Feelings for Breakfast!

Please Won't You Be My Neighbor?

2012-01-26T20:02:00.000-07:00

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. That's a lie. It's gray and ugly, and worst of all, raining. I am told repeatedly that this is not a typical Utah winter, and I am assured that normal winters are much colder, much grayer, but filled with piles of fluffy, powdery snow. That sounds horrible and wonderful at the same time, like drinking a fine wine while someone takes a lead pipe to your kneecaps.

Honestly, I don't remember the last time I experienced a typical winter anywhere. Last year in Idaho, we started off the winter (or mid-late fall to most people) with monstrous amounts of heavy, wet snow that, had my jobs and the grocery store been outside of walking distance, would have paralyzed me and my economy car completely. The previous winter in New Jersey brought more snow than I can remember. More snow than anyone alive can remember. For realsies. Snowiest winter on record. After the sky finished it's bulimic snow-purge onto the Eastern seaboard, we had about a four foot high pile of snow in my mom's front yard, between drifting and snow shoveled from the sidewalk.

Is there even such a thing as a typical season? Do we ever actually experience weather patterns that make us think, 'Hot damn, this is truly the epitome of spring in this geographic region'? Or do we always find some flaw in the weather or deviation from our ideals or expectations that prompts us to assure ourselves 'This is highly unusual...surely next summer will be back to normal'? Or is the whole planet just going completely cray-cray, as both Al Gore and the Mayans have so wisely prophesied?

But I digress. I didn't intend to go on a tirade about the most banal small talk topic of all time. My intended topic, folks, is one Mr. Fred McFeely Rogers.

from Wikipedia

I am him. He is me. We are one.

Aside from our mutual, undying love of cardigans, we share a very important trait. You see, I have developed a curious habit of late. I change my shoes when I enter the building. I am now the person who walks to work in one pair of shoes, and changes into another when I get there. You are probably thinking, 'Hey, that's not so weird, a lot of women walk to work in sneakers and put on heels when they arrive.' But that's not it.

The last three times I wore high heels (because those are the only times I can remember between high school proms and now) I was also preposterously drunk and wearing a dry-clean-only silk dress. I don't do either of those two things at work, so why would I wear heels, either? I'm not fancy, or short, or a masochist. (Interestingly, Mr. Rogers was none of those things, either, as long as you believe that devoting over 30 years of your life to filming a wholesome children's show with spooky hand puppets and a "mailman" who maybe should have been on a sex offender registry wasn't painful. Coincidence?)

So, why do I change my shoes when I get to work? (The real question should be, why don't I change my clothes when I get to work, because let me be frank and admit that by the time I get there I am sweating like Rick Santorum at a gay pride parade because I am never not running late and therefore always power walking like an a-hole.) I change my shoes because I am the proud but smotheringly overprotective mother of these babies:

Steve Madden

They're so pretty. I could never taint them by trudging through snow, slush, puddles, or dog poo (seriously, people of Utah, why do you let your dogs crap on the sidewalk?). I can't bear to damage them, so I wear them only on dry surfaces. Every morning, I carefully pack them in my backpack with my lunch (don't worry, Mom, the food is in a separate compartment) and lace up my trusty 8 year old Doc Martins so I can speed-toddle down the street over the solid ice that forms on the sidewalks after anti-social homeowners don't shovel the snow in front of their houses and then people inevitably walk on it and pack it down. Yes I have fallen. No I'm not injured. Yes I was annoyed. Nobody saw (I hope).

I love a good pair of Docs. Don't get me wrong. But they don't really go with a lot of my clothes, and they kind of make me feel like Frankenstein. But they are officially the only pair of shoes I own with any traction (snow boots might be a solid investment, but I like to deprive myself of functional items just for S's and G's). And they are so comfortable. Thus, I enter work looking from the knees down as if the 90s just coughed up a hairball. Daria called, she wants her footwear back. What? But then I scurry into my cubicle and slip into these beauties and all is right with the world. If loving my boots this much is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Plus or Minus

2012-01-20T20:12:00.000-07:00

We had a wee bit of a pregnancy scare last night. But don't worry. Everyone's fine, everyone's barren. The stray cat I found at the liquor store is not pregnant. Probably. It's kind of hard to tell. Speaking as someone with little to no experience with pregnancy of the feline or human variety (ok no experience whatsoever) I can't really tell if her behavior and outward symptoms mean that she's pregnant or just in heat.

I'm leaning towards 'in heat' because 1) I really do not want a pile of slimy newborn kittens showing up on my floor one day and 2) she's been slithering around all evening making this 'murrowww' sound that seems to be cat-speak for 'DO ME'. Either way, GROSS. I will spare you (most of) the gory details, but I want to spread a little of this misery around by making it quite clear that engorged cat nipples are disgusting on so many levels (including but in no way limited to the sheer quantity of nipples, oh my god) that I can't even begin to describe how uncomfortable it makes me to pet Hadley right now. This little hussy cannot get spayed quickly enough.

Hadley was supposed to get her lady parts excised last Friday (on the ominous 13th), but she had a chest cold thing going on so we pushed back the surgery. Maybe that was a bad idea. Is there an abortion cut-off for cats? I tried looking up the legal precedent set in the landmark Meow vs. Wade case, but my iPhone literally punched me in the face for making such a weak pun. And I mean literally in the most literal actual sense, not the 'I really mean "figuratively" but I am literally too dumb to understand the meaning of the word "literally"' sense. It's amazing how sassy artificial intelligence is getting these days. And my (antiquated, Luddite) iPhone doesn't even have Siri!

So clearly, I should have made 'writing about cats incessantly' one of my New Year's goals. I would be spanking that so hard right now.

In other non-cat related news:

We are going to Sundance this weekend! I demand a Ryan Gosling sighting, or I want my money back. I have no idea if he's even going (because, you know, we talk, but the topic never seems to come up) but seriously? How could you not love him in Lars and the Real Girl or Half Nelson? And how could you not adore internet meme Ryan Gosling? In my humble and totally unbiased opinion, Librarian Hey Girl is by far the best one.

This is my favorite iteration. It's naughty.

Source

And in case you are wondering and couldn't fill in the blanks sufficiently on your own, allow me to translate. That is the Library of Congress call number for the book, The F Word, by Jesse Sheidlower. See for yourself.

While we're tossing around a celebrity encounter wish-list, I also wouldn't mind a Rashida Jones sighting. She's in a Sundance film with Andy Samberg (who I ALSO wouldn't be disappointed to espy from afar!) called Celeste and Jesse Forever. It looks really cute - we aren't seeing it at Sundance but I'm going to keep an eye out for it when it comes to theaters. But I digress. I've been toying with the probably terrible idea of cutting my hair, and Rashida has been frequenting my radar screen. And by radar screen, I mean she's carved herself a nice little niche on my Pinterest, and I have a tiny little girl crush on her. And her hair.

Is that totally stupid to hope that I see certain celebrities (or any recognizably famous person, really)? Yes. Yes it is stupid. But also fun. And it's a behavior that has been ingrained in my personality since the height of Zach Morris mania. True story. Once upon a time in 1993 or thereabouts, I saw a commercial for the Philadelphia Auto Show. There might have been some cars there, or something, but all I cared about, and all I could think about for the next month, was Mark Paul Gosselaar. He was going to be there signing autographs, and obviously he was going to fall in love with the creepy jail-bait 8 year old seeking his autograph and we would live happily, if scandalously, ever after.

Amazingly, my awesome mom took me and my then 6-year-old cousin Michael to the auto show and waited in a forever long line for an autograph. Naturally, I had ~~Zach~~ Mr. Gosselaar sign a giant Saved by the Bell poster that came as a centerfold in some random teen magazine. It was the best day of my life, and the day I retired my even-creepier 'Ernest Goes to Jail' Jim Varney poster (that I used to kiss every night before bed because why?) and replaced it with something slightly more age-appropriate.

I have no doubt that Sundance will be a slightly less pathetic but no less euphoric experience.

The Blizzard That Wasn't

2012-01-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

Yet.

I may be speaking out of turn. The forecast changed so many times throughout the course of today, it's really anyone's guess. We could still get 10 inches tomorrow, supposedly. All I know is that I was robbed of the opportunity to trudge almost two miles home from work in a blizzard and then complain about it bitterly afterwards.

Side note, you know how typing on an iPad is a delicate and not always accurate process? Well, that imprecision is amplified tremendously when two cats are vying for the limited space on your lap. And when one of those cats weighs almost 20 pounds and is crushing your organs, and the other is tiny and cute but likes to swipe at your screen and try to eat your diamond ring because it's shiny and waving around while you type. It's a first world problem, for sure, but life is so hard sometimes, right?

Other side note - small kitty just swiped the screen and somehow typed the letters 'non'. I am positive she was trying to type 'Nyan (and I'm purposely leaving off the closing apostrophe because every time I added it, this terrible iPad auotcorrected it to 'Nyanja' as if that is even any more of a word. What even is that? A poptart cat trained in martial arts? Please enlighten me). Point is, this cat is so smart. Real point is, Andy is away and the human to cat ratio is currently at a shameful level in this house. I feel a little weird about that.

Ho-ga

2012-01-11T21:31:00.000-07:00

I am simultaneously awesome and terrible at yoga. The physical part is no sweat, literally or figuratively. Of course, the classes I attend are not advanced, but still. I am so freakishly flexible that sometimes I feel guilty for being so awesome when I know that people in class who are struggling probably see me and wonder why their own bodies can't contort into completely unnatural positions. Which brings me to the terrible part. I am a complete and abject failure when it comes to the spirit of yoga. I am a big old Judgey McJudgerson. Judge Judy. I am a mean girl. At least, my inner-monologue is a very mean girl who would give Regina George a serious run for her money.

OMG, you're not seriously already sweating during the first downward dog. Because that's gross.

Yoga is not about walking in off the street and being the best. It's not a contest, it's not about winning, and there is no perfection in yoga. It just doesn't exist. And it isn't one-dimensional. It's not just about how much your anatomy functions like a Gumby figurine. It doesn't matter if you're a Cirque du Soleil performer with rubber bones and surgically removed ribs. No matter how flexible, how strong, how balanced you are, if your ego worms its way into your poses, you're doing it wrong. And I can't make my brain stop thinking about other people's flaws! Yoga is supposed to be about YOU (me). It's doing the best you can with what you have, and "honoring your body" and feeling "oneness" with others and all that foo-foo. I can get on board with that, really, I can. They are nice ideas. But way harder to do than standing on one foot while holding the opposite big toe and drawing that leg up so my knee touches my face. Way, way harder.

Last night, I went to my first yoga class in a while. I was really looking forward to it, because I last attended two weeks before Christmas. I was hoping this would be a soothing, quiet session, but two minutes into class, as we were sitting cross-legged with our eyes closed 'finding our center', my hopes were dashed.

There is a large group of girls that come to yoga every other week. I gather that they are doing this for some kind of college requirement, as they seem to be about college-age, they travel in a pack, and they range in enthusiasm from moderately interested to apathetic to living in complete dread of every pose. The lineup of this group has changed substantially from last semester to this one, but the pattern is the same. They roll in a few minutes after class has started, and there are too many of them for this to be a silent, unintrusive process. They come in chatting and laughing and take their good old time removing coats, shoes, and socks. Those of us who had the courtesy to arrive on time are forced to break concentration and rearrange our mats to make space for the late-comers. I think it is at this point that I get irritated and start giving my inner-monologue permission to be a complete and total biotch.

