I have a stalker

And he is not human...


Yesterday during lunch I was sitting outside on my little blanket attempting to complete my weekly New York Magazine crossword puzzle. This is my favorite crossword puzzle because it's not too easy or too difficult and is culturally relevant enough to capture my attention and teach me a few things.

Maybe it was because I had pandora streaming from my blackberry's speaker or maybe it was because my hair was a slept-on, wind-blown mess, making me look like a rodent, but I realized that someone or something was watching me.

He was small. 8 inches at the most, not including his tail, and he was on the thin side. He was confident, though. He observed me for a minute... and then he began his approach. Staring intently ahead, this little creature marched within 6 feet of my blanket, ignoring my order to "Go away!" He had a gleam in his little beady eyes that made me nervous as he got closer and closer. When he was 3 feet away I threw my right shoe at him and he reluctantly retreated.

Temporarily.

I had barely filled in "HOSTILE" for 4 Across', "Far from friendly" clue, when he crept back into a space I would prefer to call a squirrel-free zone. This time he was fearless and defiantly sidestepped my flying left shoe. I stood up in just in case I needed to make a barefoot run for my life. He zig-zagged forward, close enough to take a full-shower from my cup, and I threw 16 oz of cold water on the beast. He was stunned by the attack and hopped around twitching the water off his furry spy jacket.

I stood there trying to gauge the likelihood of another assault and considering my options if one were to take place. In terms of "fight," I could throw my magazine, which would probably not go very far. I could throw my phone, which probably wouldn't be damaged by the grass but also wouldn't DO very much. In terms of "flight," I could take off, barefoot, into the parking lot screaming, "Killer Squirrel!!" Fortunately he backed away toward his side of the lawn.

After glaring at me for a few minutes while drying off, he scampered laterally away from me and circled back. I stared him down and he stared right back but did not come as close as the last time. This went on for close to 5 minutes before he started scoping out better hiding places.

For the duration of my lunch hour, the little bastard did not let me out of his sight, nor did I allow loss of visual contact with the suspect. With a disappointing number of empty columns and rows left in my crossword puzzle, I gathered my things and backed away toward my building.

A few days later, I was picking up some lunch in the office park with a friend when Mr. Squirrel made another appearance. He stood between me and the little deli and stared me down. My friend scared him away but only long enough for us to enter the deli. He was out there waiting for us, and I could see him from inside. He was loitering around the doorway just waiting for his chance. With sandwich in hand, I made a run for it and just barely escaped, rabies-free. He sat glaring at us as we drove away in my friend's car, wishing that he himself had a squirrel car so that he could follow us and eat our lunches.

What is WRONG with me

Now that this is really turning into a dream blog, how about this dumb-ass move:

I have been known to cancel dentist appointments and curse people out and not remember when they call me early in the morning. Now that I sleep with my phone off, this isn't so much of a problem, but I still do stupid things when I first wake up in the morning.

For example, this morning my phone alarm went off (dammit, I left my phone at home!) and I remembered a dream I had during the night. It was about a boy I went to high school with. We weren't exactly what I would call friends... there were a lot of fluctuating relationship dynamics going on between his friends and me and my friends... but we definitely knew each other. He was never as big of a douche as the rest of his friends and we are friendly twice a year when we see each other.

So thanks to the wonders of facebook mobile technology, from the warm comfort of my bed, I was able to send a message to this boy before I was even awake enough to lift my head from the pillow.

And here is what I said:

"Last night I had a dream that I was sitting in the living room of your parents house watching baseball on tv with them and you showed me pictures of the black side of your family except they were all drawings because they couldn't afford a camera until you guys found out about them and took them in.

PS I'm still half asleep in bed with one eye closed so its probably really dumb that I'm even telling you this."

Now I am just DYING to know if that made him laugh when he saw it, because it definitely made me laugh when I first told someone. I really want to know what he thought, who he told, and what they said! May send spies in to find out.

This is starting to turn into a dream blog

I was in Chicago and Courtney and her roommate were out. It was raining out and I got let into their dorm to wait for them but I had to leave and I left the door open to I could get back in.

