Dr. Olivia's Latest Self-Diagnosis

I have had Lyme disease. Opium poisoning. A stroke. Schizophrenia. In high school, a mole on my leg became malignant melanoma. According to the experts, I've had it pretty rough. And by "experts," I mean myself.

I blame House and the skin cancer unit in 12th grade health class--particularly the disturbing afternoon we spent staring at images of cancerous spots projected onto the whiteboard--for instilling in me the fear of leaving my house without a Hazmat suit. I've lost count of how many times I've fired up the Google for a refresher course on the ABCs of melanoma. It's like a twisted nursery rhyme, and I'm convinced that by the time I have children I'll have found enough cancer warning signs to finish the rest of the alphabet.

I'm what you might call a half-ass hypochondriac. Usually I'm just testing out the terms on my tongue and don't really believe I am under their influence. On those occasions when I'm truly concerned, as has been the case with numerous would-be cavities that weren't, I sink into a deep funk for several hours or several days until my mom reassures me that I in fact do not suffer from multiple personality disorder.

All this is just to say that I'm aware of my utter freakdom. I know I don't have Lyme disease (anymore), and it's okay if the mole on my leg might be cancerous because I'm sure the mole on my face is, and that one will probably kill me faster.

But I also know that my most recent non-medical ailment is a violent case of soccer-related anger management issues. Once, and I'm not proud of this--okay, maybe I'm a little bit proud, in that I've-decided-it's-okay-to-be-an-awful-person-during-indoor-soccer way--I smashed into the other team's goalie after she had caught the ball and kicked it toward the other end of the field. I have illegally slide-tackled a girl from behind just because we only had 14 seconds left in the game and I hadn't gotten out all my aggression. I've slammed people up against the plexiglass walls in pursuit of the ball. (In my defense, though, that's an established and oft-used indoor soccer strategy.)

But no matter how angry I may get when I'm on the field, nothing curdles my blood or draws resentment and bitterness more than any player who scores against my Seattle Sounders. I consider it an offense punishable by death. Unfortunately, I can only administer the death glare, complete with lip snarl, and I doubt David Beckham can see this from the field. (He's too busy being aggravatingly beautiful.) But each person who sneaks a ball past the fingertips of the godlike Kasey Keller has earned himself a spot at the top of my hit list. At the end of last season when the Sounders were getting their tushes thoroughly kicked by LA, I was so irate that they wouldn't have a shot at the championship that I had to leave the TV room at halftime to go for a walk around the block. In the pouring rain. Cue a montage of angry men smashing empty beer cans into their foreheads while the depressed little pill from the Zoloft commercial floats by in the background, crying.

That this rage is so intense is a shock to me, the rageful. I seldom experience ire on such a scale in my everyday life. The maddest I've gotten in recent memory was when I started a book that should have only taken me two days to read but was so hard to follow that I barely finished it in five. It is because of the extremely specific, extremely violent bouts of anger during soccer games that I have diagnosed myself with anger management issues.

First order of business: Beckham voodoo doll.

Join Me on My Quest to Do Everything!

I am always on the prowl for new podcasts that simultaneously boggle my mind and make me feel profoundly deficient for how easily and frequently my mind is boggled. My latest discovery is the new podcast How to Do Everything, created and hosted by Wait Wait's senior producer Mike Danforth and producer Ian Chillag. It's "half advice show, half survival guide," and three-quarters AMAZING. And yes, you just witnessed my stellar math skills in action.

So far, in just three 15-minute episodes, I have learned:

1. How to correctly spell Moammar Gadhafi's name.
2. What to do if my brakes give out when I'm driving.
3. How to store potatoes to prevent them from sprouting.
4. What to do if you encounter a large, menacing dog on the sidewalk and the owner is nowhere in sight.
5. What to do if you're trapped on a ski lift and it's clear help is not on the way.
6. How to order wine in a restaurant.
7. How to seek revenge on an ex.
8. What to do/not to do at the upcoming royal wedding.
9. How to get a raise.
10. What to drink if you're stranded in the desert.

