Writing About Me

My brother and his girlfriend are moving into my father's garage. My mother is moving next door to my father--with her boyfriend. My grandfather has lost control of his bowels and mows through adult diapers like there's no tomorrow. My best friend's boyfriend of five years left her suddenly. My boyfriend's birthday is tomorrow. The semester is officially done. A student recently told me I need to stop assigning readings about "cancer and dead babies and stuff."

These are some things that have been going on lately.

I know I haven't been here to tell you about them. I've been wondering why I stopped writing. I've been wondering that for a long time, actually. My reluctance to blog started shortly after I started up with The Lady-Killer. Why? Because The Lady-Killer and I spent most of the summer and fall of 2010 in bed, but we did not--contrary to Christine's opinion--develop bedsores. Also, living with someone takes up a lot of time. Seriously. There are days when I get in bed at night and think, "I wanted to do, like, eighty things all day, and yet I spent a good chunk of time lying on the couch reading a magazine and watching TLK play video games." The glorious thing about these thoughts though--and this is showing some real growth here, people--is that they generally do not bother me. The fact that I got almost no shit done would have driven me crazy, pre-TLK. But my world since TLK is like a whole new world, one where a psychiatrist prescribed me a whole mess of anti-anxiety meds. That's right. TLK is like a walking, talking anti-anxiety pill. Plus, he has a lip piercing that feels really good when you kiss him.

And here's another thing. I don't want to tell you some of these things. I mean, I do. I really do. I want to tell you about a million beautiful things about TLK--how he's so funny and charming, how he sometimes makes me giggle until I think I'm going to wet my pants, how he makes really good scrambled eggs because he puts cream cheese in them, how we sleep on the same pillow at night (a fact that, when I told my friends Emily and Christine, almost made them barf)--but I also don't want to tell you those things. I feel more private now. I want to hold some things close to the vest. (I mean, see that list of cute things about TLK up there? THAT IS NOTHING. TRUST ME.) But there's just something in me now that is saying Shhh.

I think it has something to do with me protecting TLK's privacy, and mine. I also think it has something to do with growing up. I mean, back in grad school, you could not shut me the fuck up. I wanted to talk about myself all day and night. And then after grad school, I wah-wah-wahed for months about how sad I was, about how rotten and dumb my life had become now that I had graduated and been forced out of the loving cocoon of the MFA program, where everyone is batshit crazy in really lovable (okay, mostly lovable) ways. I wah-wah-wahed over the Wily Republican, who I now, for days at a time, sometimes forget even exists (oh glorious, happy day that I never thought would come!). Then I wah-wah-wahed over having to take up waitressing when my adjunct gig was over for the summer. Oh my God, how did anyone stand me?

But now, I sort of don't want to talk about myself. And that's really startling to me, because I really love to talk, and I really love to talk about myself. (This, I think, has something to do with my family. Generally, during every phone call my mother and I have, we will spend 15 minutes detailing how stupid our relatives, our neighbors, our coworkers, or other people out in the world are. Then one of us will pause and say, "Well, you know, because we're obviously perfect." Sitting in judgment of others and thus illuminating our own awesomeness is one of our favorite pastimes, right up there with badminton and pierogi-eating.)

Anyway, sometimes I miss writing about myself, and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I think, holy crap! That thing TLK is doing right now is so funny (or weird! or crazy! or ill-advised!) I really should write about it! (I've said it before, but I'll say it again: TLK is a lot like my brother. He's lovable in the same way and for similar reasons that have made a lot of complete strangers who read this blog fall in love with my brother. Therefore, I think he makes a beautiful muse.)

Still, I have struggled to get it right when writing about TLK. It's easier to write about my brother than it is to write about TLK. A lot of what's funny between me and TLK has to do with the origin of our relationship, and that's one of those private things I'm not willing to share right now. I don't really care about exposing my brother's weird foibles. The kid is related to me, but it's like he's actually not. It's actually like he's some glorious, horrible space alien that took over the room in our house that had been previously reserved for my mother's typewriter. That kid--the one who took over the typewriter room, which I used to think was its own kind of heaven? That kid I'll expose all day long. TLK though? I'd rather not. That one's all mine.

So that's part of it. The other parts I'm really still trying to understand. But right now I have the inclination to be quiet, but who knows how that's going to go and how long that's going to stick around? After all, when I go home this summer, my mother will be convincing my grandfather that he can never again leave the nursing home and return to his house and that she, in fact, will be renovating the house and moving in. (Wait. Did I say "will be renovating?" I actually mean "totally already did it and has already had new furniture delivered. Surprise, Grandpa!)

In addition, my brother and his girlfriend are consolidating all the things they went to the trouble to dig up for their new apartment, which they've only been in for one year, and they will be moving those things into a small room off to the side of my father's garage. They'll be living there for God knows who long, which means they'll be there when I arrive at my father's house for my usual summer R&R. I think this year my stay at Dad's house will be less like a quiet spa vacation and more like a sitcom staring a boy who once frittered away his life savings at a Hooters.

So maybe I'll be back, but maybe I won't. Either way, I wanted you to know that everything is good--more than good--and that I'm just wrapped up in it, loving it, and being quiet about it for right now.

Why I Love My Mother

A conversation with my mother about the girl featured here:

Mom: Well, I got that e-mail you sent with that letter from your student in it. Oh my God. Where do these people come from?

Me: I don't know, Mom. It boggles me.

Mom: Well, I took one look at that and thought, Now there's a future Dollar Store employee if I've ever seen one!

And Now a Story that Involves Wine, Vomit, and My Brother

Let me brief and honest: My last full day of spring break was not awesome.

At first it seemed promising. It went a little something like this: Broadway Market for pierogi and placek and rye bread and pounds of sponge candy, and then the whole world fell off its axis and went spinning off into space.

There was some family drama, and after that family drama unfolded my mother was left teary-eyed and demanding to know where we'd put the fucking wine. She went into the bathroom to cry for a little bit, and I stood in the kitchen with forty dollars of Chinese food still sitting untouched and pristine in its take out containers. My mother was upset and crying in her bathroom, and I was trying to yank a stuck cork from a stubborn bottle of wine.

This called for reinforcements.

HOLY SHIT, I texted my brother. YOU NEED TO COME HOME NOW. I NEED BACKUP.

It's not that I needed help with the cork--eventually I bashed that thing out of the neck of the wine and poured two glasses (a giant one for my mother, a small one for me)--but it was that I needed help with the drama. I am not very good at handling my mother's sadness. It's true. I've handled it poorly all my life--especially after my parents' divorce. Back then, I adopted the attitude that it was her own fault, she'd made her choice, now she had to live with it. Sometimes I looked at my mother and thought SUCK IT UP.

On my last full day of spring break, though, I was not thinking SUCK IT UP; I was thinking THERE IS NOTHING IN THE WORLD I CAN DO TO MAKE MY MOTHER FEEL LESS SHITTY RIGHT NOW. I knew I would eventually need help and that I wouldn't be able to be a clown for long enough to make her forget her problems.

Thus the text to my brother.

He arrived three hours into my crisis control--which, it should be noted, is not very smooth or sophisticated. If anyone is ever hurt or sad, this is what I will do to try to soothe them: I will park it on the couch, mix a drink or pour some wine, and I will pat a knee or a shoulder or a head until it seems lame to continue to do so, and then I will mix another drink or pour some more wine, and then I will say something stupid and silly and inappropriate in hopes that the person I am getting drunk will laugh and forget, for just a second, whatever is making them sad.

But the family drama on this particular Saturday had made me sad, too, and I needed someone to come refresh me, too. If we were going to make it through this, we all needed to be at our best. And that was where Adam came in.

"So," he said, after arriving and sitting himself in front of me and my mother, "how drunk are you? I saw the two wine bottles on the counter."

"I'm not drunk," my mother said.

That was a lie.

"She's pretty drunk," I said.

"How much did she drink?" Adam asked.

"Well, I only had one glass," I said.

He raised his eyebrows. "Oh."

"I'm not that drunk," my mother said.

"Are you going to puke?" my brother said. He wrinkled his nose, thinking about the possibility. "What I'm saying is I don't really want to wake up in the middle of the night to hear you barfing into the toilet. It is right next to my room, you know."

"Adam," I said, "shut up. She can puke if she wants to puke. She's a grown woman."

"I don't want to hear it!" he said. "That's gross!"

"Oh, like you've never done it," my mother said.

My brother grinned and sat back in the chair. He cracked his knuckles and surveyed the floor of the living room. "Oh, I've done it before," he said.

"I know," my mother said. "You've had parties. You've had them here!"

"It's true."

"Gross," I said.

"Whatever," he said. "Have I ever told you two the story about the rug?"

"What rug?" my mother asked.

"The rug that is missing from this room."

"There's a rug missing from this room?" my mother asked.

"Yes. For, like, years."

"Liar!" she said. "There's no rug missing."