Then I was friends with a group of people who all worked together and they were trying to help me out with a test I had to take. They had packets and floor plans of where everyone had to sit for the test but there were so many that they couldn't remember where I was.

I was holding a half-black, baby-sized midget who was getting married and she was wearing a pink see through dress and a diaper, had almost no hair, and smelled weird. She got married before but no one came and she wore black that time. Her friend was getting ready in the same room and she had the most absurd makeup (see below) including a teal metallic design on her forehead and thick black smudgy lip liner that looked like a mustache.

My mom was throwing me a party over at her old house and there were 2 Abby dogs (Springer Spaniels) and they were running loose and I was scared that they were lost. Mom was up all night making food and I was sleeping in bed with a guy and a girl who both had a penis. At 6:45 we were woken up because there was a huge fire and we all had to evacuate.

I went to find my Grandma Trudy at her gas station and parked right in the middile of the lot but her employee was working. I went in the back and found her... but it was my mom and she wanted to go to her place but I was like, Mom, your old house was a freaking bomb shelter, why wouldn't we go there? So we were talking and she lead me to the bathroom and I waved bye to my grandpa on my way in.

I dream in color

Last night I awoke from a dream at 3:41, which is actually 3:34. This dream was so strange and vivid that I had to get it down on paper before it was gone . Normally I write my dreams in the dark, taking up whole pages with 4 lines for fear of overlapping in the dark. But for this dream I was willing to risk not being able to fall back asleep, so I turned on my light and pulled out a pen and paper.

Kit Porter from The L Word took me to a large empty warehouse and everything was grey and there were some strange little Spanish mafia people waiting for us. Apperently she had brought me there to pay off some debt as a sex slave or laborer, or something unpleasant.

There was something stopping me from being able to be handed over. My eyes wouldn't adjust to the dark warehouse only it was in reverse. I was blinded by the light coming out of everyone's faces.

Finally I somehow saved the day by accidentally knocking somethng over and setting offf a chain reaction like one of those mouse traps only it was the entire city. Things were bouncing and ricocheting and catapulting everywhere like a pinball machine

Marge and Homer Simpson were brown furry things way on the other side of town and there was a marble that kept bouncing between two poles and every time it bounced back, Homer and Marge would mutate and duplicate like humps on a caterpillar.

After I saved the day, I went back to the gym for a class but there was a sub, which always makes me upset. This time the sub was holding class in the locker room, more specifially in a claw-footed bathtub with curtains. She had everyone stand in brightly colored buckets made of some soft but solid gel-like material and do squats while making strange noises.

A childhood friend's little brother, Ian, showed up at the gym and sat by the crowded pool doing a cool frisbee trick. My brother watched in awe and jealousy as Ian sent the frisbee whizzing past people in one direction, then skimming the water and swirling in the other direction nearly missing more people and then swooping for another splash and turn maneuver.

Then I had to pee.

Speaking of things I want but can't have...

I fantasize about the following emoticons:

Tired/Sleepy

Growl aka ARGH

Eye-rolling

Update:

I would also like one with a giant ear, to capture, "I'm listening."

If I were a rich girl

Have you ever thought about how you would spend your money if you had more than you could ever dream of? I have, and of course I would give significantly to charitable groups, invest wisely, help loved ones, the usual. But after all that, there are a few things I would like to have that I bet you never would have thought of...

Like my very own in-home salad bar with an Asian lady who comes around to refill it every day. She has to be Asian or else it's not like Charlie Brown's.

And a hibachi grill with a chef. Shrimp-flipping not required but appreciated.

How about someone to peel my grapes because I hate grape skin. And another person to peel my oranges because I can't stand to do it myself.

And finally, I would have a group of little people working together to trim my split ends, one by one. The split ends and only the split ends.

The end.

Typical Friday night of Erdeness

"What I did on my vacation by Valerie E." (by Laina E.)

On Friday, my sister and I were so full from lunch that we didn't feel like eating when she got home from work. So after I watched her do her workout video in the living room, we went shopping on the 3rd St. Promenade in Santa Monica.

