Whispers

I think my air conditioning can tell on me.

Where have I been, you ask?  Oh, losing a job, finishing a novel, experiencing the numb faces of dentistry... Basically, life happened and it sort of caught me off guard.  But that's not why I am writing today.

I am writing because my A/C is a tattle-tale.

As far as I knew, my air conditioning and I were getting along just fine.  Sure, there was a little rattling sometimes.  And yeah, it's definitely been hotter than I'd like in my apartment of late.  But overall, I thought our relationship was pretty good.  If not good, definitely functional.

Apparently I was wrong.  While I was slumbering the morning away, peacefully and deeply, my air conditioner must have been complaining to a higher power.  I know it was telling on me, because I was awakened fifteen minutes before my alarm was set to go off by some fairly persistent pounding on my front door.

By the time the pounding finally broke through my dreams and propelled me out of bed, my cats were extremely curious about my visitors.  I lured them away from the door before cracking it open.  Outside were two guys with toolboxes.

"Hi there," they greet me, and the one closest to me clearly has a laugh in his voice.  I can't really blame him.  I was wearing penguin pajamas.

Squinting in the spring sunlight, I clear my throat and say something like, "Hi.  Can I help you?"

LaughingGuy squints back at me.  "Yeah, we're here to fix the air conditioner."  He says it with authority.  I frown in confusion.  "What's it doing?" he asks me, all solicitation and concern.

I make some hems and some haws.

"Nothing, huh?" he laughs.  He seems to like to do that.

"Nothing that I know of," I agree.  After a moment of hesitation, I figure these guys look pretty legit.  "Come on in," I offer, and open the door.

The next few minutes saw me trying to get my cats into a different room (they were quite uncooperative), and saw the toolbox guys taking apart my air conditioner (they were quite unconcerned about my cats).  But they needed a tool from the truck, so while they went to get that, I got my cats into my room and changed into regular clothing.  Well, as regular as ever, anyway.

And then five minutes later, they had fixed whatever I didn't know was wrong.

LaughingGuy wipes his hands on his jeans.  "You keep an eye on your filter, huh?"

I just repeat that last word back, "Huh?"

"Your filter.  It's really clean."

"Oh, yeah."  I don't know anything about that filter.  The fact that it was clean was pure dumb luck.

LaughingGuy nods in approval.  "Most of these people don't even know they have a filter."

Little does he know that I am one such "most people."

"It's kind of scary."  LaughingGuy jokes around with OtherGuy as they leave, and then they are out the door.  My morning interruption is over before my alarm has even gone off.

Vaguely, I wonder if they made up the thing about the A/C and the loose connection just to get a look at what they can steal later, but then I remember that they've seen my vicious guard cats, so they probably won't try anything.

I suppose it is possible it was making some kind of ungodly racket that only my neighbors could hear.
Still, though, I don't know how they knew to come.  Unless Big Brother's name is Lee.

I'm going to be a lot more guarded with my air conditioner now that I know it's got a big mouth.  And a filter.

Monstroffity

I have finally figured out what I should do with my life!

I have discovered a product with huge potential, as yet overlooked by most marketing agencies.  There are a few independent chains, mostly headed up by moms, but in the market at large, it remains quite obscure.  This product is going to sweep the parental demographic.  This product is going to make me millions!

This product was invented by my grandmother.

When I was a child, I was relentlessly pursued and harrassed by a veritable phalanx of monsters.  These monsters were masters of disguise, friends of darkness.  They hid in my closets, under my bed, in my drawers, under my pillow, in the faucet of the kitchen sink, beneath the living room carpet... everywhere.

Thankfully, these monsters had one weakness, that I knew of: light.  Sleeping with a night-light on left me completely unplagued by the photophobic creatures.  Also, I could make shadow puppets on the wall to protect me.  I had bodyguards of the llama, dog, butterfly, and giraffe variety, but no monster was a match for my shadow brachiosaurus.

This was all very well and good when I was at home, but on the rare occasion that I would spend the night with my grandmother, I had no choice but to sleep without a night-light.  I did my best to be brave.  I had a habit of growling softly until I fell asleep, and then growling some more anytime I happened to wake up for a few minutes during the night.  I thought that would be at least a little intimidating for any potential attackers.