"Mother," Adam said, "do you mean to tell me you've never noticed that one of your runners is missing from the living room?"

She took a long sip from her wine.

"I puked on it," my brother said. "I was having a party, and the boys were here, and we were drinking, and I'd had a lot, and I couldn't make it to the bathroom, so I just leaned forward, opened my mouth, and vomited out a neat little pile of puke. RIGHT. ONTO. THE. RUNNER."

"You are vile," I said.

My mother started giggling.

"We were too drunk to do much of anything about it," my brother said, "so I told the boys to just leave it, and we'd worry about it the next morning."

"OH MY GOD!" I said. "You left puke sit over night!"

"I was trashed, Jess," my brother said. "What did you think I was going to do?"

My mother giggled harder. "What did you do with it?" she asked.

"In the morning, I rolled the rug up, put it in a bag, and we put it in the car and took it to the car wash."

"Holy shit," I said. "You took a puked-on runner to the CAR WASH?"

"Listen," he said, "it was a good idea. You know how they have the clips for the car mats? Well, I took the rug out of the bag, clipped it up, and then blasted the shit out of it."

"You sprayed vomit with a pressure washer," I said. "That's smart. Vomit everywhere!"

My brother nodded. "Yes," he said. "But it got clean, okay? And I rolled it up and put it back in the bag--"

"The puke bag?!" I asked.

He glared.

"Fine," I said. "Continue."

"I put it back in the bag, and I took it home, dragged it into the garage, and then I forgot about it," he said. "A few days later I was out there, and I realized I'd forgotten the rug. And there it was, in a dark corner, and the bag was really condensated. So I knew there were really only two possibilities now: That I'd open that bag, and I would find the rug all moldy and disgusting; or, alternatively, I'd open the bag and smell the worst old vomit smell that ever existed. So I just took that bag and threw it into the garbage can and buried it."

"My rug!" my mother said.

"You're disgusting," I said. "You threw out MOM'S RUG."

But my mother was laughing and spilling her wine and mopping it up and laughing some more. She was denying that there was a rug missing. She was saying she'd never noticed its absence. She was saying it wasn't true.

And what she wasn't saying was everything else that was in her mind at that moment--all the bad stuff--and at that moment, for that reason, I loved my brother very, very much.

This One's For Anyone Wondering What My Brother Did with His Weekend

If you walked into my brother's room in my mother's trailer here's a few things you might find: a poster featuring three spread-legged porn stars; a replica of his and his girlfriend's hands--which are intertwined--done up in two colors of wax (pink for her; blue for him); seventeen bottles of cologne; spray painted t-shirts of the variety you can get at the state fair; a coffee maker; and a bag of multicolored dog treats ("Only a $1.99!" he told me.  "Can you believe it?").

The newest item that has made it into my brother's room is this: a turtle.

The turtle appeared yesterday, mysteriously, a surprise.  One day the trailer was turtle-free, the next it was not.  My mother woke up and walked by his room and saw a suspicious soft light streaming into the hall.  When she pushed inside, there was the turtle in a large tank that had been set up on top of Adam's dresser.  The tank had a makeshift wooden top placed over it, and there was writing on it.  It said: MY NAME IS MYRTLE THE TURTLE.

"Did you see your brother's turtle?" my mother asked after I arrived at her house tonight, loaded down with the makings of her official birthday dinner (beef stroganoff, homemade biscuits, and chocolate raspberry cake) I had started at home.

"Excuse me? A turtle?"  I walked down the hall and leaned my head in the room.  There it was.  A turtle.  In a tank.  On Adam's dresser.

For those of you keeping track, here is the current tally of living beings currently inhabiting my mother's very small, very skinny, very non-double-wide trailer: my mother, my mother's boyfriend, my mother's boyfriend's son, my brother, the cat (Zoe), the dog (Ziggy), and Myrtle the Turtle.

"I didn't know he was getting a turtle," I said.

"Yeah," my mom said.  "Neither did I."

Earlier that weekend, over a fish fry, my father had revealed to me that he knew Adam was headed down to Erie, Pennsylvania, which Adam had recently informed us was his and his girlfriend's favorite place on earth, a place they go when they're feeling down in the dumps, a place they hope to someday live because they think it's a fine place, a sweet place, the best place.  

"Why are they going to Erie again?" I asked.  

"I think they're getting a fish tank."

"In Erie, Pennsylvania?"

"Yes.  In Erie, Pennsylvania.  A fish tank.  Just another passing fascination of your brother.  He'll love it for a few weeks, and then it will be over, forgotten."

My brother loves things like that--fast, hard, intensely--and then, without warning, those things are pushed aside in his heart to make room for the next fad.  In the past, he has gone crazy for collecting hot sauce and glass Coke bottles.  He has been obsessed with exotic flavors of pop.  He went wild for paintball for about two months and hasn't touched his very expensive equipment since.  For a long time, he amassed tiny sample bottles of every cologne they sold at the perfume counters at department stores.  He had a short-spanned love affair with dwarf rabbits.  He used to comb the grocery stores and coffee shops for the blackest, darkest, earthiest grounds he could find for his bedside coffee maker, but that led to unpleasant stomach and bowel issues, and that obsession fizzled.

And so his new obsession was a fish tank, and, I thought, fish.  But I was wrong.  My brother wasn't tooling around Erie, Pennsylvania for a fish tank for fish.  He was looking for something to keep a turtle in, and, of course, he was looking for the turtle, too.

When Adam got to my mom's tonight, the first thing he asked me was, "Hey.  Did you see my turtle?"

"Yes," I said.  "I didn't know you were into turtles."

"Oh, sure I am."

I stirred the stroganoff and nodded.  "Of course," I said.  "And are you planning on getting Myrtle a friend? Someone to keep her company? A boyfriend?"

"Sure," he said.  "Sometime.  Not now, but soon.  He'll need company."

"Wait a second," I said.  "HE? You named your male turtle Myrtle?"

"Yeah."

"Are you aware Myrtle is a girl's name?"

He frowned.

"It is," I said.

"Well, what else was I going to name him?" he asked.  "Myrtle the Turtle.  It sounds great."

"And how do you think he feels about that name?"

"Great," he said.  "I think he feels great about it.  I think I'm going to get him a salamander."

"For a friend?"

Adam shook his head.  "No.  To eat."

Later, at dinner, my brother charmed us with burps, with farts, and a story about he laid out the longest, most disgusting fart in the middle of Gander Mountain while he and his girlfriend were looking at golf balls.

"I swear I looked around before I did it," my brother said.  "I swear.  I mean, I looked! I checked! And then I farted, and it was the loudest fart ever.  It was the type where you could hear my butt cheeks rattling.  It went on forever.  I was trying to do it discreetly--"

"Wait a minute," his girlfriend interrupted.  "You weren't super discreet.  You popped your ass up in the air and tipped your head back."  She demonstrated.  

My brother laughed.  "Yeah," he said.  "I did that.  And then when I opened up my eyes, there was a guy standing two feet from me.  I don't know where he came from.  I can only imagine what he thought."

Most of the time, I can only imagine what Adam is thinking.  I'd like a chance to crack open his head, see what's brewing inside, understand just how he got the way he is--because he is an odd boy who is capable of going on rants about the awesomeness of Pennsylvania ("Did you go to Pennsylvania just to go to Petsmart?" I asked tonight.  "Well, no," he said.  "I mean, we went to price out pet stores.  We went to just check around at all the local joints and price things.  How much are fish in Pennsylvania? How much are dog treats? You know, we priced that stuff.") and the unawesomeness of France ("I hate it!" he said.  "Why?" I asked.  "Give me one good reason," I said.  "I don't know!" he said.  "I just hate France and everything French!"), and he is capable of wanting to own a roomful of floppy-eared bunnies, and he is completely okay with wallpapering his room with posters of porn stars, and he is not above jostling his private parts around in his palm while he tells me goodbye.    And now he is the proud owner of Myrtle the Turtle ("Hey!" he said.  "Lots of turtles live to be 150 years old!" and "Hey!" he said.  "He's going to be over a foot long soon! He's just a baby now!"), and sometimes I think I should get a therapist just so I can discuss my brother and his antics, and we would work every day for hours and hours, and this could go on for months, and the therapist and I still wouldn't figure him out.  We still wouldn't figure out where this kid came from and how he's in any way related to me.

And Then He Put His Hands on the Jackson Pollock Painting

Yesterday, at approximately 3:45 PM we were entering the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.  This was part of my mother's Surprise Birthday Extravaganza! that her boyfriend had orchestrated.  He'd borrowed a friend's RV for the day, and I decorated it with help from his son, the boy previously known as the possibly-gay-black-belt-son.  (I say previously not because he has disgraced himself and is no longer a master of martial arts; instead, I say previously because I no longer have my suspicions about his sexuality.  Now that he no longer sleeps on the top bunk with 100 of his favorite Beanie Babies--remember? sparkling unicorns, angel bears, and the like--he seems to be solidly pro-girl.)

