also, we’re not talking about the fact rats might have been involved

My Halloween pumpkin, freshly carved, on the left; what remained on my front doorstep 4 days later. Good news: in case you were wondering, squirrels are not afraid of ghosts.

this is why i fail marketing 101

I think you’re supposed to post links when other people are kind enough to publish your work on their own blogs. I just remembered that. Seriously, I flunk every blog test out there.

I sent in a story to Globejotting this spring during Dave Fox’s 100 Hours of Humour (yeah, that’s how he spelled it; he’s gone rogue), for one of his flash humor writing contests on the theme “Road Trips”. I didn’t win and he published it anyway, because he’s awesome that way. So thanks, Dave!…six months later.

Lumberjacks & Roosters

we have nothing to fear but scariness itself

I’m kindof a chicken, and I know it.

I don’t like snakes, or bears, or goingveryfast down mountains, or, you know, hills, or riding bikes in traffic, or heights.

Heights is definitely the worst, though. It’s always been around, since those days of very long walks to the end of the high dive board when I was a kid in the Red Cross swimming lessons. The beginning of every summer my friend Angie & I would have to dare each other into the first jump, and then over and over again until we beat back the terror to manageable degrees.

Then, we agreed, we didn’t need to go off it again until next summer. I mean, why should we? It’s not like we were scared or anything.

Well, it’s been a long time since I saw a high dive, but it didn’t seem to be a problem to me until very recently.

I went to Busch Gardens with my friend Dante a few weeks ago and found a startling dearth of acceptable rides. Scary, scary, speedy roller coasters? Nope. Almost upside-down Viking ship? I think not. Swings? Are you insane? Those things are death traps! What’s holding you aloft? A couple of thin lampchains? Why don’t you just tape yourself to an airplane wing if you like those odds? Personally, I like the twisty upside-down kind of roller coasters without any big scary hill, but BG is short on these types of rides. DarKastle was the closest substitute and that was fun and all for a ride with a very problematic narrative once you start thinking about it (seriously: those magic sleighs don’t make any sense), but it wasn’t really a ride so much as a show. Otherwise, I was pretty much limited to the kids rides, and apparently I’m too tall or something for those (thanks a lot, BG employees).

We were told, however, that Apollo’s Chariot was “not too bad”, so I agreed to try it out. Only one little hill! I could do it, right? I was in!  I even meant it!…until it became clear that we had to ride in the 2nd car from the front…and I freaked. Just out and out freaked. I couldn’t make my legs step into the car. “Not happening, ” I said, finally. Dante rolled his eyes. “Okay. Going without you.” He did, and when he returned (alive, without visible injuries) assured me, between some mild mockery, that it was not bad at all.

Feeling justifiably ashamed, I agree to go on his favorite ride next, Le Scoot log flume. Now, it’s true the log flume has a drop at the end. But you’re not even buckled in. People don’t fall out of the log flume. People take babies on the log flume. This, I could handle.

Until we got to the boarding dock, and it became clear I had to ride in the front.

“I can’t ride in the front,” I gasp, in horror.

“Well, I’m not riding in front,” Dante says. “The person in front gets splashed and I just dried off from the wildwater raft ride.”

“I can’t ride in the front!” I shout.

“It’s the log flume!” he shouts back. “Nothing can possibly happen to you!”

He’s now in the back seat of the log and it’s starting to move. The teenaged BG worker is struggling to hold it still for me to climb in. I’m hovering on the edge of the dock, practically dancing around in panic.

“You can ride back here with me!” That’s Dante’s last-ditch offer.

“I can’t.” I say, desperately. The teenager swivels around to stare at me incredulously.

“You’re not going at all?” he says.

“I can’t.” I say. I can’t do it. Dante waves at me cheerily as it bobs around the corner out of sight.

The teenager is still staring at me. Who’s afraid of the log flume, is his expression.

That’s right. This girl.

So this is how I know it’s gotten a little out of hand recently, this fear of heights.

In retrospect, I guess jumping off that crazy high dive every summer was a good exercise; somehow knowing at age 8 that I couldn’t let my fear control me. If I can’t do heights, I can’t ride ski lifts, can’t climb ladders, can’t ride helicopters, can’t hike mountains and volcanoes. Can’t travel to far-off places on airplanes. And that’s the scariest thing I can think of.

Who wants to go to King’s Dominion with me??

(P.S. We’re still not going on those damn swings.)

