Dragons

It is commonly believed that every little girl wants a pony.  And why shouldn’t she?  Imaginary ponies are small and manageable compared to a horse, run faster than parents, are very willing to stand still for hours at a time while you braid and ribbon their long flowing manes, and never poo.  There is some debate over whether or not they also eat broccoli under the table and fetch newspapers, or if that should remain strictly in the territory of imaginary dogs. 

If a little girl requires all of those qualities in her imaginary pony, then I’m pretty sure that I need a dragon.  With a telepathic link to my thoughts and emotions, my dragon would build models with me, laser cut materials by channeling his fire into a fine point, and stand behind teachers breathing heavily at reviews.  You know, just to mess with them.  And, just like in the tv show Merlin, I could go about a mile out of the city, stand in a field and shout “DragON!!  Hsoidfjk ffnd gealnd ne blaalok!” when I’m feeling dramatic.  That would probably be my favorite part, actually.

Also, my friend Sarah needs a Pegasus.  For some reason it just seems right.

Allegorical Summer

The problem with having a blog that I don’t update regularly is that, now that I have a few minutes to write something that anyone else would actually want to read, it’s a daunting task to pick out which anecdotes most warrant sharing.  In the interest of maximum entertainment value, I choose to tackle my plights topically, episodically, and allegorically.  The following, therefore, have been adapted to include the characters of Star Wars. 

 One way

 It so happens that we are involved in a project to revitalize the Gwarp Nebula.  Fortunately for us, several other nebulae within a reasonable distance for light speed travel have recently undergone similar projects.  Darth Sith, the two other interns, and I therefore packed up the soccer-mommiest space vessel in the quadrant and traipsed across the stars to find these gems.  They included the typical things that a hard-working and well-off business darth wants in a tourist destination:  bike lanes, park benches, façade treatments, and such, but we wanted to dig deeper, see how the narrower streets with low speed limits for hovercraft promoted business, get a taste for the demographics, and consider life in these oases of peace and harmony.

 Cut to ten minutes later.  The peace and harmony of our one-way street is somewhat lessened by our presence.  Darth Sith curses the sun and stars and swears on the ash of his forebears that no sign told of this ancient foe. 

 The next day, as loyal drones do, we went back to take photos, and we found this:

  

 Clearly, Yoda is up to his old tricks. 

A Phantom Menace: Bad Veg

With a practically unlimited budget for groceries, us drones consider carefully what delectable goodies we choose to put into our weak little solar-powered bodies.  One night, only Earth vegetables chosen from the finest chain store would do.  We chopped our little automated hearts out, marinated our veg. in oil and coolant, and grilled them on top of the port engines.  We had high hopes, and were certain that we would not be disappointed with this meal.

Twenty minutes later we were horribly disappointed with that meal.  Something had gone wrong.  Strangely, though, we were all bugged with a polite virus that night.  With each of us thinking that the other two had loved those horrid rancid vegetables, we began to dish out the leftovers the next night. 

Who wants eggplant?  Who does indeed.  We realized our systems error and quickly updated our databases to include more honesty, less courtesy.  Of course, horrible brawling broke out the next night, but I’m pretty sure that was unrelated.

 

Chicken Hat.

Sometimes, living in Beach Haven, NJ, (You know, the place where everyone is on vacation except me and Mary the other intern and we suffer and see people on vacation but we can only relax ourselves through beach frisbee after work but that doesn’t go well because the beach is really windy?  *giant inhale*  Yeah, that place.), I go for walks at night for some me time.  I listen to my iPod, clear my head a little, watch the tourists, and then head back and try to cope with the thought of another day. 

One evening, however, the impossible happened.  I thought to myself, “Heck, I’ll just walk into this department store-type place that I’ve never visited before and have a look around.”  And look around I did, my friends.  Don’t ask me to recreate the vibe anytime soon, but for some reason browsing beach gear was appealing in that moment.  I walked around the side to the back, then up the middle to the front again.  The cash register stand was set back from the front just a bit. 

