New Age Grandma

[newagegrandma]

"We are trying to limit showers to 3 minutes"

How about you go fuck yourself. I shower once a week, a 3 minute shower is just not gonna do. I AM FUMING RIGHT NOW. I need to get out of this fucking house.

[newagegrandma]

The "Potluck"

Do you know what's the most stressful thing? Like more stressful than not being able to shit for 2 weeks. Or not having the ability to "get it up" during a time of coitus. A potluck where people who are gluten free, vegetarian, dairy free, vegan, and simple sugar free are all invited. I came to said potluck, which was an excuse for everyone to sit down eat and talk about house things, on time at 6pm. Being the timely person I am, I got pissed the fuck off when everyone decided to be late. Oh and I personally had 40 hours of work to do, so I wasn't necessarily stoked on said potluck. You could say "You didn't have to go!" but you don't know persistent new age people, it's going to happen, it'll happen two hours later but it'll fucking happen. They couldn't give a fuck about your schedule though, because their yoga class ran late, and then after they had their friend dread their pubic hair.

Also what the fuck does a room full of people with every "food intolerance" known to man eat? Kitcheree apparently.

"Does the dressing have any sugar in it?" Asks one housemate.

"Does this have animal products?"

"Is there any gluten in it?"

The answer is no to all of these because I made the most tolerant-of-intolerances salad known the man, unless you have a nut allergy, then you can fuck off. I honestly made everyone happy with my stupid fucking salad. The recipe is chopped cabbage and kale with lime juice, olive oil, edamame, apples, sliced almonds, and sunflower seeds, also known as the only thing I could've made for these people besides kitcheree.

So we started eating at 6:40pm, k00l. I am carnivorous at this point, but not an ounce of meat is being served, of course. At a certain point, whilst waiting for everyone to serve themselves, I stared at my bowl of kitcheree imagining a burger, with pickles slightly slipping out the sides of the bun.

"Let's say a prayer!!" Alright so here we go Emily, put a smile on your face, feign interest, because this is going to be a solid hour and a half of hypocrisy and ignorance.

"Which prayer should we say?"

"Oh I know! Satnam!" This means "whose name is truth" in Sikh scripture. You would say it three times over your meal to make sure it's blessed by your positive energy, for sure.

"Saaaaaaat- naaammmmmmmmm"

First one down, two to go, you've done this before.

 "Saaaaaaat- naaammmmmmmmm"

Alright, this is bullshit, but whatever, one more.

"Saaaaaaat- naaammmmmmmmm"

Thank god, it's over. Now I can eat this 'burger.'

I guess I like living with my truth, and my truth is sitting in my own shit and being a cynic and a pessimist as much as possible, so being around this, and having to assimilate in this way is painful. Oh yes, poor me.

The conversation topics ranged from native spirituality to mother earth to the era of the "masculine" ending and the era of the "feminine" becoming predominant. If you coupled the lenses of feminism and realism with this particular conversation topic you would see how fucking inane it sounded. Some of it was interesting, but really it was a lot of preaching to the choir and a new age-y circle jerk.

Oh yes after the conversation we must go over our cleaning routines once again for the thousandth time. I of course am doing a terrible job on my cleaning, because I am too busy to spend one hour a week deep cleaning the bathroom, which sounds simultaneously like a lot of time and not much time. They made it a point to be concerned about my busy lifestyle, and to tell me they were worried about me. I am most happy when I am occupied by work, but they did not seem to understand that and continued to poke and prod me about cleaning the bathroom and my busy schedule.

I ended up being the bad guy at the end of the potluck, so I slunk into my room and coded for two hours till I fell asleep, annoyed of course.

This was more of a dear diary post. I may edit it to make it less me-centric and more centered on the insanity that is my house. so consider this part I.

[newagegrandma]

I've been asked to write another post

Is this forced? Maybe.

Do you know what a gong is? If you don't it's an instrument that has devolved into an occasional sound in a marching band performance and the tool of spiritual enlightenment used mostly in yoga studios and my living room. I came home one day to see this reminder of the days I used to hit the gong, a most monstrous sound, in marching band. I always dreaded smacking that piece of metal with a mallet, of course I never did it justice. I don't believe my housemate did it justice either. It stood 6 feet high in the living room and sat on a tattered piece of Turkish rug. It was covered with a gold-yellow-orange tapestry, and the gong remained a shadowy reminder of the past and future.

