That's Why I Keep Lobster Bibs In The Top Drawer

Not 5 minutes after crossing the threshold of the beach resort where we’d spend our day on Grand Bahama island, I found myself peering curiously at a group of four transparent pitchers holding a variety of colored liquids: pastel yellow, soft orange, mint green, and on the right, a dusty pink.  After sniffing them thoroughly [and thereby killing any fellow interest], I was still having a hard time getting a whiff of the pink stuff on the right, which was the pitcher that really intrigued me, because hey - it could be a strawberry smoothie or something really good like that, right?

My plan was to pour a small “tasting” amount of the beverage into my glass, but there was this stubborn plug of fruit pulp in the neck of the bottle that was blocking the flow.  The mixture was frustratingly resistant to gravity until suddenly, when I had it practically upside-down, it wasn’t.  That's the moment I found myself standing in a large puddle of creamy watermelon juice that extended over to the dripping buffet counter and also coated my arms like runny oven mitts.

Post-spill.  I got a nice full glass.

I wish this event didn’t throw me into a foaming wave of pasty pink flashbacks, but unsurprisingly, it does.  During my four years of undergrad, I developed a somewhat regrettable relationship with the cafeteria frozen yogurt machine.   I’m the first person to encourage a dessert course, whether it’s after breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a snack, so it should come as no surprise that I was a frequent visitor to the frozen goodie station of our dining hall. 

One weekday after an early lunch, I strode over to the dessert counter, blindly reached for a sugar cone (which I could have done in my sleep), and held it in my left hand under the Columbo yogurt nozzle (flavor of the day: raspberry) while I pulled the white lever with my right hand.  Instantly, the device began gushing pink, frothy, room-temperature liquid in a 4-foot circle around my feet… all in view of 400 or so peers who I would spend the next month trying not to look in the eye.

To challenge any generous assumption that I’m a fast and thorough learner, an identical event happened on a second occasion, this time leading to strawberry- flavored results.  I eventually did get the message: Don’t try to satisfy a fro-yo fix before 1 o’clock; DON'T DO IT.  Because if I do decide to pull that lever and try my luck, I’ll just have to waste another Rhetorical Theory class showering syrup the color of Pepto-Bismol off of my legs, and I doubt that Dr. Chase is inclined to accept that excuse more than twice.  At least not without laughing in my face first.

Despite many years scattered with a multitude of bittersweet accidents, I want to encourage each of you to keep on filling that sugar cone.  However, if you’re standing in line and you feel even a shred of doubt, just go ahead and let someone else pull that lever, because while you can clean up the sugary stink, there’s simply no sponge in the world that can scrub away the shame.

Way, Way Too Much Of A Good Thing

Sun, sand, turquoise tropical waters, 24-hour pizza and ice cream… it sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?  It is.  Especially when you’re traveling with your older sister and your mom, two people who have the ability to singlehandedly make any ordinary occasion, to say the very least, extraordinary.

To celebrate my sister’s milestone birthday this year, we arranged to take her on a cruise to the Bahamas.  Renee has, until now, never had the joy of steaming along on a floating Las Vegas resort, so it was particularly exciting to watch her eyes absorb all of the neon lights, read the gluttonous menus and revel in the slothful lifestyle of our little adventure at sea.

You can probably recall from previous posts my extreme affection for soft-serve ice cream, but what you don’t know is that it runs in the family.  We are also a clan of chronic snackers, on which I’m blaming the extra 3 or so ”souvenier” pounds I’ve returned home with.  Everyone knows that you can nosh your way through a cruise, but hardly anyone really gives you the pathetic details of their sorry, over-indulgent foray into gastrointestinal chaos.  The following is a single day’s account of where my 3 pounds might have come from.  I promise you’ll find yourself speculating how far I am rounding down the wreckage.  I’ll never tell, but if you see me in person, you'll probably be able to without my help.

