Vehicular Safety: We Fucking Love It!

Chapter 1: My Exploded Elbow

Waited for her chance.

 Somewhere in my Wonder Woman moving adventures I must have bashed my elbow. In fact, I've been a complete klutz lately, and am fairly well-covered with bruises, mainly, I believe, from bumping into furniture that's in unfamiliar places. I've managed to fall and land hard on the same knee no less than threee times in the last month: one running-for-a-bus-incident, one free-tequila-shots incident, and again last week when Spider got her revenge for the washing machine thing by dropping a greasy roasted chicken carcass on the tile floor and I slipped on the grease.

 The knee has turned colors I didn't even know I had, and there's an unfamiliar bump on there. The last time I fell on it, I almost cried and I almost puked it hurt so much.

Anyway.

Fuck yeah! Who needs goddamned medical care?

The elbow, which I don't remember bashing, just hurt for awhile but then it started to swell and it got all red and hot. The doctor at the school clinic got mad at me for not coming in sooner, just like he did when I'd had diarrhea for two weeks. Both times I was like, "Dude, I'm American and I'm used to not having health insurance. We don't mess with doctors for ridiculous hypochondriac issues like the shits and swollen, burning elbows."

So the elbow got a little bit better, but clearly there is something exploded and squishy in there. It's annoying the hell out of me because that's the elbow I lean on. So I checked with Doctor Google and decided I should go see a real doctor.

Look, I'm calling it my exploded elbow to make it sound cool. The fact is, it's bursitis, which sounds to me like something only old people should have and I'm not dealing well with having it.

Fuck.

My elbow is way less hairy, really.

Anyway, the doctor gave me a super-cool bandage and an explanation that bursitis is because of an inflamed bursa. Which helps a little bit, thinking of an inflamed Bursa in my elbow, even though I'm pretty sure that shit is exploded. Or maybe I just really, really want to believe that, because bursitis sounds, well, fucking lame.

Chapter 2: Vehicular Safety

LE and I took the minibus home from the hospital. There weren't any seats and even though he still has a hard time standing up and remembering to hold on to something on the minibus, his two months of perpetual growth-spurts have made him tall enough no one gives us a seat anymore unless he actually falls down. Occasionally a kind stranger offers him a lap, and he's gotten where he's cool with accpeting that.

Just trust this guy with your life every day, okay?

In cars, I'm pretty fanatic about attempting to encourage some sort of vehicular safety. I'm American. I can't help it. If there's no booster for him, he at least has to wear a lapbelt. If the seatbelts are cut off or otherwise not funtioning, like in taxis or his dad's new car, he at least has to be reminded a million times to sit back on the seat and not climb around or stand in the middle hanging between the two front seats.

The minibus, well, it's a fucking joke and it occurred to me today how little I care. In summer, the best seat is in the front passenger seat next to the driver with the window open. Ample room for our stuff, and a clear path to the windshield.

But today, clearly the best place was on the cushion on the floor in front of the money box. I'm surprised no one else had snagged it.

It was super-safe because the cushion wasn't secured to anything, which meant I could move it closer to the bar so LE could hold on and not get thrown on fast turns, or end up under the driver's gear-shifting arm as we barreled downhill.

Whatever. It's all relative, even safety.

Truth be told, I've always thought safety is fucking boring anyway.

A Sophomoric Snicker

I can't believe I've been walking by this place for over a year and just noticed it the other day.

According to Seslisözlük, Şit (Seth) may have taken second place over Peker in the Worst Ever Turkish Names in English Contest.

Kunt still wins, though.

Spectacularly Bad Mom, Of Sorts

I don't care for it when people refer to themselves as their pets' parents. And let it be known that before this Incident I'd already started making moves to find a home for Havuç and Spider. They're lovely but I can't deal with them anymore.

Yesterday, having done my job acceptably well and visited the school where I'm suddenly supposed to register LE under this fucked up new law and talked about everything with the vice principal and gotten us home early and done the shopping and given the kid a Popsicle and done a load of laundry and ordered the heavy things from Sarıyer Market and bathed the kid, I was feeling pretty fucking good about everything when I started a second load of laundry and was ready to tackle dinner.

I'd promised the boy sucuk for dinner, which is easy to cook even though our gas isn't hooked up yet but the electric burner is working fine. So we had some time to hang out and watch crap on YouTube.

Havuç was meowing a lot in the bathroom but he's very meow-y so I don't care, usually.

So I went back there to change my clothes and there was an unpleasant rowling sound coming from the washer, with Havuç sitting there looking upset.

