The Epic Weekend of Pasta Salad and Loud Noises

I'm in the midst of a recovery day, my friends. There has not been so epic a weekend since the Epic Austin Weekend of Boobs and Cake. I am in actual physical pain due to its awesomeness and am also having a small existential crisis, and that is the result of only one of the three, THREE!, fantastical events in a roughly 30 hour period.

I would begin at the beginning, but I feel a need to explain something first. I noticed back in autumn that homesickness seemed to be at its worst during times that are important to your culture but just a regular day where you live now. For example, I suspect that Canada Day, for a Canadian who now lives in Spain, is probably kind of a bummer since no one is saying "Happy Canada Day!" or pouring maple syrup all over their naked bodies (is this what you do on Canada Day? I don't know, I'm not omniscient). I felt it a bit at Halloween - because people do Halloween here, but not like it's done in America where everyone goes insane - but when it really jumped up and kicked me in the cunt was on Thanksgiving, which in this country is just known as "Thursday" and everyone goes to work just like a normal day. I had Thanksgiving dinner with my neighbors, but it was on Saturday, not Thursday, and they were all very excited about this novelty dish I made called "cornbread" - I mean, they raved about it (because of course they did, it's CORNBREAD) which was very nice, but delighted surprise is not a typical reaction to cornbread at Thanksgiving dinner. Also there wasn't a shitty Cowboys game going on in the background. It felt weird.

Having experienced this once already, I decided that I would try to head off the "boo-hoo everyone is having fun but meeeeee" feels by having a 4th of July party. Unfortunately this is the time of year that literally half the country goes on holiday so most of our closer friends couldn't make it and also our neighbor The Commodore, so called because he recently became commodore of the nearby yacht club, stole all of our neighbors and took them to a ball at said yacht club, so it ended up being a much smaller affair than I had intended. BUT! It actually worked out great because the people who did come were my American study buddy (hereafter known as the academic) from my masters program and his English husband, my childhood friend the turk, who now lives in London with her English husband, and another American classmate from my program who I don't have a blog name for yet. We did it up American style, with burgers and brat(wurst)s on the grill, florescent yellow mustard, America shaped cookies, buckeyes*, and an enormous pasta salad. I have never seen people so excited about a pasta salad. It's not like pasta salad doesn't exist here- I've eaten some from M&S myself. But it seems using an entire package of pasta to make a party snack is uncommon here. This arrangement turned out to be perfect. We sat in the garden (these people all live in the city and were absolutely knocked the fuck out by the sheer volume of wildlife available a mere 40 minutes from London) drinking beer and/or wine and/or margaritas playing rounds of Cultural Differences and debating the proper pronunciation of words. One I didn't know is the word skeletal is pronounced here as skhe-LEE-tal, which by the way is wrong as evidenced by the fact that He-Man's nemesis is not called "SkeLEEtor". Eventually it got dark (i.e. spiders were starting to surround us) and we went indoors to tell childhood stories of terrible camp songs, fencing lessons (the turk and me, 5th grade) and archery. In the midst of this we saw some flashy lights outside and upon opening the door realized they were accompanied by exploding sounds...IT WAS FIREWORKS YOU GUYS. WE GOT TO SEE FIREWORKS IN ENGLAND ON THE 4TH OF JULY. Having achieved a perfect day, I took some people back to the train station, the academic and his husband (potentially Mr Coffee???) stayed overnight and I went to bed happy and exhausted.

StereoNinja and I got up very early the next day and rudely left our guests to fend for themselves, because we had tickets to the British Grand Prix and it is well known that driving to and from Silverstone on race day is a colossal clusterfuck. Now, I know nothing at all about F1 or any racing really, mostly because I don't have any real interest in cars or going fast and in my country the popular racing to watch is NASCAR, an interest I find fucking hilarious in other people. Conversely, prior to my converting him into an ice hockey fan, F1 was literally the only sport StereoNinja followed or gave a single fetid shit about. I haven't been exposed to his F1 fandom however, because we don't get Sky on principle so he can only watch about one out of every three races which makes it hard to follow. I was excited to go because he was excited and because I got to do a new thing, but my excitement had little to do with with the race itself. We got there and inhaled a shitty hamburger before finding our seats in the grandstand. Which is about when the Red Arrows started flying their impossible formations of awesomeness, complete with red white and blue smoke and a fucking heart that they drew in the sky. I got some sand or something in both my eyes.

And then it was race time. I was all ready to experience my first F1 race and excitedly awaited the first time they would go flying past me. I wound up waiting a long time, since 58 seconds in there was an enormous crash that knocked three cars out before it had even really started and damaged the barriers to a degree that took and hour to replace. But eventually the race got underway again and...You guys. The last thing I needed was another sport to follow, particularly another sport that it was difficult for me to be able to watch due to limited availability. However. FORMULA ONE IS FUCKING AWESOME. It wasn't even a particularly good race as it was clear from about halfway through who the winner was going to be and the only thing in question was who would win the battle for fifth place. But. For serious. Driving inches from each other at those speeds, making a play to get past someone in a corner by breaking later, which is pretty much challenging them to a game of high stakes chicken...I don't know how these cars can even go that fast with how much their balls must weigh. Next thing I know I'm reading in the program about innovations in engine design and strategies for dealing with the new limit of 100kg of fuel per race. So apparently I'm now both a racing fan and burgeoning petrol head. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO I AM ANYMORE.

The race ended with with a British racing driver as the winner making everyone mad with joy and patriotism, and me bewildered at myself and realizing that I had a sunburn for the first time in over 10 years (it's all coming back to me now. Having a sunburn SUUUUUUUHHKS). StereoNinja and I hightailed it back to the car in order to drive all the way to London to see Ben Folds with the Heritage Orchestra at Barbican. I've seen Ben Folds with an orchestra before. What I had not seen before was Ben Folds' new piano concerto which he'd spent a year writing and which was a highly unusual mix of classical and modern styles. Nor had I seen him lead an entire orchestra in a spontaneous episode of Rock This Bitch. For the uninitiated, Rock This Bitch is a thing that happens at many Ben Folds shows in which someone in the audience waits til a quiet moment to shout "ROCK THIS BITCH!" and then Ben Folds makes up a song on the spot containing the words "rock this bitch" that is completely different from any version of Rock This Bitch he's played before. This is not the first orchestra he's convinced to play Rock This Bitch with him, but it is the first time I'd seen it live, so I can pretty much go ahead and die now. If you'd like to be ready to die also, here's a video of the whole process:

Once Ben Folds had finished blowing my fucking mind again, we headed home. After a concert, an F1 race, and a brilliant party, I was completely exhausted (also crispy and pink as all fuck) and not looking forward to going home and cleaning up the mess we'd made on Saturday. So imagine my total fucking delight when we finally got home only to find that the guests we had abandoned in our house had cleaned up absolutely EVERYTHING before they left like a couple of magical party debris erasing genies, thus making the entire thing into a PERFECT weekend. Or indeed, the Epic Weekend of Pasta Salad and Loud Noises.

Update: I have just remembered another conversation from my 4th of July party between the four Americans that occurred when the turk mentioned she had gone somewhere that had REAL rye bread and the other three of us all sat up and went "Get out. Seriously? With the seeds and everything? WHERE? WHERE IS THIS RYE BREAD?" The reason we all reacted so strongly is that we've all had a common experience, shared I suspect by almost all Americans living here, of having ordered a sandwich on rye or rye toast somewhere and being served instead with bread that is actually white bread and pumpernickel swirled together. Listen, because I cannot stress this enough: that is not rye bread. There's not even any caraway seeds in it, which while some real rye bread doesn't have caraway seeds either, that kind of rye is pointless. If there is one food I miss from America more than any other food it is rye toast to go with my omelette. Without rye toast, an omelette is just eggs with some other shit in it. Rye toast is the shit, man.

