finding my voice

my sister calls me up one day and says, "do you know what a totesum is?"

i say, "of course, it's a place like 7-11."

"well," she says, "i mentioned a totesum to shawn and he had no idea what it is."

mississippi strikes again.

now i've never had a very pronounced southern accent. in fact, most folks who aren't from the south couldn't guess i am. mainly, i think, because the rest of the world thinks all southerners go around saying things like "i ain't never done nothin' tew y'all, why'd yeeeew go and do somethin' laaaak that fer?" i can't blame them really. they only know the south from tv, movies, and books, most of which depict all southerners like backwoods hicks. and granted, there are a heckuva lot of backwoods hicks in Mississippi. i just happen not to be one of them.

but my Dixie starts showing around midnight. that's when i'm just far too tired (tarred) to add a "g" to the end of every word. Also, if i have too much to drink, i start drawling all over the place. i also get extremely outgoing and friendly. there are reasons i don't drink anymore (does bailey's in hot cocoa count?). I'm not a friend of bill w's or anything. i just decided to stop because of my migraines (though i must say, it hasn't made any real difference. in fact, i'm having more headaches than ever now, so perhaps i should jump off the wagon. and then again…)

oh, and, of course, i am totally a Dixie chick when i'm on the phone with anyone from back home. people in the room with me can always tell the difference between local and long-distance phone calls.

anyhow, like i said, i'm not normally drawly, so it came as a surprise when my boyfriend called me on my extremely random pronunciation. he says, "say i-n-s-u-r-a-n-c-e."

after i take a few seconds to figure out what the heck he wants me to say (i can hardly ever spell things aloud, which is why i have a hard time around small children), i say, "INsurance." he says, "it's pronounced 'inSURANCE." we argue this for as long as it takes for him to pull up some pronunciation tutorial on the internet and prove me wrong. (although i still think i am right)

and now that he's on a roll, he gets me to say stuff like HALLoween, TEEv, THANKSgiving, and JUly (technically JEWly). He says, "you're always moving the emphasis to the first syllable.

i had never noticed that people around me here in seattle were all pronouncing things in some freakish way, so i called on my southern folks to tell me how THEY pronounce these words. To a person, they all put the emphasis on the first syllable. even a friend of mine who speaks in the most eloquent non-accent, says, "Yes, people always know i'm southern when they hear me say JEWly." so i wasn't wrong. everybody in the south talks this way. just listen to kyra sedgewick on 'the closer."

my boyfriend is also confused when i say things like, "i'm trying to turn on the eye on the stove and it won't work!!!" he's like, "what the hell are you talking about?" "the EYE on the top of the stove…where you put the frying pan!" i say. and he goes, "You mean the BURNER?" "It's not a BURNER; it's the EYE!" i say, as i rush to confirm, via my southern friends, what that thing the frying pan sits on is called. (if al gore hadn't invented the internet, we'd have a tough time proving our points. or at least we wouldn't prove them so quickly.)

anyhow, my boyfriend and i have to agree to disagree on matters such as this since we intend to be together and bickering gets tedious.

BUT my Dixie is rubbing off on him in small ways. see, we have this very demanding cat who always whines for food, even though he's fed at least FIVE times a day. but every time we're in the kitchen or near the kitchen or are in a house that HAS a kitchen, he will holler at us until we relent and give him food. we both agree that he is spoiled. but then i say, "he's not just spoiled; he's RURNT." "he's what?" "RURNT. It's the past tense of ruin when something has absolutely no hope. it's like ruined to the power of 100 or 1000."

