No, I won't watch your bag for you...

I Hate Americans

2012-05-20T21:17:00.000-05:00

For a brief period of time, over the course of an idyllic summer and then some, I lived in Munich, Germany. Being there more of less by myself, I did my best to meet strangers and over time, I became friendly with this big group of expats who liked to picnic. That seems odd to say, but I mean it very seriously. These were big-time sophisticated picnics, that started early in the evening and extended late into the night, with candles and baskets and blankets and strawberries and PROSECCO. This summer, to me, will always be remembered in Prosecco. I had never had Prosecco before but during the particular summer, when I wasn't drinking Weissbier, I was drinking Prosecco.

On any given Friday night, there'd be me the American and then the Brazilians and the English and the Australians and the Italians (of course) and then we'd have our German hanger-on-ers who we relied on when the Polizei came by.

I liked the picnics (A LOT) and I liked the Brazilian men (A LOT), but the Brazilian men were so very unreliable and it was time to get serious about my ovaries and maybe now was the time to find my international husband. So I signed up for an Internet dating site and and met up with Matthias, a German. We went to the Englisher Garten in Munich on a ridiculously sunny day to have ein Mass or two.

Matthias was much larger than in his photos, where he was shown climbing mountains. Matthias was like MUCH larger. Matthias hadn't seen a mountain in looonnnnng time.

Whatever though, people change and you never know somebody's story. I'm okay with that.

We had a nice afternoon, drinking liters in the sunshine. Our afternoon was so nice, in fact, that as the day wore on, I let Matthias convince me to go to a Kneipe by his house in Munchener Freiheit. This convincing of me wasn't too hard as I'd had two liters of beer by this point (that's SIX American beers if you're keeping track) and I needed to use the ladies and it was easier to walk to the next bar then walk home. So we went to the next bar.

And when we got to the next bar, I went to the ladies. (Sofort!) And then I came back from the loo and everything had all shifted

I had given him, apparently, TOO MUCH TIME TO THINK.

"I hate Americans," he says to me, as I take my seat across from him in the bar.

There's a grammatical phrase in German..."je mehr x, desto y" The more x, the more/better y. For me, je mehr Bier ich trinke, desto besser Deutsch kann ich. (The more beer I drink, the better German I speak.) Matthias and I were speaking German together, bar a few nouns that failed me every so often. (Grammar good. Vocab bad.) Can you imagine what I'm about to say all in German with a few random English nouns? Please try.

"Um, but I'm American."

"I know. I don't mean you. But I hate all the other Americans. All of them. They're so stupid. They don't know anything about geography."

"Well, America is a pretty large country. It's like ridiculously larger than Germany. GERMANY IS THE SIZE OF MONTANA.* It's not surprising that most Americans don't know much about geography."

"I don't care. I hate them. Americans are just so dumb and stupid. They never travel or go anywhere."

"Um, again, I'm American...my parents are American -- actually my dad is American and Irish -- and a lot of my friends are American...and we've traveled, we've been places..."

"No I don't mean you. But everyone else...Americans are just stupid."

This went on and on for a while and a while, and then for some more time, and then some more time longer. A conversation that went nowhere, in circles. Repetitive repetitive circles, fueled by half-liters of Weissbier. I do like a good Weissbier. But finally, on Weissbier Nummer drei, for me, it was over.

I put Weissbier #3 down.

"Listen, here's some money. I think it should cover my part of the tab. I gotta go. It's Sunday night and I have a conference call with China later. I had a nice afternoon in the Biergarten. It was really nice..."

I paused, debating what to do next. I'm not normally this girl, but I had had so much Bier at this point and my German was SO good because of it, it was hard not to do it.

"But listen. I don't think this is going to work. Maybe we don't have as much in common as I thought. I thought you were really international and global. But you seem really really biased and negative, and well, you've said a lot of things about Americans that are bad and disrespectful and I'm just not down with that. I mean, I'm American. And my family is American. So, um, I just don't think this is going to work out."

"You don't think this is going to work out?? Really? That's funny."

"I'm sorry...I just don't think..."

"Because I knew, I knew from the moment I met you today that THIS (Bierglass slam) was NEVER (Bierglass slam) going to work out (Bierglass slam)!"

"Ah, okay then. Well here's your money then. Get home safely. Nice meeting you. Tschuuuuuuusssssssss."

I ran home that night (had to pee again), took myself off match.de, and spent the rest of the summer concentrating on Brazilian men. We drank a lot of Prosecco and never talked about America.

*I learned this fact in German 101. Danke, Herr Wimmer!

38 Things Not to Say in An Online Dating Profile

2012-05-13T11:54:00.000-05:00

I am considering online dating again. Yes, after a long dry spell, it is time to give the Internet wheel of fortune another whirl. The words that follow are only going to get me in trouble. But this Catholic girl says "F*CK TROUBLE." I am 38 years old and MY OVARIES ARE DYING. "Geriatric," they call me. GERI-f*cking-atric. At 38. Yes. So here, here is my guidance for men of all ages (and for myself as well). Here is what NOT TO SAY in your online dating profile.

1. Your favorite movie is "The Notebook." Well, f*ck you and f*ck Ryan Gosling too.

2. Your life includes "no drama." F*ck you, and f*ck your lack of drama, because we both know you have two ex-wives and three children by four women in five states.

3. You love to "just" talk. I can tell you right now...maybe you should just learn to love to shut the f*ck up.

4. You love "taking risks." So what I'm hearing is...sometimes you drive around with an expired license and NO CAR INSURANCE.

5. Your best memory ever was" that one time in high school, when your team won the football/wrestling/swimming/lacrosse/canoeing championship." That is...you still live with your mother.

6. You like to discover new apps on the iPhone. NEXT...

7. You "act shy until you get to know someone." You are anti-social. There is something f*cking wrong with you. You never leave your house.

8. "I'm really getting into exercise." Because when you're not exercising, you are eating ALL of the spaghetti.

9. "I am from a large family." Every member of your family will f*cking hate me.

10. "My hobby is premier league football/soccer." You will never f*cking talk to me when the footie is on. NEVER.

11. "I am a freelance writer." You have a f*cking blog and never should have quit your day job.

12. "I have no financial baggage." You went f*cking bankrupt a few years ago. But things are pretty okay for you now.

13. "I love HGTV." Because you are a f*cking hoarder and you house is a piece of sh*t and at night, you like to lie down and think about what could have been, while you stare at David Bromstad's pecs.

14. "I am a very deep person." You never shut the f*ck up.

15. "I'm just looking for someone I can click with." You want to have sex. On the first date. And you never f*cking shut up.

16. "I'm a really laid back guy." You are unemployed and you want to do your laundry at my house. You think that's fine because you will bring your own fabric softener.

17. "I like to explore the city." You never leave your f*cking couch.

18. "I am very confident." You are an asshole. Also, you never shut the f*ck up.

19. "I am in touch with my inner child." You are an asshole. With a motorcycle.Who never shuts the f*ck up.

20. "I believe in freedom." You are an asshole. And a member of the NRA.

21. "I am a senior executive." You are not a senior executive.

22. "I am disillusioned with women but I'm giving online dating a try." You've given this 47 tries already and you still haven't figured out that YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

23. "I will not put the toilet seat down after I urinate." I'm just saying...this did not turn out well for my father.

24. "I want someone who doesn't care if I come home drunk sometimes." You come home drunk ALL THE TIME. And sometimes, you sh*t your pants. In the front hallway.

25. "I am very well-traveled." You have been to Canada. And Jamaica once on a booze cruise, but you never got off the ship because you realized you didn't have a PASSPORT.

26. "I love to visit exotic places." Your work sent you to Colombia once, and you never left your hotel room because you were afraid of getting kidnapped. Even though you work for f*cking MATTEL.

26. "I love women." You sleep around. A LOT.

27. "I have a ponytail." All this white space and you chose to identify yourself by your ponytail?

28. "HELLO MISS LADY..." NEXT.

29. "I like to give long massages." You have one, if not two, sexually transmitted diseases. But you're on antibiotics.

30. "I like to cuddle by the fire." You do not have, nor have you ever had, a fireplace. If you do have a fireplace, you do not have any wood. If you have a fireplace AND if you have wood, you do not know how to open your flue. This will all end with a 911 call, I am telling you this right now.

31. [Insert photo of man in ski googles on mountain.] You went skiing once. In Michigan.

32. "My passport has never been confiscated." PASSIVE VOICE. You've been arrested and you are in jail.

33. "I'm recently back in the dating world." You've been divorced seventeen times.

34. "Wow, great teeth!" You have none.

35. "I'm very close with my ex-girlfriend and I want you to be comfortable with that." F*ck you, and f*ck your ex-girlfriend, who is just using you to get back at her soon-to-be-ex-husband.

36. "I'm down to party." You like hookers. And cocaine. A LOT and ALL THE TIME.

37. "Looking for someone no drugs, no kids." Because you have enough for both of us.

38. "I am genuine and down-to-earth." You are a liar, a cheater, a thief and a rogue. You also like wear hiking boots a lot, even when you're not hiking.

The End.

I Had a Foster Sister

2012-05-06T21:44:00.000-05:00

At some point, my mother must have wanted a third child. There were interviews, on the back porch, under the white aluminum awning. I remember our picnic table, very sturdy and painted a good brown that my mother had worked on for a long time. And there was fake grass. And the screen door that would slam if you weren't careful. But there was also a Japanese cherry tree. We were the only people in our neighborhood to have a Japanese cherry tree, and when I make the millions I deserve, I will buy one. Because there is no greater joy as a child than to hop onto a branch of a Japanese cherry tree and devoid it of all its pink petals.

It was a nice day and there was a fat lady at the house and we sat outside under the aluminum awning and she asked me if I wanted a sister. I had always wanted a sister. This was an easy question.

And before I knew it, I had a sister. She was a little younger than me and slept in my room. I had a really big bed at the time and we shared it. She had blond hair and she was too happy. And excited. Too happy and too excited about too much of everything. She had never had a Barbie doll before. Or an Easy-Bake Oven. We got her a Blanket Sleeper and a Mr. Potato Head to welcome her to the house. She had never worn a Blanket Sleeper or seen a Mr. Potato Head before. She didn't know what to do with Mr. Potato Head, so my brother and me showed her.