To be fair (to myself), I will say that I'm not shallow enough to judge what these girls are wearing. At least, I'm not judging the girls who look sloppy. Because this girl right here isn't winning any fashion awards in her hunter green polyester/fleece blend American Eagle lounge pants circa 1999. Unless people get fashion awards for wearing part of their high school gym uniform 8-12 years later. I know I look like a scrub...after hearing the phrase "it's not a fashion show" ad nauseum throughout my entire childhood and adolescence whenever I agonized over what to wear, I can finally accept that the gym is definitely one place where I should not care about my appearance. That being said, I will relentlessly judge anyone who looks too dressed up for yoga...like the 65+ year old woman who comes on Saturday mornings, late, fully coiffed and made up, with some kind of leopard print silky shirt and lots of jangling gold bangle bracelets.

But I digress. So these hussies tramp into the studio like they own the joint and, to the instructor's credit, she doesn't miss a beat and she doesn't backpedal to accommodate these egregious violators of the social contract. Eventually they settle into place and start halfheartedly taking poses. Soon we find ourselves hanging out in a downward dog pose after we cycle through our first 'vinyasa'. You may or may not have ever found yourself in this position before, but after viewing the illustration below, you will probably agree that it does not look difficult.

Source

It is not difficult. It is a basic warm-up stretch. So you will join me in my surprise and sadness when I report that I saw, from my upside-down vantage point, two girls behind me panting and sweating. They had dropped down to their knees and were guzzling water and toweling the dripping sweat from their faces. In the first 10 minutes of class. Does. Not. Compute.

If I were a better person, I would channel that observation into thinking positive and encouraging thoughts for these girls, and feeling grateful for my own body's abilities. But I'm not. I'm a terrible person! Instead of doing that, even after the thought crosses my mind, I twist it into feeling superior! It's horrendous, and I'm pretty sure if anyone else in class could hear my thoughts, I would get jumped and summarily smothered with a yoga mat. And they would probably use the sweatiest one, just for good measure. Like, ew.

But fortunately, my terrible thoughts are my own, so we soldier on. The girls who aren't writhing in pain or hyperventilating continue to apathetically follow the instructor. There is usually a lot of self-conscious giggling from these girls when they inevitably ~~really suck~~ can't do something or ~~look~~ feel ridiculous. That's super annoying, because I've been programmed to assume that anyone giggling behind me is giggling at me, and then before I can reason with myself I'm all, "Yea, I'll give them something to laugh about" and I start pushing harder into whatever pose we are doing. This just serves to push me farther to extremes, physically getting more out of yoga but mentally backsliding.

It's a terrible inverse proportion of success, and the more I think about it, the more I think I should just go to a more challenging class that will put my ego back in check. One where I will consider it a victory simply if I make it through class without farting. You know what? Let's be honest, that's never not a victory.

Tabby cat doesn't give a $^%+

2012-01-06T21:04:00.000-07:00

You know what needs to happen? Someone needs to film our new kitty, and have a fabulously flamboyant-sounding man narrate her behavior. She is the honey badger of the feline world. She seriously doesn't give an s-word.

Let me back up and tell the whole story. Long ago and far away, in a dark and frozen land, this cat chose me.

It all started the Monday before Christmas. It was a bitterly cold, malodorous night in Utah. An inversion of polluted, stagnant air had settled over our little valley, and the smell that filled the air was not chestnuts roasting on an open fire, or peppermint, or gingerbread or anything remotely festive. In fact, the smell was not unlike the odor of a dumpster full of hamburgers left open during a downpour.

I set out for the state liquor store to obtain a bottle of wine for our friend who would be taking care of our cat, Ajax, the gentle giant, while we visited New Jersey for the holidays. When I left the store, brown paper bag of sin-juice in hand, a little tiny kitty was loitering just outside the door. I'm a sucker for baby animals, and become totally oblivious to possible diseases and perils when an opportunity to pet one arises. So of course, I crouched down and put out my hand, and the kitty bolted over to me.

I pet it for a minute and then I realized two things:

OMG, it's way too cold for something this tiny to be outside exposed to the elements

and,

OMG, dirty stray animal! Fleas! Rabies!

So I stood up to call Andy to see what he thought I should do about this cat. It was super cute, and I wanted to keep it, but there were multiple reasons why that would have been a bad idea, including the illegality of harboring a stray, and the logistics of getting a new pet right before going on a long trip. I was wearing a long knitted scarf with fringe, and the kitty starting batting at the low-hanging yarn. CUTE OVERLOAD. Then, it jumped up on the ledge of a raised flower bed and stared at me intently. Before I knew what was going on, I was standing in the liquor store parking lot with a phone in one hand, paper-bagged booze in the other, and a cat on my head. If that doesn't scream classiness and mental stability to you, we might need to have a talk.

Andy talked me down from the ledge of cuteness-induced poor judgment, and I called the local Humane Society. They were closed for the night, so I had no choice but to call Animal Control. It felt vaguely wrong, since I was essentially calling the cops on a baby animal. I also felt a twinge of shame telling the dispatcher that I found the kitty outside the liquor store, because the odds that I was talking to a Mormon were overwhelming (and I know, I know, super nice people, they probably weren't judging me, and all that jazz...).

The dispatcher told me an officer would call to arrange a pickup, so I scooped up the kitty, plopped it on my backseat, and drove home to wait for the officer's call. Little baby kitty obviously had to explore this moving vessel, so it wandered all around the car, which could have been the first warm, soft place it had ever experienced. After about two blocks, it settled down in my lap where it curled up and started batting at the keys dangling from the ignition. I had to think about some seriously awful things to block out this second cute overload, or I would have driven straight off the road . Must. Fight. Cuteness. With thoughts of nuclear holocaust. And Comcast customer service.

Thoughts of wiping out civilization and/or having an stroke from severe anger and frustration got me through the ten-minute drive unscathed, but once I was back in my driveway, all bets were off. I sat in the car petting the kitty and hoping the Animal Control guy wouldn't show up. Unfortunately, he did. He told me they'd keep the cat in jail for five days, and if no one claimed it, it would be turned over to the Humane Society to be put up for adoption. Jail! A kitty in jail!

I pushed aside thoughts of taking it some Fancy Feast with a nail file in it, or busting it out myself and becoming the first human-feline crime duo. Once it was gone, I regained some perspective on the situation. Two cats? Did we really need two cats? With two litter boxes? And two shedding coats? When my mom and most of our friends here are highly allergic to cats? I don't want to be a crazy cat person...does having an equal librarian to cat ratio in your household automatically make you a sad stereotype? It might.

I decided I had done my good deed for the year. Turning the cat in was enough, so I went inside, stripped down, and threw every article of clothing in the dryer while I took a hot shower to ward off a possible flea infestation. I would later find out this was a pointless exercise, because it's way too cold here for fleas to thrive on outdoor animals.

The days passed, we flew to New Jersey, Christmas drew closer, and I tried to put this hilarious, adorable encounter behind me. Andy, however, had different plans. He was adamant that we adopt this cat so Ajax could have a friend. I wasn't sold at first, but then I realized this cat could be MY friend, too. Ajax is our cat, but he's not really our cat. He's always been more Andy's cat than mine. He just uses me as a food provider when he's hungry and Andy isn't around. So basically whenever Andy isn't around. Because Ajax is never not hungry.

After a flurry of correspondence with the Humane Society, we found out our cat was there, it was a girl, and she was in alleged "good health". They posted her picture online with the other adoptable cats. All the other cats were decked out for Christmas, some wearing Santa hats or posed in front of festive displays of wrapped gifts. Our cat was photographed through the window of a smudged, cloudy plexiglass box. The other cats had fun names and quirky write-ups about their personalities. This cat was just 'unknown stray cat, age 1 year'. We thought there was no way anyone would adopt her in such a state, which was a relief, because there was no way to put a deposit on her or reserve her in any way while we were still back east. Then they updated her profile with a mind-blowingly adorable picture of her perched on the shoulder of a shelter volunteer, looking alert and curious and fuzzy. They named her Bonnie, because she seemed to be so happy.

That was it. She was going to be gone in five minutes, for sure. But luck prevailed, and she remained in the shelter until the window of opportunity arrived during which we could place a 24-hour hold on her. Once we were fairly certain she would be ours, I immediately set about the task of renaming her. With a real-life awesome human friend named Bonnie, it would have just been too weird to keep the name the shelter gave her. Something booze-themed seemed only natural, given her place of rescue, but I didn't want to be obvious and name her 'Cabernet' or 'Kahlua' or something. So I devised the best possible mash-up: Alcohol and literary references.

After much deliberation, I decided to name her Hadley. She is named after Hemingway's first wife, whom he often called 'little cat'. It's no secret that both Ernest and Hadley were big-time boozers, so it works on so many levels. Or two levels. But so many.

We brought Hadley to her 'forever home', as shelters love to call it, on Monday. The woman at the shelter assured us she was healthy. We asked if she had been tested for feline AIDS or leukemia. "Oh, well, we don't test for that here." Exsqueeze me? How can you be sure she's healthy if she might have AIDS??? Is this little hussy going to infect the perfectly healthy cat we already have? But it was too late; we were in too deep. We took our possibly FIV-ridden new fur-child home and kept her in isolation in a spare room until we could get a vet appointment. It turns out she's clean, but she had some nasty ear mites and a runny nose. So, thanks, Humane Society, for giving us a cat that could have had the FIV, and did have some gnarly business in her ears. I guess 'healthy' merely implies alive and not bleeding or vomiting.

Now that Hadley has been in our house all week, we've had some time to really see her personality shine. This cat is fearless. All she wants to do is play, and she will play with anything that moves. She tries to attack my hair, and she has tried to eat it the way a human baby might. She has jumped on my head several more times since our first encounter. She has also punched me in the face. Seriously. She batted me in the eye. On my eyeball. A cat touched my eyeball. I can't even tell you how disgusting it felt, or how quickly I tore out my contact and flushed out my eye with water. I don't know how, but she hit me so hard that it left a tiny bruise under my eye. A 5.6 pound cat gave me a black eye.

She is also desperate to play with Ajax. She wants nothing more than to be his best friend. He is three times her size, and could destroy her if he had the slightest inclination. But she does. not. care. We haven't officially let them interact yet. However, she escaped her area the other day and bounded right up to him. She was all 'Hai friend, let's be friends, let's be the best of friends, forever, and let's play!' And he was all 'OMG, HISS'. And then he ran away and sulked.

I don't get it. Does he not understand that he is enormous? Does he not realize this is a David and Goliath situation, only nothing important or 'righteous' or mythical is at stake, so, as the Goliath figure, he could probably eat her or sit on her or otherwise decimate this tiny adversary?

As I write this, surly old Ajax is sulking under the bed while Hadley bounces back and forth between me and Andy, batting at our iPad screens, biting Andy's head, and shoving her entire head in a coffee cup that recently contained milk. Earlier this evening, she tried to scale the curtains on the sliding glass porch door.

I'm so glad this 5 pound tornado clawed her way onto my head and into my heart.

I Blog, Therefore I Am

2012-01-02T20:43:00.000-07:00

Oh, hay. Still alive over here. The second half of 2011 was so very. That's the best way to describe it. Take any adjective and just put 'very' in front of it, and that was our year. Very busy. Very overwhelming. Very fun. We bested our personal moving frequency record and moved twice in four months. Thankfully, the second move was a mere cross-town move, and hopefully it was the move to end all moves. We. Bought. A house.