Then I saw it.  It was beautiful.  Its yarn was arrayed in just that way that told you, “I was made by semiskilled workers in a backyard to the soundtrack of eight screaming children, two of them mildly dyslexic.”  It was… a chicken hat.  My friend Laura just happens to be a connoisseur of fine chicken apparel, and her birthday was coming up.  Could this have been planned any better?  It was as if tiny cherubs came down from heaven, planted the hat at the bottom of a tall rack in a discount beach gear store behind the cow, and then waited for me to pass by so they could all sing “Ode to Joy” in my subconscious.  Or megaconscious.  Or consciousness of my conscious.  Well, you get the point.  That hat would be mine so it could later be Laura’s no later than four days after her birthday because nothing’s perfect. 

The next day I remembered to bring actual money with me and the angelic chorus picked up where it left off.  A thought had occurred to me in the mean time, however.  It was in the general vicinity of a lot of children’s paraphernalia – what if the hat was too small for an adult?  The thought devastated me, but I had to admit the possibility.  It would have to be tested.  I picked up the hat.  The glory of the previous day sang through still, though tempered with the wisp of doubt and uncertainty.  I casually headed to the back of the store, where tiny sundresses boasted of being thirty percent off.  I struggled to find a corner where others would not see me clearly, and momentarily considered if I could crouch down without looking more suspicious than normal.  Coming to a negative conclusion, I reluctantly drew the chicken hat over my head and waited for the scorn. 

Divine intervention drew me to its bosom, and, somehow, life continued normally.  Chicken hat was the real deal. 

And the rest of the story is aptly documented here: http://laurajanewrites.com/2011/08/11/poultry-garb/

A Boston Shower

Hello, Friends.  Tonight I would like to spin you a tale of lies and deceit, courage and the hardiness of the human spirit. 

Instead I will tell you about showering in the form of a checklist. 

1.  Stop shivering long enough to consider personal hygiene.  Yes, the space heater situated 3.5 inches from your pinky toe keeps your pinky toe warm, but sometimes the rest of you needs a little something extra.  What if there were a place to consider both cleanliness and warmth?  A dream, you say?  No, that’s just the hypothermia getting to you.  Take a shower. 

Seriously, you smell like Kermit’s lily pad on a temperate moist day.

2.  You’ll need to allow plenty of time for this step as the peeling process can be painful and require contortion.  Starting with your emu down parka, begin peeling off the fifteen layers of clothing into which you have managed to squeeze your body through various defiances of physics.  You may be a panty size 5, but if layer thirteen is a size small then clearly that bustier is earning its salt.

3.  Between layers, start the water in the shower so that it can heat.  When you step in, try to control your shock and/or overstimulation.  As you slowly regain feeling in your limbs, picture a nice day at the beach while ignoring your earlier feelings of hopelessness ever seeing summer again.  The first ten minutes are for thawing, so as your deeper tissue begins to soften you may experience some feelings that you thought had stayed in Vegas. 

4.  The turning point.  At last you.  Are.  WARM.  (Praise heaven)  No one can stop you now.  Enjoy this moment, for deep in your heart you know what must follow.

5.  The last fifteen minutes are for steeling yourself to get out of the shower.  I won’t sugar coat it; it’s cold out there.  Damn cold.  Especially when you’re wet and clinging to a thin towel like a hairless rodent.  You become wrinkley, disoriented, and heat drunk, and finally it is time.

6.  Turn the water off….now.  Do it.  Don’t even think.  A clean break is best.  Hopefully you have studied your evacuation plan in detail.  Towel…GO!  Drying action….GO!  Clothes…GO!  and…GO!   and GO!  and…GO!  and…GO!

[fifteen minutes later]

and…go!  and…go….DONE!  You are now dressed once again, complete with large coat that makes you always appear to need a hug.  Your space heater has missed you.

Until next time, hot water.  We will meet again.

Futon Story

And now, boys and girls, a futon story…

It’s like Toy Story, but with large furniture.

Moving day dawned brightly with the sunshine of despair.  Two car loads of crap and one Lexi equals a lot of grunting, swearing, and general uneasiness.  Normally I park my car in Watertown, where I was moving, and ride the bus in to Harvard Square, and on Sunday I did just that.  Because another girl was moving out, I had to park a bit farther down the street, however, and about three houses down there was a futon on the side of the road.  It was about eight feet long, white, and the cushion didn’t detach from the frame, but it was in very good shape, and I thought to myself that if it were still there later I should see what I can do.

