Guess my name

A few weeks ago I was in LA, being a young professional, eating Pop Chips, and taking a lot of cab rides. And the cab rides were sort of the worst.

I thought the very worst ride ended with my driver punching the dashboard when I told him I didn't have cash, then fumbling with a credit card machine while screaming "Get away from here, I don't accept your kind!" at a group of teenagers banging on the windows. But then it actually ended with my realizing I had given him the wrong address and was pretty lost, so I wandered around a while before standing in front of an out-of-business menorah store for a half hour because it seemed like the safest area.



My trick for deciding if something is dangerous is imagining how the worst-case scenario would look in the newspaper and "Girl Robbed Blind by Wrong Sort of Teenagers in Front of Out-Of-Business Menorah Store" sounds like a horrible newspaper headline so I knew I was safe. Also the capitalization is all wrong in that, I faked sick the day we had a headline capitalization test in middle school and never looked back. In French you only capitalize the first word which in my opinion makes it a strong contender for Best Language or Second best language, depending on how you capitalize and what your favorite language is.

That's a long way of saying that I was excited when my friend told me about a new sort of cab service where you sign up on your phone and it charges directly to your card. No cash involved! No finding one, they come to you! I won't tell you the name because I don't want to buzz-market it, but believe me, it is great. It is extremely fancy.

These cabs meet you wherever your smartphone is in less than five minutes. All black on the outside, all back on the inside, enough legroom for the lovechild of a spider and an octopus which also happens to be my new greatest fear. My driver was a composed man in his sixties wearing a driving cap - he ran through all the benefits of the service in what sounded to me like a fake accent. I was never going to spend another night alone in the dark trying to remember the story behind Hannukah and I was pretty excited.

"I LOVE this!" I said.

Without missing a beat he adjusted the rearview mirror so he could make eye contact.

"And we love you, Brooke."

Which brings me to the one bad thing about this cab service: apparently the drivers know your first name. And they're excited about it. I started alternating between pretending he knew my name because he was my professional chauffeur and trying to forget the whole thing had happened but switching back and forth between the two made me carsick. Luckily he kept the conversation going.

"It pays great, Mondays are the slowest but this Monday I still made $500."

"You're kidding!"

"Well, actually I made $450, but it's close to $500 and I thought it would be easier to just round up."

"Oh believe me," I said. "I tell lies like that all the time."

He laughed. "I like you, Brooke. You're my kind of girl."

At this point he realized the street he had been taking to my hotel was a dead end, and he started to turn around. But the best thing about paying for cabs with your phone is you can just suddenly yell "This is well within walking distance!" and jump out of the car when you want your ride to end. And I suddenly did.

And then when I got back to my hotel room I ate some more Pop Chips, because they're a delicious low-calorie snack.

I ruined three notebooks this afternoon.

It rained really hard in Portland today.

The sort of rain where when you come inside you need to change your shoes and your pants, and also your socks, and also your underwear.

I took it as a challenge to get as soaked as possible, and walked around for an hour in the sort of rain where after a while the raindrops aren't making you any wetter, you're just spinning your rain wheels and you might as well be swimming.

And when I came inside I took my gray Converses off and they were so dark I thought they were my black ones.

Some deep thoughts here.

Other thoughts include thoughts about small warm places, like forts, and caves with deers in them, and the Borrowers, and why all of the places I like that are small and warm are things I liked when I was small. When I was small my family would get extremely competitive about snow fort building, we saw a documentary on people living in Antarctica and used their technique of blowing up a dozen garbage bags and piling snow over them, then popping the bags to make a fort more fit for survivalists than suburbists. The forts never collapsed on me, but I have memories of one collapsing on me because I've seen so many movies where forts collapse. Sometimes I wonder how many of my memories are real and how many are made up and whether I've ever seen snow in my life.

Last year in LA the rain was a special occasion and people put on Bean Boots at any sign of moisture, and in this sentence a sign of moisture includes an especially good lotion. Here in Portland, fall asleep during the rain and you won't miss anything - it's going to rain again tomorrow, they say. How great is that. I want to high-five everyone else walking around in wet underwear because WE ARE SO LUCKY GUYS.

