Four for Four

It’s official.  On my last four trips to New York, every single time, my return flight has been delayed just when you think it’s about time to start boarding. And the greatest part is that tonight, I am surrounded by a huge crowd of screaming, coughing children, frustrated, shouting ticket agents, and people who think it’s important for everyone in the terminal to hear their cell phone conversations…and I can’t leave the gate.  Because I’ve apparently landed in some alternate universe where “the plane could show up at any moment.”  And behind it, a line of pigs will be flying.

Seriously, airline industry.  Get it together already. And seriously, asshole across from me, you manage a hedge fund.  I get it.  You probably wake up in the morning and 100 dollar bills come out of  your ass when you take a dump.

Sometimes, I think I might have to go back to church

My conference today was in the financial district in Manhattan.  The conference ended at the same time as taxi driver shift change, which happened to coincide with a lot of other people magically appearing on the street, everyone trying to get somewhere.

I’ve always thought that there should be an Amazing Race Roadblock involving hailing a cab during shift change on Wall Street.  After waking up at four a.m due to my hotel neighbor watching porn at that hour, I found myselfwalking up Broadway in 20 degree weather, wheeling my suitcase fully of heavy promotional materials behind me for what seemed like forever, I miraculously found an empty cab,right at the point where I was starting to get pissy,  and it was off to the airport, albeit slightly earlier than necessary

Then, I decided to have dinner in the one crappy restaurant in the US Air terminal at LaGuardia.  I opened up the menu and discovered that they serve Paulaner Hefeweizen.  And the best thing is that I’m not paying for any of it.

Bigfoot sighting

There are defining moments, seconds or minutes or hours that alter the course of your entire life in ways you don’t always realize immediately. Maybe for you, it’s graduation, or your wedding, the birth of a child or the death of a parent.

Or, if you’re like me, you can understand why I experienced the defining moment of my life thus in the DSW shoe warehouse in Battery Park.

I’ve finally decided to cut off my toes. It’s time.

This DSW was magical. There was a beautiful wall of shoes, shoes with names like Chanel and Givenchy and Prada. Shoes that normally I pick up, try on, and put back, because I’d like to pay the mortgage, or possibly buy a Picasso. But today I could have taken several (meaning more than ONE, people) of these pairs of shoes home with me, and not felt an iota of guilt. The discounts were insane enough to induce near-hyperventilation.

They didn’t have my size in a single pair, because I have gigantic, flipperesque feet. They measure somewhere in the gray area between 10.5 and 11. Normally, I realize that if I want cute shoes that fit, I have to order them online, pay full price, and usually send them back because they just don’t fit my freaky clodhoppers.

But today, for just a few minutes, I had hope. If I only had feet between a size 7-9.5. So I’ve decided that if my toes are the only thing standing between me and a pair of Marc Jacobs python boots, then my toes are getting amputated. They deserve to be punished for all that they’ve done to me, which includes having to special-order school uniform shoes in the 7th grade.

I’m drowning my sorrows in free booze, a fluffy bathrobe, and french fries that were cooked in duck fat.

Ready for his close-up

 Scared of the printer, loves kibble, has cutest nose in the world:

Totally unacceptable

I had a traumatic squirrel experience when I was about five, and ever since I do not trust them.  Two squirrels were fighting in the park, and they fell out of a tree in a big ball of rodent, landing square on my head.

You can imagine my horror when we discovered there’s a squirrel in our attic.  Or possibly our chimney.  Or possibly several squirrels who run in and out, making god-awful scratching sounds.  I am horrified by images of the squirrel chewing through the ceiling and falling on my head while I’m sleeping, and then crawling downstairs and eating my Pop-Tarts.

I know it’s cold out and they just want a warm place to sleep, but the squirrels around here should know I’m a soft touch.  All they have to do is ring the door bell politely, and I’ll happily make them a peanut butter sandwich and fashion them a cozy, portable squirrel bed out of a shoebox.  But if there’s anything I hate more than critters in my house, it’s critters who have no manners.  One doesn’t just show up as an uninvited house guest and squat for the winter.