Now it’s later and the futon in question is still there.  I should see what I can do.  Because I don’t have nearly enough to schlep, I eye it and already know what my fate will be.  I look around.  There’s no one.  My first brilliant plan is to move it down the street length-wise by grabbing the far end and rotating it around 180 degrees so that it advances one futon-length every time it rotates, but then I realize that there is a convenient metal bar on the back by which I can drag it relatively easily, and so that is what I do.  I will notice the scrapes later, but for now everything is dandy in my tiny fantasy world that includes a girl and her futon.  Instead of me dragging it, we’re holding hands and dancing in a field of heather.

Going forward once again, the futon is now at the foot of about eight steps that lead to a narrow front door.  I begin to angle it up the steps, but then realize that there’s just no way, and look around again.  I think my neighbor senses danger, for a middle-aged man is doing yard work across the street and trying not to make eye contact.  Bingo.  I approach said middle-aged man and he agrees to help me; it turns out that his son had just moved the day before.  Great, he’s warmed up. 

Being eight feet long and all, my new cherished futon takes some maneuvering, but it’s cool and eventually it lands in the living room, from which it easily slides into my room.

The man leaves, and I thank him profusely.  I think he’ll always remember that day as the day he helped some poor delusional girl with anthropomorphic fantasies move a big-ass but well maintained futon up eight steps, but to me it will be a new beginning.  As I walked into my room and…

[Record player stopping quickly sound effect here]

It turns out that the girl before me left a couch in the room.  I weep softly.

Part 2: Only 1 Coast Now

Because I have been here for so long at this point, I would like to cover the remainder of my journey until now topically.  I will begin with that which is near the forefront of all our hearts: driving.

Driving in Boston is not for the weak-willed, as very little of the process seems to actually encourage arrival at a predetermined destination.  Rather, Boston is designed to break drivers out of their shells and try new things, preferably on the other side of town, or, better yet, in Rhode Island.  Your adventure begins by pulling out of your driveway onto a two-lane highway.  This is easy enough, but some ten minutes later you come to realize that your jaunt along this charming forested community is frought with a sense of peril that is equal to and yet completely different from anything you may find in Los Angeles.  Nestled within an unbreaking line of traffic, you, not wanting to tailgate and sensing imminent danger, leave a nice cushion of ten feet or so between yourself and the vehicle in front of you.  Lurking from the side roads, however, waiting to pounce, are the jackals of the road.  They steal your cushion, rip it apart, and laugh while the feathers are still flying.  But then, while you’re still fuming with the indignation of it all, you see a split in the road ahead.  You begin to ponder the ramifications of this, thinking that surely which fork continues your current route will be apparent somehow.  Surely, either one side will be a wider, clearer choice, or a helpful road sign will point your way.  Getting closer, your frantic gaze burns down the street poles, the lanes, and the Dunkin Donuts to your left, until finally, armed with intuition and a careworn heart, you pick one and choose your fate.  The first tiny road you come to after this naturally has a sign the size of a billboard, and five hundred-point font confirms what your heart already knows: you were wrong.  You turn around and correct this mistake, finally back on track and newly at peace with the universe, which, just to spite you, somehow causes the next intersection to include three major streets. One of these streets is labeled, and, thankfully, it’s even the one you need.  You just need to see it a little closer.  Wait…which…to your almost continuous chagrin, the one street sign is positioned just haphazardly enough to be no help at all.  You look a little closer… are those circular TRACKS going around the pole on which the sign swivels?  Indeed they are, and Screwtape himself put them there for your spiritual downfall.

On the flip side, drivers are very courteous to each other when it comes to lane changes and crossing busy highways or making left turns.  This courtesy is not extended to pedestrians, however, on whom it is always open season, and who sport large invisible targets.  I have not yet figured out the point values around the bullseye, but I think the grand prize may be a bag of pretzels or something.

People.

New Englanders are like a box of chocolates: you know exactly what you’re in for, but you just need to determine which have pure chocolate and which are just nuts so that you can gather the good ones and hide them in your desk and leave what’s left for your coworkers or distant relatives.  Or something like that.  Astoundingly, transportation workers are very nice.  Less astoundingly, much of the general public wants you to go f*** yourself but hides it under the mandatory bland courteous veneer that holds the subconscious in a death grip. 

Next week… another topic.  Stay tuned.

