How often do you floss.

Usually when you’re talking to a stranger you’re not allowed to ask them many personal questions. 

You can ask a stranger what time it is, you can ask them for directions or how soon the bus is coming. That's about it.

But everything changes when a stranger asks you a question - then you get to ask it back to them. It’s a free pass and I love it. I love when people ask how many siblings I have, because then I get to find out how many siblings they have. I love when strangers ask where I’m going, how I cut my hand, or what I’m ordering at a restaurant. The best thing a stranger can ask me is how much I pay for rent.

But the worst thing is when there’s a reason that stranger is asking you the question, so you can’t ask them back, even though you feel like you should be able to. Like when a nurse asks if the veins in my arm are close to the skin. Suddenly I want to ask her the same thing, so badly. It only seems fair. 

Or when my hairstylist asks how long it usually takes for my hair to air dry, I can feel my mouth wanting to say “What about your hair, how long does your hair take to dry?” and I have to bite my tongue to keep my mouth from asking. Biting my tongue reminds me that I never got to ask my dentist how often he flosses.

Bouncers at concerts ask my age, police officers ask where I’m headed, my credit card company asks me my salary, and none of these questions are questions I can ask back. I’ll probably never know what kind of veins my nurse has, where my pharmacist stores her medications, or if my doctor has had any unexpected weight loss recently. 

If my landlord is reading this: Ever since you asked if I own an aquarium or a keyboard I have been dying to know if you own either. And if you own a keyboard, how many keys does it have, and do you use headphones with it or not? Also, this weekend I noticed a new closet in the apartment that I have never seen before. It sounds crazy but it's probably some sort of portal or maybe the previous tenants held a seance. Did the previous tenants own an aquarium? Please respond ASAP.

While I wait I'll be watching this.

I'm partially ears

Last week I got my ears pierced - here's a picture.

One thing about having ten pounds of hair is that ear piercings for me are like stomach piercings or inside-of-the-spleen piercings for other people - they're nobody's business because no one can see them but me. 

It's hard for things to stay nobody's business when you write about them on the internet but something very important happened that I need to tell you about.

You can save $15 if you get a hoop earring instead of a little post earring.

I'm all about saving $15 and I figured I could spend a few weeks secretly looking like a gypsy and then switch it out for a post when my ear healed from having a hole punched through it. Right? 

WRONG. Putting a metal hoop in a piece of skin as fragile and rip-able as wet tissue paper is the worst idea I have ever had. The hoop earring catches on everything. It somehow gets caught on light breezes, and on music and smells. It keeps me awake at night wondering my ear's intact or if my pillow's ripped it to pieces, and when I finally fall asleep I wake up from nightmares about combing my hair.

Here is a useful chart of things I'm worried about my ear catching on.

I have more to say but my ear is making me too tired to write.

Mazel Tov, whatever that means

The thing about Hebrew is everyone says it’s so easy because it’s completely phonetic.

There aren’t weird things in Hebrew like there are in English where tough and though don't rhyme, and you can read a red book but last week you read a book about reeds. English is a mess obviously but everyone’s like, oh, Hebrew’s so easy.

So you memorize all these little geometric swooshes and the sounds they make and there aren’t too many of them and then congratulations - you’ve just turned a lot of geometric swooshes into a foreign language because you still have no idea what these sounds mean. The fact that Hebrew is phonetic makes it as easy to read as a Icelandic electrician’s manual. Sure, I can sound it out fine but this Icelandic waffle maker is still broken.

I know Icelandic pancakes are a thing but I don't know about waffles. Bubble waffles are a thing in China, have you seen them?

Anyway, if you give me enough time I can read the words הָעוֹלָם and חטיף out loud but one means snack and one means universe and I don’t know which is which. My favorite Israeli snack in the universe is Bamba and it’s also the only Israeli snack I’ve ever had.

A lot of Hebrew, besides the word Bamba and the phrase “Mazel tov” just sounds like very friendly coughing to me, and I don’t know how to say “Help I’m coughing” but if you wrote it I would be able to sound it out, because it’s phonetic, it’s so easy to sound out.

Here's this blog post Google-Translated into Hebrew, good luck.

הדבר על עברית הוא שכולם אומר שזה כל כך קל, כי זה פונטית לחלוטין.

אין דברים מוזרים בעברית כמו שיש באנגלית שבו קשה ואף מבוטאות שונים לחלוטין, ואתה יכול לקרוא ספר אדום, אבל בשבוע שעבר שאתה קורא ספר על קנים. אנגלית היא בלגן ברור אבל כולם כמו, אה, של עברית כל כך קל.

אז לך לשנן את כל הקשקושים קטנים האלה ואת הצלילים שהם עושים ושאין יותר מדי מהם ואז מזל טוב, אתה פשוט הפך הרבה קשקושים לשפה זרה, כי עדיין אין לך מושג מה הקולות האלה אומר. העובדה שעברית היא הפונטי עושה את זה כקל לקריאה כמו במדריך של חשמלאי איסלנדי.

