Wide Lawns and Narrow Minds

Wide Lawns and Tere-Tere Have a Psychic Connection

2009-07-10T16:38:00.002-04:00

You are never going to believe this. I have had a documentable psychic experience. YES!!!!!

My dear friend, who also has a blog, early today wrote a post on her blog about the time she and I visited a fancy hotel in Miami and spent a good 20 minutes frolicking in the fancy bathroom, which was very similar to the bathroom of the Ritz in San Francisco. I hadn't read her post. I had no idea that she wrote about this at all, yet I felt an overwhelming desire to write my story about the Ritz bathroom this afternoon. HAND TO GOD. We wrote on the same topic on the same day without even knowing it. We have a connection. I'm very excited to be seeing her both tomorrow and Sunday where perhaps we will have to practice telekinesis and remote viewing next.

Poopin' At the Ritz

2009-07-10T14:52:00.003-04:00

For almost three years, Husband I had a long distance relationship. He lived in San Francisco and we met when he came to Florida on vacation. At first, he had a more flexible travel schedule than I did. He also had a lot of frequent flier miles that he could exchange for free flights to Florida, so he visited me three times before I was able to make it across the country to see where he lived.

When you're in a long distance relationship, you're forced into a more instant form of intimacy than you are in a traditional dating situation. When you date someone in your own proximity, you go out for a couple hours then you go home. Then you do it again. You have time to yourself. You move through the stages of dating more slowly, gradually working your way up to sleep overs, then sleep overs where you spend a good part of the next day together and then before you know it you're spending a couple days at a time together before going home which then leads up to the first big milestone in any new relationship: the weekend away. By the time you get to the weekend away, you're usually pretty well acquainted and comfortable with one another. In other words, you've come to an acceptance that the other person poops, though you're not at the stage of actually discussing it or admitting that you do it and you absolutely haven't yet farted in front of each other. That comes later, though not much later given that the weekend away goes well.

In a long distance relationship, one doesn't have the luxury of such privacy. You go to visit each other and you're stuck with the other person for the whole entire duration of the trip. At some point you're going to have to go to the bathroom. For neurotic anal retentives like me, this is cause for major anxiety.

Before I met my husband, I once spent a weekend away with a man I didn't know as well as I should have. I liked him very much and I didn't want him to know that I pooped, although he was a doctor so I'm sure he figured it out. One day I will tell you the whole story of this weekend, because lord knows, it is a story. For the entire weekend I prayed that I wouldn't have to go to the bathroom and in order to ensure that this wouldn't happen, I took what I called pre-emptive Imodium each morning when I didn't even have diarrhea. I definitely didn't have to go to the bathroom. For about three weeks after the trip had ended.

I also used to pride myself on the fact that I made it through elementary school, middle school and high school without ever going in the school bathroom. I have a colon of steel. Many a long car ride home have I suffered in order to avoid the humiliation of public restrooms. I just can't stand it.

Husband's first visits were short and miraculously I didn't have to go while he was around. Another time, he stayed longer but I was at my parents' house where there were multiple bathrooms. I would poo in brief installments in their bathroom, always using the excuse that I "had to get something" or "was looking for something." Once I used the excuse that I just had to have a shower. This always works nicely because you can run the water, poop really quickly, take a shower and by the time you're done the smell has usually dissipated. The problem is that you end up taking oddly timed showers and, if you're on the weekend away, the other person may mistake this as a romantic overture and ask to join you, which is really awkward.

I was going to San Francisco for ten days. Pre-emptive Imodium was not an option for that length of time. At the time of my first trip out there, my husband lived with two other young guys in an apartment that wasn't that big. It was really a two bedroom, but Husband turned the old-fashioned dining room, with its french doors, into his bedroom (he hung curtains over the panes). There was only one bathroom for all these boys and guess where it was? In the middle of the living room. Right there. In an old building with thin walls, a door that wouldn't close all the way, even when latched. Had I known this before arriving in San Francisco, I may not be married right now.

During the days, everyone went to work. I would pray to please, just let me have to go while they were all out. Please. But this didn't work because my body hates me. It's the Murphy's Law of Elimination. You'll always have to go at the time when it is least convenient. At home alone you can strain and strain with no results, but the second you're in the middle of an important meeting your stomach will begin to rumble. Stuck in traffic with no rest area in sight? Time to go. My biggest laxative is the lack of a bathroom.

While Husband worked, I used to entertain myself sightseeing. My first day in San Francisco, I walked a block up the hill to have tea at the Ritz Carlton, which was very posh and very lovely. Before I nibbled my cucumber sandwiches I went to the powder room to wash my hands and it was like the pearly gates of Heaven opened. I felt like Dorothy in the Emerald City. The bathroom in the lobby of the Ritz Carlton was so sumptuous, so perfect in every way that I thought the Wizard lived in one of the stalls. To call them stalls is really an insult. They were water closets. They were practically their own studio apartments. They had real doors. The walls were attached to both the ceiling and floor and were totally soundproof. Picture a toilet in an elevator and you have some clue as to the level of privacy and enclosure offered here. You could play a trumpet in one of those little closets and the person in the stall next to you wouldn't be able to hear it. But not only were these bathrooms private, they also smelled good - like tangerines and angels. There were lavish floral arrangements on the marble counters, real towels, wicker baskets, expensive soaps and hand cream that turned your skin into satin. I wanted to live in the Ritz Carlton restroom.

The next night the boys were home making dinner when nature called. Thinking fast, I told them I needed to get some fresh air. I'd take a quick walk and be right back. They needed half and half and I'd pick some up at the corner store so I could have coffee after dinner. I sprinted up Powell Street, right into the lobby of the Ritz where I headed in the bathroom of my dreams and did my business without event. I picked up the cream on the way home and was back in less than ten minutes, utterly relieved. It worked spectacularly. No one knew the difference. No one knew I was poopin' at the Ritz.

I visited the Ritz Carlton's bathroom several times during that trip. Utterly grateful for its existence, I went back over and over on my subsequent trips out to California. Pretty soon Husband and I became closer and more and more comfortable. Pretty soon he realized that I did go to the bathroom and that I was a human being with a working digestive tract. He still loved me. But this didn't help the roommate situation. I still couldn't go when they were around.

One day Husband asked me if I was leaving for these mysterious walks in order to use the bathroom.

"Yes," I confessed, "Yes I am."

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"The Ritz Carlton. I'm pooping at the Ritz Carlton. They have a really nice bathroom. Really. If you could see it, you'd understand."

By now my future husband knew I was nuts, but one day we were out on a walk and he got to see for himself. After he went he understood. After that he became my accomplice. If I had to go while his roommates were home, I'd signal to him and he'd actually go with me, just because the Ritz lobby and bathroom were that pleasant.

I visited again on New Years Eve. The roommates threw a huge party. The small apartment was filled with people who had "broken the seal." The one little bathroom in the middle of the living room had a line. Of course this was the best time for me to get diarrhea. Of course it was. I had never run up Powell Street faster. Never. When I got to the hotel, it was lit with candles and Christmas lights. It glittered. The building had never looked more regal, more imposing or grand. It was like taking a crap at the White House. No, it was like pooping at the Parthenon during the golden age of Athens. Had I not been gripped with stomach cramps, it would have taken my very breath away. Inside there was a big party with several dignitaries and who did I see but former San Francisco Mayor, Willie Brown, all decked out in his tux doing a meet and greet. He came right up to me and shook my hand!

"Happy New Years, young lady," he said.

What a memory that was.

Soon Husband moved out and got his own apartment. By that point we were well past the farting in front of one another stage and I no longer needed the security of a five star hotel powder room. Still sometimes, I'd wander back because I missed it in there with that fancy soap and hand cream. It was like old times.

I haven't been back to San Francisco in almost two years, but I miss it and the next time I return, I'll stop in and see my old friend the Ritz bathroom. If you happen to be there, stop by and tell it I said hello. Once you walk through the door, you'll understand too.

Living in Muddy Waters' Scary Story

2009-07-09T14:36:00.003-04:00

Hey, I've got to go teach today (well tonight too) and I'm all one with the Universe again after having my second round of acupuncture. Who knew sticking needles on the insides of one's fingers could feel so good? So, while I'm working, how about going and visiting Living in Muddy Waters this afternoon? She's currently writing the best story ever. It's very spooky, very scary and has a frustrating level of suspense that will make you obsessively click the link to her site to see if she's continued the story yet. It's divine torture. The story involves a serial killer, dead prostitutes, ghosts, two psychics and I freaking love it. Love it, I tell you. Nothing better than a scary story, especially when it's true.

