Heather Toshiko

You know how sometimes karma makes you it’s bitch? Well, all my shit talking and general disdain finally paid off in some small amount today.

So, I’m supposed to meet with my co-manager (think Jim Halpert and Michael Scott) and our boss today at noon for lunch. We decide that I will pick them up in front of the office since I had a morning doctor’s appointment and would be arriving around lunchtime. First, traffic was a nightmare. I mean every assclown, Asian and senior citizen was on the road driving like old people shit. I’m relegated to texting my boss that I’m running late while dodging a maze of inept drivers.

When I finally arrive at the office, flustered and late, I speed past the crosswalk in order to flip a u-turn a pull up curbside. As I’m going through said crosswalk, I see an older middle-eastern man running towards my car. As I pass, he slams his hand on top of my trunk and yells something at me. Whatever. Douchetard.

I flip my bitch and pull up curbside and look to my right in time to see my boss and colleague walking down the stars toward my car. Cool. Perfect timing. Then, I looked left.

RUNNING toward my car is the irate middle-eastern male. Great. Just what I need. He starts pounding on my window and screaming at me. I (foolishly) roll down the window and he says “that’s a crosswalk” to which I responded, “no shit.” He continues with “you have to stop for a crosswalk, blah blah osamaosamaosamaosama.” He’s clearly irate and a little nutty. Meanwhile, my boss is getting closer but still hasn’t noticed the commotion.

At this point, I make the decision to just end this quickly. I point at him and say “get the fuck away from my car you psycho.” Oddly, this does not pacify him, and he looks me directly in the eyes and says, “you’re a fat, stupid bitch.” I reply “Ok. Now go away.” He is not satisfied with my response so he repeats it again. At this point, my boss and colleague are at the car. My colleague slides into the backseat without missing a beat and says, “Welcome home, what’s going on?” Umm, there’s a crazy man screaming at me, have you noticed? My boss turns to a bystander and asks what’s going on. The bystander tells him that the guy is crazy and I was nowhere near hitting him in the crosswalk. That’s when I started silently praying that my boss would just get in the car so we could GO. Oh no. Saddam has to started screaming at me and calling me names AGAIN at which point my boss says “Hey!” and starts to walk around the car. Of course that’s when Uday ran off because he was afraid of getting his ass kicked. PUSSY!

So, that was my humiliating afternoon. There’s nothing like having your boss hear someone call you a fat, stupid bitch. Here’s the thing, call me fat, call me a bitch, but DON’T call me stupid. I mean really, I’m not the one screaming and pounding on the car in the middle of a busy parking lot.

Good one, karma.

Tonight, after picking up my floor length, halter-top, ruby red bridesmaids dress, my co-bridesmaid and I had dinner at Claim Jumper in Brea. We were quickly joined by her mother, her 9 year-old daughter, and her brother. Family dinner.

Our server looked like Oliver Platt. Same hair, same frump, same shitty personality. Ollie came to our table for the initial meet and greet and struck up a conversation with Macie, the 9 year-old. Here’s the thing, if you’re a grown man, the maximum acceptable amount of time that you can converse with a little girl that is not your daughter is about 10-20 seconds. Long enough to say hello and would you like a children’s menu. Any in depth conversation, teasing or playful harassment is just weird and frankly makes me uncomfortable. Ollie-the-Pedophile did not get this memo. He stood and chatted and teased Macie for a few minutes before I got out my cell phone to call 9-1-1. Stranger-Danger Platt finally took the hint and left the table to go dip his dick in our iced teas.

When Ollie returned, he decided to try his hand at sarcasm. This is not wise when I am at the table. I consider sarcasm to be my wheelhouse, and I’m not at all pleased when a plebe crosses the threshold without knocking. Enter at your own risk, Flatliners. So there he is, giving Macie’s Grandmother a hard time, and being almost rude to her. Oh, and he was one of those fucking servers that doesn’t write anything down. Dude, this does not impress us as patrons, it makes us worry that you will fuck up our order and then make us feel awkward when we have to ask you to fix it. WRITE MY FUCKING ORDER DOWN! I do not order the number two, or the Moons Over My Hammy. I order things like no mayo, fries extra crispy, dressing on the side and ranch instead of bleu cheese. If you fuck up any of the above, I will send it back, ESPECIALLY if you didn’t write it down. I digress.

So Platt decides that he’s gonna be rude to Grandma, and gets huffy when she lists a very long and specific order. He tried to make HER feel awkward, which was about the time I asked him if he needed us to get out the sock puppets to review the order again. He was not pleased. It was at that point that he started ignoring me completely. It was also at that point that I decided that I needed a million little things from the kitchen, and more iced tea.

