"If you burn your neigbor's house down it doesn't make your house look any better."*

   I’m pretty sure one of my neighbors has tuberculosis. I believe the fancy term for that is “consumption.” Each night at approximately 9:30 p.m., someone goes into the bathroom that shares a wall with my living room and coughs like he or she has a huge hairball deep down in his/her lungs. Or a bale of hay. Or a meat grinder. Or a chainsaw.

   Why do I say his/her? Because my neighbors are very confusing people. They are, I think, a couple. I only think this because I’m pretty sure it’s a one-bedroom apartment. And I’m almost positive one of them is a man and one is a woman, which makes sharing a bedroom more difficult if you’re not a couple (and you're both straight). But it’s hard to say for sure. They’re both quite obese, and when I first moved in I thought they were a nerdy gay (male) couple that loved video games. Now I think they are an unconventional straight couple and the woman really loves baseball. The one I think is a woman has a relatively feminine face, but she has close-cropped hair and a deep voice. The one that looks like a man (Jay—he introduced himself (herself?) begrudgingly one time when I was warning him (her?) about my bee situation; P.S. he/she didn't care, even though I was trying to be a good neighbor and tell him/her to watch his/her back), has a mannish face but a very high voice. And sometimes he/she smokes cigars. The two of them have a screen door that closes with magnets (instantly!) and Jay (J? Jaye?) will often smoke his/her cigars just outside while lady-friend (man-friend?) watches some baseball and eats some/a lot of Cheetos. 

   Behold the screen:

   Whoever it is that coughs sounds a lot like a man, because the coughs are deep and throaty and baritone. But who’s to say that Jay’s girlfriend (boyfriend?) isn’t a deep, throaty cougher? (FYI: it seems "cougher" is not a word. I'm coining it. Dibs!) I only mention it because it’s actually kind of disgusting and drives me up the wall. But I’m sure that I make noises that annoy the shit out of them as well. I just hope the coughing isn’t a result of one of them having cystic fibrosis. (Although, and I'm not trying to be insensitive here but medical: I'm pretty sure people with cystic fibrosis have to do their coughing in the morning, not in the evening.) If one of them actually has CF, that'll suck...mostly because I'll feel guilty for complaining.

   Also, my fascination with who’s who in this sexual/romantic/mystery relationship has more to do with my innate need to label people and put them into tidy little compartments so I can move on with my life and free up gray matter. Think of it as Tupperware of the mind. (Though I’m pretty positive the Tupperware cabinet of my mind looks a lot like the Tupperware cabinet of my kitchen—and my Mom’s kitchen, too: half of it is mismatched and 90% of the lids are missing.)

   In other news from my increasingly classless apartment building: someone left this on top of the recycle bin this morning:

My garage is full of treasures.

   Please forgive the poor quality of the photo. It was 6:45 a.m., I was on 4 hours of sleep and there wasn’t much light and oh yeah, I’m a SHITTY PHOTOGRAPHER.

   What do you suppose this is? If I were being practical, I would assume it’s just a hideous duvet cover or bed skirt. But I prefer to think that it’s the cast off robe of a former king who, due to reduced circumstances, is forced to share this shithole building with the rest of us poor, consumptive, sexually ambiguous slobs.

*Lou Holtz, retired American football coach (most recently of Notre Dame and South Carolina). Wise words, buddy.

**Please subscribe to my blog. Click on the "Follow this Blog" link on the right side of the page and follow the instructions. It will make me so happy and I will be your best friend. 

"The next video was sent to us by Geurgud Gardner from Baden Baden. Here they have come across the body of a tramp, which in itself is not so disturbing. Until it is turned over to reveal...ANTS! ANTS! ANTS!"*

    I’ve been doing some super important stuff lately, and plan to do more of it this weekend, so I haven’t had time to form a thought or generate an idea or an interesting story for you. But I didn’t want you to be sad, so I grabbed up a few hundred of the post-it notes I have been sticking on various surfaces of my apartment, and decided to offer you some random (and yet deep) thoughts from the last week or so. I just have a few things I have to get off my chest/kitchen cabinet. None of this stuff has anything to do with anything ever. It's neither here nor there. Nor anywhere. Ever. Seriously.

I keep my great ideas organized.