9AM - room-service breakfast, taken in stateroom: smoked salmon, fruit, bread products, coffee, yogurt, mimosas

10AM - breakfast #2: coffee, fruit, bacon

11AM – ice cream break, coffee

12:30PM – lunch: jerk chicken, curried vegetable salad, calamari fritters, beef in puff pastry, pizza, fruit, ice cream….

After reaching her max, my sister seems appalled at the fact that I, friends, am a bottomless pit.  It's a talent, really.

2PM – ice cream break #2

4PM – ice cream break #3

5PM – visit to the sushi bar (cultivating my very own maki roll, located just above my belt line)

7PM – dinner (2 starters, 1 entrée (or two, if you’re Renee), and as many as 7 desserts before Welly, our waiter, begins jogging in place as he prepares to log roll each of us out into the foyer.  Apparently, we’re not the only ones regretting that last scoop of bread pudding.

Get your own dessert table.

9PM – the last, is-it-even-possible ice cream break of the night.  Probably.

Add a couple of drinks in there, and you’ve got something like 8 million calories.  Or 4 pant sizes, which explains why I can’t even fit into my stretchy pants.

 

So there you have it, folks.  I have more stories to tell and other pictures to share, but right now it’s after 2PM, and I need to go find a soft serve machine somewhere.  What can I say?  Some habits die hard, if they die at all.  

Let Me Count The Ways

Today is DoesThisParkaMakeMyButtLookBig's 100th post!  It's a good thing you aren't here to see my happy dance, because despite the scientific advances of the 21st century, you still can't erase something like that from your memory, even if you desperately want to.  It's better this way.

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At this particular time of year, there are some things that I miss about our old neighborhood.  

I miss scampering through the local corn maze with my sister, cackling loudly as we race through the crisp fall air and trick small, rosy-faced children into marching down dead ends. I yearn for my kitchen, with its sharp knives, miraculous dishwasher and double sink.  Here, when I load the sink with dirty dishes and greasy pans, I don’t have a second bowl to fill my coffeepot in, and rearranging the mountains of glass and knives is like a kitchen version of running the gauntlet  – one of these days, I am going to reach in, flail about, and emerge not with ten fingers, but with two fists of what appears to be ground meat.  I long for the vegetable stand a mile up the road, with its locally-made ginger and eggnog ice creams and perfectly inspired cherry tomatoes that almost never lasted the 3-minute drive home.  I crave a yoga class, a match with my volleyball team, my washer and dryer, and the company of my parents.   I even sort of miss the way the local McDonald’s employees recognized my face as I drove through for yet another vanilla ice cream cone.  I’d try not to frequent the same franchise more than once per day, but there were times when I cared less about my reputation and more for my craving.  They probably had a nickname for me, and rightfully so.  

But despite the wonder of NPR, wireless internet, and comprehensive fitness centers, there are also a few things that I don’t miss.  For example, I don’t miss traffic.  For you friends who doubt the existence of traffic in the neighborhood, boy do I have news for you.  I can identify between 40 and 50% of the vehicles driven in our current town.  The other half is made up of either Canadians or logging trucks.  The last time I had to stop behind a car was about a week ago.  It was on the 3-mile dirt road to camp, and was because we all knew each other and were stopping to have a chat. 

Traffic.

I also don’t miss shopping.  C and I have developed a very brief retail half-life, which seems ironic since before the move, I worked in that industry.  Perhaps it was always this way, but I suspect that making our direct purchases almost exclusively at convenience and grocery stores for the last nine months has exacerbated our impatience.  The only exception I make to the above statement is that I have retained an insatiable love for shopping with my sister, which categorically falls somewhere between Halloween-costume hunting and raiding a candy store, and is perhaps better known as the eternal quest for the most revolting frock.

