The house slept in today. Sundays are the best. This weekend was a good one. I spent the night with a girlfriend on Friday, and as you know, girls will be girls. We rode a glass elevator to the rooftop in our bathing suits, kicks on our feet, and me in a puff vest (for some modesty of course) whilst holding four to-go coffee cups full of tequila and cranberry juice, and a large bag of food from the hotel restaurant…only to realize the day after we did not even get our french fries. Well, I did not notice, she did. I did however notice these men taking a particular odd interest in us and walking from one end of the bar to the other to relay messages that I greeted with solid eye contact and why don't you fuck around and find out-ish vibes. I am always on high alert, I am reading everyones energy and their lips while listening to who I am with and of course talking a shit ton. I often times wonder how insane I look from an outside perspective. This night it was confirmed I look looney. I like to continually add volume to my hair and I do this by running my fingers up each side of my head at the same time right to the center of my scalp and quickly shake my hands while pressing a little down and a little outwards…I can make my hair terrifyingly voluminous by doing this. Apparently the action itself is terrifying enough for some dude with a bald spot and a blue and purple paisley button down from 2010 (you know the one…roll the cuff back to reveal some contrasting print like polkadots) to shout out from the middle of the bar “ARE YOU OK?” He probably thought I was having a bad reaction to his roofie and panicked, but he was more or less trying to embarrass or humiliate me…good luck with that one, dude. He was one of the guys I was watching. He was the major relay man to the men standing near our barstools. When I say near, I mean leaning against at one point. When he shouted at me, my friend and I looked at each other like what the actual fuck and then I shouted back “Yup. Just making it bigger!” Something I am sure a lot of women have wished they could have done to you, small man in paisley worried about my hair tactics when perhaps if you worried more about your own you would shave the remainder on your head, find some new gross ass shirt to wear that doesn’t look like you wear it to this same bar several days a week for the last fucking 13 years. How many fucking women have seen that shirt on him and cringe when it flashes in their memory? I will give it to him though, it was so faded there is no doubt in my mind he washes it along with his lack of manners right off every few days so he can start fresh. There was something so odd about the time leading up to this. So odd that I had taken the time earlier to tell my friend I was in fact listening to her but also keeping a watchful eye on these guys. I have been roofied before, and it is so quick and no joke and I never want to end up flat on my back in the middle of the street in Chicago again…that is a story for another time. Although we weren’t in Chicago, this shit as most of you unfortunately know, happens everywhere and all the time… I also never doubt the possibility of the involvement of the bartenders or some stupid fucking repulsive system. I had a mouthful of witty comebacks when he shouted at me,  but I said none of them. Again, we were shocked, caught off guard, and quite honestly a little freaked out and wanting to just remove ourselves from the environment. We waited for them to be distracted, hopped off our barstools, walked off standing close to 6’ tall each so definitely not blending in amongst the mariachis filling the lobby bar and headed for the elevators. They were glass as I mentioned and from the bar you can see people on them until about the 3rd floor or so…so we squat down while laughing our asses off and kept reaching for the elevator buttons while talking so much shit about the guys. Look, they were not going to ruin our good time, but fuck them for trying and making us forget to check if the fries were in the bag. I don't scare easily in this way, because my personality usually matches with others shenanigans. I do however get scared when I sense a true threat and mal-intent. This wreaked of it. How many guys have you seen squatting in an elevator trying to reach the buttons without being seen by a group of women in faded purple paisley shirts making some kind of plans/scheming with one another? None. That is how many. I am just thankful to be at an age where I know to stay alert, to stay squatted, and to not go home with men from bars, but rather my girlfriends. 

One time a friend was at my house and were were just catching up, bullshitting, etc. She was in the midst of job interviews during this time period and had one of the companies she was interviewing with reach out for a last minute Zoom interview. I was confident we could get my house settled and moods shifted so she could pull it off. I was wrong. The video started, and I started listening to the questions and answers and something about balls was mentioned in very appropriate context and I lost it. She was sitting at the kitchen counter and I was manning the oven for a frozen pizza for the kiddos. I took myself into the pantry, closed the door and sat on my little blue stool in there pep talking myself to get it under control. “It is not that funny, Britt. What the fuck is wrong with you. Men have balls. You know this. But there are also baseballs and basketballs. She wants this job. Grow up. Shut up. Think about Brad and Sarah and get the fuck out of this pantry.” I stood up, opened the door and made eye contact with her. Nope. All of my hard work was out the window the second I saw her face. So what does one do in this situation? I don't know, I just know what I did. I threw my hands on the ground in front of me and bear crawled to the nearest exit. I bear crawled across the kitchen, to the right as to make my way to the front door and not be on camera as I had to go behind her and then onto my porch. I took no consideration of how incredibly distracting this was going to be for her as I was only aware that hearing them say something about balls and knowing I had to be serious was distracting for me, and I am not mature enough to even pretend for the sake of her livelihood that I was. I got outside and I remembered the fucking timer was on in the kitchen, the handy one that does not turn off until you hit the button and I knew this would be a nightmare with the dogs who without a doubt would lose their shit to the sound. They are my dogs after all. So now I am outside on the side of my house talking to myself again to prepare to go back. “You only have to be quiet and keep your head down. Keep your hands on the floor. Concentrate on how your boobs no longer hit you in the face when you're in this position as they have migrated south for the remainder of your life and you wont laugh. Just keep moving and whatever you do, do not make eye contact. Do not listen to what she is saying.” I stretched in preparation this time, bounced up and down like Rocky for a bit, and have never believed in myself more. I wanted to believe in myself for her. I had no reason to because I failed. Of course I did. No one is surprised. These kind of situations were not meant for me but she got the job and I would like to think it is because of the bear crawl. This is the kind of denial I live in. This is why I do not evolve in this regard. This is why I took to the floor of the elevator this weekend while laughing. I refuse to age in ways I can control. I actually do not put much thought into it. I more or less just have the personality. The craving to enjoy life and to laugh. I often find my girlfriends are where I have the most of this. I am incredibly blessed in this area as I know I have mentioned before. But seriously. I have a handful of women who I can tell anything to and get sound advice from in return. Women who laugh and cry with me. Women who know me to my core and understand me in a way that allows us to share our deepest selves with no judgement, just love. I would be lost if I did not have this. I would be lonely. I would struggle to get through the pains of living without them. I would not know myself as well as I do, and apparently I would not know the floors of many places in a personal way either. 

