Ho Ho Ho

Because it’s December, I thought I would talk a little about Santa, and why I think he’s kind of great.

One of the neatest things about Santa Claus, is that just about anyone could pick him out of a line-up. He’s got a variety of looks, from the classic Coca-Cola image to the Old World Father Christmas- but you always know it’s him. He’s known around the world. He’s LOVED around the world. I don’t know of anyone else with such a unifying presence, fictional or real. Pop Culture icons like Elvis, The Beatles and Michael Jackson had a big scope, but their memory disappears a little bit every year. Santa is still going strong. I think his biggest competitor is Mickey Mouse, but somehow I suspect The Ears are still behind The Beard. In fact, Santa is someone Mickey likes to dress up as for Christmas, because EVERYONE loves Santa Claus.

And Santa loves EVERYONE. Santa is FOR everyone. He doesn’t care about what religion you are or aren’t. He doesn’t care what color you are, what language you speak, how much money you have. All he cares about is if you’ve been Naughty or Nice. And you don’t need to see his list to know where you fall on it. You really don’t. And if you don’t make the Nice list, he believes in second chances. Because there’s always next year.

Santa is flexible. There’s white Santa, there’s black Santa there’s redneck Santa and centaur Santa. There’s Fashion Santa, and If you can imagine it, Santa has worn it, somewhere on the internet. And he’s still Santa. He speaks all languages, and can sign too. He’ll do whatever it takes to listen to you, and find out what you want for Christmas. If only more people took the trouble to learn to communicate with others so well.

And people DO, because they’re inspired by Santa’s example. There are millions of people in the world who take up the mantle of Santa, who put on that hat and beard and bring joy to the people around them. There’s a documentary I watched on Netflix recently, called “Becoming Santa” (2011), which gives you a great view of the journey one man took to be transformed into Santa Claus, and his first year appearing as him. There are Santa Schools. There’s Santa charities. There’s Santa Suit rental companies. There are websites dedicated to the folks who portray Santa , to support each other and share their experiences.

I only wish there was a female equivalent who had as much recognition. Sure, there’s Mrs. Claus (sometimes named Holly), but she seems to get far less of the Rock Star treatment Santa does. Right now, Elsa from Frozen seems to be filling that gap for a female Winter icon, but her fame will fade, too. Because nothing really holds a candle to Santa Claus. Oh, and there are women who dress up as Santa, too, because they know it.

We could certainly see Mrs. Claus step up and get more recognition in the future, or maybe another member of the Claus family, like a daughter. Because another great thing about Santa Claus? His mythology is continuously building! Every Christmas provides inspiration to creative minds across the world, and we tack new things on to Santa’s life and world, from Jack Skellington to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Elf. The Santa Clause. The Polar Express. Elf on a Shelf (though that one kind of hurts me). And no one minds that these editions keep growing. No one is saying “this is the one and only true Santa Claus story, none of the others count!”

I think that last bit is one of the best things, actually. It’s the part that really makes Santa Claus someone for everyone.

A Short Break (Pun Intended)

I originally wanted my next post to be a continuation of my house hunting/home buying experience, but I got real busy with the move and then on November 9th, I tripped while attempting to skim my new pool and broke my ankle. I fell face forward into the pool decking and threw up my arms to brace myself for impact – and damaged those a bit as well. For three days I couldn’t really use my arms at all, and I’m still in a cast for the ankle, but every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.

There are certain things you don’t pay any attention to until you HAVE to, and this experience has been a real eye-opener. Because it’s something I’m dealing with right now, I wanted to talk more about it. I’m very, very fortunate. I’m lucky I didn’t fall backwards and crack my skull. I’m lucky I didn’t actually break my arms, and they seem to be recovering nicely now. I’m lucky my boyfriend was home when this happened and was able to call 911 quickly, instead of lying on the ground for hours. Next to the ant trail. I’m lucky he lives with me and has been able to care for me during all this. But most of all, I’m lucky this is temporary.

You really don’t realize just how NOT handicapped accessible everything is, until you have to make it through on crutches or a wheelchair. I had to rent a knee scooter for work, because it’s such a long way to the back of my building and down the hallway to my office, that hobbling along on crutches was exhausting, painful and completely impractical. And believe me: you do NOT want to have to make that long, slow trek to the bathroom on crutches when you REALLY have to go because you were holding it in until your break. I’ve been told I need to put a horn on the thing, since I race down that hallway pretty quick sometimes.

Which brings me to this: Please, please, please, do NOT use the large bathroom stall unless you really need to, especially when all the other stalls are open. It may be 9 o’clock at night and most of the departments in the building are closed, but mine is not, and I can’t get my damn knee scooter into the little stalls. If you are using it, get out quickly - don’t sit in there and primp while I wait, and give me an “oh! Sorry!” when you come out. Jerk.

