I'm sitting in a café in the Mission in San Francisco and am
having the feeling, as I often do in such places, that a. I am the only person
in the entire Bay Area without a tattoo and b. there is a particular definition
of "urban cool" that I will just never fully understand. I am
enjoying the fact that this café is large and airy, with great light and
excellent coffee. But the man ordering coffee right now has dyed black
chin-length hair (and bangs?) and is wearing a pair of skinny black jeans that
cling so tightly to his legs that it is impossible to determine where his pants
end and his elfin black boots begin. Perhaps the pants don't end at all --
maybe they're connected, sort of like how firemen's pants are actually attached
directly to their boots so that flames can't lick up their calves. Except in
this particular case, the only things licking anything are his tattoos, which
are creeping up his neck and down the back of his hands.
Whoah -- just as I wrote another woman walked up, dressed
all in black, but this time with vinyl black leggings that ALSO flow directly
into black elfin boots. As far as I can tell, the two of them are not
personally acquainted. Have I entered some weird twilight zone where everyone's
pants must connect to their footwear? Am I at a disadvantage for wearing
capris?
Also, there are four boar heads on the wall. Like, actual
boar heads. With big teeth and everything. Oh, Mission district. How I love to
hate you.
Mailman update #3: After not receiving my mail since last Thursday, despite repeated calls to my local branch requesting that someone out there PLEASE GIVE ME MY RSVP POSTCARDS, I decided to take matters into my own hands: I stalked the mail man.
After seeing him go into a nearby apartment building, letters in hand, I scurried down the stairs and waited next to his truck for him to emerge, attempting to adopt a casual stance ("Oh! Funny to see you here!") to encourage a casual, unconfrontational conversation. He came out of the building, I said, "Excuse me, I had a question about my mail." Without even asking my name, he simply said, "Oh yes. I cannot give it to you."
"I understand that you are having a problem with my neighbors," I said, "But see, their mailbox is at the top of one set of stairs, and mine and my landlord's are at the top of another." I pointed at the two staircases in question. "I was wondering if you could please come up our stairway and deliver our mail."
"I cannot do that," he said.
"Do you see what I'm talking about?" I pressed, still pointing. "There are two staircases! You can come up ours and deal with your problems with them separately."
"I cannot do that," he said again.
"Why?"
"I cannot go up two flights of stairs. It is a waste of time."
"But you don't have to go up two flights of stairs," I continued, flustered by the fact that he was being so matter-of-fact about something so patently untrue. Was I the crazy one? Had I missed some invisible fence in front of my stairway that permits only permanent residents access to our mailboxes? "You can just come up ours."
"I can't do that," he repeated again. "You can get your mail at the office."
"You mean I have to go to the post office to get my mail?"
"Yes."
"But you're the mailman!" I said, in a tone too aggressive to use with someone who wields so much power. "Your JOB is to deliver my mail!"
"Sorry," he said again, still smiling. "I cannot do that."
Then, sensing my exasperation, he suggested a compromise. "Okay," he said. "I will bring your mail. DO NOT TELL ANYONE. If you see me down here you can come to the truck and get it."
I pointed out to him that with the exception of today, I normally do not sit at my window watching for the mail truck to pass by.
"Sorry," he said. "If you see me, I will give it to you. Do not tell anyone. Anyone."
By this point, we were so far past rationality that I decided to roll with it.
"Okay," I said. "Thank you, sir." I extended my hand for him to shake. "Thank you very much. If I see you in the street, I will come and get my mail."
"Do not tell anyone!" he repeated, as I made my way up my inaccessible staircase and walked inside.
