One day, my older sister Kelly was in the library in high school, sitting with all of her friends. A note was being passed and giggles were happening, so Kelly anxiously waited for it to get around to her so she could read it and giggle too. Suddenly and without warning everyone else got up and left, leaving the note on the table.
It read,
"Let's get out of here! Kelly's breath stinks."
---------- ***UPDATE***
Kelly's Response:
"This story is close, but some inaccuracies. One day, my older sister Kelly was in the library in high school (GRADE SCHOOL, HOLLER ELEM), sitting with all of her friends (EVIL CLASSMATES). A note was being passed and giggles were happening, so Kelly anxiously waited for it to get around to her so she could read it and giggle too. (I DID NOT SEE THE NOTE BEING PASSED. THERE WAS NO GIGGLING. I WAS LIKE HEY WHERE ARE THEY GOING, OH HERE'S A NOTE, WHAT DOES IT SAY)Suddenly and without warning everyone else got up and left, leaving the note on the table. It read, 'Let's get out of here! Kelly's breath stinks.' ACCURATE I LOOKED AROUND AND DID THE CUPPED HAND OVER MOUTH BREATH SNIFF TEST."
---------- (Great Kelly, now nobody is ever going to believe one of my stories ever again.)
In order to release pent up roommate anger, sometimes you just gotta go at a couple empty boxes at 7am. In the yard of the City's water department. Where you work. Get a coworker to film it, if possible.
*(Starring me. And my roommate Summer of Hobo Siren.)
You know that feeling when you first start to like a boy and his hand brushes yours, or you sit next to each other and your arms are forced to touch? And any part of your body that is within a few centimeters of his automatically feels warm and electric?
One of the first times I remember experiencing that feeling was during fifth grade in Mr. Woods' class. I sat behind Grant Nelson and I was in love with him. In love. Dreamy, fifth-grade, impossible, romantic, Babysitters'-Club-Logan-and-Mary Anne LOVE.
This magical day, I stretched out my foot and felt it touch his. Terrified, yet curious, I let it stay there. He didn't pull away. Our feet were touching! For a long time! And it was...electric...warm. The sensation spread all the way through my entire body. I knew it must mean that he loved me too, and that he would ask me to "go out" which meant that I would write Kady Nelson on my notebook thousands of times and that we would not talk to each other; instead we would send messages through other people, such as "it's our one-month anniversary", or "I need more space".
It was all so exciting. This went on for almost an hour. I couldn't resist. I looked down, to see our feet romantically and lovingly touching each other but was confused to find only my own foot.
When I was ten years old, I missed the bus one day and my mean, mean 16-year-old sister Kelly had to take me to school. She was already running late and driving me was going to make her even more late and so she was really mad.
She ripped and tore through the streets of International Falls Minnesota in my dad's white-with-red-racing-stripe-1960s-Rambler with me in the passenger seat, prepping me for the drop-off.
"I AM NOT STOPPING, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO JUMP OUT, SO GET READY!"
I got ready. I had my backpack in hand, I got my seatbelt off... (Just kidding. It was 1987, and this was a 1960's Rambler. There were no seat belts.) Anyway, I crouched while she slowed to a roll in front of my school and I jumped!
When she tells the story she describes peeling away from my school and glancing in the rearview mirror to make sure I got up off of the road. Instead what she saw was me in the rear view mirror, arms flailing, running after her car screaming for her to "STOP!"
She got SO MAD. She slammed on the breaks. She screamed, "WHAT?!?" at her tiny little crying ten-year-old baby sister who had shut her backpack in the car door.
Everybody stares at the water meter installers in the neighborhood. Some come up to ask what we're doing, but they all do a huge double-take when they realize we are women.
If we go into any kind of store we get lots of attention in these crazy getups.
I think it's just a little unexpected to see girls in any sort of stereotypical male job. It's been a very interesting social experiment actually. And of course it only makes me feel super tough and strong. I like to do things like swing my pick ax or throw heavy things when people are watching.
Another thing I like to do when kids are getting on or off the school bus is to say, "Stay in school kids!" with a shrug of my shoulders, even though I KNOW they are thinking what a cool job I have. And it is cool. Really cool. Part of what we have to do is collect a bunch of the metal pit lids from in front of people's homes and deliver them to have holes drilled in them. Then we bring them back with the holes. I think we would be drilling the holes except I broke two drill bits on one hole. (The holes hold the radios that we install and program.) Anyway, for this part of our job, one of us drives and the other one of us rides in the back of the SUV with the hatch open. Our code word is "hop pop" when we're ready for the driver to drive to the next one. I use my pick ax to pry the lids up and this part of our job looks really cool, trust me. I always tell the kiddies that the holes are for putting quarters in. (I'm hoping I can get a secondary source of income.) Today I got a little girl to dig an entire hole for me. It took forever but hey, I needed the break.
I digress. The point of this post is to discuss gender disparity amongst manual labor workers.