Even as a child, I had extremely vivid, realistic dreams.  I remember them very clearly, and there are even some dreams that have repeated themselves since I was a child, popping up every now and then.  Trying to run away from wolves/coyotes is one such dream.  Another is getting a glass of water, only to realize that your return path to your room is littered with red-eyed crocodiles.  I also have a strange tendency to dream about post-apocalyptic worlds.

But when I was little, my dreams were simpler.  They were brighter.  They were scarier.

I remember one night, in particular, when I was staying with Grandmother.  We had both gone to bed early, and I had been sick not long before, so my rest came in fits and spurts.  After one such fit, I woke from a nightmare, thinking I was about to be devoured by some heinous creature.

I ran screaming for Grandmother, who was of course more than a match for any monster merely because she was too awesome for words.  Obviously.

This was not the first time I had panicked.  Grandmother had lots of experience calming me down and keeping monsters at bay.  But on this particular evening, for some reason, she decided I should sleep in my own bed.  So, she got out of the bed, slipped her feet into her blue houseshoes, and went to the kitchen.

She returned with a spray can.  Showing it to me, she told me she was getting tired of all the monsters in her house.  The last time I had been there, she said, she realized what a big problem it was.  So she had gone out and gotten some 'Monster-Spray.'

Awed, I listened as she explained that this Monster-Spray would chase away all the monsters, ghouls, ghosts, creatures, and thingamajigs in the whole house.  Not one evil thing could withstand the spray's deadly aerosol formula.

I padded around behind my grandmother as she sprayed every nook and cranny in her house.  We must have been monster-proofing for at least an hour or two, but Grandmother was very thorough.  She even let me spray it sometimes.  And after we were done, I drifted off into blissful sleep, confident that the only non-human creature still present in the house was my Grandmother's cat, Shasta, whom Grandmother assured me was immune to Monster-Spray.

I have invented my own brand, based off of that experience.  It is sure to be a hit with all the little children facing similar problems to those of my young days.

Castle in Ireland, here I come!

Thanks, Grandmother.

Dig

When I was six years old, I told my grandmother I was going to be an archaeologist.  For at least two years before that, I had been set on being a paleontologist.  But after a trip to Arizona, during which we visited the great Mesa Verde ruins, I was now convinced that I liked Native Americans way more than dinosaurs.

The movie Jurassic Park had inspired my initial interest in dinosaurs.  The first time I tried to watch the movie, I admittedly couldn't make it past the T-Rex escaping and terrorizing the Jeeps.  But my grandmother insisted I would love the movie, and as a four-year old, I trusted my grandmother completely.

We watched it again.  I covered my eyes during the scary scenes, and sat fascinated for the rest.  The brachiosauri, the triceratops, the gallimimus, and even the dilophosaurus caught my imagination, and although I was quite terrified of the tyrannosaur, I thought he was pretty awesome too.

We won't talk about the velociraptors.

From then on, I became that nerdy kid.  I was the kid with the dinosaur books, and not the fun ones where some little boy has a dinosaur as a pet, but boring ones with hardly any pictures.  At five years of age, I could discourse intelligently on several different theories of the dinosaurs' sudden extinction.  When I was in kindergarten, the second grade teacher asked me to come in and teach the lesson about dinosaurs.

I knew all the most common dinosaurs, what periods they would have lived in, what they ate, their social behaviors... I was a dinosaur encyclopedia in miniature, fun-sized for your convenience.  I maintain much of this knowledge even today -- I can't begin to tell you my dismay when they announced that the brontosaurus was a hoax.

Pluto isn't a planet.  Tomatoes aren't a vegetable.  Indigo isn't a color.  And brontosauri never existed.  Our modern world is a killjoy.

You can imagine, since I displayed such devotion to my paleontological pursuits, that the experience I had at Mesa Verde was quite powerful.  It caused me to rethink my life plan.  Whereas most little six-year-old girls wanted to be princesses or supermodels or the first female president, I was now absolutely certain I would be an archaeologist.

As my fascination with history grew, I spread a wide net.  I took in American history, world history, prehistoric theories, myths and legends of prominent cultures.  But my real passion was for Native Americans, particularly those of the nomadic and puebloan southwest.