So, anyone who's known me for the past, say, 20 years, knows that I have bad knees. Recently, this situation worsened when I made an overly aggressive move in my Friday morning cardio-hip hop class and somehow managed to tear my meniscus. It doesn't hurt most of the time, but when I screw it up, I can't straighten my leg. So I got an MRI and took it to the doctor. His verdict? Not only do I have a meniscus tear, but in the back of my knee, I have a cyst. I find this gross; he says it's pretty normal with a tear because fluid tends to leak out of your damaged knee and pool at the back. Fair enough. But it's still gross. More worrisome, however, is that he noticed a part of my kneecap where it appeared I had no cartilage left at all. Seeing as how I am but 29 years old, that is not a good thing. I asked him what he suggested we do about that. His response? "I would drill small holes in your bone to make it bleed." I am not kidding. He actually said that. I responded, "Wow, that's not something you want to hear from your doctor," and he proceeded to explain that the bloody bone would presumably release some pluripotent cells that could produce a bit of "scar cartilage" (scartilage?) and ease my aching joints. Sounds good, but how about the recovery? FOUR WEEKS on crutches and FOUR MONTHS of no physical activity. This is beyond depressing to me, not only because I hate myself if I don't exercise for even a single day, but because working out is a primary way I control my diabetes. Very upsetting.
Speaking of diabetes, though, yesterday I went in for a second MRI on my other knee (my logic being, if I don't have cartilage in my right knee, it's probably not in my left, either). On the intake sheet, they ask if you have an insulin pump. I checked yes. When I walked into the room, I showed my technician my insulin pump. She said it was fine. In the actual MRI room, the other MRI technician asked what my medic alert bracelet was for. I told her diabetes. None of them said anything about my pump, and since they'd also told me that my jewelry was okay, I figured it wasn't a big deal. Otherwise they'd have said something, right? And besides, what could happen if you put an insulin pump in a gigantic magnet? Oh, wait . . . it magnetizes! Then it FLOATS IN THE AIR. And then its motor breaks. When I came out of the machine I noticed that my pump was suspended in the air above my stomach -- a strange sensation -- and showed it to the tech, who said, "Oh, I didn't know you had that on you!" and suggested I "reprogram it." No such luck. The thing is busted. Minimed is sending me another one (though shit is going to go down between Minimed and Magnetic Imaging Affiliates) and for the time being I am on some weird cocktail of long-acting insulin (which I haven't used in five years) and boosters by injection every time I want to eat something. Point being, this morning, I am one unhappy diabetic.
Hello, friends. It is now Thursday. Would you like to know the last time my regular postman delivered my mail? Last Thursday. (See previous post.) On Tuesday I saw a different mail carrier on my block and actually ran into the street to stop her. "Are you going to deliver our mail?" I asked. She looked at me as if I were stupid. "Yes," she said. "Oh, good!" I said, and started blabbering on about how our other mailman had gotten into a fight with my neighbors and was insisting that their potted geraniums constituted a fire hazard. "He is not allowed to do this," she said, as she sorted out three days' worth of mail. "He is not allowed."
Well, unfortunately, rules or no rules, that's the only time we've gotten our mail in the past week. I've seen the guy outside but every time I put shoes on and prepare to sprint downstairs to stop him, he pops back into his little white truck and drives away. Instead I've been calling our local post office and lodging complaints, first with a very friendly man named Dave who, when I told him I was particularly worried because I was planning a wedding, said "Oh, well that's not good at all," and continued, "welcome to SNAFU-ville!" Welcome, indeed. Yesterday I spoke with Mary, who originally refused to speak with me because while she was sitting right next to the phone she was on her "eating break," as her coworker put it. When she finally picked up she, too, was quite nice, explaining that from what she understood the situation sounded "silly" and that she would speak with her supervisor again about it. Fair enough, but when I got home last night? Still no mail. My current plan is to arrange large speakers at the window and start blasting the Beatles' "Wait a Minute, Mr. Postman!" out my door when I see his little white truck. Perhaps humor will sway him?
So, a couple days ago I was sitting at my desk working when I noticed some yelling coming from downstairs. It appeared my neighbors, who inhabit a subterranean studio located roughly beneath my living room, were in a shouting match with the mailman. The issue? Apparently he likes to walk in front of their window while getting to our mailbox, since not doing so would necessitate going down and up an extra flight of steps. But in doing so he had kicked a piece of lawn furniture, and now the shit was hitting the fan. My neighbors argued that he shouldn't be walking past the window to begin with, since it was their "private space." He asserted that it was a "hallway" and he could walk by it whenever the hell he wanted to. Tensions escalated. Soon my neighbor's husband, a quiet seeming guy with a British accent, was outside their door as well, yelling something about how he wasn't allowed to "kick private property." They then demanded that the mailman give them his name, to which he demanded that they give him their name, to which my neighbors rightly pointed out that he knew their name already; he delivered their mail. Meanwhile, I'm sitting upstairs thinking, we already don't get mail on certain days to begin with (the midweek mailman seems to have amended the "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night" to include an exemption for Wednesdays) -- now we're never going to get a letter again.
