Maintenance Mike & The Domesticated Harpy

My morning started off rudely.

I was awakened first by the construction noises nearby on another patio. And i drifted in and out of sleep, still needing another few hours.

Then a banging at my door set my heart to pounding. And the person kept banging. I hurried to open the door, my pistol behind my back as usual, (I am a single woman who lives alone. I make no apologies) and opened the door.

The construction guy was standing there with three other guys (already a little daunting for a woman alone) and announced that I had to move my stuff off the patio so they could work on it. He said it rudely. Like he had testosterone poisoning.

My hand tightened around the pistol grip. (okay, just kidding, that was for dramatic effect. I don't just go around shooting people who knock on my door. Unless they're from a church, soliciting my soul. Then, yeah. of course. Why wouldn't I?)

Now understand, that one of my biggest pet peeves is to be awakened rudely. Especially by loud sounds. That's why I hate alarm clocks. I have an almost epileptic response. And also understand that i have a sort of primal fear of someone knocking on my door. Not sure where that comes from, but it just stresses me out. Maybe because it represents someone trying to get into my home and i don't know who it is. Weird, i know. But for whatever reason, it's highly stressful.

So I'm standing at my door, having weathered those two very personally stressful things happening at the same time, and this guy is telling me I have to move stuff off my patio, and I'm still in my pajamas. (Okay, I often stay in my pajamas all day...That's why I say i have a Pajama Job...but i don't like being FORCED out of my Pajamas, unless it's for a good reason. Like one that includes a really pretty woman).

Back to our show:
After he TOLD me what i was going to do, i TOLD him what was REALLY going to happen. "Listen here, Scooter, don't pound on my door and tell me what I'm going to do. You did not give me any kind of notice, and I am recovering from a ruptured disc in my neck. I'm not moving anything. You should have given me time to make arrangements. And since you didn't, arrangements will have to be made. In the meantime, you'll have to go terrorize someone else."

Dude took one step back. And then he and his boyfriends just walked away. I guess that work i did in my Card-Carrying-Harpy class really paid off. There would be no tearing of flesh today.

SO I slam the door. I felt it was necessary to make my point. But had to grab the mirror hanging on the wall there, so it wouldn't fall. Damn. Just what i need. Seven years of bad luck on top of the last 7 years i just had. I still can't remember what mirror i broke last time, but it must have been the size of a billboard.

Anyway. I'm thinking about coffee, which always makes me feel better, and there was no way i was going to go back to sleep anyway. So i made coffee and tried to get my heart rate back down. I called the office and told them what happened, very careful not to be in Harpy mode. Rep said she'd have Mike come over and handle it--i think the head of maintenance. Great, I say. Meaning, Great, another man with testosterone poisoning.

A few minutes later, Mike pecked on my patio door, and I stepped out to talk to him. He was immediately courteous. He completely understood dealing with back and neck issues. He'd had surgery on his. And he said there was no way they should have done that the way they did. They were supposed to give me enough notice. And he said that he's there to make sure i get the help I need, and that anytime i ever needed anything moved or any help at all, to call him. It was not only his job, but he enjoyed helping. I said, "That's so refreshing these days. I just wish people would do it because that's who they want to be, and not becuase of some perceived reward." (that's one of my test questions. I always say things like that to see what someone will say, so I'll know where they're coming from). He said. "Jae, I do this because it makes ME feel good. So in a way, i guess it's a little selfish. I enjoy helping people because of how it makes me feel."

Okay, really good answer but he skirted the religion part. And I'm always afraid they're going to start preaching to me at any moment and ask me if I've accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, and then it will get ugly because i have so much to say on that subject. But it didn't matter at that point. I already liked him. I already thought about baking him some bread and giving him a fresh cup of coffee later.

The thing about me is, I can be the sweetest most generous and friendly person in the world if you treat me with respect, but the minute you mistreat me, the claws come out, and i go for the jugular. I guess I'm sort of a Domesticated Harpy.

My day improved substantially after that. We stood on the patio and had a nice chat; He reiterated to call him anytime I needed help and I told him I wished I'd known about him when I moved in. Then we talked about our experiences with Frozen Shoulder, Rotator cuff injuries, Bone Spurs, Disc issues; and then about his daughter who is also a writer, and about his son with Asberger's Syndrome who can do all kinds of wonderful things, including write, and how we both wish some of the old fashioned things would swing back around: like doctors who tell the truth, chivalry, customer service, respect, and people being willing to help and have compassion. I'm thinking he and his family are the types I'd like to be friends with. Anyone who can take the day I was having, and change it into something so positive, well, they deserve a medal. Or fresh baked bread and coffee.

Maintenance Mike & The Domesticated Harpy

Beware the Drooping Cerebellum

..a cautionary tale. Maybe.

