My Sink Runs Dry

The gasoline thief is so last week. Wanna know what's bugging me this week?

My bathroom sink.

My brother went to take a shower the other night, and when he turned the faucets to start the water, a strange thing happened. The entire house shuddered and groaned. A deafeningly loud clunk-clunk-grrrr-bang-thunk-rrrrRRRR noise erupted from the plumbing system. It sounded like there was a garbage disposal in our bathtub that was literally grinding up Tay.

"What the hell was that?!" my mother said.

I ran to the bathroom and pounded on the door. "Tay? What happened?"

He had no idea what was wrong -- he simply tried to turn on the water but got that awful noise instead. The second attempt went better and Tay was able to shower without incident.

We decided that the whole thing had been a fluke. Our house is approaching 50 years old, so we figured that the plumbing was probably just letting some air out. Kind of like a fart.

But the next day the sink stopped working properly. It was as though the sink got jealous of the attention bestowed upon the bathtub and decided to steal the limelight. Or maybe the plumbing in our house is just going to crap -- that could be a possibility, too.

Now when I turn the faucets on, instead of getting a stream of running water, I get a pathetic trickle -- if even that. This has been a crisis of sorts because I'm a medium- to high-maintenance kind of girl. The sad little drippings that come out of my sink barely provide the water I need to brush my teeth, let alone do snazzy optional bonus grooming like apply eyeliner.

Today is my father's day off, and he has promised to take a look at the ailing sink (translation: take sink apart and then determine that nothing is wrong).

Pop quiz: On this long holiday weekend, will Kay get all dolled up to go out on the town?

(Hint: The answer rhymes with the word "blow," as in "my sink can blow me.")

Happy Labor Day weekend, everyone! Have fun and be safe. See ya'll next week!

Red Is the New Green

I just bought myself a dress for my cousin's wedding.

But Kay, you're probably thinking, didn't you already buy yourself a dress for your cousin's wedding?

Yes. Yes, I did.

But that dress, even though it was lovely, was missing something. It was lacking a certain je ne sais quoi, if you will.

I found the missing element -- it was red. My green dress was definitely not red enough. Behold dress #2:

So now I have two dresses. I'm keeping both, but I can't decide which one to wear to the wedding. This has suddenly become a decision of monumental significance since I can't plan my shoes, handbag, jewelry or accessories until I determine what color dress I'm wearing.

Why is being a girl so difficult?

A Dirty Rotten -- and Gassy -- Thief

You know what’s not cool? When the check engine light comes on in your new car.

On Friday, I was driving home from work with the windows down, thinking about all of the wonderful things I planned to do over the weekend. A butterfly flew past my windshield and I smiled. Then I looked down at the dash and -- BAM! -- the check engine light came on.

I was upset. Hysterical, actually, would be a more accurate description. I just bought the car three weeks ago. True, it was a slightly used vehicle, but I have paperwork that states that the car has never been to the dealer for problems or repairs. That’s why I bought it -- it was in great condition.

When I got home, I must have had a look on my face. “What’s wrong?” my mother asked.

“New car. Check engine light?! GAH!” I sputtered.

“Maybe your gas cap is loose,” my mother said.

“Gas cap? Huh? No.” (As you can tell, I’m very articulate when I’m distraught.)

I knew for a fact that there was no way my gas cap could be loose. The last time I had pumped gas was a week-and-a-half ago. I was running errands with my father, and he was sitting in the passenger seat with the window down while I was working the pump. After the tank was full, I screwed in the cap. It clicked several times, and my father stuck his head out the window and yelled “Kay, it’s tight. Don’t screw it anymore.” I think I yelled something back about how I was still getting used to the car.

Despite the story (which my father verified), my mother sent me outside to check the gas cap. It wasn’t as tight as I had remembered, but it wasn’t exactly falling off, either. I screwed it tighter and then drove the car around the block. The check engine light was still on.

I got out the owners manual and flipped to the section on the check engine light. It was useless. So was the section called “Troubleshooting.”

Then my mother reminded me that the same thing happened to her car several weeks ago. The check engine light came on for no apparent reason. She noticed a slight decline on her fuel gauge, so she checked her gas cap. It was suspiciously loose. She was convinced that someone had tried to siphon gas out of her tank.

