Eat your feelings… or some dryer lint. Drawing Challenge, Part II.

This week’s blog post is about the completion of a 30 day drawing challenge that I started last month.  If you missed the first post “That’s not my husband. Drawing Challenge, Part 1”, you’ll want to go back and catch up (or not, depending on your tolerance for really bad art).

I know you can’t handle the suspense much longer so let’s get right into it:

Day16, Scenery– I decided to draw something in New Hampshire (don’t worry it’s not the nudist colony or zombie santa… though he is looking more festive this holiday season) so I drew an ocean scene.  My husband, who really rather enjoys the ocean, was very supportive of the idea… and only told me 10 minutes into my drawing when I was complaining about not being able to get the perspective right that “Waves are REALLY hard to draw”.

Day17, Something Orange– When you meet some people they like to ask you- what you do for a living, where you live, do you have kids, etc.  I like to ask people ‘If you were a monkey/ape what kind would you be and why?’ (i.e. Chimpanzee, Ring-tailed lemur, Proboscis monkey).  I find that someone’s answer to that question usually tells me a lot more about them than the answers to all of those other ‘socially acceptable’ inquiries.

My answer to that question is Orangutan.  So when Orange came up I was excited to draw a beautiful baby orangutan.  Turns out that humans aren’t the only Primates that I can’t draw.  It didn’t take very long to realize that my orangutan was not going to look like an orangutan.  I thought about trying to start the drawing over or fix it but it was getting late, there were snacks to be eaten, and I thought you would all get a pretty good laugh at this:

It kind of looks like Steve Buscemi, if Steve Buscemi stuck his finger in an electrical socket and his greasy hair stood on end (is that even possible?) OR a junkie with an extremely small body doing a pole dance strip tease with his head on fire.  Either way, it’s not good.

Day18, Favorite Animated Character– Scooby Doo.  Scooby and I are kindred spirits.  We’re always hungry, we’re always afraid, while trying to run our legs and arms windmill around and we don’t actually go anywhere…

Day19, A Place you Want to Go– I would like to get some authentic Rice-a-Roni® (you totally just heard the little trolley bell ‘ding-ding’ in your mind when you read Rice-a-Roni® didn’t you?        Sucker!).

Day20, A Bad Habit– I tend to eat my feelings. They usually take the form of something sweet (cake, ice cream, cookies) followed immediately by something salty (popcorn, potato chips, french fries) followed by something sweet, followed by something salty… and so on until I become physically too tired to eat.

Day21, Something Pink– When I was a kid my favorite My Little Pony was the pink pegasus pony with the blue lightning bolts on it’s butt.  I did a google search and found out that the actual name of the pony was ‘Firefly’ and also that she was voiced by Sandy Duncan in the My Little Pony animated films.

Ummm… didn’t Sandy Duncan have a glass eye?  Seems like that would kind of pigeon-hole you for voice work only.   Early 90’s Hollywood must have been feeling kind of forgiving when they gave her that gig on the Hogan Family.

Day22, Childhood Memory– Obviously every child wants to be a super-hero.  Some of us have not outgrown this dream…. however, we have outgrown our capes.

My mom made superhero capes for my brother and I out of old sheets that she dyed in the bathtub with RIT dye.  My brother’s cape was black because he was Batman and my cape was yellow because I was Robin (I used the non-gender specific title ‘kid wonder!’).  We wore those capes every single day.

Since we wore our capes so much my mom decided to upgrade them.  She sewed capes out of appropriately colored fabrics with hand stitched superhero logos (Batman again for my brother but by this time I was done being his sidekick so it was Wonder Woman for me).

Alas, the new capes were stuffy and fancy and the heavyweight fabric pulled at the ties around our necks (which, thinking back, was probably some kind of choking hazard).  We were back in our old sheet capes within days… sorry Mom.

Day23, Eyes-I only drew one eye, is that cheating? I used an elephant picture for a model but it could also be a bird or a dragon, or a close up of a someone’s grandmother that needs moisturizer and Visine really bad…

Day24, Faceless Self Portrait & Day25, Black and White- I decided to combine these two subjects into one drawing so I could put my feet up and take off from drawing on Christmas.

Day26, Hands– I was going to draw the hands of Patrick Swayze and 1989 Demi Moore (who was actually a real person as compared to current day Demi Moore who is a cyborg composed of Botox, implants, and hair extensions)  from that pottery scene in the movie Ghost.  But then the whole thing seemed too complicated so I went for my second (and clearly better) idea- duck shadow-puppet hand… huh, huh?

Day27, Silhouette– I love how the ocean looks when the moonlight hits all the little ripples in the water.  This drawing does the moment absolutely no justice but since I’m going on vacation somewhere tropical and coastal next week I’ll have the opportunity to see the real thing.  For the rest of you, this is all you get… I apologize.

Day28, Favorite Song– Shockingly, my fave is not a Taylor Swift song.  Though it may be next week… this subject is constantly evolving for me.  I don’t have one, favorite song that is my favorite song forever (because who could possibly choose between all of the songs on the ABBA Gold and Queen Platinum collections?).

My current favorite is On Top of the World by Imagine Dragons.  So I drew myself on top of the world (I know- stick figure, totally cheated).  I also drew in a slice of pepperoni pizza because if I’m going to really feel like I’m on top of the world there is going to be food involved.  Imagine the actual size of that piece of pizza if this drawing was done to scale?

Excuse me… I need a snack.