So, after we surprised my mother with the RV and the bevy of snacks we'd loaded into it, we were off for the first of several stops along the extravaganza route.  We did the Buffalo Garden Walk, which took us around the city to thousands of amazing gardens in front of or behind beautiful homes downtown.  It started raining early in the afternoon, so we cut our tour short and headed to the next stop along our route: the Albright Knox Gallery.  We tailgated there for a bit--we were in an RV, after all--and drank some wine and ate some chips and let my mother open some of her birthday gifts.

After that, we headed into the art gallery.  And in the very first hallway, just several feet from the door, as the rest of the group was striding ahead, desperate to get through this at a fast click--my mother's boyfriend, his son, and my brother are notoriously anti-art--my brother spied something that caught his eye, so he stopped in front of the tall canvas.

And then he reached out and touched it.

But more than touched it.  He pressed his entire palm against it, and leaned into it a bit, testing the canvas's give, its strength, its texture.

It was a Jackson Pollock painting.  I almost had a heart attack.

"ADAM!" I hissed, and in the quiet of that gallery that hiss was pretty loud.  Everyone--our party and the several other groups that were milling about the abstract wing--turned to look at me, the girl who hissed, and Adam, the boy who was leaning against a Jackson Pollock painting.

"What?" my brother said.

"YOU CAN'T TOUCH THE PAINTINGS!" I said.  "GET YOUR HAND OFF IT!"

My brother looked all put out, but he did take his hand off the painting.  "Oh, Jess," he said.  "Chill out."  

"Chill out?" I closed the distance between us, so that I was standing right next to him and able to hiss at him all I wanted without other people wondering if I was yelling at a poor retarded boy who didn't know you can't put your hands on a Jackson Pollock painting.  "Adam, you cannot, cannot, cannot touch art in museums."

"Well, I didn't know that," he said.  "How was I supposed to know that?"

"Are you stupid?"

"Listen, it doesn't say I can't touch it," he said, "so how am I supposed to know I shouldn't touch it?"

"How about using your head?" I said.  "This is an expensive piece of art by a famous artist.  What do you think would happen to it if everyone just came up to it and put their hands all over the canvas?"

He frowned.  "Fine," he said.  "Whatever.  And it's not very good anyway.  I mean, I could do that.  I could splatter paint on a canvas and make it look disgusting."

I sighed.  He sounded just like one of my students.  

But he'd already moved on, and he and his girlfriend were standing in front of another canvas.

"How is that art? It's nothing," he said, loudly, and some of the other people sent him withering glances.

"Ssssh," I said.  I needled him in the ribs.  "Here.  I'll ask you the same thing I'd ask my students if they said that to me.  Break it down into its parts.  What do you see?  Consider the colors, the brushstrokes, the shapes.  What does it evoke?"

He considered the painting for a minute and then he said, "A sunny day.  I see the horizon and a big sky.  I see the sun."

"See?" I said.  "That's a lot more specific than saying 'this is nothing,' isn't it?"

"I still think I could've painted it," he grumbled, "but whatever."

Around the next corner, my brother reached out and flicked a light switch that was part of an installation piece.

"ADAM!" I said.  "WHAT DID WE JUST TALK ABOUT?!"

He turned around and narrowed his eyes at me.  "Jeff just did it, too," he said, speaking of my mother's boyfriend, who had gone past the installation before Adam.

I wanted to die.  I wanted to curl up in the corner and wait until they had gone through the gallery so I could make my way through not in the wake of them, the group who was saying loudly, "Wow, that's a real piece of crap!" or "Holy shit! People actually pay money for this?" all while flicking and touching or leaning against the artwork.  (Later, when we were in the upstairs gallery, which featured a room that was filled with giant sculptures of tables and chairs, my mother's boyfriend leaned against one of the chairs and was scolded by one of the guards.)

But curling up in a corner and praying they would forget I was with them was not really an option.  I had to follow them--at a safe distance, so it might look to others like perhaps I was just a girl going through the museum by herself, and not with those crazy people in front of her. 

In another of the lower galleries, my brother dragged me over to a piece that featured long pendulums of different color rocking around and converging to make new colors every time.  

"LOOK," he said, pointing to the floor.  Underneath the pendulums were the words PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH.  "See?" he said.  "If there's something they don't want you to touch, they label it accordingly."

"You are a moron," I said.  

And then he bounded off to get his girlfriend, so they could go stand in another wing and whisper about how ridiculous they thought this was, how stupid it was to call some of this stuff art, and I wandered off on my own so I could stop in front of each of the paintings without feeling the cold breeze that kicked up as the rest of the members of my party jogged by without even the smallest of critical glances at what we had come to see.

This One Is for Diana (Because She Loves My Brother)

Let's cut straight to the point, okay?

Spring break sucked. It sucked ass. It sucked cock. It sucked dirty spring break ass cock.

Here's the breakdown:

TUESDAY


6:00 AM:

Our plane out of Buffalo takes off on time and lifts us into the sky. We touch down in Cincinnati, have a snack, get on our connector, and fly down to Miami International. We are in Florida by noon.


12:15 PM:

There are no signs for the rental car agencies. We ask someone where we go, what we do. Our paperwork says there is a counter in the terminal and a shuttle to the place we get the car. Turns out there is no counter in the terminal, but there is a shuttle to the place we get the car. Someone points us to it, and we go and stand next to a small placard that says RENTAL SHUTTLE. A thousand buses whiz by us. Buses for Avis and National and Thrifty.

"Do they stop?" my mother asks because not one has. They haven't even slowed down to give us the time to identify whether or not they belong to us.

"Maybe they are buses for another terminal," I say.

When the bus for our rental agency comes by, I am unsure what to do. I give the driver the heads-up nod, and he slows and pulls to the curb. He comes out angry.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU FLAG ME DOWN?!" he demands.

"I nodded at you," I tell him.

"YOU NEED TO FLAG ME DOWN!" he yells.

"I'm sorry," I say. I start rolling my bag toward the bus. I motion for my mother and my brother.

"WELL, WHY DIDN'T YOU FLAG ME DOWN?" he asks. "HUH? DON'T YOU KNOW YOU NEED TO FLAG ME DOWN?"

I am shoving my bag on the rack. I want him to stop yelling at me in front of the other passengers, who look alarmed by the angry man. It doesn't help things that he has a thick accent, and it's sometimes difficult to understand what he's saying. Sometimes it's just loud noise instead of words. A little girl burrows into her mother's side. I sit. My brother sits. My mother sits.

"I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU DON'T FLAG ME DOWN!" he says and slams the door shut.


12:30 PM:

The man at the rental counter slides us the keys to our silver Dodge and tells us that it's in spot 206. He points vaguely at one of the doors on the side of the building and waves us away.

We walk out the back and roll our things own to space 206. It is empty. There is no car in space 206.

"Maybe they bring it to us?" my brother asks.

"Maybe," I say, doubtful.

"Maybe they're washing it and bringing it over," my mother says. She points to the detail shop, where a row of cars is being scrubbed down by very tan men.

A worker sees our confused faces and comes over. "Where's your papers?" he asks.

My mother hands him our invoice, which clearly marks our spot as 206.

"Here," the worker says. He points to the spot on which we are standing. "See?" he says. "Two-oh-six."

"There's no car," my brother says.

The worker looks down at the spot. He looks at our paperwork. He looks at the spot again. He looks at us. "Oh," he says.

Anothe worker is walking by. The first worker flags him down. "Hey!" he says. He hands the paper over.

"Two-oh-six," the second worker reads. He looks at us and then down at the empty spot. "Ha!" he says. He snorts and then shrugs. "How about you take that one?" he says, pointing to a different car in a different spot.

"We can just take one that we weren't given?" my mother asks.

The guy shrugs. "The keys should be in there," he says.


1:30 PM:

We are in the lobby of our hotel. We are surrounded by spring breakers who are wandering in and out with flip-flops and Mai Tais. It seems to be taking an awful long time to get checked in, and the woman behind the counter isn't saying anything.

Adam is over peering into the gift shop, planning the first of his many shopping bonanzas, and then he's over peering into the cages that hold parrots and other squawking, bright-colored birds.

"This is so awesome," he says. "I'm taking pictures of everything. Even the fans!"

Above us, there are old-fashioned paddle fans turning in the warm Miami air. Adam aims his camera at them.

Finally, the woman behind the counter turns to my mother and says, "I'm sorry, Ma'am. We don't have any record of your reservation in our computer."

Adam slumps against the counter. "WHAT?" he hisses.

"How is that possible?" my mother asks. She unfolds her thick packet of information from Expedia. We have confirmation numbers and everything. She points to them. "We were confirmed," she says.

The woman behind the counter shrugs. "Expedia must have made a mistake," she says.


2:15 PM:

We are sent to a inferior hotel three blocks down the road, where we will stay until the other hotel finds us a room--hopefully in a day.

