Our executive director (ED) had caviar dreams and bullshit skills.  Our team lived through five years of her ridiculous celebrity stalking, wallet gawking, funeral chasing ways.  Somewhere around the halfway mark of my tenure with the organization, she decided that we needed to hire a development director, because we (read: she) was not able to raise the kind of mythical money that made her foam at the mouth like Cujo.  So she hired Lydia, to be our hunter and slayer of the rich.

Lydia started on a Wednesday during a particularly busy week.  When I met her, there were so many red flags waiving I thought I was at a NASCAR race.  But I tend to be hypercritical, so I said nothing.

On her third day of work, we were hosting a small fundraiser, which was basically an annual sangria and paella spiked reunion for a family we worked with.  Before we got there, our ED informed us that Lydia was not to participate in the manual, back breaking labor we had to endure, but she was to circulate and see if she could make her way into some overstuffed wallets.  Initially, our ED showed her off like a prize cow, but within 20 minutes had dropped her like a bad penny.

 It was during clean up that we realized something was very wrong. 

Shlow me what you want I want me to do and I will shlow you what I did. Do. I did.

I say nothing.

If yous slet me halp, I can be the good worker girl and the helper that does the helping.  Really, gimme you key.

We carefully placed her stumbling ass at a table and finish cleaning up.  The whole time, I am wearing what I believe was the biggest grin of my life and I waste no time pulling the ED over to tell her that I think something is very, very wrong with our dear new colleague. 

Lydia decides that she is totally ready to drive herself home when we decided to stage a small but awesome intervention in parking lot.  We were co-workers against drunk driving and we weren’t going to let our ED think for even one minute that this shit wasn’t for reals. 

An intervention for a stranger is probably the best kind of intervention you ever hope to be a part of.  There aren’t any of those weighty emotional ties, you don’t have to write a letter using feeling words and your makeup stays perfectly in tact.  Lydia insists, slurring and stumbling the whole time, that she can drive, that she doesn’t *ever* drink and certainly didn’t drink this evening.  We call bullshit, we play good cop/bad cop, we perform our own made-up brand of field sobriety tests. Best. Night, Ever.     

But like all good things, the fun was coming to an end.  I get bored easily and I needed a drink myself, so after about 40 minutes, I left the circle of trust, got in my car and headed home.  Something that I still regret to this day.

Immediately after my departure, Lydia made a run for her car, got in and took off.  Unfortunately for her, she was drunk and couldn’t figure out how to get the hell out of the parking lot, let alone the gated community.  The ED and another colleague took off in their cars like Tubbs and Crockett, heading for the exit, dialing 911.  They barricaded their entrance and exit with their cars and waited for the cops to arrive. 

Seriously, a barricade?  BARRICADE.  Made of humans and cars. I would have given my eye teeth to be part of that action. The cops show up, search her car and find three bottles of wine, two of them completely drained. Receipt noted the time of purchase was earlier that evening.  She blew a .278 and was promptly arrested, still insisting that she doesn’t drink.

________________________________________________________

A few months ago, I was hiring for a new position on my team with the company I work for now.  We posted the ad on Monster, so we got a kajillion applicants.  One day, while sifting through the landscapers and truckers that wanted a marketing position, I came across a familiar name.  Yes, my friends – someone up there clearly has a sense of humor but I wasn’t 100% sure if it was in fact our dearly drunken Lydia applying for a job. 

Since she didn’t keep in touch after that night, I decided to look her up her arrest record because I am sentimental like that and came to find out that she has been arrested six times in the past three years.

I thought about what a small freaking world it is as I dialed her up.  I introduced myself, and informed her that I was calling about her recent application to our company and after a few minutes of totally legitz pre-screening questions, I told her that her name sounded really familiar to me.  And then I asked….

You didn’t happen to work at…..

Silence.  Gulp.  Silence. CLICK.  *Sweet confirmation.*

The lesson here…good help is a son of a bitch to find.  Also, don’t get so drunk on your third day of work that you forget that were arrested and subsequently fired.  It makes for very awkward conversation when you show up for day four.

The last time I went down, I was in New Orleans.  The Big Easy.  And I went down hard.  So hard in fact, that I tore my labrum.  If you are smarter than I am, you know what a labrum is.  If you are not smarter than I am, you too probably think the labrum is at least a distant relative of the labia.  Incidentally, as my first orthopedic surgeon informed me during a rather perplexing conversation, the two aren’t even second cousins twice removed.  

I was at a convention in NOLA, wearing super comfy clogs that had the shortest, squarest heel ever, and they got caught in a concrete crater that was cleverly disguised by cheap red carpeting that might as well have been felt.  And down I went. On one knee.  The only people who didn’t see me were the people I was at the conference with. 

Over the years, I have become an expert in the art of falling.  There is no pre-work involved, as it is so unpredictable, you can’t really prepare for it.  I have completely given up hope of trying to be one of those people that can catch myself.  Because as if falling isn’t embarrassing enough, I don’t really feel the need to give a pre-show that consists of me flailing my arms like a human pinwheel, only to have drawn more attention to myself before my knees hit the floor.  And it is always my knees.  I never scrape an elbow or take advantage of an awesomely junky trunk.  Always the knees.  I go down straight and pop back up like a hot piece of toast from the toaster, look around, assess the spectators and assure any of them that offer the obligatory “Ohmygodareyoualright???” that I am, in fact, fine.  I smile. I laugh.  I walk away quickly. 