That's right, no more listening to our neighbors flush the toilet, sing, or get it on. No more smelling their cigarette smoke, no more watching them come and go with large amounts of fast food immediately before and after hearing them get it on. Clearly there's more to home-ownership than avoiding your neighbors (because if anything, home-ownership has brought us into some awkward proximity with some of our new neighbors), but seriously. It's the best. Also, we have not one but three bathrooms. I never want to share a bathroom again for as long as I live.

But now that the whirlwind of new job starting/house hunting/mortgage applying/house buying/moving/unpacking/decorating/wedding attending/Christmas vacationing is behind us, I'm looking forward to settling back into a routine and hopefully being a little more active on the internets.

I also have a few goals for the new year. Gotta make it count! After all, if the totally appropriate and not at all creepy card one of our neighbors (who we have not yet met) taped to our front door is correct, we have just 355 days left to live. Assuming I remember to post this today, January 2nd, and also assuming I can correctly do math and subtract from 366. Because if the year has to end, at least the Mayans did us a solid and predicted the Apocalypse in a leap year so we'd get an extra day. Also, this card thanked us for being their 'best neighbors'. Did I mention we haven't met them? Because we haven't, but I'd really like to high-five them before the restraining order takes effect.

Now, by goals, I really mean the kind of goals that mesh with 80's child rearing style. The kind that says, 'Shoot for the moon, because if you miss you'll land among the stars' and where everyone gets a participation trophy and the losing team still gets ice cream, and the fat kid in gym class (me) still gets an E for effort. The word 'resolution' just sounds so legalistic and foreboding and certain. 'Goals' has a shiny, happy ring of unaccountability to it.

Without further adieu, here are my 2012 Pre-Mayan Apocalypse World Collapse Ruin and Doom Life Goals

1. No hangovers. Seriously. I seem to have 1 or 2 episodes every year where things just get really out of control and it isn't cute. I once projectile vomited with such force that I burst a capillary under my eye. This is because, and I mean this in the least racist, most sincere way possible, the 1/16th or 32nd of my ancestry that is Native American has manifested itself in my liver. I have a mortifying inability to metabolize alcohol. I don't drink that frequently, and I usually try to keep it to a glass or two of wine, which is okay. But anything more than that and I'm doing rain dances and applying war paint. Okay, that might seem a little offensive, but get off my back, guys, I just said I was Native American, so I'm really just taking ownership of the stereotypes.

2. Cook new recipes. This would be a good time to apologize to Andy for cooking a pretty constant rotation of the same 10-15 dinners (that might even be an overly-generous estimate). I should also apologize for the time I made vegetarian burritos that were so spicy they hurt him, and for the time I cooked such spicy food so consistently that he is convinced it gave him an ulcer. But I regret nothing. I make healthy, fiber-rich meals full of antioxidant-laden spices. I don't hear any complaints from my digestive system (in fact, Christmas vacation, full of rich comfort foods, cheese, and nary a single bean, made my intestines cry. And not a cute cry with big ol' sparkly tears, but the ugly cry where you just open your grimacing, contorted maw and wail, but no tears fall. Sorry, too detailed a metaphor?). But I digress. It would be nice to branch out, but I work until 5, at which time I am ready to cry from hunger and exhaustion. It's so easy to go on auto-pilot and cook something I've already made 25 times instead of trying to decipher a new recipe using the 2 remaining brain cells that my body hasn't burned for fuel. It will require a little bit more planning, and maybe a mid-afternoon snack, but I'm game for it. And hey, does anyone want to give me a pat on the back for actually cooking real food instead of microwaving something out of a package? No? No takers? Now I'm embarrassed, you guys.

3. Exercise more consistently. A little blood just trickled out of my ear from the aneurism this cliche caused me to have. But let's get real. I've been working out pretty regularly since the spring of 2008. At first, it was painful. I was pretty out of shape in terms of endurance and strength. But after a short time, I could honestly say that I enjoyed exercising. I get really grouchy when I have to be sedentary for more than a day or two because of random obligations/bad weather and lack of access to exercise facilities/illness. However, my work schedule makes it really inconvenient to go to the gym during the week. Our old apartment was right across the street from the gym, so it wasn't a huge ordeal to work out in the morning before work, or to pop over for a quick workout after work. But now, it's like, ugh, I have to get up, get dressed, and drive all the way across town? No thanks. And it's the same story after work, only by that point I'm also in the blind rage of starvation I like to call 'hangry', so my response would be considerably less civil than 'no thanks'. I often walk to and/or home from work, which is 1.8 miles each way, so that's better than nothing, but I have a hard time counting it as exercise since I'm not sweating or significantly raising my heart rate. So this goal and goal #2 are kind of in competition with one another because they both require time and energy that I just don't have after working from 8-5, but I'm determined to find a way.

4. Earn a faculty-level position at work. I'm really fortunate to have a job with benefits, period. I also like my job and work with super awesome, nice, supportive people. However, the work I'm doing is not what I ultimately had in mind when I was getting my master's degree. Aside from the obvious financial gains, moving into a higher-level position would be tons more stimulating and fulfilling, and probably more flexible. In a perfect world, goal #4 would be awesome in itself and also pave the way for goals #2 and #3, but we'll see what happens.

5. Go to Las Vegas. Clearly, this needs to happen. I feel like it will be Jersey Shore, desert edition, but with a lot more money floating around.

6. Visit the Grand Canyon. This is obvious. I can't be living less than a day's drive from the Grand Canyon and not be able to say that I've been there. We bought an annual National Park passport when we went to Zion and Arches over Thanksgiving, so we might as well visit as many national parks as humanly possible between now and November 2012.

7. Start riding my bike to work. This one will have to wait until morning temperatures reach an acceptable level of non-gangrenous-frostbite-inducingness. Walking to and from work isn't that bad, but icy wind blowing in your face at a high speed? Sorry Earth, but I like having skin and not frozen leather, thanks.

8. Get a new kitty. We checked this one off with flying colors this afternoon, but we need to have her tested for the FIV to make sure she isn't going to infect Ajax. To make a long story short (so I have a topic for another post), I found a kitty, and it loved me, but I did the right thing (oh hay karma points) and turned it in to the local Humane Society in case it was someone's lost pet. No one claimed her so she's totally my new BFF.

9. Sew curtains. I finally bought a sewing machine just in time to start and not (yet) finish Andy's main Christmas present (more on that some other time, because I find it hilarious), and my mom gave me a sweet gift card to JoAnn's for Christmas, so, game on.

10. Blog more. This one will be easy. I think if I post at least twice a month I will probably surpass 2011's average.

11. Paint the master bedroom and office. A lot of our house was already painted, but the previous owners were still in the process of remodeling some of the rooms, so our bedroom is currently an institutional white. After so many stark-white apartments that we weren't allowed to paint, I think I need to either go whole hog and pad the walls, or break the cycle and add a little color to my life.

12. Ski on Utah snow. I'm really excited about this one. I think. I have skied on East Coast snow in the Poconos several times and once in upstate New York, but never often enough to become a proficient skier. I'm naturally highly risk-averse, so the thought of whizzing down an icy hill with slippery boards strapped to my feet has never sounded like a fun thing to do. I can shakily navigate the bunny hills, and can sometimes even get off the ski lift without falling, but that's about the extent of my skill/ambition when it comes to skiing. I am told (repeatedly, ad nauseum) that Utah has the best snow on earth, and that apparently snow can come in powder form and does not always fall from the sky and immediately form an impenetrable icy cement upon contact with other snowflakes.

13. Plant a garden. An edible one. I'm thinking garlic, onions, lettuce, kale, tomatoes, and raspberries. If I could also grow some beans and bananas, and get a goat for milk, I'd never have to go to the store, ever. We'll see how this one goes, since I've managed to kill many a house plant, including cacti.

14. Send out Christmas cards, and remember to send birthday and holiday cards to close family members. I mean, I obviously remember immediate family, but it's time to put on the big girl panties and cast the net a little wider. Also, I have been dying to take a subtly ridiculous Christmas card photo for a long time, but it seems like something really distracting and time consuming is always happening in November and December and I don't get around to it. This will be the year. I can feel it. I might even take one this week just to make sure there are no excuses when November rolls around. Plus if I end up pregnant by then, I can still be (relatively) skinny for the card. I kid, I kid. That better not happen.

15. Get a DSLR camera (birthday...hint, hint...except more like birthday and Christmas for the next 2 years because those bad boys are not cheap) and start doing photography again. I am constantly looking at some landscape or close-up detail of something that I think, wow, this would make a great picture if only I could control the depth of field or the light exposure. But alas. My point-and-shoot digital camera is pretty good, and it has a panoramic function that I am obsessed with, but it's just not the same.

16. Get better about keeping in touch with friends and family. My fingers aren't broken, there's no excuse for me to not pick up the phone and use it. I need to get over my phone-phobia and stop worrying that I'll be bothering people or that I don't have anything interesting to say. I mean, both things are probably true, but who cares, right?

17. Stop apologizing so much and feeling guilty about everything. I am pretty good at deciding to keep my mouth shut so the first part should be easy, but I actually might not be able to help the guilt. It's hereditary, just like my uncooperative liver. Except in this instance, it's only my imaginary fantasy Jewish ancestry. But I'm NOT going to apologize for that. Let's mark that down as one point for me, okay?

18. Volunteer somewhere. After all this talk about ME, should I maybe think about someone or something else for a change? I'm thinking either the animal shelter that held our kitty, or a food bank or something.

19. Next Christmas, ask people to get me Heifer International gifts instead of actual presents.

20. Learn to pack lighter. This actually goes hand in hand with goal #19, and reveals how that seemingly selfless goal is actually rooted in laziness. This Christmas, we deliberately flew back to Utah on Southwest because you can check 2 bags for free, and we knew we'd need the the extra space for presents. We actually had to borrow a full-size suitcase from my mom, which we then filled with our holiday haul. I blame Andy for receiving a pair of hip waders, which took up 40% of the space in said suitcase. There may have been some tense moments with a bathroom scale during which we had to carefully redistribute some items so that none of our three suitcases weighed more than 50 pounds. I also unpacked my suitcase yesterday and realized I didn't wear about 1/3 of the clothes I had taken with me. In an effort to not apologize, and to not give Andy the satisfaction of saying 'I told you so,' I will justify this outcome by saying it was unexpectedly warm in New Jersey, I did laundry while we were there, and I wore some of the clothes I received for Christmas.

21. Start using more natural cleaning/hygiene/beauty products. I do so much other stuff to try to be healthy and feel good, I don't need gross chemicals bringing me down. I already use Tom's deodorant (in the non-sweaty months...sorry Tom's, but you just don't cut it in the summer) and some various natural cleaning products, but I'd like to incorporate more of these things. The only barrier, really, is the expense, so goal #4 would totally allow this goal to become a reality.

I was going to set some more goals, but I figured 21 was plenty, and it's an appropriate number given that the world is going to end on December 21 anyway.

OH MY GOD, less than a year to (think about) attain(ing) these goals. Better get busy!