I now return you to you irregularly scheduled self deprecation and spider freak outs.

*These were specifically for the benefit of the turk since as a native Ohioan she was the only one likely to have had them before. If you don't know what a buckeye is, as far as I can tell it is a nut (or seed? I'm too lazy to google which one it technically is but I think of it as nut) that is either exactly the same as or indistinguishably close to a conker. The tree it grows on is the state tree of Ohio and it is the mascot of the state's largest institution for secondary education, The Ohio State University. Somewhere along the line, some total fucking snack genius got the idea to make balls of candied peanut butter and dip them in chocolate, which is both delicious and looks exactly like a buckeye. Despite not encountering them before, the group ate the crap out of them and now I don't have any more.

50 Shades Meet Up And Why This Post Is Not About France

Hello everyone! I'm just back from France today, and I absolutely owe you a post about snails, art museum shenanigans, and a mariachi band. However this post is just a short one in order to update everyone who is not on the email list about the 50 Shades party game meet up happening this Sunday evening. I was absolutely planning to post my France recap (entitled "Is This Snails?" because I had decided that probably everything was made out of snails, including cups of tea, which I needn't have worried about because there IS NO FUCKING TEA ANYWHERE IN FRANCE) tonight, as I am currently sat in a hotel by myself for the express purpose of catching up the blog and the email and the twittering I've missed whilst I've been away. But then I got back from the trip and started unpacking, at which time I reached into my bag and ended up taking a massive chunk out of my finger with the razor blade I had carelessly thrown in there with no blade guard LIKE A DUMBASS, so right now I'm typing this with my left ring finger held up in the air because it really, really, REALLY fucking hurts. It's not a good situation. I bled through three plasters (Americans: plasters = band-aids) earlier.

ANYSUCK, I'll either post about France when I can type like a normal human being without screaming every time I touch something, or I'll bat my eyelashes at StereoNinja and try to get him to type it for me with me dictating, but I suspect he'll merely laugh at that suggestion.

So, the meet up! It's this Sunday the 10th. I've reserved a table at the Green Man pub on Euston Road in London for 5 pm because it's much easier to play table games with the use of an actual table. I've never been there, but it was suggested by one of you lovely folks, I can get there via tube, and they let me book a table online without having to speak to any strangers or pretend like I know what I'm doing. I can't wait to meet you all and I'll see you Sunday!

More Video Goodness

StereoNinja finished editing my last batch of spare notes last night, which I uploaded to YouTube in the middle of the night because I had dance class earlier in the evening and then promptly came home and slumped to the floor in a heaping pile of pain and exhaustion. I had assumed advanced class was called that because it will culminate in solo performances where we each take off all our clothes to music at the end of June, as opposed to the beginning and intermediate classes where you just take some of your clothes off as a group in class instead of on stage. What it actually means is "HAHAHA you think those abs are in pretty good shape, do you? Let's see if you can do all these exercises without literally breaking into two pieces then you weak, stupid fool." To be fair, pain and exhaustion were a welcome change from how I felt after my "Tricks of the Tease" class on Monday night, which is when we did nothing but turns for an hour and Madame Spinny McVomitpants over here (thad be me) ended up sitting out the last 15 minutes of class to avoid painting the floor with my dinner.

None of which is the point, really. The point is the latest Fifty Shades video is up on my YouTube channel now:

and it should be followed in a few days by the video where I review the Fifty Shades of Grey party game that we are all going to get together to play in March when I'm back in the UK. And holy god, you guys, it is hella ridiculous.

Tonight is bar night so I'll be reading the next batch of chapters and probably tweeting about how much I'm not enjoying myself. Please go out and enjoy yourselves tonight on my behalf.

Birthday Wrap Up

HOLY CRIZAPPLE YOU GUYS. Thank you SO MUCH for all the amazing birthday wishes here and on Twitter, especially since I barely reminded anyone about it this year! And also greetings to my birthday twins Lola Cherry Cola and Cat Spinster - I hope you both had as wonderful of a day as I did. Because I did. You know why? Because StereoNinja bought me the stupid Fifty Shades party game we're going to be playing at the UK meet ups and you guys, YOU GUYS, it is FUCKING TERRIBLE. I made a video for you of me opening and examining the contents of the box. Let me tell you something, it is a fucking scene inside that box. Unfortunately it won't be ready for a few days because my esteemed video editor is doing actual work that he gets paid for, but that and the spare notes from 11-13 will be up soon.

Other things I got for my birthday:

• Books (good ones, not this "erotic" novel crap)
• Dalek socks (which I hope won't exterminate my toes)
• A giant Reese's peanut butter heart that I plan to crack open and eat the peanut butter out of with a spoon (THERE'S NO WRONG WAY TO EAT A REESE'S DAMN IT)
• A pirate Santa (I'll say that again. Pirate. Santa.)
• Drunk with my coworkers Thursday night, a night that culminated in my patented sleeping on the bathroom floor move, a raging hangover all day Friday, exactly zero desire to drink on my birthday, and no posts over the weekend (sorry). Also there were feathers EVERYWHERE.

I Got Nuthin'

I'm having some serious writer's block tonight, either because I did actual work all day long and nothing interesting happened, or because two and a half hours of stripper classes is fucking exhausting. Therefore, I will be cheapening the NaBloPoMo experience tonight by simply posting a video of something else that has nothing to do with me, other than this being the woman who just put me through an evening of very fun torture that I will no doubt be paying for with soreness for the next two days.

Here is Michelle L'Amour in "The Most Naked Woman".


Michelle L'amour in "The Most Naked Woman" from franky vivid on Vimeo.

No Pain No Gain

I can't move. I mean it. I can't. fucking. move.

The new session at the place where I take aerial classes started this week. I didn't really dig silks so much in the last session and I want to switch back to trapeze which I loved, but I'm going to England in a month which means I'll miss two weeks of class, and more importantly I'll be sleeping with half the country so I'd like to show up with nice soft hands that don't look like I lost a battle with a rogue cheese grater. That's why I decided to put off trapeze until the next session and take something new this round. This is actually how I make decisions.

The class I settled on is called Beginning Stretching and Flexibility. It seemed like a really good idea, as presumably it would enhance my abilities in trapeze AND at the burlesque studio AND that whole part I just said about my intended behavior overseas. Which in the long run, I think it will. But that day is not today.

My teacher is a laid off electrical engineer and accomplished gymnast named Char, who has the magical ability to be incredibly tiny and built like a monster truck at the same time. She has also broken her back from gymnastics a double digit number of times, so while she is happy to demonstrate every other stretch, she calls on a volunteer to show us the correct positioning for bridges. She is awesome.

The class consisted of 30 minutes of dynamic stretching that involved a lot of kicking our way across the room and me constantly being told to straighten my knee, 30 minutes of static stretching that left me wondering if I just dreamed that part of my life where I could do full splits with ease, and 30 minutes of partner stretching, which I did with a girl from North Carolina who was so good at it and so positive in her reinforcement that I was "doing so great" and "almost done" that I suggested she could make a ton of dough being a labor and delivery coach. It was great and I left tired and sweaty and just knowing that I was already going to be a better dancer by Wednesday just from the one class.

I woke up the next morning slightly sore, which I was expecting. For some reason, standing in first position seemed to alleviate the pain in my hips, so I stood around like that most of the day at work and while washing dishes after dinner to the extreme amusement of the bartender. After dinner I worked a little bit on some choreography I was supposed to do over the weekend, feeling mostly fine, and then took what I felt was a well deserved break and sat on my couch to watch a couple hours of Shark Week. Then I got up to get a drink from the kitchen.

And failed.

