You are not the target audience

Last night, my husband watched an entire episode of Project Runway with me. “Watched” in this instance is defined as “walking upstairs where there are two other TVs is much, much too difficult, so instead I shall lie here on this sofa and think myself a better person while I mock the program you love most.”

He spent the first half of the show cringing behind a pillow, mumbling something that sounded like “I think I’m growing a vagina,” when he should have been saying “OMG TIM GUNN! TIM GUNN! IS BACK ON THE TELEVISION SCREEN! TIM GUNN! IS CALLING PEOPLE SLACKERS! TIM GUNN! SHOULD LAY OFF THE BOTOX!” The second half was spent asking me when exactly Heidi Klum would show up without pants.

During the show’s ending credits, there was a clip of Michael Kors declaring that some soon-to-be seen garment was “slutty, slutty, slutty.”

“Well,” said the husband, “slutty is good, right The judges like slutty?”

“It depends.” I replied, while shaking my head at his ignorance of the subtle nuances of Project Runway, and proceeded to break it down for him.

“Slutty’s not good if the challenge is something like ‘Modernize The Habits for the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart.’ But if the challenge is ‘Make an Outfit for a Hooker Using this Bottle of Ketchup’, then slutty is perfect.”

His response: “I do not understand women.”

Sit and stay don’t cut it anymore

I’ve decided to open my own obedience school based on the useful things my two dogs needed to learn but were never taught.  The course catalog will be as follows:

• Duck Poop: It’s Not For Dinner
• Bunnies - Friend, not Foe
• That is Just A Clap of Thunder, No One is Going to Come in the House and Kill You
• Just Because You Can Open the (Garbage Can, Front Door, Cabinets) Doesn’t Mean You Should
• Toes are Not for Licking, Gus is not for Eating
• The Sofa: Piece of Furniture, not Giant Napkin for Your Face
• Alerting Us to Threats: Actual (Big, Mean Man with Gun) vs. Perceived (Single Leaf Scraping Across Porch)
• Sometimes Guests Come Over To See the Humans, Not to Pet You
• That is Not Our Doorbell: Real-life vs. Television
• If You Want to Live, Do Not Clamber on Top of the Marc Jacobs in the Front Seat While the Car is Moving (or Ever.)
• Stand Still for the Thermometer and It Won’t Be As Bad
• My Pants are Clean.  Wait Until Your Beard is Dry to Put Your Head There.
• Chewing Your Kibble is Sexier than Swallowing So Fast You Burp for An Hour
• How to Sleep in the Humans’ Bed Without Taking Up The Entire Thing.
• Please Don’t Steal the Dirty Socks and Hide Them In Your Crate.
• No, I Don’t Want to Smell Your Breath.
• You Are Not the Boss of Me

You say metatarsal, I say ouch

Internets, I seek your help.  More specifically, my right foot needs your assistance.

I may have mentioned once or twice before that I have rather large feet.  I had an epiphany a while back when I realized I had been wearing the wrong size for many years, partly out of vanity, but mostly out of habit.  You’d think the constantly sore feet might have clued me in to it.  I think I always suspected this  but pushed this knowledge deep down inside in places you don’t talk about at parties, because I didn’t want to enter the “special order zone.”

Once I went up a half-size in most shoes (thus officially entering the world of they will NEVER carry your size unless the price is three digits), the pain in anything not tightly fitted (like sneakers) lessened, unless I wore very high heels.  Which I do.  But only on days when I have to look official.  Or like I am teetering and about to fall over.  (Normally I wear flats, or flip-flops, or nothing at all.   But sometimes, a pair of four inch, pony-hair, leopard print, peep toe heels magicaly wind up in your closet, shoes so beautiful that the pain is worth it.)

BUT - brace yourselves, internets.  I’m about to tell you about horrifying.  THE ALIEN BONE.  I have TWO.  I have this thing on both feet I’ve termed “the reverse bunion.”  As far as I can tell thanks to google images, it’s my fifth metatarsal bone, and it sticks so far out that it makes the back of my foot an entire width smaller than the rest of it.  Everyone’s sticks out a little.   I know this.  However, I made my husband feel mine the other day and he actually said “AHHHH!” and recoiled in horror.  I’ve been going around for days, staring at people’s feet, and I’ve seen nothing like my own.

I went to get professionally fitted for sneakers the other day.  Sneakers have always hurt me the worst of any shoe, something no one ever believes.  Running, hiking, walking - within ten minutes, I usually want to rip my shoes off and go barefoot.  Sadly, I’m not an Olympic marathoner from Kenya, so not an option for me.

