I am great. Read this to find out why.

My sister called me out via this survey, so I had to prove her right and complete it.

1. IF YOU COULD BUILD A HOUSE ANYWHERE, WHERE WOULD IT BE?
Somewhere in Andalucia.

2. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE ARTICLE OF CLOTHING?
As my sister said, my reef flip flops. Oh my god, Kelly. We agreed on something. Duck quickly – pigs are flying. As for actual clothing and not shoes, I love my red t-shirt with the Polish eagle on the back.

3. FAVORITE PHYSICAL FEATURE OF THE OPPOSITE SEX?
Smile. And hair. Good hair is a must. It can make up for a multitude of other sins.

4. WHAT’S THE LAST CD THAT YOU BOUGHT?
Steve Wonder’s greatest hits, I think. I am an iPodperson

5. WHERE’S YOUR FAVORITE PLACE TO BE?
The beach, sitting in a chair at the edge of the water reading a book with a cooler of beer somewhere in the vicinity.

6. WHERE’S YOUR LEAST FAVORITE PLACE TO BE?
Airport security lines and the grocery store. I hate buying groceries, but I love eating them, so it is a conundrum. However, our grocery store does have a Starbucks inside it, so the husband has to bribe me with lattes or I refuse to go. This is also why we use MealMakers and just have things prepared for us ahead of time so we stopped fighting over who is going to cook. Between that and our maid service, there is much less stress in our house, as well as less dust and more food other than cereal. I hate cleaning and grocery shopping almost as much as I hate Dick Cheney and his band of merry neocons, and that is a lot of hate, my friends.

7. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE PLACE TO BE MASSAGED?
Feet!

8. WHAT’S MOST IMPORTANT, STRONG IN MIND OR STRONG IN BODY?
Mind.

9. WHAT TIME DO YOU WAKE IN THE MORNING?
8ish most days

10. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE KITCHEN APPLIANCE?
My gorgeous KitchenAid Stand Mixer. It is the crown jewel of all wedding registries. I am also a fan of the food processor.

11. WHAT MAKES YOU REALLY ANGRY?
The Bush administraton, jingoism, animal abuse and companies that test cosmetics on animals, Nancy Grace, bag lady couture aka the olsen twins, people who claim they don’t watch television as if that makes them special, tapered jeans, Larry the Cable Guy, when I can’t find something I am looking for, which is all the time, people who can’t merge in traffic, and anyone who has highlights that are more than two shades lighter or darker than their natural hair color.

12. IF YOU COULD PLAY ANY INSTRUMENT, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
guitar. Deep inside me lies the soul of a rock star.

13. FAVORITE COLOR?
yellow

14. WHICH DO YOU PREFER, SPORTS CAR, MOTORCYCLE, OR SUV?
my SUV, the amazing Honda Element

15. DO YOU BELIEVE IN AFTERLIFE?
I do, but not in the typical religious sense.

16. FAVORITE CHILDREN’S BOOK?
the Anne of Green Gables series. They still hold up to this day. Gilbert Blythe. Swoon.

17. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SEASON?
Fall. It has so many good things, like apples, the highland games which includes the parade of dogs from the british isles, the stopping of sweating while just walking to the car, and the celebration of Oktoberfest, a holiday created strictly to drink beer and eat German things in phallic shapes.

18. WHAT’S YOUR LEAST FAVORITE HOUSEHOLD CHORE?
All of them. It’s why we have a maid.

19. IF YOU COULD HAVE ONE SUPER POWER, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
Flying. Then I could avoid Airport security.

20. IF YOU HAVE A TATTOO, WHAT IS IT?
None. My mother wants to get one when she turns sixty. So for me, that is the goal age for tattoos.

21. CAN YOU JUGGLE?
I can multitask. But as far as actual objects, we leave that up to Uncle Mike.

20. THE ONE PERSON FROM YOUR PAST YOU WISH YOU COULD GO BACK AND TALK TO?
Probably the grandfather I never met, or my great-grandmother, just to ask her what it was like to have 19 childrens living in a two bedroom house.

23. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE DAY?
The alternating Fridays when I have off. It’s like a secret weekend day that I can use for whatever I want. I also love Thanksgiving. All of the togetherness of Christmas without the stress – and I love turkey.

24.WHAT’S IN THE TRUNK OF YOUR CAR?
Bodies. Lots and lots of bodies Actually, a football, a scarf, a case of cherry coke, a pair of Puma sneakers, and a can of fix a flat.

