It's Amazing that I'm Still Alive

I love being able to tell people what I am doing at any time of the day, whether they like it or not. It is for this reason that I love Facebook. With Smartphones, you can literally tell people exactly where you are and what you are doing, anytime, anywhere. And I know that most of you people reading this have been on your phone, checking your Facebook, Tweeting something oh-so-profound, or playing Words with Friends while sitting on the toilet. Don’t deny it, maybe you are even reading this from the commode. We’ve all done it. However, I try not to borrow other people’s phones too often.

So this is my tale of the time I Facebooked naked. Intrigued? Don’t be, although I felt that this story needed a certain imagery to accompany it, so yes, there are pictures. And I must say, I do look quite skinny in them. My vegetable and gummy bear diet must be paying off! Here goes…

I woke up around 6:45am from the bustling of the dogs and my mom around the house, but I kept my eyes closed, refusing to actually wake up at such an ungodly hour. Alas, my efforts were foiled when Sally walked into my room, saying, “You know what’s weird Linds? The past few days I have woken up at 5:03 every morning. But this morning I realized that your dog was sitting outside my door quietly whining for me to get up.”

I still had not opened my eyes, and from under the covers I responded, “Hmmph. You know what else is weird? The past few mornings I have woken up at 6:45am from someone walking into my room and starting up a conversation!”   

She laughed and apologized before leaving my room, but by that point, there was no getting back to sleep for me. I let Dave (my dog) get up on the bed and cuddle for awhile before Sally left the house and I finally decided to get up and shower.

Showering at Sal’s house is always much more pleasant in the summer. Since you don’t need the water as hot, you are able to take a longer shower, and since my left foot is (still) in a cast, I need a lot more time to take my unbalanced peg-leg showers than I do when I’m on two feet. So with my iPhone playing loudly in the background, I wobbly, yet successfully cleaned myself under the lukewarm spray.

It was after my shower that trouble ensued. Climbing over the tub wall, I reached for my towel and dried my arms, and then my face. When I pulled the towel away from my glistening cheeks, I noticed a large black spot on my bright green towel. Even without my glasses on, I instantly knew that I was face-to-face with a very large spider. Now, I’m not normally super freaked out by these eight-legged creatures, but that in no way means that I want them in my face. I had been given quite a start, which caused me to scream and throw the towel onto the floor. The spider somehow got knocked onto the bathmat that I was standing on, and was right by my feet, unmoving. I thought that maybe this was a dead spider that I was dealing with, and while I still don’t want it in my face, it was much more manageable if it was just a corpse.

My roommate in San Francisco has a severe fear of spiders. If Katie sees even a speck of one in her room, she doesn’t hesitate to wake me up at 2am to come remove it. I have horrible guilt if I ever kill one, so even on these damn crutches, I have to find a way to trap them in a jar and set them free outside without letting them touch me. It can be quite difficult. Anyway, my first thought after throwing the potentially dead spider onto the ground was, “Oh, my gosh. I have to send Katie a picture. This will totally freak her out!” (Guilt for killing spiders does not equal guilt for scaring roommates).

Laughing evilly to myself while sending the picture to Katie, the beast of a spider suddenly came to life and started racing toward me. The next two seconds of my life are forever engrained in my memory, but in a slow motion replay, over and over and over.

As the newly awakened spider dashed towards me, I screamed (yet again) and jumped back on my one good foot, into a small puddle of water that had dripped off of my hair and body, since I was unable to fully dry myself with my spider-infested towel.  I then slipped, falling backwards, arms flailing, crutch flying, and yanking a towel off it’s hook, all the while thinking that I can’t let my casted foot crash to the ground and hoping that my thick phone case works in not letting my airborne phone break when it hits the ground. It’s times like these that I wish I had my own reality TV show. Or a helmet cam (Christmas is just around the corner people).

