Oh Good. Now the Neighbor Is Playing His Ukulele

I am the luckiest girl in the world. (Do you hear the swirl of harp? The lilt of lutes? Do you see the rainbow-colored faeries twittering about the air?)

The kids in Brighton made me a fancy photo of them holding a sign saying "Hey McBickle!" and I feel like I've been coddled by the loving hands of Olympic minor deities. (I would post it for you here, only I fear I would be outing the secret cabal of spies I pay to keep on an eye on things over there. Sh.)

But I can tell you they are mightily, heavily British, especially the dude on the right who is rocking the best haircut I've seen in a while. The pasty-white pallor of their skin equals my own, so we have basically sealed our lifelong friendship on the basis of being see-through. No one has anything but lovely teeth though, so knock that stereotype right out of your prejudiced heads, you silly American snobs!

In other news, I blew my fuse tonight by using the toaster. And a radio. AM radio. I have one circuit for my whole apartment, a radiator AD is convinced will explode while I sleep and a whole bevy of mightily stressed looking ceiling tiles that could cave at any moment. Rockin out in Brooklyn, I tell you.

Allora. So I went to the gym because at 5 p.m., it was already dark, and I could not get into the basement to fix the blown fuse. And my 157-year-old landlady was unreachable. Fine. I don't want to ever meet the birds I hear chirping from down there anyway. So I go to the gym. I work out (huff, puff) I get groceries (yeah, more salsa, some cheese, some lentils, um, pretzels? tomatoes) and I head toward home, hoping by now the landlady has found my note and returned the light to my life.

It will not be so.

I will live in the dark for an indeterminate time longer.

But to add to the absolutely delightful afternoon I've been having, allow me to tell you that I somehow lost my keys between the house and the gym. I finally had a neighbor let me in only to find my keys on the landing step in the foyer of my building. (Flustery, flustera.) I borrowed a lighter from her to illuminate my waiting stanky candles, handily escaped the neighbor's pot-filled lair of Wiccan sin, showered by firelight and found the bulbs lit as I dried off. Life, as they say, is fucked-up bananacake doosh. Dooshery.