1.     My apartment is overrun with ants. Or was. I’ve killed them off pretty well. It started last week and, unfortunately, it started while my mom was visiting with her friend Laura and I was trying really hard to impress them with how clean my apartment is. I (incredible sleuth that I am) determined the source of their interest in my kitchen yesterday: a really old jar of honey. I find that kind of ironic, considering the bee infestation of a couple of months ago. Of course, I know bees don’t so much like honey as make honey. I’m not a moron. But it was still kind of funny. As well as disgusting.

2.     While I was cowering in the living room far from the ants on Tuesday I decided to watch Delirious (Tom Mankiewizc—son of Joseph L.—1991). It’s that movie where John Candy (one of my many dead, obese celebrity crushes--along with Chris Farley, Orson Welles, Burl Ives, Charles Laughton and John Belushi) is a writer for a soap opera and then, after a head injury, he finds himself living in the soap opera. What was funny about that (aside from everything) was how his love interest (Mariel Hemingway) is obsessed with ants. Ew. So while I was hiding from the ants over in the living room (living area, actually, since it’s all one room), I had a nice, close-up view of some ants on the TV. Awesome.

3.     I saw Rock of Ages a couple of weeks ago and I really wanted Julianne Hough to suck in it, mostly because she’s pretty and has a great bod and I’m jealous of her success. But she was good. So now I’m a begrudging Julianne Hough fan. But she’s still a complete imbecile in real life.

4.     I was halfway home from work today when I realized I’d left my cell phone there. I live in Los Feliz and work in the Pacific Palisades. That’s about 20 minutes in a real place, but about an hour’s drive in L.A. So I wasted an extra hour of today in my car. It’s days like this when I want to get on the 5 and go north until I’m in Canada and never come back to Los Angeles, California, or The United States EVER AGAIN. Can every road in this country really be under construction?

Boo.

5.  If I had to choose between Jemaine and Bret from Flight of the Conchords, my first inclination would be Bret, because in many ways he’s the more conventionally attractive of the two (and an Oscar winner). But ultimately, I think I’d pick Jemaine. Because of his slight disadvantage in the looks department, he would be more insecure and therefore easier to convince that I am considered a 10 in the US. 

6. I had browned-butter-and-candied-bacon flavored ice cream yesterday at Cool Haus. It was AMAZING. And then I was thirsty for 4 hours.

7.  I love Prince. Prince, Prince, Prince.

8.  I don’t understand why some crimes are called “hate crimes” if they're committed against gays or ethnic minorities. Aren’t all crimes “hate crimes?” If I bash in the head of a white supremacist, isn’t it safe to assume that I hate him, just a little bit? Or at least hate that he’s got the car I want and am therefore stealing? All crimes = hate crimes.

9.  I saw Smokey Robinson at the Hollywood Bowl with my mom and Laura. I have never been attracted to a 71-year-old man before. But I am now. Am I a reverse-cougar?

The guy in white is Smokey. My zoom isn't super awesome. Also, my camera sucks.

10.  I’ve never heard a Justine Bieber song, but I think she’s the most adorable little lesbian I’ve ever seen.

Hot lesbians. (Photo)

I’m off to Minneapolis tomorrow to visit Gabe, and Emily is coming from Chicago to meet us! I’m so excited! But I may be AWOL for a few days, because I could be having so much fun that I don’t have time to write. Try to get along without me. 

It's gonna be huge!**

*The quote is from one of Mike Myers genius "Sprockets" sketches from SNL where he plays Dieter.

**The title of the screenplay Gabe and I wrote in high school.

"Was it Kierkegaard or Dick Van Patten that said, 'You label me, you negate me?'"*

    Here’s what’s exciting: I got a chalkboard. Or rather, I made a chalkboard and now I write things on it and take pictures of the things I write. Socrates (maybe) said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Does it necessarily follow that the un-photographed life is not worth living? Let’s hope not, because my photos (as anyone who’s been here before can attest) are horrible. But I’ve got some for ya!

The first thing I wrote on my chalkboard was obvious. The second thing was, "I need an eraser."

    I took the GRE today, so maybe I can calm down and focus on more important things now, but maybe not. Here’s the thing: I’m not entirely sure how well I did. They give you your verbal/quantitative (hint: “quantitative” is code for “math”) scores right away. Ah, the miracle of technology! But the two scores were disturbingly close together so I figure that maybe I did surprisingly well on the math or maybe I did surprisingly poorly on the verbal. Maybe I sucked at both. Maybe I aced it! I’m not really sure. I did some research online, but I’m still not feeling informed. The only thing we know for sure is that I don’t know anything (about figuring out GRE scoring).  (I think Socrates also said something extremely similar to that. Too bad I didn’t take a test on Socrates. Ha ha. I'm hilarious.)