Oh, if only I were mistaken. The next day when I got home I found my landlord's wife standing perplexed next to her mailbox. When she asked if I had gotten any mail my stomach sank; I knew where this was going. But it turned out to be even worse than I'd anticipated -- the mailman hadn't just cut off service to my neighbors, landlord and, now, me, but he had *written a note* to my landlord saying that he wasn't going to deliver mail AT ALL until she talked to her tenants about letting him walk past their window. "Is he allowed to do this?" she asked. "He is not, right?"
No, Nazrene. He's not. And yet he didn't deliver mail on Saturday, either. Usually I might not care too much -- what's going to arrive besides a credit card bill? But I'm planning a wedding, people, and we're waiting for RSVPs. If I have to personally call my would-be guests to see if they prefer chicken, fish or vegetarian entrees, my mailman is going to have a lot more than a piece of lawn furniture to worry about.
I just got back from a trip home to the east coast and was struck by how much of a difference it makes to be surrounded by talkative people. Case in point: on my way to the airport, I was sitting on Air BART (the bus that takes you from the train to the airport) and an older woman sat down next to me. That wasn't surprising. What was surprising was that she then started trying to chat me up. "So, where are you headed?" she asked, clutching her purse to her lap. I told her New York and feigned intense interest in the Oakland Coliseum, but she would not be dissuaded. "Oh, New York City," she said. "I'm from Reno." She then launched into a discussion of her career as a lower school librarian in Reno, her love of David McCullough, and her interest in the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. She actually was quite sweet and by the end I was encouraging her to come visit New York ("You'd love it -- it's fun to just people watch") -- but still, I didn't really understand the whole small-talk-on-the-Air-BART phenomenon. Who does that?
Then on the plane itself I was seated next to an older woman and a young teenage guy in a sleeveless shirt. the woman couldn't figure out how to use the television/air vents/seatbelt, etc, and the young man -- whose name I quickly surmised was Frankie Jr -- helped her. The two of them bantered the entire plane ride, him adjusting her air conditioning, her offering him handfuls of her Doritos Munchie Mix that she had kept from the previous plane ride ("Take some!" she said, grabbing his hand. "Take more! You need to eat!"). During the landing, he and I both got pieces of gum; she kept referring to him as her buddy, and was thrilled to discover that he was the legacy of a famous bakery in New York, apparently known for its fantastic selection of Black and White cookies.
Fast forward to the cab line outside JFK. I was standing there, thinking about all these friendly chatty people I had just interacted with, when I noticed a man standing behind me. Six-foot-five, built like a bouncer, he was talking loudly with someone on a cell phone. On his chest dangled two necklaces: one was a rhinestone-crusted "R," the other held two skeletons, one silver, one gold. His belt buckle was a gigantic, three-dimensional skull, about the size of a lemon, also encrusted in rhinestones and glittering as he moved forward in line. To top it off, he had a foot-long scar running down his forearm that was covered up in part by a large red tattoo that said "death." I took all this in, realized that the man could probably crush my skull with his bare hands (and then turn it into an ornamental belt buckle) -- and yet was so inspired by the experience with Frankie Junior that I barely stopped myself from asking him what the R stood for. Luckily, he was busy complaining about a guy in a wheelchair who had just been rolled to the front of the line ("What the fuck is up with that? ") and so I refrained. Next time.
There are days when you're not too psyched about getting back to work -- you're having trouble selling a story, no one will write/call you back -- and then you discover YouTube videos of a cockatoo named Snowball dancing to Another One Bites the Dust. And then, inexplicably, your day just becomes . . . better.