This Old House

2011-09-26T21:09:00.000-06:00

So I may have prematurely mentioned that we are buying a house. Lesson learned. Just because you put an offer on a house doesn't mean you will actually pony up and buy that house. Unless you can magically pull this guy out of your pocket and fix all your household ailments in the duration of a one-hour time slot on PBS:


Bob Vila, no relation despite his disturbingly identical resemblance to my late father, who oddly, was also a master carpenter (Bob is Hispanic, not Jewish, btw, but longtime readers of this blog already know that)

So we put an offer on a house. An inspection revealed that it was a horrific cesspool of decay in ways that were not apparent to the untrained eye, and which we were not prepared to correct, so we said, as politely as possible, "NO F'ING THANK YOU" and ran away.

Then we found this other house. This house was incredible, in that it was a 2700 square foot time capsule. I half expected Don Draper to walk in the door and berate us, as he is wont to do, for being in his house. This house was clearly built by some very classy swingers, who decorated to the hilt in 1967 and then never updated a single detail. Many a key party must have taken place at this pad. Full bar in the basement, complete with secret passageway into super-secret store-room where they probably hid all their sex toys from the kids. Red canvas wallpaper and multi-colored pin-striped carpet. Gold foil and red velvet flocked wallpaper in the bathroom. It has been vacant for over 2 years, and the second time we visited the house, the dryer was running and full of Levis. So basically, the house is haunted by classy swingers.

I can't make up this kind of crap.

Well, we made an offer, but the greedy heirs to the deceased owners rejected our low-ball offer. This, despite the fact that the house needs a new roof, new carpet, new windows, new kitchen appliances, and it probably needs John Stossel of Nightline to come in with a black light and test for bodily fluids EVERYWHERE because come on people SWINGERS. So we are back to square one.

To assuage the pain of house-hunting, tonight I made a delicious meal that just happened to be vegan, which magically makes it have zero calories. Because, you see, my brain evaluates calories based on the amount of explicit animal suffering that went into the preparation. And don't even complicate things with arguments about human rights abuses in agricultural labor, or unintended animal harm from farm machines, or the environmental impact of food shipping, because my head will explode and I will run into the forest and forage for twigs and leaves for the rest of my life because I can't shoulder all that guilt and still enjoy my food, but people's gotta eat, you know?

I came across this vegan paella recipe on Oh Dear Drea's blog. Yes, my twitching ovaries and I read baby blogs. Let the judgment commence. But the recipe was a great success. Andy liked it, and he didn't even seem to notice that it was animal-free until I casually mentioned it as we were cleaning up (yes I just said WE and CLEANING in the same sentence, because that's what happens, and it's wonderful).

Vegan Paella. No animals were intentionally harmed in the creation of this meal, except I narrowly missed stepping on the cat's tail but I don't think that counts.

I Scream, You Scream

2011-09-18T20:06:00.000-06:00

Really, anyone would scream if they saw the frozen-treat-dispensing-vehicle that has been lurking around my neighborhood. And I once saw someone buy a bag of drugs from a fake ice cream truck in an alley in North Philly, so when I say this is a terrifying ice cream situation, you have to believe me.

There is this man. I call him a man because I don't know how else to describe him, without using cultural references like "Skeletor" or "Voldemort". He looks like death personified. Deep, sunken eyes surrounded by dark circles. A skeletal face, no hair. A penetrating, soul-sucking glare.

I have seen him twice now, and I am afraid that it's a sign. An omen. If I see him one more time I will die a sudden and mysterious death. I first saw him as he was driving out of my apartment complex when I was coming home from work. Slowly lurking down the street, glaring at passersby. Glaring at me.

I saw him again today while I was running. He was driving south, towards my apartment complex. Still glaring.

He drives an ice cream van. Not a truck. Not even a big 15-passenger van or a windowless child-molester utility van. A straight up late-90's Ford Windstar type of minivan. Like a, 'Thanks for the ride to soccer practice, mom,' kind of van.

I would have to imagine that he just has a couple Igloo coolers full of home-made fudgesicles rolled in broken glass on his back seat. And probably a 10 year old boy tied up with duct tape, still wearing his soccer cleats and shin guards, with a rapidly melting Klondike bar shoved in his mouth. Imagine is all I can do, really, since his windows are darkly tinted and mostly covered over in grotesquely cheerful posters of ice cream products.

His van plays "It's a Small World" on a continuous loop. It's especially disturbing because it sounds like the recording was made from a Casio keyboard with several broken keys. Every phrase or so in the song, one note will be either jarringly flat or just sound like a car accident.

It's hard to believe that this is real life. I mean what? The hell? If Andy hadn't been with me the first time I saw him, I would have to assume that, at best, the intense sunlight was causing me to hallucinate, or at worst, I must have a brain tumor. Driving home from work, we turned the corner into our complex, talking excitedly about something. All of a sudden, our conversation halted and Andy instinctively slowed the car as we took in this very confusing, very terrifying sight. It's just...I can't even...I don't know. I just don't know.

Soft Loud

2011-09-14T20:26:00.000-06:00

Things have been a little quite here on the blog, but not in real life. I have barely even had time to exercise, so you know that means I'm busy. But big things have been happening! Things so big they have to be measured in square footage, and even acreage!

Yes, that's right, we're probably going to be home owners soon! Assuming the inspection goes well, which, in all honesty, it may not. There might be mole people living in the crawl space, for all we know. But, barring mole people, mold, radon, termites, faulty wiring, amateur plumbing, rampant asbestos,or a secret portal into a 5th dimension and/or hell, I think that bad boy will be ours.

The idea of owning a home is so surreal. Living in New Jersey, I never thought owning a home would be a reality for someone in my line of work: ~~prostitution~~education. Utah, though, is a totally different story. A horse of a different color, if you will. Nay, not even a horse, but a unicorn, of a different color (rainbow, natch). Not to brag or anything, but I think our mortgage payments for the year will be lower than some people's property taxes in Jersey.

In other (real) news, have you guys heard about THIS?

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People here are so genuinely nice, they will lift a flaming vehicle off your unconscious body. And that's why we're buying a house.

That and our neighbors in our apartment community are super freaking weird. And we really want chickens and a goat. And a dog. And a garden. And be able to walk to work.

No Fair

2011-09-11T11:40:00.000-06:00

As Sarah Silverman once said, when life gives you AIDS, make lemonaids. And that sort of maybe describes yesterday. Or maybe it doesn't.

Short story even shorter, we didn't go to the Utah State Fair because it rained like a mother.

However, the weekend wasn't a complete wash when it comes to human spectacle. On the way home from work on Friday, we saw one of the most redneck displays of humanity ever to grace the earth. Let me preface by saying that we have noticed a preponderance of Rascal Scooters*/Jazzy Power Chairs on the street here. They are seriously all over the place. One time we saw a caravan of three or four people on their chairs, out for a Sunday roll.

Rascal Scooter - source

Jazzy Power Chair - source

But I digress. Friday we saw a young guy rolling down the street in his chair (clearly this was the JPC variety, because it lacked the signature Rascal Scooter steering column). Normally, a Jazzy Power Chair doesn't attract much notice in these parts. But this warranted a second, and even third glance. This was no ordinary chair. It was a chair with flare. This boss had himself a mossy oak camouflage pattern power chair. Clearly this aesthetic finesse was representative of his overall animal magnetism and masculinity, because it seemed perfectly natural that he was not alone in this chair. No. Sitting side saddle on his lap, arms flung romantically around his neck, was a lady friend of considerable girth.

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This isn't the chair. But aren't you going to sleep better tonight knowing that something like this exists? This chair probably has more horsepower and towing capacity than my Civic. Who else thought, at first glace, that the steering button coming out of the arm rest was a mounted bayonet?

You can choose not to believe me, but I assure you this is true. I wasn't quick enough on the draw with my iPhone, so there is no photographic evidence of this encounter. I tried to whip it out and take a discreet picture from behind, but the traffic was moving too quickly. Because there remains one tiny chamber of my heart that isn't made completely of ice and condescension, I couldn't bring myself to take a picture of them from the front, lest they realize that some heartless asshole thought she was so much better than them that she had a right to take their picture AND make fun of them on the Internet. So there's that.

*Full disclosure: The summer between freshman and sophomore year of college, I sold these scooters over the phone. Not in a call center where potential customers contacted us. No, this was the worst kind of telemarketing. I don't know where our call lists actually came from, but it was not unusual for me to call someone who was incredibly senile or even dead, and sometimes recently so. It was Awkward City, population me. It was the most awful work experience I can imagine, outside of working in a sweatshop or being held in actual slavery.

Art Imitating Life Imitating Art

2011-09-10T08:42:00.000-06:00

Last August and September, when I was unemployed and trying to find ways not to accidentally fall wrist-first on a set of steak knives, I drew a lot of MS Paint pictures of my cat. I was especially proud of this one, because it so perfectly captured the essence of Ajax.

Thursday morning as I was eating breakfast, I happened to have my phone in my hand when I noticed Ajax in this very compromising position. He's not always easy to photograph, because he's ~~kind of~~ extremely skittish and usually runs away if he notices you approaching him with a foreign object. But he was pretty enraptured with his nether-regions so I made some photographic magic happen. I feel like I just captured a photo of Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster. What has been legend is now indisputable fact:


He glanced up just as I took the picture, but I think it's perfectly clear what was going on here just moments earlier.

Have a great weekend, internet friends! We are considering going down to the Utah State Fair tonight, because the rodeo is free with admission, and there's a traveling sea lion show (in the middle of the desert, which isn't weird and doesn't smack of animal cruelty at all). So if that happens, expect a glorious post to follow in which I reveal how shameless and insensitive I am by displaying photos I took of the human spectacle.

Oh Randy Taylor

2011-09-08T21:53:00.000-06:00

Happy 30th birthday to my third (but most passionate) celebrity crush, Jonathan Taylor Thomas!!

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JTT, you may have appeared on the scene after Davy Jones and Mark Paul Gosselaar, but you were always the brightest-burning candle in my shrine of dreamy celebrities. You were also the only one young enough to be realistic, at least from a pedophilia standpoint. Although, seriously, cut a sister a break. When you're three years old and totally digging on The Monkees, no self-respecting mother with the slightest awareness of child development is going to find it worthwhile to explain that a) these are 20-year old reruns, b) that man you love so much is 40 years older than you, and c) statutory rape is icky so just give it another 13 years and you'll reach the age of consent. I just didn't know any better. Thanks, Mom, for letting me be a 'Daydream Believer' until at least the ripe old age of 6 (when I discovered that there was no Santa and subsequently came to hate and distrust the world for probably the next 14 years).

In fact, now that I think of it, thank you, Mom, for accommodating and even cultivating my deep and profound love of Davy Jones. You went so far as to record the two earth-shattering episodes of My Two Dads in which D to the J guest-starred. Perhaps we have this show to thank for my unadulterated affection for gay men and the GLBTQ community at large, even though Paul Reiser and that guy no one remembers weren't actually gay on the show - the undertone was totally there and super progressive for the 80's, I'm guessing.

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Not going to lie, though, Jim Varney of "Ernest" movie fame/infamy was more than a little intriguing to me from roughly 1989 through 1993. You wouldn't call it a crush, exactly, but I did have an "Ernest Goes to Jail" poster of which I was inordinately fond.

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My god. This started as an ode to JTT and turned into a manifesto of reasons why I'm creepy. But isn't that really what blogging is all about? Oversharing in the hope that someone out there validates your weirdness and ups the ante just a hair? Who wants to go first? Anyone have a fetish for Christopher Lloyd or Steve Buscemi? Or that lady who played Hatchetface in Crybaby? I mean, seriously, you're going to have to really put yourself out there if you want to top pre-kindergarten Jim Varney lovin'. But this is a safe, non-judgmental place. Just let it out. Show me on the doll where the bad man touched you.

