Jason

So Mickey had an interesting theory on my first date story yesterday. He weighed in with a comment that said, "Maybe, in a bit of cosmic cruelty, Steve was actually THE ONE, and that's why he took so easily to the rejection. The Gods are mean like that, you know. And since then, every relationship termination has been awkward and/or painful sort of as an ironic joke from above."

I don't think Mickey's actually right about that, but what's strange is I was almost relieved he suggested it, because it has occurred to me more than once that I was cursed in some way long, long ago. It wasn't Steve who I think cursed me, though. It was someone a bit earlier than that.

The Steve I mentioned yesterday may have been my first official date, in the "I don't know you that well and we've never hung out or even had much of a conversation before, but let's go to a movie and see how it goes" sense. In reality, though, I had a few of what I'm sure were supposed to be dates two years prior. Unfortunately, because I was exponentially more clueless at fifteen than I am on even my most awkward days now, things never quite went exactly as they were supposed to.

The boy's name was Jason, and we met in a class called Print Media that I'm still not entirely sure why I took. It's notable that I say I MET him there, because as I mentioned yesterday, my high school class was not large. There were merely 100 of us, and this was sophomore year. The fact that our paths hadn't yet crossed in the full academic year prior was beyond strange and unlikely. I had heard his name before, though. Friends who'd gone to the public middle school with him (while I was at the Catholic grade school a few blocks away) would mention him in passing, saying, "Oh, there was this time in 7th grade math when Jason [LastName] did this crazy thing..." And I'd say, "Jason [LastName]? Who's that?" And they'd say, "Oh, you know. Jason [LastName]! Dark hair... about this tall... what, you don't know who he is?"

I did not know who he was, oddly, but then on the first day of school sophomore year, I sat down at a desk in Miss Hildebrant's room, and a kid I had never seen before sat down next to me, and he said, "Hi. I'm Jason [LastName]." And I said, "YOU'RE Jason [LastName]? You are the very last person in our class I've not yet met!"

OK, so that may not be a true and accurate transcription of our conversation. But I do remember it going something like that.

Jason and I became friends immediately, and by Homecoming, it was fairly clear there was a spark of something else between us as well. We were both too clueless to know what to do about it, however, so we remained friends with awkward pre-sexual tension, sort of an early Dawson and Joey thing, minus the coed sleepovers and the years of history. In this scenario, though, I think I was actually the Dawson, and Jason was the Joey. He kept trying to let me know he liked me, but the idea was so foreign to me that I just assumed I was imagining it. Meanwhile, I fell for a curly-haired blond, just like Dawson did, except mine's name was Shane rather than Jen, and mine mostly ignored my interest for the next three years, going so far as to take a triangle-haired girl in strange formal pants to our prom instead of me. Details.

Jason and I were both 15; hence, neither of us had a driver's license. So in the course of the eight months of our pseudo-relationship, we hung out outside of our school halls only approximately four times. One was for a day-long yearbook convention (during which we skipped the last two sessions and went to Pizza Hut instead). One was a night when four of our friends invited us to go dancing at an under-18 club, and Jen Lindley Shane got us in a car accident instead. One actually went fairly well... Jason and our friend George (not the name he went by then, but the nickname he used instead is entirely too Googleable) decided to make dinner for me and George's girlfriend Carrie (also a friend of mine) at Carrie's parents' house. The menu was strange and incongruous (I think we had dinner rolls, enchiladas, boiled carrots, and Jell-o), but it was a sweet gesture nonetheless. The date that should have been the most date-like, though, was at Jason's house. George and Carrie picked me up and drove all of us over to Jason's house, where we watched one of his favorite horror films on VHS.

I hate horror films. Have I mentioned that? So it should have been a perfect opportunity for me to lean over and bury my face in Jason's arm or chest. I was going through some strange phase where my stomach growled inexplicably every night, however, and I was so self-conscious about the noise that I leaned forward, chin resting on the palm of my hand, for nearly the entire film. Jason kept suggesting I relax and lean back on the couch. I told him I was tired and thought I'd fall asleep if I didn't sit forward.

I promise I'm not making this up. WHY do I remember that, down to the ridiculous detail?

When the movie ended, George and Carrie rushed out of Jason's house to the car obviously and abruptly, leaving Jason and me staring cluelessly at each other. It would have been the perfect moment to become my "first kiss" story, but it wasn't in the cards that night. We said an awkward goodbye at the door, and never really recovered from it.