Lastly, among the things that I have gladly left behind me are traffic circles.  If you believe in such a place, I am convinced that these, friends, are what Limbo is made of: circle after badly engineered circle of misery and anguish and panic.  I dread them.  There is a special, particularly abysmal roundabout near our old house that was recently re-designed, which means that they decided after a dozen years or more to abruptly change the traffic pattern.  I completely agree with the decision, because the vehicle interactions were backwards and inside out for years (inside out, I tell you!), but this is exactly the problem with traffic circles: there seems to be no universal way of constructing them.  Another loop I know of has two lanes – two lanes­ – something that simply cannot produce a safe or predictable traffic pattern.  I am certain that a preschooler somewhere took red crayon and drew a set of fiery concentric circles, then crammed the paper into her city planner/mommy’s briefcase, only for it to slide out onto the office floor and get pushed through approval and funding by some recently-promoted department intern.  It's particularly infuriating considering that the circles were probably drawn to be a giant apple, or maybe Buzz Lightyear.  Bottom line: a two-lane roundabout is ridiculous. 

Just try to get out of this inside circle without reaching for your Paxil.  Kiss your sanity goodbye. 

Mercifully, I haven’t driven in a circle in months, hardly ever see a stoplight, and buy my gifts online.  This softens the blow of not being able to watch my sister kill a bag of 75%-off Halloween candy or nosh on my mom’s salsa while listening to Simon & Garfunkel with Dad at the dining room table.  It’s is a good thing, because life without the joy of those two events has the potential to really bring me down. 

But no traffic circle Limbo?  This just might be worth it.  

Give It To Me Straight

Join me as I take a few minutes to step back from the world and reflect.   This is for my own benefit, but it just might be good for you too.  You see, as my sister and I were jib-jabbing back and forth the other day, we got to talking about how absurdly reluctant we tend to be to acknowledge (seemingly) unbecoming self-truths.  For example, I’m a little doughy right now.  I don’t think I’m fat, or that I'm really that unhealthy, or even a horrible person for liking fried cheese and ice cream in bulk, but I do believe I’ve reached that fleshy point in my 2011 experience, which sadly, usually happens on an annual basis in the winter.  Only this time, I have to wear a bathing suit four weeks from now for a trip with my mom and sister.  I have dimples, and they’re not just on my face.  Enough said?

I think that we women are particularly adept at avoiding prickly little realities, but you guys can let me know if men feel this way too.  It stings to recognize that probably I should trim my nose hairs, or I really am sinfully late for everything.  Perhaps like me, you’ve beaten around this bush by employing phrases like the following:

• I wake up late because I’m naturally a night owl, and 8 hours is doctor-recommended, isn't it?
• I chew with my mouth open because of my jaw problem (I’ve heard that a million times).
• Thick ankles are hereditary on my dad’s side. 
• I have to pee exceedingly often, and I can’t figure out why.  I think my kidneys, neglecting their proper duties, are off hosting speed-dating events or running bounce-house birthdays, and one day they’ll be as trashed as a Foxwoods suite after a bachelorette party, only way more important.  I’ll need an ambulance and dialysis for-like-ever.  Or a catheter.  Ugh. 

Well then, what’s a girl [or guy] to do?  Friends, let’s start a revolution.  Let’s just call it like it is:

• I stay up hours too late watching Iron Chef and Seinfeld reruns.  That’s why I don’t get up early – because I live like a child.
• I chew with my mouth open because of my jaw problem (ok, I believe you).
• I HAVE CHUNKY ANKLES.  No one knows why, and these pegs don’t seem to be going anywhere, so I’m sensitive about it.  Lay off.
• I need to stop shamelessly drinking 8 cups of coffee.   At breakfast.

source

I want to remind us that there’s no need to be a martyr to that dark widow’s peak you were born with or that annoying habit of counting the light fixtures when you enter a room.  Just show your cards – “I have a serious widow’s peak, and no one will die over it”, or, “I call it 'my OCD', but really I'm dipping my toe into the Crazy River”.  No one is going to post your news on a billboard.  They aren’t going to start texting your friends:  She’s a doughy mess!!  Tape this pic to your mirror and you’ll start eating salad, like now.