And my mother, always a good cook, would feed us. Blueberry pancakes for breakfast. Bologna sandwiches or tuna fish on toast (with chocolate milk) for lunch. It must have been summer because I don't remember going to school when my foster sister came.

I remember one day we went to a place where my foster sister would meet her family. They were alcoholics. I thought that had something to do with Carlo Rossi. I remember the room was dark and they were big people that didn't look like anyone else I knew and they were excited to see my foster sister and there were a lot of other people around but I didn't know who they were.

And then I remember that my foster sister went away and I never saw her again. And when I asked my mother why, she said that how for three children, there would never be enough bologna.

Brownie is Not Your Horse

2012-04-29T12:28:00.000-05:00

Childhood idyll. Me and the Catskill Mountains and MY HORSE. Every summer, we went to the Catskills, where the green is greener than green in the summer. First in tents, then in pop-ups, then in a proper motor home. The toilets were holes in the ground, the showers were shared (and I don't really remember taking any), and the hayrides were EVERYDAY. These were the days where open fires were permitted, where you scoured the ground for the *best* marshmallow sticks. In July, we asked for hats and gloves.

We had a porta-potty. It smelled funny. We had a CB-radio that crackled all day long. We had frisbees and comic books and jelly shoes and no shoes, no shoes at all. We collected rocks and rocks and rocks. Wet rocks are prettier than dry rocks. We waited for the hayride. We watched the teenagers dive off the cliff while we collected rocks in our jelly shoes and waited for the hayride. I always wanted to jump off that cliff, but the adults wouldn't let us.

We played PINBALL. Pinball all the time. And we begged for money for the jukebox so we could play Elvira by The Oak Ridge Boys over and over and over and over again. I learned a lot about the jukebox in the Catskills. ALWAYS play $5 in songs. Monopolize the machine and monopolize it FOREVER. Or be forced to listen to Bon Jovi forever and ever and ever.

We played badminton, badly. We played frisbee all the time. We joked with truckers on the CB-radio. Our mother made us "camping breakfast," a griddle of scrambled eggs and potatoes. My favorite breakfast ever. We slept in navy blue sleeping bags.

I rode my horse, a sweet pony Brownie. Every summer, I rode my horse. My horse, Brownie, with the sweet brown eyes. She waited for me every summer, so sweet and patient and sweet and waiting for me. I would feed her apples and sugar cubes and comb her and brush her and she was my horse and I loved her. In the evenings, they took Brownie and all the other ponies to the big field of tall grass, and as the hayride would go by, you would see the ponies, hidden in the grass, and I would wave at Brownie and she would smile at me.

It was time to go camping. We went camping. I went to find Brownie. Brownie was gone. All the ponies were gone. The stables were there, but the ponies were gone. "Where is my horse? Where is Brownie?" I asked.

"Brownie is not your horse," came the answer. "It's because of the insurance. The ponies were sent away because of the insurance."

Everybody Lies

2012-04-22T13:06:00.000-05:00

Earlier this year, in an attempt to be a grown-up, I hired an executive coach. One afternoon in one of those massive chain coffee shops full of tourists who are cold and lost and loud, he asked me about the things I believed in.

"Well, everybody lies. That's for sure up there at the top of the list," I said.

"Everybody lies? That's one of your life philosophies?"

"Yes, because it's true. Everybody does lie. Especially today, in the era of the Internet. Everybody wants to appear better, smarter, richer, more traveled. Everybody wants admiration and attention; they want you to believe in them, even when they have nothing to offer. And everybody wants to be connected to things they perceive as meaningful. Ergo...everybody lies."

My executive coach was not happy with this, but I thought maybe he was also quite a little bit happy with this. I imagined him calculating the dollars upon dollars I would spend with him, while he tried to convince me that everyone does not lie.

"Listen," I said. "If you start from a point of assuming that everyone lies, you will never be disappointed when people do lie to you. And you'll never fight with anyone about lying because you always assumed they were lying in the first place, so when you find out they definitely are lying, everything is fine. If you think about it, this actually makes a lot of sense."

"Who are all these people, lying to you?" he asked. A good question. But I was ready for it.

Because well, without going into specific details, liars are everywhere. I mean, you know my thoughts on Internet dates. If someone says they're good-looking and well-traveled, they were good-looking ten years ago and spent three months in Spain on an exchange program when they were 19. People lie to everyone because they calculate the mental odds of getting caught and assume they're small. They're probably still going to be better looking than the other liar they're on an Internet date with, and they've probably specifically chosen to go out with someone who has said something aspirational in their profile like "My greatest wish is to go to Spain."

I mean, just the other day, I was on a flight to California in the aisle seat. There was a guy from New York in the window seat and I asked him about Hurricane Sandy and it was terrible of course -- it had just happened like two days earlier -- and then the woman in the middle seat said "I'm from Long Island. It's just so devastating."

Well guess what? I'M FROM LONG ISLAND. So I asked here where she was from. And she couldn't tell me. So I asked why, if she was from Long Island, she couldn't tell me where she was from and she said she lived there for six months when she was a baby. This woman had to be 50 now.

And then during the same business trip, I took a bus ride to a winery for some sort of wine tasting event, and this one woman was going on and on about how much she loved Chicago and how Alinea was her favorite restaurant and she goes all the time. Something wasn't adding up to me about the way she was talking about Alinea so I said something misleading like "Oh yes, and it's such a good value." (Alinea can be upwards of $350 per person..) And she agreed with me. And then I joked and asked her how much money she made because Alinea was pretty darn expensive and if she and her husband were cool with dropping $700+ at dinner so frequently, would she be paying for us that evening? And she turned red in the face and admitted she'd never been to Alinea but had always wanted to go. And then she didn't talk to me for the rest of the trip.

I'd Drive Away Too

2012-04-15T21:37:00.000-05:00

I saw a man get killed once. It was a car accident, sort of, but the kind of car accident that ends in a grand jury investigation with me and my brother as witnesses. I was a teenager, still in high school. And I was driving my brother home from school and while we were at a stop light, waiting to make a left, a car careened up alongside us and people jumped out and starting smashing the windows of the car in front of the car in front of us and before we knew it, the car in front of the car in front of us had sped away and one of the guys from the car that had careened up alongside of us was on the ground.

He was dead, the guy. I just knew it. Even at 17, I knew he was dead.

I was one of the only 17-year-olds I knew that had a cell phone. My father would only let me drive the family station wagon if I took his Miami Vice phone with me. The phone was so big, I had to keep it under the seat of the car. This was 1991, I think, so when I called 911 from my Miami Vice phone in Suffolk County, NY, I didn't get 911 in Suffolk County NY. I got Nassau County NY 911, and they had no idea what to do with me and my mobile cellular phone.

"There's been an accident," I said. "Somebody's dead. You need to send an ambulance."

"You've called Nassau County. You're in Suffolk County. We don't know how to help you."

Later, I remember thinking that if anyone should have gone in front of the grand jury, it was our local cellular provider.

Why did that guy die?? Because of a girl. From the little I heard later, that dead 17 year old guy was upset about what some other 17 year old guys said about some 17 year old girl. (Maybe she was even 16.) And so he died because of some 16 or 17 year old girl.

I testified in front of the grand jury. I remember there were a lot of people there. I wore my Catholic school uniform. I remember a female juror wanted to ask me a question, but it wasn't clear if she was allowed to ask me that question or not. I didn't really understand what it was all about, but I think they were trying to say that the guy that died was murdered by the driver of the car in front of the car in front of me.

And I remember thinking that if someone came up to my car and punched in my windows and tried to drag me out of my car, I'd drive away too.

There is a Mouse. In My House.

2012-04-08T16:33:00.000-05:00

For a while there, I thought I was crazy. I was stressed out like crazy and feeling crazy and sometimes, when I was in my flat, minding my own business, I saw crazy things. Things moving. Things jumping. Crazy blurs, everywhere, out of the corner of my eye.

One night, before I stopped drinking, I came home from the pub after work and went straight to the bathroom. I lived by myself, so there was no closing of the door. There! Things moving, in the hallway outside the loo. Running. Blurs of speed.

I stopped drinking. I must be drinking too much, I thought. "You're seeing things. This cannot be good. Something is wrong."

In combination with other things, I gave up alcohol for three months. But still some nights, as I sat on my sofa on the grotty edge of Clerkenwell with my patio doors open, watching from one floor above, from a safe distance, as the Staff Terriers went by, I would still see things moving. Running. Blurs of light with the softest woosh of sound. But when I would look closely, in that direction, there would be nothing.

And then one weeknight as I was reheating a Tesco meal (crab, rocket and chilli linguini, if you must know) and getting ready for X Factor (or maybe it was Embarrassing Illnesses), there came a mouse. Like lighting across the laminate. I jumped. The mouse jumped. And I bought every mousetrap known to man on the Internet that night and poisoned the lot of them within a week. (It's amazing what you can have delivered these days.) Never saw any bodies, but I knew...they were there somewhere. (And yes, I had finally put together that all the black stuff around the kitchen floor and elsewhere was NOT dirt from my trainers.)

And I lived in fear that they were still there, because sometimes, at night, as I lay there under my duvet, I could hear things, scratching in the walls. Scratching and scratching and scratching.

Life went on. I went to work and went to work and then all the UK immigration laws started changing and the UK government needed ever company to prove that all their international workers were legit. HR had been bugging me about my passport and residence permit for weeks, and I kept forgetting and forgetting so one day, I ran home at lunchtime.

I got to my building and two men from the council were there, in their day-glo vests and green trousers. Those sorts of muscular, swaggery men who have come by their muscles through real work and by their suntans through real sun. They have my building's bin out (the dumpster, in American parlance).

"Ah, are you here about the mice?" I say. "We've been having some mice problems."