There are times when I start to worry about where my life is headed. No, I haven't started drinking too much or hanging out with a biker gang. I'm worried about how amazingly happy it has made me to see that the city of Oakland has finally made good on its promise to send me a miniature green bin for recycling food scraps. If the sight of a small green bin at the bottom of my stairs can put me into a good mood for the morning, what's next? Shouldn't I be aiming higher?
Yup, apparently the sixth grade environmentalist inside me is alive and well, since about two months ago, a switch inside of me flipped and I became obsessed with the idea of recycling green waste. I think it may have had something to do with the copious amount of leeks I was consuming (leading to a copious amount of inedible leek stems) -- but whatever the trigger was, the result has been a mess: an assortment of plastic bags around the kitchen filled with strawberry stems and avocado pits that I leave around for a week till they start to smell. I'm not sure if they'd smell less if I put them into a green bin, but whatever. Something about it seems more hygenic, more secure. And it's a hell of a lot cuter than a plastic bag filled with rotting avocados.
So. I live near Lake Merritt, the so-called "jewel" of Oakland. (It's nice, all right, but for a jewel, it has more than its fair share of goose shit.) Nonetheless, I love the lake. Love walking around it, running around it, have even been known to paddleboat on it. The one thing I can't imagine doing on it is actually touching the water. I was upset, therefore, a few months ago when I saw two parents standing on the sandy/goose-infested beach by the bandstand urging a small child in water wings -- presumably their offspring -- to go swimming. Horrifying. I considered calling child services.
Anyway, all that is neither here nor there. What I really wanted to write about is a mystery of Lake Merritt: Today, Peter and I were driving past it and we caught sight of a floating platform in the middle of the lake (itself a strange sight) with an outhouse sitting on it. Yes. Floating platform with outhouse, moored in the middle of Lake Merritt.
I do not understand what is going on. True, tomorrow is the yearly "Lake Merritt Rowing Club Regatta," so presumably the outhouse is for the race officials. But come on, people. It is not like Lake Merritt is the San Francisco Bay. That platform is within view of actual park service bathrooms -- how was it possibly worth renting an outhouse, attaching it to a dock, and pulling the dock into the middle of the lake? Very, very strange.
This is up there with the time when we saw a ten pound fish -- clearly not the sort that usually populates the lake (I think anything over a pound might die from contamination) -- floating dead in the water. Did it get swept in from the bay? Did a fish monger in Chinatown dump the day's leftovers? Was it a beloved pet? Unclear. But at least fish are *supposed* to be floating in the water. Port-o-potties? Not so much.
I am going to break my self-imposed blog silence for a momentous occasion: a trip to the post office. Don't get too excited. I'm just hoping that by writing about it, my blood pressure might drop back to normal.
See, I needed to mail an application for a fellowship that I'm applying for. It's due Thursday. Today is Tuesday. I figured I'd drop it off, do a little express mail action, and be on my merry way. After all, the last few times I've been to the post office my experiences have been, if not pleasant, at least tolerable. But then again, I'd never been to the Grand Lake branch.
Oh my fucking god. I'm not sure where to start. Perhaps I'll first ask you to stare at this computer screen for twenty-five minutes without doing anything or reading anything, to simulate what the first half of my experience was like. Then I'll invite you to imagine the following:
-three windows, two of which were staffed by people who probably rocked the "How Slow Can You Go?" part of their entrance exam
-a third post office employee behind the other two, who emerged from the back room every few minutes carrying what looked like the same package out to the front and then back to the back, occasionally looking toward the 15-person line with an expression of bemused interest, as if to say, "Gee, will you check out that line? Someone should really do something about that!" before picking up her coffee cup and disappearing into the back room again
-Some of the stupidest people I have ever seen in my life. Including:
-one grandmotherly woman (I wanted to like her, but wait) who tottered up to the counter and asked to see the entire stamp collection. She wanted flowers. And not just flowers, but a particular flower, a flower that apparently was extremely difficult for the extremely slow woman behind the counter to locate, moving, as she was, at .00000002 of a kilometer per hour. After about seven minutes of stamp inspection, the woman pulled out her credit card to pay. The line, growing by the minute, sighed in relief -- but we were too soon! For some unknown reason, she took her credit card back and repeated the ENTIRE PROCESS again, starting with stamp examination and culminating in a painfully slow extraction of money from her gigantic purse, and then another 7 minutes of waiting. Meanwhile, at the other counter . . .
