Seeking the answers, part 1: Open up for the choo-choo!

I've stumbled upon an Internet goldmine. At first glance, it appeared to be some kind of "Yahoo! Answers" for refined, cultured types. A site where erudite, sophisticated people come together to seek the answers to life's most meaningful questions.

Questions like, "WHAT IS A CERVIX AGEEN I CRNT BELIEVE I FORGOT LOOL"

Looling indeed, m'lady! You forgot ageen? I daresay, you'd lose your head if it weren't attached.

After thoroughly perusing this treasury of queries and responses, I feel I have come away enlightened and with a greater sense of self-awareness and inner peace. Allow me to share with you some of the finer points of this site...

One inquisitive young woman wonders:

"How to stop queefing?"

and a young gentleman comes to her aid with a prompt reply:

"Making a girl queef, to a guy, is just a sign that you're really hiding it up good. If you've never made a girl queef, you're not doing it right. Also, the more aroused a girl gets, the more predictable she is to queef, so it's only a bad point if you don't know what it is."

If you've never made a girl queef, you're not doing it right. Are you taking notes, men?

Another young woman wonders:

"What chemicals could be put within panties to tighten up loose flaps?"

and receives her answer: "Aluminum."

Aluminum! Who knew! There is no reason to ever visit a doctor again! What use is medicine and science when we've got all the answers we need right here at this virtual oracle of sound advice? Get lost, physicians, we've got it covered!

Another woman is desperate for help:

"God, i need some good comebacks for those boobless attacks.? people r constantly teasing me and my friend about being flatcheasted (she's more flat that me so she get's tham more often. this is 4 her. well...sorta lol, me 2) I don;t kknow weather to laugh or be angry or... idk. COMEBACKS?"

Well, young lady, you have come to the right place. Let's see what cutting witticisms your fellow scholars have devised for your retorts.

"like, at lease my boobs arent so big that I can;t see my toes!" 

Zing!

"do you need a life jacket when you have one attached?" 

Oooh, count it!

"who needs a car with air bags?" 

Absolutely nobody, that's who.

"when you run do you smack yourself in the face?" 

Lool!

"at least i can find bathing suits in my size" 

Up top, girlfriend!

"less fun on top equals more fun on the bottom" 

It's true, do the math!

"at least they dont flat in the wind when i run" 

No flatting in the wind for you!

"If its a guy, just say, they are probably bigger than your dick!" 

Um...*confused face*...yes.

"At least i wont have back pains from those two tvs on your chest" 

TVs! How creative! Televisions are indeed large and bulky, like breasts, it's true.

So clever! I can't just stand back as a participant. I must step in and humbly propose my submissions for boobless comebacks:

"I'm rubber you're glue, your TV breasts flat in the wind like big floppy dicks."

Oh, heavens. This is harder than it looks. How about:

"Your large breasts are garbage breasts!"

Well, lesson learned. Leave the advice-giving to the experts.

Lastly, it appears even the most refined intellectuals seek sexual advice from time to time. It's quite possible they're more like us than we realize:

"Is it bleak to put a toy up your Virgina?"

"Depends, probably not if the toy is a train set or something big with a lot of moving metal parts."

Are you in need of some good advice? Start here: Go, learn, grow. 

The adventure of a lifetime, now with more lethargy

A man who drives a truck and fixes things arrives this morning to tinker with something. I don't remember what. A tank or a meter, or some other type of most boring word on the planet. 

"You know where to go," I say with a wave toward the basement, where I've never been because nothing good has ever happened in a basement. Plus it's where all the boring things that I don't understand are stored.

Half an hour later he approaches me with some smug asshole blinky-light device. The Alex Trebek of poison gas detectors.

Man: Do you ever feel headachey when you wake up? Like a hangover?

Me: I knew it. This is my intervention, isn't it. Is Jeff here? Did I get Jeff?

Man: Do you feel sleepy alot?

Me: This is weird. It's like you know me.

Man: You know you have carbon monoxide coming through your vents at 25 parts per million?

Me: That's awesome! That's like, barely any parts!

Man: It's about half of what you'd find coming out of a tailpipe.

Me: Only half then? What are the side effects of that?