"rurnt," he says, "yeah, he's definitely rurnt."

and now he takes great pleasure in calling things "rurnt." And i swear i have heard him say TEEv at least once.

if the shoe were on the other foot

the other day i am walking across that skybridge that connects nordstrom with pacific place and i see something that stops me in my tracks: a shoe. it's a man's shoe, off-white with woven leather, something between a sandal and a slip on. i've scoured men's shoe sites and can't find anything that bears more than a vague resemblance to it. (which doesn't bode well for the guy who lost the shoe.) unfortunately, i didn't think to use my camera phone. and that was a prime camera phone moment. what was i thinking?

anyhow, it's a new-looking shoe, so i'm wondering what the heck it's doing in the vestibule of a mall (or pseudo-mall, as the case may be).i mean, every once in a while, you run across a kid's shoe in the grocery store or wherever, and it's understandable. kid's lose shoes. but how does a grown man lose a shoe and not notice? ok, maybe it didn't fall right off his foot. but that begs the question: why was he carrying this shoe around with him at the mall in the first place? and why would he not notice that it had gone missing? when that vestibule is empty, it has quite the echo factor, so he'd surely hear it drop if he was alone in there. and if there were a lot of people around so that the noise was muffled, surely one of his fellow shoppers would have rushed to return the shoe to the guy. c'mon, this is seattle.

i've been baffled by this lone stray shoe phenomenon for as long as i can remember. i most often see them abandoned on roads. however, i finally did get an explanation for those that sort of makes sense. or amuses me, at least.

years ago, my ex-boyfriend was involved in a road rage situation. i forget what started it or how it escalated. anyhow, the then-boyfriend does some final-straw move like flip the other driver off or something and a representative from the other car THROWS A BOOT AT HIM! A BOOT! i thought it was hi-larious! of course, i wasn't in the car when it happened. if i had been, i would've been mortified and would've long before been telling him not to act like such a moron that it got to that point, but since he did, i thought it was a hoot that somebody actually launched a boot at him. they missed his car, thankfully. i don't think i would have been laughing so much if they'd caused damage. anyhow, i told him, i always wondered where those lone shoes on the road come from. now i know.

so if you see a proliferation of abandoned shoes on the road, blame it on road rage.

i am still not quite certain about all the socks that make it onto the roads and sidewalks. however, my theory is that these are the socks that have escaped from the dryers and are heading to florida to retire. that is how far they make it until they just give up. i have to say, some of them go a respectable distance.

long lost cousin

so a couple of years ago, my mom tells me that i have a cousin who's going to be on some show called "lost." i say, there's no such show as "lost." (my first reaction is always to tell my mother she has no idea what she's talking about. often, i am right, but just as often, i am wrong.) she's adamant that she's got the correct name of the show, so i google it and sure enough i find said cousin's name listed among the cast members. so then i google him: josh holloway. and he is HOT. well, i reckon, most people know this by now, but i was just finding it out.

so my mom says that my cousin used to be a model and was on the cover of esquire and had now landed this gig on this new tv show. and then it dawned on me: this was the model/actor/wannabe cousin my dad had told me about when i lived in LA. the one he was always trying to get me to call and hook up with because we are related and were both living in the same sprawling metropolis. (parent logic, you know.). i always thought, a. why do i want to hang out with some stupid cousin? and b. right, like somebody in OUR family was actually on the cover of esquire (this is still unconfirmed). needless to say, i never called.

well, the as the months went by, even someone as out of touch with the entertainment world as i am knew that "lost" had become a hit tv show. so then i figured that if i'd called my cousin back when i was living in la, maybe i'd be two degrees from george clooney by now or something. but, of course, the time has passed. i can't call him up now on the premise that we should hang out because i'm his cousin. a. because neither one of us lives in LA anymore and b. because how lame is that? so basically, i've got this cousin who's semi-famous, but i've never met him. to tell the truth, i've never actually watched the show either. and i haven't given him more than a passing thought other than to tell this story a few times.

my sister, on the other hand, is unnaturally obsessed with the idea that josh holloway is our cousin. it's weird. first off, she watches the show religiously. not that that is any tip-off. plenty of people do that. heck, even my parents do, although my mom threatened to stop watching it when she thought josh's character was going to get killed off. i think he lived because she is still watching it.

but one of the reasons i think she's unduly obsessed is that she tells EVERYBODY she runs across that josh holloway is her cousin. (i suppose she might be lamenting that she took her husband's name as she now doesn't have quite so obvious a connection.) i think she neglects to mention that she's never actually met her cousin. that he doesn't know her from adam. and that he's her second cousin. (but at least he's not the once-removed kind.)

