The Colombian

Why am I home from the Museum of Science and Industry tonight? Why, to receive the call from The Colombian, of course.

This is getting a teensy bit ridiculous. As I texted* to Birdie, is my Fairy Godmother trying to win some kind of bet?
---------------------------

I never told the story of The Colombian.

After my cousin's wedding in Miami. I got my $300 in travel vouchers for taking a later flight and hanging out in the airport. That was when I was still mostly stoned out of my gourd on migraine meds, so I couldn't concentrate enough to get a full narrative down, even when I had a fabulous one to tell.

Airport. Sunday, June 7. My parents and brother have boarded for Chicago, a few other related and unrelated wedding guests are still getting on the plane, and a man standing casually by my seat at the gate asks me if I'm on this flight or the next one. I thought he was waiting for his boarding group to get called.
"Well, I was on this one, but I'm giving up my ticket if they need it and taking a later flight."
Casual shmoozing ensues.
He's on the next flight at this gate, going to Colombia (explaining his accent).

Three hours later.
He walked me to the gate for my flight, which was at the other end of the airport and ended up leaving before his, which was repeatedly delayed due to the thunderstorm outside. He gave me 1000 Colombian peso note so I could feel rich (it's worth about 50 cents, but as he put it, "[gasp!] So many pesos!") and remember him. It's still in my wallet.

We'd exchanged business cards earlier during the "What do you do?" portion of conversation. He works with a personal injury lawyer in Houston, helping immigrants know their rights (like, that they have them) when they get hurt. And he worked for Comcast for awhile but hated the manual labor, which is weird, because he also owns a ranch in Colombia. He tried ranching in the U.S. but apparently "In Colombia, the cows do all the work, eating grass and getting fat and then you sell them. Here, the grass doesn't grow in winter and you have to give them feed and move them and it's hard work!" So every six months he goes down to his Colombian cattle ranch for a month, which is where he was headed.
He was completely impressed that I was a writer because he said he was no good with words and language. He acts like he is embarrassed about every word coming out of his mouth. He says his English is terrible. It isn't.
He said when he first saw me he thought I was really young, like, too young, but then he got a little bit closer and thought maybe not, and then when he was closer, he saw my eyes and he saw that they had wisdom and knew I was older.
A man with English as his second language was the first to express impressions of my age in a genuinely flattering and beautiful way. Bad with words my ass.

I kept saying his English was worlds better than my Spanish and somehow he got me trying to speak Spanish. I can still understand Spanish fairly well, but no hablo para caca. Rusty is an understatement. We were talking about me living in my condo with my dog and I was trying to say I love my condo, but direct object pronouns or indirect object or whateverthehell part of speech is the thing that is being loved I kept fucking up and saying "te amo" instead of "lo amo" and I knew it was wrong but I couldn't remember how to fix it (never mind living in Chicago or watching telenovelas, it's been over 10 years since I've had any formal Spanish language training) and he thought it was the best thing ever.
"You kept saying it, and with your accent! Oh, it was wonderful."

He said he made an excuse to talk to me because he thought I was beautiful and wanted to see if I was nice, since apparently I'm every guy's ideal (news to me) and that might make me stuck up. But I was friendly. He guessed I was from the Midwest by my accent, though he couldn't place Chicago. We talked about accents and the friendliness of Midwesterners. He said he hates Houston because there you're either American or you're Mexican, and if you're not American you're stupid. He wants to visit Chicago. Wants to see the lake. I told him I lived right by the beach and he couldn't believe there could be an entire beach and big waves waves for a lake.

Later, after his flight was delayed and he bought me a cranberry juice at the bar by the gate and we found new seats, he said my speech pattern reminded him of a good friend he used to have from Michigan. He (the friend) was very smart and a very good friend and things seemed to be going better for him, but he killed himself.
Great. Is my somewhat-controlled depression that obvious? Like a big mole on my face? At the same time, The Colombian's ability to draw the parallel still counts strongly in his favor in my mind. Maybe I'm reading too much into things. Maybe I have a Michigan accent. But he said I reminded him of this friend a number of times, and I feel like he had a sense of something familiar. At least I've never been suicidal...

