Crazy Elevator Lady

While waiting for the elevator in my building, I heard Crazy Elevator Lady coming down the hall. She was saying over and over again, "What is it? What is it?" I thought she was asking the voices in her head what they wanted now. As she rounded the corner and saw me she said, "Oh! It's a woman. Okay, I can get in the elevator with a woman."

Smells Like Barn

Moth Ball Stroganoff Man. Chain Smoking Schizos. These neighbors got nothin' on me.

Tonight I created the most hideous smell of my entire life (not involving a bodily function). Even I found it disgusting. The strange thing is--I couldn't figure out why! It all started out like a normal cooking experience. This morning I was reading VegNews magazine's 222 Reasons to be Veg when I came across Reason #202: Tofu Scramble. Ah hah! Dinner plans.

Oh, I know tofu scramble is meant to be a breakfast, but never you mind. My momma taught me that the best time to eat a nice big breakfast is for dinner, with chocolate milk (or now chocolate Silk)!

So I came home, diced up a couple of potatoes and started them frying. I mashed up the tofu, added a little salt, a little pepper, a lot of nutritional yeast and put it in the pan on med/med low. Everything was going so well. It really was. I added a little sundried tomato, some fresh greens, a spalsh of broth and put a lid on it to let it simmer while I put dishes in the magical dishwashing machine. I've done this many times before. This recipe is tried and true. This is comfort food. I went back to the potatoes, gave 'em a stir, kept my on eye the scramble. All was well.

Then, while loading the dishes into the magical dishwashing machine, I suddenly found myself thinking of the place of my childhood in upstate NY where Rt. 32 and Rt. 23A intersect. It's a place with lots and lots of cows, lovely cows, but cows. And two silos that my citified aunt looked at and questioned, "Why does that farmer keep all those bananas in those tall things?" No, Auntie. Not bananas. A large family owned all those cows and the girl from that family who was my age once loved and adored one of them and named it Happy, like she was until it disappeared one day and her parents explained to her the facts of farm life and death and perhaps something about slaughterhouses.

So, there I was in my kitchen, loading dishes, thinking of a lot of stinky cows when suddenly I realized I was making that smell. I was the one responsible for this hideousness. It's bad enough to smell 5,000 acres of cow manure on a Sunday drive, but at least then you know that 1) you can balk at your over-dramatic passenger saying, "Oh, stop. It's natural." 2) you're driving and it'll be gone soon and 3) you didn't cause it. When it happens in your own kitchen, though, it's not natural, there's no escaping it, and it's all your fault.

Paul Reiser writes in Couplehood that he was in the habit of turning to his new wife on such a Sunday drive and saying, "Whew? Is that you?" Then he realized that, "Basically what I'm asking my bride is, 'Is that you or is that 5,000 acres of cow manure?'"

Yeah. That's me.

Thank You For Smoking

I live in a non-smoking building. You would think that would mean that no one would smoke inside the building. You would think.

Evidently, most tenants who do smoke seem to forget the go-outside-in-the-pouring-rain-to-smoke rule. Evidently, some tenants have a note from their doctor allowing them to smoke in their non-smoking apartments. Despite the fact that smoking is bad for your health and doctors know that, doctors scribble their names on slips of paper to allow a lot of people in my building to smoke indoors--smoke cigarettes, oh, and my favorite, pot. Evidently, not smoking in your non-smoking apartment may cause you to go off your meds and do bad things. Or at least weird things.

I walked into the Recycling & Trash Room the other day to, you know, recycle and trash something, and as soon as I walked in, the woman who was already trashing something turned toward me suddenly and snapped, "Oh, what now?" She dropped her bag of trash, which could easily have been a bag of dog doo or her own doo for all I know, and ran out the door. Not long after, she returned to retrieve her bag of doo doo and said, "Hup! Wuh? Wull---uhhh. Tsk. Kuh. Mm." Then ran out the door. I noticed her a little while later walking up and down the hallway, back and forth. Eventually, she got on the elevator. She got off the elevator. No, on. No, off. Mr. Karin said gently like a good MSW, "She's attending to other voices and may be off her meds. Might wanna give her a little extra space." Ya think?

Evidently, I have discovered, I live on the smoking floor. (What does that mean about me?) The three apartments closest to mine are occupied by people I have yet to see, but whom I often hear yelling at the walls and whose sleep patterns I have identified by their chain-smoking habits. Up at 7:30am. To bed around 12:30am. Smoking like a chimney every waking hour.

