I'm schlepping along on my roommate's pet sitting runs, in case she gets stuck in the snow. It beats another day lying around watching bad tv. I was starting to get bed sores.
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See you in 2010!
fog and thunder on Mt. Oread
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if only I hadn't already bought my sink and toilet this princess pink pair would be very tempting...
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We re-join our story in the Spa of the Ocean Spa Hotel, Cancun Mexico.
As part of our deal with our hotel stay, both Donna and I recieved a 55 minute massage and a $30 spa credit good for various services.
After some deliberation, we decide to go with the Swedish massage and an Aromatherapy Body Exfoliation. We make our appointments for 10am the day before we leave.
When we arrive at the spa, they bring us into the Women's Locker Room and ask us to change and take a warm shower before we head into the steam room. We oblige in our private showers.
After a refreshing steam, our two massage therapists bring us into a room. It happens to be the Couples Massage room....which is fine. In fact, its a beautiful room complete with mood lighting and a beautiful jacuzzi bathtub for two. The tub had lit candles around the side and some floating flower petals. We looked at each other and laughed...thinking, "You're my best friend and all, but there is no way, I'm taking a nude jacuzzi with you at the end of this".
The massages begin and they are fabulous. My masseuse doesn't speak to me (which I love) nor does she understand much of what I'm saying to her. Donna's person is much more fluent than mine.
My person only speaks to me when she commands me to do something, but what's a little disconcerting is that she bends down and whispers-this-close right in my ear. Its a little creepy feeling...plus it tickles. She had a voice like a very sweet child, so I start to get the giggles in my head. I don't want to start laughing and ruin Donna's massage, nor do I want my poor massuese to think I'm laughing at her. Its just one of those weird moments when you know you shouldn't laugh...so all you want to do is start chortling and guffawing all over the place.
The massages end and they begin the exfoliation. After rubbing, scrubbing and buffing our front sides, I'm told to "sit up". I sit up and look to my right and Donna is already sitting up....trying as desperately as I am to keep my sheet in its proper place. We get our backsides exfoliated and then are told to lie back down. From Donna's side, I hear a little laugh. First from Donna and then from her person. I wonder what they're talking about and worry that since someone broke the "seal" on the public laughing, I'm going to start to laugh about the whispering in my ear.
I'm told to lie still for a few minutes and then to get up and take a shower. The massage therapists leave and I peek out from under my eye cover and see Donna looking at me. We decide its time to get up, shower and get dressed.
Donna opens the door to the shower and its.....a shower built for two. One stall. Two shower heads facing each other. We start to laugh at how we've suddenly entered into a soft core porn flick. After some debate and many promises to "don't look", we figure what the hell? We're not THAT modest with each other. Donna heads in first and I follow behind (with my eyes closed). All I could think about was some 1980's women's prison movie and with that we start to laugh. We're trying to wash the grit off of ourselves while not looking at the other one and the whole time we're hysterically laughing. I can't catch my breath because of the absurdity of it all. The harder Donna laughs, the more I laugh. Finally, from the steam Donna yells "THIS IS THE GAYEST THING I'VE EVER DONE!! Oh, and did she ask you to do the "boobie" thing?" Apparently, Donna's therapist bent down, whispered in her ear "here...this is for your boobies" and she hands her a handful of exfoliator. I ask her what she did.
In all seriousness, she responds "I did my boobies".
That's it. I'm done. I can't shower anymore. I can barely stand up because I can't catch my breath. I run out of the shower cacking like a hen and wonder to myself what in the hell do the other spa customers think is going on in here?
You all know that I'm fucking nuts, so this will come as no surprise.
On Monday, I was at work, bored, staring down an afternoon with little to do. I did what anyone with a serious mental illness would do: I faked a headache and left work to go work on the house!
I put in a good five hours, feeling pleased that I was getting closer to being ready for my drywall contractor to work next week. The next morning, it occurred to me that I already had an excuse in place, so I called in sick. Good thing I did.
At about 9:30, my drywall contractor called to say that his schedule had changed. He could either start on Wednesday or he wouldn't be able to get to it until the new year.
My people, you know what I did. I said, "Start on Wednesday," and then I threw my ass in gear to get ready for him. I knew I had at least two more days of work to do, so I figured on at least 16 hours. It ended up taking a little longer than that. It was my first and hopefully my last home remodeling all-nighter. Because it's one thing to pull an all-nighter, sitting around eating pizza and studying. It's another thing to spend all night standing on a ladder, scraping, peeling, sanding, and priming.
