Life As I Know It Is Now Over

Friends, the semester starts tomorrow morning. For the last four months, my life has consisted of the following things: sleep, kissing, food, a lot of driving, vodka, and more sleep. Starting tomorrow morning, my life will consist of the following things: department meetings, committee meetings, syllabi, dry erase markers, and papers.

That second list is a lot less cool.

But to celebrate the fact that a.) I got everything done before the start of the semester... even though I slacked off for all of May, June, July, and August; and b.) it's been a hell of a time, let's review some of my favorite pictures of the summer!

I got an iMac. iMacs come with built-in cameras, and we made use of that camera often. See also:

We're fancy.

We're cartoon-y.

We're on the moon!

Also this summer, there was a Pink Torpedo bachelorette party to deal with! And deal with it we did.

See? We dealt with it with penis. Pink penis.

And also some chocolate penis.

And then there was the Great Pink Torpedo Wedding of 2010. Remember? There was puking!

But more important (and less disgusting) than the puking, there was the bride and the groom (and that gorgeous headpiece).

There was also some magnificent ROCKING OUT.

And then there was the trip to the Midwest, which was unlike my other post-grad school trips to the Midwest in that its main purpose was not to be inebriated for five days in a row. Its purpose was to spend every available moment cuddling babies, like this one. He's a Wisconsinite. He belongs to two of my favorite people in the universe. He and I are best friends.

And here's the other baby. It might be true that she and I are not yet best friends--I brought her a tutu to, you know, selfishly buy her love--but she wasn't having it. Someday, though, she'll realize I'm uniquely handy--like when she's pining away after some blond football star who doesn't know she exists. Madelyn, your mother isn't going to want to talk about that stuff with you. But let me break out the reams of rhyming poetry I wrote about that situation in sixth grade, and if you're good I might give you half a glass of wine while we bond. Promise.

What I learned about babies: They can wear robes!

This picture was taken outside Lorrie Moore's office (!!!!) at UW Madison. It was a big moment for me. Also, just so we're clear: That sign totally says EROTIC POETRY.

My summer was filled with babies: newborns and not-yet-borns. I did hours of art therapy with the not-yet-born and his mother.

I think it's quite clear that this was an excellent summer, and I'm sad to leave it behind, but--as always--I'm happy too. There's just something about first days, about the hope that comes along with them.

I'm ready.

All right, I won't lie. I'm not ready. But bring it on anyway.

King of the Nuggs

World, meet The Lady-Killer, who has a bad addiction to Burger King chicken nuggets, Arizona iced tea, and Monster energy drinks.

If you couldn't tell, he also likes to pose for ridiculous (read: fantastic) pictures. See?

Just the other day, on our way to the beach--you know, the time we almost died--he was craving McDonald's, so we did the drive-thru and he promptly set about eating his two McChickens and fries. TLK does not like to mix food groups. He eats all of one thing then moves on to the next thing. He started with the fries. He'd made me ask for extra ketchup--"I don't think that's enough," I had to tell the man at the drive-thru window when he dropped a few into the bag. "This guy REALLY likes his ketchup."--and he started with the fries. Instead of creating a ketchup puddle and dunking his fries into it, he opted instead to take this approach: He ripped open a tiny packet of ketchup and squeezed a gob into his mouth before jamming some fries in there.

This is also the boy who, as I was getting ready in the bathroom the other day, trudged by murmuring, "I'm fancy. I have fancy pants!"

Why? I have no idea.

So if you're wondering if I feel pretty lucky about the summer I'm having and about all the giggling I'm doing, the answer is yes.

I'm Betting The Family Pack of Condoms Is in This Box

My brother is the only twenty-three year-old guy I know who would label his moving boxes like this:





I can only imagine the multitudes of disgusting things in that box. You can bet I won't be touching it.