It was an evening where I was tripped up on Percocet (for medical reasons, no, seriously, pillz killz) and I wasn't exactly in a good mood. I sat in my room staring at the computer screen expecting it to respond to my want of something less mind numbing. My room faces Bay street so I hear the cars whirr past in an ocean like manner, tides come in tides come out (can't explain that). It's relaxing except for the occasional dick hole on a motorcycle, as well as the buses, since I'm right next to a bus stop. I can tell you the bus schedule in accordance to where the sun is and how much coffee I've had. Anyways, I am sitting in my room and hear a bus rumble by, but it's taking awhile. "Wow this bus is getting really loud and is still driving over here" "Wow what the actual fuck is going on, it's still driving by *crash* oohhhh, she's playing the fucking gong." This entire time the tonality of the gong just was lost through the walls but the vibration filled up the house. The vibration of the gong was intrusive, and without manner. It felt like an uncalled for meditation, and I was not down. She started to sing, in a language I did not understand, and the rough translation would sound like a christian rock song, but replacing Ram Dass with Jesus. (More on a Ram Dass in another post).

This has happened many a time and every time I'm surprised. I can't even describe to you how annoying the music in this house is. I will come home on any day of the week and a chant is being played over and over and over and over again, and a few people have experienced this madness with me, understood the plight and wished it would end. And the end of the chant never came too soon. It felt as if someone was kidnapping your eardrums and holding your sanity hostage. I guess if that's what chanting does then fine by me, have fun with your endless journey into spiritual enlightenment, but don't shoot the bystander on your way there.

[newagegrandma]

Bathroom time

Every fucking morning Yulani spends a total of an hour in the bathroom. Prime pooping time. Honestly holding poop in makes me more sad than anything. I feel more sad than the time a dude broke his neck because he was swimming with dreads and his head was too heavy and his toothpick neck couldn't support the weight of his super heavy jah braids. More sad than that.

[newagegrandma]

Cleaning Routines!

So cleaning in my house is a big thing, like it makes of 75% of my time in my house, but then again I'm not here very often so don't trust that statistic. On the first day I moved in I was inundated with how to take care of the house. Every part of the house has its own quirks and it's old so we have to take special care of it, but the people occupying this house are more quirky than the house itself, so get ready for some bullshit. I'll go in the order of what makes sense the most you'll understand why by the end.

Kitchen duties:

Clean the counters, daily. That makes sense, but that includes grout duty where we put some baking soda in the cracks of the tiles and scrub till it's whiter than the people in the house. This is daily.

Sink drains must be cleaned every time you wash the dishes, also makes sense, but more scrubbing follows.

We have a thing with the sponges which makes no sense and breeds a lot of bacteria, but I don't think they realize it. So we have a counter sponge and a sink sponge. The counter sponge has a corner cut off of it and is recycled from the last sink sponge. These are compostable so we have a new sponge almost twice a week. But what is really strange about the sponges is that we have to set them on the stove top to dry them out. But as the sponge is soggy and sitting there for a few minutes it will breed a ton of bacteria and then as the stove heats up the sponge the bacteria die in the sponge. This is a pretty terrible practice for the sponges, heating up and cooling things down is how bacteria is created and gets people very sick. I disagreed at first but I kept my mouth shut because nothing in this house makes sense and I just stopped caring at a certain point.

Sweep and mop the floor daily. The mop is fucking disgusting by the way because no one believes in bleach.

Wash the containers and then recycle them, like soap and water then recycle. Chill.

Compost which we dump into a ceramic container and then we dump in a big compost bin outside for our garden.

Clean kitchen table every hour, bacteria breeds. But make sure to use the counter sponge, which is a pteri dish.

Eat on the white plates. Don't ask.

Unplug the toaster oven or it will blow up.

Fill up the tea kettle with filtered water.

Turn on the filtered water faucet with only cold water. Hot water = bacteria.

The water bin is to save water while you wash your dishes so we can feed our plants with the mildly dirty dish water. Helllloooo we're in a water crisis.

Shoes:

There are outside shoes, inside shoes, and shower shoes. Feet are gross, the end. The shoes sound like what they are. It's more for Yulani and Shri Raudwa 's spiritual practices.

Bathroom duties:

I am responsible for the bathroom but each person does their own thing. We go in the bathroom, turn on the timer! 30 minute maximum though so hurry the fuck up, unless you're Yulani, more on that in another post.

Wash the mirror if you notice any spots.

When you tinkle throw your teepee garbage in the little tinkle teepee bin which we throw out in a special garbage can. Unless you shit and wipe your ass, don't throw that away flush it, bitch.

Do not flush tampons or the pipes will explode. Wrap it in toilet paper and throw away in the garbage outside. So not only am I pissed off, I'm pissed off holding my tampon for 2 minutes with only toilet paper protecting my hand from the tampon, yummy yum yum.

