The Double-edged Sword of a Beautiful Day

After 4 years of living in Minnesota, where the spring/summer/fall is the most beautiful 4 months the world could possibly produce, and the winters are the most oppressively endless frigid 8 months imaginable, I am loving the weather in St Louis.

Today, it's 60 degrees outside with a warm sun and a flawless blue sky. (Fine, this is admittedly not typical weather, but by this time of year in Rochester, I would have expected to start seeing freeze-dried squirrels in the growing snowbanks on the side of the road, and grocery stores having frozen meat sidewalk sales, and people wearing fleece-lined gortex-coated floor length winter jumpsuits.)

The only drawback? There's a bizarre phenomenon in healthcare in which the warmer the weather is, the more people manage to injure themselves. (No one rides a 100mph motorcycle wearing only Daisy Dukes, a bikini top, flip flops, and no helmet when it's below zero. They reform their whole life plan and stay home and read Tolstoy instead.)

Adding to that, it's New Year's Eve, which is the annual Go Get Drunkity-Drunk And Do Regrettable Stuff holiday.

Adding to that, I'm on-call tonight, so all the Drunky Shenanigans and risky Christmas gifts that lead to OhNoMyEye Emergencies will go straight to me.

Why, for just one day, couldn't the St Louis weather have been more like Minnesota?

Deep thoughts at Christmas

I hereby freely and fully admit that I listen to the all-Christmas-music-all-the-time radio station whenever I'm in the car throughout the entire month of December. I also admit that I shriek painfully and turn off the radio when that Pa-rumpa-pum-pum drummer boy song comes on. Call me a spoilsport, but I am convinced that the last thing anyone would want after giving birth in a frigid cattle barn would be to have a kid come play a snare drum relentlessly.

Likes: Going All In

Hollywood has successfully created a nightmare in my mind: Showing up to a costume party fully dressed up only to find I'm the only one there in costume. (Thanks a lot for making me neurotic about this, Mean Girls, Legally Blonde, Start the Revolution Without Me, Bridget Jones, Groundhog Day...)

But despite the looming threat of shame and humiliation (...maybe because of it?), I still like the feeling of committing to the theme. Sure, there's a chance that I'll be the only person there sporting bunny ears or a pirate costume, but I like going all in. I've now learned that going all in is even better when you bring along someone who's even more committed to the theme than you are. That way, as you walk toward the fateful front door of the party, wondering if you've been set up for shattered dignity, at least you know you won't be embarrassed alone.

The latest example of this starts with a guy named Jamey, who I went on one date with back in July when I first arrived to St Louis. Nothing came of it from the dating standpoint, but he writes one of my new favorite funny blogs so we've kept in touch. (At the very least, you cannot say you've fully lived until you've read this entry about the Dry Cleaning Lady, and this one about True Survival against all odds.)

Jamey hosts an annual Festivus party (a la Seinfeld), and this year he themed it Trashy or Classy, with instructions to wear either your rattiest trashy clothes, your finest gown or tuxedo, or a half-and-half combo of both.

Thanks to Goodwill (which supplied the shirts, suit pants, exclusive country club necktie, and size 8 women's jeans), my mother (who taught me to sew, but probably never envisioned that those skills would be used for evil rather than good), and Silhouette temporary tattoo paper, here's what we wore on Saturday night:

Oh Billy Ray, you mulletted hunk of man. Sadly, even the confidence instilled in me by having Billy's triumphant trailer park salute emblazoned across my back couldn't keep me from worrying that we'd be the only ones dressed up for this party.

We arrived to the door.

We knocked.

We thought about turning back. It wasn't too late to save Dave's bare thigh from public scrutiny. No one would ever have to know how close we came to ruination.

Then we opened the fateful door and went inside.

Oh, the suspense.

Inside the party, delightful levels of classiness and trashiness abounded. To my list of "Likes," I should add that going all in is even better when you meet other people who have likewise committed.

We even learned that Dave has a soul mate.

Do you ever suffer from the "What if I'm the only one in costume" syndrome? Has it ever turned out badly for you?

McDonald's is Creepier in Canada

Last night I had a dream in which I came back to my tinypartment to find that absolutely everything I own had been stolen, right down to the last square of toilet paper, except four business suits which were still hanging neatly in my otherwise barren closet.

In the dream, I was utterly convinced of two things:

1. If the burglar had left me four suits, it must mean I was supposed to wear those as I hunted the culprit to the ends of the earth, and that I only had four days to do so.

