The Not-So-Secret Diary of a Bad Luck Girl

When will I ever learn?

I couldn’t sleep AGAIN last night, and not because of a crazy downstairs neighbor.  I stupidly had some green tea in the late afternoon.  I didn’t think it was that strong, but obviously it was.

On top of that, we have mosquitoes!  What the fuck, San Francisco?  I thought you had no mosquitoes.  I guess it’s been the very warm, followed by the very chilly weather we’ve been having these past couple of weeks.

Last weekend MB discovered a bite on his (shaved) head, and I had one on my forehead.  We thought it was from our walk out to Haight-Ashbury.  But earlier this week, I’ve had more bites: on my face, hand, feet, arms, and calf.

The bites are super tiny and disappear fast, nothing like the ones I’d get in New York which would swell to the size of a half dollar and be insanely itchy.  These are more just an annoyance, especially since I can’t find the little buggers.  I *think* I saw them yesterday, and if that was them, they are incredibly fast and tiny.  There’s no way I can hunt them down like I did back east, where the skeeters were big, slow, and stupid.

So last night not only was I wakeful because of the tea, I was paranoid about mosquitoes.  Luckily the weather has cooled down, so I could blast the ceiling fan and cover most of myself with a blanket.  But I was up for a long time brushing away every tickle on my face, whether lint, hair, or actual little pest.

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Yesterday I worked on my writing, though not enough to my satisfaction.  At least I got draft pitches down, as well as a draft of an essay, and started catching up TNB reading.  Today I will probably type up/revise/focus on the essay (which is a little all over the place right now), but also want to get out of the house.  Shopping!  Haven’t done that in a while.

I discovered that Real Simple is having their annual essay contest now.  Totally entering it!  Though the deadline is coming up very soon.

The complaining comments on the page crack me up.  How dare the judges give the prize to a 10th grade English teacher?  Surely she has an up on everyone!  Um, hello, the magazine awards the best essay, and the best essay not only has to have a great story, it has to be told well.  And yes, perhaps an English teacher or professional writer will tell that story better.  Them’s the breaks.  What should they do, say, “If you get paid to write, teach people to write, teach English, were an English major, ever wrote something ever in your life, you’re not eligible”?  That makes total sense.

Idiots.

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Wow, I can’t believe it’s been almost three weeks since I last blogged.  I have a lot to catch up on.

I’m finally at a point in my work project that I don’t have to work too much this weekend.  While I’m glad to have time to work on my own stuff, I’m a little nervous too.  The work project is a no-brainer.  There’s a set process and  I just follow it.  With my own stuff, it’s a lot more loosey goosey.

My low cholesterol life is still going strong, though I did splurge twice this week on  fatty pesto pasta with fatty sausage, the first time after I had drinks with my co-workers and the second time last night because I didn’t feel like fish. (Last night was chicken sausage but the pasta was still pretty oily.)

It’s been almost a year since I’ve had a drink.  MB doesn’t touch the stuff and I’m allergic to alcohol so drinking is never that much fun.  Wednesday night I had a glass of red wine – no, half a glass of red wine – and I was DRUNK.  Very warm, very red, light-headed, and chatty.  By the time I got home, I was craving bad food.  Hence, the fatty pesto pasta.

I was also a slacker about working out this week.  Last Sunday I just didn’t feel like it, and was so blah in the afternoon, I made the mistake of having a double espresso.  As with alcohol, I’m sensitive to caffeine.  I mean, I can have as much as I want before noon, but after that, I’m in trouble.

I thought I’d be up till one or two.  I was up till 5:30 AM.  The worst was when I’d drift off, only to be jerked awake by something random – the door creaking, the girl downstairs talking at the top of her lungs, my brain skittering off to some random memory.

Luckily I work part-time so I just switched my days, working from home on Monday and going in on Tuesday, which meant missing yoga.  Boo hoo.  Then I went in on Thursday instead of Friday because we had a meeting I didn’t want to miss, which meant missing yoga again.  Must go twice next week!

