My Chick Lit Reality: Doggie Day Care

So I'm sure we're all familiar with the typical chick lit storyline: Girl has breakdown; extremely rare coincidences occur to place her in a healing environment where she works as a cleaning lady or dog walker; hot male gardener shows up shirtless; emotional wounds are healed; and everyone lives happily ever after. The point of it all usually is that in order to find this new happiness, the girl must hit rock bottom-levels of despair and slough off the stress of being in the same old rut that is currently making her life a hell hole before she can pull a phoenix and rise from the ashes a healed, whole, new person.

 

Part of this rock bottom pilgrimage sometimes entails living and/or working in what Ageless calls "fringe society," the kinds of people who consider 9-5 office jobs the devil's work, right up there with genital warts and politicians. The kinds of people who work, say, in a Doggie Day Care facility.

Enter kK, fresh from her Parisian escape, back in the city where I had just spent three years at yet another 9-5 office job. Admittedly, the companies I worked for were MUCH better than the law firm in Chicago (where 9-5 really meant 9-9), but still, there is something about office life that, while comforting in a steady, you-know-what-to-expect kind of way, manages to suck out pieces of your soul through the florescent light bulb sockets and too-cold air conditioner vents.

As I prepared for another round of temporary office job interviews, I started feeling a vague queasyness in every atom of my body. After one interview, I ran outside and just stood in the middle of the crowded sidewalk, breathing deeply and soaking up the sun as I tried to dispel the panicky jitters that had overcome me in the elevator ride back down to the lobby.

I've read enough of those girly novels to understand the signs of the bourgeoning breakdown, but my next move was pure instinct that I would only later attribute to an unconscious drift toward my chick lit reality. I walked home instead of taking the subway, something that I might not normally have done since it was a good 30 block walk, but I needed fresh air and constant movement to keep me from what I was convinced was going to be spontaneous combustion.

A few blocks from my apartment I passed a "help wanted" sign in the window of a doggie day care boutique. I walked in on auto pilot, the copy of my resume pulled out before I even realized my hand was reaching into the envelope, an interview-smile pasted on my face as I walked up to the counter and greeted the manager. She raised her eyebrows at the obviously overqualified list of credentials, but somehow I managed to convey my desperation to be in NOT-office work, and then I picked up a little King Charles spaniel scratching at my legs and buried my face in her soft hair as she tried to lick all the invisible peanut butter off my face.

Apparently a love of dogs is high on the list of requirements for this no-brainer job, because she asked me to start the next Monday.

WHOOHOO!

It was two of the most fun months of my working life: I spent all day petting dogs and chatting about collars, harnesses, all-natural doggie treats and food. My fringe society consisted of dreadlocked, potsmoking groomers and a crazy manager who came in every day either drunk, hungover or amped up on what I'm pretty sure was something a little stronger than caffeine.

I knew it couldn't last forever, but while it did I reveled in the glorious fringy-ness of it. Also, I'd been sending out so many positive vibes into the universe for a position at Patagonia that I felt like I was floating on a cloud of surreality. Especially when Patagonia called to offer me the job! I have now moved to Phase Two of my new chick lit reality, working for one of my favorite companies with great people (and a store in Seattle...HMMM!).

I'm not sure how many phases there will be, and I'm still waiting on the hot, shirtless gardener to show up to heal my emotional wounds (LOL!), but for now I'm content to fold t-shirts and spend my free time riding my new bike (more on this later), drinking tequila with my Vortex dinner/book club (again, more on this later), and watching awesome crap tv like:

and

Stay tuned for upcoming installments of the New York Chronicles, including bike rides, adventures in catsitting, and the road trips to Austin and Chicago. In the meantime, skip the shower and have that other glass of wine.

kK

It's Wine O'clock Somewhere, or Commence Chapter 30

I think it's about time to tell the tale of how I rang out the twenties and brought in the thirties with a costume party, some live jazz, and a new song to be added to my Christmas Eve playlist of favorites.

First up: Masquerade, themed "famous pairs." Here's Pull The Prick Out and me, getting ready. I'm surprised this came out at all clear--we'd had a shit week and lots of wine by 7.00 Friday night. (Photo taken at 7.01 Friday night.)