25. WHICH DO YOU PREFER, SUSHI OR HAMBURGER?
Probably sushi, as it is my favorite food other than pizza. But there are days when a big juicy cheeseburger is the only thing that will do. Moo.

26. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?
Abstractly – losing someone I love suddenly.

Concretely – Ventriloquist dummies. They scare the living shit out of me.

Drinking the Kool-Aid

Recently, we took a trip to Tampa, where my husband (heretofore known as DVH, or Double Vision’s Husband) spent the first several years of his life. We have been there several times and always have a list of specific things that have to be completed in order to consider it a successful vacation. Among them are consumption of as much Cuban food as possible, a trip to the amazing Lowry Park Zoo to feed goats and see baby elephants, and parking ourselves on the a pristine and satisfyingly undeveloped beach – Fort DeSoto.

We did all those things. It was great. But a day or so into the vacation, DVH says to me in a rather sheepish voice, “You know, Orlando is less than an hour from here.” Translation – “I want to go to Disney World, more specifically, Animal Kingdom.”

Yes, it’s true. My husband voluntarily suggested that gave we give what would amount to a shitload of money for one day’s enterainment to the Disney Company. I jumped up and down and said “Oh my god, can we can we can we?”

I will pause while you process that.

I reveal to you now that even though I may appear to be one of the coolest people you have ever encountered, deep down inside, I love Mickey Mouse and all his cheesy kingdoms, magic, animal, or othewise. I love his watches and his movies and his cute little mouse ear hats with my name on the back and his monorails. Some of my favorite memories are from family vacations to Disney World, because we went many, many times. I admit that my earliest memory is from one of those vacations, sneaking a frozen orange juice popsicle with my father past my bedtime during the evening parade when I was about two and getting it all over my shirt and it just not mattering because it was Vacation. My sister and I wore our matching Mickey Mouse shirts and spandex bicycle shorts on the plane when we were five and ten, and we were Cool.

But I am a Grownup now. I know better, I shouldn’t give in to manipulation or marketing. I am too old and too cool and too educated for this stuff. DVH always expressed strong feelings that things Disney just might be evil, even though he cried watching Tarzan. It was not just allergies, honey. We both know it. WDW is for people who think going to the World Showcase in EPCOT is just like going to those countries for real.

So though there is a part of me that will always want to ride Pirates of the Carribean over and over again while holding my dad’s hand just like I did when I was four, I repressed it for more esoteric vacation wishes, like Spain and Raratonga. That seemed more appropriate.

Flash forward to the middle of our recent visit to Animal Kingdom. We have somehow found ourselves, after a day of awesomely Disneyfied rides and events in the audience of a show called “The Festival of the Lion King.” And I suddenly realize we are both hypocrites. I look over at my husband, and he is unconsciously and loudly singing along to Hakuna Matata and then I am growling like a lion at the behest of the performer in charge of our section of the audience, which is the Lion section. We are trying to out-noise the warthog and meerkat sections, and goddamn it, we are going to win this competition.

I am forced at this point in our trip to admit to myself I am nearly as cool or esoteric as I thought, but that it’s OK. Because in that instant, I feel two years old again, like I’m eating a popsicle with my dad and getting it all over my shirt and it’s Vacation.

But for a minute, I am self-conscious; I really need to behave myself. And,with the kind of shit-eating grin that only someone with his level of cuteness can get away with, DVH leans over to me and whispers in my ear, “It’s ok, honey. Sometimes, you just have to drink the Kool-Aid.” And then he made paws out of his hands and said “GRAAWRRRRRRRRRRRRR.”

How to survive being searched by the TSA

I preface this list with the following statement:

I always get searched at airports.

Without fail, I get selected for random screenings and bag searches. Being invasively searched is not pleasant or fun, and it sort of makes you feel like a criminal. It’s become a running joke.

Having gone through this several times, I have come up with a list of things that everyone needs to know in case this happens to you. I followed many of the rules I list below, and I am happy to say that on my return flight yesterday, I sailed through with nary a beep or a pat-down. I won. So my theory that my name is flagged in the system is shot all to hell, which is too bad. I kind of like the idea that I was dangerous.

And for those of you that live in Richmond and have any anxiety about flying out of our airport, know this: The TSA employees at the Richmond airport do not fuck around. They mean business and should be commended for their work. But, they also don’t like it when you make jokes while being searched. Not one little bit.

