Poltergeists vs. kitchen scissors

"You're all gonna die in there! All of you! You are gonna die!" - Kane, Poltergeist II.

Poltergeist II was a really bad movie.

I pulled that poetic quote from IMDb because I have almost no memory of Poltergeist II. I watched it when I was about seven or eight years old. It was a textbook case of I-wanna-watch-this-because-I'm-brave-no-wait-dear-God-this-is-traumatizing-I'll-stop-watching-before-I-get-scarred-forever-too-late.

Fast forward almost two decades, and this is what I've spent my late evening tweeting:

I could never live alone. Coming home to an empty house = murderers in every room until inspection proves otherwise.
— Dasia (@awkwardoptimist) July 3, 2014

Full disclosure: I started tweeting to distract myself because by then I needed to pee.

I am currently in the well-lit lounge looking at hedgehog gifs on my phone, working up the nerve to go down the hall / face demon murderer
— Dasia (@awkwardoptimist) July 3, 2014

In my mind, murderers and demons are interchangeable and equally plausible threats.

So I got home 15 minutes ago, if there were psychos here they would've come out by now right? I even asked them to
— Dasia (@awkwardoptimist) July 3, 2014

My exact words were, "Uh, so if there are any murderers or rapists around, could you make yourself known? Thanks..." and then legitimately waiting for a response. Holding kitchen scissors. I went for kitchen scissors because I felt like a knife was just overly dramatic, and if someone walked in on me I could always suddenly pretend to be making a salad or something.

Man if I really do get murdered tonight, these tweets are SO getting me on Buzzfeed
— Dasia (@awkwardoptimist) July 3, 2014

 Girl Has Most Ironic Death Ever. 

Now I feel like I should keep tweeting to prove I'm not dead. Oh wait, that's how I always feel!
— Dasia (@awkwardoptimist) July 3, 2014

Aaand we're back to regularly scheduled programming.

Poltergiest II probably didn't break my brain and turn me from a rowdy, confident kid into a ball of anxiety who couldn't be left in a room alone. But it certainly didn't help. Something about the way a normal big-haired 80's family had their everyday life invaded by unexpected, sticky, horrible things definitely stuck with me.

And today's Writers' Boot Camp prompt is "one of my greatest fears."

So my biggest fear - well, besides the existential stuff like never making a mark on the world - certainly my biggest-by-volume fear is the strange intruding on the familiar. A sudden grab, an unexpected voice, a pair of blinking unfamiliar eyes looming in the dark. Typical Stephen King stuff.

You know they say people spend most of their lives worrying about stuff that'll never happen? Maybe. But come on. If there were a psycho in my shower, I'd rather slam on the lights and walk confidently into the room holding kitchen scissors than just kinda assume everything will be fine.

Psychos are shit-scared of kitchen scissors. Everyone knows that.

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Russian Hairdressers

Here's the thing about being Russian. You're not allowed to do things the simple, rational way. You have to do them The Russian Way.

Let me paint you a little picture. For a few years now, my family has been going to an amazing Russian hairdresser who also happens to be a maniac. Not to generalize that all Russian hairdressers are maniacs - it just seems like the hairdressing talent is in direct proportion to the crazy.

In case any of my readers decide to become Russian through paperwork or surgery, I thought I should let you know the secret inner world of going to a Russian* hairdresser. 

A Russian hairdresser will cut your hair in her living room. Salons are for "foreigners" (the generally accepted term for non-Russians - and yes, expats insist they live in a country full of "foreigners") and girls just starting out. If this woman can handle scissors without hurting herself, she'll have her schedule full of Russian women eager to get a proper haircut.

A Russian hairdresser will cut like her work is about to be entered into the Microscopic Hairdressing Olympics. This is probably the best thing about my last hairdresser - she did beautiful work, carefully sculpted to the last micrometre. For the record, speed doesn't count in the Microscopic Hairdressing Olympics. Which is why she'll -

Take three hours to do a trim. No matter what time you go to the hairdresser, it'll be dark outside by the time you leave. This is one of the reasons I look like an overgrown hobo most of the time - getting my hair cut isn't a lunchtime errand. It's a whole thing. It's a couple of hours for me, a couple more for my mom, and I'm not even gonna go into how long my blonde sister takes - I think we had to camp out overnight when she first got her foils in. But hey, at least the hair dresser will:

Be cool if you bring your own picnic basket of food, drink and books for the long wait for freedom. Did I mention there's no TV and only a handful of Russian hairdressing magazines for entertainment? If you go without provisions, you're a dead man. I don't know why local people (perhaps more to the point - normal people) are weirded out if you bring your own food to these sorts of situations. Everyone's just supposed to starve and act happy with their rations of tea and Marie biscuits. That's not okay, comrades! We need sustenance for this five year plan! Which is made even longer because your hairdresser will...

Stop mid-cut for a cigarette and a chat. My sister and I aren't very  chatty (my Russian skills aren't good enough to defend my life and my choices) so it's always mom's job to smoke and gossip in twenty-minute sessions. It doesn't really matter to the hairdresser whether she's mid-cut or not. She knows we're not going anywhere. Nobody gets off the rock. Nobody wants to get off the rock because the saltwater's gross, and your hairdresser will always...

