The Ghost of Halloween Past

As you may have figured out, I don't have a "summer job". I -- being the naturally contrary creature that I am -- have a "Halloween job".

Now, when I say "Halloween", that doesn't mean I start working, say, October 15. I started yesterday.

It's a theatrical costume shop. This is, like, my fifth halloween working here. I have the job because, well... it was my mom's first job, and my dad's current job, and the store is owned by a close family friend... you get the idea.

But, at halloween, extra people are hired, because halloween is the big season! And I got to meet someone new, and we sat, and talked, and fought over who got to use the good pricing gun, and I told stories about Halloweens Past.

Like the guy who dressed up as Norman Bates' Mother.

Or the more memorable customers. A woman is standing there, fighting with us, and her husband, in the middle of the dressing rooms. Her husband is in a toga, and she has a packaged costume in her hand. I suddenly hear her cry out, "No! We have to match! If I go as Juliet, he has to go as Romeo. But if he goes as Caesar, then I have to go as a Pink Lady!"

The list goes on.

My personal favorite: We have all the pictures of costumes up on the wall, and they all have a number. You give us the number, and we'll pull the bag out of one of the boxes in the back. The pictures are organized very simply, by size -- "infant", "child", "adult", and "plus". Fine. So, a very petite woman comes to me, and gives me a number. I go, and grab it, to find that it's a plus-size costume. There's no way it'll fit, so I go and get the regular adult size, which might be too big for her still. And I explain that it would fit better, and point to it on the wall, as it has it's own picture. But no, she wants the plus. She takes it out of the bag, and holds it up to her body. Entirely too big. "Do you want the smaller size?" She stares at me, blankly. She stares back at the wall, horrified that "plus" did not mean it was a better costume. "You mean it's the same costume, just bigger?" She bought the smaller one.

It's like a wicker dentist's chair.

Well, I finally won out over Boo and Django.

I didn't outsmart them; It didn't take strategy; I didn't physically move them.

They got bored and left.

It's not like it's the most comfortable chair in the house, but it felt good to know that I got to sit in the wicker chaise lounge.

Le Studio.

You're wondering how the Studio looks?

Mom found lovely sheer curtains, for the windows. And what color are they? Beige. (You saw that coming, didn't you? Or, did you? Maybe you expected them to be a "fun" color? Or maybe they're all different colors? You weren't sure, were you?)

Then, Mom decided to get the wicker chaise lounge out of Nana's basement. In other words, Dad has to get it up the stairs, out of the house, and into his truck. Nana says, "oh, I'll clear a path, so he can get it around all of the stuff down there."

No. Of course not. When I say, "of course not", that means that Nana never got the chance. Dad saw that the thing had a cushion tied to it, so he hoisted it onto his back and shoulders, and dragged it up the stairs behind him.

So then? Mom decides to drag us all to Fortunoff for a new cushion. The one she liked came with a new chaise lounge, and they couldn't break up the set. The one Dad liked "looks like an awning" -- and those are her exact words. The one I liked didn't come in the right size. Fine. She picks out a cushion that we (Dad and I) don't like, but that we'll have to live with, for the sole reason that Mom's name is on the credit card.

So we finally get the wicker chaise lounge set up, with its new cushion. Dad sits down in it, to test it out. Cool, it's his chair. (The whole point of this chaise lounge was so he wouldn't have to sit on the floor when he read or did crossword puzzles.) Fine. So he gets up, and Mom sits down in it.

The very second she gets up, her beloved Django hops right into the chair and curls up dead center. She told me, flat out, "Don't you dare move my cat." Then, Boo fought him for it. They got tired of fighting; and Boo moved down and slept down at the foot.

I feel so very snubbed right now. And that, my friend, is not a happy feeling.

To make attractive, stylish, or up-to-date.

As many of you may know, I'm going to be a senior in high school, starting September 7. I'm going to be remarkably vague about this -- I'm not going to tell you who I am, or where I live (beyond "New York") because there are a lot of perverts on the internet.

But, nonetheless, I'm going to complain about school.

See, where I go to school you're here for six years: grades seven through twelve. The past five summers have ended with a small packet of papers, folded over once, in half, and stapled.

In it? The "District-Wide Homework Policy". The "welcome back" letter, at the bottom of which is a sticky tag, with your homeroom. The letter asking you to join the PTA. The flier for "College and Career Night". The letter that explains that all students entering seventh and tenth grades are required by state law to yadda yadda yadda.

What I really need to complain about is the one I mentioned first: the "Homework Policy". See, for five years -- that I know of -- it hasn't changed. They sent home the same letter every year. They only difference was the color paper it was printed on.