Speaking of the gym, lately I’ve noticed this chick who simultaneously cracks me up and annoys me.  She’s Asian, very thin, and has a lot of dyed hair – you know, that weird brownish, reddish, yellowish color that some Asian women seem to favor.  She runs on the treadmill, but she runs 1) with all that hair down 2) fully make-up’d, and 3) holding onto the side rails for dear life.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to run next to her.  Being that close, I could see that in addition to big hair, she had big, fake boobs.  I mean, not ginormous but solid and perfectly round.  For a moment I wondered if she was actually post-op (ie, formerly a guy), but looking at her hands, I didn’t think she was.

To motivate myself, I got into a pretend competition with her.  I *have* to run more than this chick, I told myself, with all her hair and her tribal tattoo and silicon lady lumps.  But she ran a lot, and pretty fast.  Glancing at her machine, I saw that she ran six or seven miles an hour.

BUT.  She was holding onto the machine the whole time, the sides or the handles at the top.  And she wasn’t sweating at all, as far as I could tell.  Meanwhile I was running between 5.7 and 6.3 MPH for four miles, and I was drenched.

Then someone she knew took the treadmill on her other side, and they had a whole long conversation.  I mean, she was hardly out of breath.  I kept thinking, It’s because she’s holding onto the handrails right? She’s basically bracing herself or lifting herself up.  (The real question is of course, Why do I care? but I do and that’s that.)

This morning I found that it *is* fake running to hold the treadmill the whole time. Yes, vindicated!  I mean, I already knew that, but I just needed the internet to assure me again.

Now that I’m done being catty, it’s back to the gym again.  I’ll say hello to Miss Big-Hair-Fake-Boobs-Fake-Runner if I see her.

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This morning I apparently insulted the woman next to me when I shifted slightly over as she jabbed her elbow into me while rifling through her bag.

“If you don’t want to be touched, get off the bus,” she advised me.

I calmly regarded her.  “It’s nothing personal,” I said.

I’d rather not be touched by any weird, inconsiderate person who reeks of cigarette smoke.

Okay, so maybe it was personal.

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I should probably stop treating non-office days like the weekend.

Today I:

• Worked a TINY bit on an idea I want to pitch
• Went to the gym
• Ate lunch with MB
• Hung out in Union Square and read
• Got my hair cut (finally!)
• Watched a Harry Potter mini-marathon

It’s Tuesday!  NOT Sunday!

Then again, I do work on my freelance writing at night and on the weekends.

Okay, guilty rant over.

I like my hair so much better now, by the way.  The guy – my official new hair cutter – gave me a great razor cut and bangs.  My old hair dresser seemed to think my hair would not lie the right way with bangs, and he was WRONG WRONG WRONG.  My bangs are adorable.  I had also told my old hair dresser to just go for it and cut it short, but he barely did anything, and just a few weeks later, it looked absolutely awful.

MB loves my new cut.  He says I look younger with shorter hair and bangs.  I agree that I look blah with longer hair.  Plus it’s so much easier to care for now.

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1) On the Caltrain last week, I managed to sit behind a man and a woman who spent the whole ride exchanging prescription meds.

They seemed to be in their late 40s.  The guy was white, and the woman possibly Philipina.   She had one of those smoked-a-billion cigarettes voices and was clearly on something that made her really hyper.  At the top of her lungs, she extolled the virtues of Percocet and  Oxycontin.

At one point, I noticed her peeking at me through the crack between the seats (I had put on my headphones with the hopes of drowning them out).  She had dropped her water bottle apparently.  Instinctively I thought, Be nice to the crazy lady, and looked under my seat.  No water bottle.

“Oh, I must have recycled the wrong one!” she said excitedly.

When she finally deboarded, she was such a mess, she ended up dropping a couple of tea bags, except they were not tea.  Then I saw the guy’s backpack was FILLED with prescription bottles.  Classy.

2) On the bus yesterday, a white, dowdy middle-aged couple talked loudly about BDSM the whole ride.