(P.P.S. Okay. To be completely honest, I’m not committing to anything beyond the log flume.)

apparently, i have some kind of bad airport karma.

It looks like this!

So I’m in Atlanta for the weekend and my departure flight is at 3:25 pm. I’m actually going to make it, too, despite departing later than I’d planned, driving an hour through Atlanta traffic, missing my exit, and having to double back to refill the tank of the rental car before turning it in. It was going to be close. But I feel confident! Punctual! as I pull into the garage, hand over keys and rented Garmin to the Dollar employee, grab my bags out of the back and point out the pair of black pants evidently left in the trunk by the previous renter (black pants on a black hanger against charcoal interior = no one saw them, including me, until I was unloading my bag at the hotel 2 days ago). Across the parking lot, up the escalator, onto the Skytrain, 2 stops to the Terminal, up the escalator, down the hall, across the crosswalk, down the escalator, to the Delta counters, merrily I go. I just need my confirmation code to check into the kiosk. My confirmation code is in my phone.

 Where the hell is my phone.

 10 minutes of increasingly panicky searching later, including finally dumping my entire bag out into a chair, I face facts. It’s in the rental car. Goddammit.

 Am I going to miss my flight? What time is it? Where’s my phone?

Oh, right. Goddammit!

 I stand for a minute, actually weighing the two: my flight…my phone. Would they mail it to me? Yes. No! What am I saying? I need my phone.

 Up the escalator, across the crosswalk, down the hall, down the escalator to the Skytrain, 2 stops to the parking garage, down the escalator, across the parking lot. The Dollar checker-in remembers me. She also remembers that someone else drove off my car to the lot to be cleaned 5 minutes ago. “Over there,” she points, to the next parking lot over.

 Across the parking lot. Another Dollar employee in a neon green vest greets me. I explain the problem, and he’s willing to help.

“What kind of car is it?” he asked. “A red Chevy,” I answer.

“A red Chevy what?”

I stare at him.  Man, I don’t know. I don’t know cars. I’ve known Other Half and his car for over 6 years now and shared ownership for 3 and still, when asked “What kind of car do you have?” am forced to answer, “A green one”, because that’s all I usually remember. When pressed, while I will seldom come up with “Volkswagen” and certainly not “Passat”, I can usually add (super helpfully, in my opinion), “I think it’s German.”

 Personally, I thought it was pretty freaking amazing I came up with “Chevy”. Also, it’s red. Did I mention that it’s red?

And like this!

 “Like this?” he asks, pointing to a small red sedan. “Yes!” I exclaim. Could it be this easy? I open the door, dig around and under the front passenger seat. No phone. I shut the door and doubt. Is this the right car? Frankly, my dear, I don’t have any damn idea. I don’t know what my rental car looks like without my stuff in it. It had a red exterior and a grey interior. We only spent 2 days together getting from points A to B and back to A. We don’t have much of a relationship.

“There’s one!” Vest Guy says, pointing two rows over. Aha! I scrabble about the floor. No. No phone.

 “Up here?” A third red Chevrolet, several cars up.  Wait a minute. I stop and survey the sea of cars. There must be at least 15 identical red Chevys dotting the parking lot.

 Awesome. I am definitely missing my flight.

 Halfway through the lot we find my phone on the floor of a car which may or may not still have a pair of black pants in the trunk. I thank Vest Guy profusely and trek back to the terminal to arrange a new flight to DC, since mine is currently preparing to taxi the runway. I am lucky, in the sense that there are practically hourly flights from Atlanta to DC, so I am not stranded for an extra night. For a mere $50 change fee (!!) I am booked on the 4:15 to National Airport, arriving only an hour later than planned. Other Half is glad not to have to drive to Dulles, located in the western Godforsaken Hinterlands, which is much further from our house. As far as I know, I arrived home with all my pants. No animatronic animals were involved in my delay. So I guess it could’ve been worse.

 

Also: like this!

I think I’m going to start driving more often.

excitement

Off to my first writers conference ever tomorrow – the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop. Can’t wait!

sorry, sloth

You’re totally right.

maybe i post on thursdays

..or, I just can’t keep track of days. Slackest. Blogger. Ever.

this is a post about tomatoes. i’m starting to be concerned that maybe i am not, in fact, going to win a pulitzer.

I am ordering a cobb salad at a cafe for lunch. But add avocado, and no tomato, please. Her hand hovers over the buttons and she lifts her face to eye me incredulously. This is also the face I get when I order bacon on my veggie burgers.