Day29, Mythical Creature– I used to think I had some kind of gnome in my laundry room.  He would randomly steal socks, throw a tie-dyed t-shirt into a load of laundry running on hot, turn the dryer up to ‘Cottons- High Heat’ after I put all of my gym clothes in and set it to ‘Delicates- Low Heat’ to avoid muffin-topping (Yes I just made muffin-top into a verb).  Well, it turns out he’s not a gnome at all.

Remember Snuggle Bear?  The one from those commercials for Snuggle fabric softener… he was always giggling and bouncing on the giant piles of towels and sheets, then he’d smell the clean laundry and rub it all over his cute little bear face? If you don’t- did you grow up in a hole in the ground? Educate yourself!

Well, Snuggle’s had a hard road since those commercials stopped airing.  They put a lot of chemicals in that fabric softener and he huffed too many fresh loads and dryer fumes back in the day.  10 years later Snuggle’s gone rogue and lives in the filthy space between my dryer and the wall (you know the space I’m talking about… if you drop something down there you might as well have dropped it to the bottom of the ocean like that necklace from Titanic, cause you’re not getting it back).

Snuggle Bear a.k.a. Franklin Klonoski (His given name as revealed on America’s Most Wanted) hides behind my dryer waiting for his next hit.  Will it be Whites? Colors? Or his old favorite… Towels?  Every once in a while he creeps around the side of the dryer to pilfer items.  Most times he takes dryer lint or a running sock, which he ingests through his makeshift zipper mouth (hastily implanted at a dental clinic with poor cleanliness standards after he lost all his teeth to the fumes), to maintain a healthy weight and squishy loft.  Other times he steals items to repair his deteriorating visage.

Though his right eye and ear (which have been completely missing since his 2004 run in with Jabber Jaws the loan shark) were unrepairable, he’s patched up his other wounds with ‘lost’ articles of clothing.  His left ear is made out of a Victoria’s Secret bra (the one my husband accidentally put in the dryer 4 years ago that came out as half a bra… now we know what happened to the other half).  His left eye is made out of ALL of the buttons that disappeared from every button up shirt I’ve ever owned.  His arms are made out of old tube socks- the ones my husband threw away when they became yellowed with age and sweat when he turned 14 (I didn’t even know my husband when he was 14… where did Franklin get those socks?!).  And to cover the condition of his hideously scarred and balding body he wears a Purple Rain t-shirt (my favorite Purple Rain t-shirt that I’ve been looking for since I moved to Montana 10 years ago).

Sometimes I despise Franklin (especially when I think about my Purple Rain t-shirt*) but most times I feel bad for him.  He’s like a child star that Hollywood forgot about (Just like Sandy Duncan.  Only I guess she wasn’t a child on the Hogan Family AND she had that glass eye instead of the buttons eye.  So maybe the only similarities are that they both have fake eyes and nobody cares about them anymore… meh, close enough).  Sometimes when I’m feeling particularly sympathetic I’ll  throw an extra ball of cat hair blanket lint (his favorite flavor) down behind the dryer for him.

Day30, Inspiration– I didn’t want to bore you all with another drawing of food that I loved so I went for another motivational phrase that I really like.  This phrase carried me through an entire half marathon (the energy gels probably helped too).

There’s something to be said for believing in yourself.

Well, that’s the end of the 30 day drawing challenge.  I feel like I learned some things about technique, my personal drawing style, and where all of my missing running socks ended up.  Though I’m not sure that I learned much that will help me to draw people better.  I’ll let you know how it goes when I attempt to draw my husband again…  it really can’t get any worse than Picasso Fred from November, right???

*If you’re reading this and you actually know what happened to my Purple Rain t-shirt- please send me a message.  Even if it’s gone I still want to know.  I just need closure…

Guinea Pigs and DIY Wreaths- The Dark Side of the Holidays

We didn’t have room in our apartment for a Christmas tree this year.  It kind of broke my heart.  One of my most favorite things about Christmas is having a tree- the smell, the warm glow of the multi-colored lights in the darkened living room on a cold winter evening, the sounds of cats choking on, and then throwing up, tinsel in the middle of the night with that deep throated “Hhhheeee, Hhhheeee” sound.

To scale down our holiday this year to the miniscule size of our apartment I decided to put up a wreath instead of a tree.  It will make less mess than a tree (I hate all those needles that the tree leaves on the floor from the moment you bring it into the house until you drag its dried, dead body out to the curb on Valentine’s day).  It would also be hung conveniently out of reach of our entranced felines (shiny. must. eat.), making for fewer late night wake-up calls and careful, moonlit tip-toes through the living room in an attempt to find the shiny vomit pile before it finds you (Inevitably the vomit pile is exactly one step in front of the light-switch, every time.  And I step in it, every time.)

Instead of buying a wreath at the store I decided to make my own.  I thought I was being frugal (some wreaths cost $20 or more!) and crafty (I have a glue gun and working fingers, AND I made that one thing I saw on Pinterest that one time, how hard could it be?).  I searched the internet and Pinterest for a wreath tutorial but most tutorials were for wreaths made out of fake flowers.  Faux floral arrangements always remind me of old folks homes, Chinese food restaurants, and REALLY cheap dates (“They’ll last forever” he said… which meant that we did not).  I got the general idea of how to make a wreath from the online tutorials and headed out to the store to get some supplies.

