Monthly Archives: December 2011

Don’t shower with the door open. Especially at an office

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My sister Meg and her boyfriend Isaac have been kind enough to let me live with them and they cute baby, Tyson. For the past two and a half weeks, they’ve given me shelter and Greek yogurt and unlimited access to season 6 of Dexter. The only thing they haven’t given me is privacy.

Not like they’re all up in my bidnass or anything, goodness nah. They’ve not only given me my own bedroom – the biggest one I’ve ever had, even – but it came with a door and a lock and a comfortable bed and a huge TV and cable and everything. If I wanted, I could chill in my pimp room and act private all day. At least, I could be private from Meg and Isaac and Tyson. I just can’t be private from the neighbors. Sees, it’s a new crib and I ain’t got no curtains yet.

Luckily, having no curtains isn’t that big of a deal. If I don’t want my neighbors to see me in da buff, I can always change in the bathroom, or the closet, or behind the wardrobe. And since curtains are easy enough to come by, I could even hop on down to Walmart and buy myself a set. (Do curtains come in sets?)

When it comes to getting ready and purchasing household necessities, though, I’m a lazy little arseholio. Therefore, I usually don’t bother to hide myself from the bare windows, and I have no plans to do so in the future. I figure, if my mom’s 7o-year-old employee man has already seen me naked, at their office, a few peeping neighbors ain’t no thang.

How my mom’s 70-year-old employee man saw me naked

Last summer (maybe it was in the fall, but now that I’m done with school everything feels like summer), a real trick of a hurricane hit the U.S. Her name was Irene, and she really wasn’t that tricktastic, but she did knock out the power in my hometown for a while. It wasn’t even out for 24 hours, actually, but since my mom’s work has a shower in the basement and I get stanky quick, I went to her office to defunkify myself.

Since my mom had showered before me, she gave me a few tips.

Mom: Bathroom light’s broked. Leave the door to the hallway open, no one goes down there anyway. Maybe even leave the shower curtain open, too. And remember, it’s a shower. You’ll want to be very naked for it.

Always obedient, I did everything my mother said. I left the door to the hallway open, and the shower curtain to the bathroom open. And I got very naked. For fun, I threw my clothes, underpants included, all over the room. And then, it was time to shower.

Apparently, it was also time for the elderly fellow from the shipping department, Joe, and the UPS dude to make their monthly visit to the basement. About three minutes into my shower, I started hearing banging down the hallway. At the same time I figured out there were people in the basement – about five seconds after hearing the banging – two shadows passed in front of the open bathroom door. I’d tried to shut the curtain, but my next encounter with Joe let me know I didn’t do it in time.

Joe: WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? SHUT THE DOOR NEXT TIME YOU SHOWER HERE, YOU SICKO.

I was less naked and more unhappy than i appear here

After hearing Joe, who’s usually real jokey, sassinate me for showering in the open, a lack of bedroom curtains doesn’t seem that bad.

The time a janitor almost killed me

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Sometimes I’m a paranoid lady. About normal things, like unemployment and salmonella and armpits; and about some not normal things, like imaginary murderers and full-on-rapists. And when I’m paranoid about make-believe bad guys, it usually turns out badly.

For example, last Thursday night, sometime after the turkey feast had turned to turkey farts, my mom made me take the fambly dog, Chico, for a walk. We’d had Thanksgiving dinner at my sister/brother-in-law’s house, and they live in a real neighborhood — you know, blocks and sidewalks and stuff — but still, ’twas night! Past 6 o’clock, at least! Street lamps or not, I don’t care, it was dark as a mufugga out there. And everyone knows the freaks come out at night.

Even Whodini can tell you that

Chico as my witness, there was a freak out there that night. About seven minutes into the walk, I noticed a car following us. Well, I noticed a car parked on the street with its lights on, so I decided it was following us. Worried they’d kidnap my dog and 22-year-old, 6-foot me, I started speed walking and robot arming. Thirty seconds later, when I saw it was parked in the same spot with its lights still on, I realized speed walking wasn’t enough. Even though I was almost back to the house, I screamed “GO!” to Chico, spread my fingers wide for extra Allie speed, and started sprinting. And then I looked to my right and saw that all of my sister’s neighbors from next door were outside and watching me.

See? A bad ending! And that’s actually the least terrible of all the times my irrational paranoia/bitchassness has funked me over. Here’s an even worse one.

In 1998, there was a real bad ice storm in Maine. Everyone lost power and school was cancelled for two weeks. For warmth, my family had to bring all of our mattresses into the living room and make a super bed to share. We had to toast bagels on gas heaters. It was, by far, the best two weeks of my life.

During the day my sisters and I would go into my mom’s work. Her office still had power, so we’d go in and watch rented movies in the conference room, and get our nails painted by the crazy nail lady in the same building, and climb the shelves in the shipping department. It was awesome.

The only un-awesome part was that her work shared a bathroom with the rest of the building. To get to the bathroom, you had to walk down a long-ish hallway, take a left, and walk a foot. It might not sound like that big a deal, but it is when there’s wormy janitors creeping around.

One time, after leaving the bathroom, I heard a bunch of clanging keys. I don’t think I even turned around to see what it was — I just assumed it was janitor with bad intentions. So, when I turned the corner into the long hallway, I started sprinting. I was pumping my little  9-year-old legs like crazy — had my Allie speed fingers spread and everything. Sure, I hadn’t seen a janitor, and I certainly hadn’t seen a janitor who looked like he tryna steal me, but I knew one was there. And I knew he wasn’t far behind.

Knowing that — that he wasn’t far behind — I wanted to see just how far away he was. Still sprinting forward, I turned my head around to see where he was. He wasn’t there. A glass door was, though — only it was in front of me. Boy did I hit the shiz outta dat.

And not just “Oh boy I hit the shiz outta dat and bumped my noggin,” either. It was “Oh boy I hit the shiz outta dat and why’m I on the ground? Where’d all this glass come from? Why are there people running towards me? Am I crying?”

Actually, I wasn’t crying — I was totally fine. Apparently I could’ve died pretty easily, though. The door was supposed to make like James Frey and break into a million harmless little pieces; instead, it broke into four to five huge impaling-loving shards. They all missed me and I didn’t have so much as a scratch. Minus a bruise on my knee which I lovingly call my permabruise, cause the bastard’s still there.

Dramatization. The white stuff on my nose is lotion, btdubs

Also, one time I was home alone and convinced myself there was an impostor of my neighbor sneaking around. I ran into a wall and lost feeling in a part of the same knee. I call it a black hole, because that’s what it was.

I like it because it let's me time travel