Childhood Fears

"Wouldn't it be nice to be a kid again?" Hattie asked me a few weeks ago.  We were on the phone, as we often are at night since we're both insomniacs.  "Not, like, gym class or anything, but think about it.  No bills."


"No bills," I said dreamily.


"No job.  No responsibilities.  No worries."


"Seriously," I said.  "What was your biggest worry when you were seven?  We didn't have worries!"


"Exactly!" Hattie cried.  "We were worried about, what?  What Santa Claus was going to bring us that year?  Maybe the boogeyman."


"For me it was the alligator who lived under my bed and wanted to shoot my feet with a laser beam."


Hattie started to laugh.  "The what?"


"There was an alligator who lived under my bed.  He was a very learned alligator.  He'd invented his own laser beam to shoot my feet with.  Only, it wasn't very versatile.  He had to use a different computer program to make it shoot depending on where I was in the room and how many feet I was standing on at the time, and all the programs were on different floppy discs that weren't very well organized because his wife was a bad housekeeper.  I jumped around a lot to thwart him."


Hattie was silent for a long time.  "I don't even know what to say about that.  And what the hell is a floppy disc?"


I sighed.  Hattie's a decade younger than me and very often I have to explain things that existed before the nineties.  "They were five inches wide.  They flopped.  They could hold up to 140 kilobytes."


"Megabytes," she corrected me.


"Nope.  Kilo."


"Really?  Like, seriously?"


"You're trying to avoid the alligator that lived under my bed."


"I'm trying not to think you needed therapy even as a child."

"I'll draw you a picture of the genius alligator so you understand," I told her.  "I was also afraid of the ghost that lived in my clock."


"You were not."


"And volcanoes.  I was terrified that I'd be playing at the park one day and a volcano would erupt and I wouldn't be able to save my book in time."


"Why would you have a book at the park?"


"You've met me, right?"


"Yeah, okay.  Volcanoes?"

"Mount St. Helens erupted when I was a child.  I was emotionally scarred.  Oh, and Russians."


"Russians what?"


"I was afraid of the Russians."


"Why?"


"They were a superpower.  They were going to kill us all."


"People were afraid of the Russians?"


"I hate you," I told her.  That's what I tell her whenever she makes me feel old.  Then I listed off all the other things I worried about as a child.  I worried about a polar bear eating me.  I worried about my dog running away.  I worried about a polar bear eating my dog.  The fact that I lived nowhere near polar bears didn't matter, since my sense of direction and understanding of distance were pretty much nonexistent until I learned how to drive.


I was afraid that the zombies from Michael Jackson's Thriller video were going to get me.  I worried about forgetting my lunch money.  I worried about starving to death if I forgot my lunch money.  I worried about falling off the monkey bars.  I worried that my dad would get hit by a car.  I worried that my dog would get hit by a car.  I was terrified of clowns which, okay, I still am, because clowns are evil and I was a smart little girl.


I listed off all my childhood fears and anxieties, and Hattie laughed her ass off because she is also evil.  "Mostly, though, I was afraid of the man in the hat who lived in my basement."


"You had a man living in your basement?" she asked.


"He wasn't a real man.  He just looked like a man.  Sort of.  He was all black.  More of a shadow than a person, but really, really dark, not like a normal shadow.  He had a long coat and a fedora and he would watch me when I was playing.  I always wanted to run up the stairs when he showed up, but I was too afraid so I just kept playing, like if I pretended I didn't know he was there he wouldn't get me."


Hattie was silent.  I sighed and waited for her to start laughing.  "Dude," she said.  "That's real."


"I was a neurotic child, okay?  I know this, I--"


"No, seriously.  That guy with the hat, he's a shadow person.  Like, thousands of people have seen him."


"Fuck you," I said.


"Google it," she said.


I googled it.  I was not happy with the results.  I prefer to believe that I was just neurotic and that there wasn't really a malevolent shadow being watching me all those times.


I am not going to draw a picture of the man in the hat who lived in my basement, because he was scary as hell then, and I strongly dislike the idea that he might have been real.  Instead, you get a portrait of me and Hattie, just to end things on a lighter note.