On my way to the store- that’s where the tutorial picks up.  If you want to follow along and learn how to make a holiday wreath, get out your keys and get ready.  I now present:

My 4 step tutorial for making a quick and easy, fresh, holiday wreath.

Step 1- Proceed to store that sells wreaths.

Step 2- Purchase wreath.

Step 3- Display wreath.

Step 4- Waste additional 4-5  hours that you saved not making your own wreath from some bullshit “quick and easy” tutorial (because they’re NEVER really quick and easy).  Do something shameless like get a pedicure, practice your twerking, or have some vodka shots.

The above tutorial is not what you expected?  It’s not what I expected to pass along to you, but trust me, it’s definitely the best way of doing it.  If you think you’re craftier than me or that your holiday spirit will carry you through the wreath making process… if you really want to persevere with making your own fresh, holiday wreath I have another tutorial for you.  The tutorial below lists the steps that I actually followed when making my wreath.  This tutorial starts at the same spot the last tutorial started.  We’re on our way to the store for supplies- get out your keys and get ready.  I now present:

My 20 step tutorial for making a holiday wreath, almost losing your husband, causing a cat miscarriage, mutilating your hands, and eventually realizing that Canadian children make the best fresh holiday wreaths.

Step 1- See vendor running pop-up Christmas tree market at the major intersection just 3 miles from your house.  Realize that to sell wreaths like that for just $16 he’s most likely importing greenery from Canada, using child labor to build them, and using all of the profits from his fly-by-night operation to fund an underground guinea pig fighting ring in Nashua.

Step 2- Drive through intersection (for added flair give wreath/tree seller the finger).  You’re doing the world, the children, and the guinea pigs a huge favor AND you can make a way better wreath than that with your adult sized hands.  (This, of course, is a fact that you have to believe 100% to undertake and actually complete this project.  It’s not true.  Not at all.  In fact, you should buy the imported Canadian sweatshop wreath.  Once he cuts all of the branches off of the tree limbs for the wreaths I’m sure he’s sending the limbs through a wood-chipper to turn them into pine shavings.  Shavings that his prize fighting guinea pigs will then use for bedding… it’s really an environmentally friendly operation.)

Step 3- Shopping for supplies.  Since I really had no idea what I needed I just accosted a somewhat elderly looking woman in the floral department at the craft store that looked like she knew what she was doing.  I walked up to her as she pulled out stalks of dried red berries and hideous glittering holly leaves, eyeing each one and mentally building the most atrocious arrangement for the centerpiece at her old folks home holiday dinner.  I went for flattery and said “You look like you know what you’re doing back here in dried florals…”.  Her cheeks blushed the color of the plastic poinsettia held in her left hand and she said “I dabble a little bit… for a couple of years…”

I told her my tale of woe- No tree, Tiny Tim the littlest guinea pig…  She took me under her wing, walking me step by step through the wreath making process and the aisles at the Michael’s Arts and Crafts store.  When I had all of the supplies and sage advice that I could carry she waved her glittering holly branch over me like the fairy godmother of florals.  I felt like Cinderella heading off to the ball… unfortunately the only place I was going was the cash register (at least I had a coupon!).

Based on the advice that I received I purchased:

Wreath frame– I chose an 18” frame, only because they were out of the 21” frame.  In retrospect I should have gone for the 12 incher and just made a bigger, gaudier bow.

Spool of fine gauge green wire– it doesn’t look like barbed wire at the store but once you get home and start using it you’ll realize that’s what it is. 

Ribbon to make a bow– I chose a lovely ‘ho ho ho’ pattern.  Spend lots of time on this step.  Picking this out is the most fun part of the wreath making process. Oh and I recommend getting something red so you won’t see any blood stains on it. 

Decorations- I got some red and green miniature Christmas balls. 

Total spent $7.85 (I knew that guy on the corner was ripping people off! Kudos to me for saving $8.15)

Step 4- Have a snack.  Seriously, that trip to the craft store was exhausting and it made me hungry.  I couldn’t believe that old lady didn’t have any snacks in her purse… isn’t it some kind of law that once you hit 70 you are required to carry hard candies with you at all times (butterscotch, lemon drops, something).  She seemed offended when I asked so maybe she was just a hurt looking 67?  I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and not report her to the authorities.

Step 5- Procure implements for harvesting greenery– A pair of pruning shears will probably do.  If your pruning shears are buried somewhere in the garage in a pile of stuff that you haven’t unpacked since you moved 3 months ago (it’s winter, I won’t need those until spring…) you can always get out a handsaw that is WAY too big for the size branches you will be collecting and you can also use the pair of ‘utility shears’ your husband keeps on his workbench.  The ones you’ve been told not to borrow because you never put them back in the right place, or when you do put them back in the right place they’re dull because you’ve used them to cut through something like tin cans or old tires.

Step 6- Bundle Up.   My floral godmother told me to collect ‘a lot’ of fresh greenery.  She really tried to stress ‘a lot’, in fact she seemed winded by the effort of it… maybe she was a smoker, could explain her looking prematurely old.  I took her very seriously and got ready for a big expedition into the woods behind my house.  I went for long johns (top and bottom), ridiculously big knee socks that I had left over from my roller derby days, jeans, sweater, scarf, down jacket, hat with ear flaps, and gloves.

Step 7- Pack a snack.  You could get lost in the woods and be out there for more than 45 minutes without help or nourishment.  At least grab a granola bar.

Step 8-  Leave your husband this note. After all he’s expected home in about 5 minutes and you want him to know where you are and what you are doing.

