Maintenance Mike & The Domesticated Harpy

My morning started off rudely.

I was awakened first by the construction noises nearby on another patio. And i drifted in and out of sleep, still needing another few hours.

Then a banging at my door set my heart to pounding. And the person kept banging. I hurried to open the door, my pistol behind my back as usual, (I am a single woman who lives alone. I make no apologies) and opened the door.

The construction guy was standing there with three other guys (already a little daunting for a woman alone) and announced that I had to move my stuff off the patio so they could work on it. He said it rudely. Like he had testosterone poisoning.

My hand tightened around the pistol grip. (okay, just kidding, that was for dramatic effect. I don’t just go around shooting people who knock on my door. Unless they’re from a church, soliciting my soul. Then, yeah. of course. Why wouldn’t I?)

Now understand, that one of my biggest pet peeves is to be awakened rudely. Especially by loud sounds. That’s why I hate alarm clocks. I have an almost epileptic response. And also understand that i have a sort of primal fear of someone knocking on my door. Not sure where that comes from, but it just stresses me out. Maybe because it represents someone trying to get into my home and i don’t know who it is. Weird, i know. But for whatever reason, it’s highly stressful.

So I’m standing at my door, having weathered those two very personally stressful things happening at the same time, and this guy is telling me I have to move stuff off my patio, and I’m still in my pajamas. (Okay, I often stay in my pajamas all day…That’s why I say i have a Pajama Job…but i don’t like being FORCED out of my Pajamas, unless it’s for a good reason. Like one that includes a really pretty woman).

Back to our show:
After he TOLD me what i was going to do, i TOLD him what was REALLY going to happen. “Listen here, Scooter, don’t pound on my door and tell me what I’m going to do. You did not give me any kind of notice, and I am recovering from a ruptured disc in my neck. I’m not moving anything. You should have given me time to make arrangements. And since you didn’t, arrangements will have to be made. In the meantime, you’ll have to go terrorize someone else.”

Dude took one step back. And then he and his boyfriends just walked away. I guess that work i did in my Card-Carrying-Harpy class really paid off. There would be no tearing of flesh today.

SO I slam the door. I felt it was necessary to make my point. But had to grab the mirror hanging on the wall there, so it wouldn’t fall. Damn. Just what i need. Seven years of bad luck on top of the last 7 years i just had. I still can’t remember what mirror i broke last time, but it must have been the size of a billboard.

Anyway. I’m thinking about coffee, which always makes me feel better, and there was no way i was going to go back to sleep anyway. So i made coffee and tried to get my heart rate back down. I called the office and told them what happened, very careful not to be in Harpy mode. Rep said she’d have Mike come over and handle it–i think the head of maintenance. Great, I say. Meaning, Great, another man with testosterone poisoning.

A few minutes later, Mike pecked on my patio door, and I stepped out to talk to him. He was immediately courteous. He completely understood dealing with back and neck issues. He’d had surgery on his. And he said there was no way they should have done that the way they did. They were supposed to give me enough notice. And he said that he’s there to make sure i get the help I need, and that anytime i ever needed anything moved or any help at all, to call him. It was not only his job, but he enjoyed helping. I said, “That’s so refreshing these days. I just wish people would do it because that’s who they want to be, and not becuase of some perceived reward.” (that’s one of my test questions. I always say things like that to see what someone will say, so I’ll know where they’re coming from). He said. “Jae, I do this because it makes ME feel good. So in a way, i guess it’s a little selfish. I enjoy helping people because of how it makes me feel.”

Okay, really good answer but he skirted the religion part. And I’m always afraid they’re going to start preaching to me at any moment and ask me if I’ve accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, and then it will get ugly because i have so much to say on that subject. But it didn’t matter at that point. I already liked him. I already thought about baking him some bread and giving him a fresh cup of coffee later.

The thing about me is, I can be the sweetest most generous and friendly person in the world if you treat me with respect, but the minute you mistreat me, the claws come out, and i go for the jugular. I guess I’m sort of a Domesticated Harpy.

My day improved substantially after that. We stood on the patio and had a nice chat; He reiterated to call him anytime I needed help and I told him I wished I’d known about him when I moved in. Then we talked about our experiences with Frozen Shoulder, Rotator cuff injuries, Bone Spurs, Disc issues; and then about his daughter who is also a writer, and about his son with Asberger’s Syndrome who can do all kinds of wonderful things, including write, and how we both wish some of the old fashioned things would swing back around: like doctors who tell the truth, chivalry, customer service, respect, and people being willing to help and have compassion. I’m thinking he and his family are the types I’d like to be friends with. Anyone who can take the day I was having, and change it into something so positive, well, they deserve a medal. Or fresh baked bread and coffee.

 

Knock & the Door Won’t Be Opened to You

I have a condition called Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, and that often means I wind up sleeping during the day, and being awake at night. This schedule has its negative aspects. One of them is the fact that I’m asleep while everyone else is going about their business.

Few things can awaken the irrational beast in me faster than someone knocking on my door when I’m asleep. First, it scares me, and so that’s what is known as a rude awakening. Who likes waking up scared?

