyle.

When we changed to 10-hour shifts, we initially had to work both day and night shifts.  Days started at 8:00 am and I was formally re-introduced to that early start time.  Then they moved me to 7:30 am.  I couldn't even figure out what a good time to leave my home was for that start time.  I hadn't started anything at the half-past since high school, and that didn't go well.

And then we changed to 12-hour shifts.  Twelve hours for a social worker in an emergency room is brutal....yes, most of the other disciplines do 12s as well, but they aren't listening/seeing/absorbing human misery for those 12 hours straight.  We are.  It's fucking exhausting.

To add insult to injury?  We start at 7:00 am now.  Remember the opening joke where my brother teased me for not knowing what 8:00 am looked like?  Yeah, not funny anymore.  Waking up when it's dark outside for a long work day is inhumane.  Leaving for work while it's still dark out (hello winter) is completely insane.  It's making me miss my theatre days.

We've now been doing this schedule for nine months and I have not gotten used to it.  One shitty day in the ED leaves me completely depleted the next day (if I'm off, it's a wasted day; if I'm working, watch out, people!).  7:00 am is officially the earliest start time I have ever had for work (excluding some production assistant days but that was super-temporary) and it's making me miserable.

The only saving grace?

At least I don't have to work the night shift.

(And big hugs and kisses to my colleagues who do work overnight.)

Giant Dwarf vs. Zombies

Well, I just fell down the internet rabbit hole again.  One hour wasting time reading Facebook posts when I should have been doing something - anything - more productive.  So, since I'm logged on anyway, here's a new blog post.

The Spazz will never forgive me for this one, so hopefully he won't read it.  Here's my latest spousal observation and reason #52 as to why I love my husband:  he scoffs at my TV shows then becomes utterly obsessed with the story lines. 

Allow me to explain:

It started with Sex and the City and having cable TV for the first time in 15 years.  When the Spazz and I moved in together, we got a full cable package and, at that time, one of the networks (maybe E!?) was airing mini-marathons of SATC.  How could I not watch?  These were my girls!  As I was watching it, the Spazz came into the living room and made many dismissive comments about the show.  As he piddled around in our tiny, tiny kitchen (with a direct view of the TV), he started making comments and observations about the characters (he really cannot wrap his head around Samantha's overt sexuality, he thinks Charlotte is too shallow and picky, and he rather likes Carrie and Miranda).  A few episodes went by and he was extremely involved in the various stories.  And a few episodes later?

"I'm really craving a Cosmopolitan right now."

As the Spazz would say himself, I shit you not.

We actually made some Cosmos and sat back down to enjoy some more episodes.

Then I got into RuPaul's Drag Race.  Okay, this is a tough one for the Spazz.  He is ardently heterosexual and a surfer, which, if you know both kinds of guys, makes him not want to admit that he watches a show about drag queens.  So, again, every time I put on the show, the Spazz waves his hand at the TV, saying "not this again!"

And then, by the end of the show, he is deeply invested in who is forced to "sashay away."  He marvels at RuPaul's costumes and wigs...and sheer height.  He even sometimes can't believe that some of the drag queens are really men (though most people would agree that Courtney Act could fool almost everyone).

I also fell victim to the awful SATC prequel show, The Carrie Diaries.  Again, the Spazz joined in at the beginning and then in the last episodes, totally asking me who was who and then commenting on the show's plot line, warning characters not to do "that" before they did it, and then asking when the next episode airs after he viewed the very last one.

I'm sorry to say that I do not reciprocate.  I enjoy some of his TV shows, but most of his movies are horrible, violence-filled action-adventures with silly scripts.  His ultimate failure in engaging my interest?  The Walking Dead.  I just could not get into it.

Here's why:  I hate zombies.  They are my least favorite monster.  They have no soul or inner lives, like vampires or Frankenstein's monster.  They have no good backstory, like a werewolf.  They're just stupid undead monsters with avulsions all over their bodies.

And I hate avulsions.  They make my skin crawl.  I work in an emergency department, and I've seen lots of things, but avulsions creep me out.  Ugh, I'm feeling nauseous just writing this.  And that image is disgusting.