Know what I mean, Vern?

Picture This

2011-09-06T21:42:00.000-06:00

As promised, here are some more pictures from a glorious weekend. Or maybe, just maybe, we didn't really go to the Tetons this weekend. I may or may not have Googled all these pictures. I actually spent the weekend eating donut holes and chugging Tussin while listening to Yusuf Islam records in a darkened room.

Or maybe I really was outside have a blast. It's your choice. What are you going to believe? Have I blown your mind? Do you even know who you are anymore?

Jenny Lake. I feel like there might be a Forrest Gump joke in there somewhere, but it's just not coming to me.

More of Jenny Lake.

Have I mentioned that Teton is French for tit? Because it is.

Million Dollar Cowboy Bar in Jackson, WY. They have saddles for seats on the barstools, and silver dollars are embedded in the bar. It was a little rich for our blood, though, so we didn't stay for a drink. Maybe someday we can be Million Dollar Cowboys, too. I guess for now I can settle for being a Rhinestone Cowboy. Glen Campbell? Neil Diamond? Anyone? Why am I a 70-year old trapped in a 26-year old's body?? Ok I lied I am only familiar with the song because it was in the commercial for High School High, a movie I have never even seen because I wasn't allowed when it came out in theaters. This caption is becoming less and less of a caption and more like a dissertation. I am deeply sorry.

Antler archway leading into the town square in Jackson. There's one on every corner of the square. You might be imagining the bloodbath that necessarily preceded the construction of this arch, but remember that elk shed their antlers every year. I kind of didn't know that, and was totally relieved to find out because I secretly thought this was a little bit awesome even before I found out no animals were harmed. Shame on me. Shame.

Surprise! It's a lake. No really. This is Surprise Lake.

I might be a little obsessed with the panoramic feature on my new(ish) camera. Good thing we live in a place where we are constantly and literally surrounded by amazing things.

French trappers used to call these mountains the 'Trois Tetons'. I guess third nipples have always been hilarious (the supernumerary nip is not pictured here - obviously...because most people can count to two, I hope).

Mmm glacier water. Pretty sure nobody should drink anything that color (not even Hypnotiq, unless you're into that sort of thing).

Amphitheater Lake. We never quite made it up to Arena Lake, where I hear Bon Jovi was giving a private concert. Bad Jokes. I make them.

More Amphitheater. 9,698 feet of elevation. My sea-level loving body and brain cannot even fathom this.

Does this even need a caption?

Happy Labor Day!

2011-09-05T20:05:00.000-06:00

What? Not that kind of labor? Oh. Well, it's the thought that counts, right? Too much? Too far? Isn't that what America is all about?

We made it back from the Tetons in one piece. Well, two pieces, really. I mean, we were two separate people when we went, so if we came back as one, that would probably have to imply some kind of Human Centipede sort of deal, which definitely did not happen. Even if it did, the last thing I would do is put something that private on the Internet for everyone to see. After all, what happens in the Tetons stays in the Tetons, right guys?

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All told, we hiked about 18 miles this weekend. No big deal. Although, when you're hiking with Andy, it is a big deal, because you're hiking each and every one of those miles like it will be your last. He hikes at about the speed you could expect someone to travel if they are being pursued by a guy with a machete. I'm confident that I'm a reasonably in-shape person, but I suffer from a 7-inch height disadvantage when I'm trying to keep pace with Andy. My stride couldn't be more than 2/3 of his. I have to imagine that all the people, young and old, fit and unfit, past whom we speed on the way up the trail, feel a twinge of pity for me as I practically run to keep up with my husband, who would be totally oblivious if a bear happened to snatch me off the path behind him.

Oh, this lake? We hiked around the whole thing. Circumnavigated, if you will. And you will.

I'll probably post some more pictures tomorrow, but I'm not making any promises. Not trying to set myself up for failure here. Just be happy you got this much, folks.

3-Day 3-Way

2011-09-02T22:02:00.000-06:00

This might be the first time in my adult life that I have really and truly appreciated Labor Day as a three-day weekend. The first two years out of college, I worked in a high school, so Labor Day was bittersweet. It heralded the impending return of the zombie horde, because the school year in New Jersey typically begins on the Wednesday after Labor Day (or is it Thursday? Perhaps the PTSD from this time is interfering with my memory...). It was like giving a wrongfully-accused death row prisoner a pile of cookies right before the execution. Momentary pleasure preceding inhumane punishment.

The year following this employment, I was a broke grad student. I can't remember if I had already quit my job by that third post-collegiate Labor Day, but I was either unemployed or soon to be so, and one day off was as good as any other. And the year after that, I was desperately unemployed in Idaho. I would have paid someone to let me work at that point, so, yea, Labor Day wasn't much more than an excuse to drink a little bit more than usual on a Monday. Although I probably had no idea what day it was at that point, so there's a good chance I was at the laundromat or just alternately blogging and wallowing in self pity for the majority of the day.

This year, however, I have been working for a solid month. I know. You don't even have to say it. Sheeeeet. A whole month. I must be exhausted, right? Because I don't need to do this for the next 30 years or anything. Well, I am exhausted. The one good thing about working in a public school is the schedule...at least... if you semi-don't care about your job and work the bare minimum of hours with no prep time before or after school. I was in at 7:30 and out by 2:30. Now I'm in at 8 and out at 5. I've been mostly working out in the morning before work, so by the time I get home I'm ready for bed except I still have to make dinner, and then eat it, and preferably digest it and do some basic things to prevent my house from turning into a crack den full of cat hair and dirty clothes. I really miss that extra two hours every day. Although I shouldn't complain too much because I do thoroughly enjoy my job and the people are great, even when weird patrons ask me semi-inappropriate, non-library questions (like, "how tall are you?").

I think the original point of this post was probably just to let the internet know that we'll be in the Tetons for the weekend. So if I never post again, you might want to alert the authorities to search for a female carcass covered in bear teethmarks. Sorry, Mom. Joke! Totally a joke. Because everyone knows bears love honey, so I'm just going to carry around a jarful to placate the bears. Everything will be okay.

Also, I want everyone to know that I apparently have the body of a 9-year old boy, or at least, a very unfortunate 9-year old boy who happens to have a generous set of boobs but is otherwise totally androgenous. I ordered some hiking pants (convertible 3 ways, from pants, to clam diggers, to shorts, if you care, because I sure do) on mega-sale from backcountry.com. I ordered them YESTERDAY and they were on my porch this evening, because apparently the company is based out of Salt Lake. But, I was unsure about what size to order, even based on the sizing chart (because who seriously whips out the measuring tape and jots down their waist, hip, and inseam measurements?). Fortunately, these pants had a lot of customer reviews to guide me. One dissatisfied customer wrote that "real women" should not buy these pants - only women built like 9-year old boys would fit in this style. I took my best guess, and the pants fit like a dream. For once, I don't feel like a miscreant for having no hips or ass (although I suspect I may regret that statement if I ever have a child and find that I'm physically incapable of shoving said kid out of said hips...sorry, is that an overshare? It might be).

With that horrifying visual, I wish you all a fabulous weekend. And I do mean fabulous.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend Me Your Rears

2011-08-29T22:19:00.000-06:00

Because this climate is kicking mine. Kicking my ace. So hard.

It's just so dry here. I feel like I'm being dessicated. You know those little packets of silica gel that come in a box of new shoes? They are stamped, "DESSICANT - DO NOT EAT." I feel like I'm living inside of one of those packets.

Idaho was pretty dry compared to New Jersey (but everywhere other than the Amazon Rainforest is dry compared to New Jersey, really), but so far Utah has taken me to a whole new level of parched. I feel like if I lay still for long enough, cacti will sprout from my pores. A tumbleweed rolled past me just now as I am typing this. I am in my living room.

Once upon a time, I had extremely oily skin. We're not talking typical greasy-faced teenager. No, we're talking Exxon Valdez. Like, I would hug a baby animal and someone would rush in to wash it off with dish soap before it could be safely released. Like, my face was its own emirate in the United Arab Emirates. Like, Daniel Plainview tried to erect a derrick on my forehead. Let me be the first to acknowledge that I was an aesthetically repugnant adolescent. The only solace I found in looking like I was using Crisco for foundation was that I was probably going to be the very last person my age to develop wrinkles.

Over the past couple years, I have gradually grown closer and closer to being a normal person (which closely coincides with the recent dramatic rise in oil prices, for which I apologize). Then the desert happened.

Overnight, I went from pleasantly hydrated to "dry-rotted suitcase on the floor of Death Valley at noon." And it's not even just my face. No matter how much lotion I apply, or how much water I drink, I feel like my outsides and my insides are quickly turning to dust. I have never in my life been ashy prior to living here, but if I don't lotion up within 15 seconds of showering, I practically grow scales. My sinuses are so dry that my boogers have boogers (you're welcome for that visual).

On top of all that, running any respectable distance in nearly impossible. One mile in, you feel a little thirsty. Two miles in, your lungs begin to shrivel and your esophagus burns a little with every breath. Anything beyond that, and you can forget about ever feeling happy about anything ever again. No matter how much water you drink during or after this run, you will feel like you're hungover. Your poor tender brain will throb against your bare skull; the light will stab your eyes like a thousand flaming ice picks. You may even throw up in your mouth a little.

You would think the one benefit of this aridity would be not sweating even in hot weather. You would be wrong. Somehow, humidity and I got along just fine. It was like my body and the air reached a state of homeostasis. I didn't need its moisture, it didn't need mine. But here. Here it's so different. The air is all, "Hey, you using those water molecules? Cause I kinda don't have any sooo, yea."

Dry air is so awkward and passive aggressive like that. The point is, though, the air seems to draw moisture out of my body in the form of sweat. It's not even that I'm hot, it's just that the air is sucking every drop of water from my body and using the surface of my skin as an evaporation staging area. It's gross.

So, thanks, Utah, for turning me into a sweaty catcher's mitt.

SLC Crunk

2011-08-25T07:00:00.000-06:00

Now that I've berated the liquor laws in Utah, let me describe the highly enjoyable imbibing experience we had in Salt Lake City on Sunday.

We started the great schlep down to SLC after lunch, with our sights set on Men's Warehouse so Andy could get measured for a tux for an upcoming wedding. Unfortunately, Men's Warehouse decided to be closed (as they apparently are every Sunday, contrary to what their website indicated, but hey, we can't all be as perfect as me). So we cut our losses and continued on to This Is The Place.

For those of you not intimately familiar with Mormon history, "This Is The Place" is, and I'm sort of paraphrasing here, the place where a rickety old wagon rattled over the mountains and encountered a wide desert valley. That wagon was carrying Brigham Young on his deathbed, and that arid valley is now Salt Lake City. He saw this scrubby, sulfurous wasteland and thought, "Damn, this place has potential." Or maybe he thought, "Balls. I'mma throw up if we have to bounce over one more GD mountain range. Who cares, we're stopping here." But really, he probably thought, "Well, this is about the least accessible or desirable place we're going to find anywhere. We are sure to be left completely unmolested if we hang out in this hellscape." Whatever, I don't know, I wasn't there so I'm speculating as to his inner monologue. But history tells us that what he supposedly did say, which is, oddly enough, "This is the place."