Not that I'd forget the GRE. I just want to thoroughly document my life, you know?

    I thought I would come home from the test and feel elated and calm, but mostly I feel like an athlete who’s been doing steroids and just got off the field/court but is still amped up: warm and anxious and somewhat aggressive.** I feel like screaming or punching something. Weird? I don’t know. I know nothing, remember? (If you don't, see above.)

    It’s a short one tonight. I’m off my game. You're welcome.

*The quote is from Wayne's World (one of the best movies ever made). In the movie, the quote is spoken in Cantonese. But no one wants me to try to go there, right? In any event, it was Kierkegaard (and not the loveable star of Eight is Enough and Spaceballs), who said "You label me, you negate me." Thanks, Mike Myers, for making me do the research. I definitely would have assumed it was Dick.

**I actually got a steroid shot one time. I don’t think I mentioned this in bees part one or two, but something bit my eyebrow one night and in the morning my eye swelled up so bad I could barely see out of it. So I went to an Urgent Care center and asked if I was going to die, and the doctor said not to worry, I just needed a shot. Then the nurse came in and I rolled up my sleeve. But she said to bend over and pull down my pants. I was really confused for a minute. Shots go in your arm! Then I realized she was going to put the shot in my derriere (code for "ass"). All right, fine. Still better than a pap smear. But the shot made me sweaty and punchy and hot. Long story medium long, I liked it and I can see why athletes abuse steroids.

"That's it! I've had it with this dump! We got no food, we got no jobs, our pets heads are falling off! What the hell are we doing here, Harry? We gotta get out of this town."*

        I know for sure that I will never murder anyone, because I’m quite confident that if I ever did murder someone, I would have a nonstop panic attack until I was found out. And I hate panicking.

        I wasn’t always this way.

        I have a distinct memory of driving to the Oak View Mall in Omaha with my dad and one of my sisters (I think it was Penelope) at some point during college. 

The Oak View Mall.

        My dad said something to the effect of, “You don’t worry about much, do you Lacey?”

        And then I felt proud. As though it were something my dad admired about me. “Lacey: My One Kid Who Doesn’t Worry.”

        At the time it was true: I didn’t worry too much about anything. For one thing, what’s the point? It’s a waste of energy to worry about the outcomes of events that we aren’t even sure will happen. And even if we did worry, it wouldn’t prevent anything from happening.

        When you’re in college, you sort of feel free from worry because you’re actively working towards a concrete goal: graduate from college. Also, you’re in a sort of in between stage: handling money and paying bills, but not actually earning much of anything. And in my case, spending money that you didn’t have to make yourself.

        Once you graduate, and especially if you graduate with a degree in the “Arts” and even more especially if you graduate with a degree in the “Performing Arts” you start to worry a little bit about what the goal is and how the hell you’re going to pay rent until you achieve it.

        In the last couple of years I’ve started to panic a bit. Not about anything substantial, just a sort of general panic that sets my heart racing and makes my hands shake. When I take a moment to center myself and try to figure out what’s causing the panic, I can rarely figure out the source.

        I will say that since I moved into my own apartment I feel less anxious, but the idea of panic always seems to be hiding around the corner. I keep waiting to feel anxious and the anxiety of waiting makes me anxious. Yikes.

        What’s worse is that I’ve taken to envisioning problems that don’t even exist. Upon exiting the shower today, I imagined I saw something coming out of the little side drain in my bathroom sink. It turned out to be a portion of my own reflection in the opposite mirror. But still. Then I thought, “What if something actually did come crawling out of there?” What if it were a worm or a snake or some sort of tiny mouse? Or a creature like that one in Ghost Busters II? (Okay, that might actually be kind of funny, after the initial shock wore off.)

Ghost Busters 2. Scary!

        What the hell could I do about that? Scream? Tape it up, like I did with the bees? Run away? I live alone now, and I’m the only one here that can kill the spiders or what-have-you that show up, uninvited, in my apartment.That's the stuff horror films are made of. Shudder.

        Yeah, sometimes being a grown-up really blows.

        I’m thinking more and more that I need a change of scenery or at least a change of focus. A thought that was driven home further by the presence of YET ANOTHER dead bee in my kitchen.

        Sigh.

