Thursday, October 15, 2009

My son is a pagan and there are Russians in my bedroom

I have two Russians living upstairs in one of my bedrooms. I do not know their names. They've been here for a few weeks. They are my new boarders. I put an ad out on Craig's List, they showed up, liked the place, handed me some cash and moved in. I knew they were Russian and fostered a secret hope that they might have Russian mafia connections and I'd get my lucky break. No such luck. Instead, the guy appears to have gone on an all-out mission to break the world record on electric bills. He likes the A/C around 34. He washes his cars a few times weekly. He does a few loads of laundry a day.

I finally cornered him downstairs with his arms full of laundry. My boyfriend had by this time already formed a theory that he is a serial killer, hence the constant washing of vehicles and clothing. I can't say this wasn't at all disconcerting for me to contemplate. It's not like I'm bragging about not knowing their names. I just didn't think it was an important detail at the time, and since then too much time has gone by for me to get away with actually asking them. By now I'm supposed to know.

So I interrogated the Russian guy in my most friendly interrogation style, which, in spite of the fact that I've spent most of my time getting culturally softened to a malleable, pulpy milksop in the USA, still seems to bring out the pure German in me. It's been a while since I interrogated a person about their laundry habits, but this is my washer and dryer we're talking about, which have not seen this much action since just before I stole them from my ex-boyfriend, which is when I decided to run up his electric bill by churning out clean, cleaner and cleanest sheets during a maniacal “cleaning spree” that lasted about a week.

Back to the Russian, who has been cornered downstairs by the door that leads to the garage, where the washer and dryer are. I started in on him rather innocently, by asking him if he in fact did laundry every day. He acquiesced that indeed this was the case. At which point I laid into him like an angry drunk Mexican midget wielding a baseball bat (but only metaphorically, as I wasn't drunk, diminutive, South American or armed), explaining to him in as carefully controlled a tone of voice that I could possibly muster under the circumstances, that I have two children, two gerbils, two fish, a dog and a cat and that I only do 2 loads of laundry per week, and was it really necessary for him to do a load a day, and could he perhaps consolidate his laundry a little more effectively, etc, etc. The attempt here on my part was to just sort of mildly given him the impression that I and my children would most likely be homeless and driven to prostitution and pickpocketing (respectively) as a result of the electrical bill he was churning out in my name. Turns out his excuse was that he doesn't have many clothes and he doesn't want to be dirty. I didn't even have a response to that. I'm sorry, but I live on a daily budget of about 24 cents a day, but my closet is exploding with clothes. Total unreality here.

In any case, he got the point. He seemed a little pasty and shaken after our little tete a tete but not too much worse for the wear. I haven't seen him since (he's been hiding in his room, with the A/C at a very civilized 78), but I've been keeping my eagle eye on the washer and dryer and a full day has gone by without him touching either machine. Maybe he's been hiding because he's so dirty after one day of no laundry that he's scared to show himself to the world.

The other Russian is his girlfriend. She has tits like rockets and a face like an angel. My 10 year old son is in love with her. He doesn't know her name, either. She helped him one day with his homework. Since then, he's become a model student and in fact was tested for “gifted” just yesterday. I shit you not, this was the same kid who used to say that he couldn't do homework because boys aren't organized enough to write things.

Besides going from a "C" average student to "gifted" my son also became a pagan this week. Last week he was a Jew. This might be considered a little odd for someone whose great-grandparents included an American Indian and a spattering of German Nazis and whose rotating selection of grandparents (depending on who his dad or I were married to or cohabiting with at different times) included old-school Germans who think all religion is evil, a pot-smoking hippie whose current girlfriend was his tantric yoga teacher, a Mexican chilanga, a New Age multi-level marketing junkie and an ordained minister of the Church of Christ. Add to that two Scientologist parents, and being a Jew is about the most normal thing a kid could ever wish for.

So that conversation went a little like this: “Mom, I've decided I want to be a Jew”.

Me: “OK, great.”

Son: “Seriously? You're OK with that?”

Me: “Absolutely. You sure you're serious about this?

Son: “Yes, mom. This is an important decision for me and I'm gonna stick with it.”

Me: “All right then. Let's get you circumcised.”

Following that conversation, my son was in spiritual crisis for about 4 days before he randomly decided to spout a bit of prophesy at total strangers at the airport last weekend and who, duly impressed, called him an “Indigo Child”. I looked this term up on the internet, and it basically means a kid who's really fucked up but whose parents have chosen to believe that he's generally misunderstood because he's actually psychic and really deep spiritually. So my kid really dug this for a few days and started writing a journal of prophesies, which sound really cool if you haven't heard them a hundred times before. I mean, kudos to my son for being drawn to the spiritual, I think it's great, but the shit he's coming up with ain't anything new, but I'm not going to be the one to cramp his style because I know he'll be done with it in a few days and be onto something new anyways.

Sure enough, this week he's a pagan. He's been a pagan for 5 days or so, which is pretty tenacious for him. The first three days were a bit rough because he kept forgetting the word “pagan” and kept having to ask me what he was, but by now he's settled into it quite nicely and is currently drawing watercolors of nude men and women dancing in nature. He decided that natural is best, and what's the big deal about nudity anyways, a concept my almost-2 year-old couldn't agree with more, especially when it's time for a walk, which she considers is best done in the buff anyways.