“When I tied someone up, I like to use. . .”

“I wouldn’t do it in the yard.  I wouldn’t do it outside.”

I couldn’t hear everything they said, but enough snippets to feel really embarrassed (so call me a prude) and relieved when they got off the bus.

3) Down the street there are a pair of crapped-in jeans. They are as disgusting as they sound.  They’ve been there a few days, and I keep forgetting not to walk on that side of the street.

Only in San Francisco.

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I have a new piece up at Matador Life. It’s about how a Buddhist monk and a trip to Prague helped me leave my cheating husband.

I got the job! It’s part-time technical writing/admin work at this start-up right outside SF.  This week I work Thursday and Friday, but my regular schedule will be Monday, Wednesday, and half a day on Friday.  Yay for moola and getting out of the house!

Part-time is so perfect for me.  On my “free” days I can write, and the way my schedule is now, I don’t even have to miss my yoga classes.

I have renewed energy for my corporate murder mystery. I got some very helpful feedback recently.  I was dissatisfied with my NaNoWriMo draft, but I hadn’t even looked at it.

So this weekend I actually took the time, and so far it’s not as bad as I thought.  It definitely needs work, but – so far – it seems to be doable work.  In fact right now I like this version better than the rewrite I had been working on.

I have renewed respect for good customer service, because I got some shitty service over the weekend.  Normally, Elite Cafe is awesome, both in terms of waitstaff and food.  But yesterday there was a new bartender who was a bit of a dick.

We were sitting at the bar.  He asked us if we wanted anything to drink, but I couldn’t hear shit because the place is noisy and he was mumbling.  So I just gave my order.  He looked sort of taken aback, but whatever.

He got our drinks and repeated our order to MB only.  So I really didn’t hear that time.

Inevitably I got the wrong order.

I was nice about it.  I said, “Oh, I actually asked for the corned beef hash.”  To me good customer service would be, “So sorry! We’ll get that straightened out right away.”  But he had to say:

“That’s why we ask you twice.  To make sure we got it right.”

So it’s my fault huh?  Even though obviously I couldn’t hear anything you said, and you asked my boyfriend and not me what my right dish was?

I think the waitress behind the bar realized the new guy’s faux pas because she apologized to me and tried to be friendly.

Sure, it was totally partly my fault for getting the order wrong, but let’s pretend it wasn’t.  That’s part of the whole experience of going to a good restaurant.

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I was somewhat distracted by my dizziness problem, but still managed to have a nice weekend.

Saturday morning we were surprised by someone at the door.  It was FedEx with a package.

“Probably a birthday present for you,” MB said.

“Doubt it,” I automatically said.  Despite all my trying to teach myself to have no expectations – meaning neither high nor low – and being open to surprises, I still have some learning to do.

It was a gift from my brother: a very nice yoga mat and bag.  Such a nice surprise. I had told him how I just use the mats at the gym and he was all skeeved.

“You mean you put your face where other people put their feet?” he said.

Well, if you put it that way.

And I totally neglected to include my brother on my Grateful 38 list!  I blame the Drammamine.  If I were more alert, he’d have gone right after 8, 9, and 10, the ones about my parents: “I’m grateful my brother has always been my partner against the insanity of our parents.”

MB and I went out to lunch, took a nice long walk, and saw Kick-Ass at the AMC Metreon.  I was under the impression that people simply don’t talk at the movies in SF, but Sitcomgirl is totally right that at the Metreon they do.

Still, it wasn’t as bad as NYC.  People, including us, repeatedly told the noisy girls to STFU, and the woman with the baby (great idea to bring an infant to Kick-Ass) apologized for the baby’s crying.  Plus the movie was so noisy, it didn’t matter that the audience wasn’t quiet.

After the movie, we headed over to Border’s, where MB got me a few books plus a gift card.  Yay, books!  I’m still loving Harry Potter.  I just finished number four and bought number two since the library doesn’t seem to have it.  Kids do not treat these books well, by the way.  Number four was full of ripped pages – like deliberately ripped – and in one section, some idiot had changed the word “pus” to something dirty.  Damned kids.

