Finally!

Last week's insomnia, which resulted in either almost no sleep or anxiety-ridden sleep, finally caught up with me last night. My eyelids began fluttering shut around 9:05 pm. Within minutes, I was dreaming of India although the light was on in the bedroom and Husband was reading a magazine next to me in bed.

Barnes & Noble finally received the Hindi course I ordered last week. I picked it up on Saturday afternoon, and was relieved to find that it came with a book and two CDs. Then it occurred me that the only place I can listen to the CDs is at home or on my laptop, which is not very convenient. My iPod is a Shuffle, which means that I can't organize MP3s and select which files I want to listen to. I don't think that I want my Hindi lessons to come on while I am at the gym, between Madonna and the Beatles.

I wracked my brain. Finally, it hit me. I could use the Barbie Girls prototype MP3 player for my Hindi lessons!




Oh, this combination of learning tools cracks me up.

Just a reminder: tomorrow is finally May 1. Every first of the month is Blog Exchange Day. I didn't sign up last time because I was in India, but tomorrow my usual crazy rantings and stories will be over at Web Kittyn Warbles and Web Kittyn's insights will be here. The theme is Mother's Day.

Scones and Pizza and 'Balls, Oh My

The Big O decided that he needs to lose weight and is going on a liquid diet. He began cleaning out his food supplied from his freezer, and ever conscious of waste, he thought he should offer the perishables to his friends before trashing them. Hence Husband and I received an email on Wednesday asking if we wanted a giant bag of frozen Swedish meatballs from Ikea.

I declined, but Husband jumped at the frozen meat delights. Big O came over the next night, also bearing a jar of Ikea lingonberry sauce, two Trader Joe’s frozen pizzas (“The pizzas are made in Italy!” he said excitedly), and more oddly, a box of blueberry scones from Starbucks, still in plastic wrap.

“Do you want some scones, too?” he asked.

“What are you doing with an entire box of blueberry scones from Starbucks?” I asked, eyeing the enormous grease stain in the bottom of the cardboard box. Oh, how I wanted the baked delicious goodness, but I resented the temptation.

“Oh, I stopped off at Starbucks on my way to an interview this morning,” he explained. “When I flirted with the girl behind the register, she asked me if wanted some free scones and gave me the box. It was awkward bringing them with me to the interview, though. Who carries around an entire box of blueberry scones from Starbucks?”

Thus we feasted last night. Husband is recovering from a nasty cold, so he wanted to stay in. Dr. P came over with Children of Men in tow, and we consumed a disparate meal of Swedish meatballs and pizza. I think Ikea makes their balls with veal, so I wasn’t crazy about them, but the sweet lingonberry sauce really works with it. The pizza was scrumptious. This morning, I finally ate one of the scones. I thought it would be stale after days of sitting around, but it the greasy enclosed environment make the pastry quite moist. Tasty indeed, which is good because one scone has 23 grams of fat, 490 calories, and 64 carbs, meaning it is not good for any of the healthy diets I am supposed to follow, which I have been awful about anyway this week, but that’s another story.

Children of Men, by the way, is devastatingly good.

Living La Virtual Vida Barbie? Loca!

As I recently confessed, I was not always an unshaved, misanthropic feminist. Nope. Back in the day, I was a fat nerd hiding from the onset of puberty and playing with my Barbies while the other 4th graders at my school experimented with dating and read stolen copies of their dads' Playboy magazines. Sure, my Barbies were horny gals out for some action with my one Ken doll, but isn't that more innocent than me being a horny 10 year old looking for ass? I think so. The point is, I loved Barbie.

Hence it is ironic that I was sent by Bugaboo magazine yesterday to cover the global launch of Mattel's new Barbie product, Barbie girls. I admit that I was eager to see what sort of sexist stew they had concocted to feed our kids. I wasn't disappointed, at least in the sense that they lived up to my lowest expectations. From the press release (which I am pleased to note they distributed on USB ports):

NEW YORK CITY (April 26, 2007) –Today, Mattel unveiled the next generation of fashion doll play with Barbie Girls™, an unparalleled, hybrid play experience that blends fashion, music and an online virtual world. Representing the true evolution of what today’s girl loves and opening the door to how tomorrow’s girl will play, Barbie Girls™ fuses the best of virtual and real life for a fresh, new experience. At launch this week, Barbie Girls™ first comes to life via www.BarbieGirls.com, the first global, virtual online world designed exclusively for girls. At BarbieGirls.com girls can create their own virtual character, design their own “room,” shop at the mall, play games, hang out and chat live with other girls. In July, Barbie Girls™ will take shape in the real world with a sleek, handheld, 4 ½ -inch portable device that serves as a music player and fashion statement-in-one, while also unlocking new content within BarbieGirls.com.

According to the Chief Barbie Girl's presentation at the launch, girls today love music, shopping, and being online. A group of hired minions – er, I mean "real girls" – stood around shouting out their agreement at this statement, and as Chief Barbie Girl walked us through the virtual world that is supposed to represent tomorrow's girl, they kept whooping their approval at all the "cute outfits and cute accessories and cute pets" that a girl can virtually acquire by watching "movies" (aka commercials) on the Pepto pink site. (OK, I probably shouldn't criticize the color, but CUSS's Pepto is irony, damn it!) The games offered on the site, which also help a girl earn virtual dollars which she can then spend on clothes and furniture, involve painting digital fingernails and giving Ken a makeover. I detected nothing game-like in this.

The point of all this is that Mattel either believes that girls only care about shopping, fashion, and looking good while hanging out with friends online, or they are reminding girls that obviously this is what they should care about. Even the virtual park is for hanging out, not for playing soccer or running or anything sporty. Need I mention that the Barbie girl avatars look like Bratz, but without the thongs? Oy. As for the Barbie girls MP3 player, well, Barbie's finally an official 'Pod person. (Ha! I kill me.)

Of course, I will write a nice little blurb about the product in Bugaboo. My interviews with minions – er, I mean "real girls" – (ages 10 and 11) will appear at BlogHer in early May. (They made me want to poke my eyes out in despair for the future.) At least they don't spell "girls" with a "z," right? Also, they had some great fucking food at the launch. Not that real Barbie girls eat mini sandwiches with cheese (the horror!), but I put the Barbie-as-surrogate-Suzanne away a long time ago, so I stuffed my face most unceremoniously.

Excel(lent)

It's been six months since I quit my do gooding work at an evil nonprofit organization that squeezed me dry like a grapefruit. I've tried semi-successfully to use that time to write. Generally, I've also used the time to feel guilty about not working. Then I got The Call.

My friend at the City's main child care agency asked me to help them develop a child care facilities strategy. (It was more like, "Please, Suzanne!" she begged. "Please! I really need your help.") I am terrible at saying no to friends, especially ones who plea for my assistance. Plus, it would be a good way to get money so I wouldn't feel guilty about mooching off Husband.

The truth is that it was about the last thing on earth that I wanted to do. I was really fucking burned out on that topic. Of course I said I'd do it, and spent the next few weeks moping and dreading it.

Yesterday was my first day. You know what? I forgot how much I like being useful. Even better, I spent most of the time parked in front of the computer developing a highly exciting Excel spreadsheet. Despite my hatred of math in school, I adore crunching numbers. There is nothing that can be more fun than a day with Excel. If only the rest of the consulting gig will be as fantastic as my first day.

Danke Schon for the Nightmares

The most frequent recurring dream that I have involves language classes. Most often, I dream that I am in high school and have not attended my German class in months. The final is approaching and I realize that not only do I not know the difference between wunderbar and toll (or whatever), but I can't even remember where the classroom is. Sometimes involves my college Spanish class. Regardless of the language, I am unable to explain how the hell I let the situation spin so far out of control. I feel like the biggest idiot, and my sense of impending failure is overwhelming. I wake up feeling more anxious than ever.

What particularly interests me is that this dream centers around foreign language. I definitely struggled with it in high school because I was absent so often, had a bad memory, and unable to distinguish between the sound "ihr" and "er," which is pretty critical in German. Thanks to a kind teacher, I did well. On the other hand, I battled with math far more ferociously than German for two out of three of the same reasons. I came extremely close to failing a semester each of geometry and trigonometry. (Final grades in the second semesters of both: D.) I'm surprised that my nightmares never are about forgetting the quadratic formula or how to calculate co-sine.

If you ever have a nervous drama that repeatedly unfolds in your sleep, I am curious to hear what the scenario is.

Ji Nahi

"Ji nahi" means "no" in Hindi. It was the third word I learned in India, but probably the most important. It seemed to work wonders when people tried to sell me things.