I'm going to write this down and put it in a waterproof container and look at it in six months to remind me, when it's still raining, that it rained really hard in Portland today, and I loved it.

Everywhere ever

Not sure why I’m making so many charts like this lately but I can tell you they’re extremely important and useful.

the email equivalent of watching a kitten fall down a flight of stairs.

A cruel twist of fate caused me to meet my favorite nine-year-old in the world just before I left LA, and we only got to hang out once. When I emailed her parents to tell them I was moving her mom emailed me back a reply of congratulations that ended with this:


(p.s. I'm going to wait a couple of days to tell [most beautiful name ever spoken] since it's her birthday tomorrow...after I tell her I'll let you know, and then would you mind sending her a little email to say goodbye? I know you didn't spend a lot of time together, but she had such a great time - you really made an impression on her! Thanks so much.)


Dear favorite newly-ten-year-old in the world, please convince your family to move to Portland, this week if possible. We can climb trees and never brush our hair and I just found a new kind of Skittles that will change everything you think you know about candy.

three signs it's time to start packing

1. The other night when I went to lie down my bed broke in pieces.

2. After 10 months of consistently remembering to shut my blinds when I got dressed, I've started just mouthing "enjoy it while you can" to my neighbors when I forget.

3. My flight is in two days.

You're sure to enjoy your stay!

Today I had the worst realization. I gave a full tour of my French studio last year, but in nine months in my new apartment I haven't really shown you much of it.

To remedy the situation I'm giving out a limited time offer for a FREE three-nights-stay to those lucky readers in the Los Angeles area! Here are only MOST of the amenities you'll enjoy if you choose Brooke's Apartment and Suites!

Broken locks provide visitors round-the-clock access!


 Continental breakfast almost every single day!

Two towels! Usually one is wet so just grab the dry one. Easy enough to remember!


Due to a recent increase in the price of yogurt we do not provide cable at this time. But help yourself to our collection of a Chenguin dvd and a coupon from Starbucks for a free download of a Planet Earth episode!


Spa area!


Inspirational art!


And don't forget the Electronics Lounge is free to all guests!


Limited time offer, only the first 1,000 guests will be accepted. Not recommended for persons afraid of spiders, hummus, or police cars. Brooke's Apartment and Suites WILL NOT be held legally responsible if you are awoken in the middle of the night by the next-door-neighbors going at it.

And the screaming is louder.

My next-door neighbor who taught the extremely unpopular night class "How to calm a screaming baby" moved out a few weeks ago.

Fortunately my post-graduate education continues, with the new tenants' complimentary evening course: "How to make a baby."

Coincidentally, it also involves a lot of screaming.

you're welcome, plants I didn't buy

My freshman year of college, my humanities professor recommended that we all get potted plants. It wasn't really relevant to Humanities. But if the plant is thriving, that means things are under control enough that you're watering it regularly. If it's dead, things aren't good.

Last week I went to the grocery store and bought groceries, and this morning I realized they're all still here, because I've been to busy to make myself any food all week. I think that's a good indicator of whether things are under control.

good luck and good luggage

Off my flight to LA (is this relevant?) All of the checked bags got lost/late/misrouted. I'd opted for a Hartmann Tweed duffel instead of a checked bag so the checked bag problem didn't concern me, but was feeling bad for everyone else on my flight since we'd already been delayed an hour, and LAX has that screening where they look at you naked instead of going through a metal detector, but for some reason you still have to take your belt off.



As I was walking away a white male (is this relevant) asked me "Hey do you know where our bags are?"

"No, I just have a carry-on." I shrugged my shoulder with my Hartmann Tweed on it and then, because I have a curiosity that rivals that of any cat I know (I know zero because I'm allergic to cats, is this relevant?) I asked, "Is there a problem with the bags?" As soon as the word "bags" was out of my mouth I knew the Minnesoootan accent had come out too strong but I soldiered on, "Did they get sent to the wrong place?"

"Well..." he said. "Well I've had a lot to drink."

Is this relevant? He seemed to think he had answered my question. I wished him good luck.

"AND. GOOD. LUCKS. TO. YOU." he answered too loudly, with emphasis on every word.

