This is my theory about children. I'm a teacher, but not a parent, so take it with however many grains of salt you want, and if you are on a low-sodium diet you may want to skip this bit altogether, but here it is: Having a child is like taking on 5 roommates. The first roommate is a midget. The second roommate is perpetually broke. Third roommate has amnesia. The fourth roommate is slightly retarded. The fifth roommate is a temperamental genius. Oh, and there is a sixth roommate- he is a track star. These roommates are just like adults but they are all illiterate, and you have to learn how to live peacefully with them. Then as the kid grows up, the handicapped roommates gradually move out and fully-abled roommates move in. That's my Montessori-teacher's theory of kids. (The Montessori institute does not support this message!)

The very large attorney, with a teeny tiny head, handed me the check from my client and got right down to business.

"You're a pretty good-looking girl, and you seem cool. Would you want to go out with me some time?"

"Thanks, but I'm not single."

"Oh, so, like, you're a lesbian."

"No."

"What with the leather jacket and all." A long pause. Me just sitting there, wondering if I have to sit through this for my client's sake, or if I can just get up and go. He had said his attorney was a writer too, and wanted to meet me. Since I had never met my client face to face, I felt obliged to somehow indicate my professionalism to this representative, but I had no idea how rigorous his test of legit-ness was going to be. "So," he said, "you have a boyfriend."

"Yes. . . So, have you had a home office for long? How is that?"

"Are you like, engaged, or what kind of a thing is it? I mean, wedding bells? Tell me! Tell me!"

"Uh. Yeah. We're engaged. No plans made yet."

"I see, taking it easy."

"So, you're writing a book on Billy the Kid?"

"Yeah. Billy the Kid, the most interesting outlaw in history. People don't know. He was a drinker, a fighter, a total gambling man. He should have been a writer, like us!"

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Listen, forget about the date. Why don't you bring your boyfriend and the three of us can sit around and drink whisky and get completely wack and talk about writer stuff. You know-- booze it up. I do it every night. Booze it up and write and talk about writing. The writing life! My assistant Dave can join us too. Right Dave?"

"Huh?"

"Right! If you don't get laid enough, drink enough, get in a few bar fights, I mean, how can you be a writer? You know! Bring your boyfriend! It'll be great! I have a date with tequila every night! In fact, it's almost my drinking time now! Why don't you stay and join me!"

These enthusiastic invitations went on for some time, until I escaped under some bullshit pretext. I just want people to know that this really happened.

Perhaps I should say, "Charles Bukowski is alive and well and living in Santa Fe!" 

I'm standing in the classroom, looking through the door into our little mini-lunchroom. Margueritte, the substitute teacher (who I secretly think wishes to somehow justify the fanciness of her name), is there, doing sexy moves to hip-hop music. Around her, ten highly retarded students eat lunch, while their teachers and personal assistants sit around, waiting for tomorrow-- the first day of winter break. Vanessa is dancing also, and her brain-damaged interpretation of hip-hop moves is clearly remembered from her pre-car-accident life, when Vanessa was a normal adolescent girl. The strangeness and sadness of her glassy-eyed, obese self doing these unusual, almost athletic moves in extreme slow motion is overwhelming to me. Apparently, it also affects Margueritte, who is trying to turn it into a teachable moment.

"That's right, Vanessa! Clap to the music!" says she, at the top of her lungs, to the girl who could no more clap to music than manipulate numchucks.

"Everybody! Look at Vanessa! I think we should give Vanessa a hand! Everybody, give Vanessa a . . . Clap!" insists Margueritte. Everyone ignores her. She is very loud, as is the whole room. The day has been long, tedious, and unrewarding, like most days in the "skills based" special-ed room. But Margueritte's sudden, bossy mania is not helping matters. Like me, Mr. T.J. has retreated to the dark and the quiet of the classroom, which as far as I can tell is seldom used for anything approaching a class. Once, a down's syndrome boy and another even-goofier boy came in here, sat on the floor, and laughed about each other's farts. Another time, a girl came in here to do a computer learning program. She seemed to believe it consisted of clicking the mouse on everything on the screen until the computer switched you to the next question. Mr. T.J. and I are both watching Margueritte, wondering how long she is going to keep up this behavior that should embarass her, but instead embarasses us. Becky calls to me and demands that I get her a fork. Instinctively, I almost say, "Get it yourself. What are you . . . crippled?"