Man: Sleepiness and death.

Me: Huh. Well. This explains why I've gained so much weight this year.

Man: No it doesn't. It doesn't explain that at all.

Me: Or does it?

Man: No.

Me: *squinty eyes*

Man: Nope.

Me: *hopeful eyebrows*

Man: No.

Me: I've been breaking out on my forehead...

Man: No.

Me: My toes feel less bendy lately...

Man: No.

Me: Fine. Does it explain that gas smell down there?

Man: No, carbon monoxide is odorless. Wait. A gas smell?

Me: Yeah, like smoky gas. Mostly smoke, but I know there was gas too, because it made my tongue taste like perfume, so I closed the basement door and locked it. Cause petewy! I tell you what, it took about 15 York Peppermint Patties to wash that taste away!

Man: Well whatever that was seems to have resolved itself. The real problem is the lethal amounts of carbon monoxide. 

Me: Okay. Can you fix it?

Man: Well, I turned the furnace off down there for now. Your [insert nonsense stuff I don't understand] hasn't been replaced since 1986. And your [award for boringest words ever] looks like it's original to the house. You have [yawn] leaking down through your [I wonder if there are any more peppermint patties?] and causing [oh my god, my dog looks so cute right now] to rust. It's pretty serious.

Me: Okay. So, how long until I can flush the toilet?

Man: I turned off the furnace. That's all. Not the water.

Me: So, no hot showers for....

Man: Just the furnace. The hot water is fine.

Me: So the Internet...?

Man: Still works.

Me: Can I still send texts from my phone?

Man: Yes.

Me: And the milk will stay good for how long if I don't open the fridge?

Man: I don't think you understand.

Me: It's just so boring, what you're saying. It's hard to even focus. Could you just summarize it? Or write it on this post-it and I'll read it later?

Man: Listen...I. turned. off. your. furnace. so. that. the. carbon. monox....

Me: Oh my God you're killing me right now. I think I just fell asleep and had a dream in the middle of that sentence. Don't say "furnace" ever again. So boring.

Man: Don't use the heat. No more hot air. Look at me. It's simple. No. More. Hot. Air.

Me: UGGHH SO BORING MY BRAIN HURTS.

Man: Just say it.

Me: Nah. Mah. Hah. Ah. *falls asleep*

Man: You can do this. Focus.

Me: Fine. No More Hot Air. NMHA. I'll remember it that way. It's a mnemonic device. NMHA stands for: No Man Has Apples. or Nancy Makes Hot Appetizers. Or None More Heat Air.

Man: Or, No More Hot Air.

Me: Hey! That's catchy! I'll remember that!

Man: You're really lucky we caught this leak.

Me: See, this is why I don't go down in the basement. Nothing good ever came from poking around down there.

Man: Besides detecting carbon monoxide and possibly saving your life? You know, carbon monoxide sinks to the ground, where your dogs sleep. Have your dogs been listless?

Me: Um...let me think. 

Me: Maybe a little. It's hard to say, really.

Me: I suppose it's possible, now that you mention it.

Me: I cremated one last month. I wonder...

Me: *thinky face*

Me: I'm pretty sure she was dead.

Me: ...

Me: Pretty sure.

***

The best thing about living in an old house is that every day is a surprise and and adventure in survival.

Sometimes it rains pee in the hallway. The first time this happened I was like WHAT THE FUCK and I thought maybe it was the apocalypse or a house stigmata because whoever heard of such a thing, and I went upstairs to pack my suitcase because yeah, fuck that. But it turned out to be a broken pipe caused by somebody flushing a catcher's mitt wad of toilet paper down the toilet but you know what? Whatever, plumber. If my only luxury is 35 layers of tissue between my hand and my poop, then just let me be. I'll take a little pee rain now and then. That's why God invented buckets.

And sometimes my front gate opens, and sometimes it doesn't, and maybe it will be a climb over the wall and land in the hedges day, and maybe it'll be a use your key day. And maybe it'll be the kind of arid day where the gate shrinks and the little clicky metal piece doesn't even reach the other side and it becomes a swinging saloon door and I get to enter my patio like an old west cowboy. See? Every day is an adventure.

