Always Stories…

I’m not sure if it’s just that the air freshner finally totally died, or if the cause of the smell was removed but has now returned…but it looks like the smell is back. The air freshner has been almost gone for a couple of weeks, and I’ve been getting little whifs of the smell, but I’ve been ignoring it b/c thinking that the smell is back makes me want to cry. I don’t know why having to face it again makes me so upset, but it does.

Right after the AC unit was replaced my landlord came back to ask if the smell was gone, and I told him that the air freshner was still working, but that I thought the smell might not be gone.

He said “But we changed the AC unit, so it has to be gone.”

I said “we changed the AC unit because we THOUGHT that’s where the smell was coming from.”

He said “But if the AC unit is gone, then the smell is gone.”

I said “Not if the smell wasn’t coming from the AC unit.”

He sighed and looked at me for a minute and said, “well lets just give it a week and see, ok?”

That was several weeks ago. I’ve had a couple of occasions where i thought I smelled the smell, but I just turned up the air freshner fan b/c as I’ve said, I can’t deal.

But the little pot of chemical air freshner is 100% empty and just now when I went into my room I got more than just a whif of the smell. 

So to recap, here is what we know:
1. Air Freshner will cover the smell.
2. It probably isn’t coming from the AC Unit

Here is what we don’t know:
What’s causing it!!

I was at Wolftrap tonight to see Great Big Sea and Eddie From Ohio . We had seats about 4 rows from the back, so I had a good view of the whole theater. Great Big Sea is Irish folk music, and so the seating area was a mix of people who were up and dancing and people who were sitting. Those were dancing were doing so with vigor: parents were dancing in the aisles with their kids, a woman near the front was wrapped in a flag doing variations on Irish jigs,  whole sections were swaying/jumping/waving their arms together… in other words, it was a totally normal Great Big Sea experience. Including the pockets of people who chose to remain seated, and just accepted that that they would be sitting among dancing people. Generally.

2 rows in front of us was a girl – maybe 9 years old. Clearly a huge fan of GBS because she was singing and dancing her heart out. She was with another girl around her same age and several adults, presumably family members. Next to her was a slightly older woman who I decided was an aunt. This girl caught my eye early in because she was so into it. I watched her swinging her hips (such as they are on a 9year old girl) and waving her arms and I thought “this is a girl who will always be the life of the party.”

As the third or fourth song came to a close, I noticed this man stand up in front of the dancing girl, turn around, get down in her face and say “Look you little brat, if you —(inaudible) one more time, I’m going to—(inaudible – but clearly nothing nice)” I was stunned not only by what he said but by the pure anger & hate that was imprinted on his face. Dancing girl’s aunt jumped between the girl and angry man and judging from her hand gestures was telling the guy to relax/back off. Angry guy turned his attention to her, continuted yelling while pointing at dancing girl, who had become frozen in place the moment he started to yell at her. I couldn’t figure out what he was saying b/c I couldn’t really hear anymore and I couldn’t see his mouth to read his lips, but I’m sure it wasn’t any nicer. So then another woman from their group whom I decided was dancing girl’s mother got up and totally started yelling at angry guy – something to effect of she didnt’ care what dancing girl had done, he had no right to speak to dancing girl that way. He yelled back at the mother, and started alternately motioning to the girl and the ushers at the back of the seating area. Then the girl’s dad, who was not a small man, stood up. When angry guy saw him stand up he stopped yelling, but didn’t move. Dad looked at him without saying a word and then turned toward the aisle and started walking toward the ushers. Mom returned to yelling at angry guy, and another adult male who was with them stands up and looks like he’s going to get involved. Suddenly angry guy runs down his row and up the aisle as well (with his wife in tow. A long suffering wife, I have no doubt). I don’t know what happened to him after that, but my friend said that she saw him sitting in the back, so I would like to believe that he realized the crowd was going to turn on him, and decided to follow dad to appeal to the ushers. My friend says she saw him sitting in the back, so I think the ushers reseated him, taking the side of dancing girl.

