Some People Really Know How to Have a Good Time

Sometimes my life feels like a Michael Chabon novel— populated by eccentric but loveable characters, filled with bizarre events, riddled with zany adventures, and very, very well written. This week has been a perfect example. These are a few of the things that have happened over the past 9 days or so:

The Black Eye Story:
Open a cabinet into face at work. People disbelieve actual story, so made up various better ones. Hilarity ensues.(it looked much worse IRL, guys)

The Unsolicited Mail Story:
Am handed piece of mail by a perplexed-looking manager at work. It is addressed to me, via my job. Open it. Is DRAWINGS OF SELF, copied creepily from internet photos, sent by one of my various bar regulars. Includes sketchtastic note. Boss gets all masculine about it and calls security and the police. I begin to feel like a troublemaker.

Unsolicited Mail Part II:
Overhear managers having meeting about crazy vindictive email (re: our Finale location) sent by former customer. Overhear that said email was sent on May 20th. Date sounds vaguely familiar, as is two days after broke up with ex. Realize who email must have been sent by: Ex's CRAZY BOSS who made up stories about self and workplace, ostensibly to undermine what limited influence I may have had in ex's limited life. Talk to managers, confirm that this is indeed the case. Inform managers of CRAZINESS. Managers look partially relieved, partially perplexed at my freak-magnet abilities. Did I mention that this was the same day as Unsolicited Mail Part I?

The Wenchcapades:
Eight girls descend upon house, drink lots of rum/orange sherbet smoothies, and break into my wig collection. Several glasses are broken before we remember that it is Friday the 13th.



Swing Dancing With Christina:
Copacetic!

Finale Summer Picnic:
All of the possible hilarity
Gerri: "This is my haaat, from Paaaris."
(...it was not a hat from Paris. It was, in fact, a piñata.)

Dinner Party:
I hereby reclaim some of the possible hilarity and bequeath it to this situation. Buy hundreds of dollars worth of kitchen ware, make 5 different dishes, dress up as Stepford Wife. Send Rowan into work wearing a suit. Enough said, really. Photos forthcoming as soon as they vacate Ashley's camera and occupy my computer.


In Summary, courtesy of Finale Manager:

BJ: So Nora, how's the soap opera life?
EM: Oh, you know. Soapy.
BJ: We should translate you into Spanish and call it "¡Noramundo!"


Well, I mean... fair enough.

Call Me Ishmael

I am tearing apart the room here after less than a year, and moving on to a more feminine and adult abode less than a block away. I have grown to love the neighborhood that I was so reluctant to join at this time last year. Maybe I enjoy it because, like the rest of my life, it occupies a liminal space. Here is the paradoxical territory between high class and subculture, equally populated with the rooted and the rootless.
I am beginning to wonder which I am. I value my independence more highly than most, but (again, in keeping with the grand paradox of life thus far) the need for personal liberty is often complicated by an opposing desire for stability and the depth in friendship that generally is only achieved through consistent company. Herman Melville says that "All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore." I have spent too much of my life thinking earnestly at the expense of living earnestly, with that wanderer's fear of finding myself tied to one place, one set of people. I hope that I can keep the best elements of my rootlessness while discarding those that prevent me from living deeply in one place at a time.
I wonder what insights Ireland will add to this train of thought over the next month. At this point, I still have no idea which continent the rest of my life will find roots in— a thought that is both thrilling and somehow melancholy. I am never sure if I am running towards or away. I think possibly the solution is to live on a houseboat. Temporary permanence!

Excessive house cleaning always either makes me restless or content. This time it was both, I think. Typical.