So zombie shows are out.  Sorry Spazz.  There are just some parts of a relationship that cannot go both ways. 


Now, let's cuddle, make some tea, and watch our DVR'ed episode of Downton Abbey.

Giant Dwarf vs. December

Well, yet again, we are nearing Christmas (aka my pre-birthday) and I am experiencing my yearly December meltdown.  Here's how this goes (every year):

Halloween happens.  I haven't gotten my shit together for that either so when it happens, I fill the pumpkin head with good fun-size candies and hope for trick-or-treaters.  They don't come.  We live in the what-can-only-be-considered slums of a very swanky city and our neighborhood gets no play when Halloween comes to town.

After Halloween, I start thinking about buying holiday gifts for family and friends and then I stop.  Thinking.  About anything.  Except whether or not I'm working on Thanksgiving and what my contribution to the potluck will be if I do have to work Thanksgiving.  If I'm not working, I'm planning on where the Spazz and I are going to celebrate Thanksgiving, as this is a "we have to be someplace" kind of holiday when we are not working.  And by "someplace," we don't mean our own home.

Around Thanksgiving, I start to think:  "I should really start making my gift list."  Yes, by now it's too late.  Recently, Chanukah has arrived way to early for my level of procrastination and so I start the holidays behind the 8-ball.  But, you see, Chanukah is not the only December deadline I have to deal with.

I grew up in a family of late-December Capricorns.  This is how it went:  first, my grandmother's birthday; then mine, then, all on the same day, my mother's, and both of my grandfathers'.  All within 8 days.  Not only that, there were several cousins with birthdays in this time frame.  This alone made December my hell month.  Then we get to add Chanukah and Christmas for all the people I know outside of my family.

When I married the Spazz, I added another December birthday (my mother-in-law) as well as a late Capricorn:  the Spazz himself.  In addition, I now have friends with kids born around this time and, since I know what it's like to have your birthday riding on the tail of Christmas, I make sure these kids get their birthday gifts as well.  And then there's my good buddy Mags, with the worst birthday of all, just a few days after New Year's.

I'm already exhausted.

This year was especially difficult with the passing of my grandmother (that first December birthday), just after Thanksgiving.  I could say that this impacted my December Downer Days, and it kind of did, but I'm still at the same level of frazzle as I am every year during this time.

Every December I feel like the world is closing in on me.  We send holiday cards, but we're never on time for that either.  Then we receive holiday cards from people not on our list and we have to hope that we have some left over to send.  Work is another freaking nightmare; back when I was the only one of my kind in the Emergency Department, there was no gift exchange.  Now there are 10 of us sharing an office and everyone gives gifts to everyone.  This is madness!  Earlier this year, one of my coworkers and I talked about setting up a Secret Santa project to prevent this rampant spend-fest, but, again, I completely forgot about it (I blame my coworker) and I just spent the last week worrying about what to get my coworkers.

They all have gifts.  My family does not.  And Chanukah was over 2 weeks ago.

So, I spend December shopping while listening to maddeningly terrible Christmas songs being piped into the stores.  My husband asks me daily what my plans are for my birthday, as do my parents (who visit every year for said birthday) and I cannot think of anything because my brain is swarming with gift lists, holiday card lists, thank you note lists, and too much fucking candy and cookies.  I have gift bags and tissue paper and ribbons strewn about my apartment.  And then I have to also worry about my parents' visit because my mom wants to visit every distant cousin we have in the LA area as well as my in-laws, but then my parents are only here for 2 days, and "have you thought about what you want to do for your birthday?"

And here's the kicker......Christmas happens, my birthday happens, New Year's happens, and then there's this weird kind of....silence.  The madness stops rather abruptly and I'm left with a tree that needs to be taken down, menorot that have to be cleaned, and the strange after-holiday deflation that I'm sure many people feel.

I'm also left with a ton of holiday cookies, candies and treats.

Giant Dwarf vs. the Gym

I have very complicated relationships with gyms.  It is rare that I don't step into a gym and instantly have a feeling of hatred and repulsion.  I'm not sure why, but let's look at the evidence (and there's a lot, so bear with me 'til you get to the end and you will be rewarded....I hope).

