I think I just found a piece of kelp in my hair
There really is nothing like having that "click" feeling that is created when a person finds that special activity/person/clothing item/??? that they were absolutely 100% MEANT to do/have/be with. I'm speaking particularly of the activity section of that, since the person/clothing item/??? side hasn't quite made any sort of noise for me besides a sort of vague "errr" or sometimes a "bah".
This past Saturday I very carefully wrapped myself in not-one-but-
two thick wetsuits (one had no arms, one had no legs and a hood. Who decides this? Are they feeling all right?), somehow managed to strap on 46 lbs. of weights that the instructor promised would make things easier (except the walking and ability to convince my body that toppling over on the rocky seashore is a bad idea), geared up with more hoses and levers than I properly knew what to do with, and hopped into the mind-numbingly frigid waters of the lovely Puget Sound to get my scuba open water diver certification.
The water was in the low 40-degree range, full of sediment that left our visibility at around 6 feet (3 feet the second day), and left disgusting green streaks on the few bits of skin that were exposed to its pea-soup-ness. It tasted a little like miso soup. Lots of seaweed bits floating around. But still, click! I got the hang of everything quickly skill-wise (we'd done most things a couple weeks before in the swimming pool, but not in water that numbed your lips within seconds) and soon was playing around with my buoyancy while the rest of the class was going though their testing. When we kicked off to tour the area a little, I couldn't look at everything enough - the way the fin kicks of the girl in front of me rippled the kelp on the sea floor, how fascinating a discarded beer bottle became when crusted with sea life. When we found an old toilet half-buried in the sea floor with anenomes sprouting from the rim, I actually clapped in delight (gaining me a very odd look from one of the dive masters, but I was beyond caring).
The second dive of our first day we practiced some emergency safety manuevers, one of which consisted of a lot of overexaggerated "omigod I'm going to die" miming and a very slow ascent from 20 feet below the water to the surface with my "buddy" breathing from my emergency regulator mouthpiece. I was having a grand old time, swimming slowly and trying to get us to make circles, and when we broke the surface I inflated my vest as I was supposed to and calmly held up my buddy, who was supposed to be inflating her vest as well (though with her mouth, since she was out of air in the drill). Unfortunately, she freaked out once we got up and thought that we were going down again - I'm not sure why this was bad, since we both had air and masks still on, but panic rarely follows logic - so she grabbed my inflator and filled my already-full vest with so much air that my ribs were pushed in and I couldn't catch my breath. Of course, as in all emergencies and moments where I'm in any amount of danger, I thought this was funny and started laughing. She didn't notice, luckily, as she was crying by this point (I didn't see that she was so upset, or I probably would have reacted differently). The instructor floating directly behind me saw the bubbles exploding from out of the back of my vest's over-inflation indicator and swam over to investigate. She pulled the lever in the center of the indicator, not really knowing what would happen, and all of us simultaneously learned that my vest was equipped with an instructor button that immediately FULLY deflated all equipment and sank me and my 46 pounds of extra baggage back under the water again, dragging along my poor traumatized buddy in the process (who was now kicking me hard with her fins, trying her hardest to stay at the top).
The really funny part about all of this was that the instructor didn't tell me her particular role in this until the second day (she was so embarrassed), so in my ignorance I just thought that I'd been somehow pulled under by my buddy and reinflated my vest as quickly as I could, bobbing around like a demented pool toy and cracking up. The instructor was glad that I was laughing about it all, but ended up having to talk down my buddy for a while before she'd trust me with anything important again.
So anyways, I did four dives and saw all of two fish (and one might have been a stick, it was hard to tell), a bunch of anenomes, some bottles, kelp, and a toilet - and I'm hooked! More people need to learn how to do this so we can go places and do things and look at stuff. I promise to find conditions better than the ones I just experienced, and to make it fun for all involved. I've already been experimenting with new fin-kicks - there's this one where you kick like a jackknife and use both fins at once and it's so cool and you end up like three feet above where you started without hardly moving at all...
I'm getting geeky about all of this but have a hard time caring. Hooray for new hobbies!