Everything was sore. EVERYTHING. I had no idea you could even have that level of pain in your hip flexors. I ate a fistful of aspirin while I laid there watching interviews with people who had been attacked by sharks and convincing myself that having my leg bitten off mid thigh didn't really sound so bad (also reminding my roommate that sharks have two penises, which is my favorite part about Shark Week - having an excuse to engage people in conversation about shark dicks).

This morning I woke up and it was 100 factors worse. I ate some more aspirin and grabbed the muscle rub, but short of bathing in it I didn't know how it could possibly help. Plus I couldn't bathe in anything because there was a centipede in the bathroom, but regardless. This is the level of pain I find myself in right now. I am sitting at my desk at work moaning. I get up every so often and walk around because moving is better than sitting still. Walking makes me look like a monumentally constipated duck. Standing up straight is not even an option at this point. Every time I want to adjust my legs under my desk, I am physically picking them up WITH MY HANDS because engaging any leg muscle makes me want to Aron Ralston all my limbs. My abs, which had been ok earlier, are now starting to ache because they are compensating for the fact that the only other muscles I can move in my body without screaming are the ones that control my face. Oh, and my dance class starts in two hours, so I have that going for me.

I'm not sure if it's rampant masochism or just endorphins from the pain, but I am kind of loving this. Except for when I try to move. Also when I try not to.

An Entire Day Of Nerdery

Today I am recovering from both advanced burlesque class yesterday (when Michelle said the warm ups were "a little different" from beginner class apparently what she meant was "will kill you") and the preceding 24 hours of excessive geekery for which I actually want to shove myself in a locker.

It all started with a random thought that I should google "sexy geek clothes" because of some vague idea I'd had while falling asleep of stripping dressed as a TARDIS and ending up in pasties shaped like bow ties because bow ties are cool. I did, and eventually the rabbit hole of clicking on things led me to this which I immediately tweeted to Mrs. Sizemore and then bought for myself because I read comic books now. This happened on Tuesday afternoon at work, which is I'm sure when you buy all of your nerdtastic garter belts so shut up (BrownsFan, please forget that you read this sentence. Thanks). After that I went home and watched a show I had DVRed called "The Science of Sexual Attraction" while I waited for the hockey to start, the theme of the day apparently being "I AM GOING TO CRAM SEX INTO ALL MY NERD SHIT UNTIL IT FITS WHICH KIND OF ALSO REMINDS ME OF SEX".

The next thing I knew I woke up and it was Wednesday. Last weekish, Mrs. Sizemore had tricked me into buying comic books, which I read, and then realized that if I don't buy the rest of them I will not find out how the story ends which is not ok. So naturally I asked her if I could tag along on her weekly trip to the comic book store and pick up the next three issues. It was the opening she seemed to have been waiting for, because on the train ride over she launched into a list of other comics I should be reading and why, which translated in my head as "words words words. Words. Words words Batman words words."

At the comic book store we found all the Avengers vs. X-Men issues I needed and I asked Mrs. Sizemore what other ONE book I should pick up and start reading. "Ok, well when you were reading AvX, were you thinking there needed to be more fight scenes?"

"I was thinking about which cosplay character I wanted to be," I answered her which is a) true and b) probably the nerdiest thing I've ever said. We ended up not getting me any other books because she thinks I should wait for the trades to come out (which is when they take all the comics from a series and put them all together in one book and I knew what she was talking about because I know this lingo now and who am I?). Then she went to the counter to get her pulls for the week (which is when the comic book store takes all the different books you buy every week and sets them aside for you because they know you are coming). In case you weren't already sure that she is insane, this is roughly about 30 comic books that she buys every week.

Pulls acquired, we decided to browse the toy section to see if there was anything there we "needed". She bought a mini bat signal for her desk, whilst my eyes fell on a toy that so defies logic I absolutely HAD to own it. It's a toy Dalek from Dr. Who. A plushie toy Dalek. For those of you who are not Whovians (most of you?), the Daleks are a race of basically robots of hate. The hatey robots roll around trying to kill everything that isn't a Dalek (except for when the new Daleks decided to kill the old Daleks because they were obsolete but that's not really my point) and yelling "EXTERMINATE!" in hatey robot voices. So a plushie version of this is probably the most ridiculous and incongruous toy ever manufactured. Or as Mrs. Sizemore succinctly put it "'Cuddly as a Dalek' is not an expression". There's now a squishy Dalek sitting on my desk that I periodically pick up and hug and it yells "EXTERMINATE!" at me and I am in love.

All this comic book and Dr. Who tomfoolery made our little nerd brains tired, so we and the two other ladies we were with went across the street for some lunch. As well rounded nerds we are all reading and/or watching Game of Thrones because of course we are, and at some point this turned into a lively debate about whether or not Mrs. Sizemore is a Lannister since she plots things a lot. We decided neither after I made her tell the story about extorting money out of her siblings when she was a child by forcing them to pay her a toll every time they went in the hallway, whereupon Sarah rightly declared that she is obviously a Frey and we should probably all start calling her Walder.

The conversation was hilarious and I was starting to think about how I would blog it and the rest of the afternoon, when I realized that doing so would probably mean me having to explain Dr. Who and Daleks and comic book culture terminology and cosplay and the major houses from Game of Thrones and it was then that I discovered that my nerd credentials were far more outstanding than I had realized.

Achievement unlocked.

Day 29 And I'm A Star! (A Little)

I'm just now back from dance rehersal for the group burlesque number at the student show at Martyr's on December 10th and I am very excited about it, despite the fact that everything hurts right now because double rehersals suck bowls full of dick and my abs, good lord, the pain. So. Much. Pain.

I'm trying not to read too much into it, but the lines have been set and I am in the front row just stage right of center, despite being taller than many of the girls behind me. There's a possibility that this is because our instructor thinks I'm one of the better dancers. It could also not mean that, and merely be an indication that I've got the choreography down more than some of the others. And, of course, they don't really know me all that well, but there's a slim chance they've sensed what kind of not-a-lady I am and have put me in the front row because they know I will not be nervous about taking off all my clothes as opposed to some of the women who have specifically requested to be in the back row. All I know is I didn't make a request for any specific row, I was just told to go stand in front so I did.

I've had a number of people tentatively ask me if I wanted people to come, or if I'd prefer they didn't because of concerns it might be easier to take my clothes off in front of strangers rather than people I actually know. If you're one of the people who has been wondering this but hasn't asked me, here's what I told everyone else: I have no problem with anyone coming to see me in this show, but I am not going to ask anyone to go. This is not because I don't want you there, it's because I'm part of a group number that is a part of a student show. I'm going to be onstage for less than three minutes with 16 other girls and I'm not comfortable asking people to spend $15 and sit through tons of other numbers in order to witness my three minutes of shared fame. But you're more than welcome to do that if you'd like. All the other numbers will involve girls getting undressed as well, which is pretty cool. It's not like you'd be sitting through an entire Star Trek convention to catch a brief glimpse of my ass. Tickets are available here if you want them.

BRAAAIIIIINNSSSSS!

The zombie 5K was this weekend in Baltimore, and I am proud to announce that I survived. Well, actually I didn't, I died. But I lived through it. I'll explain in a minute.

My training can best be described as "half-assed". Actually, half-assed may be a slight exaggeration. Quarter-assed is a bit more like it. As you may remember from previous posts, I HATE running. And while I started out with the best of intentions, no amount of progress in my abilities was enough to convince me that I liked it. In fact, I think it made me hate running even more. I started to rationalize reasons why I didn't really have to train. "I had dance class on Tuesday, that should count." "I totally did cardio-kickboxing for 10 whole minutes, that's exactly the same as running for 20 minutes." The last couple weeks I didn't bother to train at all, telling myself even more lies: "The adrenaline of being chased will carry me through it." "I should just sit on the couch all week - I need to conserve my energy."