I had absolutely no idea how old The Colombian was. His eyes creased a bit when he smiled, but just enough to rule out younger than me. He could have been 30. He could have been a well-preserved 50. You can never really tell how old anybody is.
He's 39. He didn't want to tell me. He acted like it was going to be 60. I told him 27 and he said he knew I wasn't lying. I kept threatening to check his passport. I wanted to, except it didn't matter if any of it was true. It could all be shiny fiction and then vanish at the gate. Three hours of flattery and company. I was quite content for it to be what it was.

I'll admit, I looked him up on Facebook after I got home. He was there. Full name, in Houston, Texas. One bad blurry photo as a profile picture, a list of friends, and an otherwise hidden profile unless I "friended" him. But I left it. He could find me if he wanted, otherwise, I had his peso and the story.

There's more story I could tell, but none of it involved airport bathroom sex or even smooching. Just more morsels of exchange.

But tonight, he called. He'd gotten back from branding cows in Colombia and wanted to call.


Did I slip into a coma two months ago and my life since then is entirely in my head? Maybe I'm watching too much LOST, but my life seems more and more like a lighter, funnier drama done by the same writers.


*txt'd? wtf. I didn't say it to her. I didn't quite write it to her. Once again, technology and semi-anal accurecy chew away at prose.

Lump from dog's butt is benign. Lump in my soul rejoices.

I gave the now married couple their wedding pictures via flash drive they brought. They gave me a really nice thank you card and were extremely happy.

It's members' night. Museum of Science and Industry. I want to go. I don't want to go. They have the new Harry Potter movie in IMAX and my head is already iffy and there's no way I could survive that. I like all the other stuff, and it will probably be less busy everywhere else as a result, but like I said, the head is iffy. And I don't have a "date." I know if I pushed I could find someone to go with me, but it's almost 6 PM already and I'm not so sure I want to push. Just can it at this point. Take it easy, eat an actual dinner, do something that I enjoy that won't make tomorrow useless.

Biofeedback, Blerg, and Boys

This morning began with my second session of biofeedback. Biofeedback is friggin' cool. I go to St. Joseph's Hospital, where valet parking costs the same as regular parking for patients ($4) and everybody is nice, and the Diamond Headache Clinic has an outpost on the 9th floor.
[my computer sounds like it's sizzling. that can't be good. dog hair in the fan?]
For biofeedback, they hook up various muscles in my head and neck to a monitor that shows how tight or relaxed they are, and my finger up to a thermometer. I've already mastered making my hand temperature rise just by thinking about it within minutes, which is pretty friggin' cool. Plus, it feels like some of the internal glurping stuff I used to describe during acupuncture, but now there's machines hooked up that show a difference in my body. Today's muscles were in my temples and jaw. I thought jaw would be the big clenched culprit, but I figured out how to relax it pretty quickly. Temples not so much, so we're working on that again next week.

I left in a hypnotic fuzz, but I needed to stop at Target. I didn't get a rolly cart, just a hand basket, thinking I was only picking up a few things and none of them were heavy. Except milk, and I'd get that last. I wanted more Epsom salts for my own baths, but they only had a huge container. Then I realized this particular Target had full grocery so I had to get a bazillion other heavy things and waddle like a dork to the cash register, weighed down by my gazillion pound basket. When I got home, I realized I'd made it there without the bag that contained one of the major items for which I went to Target in the first place.

Then I broke one of the bobeche of my chandelier just as I finally got everything I needed to finish fixing it up and actually figured out how to fix it with all the wiring and everything (nevermind attaching it to the ceiling, but getting its own sockets and lightbulbs all wired and happy, I'm set).

Dog joined me for Target Run 2 followed by Epic Naps 1 and 2 since I just couldn't stay awake. Lame. Extra lame because...

