Going Postal, Talking Before Thinking, and Getting Hit on by the Terminator

About once a week I get a phone call from someone trying to reach the post office. Typically they blow past my “Nice Hedge Fund, Jackie speaking” greeting, none of which sounds like “post office” really, and launch into their sob story about how they filed for address forwarding but it’s been weeks and they still haven’t received their mail and what am I going to do about it? If I can get a word in edgewise I try to explain that, no, this is a private office and not the post office, but sometimes callers rant for twenty seconds before I can tell them they have the wrong number. Really, it’s like I’m doing everyone a favor: the caller gets to bitch about the unreliability of the postal service to someone who isn’t going to take personal offence to their slander, and then when they finally reach the person who can help them they’ve calmed down a bit. And also, the calls tend to be the most entertaining I get all week.

R and I celebrated his birthday yesterday with a nice sushi dinner uptown followed by a slice of cake like something out of a six-year-old’s dessert fantasy: part chocolate mousse, part brownie, and part cheesecake, drizzled with caramel, and topped with rainbow sprinkles and walnuts. All it was missing in this cake’s quest for perfection were Oreo cookies and a maraschino cherry on top. I had given him his present – a dartboard – early so we could hang it and play with it over the weekend. It was a low-key kind of night, but we had a good time together devouring that cake.

Then I went and invited him to Thanksgiving dinner.

We were talking about how our families celebrate the greatest holiday of the year (an entire day devoted to EATING!) and while I gushed about MomOh’s cooking and the fun/crazy energy that emanates from family gatherings on her side, he said that he doesn’t really like Thanksgiving now that his sister and brother go to their in-law’s.

Okay, don’t misunderstand me: R is completely qualified for Take Home to Mom and Dad Status and overall a wonderful addition to my life. But as soon as the words were out of my mouth I remembered that what my family thinks of as “fun” and “crazy” can also be considered “overwhelming” and “self-referential” by outsiders and newcomers. Nothing is definite (he said he’d think about it) and I’d be very happy if he came with me, but this is one of those situations that will either be a lot of fun or a complete disaster. This Friday he'll get a little introduction to the family with the Queen of Crazy: Aunt C and her husband will be in town for the opera and are taking us out to dinner, so that should be an interesting prelude.

My lovely little Midtown apartment is having a mouse problem. An aggressive mouse problem - the little fucker ate through a ziplock bag and helped himself to a batch of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. I've heard him scamper through the walls occasionally in the past and generally ignored it, assuming he was just passing through, but the cookie incident was just too much. My leasing company is useless, so I hired an exterminator (which I keep accidentally calling a Terminator, but that's cooler anyway) to kill the mouse. The Terminator was, as one might imagine, quite the character. He moonlights as a bouncer at various clubs I've never heard of, and wasn't shy about showing off his stab wounds. Really. Then, when he was putting down the traps in my bedroom (which looks like my closet exploded), he offered to "come over and help me clean sometime" and pointed out a stray thong that had missed my laundry basket ("sexy"). Sure thing, creepy Terminator, I'll be sure to request your service if this round of baiting doesn't do the trick. Now my lovely apartment is littered with little cardboard box traps and smells vaguely like peanut butter. Gross.