<INSERT SHITTY NIGHT OF SLEEP, A WHOLE DAY, AND ONE CHRISTMAS PARTY>

The opposite of the floor comes to mind now. The sky. Some of my saddest moments were on airplanes. The overwhelming feeling of leaving someone behind, but then sometimes the joy in flying in or watching their plane land as they come to you. The extreme emotions that come with flying ranging from stress and anxiety to excitement and impatience. Hellos and goodbyes. Oof. Just those two words next to each other. I always stare up at planes and wonder who all is looking down. Where they are going and what they are feeling. My first flight I took alone I could not stop crying. I was so afraid. The older gentleman seated next to me on the plane reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a baggie of pistachios his wife had packed for him. He told me to help him take the shells off and before we knew it we would be feeling happy together. This man changed my entire flight and mindset. We all need distractions. And sometimes before we know it, we are done shelling pistachios and things feel ok again, but then other times we don't. Today I don’t. Today I say fuck pistachios and anything else with a shell. Tomorrow is a new day. There are some things in life a baggie of pistachios cannot distract you from. I like to acknowledge that while I am a dreamer, it is only a light layer of me which lies on top of a heavy layer of realism. Sandwiched in between the two is a brat, a Britt brat. An ornery brat with disheveled hair, scratches on her face, and a foul mouth without yearning for water… Though sometimes, when I brush my teeth and rinse its like a teaser in the middle of the desert and I am painfully aware now that I need to hydrate my poor fucking body.  So this thirsty brat is one who will still do what needs to be done when the dreamer aspect is killed, the brat settles and reality is now obvious. Today the brat returned and I briefly stared at planes and shouted “fuckkkkkkkkkk youuuuuuuuu” out of the sunroof of my blue station wagon, you know her, Bossy, while blaring “Zombie” by The Cranberries and thanking God the sun was out and it was a beautiful day and still a very beautiful world with many more things to discover. Interesting enough on the same trip in which I had my first plane ride alone with pistachio man…I took a drive from San Jose, Ca to San Diego, Ca with one of my best girlfriends. I was in high school and skipped a few weeks of school with no heads up to my parents. Yes, I was that teenager. I received a phone from my father while I was having crème brûlée in Carmel, Ca. A quick, “Nikki (what my dad calls me when he remembers he loves me)…where are you, the school said they have been calling your mother and finally called me?” “Well dad… (what I call him when I remember I love him) I am currently in Carmel having crème brûlée and about to go have a cigarette on the beach, can I call you back?” There are not enough pistachios in the world to distract any of my family from this time period of our lives. Awful. Fucking awful. But the trip was fun and school was still there when I returned. So my girlfriend and I eventually were back in the car and driving at night, trying to stay awake and blaring “Zombie” on repeat and screaming it at the top of our lungs. We both lost our voices that trip and all these years later remember it so fondly, she was my upside, she was the reason when I flew back home that I sat on the plane and cried to the point of not being able to breathe. My reason for not giving a fuck about pistachios and the same reason another old man stuck next to me on the plane offered me a handkerchief. One I actually used and offered back to him…which was met with the most wrinkled and disgusted face with the words “no, its ok.” Are you not supposed to offer them back? I figured he had an old lady at home who washes it for him, just like the other old man had one at home packing a baggie of pistachios for his flight. Women. So fucking thoughtful and kind. They think of everything, often times ages before a man knows what he needs. I however failed to think of everything when I attempted to hand this man his snot filled-mascara covered-white handkerchief back. And here I am again waving another little white “flag” but this time from the ground and certainly with no intention to hand it over for some woman to wash. My point in contrasting my experiences on the floor with those in the air are merely to highlight how our proximity to the earth has no bearing on the joy and sadness we feel. Our highs can be our lows, our lows can be our highs. Our feet and bodies can be planted into the earth, and we can feel overwhelming joy just as much as we can feel unbearable grief. Our bodies could be leaping from an airplane overlooking the ocean in California as I once did with a man I loved from Düsseldorf with the highest high and joy for the experience only increasing as we fell to the earth. We went through a gradient of rapid gain while falling and I have had a gradient of rapid loss while rising. We can also be mentally and spiritually elevated to a new level incomprehensible and come crashing down faster than when gravity pulls your body and feel nothing but loss in the end. It never has anything to truly do with where our bodies are, it is where our hearts are. Brad rolling his eyes saying “the heart is in the body, dumbass bear crawling fool.” Life is not as defined as we all hope for, but I am so thankful I have my friends to lay on the ground with in pure joy even in moments of sadness. I am thankful there will always be opportunities for elevation and growth in moments of pain. I am thankful for the pistachio man teaching me how to appreciate and utilize things with shells for a purpose I never had considered…just like my hair volumizing technique I now know doubles as a repellent for any man in a faded purple paisley shirt who briefly assumed I was normal and mature and would not moments later be demonstrating how you can feel high while lying low and being lifted up all at the same time…but only because I did not know the french fries were not in the bag.