And my personal favorite:
11. How to flip a snake-infested house for under $65,000.

Perhaps my favorite facet of this show is that they take suggestions from anyone curious or bored enough to ask. No query is too big or too small. How do you peel and egg without peeling? How do you get your tongue unfrozen from a metal pole in the middle of winter? How do you not look like an idiot at a Superbowl Party when you don't know the first thing about football? Mike and Ian are about to save your life.

I strongly recommend this podcast to anyone with an insatiable appetite for either useless or useful facts. I even more strongly recommend this podcast to anyone who, like me, lacks the ability to differentiate between the two.

The Nanny

Over the past few weeks, my life has been consumed by The Nanny. In case you've been living in North Korea for over two decades, The Nanny is the suuuuper '90s TV series starring Fran Drescher as the nasally caretaker of three, and Charles Shaughnessy as British dad heartthrob Maxwell Sheffield. The show also features a sardonic butler, a melodramatically lovestruck business partner, and one ingenious one-liner after another.

Rather than rehash the general plot of the show, I yield to the theme song (with some spelling and punctuational embellishments of my own): 

"She was working in a bridal shop in Flushing, Queens 
'til her boyfriend kicked her out in one of those crushing scenes.
What was she to do, where was she to go, she was out on her fannyyyyy!
So over the bridge from Flushing to the Sheffields' door,
she was there to sell makeup but the father saw more.
She had style! She had flair! She was there!
That's how she became the nannyyyyyyy!
Who would have guessed that the girl we described
was just exactly what the doctor prescribed?
Now the father finds her beguiling (watch out, C.C.!)
and the kids are actually smiling (such joie de vivre!).
She's the lady in red when everybody else is wearing taaaaaaan,
The flashy girl from Flushing, the nanny named Fran!"

That's basically it. It's the age-old story: Boy meets girl, boy mistakes girl for a childcare provider, girl spends five years flaunting her sexuality in front of boy, and eventually boy and girl get to first-name basis (and later, first base).

In short, it's stupendous.

Recently I have begun reevaluating my friendships based on the reactions I get to the statement, "I've been doing nothing but watching reruns of The Nanny." (This may be true Whether or not this is true is not important.) If my confession--nay, revelation (a confession implies embarrassment, and I am certainly not embarrassed)--is met with, "Oh my gosh, I love The Nanny!" or similar exclamations of jubilance, I am reassured that I have found in that person a kindred spirit and that all our years (or weeks, or months) of friendship have been truly meaningful. If, however, I encounter such sentiments as, "Seriously?" or the bone-chilling, "Why?" I immediately retreat into a momentary but cavernous depression wherein the very foundation of my friendship with that person begins to sink into the molten mantle of the earth's core.

This show has become my essence. It makes me love my Jew nose and rekindles my junior-year desire to learn Yiddish from the Yiddish fridge magnets I found behind the microwave during high school. I want to wear outlandish clothing and laugh like a herd of goats and binge on chocolate bars hidden inside a loaf of challah. 

From now on, I can conceive of no greater aspiration than the ever-noble goal of becoming a Jew. 

If you need me, I'll be in my room practicing my pronunciation of "nuchslep."

"What the Eff is a Spade Mashie?"

There are many things my favorite cousin Naomi and I have in common: Poor navigational skills when it comes to locating the grocery store five minutes from our grandmother's old house in Tulsa, Oklahoma; a simultaneous revulsion of/magnetism to crossword puzzles; remarkably similar senses of humor; and birthdays six days apart.
 
Naomi is a senior at Whitman College in Walla Walla--a mere 4.5-hour drive from the booming metropolis of Woodinville. This year for the weekend between our birthdays, I loaded up my dad's blue Toyota Matrix (Lloyd) with every item of inclement weather garb in my closet, Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods burned onto five CDs, and a banana and embarked on the cross-state journey to the city so nice they named it twice.