This might seem like it's just a really shitty drawing, but it's not.  We actually look exactly like this, only I'm even taller.  And I'm eating nachos right now.

Tour De France, Yeah, I'm Down With That

>Just a forewarning, I swear, a lot in this post. And damn Floyd Landis to an eternal hellfire for being a dickhole.

So, Sena and I are Tour freaks. This is mostly my fault. And it is mostly the fault of Lance Armstrong. What started in 2001 or so as a "Hey, he survived cancer and he's American! Let's watch this bitch," has become a fairly all consuming obsession...

Really, it was the 2004 Tour that got me seriously into it. Thomas Voeckler and his little woob face. And then. And then. FLOYD LANDIS YOU SKEEZY WHORE FACED COCKSLAP.

...Sorry for the capslock and language, but seriously. Fuck him hard. Lance Armstrong is probably the most tested man in the history of any sport. And seriously, seriously. He had less than a 40% chance of surviving cancer... not only did he survive, and win the Tour 7 times? He naturally fathered two children (OK, one is still in the womb, whatever). HE SHOULDN'T HAVE SPERM. Clearly, he is superhuman. OK. Deal with it, Floyd, you skeezy bastard. And it's not just Lance he's attacking. It's everyone. What is that? Come on, you got caught. You and Vino and all the other cheaters can have a nice party in hell.

I mean, if you ever prove to me without a shadow of a doubt that Lance cheated? I'll probably lose all faith in humanity. And he's not even my favorite cyclist... but he is one of my favorite human beings ever. And Landis accusing Hincapie and Zabriskie too? Sorry, Floyd, they're national champs, and you're made of fail. Sucks to be you.

I think that some background should be give on this. I loved Floyd. When he was one of Lance's lieutenants, I thought to myself "He could win this, he should be on another team, going for himself". And then he won! And then he was accused and he wrote a book. A book that I bought, and I sung his praises. And then he turned out to be an epic bag of douche. Like when Vino couldn't have won, couldn't do it, was out and then came back and won a stage. Won it epically. Fuck you, Vino. Cheater.

Anyway, watched the stage today, the first stage in the Alps, and my little heart wants to say, “no, you're wrong announcers, Lance isn't out of this” just because they said that Cavendish was broken and they talked smack about him and said he couldn't come back and then Cavendish went “hey, fuck you, two stage wins” and I made the most epic win arms ever. Tyler Farrar... broken wrist and cracked elbow went “hey, second place, bitches.” This is why I love the Tour.

I don't know who's going to take it this year. Andy Schleck, perhaps? (Side note, if you're on Twitter, you should follow @schleckfrank and @andy_schleck). Contador? He's won all three before, in his own right. Shady-ness of last year aside (What was he doing on the same team as Armstrong, anyway?), he can win it in his own right. Cadel Evans has gotten stronger each year... I think I'm throwing my support to Andy Schleck, and a little to the slightly longer shot of Levi Lepheimer.

Mostly this year, can we have a dope free race? Please? That would be amazing.

I like to pretend that it's a superpower, but it's not.

So, for those over 21, you know what it's like to go out to cheap beer night. And here in Nevada, there's never ever a shortage of beer.

Now, I've been living in the desert in some form or another for nearly 14 years. This fact that does not factor into my feeble brain when I'm drinking cheap beer. If I'm having cocktails, desert survival brain kicks in and tells me to have as glass of water for every, or every other, cocktail.

But, if we're drinking unlimited Bud, Coors, Busch... etc? There is no survival brain. There's just beer brain. This is because I'm highly unlikely to actually get drunk from these beers unless I'm shotgunning them at a rate that with my bladder, means I should just take my pitcher of beer and sit on the toilet until I'm done peeing... forever.

I get so busy keeping my buzz on, making sure my beer is always full, and not drinking so much that I have to urinate every 3 seconds, that I forget to drink water. And even when I get home after a night of drinking beer, I seriously just stare at the bottle of water next to my bed like I am the far superior being. I don't need that water. Until about 2 hours later, and I have to give the water bottle credit for not judging me when I wake up feverish and moaning in the early stages of dehydration.