She isn't crippled, in fact, but although she is 21, she appears to be 9. She has a hump on her back, a face that is astoundingly elf-like, and tense hands like scaly claws with skin that is perpetually chapped and peeling off in layers. Although we have our own kitchen here, the drawers are mostly empty. A donated coffee-maker, crock pot, and aluminum baking pan reside in upper cabinets. Otherwise, there is nothing. I finally find her a plastic spork, and insist that she say thank you. After a great deal of stuttering and giggling, she manages to do so. In the background, Margueritte is still there, going off like a car alarm: "Clap!" she insists, "Clap to the music!"

Here's a really funny book you should read if you want to finish a book in a couple of hours and laugh the whole time. It's the kind of book that makes you into an obnoxious reader. As in: "Hey, listen to this part, it's really funny!" Then you read it, but it isn't as funny to the other person because they aren't reading the whole book. You realize that, but nevertheless, five minutes later, there you are again, "Ha ha! Listen to this! No, really, you've got to hear this!" etc. Then when you realize you are bothering people with your endless mirth, you stop commenting, and you just sit there reading and occasionally cracking up to the point of tears, but not saying what was so funny, which the listener finds even more obnoxious than what you were doing before.

So the book is called Tales from Fish Camp- a city girl's experience working in an Alaskan fishing village. By Danielle Henderson. You can check out her blog at www.knottyyarn.com. 

After a very rocky and somewhat moldy start, I have figured out a method for fermenting saurkraut in a glass canister designed for displaying lentils or some such kitchen decor kind of thing. Since it's clear, I can actually watch it as it ferments and see the bubbles doing their thing. It's very interesting. If you have kids and want a science fair experiment, you should try this. It's super cool. But if you do try it for any reason, do not—I repeat, DO NOT—put four cloves of garlic in with two heads of cabbage. My recipe recommended this. It was a mean recipe that is trying to destroy people's lives one batch of saurkraut at a time. Fermented garlic smells like the putrid stench of a stagnant bog where the bones of Indian ancestors have been rotting since Custer's last stand. I actually love the taste, but I receive strongly voiced, frequent, strident complaints about the stench that wafts out, like a living thing with a mission, whenever I open the jar and remains in the room for several hours afterward.

It's not there in my horoscope. I don't understand it, but in one day I had some kind of run-in with 9, count them nine, persons from my past. I'm talking about persons who I never expected to see again. I'm talking about persons who I never even think about. I mean a woman from college, ten years ago, who I only remember because she ran off with my boyfriend at the time. I'm sure she doesn't even know who I am. A woman who once rented an apartment from me and made my life a living hell, suddenly she shows up at my dance class. Some people I used to work with in various jobs, suddenly there they are in the grocery store. These people are just coming at me from out of the blue. Shot from the cannon of the past. All in a single day, for no apparent reason. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it meaningful? Is it a cosmic joke? Is it dangerous? Should I consult a professional of some kind? If so, what kind?

This is my latest article as Local Flavor magazine's resident cooking clown.

Local Flavor is a semi-monthly food and lifestyle magazine in and about Santa Fe, New Mexico.

They say a watched pot never boils. You wouldn't have to worry about that in my kitchen, since I can't even stand there and wait for it to come to a simmer before I remember something I have to chop or wash or mash or bake . . . or maybe this seems like a good time to start a really ambitious dessert.

Inevitably I forget about the pot, which boils over, spilling chocolate or chicken broth or pasta water everywhere. While I'm trying to repair that disaster, without a doubt a pan of glazed carrots, cranberry sauce, or perhaps scalding milk will overheat and cause a sticky mess to ooze down the front of my oven door. Meanwhile, there is so much smoke from the oil I am heating to roast mustard seeds (because I'm such a gourmand) that I have to turn on the overhead fan. The fan is so loud it prevents me from hearing the timer that tells me my perfect sourdough dinner rolls are about to burn into charcoal briquettes.