she seriously would like to get my dad to ask his brother for a signed photo for her. i think she would also like to get his phone number, but that might be asking too much. she and and one of her friends are thinking they should go out to california and meet him. i'm not sure how serious she is about this. i hope not too much. especially since she hasn't yet made it out to seattle to see me. (which is a whole other can of worms i'm not going to open right now.) and also because, as i have recently learned from an astute blog reader (my boyfriend), j.h. actually lives in hawaii where his show is filmed. anyhow, her husband and i both agree that her level of interest in this particular cousin is unnatural. but at least she's not trying to date him or something, even though we are from mississippi.

nice people give me road rage

well, i guess i am finally turning into a seattleite. tonight, i actually stopped in the street and let a pedestrian cross. ack! i sort of felt obligated since he was already halfway across the street when i showed up. i figured it was best not to let him stand out there and get hit. so i let him cross. normally, i wouldn't do this. unless, of course, it was an actual intersection. or one of those annoying marked crosswalks. it's not that i mind stopping to let pedestrians pass (except when i'm in a hurry, which is actually most of the time), it's that here in seattle pedestrians EXPECT you to stop and let them pass because EVERYBODY ELSE DOES. so you get pedestrians darting out into traffic all the time, figuring people will naturally stop, and i'll admit, i'm not the most observant of drivers, so i don't always notice when stray people wander into the street. I'm sometimes on autopilot, and because i'm not expecting people to be in the road, i'm not conscious of them. until they're RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. and then i'm screeching on my brakes. and do they scurry? no, they continue in a leisurely pace as if they haven't just narrowly escaped death. it's unfathomable.

alternately, it bugs me as a pedestrian, as well, that people stop in the middle of the road for you. i am perfectly content to wait for a break in traffic to make a dash across the street. but no, a person stops for you and you're obliged to step out into traffic, but then there may be a car coming from the other direction that won't stop, so you're stuck there holding things up. it's much better if drivers just leave pedestrians to fend for themselves. but, no, in seattle everyone wants to be "nice." heck, i've had cars stop for me when i was just standing on the sidewalk with no intention of crossing the street. it's that crazy! oh, but the flipside of the "nice" drivers, is how rude pedestrians get if you don't stop for them. they're so used to people stopping, that i reckon they think that's the law or something. that drivers are required to stop anytime they feel the need to jaywalk. um, no. as far as i know, i'm not allowed to actually run over them, but i don't have to stop and let them walk out in front of me just because they feel like it either. even if i do have a seattle driver's license.

the weird thing is that while i'm driving, i encounter a lot of people who jaywalk, even though seattle has this reputation for being a city that's tough on jaywalkers. i do think there are a lot of people who are paranoid about this, however. When you're waiting for the walk signal at an intersection downtown, there are always a couple of people who are checking to see if the street is clear and crossing against the light. the rest wait on the corner till they get the go ahead to "walk." i am always among the band of evil jaywalkers. i can't help it. i have no patience for standing around and waiting to do what i'm told. never have, never will.

as a total tangent, i tried to preserve the straight hair one day too long. today, i do not feel cosmopolitan. i feel kind of grungy. can't wait to wash my hair in the morning.

playing it straight

i am not myself today. today, i am that cosmopolitan girl who shows up for a couple of days once every three months or so–right after i leave the gene juarez salon. yes, when I walk in there, i am a somewhat scattered, curly-haired girl, but when i leave the place, i’m as sophisticated as a girl can be with my silky smooth straight hair. ok, maybe it’s not so eliza dolittle, but it is a transformation. ask anyone who knows me.

once, i had an off day creatively when i had straight hair and the client i was working for at the time blamed it on the hair. after that, any time i showed up at the office with straight hair, he called me “the evil kim” and told me to go home and get my curly-haired sister and send her to work.