We packed a (really large) backpack full of alcohol and trekked over to Squash's apartment, where every single stick of furniture had been removed to make way for what seemed like 800 people in about 400 square feet of space.

Joliet Jake and Elwood Blues: We Hate Illinois Nazis

My personal favorite (or second favorite, right after the Blues Brothers, of course): One person as both Sonny AND Cher!

SonnyAndCher

PTPO made amazing (also read: really f*ing strong) concoctions of tequila, lime and something else and quite possibly a fourth ingredient but buggered if I can remember anything about anything.

And that's all I really have to say about that, I think.

Anyhoo, six days later was the big Three-Oh, which started out nicely by me sleeping off staying awake until 5am the night before reading Diamond Age and listening to French news podcasts (omg who AM I!)

Then it was off to the Paris mosque for hammam, where I sat in the second-hottest room (I got one foot in the third room and thought it was going to melt off my jambe right on the spot) and sweated and warmed my way up from the inside for hour upon glorious hour. This was followed by a spot of thé à la menthe in the dimly lit welcome room surrounded by murmured conversations of the other ladies-in-repose and the white noise of water running through the fountain in the middle of the pillared, vaulted space.
Ahhhhh.

To fill in the hour or so before dinner, Pain Quotidien came to the rescue with a bowl of creamy coffee and a brioche aux raisins.
Ahhhhh.

Dinner was a DELICIOUS salad niçoise, bottle of wine (it's wine o'clock all day on birthdays, I'm just sayin'), and a chocolate yumminess for dessert at a cute little restaurant near Ile St Louis. Squash, PTPO and I segued to the next event by strolling up Blvd St Michel to a jazz club, where we cheered on a group of cute old Frenchmen playing New Orleans style tunes.

Le Petit Journal Saint Michel

And then, of course, no self-respecting birthday celebration is complete without crepes aux nutella!

Best. Crepes. EVAH.

And the next day, wrapped in one of my favorite expletives and a short story about a toothbrush by way of apology on being a day late, the one and only DT, known in some nefarious circles as the Ramblin' Mand'lin, emailed me a song he'd composed for my big day. (N.B.: I would never stoop so low as to beg ask him to do this for me. Nor would I follow up to give him a week's notice-reminder out of paranoia he'd forgotten.)

It is, ironically and yet undeniably aptly, titled "It Is What It Is." I push play, hear the first bare notes of mandolin and see ... 

... winter, the darkening skies, the chill wind with a spattering of cold rain, the hunched-shoulder half-run to your front door as you struggle with your errands-bags and finally manage to shut the door behind you and lean against it with trembling knees in relief of the warmth you can now feel seeping by degrees into deeper and deeper layers of your every cell. You might have just had a shit day, but right now it all falls away and you take a deep breath and unzip your coat and your sleepy lazy cats curled up with the sleepy lazy mastiff-named-Murdoch raise their heads (b/c they can't be bothered to move from their comfy spot on the doggy tummy and as much as the doggy loves you she's so excited that the cats are hanging out with her she doesn't want to move either) and see you beeline for the kitchen to put the kettle on for tea. (Was that a half-smile you let slip when you decided on vanilla roobois with a spot of agave nectar?) 

Putting away groceries and other things you had to go out in the cold for before the blessed relief of warm chez toi, the snow that held off as rain all day finally starts to fall intermittently in small, goopy-wet flakes, nothing too serious. You are a bit melancholy, but not quite sure why, and yet it's not the melancholy that turns downward into depression, just the melancholy that, when it dissipates (which it's sure to do when Murdoch and the kitties finally rub against your legs after admitting they love you too much to leave you alone in the kitchen and you remember there's a Castle marathon on TV tonight), leaves you feeling even more acutely the happiness that was lurking just under the 'choly. You have miles to go before you sleep, but these next few miles will be friggin fantastic and lazy--miles of cozying up in your favorite big sweater cooking ratatouille and Trader Joe's cornbread.