           

At least I don’t think they’ll do this. 

So what I’m saying is, let’s call a spade a spade.  Ladies, let’s get a little bit more secure and develop a slightly tougher skin.  It's not worth it when I unintentionally shoot juice through the Michael Strahan-sized gap between my two front teeth and then blubber out of the room when someone lets a fart slip because they’re giggling so hard.  It just isn't.

He really is one of my heroes.  The man's a Fox football analyst, for crying out loud.  His gap is probably insured.  

And what’s so wrong with cankles or gaps or sleeping in?  The earth will continue to revolve, the hungry will still need feeding, our friends will still love us (and periodically laugh when a stalk of celery gets completely wedged in our front teeth), and we will be better off for letting these things - which in the scope of life, truly are small – slide off our backs, so that we can tackle the true joy and work of life. 

And when you have second thoughts on whether thigh dimples are funny, just check out the cheeks on a 6 month old.  Be sure you get the o.k. from their parents first. Otherwise, you didn't hear it from me.

I Allow Myself One Huge Mistake Per Day, At Least

It’s taken me a little while to sum up our events by a daily schedule, so allow me to take this post to catch us up a little.  Where did we leave off?  Oh yeah, showering in the cave.

After Canyonlands, we planned a few days to base our activities out of the town of Moab, a perveyor of outdoor magic and bliss.  Apart from eating at the Moab Diner every morning and getting gelato every night, we explored a bit.  Here are a few things that what we did.

Here I am, weirding out all the German tourists.

Arches: We hiked the slickrock to Delicate Arch (barefoot) and then Landscape Arch from the Devil’s Kitchen area.  Like I said in a previous entry, though beautiful, Arches is a madhouse.  Go in February.

C under Delicate Arch

Hole N'The Rock.  I both highly recommend and adamantly warn you against this excursion.  This day was “M makes all the decisions“ day, which is why our activities were comically strange and anticlimactic.

Hole in the Rock is a 5,000 square foot home that was blasted into the side of a mountain back in the 1960’s.  The couple who owned the property ran a diner out of a portion of their home for a time, which eventually became a gift shop.  The home itself is dark despite the large windows that were erected on the external edge of the cave, er, house.  The husband dabbled in taxidermy, and there is a large mule resting near a window and a mustang in a corner near the bathroom.  You are never alone at Hole in the Rock.

Another reason that you’re never alone is that across the parking lot from the home is a private zoo.  Nestled near the two story outhouse and “sasquatch sighting” sign were a collection of animals: turkeys, peacocks, pygmy goats, a pig, a couple of American bison, 3 alpacas, a family of deer, two terrifying ostriches, and a bactrian camel named Kramer.  We bought a bucket of food that we could feed the animals, which was nice, but the ostriches pounced on the bucket with such terrifying strength that if I had used my hands to hold out the treats, I would have no hands.  Really.

Slickrock Trail: C spent an afternoon mountain biking the famous Slickrock trail on the edge of Moab.  I declined to go because a) I would weigh him down (there was a very high probability that I would either pass out or crash and C would have to carry my body the 5 miles out - I would literally weigh him down), and b) we’d decided to stay at a hotel for a couple nights, and it had an outdoor pool.  From his immediate feedback, I’d say that C loved it and periodically thought he might die, which is our favorite recipe for success.