After I finished thinking of vocabulary I can use instead of bag (luggage, suitcase, personal items) my Hartwman Tweed, my lucks and I walked toward my Los Angeles apartment where the luckiest girl in the world lives. Can I stockpile those lucks for later? Collect a few more unnessecary lucks and them go buy a lottery ticket or move to Ireland or whatever lucky people do? Ragin'.

I hope there's not a test

A couple months ago I enrolled in a night class my neighbor teaches, entitled "Things that do not work to calm a screaming baby." I had never been super eager to learn these skills, but the course comes with an apartment, which is something I was looking for anyway. Here are my notes from last night.

shut up
be quiet already
stop it already
shut up already
stop it
quiet
shut up
quiet
shut up
be quiet
quiet
shut up
AAAAAAAAAAAA
shut up
I can't take it anymore!
stop crying
stop it
shut up already
you know better than that
calm down
shut up
stop acting like a crazy person!

not all girls can cook

You know you've lived in Southern California long enough when you start drinking soymilk instead of regular milk for absolutely no reason. And I do. I'm not ashamed of it and at the same time I am very ashamed.

My diet consists mostly of soymilk, edamame, coconut water, Greek yogurt, organic dried mangoes, homemade gluten-free granola, and spinach leaves. Eighteen-year old Brooke hates me. Actually every age of Brooke except twenty-four hates me.

Actually twenty-four-year-old Brooke hates me as well. But it's the purest, most organic soy-hate. It costs three times as much and only stays fresh for two days. Every time I shake my fist with hatred, proceeds go to an attractive turtle in the Galapagos Islands.

The next two pictures were taken while listening to this so they'll probably look best if looked at while listening to it as well.





Macaroni and cheese with chocolate milk instead of regular: good idea or bad?

 
At least I still eat Kraft macaroni and cheese? Sorry attractive turtles. But I just buy it so I can mix that orange "cheese" sauce with chocolate soymilk and gluten-free brown rice pasta. Sorry people trying to respect me.

my computer doesn't think saggy is a word.

Last week at the grocery store the lines were a nightmare - about fifteen minutes long, and the worst sort of fifteen minutes, where you get stuck behind a lady buying a decade's worth of shampoo because there was a newspaper special. But I struck gold in aisle three. Even though it wasn't labeled "Express" or "No Shampoo-Hoarders," the only person in front of me was an old man covered in tattoos, who I guess no one wanted to stand behind.

A lot of my friends have awesome-looking tattoos, and given the permanence of tattoos I'm assuming they'll still have them when they're old. People always say "oh you think tattoos look cool, wait until you're old and saggy and covered in tattoos - what will your grandchildren say?

Here's the thing about that.

A lot of my friends have awesome-looking butts.

Which will also become saggy. A lot of my friends have awesome-looking hair, which will either turn white and inexplicably short and fluffy, or just disappear. And did you know that your nose keeps growing your entire life? According to my albeit limited research, none of these things are caused by tattoos. You can get old and saggy with tattoos, or old and saggy without them. And I don't know about you, but I don't much care what my grandchildren have to say. I'm going to have things to tell them.

I'll use this paragraph to mention that I don't have any tattoos and don't plan on ever getting any. Yet I will still age.

Tattoos when you're old just mean that when you were younger you were awesome. Or I guess this guy could have gotten them last week. He didn't tell me. He did tell me that the groceries I was purchasing were all available at the dollar store a couple blocks over for just a dollar. I thanked him, and then hid my shame with pretend fixation on a National Enquirer cover. It said Demi Moore was trying to commit suicide. I wonder if Demi Moore ever thinks "Wonder what the National Enquirer is saying about me!" Probably not.



Then I walked my overpriced groceries next door to the drugstore to get band-aids.

Unnecessary detail coming up: I needed them because I have a scab the size of North Carolina right between my eyes, that would have healed weeks ago if I could stop touching it. I've been considering a dog cone or constantly wearing mittens, but then I thought of band-aids, and decided to pick some up a the drugstore.

For reasons I no longer remember I ended up in the first aid aisle, absentmindedly picking up all of the creams and reading the labels. I jumped when I heard a voice behind me.

