Perhaps the mildest bit offputting.

I used to have a nice friendly blood donor card. White with the red American Cross symbol on it, and my name, ID #, and blood type typed on the front in old Remington-style font.

Over the years, it started to look increasingly grungy. Bits broke off. It was a bad scene.

When I last went in, the check-in guy tsk-tsked disapprovingly at my card, took it away, and promised to send me a new one.

Which has just arrived.

It is a special VIP blood donor card, despite my veins’ alleged wimpiness. And would you like to know what the ARC’s VIP club is called?

The Gallon Club.

A gallon is only four pints, granted, which isn’t a huge amount, but it just sounds… discomfitting.

****************

Edit: Eight pints. EIGHT pints. Thank you, Karen.

mumblemumble no wonder I get in trouble at pubs mumblemumble

My Palm Pilot wished me aGood Pesach this morning…

No, really. It did.

The thing is…I’m not Jewish. I guess my Palm Pilot is, though.  And me without any matzah in the house…

Sensitive Girl puts her foot down

Despite all my big talk, I am way too sensitive.

And so the last two weeks or so, which have been full of people being mean to each other (sometimes me, on either end) has taken its toll. (Also the Hit Parade of Deaths, which is marching on. GEE WILIKERS, HORACE, GIVE IT A REST. Isn’t it getting crowded up there already? Leave some for us.)

So we’re going to start over again, kids, and everybody play nice this time.

OK, ready? One… two… three. Reset.

NICE.

Much better.

Addendum: A Bitch-Slap From God

Ridiculous as it may sound, I was pretty shaken up by the events below. It’s disconcerting to have someone so angry at you over so little in such a small space. Anyway, I took my stuff to the laundromat to dry, all the driers being full, and wrote in my journal at some length about the whole event. Then I got to the really oy-vey-is-meer part, all woes and ah-misery’s and oh, why do people have to be so mean to each other, and just as I got to the "Why do people have to be so…", I heard a voice on the other side of the folding table say, "Excuse me?"

I looked up. A similarly frat boyish-guy was standing there. "Miss? Did you drop your phone? I found it over on the bench."

I blinked at it disbelievingly. It was, indeed, my phone. I took it, babbling thanks, and he smiled, put his earbuds back in, and turned away, bouncing slightly in time with his music.

This sort of coincidence always feels like a bitch-slap from God, to me – it seems that every time I get so hysterical about small things, someone does something particularly nice and I feel all sheepish.

Alright, Horace. I get your point.

(But I’m still going to the public laundromat from now on.)

The Secret

I’m watching "The Secret" on DVD right now.

Wow.

Did you know that no one in the world knows how electricity works?

According to the DVD, this is the case.

Yoiks.

Trolling for opinions

I am curious as to what y’all think about something.

One of the top e-mailed articles in the NYT today is entitled Buying With Help From Mom and Dad. It’s basically about how young adults – mostly young New Yorkers in their 20s – are having their first apartments bankrolled by their parents, and how this changes the ensuing dynamic; how much control the parents have over whether a girl/boyfriend can move in, for instance, or even furniture choices.

Ad hominem background: I was raised by a single mother on disability; when I was a kid, we lived on her savings from when she was a bigshot lawyer. In that sense, it was a pretty cushy upbringing, in that she took me to the theater and concerts when I was little, for which I am very grateful, and there was never any question where the week’s food was coming from. But we always knew the money was finite and if I wanted something extra, like camp, a college education, etc., I paid for it myself. This is neither a point of pride nor of shame for me; just pure mathematics.

And so I admit that part of the horror I feel upon reading this article is pure, flat-out jealousy; sure, it would be nice to have large nice things just given to you. But part of me is taken aback that young people are so willing to give up their freedoms and independence to get a nicer place; the first young woman named in the article got a two-bedroom penthouse in Williamsburg for $900K (non-NYers – this is a VERY hipster neighborhood, and a very fancy kind of apartment), and her parents are paying the down payment. If she can afford mortgage payments and maintenance on this place, she could have afforded a one-bedroom in a less ritzy neighborhood all by her lonesome. It’s not like these folks are getting emergency grocery money from their parents; they’re basically allowing them say over their lives in exchange for a luxury.