The Time My Cousin Tried To Kill Me - Happy Birthday Bella

2009-07-07T23:47:00.001-04:00

Today, July 7th is my first cousin and best friend Bella's birthday and to honor her special day I'm going to tell you about the time she tried to kill me. OK, perhaps that is an exaggeration. It wasn't premeditated murder. In a court of law it might not even be considered manslaughter, had the situation come to trial, which thankfully it did not. What happened is that Bella, in her zeal to remain alive, was willing to use me as bait; was willing then to let me die in her place when it came right down to it.

A few years ago, on a beautiful summer day, Bella and I found ourselves in a boat in the middle of the ocean with a bunch of cool people. Both of us, being highly neurotic individuals, did not want the cool people on the boat with us to know that neither of us were as cool as they were. At first things went well. Now I will tell you that both my cousin and I have a deathly terror of the sea. We both enjoy boats just fine when they are piddling down the Intracoastal. We like them even more when they are affixed to a track and gliding through animatronic pirates and dogs wagging keys in their robotic mouths. Both of us were a bit on edge that afternoon, on the big power boat, blazing through the surf, a fan-shaped fountain of spray erupting in our wake.

It was a hot day. Everyone wore bathing suits. I wore my prized pale yellow bikini with monkeys on it, which is now nine years old and needs to go in the garbage. I haven't worn it since this day, but I can't get rid of it for some reason. Where will I ever find a bathing suit with monkeys on it ever again? I keep thinking I'll find a use for it, like maybe one day I'll get into quilting, learn to sew, and make a giant, waterproof throw. A pool throw perhaps, for when the water's cold. Because that could work, right? And it could be patched together with squares from all the pilled-up seats of all my old bathing suits.

But yes, we were all wearing bathing suits and mine was already well past its prime. As I said, it was a really hot summer day. We decided to stop the boat in the middle of the ocean, literally miles from the shoreline, above a thousand feet (at the very least) of opaque blue water, in four foot swells, which didn't look very large from the deck of the forty foot boat until it stopped and then all of a sudden the stomach-roiling rocking began. Internally, I began to panic. A million terrible images bubbled into my mind: seasickness, sharks, man o wars, barracudas, cellulite, drifting to Bimini and perhaps the biggest terrible thing of all - not looking cool around cool people. Half of the cool people wanted to (gulp) jump off the boat and into the water. The other cool people wanted to sit on the boat and have cocktails.

I weighed my options. Bella weighed her options. It is a well known fact that the cool girls are adventurous. They go rock climbing and bungee jumping. They can drive stick and love upside down roller coasters. Cool girls are fearless risk takers. Well, I'm not a fearless risk taker and neither is Bella, in spite of what she'll tell you about how much she loves the Sky Coaster. When it comes to the ocean, both of us are wary. My theory on this is that in a past life we died together in a terrible shipwreck, but who knows. Although we are afraid of the ocean, both of us really wanted to be the cool girls.

Too often I am labeled as the party-pooping pain in the ass who can't have a good time and who is scared of everything. This day, I just didn't want to be that. I wanted to be that bungee jumping, motorcycle riding without a helmet kind of girl for once. I wanted to jump off of that boat into the blue abyss and so did Bella. We had to do it. We had to conquer our fear and save face.

Bella went first because she is a tad braver than I am. Then, because she did it I had absolutely no choice but to hold my breath and jump in. The water was freezing miles from shore. God only knows what sea predators were swimming beside me and beneath me. The water was so dark, there was no way I'd ever know until I was crammed halfway down the maw of a starving Tiger Shark. I was already seeing my own reenactment on a Shark Week documentary about Florida attacks and I hoped they'd at least get a skinny actress to play the dying me flailing around in the red water.

To make matters worse, those four foot swells created eight foot wells. From the boat, the chop only served to make one mildly queasy. From above, the waves didn't look like much. That all changed once you were actually in the water, with nothing to hold onto and nowhere to stand up. I was treading for dear life and so was Bella but I wasn't even thinking about her. Naturally we were with a bunch of boys who thought nothing of any of this and were practically playing Marco Polo while I half drowned.

When I jumped in the water, I was too panicked to realize that the sheer force of my jump, combined with the waves and current, had all conspired to rip my bathing suit bottoms clean off of my body. I only wear tie bottoms, because these, I've concluded squish the hips the least, thereby making one look less fat in them. Somehow both sides of my tie bottoms came untied at once. The current was strong that day. It felt like we'd managed to stop right in the middle of the Gulf Stream itself and now it was quickly carrying away my bikini bottom with the monkeys on it. I was completely bare assed and panicking and going to die in the ocean and they were going to find my body naked from the waist down, in South Carolina, since that was where the Gulf Stream would probably carry me.

I was South of the boat and the current was pulling my bathing suit bottoms toward, but actually past, the boat. Frantically I dog paddled, half naked, my big white ass shining in the sun for everyone on the boat to see quite clearly, to try to catch my bottom half. Everyone on the boat shouted and pointed. Finally, out of breath, I made it to the boat's swim ladder, where I tried to hold on for a second. I thought if I could hold on, maybe I could get stable and maybe the bottoms would float by again and I could lunge out and get them if I could just get one of the long strings. There wasn't a lot of logic in this thinking, but I had just exposed myself to several people and was floundering in a thousand feet of salt water which was violently tossing me around and washing over my head.

At the same time, Bella was having her own crisis. Wrapped up in her own terror, Bella failed to notice my bare ass and saw only my screaming and desperate race to get to the boat ladder. In her mind this could only mean one thing. There was a Great White Shark. We were its appetizer sampler platter, much like the one at the Olive Garden that comes with fried raviolis AND mozzarella sticks. Bella was going to be a Great White's fried ravioli!!!! She was going to die!!!

Bella's mind went blank. Her fight or flight kicked in and she practically flew up out of the water like a sailfish, running across those four foot swells to get back to that boat ladder to climb to safety. She thought of nothing else but her escape from the non-existent shark that she assumed I was screaming about. She didn't see my bathing sut bottoms bobbing away and she entirely missed my gigantic bare ass looming before her on the boat ladder. Bella was in survival mode and I was in her way.

My tiny cousin, who I tower almost a full seven inches over, literally grabbed me by the hair and jerked me back. Then, she slammed both of her hands against my chest, hurling me back into the waves, this time face up, so everyone who had now already seen my behind, could get a nice detailed shot of my crotch. Once I was out of the way, having become Bella's human shield to an imaginary shark, she scrambled up the ladder and back into the boat. That's when she looked down and saw that I was half naked and by now in hysterics.

At this point in the story, the boat's captain had retrieved my bikini bottoms with a gaff hook, and everyone found this wildly amusing. Except me. I was still stuck bare assed in the ocean being laughed at. I had to hang on to the edge of the boat until Bella could come with a beach towel to shield everyone from another gratuitous crotch shot. That did nothing, by the way, to block the view of my ass to the boys who were still in the water.

So much for trying to be the cool girls. The whole ride back in we had to listen to recountings of Bella's mad scramble up the ladder and descriptions of not just my face when I realized my bottoms were off, but also how my butt looked tossed around in the waves. No one knew Bella had such strength in such a little body. No one knew she'd be willing to sacrifice her dear cousin to sharks in order to save her own ass.

Bella it is for stories like these that I love you so much. Happy 29th Birthday!

My Newly Updated Links

2009-07-06T19:06:00.002-04:00

I'd like to direct you to my newly updated links list over in the side bar. Because I am a lazy procrastinator, I've been meaning to do this for at least two years. Something happened today that finally made me sit my ass down and do it, but I don't know what it was. In any event, there are now links to sites I regularly read, be they for cat pictures, possible sightings of Champ (God please let them catch a lake monster), J. Crew outfits, stuff about Japan, recipes that don't suck, good writing, having something interesting to say, cracking me up at least twice or architectural drawings of chicken coops. I'd like to say it's all there, but I guarantee you I forgot someone that I didn't mean to. If I forgot you, please don't have hurt feelings. In another two years I will hopefully remember to include your link. In the meantime, if you know of any other brilliant blogs or places where I can look at recent UFO sightings, leave me a comment and let me know. Almost every single blog on the list is something that someone else told me to check out at some point.

2009-07-06T18:15:00.003-04:00

Tomorrow's story contains these elements. Can you guess what it will be about? There's only one person who truly knows the answer to this question, and that is my cousin Bella.

