Slumrat millionaire

I hit a new low this week doing nothing short of shitting the bed yesterday. 

It all started on Tuesday afternoon when I ordered a raw kale salad from a swanky health food restaurant in central london. I paid fifteen quid ($18.50) for a bowl of inedible plant which someone had apparently taken an undetectable dump on because it resulted in me being roused at 5am wednesday with a nausea so overwhelming it made me tachypneic. Moments later i was running to the bog and heaving out loads of cruciferous chunks (seemingly much more than the equivalent I'd eaten), followed by exorcist level green diarrhea, then more heaving, more diarrhea, and this continued for about four hours until my body composition emulated a cactus. Have you ever been sick like that? To the point where the thought of water makes you retch but your mouth feels like you'd spent a lifetime eating talc for breakfast?

anyway..

actually no, i'm going to rant on this topic some more. I mean, where is the reward for trying to be healthy? i am never eating that toxic green plant ever again. Why would i punish myself when I can eat pizza, burgers, and pasta and feel on top of the world? 24 hours later and I feel like i've been punched multiple times in the epigastrium. Oh and a little public service announcement: Pepto Bismol turns your poo black. I learned this the hard way thinking I had melena and was dying of internal hemorrhage, only to read the label and find out that bubble gum bismuth has this unfortunate side effect. 

I swear I live in the most expensive slum on the planet. East London is described as "edgy" which I guess is the adjective used to embody those times you walk out the door of your complex and are greeted by a large soft serving of human excrement. Two weeks ago I was chilling in my living room when a rodent suddenly appeared in the kitchen. No matter how many times I clean the dust reappears faster than it does in black rock city. The streetside intercom video doesn't work at all and the audio is intermittent which means we indiscriminately buzz anyone up who rings, notwithstanding the person who left the poo on our back doorstep. Our shower has two temperatures: scalding hot or freezing cold. But London is just so, ahhhh. We love it and love to hate it. Here is a picture of pest control making everything right in the world:

The purchase of nobility kale was a one off really. For the most part I have taken this period of quarantine to do things for myself. This includes meals as well as self care- mani pedis, and most recently waxing my own lady parts. I had had enough of the situation so bought a professional grade hot waxing kit and went berserk. Managed to remove all the hair  by myself! along with all the underlying skin to which it was once attached. 

I was a little surprised this weekend when I got an email saying that there was a package waiting for me at my office across town. I always find these scenarios when I have a delivery but didn't order anything very exciting. What could it be? Chocolates and flowers from a secret admirer? So I biked 40 minutes across town, conspiring along the way how I might possibly fit a gigantic bouquet of peonies or orchids in my bicycle basket. When I arrived, I was handed a square of plastic wrap smaller than my hand (and my hands while shaped like a man, are actually quite tiny). I opened it up. It was a roll-on of mosquito repellant. Was this some kind of sick joke? The celestial bodies above laughing at me for the trip to Thailand that got cancelled only days before the whole world shut down?

There have admittedly been some nice moments during this lockdown. I am actually a bit of an environmentalist so its pretty cool to see carbon emissions down by 60% in London and swans swimming in the same canal where I would otherwise expect floating syringes. I feel like I notice more  of these kinds of beautiful things- the smell of jasmine, the beautiful bearded and bunned man drawing a heart with red chalk on the sidewalk. These are stark comparisons to the other darker moments where I've found myself sitting alone at the river typing 'will I ever get married?' into the online magic eight ball.  The answer is always some variant of "my sources say no". The closest I've ever gotten to a 'yes' is "concentrate and ask again". In fact I just asked it again right now and it says "Very doubtful"

I guess that takes the discomfort in uncertainty out of some things. What it does not do is take the uncertainty out of whether or not I will ever dance in a sweaty, packed nightclub ever again, or if my laptop keyboard will ever revert to normal. You see, a few weeks ago I spilled a double margarita on it and probably got some flour in there too as I was making home made tortillas. The internal fan started blowing like hell and I was sure my computer was going to blow up in a spectacular show of living room fireworks. I was relieved when it persevered, only now the keys are so sticky that the computer is good only for watching The Real Housewives of New York. I am hoping if I throw some talc or olive oil in there they'll loosen up. For now I am using an external keyboard.

This has been the best, shittiest, longest, fastest year ever. I have realized that what makes me feel almost as bad as kale is taking care of myself. I am so bored with taking care of me. I would like very much instead to look after someone, or have someone look after me, but being independent brings a limited joy. Of course we can do things for ourselves, but isn't it so much nicer if someone does it for us? 

So who is volunteering to skill up and do my next bikini wax? 

Inconclusive

"The only thing that's certain is death and taxes". 

My father used to say this to me when I was a kid (clearly to blame for the origins of my insipid outlook) and this musing was the first thing I thought about last week when opening up the results of my COVID-19 antibody test:

INCONCLUSIVE.