"Mice, love? Is that what you've think you've got?" I lived on the border of east London, and they had those east London accents that make every question sound like insultingly ironic.

"Yes, I've been having mice problems for months now. I think I finally got them with those high-frequency things, but I can still hear them at night, scratching in the walls. I wasn't sure what to do."

"Scratching in the walls darling? You can hear them scratching in the walls? The two look at each other and cackle. "She can hear the mice at night, scratching in the walls!" The sun glints off their diamante ear studs, day-glo stripes, and white trainers.

"You haven't got mice, love. You've got RATS. The entire building has rats. They've eaten through everything. I'm surprised you haven't got rats in your flat. The bin men called the rats in yesterday. Said you were infested. That they were everywhere, that there were twenty of them, in the bin alone. So were're here to put down poison. We're putting it everywhere. To keep the rats from spreading to other buildings. This is a real health hazard we've got here."

I see they have indeed spread around rat traps. Many of them. I stare at them and stare at them and stare at them. I cannot move. I am paralyzed by the thought of rats.

"Everyone knows when you hear scratching in the walls, love, it's rats. Not mice. Everyone knows scratching in the walls means rats."

I've Just Been Defriended on Facebook

2012-04-01T18:58:00.000-05:00

I've been defriended on Facebook three times now. Is that good? Bad? Ugly? I don't know.

#1: The first time it happened, I was the victim of a Facebook bug. Over there, in the right hand column, it said something like "People You Should Know." Most of the people there...I didn't know.

But there, down at the bottom of the list, was one of my friends.

How odd, I thought. Why is that person listed there? So I innocently clicked on the person and innocently sent a very innocent message: "Hey, we're no longer friends on Facebook!? Isn't that funny! Adding you again!!!"

Triple exclamation marks.

No response.

Then I made the mistake of mentioning it to some people, one afternoon where maybe we had all had some beers. "Isn't it funny?? X and I are no longer Facebook friends!? I sent another invitation, but I haven't heard back. X must not be checking Facebook."

Looks are exchanged. (Yes, passive voice time now.) I've obviously done SOMETHING. But what SOMETHING have I done?

I wrack my brain(s). Nothing. Nada. Maybe it was that time, where I sat there, lazily thumbing Twitter while everyone else talked about childbirth and the virtues of a C-section over natural.

I have never experienced childbirth before.

And I love my iPhone.

Can you blame me?

Later, I am told (passive voice!) that I disagreed too much with a friend of this friend about good restaurants. (Talk about feeling like a TOTAL COMPLETE AND ***UTTER*** F*CKING CHUMP for recommending said friend of this friend for a job at my firm the day after I apparently agreed too little about restaurants.)

#2: The next time it happened, I was prepared. I am nothing if not technical. Having been burned once by the "Hey, isn't it weird we're no longer friends on Facebook" thing, I had installed this super-secret Javascript in Firefox that would notify me when I'd been defriended.

And I'd been defriended. By the wife of a good friend. Her husband was still my friend though. (Guys are so much easier.)

"Oh God. What have I done now?" I wondered.

And then I remembered. I had suggested to some mutual friends one night, over cocktails, that I thought my fried, the husband, might work in porn. Because anytime I asked "my friend, the husband " (quote marks for clarity) what he was working on, I never got a straight answer. Except it had something to do with the Internet. But the rest was vaguely vaguely vague. So of course it must be porn.

Lots and lots of porn.

But I figured out later that it wasn't porn, and then I realized that I had written a blog post about the inappropriateness of paying for someone's lunch when it's their birthday BUT they are the one that has invited you to lunch in the first place and you had no idea it was their birthday and you are trying to save money because you have just bought an apartment and you really don't want to pay for someone else's lunch (even though it's their birthday). You are trying to be financially responsible but instead you get defriended by the wife of your friend because you wrote a blog post about not wanting to pay for the lunch of the mutual friend of you, your friend, and his wife.

Gah.

#3. One day (today), I posted something on Facebook in support of gay marriage, with reference to the historical ban on mixed-race marriages. My ueber-conservative friend decided to compare gay marriage to the holocaust and abortion. (I'm still not sure I understand his parallels.)

So I defriended him

He reciprocated.

The end.

Book Clubs Part I: Thank God There Was Sex in It

2012-03-25T19:30:00.000-05:00

I was so excited to join my first book club ever. I mean, really seriously excited. I like to read. A lot. Not always the highest brow stuff, but I really, really do like to read.

So when I was out one night in London with some friends and friends-of-friends, and one of the friends-of-friends said she was in a book club, I kind of invited myself. OK, I REALLY invited myself. I said, somewhere in a cheap wine bar in central London--and I remember this very specifically despite all the Prosecco--"ARE YOU IN A BOOK CLUB?? REALLY? CAN I BE IN YOUR BOOK CLUB?? BECAUSE I REALLY LIKE BOOKS. LIKE REALLY."

So she invited me to her book club. And we had to read this book called The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst, a book that had won the Man Booker Prize.

And it was the worst book I have ever read in my entire life.

And that's saying a lot coming from someone who had to read the biography of Hildegard von Bingen. Twice.

I mean, if you want to read about tedious rich people living REALLY tedious lives, I suppose you'll like The Line of Beauty.

Let me just say this: Thank God there was sex in it.*

(People who like The Line of Beauty probably also like the movie "Revolutionary Road," the most boring movie I've ever seen. And by the way, I've always thought that Leonardo DiCaprio looks like a weasel.)

At least there was a lot to talk about.

So I got dressed up for book club, imagining the new friends I was going to make and the debates we would have. I showed up with homemade brownies (mix imported from America) and wine (from Waitrose!) and a big smile, ready. Ready for girl talk and sex talk (because really, that's what book club is really all about) and NEW FRIENDS.

BUT EVERYBODY WAS ON A DIET. My brownies were poison in this house, and nobody drank my wine. Everyone did yoga. Twice a day. WITH THEIR HUSBANDS. No one had touched a carbohydrate in years. Not even a chocolate one.

I took a seat and turned to my left and introduced myself warmly. The woman looked at me a little oddly but offered me her hand in return. She told me she was from India. Occasionally, she would pass me the plate of sashimi, which I would wash down with copious amounts of my Waitrose Chardonnay. I might have drank all 750 ml of it.

At the end of the night, my new Indian friend did all the dishes. I tried to help, but she waved me away.

When book club was over, I walked back to the tube with the friend-of-a-friend that I had harangued at that wine bar in central London a few weeks earlier. I was wobbly with Chardonnay. She looked at me and said, "You know that woman you were sitting next to?"

"Yes, the woman from India. I've never been to India before. She seemed nice. Maybe a little quiet, but she's going to email me her Butter Chicken recipe and teach me the secret of garlic naan. That was so nice of her, to clean up after all of us."

"That was their maid."

I was never invited back to book club.

*All sorts of sex. Just so you know.

Don't Turn Your Blackberry Off on Vacation

2012-03-18T20:12:00.000-05:00

I learned the hard way the other week that you should never really turn off your Blackberry when you're on vacation.

Because you know, someone could maybe, like, die.

And everyone could be trying to contact you to let you know before you hear it from someone else but no one can reach you because you are drinking red wine on a mountaintop in Tuscany and you have turned off your Blackberry because you really are on vacation and you want this day, just this ONE day, to totally unplug because YOU NEVER FUCKING UNPLUG.

The day it all happened, I woke up in a hillside town outside of Florence, covered in pizza and slightly hungover from the house white the night before. Two of my friends--an American and a Brit--were marrying each other, and everything was beautiful. The temperature was beautiful, the food was beautiful, the people were beautiful, and I was eating carbs three times a day. I had forgotten a bathing suit/swimming costume for the pool, which I was a little bummed about, but I have enough laugh lines for my age, so I was okay with just hanging around the villa, reading magazines and drinking miniature bottles of Prosecco.

That morning, it was time for our bus ride into town. We were going to Pienza and then Montepulciano, two little postcards of places where the light is just like that in that certain way and old women ride bicycles in Sophia Loren outfits and there's genetically modified gelato on every corner.

So I said to myself, "Krista, you really need to enjoy today. Really enjoy today. Take the day off from work. Turn your Blackberry off. Don't be distracted. Turn your Blackberry off and just enjoy yourself. Turn your Blackberry off."

Off the bus goes. With me on it, with my Blackberry in my purse, but turned off. I eat acres of carbohydrates with truffles in Pienza and I buy inexpensively expensive Montepulciano in Montepulciano. Somewhere in between, I sweat more than a little and then I get a little bus sick and later I wonder, "Now really, who stole all of Italy's toilet seats??"

But still, I take picture after picture of the doorways of Tuscany and I decide I will open my own restaurant that will serve food JUST LIKE THIS and I will, of course, become a millionaire and marry someone named Giovanni and we will have bambinos forever and single-handedly solve Italy's population crisis despite the half-life of my ovaries.

I cracked some jokes that day. I am not a joke teller. But the weather and the sunlight and the wine and the carbs had all gone to my head in that vague way, and I made some jokes. Jokes I knew I shouldn't have made, but they were funny. At the time.

And then we get back to our villa in Tuscany--nearly two hours later than expected and dinner is in an hour--and one of my friends comes to my room in the villa and sits down on the bed in her sundress and suntan from the pool and tells me, all serious like, that she really needs to talk to me about something and the only thing I can think of is "Oh God, I really never should have joked about how the mother of the bride didn't realize that I was a guest at the wedding and thought that I was someone's nanny. Shit. What have I done??"

I say out loud: "Oh no. Who is mad at me now?? What have I done??"

My friend looks at me funny. "No, Krista. No. No. You haven't done anything. What do you mean, what have you done? You haven't done anything."

And then she tells me that my friend and colleague has died. Died. Tragically. Just the night before. And that the team had called her in Italy special, to ask her to tell me personally, because they knew we were together in Tuscany and it's better to hear this sort of news personally from someone you know than impersonally otherwise.

I am without speech.

Later, after I have showered off the truffles and the Montepulciano, I turn on my Blackberry.

And I see the missed messages.