So, apparently after a lifetime of practicing and *almost* hurting myself, I finally got good enough to warrant a trip to a bone doctor after my fall.  It took me a month of sharp hip pain and my dad’s constant nagging to actually go.  This doc happened to replace my father’s hip last June and my father would refer him to you for a fucking hangnail, he loves him so much.  But in spite of his love, he, to this day, cannot pronounce the doctor’s last name. 

After the x-ray, the doctor told me that he “didn’t see anything that excited him,” and while I was tempted to flash my boobs at him, I deducted that if the paper shorts they made me wear weren’t exciting, nothing would be.  He recommended that I think long and hard about how bad the pain is, and if it is bad enough, I should go have a hip arthrogram done (read: long needle with dye stuck deep into the joint, guided by an x-ray and followed by an MRI).

Three months after the fall, I went for the test.  My sister *sacrificed* a day in the office to accompany me.  My name is called, we both look up and there is a delicious slice of yum in scrubs asking me to follow him.  My sister says “Holy shit.  You are so going to have to be all naked from the waist down in front of that.  Good luck!”

The good news: I was able to keep my underwear on.  The bad news: He hands me a washcloth and says “Can you stick this under the leg rim of your underwear so your, er, ummmm…you know, so, ummmm….your VAGINA DOESN’T HANG OUT.”  Yeah, no one would want that.  Can I just mention that when I told my 69 year old mother that story, she even said “Why didn’t he just say junk?”

When I went to review the results with my doctor, he very quickly said “It’s a labral tear.  You have two options – surgery or live with it.  It won’t heal itself.”  He assured me that while the surgery was arthroscopic, it was still surgery and should not be taken lightly.  He’s terribly good with the comfort.  So I booked the surgery and went to Dr. Google for some second opinions.

This is apparently a fairly new procedure (because I am fucking trendy like that, I like to get in on things early) so back in February when I began researching, there was only a limited amount of info on the site. First thing I learned: make sure the surgeon has done this surgery many, many, many times before.  So I call the Dr. and get a return call from his assistant, Lourdes.  (I know what you are thinking and she is NOT Madonna’s daughter.  I asked. Turns out her mother’s name is LaDonna, so it was a very confusing conversation for both of us.)  When I ask how many of these surgeries the doctor has done, she says “Baby, he hasn’t done this surgery before.”  And I say, “Are you fucking serious?” and she says, “Let me check, mommy.”  While she clearly has issues deciding who I am to her, I await her call back, where she tells me, “Love, I spoke with the Dr. and you would be his first.” That’s when it became painfully obvious to me that she was sweet talking me just so I would be his first.  Well played, nurse-pimp, but I’m on to you.

I found another surgeon, because if I am going to be anyone’s first time, it would have to be Dr. Ross ala George Clooney.  My new surgeon is a sports medicine surgeon because apparently, people usually get into this situation by running marathons and lifting houses.  I assure him that I would be super athletic if it weren’t for this injury and wonder if it is too late to convince him that I was doing laps around a convention hall with a 300lb backpack when things (i.e. my heel) took a turn for the worse.

I book the surgery again and decide to do some preliminary PT to improve my range of motion and strength before I go in for the big show.  My PT is a tiny little thing, six months pregnant, all belly and I hate her instantly.  She takes some measurements, asks me to lift my good leg straight up while laying down.  When I do, she asks me, “Are you a dancer?  You are incredibly flexible.”  My hate melted into nutcracker love as I showed her my beautifully arched ballerina feet and thanked her for seeing my dancing potential.  Something that tap/jazz/ballet teachers simply could not see.  Bastards.

Surgery has come and gone.  I was a rock star.  Not nervous at all.  They stuck me four times for the IV and I looked like a junkie by the time I left the outpatient center, which I think gave me a nice edge.  Have I mentioned how much I love anesthesia?  Sweet, blissful sleep.  Until I wake up.  And then I cry like a baby.  For nothing.  I sobbed the whole way home from surgery.  A nurse asked me how I felt, I cried.  My mother asked me if I was going to put a bra on, I cried.  I got home and my lawnmower was taking care of my grass.  I cried. 

And now for the icing…I went to a follow up appointment to get my sutures out and discuss the state of union with my surgeon.  Who couldn’t make it.  But his nurse came in and reviewed things.  My labral tear had become a completely detached labrum and my cartilage is “very badly damaged for someone of my young age.” He, being the nurse and all, immediately suggests a hip replacement since I am still having pain a week after surgery.  Recommends it the way a mechanic recommends new tires.   He is just lucky he referred to my age as being young.  I cried again, but this time there was no anesthesia involved in spite of the fact that I asked for it.