A Whole New World
Things that have confused/frightened the Rooster thus far:
* Microwave (he got over that when he realized food comes from there)
* My hair dryer (granted, it's a loud one)
* Fat Boy Slim (this one was hilarious - I was playing a mix and "Funk Soul Brother" came on and Rooster stopped in his tracks, SPRINTED (as much as the big guy can sprint) to the speakers, sat down, looked up, and cocked his head to the left and right while whining slightly until the song ended. Then he came up to me with the most quizzical look on his face like he expected me to explain it. All other music he's okay with.
* The assembly of my barbeque. He barked at me when I started putting it together, and no amount of stern tones or banishment inside made him stop. If he continues to react that way to the sight of me with tools, we might have a problem.
* The toilet. He can't figure that one out.
* My cell phone, which is actually kind of handy since he hears it ring better than I do and the whining lets me know I have a call.
* Wet dog food (he was scared to death when I opened the can and put that unfamiliar goo in his bowl. He got over it once he dared to sniff it and give a lick. Monkey was going crazy at this - wet food is her culinary nirvana and I could practically hear her screaming when he threatened to turn up his nose.)
* Daschunds
* Flip flops
(insert sound of light bulb flicking on)
I finally remembered what movie it was from, thanks to my friend Lisa and her encyclopedic knowledge of bad films. I named my new dog Rooster, incorporating my need to name a pet "chicken" with his boy-ness and an easily explainable nonexistent Chinese Zodiac naming theme (it's much easier to tell people that I was working off the Chinese Zodiac than to tell them that I really wanted a dog named chicken and rooster is close enough, plus with the added santeria reference bonus)(and with the Zodiac excuse I can also threaten to name any subsequent pets Ox, Snake, or Rabbit). But then as soon as I gave him the name, a little nagging "heyyy..." kicked up in the very back of my head and I got the distinct impression that there was a character named Rooster in a movie that I couldn't remember but who was making my brain itch in a way that was both pleasant and worrying.
I searched IMDB, asked various people, racked the potholed and poorly-marked expanses of my memory, but haven't been able to calm the voice to a point where it would accept the Rooster. Then last night I was talking to Lisa about everything and nothing, and she said "I really like the name for Rooster - it's from "Annie", right?" I whooped with joy, thoroughly confusing the poor girl and necessitating a long, winding explanation that I'm not sure she got. It figures that the person with a movie collection comprised of every sketchy and outright horrible movie made in the last 20 years (seriously - "Howard the Duck", "Cocktail", "A Knight's Tale"... I could go on but it's hurting my sense of cinematic decency) would remember the side character from such an obscure and random movie. I watched "Annie" in the theaters when I was younger (I think I was 7-8 when it came out), and remember being happy about the dancing and fascinated by the bad guys but overall not really getting into it too much. The bad guys in this case being Carol Burnett and Tim Curry, both of whom I still love in all of their manic, swaggering glory.
It figures that I would somehow subconsciously name my dog after Tim Curry.
Despite the teensy name issues, the pup is a great find. He's sweet, not too hyper, and seems like he'll do just fine with some training (which will start soon). He thinks he's far smaller and more agile than he actually is, which leads to many falling down, tripping and awkward crawling/flailing moments. Possibly something he'll grow out of (hopefully! He's already hurt his paw trying to hop over a hole and falling halfway into it), but I met a lady yesterday at the park who told me that her 3 year old retriever was still tripping over himself. At least Rooster is cute when he falls, and he doesn't seem to mind looking like a dork (unlike Monkey, who gets a distinctly embarrassed look whenever I do anything remotely undignified to her. Hosing off her feet, brushing her coat, making her wear one of my sweaters and boxer shorts with an unmatching hat). He and the Monkey are already working as a team, ridding my house of anything edible under 3 feet of elevation and ganging up on me whenever I lay on the couch. Monkey has a nice, established spot curled up directly in front of me but low enough that I can still manipulate my book without bonking her. Rooster has decided that he doesn't want to lay by my legs in the other somewhat conveniently open spot since it's too far from my face (otherwise known as the lick target #1), instead he tries to sit directly ON my head. Gotta give him props for attempted efficiency, but having 65 pounds of fur and drool as a hat is not an experience I would wish on many people.