Apparently one of the test plates showed a positive result, whereas the other came out negative. As if the uncertainty wasn't annoying enough, now my flatmate is trying to imply that my three and a half week stint of anosmia and ageusia was psychogenic. This is the same girl who randomly leaves her lipstick, hairbrush, and receipts for her lubricant and vibrator purchases in the same kitchen cabinet containing all our cereals and biscuits. But I'm the one who's nuts.

To be fair, she might be right about me having lost it. I have been having disturbing and crazy dreams lately. In the span of a week I dreamt first that I showed up at the hospital dripping with amniotic fluid and about to explode with a 40 week baked bebé. All the beds and staff were occupied dealing with COVID-19 drama, so I sat on the floor of the emergency department lobby and delivered that thing myself, cutting the cord with my fuggin teeth no less. There was of course no father in sight. Then just a couple nights ago I dreamt I was at my own wedding and very happily said "I do" to myself; once again no man in sight because apparently in the eyes of my subconscious I am a strong and independent woman capable of immaculate conception out of conventional wedlock. Bastard. 

In the meanwhile I have repeated the antibody blood test. There seems to be little else to do anyway than sit around in my joggers finger pricking myself over and over again. Having no social life and no manic family to homeschool and control means a lot of free time for thinking. In this vein it's actually been a period of intense contemplation considering as well what is important and what I want. I have gone back and forth being down on myself for being the insurgent against social first world convention- 35 and unattached, still a renter and no assets. But in a moment I am reminded that for what I lack in family happiness and stock options I gain in freedom and cock options. And everything feels ok again. Especially when Warren Buffett loses fifty bajillion dollars in the same period that I GAINED another tenner in my bank account. 

I'm about to lose my shit because last night I spilled a full margarita onto my macbook and now the keys are sticking. What do I do? As if I wasn't already deep enough down the rabbit hole of my own thoughts, now the entire top line of my keyboard Q to P is grating at my will to carry on. Gonna take a quick break.  brb.

Ok. I'm back. 

I have just returned to my computer after an hour of stress relieving activity trimming all my split ends with a nail clipper. 

Does anyone else think it's weird when someone asks you these days "what are you up to this weekend?" Like, is that some kind of sinister joke? Makes me angry and defensive like you KNOW perfectly well I'm going to be working on expanding my collection of adipocytes and repeatedly hitting refresh on my computer checking for news coverage that this is all over. What are YOU up to this weekend? 

I keep hearing these sweet little slogans that we are all in this together. We ARE all in this together, and that also means getting fatter together. It's just not fair if any of you are out there using this time to get in shape while the rest of us become more and more shapeless. Things for me are bulging in places they never have before but I'm too terrified to step on the scale to confront the damage. Not only have I been moving less but I've been pac manning my way through each day. Even my targeted instagram ads this morning was for a meal delivery company called "Fat Girl Getting Fit."

(A quick digression just to point out that this company's marketing team really needs a new manager because that plate looks fucking disgusting. Obviously you're going to lose weight if your meal consists of a pile of parsley, a lime wedge, and a sprinkle of cat testicle.) 

Other than gorging on carbs, as a mechanism of boosting dopamine I have also been shopping online. So far I have bought a salad spinner, a 50-pack of 8-hour burning tea lights, and two very tiny whisks. It was fun to open the boxes but then I realized I'm really not sure why I did all of that. 

Be careful of those coronavirus scams people. Its really upsetting that anyone could engage in profiteering in any capacity from a pandemic, whether that be charging thousands for a milliliter of convalescent COVID-19 plasma or phishing online. In general, if you get any emails that have the word "Greetings" in the subject line, you know the sender is  full of shit. Nobody says that. Also, emails that include emoticons should be deleted (and so should your boyfriend if he uses them more often than prose). 

By far the best thing that has happened to my social life in the last month was a couple weeks ago when there was an unexpected knock at my door on a weekday afternoon. I opened it up to find a very attractive police officer. It was the first person other than my flatmate and the grocer I've interacted with since the 12th of March. My first reaction was to scan my memory of every illegal thing I'd ever done. My second reaction - influenced both by how attractive he was and having just watched the first episode of "Toy Boy" on Netflix, made me believe he could have been a stripper. He showed me his badge and I nodded like "yea, you and I both know thats fake". But then he asked for Anna, my flatmate. Someone had tried to steal her moped and she'd filed a report without leaving her phone number, so they sent the sexiest cop in London to sort it out in person. I called Anna with him standing in front of me to make sure this wasn't some weird coronavirus scam:

"Wait, there's a cop at our house right now?"

"Yes."

"Is he cute?" 

"Yes he's cute." (cop blushes, breaking character)

"Give him whatever details he wants." 

"I'll give him my details too, just in case."

The investigation is still inconclusive.