Moving!

I've been terrible about updating this blog, so hopefully I'll be MUCH better about posting at my NEW blog -- http://texanthropology.blogspot.com

New city, new state, new blog. As Sinatra would say, "Newbie, newbie newwww."

(What?)

Sex bomb

I think I've killed the sex life of two people I've never met.

Sometime in the last two or three months, the girl in the apartment below us got a boyfriend. A boyfriend who comes over every night and apparently pounds her like a jackhammer on speed until 4:15 AM. This is not an exaggeration -- every night. From about 2 AM to 4 AM. I know, because I hear every second of it.

It sounds like she is sticking her head out the window, shrieking wild sex yodels into the night. Possibly through a megaphone. Nothing could drown out the monkey sex... not earplugs, not fans, not pillows, not the fantasies running through my head of me busting through their door, snatching the megaphone out of her hand and beating both of them over the head with it.

To make matters worse, Mr. and Ms. Humpy McFeckface prefer to get it on weeknights, not weekends. I think they don't have jobs. Or maybe they work in a bar. A bar where the specialty is the oyster-choco-viagra cocktail with a twist of tiger penis, and employees get all-you-can-drink.

This past Sunday night they were carrying on louder and longer than ever, and I actually hollered out the window, "FECKING WRAP IT UP ALREADY!!" right about 3:57 AM. But they didn't hear me. I was no match for the megaphone. I wanted to claw my ears off.

So the next day, I composed a very polite, very direct letter and had Mikey go affix it to their door. He almost drew a big, red "A" on the door, too, but we couldn't find the markers. For your reading pleasure:

Apartment #4,

There is an issue that's become enough of a problem that I must bring it to your attention. I don't know if you realize it, but your sex is very loud. I've tried everything I can think of to sleep through the screaming – using earplugs, pillow-over-the-head, trying to drown it out with the fan – but the screams are just too loud; nothing seems to work. For those of us with regular jobs, it's especially rough to miss that precious sleep between 2 and 4 AM on a work night, when you know you have to get up and try to function in just a few hours. We've all gotta share this tiny, noisy planet, and when we help each other out, our kindness comes back to us. Maybe you could try and tone down the volume of the screaming in the wee hours? Re-schedule your romps for a more decent hour? Or at least shut your window? Think of the great karma you will earn yourselves!

Thanks SO much for considering this problem, and happy (hopefully quieter) humping!

We dropped off the note Monday evening, while Mikey was doing laundry. Since the laundry room is right across from Apartment 4, he got to peek and see if the letter had been picked up every time he checked on the laundry. Finally, on the last load, the letter was gone. Mike and I stared at each other wide-eyed, partly giddy, partly frightened. He said, "You've seen the dude, right? Do you think I could take him if he comes knocking on our door all pissed off?" I assured him that surely this dough-y, aging frat boy would be no match.

Well, it's been three nights and not a PEEP from the downstairs sex fiends. Part of me is worried that we embarrassed the poor girl so badly, she's too afraid to even have polite, quiet sex now. Or maybe loud sex was the only thing they truly had in common, and we've given them no choice but to break up. Or maybe they started keeping HIS neighbors up for a change. Whatever it is, now I feel like sending them a fruit basket, or yelling out the window through a megaphone "THANK YOU FOR GIVING ME MY SLEEP BACK!!!"

With butter and jam

Several weeks ago, my friend Angela came back from Ethiopia with the adorable little boy she and her husband adopted. His name is Noah, and it takes intense physical restraint for me not to slather him with butter and jam and eat him all up. I am always kind of twitch-y after Angela has pried him out of my arms.

Soft Batch Chocolate Chip Cookies

So, last week I started my memoir writing class, and oh my god, am I so glad I'm doing this! There are maybe 12 of us, and we are all ladies. I don't know why, maybe women are more introspective or something. But it's actually really nice. It's sort of inadvertently a women's therapy group. A lot of these women have some crazy, traumatic, touching stories to share, and I feel so privileged to get to hear them. Also, it's an excellent reminder that as humans we all share the exact same insecurities and shortcomings -- we all have troubled relationships with someone. And those troubled relationships are usually with our family members.

