I feel like I’ve spent the whole night cleaning up one mess or another.
The sugar bag tore when I was pouring out a cupful, scattering at least three cups worth of sugar over my counter and floor.
I’ve now spent a considerable amount of time rinsing about a gallon of fake blood out of the tub. The good news is that it didn’t stain the tub, linoleum, or grout. The bad news is that my hand looks like I’ve spent my evening fistfucking Satan.
I have determined that my upstairs neighbor must be hosting Fight Club: Renton, as that is the only thing I can think of to explain the CONSTANT dragging and slamming sounds, some of which are so thunderous, they rattle things in my apartment. One of which was so thunderous that it actually knocked the light fixture down from over my fireplace, which exploded when it hit the carpet with glass flying everywhere–some pieces flying so far as to smack me in the face all the way over in the kitchen. This is shockingly not the first time this has happened.
I have determined that it is feudin’ and a fussin’ and not the lovin’ upstairs this time that’s causing all the ruckus as I also occasionally hear shouting and screaming. It’s like living in a shitty haunted house.
I have tried to avoid being the downstairs troll; I understand that having people living above you means experiencing noise when they walk around and live their lives, it’s not up to me to monitor and regulate how the neighbors upstairs live their lives, and I elected to live on the bottom floor so I could stomp around and roughhouse with the dog and play rock band drums or maybe even play some dance dance revolution without annoying anyone, and the consequences of not trying to annoy anyone else means being occasionally annoyed myself, but this is nearly constant.
On Saturday night, the upstairs averaged one wall-rattling KABOOM every five minutes, from 10 pm straight through to 3am. I get that it’s the weekend and people are up later, but whatever the fuck they are doing, one would think they would realize they need to knock it off earlier than 3am. My patience and understanding ran out, my humanity took a step back and a furious downstairs troll emerged from the human shell, stood up on the back of her couch and began banging on the ceiling, shouting “KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF”.
…I don’t think my upstairs neighbor is going to say ‘hi’ when he sees me anymore.
On the plus side, the last few nights have been blissfully silent.
My dad and I packed in quite a bit during my last day in San Diego. The first step was packing our stomachs. I’d mentioned some nostalgia over the Walker Brothers pancake house in Chicago, and by whatever grace exists in the univese, they’ve opened ONE location outside of chicagoland, and that location is in San Diego. When I am willing to get into this sort of a line for a pancake, know that it is no ordinary pancake, it is the best damn pancake on earth.
I’m serious. After cramming myself dangerously full of apple pancake and perfect thick-cut bacon, it was determined that we would go ride bikes around Mission Bay. Here’s the thing about that. ‘They’ say that once you learn to ride a bike, you’ll never forget, and that may be true. It took me much, much, MUCH longer than my peers to learn how to ride a bike. My parents hadn’t realized that scabs on knees could possibly become so thick prior to the ‘Melissa attempting to ride a bike year(s)’. So while you may never forget how to ride a bike, let me assure you that if it’s been, say, a good fifteen years since you’ve last straddled one, the first few miles are going to be white-knuckled and shaky. Granted, it was a Monday, so pedestrian traffic around the bay was not as thick as it would be on the weekend, but it was more than thick enough for my tastes. A woman jogging with a double-wide baby stroller cut in front of me, and I worked at keeping a safe distance behind her…but then she slowed down. I couldn’t go around her, as a large group of people were walking in the opposite direction, with a large dog that kept bounding into my lane of ‘traffic’. At this point, I was traveling slow enough to wobble and didn’t know what to do. So, of course, I panicked, yanked the handlebars taking the bike off-path into the sand and then promptly flipped over said handlebars. You never forget how to ride a bike…in the manner to which you are accustomed. We rode for about eight more miles after the, er, incident, and by the end I was doing quite well–riding a lot more confidently, doing a few things off-path without (or with less) fear, engaging street traffic without shitting myself, and only wobbling when reaching back to make sure my wallet hadn’t popped out of my pants pocket as it is wont to do. After we returned the bikes, we took a good long walk to Pacific Beach, seeing as how we still had more time and it was a gorgeous day.
There are wee cabins sitting out on the pier at Pacific Beach that you can rent. I think it would be lovely to spend a night or two sleeping out above the ocean. After we walked back, we STILL had a little more time, so we wandered around Seaport Village a bit. One of the pedicab drivers noted my ‘Benjamin Franklinstein’ shirt and offered us a free ride to wherever we were going, but we declined since we didn’t really have a destination. From Seaport Village, it’s only a short distance to the airport, so my dad dropped me off in plenty of time. It only took me five minutes to get through security, so I decided to get a cool beverage while I waited to board the plane. It was then that I realized how badly my arms were burned, when my skin crinkled in that taut, uncomfortable way as I reached for my wallet. This is another significant piece of evidence that I don’t learn from my mistakes. When I went to Hawaii with Alex, we went snorkling, and I didn’t think to put sunscreen on the backs of my legs, though they’d be hanging out of the water all day long, and consequently got one of the worst burns of my life. This time, I gave no thought to the idea that in the act of riding a bike, my arms would be stretched out in front of me and hence much more exposed than they are normally. That’s how I wound up with a totally elegant farmer-tan-line burn. At the moment, I’m flaking and leaving DNA evidence everywhere, so I must be careful not to commit any murders until AFTER I’m done healing.