I had a "ji nahi" moment last Monday evening when I received my new book for learning Hindi from barnesandnoble.com. It seems that I can't read English very well and thus did not notice that the book I ordered did not, in fact, come with a CD. As I discovered while in India, when I tried to pronounce things after merely reading them in my little Hindi & Urdu phrasebook, this is not a good method for speaking a language if you want to be sure you are saying, "Thank you, my friend" instead of, "Come to my room tonight for hot monkey sex." I need to listen to things be said properly and repeat them. I also cornered one of the men who work in my building and asked him if I can practice Hindi with him. He seemed rather pleased with my suggestion. (He also seemed extra excited when I spoke one of my four phrases to him, which of course makes me worry that I unintentionally offered to suck his dick as part of his holiday tip this year...)

Oh well. I'll bring it back to Barnes & Noble and then re-order the book with the tape online, which I will then get free shipping on and a discount. It's cumbersome, but so is learning Hindi right?

Oh Snap

Dr. P, Husband, and I had dinner with a friend of Husband's while we were in Florida on Friday night. Generally, he seemed like an unexcitable type, mostly talking about his various real estate deals in southern Florida, many of which involved draining wetlands. I recommended that he read some Carl Hiaason.

About a quarter way through what turned out to be one of the most delicious seafood meals I ever had, Husband's Friend brought up Florida's lax gun laws.

"I recently exercised my 2nd amendment right to bear arms," he said with pride.

We stared at him. None of us said anything.

"Getting a license is easy," he continued. "All you need to do is take a two hour class."

Dr. P looked him in the eye. "I took a bullet out of a kid yesterday in the ER," she declared in an even tone.

Husband's Friend's jaw dropped to the floor. "Oh," he said. I snickered. That was the end of his boasting about owning a gun with no training.

Later, Dr. P told me that she couldn't resist making that comment. "Maybe if he didn't seem so boringly normal, I wouldn't have bothered."

Damn, I'm going to miss her when she moves to Florida in June, but it makes me cackle just thinking about all the schooling of "boringly normal" folks she'll be doing down there.

And?

After my roller skating escapade, I walked down to the Bugaboo office in the Garment District. The editor asked me to come in and help finalize a special issue we are putting out in May on Central Park.

I ranted about people's poor grammatical skills before. I don't care if things are perfect or follow grammar rules to the T when it comes to blogging because these are things that people write for themselves and as shared journals of a sort. However, if you are going to write for a formal publication, please fucking follow some damn standards. For example, despite my previous blog post below (which falls into the blog exemption for grammar, anyway), sentences should not begin with the word "and." Maybe I can deal with it once in awhile, but certainly not as the last line of every fucking paragraph. Same goes for "but."

It is driving me crazy that I am sitting in a stuffy office on a stunning Sunday afternoon reading such drivel. Grrr... No more "ands" or "buts." (Ifs, however, are fine.

Old School

The sun is shining and the weather is warm here in New York City. Finally, after bringing my roller skates (actually, my sister's roller skates because she took mine with her to Iowa) from my parents' house in Chicago to New York in January, I could lace them onto my feet and glide over the pathways of Central Park. It would be glorious!

Except that I haven't rolled skated outside in about 15 years. And there are a lot of hills in Central Park. Plus, while the pavement if not as bad as the scary roads in India, it isn't exactly smooth going. And I forgot how to break. And now that I am old, I am scared of falling. Not even five minutes into my skate, I was pretty sure I was going to fall and crack my head open and die. At the very least, I was sure that I was going to wind up in a full body cast.

Central Park actually has an area that is frequented by old school roller skaters. As I clomped in the grass down a hill along the lower loop road, I decided that it behooved me to head over there. It turned out there was some fundraiser going on in the main area where the skaters congregate, but some folks were skating it up on a flatter side path. I spent my time relearning the tricks of the trade (like stopping) as Led Zepplin played on my iPod. (If I were truly old school, I'd have my GE walkman thing that played cassettes. The cassette door fell off of it years ago in one of the last times I skated outside and tripped on a rock and went flying. It still worked though. Ah, those were the days when they built things to last, I tell ya.) Within 30 minutes I had some of my groove back.

Not that I didn't nearly fall and crack my head open a few times, but it was not terrifying and thus fun. I am excited to go back next weekend.

Something's Rotten in the State of Florida

Husband and I went to a Marlins v. Mets game at Dolphin Stadium last night. We were pleased to find that at least half of the audience consisted of very vocal Mets fans. The Mets also smashed the Marlins to tiny pieces of stinky fish, winning 11 to 3. It was fun.

However, the Marlins have desecrated baseball. Problem #1: they don't have vendors wandering around in the seats selling food or beverage. What is baseball if no one comes by to sell delicious hot dogs in steamed buns, Cracker Jacks, Diet Whatever (for me), or Beer (for normal adults)? It is crap, that's what it is. You have to get up off your lazy ass and go to a concession stand, where the hot dog has been roasting on those stupid heater roller things and is overcooked and nasty and mustard does not come in packets, but in a big vat that your squeeze onto the tray. Harumph.

The other abomination perpetuated by the Marlins to the good name of baseball is so horrifying I can barely bring myself to write about it, but I must be brave and bring the truth to the masses, who are probably here looking for Jewish (or lately I've had some hits for Hindu) pussy anyway and won't care. But I digress… The Marlins have cheerleaders!!! Cheerleaders! To paraphrase Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own, one of my favorite movies, there are no motherfucking cheerleaders in baseball! Have you ever heard of such a thing? These ladies wore tiny little short shorts that were smaller than the bikini underwear that I was wearing and bizarre tops with their tits hanging out. Sexist, not sexy, and not cool. Every time they appeared with their stupid silver pompons and shook their asses, I felt the spirit of baseball die just a little bit more.

Regardless, Husband and I were in a very good mood at the end of the game. Mets won (yay!), and earlier that day I finished a chapter of a memoir about puberty and other medical disasters that have befallen me. (That's my progress report tucked into this complaint.) Unfortunately, we almost lost our rental car in the parking lot because there are no signs so we wandered around aimlessly. Once we found it, we discovered how truly fucked up driving in southern Florida is. We had to go through a tool booth, which didn't indicate until it was pretty much too late which lanes were open or closed. Thus cars kept swerving across four lanes of closed toll lanes to get all the way right tot the two that were open. Most merged at the middle of the line, but an uncountably large number of drivers drove to the very front of the line and attempted to cut in. It was madness, I tell you! Madness!

On a positive note, grocery stores in Florida sell the most ridiculously delicious concept in 100 Calorie Packs: Hostess Cupcakes. Yes, you get three mini cupcakes, complete with frosting and cream filling, for only 100 calories and 3 grams of fat. I have no idea how that works, but it is scrumptious genius. They must start selling this shit in NYC immediately.

(Crazy White) Lady in a Hat

Someone sent this picture to me yesterday and it cracks me up. Just thought I'd share.

Progress Report

I had three goals for my trip to Florida:

1. See sunlight.
2. Finish essay about trip to India
3. Finish chapters on boobs and period for memoir

I am happy to report that I did see sunlight. It has been very lovely. I wrote outside in both sun and shade. I have not, however, seen any octopi in the ocean. (I had to throw that in there so I could use my cool octopus label. Sorry.)

Also, I finished a shareable draft of my essay on my trip to India. The essay started out two weeks ago when I copied and pasted all of my blog posts from the trip into one master document and wrote a new intro. Unfortunately, it was 10,000 words and I was aiming for 2,000. The good news is that once I cut all the parts where I said nasty things about people, plus the parts where I repeated myself ad nauseum, and the things that were just totally inappropriate (for example, my fear of shitting my own pants at the Taj Mahal), I got it down to 8,000 words. I edited that sucker on Tuesday afternoon and all day on Wednesday, bringing it to 4,600 words. The Husband made the really hard cuts that I knew had to happen but couldn't force myself to do. With that, I am at a reasonable 2,664 words. I turned to my writing group for help. Hopefully, they can suggest 664 words to cut and I'll be in business.

As for the memoir, I better get my ass in gear tomorrow. The main problem is that when I get back to New York, I am starting a part-time consulting gig with the city's main child care agency. This will pay me money and assuage my guilt about not utilizing my do-gooder skills for the last six months, but also severely hamper my time to write in May. (At the end of May, my fourth month commitment to Bugaboo magazine ends, so that will open up some time for me.)

So that's what's up. I give myself a B or B- minus on the writing retreat accomplishments, and a D for the overall sabbatical that I continue to sabotage by taking on other projects out of fear or guilt.

What a Distinction!

I received this email a few days ago from my friend Alex. Her Younger Son (YS) is my official godkid, but I think of her Older Son (OS) as my godkid, too. (OS, as many of your know from Alex's hilarious blog, is 3.5 and YS is 9 months.)

Hi Suzanne,
I just wanted to let you know how highly OS thinks of you. Yesterday
when I was changing YS's diaper, OS pointed out that YS had an
anus. Then he proceeded to list people he knows that have anuses.
Guess who was one of the first people on his list? How are things going?
Love,
Alex

This just cracks me up for so many reasons. I am so damn proud of this kid. I also happen to love the seamless transition from being told that OS said I have an anus (not that I am an anus, thankfully) to asking how I am. I am proud, dammit! Proud!

