Award-Winning Day of Weirdom

Today was weird. I felt listless. I don't usually feel listless; I usually feel like I've eaten lots of lollipops. Today I felt like I'd just had dental work done.

Somehow things aligned so that only 3 of us were in the office for hours. It was like the day after a tornado when I was a kid, when everyone in the neighborhood came out into the street and looked up at the sky in the eerie silence wondering if that had just happened.

Then we discovered we'd been hoodwinked. Through some sleuthing we found out the person who called in last week claiming to be Person A & was stranded in City B & needed C amount of money turned out to be, in fact, not Person A at all. Hoodwinked! I first started suspecting when I talked to Person A at church on Sunday about whether everything had worked out and she looked at me like I was a crazy person trying to steal her child. Woops? We're still working on getting to the bottom of it. But if you've ever been hoodwinked, you know it is a very surreal experience.

Then some very large man in foreboding sunglasses like a hit-man came in and told us he's starting a Pentecostal church and asked if he could hold services in our sanctuary. He was fishy because he said he was from Louisville, but he pronounced it "Louie-ville," and who from Louisville does that? Also, when we told him it wasn't possible to hold services in our sanctuary, he sat in his SUV in the parking lot for a long time and just stared at the church.

Weirded out.

The bug lady came in to spray for bugs and told me she always feels peaceful walking into our church. I wanted to tell her it's because something weird is happening today, and there's probably an episode of The Twilight Zone about this where everyone's hands turn to jelly or something. But I just smiled instead. Which is probably what the jelly-handed lady in The Twilight Zone would've done, too, right when the "doo doo doo doo" music started playing.

Attack of the jelly hands. Episode 1.

come back to center

There is a woman in my building who drives a yellow station wagon, somewhat the color of a melted banana popsicle. She has a license plate on the front of her car that says "Namaste" in the same letters as Disney uses for Aladdin. All I know about "namaste" is that the woman in the yoga videos on FitTV says it at the end of her yoga episodes. Namaste to you, too, yoga lady.

Well, one evening, Banana Popsicle Station Wagon Woman, pretty close to the start of my residence in my apartment building, took up two parking spaces with her bananamobile. And they were the two parking spaces closest to the dumpster, which may sound unappealing, but they're my favorite parking spaces because they're so easily accessible.

And she took up both of them.

It's okay, I told myself. It's a weekend. I'll give her some slack because she was probably drunk when she tried to park.

But then it happened again.

And again.

And I'm telling you, she does it almost every time, weekend or weekday.

So the other morning I looked out my window and caught her little station wagon in its crime.

Proof.

That's not even like an "Oops I accidentally leaned across the white line a little but oh well I'll just leave it for now" parking job. That's like a "Take THAT apartment dwellers, now you can't use EITHER of these spaces! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha I am evil" parking job. How does she think that this is okay?

Next time she does it I'm going to write a little note and stick it in her windshield wiper.

Dear Resident,
       I am a quadriplegic who also suffers from epilepsy and ADHD. The closer I can park to my front door, the easier it is for me. Please stop taking up these parking spaces, as you put my life in jeopardy each time you do. And if I die I will come back and haunt you.
       Hanging on by a thread,
               A fellow resident

Namaste my eye.

someday my prince will come

This past week I was sitting at a red light. I had my windows down and I was singing loudly with the Beatles. I looked to my right and saw the car sitting next to me, a man probably in his 50s at the wheel. He looked at me, and I looked casually away as if my head was simply vacillating like a fan in the summertime. But then I grabbed my cell phone and took a picture.

Yes, that is a car covered entirely in fake flowers and Disney princess stickers.

Snow White and Belle seemed to be his chosen favorites.

I have no idea why.

I mean, has he ever seen Pocahontas?

taking the cannoli, part II

As Man on Center Yellow Line (Holding Pole) taught us earlier, you're not crazy as long as you love what you do. And I realized a few days ago that that is also the moral of The Godfather.

Other possible morals are: 1.) It's okay to murder other people if you're doing it for your familiy; 2.) It's okay to murder your family if you're doing it for other parts of your family; 3.) Love never dies, except when it is murdered - by your family, for your family, or because of your family.

But the one I want to focus on is the first one. You're not crazy as long as you love what you do.

For example, I apparently like to flap my legs and screech like a baby dinosaur. I didn't know this about myself until a few days ago, when I was sitting in Courtney's car and I, indeed, flapped my knees and screeched like a baby dinosaur. Courtney sighed, "You always do that."

Well. I was not aware that I "always" flap and screech like a baby dinosaur. Hopefully I was never sitting in a lecture and randomly began flapping and calling out, "Screeeeee!" But if I did, and my professor looked at me with a concerned and shocked expression, I would calmly have said,

"I love, therefore I'm not crazy."




You're not crazy as long as you love what you do.