oh, the naps we will take

Y'all, please meet the newest addition to my home (well, besides the $24 Black Friday Target microwave in my kitchen), my couch:



I got a fabulous deal on this couch. It makes me wish that every store you went in had sales clerks that followed you around and just started dropping the prices on stuff if you looked at it sideways. Bargain hunting is such a thrill. Of course buying a couch isn't as satisfying as, say, walking away from a little Asian lady and subsequently getting a stolen Coach bag for $25, but hey. We take what we can get. You can't haggle on boots at Macy's, so I will widdle Angelo's bottom line down as much as I can on that couch. And then I will require a cigarette.

So once Angelo made his absolute lowest offer and I bit, we had to deal with the matter of delivery. Professional delivery by the store would cost me $90, and would happen at some time in the next few days. OR. Angelo knows a guy. And his truck -- you see that truck, out there in the parking lot? -- it's right there, and he'll bring you the couch for $50. Cash. TODAY.

It was all so Memphis, I could barely effing stand it.

So naturally I jumped at the deal, Mom and I left the joint and swung through the ATM to grab $50 in cash and I went to my apartment to wait for the delivery. About an hour and a half later, I'm in my pajama pants and my Cookie Monster slippers when this guy pulls up in my driveway with my couch roped in to the bed of his pick-up truck. And it's just. HIM. Alone. By himself. And he looks at me and says, "Are we gonna do this?" And I take one look down at my Cookie Monster slippers and just kind of gawk at him.

The events that followed were nothing if not comical. I picked up the couch, I dropped the couch. I picked up the couch, I dropped the couch. Rinse, repeat. Finally he turned it end over end to get it up to my front door, where we discovered that the angle of the front door of the house and the front door to my apartment were making it impossible to just slide the couch right into my unit. So we pushed it all the way into the entryway, got it up on its side and started pushing. We turned and pushed, and pushed and turned and angled and it just wasn't going in. And it didn't look like it was going to.

And so he leaves me, because frankly that $50 bill isn't magically gaining interest in my wallet, and there I am. Sitting on the floor of my apartment, staring at my upturned couch sitting in the entryway and realizing that I have about 45 minutes to shit or get off the pot because I have to leave for speed dating.

SONOFABITCH.

I'm calling everyone I've ever MET, and they're basically all tied up moving other couches somewhere else and I don't know what happened. Something just got into me. I said to myself, I said, Self? YOU CAN MOVE THIS COUCH.

And holy mother of God, I DID. I angled it and I turned it and I shimmied and pulled and I dragged that couch into the apartment all by myself. My phone rang when I had it about halfway pulled through the door, and it was my mom. She was calling to see if I wanted her to come over and try to help me. I calmly shared with her that I, in fact, am the baddest MF alive and had just moved that eight-foot behemoth all by myself.

Needless to say, I left for speed dating feeling stoned on sheer power. And every nap on these big comfy blue cushions is totally and completely WORTH IT.


cheers,
elizabeth

zen and the art of appendix maintenance

Remember before, how I said that I had so much to tell you, and there just weren't enough hours in the day to write about all of it? Remember that? And how I still haven't told you about ANY OF IT?

Yeah, blame it on my appendix.

It all started about mid-day Monday, a week ago today. Crazy stomach pain that seemed to appear out of nowhere. Except for maybe it was the pork I ate the night before, but I wasn't ralphing. Or maybe I gave myself a hernia moving an eight-foot couch into my apartment BY MYSELF. Oh wait, I never told you about that? Turns out, I am WOMAN, hear me EFFING roar. Long story. Involves paying a delivery guy $50 cash to jimmy rig the couch into his pick-up truck, because this is Memphis.

I digress.

The pain kept on a-chugging until Tuesday when it was so excruciating that I left work at half-day to go seek medical attention. Since all my insurance information had arrived in the mail the week before, you can imagine my dismay when the lady at Baptist Minor Medical (the THIRD minor medical I'd driven to, after the address of the first one turned out to be a Holiday Ham, I shit you not) told me that actually? I'm not covered until December 1.