So, in part, my being tragically hip (bad pun totally intended) is one of the things that has kept me from here for the past few months.  I am now nearly four weeks post-op and doing physical therapy.  Oh, the cherry – it is with someone that has never worked on a patient with a hip labral tear before.  Oh, yeah – he is also “not *really* a PT” as he just informed me during my last session.  So by the grace of GTL (Gin, Tonic, Lime), I have progressed from crutches to a walker with balls on the bottom and now I rock a shiny silver and gray cane.  It’s like going from 90 to 75 in a matter of a few weeks.  Like Benjamin Fucking Buttons.

And for your future reference, it is far easier to get an endless supply of oxycodone than it is to get a temporary handicapped hanger for your rearview mirror.  So, if you are looking to score some painkiller, ask to get a better parking spot and they will give you the drugs to get you through the parking lot pain free. And now that I have shared my secret for getting more painkillers and making a trip to Wal-Mart nearly pleasant, my work here is done. You’re  welcome.

So I started this because it would be my teeny, tiny space.  It was at the prompting of an amazing friend and blogger extraordinaire, who asked me to make her two promises.  That I keep it running for a year and that I attend BlogHer ’10 in NYC.  I kind of failed on both.  Though technically, the site *has* been running for a year, with or without my hand in the mix, thanks to Go Daddy.  That four-eyed minx.

When I started, I felt like a student of The Blog.  I Tweeted, I wrote, I tweeted that I wrote.  I commented.  I read. I read. I read. And I felt all anonymous and edgy.  Like Happy Harry Hard On from Pump Up the Volume.  Except without a pirate radio station and thousands of teen-angsty people listening.  And, also without simulating masturbation.  Why would you just simulate it – that’s no fun for anyone?  I guess I am just classier than he was.  And more committed.  Scratch that – he was obviously way more committed.  He was shut down by the cops.  I was shut down by myself.  Way less cool.  (If you haven’t seen this movie, it means you are way younger than me.  Making me feel old is kind of mean.  Also, don’t try to watch this movie now, because chances are it will seem lame.  And you will think I am lame.  Again, mean. But check out the soundtrack, because it is filled with golden oldies like the Pixies and Concrete Blonde and Peter Murphy and they are anything but lame).

I watched the blogging community from the sidelines, dipping a toe in here and there.  I’ve seen some incredible things.  I have seen strangers rise up and bare their bewbs support people in inspiring ways.  I have seen other strangers rip people to pieces, wearing their virtual screen-name cloaks.  I’ve listened to established mega-bloggers slap down newbies for their careless clumsiness in an already crowded room.  I’ve seen some newbies careless and clumsy in their relentless desire to hang with the cool kids and get free things like nose hair tweezers and anti-fungal cream for their feet.  It’s like one of those Animal Planet specials – so many beautiful, unusual creatures co-existing, all drinking peacefully from the babbling brook.  A dark shadow floats quietly underneath, barely rustling the water and the SNAP, the smiling crocodile just came and bit someone in the ass.  Or maybe it’s like a hemorrhoid flare up.  You choose your analogy.

So, I sit here, with credit card in hand and the decision to try this out one more time. I know I lost a few readers with my unfortunate, unplanned hiatus.  But I gained a shitload of spamirific compliments about how they really like the layout of my site and about Sandra Bullock and Jesse James.  I am not sure what that kind of spam gets anyone, but when someone gives you a compliment or finds you because you made one tiny reference to the Bullock, you smile a little on the inside.  And then hit delete.  Because, at the end of the day it’s just spam. This post isn’t in criticism of anything or anyone.  It’s about me.  Trying to start this over.  Trying to enjoy writing again.  Using the word fuck and double spacing all the way.

Yes, the same man who created the yummy, edgy goodness of boyhood teen angst in Holden Caufield, broke his code of silence to get all pre-teen Jonas Brothers giddy with several media outlets including Time, Newsweek and US Weekly, asking them: “How sweet was it when that giant robot hand reached in through the roof and grabbed that old lady?” Salinger added. “Or when those motorcycle terminators detached from its legs and started speeding toward the escaping resistance fighters? Holy crap, was that fucking cool or what?”

I shit you not.  That quote is for reals.  So, in the spirit of J.D. Salinger, I am coming out of my two months of sub-par literary hiding, to proclaim a new love of my own.  The Jersey Shore. 

I know – the drama for this show started months ago.  And I ignored it.  I heard rumblings about Situations and Snookies and creeping and hoards of Italians being really pissed off because they are being poorly represented and I ignored it all.  So. Fucking. Stupid.

Thank GOD for wine and MTV On-Demand.

Because one night, when my toes were cold and my heart was aching for Glee to return, I flipped it on, fearing that not having some experience with the show would leave me pop-culturally irrelevant.

All it took was one word. Guido. I. Was. Hooked. 

I grew up in Queens.  Lived there for the 80’s and part of the 90’s.  The neighborhood I grew up in was all Italian.  ALL Italian.  Guidos and Guidettes were everywhere and everyone.  The accents were strong and hard to swallow like cheap whiskey.  The hair was big.  The cars were shiny and driven slowly, Vanilla Ice style. And the shirts…they were wife beaters, exposing biceps that pay the greatest homage one could pay to their culture – tattoos in green, white and red.