It was a nice night on the promenade and there were street performers, but at about 10pm I started to get hungry. First we went to a really cool mini mart that had such a random assortment my favorite Japanese snacks along with an amazing variety of American foods. We spent 10 minutes deciding what to eat and then we saw those delicious steamed buns that they serve at Dim Sum restaurants. I got a chicken teryaki bun and my sister got her own bun, and then we split a red bean bun. Mmmm buns.

Then we stopped at the supermarket and I bought fruit salad and broccoli and cheddar Lean Pockets. While I was heating my lean pocket, my sister told me that she didn't know they had any vegetarian Lean Pockets. I told her, of course they do.

I have no interest in eating any meat in a pocket. That is frozen.

Later we were sitting around on two of my sister's three couches, which her roommate bought for $105, all of which she hates because they are old, ratty, and smelly. I asked her if the pillows came with the couches. She told me she bought them at Bed, Bath, & Beyond and shuddered as she described the original pillows.

I told her how disappointed I was that instead of giving it to me for my new apartment as promised, our dad had given away his living room couch to a Nigerian man who planned to send it back to Nigeria for his family. My sister burst out laughing over this revelation which made me laugh at the idea as well.

She told me that there was NO way that anyone would send a 15 year old couch to Africa. I told her that that's what the man said, but she insisted that there was just no way it would happen, wondering outloud how much it would even cost to send a couch to Africa.

So we looked it up online on the world wide web. We estimated that the couch was 70"x48"x33" and weighed approximately 60 lbs. UPS calculated that in 5 days, this couch could arrive in the capital of Nigeria for the low low cost of $1207.96.

We thought that this was a lot to pay to send a couch and decided to find out how much it would cost to buy a couch in Nigeria. Sadly for the Nigerians, the nearest country served by the mighty Craigslist is South Africa. But for the sake of estimation we decided this was fairly sufficient and searched for "couch" in Cape Town. There was only one available for sale, and it was ZAR950.

Now, I can convert a lot of things, actually I can't... but we did not happen to know the ZAR:USD conversion rate. Luckily my sister knew of a website on the internet that could convert these things automatically. We now know that ZAR950=93.63 USD.

In conclusion, my sister's smelly couches were the best deal, but see how we tried to help others by and sell couches:


From: Laina E.
Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2009 12:54 AM
To: sale-1000767768@craigslist.org
Subject: couch

** CRAIGSLIST ADVISORY --- AVOID SCAMS BY DEALING LOCALLY
** Avoid: wiring money, cross-border deals, work-at-home
** Beware: cashier checks, money orders, escrow, shipping
** More Info: http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams.html

- Hide quoted text -

Hi,

This is very strange, but I was doing some research online and saw your post seeking a couch. I also saw a post with a nice looking blue-ish couch for sale. Here is the link: http://capetown.craigslist.co.za/fuo/989733875.html

By the way, I am in California. Also, it costs $1,207 to ship a couch from New Jersey to Nigeria. Like I said, strange.

Good luck with the couch.

Laina

From: Shelley M. Ottino
Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2009 9:12 AM
To: Laina E.
Subject: Re: couch

Thanks very much for the info, I was really looking for a couch in Durban, South Africa for my parents, I am actually in Texas.

Thanks again - Shelley

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Not getting to the point very quickly

There is a birthday in the office today... and cupcakes. Yellow cake with vanilla frosting and yellow cake with chocolate frosting. This is not good for my diet. They're not even good cupcakes as far as cupcakes go. This isn't Sprinkle's, it's not Susie Cakes, they're not even real homemade. I mean, sure they were made in a home, but they're from a box. And the frosting is from a can. I've been into "from scratch" lately, and these were far from it.

I had one chocolate and half a vanilla after lunch, then over the next two hours I decapitated another vanilla and a half for their frosted tops only.

A little while later, because I'm clumsy, I smashed my finger in a cabinet and in the process of getting some ice in the kitchen I spotted the cupcakes again, which are obviously comforting. So I skedaddled out of there with a big bad vanilla to ease my pain. Let me tell you, it's not easy to ice your right middle finger and eat a cupcake simultaneously. It's just not easy. After I scarfed it down, I was feeling the kind of guilt that only happens when you forget how many cupcakes you have had. I've since calculated, but at the time I was blocking out the gluttony.