I drove home, sobbing, to my parents' house, where my dear old Dad turned me right around and drove me back to the doctor's office to pay their exorbitant fee and get me seen. The doctor ran through the million trillion BILLION things it could be, but in the end felt pretty sure that it was, in fact, my little nubbin of an appendix. He wanted me to go to the ER. With no insurance, that basically wasn't going to happen until my appendix exorcised itself from my body like a little baby alien, so he wrote me a prescription for some free antibiotics (free? ex-squeeze me?), told me to keep an eye on my temperature and stick to clear liquids, and sent me on my way.

Slowly but surely, things have been improving since then, and now mostly the only thing I feel is exhaustion from the antibiotics. They never fail to wipe me out. I did finally blog about speed dating for Memphis Connect, so you can check that out, and expect an explosion of content here this week. I need to tell you the full story of the couch that almost didn't fit through my front door until adrenaline kicked in and I lifted a car off a baby, in addition to many, MANY more tales of Mr. November. Who, dare I say, is less than 24 hours from making it to December. You'll find all my secrets to longevity in my upcoming book on relationships. Should be a quick read.


cheers,
elizabeth

sampling the wares

This whole not having the internet in my home thing is really harshing my buzz, y'all. Because I have SO, so very much to update you on and there just aren't enough minutes in my lunch break to get it all out. But I know what you're waiting to hear about, so I won't keep you waiting on it any longer -- the results of my second adventure in speed dating.

The event was fairly small, just eight guys and eight gals, but there was a good variety of ages and ethnicities represented. Among the men, that is. I'm pretty sure every girl in the place was white as milk and between 22 and 26. There were eight five-minute dates with a short break after the fourth date, and each of us was given a card with all the names printed so that we could just tick the box next to the people we connected with and hand it back in at the close of the event.

I checked four boxes and, drumroll please, had two mutual matches waiting for me in my inbox this morning. Mostly I wrote those four names down because I felt like the guys liked me, and I wanted to find out if I was right. Two out of four ain't bad.

And there's something you should know about these two guys. Well, if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you'll have already guessed what I'm about to tell you. What do you imagine these two gentlemen have in common? Don't overthink it, kids. Neither one of them is white.

And why is this not at all shocking? Because it is the story of my life. I wrote about this exact same thing following my first crack at speed dating in New York and it looks like being in the south hasn't changed anything. I did briefly see a Colombian man following that, but the only thing I really aimed to gain out of that was a few free drinks, a good meal and some sassy Latin compliments. What I said then still holds -- I pretty much know my type, and he's the type that will allow me to pop out little blond Hitler babies that look just like me. It's not that I don't think non-white men are attractive, I just don't want them to impregnate me. To each his own.

So will I pursue anything with these two matches? Mr. November is a week shy of being Mr. December and I'm pretty satisfied with letting him reach that milestone, so no. The pursuit wouldn't come from me. If they wanted to buy me dinner? I might just go for that, but officially the jury is still out. Things are new and early with Mr. N, and I don't quite know what the boundaries are yet -- mostly I think at this stage there aren't any boundaries, because DTR-ing (defining the relationship) has yet to take place. And I'm okay with that. Slow is a good speed for me.

The matches have my contact info, just as I have theirs, so we shall see if any attempts at communication are made. I will obviously keep you in the loop on any and all developments in this department.

I wish that this time around I had some hysterical story to regale you with, like last time around when Vlad asked me kindly to mention his ten-inch you-know-what. Mostly the dates were enjoyable and chatty -- only two of them stared at me like a bull looking at a new gate and literally forced me to ask, "So...what do you like to do for fun?" It was worse than pulling teeth. It was a five-minute root canal.

But I think my comfort and ease throughout the whole thing was largely facilitated by the fact that I was going out with Mr. November that night. It's like going to the store when you don't really have anything in mind and finding the most fabulous outfit ever. When you're looking for something in particular, it's never there. I hope this is a lesson I can put in my back pocket for the day in the future when I need to take my own advice and stop searching. For real.


cheers,
elizabeth

the dating revolution will be live-tweeted

So, I'm doing something interesting tomorrow. How's your weekend shaping up?

I use the word interesting in just about every way that you can mean interesting, because (drum roll not necessary) I'm going speed dating.

What? Back up the train, turn off the engines, stop the operation. Speed dating? In Memphis? What happened to Mr. November?