Knocks on the door have always scared me, even when I’m awake. I’ve tried to figure out the psychological root of this, but all I can come up with is that it somehow represents a stranger, insisting on entering my space, without prior written consent. . .One would think I had been traumatized by answering a door and finding some guy in a hockey mask who tried to hack me in half. But nothing like that has ever happened to me. Unless I blocked it out. I guess I could have traumatic amnesia. But then, if I can’t remember it, it couldn’t have been that traumatic, I am guessing.

Anyway, for whatever reason, knocks on my door set my heart to hammering, and I always run upstairs to look out the window with a view overlooking my front porch.

I learned a long time ago that the decision to answer the door depended strongly on who it was. Since I don’t have any local friends (I didn’t say “no friends” I said “no LOCAL friends”–just in case you think I’m friendless and decide to come visit me. . .I won’t answer the door, you know. Mmm. . ..maybe that’s why I don’t have any friends. I mean, no local friends).

Anyway.

Peeking out the window is a much less extreme reaction than what I used to do. I used to run to the bedroom to get my gun and have it behind my back with the safety off when I opened the door. Now I just look out the window and usually there’s no need for the gun, because I can see it’s someone I don’t know and don’t want to open the door to, anyway.

Some time ago, it occurred to me that I am under no obligation to open the door, just because someone knocked. It’s like a Pavlovian response that stems from our need to follow some universally understood pattern: knock on door/open door. But after giving this some thought, I recognized a self-empowering truth: I don’t have to answer.

And Experience has shown that I don’t usually know who they are, anyway, and if I don’t know them, they are probably some local church-goer who wishes to save my soul from its current trajectory to an eternal fiery furnace for which there is no evidence. I used to toy with these people, by answering the door and when they asked if I went to church, or if I’d accepted Jesus as my personal savior, I offered some scandalous and disrespectful retort designed to spin them into spiritual confusion. (Something like “No, I can’t accept Jesus as my personal savior, because Satan is my deity of choice, and he doesn’t like Jesus very much.” Or I’ll go to the door with a ketchup-smeared chef’s knife in my hand and growl, “Can’t you see that I’m in the middle of an important ritual?”

I eventually lost interest in this little game, just like cats who play with a mouse until it stops moving, and then it’s no fun anymore. These preachy types were just like another mouse. Or maybe more like lemmings. Either way, they eventually just became aggravating. It wasn’t worth me getting my sleep disturbed. And often, the knock interrupted some erotic dream which I was enjoying immensely and would never be able to rejoin when I climbed back in bed.

So I was finally forced to post a sign at my door, which read,

NO SOLICITORS.
IF I don’t know you, don’t knock.
This goes for church-people too.
Knock, and the door won’t be opened to you.
A stranger is just a person I haven’t SHOT yet.

I added a little graphic of a hand holding a gun.

I haven’t heard a knock since. Although I did find a package that the UPS girl had quietly left for me yesterday.

She didn’t knock.

I might need to order some more black candles and a sacrificial dagger.

Maybe I should add an addendum that package delivery people were exempt from a bullet.

 

Door Christians

Well here’s my latest little adventure…I’m one of those people who has to have a certain amount of control over my environment to be happy. When that gets disrupted, it fucks with my Chi, as I like to say. As a songwriter, I often spend long hours working on tracking my music in my home studio. I was in the middle of recording a new song and had already started over twice, and really had it going good this time when….

…there was a knock at the door. My dog, Giz, went to barking, (‘Cause it fucks with his Chi, too) and I stood up quickly, tried to lay my guitar down, ripped the headphone plug out, tripped over the guitar cord and muttered an impressive selection of profanities. I checked through the window–some dude and a younger girl. Seemed harmless enough, but hell, the recorder was still on and I HATE being interrupted!

I opened the door and said “Yes?”

Referring to a card in his hand, he says, “Are you Jud? Jud Ba-eely?”

First of all, i am female, and i don’t know many females with the first name, “Jud.” I wanted to say, “Do i look like a Jud to you? But instead countered with: “No, Jae Baeli. (I gave emphasis on the pronunciation of my last name, Bay-lee). “Who’s asking?”

He said, “I’m blah-blah from the First Baptist Church, and–“

I could feel the steam forming in my ears. This makes me so mad. It’s like door to door spamming. I kept wishing for a delete button or a block-this-person switch, or even a trap door beneath my stoop. I said, “Do you have any idea how rude it is to just drop in on people? I’m in the middle of something and you have really fouled things up.”

He says, “I’m sorry. We were just wondering if you attend–“

I interrupted him again. “I was in a training session with my sex slave, and about to make an offering to Satan, so I don’t think we need to continue this.”

The look on his face was enough to give me some satisfaction as I closed the door in his face.

I guess this makes me sound awful, but I really hate that shit. I don’t want anyone cramming their religion down my throat. If I want to go to church, I can find it–it usually has a huge steeple on the building and lots of singing inside. I’m no pagan or anything, but it’s just such a rude thing to do, in my opinion. And knocks on my door have a way of scaring me. My heart rate climbs and my blood pressure soars. Not sure why. So as is the norm in these situations, I began to shake, and then I couldn’t continue recording because I was so shaky. I am so mad, now.

So there’s a part of my “dark side” for ya. I’m probably going to burn in hell.