Clareified

In the past two days I have attempted to plug my cellphone chargers into the headphone port on my ipod and put the headphone tip in my ear as an earbud.

#DawnFail

I’m sitting in the BMW service shop waiting room. The flatscreen on the wall is tuned to NY1. I’ve been here an hour and I’ve been through the NY1 news cycle once already. I’m just about a third of the way through it again.

My phone, a 4G Verizon Samsung Droid Charge, is fully charged and actually getting 4G reception. I have my new silver video ipod in my pocket. That is also fully charged and stocked with thousands of songs and hours of television that I haven’t seen.

And yet… I. Am. Bored. Out. Of. My. Ever. Loving. Mind.

I’m anxious for the next eight days to pass. Heck, I’m anxious for the next fourteen days to pass. 2012, yo! We are full and well into the future! This is the date I used to blurt out when trying to evoke the notion of the impossible!

“Pshaw, yeah, maybe in 2012!”

I swear I’m about to have like nine marriages, triplets and adopt two dogs.

What care I for the blatherings of social media or local news on a cold Saturday morning on the cusp of THE FUTURE?!

I need bigger distractions! Tebowbowl! Rangers/Devils! Alien invaders!

Sigh.

Taps foot.

Are we there yet?

My mom was robbed at gunpoint yesterday fucking AFTERNOON!

She went to the bank to get change for the Sunday collection, her medical co-pays and her Access A Ride van fare. She withdrew $300 and got $200 in smaller bills from the teller. This money was put in a bank envelope and she put that in her pocket. She and her friend then went to the pharmacy to fill scripts for her back pain and to buy groceries.

Then, she and her friend walked home.

There were two people talking on the stoop and her friend stopped to talk to them. My mother put her key in the lock and opened the front door, she held the door open for her friend and the woman in the stoop talking couple, put her foot in the door crack and continued her conversation.

My mom and her friend went up the stairs, got the mail from the mailbox, got in the elevator and pressed their floor.

“Hold the door,” a voice cried out and my mom pushed the door open a bit to stop the elevator.

A well dressed black man in his forties stepped in. He didn’t press any buttons and followed my mom and her friend off.

“Where is 3C?” He asked them.

My mom’s friend pointed to the end of the hallway, he said thanks and they walked in the other direction of the hallway.

My mom’s friend went to her own apartment and my mom went to ours. She put the key in the top lock and opened it when she felt hands around her throat and someone started choking her. She pushed him back against the wall, her didn’t let go of her neck, but his cellphone fell and he yelled “Fuck,” when it hit the floor. He then punched her and threw her down to the floor. My mom’s friend started screaming and he pulled out a gun. At this point, my mom said she saw someone looking down at them from the floor above, so she started yelling “he has a gun, call the police.”

The gunman then went directly for the pocket with the envelope she had gotten from the teller, took it and ran.

At this point, her friend ran into her apartment and called 911. Three cars came within five minutes. They said NO ONE ELSE CALLED. So basically, some asshole sees two women being attacked with a gun in their building and not only doesn’t help, which, fine, ok, I get that, BUT NOT EVEN CALL THE POLICE?? MAAAANNNN, LIIISSSTTEEEEEEN!

The cops said the guy must have followed them from the bank. My mom says she thinks she saw the guy in the photo lineup the police showed her, but the man in the picture had a beard and her robber didn’t. The cops wanted to take her coat to see if there was any DNA on it from her struggle with the man. But she said it was too cold to leave without her coat and they let her keep it. A paramedic at the station checked her out, but she has scheduled an MRI and whatnot just in case.

The cops offered to give her money for the collection plate on Sunday, but she declined.

I had won tickets to attend the premiere of 24/7 Rangers/Flyers at HBO headquarters last night and I told my mom I would take her. I think she was glad for the distraction and she always likes “fancy parties” with “little food.” Seriously, she is obsessed with hors d’oeuvres! I think she kinda likes hockey now, although I will never be able to explain anything that’s happening beyond “um, that guy scored,” AND the main bad guys in the movie (The Flyers) have a black guy and the good guys (The Rangers) don’t: WORST. SCENARIO. EVAH!