I notice all the rocks kicked onto the sidewalk from people who cross into the landscaping as a shortcut – the rocks that make my crutches and the scooter wheels skid. I pay real close attention to who opens doors for me, too. I notice who ignores me or looks away, who offers to hold an elevator or carry something for me, and those kind souls who wait while I trudge along, so that they can hold that door even though they’re so far ahead, because they saw me coming. This applies to the Uber drivers I had to use as well – who opened the door and got my crutches versus who let me manage it all on my own.

Since I broke my right ankle, I’m unable to drive, which is how I came to use Uber for the first time. Because I work second shift, my boyfriend is long gone to work before I have to go in and had to find another means. Fortunately he can pick me up, so I only have to pay one way. I have used traditional Taxis before, but I have a few friends who have used and driven for Uber, so I wanted to try it out. I have had to take it 5 times now, and only had the same driver twice. Every single time, they were at my door in about 6 minutes or less – it was awesome. And because you keep your card on file, there’s no worrying about whether you have enough cash on hand, or if they take credit cards. They pick you up, they drop you off, that’s it. The app was pretty easy to use and it’s been interesting to meet the different drivers. Some talk to me, some don’t. Some put me in the back, a couple let me ride up front. If you’re ever in a bind, I highly recommend it. I’ll write a separate blog about it someday.

And speaking of rides: the modes of transportation for those who need assistance are a joke, and awkward to use. Crutches kind of suck and need more padding. They rub up under your arm pits and after using them for a couple of days, I hurt in places that were fine when I started. I had a prescription for a wheelchair that I ended up not using, because the spaces in my house are just too narrow, nor would it have been very practical in the office, even when my arms weren’t hurting as much. Turning those suckers in tight spaces would not have been my idea of a good time. The knee scooter is a bit more flexible, but I’m a heavy girl, and out of shape. I have to hold my body in weird ways to balance properly while propelling myself with the left leg (far more exercise than you’d think). Plus, all my weight bearing down onto the top of my cast makes it dig into my leg, so I end up as tender in the shin as if I had rug burns. This means the next time I need to use it, it’s twice as uncomfortable.

I leave the scooter at my cubicle, because hauling it back and forth would be tricky with Ubering it, and I can’t find a way to carry it and my crutches. I have to use the crutches to and from the cubicle and my ride before and after work. This is a trick for another reason: trying to figure out how to carry my stuff with me. The scooter has a little basket at least, but I have learned to fit my coffee and water cups into my Steam Crow “Monster Search & Rescue” bag that has a strap I can sling over my other shoulder so it’s across my body like a messenger bag. Hurray for impulse nerd-gear purchases! I also have a lunch bag with a similar strap, so with the two at once, I look like some deranged human pack-mule.

I am so glad I’m pushing forty and no longer care about what people think I look like. For an insecure teenager, this would have been hell. For me, it’s just mostly annoying.

I’ve also come into more contact with doctors and nurses than I have in years, and my perception is still the same: most of them are overpriced and not nearly as helpful as they should be. The whole system is completely disorganized. My 7 hours waiting in the ER is a whole other rant. I do want to give props to the response team who hauled my fat ass to the hospital though, even if they did spell my name wrong.

I want to give props to my poor boyfriend, too, who has had to endure dealing with all of this beside me, at my beck and call, when what he had originally planned to do is play Fallout 4 nonstop. He’s had to do things to help me that I’m sure he never imagined he would. For that, I’m sorry. Thank you.

For everyone who has helped me, thank you. I do notice. I do appreciate it. Your kindness and consideration is what restores my hope for human beings in a chaotic world filled with antipathy. For some of you, I know that you see the little courtesies as basic common human behavior and can’t imagine anyone acting differently. But they do. You shine like a lone star in a dark night. Thank you for being you.

Things I've Learned So Far

Things you need to prepare yourself for when you're buying a house for the first time:

1. You're going to be too excited to sleep.
I'm talking little kid on Christmas Eve, night before going to Disneyland, teenager getting their first car kind of sleepless excitement. This means your judgement is going to be shit for those first few house showings.

2. You'll consider living in neighborhoods you would normally be afraid to drive through.
At some point you will probably consider square footage per dollar to be more important than your family's safety. A good realtor will save you from yourself.

3.You're going to become an expert on your city.
Taxi drivers are going to ask YOU for directions, since you'll have driven down every single street in your chosen area so many times. You'll know which are the good areas, which are the bad, and where the borders are between the two.

