odd little bean

sixth down.

who knew?

i can’t find any of my friends with barack on their lists which makes it all the more hilarious to me.  next stop: the white house.

craigslist fans out there, i know you’re going to love this one.  here is the response my friend received when he posted his SUV to CL (for $4,500):

Hello,

I was just wondering if you were interested in a trade, I have an
engagement ring.  I have paperwork for the ring, it is in brand new
condition because it was reshanked (new ring part) and polished and
cleaned.  Ring was purchased from Kay Jeweler and has a lifetime warranty,
originally purchased for 2799.00. (I know this is less than your asking
price)   It has a half carat center and surrounding diamonds make a total
of 1.00 Carat. Would make a great present for someone or engagement ring
for someone.  Please let me know if you are interested.  I might be able to
throw in some cash.  I have attached a picture of the ring.  Thanks for
looking.

sometimes craigslist truly renders me speechless.  this is one of those times.

the current purging season in our home has reignited a debate that nicholas and i had almost 2 years ago.

the great craigslist debate.

shortly after i met nicholas, i was in the market for some furniture.  i found the couches of my dreams (fancy apple green nubby wool ones from softline) for $600/couch or $1,000 for both.  CRAZY GOOD DEAL!  i was debating whether i needed one or two while i was on iChat with nicholas.  while i hemmed and hawed, he asked me the million dollar question.  “how much,” he asked, “are you going to offer him?”

silence.

“what do you mean how much am i going to offer him?  he said he wants $600 for one or $1,000 for both.”

and hence the debate began.

i have used CL to buy and sell stuff since about 2001.  i’ve bought surfboards, chairs, tables, concert tickets, and video games, just to name a few.  i’ve sold mattresses, desks, televisions, tables, couches, and pretty much anything that is so heavy i don’t want to drag it with me when i move.  i had never, in my eight years of craigslisting, asked someone if they would accept less money for their items OR received less money than i asked for.  why would i barter?  there’s a bartering category for that.  why would i assume the prices weren’t firm?  if a price isn’t firm i expect someone to write “obo” after the price.  one time i listed a mattress for $50 and when the person came to pick it up she notified me that she felt bad paying me that little when the mattress was in such good condition.  she slipped me an extra $20 before happily driving away.

nicholas, on the other hand, had never paid “full price” for anything on CL.  when my twin sees a table listed for $75, he sees a table that he can buy for $50. reciprocally, nicholas has never received his full asking price when he sells things.  my twin’s strategy is to list something for a high price (expecting someone to low-ball him), then when it doesn’t sell said thing he proceeds to re-list it with REDUCED written in the title so people think they’re getting a super-sweet deal and will only knock him down a small smidge more.

is it a tale of two cities/states/regions?  do people in the midwest simply approach CL differently than people on the west coast?  my twin thinks that everyone bargains, but that i just habitually list everything too low which is why people don’t bargain with me.  i think he is a craigslist anomaly and habitually lists everything too high (which he admits to doing) resulting in people offering him less.   what is the story?  is bargaining acceptable on CL?  which one of us is in the right?

i would love your thoughts.

incidentally, since moving to ohio i HAVE noticed that people seem to be unwilling to pay my posted prices, which has caused me to up-price everything.  also, with the help of my twin, i bought both of those couches from CL in boston — $750 for the pair! DAMN i love a good bargain…

don’t even try to tell me that you didn’t religiously watch punky on tv when you were younger.  punky brewster, rainbow bright, and blossom were my earliest fashion influences.  i’m not saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing…i’m just saying it’s a thing.

my twin actually knows the punky intro song by heart.  i’m not joking.  as i was embedding the video above, i pressed play, and suddenly nicholas darted into the room and gave me a dramatic musical performance.  meanwhile i pride myself on my punky passion and i found myself thinking that i had never heard the song before in my life.  classic.  he collects music in his brain too.

assuming you love punky as much as i did, today is your LUCKY day.  you can now own your very own 18″ tall piece of 1980’s tv history.  buy her on eBay right here. breast reduction scalpel not included.

i’m 32 and 1 month old today.

my hips crack when i walk, my skin is getting crumpley, and i slept through the last two new year’s eves without feeling any guilt.

in all of my ancientness i’ve come to realize that the old adage about everyone dragging around baggage with them wherever they go is more true than it’s not.  my twin (aka my lovely boyfriend) is no different, but his baggage is of a special sort.  while most people’s baggage includes a vivid assortment of lost loves, childhood traumas, abandonment issues, daddy issues (or potentially mommy issues if you’re a beauty queen), and body image/eating disorder stuff.  my twin’s baggage includes mint condition punky brewster dolls, carly simon LPs, small ET figurines, ceramic hockey player flasks, and ewok villages.