We were talking about the incident on the way home and she said that she was angry that the guy had “tricked” her with his suit.
“If he was wearing baggy pants down his ass and looked like a kid, I would never have even gone to my door!” She was very angry.
I was mostly angry that this fucker has a cellphone and is stalking old ladies in banks. I’ve slacked off from the gym since I came back from DC, but I return tomorrow with a purpose and a focus! I will be the masked Avenranger. I will fight bad guys with a hockey stick and when I leave them tied up for the police I will duct tape a hockey puck into their mouths.

Alas, until then I’m just going to randomly hate crime well dressed black guys. Starting with that Simmonds dude.

Wait…what?

So, every morning I make a pot of coffee in the office. After two months of tinkering I finally figured out the perfect process for an amazing cup of coffee. Seriously, my coffee is so amazing the people lurk around the kitchen when they see me come out so they can get my pot! (Actually, one time this dude tried to cut in front OF ME to fill his mug. I side eyed his dumb ass into submission.)

Anyway, part of my “process” is I clean EVERYTHING — INCLUDING THE INTERNAL MACHINE PIPES — And how do I clean the internal pipage? Well, I make a pot of coffee *before* my pot. I used to end up making two pots of the House Blend, but then I realized I was just wasting House Blend, since I wasn’t drinking one pot. Then, I got a GENIUS idea… make a pot of decaf! So, that’s what I started doing. Then one day this woman comes in and sees a pot of decaf already prepared, while I was measuring out the coffee for my regular pot.

“Oh My Gosh, did you make the decaf for me?”

Um.

“Yes?”

“That is SO NICE! YOU ARE SO NICE! You don’t even drink decaf!”

No. Cause it’s retarded.

Smiles

For the next two weeks whenever I’d see her she’d be like “thanks so much!”

Then yesterday, the office manager came up to me to say that she heard I was making the coffee for the floor and she wanted to thank me for helping out.

O_o

Yes. I am AWESOME!

My primary care physician referred me to a specialist at the hospital where my mom used to work.

I called and they gave me a new patient appointment six weeks into the future, so naturally, I wrote it down and promptly forgot all about it. 5 weeks and 6 days hence, I’m all… oh yeah, I gotta go to that doctor tomorrow. Huh… I should probably ask my mom about the doctor. So, at midnight, after I got back from a wild and crazy Monday night out (@_@) I call my mom and ask:

“So, do you know Dr. Katherine Mercedes?”

And she’s all “No, I don’t think so. Who is that?”

“Doctor at your old hospital.”

“OH. KATHY MERCEDES? SHE’S THE WORST! DON’T GO ANYWHERE NEAR HER. SHE’S AN IDIOT AND A BITCH. SHE’S TERRIBLE…. Why are you asking?”

UM. O_o

So, yeah, evidently she’s hates this woman and this woman hates her and I have to go to this appointment in 6 hours. My mother very helpfully said “I wouldn’t go. But if you go, I wouldn’t let her know we’re related.”

Now, it’s way too late to cancel without paying money and I have to go, BUT I LOOK EXACTLY LIKE MY MOTHER! Plus, she’s my emergency contact!

Yeah, I cry.

And the moral of this story is ______________?

So, my hairdresser used to be my cousin’s wife, Jenifer. Turns out, my cousin was some kind of drug lord and after his mother was murdered by a rival drug lord, their family went on the run. Obviously, no one was thinking about *MY* needs when these decisions were made because I was very suddenly without a hairdresser… more specifically, without a *free* hairdresser. Since then, there have been many a face burning incident and ill-advised self haircuts. Then, I threw in the towel, put in braids and called it day. Okay, seriously, this whole paragraph should just be hashtagged #blackpeopleproblems

Anyhoo, I took out the braids and was all wandering around for a new hairdresser when my mother decided I should go back to the woman who did my hair when I was in high school. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on a valid reason, but I did not want to do this. However, I was leaving for Vegas and I just didn’t have any other choice. I asked her if she would be open after I came home from work and she said she would keep the shop open just for me because she was happy to have me back. Umm…so far, so good, I guess.