We are told there's no way we're getting into a room at this substitute hotel for a few hours, so we better get comfortable in the lobby. We decide to get some lunch. The desk clerk suggests a few places and hands us a business card for a place that serves Mexican food.

FREE BEER WITH PURCHASE! the card reads.

"Sweet!" Adam says and tucks the card into his pocket.


2:45 PM:

Adam hands the FREE BEER WITH PURCHASE! card to the waiter, and the waiter brings us all free beer--some Mexican variety with a red label and an exclamation point.

I don't like beer, but this is the best beer I've ever tasted--not because it is a tasty variety but because I am already stressed and irritated and feeling like I should've just booked us into an all-inclusive in Puerto Rico and been done with all this Build Your Own Vacation nonsense. Fat lot of good it has done us so far.

Adam and my mother get crab tostadas. They do not like them.

"These are gross," my brother says.

I have gotten shrimp and avacado tacos, and they are very good.

Adam tries them and likes them. "No fair," he says. "That's just not fair that you get the good stuff."


3:30 PM:

We are back in the hotel and inquire about our room. We wonder if it might be possible for us to get in it yet. We are tired and gross and irritable. The woman behind the desk--the one who told us we wouldn't be getting in for hours--tells us no, no way. There's no way we can get in there yet.

A minute later she disappears and a new man comes out.

"Do you think that was just a shift change?" my mother asks.

"Maybe," I say.

"Good," she says. She goes over to the man and asks if it might be possible for us to get in our room.

He smiles and slides her a packet of keys. "Of course!" he says. "It's been waiting for you!"


4:15 PM:

I am on the beach. I am on the beach! I am on my towel and listening to the thump-thump-thump of dance music coming from the group of hairy Russian boys who are sitting next to me.

My mother and brother discuss drink options.

"Mojito," I say.

"Maybe I'll get a Sex on the Beach," my brother says. "Or maybe I'll get a Mai Tai. Or a Fuzzy Navel."

"YOU ARE A GIRL," I tell him. "Go get me a mojito."

They leave. I flip. They come back. I flip again so I can take my mojito.

"I tried it," my brother says. "It's gross."

"It's refreshing," I say. "Leave me alone."

But he doesn't. Now that he has a pink girl drink in his hand, my brother is happy. He is chatty. He is stroking his nipples.

"STOP THAT!" I say.

"Do you like my nipple hair?" he asks. He wiggles his chest in my direction. "Nipple hair!" he sings. "Nipple hair, nipple hair, nipple hair!"

"Mo-om!" I say. "Make him stop."

My mother could care less about my brother and his nipple hair. She has a pink girl drink, too, and the weather is warm and she's not at work. At this second, she's pretty okay with everything. "You're strange," she tells my brother before taking another sip of her drink.

"Look at it," my brother says, leaning even closer with his nipple hair. "Watch it dance in the ocean breeze!"

"GET YOUR NIPPLE HAIR AWAY FROM ME!" I say, and I am ready to punch him in his nipple, but a fat rain drop falls onto my forehead.

"Jesus," my mother says.


7:15 PM

We are sitting at Le Tub--an "outdoor-seating saloon" in Hollywood Beach. It is dark, but we are sitting outside, under stars, with a cluster of palm trees vaulting over our heads. Our waitress is a gruff-voiced woman who clearly wished it was still 1985 and that she was on the back of her boyfriend's motorcycle on the way to a Motley Crue concert.

"I am now going to list my favorite light beers," my brother announces after we give our drink orders.

I stare at him. I wonder if this is what he and his girlfriend stay up late to talk about--their favorite light beer. I wonder if there are times my brother's girlfriend looks at him and thinks, I am dating the world's biggest dork.

"My favorite," my brother says, "is Miller Lite. I also like Bud Light. Blue Light is pretty great, too."

Later, after he's schooled us on beer and after we've eaten, I ask Adam to pose for a picture on some of the decor--tubs and toilets potted around the restaurant. He climbs on top of two toilets and grabs his crotch.

"Here you go," he says.


WEDNESDAY


11:30 AM:

We pack up because our real hotel has found us room and told us to come on back. We go. We stand in the lobby with the parrots and spring breakers who are already (still?) drunk. The woman behind the counter tells us our room is ready and we can go on up. She says if there's anything else she can do for us, we shouldn't hesitate.

We won't hesitate long. When we get up to our room and open the door, we are staring at one bed. One. I look at my brother and my mother, and I look back at the one bed. There's no way in hell I am spending my spring break crammed between my mother and brother on a king bed.

My mother calls down to the lobby and tells them we need two beds, and that it's not negotiable. We get booked into another room. This room, they tell us, is a two bedroom suite.

Adam starts giggling. "Woo-woo!" he sings out, all hoighty-toighty. "A two bedroom suite! Fancy! Aren't we fancy!"

After we roll our things downstairs, exchange keys, and roll them back upstairs, we open a door to a room that is terrifying. It looks as though Florida circa 1976 has exploded all over the walls. There are drooping plastic plants and clear lamps that had been stuffed with dyed sea shells.

"Uh..." my brother says.

We are no longer fancy.


2:00 PM

We drive to South Beach and take a self-guided tour of the art deco district. We are given iPods and giant, tattered headphones.

"We look sort of douchey, don't we?" my brother asks.


2:15 PM

"If we go by some stores, can we go in?" my brother asks.


2:20 PM

"There's a store," my brother says. "Can we go in? Let's just pause our iPods and go in."

I roll my eyes at my mother.

"It's his vacation, too," my mother reminds me.

I want to remind her it's only his vacation because I gave in and said, yeah, fine, okay, the kid can go, too, when I called her up and asked her if we could go on a girls' vacation over spring break.

The store he wants to go in to is called Surf Sport, and it's just what you'd expect: a horrible tourist trap. There are snow globes. There are T-shirts. There are keychains. There are hats. There are mugs shaped like nipples. There are thongs that say GOOD BOYS GO DOWN: SPRING BREAK 2009, SOUTH BEACH! or SHUT UP AND START LICKING.

I float through the store, far, far away from my brother, just so there is no chance he will wave one of those thongs in front of my face and say, "How about this for Carly, huh? Huh?"


2:45 PM

We are still in the store.


3:00 PM:

We are still in the store.

When I roll my eyes for the eighteenth time my brother asks me what my problem is.

"I didn't come to Miami to go shopping," I say.

"Suck it," he says.


3:15 PM:

We are out of the store. Adam has bought his girlfriend two shirts, a hat, and some postcards. He is second-guessing his decision to forgo the purchase of a "genuine" crocodile head.

"She loves crocodiles," he says. "She's crazy for them. I should've gotten it."


3:30 PM:

"Can we go into another store?" Adam asks.

I tell him no. No more stores.

"I get one?" he asks. "One store? One store forever? For, like, the whole trip?"

My brother likes to shop. He's a shopper. I have never met another person who likes to accumulate as much pointless shit as my brother. He will buy solar-powered keychains that blink his name--ADAM! ADAM! ADAM!--and fake Rolexes and mini water fountains. My brother is the happiest when he is spending money.

"No," I say, "not for the whole trip, but for the next hour at least. GOD."


3:35 PM:

"I'm still thinking about that crocodile head," Adam says.


4:45 PM:

We have finished the deco tour. We are hungry and thirsty. We decide to sit at one of the dozen restaurants that line Ocean Drive and maybe get ourselves some of the giant drinks other customers are sipping from.

Mom gets a Mai Tai. Adam gets a Hairy Navel--a twist on one of his favorites. I get a Hurricane.

They are as big as our heads.

"How much do you think these cost?" my brother asks.

"Fifteen," my mother says.

"Twenty," I say.

When our bill comes to the table, our total--for the three drinks and two half-price appetizers--is $110. (The drinks are $25 each.)


5:35 PM:

"Can we go into this store?" Adam asks. It is the same store--the exact. same. chain.--as the first store we'd gone to, but Adam doesn't realize this. The workers--seeing Adam's hungry eyes and itchy fingers--swarm him, bring him things, say, "Don't you love this? And this? Wouldn't your girlfriend like this?"

I spend time in the corner, examining those filthy thongs again. One says FUCK ME! Another says MAKE ME CUM! I want to know what type of girl walks in this store, buys those panties, and puts them on her body. I want to hit her. Hard.

The only thing I like about the store is the music it is playing. It sounds like the rest of Miami, which sounds precisely like this, at the loudest volume, all the time. I find the dance music with words I can't understand to be soothing. It makes me want to roll my hips in a very vulgar way.

My mother is dancing over by the check out.

"Woo-woo!" one of the workers says.

"I think this is the same song that has been playing for the last three hours," my mother says.

Adam picks up a crocodile head and holds it lovingly. "I'm getting it," he says. "I need to find just the right one."

"Just the right crocodile head?" I say. "How different can they be?"

Adam jabs its snout at my face. "They have different colored glass eyeballs," he says.