So the Russian girl with the rocket tits told me she'd had a job interview that morning with Walgreen's for a cashier job, which reminded me why she's actually living in one of my upstairs bedrooms in the first place: I don't really have a job that pays shit. I have numerous jobs that pay something, sometimes, but none that actually make it possible for me to purchase a tank of gas without silently panicking. Hence, the endless succession of strange roommates in the extra bedroom. The set-up reminds me not a little of Anne Frank, since my harboring a roommate is completely illegal, forget about two, forget about them being the 6th set of roommates in less than a year. To clarify, I don't own this place, I rent it. The landlord already freaked out when he found out I was harboring a dog. I wonder what he'd actually say if he knew I was hiding a couple of Russians in here too.

Back to the Russian girl interviewing at Walgreen's, apparently they actually asked her during the interview, “why do you want to work here?”

This question had me stumped. It's been bugging me for days. I don't know I'd have an easy answer for that if someone asked me why I wanted to work at Walgreen's. Because, unless you get brownie points for bullshitting, they wouldn't really want to know my answer.

“I want to work at Walgreen's because ---”

I can't even come up with a bullshit answer to this one. Why the fuck would anyone want to work at Walgreen's, you dumb fucking bitch? Because you're hiring, you fucking assfuck, and I need some fucking money right about now, and I talked myself into the idea that I can actually survive and raise a family off $7 an hour before taxes, when the babysitter wants twice as much so I can have the fucking privelege of working, that's what. I don't WANT to work at Walgreen's and either does anyone else, unless they're meth heads with a way of getting into your pharmacy after hours, and either do you, for that matter, and that's why you're asking me, to see if I can come up with one good reason why you're still here, because you're fresh out of answers. You sick, sick person.

If I'd been the interviewee, I guarantee you the Walgreen's manager would've walked out of that door right behind me, never to return.

Besides, the Russian chick had an interview lined up at Victoria's Secret at the mall, which pays $10 per hour starting, and she and her tits are going to be perfect for that job, so her head is probably in a pretty good place right now anyways.

Which of course got me to thinking of the whole job interview process. The last job interview I had, I lied my ass off, for about an hour – in German. I promised them I could do things I'd never even heard of. I assured them I could generate $200,000 in new business in 3 months, from scratch, in an area of business I had zero experience in. I told them about my incredible average production output, playing it off like it wasn't a big deal but literally having pulled the number out of my ever-tightening sphincter due to the fact that I had never produced a single one of what was being discussed (although my resume claimed I had 10 years' experience in the field). When asked what type of salary I had in mind, my answer was quite possibly on the order of millions of dollars a year, which I considered was an answer appropriately reflective of my supposed skills and previous accomplishments.

I retrospect, I'm pretty sure they had my number within the first 2 minutes, and the rest of the time they were just enjoying themselves, as Germans will, by casually torturing me, and watching me squirm (I had chosen the German lady's bra-less nipples as my focal points to help me keep my cool, but that may have backfired in its own way as well. One really lovely thing about Europeans in general is they are a lot less uptight about bras, which as an A-cup, suits me just fine personally, because I really don't have anything to lift or support. The only reason I wear bras is to cover my nipples, because in the US nipples are considered dangerous and distracting and quite possibly a sign of terrorist tendencies.)

I, too, need to gear up for some new interviews, however. After 4 years of pretending I was gainfully employed, I have finally acknowledged that I'm not just unsuccessful, but that I'm broke, I suck at what I do, and I am in the wrong part of the country and in the wrong line of business entirely. Being a realtor in Florida was easy money – for about 4 months. Getting distracted from my fledgling career path by going sailing in Portugal and gallivanting through the English countryside with my dashing new husband was, professionally speaking, perhaps not the smartest of all moves. Being left high and dry by the very same (albeit abruptly much less dashing) husband, who ingallantly and very suddenly decided to gallivant solo (in the Sahara desert, of all places, never to be seen this side of the pond again), threw me for a loop, but back then there was this thing called a home equity line of credit, which was a welcome temporary solution. Getting knocked up shortly thereafter by a guy I'd only met that same weekend was, in hindsight, also poor planning. OK, it was no planning. Fast forward to today, and my financial profile would make Stephen King scream with horror.

I've started filling out some online apps and sending out resumes. They want to know if I have any management experience. I want to say, listen pal, I'm a single mom, of course I know how to manage. I could run a small country better than anyone else who's currently doing it, while cooking dinner and wiping my kids' asses.

Do I have any sales experience? Sure I do. Do I work well under pressure? Fer fuck's sakes, you're looking at someone who's never worked any other way. You want proof? Here's a little anecdote for you, future employer: I was selling advertising some years back and took a phonecall at home while bathing my infant son in the kitchen sink. While fielding the call in the most professional manner imaginable, I watched in silent horror as my son found a turd (presumably his) in the bath water, picked it up and began maneuvering it towards his open rosebud mouth. Without the prospective client ever knowing that I wasn't sitting at a desk in a penthouse office suite, I deftly swiped the turd off the hand-to-mouth trajectory path it was on, causing it to take flight across the kitchen like a bird on the wing, and I closed the deal.

So yeah, I can do sales, and yeah, I work well under pressure. Next question, please. Just please don't ask me why I want to work for you.

1 comment:

  1. Hell, I'd hire you! Of course the real estate market has picked up and you are hell on wheels these days =)

    Thanks for the laughs. I may be the only one who commented, but I promise I'm not the only one who read it and enjoyed it. Some people are blog lurkers. You know what I'm talking about, too!

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