And I think, "Today. The only day I've ever turned off my Blackberry. Ever. Except when I'm in a silver tube flying through the sky. Today."

Nobody Ever Believes Me

2012-03-11T18:12:00.000-05:00

I was going north on the 56 bus in London when Michael Jackson died. I was on Twitter, on Goswell Road. First there were just a few tweets and I really thought it was just a joke. Then there were enough tweets that I knew it was either the whole truth and nothing but the truth...

...or it was a really, really good hoax.

But it seemed true enough, really. And I wanted people to remember that they were on the 56 bus heading up towards Islington around where that old Banksy used to be when they heard the news from some drunk American girl with a vaguely Madonna-like accent.

So I said it. I announced it on the bus.

"Hey hey, everybody! Michael Jackson is DEAD. Like totally dead. It's all over the news." I'm trying to be loud. I'm not good at projecting.

Nothing. From nobody. The King of Pop was dead and the entire 56 bus had nothing to say about it. I tried waving my phone around to show them the TMZ homepage and still nothing.

So I bought a bottle of cheap rioja from the Turkish bodega on my corner and went home and clicked refresh on TMZ until I passed out.

Then, I found myself in Kuwait Airport last year, waiting to bag-drop for my flight to Washington DC. Kuwait Airport sucks because it doesn't matter how much status you have; there are no special queues. This is odd for a country with so much money, but I was fine, hanging out there with my iPhone, waiting. I'm good at waiting in airports. After all, there's no place really to go until you get in that silver tube and fly across the sky.

Chimes. My phone is chiming. It's a text message from United. My flight has been cancelled. Completely and totally cancelled. I kinda knew this was going to happen because I am an expert flight status checker and I had been checking the United Cargo flight status site all day (as opposed to the regular United site) and it kept giving off mysterious messages like "Pending."

"Hey, hey, everybody! The flight to DC has been cancelled. Like totally cancelled. I got a text from United that says so!" I wave my iPhone around.

Nothing. Just blank looks. I call the United 1K service desk and say, "Hi, my flight's been cancelled. What should I do?" They book me on the next flight 24 hours later. This all takes like 3 minutes.

I look at everyone in the queue. "Seriously, people, really. The flight is cancelled. You should all just go home and rebook yourselves." One guy with a broken arm asks if he can use my phone. I hook him up with the 1K desk and he rebooks himself too.

No other takers. Everyone just stands there. There are a lot of people now. A lot.

I leave them all and hop in a taxi and head back to the Marriott, where they (oddly) still haven't cleaned my room. I go to bed and feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

The next night, I get on the plane and the woman next to me tells me how she waited in the airport for hours the night before, waiting for an update on the flight, waiting for a different connection through anywhere, waiting for help with accommodation, waiting for everything.

I calculate that I was in bed within an hour of the text message from United.

Then, in March of this year, I get on a plane from Sao Paulo to Chicago. I've used my status and I have a seat in business class, but the seat has only been granted at the last possible moment. I have the United app on my phone, so I know who's been upgraded, by their first initial and the first three letters of their last name. I approach my seat. There's a man sitting there.

"Hi," I say jauntily and in good spirits, showing him my paper boarding pass. "If you're in 10J, so am I." He looks at me, not happily.

"There must be a mistake," he says.

"Probably not," I say. "You've probably been upgraded to first." I get out my phone.

"I think I'd know that because I just got on the plane," he says. He's testy, this one. A bit of a jackass. An amateur, really, with this front of the plane stuff.

"Right, well, sometimes these things happen at the last minute. I'm pretty sure I'm in business and you're in first." I wait for him to get up, to move, to anything. Nothing. I look down at my phone to confirm my seat and his.

"You'll have to get a flight attendant. As far as I know, this is my seat." he says.

"Yes, but you've been upgraded! You have a better seat! I'm sure of it! You're in 1A. Your first name starts with a D and your last name starts wish CON! It's you!" I show him my phone and then wave it around a bit, in a happy and congratulatory sort of way.

He looks at me, surprised. I know I've got the name right. He is the only person on the 1st class upgrade list and I've boarded the plane, tardily. (They had a really lovely Chardonnay-Viognier in the lounge.)

"Well, I'm not moving until a flight attendant tells me too." He crosses his arms, like a child.

I get him a flight attendant. They give him a new boarding pass. The guy ignores me as he repacks all his stuff and moves out of the seat. He says nothing.

"Enjoy first class!" I say.

Nothing.

Ethel Merman was My Grandfather's Cousin

2012-03-04T16:54:00.000-06:00

I woke up ungodly early one weekend morning and I decided to take a walk into town, the long way. Down Goswell Road and then Aldersgate through the garden at St. Paul's Cathedral and then over, westwards, down the deserted Fleet Street and then The Strand. Just me and the junkies and the lost Spanish tourists in their down coats and fur-trimmed hoods, even though it wasn't that time of year. At some point or another, I found myself approaching Charring Cross Station, so I took the "shortcut" up to Trafalgar Square. It's this little street. You might know it. William the IV Street. So I was wandering and I saw this well-dressed guy who had this face--this incredibly large and craggy memorable face--and I'm looking at him and he's looking at me and he nods in acknowledgement and I'm thinking, "I KNOW YOU." But I keep walking my way and he keeps walking his and then I realize it.

It's freaking DUSTIN HOFFMAN.

He is not a tall man.

Another time. I'm on an Internet date. With an American guy. He's lived in London a relatively long time for an expat, like me. Committed Londoners, both of us. I'm wearing my favorite black wool sweater, which just happens to have holes in both elbows. I don't care how many holes this sweater has, but I really love it. We have hamburgers in Camden at this place twinkling with fairy lights and then we go to a show at the Electric Ballroom and he keeps buying me beers. Large ones. I think they're Mexican beers. Tecate? It's all quite a blur really, but I remember thinking that my favorite wool turtleneck was not a good choice for the steamy mosh pit. Afterwards, we go to this bar in Camden and he goes off to the men's room and I'm watching this woman walk across the bar towards me. She is a very small woman, with towering hair. She's wearing baggy jeans and a long-sleeved green and blue rugby shirt but boy does she have a PRESENCE. There is just something about her. I can't look away. My date is walking behind her, pointing at her. There are all sorts of hand gestures involved. I am confused.

But then I realize. It's freaking AMY WINEHOUSE.

My date gets out his phone and tells me, "I need to update my Facebook." It's 2007. I've never heard of the Facebook, but I make a mental note. And then my date and I go upstairs and talk ourselves into a private party. We assume Amy is there for the private party because that's the direction she came from. But then I manage to somehow kick a glass of red wine up against the wall of the pub in a huge flourish of Tempernillo. And then the night is over. I never see Amy Winehouse or my date again.

(That, by the way, was the most clothing I ever saw her wearing.)

I go home that night and join Facebook.

Peddling backwards. I'm a child. I'm with my grandfather in South Florida. He's from Brooklyn. Born and bred. Seller of outboard motors and a fixer of everything. Even as an old man, he is strong, a lifetime of Evinrudes in his biceps and triceps. Grandpa is a collector. Of stamps. Of coins. He's an artist too. So many photographs over so many years. He likes to take out his albums and show them to me. I like his albums. One year, he takes out one I've never seen before. I am less than 12, but I don't know how much less. I just remember that I am small, but I am big enough to remember.

"And this is everything that Ethel ever sent me," he says. He shows me an album full of postcards and letters and photos from all over the world. Postcards to him, from Ethel. There's one from Jones Beach, in Wantagh, where I grew up. Not far from Brooklyn, really. I find it funny that someone would send a postcard from so close.

"Who's Ethel, Grandpa?" I ask.

"Ethel Merman. The singer. My cousin. Actually, she's Ethel Zimmerman but she changed her name for the stage. You know her, "There's no business but show business..." He sings, horribly, but I know the song. From cartoons. It's in a lot of cartoons. He shakes his head. "Boy...even as a kid she was loud."

Fast-forward. It's 1993. My grandfather has died at 88. I'm at university. My mother is in Florida, taking care of things and being the dutiful daughter. She calls me to tell me how things are going and to ask me if I want anything before they give it all to Catholic Charities.

"I want the Biersteins," I say. "And the Ethel Merman book."

"What Ethel Merman book?"

"The book grandpa kept, with all the postcards from Ethel Merman. There were even postcards from Jones Beach."

"I don't know what you're talking about," my mother says. "There's no Ethel Merman book. There are photo albums from different cruise ships, but I don't see anything that's from Ethel Merman."

"It's there, mom. I'm sure of it. I saw it."

"You must be remembering it wrong. I never saw an Ethel Merman book."

"I'm not remembering it wrong. Grandpa showed it to me. I read all the postcards. They were from everywhere. All around the world. Everywhere she went, she sent Grandpa a postcard."

"Well, no then. It's not here. I don't know where it is then. Because it's not here. You must have remembered it wrong. Are you sure you didn't remember it wrong because you must have remembered it wrong. I'm sorry."

---END--

Googlewhack, in case anyone can help me put this together, genealogy-wise: George Hehner. Conrad Hehner. Louise Hehner. Ethel Zimmerman. Ethel Merman. I have some family tree information but would like some more.

Google Goggles

2012-02-26T19:56:00.000-06:00

I saw a PowerPoint slide recently that said that in 1995, Internet penetration was, amongst Americans, less than 5%. So it's not surprising Google and the Internet in general have failed me in writing down this story because the facts, the details, they are not online. There's no Facebook legacy page or online guestbook or the opportunity to donate via Paypal to the deceased's charity of choice. An odd occurrence in today's world, and one which might make you wonder, in this age of search query strings, if this all happened at all, or if it happened in the way I say it happened or when it happened and how.

So let me start with what I remember as happening. Friday, October 13, 1995. I am doing what amounts to nothing in my college dorm room, ready to head home for fall break. It's relatively early, before lunchtime, when the phone rings. A real phone. A heavy one. IT IS ATTACHED TO THE WALL. And it has a real bell inside it that rings and rings and rings until one of my roommates stops doing her hair while drinking Diet Coke and watching Sally Jessy Raphael (or maybe it was Montel) and answers it.