I love this. No really, I do. I mean, now I don't have to actually take up smoking. I figure I'm getting in at least a pack a week in second-hand smoke. Saves me money. Don't have to buy cigarettes for myself. This is great.

No One Should Be Up at This Hour

No one should be up at this hour. It's before noon on a weekend day. It's before nine on a weekend day. Despite the fact that I went to bed at 3:46am for reasons I will not discuss here (okay, I'm just a night owl, you dragged it outta me), I am awake a mere five hours later. This was not my plan. As you can imagine, my plan was to sleep until I was NOT TIRED ANYMORE, because that never happens during the week. It's such a fabulous weekend luxury. Go to bed when I want, get up when I want and alarm clocks have nothing to do with it. I know, crazy idea, but I put in my Church and Puritan Work Ethic years. I've already done that time--staying up late on Saturdays (because I'm a night owl), and then waking up at o'dark thirty to Bless the Lord, O My Soul with All That is Within Me. Been there, done that. I believed it made me a better person and now I don't, so now I stay up late on Saturday nights (because I'm a night owl) and then sleep until I'm NOT TIRED ANYMORE. I get plenty done in my life, just not before noon on the weekends. But "damn my shit" if I ain't up when I'm still tired. Let me tell you why.


Because MOTHBALL STROGANOFF MAN is concocting toxic fumes in his laundry room just below our bedroom. He may think he's just doing laundry, but in reality he's slowly killing us. There is no insulation between us to keep out his noxious doings. At 8:25am I woke up on a Sunday morning not because I WASN'T TIRED ANYMORE, but because my eyes, nose and throat burned. Happy F&%Kin' Sunday mornin' to you, too. WTF? I have a giant headache now in addition to the low grade headache I always have. Thanks a LOT buddy. I'm Forever Grateful To You. (You Jesus Freaks, current or former will know what I mean.)


Last night I walked into the house to discover that he was making Mothball Stroganoff, his favorite meal, while smoking. Charming. There is an explicit no smoking policy in this historic building which everyone else seems to be able to adhere to. What makes him so special? Our entire apartment smelled like smoke. If I wanted to smoke, I'd set myself on fire.


Perhaps I need to embrace diversity. Perhaps I haven't fully explored the finer qualities of Smoked Mothball Stroganoff. Perhaps I should ask for the recipe!

Mothball Stroganoff

I swear this must be what our new neighbor makes for dinner every night. What the hell can he be cooking that generates this odor? It's disgusting. Despite all our best efforts to tape his duct work that runs throughout our basement and now serves as a Mothball Stroganoff conduit, the stench of fresh hot mothball stroganoff comes piping into our apartment practically every goddamn night. We should invest in duct tape; we've used so much of it.

I've begun to eschew the entire downstairs (basement) altogether just to avoid his offensive odors. Odors, plural. You see, while we each have our own basement areas including our own washer/dryer units, these are only separated by hastily tacked up plywood, this being the only unfinished area of an otherwise solidly built, nicely maintained rental. Anyway, when our lovely new neighbor does his laundry, we can smell it. Now, before you get all in a bunch about this, please note that I wouldn't mind at all if he used laundry detergent and dryer sheets like the rest of us. I could even handle it if he used that nasty strong-smelling store-brand cheap stuff. But no, our guy cleans his clothes with battery acid and Drano. If I'm downstairs when he does laundry, my eyes, nose and throat start burning and I have to run upstairs Before. I. Die.

And I'm not the canary in the mineshaft in our marriage. That's Mr. Karin's job. I can be going along thinking everything's fine and he just passes out dead from some noxious fume I hadn't yet detected. Or I'll come home from work and within a minute he'll say, "You've had garlic today. woo! And you were around somebody who has a dog. And a cat, too." He's some kind of olfactory detective. Hard to believe we haven't made a game of this. He'll get into my car, which I think I've kept quite tidy, thank you, because I've removed the rotten apple cores from summer and the Spicy Blackbean Gardenburger wrappers from Burgerville that I don't want him to know I've eaten, and he'll declare it a toxic waste site, that we should get out of the car immediately and that no one should ever drive this car again because the air quality inside is so horrendous.

So you understand now how significantly powerful the odors emanating from our dear neighbor must be if they are causing me to run screaming like one running from Godzilla.