אני יכול לקרוא את המילים x ו-X בקול רם, אבל אחד אמצעי חטיף ואחד אומר שקרבה ואני לא יודע מי הוא מי. החטיף הישראלי האהוב עליי הוא במבה וזה גם החטיף הישראלי היחיד שאי פעם היה לי.

הרבה עברית, מלבד המילה במבה ואת הביטוי "מזל טוב" פשוט נשמע כמו שיעול נחמד אליי, ואני לא יודע איך להגיד "עזרה אני משתעל" אבל אם אתה כתב את זה אני יוכל נשמע את זה, כי זה הפונטי, זה כל כך קל נשמע בחוץ.

It looks like I'm feeding bamba to giraffes but it's just a giraffe חטיף.

In your dreams, Pop Tarts

If it's true that if you can dream it you can do it than I can't do very much at all.

Last night I had your standard "Save a dozen of Brangelina's children from a haunted house" dream and suddenly all the running and saving made me starving and suddenly my fifth-grade gym teacher started tapping me on the shoulder.

"Hey. Hey." She was sort of yell whispering, and she shoved a Fred Meyer bag into my arms. I looked inside and saw it was filled with every variety of Pop Tarts.

"That is so kind of you." I told her. "But I think these have gluten, I can't eat them."

Gluten is I something in wheat, rye, and barley and even in my dreams I have Celiac Disease and can't eat it. I spend most time in REM asking strangers, friends, and celebrities about cross-contamination and reading packaging labels.

"Aren't you hungry though?" she took the bag back. She was actually whispering now.

"Don't worry about me, I actually swallowed a lot of blood earlier so my stomach's full." I told her.

As a side note this blog post covers two of the seven subjects that are too boring to talk about.

My right ear is worth two hundred dollars

I started taking an All About Judaism class and last week was on mysticism.

Usually I like the class a lot, and I take a lot of notes. But in mysticism none of the words were spellable, all I wrote down was “shebeeti” and “sheriti” and now I’m not even sure if those are two different words or two attempts at spelling the same word. The class was still useful though, because to be honest before the class I thought I wasn’t into mysticism, and after just two hours, I KNEW I wasn’t into mysticism. 

We spent the last part meditating. She explained that the most common side effect of meditation is weight gain because your bones become dense with love. Then before we had a chance to ask questions about that, she told us to close our eyes, and to imagine God’s name on our bodies. It’s not the first tattoo I’d choose, but it’s way easier to spell than shebeeti so I was game.

Sometimes, lately, to be honest, I feel bad about my body. I guess it’s just proof I’m a girl, but lately to be more positive and more masculine I’ve been trying to think of things I do like about it and the complete list includes my eyebrows, my thumbs especially my left thumb, all ten of my fingernails, a birthmark on my right arm that looks like a division symbol ÷, and my left ear. That’s plenty of skin space for a name. I closed my eyes.

“We’re writing God’s name with honey,” she announced. “It’s a pile of honey, it’s landing on your head and dripping into your scalp.”

Obviously this was horrible news.

“The honey is back behind your eyes. It’s the most gold honey in the world. Now imagine it filling your lungs. Slowly. It’s viscous, this honey. So incredibly viscous and it’s filling all of your lungs.”

The woman sitting behind me started choking.

I learned about the word viscous in seventh grade, at an after-hours science lecture. My middle school would invite scientists in various fields to come talk in the cafeteria once a month, and if you went and listened and took notes you got extra credit. I never missed one. Not because I loved science but because science is one of those subjects that can suddenly take a turn at any moment. Everything’s going fine, you’re learning about ecosystems and cells and gravity and then HEY! here are mols, velocity, centripetal force, and you’re going to need all the extra credit you can get.

For the last ten years I’ve used the word viscous to try and make myself sound smarter but I knew that now it was just going to remind me of this woman choking and the feeling of my hair being incredibly sticky.

Now the honey was moving in between the muscles in our calves. The woman behind me continued to cough up negative energy into the air, which at this point was probably thick with flies.

When our socks were completely saturated we got to open our eyes and see who was still awake, and write down anything we wanted. We didn’t get to weigh ourselves before and after to see how much love we gained but I'm sure it was substantial.

Thinking about honey isn’t really my jam. Instead I like to imagine I’m in a plane, in the window seat, and we're taking off from LAX. It’s just huge in every direction, ocean and city and mountains and sky and I imagine that whatever is stressing me out is the size of a contact lens. Or a sequin, or an earring back. That makes the bad thing seems unbelievably small, so small I can’t even see it and I get distracted and start looking for shadows of whales in the ocean.

It works great when I’m stressed about a woman chocking to death in my All About Judaism class, or when I’m stressed about how mols work, or how shy I am, or how unfortunate-looking my ankles are, but it doesn’t work as well when there's a spider in my shower or I need to pay my utility bill.

Portland General Electric doesn’t accept a human body full of honey as payment, even though by my calculations a bodyful of honey is probably worth about $105. That’s if you just replaced your blood with honey, not the rest of you. Organic honey, not raw, adult male body, before meditation. Ask in the comments if you have any more questions about how I got this number.

Here is today can also make you feel better, if it's easy to make you feel better.

I also found the word "maymonetize" in my notebook, which I think is my spelling of Maimonides.