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| NO SOUL EVER SLEPT MORE CONTENTEDLY THAN MY HEROIC FELINE SIDEKICK "PRETTY". REST IN PEACE, MY KITTY, THIS MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND... (Two years apart, but she's still in my heart!!!) |
“Since I don’t have any actual proof that she’s a prostitute, I can’t exactly
quantify that my new upstairs
neighbor may or may not be a hooker” I confided on the phone to my Dad, from
whose side of the family I seem to have inherited my rather unorthodox abuse of
‘word-smithy-ness’.
“True...” he mused momentarily as he
contemplated my ‘idea-logical’ blog post in progress, and the fact that my
neighbor always appears with disturbingly disheveled hair in the same denim
skirt and strappy sleeveless pink camisole. “But perhaps you could hint that this might
have become a ‘whore’-able situation?”
(My Dad is AWESOME!)
>>><<<
As previously stated, I had no
tenable explanation as to my new neighbor’s source of income to afford
residence in our apartment building (seriously,
if it wasn’t for Rent Control, I’d be living in a cardboard box); nor her
inexplicably bizarre choices as to whenever the f*** she felt like moving her
car (my ever so considerate text messages
as to my morning departure times for work falling on deaf ears); and with
my knuckles a wee bit sore from having to continuously rap on the door (I kid you not – rather than answer the polite
knocking, she TEXTED me back, with “Ok, com8ng”), I found myself, quite
literally, near my wit’s end.
Granted, I had some stressors
preoccupying my pea-brain as I prepared for the monster two-part epic Series
Finale of our Sit-Com –- an heroic “let’s blow the budget with location shoots,
stunts and Guest Stars” middle finger to the cable Network for cancelling our
show prematurely –- but as I, a humble Stand-In who has zero power over the
Powers That Be, had no say in the matter, and whose only choice was to make the
best of the situation (hey, overtime pay
is always welcome in my checking account!), I opted to embrace the
stressors by contemplating the possibility of purchasing a fresh, new,
comfortable pillow where upon I could lay my weary head.
>>><<<
With an early call-time on a
brutally hot Tuesday morning (I actually
parked on the street so I didn’t have to deal with the hooker), and
released from work after a 1:00 Producers Run-Thru around 2pm, I piled into
Cecilia (my Toyota) and motored off
in search of a replacement for the mangled monstrosities that I’ve been folding
in half for neck support as I continue my everlasting pursuit of “dreaming
huge”.
>>><<<
“Yes, we DO sell pillows!” the
delightful Store Manager “Jennifer” smiled warmly as I entered into the cooling
coziness of the bedding retail establishment.
“Just out of curiosity, are you possibly due to purchase a new mattress
sometime in the near future?” she inquired politely, a sales professional for a
company in Southern California whose catch phrase happens to be “If it’s over
8, it’s time to replace!”
“Um, yeah, well, maybe...” I
stammered awkwardly, far too ashamed to admit out loud the longevity of the
relationship betwixt myself and the sanctuary of my mattress and box set (purchased
in 1988).
“If you have a few minutes Penny,
I’d love to introduce you to some options for whenever you might choose to
upgrade!” Jennifer led me to a showroom demo.
“Go ahead and lay down, here’s the pillow that I recommend, and just get
a feel for the mattress.”
Hmmm... (Pillow not bad...)
“This particular base model has
pre-set selections, but let me place you where I think is most comfortable, OK?”
she inquired as she worked the remote control thingy.
And with a most gentle elevation of
my feet and head which immediately took away all pressure off of my lower back,
I dissolved most contentedly into the cradle.
“Now let me take you back to Zero
Gravity to feel the difference” she pressed a button which flattened the bed,
leveled my body and left me feeling somewhat bat-like upside-down. (HEY!?)
“I know you’re not shopping for ANY
of this Penny, but please indulge me, as you absolutely HAVE to experience this
one for yourself!” Jennifer recommended as I plopped down once again, prepared
for nothing more than a redundant sales pitch in a different (albeit reaaallly comfortable) crib.
