What's in the Drawer?

When Tiffany and I moved into our first apartment together, we brought with us various hand-me-down kitchen things from our parents. A set of silverware from my dad; enough spices to fill the tiny shelf above our sink from Tiffany's mom, Patty; dish towels from my mom; and a recipe for "Nana's chop suey" from Tiffany's dad, Gary. But we bought some things ourselves, too. Like new cookie sheets, which one day while I was at work, Tiffany stored--still in their plastic wrapping--in the "drawer" underneath our oven.

One night we decided to broil some scallops for dinner (Patty's recipe: a pat of butter and parmesan cheese on each little blob--delicious). While I was busy doing something else, Tiffany put the scallops in the oven. A few minutes later, we smelled burning plastic.

"The scallops are burning!" Tiffany yelled.

I came running into the kitchen to see her open the oven door.

"Why are they in the oven?" I asked.

"What do you mean? I'm broiling them!"

"The broiler is down there!" I cried, pointing to the bottom of the oven.

"In the drawer?"

We looked at each other, grabbed our oven mitts (hand-me-down: Patty) and then dove simultaneously to the linoleum to open Tiffany's drawer. Swatting black smoke, we removed the cookie sheets, now coated in melted plastic.

After we assured ourselves that we were not in danger of burning our new apartment down, we burst out laughing. Tiffany had never seen a broiler at the bottom of an oven. I had never seen one anywhere else.

Apparently the broiler-blank runs in her family. Last night, Gary was in town on a layover. He took us out to dinner and then we brought him back to our apartment to have a piece of cream-filled cornbread with maple syrup (a recipe I took from this awesome book I just finished: "A Homemade Life" by Molly Wizenberg).

I sliced us each a piece and got down on my hands and knees to slide them into the broiler. Tiffany squatted beside me, checking my work.

"What's in the drawer?" Gary asked.

I rolled my eyes.

Tiffany, though, well... she just beamed with pride.

Parking: The Sport

In the city, parking is a contact sport.

Tiffany excels at this sport:.

"That's what bumpers are for!" she cries when parallel parking, bumping into the car in front and the car in back.

I am a mediocre parker, at best:

"It's too small!" I cry, panicking, putting the car in park, and exiting the driver's seat. "You do it!"

When Tiffany is not in the car, I do fine. What choice do I have? I once got into a spot so small, I had no idea how I would get out. I prayed to the Parking Gods that the cars behind or in front of me would be gone when I returned a few days later. They weren't.

"What *ssholes!" two women said sympathetically while I inched up and back, over and over again, until I extricated myself.

I nodded, too ashamed to admit I had parked there of my own free will.

The good thing about living in a crowded city where everything and everyone are close together is that we can walk most places we need to go. And, of course, Tiffany and I have our scooter, which we can squeeze into tricky spots for slightly longer trips. But for really long trips or trips in the rain, we like to get in our car.

The way it works in our neighborhood is there are certain streets where cars with yellow permits (like ours) can park indefinitely. Spots on these streets are Perfect Spots, no matter how far they are from our apartment. Other streets have designated street cleaning times, requiring a mid-week move at an early hour. Spots on these streets are Sucky Spots.

Confusingly, Perfect Spots can turn sucky. Once Tiffany and I parked our car in a Perfect Spot and went away for a long weekend. When we came back, our car was gone. Our Perfect Spot had been roped into a construction zone and parking there (and in the subsequent tow-away lot) ultimately cost us several hundred dollars.

Whenever we maneuver out of a Perfect Spot, I always feel a pang of regret.

"We won't get a spot this good again," I say sadly.

And when we pull back into the city from wherever we've been, my heart begins to race. Besides being a contact sport, parking is competitive.

"Come on, Parking Gods!" we chant as we make ever-widening circles around our building, racing around other cars with yellow permits and swerving to avoid pedestrians (the contact in parking should not extend to people).

Sometimes the gods love us, and sometimes they don't. But they can send mixed signals, too.

On Sunday, when she returned from class, Tiffany circled several times before inviting me to join her. We made one turn and found a Perfect Spot, right around the corner from our building.

"Yes!" we yelled, high-fiving.

Two days later, we walked by the car in the rain to find a soggy ticket underneath our wipers. The offense? Not properly turning our wheels to the curb on what must be San Francisco's puniest "hill."

*ssholes.

