The one in which Rachel does the walk of shame (but not THAT walk of shame)

It started the way these things always do. With bites. Multiple ones, mapping an imaginary line down the body.

When my roommate Bri told me a collage of itchy splotches had cropped up on her petite frame, I did what any good New Yorker does: I clammed up. Told no one. I even started taking calls from my work lobby – fearful that zealous cubicle mates would overhear my drawn out conversations with the Tony the exterminator and Jack, “Papa Gullo,” my semi-deaf landlord.

There’s a reason a Google search for “bedbugs social stigma” generates over 12,800 results (including one LA Weekly blog post titled “Bedbugs Finally Outnumber Hipsters in New York City”). Bedbugs in the home get you on the fast track to becoming a social pariah. It outperforms drugs, divorces and other salacious bits of gossip. And drives open, unguarded people, like me, to secrecy (cue the eerie soundtrack).

Bedbugs may just be the 2010 post-“Signs” version of an alien invasion (substitute the crop circles for bug bites). It becomes about survival – only in this case, survival of the social kind. Soon, you realize one thing. What goes on underneath your mattress is strictly between you and your landlord.

So what’s a girl to do?

After the initial shock wore off (I may have gone through all 7 stages of grief within 30 seconds flat), I did what any new lessee does: call the landlord. But Jack was not so obliging. He insisted my roommates and I were responsible. The bedbug(s) had to come in on someone's back, right?

Still reeling in disbelief, I called Tony the exterminator and set up an appointment. In the meantime, my roommates and I madly scoured the web, searching for any information on tenant rights (for more info, go here). I continued to harass Jack -- even calling him on the eve of a family wake. And I continued to keep it a secret.

Finally, B-Day rolled around. At 8:30 AM sharp, I got the call and ran downstairs. That's when I met Tony & Harry, two mealy looking specimens in overalls, who clomped up the stairs into my life.

I led them to the back room. They flip-flopped the mattresses, whipped out insanely small lasers, and "oohed" and "ahhh'd" as they scrutinized our sheets. It was a strangely intimate scene. I almost died when Tony cried out, "there's a piece of their vomit!" Any social aspirations drew their last breath.

But then it got better. In this case, better meant no rust-colored blood spots on our mattresses. Better as in no bedbugs. Not a single one. Anywhere.

Six hours later, I'm still not sure what to make of the ordeal. Was it was a fake out? A freak out? Are the bedbugs regrouping before one last, final invasion? Maybe Bri's bites were caused by mosquitoes. Maybe she just has sensitive skin.

For now, I don't really care to find out. I'm too relieved. I can talk loudly again in my cubicle. I can lay in my bed without thinking of dot-sized bloodsuckers waiting to pounce. I can walk with my head held high.

At least for now.

The one in which Rachel says “No more to handing out my number to strangers"

Here’s the thing: I can be naive.

Attending college in Salem, Oregon – what I like to call the civic armpit of the Northwest – probably didn’t do much for teaching me the social mores of fast-paced city dating. Where a conversation (either in real time, real life, or real whatever) leads to a whirlwind of flirtatious texts (and boy do I appreciate a good texter), drawn out email conversations at 2:00 AM and inevitable Facebook stalking. And then, like all the gusty sighs that preceded it, it loses wind, or momentum, or something, and it ends just like that.

All this to say, Salem-style relationships were different. Slower. More inbred. People there are not quick to ask you for your number. (And for the record: getting asked by the at large homeless community, product of budget cuts at state-run mental hospitals, does not count).

So maybe my naiveté was not wholly my fault. In my defense, I had no one to explain the significance, or lack thereof, of a “can I get your number?”

I remember the first guy who asked me for my number in New York. I’d been here two weeks, was still looking for work, and when attending a work party of a friend, inevitably gravitated toward another recent college grad. After talking to “Joe” (fake name not used to protect “Joe,” but simply because I can’t actually remember his name) for a good hour or two, we parted ways. Him – with my number in his iPhone. Me – with my feelings lifted after regaling him with all my job interview sob stories.

Big surprise, “Joe” never called. Not so big surprise, I still hadn’t caught on to the complete lack of follow up inherent in a good-natured “can I get your number?”

So I kept on handing it out to any guy I met. The way I handed it out – despite my pretensions of privacy (epitomized by my “private” settings on Facebook) – you’d think I was into guerrilla marketing or self-promotion or selling some type of service. That, or just plain dumb.