Yesterday MB made huevos rancheros for breakfast, then we took another walk since it was such a gorgeous day.  It was actually hot when we started out, probably almost 80.  We went to Union Square and hung out for a bit.  Then suddenly it was chilly.

We had dinner at Borobudur, our favorite Indonesian restaurant, where we overheard the best conversation.

An Asian couple was sitting behind us. I had seen them walk in – the woman petite and well-dressed, wearing an enormous hat and sunglasses, and the guy kind of schlubby.

WOMAN: Can you recommend something without peppers?

WAITER: Sure, sure. [Rattles off suggestions]

WOMAN: Do they have black pepper? No black pepper either.

WAITER: Uhhh. . .

WOMAN: No black pepper, and no chili pepper.

WAITER: Okay. Honey beef is good.

MAN: No beef.

WAITER: Okay. [Rattles off other suggestions]

MAN: And no salt. Is it salty?

WAITER: Uh, yeah, it’s kind of salty.

MAN: And no oil. Is it oily?

WAITER: Uhhh – How about this? [Kindly makes another suggestion]

MAN: You think that’s good?

WAITER: Yeah, yeah, good.

WOMAN: Is it spicy?

WAITER: No, not spicy.

WOMAN: Um, okay.

By now MB and I are rolling our eyes and staring at each other like, Are they kidding?

A few minutes later:

WAITER: Sorry, that dish is already marinated in salt.

MAN: It is? [Begins to sound desperate] Um, I don’t know, you decide. I don’t know what to do.

WOMAN: It’s okay.

Now MB starts munching like crazy on our tumis buncis, which if you don’t know is string beans sauteed in a very salt, somewhat spicy fermented shrimp paste. It’s really delicious.

“Mmm!” he said unnecessarily loudly. “This is sooo good!”

MAN: That looks good. It’s probably salty though, right?

WOMAN: Yes, very salty.

MAN: [Sigh]

Hearing that conversation was probably the best birthday present ever.

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I enjoy looking at the New York Times Sunday wedding announcements.  I don’t read them all but glance through the names to see if there are any I recognize (less and less so as I get older), if there are any cute “how we met” stories, or it’s-horrible-but-I-can’t-look-away spectacles.  Yesterday was a spectacle day.

I didn’t really pay attention to it till I saw a write-up in Gawker.  Sometimes Gawker goes a little overboard with the hate and snarkiness, but they were definitely on the money with this one.  As I read the announcement, I cringed, then cringed some more:

When Jonathan Grubb first spotted Kestrin Pantera, she was dressed as a light-saber-wielding Jedi knight.

That’s just the first line.  It gets better.

Powerful, wise and dedicated to the “light side of the force” is how Ms. Pantera described the character she sought to embody at the 2006 Burning Man arts festival in Nevada.

Burning Man, ’nuff said.

Mr. Grubb. . .recalled watching with a cousin as the warrior set up camp. “I know you’re perfectly capable of setting up this tent by yourself, but we’re doing it for you,” he said.

Being manipulated from the start.

As they did, Ms. Pantera. . .imagined a glowing arrow pointing at Mr. Grubb’s head.

Because life is a quirky movie with special effects.

“This is him,” she recalled thinking as she mentally listed qualities she wanted in a mate — a list that she had drafted as part of the daily “personal manifesto” that she had been writing for years.

Um, daily “personal manifesto”?  I’m all for writing down one’s “intentions, motives, or views” but a manifesto is a PUBLIC declaration.  I mean, I’ll blab my head off about what I want and think, but I’m not going around calling it a manifesto like I’m Karl Marx.

Then the kicker:

“Everything pointed to us being a perfect match,” Mr. Grubb said. “Except one thing: my girlfriend was due to arrive.”

D’oh!  And then the article NAMES the girlfriend!  Double d’oh!  So. . .