There's even a perfect kK tangent at the end of the song. You think it's over, and then just as you're mentally prepared for the next song on the list to start, there's a little afterthought that pops up and catches you off guard in a "yar, nope, not finished yet, there's plenty more good stuff where that came from ... whatcha think, will I leave you hanging this time, too?" way, and then it's done, nothing left it wants to say. And leaves you to retreat inward to process your own thoughts for a while. Or screw the inner monologue and LET'S GO DANCING.

There's no denying it's a perfect addition to my Christmas Eve playlist. The imagery might change with another hearing; there are no words, so it's perfect for personal, depending-on-my-mood interpretation, which as you know is the ONLY WAY I ROLL.

Now I am going to pour a generous splash of cognac (happiness-in-a-can-baby!) into a glass that was once used to house the deliciousness we call nutella (happiness-in-a-can-baby!) but has been emptied (probably in one go, by me), rinsed out and recycled as part of a glasses set that, without the nutella labels, really does look like a stack of regular ol' water glasses. 

Before

After

Once that incredibly arduous task is done, I am going to sit back, relax, and watch the rest of Supernatural season one. Dubbed. In Chinese. OK, just kidding, in French.

Anyway, now that I'm 30 my life experiences and level of bizarreness have maybe quite possibly developed into something resembling inner wisdom. I don't really know what that means, but as les Blues would say:

It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.
Hit it.

kK

Bien joué: Terrible sequels and horizontal stripes

OK, so there are books one must read even though--nay, BECAUSE--one knows they will be horrible. Current reading list: Dracula The Un-Dead, by Dacre Stoker (direct descendant) and Ian Holt (um, expert).

Putting aside the fact that the book is written by what appears to be two 17-year-old boys and a hopefully appropriately-aggrieved and over-worked editor (I say 'hopefully' b/c to me the book has an air of heavy shit-this-is-the-best-I-can-do-with-what-I've-got-to-work-with editing; otherwise, if this editor actually thinks this acceptable material, well, humph, let's just have a little chat with Elizabeth Kostova, shall we??), it just once again proves that Sequels Are Pretty Much Always Terrible, especially if they deal with Draculas, Rosetta Stones, Knights Templars, and/or Cardenios. (Exception: a sequel by Christopher Moore dealing with ALL OF THOSE SUBJECTS AT ONCE.)

So, anyway, after altering the dates of Bram's story to fit their own arbitrary timeline, scene one opens twenty-five years after the infamous staking. Jonathan Harker is an over-bearing drunk of a father and husband, who thinks Mina is in love with what used to be Dracula and as obnoxiously as possible forces his theater-loving son to go to law school. The Dis-Band of Heros is taking angst to a whole new level, and really, why do people think it's a good idea to try and keep secrets and then be self-righteously surprised when other people discover said secrets, have a huge hissy fit they weren't informed earlier and then storm out into the dark dangerous night? Anyway, the real fun begins when Someone Important is impaled Vlad Tepes-style in the middle of Picadilly Circus, and a hot lesbian vampire reveals her plot to make Inspector Cotford her new pawn in a fun-for-hot-lesbian-vampires game of eat-the-human.

And I mean really, how can you not love lines like these:

"He stood at the crossroads of destiny. His dreams would have to wait."

"His coat, still damp from the earlier rain, did nothing to warm his body. Neither did his swirling, angry thoughts do anything to warm his soul."

"Tears from heaven poured to the earth as if God knew that tonight his reign would finally end."

"The razor-sharp blades sliced his fingers from his hand, the digits spinning through the air as he shoved Bathory's blade aside."

"Feeling cold and unsteady, he looked down. He had been gutted from his chest to his privates, and his innards were spilling out of his body. Marrow felt ill, and a strong urge to vomit. But as he tumbled back, he realized he no longer had the stomach for it."

Oh, did I mention that Bram Stoker has a cameo as a whiny, put-upon playwright stubbornly insisting a drunk John Barrymore play the stage version of Dracula, and, as if that weren't enough, Van Helsing is now suspected of being Jack The Ripper? Throw in a most beatific Luke*-I-Am-Your-Father showstopper followed by a couple of vampire fireballs off a really tall cliff and, wait for it...two mysterious large-enough-to-fit-a-human boxes being loaded onto, oh yes, THE TITANIC...No, it's just too fun. You must read it for yourself. It literally is just as good as you think, if not more so. And by "good" I mean terrible in that awesome must-read way, like Jemaine Clement is Ugly Hot, or Crap TV is Really Fabulous.

