Go Along for the Ride

A few weekends ago, my husband and I took our darling children to Savannah for a night over their fall break. We are not big Savannah fans. Way back before we had kids, we lived in Charleston, South Carolina, a port city also rich in history but with current industry as well.  Even though they are both popular destinations on the eastern coast, Savannah is more of a tourist attraction, a sleepier, dirtier version of the Holy City. People tend to prefer one over the other. We are Charleston people.

That being said, it isn’t fair for my children not to be able to at least once experience Savannah, if nothing else, to say they’ve been. Plus, it’s not a horrible drive from where we live, and we are running out of places to visit within a three hundred mile radius of home. I looked online and found a cool hotel, one that was in the historic district but tricked out with a hip, modern vibe. I didn’t really see anything we had to do during our stay. We didn’t need to tour the historic Mercer house because “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” isn’t really relevant to their generation. I didn’t want to wait in line for two hours to eat southern food with a table of strangers at Mrs. Wilkes, and I have a serious Paula Deen aversion because she looks too much like my mother. I decided we could just stroll around, do a little shopping, and take a ghost tour at night.

I could be wrong, but does every town have a ghost tour? Spooky walking tours. Haunted trolley drives. Sinister horse and carriage rides. Ghost buses. In my town, we have a haunted Segway night tour, which sounds like an accident waiting to happen. Every year, they could take stupid patrons around on their douchey Segways and tell them about the idiots who died the previous year on the tour. I’ll never know because I am not coordinated enough to use a Segway, which is why I am qualified to judge others who do.

The ghost tour I chose was a Haunted Hearse tour. It’s not unique to Savannah, as other historic or funky cities with a plethora of old hearses have it; Austin, St. Augustine, you get the idea. Anyway, here’s how it works. The company has a whole fleet of hearses that have been decommissioned and repurposed with a bunch of rickety seats for people to sit. Your feet rest on the rollers that were used to move the coffins, and your shoes can be seen through the little curtains on the side windows. The top of the hearse is raised up with a sort of open viewing area. You enter through the rear of the hearse by walking up a step ladder, take your seat, and wait for the drive to begin.  It looks like this:

 

Lucky for us, the tour picked us up right outside our hotel. Our tour guide had one of those ghost tour guide names. Let’s call him Ghoulish Gary; that wasn’t his name, but close enough. He looked like the kind of guy, and I mean this with the utmost respect, who spent his formative years masturbating to “Faces of Death” in his parents’ basement. He wore all black, a little pork pie hat, and he did this thing with his eyes where you couldn’t tell exactly at whom he was staring. I couldn’t tell if it was congenital or just like a special effect.

He proclaimed himself an expert in the local paranormal community and promised to tell us things that would keep us up at night. I had no reason to doubt him, but I also didn’t have much reason to believe him.  I only hoped he meant that he had lots of good Savannah ghost stories and not a litany of sad personal tales. We settled into our hearse seats and he drove to another hotel to pick up the rest of the tour, a foursome of elderly people that I admired for being so nonchalant about being in a hearse.

Ghoulish Gary drove us around the historic squares of Savannah, stopping every now and again in front of an old home to tell us about how someone died there or some similar sort of tragedy. Other hearses drove past us, a continuous loop of hearse traffic that took over Savannah’s streets after nightfall. He also spent a lot of time in front of a cemetery talking about how many people were buried on top of other people.

Basically, all of Savannah is a giant mass grave. Also, according to Ghoulish Gary, it was an ancient Indian burial mound before it was Savannah, so all of the spirits are angry and malevolent just like in “Poltergeist.” A couple of times he referenced some bullshit about how paranormal experts had taken soil samples here and there throughout the city, and they all came back at least 17% human remains. I thought if you tested soil samples everywhere from around the world, it would be around the same amount of dead human. People have been living and dying for thousands of years.

Ghoulish Gary ended every story with a long, drawn-out Yyyeeeaaasssssssssss for emphasis. Occasionally he would cough and choke on his cigarette. One of our stops was at a bar, where he encouraged us to go inside and order him a soda. We waited in the hearse, although I had a feeling the tour would have been better with an open container violation.