Very soon after declaring my archaeological ambitions, I developed a healthy fascination for a southwestern Native American symbol: Kokopelli.  His legend permeates most of the western region of the United States, and goes as far south as the Mayans in Central America.  Legend has it that an actual, wandering flute player travelled around the region's trade routes, playing his wooden flute and trading trinkets (mostly jewelry and precious materials like turquoise, obsidian, and shells).  This paragraph actually has nothing to do with anything -- I just wanted to tell you about Kokopelli.

My family and friends were all very supportive of my career choice.  When I was in middle school, my mother even enrolled me in an archaeology program at the Belle Meade plantation.  I was thrilled.  Over the span of two summers, I spent about a month digging stuff up.

I learned how to grid a dig area, how to dig by level, how you ought to sift the dirt to make sure you aren't missing anything.  I got pretty frustrated with the number of buttons and nails we uncovered our first summer, when we dug at the site of an old tool shed.  But even more frustrating was when we found a complete hinge, rusted through, and had to continue to dig by level around it, rather than simply pulling it out triumphantly.

I learned (with less enthusiasm), how to catalogue, label, and describe each and every item you unearthed, no matter how modern or boring or small some of those items happened to be.  In my second summer, I bagged and recorded everything from pig bones to a bottle cap from an old school, 20-oz. glass bottle of Coca-Cola.

I learned how to research your area in relation to your finds, so as to form an educated and plausible theory about what you have uncovered.  We were fortunate when we dug at the tool shed to already have historical records indicating its location on the plantation.  We were less fortunate with our information during the second summer, when we were the first to dig on newly reacquired land.

We knew the land had once belonged to the plantation, that it had been sold sometime in the early 1900s, and that it had been mostly farm and pastureland.  So you can imagine our surprise when we dug to only Level 3 (not very deep at all) and uncovered a layer of rocks, clearly man-made.

We speculated about its usage, trying to justify it with the smaller artifacts we had already gathered.  Nails, bones, and bottlecaps aside, there wasn't much to give us clues.  Perhaps a farm road, or the foundation of a small cabin?  But afer much speculation and digging an entire four-square grid of next-to-nothing, we found our answer in the photographical archives of the plantation -- a barbecue pit.  It was invigorating.  (I'm sure that longwinded explanation wasn't boring for you at all).

I remained glued to my dreams of working in the dirt all the way until my freshman year of college.  As it often does with people far more motivated than myself, college changed me.  I realized I had a penchant for languages, and a serious weakness about homework.

I quickly understood that an anthropology major would be a lot of hard work, and also kind of awful.  My first and only anthropology class was taught by a professor who officially turned me off to the entire department.  Within a month, she had informed us that we knew nothing about Scotland, and we were stupid if we thought we did.  She also succeeded in teaching me that, according to gender stereotypes, I should have been a guy.  I loathed that class, and all its stereotypes.

So I changed my tune.  Yet I still found myself connected to certain quirks I had developed as a budding archaeologist.  Two, in particular, stick with me even now.

1- Trash.  I have a thing about trash.  Maybe that's why I am so fascinated by litter on the roads, or by what my apartment neighbors throw out.  You can learn a lot about people from their trash.  Thousands of years from now, when our civilization is just dust, future archaeologists will be conducting major digs in our land fills.

2- Journals.  Although they can be rather unreliable, journals are a huge historical resource.  They are often very informative without even intending to be.  Because of this conviction, I decided that I ought to keep journals myself, for the benefit of the future historians and archaeologists.  My journals are completely wacky, but I do throw in tidbits about the news of the day sometimes.  If you can sift through the crazy, you'll find some historical gems, I think.

Similarly, I wrote letters during college, since many records can be traced back to an exchange of letters.  This has faded over time, but I still wish that snail mail was the most common communication method.  I like it way better than email, and infinitely more than the phone.  But it's not, so this paragraph is a moot point.  I'm just full of useless paragraphs today.

Now that I've dropped out of college and started paying off my Exorbitant Money-Sucking Loans, I find myself coming full circle.  I still want to be an archaeologist.  That childhood dream is not dead.  It's fitting, in a way.  When I declared a Russian major, I considered my archaeological aspirations to be ancient history, and here I am discovering them all over again.