Here are the things you need to make sure you know if you are like me and apparently resemble a terrorist, drug mule, or renegade Polish-American escaped convict whose middle name is Danger.

1. When beeping the metal detector for the second time through at the Richmond airport, don’t make a move to remove your watch while saying, “this must be the problem!” You will be told to freeze and step over to the screening area immediately without touching anything. They will think your watch is a bomb capable of blowing everyone to bits. They are wrong. It a Men’s Invicta Grand Lupah Dragon capable only of being awesome and inspiring envy. When you beep twice, they take you to the Area of Mystery. It’s the blocked-off section where they search you and/or start processing you for a trip to Guantanamo.

2. Wash the hell out of your feet the night before. After they decide to do the full screening on you, which they will, you will have to start by sitting in a chair and showing the TSA agents the bottoms of your feet. They scrutinzie them so closely that you will be convinced that they are taking notes and going to report the amount of dirt on them to your mother or maybe the president’s mother. We should all be scared to death of Barbara Bush, so wash your feet or she will have her son bomb your house.

3. Speaking of shoes, wear flat-soled ones you can whip off easily, because you have to take them off and put them through the scanner. I recommend the Puma Impulse Cat – half sneaker, half sandal, all sweet. Don’t wear gel insoles. You can’t have them. People who are gelling should be considered a threat to our well-being if for no other reason than those annoying commericals. Don’t wear platforms or wedges, as apparently, explosives can easily be fit in them. (This was actually told to me by a security agent in the Madrid airport while she searched me. She said not to wear shoes like that or I will always get screened for the very reason I just mentioned. And then she told me she really liked my shoes. I love her country and its many cheeses, but that is a different story.)

4. Don’t have metal of any kind on your person anywhere at all if you can help it. No watches, bracelets, zippers, plates in your head, underwires in your bra, retainers in your mouth. Two of the times I have been extra-screened, the offending metal was my permanent retainer (Atlanta) or my bra underwire (Richmond, just last week).

5. If you are traveling home from a two-week overseas European vacation for which you stubbornly only packed one carry-on because “you were raised that only fools who like to lose things check bags” and your suitcase is thus now full of dirty, stinky clothes that you wore at least twice and then shoved in there in a nasty pile at the last minute because you had too much to drink the night before and didn’t feel like folding…your suitcase is going to get searched in front of lots and lots and lots of people. And they are going to see your dirty underpants. Worse, some poor foreign security agent is actually going to have to dig through the pile while you look on humiliated. Your dirty underwear is why they hate America. And your husband of two weeks will look on smugly while cracking up. Hypothetically.

6. If you learn your lesson and are also forced to check a bag because you might build an IED with your Aveda botanicals, your checked bags will STILL be searched and you will get the TSA white ticket of invasion. They will have rearranged your things, undone your careful packing, and possibly stolen your Kiehls lip balm. So pack two lip balms, one in each piece luggage, and don’t be upset when your careful packing job is undone.

7. Back to sitting in that chair, and showing your feet. Don’t try get up out of it and stand on the little mat with the outlines of two feet until the lady who is in charge of determining if you are a terrorist tells you to get up. Seriously, you move when she tells you to move and that is IT.

8. If they are patting you down, and your sleeve gets caught on your watch band/bomb, do not under any circumstances move from your spread eagled legs and arms apart position to fix it. TSA lady will then grab your arm and tell you NOT TO MOVE. If your nose gets itchy, suffer through it.

9. Be prepared to be patted down, inspected, felt up, metaldetectorwanded etc., everywhere conceivable, except the actual crack of your ass and your nostrils. They will be all up in your lady business. They should buy you a drink and make out with you afterwards. They won’t. Don’t suggest it. They are not amused.

10. Honestly, if you are me, at this point, just fly naked with no luggage.

I say all of this while being very thankful to the TSA for taking their job seriously. Like most people, I enjoy when airplanes avoid exploding and crashing and if that means I am searched every time I fly, so be it. However, if I get my hands on the person who stole or lost my lip balm, watch out.

Apparently, I am a threat to the nation’s security

We made it back from vacation alive and sunburned within an inch our lives.

More reports on our travels to follow, but I just wanted to warn you all that I am indeed a threat to security.