Twenty nine years of sore feet and one actual hysterical crying fit in the middle of Grand Teton Nation Park later, finally, I found a semi-answer. The fitter finally explained that this was source of all my foot pain while wearing anything tightly fitted.  She also said, “wow, this will be challenging, and I don’t know if we can help you.”  If you fit the front of my foot to accommodate my alien bone, the back is way too big and the shoe flies off.  So you have to fit the back, which is what I’ve always done meaning 2/3 of my foot is in a shoe a full width too small.

I went to another store, a running store, and it was the same thing.  I did find a pair of sneaks that are an improvement in that they hurt less than any other pair I’ve worn.

But still, after the gym, I’m limping to the car in pain.  Now that I’ve realized that this is not normal, that there might be a solution, I refuse to accept this.

Are any of you podiatrists?  Is that the answer?  Better yet, are any of you podiatrists who look like TV’s Dr. Doug Ross?  Does anyone have a solution other than the one proffered by the hubs -  “maybe your caveman great-grandfather had some extra bone in his foot or something?”

Because I did have a caveman great-grandfather (sort of), but that’s a whole other story.

A light is waiting to carry you home

So, vacation?  There’s almost too much to tell.

I could do an entirely separate post on all the amazing food we ate, food that has now made its way to my hips, plunked down its beach umbrella,  and decided to stay for the summer.  However, I don’t think I can do it justice,, so I won’t try.  While I truly love good, fancy-pants food with long names, I’m often like, “hey there peanut butter sandwich, you will be my dinner tonight and for the next week and maybe forever.”  Hubby is the true foodie in the family, and I go along for the tasty ride.

I also could talk about how all of Northern California is burning, how the resulting haze made taking pictures tricky, how Californians are the nicest people, how 60 degrees by the Pacific ocean is totally different than 60 degrees by the Atlantic ocean.  It’s so different that we had to buy overpriced heavy sweatshirts with our hotel logo on them.  Then, we had to wear them around for the rest of the trip, because the thin sweaters we packed didn’t cut it.  And no way was I missing out on getting my ass kicked at outdoor evening bocce.  (PS it’s very, very easy to lose when you are playing one handed due to the glass of vodka in the other.  Take note.)  We did feel kind of douchey wearing them, like we were going to a concert and wearing the band’s t-shirt.

But I’m not going to talk about haze or sweatshirts or douchebags or bocce.

I’m going to talk about the single greatest spontaneous moment of our vacation.

My darling husband talked me into a three and a half hour bus tour of San Francisco.  Normally, I dislike tours of any kind, because oh my god, what if we see something historical?  And I find it interesting?  The world will turn on its end.  Do not force me to LEARN on vacation.  Occasionally, I take a break from being a pain in the ass, and this was one of those times.

The first important thing I must note was that our bus driver, Silvio, was half-Salvadoran and half-Italian.  He sounded like Martin Short’s character from Father of the Bride trying to talk in a Spanish accent.  We loved him.  When we  think back on this vacation, I’m sure one of our strongest memories will be quoting Silvio all weekend by asking, “Hey ju wanna go Feesharmen Whearf for dinner at the Hootears?”  I’m also sure that he simply made up most of the facts told to us on the tour.

One of the stops was at Alamo Square, home to the “sevahn seeeesters made famooose by sucha shows as the Full Howze.”  As we walked through the park, a car stopped.  The man in the passenger seat shouted the Full House theme song to us out the window and pulled away.

My husband turned to me in the midst of our fit of giggles and said, “Hey honey?”

“Yeah?”, I replied, while the foreign tourists standing behind us looked on in confusion.

“HAVE MERCY.”

I love you, San Francisco.

I would not, could not, in a box

I don’t want to fill out your survey.

I don’t want to donate a dollar to your charity.

I don’t want to complete your customer satisfaction sheet.

I don’t want a car wash with my gas.

I don’t want a coupon for a bucket of soda, either.

I don’t want to apply for a store credit card.

I don’t want join your valued shopper program.

I don’t want fries with any of this.

What do I want?

I want to complete transactions without any extra steps blocking my path to completion.

I want goods and services without having to do extra, unnecessary tasks thrown in for good measure.   I want the providers of these goods and services to realize that yes, even five seconds of my time is valuable, and I don’t want to be badgered into charitable donations, overpriced car washes, or credit cards with 20% interest.

I’m sorry, Kevin the checkout boy. But you asked me to join the valued customer program, donate to charity, consider buying a phone card, fill out a cashier review survey, and enter a contest marked on my receipt - during a single transaction.