So the aptly named attraction boasts a bunch of elaborate statues, a gift shop, and a reconstructed pioneer town. I will now shamefully admit that we visited the ol' 'Place a few weeks ago, on a Saturday. We left without visiting the pioneer town, because it cost $10 a person. Seriously? If I wanted to look at old vacant buildings, I could have stayed in New Jersey and spent an afternoon in Camden. Fortunately, I didn't have to do that, because admission drops to $5 on Sundays! The reason should be obvious - all good Mormons are churching it up on this day of rest, and nobody is there to dress up in old timey costumes and give tours. That suited us just fine, so we ponied up the cash and explored what amounted to a sort of creepy Mormon ghost town until the desert sun drove us to the brink of insanity.

Judging from the position of the sun in the sky, we surmised it to be beer o'clock and ventured into downtown Salt Lake to Trolley Square. There, we found a shady spot on the deck at the Desert Edge Brewery. We ordered a round of beers (which were delicious!) and steeled ourselves for the inevitable demand that we order food right away. It was then that we learned that not all liquor licenses are created equal, and Desert Edge clearly opted for the dungeon-master level of license. We were free to drink as much beer as our little livers desired, without ever feeling pressured to ingest solids. A veritable booze-o-rexic oasis in a desert of regulations. Even so, we did order an early dinner, and my grilled portobello salad was bangin'.

A brew with a view

To put the cherry on top of a great afternoon, we drove around in search of a frozen dairy dessert. But not just any regular old ice cream would do. I was bent on experiencing my first fro yo encounter. I cringe a little as I type that, because it sounds like something a sorority girl would say, obvi. But I find that calling it 'frozen yogurt' doesn't quite capture the essence of what this is. Which is magic. It couldn't even get more magical if a leprechaun hand churned it from unicorn's milk. It's that special.

The place we found, called Yoway, was this adorable little Korean fro yo shop tucked into a random shopping center. We entered to the soothing sounds of mellow Asian pop music emanating from hidden speakers. Bright pastel walls surrounded an open room with space-age, Jetsons-style plastic chairs scattered around little tiny metal tables. At the back of room was a buffet table of candy and fruit toppings and a cash register. Down a dimly lit hallway to the right, there awaited a gauntlet of frozen deliciousness. We picked up our cups and drifted up and down the hall, reading the names of the various wonderful flavors on the frozen yogurt machines built into the wall.

After much deliberation, I decided to pop my fro yo cherry with a mix of red velvet cake and vanilla flavors. I emerged from the hallway to the glory of the toppings bar, and carefully curated an exhibition of deliciousness with the fresh berries and crushed peanuts I lovingly sprinkled on my ice cream. When I was satisfied with my creation, I proceeded to the register, where I paid for my new best friend by the ounce. How wonderful. I always feel like a 'regular' or 'small' size is too big but a kid's size is just a tad too small. But this was my Goldilocks moment. I was in control and it was just right. It was so right it was wrong. I can honestly say it was the best thing ever.

Until I used the bathroom before leaving. Then it got just a little bit better. And then my head exploded.


Well that's a bit harsh...but I guess people who don't wash their hands have a lot more in common with child molesters than we all think.


The gauntlet of fro yo is a prohibitively long and tiring journey for some people.

I realize that this whole self-serve pay by the ounce fro yo phenomenon is not new (isn't that what Pinkberry is?) but it's new to me, and my life is forever changed. It takes me back to the annual Scholastic Book Fair/Ice Cream Social night in elementary school. Those were the days. Eight-year-old me had almost zero awareness of body image and no self-control whatsoever, so this was a free-for-all unadulterated by concerns about my health or my appearance.

My teeth actually hurt thinking about the mountain of ice cream that I drowned in chocolate syrup, peaked with whipped cream, and peppered with avalanches of Reese's pieces and chocolate jimmies. (I just can't call them sprinkles, even though I recently learned that in some parts of the country, 'jimmies' carries an offensive racial connotation of which I was never aware That's unfortunate, so I'm taking it back. Or just not giving it up, but it is what it is.)

But the ice cream wasn't the sole attraction. No, this yearly event combined my two great childhood loves - being a fatty, and being a nerdle. The only thing that could possibly tear me away from the ice cream bar was the promise of scooping up a haul of the latest and greatest by Ann M. Martin, Francine Pascal, and R. L. Stine. All of which I would read in an afternoon with about the same greed and gusto with which I devoured the ice cream that preceded their purchase.

Ah, those were the days. But thanks to fro yo, I can revisit that little piece of my childhood any time. Unless I don't want to be broke and weigh 500 pounds. Which I don't. So really, by 'any time' I actually mean very seldom, but with frequent pining and yearning and salivating in between.

Note to self: brilliant business idea = bookmobile ice cream truck. yes.

Utah’s Liquor Laws, or, SLC Punk hit it right on the mark

2011-08-23T07:00:00.000-06:00

The liquor laws in Utah are a labyrinth that would make even David Bowie tinkle a little.

source

Every person I talk to sheds a little bit more light on the issue, but nobody has a concise explanation. Probably because there isn't one. Here's what I think I understand so far:

"Where'd you get the beer?"

"Wyoming, where else?"

"This actually needs some explanation.  Beer in supermarkets in Utah is weak.  Three points instead of the normal six points of alcohol.  It's the religious influence, and it's a pain in the ass.  To me, it makes no sense.  If you've got alcohol, you've got alcohol.  So why three instead of six?  You know a drunk's just gonna drink twice as many beers to get drunk.  So not only do you have a drunk on your hands... but you have a drunk who's fat and gross.  There's nothing worse."

(Copied and reformatted from this page)

3.2 Beer. I really shouldn’t complain, though. It’s perfect for me. I basically catch a whiff of someone else’s drink and get a contact drunk, so if they wanna water down my happy juice, that’s probably better for everyone concerned.

Unlike Idaho, and I’m sure many other places, you can’t buy wine in grocery stores in Utah. Just beer, and, depending on the store, usually a pretty limited and crappy selection. Although, the grocery store closest to us, which I will no longer patronize because it is overpriced, doesn’t stock a lot of things I like, and the produce guy is overly-helpful in a way that totally creeped me out (close talking, shoving sliced mini-cucumbers on toothpicks in my face…) introduced us to a hilarious and quite palatable libation in the form of Polygamy Porter.

Is it just me or does the woman on the left really look like Joyce DeWitt?

But speaking of wine, it’s expensive here! At least, compared to the wine we used to buy at Winco in Idaho, it feels like highway robbery. We used to be all about Rex Goliath wine, which we lovingly call chicken wine, although cock wine would both more and less appropriate, given that the label bears an image of its giant rooster namesake. At Winco, it was $4.99 for a standard size bottle, and $8 or $9 for the 1.5 liter bottle. It’s not something you’d put in your wine cellar and age for a special occasion, but it’s decent enough that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to serve it to guests, and it doesn’t give me an instant hangover like Franzia. So I thought I had graduated to the level of adulthood where you don’t have to buy jugs of Carlo Rossi, but I guess I’m not quite there yet.

Sidenote: I know I used to hate on Winco for being the po’ people store in Idaho. The one in Moscow was a little grungy and usually pretty crowded, as much as any place in Idaho can ever be crowded. However, after moving back to New Jersey and having no access to such a place, I found I really resented having to buy prepackaged dry goods like flour and spices and pasta. The best part about bulk bins is obviously the ridiculously low price, so I won’t even pretend that’s not my primary motivation in going to Winco, but sometimes it’s also really nice to be able to precisely control the amount of a substance that you choose to buy. This one time, I needed a tiny amount of cardamom for a recipe I wanted to try, but I wasn’t about to pay more than an hour’s wage for a tiny jar of spice that I would probably use once and have to throw out the next time I moved. Enter Winco. $.43 later, I had just enough cardamom for whatever random concoction I was trying to whip up. What’s not to love?

Needless to say, when I discovered that there are two Winco stores within 30 minutes of ournew home, I was totally stoked. Now I’m one of those people who make a pilgrimage once every so often in order to hoard these wonderfully inexpensive foodstuffs. I bring a cooler and stock up on frozen berries, frozen corn…I shovel those dried apple rings into a plastic bag until it’s about to burst. It’s just…so beautiful.

Winco, I just don’t know how to quit you.

But I digress. Did you know that Happy Hours and other forms of drink specials are not allowed in Utah? This is a recent development, as of June, I think. Any alcoholic beverage sold, from beer to wine to mixed drinks, has to be the same price whenever it is sold. That being said, a lot of joints are getting around this limitation with a clever loophole. Changing the size of a drink and selling that different size only once a week for a low price gets a green flag. So you can’t sell pints of a certain draft beer for $4 from Wednesday through Monday and then sell it for $1.50 on Tuesday. But you can sell pints for $4 all the time and sell a 14 oz. glass of the same beer for $1.50 on Tuesday. Or, you can sell pints for $3.50 and 24 oz. mugs for only $3.75, as long as that particular drink is always that price when it is sold at that size. So, so weird.

Worse still, only true bars can sell you a drink without forcing you to also buy food. Restaurants with less comprehensive liquor licenses cannot sell you a drink unless you buy food. The worst. We found this out the hard way after a morning of vigorous hiking through a mosquito-infested canyon that did not live up to its name (Dry Canyon). We devoured sandwiches about 20 minutes before we got back to the trailhead, so we weren’t hungry, we just really needed beers. Much to our dismay, we ordered beers and were immediately forced to choose something, anything edible, before we were allowed to have our beers.

Okay, thanks, but I just ate. Now all I want to do is sit here in your air conditioning and drink this beer that I already bought from you. Fortunately, we found a nice hummus plate on the menu so it wasn’t the worst thing ever, but still. Who are you to decide whether or not my stomach is properly primed to receive alcohol? What if I just carbo-loaded on the way over here, and one more ounce of food will cause me to simply explode, ala Monty Python’s Meaning of Life? What THEN, Utah Liquor Control Board and restaurant owner? WHAT.

Parts Three and Four of the Drive

2011-08-22T08:00:00.000-06:00

Well, the third installment of the story, which covers the remainder of Tuesday night straight on through the third and fourth days of the drive. As you recall, we crawled to the nearest food establishment to inhale some dinner at 8:30 at night, after 14 hours on the road. We hit the jackpot when we stumbled into a seedy Mexican joint purveying dirt cheap margaritas.

The watered-down margaritas did little to dull the pain of returning to our room. On the short walk back, we noted that the freegan (or more likely homeless person) digging in the dumpster and stuffing treasures into his backpack had moved on. With defeat in our hearts and Mexican food-babies in our bellies, we trudged up the stairs to our room and shut the door that had no chain or deadbolt. We brushed our teeth in the bathtub, because it had cold water. We looked around…for the…cat?

Where was the cat? He had vanished completely. We tore apart the room for several minutes before Ajax came strutting into the middle of the floor looking all nonchalant like, “Oh, hai, guys, what’s going on?” Neither of us saw him emerge, but a few minutes later Andy watched him disappear into the bed. Yes. INTO. Not under or behind or just between the sheets. INSIDE the actual structure of the bed.

As it turned out, the bed frame was nothing but four pieces of 4x6 lumber nailed together to form a rectangle which rested on the floor. The two twin box springs supporting the king-size mattress were screwed onto the bed frame. Because that’s necessary. Someone might steal one of these box springs, guys. The box springs were overhanging the end of the “bed frame” by about six inches, and the fabric covering the bottom of the box springs had torn. Naturally, Ajax found his way into the crevice this tear allowed him to access, and he proceeded to crawl into the space between the box springs and the floor, where he was completely hidden.