My husband didn’t come and find me in the woods.  He didn’t get home until about 10 minutes after I came back into the house.  He was 30 minutes late getting home from work that day.  He says that he was ‘working late’.  I was immediately suspicious because he never works late.

I am almost certain that he came home, found the note and decided that either New Hampshire had finally gotten to me and I was waiting in the woods to ambush him with the saw (in which case I wouldn’t say anything about the saw in the note… duh!) or that he’d finally had enough of my peculiar behavior and that here was his chance to make a clean break.

My guess is that he got half way to the airport when he remembered that he left his cat and his favorite utility shears back at the apartment.  He sped back, cursing the whole way, and unfortunately found me back in the apartment (at least I was sans saw) foiling his getaway.

The only reasons my husband came back.

Step 9- Go outside and collect branches. Get the small, full looking branches.  Avoid sap and spilling snow down the back of your jacket.

Step 10- Dry branches.  Shake snow from branches and bring them in your house.  Lay out a number of old towels on your kitchen floor and put snowy, soggy branches in a single layer on top.  At this point you might think a really good way to remove excess moisture from the branches is to put another towel on top of the branches and then dance around on top of it in a RiverDance fashion while singing that Christmas Carol… the one where the only words you know are ‘Pa-Rum-Pum-Pum-Pum’.  I wouldn’t recommend this for 2 reasons.

1-      I think this is why all of the needles started falling off of my wreath only days after I made it and

2-      If your husband, who is already questioning your sanity because of a note involving a saw, returns home at that moment…  it’s probably not going to help you any. 

Fresh Greens

Step 11- Have another snack.  All of that branch collecting and dancing burned a lot of calories.  I went for a full dinner at this point.  It was a little difficult to get in there and cook with all the branches on the floor but since I was cooking my specialty (spaghetti) there wasn’t too much kitchen time or prep work involved.

During this step you’ll also have to keep your cats out of the kitchen so they don’t eat the fresh greenery.  I tried to use scare tactics by telling Willi and Animal that eating pine needles causes miscarriage in goats (I knew that Master’s degree would come in handy for something).  My ominous warnings prompted only disinterested stares from the other side of the kitchen.  My spayed, ovary free felines then chomped their way through an entire branch before retiring, pine fresh, back to the sofa for the rest of the evening.

Step 12- Clip 6-8” pieces of greenery off branches (the utility shears work really well for this step).  Tightly wrap 5 or 6 of these pieces together into a bundle using 6” pieces of fine gauge green wire.

Bundle

Step 13- Repeat Step 12 until you have enough bundles to cover your wreath frame.  Approximately 30-35 bundles will cover an 18” frame.  You’ll know when you’re about done because your hands will start to look like Bruce Willis’ feet in the original Die Hard movie (why was he barefoot? who takes off their shoes at a fancy Christmas party?).  Like John McClane you must persist… I’d hate for Hans Gruber to get you.

Bundles and Bundles of Bundles!

Step 14- It’s been at least an hour since Step 11 when you last consumed food.  Normally I would say we’re due for a snack break but the condition of my hands totally made me lose my appetite.  If you can eat something at this point, do, we still have a ways to go.

Step 15- Wrap bundles onto wreath frame.  Lay 1^st bundle on frame, wrap tightly onto frame using 6” of fine gauge green wire, twist the end of the wire into bundle on the back of the frame.  This serves the dual purpose of keeping the wire from scratching your doorframe (or your clothes and eyeballs) and helps to make deeper puncture wounds in your hands than you were able to sustain with the wrapping in Step 13 alone.  Work backwards from the 1^st bundle, slightly overlapping each bundle to cover the end of the previous bundle and create a nice full wreath.

Wrapping onto frame.

Step 16- Your hands will now look like they’ve been put through a meat grinder.  We might as well cauterize the wounds… it’s time to get out your glue gun.  In this step we’ll make a bow for your wreath.  I had no idea what I was doing so I decided to try and find a tutorial online for making a wreath bow.  These are also bullshit.  I ended up with something that looked like it was made by a kindergartner on ‘Learn to Tie Your Shoes’ day.  In the end I cut some long pieces of ribbon and wrapped them in a bow-type fashion, using lots of hot glue to both secure the layers together and further deform my hands with second degree burns.

I didn’t realize that half of the ho-ho-ho’s were upside down until after I glued it on. Oh well…

Step 17- Once your ‘bow’ is completed you can either wire it onto your wreath frame using a long piece of the green wrapping wire or you can glue it down with your glue gun.  I chose the less painful of the 2 evils.  Having limited muscle control left in both mangled hands I squeezed out a quantity of hot glue roughly equivalent to the magma flow generated in the 79 A.D. eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.  I laid the wreath down on my kitchen floor and pushed the bow down onto the glue.

Step 18- Walk away to let the glue cure.  Sit on the sofa.  Encourage your cats to go and eat more pine needles.  There are needles everywhere, it looks like a pine tree fell over in your kitchen at this point.  I’m gonna go with word from Ke$ha and yell “TIMBER!”. The more the cats eat, the less you’ll have to clean up.   Cats are suddenly, mysteriously, disinterested in pine needle consumption.

Step 19- Lift wreath off kitchen floor… if you can.  Given the condition of your hands you might not be able to lift anything.  In my case it wasn’t just the burns and cuts causing the problem… turns out I used a little too much glue and it ran through the pine needles onto the kitchen floor.  I thought briefly about displaying the wreath right there in the middle of the kitchen floor but then thought I better peel it up since it might be a hazard if it gets between me and food at the wrong time.  Lucky for me the glue didn’t melt the linoleum… phew (rental)!