On another note, Florida is delightful. I arrived yesterday afternoon to find warmth and sunshine. While Husband was at his conference reception, I wandered out of the fancy resort (it's about 1/2 mile walk to get the hell out of here) and as I was leaving, I asked the security guard if he could recommend a place to eat. He said I should try the Cuban place down the road. It was bueno. I particularly loved my mamey (no, I have no idea what that is) batido (shake) and dulce de leche sandwhich cookie, which in Argentina is called alfejore, but the woman stared at me like I was wild-eyed from crack when I called it that. On the way back, I found a 7 Eleven and bought Cheerios and yogurt for breakfast. Upon further exploration, I found a ginormous Winn-Dixie grocery store that I will get lunch at. The security guard and I chatted it up when I came back. Turns out he's originally from Brooklyn.

Oh, yeah, I got some writing done, too.

Another Deep, Dark Suzanne Secret

I loved Barbies when I was a kid. I played with them until I was 10 or 11, when other girls in my school had given up on dolls already and gone on to dating. I was in no way, shape, or form ready to handle real relations with boys, so I retreated into my little Barbie world. They put on pretty clothes and dated and had sex with Ken. In retrospect, it was sort of a proto-Bachelor situation, since there was only one guy and lots of ladies clamoring for him. I personally continued being a nerd. Life was good.

Ironically, although I loved gussying Barbie up and pimping her out, when it came to my life, I realized quickly that I hated heels, tight clothes, and makeup. I also was one of those no-sex-until-marriage types (shocking, I know) until I was 16 or 17. I left high school still a virgin. And I'm a hairy legged feminist to this day. In fact, as I leave for Florida for my writing retreat, I am gleeful that Minnie long ago suggested that I wear board shorts over my bathing suit so that I needn't worry about shaving the old bikini line. (I am not into shaving snatch, but I am also not into pubes hanging out of bathing suits. It's the worst damned if you do, damned if you don't situation a curmudgeonly vacationer faces...)

Your Insight is Killing Me

I get a lot of hits from people googling "jewish pussy." On Thursday, November, 30 I wondered what people were exactly looking for with this search. Did they think that Jewish pussy somehow looked different from Christian pussy? I requested that searchers let me know what they were thinking to satisfy my curiosity.

Over the next few months, a few comments tickled in. However, this most recent one takes the cake:

Why do I google "Jewish Pussy"? It is a test. One can find scores of prono websites for "Asian Pussy", "White Pussy", "Black Pussy", "Japanese Pussy", "German Pussy"...etc. Yet no web sites for "Jewish Pussy". Interestingly enough, many websites that exploit Women of various ethnic or racial types are indeed owned and oeprated by JEWS!!! Thus, they do not respect non Jewish Women. Boycott porno forever.

What the FUCK are you talking about? While Judaism certainly is a culture, it is more comparable to look and see if there are sites for Christian pussy or Hindu pussy, not Asian pussy. More disturbing, how on earth can you decide randomly that Jews operate those websites?

This is not the first time people have left crazy remarks about Jews being bad people on CUSS. On the other hand, is ther not something really funny about someone sanctimoniously researching different kinds of pussy on the internet? It cracks me up inspite of myself.

I'm Lovin' It

Sometimes I love storms. Even though I have been annoyed at all the gloominess and rain that has taken place since I got back, yesterday’s rain was different. It was intense, and it kept the streets of Manhattan quiet, as very few people wanted to venture out and be soaked within seconds. The City is a different place when it’s deserted like this, and just enjoyed the semi-stillness of it.

Husband and I went over to Brother-in-Law’s for the afternoon. Even just crossing the street to get to BIL’s apartment left my jeans soaked up to the knees. The boys experimented with chocolate dumpling recipes. There is nothing like eating experimental chocolate dumplings on a rainy afternoon. Some were filled with strawberries, some bananas, some Nutella, some peanut butter. We also watched the Return of the Jedi on TV. Unfortunately, it had the new stupid ending, but it was still good fun. Luke Skywalker really is sort of a douche bag, even if he does triumph nicely at the end. Seeing young Harrison Ford reminded me what a horrendous idea Indiana Jones 4 is.

I also walked ¼ mile to Barnes & Noble to pick up my bookclub’s April selection, Mrs. Dalloway, plus Everybody into the Pool, a memoir I partially read when it came out by Beth Lisick that is hilarious, and an intro to Hindi set. I’m not remotely excited about this, but at least it’s short. Hopefully, my bias against it will turn out to be wrong, and it’ll be the best book I’ve ever read on a flight to Florida. Yeah. After a thorough drenching, I discovered the store had neither the Hindi set I wanted nor the memoir, so I slogged back through sidewalks strewn with oodles of puddles to BIL’s, where I ate more chocolate dumplings and ordered Mrts. Dalloway online from B&N for a discount and the Hindi set. It better fucking arrive here tomorrow as promised or I’ll be peee-ahssed.

All in all, this weekend has made me 100% happy to be back home for the first time since I got back two weeks ago, which is great.

Polyagomy=A Nor'eater on a Sunday in April, Polyamory=A Day of Sun on a Saturday in April

No doubt about it, yesterday was the calm before the storm. Husband and I decided to take advantage of the weak, but still warm sunlight and walk from our apartment to the show we had tickets to see, a tribute to Hall & Oates. A mile into the walk, he realized that he forgot the tickets, so we had to turn around and go home. It could have been worse, of course. Imagine how annoying it would have been if we walked three miles and were almost there, then had to take a cab home and back. At any rate, since he discovered it early on, we were able to get home, take the subway part way there, and then walk from a closer point. It was a nice walk, and the show was seriously rocking. Hall & Oates were quite the prolific little duo.

All the warm weather and wandering around made me start thinking of India (well, everything makes me think of India) and women’s rights, and the hamster on the wheel that powers my brain got a good run going, which eventually somehow led me to polygamy and marriage. (Actually, it is not a difficult connection. Many of the Mughal emperors in India had multiple wives, and we were always hearing about this wife’s palace and that wife’s palace, and blah blah blah.) I hate polygamy. It’s not that I feel that being married to one person is inherently right, but as polygamy seems to be primarily practiced in patriarchal societies, women are utterly screwed by it, literally and figuratively. It’s not just that men get to screw more than one person whereas women are tied down to one guy. It is also that they just bring people into women’s lives without any input from them, and it often has serious implications for women who are already doing an insane amount of backbreaking labor.

However, if women had equal freedom under polygamous relationships to go out, take husbands as they wish, and generally live lives as independently as men did, I’d really have no problem with it. Hence, polyamory makes a lot of sense to me. I don’t think that marriage inherently has to be one-man-one-woman, or one-woman-one-women, or one-man-one-man. People should be free to form meaningful relationships as makes sense for them. That said, I am a bitter and jealous bitch and can be rather sensitive due to my insecurities, so I can guarantee that I would not function well under that system. But if other people don’t find their dark sides to be barriers, all the more power to them.

It's a Simple Question, Really

When I was in India, I had a very nice conversation with the bus driver's helper on hot afternoon when I was supposed to be shopping for expensive rugs but instead sat outside in a shady corner and ate my granola bar lunch. Malikit asked me how old I was. For no reason, I started to answer that I am 20-whatever. I realized as I was saying it that I was not in my twenties, and corrected myself, saying I was 31. I'm sure he thought I was a nut job. (Well, he's not wrong about that, but that's not the point.)

Last night while Husband and I had pierogies with friends, I told one of them that by age 32, I already became a dried up prune.

"Thank goodness you are only 31, then," Husband responded.

"Oh yeah," I said, a bit mystified that I yet again forgot my age.

It's funny how memory "works," and a mite frightening, too.

Yay, It's the Weekend

Husband and I went to see Blades of Glory with some friends last night. I had some trepidation about seeing it, as I feared it might be some big jokes-about-homos fest, but I figured that Amy Poehler was in it and she doesn't seem like the type of person who would be in a homophobic flick. Plus, yesterday was one of those days where I set out to go to a 2.5 hour meeting that I really did not want to go, then it began 50 minutes late, and four hours later, I finally left the office, so I needed some brainless entertainment. Surprisingly, I giggled throughout Blades, and even had an outright guffaw at one point.

My plan to sleep in this morning was thwarted by the assholes upstairs, who decided to begin semi-consistently banging on something at 10:15 am. I realize that 10:15 am is not particularly early, but I am in definite need of beauty rest these days. They were done by 11:00. Why the fuck couldn't they just wait an extra 45 minutes before they decided to hang up pictures or whatever the fuck they were doing? I hope a thumb was smashed at some point.

Tonight, Husband and I have a date! We are going to The Losers Lounge. The Losers Lounge is a fun tribute band. Homage is paid tonight to Hall & Oates. I don't think I know that many Hall & Oates songs, but that's OK. (I usually think I don't know many songs by a particular group, and it turns out that I really do, I just don't know that I do. I never know what songs are called and who sings them. It's part of my general cluelessness.) Past shows I have attended were Queen, Debbie Harry v. Chrissie Hynd, and Elton John. Good times.