Despite the nagging feeling that I was woefully under-prepared, I was getting very excited. A few days before the race the organizers sent out a tantalizing e-mail. There would be mud, red dye, strobe lights and four feet of standing water. We should "use our best judgement" in the event we had a seizure disorder, or an allergy to latex. Oh, and could we also print out and sign this wavier indicating that we understood we might potentially die? It was starting to sound awesome.

Race day came, and H-town and I got up at the ass crack of dawn to drive out to the race site. There were actually three of us who would be running together: me, with my half- to quarter-assed training, H-Town, who also hates running but had trained diligently, and Callie, who is a maniac and does this sort of running shit all the time. We discussed our training regimens and reactions to it on the shuttle from the parking lot to the race site. I reported my reaction the same way I always do: I am never, EVER running anywhere ever again.

Callie, H-Town and me, blissfully unaware of what lay ahead.

On arrival at the actual race site, we got our race packets, put on our numbers and our flag belts and got in line to check our bags. Each of us was in a different line, but we all had a similar experience of being given tips by people who had already completed the race. We already knew there were two kinds of zombies - "theatrical" zombies who were for show, and "athletic" zombies who would chase you and take your flags (this was the zombies' job. If you finished the race with none of your flags left, you were dead, and weren't eligible to win a prize). We were advised to look out for zombies who looked theatrical, but would turn around and chase you after you'd passed. We were also given advice for the "four feet of water" we'd been warned about, namely that it was way more than four feet deep, it was very cold, and we should grab the ropes to pull ourselves across rather than try to swim it. We all met up at the starting line and compared our notes. And then the race started.

We were not prepared.

Our various levels of training made no difference as we quickly realized that no one had actually trained properly at all. Running at a steady pace on relatively level, always dry, usually concrete surfaces is in no way at all adequate preparations for running through the woods up and down ridiculously steep hills, the surface of which had been reduced to a muddy slop, while being chased by zombies. In hindsight we should have been practicing running up and down various inclines and a fuck ton of suicide sprints.

We first realized this when we encountered our first obstacle - giant piles of hay we had to climb over. We reached the top and looked down to find a sea of zombies waiting for us on the other side who were sprinting after people trying to get their flags.

Holy Fuck.

 This would become a theme - go through some arduous task like climbing up a cargo net or clawing your way up a muddy hill, and face the waiting zombies on the other side/at the top. Also, for something that had been billed as a 5K run, there wasn't really a whole lot of actual running. Sprinting away from the zombies used up most of your energy so that when you did get to a zombie-free straightaway, you were usually too spent to run it. Which really didn't matter anyway because those sections were almost all so incredibly muddy you couldn't possibly have run through them without constantly falling. Still, it was pretty cool and we were having a ton of fun.

Until.

The water obstacle was to swim across a pond. There were two ropes stretched across it to help in pulling yourself along. We scrambled down the embankment and stepped into water up to our waists. It was stunningly cold, but seemed manageable. For five seconds, until we took another step. We all found ourselves submerged to the neck in 40 degree pond water. There is no way to grasp exactly how cold that is without actually doing it. The shock of the cold hit me like an anvil to the chest. FUCKING HOLY HAIRY NUN TESTICLES, I thought, but didn't say, because I was too stunned to speak. The bottom of the pond was nowhere to be found. We pulled ourselves along the rope hand over completely numb hand, urged along by H-Town, who was the only one with the ability to speak and was channeling her inner Dory - with Tourettes- all the way across. "JUST KEEP FUCKING SWIMMING!" she screamed. "FUCK YOU, NEMO!" I had a sudden moment of clarity remembering the text of the waiver I had signed - I could actually for real die in water that cold if I didn't get out of it as quickly as possible.

Somehow we all managed to get across to the other side and pull ourselves up the steep embankment. With two miles to go we were now cold, tired and soaking wet. Additionally, my saturated hoodie added another 10 pounds of weight for me to try and run with. We got to a very steep downhill that I almost ended up tumbling down, only to be faced at the bottom of it with an even steeper and higher hill that we would need to climb, which was also a river of mud. Climbing it took just about everything out of me, so when the zombie who had been sitting on the ground giving people high fives as they came over the hill suddenly jumped up and snatched away my last flag I barely even reacted. It actually turned out to be more fun once we had no flags left to worry about (it's not like we had any shot of coming in the top 3 anyway). We started deliberately messing with the zombies, trying to hug them and get them to high five us. We also did our good deed for the day and started running interference for the runners who did still have flags, blocking the zombies from being able to reach them, or tricking them into thinking we still had a flag on us somewhere.

The end was now in sight. Cold, wet, exhausted, filthy, lungs on fire, we could see the finish line (chain link fence that you had to crawl, or as H-Town did, slide under), and Callie led the way for the three of us, who were all determined to finish the race actually running. We babbled to one another excitedly while we got our medals, developing the strategies that would have been a lot more useful to us if we'd thought of them during the race. We grabbed our bags so that we could change into the clean and dry clothing we had brought, pausing first to have our photo taken together while we were still a hot mess, and giving the photographer and her friend who had yet to run all the advice we could think of. The shoes we ran in were all destroyed and we threw them away with great ceremony. Then we went off in search of the free beer we had been promised and something to eat.

The beer was like the nectar of heaven. The cheeseburgers H-Town and I procured were the most delicious either of us had ever had in our lives and we ate the crap out of them. We said goodbye to Callie, who is insane and was teaching a yoga class later in the day, and decided to head down near the course to watch some of the next wave. We stood near the first obstacle, the giant piles of hay, with a number of other people who had also finished the race, and watched as the next wave crested the hay and headed into the sea of zombies. We'd been through it before and knew that the direction they needed to run wasn't readily apparent, so the entire spectator gallery began shouting at them and pointing "To the right! THE RIGHT! Head for the trees! Go towards THE TREES!" After the wave passed by us, we went to the section between the maze and the downhill, where a ton of zombies waited in ambush all the way down the hill. Again, we used our knowledge to help the runners. "Wait for a group! Go in a group! There's too many of them, you'll never make it by yourself! Everyone go together and overwhelm them!" Most people took our advice, and a few of them even gathered around a leader who would get them all geared up Braveheart style and then all together make a break for the zombie gauntlet shouting guttural war cries. One who didn't was a guy dressed up as Superman, who actually did manage to get past them all without losing any of his flags, although one of the more enterprising zombies managed to steal his cape.

We drove home in absolute exhaustion, extremely pleased with ourselves for choosing an early heat when we noticed the traffic backed up for miles along the two lane road that led to the race (the traffic turned out to be a  huge problem and quite a few people unfortunately didn't get to run). We got home and spent 15 minutes excitedly relaying to H-Town's lovely wife all the details of our adventure before passing out.

I hate running, you guys. I really, really mean it. But there's just something about being chased by zombies. So despite the fact that I still swear I will never run again, when H-Town turned to me on Sunday afternoon just after we came home from dinner and suggested that we might want to sign up for the zombie run next year in Indianapolis  I agreed that we were kidding ourselves if we thought there was any chance that we won't.

Sibling Fight (Except It's With My Best Friend's Sibling, Not Mine)

E-Town: how's the runnin?

Me: there is zero chance i will be ready. or ever do this again
zombies and [H-Town], i keep telling myself. zombies and [H-Town]

E-Town: you're tougher than that
just do a slow jog

Me: it's warm enough this week to go running outside again, so that's a bonus

E-Town: that's good
make me proud of ya

Me: still wish you could make it :)

E-Town: yeah, me too
we can kill them in Indy next year
I might try two of them next year

Me: that's crazy talk. I would potentially be a zombie next year though

E-Town: I'd punch your face if you came near me as a zombie

Me: you aren't allowed to hit the zombies
so nah
imma take all your flags
anyway, home go time. have a great night!