A month or so later, presumably frustrated by the inertia of our non-relationship, Jason said some not-so-nice things about me that I know now he didn't really mean. At the time, though, it infuriated me, and when I confronted him about it, he replied with more unwarranted meanness, and suddenly we were in a strange, nasty fight that I don't think either of us could explain even then, much less now. People I'd never talked to before came up to me in the halls to say, "I heard you and Jason [LastName] broke up!" We were never officially dating, but apparently our non-breakup was big news. Even my mother heard about it (via my older sister, of course). The only thing she knew about Jason [LastName] was that he'd sent me a rose and a teddy bear on Valentine's Day, which obviously should have been enough of a clue to both of us that I had an almost-boyfriend, and yet neither one of us seemed to take it as such.

Where was I going with all of this? Oh yes. A curse. Jason ended up getting an EMT certification after high school. He's also been a volunteer firefighter and is now a nurse. In high school, however, he was obsessed with horror movies, and wanted nothing more than to be a special effects artist. He made gorey masks and severed body parts at home for fun, using liquid latex and the ink from Bic red pens. It was a strange hobby, but he was passionate about it in a surprisingly not-creepy way. His enthusiasm was almost endearing. Still, there were moments when I wondered what he'd created that he hadn't shown me. A comment our friend George made once had me wondering for weeks whether Jason had some strange latex replica of me (or, of portions of me) at home. Somehow my brain went from imagining a creepy latex representation of me to presuming that Jason was dabbling in the Dark Arts, to assuming that of COURSE he had placed a curse on me.

I'm summarizing, of course. My mind works in absurd and inexplicable ways, but if I were to detail all of the transitions, I like to think it might make at least a modicum of sense.

In any case, I decided that Jason had cursed me. The fact that I'd irreparably botched things with the first boy I liked who liked me back was somehow bound to haunt all my future encounters from that point forward. It sounds ridiculous, I realize, but I haven't fully conveyed the ugliness between Jason and me post-"breakup." Our last year of school, I asked him for one of his senior photos, and he refused to give me one, on the grounds that, "You're a punk, and there's still a lot of stuff there..." "Jason, that was two years ago!" I replied. And he said, "Yeah, and it'll be another 12 years."

Strangely, I actually ran into Jason 12 years later. It was Christmas night four years ago, and my dad hadn't looked well since the night before. We were worried he was having a stroke (he was, as it turns out, but it was a minor one, thankfully, with no pronounced residual effects), so we took him to the emergency room of the nearest hospital. Jason [LastName] was on staff that night. I hadn't seen him since graduation, but we had a warm, friendly small talk conversation. I actually wanted to say "I'm sorry" and somehow resolve the pointless feud I never really knew why we were in. I didn't, though, of course.

I do wish I'd asked him to lift the curse, however.

Here I go again (on my own?)

OK, so tell me exactly why I thought signing on for NaBloPoMo again this year was a good idea? Lofty goals? Creature of habit? Sad lemming? Delusions that, where prizes are concerned, third time's a charm? I'm not sure, really, but the fact that I'm beginning my very first post of NaBlo '08 nearly 22 hours into the day indicates a bit of a dubious start.

Never mind that, though. I've got a theme to begin! I took a poll in which several of you voted, and as of right now, 69.05% of you said I should talk about dates for the next month. And really, who better to rattle on about dating than the girl who is home alone at 9:30 on a Saturday, drinking Malbec in her yoga pants instead of being out on an actual date? Seriously, WHO? I am totally qualified to elaborate on this theme, seriously.

Did I mention I have had the better part of a bottle of Malbec tonight? Um, yeah. I have. First post of NaBloPoMo and it's a drunk post at that. Whoo.

So before I begin, a bit of old business. I am no longer juggling two men. I decided Thursday evening that if I hadn't given Bachelor #2 more than a passing thought since our fifth date last Sunday, it was probably a fairly clear indication that I was just not that into him, so I released him via email yesterday. How'd he take it? Not so well, actually. It turns out, no matter how nicely I let a guy down, he takes it personally and lashes back in defensiveness. Seriously, people--I do not know my own power. The fact that any male would be hurt that I don't want to touch him is beyond perplexing to the memory of 18-year-old me. Seriously, where WERE all you men who think I'm so fantastic now when I was in high school and college?? I should just enjoy the moment in some strange, unsatisfying way, but instead, I can't help but cry "No fair!" All of life is a Seinfeld episode, and I'm totally in Bizarro World.