        In other news, I got a professional haircut today, so my bangs are under control yet again. Hooray!

*Lloyd Christmas, Dumb and Dumber (Peter and Bobby Farrelly, 1994).

"And the only reason for making a buzzing noise that I know of is because you're a bee...And the only reason for being a bee that I know of is for making honey...And the only reason for making honey is so I can eat it."*

              So, about those bees.

        The exterminator came on Monday afternoon and had a good look at them. I could hear Sir Robert T.L.W. talking to him downstairs so I hurried all the way around the building to the back to listen in on what was going on. Robert didn’t recognize me because my hair was down and I was wearing a different shirt (this seems to happen to me a lot with apartment managers), so I had to introduce myself, which was awkward, since I spent a good ten minutes screaming to him on the phone on Sunday. And we'd spent a good half-hour together earlier that day. But I guess I'm utterly forgettable in every way.

        The exterminator explained that his ladder wasn’t tall enough to reach the hive. It would have been tall enough if my downstairs neighbor didn't have a serious hoarding problem and state regulations hadn't forbidden us from moving some of his "things" (read: garbage) out of the way. I found it all dumbly ironic, since Robert has no problem popping into my apartment whenever he feels like it, despite the lease (and the state) specifically stating that he can't.)

        Anyway, the exTerminator was looking at my kitchen window and wondering aloud if he could get at the bees from there (an unappetizing proposition).

         I tried to explain to both Robert and the exterminator, whom I'll call Julian for reasons that remain inexplicable even to me, that they’d never be able to reach the bees from my window because of the side the screen is on: if they removed the screen, they’d be too far away to reach the vent. The vent is on the side where the immovable glass part of the window is anchored.

         Both being men and middle aged and one being Hungarian and the other Armenian, they completely ignored me. I am female, after all, and not yet old enough to slap them around like their mothers or wives would. So we trudged up to my apartment and looked at the window. And guess what? Julian couldn’t reach the hive because of the way the window panes and screens are positioned. Really? No kidding!

        Julian said he’d come back with a taller ladder. I asked when. He said, “Not today.” Awesome!

        By way of comforting me, he said, “The bees don’t want to be inside. They get stupid when they come inside and die within 20 minutes.”

        I said, “Well, don’t think I’m ridiculous, but I taped up the vent above the stove, just to be safe.”

        And I did right!! Normally, I feel like I’ve got some sort of twisted, moronic concept of how things actually work, but Julian said my instincts were spot on and pointed out a few other places I could tape as well. He said the scout bees sometimes get lost and then they head towards the light and wind up inside. That’s when they head for the windows (just like the Interweb told me!). So there aren’t holes in my walls: they were getting in through the stove vent. Excellent.

Duct tape. Not just for wallets anymore! Also good for ducts.

        So I was gone all day Tuesday and all day Wednesday, and sometime mid-afternoon Wednesday (yesterday), Sir Robert called to ask if I was okay, because he hadn’t heard from me in a while and wanted to tell me the hive had been removed and to make sure I wasn’t dead. I appreciated the gesture.

        And today, there were three more dead bees in my apartment. I guess they were stragglers from the now-defunct hive. Sad.

        Bee one is dead between the screen and glass pane of the living room window. Bee two was circling the drain (metaphorically) on the stovetop. He was under the burner grate in the midst of death throes, and I felt cruel spraying him with Raid, so I decided to quickly smash him and give him a quick death. But I couldn’t get the magazine into the depression of the burner just right, so I ended up needlessly torturing him for about 30 seconds while slamming my current issue of Vanity Fair on him from every possible angle and yelling, “I’m sorry, bee! I’m really sorry!” Julia Roberts’ face is covered in bits of bee corpse. And I certainly didn’t do that bee any favors. It was the equivalent of leaving it in a bear trap to gnaw off its own leg. I felt pretty bummed about that.

        Bee three was just dead on the kitchen floor. Sigh.

        And so it’s over, I guess. Or I hope so, anyway. My dad said I should keep an EpiPen handy, just in cases, so I guess if I ever do get stung, I probably won’t die a hideous death. Not this time.

Lacey: 11, Bees: 0

*A.A. Milne: Winnie the Pooh.