Let's back the train all the way into the station and take a five here while I give you the back story. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to meet the owner of a fairly new downtown gastropub called South of Beale. They've done a lot of aggressive social media marketing, and I follow them on Twitter. I mentioned to him that I'd been excited about a tweet they sent out about speed dating, and asked him if they'd made any plans to host an event.

Fast forward a few days, I spend most of my commute home chatting to him about the ins and outs of speed dating, hoping that I can unleash everything I learned from all the research I did before my infamously live-Tweeted speed dating evening back in April so that they can launch an event. And they did. And I signed up. Two weeks ago.

And that brings us to the current situation. Mr. November still very much in the picture, working very earnestly at becoming Mr. December -- in fact, I saw him again last night for a few drinks -- and I'm going speed dating tomorrow afternoon at South of Beale. Bananas.

Clearly I will be blogging about the (mis)adventure here, and I'll also be writing a separate account of the event for MemphisConnect. The timing is a little weird, but it'll no doubt be a good time and rife with opportunity for parody. And y'all tend to like that. I'll also be live-tweeting this go-round, so be sure to follow along here -- this time you can even @ reply me on Twitter with questions to ask the bachelors and I will do my best to make it happen.

And hey, we all know I suck at playing hard to get. I have to have some way to keep him on his toes.


cheers,
elizabeth

meet mr. november

Gather round, children, because it is story time -- I went on a date last night.

There won't be any familiar characters in this story, mostly because things with Mr. October (that's what I'm calling this most recent of situations, partly because it happened in October, partly because it happened some during the World Series and partly because he, like most Southern men, gave me a hard time about pulling for the Yankees) have crashed and burned like a Hindenburg of Awkward Proportions.

I'll give you a moment to get over your shock.

The bottom line it seems was that he didn't want to be blogged about, and unfortunately that kind of comes with the territory of dating me. While I certainly can't empathize with the way he feels, I can understand it. Putting your life on the internet isn't for just every body. It was obviously a deal breaker for him that I wrote about those details of our (fledgling as it was) relationship, and it was a deal breaker for me to have such a central part of my life off-limits.

So last night I went out with Mr. November. Though I'm hoping this one will put up with me long enough to make it into at least December (it's only two weeks away, for God's sake), it is presently November and naming the boys in this way makes me feel like the curator of a beefcake calendar photo shoot. Yum.

Anywho. In yet another episode from my awkward memoir, we did in fact go to the same restaurant that Mr. October took me to on our first outing together, but I can't help that I like sushi and that the place is adorable and kitschy and now a five minute walk from my apartment. It happens.

We had dinner, we had drinks, we went across the street to a bar to watch the Tigers play and had a few more beers -- it was a really good time. Like, I'm in one of those moods today kind of good time. But here's what's so uncanny about the whole thing: I've known this guy since I was a senior in high school.

Clearly back in 2003 I was a completely different version of myself, and I'll venture to say that's not too far off-base for him, either. I remember thinking that he was egotistical and entitled -- we used to debate politics. I was a bleeding heart (that much at least hasn't changed) and he was conservative to some degree and I was 18 and unaware that sometimes other people have different opinions and it isn't actually a personal affront to you. He made me crazy, but in that way that made me want to just keep arguing.

Fast forward about five years. My brother's in town back in September, I run into a friend from high school at the Young Ave. Deli, and Mr. November happens to be with him. We chat for a minute and catch up, and I guess I was working my feminine wiles (sometimes they just work themselves, you know, it's so hard to keep up) because I had a text from him oh, long about the very next day.

So I bet you're wondering by now if I learned my lesson with Mr. October. About the whole blogging about dating thing. And if I did, why am I giving you all these specific details? Am I bananas? Well, yes. Probably. But the answer to the first question is that I did learn a very important lesson. I went into that date last night guns-a-blazing, prepared to lay out the truth: I have a blog. I'm going to blog about you. You're going to have to be okay with it.

But here's the thing, y'all. Mr. November? He knew I had a blog. Not only did he know, he pretty much read the thing back to front before our date. What? I'm not the only one internet stalking!? WHAT PARALLEL UNIVERSE IS THIS?

So here's what we know so far: last night was fabulous, he's copacetic with the blog and we almost managed to pull our unranked Tigers to a victory over No. 1 Kansas. Tuesday for the win.


cheers,
elizabeth

the devil's in the DSL

On Sunday, I shot a video tour of my new place. For you, internet. So that you could become officially acquainted with my humble abode.