The Last of My Indian Adventure in Pictures: Two Weeks Ago Today, I Did Not Go to a Crappy Meeting

Thanks for bearing with me as I relive my glorious trip to India. Today is the last day for which I have pictures, which saddens me, but hey, all good things must come to an end and all that shit.

The first stop I made two weeks ago today was to Hawa Mahal, the Palace of Wind. It was built in 1799 and according to the cousin of the "dead guide" (the dead guide is the Lonely Planet book I took to India with me, then returned to the library; its cousin is a Frommer's guide), it has 593 windows so that the ladies of the palace could watch the city and not be seen. I found that this type of attitude about women persisted in India today, although there was a better presence of women out and about in Jaipur than in Agra. There was even a billboard advertising motor scooters to women in Jaipur, which impressed me because I'd seen no women drivers the entire time I was there. (And the women passengers wore no helmets. Ever.)

The Hawa Mahal is more or less a façade, so we took our pictures and moved on to Amber Fort. According to both "dead guides," Amber Fort is actually pronounced without the "B," although Fearless Leader, our incompetent live guide, called it AmBer, so whatever. We took an elephant up to the Fort.

"Take your hat off," the driver requested as he slowed the racing elephant down and used my camera to take a picture. I figured that he just wanted to get my face better, so I complied. Suddenly, his sweaty turban was on my head before I could politely decline. That, by the way, is a very painful smile.

My sweaty surprise turban experience was as colorful as some of the elephants. The "dead guide" mentioned something about the tradition of painting elephants and we arrived in Jaipur right after a festival for elephants ended, but I don't know much more because neither the dead guide's cousin nor our live guide mention this. I love elephants (ever since my mom read Babar to me as a wee one), and the designs were lovely. These regal beasts have hard lives, which the dead guide also mentioned, but most living things in India seem to really work to survive. It's one of the saddest aspects of India to me.

A few animals that didn't seem to have it too bad were the monkeys hanging out in Amber Fort, displaying their asses to the world without a care. (I'm curious what kinds of hits I'll get know that I have "monkey ass" on my blog…)

After the Fort, we were shanghaied at a tourist trap that specialized in carpets. I am not inclined to buy a carpet, starting at $450, so after mindless wandering through the trap's other crafts offerings, I went outside and sat in some shade and ate my granola bar lunch. That's when Malikit, the bus driver's helper, came by and we chatted. Then the bus driver joined us, and I enjoyed talking to them immensely. Then it was on to the fancy jewelry store, where I finally lost it completely and disrespectfully sat on one of the carved marble elephants in front of the shop. In that arch in the background is where the jewel cutters worked. The shop sold the stones they cut. They are paid a pittance and have to work outside in the heat, partly so that the shop owners can show their skills off to clueless tourists. We hated being forced to be part of it, and a lot of us hung back, but went to talk to the guys afterward. I shit you not, one of the men gave a very cool woman in our group an uncut ruby because she was so nice to him.

Following that, we went to an amazing park of sun dials, Jantar Mantar. This is world's largest sundial, and it is accurate to something like five seconds. The complex of sundials was built in 1728 and also includes astrological elements. (It's a good thing we no longer rely on sun dials because it is so fucking rainy here in NYC – and will be for the foreseeable future, ugh – that we'd just be wandering around cluelessly and I would miss the 12:00 meeting that I don't want to go to anyway and will be late for anyway if I don't stop blogging and get dressed.)

And now we get to the last picture that I will subject you to. There is still a maharaja who lives in the City Palace of Jaipur. (He plays polo with Prince Charles according to the "dead guide.") His palace is closed to the public, but other buildings in his palatial complex have been turned into a museum. This peacock door (you'll probably need to click on it to see the gorgeous details) was one of several sumptuously colored and decorated doors in the main courtyard. These maharajas really live beautifully, and again it is one of the contrasts of extremes that stand out so vividly. Of course, we have serious and growing income gaps here in the US, but we hide our poverty so much more efficiently. Not that that is a good thing, but I think things stand out more there. You would never have a palace here with a tent city in front of it. Cops would be sure to shoo homeless people away. Even in Manhattan, I rarely see homeless people in front of the zillion dollar co-op apartments on Park Ave., for example. But I am digressing….

So that's my trip to India in a nutshell. Thanks for sticking through it with me. The whole experience deeply affected me, and I am thinking of taking Hindi lessons. (Keep in mind that when I returned from Israel in August 2005, another trip that touched me at my core, I seriously considered taking Hebrew lessons. Needless to say, it didn't happen.) Regardless of whether I ever progress beyond the 14 or so Hindi words I learned on the trip, I am committed to going back and exploring more of this country of contradictions that made me feel more alive than I have in the past several years.

Flattery Will Get You Everywhere

Many thanks to Karrie at One Weird Mother for her kind nomination of CUSS for a Bligziter award at the Blogger's Choice Awards!!! I feel like someone finally asked me to the prom. Swoon, swoon, swoon.

Now, if you will be so kind as to click on this link and vote for my sorry ass, I promise not to go all "Carrie" on people and cause major calamities and carnage. Of coure, that is also assuming that you don't drop a bucket of blood on me.

Taking the Stairs Less Traveled: Two Weeks Ago Today

It is cold, raining, and generally miserable here in New York City today, as it more or less has been since I returned from India. Two weeks ago, however, I was traipsing around a wonderful abandoned city, Fatehpur Sikri, on the way from Agra to Jaipur. It was hot as hell, I gave up my insane idea of wandering around India in a state of dehydration so as to avoid the need for public bathrooms which involve squatting over a porcelain hole and no toilet paper, and I was feeling fine. I also decided that if I was going to learn anything about the places I was visiting, I needed to lug along my ginormous guide book, as Fearless Leader, our insipid and incompetent hired guide, was not doing the trick. This led to me having words with Fearless Leader, who was insulted that I brought a "dead guide" with me, and then eventually apologizing (insincerely, of course), and him putting his arm around me (ugh), but it was still a wonderful day. You can see why:The entrance to Fatehpur Sikri.

The astrologer's kiosk.

A very cool pavilion.

Ha! I would have been a giantess back in Emperor Akbar's times (late 1500s). OK, fine, I'm standing on a step, but the doors are still pretty low. I just fit through without needing to duck my head, and I'm under 5'2".
The "dead guide" and I pose on a stairway to heaven (in the skirt I got thanks to Karrie's pre-trip shopping recommendation and a linen shirt I got at a market in Dehli on one of the only normal shopping opportunities we had). Or wherever this staircase went. I guess the gates at the top aren't exactly pearly.

"Dead guide" and I got along splendidly. When I got back, I sent it back to the public library that Mother-in-Law borrowed it from. I hope whoever takes it out next has as fantastic an experience in India as I did.

Two Types of People in This World: Two Weeks Ago Today, I Joined a New Group

Supposedly Bill Clinton said, "There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who have seen the Taj Mahal and love it and those who have not seen the Taj and love it" when he visited the Taj Mahal. On Wed., March 28 I became a lucky member of the former.

First, I had to take Immodium AD and hope that I would not shit my pants if I left the hotel to see this "tear drop on the face of time." Then I had wait in a very long line of women to get in. The men's line moved 10 times faster, but then again, men don't pack everything they own in their purses which take forever to hand search by inadequately staffed security personnel. Sigh. It was so worth it though.




These are without a doubt the best pictures I have ever taken. I flipped the second one upside down so that the reflecting pool is on the top because it looks so cool and dreamy.

You Know You Want One, Too

I know, I know. This is a hat that someone who pledges her virginity to her father wears to church on Easter Sunday. Fear not. I have not lied to you about my credits as a card-carrying liberal athiest Jewish white trash girl from the suburbs of Chicago who now lives in NYC. I do, however, love the crap out of this hat, even as it makes me cringe in horror at its awfulness. (I've never been crazy about the big red flower.) The hat has been part of my stylin' wardrobe since high school at least, but possibly as far back as junior high.

I wore this hat every day while I was in India. I am fairly sure that several people laughed at me as I walked around in such a ridiculous thing. I also wore it 12 years ago to Passsover dinner at Husband's parents' house. It was my first time meeting them. I am fairly certain that they wanted to know what kind of lunatic their son was dating. Oh, they know now.

Mwa ha ha ha.