Still, though... he's a keeper.
So many straws on the camel's back
Another date, another evening of inner struggle while I try to smile politely instead of sprint out the door like every part of my tormented brain is yelling at me to do.
He wanted to meet me at the Jamba Juice for a smoothie, and just to say hello. What's the harm, right? Hello, then a smoothie (mmm, smoothie), then goodbye. I got there at the appointed time and called him since he'd mentioned that he only lived a few blocks from the place and would be there in seconds. I went ahead and ordered my smoothie from the very nice lady at the counter, and chatted with her about the merits and disadvantages of various fruits. She was funny. I should have dated her instead. He showed up long after my smoothie had arrived and I had sat playing with my cell phone and trying not to sip too much for 15 minutes. I was on the verge of walking out (and would have at 10 minutes if it weren't for the soothing, blinking lights and peppy games of my little cell friend) when I saw him wander in. We were the only two people in the store, so it wasn't a hard find. We said hello and he went to order, then came and sat down by me. He's a handsome guy, Iranian or Persian I believe, and works for Microsoft. We chatted about what we do for a living a bit, and then he asked if I'd decided on a name for the dog I'm getting over the weekend (by the way I'm getting a dog over the weekend)(woo!)(for reals, and not a drooly Rott)(an Akita/Border Collie mix, and CUUUUTE)(I'll stop the distractions now, really)(He looks like a Muppet. The ones with really long arms and legs and big heads that dance a lot)(no really, done)(woo!). Somehow that conversation degenerated at a rate that I'd thought only possible in those cringe-inducing movies by the Farrelly brothers where a simple comment sparks a wave of fires, explosions, genital injury, and massive pet damage that scars the psyche for weeks afterwards.
He started talking about midgets. He said that instead of getting a dog I should get a midget, that they were less effort to keep. I said I didn't know about that, and tried to change the subject, but he plowed on into a litany of ways that a midget would make a better pet than a dog. They got worse and worse as he went on - some examples:
1. A midget doesn't bark (I'll give him this one).
2. They can help with the cleaning, at least everything under five feet.
3. They won't run away (I contested this one, and he argued:
a) Their little hands are too short to reach the latches
b) They're midgets, where would they go?
4. You can play more games with them. Midget bowling. Midget toss.
5. I'm not going to write the rest of what he suggested because it's still pissing me off and honestly I'm not sure it should be repeated.
At the bowling comment I tried to stop him, I was getting disturbed at the intensity and glee that was forming on his face as he was describing how you could torture a midget. When it got worse I turned away from him entirely and became fixated on my drink. I noticed that my straw had spilled over a drop so I got up while he was in mid-sentence, went all the way across the store and got a napkin. It took a lot of mental debate to make myself go back and sit down again. I told him that he must not know a lot of midgets, and that the proper term was in fact "dwarves" (how I learned this was a very painful and embarrassing story, but one that will forever imprint "DWARF" instead of "midget" in my brain)(I'm not going to tell you.)(DWARF) and that they were in fact usually very nice people. I told him that I'm in fact quite short in a lot of communities (5'4") and have been called a little person (usually by my bro, who is 6'2") but that it was okay since then I wasn't faulted so much for hitting low. He said that anyone who was under 5'0" could qualify for a handicap parking pass, his friend's girlfriend had one because she was 4'9". I called bullshit and said that if that was true, all of my Filipina girl friends would be considered handicapped (they're so tiny! Feisty, though). Dude called me racist and said that he was sure under 5 foot tall = handicapped.
Luckily at this point the nice lady at the register told us that the store was closed, and with a hidden sympathetic glance at me and a free pastry she told us that there was a bar and a coffee place still open within a couple blocks if we wanted to continue our conversation there. I thanked her and started walking to my car, but he asked if I wanted to meet him at the bar since we'd only been talking a half hour or so (the LONGEST half hour I've endured in a while). Quite honestly, I only agreed to see how bad the train wreck could possibly get. Sick, sick curiosity. Probably the only reason I still date at all.