At about 8 pm, I broke for dinner and went down the block to the nearest fast food place. In the shape I was in, I would normally have gone through the drive-thru, but the bathroom in my basement is sooooo cold. I was willing to face a little public humilation in order to put my ass on a toilet seat that was not glacial.
I took my pee break and went back out to order some dinner. People stepped away from me in line. At the counter, the cashier recoiled. Now I knew I was dirty, but until that moment I hadn't realized just how dirty. I had a cloud of dust and debris around me--the pulverized particulate of fifty years of bad wallpaper choices. And probably not a little in the way of lead paint chips. The cashier didn't even bother to ask if I wanted my food to go; she just bagged it up and handed it to me from arm's length. Only then did I notice the little semi-circle of dust and detritus that I'd left at the counter where I'd been standing.
But wait, there's more. At midnight, about 15 hours into my ordeal, I was dying. I could see I had at least 3 more hours of work and maybe 5 hours. I went out to the local quickie mart for coffee and another pee break in non-artic conditions. An elderly man stood by the counter chatting with the college age cashier. Clearly the old man had reached that point in life where he no longer really needed sleep, so he'd taken to hanging around pestering cashiers at all-night quickie marts.
When I approached with my coffee, the old man smiled at me and said, "Why don't you let me get that for you?"
I was already in a slightly stunned state, but I managed to say, "No, that's okay. I got it."
He persisted, but I already had my money out on the counter.
Having failed to buy me a coffee, the old man said, "Do you have some place warm to stay tonight?"
Yes, that's right, my people. I was so bedraggled looking that I was mistaken for a homeless person. I schlepped my crusty, dusty self back to my 2 bedroom gulag, and went on with the work. At 4:30, I put the last strokes of primer on all the cut wallpaper seams, and dragged myself home to shower and sleep for a few hours.
For the record, I do not recommend this, but I do now have sheetrock on my walls.
plus pumpkin lasagne.
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Before I begin this post, I wanted to say hi to all of my Vox neighbors (those that are left, anyway). Sorry I haven't been around much since Jake died....but its been kind of a hard few months and I just haven't felt much like talking about stuff.
That being said, I had an experience recently that I wanted to share (and remember)...
Anyone who knows me well, knows that in the last 10 years or so, I've developed a little fear of flying. I still do it, but I really don't love it. I refuse to drink or take medication to calm my fears, so I grit my teeth and go. The part I really can't stand is take-off. That feeling of slowly climbing into the air completely freaks me out. Once we're up and the flight attendants start serving, I'm pretty much OK - assuming there isn't a ton of turbulence.
I should point out that I never had an issue with flying until a few years ago. Nothing specific happened to stress me out...perhaps just getting older or perhaps its because I tended to hyper-focus on news reports of aviation disasters. (much like I watch shows about serial killers even though I'm terrified of them). In the last few years, I've read a few books about flying and I change the channel when there is ANYTHING to do with plane crashes.
I consider myself to be a very rational black-and-white person, which is why I'm baffled by how irrational my fear is. People think they're being helpful by saying "you have a greater chance of winning the lottery than being in a plane crash". But I think to myself...I COULD win the lottery....assuming I ever bought a ticket. So in the past few years, I've read books, logged onto the FAA website to read the statistics and have regular conversations with myself about how safe flying truly is.
Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. The fear usually creeps in about a week before I have to fly. I maniacally clean my house in case I don't come home. I hope that my family will give a flattering picture of me to the folks at Dateline who are SURE to do a story on the accident. I can't stand when people tell me to "have a safe flight" because I assume they've suddenly gone psychic on me and they know something that I don't. I ask Dan if he "has any feelings about the flight"....again, I assume everyone I know is a member of the Psychic Friends Network. I make Dan look up statistics about how many takeoffs and landings there are each year from the Minneapolis airport. (450,000 in case you're curious).
When I get to the airport, I look around to see if its looks like its anyone's "time". I swear to you. Its horrible. If there is ever a famous person on my flight, I'm about ready to turn around and go home. I stare at the departures and arrivals screens to see how many flights there are, what airlines I've never heard of and how many faraway destinations there are. These things are supposed to make me feel better, but they tend to freak me out all the more.
That being said, Dan and I usually fly first class because it does seem to help me out a little. That or I'm just saying that so Dan will pony up for the good seats. I tend to feel worse if its a really crowded flight. I also feel much better if the pilot and the flight attendants are older. If the pilot is under 40, I assume he's an idiot. Why? I couldn't tell you.