i can, of course, still work when i have straight hair. But i do get distracted by my hair. i can’t stop touching it. it’s so soft. i love to run my fingers through it. and, no, I am not some kind of freak or fetishist. you’ve got to understand: when I was young, i desperately wanted silky, straight hair. like my sister had. hers was blonde, to boot. mine was brown and usually frizzy. can you see why I’d want to trade? so one day a few years back, a hairdresser asked if i wanted my hair blown out straight. i had no idea this was an option. so i said, sure. and when she did, it was unbelievable. i mean, i figured they could get it straight, but i had NO IDEA my hair would be silky. wow! (i am touching it again just to make sure. still silky.)

now don’t get me wrong, i love my curly hair. i wouldn’t trade it for anything. now that i’ve come to terms with it, that is. we’ve gone through a lot of rough spots, my hair and i. i can remember trying to “feather” it. word to the wise: curls don’t feather. then there was the unfortunate close-cropped style which elicited refrains of the monchhichi song whenever I came near my friends. delightful. and i probably shouldn’t mention the time i highlighted it with stripes. yeah, I didn’t think so.

now that I’ve decided to leave my hair alone and pretty much let it do what it wants to do, we get along fine. even better now that i got one of those ionic hair dryers. i may be one of the last people in america to jump on this bandwagon. i mean, i called my sister to tell her about it and she said she’d had one for three years. anyhow, if there’s anyone out there with curly hair who hasn’t tried the ionic hair dryer, i highly recommend it. i’m not sure what the science is on the thing, and my boyfriend is dubious, but he does agree that it makes my hair much less frizzy and more curly. but what he noted about it was that it shortened the drying time. which is sometimes important when you live in a house with only one bathroom.

no, your other left...

ok, it has long been established that i have no sense of direction. one of my boyfriend's favorite things to do is ask me, which way is east? and take in my extremely confused expression as i try to decide which direction to point. when we are in the house, i can usually point the right way (now that he's told me which direction is which), but once we leave home, all bets are off.

I also know whether i'm headed toward vancouver or portland when i'm on the 5 or 99, but take me off the road and spin me around a few times and i couldn't tell you anything.

of course, my boyfriend has all these complicated methods involving putting a stick in the ground and observing the shadows and whatnot. or watching the sun at a certain point in the day and all such as that. not really very helpful when someone's directions tell you to go "east" and you have no idea which way east is and have no time for a scientific experiment.

why on earth do people who are giving directions tell you to go east or west? what is wrong with right or left? not that i am any better at those either, but still. oh, yes, i'm one of those people. i will tell my boyfriend to turn right when i mean to turn left. or i will turn left when he tells me to turn right. drives him crazy. (can't imagine why!)

so anyhow, my sister and i are in new york a couple of weeks ago and we go out to dinner at this restaurant that I thought was pretty close to the hotel. we're at the marriott marquis so we're at 6th and 45th. we start walking and we're looking for a place that's between 8th and 9th. so i get my sister to ask the cops which direction we should be going. she does and we start going that way. but one extremely long block later (what's the deal with the long blocks in new york?) i see that we've hit 5th. I say, we're going the wrong way! she says, you said it's between 4th and 5th! i said, no i didn't; i said it was between 8th and 9th! this goes back and forth more than i care to say as we make our way back down the extremely long block. peppered with, we're taking a cab back! from my sister. and me saying, it's only a few blocks! and further commentary from both of us about how the blocks are really long. (i should probably interject that by this point i had walked all over the natural history museum, the metropolitian musuem of art, and many other long new york blocks and had developed some nasty blisters. i wasn't just cranky; my feet hurt!)

so we finally get to "between 8th and 9th," and we're looking for the address where the restaurant is supposed to be, but...no restaurant. what the hell? my sister asks to see the listing that i have thoughtfully pulled out of the zagat's guide and brought along. she says, this is on 46th street!!! oops. so we walk another three blocks and finally get to the restaurant. i want to look at the menu before we go in, but jenna won't let me. if she's walked this far, she's eating at this restaurant. period. well, when she sees the menu, she wishes she'd let me look. i know she does, but she doesn't let on. it's an italian place, but there's not a pasta dish in sight. I've since learned that northern italian basically means "meat only. oh and the waiter asks would we like sparkling or still bottled water and jenna says "still" before i can say "neither." Apparently, she didn't understand that "neither" was one of the choices and that by not answering that, we got to share a $7 bottle of water. yum! well, it all worked out though. turns out the special was some three kinds of pasta deal which was ok. so after dinner we walk back to the hotel, which in case you haven't been plotting this on a map, is only a block and a half away from the restaurant. my sister says, if we'd only had to walk this far to the restaurant, i would have let you look at the menu and we could've gone somewhere else...

