why I run fast

Yesterday on my neighbors' (real) lawn there were no fewer than 100 huge black crows, just staring at me as I sprinted by.

Crows here are about the size of dogs here.

how I manage to embarrass myself before seven am

Last night one of the girls I babysit (a lot of people have been asking if it's cool or not cool for 24-year-old college graduates to babysit so I'll clear this up right now: it's very cool.) asked if I would read her a bedtime story. Since I love reading and since I was pretty exhausted from an hour pretending to be a money-laundering vegetarian FBI agent who worked at a five-star restaurant, I said I would read any book she wanted.

So she she pulled out the big guns and grabbed High School Musical: Our Yearbook!. Usually when asked to read a book this terrible to a child, I'll make up my own improved story that loosely follows the pictures. But there was something so train-wreck fascinating about a multiple-chapter book that followed a Disney movie so religiously that I read every single word to her. With voices. This isn't the embarrassing part yet.


This is not the cover but it looks just as bad.

Then last night I dreamed the entire plot of High School Musical: Our Yearbook!. For those of you who haven't read the fabulous book or seen the movie it's supposedly based on, Troy (played by Zack Efron) couldn't decide whether or not he wanted to try out for the musical, because theater rehearsal would really cramp his style when he should be practicing basketball (Go Wildcats!) and it would really be such a devastating loss to the world of theater and the world of sports if he quit either, and if you're wondering if I'm at the embarrassing part yet, I'm not.

When my alarm went off, I HIT SNOOZE just so I could go back to sleep and see if Troy would follow his heart and try out for the musical.

And that's how you embarrass yourself before seven am.

see people they don't understand

What if there were a prostitute that was really good at magic tricks? And she would say "Is THIS your card?" and she would light the deck on fire and pull your card out of the pile of ashes, completely intact, but people would just yell "Take your clothes off!"

It would be too bad because I bet they're really good magic tricks, she's just got the wrong audience.

is there grass in heaven?

Here's a tour very few people have been on: let's visit the disturbed mind of the guy who was evicted from my apartment before I moved in.



The one who scratched his genius musings into the walls of my bedroom.



Sometimes I wonder if they're some sort of code, that if I deciphered would lead me to a buried treasure.



Who knows what sort of things he might have stashed.



We owe the fact that we have brand-new carpeting to him. And I cover the creepiest scratches with my own notes. Like this one for my roommate that will make you glad you're not my roommate:



I changed the name of the place I ran to because it's the best route and I don't want it to get crowded. With stalkers who will tie me to train tracks.

karma police

What if every time something good happened to you, something bad happened to someone else?

I know it's the plot of countless television shows but here is something almost as cheesy: the other day I was out with friends and smelled burning, and I knew it meant I had left my hair straightener turned on at home. I knew this because I actually don't have a sense of smell, and only have phantom smells when I'm stressed, when someone asks me to smell something and my brain invents what it might smell like, and in this case when I'm using my sixth sense.

I don't believe in many magical things, even though I'm curious about aliens and would love to hear any ghost stories if you know any. But I do believe in my simultaneous inability to smell the chicken I'm eating and ability to smell my apartment burning down a city over, because that is not magic that is just what happens.

When I got home everything was hot but nothing was on fire yet, so I said a quick prayer to the gods of hair appliances, turned off my straightener, and forgot about the whole thing. Until today when THREE fire trucks rushed down my street because an apartment a few blocks over was on fire. I think I used up all the good luck our neighborhood had and now we're fresh out.

Please tell me about any personal experiences you've had with ghosts in the comments.

Also, if you know any names of gods of hair appliances I would love to hear them. The only ones I can remember are Chi, the all-powerful god of volume and Conair, the benevolent goddess of shine. I really should have studied more in high school, you never know when these things are going to come up.



Big hair is the worst. If the god of volume demanded an offering I'd give him a moldy piece of toast with Marmite smeared on it.

who's cool now?

Here's what I usually look like on my way to work.



I know what you're thinking, "How could she possibly improve on this?" Think no longer:



This is a dramatization of how it would look if my tricked-out helmet somehow hit me in the face. Check out that lightning bolt!