Neighbor Guy called me yesterday to say that Possible Boy was talking about me again and hoping I wasn't jealous of the other girl and saying how pretty I looked and blah blah blah and that Possible Boy was probably going to call me, but then I was ouchy-dead and not really able to talk to Neighbor Guy and the thing about Neighbor Guy is that you never know if what he's saying happened in reality or in his head. I'm a little worried he's (non-consciously) trying to pull me into his Pining for Possible Boy Club. But I also refuse to contribute to Neighbor Guy as messenger for the torrid love triangle (SO TORRID) for both the sake of Neighbor Guy's emotions and the sake of the message. I explained to Birdie, Neighbor Guy is like a little kid-you tell him something, and he might relate back what you said, but he also might warp it so it means something completely different or just talk about firetrucks. So I really wanted to call him back today with my wits about me. No such luck. And tomorrow is the Museum of Science and Industry's Members' Night and I want to go and if Possible Boy had called me I would have invited him but he didn't and I don't want to do all the pursuing since I already get a sense he's a boy who likes being pursued and I don't want to be a pursuant for the sake of pursuit and I already called him once. So if I can stay awake tomorrow, we'll see what the day brings.

I still haven't contacted Another Boy. What are the formulas? How long am I "supposed to" wait? Do I have to rent Swingers again?

This part of the boy game is hard. I'm much better at melodrama and fooling around.

Jacuzzi Power!

It's 1 AM. Today's pain didn't like light or sound, so I slept a lot. Snuggled the dog a lot. A few hours ago as I was lying around awake but unable to use the computer or read or listen to audiobooks or anything, I tried to think what I could do to keep my brain interested. What senses could I stimulate in a way that wouldn't just cause more pain? I've thought more than once that it'd be nice if I could read braille. It would also be nice to have a human snuggling companion, but I'm not there yet and human snuggling companion would have to be well aware of the "no talking or I will kill you, and no taking my snippiness personally" rules. Then I thought of it: jacuzzi. I own a jacuzzi tub. Warm, sensory, soft, different than bed that I'm in all the fucking time, no light, the sound doesn't usually bother me. Perfect.

And it was. For over an hour. Distracting from the ouchies and even melting away some of the pain. I need to do that more often. Maybe get some essential oils or something. I threw in some Epsom salts for good measure since I had them sitting right there. Awesome.

Now the computer is starting to bother me again, but I'm using it in my dining room and I had this picture of myself silhouetted in the window by the glow of the screen with one of my newfound male admirers walking past on the street*, looking up, not knowing it's me but still being struck by the image. I also had something Japanese and entirely unrelated playing in my head, but the strangest thing about my thought process at that moment was how aware I was of exactly two of my channels. I'm surprised I didn't have "The Little Mermaid" soundtrack playing and several different ideas for things I should feed myself before going to sleep and who knows what else as well.

Ugh. I stopped making sense. Back to sleep.

*entirely probable now that they all live in my neighborhood. does this mean no more rolling out of bed and walking the dog without changing or brushing my hair?

Poor Puppy

Before those of you who've met my dog say anything, shut up. I love him and he's my puppy and I love him.

My dog has a creepy thing between his toes on his rear right paw. It looked like a tiny stone or something got stuck under the skin, and considering how often we're at the beach, I figure it could be anything. I noticed it Thursday night, but Friday I had my own doctor's appointment to attend to so I got him a 1:40 slot at the vet on Saturday.

I figured I should also point out the little lump on his back where his tail meets his body. I wasn't sure if it had always been there and I just never noticed or if it was new, but it didn't hurt to check it out.

Neither spot seems to bother him, but his seasonal allergies have been bad the last few weeks and I'm plying him with half a Benadryl on his extra itchy days.

The vet decided to remove the lump on my dog's butt right away since it was a 15 minute procedure they could do with lidocaine and he has a history of cancer. A big shaved patch and three stitches make it look like they had to reattach his tail.