We dig through the bin of crocodile heads to find one with green glass eyes. Carly's favorite.


8:15 PM:

It's late by the time we get back to the hotel, and we haven't had dinner. We decide to order a pizza. We get mushrooms on half. This may not be the best decision we've ever made.


10:30 PM:

My brother wants to go down to the hotel bar for a drink. The hotel bar is actually very nice and surprisingly swanky. I'm not against checking it out, so I tell him I'll go, too.

It's ladies' night down there, which means the girls have been drinking for two hours for free. It shows. The girls outnumber the guys by a staggering amount--and this is good news for the guys, who are being grinded against by two, three, four girls at a time.

Everyone looks really, really happy.


10:45 PM:

I buy my brother a drink. (Light beer. His favorite type.) I get mine free. We find a spot against the wall to watch the show that's going on up on the stage. The spring breakers are doing a version of The Dating Game, and one of the contestants--a guy who reminds me so much of one of the students in my very first class--sings each of his answers into the microphone.

He has a good voice and is clearly the crowd favorite. When asked to say his A-B-Cs and make them sound sexy, he falls to his knees and does the song Boyz-II-Men style.

"I sort of love him," I tell my brother. I take my first sip of my drink--a vodka-cranberry--and choke. There is no cranberry. "Jesus!" I say.

My brother takes my glass, sniffs it, holds it up the light and we finally see that there's just the slightest wisp of pink in the glass, like the color could be, might be pink, if you really wanted to stretch the truth. I was drinking a tall glass of straight vodka.

"Ladies' night is AWESOME!" Adam says.


THURSDAY


12:45 AM:

We stay for a few rounds of The Dating Game and for some dancing in between rounds. We sit at a table in the middle of the action. I make Adam play the game Who Would I Date If I Didn't Have a Girlfriend?

We go upstairs when we get tired of all the spring breakers, who walk by smelling of sex and sun and coconut.

"You know," I tell my brother on our way into the room, "I'll never be one of those girls. The really pretty-perfect-tan ones."

"Oh stop it," my brother says. "You're pretty." He pauses. "I'm so setting my alarm for real early tomorrow morning. I'm going to walk across the street and go shopping."


4:00 AM:

Mom is awake. I can hear her. She's in the bathroom. She is puking.


9:45 AM:

My mother is sitting on the edge of the bed, drying her hair. "I threw up all night," she says. "I was so sick."

I ask her how she feels now, and she says she feels sort of okay, but not all the way okay. "I don't want to eat breakfast really," she says.


11:00 AM:

Adam gets back from shopping with more T-shirts and hats and postcards. He's gotten a mug for Carly's grandma.

"She likes coffee," he says. "Can we go in the hot tub now?"


11:30 AM:

Mom sits at a table under a thatched hut and reads I'm Sorry You Feel That Way.

Adam and I go and sit in the hot tub with a spring breaker who has severe chest acne and a hangover.


11:50 AM:

Adam and I move to the pool. When he comes up from a deep dive with snot hanging out his nose, I tell him so. He hooks it out of his nose and flicks it into the water.

Mom is fanning a magazine at her face. "It smells like grease," she says. The tiki bar is making fish and chips. "It's making me sick."

I suggest we go for a walk to take her mind off it. Adam says like hell he's going for a walk. He wants to know why I'd even think he'd like to take a walk.

"I don't walk down beaches," he says. "I'll stay here and get a few drinks."

The lifeguards have hung out flags for rip tide conditions and dangerous marine life.

"You'd think they'd narrow that down a little more," I say. "You know, so we'd know what to look for."


12:00 PM:

Half way through our walk, my mother and I see several wobbly, gelatinous-looking blue things sprawled across the sand.

Jellyfish. Man-o-War jellyfish. They are everywhere. They look like water-logged novelty condoms. People are bending to examine them, take pictures.

“I feel a little gross,” I say. “Nauseous, sort of.”


1:00 PM:

We get back to our hotel, to our tiki bar, and find that Adam has ordered a beer.

"Next I'm getting something different," he says. "I'm going to have a cocktail. I'm going to have a Tom Collins."

"A Tom Collins?" I say. "Are you eighty?"

"A Tom Collins with Grey Goose!" he says. "That's what I'm having!"


1:45 PM:

Mom--who is nauseous again--has gone up to the room.

I am sitting across from Adam, and Adam is looped off his Grey Goose Tom Collins and two beers. He cannot keep his voice at a normal volume to save his life.

"Fucking fuckers!" he yells about some idiots near the pool. "Shitty assholes!"

"Ssssh," I hiss.

"Fuck that!" he says. "Fuck ssssh! I'm fine! I'm great!"

"Oh my God," I say. "You are completely drunk! You are a lightweight! You are shameful!"

"Shut up!" he says. "SHUT UP!" He swallows the last of his drink and slams it down on the table. "I'm hungry!" he says.


2:00 PM:

Adam and I walk to the gourmet deli across the street from our hotel. It's a little like Wegman's, a little like Premier Gourmet, a little like Dean & Deluca. I wander the aisles and get jealous that I don't have any of these fabulous foods in my grocery store back in Maine.

Adam is stumbling and running into things. He has been stumbling and running into things for the last fifteen minutes. ("You're going to have to make sure I don't run out into the middle of the road," he insisted as he jostled from one foot to the next as we waited at the crosswalk.)

When we get up to the panini counter, I have to order for him because he can't get the words "egg salad sandwich" out without dissolving into giggles.

"You are a drunk fool," I tell him. "A total pansy. I could drink you under the table!"

"I know," he says. "I've always been a lightweight. But you know what?" He leans against the deli case, and I have to yank him off it. "I've always liked it," he says. "I'm a cheap date."

There are samples up on the deli counter--samples for their turkey salad. Adam takes one, eats it, giggles.

"It's good!" he says and reaches for another.

"Adam!" I say. "You already had one!"

"It's really good!" he says. "No one here knows I already had one."

"We are the only ones standing here," I say. "They are LOOKING at you."

He reaches for a third, but I clamp his hand onto the counter and don't release it until his sandwich has been delivered.


2:30 PM:

I have been feeling sort of nauseous, so I only got soup and chips for lunch. I eat them and watch an episode of some show about a little boy who was possessed by a demon that lived in a well outside his family’s rental house.

“Is this real?” my brother asks. He is sitting next to me on the couch. He is sitting up very straight. He is not moving. He is already coming down from his Grey Goose Tom Collins and two light beers. He is hungover and feeling like he might just puke.

“Well, these are real people,” I say. “I mean, this isn’t an acted story. It’s some kind of documentary.”

“And a demon lived in their well?” Adam asks. He is probably thinking of the well at my father’s house. It sits in the front garden, hidden underneath some shrubs. It’s not too far outside my brother’s window.

“Yeah,” I say.

“That’s fucked up,” my brother says. “I think I’m going to puke.”


5:15 PM:

Adam doesn’t puke. Adam sleeps and sleeps and sleeps.

I puke. In between my trips to the bathroom, I lie on the bed—on the thin comforter that is probably coated with spring break sperm—and moan.

“I’m siiiiick,” I say.

My mother turns on the television. What Not to Wear is on.

“This helps,” I say, but that’s sort of a lie. Even Clinton Kelly and his beautiful sweaters and shining shoes and tender disposition can’t make my stomach right.


5:30 PM:

Adam wakes up from his post-Tom Collins nap. He is refreshed. His hair—which he’s been styling in a Zach Braff/Wolverine-type style—is dented on one side.

“I,” he says, “am going shopping. I’m going to find a mall!”


6:15 PM:

Outside, spring breakers are shrieking and giggling and tossing each other into the pool.

I am in the bathroom, hunched over the bathtub, throwing up. When I finish, I have to scoop my vomit out of the tub and put it into the toilet because I was on the toilet when I threw up, and it had to go somewhere. Now it has to go somewhere else because our bathtub is clogged and the water I tried to run into it to dissolve the puke won’t drain.

I am on spring break, kneeling in front of a bathtub, and scooping vomit up with the palms of my hands.


9:00 PM:

Adam comes back with three new shopping bags. He has hats and T-shirts and postcards and keychains and mugs.

I am on spring break, and I go to bed at 9:00 PM.


FRIDAY


9:00 AM:

For our trouble, the hotel has given us three coupons for free breakfast at one of their restaurants.

Adam has been looking forward to it.

“Want an omelet?” he asks me. He sits on the edge of my bed. “Some eggs? Some bacon?”

The thought of it is enough to send me running for the bathroom.


10:00 AM:

Mom and Adam come back from breakfast to find me in bed, watching Election.

“How was it?” I ask.

“Disgusting,” Adam says. “Sick. Gross.”

“Everything was cold,” my mother says. “Good thing we didn’t pay for that.” She brings a yogurt out from behind her back. “We brought you something,” she says.

“Please get that away from me,” I say and bury my face in the pillow.


10:30 AM:

Checkout is nearing, and I need to get up and ready for the day, for the trip back to Buffalo.