As soon as angry guy is gone, the girl unfreezes and sinks into her seat, and the people behind me start yelling “keep dancing! Forget him! Keep dancing!” After a few seconds the girl gets up and moves down the row to her mom and upon reaching her sinks to her knees crying. The people sitting immediately behind mom lean forward and offer support, making dismissive gestures in the direction of where angry guy had been. After a remarkably short time the girl pulls it together and goes back to her seat. An older woman who was sitting near angry guy gets up and comes over to make sure dancing girl is ok and encourage her to keep dancing (I assume, I couldn’t read her lips very well, but she was clearly being comforting and supportive).  The aunt turns around and says to all of us in general, ”its a concert! what does he expect?” and several people voice their agreement. In the row between my row and dancing girl’s row was a family with 2 younger girls with two empty seats next to them and they invited the girl and her friend to come back to their row to dance if angry guy came back. (I also have to mention that angry guy  was sitting in the middle of a pocket of open seats. He had his choice of moving left, right or one or even 2 rows down if he really wanted to get away from the child).

And this is what really struck me about the whole thing – the way the entire section rallied around dancing girl.  Maybe it seems like a small or unremarkable occurance, but for me it was an amazing thing to watch.  I’ve become fairly misanthropic of late, and this was a moving example of humanity/community.

All of this drama took place while the band was chatting up the audience, and by the time the next song started, the girl was ready to dance again. Sort of. Her level of enthusiasm was much lower and every few minutes she would look over her shoulder and scan for the return of angry guy.

After bravely dancing through almost two songs the girl suddenly decided to take advantage of the invitation to move to the open seats behind her. The family welcomed her with smiles and arm waving and the little girls clammored to dance next to her. Within minutes the dancing girl is showing the little girls how to dance like her, and dad is taking pictures like his kids are with a rock star. By the end of Great Big Sea’s set, she had returned to her full energetic-hip shaking-arm waving-singing-along-to-every-word- form.

Angry guy I assume sat in the back refusing to enjoy the concert.

I keep finding myself repeating “I’m so over it” in my head lately. What is “it” you ask?  Apparently just about everything. Annoying/obnoxious clients. Being “president” of a company. Fundraising. Helping people. Dating.

What does it mean to be ”over it”? I’m not entirely sure, since the thought/reaction formation is unbidden – it just pops into my head in response to just about every experience these days. Client’s demanding impossible things, or just plain old bitching about things that are and can’t be changed. I used to apply my communication and reasoning skills and find a way to calm them, make them see, come up with a solution. But now? Now, I’m over it. Now I just listen, nod, answer when required, try not to roll my eyes (unless it’s on the phone, then I’m all about the eye rolling) and wait for the interaction to be over.

Fundraising/Helping people. Yeah, I’m pretty much over it. Which is awesome since that’s my job (for the moment). It took 10 years, but I’m finally over the bleeding-heart, poor-non-profits, lets-help-them-change-the-world, anything-is-possible crap. What changed? I’m over being taken for granted, and constantly being nickel and dimed on my fees. I’m over being held accountable for not being able to change the time/space continuum,  and I’m over saying the same things to different groups over and over again (which is what consulting basically is, so I guess I’m over consulting too). I’m really, really over not being paid on time (or at all). The people who have no problem paying their car payments, or their cable bills, or their credit cards on time somehow can’t manage to pay my invoice within a 2 week window.  Every single month. Which means I’m late paying people. Which sucks.

Which reminds me of something else I’m over: “Debt”. So over being in debt. Particularly being in debt to other small business owners who were naive enough to work with me thinking they’d get paid. Because they assumed I’d get paid. I’m sure they are all over it too.