It's my editor-in-chief. I work at the university newspaper and I am GOOD at it. So is my editor-in-chief. At age 19, 20, 21, he (to this day) is one of the best bosses I have ever had. We make a good pair.

It's odd to get a phone call from John at 10 am on a Friday morning. All 13,000 copies of the paper are on their way to the dining halls and the classroom buildings or, well, to the recycling containers. (I think we recycled more in the mid-90s than we do today.) The paper is OUT. It's done. Unless I've messed up. That happened once before when I let a feature about the campus pizza delivery guy go out as "Hot, Cheap and Easy." John was a little upset about that. So was the pizza guy. But now I never let my section go to bed before signing off on it.

"Are you sitting down?" John asks.

I live in a college dorm room full of couches and bean bag chairs. Of course I am sitting down.

"I don't want to be the one to tell you this, but I wanted to make sure you found out sooner rather than later."

Pause.

"There's been an accident."

Pause.

"Rob is dead."

Double-pause.

"We think there was alcohol involved. Campus and the police won't tell us anything."

Triple-pause.

Rob is my on-again-off-again intermittent hookup, my concert critic, and my source of all new music. He makes me mix tapes. At various points in our relationship, I have fancied myself in love with him and as the mother of his children.

So yeah, someone I know and sort of love--in the way that you love someone in that way when you're in college--is dead.

I will skip the stages of grief. You know them. (If not, you can Google them. Google's all caught up now.) A week or so later, I find myself in the campus cathedral (yes, we had a campus cathedral) with the rest of the editorial staff. I am sobbing in the arms of one of our columnists, who is now, today in 2012, a famous food writer.

Rob has been to a party. To this day, 17 years later, I don't know where and I don't know with whom and I don't want to know, really. He drove his Dodge Neon to the party. It's a car my father, the insurance investigator, calls a "death trap." "Don't ever get into a Neon," my father has told me. I drive a shiny new Toyota Camry, with airbags everywhere. (Is it possible to order extra airbags? I think I might have had extra airbags.) It's a mom car, but a good car. "Always make sure you have at least eight feet in front of you and 12 feet behind you in any car," says my dad. (This is sort of impossible, but his point is made.)

Rob had too much to drink at this party. A lot too much. And somehow, he gets himself back into his car and tries to drive himself home and he instead drives himself into and around a tree.

And he dies.

It's tragic. Tragic. Tragic. Tragic. And all everyone on campus wants to talk about is how stupid he was and what an idiot he was and how he wasn't thinking and all I can think is "Of course he wasn't thinking. But it's over now, so you can stop it."

A year or so later, I am living in Chicago and out on a pseudo-date with a guy who likes to show everyone his old driver's license, and how good-looking he used to be. (I really can't make this stuff up.) There's a big boxing match on TV and he wants to take me to his friends' house to watch it. His friends are nice. Nicer than him. He drinks a six-pack while we're there. Maybe more. I lost count. And I was counting. I had some to drink myself. And that moment came, around one in the morning, where you don't know where you are--there's no Google Maps yet--and the streets are dark and empty and you want to go home. There's no Taxi Magic. There are no Uber Cars. This drunk boy wants to drive you home. And you refuse to get into his Honda Civic because not only does it ride too low to the ground (says your father) but he has also had too much to drink, in your judgement.

"Get into the car!" He yells. "Get into the car, you bitch. You're such a bitch. Just get in the fucking car."

You turn around and walk away and even though it's one in the morning and you're sort of drunk and you don't know where you are, there's a taxi there, randomly, on that dark corner in that neighborhood you still can't remember. And you get in that taxi and you go home.

Facebook Friends and Facebook Photos

2012-02-19T08:49:00.000-06:00

I was totally minding my own business, I swear. I was at a bar I hadn't been to in a long time when I ran into someone I hadn't seen in a long time. He's a nice enough guy, I suppose, but I don't even know him well enough or see him often enough to say that, really. And maybe that's it. Maybe he's just a really shitty person who spends too much time on Facebook and I never realized it til now.

So there I am, ordering (another) glass of Chardonnay, minding my own business, when he finds me and we exchange those general pleasantries about why we're both at the same bar at the same time while we wait for our drinks to be served. "But Krista! Shouldn't you be traveling somewhere? Your Facebook page always says you're traveling. That must be hard, always being away from home."

"I quite like it actually. The hardest part is that I haven't found a hotel bed that's as comfortable as my bed at home. But I've only been away for four weeks so far this year, so it's not so bad."

"That must be hard for your social life though. I mean, I've been on your Facebook page and all you ever talk about is traveling and work. You must not have a social life at all. I never see you talking about your friends in Chicago. You must not have any friends in Chicago. That must be hard for you..."

"Ummm...."

"I mean, I spend quite a lot of time following you on Facebook. You never post any photos of you and any friends and you never talk about any of your friends at all. I think you really need to prioritize your social life. You don't want to look back a few years from now and think about all the time you've wasted."

"Um...so..."

But damnit! My Facebook stalker (and, dare I say it, jackass) has turned around and walked away on that parting shot. I haven't even had a chance to respond. And to follow him across the bar and even attempt a discourse...well that's desperation, isn't it?

Because I have rules about friends and photos on Facebook. Well, really, I only have one main rule:

DON'T POST ANY PHOTOS OF ANY PEOPLE YOU KNOW ON ANY FACEBOOK PAGE!

UNLESS
1. The people in all of your photos look like movie stars. Or maybe they are movie stars. Like Ryan Gosling.
2. Your friends have given you their explicit permission to post said photos.
3. It is someone's wedding day and the bride has given you the official photographer's photos.
4. 1, 2, and 3 PLUS NO ONE IS BREASTFEEDING.

Because all it takes is one Facebook photo in the wrong place at the wrong time and someone could lose their job or their husband/wife or maybe get sent to Promises or Betty Ford or someplace like that. Or maybe, alarmingly, your photos causes your Facebook friend to get a nose job or a boob job or liposuction or--oddly--a chin implant or maybe even calf implants. (I saw this show once about a guy who looked at too many photos of himself and decided to get calf implants so he'd look better on the beach. At the end, he looked exactly the same, but tireder. You know, because he couldn't WALK.)

This "no photos" rule does not apply to children under the age of five or your parents. Or animals. Animals are always acceptable. (Although if you are a cat person, you might want to rethink this.) Also okay are landscapes and scenery and Catholic school class photographs from Grades K through 8, braces and headgear and all, because face it, we've all been there.

But no photographs from the delivery room!!! Keep the mystery of childbirth between you and your medical team and just show me the Jackie O shot from outside the hospital. OUTSIDE. Please. Really.

That night, I came home from the bar and I did something I've only done to an old friend from childhood who was in a terrible accident in his 20s that left him with nothing to do all day but ask me to play Farmville:

I blocked my Facebook stalker from seeing anything on my Facebook wall.

But before I did, I checked out his wall, just to understand the difference between him and me really. Because deep down, I don't think people are all that different, really.

His wall is full of photos of himself. Lots of them. Lots and lots of pictures of just him.

On Airports. And Waiting.

2012-02-12T11:12:00.000-06:00

I'm a sucker for "Love, Actually." The movie. There's that opening scene at London's Heathrow Airport. And that closing scene at London's Heathrow Airport. With all those people, waiting, waiting, waiting for their loved ones to come through those magic sliding doors. The people waiting have balloons. They have flowers. Posters, even. They cry. They laugh. Everybody hugs. And Claudia Schiffer is there.

The only person who ever met me at Heathrow was a cranky minicab driver who got my name wrong (Krister, it would seem), thought I was going to be a man, and then complained I didn't text him far enough in advance so he'd have time to get a coffee before we left the airport. And I've never seen anyone famous in an airport, except for the one time I flew back to London from Orlando, and Jonathan Ross--the David Letterman of the UK--was on my flight with his family. (First class, of course.) His wife has strange hair.

9/11 has taken all the joy out of homecomings. Now, when I land in West Palm Beach, I call my 80-year old uncle (he drives a red Ford Mustang) and try in vain to describe my location. "I'm under a sign that says FOUR, Uncle Ray. FOUR!" Once, when he picked me up, he had a Diet Coke for me from Taco Bell. On the drive home that night, through that odd part of Florida where there's nothing but nothing and stars, he told me he believes in extraterrestrial life.

In Chicago, I land at the International Terminal. The doors sweep open and there they all are again, with their balloons and their signs and their flowers and sometimes, even little dogs. (Isn't that illegal?) Even at 5:30 in the morning, when the United flight from Sao Paulo lands, they're all there.

I take taxis home from O'Hare a lot. I don't mind taking the train TO the airport when the enthusiasm of my impending departure can propel me down the El stairs with my 70 lbs of luggage-to-be-checked. But I can't make it back up those stairs after eight to ten (or more) hours in the air, and there's a shortage of escalators and elevators in my part of town, along with Good Samaritans. Apparently.

A taxi back from O'Hare is 1778% more expensive that the train for me. Fact. But I like the early morning taxi drivers. They're happy that I'm not drunk, and because they''re from Nigeria, Iran, Romania, Morocco, the Ukraine or anywhere that ends with "stan" really, they know what I've just been through. "I hate flying through Frankfurt," they tell me. "There's nothing there." "Now Heathrow Terminal 5. That's a good terminal." "Schipol immigration officers! I am a U.S. citizen, but they only care about where I was born." "You know that United flight from London to Washington DC? The one with only one TV screen for the entire plane? That is the worst!"

"How long is it since you've been back?" I'll ask, during the amazingly quick trip into downtown Chicago at this time of the morning. "I haven't seen my family in five years," they'll say. Or ten. "I go back every Christmas. Because I am a Christian." Or, once, "I have never been back. I cannot go back. If I go back, they will kill me."

No, I Won't Follow You Back on Twitter.

2012-02-05T16:41:00.000-06:00

Because your profile talks about you in the third person. Or you are a "serial entrepreneur." Or you talk about your cats a lot. Maybe it's because you think "a lot" is one word and "cannot" is two words and, well, you were never quite paying attention when someone taught you the difference between "it's" and "its," were you?