I moved on and through some sequence of events not relating to my job, I found myself reading and article in the advice column, Ask E. Jean about a husband who refused to buy lingerie for his wife who had wanted him to do this for many years and thinking about my cupcake-eating self in lingerie. I was not happy about this concept, and decided to go directly to the gym followed by bed without dinner.

In theory, I would like a man to buy lingerie for me. Theory, including the assumption that it is nice, tasteful, and "me". I feel silly buying it for myself and wearing it for someone else, but if it were given to me, that's another story.

But the real story here is that all of this led me to the horrible memory of a lingerie exchange between two senior citizens.

I was visiting my grandpa a few years ago, when he first started seeing his skanky new (but not young) girlfriend, Lila... that hussy. He took me to meet her and her leopard print house, where my grandma's old cleaning lady, Sue, was taking care of her while she recovered from hip surgery. Like I said, not young. So we're all sitting around on the hiddeous couches and my grandpa pulls out this gift box and hands it to the old (ho) bag. She opens it up and pulls out a LACY BLACK SEE THROUGH THING AND A MATCHING THONG. The cleaning lady's eyes are bulging and I'm gagging and trying to think of a reason to die immediately while the other two are holding it up and touching it and smooching and generally doing everything you NEVER want to see your widower grandfather do. I was traumatized past the point of being able to erase this from my permanent scars.

At least I can say that matter how many cupcakes I have (well, to an extent), I would rather see myself in lingerie than a wrinkled old lady laying on her leopard print bed, replacement hip and all.

The other waxing lady

Anyone who's read "The Waxident" will know that Kuniko, my favorite waxing lady ever, left me with no warning and that I was very upset about it. After that I had to try someone new, so I started seeing Choon. She was fine, but more expensive because, as you know, Kuniko gave me a secret discount.

So in October of 2007, I was getting ready to go on a cruise to the Western Caribbean and made a visit to Choon at Anthony Garubo. She asked me what I was going to do on the cruise so I told her that I was just going to go to the beaches... I wasn't interested in any excursions.

This is when Choon started telling me about all of her snorkeling experiences. She and her boyfriend were seriously into snorkeling and she tried to convince me to try it. Well, the funny thing about that is: I have tried it. So I told her my story...

March 2006:
I am prepared to snorkel. I am mentally prepared to face my fear of fish touching me. I am equipped with the mask and snorkel I brought thousands of miles by air and sea to Grand Cayman. I paid for the cruise excursion and I have Jill, my snorkel buddy there with her flippers and mask.

When they tell us that we're going to go to the end of the pier and climb into the water, I'm definitely put off because I was expecting to wade into the water and stay in the shallow end. But when they tell us that we might see a large fish that looks like a shark but isn't, I am no longer prepared for this. I've got my mask on and my flippers on and I've got my underwater camer hanging on it's little rubber band from my wrist. I'm lagging behind the group a bit because I'm nervous as hell and I want to see every last person get in the water before I try it.

So finally, Jill gets in and it's my turn. So I turn my back to the water and take hold of the ladder's railings, lowering my flippered feet one-by-one onto the steps. Over the course of the next five minutes I make it about half way down the ladder and the rest of the group is getting pretty far away from the dock. There's a group coming in, but there is no way I'm rushing into the water to let them out and I'm not ready to give up on the idea altogether, and since there is another ladder, I decide they only need one and I clearly need the other.

Little by little, I lower myself into the water and finally I let go of the ladder.

5

4

3

2

1

Splash, splash, splash, I am flipping and paddling myself back to my ladder and pulling myself out of that water exponentially faster than I got in. If this had been TiVo, it would have been frame by frame into the water and then 3x fast forward out.

I'm flip-flop-flip-flop-flip-flopping back down the dock and then I hear another flip-flop-flip-flop-flip-flop behind me and I turn around and it's a terrified, half-drowned Jill running for her life from the shark (the one they told us was not a shark). I just want to say that she was brave. I surely would have all-the-way drowned if I saw that thing.