Cats With Mohawks

2009-07-05T21:30:00.003-04:00

As I mentioned, we're back staying at my parents' house (bathtub and BBQ!!!) for the summer while they RV around the country. They're having a great time. They've already been to Millpond and Washington DC (where they had a drink with Laura Ingraham of all people, right before she hosted O'Reilly the day after Michael Jackson's demise). From there they went to Aspen, then to Vegas and now they've parked the bus on a bluff in Malibu. Today, they're attending an honest to God celebrity wedding. It just doesn't get any cooler than my parents, I swear. I'm really happy for them having all these adventures and I promise if they have any exciting encounters with famous people that I'll report immediately. But that's not what this post is about. It's about cats with mohawks.

When we stay here at Casa dei Sogni, we bring our kitty Canela too. Canela loves having a big airy house to roam around in. When we were here last year, we were often startled, sometimes out of a dead sleep, by Canela howling and hissing like something possessed. It happened almost every day. One day Husband told me there was a black cat with a mohawk outside the back door and that Canela was fighting with it through the glass. This cat, with its fierce hair-do, was Pepper, the neighbor's cat who is lucky and gets to go outside. Pepper is the boss of the street and liked to come over and taunt and tease poor Canela, the unlucky indoor cat, who subsequently grew her own mohawk because she can be fierce and scary too. This went on every single day until we went back to our apartment last fall.

This summer, we wondered if it would happen again; if Pepper could smell Canela here or if she could somehow know Canela had returned. Friday it happened. Once again, the two mohawked cats were throwing themselves against a pane of glass, shrieking like two Tasmanian Devils. And the sick thing about it, was that I was excited. I was all like: "Yes!! Pepper's back! Cat fights!" What the hell is wrong with me that I find this behavior mildly amusing to the point where I guiltily look forward to it? I guess if the cats seemed like they were suffering or if they were harming themselves it would be different, but I swear these two really enjoy talking smack to one another and hitting the glass with their paws. I think it makes them feel like bad asses. Canela sits and waits at the door for Pepper to come and when it seems like they get out of control I open the door and shoo Pepper away. I also toss her the occasional Greenie because she's a cute kitty too. I'm not all evil. Am I?

As Promised, Potato Salad Picture

2009-07-05T20:47:00.003-04:00

Here is the finished result of the potato salad I made for the neighbor's BBQ last night. It was quite a hit. I mean, it has bacon in it after all. You know how people get over bacon. I certainly liked it. I can even venture to say that this potato salad is better than the Pioneer Woman's potato salad and I'd like to challenge Pioneer Woman to a friendly, lighthearted little Potato Salad Throwdown, Bobby Flay style. Now don't get me wrong. I've made and thoroughly enjoyed some of her recipes, but not her nasty potato salad. I may not have a fancy camera or the patience to measure my ingredients and take pictures of every single, God forsaken minute step of a recipe, like she does, but I'm telling you people, I can make a better potato salad. So anyone who's made her recipe, make mine and tell me if it's not a million times better. Of course if she'd like to invite me out to her ranch to pick blackberries and make it for her in person like a real throwdown, I'm not saying I wouldn't accept the challenge. You know what I mean? But I think she'd be too scared. I mean, bacon. It has bacon in it.

Kitty Kitty Bang Bang

2009-07-04T23:08:00.002-04:00

Canela would like you to know that this Fourth of July nonsense really needs to end immediately and that the fireworks (aka Cat Exploding Devices) are unacceptable and must be stopped at once. Failure to end this holiday will result in regurgitated hairballs on your pillow and dead lizards in your shoes. Until this idiotic Independence Day has ended, Canela will remain under the bed where it's safe, and while you're at it, please also eradicate all vacuum cleaners, hair dryers and blenders from the planet as well.

Nasty Assed Recipes - Fourth of July Edition

2009-07-03T14:51:00.002-04:00

Having moved back into my parents' house for the summer, as they RV around the country, Husband and I have been invited to the neighbors' home for a Fourth of July BBQ. This couple is a little older than my parents and they are super, super Southern. They are as Southern as it can possibly get and their family is down from Georgia for the holiday. They are really nice people and they asked me to make a potato salad for the potluck. This I can do, except I don't particularly like Southern Potato Salad. The Pioneer Woman recently posted a recipe for it that was so utterly vile that I couldn't even look at pictures of it without the bile rising in my throat. She actually rices her potatoes, which is heinous. Potato salad contains cubes and chunks of slightly al dente potatoes, not freaking mashed potatoes. It's not negotiable.

There is not a single person in my family who can make an edible potato salad. My grandmothers each have their own version. Both are gross. Mommom Jewel's potato salad is at least the correct consistency with the diced potatoes, but then she goes and makes it with Miracle Whip and an ass load of celery seed and it becomes a culinary abomination. Memere Marie's gets worse with the addition of hard boiled eggs, chopped green pepper, big pieces of raw onion, school-bus yellow hot dog mustard and something red that is unidentifiable but may be pimentos. With her you never know. It could very well be maraschino cherries. Even Savta, my dear Slovakian adopted grandmother, who is as far from Southern as one can get, makes her own horrible, Eastern European version of potato salad. This one is the worst, but apparently it's popular from Warsaw to Moscow. In Savta's potato salad, diced potatoes are combined with mayonnaise, the aforementioned hard boiled eggs, diced cooked carrots, canned peas, onions, canned corn (though not always) and occasionally even diced meat which can be tuna fish, chopped salami (kosher of course) or some other horror. This has got to be the grossest potato salad I have ever seen in my life. I would not eat this for a thousand dollars. For real, if you came to me and said you would pay me a thousand dollars cash to eat Savta's potato salad, I wouldn't be able to choke it down. Same goes for Memere Marie's. I think for the money, I might manage Mommom Jewel's, but only if I got half the money up front and had a full pitcher of ice cold, Country Time pink lemonade to wash it down quickly.

The only potato salad I can reasonably handle is German. This is because it has bacon and isn't creamy. I like tart, vinegary and smoky things (like BBQ) so this potato salad makes more sense to me. I learned how to make it when I worked at the hotel where I used to make chicken club sandwiches for Elton John. We served it cold, although I know some German Potato Salad is supposed to be hot. I wish that I could provide you a recipe. Once I longed to have a food blog where I posted original recipes, but quickly I realized that this just isn't possible for me because I don't use recipes when I cook. I just throw stuff together and adjust the ingredients until I get it how I like. I can give you a rough idea of how it's made and if you're industrious you can probably work it out for yourself.

How I Make Potato Salad (but not a recipe)

Take some red, new potatoes and boil them whole until they are slightly tender. You can't overcook them or you'll have a smushy mess. Potato salad MUST NOT BE A SMUSHY MESS. I feel so strongly about this. Cool the potatoes and slice them into rounds or wedges. Let them keep cooling. Then cut up a bunch of bacon into little cubes and saute it. Once it renders some fat, throw in some diced red onion and saute that until the bacon is cooked and the onion is soft. Then throw in some red wine vinegar. This will burn your nose. Stir it around and dissolve all the brown pieces of bacon that stuck on the bottom of the pan. Then sprinkle in some brown sugar and stir that up. You're going for a balance of sweet and sour here. Take this off the stove and let it cool. In a separate bowl mix up some mayo, a pinch of celery seed (do not go crazy with it), grainy mustard and pepper. Whisk it all up until it's smooth. Put the potatoes in another bowl with some minced celery. Pour the bacon vinegar mixture into the mayo mixture and whisk it up. Taste it and see if its how you like. You might want to add more vinegar or sugar to get the balance right. See if it needs salt. It might. Once you get the dressing tasting good, pour it over the potatoes and celery. Then, very gently, with your clean hands, fold the dressing into the potatoes. Do not be rough with this or, again, you will end up with a smushy mess. You want to keep the potatoes in tact. Now you can serve this at room temperature or chill it. Sometimes when it gets cold it tends to stiffen up a little. If it does you can add a little water or vinegar to loosen it up before serving. This isn't supposed to be very creamy though. Don't be ridiculous with the mayo. Once I get off my lazy ass and make mine I'll take a picture so you can see how it looks. I can tell you right now that it looks good. This potato salad is not disgusting. This is not a nasty-assed recipe.