Step 20- Hang wreath in its chosen place of honor.  Add decorations.

At this point your wreath is finished and the tutorial ends.  However, I’d like to also pass along some additional advice.  You should probably:

Wash your hands right away (it’s going to hurt).  Apply a generous amount of antibacterial ointment, then maybe cover your hands with some gloves to seal it all in.  Oh, work gloves…. that would have been a good idea somewhere around Step 12!

Leave the giant mess in your kitchen.  You’ll get it tomorrow… or the cats will get it… or your magical floral-y godmother will come and clean it up in the night.  I thought the latter was what happened in my kitchen but I think my husband said something about cleaning up a big mess when he was asking me, once again, where his utility shears were.

Get a tetanus shot. Just in case.

It turns out that my wreath came out pretty well.  Nonetheless, I’m thinking that next year I’ll pay the extra $8.15 to support the Canadian children’s fund.

It also turns out that my husband wasn’t working late after all, nor was he headed to the airport.  He was doing Christmas tree reconnaissance.  He knew how upset I was about not having a tree and he went to the pop-up vendor and looked at trees that night after work.  On the eve of Christmas Eve I came home and found this beautiful, little, Canadian tree smashed into the corner of our bedroom.  I hope our tree purchase will fund the career of Nashua’s next superstar fighting guinea pig, in my mind he is named John McClane.

That’s not my husband. Drawing challenge, Part I.

One night in early November while we were sitting watching TV I told my husband that I was going to draw him.  I’m not sure why I thought this was a good idea, it just sounded like fun.  I sat next to him on the sofa and spent about 20 minutes drawing him in profile.  The result of my effort is shown below. 

Oh, go ahead and laugh… we did.  If you aren’t laughing it must mean that you don’t know what my husband actually looks like.  He looks something like this but nothing like this at the same time.  If I was a police sketch artist and my husband had commited a crime they’d likely never catch him.

2 days later I decided to try again, certain that I could get it right if I just drew him from another angle.  I drew a close-up Fred, which became known as fat-face Fred.  Another 2 days, another fat-face Fred.  Another 2 days, Picasso Fred.  Another 2 days, another Day1 Fred, thought with a slightly smaller forehead.  I took some time off and waited 10 days before drawing him again… practice was not making perfect.  I plan on publishing these drawings in a later posting titled “Ways to alienate your spouse”.

Actually, I was hoping to improve my drawing skills and post the 5 original drawings with 5 amazing likenesses of my husband. So, to hone my drawing skills I am participating in a 30 day Drawing Challenge.  I found the Challenge online- it lists a theme or item for you to draw each day for 30 days.  The Challenge is supposed to enhance your drawing ability by giving you subjects that you wouldn’t normally choose to draw and making you attempt drawing them.

If I had to pick the thing that I am worst at drawing, it’s definitely people.  I can draw a decent looking animal, or inanimate object but if it has a human face I’m in trouble. That’s why it was so appropriate that the Challenge started off on Day 1 with a Self Portrait.

Day1, Self Portrait- Fred watched me as I held the hand mirror, stared into it, and tentatively put pencil onto paper.  I honestly tried to draw myself but this looks nothing like me and more like Dorothy when the flying monkeys took flight.

I didn’t want to draw freckles on my face because I didn’t know how to draw them without making myself look like an extra in a really bad live action version of 101 Dalmatians… thought I suppose if that happened I could just add some wrinkles and it would be a star from a really bad live action version of 101 Dalmatians– Glenn Close.

I clearly think better of my ears and my eyebrows than the reality that is attached to my head.  I shudder to think of what my actual self-portrait would look like.  Maybe after the 30 day challenge is over I’ll be able to draw a better Fred and a ‘better’ Mel?

Day2, Cloud- I went for dark creepy Halloween moon with clouds.  I remembered the advice of the teacher in my community education drawing class to cover the whole canvas in pencil and then erase out the clouds (sadly, although he reminded me a lot of Bob Ross -pot smell, hippie attitude- he didn’t have any other advice about happy little clouds… or a white dude afro).

Day3, Favorite Plant- Was there any other choice for this category than the Truffula Tree? I had to dig through my garage to find my colored pencils because Truffula trees need color! The joy of the trees possibly couldn’t be contained by the small square that I intended to draw them in and busted out into the space for the Day4 drawing.

Day4, Something Blue-. I think my Ornithology instructor would be proud of the wing structure that I recreated here… proof that I did something besides flirt with my future husband (who I met in the back of the ornithology van on our first bird-watching field trip) during class.

Day5, Something you don’t like- I hate wearing a watch.  I just hate the hassle of knowing what time it is and having to follow the rules that go along with knowing what time it is…. like being on time for things that aren’t food related (because I’ll always show up on time, and sometimes early, if there is a promise of something delicious).   It actually took me a while to find this watch and I was impressed to see that it was still set to the right time… in Bozeman, not including the adjustment I didn’t make for Daylight Savings time 4 years ago.  Must be a good battery.

Day6, Favorite Movie- My ABSOLUTE favorite movie of all time is The Sound of Music but I couldn’t bear to disgrace Captain Von Trapp and Frauline Maria by attempting to draw them with my previously exhibited people drawing skills.  They’d probably end up looking like Boris and Natasha from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons.  So I drew my second favorite movie Despicable Me.  I imagined my minion was thinking about ice cream.  GELATOOOO!

