One and Done #10

Hey. It’s One and Done Sunday.

Also, it’s Christmas.

One and Done Sunday is supposed to be nice and easy. One picture, and five links that are worth your time.

However, since I’ve been offline for like three weeks, I’ve only read two things and they’re not blogs. They’re articles that CC sent me links to, one with the email subject of “ewwwww” and the other with a subject of “EWWWWWWWWW!”.

The first is an article in Wired about how you can catch the Bubonic Plague from letting your dog sleep in your bed.

The second is an article on Yahoo connecting deaths from brain-eating amoeba to neti pot use with tap water.

The first year the kids lived with us I went on antibiotics five times for sinus & respiratory infections, including a bout with bronchitis that had me largely bedridden for a month with a fever that reached 104 degrees more than once. Then I found a great ENT and a neti pot. They changed my life.

My awesome ENT suggested that I use the pre-made saline solution and heat it in the microwave, rather than making it up with tap water and the salt packets. He said it would be more effective. That just seemed like extra steps to me, so I did not heed his advice and used hot tap water from the bathroom with the salt packets. After all, he said the pre-made solution was “more effective”. AT NO TIME did he mention the phrase, “brain-eating amoeba” in association with tap water. This seems to me a severe oversight on his part, and I may be reconsidering his awesomeness.

A word to doctors: if you want to get your patients’ attention, just use that phrase, “brain-eating amoeba”.

I’m sure the phrase, “flesh-eating bacteria” will have a similar effect.

As for the other links. . . uhhh. . . let’s see here. Well, Erin from Momfog is consistently kicking my ass on Words With Friends and she scored this one word on me that was worth 141 points. I was simultaneously impressed and humiliated. That has nothing to do with anything she posted but I like her blog. Oh, also, if you got a Kindle for Christmas, you should download Elena Aitken’s book Unexpected Gifts because it’s fun and sexy and every Kindle needs some o’ that.

If you wrote or read a post you want to share, put a link in the comments section below. Because I don’t really think that the Black Death and brain-eating amoeba are very festive links to put up at holiday time and my mom might get mad at me about that.

Here’s a slideshow of some pictures I took in the city this week.

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Why #5 Wants a Fake ID (a Christmas post with pictures)

CC and #1 got up early on Sunday, December 11 and drove up a mountain to a place where you can cut your own Christmas tree.

All around the Christmas tree farm are posted signs that read No pets allowed. We have all kinds of wildlife in New Jersey. This is the only place besides a zoo that I’ve ever seen a bear. Not to mention the Jersey Devil (in fact, I’ve never seen one of those in a zoo. Hey, there’s an X-Files episode about that). One might think ahead about these things and know that when going up a mountain to chainsaw down a tree, it may be a good idea to leave your pets at home.

Or not.

At the Christmas tree farm on top of the mountain, the SUV in front of CC and #1 stops at the caretaker.

Yuppies in SUV: Hey, we have our golden retriever. Is it okay if he comes with us?

Caretaker, rolling his eyes: Keep him on a short leash, look out for animals and don’t let him pee on the trees.

CC stops at the caretaker: So I brought my mountain lion. . .

They came back with a truly perfect Christmas tree and the house smells all good and piney and Christmasy. I bet you thought this was the part where I tell you about how the yuppies with the golden retriever got attacked by bears and carried off by the Jersey Devil. Yeah, that didn’t happen.

We go to work decorating.

#5 (running back from the tree to get another ornament): Hey. Can you get a job decorating Christmas Trees?

Me: You mean me, personally? Or do you mean you?

#5 (runs to tree with ornament): I mean me!

Me: When you’re older.

#5: Awwww. (runs back for another ornament) Hey.

Me: What.

#5: Can you get me a birth certificate that says I’m older so I can get a job decorating Christmas Trees?

Me: Dude. I am not getting you a fake ID so you can get a job decorating Christmas Trees.

#5 (runs to tree, places ornament, runs back for another): Well. When you put it like that, it does sound extremely illegal.

The tree looks fantastic when we’re done. And then, inexplicably, all the white lights go out. Not the colored ones. Just the four strands of white. I have to confess that troubleshooting Christmas lights is not high on my priority list. The reason for this is that I spent the past five Christmases doing exactly that. I kept all the stupid fuses and extra bulbs because I figure, hey, I’m technically an electrician and I should just fix these.

Except that they’re all made in China by little girls who are forced to work on their birthdays and don’t celebrate Christmas anyway and so they have the last laugh by making it, frankly, not that simple. So I don’t troubleshoot lights anymore. I buy new ones.