Maybe it’s just that Mama Book Stud and I don’t get along, particularly, and so I’m taking too personal an approach to this, but I find it a little odd that people in their late 20’s – adults, by any stretch of the imagination – are willing to give their parents say over intimate and essential aspects of their lives in exchange for a ritzier apartment.

Then again, it is none of my business and I am a grump about these things.

What do y’all think?

OK, now you’re just messing with me.

So I’m walking back from running some errands at lunch. A sort of regular-punter looking guy stops an otherwise-normal conversation with his friend and gives me the once-over. He grins big, I brace myself…

…and he quacks at me.

Quacks.

Is it… a compliment? Could be.

An insult? Maybe. I just don’t know.

Harassers of the world! Get on the ball! Please return to the classics:  "Hey baby, hot ass!" or even the retro: "Nice gams!" or kgaard’s favorite: "Shake it, mama. Capital knockers!"

Objectify me! Go ahead! Just don’t confuse me. Life is confusing enough.

Book Stud’s New Career Move: Lady Of The Night

Those of us of the female persuasion who live in places which aren’t, say, Amish country, have gotten used to a certain amount of forgettable street-arena harassment – particularly if you’re blonde (why this signals "more likely to sleep with random stranger on the street", I do not know) or given to wearing shortish skirts, as I am. When I try to work out just what these gentlemen are after – surely they don’t actually have significant success rates? That guy who stopped me to ask, politely, if he could fuck me up the ass didn’t actually expect me to say, "well heck, I’ve got nothing else to do this afternoon"? – Kgaard has advanced his theory that it’s not actual attraction that’s driving these guys, it’s anger and the lust for power – they don’t really want to fuck me up the ass, in other words, they just want to watch me get angry and/or afraid when they ask.

Never has that been clearer than this morning, when I was sitting on a delightfully uncrowded subway car, reading. Three teenage boys were taking up about nine seats around me, and when I looked up from my book I realize that one of them was trying to get my attention, doing the clown-and-grin-and-make-a-lot-of-noise-just-within-my-sight thing. (As I don’t speak Teenage Boy Patois, I couldn’t tell you exactly what charming aphorisms he was employing.) Not in the mood for having to extricate myself from the inevitable conversation if I made eye contact, I went back to my book, and they went back to making noise.

When we got to my stop and I got up and wended my way between the forest of sprawled-out legs to the door, my suitor looked up at me, glanced down pointedly at the hem of my skirt, and hissed, furiously: "Hooker." (The first intelligible word he’d said thus far.)

It’s just interesting how much clearer the anger is, coming from the Junior Harassers; I didn’t respond to his attention, thus making him feel stupid in front of his friends, thus he had to do something to make him feel better. But why "hooker", for goodness’ sake? Doesn’t that imply something bad about him, as I wouldn’t even do him for money? And why not the more muscular, guttural, satisfying "whore", instead of the awkward emphasis-on-the-first-syllable construction?

I’m telling you, you just don’t get the kind of quality harassment you used to, these days.

I am bewildered.

I just received a truly lovely gift in the mail. As we have all seen in the Great ToolboxLess Disaster of 2007, I have been reduced to truly embarrassing acts of MacGyverism to fix things around my house; but no more! As of today, I am the owner of this lovely and very ladylike tool kit, which includes pink staple gun, pink hammer, pink level, pink wrench, etc. etc.:

   

(Please forgive the fuzziness, these were taken via cell phone.)

It is called the "Ladies Tool Set" [sic] and joyfully proclaims, on the packaging, that no man will attempt to "borrow" it, keeping the contents safe from any prying male hands that may be rummaging through my drawers! (Ahem.)

Seriously, this is a fantastic and very useful present.

One problem.

I have no idea who sent it.

There is nary a card nor a note, and I don’t recognize the return address. It’s the Great Peeps Mystery, only way butch-er.

So now I need to write a letter to my mysterious benefactor (Him? Her? Reader of this blog? Memory-blitzed one night stand? The mind boggles.) to thank him/her for the lovely gift… without divulging that I cannot for the life of me fathom his/her identity.