After I gracefully landed on the tile floor (not gracefully at all, but my naked fall is awkward enough, so let’s pretend I looked pretty while doing it), I burst into a fit of laughter with the instant replay immediately going through my brain screen while simultaneously hoping that 1) the spider was nowhere near me, and 2) I hadn’t broken any more bones, because at that point, there was nothing that I was going to be able to do about either of those problems. But what I could do was dry my tears of laughter and immediately let my public know what just happened to me, by posting the picture of this huge spider to my Facebook wall. And I did just that.

Hearing my second scream, Thunder Dave had slowly wandered to the open bathroom door and sat staring at me, wondering what the hell was going on. That adorable dog-head-tilt wasn’t doing anything to save me, but it was cute. And I have mixed feelings about the fact that the spider had found a good hiding spot by then, because if Dave had seen it, he would have attacked and eaten it. The downfall is that I never found it and the next couple days at Sal’s house consisted of me in a constant state of fear and suspicion. Where did Spidey go? Is she hiding in the box of Kleenex for when my allergies act up? Maybe laying low near the sink so she can crawl up inside my cast when I’m doing my make-up? Or maybe she made the trek into my bedroom and is hiding under my pillow so she can crawl into my ear one night and lay eggs. Any of these are entirely possible. Maybe I should go back to killing spiders. I’ve been reading far too much about the peaceful ways of Buddha.

For now I will continue to ferociously shake out my bath towel before I use it, even though I’m back in San Francisco. There are still spiders here, and since I never actually found her, I really don’t know if Spidey hitched a ride back to the Bay with me, now do I?

Special thanks to Sally O'Malley for helping me with the pictures for this blog post. I guess that makes up for coming in to wake me up at the crack of dawn, just to chat.

One Step Closer to Nerd Fame

Are you tired of simply reading my words? Never, I know, but now you can HEAR them too! My friends, David and Gavin, have a podcast called Three Pints Deep. I promised them that I would plug them via Facebook when they put out a new episode and that any time I am actually ON the show, I would post the link in my blog. This is obviously an incredibly transparent attempt to guest star on their blog as much as possible, but I do love to hear myself talk!*
I tried to get them to have me become the third host on the podcast, my argument being that they need a female influence to appeal to a wider audience. Not to mention, it's called THREE Pints Deep, not two. They should stick with that lucky number three vibe. Alas, no dice.  
After I got over my initial insult, I posed this newest idea of being a reoccurring guest star, with the offer of posting on FOL. Well, I stick to my word, so here it is. And if you're like me, and just want to hear my part over, and over, and over.... I'm from minutes 5:05-9:35. Just sayin.


Episode 5.5 "Imagine You've Been Kidnapped..."

http://threepintsdeep.podbean.com/ 

*The exception being hearing myself on answering machines and voice mails. I'm convinced there is a conspiracy on these devices to make my voice sound more manly and awkward than it already does in person.

I Keep on Fallin'

I was asked out once by a guy that I met through a friend. I knew it wasn’t going to go far from the beginning, when he asked for my number but followed the question up with some lame poor me comment that made it impossible to back out. Greeeeat.

So the following week, my blonde buxom friend and I met up with him and a friend at the Sparks Farmers Market. Ah, Thursday nights in downtown Sparks. It’s a place where you can find one of the highest concentrations of white trash, underage drunks, and people I went to high school with (who may or may not be in the previous two categories) enjoying the cool, beautiful desert night. I’ve never been sure why they call it a “farmers market,” as I have never seen a piece of fruit or vegetable in a five mile radius, and have been meaning to suggest to the City of Sparks  that they should rename it the “Slutty Farmer’s Daughters Market.” There is however, a very small collection of a taco truck, a corndog stand, a local radio station setup, and a margarita stand, that I must admit, has the best guava margaritas that I have ever tasted. The margarita stand always had a ridiculously long line, and when I would succumb to the 20-30 minute wait, I would usually buy two of these delicious concoctions and have to walk around with a drink in each hand, incognito with the rest of the crowd. Yeah, it was that kind of place.