When I was a kid, there was gym class.  As the second smallest person in my class who was, at that time, very underweight (yeah, that ship sailed in 1981), gym was nothing short of torture.  I wasn't athletic, I didn't run, and I didn't do gymnastics (the only girl sport that our two male gym teachers respected).  I got confused learning the rules of games and was invariably one of the last people to be picked during the dreaded team-picking ritual that non-athletic children are subjected to.

I did dance though.  I took ballet, tap and jazz, two years of each at most while I was in elementary and middle schools.  But choreography was also a challenge for me.  I was so obsessed with getting the steps right that the fun of the whole class just got sucked right out.

During this time, my parents joined the JYC in Northeast Philly.  I took swim lessons there and played raquetball with my dad.  I think that was the extent of my gym usage there.  I liked racquetball, but I think my father preferred playing with adult opponents.  I can't imagine why.

My dad and I also tried jogging once.

ONCE.

We moved to Phoenix, and I took a ballet class for three months before I dislocated my knee at a jock party I shouldn't have gone to; thus began an almost 30-year history of repeated injuries to that knee that put another nail in the gym coffin for me.  (Good news:  I finally had surgery for this rogue knee five years ago.  The bad news:  now the rest of my body hurts for being forced to compensate for said knee during all those years.)

I went to college in Massachusetts at a school that touted it's state-of-the-art gymnasium; it was even part of the tour for this school full of egghead women.  I never stepped foot in there except for our first year, when we were required to pass a fire rope test.  (What's THAT?, you ask.  It was the one thing that intimidated all of the non-athletic girls who were hoping to avoid that gym for four years.)  Oh, and I think we also had to go there to sign up for our phone plans....back when you had to buy your own phone for your dorm room and open an account with New England Bell (I'm pretty sure I've lost all the millennials by now).

In any case, I did avoid the fancy state-of-the-art gym at college.  I did, however, take dance classes, which, in a strange turn of events, counted toward my theatre major and allowed me to graduate with more credits than I needed AND take only three classes the last semester of my senior year.  Interestingly enough, my second knee injury happened during that second senior semester....in dance class.

I graduated from college and was instantly poor, so joining a gym wasn't even a passing thought in my mind.  Paying rent and buying enough Lunchables and TopRamen to get me through the week were my priorities.

Eventually, though, in my late 20s, I joined the Berkeley YMCA.  I liked it.  I'm not sure why I terminated my membership but the only reason that would make any sense is because I STOPPED GOING.  Yeah, that's what tends to happen.

However, I did have one year (1997) when I was a bona fide Gym Rat.  Seriously.  I was working only three days a week and I had joined a gym in Emeryville called Every Woman's Gym.  I just looked it up....it's gone now, probably because rent is now at San Francisco rates in Emeryville (back in the '90s, Emeryville was kind of a dump so rents were cheap and businesses were catching on by the time I left the Bay Area).  In any case, I LOVED THAT PLACE.  I would hang out there for three hours at least, working out and then using the sauna and the shower.  It was awesome and I was in the best shape of my life.

I took some of the habits with me when I moved to LA and joined LA Woman on the Westside.  It was perfect because it was on the way to and from my internship and I got this sweet student rate that made the monthly payments only $15.  My first year was great, despite a bout of tinnea that I got from not changing out of my workout clothes fast enough (the showers were not as nice as Every Woman's Gym), but then my schedule got all janky and that was that.  I went intermittently.

LA Woman is now extinct (as is that ridiculously low monthly fee).  Since then, I've joined a few gyms, then cancelled my membership.  I've also worked with quite a few trainers, and my learned opinion about most of them is that they're full of shit (but not Chappell....she was/is the best ever trainer!  She just moved out of my area....).  My last gym was near work and, while I was okay there for a few years, the last year was horrible.  I literally would walk into that gym and seethe with hatred.  There was a bad vibe.  I don't know what it was, but I HATED being there and finally just terminated my membership.