Ajax soon returned to the world of the (barely) living, and we set about blocking his access to this netherworld. We stuffed some trashcans and luggage under the overhanging box springs and figured that would be enough. Utterly depleted by this effort, we then attempted to go to sleep. In the stillness, the room’s ultimate flaw revealed itself.

I had just drifted into a half-sleep when a noise assaulted my very soul. Was I on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral? Why, God, WHY am I hearing a spaceship firing up three feet from my head?

Oh. It’s the air conditioner.

There seemed to be two settings. Off, and NASA. The high in Tulsa that day was something like 104, and we were on the 2^nd floor. Turning off the AC was not an option. So we suffered. We slept in 10 minute spurts. The machine would roar into action and blast frigid air for a few minutes, and then abruptly shut off for about 10 minutes before repeating the process all over again. It was the aural equivalent of waterboarding.

Finally, around 4:30 in the morning, we gave up. We arose to shower, pack, eat and get as far from Oklahoma as we could, as quickly as humanly possible. I got out of the shower to find Andy in a panic. The cat was gone. Again. Ajax moved the barricades just enough to squeeze back under the bed, and promptly fell asleep. There was no coaxing him out. We had to lift the entire bed – frame, box springs, mattress and all. We propped it up on the trashcans and I had the distinct pleasure of crawling under the bed and into the filth to extract the cat. I may or may not have contracted AIDS from this experience.

By 6:30 we were hauling it out of there like our lives depended on it (because our sanity actually did). When we crossed into Kansas, I wept.

I was even happier when we made it to Colorado, for three reasons. First, this sign. I love how a lot of the West seems to think it’s still 1989.

Second, we began to see signs of the Rockies in the far distance. And, finally, we were going to stop for the night in Colorado, a mere two states away from our final destination.

Wednesday afternoon we made it to Fort Collins. I know from its reputation that Fort Collins is a legitimately cool place. However, it could have been freaking Compton, California and I would have been happy to stay there for a night, simply because it wasn’t Tulsa. We stayed at a newly opened La Quinta, which was also objectively quite nice. Comparatively, however, it was a palace of epic proportions. Spending a night there made me feel like a real person again.

We slept in until 7 and hit the road shortly after 8. We stopped for our typical roadside peanut butter and jelly somewhere in Wyoming, where we watched this rainstorm sweep across the open range. Later, we passed by Sinclair, Wyoming, a town that exists solely within the boundaries of an oil refinery and looks like the movie sets for Brazil and Mad Max got together and had a post-apocalyptic baby.

Finally, around 3 in the afternoon, we crossed the border into Utah. After four solid days of driving, I was actually grateful to be there, if only because it meant I could soon stop driving hundreds of miles each day. Much to my pleasure, northern Utah is actually a really pretty place. We drove past Bear Lake before turning south into a canyon that would lead us to our new town. Actually, we first turned south onto a side road that quickly turned into a gravel road and then a pock-marked dust road because the GPS seemed to think this was a reasonable detour. Once we found the real road, the canyon was beautiful. There was a lot of precipitation this past winter and spring, so the river was rushing alongside the road and everything in sight was a different shade of green. I was actually happy to get stuck behind a truck hauling a camping trailer, because it gave me an excuse to slow down and take in the view.

Bear Lake - Much more impressive when you're not trying to take a picture and drive a car at the same time.

Driving through Logan Canyon

We stayed in a hotel the first night, and went out for dinner in town, where we got a crash course in the twisted labyrinth of Utah’s liquor laws (which could be a rant in and of itself). The next morning we signed the lease for our apartment and unloaded the bare essentials we had hauled out in our cars. Thus began our 10-day stint of suburban camping while we waited and waited, and waited still, for the movers to deliver our stuff.

Part Two of the Drive - A Tale of One (Very Awful) City

2011-08-20T08:00:00.000-06:00

Let's pick up right where we left off. Tuesday morning, we woke up in Knoxville, drove for an eternity, and ended up in a place I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy:

Marathon is not an inaccurate way to describe Tuesday’s drive from Knoxville to Tulsa. By the end, we were exhausted, dehydrated, starving, sore, and at risk for having a heart attack. If my bowels had released at some point during the drive, it would not have been surprising. Marathon.

The drive was just too long. Too many hours of monotonous countryside. Too many unexpected tolls on Oklahoma roads. (Why would I want to pay to drive here? You should compensate me for pain and suffering for setting foot in this wasteland!) Too many thunderheads that I was convinced were going to turn into giant whirling funnel clouds that would head straight for my tiny little car.

We left Knoxville at 7 in the morning. We gained an hour as we entered Central time. Even so, it was around 8 PM when we finally checked into the motel where I thought my life was going to end. After stopping at three other hotels where we could not stay, we finally came upon a Budget Inn that was both affordable and hospitable to Ajax. (Sorry, no pets. Sorry, too expensive. Sorry, no vacancies. – Wait, what, a hotel in Tulsa is full? Who the hell else came here voluntarily?) We hastily paid for our room and immediately suffered buyer’s remorse as our sense of desperation for shelter waned enough for us to take in our surroundings.

Signs adorned the lobby cautioning, “No Refunds,” and “We are not responsible for anything stolen from your room or vehicle.” I suppose those aren’t unreasonable policies, but you could tell this was just the kind of place where people might really really want and deserve a refund, and where you would probably be one of the lucky ones if you left with all the same belongings you had upon arrival. We emerged from the lobby to a simmering asphalt wasteland. The strip of dirty, low buildings and scabby parking lots stretched on for miles in either direction.

Where. The hell. Were we?

Exhaustion and hunger were overriding any questions I had about the safety of my person or possessions, so we proceeded to our room. The door swung open to reveal a hell-hole. My first thought was to check the vents to make sure there wasn’t a briefcase full of money and a transponder hidden anywhere because this was clearly the kind of place where Anton Chigurh would blast open your door with a cattle stunner and kill the shit out of you because you took his drug money.

Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men

I don’t even remember if we checked for bed bugs. By some miracle, the place must not have been infested, but bedbugs would have just been icing on this cake full of razor blades and horrors. Andy sat down on the bed and a beetle immediately crawled up his pant leg. I tried to wash my hands and found that only scalding hot water was available from the sink. I peeked in the cabinet under the sink and found a half-eaten pudding cup (in addition to a dark hole that led to some abyss of plumbing and probably child-raping clowns). If you're wondering, the pudding was chocolate. No, I do not recall if it was Jello or Snack Pack, but in retrospect it could have just as easily been Swiss Miss or Kozy Shack. So many questions left unanswered.

But I digress. After 14 hours on the road, I was ready to just lay face down on what I’m sure was an unspeakably filthy comforter atop the bed and cry until I passed out. But I had come to Tulsa for a very specific and important reason! Tulsa was not on the way to Utah, nor was it on my list of places I ever wanted to visit, save for the fact that Danielle was forced to call it home for three years. So I tried to rally and make arrangements to meet up with Danielle. But then the problem resurfaced - Where. The hell. Were we?

My camera didn't have a 'hellscape' setting, so this photo doesn't accurately capture the desolation.

In my short-sightedness, I had failed to make sure I knew where Danielle lived in relation to the city proper (if you can even call it that). As we approached Tulsa from the south, I realized this omission and called her to find out. South. She lived south of the city, the very place I was driving at that moment. As fate would have it (fate, you bitch) Andy, driving ahead of me, hit a dead zone and had awful cell reception as I tried to inform him that we needed to get off the highway and find a hotel NOW. He thought I was telling him NORTH, keep going. Ugh. So we ended up somewhere north of Tulsa as we began our hotel search. I have no idea how we ended up where we did, on the west side, in a bleak, sprawling ghetto.

Danielle wasn’t familiar with our blighted wasteland location, so she tried to look up directions. As fate would have it again (that trollop), computer troubles prevented Danielle from swiftly obtaining directions. Andy and I were too tired and disgusted to venture very far from the hotel. It was almost 8:30 by this point, and we hadn’t eaten since lunch. On the verge of crying, screaming, slipping into a coma, or all three, I regretfully told Danielle that hanging out just wasn’t in the cards.

Andy and I set out to find the closest possible source of food. We found a Mexican restaurant in the half-vacant strip mall next to our motel. They had cheap and fast margaritas that provided the only bright spot in what was one of the worst days of travel I have ever experienced.

The watered-down margaritas did little to dull the pain of returning to our room. On the short walk back, we noted that the freegan (or more likely homeless person) digging in the dumpster behind our motel, stuffing treasures into his backpack, had moved on. With defeat in our hearts and Mexican food-babies in our bellies, we trudged up the stairs to our room and shut the door that had no chain or deadbolt. We brushed our teeth in the bathtub, because it had cold water. We looked around…for the…cat?

In the next installment, we'll learn where Ajax the Intrepid ventured, and how we pulled him back from the edge of the abyss.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

2011-08-19T18:39:00.000-06:00

Or, Utah: A brain dump in as many parts as I feel like writing

Do they give out prizes for the number of times a blogger promises to write about something and then forgets or just disappears from the internet entirely? Because if they do, I want one. I believe I could be a serious contender for such an honor.

I’ve been gone from this interweb hovel for exactly one month today. I’m not even going to apologize, because I’ve just been having too much fun. If I did apologize, it would totally be passive aggressive – it would be all “Oh sorry I’ve been too busy living life to actually write about it. Isn’t it just a crime that I’ve been acting like a responsible, real person and not a curmudgeonly hermit.” By the way, there is a season for everything, and that curmudgeonly hermit will come crawling back to regularly blogging someday. Someday. (Probably in the winter when the Inversion lingers over the valley and I am, as a colleague predicted, ready to slit my wrists.)

Let’s backpedal a bit, shall we?

The drive. Yes, the drive. We began our drive to Utah on July 11th, marking the third summer in a row that we have driven across almost the entire continent. When you realize one day that it’s been blindingly sunny and 120 degrees every day for 6 months, I’m the reason. You’re welcome for that golden tan, by the way.

This time, we decided just spending four straight days in the car wasn’t punishing enough. We reached the conclusion that if we really wanted to take road-tripping up a notch, it was time for the mental self-flagellation of driving alone. (Full disclosure: Andy had already driven across the country alone. Twice. In January. So I am kind of being a huge whiner here.) So we took separate cars. Really, we did this to save money, because shipping a car is expensive. Even though we had a generous moving allowance from Andy’s new job, the moving company, Allied Van Lines, if you’re curious, was giving us the run-around and trying to rip us off in ways that I may or may not remember to bitch about in an upcoming segment of this story, so we had to cut corners somewhere.

Monday, July 11^th dawned bright and steamy, like every morning in New Jersey between Memorial Day and Columbus Day. We rolled out a few minutes after our projected departure time, because saying goodbye kind of sucks. We waved to my mom and Andy’s parents and sister as we drove away from the flat, swampy farmlands of rural South Jersey and headed for the Delaware Memorial Bridge. I just couldn’t wait to have one last day of paying tolls and driving on 6-lane highways in gridlock traffic.

And boy did I ever get my fill. Somewhere in Maryland, traffic came to a dead stop. Shoulder construction forced several lanes of traffic to merge down to merely a few lanes, and obviously asking people to take turns while driving is just beyond so the next hour or so was spent alternately creeping at 3 mph or debating whether it would be more efficient to just cut the engine, put the car in neutral, and push.

Fortunately, this truck slipped in front of Andy’s car and kept my spirits high until almost Virginia. ‘Twas magical.

