The RedDISH

My new year’s resolution for 2012 is to blog at least once this year.

Mission accomplished.

Don’t Trust Thy Neighbors

Late Thursday night. 1:00 am. I am awoken by a loud slamming door proceeded by my next-door neighbor and his buddy yammering away about some chick they want to call. Shortly thereafter they left as I lied in bed unable to fall back asleep. This normally does not happen as I am typically awake until 2:00 am. My disgruntled, sleepy self did not want to be disturbed again when they came back, so I came up with two options in my head: call the cops or leave a note. And no, the smarter, more optimal solution of not doing anything did not cross my mind. 

Valiantly, I reached for my yellow sticky pad and scribbled: ”Please don’t slam the door again when you come back. Some people are trying to zzz….” I marched over, stuck the note on his door and strut back to my apartment to catch some z’s. While this was not the most ideal solution to my problem under normal circumstances, it was certainly less than ideal given the actual state of affairs—that being, my neighbor is a felon.

A little background. I moved into my apartment fully aware that the apartment next to me was vacant due to the imprisonment of a certain tenant. What I didn’t know was that this resident jailbird would later move back and become my next-door neighbor. Before you start to worry too much, his crimes were less stabbing/raping/pillaging and more forging/laundering/conning.

About two months ago, I was informed that he was going to be released from jail by my landlord’s kind request to clean up the beer cans from the shared deck space, which I might add, was not my doing. Besides the lack of incentive, the beer cans managed to vanish and my neighbor magically appeared one night, keyless and a little trigger-happy with the intercom. Dawned in my shabby, home-only garb, I opened the apartment building door to a surprisingly attractive man in his mid twenties. I immediately learned that he was my next door neighbor, finally free from the confounds of our local jail.

Minutes after I went back to my place, he knocked on my door and informed me that my central air was controlled by the thermostat in his apartment—one of the many dysfunctional things about my apartment. He beckoned to show me how it worked, and against my better judgment, I followed him into his apartment where he briefly instructed me about the a/c then yammered on and on about how he wanted to design his space. After I was finally able to escape his delusional mile-a-minute word marathon, I went back to my apartment and rarely ever saw him again. I only ever heard his pounding bass music, 3-o’clock-in-the-morning parties, and loud dream-destroying door-slamming.

Friday evening. 6:00 pm. I am sitting down to enjoy the season finale of The Office courtesy of Hulu when all of a sudden, the door knob on the door to my apartment jiggles and I hear pounding on my door. Not front-fisted knocking of someone who patiently awaits your door-answering, but impatient side-fisted banging of an unhappy person who wants to confront you about something. Immediately, I thought about the note I left my neighbor the night before and visions of a pissed off felon standing on the other side of the door flood my mind and I nervously cry, “Hello?”

I cautiously approach my door, thinking of how I’m going to defend myself once my neighbor lunges for my throat. Chain lock slid in place, I open my door to three officers who immediately bark: “Who are you?”

Bewildered, I respond: “M-megan.”

Officer: “Do you live here?”

Me: “Yes?”

Officer: “Do you live alone?”

Me: “Yes.”

Officer: “Are you alone right now?”

As my TV flickers a talking head of Dwight Schrute, I reply, “Yes.”

Officer: “Have you seen your neighbor recently?”

Me: “No.” And then I explained the door slamming incident. “What is going on, officer?”

Officer: “We need to arrest him.”

It was about as blunt as that. Impatiently, they shove a card in my hand with a number to call in case I see or hear him then storm out of my building and give me little more information. They tell me the name of my neighbor, which I later google to find out that he has broken into his mother’s apartment, tried to buy a car with his brother’s identity, and attempted to wire tens of thousands of dollars from his employer’s bank account into an account he fabricated. He also strongly resists arrest, which explains why there were three cops ready to slap cuffs on him.

As far as I know, the cops still have not been able to find him and arrest him. I could not have picked a better time to passively confront my felon of a next-door neighbor about his overly loud door-slamming tendencies.

REDitorial: Save the LOL for your Cats

I know “LOL” has been around since the birth of instant messaging and dial-up, which makes this criticizing post about two decades late, but I constantly wonder: WHY the fuck do people still use “LOL”? Are people really just too lazy to type h-a-h-a? Have we, as a society, really lost all motivation to type four whole letters to express our joviality?

And please don’t tell me it’s easier to type “roflmao” than “hahahahaha” because you’re going to make me ralph all over the floor. “Rolling on the floor laughing my ass off?” No one says that in real life. Who made this shit up and why the fuck did it catch on?

Since I know “LOL” will (unfortunately) never go away, I have compiled a list of people of which this godforsaken acronym should be restricted.

1. 13-year-old girls
2. Confused mothers who think it means “Lots of Love”
3. LOL cats (because cats don’t know any better)

Confessions of a Colorado Failure

I should really be more careful when I brag about being from Colorado—especially when it comes to snowboarding. Apparently, out east, being a Coloradan is synonymous with being some sort of snowboarding virtuoso. While I can hold my own on the bunny slope, I have yet to master a proper ski-lift dismountation and a wipeout-free run. At no point in my snowboarding career could I ever consider myself proficient, let alone skilled. So it should of course come as no surprise that my snowboarding adventure in Vermont this weekend came to a close after one and a half runs and a journey down the mountain on a medical sled.