I left Queens to go to college in New England and never really went back.  Until I turned on the Jersey Shore.  And I was simultaneously relieved and horrified to find out that Guidos are EXACTLY as I left them so many years ago.  Except the girls have smaller hair and bigger boobs. 

I have now watched all the episodes except for two – because apparently MTV can’t count On Demand, leaving out episodes two and four.  Bastards. And I am obsessed.  Because at the end of the day, I am okay with admitting that I am a fucking rubbernecker.  A rubbernecker of life.  And the Jersey Shore is one brilliant train wreck that I can’t take my eyes off of.  I don’t even want to try.

So, I work with this loverly gal who I share space with for nine plus hours a day.  We agree about a ton of things.  But the things we disagree on are serious issues – like Panera Bread (she hates it), John Mayer (I think he is an ass) and now, Jersey Shore.  But I am sometimes always the bigger person – I bought her tickets to see John Mayer for her birthday.  A concert that she gushed about, proclaiming that when it was over, she wanted to write him a letter that went: Dear Mr. Mayer, I think you are really, really awesomely talented. And I love you.   

So for the past several weeks, she has been giving me all sorts of shit about how disappointed she is in me and there is no justifying a Jersey Shore habit.  Because it is the worst thing that has ever been on TV (she has not seen the new Melrose Place). She is disgusted by the fact that that these people are put on a show and glorified for being idiots.  The Jersey Shore is what is wrong with this world.  And I am protesting her like the Catholic church going up against The DaVinci Code.  I am convinced that eventually I will get her to see the pure beauty that is the Shore. 

I strive in every conversation to make random references to the Shore.  She Guido-blocks me every time.  She says she doesn’t want to waste her time on assholes.  I tell her that a lot of people are assholes, they just aren’t upfront about it.  She talks about a miscommunication at work and I tell her how it is *exactly* like the miscommunication between Ronnie and Sammi when they were at the club that night, but they were able to work it out, so she will too.  I encourage her to fist pump and tell her that she is doing it wrong if she’s only raising her middle finger.  She only celebrates the beauty of true artists and can’t support schmucks making $10,000 for appearances.

And then, in a moment whose timing is too beautiful to accurately put into words, her beloved, idolized John Mayer proclaims to the world via Playboy that his cock is actually a white supremacist that doesn’t take on black chicks. And he used the N word. And talked non-stop about how people think he is a douche-bag, but he’s really not.  Because while his dick is racist, apparently it has opinions and makes decisions independent of his mind and body. 

I eagerly read her quotes from the article – just the highlights really.  I watched her mentally crumble up her mental letter to Mr. Mayer as her mouth hung agape.  It doesn’t mean he’s a racist, right?  He didn’t really mean it the way it came out, right?  He’s just edgy and misunderstood, right?

I turned to her, smiled and said “THIS is why I love the Jersey Shore.  Because Snookie and J. Wow and Paulie D. and the Situation never lied to me.  They never pretended to be good, upstanding people.  They promised me promiscuity in hot tubs, thick Jersey accents, police intervention and questionable undergarments and they delivered.  With the Shore, there are no disappointments.  Unless you were expecting the boys to actually get laid by someone that didn’t live in the house, because that almost never happened.”

And while she argued and said it was different, I know in my heart that she realizes that John Mayer just made the Jersey Shore kids look like heroes by comparison.  It. Was. Beautiful.

So with that, I have come out of hiding, just like Salinger.  Except I don’t drink my own urine.  Or anyone else’s for that matter.  I just wait for the tide to come back in for season two.  Which is in Miami.  Need I say more?

I would like to tell you that I had to slow down.  Because I used to get paid for my blog posts.  And since that is not happening anymore, I can’t blog as frequently.

But that’s not 100% accurate.  There was a short period of time when I could write a post at work and, since they pay me there, *technically* I was getting paid to blog.  Which was awesome.  But that was back when I had a Hobbit for a boss.  But he has since been exiled to the Shires (which is totally a good thing) and now we have a new Commander in Chief who is just chock full ‘o ideas.  GREAT ideas.  Ones that are seemingly specific to my department and only my department.  And the timeline for these projects is…NOW.  I have a sneaking suspicion that the newbie didn’t get the memo about how December in the workplace is designed for internet shopping, bitching about the holidays and looking for new Christmas cocktails for the party that you have planned 100% from the discomfort of the ergonomically incorrect chair at your desk. But this December – there has been none of that.  And it really pisses me off when people don’t respect time-honored holiday traditions.

I could blame my lack of blogging on any number of things, but in the spirit of sharing and making excuses because that is what the holiday season is all about, I am going to share the dark, dirty secret that has kept my fingers far from my keyboard on the weekends and most evenings.  I realize that in sharing this, I am probably going to lose the little bit of street cred that I have.  The threats to hurt people who wear Snuggies and promises to loudly out people who pee on the seats in public restrooms will be washed away by my odd little holiday obsession. 