The rest of Monday’s drive was unremarkable. We arrived in Knoxville, checked into a Super 8 where we did a quick Bed Bug/Make Sure There Are No Crevices Into Which The Cat Will Disappaear Forever inspection, and set out for Keith’s house. He showed us around his super sweet Brady Bunch-esque house (it still kind of makes me feel old that some of my friends are home owners and that comparing utility bills and appliance efficiency is a form of stimulating conversation).

Then we went out for dinner, which was awesome and did not contain grits, hush puppies, or anything remotely Southern – a relief for both my waistline and my colon. Afterwards, Keith showed us around a bit of downtown Knoxville. He took us to the giant disco ball from the 1982 World’s Fair. Good times were had by all, but we called it a night early so we could get some rest in preparation for a marathon drive from Knoxville to Tulsa the next morning.

This tale of wandering and woe will continue...tomorrow. Seriously, it really will, because I've already written it and scheduled the post. You can take that to the bank.

Officially arrived in The West

2011-07-19T14:34:00.000-06:00

We may have rolled into Utah on Thursday afternoon, alive but not quite unscathed from our four day journey. But I didn't realize until today that we are fully in The West. I've been slowly savoring all 858 pages of Lonesome Dove for the past couple weeks, so I've been cultivating a Western frame of mind for a while now. Even still, I wasn't quite ready for what I found in the mail today.

Normal people in normal places get their Red Plum bulk mail circular full of grocery store and drug store sale flyers. We got one today with flyers from the three grocery stores in town. Most of the sales consist of huge portions of ridiculously cheap meat and cases of the pitiful 3.2 beer we are forced to buy. But as I paged through the circulars, I discovered a whole new world of awesome. My life is forever changed. I never again want to live in a place where I don't receive sale circulars for a single store where I can buy all of the following:

Live chickens

Dutch ovens (dude, I know) 

Mane n' Tail shampoo that is actually intended for use on a horse

Pistols

Rifles

Handguns

Revolvers

The next time I go shopping, my grocery list is going to look a little like this:

milk - 2%

orange juice - with pulp

eggs  live chickens

greek yogurt

spinach

revolver- with holster


An extra $30 for the holster? Worth. It.

Speaking of 3.2 beer, though, there IS a loophole. Apparently microbrews can be 4.0? I don't know. Trying to comprehend Utah's liquor laws is like playing Candyland with a three year old. No matter what you do, they keep changing the rules and making shit up so you lose every time. Here's one brewery that is clearly sticking it to the man as flamboyantly as possible:

Utah. So far, so good. Lots to report, but I just wanted to whet your appetites with this morsel while I go about the business of joining a gym, laying out, finding a laundromat (gasp) until our washer gets delivered next week, getting a driver's license, securing pending employment, and then maybe realigning my priorities because clearly that list betrays my New Jersey provenance. Whatever, I'm not ashamed.

Oh Hai.

2011-06-01T14:25:00.000-06:00

I fell off the grid for a little while, there. Since we last spoke, I have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to wrap my head around my latest life development. After letting the idea simmer in my brain for an appropriate amount of time, I am finally ready to share.

Are you ready for this?

No, I'm not pregnant, but what I have to say is just as weird. We're moving again! Guess where! Here are some hints:

When I found out, I wasn't exactly 'buzzing' with excitement. Nor was I all that 'jazzed.'

To woman up and deal with this news, putting on my big girl panties isn't going to cut it - I may have to put on some sacred underwear.

It's a good thing I'm a featherweight imbiber, because I'm going to have to get used to drinking 3.2% alcohol beer.

Have I been too subtle?

It's true. We are moving to the Beehive State, where Andy obtained a Big Boy job (not a job at a Big Boy restaurant, but legitimate, exciting employment in his chosen field and I should note that I am both proud of and happy for him because he will read this and then get all poopy pants that I'm complaining but I'm really not trying to rain on his parade). I was sad to learn that its moniker did not come from the Utahns collective love of our apian friends, but rather because of the "hive mind" mentality of its citizens (and also because they value thriftiness and hard work, which is alright because I am nothing if not thrifty). But I really thought there would be honey. Sad face.

I have just twelve days left at my job that I am coming to loathe, and then we pack and move early next month. I am just not cut out to deal with high school students. Or at least not these high school students. I feel like I am constantly in an adversarial position with these monsters. At least they live in New Jersey, so pumping gas is a career option when they ultimately fail at life.

And I really have no business being a high school librarian. Reader's advisory? I can suggest a ton of books but you aren't going to like a single one, kids! What should you read next? You're interested in books about self-discovery and girls having adventures? Why not read some Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D'Urbervilles is loaded with self-discovery and adventure. If by self-discovery and adventure you mean: a girl in 19th century rural England leaves home to earn money for her family because her alcoholic father can't support them, and on the way she gets hardcore raped and impregnated, and then things get really ugly.

Was that the kind of story you wanted to read? Oh, you wanted a book about teenagers going on a road trip where they spend their parents' money and make out with cute boys, but on the drive home one girl confesses that her parents are getting divorced so they softly weep together for a quarter mile of highway before cranking up the pop music and returning to the gilded prison of suburbia? Sorry, I have no idea, but I'm sure I've just described the plot of 60% of YA lit in existence, so it couldn't be that hard to find something.

Well that escalated quickly. This was supposed to be a post about moving! Needless to say, Utah wasn't at the top of my list of places I ever wanted to live. In fact, it wasn't even on the list. There was a list, and Utah was nowhere near it. But the more I learn about my future home, the more I think maybe it won't be so bad. I am kind of looking forward to a fresh start.

And if all else fails, I'm sure I'll find some hilariously weird things about which to blog. Because, let's be honest. New Jersey is totally bizarre, but a lot of its idiosyncrasies fly right under my radar because I'm so used to them. I have had much less inspiration to write since I've been back in New Jersey (although having a full-time job and cable TV and close proximity to family and friends might also be to blame) so maybe Utah will be a nice kick in the pants (a kick that will, no doubt, be buffered by the padding of the sacred underwear).

Juxtaposition

2011-05-09T19:07:00.000-06:00

Big word, am I right?

I have been BUSY for the past couple weeks. We spent a lot of time with family. We went to a Phillies game. I ran SEVEN MILES last Saturday. That was pretty wild. For a lot of people, that's nothing, but I usually hit a wall around mile 3 or 4. I am either too hungry, too thirsty, or in some kind of pain, but lately I've been making a real effort to run with better form and stay hydrated, so that was an exciting breakthrough.

Earlier last week I was at the mall getting my engagement ring repaired (because apparently I can't take care of nice things, and knocked two of the prongs out of alignment when I bashed my hand on my desk at work - what gives?). I wandered into "The Shoe Department," which is a store I can't quite figure out. They carry some name brands, but their niche seems to be the purveyor of hilariously blatant knock-offs. Bob's shoes - for every pair you buy, they'll donate TWO pairs to poor kids who have to walk 39 miles over broken glass and molten lava to fetch dysentery water. I'll just post this picture and let you all digest this confusing bundle of possible intellectual property theft and charitable one-upmanship:

This past weekend we celebrated my grandmom's birthday and, obviously, Mothers' Day. For Miss Iowa's big day, my mom and I took her to a nice little lunch outside at a local restaurant. Well, it would have been lovely, except for the traffic that made it necessary to shout. And the waitress who acted like we ruined her day by sitting in her section. Then she messed up the birthday girl's order and brought her a cheese steak instead of a chicken cheese steak. The horror. Just for the record, though, my portobello and zucchini wrap was bangin'. Just saying.

We tried to put the shortcomings of lunch behind us. We headed down to Wheaton Village to take in the Paul Stankard glass paperweight exhibit. Before you go into a coma, let me 'splain. These aren't your average, desk-dwelling, memo-holding paperweights. These things are AMAZING. So intricate and detailed and beautiful. My favorite was called "Morning Glory Orb with James Joyce in a Potato." A very tiny image of James Joyce's face was hiding inside a potato. Don't question it. Also, it costs $12,500 if you want to buy it for me.

Taken from http://www.jsauergallery.com/sagemoon/artistPages/PStankardShow.html

After we had our fill of acid-trip hippie glass blowing, we repaired to Casa de Madre for some pound cake that my mom and I had made the night before. Aww:

Also, this, because how can you not love that little face?

On Sunday, my mom and I joined Andy's family and friends-who-may-as-well-be-family at the Tap Room in Chesapeake City for the traditional Mothers' Day crab feast. My feast ended prematurely when I saw the inside of a crab's body cavity for the first time. Mustard? Oh my god, I can't even. Luckily there were lots of bay fries and clams and Yuengling. The beer was instrumental in alleviating the mental trauma I experienced when Andy broke open my crab (which immediately became his crab). Sweet Jesus.

The weekend capitulated with the most hilarious juxtaposition I can think of. On the way home from Maryland, on a three-lane highway somewhere in rural Delaware, we sat at a traffic light. I heard Adam Lambert's "Whataya Want From Me?" blasting from a nearby vehicle. I glanced around casually trying to identify the source. Was it the teenagers in the little coupe to my left? No. Was it the hoss with the eagle tattoo on his bicep in the giant white pickup? No way...yet it sounded like...but it couldn't be...oh, but it was. I rolled down my windows to verify that the dulcimer tones of Adam Lambert were indeed coming from the truck to my right. Not only was this dude blasting Adam Lambert, but he was jamming. out. Drumming on the steering wheel, bobbing his head. He was so into it. Best thing.

Actually, I lied. Best thing award goes to the old man in my apartment building whom I observed peeing on the dumpster at 4:30 in the afternoon the other day. I pulled up in the parking lot and his cane was dangling from the rim of the dumpster, which he was facing with his back to the parking lot as he fumbled around with the fly of his pants. The next day I was heading out to my car when I saw him getting out of the FANCY ACURA that he drives, with his fancy tortoise-shell pimp cane. That he actually uses because he is crippled - it takes him about 8 minutes to climb up the single flight of stairs to his unit. Lest you form a mental picture of a geriatric Shaft, this man is feeble and very, very white. Crazy old man living large and peeing on dumpsters in broad daylight? Best. Thing.

If you spent three days trapped in a cave you'd probably be a little annoyed, too

2011-04-24T08:28:00.000-06:00

Happy Zombirthday, Homie J.

It's Easter, and I have successfully navigated the month of April without a single piece of candy passing through my lips. I did, however, dye an egg. In keeping with a four year old tradition (I think it's been four years now?), my friends and I once again gathered for beer and Ukrainian egg dying. One Flying Fish Exit 4 beer decimated me for the night (but it's 9.5% alcohol!), and my hand-eye coordination apparently rivals that of a five year old with ADHD when I am a wee bit inebriated:

Friends shouldn't let friends dye drunk.

Right now it's surprisingly nice out for an Easter Sunday. Growing up, I don't ever remember having an Easter Egg hunt with my cousins that didn't involve scrabbling through mud and wet grass in a cold drizzle. Now that we're too old for our parents to justify hiding plastic eggs full of loose change for us to fight over, Easter decides to be warm and gorgeous. It's just as well, though. Finding money isn't nearly as exciting when you know you'll just use it to buy groceries or pay your electric bill.

Time to go mix up the dressing for the kale slaw I'm taking to dinner at my aunt's house! I hope everyone at least tries it, but I'm not going to hold my breath for that one. Usually my attempts to introduce healthy things are not well-received, so we'll see.