Now, with Jenifer, because of the language barrier and because she was trying to impress my cousin by being nice to his family, I would just show up, she would show me pictures of the kids, I would say “oh, they’re cute,” (or my botched Spanglish version of that sentence), she would do my hair and I would offer to pay, she would shake her head and that would be that. I didn’t even know what she was doing to my hair exactly, I just knew whether I liked it or didn’t (though, if I didn’t I just had to suck it up.) So, when I went to Lynn’s shop on Wednesday evening, I took a picture of me with one of the Jenifer styles I liked and said that’s what I wanted. Lynn was all “how do you want me to do it…A or B… blah blah blah.” I stared, thought it over and held up the picture again.

“Whatever gets it to look like this.”

She asks some more questions, I make it quite clear that I have no answers and then she just starts doing my hair. However, 1. nothing she’s doing is familiar. 2. She is talking NONSTOP.

“Oh, do you remember my daughter, Sharice? The one that’s as smart as you?”

No.

“Mmmhmm. How is she?”

“Oh, great, great. She’s going to an Ivy League college in DC now.”

O_o?

“At first, I thought she was going to go to Duke, it was Duke this and Duke that, cause she got into Duke. She also got into Brown, but she didn’t like that, so she was going to go to Duke, but then she visited Georgetown and that was it! I still have my Duke mom sweatshirt too. But she says “Mommy, don’t you wear that down here!” Oh, then she got a roommate from Trinidad and she thought they would get along, but then the girl really hated American blacks, so they didn’t get along. And my daughter told her, if she hates America so much, she should go to college in Trinidad, that didn’t sit so well with the girl, yeah? Hard to believe that you would get that attitude in Ivy league schools. Smart children shouldn’t be like that blah blah blah blah.”

At this point, mostly I’m furiously texting my mother to get down here because I can’t take it anymore and I really didn’t know how long I would be able to resist bursting out laughing if she called Georgetown an Ivy League school even one more time. (Though, I should have known that my mother was not the answer to that particular problem because my mother is even more of a college snob than I am. TO THIS DAY, she tells people I went to “Harvard,” because it’s the “same as Yale.” O_o Sure enough, the first time the Georgetown/Ivy thing comes up, my mother goes “No, it’s not. There are only five Ivy League schools.” Then, the hairdresser looks at me and asks if that’s right and as she was all up in my hair, with hot objects and whatnot, all I would say is “I think there are eight” and shot my mother a look.)

Anyway, this goes on FOR FIVE AND A HALF HOURS!!! Now, I was flying out in the morning and it was already 1 AM. JENIFER NEVER TOOK THIS LONG AND HERE’S THE KICKER: I was expecting to pay like $30 or something and this woman says “$110″ she then adds “usually I charge ‘$160,’ but since I know you…” THE HELL??? Luckily, I had my Vegas cash on me, BUT STILL!!

Okay, so now I get home at like 2 AM. I have some decisions to make…do I just stay up all night and sleep on the plane or do I go to bed immediately? I split the baby. I packed and then went to sleep at 3. I woke up at 5 to go to the gym and then, because two hours of sleep is just enough sleep to keep you keenly aware that you have not slept, I started to worry that I would fall asleep at the gate and miss my flight cause I wouldn’t hear the boarding call.

Every one of you just laughed and rolled your eyes at that… except Ugarles.

So, I’m chugging coffee, grab my Mets duffel bag and head out the door. Halfway to the busstop (yeah, poor people take busses to the airport…) I realize, I left my suitcase at home. Balls. Leaving for the airport: take two.

I just miss a bus, but luckily another one is right behind. Unluckily, it’s a local. It takes an hour to get me to the second bus which actually goes to the airport. This bus is also a local. And then I miss an Airtran. I’m down to 40 minutes till takeoff before I get on the airtran. I suffer as it stops at Federal Circle, 38 minutes.

Then Terminal 1, 35 minutes.

Then terminals 2 & 3, 34 minutes.

Finally, at Terminal four, I dash off the monorail and run.

I put my creditcard in the check-in machine: DENIED.

I run to the counter and the woman says the flight is already closed. Sorry.

NOooooooooo. NO SORRY! NO SORRY!

“Please, it doesn’t leave for half an hour…”

“Do you have any checked bags?”

“NO! None!”

“Ok, I’ll call the gate and see…”

“Thanks.”