Bachelor #1 is still in the picture, incidentally, though I remain in "keeping my options open" mode. He is the aforenicknamed "Arty-looking IT guy" who made me pony up for membership in my last round of e-dating in the first place. I never did come up with a better blog alias for the guy, so perhaps we should just use initials and call him AW. I like AW quite a lot, and yet, something is holding me back. Any number of psychologists might call out my fear of commitment or some other interpersonal issue requiring therapy. My friends, on the other hand, dismiss the dilemma more simply and quickly by saying, "It sounds like you're done with him." Who is right? Time will tell. Meanwhile I'm still in Wait and See mode.

All right then. That catches you up on new business (which I think I actually referred to as old business... Robert's Rules, anyone? I've said before that I'm not much of a club-joiner, so it should be no surprise that I don't know how these things work). ANYWAY, on to NaBloPoMo. I promised you stories of 30 dates in 30 days, and where better to start than my very FIRST date? Seems a logical jumping-off point, doesn't it?

As I'm sure I've said before (like, in paragraph 4 of this very post, actually), I'm a bit of a late bloomer. Hence, I didn't date much in my formative years. There was a guy in 10th grade whom I consider "my first pseudo-boyfriend" (perhaps I'll write about him next), but my first formal "I'd like to take you on something we'll formally call a DATE" invitation didn't come until senior year of high school. True to the ridiculousness that is high school, the invitation came in hand-written note form, passed from the asker to my friend Cary and then on to me. Strangely, it wasn't even a guy I saw regularly or had any sort of spark of chemistry with prior. But for some reason, he decided "Stefanie! I should ask Stefanie out." Hence, the note relayed to me in 2nd hour Physics class.

The guy's name was Steve, and while he was perfectly nice, I had no interest in him beyond "friend of a friend" status. One of those "friend of a friend"s was my friend Rick (who, as a sidenote, recently Facebook-friended me but has yet to send a message or comment of any sort to make the re-connection any less false or awkward-like). It was Rick who said, "Well, obviously you two aren't going to 'go' together, but you should say yes anyway. I mean, if nothing else, Free Movie! Just go. It'll make him happy."

So we went. As I recall, we went with Rick and one of my best female friends, and she and Rick for some reason sat behind us at the theater, as if they were in chaperone mode. I don't even remember what the movie was, which is strange because I'm sure I knew last year and even last week. (Malbec? Can we blame the Malbec? Does wine temporarily erase memories that have been fixed in place for 15 years or more?) [UPDATE: Addams Family! It was The Addams Family. No idea why I forgot that for a couple of hours...] And while I remember driving to the movie as a foursome, I know it was Steve and Steve alone who dropped me off at my parents' house that night. And as he idled in the driveway, our family dog barking at the unfamiliar car suspiciously, he turned to me and said, "So! We do this again sometime?" Given that I was just as nervous and in just as uncharted territory as he apparently was, I didn't question his foreign exchange student-like sentence structure. With my hand on the door release, I just said, "Um, how about I get back to you on that?" and then I quickly dashed out of the car and into the house.

Strangely, he never asked me out again. Stranger still, it never became any sort of awkward sticking point. My graduating class was a class of merely 100, and yet, as far as I know, no one knew we went out, and as far as I know, he gave it no more than a second thought after that night.

Sometimes I long for the simplicity of youth. Where anonymity and moving on briskly is concerned, high school is not generally a time I think back on fondly. That said, if I could channel the Me who successfully dodged another date way back so long ago, I would. Somehow, that clueless and inexperience self mastered something I can't seem to accomplish today.

Mid-week post of no import

So it looks like I'll be regaling you with even more dating stories come November. Thank you to everyone who voted in the poll. I thought perhaps those stories had grown tiresome, but it seems where my social awkwardness is concerned at least 26 of you are a tireless bunch. I may actually still do a more true-to-the-original take on that x365 idea at some point. Or, you know, I may forget all about it, just as I apparently did the last three letters of the Encyclopedia of Me. Time will tell.