“No tomato?”

No. I say. No tomatoes.

“Are you allergic?” Skeptically.

No. I just don’t like them.

Frown. Really? “Ok. Fine. No tomato.” You degenerate.

I have a slew of pet peeves. I don’t like people who overuse their car horn. I don’t like it when someone makes a show of correcting other peoples’ grammar or pronunciation. I hate when the DVR won’t let me fast forward through commercials. (I’m already exhausted trying to follow the erratic character development in Glee, ok? I truly do not need to see the same movie trailer 18 times in a row.)

But the thing I hate the most – my number one pet peeve – is when people get mad at me because I don’t like tomatoes.

You’d think that would be a relatively small number. Who possibly cares about such things?

Well, it isn’t a small number. Apparently, America is made up almost entirely of rabid tomato fans.

“You don’t like tomatoes?” They gasp in horror. “But how? Why?”

I dunno. I give some vague answer about how it’s probably a texture thing; you know the slimy inside and the crispy outside…and the seeds? Actually, I don’t really know why I don’t like tomatoes. I just don’t. No, not cherry tomatoes either. I am largely indifferent to sundried. Yes. YES! My God! I know about organic heirloom tomatoes at the farmer’s market! Stop telling me! I don’t like those either!

They regard you with exquisite dismay. Sigh heavily. “Well,” one of them will inevitably say, “my mother grows heirloom tomatoes in her garden and I can tell you, they are the best thing ever.”

Worse than the incredulity, are the people who want you to “grow up” and accept tomatoes as a regular part of an adult diet. This depresses me beyond measure. Adulthood means I am forced to eat all the things I dislike? Isn’t that what childhood is about? I thought becoming an adult means you have a certain amount of autonomy. I mean, we agree that it turns out you don’t actually get to do everything you want all the time, as we believed when we were ten; you still have to get up early to go to work, and and attend weddings of people you hardly know, and drive a safe car with passenger side airbags instead of an open Jeep with a surfboard in the back (that was a hard one to let go of). At the very least, however, was the promise that you didn’t have to eat stuff you hated and you could have ice cream cakes on completely random occasions if you felt like it.  So, I eat my fair share of veggies and pay my taxes. I have a mortgage and no longer wear miniskirts in public. I exercise regularly, drink quite moderately (drunken Ken Burns experience was an aberration, I assure you), sit through the entire baby shower, separate my whites, line dry my jeans, read “classic” books instead of trash, foreswear white zinfandel, grimly endure an annual showing of the Oscar documentary “shorts”.

However. There are some lines to be reasonably drawn.

“Stop picking off the tomatoes,” these people will snap, “you are such a child!”

Oh, screw you, I think, as sweetly as I can manage, which is not very, and by the way, I’m having ice cream cake for dessert.

Worst of all, however, are the people who insist you will love tomatoes if only you will try their “special recipe”. Their “special recipe” invariably consists of sliced tomatoes, basil, and fresh mozzarella, drizzled with olive oil. First of all, I find myself explaining, in slow, even tones, that is a caprese salad, and it is in every Italian restaurant in America, if not worldwide. It is not your “special recipe”. And secondly, there are only 3 major ingredients in this salad, and one of them is tomatoes. I don’t like tomatoes. I’m not going to like this salad.

“Try it!” They insist. “You will love it! I’m telling you!”

Indeed, I will not, I warn them.

“Trust me! Just try it! Try it!” Etc., etc., and finally I give in and say, fine, I will not like it, but I will try it for you and they are so pleased and I take a bite and they look at me expectantly and say, well? And I say, yeah, no. I don’t like it. And then they get mad.

Those are the worst.

No, wait! Actually, the worst might be the people who give you such a hard time, and then turn out to dislike something fabulously delicious that no sane person would ever willingly reject…like, say,…cheese. Who’s the wackjob NOW?

ok, i suck.

So here’s an article mocking modern hip DIYers, like I’m trying to be, except they are actually successful in their jam-making.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2012/01/the_foxfire_books_are_modern_diyers_just_play_acting_.html

i post on wednesdays

…is my new plan. You might have noticed it’s Thursday, and yesterday was Wednesday, and there’s no new post up. That’s an aberration you should ignore, forthwith. I’m going to post today, which is Thursday, and I’m going to pretend it’s still Wednesday. If you could just go along with it…that’d be great.