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I just got off the phone with mom, and we came to the realization that my family has lived in a series of unplottable houses for a couple generations now.

-The First Unplottable House is on my dad’s side of the family, in Delphi, Iowa.  The directions to it are the stuff of Buried Treasure:  Turn off the county road with a fraction in it’s name, to the Named Dirt Road, then turn at The Discount Eggs Sign on to the Unnamed dirt road that takes a meandering path THROUGH a corn field, DO NOT take any forks on that road or the farmer will shoot your ass, then take the paved road that dead-ends on ALL the way to the end- No, farther, the road keeps going it’s not a cliff-The only indication that You Have Arrived At The Correct Driveway is that a fat gray pony will charge the car, screaming, then escort you the rest of the way there.

It’s on the side of an enormous river, they’ve owned the property since 1911, and that’s the ONLY route there.

-The Second Unplottable house is in Bedford, Ohio and belonged to my mother’s parents.  It’s at the corner of two side-streets, right across from the tiny Italian grocery store.  Due to strange development decisions, the house is about 30 feet above street level and rendered invisible by a chestnut tree so majestic Hyao Myazaki would probably put it in a movie.  The driveway, however, is VERY visible from any of the surrounding houses, the grocer, or the street.  

At least in theory and old photos, becuase if you actually GO there,  your eyes slide right past it to the neighbor’s lillac bush, or to the retro neons of the grocery store or up the Chestnut tree.  it is literally HARD to look at that driveway, all the world around it wants to pull you away.

-The Third Unplottable house is in Salinas, CA, home of my paternal grandparents.  It is the single most BORING house possible- like, if you were to ask a third-grader to draw a prototypical house, they would draw my grandparent’s house.  Utterly Unremarkable. 

Except for the part where my Grandfather, spurred by his success with the “non-fruiting” peach tree, decided to plant a California Redwood Tree, and it grew to approximately 150 feet over the course of a few short decades.  It is the tallest damn thing for miles around, and SOMEHOW deliveries keep being missed, mail is delivered to the neighbors, and any non-blood family that tried to visit would end up on the other side of town.

-The Fourth Unplottable House was the one I grew up in CA.  The Directions to it are as follows:  It’s the Bright Orange house Right Across From The School.  You know, the one with six flamingos and the Volunteer Avacado Tree.

SOMEHOW, we got everyone’s mail but OURS (we still wonder about the letter from Fort Knox for Mr. Thomas Saxophone), the other kids got lost trying to visit and ended up in Mr.Phan’s yard on the other end of the block.  Officer Brown, Mom and Dad’s friend, who had GPS back in the early 90′s becuase silicon valley, regularly got lost looking for our place.  The Flamingos did nothing.

-My parent’s current house is the second house on the right  after two right turns off the state highway that runs through town.  Sounds easy, right?  

Except that due to a couple small trees and a bend in the road, the house is invisible from the road.  I have to stand out in the road if i want my pizza delivered.  The Mailman is the only person who could reliably find the box, but he drives a subaru that’s older than my sister from the passenger side by leaning over, and delivers mail based on the aztec lunar calendar, so he’s probably not actually human.  I tried to host a party, tied rainbow balloons to the mailbox, and all nine friends had to be waved in from the street.

-My current apartment building Does Not Exist, according to my Bank, medicaid, Google, and City Hall which was a bit exciting when I first moved in and had to call everyone that yes, I was sitting in a building that really exists.   

Unless it’s my classmates, becuase they can apparently come to parties I don’t host. This Friday I had a friend telling me she had a great time at my place last Teusday… when I was home alone.  She assures me that I held a houseparty with “Those polish things you make” (I make great mini klatchky, but haven’t served them to her) and that “You were definitely there, we talked about Carvaggio and you drive me home”

The only thing that offers any explanation is that you were drunk at the anecdote about your recent house party 🎉 nothing else is explainable

I’m deathly allergic to alcohol, and was definitely at home alone, emailing a former professor about werewolves.  Got the chatlog and everything.

Guliya’s roommate recalls me dropping her off at the dorms, which is really peculiar.  Another classmate, Jeff, was at the party with Guliya, and they thought it was my place too.  Jeff is a jackass and I’d never invite him to my place.

God, I hope I don’t have another doppelganger.

… /another/ doppelganger???

The year is 2014, October.  I have the beginnings of what will prove to be a rotten cold, and I decide to take the precaution of getting an enormous bowl of Pho from my local Vietnamese place in hopes of staving off another respiratory infection.

No sooner do I set foot in the door, and Mrs. Nguyen snaps up and shrieks YOU!!  and I am much distressed and confused, because I adore Mrs. Nguyen.  She kept My Intended alive last passover when the cafeteria covered literally everything in flour.

She insists that some time in august I had dined with a large group of friends and then skipped out on a $200 dollar tab.  This is even more distressing and also impossible, as I had been in Oregon at the time, and only have like 3 IRL friends.  She is livid, and absolutely insistent that it was me, and that I pay the tab or she’ll call the police.  Being very distressed and not eager to have a panic attack in front of police, I pay up $216.87 and am banned forever.  I go home in tears, without my Pho and am very sick for a fortnight.

Two months later, it’s Polish Butter Christmas, and I locate the source of my woes.