SO...last week I had the opportunity to take a quick trip to Cancun with my best friend Donna. Donna and I have taken a ton of vacations together and she's a great travel partner. Mainly because she distracts me during takeoff by telling stories about her mother that make me laugh. She also knows that while I look calm on the outside, on the inside I look like a Edward Munch painting.
For some reason, my usual pre-flight thoughts weren't scary ones. In fact, I did really well the night before and didn't even think much about the flight. Same thing when we got to the airport. We get on the plane and I offer to take the middle seat and give Donna the aisle. (keep in mind that she's been taking the middle for me for about 15 years). I can't figure out why I'm feeling so calm, but I'm pleased.
The day of our flight was the day when the entire U.S. was hit with storms, blizzards and record cold and yet...I'm still not afraid.
The plane takes off and I'm just fine. A little fluttering in the stomach, but nothing I can't handle. The flight is going great. No turbulence, a gray-haired pilot AND an older flight attendant. What more could I ask for?
When food service begins, Donna and I decide to look at the menu and have a little snack. I offer a menu to the woman on the other side of me and she just stares blankly. She's an older woman, about 70 or so. The flight attendant asks her if she wants peanuts, pretzels or cookies and she just stares back at her. I ask her the question again and in a very thick Polish accent, she says "no English". (I know its Polish because Donna's best friend from home is Polish) I tell the flight attendant to give her all 3 options. I try to see if she wants something to drink by giving the universal sign for "drink". She says "Sprite".
I decide to have a cocktail since I see Pomegranate Martinis on the menu. The flight attendant shakes my drink and Donna pulls out her travel Yahtzee game (sound dorky...but a great time-waster on a plane).
Just as we begin to play, the plane starts to shake a little. And then a little more. I'm doing OK. The pilot comes on and says to buckle up because they are expecting a little rough weather. I'm still OK. In fact, I'm doing better because I LOVE when the pilot tells me what's going on. (can you say "control freak"?)
All of a sudden from the left side of the plane comes a big BOOM. Donna says "I think that was thunder". I turn around to the guy behind me and say "was that thunder?" when all of a sudden it felt like we were rear-ended by a semi. The plane pitches forward, shakes from side to side and drops to the point where I'm straining against my selt belt.
As all of this happens, I see my Pomegranate Martini levitate off my tray and catch it in mid-air without a drop spilled. I mean, if I'm going to pay $7.00 for a Rande Gerber cocktail, I'm not letting it spill all over some elderly Polish lady.
People start SCREAMING...and I mean, horror movie screaming and things are flying all over. It seems to last for 5 minutes when all of a sudden everything is still. Throughout all of this, I'm calm. I didn't utter a peep, a yelp, a howl, nothing. I look down and I see my martini in my left hand and my red Yahtzee pencil in my right. The entire Yahtzee game was gone. Not in my lap, not in Donna's, not in the aisle...just gone.
I look to my right and the little Polish lady is fiddling with her scarf and just absolutely terrified. I rub her arm and say "its OK, its OK". She smiles. I turn to Donna to start to laugh about the insanity of it all and there she is...my big brave travel partner with tears just streaming down her face. I put my arm around her and say "we're OK. we're OK". She starts to cry and says "my whole life just flashed in front of my eyes. OK...not my whole life, just the part where I think I'm a mean person". I start to laugh and laugh hard. Then she stops crying and yells "that fucking pilot better tell us what just happened". I can't help it...I start to laugh even harder. She tells me to look at the aisle and when I do, there are cameras, books, empty cups, ice, magazines strewn everywhere. There is tomato juice, coffee and diet coke dripping down from where it hit the ceiling. And still no Yahtzee game. Donna is covered in some beverage and I kind of feel guilty that I made such a great catch of my own beverage.
The flight attendants come by with napkins to help with the clean up when the pilot comes on and in the most chipper voices say "sorry for the bumps there. We were trying to divert around the bad weather over Jackson, Mississippi". Now everyone on the plane is laughing....that kind of embarrassed, nervous laughter. I can't stop laughing, but I really want to know where the Yahtzee game went. We find it in the aisle under some seats....that is all but one dice.
I turn around to ask the guy behind me if they've seen any dice. He starts to laugh and says "yeah, its in my son's pocket". Apparently, the dice went flying over the seat into the kid's lap and he pocketed it. The kid hands it back and we're all still laughing.
When the flight attendant stops at our seats, I ask her "so...do pilots feel what we feel back here?" (yes, I'm that goon who feels the need to ask those kind of questions). Irritated, she yells "NO and really irritates me. They have no idea". Then she tells me that in Row 18 where we were was nothing compared with Row 28 who REALLY felt it.