In the end, I discover that more food landed on the linoleum than in the mixing bowl, and somehow that thing that was supposed to form into balls just crumbled into dust. My cookbook is so smeared with buttery fingerprints that I can't even read the recipe anymore, and the sink is piled so high with dirty dishes that I can't get to the spigot to refill that pasta pot. And that is, of course, when my guest arrives.

That's when I put on a big smile and say those three precious words . . . "Let's go out!"

"You want to do what?!"

That was Richard Zeng's response at first when I said I wanted him, the owner of Chow's Chinese restaurant on St. Michael's Drive, to show me how to make my favorite dish, firecracker dumplings, right there in the Chow's kitchen. And he didn't even know about my personal . . . ahem . . . history with cooking.

Now I have been writing for Local Flavor since 2000, and I've been attempting unsuccessfully to cook gourmet meals for longer than that. My feeling is: I've paid my dues to the restaurant world. Now I want what every foodie wants—a personal lesson from a gourmet chef.

"But it's a secret recipe!" he exclaimed.

I said I wouldn't leak the recipe. I promised. (Sorry folks, I promised) So with some trepidation, he agreed to do this very unorthodox thing.

Naturally then, I was surprised to find that as soon as I got there, Richard started leaking secret information like Scooter Libby. He handed me a glass of Chows' trademark iced tea, for instance, and told me how it's made. Exactly. There is mint involved. Orange juice too. An hour of preparation. Anyway, I'll take the recipe to my grave, but you can bet I'll be in my kitchen for the next few weeks trying to duplicate it. (In case you come over and see me with one foot in a puddle of lemon juice, the other in a pile of spilled tea leaves, various juices splashed all over the cabinets, and me yelling "you're not supposed to do that!" at a boiling pot that's spewing pulp everywhere like organic fireworks.)

Next, Richard introduced me to Chef Li Chang Ling, who was to be my instructor. I tried to explain to her that I was going to be a tough case. I told her she would have to carefully demonstrate every little technique because I don't have a natural affinity for cooking. It's really the tasting I excel at, I told her. I even admitted that my fascination with food stems from my total inability to actually produce it in any way. I explained that I was going to need to understand the crucial timing issue for each component of the meal as well as all the essentials for rolling out the dough. I made it clear that even the mixing aspect was likely to be a tricky one. I would need to know the number of strokes needed to achieve the proper consistency and the actual mixing method as well—whether folding, whisking, or stirring with a wooden spoon. I explained that I am well read on all of these techniques, although I can't seem to do any of them properly. I told her not to leave a single stone of culinary knowledge unturned.

I also told her I would do anything she said because I love, and I mean I LOVE, firecracker dumplings. The only thing I don't like about them is that you don't get enough of the tangy green sauce with an order. I wish I could have a huge bowl of it . . . no, a bathtub full of it . . . Li Chang Ling put up a hand in the international gesture for stop.

She didn't understand a word of English. She slapped some plastic gloves on me, patted my hand as if to say "it's going to be okay," and her fingers made the jump into hyperspace. She started folding dumplings a mile a minute.

I think someone had tipped her off about me, because the dumpling wrappers were already prepared and cut into perfect little squares. The filling itself was also all ready. All I would have to do is actually place the filling in the wrapper and fold it like an origami crane, with one hand. But the chef was doing something human fingers shouldn't be able to do. I wondered if she had special hands. Perhaps her fingers were double jointed. She continued to smile and demonstrate. She slowed down to just under warp speed to enable me to catch up.

You put a little egg yolk on the corner of the wrapper, then a little dollop of filling in the center. You fold one corner over to the other and make a triangle. Then the other two corners somehow connect with each other without making the filling ooze out the cracks. I made a couple. I thought they looked okay. Richard looked on. He and Li looked at each other. I made a couple more. They looked good to me. Still, there was silence from my instructors. I made one more. Then there was laughter.

Always there is laughter. I tell you what, I have traveled abroad enough to know that silence followed by laughter is never what you want to hear when you are out of your element and people are speaking a different language.

"They are upside down," explained Richard.

Who knew dumplings could even be upside down? I corrected the problem, and Li demonstrated very v-e-r-y slowly how to hold the dumpling just so, press its belly with your middle finger, and connect the corners in a little circle. I mastered it! Incredulous at my success, I gleefully made ten perfect dumplings.