We got to the place and sat in a corner (I didn't drink - that's how bad it was. When I avoid even the sweet release of alcohol, you KNOW I'm on guard and not having a good time. Plus I didn't want to have to sign out a credit card or impede my immediate exit if the situation required it). I asked him about Microsoft, and he embarked on a long rant about Seattle in general, ignoring my attempts to defend the city and its people, food, clubs, and entire culture. He was on a roll. He said that the people were shy and cold, the city was nerdy (that I might admit, but I like it), the social scene sucked, and that he had yet to find any food that was any good here. I brought up Thai food, which I feel is pretty strong here, and he said all that he had eaten was crap. And the spices were nonexistent here (BLATANTLY untrue, I've had food in India that was less spicy than some of the stuff I've gotten in Seattle), and that the culture was far too white. He was insistent that the percentage of white folk in Seattle was 90%. I just looked it up and it's 78% (which is still high, but at least we're not fully honkytown like he was trying to claim). I tried to change the subject and told him about a person I knew at Microsoft who is the Vice-Pres of the Seattle Star Wars Society and a crazy partier to boot. We started talking about Star Wars then (thank God, at least something we could equally rant about) and telling nerd stories, and I let it slide that another friend of mine had done a Star Wars themed wedding, complete with light sabers and the Imperial March as music to walk the aisle to. He asked me how I knew the name of the music and I told him that I had played it in band. I accept my dorkdom. He didn't. I told him that I had to do something and needed to go (seriously, that's about the level of detailed excuse that I gave. I was so tired of the mess that I almost didn't say anything at all and just left). He walked me out to my car, asking more about band and if I'd ever done naughty things to myself with my instruments. I got in my car and drove away, answering his request for dinner sometime with a grunt.
The new plan is to get a barbeque, some patio chairs, and set up my hammock in the backyard so my two lovely pups and I can just hang out with our bad old selves. Friends are invited, but if you bring a single man be warned that I might fling a garden burger or sic a mutt on him if he bothers me.
The Times I Almost Died (Part Three)
I keep remembering times I almost died. Is that bad?
This one came during a humanitarian trip to Cancun which focused mainly on building a nurses' living quarters for a very, um, RUSTIC cement-block hospital on the outskirts of the city. After a full week of mixing cement in the street with shovels, surrounded by a constant group of older men who spent the entire day staring at the gringos and commenting about how we should have really thought ahead and brought one of those fancy american mixers if we were going to build a wall (whoops), we were ready for our weekend of relaxation. Plus of course the mob of children who were constantly stealing our hearts and staring at our watches (for some reason our watches were the most fascinating things ever ever ever)(they did not, however, steal our watches or stare at our hearts).
Jose was a middle-aged guy who had been working with us all week, and was thrilled when we agreed to come out to his family's ranch and hang out there for a while. He had about three hundred cousins and approximately fifty bazillion weathered aunts and uncles who wandered about, dispensing sage words of wisdom to our wild group such as "you may want to hold on to the horse's reins instead of his neck when you ride him" and "if you fall into that hole over there you will be hurt badly" and "if you hit me with that Frisbee/hackeysack/football/small child once again so help me Dios". We were a little rowdy, a little rambunctious after all that hard labor.
They decided that to help us expend our energy, they were going to take us out snorkeling by one of the smaller islands where the fish were less bothered by tourists. At least when we were snorkeling they wouldn't have to worry about the yelling and nobody would be able to throw a Frisbee effectively. About five of us piled into a small motorboat and took off over the bright blue water, hair whipping in the wind, not caring where we were going or even if we in fact had the proper equipment to snorkel (again, whoops). I ended up with fins and a mask, but no snorkel. Others had only a snorkel, one poor guy had one fin and was trying to make do but ended up swimming in large circles around the boat. I decided that my lack of snorkel was in fact God's sneaky way of telling me that I needed to spend my time underwater and play old-time scuba, where they just held their breath a really long time instead of messing with all that compressed air crap. Air supply systems are for the weak! My lungs are steel! My fins are motors! My swimsuit is invincible!
You can probably see where this is going.