I trudge into the bathroom, which smells vaguely of tomato-based soup and parmesan cheese. I lean against the shower wall, which I am sure is crawling with sexually transmitted diseases, and try to feel better.


2:00 PM:

We are in the airport now. We have returned the rental car without incident. We have taken the shuttle without being yelled at. We have checked in, gone through security, and found our gate.

It is then that Adam announces he doesn’t feel so hot. He feels nauseous.

I am starving. I am hungry but I know better than to eat something. I haven’t eaten a real meal since Wednesday night. I feel light-headed and loopy.

“I think I’m going to get sick,” my brother says.


3:30 PM:

The man at our gate comes on over the loudspeaker to announce there has been a gate change, that our flight is now leaving from gate 37.

We roll our things down to gate 37, where we see that there has been a little more than a simple gate change. Our plane is going to be an hour late.

We are going to miss our connecting flight out of LaGuardia.


3:40 PM:

We go to the desk and talk to a tall American Airlines agent with a sexy accent.

“We’re going to miss our connector,” I say. I point to our tickets.

“Yes,” he says, “you certainly are. Let’s get you on the next flight out of LaGuardia, okay?”

“Okay,” I say.

The next flight leaves an hour and a half after our original flight would’ve left. We should have plenty of time, even though we will have to switch terminals because we are taking an American Airlines flight into LGA to catch a US Air flight to Buffalo.

The agent puts our information into the computer, changes our flight. He writes down our new flight number, the takeoff time, the terminal information.

“You’re all set,” he says and smiles before sending us on our way.


5:45 PM:

Our plane is late.

When it finally gets in, Adam is sick. While we stand in line on the jetway, he shifts his weight from one leg to the next.

“Can I use the bathroom as soon as we get on?” he asks. “Is that against the rules? Do I have to wait until we get into the air and to a cruising altitude? I NEED TO GO.”

“Just go,” I say. “If you’ve got to go, you go.”

He asks a flight attendant anyway. She gives him the go-ahead and he spends the next fifteen minutes locked in the bathroom.

When he comes out, he looks pale and winded. “Oh God,” he says. “Gross.”

He’ll go several more times over the course of our flight.


8:55 PM:

We land in New York. Our new flight to Buffalo is slated to leave at 9:55. This means it’s boarding at 9:30, which, after we deplane, gives us about half an hour to get from one terminal to the next, go through security again, and find our gate.

It turns out this is not enough time.

Although I’ve flown to and from New York City a ton of times in my life, I have usually flown through JFK, which is an airport I understand, which is an airport I am familiar with.

LaGuardia and I are not nearly as chummy. LaGuardia and my mother and brother are complete strangers.

We need to find a green-line bus, which will take us to the US Air terminal, and then we need to start the whole check-in process over again.

We run and run and run. We wait for a bus. It does not come, does not come, does not come. When it does come, the driver gets off at one stop and has a leisurely conversation with the other driver who will be replacing him.

I am starving, nauseous, and panicked. It is all I can do to keep myself from launching off the bus and dragging the driver back on by his ear.


9:25 PM:

We go through security. There’s some hold-up with Adam, who’s been held back by the metal detector agent.

I have been cleared, so I run around the corner to check the board about our gate information. I see that our flight has been delayed by twenty minutes. This is good news.

“It’s okay,” I tell my mother and brother. “Don’t rush. We’re okay. It’s delayed.”


9:35 PM:

At the gate, the three of us go up to see the agents so that we can double-check our status. We hand them the information the American Airlines agent handed us.

The woman behind the desk types in our names and shrugs. “You’re not on this flight,” she says.

You can hear the sound of our hearts falling down to our knees.

“What do you mean?” my mother asks. “We watched him change our information.”

“What you probably saw,” the woman says, “is a man pretending to change your information.”

“What?” I ask. I am having trouble keeping my voice calm.

“Happens all the time,” the woman says. “They lie all the time.”

“They lie,” my mother says.

“Yes,” the woman says. “Look, you’re not getting on this flight. It’s full.”

“I don’t understand any of this,” my mother says.

The woman types some things into her computer. “All the flights out to Buffalo are full tomorrow,” she says. “We might be able to get you back Sunday night.”

I am filled with murderous thoughts. “We could drive home faster than that,” I say.

My brother is starting mutter fucking bullshit, fucking assholes under his breath.

“Sssh,” I tell him. “Stop it. Don’t make a scene.”

“What about Rochester?” my mother asks. It is a brilliant idea. We could be picked up from Rochester, no problem. It’s only a short ride down the thruway. It wouldn’t be that big of a disaster.

“You’d be our hero if you could get us to Rochester,” I say.

“Okay,” the woman says, and she starts typing. “Yes, alright. I have a flight out to Rochester leaving at 9:35.”

Simultaneously, we all glance down at my mother’s watch. It is 9:35.

“…and that flight has just pulled away from the gate,” the woman says.


10:00 PM:

We have been moved to a flight to Rochester that doesn’t leave until the next day, but none of us want to wait around to catch a plane to Rochester so we can then drive the rest of the way home.

“Let’s just drive,” my mother says.

“Okay,” my brother says.

“Okay,” I say.

We can cut across state in seven hours. We can be in Buffalo just as the sun rises.

Of course, it’s not as simple as that. There is the question of baggage. (No one knows where it is.) Of the rental car. (None of the agencies are picking up their phone.) Of how much this all going to cost. (Two hundred and fifty dollars for a one-way rental.)


11:00 PM:

We are on the road. We are on the Tri-Borough Bridge, and the Chrysler Building is a ghostly shimmer to our left. I am starving and tired and angry, but seeing the city lit up against the sky makes me feel a little better. There is a part of me that wants to suggest that we abandon our plan, take the car back, and spend a few days holed up in some hotel not far from Magnolia, where we can go each morning for red velvet cupcakes and coffee.

There is a part of me that wants to fall asleep in the backseat so that the ride will go faster, so that when I open my eyes I will be in Buffalo.

But there’s no time for that. We all have to do our part. We have to do our share. We split the drive into three sections and spend time trying to keep awake, trying to keep each other awake, and trying not to drive off the road outside Syracuse. In a few hours, I will turn around and make this drive again, the opposite way, on my trip back to Maine. It is not a cheery thought.

We will get into Buffalo at 6:02 AM, and I will have to drive an extra half an hour back to my father’s house so I don’t have to sleep on a bunk bed atop my brother and his girlfriend.

We will get our luggage the next day, around 3:00. It made the flight to Buffalo that we weren’t allowed on.

It will be the first time in my life that I am jealous of my luggage.

Bienvenido a Miami!

Back in my last semester of undergrad, back when I was lying awake at night trying to decide which of the three grad schools I'd been accepted to was the one I was going to end up at, one of my professors told me that if I decided to go to Miami, she was going to make a CD for me that had one song on it over and over and over and over. This was the song:

I've been playing that song quite a bit lately. As of Tuesday morning I'll be in Miami, where it is going to be 84 degrees, and I am going to be doing an awful lot of the following things:

1. Beaching
2. Reading
3. Tanning
4. Eating
5. Drinking

This is my first "real" spring break trip ever--and by "real," I mean a trip that does not have a final destination of Buffalo, New York, which is muddy, snowy, and unpredictable in the spring.

And interestingly enough my first "real"--and now by "real" I mean "tropical and beachy"--spring break is going to be spent with my mother and my brother. Not your typical spring break companions, right?

Of course, this trip started out as a half joke on a day I was driving back from Portland. It was snowing. It was two degrees. It was gray. My part of the ocean was not frothy, lush, or sparkling. It was frozen, crusty, and dull. I was thinking about Mexico and how I wished I was going back.

And because the Pink Torpedoes had already scheduled our spring break vacation--this one in April, when the other girls have their spring breaks--and because that vacation is going to land us in D.C. where we plan to completely nerd out under the cherry blossoms for four days and because D.C. is not known for being balmy or tropical in early April, I called my mother and said, "Wouldn't it be nice if we could get on a plane and go to some all-inclusive place in Jamaica or Puerto Rico or something? We could have a girls' week."

And you know what she said? She said. "It would be nice. So let's go."

A few days later she called me back and asked--hypothetically, hypothetically--what I would think about a vacation that involved her, her boyfriend, her boyfriend's possibly-gay black belt son, my brother, and my brother's girlfriend?

I told her the thought of it made me want to put a knife through my eye. And it wasn't because I didn't enjoy those people (some in small doses); instead, it was because I wanted my vacation to be about one thing: relaxation. I wanted sand and sun and a stack of books. I did not want to worry about pleasing antsy children, picky eaters, and the eighteen year old girl who was dating my brother and had absolutely no problem with coming over to my mother's house and leaving her birth control packet out on the counter with her keys, where everyone could see it.