But at the time, my father’s car was in the shop for some repairs, so that took up all of our vehicular anxiety. We couldn’t afford to spend precious brainpower worrying about my mother’s car when we were already concerned about how to get all four of us to work with only three sets of wheels. After several days, my mother’s check engine light went off all by itself.

“I bet someone tried to siphon gas out of your tank, too!” my mother said.

“That’s for the dealership to determine,” I announced.

The next morning, I drove my car to the dealer. They hooked my baby up to some kind of diagnostic computer. An hour-and-a-half later, the computer determined the problem: I had been driving around at some point with a loose gas cap.

I’m relieved that my car didn’t need any repairs. But I’m hopping mad that someone would walk up my driveway and mess with my family’s property. Not just once, but twice.

My mother and I are going out to buy locking gas caps this weekend. It’s a sad state of affairs when you can’t even trust people to leave the gasoline in your car alone.

The Write Stuff

I'm tired. And I think I have a head cold. Also, hi! Sorry for my absence. It's been a very long week.

I don't have much to say. It seems that I have writer's block -- again. But unlike some people who just don't have anything to write about, I have tons of thoughts knocking around in my brain. I just don't know how to express them right now.

So I'll leave you with two quotes that describe exactly how I feel. The first is by Tom Shroder, the editor of the Washington Post Magazine. In his column ("Editor's Note") on Sunday, he tried to describe the relationship he has with writing:

"I'm sure there are writers who don't find writing to be a bone-crushing, nausea-inducing festival of self-loathing. I just don't happen to be one of them. Faced with a blank screen and a deadline for even the shortest, simplest piece, I am seized with the overwhelming desire to clean out my garage. Or do anything other than writing (up to and including root canal).

The problem seems to be standards. I have some. And I'm terrified I can't live up to them. I've found that to make myself write anything at all, I have to begin by lowering my sights, and simply try to write something bad. Don't even write, I tell myself, just type.

But, in the end, nothing works except a deadline. As my deadline approaches, the pain caused by the fear of missing it steadily increases until it exceeds the pain of writing."

This also explains why I don't update my blog every day. Sometimes I psyche myself out with my impossibly high standards, and sometimes I write things that are not worth sharing with all of you. Other times I do so much writing at work that I don't feel like coming home and writing even more for this blog.

My other favorite quote about writing comes from an author whose work I don't like very much. Toni Morrison, who has won both the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes, once had a reader say to her that he found her novels difficult to read.

"Honey," she answered, "they aren't easy to write, either."

Amen to that.

Maybe I'm Craaaaazy (With Apologies to Gnarls Barkley)

I might be a little bit crazy. Here's why:

On Saturday, I got out the vacuum cleaner and vacuumed my car for the second time in three weeks. This whole getting-a-new-car thing has clearly had a negative effect on my common sense.

You'll be happy to hear that I backed the car down the driveway before vacuuming this time so that I could avoid the non-poisonous ivy that I'm allergic to. I thought I was being clever, but somehow I managed to get 11 bug bites on my shins. Awesome.

Then I took a hair dryer and a can of WD-40 and removed the ugly white vinyl dealership sticker that the dealer slapped on my trunk. This was quite possibly the highlight of my entire weekend. I hate hate hate HATE advertisements. My hatred of advertising is so great that I avoid buying clothes/shoes/accessories/personal objects with prominent logos. I spend money to look good, not to advertise specific brands. If a company wants me to be a walking or -- in the case of my car -- a rolling advertisement, then they have to compensate me accordingly.

I had a conniption when I discovered the sticker on the back of my car. I've been obsessing about removing it for a couple of weeks now, and this weekend's lovely weather gave me the perfect opportunity to do it. The decal came off flawlessly, and all is right with the world again.

After that I got a little carried away and decided to wash and wax my car. The washing part was no big deal, but the waxing was a nightmare. We were out of wax, so I had to go to the local auto body shop to get more. I ended up splurging on the super expensive, heavy duty, professional-grade wax because nothing is too good for my baby (and also buying a car has robbed me of my common sense, remember?). Rubbing that crap on my car and wiping it all off took hours and resulted in a very sore right arm. But at least my car looks good.