"If you're looking for hydrocortisone don't waste money on the name brand! Look on the back - they've all got the same ingredients!" The man who owned the voice picked up a box and deftly flipped it around "This one's 3%, cheap, perfect, that's what I want!" and threw it confidently in a basket already filled with medications.

This is actually one of my favorite topics, so I jumped right in. "It's all a marketing game," I explained. "I bet you anything there's just one big factory out there making one kind of cream, and all the companies need to do is decide how they're going to package it and market it to make the most profit."

He liked this idea but topped it: "I got bitten by a poisonous spider last night and now my body is filled with its venom." I asked whether it had been in his house or whether he had been out in the wilderness, and crossed my fingers and silently chanted please say wilderness please say wilderness please say wilderness please say "Right in my own home!" he answered and the drugstore changed the radio from oldies to sinister without missing a beat. "It bit me while I was sleeping. You don't like thinking about THAT when you go to bed at night."

I can definitely work with the topic "Things you don't like to think about at night" and specifically remembered a youtube video I'd seen where someone put a vibrating machine in an old house. The vibrations bothered the spiders who were hiding unseen in the thick hollow walls and came pouring out of air vents and cracks by the thousands.

But I was obviously playing way out of my league and couldn't imagine the stories this guy would tell to top my spiders-in-the-walls video, so I bit my tongue. The momentary pain reminded me why I was there, and I picked up a box of bandages.

"Ah, Band-aids!" (what a great way to start a sentence!) "I buy a lot of those." he continued. He explained that he was 62 and bruised very easily, and pointed out a large raisin-colored spot on the back of his hand. "I'll just be doing things..." (he half-heartedly mimed reaching for a box of band-aids) and if my hand gets tapped it will bruise." I asked if band-aids helped prevent bruises - as soon as I said it the idea seemed stupid, but I couldn't think of any other reason.

"No, I wear them to cover my bruises when I go out, because I don't like people having to look at them." He looked down sadly at his hand, and the excitement of talking about spiders and how marketers were screwing with us was gone. My raisin-friend sighed. "I hope that doesn't happen to you when you're older."

Something about a man hoping a complete stranger would be able to avoid all the inevitable pitfalls of age, just because she had interesting opinions on pharmaceutical products and a healthy respect for spiders was so sweet to me that I couldn't think of a better response besides something stupid like "It happens to everyone." Would you hope the same thing for someone so clueless and naive? I remember when I was 15 my younger sisters would always tell me how disgusting my pubescent self was. "You're so gross! You're covered in spots!" and I would think just you wait. Just. You. Wait. The point is I'm not half as good as this man is.



And then I wished my scab were twice as big, because even though that would make it so large it would obscure my vision, it could remind him that these things don't matter. I had a scab the size of a state known for its fantastic wood furniture right in the middle of my face, and now that I'm at home typing I have an off-brand band-aid in the middle of my face, and at the end of the day that is not the most important thing about me. It's a shame that people see our bruises and our tattoos and our horrible self-infliced facial disfigurations before they have time to ask us what we know about spiders or what we're most scared of or what our favorite aisle in the drugstore is. Everyone has things they're not proud of about the way people see them.

And according to most people, all of these things are caused by tattoos.

Hello everyone who skipped to the bottom. Here is a song by the Magnetic Fields. If you're waiting for some water to boil you might want to watch that instead of the visuals in this video.



And here is me with a band-aid on my face. You probably don't get the reference.

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.

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.

and he had a son, his name was Fred Astaire, and boy could he dance!

Today while I was waiting for my laundry at the laundromat, a seemingly well-composed homeless woman cornered me, and managed to talk to me for ten minutes about her experiences in Florida and the dancing abilities of her favorite celebrities before I could really get away.


Before she showed up the morning had already been reminding me of France, because after I started the laundry machine it turned out the door hadn't been shut properly or was broken, and water starting shooting out. The only people around were two sweet Mexican women, and when "Excuse me - sorry to bother you but do either of you know if these machines have a stop button?" was met with blank stares I said "Stop!" and pointed to the spectacle that was my washing machine. They didn't know what to do either, but we all ran around yelling "STOP!" and banging on the machine, and surprisingly that worked.

Since the only language barrier in France was articulating really complex emotions and cultural things, the inability to talk communicate with anyone in the laundromat seemed even more French than France did. It was the France that could have been.