I like this girl. I do. But there's just something about the two of them together that is a little bawdy, a smidge inappropriate--like the time they came crashing into my mother's house and my brother was having a panic attack about his girlfriend not having skipped one of her pills and what was going to happen because of it. He and his girlfriend then talked to my mother about what would happen if the girlfriend took two pills to catch up on the missed dose--and my mother had to answer these questions without vomiting and without combusting at the thought of the two of them getting busy, wedged into the small space of the bunk bed Adam sometimes shares with the possibly-gay black belt son.

Having to deal with my brother oh-so-subtly sneaking off to the room I would inevitably end up sharing with him and his girlfriend so that he could then have his disgusting way with the girlfriend didn't paint a picture of restoration. None of that seemed particularly restful.

So I told my mother the thought of a vacation involving that combination of people made me very, very nervous, but that if we had to bring my brother, that would be about all I could handle. Plus, I reasoned, wouldn't it be nice to have a little family-only vacation? It would be bonding time.

And that's what I'm getting. Family-only vacation. Bonding time. Four days in Miami with my mother, with my brother. One room. One bathroom.

I can't say exactly how it's going to go, but I am excited for warm weather and bright beach and everything I'll see along the way. Let's just cross my fingers that I can somehow hold off on telling my brother that if he doesn't shut up I am going to kill him at least until we've made it to our layover.

Dirty Old Man

"Your uncle's on vacation for a week," my mother says when I call her this morning, "so I've got Grandpa Duty."

"Oh yeah?" I say.

"Yeah. I started yesterday and I'm already sick of it," she says.

This seems reasonable to me. After all, I know what a pain in the ass my grandfather can be. Just last night, for example, I had a dream about him that seemed to sum him right up. In the dream, he showed up after I had just finished baking a batch of chocolate chip cookies and frosting a dozen sprinkled cupcakes. He walked right into the kitchen and sat in a chair in front of those forbidden sweets and reached out for one.

"GRANDPA!" I said. "You can't have any of that!" I swatted his hand away from the cupcakes.

He looked at me and then back at the cookies, the cupcakes. He reached again.

"No!" I said and hit his hand again. "No! No! No!"

The dream was pretty accurate. My grandfather is a whiner, a big overgrown baby who will keep reaching for the things that are bad for him, even after he's been told not to. When my mother tells me she is already tired of her father's antics and she is only a day and a half into her duties, it doesn't surprise me one bit.

"So, what's that been like?" I ask her.

"Ugh," she says. "I went over there yesterday afternoon, and when I walked through the door there was a porno playing blaring from the living room."

"GROSS!" I say.

"It gets worse," she says. "He came trudging out from the bathroom and started talking to me like it was no big deal. I could hear the girl moaning. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I said, 'Dad, what is that?'"

"Oh God."

"And he said, 'Oh, that's one of my adult movies.' He didn't even go turn it off. He just wanted to sit there with me and have a conversation with that playing in the background. His daughter! He wanted to have a conversation with his daughter while a porno blared!" she says.

"I'm going to throw up," I say.

"Yeah, so was I," my mother says. "I finally had to tell him it was disgusting and that I was going to go shut it off."

"Inappropriate!"

"So inappropriate," she says. "He's getting weird. He's a really dirty old man."

"And today you're making him a meatloaf," I say.

"Yeah," she sighs. "And today I'm making him a meatloaf."

One of Those Girls

This has been a crazy week. I graded, graded, graded. I ran, ran, ran. I tried to tie up all sorts of loose ends before the Boy From Work arrived in Maine on Friday with a suitcase full of sponge candy (orange, milk, and dark) and a new haircut--two things of many he would roll out over the weekend in order to make a strong case for us getting back together.

A lot of those things were sweet and serious--a book of short stories he'd written about me, for example--but some of them were of the more frivolous variety. The sponge candy (delicious). The new haircut (adorable). The trip to see the Portland Pirates (awesome).

While we were at the arena, I busied myself with my usual Jess at Hockey Game Fare: discussing how much I love watching men play sport on ice, discussing how I could listen to the song "I Want to Drive the Zamboni" every day for the rest of my life and be happy about it, dissecting my love for Ryan Miller, recounting the days in grad school when each Maverick home game was preceded by cheerleaders doing lifts on skates, and screaming things like Eeep! and Ack! and Jesus! and I will kill you if you don't score!

And even though I was pretty busy with all of that, I still managed to squeak in some time to be charmed by the girls sitting behind us.

The row directly behind us was filled with seven eleven year-old girls who were extremely excited to be at the Friday night hockey game. They were also extremely excited that they knew one of the boys who worked the ice--you know, cleaning up after Chuck-a-Puck, shoveling ice shavings off the lane by the boards, making sure the goalies had their water bottles safely stowed in the nets.

Every time that boy would make an appearance, the girls behind us would stand up and sing out, "Oooooooh, Robbie! Oh Robbie-Robbie-Robbie! Ooooooooooooh, Robbie! Hiiiiii, Robbie!"

And that boy on the ice--Robbie--would blush and shake his head and look at his toes. It was all very charming and sweet, and I felt like I wanted to turn around and tell those girls they were just about the cutest thing in the world.

This feeling only intensified in the second period, when those girls started talking about the boys they were in love with.

"Did you, like, see him the other day?" one would say.

"Oh my God!" another would squeal. "He's sooo cute!"

They were eleven year-olds with high pony-tails and sherbert-colored hoodies. They had hot pink nails and scrubby tennis shoes. They were sugary, jittery, giggly whirs that buzzed up and down the stairs to get snacks, to get Robbie, to get the camera man's attention. What they wanted more than anything was to get on the Jumbo-Tron, where they would dance and squeal and hug each other.

I understood them. I understood them a lot.

Sadly, though, the woman sitting next to me--the woman sipping light beer, leaning against her husband--did not.

In fact, at the end of the second period, this woman--who had, at the end of the first, turned to me and said, "Those girls need to have their mouths sewn shut!" before informing me that she didn't have kids and was never in a million years going to have any--whirled around, raised her voice, and started yelling.

"Listen!" she said, sounding like any number of the evil math teachers I've had over the years. "I paid money to come and watch this hockey game! I did NOT pay money to come here and listen to YOUR CONVERSATION! You girls need to be QUIET!"

Oh my God, I thought I was going to die. I nearly crawled into the Boy From Work's lap to get as far away as possible from that woman. I wanted those girls to be certain that I wasn't with her and that I didn't share her views. I'd paid my money to see the hockey game, sure, and I was sort of in love with the weird background conversation that was playing as a soundtrack to the sport playing out below. It was making me nostalgic. It was making me think back to the days I roamed Holland Speedway with Tammy, giggling and sipping Pepsis we'd gotten from the cute boy down at the beverage stand. We sat behind numerous families who'd paid their money to watch drunk farmers derby their cars around an asphalt oval, and they were getting us--and all of our, Oh my Gods! and He's so cutes! and Do you think he'll let me drive his race car when we get marrieds? No one said a single word to us. We were allowed to scale the tall steps of those bleachers and gallop back down whenever we pleased and with as much fanfare as we found necessary.

People didn't need to turn around and yell at girls like us. We weren't like the tough girls my mother turned around and yelled at when I was a little girl attending one of my first races. It was the late eighties, and those girls looked like something out of a Whitesnake video. They had tall hair and red lips and stacks of bracelets climbing their wrists. They were wearing tight acid-wash jeans and matching denim jackets. They were beautiful in the way that was just right for that moment in time, and they knew it. They were showing off. They were tough and they were pretty, and they were talking about their racer boyfriends and how those boys were going to kick the fucking shit out of that motherfucker and that asshole and that dickhead.

My mother couldn't take very much of that before she turned around and told those girls that there was a little girl sitting right next to her and they needed to watch their language because that wasn't the stuff a little girl needed to be hearing.

I was horrified. I felt uncool. Babyish. I couldn't believe my mother would do such a thing. And when one of the girls--embarrassed and horrified herself--leaned down to pat me on the shoulder and say, "Hey. Hey. I'm so sorry," I could have dissolved into a hot little pile of ash.

Those were the girls you yelled at--foul-mouthed filthy girls--but even they knew when they'd done something wrong and could apologize for it. But the girls behind me at the hockey rink? They probably had never been yelled at before. They were probably good girls who volunteered to work in the library and held elaborate fashion shows at sleepovers. They probably cut their crushes' pictures out of the yearbook at the end of the school year and pasted those pictures into their diaries. And all they were doing was being themselves and having a good time. But the woman next to me couldn't stand it. She hated the giggling and the talking and the frivolity. It made her clutch her armrests, her beer, her husband's arms. It made her turn and yell.

I felt so bad for the girls. I felt so angry with the woman next to me. I was half hoping that one of the girls' mothers would come down and tell the woman to mind her own business or get up and move seats if she couldn't handle a little girl talk. But that didn't happen. I just burrowed closer to the BFW and said, "Jesus. SOMEONE needs another six wine coolers to calm herself down."

