My Horizontal Life

Miss Chelsea Handler. How you made me giggle out loud many times in this book. If anything in this book is even 85% true, I applaud your honesty, bravery, and your doctor's antibiotics. Kidding. Kind of. If everything is a lie, I can breathe a sigh of relief and let you know that your imagination is both depraved and delightful.

I cannot say what compelled me to buy this book, or why, after so many months in a pile of other unread novels, did I make a bee-line for this one, pick it up and finish it in an airport, practically in the same spot I started it in. I can say that Chelsea makes one night stands sound even more hideous and mortifying and reaffirming of loneliness and dissatisfaction than anything else I have ever read.

I can also say that when I lent this book to my best friend, I was expecting a lighthearted comment in her review. Or nothing. What I was most definitely not expecting was a story about how her fiancee didn't "appreciate my giving her that kind of stuff." He apparently has been asking her if there was something I was trying to say to her.

Something to say? Like, you should have on night stands and here is a book that will teach you how? If he spent five minutes with one of the short stories, I would think he would be calling me to thank me. I imagine the call would go something like this:

"Thank you for giving my girl many, many more reasons to stay with me. I owe you and Chelsea Handler a sincere thanks for making this happen."

Maybe he thinks that a novel can really shape someone's mind set. Could you imagine?! Just in looking back to recent books... After The Hunger Games, I find myself near a group of 30 people and just start fighting for my life? After 50 Shades of Gray, find a near perfect megalomaniac with uncommon sexual predilictions and an unlimited amount of money and then... maybe I don't need to worry about that scenario as much.

And now? I can't help but want to succumb to this urge I have to buy her more books. Old ones, that he would appreciate. I have to see if such books exist on the internets. I am thinking, "How To Iron My Husband's Socks While I Wait For Him To Come Home And Read This Book To Me." Or, "Words Are Dangerous, So This Book Is Only Filled With Pictures Of Food That My Husband Would Like Me To Prepare For Him."

I will refrain from further comment. It doesn't get prettier from here.

Shot 'O Wha?

My foot is broken. Long story- it could be worse. It could be better. Such is my life.

I decided to move forward this past Saturday, helping a friend in need of some friendly hands help him move. Since I had already mapped out a plan of attack for the prior week's packing schedule to aid him in organization and hitting goals, I knew what we were walking in to: Boxes and neat piles of organized chaos. (Do as I say, never as I do, please.) Instead, what we walked in to was chaos... that had been kicked around for 12 months, growing dust and CD limbs with slight hoarding undertones. My previously realistic goal of helping unpack boxes and rearrange furniture in said new place became lofty and laughable. Instead, I stayed in the old apartment, packing and sweating and sticking my swelling foot in the air every twenty minutes to help my pain killers do a little something more than taste funny. I had help. His mother, in a full mechanical knee brace, not only packed alongside me, but she was excellent company as I watched my more limber friends pouring sweat off their shoulders, packing and unpacking the moving van. If it wasn't 100 degrees, and we weren't moving boxes, and my foot wasn't broken, it would have been the perfect day. I will settle for great, most of the time, though.

My head and heart were a lot happier to help than my stress fracture. And later that night, as I lay immobile on my couch with an ice pack on my elevated foot, I thought back on my favorite part of the day. I have been doing that a lot lately. Is that bizarre? Taking a step out of reality to observe it? I feel this need to capture vignettes outside of the 8 to 5. Here is what I came up with:

After hours of feeling pain in his heel, Ben-jammin decided to take his sneaker off only to find an earring post had punctured the rubber sole of his sneaker and was standing up straight, brazenly even, in his shoe. It had also managed to pierce the bottom of his heel, which was lightly bleeding. And as I made a scrunched up, "That sucks" face, I look up and see his eyes widen with horror as the realization that someone else's bodily secretions at some level were inserted in to his foot. And we were in Jersey City! More people could be culprits on that one street than in most people's entire towns. And his question?

"Oh no! Does this mean I have to get an AIDS shot?"

I hear those are the worst!

Snapshot

Marley's face looks about as dusty as the thin layer covering my bedroom dresser in the back. I never have the heart to tell her that she is on my pillow. So I crawl to the bottom of the bed, scratch fervently with both of my hands while simultaneously making a small circle until I plop down in the same spot I started and I sleep perfectly unless there is thunder, lightening, a creak in the neighborhood, a dog wagging its tail within a 30 block radius, or if it's my time for my hourly trot up and down the hallway as a volunteer security guard.