E-Town: I'd hit you.
night

England Trip Do Over - Part 4

After a few false starts on Sunday, I finally managed to get out of the hotel and meet the mutineer at the Red Hart for a delicious lunch of various things that had been fried (ordering a meal all on my own the night before had depleted my social bravery reserves, so I got him to order for me in exchange for buying him some chips*). We ate over an intense discussion about playing in bands and the relative superiority of +44 over Angels and Airwaves, which we both agreed was steaming pile of emo horseshit. I also had two Strongbows. I should have realized ahead of time that this would turn out to be a mistake later on, but I was distracted by my delightful company and the onion rings. After lunch we headed back to the hotel where the mutineer kept me company for a few hours until the day's main event.

Steve had been telling me for weeks that he was going to have me tend bar in his pub while I was over. I had been telling him he had no idea what he was saying for just as long. "I think you'd be a natural at it," he told me, despite my repeated explanation of how I already knew that wasn't true: a) I have crippling social phobias and b) I break and/or spill EVERYTHING I touch. When I told the bartender of Steve's plans over dinner one night he dropped his fork in shock and asked if Steve had ever actually met me. Luckily, events transpired that prevented him from implementing this ludicrous idea. Instead, he came to the hotel to pick me up, where I showed off the coils of rope that had been left behind on Saturday before heading down to the car park where we stood in awe for 10 minutes watching a black squirrel frolic by a tree (hey, it's not every day you see a black squirrel).

We headed out to a place called The Rusty Gun, obviously the most appropriate place to take an American visitor to dinner. It's also one of the most appropriate places to take Steve for dinner. As he will be the first to tell you (the comic will be the second), Steve only eats weirdo food. Take him anywhere in the world, and his instinct is to find the most outrageous thing on the entire menu and then order it. He's the exact opposite of me, really. No matter where I go, I pretty much only eat four things - pasta, hamburgers, prawns and dessert. It's because I know I like these things, and I want to make sure I do not starve to death because I ordered something I might potentially hate. Steve, on the other hand, is on a perpetual culinary adventure.

I will now go back on what I just said about myself in the previous paragraph. I order the same things over and over again everywhere, mostly, except that when I'm in England something weird happens to me where I suddenly decide it's time to try some new vegetables. I don't know why this happens - maybe it's because certain things are more common there than here or maybe it's because I'm drunk a lot - but my first trip over to see the comic I ate some parsnips in an attempt to appease his mother (the poor woman nearly short circuited when he told her I didn't eat potatoes and almost gave up on making me a roast dinner altogether. Instead she went overboard and made about twelve sides in the hope that I might like at least one of them) and I have been addicted to them ever since. For starters I had prawns (see?) and Steve ordered the soup of the day, which was celeriac. I'd never heard of it. "It's a root vegetable," he told me. "Try it." I was dubious, owing to the word "vegetable" which typically connotes "horrible things are about to happen in the vicinity of your taste buds" to me. But he wouldn't drop it, so I borrowed his spoon and (after a rambling description of Don Hertzfeldt's animated short Rejected when he gave me the crazy eye for holding it up and shouting "My SPOON is too big!") tentatively tasted the soup. Immediately, Beethoven's "Ode To Joy" began to play. Diamonds rained down from the sky, a pile of kittens appeared out of nowhere and a bevy of angels hovered nearby smiling benevolent smiles at us. Celeriac is DELICIOUS, and I made him write it down for me so I could look it up later and see if we even had it here (we do, but it's called celery root), which he did while I inhaled pretty much all of his soup.

It was at around this point when the trouble started. We'd gotten a beer at the bar before being seated and then ordered a bottle of wine to go with our dinner (me, something that had the word beef in it and seemed safe, him I don't even know what the fuck) which I drank what I felt was more than my fair share of because he kept insisting he was driving. Then our waiter, a charming and ingratiating man who resembled a young Lurch with a shaved head, brought over the dessert menu which had something on it that contained the word "chocolate" three separate times in its description. Obviously I made Steve order it for me, thus giving him the opportunity to order us some dessert wine as well. You may recall I was two ciders into the day before Steve had even shown up. Consequently, by the time we left I was well and truly fucked.

Steve drove me back to the hotel, where clearly the only thing to do was head for the hotel bar and pour more cider down my throat. We phoned Nat the Evil Lesbian to join us, and together we hatched diabolical but hilarious plans for when I return in March. Our laughter seemed to attract the attention of the people at the next table - a nice couple from Lincolnshire who may or may not have been at the wedding the previous day (I asked them but don't remember their answer because I was piss drunk). After Steve left (early, I decided, even though it wasn't. I had gotten the Loud), Nat and I joined them at their table where we regaled them with tales of how we'd met and what we'd done all week and they told us about their grown children (or something, I was drunk). They were genuinely disappointed when we rose to leave and even more so when I explained that my level of drunkenness would most likely prevent me from meeting them for breakfast before they went home in the morning. It did.

I woke up Monday and was not any more English or 20 years old than I had been earlier in the week. I was supposed to have lunch with Felix and Charlie and their progeny. When Felix texted me to let me know something had come up and they couldn't make it, I gratefully went back to bed until the middle of the afternoon. I only got up again in order to collect the stranger from Hitchin station, who had cleared a few hours of his schedule to spend the afternoon with me tying knots in things and showing off some tools he carries around in a very nice pair of cashmere socks. I was starving by the time he left and decided to go out for a delicious roast dinner (no parsnips, sad sad). That accomplished, there was nothing left to do but pack up my things (and my new rope) and try to catch a few hours sleep before catching a bus to the airport for my flight home (I didn't. Instead I called the bartender and had him put the cat on the phone so I could tell her I was on my way home because I am insane).

Even when I've been away somewhere brilliant, and even when I leave somewhere before I really feel ready to go home, I always feel an enormous sense of relief as soon as I'm back on the ground in Chicago - it's how I know I'm in the right place. I was grinning from ear to ear the entire cab ride back to my apartment. When I got there, I discovered that my amazing roommate had bought me two bags of Nacho Cheese Doritos (I do not know what they do to the Doritos in England, but it isn't good), some Reese's peanut butter cups and a huge pumpkin (he would later tell me it's my "practice" pumpkin to help me decide what to carve on my real Halloween pumpkin). Home sweet home.

I'll see you in March, Hitchin.

*Fries.

England Trip Do Over - Part 2

There are two things I forget every time I go to England: 1) I am not English and 2) I am not 20. I woke up at 7:00 a.m. Wednesday morning with a raging hangover and wanted nothing more than to down a glass of water, roll over and go back to sleep. It was not to be. We had planned a trip to Thorpe Park which everyone had been looking forward to for a month, and begging off because I drank too much was not really an option. I got dressed sitting on the floor of my room and made it downstairs to the car where Sulu, MrBalls and i.c. hater were waiting on Nat and me. "Good morning!" grinned i.c. hater as I slid into the backseat.

"No," I replied. We collected Nat and headed out. Now here's the thing: I love roller coasters. LOVE them. But some years ago I started noticing a change in my constitution. I had always gotten a bit motion sick on long car rides, but at some point in the mid 90's I realized that I was starting to get motion sick going on roller coasters. One particular trip to Cedar Point ended with me collapsing in tears - I'd gone on three brilliant coasters and was so shaken up and nauseous I was sure I would never be able to ride again. Luckily, I quickly discovered the joy of Dramamine and my thrill riding ways were able to continue. I was totally pumped, despite my hangover. "Even if I puke after every ride," I announced as we walked in, "I am going to RALLY LIKE A CHAMP." We got on the first coaster and I kicked my feet happily as we chugged up the first hill. And then we plunged down it.

