and if you complain once more
FIVE QUESTIONS I DID NOT ASK THE THAI YOGA MASSAGE THERAPIST
1. How do you keep your hands so warm?
2. You are the smallest adult human without dwarfism I have ever seen in my life, yet you are crazy strong. Explain.
3. Do you have any terrible fart stories? Anyone who was super gross and you had trouble opening your tiny, serene, massage-therapist heart in order to lay hands on his or her grossness? Anyone really greasy, or with horrid dusty dreadlocks, or a bad smell?
4. Is this music the “Drone Zone” channel on Soma FM? It totally is, isn’t it? I thought you had some special yoga-lady CD but you just stream music like the rest of us, right?
5. Is it hard not to laugh when you say things like “Give me the weight of your leg” in your gentle mellow yoga-voice? It would be hard for me. I am bad at gentle mellow sincerity.
I AM ALSO BAD AT RECYCLING
As evidenced when I accidentally dumped a whole lunch container of almonds into my office recycling bin. I tried to pick most of them out and transfer them to the actual trash (because maybe it is only used for clean office paper and such, but I still can’t really bring myself to eat almonds out of the recycling bin). A lot of almonds ended up staying in the bin, though, because who really has time. But that bred some guilt too, because does the office cleaning person have time? Do that person have time to say wait, almonds are not office paper, now I have an extra step of taking these almonds out of here instead of quickly dumping the recycling bin and moving on? Will the office cleaning secretly think I am an entitled bitch who blithely dumps almonds (which are not an inexpensive nut) wherever she pleases? OH I GROW WEARY OF THESE ALMONDS AND WILL THROW THEM WHEREVER. SEPARATE THE ALMONDS FROM THE RECYCLABLE PAPER, MINIMUM-WAGE PEON.
A TERRIFYING PUBLIC-TRANSIT DYSTOPIA
I wish there were a way to prove that this actually happened, because it was so very freaky—I was on the train, reading a book and listening to a Songza playlist called “Indie Rock Workout” (I know, I hate me too), and I noticed that the woman sitting next to me had her fingernails filed to sharp points. Then I noticed that the woman standing in front of me had her fingernails filed to sharp points. An elderly black man across the way from me coughed and put his hand up to his mouth, and his pinky nail and the one next to it (couldn’t see the rest). In a horror movie, all the train people would have started slowly advancing on me, curling back their lips to reveal that their teeth were also filed to sharp points, and there would be a bloodbath or an action scene or a fade to black, depending on directorial intent.
A REAL PROBLEM
I apologize to all of you who have already heard me yammer on about this, but I can’t stop thinking about it. There is a thing called Empty Nose Syndrome. Well, probably there is. If you Google you will see that there is some controversy about this—however, most of the naysayers are otolaryngologic surgeons, and it makes sense that they would not want to acknowledge the existence of a condition caused by the surgery they just performed.
I love Empty Nose Syndrome. I mean, I’m sorry for you if you have it, but it is just such a lovely and evocative name. And it has a special resonance with me, as I am prone to odd existential bodily afflictions, such as not knowing exactly where my head belongs on the horizontal axis (a little more forward? a little farther back? balanced right on top of the neck? none of it feels right) or feeling like I have comically large hands whenever I take Nyquil.
Also, maybe some otolaryngologists are unwilling to admit their mistakes, but others are cool people because they invent post-surgery questionnaires like the Sino-Nasal Outcome Test, which of course abbreviates to SNOT. Oh otolaryngologists! You so crazy!
—mimi smartypants partied with the nose surgeons.