My India Adventure in Pictures: Tuesday, March 27

Two weeks ago today, my group left Delhi bright and early in the morning for a long bus ride to Agra. On the way out of Delhi, I took pictures of some street scenes. For more details, click on the picture and it will open in a new window in a larger format.This was a very typical sight: a crumbling strip of commercial property with shanties semi-hidden behind the stores. While I didn't intentionally take a picture of an STD/ISD provider, I am glad that I captured it because saying "STD" made Fearless Leader, our idiot tour guide, gleeful in the aren't-I-a-naughty-boy? Way that made me want to throttle him. What an STD is in India is a domestic long distance provider. ISD is international. People go into the storefront and can make significantly cheaper calls across the country and world than they can from home, if they even have a phone.This is a tent city. They were all over the place. I tried not to take too many pictures of the impoverished conditions because it made me feel very exploitative, but at the same time, I did want to show people what I saw there. Incidentally, when I showed this picture to Dr. H , she told me that many of these tents have satellite TV and people really love watching the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Satellite TV in a tent city. Who knew? The world continues to boggle my mind…A good depiction of the litter situation, although more often than not, there'd be kids, dogs, and cows sorting through the trash pile for food.This is one of the many cattle hanging out in the streets. Also, the building behind it is pretty typical. We never understood what was going on with these structures. They looked like people gave up finishing them halfway through and then they were left to rot, but again, we weren't sure what the story was.After driving many hours and a pit stop, we arrived on the outskirts of Agra, where the tomb of Emperor Akbar is. Akbar expanded the Mughal empire extensively during his reign, and was also known for his religious tolerance. He's kind of my favorite benign despot at this point. I complained before that we only had 10 minutes to photograph the outside versus three fucking hours the next day at the evil slave labor tourist trap marble shop, so I'll let that go. Sort of.After dropping our shit off at the hotel, we visited Itmad-ud-Daulah's tomb, aka the mini-Taj or baby Taj. Jahangir's powerful and influential wife built it for her dad. It is sort of a prototype for the Taj Mahal.I love the details!Our day of sightseeing ended with a dysfunctional tonga (traditional horse-drawn carriage). I find it strange that I had more trouble taking clear pictures from a slow moving carriage than a speeding bus, but maybe that had to do with the bumpiness? Anyway, this is in old Agra and is a good representation of a street scene that we saw over and over. Next to a road, there would be a strip of stores that seem like they were built with no plan in mind and no paving other than the street itself.

Yep, I miss it immensely, although I'm feeling better lately.

Write, Write, Write Your Story

Next Tuesday, Husband is going to a conference in Key Biscayne. Happily, I am tagging along. There's pretty much nothing to do in Key Biscayne except see a lighthouse and sit around on the beach (I hate sand, so this opportunity is wasted on me), so I originally planned to get some writing done. I need to polish up my essay on India that I hope to submit to a travel magazine. (Currently, based on a new intro and my blogs, it is an unwieldy 10,000 words. It should be no more than 2,000 words, so I've got some work ahead of me. As much as it pains me, my speculation about what I might actually be saying in Hindi (may I suck your cock?) as opposed to what I want to be conveying (how are you?) is going to go.) I also planned to work on my memoir about growing up. It will be a very nice retreat with lots of work getting accomplished. Plus, as a bonus, Dr. P will also be there part of the time and I am going to help her in a quest for an apartment for her June move there.

Dr. P, however, also threw an interesting new angle into my plans. She was reading Glamour magazine yesterday when she came across a page advertising the Glamour essay contest. Basically, the contest asks for a 2,500-4,000 word personal essay. The winner gets $10,000. (Ironically, they will not guarantee that they actually print the essay, but as Des pointed out, she'll take the money regardless.)

The contest has my undies in a bunch, put the fire under my feet, got ants in my pants, or whatever little hyperbole works in this situation. See, I planned to write a heeelarious chapter on the first time I got my period (something I think I wrote up here at one point) and then go into how it never really worked right, then stopped completely when I was 17, and then led me to a 13 year quest to find out what was wrong with me. The chapter will also have something about how I decided that I didn't want to have kids, and yet the eventual diagnosis of PCOS weirded me out anyway. Blah blah blah. But I think it is good. Probably not good enough to win, as I am sure that some woman will submit a story about how she escaped from some awful situation in Bosnia or Darfur and is now doing relief work with survivors of tragedies and it will deserve to win far more than a mundane but hilarious story about the rights of passage of semi-privileged American girls and failed reproductive systems, but whatever. I will enjoy working on it, and will be happy to finish something that I am proud of.

And it will be exceptionally nice to have a little writing retreat for myself, although clearly I get plenty done without retreats. This is my 1,000th post on CUSS! More pictures from India to follow.

Pride!

When someone looking for the best wide open snatch on internet spends almost five whole minutes (according to my stat counter, it was precisely 4 minutes and 56 seconds!) reading seven pages of my blog, I know that I am doing something right. Or very, very wrong. Either way, I puff my chest out with pride!

Incidentally, here is a snapshot of the search terms and sources of my last 20 visitors:

1 winona ryder heathers (images.google.ca)
2 christie brinkley nude (images.google.com)
3 (images.google.com.au)
4 prague (blogsearch.google.com)
5
6
7 hairless twat (images.google.com)
8 van chai (images.google.com)
9 (images.google.co.nz)
10
11 thong anus (images.google.co.uk)
12 snatch (google.ca)
13 granny snatch (google.com)
14 my frist time story (google.com.fj)
15 triple f.a.t. coat (google.com)
16 shave my beaver (google.com)
17
18 fantasy world models (images.google.com)
19 v-string (images.google.com)
20 cock eating (google.com)

What can I say? The world is obviously a horny place. Also, I clearly need to share these lists more often.

Two Weeks Ago Today

Dr. H came over last night and told me that the punjabi dress I bought two weeks ago today was perfect and didn't really need altering. She said that it shouldn't be too tight, although maybe it could use some work around the bust line. While I was happy that I made a good purchase, I also was a little frustrated that I didn't wear it while I was in India because I was afraid it didn't look right. Then again, it is some sort of silk material, and I would have sweat right through it, so it's probably for the best.

I bought the punjabi dress in the morning on Monday, March 26. In the afternoon, we went on a rickshaw ride through Chandni Chowk, which is where many markets and bazaars are, in Old Delhi. Rachel and John rode together, so I went with someone else in the group.Brian turned out to be super delightful, and we had a fantastic time discussing subprime lending practices and credit card debt issues in the US while holding our breath as we went down precariously narrow streets in absurd amounts of traffic. We also saw a monkey.(For another view of the street scene, see my post from March 30.) Incidentally, I did feel a little bit like a British woman from the 1920s in colonial India with my ridiculous hat, but it was excellent in keeping the sun off my face and neck, and most people who saw it found it amusing. I even received a few compliments on it, despite the fact that I duct taped a piece of lace into it to serve as a chin strap so that it would not blow away in the wind.

The rickshaw ride ended at Jama Masjid, the last architectural undertaking by Shah Jahan before his son usurped power and imprisoned him. Jama Masjid is the largest mosque in India.I posted this strange picture of it because I feel like it captures India well. In the back, you have this gorgeous mosque. In the front, a garbage pit of some sort.

We ended the day, and the group's time in Delhi, at Rajghat, which is a large park where Gandhi was cremated as well as many other famous Indians.This is Gandhi's cremation site. It was beautifully understated.

And that is what I did two weeks ago today.

Some Personal History

I wasn't even close to being po' when I grew up, but I didn't exactly sit in the lap of luxury either. I like to describe my family as Jewish white trash. My parents had respectable middle class career paths at some point in their lives; they just sort of never made it all the way to the finish line. They did, however, work hard and save money and buy a dumpy (but comfortable) house in a very wealthy suburban community of Chicago where other people paid enormous sums of property taxes to ensure that their kids got the best education possible while also claiming that the amount of money spent on kids doesn't really make a difference so that they didn't need to pay for underprivileged kids outside of the community to have a fair shot. I guess kids like me were all the charity they could handle.

In my suburban community, being smart and cultured was highly desirable. All the popular kids were smart, even the girls. I am undoubtedly scarred because I was kept out of the smart kid enrichment programs for years because, I am convinced, I was not wealthy. (Also I was not a good standardized test taker, but that is another story.) Worse, my friend the Sauce, who became my BFF when she moved onto my less-than-desirable block when we were in 4th grade, was labeled as "average" (slang in the community for "slow") because she is half Dominican. The Sauce is probably one of the smartest people I know, but that is also another story.

People in my school went on fabulous vacations to Rome and the Bahamas and wherever people with money take their families. When I was seven, I drove with my dad, mom, grandpa, bubbe, and sister for several days squeezed in a Cutlass Supreme (I think) to Toronto for a family friends' function. Along the way, we stopped to see other family friends in South Haven, MI. We also went a few times to some Jewish resorts that smelled like mold in South Haven. After saving up for years, my parents took us to visit our great aunt and uncle in Burbank, which of course meant we got to go to Disneyland. (This is the infamous trip where we got to take a picture with Dennis Franz, which is taped to the living room wall in my parents' house to this day.) When I was going into 8th grade, we drove down to Florida where we stopped at a motel that had blankets that I swore smelled like vomit and I noticed a condom dispenser for the first time in a dirty gas station bathroom in Georgia.

Hence, nothing in my life hinted at the life I'd be leading today. Instead, all of this caused me to develop a seething rage at the injustices of the world and a naïve but well-intentioned belief that I could do something about them. I planned to be a public interest lawyer and struggle to make ends meet while I tried to pay off my law school debts on my piddling salary. I never expected to travel, although I hoped very much to visit England one day. (I've always been a secret Anglophile.)