Not only was I selected to be invasively searched in a way that should have included the security agent buying me dinner and drinks, but both my checked bags were inspected. Read: rummaged through and unorganized. I received the TSA paper in both bags that let me know that my unmentionables were violated. It grosses me out to think that some unknown person had their grubby paws all up in my suitcase’s business.

Every time we travel, this happens. Can you be a terrorist and not know it? Also, my small ziplock with a travel-sized Aveda gel sample and my backup tube Kiehl’s lip balm was either taken or lost in the search. So if you see a TSA baggage inspector with shiny, bouncy, gorgeous hair and incredibly moisturized lips, stick your hands in their armpits, rummage through their pockets, and then yell at them while they try to adjust their sleeve.

The worst part of vacation is not the going back to work, though that is by no means a picnic. The part that has me most disturbed is the self-inflicted stress over getting caught up on all the things I tivoed. It’s a daunting task, compounded by the fact that I also have a book I want to finish. Welcome to my life, which is controlled by electronic devices and hair products.

The Most Random Things

I was working on a long post about how everyone, including myself,all sort of lost our minds in the rush of fear and enforced patriotism that followed September 11th, but somewhere in the middle of it, I lost focus.

I will get back to it tomorrow, but as I was writing it, I tried to come up with what I remember most about that awful day.

I remember it was the second week of my first teaching job and that I stopped at 7-11 for a Zone Bar and a Coke that morning.

I remember I was doing my assigned duty – in-school suspension – that morning, and the person who came to relieve me at around nine o’clock had a white face and looked terrified and said to go directly back to my classroom and turn on the television.

I jokingly asked her, “Is the world ending or something?” I’ll never forget her response – “Yeah, I think it is. go turn on the TV now.”

I remember suddenly being scared and wanting my parents and being totally unsure of how I was supposed to explain things to the students in my class, who were really only six years younger than me. No one taught anything that day.

I remember that the cable in my classroom was not hooked up, so all we saw over and over was a snowy image of something exploding. The internet made it clear what we were seeing, though, and after a while, the snowy TV image was preferable to reality. Then I heard “Pennsylvania” and immediately thought of my friends and family, who live there, and especially my mother, whose elementary school is in the red zone of a major nuclear plant. Thank god for email. Thank god it wasn’t them.

I remember fear and falling asleep holding my then fiancee/now husband’s hand an d waking up throughout the night to the TV, which we felt needed to stay on all night in case something else happened. I remember the gray and purple Nikes I put by my bed in case we needed to flee. It sounds incredibly ridiculous to me now, but that day, it made sense.

But the thing that stands out the most is something small and irrelevant: I burned my mouth really badly. We hadn’t gone to the grocery store for a while, and didn’t have much to eat. Neither of us wanted to leave the house or felt much like eating that night, so we made some random frozen potato casserole we found in the back of the freezer. As we sat glued to the TV, I took a bite, and it was so hot it burned my mouth. I didn’t notice till it was too late, because I wasn’t paying attention to anything but CNN. I actually got a blister on the roof of my mouth from it. For the next week or so, I poked it over and over again in a twisted reminder of the fact that things would never be the same.

And today, I got pissed when I realized I can’t carry lip balm on a plane when we leave for vacation. Too bad my blister is gone. Maybe I wouldn’t be so irritated if it was still there.

Some dogs do tricks. Mine goes nuts when you say "beach."

That is the video reaction of me asking “Hey Cbear, wanna go to the beach? Do you do you do you?

At the behest of my husband…

…who today said, “So when are you going to update your blog? I’m booored.”

A recap of part of our lunch conversation:

DVH (Double Vision Husband): But I thought you liked watching tennis.
Me: I do, but I didn’t feel as though there was one player to root for last night.
DVH: What about James Blake? He’s American.
Me: Nope.
DVH: Why not? What’s wrong with James Blake?
Me: His brother looks like Sideshow Bob. I cannot in any way support dreadlocks like that.
DVH: You’re insane.

Video of my dog going apeshit over sour cream

If that title didn’t grab your attention, you must really hate being entertained.

Today I made a cheesecake. While I was doing this, I dropped the liner to the sour cream on the floor. I have ADD and got distracted by either the food processor, something shiny, or Coach Gibbs the betta fish.

Before I knew it, Cbear had sour cream all over her face and swampbeard, with some of it smeared just far enough out of reach on her nose to drive her insane . I did what any good dog owner would do. I took videos of her crazed attemps to lick it off. They each end with her jumping up and trying to wipe it on me.