I guess what I'm saying is, we have to chase our dreams while we're still young.  Responsible Adult Limbo sucks in so, so many ways, but the only way out is up.  We're allowed to use this time to figure out what we're doing.  We can make mistakes, we can learn, we can still be growing up.  This is the time for adventures.

My adventure started in a barbecue pit.  Who knows where that road will take me?

Frazzled

Sometimes, I randomly get overwhelmingly nervous about:

• the overpass collapsing on my car.
• whether the bug I am investigating might be poisonous.
• the fact that the GPS in my phone is making me a magnet for government conspiracies.
• trees falling on my house (worst case scenario: it's also raining).
• the fact that I don't know how the internet works, but I use it all the time anyway.
• how I legitimately cannot stop biting my nails.
• the possibility that I might inadvertently alienate all my loved ones and end up alone.
• being forced to give up sugar and meat (my dentist told me I had to stop drinking Dr Pepper-- he doesn't understand that it's literally ALL I drink).
• whether the world really is ending.
• losing my job.
• never losing my job.
• animals escaping from the zoo.
• the fact that it will be winter again at some point.
• the possibility that I don't own every recorded piece of music by Kate Nash and/or Parachute Musical.
• brain aneurysms.
• nuclear war.
• a bird pooping on me.
• whether or not the people in the car next to me can hear me singing.
• rabid dogs.
• whether blue eyes can see into my soul.
• the existence of chupacabras.
• spontaneous combustion.
• wearing shoes too much (worst case scenario: my feet shrivel up from lack of oxygen/blood and I never walk again).
• whether turtles bite.
• self-destructive word vomit.
• the fact that I will be donating blood at some point in the next three years.
• the sun never coming out again.
• the inevitable literacy issues of the next generation/the degeneration of the English language.
• whether people are keeping huge secrets from me.
• whether the meat I'm cooking has gone bad.
• losing my ability to smell.
• time and relativity theories.
• whether my freckles are multiplying.
• talking on the phone.
• crashing my computer on accident (not unprecedented).
• America becoming a dictatorship.
• time travel paradoxes affecting my reality (for this one, I blame GreenFriend).
• going to jail on trumped-up charges.
• whether the guy in front of me in the grocery line is packing heat.
• where I left my iPod.
• the fact that I am responsible for two feline lives.
• becoming my CrazyAunt.
• what would happen if McDonald's went out of business.
• someone actually succeeding in a world domination plot.
• dying by suffocation.
• when my pen runs out of ink.
• sitting on something gross.
• how I don't burp.
• the fact that I don't own pepper spray.
• coming into contact with acid.
• losing all my Word documents.
• not remembering things.
• how I am pregnant (despite the fact that it is physically impossible).
• my toes cramping and then getting stuck that way.
• the possibility of crying in front of other people.
• sneezing (worst case scenario: when your heart stops, it doesn't start working again)
• whether the road kill is still slightly alive.
• being attacked by a vulture or a goose.
• bedbugs.
• my complete inability to believe I might get a happy ending.
• what it would feel like to pierce your ear with a staple remover.
• other people reading combinations of words that were written by me.
• if I have something in my teeth.
• what I look like when I've been injected with Novocaine.
• whether an important person in any given situation can read my mind.
• what fashion will be like when I'm old.
• how animals don't use toilet paper.
• experiencing impale-ment, directly or only as a witness.
• whether there are actually situations in which it is acceptable to end a sentence in a preposition.
• how I can't veto males from my friends' lives.
• being a disappointment.
• if inanimate objects have feelings.
• leaving my curtains/windows open at night (worst case scenario: the ability to see a glimpse of my apartment entices home invaders to climb in).
• misspelling things.
• being the only person available to respond to [insert crisis/emergency here].
• being annoying.
• being forgotten.
• ever being in a situation in which I require an IV.
• losing my hair.
• offending someone by double-dipping a chip.
• how camels and deer walk with backwards knees (it just makes me really uncomfortable).
• coming in contact with my arch-allergen for the first time, causing anaphylactic shock/instant death.
• what to do with leftovers.
• what I would do with three wishes.
• being trampled by/crushed in a crowd.
• never amounting to anything.
• being this nervous forever.
• everything I'm nervous about coming true.