Then I went to NYU. I was invited to join a program for smart people that allowed us to travel over winter break. I went to Italy and Germany. It was very cool having a passport, although I thought I'd probably never need it again. I also met Husband at NYU, who had decided early on in life that he loved money and would someday be rich. Weirdly enough, we turned out to be perfect for each other and fell madly in love.

Husband pursued his dreams of riches. I dropped out of law school on my third day. Husband worked in finance. I got a Master's in Public Administration and Policy and had an unexpectedly well-paying career (for my age and my field, anyway) as a child care facilities development and finance guru.

I also began traveling, both for work and for pleasure. The girl who never thought that she would leave English-speaking parts of North America went to the Czech Republic (to visit a friend of Husband's outside of Prague) with an unintended stop in Amsterdam on the way (long story), London, Buenos Aires, Paris, Israel, Zurich, Florence, Rome, the Dominican Republic, several Caribbean Islands on a[n ill-advised] cruise, and most recently and amazingly, India. Domestically, for work this girl went to San Francisco (multiple times), LA, Sacramento, DC, Portland OR, Atlanta, and thrilling Columbia MD. For fun, I went to Boston, DC, Philly, Cleveland, Miami, San Jose CA, and glamorous Iowa City. It's been quite the whirlwind.

Never in a million years would I have thought that this would be my life. I am one lucky ass bitch.

Cringe

I have not been proof-reaaading proofing things well lately and seem to have an abysmal amout number of typos. I'll be working on that, folks.

Addendum

I forgot to include Humayun's Tomb. We actually went there after the Baha'i Temple and before the Birla Mandir. Humayun was the second Moghul emporer. This tomb is a prototype of Mughla architecture, which I saw over and over again and found beautiful each time. These dudes loved symmetry, so everything is designed to be balanced.

While there, I had to use a public bathroom and discovered that when squatting over a shallow porcelain hole in the ground, it is critical to squat as deeply as possible or else pee will splash up on your shoes. Pee on your shoes will wind up being not nearly as gross as it initially seems by the end of the week.

Time Keeps on Slipping

Time is one of those concepts that used to make perfect sense to me, but now that I am older and stupider, I find it confusing. For example, can it really be possible that at this time one week ago today I at the extremely run down and utterly unorganized airport in New Delhi, getting ready to come back to the US? It feels like a million years ago, and yet like I just got back yesterday. I have managed to adjust to our new toilet seat for the most part, although it still freaks me out a little to close the lid and still see the contents of the bowl go down as I flush.

Since I've been back for nearly a week now, and the beginning of my amazing trip was two weeks ago at this point (!), I realize that one of the best things about this trip was how damn alive I felt on it. Despite lack of sleep and intense conditions, I didn't have an underlying level of tiredness accompanying me wherever I go. Before I left, I almost always felt exhausted, no matter what I was doing. Even at things that were fun and I had looked forward to for ages, I felt like I wouldn't necessarily mind going home and crawling back into bed. This has been true on other vacations as well. But that little cloud lifted while I was in India. It was great.

That said, here are a few pictures from Sunday, March 26, which I cannot believe was already two full weeks ago: Rachel and I are bright-eyed and busy-tailed for our very first, extremely full, day of touring despite not sleeping very much the night before. This was right after we had our fateful attempt to go explore on our own and were followed by many people at different points of the less than pleasant walk. Incidentally, if you look at the glass partition at the front of the bus, you'll notice how class is played out in subtle and not-so-subtle ways in India. Behind the glass is where the passengers and tour guide sit, in air conditioning. In front of the glass is where the bus driver and bus driver's helper sit, driving for 12 hours a day with no air conditioning. Rachel and I were immensely bothered by this, as it's just fucked up to go out of your way to design a bus that makes the people working hardest separate and unequal. This charming individual was in the park near the President's Residence, Parliament, and India Gate, which was the first stop we made. When he set up shop, I suspected that he'd demand payment for the picture, but it was so worth it. After he slapped the drugged up cobra a few times to wake it up and then "charmed" it, he ran over to us and demanded a 100 rupees from everyone. I was going to give him 50, but he was so busy harassing John that I gave up and walked away. I did! This Alice in Wonderland trash can was in the parking lot of Qutb Minar, a victory tower begun in 1193 by the first of the Delhi sultans, and its surrounding ruins. The tower itself is a stunning engineering feat. From Qutb Minar, we headed to the Baha'i Temple. The lines were absurdly long, but we were able to cut ahead as part of a tour group. The gardens were absolutely stunning. On the way back to the bus, I freaked out either Bus Driver or Bus Driver's Helper (I can't remember which one) when I wandered off a bit and bought a carved wood recorder from a kid in the street. He thought I was lost.

From there, we went to the Birla Mandir, a very cool Hindu temple, but cameras were not allowed so I don't have pictures. We made Fearless Leader, our tour guide, very angry before we left the mandir because we insisted on stopping in the gift shop. Now I realize that he was just as mad about us shopping at a place that didn't pay him a commission as he was at the fact that this put us far behind schedule, meaning that we had to rush through dinner and still arrived late to our day's final destination, Lal Qila (Red Fort) for the horrendous sound and "light" show. This is Lal Qila at night. My new friend Liz saw me trying to take pictures of the fort in the dark and pointed out that my camera has a night vision feature. Bitchin'!

Probably this was one of the best days I ever had, only to be topped by Monday, March 27.

Beast Rider

In the last few years, i have had the privilege of riding several large beasts on various trips that I have gone on. As my pictures show, they have become progressively larger over time. Husband insists that the next animal I ride will be a whale, but somehow I doubt that. I'm no Keisha Castle-Hughes, which is good for a variety of reasons. The thought cracks me up, though. (I was going to try and use "bestiality" in the title of this, but it really grossed me out too much. I am curious how many hits CUSS will get as a result of this post though. People are freaks.)Ranch outside of Buenos Aires, Argentina (Jan. 2004) - In January 2004, Dr. P had a month off from her surgery residency and decided to visit her family in BA. I thought she might be lonely, so I generously offered to join her down there for a week. Husband and Stupid McFuck also tagged along. One day, we went to a traditional ranch outside of the city. We were able to ride horses, engage in traditional dances with gauchos, and watch gaucho games, plus eat lots of parilla, which is BBQ. This was only my second time on a horse, and the gauchos cruelly put me on the largest one in the herd. I thought my legs were going to rip out of their sockets as I straddled the damn thing. Still, glad that I did it.Niveau de la Mer, Israel (August 2005) - Niveau de la Mer is a spot in the Judean desert that is very far below sea level. Our tour bus stopped there to look at the sign on our way to Masada, the ancient desert fortress. Our tour guide told us that a Bedouin with a camel would be there, and that he would offer us a camel ride for free. The trick is that you have to pay him to let you off. Armed with this knowledge, I set about my short but successful first camel ride.Jaipur, India (March 2007) - Our tour group to India rode elephants up the mountainside to Amber Fort outside of Jaipur. This was not one of the more stressless large beast rides I took, as our elephant driver hustled the elephant up the hill so he could get our tip faster, then get down and get the next fare. Rachel was not enjoying it at all, and clung to the seat so hard that her arms hurt the next day. When we got to the top, the guy who helps people de-bark took our picture. At that point, the driver started yelling at us for more money and then as we were gettting off, the photo guy yelled at us for more money, so that was unpleasant. The elephant was very nice, though. She should have stomped them all.

Good Friday Jeans and Friends

Back in the days when I was gainfully employed, I never got Good Friday off. My first year at my previous employer (2002), we got semi-permission to leave early, and I was out the door. I met up with Dr. P and went shopping for jeans. Since I hadn't planned on this, I wore an old pair of granny undies. Actually, most of my undies were granny undies back then, so I really had to be strategic about matching my underwear to my day's activities. Dr. P convinced me to try on a pair of low rise jeans, which I insisted up to that point would never work for me based on a disaster that I had in a fitting room at Express in 1998.

Lo and behold, I loved this new-fangled style. (Every style to me is a fad unless it lasts for over five years, and I am pretty sure low rise jeans had already reached that mark by 2002.) My Levi's 518 Super Low Rise (which were not super low on me because of my short torso – they reached just below my belly button as opposed to just above my pelvis) jeans are starting to look really ratty these days. The crotch and hems are fraying like mad. Stupid Levi's of course does not make the exact same pair any more, so I am trying to savor what I have left in them.

Which brings me to Dr. P. Late August is the 13th anniversary of our friendship. I've held my breath two times as she transitioned from being my friend P to my friend Dr. P. Each time, I was lucky: she got into med school in NYC and then she got her five year surgery residency in NYC. I was delighted to continue to get to spend absurd amounts of time with her. When it comes to fellowship, though, Dr. P is moving to Florida. I'm trying to be brave and taking it one day at a time, just like with the jeans she helped me buy. Fortunately, her goal is to repair holes in people's asses, so I think she'll outlast the jeans.