Let me explain how it works. It's in sections. "Policy" (explaining that there actually is one) "Purposes" (why there actually is one) "Responsibility of Parents"... and so on.

They changed it. They... they... It's not new -- it's the same old policy -- they just changed it.

They made it spiffy. That's the only way I can describe it.

One of the new "purposes" is to "Foster the worthwhile use of leisure time". Excuse me? It's not leisure time if I'm doing homework, now is it?!

Wait.

It gets better.

"The teacher should plan and instruct the students on what to do and how to do it." Isn't that why they're paid?

It's spiffy, but it's the same old packet.

The Camel has been found!

camel
Originally uploaded by Laukaisyn.

Did anyone read the post entitled "Shades of Orange?" At the bottom, I ask about the whereabouts of a certain camel, with a gatling gun mounted on his (or her) back. Apparently, it was part of the 1876 exposition.

This is the fourth comment for that post:

eureka... the camel has been found... in mothballs, but safe and secure and saved for posterity

box 18 of 30, "CAMEL MOUNTING GATLING GUN PROJECT", Accession 99-152
National Museum of American History, Office of the Director,
Subject Files, 1958-1997

Theater of the Bizarre : Gatling Guns and Camels
http://www.heliograph.com/trmgs/trmgs2/camel.shtml

Thank God for Cable News

On the subject of color-coded-alert-things...

In Dad's words: See, back in Vietnam, "Red" meant "You're being attacked". I knew a guy who was shot putting up the red sign.

The studio.

I know I mentioned the studio in a few posts a few weeks ago (scroll down to Aug. 4 and Jul. 28). Then, I stopped mentioning it. This little office in the front of our house just sort of disappeared from my blog.

Perhaps I gave you the impression that it was finished?

Wrong.

The floor is finally finished. Mom decided on a deep beige wallpaper that vaguely resembles burlap, a beige floor tile, and she chose out a beige rug. All in all, it looked really nice. It had this simple elegance to it.

Then, Dad and I haul the old office furniture outside, and she starts spray-painting it. I know what you're thinking. *She painted it beige, right?*

No. Of course not. She went and painted the bookcases and the desk fun colors. (Yes, that's how she described them).

Two bookcases are puce. The desk is federal monochrome, two more bookcases are apricot; and another bookcase and the printer-stand are yet another fun-but-unnamed shade of yellow.

So after we go to the trouble of hauling he furniture back in, we don't feel like setting the stereo back up. (Wires = bad.)

I never told you about the wires! When we had to get the desk out from the one side of the room -- this is when it was still white -- I was given the job of taking all of the wires and power cords out. Mom had twice as many power cords as there were appliances and computer peripherals on her desk. We still don't know what half of them connected to.

So, anyway, we didn't feel like sitting there, and playing the "which speaker does this go to?" game. Mister Boombox comes out to play. Mister Boombox's battery's die within the first ten minutes.The five dollar black plastic digital radio alarm clock does not go with the beige wallpaper and federal monochrome desk.

Shouldn't we be twenty years beyond this?

(Edit, Aug. 15:) I am such an idiot. The whole "playcount" thing, well, you can turn it off in the preferences, if you like. It's an option for sorting, right up there with the little star rating system. Sorry.

bigbrother
Originally uploaded by Laukaisyn.

Did anyone else know that iTunes kept a "playcount"? Was anyone else aware that they -- the ever-present "them"-- were keeping tabs on which songs you listened to, and how often?

I need you to imagine this. A teenage girl (that's me) sits down at her computer, to listen to music; some of which was downloaded and not paid for.

Am I the only one this freaks out?

My God, what a country we live in.

Okay. I have been inside the American History Museum in D.C. more times than I can count. You walk in, you look up, and you see Old Glory behind the Foucalt Pendulum, and the little sign, that told you the history of Old Glory.

Right?

No.

You walk in, you see a magnatometer, and a different flag.. It's not Old Glory. It has black smudges on it. And the little sign tells you that it's the "Pentagon Flag"... (let's see if I can get this right)... the one that was hung at the pentagon on September 12, 2001.

They do still have Old Glory on display, by the way. Just in a different exhibit.

Shades of Orange

On a less soul-baring note, the studio isn't finished, it's kind of... half-finished. We left it, and had a family road trip. Washington D.C.