If you have to be a rodent, at least don’t be so tacky about it.

The animal removal guy is coming tomorrow.  I’m going to ask him to leave a copy of Emily Post inside his humane traps.

Here’s a big dose of shut it

Apparently, my recent post ignited some emotions in people and things got sort of ugly. I’ve had at least 20 comments today. Normally, I’d leave them, but flame wars get put out here. I’m not approving any more comments and I’ve deleted the ones that were there because this blog is not a forum for conservationists and hunters to hash out their differences with incendiary language. If you can’t play nice, you don’t get to play.

My final comment on the issue is that if the gray wolf was taken off the endangered list because it isn’t endangered enough to warrant protection, that is awesome. If the gray wolf is still endangered and lost much needed protection because people want to to shoot it, that sucks. I’m not a wolf expert, so I’ll say nothing further. I don’t need lessons on why if it wasn’t for hunting, animals would literally be running through my house eating my pop-tarts, and I don’t need lessons on why anyone who votes republican is a wolf-killer. This controversial issue won’t be resolved here, unless I go west and spend my remaining years counting and tracking the wolf. (Nothing would thrill me more actually, but refrigerators aren’t free.)

Back to your regularly scheduled programming: OMG, what is going on with J-Lo’s face? I’m not talking about the weight gain, the woman’s cooking up some twins in that picture and still looks better than I do. What I want to know is this: does pregnancy actually have the power to reverse nose jobs?  Because that’s what it looks like to me.

Come on down

When I was a teenager, I never thought I’d get married, never thought I’d participate in any sort of oppressive social construct.  I figured I’d live in sin in some incredibly trendy city, become independently wealthy by writing politically relevant, important novels, and reject all notions of traditional family life.  Also, for some reason I figured I’d wear a lot of berets.

What an insufferable little asshole I was, huh?

If there was any slim chance of any of those things happening, they evaporated last night when I fell madly in love with a refrigerator and its matching compatriots, the stove and the dishwasher.  They are coming to live in my house next week, and my teenaged self would be ashamed at my excitement.  I have offficially told my teenaged self to bugger off.  I look totally stupid in berets.

Somehow, my life has turned into the Showcase Showdown (and not even the one with the boat), and I am totally cool with it.

And the wolf behowls the moon

READ THIS FIRST. 

I read this article and was thrilled to learn that the gray wolf is no longer on the endangered list. We had several fleeting encounters with these beautiful animals when we were in Jackson Hole last September. There was quite a controversial conservation effort underway, and the notion that it appears to have worked ignites a small hope that some of the damage we’ve done to the planet might be reversible. Also, wolves are badass. Edited to add: apparently, it hasn’t worked so well, and this might just be one big plan to allow people to hunt them again. So that’s depressing.

I knew I had a wolf picture, one that I managed to take thanks to my camera’s insane shutter speed and my willingness to hang out of the window of a very small rental car as it sped down the road. I did a lot of hanging out of the car window with my camera on that trip, and my husband did a lot of yelling at me to please get back in the car because you can’t pet the bison. Or the moose. Or the elk or the wolves or the coyotes.

Wyoming (or at least the parts we saw) might be the most beautiful place on the planet; I occasionally had to put down the camera, because I knew a mere picture would not be able to recapture what I saw at that moment. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to believing that there’s some higher power in charge of us all – until I smelled bison ass, which is a smell no higher power would ever, ever allow to exist.

Here’s a few visuals for you. I’ll try to post some more tomorrow.

Hey guys, watch this!

Did you ever think you would actually think, “gee, I wonder if I can call my father-in-law to see if he can rig a bike helmet to fit the dog?”

I didn’t either until Gusbus joined the household.

