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This morning I was mauled by a pack of wild children while attempting to board the T.
All this time I'd been fearfully conscious of potential gangbangers, psychotic homeless people and nutters in general (yesterday a guy started barking at me on the Orange Line), when I really should have been on the lookout for knee-high fetuses in matching LL Bean slickers.
I had no sooner stepped foot into the already-crowded Red Line train, headed towards Alewife during the 9 a.m. morning commute, when I was knocked aside by a rat pack of screaming, ugly (yes, I said it), ill-behaved children. As they pushed into me, I stumbled forward, spilling the contents of my bag all over the wet, dirty T floor and cringing as I watched my just-purchased bottle of milk roll down the aisle away from me. Before I could even get my footing and right myself, their mother rammed me from behind with a stroller carrying a mini version of my remorseless attackers.
True story.
The Fourth of July is almost upon us and I have yet to make any plans to celebrate Independence Day. I'm most definitely a "planner" (some might prefer the term "obsessive compulsive"), so this is very troubling.
Like many Americans, my preferred way of commemorating our freedom from the British tyrant king is to drink beer, grill burgers (veggie burgers this year since I'm off the meat) and eat macaroni salad, potato salad, coleslaw, deviled eggs and watermelon. Plus brownies and cookies for dessert, of course, and an apple pie if I'm feeling industrious. Throw in some sort of outdoor sport (touch football; Frisbee; horseshoes), sparklers and a grand fireworks display, and you've got yourself a perfect day.
Unfortunately, our tiny apartment gets crowded quickly, and we don't have a grill. Or a yard. We briefly considered buying one (a grill, that is -- yards require a mortgage) and using it on the community roof deck, but the chastisement by our elderly neighbors and inevitable visit from the Boston Fire Department would likely put a damper on the day.
At this point we've been forced to start calling on friends and friends-of-friends -- anyone with a grill, for that matter -- to try and convince them to have a barbecue and invite us. So far, no takers.
Plan B is to just buy a grill, take it over to Ladder 24 and cook out under the watchful eyes of Boston's finest. Cute girls who want to cook for them -- how could they say no? Besides, us being out of our house cuts down the emergency calls by at least 35%, so they're bound to have some free time to eat burgers and toss the ball around.
I don't know who's been talking to my dryer, but it must have heard I was blogging smack about it and has since retaliated by jamming my quarters and now does not work at all.
I have wet laundry strung up all over the apartment like I'm living in the projects and not a posh apartment in Beacon Hill.
Monroeville, PA
By Ed Ochester
One day a kid yelled
"Hey Asshole!"
and everybody on the street
turned around
Many moons ago, I blogged about having a love/hate relationship with my cell phone (and, unfortunately, I have yet to progress past the thinly-veiled passive aggression I feel whenever my phone does/does not ring).
This morning, it occurred to me that I have similar love/hate relationships with other inanimate objects in my life:
Dishwasher: While I'm thankful to have a dishwasher in my tiny Boston apartment, it sure would be swell if this particular dishwasher didn't take more than two hours to run one cycle, and would actually wash the dishes during the first cycle instead of having to be re-run twice Every. Single. Time.
And, as dishwashers do, it breeds laziness in our kitchen (the thought of hand-washing something hasn't crossed our minds in two years), so we run this dishwasher a lot. I'm of the firm belief that one day the world's dwindling water supply will be traced back to this very dishwasher.
Washer/Dryer: Again, I am very happy not to have to cart my dirty laundry two blocks down to the laundromat. I am.
But the two washers/dryers in the basement of our building do not exactly live up to their full potential. Sure, the washer wets our clothes, and even swirls them around a bit, but my roommate and I both know that if, God forbid, we actually spill something on our clothing, we'd do better to cut our losses and toss it out rather than get our hopes up that the washer will actually remove the stain.
The dryer, on the other hand, works. Too well. All of my clothing shrinks half a size every time it comes out of the dryer, so every six weeks or so I find myself rocking Flashdance-style half-tops and tight pants at the gym. I now buy xtra-large T-shirts so that they'll last me more than a month before shrinking down to toddler sizes.
Remote Controls: Ok, this one is my fault. The remote control to my bedroom TV hasn't had a battery change in years. Years. And I, being too lazy to buy and install new batteries, persist in banging the crap out of it on my nightstand every time I want to use it in an attempt to spark the battery just one last time. But as long as it keeps working, I'll keep banging.
The TV remote in the living room, on the other hand, is a complete mystery. I understand the universal button for "On/Off" and the arrow keys to change channels, but not much else. Why does one remote for one TV need so many buttons? I live in fear of accidentally hitting the wrong one and blowing up the TV. And when that battery finally dies - forget any hope of figuring out how to replace it. We'll have to get a whole new TV.
Hairdryer: Thank you, hairdryer, for drying my hair. If there's any possible way you could not severely burn my scalp at the same time, that would be AWESOME.
