a dungeon full of Dungeness crabs

-- There's a bus stop ad for Magic Mike's Last Dance just down the street and my mother's newest thing is that whenever she passes it, she -- knowing nothing about the plot -- likes to yell out hypothetical reasons WHY it might be his "last dance": "He's facing a firing squad in the morning!" "An asteroid is about to hit Earth the exact shape and size of a male strip club!" "He was just elected mayor of that Footloose town!" And my favorite: "Salma Hayek's character is an evil taxidermist who wants him stuffed and mounted on her wall!"

So far there hasn't been a single idea I wouldn't pay to see in theaters.


-- I toured an apartment yesterday with a kitchen so narrow the refrigerator door didn't open all the way. Or even halfway. About six or seven inches, that's all I got. Same with the stove on the other side; it opened to about the length of my forearm before butting into the wall on the other side. Willy Wonka could not have designed this kitchen. And, okay, apartment hunting on a budget in a city that does not respect budgets? You're gonna see some stuff. I thought I already had! But holy hell!!

I guess it could work if I...what? Jerry-rig a very long set of pincer-type things out of some fondue forks and a rubber band? And hope to God every grocery I buy is pince-able?

Never, ever, ever use the fridge or freezer or stove? Invent a cutting edge room temperature diet for myself? (...tap water and goldfish crackers?)

Or, third option: just don't live there. Seems like the best idea. And yeah, I do realize how troubling it is that this wasn't my very first thought. I am aware.

I won't even tell you how much they wanted for the place. I will not burden you with that knowledge. It's just plain embarrassing. I'm embarrassed for all of us: them, for asking. Me, for considering it. Realty as a profession! The city of my birth for allowing this to happen! Just a medium-thick layer of shame spread over the entire freaking proceedings.

Oh, God. The worst part? It was the super who toured me around, a perfectly nice man who I know -- I know! -- is utterly powerless here. So I'm struggling with the freezer door, seeing how far inside I can fit my arm, possibly grunting a little as I try to pull it out again, and I turn to look at him and his face is RIGHT THERE. Big smile, too many teeth, the terrified eyes of a prey animal and he's like, "I know, right? Isn't it great??" And I was about to ask him if he was fucking serious, but then I realized I knew that look. I have retail experience. This man has been instructed to UPSELL. And I just -- I just felt so bad for him.

He knew the apartment sucked. He knew I knew it sucked. But it became my temporary mission in life to make sure I didn't, under any circumstances, LET ON that I knew it sucked.

So. I let him tell me a twenty five minute anecdote about his father in Ecuador. And then I let him show me the laundry room and the area where the recyclables go, fully knowing I wasn't gonna be putting in an offer. You'd think two, five, ten, twenty years of *wild, crazy-armed gesticulations* would've knocked the people pleasing out of me, but. You'd be wrong.

So that's how the Saga of the Skinny Kitchen ends -- with two idiots smiling creepily at each other and making painful chit chat about Ecuadorian football. I know. I was surprised, too.