One of my ex girlfriends has this weird and rare condition where her cerebellum is drooping down too far and impinging on the brain stem. For real. It's called Chiari.

Now for a long time, even before this diagnosis, I discovered that I didn't want to talk to her anymore because every conversation consisted of her condescending to me at every turn. Gone was that delightful, brilliant young woman who so fascinated me with her thoughts on things...she had become sort of...well, an arrogant prick. (sorry).

For more insight on this, see Phone a Friend.

I put up with it during the last slew of phone calls, because she was telling me about her brain condition, and i felt genuine sympathy. I'm not a heartless bastard. Though I wasn't sure what to say. We hadn't seen each other in something like 7 years, and I only periodically talked to her on the phone or email. But as time went on, I was reminded again that I always felt like she was judging everything I said. Just an overweening disrespect in general. Well this haughtiness will only go on so long, brain condition or not, before I say good luck, bye bye. During our last conversation, I kind of reached my breaking point, and unloaded on her, telling her I was really not happy with the way she spoke to me, and i made sure I fully explained why i felt that way, and I said, "Do you talk to everyone like this, or is it just me?" She hung up on me.

A week later, she called, but I didn't answer. Just couldn't get sucked into that black hole again. And then she emailed, asking for some favor. Like nothing happened. No mention of having hung up on me, or being an ass--nothing. Whatever, Becky.

So the best I can do is chalk it up to still another person who seems mean or damaged or otherwise unpleasant to have in your life. And after that, I tend to just make jokes about it. Like, she can't help it, her brain is falling out of her head. I know it's not supposed to be funny, and maybe it's awful of me to joke about it, but dark realities sometimes need to be used as fodder for humor, because otherwise we'd all just be blubbering and wailing through this life. I don't think she's behaving that way because of her condition, either. I think it's just who she's become. For lots of reasons I won't go into here.

BUT. If I had that condition, I'd milk it. I'd do all those things that are inappropriate and blame it on the fact that my brain was falling out of my head.

Beware the Drooping Cerebellum

Door Christians

Well here's my latest little adventure...I'm one of those people who has to have a certain amount of control over my environment to be happy. When that gets disrupted, it fucks with my Chi, as I like to say. As a songwriter, I often spend long hours working on tracking my music in my home studio. I was in the middle of recording a new song and had already started over twice, and really had it going good this time when....

...there was a knock at the door. My dog, Giz, went to barking, ('Cause it fucks with his Chi, too) and I stood up quickly, tried to lay my guitar down, ripped the headphone plug out, tripped over the guitar cord and muttered an impressive selection of profanities. I checked through the window--some dude and a younger girl. Seemed harmless enough, but hell, the recorder was still on and I HATE being interrupted!

I opened the door and said "Yes?"

Referring to a card in his hand, he says, "Are you Jud? Jud Ba-eely?"

First of all, i am female, and i don't know many females with the first name, "Jud." I wanted to say, "Do i look like a Jud to you? But instead countered with: "No, Jae Baeli. (I gave emphasis on the pronunciation of my last name, Bay-lee). "Who's asking?"

He said, "I'm blah-blah from the First Baptist Church, and--"

I could feel the steam forming in my ears. This makes me so mad. It's like door to door spamming. I kept wishing for a delete button or a block-this-person switch, or even a trap door beneath my stoop. I said, "Do you have any idea how rude it is to just drop in on people? I'm in the middle of something and you have really fouled things up."

He says, "I'm sorry. We were just wondering if you attend--"

I interrupted him again. "I was in a training session with my sex slave, and about to make an offering to Satan, so I don't think we need to continue this."

The look on his face was enough to give me some satisfaction as I closed the door in his face.

I guess this makes me sound awful, but I really hate that shit. I don't want anyone cramming their religion down my throat. If I want to go to church, I can find it--it usually has a huge steeple on the building and lots of singing inside. I'm no pagan or anything, but it's just such a rude thing to do, in my opinion. And knocks on my door have a way of scaring me. My heart rate climbs and my blood pressure soars. Not sure why. So as is the norm in these situations, I began to shake, and then I couldn't continue recording because I was so shaky. I am so mad, now.

So there's a part of my "dark side" for ya. I'm probably going to burn in hell.

Door Christians

Growing & Non-Existent Testicles

Saturday night we went out to see Shannon and Walter play at Grumpy's. We had an unpleasant experience with this man there who decided to "join us" in that area of sofas around a coffee table near the stage. He fancied himself some Knight from King Arthur's Court, yet didn't pull it off for a nanosecond. Even before he sat down, he waved his hands across the table where our plates and drinks and ashtrays were, as if they were in his way and he wanted us to clear them so he could settle in. Then he began to complain about the ashtrays that had butts in them (imagine that)--"What sort of place is this, can't even have a clean ashtray..."