And oh yeah, you might have heard of this teensy French (and Squash and The Sultan before they even got to Paris) obsession with black-and-white/navy-and-white/black-and-grey/navy-and-grey stripes. Apparently these stripes cast a magicky spell on anyone who stays in France too long (any amount of time greater or lesser than an hour) and it actually becomes your number one desire to parade yourself around in public with horizontal stripes on your person.

I clung desperately to the edge of reason for about four months.

Now, with your own eyes, you can see how far I've fallen. Next thing you know I'll have stopped shaving my legs and armpits.
Oh wait...

kK
*So I've definitely been in France too long...I just wrote down Luc for Monsieur Skywalker's prénom. I almost left it to see if anyone would notice but wait no, that's just embarrassing.

The cat who spoke French, or happy arbitrary birthday, universe!

So everyone and everything is about to turn another year older, and I'm celebrating with a bottle of champagne and a late dinner with Picasso, Madame and Benjamin. Oh, and of course les petits chats, who will most likely try to add a garnish of cat hair to our sauerkraut as they strut their stuff and try to block our view of the tv.  awww!

It's funny to think that this time last year I was in Paris with Ageless, the trip that inspired me to come live here in the first place!

New Year's in Paris, 2009

And now, 365 days later, here I am again, having eaten some sort of weird meat cuts that I think might have been trying to be hot dogs, along with some sauerkraut, potatoes, baked apples and 3 different kinds of cake for dessert! ahhhh! I think I might burst. Plus I drank most of the bottle of champagne so I'm a little swimmy right now, woohoo!

We watched some amazing tv this evening...it was a French 'spectacle,' which included more magic skits  in one hour than I've seen in all the years I've been alive, and a bunch of acrobatic numbers that were really pretty amazing. The French are SO WEIRD. I can't get enough!! And then, once it hit midnight, we yelled out the window at the top of our lungs, then shut it really quickly so we wouldn't freeze to death, and then faire-d les bises on each other's cheeks and clinked glasses and danced around the room a bit to the snippets of each decade's hit songs that the tv was blaring as a tribute to...well, each decade's best songs.

Me, Madame and Benjamin, New Year's 2010

Madame, Picasso and me (and CHAMPAGNE woohoo!)

All in all it was nicely tame and relaxing...I was warm and sleepy (yar, I nearly fell asleep at the table at like 10.30...I can't even make it until midnight any more!!) and I managed to keep up with all the French conversation 'round the dinner table all night! (I think I even managed to be funny en français, or maybe it was franglais, but woohoo none the less!)

And now we have some gratuitous photos of les petits chats, who really do only understand French! I tried talking to Sushi in English and she totes ignored me, then I said 'viens ici!' and she turned and looked at me! Of course, she didn't actually COME to me (b/c why would a cat actually do what you asked it to), but still, she understood what I was saying! LOL!!

Kikou

Sushi on her bed by my window

OK, it is nearly 4 am somehow, and I didn't even go out dancing tonight!

Happy New Year 2010!

kK

Reason to laugh #624-it takes the French 3 hours to buy soup and toothpaste

**N.B.: I sent this out as a mass email a while back, and decided it would serve just as well as a blog entry. I'm sure you'll agree.**

So first off—I had a very cynical, bitter New York friend who lived in Paris for a year and hated it. He never tried learning French, didn’t like wine b/c it wasn’t as manly as beer, made friends of mostly the ex-pat persuasion…well you can probably see where this is going. Anyway, when I got to Paris he was excited to share with me his “reason # [whatever] to hate the French” list with me. I was having none of it and changed it to “reason # [whatever] to laugh [insert annoying French habit here].” Yes, it took me over an hour of standing in line to buy 6 grocery items (and that was in the fast lane…) with less than 10 people in front of me, but hey, it’s funny! Most of these reasons aren’t actually super amusant, but if you don’t laugh you just go insane, is what I always say.