She squished and prodded his toe while he stood there and let her. This from the dog who won't stop barking until 10 minutes after a person he deems a "stranger" (ie anybody who isn't me or my parents or sometimes NBF) leaves my condo. Or about two square blocks surrounding my condo. Or my parents' house. The dog who shows teeth if that same "stranger" class of people tries to look him in the eye. Or put out a hand. Yes, my dog, was a perfect patient as the vet tried to dig into his gross icky toe thing to see what it was and if anything would come out. Nothing came out, but they soaked it in warm water with epsom salt and advised I do the same for a week and see what happens. The trouble is, if it's something like a malignant tumor (and apparently biopsying makes infections and tumors look the same?) then the whole toe would have to come off. He's had a hard enough life without losing a toe to the inadequecies of modern veternary medicine. Now, I don't know shit about dog tumors, but this thing looks more like a wart on top of an infected cut or something. That's why I thought it was a stone caught under the skin. Still might be.

So how do you get my dog to soak his foot in epsom salt? This worried me far more than the $300 bill at the end of the vet visit (thank goodness I got doggy health insurance). I was going to stick him in the kitchen sink. That's the one place I can give him a bath, with the spray nozel and deep sink so he can't escape as easily. But there are onions in my drain stopper and I didn't feel like cleaning my whole kitchen sink just to refill it with fur, and a foot soak doesn't require a spray nozel, so I moved operations to the hall bathroom. Warm water, epsom salts, and a package of bologna for bribes.

The dog followed the bologna and we had an absolutely lovely time hanging out, snuggling, and playing "snatch bits of bologna out of mommy's hands" while his two hind paws remained stationed in the full sink. After we were done and I lifted him back to the ground, he camped out in the bathroom like this was his new favorite place in theuniverse. And why shouldn't it be? The puppy-pedi-soak won't be so bad after all.

Murder and Intrigue

I went out to the bar by my house tonight for karaoke. Neighbor Guy called me earlier to say he and Possible Boy were going, and Possible Boy was saying some very nice, flattering things about me and about how pretty I am, etc. Um, awesome.
I get to karaoke night only to discover that with Possible Boy and Neighbor Guy is the girl the two of them had discussed the day I met Possible Boy as hotly pursuing him. And her posse. And it's her birthday. With moderately dejected heart I resigned myself to leave them alone, have fun with Neighbor Guy, and flash the occasional smile when coyly appropriate.

There was Another Boy whose eyes kept meeting mine. Neighbor Guy noticed and informed me my ocular pen-pal was gay. So I started being less shy about ogling the Boy, and the boy kept looking at me until he introduced himself.
"Hi, I'm Another Boy."
"Hi. I'm Annabell."
"Where are you from?" He expected somewhere between Iowa and another planet, I think.
"Across the street." He couldn't believe it.
"What do you do?"
"That's a harder question than it should be, but the easy answer is, I'm a writer."
He acted like I told him I was an astronaut. Not only that, but he too was an astronaut and hadn't been able to tell anyone.
"Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend?"
"No and no [surprisingly easy to say considering how naturally and frequently I lie about this to the creepy guys who ask at car washes, in parking lots and on buses]. What about you? Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend?"
"No and I'm not into guys."
I guess Neighbor Guy was wrong.
After a bit more awe-struck stumbling through words, Neighbor Guy whisked me away to dance as the woman running the karaoke sang "At Last."
Another Boy handed me a piece of paper with his phone number and email as he headed out the door.

I want to have multiple Boys and for all of them to be faithful to me and me alone. Is that so wrong?

Phone Anxiety: A Bad Connection

Another good day today! I'm counting my blessings and the number is getting up around 319.

I called Possible Boy to invite him on a possible adventure. He didn't answer, and it turns out he was at work, but still, I called him. I'm fairly brave about that sort of call. I say awkward and stupid things and make a dork out of myself once on the call, but I make the call with little hesitation or ambivilance. I also need to call my health insurance company and make an appointment with a gynecologist (since I haven't gone in like five years and the brain doctors and I want me taking a progesterone-only version of The Pill). Nothing about my self-worth is contingent on these businessy calls, and yet I hesitate, procrastinate, and panic over Blue Cross Blue Sheild's customer service department far more than the boy who makes me feel uncontrollably squishy. What the fuck?

