The Here and Now

Every so often I get a burr up my ass.
This burr always has a different purpose. A different motive.
A different malevolent reason for being.

Like last week when I tried to give blood out of the blue.*
Like that time I decided to go to a Korean restaurant to figure out where spend the next year of my life.

This morning I got a burr up my ass.

This burr was shouting at the top of its’ little burr-like lungs that I had to do something crazy.
Something I might fully regret tomorrow.
But, like the burr following girl that I am, I did exactly what the little guy asked.

Shaking and nervous I drove slowly to Great Clips. I approached the building with a plan pounding in my ears. I would go in, find that there was a wait, put my name on the list, and then chicken out long before they ever have a chance to get those clippers within 5 feet of my hair.

This way, I would keep my hair and the burr would be sated for at least a little while.
Great plan, eh?

I entered the shop and before I even had the chance to say, “hello, I would like a haircut please” I was pulled kicking and screaming into a chair.
In the blink of my scared peepers there was a smock around my neck with the hairdresser standing behind me, clicking her scissors, and laughing manically.

Here was my hair.
It fell below my beltline.

Sometimes it got caught in the car door.
Sometime I would roll it up in the window.
Sometimes it would get caught in seat backs, pulling long strands from my scalp.



Here is the amputated 12 inches of hair.



I donated it to Locks for Love where they make wigs for people with cancer. Something I hope all of you will do at some point.
After all, it's only hair.
Right?


*I say tried because they turned me down, claiming that Laos and Cambodia were at the top of the malaria risk list making me unable to donate for a full year.

The best part about eating Chinese food, besides chopsticks, is the end of the meal. You are presented with the check and a fortune cookie.

Depressingly, many fortune cookies have become purveyors of clichés and pointless advice.
With the required lucky numbers on the back.

But today I opened a cookie that made me smile. It was totally worth choking down the stale folded cookie wanna-be.

It read:

A bold and dashing adventure is in your future within the year.

Hello boys and girls.
Ladies and gentlemen.

Long lost friends and foes.

I am officially out from the rock I have been hiding under.
You see, it was a rather big rock and quite heavy.

But, as luck would have it, nothing really happened while I was under my rock.

Well, there was one thing.

A few weeks ago I was in a horrible state of angst. I was on my yearly job hunt, stressed and unhappy, attempting to pick a city.
Or state.
Or hemisphere.

I had my search narrowed down to two places.

Las Vegas and South Korea.

Even though I had not yet been offered a job or even finished filling out the applications I was feeling pretty anxious about deciding which location would win in a fight.

South Korea may have military experience but Las Vegas fights dirty.

I scoured the internet, researching everything I could find. I made lists weighing the pros and cons.
I surveyed my most distant friends and closest strangers.

Nothing gave me a definitive answer.
Nothing screamed, “Move here!”
“This is the place to be!”
“Puppies taste like chicken!”

I had to do something pro active, sitting on my tuckus playing the passive, safe, logical card was not as helpful and reckless as I have grown accustomed to.

I needed a sign, something akin to a bouncing cartoon arrow indicating the right way.
Possibly even a bubbly hot pink skull and crossbones declaring, “Pirate rock!” and “This place will eat you soul!” all at the same time.

I thought, I pondered, and I decided on a foolproof plan. An infallible method of discerning the right from the wrong.

I went to a Korean restaurant.
I entered with the full intention of letting the menu do the talking.

If I liked the food, the motif, the pronunciations, I would move to Korea. If it was all too much, I would be come a resident of Sin City.

The first round went to Korea.
The restaurant had those fun low tables and silky pillows to sit on. Plus, I do love chop-sticks.

Vegas bitch-slapped Korea for the win in round two.
There was raw beef and pickled baby octopus on the menu. That seems a bit creepy. Even for me.

Korea took a lesson from Lil’ Kim, (and I don’t mean the singer) for the win in round three.
Half the menu was all about soup. I love soup.


It was a heated battle. There were harsh words in harsh languages. Cat fights broke out in the aisles, and possible on my plate. A war was waged in that little diner on that fateful evening.
By the end of the meal (and several bottles of beer) white flags went up, a treaty was signed, and a clear winner stood with their hands up in victory.