I tried joining the YWCA, just around the corner from me, but I almost passed out during a Zumba for Seniors class, and the opportunities to work out on my own (i.e., machines) were limited to a tiny room with exactly one treadmill, one elliptical and one stationary bike (that didn't even work).  You had to get a key to use the room and it was so small, only one person could comfortably work out in there.  It wasn't working for me.

I went to take a look at my neighborhood 24-Hour Fitness facility.  That seething hatred thing?  It was immediate upon entry.  And the hard sell only made it worse.  The guy tried to make me sign up without even giving me a tour or giving me a trial pass.  I had to ask him for both, which he grudgingly gave me.  I already knew I hated this place though.  I used a couple of machines then snuck out as fast as I could.  24-Hour Fitness stalked me for the following 6 months.

Two things have happened recently that have increased the urgency of joining a gym.  I turned 40 (okay, not so recent, but I had this fantasy that my metabolism would return and then it didn't) and I married the Spazz.  As some of you know from a very old, past post, the Spazz is a champion eater.  And I have been heroically keeping up with him at the expense of my waistline and my overall self-esteem. (Full disclosure:  as I am writing this, I am eating a bowl of pickle-flavored popcorn which is completely addictive.)

When I look for a gym, there are certain requirements that have to be met:  be near my home (so I can go after work or on my days off) and not make me want to return to the location with artillery.  The YMCA has just successfully fulfilled those two requirements.

OHMYGOD I LOVE THIS PLACE.  Seriously.  First they gave me a tour with NO hard sell.  Thank you very much.  Then it had all this cool stuff:  a pool (!), basketball courts/gymnasium, lots of equipment (both aerobic and weight-training), classrooms, raquetball courts (it's ON, Dad!), a sauna and a steamroom, and a punching bag for my husband.  Oh, and the best part?  FREE PARKING.  And all for the cheapest gym price that I've seen in LA.

But the BESTEST part of all?  The people.  1)  It's more diverse than I expected, which is totally fun.  2)  I can wear whatever I want and no one judges me.  2a)  No one bugs me.  3)  There is a paucity of assholes (maybe that's 2b, but I think it's important enough to have it's own numeration).  4)  There's a bunch of Russians and Russians at the gym is a great spectator sport.  I don't know why, but they also make me feel at home in the locker room; maybe it's my Eastern European roots coming home to roost.

My new favorite person:  an big, elderly lady who wears a leopard print bathing suit and pearlescent bathing cap, web gloves and fins, and swims backstroke laps in the pool below the aerobic machines.  She topped the huge young man on the bike who was clearly suffering from some kind of Tourette's while pedaling furiously.  However, she may be unseated by the trannie who came in while I was on the elliptical.  I am in Gym Nirvana.

I am actually looking forward to going back to the gym.  I haven't had that feeling in a long time.  Now, can anyone direct me to a source for good, cheap exercise bras.  This is my new necessity.

Giant Dwarf vs. Max and Bettina

So I get this email from my sister-in-law:  "Do you think you can borrow a pack-and-play for our visit?"

A what?

What the fuck is that, really?  Without knowing, I went to the interweb and posted a Facebook plea to borrow said pack-and-play.  The responses fell into two categories:

1) "Of course you can borrow mine but I live at least 300 miles away from you."
2)  Instructions on how to MacGuyver a pack-and-play from various household items.

I still didn't know what it was and no one could give me one anyway.

I finally took the time to look it up on the Google machine and found that it is what we used to call, back in the old days, a "playpen."  More accurately, I guess it's a "portable playpen."  Whatever.  Pack-and-play clearly does not accurately describe the item so I don't know how I could have been expected to know what it was.  And yes, I tend to avoid baby showers.

Look, here's the deal.  My nephew, El Frijolito, is only 9 months old but, like all modern kiddles, he travels like a spoiled rock star, with tour bus-loads of baby items that I'm not going to pretend I understand.  And whenever I think of children and their accoutrements, I think of Max and Bettina.

It's one of my favorite Absolutely Fabulous episodes.  Eddy is all anxious because she remembers her friends as this:

They were minimalist and oh-so-judgemental back in the day.  When Eddy and Patsy go to visit their new über-chic apartment and bring a wine bottle, there is literally no place to put it.  Flash forward to the present time and Eddy is throwing away everything in her home in anticipation of their visit.  However, when Eddy opens the door upon their arrival, she sees something like this....