my twin is a collector.

a year and a half into our relationship we decided we had spent entirely too much time on iChat, and i moved from boston to his home city of cincinnati (”the nasti”).

i had no idea that we would be sharing our new flat with his Dark Passenger — the contents of his two storage units.  on the plus side, our house is large enough for each of us to have our own rooms for our sundries.  i keep my sewing and knitting stuff in mine, and he keeps his collections in his.  i don’t ever have to open the door to his formidable past if i don’t want to.  on the minus side, it takes a psychological toll on me just knowing it is there, and it’s starting to bother him too.  who the hell needs a my pet monster stuffed animal with broken plastic chains?  apparently my twin did…for the past 20 years or so.

my twin is a legacy collector.  his dad is a collector, and his dad turned his mom into a collector.  collectively, they raised both of their children as collectors, and now both children struggle with the fact that they’re fully-grown adults with stockpiles of barbies and GI joe dolls.

how many times have i heard:  DON’T TOUCH THOSE GI JOES!  THOSE ARE THE GOOD ONES!

okay, only once, but i nearly peed myself with laughter when i saw how alarmed he looked as i reached for one of the dudes in the tupperware bin.

actually, before i forget, if you’re in the market for a 1970s barbie dreamhouse i can put you into contact with his sister, who is going through a purge period (following her mother telling her that she would no longer be paying for her storage unit, and that she would either have to sell everything, move it to new york, or transfer the unit over onto her own credit card). [UPDATE: SOLD]

to celebrate the new year (and to prepare for the inevitable move to the west coast), my twin and i have joined forces and decided to clean ship. ALL DECKS SHALL BE SWABBED!  ALL TREASURES SHALL BE CAST OUT INTO THE OPEN SEA OF LAND LUBBERS. the only things we are keeping are our gold dubloons and pieces of 8.  and our patagonia.  this includes the patagonia backpack i haven’t worn yet, because i’m saving that one for the day when my current patagonia backpack and messenger bag shit the bed.  hey — a girl needs back-ups…

today we sorted the LPs into keep and sell piles.  it took us 2 hours and 5 allergy attacks, but at the end of it all, we nearly cut the stack in half.  thanks to me, all of the billy joel and paul simon stayed with us.  thanks to my twin, we have every david bowie, queen, and rod stewart LP in existence.  sorry partridge family, but you didn’t meet our stringent standards.  jethro tull also hit the chopping block today, so look for that to hit eBay in the near future.

although we don’t have a specific date set, i think we would both like to see everything gone by easter.  you know…so we have room for peeps, eggs, cellophane grass, and pink jesus magic 8-ball statues.  speaking of pink jesus magic 8 ball statues, my twin has one of those too.  the verdict is still out on whether he will be purging it, and it’s not actually in our house anyhow: pink jesus lives in the closet of his sister’s old room at their mom’s house.

jesus, will i learn to play my banjo this year?

outlook hazy.  try again later.

i’m sure that skeletor would be thoroughly unamused that one of the first items on the collection guillotine is castle grayskull.  click the pic for the CL ad, or make a bid on eBay.

tomorrow someone will swing by the house to pink up one of his pieces of modern furniture that neither of us were fond of, and following that transaction he will post his 18″ punky brewster doll and his joe camel director chair to eBay.

as he posts the stuff, i will blog it, so if you have a soft spot in your wallet for menudo lunch boxes, happy meal toys, ewok villages, or old carole king LPs then check back often.  alternately you could check back often because i promised my sister scariel that i would pick up blogging again.  i can’t promise you anything scandalous since i’m old and boring now, but at the very least you’ll receive laser hair removal updates, photos of my wild midwestern adventures, and progress updates on my knitting and recovering projects.

holy fuck.

next thing you know i’ll be making doilies and baking casseroles.

please pink jesus, let me never pass on a loaf of amish friendship bread while i live here.

it is decidedly so.

autocompleteme

day 5: drinking and dancing the night away at club caprice in honor of nick’s 30th birthday, we revel in the fact that there are no rules in greece and I can dance on top of couches in bars; but the morning sobers us up when we find poseidon stirring up his sea soup, and we ride on a ferry full of violently vomiting europeans from bow to stern.

day 6: being on a greek island surrounded by french people makes me feel even more like a fish out of water, which i didn’t think was possible; c’est la vie.

day 7: it turns out that there IS something more dreadful and curmudgeonly than border patrol officers on the US/canadian border: local bus drivers in santorini.

day 8: our magazine pile starts shrinking, our photography collection starts growing, and our love of oia holds.

day 9: after climbing up and down 9 or 10 different dead-ending long and narrow sets of stairs, i discover that “you can’t get heeah from theyah” is more of a universal claim than most new englanders think, but we eventually stumble upon our next cave.