We drove around a little bit more and then pulled into an empty lot. Three other hearses were already parked there as their tour guides, Scary Sam and Creepy Carl or whoever the fuck else, told identical stories that just didn’t sound all that… believable isn’t quite the word. Hmm. Interesting, maybe? Our very own Ghoulish Gary left our hearse to go over to the other ones to give them the wall eye stare and make them as uncomfortable as he made us. I had this feeling he didn’t think we were all that great of an audience and needed to have a little more attention from a fresh group of hearse captives.

He finally ambled back over to us and took out his cell phone to show us images that would prove the very existence of spirits. One was a flying orb that looked suspiciously like a flash reflection on a window. Others were just blurry images.  I’m pretty sure one was his thumb. None of them spoke to Savannah specifically or any of the familiar legends you might expect. Then he stared at some of us, possibly, because I couldn’t tell for sure, before loading himself back in the driver’s seat.

We circled around a few more times to see if an apparition might appear. It wasn’t our lucky night, so he dropped off the party of retirees at their hotel before taking us back to our own. On the way, Ghoulish Gary told us about the history of the building where we were staying. Apparently, it used to be a stable, until one night when it burned down, killing all of the horses inside. He took a few pictures with us and then left us in front of the building and tootled on down the road and away into the dark night. As we walked the halls inside, we noticed that the walls were decorated with murals of horses. We just thought it was odd when we checked in, but after the tour, it made sense to us.

Later, as we got ready for bed in our room, the lights over our bathroom mirror blinked on and off. It wasn’t a flicker or a power surge. It was as if someone turned the lights on and off with a switch, slowly, and the four of us watched it from the comfort and safety of the hotel beds. None of the other lights went on and off, just the ones over the mirror. It only happened one time, for about ten or fifteen seconds, but for real, it did.  We didn’t hear any hooves down the hall, no whinnying, no neighing, nothing like that.

Savannah was kind of fun. We’re glad we went. You should give it a try. It’s no Charleston, but it’s good for a night. Yeeeaaaaassssssssss.

Don't Get Me Wrong

Do wrong numbers irritate you?  They drive me insane. It’s not that I mind the part where people make mistakes because we all do that. It’s really the intrusion of the phone call that gets me. I am a phone-a-phobe. I detest, abhor, loathe answering my phone. If you need me, text me.  I am not afraid of typing words. Typing words is my favorite.

It probably stems from my years of working for state government, where most public contact was through phone conversation. No phone call was pleasant for years. At home, the only person who called me on a ridiculously regular basis was my mother. Her phone calls were on par with my work ones, so for years I dreaded answering the phone anywhere. I would have nightmares of the phone ringing, ringing, ringing. All the ringing.

Now I don’t talk to my mom nor do I work for the state, but my dislike of telephone contact persists. Between my cell phone and caller ID on my landline, I generally know who’s calling. Sometimes I answer. Most of the time I call back. I have to set my intention before I can do either.

It’s just a thing I don’t do. Don’t take it personally.

Lately, despite my registering with the do not call registry, I have been getting more sales calls than I used to. Which means I answer my phone even less. If it’s important, someone will leave me a message. If it’s one of my usual contacts, the name pops up as a missed call even when there’s no message. I know you called me. Chances are good I texted you back a response.

Every once in a while, it’s none of those, a local number that I don’t recognize, a wrong number. And sometimes, that stranger will leave a message not intended for me.

That happened to me the other day. A local number I didn’t know called me, and left a message. It was from some gruff sounding man who said he was contacting someone who wasn’t me about a concealed weapons course he was teaching. Apparently someone else wanted to take that course, and he was calling to discuss the class. Not only was it not for me, it would never be for me. I hate guns even more than I hate answering the phone.

Since it wasn’t me, I didn’t call back to let him know he had the wrong number. It’s the kind of thing I figured would sort itself out without my involvement. And since it’s 2015, etiquette doesn’t dictate that I return messages to wrong numbers. I chose to do nothing.

The next day while I was eating breakfast, I got a Facetime call from the same damn number. Odd, I thought. Does he normally Facetime people to sign them up for concealed weapons classes? I again didn’t answer it because now I was a tad afraid.

This guy couldn’t take a hint. An hour later, he texted me.  It went like this:

Him: I am contacting you in reference to my October 31 concealed weapon class. If I am interested, call back.

Me: Wrong number.
Him: Please excuse.
Me: It’s fine.

Should have been the end of it, right? But no; fifteen minutes later, I got another text.

Him: Are you interested? Call me back and I will get you prepared for the October 31 class.

