topotales

Not long ago, the remote controller for our television went missing.  After searching the couch cushions, under the couch, the kitchen counters, the nursery and the dog’s bed (because it never ceases to amaze me what Charlie deems cuddly), I had a better idea.  Why keep searching around like an idiot when I could just CALL the remote and follow its ringing?  I picked up my phone and stared at the numbers.  And I actually thought to myself: “What the hell phone number does the remote have?”  …wait for it… wait for it… OH, UH, …RIIIIIIGGGGHHHHT.

Then I called Pnut and told him I might need to go back on my meds.

The theme of this post, not dissimilar to the theme of this blog overall, is that I am a walking disaster.

Monday evening I found out that I had been exempted from the last of my finals, thanks to carrying an A average all semester.  Meaning, I have straight A’s for the semester and didn’t even need to take 2 out of 4 of my finals.  Feeling righteously proud of myself, I took all of Tuesday off from life and planted myself in front of bad television for six fabulous hours.  When Pnut came home from work I treated myself to a virgin bloody mary, extra spicy.  The bloody mary mix came from my mother, who I later found out retrieved it from her office while they were cleaning out the supply closet.  Thanks, mom.

Fast forward to three in the morning, and many trips to the bathroom later.  Then fast forward to seven in the morning where I am drinking water and simultaneously watching it leave my body from the other end.  At this point, I started to get seriously worried for baby… I’ve had food poisoning in India and survived at least two days in a row of this kind of nastiness, but I’m not five inches tall.  So we call the midwife’s emergency number, and the emergency doctor on the other end of the phone tells me I have a 24 hour flu, to take some immodium, drink some water and stay hydrated.  Thanks, JACKASS.  Would be great if any of that stuff stayed inside for more than ten seconds.  So we head directly to the midwife’s office.  The doctor there (my midwife is out of town) takes one look at my dry, cracked lips and the bag full of vomit I’m holding and sends me to the ER, thankfully just down the street.  There I spend the rest of the day with an IV full of fluids and Zofran, capped off with a visit to the ultrasound doctor.

I admit it, me + doctor is inevitably a collision of egos.  Here’s the thing - I respect a smart person, whether or not they hold an MD.  But (big, huge but) holding an MD does not immediately gain my respect for you, nor does it mean you’re smarter than me, nor does it automatically mean you know more about medicine than I do.  True story.  So when the ultrasound doctor began her visit by not looking me in the eye, but by pulling up my hospital gown and telling me I shouldn’t be in her office because “this has nothing to do with the baby, you’re just vomiting, right?” she did not win my favor.  Instead, she started me on a barrage of annoying and inane questions to which I already knew the answers, intended to assess her knowledge of actual medicine since her knowledge of human relations was obviously lacking.  Her responses to my questions were less than adequate, and she covered up her lack of knowledge by acting like I had no right to ask her anything.  Then, she informed me that I had a giant fibroid which was probably “what’s causing all the abdominal pain”.  Thanks doc, OR it could be cramping from the explosive diarrhea I’ve had for the last 12 hours, you JACKASS.  Also, if an expecting mother has been in the ER for over six hours, she probably needs a reassuring look at her baby regardless of whether or not you feel like it.  And it’s what’s PAYING your bills, you JACKASS.

Pnut was a little embarrassed by my obnoxious interrogation of the doc.  At least twice he whispered out of the corner of his mouth “topo, I thought you were feeling sick”.  But I think he is secretly pleased when I pull this kind of shit - as soon as she left, he agreed she was an asshole.

The important part of the story is - baby is fine, and I figured out some cool shit on my own - like the reason I continue to appear not as if I’m carrying a baby, but as if I just ate five rolls of cookie dough for lunch: baby is sitting straight up and down in my belly.

Them’s the news, folks.  Sorry for the long absence, but I’ve been busy working on those A’s and collecting enough medical knowledge to annoy smarter and smarter doctors down the line.  My mum’s still convinced that this should all lead to an MD of my own.  But really, wouldn’t it be cooler to be a nurse practitioner with a PhD so all the other JACKASSES have to call me doctor anyway?

P.S.  My new favorite word is JACKASS.