Dating. I had a new e-harmony guy. He initiated with me, b/c I was close to done with dating and had stopped even looking at the e-harmony “We’ve got a match for you!” emails. He was consistent with responding to each stage within a day (this is considered quick in the world of E-harmony), and his responses were consistently funny and warm (also unique). When we got to open communication (emailing) he immediately wrote a nice email with good questions in it. After a few emails, I suggested we move to the phone and gave him my phone number. His response: “when would be the best time to call you?” And this is where I started to pay attention. Every other guy, when receiving my phone number has responded only with “ok. Here’s mine too.” And then we are left in this limbo of “do I call, do I wait for him to call, do I ask when he’s going to call, and if I do is that being too uptight/stereotypical female trying to rush/control everything?” And yes, I know I could say “when is a good time to call you?” But goddamn it, I want him to be a man and take the lead. Call me old fashioned, call me anti-feminist, but my life and my work are all about me being in control, setting the pace, calling the shots, being responsible for getting shit done, and so in my personal life, I would just like the guy who claims to want to date me, to behave like a “man” (acknowledging all the archetypal levels to this label) and make the first move. That’s it. Just make the first move. I’ll make the second (and probably most of the ones after that, b/c let’s face it, I am who I am).

So when this most recent guy asked “when would be a good time to call”, and after I told him said “ok, I’ll call you tonight or tomorrow night,” I took notice. I started to think he might be different. Add to that the fact that I confirmed that his pictures were taken within the last month, which means I wouldn’t have to apply the standard “20% downward adjustment” to his photos in preparation of meeting, I thought this could be something.

And yet, I still wasn’t particularly excited or anxious about his call. On the first night I spontaneously went out to dinner with a friend and forgot my cell phone. I was mildly concerned about not keeping my end of the bargain by being available when I said I’d be available, but oh well. But he didn’t call. The second night, I wasn’t in a great mood and was worried that I wouldn’t provide my normal level of sparkling conversation when he called…

But he didn’t call, so it was ok. OK, except that he didn’t call. Which just takes the shine right off his initial pro-activeness.

I don’t care that he didn’t call, I really don’t. I care that he said he would call, and didn’t call. Aside from my desire to have men who can take the initiative, I also like men who do what they say they are going to do. Perhaps I am unreasonable in this. I’ve ended many an involvement over exactly this issue, and yet, I can’t relent. Don’t make the commitment if you can’t honor it. If he had said “I’ll call you sometime this week” that would have been fine. I would probably have commented to friends about the pervasive inability among men to commit to anything, including a time to call, but I accept that as “the cost of doing business” and it wouldn’t have counted against him.

But now I’m irritated. Not irritated because he didn’t call, but b/c I thought he was different, at least on this point, and he’s not. And maybe my expectations are too high, but the fact is, I have enough going on in my life right now to be irritated about, I don’t need this random guy popping into my life and giving me something else to be irritated about. I would have been better off if I hadn’t responded to his first set of e-harmony questions. And to respond to an initial set of e-harmony questions is to say, to myself at least, that I still have hope. I still believe that there is something out there worth finding. But that’s a whole other blog topic.

He could have recovered if he’d emailed with an explanation. Especially since the one time he didn’t respond to an email within 24 hours he acknowledged the lapse, apologized, and explained why he took so long to write back (he was out of town). All of which were unnecessary. We had no commitment about the pace of email, we had only been emailing for a few days, hardly enough time to establish a pattern. I’d hardly noticed the space between replies, and had he not brought attention to it, I would never have noticed.  But he did, and that is why I expected that when he said he’d call on specific nights, he’d call on one of those nights. Or even the next night. Or send an email explaining.

I just hate when people perform to type, (or archetype, such as it is. I guess I should be careful what I wish for.)  **EDIT: Actually I usually love when people perform to type, but only when it’s funny, like when two middle age people come into a non-starbucks coffee shop wearing pink sweaters and loafers with no socks, and they sit among students and self/un-employed people on their laptops with their giant paper cups of drip coffee, and they drink espresso out of tiny china cups while their tiny dog sticks its head out from the purse that it lives in, while they look around with little smiles on their faces at this “lovely new experience”… I love that kind of performing to type.** 

But anyway, this just brings me back to my constant theme about having a relationship – it has to ENHANCE my life, not detract from it. He needs to act as a positive force, not a negative one. And the truth is that depending on what is going on in my life, the definition of that which is a positive force or an enhancement can vary widely. And right now, pretty much anything that isn’t totally easy or totally fun, is a negative force.