And I keep doing this... I mean, even rats learn that the cheese is electrified and stop doing it. My superpower makes me dumber than a rat. Go team me, go.

I have this thing about directions

Whenever I go to visit my parents, I end up being the one to drive everywhere during my visit despite the fact that they live in a completely different city than the one I grew up in and therefore have no idea where I'm going.

This would be fine if my parents had maps.  Or senses of direction.  Or sanity.

Take something simple, like going out to eat.  Despite all my begging, my parents will never tell me the name of the restaurant we're going to and seem baffled when I tell them I want the name so that I can Google Map it.

"But sweetheart," says my mother, "it's just up the street and we'll tell you how to get there."

Even when I ask nicely, they don't seem to understand the question, "What's the name of the restaurant?"

"What does it matter?" my father asks.  "It's just down the road."

When I say, "Pretty, pretty please, I am begging you in the name of all that is holy to tell me the name and/or street address of the restaurant to which we are going," they look at me with bemused expressions and I can see that they're becoming concerned for my sanity.  For good reason.  Here's how a typical trip with my parents goes.

Me: Left, right, or straight here?
Mom: We're going left.
Me: [gets into the left lane, waits for the light, turns left]
Mom: You should have gone straight ahead, we're going to to have to turn around.
Me: You said left!
Mom: Well, I didn't mean right away.

and then, later

Dad: Hey, can you turn left here?
Me: No.
Dad: Why not?
Me: I'm in the far right lane.
Dad: Oh.
Me: [after a few minutes of silence] Was that a rhetorical question about turning left or did we actually
need to go left back there?
Mom: We needed to go left.
Me: Okay. Next time, I'm getting a map.
Mom: Why would you need a map? Your dad and I know exactly where we're going.
Me: [muttering] Not that you bother to tell me...
Mom: What?
Me: Nothing. Okay, after I turn around, where do I go?
Mom: To the restaurant.
Me: Which restaurant?
Mom: The one we're going to.
Me: ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?
[silence, then] Mom: I don't know why you have to get so angry all the time.
Me: What. Is the name. Of the restaurant.
Mom: It's just up here a ways on the left.
Dad: The right.
Mom: The right.
Me: THE NAME! TELL ME THE GOD DAMN NAME OF THE RESTAURANT!
Dad: The Stadium.
Me: Thank you.
Mom: You just passed it. It was on the left.

This is inevitably the time during the drive when I threaten to crash the car and kill all three of us for the good of the world.

My family has always been like this with directions, which might be the reason I'm obsessed with maps and detailed directions to wherever I'm going.  This might also be the reason that Hattie and I should not take road trips together, because when I'm driving and ask Hattie if we need to take I-5 North or I-5 South and she shrugs and replies, "Whatever, we'll get there no matter which way we go," I fly into a rage blackout.

I'm pretty sure I once threatened to rip out her pancreas and make her eat it while on a road trip in Los Angeles.  In my defense, Hattie's theory that if you just keep driving eventually you'll find what you're looking for doesn't apply when you're driving in a city with an area of roughly 20,000 square miles.  Also in my defense, she had shared her "we'll get there eventually" theory with me just moments before we saw signs welcoming us to Compton.

I realize that I am insane when it comes to directions, and I realize that I become verbally abusive if my navigator lets me down.  However, when people do things my way, we arrive where we need to be safely, efficiently, and on time.  If you ever find yourself in a car with me and have somehow become my navigator, avoiding my rage is simple; keep your eye on exit and road signs and read the directions that I have written out in my very neatest handwriting complete with mileage estimates, exit numbers, and alternate routes that may become necessary in case of construction, traffic, or nuclear war.  That's it.  Do these simple things and your pancreas will remain in your body where it belongs.

So Bored

So, it's day three of my four days off and I've officially gone insane. Instead of cleaning my apartment (which really looks like I'm squatting in even though I've lived here for almost a year... literally, my bed is on my floor), I've spent my morning mainlining Futurama and reading gossip blogs that make magazines like OK! and The Examiner look classy. Also, I've been reading them aloud. To myself.