Not really. Anyway, I've discussed before how I always feel like a dude because I look like this at work:
And we work. We work ten to twelve hours a day. I never wear makeup and I never get dressed up. When I get home I shower and put on my new pajama sweater dress I bought at Old Navy for $5.97 and fall asleep in a chair in front of reruns of 30 Rock at 8:45pm:
And Summer takes photos.
Today we decided we needed to do a "Treat Yo-self 2011!"...
...and got Pedicures next door to the FedEx office we frequent for paperwork shipments back to Minnesota. All the ladies at the shop stared and double-taked just as much as the neighbors when we're elbow-deep in their water meter pits.
We're pariahs. We don't fit in the man's world of basic plumbing and we don't fit in the woman's world of Asian pedicure shops.
Oh Well and Oh Man it felt good to look feel like a woman for 45 minutes.
It was about time for a new laptop, and so last summer I gathered up all my one dollar bills that I made from waitressing and bartending and brought them to the apple store and paid for a good chunk of the new Macbook Air. It took some getting used to, but I love it. It's wonderful and fast and smooth and clean and weighs nothing.
These days, after working eleven to twelve hours programming radios and digging holes for the water meter company, I go home and shower and put my pajamas on and then do some work on my beautiful laptop for the company in Minneapolis that I used to work for before this whole trip around the world thing. (My plan is to work like a dog for a few months and save up enough money for another epic trip.)
Last week I started to feel like I was going to catch a cold. So I added a tablet of Walborne (the poor man's Airborne) and a packet of Emergen-C to some hot water. I like to drink it like a tea and it usually helps me not catch the cold I thought I was catching.
So I was working, drinking my strange tea, and I don't know how it happened but I knocked the tea over and it poured onto my brand new beautiful laptop. Not just water, but sugary powdery thick water. What an idiot!
I said so many swear words while I ran to the kitchen to grab a paper towel and tip it upside down and try to dry out the keyboard.
I got it as dry as I could and washed it up with a soapy paper towel. But I was in the middle of a project for my old boss and so like an idiot I kept working even though the keys were all sticky and weird. I seriously didn't want this laptop anymore. Ew!
Soon I noticed that the 'h', j', 'k', and 'l', keys weren't working! Ugh...I finished the project copying and pasting and emailed my boss using the number '1' for 'l' and a '7' for 'k' and so on. I tipped the laptop upside down again on a paper towel and went to bed. The next morning the keys still weren't working. I kept it upside down some more and finally googled "spilling on your keyboard" and was horrified to discover I had probably just ruined my brand new expensive computer.
At work one of the guys has a neighbor who fixes computers though and I brought it in to him (an Australian!) and he took it all apart and found out that none of the moisture made it inside the computer and only my keyboard was trash. He said I was very lucky and the fact that there is no humidity here was probably a big factor. With a mac, that means replacing the whole top part of your laptop. Since I thought my whole computer was ruined when he quoted me $250 for the keyboard I almost did a cartwheel of joy.
$250. Almost the entire purchase price of my former netbook. The netbook that never got stolen or gave me any issues for two years. This is why I shouldn't ever have anything nice.
The Australian gave me this keybode to yooz whyle the paht taykes its toim getting hee-ah.
What an amazing and interesting blog post!
But that's one thing you never really talk about is it? How dependent we are on our technology and if it isn't working properly how much it can absolutely cripple us?
When I was in Minneapolis a couple weeks ago, I got to spend the evening with my favorite little tiny kids.
Little Miyo puddin' pie. 5 years old, wearin' glasses and goin' to school.
At bedtime I was trying to take a video of Murphy humming and Miyo got all up in our business.
What a busybody!
"Hi. Did you get the close picture? Murphy smile. How 'bout I get in the picture, because, because we could like, Murphy, smile!"
Right after I stopped that video, she said, "take a picture!" with clenched teeth and it was hilarious and I was so mad that I missed it. So I had to start a new video.
I suppose it's a little bit mean to pretend to take a picture when I was really taking video...but come on. Hilarious.
You may recall that about a year ago I met my Annie Wilkes. My number one fan, just like from the movie Misery. Well, the one, the only, the fabulous Blog fan Lisa* (names have not been changed) lives in Tucson, Arizona!
So when I heard that I would be working there for a water meter assignment, I contacted Lisa, who helped Summer and I secure the house we're renting. We arranged everything days before arriving, so we needed somebody in Tucson to receive the Fed-ex package with the keys, etc., and Lisa was our girl!
We were driving from Albuquerque, Summer had a paper due and we were late getting into town, so we didn't have any time to waste picking up the keys. Lisa understood and offered to meet us on the side of the freeway.