I’m usually an avoider of confrontation.  Never afraid to speak my version of the truth, but usually under the right circumstances…like when nobody can beat me up.  That said, here’s some of the batshit crazy that I’ve been subjecting people to since being impregnated; it all happens in the hallowed halls of the university, since that’s where I spend all my time these days:

1. A guy was running full speed through the hallway.  He took the corner, where I was sitting on the floor, too fast and almost fell on me.  My first thought was “protect baby”, and I curled into a ball.  Then, my exact (yelled down a hallway full of students) words to him were: “Take it slow, or next time I’ll stick out my fucking foot”.
2. A woman interrupted my conversation with a fellow student to explain something I was half way done explaining.  She took out her pen, and started making notes on the girls homework.  I gave her the nastiest look I could muster and said “I KNOW you didn’t just write all over her homework in pen.  She has to turn that in.  Some manners would be appropriate, no?”.
3. I walked straight up to another pregnant woman in my Psychology class, whom I had never spoken to before, and said: “Are you seeing a midwife?  Oh, ’cause I’m pregnant too; I was just wondering”.
4. To a fellow student, who was trying to be helpful by suggesting some things that she ate while pregnant: like soup, soup, or… soup: “No, no moist things.  Please stop talking about moist things or I’ll throw up on you.”
5. To a sizeable crowd studying together: “My husband farted last night, and he thought it was real funny until I spent the next twenty minutes puking”.
6. I got insanely annoyed by a certain spammer, looked up the IP address and website owner, and sent them an email entitled “You Irritating Bastards”, that said: “Please stop spamming my blog, or I will begin to forward you every single piece of spam and shitware I get.”  Then, this morning, upon seeing two new pieces of spam from them, I did just that.

Okay, so number five and six could be pretty typical topo, pregnant or not pregnant.  But the rest are a bit over the line, especially the one where I just started blabbering to that poor pregnant woman like she should give a shit about me and my midwife.  SIGH.

I’ve been thinking about all the weird stuff I misheard, then misperceived in gradeschool, and wondering why nobody ever sent me to an audiologist.

1.  You know how the pledge of allegiance has that line “And to the republic, for which it stands”?  I spent at least a year thinking this was “…for witches stance”.  I kept wondering why those witches were standing around the flag, and in which kind of stance, exactly.  I actually spent time picturing them in various poses.  And I thought all the witches got burned in Salem?  Was this written before that, when America loved witches?  (Hey, it was the early eighties -I had a lot of time to think about it since we said the pledge every morning back then.)  Luckily, somebody took the time to correct me (thank you, Ms. Kociak).  But still I did not hear “for which it stands”, no, I heard “for Richard Stanz”.  Who the hell is this guy?  A president?  The person who wrote the pledge?  It took a couple of years for me to sort out that there WAS NO Richard Stanz.  Which totally fucked with my entire world view.

2.  My mother’s father is to blame for this one.  Mom told me he used to go to church for Christmas and sing “Oh Hell, Oh, Hell” (instead of “Noel”).  I got a little turned around on which -Noel or Oh Hell - was embarrassing.  I’m pretty sure I sang “Oh Hell” at least once, sure I was singing it the ‘right’ way.  And, because I’ve matured so much over the years, I still can’t get through church on Christmas without snickering about it (though, to my credit, I haven’t been to church in over 7 years).

3.  Another Christmas song.  This one I blame on Caitie, who lived in the apartment above ours in Chicago, and was my best childhood friend.  Her sister was quite a bit older than both of us, and taught her things which she promptly passed on to me… wildly out of context and utterly misconstrued, obviously.  ”I wanna wish you a merry Christmas” was, to my ears, “I wanna wish a Jew a merry Christmas”.

4.  And back to the patriotism, care of our national anthem wherein I thought “Bombs bursting in air” was actually “bums bursting with air”.  I have no excuse for this.  I was a weird kid.

5. I once passed a love letter to a kid in class that read: “I like you because you are a toad-head”.  This was my attempt to compliment him on his platinum blonde hair.  And I seem to remember (though this may just be one of those warped memories due to the humiliation involved) that he crossed out toad-head and wrote over it, in red, “I think you mean towhead” before passing it back to me.

This was all, mind you, before the third grade.  Except the toad-head.  I won’t mention when that was, except to say it was definitely BEFORE college.

Please tell me I wasn’t the only half-deaf second grader who spent time wondering if Richard Stanz was possibly Santa’s daddy?

Our trip to Mexico was a load of fun.  It can be summed up with two basic conversations that Pnut and I had in variations over the course of five days.

Conversation n°1: The Travel Snobs

topo: Gawr, more drunk obnoxious Americans.  How hard is it to treat people with respect in their own country?  I am so ashamed.

Pnut: I think the crazy one is actually Canadian.

topo: Canadians are just Americans without guns.

