Friday, February 13, 2009

New city, new state, new time zone, social awkwardness remains the same

So, my landlord is this gregarious guy from Bulgaria, he's friendly, helpful and seems like a great guy*. And I see him every day because he's building a house right next to the one we're living in (it's a pretty big parcel of land).

If you know me at all, you know that the whole seeing him every day thing will eventually turn into an issue for me because soon I'll probably take to sneaking out of the house trying to avoid conversation, because I'm just kind of weird around people.

Today, I spent most of my day working on organizing stuff, determined to get rid of at least some of the cardboard boxes, and I didn't see him at all... until I was walking down the street to pick up my kid from school.

I'm going one way and he's coming from the other way with a group of people, I kind of figure I can get out of it with just a wave, but no - he crosses the street to come see me... and kind of makes a move to hug me, which I instinctively thwart by kind of flinching and turning away.

It's not that this guy's creepy or anything, he doesn't give off any kind of skeevy vibe at all, and I'm sure the friendliness has to do with him being European**, but I'm American... and weird around people. I feel bad, because I should be thrilled to have a nice landlord, Hell, after living in the unfriendliest city on the planet for two years, I should be thrilled not to be openly shunned, but I worry that my weirdness might be too deeply ingrained in my personality for me to be able to get past this. Or I'll try to overcompensate for it by going out of my way to be friendly and try to hug him or something and he'll think I'm hitting on him.

Whatever.

Nowhere near on topic, but one thing that's different about California is that you can buy hard liquor in the grocery store - I know you can't do that in Washington, I don't think you can in Georgia (or at least Savannah) and you can't in Texas (or at least Corpus Christi) and I don't remember if you can in Arizona or not. It's just strange to see full liquor sections in grocery stores. Today, when I was grocery shopping, I bought a bottle of vodka just because I could***.



*when my husband and child came out here to look for a house, he actually drove them around the neighborhood, took them to play basketball with him and his son and then took them to a farmers market up in San Luis Obispo.

** I'm seriously amused every time he references "the old country" without a hint of irony, it's so quaint.

*** and because I'm going to experiment with making my own vanilla extract, which consists of vanilla beans and vodka. And if it doesn't turn out to make good extract, I'll be having some vanilla-y vodka.