Mold mouths the rims of the dishes
in the sink.
I should do the housecleaning.
Angels come in unexpected forms sometimes. This week the form of choice was my loud, energetic friend Jess. She has a degree in chemistry. She seldom speaks below a shout. She's always exuberant. And when, a week ago, she heard me mumble that I haven't been able to wash my dishes in about three weeks, she sat up straight and said, "What night are you free? I'll come over and wash them."
And she did. I threw a chuck roast (marinated in oil/red wine/garlic/carrot/onion/bay leaf/thyme/parsley) in the slow cooker with carrots, diced tomatoes, garlic, bacon, thyme, parsley, bay leaf, and black olives for dinner, we watched a couple episodes of Bones Season One, and she washed all my dishes. We folded my clothes. We chattered. It was nice not to sit alone in my apartment all evening. It was amazing to see my countertop. And I was distractedly, exhaustedly grateful.
There were a couple of sticky moments -- not just sticky in the coffee-residue-at-the-bottom-of-the-twenty-first-mug sense. Like when she told me to put in some "upbeat" music. I stood in the middle of the kitchen floor and stared at her. "Umm...I uhh....I don't have any." I mean, my music isn't all depressing and glum -- not all of it -- it's just...indie. The best I could do was music that was happy in a sad kind of way. The other sticky moment was folding my clothes when she found this hoodie in my laundry pile:
which she declared she hated, and which, to be fair, I don't wear at all when I'm actually feeling that way. Otherwise I just think it's funny.
But we had a good time, and last night I kept out of the house and talked on the phone for awhile with my childhood best friend Hill and ate out with Megster and Phillip.
So things are looking up. A little headachey today (hm, maybe it was the sangria at Don Pablo's), but the sun's out, and it's almost Friday.
Oh, and according to Phillip, Baliwood's most popular soap take place in a call center. Every week features a call from The Irate American. I find this hilarious.
6 comments:
I really love that shirt.
See? I think it's HIlarious. I wear it on happy days.
You can get it on engrish.com.
I'd wear it to work just to see the face of the girls down the hall who already think I'm nuts
It really divides your viewers into humor camps. There are the people who generally only appreciate happy humor, and are therefore made angry by the macabre theme of the shirt (such as Jess. "And you wonder why you're depressed," she said. I understand, though I differ from, her perspective). There are the straight-laced variety (often found among the churched, the preppy, and the elderly), who abhor the dark side of anything, generally only understand the literal, and are shocked and horrified to find rainbows and flowers and cheerful lettering bearing such a message (these are among my favorite viewers, because them I don't get, and them I love to lean on a little, to see how far I can push their politeness before the stuffing bulges through the seams. I did this all the time at the Center when I worked with the babies, with the bubbly undergrad volunteers, who would coo -- chomping on their Bubblicious -- over my least favorite children and say, "oooohhh, he's so cuuuuute," until I'd say dryly to my boss, so they could just hear me, "wait till he pees on them," or "he'd better be, 'cause his personality won't get him anywhere," or "yeah, he gets it from his dad, I guess; Satan's supposed to be a real eye-catcher" and watch their eyeballs bug out of their heads). The last camp are the fellow lovers of all things wry, sarcastic, ironic, dark, black-humored, and macabre. They're the ones who'll look disgusted when they first see the color, the design. Not another flower, the curl of their lips say. I hate these happy people. They'll roll their eyes, start to read like you wiggle a loose tooth...and then the pause. And then the most wonderful expression comes over their faces, and they give a soft internal chuckle as they glance at the suddenly recognized kindred soul in your face, and ask in a disinterested, emo tone of flatline camaraderie, "Where'd you get the shirt?"
And I do love those moments. Because those kindred folks look like all kinds of people. That shirt is a great bridge builder, and suddenly people who wouldn't ordinarily make eye contact with me are my friends, and I really love it.
Hehe! I love that! Irate American! And we look at them as "those people with Indian accents."
Awhile back, we'd interviewed El Paso's mayor. Get this...
AT&T asked for and got a small tax break from the City Council on Tuesday for a big project that will mean 424 new jobs and a $10 million payroll. The communications giant wants to establish a new technical support center in El Paso to help its DSL broadband Internet service customers.....
Mayor John Cook's response:
"Now when I have trouble with my DSL service, I won't have to listen to someone with an Indian accent,"
Whew! What goes around comes around, I guess. I would love to get that soap channel. :)
Although I must admit it's funny to tech support and hear the person on the other line (usually from the Philippines; while I'm waiting for my computer to reboot, I bug them to tell me in which country they're sitting until I get it out of them, so that I can ask them about the weather and what time it is, and not hound them about outsourcing), whose first language clearly isn't English, telling me to call him "Bill."
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