We'd received generous monetary donations from various members of our family to treat ourselves to a nice birthday dinner. This birthday dinner received so much funding, however, that we were also able to indulge in pre-dinner birthday drinks at Jimgerman Bar in Waitsburg, birthday chocolates at Petits Noir Chocolate Boutique in Milton Freewater, Oregon, birthday gelato at the Walla Walla Patisserie, and a delicious birthday brunch at T. Maccarone's.

Monstrous eggs and veggies

Monstrous french toast

Needless to say, we did a lot of eating. In between meals we could be found strolling through the quaint, sleepy Walla Walla streets or shouting various profanities at one or more of three  crossword puzzles that consumed both our time and our sanity. Other activities of note included visiting the Pioneer Park Aviary and befriending its winged residents, conversing with Mr. Patel, the delightfully chatty Indian employee of the Walla Walla Travelodge, and discussing the strangeness of trees.


This here is probably our finest accomplishment of the weekend: A "finished" Friday NY Times Daily Crossword featuring such infuriatingly cryptic clues as "Ice cream eponym" (edy), "Glycerides, e.g." (esters), "Loud horn" (klaxon), "___ cat" (manx), "Prefix with biology" (exo), and "Spade mashie" (six iron), the last of which prompted the oft-shouted, "What the eff is a spade mashie?!" at such inopportune moments as during mealtimes, treks across campus, and immediately upon waking up in the morning. We were also displeased by the clue "Cooler" which we knew  began with a P and was followed by two blanks. On the right side of the paper you can see my not-so-extensive list of potential three-letter words. Note that the only word missing--"pen"--was, of course, the answer. I'm sorry, but how is a cooler a pen?

We also shouldered the distinct burden of attempting a NY Magazine crossword whose clues were written by our 42nd president--the one and only Bill Clinton. Enraged by our inability to decipher the hints, we coined one of our most common battle cries of the weekend: "Screw you, Bill Clinton!" (The more subdued exclamation of frustration being, "Who voted for this guy?"  

Overall, a wonderful weekend. I am so lucky to have a cousin who couldn't be more perfect if I had hand-picked her. I can't wait to see her again in March, and again after that in May when she graduates. Thank you for the perfect birthday, Cous Cous! I love you!

My Best Options

Thank you, Craigslist, for alerting me to the fact that while I have a generally upbeat spirit and a college degree, I'm really only valuable because of my anatomy. (That, or I'll have to become a dentist.) It looks like I'll be sacrificing my dreams of travel writing for the following offerings from this fantastically heartening list:

1. YOUNG WOMAN WITH JEWISH HERITAGE URGENTLY NEEDED $8,000. Maybe it's just me, but whenever a statement can be read as either a job listing or an obituary headline, a little red flag goes way up. Plus I'm only half Jewish. And probably infertile (thanks to an incident in high school involving a backward-moving chair with me behind it).

2. Egg Donors and Surrogates. On the bright side, as of three days ago I officially meet the age requirement for carrying someone else's child. Question: Does anyone actually use Craigslist for services like this?

3. Native Castilian Spanish speakers needed for voice recordings. I knew my extensive knowledge of the "One Semester of Spanish" Spanish Love Song would come in handy in my professional life. (And would you believe that I actually do live in a casa roja?)

4. Swedish speaking Baby Sitter Needed. No sweat--I've been to Ikea. (I just have to say how much I love that all this listing is really looking for is a toddler who can speak and sit and who identifies as Swedish.)

5. Sad? Only because this is my best chance at a job.

6. IF YOU LOIVE TO CLEAN, THIS IS THE JOB FOR YOU. According to Urban Dictionary, "loive" is "a nebulous word. It's a rather interesting cross between like and love... After all, quite a few relationships develop slowly, and once one surpasses the realm of like, it is naturally inhibitory to continue to use the same word to describe a deeper feeling." I'm not sure if I loive to clean, but I definitely loive that this post asks for someone with "good English skills."