The instructor who stayed back comes over to us and we're huffing and puffing and practically falling over thanks to our flippers and asks what's wrong. Well Jill saw the shark-fish, and I'm just a baby. But I'm really disappointed that I won't get to see any fish, so the instructor walks us over to this shallow pool of ocean that is MAYBE a foot deep and tells me to practice there. So I examine the area and decide that it's safe.

Jill's finding it quite amusing to see me on my hands and knees, face in the water, butt in the air looking at sand, and since she's got the underwater camera now... she's documenting my snorkeling experience. And laughing at me.

...
So I finish telling this story to Choon, and she's on the verge of wetting her pants. She's already laughing so hard she's crying, and she's relentless. I don't think I've ever been laughed AT so hard in my life. I feel really safe and secure in her room now. NOT. And can you even believe this... she had me bring in the pictures of my with my face in the water and she put it up on her wall! And she made fun of me every time after that. What a joke.

Gripes About Cops (Lehigh University Brown and White 2004)

Gripes about cops
Laina Erde

Photo Editor

3/17/2004

At 9 a.m. on the Friday that began my Spring Break, I was woken up by the furious sound of my door being beaten down and my doorbell screaming. In a dreamy fog, wearing only a T-shirt, I stumbled to the door of my Trembley Park apartment. Through my peephole I saw none other than the Lehigh Police. I could not even fathom why the police would be brutalizing my door and stealing the early morning sleep I had been enjoying. I opened the door with one hand and tried to pull down my shirt with the other.

As it turned out, the police thought that they were coming to the aid of helpless prisoners trapped in their own apartment. The reason they thought this was because of the sign in our window, meant to be a joke, which read “Send Help.”

So the Lehigh Police sent help. They sent it in the form of a door-banging, bell-ringing, mean man who took my sign and refused to tell me why.

The Lehigh Police were actually doing their job for the first time in recorded history, only it was like wearing sunglasses at night: unnecessary and just plain stupid.

I was very angry. Not only was I woken up two hours early and yelled at, but I was forced to hand over my property without reason. This might make anyone angry, but the reason I was angry is that I have asked the Lehigh Police for help in the past, and did not receive it.

Soon after several off-campus robberies in the fall, my roommates and I left an off-campus party hoping to Take a Ride Around Campus Safely with T.R.A.C.S. We were concerned about the risk of being approached by a bandit, so we went to nearest call box, pressed “HELP” and asked the police to send T.R.A.C.S. to the rescue. The man on the phone said that the vans were no longer in service, but that he would send someone to make sure we were OK.

We waited. We called again.

Soon, a police car pulled up and the driver asked us if we were OK. We said that we were waiting for T.R.A.C.S. and that we did not feel comfortable walking all the way home alone. The officer said, “This isn’t an escort service, you can’t just call us like a taxi.” Then he sped off, probably to break up some party on the Hill.

We asked the police to send help; they told us they would not. We put a sign up in our window; they came barging in when they were not welcome.

Even more dramatic was the incident reported in The Brown and White police blotter as, “Criminal Mischief — On Dec. 18, a window in Trembley Park was damaged. The incident is under investigation.” The window in question was not damaged. In fact, it was totally destroyed by jars of apple butter and a case of beer that were all thrown at our double-paned window in the middle of the night. My roommate walked into our apartment and saw what looked like ice chips covering every inch of our apartment. She realized it was glass and called the police.

The police asked what time the incident happened, who was around before, if they had been drinking and if there were any suspects.

Then the officers left the scene. No fingerprints, no assistance, no comfort; just the cold winter wind blowing through our new gaping hole.

The glass was in the cups in our cabinets, covering our couch and embedded in the carpet. If anyone had been sitting on the couch, he or she would have been seriously injured by the wall of glass. The incident is not under investigation — it was abandoned by the police. To this day I am still finding tiny bits of glass all over my apartment.

I suppose I haven’t had the best interactions with the Lehigh Police, but I would like to know, who has? Have they ever helped anyone in trouble or have they only stopped us from having fun, kept us from making jokes, and ticketed us for parking in our own parking lots?

The cherry on this hot fudge sundae came today when I picked up my precious sign from the police station. It was damaged, again with no explanation from the police. I could not even feign surprise.