Sometimes My Love for This State Overwhelms Me

This is clearly one of those times:

Another Pink Torpedo Wedding

At the beginning of the month I flew back to Buffalo just so the very next morning I could get in a car with the Pink Torpedoes and drive down to Pennsylvania for Anne's wedding. If you're keeping score, that two's Pink Torpedoes down and one more on the way (Steph's wedding is next summer). And if you're wondering what it looks like when a Pink Torpedo gets married, this is as good of an answer as any:


Created with flickr slideshow.

I'm Home with These Girls

And we've got wine, brownies, cupcakes, and cheese. All the best things in the world.

I'm Moving to Owl's Head. Don't Try to Stop Me.

God, I love Maine. I mean, I really love Maine. And this past week only enhanced my love for the state. The Boy From Work was here for a spring vacation, and we used our day to go up and down the coast, seeing and eating the best things along the way. We ate lobster in Cape Elizabeth and fried clams in Freeport. We ate chowder in Rockland and Boothbay Harbor. We saw three lighthouses and explored some of the sweetest, quaintest towns in the whole state.

But none were as sweet and as quaint as Owl's Head. It's a tiny town near Rockland, and one I probably would've never realized I needed to go to if it wasn't for the Food Network's 50 States, 50 Burgers project that named the best burger in each state. Maine's burger--the 7 Napkin Burger--sounded fabulous. Juicy. Drippy. Cheesy. Everything good in the world. And the fact that you could get those burgers to go and take them down the road to tiny Owl's Head Lighthouse for a picnic sounded even better.

And the BFW, who is always ready to go on a trip just to eat something delicious, was up for it. So we headed off for a day trip to Owl's Head and Rockland. We were going to eat lunch in Owl's Head, tour the lighthouse, then head back to Rockland for a trip out to the breakwater lighthouse and shopping in the sweet galleries and stores that line Main Street.

The 7 Napkin Burger is the brainchild of the owners of the Owl's Head General store--a place where you can get homemade burgers and chowders, cookies and whoopie pies. In the warm summer months, there are ice cream novelties to be scooped up. And if you just ran out of ketchup or toilet paper and don't want to travel back to Rockland to grocery shop, you can pop into the General Store for the necessities, which are arranged in the back of the shop, right behind the small eating area.

And that eating area was the cutest thing I'd ever seen. Big and small tables were covered with patterned vinyl table cloths and stocked with plenty of napkins--which you definitely need when eating the burgers. There were a few friends gathered at two of the tables next to ours, and it was clear that this was routine. This was what they did. They came to the store every day for coffee and a snack or a full lunch. When someone came through the door, they were greeted by name. The girls behind the grill--two nineteen year-olds in gym shorts--knew what to serve up for them. They settled in at their table to talk about the weather, to local school, their neighbors. It was so friendly and charming it made me want to lock my legs around my chair and stay there forever, even through the coldest months, when the town's residents would no doubt come through the door stomping off boots and rubbing feeling back into their hands before settling into their chairs for hot chocolate and a slice of crumb cake. I wanted to be one of those regulars worse than anything. Especially after the girls delivered our burgers, which oozed with ketchup and mustard and pickles and cheese. If someone had come into the store at that moment and announced they had a charming apartment for rent--one with a seaside view--I would've been on the phone with the movers, telling them to go on over to my apartment and pack everything up and move it on up the coast.

Of course, Owl's Head wasn't the only amazing place we visited while the BFW was in state. Here are some of the highlights:

This picture was taken at Owl's Head light, which is right up the stairs behind us. As you can see, it was a windy, windy day. When you are planning on going anywhere near the ocean, you have to dress expecting it to be substantially colder than it is inland, especially in the spring. The wind comes in off the Atlantic and rips right through you. We chose a ridiculous day to tour lighthouses--especially one that is a mile into the ocean. Yeah, that's right. We traipsed along the Rockland Breakwater Light in those winds and almost had our ears torn off.

When preparing for a visit to Maine, it's best to fast for a week before your arrival. After all, you're going to eat a lot of seafood. A lot. Here's Ross with one of the chowders we ate over the week. It was good, but it wasn't nearly as good as the best chowder I ever had, which was served up at a tiny cafe in Damariscotta.