This recipe, however, is. Feeling brave, I decided to do a search on the ever reliable nasty-assed recipe archive that is Cooks.com, for Fourth of July recipes. I think I may have found a winner with this recipe for something called Copper Pennies. It doesn't even sound good. I remember sucking on pennies as a child. Why I did this I don't know. It's a miracle no one ever had to call an ambulance over me swallowing one. I also used to pick scabs and lick the blood and I remember thinking the blood and pennies tasted the same. In this recipe one makes a dressing with a base of cold, canned tomato soup and then pours it over cold, cooked carrots and raw green peppers. This is not ok. Recipes involving cans of tomato soup are never a good sign. Tomato soup reminds me of this date I once had with a guy from Indiana.

My friend and I had met this guys out at a club and had gone to Denny's with them at three in the morning. One of the guys, named Marc with a C, asked me out and I said I'd have dinner with him. I chose a Jamaican restaurant. Marc with a C was not about the Jamaican food. It was too spicy and exotic. He ordered his meal without this and substitute that and put this on the side. Then he made a big fuss about how strange this Jamaican food was. I don't think there's anything exotic in the slightest about Jamaican food. Some of it is spicy hot, but that does not exotic make. I asked Marc with a C what his favorite food was. He said he liked his Mom's Indiana home cooking. I asked which dish.

"Tomato soup, hamburger and rice," he said.

"Which one is your favorite?"

"No, that's one dish."

"How do you make it?"

"You take tomato soup and mix it with some cooked hamburger meat and then you make some Minute Rice and put that in too."

"Is it soup?" I asked.

"No, it's thick. You eat it with a fork."

"Is there anything else in it," I asked, thinking maybe some spices, onions, peppers? Flavor?

"You can put some salt."

Needless to say, Marc with a C and I did not have a second date. He would never have approved of all that hot sauce I keep in my fridge.

But here is the Fourth of July Nasty Assed Recipe 2009 Winner: Fourth of July Copper Pennies.

I did some more research on this recipe, desperately wanting a picture and found a blogger brave enough to actually make it and photograph it. This person used red peppers, which seems to be an improvement over green and the picture of it did not look as gross as I would have imagined. Still though, a can of tomato soup?

What nasty-assed recipes are on your BBQ menus this year?

Acupuncture Update

2009-07-02T14:18:00.002-04:00

Well, I am back from my acupuncture appointment and feeling quite one with the universe here. It was different from what I expected. I found it to hurt a little more than people say it does, but nothing major and nothing I couldn't handle by any means and I felt so so so much better afterwards that I would say a little pinprick is worth it.

I am going to the acupuncturist for relief of the symptoms caused by my autoimmune issues, one of which is bothering me particularly lately. I am also going because my health causes me enormous anxiety and fear which interferes with my daily functioning and creates a vicious cycle where I worry about my health, then because I am worrying I have more symptoms and then I worry more and I can't get out of it. The constant anxiety hurts my spirit and makes me act in ways that just aren't who I am or want to be.

According to the acupunturist, I am blaming myself for my health too much. I am also starving myself and all of my anxiety is caused by my physical problems not the other way around. In other words, I'm not really doing this to myself and I'm not responsible for what ails me. That made me feel a lot better and less guilty. He also said that I am "All About the Liver." Hmmm.

Then I layed on a nice soft table and he stuck needles on the insides of my fingers, my left elbow, both of my feet and somewhere in the middle of my right arm. You can definitely feel the needles going in. It's less than the pain of a shot, so it's no big deal, but you can feel the needles. Once they've been in for a while you can't feel them until they move them. I sat still for a while and he came back and twisted and twirled the needles until it felt like electric shocks were traveling up and down my body, which was not without pain, but also not unpleasant either. My left arm began to ache mildly as well. But then I noticed an absence of the constant annoying mental chatter that torments even in my sleep. It just went away. I stopped worrying. I began to admire a spot on the ceiling. I imagined a big hole cut in the crown of my head (which is what I do when I compose poetry by the way) and a wave of white light rushing in (also what I do when I write poems) and I just felt like everything was going to be ok for once. I felt like I could be in the present instead of my usual five steps ahead of the present because oh my god something terrible might happen five minutes from now and I have to be prepared for it and save everyone from it. And I just felt calm and peaceful in a way that I honestly never have, never once. I have been crying all day long in relief. I know that sounds crazy, but it's true. I'm just relieved and to feel that after never feeling it, is really something.

After I left I cried because I felt so happy and the Royal Poinciana tree looked so pretty and Canela was so soft and I could feel her entire soft body ripple with vibrations when I picked her up and I wasn't thinking about my husband getting into a car accident or the mail getting wet in the storm or fifty things I need to do by tomorrow or how I may have forgotten a deadline. It was all gone. All that nonsense was gone.

So this worked for me. If this is just a placebo I don't care. I feel better.

Just Humor Me

2009-07-02T09:43:00.003-04:00

So today promises to be interesting. Right now I'm about to go take a shower so that in a half an hour I can leave to go to my first acupuncture appointment. Here is how I justify the whole thing. Regular doctors haven't been able to do much. I don't mind having needles stuck in me and I like the guys voice. A couple years ago my mother went to him for one session because she wanted to stop smoking. She didn't stick with it because she felt it wasn't the best time for her to stop smoking. I have no idea why that was. But anyway, she made me go with her to her one acupuncture to keep smoking session and I thought it looked fun. Yes, you heard me. It looked fun. Also, Gwyneth Paltrow does it and, as you may recall from last summer's drastic haircut, I will do anything that Gwyneth Paltrow does, within reason. I even like the name Apple. So I called the guy yesterday and made the appointment and he explained that he could hear the pain in my voice. I almost burst into tears. He probably says that to everyone. I bet it's his acupuncturist pick-up line. But still, it worked on me. He could hear the pain in my voice. Clearly the chi flow is dammed up somewhere in my body (knowing me it's in my colon) and needs to be fixed. I figure, if it's stupid or it doesn't work at least I'll have something to write about, right?

Anyway, while I'm at the acupuncturist feeling all Gwynethy, please, please, go to Just Humor Me and read the entire page. I went to just read one post and ended up cracking up and scrolling ever downward, laughing more and more and more. I almost peed on myself when I read the post about the different colored ribbons for different causes. Someone needs to publish that post. Not far behind was the post about fortune cookie fortunes that aren't fortunes. I haven't laughed that hard in forever. And she lives in South Florida!! I had no idea. I have to meet this woman. We need to have lunch, for real.

2009-07-01T12:37:00.000-04:00

My First Job - Part 3

2009-07-01T11:27:00.002-04:00

Working was crap. I learned that very quickly. Every evening and every Saturday afternoon when I went to the ice cream shop I thought of a million other things I'd rather be doing. It was no wonder my parents and pretty much everyone else I grew up around, eschewed traditional employment. It just plain sucked working for someone else, especially when the someone else was a racist who never got over Vietnam, who was convinced that you were "on marijuana."

"You're on the marijuana, I can tell," he'd say at least three times per shift, as he sat at one of the white tables banging his cane against the checkered floor.

"I tried it once. In 'Nam. The blacks liked it. I didn't know any better, gave it a try. Never been so sick in my life. Threw up. It's evil - the marijuana, and you'd better learn to stay away from it."

By then, I'd given up trying to convince him that I wasn't smoking pot and never had.

Luckily, I didn't have to work with the owner (whose name I can't remember to save my life) every shift. He wasn't always there. Sometimes I shared a shift with a girl named Kayla, who was mixed race. This always bothered me because I wondered why such a bigot would hire a girl who was obviously part black. I wondered if he'd given his speech about "The Blacks" to her and how that made her feel. I hoped he hadn't.

Kayla hated the owner. She hated everything. Just like me. She was fun to work with because we'd sneak spoonfuls of ice cream and break cones on purpose and then eat them, but every time we did it, I'd become consumed with guilt and paranoia and swear the owner would know, like he had hidden cameras set up to see if we were eating the ice cream or not. If he caught us, he'd probably blame it on that grass we were smoking. Grass makes you hungry you know.

It was with Kayla that I discovered pumpkin ice cream. It arrived in October, just in time for Fall. But I'll come back to that.

The ice cream Shoppe advertised "homemade" ice cream. When I first started I'd assumed that they made the ice cream there. Isn't that what homemade meant? Apparently, it wasn't and this practically destroyed my entire worldview. It meant I couldn't trust advertising anymore.

The ice cream was made in a factory nearby.

"They make it homemade," the owner explained when I asked how the ice cream could be called homemade if it arrived on a tractor trailer in big plastic tubs.

Homemade ice cream from a factory.

That said, it was good ice cream. The owner may have been a complete asshole, but he did choose a decent ice cream supplier and he ordered good flavors. I really hated scooping it though.