I was fully prepared to strip all the ornaments and non-working lights and reload the tree with working lights and redecorate it. But I went to four stores and nobody had any lights left. Well, no lights that I would use: seizure-inducing strobing color LED’s, gold lights on a gold cable, three five-foot strands of blue. I should have known the stores here would be cleaned out. This is suburban New Jersey and in my neighborhood, on Thanksgiving Day people replace their giant inflatable yard turkeys with giant inflatable santa-hatted penguins, and then wrap lights around their roofs, bushes, pillars, lamp posts and bomb shelter doors. All lights were gone by the time December 1 rolled around. Ah well.

I’d like to share some pictures with you.

Secaucus Junction, where I catch my train in to work, is a post unto itself. Suffice it to say for now that it is a great representation of corruption in my fair state, and one of the very unimportant results is that it has no electrical outlets. They decorate and can’t light anything up. They are afraid to pick a side in their decorating too, which is odd, because around here pretty much every town center throws up at bare minimum a Christmas tree and a Menorah. In Secaucus they have these:

Donuts? Spare tires?

Oh.

They’re so. . .~~festive~~ green. And red. And unlit. As if somehow by not lighting them, they become non-offensive. Also, they’re fake.

From one extreme to the other, here’s a house in my neighborhood.

Sorry it’s blurry, but there’s a damn lot of blinkity-blink happening here and I was trying not to look like a stalker standing on the street taking pictures. Though really, they’re asking for it.

Here’s the poor tastefully decorated house next to it:

I think you need a closer look.

If you need me, I’ll be in the bathroom, bleaching my eyeballs. Merry Christmas.

Oh, there you are!

CC mentioned to me on our way in to work the other day that I needed to put a post up explaining myself and my absence. As if somehow I were unaware that I haven’t posted on this blog, Facebook and Twitter for like three weeks now.

He said I needed to let the people who follow my blog know what’s going on. Apparently both of you are worried about me.

So here’s a story:

I go in to the city early one day to hit a yoga class before work. I drop my bags at my work area and go into the bathroom. Remember that I work in a theater.

The bathroom is in the basement and is, as my sister would call it, a one-butt bathroom. I d0 what I need to do, wash up and go to leave. I grab the doorknob, pop the lock and turn.

The doorknob spins in my hand. Loosely. Ineffectively. I would go so far as to call it impotent and flaccid, even though it’s a doorknob. The doorknob isn’t doing a goddamn thing. The door is still closed, and, somehow, still locked, even with a freely spinning doorknob.

Okay, I think, no biggie. I’ve been locked in far worse bathrooms than this. Plus, I’m a stagehand. Oh, wait. All my tools are at my work area. Not in here with me. As is my cell phone. Crap.

So I dig around the bathroom and find. . . a roll of paper towels. That’s it. No pipe wrench. No random screwdriver. Not even a goddamn plunger.

I start yelling and banging on the door to try to get someone’s attention, because people are actually in the building even though it’s the middle of the afternoon. The only thing is that I’m in the basement. They’re on stage, rehearsing. Far, far away.

I may as well be on the moon.

And suddenly I’m pissed, you know? I get dinner made early, I arrange a babysitter early, I pay extra for early parking all to come in early and take this goddamn yoga class and now I’m stuck in the frickin’ bathroom? Are you kidding me?

I’ll be damned if some doorknob is going to steal my peace.

So I start kicking the crap out of the doorknob. It takes a little while, but eventually the doorframe bends, the knob breaks off and I am free and I have exactly five minutes to haul ass down 8th avenue to get to my yoga class.

I drop the pieces of the doorknob off at the stage door on my way out and tell our doorman, Gus, what happened, apologizing as sincerely and as fast as I can.

I make my yoga class.

When I come back I have to endure a rash of crap from lots of people for breaking the bathroom door and leaving.

House Head Carpenter: I don’t get it. I don’t understand how you were locked in. The doorknob still works.

Me: But it came off! Completely! That’s how I got out.

House Head Carpenter: The door’s bent now where you kicked it, but nothing’s wrong with the doorknob. Even though it broke off.

Me: Dude. I don’t know what to tell you. I was locked the hell in. For like twenty minutes.

House Head Carpenter: I’ll replace it, I’m just saying it still works. Don’t kick me.

None of this has anything to do with my absence from all things social media. But it does explain these:

The old doorknob is still on the door and sometimes I forget and try to lock it instead of using the latch.

Don’t let anybody steal your peace.