“Okay, I can’t guarantee anything, but you can head over there.”

“Where is security?”

“Downstairs and on the other side of the terminal, I honestly don’t think you’ll make it, ma’am.”

I spare a tenth of a second to glare. And then I RUN!

Seriously, I was in a ZONE. I was hurling my carryon on down hallways, hurdling over baby carriages, flying through the air, basically, until I got to the security port. I skipped to the front of the line and showed the guard my boarding pass “Oh, that’s boarding now.”

Yes…I…know…

He ushers me through and I hit the wall of a line of shoeless passengers waiting to go through the metal detectors.

Oy.

I walk up to the lady at the front of the first row of people, explain my plight and ask if I can take her place as first in line.

She agrees. I hear the PA make the announcement for Final boarding call for my flight. I peer over the metal detectors, my gate is the very first one off of the security line. ALRIGHT! I’m going to…

An alarm starts blaring.

I hear the TSA handlers calling for a supervisor. There is some malfunction on the first lane, so all the x-ray scanners have been shutdown.

KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!

The supervisor comes out, he blah blah blahs with the agents, I hear another announcement saying this was the FINAL final boarding call for my flight.

The supervisor shuts down the lane I am at the front of. FUCK!

My lane now has to consolidate into the next lane, I ask the TSA agent if I can get to the front.

“Front of what? All the lanes are stopped.”

O_O

“Well, when it starts again? My flight is final boarding.”

“It’s not up to me ma’am, there’s a long line here. That’s why we tell you get to the airport 90 minutes before your flight.”

&%$^#%^@#^@

As they restart the x-ray machines, I ask the dude at the front of the line if I can go through before him, he agrees.

Finally, I step through the metal detector and the alarms go off… the fucking scores of bobby pins in my hair trigger the alarm!!!

“Female patdown,” the agent calls out. Nothing.

“Female patdown!” she calls again.

WHAT IN THE HOLY NAME OF TIM TEBOW?!

Meanwhile, I can SEE the gate, I can TASTE the gate. I watch as the sign switches from 8: 45 AM Las Vegas to 10:15 AM San Francisco.

That. Cannot. Be. Good.

I just start to cry.

“Aww, what’s the matter, hon?”

“I think my flight just left.”

“You have any belts, or anything sharp?”

“No.”

“It’s just the pins.”

“okay, go. go.”

I trudge barefootedly over to the desk and the lady is all, “hurry up, you have like two minutes.”

Wheeee!!

I confess, I can barely look my blog in the URL anymore. So many months without any proper posting, the shame of it. I derided bloggers like me, now I am a blogger like me. Wait… what?

I have tons of stuff to write about — did you know that I went to the final Taylor Swift concert on the “Speak Now” tour? It was awesome! And I need to finish a writeup of returning shows(The entire NBC Thursday “comedy” block needs to be canceled. Ditto “The Mentalist.”) But, I’m packing and getting ready for what I think will be my last WPBT in Las Vegas and when I return from that, I’ll be off again to the Dirty Souf. I hope to get some writing done on the plane and maybe at Beni Hana, since I’ll be dining alone and will need something to occupy my hands in between wiping away my loser tears.

So, short post, slightly longer, things should be back to normal, just not right now.

GO RANGERS AND RIOTS!

I was up late Sunday night watching football. The game turned out to be the most awesome thing ever, and I was all jacked up on adrenaline and couldn’t sleep. So… I stayed up and I watched the game again.

Needless to say, by the time I got home on Monday night, I was dead tired and face planted into bed. When I checked my phone this morning at 4 AM, there were like five text messages from my mother saying “Urgent. Call me immediately.” There were three missed calls. I decided to call her. She was totally sleeping.
“Hello?”
“It’s Dawn. You said it was an emergency…”
Still groggy she’s all “What?”
“It’s Dawn… you texted me ten times yesterday…”
“And you’re just now calling me?”
“I was sleeping…what’s the emergency?”
“I wanted you to show me how to log on to facebook so I could vote for Dancing with the Stars.”
O_o

I missed my bus this morning.

My ipod died.

Chupacabra threatened to fire me again.

It’s cold.

AAANNNNDDD I’m hungry again.