In the end, I’m sure Oliver Platt won the battle, because even though I made him scurry for a bunch of crap, I’m certain he shot his load into at least one of my ranch dressings. I did manage to get his name though, and I will be posting it on the local Pedo-Watch website. I will also be posting the iphone photo I took of him around local schools with the message “Free Tutoring for Girls 12 and Under” with the Claim Jumper phone number. Suck it Ollie, you’re 40 and hocking mozzarella sticks. Get a real job.

Well, it’s taken me 10 years to write this, but I’m fairly certain that I’m finally emotionally stable enough to share the story of a night I will never forget.

When I was 25, I was still fairly oblivious to the warning signs that my body sent me when I was sick. I attributed most discomfort to allergies and never really bothered to consider that sometimes I might be ill.

For some reason, I always got the flu during Christmas or New Years. Before I started getting the vaccine religiously, one or the other of the two holidays was spent in bed feeling like ass. In 1999 however, it hit me around Easter. I remember sitting on the couch in my parent’s living room, and feeling cold. I had been sniffling for a few days, but I assumed that my springtime allergies were kicking in. I decided to take a shower, so I left the warm blanket I was wrapped in, and headed down the hall.

When I got in the shower, I still felt cold and the hot water felt wonderful. It felt so good in fact, that I kept pumping the heat higher and higher until the room was quite steamy. Halfway through the shower, I tilted my head back and closed my eyes to rinse the conditioner out of my hair. That’s when my ears started ringing and I lost my vision for a second. I stood up, and felt fine, so again, I tipped my head back and tried to rinse my hair. Again, I started to pass out. Not good.

I turned off the water, hair dripping conditioner, legs half shaved, and sat on the edge of the tub. My stomach started to feel sick, but I really wanted to finish my shower, so I stood up, bent down to turn the water back on, and started to black out as liquid shit shot out of my ass and into the tub. Awesome. That’s when I realized that something was really, really wrong.

Barely conscious, I heaved myself onto the edge of the tub, feet on the ground, head on my knees. That’s when I lost it. Completely. What I can recall is waking to hear my little brother knocking on the door asking if I was ok. I mumbled that I was, then realized that I was lying naked, half in the tub, legs hanging over the edge, hair resting in a puddle of shit water. I had fainted and fallen backwards into the tub and landed in my own crap.

My brother, sensing that something wasn’t right, called my Mother who came in to find me naked in a room that reeked of poop and humiliation and struggling to get out of the bathtub. To her credit, she didn’t laugh until much later.

After helping me out of the tub and wrapping me and my hair in towels, she got me across the hall and onto a bigger towel on my bed. I wasn’t taking any chances getting skid marks on the sheets. Then, she took my temperature. 104 degrees. Oops.

By that time, Dad was involved, and after he checked on me, he went across to the bathroom where I heard him exclaim “Oh, Heather,” followed by laughter. To his credit, he got paper towels and Lysol and cleaned out the tub for me.

After resting, my Mother still had to help me shower and wash the excrement off of my arms and out of my hair. I was still too unsteady on my feet and very weak.

Turns out I had the worst case of the flu I’d ever experienced. I was cold before my shower because I had a high fever that caused the chills. By taking a scalding hot shower, which felt good to my chilled body, I had sent my temperature soaring thus causing me to pass out. Dumping a liquid grumpy on the shower floor was just a bonus.

To this day, when I get particularly mouthy, my family is kind enough to remind me of the time my ass vomited in the shower and I passed out naked in the puddle.

I hate people.  Well, maybe that’s a little strong.  No, nevermind, I hate people. 

See, about twice a year, I go to Costco and stock up.  I try to avoid weekends and Costcos in cities with high illegal immigrant populations, but I was in need of some essentials today so we went to the one on Sepulveda in The Valley.

For starters, it probably didn’t help my mood that it was 92 degrees outside.  I’m not a fan of the heat, so I was already feeling pissy when we entered the store.  That’s when the stench of a thousand sweaty bargain hunters from countries spanning the globe hit me.  It seems they were all embroiled in a vicious battle for cart spaces closest to the free sample tables, and failing to wrangle their tards.  In a word: hell.

Within minutes we were stuck in a 5-cart pileup near a sausage sample table in the deli section.  Some stay-puft marshmallow minority was blocking an entire aisle while greedily shoving mini-dicks in her mouth.  Really?  The joke writes itself.  I had to clap my hands and loudly say  “Traffic jam, c’mon people move it along.  You’re blocking the aisle.”  Stay-Puft looked up in a grease addled daze and then lumbered out of everyone’s way.  Fatass.