Pressure Cooked

I'm actually pretty good under pressure. Once Tiffany and I were towing my brother's jet ski to him, and we had a blow-out on the highway. I was driving in the fast lane and very calmly put my blinker on, slowly maneuvering our longness to the shoulder, which we rode to the next exit. (Of course, although we both know how to change a tire, neither one of us could get the lug-a-majigs off even when we took turns standing and bouncing on the tire iron. Thank god for the kindness of stranger-truck drivers.)

Under other kinds of pressure, however, I'm no good. No good at all.

The way I agonize over ordering food at a restaurant, for instance, you'd think I was never going to have another opportunity to eat.

"I'm having the grilled ham and cheese and I'm asking for it with tomato and avocado," I said, matter-of-factly, when Tiffany and I sat down across from our friends Zac and Kate for lunch the other day.

Then, just for fun, I glanced at the menu again.

"Oooh, the grilled chicken sandwich sounds good," I considered aloud.

"Do you want to split that?" Tiffany asked. "With sweet potato fries?"

"Yep," I said. "Let's do it."

But as soon as the waitress came along, I began to doubt my decision. While the waitress turned to Kate, then Zac, I turned to Tiffany.

"I don't know," I whispered.

Tiffany rolled her eyes.

"Why don't you get the ham and cheese, and I'll get the grilled chicken..." she began.

"No, that's too much food!" I said. "Can we split the ham and cheese?"

"Yes. Whatever."

The waitress turned to me, tapping her pen on her little notepad. Judging.

"We'll have the grilled chicken sandwich," I blurted.

"Are you sure?" Tiffany asked.

"Shhhh!" I hissed. "Yes, I'm sure."

I call this my dining-hall-sandwich-line-syndrome. The dining hall in my college dorm was fantastic, as far as places that serve mass quantities of food go. But I was terrified of the sandwich line. I always ordered a turkey on wheat. Every time I got in line, I told myself I'd branch out and try something different. While I pushed my tray along, I built some beauties in my brain: a wrap with hummus, roasted peppers and spinach, maybe, or a bagel with cream cheese piled high with every veggie on display. But when it came time for me to make a decision, I always lost my nerve.

The sandwich man had a lazy eye, which didn't help. I could never tell if he was addressing me or the person behind me:

"What will you have?" he'd say.

And I'd wait politely--thinking he'd accidentally skipped me--for the person behind me to answer. But then I'd see his good eye begin to glare... in my direction.

"Turkey on wheat!" I'd answer. "Please! And thank you so much!"

The Big Whopper

So, I have this friend. And shortly before the Academy Awards, this friend and her girlfriend realized they had no reason to be excited about the show because they hadn't seen any of the nominated movies (after the show, they realized they had no reason to be excited anyway because the hosting was so awful).

They decided to remedy the situation by seeing two of the movies. On the same day. At the same theater. With one movie ticket each.

The girls told their friend, who said he's an expert in such things.

"Couples are more recognizable," he said. "Split up. Throw on a hat or a scarf. Buy something at the concession stand between movies, and you're golden. No one buys something at the concession stand if they've already seen a movie."

These girls never break the rules, though, so they were very nervous. On their walk to the theater, they rehearsed their plan.

"Okay, when the first movie is done, you walk out and go buy something at the concession stand and then go straight to the next theater," the girlfriend said. "I'll go to the bathroom and then meet you there."

"Or I'll go to the bathroom and change and you hit the concession stand," the girl I know said. "But how will we know where the next theater is?"

"Oh," the girlfriend considered. "Okay, when we first get in, we'll wander around for a while like we're looking for our first theater, but really we'll be looking for our second."

"Good idea," my friend agreed.

The first movie they saw was "The Fighter." As the credits began to roll, the girlfriend pushed the girl I know out of her seat.

"Go, go," she whispered. "We need to be with the crowd."

"Good idea!" my friend whispered back.

But then they jumbled their plans.

"Which one of us is going to the bathroom?" my friend whispered, smiling at a theater worker with a broom and dustpan.

"Don't make eye contact with anyone!" the girlfriend hissed.

By now they were both in a tizzy. They started to go different directions, collided and ultimately stumbled--together--into a bathroom where the girlfriend added a layer in one stall and the girl I know took a layer off in another.

"This is suspicious," my friend said. "I don't think a person would naturally be wearing a t-shirt. It's kind of cold."

She put her layer back on.

Then the girls stood in the concession stand line--together. And that's when my friend noticed it. A gigantic surveillance camera.

She gasped.