And for you, internet, I sat at Otherlands waiting for this unfortunately huge video file to upload to this blog so that you could see the glory that is my home while doing your Sunday afternoon blog-reading. For you.

And when it just refused to upload in time, I took solace in the fact that I'd finally received an e-mail back from AT&T tech support letting me know that my phone and DSL lines should be fully functional. I left Otherlands without finishing the upload because, hey. I could finish it any time I wanted in the comfort of my own home!

All of that might've been true, internet, had it not been for the fact that the AT&T is Satan incarnate, and as I cursed and spat Sunday evening at the realization that not a single one of the FOUR phone jacks in my apartment were functional, SAT&TAN was probably doing the backstroke in the River Styx laughing maniacally at my misfortune.

On Monday night I headed out again to a different coffee shop to make use of free WiFi to get this video uploaded. All. For. YOU. And what do you know? Just when it finally uploaded, and was to the "processing" stage, the WiFi failed. Went off. Pulled its metaphorical rug right out from underneath me, the dirty bitch.

After I got home I had the pleasure of speaking with the kindest, most Southern fruitbasket of a man I've ever spoken to at AT&T technical support, who shared with me that "trouble" was showing on my line but that the earliest someone might be able to get out to fix it would be this weekend. And while his sweet little voice was just so lovely that I wanted to put him in my pocket, I know that he, too, is a tool of Satan and cannot be trusted.

So here I am, internet. I have this video, and I made it for you, and until AT&T removes its large Satanic head from its hindquarters and fixes my DSL, I guess you'll just have to wait for it.


cheers,
elizabeth

taking pride in your work

Side effect of living alone: extremely disproportionate level of personal satisfaction related to minor problem solving.

Example: I'd been dissatisfied with how hot my shower was getting and how long it was staying at its hottest. Then this morning it occurred to me that I could probably fix the issue by adjusting the hot water heater. On my way out to work, I stopped on the back porch and turned the nozzle just slightly farther toward "Hot," and tonight I cranked the faucet to take a shower after I got home from the gym and found it to be pleasantly scalding. I took a longer-than-usual shower to revel in my genius and even now feel ridiculously proud of myself.

Proud. For turning the knob on a hot water heater. Or perhaps just proud because the thought happened in my brain to begin with. Next thing you know I could be toppling buildings and curing cancer or AT LEAST changing a light bulb by myself. Watch out, world. Sisters are doin' it for themselves.


cheers,
elizabeth

why yes, london IS calling me. funny you should ask, joe strummer

A very wise friend of mine has often said that she works to travel. Monday morning as I booked my flight to London for a trip over the New Year, I thought about how lucky I am now to be able to say the same thing.

It's going to be a whirlwind trip, just six days of traveling with about five full days' worth of time actually in London. But that means a few things - first, that I'll be making it to London in the calendar year of 2009, thus meeting the requirement I set for myself to never go a year without being in England, and second, that those five days will be absolutely packed to the gills with people and places I love.

I have this dream where one day I make enough money to have a home in the states and one in England. And I'm using the word dream here for a reason, because chances are it'll be just that, a dream, forever. Unless of course I can finally realize the ultimate compromise and marry an English guy so that we can both capitalize on visa-related benefits, live transcontinentally and be painfully fabulous forever until we die. The end.

Until that day (never) arrives, though, I will have to make do with the occasional mad, six-day trip to a time zone six hours removed and be thankful for the resilience of my young body and its ability to bounce back from jet lag. This time around I'll be arriving back from London at 11 p.m. on a Monday night and heading in to work at 8 a.m. the next day. It's going to be rough, but it's not like I haven't powered through before.

When I came back to London after my Christmas break in 2008, I landed about four hours before I had a voice lesson with my performance professor. I had to trek from Gatwick in south London up to Kingsbury to drop off my suitcases and get my school stuff and then trek even farther out to Brunel, just in time for my 1 o'clock session. And not just to sit and take notes. To sing. Alone. Notes that are high. On about two hours of plane sleep.

And in the middle of the lesson, sight reading Billie Holliday's "Them There Eyes," my phone started going off. My American phone.

