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Last night Jen and I met up for dinner and drinks. We went to our favorite Chinese restaurant and ordered the Dragon Bowl. A bowl of mystery liquid with two gigantic straws. It is heaven.
It is also potent.
Note to self: don’t go to Marshalls after drinking a Dragon Bowl. You will buy a purse. Moving on…
I made the mistake of going to Starbucks this morning. On a Friday. In the summer. In the tourist town that I work in. On the first day of a huge event we’re hosting. Twenty minutes at Starbucks. Insanity!
However, it was worth it. Because now I have my grande soy, no water chai and it’s Friday. Yay Friday! This weekend I plan on going to the beach and sleeping. Maybe even sleeping while at the beach.
And also, despite the ridiculous humidity, my hair decided to look nice today. A little curl cream and it was good to go. Thank you, hair gods.
A crappy up the nose cell phone picture to prove that really! Hair behaving! Yay! (Also, am not in bad mood…was concentrating on picture and forgot to smile.)
Happy Weekend!
I have 12 days to go and I’m already like a kid waiting for Christmas. Twelve days till Vegas, baby! I can no longer contain my excitement about it and have started making packing lists (how many pairs of shoes is too many?), bugging fellow bloggers for tips and emailing daily with Boobeski and Jen, who are equally as excited.
We have a loose itinerary that includes a show (Cirque du Soleil “Love”?), a drag show, mechanical bull riding, club hopping, karaoke and sun bathing. And despite it being 105 degrees, with no humidity I can be assured the my hair is going to look good.
Operation No Eating? It’s going pretty well. If you consider being hungry all the time “well”, because fruits and vegetables? Not all that filling. But my God will I look good by the pool. (I hope.)
Michael has taken to asking often how many days until I “leave him” for Sin City. He’s going to missssss me, he says. (Cute!) But I know that part of the apprehension lies in the new fitted (read: cleavage enhancing) dresses lying in the spare bedroom and the “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” commercials that seem to be on all the time. Not that he has anything to worry about, but three hot ladies out on the town? Of course we’ll get hit on! (Modest, I know.)
The one downside? Clink will be flying to Vegas the very day I’m flying home. We’re actually going to be in the air at the same time, probably passing each other over the middle of the country. We’ve promised to wave, but will not resort to sending Gmail chats via cell phone, I swear. We may be geeky bloggers, but we’re not that geeky. At least not yet. (OK, maybe just one chat message.) (Geek!)
12 Days!!!
The summer after my sophomore year of high school I was part of a touring orchestra. We went to Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti and Rarotonga in the South Pacific for a three week whirlwind tour. It was amazing.
Most places we were paired up with a friend and stayed in home-stays. We stayed with a great family in Auckland that had a six year old daughter who knit sweaters, a slightly odd family in Christchurch who gave me my own suite and the weirdest of them all, the family in Brisbane.
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We were jolted awake by the tour bus pulling to a halt. It was dark –just barely 4 a.m.– and we were exhausted. We gathered our things and shuffled down the steps to greet our next round of “house mums”. My best friend A and I were directed to a large woman standing in front of a small car. “In you go!” she laughed.
We arrived at her house soon after and were surprised at the appearance of her home. Everything was white. White walls, white furniture, white tile floors. And no artwork, except for a gigantic glamour shot above the fireplace of a big girl with even bigger hair.
“Why don’t you girls drop off your things and then take a shower before bed,” House Mum said. Shower? At 5 a.m.? We were tired…sleep seemed much more important. But she persisted and we didn’t want to be rude, so we showered before we slept.
I woke up hours later to House Mum’s face above mine, fingers wiggling in the air as she cackled “Riiiiise from the dead!” A screamed and I hid under my blanket. What was this woman doing?
“OK, girls! Up, up! Time to shower!” Shower? What? AGAIN? We had just showered five hours ago. She left the room and A and I stared at each other, unable to comprehend our wake up call and request to shower. A sighed and grabbed her towel. “I’m just going to run the water this time,” she said. “I’ll be out in five and then you can pretend too.”
Breakfast was dry toast and Tang (yes, really!) before an orchestra rehearsal at a local school. When rehearsal had finished A needed to exchange some money. I was exhausted, so House Mum dropped me off at the house and took A to the bank.
I woke up an hour later and sat upright in bed. Standing in the doorway was a boy about my age that I’d never seen before. Staring at me.
“You’re in my room,” he said.
“Sorry?”
“Mum made me give it to you. I didn’t want to. It’s mine.”
“Oh…did you need something in here?”
“No.”
He turned and walked away. Now awake and curious, I followed him. I found him in the all white kitchen. He asked if I was hungry. I was and when he pointed to the fridge I figured I should help myself.
Inside was three jugs of Tang and rows and rows of apples. That’s it. Tang and apples. So I ate an apple.
That evening we sat down with the entire family for dinner. Us, House Mum and House Dad, the boy and another brother and the daughter (who was immortalized in her glamour shot) and her fiancé. They ordered six pizzas for eight people and laughed at us when we asked for a cheese pizza. Apparently they don’t do that in Australia.
We were asked to shower multiple times that evening and began to get suspicious that there was a camera hidden in the bathroom.
Before bed, A and I were talking in our room about how weird the family was, when suddenly a cockroach crawled under the door. Cue to screaming “House Mum! House Mum!” until she came in.
She threw open the door, took one look at it and said, “It’s just a cocky!!! And it came out of YOUR suitcase!” A’s face fell as House Mum pointed at her. “It did not!” she cried back. House Mum would not hear it. She stepped on the roach, turned to leave the room and said, “you girls should shower.”