I am moving to Korea.

I have had one job offer already and am waiting for an interview with another school before I start signing paperwork and buying plane tickets.

So here I go again, here comes another adventure!
Wish me luck!


As a side note, or rather a bottom note, I believe I am going to remain on the topside of my rock for here on out. There will be much in the way of preparations and planning that will shortly become fuel for typing.

I have done nothing.

Nothing.

Not a damned thing.

Nothing worth writing about. Nothing worth talking about. Nothing worth doing again.

Nothing.

And I kind of love it.

There is something about being jobless that is amazing. You can sleep as long as you like, stay awake until the sun comes up, and aimless contemplate what kind of force is required to pop an air mattress*.

I have made many attempts to think of something to write about, something interesting and exciting, or at least mildly humorous.
But, try as I might, I can’t seem to come up with a heart-warming story about the time I took a nap.
Or an adventure tale about my rubber band ball.
Or even a laughable piece regarding my incessant searching of the Internets.

I can feel that there is a road trip in my future.
My very near future.
Possibly today.

You never know, I might be on your couch tonight…

*I have a strong, well-researched, theory about this one but have not yet tested it. That big balloon is my only furniture, after all.

Quick update regarding my hatred of all things cellular.

Last night I was, yet again, at a bar. This one was of the karaoke persuasion.

Two of my friends went to the mic to sing an interesting rendition of “Bitch.”

Half way through the song one of the girls pulled out her cell phone and began texting.

While still at the mic.

In a crowded bar.

I am sorry to say that the “couch hopping” portion of my summer is very likely to be over. It had such a promising start.
There were so many types of sleeping arrangements, used in so many short days.
But all that painful adventure has come to an end.

Did I find a job and therefore a place to live?
Did I suddenly come into a large amount of money and living it up in the penthouse of the Hilton?
Did I do a funky dance landing me in prison with a warm-ish bed and three square meals a day?

None of the above.

I am currently living in a vacant house.
One could call it squatting, except the owners know about it and I have no intention of staying for 11 years.

I have no stove, no microwave, and no refrigerator.

I do have a roof, a warm shower, and an air mattress.

There are suitcases lining the walls. Everything I own that was once in the trunk of my car is now in the living room of my very own vacant mansion.

This kind of home-full home-less-ness is a wonderful change to the house hopping car dwelling existence I had planned for the summer.

I have been out of the world for far too long.
Like the victim of a generation gap I seem to have missed something in this new and shiny world.

I have always thought of myself as a technological person.
I know about these things.
I am addicted to my computer and the internet.
I pride myself on the acquisition of all the newest thing-a-mi-gigs.

Bu then, something happened. There was a shift in the world, and I missed it.

When the hell did cell phones become so freaking annoying?

Granted, I have spent the past two years in a land without cell phone coverage and have therefore grown unaccustomed to their intrusions, but there is still no excuse for this.

Last night I was sitting at a crowded bar with a group of friends. Live music playing loudly in the background, beer flowing freely from several pitchers, and cell phones resting in every hand.

Out of the eight people at my table, 5 of them were on their phones, texting.

I sat in stunned silence, shocked to the core that in a setting as social as this one, the most interesting thing to do was to text other people.

What the hell happened to this world?

Throughout the evening conversations were often broken by musical indicators to a new message. When had to pause our conversation to allow for the response to some technological intrusion.

I was aghast.

I wanted collect up every cell phone at the table in a violent and disrespectful nature and smash them into teeny tiny bits.

During one of these electronic pauses in conversation, I waited for someone to type something of vital importance while I stared at the ceiling and counted tiles.

143, by the way.

I commented, “Man, I must be old, cause I sure do hate these cell phones.”

The terribly texter looked up between letters, “I know, right? Everywhere I look people are using these blasted things. If I had my way, I would throw them all in the freaking river. I mean, whatever happened to actually talking to people!”
The rant was immediately followed by their completion of that text message, the response to three others, and a quick phone call.

There were 279 tiles on the floor.

Maybe I am old, maybe I need immersion therapy to ease myself back into the “real world,” maybe I am just angry because no one calls me anymore, but I find myself missing the days when I lived in something akin to the stone-age.