Day7, Something from a High angle- I laid my bicycle down on the ground and drew the seat while sitting on the sofa, instead of riding my bike (laziness).  I had been thinking about my bike seat a lot lately… not because I fell off of my bike in the living room (That was actually a couple of days later.  The bolt came loose on my bike trainer and I, still being clipped into my bike, fell sideways to the floor with my bike attached.  As I lay on the floor laughing at myself and thinking how funny that would have been to catch on camera for America’s Funniest Home Videos (I think this show is actually still on) I happened to look up.  There was the side of the fridge… 3 inches away.  I’m lucky Fred didn’t come home to find me lying on the floor in a pool of blood with a fridge/head concussion… or worse yet, come home to find me with a fridge/head concussion lying on the floor in a pool of blood AND melted ice cream if the impact had knocked open the freezer door- that would have been far worse), but because my butt really hurt from riding my bike over the last couple of weeks.

I thought my seat would look much more like a razor sharp torture device but after taking a detailed look at it while doing this drawing I realized that it really wasn’t that bad for a bike seat (as a tractor seat it would be just terrible, but as a bike seat it’s probably pretty standard issue).  I recognized then that the pain problem may be caused more by my butt… or my lack of butt.  So I went to the store and tried on some of those biking shorts to add a little junk to my trunk.

I poured my body into three different pairs of spandex shorts, stretching and pulling as hard as I could to get them up and over my hips (because my hips got all of the butt that didn’t quite make it around back…  these shorts made my hips feel like they needed their own ‘wide load’ sign).  I sidled out of the dressing room sideways (because there was no way I’d make it through head on with those hips!) and walked around the store like a cowboy in an old spaghetti western.  I was completely unable to close my legs because of the giant pad between them.  I felt like I was wearing an adult diaper, or one of those gargantuan maxi-pads that they give you in 6^th grade at the ‘Your First Period’ assembly.

In the end I opted to keep my $79.00 and to just get rid of the nerves in my butt one training ride at a time. (Obviously somebody wears these things…. Do you? How are they comfortable? If the pad was uncomfortable while walking I can’t even imagine what happens when you sit down on a bike seat.  If you’re in the know please explain.)

Day8, Something from a Low angle- Lassoed the moon and the stars and pull that rope tight…

Day9, Someone you love- I was going to draw Mr. Peanut (who doesn’t love Mr. Peanut) but then I remembered that this was a 30 day drawing CHALLENGE and that part of the challenge was to draw things that aren’t easy for me to draw.

I thought it would be a bad idea to draw Fred again because then my first drawing after the Challenge wouldn’t be like the big reveal on a makeover show… at least I hope that’s how it’s going to be *gulp*.  I decided to draw my dad because he smiles a lot and has glasses and if the drawing didn’t end up looking like him… it might just end up looking kind of like Mr. Peanut. Win. Win.  I think it came out okay… if you’ve never met my dad you probably won’t recognize him from this drawing but at least you won’t walk up to Mr. Peanut and call him Mr. Cheeseman (that would be embarrassing).

Day10, Favorite fairy tale- I really like The Princess and the Pea because it teaches us the valuable lesson that if we complain about things it will be assumed that we are royalty and should be treated thus… and because Fred is constantly calling me ‘the princess’ because of my insomnia.  I don’t sleep well and I always think it’s something, besides my insomnia, making me stay up for half the night. I’ve complained about cats in the bed, the little green light on the smoke detector, that I’m too hot, that I’m too cold, that I’m hungry, that I need a bigger pillow, that I need a smaller pillow, that we need a new mattress, that there is a killer in our house (mostly I thought this for the 2 months after Fred made me watch that horrific movie Mr. Brooks, the one with Kevin Costner, but sometimes I still wake up afraid we’re going to be one of his thrill kills and that we’ll be incinerated in his pottery kiln without anyone knowing what really happened to us… so if we go missing, this is most likely what happened), the noise that the heater makes when it comes on, the noises from outside when the windows are open, and even the noise of Fred breathing (which he promised to try and stop doing but hasn’t managed it yet).

To avoid having to draw a person again I thought about drawing a big stack of mattresses with a pea plant growing underneath the bed.  But then I decided to challenge myself and give it a try.  I nailed it on the pea (because I know whatever it is that’s bothering me when I’m sleeping feels like that BIG of a problem) but there is definitely something wrong with that princess.  She looks like she got steamrolled by the pea and her flattened body got stuck on there.  Oh well…

Day11, Favorite animal- That’s my dog Remmie, or what my dog Remmie would look like if he would sit still, which he doesn’t, even when you insist that he do so in the mean mom voice.

Day12, Something green- I love sea turtles.  We saw a ton of them when we went to the Big Island.  This one kind of looks like The Grinch. The Grinch is also green… either way, it counts.

Day13, Something you miss- Oh, Bozeman. Somebody please tell me it’s -25^o there again and I’ll feel better about leaving.

Day14, Favorite book- Every since 2nd grade when Mrs. Barbagello read Charlotte’s Web aloud to us I have loved me a talking pig and spider duo.  Although I have to admit that the character I most relate to is Templeton the rat when they go to the Fair.  I dream about the gluttony of fair food all year long.