It took a grand total of two seconds for me to respond. I picked up one of them and dumped it into the other and set down the empty one in front of him. "There you go," I said.

I immediately disliked him. There's never much doubt--nine times out of ten when a man invites himself to sit near you, he's after more than your witty repartee. The strange part is, he thought he was the most lucid, engaging, and charming member of the intelligentsia. What he was, was weird, rude, presumptuous, obnoxious, ridiculous and pathetic. He was sitting in the sofa that had it's back to Shannon and Walter, and so he had to crane his neck around to respond to them. But meanwhile, he jerked and bobbed his head and broke into song. When they would pause between songs, he would obligingly fill the void with a Pavorotti-esgue rendition of something, complete with hand gestures, and a thick operatic accent--sometimes in some indecipherable language which he tried to pass off as German, but was really Pompous fakery.

We tried to ignore him. But then he began to badger the waitress about his drink, the table, the ashtrays, his glass, and anything else. We were both bristling by this time, because she was trying her best to be tolerant of his behavior, and was met only with his holier-than-thou abrasiveness. It seemed to make him feel empowered somehow, and he was looking for some twisted, adoring response from the females in his company--uninvited though his presence was.

Shannon and Walter just looked on in wonder while he monopolized the silence between songs, periodically shouting something earth-shatteringly pertinent in their direction. He reminded me of a compunded version of that young man one night at Shug's, who sat in the front, stood by the table, almost facing everyone, his foot hiked up on his chair, and singing along with Shannon and Walter like he was a cast-member in Guys and Dolls. Only that guy was innocuous, whereas this guy at Grumpy's was like a barfly Frankenstein version of the same creature. When he asked, "Where is the restroom in this establishment?" I gave him a dry look, and shrugged. I was trying to be so obvoiously uninterested in assisting him in any way, that he would slither in some other direction. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.When he stood to announce his temporary departure, ("Will you ladies excuse me for a moment?") pausing as if to gain our full attention and coy "but-of-courses"-- I instead looked right past him toward Shannon and Walter, giving him absolutely no acknowledgement. After he was gone, I told Tammy I was losing my tolerance in a swift fashion. She said she was pretty sick of him, too, and entreated me to let her "handle it."

Well, this was a shock, since Tam is notoriously tolerant and sometimes overly-concerned with appearances and tactfulness. I didn't quite believe her, but I told her okay, but that I was not responsible for any unexpected stimuli that might make me take his head off before she'd worked out her rebuttal to him. To punctuate my declaration, I promptly leaned over and thumbed the ash from my cigarette into his drink.He returned (damn the luck) and then the waitress arrived again to serve yet another one of his requests. He was drunk, and the bartender wanted to cut him off, and he didn't like that at all. He insisted she bring him a drink, and in the big kind of mug like the one Tammy had tea in. He made a big production of it, and then insisted she empty the solitary cigarette butt from his ashtray and wipe his table down. She whirled and went to get him another glass.

I guess he didn't care for the looks we shot at him, because he began to justify his rudeness: "When I ask for something, I expect to get what I I ask for."

Tammy said, "You get what you deserve."

He mouthed off again, and she said, "You know what? You're being a jerk."

That made him mad, and he started flinging drunken aspersions and opinions again. I finally had had enough. I leaned forward and said, "Why don't you just go away?"

He continued his tirade. I kept repeating, "We do not want you here, don't you get it? We're not interested in your company. You're a jerk, and we're disgusted by you. Go away!"

He said, "make me." Wasn't that intelligent? He sounded like a grade school brat. I got up and went up to the bar to ask the manager to remove him for harassing us. They were ready to, anyway. He's been inflicting himself all over the bar all night.

So when the waitress came back while we were shouting at him, and had to deal with more of his attitude, she invited him to speak to the manager, who was going to toss him out by that time. He marched up to the bar, and while he was gone, I grabbed his cigarettes and bent the pack, breaking all the remaining cigarettes inside. I guess that was silly, but it sure made me feel good.

After he had gone, I couldn't resist a jibe at Tam's uncharacteristic indignance. I leaned over to her and said, "Do I detect the sound of growing testicles?"

Growing & Non-Existent Testicles

A Backwoods Eatery With a Side of Velcro Papaw

You could call this a restaurant review. You could also call this a wart on the butt of the service-industry. Or you could just mark it off to another card-carrying harpy sinking her claws into some unsuspecting, still-warm piece of meat. Ultimately, you’ll chose one, and we can just shake our heads and move on.

The establishment in question is a little club situated in one of our many dry counties. Since it’s the only place in the area that serves liquor, the local college punks and area Bubbas turn out in force to inflict a little down-home harm.

A friend and I went there to enjoy the music of some friends of mine who are popular in the Little Rock music scene. We had no idea what sort of glorified sale-barn we were walking into.