...Or it did look good until several hours ago when it started to rain. What's up with that, God? Did you send the rain because you knew I just washed and waxed my car? I don't think I like your sense of humor very much.

Then on Saturday night I went up to Baltimore with my girls. I must love my friends very deeply because it takes a lot to convince me to go to Baltimore. As movie director John Waters (of Hairspray fame) once said, "You can look far and wide, but you'll never discover a stranger city with such extreme style. It's as if every eccentric in the South decided to move North, ran out of gas in Baltimore, and decided to stay."

Naturally we got lost downtown because of all the one-way streets and wacky traffic patterns. We finally found our destination and proceeded to celebrate our un-lostness by drinking several bottles of White Zinfandel. Needless to say, we had to spend the night there. (Mad props to V. for letting us crash at her place!)

The next day we brunched in the Baltimore area and headed home. My friends had the luxury of napping off their hangovers, but I had to go to the dance studio for three hours of ass-kicking lindy hop practice. This is further proof that my common sense has totally vanished.

So that was my weekend. How was yours?

Six -- No, Err, Three Degrees of Separation

So there's this boy I used to date. He's originally from Arkansas, but he moved here to go to grad school at the big state university in my area. Today I took the liberty of checking out his Facebook profile. (I know, I know, it's never a good idea to use the Internet to spy on your exes. But I'm a glutton for punishment.)

Through him, I found the profile of a girl he went to high school with. Coincidentally, she also moved here from Arkansas to go to grad school. (They're studying different subjects, though.)

Turns out she's the housemate of a guy who asks me to dance every so often at local swing events.

WEIRD. Next time this guy asks me to dance, maybe I should ask him if he has connections to Kevin Bacon.

To Amy

I love how Facebook reminds me of my friend's birthdays. I'll sign in, and the homepage will conveniently tell me everyone who has a birthday over the course of the next few days. According to Facebook, yesterday was my second cousin's birthday.

Also according to Facebook, tomorrow is Amy's birthday. It's a milestone birthday of sorts -- 25 years old.

I met Amy through my sorority. I was instantly struck by how deeply she cared about the organization. Once, on her blog, I remember reading a meme that she had filled out. One of the questions was something along the lines of "what's your biggest regret?" Her answer was "that I didn't meet my sorority sisters sooner." Coming from anybody else, that would sound like a cliché, but Amy really meant it. To her, every one of us was special. She loved us all unconditionally.

On a weekend retreat once, Amy and two other sisters sat down and drew caricatures of all the new initiates. Most catty sorority girls would have drawn mean cartoons that exaggerated the worst features of their victims, but Amy and her group drew playfully entertaining pictures that made us all laugh for half an hour. I don't remember all of the cartoons, but I was drawn with a large belt that I had bought earlier that day. The picture was so funny because I couldn't stop talking about how much I loved the friggin' belt.

She made an effort to always be around. She was at every single gosh darned meeting and fraternity mixer. She helped put on the male beauty pageant that we did for charity. And she loved every minute of it, too.

Amy died suddenly on January 9, 2005, of a heart attack. She was 22.

Happy birthday, Amy. We miss your smile, but your spirit will be with us always.

Golden Queen

I have two cats. I mention this fact because it often comes as a surprise to many people. I only ever talk about one of my cats, so most people just assume that I only have one. And I did only have one -- until three years ago.

We were a one-cat family for many, many years. Eleven years, to be exact. When I was 9, we adopted a kitten from a neighbor cat's litter, and we've had him ever since. He's 14 now, which is ancient by animal standards. In human years, he's 72. I love Oreo, but he's a bit dull.

Our other cat is anything but boring. She's been entertaining us ever since we found her.

Several summers ago, my younger brother Tay (yes, our names rhyme. No, we're not twins.) worked the night shift in the back room of a big retail store. He didn't have a car, which meant that every night someone in our family had to stay awake and go pick him up when his shift was over. This task usually fell to my mother.

One night she went to get him as usual. When the two of them returned home, my mother called me. "Kay! Come see what we found!"

I came down the stairs (dressed for bed in my pajamas) and saw my brother clutching a very small animal to his chest. Or rather, the animal was clinging to his shirt for dear life with its claws.