Then we went to cook them.

Chinese kitchens are fun because there is tons of fire everywhere. The set-up consists of several woks suspended over open gas flames that shoot out from big wide tubes. No burner needed. The flames are controlled with a big lever, like something a mad scientist would have in his laboratory. You turn the lever a little bit and flames leap out of the tube like crazy. This is why Chinese people don't have big eyebrows. They're always singing them off. Just kidding.

With the Chinese equivalent of a slotted spoon, I transferred my dumplings from the plate into a wok of boiling water. I was instructed to keep the water boiling very lightly so that the dumplings didn't fall apart. I turned the lever up to get it going, at which point everyone made sounds of panic as it instantly turned into boiling whitewater. I turned the lever down, and instantly the boil subsided. The ultimate gas stove! A little up, a little down, and we soon had the dumplings boiling nicely. After five minutes I plated these babies and we headed over to chef Li Chao, who was manning the food processor.

As we deposited spinach, basil, cilantro and about a hundred secret ingredients (the names of which I will never disclose even under torture) into the machine, Richard explained to me that this is actually a French sauce. It's a pesto, basically. In fact, the dumpling filling is made primarily from turkey and carrots, not the traditional pork. He developed this dish to appeal to the American palate, which leans towards more low-fat meats.

There are, he assured me, no turkeys in China. Nor is there pesto. So firecracker dumplings are a twist on the traditional idea of a dumpling. Fusion techniques like these are what has put Chow's on the map, what earned the restaurant 16 years of success in Santa Fe and two more Chow's restaurants in Albuquerque. Having developed this special niche in the food world, Richard Zeng invents and serves dishes like coffee chicken, peanut-butter wasabi sauce, and fried wontons with parmesan cheese to demonstrate his culinary bravery.

Even I could not screw up the sauce. We whizzed it all together for a couple of minutes, and it was done. I dolloped the sauce onto the dumplings, then we took it out into the dining room and tucked in. Delicious!

The best part was that finally I got to have my dream come true: an entire soup bowl of that outrageously addictive spinach pesto all to myself. People were watching, so I couldn't just drink it. I tried to keep calm.

I added an extra dollop . . . or two . . . or three . . . to each dumpling.

Then I marveled . . . It tastes just like it's supposed to! And hey, I made it myself! It's kind of a heavy responsibility I'm carrying now, having that secret recipe in my head. Sure, I've been harassed. I've been threatened. Other restaurants have approached me with attractive offers. But the secret of firecrackers dumplings is safe with me. You'll have to go to Chow's and try to taste all the secret ingredients yourself. Or you could just stop by my house and peek in at the mess I'm going to make this week.

This blog is a posting of my monthly column, Romancing the 'Fe, published in Santa Fe, New Mexico's Local Flavor magazine. Enjoy!

Welcome to Romancing the 'Fe, a new column where, each issue, I will take you along on a romantic date. I'll be trying out new and unusual Santa Fe-area dating ideas for you and rating each one as to its seductive powers for:

a) a first date
b) a date for lovers
c) a double or group date

I'll also give suggestions for easily extending the date (a bonus round!), and amping up the romance of the date (secret weapons!).

STARS

Now, a warning for you first-daters out there. I have always marveled, and not in a good way, at the Santa Fe tradition of the "hiking date." See, when I go on a first date with a guy I barely know, I don't really want to be alone in the woods with him. I mean there are so many reasons why this is logical. But upon polling numerous single Santa Feans, I have actually found that the hiking date as a first date is a very popular experience. Go figure. Even so, this hike is so far away from town and down such a long, rock-strewn dirt road bordered with rusty vehicular detritus and broken-down old shacks, that if your date doesn't know you well, the drive may fill her or him with a slight sense of foreboding, which is maybe not the best way to start a hike deep into the woods with a relative stranger. So for a first date I give this maybe two out of five stars. But for an established couple this adventurous multi-faceted date with snuggling option is a five-star bonanza.

