We'll Leave the Light on For You

OK - so I have survived thus far: the holidays, the pack, the move, the drive and the flight. Now it really gets interesting (at least it seems that way in my head).

Jan 8th: To my delight and surprise, my luggage arrived OK. I should end the blog right here as that is friggin exciting news, yes?!

We get a taxi and arrive at the hotel - nothing of note here - except the cabbie's car smelt a little funny...like when you walked by that certain dorm room back in college? The dorm room where the students always seemed to have money but not for too long, laughed at everything and ate a lot of Funyuns...Yeah. You feel me on that one.

Anyway, I digress. The scenerey between the airport and the city reminded me of New Hampshire a bit. Kind of a hard / stony landscape - not really soft / hilly. Like it was just cut roughly. I've got no other way to explain it. There was some snow on the ground, but not too much. It was about 33/34 degrees. Not too bad. I couldn't read a damn thing from the signs posted - that was kind of weird.

Think about it. All of the stuff you see everyday, but don't really see because you have your routine down cold. Street signs, mail boxes, exit signs, gas station window advertisements, bumper stickers, billboards, bus stop movie promotional posters, even graffiti. Can you imagine trying to understand graffiti in a foreign language? Trippy.

When we get to the hotel, at this point, I've got no idea where we are in relation to anything, so this is severely tripping me out, AND, the hotel is undergoing construction. How marvelous! We check in and go to our room on the 5th floor (1 floor beneath the construction work by the way. How marvelous!)

This is what greeted us when we exited the elevator to find our room - this is where my room was supposed to be. Now...either this is the smallest room known to exist anywhere, OR, our room just did not exist and someone felt like having a bit of a laugh over the Americans.

Dude, I had vertigo. I felt insane for a few seconds. Believe me, that is not a fun feeling AT ALL!

Here is a few mad thoughts that entered my head at this time...

If I open that door, it will be like a Bugs Bunny cartoon and it will open to nothing but a gigantic hole facing the street - ya know the one I mean - where someone opens a door and hangs a leg out over nothing but air and then grabs the door jamb because it is such a shock...OR...If I go back to the lobby, it will be 1928 like in the Shining where there will be men in zoot-suits and tommy guns while the women will be dressed in long skinny gowns grasping cigarette holders. It was BIZARRE.

We finally did find the room, but only because it had to be there. We ended up in several deadends, and tried every corridor. There was only one door left (besides the creepy box you see in the picture). So, like Sherlock Holmes says "It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

We get in and it was really a nice room....or was it? DUHN DUHN DUHN...

To make sure I wasn't in the Twilight Zone or Outer Limits I took this picture from the peephole...just in case there was an army of the living dead staggering about outside the door yearning for fresh brains.

The bathroom had a surprise though. The world's tiniest trash can. I swear to God. It can hold MAX: 2 strips of dental floss, 4 wadded up tissues, 1 disposable razor, 3 chewing gum wrappers and 1/2 cotton ball. Now, here is the question. Ready?

Is it really a tiny trash can OR are the ones I have back in my bathrooms in the US really big? Think about that for a second or two. It'll bend your head, man.

Seriously, based on the time you spend in the bathroom, how much trash do you actually accumulate? Probably the items I mentioned earlier... So think about that. Why not have a trash can big enough just for the trash you make in your daily bathroom trips. Why keep anything bigger? I mean all you do with a larger trash can is continue to stuff and stuff it full of crap only to, maybe after a week, if you happen to find a plastic shopping bag laying about, you end up pouring all of the junk in the bag (and let those q-tips which fell out of the can stay where they are because they rolled out of sight where no one can see anyway) ONLY to put this overstuffed plastic bag of junk back into the trash can INSTEAD of actually throwing it away?

Or is that just me? I feel like I just asked for a high-five and got left hanging on that one... Well, I guess it helps that a cleaning crew pops in once a day to empty the ziploc baggies of trash out of here, but still, its a thought.

Guess what greeted me on the little (or is it really little) table? Swedish goodies. Too bad I can't read the ingredients, but I still might give them a whirl some night when I'm bored and am too lazy to go downstairs to smoke. I think those might be 'M n 'Ms, but I'm too chicken right now to try it...and I think the things in the blue bag are gummies....

Come back often around as days 2-7 are on the way. Feel free to comment / ask questions. I'll do my best to respond.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

When last we read, I was in my kitchen trying to feed my cats (Merlin & Nemo) and I got sealed in the room by a mountain of moving boxes -- all pretty much mis-labled by the way. I opened up 5 boxes marked Pots and Pans to find 1 saucepan lid, one casserole dish, books, craft supplies, nightlights, dental floss, and an array of business cards. Don't ask.