After fighting through the rest of the aisles and getting reprimanded by Chris every time I wanted to buy something that tastes good, we headed to the front of the store.  There, we stopped briefly to look at socks.  Seriously, why do men think it’s ok to wear socks riddled with holes?  I mean, it’s like $5 for 50 pairs at Costco so you really don’t need to wear socks that are grayish in color, threadbare and crunchy.  I digress. 

So, we park the cart in a respectable slot on the side of the aisle so as not to block traffic.  Also, there were a ton of illegals as I mentioned before, and you just know their carts weren’t insured.  Anyway, we’re looking for sox in size ginormous and this little Armenian woman asks us to move our cart so she can get by, rather than burning 5 extra calories and going around it.  Chris, nice guy that he is, happily obliged.  I fought to silence my inner demons, but I did not win.  I politely suggested she just go the fuck around and stop being lazy.  I’m pretty sure she didn’t understand a damn word I said.  Fatass.

We finally managed to get to the checkout without further altercation, and after spending $300, I nestled into the herd headed for the door.  There, some minimum wage monkey barely glanced at my receipt then marked it with her highliter-of-self-esteem.  Seriously, does this really help prevent theft?  Unless they’re checking every item against the receipt, which there is no time to do, it’s a pointless exercise.  All it does is cause a huge clusterfuck at the door.  Arrrgh!

By the time we were in the lot, I was sweaty, agro and looking for a fight.  I’m still not sure how we made it out of the lot.

I hate Costco.

I’m pretty sure that I don’t really like change. Sure, there’s good change, like when you lose 20 pounds, or when you buy a nicer car, but generally, I’m not a fan.

For most of my life, I’ve lived in a home with several people. Growing up, it was my parents and my brother. When I moved out, I lived with my friend Jackie and our roommate Cindy. From there, I moved to a house with my brother and his best friend. When his best friend got engaged, my brother and I got our own place. Only in the last year and a half have I lived alone in a place that has been solely mine. I have to tell you, I kind of like it. At first, I was uneasy about the idea. I liked living in a place full of noise and laughter. I thrive on chaos. Now, I love coming home to a house that is just how I left it. I love my freedom and my sovereignty.

In exactly two weeks, the short-lived era of my residential freedom will come to an end. My guest room will no longer be the dumping ground for my forgotten clothing, old shoes, boxes of detritus and general crap. On April 30, it will become the domain of my beloved boyfriend and his computers, cameras, printers, books and nerd supplies. My guest room will become his office. In other words, change.

My boyfriend, Chris, is a great guy and one whom I still can’t believe I managed to snare. He’s my first and only “nice guy,” and I have to say that I’m pretty hooked on the breed. He’s making a huge sacrifice by moving to Orange County from his digs in Studio City, but for some reason, he seems to think I’m worth it. Sucker! I’m thrilled to have him here, and seeing him daily instead of weekly will be awesome. I just feel like there’s this looming cloud of change coming and I’m not sure what to do to prepare myself.

The change seems to already be happening in increments. Suddenly, there are healthy snacks in the fridge, surely not mine, and I’m sleeping on the wrong side of the bed because of Chris’ shoulder injury. My beautiful 42” plasma will be coming off of the living room wall and move to it’s new home in the master bedroom. Why? Chris has a big mama jama entertainment megaplex that will be taking up residence in the living room. My tv wasn’t good enough. Sigh. Then there’s the car situation. My garage is full of crap, so only one car fits inside. Will my 2004 Infiniti get to continue living there? Nope. Chris’ new BMW 5 series is moving in and kicking my Infiniti to the curb, literally.

I suppose these are truly first-world problems, and I really shouldn’t be complaining. The kids in Darfur would love to have any of these issues. Actually, I’m not even complaining. I’m getting a big entertainment center with a badass tv, a king sized bed, and DirecTV. Oh, and most importantly, I’m getting Chris. I suppose that’s all that really matters, right? If I’m willing to sacrifice my sovereignty, and he’s willing to sacrifice his LA lifestyle, then I suppose it’s meant to be. I just hope that once we adjust to the change, and we get comfortable calling things “ours” instead of “mine,” we can focus on what’s really important in our lives, “us.”

So, I’ve noticed that since I’m out and about quite often, I find myself taking pictures of things that beg to be noticed. Usually, it’s some variation on douchebaggery, either subtle or blatant. Suddenly, I have a collection of photos that are an excellent example of why abortion should be legal forever. So, I present you with the Douchebag Files. Installment number one. Enjoy.