Of course, I still haven't officially signed up for NaBloPoMo, which means I could still back out. (Changing mind, woman's prerogative and all that.) I have this possibly misguided and overly optimistic idea, however, that once I've decided to do it, I will DO it, despite my lax participation on the Internet of late. Then again, I decided to clean out my closet last weekend, and the unfinished remains of that project are still strewn about several rooms of my home, taunting me and my lack of stick-to-itiveness, so maybe I'm not so against abandoning my best intentions after all. I am inherently lazy(ish)... Hmm. Perhaps I should give this some more thought.

Speaking of laziness, I did manage to overcome that long enough to finally put in a few volunteer hours for the Obama campaign last night. Those of you in Minnesota, when you receive a flyer on your doorknob next week reminding you to vote, be aware that yours truly might have counted that very flyer out and bundled it in stacks to be delivered to your neighborhood. That's pretty exciting, I know. Almost makes you want to keep it forever, rather than recycle it Tuesday evening, right? What? If I told you that flyer was possibly touched not just by me, but by one of the regulars from "Crairie Pome Hompanion," THEN would you be more impressed? No? No crazed NPR nerds here? OK then. That said, "ue-Say ott-Scay" did spend her evening sorting and collating along with us common people last night, presumably of her own accord as a concerned and active Democrat, not just as a local celebrity. I'm sure the Homegrown Democrat she works for would be proud.

Let's see. What else? Well, I am both pleased and sad to report that there will be no more stories about my least favorite coworker, because as of last week she is no longer my coworker. Luckily, I can confidently say that her release had nothing to do with the big scary mess with the economy that we keep hearing about and had everything to do with her being an insufferable and near-useless drama queen. So yay for that, though boo to the fact that I'm now stuck doing about half of the work she previously did poorly.

Speaking of which, my Lean Cuisine tray is empty and my lunch break is just about up, so I'd best be getting back to that. What's new with all of you this fine Wednesday?

If I keep this up, I'll end up accidentally marrying one of these guys

Him: So, do you want to go out again?

What I was thinking: Um, I don't know... I mean, I like you, and I've been having fun hanging out with you, but I'm not sure I really feel it going anywhere. It sort of feels like a friend thing. Maybe something more could build from that, but maybe not. Frankly, to be blunt, I'm not sure I'm ever going to want to rip your clothes off. Plus, I've been dating this other guy at the same time, and I feel weird that I haven't told you that, even though we've in no way said we're doing anything exclusive here (and even though I'm not sure I want to rip his clothes off either), so my attention is sort of divided and frankly I'm just not sure I want to keep making time to date both of you. Or either of you. GAH; I don't KNOW!

What I SAID: Sure!

Seriously, who am I, and what happened to the date-and-run girl who used to live here???

In other news, NaBloPoMo is quickly approaching. Seeing as my blogging's been less than prolific of late, I don't know why I think signing on for that might be a good idea, but as I've done it the past two years, it does feel wrong not to give it a go a third time.

I realize, though, that the only thing that got me through NaBlo last year was a theme. Those of you who were around for that may remember I did this "Encyclopedia of Me" thing that several other people picked up on as well. (Some of you may also remember that I never actually finished the alphabet, but I did finish my full month of posting, so let's just forget about that little detail.)

Anyway, so I need a theme. And I thought I'd come up with one. I decided to do a "30 Dates in 30 Days" collection. Not that I would actually go on 30 dates in 30 days, mind you. (Aside from the fact that with all that dating, I would have no time to write about the dates, I think my four-date week a while back proved that no good can come from a marathon like that.) Instead I would simply write about 30 dates, current ones or amusing or painful ones from my past. You'd read that, right? Maybe?

But then tonight I read about this x365 project, and I thought that could make a good theme as well. Instead of 40-word posts about 365 people I've known, however, I'd do 30-word posts about 30 people. That could be fun, right? It would also guarantee all my posts would be short, meaning that those of you whose feed readers fill to capacity during NaBlo could happily zip through my line in your list in a minute or less. (I'm here to help, people. I have only your short attention spans best interests in mind.)

So help me out here, folks. What should I do? I'm not ready to let you guys pick my future husband quite yet, but I will let you pick my NaBloPoMo theme. (Maybe. I think. Aw, hell, just vote!)


This is my first attempt at including a poll, by the way. If it doesn't work, I think you can go here to complete it instead. Let's see!

I Looked Homelessness in the Face and Said, “Not Today, Sir”

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Those of you with blogs of your own... Do you ever wish a post would just appear in your Inbox some morning, already written for you? It turns out, sometimes that actually happens! Or, it does if you have a friend who's a former blogger who still has a story or two in him every now and then.