Which is why I’m over it. Over “dating” at least, because “dating” carries with it expectations, goals, time spent on hair and makeup. I’m not, however, over men, just so long as they don’t want to date me. Which, in my normal life (i.e. outside of on-line dating) isn’t usually a problem, so we’re all good. 

I am not a bug person. I hate admitting to anything that is stereotypically “girly”, but…I’m a total girl when it comes to bugs. Although, living alone for the last 4 years has helped me toughen up to some extent – I can now kill most spiders and other things that crawl on the walls. At times the process of killing them is accompanied by lots of screaming and shuddering and false starts…but the point is I do it.

Usually.

A few months ago I was on the phone with my then assistant, and I was walking down the hallway in my apartment and saw something out of the corner of my eye that made me unconsciously duck down. When i looked, I saw the biggest, most disgusting bug I have ever seen. It didn’t look like anything I’d EVER seen before. It was at least 2 inches long, brown, really fat and round. It was like a caterpillar had eaten a small cat and hadn’t digested it yet. It was gross. I screamed into my assistant’s ear upon seeing it and ran to the other side of the apartment (a full 10 feet away) to evaluated the situation.

This was my analysis: It was big. It looked squishy and super gross and it was in the space where the wall met the ceiling, and it was directly above my laundry hamper, which was filled with clothes waiting to be put into the washing machine.

I quickly ran through the likely scenario if I tried to kill it: First lots of screaming, at least 4 false starts, then I make a sissy swing for it with my shoe and mange to only get the back half, whereupon goo squirts out, and the maimed, but not killed bug falls into my laundry hamper, where it will quickly burrow into the pile of clothes, staining everything with its bug goo. It would then live in the dark warm depths of my laundry hamper, because there is NO way I’d go digging through the clothes looking for it, and it would grow strong and eventually come out and eat me while I slept.

Clearly, the only option was to move out. Immediately. My assistant quickly talked me out of that, but when I started dry heaving every time I looked at it (and I had to keep looking at it, b/c the only thing worse than a bug you know about is a bug you know about, but can’t find anymore), she agreed that I probably needed to get some help.

I went outside to see if my landlord was lurking about in the complex, b/c he often was. But not on this day. I called a neighbor who sometimes works from home, and when she didn’t answer, I drove over to her house just in case she was actually home but just didn’t hear the phone. No luck. I returned to my apartment, checked to see the alien bug was still in its spot on the wall, dry heaved when it started moving around – which consisted of half of its slimy worm like body pulling back from the wall and swinging side to side… I’m retching right now just remembering it.

My assistant called me back around this time to get an update and then told me that she had a solution (because she was totally that kind of assistant, solving problems that were way outside her job description). Her solution was that her husband, the now named “bug slayer” who worked about 20 minutes from my house, would come over and kill my bug.

I definitely said to myself ”this is ridiculous – I don’t need to drag a man out of work to kill a bug.” And I said to my assistant “What time will he be here?”

Perhaps the best part of The Bug Slayer coming over to kill the bug, was that he was able to confirm that it was in fact, the biggest, grossest, most alien looking bug he’d ever seen. Which keeps this from being just another story about a girl freaking out over a bug.

So fast forward to a couple of days ago. I’m walking down the hall in my apartment, and just outside the bathoom door, I see another really gross, alien looking bug. It was about 1/100th the size of the original alien bug, and it was low on the wall, and in theory would have been easy enough to kill. Which I was absolutely planning to do. As soon as I took care of a few other tasks (why shouldn’t I procrastinate bug killing – i procrastinate on everything else.) When I came back ready to kill the bug about 20 minutes later, it was gone.

As I’ve already said, the only thing worse than a bug you know about, is a bug you know about and can’t find. It was bed time, and I was stuck – it was last seen very near my bedroom, what if it was now IN my bedroom? My normal solution to this scenario is to leave the hall light on, and turn my bedroom light off, since most bugs like light and so would be drawn outside my bedroom. But then I realized that the alien bug had been in the hallway where the light had been off. Maybe alien bugs like darkness. After a solid 10 minutes of fretting “light on or off?” I went with the standard, light on in hallway, off in bedroom.

