someday, i'll buy my mom a real yorkie.

today was another slow day, but at least jane wasn't there!

yesterday i did a drop in with a regular of mine who is a chef. he's really nice, the only thing i don't like about him is that his hands smell very strongly of onions. other than that, though, he's ideal: polite, clean, receptive, easy to get off. i think i've written about him before, but i don't remember. anyway 

i liked dropping in on a sunday, the house was very quiet. it was just one girl working, luisa, who i like a lot. she's always really busy because she's a tall model, but i guess even her business is down because she only had three appt's yesterday and usually she'd have like 5 or 6. 

it was probably good that she didn't have that many clients because luisa was kind of a mess yesterday. she had a tiny little cut on her hand and was worried about getting cum in it. i told her she should just use her other hand, exclusively. (the more obvious solution, wearing a glove, is also the quickest way to lose a lifelong customer and so was pretty much out of the question.) she asked me whether she could get an STD if she accidentally got cum in her cut. i hated to admit that i really wasn't sure whether that could happen. i'm pretty sure i napped through that whole series of sex ed filmstrips.

in addition to her cut, she was sporting a swollen ankle. when she showed it to me, she prefaced it with "now, you might not be able to tell that it's swollen, but i think it might be." i took one glance and could clearly see that it was almost TWICE as big as the other ankle. i told her she needed to ice that shit and stay off it. she was like, "oh, i'm glad you can tell it's swollen. i knew it. i'm totally not crazy!" she had fallen while hiking with a guy friend the day before and when she complained that her ankle hurt a lot and was swollen, he somehow convinced her that it was fine.

a. what a jerk, and

b. i TOTALLY cannot picture luisa hiking. like: at all. she's just a skinny little twig of a thing. so skinny, in fact, that i don't know how she doesn't constantly faint from low blood sugar. i've worked entire shifts with her where i've not seen her eat even one bite of food. once in a while she'll have a yogurt or a few pre-packaged apple wedges, but that's pretty much the extent of it. i am so obsessed with food that it's hard for me to imagine how she can go all day long without eating. but then i think back to a time when i was, myself, a skinny twig. i'm still slender, but i used to weigh a good 15 lbs less, which is scary for me to even picture now. anyway, when i hardly ever ate anything i just stopped being hungry. but i often felt weak and dizzy, and i don't think i could have massaged big dudes all day long like that.

so. after my drop-in, i chatted with luisa a bit, forced her to ice her ankle, and did some tidying up. when i left, the apartment was totally tidy. it looked as good as that dump can look.

this morning when i came in, however, the place was a disaster! and i know it wasn't luisa who messed it up so much because she's fastidiously tidy. it was either yala or lily for sure. yala comes in at all hours and takes appointments, and just makes a huge mess. but she doesn't cook or eat in the house, really, and this mess was foody, like a dirty pan and some plates. and empty pop cans, and one of my diet cokes that i had put in the fridge with a little note saying "mandy's: please don't drink," so i was totally sure it was lily. who, you might remember, was fired but who still works there when no one's around. 

anyway, the crumbs everywhere, the plates, the neglected g-string on the floor were enough. but here's the thing that was the dead giveaway: a safeway deli bag with some crusty old chicken strips in it. WHAT A CARELESS PIECE OF EVIDENCE TO LEAVE BEHIND! those bags have a LABEL on them, saying the date and time of purchase. this one was sept 13 at 8:55pm. it made me mad to find that because what if jane had found it, instead? she's just finally starting to not come in every single day. this would have sent her and gigi over the edge because it would be proof positive that we come in at night and don't write things down.

so this morning i cleaned up the house a bit. threw the evidence away. recycled the cans, etc.  and then it was quiet. it was just me and milly, and the french girl martinique (marty). 

i sat on the lumpy couch for an hour or so, then since jane wasn't there, i decided to go for a walk to the baby gap to get some baby clothes for my brother and sister-in-law. their baby is due in one month! she's going to be SO CUTE!!! i want to go see her as soon as she's born.

i went up the hill to this bougie neighborhood by the water. too many rich people everywhere. i got a few really cute little things for the baby and then someone called for an appointment so i headed back to the house. on my way i saw this expensively dressed lady about my mom's age (50) walking her adorable little yorkie and i got SAD.

my mom is on facebook (along with my entire family, even my grandma!) and she's into this "yoville" thing lately. i think it's kind of like an easier version of second life or some bullshit. where your actual life isn't what you wanted it to be, so you're creating this virtual world where you can build up the life that you'd like to have. it seems like such a colossal waste of time to build up your life in this online game, when you could be taking that time and energy to better the life you're actually LIVING. but anyway, i digress. the sad part is that my mom has kind of a super depressing life. she's unemployed, disabled, always insanely destitutely broke, lost her apartment and now lives in this total shithole apartment in the very worst part of town with her ex-boyfriend (who is the dad of my youngest brother). it's a bummer over there. dingy, dank, unbearably cluttered, all the neighbors are hos and speed-freaks. not great. you get the idea: her life is a bit dismal. so she's gotten into this yoville thing and this morning her facebook status update read, "hELP ME AS i WANT YO $$ TO BUY A YORKIE." something about that just made me SO. SAD. she's always wanted a yorkie and now she's getting one, but not in real life--just in this internet game. 

and then there's the rich lady right in my face with her actual yorkie. 

lemons! it's all lemons sometimes!

so. i scrambled back over the hill and saw my client. nice guy. he had an unbelievable amount of moles on his back, but at least they were, for the most part, the flat kind. his pores were very clogged on his whole back. i used a lot of oil to avoid tripping out on it. i was glad when the massage was over. the guy grabbed me and gave me this giant bearhug as he was leaving. it felt nice to be totally squished for a minute. i wasn't expecting it but it felt cute.

then i kept waiting for my phone to ring and it didn't. marty was insisting on telling me all about her time at burning man, which took no work at all for me to tune out. her french accent's so thick that tuning IN is the hard part. i was thumbing through vogue and trying to watch "friends." she said, "do you like zis show, friends? some off my friend like it. but i don't get it." i told her it's not so much that i like it, but i'm just familiar with it and for that reason it can be comforting to watch if i'm feeling edgy. which i was, for some reason.

at 6:30 on the dot i jumped up and walked on down the hill toward home. and now here i am in my pretty place. i have tomorrow off, then i work again on wednesday, then i'm going to austin for a week! sky's going too! i'm excited.