I know how badass this must sound, but please, let me explain. 

It was my 26th fall of the day and most certainly the most traumatic. There is not one proper term for the fall that cost me $300, but many that can describe my pathetic demise. Let’s see…I wiped out, face-planted, biffed, ate shit…you get the point. After having every ounce of air pounded out of my lungs, I made a dramatic effort to scream with every exhale out of sheer panic. To my luck, a man in red happened to witness my tumble and rushed to my side and told me not to move. After my panic subsided, I realized I was fine and stuck in the same position for no reason other than precaution. Within minutes, I lost all feeling in my feet—not from a spinal injury, just simply from the position of my legs and the lack of blood flowing to my toes.

Next thing I knew, I was being strapped on a gurney like I was paralyzed and getting tugged behind an EMT/Ski-fiend in some sort of medical toboggan with my head being held in place by plastic neck brace, curiously resembling a jock strap. On the bright side, I did get a sense of what it must be like to ride in a bobsled like in Cool Runnings. As I felt the rhythm, felt the rhyme, all I could see was the sky between the trees, the shavings of ice that flung on my face, and curious on-lookers peering down at the immobile snowboarding failure.

Once to safety, I was lifted from the snow stretcher onto a bed where I spent the next half hour watching people with real injuries fill up the beds around me. Two nurses began taking care of me, one asking questions and prodding my chest and neck, one removing my boots that had, by then, completely cut off all circulation to my feet. Moaning in pain from my feet coming back to life, the nurse poking my chest became worried something was wrong with my ribs. I explained my calves hurt, to which she immediately diagnosed a broken fibula and rushed me down to x-ray.

On an even lower level of both the building and my life, I rolled onto the x-ray table and back off again to prove what I already knew: the only thing bruised or broken was my ego. I wish I could say the humility of my mistaken leg cramp ended at the unnecessary x-ray…but I can’t. I was prescribed crutches—which I used to walk to the waiting room until my once diagnosed broken leg melted into a measly case of charlie horse. 

I may have been able to walk off my pointless trip to the Stratton Mountain Medical Center, but I will never walk off my shame as a Colorado failure. 

RIP

Today was a tragic day. Somewhere on my journey to the post office, trekking through the treacherous mounds of blizzard carnage on unplowed sidewalks, my favorite pair of pants endured an irreversible laceration. A gash so big and so poorly placed, I have no choice but to retire my favorite pair of pants forever. To make it all the more tragic, not only were they my favorite pair of pants, they were my only pair. You see, I recently suffered another pants fatality a few weeks ago from a tragic bleach accident at the laundromat. I suppose I have grown stronger and wiser since that day (now I watch where I sit and don’t assume that a puddle on a seat is just water). But for right now, I’m too sad to think about any bright side. I’ll just do all I can to not cry over split pants.

RIP, favorite pair of pants, because that’s all you are now. Just one big fucking rip.

Snow Day Checklist

1. Keep warm…check
2. Watch six movies (not including Sex and the City commentary)…check
3. Finish a triptych painting made from salvaged and cheap materials…check
4. Build a snowman…..
5. Drink hot cocoa…..
6. Think of cleaning…check
7. Actually clean…..
8. Nap…check

Stork Bites

In the midst of thinking about my future and where I want to go in life thanks to my first job, the New Year and the fast-approaching Armageddon, I couldn’t help but think about how I got to where I am in the first place. 

Let’s take it way back to when I was still in diapers. As a baby, I always held my head to one side, specifically (yet not crucially significant to my tale) the left. Whenever my mother looked down at her bobble-headed baby, she not only worried it might never grow up to get its heavy little head on straight in the literal sense, but also in the figurative. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my mother was worried I would be retarded. She was not entirely out of place.

You see, I was a forcep baby. You may have never heard that term before since forceps are a birthing tool from the 80s and have since been replaced by a more kosher birthing aide, the suction cup. As you can imagine, with the odd pressure points of the metallic device wrenching out an extremely delicate infant skull through the undeniably strong suction of birthing, there are bound to be side effects. Mine were called stork bites. A maliciously cunning way of saying my head was squeezed a little too tightly by the jaws of birth.

After the stork bites faded, my head bobbled, I didn’t read until the end of the first grade and I constantly wore a puddle of drool on my chest up until preschool. (That last one is a lie…to the best of my knowledge). Miraculously, however, I grew up with a well-balanced head on my shoulders, the ability to read, and less drool on my shirt.

Resolutions

1. Blog more often  
2. Become less of a domestic failure
3. Wake up earlier than 40 minutes before work
4. Swear less when conversing with strangers
5. Stop sitting in bleach at the laundromat
6. Make more lists  

A Poor Man’s Guide to Christmas Wrapping

As a recent college grad who just got her first job a month and a half ago, relocated across the country, and has to pay off her credit card debt, moving expenses, and college loans…I didn’t have a lot of pennies to spend on gift wrapping. My excitement over finding a roll of wrapping paper for $2.50 was soon deflated after realizing that you could see the present it was supposed to be concealing, completely defeating the purpose.

Luckily, I had received a gift from work last week and managed to salve the wrapping paper and repurpose it for my parents’ gifts. A little bit of shitty wrapping paper from Target, some reused paper (courtesy my boss), a Whole Foods’ bag, some artful snips, and a little bit of tape later, I had little works of art on my hands!