Tales from 12/21/12, The First Day of the Rest of My Life (and coincidentally, the end of the world)

(Note: for entertainment and clarity purposes, The Girl in the Orange will be substituted with the appropriate alter-alias Small-town Hick in this post.  I feel it is the name that can best express the sense of completely overwhelmed-ness I was experiencing as I tromped around in one of the biggest cities I have ever been in.)

At 5:30 AM, Small-town Hick wakes.  Small-town Hick is antsy, having not slept well the previous night, and is quite ravenous, so she is up in the kitchen fixing tea and oatmeal strange orange goo within two seconds.

Pumpkin protein oatmeal–Hick didn’t want to get hungry during the meeting!

After breakfast, Small-town Hick takes shower and spends a record-breaking time of twenty-three minutes doing hair.  Status: better than usual.  Small-town Hick is satisfied but wonders how it managed to get so frizzy, for all it’s so short.

Small-town Hick decides she is hungry ravenous again and eats a cashew butter sandwich on homemade whole-wheat bread.  Hick considers eating more but decides that it is really nerves she is experiencing, not acute starvation.

Small-town Hick puts on pantyhose.  No, really.

At 9:00 AM, Small-town Hick stumbles due to her absurdly high half-inch heels struts to Chevrolet luxe limousine in the pouring rain softly and poetically falling snow.

Small-town Hick spends two hours in the car on the trip, knowing she should be compiling questions for the impending meeting, but her brain is like a still-humming, dying wire.  She has a quite adversarial relationship with the chemicals found in that processed abomination humankind refers to as gum, but she slides a stick between her teeth here, not because she really likes the taste or is experiencing hunger again, but because she wants something to do with her mouth.  She swipes on lip balm for the same reason, telling herself that she could probably use it anyway.

Instead of coming up with questions, she chooses to engage in an intense conversation about zombies with Mother Dearest.  She comes to the conclusion that, if such a thing as a “zombie-virus” actually existed, much of what is portrayed in zombie literature would be plausible, assuming that zombies are sort of akin to single-celled organisms: no brain, innate instincts driving them towards food, etc.  She also comes to the conclusion, however, that the zombie rom/com (?!) Warm Bodies is not plausible, because following on the logical thread of zombies=single-cell organisms, then zombies would not be able to translate the messages taken in by their eyes (how are their eyes still there, anyway?) into what we call sight (nor would they possess any of the 5 senses) and could therefore not fall in love with a specific human.

Destination is reached.  Big building.  Biiiiigbigbigbigbigbigbig building.  Building is mainly glass on one side and Small-town Hick thinks it is a skyscraper.  Small-town Hick would later find out building has 30 floors, plus underground parking levels.  Small-town Hick would faint.

Small-town Hick enters bigbigbigbigbig building.  She cautiously introduces herself with her pantyhose and her sophisticated act and her forced smile and her knowing that everyone is wondering what a teenager is doing in this sophisticated bigbigbigbigbig building.  People walking around Small-town Hick are carrying Prada totes and the like, while Small-town Hick has a vinyl reusable shopping bag slung over her back.  Small-town Hick grins nervously, and is instructed to go to the 27th floor.

Small-town Hick uses restroom there and is shocked by the utter silence and stillness of it all.  The building is so quiet, it seems to be abandoned except for her and Mother Dearest–such is the fate of a place that has never known the voice of a child.

Hick washes her hands for an obscenely long amount of time, thinking that perhaps she should just not show up, that the world would go on anyway if she just stood there for the rest of eternity, washing and washing and washing her hands, get them extraextra-clean.

Small-town Hick is told to go to either floor 17 or floor 19.  She is in the wrong place.

Small-town Hick selects floor 17 on the elevator, but somehow it stops at floor 21 and she naively waltzes out.  This floor is white and has more sophisticated wall art adorning the corridors.  It is also very quiet.  Small-town Hick starts heading in entirely the wrong direction and is escorted by a kindly businesswoman carrying her coffee into the elevator, and to floor 23.

Secretary on floor 23 questions Small-town Hick about how she has reached said floor; only those with a key card are granted access.  Small-town Hick’s mind reels.  She stammers out an apology, choking back the fact that she didn’t know such things existed outside of spy movies.  Secretary smiles and escorts Small-town Hick into a large office with one entirely glass wall looking out over the drizzling city, with instructions to wait and inquiries about whether she needed any coffee.  Small-town Hick doesn’t drink coffee.  Small-town Hick waits quietly and fiddles with her earring for quite some time.

Important Person comes in and meets with Small-town Hick about her writing and discusses Options and Strategies for getting Small-town Hick’s work in the eyes of a mainstream publisher.

Small-town Hick thanks Important Person and exits the bigbigbigbigbig building after an hour or so, and stumbles struts to a nearby Chipotle for lunchness.  Problem:  Chipotle workers assume that you’ve been there before.  Small-town Hick finds herself giving a bewildered, out-of-the-blue  “Hello!”  to her first server as said server impatiently flourishes a hard taco shell behind the counter.  “Wait, the order normally comes with three?  And you’ll charge me the same price even if I just buy one taco?  Well, I’ll have three then…oh, never mind, I guess.  No, no sour cream.”

Small-town Hick ponders on the journey home…and starts writing!!