First date: **
Established couple: *****
Group date: *****

GETTIN' OUR DATE ON

In honor of this being Local Flavor's outdoor sports issue, I have decided to explore a super-romantic hiking date . . . with some tantalizing surprises. Upon asking numerous friends and acquaintances for the most romantic hike around these parts, I have pinpointed the ultimate spot, which is known as The Rio en Medio hike. Now, with the few extras I added in to boost the romance factor, I think any of my readers out there can duplicate the five-star romance rating of this date with very little effort. We begin our date with me, Ruby Peru, and my date, who we shall call . . . Panda.
Panda and I have been together for about a year and a half now, so we are established snugglers. We have in fact considered setting up an international snuggl-lympics just so we could win every event. So naturally, I had to take the idea of a rough-and-ready hiking date and try to figure out how to work snuggling into the equation. But don't worry; if you and your date are not at the snuggling stage, you can edit the bonus feature out of the hike. Then, if things are going well, you will also have an opportunity to continue on to the exciting  "cherry on top" stage and extend an incredibly pleasant afternoon right on into the evening.
When I told Panda what hike we were going on, he declared, "Oh yeah! That's the hike where Cougar Dan got his name!" It wasn't until it was too late to back out that he told me why.
Panda wasn't allowed to look inside the daypack because of a certain surprise I had stowed away in there, but he very chivalrously offered to carry it anyway. So on that good note, the two of us set out along the dirt road at the trail head, which very shortly led to the marked trail, 163, branching off to the right. For a full 50 to 60 minutes, this hike parallels a babbling brook that meanders through pretty dense stands of oak and chokecherries. We loped along under this canopy of green, enjoying the yellow flowers that are in profusion this time of year. Butterflies literally flitted and flapped around our heads as we hopped from one stepping-stone to another at the many stream crossings. At the end of this trail, a 20-foot waterfall drops like a shimmering curtain through a narrow canyon into a shallow pool. I mean, I'm trying to think how you could possibly get a more romantic outdoorsy experience, and all I can think of is if you had maybe tame birds that would come alight on your finger or something.
A half an hour into the hike we came to an intersection where a sign indicated "Rio en Medio" on the right, paralleling the stream, and "179" to the left, crossing the stream. We stood there indecisively. This could have been a "path less traveled" moment, except that both paths were pretty well traveled. Panda didn't seem concerned. He just said, "I think we're getting pretty close to the place where Cougar Dan got his name." Foolishly, I was so preoccupied with choosing a path that I didn't listen.
It turns out that both trails actually converge about ten minutes later. If you cross the stream though, you have the option of branching off to the left for an extended hike on what is called the La Junta circuit. Also on the left side are a couple of lush camping spots with established fire circles. They are very tempting and very romantically tucked in amongst the towering Douglas Firs.
We continued along the Rio en Medio trail and eventually came to a place where it climbs up a steep rocky slope, but it also branches off to the left and, again, crosses the stream. To get to the waterfall, we crossed over the stream and walked a little way down the trail, then found ourselves basically in the stream itself, hopping from rock to rock. Then there it was. The waterfall!
We sat on rocks and gaped at the splendor of it all. We took off our shoes and waded in the cool clear pool. We even braved getting wet to explore the open cavern behind the falls itself. Then my carefree mood turned ponderous when Panda said, "Yep, this is the spot where Cougar Dan got his name." So finally I asked him to tell me the story.
The story goes that Dan (then just ordinary Dan) hiked to this waterfall alone, and just as he was getting ready to leave, he looked up and there was a cougar sitting right in the trail. Dan stood there trying to look casual, but suddenly realized that he was not only at a beautiful place of unparalleled splendor, but also a boxed-in dead end. The cougar looked kinda hungry . . . but eventually Dan's overwhelming charisma frightened the big cat away. (That's the way Dan told it.) And that's how just-plain Dan became Cougar Dan.
I looked left. I looked right. I looked up to the tops of the rocky outcroppings surrounding us, expecting to find a large predatory beast getting ready to pounce.  Nothing.
"The cougar could be just around the corner," suggested Panda.
I remembered the surprise in the daypack and snapped out of it. I told Panda I had a better surprise for him than any old cougar. Panda found this hard to believe, but he would soon admit to being wrong.
We started hiking back along the trail, and about ten minutes along I spied a secluded grove of trees. I zipped open the daypack and pulled out one of my two new purchases: "slap straps." Sounds kinky, I know. Folded into a tiny little stuff sack of their own, this very simple hammock-hanging mechanism consists of two heavy-duty seven-foot strips of nylon webbing with some loops sewn into them at about six-inch intervals. They are each designed to loop around a tree and make hanging a hammock a breeze, which is exactly what they do.
"Why not use an ordinary length of rope?" you ask. Because, my friends, the object of the game is romance. We don't want to get into carrying lots of tangled-up rope around. It's heavy and bulky and awkward and besides, if this were a first date and you brought all that rope . . . after the long drive past the creepy old shacks and busted-up trucks . . . and the long walk into the woods . . . what would your date think?
Next, I pull out the ultimate outdoors-person's hammock. I bought this camping hammock (from Eagle's Nest Outfitters) at the new REI store in the Railyard. I had to brave "opening day" to do it, which was death-defying, so you can see how dedicated I am to romance. It's big enough for two and folds up into a tiny little bag that weighs nothing.
Instantly I unfold it, then clip the karabiners on each end of the hammock onto the slap straps. We both take off our shoes, dive in, and wow! Instant romance! The thing that is great about the ENO hammock is that there are no strings to tangle up. This is especially key when you are on a date, like this one, designed for lovers. There can not be any knotted messes that bring about the inevitable arguments any couple has, when under stress, about how one person always has to do things the hard way and the other person doesn't appreciate complexity, and so forth. This hammock system is instant, hassle-free snuggling.
Once we were ensconced in our little swinging paradise, we did not emerge for one solid hour. We swayed gently just above the forest floor, listened to bird calls, and pointed out squirrel's nests we could see in the treetops. We wrapped our arms around each other, invented new snuggling positions exclusive to mid-air furniture, and generally got really peaceful.
We began this adventure like two people going on a typical hike—each of us thinking our own thoughts, lost in our own worlds. But when we emerged from the magical hammock of romance I want you to know that we finished the hike arm in arm, talking nonstop about projects we would do together and our wonderful future. It was a perfect set-up for my cherry-on-top: Dinner at El Nido.
El Nido is so old school. The simple, dark atmosphere; the understated, never-changing menu. It's a place where you have to really ask the waiter questions, otherwise you would never know that the New York Strip is aged six months right there on the premises and that it has this endless flavor you can suck out of every single bite. The food there reminds me of how my mom always said to chew every bite fifty times, because literally that steak I had was so good I didn't want to stop chewing it. Every chomp brought out a new burst of flavor. And the glass of top-shelf scotch I paired it with made me happy, tired, and contented, and ready to go home and snuggle some more. Perfect!