A and I slept in the same bed that night, afraid of cockroaches and afraid of our House Mum. The next morning, standing above us like she had before, she woke us with “All aboard!!! Choo! Choo!”
As we packed our bags to leave that morning, she asked us again to shower.
We couldn’t have gotten out of there any faster.
Because I got such a positive response last time I wrote about this (and requests for more!), I give you the World’s Worst Shoes part deux.
The actual shoe isn’t awful, it would actually look sort of cute as a flat. BUT, it is not flat. Oh no, it has a heel. And I’m completely perplexed by this heel. Can someone please explain to me how I’m supposed to walk with a giant suction cup attached to my foot?
Five words: Rodger Rabbit or a clown. You pick.
Why? Why, oh why did Roberto Cavalli think that turning a saddle into a shoe would be a good idea. And $735? For that?! I think Italians must know where to get some good drugs.
Dear Mom and Dad, today at summer camp I made a Native American Dreamcatcher in the arts and crafts shed. My counselor said it was looking a little boring, so I added some yarn from the scrap bucket. I hope you like it!
You know those woven plastic/rubbery lawn chairs that you accidentally leave outside all year, causing their shiny whiteness to turn gray? I turned mine into a shoe for you.
Hurt your foot? No problem! It’s a shoe and an ankle brace in one!
Oh…so that’s what happened to my oven mitt!
It’s like sticking your foot in the arm rest of grandma’s couch.
What does one wear to a wake in the summer?
That was the question I was pondering over as I stood in front of my closet this morning. What is an appropriate outfit to wear when paying your respects to a family going through an awful time?
What an insignificant problem to have, worrying over what to wear. As I sit here, I am thinking about my boss. Thinking about the range of emotions he must be going through. Welcoming the birth of his beautiful daughter and suddenly saying goodbye to his older brother in the same week. I can’t comprehend it.
To say that tonight will be hard for me is unfair. It’s not me that is mourning the loss of someone I love. But attending a wake always brings me back to the same place, my grandmother’s funeral. While most of the day is a blur–the drive to the cemetery, the service, the eulogy–the memory of walking through the chapel doors and into the sun is crystal clear. That was the moment her death finally hit me. Momentarily alone with no one to hug me, I fought back my emotions until someone was there. Only then did I collapse.
A few years ago I attended a wake for the father of an acquaintance with Michael and some friends. We sat in the back, the soft light reflecting off the brass buttons on the boys’ dress uniforms. I held it together until the family filed in. Then I cried. I cried because I remembered what it was like to lose someone.
Maybe it’s selfish, but tonight I will cry. I will cry for my boss, for life lost and for lives left behind.
But I will also cry for me.
The best thing about weekends is they make you forget a hellish week. My weekend was perfect. Boobeski arrived Friday night and since we were both beat, we used that time to catch up and relax. Oh, and within 20 minutes of her arrival I had convinced her to join me and Jen on our Vegas trip. And with 25 minutes, she had booked her flight. Awesome.
Saturday was a productive morning of grocery shopping and working out, followed by…a nap. A glorious, two hour, no-need-to-wake-up-and-do-anything nap that I haven’t had in ages. Later, we met up with Jen for yummy dangerous martinis and Vegas planning. It was decided that Operation No Eating has begun. (OK, before you flip out on me, it’s really Operation Eat Less Crap and More Fruits and Vegetables So We Will Look Good in Our Bathing Suits While Sitting by the Pool in Vegas.)
Sunday was shopping day and I actually mangaged to find a bathing suit relatively painlessly within an hour. A word to the wise, you’ll look much hotter when you try it on at home in natural lighting.
Which brings us to today. Good old Monday. And what would Monday be without a snag? The photographer I was supposed to meet at 9:15? Didn’t show up. The guy who begrudingly came in on his day off to help me out? Is majorly annoyed. My boss? Is still out. (But he totally should be, what with a new baby and a death in the family all in the same week. My heart is totally breaking for him, but if I talk about it too much I will cry again. Moving on…)
So hear I am, dealing with Monday and downing my big cup of tea (instead of snacking on something chocolaty and delicious, which I would much rather be doing right now) and hoping this week is quiet, because if it’s anything like next week, I’ll have to extend my Vegas trip indefinitely.
(Just so you know, “Umbrella” is playing right now. I’m hooked, I can’t help it.)
Hi, weekend. How are you? I’m so very happy you’re here. This week has been a long one and the thought of going to the beach, partying with friends in Newport and sleeping in the next two days has been the only thing keeping me going. Well, that and soy chai lattes.
Some of the highlights?
- I spoke with a writer from Finland who had the worst breath ever. AND he was a close-talker. Every time I leaned back to avoid the smell he would lean in closer. A vicious circle, I tell you. It’s very hard to hold your breath and talk at the same time.
- I gave a presentation to a group of interns who were funny and very attentive. Especially one guy who found my chest much more interesting than the topic of PR.
- My boss, the self-proclaimed Vegas King, has yet to give me any pointers for a great trip. (Advice and recommendations welcome by all!) Apparently, being home with a new baby is much more important than helping me. Fine, I see where his priorities are.
- Kodiak rolled in/rubbed against/got sprayed by something skunky. It’s only in one little patch, but it is slightly oily and STINKS.
- The stitching gave way on my favorite pair of black capris. Now it’s one leg capri, one leg pedal pusher. Hot.
- We’ve put off grocery shopping as long as possible. We are officially down to lemonade, three yogurts and Worcestershire sauce.
Weekend, work your magic.
These Little Moments 