Coast – 2 – Coast, Part I

Having said my tearful goodbyes, I set out on the road on Monday, my car weighed down like the pimp mobile that it surely is in the universe not quite parallel but sort of diagonal and up a few from this one.  Among my now few possessions were:  a prominently displayed vacuum, a drafting board, 26 pairs of underwear, an Imagineering mug, and a father.  The last item was also quite prominently displayed, and took up quite a bit of room in the passenger side front. 

We rolled out nearly bobsledding, the 210 an open vista of possibility, the 15 a bountiful array of expectant Los Angelenos.  I always have a difficult time understanding the degree of urgency with which Southern Californians absolutely MUST arrive in Las Vegas in as little time as humanly possible.  Fortunately, my fellow drivers were kind enough to remind me with subtle hints and kind suggestions that involve flashing lights and very specific body parts. 

Nevada.  You can almost smell the intrigue, adventure, and wonder of Las Vegas.  As I found out the weekend before, in no place else do all women dress quite like that.  With enough glitz to dumbfound every animal within a 1,000 mile radius, including men, Vegas women flaunt the tiny dresses, painted on makeup, and 1980s hair that I had never and will never dream of pulling off.  At the time, I wished that I had overalls and a straw hat to further delineate my alien invasion of the trampy ho clique.  On this trip, remembering the irresistible nature of the city, I did what any swaggering party girl would do.

I drove right past it to greener pastures. 

Utah.  Utah scares me beyond all reason.  It’s kind of like Yzma, but with less purple, fewer potions (believe me) and infinitely more crazy.  Kronk may be a prophet there, in fact.  We drove a long day in order to arrive in Provo so that I could take a physics final the next morning.  You see, I have nothing better to do in life than pile things on top of each other in a nearly impossible array of multitasking and scrambling that ends just short of killing me.  Luckily, everything so far has settled on kicking my ass with a fiery vengeance. 

Tuesday morning found us driving through Provo looking for Brigham Young, which, as it turns out, is quite lovely.  I finished my test in the prescribed two hours, then hit the road again.  Before I left the room, I was instructed to fill out a brief survey of my satisfaction with the course.  I expected the normal questions rating my perceived aptitude of the professor, effectiveness of material, and such, but they also threw in a few gems.  On a scale ranging from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree,” I was asked to assign a value to the following statements:  “I grew spiritually from this course,” and “I feel my character was strengthened.”  You understand that this was physics, right?  As in, the discipline most likely to completely disprove your religion and lambast everything you stand for?

So that was my entertainment for the morning.

Wyoming.  I did not hate Wyoming, although, as Dad pointed out, it could use a few more trees.  Apparently one of the least populated states in the country, it sports an endless plain of funny rock formations dotted with plains and houses.  But then…

Nebraska.  What was anyone thinking when they planted Nebraska?  Has anyone there ever driven a significant distance of it?  If they did, I am confident that they would immediately set to work on devising something, anything, to keep drivers from beating themselves over the head with the contents of their glove compartment.  Flat, fields, and fragrant are labels I give to the endless straight monotony of fields dotted with cows and dripping with my disdain. 

We wanted to spend the second night in Cheyenne, but apparently Frontier Days is a huge deal, so we needed to get an hour or two outside of it.  You know you’ve left the west coast when hotels advertise “American owned” as their biggest selling point.  First of all, having been in very international places for the last ten years, the extreme patriotism of the rest of the country sometimes seems a little jarring, and almost prejudiced in a way.  Secondly, when I’ve been sitting in a car all day and it’s eleven o’clock at night, I will rent a room from Voldemort himself as long as he promises to avada kadavra the roaches.

The next way you know that you’re not in SoCal anymore is when you find streets called “Cornshuck Avenue.”  Do they by any chance do farming in Nebraska?  No way!  I totally didn’t get that impression from the 15,000 fields I’ve already driven past!

But then we hit Iowa.  Iowa was very pleasant.  There was woodland with, wonder of wonders, TREES!  It also boasted the largest truck stop in the world and more Git N Splits than you could shake a stick at.  I give Iowa a B+.  We stayed the night in Davenport, where there was a sale on puppies. 

The eastern states love their construction in the summer.  Just because they can’t do it nine months out of the year does not mean that every road needs to be under construction for those three good months.  It also does not mean that work zones need to go down to 45 mph.  It also does not mean that every granny needs to get in front of a line of cars in the one open lane and strictly adhere to that speed.  I feel like Dr. Doofenschmirtz should have an –inator for that or something.