Her girlfriend looked at her, looked where she was looking and saw what she saw. Panicked, she asked for Whoppers when anybody could tell just by looking at them that they were Junior Mint girls.

"Junior Mints," my friend shouted. "She meant Junior Mints!"

The boy behind the counter gave my friend a look.

By the time they sat down in their seats for the second movie--"The King's Speech"--they were sweating. And early. For several agonizing minutes, they waited for security to come escort them out of the building or worse.

But security never came. Still, the thought that security would come was enough to ruin the whole experience. My friend had a guilt headache and felt like a film glutton.

Or so I'm told.

Shower Curtain Fail

How many shower liners does it take to wrap around a claw foot bathtub?

That may sound like a simple question. But now account for these irritating idiosyncrasies: the shower stem is connected to the wall with a metal rod, preventing a single curtain from covering the front of the tub; the near-side of the oval bar on which to hang the liners is connected to the ceiling with two metal rods, meaning a single curtain, if extended beyond those rods, cannot be pulled open past them; and there must be a way to allow air from the window to flow out the bathroom door after showering to prevent our walls from sprouting mold.

Tiffany and I are spring cleaning. Or, to put it more accurately, we are company-cleaning. We have friends coming into town and so we are re-assessing things, like, our shower curtains, which in six months of use have become quite disgusting. I'll never understand how my mom kept her shower curtains mildew and soap-scum free. She swears it's a simple cleaning spray, but I do not believe her. It's magic, I tell you.

The way Tiffany and I initially solved the problem when we moved in--at our building manager's insistence--was to have three plastic liners for full coverage and draft capabilities. The problem? Three is actually too much curtain, and the slightest draft from even a crack in the door makes showering in our tub a bit like wrapping your body in heavy duty saran wrap.

While Tiffany was in class yesterday, I bought a new clean liner and, when she got home, we tore down two of the old ones.

"Tell me again what you're seeing," I said. I am spatially-challenged and cannot visualize things easily.

"One here, one here, this pulls back, in and out through here, voila!" Tiffany said.

Tiffany visualizes things easily.

I saw no such "voila," but I took her word. We both climbed onto the edge of the tub with our bare feet to hook the new liner onto its hooks. We (Tiffany) had decided on two liners, stretched to their maximum length beyond the metal rods, with not quite full coverage behind the shower head or at the back of the tub.

Tiffany got inside the tub and peered out at me through the plastic.

"Do you see any potential problems?" she asked.

I pointed to the holes.

"Well, only one way to find out," she said.

And then she showered.

Indeed, the real problems were only apparent post-shower, when, still inside, Tiffany tried to reach her towel. It was inaccessible beyond the immovable liner. Then she tried to get out. A little bit tricky, given same immovable liner. Especially given that the lip of the tub comes up past our knees and the hole between the two liners opens right up to our wall-mounted cabinet. Tiffany had to duck out underneath the liner, incurring that same saran-wrap feeling.

And so, we are re-re-assessing. We are considering a third liner, cut into custom-sized pieces to fill the gaps and to allow the near-side liner full movement between the metal rods.

How many liners in all? Two and one half, I'd say. But the better question might be, how many lesbians does it take to figure that out?

Walk This Way

It's good to look out for the people you love.

Tiffany and I do this all the time. When we're walking on the streets around our apartment, we'll call out the obstructions in our path mid-conversation:

"So, you'll never guess what happened to me... POOP!"

or:

"That's hysterical, how did you... CONDOM!"

I'm sure we sound like we have Tourette's, but sounding like we have Tourette's is better than stepping in the offending matter. Most of the poop on the streets around us is human, sadly, and the condoms tend to be used (Yay! Safe sex! But still disgusting.).

If it's too late to call out a warning, sometimes Tiffany will just push me. Once she re-aligned my spine with such a push to prevent me from stepping in a pile of vomit.

When we walk or run on Ocean Beach, we're on guard for jelly fish. The last time my mom came to visit, we took her there. Sadly, she did not respond to our verbal cues:

"Sweetie, I was thinking I'll cook chicken fried steak for..." my mom started.

"JELLY!" I interjected.

My mom continued her stride.

Squish.

She screamed and then I screamed and then Tiffany screamed.

But it turned out we were all okay. So we started to laugh and kept walking.

Hello, Neighbor

"I don't want to freak you out," Tiffany said one evening recently. "But in one of the apartments across from us, whoever's inside is always looking out toward our place and painting."