Better Days

I felt a lot better all weekend. All day starting Friday and even through Monday. Clearer and I could concentrate again and the pain was manageable, especially once I added in some combination of Norflex, Vistaril, and my Toradol shot. Last night, I even started looking through the Craigslist help wanted ads.
Today I'm still not terrible, so I am hoping this is not just a quick break in the misery but a continued positive direction. I'm trying very hard to avoid dissappointment or negative feelings that today's setback (super light sensitive, strangely sore muscles, and Pain that isn't calming down when I give it the extra non-injected drugs) is a trend. I'm still feeling emotionally better. I'm still able to write things, it seems. Pretty good indication the Neurontin was what had me quite so stoned, not the "abortive" meds.
I slept all day.
I can't decide now if I should give myself the Toradol to keep myself in the lesser-pain mode, or not do the Toradol so I don't overuse it and render it useless like I did to the DHE.
But I kind of want to go out...
Because there's a possible Boy...

Possible Boy is Neighbor Guy's best friend, even though Neighbor Guy doesn't call him his best friend. Neighbor Guy "had" a huge crush on Possible Boy. For a long time. Possible Boy knows this. They've talked about it. Possible Boy is straight; he likes girls. Neighbor Guy is not a girl. So Neighbor Guy decides I should meet Possible Boy. "Oh, you would really like him."
Neighbor Guy drags me to a barbecue. Possible Boy also comes to barbecue.
Turns out Possible Boy is sharp and snarky with depth, and he's cute.
Neighbor Guy claimed he had his crush in check and was "totally over" Possible Boy, but we all know that's bullshit. Still, so long as Neighbor Guy is a guy, Possible Boy can't see him as anything more than a friend.

NG: Possible Boy was telling me to call you the other day to invite you out but I told him you were probably having your headaches and you'd call me if you wanted to do something.
Me: Blah blah blah not important to story
NG: Well can I just give him your number? I hate being the middle-man.
Me: Of course! Blah blah blah
NG: Ok good because I don't want to be an intermediary blah blah blah etc.

Neighbor Guy kept saying he'd had a horrible week but nothing about it sounded horrible. Now I knew why. He'd been fielding off-hand, pseudo-casual remarks from both me and Possible Guy about one another, having to endure the Glimmer of Interest in and about the current Love of his Life. To make matters worse, he introduced us.
I'm used to being in Neighbor Guy's corner of the love triangle. It's the self-defeatist's spot and I empathize completely. I don't really know what to do or how to handle the good corner. For that matter, I don't know how to handle possible boys. How do I not automatically turn him into a just friend? Or chase him away completely? This is not one of my better games. HELP!

Totally unrelated: In my dreams, I keep accidentally eating things that are big no-nos on my migraine diet. These dreams have the same feel as the ones where I do something that accidentally hurts a child or children, but now I have a new theme. It's me doing things I shouldn't without realizing it. Since they are dreams, they skip the parts where I'm making any decisions or thinking about it and go right to where I'm eating the pizza or letting go of the bar before the kid jumps up to grab it.
Obvious interpretation: I feel like I make all these mistakes in life that are my fault without having any control over them.
Obvious easier-said-than-done solution: Take control over the things I can control and let the rest go.
Reality: I'm still a long way from actualizing the AA serenity prayer.

Waiting for Nemo

I took over 300 photos today at a stranger's wedding.