Friends, our pal Darren is back. At this rate, we may just convince him to reinstate his own blog yet. In the mean time, I'm happy to host his guest posts. Take it, Darren.

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I have lived in New York City off and on for more than eleven years now.

Well, sort of. I mean, I stayed in New York for ten weeks during the summer of 1997 for a college internship and then returned permanently in the fall of 2000 before leaving in 2006 only to come back in 2007. Did you follow that? Eh, it doesn't matter.

Let's just say that my relationship with New York has spanned enough years that I could be one of those annoying New Yorkers who say things like, "The Lower East Side? The Lower East Side, man?! Man, I remember a time when these college kids woulda been scared shitless to find themselves in the Lower East Side! Now they got Starbucks down there and Urban Outfitters and I don’t know what all…"

In the two decades I've spent in New York (sounds even more impressive, huh?), I have never once given a homeless person money. Not a single dime. It's not that I don't feel sorry for homeless people or don't realize that many if not most of them are suffering from mental illness or from addiction or don't think that there's something absurd about the idea that anyone living in the wealthiest nation on the planet should be homeless. Wait. Let me see what the stock market is doing right now.

Yep, okay. Still the wealthiest. Wait! Yep, still the wealthiest.

I don't give money to homeless people because the cynic in me doesn't believe the man begging for change on the steps of the uptown Sixty-sixth Street 1 stop has been saving the change he's received from all the various subway passengers who have dropped money in his paper cup and that my twenty-five cents will be the twenty-five cents that will finally allow him to get a shave and haircut, buy a passable off the rack suit, run copies of his long dormant resume off at Kinko's, get a job at an accounting firm willing to take a chance on a long shot, and reclaim the long-suffering wife and children he left all those years ago when the grind of our work-a-day world just became too much and he "dropped out for a little while." No, the cynic in me tells me that that twenty-five cents is going directly toward the purchase of a pint of Nikolai 100 Proof. I don't want to be an enabler, teach a man to fish, etc., etc., which is why I prefer to donate a little money every year to homeless outreach organizations and shelters and that kind of thing*.

So you can imagine the irony or whatever you'd call it when I gave not a dime nor twenty-five cents nor even a dollar to a homeless man last night after work but a whole twenty bucks. To put this into perspective for you, I cancelled my Netflix membership because $16.99 a month?! Oh, that money could go toward so many other things every month!

I'm a tightwad is what I'm saying.

It all began after leaving the grocery yesterday evening after purchasing cottage cheese and getting twenty dollars cash back for the Laundromat I'd be going to later that night. As I walked along the sidewalk, I saw a hulking man in dreadlocks, dressed from head to toe in orange, and lumbering right down the middle of the path directly toward me. He was wobbly, and I could smell even from that distance that he was drunk. He yielded none of the sidewalk to me, and we collided. I felt his hand catch on the plastic grocery bag I was carrying and then release a second later. I turned to see if our knocking into each other was intentional on his part and saw him bend down to pick some of his belongings up off the pavement. He seemed fine, I was fine, no harm-no foul, so there was no reason to stick around.

On the next block, I stopped to tie my shoe, and as I was finishing with the lace, I saw a huge orange mass fill up the corner of my left eye. "This can’t be good," I thought to myself.

I'm not a racist person. I'm not. Whatever my thoughts are about people of different color is learned behavior from growing up in a predominantly white suburb and raised by parents who responded to driving through the rougher parts of Indianapolis by referring to black people euphemistically as "minorities" and telling my brother and I in hushed tones to lock our car doors. To this day, my mother will warn me whenever my visits to my home city coincide with "Black Expo" – an annual convention held, according to the organization's website, "to be an effective voice and vehicle for the social and economic advancement of African-Americans" – to stay inside the house. For the love of God, stay inside the house! "It's Black Expo," she'll whisper as if that sums up everything there is to know.

So as one of the only white people in my predominantly black and Latino Harlem neighborhood, I am forever resisting the ingrained response to view all around me with a case of raging heebie-jeebies. "Don't panic," I told myself as I stood to face the towering dreadlocked man in orange. The one who had followed me for an entire city block. The one reeking of beer. "I bet he just wants to talk about Obama."

"Can you hear me?" he asked.

"What?" I asked back.