I'm On Fire

so you dont want to hear about my good song?


you dont want to hear about how i am getting on

with all the things that i can get done

the sun is in the sky and i am by my lonesome

so you don't want to hear about my good day?

you have better things to do than to hear me say



god its been a lovely day! everything's been going my way

i took out the trash today and i'm on fire...



so you don't want to hear about my good friends?

you dont have the guts to take the truth or consequence

success is in the eye of the beholder

and its looking even better over your cold shoulder



i'm not suggesting you get to line me up for questioning

but jesus think about the bridges you are burning

and I'm betting

that even though you knew it from the start

you'd rather be a bitch than be an ordinary broken heart



so go ahead and talk about your bad day...

i want all the details of the pain and misery

that you are inflicting on the others

i consider them my sisters and i want their numbers



god its been a lovely day! everything's been going my way

i took up croquet today and i'm on fire



i picked up the pieces of my broken ego

i have finally made my peace as far as you and me go

but i'd love to have you up to see the place

i'd like to do more than survive i'd like to rub it in your face.....



hey! its been a lovely day! everything's been going my way

i had so much fun today and i'm on fire

god it's been a lovely day everything's been going my way

ever since you went away hey i'm on fire.....


Good Day lyrics by The Dresden Dolls
 
No, I wasn't belting this out at the top of my lungs in repeat on my ride in to work today in flagrant defiance of the truth. Unless you saw me. Or heard me. In which case, I blame Amanda Palmer for being the most honest lyricist I could think of on such short notice.

Opposites Attract

Michelle: "I'm going to see Rock of Ages... Not the show, the movie."

Me: "Didn't know it was a movie."

Michelle: "Where have you been? Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, a bunch of other people..."

I look it up on IMDB... "Set in 1987 Los Angeles, Drew and Sherrie are two young people chasing their dreams in the big city. When they meet, it's love at first sight, though their romance will face a series of challenges."

Me: "You crack me up. We like such different things. I would rather do just about anything than sit through anything with a storyline like that."

Michelle: "Unique. I prefer it keeps the friendship interesting."



I fear that next, my oldest friend is going to sit me down in front of a big screen playing some Step It Up and Dance 9 movie with Elvis and Miley Cyrus singing in the background while speaking into a gas mask and the walls start spinning with swirls painted all over them. Basically, her choice Saturday afternoon is my bad acid trip. And we have been friends for cough*cough*cough years!

Snapshot

I guess it shouldn't have surprised me that in the Meat Packing District of lower Manhattan, where meat packing plants no longer exist, that they put incorrect signage in front of an empty storefront. I found out, after four hours of waiting under said sign, that this is in fact a lie, and taxi's do not pick you up here.

Visiting (Near) Rochester

Work is bringing me to the far North tomorrow afternoon. Highway driving on a highway with nothing but highway behing me and highway ahead and highway tunes blasting... I could handle a day like that. I will be staying about 40 minutes west and a little bit south of Rochester, NY and I mentioned the trip to a friend of mind currently working towards a pharmaceutical degree in that same city I thought I would never get to see again- by choice. Here are his words of advice:

Scott: "Make sure your wiper fluid is full. Soooooo many bugs...I hit one that might have been a small bird. Really. And then I puked."

Me: "Well, I am driving a rental, and I am pro-bug murder. So I will be fine."

Scott: "Let's just say I pulled into a rest stop strictly to clean my windshield."
I can just hear myself questioning the car rental advisor assigned to me tomorrow morning... While people around me are asking about gas mileage and smoking policies, I will be asking about potency of windshield wiper fluid.

Quote of the Day

Jordan: "Alright. It's time for me to get off the phone now. It's been 15 minutes and 20 seconds already- I'm looking right at my phone and I wanted to talk for only five minutes."

Me: "Well, my phone says fifteen minutes and fifteen seconds, technically."

Jordan: "Oh, maybe my phone says it's longer because it feels SO much longer on my end!"

June!

Just wanted to say.... It's June! Halfway through this year. Speachless.

Quote of the Day

Me: "Oh no! The bathroom in this place smells like Egyptian Musk and diarrhea."

Melissa: "Eww. Why?"

Me: "I'm guessing it's not the new air freshener."

Snapshot

The mark of a truly great party... Happy Cinco De Mayo plus One Day 2012, SMKD.

Memorial Day Weekend

Feeling reflective. Counting my limbs above water.