2. The whole robbery was related to a deeply sinister plot concocted by The Hamburglar, of McDonald's fame.

Not wanting to just chalk up such a thing as irrational dream gibberish, I've been trying to figure out what exactly prompted me to dream it. I think it must have been a combination of the conversation Dave and I were having a few days back about great snippets from The Onion (follow the link for what may be one of the funniest articles I have ever read), and this picture my friend Val sent me of a road sign in Canada:

If cash levitates out of the trunk of your car whenever you open it, you might want to hide the key a bit better than that. Especially if there are gigantic burglar creeps wearing fedoras prowling around. You can't be too careful, you know.

- - - - - - - -

Putting the two together, it's clearly a recipe for a dream about being robbed blind by a hamburger-enthusiast/costumed criminal who then skips the country to head into the great white north with all my pseudo-valuables. I have no way to explain why the suits were featured in the dream. Maybe Hamburglar figured that if he has to dress up, so should I?

Have you ever had a bizarro dream but actually been able to explain what seeded it?

Arch Rivals in the City

My friend Dar, who's toiling along through plastic surgery residency in Cincinnatti, had an extremely rare weekend off so she came to visit. After relentlessly shaming me for being a St Louis resident but never having been up to the top of the St Louis Arch, we spent most of Saturday afternoon there.

Allow me to specify how "most of Saturday afternoon" breaks down:

- 20 minutes in the arch itself

- 2 hours jumping/cartwheeling/yoga-posing/handstanding on the grass in the park at the base of the arch while fiddling around with the timer on the camera in search of the ultimate shot

- 10 minutes (summed) telling innocent bystanders that we weren't crazy people and denying that we'd been there jumping/cartwheeling/yoga-posing/handstanding for the past 2 hours.

After that, we ate dinner at a sidewalk cafe then went to the venerated, classy, upscale, grown-up St Louis landmark known as City Museum. Picture the best playground from your childhood dreams, build it out of found objects and junkyard steel with questionable engineering tactics, install a 10-story spiral slide, a pipe organ, a live herd of turtles and a gutted airplane, then charge admission and serve pizza. Voila! City Museum! From the bowels of said museum comes a montage I like to call, "Hey Dar, you should try crawling through that."

To which she replied, "Hey Sarah, you found another inanimate boyfriend." (Wow! Printer Man, Wooden Doorstop Man, and Crosswalk Reminder Guy will be so jealous!)

War Paint

It seems like it's been so long since the Krispy Kreme Challenge. Luckily, there are other equally ridiculous things to do around here: bring on the Warrior Dash!

And now, an exclusive and irrelevant interview about the experience:

How excited was I?

Excited enough to entice me into wearing that very special spandex-and-socks combo in public again.

Excited enough to jump up and down a lot.

Excited enough to render me incapable of preventing the Dork Smile from being captured on film.

How did I train for it?

Um.... good intentions. And zero actual training. In retrospect, that may not have been the strongest regimen.

My friends Justin and Katie ran the Warrior Dash in Minnesota a few months ago amidst their training for much more serious/lengthy races. They were in shape. Oh, so wise.

Are the spandex and socks flammable?

The world may never know.

Did I slip gracelessly into a mud pit and crawl through it on all fours, even though everyone else managed to cross it in a bipedal manner pretty well?

Why yes. Yes, I did.

How did I get clean afterwards?

Bathed publicly with a fire hose while surrounded by throngs of total strangers. Naturally.

Please don't Rhwe in public

I just stumbled across an awesome little article listing words with no English equivalent.

They describe concepts that we're familiar with, but lack word for.

(On that note, please oh please oh please someday let the newly approved words of the year be gender-ambiguous 3rd person singular pronouns meaning him/her, and he/she. We need a singular "they." Please.)

Here's the list, for your enjoyment and new wordification:

1. Shemomedjamo (Georgian)

You know when you’re really full, but your meal is just so delicious, you can’t stop eating it? The Georgians feel your pain. This word means, “I accidentally ate the whole thing.”

2. Pelinti (Buli, Ghana)Your friend bites into a piece of piping hot pizza, then opens his mouth and sort of tilts his head around while making an “aaaarrrahh” noise. The Ghanaians have a word for that. More specifically, it means “to move hot food around in your mouth.”

3. Layogenic (Tagalog)

Remember in Clueless when Cher describes someone as “a full-on Monet…from far away, it’s OK, but up close it’s a big old mess”? That’s exactly what this word means.

4. Rhwe (Tsonga, South Africa)

College kids, relax. There’s actually a word for “to sleep on the floor without a mat, while drunk and naked.”

5. Zeg (Georgian)

It means “the day after tomorrow.” Seriously, why don’t we have a word for that in English?

6. Pålegg (Norweigian)

Sandwich Artists unite! The Norwegians have a non-specific descriptor for anything – ham, cheese, jam, Nutella, mustard, herring, pickles, Doritos, you name it – you might consider putting into a sandwich.