Then there are the rats. Rats like old houses. Lots of hidden holes and broken screens and old vines and stuff. Sometimes when I'm sitting outside, a rat will just walk by on a branch of a shrub next to me. Hello, Senor Raton! Make yourself at shrub!

Another fun part about living in an old house is remembering which outlets work, and which don't, and which ones make a BEZZERT noise and put on a tiny fireworks display and give you an electrical bitch slap and make you say nonsense things like Yeep!! and Shookaw!! and Whacha!! as your leg shoots out backwards in an involuntary donkey-kick when you go to plug something in. And then after a few years of this, some electrician tells you that your house is powered with cloth covered wires from the 30's and that you're lucky to be alive.

Hear that? Lucky to be alive. Like Evil Kneivel or Tom Daschle or Gary Busey. Not everyone gets pretty much constant life-affirming reminders from their house.

I, Pigeon. (Alt Title: Why does my crotch smell so facey?)

Sitting alone at the coffee shop early this morning, I watched a pigeon get struck by a trolley car. Or a trolley car get struck by a pigeon. I don't know, I guess whoever started it doesn't really matter, the point is that the pigeon lost. The trolley will cut a pigeon. 

The pigeon was dead, but only on its left side. The right side was determined to fly away, or perhaps its right side believed it was flying, because it continued to flap awkwardly as cars drove by. In between sips of latte, I watched and made those teeth clenched sucking in noises each time a car's tires would send more feathers flying. 

The bird wouldn't die, even despite its being dead. Such optimism in the face of adversity. 

I am that bird.

No, I am the road.

An old Chinese trash collector man walked into the street and swept the bird into his dustpan and dumped it into his rolling trash bin. "Not dead yet! Not trash yet!" I murmured, quietly angered by the indignity. 

I am that trash collector.

No wait, I am the broom.

I pulled my finger out of my ear to inspect whatever my pinky had been rooting around for this entire time, and wondered why nothing deep ever happens to me. I never get to be a metaphor. It's not fair, and frankly I think this blog suffers because of it. It would've been nice if that whole "I am that bird" thing back there had worked out, that sounded deep. 

Hold on. It's coming together now. If the trolley is vodka cranberry, and the bird trying to fly while half dead is anything like me trying to steal a room service cart full of grilled cheese and french fries and bring it in the elevator down to my hotel room last night, then maybe I am that bird. 

Are you following me on this? I have a crazy hangover, so I might be off on this, but bear with me.

If bachelorette party weekends are the coffee shop, and I am the bird, then the eternal struggle between life and death is the floor lamp I wrestled last night and broke, then put in the elevator with my cart of grilled cheese to take to my room so the hotel would never find out. And the people who witnessed the bird get hit by the trolley are a metaphor for the hotel manager who saw the bride-to-be and I dragging hotel property down the hall and into the elevator on the security camera and came looking for us.

This is getting good. Really deep shit. 

And the room service guy who I trusted enough to open my closet and show him the lamp and ask his advice for how to proceed in the matter would be the trash man, because well, I don't know if that trash man is a tattletale, but this guy definitely was. It's a good metaphor though because they both sweep up things that aren't dead yet and/or have a trusty kind of face but are extremely disloyal.

Then there's the elevator mechanic. I might need help with this one.

My friend swiped the wrench out of his tool belt on our ride up in the elevator, and when he discovered it missing, he called our room to accuse us of stealing it. 

"One of you turkeys stole my wrench," he said. 

"Gobble gobble," friend replied. 

So he turned off our suite's electricity. Wait, ok I remember now, that's when I started the fight with the lamp. I was confused about why the lights had gone out. But anyway, our room went dark and quiet as revenge for stealing his wrench. So we threw it back in the elevator and pressed the down button. That mechanic is God, taking and giving life/electricity all willy nilly, and also all-powerful/has no sense of humor.

And in an unexpected twist, God (real life God, not metaphor God who was played by the mechanic) is me (coffee shop me, not vodka me) because I watched the whole bird scene play out and God watches my whole life scene play out, and God probably makes those sucking air in through clenched teeth noises at me too. 

Oh, and my friend Ani is the road, because I sat on her face last night.