Category: The ORIGINAL Team Double Deuces will attest that my life is somewhat unusual. If there aren’t strangers at Starbuck’s talking to me about aliens, then there is a man urinating on my front yard as our team meeting is about to begin. Or perhaps my 20 year old kitty cat will decide to give her opinion in the middle of the team call with a “Sqqquuuaaaccckkkkk”. So this story will come as no surprise to them. It’s just one in a million in the crazy things that happen to J.Lo.
This story is about the benefits of jet lag. Until last night I thought there were none. I hate lying in bed wide eyed during the middle of the night, and I hate even more trying to catch up on hundreds of work emails while falling asleep. I think I’m able to survive residencies because the pace is so quick that I hit the ground running. There is no time to think about jet lag when you’re being cold called or on a trip to a Mosque.
I arrived back in the States on Monday, along with about 20 other classmates flying Delta 7. (Shout out to the party plane!) Now, I need to tell you this part, which at first seems trivial, but in the grand scheme of my life becomes the central part of our story. I had decided to take an originating flight out of Gainesville, Florida to catch the non-stop in Atlanta to Dubai. That saved me about $800. Since my Grandmother and aunts live in Gainesville I also had an excuse to visit. I’ve been staying with my grandmother, heretofore called Nonnie, for the last few days.
Nonnie is about as cute as they come. I tower a full 6 inches over her white hair which means when I hug her she nestles snuggly into my neck. She asked me if I would sleep in her bed with her (because she was feeling lonely) and this is how I first learned of her bed time security ritual.
It begins with first making sure all of the doors are locked and dead bolted. On the front door she then hangs a cow bell which if an intruder somehow managed to move the door even a hair will clank. In front of the door she then places the dog carrier. Then to her bedroom she goes. The bedroom door is then locked. She then sets the security alarm. To additionally secure the door she places an old shower rod across it to bar the door. If someone should then get into the room, she showed me a metal bar which she would use to subdue her attacker. Nonnie’s dachshund, Hershey, is then called to the bed to sleep with her, so that her terrifying bark will provide further alarm. This system actually does make you feel like you’re in a Fort Knox like situation, and you sleep soundly without any fear of invasion.
Since I’ve come back on Monday I somehow have managed to make it through a full work day each day, but I have been a goner by about 8pm EST. I have been waking up at 3 or 4 am and trying to make myself drift back to sleep. Last night I managed to make it to about 10pm before falling asleep in my Emirates Airlines T-shirt on the couch. Nonnie woke me up and I stumbled my way into bed and I heard her go through her normal routine.
Three thirty AM. I awaken to the house alarm going off! Nonnie is in the bathroom and I jump out of bed! I’m awake. It’s 12:30pm in Dubai. I AM AWAKE!!! The security company calls. Nonnie picks up the phone.
“Yes, this is Jane X. “
“Well that’s strange we’re in that room.”
“No I don’t see anything. I think we’re ok. I think the alarm would have scared them.”
I am talking to her as she’s talking to the security company. “Nonnie, tell them to send a police car to check the outside of the house and cruise the neighborhood.”
“Maybe just send a car to patrol the neighborhood once.”, she tells the operator non-chalantly. All of the sudden the woman with a million locks is Arnold Schwartzenegger. I am imagining my Nonnie breaking out with some Jackie Chan moves if there is still some perp lerking around. Not likely. More likely, the black beans I fed Nonnie for dinner combined with the stress of an intruder will cause her to produce noxious fumes. (Yup, I’m an MBA candidate. Note to self, build model for likely Nonnie vs Intruder outcomes.)
Nonnie gets off the phone, and again proves she is braver than initially thought. She puts on her little cover up so she is not seen in her nighty. She walks over to the bedroom door and opens it right up. All the time, I’m wired and going “Nonnie, Nonnie, wait…we should wait for the police to come. Wait, where’s the metal bar.”
Nonnie isn’t listening to me though. She just sashays right on out to the living room turning on lights as I poke around under the bed looking for the metal bar. I find the bar. EUREKA we have protection….or maybe not. Come to find out that the metal bar is the broken part of a wind chime. It’s a hollow aluminum tube which is about four hand lengths long.
That’s ok, I’m jet lagged! This perp doesn’t know what’s gonna hit him. He’s probably tired or at best wired on the latest narcotic. But I have jet lag on my side and a somewhat short aluminum tube.
Nonnie leads the way. Mainly because I couldn’t stop her from going to more doors and windows to check them. She’s like a little 5’2” leprechaun. Every time I’d get over to protect her at one exit she’d be at the next. “Jeez Louis woman, just hold still and wait for the police.”
Finally the police officer comes to the door. Nonnie stands on her tippy toes to look through the peep hole and I crane my neck up to look through the top of the door. “It’s okay Nonnie, I see his badge.” I say standing behind her slowly lowering the bar.
The police officer checks around the house and reports back that everything is fine. “It’s probably just the wind.” Him and my grandmother agree. In the mean time I have figured out that if I were to hold the bar in a certain way it would like the barrel of a pistol. I am debating about whether or not it is safer to claim it is a gun and “I’m not afraid to use it.”, or should I continue with it as a wind chime/thwacking device.
We go through our little ritual of securing the doors and locking ourselves in the bedroom. I put the phone and the wind chime on the bed in between us. I think “I could put it underneath the covers and it would look like a gun if I pointed it out. That way they couldn’t tell if it was a gun or not. Although I might need to rethink my warning message. I’m sure that would be a funny enough site for the perp to walk in on two women in bed with something poking up out of the sheets.”
And so, with my jet lag I laid back down, brainstorming ways to clobber an intruder. Nonnie fell back to sleep and after about an hour I did too.
So as you see, jet lag was quite useful. I thought with a clear mind, and was clearly championing this whole situation. No one is getting past this chica and her Nonnie. So here’s to 9 hours of jet lag and all the security and mental toughness it brings.
Thus ends yet another typical day in my “normal” life.
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