Twanna A. Hines @ FUNKYBROWNCHICK.com | sex. dating. relationships.

Intruder in My Apartment :-(

I’m Home.

After much turbulence, my plane lands at New York’s LaGuardia Airport 52 minutes behind schedule. I leave the airport, get into the cab and tell the cabbie my address.

When I arrive at home, I slip the key into the keyhole and give it a turn. I open the door and I drag my luggage inside.

It’s good to be home.

Time to get comfortable. I remove my sweater from my body and kick my socks and shoes off. Now, I’m walking around barefoot in a t-shirt and jeans. That’s when I hear it. There is a noise in my bathroom.

“What the f*ck was that?” I wonder as I stand very still. Maybe I’ll hear it again.

rattle. rattle. rattle.

Yep. I hear it again. “Maybe that sound is actually in the apartment next door and it just sounds like it’s in my apartment,” I reason. I call Bro. I’m on the phone with her for about 15 minutes when it happens. Right before my very eyes, the largest f*cking mouse that every walked on the planet appears out of nowhere and charges toward me.

I scream at the top my my lungs and into the phone. “OMG, I just saw a mouse!!! I’m coming over.” While still on the phone with Bro (moral support), I grab my purse, my keys, my shoes. And, I run out of my apartment.

“You need a boyfriend,” Bro sighs.

For the next 24 hours I will be a refugee in the home of my absolutely lovely friend Bro until I figure out if I am going to either: (a) buy glue traps, steel wool and poison or (b) a cat.

PLEASE HELP!!! Does anyone have any advice or suggestions for getting rid of a mouse or, God help me, “mice” if there is more than one? I haven’t been home in over a week and I know that they are gutting the apartment downstairs. Years of living in Chicago taught me that renovations = mice. What can I do????

February 6th, 2006 | Print This Post | link | Email This Post | [13] folks got down with the Funky Brown

Touch Me, I’m Dick

That song It’s Raining Men? It’s a lie. It is definitely not raining men. In fact, the phrase “Man Drought” more accurately describes my New York dating. The vast majority of the time, I’m incredibly happy with the single & fabulous life. And, sometimes, I’m not happy with it. Take last night, for example. The night comes and I feel a little down … no, check that … I feel really pissed off, sad and lonely.

I’m still in LA at the moment so I’m at the hotel. I lay my head on the stack of white pillows on the bed that overlooks the city. And, I think to myself, “why the hell am I here alone?” Yeah, I can already hear you: “Stolie, you’re the one who put yourself on the man diet!” But, really, you know what the man diet is all about? It’s about me letting go of the one thing you’re always supposed to hold on to: Hope.

If I truly had hope, I’d know that some really great guy is somewhere in New York just waiting to meet somebody exactly like me. But, experience tells me otherwise. So far, the choice has been about dating: a Stolie-hating idiot; an alpha-male, arrogant asshole; a whacked-out, panty-sniffing, drunk-dialing Irish Boy; a booty-calling-nowa-ima-gonna-disappear-lika-Houdini Italian guy; *OR* not dating at all. And, honestly, I’d rather not date. Take some time for me. Hence, the Man Diet. But, sometimes I get really pissed off about it; and, sometimes I feel lonely …

October 18th, 2005 | Print This Post | link | Email This Post | [10] folks got down with the Funky Brown

The Death of My Grandfather

Summer in Mississippi. I am nine years old and I’m playing outside with my older sister and my two younger cousins. It’s 102 F / 39 C and I smell musty air, cut grass, melting black asphalt and other oppressive smells of the Ol’ South. My aunt calls my sister and me inside and sits us both down on the bed. “Stolie,” she says in a rural southern drawl, “yaar grandfather daayead.” But, I’m only 9. I don’t understand death yet. It would be years before I would learn that Grandpa Tucker died of cirrhosis of the liver (a.k.a “he drank himself to death”). In the meantime, to attend the funeral in Illinois, we drive 645.16 miles / 1,038.28 kilometres over 11 hours and 32 minutes. It’s strange to me. This person—this human being, my grandfather—with whom I’ve danced, talked, laughed, smiled, and spoken is gone. All that remains is a cold, suit-donned, lifeless body lying still in the coffin before me. “He won’t open his eyes,” I remember thinking. “He won’t open them. He won’t speak. He won’t get up and walk away from that box.” This is how I come to understand Death. The concept shakes me to my core and, although I’m only 9, I vow to never go to a funeral again. I haven’t since. It’s a double-edged sword, my fear of death. It causes me to live life to the fullest.

August 25th, 2005 | Print This Post | link | Email This Post | leave a comment