So, for the better part of December, mixed in with online shopping, marketing campaigns that were trying to kill me and copious amounts of wine, I was putting up this:

 They say it takes a village to raise a child.  Well, I have no children.  And it took me and my dad a ridiculous number of hours, with the fate of our relationship hanging delicately in the balance, to raise this village.  And I am not going to lie – putting this shit together is a pain in the ass.  A real pain in the ass. 

 But in hopes of gaining back just a little bit of respect, there are minor details I need to point out about my village.

My village people like to drink. A lot.  There are two stand alone bars, a winery and I am pretty confident both the hotel and the ski chalet have bars inside – or at least fully stocked rocking mini-bars.  And there are no cops in the town.  So the crime and drunken fighting – it runs rampant. 

The Ski Lift of Terror is one of my favorite pieces.  It moves back and forth, which is awesome, but there is no possible way for people to get off.  These cable cars rock – back and forth.  Sometimes, they bang into each other, sometimes they hit the top of the winery. 

There is a subway.  With a shoe shine and a musician begging for money.  And a rat. 

Someone lost his head.  Quite literally.  In a freak ice skating accident.  And every year he skates the mirror-pond.  Headless.  As it should be.
 

So this is what I have been doing. For the past month.  And I am filled with equal parts of shame, pride and wine.  And the more wine I drink, the more I realize that this huge city sitting in the middle of my living room is becoming a bit hazardous when I am tipsy.  If you ever see a news story about someone that was tragically impaled after falling onto her village church’s steeple, know that it was probably me.   

Happy Holiday!

PS – It is December 24th and I totally just got paid for writing this blog post. Thank you baby Jesus – this village is especially for you!

So, my five days in The Big Easy was, quite frankly, hard.  Ridiculously so.  But really, not for any of the reasons above.  I was in the city for no more than 45 minutes, just enough time to drop off luggage and put together a game plan for the night when I got voicemail from a friend.  Someone I hadn’t talked to in too long.  I could tell from her voice something was wrong.  I decided to put it off, wait until the morning.  Hurricanes were awaiting.  Then another call came in.  My sister.  The message was simply, call me. 

And I did.

And my heart broke into tiny little pieces as my brain was pulled and stretched and blistered as it tried to process.  Anissa had another stroke.  What. The. Fuck.

I met Anissa for the very first time in the outpatient clinic where her daughter Peyton was receiving chemotherapy.  I was working for a pediatric cancer non-profit and I was at the facility getting b-roll footage.  I watched Peyton play with a staff member’s retractable badge as if it were the best toy ever created.  And I watched Anissa looking at her daughter with all the love and joy a face could express. 

In the sorority of cancer moms, every week was hell week and no one ever wanted to join.  When leukemia made Anissa its newest pledge, she unknowingly entered a world that needed her as much as she needed it.  And that world – she changed it.  And I wish I could find the words to explain it all – but there are not enough adjectives in my entire vernacular to describe the laughter she created when it was in the most serious of deficits, the hope she gave when it seemed to be snuffed out by despair, and the comfort she gave when hearts were broken by the most unimaginable loss.

All week I have been trying desperately to wrap my brain around all of this.  Trying to process something that is simply not fathomable.  My heart keeps telling me that she is going to wake up any day and write a post entitled “A Tale of Two Strokes: How to Get Ralph Macchio to Become Your Greatest Supporter.”  Admittedly, there are moments when my head decides it wants to get all Dr. Google.  Weeks like this make me eternally grateful that I never listen to my head.

There are a lot of things I don’t know (algebra, how they decide the order of the balloons in Macy’s parade, the true gender of Lady Gaga).  But the things I do know, I know with complete confidence.

I know that this stroke is being a complete asshole.  Of epic proportions.  And while it may think it has a stronghold on our girl, it so fucking doesn’t.  Little by little, Anissa is planning her counter attack.  Because she is sneaky and fiercely strong and she will win.  The stroke will go down. 

I know that the impact of Anissa’s life is far greater than I ever imagined.  She IS a big deal on the internets.  Huge.  I have been inspired, overwhelmed and touched by the outpouring of support and love for Anissa and her family.  Once again, she has become a part of a community that needs her as much as she needs it. 

I know that Anissa kids, Nathanial, Rachael & Peyton are more than worth going to hell and back for.  These kids are riotously funny, smart, beautiful, talented and the most pure reflections of Anissa.  And Peter?  Seriously awesome.  As an anniversary gift one year, he bought Anissa the soundtrack for Once More With Feeling, the musical episode of Buffy.  Enough said.

I know that from the first time I met Peyton, every cell in my body knew that she would be a survivor.  There was no doubt.  To see her little nose crinkle up like a Shar Pei and laugh was to know that she was much stronger than leukemia.  And that strength?  She got it from her Mama. 

Lastly, I know that miracles do happen.  In the cancer community, Anissa and I were both witness to them.  Get ready ladies and gentlemen, because if you didn’t believe before, you will soon.  A miracle is about to happen.  Because while Anissa may Aim Low on things like cleaning and cooking and personal hygiene on occasion, she does not half-ass it when it comes to her family. 