At every job I have ever had (and Lord knows there have been many) there is always some task, some aspect of the job that I have hated beyond everything else. The one thing I hate about teaching is grading over 40 Freshman Composition papers at a time. At my last job I hated keeping track of code violations (so I didn't and ended up getting in trouble over it). At the pottery studio, I hated unloading cases of bisque (the dry, rough pottery made my skin crawl) and at the Bubblegum Kittikat I hated adding up the thousands of dollars I'd charged on men's credit cards in exchange for "Bubble Bucks" (which is fake strip club money) at four in the morning when I just wanted to get away from drunk, naked women. At the ice cream shop, the very first thing I ever hated in a job, was scooping ice cream. It was cold and sticky. The ice cream scoop sat in a little tray of grey water. It had a drain and a little faucet, so that the water was supposed to be constantly fresh, but it never looked like it was to me. It was gross. The ice cream was too hard and the case was so deep that I practically had to crawl inside of it to reach the tubs of ice cream. I didn't have the strength to pack the scoops into the scooper and I'd just scrape and scrape at the sides of the tubs trying to get something as customers grew impatient. I used to wish I had an icepick. Why didn't they keep the ice cream softer, I wondered. It was horrible. And just as bad was when the metal rim of the ice cream containers touched the backs of my arms. It was so sharp and cold it burned. I didn't mind filling the toppings, restocking, even mopping the floor, but I despised scooping ice cream.

I hadn't even been there two weeks when it went from bad to worse. The owner had ordered some newfangled machine that turned packed ice cream into soft serve. The way this idiotic contraption worked was that you scooped whatever flavors of hard ice cream into the top of it. Then you could add whichever combination of toppings you wanted on top of that. Then you pulled down on a lever which pressed the icecream and the toppings down into some sort of chute, smashed it flat and then extruded it, soft serve like, out of a tube and into a waiting dish or cone. It was awful. The machine made its operator do all the work and pushing that lever down required the strength of an Olympic weight lifter. It also required the use of both arms in my case, and still I'd pretty much be hanging off the machine, my feet dangling five inches off the floor, as I tried to use all one hundred and ten pounds of my body weight (God I wish I weighed that now) to get that stupid ice cream to come out of that tube. The problem was, you were supposed to use one arm to pull the lever down and one arm to hold the cone or cup steady under the dispenser. All of this required a level of strength and coordination that I just didn't have (and probably still don't).

This confounded machine. After it arrived, the owner got a new sign made for the front door that advertised some insane, ungodly number of ice cream flavors. I can't remember the exact number, but it was just ridiculous and the sign went something like this:

"NOW AVAILABLE 15,337 FLAVORS OF ICE CREAM!!!!!"

"We don't have fifteen thousand ice cream flavors," I said to the owner, "We just have twenty, like always."

"You are wrong, young lady."

The owner decided that because of this new machine, the combinations of flavors and toppings that could possibly result were probably well over fifteen thousand. He said he'd actually sat down and come up with a complex mathematical formula based on number of ice cream "bases" plus the number of toppings and come up with the number of possible combinations of bases and toppings which, if put through the machine, would result in new "flavors." To me, this was just some BS. They weren't really flavors. They were possibilities of things you could smash together. Again, false advertising. It annoyed me to no end. But every two weeks I was making sixty three dollars!!

And I was sneaking pumpkin ice cream.

Once I had that pumpkin ice cream it was all over for me. I could think of nothing else. Whenever I worked with Kayla the first thing I did was eat at least two scoops of it. Whenever I worked with the owner, I obsessed over the pumpkin ice cream. I'd look at it and try to plan ways to sneak just a tiny lick of it when he wasn't looking, but I never had the nerve. I'd mop the floor and refill the strawberry topping, scrub caramel off the counters and think of pumpkin ice cream. It was like being in love with a married man who has no interest in an affair.

That pumpkin ice cream was special. Basically I think all it was, was pumpkin pie filling folded into a vanilla base. It was orange and speckled with spices. It tasted like a cold Thanksgiving, heavy on the cinnamon and there was no other ice cream anywhere else like it. They didn't sell pumpkin ice cream in the grocery store, and twenty years later they still don't. It was rare and unusual. Since I was a child I have always loved the things that were the hardest to find. It's as if what I truly love is longing and I loved longing for the pumpkin ice cream.

But the job was getting more and more miserable. Kayla quit, so there was never any possibility for fun anymore. The owner was still convinced that I was stoned and he began to nag and criticize me more than ever. I was too slow. I was too weak to scoop and operate the soft serve 15,000 flavor machine. Finally, he told me it wasn't working out.

"You weren't meant for ice cream," he said, "Takes a lot of strength. Ice cream is man's work. You're too little."

He'd hired a pair of brothers, boys from his church. They were on the wrestling team, and really, I was relieved to be let go. I hadn't been there long and hadn't made that much money, but I had bought some tapes and I did get that book on love spells along with the ballet slippers that made my feet ache when I wore them to school. It hadn't been all for naught and maybe I just wasn't meant to work for other people. I came from a long line of entrepreneurs, which I liked.

It was a year before I got another job. My second job was a lot better. I conducted telephone surveys for a marketing research company. There was no pumpkin ice cream there though and I have never found it again, at least not one that compares to my first, but every Fall I keep looking and hoping.

My First Job - Part 2

2009-06-27T10:33:00.003-04:00

I knew I was going to get this job. How could they not hire me, come on? High school girls with fresh spiral perms were practically bred to work in squeaky clean ice cream shoppes. As soon as I got home, I fantasized about my new job as I unpacked my bedroom. I planned all the things I was going to buy with my future paychecks. Number one - I wanted to buy every single Smiths tape there was. I wanted to have the whole collection and I would stack them up next to my tape player in chronological order. Two - I wanted a black turtleneck from Gap, yes even though I lived in Florida now where the heat was already pretty much unbearable, but still. Then I wanted a book about love spells because I wanted to be a witch and cast love spells on my boyfriend back in New York which would make him never, ever leave me ever. I also wanted some ballet slippers. Real ones. I wanted to start a trend where it would be cool to wear ballet slippers as actual shoes. (Now, I did actually do this, however the trend didn't catch on, people would not stop asking me if I was a dancer, which I was not, and let me just tell you, there are hard balls in the toes of ballet shoes that kill if you try to spend an entire day walking around in them, so this was a terrible idea.)

My parents were very proud that I had taken the initiative to work and they were happy to take me back to the ice cream shoppe with my filled out application.

The owner wasn't old, but he walked with a cane. It wasn't a charming wooden cane. It looked like it came from a medical supply store and was metal and grey rubber, all right angles. Something about it reminded me of when people have hooks instead of hands. The owner wore army pants and a black tee shirt that said POW MIA and had a flag on it. I had no idea what that meant. He drove a pick-up truck, which was parked in front of the store and the truck had the same stickers along with a huge American flag painted on the back window. I was used to this sort of thing though. I'd seen plenty of it in Millpond.

"You never worked before?" he asked.

"No!" I said perkily on purpose, "This is going to be my very first job ever!"

"You smoke marijuana?"

"No, of course not!"

"You sure? Because I don't put up with drug users."

"No way."

This was true of course. I had never even seen drugs before. I would in a couple of months, but at this point, I was still very innocent.

"Ok, go in the back, take an apron off the hook, put it on and you can start."

He told my dad to come pick me up at 10:30.

"Don't you close at ten?" I asked.

"There's clean-up."

I wondered what clean-up was.

He showed me where everything was: extra cones, huge cans of pineapple and strawberry topping, boxes of pre-crushed cookies, malt balls and gallon containers of hot fudge. There was a special way to stack waffle cones. You couldn't drip the hot caramel or it would get sticky and be a god damned bitch and a half to clean up. If people wanted more than one topping on a small they had to pay for a large. Most people'd want cones and you had to learn to pack the scoop into the cones without breaking them. Broken cones had to be logged and accounted for on a special chart. More than three broken cones per pay period would result in docked pay per broken cone. Cones are expensive. You just can't go around acting like they grow on trees. These things cost money and cost profits. Now, the customers would try to see what they could get away with. Customers, the owner explained to me, were out to rip you off and you had to be sharp. They'd be asking for water, but cups are thirty five cents a piece wholesale, so you had to direct people to the water fountain outside the Xtra if they wanted a free drink. Never give anything away for free, he told me. Because that's what people want, especially all these New Yorkers moving down here. They just wanted something for free and he wasn't some kind of chump. They weren't going to take advantage of him.