He impressed me with his persistence. Here is a man who has a pretty creative marketing strategy. He could just call random numbers all the time, “accidentally”, and maybe every so often he would get a bite.

Me: No thanks.

Him: If you change your mind, call or text me back.

When a little old lady calls me by accident, I call back. I let her know she has the wrong number. She might have written it down wrong. Maybe she can’t read the numbers on the paper. Maybe it’s really urgent, like she’s fallen and can’t get up. She might think she’s calling Life Alert, but it’s just me avoiding my phone. You never know.

Concealed weapons course instructors are not little old ladies. They don’t need my help. What they do need is to just move on. If someone doesn’t call you back, they’re just not that into you, especially when it’s a wrong number.

Olive's Fair in Love and War

I have two teenage daughters.

I don’t need to say anything else for you to know how life is in my house. Ups and downs do not adequately describe it. Roller coasters are not a fair comparison. Jumping out of a plane with no parachute, free falling onto an extra strength trampoline that catapults me across the sky only I’m still attached to a bungee cord that brings me right back so I am dangling precariously until I get whacked like a giant tether ball around a pole, never ending twisting and untwisting and twisting and untwisted…still not quite what it’s like.

Take a moment to appreciate your sons. When you aren’t driving them to sports or band practice, chances are good they are holed up in their rooms playing video games and pausing briefly for some feverishly furtive masturbation before they come to the kitchen and eat all the food in the pantry. You might have some moodiness, some acne, perhaps some other hygiene issues. Sneakers and armpits stink.  The sleeping makes up for it.

Daughters, well, my daughters, are just raw nerve endings with twenty pounds of makeup to dress up those synapses. There are a lot of moods. Trashcans overflow with tear filled Kleenexes and used feminine hygiene products. Sometimes the two of them are witty and smart and impressive. Other times one is a bitch, the other an asshole.

Our latest waste of time issue is fighting over clothes. The older one is on her fourth or fifth look since middle school. I’m running out of money and storage space to accommodate her ever evolving signature style. We’ve gone from funny t-shirts to a sort of rock edgy look to extreme suburban preppy to surfer girl. We are now settling on a sort of college co-ed hipster vibe. That’s a lot of transition if you ask me, but she isn’t on drugs or pregnant so I keep quiet.

The younger one is a lot easier to please for now. She favors a flowy bohemian kind of thing, but she’s really not too picky. She just appreciates something new. Don’t we all?  Now that they are the same height (well, the young one is a teeny bit taller), the hand-me-downs have ended. It’s all new to her these days, and she is pretty happy.

I was hoping they would be the kind of sisters that gave each other advice and shared each other’s secrets and swapped clothes back and forth. Instead, the older one is the kind who sneaks into the other one’s room and takes what she wants without asking, shoes, shirts, pads, you name it.

The younger one will ask to borrow something from the older one, who always says no thank you, because she thinks manners soften the no blow. Occasionally I intervene and tell the older one to share and also to appreciate the fact that the younger one is respectful enough to ask first. That subtle dig is always lost on her.

Currently, they have been at war over an olive green tank top. I found it at Old Navy, on a clearance table. It’s made of cotton and has thin straps and comes up high on the chest. It might be called a high choke neckline, but how the hell would I know? I’m not up on fashion terminology, but I know it’s cute. Also, it was on sale for $1.99. I bought it and brought it home for the older one. She likes to wear camis and tanks with a blanket or bathrobe type schmatta on top, so I thought it was perfect for her urban homeless chic.

She loved it. Unfortunately, so did the younger one. She asked the older one repeatedly if she could borrow it, and was always answered with the no thank you bit. The younger one complained to the older one about taking her things without asking permission and how unfair she was being, but the older one just looked at her phone and ignored her.

After a week or two of this, I went back to Old Navy and bought another olive green tank top. I brought it home and gave it to the younger one, and she was happy and began wearing it immediately.

A little while later, the older one came to me to complain about the younger one taking her things. I asked what things she had a concern about, and she said the olive green tank top. “Oh that? I bought her one too so you would stop fighting over it,” I told her.

She couldn’t believe I would do such a thing. I pointed out that for an extra $1.99, I eliminated one of the daily battles, which was worth the two bucks. Her response? “But it’s exactly like mine.”

“Won’t it be fun when you wear it on the same day accidentally?” I said.