 

Jan 7th: Flight day. My last day in the US of A for a while. By the way, in case you weren't certain, Atlanta has some crazy ass roads. I'm serious people, I felt like we were driving around a mobius strip forever and that we were going to end up where we started...it was freaky. Don't worry, you can Google "mobius strip" in another window now if you want...I'll wait.........I bet you looked up "lilliputian" too, huh? Hilarious!

After parking 2 counties away, we caught our flight. No worries there. We get to Chicago and...holy crap! I've been to O'Hare before, but I obviously never had to fly Internationally before this day. I wasn't prepared to leave the terminal, take a train or whatever in the the hell that was to another terminal (still O'Hare though-Terminal 5), go through security again, and then get to the gate. It wasn't stressful or anything, but just a little odd for me.

 

So, we start to board the plane and I am amazed as I notice this really really tall woman suddenly step into the line. Easily 7 foot tall. I almost lost my cool as "That's a huge bitch" line from the Deuce Bigalow movie came flooding in my mind and I had to fake cough a few times because I accidentally made myself laugh outloud.

I felt bad because soon everyone in line suddenly had to cough. It was awful. Awful but funny if you know what I mean. I'm serious, picture 15 people in a line, not making a sound for like 20 minutes as we are waiting to board an 8 hour flight, and then suddenly all of us start coughing? Strange coincidence don't cha think.

Because we are all being a bunch of rude idiots to this poor woman and I was stupid enough to make myself laugh outloud in the first place, I did that damned silent laugh for about 5 mins straight. C'mon, you know that laugh I'm talking about. Where your mouth is shut, no sounds are coming out, but your friggin chest is heaving like you have the hiccups, and when you're done, your stomach feels like you did some crunches? It was awful. Awful but funny.

 

Anyhoo. I've settled down enough to hand the agent my boarding pass with pretty much a straight face. I'm very proud of that by the way. So, I'm about to get that little stubby piece of paper back from her when she grabs my arm in a vice like grip. I'm talking so hard it must be what a muskrat feels like when a hawk comes swooping out of the woods to hunt and carry it off.

 

I'm talking about hanging on a person so hard her life depended on it. I thought she was having some sort of seizure or something. I'm about to ask if she's ok when she pulls me closer (she was kinda stronger than she looked - she must work out) and whispers in a panic "That was a man!" "What?" I said a little louder than planned as she was starting to make my arm go numb. She was seriously freaking me out. She lets go of my arm (thank God) and leans in and whispers it again. Her eyes were bugging out so bad I just wanted to get away from her.

I'm thinking this lady is insane. She friggin just grabs people and whispers strange shit in their face. My God, what is this and why, for God's sake did she pick me to grab? I must look like I need to know these things. My facial expressions must evoke "Please, please kind stranger, tell me everything you have been thinking for the last 10 years but haven't dared tell a soul...but you can reveal all to me..."

Frigging weird. Well, as I get closer to the plane and people are getting in, I'm thinking, dammit...dammit... that crazy flight lady is going to suck me into her world make me try really hard to determine if her whispered information was true. She's going to make me try to see that tall woman's face and do the quick stare isn't she. Dammit. She just had to plant that little crazy seed didn't she. Damned crazy flight lady.

I tried to resist, I really did. But I ended up smack dab in crazy flight lady's little world.

So....I thought about it, the more I thought, it must be true. I mean, when is the last time you saw a woman that tall? I kept debating with myself...teetering on the possibility that well, I am afterall going to Sweden, maybe she's model...a really tall model. She must look great on the catwalk - She must get tons of work too. I mean if I was a fashion designer and in walked a 7foot woman who could make my clothes look beautiful ...sure what the hell, I mean -- holy crap she turned around to get into her seat. Holy crap, the crazy flight lady was right...

What can I say to you at this point?

He looked fantastic!

Well, I finally get to my seat on James Bond's plane, and it was so high tech, I was like a monkey with a hammer when I tried to work the buttons on arm of my seat. I must have looked like a caveman who just saw fire for the first time. All confused and awed and just couldn't wait to touch it, but it kinda scared me at the same time. It was mental. It was fun for me though. I have never been on an 8 hour flight before.

I tried all the gadgets out on the arms of the seats. I had a little Star Trek bendable light by my head I could twist on to read. I had at a minimum 12 buttons to control the seat. That was way too much for me. My A.D.D. was out and it was ready to go. I had collapsible trays tucked in the other arm. It was great. I'm sure everyday normal people don't think anything about it.

They just store their stuff in the overhead bins, read a news paper, drink some cola, and then pray to God they fall asleep. It might get boring to me after a while if I end up travelling back and forth to the US frequently, but I hope it never does.

