Good Morning, Sunshine

This morning when I got up to go to the bathroom, I got really freaked out because I thought my pee smelled like skunk. Then I realized it was just my neighbors indulging in a wake'n'bake.

Random Life Stuff

Our landlord likes to eat on the run. He once showed up at our door balancing a full plate of food with one clean and one dirty air filter, announcing himself with a call of "Maintenance!"before going to change our air filter. That's why I'm not more suspicious about the quarter watermelon wrapped in aluminum foil and unopened can of cranberry sauce that are sitting on the sidewalk next to my front steps.

Within a three-day span I was mistaken for a married woman and a high school student. Someday I will figure out the right combination of hair, clothes and make-up that makes me look my actual age.

John and I were sitting at a bar in Toronto having a drink and a guy leaned between us to pay his tab. When the bartender told him the total, the guy shouted "EH?!" After trying to perfect the quintessential Canadian sound all weekend, this was like a golden goose being placed before us, on the bar. John and I immediately looked at each other and basically high fived with our eyes.

Baby Face

A couple weeks ago, I met John in Clearwater, Florida for the weekend since he was already down there for work.

It was so nice to escape just for a brief time and feel some sunshine (through a shield of 70 SPF of course) and walk on the beach. Late Friday afternoon, after sitting on the beach for a while, we walked up to the pool bar to get a drink. We sat on stools among all the people in Phillies shirts and hats who had just returned from a spring training game.

Before the bartender even approached us, I heard people talking about Sea Isle City and my ears perked up. No one even knew what Sea Isle was when I mentioned it in North Jersey, so hearing it mentioned all the way in Florida was exciting. A girl was talking about a bar she liked and the guy she was chatting with was trying to remember the name of the place he would go for pizza late at night...

“It’s on a corner, it's brown, you have to walk up steps to get there...”

“ANGELO”S!” I screamed as I leaned across John toward them, almost falling off my stool in my attempt to be the first to buzz in with the correct answer.

They acknowledged my answer and we exchanged brief pleasantries but then it was time to order a drink.

The bartender came up and asked what we wanted. I asked for a strawberry daiquiri, since it seemed like the most appropriate thing to drink while sitting poolside.

“Coming right up,” the bartender replied, picking up a cup. “But could you just raise your sunglasses quick so I can see your face?”

“No problem,” I said, and lifted my large glasses.

She squinted in the sun, looked my face up and down, put the cup back on the bar.

“Uh, yeah, I’m going to need to see ID.”

I didn’t even pretend to look in my bag, I knew my ID was up in the hotel room.

“How about a virgin strawberry daiquiri?” I asked.

“Sure, sorry, you know, it’s just spring break and all,” she explained.

They say the eyes are the window to the soul. With my sunglasses on I was getting served, with my sunglasses off I was a minor trying to pull a fast one. I guess my soul must be about nineteen.

Tik Tok in A Minor

I was scanning through radio stations in the car today, and as I passed by one station, I heard a snippet of a Ke$ha song. It was the "duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-dumb" portion of "We R Who We R," as in 'We're dancin like we're duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-dumb.'

Just hearing that one bar of robotic staccato sounded like the skipping that would occur when Vicki from Small Wonder would get splashed with water and malfunction. The thing it made me think about was- what if guys like Mozart, Bach, Chopin, somehow got transported through time to the America of 2011, listened to a Ke$ha song and were told, "yup, that's music."

Not that I'm a music critic or have anything to back up my two cents. And it's not like I haven't danced like I'm duh-duh-duh-dumb to a Ke$sha song or two, but just hearing that tiny flash of the song, out of context, put into stark contrast what music is today versus what music has been in the past.

It just makes me think about what I'm consuming as entertainment these days and if I'm really doing what's best for my brain...and the future of art. Does Jersey Shore have the staying power of Romeo and Juliet (no SamRon comparisons, please)? Will the Twilight series stand the test of time like Pride and Prejudice? Will music theory students of the future study the composition of Lil Wayne's early work while voice majors studiously listen to recordings of Auto Tuned Katy Perry songs?