I started this blog because of Anissa.  Because she pushed and prodded and encouraged and supported.  And when I put up my first post, I told her I was going to take it down because no one was going to read it, she made me promise that I would keep it up until August so I could go to Blogher in NY this year.  So I promised because apparently it is awkward to go to a blogging event when you don’t blog.  And I fully expect that she will hold up her end of the deal. 

So a week in New Orleans and there were no Hurricanes. No beads. No flashing of my bewbs.  I went St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square and lit candles for Anissa.  And not the .50 votives in the foyer.  I went for the big dogs at the alter (and nearly set the place on fire with those crazy wood sticks, that don’t go out very easily).  And I expect a return on my investment.  Like, today would be great. 

Please continue to keep Anissa, Peter, Nathaniel, Rachael and Peyton in your daily prayers.  And while I know times are hard, if you have anything to spare, think of the Mayhews.  This is a most difficult road for them – let’s do everything we can to make it easier.  Click Here to make a donation NOW!  Check Aiming Low for updates on ways to help.  Send Pete and family your love on Hope4Peyton.org.

Okay, I have.  But I didn’t enjoy it.   

Okay, I enjoyed it.  But I am not buying NeNe’s book.

Anybore, the airport. We were having one of those conversations you have with people that you really don’t have anything to say to whilst anxiously waiting for the comedians at Southwest to stop telling bad jokes and call your freaking boarding group for line-up. 

Someone says, “So, what is everyone reading?”

Colleague #1: Oh. My. God. I am almost done with The Tipping Point.  (Reaches into bag and holds it up as if it she realized that she got the Golden Ticket and now her Grandpa will miraculously be able to walk and take her to Wonka land).  It is Life. Changing.  Mind.  Altering. Utterly.  Amazing.

Just as I am about to ask if we are talking about a book or a bag of mushrooms… 

Colleague #2: (pulls book out of bag with the pride of a child that just pooped on the potty) That is CRAZY! I am reading Gladwell’s Outliers – I read The Tipping Point and I. Loved. It.  That book totally helped me look at things in a new way.  I will so lend this to you after I am done. Which will be soon, because I can’t put it down.

Big Papa: Both amazing books. Blah, blah, blah, paradigm shift.  Blah, blah, blah, critical mass.  Blah, blah, blah, YAWN.

Colleague #3:  I haven’t read Gladwell yet – it is on my list.  I am reading Good to Great.  It’s fascinating to see how companies went from, like, good to great. You know? Like, they started off okay and then they started doing different things and making improvements and stuff and those improvements helped them get from…well…good to great.

At this point, my smile is as twisted and stretched like Brittany Spears’ sanity.   Please just call the boarding group and end this.  I have two free drink vouchers that are burning a hole in my liver and if I don’t cash them in soon my veil of interest is going to fade like MJ’s skin. 

Duck. Duck. Duck. Duck. GOOSE.

Big Papa: So, what are you reading? (Points his chin towards me, as if the chin is the new index finger, to inform me that is in fact my turn to play What business-trendy book are you reading for the sole purpose of possibly being able to reference it to strike up a common-ground conversation with the president of the company in hopes of him making the realization that you are the Susan Boyle of his business – a raw and beautiful undiscovered talent disguised as a troll?)

 Now I could have lied.  Maybe I should have.  I could have named any one of the hundreds of big-duh, I-wouldn’t-need-to-read-this-book-if-common-sense-was-actually-a-common-part-of-my-life books that people are constantly referencing.  Because they think that reading about someone else’s success or failure somehow makes them a leader instead of a mere reader.  But I am nothing if not honest. 

Me: Diablo Cody’s Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of An Unlikely Stripper. 

Long pause accentuated by nods, smirks and the sound of eyebrows forcibly making the forehead skin to crinkle.

Colleague #2:  Hmmm….you’re reading a book about a stripper?

Me:  It’s not about just any stripper.  It’s Diablo Cody – you know, the one that wrote Juno?  (Blank stares).  Juno?  The movie about the pregnant teenager that was all the rage two years ago because it was awesome.  And also because the screen-writer, Diablo Cody, was once a stripper. 

Big Papa: So that’s really what you’re reading?  That’s pretty funny.  I didn’t expect that at all.  I understand, though.  At least once a year, I like to read a purely mindless book too. 

Me:  I don’t know that this is so much of a “mindless read”.  When I picked it up, I thought it was the kind of gritty American success story that Lifetime movies are made of.  Talented girl, strips to pay the bills but writes to free her soul.  But, it’s actually about a girl works at ad agency in Minnesota and is bored, so she starts stripping because she thinks it’s sexy and dirty in a good way.  So, while the stripping doesn’t make her as much of a great American success story as I thought it would, it does make her a rockstar.  And really, if you think about it, she was an admin at an ad agency and now she owns an Oscar, has created a show that is produced by Spielberg, and has made teenage pregnancy, multiple personality disorder and stripping infinitely cooler.  One can only imagine the impact she has had on the sales of orange flavored Tic-Tacs.  She went from painfully mediocre to incredibly awesome, which I think just may be a teensy bit better than going from good to great. It’s actually pretty damn inspiring. 

And without a word, just a small and uncertain laugh from my dear colleagues, Southwest got their shit together, boarded the flight and I made friends with the best free beer a girl could ask for and finished my book, dreaming of strippers and Oscars and boys named Paulie. 