We had five years of living with C-bear, a dog so smart and full of attitude we often feared for our lives. A dog that would be upstairs, somehow would hear me whisper to my husband, “hey honey, how about a sandwich,” and magically appear at the refrigerator. A dog that you can say, “hey C, go find your bone and bring it here, the big one” and then she does. A dog that plops herself down every night exactly in the spot on the bed where you want to sleep, and when she is told “scoot,” moves exactly one inch and shoots you the bitchiest look imaginable. It’s easier just to get in the other side of the bed. She took two weeks to potty train, could sit/down after a day or so of practice, but refused to learn “stay” or any other trick because they don’t suit her needs. It was maddening, because we knew she could do such things, could probably put together a circus act and pay our mortgage, but after months of trying, her stubbornness won. The flip side is that somehow she figured out on her own that she’s not to cross a doorway leading to the outside without waiting for permission and she’s not to go up to bed in the evening until we tell her “go night-night.”

C figured out how to open our lower cabinets and the storm door and mastered the pedal on the trash can. She won’t actually do any of these things, but she sure as hell wants you to know she can. One day, she opened a cabinet at my parents and flopped down next to it, not touching a thing, just to prove the point that she could end all of us if she so desired.

She knows which car each of us drives, and will run and wait by the one belonging to whoever is holding her leash. One day we tried to figure out all the words she knows and stopped counting after 100. Mainly because we were saying them out loud, and she was losing her mind, thinking she was going to accomplish “bye bye”, and “beach” and “snow” and “walk” and “cheese peanut butter food eat dinner lunch” and “vet” and “is daddy home yet” all in one day.

I had no idea any of this was abnormal.

Along came Gusbuster.

Today, I clipped on his leash, and he and I set out to get in the car for the usual morning adventure. As I was putting things in the front seat, he was sniffing the tree close to where we park the cars. I gave him the “come” command. He came running at full speed, so pleased I wanted his company. And tried to get into the back seat while the door was still closed. Poor guy smashed his little noggin into the door so fast and hard that cartoon birds flew around it in a circle. This is not the first time this has happened. Some mornings, he celebrates the fact that he’s alive by charging full speed out the door,and trying to get into the car before I’ve even caught up to him. Every time, he bonks his head on the door. Every time, he looks at me as if to say “I totally meant to do that, dude.”

Poor little guy.

Shake that ass

I heard a snippet of a story NPR (or PRI or CNN, I’m not 100% sure which station, damn you and your choices, satellite radio)today discussing the negative way rap music portrays women in their videos. How amusingly retro of them. Next thing you know, they’ll be reporting on how the 911 system is laughable in their town.

They had interviews with some young girls whose life goal was essentially to be a “video ho”, as well as a woman associated with a women’s advancement group. As you can imagine, she was incensed that these girls’ lives have been flooded with negative music video to the point where they are so desperate that they actually see “booty shaker” as a viable career option. Anti-feminist, she called it. She felt that the rap industry needs to address this problem and produce positive images of women. I’m sure they’ll get right on that one.

I have yet to see any girl in a video who is there because of desperation.  I’m pretty sure the competition to get to that point is pretty fierce; it’s not an easy enough field to break into to be a last resort. Booty-shakin’ ho is also not synonymous with prostitute last time I checked.  I’m pretty sure no one is holding a gun to anyone’s head, forcing them to watch Flo Rida over and over until the only thought remaining is “I will never be a doctor or a teacher, but instead must shake my ass for a living.”

I’ve never been in a music video, with the exception of the great 1989 remake of Electric Youth that was staged in my basement. But I’m pretty sure the girls in these “controversial” videos fought tooth and nail to be there. Maybe they want fame, or money, or to land themselves a nice, rich rapper. That’s their choice. I would not choose it for myself, but that doesn’t mean someone else shouldn’t

The other option is to tell girls to watch Carrie Underwood’s videos, where they will learn that if you’ve been cheated on, it’s perfectly ok to take a baseball bat to your ex’s car, slash his tires, and key the paint job.

There’s your choice, girls of America. Shake your bon-bon or smash up a car. Or perhaps turn off the television and do your homework.