The next morning, Saturday, I’m walking into the bathroom and I notice the alien bug laying on its back in the crack between the carpet and the wall. So it hadn’t been missing the night before, it had died and I hadn’t seen it. PHEW. I told myself I’d grab the vacuum and clean that baby up right away. After I had breakfast. And checked my email. And did some laundry. But I was definitely going to get it because Saturday was my cleaning day. And actually, it would make the most sense to just wait until I was ready to vacuum the whole apartment. I mean, its dead, right? Its not like it going anywhere.

Saturday morning is spent cleaning the kitchen and bathroom and my office area, and watching deleted scenes from the last season of The Office on my laptop. Around 2, I decided it was such a beautiful day out, I should really go to the pool and get some writing done. I got back from the pool at 5:15 and only had time to shower and change before leaving for a baseball game. I check on the alien bug, and sure enough, still sitting there, dead. So I decide I’ll just do the vacuuming on sunday, no problem.

Get back from ballgame at 11, check on bug: still there. (I should maybe say at this point, that I KNOW its weird that I invest time in checking to make sure the dead bug is still dead, when it would likely have taken less time overall to just vacuum the damn thing up, but whatever this is my life).

I get up this morning and make breakfast and check my email and generally go about my normal weekend morning routine before I start cleaning. Bu I can’t remember if I checked on the bug this mornign or not.

So I’m sitting on my couch, which is in front of two big windows, and I’m wearing a tank top, and my hair is in a pony tail, and I have my laptop on my lap and I’m responding to email and watching “Brooke Knows Best” on VH1, and I feel this little tickle on my shoulder. I absently brush it away, assuming its just loose strands of hair ticking me in the breeze from the open window. I continue writing and watching, and I feel more ticking. This time I sort of look over my shoulder, don’t see anything, assume it was just the breeze and return my attention to my email and reality TV. About 2 seconds later I feel a much stronger consistent tickling and as I bring my hand back to scratch my shoulder I feel something. I turn my head and come face to face with a giant moth that is flapping and flying all around in the area of my shoulder/neck/hair. PROBLEM.

But I didn’t scream, and I didn’t dump my laptop on the floor, (but I came damn close.) I did make an audible noise, but it wasn’t a scream, more like a weird “yeeee-ahhhghhaaa” sound. I jumped up and carefully set my laptop on the coffee table, and then turned to do battle with this moth…and it was gone. I stood there for a second, and then ran down the hallway to the place where the “dead” bug had been, and it was gone. Big problem. 

Clearly, one of two things has happened. #1 The “dead” bug was in fact a larvea stage alien moth that hatched last night and is now going to eat me.  #2 The dead bug was eaten by the alien moth that somehow got in the apartment last night, and its going to eat me next.

So knowing that there is this gross evil moth somewhere in my coach area (i’m guessing its either in the curtains, or behind the couch under the window sill), I did what I think any rational person would do. I grabbed my laptop from the coffee table, moved over to my desk and wrote a blog about it.

I’m definitely going to deal with it today though. I’ve decided that if i accomplish nothing else today, I will find and destroy this moth.

As soon as I take a shower, and send a few more emails. Oh, and I have to fold some laundry too…

I took a Zumba class tonight at my gym. If you don’t know, Zumba is a new fitness craze where latin dance, meets belly dancing, meets club dancing, to combine into an hour long class where you end up focsing on the instructor’s ass with an unnatural and yet necessary fixation as you attempt to immate her moves. It is a long, hard hour, but its really fun.  Even though I’m really bad. In the begining its just a matter of my natural lack of coordination, then i get tired and I can only think I resemble someone having a small stroke – my brain is definitely communicating clearly with my arms and legs, they just aren’t receiving the message. I know both my arms should be moving, but only one is, and off beat at that, I know I’m supposed to be jumping, and yet I’m kicking, I don’t know why. But it it’s fun. Really.Ok, its a study in self humiliation, but only if i stop to think about it. If I just focus on the instructors ass and believe that I’m moving just like her, then its fun.

