friday night conversations

Rose: "So, basically, I have to get a second job and the first 800 dollars I make is going to my parents."

Rose and I have been friends since before I can remember. She says she was out shoveling snow with her dad in their new neighborhood, and I was across the street at my house doing the same thing with my pops. She came over, asked if I wanted to be her friend, and the rest was history. We have the relationship that only close girlfriends can share, one that is strengthened by the fact that it took root in the early stages of our life when we were completely innocent.Those were the days before we knew that broken hearts physically hurt or that life is full of amazingly diffcult decisions. Before we found out that people die, that the world stretches far beyond the boundaries of our old neighborhood, and that love is not in fact all we need.

When we lived together, our little house that was shared with the other point in our triangle of codependancy (shout out to bestie numero dos Mini-J) became a homey little den of emotions and general irresponsibility. Por ejemplo (is that real Spanish? is it??), there was the year neither of us had the money to renew the tags on our cars, so we just...didn't. This non-payment led to problems, namely, we lived on an extemely busy street and with only one driveway spot one of us ended up parked on that street everyday, which of course led to multiple parking tickets. There were also the numerous arguments and deep, irritated sighs about who got to park in the driveway ("but I got three tickets last week and I don't have ANY MONEYYYY"). As you have probably surmised, the parking tickets didn't so much get paid as forgotten about under car seats with lost diet coke bottles and used as decoys that we put back on our windshield to avoid further ticketing.

This would be why Rose now owes her parents a cool 800 bucks. I guess she never went ahead and paid any? of those tickets, got a big 'ol boot on her car, and had to shell out nearly a grand to get it removed. Let that be a lesson to all of us irresponsible car owners. Naturally, after she told me about getting a second job as some sort of homeless youth counselor I asked what that would entail. "Oh, they give me a van. So I am going to drive around in a van all day and try to convince kids to get in it." The previous statement is humorous for a number of reasons, but mainly because it was spoken without a trace of joking. "So you're keeping the refugee after-school program, too?" I asked. "Yup. The one where I walk around the halls looking for black kids and then trying to get them to talk to me."

I couldn't make this stuff up. Well, actually...I certainly could. But that would be so stupid.

Conversations with myself, among other things

Did I eat macaroni and cheese in bed yesterday for breakfast whilst watching my new secret shameful love, ABC Family's Greek? NO {insert squinty eyes looking to the left that may or may not indicate lying here} That would be so gross and lame. Incidentally, why is there a show about life in the Greek System on ABC FAMILY? I'm trying to remember which of my collegiate sorority activities would be suitable for a network with the word family in the title and I find myself...coming up with...um, nothing? Though I did hang out quite a bit with one particular family during football season...they had one of the most popular tailgates and their ten year old boys would make us all martinis.

How many diet cokes did I drink last week? And how many had vodka in them in true post-breakup Hales fashion? No one KNOWS...bahahaha.

Do I sometimes drink beer AND watch TV while studying? But maybe it's REALLY OKAY LIKE I'VE BEEN SAYING FOR MONTHS and now I don't have to say it to ANYONE anymore because there is no one judging me with sideways glances and questions about test scores (which, B to the W, are excellent. So suck that down).

If I were, say, a neurotic and emotional cleaner, I could perhaps get up at 2 AM to obsessively scrub, sweep, and re-organize the teeniest abode without having to worry about waking anyone up but the dog, and that dude sleeps like..all day, so I don't even feel bad.

you born alone, you die alone

I have recently found myself in a situation which requires me to return back to the oh-so-wonderful world of renting, after (as my best friend put it) getting a taste of the good life livin up in a swanky, new build

Townhouse brand spankin new stainless steel appliances? check. oil rubbed bronze fixtures including rain shower heads? of course. flat screen tv with instant access to netflix? mmmhmm. ginormous garden tub? oh fo sho. ice maker which gave me a sweet yet brief reprieve from a lifetime of dealing with those GD ice trays? sweet, sweet ice maker. thank you for your multiple chilly blessings. i will never forget.