It’s a very weird life, dearly beloveds.

Soundtrack of today: ew ew EW ew ew

There comes a time in every woman’s life – every three months or so, in my case – when she looks around at her living environs, examines the bottoms of her dainty slippers, and says, "Bugger this for a lark, best get out the scrubber."

Yes, that’s when the mop just isn’t going to do it anymore; urban grit has made its pernicious way in, and it’s old clothes, bucket, scrub brush, and a strong gag reflex to the rescue.

I have just scrubbed down every inch of floor in my apartment, even those bits that are behind radiators or under appliances or in other spots so unreachable that the Lindbergh baby could be hiding there too, for all I know.

And I have learned some very important things.

1. It is no small miracle that I have any friends at all, or that I am allowed to partake in social engagements, as I apparently live in extraordinary squalor.
2. Although to the casual observer it appears that I have only the one rather small cat, the fur-content proves otherwise; apparently, I keep as pets an entire herd of long-haired wooly mammoths, and it is their molting season. (The fact that I have never actually seen them is merely proof that wooly mammoths are Very Wily.)
3. THAT’S where my eye mask went.
4. And my favorite pen.
5. And – ew. Never mind. What on earth was I doing with one of those?
6. My knees are very (k)nobbly and don’t like scooting around my apartment that much.

Let this be a lesson to you. And watch out for those wily wooly mammoths. (What are they eating? Are they scavenging? This must be why popcorn and beer go so fast at my house.)

xoxox
Book Stud

Yet more anatomical irregularities.

Remember when it turned out my veins are too small?

The plot thickens.

I went in today to have my teeth cleaned. The lovely dental hygienist with an Irish accent so marvelous that I even forgive her for using the full form of my name (Bookus Studium, natch) went through her usual raptures about how thoroughly I floss (no applause, just throw money), and then, getting to my bottom front teeth, said, "Hmmm."

"Hmmm?" I repeated. "Ut uz hmmm mee?"

"I’ll just get the dentist," she said brightly, and bustled out.

I spat and scooched around in the chair, trying not to look so much five years old, and more capable of taking care of these lovely coffee-stained teeth which I had mysteriously somehow failed so utterly.

The dentist came in, gloved up, and immediately yanked my lower lip away from my mouth.

"GGGRRRARRRGGGGH," said I.

He paused, not letting go. "Tooth or gum?"

"IP."

"Aha!" he cried, with such vivacity that I expected a "Eureka!" to follow.  "I see the problem."

"Ess?" I said hopefully.

"Your labium inferioris is too strong."

"ARDON EE," I said indignantly.

Both dentist and hygienist laughed. "Your lower lip, silly," said she of the beguiling Gaelic accent. "It’s too strong. The muscle is too developed and you’re not getting in there to brush properly. You’ll have to learn to relax it."

So, in other words… all this time I’m spending at the gym on Project Look Good In A Wifebeater By May, my lower lip is achieving a similar feat just by eating lots of sunflower seeds.

Good to know.

(P.S. All the filthy jokes y’all want to make [LG and GGTFF, I'm a-lookin' at you], don’t bother. I’ve already thought of ‘em myself.)

To the dipshit who is out there using a faked version of my credit card:

• I will cut off your balls and fry them for dinner. The dinner of someone I do not like.
• I will rip out your hair hank by hank, and stuff it all down your bathroom drain.
• I will read your adolescent angsty poetry and LAUGH.
• And then I will PUBLISH.
• I will gather up whatever you’re currently spending thousands of dollars on at Target and use it to construct a billboard detailing every moment of your poor pesonal hygiene.

And your fields shall be razed, and the air shall be heavy with the lamentations of your women.

In short: DIE, motherfucker.

Bubble gum is fantastic till your hair falls in your face.

 

Drat.

Vee haff achieved dryness!

Vee haff also, apparently, achieved a life that titularly sounds a lot like a Depends commercial. Heck.