You guys. There is no amount of motion sickness medication in the world that can counteract the effects of both motion sickness AND being hungover at the same time. I came off the ride almost in a daze from how bad I felt. We ended up settling into a pattern where I would go on two coasters in a row and then sit one out while I recovered. This worked out really well since as it turns out, Sulu is kind of a giant pussy about roller coasters and I often had her for company.

The newest attraction at Thorpe Park is Saw. There are two rides: an absolutely insane roller coaster with a drop that is greater than vertical and a sort of haunted house type thing. We went for the haunted house first. Along the way we had picked up a couple more friends, so the seven of us plus the four or five people behind us were lined up train style with hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them and sent inside. We were immediately accosted by a terrifying man who went straight for Nat (she was in between Sulu and me), prompting her to scream, or rather screech "STOP TOUCHING ME!" This had the effect of basically painting a target on her, and in every subsequent room the monster people seemed to go straight for her. I got through the entire thing mostly ignored while Nat kept up a steady stream of screaming and yelling: "STOP TOUCHING ME! GO AWAY! FUCK OFF!" The situation wasn't helped by the fact that our friend at the front of the line was as terrified as Nat was and was leading the line along at a pace that made it seem as if her shoelaces had been tied together.

Next up was the roller coaster. There was a queue*, so we were idly chatting while we waited when someone brought up Ben & Jerry's ice cream (this happens every time MrBalls and I are anywhere near each other) and led to a comment from i.c. hater to the effect that he hates ice cream (i.c. hater! Get it?). We demanded clarification. "Well, I don't like the way it is so cold. It's really a bit agro, isn't it?" The rest of us were all perplexed, but true to his word he refused to eat it any of the Half-Baked pint we bought on the way home.

This time around, it was Sulu who became hysterical on the ride. She was sat between Nat and me for moral support, and the both of us were patting her legs reassuringly as we went (straight) up the hill and she babbled uncontrollably. At the top of the hill she started screaming and she did not stop for the entire ride. She was physically shaking when we came off it. I was a bit shaken up as well, but it was of the hangover variety, so as the rest of the group prepared to get back in the queue, I was fully prepared to sit it out with a PTS Sulu. Except that when the suggestion was made to go again, she was the first one to agree, and then she RAN to the entrance. It was impressive actually, I don't think we could have paid Nat to go back in the haunted house.

Saw the roller coaster. Note that the way up the hill is vertical. Sulu was not a fan.

The drive home was much more lively than the drive out had been and, as previously mentioned, we stopped for a pint of B&J's which four of the five of us shared, though the bulk of the thing was consumed by myself and MrBalls. Also at some point we invented the term "Dickmuff".

The next day I was feeling much better, which was important because I had some seriously grown up plans, y'all. Specifically, I managed to get to Hitchin rail station, buy a ticket and a return from the nice ticket counter man, get myself on a train to Kings Cross in London and then find the prearranged meeting point at St. Pancras station all by myself LIKE A MOTHERFUCKING ADULT. I was meeting a total stranger, hence the bright purple, highly recognizable hair. I'd been internet stalking him for some seven years, and realizing that I could do whatever I wanted on this trip and that I had nothing to lose, I'd e-mailed him and asked if he would be interested in meeting me for a drink. I should back up a bit. The stranger is sort of my idol, internet-wise. His writing is spectacular and is the standard by which I judge all other websites of similar material. I'm not the only one who has noticed, either - his site is fairly popular. So when I sent the e-mail, I wasn't really expecting there to be a response, let alone that the response would be "yes" and "I'll clear my afternoon for you." I figured it would get lost in the sea of fan mail he must get constantly, or that perhaps he doesn't bother to arrange meet-and-greets with potentially crazy fangirls from the internet. I immediately freaked out because HOLY CRAP WHAT AM I GOING TO WEAR and also shitshitshit what if I can't think of anything interesting to say? By the time of my trip we'd been corresponding for a few weeks so I was marginally less nervous (though not comfortable enough to do something intelligent like wear shoes intended for walking in, given that he had told me we'd be walking a fair amount. Instead I wore heels because looking good seemed way more important and I like to pretend to myself that I'm hardcore). We went for lunch and had tapas (my first time, somehow I had missed out on this brilliant cuisine for the first 33 years of my life) and then went and found a coffee shop that served genuine for real delicious coffee, which I took a photo of because I had never seen real coffee before anywhere in England. It was a wonderful afternoon and went by very quickly. The stranger had another engagement, so we made plans for later in the week and then I went home (by taking the tube back to Kings Cross because I am VERY MATURE).

Back in Hitchin I discovered the one thing that would make life in a small town in England difficult for me (actually the second of two things. As I apparently told everyone repeatedly while drunk, what I would miss about Chicago if I moved is that I can get Mexican food made by real Mexicans when I am drunk at 5 in the morning, and in England even if I could find something open that late (unlikely) it would almost certainly be curry and I don't like curry. Tacos!): everything shuts ridiculously early. Well, I say everything, but I mean everything decent - Subway was still open when I got back, but I didn't go for it. I was starving but there was no way I was eating Subway, which I can get at home, while I was in England. It's the principle of the thing. Instead, I went home and made myself some hot chocolate, surfed the internet for a while and went to bed. I had an adventure planned for the next day insofar as I had absolutely nothing planned at all and was going to be truly on my own as far as how to entertain myself. Shut up, it was very exciting for me.

*Line.

Running Update: Week Two

I think the status of my running experiment is best summed up in this conversation with H-Town's brother, runner extraordinaire:

E-Town: how's the running?

Me: I want to stab everything.
btw, I learned this: Do not run on the same day you have burlesque class. FYI

E-Town: haha, ok

Me: my legs are like spaghetti today

E-Town: thin and tasty?

Me: limp and wrapped around a fork


I seriously look like I have just now discovered my knees and I'm still getting used to them. I was confused about why my body was rebelling against this so much - the running part I understand, but I was a dancer for 14 years and I felt like I should be holding up better in the face of pliés and hip circles. Then it dawned on me that the last time I did a plié I was about 17. My body already knew that, and clearly is telling me "No fucking way, lady. You are every day of 33 years old, so stop trying to bend your knees sideways." As with most advice I am given, I've chosen to ignore this, and the 26 seconds of choreography we learned last night has been run in my office today more than once, though I'm not sure if it's because I want to get everything down perfect before the next class or because I like to touch my butt.

Training Day (Or, I Must Be Fucking Crazy)

You remember that movie Training Day with Denzel Washington, where he's a crooked narcotics officer training Ethan Hawk and all kinds of horrible shit happens? Yeah well my first training day for this 5K I'm running was a lot like that, except with less forcing people to smoke PCP and no one got shot. Though, given the way my legs feel right now, if I were a horse and not a person I would have been taken out back and shot this morning. It's possible I'm being a little over dramatic. It's also possible that I'm not, and that running really does suck as much as I'm telling you it does.

I'm using the highly touted Couch to 5K program, which a number of my friends have done and insist that it works and that they love to run now. I got up yesterday at the ass crack of dawn, slightly wary but also fairly excited. I was going to run! Like those people that I see running! That was going to be me! Day one of the program starts you off slowly: 5 minutes of brisk walking followed by alternating 60 seconds of running with 90 seconds of walking for 8 reps, totaling 20 minutes. This seemed like a no brainer. I can run for 60 seconds at a stretch, right? I'm in excellent shape overall - I lift weights and I shadow box. Piece of cake.

After the first 60 seconds of running I was ready to kill myself. What was I thinking with this whole running bullshit? Am I some kind of idiot? I spent the 90 seconds of my break sifting through my iPod until I found The Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up and put it on repeat. It was the only song I had that was angry enough to match my complete hatred of this incredibly stupid form of exercise.