Nothing else happened worthy of note on the plane. Normally I can find something interesting about anything, but the crazy flight lady incident before I boarded the plane soaked up all the MBP-Interesting minutes...

Movin On and Movin Out: Part II

I'm an excellent driver

As I was saying...I friggin hate to drive. I'm using the word "hate" here. But, a girl's gotta do, what girl's gotta do.

Jan 4th: So, my car was jammed packed with DVDs and 2 suitcases I planned on taking to Stockholm. I'm talking 10 huge rubbermaid clear bins with DVDs a-overflowin and 2 suitcases ready to burst. Once Nemo was packed securely in his fugly carrying case, off I went.

SO...picture it if you will...I am attempting to follow my husband who drives like he could care less about speed limit signs, I'm in a car with the engine light that has been on since late 2006, with me is a kitten crying like an old lady who just lost her 15th round in-a-row by one number in a BINGO parlor on a Saturday night, and no vision out back or sides of this vehicle except for a sliver in my mirrors -- BRING IT ON!

Needless to say, when I stopped to get gas, I stocked up on some cigs. I was gonna need them. OK, to make a long story less boring - I was actually OK. I only got pissed off once when I had to veer WAY over to the right to catch an exit 4 lanes away and had like 2 seconds to do it in (remember I was following Alberto who owns the road). I only smoked about 10-15 cigarettes in a 2 1/2 hour period...that's normal..right?

What is not so normal is that I NEVER drive on the highway. I avoid it as much as possible, and here I am just putt-putting along like I know what the hell I am doing. I'm serious. Before the 4th, I had about 10-12 (possibly 15 but that is pushing it) of lifetime hours I have spent on a real highway where I HAD to go above 55. (Hey, I grew up in a city, who the hell needed to drive..gimme a break).

But I digress. So, I get to the condo OK that he is (I guess that is 'we are') renting and drop off all the crap in my car. I don't remember that night - but I did finish off at least one pack of cigs and might have done some damage on another one...

Jan 5th-7th: The same mass of lilliputian Mexicans (plus some Dominicans I think who snuck into the mix) show up to unpack all the sh*t they just finished packing a few days before. What a friggin mess this was. It took the bastids 3 days to pack and only 6 hours to unpack it all from the truck. I'm thinking there was no plan here on their part - just pick a room and drop a box and do it again.

They unpacked that 18 Wheeler so fast, I went into the kitchen to feed the cats, Ok... how long does that take? Seriously? 10 minutes max if you spend time washing out the cat food cans so your trash doesn't smell like that BINGO parlor I mentioned earlier? Ok. So I'm in the kichen for 10 minutes max. I turn around to, I don't know, maybe smoke another couple packs of cigarettes, and BAM! I am blocked in. It was like a friggin lifesize carboard TETRIS game right before my eyes. These fools blocked me in. Box after box kept coming in...what the hell, man.....Idiots. Since the Great Wall of Cardboard muffled my cries for help, I decided to take a picture as it was funny in a really really MBP-messed up way.

Jan 7th: More to follow as Jan 7th is when I finally head for Stockholm where the real fun begins. This is where that 7 foot-tall-queen comes into play and the crazy sh*t I've been up to in this city.

Here's a preview of what I have found interesting thus far:

Movin On and Movin Out : Part I

Well, well, well. What a shock! We've moved again.

Here is a low down on what's been happenin' so far. (December 2007-Jan 2008)

Dec 20th : El Casa de Perez went on the market. Whahoo!

Dec 26-31st : The 3Js + Matt (Jessica, Jonathan and Jacob) showed up. At the end of their whirlwind visit, I was short a leather furniture collection, a desk, a kitchen table, some bikes, some dinnerware, and a few other odds and ends. Such is la vida - if you can't help family, you're just another jackass.

Jan 2-4th: A mass of tiny Mexicans packed and stored my stuff in a huge 18 Wheeler. A neighbor stopped by, not to wish us luck or to ask if he could help, but to blame us for blocking the road, causing his trash not to get picked up. "How odd," I said, after he brought this oversight to my attention. "That waste management holiday schedule change must have only occured for everyone in this area but you." He apparently got upset because he left rather quickly. I certainly hope it was something I said......Jackass.

Jan 4th: Coming soon: Michelle packs up her car and hits the highway. To put this comment into context, before Jan 4th, I had about 12 hours MAX TOTAL lifetime experience driving on any flat surface which required I go above 55.

In other words - me no likey highway driving.

Stay tuned to hear about the adventure which eventually leads me to Stockholm, Sweden. Included will be snippets about a 7 foot tall drag queen, city-street-high-speed-police chases, flying 8 hours non-stop on James Bond's plane, a Steven-King-esque hotel from Hell and how it is home to the smallest trash can known to mankind.