Thanks to OkieExpat, I will soon have in my (borrowed) possession not one, but two dehumidifers. That apartment will be damp-free in no time (and hopefully the dreaded Mold Implosion will be averted.) The updated situation is that when I frantically threw the windows wide open to air out the steam, the ceiling dripped down into the frames, and the windows, of course, froze open with long stalactites of ice. When the heat got below tropical, I employed a hammer (and when I say "hammer", I mean "the blunt end of a stapler"; I really need to acquire a decent toolbox) to get the worst of the ice off, but the windows still wouldn’t close all the way. That wasn’t actually a bad thing, as the apartment smelled awfully stuffy, and I’d rather freezing and non-smelly rather than warm and smelly. After the dehumidifying, I will use a blowtorch (and when I say "blowtorch", I mean "hairdryer"; see earlier comment in re toolbox) to get the rest of the ice off, and mercifully close the windows.

Spent the Superbowl at Ms. NOLA’s house knitting and occasionally peering at the TV screen, with absolutely no conception of what was going on. The other viewers were New Orleans natives, and thus the screaming and yelling that went on when Indianapolis scored was just extraordinary. The lovely Ms. NOLA also made the most amazingly delicious spicy peanut stew, which miraculously contained things I ordinarily do not like (eggplant, zucchini) and yet this was easily the most scrumptious thing I’ve ever tasted. Because I am OCD about such things, I am going to transcribe the recipe; if anyone wants it, let me know.

[I should probably do more research into this before commenting, but on first glance, am I the only one who thinks the Snickers ad hoo-ha is a little silly? The NFL is homophobic! Holy rainbows, Batman! Stop the presses!]

Adventures In Urban Living

For those of you not in NYC, it is cold as fuck down here. 9 below with the wind chill. But here at Casa Book Stud, where I am working from home today? Warm as toast. Damp, soggy, sort of scary toast.

Sound strange? Read on.

As many of you know, I sublet my adorable little apartment from kgaard. When I moved in, he briefed me on the apartment’s little foibles; oven wasn’t working properly (super got me a new one), no toilet paper holder (borrowed La Gringa’s drill and got to work), radiator in the bedroom emits a high-pitched whistling noise when turned on.

You begin to see where this is going.

When I’d done enough this morning to warrant breaking to go to the gym, it was pretty damn cold in the apartment. It’s small, but the living room radiator still wasn’t quite doing enough to keep the Arctic where it belonged (i.e. Elsewhere.) So I hang off the side of the bed and remove the very impressive architecture of packing tape and old T-shirt that kgaard had used to keep the whistling at bay.

Silence.

Excellent, I think. I open it up wide, no whistling, and within a few minutes I could feel the heat coming up . I figured they must have fixed something in the boiler, got my gym bag, and went on my way whistling merrily.

When I returned an hour and a half later, I opened the door quickly, anxious for a shower and lunch. My hand didn’t quite have time to register that the knob was uncomfortably hot before I got the door open – and was confronted with what looked, at first glance, like a wall of smoke.

I had already taken an involuntary step forward. Something splashed. I looked down. My sneaker was in half an inch of water. It wasn’t smoke, it was steam – steam so heavy I couldn’t see my proverbial hand in front of my face. 

Reader, I freaked out.

Somehow, in an hour and a half, that radiator managed to pour so much steam into the apartment that there was a swamp of water on the floor, my bed and sofa were wet to the touch, every surface is beaded with water, and the paint is, in certain places, bubbling off the walls. The (very heavy and glass-coated) framed poster behind my bed had come down, thankfully not breaking, because the nail had simply pulled out of the soggy wall.

God knows how, but Mona is fine. She has only just emerged from hiding under the coach, but she’s fine. The TV doesn’t seem to work – hopefully it will dry out – but the laptop is OK. Photographs and posters, still up in the air. Books and papers that were lying out are ruined, but books on the shelves and the clothes in my closet feel dry to the touch. Thank God, or it would be Mold Central in here!

I’m a wee bit shaky now – what if I had opened the valve and gone to work, for crying out loud, Mona would no longer be with us – and every  window is open as wide as it will go. I will wear many pairs of socks  all winter  happily. The Arctic is welcome to stay as long as it likes.