At any rate, I have quickly become reacquainted with the gatekeeper of all abodes in the renter's world: the landlord. I once had a landlord tell my two best friends and I what a wonderful time we would have living in her cute old and very adorable home, and as she told us how fun it would be to decorate she reminisced about her old tenants, two male roommates. "Although I don't think they were you know, 'roommates'.", she mused. "The house was far too pulled together and stylish for that. Those gays, they sure do know how to style a house." I then began to choke on my laughter and panicked as I felt it threatening to come out of my mouth in an uncontrollable bout of giggles, so I ran into the bathroom and slammed the door, threw myself down on the toilet, laughed incredibly hard into my elbow and emerged as though nothing unusual had happened. Had I a blog then, I sure would have blogged the shiz out of that. Alas, I did not, but I now have a blog in which to offer you this gem of a landlord story.

Landlord Reed and I met at a Staples, the popular office supply chain with the 'easy button'. I sure as hell wish there had been an easy button for me to bang on in there on Monday. I sat in my car waiting for him to arrive as I quietly cried and sniffled, since I was in the apartment market again due to what else? Those pesky relationship woes. The longer I sat, the more I cried. The more I cried, the less of a grip on reality I had, and I fell into a deep cycle of financial worrying that I didn't have a toaster! Oh GOD how will I make toast? A coffee machine? NO MICROWAVE? Which one of my treasured possessions will I have to sell to purchase paint? My shoes....my boots alone have had their own closest, my poor lost homeless boots! Woe are my boots! The few seconds that I stopped my obsessive worrying were fraught with the grief that is so familiar to anyone who has ever been in a relationship that ended.

Needless to say, there were many tears. And sniffles, and full on heaving sniffle-sigh-sobby-hiccups. Now, you might think that one would put on her big girl panties before she met her potential new landlord in a Staples office supply store! That she would pull herself together! Slap on some face powder and hold her breath till she stopped crying! No no. I entered that store a full on level five emotional train wreck of a girl. My landlord of Eastern European descent who is six feet tall, very large, and whom I am vaguely certain is involved in some shady if not illegal business practices took one look at me and demanded: "What? What is wrong with you? You not want to do this or what?" Between snotty hiccups and tears I managed to squeeze out something about a boyfriend problem and nowhere to live and sharing a dog and needing an apartment. To which I was immediately given the gruff response of "Okay, we do this! You show me the money. I see the money." Yes. That's right. I was told to "show him the money" and then I litteraly had to fan out four hundred dollar bills right there on that office supply store table between us. Then came the tenuous process of filling out the blanks on a Universal Rental Agreement printed from the Internet. Despite having forced me to meet him at a Staples for the use of their Xerox machines, dude handed me a blank generic lease with instructions I am to fill my copy in with him as he fills out his copy. Tears dropping onto the page and smearing the ink and my brain in emotional overload having long since stopped functioning on a significant intellectual level, I filled out that damn Universal Rental Agreement. I then had to convince him to sign my copy and argue with him about giving me my key since I have given him a deposit but not rent yet. He relented and gave me a key, and mumbled "How long? How long it last for with boyfriend?" And mercifully, I was not placated with the plenty of fish in the sea if you love it set it free it is better to have loved and lost generic breakup advice. I was told by this tall domineering stranger who owns what is now my (very small) postage stamp of a residence: "You know...you do what you do. You born alone, you die alone. You not worry about boy or man, you do what you do."

 Fitting advice for a distraught girl who just signed up for her first EVER six months of solo livin, no?

Yesterday he called me to check in. Ya know...gave me some more of that stoic Russian advice. Told me I was "Young and beautiful girl! Not an old man. I am an old man, and fat too...and I am in same boat as you only it not going to be so easy for me as for you!"

I think 'ol landlord Reed and I are gonna do juuuuuust fine by one another.