One of the things you’ll need to learn in order to succeed as a checkout boy, or as anything else,  is how to read a person.   If someone is not paying attention to you, checking their email, waving a credit card at you saying, no, no, please just check me out, and you continue to push it, continue to ask that very hungry, irritated person to do things,  it will come as no surprise to you when you get your review survey back and it says, “ASKS TOO MANY DAMN QUESTIONS.”

Never poke a sleeping bear, or a hungry woman trying to buy some eggs and get the F home.

Vacation images

I could live here forever.

I couldn't get over the colors.

Does anyone know how to read chinese?

 

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair

When I think back on the vacations I took as a kid, two very specific images come to mind.  One is my sister, best friend, my grandmother, and myself sitting around my aunt’s kitchen table at the beach, eating ice cream out of the container at 3 a.m while playing rummy with rules so incorrect that it really should have been called something else, like Fake Card Game With Changing, Arbitrary Guidelines Made Up By Grandma.  Ice cream at three a.m. was just one of the things on the long list of “Stuff You Don’t Tell Your Parents You Did After They Dropped You Off for Vacation”  Other things included allowing my then eight-year-old sister to watch Letterman and advocating the purchase of neon yellow nail polish.

The other image seared into my brain is posing for a picture with my sister next to anything that could possibly pass as A  Place of Historical Importance.  If George Washington once sneezed anywhere between South Carolina and New Hampshire, chances are good I’ve been there.  You can probably find a snapshot of me with a half-hearted smile of my face (because really, is it necessary to visit the house of Abraham Lincoln’s son?) accompanied by my sister, who can probably be seen clutching a paper bag containing historically-themed stationery.

The beach I loved, the historical tours I now appreciate because they help win Trivial Pursuit.

Now that I’m a grown-up, I get to choose where we go on vacation.  Then my husband points out that no, Johnny Depp probably doesn’t want houseguests, and no, he’s pretty sure he didn’t accidentally buy  Jay-Z’s yacht as a surprise, so why don’t we go to California?  Easy enough.  When you dangle shiny, cross-country trips in front of me, I’m easily distracted and much agreeable.  As long as I don’t have to care who took a piss there in 1783.

In the halcyon days of youth, preparing for vacation meant shoving as many books and swimsuits as possible into a bag.  Now it means shoving as much work as humanly possible into the day before we leave, having a internal meltdown about packing because that’s what I do, lighting candles in front of statues of the patron saint of please make sure our flights aren’t cancelled, and praying that there’s no BlackBerry service where we’re going.  (Not likely, as on our last vacation, I turned around from the spectacle of a mud volcano in Yellowstone National Park to see my husband ON THE PHONE WITH HIS ASSISTANT.   If he can get calls in the middle of a national park, I’m pretty sure my hopes of the excuse of “oops, sorry, no coverage in this little backwater town called San Francisco” won’t cut it.

Anyway, after all those things get finished,  we’ll be here, here, and here.  And will most likely wind up our trip here.

Sad

Pass the pig

I haven’t eaten much since Saturday.  This is because I am going on a ritual semi-fast before the Virginia Pork Festival on Wednesday.  Though my husband is the bigger lover of cooked up pig parts, I’m the one who pulled the trigger on the tickets.

I’m attending in part for the delicous food, but mainly, I’m going for the spectacle of it all.

I adore spectacles.  I love when large groups of people lose their inhibitions, stop caring what other people think, and start acting ridiculous (read: all of my family get-togethers, ever .)  This is why I went to the Harry Potter book release party at midnight with my sister, having not read a single tittle in the series; it’s why I go shopping on Black Friday and stand in line on the first night of any Star Wars premiere.

I want to see grownups wearing pig noses and pig ears, and I’m really hoping people start oinking at each other.  I’m planning on taking pictures of as many mullets as I can.

I’ll report back after I process the glory of it all.

In which I clarify

This morning, I got an email from a very dear friend.  The subject line was “this could be you”, and the body contained a singular link to this webpage.

Let’s get one thing straight, friends of mine.  I want to hang out with Anderson Cooper at his anchor desk, discuss the news with him, possibly go to the gym and then the spa, spend some time shopping for blue safari shirts that double as reporting-on-a-tsunami business casual, maybe head into a war zone together wearing hot little flak jackets.  I want him to show me how to roll up my sleeves so I look fashionable but still disheveled enough to be taken seriously in the middle of a hurricane-ravaged town.

It’s a completely platonic affection born of my extreme news addiction and love of first two seasons of The Mole.  I don’t want to tattoo his face anywhere on my person.  I prefer not to wear my crazy quite that obviously.