The island that we dove by was absolutely gorgeous, and had massive schools of impossibly-colored fish everywhere. I swam among them as long as I could, only surfacing when things started to hurt. I found a small tunnel through part of the coral that was covering the sea floor, and spent a couple of lungful-length trips staring through it, trying to gauge the distance from one end to the other through the swarms of fish that were huddled inside. I guessed it was probably around 12-15 feet from end to end, and around 3 feet in diameter - easily swimmable if I got a good head start and kept my arms and legs close together. I surfaced and took a deep breath, then dove quickly and sped towards the tunnel. The fish at the entrance paused for a split second, then darted aside, casting a dirty look at my exuberant fins currently flapping inches from their tiny faces. I used my hands to push aside the other fish while my feet pushed me like a bullet through the small tube, finally exploding through the far side in a cloud of bubbles and sideways-swimming distraught cave fish who had gotten caught up in my mad rush. The surface swept towards me and I leapt into the air with a "WHOOOO!" that alarmed my fellow divers and the poor guy who had until then been enjoying a nice sunny nap in his boat. I told them of my tunnel-chute and convinced a couple to try it with me, with the same glee appearing on each of their faces as they emerged from the mass of fish (some of whom were getting a little angry now that they had been rudely shoved aside multiple times now).
Then, of course, pushing my luck I decided that my fins of fury and swimsuit of steel (not to mention the mask of... um, might? merriment? moving of fish?) were enough to combat the tiredness that had crept up after swimming for a few hours and that I could make it through
one
last
time.
Surface, big breath, power towards the cave entrance - done. Once through the entrance, however, I found that the fish were harder to push aside and that they in fact had started to develop a markedly antagonistic attitude towards my masked mug. Looking back, this is probably because I had a slower start and less energy for the fish-shoving, but at the time I felt like a kid who had walked down the wrong dead-end alley right when a gang got their collective panties in a collective bunch. With the reduced momentum, my body started to rise towards the top of the tunnel and suddenly, I found my heels kicking the ceiling and before I knew it, the heel of my fin caught painfully on the coral and I was trapped. The fish swarmed around me, cold eyes on mine and cold minds working together to form one word and broadcast it at my near-nude, unsnorkeled and suddenly helpless self.
"Pussy."
A couple of them bumped up against my mask, pretending to be surprised that I was still there. I hate fish. Even as a vegetarian, I would totally eat them based on this experience alone if they tasted like anything but badness and ick.
Bastard fishes.
Back to the tunnel - the diameter of the space and the rough coral contours made it impossible for me to bend over and free my foot, so I was stuck trying to wiggle it free of the snag it had caught while attempting not to lose any more of the rapidly dwindling breath I had taken what felt like hours ago. My lungs started to ache and my eyes watered (not that it mattered, since all I could see with open eyes was the smug, laughing faces of my bad-tasting tormentors), and just when I thought I was in deep trouble, I somehow kicked my heel free and was finally able to use my hands to pull myself down the remainder of the tunnel and float weakly back to the surface to nurse the multiple deep scrapes on my heel, hands and side. Coral is an unforgiving material, particularly when you piss it off.
I love April Fool's Day...
(I sent this to my family this morning)
I know he's a little bigger and older than I originally intended (bigger than I am, actually! He outweighs me by 10 lbs.) (and probably older than I am, in dog years), but Quincy is going to be such a great addition to my home. Definitely won't have to worry about any prowlers, anyways! He also seems like he's going to be able to keep Monkey in line without any problems, and the shelter says that his behavioral issues/overprotectiveness should work themselves out with a lot of class training (good thing I already have a muzzle!).
I picked him up yesterday and he's already laid claim to the couch
(the ENTIRE couch) and Monkey's water and food bowls. Have to get some
more of those, apparently! He tried to take over my bed but after a lot of
pulling and locking my door, I think he'll get the hint that it's not allowed.
I can't wait for you guys to meet him - the shelter said that I have to
be really careful with introductions but if we go slowly and nobody makes
any quick movements, I'm sure he'll learn to love you soon enough!
See you soon! Don't worry, I'll bring my new addition along (and a
strong chain!)
Love,
Ja
(Heeeee hee heee...)