But deep down I was hoping that I would never become one of those women--one of those women who hates kids, who thinks anyone who makes the decision to have kids has been ill-advised--because there are days I wake up thinking, My God. Will I ever feel ready or capable or prepared? I don't want years of that wondering panic to spin into bitterness, into black hatred for kids--something so strong it makes me turn around and tell them that they are not important, they are not part of the deal, and they need to shut the hell up. I'd rather stay one of those girls--pink and blushing and twitchy--forever, running up and running down, making my way as loud as humanly possible.

This Is What Happens When You're No Longer Around a Whole Bunch of Polish People

This was the scene today in the local grocery store's pasta aisle:

I was stalking up and down the aisle, looking high, looking low, scouring the shelves. I was not alone. A silver-haired grandpa was stalking up and down the aisle, too, and he looked nervous, concerned, overwhelmed. It was clear he wasn't finding what he needed. Neither was I.

What I needed was kluski. I didn't know what the grandpa needed, but after four trips up and down the aisle I was beginning to suspect that he, too, needed some kluski and, like me, was becoming convinced that he was going to have to rethink that chicken soup he was planning on making this weekend.

I guess I'd never stopped to really think about kluski before. I just always assumed it was in the pasta aisle of every grocery store that ever existed, next to those other flimsy-looking egg noodles that schools everywhere roll out for the buttered noodle side on chicken cutlet day.

I knew kluski was Polish, but I didn't think it was one of those items you can find everywhere in very-Polish Buffalo but not find anywhere outside of it. It was just so available and so common that I assumed it was available and common everywhere. Everyone's mother had a bag of kluski stocked in the pantry because they are as close as you can get to homemade noodles without mixing the dough and piping it into boiling water yourself.

And today, as I stumbled through the grocery store on a comfort food bender--I had plans to make lasagna, banana bread, and chicken soup in the span of two days--I was getting irritated that I couldn't find something that should be right there, right next to the No Yolks.

I finally gave up and bent down to get the lasagna noodles I needed anyway. I sighed a heavy sigh.

The grandpa--brightening suddenly, seeing that I'd possibly found what I was looking for--came over to my side. "Excuse me," he said, "but did you happen to see the lasagna noodles?"

So he wasn't after kluski after all. He was after lasagna noodles, which were stocked in many varieties on the bottom shelf.

"Right down here," I said, gesturing to the whole wheat, the no-bake, and the regular lasagna noodles.

"Whew," he said. "Thanks."

Clearly he was running a very important errand for someone else, someone who needed lasagna noodles as much as I needed kluski. He would be able to walk out of the aisle satisfied, but I would not.

Still frustrated, I wheeled around to the small ethnic aisle and scanned the falafel mixes, the chow mein noodles, the basmati rice just to make sure kluski hadn't gotten lumped in over there. Nothing.

I had to call in reinforcements. I plucked the phone from my purse and called my mother.

"Okay," I said, "I'm sure this is going to sound like a completely bizarre question, but kluski is always in the normal pasta aisle, right? You've never seen it anywhere else, have you?"

"No," my mother said. "Kluski's always next to the egg noodles."

I sighed and shook my head. "Mother," I said, "there is no kluski in this store."

"No kluski?" she said. She sounded like she didn't quite believe me.

"No kluski," I repeated. "None. This is what happens when you don't live in Buffalo. All the good things go away. I think kluski might be considered exotic here." I sighed. "I'm going to have to drive to the big grocery store and see if it's in their giant Foods of the World section."

Which is exactly what I did. I drove from one grocery store on one side of town to the other grocery store on the opposite side of town. I made a beeline for their long (and pretty impressive, for such a small town) Foods of the World section, which is one of my favorite aisles in the whole store. It's where I can get my fix of the candy bars I would normally eat in Canada. It's where I can get my fix of cookies that are bundled behind packages featuring strange animal mascots. It's where I can get my fix of that thick peach juice that comes in tiny tin cans.

It's also were I can get my fix of kluski. There is an entire Polish section--I already knew that; I've been steadily working my way through the various Polish cookies for the last few months--but I'd never bothered to look for kluski there. It was there, but I'd never noticed it before--probably because I'd just assumed that if I ever went looking for it, I'd find it in the pasta aisle.

I snatched up a bag of kluski and then thought about taking all the bags because there were only three left, and how could I be sure that the grocery store would think to refresh its kluski stash, which was relegated to the bottom shelf in the Foods of the World aisle?

In the end, I talked myself out of stockpiling the kluski. I told myself that there was hope--that surely they had originally ordered more than four bags of kluski, and now that there were only a few left, that must mean there was someone else in town who'd grown up on chicken soup with noodles tastier than the normal fare stocked in the pasta aisle. In fact, I was so hopeful that I walked toward the registers wondering if that person was at home right that minute, stirring a big batch of borscht and cracking a palm of dill into the broth. And then I wished she'd call me up and invite me over for dinner.

Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay!

I don't know much about the gay lifestyle here in Maine. I couldn't tell you where the great gay bars or saucy meeting places are. I couldn't tell you about festivals, shows, or parades that celebrate Maine's LGBT population. I don't have a link to that world here--which, yes, distresses me a lot--but after this weekend, I can tell you this: there's definitely a gay undercurrent zipping through this state, or at least its southern coast.

I realized this as my mother and I picked our way through a large Christmas store in downtown Portland. My mother and I are both fools for Christmas decorations, and there is absolutely no time during a year that we aren't game for shopping for ornaments, garlands, trees, or holiday-themed place settings. So, while her boyfriend and her boyfriend's son sat in a bar down the street, my mother and I spent some serious time oohing and ahhing at Christmas villages, hand-painted Russian Matryoshkas, and a variety of lobster and moose-themed ornaments. Then we came to the last room of ornaments. There, lined up in neat rows that took up nearly an entire wall, were mermaid ornaments.

It's important to know why I saw the flicker of glittery tails and was immediately drawn to the wall. For a large period of my childhood, I was obsessed with the movie The Little Mermaid. I was so obsessed with Ariel and her life under the sea, I spent a considerable amount of time fantasizing that I was a mermaid, that I was able to float and twirl among sea anemones and schools of fish. Sometimes I would go so far as to pretend I was a mermaid for a whole day, and if my parents called me to, say, come into the kitchen and eat my dinner, I'd make my way lazily down the hall, arms stroking, hair tossing, voice singing Ariel's trademark songs.

I've always been into mermaids--probably more than one girl should be, especially considering mermaids aren't real. But still, this explains why I got so excited, why I squealed a little bit when I saw that wall of mermaids. I stepped over the wall to check them out--there were tons!--and that's when I stopped, gasped, and clapped a hand over my mouth. These mermaids weren't what I'd originally thought (mermaid ornaments depicting human careers and situations); instead, they were just slutty. And gay. Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay.

"Look at this!" I hissed at my mother. I plucked one of the mermaids off the wall and balanced it in my palm. It was the best thing I'd ever seen. The ornament was big--larger than my hand--and heavy. These mermaids and their glittery tails were made of real substantial stuff. Slutty, slutty stuff. Their tails were arched in various positions that insinuated sex; they were wearing outfits that should only be seen in the bedroom; and they always had liquor in their hands. A martini, a margarita, a flute of champagne--each mermaid looked like a Vegas hooker who was two drinks away from giving a freebie to that cute guy over by the slots.

"These mermaids are prostitutes!" I said, and my mother and I laughed and poked at each of the skanky sea creatures and their tiny glasses of booze. But none of the girls could even come close to the beauty, the brilliance, and the hilarity of the mermen. I'd never seen such blatantly gay Christmas ornaments before, and, needless to say, I loved them. I wanted to buy every single one of them and start a tradition of having a small themed tree devoted only to these ornaments and their sparkly awesomeness. Just picture it:

It would be the best themed Christmas tree ever. Start shopping.

Abbey Disapproves of My Attempts to Keep Her From Getting Under My Desk

My mother and her boyfriend and her boyfriend's son (you know, this kid) have arrived to tour Maine's coast. My mother has another agenda, too, and that's to snuggle my kitten as much as humanly possible. In fact, when she left work on Monday afternoon she announced to the whole office that she was going to Maine not to visit her daughter but to visit her daughter's cat. And since my mother brought me an early birthday present that was packed in layers of tissue paper and ribbons, Abbey thinks she's just about the best thing ever because, well, ribbons are the best thing ever. She's enamored of the whole ribbon-bearing group, and she's taken up residence on their laps, in their arms, and in their shoes.

So, until they've gone and until I can come back up from the whirling, lobster-filled mini-vacation, there will be a new picture of Abbey here every day to fill the space. The first is one I like to call Abbey Disapproves of My Attempts to Keep Her From Getting Under My Desk. I used rolled up sweatshirts and stacks of envelopes to block the different entrance points--thin, claustrophobic--to the swampy area behind the computer, but she got around them anyway, and I'd have to reach behind and pluck her out of the tangle of wires every day. She is nothing if not resourceful.