-Another woman, bearing a Trader Joe's bag full of packages she wanted to return, was handing them over to the woman behind the counter, by which I mean placing them, excruciatingly slowly, on the bullet-proof plastic Lazy Susan separating the customers from the postal employees. Then the post office employee slowly, ever so slowly, began typing each into the computer, and coming up with registered return receipts and insurance tabs for each one. Then, after this had gone on for about ten minutes and the woman (presumably) was about to pay, the post office employee looked at the addresses on these packages, and noticed that they were all addressed to the woman. Yes. She was sending them back to herself. "You know, these are all going to just come back to you," said the post office employee, as an audible groan erupted from the line. "You need to readdress every single one and bring them back." I had a moment of sympathy for the woman, but it quickly evaporated when she continued to stand at the counter, asking follow up questions ("What do you mean they will come back to me? But I would still like them to be registered receipt!") and insisting on buying her insurance for the packages ahead of time.
Then, just as she was sent away to do her re-addressing and I took a triumphant step forward to buy an envelope and send one item Express Mail, another woman -- heretofore lurking on the sides, waiting to bring back up some packages that she, too, had mislabeled, announced that it was her turn. I stepped aside. The line grumbled.
-FINALLY, I was called. To be honest, at that particular moment I was feeling a little sympathetic toward the woman -- after all, she had been dealing with the flowered stamp lady -- but that, too, quickly evaporated when we had the following exchange:
Me: I would like to send this express mail, and get postage for a 2-pound envelope going to New York.
Her: (Blank stare. Then, finally) So you mean you want postage for this for 2 pounds, going to New York.
Me: Yes.
Her: You know, you're going to have to come back to mail that. Anything over 13 ounces you have to come back and mail in person. You can't just drop it off in a mailbox. You have to come back.
Me: Okay, that's fine. I'll come back and drop it off.
Her: Because, you know, if it's over 13 ounces I have to ask you questions about it. You can't just drop it off and walk away. You have to wait on line and I have to ask you questions. Like, for example, is it hazardous? Or fragile?
Me: No. It's a book. It's fine. I just want to buy the postage now. I'll come back later.
Her: I'm just warning you about what you're going to have to go through. You can't just drop it off in a mailbox.
Me: Okay.
Her: (Putting postage on my express mail envelope) You know, you missed the cut off for today. It will get there in two days, guaranteed. 3pm. But you missed today's cut off.
Me: When was the cut-off?
Her: It was at three pm. You missed it.
*Side note: It was now like, 3:07. I'd been at the post office for about 20 minutes.*
Me: So, it'll get there by Thursday then.
Her: (blank stare) What's today?
Me: Tuesday.
Her: Tuesday, Wednesday, yes, Thursday. Yesterday was my day off. I have no idea what day it is. Yes, Thursday then, by 3 o'clock.
Me: Okay, that's fine.
HEr: You could still go to the main post office. There it's four o'clock. But here it's three. Because they have to come and pick it up. You missed it.
Me: Okay.
Her: Your postage for the two pounds will be $8.99. Priority Mail.
Me: I just want first class.
Her: (Another blank stare. Then) It's over 13 ounces. You can't send anything first class that's over 13 ounces. It bumps up to priority mail.
Me: Is there anything cheaper?
Her: You can do ground. Or media mail.
Me: It's a book.
Her: You didn't tell me that.
Me: It's a book.
Her: You can do parcel post then.
An interminable amount of time passes as she scans my credit card, carefully folds up my receipt, and passes my paperwork back through the slot. By this time, the line is still well out the door and the other postal worker has worked through three separate customers.
As I walked out, a man stuck all the way at the entrance looked at me and said, "What, did it take , like an hour?" I tried to make a joke or some lighthearted comment about the craziness of the post office, but instead all I could say was "Yes, yes it did," with what could only have been a crazy smile, and pushed past him into the sun.
This, my friends, is why the Soviet Union collapsed.
