topotales

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.