DIRECTIONS
We begin with a drive out to Tesuque. Panda and I went the Bishop's Lodge Road (aka 590) route for the lovely views and the dreamy conversations we could have about tree-shaded horse properties we might buy in our wildest dreams. For expedience you could also take 285 (aka St. Francis Road) north out of Santa Fe to the Village of Tesuque exit and go right at the exit, which also puts you on 590. Either way, you will continue on 590 until you get to 592, about five minutes, where there is a sign for Encantado resort. You will take a right there. Watch out, this intersection is where state troopers hang out all day and pick off speeders like ripe apricots. Follow route 592 3.5 miles to a stop sign, where you will see a sign directing you to turn left for Rio en Medio.  Turn left there; you won't have any other choice. This is still 592. Follow it all the way to the end. It goes through the little village of Rio en Medio and becomes dirt for about ¾ mile at the end and dead ends at the trailhead. It is 20 minutes' drive from Tesuque to the trailhead.

Following is a little story about something weird that recently happened to me (And it’s not a lie) and my analysis of it vis-à-vis the self-revelation that I may or may not have had, mentioned in the last blog.

Recently I found myself in possession of a most-coveted thing: a vacant apartment that was already paid for. I was in the process of moving out of my old house and into a new one, but I was also traveling for work during the week. When I came home on weekends I only went to my old house to get loads of my stuff to schlep to my new house. There was no hurry, because I couldn’t get out of my lease for a couple of months.