Pnut: You have to admit, they’re more fun than British on holiday.

topo: Americans are just loud Brits without tea.  We are never doing an all-inclusive again.

Pnut: Have you seen my flippy-floppies, muthafucka?*

[*note: this is the consequence of introducing an Italian to Lonely Island]

Conversation n°2: Pacific Topo

topo: (underwater screaming, sounds of swallowing water, thrashing noises to the surface) OH MY GOD!  OH MY GOD!  Did you SEE THAT FISH?  It was right by my face!  RIGHT BY MY FACE!

Pnut: topo, settle down.  It’s not interested in you.

topo: But it could TOTALLY have BITTEN ME!

Pnut: It doesn’t have teeth.

topo: Well, I don’t want it rubbing its fishy gums all over me either.  And I swallowed half the Pacific!

Pnut: Put your mask back on, I’ll hold your hand.

topo: Like that’s going to keep the sharks away.

–(five minutes later)–

topo: (muffled by snorkel mask) BARRACUDAAAAA!!!!  BARRACUDAAAAA!!

Pnut: Nobody can hear you screaming underwater, you know.

topo: (mask removed) AND I GOT STUNG BY A JELLYFISH!  Oh my god!  It hurts! It hurts!  OW!  I just got stung by another!  OW!  AND ANOTHER!  OW!…

Pnut: Are you SURE you were a swimmer?

topo: WE PRACTICED IN A POOL!

Yup, that was us in Mexico.  Pnut did convince me to try scuba in the end, and I loved it.

Apparently there are some things about me you should know. The Pnut would like to provide you with the following information before we continue our relationship lest it be all in vain. That is, … before you and I, dear reader, continue our relationship, not P and I. It’s too late for him, he’s gone and married me now.

Clean!  And Garlanded!

1.) She is the most annoying person to fly with. First of all she claims the window seat as if it was some sort of right, and just to sleep the whole time. If you want to have a glance outside or just go to the bathroom you’d get in trouble because you are moving, and since she’s laying on you to be more comfy and sleep better, you are waking her up. After she eats she drops all her wastes on your little table-tray and keeps on sleeping; She only wakes up if there’s a Bollywood movie or during landing or turbulence when she almost dismembers your arms.

(In my defense, more airlines should offer Bollywood films for viewing!)

2.) She believes she’s the great bastard granddaughter of some Portuguese king ruling Goa in India back in the days. Therefore she claims she’s a princess.

(Because it’s true! My mother’s parents were from Goa, India. It is well known family lore that one of my great-great (and maybe one or two more greats) grandfathers was the bastard son of a Portuguese king!!!  Now where’s my fucking crown?).

3.) She snores and talks on sleep. Like big conversations. When we started dating I though she wanted to talk so I was used to reply. Now I know better…

(I don’t snore. The rest is true though. I have also been known to walk around in my sleep from time to time.)

4.) She hates horror/ thriller movies or books. If, after hours of bitching and moaning, I manage to watch a ‘”scary” movie with her usually she has to have total control of the Dvd remote control…to fast forwards the scary parts (so that she knows what happens and she won’t be scared to watch them at normal speed…) or to mute the audio.

5.) She is a talented climber. When we stay off climbing a while and we go back to the wall I feel like a jelly tight to a rope, she climbs even better then when we stopped. That’s super annoying.

(This from the guy for whom any pile of Dolomite choss is “good rock”. I’m not sure I want to know what ”jelly tight to a rope” looks like!)

6.) She doesn’t like to be called “rospo”: toad. I use this nickname to call her when she’s been naughty or when she did something bad (happens pretty often…).

(”rospo” is NOT A NICKNAME. It’s an insult. I refuse to respond!)

7.) She’s as delicate as a little elephant. With her around gravity is a dreadful enemy for any of your belongings. It’s a strange effect, really…

(Yeah, I’m Chunk from The Goonies. And the more expensive the item, the less time you have to wait before I smash it. Three… two…)

8.) She loves t-shirts with weird messages (I think her favorite ones are “I scare my family” and ” I’m like a f*cking ray of sunshine, aren’t I?!?”. There was also one about a d*ck, but I forgot what it says…)

(It says “Suck my dick”. But my favorite all time t-shirt I ever owned says “Your mullet just winked at me” - you know, for the lesbian bars - but it didn’t fit so I gave it to Paolo.)