Well, today the humiliation inescapable, because today the instructor was 6 months pregnant with twins and “techinically on bed rest”. So it was impossible to escape the fact that at 6 months pregnant her ass was still nicer than mine. Worse, when I couldn’t keep up, I was failing to keep up with a woman who was supposed to be on bed rest and was caring 2 small people in her belly!

Even worse though, was the fact that my two guy friends (who took the class for the first time today) were able to “shake ‘em” way better than me. Maybe that’s why I’m single – I’ve definitely got ‘em, I just don’t know how to shake ‘em…

But the worst part? The worst part was when I accidentally saw myself in the mirror. It’s why dance clubs are dark.

I was supposed to have a date this week. A second date. Normally this would be exciting news that I would almost whisper to close friends for fear of jinxing it with my excitement. Not this time. I just don’t really like this guy. But I still almost whispered news of the second date to my friends anyway, not in an attempt to avoid a jinx, but in an attempt to avoid the criticism; the criticism that I inevitably endure when I decide that one date is enough to know he’s not the one.

Normally my reason is a lack of chemistry. This is never a good enough reason. Not anymore at least. It was when I was in my 20’s. But my reproductive years are running out, my options are growing increasing limited as men are snatched up by those “smart” women who don’t let little things like his inattention, his social inappropriateness, or his man purse prevent them from pairing up. Mind you, I didn’t say “finding true love”, or “being swept away”. Oh no. Because that is not what it is about anymore. Not when you’re a woman in your 30’s. Romantic ideas of head-over-ass love is for young women. Now it’s about being practical. It’s about pairing off and having children. It’s about lowering expectations and it’s about what is really, the true “American way.”

But I can’t stop wondering what that is about. Why is everyone obsessed with pairing off?  Or more to the point “What the fuck? Why do I have to constantly defend my decision not to settle?”

One thing I’ve realized (or remembered) is that this is not a society that supports the single individual. I learned this as a political theory student as an undergrad a decade ago, and then again as a grad student in organizational theory.  Humans are social animals, they are driven to form social groups which become large societies and then drive individuals to create smaller social groups, ie, families to avoid the anonymity that comes from being an individual member of a very large group. And I’ve experienced the reality of that this theory seeks to explain in the way that I throw everything off by being the perpetually single one in any group. I’m the 5^th wheel, the person who throws off the seating at the dinner table, who makes it squished in the back seat b/c with 5 people it doesn’t make sense to take 2 cars. I also experience it every time someone urges me to “try harder” to find the chemistry, or to “be patient, sometimes it takes a while for the attraction to come”, or to “stop being so picky.” This is all comes from a belief that I would be happier as a couple. (Or in my dad’s words, that they would be happier if I were a couple).

I’ve considered giving in. Just finding someone to settle for, so I can fit nicely into the mainstream of society. But I can’t do it – I’m not strong enough. Not strong enough to avoid pulling back when he tries to touch me, not willing to fake interest when he kisses me (is “faking it” even supposed to apply to kissing??) I’m not strong enough to fake interest when he tells a story about how he was “So wasted last night, dude!” But mostly, I’m not strong enough shoehorn an ill-fitting man into my life. I don’t have the emotional or physical strength that is required to convince myself that I’d be happier with the wrong man than I would be alone.  Because I’m pretty content with my life as a single adult, and if I’m going to make a change, it needs to be an enhancement, not a task I’ll struggle with daily.

So I canceled the second date. I sent him a text saying I had food poisoning. Apparently I’m also not strong enough to be an adult and level with him. Maybe that’s another reason I’m content being single.

But I’m going to email him and explain that I can’t see him anymore. I’m going to explain that I didn’t really have food poisoning.

I’m going to tell him that it was actually stress related, and I just think I have too much going on in my life right now to date… Don’t judge me.