"Can you hear me now? Because I've been calling after you for a few minutes now." His lower teeth were brown nubs.

"Oh! Right. I had my headphones in." Which was true. I hadn't heard a thing as I had been listening to my beloved collection of soft rock hits from the nineteen seventies, AM Gold. As the collision and shoe tying and everything else had transpired, I had been on Volume Four, 1974, which is why Charlie Rich's "The Most Beautiful Girl" will forever remind me of this man in orange.

"But you can hear me now," he said more than asked.

"Yes...," I said with hesitation.

"All right. Let me tell you what happened." The man in orange went on to relate his version of events; how I had knocked into him, caused the fingers of his right hand extreme pain as they caught my grocery bag, and he had dropped the possessions in his hand to the pavement as a result.

Whenever faced with a difficult situation or wrongdoing on my part, I think I do what a lot of people do and that's play dumb. I have so perfected the "What? Really?!" response to confrontation that I'll gladly take on any lie detector in the world. But last night I went beyond playing dumb and entered full acting mode. James Lipton is going to want to arrange for me to come by the Actors Studio because I can now tell him and every one of the eager young faces in the audience with authority about "the craft" after last night's performance.

"Wait, wait, wait," I said as I squinted my eyes and shook my head. "What are you talking about?"

My tone and expression might have said, "What on earth does this have to do with me?" but the man in orange wasn't buying it. "I know you know what I'm talking about," he said, "because I saw you turn around and look." Sigh. Caught in my own lies by a man who chugs forties of Ballantine the way a runner might down bottled water after a marathon.

"Oh, right," I said. "Gee, I'm sorry. I thought we had just bumped into each other."

"No. We didn't," the man said. "You caught my fingers."

"Oh, well, gosh. I'm really sorry." I might have tossed in a nervous "golly" and a "gee-willikers" in there for good measure, but I'm not sure.

"Uh-huh. Well-well-well, that don't matter because I want to show you this." At this point he produced his glasses. The right lens had a large crack in the center. The crack might have been old, it might have been fresh, but at this point, it was his word against mine and he was much bigger than me.

"Now this is a problem," he went on. "You see, because I gotta be at work, so what I want to know is: Can you come with me to LensCrafters?"

"Um. No," I said.

"No? But you see, I have to get to work, and I don't have time – You can't come to LensCrafters with me? This is going to cost me."

"No, I really can't. I have to get somewhere... for this thing..."

"Well, how am I supposed to pay for this? There's nothing you can do?"

"Yeah, wow... That's rough..." Even as the words were leaving my mouth, I was reaching into my pant pocket for the twenty dollar bill I had gotten from the checkout girl at the grocery not five minutes before. I'm not sure if it was me or time itself, but the whole process seemed to move in slow motion. I love no other movie more than I love Raiders of the Lost Ark, and this moment reminded me of Indiana Jones jumping past poison darts, leaping over chasms, and outrunning the enormous boulder only to be forced into relinquishing the golden idol to the evil rival collector. This was Fate saying to me, "Again we see there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away."

"This is what I can do," I said, holding out the twenty dollar bill and swallowing hard.

The man in orange turned half way around sulkily. "Man! That's it – This is going to cost me seventy or eighty dollars!"

"It's all I have!" I insisted.

"Man!"

"I swear! Do you want me to show you my wallet? It's empty!" NOTE TO SELF: Never offer to show your wallet to a stranger who has been following you.

"No, I don't wanna see your wallet! Aw, man!" Suddenly, the man caught himself. "Well, now, okay. Okay. You did help. You did. I have to give you that. You helped."

I sensed that I was being let off the hook, so I started to turn to walk the other way. "I'm really, terribly, gosh-diddily-darn sorry," I said. Why do I turn into Ned Flanders whenever I'm nervous?

"Yeah, yeah," the man in orange said.

"I hope you get everything fixed," I said not too convincingly.

The man too had turned to walk in the opposite direction. "Yuh-huh," he said over his shoulder. I heard him continue to grumble about the twenty dollars as he went.

I knew exactly how he felt.

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* Insert the words "will" and "one of these days" on either side of the word "prefer" in the second part of that sentence.
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Tidbits without pants

1. First off, I should clarify that I am wearing pants. But for some reason, whenever I think the word "tidbits" in my head, it is followed by "without pants." Can anyone tell me WHY? Because I have no idea. I must have read it somewhere. Did one of you use that as a post title once? No? I'm just a crazy lady? I thought so.
   