It's amazing when you live in the New York Metro area. I call it the "New York Metro Area" because I live on Long Island. Now, when it's written out, that's fine, but when it's spoken, most people in this area cram it into "Lon-gisland". It sounds tacky. I simply call it "the island". But, um, there's also Staten Island, Manhatten Island, Roosevelt Island, Governer's Island, plus a few others that I'm not entirely sure about.

Anyway, I, as a New Yorker, have one slight problem with the color-terror-code-system. (Does it have a name?!)

The New York Metro Area has been at Code Orange since the system was instated. At least Jersey has seen Yellow! We haven't!

So, on the day that both New York and D.C. go onto heightened alert, we leave from New York, to drive to D.C.

You're thinking, "Well, at least you didn't fly."

It usually takes us five hours to get to D.C, six if there's traffic. We spent four hours sitting in the parking lot known as New Jersey.

Traffic was that bad.

---

I also have a quest for any one in the D.C area: in the Smithsonian, somewhere, there is, as part of a exhibit, a camel, with a machine gun on his (or her) back. It was in the Smithsonian castle, when I was little, and I was fascinated by it. Unfortunately, when we asked the lady behind the counter where "the camel with the machine guns from the 1876 exposition exhibit" was, she told us that that exhibit was dismantled "at least four years ago".

Find it.

Tell me where it is.

Using the drunk to cure the hangover

This would be a lot easier for me to explain if I could actually see you face. If I could look you in the eye, this would be a hell of a lot easier for me to do. But I can't. As far as I know, you're just a nameless, faceless entity, on the other side of my computer screen -- that's all I am to you -- but I'm going to bare my soul to you, nonetheless.

This is an explanation that has been perfected and trimmed, over the years, between various school reports, and explanations, and doctors' visits.

In the third grade, it was decided that I was an epileptic. Fine. (I have --I think-- what are called 'absence' seizures, --pronounced with a French accent-- which means you stare off into space. You are, in essence, absent. The other kind of seizure that I have -- I don't know what it's called, it is possibly the same thing -- is if I'm running, I'll just, like, keep running.) As long as I took the little orange pills, I wouldn't have any seizures. I was, what, eight? Nine? What did I know from side affects?

(I know, without the inflection of voice, that probably sounds bitter. But, it's not. That's just explanation. I need to explain that to get to another part of the story.)

I was on it for two years. Low white blood cell count; Liver enlargement; Lack of appetite; and so on.

So, fifth grade, I'm weaned off the drugs, and I start acupuncture to control the seizures.

There is an anecdote to all of this: When the Acupuncture clinic closed, and moved to a bigger building, they were closed for six weeks. I usually get needles stuck in me on a weekly basis. So, my last truly memorable seizure -- drumroll please! -- I ran head-long into a lawnchair. And not one of those happy plastic ones, either. An old, nasty metal one. Had stitches in my face for like two weeks. And then, the day after I got the stitches out? I run into a tree. Head-on. Break my nose.

Needless to say, I'm not allowed to do very much in gym, or play sports, or anything.

Skip foreward the tenth grade: Fire in one of the Art rooms. Massive fire. Smoke damage. When they clean it up, they use scented soaps and they scatter scented air fresheners throughout the school. (Factoid: Asthma and allergies have increased exponentially, linked to the scented stuff used after the fire.)

Later in the tenth grade, a different doctor declares that I'm not an epileptic; I'm "High-functioning P.D.D." with seizure profile. (PDD, by the way, stands for "Pervasive Developmental Disorder", and is, as it has been explained to me, something like autism).

Okay. Fast foreward to eleventh grade. Stress, allergies, and blinding headaches that we attribute to sinusitis. We go to see an ENT, who says I need surgery, because my septum, and nasal passages are small, and if anything gets inflamed, it presses against anything else. Plus, he'll give me a nose job. Second opinion ENT says, well, first guy didn't notice that my septum isn't the problem, it's the Turbinates. They need to be courterized. (I think that's how you spell it. I'm not sure.) Anyway, second ENT also say that he wants a neurological referral before he touches me.

This summer. The first doctor that I mentioned -- the pediatric neurologist that diagnosed me with epilepsy -- says that it's not sinus, that I may have migraines, calls for a new EEG, (electroencephalogram) and prescribes an anti-migraine/seizure medication for me. Side effects: if you're not used to it, at first, you feel tired, and, actually, drunk.

That's where the joke behind the title of this post comes from. My mom says I'm an excellent drunk. My dad says that I'll never be able to drink ('cause you can't, when you have any kind of major neurological things like me), but this is what drunk feels like. My mom comments that I don't even need a hangover. And I, being the 'excellent drunk that I am, say that the migraines were there own form of hangover.

Yeah.