So there is this story- a true one, although my feeble recap of it I am sure will do it no justice. But it keeps bouncing around inside of me today so I thought I would share...

My father's father was a great man. He passed away at eighty years old, in 1995, and what I knew of him then was enough to fill me with pride for at least eighty of my own years. I knew him to be kind, with crinkly eyes and big hands and a deep snore that reverberated into the living room where I would sleep soundly in freezing air conditioned temperatures on the blow up mattress in Pembroke Pines, Florida. He was the man who would swim laps with me at the pool and never hinted at being tired or, what I can only assume, painfully bored after hours of repetition. He was the man who would pull out this old clunky silver radio and sing songs with me while he dutifully played dolls with me. His smile did light up every room for a mile. He would wake up before everyone in the house, slick his hair back with V05 hair creme and drive to the far away bagel store so that we would wake up to decent bagels every morning- a feat in southern Florida. We would see every movie I wanted to, and he would have his jacket around me before I even knew I was about to be be cold. He and I would concoct milk shakes for dessert, annihilate coloring books and stroll around the lake. I strolled with my head held high, never scared of the alligator signs when he was near me. Towering at an imaginative 9 feet tall, I had every confidence in his abiity to fend off prehistoric attackers.

His death was a double whammy to me. Not only was his death the first close person I had to endure, but I lost a hero that day. What happened in years to follow, however, brought new light to his life, and I have had the honor to learn what he was outside of Grandpa Lou.

The youngest of four, Louie joined the army alongside all three of his older brothers- two of them were doctors serving as physician's in the field. Somehow, they all were able to keep tabs on their little brother, allowing him to serve his country selflessly while they accepted the responsibility of worry. And when my grandfather's troop was called to France, his brother acted on some internal alarm going off, and ran to  the youngest brother's supervisor, pulling him from his post to perform an appendectomy. It was an emergency, as it turned out, when nobody from that mission returned alive.

His unnecessary surgery gave him another sixty years of life. It gave him three children- all of whom are exceptional people. It gave him my brother, who is the funniest person I have ever known. It gave me him.

I am thinking of every family whose roots grew as a result of someone's act of kindness, serving our country.

Mo's Quotes

“Do me a favor. Don’t drink too much and don’t play in traffic. Do me a favor, you’ve got my number.”

Snapshot

Intolerant of following traffic signals, being pleasant, smelling clean, not body checking innocent bystanders all trying to get to the same place you are... I guess in a dystopian society, NYC sounds pretty good: Believe what you want, and wear nice things.

Quote of the Day

Me: "Would you still like me if I grew a second nose out of my chin?"

Jordan: "What? You had a first nose on your chin?!"

Me: "Funny. No, this pimple doesn't look like it's going anywhere."

Jordan: "Well, the question is ridiculous, because it implies that I like you now. Which I don't."

Snapshot

Just my Aunt's minor hot flash...

Quote of the Day

Eric: "Sorry midwife called."

Me: "Midwife. So strange to hear that. What's the midwife's responsibilities at this point? I keep thinking of "The Handmaid's Tale. You know, where the female citizens of what is supposedly the previous United States- now slaves- have a few chances to get pregnant before they are dismissed from the life that they know?"

Eric: "Delivering the baby."

Bad Tingles

Isn't it wild how a sentence can take away your breath?

"We're at the doctors with Poppy getting him scanned, because he can't feet his feet and they are blue."

I ask too much of my mother. I get upset with her when I am left out of the loop, and I get upset with her for dropping bombs like that on me when I am trying to peaceably weave my way from home throughout a handful of people that don't deserve feeling in their feet. I'm sorry.

Isn't it funny how just as your lungs contract into tiny hard boxes with a lid forcing it's way over the opening, the air simultaneously turns to gel? I always think that is so strange. Strange funny. Absurdly unexplainable funny.

And later on, when I try to call all reasonable adults in the know, nobody answers. So I go to the source.

"Aly? I'm a very lucky man. I am so happy. The doctor said everything is good. And the blue feet? Those are veins! I'm the happiest man in the world. I will have the girls call you when they are back from downstairs. They are at a building meeting, your mother and my little one."

Quote of the Day

Scott: "You change your mind on a whim."

Me: "I do not! I evolve. And sometimes regress."

Carlsberg's Toast

Just try to not smile during this video. I dare you.



I would try one based soley on principle, even though I doubt it tastes much like Scotch...