Confessions Of A Splenda Stealer

The things I do in the name of journalism.

Friday morning, I awake to a migraine. Though the pain hasn’t kicked in yet, as I am peeling the shell of my hard boiled eggs, I realize I can’t really see what one hand is doing. I stare at a blank wall to confirm the fact that I am developing a split vision headache, aka, mini migraine.

What to do?? I had a deadline, and I left my BB charger at work. Drats. So I did what any trooper would do: popped in two Advil, and solicited help from my roommate who was walking out the door at the same time to prevent me from bumping into fellow pedestrians and strollers on our way to the PATH trains.

Functioning with split vision is a bit like seeing the world with that crazy annoying “overwrite” mode in Microsoft Word. In this mode, the text just after the cursor gets deleted as you type new text. It’s incredibly disorienting and frustrating until you realize what’s going on. Split vision is the same thing: your point of focus seems to blur or block out what your eyes are trying to look at. In order to see something clearly, you have to look to the side of it, or sometimes below or above. Fascinating, I know.

I think I should be able to add my ability to type through this phenomenon under the “skills” section in my resume.

Annnnnyways, I miraculously pulled through to deliver this to the editor. Enjoy-ee.

Close Encounters of the Pest Kind

I have a confession. When I was six-years-old, I stomped out an entire ant hill in my backyard. Seconds later, an army of beady, fat, black ants took their revenge by crawling up my chubby legs. They had it coming though–the placement of their hill killed the baby evergreen tree I planted for Arbor Day. But, ever since that battle, the bugs have had it out for me.

This relationship with nature does not fare well when you live in an old house or building, because the outside will inevitably seep in. As luck would have it, I’ve usually had some sort of pest-control on speed-dial. When I was in single digits, all I had to do was yell DADDY!!!

One afternoon in college, my roommate and I found that screaming bloody murder was quite effective after we were welcomed back to our dorm room by a bird flapping around our tubs of animal crackers. Our hall mate came to the rescue, and he scooped the bird up with a lacrosse stick.

But now–I live with two other girls, and the topic of bug-control has not yet come up, until recently.

Upon returning home from a gallery opening post-work, I headed to the kitchen for some water before going to bed, and a little friend was waiting for me. I froze. I spied a huge, blackish-brown, beetle-like thing that walked slowly across the linoleum. I jumped away. The roommates were asleep, and the vacuum was behind my nemesis. I decided to exit the kitchen, turn off the light, and forget I ever saw it. I had to rock myself to sleep.

In the morning, I screeched that I saw the grossest cricket last night into the phone, naturally, to my mother. As a native to New Yorker, she said something so eye opening that I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“Em, you are such a suburb girl. I love that you assume that a bug like that is a cricket,” she said.

I mean, I guess it didn’t make a noise, and it’s not August quite yet…Then I realized—good God, it might be a cockroach. I had never felt so far away from home.

Since that rude awakening, I have seen my enemy two more times. The second time, I reacted with the same, back-up-slowly-and-return-to-

your-room approach. But, last night, when I saw him creep out from under the fridge, I took action. I placed a white ceramic bowl on top of my nemesis. Whatever he is, he is now in captivity.I left a note for the roommates and told them not to look under the bowl flipped upside down by the microwave. I think they’ll understand. Or, they’ll just think I’m an idiot. Only time will tell if the bowl is still there when I get home.

As we are all well aware, I really do love freebies. I’m not “in like” with them–I LOVE them, and that is not a word I use lightly.

Coincidentally, it was just the other day that my co-worker asked me if I ever shopped at the now defunct grocery store Grand Union, back in the days when I was small enough to fit in my mom’s shopping cart. We reminisced/drooled about the Grand Union cookie club–a “club” where little kids got a card they could flash at the cookie counter for a freebie. This was the best deal ever, until you were about 11 or 12, and we turned from cute to awkward, and we weren’t allowed anymore freebies.