This shot was taken at Southport, which is a small island in the waters outside Boothbay Harbor. There is a tiny beach on the island, and we took off our shoes and walked across it, pausing to examine the millions of shells that were scattered across it. The BFW was very impressed with the purple mussel shells. (I'm pretty impressed with them, too. The insides are pearlescent and beautiful. I've got a bunch of them on my desk at school.) In fact, the BFW was so impressed that he took a closed one away from the beach with us. He wanted to see what it would look like it it opened. We both got a littl squirmy about that, though, when the mussel, which cracked open a bit while we were strolling through Boothbay, sucked back shut when the BFW tried to open it further to investigate. We left that thing in the parking lot. I didn't want anything oozing out of its shell on my car floor.

This right here is me in my moment of glory. On our way from Boothbay Harbor to Damariscotta, where we were going to eat dinner at the place with the best crab cakes in the world, the BFW and I made a pitstop to play mini-golf. I got a hole-in-one on a really hard hole. Because I am awesome.

If you look in the background, you can see Hendrick's Head Light, which is in Southport. The gray areas in the photo? All shells. Beautiful, tiny little spiral shells I scooped into my hand and brought back with me. (Mine didn't have anything ooze-y living in them.)

I could write poetry about The Lobster Shack in Cape Elizabeth. The poem would start by describing the beauty of the shack's location--on a granite cliff just above the waves of the Atlantic--and then move into the beauty of the shack's food, where lobster rules the menu. The Lobster Shack's lobster roll is my favorite in the state. But that's not the only thing that's good there. Clams, crab, mussels, whoopie pies--all delicious. But their strawberry-rhubarb pie? It's perfection.

I Think She Expects a Mention in the Acknowledgments

This is where you'll find Abbey most times I'm in my office. She loves the warmth of the top of the monitor, so that's where she'll be if I am filling my weekly allotment of Sims time (which is what you're seeing here) or if I'm writing.

Not surprisingly, her favorite spot has its drawbacks: it's sort of hard to type when there are two paws blocking the literary gem you're trying create. Still, you'll never see me move her. No way. It's just too cute. And when she puts her head down so it looks like she's reading what I've written, it's possibly the cutest thing I've ever seen.

If She Were a Human, She Would Be Employed at UPS

There are not many things Abbey loves more than packing materials. She loves boxes, peanuts, shredded paper, styrofoam inserts, and bubblewrap. In the picture above, you can see how pleased she was when I unpacked my new Christmas tree, which came tightly bound in rolls and rolls of bubblewrap.

The Ass. Head Cashier Approves of Abbey

This picture was taken the very first time my brother got to meet Abbey. It was over Thanksgiving, and he popped into Dad's for a few minutes before we had to go next door to my uncle's for dinner. When Adam walked in the room, he gasped like the woman he is. "Oh! My! God!" he said. "She is the cutest kitten I've ever seen!"

And then they became best friends forever.

(Side Note: For those of you who have developed a crush on my brother over the years, you might be interested to know that he was recently promoted from Assistant Head Cashier to Head Cashier. That means he gets the keys to the store. Fancy!)

More of Abbey's Obsessions

What I like about this picture is that it combines two of Abbey's favorite obsessions/hobbies: earplugs and burrowing.

She will crawl under or into any stack of blankets and stay there until you do something interesting enough to warrant her retreat. Abbey routinely sleeps under the covers at night. Sometimes she'll stick her head out the top, by the pillows, but usually she won't. She prefers to be completely burrowed underneath the covers on my bed, and I often wake up in the morning to see a strange lump down by my hip. That is Abbey, who has chosen to spend the night pressed under the weight of a sheet, a blanket, and a comforter.

As for the earplugs, the cat is crazy for them. I don't know which she likes more--earplugs or Q-tips. She chases and fetches both. Just this morning, right after the sun came up, I felt a thump! on the bed and knew that Abbey was sick of playing by herself and wanted me to join in. Sure enough, when I rolled over, there she was, and she dropped an earplug down next to me. She gave me a look that said, Play with me! Play with me! Play with me!