Inside, we noticed that there were no tables directly in front of the entertainment, so we asked permission to move a table to the front. This was our first miscalculation. Moving a table obviously caused some confusion among waitresses. It became a “non-station.” We were outcasts, fooling with the order in their chaos. But we waited patiently for a waitress to appear, and after fifteen minutes, I got up and went to the bar to request some service for our table. The bartender said he’d send a waitress right over. Satisfied, I went back to my seat. The band began their first set of the evening, and we listened, alternately smiling at them and rubber-necking in search of this alleged waitress. Thirty minutes had passed, and we had neither been spoken to, nor offered anything to drink.

I got up again and asked the bartender if there was a manager on duty. He said, “A manager?” and then sort of pointed at himself, as if this was an untested idea. I told him we had been there 30 minutes, and would like to order some food and drinks, and what’s-the-matter, didn’t-he-want- our-money? He turned to one of the waitresses and said, “Hey, they’ve been here for thirty minutes and haven’t been served yet.” She nodded and said she’d be right there. It only took her another 10 minutes to make the trip. We ordered, and within another five minutes or so, we actually got our iced tea. No spoon or anything to stir the sweetener in with, but by golly, we got our tea. My friend stirred hers with a lemon wedge, and I used the tried and true jiggle-method.

Finally, the cheese dip and chips came. And remember, oh Patrons of Culinary Delights, for a mere $3.75, you too can have nuked Cheese-Whiz with water and peppers mixed in, along with stale, reheated tortilla chips. The bowl was only half full, (or was it half-empty?) and I’ll bet that was a good quarter cup of charming queso. Then our bacon cheeseburgers came, complete with that optional side of fries for an extra ninety-five cents. I counted, and that came to about eleven cents per fry. What a deal. And how delightful that they were brave enough to serve them cold. The burgers were overcooked and had that homemade charred flavor that can only be achieved by not cleaning the grill for a year. And we had to go get our ketchup and napkins from the bar. In case you think this is the end, au contraire! Insult was added to injury when we were both accosted by an elderly cowpoke whom I loving refer to as the “Velcro Papaw.”

He pulled up an uninvited chair next to me, plastered himself against my side and began his pick-up routine, no doubt perfected by decades of rehearsal, if the wrinkles on his face were any indication. He wanted to dance, and was sure that my refusal was simply my attempt at being coy. I assure you that I am a lot of things, but coy is not on the list. He continued to pummel away at my resolve, while I continued to move my chair away from him. He extolled the virtues of the VFW club: “Now THAT’S the place to be...why don’t we go there?” I told him I had to get up early for work. He said so did he, and what’s a little sleep-loss? He persisted in asking for my phone number. I told him I didn’t have a phone. Undaunted, he leaned over and offered the same deal to my friend, who graciously said “No thanks.”

He battered her with his testosterone poisoning for a few minutes, asking her for her phone number, too, until I told him, “I don’t think her husband would like that.” He said it didn’t bother him none if she was married “if you know whut I mean...” wink-wink. Then he asked me if I was married and I lied about that, too. I should have known it was not an effective way to dissuade this paragon if moral turpitude. I mean, what part of “no” did he not understand: the “N” or the “O”? I told him we were about to leave anyway, and I stood up, praying that a waitress would appear next to the table with our check. (If wishes were horses, beggars would ride). I went over to the bar to pay, and while waiting for change I glanced back at the table. The Velcro Papaw had sticker- burred himself to my friend, and all I could see was her shaking her head over and over. I got my change and returned to the table, and another cowpoke moved in for the kill. He placed his hands all over my shoulders, squeezing and rubbing and asking for a dance. I summarily removed his hand and shot him a telling glance. They returned to their own table, then, and we sat down to listen to the rest of the set.

When the set was over, the band took a break and followed us outside to say goodnight.

The next day, our musician friends told us it was fortunate that we left when we did. The crowd eventually became belligerent. Some young men collected at a table began screaming requests: “Play Fleetwood Mac.” The singer told them on the microphone that she had just done a Fleetwood Mac song, and they continued to request it, oblivious.

The repartee dissolved into crude comments to the female singer like, “Why don’t you play some George Jones or Merle Haggard...or why don’t you play with yourSELF?” I won’t even go into the other derogatory, prejudical, and slanderous comments that ensued after this.

I’m not sure what it is about the mix of uneducated, uncivilized humans and a bottle of beer, but for performing musicians and attentive audience members, the disrespect and total disregard for decency is out of control. The management of this little “supper club” and some of the clientele it draws, should be staked to a fire-ant hill and left to the devices of the food chain.

From now on, I think I’ll stick to the larger towns where talent is appreciated, and restaurants care about the quality of their food and their service.

A Backwoods Eatery With a Side of Velcro Papaw