Polish Butter Christmas is the invention of my Intended’s friend/domesticated internet troll, where everyone deemed a friend or at least interesting party diversion is invited to their house and we all consume massive amounts of Traditional Polish Cooking, which is about 60% butter by weight.  everyone eats way too much, most people also get shitfaced and i usually end up on the floor playing with 4-6 corgis, depending on who’s invited that year.  in 2014, it was all six of them, rustling under the table like a pack of obese furry sausages.  

Among the guests invited are myself, my Intended, The Troll’s girlfriend, and her friend.  The latter is 5′2″, whiter than mayonnaise, with bright purple hair and green glasses.  I also am 5′2″, glow under black lights, had bright purple hair and still have green glasses.  We learn furthermore, that we have the same first name and live on the same side of town.  This is laughed off as Most Amusing, at first.

The celebration goes on, and I become steadily less amused as I learn that Not-Me is a BITCH.  Racist jokes, yelling at the dogs to make them cower becuase “They look so funny!”, and generally abrasive and cruel.  Everyone is uncomfortable and Troll confides quietly to me in the kitchen that she is not invited next year, but needs an excuse to throw her out, or his dad will have a fit.  Troll’s family is as much a gang of cryptids as mine, and cannot go around Un-Inviting people without Due Cause.  So we agree to suffer quietly and laugh about it next year.

Eventually, the conversation turns to “Youthful Shenanigans”, and while most people have the sense to tell stories where they did something dumb but not actually illegal, Not-Me recounts with utter glee “That time me and my hoes dine-and-dashed that one chink place hahaha”

I suddenly put two and two together and realize that This Bitch Has Personally Wronged Me.

“You CUNT.” I tell her, furious at the realization ad the fact that she’s been steadily ruining Polish Butter Christmas for the last three hours. “Mrs. Nguyen thinks I did that! I HAD TO PAY THE TAB!”

“Oh, uh my bad, haha…” She laughed awkwardly.

“HA. YES. FUNNY. WE ARE GOING TO THE PLACE, YOU ARE APOLOGIZING TO MRS. NGUYEN AND PAYING ME BACK YOU INSUFFERABLE BITCH.”  I yelled, grabbing her arm and dragging her towards the door, Corgis yapping excitedly at our ankles.

“Whaa?  No!  fuck you!”  She said, winching her arm out of my grip and doing an amazing four-inch-heel-sprint for the bathroom, locking herself in.  

She has made a rather serious error in the Troll is both 1. a 6′6″ Sasquatch of a man, and 2. TOTALLY WILLING to take a crowbar to the bathroom window he’d been planning on renovating anyway, esp if it mean he gets to haul a bitch out and toss her into the back of the minivan with the three least-obese corgis, so that we may drive her, sobbing about injustice the whole way.

Nothing in my life will ever be so satisfying as dragging Not-Me into Pho 67, and seeing the look of horror and recognition cross Mrs. Nguyen’s face as she realized what had happened, then having Not-Me withdraw the money from the ATM at the front.

We then returned to Polish Butter Christmas and had a splendid time feeding buttered pork to the corgis.

But you see why I am loathe to deal with another one.

Every sentence that gets added just reinforces that this is a Neil Gaiman story in the Sandman universe near the Ocean at the end of the Lane.

And no one’s gonna question the werewolf email to Prof?

Congratulations on being the first person to ask about the werewolves!  Prof Hoffman teaches a course called Freaks And Monsters, which was THE BEST literature course I’ve ever taken and she was the first person to get my idiot brain to understand symbolism.

I’m writing a book about Crypids In America and was emailing her to see if she had any recommended reading for me, and to introduce her to my Botany professor becuase I think they’d be friends.  She was a little late replying to me becuase she’s in Rome documenting gargoyles, but she and Botany prof are planning an expedition to Moscow to retrieve a book for rare mushroom plates before the crazy cat lady who’s keeping it accidentally destroys them.

You sure the party doppelganger is not the same doppelganger as Bitch Doppelganger?

THANK YOU FOR ASKING BECAUSE I HAVE AN UPDATE.

So last night I’m out walking Charlie at 2AM becuase it was the first break in the lightning we’d had since 6PM, and I go around the corner and literally for half  second I thought I was about to walk into a mirror becuase I found  my local doppelganger and this time it’s WEIRD.

I’ve got weird curly brown hair that goes kind of Bride-Of-Frankenstein when it gets long, have a weird hound mix from AZ, and am art major with a science background.  I grew up in the bay area and moved to CO in middle school.  I’m a night owl with a bad habit of signing up for morning classes.  I’ve got a super-common first and middle name, and a less-common irish surname.  I’m in 105D

SHE has got the same hair and face, her dog is a weird hound mix that’s like a paletteswap of charlie also from AZ, possibly the same ranch, She’s a biology major with an art minor, grew up in CO and moved to the bay area in middle school, is a morning person with afternoon classes. We have the same first and middle names, in reverse order, and she has the other spelling of my last name.  She’s in 105A.

Statistically, some of this is not surprising- both combinations of names are common, and there was a lot of cross-traffic between CO and CA in 2004, all Rez dogs are shaped the same, and Art/science isn’t that odd a major/minor combo.

She did throw that party back in novemeber, and I was much relived, and she was glad to find out I exist-  We’ve somehow gotten into the same circle of art/science/queer friends without meeting up, and Guliya was bugging her telling stories of My Shenanigans, and attributing them to her.

We’ve arranged a coffee-date with Gulia and are gonna show up in the same outfit just to fuck with her.

IT GOT BETTER!!! And I’m so glad this doppelganger is nice.