Monday, May 20, 2013

The Bright Side of Ghetto Living

The fantasy of living alone is that you live in this fabulous downtown abode, outfitted with pristine hardwood floors, and you come home to a big glass of expensive wine and go to sleep in a huge canopy bed fit for a princess.

The reality?

You live in a 1970s shitty apartment in the hood, sandwiched between an abandoned elementary school that's been tagged by the Crips and a halfway house for people just getting out of the looney bin. Oh, and there's the questionable "massage parlor" down the street that has "Client List" written all over it. Your carpet is stained with cat vomit, you drink tap water and go to bed on one that sits atop a metal frame from Costco that has wheels on it.

Admittedly, I moved to this apartment to be closer to the now ex-boyfriend. It made sense for other reasons too, of course, like it's 5 minutes from my Grams, 10 minutes to downtown and an easy 20 minutes to both work and my dance class.

But there are times I really wonder why the hell I live here. Exhibit A:


No, this is not a full moon. This is a glimpse of my neighbor that apparently doesn't believe in belts or thinks it's 1995 when sagging was cool.

Exhibit B: My landlord called the other day to tell me Henry the maintenance man would be removing some rotted wood from my balcony. I come home to this:


As in - the entire balcony was gone, and Henry left this ridiculous sign.

Despite all of these quirks, I have to admit that these last couple months of singledom have allowed me to appreciate my ghetto apartment. Some highlights:

  • I have been belting out songs to my cat. Crazy cat lady status.
  • I'm officially obsessed with "Damages" on NetFlix. So sitting on my ass watching it is all the companionship I need.
  • My bed may be janky, but it's all mine. Oh, and Cammie's too.
  • The old-lady-chain-smoking-neighbor smell can easily be remedied with a couple Bath & Body Works candles and a Scentsy.
  • My bedroom walls aren't shared with anyone, so neighbor sex noises are not an issue.
  • Guest parking is a cinch - you'd be hard pressed to stupidly park your friend's car in the wrong place only to have it towed to Rio Linda (I may know something or two about that).
  • With my neighbors, there's never a dull moment. Ever.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Bitches Get Stitches

You know your week is going to blow when it begins with a trip to the ER.

That was the scene that played out a couple Mondays ago. I was hastily slicing an avocado for my lunch when I went to stab the pit to take it out. Things didn't go quite as planned because the knife slipped and made a lovely laceration on my hand and wouldn't stop gushing blood.

Eff.

I slightly freaked out because I wasn't sure if this was worth a $250 ER visit. I quickly decided it was after observing the gaping hole and noticing I could see through it to the other side of my hand (practically).

I headed to the ER, which was thankfully pretty abandoned. Heaven forbid my pathetic wound would supersede someone with an actual life-threatening emergency.

The doc patched me up with some liquid stitches and sent me on my way. "But wait," I said, "Don't I need a bandage on it or something?" He told me it wasn't necessary, but if I wanted one, he'd put one on. "Umm, yes sir. I need this to look like a legit wound when I go back to work." I'm pretty sure when I recounted my story of cutting an avocado incorrectly, people would not at all take this wound seriously anyway.

And thus was the beginning of my week.

The rest of the week continued to shit on me, but mostly in little ways that just compounded. The highlight of the week was when I made the ridiculous decision to join an online dating site at the encouragement of a couple co-workers.

For the record, I did online dating a few years ago, and it sucked. It only lasted a couple weeks, but in that time I met a boring guy and then a mean guy, and I experienced a whole new kind of rejection - the virtual kind that comes in a higher volume than real life and is strictly a result of people only seeing your best 5 photos. It's brutal out there.

So, I decided to lower my expectations even more and make a profile so I could potentially meet some people to hang with. I've got a lot of free Friday nights in my horizon.

Within a few hours of me creating my profile, I received 3 messages. The least creepy of the bunch seemed harmless, so I responded with your run-of-the-mill small talk - what are you up to tonight, what do you do for work, etc.

This character, Grey (who, BT-dubs, was nothing like Christian Grey) got a little over-excited when I said I did PR and that I have a cat. I should have had better sense, but I was at my girlfriend's house drinking wine, so I accepted his offer to move from messaging to texting.

Big mistake.

Grey proceeded to send photo after photo after photo of himself (PG stuff, thankfully), but it's like, did I request 12 pictures of your creepy mug? No. His final photo was of his chest (and moobs). Aaaaand, I'm out.

When I didn't respond, he asked if I still wanted to talk. I tried to nicely tell him no, but I guess I didn't get my point across. He said he'd like to talk tomorrow but if I didn't want to, just tell him so I don't "waste his time." OK, fine by me. I flat out said I didn't want to talk anymore.

And here was the response I got, a whole 22 minutes into our first conversation:


First of all, how dare he not use proper punctuation when cussing me out?

Second, I'd rather re-live my avocado stabbing fiasco 17 times before ever talking to this fine gent again. Bummer. Looks like I really missed out on a gem. Ahhh, single life. How I've missed you!

My online dating profile has since been deleted after being live less than 24 hours.