I figured I could manage. I was a bit horrified. I certainly hadn't pictured the owner of this lovely little ice cream store to be a redneck, but I could deal. I mean, think of it, ALL the Smiths tapes in a perfect row gleaming in their little plastic cases. I especially loved when the tape inserts unfolded like an accordion with all the lyrics printed like microscopic poems.

The one thing that really shocked me was the most important rule of all.

"Rulo Numero Uno, aside from the no marijuana, NEVER EAT THE ICE CREAM. I catch you sneaking bites of my ice cream you will be fired on the spot."

This to me, was absurd. Wasn't the whole point of working in an ice cream shopPE to be able to have as much free ice cream as you could hold? How could someone be expected to work around ice cream without actually eating any of it, ever? That was ridiculous. But, ok. I was making a whole $3.35 cents an hour. For that, I could resist the temptation. If I worked a hundred hours I would have $335.00. And that was a lot of money.

"Another rule I have is The Blacks. I don't care who comes in here to enjoy a frozen dessert, now. I'm not a racist. I fought alongside of plenty of blacks in Vietnam and didn't think nothing of it. If people want to come in here and spend their money and have a good time, I'm fine with it. But I don't want trouble and these Blacks'll try to come in here and raise hell in my shoppe and I'll not put up with it. I don't want them in here acting like a bunch of gorillas in my place of business, so if that happens, you throw 'em right out. You call the police. If I'm not here, you call me and I'll see to it they leave. This is a family establishment."

Was I actually hearing this? Did he actually say gorillas?

"Something else is the Spanish. This place is full of the Spanish and I got another rule. My shop is in the U. S. of A. We speak English here. So if you come in here and try to order in some other kind of language, you're outta here baby. You're in America, learn the GD language. I mean, if you or I moved to Mexico, we'd learn Spanish wouldn't we? I mean, come on. I don't put up with it. I don't sell El Ico Creamo. I sell ice cream! American ice cream."

By this point my stomach was cramping.

I had worked for less than an hour, and already I wanted to quit. All this and we hadn't even gotten to "clean-up" yet.

To be continued...

Wet Nuts

2009-06-26T10:45:00.003-04:00

The term "wet nuts" has caused some readers a bit of horror, so I decided to clarify. I agree it is definitely gross sounding and I've never really been a fan. I prefer the alternative "dry nuts." Maybe this is a Millpond thing. Maybe this is a Southern thing. I don't know. Wet nuts are walnuts in syrup (yuck) and dry nuts are chopped peanuts. Dry nuts are far superior. My mother is a wet nut lover. Oh my God, that sounds terrible. I can only imagine the Google searches that will appear on my site meter from that phrase. I wanted to show you a picture and I really dreaded the results when I searched Google Images, but luckily I didn't come up with anything that would have burned my innocent eyeballs. Picture courtesy of roadfood.com.

My First Job

2009-06-24T18:20:00.003-04:00

It was the case that did it - the double rows of pastel filled buckets under spotless glass. It was the shiny glop of hot fudge in its special warmer, the ten different toppings, including smashed Oreos and Reeses cups. I loved the aqua and hot pink neon flashing in the windows, the red vinyl stools at the counter and the black and white checkered floor. I had to work in an ice cream shop (spelled "shoppe", because the extra p and e made it sound old fashioned and therefore better).

It was August of 1989. I was fifteen and we had just moved to South Florida from the quaint Riverbank, New York where I had recently found my first love, believing him to be my soul mate, believing absolutely that we would get married and soon and live together forever listening to The Cure, decorating our house with quartz crystals and keeping as many kittens as we wanted. When my father came home, suddenly one afternoon and announced that we were moving - the next week - I was understandably a little devastated. But true love conquers all. Right? I think? So it would still be ok?

No stranger to moving by then, I didn't throw a fit or weep uncontrollably. I was sad and disappointed, but in some ways I knew a move would be good. For one thing, I'd just gotten expelled from a fancy private school that served its students brown rice and tofu burritos for lunch. I spent most of that summer stuck in a special summer program for kids with "issues" and that school was an hour and a half drive away in New Jersey. My parents were sending me there in the Fall. Had we never moved, I would have been classmates with Tara Reid. I didn't particularly want to go to this school. I liked the summer thing for screwed up kids ok, but I didn't want to wake up every day of eleventh grade at five in the morning to get to a school further away than the Paramus Mall, just to spend the day with kids who were more fucked up than I was. New York Public School wasn't an option. We'd already tried that and I'd come home in tears each day after getting slammed against the lockers by a burly girl named Stephanie whose family owned a pizza place known for its square Sicilian slices. I wasn't exactly popular in the Riverbank school system. At the end of my only year in public school there, the guidance counselor suggested to my parents that a smaller private school would probably work better for me. Except it hadn't.

But no one knew me in Florida. I hadn't screwed up everything there. Not a soul knew me in Florida. I could be anyone. I could transform my life, my image, my everything. No one would know I went to summer school or got expelled or had already been to four other high schools. I could make a change in Florida. Maybe I could be popular. Maybe, finally, I'd be able to keep my papers organized and remember to complete my homework, study for tests even. Moving would be a good thing. I wanted to go to a big public high school with pep rallies and bonfires before football games. Maybe I'd join a club. Maybe I'd be on Yearbook. There'd be homecomings and prom. I could do this. It was a new start, not just for my parents who'd just lost everything in an advance fee scam, but for me too. We all needed it.

We moved to a housing development in Coral Springs, where all the homes looked alike and were laid out in a large grid; squares on squares in squares all framed by one big square.

"Where's the town?" I asked, as we unpacked boxes.

"This is it," my mother said.

"No, I mean the down town, the Main street."

"There isn't one."

I've never been able to wrap my brain around this, even twenty years later. Coral Springs, my new home, and all of South Florida really, is just a big sprawl of seemingly arbitrarily named "towns" that overlap, oozing housing developments, strip malls, plazas, Publixes, big boxes and condo communities further and further south until you hit Key Largo and the nonsense finally ends. There are no Main Streets here. You can't tell where Coral Springs ends and Parkland, Margate or Coconut Creek begins. There are no places where you can just park your car and walk around town like there were in New York or in Millpond or everywhere else I'd ever lived. In South Florida you just drove from one strip mall to the next and all the houses hid behind high, concrete walls and gates, their barrel tiled roofs and screened-in pool covers peeking over, suggesting that inside there were people here, but not people who wanted to know you. It was so strange this place. So different, this South Florida.

But a couple miles from my house, in another strip mall next to a long gone pasture, where after a good rain hippies ran to harvest 'shrooms from cow patties, next to a warehouse grocery store called Xtra, there was a perfect ice cream shop (or shoppe rather) and my parents took me there on our second night in our new house.

"Help Wanted" hung on the glass front doors and then it occurred to me. Maybe here, in my new life, I could get a job. A real job.

"Am I old enough to work?" I asked my mother.

"Yes," she said.

"Can I work here?"

"Sure, ask if you can apply," she said, licking pineapple topping and whipped cream from her spoon, "And ask if I can have some more wet nuts on the side."

A job. Wow. All at once I felt extremely old and worldly. I could get a job. I was delirious imagining all the possibilities. I would have money and it would be my own and I could do whatever I wanted with it. I wouldn't have to beg my parents for cash to see a movie. I could buy as many tapes as I wanted. I could get clothes from the Limited Express, art supplies and blank notebooks to write stories in. I wanted colored pencils and the new Pixies. And think of how cool I would be in my new school when I could tell people to come see me at work. I could give my friends free scoops. I would be around ice cream all the time! But best of all, I could buy plane tickets back to New York to reunite with my true love. I could buy him tickets to come see me and we could make it work long distance. This had to happen. I had to get this job. I had to.

I asked the girl behind the counter if I could apply for a job. She handed me an application along with the side of wet nuts.

"It's 35 cents for the nuts. Fill that out and bring it back Wednesday after 6. That's when the owner's here."

To be continued...

Toblerone

2009-06-23T09:32:00.004-04:00

My cousin Stu got home from Amsterdam (most of Western Europe actually) Sunday night and I was kind of pissed he didn't even bring me back a Toblerone. Now, I don't actually enjoy Toblerones at all, but they are the gift from Europe that you can get someone at the last possible second before boarding the plane back home, they're cheap and they require no effort whatsoever. It would have at least been something. But no. I got nothing from Stu. I predicted this would happen over a week ago.