4.You're going to over-estimate your budget and handyman skills.
You'll tell yourself it's got a lot of potential, especially once you fix that fence, window, bathroom tile, carpet, paint, and porch. And you'll probably have to replace that water heater, water softener, stove, refrigerator and washer/dryer. But it's a great deal!

5. Your free-time is gone.
Time not spent sleeping or working will be spent driving through neighborhoods to gauge the area and look for sale signs. The remainder will be spent looking up houses on the internet, and boring your friends with house talk. They may start to avoid you. One or two will start looking for themselves and you can obsess together.

6. You're going to get your heart broken.
You almost never get the first house you make an offer on. Often you'll make an offer on several different houses you've fallen in love with, only to have your hopes crushed into powder each time until you finally find the house that loves you back.

7.You'll get by with a little help from your friends.
Once they know you're in the market, you'll be amazed at the outpouring of support, advice and references from the people you know. They'll tell you about open houses, give you referrals to realtors, offer advice about neighborhoods, and if you're lucky, help you move. Take it all in, because see #1 again.

House Hunt 3: The Search For Red Brick

I got the notice on Monday evening that the house I loved couldn't be mine. The seller had accepted another offer. Curses! They couldn't possibly love that house as much as I did! I was devastated. But it's still early in my search, so I pushed on.

That neighborhood is perfect for me, and I love the little red brick houses with their scalloped trim and fairy-tale feel.

I grabbed my trusty sidekick, Boyfriend, and we cruised up and down every street in that neighborhood, looking for "For Sale" signs. I told him, "This is it. This is our life now. Looking for signs.". When I got home I looked on the realtor's website for more that I could have missed. I'm not obsessed. I swear.

I have 3 more showings tomorrow at 9am. The search continues...

House Hunting 2: The Offering

My heart nearly stopped when I saw a new listing in my favorite neighborhood. It had previously been listed as Under Contract, but the deal had fallen through! I requested a showing on that one instantly, along with 2 others that seemed to have potential.

I got more sleep on Friday night, but Saturday was the longest workday ever. Despite being exhausted, I still didn't get to sleep before 1:30 am. I was up and moving at 7:30 on Sunday morning. I was supposed to meet up with my agent at 9:45 am, but got a text from her asking to go later, since she'd had a long night. I'm basically a nice person, and I said sure, with my heart jittering like a 5 year old's on a sugar buzz. I only texted her once for an E.T.A. Be proud of me.

We didn't meet up until about 11am, which is the time I normally roll out of bed, being a second shift worker. You have no idea the amount of restraint I had to apply to prevent myself driving to the agency office early and just waiting in the parking lot. I have my pride.

The other two houses were a definite NO, but THE house, oh yes! I was in love! I ran from room to room, gushing like a mad woman. I videotaped it. Yes, I wanted to make the offer. No, my agent didn't have any objections to this one either.

We called the seller's agent to see if they had any other offers - the answer was an unbelievable no! We rushed back to the office to write up a proposal and initial everything important. The seller had 24 hours to review it and get back to me.

I show pictures of the house to my parents, my boyfriend, my best friend. Everyone loves it. Everyone is excited.

A couple hours later I get a text: the seller has gotten another offer. Should we raise our offer?! No, the appraisal won't warrant it, we're sure. Let's see what they say, first.

The wait has just gone from awful to excruciating.

More time passes. The offer isn't rejected outright...there's just...nothing.

That was yesterday. I'm still watiing for my counteroffer, acceptance, or...rejection.

And waiting.

I hate waiting.

Shhh... Be Vewy Vewy Quiet! We're Hunting Houses!

I was just pre-qualified by my loan officer to go house hunting, and Friday I was going to look at houses with my realtor. I'm a first-time home buyer, and the excited anticipation of Thursday night almost did me in. I'm very lucky my realtor was looking out for me.

I was positively drunk on possibility and sleep deprivation, so while I had driven through the area of the first house before, and noticed it wasn't the best neighborhood, I didn't want to completely knock it down. After all, it had a lot of square footage and it was in my price range! It could be mine!

It was on a hill. The whole back yard slanted. The weirdly shaped addition to the back where the two main bedrooms were had floorboards that creaked so loud you could hear them throughout the house. There were 5 entrances into a house that was located in an area where police raid escapes might be a necessity. There was no obvious place to put a fridge.

I tried to look at its potential. It's quirky! Not a whole lot of through traffic! Look at all the square footage! Firepit! Gazebo! The garage has barn doors! Right next to a mountain park!