"What?" I cried. "That freaks me out!"

The back of our apartment building looks out onto the back of four other apartment buildings. From our kitchen and living room windows, we can see into 26 other people's kitchen, living room and bedroom windows, if their shades aren't drawn. And, if our shades aren't drawn, they can see into ours.

Then I thought about what she said.

"Painting?"

"Yes," she said. "There's an easel."

"Oh, well, I don't think we sit still long enough for anyone to paint us," I said. "If he has binoculars or a camera I might be worried. Is it a he?"

"I can't tell," she said.

"Maybe we should get our binoculars out and stare across at him or her so he or she knows that we know he or she is looking at us," I considered.

But we decided the person was most likely doing a still life of the back of our building, however unlikely it seemed. Anyway, what could we do? There were people behind us, and, unless we wanted to live in the dark, they could see into our apartment and we could see into theirs. Sometimes when we're eating breakfast, the boy in the apartment diagonal from ours is strumming his guitar in his boxers on his futon. The woman in the apartment way way across the four backyards--none of which we have access to--has laundry hanging up to dry in her place all the time. Like every day. She makes me feel like we are very dirty. Or else she has 16 people living with her, which would not be unusual for the neighborhood.

The man who freaks me out the most is obsessed with rain. He has long scraggly brown hair and a shaggy brown beard and, every time it rains, he sticks his entire upper half out his window and smiles, turning his palms up to feel the drops. Then, he eases his body back into his apartment and cranks his window shut. Twenty minutes later, he's at it again. I actually start to get mad at him until I realize that every time I see him looking at the rain, I'm also looking at the rain, so perhaps he thinks I'm the freaky looking blond girl who stares at the rain.

(Yes, it's been raining a lot here.)

Both my mom and Tiffany's mom love our windows to the world, however weird our world might be. We normally pull the shades shut at dusk, otherwise we feel like fish in a bowl, but when either one of our moms visit, they beg us to leave them up, just a few minutes longer.

"You know, we have a movie to watch," we say.

"Shhh," they say, "I'm watching someone pick out a book from a shelf in his tighty-whiteys."

The Green Mashed Monster

So it turns out green potatoes are toxic. Which is really too bad because on Tuesday night, hungry for some buttery mashed starch, I took two exceptionally green apples of the earth from the bowl on our counter, boiled them up, smushed them up and ate them. I also fed them to Tiffany.

Here's how it came to pass that I inadvertently poisoned us.

We had to make dinner. The choices were reheating some of our leftover homemade pizza and making a salad or reheating some of our leftover homemade chili and making a salad. But sometimes eating pizza on a Monday-through-Thursday night makes me depressed because we normally eat our pizza on Friday night as a celebration for having survived another work week. And Tiffany had had a big salad for lunch. So we decided on the chili, and I decided on the potatoes because mashed potatoes are one of my favorite foods.

"These potatoes are kind of green," I called out to Tiffany.

She came into the kitchen to examine them.

"Wow," she said. "They are actually green, not kind of green. Do you think we should eat them?"

"Yes!" I cried. "It's probably just new growth. Green is good."

I thought the green would diminish after the boiling and mashing. It didn't. Not even moderate-to-Southern-style quantities of butter and milk helped.

"Rebecca, those are still really green," Tiffany said, peering into the pot.

"Mmmm," I said, taking a big bite. "I don't care. I'm eating them anyway."

Well, of course Tiffany ate them too. And then after we had eaten half the bowl we'd served ourselves, we pondered what the color might mean. So Tiffany googled it.

"Most folks know not to eat potatoes that have turned green," Tiffany read.

Whoops.

Blah, blah, blah, some toxin called solanine...

"Consuming a large quantity of solanine can cause illness OR EVEN DEATH IN EXTREME CASES," Tiffany shouted.

I looked up from the TV, and considered what might constitute a large quantity.

"You poisoned us!" she yelled.

"I love you," I said.

But apparently we didn't eat enough of the potatoes to hurt ourselves. Still, we scraped the rest of the batch into the compost bin (this kind of green is good).

"You know what kills toxins," I said solemnly, reaching into the freezer. I held up the emergency Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies I'd bought the week before.

Tiffany took one. I took four. Better safe than sorry.

Thin Mints come in a green box. And that kind of green, my friends, is delicious.*

*Since this is basically a public service announcement , please forward to anyone you think might be susceptible to green potatoes. Especially if you think they might be able to offer me a book deal.