This is my parent's record collection, the one I listened to my whole life. They throw these little gems on whenever I make the mistake of trying to have a conversation with them. In the past few years they got a little jiggy and added some new tracks. My dad loves the one where he "prays for Obama to be assassinated every night" and my mother grooves to the secular soundtrack of those loony Christians who believe that in the after times the Dalai Lama will be on a dinghy to hell while George Bush gets to fuck an angel a day for eternity.
They are always asking me why I'm so unhappy. Um...
When you teach your children to not trust anyone or anything you get me. When you teach them to believe in goodness and tell them they are beautiful in their own way you get Nick. I tend to be a hate machine who slags it all. Nick loves people and animals and doesn't go out of his way looking for mass murderers at the Safeway. You should see how good he sleeps at night.
It's exhausting for me to be the asshole. Really.
At 26 I got a second chance at being parented. I am one of the lucky ones.
I only lasted as bakery manager for a few months. RCKCNDY took over as my office and the Beastie Boys checked my head for job commitment and found an ounce of Ak-47 instead.
After my awkward firing (Joan, the owner cried while telling me how I sucked and she was sorry because she really, really liked me) I was left with a month of severance, a Tony Robbins book (really) and a need to pay rent so I did what any desperate girl with no specific job skills does..... I started cleaning houses. I know what you were thinking. I wish. If ONLY I could have gotten up the nerve to strip. I did walk past the Deja Vu once or twice, but it's just not me.
Cleaning someone else's crap out of a toilet is dehumanizing and zen-like all at the same time. By zen I don't mean that happy trance place either, I mean you have to reconcile that it is all the same in your head when it's a stranger's leftovers staring you in the face.
ANYWAYS.
My adventures in housekeeping were a brief experiment wherein I would sit on your couch watching 90210 reruns while I had a snack. I'd get up for the last hour and speed-clean, grab the check and go. This is what your cleaning lady is doing right now if you aren't spy-camming her. It lasted all of three weeks until I climbed some steps in Laurelhurst and met my second mother.
Ladies and Gentleman, it is my absolute pleasure to introduce you to the fantastic Milari Hare
It is from Milari that I learned to drink from a glass instead of plastic, to use a real napkin, to gladly throw open the shades first thing in the morning to let all the light in. It is with Milari that I learned how to weed a garden, pick a dahlia, buy an artichoke. Milari lives "Don't Worry Be Happy" with every cell of her five-foot tall, marabou-clad frame. She walks the walk. When I am around her, I do too. She's what I miss most about Seattle.
By the end of that work day I had procured a job as a nanny, quit the housekeeping service, and begun the long, smelly road to chef-dom. Follow the yellow brick road.