I threw it once and went back to bed.

Abbey's Current Obsession

Abbey, seen here with my father, who is carrying her around in a wicker basket because, well, she let him, loves to be lifted into the air. In fact, the current object of her undying love and affection is a box top I brought portfolios home in. Now that it's empty, she will sit in that thing and look up at me with those giant kitten eyes until I do one of two things:

(1.) Hook my finger in a corner and slide that box top--at a very fast pace--from one end of the room to another

or

(2.) Heft the box top up and balance it on my right palm, then carry it around the apartment like it is a waitress tray. Abbey stays inside the whole time, her chin hanging over the edge, her eyes soaking in what all of her stuff looks like from people height. When I told my father this the other night, he said, "But doesn't she jump out?" And the answer to that is no. She'd ride around on top of my shoulder for hours if I let her.

What Anne Wants, Anne Shall Receive

When Anne heard I wasn't going to be around the blog for a few days, she requested that Abbey make daily appearances to keep her amused. I said that could be arranged.

And so, to kick off six days of Abbey, here's a flashback to one of her baby pictures. Tomorrow I guarantee you'll be thinking, Holy shit! That cat's huge now!

Yeah, she's huge alright. She's a huge earplug-fetching, grape stem-carrying, macaroni salad-loving cat whose first birthday is just a little over a month away.

Music for Bachelors

When I was home for spring break, I had a little slice of time to spare before I jetted off to Miami. In that little slice of time, the Boy From Work decided to steal me away for a day and take me on an adventure. He drove me around tiny no-name towns and we stopped at sweet, small antique stores, places he passes every day on his way to work. He was--is--trying to woo me, and he knows that opening the door to a store stocked with musty old doilies and crooked furniture is the surest way to my heart. I love antiquing. I love rooting around in piles of other people's things, wondering what kinds of lives the items had before they came here, to some store in the middle of nowhere. The potential to find really bizarre or wonderful things is remarkable.

And during those stops I did find some wonderful things, but none as wonderful as the record I found tucked into the back of a milk crate in some forgotten corner of a store in Franklinville, the town we used to ride to in the back of my best friend's sister's car, on the way to the teen dance club where we would raise our arms when the smoke machine hissed out its maple syrup-smelling mist, where we would cram into the corner booths and curl into the boys we loved, who were boys we had absolutely no business loving.

So I was nostalgic as we drove past that little teen dance club, which still sat next to the town skating rink, but nostalgia would soon be replaced by an overwhelming sense of awesome! as I pulled that record out of the milk crate. On its front there was a sassy lady sporting big hair and a thin robe. She was on the phone. She was looking over her shoulder. Her gaze said, Hiya, Big Boy. The record was titled Music for Bachelors.

I squealed and clutched it to my chest. It was mine, mine, mine. I wanted to hang it up in my office. I thought if ever I was having a bad time of things, if ever I couldn't turn a pretty phrase to save my life, all I would have to do is look up at that framed record and think of bachelors from the 1960s picking through racks at the record store before settling on this particular selection, which they would take home and play while patting cologne on their cheeks, while mixing martinis, while walking a date out to the terrace to see the stars. It was all very Down with Love. And that would make me feel better.

So I bought the record for a dollar, and then I proceeded to leave it in the back of the BFW's car.

Today, though, the BFW called me up and said, "Check your e-mail, okay?" and I did. And in that e-mail I found that he, too, had been transfixed by the album's cover, that he hadn't been able to squelch the urge to whip out the Music for Bachelors and get cozy with its rhythms and patron saint, the thin nightgowned woman. He produced a lovely little photo essay to prove to me that my record was in good hands, that Music for Bachelors wasn't going to waste. It was safe, and it will stay safe until I frame it and put it on my office wall.

It's like she's got tractor beam eyes. The BFW can't get away. And how could he? That girl's got tractor beam eyes. It's enough to make anyone want to listen to The Girl from Ipanema, which is--of course, of course!--the first song on the record.