7. Lagom (Swedish)

Maybe Goldilocks was Swedish? This slippery little word is hard to define, but means something like, “Not too much, and not too little, but juuuuust right.”

8. Tartle (Scots)

The nearly onomatopoeic word for that panicky hesitation just before you have to introduce someone whose name you can’t quite remember.

9. Koi No Yokan (Japanese)

The sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall into love.

10. Mamihlapinatapai (Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego)

This word captures that special look shared between two people, when both are wishing that the other would do something that they both want, but neither want to do.

11. Fremdschämen (German); Myötähäpeä (Finnish)

The kindler, gentler cousins of Schadenfreude, both these words mean something akin to “vicarious embarrassment.” Or, in other words, that-feeling-you-get-when-you-watch-Meet the Parents.

12. Cafune (Brazilian Portuguese)

Leave it to the Brazilians to come up with a word for “tenderly running your fingers through your lover’s hair.”

13. Greng-jai (Thai)

That feeling you get when you don’t want someone to do something for you because it would be a pain for them.

14. Kaelling (Danish)

You know that woman who stands on her doorstep (or in line at the supermarket, or at the park, or in a restaurant) cursing at her children? The Danes know her, too.

Cardboard Boxes and Sisterhood

I just spent a 4-day weekend in Utah with my sister, Bonnie. We had a great time doing everything from hiking...

to mall loitering...

to caving...

 

to wandering aimlessly on a sunny day in her old neighborhood  park... 

Whenever we hang out, I'm always surprised how many people ask us if we're twins. (One guy asked us if we were "open-minded twins." I think I may or may not have understood what he meant by that.)

Whenever we're together, I'm also reminded that growing up with her as my sister it's amazing I survived to adulthood. So many of the very best bad ideas have involved her. Case in point, she pushed me off the roof twice while we were growing up, both times in a cardboard box.* 

#Once.  Our parents had just bought a new water heater, and that gigantic cardboard box practically begged to be played in. "We" decided it would make good practice for someday when we would become famous by going off Niagara Falls in a barrel.

 

#Twice. Our neighbors had just bought a new washing machine. Bonnie and I pooled our brain power as budding engineers and made an airplane cobbled together from the washer box, an old bicycle chain & handlebars, and a box of Cookie Crisp cereal (the trans-continental in-flight meal). "We" decided I could be the solo test pilot for its maiden flight.

Thanks for the great memories and the excellent cardboard-box-free weekend.

I love you, Bon!

*The issue of why we were allowed to play on our roof is a whole other blog post... maybe even a book.

Ooh! Who sent me this?

Do you remember back in junior high when, out of the blue, a note would arrive in your locker from "a secret admirer" and you would swoon through the school hallways for the rest of the day feeling special because someone (may as well presume it's someone cute and awesome) secretly admired you?

Yeah, that never happened to me either.

But instead, yesterday someone identified only as none@nowhere.com emailed me a link to 11 pieces of Hilariously Bad Art. Apparently, there's a Museum of Bad Art in Boston where most of the art was rescued from the trash then proudly displayed in the MOBA as "Art too bad to be ignored."

Thank you, secret admirer of bad art. I feel...uh...special.

A glimpse into the love life of people with impossibly tiny feet, whose clothes match the foliage impeccably.

- - - - - - - - - - - - There is nothing more perfect than a full moon, the Golden Gate Bridge, a menacing fist, an apocalyptic fog, and a shameless bowl cut. I think I saw this pattern woven onto a fuzzy blanket for sale at a roadside swap meet once.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

This one is called "Lucy in the Field with Flowers," and it was the original artwork in the MOBA. I love how it's like we're unexpectedly witnessing a Marilyn Monroe moment from a cranky old broad in sensible shoes. Plus, I've always liked how acid rain from a radioactive yellow sky makes the flowers grow.

Basking in Centuries of Culture

A few weekends back, I went for a hike out at Pere Marquette, where the top of the hill rewards you with a breathtaking view of the backwater tributaries of the Mississippi river valley. The lobby of the visitor center at Pere Marquette also had something rather...uh...breathtaking.

I can honestly say I've never seen buckskin pants, a fur loin cloth, and a lollipop-feathered headdress all together in one ensemble quite like this.

Although the model shown here is undeniably making it look fierce (not a trace of silly candy-schlepping-salesman-type pandering; simply stoic candy-coated pride), and I'm always a fan of mixed media and quirky cultural intermingling, and I'm sure the suckers are delicious, I have to wonder whether hundreds of years of tribal civilization were *really* supposed to culminate in this.

Ultimately, I give a bewildered salute to the determined sculptor with a sweet tooth who brought us this strange modern masterpiece. Tasty, but not tasteful.

Mergency

"Some situations are so dire that you don't even have time for vowels."