"You brought home a squirrel? What are you, crazy?" I asked. "They're wild animals -- don' t they carry rabies?"

"No, it's a cat," Tay said.

I was not convinced. "Seriously, what's with the squirrel?"

"Kay, it's a cat," my mother insisted impatiently.

I got closer to Tay and examined the tiny creature. It was indeed a cat. A kitten, actually. And an incredibly young one at that. I mistook it for a squirrel because it was so mind-bogglingly small. It was also a dingy gray color and its tail was all fluffed up -- a sign of fear.

"So what are we going to do with it?" I asked.

"I don't know," my mother shrugged. "But we couldn't leave it there in the parking garage -- look how young and defenseless it is!"

It took a great deal of effort to pry the thing off Tay. The poor little animal was probably in shock -- it was silent and trembling. And we noticed that its fur felt slightly slick and yet vaguely gritty. We put it on a dish towel in the middle of the kitchen counter, and Tay held it down while my mother tried to dab at it with a damp cloth. A miraculous thing happened -- we discovered that the kitten wasn't gray at all. It was actually orange.

All three of us stared at the baby animal. It shook the excess water from its coat and it blinked back at us. "Hi there," I whispered, reaching out my hand slowly, palm up, towards the kitten. Without hesitation, it put its paw in my hand. My mother and Tay laughed.

The next day we called the local SPCA, but they told us they didn't have enough space to take the kitten. They said that if we were willing to keep it for a few days, a spot might open up if one of their existing cats was adopted. They left us with no choice but to agree. The kitten was ours -- temporarily.

We waited for the SPCA to call us, but after a week we had heard nothing. I silently prayed that they'd never call -- the kitten was so wee and adorable that I didn't want to give it up. I was thoroughly charmed by the way it sat in one of my mother's empty sneakers and played with the laces. No one else in the family wanted to admit it, but they were charmed, too.

After two weeks, my mother called the SPCA. "Don't bother calling us if a spot opens up," she told them. "We're keeping the kitten."

We took it to the vet, who determined that it was six weeks old at most. She also told us something that we had been curious about for a while -- the kitten was female. Even the vet, who probably sees 20 kittens a day, seemed smitten by the creature. "Aren't you a sweetheart," she said to it. "I can tell that you're going to be spoiled rotten."

It took us a long time to name the kitten because we couldn't agree on what to call her. I had recently returned from a semester abroad in Ireland, so one day I decided to look through Irish female names.

"How about 'Orla'?" I suggested. "It means 'golden lady' or 'golden queen' in Gaelic." Everyone nodded in agreement -- that was it. The name fit our orange kitten perfectly.

Three years later, Orla is still queen of the house. Even my father and brother are enamored of her, and they'd kill me if they knew I told you this, but they talk to her in a high-pitched voice, as though they were talking to a baby.

My mother and I are even worse with the baby talk. But with a face like that, who can really blame us?

She's such a pretty girl. Yes, she's so pretty, isn't she?

Uhhh...

There is something wrong. When I open my mouth to talk, I can’t stop myself. All of these meaningless words just come tumbling out, and after a while even I start to bore myself.

And when I go to sleep at night, I can’t turn my brain off. Thoughts go zinging around in my head faster than a ball in the game of Pong. (Anybody remember that game? I miss Atari.)

But when I sit down to write, all words and thoughts vanish and my brain goes blank. I had this post typed up about how much I hate eBay, but every time I go back and re-read it, it sounds more stupid than it did the last time. It starts out great and then it kind of falls apart. It’s not polished and I’m not happy with it.

This is what happens when you write for a living. You use words all day every day and then when you sit down to write for yourself, you have no words left.

So this is me just checking in and saying hello. Nice to see you! Thanks for stopping by. I hope you have a great weekend... and maybe some tips for me on how to overcome writer’s block. I could really use them.

Just a Girl

When I was 13 years old, I would turn up No Doubt's Tragic Kingdom on the boombox in my bedroom and lip sync all of the words into a hairbrush. My favorite song was "Spiderwebs," but I liked them all.