So, I leave next week for my next business trip, which promises to be filled with the same awkward pre-drink airport conversation, which means I am due for a trip to the bookstore.  Because I changed my mind.  I am going to get NeNe’s book.

Our office tends to be unfathomably cold.  The physical space runs relatively narrow and long and air conditioning vents travel the length of the office.  When the air turns on, it blows like a tornado in a trailer park. And most of the ladies at our office – they are the stuff anorexic fantasies are made of.  If the future of saving lives through blood donations rested within these girls’ veins, we would be shit out of luck because a good number of them don’t meet the 110lb weight requirement to donate.  Needless to say the thin layer of skin stretched tautly over their tiny bones does not provide much protection against the elements. 

One girl in particular has been complaining relentlessly about the cold.  For a year.  And somehow, the frigid conditions of our office seem to come to a shock to her. Maybe each night she comes down with a sudden and tragic case of amnesia that prevents her from dressing appropriately.  Maybe she spends her nights praying for the miracle of temperate air and believes that an unnamed God will answer her prayer.  I don’t know.  What I do know is that with each day of icicles and tank tops, she makes a threat.  A serious threat.  And last week, I decided that I had enough.  It was time she make good on that threat and that I was going to *help* her.  And it was going to be hilarious. 

So, I did something truly terrible, for which I am very sorry.

I bought her a Snuggie.   A SNUGGIE.

Now before anyone sends hate mail or unfollows me, know that it was meant to be a joke.  The kind that you laugh at over the ridiculousness of it and then move on.  That was all I thought about when I spotted the end-cap of Snuggie’s in the store, claiming its rightful place at the throne atop the aisle filled with horrendous As Seen On TV items like Bumpits and the Flowbee.  So I spent the $15.99 for the world’s greatest monstrosity of fur and arms.  And I wrapped it up in tissue paper.  And I gave it to her. 

And now…she wears it ALL THE FUCKING TIME. 

Seriously, this is a girl who adorns her feet with Stuart Weitzman.  Drapes her body in Diane Von Furstenburg. Decorates her wrists and fingers with David Yurman.  And now, because of me, she wraps thousands of dollars in overpriced fashion in a Snuggie.  A SNUGGIE.  She walks across the office, lifting it carefully as if she were Scarlett O’Hara rocking her best hoop gown, letting those Weitzman shoes peek out their new found prison for a glimpse of what life was like before I stole their innocence.

Someone suggested that I take her out behind the building and put her out of her misery. And I considered it, but was faced with a dilemma.  She is so tiny and covered in all that fur, it would be like clubbing a baby seal.   And no one likes people who club seals.  But then again no one likes people who wear Snuggies either. See the dilemma?

What’s more is that I fear I have started a Snuggie pandemic at work that will make the Swine Flu look like the regular flu.  All of those teeny-tiny girls looking for comfort and warmth in the arms of a Snuggie.  Yes, the vaccine is accessible and made up of all the common sense it takes to just bring a sweater to work.  But you know how wary people have become of vaccines these days.  And let’s face it – common sense is not always in ample supply. 

So, all I can do at this point is apologize.  Sincerely.  I bought a Snuggie as a joke and in turn hurt a lot of people.  I am sorry.   And if you want to talk smack about me, I completely understand. Just know that I will hear you.  Because I also bought one of these bad boys that fateful day.  And now, I can hear EVERYTHING.

And then it dawned on me.  Without a formal ceremony there was no need to run out and get my fashion on rightthisminute.  And then I remembered that because there was no ceremony and because no one can actually see me, I didn’t really have to get a new outfit at all. 

And then I came home with some Vera Wang.

Pajamas, people. From Kohl’s. Jeez, I’m not ridiculous.

So I had prepared this mind-blowing acceptance speech, thanking so many people – The Suburban Jungle for being unbelievably awesome and having a site that I aspire to have some day; Janet, who made me web-pretty with a design that rivals Wang; friends; family; my 11^th grade English teacher who called my mom and told her I was on drugs; my college professor who insisted that Jim Carroll was the world’s best poets (that same professor had to take a semester off after getting high with freshman students).  I would have thanked all of those people.

And then I realized something that made me tear up my acceptance speech on the spot.  I realized that by thanking all of those people I was only giving Kanye yet another chance to be a douche and steal the spotlight.  And I will be damned if I am the catalyst for that bullshit.  So, I will humbly and quickly thank The Suburban Jungle (because she’s all win) and perform the responsibilities that are required of me as the winner of a major, national award.

What You Must Do When You Are Presented With This Honor

1. Present this award to 7 others whose blogs I find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged me.
2. Tell those 7 people they’ve been awarded HONEST SCRAP and inform them of these guidelines in receiving the award.
3. Share “10 Honest Things” about myself.