So I met this woman. She was a friend of a friend, and a psychoanalyst. She seemed okay. Now that I think about it, though, I realize that when I first met her I found her scary, but there was an internal logic going on that went like this: this woman always seems to be looking right through me. She is seeing terrible stuff. I should not acknowledge that she makes me uncomfortable, because that would be like acknowledging that I am full of terrible stuff. (Note that this is the kind of deep down reasoning you are never aware of until later when you have to see . . . a psychoanalyst)

I saw her several times over the course of a few weeks, often where cocktails were involved, and I guess I just forgot about my initial impression of her, and she was just, well, just a person who was always there. Sort of an acquaintance/friend who, by virtue of being a friend of a friend, I considered to be a reasonable human being. We’ll call her Mrs. Q. Anyway, it turned out that she needed a place to stay for a short period of time because she was between housesitting gigs, and I told her she might as well stay at my place, since it was vacant.

Well . . . (and I don’t mean that in the Ira Glass kind of way where “well” denotes a moment of unsureness [well, it wasn’t clear whether the pig had a human’s arm, or whether a human had a pig’s entire body except the arm] No, I mean it in the dramatic-pause sort of way. [the horrible creature took one giant step toward the hay loft where little Jimmy hid behind a snow shovel. Well. That was the last we ever saw of little Jimmy.])

On the day she moved in, I asked her to do some barter, helping me with moving, as a trade, and she balked. She balked at everything that resembled payment or barter of any kind. She complained about the dust, the condition of my apartment, even the size of my refrigerator. And she did it in a way I can only describe as frenzied, desperate, manic, and enraged.
Why did I let her move in? That’s a good question, but then again its obvious—in the course of this conversation, which was conducted in my living room while she was already cleaning my fridge and stuffing her many special-diet items inside—she seemed to be implying that I had done something terribly wrong. The complaining was more of a harangue, and it came on so suddenly and so out of the blue that I figured, yet again, that I must have done something really wrong to deserve this, but I wasn’t sure what.

The upshot of her ranting and raving was that she was so very very poor that she needed help and couldn’t be asked to do things or pay hardly anything in return because she was so busy trying like hell to get her life together.
She didn’t even seem to understand how much an apartment really costs, and that there are utility bills to pay, and all that. But I sympathized with trying like hell to get your life together when you’re all f***ed up, like she pretty obviously was, and so I had her write me a check for a mere $200 bucks and let her move in for one month, with the caveat that I had to come on weekends to move my stuff.

I thought she was like a backpacker, you know, not like a proper tenant with a house full of stuff. I did not, however, clarify this.

The following events then transpired:

1. She called me the next day saying she had had a headache all day and wondered if the house had mold. She wanted to contact my landlord and discuss it.

2. She moved so much of her own stuff into the house that is was essentially refurnished. I couldn’t tell where my stuff ended and hers began.

3. She bought a cover for my couch, which I guess she didn’t care for. “You can’t have it” (the cover) she pronounced. She also noted that she was looking in local stores for a cover for the chair as well, which was not up to her standards either.

4. She took several of my personal belongings and put them outdoors in the unprotected sideyard, on the woodpile. She thought they were dirty and didn’t want to live with them.

5. I confronted her about putting my stuff outside and she apologized. When asked about the mold problem issue, she insisted that if there had been mold she would have just MOVED OUT. Remember that.

6. She apologized like this: “I’m sorry you were upset about your stuff being outside.” If you call that an apology.

7. At the end of that conversation she was very apologetic and said she would rather MOVE OUT (remember that) than make me feel uncomfortable, but I told her she could stay because you have to understand that when she is in apology- and nice-person- mode, somehow she is so so nice that it is very hard, basically impossible for me to tell her to f*** off.

Okay, so the next weekend, I came to do some moving. At this point she had so much stuff in the home that it was very hard to know how much moving I still had left to do. In fact, she had the place set up like a delightful Montessori school custom made for herself. She had a yoga area, a playing-violin area, and now a painting area complete with a set of brand new pricey paints with price tags still on them.

At this point, I became of the opinion that she was not a poor person trying really hard to get her life together, but actually a free-loader who manipulates people to get cheap or free places to stay so that she can live a life of leisure. I had had enough.