By the time I had finished I'd calmed down a bit, mainly because I knew I was going to get to spend the rest of the day telling people how bad it was and have them pat me on the back and tell me I am awesome sauce. And I did - I bitched and complained about it the entire day to everyone, including Jon and Scott of the incredibly awesome podcast Total Talk Nonsense while I was at their worldwide headquarters recording episode 228 as an in studio guest and being all famous 'n shit. In reality I felt pretty good. I had made it through the whole first workout without giving up, I was energized, confident, proud of myself. I could picture in my mind running the whole 3.1 miles while dodging zombies left and right. I set my alarm for 5 a.m. this morning so I could get up and run the same thing again.

When the alarm went off I was ready. I fucking OWNED that horrible workout yesterday and today would be even easier because I'd already done it! I got out of bed and...

HOLY MOTHERFUCKING CRAP ON A CRACKER. Mentally, I was totes prepared to go out and run. Physically, however, my legs were saying, "Like fuck you are, stupid ass. We're not falling for that shit again. Go away and come back tomorrow." The pain, which originally seemed to be mostly confined to my shins, was tremendous. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed and realized the pain in my upper thighs was even worse than the pain in my shins. Then I stood up again to go wash my face and to my utter astonishment noticed that my ass was actually on fire. Really? My ASS hurts from this? Because, as I said before, I lift weights frequently and there's squatting down and lunging types of things I do that work those muscles and I KNOW that my ass is in shape and what the fuck? H-town's brother, who started out on the same couch to 5K program and now can run like the wind, told me that the reason my ass hurts is because running works the muscles in a different way than weight lifting does. By "different way" I assume he means "the way of the devil". I was obviously not running anywhere today. As a matter of fact, the little bit of walking I did between the train and the places I needed to go saw me stumbling around downtown Chicago like Lurch and frightening all the children and several adults.

If it wasn't for the fact that I love H-town and really want to do something cool with her and also the part about the zombies I would just give up this very minute. I am right now sat on my couch and plotting out my plans for the evening based around doing the bare minimum of moving possible. Because my legs...oh lord, my legs. The Run For Your Lives zombie 5K is October 22nd. Beginning October 23rd I am NEVER RUNNING AGAIN.

Blogging Is Not A Matter Of Life And Death...Unlike Pneumonia

Relax, I'll tell you where I've been, just calm down. I've just returned from spending 11 days on a 10 day trip to England the U.K., which followed directly on the heels of spending the bulk of two weeks visiting Hell Illinois Masonic Hospital, where they were holding my beloved roommate the bartender in a thankfully successful attempt at making him not die, which nearly killed him in and of itself.

I'll explain that shortly, but let's back up a minute.

What now seems like many Thursdays ago, I was in my usual watering hole doing my usual have dinner with my roommate and then drink a beer while antisocially playing games on my iPad thing, when a pretty looking boy began admiring my very pink hair and asking my advice on how he could do something similar to his very brown hair. I have had this conversation many times, and now that I have an iPad, I can augment it with Facebook photos of my coiffure's previous incarnations. He was impressed, deemed me artistic and started showing me some of his design portfolio, including some work he'd done for a motorcycle club. In turn I showed him the results of the Super Secret Project. It was the most stunning transformation I've ever seen: he was having a normal, relaxed, easy conversation with me and then as if I'd flipped a switch he suddenly became so nervous that he literally could not complete a sentence. He eventually took several deep breaths and managed to choke out enough words for me to understand he was asking me out. It's not like I could say no - he was adorable and there was a strong chance his head might implode from a rejection, so I gave him my e-mail and made vague plans to "eat something and watch the hockey game" on Saturday. In retrospect, it seems hilarious to me that I thought there was any chance I might wind up in some sort of normal situation.

The bartender had not been feeling well, so when he came home from working Friday night at 4:30 a.m. sweating and out of breath I was concerned. He asked me if we had an accurate thermometer (we didn't) and then said the bone chilling words that would kick off a terrifying saga: "I think you need to get dressed. I need you to take me to the hospital." The bartender doesn't really "do" hospitals. Despite that fact, he'd just been to the ER two weeks prior to that due to excruciating back and chest pain that was diagnosed as walking pneumonia. He was given antibiotics and sent on his way. He felt better after a few days, went back for a follow up a week later, was pronounced healthy and sent on his way. Two days later he had a fever of 102.2, couldn't breathe and wanted me to take him back to the hospital. Not good.

We got there and did the whole ER routine: triage, get in a room, vitals, talk to a nurse, talk to another nurse, wait for a doctor, explain everything again, wait some more, repeat everything again for a medical student, then a third nurse, get some blood drawn and then finally they took him away for a chest x-ray, which is when I checked my voicemail and realized I'd missed a call from the comic the night before explaining that he'd been randomly punched in the face. None of my boys were doing well, it seemed. I texted the only one who was (the boy from Thursday night) to inform him that I would not be making our date that afternoon and rescheduling it for Sunday. A doctor came in with the bad news: the bartender's pneumonia had not gone away at all, but rather seemed to have gotten worse. They decided to admit him for a couple days. I texted the newbie and rescheduled our date for early the following week, then went home and fed the cat.

When I got back to the hospital the situation had gone from bad to worse. A CT scan revealed that in addition to the pneumonia worsening, his lung was also being collapsed from the outside due to empyema. He would need surgery, but they didn't want to perform it until they got the infection that caused the pneumonia in the first place under control. They started throwing every antibiotic they had in their arsenal at him hoping something would work. None of them seemed to help, and after two days of this with his condition continuing to worsen it was becoming clear he had some sort of antibiotic resistant super bug and that they couldn't wait any longer to do the surgery. He went under the knife that Tuesday, while I paced the family lounge, tweeting what little information I had and postponing my date until the bartender made it home.

I was wholly unprepared for the scene that greeted me when they allowed me to see him in the ICU after surgery. IVs in both arms, a breathing tube down his throat, oxygen, catheter, epidural, three chest tubes snaking out of his back and his arms strapped down as a precaution because people coming out of anesthesia have a penchant for trying to rip their breathing tube out when they come to. He looked terrible. "You look good," I told him, which he obviously didn't reply to because you can't talk with a breathing tube stuffed down your throat. The anethesiologist came in to check up on things. His name was Dr. Dieter, but he looked less like Dieter from Sprockets and more like The Dude from Big Lebowski. He was also hilarious. "I was only in there for the important part," he said. "Basically, we cut you open, drianed the pus out and then took a garden hose to your chest for about 20 minutes."

Having cultured the fluid to get a better idea of just what the hell had made him so sick in the first place, they put him on an appropriate antibiotic that we hoped would clear up the infection once and for all. In the meantime, breathing tube removed, the bartender was free to insult his oh-so-witty surgeon when he came in each day to pull out the chest tubes one at a time. "I promise you, I won't feel a thing," the surgeon said as he de-Borged my roommate, which earned him "Dick" in response. On the day the final chest tube came out, the plan was that he would get out of ICU, go upstairs for observation for a day and then finally go home. Obviously this scenario was not in the stars because when everything else has gone horribly wrong, why not just pile it on?

As it turned out, after a day and a half on the "right" antibiotic to treat the infection, it was discovered it was the wrong antibiotic for the bartenders kidneys, as they had begun to shut down. So began several stress filled days of constant monitoring in an effort to keep the treatment that was saving his life from killing him.

Finally, FINALLY, he was well enough to leave the hospital and I took him home on Tuesday afternoon, 11 days after I'd driven him there in the middle of the night. I spent the next three days hovering over him and carrying things around because he wasn't allowed to lift anything at all (and couldn't have even if he'd tried). Then on Saturday, at the bartender's insistance, I finally left for my long planned trip to England which I had resigned myself already that I was going to miss, sending a text message to newbie postponing our date until June in the cab on the way to O'Hare.

So yeah. Sorry about the long break from blogging. I WAS BUSY.