Meanwhile, my realtor is all, " I think this building should be condemned. There's serious metal fatigue in all the load-bearing members, the wiring is substandard, it's completely inadequate for our power needs, and the neighborhood is like a demilitarized zone."

Reluctantly, I had to agree with her, and we moved on to the next house on our list for the day. And kept on driving, because of the dicey neighborhood and the fact the house was on the corner of a busy main road (always check the area before scheduling a showing folks, to prevent wasting your time and your realtor's). Dr. Spengler called out a cheerful "Good Luck!" to the real estate agent sign in the yard and we moved on to house #3.

House #3 was in the neighborhood I really fell in love with when I first decided I wanted to buy a house back in April, so I had high hopes. Agent Realist pointed out the bullet holes in the large kitchen window, the missing stove (FHA would not approve it without one), and the weird floor plan. Again, no obvious place to put a fridge... and the backyard was the heart-breaker. The dilapidated, four foot high wood fence was falling down in sections and completely missing in others. I have dogs, so before I could even move in I would need to rebuild the fence (preferably taller, since there was NO privacy), along with buying the missing appliances and replacing a window. I don't really have that kind of money.

All I wanted to do was keep driving, hoping we could find something for sale that wasn't already under contract that maybe just hadn't hit our listings yet. I was approved! I wanted to buy a house that day! We drove around a little bit, but sadly, there was no luck there.

That evening I combed the listings again, hoping to find something else to go look at. I had to work on Saturday, but I was off Sunday and Monday, so I could still look some more this weekend!

To Be Continued...

Henry Rollins

Like many people, I occasionally have dreams about celebrities. It’s to be expected, considering how bombarded with a million types of social media we all are. Some of my dreams have included guest appearances by Penn & Teller, Wil Smith, and Bat-Man.

Henry Rollins is my personal Boogeyman. I don’t really know how this happened, as I was never a huge fan of his music back in the day, though I have on occasion appreciated his stand-up as well as some of his intelligent , well-written blog posts. I respect the man.

Somehow this translates oddly in my subconscious. I once dreamed that he was a mall-cop, and as we rode the elevator together, I flirtatiously mentioned that he was looking pretty good for his age. Clearly the man cannot take a compliment, because this caused him to chase me throughout the mall, occasionally firing his gun. Maybe it came off kind of backhanded and he’s just touchy about his age? Regardless, I dreamed Henry Rollins tried to shoot me because I thought he was attractive.

My latest dream involved me taking a couple of out of town friends to the local AZ Renaissance Festival to visit with some other friend s that worked there. In my dream, the office trailer had and upstairs where some employees had set up a couple of tattoo chairs and were giving discounted tats to other employees in their free time. I figured I’d talk to the girl I’d seen there to get an idea how much the work I wanted done would cost, and when I turned around, she was gone but there was… dun Dun DUN! Henry Rollins.

First he took a red ink pen and sketched a wicked looking skull on the back of my left hand. And while I thought it might look kind of cool if I punched somebody with it, I told him I didn’t really want a tat in such an obvious place, and not one that was random. I then showed him the crow I had tattooed on my shoulder (which I really have) and said I had thought it could be the centerpiece of a larger Halloween image, because Halloween was important to me. I thought the crow could at least be standing on a Jack-O-Lantern or something.

Mr. Rollins’ response was “No, I don’t like this idea”, because *of course* he doesn’t. He then proceeded to take a bunch of sharpies and cover my right arm in his vision of what I should get. It started off with him drawing a cartoon man’s head (which looked suspiciously like his own) wearing some red headphones. The end result was a black and rainbow striped sock looking upper arm, interspersed with what looked like a few political meme images from The 98%’s Facebook page. At the joint, he had covered up the head with black and instead made the red headphones encapsulate the numbers 98.88 fm, like it was an advertisement for a radio station.

This whole time, he’s got a grip on my arm and I can’t leave. In the middle of all this, he turns on the radio and starts bobbing his head to some 80’s punk song I’ve never heard of. My friends step in at one point and tell me they’re tired of waiting for me. I can’t leave. He won’t let me go and I’m afraid to tell him I HATE the sleeve idea he’s designed and I am desperately trying to figure out how to get out of this before he permanently commits it all with a needle. I get more and more frantic and finally wake up, because that’s the only way to escape Henry Rollins in my dreams. Every. Time.

Because my life Is some sort of comedy-drama for some unknown being, there will come a day when I will actually MEET Henry Rollins in person. I’m sure of this. And I am a little horrified that I’m either going to give him a strained laugh, like a colicky dolphin, or just turn and run for my life. And because I won’t be able to do so myself, one of you is just going to have to point him at this blog post so he’ll understand why. Nothing personal, Mr. Rollins.