9) When we have to go out, and for some reasons we want to dress up, she changes idea 558738758564 times about what dress or combination of clothes she’s gonna wear. Eventually she chooses the same old pair of jeans…

(The jeans are super comfy! Plus, they make my butt look cute)

10) Once, when she was a teenager, she ran away from home with a friend to be caught some time after on the same moment and place by the cops and the Mafia…

(whachyagonnadoabowdit?)

11) She is food jealous. Let me explain: you are there, enjoying your meal (you prepared it yourself after checking 10 times if Topo was hungry, “no thanks” is usually the answer). All the sudden you don’t hear any Topo-noises anymore, you look at her and see that she’s cross-armed, crooked-lipped and looking enviously at your meal. At this point here’s the typical conversation:

P: “what? Want some?”

T: (with the sweeeeeetest voice) “yes pleeeeeeese” (big smile);

P:”but…you said you weren’t hungry. If I knew I would have cooked for you!!!”,;

T:”I know, I wasn’t hungry. Now I am. Can I have some of the EXACT same kind? Otherwise I get jealous and I won’t love you no more”.

12. She has funny looking pinky toes.

They do look slightly like boiled shrimp, but I swear it’s from the climbing shoes!)

As you can see, we have embarked upon married life with our usual mix of very high expectations and dirtbaggery. Coming soon… a list of things you should know about the Pnut.

‘Sup, we’re married!

(Photos are courtesy of this wonderful photographer who popped by for a whole five minutes and took about 100 amazing photographs.  I’ll link her in as soon as I find her back!)

 

Back in college, I briefly dated this guy named Rob.  There is a conversation we had one night that I have thought about frequently over the years, and that I was thinking particularly hard about his morning.  It was a long discussion about the various weird games that we play in our minds on a regular basis.  As it turned out, whenever he entered a new room (a room he had never been in before), Rob would spend the first few moments in that room imagining an axe-shaped thing bouncing from each corner of the room, back to him.  Once all the corners had been mentally bounced by the axe, he felt more comfortable being in the room.  Yeah, we were probably high when we had this conversation.

Anyways, at a certain level, I’m sure this kind of weirdness gets classified as some sort of OCD.  But I’m pretty convinced that we all have these little games.  For example, why I was thinking about the conversation this morning: the volume button on my car radio is a bit smushed, and it’s hard to get the volume to just the right spot.  And when I say just the right spot, I mean, for me - it has to, HAS TO BE on an even number.  Unless it’s on five, which is half of ten, which somehow therefore counts as an even number.  So when I couldn’t get my volume off of the number seventeen this morning, and it vexed me so much that I had to pull my car over and fiddle with the button, I thought of Rob and his axe.

I’d like to say that even-volumes are my only freaky little neurosis, but… well, then I’d be lying to you.  So here they are, the top five neuroses I’ve had and have in all their glory, past and present:

1.  The volume thingy, as explained.  Which also goes for television volumes, ipod volumes, and all volumes in general.  Also, if there aren’t enough evens in your telephone number, I may not call you that much because, well, dialling a bunch of odds makes me feel all squirmy.

2.  I don’t do this one anymore, but I think it’s pretty weird so i’ll include it.  When I was little, I had to put on all my clothes before I counted to ten.  I used to line my clothes up in front of my closet and take a deep breath before I got dressed.  Then I’d get dressed as fast as possible while counting to ten.  If I didn’t get dressed before ten, I’d have to take everything off and start again.  (Thank god I outgrew that one, it takes me long enough to dig out my cleanest dirty shirt these days!)

3.  My keyboard has to be perfectly in line with my computer screen or I cannot work.  Why I prefer working on a laptop!

4.  I must have see-through shower curtains.  Otherwise when I’m in the bathroom I freak out that there’s somebody in the tub, and when I’m in the tub I freak out that there’s somebody in the bathroom.

5.  I have to alternate which foot gets to sleep outside of the covers, in case the other foot feels bad.

All right people, it’s your turn!  Gimme your top five freakies!  Or an even number of them.

Yeah, so remember that tick-bite I got on SATURDAY?  Well, by Wednesday it looked like this (don’t worry, I kinda exaggerated about how close it was to the goodies (kinda):

And then the doc told me I have Lyme disease.  Yeah… you can rejoice now - YAY!!!  The joys of this year are seemingly endless.