At that age I was too young to appreciate the song "Just a Girl," in which Gwen Stefani rails against society's perception of women as helpless. The song confused me. Gwen was the lead singer of the world's coolest rock band (or at least I thought so at the time), and I didn't understand her whining. She was famous, so why couldn't she do anything she wanted? What was all of this complaining about living in captivity and not being able to drive late at night? It was the '90s, for heavens sake, and women could do anything they pleased!

Now, 10 years later, I finally understand. It's not about feminism. Despite all of the steps taken towards gender equality in recent years, feminism hasn't made the world a safer place for women to live.

Several years ago, I had a friend who took Metro to Georgetown every day in order to attend classes. She would drive to the nearest Metro station, park in the garage, and hop on a train. One day after she had parked, she was leaving the garage and approaching the station when an attacker assaulted her from behind. There was a scuffle, and he got away with her purse.

Fortunately, she wasn't (physically) hurt that badly. But every day after that, her mother would drive her all the way to Georgetown and wait in the car while she was in class. This was particularly disturbing because a.) the Metro station where this happened is only a mile from my house and I go there all the time, and b.) it happened during the middle of the day.

I decided to blatantly disregard the whole incident when I started dating a boy who lived right off the Green Line. I took Metro at all hours to meet up with him in various places around town.

I rationalized my actions by telling myself that the mugging was an isolated event that could have happened to anybody. I also made an effort to park in a lot on the opposite side of the station from where the attack had occurred. Also, I was very smitten and very stupid.

My parents weren't happy about my frequent solo nighttime Metro trips, and neither were some of my friends. All of them expressed concern about my safety, but I brushed it off, reminding them that I was a smart and observant person who owned a cell phone, so there was no reason to worry.

One night, I met up with the boy to go see a concert. After it was over, we walked back to Metro together as usual and got on separate trains -- his headed in one direction, and mine headed the opposite direction.

At some point during the ride home, a drunk man took a seat across the aisle from me and began talking at me. I say "talking at" and not "talking with" because I was trying hard not to engage in conversation. At first he ranted about teaching, children, and war. Specifically, he wanted me to know that we should be teaching our children that war is wrong. But then he began to direct personal questions at me (like "Why are you here all by yourself?" and "Do you have a husband or a boyfriend?") while I sat in stubborn silence, staring out the window.

I became thoroughly freaked out when I realized that we were alone together in our train car. When the train finally stopped at my station, I jumped up in relief to leave only to discover that he intended to follow me.

I practically ran from the station to my car and he followed me most of the way, yelling after me, still trying to make conversation. Fortunately for me, he stopped at the taxi stand and got in a cab.

I was lucky. I don't know what I would have done if he had tried to grab me or follow me all the way to my car. That incident cured me of my invincible attitude towards riding Metro alone at night.

Ever since then, I haven't exactly been living in fear -- instead I'm just angry. I'm mad that I have to go out with a friend or stay at home. I feel stifled and restricted because now my plans revolve around whether or not I can find myself a Metro buddy on any given night. It's infuriating to know that I can't go out on my own without risking my safety.

Recently, my family has been giving me a hard time about swing dancing. All of the dances are held at night. I drive to them instead of taking Metro, but this isn't good enough for my mother or my grandmother. They worry about me walking to and from my car by myself. My grandmother gave me a whistle on a string and made me promise to keep it in my purse, and my mother makes me call her to let her know that I made it into the building without getting abducted in the parking lot. Both of them have been pressuring me lately to take friends to the dances.

My mother doesn't even like it when I go jogging. I'm not supposed to jog unless I have my cell phone on me and there is someone at home in case I'm in trouble and need to call.

I'm helpless, and suddenly that No Doubt song from a decade ago makes a lot of sense.

The moment that I step outside

So many reasons for me to run and hide

I can't do the little things I hold so dear

'Cause it's all those little things that I fear...

Ohhh, I've had it up to here

Non-Poisonous Ivy

We have searched high and low, and there is no poison ivy amongst our regular ivy. This means one of two things:

1.) I caught poison ivy from somewhere other than the ivy patch near our carport.

2.) I have a mystery rash on my ankle of unknown origins.

Because I'm stubborn and I refuse to believe that I have poison ivy (and also because I rarely venture outdoors), I decided to go with option #2. And then I did what every person my age does when trying to get to the bottom of a mystery: I turned to Wikipedia.