Anyway, last night was the second class, and I think one of my favorite parts may be the short in-class writing assignments we're given. I like these because it forces me put some stuff down right on the spot and not think about it too much. Last night's assignment was to write about a place that has meaning for us. Here's what I wrote:

Grandpa has Soft Batch chocolate chip cookies at his house. He puts them in different drawers every time to try and hide them from me, but I always find them. I don't like to chew them -- I like to hold them on my tongue and squish them to the roof of my mouth until they separate into individual grains of sugar.

I like to lie on my belly in the green shag carpet on the living room floor and hunt for change that's fallen out of his pockets. Then I like to crawl like a cat over to the window and part the dusty vertical blinds to look at the backyard. I don't usually like going out there, though, because I know there are spiders and ants, and my ankles begin to itch when I think about it. I like to imagine that there are jungle animals crouching or slithering or climbing through the low-hanging tree branches, the overgrown bushes and the weeds.

Later, I like to sit on the fat vinyl chair at the kitchen table, the one that spins the fastest. I spin one direction until the cabinets and the dingy yellow linoleum and the poker chips on the table are all a blur. Then I stop myself with a jerk and spin the other way. When I feel the Soft Batch cookies start to come back, I peel my sweaty legs off the chair with a loud thhhhhhhhp.

What the feck!

So, I've been hearing a lot about this thing called a "web log" and I thought, "Huh! That sounds kinda neat, I should get myself one of them there things. It's all the rage with The Kids." So I hopped on the ol' information superhighway to do some research, and... Eh? I already HAVE one of these newfangled blog thingies? That I haven't touched in more than a calendar year?

Whoooooooops.

Yeaahhhh, I guess that's what happens when you get a job you actually enjoy instead of one you're willing to risk losing on account of Zappos, Amazon and Blogger. And then you spend all your spare time making kissy faces at your boyfriend. (Gross.)

But I'm back! I've really missed blogging. Or really doing anything besides working, eating, sleeping, drinking wine in my sweatpants and making kissy faces. Reading one of Mike's stepmom's books made me all introspective-like and caused me to realize I've totally abandoned writing, which is one of my primary joys in life. So I was inspired to sign up for a memoir-writing workshop at SMC to make me actually do it. (Do it meaning write... not, you know, "it.") I figure blogging again will be a good warm-up.

Although I feel pretty douchey signing up for a memoir-writing class. Like, I think my life is so interesting I should be writing memoirs? And how many other 27-year-olds are focusing on their memoirs? I mean, I guess it's been a couple years since I've puked from too much Smirnoff Ice, so I probably do have some deep and abiding wisdom I should share with the world.

Fecking kids

The hills approximately point five miles from my apartment building have been ablaze most of the day. I work about 20 miles from there (YAH, my commute is laaaaaame), and I can see the huge plume of smoke from my window here on the 10th floor. Twenty miles away, people! See, look:

Apparently a couple of wayward teenagers turned themselves in to authorities in connection with the fire. I hope Officer McGruff, Smokey the Bear and... Hootie the Owl, or someone, seriously rough those kids up in the interrogation room back at the station. Wait, is Hootie the one with "give a hoot, don't pollute"? Or is he the one with the Tootsie Pop addiction? Whatever, send 'em all in there for some hard-core vigilante woodland creature-style justice. Fecking teenage feckfaces.

Defamer's coverage here.

LA Times coverage here if you're into, like, legit news sources.

Fox News coverage, if you want to hear how Al-Qaeda is a likely suspect. (Totally, totally kidding.) (Actually, they're claiming Barack Obama is responsible. HA! Got you again.)

It's so easy... writing for someone else

SO! In addition to my own poorly maintained blog, I've also started writing for my friend Sara's much better, much more life-affirming environmental blog, It's So Easy Being Green. I was so flattered and excited when she asked me, because in addition to being a great friend, I also have a lot of respect for her green campaign and for her awesome writing skillz. (With a z, obv.)

Plus, I'm finding that it's much easier to write something when I have a purpose, and someone expecting me to actually write. I have so many painfully boring drafts sitting unpublished in my own personal blog because a lot of times I feel terribly uninspired by my ho-humish life. But! Now I have an excuse to write about, like, THINGS. Things that I'm passionate about and enjoy researching.

Hopefully along the way I'll come up with things to write about here, too, since I've generally been really bad about it. 'Cause you know what I just remembered? Writing is fun! Wheeeee!