Day15, Just a doodle- I wasn’t really sure what the definition of a doodle was (beside a ridiculously cute or ridiculously ugly dog.  Have you ever noticed that? There’s really no gray area with doodles… they can be the most adorable thing you’ve ever seen or they can look like a hideous rat-faced science experiment gone wrong).

I was going to draw a desert and a horse with no name.  After I drew the desert, with the blazing hot sun and the horse, I couldn’t figure out how to ‘not name’ the horse in my doodle.  Lacking a witty caption I decided to draw a cow spot over the saddle on the horse with no name, put in a barn and an extra cow and just make it a super-sunny Wisconsin afternoon.

 

So that is the result of 15 days of my Drawing Challenge.  I’m not certain that my skills have improved very much… just ask the flat princess that looks like she’s one of those villains from the original Superman movie that got trapped in that pane of glass and sent out into space.

I hope that the next 15 days, which include drawings of a:

Mythical creature

Bad habit- which I might just ‘accidentally’ read as a bad Hobbit

Childhood memory- this ought to be good, having been in my head it’s already warped and likely to get more so when I try to draw it

will help my drawing skills, allowing me to draw my husband in a non-offensive manner in January.  I don’t even think it really has to look like him… just as long as it doesn’t look like a 9/11 terrorist wanted poster I think he’ll be happy.

Best in Show 2013

This year’s winner of “Best in Show” at the National Dog Show (airing on NBC Thanksgiving day) had to defeat 1500 other dogs in 178 breeds to claim his title.  I had the honor¹ of witnessing this dog’s rise to the top just a couple of weekends ago (the show is pre-recorded weeks in advance- sorry to disappoint all of you who have been watching year after year and waiting for one of the dogs to get caught on camera peeing on the ‘Best In Show’ flower arrangements… oh, was that just me?).  Don’t worry there’s no spoilers here- I’m not going to tell you who won. I’d hate for you to get roped into watching something horrible on Thanksgiving… like football.

We got to the dog show around 9am and parked not far from the door².  We entered the venue and were confronted almost immediately by what appeared to be a well behaved bear on a leash.  I was surprised to see that the biggest dog on earth was out of his kennel walking around…but really where else was he going to go? If he laid down people would need a map and a compass to circumnavigate his body.  I asked the owner about the dog and could barely hear her response above the noise of barking and blow dryers.  It sounded like she said the dog’s name was “Leon Burger”.

I thought that it was pretty formal to call the dog by his full legal name but he was a show dog after all AND if my last name was Burger I’d require people to use it all of the time too³.  I stood petting Leon Burger and talking to the owner about the complexities of raising such a large animal: YES to big poop, ruined sofas, lots of drool, and NO to eating small children and lots of exercise.  We thanked the owner for her time, bid good-day to Mr. Burger and started off to see what the rest of the show had to offer.  I later found out that Leonberger is a breed of dog.  Ooops.

As we walked down the aisle I noticed that almost all of the other dogs were out and on display.  I had assumed that the dogs would be in a limited access area, or at least be roped off from the general public.  But you could, with permission from the owner, pet every single dog at the show… and I did.  I diligently worked my way from Mastiffs and Great Danes at the front end of the room to Bulldogs and Chihuahuas at the far end of the venue.  It took ALL day!

I won’t tell you about all of the dogs because there are far too many to list but some of the dogs that stood out were the:

Komondor and Puli- these are the dogs that look like they have dreadlocks.  I always imagined that these dogs would feel kind of scratchy and wiry, kind of like that striped fabric made out of steel wool and burlap that carmakers used for station wagon seats in the early 1980’s⁴.  I have never been more wrong.  The dogs were surprisingly soft- like the softest, warmest polar fleece you’ve ever had… but with eyes and dog breath.  Despite Fred’s affinity for reggae music, my inexhaustible begging, and my offer to call the dog ‘Fred Junior’ my husband still refuses to let me get a dreadlock dog.

Affenpinscher- I have always wanted to see an Affenpinscher in

Upon seeing the PWD with this haircut my friend exclaimed “Somebody stole his pants!”

real life but the “little devil with a mustache” evaded me at this dog show.  I’ll get you next time “monkey-faced dog”!

Portuguese Water Dog- We all know Bo from the White House⁵…  but Bo doesn’t have the traditional Portuguese Water Dog ‘lion cut’.  The PWDs at the National Dog Show were cut in this fashion.  You could almost see the shame on their faces.

Xoloitzcuintli- The Mexican hairless dog.  The lady that owned this dog probably got sick of seeing me.  I went by her table about 40 times and kept stopping to pet her dog again and again.  He was my absolute favorite. I love the wiry little hairs on the top of his head and the little hot dog pack on the back of his neck.  Sadly, we will not have one of these dogs named ‘Fred Junior’ either.

When I wasn’t stalking the Xolo I watched some of the Breed contests.  These shows take place in the small show rings (not the fancy blue carpet ring) within individual breeds of dogs.  The dog that wins this contest is ‘Best in Breed’ and is then sent to the blue carpet and the ‘Best in Group’ contest. For some breeds the winner only had to defeat two or three other competitors but for the most popular breeds, like Golden Retrievers, there were over 50 dogs competing for one spot.

I overheard some dog owners at the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever (a more popular breed than you would think, and random fact- the dog with the longest name in the AKC) ring talking about professional dog handlers.  They mentioned that professional handlers make about $80 for each Breed showing they are entered in.  Then if the dog makes it to the Group contest the handler’s fee goes up.  If the dog is then lucky enough to make it to the Best in Show contest the handler’s fee skyrockets to a point where they’re paid in gold bricks.  I began watching the professional handlers to see what was so great about them.