If I hadn't already met and fallen in love with her, if she weren't a friend of a very good friend of my sister's...it might have been a very strange and scary scene:
Blog stalker offers to help find housing
Blog stalker offers to receive keys to new apartment
Blog stalker in fact receives and has possession of keys to new apartment
Blog stalker offers to meet late at night on the side of the road next to a highway
Blog stalker distracts Blogger with praise for blog
Blog stalker stabs Blogger 37 times in chest and abdomen
Blog stalker leaves Blogger to bleed out on side of highway
Blog goes unupdated from that point on, leaving tens of other fans disappointed and confused
But that's not how it went. We met, we hugged, we laughed, we got Summer involved, we got the keys...and settled in to Oro Valley.
A few days later Lisa hooked us up with her good friend Roxanne* (names have not been changed) who graciously brought us to the Seguaro (pronounced Seh-wah-roh) National Monument just minutes from our town.
Those are saguaros. There are millions of them in this National Forest. Millions.
Roxanne is hilarious. She has a story of how she had told her husband that the reason she was putting on her nice underwear/bra combo was because she was going to the dermatologist. He was confused, because it was for an above-the-neck skin appointment. "And you have to undress for that?" "Yes," she said, "he has me completely undress and lay on the table and then he looks at the skin on my face. What? Is that weird?"
This is the only photo I have of her, as she prefers to be photographed from behind:
I knew I loved her when she told me that she also likes to pretend to use a tampon for chapstick....but I really, really, really love people who participate when I have a ridiculous photo idea.
Today at work one of my coworkers motioned towards my face and told me I had a mustache. Horrified, I asked, "do you mean my freckle mustache?"
He said, "no you have some dirt on your lip."
"Thank goodness," I said as I wiped my lip on my shirtsleeve. I then explained that I have a freckle mustache of hyperpigmentation from 30-something hormones and sun damage and if that's what he meant I would be really embarrassed. He and two other male coworkers laughed. Awkwardly.
After I got home I replayed the scene in my head. When I wiped my lip on my shirtsleeve no dirt came off. They laughed a little TOO awkwardly. He WAS talking about my freckle mustache!!!
If you look closely, you might be able to make it out in the photo below.
So I'm totally a dude now. There are pros and cons, of course. When I used to work a desk job, I almost never had to use one of these: -- CON
Dig In!
But I also didn't get to look at stuff like this all day: -- PRO
I took this photo using my new iPhone app Instagram
Today a guy came out of his house with his wife and I heard her say, "who is that?" And he waved his hand and said, "oh, it's just the meter reader." -- CON
Then later we went to Home Depot to get supplies and this adorable Latina woman (think Gloria from Modern Family) said, "I love your vests! Where do you work? Where did you get those vests?" -- PRO
We take a break from the sun to eat lunch at a sit-down restaurant...and every day the wait staff says something like, "what'll it be ladies?" or "what'll you have, ladies?" And every day we wonder, "How did they know?" -- PRO / CON?
You might be wondering what exactly Summer and I are doing here in Arizona for work. And maybe you're not wondering at all. But I'm going to tell you.
We are living in one of the suburbs of Tucson, who hired my company to change all of their old brass water meters -- that needed manual reading -- to new meters with radios -- that will send the reading automatically. The meters are located in pits in people's front yards so we don't have to go into people's basements like we were doing in Michigan. The installers are doing the switch-outs, and Summer and I come along behind them and install the radio and then program it.
As Summer reported, we had heard all kinds of horror stories about what kind of critters we would find in the pits. Gila monsters, scorpions, rattle snakes, and black widow and brown recluse spiders. So far all I have seen are a lot of ants and crickets. The pits are a lot smaller and more shallow than I had imagined. There's not really room for a rattlesnake or gila monster, thank goodness.
But there is room for fashion!
As you can see, grass doesn't exist here. What they do have is dirt, dust and landscaping rocks. So I wear very attractive knee pads. That baseball cap and fluorescent vest complete an outfit of a grey company T-shirt and my black cargo pants that I have to roll up because they were already too short and the knee pads make them even shorter. "Where's the flood?" All my jeans show off my coin slot when I bend over, so I wear the black pants every day.
Sometimes two houses have their pits right next to each other, and so we have to dig around the pits and create a space for the wiring from one pit to be brought over to the other. So we have a pick axe and a shovel and we dig holes.
Don't let this adorable photo fool you, she mostly looks bad at work.
(As evidenced by what the weirdos searched for on Google and then assumably got very disappointed when they arrived at my blog:)
"bra lines"
"itchy welts that come and go"
"asia public no panties"
"girls with out under wares and show their toilet images"
"photo panty poop girl"
"lady pees pants"
"wife pees jeans"
"Like Having Pantylines"
"weirdos in bemidji"
"blond spilled cereal" (which leads directly to this photo:)
I haven't really gotten much further into the whole Siri thing on my iPhone 4S. (Not super technical). Anyway, I like to tell her I pooped my pants and then she tells me where the nearest clothing stores are. And then I say, "I love you, Siri" and she says, "I bet you say that to all your Apple products."