You are an expert in SEO, SEM, and SMM. (SMM's a new one for me. Had to look that up.) Or yoga. (Sorry.) Or vegan-ism.

You want to "make friends." Or "find love." Or "share experiences."

#You #talk #like #this.

You can has fun.

Maybe you promise, "I follow back!" Or "Make money online!" or "Work from home!" Sometimes, you "direct message" me these things. I am, apparently, overlooking a MAJOR opportunity to make a living with Twitter. And Facebook. And YouTube. And LinkedIn. With an Internet entrepreneur with business know-how who will help me become a professional blogger and quit my day-job. Overnight. Overnight!!!

You like to watch TV and tweet @GetGlue check-ins. While you are watching CSI Miami. Or Law & Order. Or any TV show that's been on for 10 years or more.

Or any TV show, really.

ALL YOU TWEET IS $%!#@* @4sq CHECK-INS. From your BUS STOP. Or the gas station. Or your bedroom.

You are the Mayor of Your Mother-F*cking Pants. (Actually, that's quite funny. But still.)

You "muse." I hate musing. And musings. Let me ask you this, my new Twitter friend: do you really have this much time? Because I could really use some help around the house. I don't mind if you muse while you're at it.

You are an Award Winning/Expert/Author/Founder/CEO/Motivational Speaker/Consultant/Strategist. Or perhaps you are my "source for (insert something I really don't want to know about here)."

You talk about #truth. Or #life. Or #Jesus.

I didn't realize Jesus needed a hashtag.

You use :) or ;) or maybe :_( A LOT. All the time, actually. (Have you considered medication? It can help. Really.)

And you lie. Oh how you lie!

Because you do not live where you say you do. And that is not your photo. (Or maybe it is your photo, 10 years and 100 lbs ago.) And the closest you've ever come to being an entrepreneur is when you were 12 and sold chocolate bars at the train station for charity. Two boxes, that. And you've never made any money online either, really. Like ever.

So Do You Like Seafood?

2012-01-29T09:00:00.000-06:00

Let's be honest. I'm female and I'm single. OF COURSE I've tried Internet dating.

Of course I've tried it.

And I probably will try it again. I have to, don't I?

But I'm on hiatus right now. Have been for a few years. Because--and look, I'm not going to blame anyone here but myself--my expectations for Internet dates are always way too high. Like way too high.

In Chicago, I met up for sushi with a guy from the Internet who was lovely online. His photos were all black and white and artsy and deep. He loved music and Japanese food and his e-mails were thoughtful and displayed a proper understanding of the semicolon. I like music and Japanese food; I also like the semicolon.

Loving music translated into loving VERY LARGE HEADPHONES, which he wore throughout dinner. Also droning on and on endlessly about how New Order was the GREATEST BAND OF ALL TIME.

When there was a spare second between bites of my chirashi and the full concert history of Bernard Summer and Company, I squeaked in, "Now Bizarre Love Triangle. That was a good song."

And loving Japanese food? During our date at one of Chicago's pre-eminent Japanese establishments--I had been very thoughtful about where our first date should be given that we were both lovers of Japanese food--he admitted to not liking raw fish.

Um. Okay. "So what sorts of Japanese food do you like then?" I wanted him to say Katsu-don. Katsu-don! I love Katsu-don. In my head, I begged him, desperately, to say Katsu-don.

He was still wearing his headphones; they were VERY LARGE and pulled down around his neck now.

"I like California rolls. And those Philadelphia rolls, you know, with the cream cheese."

I am that girl. Yes, I rejected him not only because he couldn't take his headphones off at the dinner table, but also because he professed a love of Japanese food that turned out to be nothing more than a love of cucumber, imitation crab, and white rice. And Philadelphia cream cheese.

Less than a year later, I moved to London. My first Internet date was with a strapping, handsome dark-haired Norwegian who professed a love of seafood and international travel AND PJ Harvey. Who doesn't love a man who loves PJ Harvey? Even my mother says that PJ Harvey is angry-woman music. (Not even "Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea" can persuade her otherwise.)

Me and the Norwegian met up for a coffee and a walk around town. It was very awkward, but I was used to Internet-dating- awkwardness by this point. "So you like seafood?" I asked, as we passed The Ten Bells in Spitalfields. He didn't want to stop in for a beer, even though it was the Jack the Ripper pub and everything.

"Well, not really. I mean, I like salmon."

"Oh, salmon is nice. I like smoked salmon. I'm from New York. We eat a lot of smoked salmon with our bagels. With cream cheese and capers. You probably eat a lot of smoked salmon, being Norwegian."

"Yes."

"Um, so what other sorts of seafood to you like? Your profile said you liked seafood?"

"I just really like salmon. I don't like crabs or prawns and I don't really like other sorts of fish. I don't like mussels or clams. I just like salmon."

"Oh. So I guess we won't be having oysters then today will we? I love oysters. Champagne and oysters. Guinness and oysters. Mmmm oysters." I laughed awkwardly. He put his hands in his pockets and said nothing. It was a ridiculously bright Sunday in London. All the hipsters were out and about, wearing tight jeans and groovy sunglasses. A few wore jaunty hats. I wanted to sit outside a pub, have a couple of pints, and people-watch and gossip about celebrities and complain about planned engineering works.

We went for Chinese food instead.

He had never had Chinese food before.

He didn't like it either.

A few years later, another Internet date, another London restaurant. It's an eHarmony man this time so I have high hopes. If their advertising is right, this is supposed to be my soul mate. My soul mate!

He was affable. Good looking, and he obviously spent a lot of time in the gym.

"My mates told me not to tell you things," he says to me, in the basement of a Thai restaurant in Soho. "But wow, you're just so easy to talk to.

"My wife--my ex-wife--she has agoraphobia. We got married young and obviously didn't leave the house much. You're my first date since the divorce last month. Since I was like 17 actually. I wanted to wait until the kids were teenagers to leave her. It's been hard for them."

"I'm so sorry," I say. "I don't know what to say. I hope everything's okay."

"Everything's great! This is great! I'm 37 years old and I had never had Thai food before today and I was nervous about it but now I've had it and it's great! I'm going to eat Pad See Ew with prawns all the time now!"

Are You Sure You Haven't Used ANY Cocaine?

2012-01-22T10:13:00.000-06:00

Friends of mine used to have this friend that really, truly disliked me for no particular reason--that we could determine--other than the fact that I existed and walked the earth and was friends with some of the same people she was friends with. I had been friends with these friends for much longer, so there was that. Perhaps maybe I had a better job or something. And this one time, I mistakenly mentioned that my aunt had given me a tidy sum of money, so I was going to buy an apartment with it, and wouldn't that be a good thing, as a 24 year old, to be a homeowner?

I had never been on the receiving end of such dislike before. Such virulence. At bars and restaurants and at friends' homes, when the torrent was being unleashed, I would sit there and wonder, "But really now...what have I done except come out for cheeseburgers and a Bud Light or four and won at Trivial Pursuit?"

I made a mistake once in that I kissed a handsome man who liked me. HE LIKED ME. She liked him. She did not (obviously) like me. I was fairly indifferent to everyone really, but I was not one to turn down a make out session with a handsome, older man (divorced even!) at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night with four Bud Lights in me. The evening ended in tears on a sidewalk in Lincoln Park, Chicago, in front of a karaoke bar. My taxi driver drove me home for free that night.

But despite the animosity, and despite not being much of a sports fan, I continued to find myself out for $2 burgers and $1 Bud Lights with her and our shared friends, all around the City of Chicago. Safety in numbers, really.

The months went on. It became more uncomfortable. I started having odd chest pains, just thinking about social outings where I'd have to see her, have her talk at me and about me. I woke up at 2 a.m. one night after a particularly uncomfortable evening out, sweating and seeing stars. (Who knew you could hyperventilate in your sleep?) I went to the hospital. They attached me to many wires.

"Do you use any drugs?" they asked me, six of them, starting at me. Three doctors, three nurses. It was a quiet evening in the emergency room. And this was a teaching hospital so two of those doctors were those doctors that are technically doctors but you probably wouldn't want them cutting you open or anything.

"Nope, not a drug user. Just say no, right?"

Blank stares all around.

"You know. Child of the 80s. Nancy Reagan?"

More blank stares. And frowns this time. Frowns all around.

"Are you sure you haven't used any drugs tonight? No methamphetamines? No cocaine?"

"Um, positive. Not a drugs person. I like Bud Light though. I had some earlier. OK, I had four. That was probably two too many. But it's a Saturday. And were were watching the game. Is everything okay?"

"There is something wrong with your heart. You're not going to drop dead like Flo Jo or anything. But we need you to tell us about your drug use."

Six sets of eyes stared down at me, practically naked in my hospital gown, attached to many wires.

"Now be honest with us...how much cocaine have you used today?"

"I swear to God, NONE! I am not a drug user! I swear! What do you mean that I'm not going to drop dead like Flo Jo? Does that mean death is really a possibility here? What are you talking about?"

They ran more tests. I peed in a paper cup. And then the next day I went for more tests. And then some more tests the day after that. And I was fine, really, it was just a heart murmur and no one was really sure why it was causing me pain, but if it happened again, I should come back and they'd run more tests. "But stay away from any sorts of drugs," they told me. "Particularly cocaine. And by the way, have you had a pap smear recently because we can do that for you while you're here."

And then I bought my condo on the other side of town and I joined a nice gym and started running, and then I got promoted at work and didn't have time for $2 burgers and $1 Bud Lights anymore and I never really saw her again, except maybe in passing.

Apple Pear Umbrella

2012-01-15T09:00:00.010-06:00

My mother is funny. She's retired. A nurse. She went to nursing school in the days when there were nursing schools and nurses wore those hats. You know, the white ones. (St. Clare's. In the city. New York City. You know.)

She says her father--George the German--gave her a choice when she was in her late teens growing up in the Irish part of Brooklyn:

You can be a teacher or you can be a nurse.

She chose nurse.