The cycle continued. And like a law of nature, it always followed the same mold: chat with cute guy, cute guy asks for number, I act all easy-breezy and give it out – all the while feeling a rosy glow of “this is what New York is about…meeting random, cute people in a Serendipity-inspired fashion.” Cute guy never calls.

So finally this week, I’m saying “enough.” No more. After handing it out for the umpteenth time (and please note that this is not a vanity blog post…I just have zero capacity for saying no to even the very weirdest, most odd characters who you should NEVER give your number to), I’m calling it quits.

Ask me for my number, and all you’ll get from now on is my email address.

So here’s to a year of email spam.

Cigarettes, Sauerkraut, and Death

This coming Halloween will mark one year of me living where I live now. There's three of us, three rooms. The guy on the lease and I obviously haven't changed. But the third roommate has changed about five times since I moved in. One of those darling roommates was written about in Pooky. Besides her we had a lady live here for about two weeks and then left saying it was too wet here, a yuppyish fella who I thought was okay but then he and the other guy living here started fighting or something, a guy on parole who didn't do all his community service so he had to go back to jail, and now we're on our fifth who pees with the door open and uses my baking sheets to dry his shorts in the oven. So the guy on the lease, for privacy issues, we'll just call "Rawburt." He's the one that always give these people the third room. He's asked me about it before but I'm never there when the people stop by so he just says "They seem to be fine." He basically gives the room to the first person who responds to the craigslist ad. 

And speaking of Rawburt, he doesn't do anything. Not really. The very first thing I think of or picture in my mind when I think of Rawburt is him in the living room on his recliner watching his flat screen television. All the time. That's it. And he orders pizzas. I've seen him eat bowls of sauerkraut. He gets work sometimes from…wherever, but the third roommate and I pay more than him, even though he definitely has the largest room. So we basically pay him. I didn't find this out until six or seven months after I moved in. He's kind of clean, but I feel like he's getting less so. 

So what's the deal? I mean, why am I still here? Why haven't I moved out? Well, for one, I kind of have a lot of stuff, and no car, so it's hard to move. Secondly, it's pretty cheap where I live, the cheapest around probably. And the place isn't cramped or anything, so it's relatively a good deal. And I have bothered Rawburt about the unfair rent payments but…I don't know…he comes up with dumb reasons, and like I said, it's the cheapest around. And I'm only here until may or june. As long as I stay in my room...

But who knows. I have a pretty good job now (yeah. suckway fired me) so I'm making a bit more. I could just very well pay slightly more for a better place. But in the end I'm so ridiculous, it'd be so hard to find some random people that would be great to live with. I don't have any friends that are needing roommates right now.

Oh well. 

TO-DO LIST

Well, it's been quite some time since I've posted. Not out of lack of misery, but out of lack of energy to relive it. I figure I'll ease into the blogger's life with a list. You see, I am a nanny. Which is, in itself, great. Sort of like having fake kids you get to leave every day between four and five pm and see again in the morning at seven am. But sometimes, this nanny thing I'm in turns into an exercise in humiliation. And cheap labor. Before certain confrotational talks took place, I had somehow evolved into nanny-housekeeper-errand-runner-cook.

Here is a list of tasks I received during the first month of nannyship:

-- clean the fish tanks (yes, tankS)

-- buy three containers of Greek Yogurt (typically on the list once a week)

-- vacuum and steam the floors

-- clean, peel, dice potatoes; chop onions; put in pot on stove

-- find "reasonable but classy cookies - maybe the Italian ones at the Market, or...?"

-- teach the five-year-old how to tell time (I taught her jazz hands, we're still working on time)

-- teach the two-year-old how to put his toys away (I taught him to say "Cowabunga!")

-- scrub showers (this words must be typed and read: pubic hairs)

-- windex windows of fingerprints

-- reorganize Madi's hair supply drawer (I did this)

-- tidy up Madi's pajama bins (I didn't do this)

-- do the laundry (they wear things once, then throw them in the laundry bin)

-- mail this box of severed body parts ("for his spook box!) to Grandpa in California

But I manned up and grew a pair and drew the line. Now I have time to take the kids to the beach and snuggle on the couch and speak to them in accents. There are still moments of misery. Like Aiden peeing on my sweater. Like Madi screaming that she will blow up my head and run over me and ohimakehersoangry and shehatesme! Like getting Madi to do math homework. But the misery comes along with dimples and introducing a new generation to LCD Soundsystem and The Beatles and Arcade Fire and The B-52s.

(I can never remember the font we're using on this crazy thing called blog. Someone make sure this follows protocol for me, will you?)