Now maybe fewer children will mock me mercilessly. I would say type that with so much more confidence if this morning two people hadn't yelled "Hey nice helmet, loser!" from the side of the road. Do you not see these lightning bolts? I am made for speed.

I know I'm obnoxious

It can only be annoying to hear this but, my job is so fun that Fridays don't have the sparkle they used to. Proof: garbage pickup is on Fridays and I remember to take the trash to the curb about once every four weeks.

I still love weekends though, because when I don't have time to do laundry no one has a good week, and because all four of the local animal shelters have adoption events on Saturdays. There's nothing like hitting those up back to back to back to back in a clean shirt.

What is your favorite day? Does it involve homeless dogs?

next time I'll just take my chances

Is it safe to assume that a friendly, grungy, slightly-intoxicated man camped out at a picnic table in front of a grocery store is homeless? Today I almost bought a sandwich for a gentleman that fit this description, but then I realized I wasn't sure he was homeless, and he hadn't done anything to solicit food donations. In fact maybe he had just eaten a HUGE meal, and was so exhausted from the sheer quantity of food he had just passed out on a picnic table in front of Vons, and the idea of a sandwich would just be insane and disgusting to him?

After typing that I realize how ridiculous it is, and I should have just bought the sandwich.

But, to the countless homeless people who read my blog:
Even if you're too intoxicated to write a sign or you don't want to seem desperate - take it from a girl who stood in line at a homeless shelter for thirty minutes because she thought it was an indie rock concert - subtlety is not always the best option.

And to my non-homeless readers who have been given a sandwich by a well-meaning stranger:
Nothing I've worn has ever gotten me a free sandwich, so you must be doing something right.


Not a super relevant photo but I really need to start adding more pictures to my blog. This was one of my top ten meals in Marseille - my sister and I ate outside at a sidewalk café on one of the sunniest most beautiful days of the year. Then we went swimming in the sea. Today I went to Vons. La-di-da.

if Marseille were a state, they would be its state bird.

TIME MACHINE POST

It was pouring today, and in a concious effort not to notice the waterlogged newspapers floating over soggy bagettes and liquid dog waste on the ground, I noticed that all of the pigeons had disappeared. Where do they go?

And they're missing out. Because seeing a pigeon in the rain is probably the only time I would feed it.

People fall into three groups: pigeons-lovers, pigeon-dislikers, and pigeon-haters.

Pigeon-lovers might be more gross than pigeons themselves. I don't know what is wrong with these people, but they often buy an entire baguette at lunch just to feed to those disgusting animals. I can only assume they were orphaned and raised by birds, or are retired pilots. Hey you people - I have seen a pigeon eat a plastic drinking straw. You do not need to buy them baguettes.

Pigeon-haters often call them rats with wings. And I think that's going too far. Because if there's one thing Marseille has more of than pigeons, it's rats. Rats go in your house. And when they get run over by cars, their bodies flatten but rigor mortis makes their tails stand straight up.

So there's a vote for pigeons I guess.

Changes color in sun!

TIME MACHINE POST

Look out world - it's April, it's sunny, and my skin is changing color. And there are four hundred French children that have four hundred questions about it.

This isn't the first time my genetics have fascinated French children. I have a freckle on my arm that kindergarteners try to lick for good luck. I have done everything in my power to discourage this, including wearing sweaters in extreme heat, and doing a lot of dancing where my arms are above my head, but I think the fact that it's hard to get to makes it even luckier.

Anyway, color-changing skin freaks people here out.



Alright, admittedly it's kind of freaking me out too.

French people do not seem to tan. They start out dark, or they tan very slowly, or they don't consider 80 degrees warm enough and constant sunlight sunny enough for skin to get darker.

Are you wearing make-up?
Have you been on vacation?
BEACH? (This one was in English! Accompanied by putting both his hands behind his head and smiling happily.)
Oh, you've put on some tanning cream?
The fake tan looks great on you!

Why is my skin changing color? Because we live on the Mediterranean. The weather here is pretty-close-to-literally tropical. No one believes me until I show them my watch tanline. Then they say "Wow!" which means "So she isn't lying, she's just some freak of nature."

And yes, that makes licking me even more enticing.