My mother was "older" when she had me and my brother. Older like in her early 30s. But she was a modern woman, and she went back to work once we were in school and everything was fine and I wasn't blind and didn't suffer from dwarfism, and my brother wasn't deaf.

At a hospital on Long Island, my mother turned up on her first day of work--she was in her early 40s at this point--in her old nurse's kit. The white dress, the hat, the everything. I believe the hat had a brown velvet stripe. And I would not be surprised if she were wearing some sort of scapular on that first day. With saints' cards in her pocket(s). Her fellow nurses laughed at her. Because this was the 80s and no one wore the outfit anymore. Unless you were religious of course.

Personally, I think she should have kept the outfit thing going.

Fast-forward many years later and I'm older and doing my own thing. My mother--now retired--goes on vacation somewhere in the southwest of America with a group of folks from her "active adult retirement community." (I call it The Boca Vista. Seinfeld fans will know what I mean.) In her heart and in her mind, my mother is still a nurse. Today, yesterday, every day of her life. She tells her fellow travelers about The Alzheimer's test. How you say to an older person, "I'm going to give you three words. Repeat them to me. And then I'm going to ask you about them later...

...Apple pear umbrella...

Repeat them to me."

She is the life of the trip. And anyone--old or not--will repeat the words. "Apple, pear, umbrella." Then ten minutes from then, a day from then, a week from then. "Apple, pear, umbrella! Yes! I'm fine! I don't have Alzheimer's!"

It goes on for days and days and then weeks and months and then many active adults in South Florida declare themselves free from everything.

Unless you're me. And you're somewhere in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and it's Christmas but sunny and gorgeous and you think this whole "Apple, pear, umbrella" thing is just so very, very funny. So you tell this whole story to your dad. Your tall, strapping Irish dad who--family rumor says--is descended from the Spanish Armada even though that happened like 400+ years ago. So at a stoplight, you say "Apple, pear, umbrella. Repeat this to me." And he does, and it's funny, and you drive along the beach and you think about nothing in particular but the beach and the sun and maybe later you'll stop for some blackened grouper sandwiches somewhere. With some Arnold Palmers.

And then later at another restaurant, and then at another stop light, you think it will be funny if you ask him again.

So you ask him to repeat the phrase. That one time. And then another. But you don't give him the nouns.

And your 72 year old father laughs and laughs and laughs and looks at you funny and then finally, eventually, he looks at you--like straight at you, really straight at you--and he says, calmly and without emotion, "Umbrella?"

The Things We Say to Each Other

2012-01-08T09:00:00.001-06:00

When I was very young, I went away for a while, to a foreign land where everything was ridiculously inexpensive. Because of this, I stayed in a lovely place where everyone knew my name and where handsome waiters escorted me to my table each evening, a table where chardonnay and assorted canapes lay in wait. At night, I would meet people--fascinating people from all over the world--and they would talk to me about New York and London and Tokyo and glamorous international locales. They would tell me where to go and what to eat and what to buy and why. (Sometimes, the men would offer to escort me back to my lodgings, to make sure I was safe, or to talk more about how their family escaped from Somalia with no shoes on and how hard things were. Or maybe they just wanted to compare frequent flyer programs and the best airline credit cards on offer.)

When I wasn't at the local bar, I went shopping on weekends and because of the strength of my currency relative to theirs, I stocked up on all sorts of expensive things that were ridiculously inexpensive. Lovely frivolous things. Like underwear. Reams and reams of underwear.

I do not regularly wear what one would define as lingerie. Most usually, I am a functional sort. But this particular year, I did purchase lingerie. In all sorts of colors. My favorite, a snappy set in turquoise and teal that felt strong and durable and long-lasting. A set because when everything is inexpensive, sets are important. I bought all sorts of sets in all sorts of colors. Maybe 20 in all. Maybe 25. For the few men that met me that year in the dark, I was a surprise every time.

I felt good during my time away. Tan and strong and happy. Sunshine spoke to me daily, if not hourly. I think I may have even felt TALL during my time away. Verrrrry very tall.

But then eventually it came time to leave this paradise of complimentary cocktails, free bar snacks and inexpensive sexy lingerie (a good name for a band if there ever was one), and I found myself once again in wool and corduroy in the arctic tundra of middle-America."I bought a lot of nice lingerie while I was away," I said one day, to some people who had asked how things had been. "It was very inexpensive there. And of good quality."

"Let's hope you don't gain any more weight," said one of the some, over their shoulder, as they walked away, down a long and dark and narrow hallway. And I sat there, covered up in my winter-y turtleneck yet still strong and tan and happy and tall. And I wondered out loud, "Who says these things?"

I Used to Live Upstairs from a Brothel

2011-12-18T09:00:00.000-06:00

It was the bicycle that I first noticed. A bright orange mountain bike of sorts--hard to miss in a gray city with only one proper hill which was tube stops and tube stops away from the flatlands of Clerkenwell. Always a different guy riding the bike. Always a man, but always a different man. Always a scraggly sort. With shifty eyes and gap teeth and that sort of faint odor hanging around him. The kind of eyes and teeth and odor that make you hold on to your purse, that make you nervous, slightly.

I have a bicycle. You probably do too. I'm the only person who rides my bicycle. And you're probably the only person who rides your bicycle. I mean, you're probably not as anal as I am. (And if you know where this story is going, that pun was really truly NOT intended.) I don't let anyone ride either of my bikes. Because they're mine.

At some point, I noticed the bath towels. My bedroom overlooked their private walled garden, where they had stretched a flimsy laundry line and mismatched pegs. There were always bath towels out to dry. Lots of them.

I had bath towels. Three or four of them. Maybe one or two were in the wash at a time. Not twelve. Definitely not twelve.

"Who takes this many showers?" I'd wonder. "And who lets this many friends ride their bicycle?"

They must be popular, was my answer. And in the deepest dark of night, in the weeks after they first moved in, I confirmed that they were indeed very, very popular.

"Who gets this much action? I'd ask no one in particular, over the dull sounds of incessant thumping, alone under the duvet in my flannel pajamas, fuzzy socks and face mask and everything.

And the cigarettes. Always the cigarettes. Always under my window. Some nights, I'd come home late and my bedroom would reek of Marlboros, so many would they have smoked. Right under my window.

The tenants, from what I knew, were two ladies of a certain age from the East End. True Londoners, with true Cockney accents. They had a small dog. They sprayed their hair pink, and they sprayed the small dog's hair pink. Eccentrics, I thought.

And then things would happen, like the one drizzly weekday morning where I headed off to work, but couldn't get past the thin and swarthy man outside, ready to introduce himself and shake my hand.

Or the fresh-faced well-dressed, posh-sounding 20-something who greeted me at the front door on a Sunday morning at 4 a.m., as I was heading for Heathrow to Amsterdam, suitcase in tow. "You're leaving?" he asked, in that sort of alarmed and incredulously posh way. "But you said you'd be free until 6!"

Or the handsome, taller, muscular older man with the golden curly hair and the wedding ring, who gave me the up and down that first time and looked more than a little bit pleased, in that way. I saw him a few times a week for a while, his schedule inconveniently overlapping with mine. After a few awkward encounters at the front door--him at the buzzer, me with my key--I started greeting him like a neighbor. "How are you? Nice day isn't it? Good to see you again." It was awkward not to. He stopped coming.

One day, the man would look like an estate agent. The next, he only spoke Portuguese. Sometimes, he had no teeth. Others, he looked like a movie star. Or a bike messenger. Or a builder. Or a billionaire. Or the guy at the kebab shop or the Chinese takeaway up the road. Or an old man. Or a young man...too young of a man. Sometimes there'd be two men. Usually young men, with biceps and hair gel and cologne and cigarettes and starter Nokias.

And then one day, more than a year later, after a weekend of incessant thumping and cigarettes and doors slamming and SOUNDS, I called my landlord and cried and said I felt unsafe and that they MUST have guns in there given all the traffic and all the towels and all the cigarettes. He put in CCTV the next day and the men and the women and the bicycle and the towels all disappeared the day after that and, later, two Swedish boys moved in, golden in all their Swedishness.

They liked to hear me ask them for a beer in Swedish. And I would laugh and wait to see if they'd invite me in for one. But they never did.

From Krista: Yes, this is a true story. There are other elements of it that I'm working on. Stay tuned.

Fajitas Don't Come with Tortillas

2011-12-11T15:00:00.001-06:00

Every so often, I get myself into these arguments. You know the type...where you are so sure you are correct but the other person is so sure you are wrong and there's no solution really but to give up and pretend that they are right, even though you know you are right and they are wrong.

I went to a Mexican restaurant in London once with my crazy Romanian friend. She had never had Mexican food before. So we went and I ordered some fajitas and my Romanian friend ordered a burrito and we sat back to gossip and drink copiously cheap margaritas. Our server was from somewhere east of Germany and admitted to never having Mexican food at all either. In her entire life. "Not even during your lunch break?" I asked. "Surely there must be an employee discount of sorts?"

"No," she said. "And I vould not vant to eat it . For me, it is too svicy. And there are no potatoes."

Eventually, our food arrived and my fajitas came out sizzling--as they should--on a long metal board of sorts. They looked perfectly acceptable, given that London is not really very close to Mexico and my request for an agua downstairs at the bar was met with blank stares. This was going to be okay.

"So you'll bring the tortillas in a second, right?" I asked.

"What tortillas?" says our server.

"The tortillas that come with the fajiatas."

"Fajitas don't come with tortillas."

"Um, yes they do...

"Not here they don't."

"Um, I've eaten a lot of fajitas in my life. They always come with tortillas."

Our server looked mildly annoyed. "Well, we don't serve them that way here. Sorry." She moved to walk away.

"But wait...can't I buy some tortillas? I mean, if I have to pay, I'll pay."

"We don't have any tortillas to buy."

I looked pointedly at my friend's burrito. "Um, okay. I see a tortilla right there, but if you won't let me pay for any tortillas, how about some nacho chips?"

"You'll have to pay for those."