I've decided too that I'm going to buy a bar of soap for my birthday next week. Not because I'm dirty... which I am, but because I figure it's been at least 5 years since I last bought a bar of soap. I use body wash, not nothing, if that's what you're thinking.

I am torn on what to buy. I can't have Dove, because even though that's supposed to be all dye-free super sensitive and whatever, it makes me break out like I have herpes. Of my whole body. Not just my hands. Which, after many years of trying to figure out, I still don't know why I have herpes hands. It's not actually herpes, it's just this weird rash that I think might be related to stress that I have on my hands.

Apparently, Palmolive now makes a bar soap... I can't use that. Because it makes me think of greasy dishes, and I am not a greasy dish. I'm googling bar soap right now. And I feel like last time I bought bar soap all you could get was Dove, Irish Spring, Lever 2000, and Dial. Now, there are way too many choices. I'm tempted to go to Von's and look at choices, but I'd really have to shower, because if I don't, they'd probably kick me out for being a hobo. But hobos need soap too. They probably need soap most of all. Maybe I'll buy a pack of soap for my birthday and give it to some hobos. They can wash up in the sprinklers.

Banana Shame Spiral

So, today I went to the grocery store to buy bananas, because my favorite breakfast it a frozen banana, vanilla soy milk, and oatmeal, blended up and then drank from a cup with a straw. This does not work without a straw.

But that is not the point. The point was, because the bananas are frozen before I use them and are cheap as all get out, I was thinking I would buy a whole bunch. And this is what I learned. One bunch in your cart makes you look all healthy. Two looks like maybe you want to share your healthy treat with your family or perhaps coworkers. Once you put three bunches in there, you look like a psychopath.

I'm not sure if you really look like a psychopath, or if it's actually kind of related to my phobia of lemons... by the way, I have a pretty intense fear of lemons in groupings greater than three, because I really don't want to be crushed to death by a pile of lemons. That's a worse way to go out then in that Dane Cook skit where Mary took a tire to the face. Could you imagine the police calling your parents and being like "We're really sorry to tell you, but your daughter was killed today at the local Von's... Yes sir, the fruit cart tipped over and the lemons got her. Sorry for your loss."

That would suck so much.

So, anyway, I had to remove one of the bunches of bananas from my cart, so that I only had two bunches, because I didn't want to be judged by my fellow patrons. Granted, I do shop at a grocery store were 99 times out of 100 I'm behind a person that's got to make their food stamp purchase first and then they got a separate transaction for their Schnapps and/or Budweiser Chelada. (For those of you that aren't familiar with Chelada, that's Budweiser mixed with Clamato. Yeah, it's real.)

Laphroig Quarter Cask and Macallan 12 Year

My friend Roy showed up at work the other day with two test tubes of Scotch for me to try. This sounds weird, but he's a microbiologist, so that makes it less weird. And the test tubes were sterile. And he knows I love Scotch.

He gave me Laphroaig Quarter Cask and Macallan 12 Year.

I uncapped the test tubes to sniff at work, I won't lie. I didn't taste them, though. I thought that probably deserved my complete attention.

The Laphroaig is pale golden compared to the richer amber of the sherry-casked Macallan. The first whiff of Laphroaig is pure smoke, but a soft smoke with hints of vanilla and Band-Aid. It's not at all unpleasant, though it sounds like it might be. On the palate, it's a mix of smoke, moss, salt, and seaweed, with an iodine sting that lingers through the tight finish.

The Macallan has a rich, fruity nose, like dried apricots and that distinctive sherry smell that makes me think of rehydrated raisins. I expected it to taste as light and fruity as it smelled, but it took me by surprise, less full-bodied and more just big-bodied. The taste is fruity, and also somewhat floral. It doesn't taste like marmalade, but it reminds me of it in it's slightly-overwhelming yet enjoyable sweetness.

With only a few milliliters of each left, I committed sacrilege and added a splash of filtered water to each one. It improved the Macallan, removing the hint of cloying sweetness and making me think of orange blossoms. The Laphroaig does not pair well with water, losing it's smoky smoothness and emphasizing the Band-Aid.