"What's the buzz? Tell me what's a-happening!"*

            I walked into my apartment on Friday afternoon and went to the kitchen to make a snack. There was a dead bee on the windowsill, so I freaked out (just a little) and went to grab a paper towel to clean it up. That’s when I saw bee number two, dead on the other windowsill. Number three was in the sink. I’ll fast-forward to the total body count: eight. Slightly unsettling if you’re a normal human being. Mind-numbingly terrifying if you’re afraid of bees (or spiders, cucarachas, beetles, bed bugs or those fake ladybug-looking things that are yellow or orange instead of red). Also, I’m a little bit allergic to stingy things. Not die-of-anaphylactic-shock allergic, but swell up like the Elephant Man allergic. (Just to be clear, the story of Joseph Merrick kills me, and I don't mean to denigrate him or anything. It's just that I look a bit like him when I swell. Also we share an astrological sign. Leo, in case you're interested.) 

        So I started crying, like a normal, grown-ass adult does, and called my friends Richie and Jerome, who were on their way to pick me up for a movie, and asked them to help me clean up the carcasses, as I’m a big, fat weenie burger who isn’t fit to live on her own or have a letter on her wall.

        Then I went to work online trying to figure out what the hell was going on. The answers ranged from informative to outright horrifying. One lady said they don’t come in through the windows, but through holes in the wall or air ducts, and then they head for the windows because they see the light. (Yay! My screens aren’t broken. But, boo! My walls are?) One guy said he found bunches of dead bees in his house each day and when the exterminator finally arrived, he unearthed a hive that was five layers deep and twelve feet high. (Can’t think about that today or I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.)

One of the many images that underplays the danger

 of both bears and bees.

        The most comforting thing I learned is that bees bed down when the sun sets, so I didn’t need to worry needlessly while I was sleeping (or trying to sit in my living room or pee or eat or drink water)—as long as I was ready to roll as soon as the sun came up, or, at the very latest, 10 o’clock, which is when the bees go to work for real. (Think of it as the post-coffee break, pre-lunch period, when everyone is really alert.)

        Richie and Jerome helped me by cleaning up the dead bees (Jerome even heroically killed one that was on death's door in the sink) and forced me to buy some Raid (more so I wouldn't be so nervous rather than because they expected me to unleash my wrath on the bees. I don't hate bees, I'm just a little jumpy around them.).

        I called my apartment manager, Sir Robert the Long Winded, on Saturday morning and explained the situation. I was headed to work (one of the few times I felt supremely grateful to be working on a weekend). He said that he’d try to call an exterminator and/or pest control, but that they don’t usually work on the weekends. Really? Don’t they? What if I had a family of tarantulas in my apartment (oh please dear lord never let that happen to me!)? Or a nest of scorpions? That would have to wait until Monday?

        I explained that I’m allergic to bees, though I may have exaggerated the extent of the allergy a bit, and told him that this was a seriously exigent matter.

        And guess what? He took care of it!

        Just kidding, he totally didn’t. And when I called him on Sunday morning, he said that he hadn’t seen any bees in my apartment, so he didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. So I reiterated how serious the situation was: that I was afraid to go home and I didn’t want the owner to have to pay for a hotel room for me to stay in while I waited out the hellacious bees (Richie recommended The Roosevelt...it is close by). Robert T.L.W. said he’d call some more exterminators.

            Well, he did or he didn’t, but anyway no one came and I was super nervous when I woke up this morning. I could hear the hive buzzing in my kitchen—I just didn’t know where they were.

        Fortuitously, I ran into Robert on my way downstairs and he took me on a bee tour. And I took some pictures, which, like most of my pictures, are pretty bad. I don't have any fancy 18x zoom, so just know that the black dots are bees and the window in question is my kitchen.

Those blurry black dots are BEES.

        They’re in the air duct connecting my stove vent to the outside. And they’re having a blast.

        I will end this post now, as it’s far too long, but know this: I do not want to be responsible for the decimation of a beehive.

        I was super nervous putting honey on my yogurt this morning for fear they’d see me through the window and exact their revenge. And what if these bees are Africanized? What if they know that the exterminator is on his way and they come for me like they did for Winnie the Pooh? I cherish nature and all that, but I don’t want to die alone in this apartment covered in pustules and swollen up like an unrecognizable blimp. Aside from hoping to be an attractive corpse and, more generally, not die alone in my apartment, I’m still young and I have a lot of dreams for the future.

Africanized bee, raping a stick?

Honey Bee. Sweet and innocent and gathering nectar.

        More later.

*Jesus Christ Superstar (Norman Jewison, 1973). I’m sorry, I know it’s cheesy, but Easter is just around the corner, after all.