What struck me is how not scared she was...just annoyed because once we arrive in Cancun she only has 90 minutes to get the plane ready for the return flight.
Throughout all of this, I couldn't believe that I was so calm. As I've said many times before, I am great in a crisis. The house could be on fire, my arm could be hanging from its socket and I'd be calm as a cucumber....but God forbid the grocery store only has curly parsley instead of flat-leaf because NOW I'm going to burn the house down. Weird how things work out that way.
Donna kept saying "You're so brave, I'm so proud of you. Unlike me on the other hand, who looked like the petrified cat in this week's episode of "Hoarders" I lost it again. She has a way of making references that she just knows I'm going to get. Its great to have a best friend like that. Then she said something that I think will help me with future flights. She said that whenever I get scared on another flight, to remember what happened on THIS one and compare the two. I think its great advice.
When we arrived in Cancun, all of the goons on the plane started to applaud. I jumped out of my seat and was waiting to exit the plane when I hear this little voice saying "help me...help me". I look over at my Polish seatmate and her seat belt is completely twisted around her and she can't get out. I reach over, unbuckle her and give her a goodbye arm rub. She smiles gratefully and we leave.
I can't say this cured my fear of flying because on the way home, I had the usual take-off flutters. But I have to admit, that I am proud of how I handled a potentially bad situation. If this would have happened some other day, the flight attendants would have had to hog-tie me to the seat and there would have been federal marshalls meeting me at the gate.
Stay tuned for the next installment of "Nancy and Donna Go To Cancun"....entitled "That's The Gayest Thing I've Ever Done".
I've just gutted my entire house, right down to the studs, and am slowly rebuilding it. After months of nothing but demolition, I'm finally starting to reverse the process. My bathroom contractor is working today to get ready for my tile guy. The insulation guy worked yesterday, so the house is nice and cozy now. (Right, except that I have to put the windows back in.) On Tuesday, the sheetrock guy comes to start putting my ceilings and walls back.
Just as soon as I wrap up my work in the attic: 2 more ceiling joists to sister, one more ceiling fan mount to install, plus 3 more fixture mounts for other lights. I'd planned to sister all the 5 ceiling joists that need it this weekend, but Tuesday I created a little emergency. While trying to rip out a piece of planking in the wall that had bowed and split--thereby preventing the sheetrock from being flush--I discovered that two of my ceiling joists were actually resting on that plank, instead of on the exterior load-bearing wall. The reason? when the foundation failed in the 40s that wall bowed out about three inches, and the joists slipped off it.
Which is how I broke my nose. With all that weight on the plank, it was under a lot of pressure, so when I finally managed to pry it off the studs, it came loose at high speed and whacked me in the face. I blacked out for about a second, before that little quiet voice in the back of my head kicked in. You know, the little voice that whispers, "Maybe you shouldn't take that short cut," and "Get up and check the door." My little voice said, "Don't fall off the ladder."
I didn't. I managed to get myself down the ladder, my head ringing, and my dust mask filling up with blood. As I was just starting to wonder how badly I'd fucked myself up, I heard this soft groaning sound and looked up. Above me, the ceiling was sagging about three inches. Not terrible, but likely to become so.
This was at about 8 pm, and who was I going to call for help? Sure, 911 would take care of my face, but they wouldn't do anything about my ceiling joists. So I went out to my truck, grabbed the jack, and a couple of 2 x 4's on my way back through the garage. I slapped one 2 x 4 up to the ceiling with a pair of screws (thank you, trusty cordless drill), wedged the other one up under it, balanced on top of the jack, and cranked the ceiling back up to the proper height. Contrary to my expectations, it worked perfectly. After all, that little jack was designed to lift one quarter of my truck, so it was strong enough to lift one tenth of my ceiling.
Then I could worry about my nose. Luckily I still have a kitchen sink, so I went it and pulled the dust mask off. Blood, lots of it. I washed off a bunch of it, but I didn't have a mirror, so I couldn't really see what the damage was. I had half a bag of ice in the freezer, so I grabbed that, stuck it on my face and drove to my temporary digs.
I kept the ice on it for about five hours, and that seems to have done the trick. I have a bump, a bruise, and my eyes are a little black, but my nose is straight. I'm pretty sure it's broken, because I can feel it wiggle when I laugh, and my eyebrows actually hurt.
Episode 2 was me calling into work sick the next morning. Only I didn't stay home. I couldn't. I went to the house and crawled up in the attic to sister in the three joists that just couldn't wait for this weekend. Then I had to repair and replace the plank I'd originally been intending to fix when it bitch slapped me. I won the rematch.