At the festival, Mr. Grubb and Ms. Pantera developed a chaste friendship. Yet Mr. Grubb remembers the moment he knew Ms. Pantera was in his future. “Kestrin began playing Jimi Hendrix-style electric cello after revealing that she spoke German and Mandarin and read monetary policy reports for fun,” he said.

I’m high-class talented, see, cuz I play the cello, but I’m EDGY because it’s electric and I play Jimi Hendrix style, and oh yeah, I’m FIERCELY intelligent because I speak all these languages, AND I’m basically a biz dude in a hot girl’s body.  Isn’t that every guy’s dream?

BUT, then she finds out through an online profile he doesn’t want kids, which is like totally against her manifesto.

“My manifesto-man wanted kids,” she said.

That’s right folks, she said it: her manifesto-man.

Then blah blah blah, he breaks up with his girlfriend, hooks up with Kestrin, and they kiss.  Harp players appear over their heads; doves fly out of their butts.  But what about the no kid pronouncement in his profile?

He had invented many [online profiles] “as tests for my work,” said Mr. Grubb, whose résumé dates to the start of the Internet boom.

Hmm, seems sketchy to me.  But that’s their  fight to have when Kestrin’s biological clock starts ticking.

Then he pops the big question:

“I know you’re perfectly capable of living this life on your own, but I want to live it with you.”

I know you’re a fully capable woman who doesn’t need a man -

That’s right! I don’t need a man! I’m quirky and wild and independent!  I read monetary reports for FUN!

Well, yes, that’s what I’m saying -

I’m a FEMINIST!

Yes, I totally agree.

I went to Burning Man!  I dressed as a Jedi Knight and NOT Princess Leia!  I don’t need a man!

You’re right, you’re right. Actually I can’t live my life on my own, although I’m a man.  I need you.

All right then.

(AND scene.)

So then they get hitched (not far from SF incidentally), and. . .

Because the bride hates to “kill” flowers, she carried a bouquet of tillandsia, an unusual, spiny gray-green bromeliad that feeds off air.

*Sigh.*  Just *sigh.*

Ms. Pantera, the former Jedi warrior, pledged in her wedding vows “to constantly generate a force field of awesome.”

And Mr. Grubb vowed to constantly generate a force field of telling her she’s awesome.

There at the wedding, they both burst into tears: the manifesto had been made manifest.

Oh no they didn’t! (Yes, I’m afraid they did.)

But it doesn’t end there:

Of her affection for the spiny tillandsia plants, which surrounded the guests and numbered in the thousands, the bride said, “They manifest life from thin air.”

Then the write-up mind-blowingly ends with a quote from the jilted girlfriend, who is supposedly still friends with them: “I want to be involved in their whatever, forever.”

I like to imagine she’s saying “whatever” with fingers like a W and a mean girl smirk.

Coming to a whimsical theater near you, Our Whatever Forever.

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Except of course when my mom’s driving me crazy.

Now that I have a couple of articles out there, in addition to my blogging at The Nervous Breakdown, I get some kind words from people, which I really appreciate.  I also get haters, which is kinda fun.

I’ve written before about the risks of writing about my life, especially in such a public forum like the internet, where you can get immediate feedback.  I have to be careful about writing about other people, changing names and other details, and I have to really think about what I want to put out there about myself.  I don’t mind making myself look bad, but there are some details that are TMI, even for me.

Recently I received a comment that I need to “put things in perspective and get over it,” that “life moves on” and that my need to write about the past only hampers my “inability” – I think she meant “ability” – to move on with my current “happiness” (cuz I’m not really happy now you see).

If you’re familiar with my writing, you know I write a lot about the past.  Why do I do this?  Number one, it’s a good story.  Number two, it helps to put it behind me.  Number three, writing about the past helps me see the lessons.  It puts it at a distance so I can see meaning and events more clearly.

I’m not interested in making myself look good.  An important goal of my writing is to own up to my own faults and mistakes.  Plus how boring is a “heroine” who’s perfect?  You might as well read a romance novel.