Jetboat Ride to Remember:  For the second real gem of “M Day”, I booked us a dutch oven dinner followed by a jetboat ride up the Colorado River featuring a light show.  I work for an outdoor outfitter.  I have no excuse for neglecting to ask the right questions.  The first would be, “I’m looking for something fun and exciting – is this the right booking for me”, and the second would be, “Can you describe the light show”.  This would have avoided a lot of nervous hand-fiddling at dinner and juvenile giggling on the boat ride.  C and I arrived at the base and immediately knew that I had made [yet another] mistake.  We were surrounded by a sea of white.  I have no problem sharing activities with my elders, so I don’t want to come across like an entitled little brute, but I think I expected that our ride might have some element of speed and vigor, and that…. Well, I guess I just expected a more diverse crowd, all around.  There were exactly zero families with children.  We were one of three, yes three couples that were under 40.   Out of 100 or so people.   We made friends with two young newlyweds from California that sat across from us at dinner and adjacent to us on the boat ride.  The other young couple was on their own somewhere.  The food was a real high point of the night – a variety of slow cooked meats, scooped pound by beautiful pound onto your metal plate (didn't they used to use metal plates in prison?).  After dinner, we ambled out of the dining hall and made our way to our assigned seats on the jetboat.

This is Dee, our riverboat guide.

The ride itself was nice, but instead of learning about geological formations, we spent our upstream ride looking for the face of Winnie the Pooh in the canyon wall, and our downstream ride listening to a pre-recorded tape of cowboy stories and natural history (with some strong LDS undertones).  The “light show” was actually a truck that drove along the river’s edge with a spotlight in its bed.  As we floated downstream, a staff person shone it’s beam on one side of the canyon, then the other, but the truck kept plugging up traffic, and C and I had a hard time muffling our laughter when 8 or 9 cars kept coming to a crawling halt behind the truck, getting the same light show we were.  My bet is that they also were wishing for something with a little more speed and vigor.  Somehow, this still turned out to be a Moab highlight.  Or a lowlight, depending on how you look at it.

We did a lot of walking around in Moab, which is really a great little town, though I’m sure it’s becoming more touristy with each passing year.  Then one morning, we packed up our gear, threw it all in the Caliber, went to Denny’s, then headed northwest, back to the city, dust flying in our wake.

Plug Your Nose And Pull The Lever

FOR-E-VER. 

(cue The Sandlot echo)

That's how long it's been since we've talked.  What have I been up to, you ask?  Buckle up and strap on your hockey helmet, friends.

I've been...

• scooping cat litter
• eating vast quantities of Gifford's ice cream (Strawberry Cheesecake, Rainforest Nut and Vanilla with Grape-Nuts, should you ever be interested in purchasing some before I come visit you, the hubs, and your exotic animal menagerie, dear sister)
• maneuvering canoe trailers

Let's dwell on the subject of creative trailer parking for a second.  It's like ice-dancing, minus the ice, plus a whole lot of herky-jerky movement and an exhaust system. Like ice-dancing between a big rig and a glass chandelier - birthing a kind of triple salchow that has a mind of it's own.

Or, you could instead imagine having to "drive" a Chinese New Year lion costume.  Then, imagine you're directing it while facing the wrong direction.  And you're going backwards (Which backwards, you ask?  Yours or theirs?  Yeah, now you're getting my point).  Some things in life are just plain harder than they look.

And they look hard.

A two-person lion performing mui fa jong, for example.  

This is no hopscotch exhibition, ladies.  Human acrobatics are not unlike trailer acrobatics, which I could probably write you a book about at this point, titled My Trailer Diaries.  Lesson #1 (and this is a complete tangent, mind you): Never forget to dump the black-water.  If you don't know what black-water is, this is especially true for you, because if you forget to dump it, you are going to find out in some very nasty ways.

But back to the list.  I've been...

• doing laundry.  Like 25 loads in one day.  In a room that registers 85 degrees on a -25 degree February morning, without the dryers running
• finding us a place to live 
• offering dancing lessons at a friend's wedding

I'm the one on the left, showing Abbie my spirit fingers.  Who dances like that?  How embarrassing.

• dropping metal canoes on my friend Sarah (There she goes!!  Sorry, Sarah.)
• changing cocktail dresses in the back of a pick-up truck (My license plate doesn't say "BAKWUDS", but then again, it doesn't need to.)
• scooping cat litter

Yeah, we're living the high life up here, dumping poop into the outhouse toilet behind the camper and parking unwieldy vehicles in tight spaces.  

I bet you're glad I'm back.