7. Lead Parking Attendant/Lot Enforcement. I saw The Parking Lot Movie. That's right. This is what unemployment does to me; it makes watching a documentary on parking lot attendants in Charlottesville, Virginia sound like the most reasonable and appealing way to spend two hours of my life.

8. Hopeless? I'm sensing a theme...

And there you have it, folks: eight reasons why I will be driven to an early grave. Goodbye, travel writing dreams. Hello, surrogacy.

Why Yes, I AM in Kindergarten

Yesterday I spent a lovely morning and afternoon with my dear friend Ellen. We made orange cranberry scones (and by "we," I mean I made scones while Ellen created Superbowl and Valentines Day ensembles for my brother's Obama action figure). 

Note the Stars of David

Valentines Day/my birthday Bama

49ers Superbowl Bama

We then trekked to Target for supplies and headed to the Lyon's Den--a cafe near Ellen's aparment--where we drank chai and made Valentines. I'm pretty sure all the baristas and customers were judging us for our piles of construction paper and cardstock, our markers and colored pencils and crayons, our scalloped scissors and glitter glue, our packs of stickers and uproarious cackling whenever we  came up with a pun like "I 'bear'ly tolerate you, although you can occasionally be 'fur'ly nice."

It was like we were cemented to those chairs. We didn't move for hours. Acting like chocolate-giddy children among tables of college students writing term papers and middle-aged women discussing garden produce is quite an exciting experience. There were hearts and paper scraps everywhere, and enough awful jokes to make even the punniest of punners physically ill. Why the greeting card industry hasn't hired us is beyond comprehension. How could you deny the genius of such lines as:

"You're wheely great!"
"You're 'speck'tacular!" (next to a turtle exclaiming, "Look! A speck! Hooray!")
"I think you're a'door'able"
"Ro-bots about it, I love you!"
"I love ewe!"

And these gems:

 

 (This last one on the right is a nod to one of our favorite episodes of House.) 

As you can no doubt see, we were on fire. Lesson of the day: Never underestimate the power of two comically stunted twenty-somethings in possession of glitter paper.

The Cover Letter I Wish I Could Send

Dear Future Employer,

My name is Olivia. I don't know what time I was born because my parents neglected to look at the clock, nevermind that they took a picture of it when my brother was born. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, a collection of fruit and vegetable stickers, and a cat who eats sweet pickles and bits of tofurky. Among my most impressive accomplishments are the following:

1) A nomination for the C.P. Johnson Humanitarian Award in sixth grade (which I did not get, probably because one time I glared at the new kid for sharpening his pencil when I was brainstorming a synonym for "vacation").
2) Offering a commendable degree of moral support when the fan on my friend's computer stopped working in a train station in Oslo, Norway and she had to fix it using nothing but a pair of tweezers and a Band Aid wrapper.
3) My memorization of just enough U.S. presidents that when the Monday crossword asks for Grant's successor I can smugly write HAYES into the blank squares and then lean back, delighted with myself, until someone walks by and comments that aside from the name of the 19th president, the puzzle is entirely empty.

I feel I am qualified for this position because I have a near-encyclopedic knowledge of House and can recall the precise instant of my teenage years when I understood that milk, when left in a thermos in one's locker over Christmas vacation, has all the aromatic integrity of a rodent corpse. I have scored higher than all my Facebook friends in Pathwords. I know how to pronounce (and spell!) "Ljubljana," the capital of Slovenia. At the age of five I discovered that I was the only human on earth who could correctly predict when an Olympic ice skater was about to execute a jump. I am an ace with scissors. I can thread a prehistoric Singer sewing machine like no one's business. I hold a household record for most crunches performed on a daily basis (as well as simultaneous household records for most extensive knowledge of female Australian political figures and most complete definition of "synecdoche"). I am also extremely modest.

I am available for an interview over the phone or in person, though be aware that punctuality cannot be guaranteed when my "car" has two wheels and as a general rule goes no faster than seven miles per hour.

I look forward to hearing from you, and thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Olivia