Jiggety Jig

There's a preliminary paragraph of whining and then some cool stories. Stick around dear readers.

I'm home in Portland. We flew out Monday night, and it was extremely unpleasant. I've mentioned it before, but I have a problem with my ears when I fly. I don't know what it is, or why it happens, except that I suspect my Eustachian tubes (connecting my ears and my throat) are blocked in some way. Imagine someone taking a wooden dowel, half an inch in diameter, and lighting it on fire. Now imagine that someone taking that dowel and forcing it into both of your ears, pushing it in as far as it will go. And then some more. In any event it leaves me weeping and clawing at my ears in public most every plane ride I take. I'm also left partially deaf for several days after. My ears are only clear when I tilt my head forward and stare at the ground. I'm not looking forward to the trip back to Provo. Also, I got sick my first day back. What a trip this has been.

Not much happened our first night back, except that my brother F needed to be picked up from work around 11:45, and my mom was in bed already and H was playing Cranium, so they sent me. And what did I drive? The Buick skylark that my dad bought from the old lady across the street's daughter for $250. H told me the basics - where the lights were on this car, and sent me out to the driveway. I spent a few more minutes acquainting myself with the car so I wouldn't die driving it- you know, finding out how to work the broken parking brake handle, finding the locks, how to fasten the seat belt, all the essentials. And man alive, I love that car. It's a beater with a capital B. It's got this old fashioned steering wheel that I'd kill to have. It's just the sort of car Optimistic. wouldn't let me buy, and don't tell Eunice, but I think I'd trade her in for this car. It's a true old lady car and deserves the name Eunice more than my Galant. Anyway, I hope to get to drive it more while I'm here.

Once I had F home we went to the computer and I got out all the music I'd brought with me. Have you heard of Of Montreal? He countered by asking me if I'd seen the youtube video collection of Hooch from Scrubs. Good times were had.

I mostly was sick yesterday, so I stayed in my pajamas for a long time, went through some of my old stuff I had stored downstairs, and sneezed uncontrollably. My mom was watching a little girl for the day, who pestered me when all I wanted to do was sit down and eat my Raisin Bran. Normally I can humor children with the best of them, chatting about their stuffed rabbits dressed like hip-hop artists and whatnot, but she wouldn't leave me alone, was tugging on the towel on my head, was running around me, and was tugging at my bowl of cereal, until I flat out told her "I'm sick. I don't have time for this" and retreated to the family room to eat in peace.

It was a fairly uneventful night, and those of us in our room all went to bed around 10:30. I woke up around 1:30 to find a half eaten pizza on the table and H and her best friend Alexis in the office. Hooray! Apparently Alexis works at Papa Murphy's now, which is where the pizza and the following stories are from.

Despite being voted the best pizza chain in the nation, the Papa Murphy's branch that Alexis works at employs crack users. All of her coworkers do drugs, some of them in the walk-in at work even. A large, rosy cheeked, wholesome looking boy makes pizzas for a drug dealer he knows who's too poor to eat. I suspect he's not a very good drug dealer. A couple who work there apparently got into a fight when they were alone running the store. The wife got a promotion, and the husband accused her of sleeping with the supervisor. They left the store to continue fighting, shutting everything down. The supervisor gets a call that the store is shut down, so he's forced to drive down from Vancouver on his weekend that he has off to celebrate his first anniversary to see what's up. Another coworker had just arrived to work only to find the store closed. Then she finds the couple sitting in their car in the parking lot next door, tells the supervisor, and he goes to find out what the crack is going on. The wife is weeping inconsolably, the husband is staring straight ahead. When the supervisor approaches them, the man gets out of the car, throws his uniform at the supervisor, says he quits, then leaves his wife in the parking lot and drives off. Nobody talks about it now.

Karina is another coworker, who used to do meth, but is all sober because she only drinks and does pot now. She's under 21 and can't legally buy alcohol. Her mom was having a party, so when Karina got home her mom sent her into the back. When she turned on the light she found a near rabid raccoon in the room with her. When she came out to tell her mom about its presence, her mom pointed her finger at her and said, "That's my raccoon. I tamed it. Don't you go bothering it." Pure madness is what I say, but I never laughed so hard as I did when I pictured this girl's half drunk mother lecturing her about her tamed raccoon.

Also, their store was broken into, but it was by someone who knew the code and how to turn off the security cameras, so it was definitely an employee. They all assumed it was the jealous husband who had quit, but then they got the tapes from the nearby Rite Aid, and they discovered it was some petite blond girl they work with. Alexis had been counting everything in the cash drawer earlier that week and had discovered that they were $200 over, and she mentioned it to the girl and asked what she should do. The girl replied in a falsely innocent, almost mocking tone, "Gee Alexis, I don't know. What should you do with $ 200 extra dollars? Hmmm." And faced with this girl's implication that they should take the money, Alexis said she'd just ask the supervisor what to do with it. Then they were robbed. No one has seen the girl since.

Alexis also informed me that H talks on the phone in her sleep. "What, like she calls people up?" I asked. "No, she answered her phone during her nap." Only when Alexis was telling me this she said she'd called during "Nap" and I interjected that it sounded like it was a time of day for H - I can picture her saying "Well, after Nap I've got to go to work."

Anyway, Alexis called her and H answered her phone even though she was asleep. It went something like this-

H: Hello?
Alexis: Hey, were you asleep?
H: (groggily defensive, because she actually is asleep) No! I'm awake.
A: (confused) Oh. Okay. How was the beach trip?

H went on to tell her all about the ward beach trip before introducing the subject of tigers.

H: And then we were divided into groups and we were the tigers.
Alexis: Wait, what? After you got back you were tigers?
H: What? No, the tigers turned into T-shirts.
Alexis: The tigers were T-shirts?
H:The T-shirts were T-shirts!
Alexis: What T-shirts?

It was at this point that H woke up to find herself in mid conversation with a phone in her hand, and she very legitimately asked Alexis "Wait, what T-shirts?"

I wish I'd brought my tape recorder.