If a Homeless Woman in the Subway Asks You If She Can Ask You a Question, JUST ZIP IT

Hallelujah! A vacation without vomit! A vacation without missing hotel reservations, delayed flights, lost luggage! A vacation without a drunk brother insisting on another Grey Goose Tom Collins, if you please!

My Easter trip to Washington with the Pink Torpedoes was a good vacation and an educational one, too. I learned many important things on my trip to Washington this weekend--thank you, Paul, the Midnight Trolley Tour trolley driver and The Smithsonians, but none of those lessons are as important as the lesson I learned down in the subway tubes.

I was coming off the escalator. I was in front of the rest of the girls, and when I came around the corner so I could walk down the platform and find a place for us to stand, I breezed past a woman--homeless, disheveled--and that homeless woman said, "Hey! Can I ask you a question?"

And, listen, here's the thing: when you walk past those little kiosks in the mall, that's what the people manning them are always quacking at you. Can I ask you a question? Can I ask you a question? And then they want to slather you with lotion or talk to you about state-of-the-art windshield wipers or show you how this one silk headband will change your entire understanding of the world of hair. So, really, the answer when they say Can I ask you a question should always be, by default, no.

Which is possibly why I had the immediate reaction to say no, which is exactly what I did when the disheveled homeless lady asked if she could ask me a question.

"No, thank you," I said, tacking on a little politeness at the end because that's what you do when the kiosk people start after you--because, well, we all know they hate their jobs and the lotion/wiper blades/headbands they are peddling, and they're just doing it to stay alive, so why not say thank you just to let them know that you've been there, you know how it is, and you feel their pain.

But a no, thank you was not what the homeless lady had in mind when she decided to see if she could ask me a question.

Suddenly, behind our group, there was a flurry of activity. A throwing of a fit. A burst of foul language.

"BITCH!" the homeless lady screamed.

At first, I didn't realize it was at me. I'd passed by courteously. I thought maybe someone else had offended her or someone around her.

"Hey," Becky said. "Hey! That homeless woman just called you a bitch!"

"Really?" I said. We were still walking. The platform was long and reasonably crowded, and we were looking for a place for all of us to stand together.

"Yes," Becky said. She turned around. "Oh Jesus," she said. "She's following us."

"YOU FUCKING BITCH!" the homeless woman screamed as she trailed us.

"Keep walking," Becky said. "Seriously! Keep walking!"

"What did I do?" I hissed. "I didn't do anything to her!"

"She's coming!" Becky said. She peered over her shoulder again. The woman was yelling in indecipherable syllables now. "She's telling other people what a bitch you are. She's pointing at you!"

"If we have to leave and come back down, we can do that," Steph said.

"There's an escalator up ahead," Becky said. "We can ride it up to get away from her. We can come back down later."

"WHAT DID I DO TO HER?!" I asked.

The woman kept coming, and we kept moving down the platform, and finally there was a space for us to duck into, and we took it. The girls swarmed around me. I was wearing a swingy pink coat. I was a walking bulls eye, and they needed to take my visibility down a notch.

I refused to look behind me. Sometimes the best way to calm down the crazy is to ignore it. If the crazy fire isn't stoked, isn't fed, isn't fanned, then it usually sputters out. I was hoping that by not turning around and acknowledging the woman who was telling the rest of the platform what a horrible cunt-y bitch I was, then maybe she would get bored of trying to provoke me and trying to get me to say something to her--which was, in reality, is what started it all.

"What did you say to her?" Amy asked.

"She asked if I could ask me a question, and I said no, thank you!" I said.

The girls blinked.

"Jess," Steph said, "when crazy-eyed homeless people say things like that to you JUST. WALK. AWAY."

"Right," I said. "Got it."

Next to us, a guy our age who had one of his arms up in a sling but was still managing to bury his nose deep into a novel, glanced our way for a second and then moved over so we could come stand farther back, next to him, far away from the edge of the platform. He smiled once and went back to his novel.

