Name:Laura Country:United States State:Oregon Metro:Portland Birthday:8/21/1982 Gender:Female
Interests:Crossword puzzles, glazed donuts, sailing and windsurfing, writing, gyros, the New York Times Op-Ed page, sociology, knitting and selling my car. Expertise:Procrastination and time-wasting. Email:email me Member Since:11/22/2004
Went out to dinner tonight with my roommate. Our waitress was a bit
of a space cadet. This manifested itself in the form of her taking
forever to remember what the specials were ("Ravioli stuffed with...
um... kale? And... pecorino cheese? And um... we also have a... );
entirely neglecting salt, pepper and parmesan; and disappearing for the
duration of the meal only to resurface to drop off the check. That's
when this happened:
She brought us back our credit cards—except they weren't our
credit cards. And they were attached to a bill about 4 times larger
than ours. Knowing that the next ice age would arrive before she'd
return, I picked them up and walked them over to her.
"Um... these aren't our cards," I said.
"Oh!" she said, taking them from my hand. She walked over to a table
a few feet away and without saying a word to the patrons, like a bird
diving for worms she snagged their bill and replaced it with ours.
Handing me the correct cards, she said: "Oops! It happens!"
Yes. It does happen. But that's not the issue here. The issue here is that "it happens" is my line. I
am the one who can use it to make light of the situation and
communicate to you that I don't care that you just gave my credit card
to a total stranger. Not you. Nope. Your line is: "Oops! I'm sorry!"
On
my way home from dinner, I came across a duck and two geese walking
down the sidewalk. Oddly, this was not the most bizarre part of my day,
but that’s a whole other story I don’t feel like telling.
The duck-goose-goose situation reminded me of my former neighbors’
potbelly pig, Girdie, who used to take it upon herself to mosey on down
the block to eat pears from a neighbor’s yard. Occasionally she’d hang
out in the middle of the street until a truck would careen by honking
its horn. Passersby regularly would stop to gawk at the bizarre
creature taking a dump in our courtyard (that’s really all pigs ever
do—eat, sleep and poop).
I believe I have a Girdie picture hanging around somewhere… ah yes:
Anyway. A friend of mine from college is moving up to Portland on
Friday and will be inhabiting my extra bedroom. These last few months
have been the first time I’ve lived alone in FIVE YEARS. It’s
unsettling, sometimes, when you don’t have a TV or anybody but your
crazy dog to talk to when you get home from work—but it’s also kind of
nice to not having to share a bathroom or deal with your roommate’s
nutritional yeast always spilling into the burners on the stove or find
their toenail clippings on the coffee table or whatever.
So, now that I’ve gotten used to playing the same song on repeat for an hour (”When We Fall” by Phosphorescent)
and blasting NPR at 6:30 in the morning and taking a dump with the door
open, I’ll have to remember how to live with someone again.
But something tells me it won’t be so hard. Besides, there is no
fucking way in hell Claire would clip her toenails on the coffee table.
Or eat nutritional yeast, unless it was accidentally sprinkled on deep-fried cheese curds.
OK, I’ll make this a multimedia post. Here’s the song that in two
days I’ll only be able to play on repeat with my headphones on:
