haaaate

So sometimes when you see a problem at work, the correct response is to look around, see if anyone else has noticed, and move the fuck on without trying to DO anything. Because Trying to Do Something will precipitate a storm of controversy that goes all the way to the top. The top, I tell you! One minute it's a polite disagreement ("hm, that's odd; this customer said he did receive stock from a damaged shipment that you'd been told did not go out") and the next, it's all "Nora, pls triple check that you are right before we go forward" and "hm, let's loop the editor in chief in on this shipping error" and lots of work for me.

I want you to read this article from the Christian Science Monitor, a publication with which I have no beef, before we go on. It's the prerequisite before today's session of "Nora's Bile: Let Me Show You It."

It's short, and I can wait.

Done? How interesting, right? In the vein of Nickeled and Dimed--with its renunciation of one's so-called station to explore how another group lives (or struggles to live)--a young man named Adam Shepard decides to take twenty-five bucks, a rucksack of physical things, and nothing else; leave his home with his parents; and step to "the wrong side of the tracks" in Charleston and "[start] his life from scratch" (sort of) as a homeless man to "test the vivacity of the American Dream."

Right.

Dear Jealousy,

Fuck off. Fuck off fuck offfff.

Warm regards,
Nora.

+ + +

When you live in an apartment building, you live with a certain expectation about the noise that will be made above or below you--or both. You live with raised voices, with radios, with alarm clocks left on too long, with parties, with big televisions on too loud. Hammering in the walls, furniture from IKEA being assembled, sex, clicky or clompy shoes on around the house, the dryer running later in the night than you'd like. These are just a few examples of allowances made for renting.

My penultimate apartment in Chicago, near Rockwell, was in a building that muffled sound between floors not at all--a distinction we were only able to make in hindsight, with the contrast of our last apartment. Anyway, the apartment off of Rockwell had a set of very, very loud upstairs neighbours. It all began on move-in day, with an argument. Il dit, "Just pick it up, Rene!" Elle: "I can't LIFT it!" "Just PICK IT UP, Rene!!" "I CAN'T LIFT it!!!" "JUST PICK IT UP!!!" I CAN'T LIIIFT IT!!!!!" There was sex at various hours (not a real problem; at least they were happy for a while...), a combination show-tunes/Riverdance night every Tuesday (CLOP CLOP CLOP Heeey BIG SPEN-DER....), and much, much fighting (YOU'RE JUST LIKE YOUR SISTER, RENE!). At about 3 or 4 in the night. As apartment dwellers, we endured as much and as long as we felt was appropriate, and then responded in the appropriate apartment manner: broomstick rap on the ceiling. At 4 in the morning, having a screaming fight, throwing things, in the bedroom above our heads, and those selfish unhappy people actually knocked back, like our broom raps were interrupting their perfectly good row. We yelled "TAKE IT TO THE FRONT ROOM!" and they did. They were one of the major reasons we moved.

The Bostonland Area would like to see both my partner and I dead, worm food, standing in the clearing at the end of the road, drawing our last rattling breaths, pushing up daisies, hedgehogs bringing our mail, etc.

Its weapon of choice for punching my ticket? Cars. I've already been both hit and nearly hit whilst biking, and I get the distinct feeling that every time I cross the street, I'm putting my life in the hands of drivers who really don't seem to give a shit about committing a little vehicular manslaughter (negligent though it may be). I used to think that very few people actually wanted to kill someone else with their cars; now I'm not so sure.

Here are the fun things I did this year, chronologically:
1. twisted the bejeezus out of my right ankle, which still can't move like it used to!
2. endured five solid months of menstruation, leading directly to...
3. got diagnosed with a chronic disease!
4. lost a piercing!
5. quit a job I loved and at which I made bank!
6. left belov'ed Chicago!
7. moved to stinky dumb Boston!
8. ran completely out of money!
9. got fucking painfully, ridiculously depressed!
10. ruined my relationship!

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, 2006.

Each day I get to pick: will I be sad today or will I be furious?
How nice it is, sometimes, to have the choice.
How lucky I am, to have options.

Today I am furious.

I am a ball of fucking fire. Touch me and die, infidels. Don't make me get my Two-By-Four of Truth and bend this entire city of bean-bakers over my knee and beat some sense into it.

Today when we asked the shop owner where the two of us might be able to walk to that would have some shops to peruse, some windows to scope, some strolling, some people to watch, and possibly a cafe into which we could pop for a cuppa and...

...and all of the places she mentioned were places that I'd been either earlier today or before in my only four weeks of living here.