Anyway, once this homeless woman started chatting me up, I was happy at first, because it reminded me of the thousands of people in Marseille that would randomly come up to me and just want to talk for hours. No matter where you were, you could always count on having a five-minute conversation with a stranger. But there were two depressing differences.

1. This woman clearly had a drug problem.

2. She never stopped for breath. People in Marseille are chatty, but they aren't talking about themselves. They want to know how you're doing. "What's your name? What are you studying? You have beautiful hair, you look Italian. Have you been to Italy? You should go. Where have you been? Tell me all about it!"

Nice try Los Angeles. But Marseille's crazy people have so much more heart than yours do.

After I had finally shaken her, I got excited because I know the Spanish word for "crazy" and I thought I could show it off to my new laundromat friends. But I couldn't find them. Mama Mia! My Spanish has a long way to go.

that's a dog browsing a department store, completely unsupervised

If you move often the thing you miss the most is the way it feels to live somewhere for a year. After a year you don't have bruises from running into doorways and furniture in your apartment (I'm really clumsy) and you could almost do everything with your eyes closed because your hand has memorized the exact height of your shelf and the snooze button on your alarm clock and how the fridge opens.

The fridge at my new apartment opens on the opposite side you'd think it would, and every time I try and open it I spend a quarter of a second thinking "What the heck is wrong with this thing. How am I supposed to get the milk out of it? This isn't right, this isn't my fridge, this isn't my home."

Right now my home is Marseille. The things I miss most about Marseille lately is the width of the sidewalk and the amount of sunlight and the whiteness of the buildings and redness of the rooftops. It took me a year to memorize how far from the curb to walk and how much to squint, and the peach-tint of every day, iced with a layer of Marseille-blue sky. I miss knowing the exact price of my staple foods at the grocery store. I miss the shade of orange my curtains were. I miss knowing where to hold my breath because it smelled bad. Three steps past the antique book store smells like dead rats. Twelve steps past the macaron shop smells like urine. These are constants. These things never change. Unless you move to the other side of the world.



Maybe in a few months Los Angeles will be home, but right now it isn't, and even though I love my family, neither is Minnesota. Right now I'm a confused girl wandering lost around a grocery store full of strangely-priced food, wondering if she's going to be homesick for the rest of her life.

The most exhilarating part of my mornings and afternoons is The Overpass.

It's halfway between my apartment and my office - an empty, dark, tunnel decked out with bright yellow signs that read "DANGER! BEES!" and beneath that PELIGRO! ABEJAS!

I don't know about you, but to me there's nothing like an upside-down exclamation point to make you ask WHAT BEES? What are you freaking talking about? Is this thing just packed with bees? Why so many signs? Are you breeding them with a chemical that makes them super angry? Does the tunnel smell like honey?

And there's nothing like a honey-scented, psychotic-bee-packed tunnel to get me biking sixty miles an hour. I fly through that thing like a bee that smells dinner. No, faster. Just a hair faster.

tell me your favorite box pun in the comments

If you thought no "apartment tour" could be more depressing than my last one, I hope you're sitting down. Because you're going to be proven wrong, and because I don't have any furniture for you to sit down on when that happens. Scoot you chair this way for a tour of Brooke's LA room.



TA-DAA the bed. I planned on buying a mattress this week but LA has been an exercise in lowered expectations. The higher the cost of a mattress, the more camping mattresses become surprisingly comfortable. Cardboard boxes work surprisingly well as nightstands.

And what do you know, they also work surprisingly well as desks.



If you love janky things as much as I do, you're probably thinking "What on earth is that nasty thing hanging from the ceiling in these pictures?" Actually everyone's probably thinking that.

The other day I got CRAF-TY (singing voice) and decided to try and make a chandelier out of a plastic bowl and a hawaiian lei, both from the dollar store. I failed, and instead came up with something that looks like a prop from a horror movie about a children's birthday party. Luckily that fits in seamlessly with the theme of the entire room.



More vanity photos. Fish lamp:



The only semi-age-appropriate wall:



And my mug that says "Emily's Bat Mitzvah" on the back:



That's my room in LA. Thanks for stopping by. And please leave you chair here on your way out.