Anyway, today’s posting on NYC Daily Deals made me think about this when I read about the other free cookies and drinks you can collect on your bday, since today is the site editor’s bday.

Happy Birthday and thanks for the heads up.

courtesy nycdailydeals.com

If only I could make a fake i.d.s to score freebies when it’s not my bday…

Here they are again, for easier reading:

The Blinders Are Off…

As a Hoboken transplant, I’m not always an invested citizen. Since college, not sure as to where I will ultimately settle, every “home” I’ve had comes with an expiration date. This limbo sometimes skews my vision of Hoboken as if it were the Fisher Price Little People Village.

In this plastic village, I only pay attention to the news that I deem important, like my favorite bar, The Gold Hawk closing, rather than local politics. This analogy of course is ridiculous: First, real people have arms and legs; second, Hoboken is not plastic, nor void of non-toxic issues I can dismiss at whim.

It was in the second grade when I discovered I had this ability to tune people out. Like all children who find out that they have been blessed with a super-power, not everyone took to it without some disconcertion sent my way.

Day after day during lunchtime, I would finish my peanut butter and jelly on potato bread and as if I were unwrapping dessert, pull a book out of my desk, lick my fingers, and flip through the pages to consume a story.
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When I have a deadline, I need music. As far as my own work ethic is concerned, nothing is more distracting than silence. When the room is quiet, my ears feel as if they are just straining and waiting to pounce on any little sound to prove that I am not deaf. Just like our eyes respond to the pitch dark–when you feel your eyes constantly scanning for some source of light in an effort to prove that you haven’t gone blind. My ears work the same way, so I silence this neurosis with music.

But, this is no easy task. In college, I made “mellow” play lists, with more instrumentals or softer lyrics so that the music wouldn’t compete with my own thoughts. As I’ve gotten older, I have found that my music personalities have gotten more bipolar. I never know what kind of music I am in the mood for when I begin to write. Mid-sentence, if a song comes on that does not jibe with my writing mood, as if I bit into a sour grape, my nose crinkles and my gut reaction is to immediately flip to another song. Playlists are even pointless because I can’t even define the genre my mind craves. I become manic and itchy to find just the right sound.

Today, my mind has responded well, so far, with the sounds of Elvis Costello and the O’Jays, but reacted violently to The Strokes and The Counting Crows (the banjo jilted it).  Al Green is streaming now, and that also seems to have taken.

Of course, this is all good and well until Pandora slaps me in the face with: Unfortunately, our music licenses force us to limit the number of songs you may skip each hour. Usually I get frustrated and then just punch in a different song or artist to generate a new station, but it was at this moment when I saw the button for “Snack Rap Radio.”

Every few minutes or so, Pandora will refresh the page with a new ad. The ad for McDonald’s new, disgusting Mac Snack Wrap, for the person too lazy to open their mouth big enough to eat the classic Big Mac, featured a friendly yellow button labeled “Snack Rap Radio.” Intrigued, I had to take a listen. Assuming it would be food-related songs, I was incorrect. Apparently, snack wrap eaters like the sounds of T.I, Busta Rhymes, Lil Wayne, and Outkast.

Immediately, I saw this as some sort of twisted marketing scheme, and that this station was somehow a socioeconomic commentary on the McDonald’s consumer. Fired up to find the meaning of what McDonald’s was trying to say with this Snack Rap station, I did an instant Google search, in which the first entry to pop up was:

“Did you mean snack wrap?”

With that same sour-grape crinkled face, I looked at the search bar to see that I had in fact typed in “Snack Rap” instead of “Snack Wrap.” Oh. Ha. Ahem…Good one…I was the last to get the play on words. Oh, how nothing gets by you, Google.

And this is why Pandora also feeds my chronic procrastination–not only did I waste about 15 minutes with Snack Rap Radio, but I also wasted more time writing this post.

I’m switching to my Nano for the rest of the day now.