What was the Plan Again?

OK, so I've been sitting around thinking about things and pondering why on earth I feel the need to squander what is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take a sabbatical for a year by wringing my hands constantly and worrying about what it turns into. I know it's due to guilt that I feel about it. Guilt that I am living off the good will of another person, and worse, guilt that I have this amazing chance to take time off and write that few others do. Guilt is one of those things that is always tripping me up. The other one is naked ambition. It's never enough for me to just do something. I feel compelled to do it best, to have some sort of tangible success in whatever I undertake. If it doesn't work out, then I feel like I wasted my time. Combine that with guilt, and oy vey.

While sitting around pondering this, looking for interesting jobs that I'll never get for a variety of reasons, and not getting dressed like I should to go over to Bugaboo, I realized how far I strayed from my original goals for my time off. When I quit my job in October, burned out at the ripe old age of 30 from my near decade-long attempt to improve the early childhood care and education system for low income kids, I planned to write a book about fun and weird things to do in New York City and also maybe some sort of funny memoir about growing up. What I did was get distracted. I started trying to write all sorts of little articles for freelancing so that I could earn at least a little bit of money and not feel guilty about leading a privileged life. To be fair, I also thought that having my name out there at least a little bit would help with selling a book, so it makes at least some sense. That led to me realizing that I needed more writing clips, so I got a ridiculous writing internship, which has led to me having many articles published, but not necessarily ones that I would want to share with people because I found the topics embarrassing. The whole time, I've been worrying about what next?

This is all stupid. Granted, my book about fun and weird places to visit in New York City has been rejected left and right. On the other hand, I did generate some very good interest at two publishers and came sort of close to a contract at one of them. I should be proud of that. In the time I've been writing, my skills have improved immensely. I even had an epiphany about dialogue, which has made a huge difference in how I approach material I already wrote for the memoir. I submitted part of a chapter to the Memoirists Collective on MySpace, and people liked it. I also received some very useful feedback on how to improve it.

The point is, I need to get back to my original plan. I should finish writing the damn books. If a nice little idea for a freelance article comes up while I work on my goals, cool. But all the hustling and fretting and crying and stressing is not getting me any closer to feeling like I accomplished something, which is important to my sanity and emotional well-being. Pity party over. (For now, anyway…)

Won't You Take Me To (Sad ) Funk-y Town?

It's true: part of the reason that I didn't want my trip to India to end is that it was such a fantastic escape. Sure, I like to tell myself (and others) that I am on a writing sabbatical this year, and thus if nothing comes of it, I'll just go back to working at nonprofit community development and finance. The reality of the situation is that I feel like an unemployed loser living off the largesse of my hard-working husband. I hate that, and so the trip to India was running away from a cold and unpleasant reality. It also allowed me to immerse myself in a completely different reality, which makes it a doubly potent fantasy of sorts.

While I was glad to finally sleep in my own bed on Tuesday night, yesterday was that hard transition day back to the little mess I am making of things in a pathetic attempt to pursue a dream that is never going to happen. It started out OK, with a good mocking of the new toilet seat (and there's no need to apologize for your comment, Viciousrumors – Husband was overreacting. The dude doesn't usually even read my blog but I told him that he was getting a lot of props for his purchase, so he checked it out.). Then I fell into a serious funk that really began the night before when Husband made an offhand remark about me being the only person in the room at Passover who didn't need to work the next day. I know he didn't mean it that way, but OUCH!

As I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling and wondering what I was doing with my life, Dr. P called. It turns out that she was on call the night before and thus free all day. Did I want to have lunch and hang out? Did I ever! Despite the nasty cold rain that reinforced my dreary self-pitying and discouraged me from leaving my house, I jumped at the chance. We had a very nice time. Of course, all that sort of made me feel worse too because she's moving to Florida for a new job in the next few months, but I'm trying to restrict myself to one nervous breakdown at a time.

Anyway, I should get dressed and set out for my meaningless writing internship at Bugaboo Magazine. Because nothing makes me feel better about my misguided choices in life than writing stories for the rich families that are destroying the fabric of New York City. Hopefully my pity party will end soon, but thanks for putting up with me in the meantime.

The Welcome Committee

Finally, I boarded a flight that left Chicago and arrived in New York. As the plane taxied to its gate at JFK, I checked my voicemail messages. Relief rapidly became roiling frustration as I listened to a message from the car service company. It seems that I communicate better with my 14 mangled Hindi words to people who speak limited English than I do to my Husband of 6.5 years, as, despite repeatedly telling him I was on a 2:20 pm flight to JFK, he arranged for a car service to pick me up at LaGuardia.

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck!" I said loudly. The guy across the aisle from me on the plane stared at me.

I called the dispatcher and she was very nice. She said she'd send a car to JFK and he'd be there in 10 minutes. I began to tell her it would take me a bit longer than that to get to the pick up area, but my call waiting began beeping and my "low battery" signal went off at the same time. I answered the call waiting, and spoke to Husband for four seconds before my cell phone died. At that point, I considered how satisfying it would be to throw it on the floor and stomp it to a million pieces, but despite decided that the answer would be "highly," I put it back in my pocket. I really miss my StarTac.

Some small mishaps happened in finding the car and then discovering that neither I nor the driver know how to get to in-law's house from JFK, but it all worked out and I arrived around 7:00 and Husband, Mother-in-Law, Rebecca, and my friend who I invited to a Passover Seder that I almost didn't make it to came out to greet me. I barely ate anything at dinner, though, because my stomach was in the early stages of revolt. It felt really great to see everyone.

On the way home, my digestive track kicked up into full welcome home mode, and upon arriving at my apartment, I made a mad dash for the bathroom. Although I was about to shit my pants, I stopped dead in my tracks when I turned the bathroom light on.What the fuck? The hamster that used to run the wheel in my brain definitely died early that day, so I stood still, mouth agape, trying to process what happened to my toilet. A few moments later, the new hamster sent by the temp agency arrived, and the wheel spun again. A not-too-distant memory of a conversation I had with Husband while I was in India replayed in my head.

"Hey, I'm thinking of getting a new toilet seat," Husband said. "Any particular kind you want?"

"Not the cushiony kind," I replied. "Those split quickly."

"I was thinking that, too. Also, I'm not getting another wooden one," he piped in. I loved out wooden toilet seat (it had been a dream come true when we got it upon moving in almost five years ago, I shit you not), but knew he was right. Thanks to the crappy plumbing in the building which resulted in geyser sprays emanating from the toilet bowl, the toilet seat had starting rotting.

"Plastic it is," I agreed.

Now that I was faced with our new plastic toilet seat, I was not actually sure that I could bring myself to use it. But nature called – rather urgently, in fact – and I found my ass plopped down on quarters suspended in Lucite. We completely outdid my parents in Jewish white trashiness with this one.

Welcome home, Suzanne.

Friends!

This is probably utterly pathetic, but as I have been catching up with all of my delightful blogging friends whose fine prose, wit, and insight I have missed much more than I realized over the last 9 days, I am cheering up quite a bit. Sure some of you up and moved your site and now I have to make a new link to you (sigh), but damn if this isn't exactly what I needed. Reading your blogs is like the big warm hug that I am craving. I don't care if it is lame that I am deriving this from mostly strangers, I think it is awesome.

Thanks folks!

Woman on the Verge

I'm sitting in O'Hare. I should be landing at LaGuardia now, but I am still being punished for my greedy attempt to have it all (extra time in India, time with my family, and time with my in-laws). Thus my flight was all on track to go, and then it was delayed by 15 minutes. No biggie.

Then my flight was delayed by an hour. Then another hour. I craftily identified a flight that was leaving for JFK that actually had a plane and crew here. I was first on the stand by list. I was pleased. Then the motherfuckers canceled the flight to LaGuardia. And suddenly 8 people who have higher status than I do were in front of me for stand by. I began losing it. By the time the plane was loaded and I was fucking next to get off the stand by list, the airline decided that although there were seats left, the plane was too heavy given the weather conditions to take anyone else. So for the 675,922 in three days, I found myself bawling.

I always get emotionally screwy after a good/intense trip. It's just time for me to go home and see Husband. I was so looking forward to having a nice Passover with my other family, Rebecca, and my friend who I invited. Normally, I become a crabby wenchy bitch when things like this disappoint me, but my little fuel tank is low and I am running on fumes here. Fumes make me cry.

Anyway, at least I got internet access in the airport. I'm looking forward to catching up on all the blogs I've missed for the last 9 days or so.

Phir Milege

Monday, April 2

Bus drivers' helpers in India all look the same at first. They are all slight, dark brown men with mustaches in their mid- to late 20s. All wear cheap polyester button-down shirts and blue pants with slip on shoes made from plastic or some other synthetic material and no socks. Of course, they don't all look alike once you focus for a second, but at a quick glance, it's sometimes hard to tell who is the person you've driven around India with for a week. You need to see the man's face.