PleaseletherbebehindthemachinePleaseletherbebehindthemachinePleaseletherbebehindthemachine...

Nope. I shut the machine off and waited for the magnetic latch to click back open.

It was around then I completely lost it. The cat looked all twisted up and without even touching her I sprang to action, certain some neural column was broken and this was the Worst Thing Ever.

I said a lot of bad words.

I tried to figure out how to deal with this.

I called the vet, who luckily was still open.

Then I dumped the kid at our lovely neighbor's, gave her some money for the grocery delivery that was on its way, left a note on our door for the delivery guys, wrapped the wet cat in a towel and bustled down to the vet. On the way, I saw the delivery guys in their truck and tried to wave them down to tell them which apartment to go to, but obviously I looked insane and they snootily waved me off and drove on.

The cat was fine. In shock, but fine. A swelling in her tail that has since passed and the blood must have come from her nose or mouth because she'd gone through 1 or 2 rather powerful spin cycles. The vet shot her up with something for the shock and again, I was wishing he'd give me some too. He gave her an anti-inflammatory for the tail, too.

It's okay if you think it's a little bit funny. I would too if it hadn't been my fault.

Spider is fine. She took a dump on the kitchen floor so she and Havuç spent the rest of the night in the bathroom. I'm sure Havuç was cool with that because he's been falling in love with Spider a little bit. Snippy snippy time.

Clearly I have no business owning cats.

Grafitti

The best thing about this little bit of graffiti is that Erdoğan's upper lip kind of looks like balls.

Between suddenly wanting to ban abortion and his stupid ideas about education, I despise him a little more than usual.

Thank you, random bar wall artist, for making my day.

I Am Fucking Wonderwoman

The move to the flat downstairs has been impending for several weeks now. First there was this and that and the other thing and I'd planned to move gradually over the course of the last month but that didn't happen. As soon as I saw things weren't happening, I was all like, "Fuck it" and decided to approach the move not with my usual American way of careful planning, but instead with the Turkish way of "Whatever. It'll get done when it gets done and it's gonna suck no matter which way I do it." Which was cool because there was definitely no plan from anyone else involved in the move, either.

Remember last month when I organized all those toys? Well, that has been undone like twice over since then, mostly when LE had his BFF over for a visit and they dragged out every single goddamned toy in the house and threw them everywhere and lined up some of them up across every doorway and down the hall in what they claimed was some sort of cat trap. The cat trap didn't work at all, but it was a good idea in theory.

The cat trap contains only scary toys, like weapons and dogs and dinosaurs.

Then I bribed them with a tiny piece of chocolate apiece to clean the shit up and they totally did it. Hence the toys were cast back into chaos. Anyway.

I'm totally fucking Wonderwoman. Or just wishing maybe.

The move finally came down to this weekend, when I'd done nothing ahead of time except worry a bit and organize the toys. Means I had to pack up the entire house and haul it downstairs inside of three days. And put everything down there in such a way that the movers won't have to kick it all too much out of their way when they're hauling the furniture.

I might be fucking Wonderwoman but I'll be damned if I'm gonna strap the fridge to my back and haul it downstairs.

So yesterday, I tried to get as much stuff into the new house as I could before it got dark. We'll have no electricity, water, gas, or Internet in the new house just yet.

Some heavy stuff.

In case you're wondering why I'm fucking Wonderwoman, it's not just because she's hot. It's because I carried all this shit downstairs yesterday.

Some fucking stuff.

Some stuff in the new bathroom.

The kitchen is done, plus some more fucking stuff.

Ok, the cleaner carried some dishes down. But then she wanted to go home and I didn't blame her. Somewhere in the middle of hauling shit I got really glad I wasn't moving upstairs. Or somewhere far, like across the street.

The kitchen is finished and the cupboards are neatly filled.

At some point, moving takes over your entire brain. All your crap just becomes shit you have to move, and you're thinking about how and when the moving of that particular useless piece of crap is going to take place. You look your stuff and wonder where it came from and why you have it, and maybe could it just go to the curb? A friend of mine is moving now too, which not only means we can't help each other move, it also means we can discuss at length our moving-related woes. His problem was eggs. I realized eggs are one of my problems too. Why the fuck did we buy eggs when we have to move? I decided to have eggs for lunch because who the fuck wants to screw around with moving eggs?

Fortunately, even an unplanned move makes it so there are essential things left in my house. In my case, it was a dishwasher full of dirty dishes that allowed me to cook and eat eggs with utensils and a pan. And salt. Salt is something you should always move last. Also toilet paper.