So Gretchen and I ended up grabbing a beer (no margaritas for us tonight) and sitting outside the local brewery, listening to some crappy local band and watching the severely intoxicated 50-somethings shake it to the live music, when “Alan” and his friend showed up.  If you know me at all, you know that I am not shy. If you have dated me at all, you know I say the most awkward things at the most opportune times.* I can only assume that since I wasn’t really into this “Alan” kid, I wasn’t too nervous and therefore was able to keep my awkward blabber to a minimum. I did, however, mention my clumsiness and grandly showed off my scabby, scarred knees. While the rest of the night was less than exciting, and mostly filled with me talking, Alan still called me the next day to ask if he could take me to dinner.

My philosophy on dating is that anyone who is gutsy enough to ask if they can take me out on a date deserves at least that.** I know that someone can become more appealing the better you get to know them (or more appalling, depending on the person).  So the following night, Alan came to pick me up for dinner. He texted me to let me know that he was just getting to my house, and since I was back living with my mom after college, I yelled “Bye!” and raced out the door to meet him before he had a chance to come up to our house. Later, Sally (aka Mom) would tell me that she didn’t think that he was much of a gentleman, since he didn’t come to the door to get me. I never told her that he would have had I not raced out of the house like a bat out of Hell (shout out- love you Sal!).

He did have time to get out of his truck and halfway around it before I was out of the house, and did open the passenger side door for me. He drove a huge, lifted Chevy truck, and I had to remind myself that I was back in Nevada and this was a very common occurrence. It did not necessarily mean that he was an ultra conservative, cattle roping redneck hick.

Anyway, we ended up going to a little Californiacated Mexican restaurant not too far from my house. He pulled up into a parking space right in front, facing the front door and wall of windows surrounding it. There was also outdoor seating, located on the side of the restaurant that was almost directly in front of the passenger side of Alan’s truck. It was a beautiful summer night, and there were plenty of people sitting outside on the colorfully painted picnic tables enjoying their fish tacos. As Alan killed the engine and got out of the truck, I opened my door and went to slide down from the lifted truck, when I tripped, lost my flip-flop, and proceeded to flip around and fall onto the ground, still somehow holding onto the door handle. My landing was actually pretty sweet. I ended up on my rear end, holding onto the door handle, one bare foot on the ground, the other foot, with shoe, still in the truck. Hence, I was facing the inside of this beast of a vehicle and was staring directly at Alan, who was staring right back at me. The image is burned into my memory, but I really wish I could have photographed the look on his face. His mouth was dropped so far open that he could have caught one of his eyeballs when they popped out of his head. It was priceless. After his brief moment of shock, he asked, “Are you okay?!” 

“I’m fine, I’m fine. This happens to me all the time.” I said, waving it off and trying to regain my composure.  I wasn’t anywhere near as embarrassed as I should have been, and I can only attribute this to what I stated before about not being that into him. If this were a guy that I had had a big crush on, I would have wished that I could melt into the pavement. I can’t imagine how many of the diners sitting in the patio area saw my not-so-graceful tumbling act, but I’m sure I gave someone a good laugh (you’re welcome).

“Oh my God. When you told me you were clumsy, I didn’t actually believe you!” he exclaimed. Note to my readers, I’m not making this up. When I tell you that I am clumsy and uncoordinated, I’m not kidding around. Which is exactly what I told him.

I ended up breaking it off relatively soon after this incident. Not because of the tumble in any way, but because I am pretty sure he was picking out engagement rings after our second date. As a person with commitment issues, this was a problem for me and therefore he had to go. Last I heard, he was engaged to some girl after a, not surprisingly, short courtship. Looking back, I learned that Alan and I have one thing in common; we both fall hard and fast, but in two very different ways.  

*See; every other FOL blog regarding me dating.

**Exceptions to that rule include; men over 50, dudes with a criminal record, guys with swastika tattoos, and women. Although the last one is subject to change depending on how good their health benefits are and if they can apply them to a domestic partnership.