When you are taking a shower, be sure to wash the curtains each time with vinegar and a sponge so the mold doesn't set in. Chill.

Clean the shower drain you fucking ass hole, no one wants to see your pubes gathered up in the drain.

When you turn the shower off be very careful of the knobs as a small rubber stopper becomes chewed away if you twist the knobs too hard.

Leave the light timer on for 30 minutes after the shower.

The bathroom needs to be cleaned weekly, like fully scrubbed on a weekly basis, chill sauce. Guess who gets to pick out hippie pubes from between the grout on the tiles, me, I do.

General house cleanliness:

If anything seems dirty just do it, it's all about karma and positive energy.

Leave the fans on or else the air in the house becomes stagnant. Bad energy, etc.

But don't leave fans on in your room, it's a waste of energy.

Keep your door open, reason: energy. The karma gods will crucify you if the energy is bad.

Spend time in different areas of the house at least once a month! It promotes good yogi practices.

Only eat organic.

Alright that's all I can stand to write before I get annoyed.

Namaste bitches.

[newagegrandma]

What is New Age Grandma?

It was recently pointed out that my housing situation is, by all accounts, unique in its own right. I decided to make a series of stories of my experience of where I live. These women are sweet people, but they have their own faults as we all do and I'm here to tell my story of them. There was a time where I had my rose colored glasses on and mirrored their activities and personalities in order to shield them from who I really am, a realist. But as time wore on and my patience wore thin I realized this fucking sucks, I hate to keep these stories in, someone has to know. Someone needs to know that I'm not psychotic, I just live with people who may be leaning on the crazy side.

I will introduce each of them to you, but make up their names to protect their identities. I wish I can give you their true names as they are as ridiculous as some of the things they may do. I may be an ass hole talking about this, without anyone knowing but again I need people to know the humor of these lives, especially of the new age existence and the very white privilege that they tend to deny.

Yulani- She is in her early 70's, but denies her age and is decidedly 34 years old. She owns the house and has a very high pitched voice. When she gets excited (about everything) her voice creates a melody that can only be entertained in the most migraine inducing fashion. She is a therapist, but I shouldn't tell anyone that. The importance of her being a therapist is that she is so unaware of her own issues that her being a therapist is unhealthy. But you know what they say, therapists tend to be as fucked up as their clients. Or at least that's what I say. She is very clean, and that is part of her spiritual practice. Along with having a poo poo platter of religions and practices to choose from on any given day. She is dedicated to doing the same thing everyday, as many older people do. I love her, but I also just am infuriated by her. She prefers Indian people over white people, and thinks that automatically because they are Indian they are more spiritually qualified.

Shri Raudwa- She is in her early thirties. Very kind, very respectful, again, totally unaware of her existence. Her name before I moved in was Jennifer, but her spiritual guide decided her name should be more of a spiritual essence. She is a Kundalini Yogi, also an Aryuvedic practitioner. She also does web design. She wants to get married and have kids, so she's moving to India to spend time with her Mexican boyfriend who is also a Yogi. She only eats organic foods and sings while she walks around the house. She has a morning routine where she practices silence, but I think that's because Yulani likes to talk, a lot. She doesn't cut her hair (like any hair) and never shows her feet. She has a Dead Kennedy's tattoo on her foot that she so lovingly referred to as "a special time in her life" which I deem as the best time in her life, I mean come on the Dead Kennedy's are sick. She is going to New Mexico to get married on summer solstice in a mass wedding.

Mandi- She is 24 and is barely at home. She is a burner, and a follower. She is like Yulani in many ways takes from each practice what she believes is true and practices whatever that looks like. She has a boyfriend, excuse me, partner named Family whom she met at Burning Man. She came back from burning man with a design shaved into her head. He turns out is a hair designer and shaves patterns into all parts of people's bodies, yes all parts. She lives off an inheritance and she works as a craft-er, makes clothing by knitting and crocheting and leatherwork. She believes in essential oils and burning things as a way of healing.

My name is Emily, I'm a narcissist and a realist and kind of an asshole. I don't deny that I've tried all of the spiritual practices these women have procured over their lifetimes, and each one has its ups and its downs. I have seen things that are undeniably hypocritical and of a privileged aura. I have learned about numerology,  the Sikh religion, Buddhism, Sufism, Aryuvedic medicine, Kundalini Yoga, the raw trend, the magic of homeopathic medicine, Chinese medicine, the following of AMMA, crystals, and so many other things that are slipping my mind currently.

These are merely my opinions and if this is offensive in any way I'm sorry but I couldn't give a shit. Here we are going on this spiritual journey of hypocrisy (not just of my housemates but of my own), I hope you get some laughs from it, that's all I really want.