I know there's still plenty of good stuff being produced, but there is also a huge glut of crap, and I think I'm hooked on more of it than I should be. Although, I have cut out some of my old reality guilty pleasures like Real Housewives and Real World/Road Rules Challenge. I've had the classic book "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad on my nightstand for two months, with page 35 still dog-eared, yet rom-com novel "Bet Me" about a frumpy, no-nonsense insurance agent who gets caught up in whirlwind romance with the strikingly handsome, achingly charming lawyer all based on a bet was devoured in two days. I guess what I'm trying to say is- actually, I'll wrap this up later, I'm missing The Bachelor.

What's My Motivation?

After a bit of a dry spell (similar to the one I’ve been in blog-wise), I finally tried to go to the gym last night. Tried. Now I’m justified (slightly) in not having gone for a week since I have stitches in my leg and I’m not supposed to do strenuous activity. But I figured I could go walk on the treadmill and do some upper body weight training and crunches and stuff.

Then I got to the gym and drove into the parking lot. Between the influx of temporarily enthusiastic New Years Resolutioners and the mountains of snow, it made the parking lot a crazy place. Snow had eliminated some spots and created an obstacle course in others. That is no excuse, though, for creating spots wherever you decide to stop your car. People were parked diagonally, perpendicularly, and other directions that I don’t know the names for. They just dropped their cars with no regard for people driving through the parking lot, let alone trying to actually park. The way these meat heads parked made looking for parking spot like looking for a needle in an assholestack.

I did three laps around the main parking lot and two around the auxiliary lot with no luck. I told myself if I went around one more time with no luck I was going home- after all it was doctor’s orders. As I made my final lap, I saw a pair of reverse lights flash on, but I pretended (to myself?) that I didn’t and headed for the exit. After all, when else in my life am I ever going to have a doctor tell me NOT to exercise?

A couple hours later, when I was sitting on the couch watching Seinfeld and eating Girl Scout cookies, my skinny little sister walked in, flushed from a work out and told me she’d gotten a clear spot right in front of the gym door. I congratulated her and ate another cookie.

Recent Tidbits That Have Tickled Me

- Jackie on her temperamental manager at Victoria's Secret:"I can't tell if I'm her sidekick or her bitch."

- A bumper sticker I saw on my ride home: "I piss excellence." I've decided to adopt this as my aspirational motto. From now on I will strive to feel that I too, piss excellence.

- I had a laughing fit when I saw one of these babies, can you guess which one?
http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/2011/01/01/saturday-night-special-new-years-baby/

- Kitty was visiting for Christmas and decided she had to go to the bathroom while I was in there putting on make-up. She did not feel it was necessary for me to leave. I did. I won, but with only seconds to spare.

- My dad being chastised by my sister for trying to eat candy off of a gingerbread house that had been sitting out for three weeks. He was caught double fisting stale gumdrops and then searching in his pockets for a scrap of paper to spit them out into after the first bite. He found a candy wrapper (shocking) that worked nicely and the gingerbread house was promptly thrown away.

How Many Synonyms for Vomiting Can I Get into One Post?

I started taking a new multi-vitamin recently, and I just realized that it’s causing an unpleasant side effect. Today was the third time that, shortly after taking it with breakfast, I experienced an intense wave of nausea. This has only happened on days when I’ve remembered to take the vitamin and kicks in within about 10 minutes of ingestion.

Today might have been the worst yet because the nausea set in while I was in the car rather than before I left the house. I was waiting to make the turn onto the road leading to I-95 and it hit me. I started taking deep breaths and swallowing the excess saliva that kept seeping into my mouth. “Oh my God,” I thought, “I’m going to vomit into my lap and all over my car.”

I kept telling myself that I was not going to throw up, I could not throw up. Deep down, though, I really thought it was a possibility. The thing that occurred to me later, after it passed, was that I didn’t pull over or turn around during this episode. I was 72% sure I was going to puke, yet I kept driving, even executing a smooth merge onto 95 next to a giant truck. Luckily I got through the nausea without spitting up, but now I’m really curious what would have happened had I just started spewing onto my dashboard. When was I going to stop the car? Did I think I’d have the presence of mind while yakking to correctly signal my pull over to my fellow drivers? Was I just going to power through to work and clean up when I got there? How was I going to react to the looks of horror from other drivers as they passed me, while I, with hands securely at 10 and 2, projectiled onto the steering wheel? I’m relieved I didn’t have to find out, but I’m thinking I start taking my vitamin with dinner from now on…