I called her and told her I had other plans for the apartment for the following month, so she should make her arrangements to leave by the 30th. At this point, she insisted that she was staying until the fourth and that I had said that she could.
This is how she insisted: YOU SAID I COULD! YES YOU DID! YES YOU DID! KATIE, YES YOU DID! Now, I don’t know if I said that or not, but keep in mind that every single thing I had said to her previously, she had misremembered in a way that benefitted herself. In discussing the expenses of my apartment, My $550 became her $200. My $950 became her $550. Every single time I had mentioned money, she had come back claiming that I had cited a number that was completely different and much lower. So why should I believe her memory now? My main fear though was that “the 4th” would soon become “the 11th” then “the 20th” and so on until my lease ran out.

Anyway, since she had several times offered to move out if she was really bothering me, I assumed that she did have a place to go. So I insisted that she had to be out by the end of the month, and that was that. She screamed at me: YOU’RE ONLY THINKING ABOUT YOURSELF! YOU NEVER EVEN THINK ABOUT ME! WHAT ABOUT ME! YOU’RE KICKING ME OUT AND I HAVE NO PLACE TO GO! ALL YOU EVER DO IS THINK ABOUT YOURSELF! I WILL STAY UNTIL THE FOURTH! I WON’T LEAVE! I WON’T LEAVE!

This woman was like a form of torture come to life, but when one day I tell you about the other extremely petite lesbian con artist that I once knew, you will see why I wasn’t just going to sit back and see what developed.

Now for the point of the story: all of this happened gradually over some time, and each week, at work, I would have some new tale of terror about this woman and how she was haunting me. Each week I would grow more and more frightened that I had invited some con-artist into my home and she was building up to doing something really terrible that I couldn’t even forsee. I was even afraid to kick her out. What would she do? Exact some revenge? It was a nightmare for a while.
Things like this have happened to me before. Worse things, actually. I have been ripped off and generally bamboozled by numerous charlatans, freaky people, and fake friends in the past. So when I started telling people about this latest situation, my friends started asking me—why do these things keep happening to you? What is the lesson you are meant to learn from this? And that kind of thing. Which is a perfectly legitimate question.

But the thing was, during the time that this story about Mrs. Q. was evolving, I had a new chapter of the saga each week. My stories of my most recent torture weekend arguing with Mrs. Q would make people enraged and excited. They would say, “Here’s what I’d do! . . .” or they’d just get these wide eyes and ask me questions. They wanted to know more. They wanted to know what I said and what she said and then what I said to that, and then they’d give their opinion on my course of action and nod sagely and shake heads disapprovingly and, sometimes, literally gasp at her audaciousness. It was exciting. I found that while I was really and truly under extreme stress from all this, I also really and truly enjoyed telling the ongoing saga of Mrs. Q.

That’s because I’m a born storyteller. I go out in life and seek out unpredictable situations just to see what will happen, and then I tell stories about it. I practice my stories in my head, out-loud while driving, in the shower, as I’m falling asleep at night. I rearrange the information for maximum effect and decide where the pregnant pauses will be. I practice giving thumbnail versions of the more complex tales. The thumbnails themselves evolve into mini-masterpieces of conciseness. Then other times, I sit silently at parties because I realize that I can’t always have myself and my storytelling be the center of attention. It’s just rude. And that: having to sit silently with tons of fascinating stories in my head that I could be telling but I’m choosing not to-- that’s almost MORE satisfying than actually telling them.

So the answer to the question “why do you encounter these freaky people? Why do you cease to avoid trouble?” I think (and this is the revelation I mentioned in my previous blog entry that may or may not be true) is that I encounter them because, deep-down, I want to. I want the stories. I don’t want the stress, but without stress there is no suspense to the story, frankly. So, deep down, I meet these people and bring them into my life because, deep down, all I really really care about is having good stories to tell, even if I am the jackass of the story. Especially, in fact, if I am the jackass. Those are the best kinds. But not too much of a jackass, because then the story elicits sympathy, which is not a fun and comedic emotion.

Anyway, this is not to be interpreted as an invitation for all the con artists and manipulators in the world to come knock at my door. But its just to say—don’t worry about me . . . somewhere deep down, I’m a little bit of a masochist.