Anyway, I made it home and have already feasted on white hots!  And I squeaked by in physics!  More to follow of my adventures…

Oh, the packing…

Today I started packing and found a few things that I had forgotten about or possibly blocked from my conscious psyche.

1.  An issue of The Daily Trojan from my 4th day at USC.  Amazingly, I was in the school newspaper my second day at school there.  I didn’t know my photo was being taken at the time, so the next day when I looked across at someone at saw my picture on the FRONT PAGE I was naturally astounded.  I’ve scanned the photo below.  I know, it’s hard to believe that I’m so prominently featured, but that’s just how I roll in the hood.

 

Can’t find me?  What?  Oh, for the love of…fine…here’s some help.  I’m wearing bright red shorts, for crying out loud…

 

2.  A matroshka doll from Russia featuring five Russian presidents.  I used to have a real thing for Vladimir Putin.  I think it’s the suit.  At one point I read his complete biography in about five minutes because I just soaked it in like a sponge.  Oh, Vladimir…

3.  *clearing throat* Uhhh… getting back to things, next is a rubber ducky wearing blue sunglasses that I fished out of the Colorado River.  It was a ducky derby, which I realize is supposed to play out to the finish line and not have people catching the duckies, but THERE WERE RUBBER DUCKIES IN THE COLORADO RIVER!  Surely they don’t expect me to leave that alone!  Do they know me at all?!  So, I fished one out, fell in the river, and went to a chamber music concert that afternoon soaking wet.  Good times.

And the packing continues…

Pumas and Penguins. The post is brought to you by Panimals.

Two a.m.  I opened my eyes and surveyed my surroundings.  Like a puma, I glanced from one thing to another, processing, remembering, analyzing.  Unlike a puma, I scraped my face off of the arm of the couch and realized that the restroom was whispering sweet nothings in my ear with an intensity reserved only for the aftermath of strong spirits and venti americanos.  With the appropriate feeling of urgency, I slowly made my way to that most sacred of spaces, and performed the age-old ritual. 

For what felt like about ten minutes.

While twiddling my thumbs and rolling my eyes at my bladder, I began to wax philosophical.   What can I say, I’m a multi-tasker.  If I were in the Roman Empire and had to use public toilets, would people laugh at me for my skill of longevity?   If my puma avatar wanders the jungle and squats with meek abandon, having sucked the wildebeest so dry that straw noises ensued, would the boy pumas think me unlady-like?  For a moment, I pictured Cerberus, who lives in my living room.  Somehow when she does her business it appears dainty, even though her number twos could fertilize several corn fields and make some home growers very happy.  Why is that “business” to dog?  Is it because they can’t do banking?  I’ve heard of dogs who get their own credit cards because of name errors on those junk mail credit card offers.  Would that then be their “business,” leaving bodily functions in a secondary role of recreation?

Having made sufficient progress in this line of thought, I proceeded to brief and prepare for a return to the couch that still probably retained traces of my last siege.  I unscrewed the twist-turn lock and pulled.  The door didn’t budge.  I tried unscrewing it more, but couldn’t get it to move further.  I pulled as hard as I could, and try as I might, I could not get out of the bathroom.  I was trapped.  In my mind, the puma growled, sliced the door to smithereens, snapped the hinges in half, then peed on the whole pile with satisfaction.  And longevity.  In reality, however, I started to panic, considered sleeping the night on the tile floor, tried the door again, and, finally, leaned against it beating it with the heel of my hand.

“Lexi.” A voice called from the darkness on the other side.  I think I mumbled something like, “Icanntfig Uroutth Dooorrr…eeehiouirs…” 

Then inspiration hit like a stealth puma in camouflage and it all made sense.

Pushing the door open easily, I trotted past my hosts and returned to see what new travesties I could whip up for their furniture.

Really, though, I needed to get home.  I considered walking, but evaluated the state of the neighborhood in my mind and felt sorry for the punks and robbers that I might have to mess up along the way.  My penguin army, while ever vigilant, has other things on its collective mind right now.  It is currently mapping out my route to Boston and eliminating all construction and repaving the potholes.  Fortunately, however, Sensei Penguin sensed my need and half an hour later a van pulled up.  The driver looked familiar, but it was best not to ask any questions for the sake of maintaining the bad-ass sort of atmosphere that I prefer at three in the morning.

I was home in no time.  Thanks, Penguins.