...entering her front door.  She's horrified that her once-minimalist friends are now weighed down with the sundry of modern parenting.  Max and Bettina are the quintessential helicopter parents (well, Bettina is) and they are trying to teach the baby advanced vocabulary while he is still an infant.  And the baby needs constant stimulation, hence the sherpa-like presentation of Max, bogged down by all of baby's accoutrements.

The day was saved by the Spazz's cousin, who drove 45 minutes to our apartment and dropped off her pack-and-play.  She also loaned us a baby seat chock full with little toys and a rocking-sleepy-chair (I have no idea what the official names of these products are, so here is a photo....please let me know if you know).

Look, I'm not going to pretend that I understand all this baby stuff.  I really don't understand babies.  Spazz and I are one of those childless-by-choice couples and we're both a little intimidated by tiny, crawling humans in our apartment.  But, I have to say, it was all worth it.  El Frijolito is freaking adorable and fun as all get out.

It would have been nice, however, if he had not chosen his visit with us to meet his developmental milestone of "stranger anxiety."  I will never regain my full hearing.

Giant Dwarf vs. the First Horseman of the Apocalypse

Pestilence.

The Beast we adopted is neither a white horse nor has any knowledge of scripture, but she has indeed brought a plague upon our house.  At first, she hated us, hid from us, attacked us; we disliked her enough to want to send her back to the people who gave her to us.  Her tiny little brain must have understood our desperate conversation with the original owner, because, all of sudden, she became.....sweet.  I'm sure, in her cat brain, she is realizing that she can kill us with kindness, but we fell for it anyway and decided to keep her.

So once she gets all loving and nice, and sleeps on our bed with us, and sits on our laps and snuggles agains us, what happens?  She brings in a flea infestation.  And I'm not talking a few fleas here and there.  I'm talking a full-fledged, Biblical-level scourge.  The kind where we pay an exorbitant amount to exterminate the buggers, only to have a reinfestation two weeks later with the spawn of the dead fleas.

Hundreds of dollars later, the Beast is fine.  There are no more fleas on her because we have given her pills to poison the f**kers.  But the eggs keep falling onto the carpet and hatch there and make us want to burn our own apartment down.

One of my friends asked me why I can't ask the landlord to replace the carpet with hardwood floor.

She has clearly never rented a rent-controlled apartment before.

The Spazz deserves a medal as the best soldier in this battle.  He has vacuumed the apartment dozens of times; we added more flea poison to the guest room (only to find out our houseguest is still being bitten).  We've done countless loads of laundry, washing bedding and clothing in the hopes that we kill them off.  We do daily carpet scans looking for those little pests, pressing our faces to the floor with flashlights in hand, ready to kill and vacuum some more.  Friends with pets sigh with condolences for our situation, but no one has a ready remedy.

Meanwhile, as I write this, the Beast is sitting behind me, shedding more flea eggs and plotting her next attack on our household.

Giant Dwarf vs. Internet Cafe

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Are you fucking kidding me?  Here’s how my day goes today:  I wake up early, do my stupid physical therapy exercises which are not providing much improvement, go to Physical Therapy where I’m given even more exercises which may have minimal effect and then I go home, put on some make-up so I don’t look like a total slacker and then head to lunch with a former intern who was in need of a bit of support.

THEN…..I muster up all my strength and resolve to change clothes again and get the hell out of the house so I can work on a stupid presentation on child abuse that I never wanted to do in the first place but I’m doing it because I need to do things that make me look good at my job.  My intention was to go to the library, where people really want to get work done (or at least stay out of the sun until the shelter re-opens for the night) but I forgot it is President’s Day (!!!!) so I packed up my computer in my backpack and walked to the closest café.  I like this café, it has good coffee, but it is littered with pretentious assholes like me working on their computers and never leaving their tables. 