Treat every hair like precious silk. Russian hairdressers have to study for two years before they get certified. They take this shit seriously.  She'll refuse to do bleaching / dying that will leave your hair in a worse condition, even if it means giving up the money she would've gotten for that job. Local (normal? human?!) hairdressers, in my experience, take your money, screw your hair up and promise it'll be okay if you use this conditioner or buy that treatment. Which doesn't work. Your average hairdresser will be okay with smiling and taking your money, whereas...

A Russian hairdresser will give you her unfiltered opinion about your life and your choices. Spoiler alert: her opinion will never be a happy-clappy one. Everything from your skin to your career will be criticized, loudly and without regard to those silly little things called "feelings". Which you're not supposed to have anymore anyway, since they should have been killed by shopping and vodka a long time ago. It's okay, you're new. You'll learn. Hangovers are like boot camp for your liver.

I went to a non-Russian hairdresser (gasp!) over the weekend because I was young and foolish and thought I didn't need to spend a day being judged, criticized and smoked on to look good. The local hairdresser took half an hour, she spoke to me like a normal person and not a criminally deranged toddler, and at the end of the day, my haircut was... meh. Just meh. Not fantastic. Not hideous. Just a normal, ordinary, "foreigner" haircut.

Yes, I want to go back to my talented maniac of a Russian hairdresser. It's sort of like a pilgrimage: first you set off on the long journey there, (and of course a Russian hairdresser must always live at least half an hour away from you). Then you followed by hours of verbal abuse, discomfort and borderline-starvation (you'll never bring enough snacks. Ever.) But at the end of the day, you are renewed. And as you stumble home, emotionally broken but aesthetically bouncy, the bad stuff fades away and you're just left with a seriously kick-ass haircut.

It may sound crazy to you. But that's The Russian Way.

*I have a feeling this post will attract a lot of Russian Bride For Yourself! spam because I use the R word so frequently.

The Great 2 A.M. Wasp Drama

So on Sunday night, I'm casually headed to bed after a not-so-fun day at my job that I don't really love too much, and a night of far too much youtube, when I happen to see that there's a GIANT-ASS WASP on my bedroom wall.

I hate wasps. I really, really, really hate wasps. They're like the sick result of a three-way between a bee and an Orc and Satan. Usually I would just scream and slam the door and avoid the wasp-infested room for as long as humanly possible... but my bed was right there. I was tired. I was already in my pyjamas.

So I decided to be brave and went (okay, ran) to the kitchen to get what is possibly the most ridiculous weapon available for a war against the devil's spawn: a long-handled bright pink feather duster.

I had a vague plan to smoosh the wasp in the feather duster and then shove it out of the open window from whence it came, but as I stood at the door to my room I sorta lost my nerve. The more I stared at the wasp, the bigger and scarier it looked - I'm sure it grew from the size of my thumb to a decent-sized rabid terrier. What if the smooshing went awry? What if it escaped and stung me, or - even worse- GOT STUCK IN MY HAIR?!

This whole situation just crystallizes my plan that when I'm a grownup I'm going to have an industrial strength beekeeper's suit in every room. Actually, make that in every corner of every room.

So I figured the safest thing to do would be to gently shoo the wasp towards the window - but the bastard would not be shood. I'd fluff the feather duster at it and it would fly up and freak me out and settle down a meter away from where it was.

HEY LOOK, I drew you guys a picture of my epic struggle between woman and beast!

Accurate.

So every time I got it flying I would suppress a shriek and bolt out of the room. For something so obviously menacing, it didn't seem to have much forethought going on, because it wouldn't go to me and it wouldn't go out of the window, it just hovered around aimlessly like a big dork. Then it'd just settle down on another obviously-not-window part of the room. We carried on this stressful dance of lameness for a fucking hour.

At one point I got ridiculously hopeful because I saw it dart behind the curtain of an open window, heard it buzz a bit, and then stop. It MUST have flown out! Already feeling victorious, I gave the curtain a little prod to make sure it wasn't just sitting on the other side. Nothing. I started to relax, giving it one last sharp poke just to reassure myself. Out zooms the fucker, circling me (and I'm sure I heard its buzz go a bit higher in its waspy lulz) before sitting quite resolutely on the light in the middle of the ceiling.

The wasp and I had battled it out for the territory of my room, and it had won. I admitted miserable defeat and went to sleep on the couch in the lounge.

Now, you guys know I'm a sensitive soul, right? Here's another fun fact about me: I don't react well to sleeping in strange beds. Most times I'm not in my own bed, I don't sleep at all. And if I do, I have weird icky dreams and wake up feeling hungover.

Lying on the couch covered in blankets that smelled a bit like cat, I was prepared to have an uncomfortable sleep. What I didn't expect was the epic nightmare I had about evil ghosts that were eating my soul. I'm not even exaggerating, this was some trippy existential shit. And it had one of those awful patterns where you wake up and think everything's okay but then it turns out you're still in the nightmare, so you wake up again but you're still there, so you wake up again...

Eventually I woke up for realsies and decided no amount of scary wasps would make me stay on that couch for another second. So I got up, checked that I still had my soul, (just in case), and went to my bedroom.

The wasp was still sitting on the light, its wings closed. It suddenly looked small and unimpressive. It was minding its own business. I let it be.

I left the door open and climbed into bed. I'll admit I had the covers up over my head until I got too hot and tired to care anymore.

In the morning the wasp was gone.

HELL YEAH IT WAS. Apparently I'm most intimidating when I'm unconscious.