Great. Done. But even my Romanian friend in all her Eastern-bloc-ness was trying to argue for the server. "Krista, this isn't Mexico. They probably don't have tortillas here. It's not like ordering Mexican in the U.S."

"But that's a tortilla right in front of you!!" I shouted. "Your burrito is IN a tortilla."

"But maybe it's a different kind of tortilla..."

"There is only ONE kind of tortilla. And it's right there!!" I stabbed her burrito with my fork. "And fajitas are always served with tortillas!!!"

A few minutes later, as I was scooping up my chicken and onions with nacho chips, our server returned and dropped a container of freshly microwaved tortillas on the table, said nothing, and disappeared.

Play the Gipsy Kings and The French People Will Dance

2011-12-04T10:32:00.000-06:00

Ages and ages and ages ago, during that decade of your life after college where your friends of friends would have house parties and you would move from one to the other on a Friday night en masse in your khakis and turtleneck sweaters, I went to my friend Jason's house for a party. There wasn't any hummus or crudités, because this was when we were 24 and the only thing you had at parties was Miller Light.

Someone was responsible for the stereo because you had to have THAT friend in the late 90s. There was no Apple Remote. There was only a stack of CDs and that friend who would spend all night swapping out the CDs from Pearl Jam to Stevie Wonder and then back again. Sometimes I was THAT friend. Sometimes I wasn't.

For this particular party, I wasn't that friend. But I had some thoughts. Because off in the living room, clustered on the sofa, were five or six French people. We didn't get many French people in Chicago in those days, so they were a bit of an anomaly. And so many of them! All at once. Even odder. In a room where everyone was dancing to Big Country by the band Big Country on the album Big Country, they looked miserable, poor French people. And I knew why.

French people do not like Pearl Jam. Or the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Or Hole.

French people like the Gipsy Kings. (And MC Solar, but we didn't have any of that.)

The Stereo Master, was busy swapping out Third Eye Blind for the Notorious B.I.G. as I approached. "Do you have any Gipsy Kings? I whispered.

"Yeah, somewhere I think. I was going to play that Bamboleo song later."

"Can you play it now, do you think? And after Bamboleo, can you play "Djobi, Djoba" and then after that can you play "Volare?"

"Whoa..." he said. "I can't play three songs by the same band all in a row."

I looked over at the cluster of French people, in their skinny jeans and scarves. His eyes followed mine. "Play the Gipsy Kings and the French people will dance."

Silence.

"Really. If you play the Gipsy Kings, the French people will dance. I promise you. And then this party will take on a wholenother dimension. I'll do it, if you want me to. You can get a beer."

Being the Stereo Master at parties those days kinda sucked because you could only socialize in three minute intervals before it was time to swap CDs again. The prospect of an uninterrupted beer break was enough for him. He left me in control.

And I played Bamboleo. And the French people stopped playing with their scarves for a moment and looked around cautiously. And then stood, quickly, and then grabbed hands and spun each other around the room and Miller Light went everywhere but no one cared because suddenly we had a living room full of dancing French people, dancing in that serious European way. And soon, everyone was dancing.

"Again!" they shouted. "Again again!" And I did play it again, and then again, in one uninterrupted stream of Gipsy Kings until the French people collapsed, laughing, into each other in a huge heap on the sofa.

And now sometimes, when I hear the Gipsy Kings, I can see that room full of dancing French people, and I can smell that odd combination of Glade and a 24-year-old boy's apartment, cigarette smoke, Miller Light, and that very distinct smell of French people, dancing.

Thank You for The Opportunity of Being of Service

2011-11-27T23:02:00.000-06:00

It doesn't shame me to tell you that my father was a New York City taxi driver. For a number of years. Some people laugh when I tell them my father was a taxi driver. These people I know immediately to be people who know nothing. Their laugh titters off awkwardly so when I look at them so.

Because if you know anything about the price of New York City taxi medallion and if I tell you my father bought one and held onto it and then sold it to put me through a very excellent university with no financial aid whatsoever, you know that my father is a very smart man. (Given what I know about NYC medallion prices today, I can only wish that he had held onto his a decade longer. We could have paid off any loans and bought a nice vacation home in The Bahamas too.)

But my economic point is not my point. It's more what I learned, indirectly, from my father during his time in the front of the car.

Firstly, women are cheap. My father could take a woman 30 blocks, and she'd tip him 10 cents. I try to avoid taking taxis with large groups of women because when we get to our final destination, someone will hand me a dollar to pay the meter that says $10. "That's all I have," they'll say. "I mean, I have a $20 but..." I pay the entire meter and turn down the buck. And I give every driver 20% for their daughter at home, waiting to go to college.

Secondly, never pass up the opportunity to go to the bathroom. My father had a Mott's Apple Juice jar. It rolled beneath the seat of his yellow Chevy Impala, stained white it places from frequent use and frequent temperature changes. "Didn't you just go?" people will say to me, upon leaving parties. "Why yes, I did," I respond. "But you should never pass up the opportunity to go to the bathroom." There is you. And there is the front door. Everything in between is not controllable. This one time, I was in McDonald's eating chicken McNuggets and before I knew it, I was on an inescapable bus somewhere on the outskirts of Heidelberg and I had to pee like a racehorse. So seriously, just go.

Thirdly, taxi drivers know the best places to eat, within certain parameters. They appreciate a good value. They appreciate a certain speediness of service. And free parking. (And a clean bathroom.) One summer when I had to have been around 12, my father picked me and my cousin up in Flatbush and on our way back to Long Island, we stopped at a Greek place somewhere up in Queens and he loaded us up with gyros. We had never had gyros before, and thought my father was a bit crazy, to take us to this restaurant with rotating meat in the window. I remember the white sauce dripping everywhere, and the foil wrapping, and feeling somehow all so worldly, eating Greek food in the back of a city cab, my father at the helm, all the way out to Long Island.

And then there is the traffic. Always the traffic. Distraction was key to traffic. Get a CB-radio. Get an airplane radio. Get a police scanner. The best of the taxi drivers have all three. Because they appreciate, above all, information.

But then there's the lying. Because everyone lies. "My wallet is inside" and "I'll be right back" and "I KNOW I gave you a $20."

And then it's midnight on a Tuesday or a Wednesday and you are 12 years old and wrapped tight in bed in your flannel pajamas when the phone rings--late, like it's never supposed to--and there are conversations and more conversations and more phone calls and more phone calls and in the morning, over your oatmeal, you learn that Mony, one of your father's nightime drivers who always called your dad Mr. Pat and introduced the family to pita bread, has been shot. In the head.

Life in America

2011-11-20T14:57:00.000-06:00

At some point, I really will stop talking about London. It will fade as all things do and I will find myself telling stories and not remembering where the story took place, but remembering the people and what was said and how it was said and wasn't it just SO funny and WHERE WAS THAT when that happened?

But for now the memories are clear. They are maybe dull around the edges in that Hipstamatic way where the new looks old and the old looks new, but they are still there in their output. Maybe it's the sounds more than anything that make the memories clearer. In the morning as I leave my apartment, I still wait for that scratch scratch of my borough streetsweeper, cleaning up Shoreditch's last party. During my commute, I wait for the sounds of an approaching train--always the Jubilee line for some reason--and then the tube doors sweeping, whooshing shut, beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. And at night, while I lie in bed and marvel at Chicago's silence, I still wait for those police sirens to go on and on and on to somewhere that will turn out to be not in the paper the next day.

At times, I will find myself standing in front of the turnstile on the other end of an El journey, ticket in hand, ready to touch out, unsure of what to do next. Other times, in the dark of night and in my centrally-heated condominium--with an elevator no less--I will clumsily slap the wall outside my bathroom, trying to find the light switch.

Some mornings, hairdryer in hand, I marvel at my hair in the bathroom mirror; it's been a long time since I've been able to blow dry so well. And other times, I open up my freezer just to admire its contents. Ice. I like to turn the ice maker on. And off. As much ice as I want, anytime I want it. And frozen broccoli, frozen chicken, frozen turkey burgers, frozen string beans, and my personal favorite, frozen peas. In America, I survive on frozen everything. And hot sauce. Repatriation has been marked by a tremendous uptick in hot sauce consumption.

I buy milk and orange juice by the gallon. The GALLON! I ride the train and then the bus with a coffee in my hand. I spend weekends wandering the city in gym clothes. (Sometimes I go to the gym, sometimes I don't.)

I have a DVR now. It's fully loaded. DVRs are important in America because of the number of commercials. In between the reality shows, there are commercials on ALL THE TIME. And everyone is always SHOUTING about an 800 number or talking to me about depression or high blood pressure. I never knew I had depression and high blood pressure until I repatriated and turned the television on without the benefit of a DVR. But now I have a DVR so I don't think about these things too much. But I do wonder about who to vote for and if the candidate has indeed approved this message.

Sometimes my friends in America owe me money. "I'll write you a check," they tell me. I haven't seen a check since 2004. Checks are hard work. First, you need to sign the check. Then, you need to hope you don't lose it. And then you need to walk to the bank and deposit it. And then you need to wait like five days until the money is yours. And in between, your friends write you emails like "Can you make sure you deposit the check today because I might not have any money after that" or other emails like "Can you not deposit the check until next week because I probably won't have money until then." And all you want is your money and WHY DOES THIS HAVE TO BE SO HARD?

So then I'll turn the radio on. And Pearl Jam will be playing. Or Tom Petty. If it's Tom Petty, it's probably that song Free Falling. Free Falling is ALWAYS on American radio. You'll get the occasional Green Day, and in the summer in particular, you get that song by that guy who I see on Entertainment Tonight now. You know...the hot guy. With the cheekbones.

At parties now, I'm the one that arrives alone but always with the champagne. Nice champagne. Thoughtfully selected, but with an eye towards a good value because, you know, France is expensive these days. "Oh that's so nice of you" they gush. And "Wow! Champagne! Oooh!" And then "Champagne...what a surprise! We'll have to save this for a special occasion." They hand me a Miller Light or a glass of Yellow Tail Chardonnay and I sigh and I wonder "Isn't that special occasion right now?"