I’ve spent plenty of time in North Africa, India, Mexico and loads of other places where you think twice about brushing your teeth with the water.  [Paolo just asked me to insert Italy into that list... not sure what that means... please come to our wedding].  Anywho, I’ve had plenty of grody diseases that have made me crap and puke and expunge… things that humans shouldn’t have to imagine expunging, and usually in embarrassing or less than comfortable places at that.  But this takes the fucking cake.  I GET A GRODY DISEASE IN FRANCE??  LESS THAN 30 km FROM PARIS???  FUCK!!!

Besides this, Paolo has been in bed sick with the flu the last couple of days.  And the hansosan came back with more than bursitis… something about his colon and intestines exploding… I dunno, I forget what it’s called.  But, you know, nothing as bad as LYME DISEASE.   FROM A FUCKING BLOOD-SUCKING INSECT!!  DID I MENTION IT WAS A FRENCH INSECT????

Seriously people, if you get bitten by a tick and anything feels funny… or looks like this, or like a bullseye?  You’d better get it checked out.  Because if you don’t catch it right away, lyme disease can stay pretty quiet in your system for years and years… like until it creeps into your heart and spinal cord and maybe even your brain.  Fifty bucks at the doc is better than a lifetime of TICKBITE IN YOUR FUCKING BRAIN.

PS- (DID I MENTION I HATE TICKS???)

So, if you are my parent or relative, you should probably turn away and close your eyes now and not read the rest of this post.

Another reason not to read the rest of this post would be if the word DILDO, specifically in connection with me, bothers you in any way.

If you are neither related to me, nor does the thought of me having a vagina with needs bother you at all, well, … read on… but consider yourself amply warned.

This story actually starts sometime last year, when I had a nervous breakdown.  At that time, when some days just getting out of my car in the evening took a telephone call for help, it seemed like getting a cleaning lady would be a good idea.  Sure enough, if you’re a secret-A-type-personality (this is officially defined as: high-maintenance emotionally while low maintenance in all other ways) like me , having a cleaning lady is a godsend.  Coming home and finding your shoes lined up and all your dishes clean and put away is the equivalent of letting the steam out of your pressure cooker when it’s at the exploding point.

Our cleaning lady is this tiny Asian woman who the first day arrived, looked around and shook her head like she had stumbled into a crack den, then informed me that it would take minimum one day to get our apartment respectable.  That’s after we cleaned it up the night before in anticipation of her arrival.  Needless to say, I quickly acquiesced and within no more than ten seconds she was up on a chair, cleaning my ceiling.  I didn’t realize until that moment that my ceiling had become a public housing tenement for invisible insects.  I also didn’t realize that four-foot-tall Asian ladies could move that fast.  Anyway, apparently, some people (people like my mother and the cleaning lady) notice whether or not your ceiling has been bleached lately, so it’s fine by me to have it all clean… especially if my dishes get done and my shoes get lined up in the intermission.

For a variety of reasons, our cleaning lady has not been here in a few months.  So when she rolled in this morning we got the crack den head shake again, and had to promise to dole out some extra Euros so she could set it right.

Thus, when I walked into my apartment this evening, I experienced the complete bliss of somebody whose rugs are vacuumed, whose pillows are fluffed, dishes done, and shoes lined up.  Even the dog looked cleaner.  Seriously, I couldn’t have been happier if I were Monica Gellar.  So, I headed over to the fridge to see what I could make for dinner.

Hmmm, I thought to myself, what frozen veggies can I throw in the soup?

And I opened my freezer.

Ahhh, I thought to myself, look how neatly everything in there is lined up! That’s so cool… it just feels nice to have all my frozen stuff… wait…what is THAT…??

oh… oh …OH SHIT!!!  OH CRAP!!! OH SHIT!!!

Because, you see, EVERYTHING in my freezer was neatly lined up.  And that frosted (literally!) bluish glass thingy in the upper right-side corner?  That’s a dildo.  Okay, okay … it’s MY dildo.  Which came in a box that described (along with noting it as “blown glass”, I kid you not) how it would be “fun to freeze”.  Which is what I did.  Which is why it WAS hiding behind the big bag of frozen vegetables on the SECOND shelf.  Which it now is not. [Frankly, I think the 'meat & ice cream' shelf would have been more appropriate.]

Now, this is the kind of lifestyle comedy that I find really funny on a show like Sex in the City.  But in my own life, it will probably require me washing a lot of dishes… and lining up a lot of shoes… and polishing my own fucking ceiling.  Etc.

The irony of the fact that I am mortified that my cleaning lady saw my dildo but am totally okay with posting photos and blabbing about it all over the internet does not escape me.  As a matter of fact, it pretty much sums me up.

Welcome to topotales.