day 10: i booked a cave suite with 2 separate private verandas, a jacuzzi, and a sunset view for a reason, and today was that reason.

day 11:  the island dogs are actually up and active at 6am while we wait for our taxi to the port, but we don’t pet them because once I got ringworm from petting a mexican shelter dog with one eyeball.

day 12: nick has a strange rash all over his body, which may or may not be contagious, but since we don’t want to be denied boarding, we keep it on the down low.

i haven’t had much time to hop online here, so here is a summary of my first few days in greece in one sentence per day.

day 1: the acropolis is as stunning as you think it is, and spending all night vomiting and diarrheaing greek salad, greek coffee, and baracca is as painful as you think it is.

day 2: there was a restaurant i couldn’t find, a ferry terminal i couldn’t navigate, a changing of the guards ceremony that i didn’t understand, and a wooden bottle opener shaped like a dink that i didn’t buy (yet) because i couldn’t decide whether it was worth the additional euros to get the balls attached.

day 3:the most amazing piece of baklava i have ever tasted was eaten as i watched a woman fish off of her balcony using sandwich crust as bait.

day 4: nick and i zoomed around the island in a 4-wheeler and played on a few beaches in the morning, and in the afternoon we will (1) do additional zooming (2) watch the sunset behind the 4 iconic windmills (3) drink some motion and life (4) pack up for tomorrow’s 10am ferry to paros.

that should catch all of you up.  i will try to post pics later tonight.  i love this place.

bliss (unpacking the bags from whole foods and cvs): niiiiiiiiiiiiicholas…ew…you bought PRIVATE LABEL q-tips?  that’s foul.

nicholas: they’re the same

bliss: they are *not* the same.  well…they might be the same, but in this case i don’t think that they are.  dammit.

[bliss goes to the bathroom and puts away the q-tips]

an hour later, bliss goes back into the bathroom to pee, and is confronted with the following:

bliss (yelling (and laughing)): NIIIICK

nick: i told you i didn’t buy crappy private label q-tips.  gross.  you’re disgusting.  why would i do that?

i love him.  so much.

i feel the need to address the growing cloud of excitement over the fact that i am getting engaged in greece.

here you go: i am NOT getting engaged in greece.

nicholas and i perfectly happy to live out the rest of our lives in sin.
“hmmph,” you might be thinking to yourselves, “you’re in for a surprise when you get to greece and there’s a card catalog and a pie safe waiting for you at baggage claim” (see footnote 1).
wrong. little do you know, that engagement season actually closed out last night.
it closed out, and it won’t be open again until january 15th.

when people at work started bombarding me with engagement excitement (leave it to midwesterners to get excited about crap like settling down), i told nicholas all about it over iChat and he told me i should fill them in on engagement season. engagement season is the season when getting engaged is a distinct possibility. i suppose the season varies from couple to couple, but for nick and i it starts on september 1st (see footnote 2) and flows through january 15th. the explanation i was given from my lovely boy is as follows:
nick’s birthday is in september, as is labor day, back to school specials, and baby safety month.
october brings with it foliage and halloween, and even if it didn’t, i celebrate my birthday from oct 1 - nov 1, so that’s an auto-out.
november is my birthday, thanksgiving, and black friday.
don’t get nick started on december..it’s christmas, festivus, kwanzaa, haunnukah, and all sorts of family drama.
early january is all of the college bowl games and new year’s day.
by january 15th most of the holiday craziness dies down, and engagement season skulks in slowly as january fades away. february 1st is certainly fair game (despite the super bowl), but apparently ground hogs’ day is the best day of the year to get engaged for us since we call each other “twin” and there are all kinds of 2s in that holiday. nicholas hinted to me that i should wear something fancy on 2/2/2022.

every day i’m thankful i have such a special life partner. i have no idea how i coped with schedules and calendars before he came along. it’s a wonder i even managed to remember when to put my white pants away for the season.

godjesuschrist, of COURSE i don’t own white pants, and you’re gross for even thinking for a second that i did.

how are we friends?

seriously.

lucky for you though, friend season runs until easter this year.

footnote 1: i lose rings. if the day ever comes when i’m domestic enough to want to get married, i don’t want a ring. i made it explicitly clear to nick that instead of a ring i would like 2 large objects that are impossible to lose:
1. a pie safe
2. a card catalog, preferably homemade or from a fancy library like the one with chutes and ladders that lavaar burton went to in that epic episode of reading rainbow.
footnote 2: although engagement season was set to begin on september 1st, apple’s decision to release snow leopard on august 28th meant that engagement season had to end early this year…on august 27th. god knows we wouldn’t want our personal life to take any attention away from steve jobs.