Thus my heart stopped for a second when I was leaving the hotel for the airport yesterday. A tour bus from Le Passage to India – the tour company we used (magnifique) – pulled up to the front door of the Meridien, and the bus driver's helper sprang out and began assisting a group of white tourists from the bus. It was so familiar to me. The man's back was to me, and the sun glinted off the windshield in a way that prevented me from seeing the bus driver's face. Could it be that I had one last chance to get a picture with my friends and say good-bye again?

I took a few jittery steps away from the bell man who was arranging a ride for me to the airport and tentatively went toward the bus. The bus driver's helper turned around. His face was much harder than Malikit's, with none of the beautiful sadness that intrigued me so. He stared at me for a second before going back to his duties. I looked into the bus from a new angle, but still could not see the driver's face. Only after the helper nimbly leapt up the stairs into the cab, the door closed, and the bus began to pull away did I notice that he was much younger than Mohindrish, with a goatee dyed a hideous reddish orange. In the few seconds that I saw his face, he exuded none of the friendliness that I had liked so much about Mohindrish. I didn't think these men would have been nearly as amused by my pathetic attempts to greet them in Hindi, but who knows? Maybe when Malikit and Mohindrish thought no one was watching, they took on a harder edge too. I wouldn't blame them. Still, I knew how incredibly lucky our group was to have them with us.

I also know that the reason that it is so hard for me to leave this trip behind is the amazing vibe that accompanied us on our overly packed agenda. We covered hundreds of miles of territory and history in only seven days together. The people on the trip spent almost every waking minute together, experiencing a new culture that mystified and confused us, but made us want to probe deeper. I can't speak for everyone who went, but I know for certain that this was a once in a lifetime journey for many of us. I believe that the personalities of the group and the tour staff made it what it was, and those circumstances will never align again.

That's why, more than 10 hours into my flight back to Chicago, I am crying my eyes out as I write this.

Ending My Time in India with a Bang, or What Happens When I Push My Luck

Sunday, April 1

The tears finally began around 4 pm. By 4:15, I was rocking back and forth with sobs, undoubtedly due in part to sheer exhaustion. For eight days, I trudged around in a hot, alien country, for the most part completely unable to comprehend the culture. Each time I thought I figured it out, I was surprised and unsure again. Definitely I should have gone back with my friends the night before, but even now at the airport lounge, I am on the verge of crying.

My trip to India literally wound down with a bang. That was the sound my foot made as it connected with the leg of the bed in my foofy hotel room last night. I figured that I just stubbed it, but when I woke up this morning, the poor little toe on my right foot was swollen and hurt. This is my second brush with foot injury, as I stepped on a rusty nail on Friday while I was at the Amber Fort. (In that case, it did not go through my shoe, and I only noticed I had stepping on something when my stride was strange. Looking down, I saw a metal plate stuck to my foot. Damn, I was lucky that I stepped on it with the thickest part of my shoe's sole.) Still, I didn't think that I broke it, and even if I had, I wanted to go do some shopping for last minute items around the hotel, so I ate breakfast and set out. Before I left, I realized that I had no sunscreen. Fie.

It was hot, even at 10:30 am. The blazing sunlight proved my prior's night's observation about no sidewalks to be 100% incorrect, I was pleased to find. Still, I was hassled a little bit by auto rickshaw drivers who kept following me and offering to take me to a mall, but I ignored them. (I did get good at that while I was here.) My big plan was to hit the Cottage Industries, which is a multilevel artists' collective shop with handicrafts from around India. Luck was running low for me, and thus when I arrived I learned that it was closed on March 31 and April 1 for inventory. Fuck fuck fuck. At least I could head over to the open air market I visited last Sunday (Monday?) with the group.

The market was still being set up at 10:45, so I headed over to a hotel lobby to pee and wait for a while. My pits were pools of sweat. I couldn't imagine wandering around in weather like this and pondered how I might spend the rest of my last day. Studying my map yielded the insight that the Central Museum of India was not far from the hotel, so I reformed my day's events accordingly. My toe hurt and I didn't want to walk far, heat or no heat, and I was not keen on the idea of getting in an auto rickshaw alone.

At 11:00, I went back to the market. I got two more tank tops like the one I bought on my prior trip. My first purchase was for 300 rupees. This morning the guy asked for 500.

"No, I'll give you 300," I said, crabby from the heat and the sticker that apparently said "sucker" on my forehead.

"450," he countered, smiling and trying to charm me.

"300 or nothing," I replied. I've never been a good haggler, and I credit this entirely to my annoyance that he'd try and charge me more this time. Had I not bought one before, I doubt I would not have known that 500 was too much.

"400 – my best offer," he came back.

"No thanks," I said and walked away.

Suddenly, he was calling after me. "Miss! Miss! 350!"

I walked back. "300 or nothing."

"OK, 300." I gave him a 500 rupee bill. They didn't have change, so he asked if I wanted another. I got one in black and one in blue. The first one I bought is hot pink, and fits me perfectly. If anyone is about my size, email me, and I'll give you the black one. I don't really need three of them… I also picked up some beads for Des, although they are not quite what I was looking for, they were the only ones I saw. They are cute.

My shopping was semi-successful, so I headed back to the hotel. I needed more water and wanted to drop my purchases off before going to the museum. By that point, my toe was not only swollen, but purple with bruising. I tried to find a sundries seller in the hotel, but they had nothing but overpriced jewelry, scarves, and carpets. Oh well. At least I had my hat to protect my face, and I resolved to walk in as much shade as possible.

It was about a ten minute walk to the museum. I swear I felt the flesh frying off my arms. Further, I realized that there was no fucking way that I could wear the same outfit for a 16 hour flight. I had basically sweat through my undies, my jeans were sticky, and my shirt had an enormous wet sweat spot under each arm. I'd also require a second shower.

The museum was unintentionally kitschy, just how I like it. It was only air conditioned in select parts. (If Husband had been with me today as originally planned, he would have dissolved in a salty pool of his own sweat.) I really wished that Rachel, John, and Brian were with me. I knew they would have also enjoyed it. The randomness reminded me of the fun we had at the City Palace museum in Jaipur on Friday. The Central Museum has a fascinating display of arms and weapons, coins throughout the history of India, and many sculptures. Best of all, it has a huge collection of what they call "miniature" paintings. They didn't seem very diminutive to me, but the detail and colors are incredible. Each one is like an illuminated manuscript. Fantastic!

I bought a present for my parents at the gift shop. Unfortunately, they forgot to give me a receipt, which caused some issues when I tried to leave the museum. After detaining me over lack of "papers" for a few minutes, security finally sent me back to the shop to produce evidence that I bought the damn thing. My luck did hold out, and they fished it out of the trash, and upon presenting my "paper" to the security guy, he let me leave.

I was back in the hotel by 3 pm and in the shower soon after. However, I didn't notice that the shower door didn't fully close until I had flooded the floor. Good thing that Indians put drains in the floor for people to wash themselves after using the toilet. Then I puttered about and re-packed my suitcase so that I would not have to check it. I was quite proud of the condensing I did, but ultimately I had to check it anyway. I think I'll get away with carrying it on from Chicago to New York, though, assuming that it arrives with me tomorrow morning.

After all my crying, I checked out of the hotel at 5. The heat (and my toe and lack of sunscreen) dissuaded me from leaving my bags with the bell man and setting out one last time, so I thought I would head over to the airport and sit around for a few hours. What I didn't know was that I would not be allowed into the terminal until 8 pm, so when I arrived at 5:45, I was directed to a special visitor's lounge across the street to wait.

I had to buy a ticket to get in, but this took me some time to figure out. While I was trying to understand what was going on, some guy kept trying to convince me to go to a hotel to wait. He was most annoying, although the last guy to harangue me and easily ignored. I paid my 30 rupees (about 75 cents) to get into the lounge, where I read Julie and Julia, a book by a woman who escaped the drudgery of her day job by challenging herself to cook all the recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking (or whatever the Julia Child book is called that I can't recall now and am not bothering to look up) and blogging about it. I'm not into the cooking so much, but it is a great book and I identify with it a little too closely. (Woman hates job and uses blog as release? Anyone?)

I'm writing this up from an overcrowded welcome lounge for business class passengers from various airlines. While I definitely enjoy the comforts of a wider seat and better food, I have always felt a little weird in business class. I know full well that I belong with the peons on the back, and I also know that when I am where I belong, I glare at the business class passengers as I get on the plane, seething with class issues. Today, I feel even more pretentious and obnoxious knowing that I will be reclining in comfort while extremely hard working people struggle to scratch out a living driving a bus 12-15 hours a day and not enjoying any of the comforts that his charges take for granted, like eating in a restaurant we stop at. I know life's not fair, blah blah blah, but it still stings a little bit more now that it is closer than ever.

Anyway, phir milege (see you!), I'm off to the boarding area.