I love my cousin Stu, I really do. I'm sure I've mentioned him on here before, though not in great detail. Our grandmothers are sisters. We grew up together back in Millpond and our birthdays are exactly one month apart. I'm older. I used that to my advantage when we were kids playing in my grandparents' pool. I guess it's not surprising that I was a bossy little kid. As Stu and I grew up we drifted apart. It was no fault of our own, just the result of both of us having chaotic families. He never knew his dad, had a few stepfathers, a usually single mom who worked all the time and drank when she was off. She'd been wild in her youth apparently, and loved Elvis. One of my first memories is of her talking about Elvis. She hung a velvet portrait of The King in her bedroom without a shred of irony. Another memory I have is when Elvis died. She was at our house crying. Aunt Janey and Mommom Jewel were drinking coffee and it was on the news. But that was Stu's life and you already know about mine.

When I moved back to Florida in 2000, Mommom Jewell told me that Stu lived down here too and gave me his phone number.

"You oughta get up with him," she said.

I did and so did Bella, who also lived here. Being younger, she always had a crush on her older cousin Stu when we were little. Back then he had this crazy girlfriend named Nettie who was out of her mind, but in a charming way that cracked everyone up. You could be having a perfectly normal conversation with her and all of a sudden she'd lose it, right in the middle of whatever you'd be talking about and burst out with something like: "Dogs are so cool! Right on. DOGS! Yeah! Dogs Rock. Girl Power! Grrr! WOOOOOT!!" It was very strange. It happened all the time.

When I first saw Stu after probably twenty something years, I couldn't believe how much we looked alike and how nice he was. We have the same distinctive nose which runs (disturbingly) on BOTH sides of my family. I think some of the families in the Millpond area got a little inbred through centuries of isolation. Stu took after the Irish more and with his dark, auburn hair he got bright blue eyes. I look a little more french and have dark eyes. Yes, I look like Anne Hathaway as an adult, as many of you pointed out from the eighth grade picture. She would definitely play me in the movie of my life, but I'm not as tall and skinny as she is. Stu and I have the same slouchy posture, the same Irish tendencies toward melancholy and music and the same artistic temperament that makes us easily bored, easily miserable and always wanting to wander.

For a little while I sold some of my mosaics in a local folk art gallery where I also worked for a short time. I couldn't believe the coincidence when I saw that they were also selling some of Stu's glass. Stu used to blow glass and he made some beautiful pieces, but he hasn't done that in a long time. I really wish he would get back into it.

For all our similarities, Stu and I have some distinct differences. For one, I grew up. I like structure and organization. I am able to channel my creative urges, my moodiness and my short attention span towards productive activities. Mainly though, Jam Bands don't do it for me. Jam Bands are Stu's whole reason for existing on this planet. My cousin is addicted to Jam Band shows.

I love and appreciate all kinds of music. My dad instilled this quality in me from the time I was very young and while I don't listen to Jam Bands, I know that these bands are filled with incredible musicians. I'm sorry though, I just can't do it. Years ago Stu took me to a show with him and except for the fantastic people watching, I almost fell asleep. I think they played one song for the entire show and everyone there was really getting into it, shaking their heads back and forth, air drumming, eyes closed, faces uplifted as if in prayer while I was standing there like "are they ever going to get on with this and start singing or maybe play something different?"

Stu lives to go to shows. He travels all over, follows bands, keeps track of how many Widespread shows he's been to and compares notes with other people he meets. He knows how they haven't played a certain song since Akron '92 and he was there and he wants to be there when they play it again because it will be so awesome and dude, how could you miss that? He goes to festivals, camps out, gets muddy and dances in circles. He gushes about how they played Cosmic Monkey Acid Storm from Mars for forty five minutes straight and then went right into Rainbow Sunrise Galaxy WITHOUT EVEN STOPPING MAN and then how they played that for a half hour before they even got to the words and you know that part in the beginning where they go OOOOHHHHH, well this time they went AAAHHHH and it was so fucking cool and then they teased Chrysanthemum Black Hole Rabbit Winder because they haven't played it since Halloween '98 when they were at Red Rocks, but then they didn't really play it. Dude. For real. You should have been there.

Stu loves Jam shows so much that he works solely to make the money to go to them. If he can't get time off, he just quits, goes to the show and gets another job when he gets back to get him through until the next show. He does electrical work. He's been a cable guy, installed alarms, been an electrician, done construction and been a handyman. Last year he installed sprinklers at my school and I used to see him around, but then he had to go to the New Year's Eve show and well, you know how it goes. I don't know what he's doing now.

It should come as no surprise that my cousin Stu is a huge stoner. That's why it was no surprise when he called me up last week with the news that, dude, he was so psyched. He was going to fucking Amsterdam. I was actually surprised that he hadn't gone sooner. It's like Mecca for his kind. As soon as he told me I decided to say my last goodbyes because I knew as soon as Stu got there he'd never want to come back. Years from now Stu would be hackey-sacking on a Dutch street corner, begging for enough Euros to pack a bowl with some hash. And he'd be damn happy. He's cute, so he'd probably get some older Russian prostitute to take care of him and cook him borscht and they'd be like something out of a Tom Robbins novel. This is what I imagined.

Stu wanted me to drive him to the airport. He wanted to leave his car at my apartment. I agreed.

On Thursday morning Stu called me and said he'd be at my place at 9:30 am. He got there an hour later, which was not my problem. I go outside and open the trunk of my car for him to put his suitcase in it and go back inside. Fifteen minutes later Stu is still rooting around in the trunk of his own car. I go outside to see what he's doing. Turns out, Stu is packing. The trunk of his car is overflowing with wrinkled laundry which may or may not have been clean. I couldn't tell. He was stuffing things into a bag and trying to fit a towel in on top of it all. He didn't want to check anything in. I asked what the towel was for and he said the Youth Hostel.

"Um, Stu man, a lot of those places you have to be under 26. You are ten years older than that."

"No way," he said. I think he was shocked at his own age, not the age limit in hostels.

I then realized that Stu was having fantasies about backpacking around Europe, Lonely Planet 1992 style. A lot of my friends did this when they were in college. I never got to and it used to make me sad. All of my friends were rich, trust funders whose parents paid for their trips and all of them were looking for "authentic" experiences. When they got back they'd compare who got sicker, dirtier and in more trouble with foreign police. I used to listen in awe at these stories and feel sorry for myself for being stuck in a hotel kitchen plating 250 mesclun salads in Banquet while my Ivy League friends hassled with Czech police and slept in a potato fields until the Polish farmer chased them away. I remember a lot of my friends returned with accents and tastes for Belgian beers.

Ultimately Stu decided to leave the towel. I convinced him that they had towels there. Then I drove him to Miami and thought I was done with it.

"If he misses his flight," I said, "he can figure it out."

Stu called me three hours later from his layover in DC. He was flipping out. He had forgotten his and his friend's Eurrail passes (he was meeting his friend who was already there). They were over a thousand dollars. He didn't know what to do. He had left them in the car and wanted me to overnight them to Amsterdam. After much confusion and many phone calls it was established that there is no over night to Europe. It would take at least three days. He didn't know where he would be in three days. I said for him to go to an Internet cafe and email me when he got his shit together and figured it out.

In the meantime, I searched his car for the train passes, which I found along with an envelope of three hundred dollars cash. I waited for the email which didn't come.

Finally, the next night, Stu calls me and says he has arranged to pick up the tickets in Paris. He gives me an address. I ask him if he's missing money.

"DUDE. OH MY GOD. I was looking everywhere for that. I thought it was stolen!!"

I told him I'd use it for the shipping and give him the change when he got back.

Somehow I managed to send the train tickets to Paris. I was highly aggravated by this time. I don't hear from Stu again. No email. No thank you. No nothing. It was at this point that I realized I was not getting a Toblerone. European chocolate was not in my future.

Sunday Stu called me from his layover in DC again to see if I could pick him up in Miami at ten that night. I told him I was too busy and that Husband had a business trip in the morning that he had to be up for at 5 am, which was true. Stu got his buddy to pick him up in Miami to drive him up to my place to pick up his beater-ass car.

They arrive at around eleven and I am in my pajamas. I give Stu his car keys and money and he gives me a hug, says he had an awesome freaking time in Europe and rushes off. Not only is there no Toblerone for me. There is no thank you at all. I am now pissed.

I lock the door and go back to bed where Husband and I attempt some mild romance before hearing noise outside our bedroom window which faces the parking lot. We look out the window and Stu and his friend are digging through his car.

"Oh no, don't tell me the car won't start," Husband says.

"No, I bet he's getting out my chocolate! Maybe he just forgot."