That happened once with a side braid. They came downstairs for school sporting a side braid, only on opposite sides of their heads, because even their parts have to be different. I don’t think the older one has worn a side braid since that day.

Come to think of it, I don’t think she has worn her olive green tank top either, which is fine, because I’m only out $1.99.

 

 

 

Say It Ain't So

Now that my girls are back in school and one of them is driving, I have found myself with more time on my hands. I am still doing all of the things, the cooking and errand running and laundry and appointments and so on, but my afternoon commute has been reduced on most days to a five minute drop off or pick up. On Mondays, I am the only one home until dinner time. I haven’t been alone in the afternoon in over fifteen years.

Rather than slip into a daytime television or vodka habit or allow myself to just sit and do nothing as if that were even an option, I decided to look into doing more freelance writing. I’ve been writing on a freelance basis for a long time, really, but most of the time the work found me. It’s very different when you are looking for the work.

I’ve spent a number of hours researching and applying on various websites, and I have to say, the prospects are pretty dismal. While fast food workers in more progressive cities are demanding and getting up to $15 an hour, a lot of freelance writers are looking at significantly less than that. The standards for these two lines of work are pretty different. I’m not saying that fast food workers shouldn’t make a living wage. I am just concerned when unskilled work is valued more than an education and years of experience in allegedly desirable communication skills.

But I digress. I polished up my resume a bit and attempted to put myself out there. Looking for work online is considerably less fun than watching porn or cat videos. It’s tedious; it’s time consuming; and it’s also disheartening. Even if you find a website that looks reputable, you can’t count on the job postings also being legitimate. The amount of legwork, er, sitting on my ass on my laptop work, well, it’s just like looking for any other job. Which means it sucks.

On one website, which requires you to bid for jobs against other desperately underpaid people who rather work on the couch in sweats, I received an invitation to apply for a one-time assignment. The pay was, seriously, $10, but there was a chance it would lead to more work. What the hell, I thought.

Here’s the funny part: it was for voice-over work. Some firm based out of Canada was looking for native North Americans/United States citizens to do voice work on a short-term project. I filled out the online proposal expressing my interest and skills and blah blah blah.

Honestly, I never considered doing voice work before. I had one of those pesky speech impediments when I was a kid, one that required school speech therapy for a brief and traumatic period of time. I still have a handful of words that I never seemed to master. I cannot distinguish between warm and worm. According to my children, I also pronounce doll and pants in a way that makes them pee a little because they laugh so hard. That is all in addition to the fact that I speak through my nose in a sort of nasally whiny way. But ten bucks is ten bucks, am I right?

Two days later, I received a message that I had been selected for the next stage of interview. I had another form to complete, and then I needed to submit a voice sample. I was pleasantly surprised because I figured they must have received thousands of bids from people who want to earn $10 for doing nothing.

The form was pretty standard, lines for my name, phone number, email, the usual questions. The next question had to do with the region of country where I either was born or had lived for a significant period of time. It listed specific states, Nebraska up to Minnesota, not more than seven or eight places I would never live. I was a bit concerned because I live in the Southeast, but I don’t have much of an accent. I thought maybe they too found Midwestern accents irritating and wanted to make sure no candidate was from that area.

The voice recording involved me stating my name, my continent of origin, and reciting a nursery rhyme. I practiced it a few times, trying to go slowly and enunciate clearly.  Peter. Piper. Picked. A. Peck. Of. Pickled. Peppers. I was concerned I would say pimpled peckers, which is generally how I say it in my head. Bravely, I recorded it on my laptop and submitted my interview form.

Secretly, I was a little excited.

Two days later, I got my rejection letter. It wasn’t anything personal. They just wanted people from those seven states with the bad Midwestern accents. They wanted only people who sounded like Frances McDormand in Fargo.

What I still don’t understand is why they didn’t make that part of the criteria? Why not emphasize on the initial job posting, hey, we are looking for people who for some ungodly reason reside in the middle of the country?

They didn’t, though, and now I’m mildly sad because rejection never feels good. Also, I’m mildly sad that I’m sad over a ten dollar job that over five hundred people also wanted. Who have I become?

Alas, this is what freelance really looks like. I don’t know who these people are who earn $25 to $50 an hour, but that average must include Stephen King’s hourly rate. The rest of us are duking it out over less than a venti pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks, which, incidentally, also pays more an hour.