An essay is a smidgen of the real me.  Even this blog is not the “real me.”  It’s what I choose to share.  You can believe I’m happier than I’ve ever been, more in love than I’ve ever been, or you can not.  I really don’t care.  There are other things for you to read; no one forced you to read anything of mine.

Recently I attempted to write a piece about one of my favorite childhood authors, Madeleine L’Engle.  In my research, I found a fascinating write-up about her.  I had always assumed she based her books on her own family, and that her family was pretty much perfect.  Turns out her kids hated her books because they felt she had appropriated their lives.  L’Engle wrote a memoir, but there’s nothing in it about her troubled marriage, or the troubled relationships she had with her kids.

I feel like I can’t help but write about myself.  I blab and blab, probably too much.  Maybe because I’ve always had a diary, and when I was kid, would force myself to write about upsetting things because I thought it was “therapeutic.”  (I think I watched too much thirtysomething.)

But, I could only write about my marriage and ex’s affair after we divorced.  I couldn’t bring myself to face it while it was happening.  It was simply too painful.

“Is this good for you?” a clueless guy I once dated asked me of my memoir.  “Should you be writing this?”

In a way writing about the past was like reliving it, but the only way I could write about it well, was to have enough distance.  It’s like watching a movie or reading a book: you’re completely wrapped up in it at the moment, you laugh, you cry, you’re scared, upset, happy, but you know it’s not real.  Clearly I was calmly sitting there writing, not sobbing or tearing my hair out or sucking my thumb in the corner; yet this guy still thought writing my memoir wasn’t “good” for me.

So why not just go to therapy?  Why do I feel a need to share my “pain” with the world?  One, it’s cheaper.  Two, I’m a writer.  The way I express myself is to share through my writing.  If you don’t want to witness my pain, then move along, there’s nothing for you to see here.  Go watch Dancing with the Stars (though that seems pretty painful too).  I’ll still be writing.

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Now my mom has a new plan: instead of coming up to San Francisco, go on a cruise for a few days.  I was so glad to hear she and my father wouldn’t be staying with us for a week, that I enthusiastically said, “Sure, I’ll do the research!  We’ll treat you guys!  I’ll go!!!”

I don’t mind doing the research and treating my parents (they won’t let us spend too much anyway), but I realized after the fact that I really hate cruises and really don’t want to go.

I’ve been on one cruise.  Three days and three nights stuck on a giant floating hotel, which managed to make me feel both claustrophobic and agoraphobic.  It was the same time of year too, June, and so the boat was full of partying college kids.

The room my mom and I shared a) was the size of a walk-in closet, b) had no windows, and c) was right next to some incredibly noisy girls.  One night they just went on and on.  My mom wasn’t complaining so I tried to suffer through it, but then my mother muttered, “Xiao gui.”  Little demons.

That did it.  I banged on the wall three times.  “Shut up!” I shouted.

The girls were silent for a moment, then started laughing and banging back.  “Shut up, shut up!” they mimicked.  After that they’d do things like bang on our door late at night and run away.

It was like all seven deadly sins in one place.  Lust, the college kids doing god knows what in the outdoor hot tubs.  Gluttony, all those all-you-can-eat buffets, including a midnight Mexican spread that I gave in to.  Sloth, nothing to do but sit your ass in a chair and stare at the ocean, wondering if you’ll survive the next three days.  Greed, the people gambling in a casino (I won $70 playing video poker, then promptly lost it).  Wrath at those stupid noisy college girls.  Pride kept me from admitting how lonely I was (my marriage was falling apart at the time).  Finally, I was totally envious of anyone not on that cruise.

But there were some fun moments.  Like when my cousins and I climbed the rock climbing wall, and joking around at dinner, and playing Pictionary, and seeing my grandmother’s face light up whenever she saw any of us.

But I’m really hoping I won’t be able to find a cheap cruise, and my mother will have to come up with crazy plan C.

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