Lo and behold, in the article for "Ivy," I found this:

"Although far less toxic than poison ivy, which is unrelated to this genus, ivy contains triterpenoid saponins and falcarinol a polyyne. Falcarinol is capable to induce a allergic reaction (contact dermatitis)."

If you can get past the poor grammar and syntax there, you'll note that it's possible I could have simply had an allergic reaction to regular ivy. So basically, I didn't get a case of poison ivy -- instead I got plain old ivy.

That sounds weird, doesn't it? Who gets a case of ivy? Me, apparently.

So does this mean I can still go around telling people that I've never had poison ivy before?

Mildly Disturbing, Parts I and II

Part I:

I’ve had a long week. I’ve been busy with the car purchasing and the dress purchasing and the whole working-for-a-living thing and a very sick cat who spread his stomach bug to pretty much everyone in our household (but that’s a story for another day). As a result, I’m severely lacking in the sleep department.

I also wear two retainers to bed every night -- one on my upper jaw and the other on my lower jaw. I hate them, but I have to wear them because I had braces three times, and I’m not about to ruin the beautiful alignment that took years of suffering to achieve.

These two facts might seem totally unrelated, but I promise they’re not. You’ll see where this is going in a second.

My usual morning routine goes something like this: wake up, remove retainers, eat breakfast, get ready for work, go to work.

On Tuesday, however, I did this: wake up, remove retainers, eat breakfast, get ready for work, unconsciously shove retainers back into my mouth in a sleep-deprived stupor, go to work.

I didn’t realize what I had done until I arrived at the office and said good morning to our receptionist. The words didn’t roll off my tongue as easily as they usually do, and I was puzzled. But then I shifted my tongue and felt the plastic-y smoothness of the retainers dominating my mouth.

By the time I had walked down the hall to my office door, I was panicking internally. Oh my god, my retainers! What are they doing in my mouth?! What if somebody, heaven forbid, actually SEES them?!?!?!

In retrospect, I don’t know why I was so upset. I work in an office of professionals who are mostly bona fide adults -- not youngish girl, half-woman people like me. My coworkers are mature and rational, and I know that none of them would tease me for wearing orthodontic appliances. Heck, half of them probably have kids who wear similar things.

But for some reason, at the time I thought it was the end of the world because OMG RETAINERS ARE GEEKY AND WHY THE HELL DID I PUT THEM BACK IN?! WHAT WAS I THINKING?!

I rushed to the bathroom, where I quickly removed them, wrapped them in paper towels, and stuffed them into my purse. For the rest of the day I felt mildly disturbed by my momentary lapse of awareness.

Part II:

Remember how I told ya’ll that I’ve never had poison ivy? I must have jinxed myself because I’ve managed to get it.

I was vacuuming out my (slightly used) new car, which was parked in the spot of honor: my family’s carport. The right side of the carport is attached to our house. The left side of our carport is bordered by some hideous shrubs and a whole bunch of ground-creeping, run-of-the-mill ivy.

Our vacuum cleaner is big and bulky, and therefore difficult for my puny self to maneuver (I’m not a large person). In wrestling the vacuum around to the driver’s side of the car, I accidentally stepped in the ivy once or twice.

Yup -- you guessed it -- there was some poisonous stuff mixed in with the ordinary ivy. Soon afterwards, an angry pink rash showed up on my ankle. It’s not a bad case of poison ivy -- it’s just enough to be irritating.

Strangely, what upsets me the most is that I can no longer brag about the fact that I’ve never had poison ivy before. Is that normal, or just mildly disturbing?

Settling Down -- and Settling a Score

Have you ever watched a cat knead the surface on which it's about to sit? I always wonder what prompts cats to do this. Do they actually think they're succeeding in softening the area? Or is it more of a physical stretching routine before they settle down for an extended period? Perhaps it's a deeply ingrained biological behavior that has an evolutionary basis. Or maybe it just feels good, much like how some people find relief in cracking their knuckles.

Personally, I believe that when practiced on a real live human stomach, it's a cruel act of revenge calculated to make up for the fact that the cat was shut out of the bedroom last night.

Me? Cruel? Never!