“This isn’t the ‘Cadillac’ of our
options – wherein you could literally use a Smart Phone to pre-heat the bed on
a cold night – but since you told me that you’re a Stand-In and literally STAND
on your feet all day, you might want to give this one a try” Jennifer suggested
as she clicked on a massage button for my lower extremities.
“Oh...” I nodded appreciatively. “So, wait; you mean to tell me that rich
people sleep like this every single night?” I scrunched my face in envious disbelief.
“Well, no, you don’t have to be
rich, and no, sleeping doesn’t have to be exactly
just like this” she mused. “You see,
if you have some stress in, say, your shoulders for example, you could always
hit this button” she pointed out as my neck vibrated like a neo-natal infant
sans the inability to hold up my own cranium.
“Oh...” I marveled stupidly.
“And if you just need to shake off
the whole day, this setting vibrates the entire bed” she smiled.
“Ooooh...” I melted further into a
puddle of goo.
“But hang on Penny, there’s more!”
Jennifer added enticingly. “Not only can
you set the vibrations to 10, 20 or 30 minutes, but you can increase the
intensity from mild, to moderate, to deep-tissue massage!” she winked as my
entire spine officially morphed into a wet noodle; dual rillets of drool
streaming into the smiling dimples on either side of my face as I lazed all pie-eyed
in the cradle.
“I need to return an email” Jennifer
‘suddenly’ checked her phone. “Will you
be OK here for a few minutes?” she asked me pleasantly, gently placing the
remote control into my limp hand.
“G’head” I purred, most unable to
even begin to form a complete
sentence...
>>><<<
With the soothing massage clicking
off on its own, Jennifer reappearing by my bedside and the junkie needle of “Crack
Back Comfort” firmly ‘embedded’ (if you
will) in my veins, I lopey-dopey followed Jennifer to the next bed – a twin
sized cushion attached to a computer where she asked me to lie down once again.
“This is how we figure out the
precise firmness of the mattress that’ll suit you best, Penny. It’s an interactive system, and while you lay
there, the computer actually scans your body for pressure points!”
“You mean my fat?” I raised a
skeptical eyebrow (the only muscle that I could still control.)
“Your PRESSURE POINTS, my dear!” she
laughed. “Then we’ll get a printout of a
color range between gold, blue, green and red, and let you decide if you agree
with the findings.”
“I look best in blue and green” I
suggested, still completely shit-faced from my twenty minute shiatsu session.
“Well, that’s not exactly how we, or
how the computer, or the actual COLOR of the mattress, well..., just relax and
type in your answers!” Jennifer recommended ever-so patiently.
>>><<<
Approximately ten minutes later,
with printout in hand, Jennifer paused momentarily before sharing my results.
“Um, it would appear that you fall
directly in between the colors of blue and green...”
(Hah!
NAILED IT!!!)
With an additional twenty minutes of
test driving various mattresses wherein Jennifer insisted I try one in the
“blue” range, one in the “green/blue” realm; another in the “green” scale and a
final firmer monster of whatever color, I felt quite content, informed and
comfortable with my possible purchasable selections.
“Can you itemize and write down
everything for me so I can discuss this with my Mom first?” I asked awkwardly,
my hand already inching toward my credit card to pull the trigger for immediate
gratification, but my head still somewhat in control over an impulse buy. (I can
justify an occasional Snickers bar in the checkout line; but a high-end purchase
without my Mom’s brilliant ability to research on-line? Yeah, NOT gonna happen!)
“So... out the door?” I cocked my head inquisitively as
to the final cost.
>>><<<
“Of course I can move my car 4 u
2nite!” my neighbor texted me to allow me to depart for work at 7:15 in the morning. “But why do you have to leave so early?” she
wondered as we walked back inside the security gate together.
“It’s our final two episodes of the
show, and even though it’s only a Sit-Com, they wrote a lot of complicated
things into the scripts that will take up a lot of time” I explained as simply
as possible.
“OH!
Much like my business in Advertising!” my neighbor nodded enthusiastically. “I work VERY hard, for SO MUCH TIME, only to
get fifteen seconds of actual product?”
I rest my case.
(Part Two, coming soon!)
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