(Special thanks to Dave for this picture and its awesome caption.)

A quilt is a hug

How can it possibly already be two weeks since I visited my sister, Janene, and her family in Arkansas? Time flies. It was just a quick weekend visit, but highlights included seeing my two cutie nephews and adorable neice. From left to right here:

- Marc is showing me his favorite blanket.

- Matthew has just informed me he has no intention of wearing clothes at the park. I wonder why 3 year olds all seem to revert to a firm nudist philosophy after spending the first couple of years pretty ambivalent about clothes?

- Miriam is demonstrating that her favorite and best word is "Cheese."

Janene lives on the Air Force base. As an honored guest there, they let me fly one of the planes.

Leaving was bittersweet. My roommates from sophomore year in college may remember Printer Man: Alison's talking printer that spoke in a stale electronic voice to notify you when printing was complete, or when it was time to replace the paper or ink. Naturally (...naturally???), it became a running joke in our apartment that Printer Man was my one and only love. *Swoon.* Alas, Printer Man and I never dated. But since then, Printer Man has been followed by a select but compelling group of other inanimate one-and-only-loves, including the Wooden Doorstop Man in Ghana, and now the plastic Crosswalk Reminder Guy on my sister's streetcorner. We shared tender goodbyes before I left Arkansas.

I may never see him again. But my street-crossing habits are forever changed.

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The surprise of the weekend came when Janene started apologizing, saying "I have your favorite old Smurf quilt here from when we were kids, and I'm sorry I haven't given it back to you all these years." I had zero recollection of a favorite old quilt, let alone a Smurf quilt.

Then she pulled this out of the closet and suddenly all the memories of it flooded back. The day our Mom took me to Western Drug (our podunk town's pharmacy/books/decor/taxidermy/fabric store of choice) and let me pick out cloth for her to make into a quilt of my very own. How I carried it around everywhere. How I took it up on the roof once to watch a meteor shower with my Dad. How I threw up all over it once when I had stomach flu. How Smurfette was my beauty icon.

It's funny how something can trigger memories so instantly, so powerfully. Do you have any memory triggers like this?

Kid stuff

Having spent the past 2 months hanging out in the Children's Hospital, I've been remembering glimmers of childhood that I hadn't thought about in a long time. I'm convinced there are certain archetypes -- certain kids that everyone remembers, no matter which school they went to or which part of the country they lived in, as though the same kid existed everywhere and just went by different names. The three most consistent are:

1. The Girl Who Had Breasts Before Anyone Else (Joyce Udall). While the rest of us 4th graders were muddling around with cooties and crayolas, she suddenly showed up with fascinating secret things like bras. All the boys were suddenly mysteriously aware of her charms (i.e. "Ooh, she must be very smart to have figured out how to grow those. I suddenly want to be her friend.") All the girls pretended it didn't matter. Think back. You know there was a Joyce Udall at your school.

2. The Kid Who Ate Glue and/or Figured Out How to Flip His Eyelids Inside Out Then Chased People Around the Playground (Jim Leveille). Oh, Jim, I had such a 5th-grade crush on you. I know that Ed Hall gave you a run for your money in the glue-eating department for a while there, but you were always the undisputed winner. Ed had to settle for being The Kid Who Carried a Superfluous Briefcase in Elementary School. Was there a Jim Leveille at your school? I've lost track of the one from mine. How did he turn out?

3. The Kid Who Got Glasses First (Sarah Jacobs). I distinctly remember the eye test at the beginning of kindergarten. I couldn't see a dang thing. I was acutely aware that all the other kids apparently could see something on that big white rectangle at the end of the hallway, and I knew I was going to fall short! Disappoint! Fail! So I did the only rational thing that came to mind: I memorized the answers all the kids ahead of me in line gave, then spouted them off when it was my turn. Pass! Huzzah! ...only to fail at the beginning of 1st grade when they re-screened with a different chart. I recall describing that I saw "a brick wall with a flower pot on top and a daisy in it," thinking I'd get bonus points for detail. Alas, it was actually just the letter "F". Glasses for me.

Were you ever one of those kids? And seriously, whatever happened to Jim Leveille?

This weekend I'm visiting my sister's family in Arkansas, epicenter of Wal-Mart in the United States.
The accent here is as contagious as herpes.
After one day here, I'm afraid I'm already talking like them.
By tomorrow, I'll probably be driving a car like this:

Help me. 

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The Masses

The year was 1989. The movie was Field of Dreams. Every movie-goer thought they had learned a valuable lesson: If you build it, they will come.

I took that statement at face value, never giving it a second thought because (a) I was 8, (b) it was just a movie, and (c) everything sounds more profoundly true when it comes from a disembodied voice whispering across a cornfield.