so fast forward to this week when i am back home and hungry for some chow-dah. i decide to go to duke's in greenlake. i was swayed because the website said they had a parking lot. what it neglected to mention was that the lot only has room for about five cars. so i have to drive around and around looking for a spot. by the time i finally find one, i've lost track of where i am in relation to duke's. i know the general direction of the street duke's is on, so i head that way. I make it to that street and indeed, duke's is one block down. I figured, two and a half blocks...not great parking, but could've been worse... well, then i get to duke's and see that the street running alongside it is the street i'm parked on. i make a mental note to walk up that street when i leave. well, i get my take-out and walk up that street about half a block and, yep, there's my car. I should have known. I don't want to jinx myself, but i have really good parking karma. i was thinking two and a half blocks seemed a little off for me...the worst part was, when i got back in the car, i thought to myself, i can SEE duke's from here! only i thought it was some other restaurant....well, i'd never been there before and there wasn't a sign in the BACK. still, i felt like a moron. such a stupid navigational faux pas in my own town.

and i can't even talk about how bad it is in when i go back to la. after living there 8 years, somehow i still manage to get on 10 east when i want to go west...

caught with pants down...

ok, here's the latest from the "my mother is driving me crazy" files:

she calls me yesterday to tell me she was driving to her physical therapy appointment when she had a sudden, uncontrollable need to pee. she pulls over on the side of the highway, gets out and by this time is already peeing but goes around to the passenger side of the car and gets her pants down to finish the job. now i should mention here that my mother is 70 and has rhematoid arthritis, a bad back, and a bundle of other ailments besides the obvious incontinence issue.

well, once she's done, she can't for the life of her get back up again. her knees keep buckling under. the more she tries, the weaker she gets. then a truck pulls over and a man comes to help her up. he's having a struggle trying to get her up (not sure why, it's not like my mom is very heavy or anything...). meanwhile, she's trying to get her pants pulled up. finally they make it to the back seat on the passenger's side and the people in the truck are hollering "help is on the way!" the man asks, what were you doing down there? so my mom tells me, i wasn't going to say, well i just thought i'd sit around with my butt hanging out... so she says, i had to pee. next thing she knows, a fire truck shows up followed shortly by the police. a fireman takes her blood pressure and it was sky high. and he asks, what were you doing out here? and she says, i had to pee! and then she hears the cop ask the fireman, what was she doing out here? and the fireman says, she had to pee. the way word gets around, probably half of jackson, mississippi, knows my mother was peeing on the side of the road...

so she says, i don't know why this happened, i took my detrol this morning. and i say, maybe you need to increase your dosage. how many are you taking a day? she says, well, i take one whenever i'm going somewhere. i say, WHAT? they're not like aspirin. you can't just take them when you need them. you have to take them EVERY DAY. she says, well, they cost sixty dollars a month. i said, yeah, so. you have sixty dollars. but if you want to save sixty dollars, you can keep peeing in the street. well, i take them three or four days a week, she says. you have to take them EVERY DAY, i say. there's no point in taking them if you're not going to take them correctly. are you listening to me? i say. i hear you, she says. yes, but are you paying attention? i heard you, she says.

she heard me. and she has no intention of doing what i say. it drives me nuts because i know she will call again with another incontinence episode. and we'll have the same conversation over again. i don't know how to stop.

i guess i'm like a man in that i always want to solve her problems for her. maybe i need to distance myself and just give her sympathy when she calls. I mean, she's 70 years old. she's made it this far without my solving her problems. i guess she can manage well enough on her own.