I'd got partway through cooking eggs when I realized there was no spatula. I started digging around the kitchen looking for a viable alternative, like two forks. Lucky for me, there was a spatula in the dishwasher and I was pretty sure the moving gods were smiling on me.

Spatula is the arm of the gods!

At some point yesterday, a fucking cat (I suspect Havuç) dragged one of my favorite wool sweaters out of the closet and chewed a hole in the arm. Fucking cats. That's the third sweater they've killed. I still kind of hate them a little bit. Why the wool sweaters, cats, why?

But then I realized I didn't have to  move the sweater so I forgot about it pretty fast.

Cats are no help with moving.

Get a job, fucking cat!

The cats have been a constant source of despair and angst lately. I'm wondering what the hell I'm going to do with them when I go out of town for a month, plus they're fuckers who chew things up and get into everything and destroy things wantonly and without purpose. They're crawling on me constantly, or trying to. But then Spider does something cute like standing up to be pet and I realized I could cover the chairs they've murdered with pillowcases and I feel like I might be able to keep them a little while longer.

Get out of my face, cat!

The cats are causing me to question some larger commitment issues I've been thinking about lately. Like maybe one reason my marriage failed was because I was thinking all along I could dump it off at this cat farm in Zekeriyaköy I've heard of.

I'm fucking tired from being Wonderwoman, all right? So it's totally okay if I mix metaphors.

And just for that I'm going to leave out a whole bunch of other juicy shit I've been thinking about and doing lately, so hah! Aside my from the move, my life has been extremely fucking cool. You can't even imagine. So there.

After the spatula incident, it became clear the gods of moving were smiling on me. It was like "Ask and you shall receive" all day today. For example, I found a cupboard full of small fragile things and I was all, "Jeez, I wish I had a small box to put all these things into," and then I reached into the next cupboard and found an empty shoebox with an even smaller empty shoebox inside of it and was like, "Fuck yeah!" It was like I had reached moving Nirvana.

And you were wondering why I have so much stuff. It's because I've saved some stuff from past moves that might come in handy for future moves. I've also saved a bunch of other crap in case I might need it someday. Thanks, Past Tense Stranger!

I also have all this Atatürk stuff. I've made a pile of my ex's stuff on the living room floor, which I plan to tell him to take tomorrow or I'll leave it out for the gypsies. I couldn't bring myself to put all the Atatürk stuff in with his crap. Not just because he'd get all insulted or something. Also because I feel like if I have Atatürk stuff around the house, people might think we're normal, LE and I. It's a clever ruse. And secretly, our Atatürk kitsch has camp value for me. Heh.

We still need this one.

Anyway, today I counted my trips down and up the stairs. 55. That's right. 55. Granted a lot of it was light stuff like lamps and plants, but still. 55. Calves are a bit sore, but my ass feels like you could bounce a penny off it.

The heavy shit, plus a whole bunch of other shit.

Added to this pile of shit, too.

Last year, when I was first thinking of getting divorced for real, I went to my co-worker who had just finished an ugly divorce and who had kids not much older than LE. I'd meant to ask her about stuff I should be looking for that would tell me my kid might not be handling it. Instead, she became a fireball of support that I could do this thing and we ended up talking about what shits our husbands had been. Another friend hooked me up with my lawyer and if it weren't for certain people like these friends, I never would have been able to even envision getting divorced. They'll never know exactly the extent of my gratitude.

On Facebook the other night, I mentioned enjoying the smell of my armpits after moving by myself all day, and the divorced co-worker reminded me how many more times I would be saying "by myself" and how it would keep feeling cooler and I'll be damned if she wasn't totally right.

Bathroom full of more shit I moved by myself.

More shit in the kitchen I moved by myself today.

A million wall hangings I moved by myself.

Plants too.

And a lamp.

So probably after I finish writing this post it's gonna take me like 10 minutes to drag my sorry stiff ass out of this chair and into the kitchen for a muscle relaxant and then into the bed for another big day. Brown burly fellows are going to haul the furniture for me to the new flat, and put it in its place.

Somewhere in all of this I need a plumber and an electrician. Plus LE has to get registered for school, a whole 'nother can of worms.

And because I didn't organize any of my stuff-- I even took some full trash cans down there, thinking of my aunt and her military moving stories-- unpacking it all will take like a year or so.

Because I'm doing it all by myself.

Fucking Wonderwoman. Thank you very much.