It was the alarm that I'd had set during my time at home, telling me it was time to wake up! Because it was 8 a.m.! Well, it was 8 a.m. somewhere. I turned it off, laughed and went back to the piano.

If I can sight read jazz notation on no sleep, surely I can manage to hang out and catch up on no sleep. Plus, booze ALWAYS helps! Right?

Right?


cheers,
elizabeth

the more things change

It's about 6:30 p.m. Sunday night. I spent the morning having breakfast with my parents and packing up more stuff at the house before heading back to midtown to get some work done and do a load of laundry.

I've been away from my parents' house for about six and a half hours.

My phone rings. "Home."

I pick up, and it's my mom. She says in a sheepish voice, "Heeeeey, whatcha doooin'?"

I laughed. And laughed, and laughed and laughed, and then -- felt so lucky. I love Memphis.


cheers,
elizabeth

and sometimes axe murderers

I'm a little nervous about tonight.

I shouldn't be nervous, because technically this marks my third night in my new place and any and all nervousness should be completely expunged by now. Technically.

But in reality, this will be my first night sleeping in my new place a.) by myself and b.) completely sober and thus susceptible to noises, creaks, house-settlings and other various and sundry opportunities for me to be afraid of the dark. And the chances of me being able to figure out the secret ways of my digital converter box in time to watch TV til I nod off are slim to none, and Slim just called me from the bus station.

So there I'll be, alone, in my ridiculously enormous apartment, all almost 1,200 square feet of it filled by just little old me. And I have complete and total faith in my ability to scare the living bejesus out of myself with little to no outside assistance. So it should be interesting.

Perhaps tonight, as I did on Friday, I will lie in bed listening to the sound of the train passing by and imagine that when the axe murderer comes to get me, he will hack me into bitty bits while a huge freight train is roaring by, masking the sound of my screams. And then perhaps he'll wait until a plane flies overhead creating yet another noise diversion to pull up my floor boards and bury me in pieces underneath the apartment.

And when my imagination really gets the best of me and I have to do a round through the apartment to make sure me and the dust bunnies really are the only ones in the place, I will take solace in this: Fears of the axe murderer at least raise your heart rate and cause you to pace madly, which SURELY burns calories; on the other hand, fears of dying alone and single to have your face eaten by alpacas really just cause you to consume mass quantities of sugar-laden foods and may potentially stop your metabolism entirely. I mean, it hasn't be proven yet, but it's only a matter of time.

And with that, I have just realized that the tagline of this blog really shouldn't be "hauling my southern ass worldwide." It should be "trying not to die alone" or "consistently working to fend off spinster-face-eating alpacas. And sometimes axe murderers."


cheers,
elizabeth

they don't teach you this stuff in school

I'm going to write a movie about my life this week, and it's going to be one of those that you don't even really want to watch because it's all bad things happening to good people. If, of course, you subscribe to the notion that I'm good people. Which maybe you don't. This week? You wouldn't be alone.

A tad melodramatic? Perhaps. But it seems I have made some boo-boos with this blog, and I think karma is paying me back for it by spilling entire cups of coffee all in my lap and all over the crossword puzzle at 6:45 in the morning. And also giving me a cold sore. AWESOME.

And here's the thing. I hate it when people vaguely allude to things, particularly dramatic things, by saying something like, "Some stuff happened this week with a certain person, but I really can't talk about it right now." What the EFF is that? If you're going to be all covert about an issue, just don't mention it all, because even if I've never even met you I am now assuming that it was ME who did something to offend you. And of course, you know I read your blog, so that's why you're not writing about it. Mostly I think this because I have some weird complex about always believing I'm in trouble whenever someone so much as looks at me sideways or emphasizes a syllable of my name the wrong way. I'm nervous sometimes, like a small deer. So sue me.

So since I hate that vague-ness so very, VERY much, I won't be vague. I talk about a lot of people and events on this blog, and it was brought to my attention this week that all those people (and maybe events, too, but I'm not certain they have the capacity to be concerned) aren't necessarily crazy about being blogged about. And just like Bobby Brown and Britney Spears said, it's totally their prerogative. And I'm trying to respect it.