Neighbor Guy asked me last weekend if I wanted to be his date to this wedding he was invited to on a boat on Lake Michigan on July 3rd. I said probably yes, but I was nervous about my head. I'm not quite sure what happened after that, because next thing I knew it was Friday night and no word from Neighbor Guy, so I ended up at my downstairs neighbors' barbecue hanging out with her entertaining, hard-partying, and mostly jock-lesbian posse. Then I called my other neighbors (the ones with the brother I shtupped) to see if they'd want to go down to the beach at the end of the block to try to catch some fireworks, since I kind of thought I'd be seeing fireworks that night from a friggin' boat on the friggin' lake. The one who isn't the brother of my shtuppee took me up on the offer and we had a very nice time. No shtupping. We did manage to run into Neighbor Guy at the bar, though, so I guessed I wasn't the only one who wasn't on a boat.

I was feeling well enough again on Saturday to play Hostess/Housewife and invited my cousinses, Neighbor Guy, and my Fireworks Friend to dinner. I cleaned all day until my house was sufficiently perfectish (unbelievably perfect if you know me) and my cousinses thought they were coming around 7 but then they were coming around 8 and then they showed up at 8:30. Neighbor Guy kept saying things about some other barbecue he was supposed to go to but since I cooked he really wanted to come over for at least a little bit so he'd stop by blah blah blah. At 7:45 he called and asked if he could bring his roommate with him, too. I asked how many people? He said just him and one of his new roommates (two Slovakian girls in the US for the summe, who moved in last week after answering his ad on Craigslist), so I figured since I never heard from Fireworks Friend I had plenty of food. At 8 I opened the door to Neighbor Guy, his roomamte, and "Chris." "Chris" was some random guy they'd met earlier at the bar or something. I have no idea. Neighbor Guy does that sort of thing all the time. He meets people he finds interesting or boys he thinks are cute (who usually turn out to be straight or in stable, committed relationships) and just brings them places assuming it's ok. But that's sort of how he lives his life. He reminds me a lot of Dory from Finding Nemo, and everbody loves Dory, right? He's a great friend for me to have around, even if I do find some of his human fascinations terribly annoying. Some of them are great, and I'm one of his human fascinations, too.

Turns out the wedding wasn't July 3rd, it was July 5th. Today. Neighbor Guy (co-worker of the bride) also thought it was in the evening until he called me and woke me up at 9:30 AM to say the boat left at noon. He'd mentioned on Saturday that he wanted me to bring my digital camera. Well, when we go to check in at the boat, I find out that we're the photographers. Really, They didn't hire professionals. A few other people brought digital cameras, too, but Neighbor Guy had offered to take photos and somehow (it being Neighbor Guy, there's a million possibilities for how) we were now their primary source for photographic wedding memories. After Neighbor Guy took a few awkward, timid pictures with my camera, I asked if he wanted me to do the actual picture taking. Yes! Oh, he was so relieved!

I feel bad for the couple, since my camera and photography skills aren't great and who knows what the bride's expectations were based on whatever conversations she may have had with Neighbor Guy. So I took pictures of everything from every angle to make sure there'd be enough good ones in the end. I'm about 2/3 of the way through half-assed editing the 300+ pictures from the day.

Dory the fish. I'm always trying to be less like Marlin, anyway.

I need to sleep now. Pity, I didn't make it to talking about the (possible) little love triangle in which I'm getting one of the good corners.

Goodnight.

Open Letter

Dear Two Guys Installing My Elfa Shelves,

Please do it right. And carefully. Be anal about it. Not like my bathroom sink which is flush to the wall on one side and half an inch away on the other so that the whole unit is at an angle, made obvious by the way it sits askew to the tiles on the floor. Not like my dining room ceiling, which is incredibly streaky because the paint goes on streaky but perhaps you could have said or done something before you were completely finished?

Is there a reason you don't have and/or don't bring tools? Just wondering. Because last time you had to go out and get a level (perhaps a carpenter square would have served you well, too), and today you had to buy the correct drill bits before you could do anything. And then borrowed my pliers. And my scissors, step stool, paper towels, vacuum, hammer...sorry I didn't have a rubber mallet. Maybe I'll get one for next time.

I'm very glad you're nice. I'm nice, too. Until you fuck up my house. Don't fuck up my house.

Love,
Annabell