Bathroom Mysteries

I'm having issues in my bathroom right now. One is an intriguing garbage can finding; the other has to do with my being a complete moron.

Saturday morning I got up at 3 a.m. to take a shower so I could be at Tai's to start painting by 4:30 (I am very serious about my work). I groggily got up, crashed into the door frame to my bedroom (as I do), and staggered through the dining room and kitchen and into the bathroom to get ready. It was when I went to throw a tissue into the trash can that I saw it: a mysterious twig was poking up out of the can. My brain slowly worked this over: Where did this twig come from? I didn't recall putting a twig in the garbage can. I decided maybe I had better get myself fully conscious before I sprained something thinking about it, so I jumped in the shower.

Now awake (also clean and naked), I got out of the shower to find that there was still a twig in my garbage can. I went back over my movements for the last few days, and found none that involved placing a twig in my garbage can. I started going over other options.

Option 1: Kristen put it there. There are several problems with this theory. For one thing, Kristen does not go outside so she'd have trouble getting her little paws on a twig to begin with. I'm sure she could have found it in the house if I tracked it in there somehow, but I don't really think so. Also, being that she's a cat and all, she doesn't have opposable thumbs to grasp a stick and throw it in the trash. True, she could have picked it up in her mouth and dropped it in there, but to do that she'd have to jump up onto the toilet with it and lean over at a weird angle to get it in there. Also, and most importantly, why would Kristen want to put a twig in my garbage can in the first place?

Option 2: The bartender did it. Besides me there are only two others with keys to my apartment, the landlord, and the bartender who happens to also be my catsitter. If the bartender came over while I wasn't home, he could have tracked in a branch that he noticed and threw out while using my bathroom. But the thing is, the bartender would not just show up and use a key to get into my house without telling me. We're in a big fight right now too, so if he had been in there when I wasn't home, I would have expected to find some of his belongings that I'm currently storing to be missing. So probably not the bartender.

Option 3: The landlord. This seems like the least likely, because in order to come in my apartment, the landlord is supposed to call and warn me first. In fact, the few times they've been in there they've never failed to call first.

So I have no explanation for a twig in my garbage can and it is really bothering me. When I talked to MrSteve about it yesterday he was unimpressed. "Fine, but we might be about to invade nuclear facilities in Iran. Don't you think that's maybe a little more important?"

"Well, no, because how does that effect me, Steve? Oh wait! Unless it was Iranian terrorists and they broke in and put a twig in my garbage can. That might be it."

"Right. Why would terrorists break in your house and put a twig in your garbage can, Amber?"

"To fuck with my head! Obviously. And it's working."

Poor Steve, I don't know why he bothers trying to talk to me at all. Anyway, the twig is still in there and it is still bothering me. I need help on this one, folks. What am I missing?

My other problem is that I am unbelievably stupid at practical things. Such as changing the batteries in my Crest Spinbrush. I can't get the damn thing open to get at the batteries. I've tried pushing, pulling, twisting, pulling and twisting, twisting and pushing, squeezing and twisting, pushing and squeezing, and banging it against the sink. The little drawing on the side implies that it should just swing open at one end, but I'm telling you, I tried that and it didn't work. The worst part of this is that I got it open once before because I've changed those batteries once already. I can't figure it out. My toothbrush is going to die if I don't find a solution to this problem soon. Please help me.

Green Thumb

Here's yet another fine example of how I'm incompetent at life! I did laundry this weekend, and by Wednesday I decided that maybe I should hang my clean clothes up in my closet rather than wander naked and cold out into the living room to hunt through my laundry bag for something to wear every morning, and also because they weren't going to be clean for very long once Kristen realized a bag of clothes would make a great sleeping nest. So, hangers it would be.

"AAAAAGGHHRRRGGHH! FUCK!" I shouted from the bedroom.

"What? What happened?" Fish asked, as he came running in from the kitchen where he had been patiently and lovingly taking out my trash for me so I wouldn't have to traverse the spider infested back stairwell of my house to get outside.

"I sliced the fuck out of my thumb." And I had.

"How did that happen?"

Yes, how did that happen? Because it seems to me that hanging a skirt on a hanger with little clippy things should be pretty routine. But somehow while squeezing the clip open I managed to lose my grip on it, spin it around, and at some point slice a major gash in the side of my left thumb.

It's how I roll.

And I bled like a stuck pig I tell you. I dripped my way to the bathroom and cleaned it, then, when my used-to-be-a-lifeguard I-know-first-aid instincts kicked in I looked at it and determined that it was deep enough and long enough that it probably wouldn't hurt to have a stitch or two put in it. So of course I just put a bandaid on it real tight instead because scars are bad-ass.

All was well until the next day, when I took my bandaid off, planning to wash my hands and change the dressing. Which was a great idea really, except that I am sort of easily distracted, and hey I should give Kristen a treat and drink some pineapple juice and find a belt to wear and...I felt a searing pain as my non-bandaged wound was stabbed and ripped further by a belt buckle. I cursed my dumb ass, cleaned and dressed it again, put a belt and and went off to the bar.

Where I decided that I should not just drop, but squeeze my lime into the mouth of my Corona. With my left hand. So that the lime juice could drip down my thumb, under my bandaid and into my cut.

The Klutz Reprise

No new bruises to report, only some dry, crusted hot chocolate that I somehow managed to splash on my sweater and in my hair this morning.

BruisyBruise

Here's the thing: I'm kind of a klutz. OK, maybe not kind of; I am a klutz.

Once, when I still worked at the number factory, I was walking down the hallway toward my office with Mary and our VP of Operations following in my wake. Now I had walked down this hallway many hundreds of times in my day; after all, my office lived there. So walking down that particular hallway should have been pretty routine. But alas, nothing is routine if it involves both me and any kind of motor skills or coordination. So when I got to the bend in the hallway (which had ALWAYS been there), I managed to completely miss the yards of open space to my immediate right and plant my face square into the wall. Mary, the world’s most patient best friend, is accustomed to seeing these types of walking fuck ups from me, but Operations didn't spend nearly as much time observing my inability to navigate minor obstacles, and was surprised.

"Did she just run right into the wall?" Operations asked of Patient Mary.

"Yup." Mary checked her wristwatch. "She's about due."

These close encounters with inanimate objects happen far more frequently than even I can imagine. So frequently, in fact, that I very rarely remember them at all. How do I know that these events occur if I can't remember them? Well, by the evidence they leave behind, of course. Because I am always covered in bruises. Always. I always tease whoever I'm currently dating and/or pseudo-dating that people are going to think they beat me because of the purple welts perpetually visible all over my body. (Fish doesn’t beat me by the way. And I don’t beat him either. He fell.)

The current leader of the pack is a quarter sized contusion on the back of my right leg, just above the knee. It is so purple that it’s black, and it’s actually raised like some kind of relief map. Also, it throbs whenever I so much as change my pants. Obviously I backed into something with some serious force. You’d think I’d be able to remember a mishap that would cause that level of damage. But you’d be wrong. A total blank as to how it got there. I only noticed it because I ran a washcloth over it in the shower kind of roughly and was rewarded with a startling pain that almost made me fall forward and achieve a matching bruise in the middle of my forehead.

I love the advice I get from people when I show off my latest transient body art. “Eat more bananas,” people will tell me. “They have potassium.” Or “You need to start taking iron supplements.” Funny how no one ever suggests, “Maybe you should start paying more attention” or “Quit walking into things, you dumb ass.” Because really, giving my body the nutrients it needs to fight the bruising is treating the symptom rather than the problem, isn’t it?

Murphy's Law

Today I'm wearing a dress. It has material of three colors: white, red and black. Also today, I stopped for a very rare cup of Starbucks finest on my way in. Because I am Captain Klutzo, I spilled it within seconds of leaving the shop. Where did it land?

Yes. Only on the two white parts.