Microwave: The microwave at our house is staging a revolt. I don't know if it feels mistreated or overworked or what, but whenever we try to turn it on, it makes a loud clicking noise and lights starting flashing inside like it's about to explode. Since we're no longer allowed to call on the Boston Fire Department for help after our CO2 mishap(s), we must avoid the impending explosion at all costs. This has forced us to start using the oven, and don't even get me started on that egotistical appliance.
A few weeks ago I went to dinner with my friends Ris and Dan. In the mood for something new, we decided to try Addis Red Sea, a tiny Ethiopian place in Boston's South End. The food was definitely different, but very tasty.
(Honestly, I wasn't expecting much from an Ethiopian restaurant, other than to go home hungry.)
Here are a few snippets from that evening:
The waiter to Marisa: "You're sitting on the table." [In Marisa's defense, the small side tables DID look an awfully lot like the stools we were actually supposed to sit on.]
Bosblog: "I'm starving! I feel like I'm in Ethiopia!'
Marisa, pointing to the table base: "Aren't those the baskets that snake charmers use?"
Dan's reply, in a whisper: "That's India."
Bosblog, while giving my order to the waitress: "Am I butchering the pronounciation?"
The waitress: "Yes."
Bosblog: 'I can't stop staring at the naked woman's nipples!" [In my defense, I was eye level with a painting of a naked woman. Her nipples were huge -- I couldn't help it!]
Marisa: "So, do you think all the people working here are Ethiopian?"
Bosblog: "Well, that, or they could just be black."
Marisa: "Is this what we'd be eating if we were in Ethiopia?"
Bosblog: "I don't think we'd be eating."
There's not enough poetry in my life right now. In fact, I may start stalking local readings to find a man who'll recite poetry to me. I mean, how romantic would that be?! Aside from the stalking part, that is.
I read this in the The New Yorker and love it, so I've stolen it pasted it here for your viewing pleasure.
Crush
By Ada Limón
Maybe my limbs are made
mostly for decoration,
like the way I feel about
persimmons. You can’t
really eat them. Or you
wouldn’t want to. If you grab
the soft skin with your fist
it somehow feels funny,
like you’ve been here
before and uncomfortable,
too, like you’d rather
squish it between your teeth
impatiently, before spitting
the soft parts back up
to linger on the tongue like
burnt sugar or guilt.
For starters, it was all
an accident, you cut
the right branch
and a sort of light
woke up underneath,
and the inedible fruit
grew dark and needy.
Think crucial hanging.
Think crayon orange.
There is one low, leaning
heart-shaped globe left
and dearest, can you
tell, I am trying
to love you less.
I am back to the blogging world (or at least I have the best of intentions for posting more frequently than once a year) and I updated my profile only to discover that the entire time I've been on Vox, my gender has been listed as "Male."
Talk about a gender bender.
I've just come to the delayed realization that I have a different "voice" for different situations/people in my life.
When I answer the phone at work, my voice sounds all breathy and fake uber-solicitous, almost like a foreign phone sex operator. (Except instead of repeating slang for various parts of the human anatomy and making moaning noises, I say "ok!," "great!" and "no, thank you!" and perform my fake titter laugh (ha-ha-ha-ha-ha).
The exception to my 9am-5pm voice is when my cell phone rings during those hours and it's 1) my Aunt Melanie, looking for computer help or 2) my grandmother, calling to say hello -- either of which I'm happy to talk to at any time because my aunt has a beach house in Boca Grande and my grandmother is, well, my grandmother.
If my cell phone rings while I'm at work and it's not Mel or Gram, then inevitably it's Shell or Ry.
Shell gets the "I'matworkI'llcallyoulater" hiss, which I've gotten down to 3.2 seconds if I leave out "hello" and "goodbye" and don't let Shell get a word in edgewise.
Ry gets only slightly more time, and a "hi," though I let him do most of the talking since I'm convinced everyone at work is listening in on my conversations. (They are.) In fact, I've given him the "I don't like talking on the phone at work" speech so many times, he can probably recite it back to me, along with the names of co-workers who are in closest proximity to my desk and which one is most likely to make comments about my conversation once I'm off the phone.
After 5pm, I don't usually answer the phone unless it's my roommate (and I'm hoping she'll say, "I got a pizza" or "I'm bringing home champagne" -- even though it's usually, "what the hell is wrong with people in Boston?!"). Roommate knows I don't like talking on the phone, respects it, and keeps our conversations short. She usually gets the normal Erin voice (I can't really say the "happy" voice, because I've yet to try that one out.)
I also answer the phone in the evening if it's Ry, usually because I feel bad about being short with him on the phone earlier. Unfortunately, he doesn't usually call until around 10pm, so he gets the "I'm tired and just want to go to bed" voice. How we maintain any sort of relationship with only seeing each on the weekends and talking less than an hour on the phone during the week, I'll never understand. Thank goodness for text-messaging.
Last, but not least, my mother gets the exasperated voice. Always. But I also talk to her almost daily, so I'm pretty sure that this voice is passing for normal.
This card is so my life, I had to send it to myself.