1. I have never ever participated in one of these all about me surveys.  I am always listed as the person least likely to respond.  Guess all they needed to do was attach an award to it to find out if I drink Coke or Pepsi.  For those who were wondering, I drink Coke.  Diet Coke to be precise.
2. For six months after college, I worked at a Wal-Mart photo lab to make enough money to move back to NY.  Yes, I looked at your photos.  All of them.  And I judged you.
3. I once lived in a senior nursing home on New York’s Upper West Side for almost two months.  Apparently, that was my company’s version of a luxury apartment.  When I arrived, they were wheeling a covered body out on a gurney – I am pretty sure that is how my room became available.
4. I don’t eat meat.  I am that person that goes to Five Guys and orders a bun with condiments.
5. I once met Freddy “ReRun” Stubbs and asked him for an autograph.  He said it cost $5. I paid him $10 for the autograph and to do the ReRun dance.  Best money I ever spent.
6. I got the West Nile Virus back when it was first introduced in New York.  Back when it was an epidemic and only a few people had it.  It was very trendy at the time.  You know, the Swine Flu of 1999.
7. I have never seen any of the Star Wars movies. None of them.  One drunk night in college I started to watch the first one and I didn’t make it past the long scrolling words on the screen.  Damn you vodka.
8. When I was a teenager I tried to go the whole gothic route.  Except I sucked at it because, unlike the other kids I hung out with, I was pretty confident in one thing – that I was not a vampire.  But black is still my signature color.
9. I wrote my first poem in the first grade.  It was about the Statue of Liberty.  It went a little something like this: The Statue still stands, big and tall / She stands for liberty and all / She stands in the harbor as a symbol of peace / Her feet are mounted in concrete.  Still not sure how I didn’t get the Pulitzer for being a child genius.

Seven Bloggers Who Will Now Bask in the Glory of the Honest Scrap Award

The Bare Essentials Today
Vinomom
Hop Piece of Sass
Livit Luvit
Life’s Crazy Joke
Pieces of Me
My Little Becky 

Honest Scrap Winners – I encourage you to use this award for doing good.  Know in your hearts that you are always right and anyone that tells you different sucks balls.

What a week – my first award AND my first Kanye joke!  I. Have. Arrived.

I digress.

Music has been a huge part of my life, so I was more than a little excited when I was given the opportunity to review the newest Five for Fighting release, Slice, on sale October 12.  The band, led by John Ondrasik, has put out a few monumental anthems of years past. 100 Years was the Never Say Goodbye of a younger generation, but without the guyliner and the highlights.

Five for Fighting’s sound is instantly likable.  It is catchy without being too pop and edgy without being over orchestrated. And the voice of John Ondrasik – quite sexy. It is two parts delicious mixed with one part sultry and a dash of vulnerability. You can feel raw emotion through his voice – loss, love, fear and hope are all there in different songs. It’s that rawness that sets Five for Fighting’s sound apart in a landscape of over synthesized, over processed music.

Slice, as an album, represents the various snapshots of life. Those moments, sometimes tremendous, sometimes small, that leave a lasting imprint on your life. Conceptually, that is what I love about Slice, because music has a power like no other to capture those life changing shifts in time and perspective.

Tuesday, the third track, is reminiscent of classic Billy Joel. Using the piano as his mistress, the tune is melodic and delicate, with a disciplined passion that feels organic and real. Again, it is the vulnerability in his voice – a slight quiver, a hint of insecurity – that, quite frankly, makes you want to watch the video to see if the face matches the sound. (It does.)

Easily, my favorite track on the album is Chances. Its tune easily crept into my head and I found myself searching for it when I gave the album a second listen. And singing it. Off tune, in my own special way – especially the parts where he breaks into a smooth falsetto and I break windows.

On certain songs, like the title track Slice and Letters to an Unknown Soldier, I found some of the lyrics to be slightly distracting and a bit awkward. Slice aims to recall a time when life was simpler – before technology and Lady Gaga. But references to cell phones and blogs within the lyrics feel forced, making the message come across a little too loud and clunky for the pop melody it is set to. In Soldier, a track that honors the many amazing men and women that are bravely fighting for our country, has a line says “You are so tall / Did you play basketball.” The sentiment is strong and you want to love the track. You want to join in and pay tribute. Ondrasik’s voice is cooing, the music is totally sway-worthy, but the quirkiness of some of the lyrics prevents you from falling completely. Which is a shame, because you were right there. On the edge. Ready to let go.

Do I recommend Slice? The short answer: Yes. Give it a listen. There are definitely some gems that found their way into mental musical library. Do I recommend you tattoo the lyrics onto your person? The short answer: Proceed With Caution.

Now It’s Your Turn
Since Slice represents some of life’s most significant snapshots, tell me what song represents a snapshot of a time in your life good, bad, funny, ugly or otherwise – and brings you back there instantly when you hear it?

For me? There are so many. But in the sake of full disclosure, somewhere in between my love for glam rock and my teen shift into gothic and what was lovingly referred to alternative music, I found myself front row at a New Kids on the Block concert. With my stone washed jeans and jacket covered in puffy paint proclaiming my love. And my hair making me a full four and half inches taller than I actually was. And though it is rare that I hear Hangin’ Tough these days, on the rare occasion that I do, I instantly smell AquaNet hairspray and wonder if my collection of NKOTB trading cards would be worth anything on Ebay.