**kK Tangent 2,000,206** 

I’m pretty sure Dr. Bob Kelso is doing his own French voice over. I could be wrong…it’s almost 2 am and I’ve just spent about 4 hours trying to converse en francais at a surprise dinner party at Squash's house. Yes, I have NO internet connection but I DO have several free channels of awesomely awful French tv. Every so often I get lucky and catch a dubbed version of True Lies or Rambo 800,001, but most of the time I get stuck with reruns of Bones or NCIS (heh heh stuck, dude, those shows are AWESOME) and now, as you can see, I’m stumbled upon a Scrubs marathon. Apparently the French can’t think up good crap shows on their own so they dub over ours and pass them off as their main selections. You should see what the fuck they actually DO produce and pass for on-air-ing…my favorite was the one about a girl in a dance troupe who was having an affair with her dance instructor and…*drumroll* someone was trying to KILL HER. I didn’t actually stick around to see if they did her in or not…I was distracted by the fanfrickintastic French MUSIC videos on the next channel over. OMG YOU MUST check out L’Assassaphonie from Mozart L’Opera Rock. It’s gotta be on YouTube somewhere. Maybe I’ll find the link myself and send it to you, if you’re really good little boys and girls. Anyway, back to my original tangent—Bob’s French voice sounds an awful lot like his English voice. I’m just sayin’.
**possible end of kK Tangent 2,000,206**

So I’ve moved into my teeny-ass apartment…when I say teeny, I mean I have to put the bed back in couch position in order to move around the room. And yes, there’s only one room, although I guess the bathroom could count as a separate room since it has a door (which I can’t close when I’m sitting on the toilet…I know, TMI, but I’m just sayin’…) but we’re just stickin’ with the one-room cabin image here. In the mornings I like to squeeze out onto my petit balcon and sip on my hot instant coffee and sneak in bites of my croissant buerre (if you don’t specify ‘buerre’ you get some crap waxy substance masquerading as croissant) as the fat ass pigeons swoop over to the roof of my building and schloop their heads over to stare at me in a very disturbing “Birds” rendition as they wait for me to share my breakfast. Fuck you, fat ass pigeons.

Anyway, so location: I can walk 10 minutes to the Eiffel Tower, 15 to Musee D’Orsay. I hear more English than I do French around here, but luckily I have the aforementioned tv with lots of French-speaking crazies chatting or dubbing or singing, whatever. And my friend Stephanie has two French roommates, and I get to try practicing with them. I’m paying in rent more than I actually make (bye bye, savings in pitiful dollars…) but I’ve posted for English lessons so hopefully I get a few 15 Euro-an-hour-paying clients soon. Plus we supposedly get reimbursed for part of our monthly metro pass, and I am hoping and praying the French government agrees I made such a pittance in 2007 (200-friggin-7?? Why do they need to know my salary in 2007!) that they’ll help me pay some of my rent. Who the fuck knows, but it doesn’t hurt to ask I guess. So much paper work it makes my eyes cross.

Did I mention it’s on the 5^th floor…sans elevator? Yup, my calves are going to be auditioning for calf-modeling by the end of this school year, you just wait and see.

OK, school: I’ve only had one week of observation and training so far, and haven’t actually taught my own class yet. That starts next week. I’m already shakin’ in my boots. Actually, I think some of it will be really awesome…a couple of classes are really well behaved AND like to try their hand at speaking English, so WHEW. Other classes are like der…no words at all, English or French. Hmmm, that should be interesting…I mean, they didn’t even laugh at my goofy dance! Whatevs. I’ll break ‘em. I don’t really know how all this is going to go…I’ve never seen myself doing the teaching thing (you all know how much I heart me some kiddies…) but since it’s what got me to france I’m gonna give it a chance.

Never mind, Kelso’s voice is done by a frenchie. Damn, I was really impressed for like two seconds.

Heart you all…I’ll write more soon. Tomorrow I’m going to a store to try and order internet installation…If I can get a good price and agree to their service terms, THEN they will start the paperwork for the technician to come FIFTEEN DAYS LATER. MuthaFU---

heart,

KK

OK I decided to do the work for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9XtyuUlV0c

ENJOY!!! I know I do... heh heh