I say trying because, to just be completely honest, I have a hard time relating to people who are more private about their personal lives. Because I'm just not. My family members have commented in the past about some of the details that I share falling into what they would consider to be the TMI category. And everyone's "TMI" is different -- figuring out how to respect that and still feel free to write about my life is a balancing act, and one I'm still learning.


cheers,
elizabeth

the woo factor

Internet, I owe you an apology.

Date number three was on Sunday and that was THREE WHOLE DAYS ago and I am just now getting around to telling you. I'll make it up to you by giving you intimate details about my personal life, though. Doesn't that sound more than fair? I thought so. Let's get to it.

First things first, the word "date" might be a little strong here although there were flowers involved. Always a bonus. Basically he stopped by to see my new place (and came bearing mums, what a good boy) and then took me to a soul food/sea food joint a few blocks from my apartment called Soul Fish. I had catfish and hush puppies and french fries and then almost died from childhood nostalgia for a place called Po Folks, which, up until a few years ago, had never occurred to me was named for the people who ate there. But by god, they could fry up a hush puppy. And you got Coke in mason jars! It doesn't get much better than that.

So he came by, saw the place, we had dinner, hung out at his place for a little while. Pretty casual stuff. Does that still count as date number three? I'm declaring that it does, but I'm open to your thoughts on this.

Anyway, now we face what's going to be a pretty good chunk of time between dates - the longest as of yet in this little, well, whatever this is. I've got the week from hell and house guests at the end of it, and he's going out of town this weekend, so we won't see each other until Sunday at the very earliest, perhaps not til next week entirely.

And here's where I find myself on this: it's a good thing. I'm not saying I don't like this boy (who needs some sort of fancy code name or acronym, stat), because clearly I do or I wouldn't continue to let him buy me dinner. But I have never been good at playing hard to get. In fact, I would go as far as to say that I totally and completely SUCK at playing hard to get. I'm too available. I'm too aggressive and too willing to make the first, fifth and sixteenth move, as you've surely figured out by now.

So this little hiatus is going to be a positive for me, mostly because the forced time apart is playing the game for me. I don't have to PLAY hard to get, because by nature of my hectic schedule I just really am hard to get. How convenient!

And I guess it's not so much that I'm concerned about playing "a game," per se, in fact I'd prefer not to play games. But dammit, I want to be wooed. And is it so wrong to want that "wooing" period to last as long as possible? I don't feel like it is. It's early yet, and I'm not sold on anything. I'm still in the middle of the car lot, in my mind, I haven't even made a decision on a potential test drive. So that salesman needs to keep on a-wooing.


cheers,
elizabeth

the nesting process

Furniture assembly is an activity best done with people who will still love you afterward.

I tweeted that observation this weekend as my parents and I cursed blue streaks at a dining room table, four chairs and all of their associated dowels, bolts, washers and wood screws as they protested mightily being assembled in a manner that resembled even slightly the illustrations in the instruction manual. We eventually forced everything together and now the table is totally serviceable and I'd say it's safe to sit on at least three of the four chairs. We'll mark that one in the victory category.

I signed my lease on Sunday and we moved the first big load of my stuff into the apartment, mostly books (dear sweet DEITIES, so many, many books) and music-related items. Then yesterday my dad met the fine delivery people from Crazy Mike's Discount Mattresses so that my brand new bed could be set up in my big, empty bedroom.

I haven't spent the night there yet, mostly because I'm still waiting on my shower curtain to be delivered from Target.com and showering without a shower curtain gets a little messy. And since I'm also waiting on my bedding to hit the door step from Target.com, it'll probably be Friday night before I'm well and truly on my own in the new place. Part of me wishes that it could be sooner, so I could nest and arrange and re-arrange my books and art and stuff and just generally nest to my heart's content. But the other part of me knows I'll be sad when I'm gone from my parents' house, even more sad than I've been to leave it all the many times I've gone off before. I've left for London and for New York with my bedroom -- the shrine to me, as my parents call it -- still mostly in tact. This time, that'll be changing, and it will be very hard to see it all come down.

Somehow the shortest move I've made away from home to date has become the longest -- or at least, the one that feels the most permanent. I don't know quite why. Perhaps it's because though the physical distance from me to home is the closest it's ever been, the steadily sinking-in reality of adulthood makes the mental distance seem like thousands of miles.

It's hard to leave, that much is certain. But I think up til now I've proven that you can always go home again. And I like it that way.


cheers,
elizabeth