My phone has been ringing off the hook this week with clips from Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl.” This pretty much means that magazine I’ve enslaved myself to has a deadline coming up, which apparently requires that they call me non-stop to pressure me into spending my precious uncompensated time writing for them. This also means that “Hollaback Girl” has been stuck in my head for 72 hours, and I think it’s beginning to get to me.
Nico, however, adores it. He and I dance about as I belt out, “The shit is bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S,” in elevators, in the market, on the way to Starbucks… I’m not quite sure what to make of his musical tastes, nor what I’m going to do the day he learns to sing the lyrics himself. On the one hand, how cute would it be for a one or two year old to go around swearing like a sailor? On the other hand, how bad would it be to be the parent of that swearing one or two year old?
It’s moments like this when I have to ask myself, am I following in the footsteps of Britney Spears, the poster girl for bad mothers everywhere? Is letting Nico suck on hamster water bottles as bad as that time ol’ Brit-Brit was caught letting her toddler play with cigarettes? Do people say hideous things about me behind my bake as I flip my giggling son upside down or toss him off on complete strangers? Does it even matter? And why do I keep letting this magazine talk me into writing these stupid last minute articles for them? Especially when the only consolation I’m getting for all this trouble is a health club membership I have no time to use because all my time is spent teaching Nico hip-hop lingo and writing articles for this magazine.
And how pathetic is it that these constitute the major issues in my life?
What’s no longer an issue is we seemed to have snagged ourself a positively palatial apartment. It’s gorgeous with loads of storage space (including a much-coveted entryway walk in closet), sunken living room, an actual turret play room for Nico (in addition to Japanese-style bedroom for his royal highness), two cavernous bathrooms, a kitchen as big as our entire current apartment, and a genuine broom closet just for holding our cleaning supplies! The only thing that stands between us and this miraculous gem of a living space is The Flake, the guy at Christian’s company who’s job is to deal with these things, but who claims to never have time to actually deal with them.
The Flake has supposedly been helping us with this house hunting project which is why I had to spend several hours scouring our complex by foot hunting for phone numbers of prospective landlords and networking with “people who know people,” why Christian had to contact actual real estate agents himself, why we had to sucker someone’s sweet unsuspecting Chinese girlfriend into making a million phone calls for us, and why we now owe the company goddess Dorothy countless favors (on top of the countless favors we already owe her) for doing the negotiating. The only task that remains is to prepare the lease contract, which considering this isn’t the first apartment the company’s rented for foreigners, should be a “cut & paste” matter. However, The Flake can’t even be bothered to show up to work to do that much. Oh, and did I mention that we’re supposed to be moving in three weeks? Needless to say, if we lose this apartment due to incompetence, I will be out for blood.
One Comment
> And how pathetic is it that these constitute the major issues in my life?
Look at it this way: If you can make your life sound ordinary enough, you might become the next governor of Alaska. Just remember to speak up at PTA meetings. And praise the Lord.