We were both wrong. They were getting out their hidden stash of weed. Then they were smoking it, out in the open, in the parking lot of my building!! Now I was really pissed. All I need is for the condo commandos to jump all over this. My cousin is such an idiot, I thought. But maybe they'd leave soon. Maybe they just needed one hit and then they'd be on their way. A half hour later they were still out there. All hopes of romance were ruined for me. Finally they left.

I still haven't heard from Stu.

Overheard in the Mall - Limpie el Piso

2009-06-19T10:31:00.002-04:00

The other day I was at the mall with my friend Emma (that's where we encountered the Anthropologie window display). We were at the fancy mall which has a Bulgari store, a Louis Vuitton and a Kate Spade store and had gone there for lunch. After lunch we had time to kill so we decided to walk off lunch and window shop. We rounded the corner past the Rosetta Stone kiosk which was piled high with yellow boxed sets of cds promising to help even you learn a new language with just a few easy clicks. Two well-dressed, affluent white women were having a conversation.

Woman 1 - I've always wanted to get that and learn a new language, like french or Chinese or something.

Woman 2 - Oh my God, I know. It's great. I have the Spanish one.

Woman 1 - You do? Really? I had no idea.

Woman 2 - Yes! It's fun, like a game.

Woman 1 - Yes, but does it really work? I mean, they make a lot of promises.

Woman 2 - It totally works! I can talk to the maid now!

Bless My Heart

2009-06-18T14:09:00.002-04:00

One of my summer projects is to scan in the few old family photos that I have. There aren't many because often we couldn't afford a camera, film or developing. The few pictures we did have, we had a problem keeping track of. We weren't exactly the most organized family and we moved a bit more than average so things like pictures were often hard to keep track of. Still, we did manage to hold on to some pictures and I've been generously lent photos of us taken by other family members for the scanning project. Last night I came across this gem. This is one of only two known pictures in existence of the mullet. What's really sad is that this picture was taken a full year after the initial mullet disaster. THIS IS HOW IT LOOKED AFTER IT HAD A WHOLE YEAR TO GROW OUT! The mullet happened in the Fall of my seventh grade year and this is in fact my eighth grade school picture, taken in early October just before the Mets won the World Series. I was not a pretty girl. It is no wonder that boys didn't like me and the other children laughed at me. Bless my heart, I really wasn't cute at all. The sad thing is that haircut isn't the only awful looking thing about me. Note the big chin zit, the awkward, closed mouth smirk hiding a mouth of braces and rubberbands, the strawberry Swatch from the year before which already wasn't cool anymore that year and the oversized, light denim shirt. I was wearing that shirt over a prairie skirt - the kind with the light denim bottom and a dark denim top. Even worse is the large, pale blue satin bow barrette holding back half of the mullet. And the saddest thing about this picture is that I distinctly remember knowing that I looked ridiculous when the picture was being taken, knowing that I looked ugly and knowing that everyone else thought so too. But I can laugh about it now and I don't mind if you do either. I remember once running across a web site where people sent in dreadful old photographs of themselves or family members, most of the pictures were from the 70s and 80s and Olan Mills types of portraits. It was hilarious. Now I can't remember what it was called or where I found it or I would absolutely submit this picture, and no it wasn't Awkward Family Photos, although it was similar.

On Sale Now - Used Catheter Bags by Anthropologie

2009-06-17T10:22:00.003-04:00

Dear Anthropologie, I was thrilled beyond all imagination when you opened a store near me. Until just recently, I had to drive a great distance north or south to visit one of your stores, or I had to just wait until I went on vacation to California or big cities. Still, Anthropologie was the store of my dreams; a mix of campy, shabby, luxurious, exotic and things that are extremely expensive but look like once in a lifetime thrift store finds. Your style is the equivalent of a woman who spends hours on her hair and makeup to make herself look as if she isn't wearing a single speck of makeup and has just gotten out of bed with perfectly tousled curls. When I shop in your stores (and I admit that I have only purchased a total of about five things in my entire life and all of them were on clearance) I feel just like Amelie, which is really the ultimate goal of every wanna-be hip, poetic woman who also loves Belle and Sebastian and shops at farmer's markets with wicker baskets. We all want to be Amelie. Ordinarily Anthropologie, I admire your window displays. All of them look like they've been crafted by art students (girls with short bangs and cats eye glasses) who also have their own Etsy stores and I love that, so imagine my absolute horror when I went to visit the new store yesterday and saw the display in the above photograph. I stopped dead in my tracks. Who decided that a window display of used catheter bags, depicting various levels of hydration as evidenced by the range of amber hues, would be a nice way to celebrate the gauzy sundresses and retro-print melamine plates of summer? I really think you need to reconsider this choice, as everyone who walks by is instantly reminded of their grandfathers' prostate surgeries - the ammonia, bleach and iodine smell of the hospitals, the patients yelling in other rooms, and Oh God, the time the full bag somehow disconnected from the plastic tubing and, well...it was awful. Please Anthropologie, I'm begging you to change this window display to something breezier, maybe with papier mache robin redbreasts, because looking at something that looks like it was recently removed from someone's urethra does not make me want to buy the Post Secret book, a Tibetan Temple scented candle or a white dress called "Acres of Indigo."

My New Coffee Maker

2009-06-13T11:19:00.003-04:00

I'm not going to lie to you. I've had a rough and tiring week. It had some great parts, but it also had a lot of aggravation and some wicked PMS which has not yet ended, unfortunately. Anyone know of any good, home remedies for it? But amazingly, the lap top is ok for now and the whole hard drive is backed up just in case. Even more amazingly, and I swear you are never going to believe this, after asking you guys to send me some money energy, I received a hundred dollar check in the mail for a poem I entered in a contest which won honorable mention! How wild is that? I decided to keep my word to the Universe. I said I wanted money to buy a better coffee maker and when the money arrived, I decided to upgrade the plastic cone. For a long time, I've had it in my head that pouring boiling water through plastic may not be a good idea. I dislike plastic. I try to avoid it, although that's impossible. I store my leftovers in glass containers and use waxed paper lunch baggies. At the same time, I really don't want an electric coffee maker that takes up space and is hard to clean and program. My kitchen is tiny after all and I like counter space. I also love the simplicity of the cone method. I love that I can clean it in about ten seconds and that it doesn't take electricity. I wanted a cone brewer that wasn't plastic though and I found it! It even has it's own little pot and the whole thing is porcelain and extremely affordable. I am overjoyed. I purchased it from a site called Sweet Marias and you can find it on this page if you scroll down. It's called the Porceelain #1 Filter Drip Pot Set. I wanted to share this site with you, not because I am getting paid to advertise for them, or for Mozy the other day, but just because I was amazed at the excellent service. Whenever I find something good I want to share it so other people can experience it too and so that good businesses are rewarded. Sweet Marias had good products, great prices and sent my coffee maker an hour after I ordered it. It hasn't arrived yet, but I'll let you know more once it gets here. (But if you were wondering about the whole putting ads on the blog thing, I applied over a month ago and have not yet been approved.) So this is all sincere, free advertising for a company that I was really happy to discover.

My Parents' Coffee Machine

2009-06-10T10:41:00.002-04:00

This is my parents' coffee maker. I have love for this thing. I dream of one day inheriting it, though I'd have no place to put it.

My Coffee Maker

2009-06-10T10:18:00.002-04:00

This is what I use to make coffee. You can buy one here. Or at the grocery store or Trader Joes.

Thank God for Mozy

2009-06-10T10:07:00.003-04:00

Dear readers, please be advised that I am currently in a state of utter panic as this morning, my trusted, dear laptop has passed from this earth. Steps to revive it have been taken, though none have yet proved successful. I am currently writing on my parents' computer, which is in their kitchen and which is not very conducive to extensive writing. I came here because they have a really fancy espresso machine and at a time like this my cone filter thingy that I use to make coffee just wasn't cutting it. Please say a prayer for my laptop, as I can not afford a new one and because I really love it. At the same time, I'd like to make a public service announcement. Mozy is good. Use it. Sign up for it. Do it now. Do the free one. Do the one you have to pay for. No matter what, Mozy is your friend. I want to go give Mozy a lot of hugs and kisses and bake it cupcakes right now. Because of Mozy I can still graduate. That is all. And please send super lap top healing energy or lots of money energy for me so that I can buy a new laptop if need be. Or a fancy coffee maker and fancy coffee to go in it and maybe a new bathing suit as the elastic is falling out of mine and it won't stay on my butt. Thank you.