Summer Guest Blogger Friday!! It’s Bunny from 86’n It!

I am proud to call this guest blogger my friend.  Bunny is, in real life, exactly as she is on her blog, hilarious, honest, and absolutely fucking fabulous.  She is talented, she wields a mean sledge hammer, and she is so nice that you don’t even hate her for her fabulous shoe collection.  Don't believe me?  Read this post.  Happy Weekend! 

My Glamorous Life as an Architect

 

Hi y'all. My name is Nikki, but you can call me Bunny Mendelbaum (don't ask). I'm an e-friend of Michelle's and have been for what? like 6 years? That's forever online. I'm most famous on the interwebs for having a house renovation blog that mostly spotlights work we do not do, as well as finding dead animals under our house. Yeah Us!


So I was throwing around a bunch of ideas on what to do with this guest post. I asked my husband to help me brainstorm some great stories I tell, and all we came up with were two that involve me peeing my pants?? Anywho, I wasn't so happy with my options, but then the internet gods (i.e. Al Gore) had pity on me and gave me the BEST/WORST day ever today. So that is what we are going with. Hope you enjoy.

I am an architect. Please, please, before you tell me how you/your sister/nephew/priest wanted to become an architect but "didn't like math", let me say this. The only math I ever use is that one formula that goes: this over that = this over the thing I want to know. That is it. And I don't even know that one's name. So stop using that excuse. Just tell me you didn't want to waste your time going to school for 6 years. Ok, phew. Onward.

Mostly I wanted to give that disclaimer because everyone seems to think that the life of an architect is some glamorous affair where we walk around in our blue button down shirts and hardhat with rolls of drawings under our arms, pointing at shit. For real. Look at what happens when you type "architect" into a stockphoto website:

Dude. That never happens. None of it. (And what the hell are we pointing at?)

So I'm making it my sole duty to inform you what the real life of a "glamorous architect" is like. THIS is what happens:

So this morning, I got to work at 8:20am. I had to hurry and get some images out because the client, who is so important and secretive that we can't even say his name in the office, was expecting them. Except we didn't even know we were supposed to make them until 4:45pm yesterday. Nice. This all sounds really fancy and glamorous until you find out that the images involve toilets and lots of electrical wires. Seriously. If I'm not drawing toilets lately, I'm drawing sanitary napkin dispensers. Who did you think figures out where those go? We do.

This all had to be done in a rush because at 10:30am I had to leave in order to drive two hours to meet a bunch of roofing guys on top of a building in Murphy, North Carolina. That is two hours ONE WAY, and two hours back. Ugh. And Murphy? The tagline for the city is "Two Hours from Nowhere". Seriously. I've had 3 people tell me that joke.

I hop in the car and realize that I need gas. Of course. Last site visit I went on, I had to beg the maintenance guy to siphon me some gas so that I wouldn't run out going down the mountain. That's how low I was. I didn't think my car could make it DOWN a mountain.

Despite this, I decide to drive about 30 miles and then get gas. Just to live life dangerously. So I stop at a gas station and decide to get out my pump parts and put it all together. Oh yeah, forgot to tell you that I have a 5 month old baby! Whoopsa. So I do. And I breastfeed, which for a working glamorous architect means pumping. Usually in the parking garage where I pretend that everyone can't see me. Anyway, I'm putting my pump together while the gas is being dispensed and oh shit... I forgot the shields. I can't pump without shields. 27mm ones to be exact. I yell fuck twice out loud, and let me tell you, I live in God's country, you don't just yell the f-word at the gas station unless they are out of beernuts or cigarellos.

I can't go home and get them because I won't make the meeting. This is an official, mandatory meeting. I cannot be late. I also CANNOT go 11 hours without pumping. #1 because the baby won't have food for tomorrow and #2 because my boobs will be leaking like crazy. I'm wearing a very thin white shirt. I'm about to meet 11 burly guys on a rooftop in the middle of nowhere. Not exactly the perfect place to have your boobs sporadically spraying like fire hoses. Shit. Fuck.

And in waltzes the iPhone. Now, most architects are too nerdy to have an iPhone. They cling to their Androids and Blackberry Storms and talk about reception and compatibility. Luckily for me and my boobs, I am not one of them. I could film an iPhone commercial: "Get an iPhone or your boobs might EXPLODE!" I whip out my iPhone and try to find the nearest Walmart. Surely they sell Medela shields there right? They have them at Target. This is how in the middle of nowhere I had to drive. I would only be passing ONE WALMART in the entire 2 hour trip. Dude. This is America. We need Walmarts at LEAST every 30 miles, right?? (Did you see how far of a drive this is? There are 4 states in this map and ONE Walmart.)

I head to said Walmart. I navigate all the scary backwoods people and find the baby feeding section. The breastfeeding supply section is embarrassing. They do not have my the Medela shields. They don't have any shields. I swear, they have two aisles of formula (did I just see strawberry flavored?), but nothing to help me out of my predicament. Crap. I end up grabbing a manual pump (what is this 1962?) and checkout. I'll figure something out.

I get back to the car and realise that not only do I not have time (nor the willpower) to use the manual pump. So I get all MacGuyver on this shit and rig it up so that the manual pump will work on my electric pump sans shields while I drive. If I had a piece of gum, I would have used it, but I ended up going with a rubber band and a piece of plastic ripped from the walmart bag. And you just know that bag is made of pure BPA. Great, my baby is going to grow a second row of teeth and start her period when she is 6.

I am amazed by my inginuity (and see - NO MATH!) and hit the road. All is going well pumping and driving, except when I notice that every time I pass a semi-truck driver he picks up his radio surely to alert the next truck driver. "Hey, Butch, louk outta yer winder, dare's a lady comin' up yer way wit her boob justa hangin' out!"

I get to my meeting. It basically consists of me reading two pages of semi-legal speak to the 11 roofing guys and then heading up to the roof where I point at stuff and say, "Yeah, tear off that gross stuff.", "Ok, then put down some of that hard insulation stuff and then three coats of that sticky stuff on top.", and "Of course there is asbestos. Just double-bag it and throw it in the dumpster. Just don't crumble it up and inhale it." Wow.

It was all going splendid, except toward the end when they all decide to gather around my car to ask me questions about the project. Based on the puzzled look on several faces, I'm pretty sure they got a look at FrankenPump. Glam-or-ous life, I tell you!

I jump back in the car for the return trip and about an hour in, it is time to pump again. I'm like a pro at this now. Bam. Bam. 7oz. Except that one maroon SUV that passes me three times. It is a dad and ~7 year old daughter. I'm pretty sure he passed me on purpose, and he was lecturing her: "THAT is why you never mess around with boys! You'll end up pregnant and then forced to drive around with a make-shift machine sucking milk out of you!!" She was crying by the second drive-by. I'm pretty sure that she is busy at home tonight fashioning a homemade chastity belt. Can that count towards my community service continuing ed?

I make it back to Asheville, grateful that my architect workday is over. I step out of the car, and then I happen to look down.

White shirt. Ketchup. How long has this been here?

I lied. We totally do point at stuff.