We stayed there, carefully obscured, and waited. I never once turned around to search out the shouting woman, and she stopped shouting and that was that. We got on the train without incident and found seats.

Once the train moved away from the now-empty platform, Becky leaned over and said, "Wouldn't it be funny if she came storming through the subway cars right now?"

"Uh, no," I said.

"That's what happens in the movies," Amy said.

And we all turned to look at the dark space between the subway cars as the train bumped along through the tubes.

Of course nothing happened. Of course she didn't come storming through the tightly-sealed door with her finger wagging in the air and a rain of bitch-bitch-bitches coming out of her mouth. Of course she didn't stand on a seat and announce to the entire car that this girl, this girl right here, she is a big skanky bitch.

Instead, things went along just the way they should have, just the way we could have hoped for the time in Washington, and we spent the rest of our it boning up on history, eating as much food as possible, talking about weddings, weddings, weddings, and doing things that the Pink Torpedoes always have and always will do. Things like these:

Nipple Hair and All

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from our trip to Miami. Most were taken pre-vomitting, when we still only thought we were going to go home with stories to tell about not having a hotel when we arrived. Boy, did we have another thing coming.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Coming Soon

The story of my Miami vacation is coming soon. Until then, here's the last picture taken of me before everything went straight to hell.

I would not look that happy or peppy for long, let me assure you.

Summing It Up

I think the picture that most accurately captures the essence of my New Year's Eve is this one:

Cheers, 2009. Let's see what we can do.

I Am Famous

Going home to Buffalo for Thanksgiving break means more than pumpkin pie, wine, and racist grandfathers. It also means this: The World's Largest Disco.

Every year, after we have spent the week stuffing ourselves and having possible run-ins with people we went to high school with, people who have come home to stuff themselves and have possible run-ins with us, we end up at The World's Largest Disco (yes, it's actually a world record), where we descend on the Buffalo Convention Center like some spangly, polyester-clad mob. It takes a lot of preparation. Some of us comb thrift stores and vintage shops; others haunt eBay. After all, there are afro wigs to buy. There are platforms to find. There are Farrah-flips to coordinate. Things need to be done so that when we walk through the doors and ride the escalator up into the giant, humid space, we fit in with the 7,000 people who are thrusting their pelvises to the beat of "Hot Stuff" or "Car Wash" all while drinking cheap boxed wine that they will later throw up into the garbage cans placed in strategic locations across the room.

This year, my preparation paid off. This year, I became famous. Why? Because I made the newspaper the morning after. Behold:

Okay, to be fair, I am neither one of the people featured prominently in this photograph. I am, however, the spectral vision directly behind them--the girl wearing the lavender pantsuit with crocheted top. Oh yes. It was a sight.

And in that picture, it might appear as though I am throwing down some fine disco moves, that I am hustling to the beat of "It's Raining Men." Or maybe it looks like I am sliding across the floor to get closer to (my secret crush) Christopher Knight, one of the Bradys who showed up as an emcee for the event. However, I am doing none of those things. Instead, I am being grabbed at by Steph, whose braceleted hand you can see reaching back for mine so I don't get separated from the group as we herd toward the bar for our own glasses of boxed wine.

Still, even though I wasn't doing anything interesting enough to be the focal point, the actual reason for the shot, I feel pretty honored to have made it into the paper at all. That pantsuit sure did right by me.

And if you want to see more 1970s fashions from our group, here are the girls:

And here are the boys:

You should've seen us strut during Stayin' Alive.

Favorite Pictures from My Minnesota Vacation

Highlights included: babies in cupcakes, a slutty fairy princess, a passed out Midwesterner with moppy hockey hair and a quilted shirt straight out of 1973, a photoshoot in which I was conned into wearing the Hooters outfit, dressing up dogs as lobsters and monkeys and Bill Cosby, suddenly-appearing Teen Beat-ish books about N*Sync and New Kids on the Block, and Steve Almond's Good Thunder Reading.