   
2. Speaking of pants (or no pants), I am totally following Miss Pants's lead with the itemized list of randomness. How's it working for you so far? (Don't answer that.)
   
   
3. In the past 24 hours, I have squashed no fewer than four tiny flying gnat-like things in my bathroom and computer room. There is no food in my kitchen that might explain a fruit fly infestation, my windows have not been open for weeks, and my garbage can should contain nothing particularly organic or questionable at the moment. So WHERE are they coming from? I am terrified I am eventually going to find a rotting, scary, long-forgotten nectarine that rolled behind a piece of furniture somewhere, but I am too mortified (read: lazy) to look for it.
   
   
4. That reminds me of a story. Not the story involving the fruit fly infestation around my desk at work last summer (because I am still too horrified to share how that happened), but a story from when I first moved into my house five years ago. Because you don't have to worry about earning back a rental deposit when you sell a house, the previous owners didn't bother to clean a single room of my new home before I moved in. (I only hope karma paid them back nicely for that one.) As a result, I spent my first day here surrounded by boxes, on my hands and knees scrubbing my refrigerator, toilet, and bathtub. Good times. A couple days later, my good friend Lisa (bless her heart) came over to help me scrub away the sticky yellow grime that mysteriously coated nearly every surface in my kitchen. At some point about halfway into the project, Lisa looked up and cried, "I keep expecting to find a whole pork chop in here!" We never found one, but I wouldn't have been surprised if we had.
   
   
5. This afternoon, my favorite coworker sent me an email that said, "I am pulling an HMC* and leaving for a bit without telling anyone where I'm going. I'd explain, but I'm sure you would say it was TMI. I'll be back shortly." Because you can't get a message like that and not be curious, I replied, and she finally admitted that my half-joking guess was correct and she had some indelicate stomach issues that she didn't want to attend to in our office's not-so-soundproof one-seater located in a high-traffic area in the center of the building. I thought perhaps she'd made the quick drive back to her own house for the Home Toilet Advantage**, but she later explained that she'd instead run to the public library (a half-block away) and relieved herself there. Rather than being incredulous or mortified, I told her that was actually a brilliant idea and I would have to remember it the next time I find myself in a similar emergency situation. The problem, of course, is that now should I ever tell her, "I'm going to the library," she is going to think I'm using this new secret code to give her more information than she needs about my digestive tract. It turns out there's a reason we don't talk about this sort of thing in polite company, isn't there?
   
   * HMC is an acronym we use for the coworker we can't stand. It's not even that great of a nickname, so that's all I'll say about that.
   
   ** I just tried to Google my way back to the blog where I originally heard this term, and while I didn't find the one I was looking for, I did find a few other blogs that mentioned it. And because I was foolish enough to click on them, those blog owners are going to see me in their search engine hits and wonder about me the same way I have wondered about everyone who's ever Googled their way to MY blog with the words "human castration story." (I swore I would never type that here again, but frankly, the damage is already done and those searchers are never, ever going away, so once more really can't do any harm.)
   
   
6. The coworker we can't stand recently threatened to sue the gym where we all get free memberships. I think my boss is officially exasperated with her. Also, we learned that the gym personnel have their own special nickname for my least favorite coworker, and it's actually way better than ours. I cannot share it without giving away said coworker's last name, but I will say that it starts with "Evil" and rhymes with the name of a famous motorcycle daredevil named "Evel [something similar to my coworker's last name]." It's brilliant, really.
   
   
7. Speaking of the gym, I think a sixty-year-old man may have hit on me there yesterday. Or not. Maybe he was just being friendly. He glanced over as I was getting up from the weight machine next to him, and he said, "Is that enough weight for you?" Because I am paranoid, I answered, "Uh, I think so. Why? Am I a wuss?" He laughed and said, "No! I actually meant the opposite! That was supposed to be a compliment!" And then he followed me around the weight room, choosing the machine next to mine three separate times, twice clarifying, "I meant that as a compliment! I'm sorry!" Um, OK sir. I'm just going to turn my iFraud up a bit now, 'kaythanksbye.
   
   
8. Sunday night I went to a David Sedaris reading, and tonight I am going to a Sarah Vowell one. I'm pretty sure neither of them would ever type a random list of mini-stories and call it publishable. We'll just say that's one more reason I'm not the writer either of them is.