The Tao of My Dog

I was upstairs doing laundry today and in the throes of a really lousy case of the crankies. Cbear, my furry accomplice for all laundry-related tasks, was nowhere to be found. She loves to sniff at the dirty piles of clothes, roam amongst them as if they are her own personal mountain chain, rearrange them as she sees fit, and then lie down in them and watch me sort and fold. It’s endearing, and slightly gross, as she is often particularly interested in my husband’s smelly golf clothes. Often, she takes one of our socks and hides it in her crate, and I come home to her sleeping with it under her chin. That is devotion.

Today, as I was bitching to myself about nothing and loading things out of the washer, I noticed she was not underfoot. I called her and called her and whistled for her. Usually, she comes running, but this was not the case, so after starting the dryer I went downstairs to find her.

This is what I encountered:

There she was, dead asleep on our giant chair, having covered herself in a blanket, perched on a mound of pillows. I decided she is much smarter than I am, took a fast picture, promptly abandoned the laundry and my grumps, climbed into the chair with her, and took a quick nap.

I love her. Never a day goes by where I don’t learn something from her. Today the message was: “Sleeping is a proven antidote to PMS and is much more useful than washing clothes.”

See what happens while you are at the golf course, husband? You miss blinding cuteness and wise dog lessons.

(PSA to the person who wrote me an email the other week and asked what kind of dog she is and was I breeding her because you want one that looks like her: the answer is she’s the awesome kind and her lady business is nonexistent. Let’s leave it at that. If you really want a dog like her for the right reasons, you’ll do enough research to figure it out on your own. You’ll also hopefully learn to use spell check. You should never, ever purchase a dog just because they are cute or small or large or in a movie or featured in my blog. Our dear Cbear is adorable, but she (and her breed in general) can be stubborn, fiesty,and not for someone who has never had a dog before or who wants one as some sort of trophy pet. We had to learn to bend her will without breaking her spirits. Someday, I will tell the story of Max, who taught us everything you don’t want in a dog and helped us make Cbear into the kind of pet that sleeps in chairs and steals socks but never chews them up or pees on them.

ETA: When one is suffering from a horrible case of pms, do NOT under any circumstances watch the episode of Little House on the Praire in which Albert is diagnosed with leukemia. Just don’t, or you will cry like a little bitch. Damn you, Michael Landon, and your 70’s feathered hairdo of melodrama.

I fed a giraffe today. What did you do?

My hubby and ventured to the Metro Richmond Zoo today.

It exceeded expectations.

Did you see those two adults without any children acting looney tunes and running around like drunk toddlers on acid? That was us.

It’s incredibly sad to me that I have been living in Richmond for nine years and did not realize that all these years, I COULD HAVE BEEN FEEDING GIRAFFES.

I had no idea we had such a nice little zoo in the area. There are certainly a few parts of it that could use some fixing up, as with any zoo. The concessions leave a bit to be desired, and the signage is not fantastic. (I should note that we are spoiled, having grown up with both the National Zoo (husband) and the Philadelphia Zoo (me) as our reference points.) Those are minor things, however. As far as small zoos go, the Richmond Zoo is pretty great. It’s incredibly affordable, well-designed, not crowded, and YOU CAN FEED GIRAFFES, including one who is a month old and has the same name as our dog. The cuteness of that baby giraffe is paralyzing enough to be worth the price of admission.
There’s no rush of tourists crowding around and blocking the exhibits, no encroaching carts of merchandise or snacks, no large groups of people walking really slowly trying to follow the map. True, there are no pandas to be found, but you can get up close and personal with a wide variety of creatures in a way that is not possible in other places.

I also had a parrot wolf-whistle at me and saw two camels humping. The visual pun of camels humping tickled my little former english-teaching heart more than I can say.

Today was great.

Fyi – it costs 8.75 for adults and less than that for kiddies. Check the website I linked to above for more info. If you go, buy as many cups of zoo feed as you can comfortably carry. Stick that shit in your pockets if you can. In addition to FEEDING GIRAFFES, you can also feed goats, antelopes, horses, cows, donkeys, and deer of some sort. They know you’re coming, and if you don’t have something to feed them, they will not be happy. There’s also hand sanitzer stragetically placed, so germaphobes, you can relax.

And don’t miss the duck habitat near the front. They will quack you up.