I order my coffee and even find a table near an outlet, which is a total bonus since my laptop is considered elderly at only 5 years old and the battery dies after about 10 minutes of use.  I plug in, enter the password for the wifi and…..it doesn’t work.  I try multiple variations of the password, finally get on, but now there’s some other kind of trouble, the kind I can only diagnose with a degree in IT or if I were 8 years old.  I am so freakin’ annoyed because the only thing I can do right now is to create a Word document, so that is why I am writing a blog entry because I need to do SOMETHING while I have this massive laptop plugged in in front of me with a giant cup of café au lait right next to it.

So I tried to make the best of it and do the research from my phone instead.  But as I started doing my google search, in came rapid fire texts from my husband and my work supervisor.  Had my laptop internet connection worked, my phone would have been safely hidden in my bag, allowing me to ignore any incoming missive until I deigned to look at it on my own volition.   So now I can’t even research on the tiny internet screen next to my giant laptop screen because everyone feels the need to contact me just at this moment.

I’m done.  You may not enjoy this Giant Dwarf entry but I needed to vent.  Hope you at least liked the photo.  And to Café Bolivar, THANKS FOR NOTHING!

Or should I say....¡GRACIAS POR NADA!

Giant Dwarf and the Great Kindle Mystery

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I blame my work schedule.  Really, I do.  It’s because I don’t work the same days every week and I get all discombobulated and can’t remember which day it is on any given day.  It’s because I don’t have a normal 9-5, Monday through Friday schedule and therefore cannot be a creature of routine.  That’s why.

That’s why I can’t find my Kindle.

There are a lot of other things to blame on my schedule, but let’s focus on this one.  I last saw my Kindle on Sunday – Superbowl Sunday, to be exact – which was my last day of work before today.  I was eating lunch in the breakroom, sometime around 12:30 in the afternoon, a good THREE HOURS before the Superbowl.  As is my habit when I “dine alone,” I bring a book and in this case it was my Kindle Paperwhite 2013 (which I highly recommend).  I remember being horrified that there was pre- pre-Superbowl coverage on the TV in the breakroom, and I remember checking my smart phone for lord knows what on Facebook and I remember that I didn’t actually read my Kindle at all during lunch.

And that’s the last time I remember seeing it.  I was so distracted by my perceived meaninglessness of the pre- pre-Superbowl programming that I can’t remember what happened to the Kindle after that.

But I didn’t yet register that.  I had the next two days off and spent my valuable time running errands with the Spazz and taking the Beast to the vet.  I woke up extra early this morning and was still late getting out the door (okay, obviously I do have some routine….I am routinely leaving home later than I should for work).  I ran to get my Kindle from it’s place on my night table and IT WASN’T THERE!

I did a quick toss-up of areas in my home frequented by the Kindle, then hustled out the door.  As soon as I got to work, I asked my coworker (who was there with me on Sunday) whether she had seen my Kindle.  She had not.  Desperate to continue reading my Lena Dunham memoir, I composed an email to the entire Emergency Department staff, asking if they had seen my Kindle.

Yes, I felt like an asshole.  Most staff-wide emails about lost items are for finding misplaced stethoscopes.  I’m looking for a Kindle.

No bites all day.  I go home and ask Spazz if he’s seen it.  He remembers the last time he saw it being several days before my last sighting, so that’s no help.  But Spazz and I proceed to search the apartment again, and he even goes down to the garage to search my car.

At this point I think it is gone forever, so I load the Kindle app on my smart phone and open Dunham’s book.  I go to the kitchen to do some dishes and at one point I turn around, and there’s the Kindle on the kitchen counter.  Now, I know it wasn’t there ten minutes ago, so I look at Spazz.  He looks at me with a smile on his face.

“Where was it?”

He is super-amused and very self-satisfied.  “It was on your night table.” 

“No it wasn’t!  I looked.”

Spazz took me into our bedroom to show me exactly where he found it.  Rather than it’s usual place on the lower right corner, I had, for some unknown reason, placed it under some items in the upper left corner.  So I am a creature of routine after all…..I didn’t even think to look for it there.  We are talking about a maybe 18 square inch surface, by the way.

Email to the Emergency Department staff the following day:

“Kindle found.  Crisis averted.  Thank you.”