The professional dog handlers seemed to have a special relationship with their dogs.  They groom the dogs, they cooperate and communicate in the show ring, and like a mama feeding her baby bird they regurgitate food from their mouths for their canine companions. The handlers work very hard to be one with their dogs so that they can look their best in the show… though I think some of them take it a little too far⁶.

While debating my future in professional dog handling I saw one handler showing dogs in several breed rings and 3 Best in Group contests.  I calculate that she must have made at least $1200 that day! Why was ‘Professional Dog Handler’ not listed as a career path at my high school guidance counselors office?  What were the down sides of this profession (besides the baby bird thing)?  Top on my list of negatives was the wardrobe.

I’m not a fashionista⁷ but the things that those women wear in the show

You could get your own dog handler outfit at this dog show booth, or you could spend your money at the booth next door and get a dog sized hamster wheel… I know where my money is going.

ring are hideous- shiny purple lamme, life-sized florals, rhinestones.  They either look like they raided the discount rack at Ross-Dress for Less or Margaret Thatcher’s closet.  I wonder if there is a special AKC catalog that you have to order handler outfits from or if it’s just that the type of folks that go into the profession all have really bad taste in formal-wear.

I nixed the idea that the clothes are regulated by the dog show industry because if they were… the skirt suits would have pockets.  Because the outfits have no pockets the handlers had to carry around dog treats in their mouths and get creative when it came to storing their other dog accessories- spray bottles, combs, brushes, drool towels, etc.  Most of the women ended up leaving these items on the side of the show ring, putting them in their hair, or placing them down the front or back of their skirt.  The latter technique ended tragically for one dog handler in the ‘Best in Group’ show ring.

The handler took her dog out to the judge in the center of the ring with something stuffed down the back of her skirt.  It slipped down and ended up protruding from the back of her outfit in an unfortunate and inappropriate manner.  At that point I’m guessing she weighed the options of being seen on TV with a bizarre looking bump coming out the back of her butt or being seen on TV reaching down her skirt suit to remove it.  She left the suspicious looking lump and showed her dog with her head held high⁸.

Out of the 7 Group contests- Sporting, Hound, Working, Terrier, Toy, Non-sporting, Herding- we saw 4.  Then we got to see the Best in Show contest as well.  We got some pretty good seats in the second row.  I’m not sure if we’ll be featured on television… hopefully not since all I did was sit there and stuff my face with snacks⁹.

At the end of the day one dog was crowned the Top Dog and walked away a winner.  However, I don’t think he was necessarily the MVP of the dog show.  The true, unsung hero of the National Dog Show was this guy:

MopMan

Throughout the day, when tragedy struck, handheld radios were used to call MopMan…  I’m guessing the Mop-signal didn’t work too well under the show rings’ fluorescent lighting.  Like a superhero he would swoop in and clean up spilled sodas and dog show faux pas.  Nothing slowed him down in his pursuit of cleanliness.  He worked tirelessly throughout the day, quickly, quietly (except for his orange jacket, which was pretty loud… but it’s certainly no worse than some other superhero garb, at least it wasn’t spandex) and without complaint.  Although you probably won’t see him on TV and he probably wasn’t given a ribbon before he left at the end of the day, MopMan was my personal choice for Best in Show.

I won Best in Breed and was interviewed by J. Peterman! Can you believe it? Based on these bad photos neither can I…

1- I had always assumed that the National Dog Show was really fancy- what with the tuxedos and jewel encrusted attire worn by show’s judges, the classy blue Stainmaster® carpet that the dogs seem to float across in the show ring, and the fact that John O’Hurley (J. Peterman from Seinfeld) was actually in the building commentating on the show.  I assumed it was an invitation-only, star-studded, black tie event.  Apparently not… I purchased the honor of attending the show for a mere $14 and showed up in a something I might wear to the grocery store (sans pageant heels).

2- It couldn’t possibly have been more than 1/8 of a mile.  Why did I tell you this? Because later in the day when we exited the building for a lunch break the parking lot was FULL.  So full that we were nervous about not getting a parking spot if we took the car out to get a quick bite to eat.  We had to regrettably tell my father that we could not drive to Bob Evans’ so he could have the pot roast that he had been craving (Now I’ve never had the Bob Evans pot roast and I’m not a food snob but… really?).  There was a small diner about ½ mile from the Dog Show venue that we could walk to.  Once we reassured my father that he could probably procure a side of soggy green beans a la Bob Evans with whatever he ordered, he picked up the pieces of his shattered dreams, walked to the diner with the rest of us, and got a Rueben.

On our return walk, about the time we were passing our car, a little yellow school bus pulled up in front of us and a driver popped out to ask if we would like a ride on the shuttle.  Other nearby walkers eagerly loaded into the bus thankful for the rest.  We were less than 1/8 of a mile from the door.  You could see the door.  You could smell the dog farts.  Since none of us were on crutches we assured the driver that we could make the rest of the walk.  He shrugged his shoulders, got on the bus full of other Dog Show attendees and drove off towards the entrance.  We arrived there at the exact same time.  Sometimes people are lazy.

3- I was actually hoping to marry a man with the last name Burger so I could hyphenate and be Cheese-Burger but it didn’t work out.

4- In what country, where sweatshops are legal, is this considered ‘fabric’?  And what kind of discount did Ford get, at the expense of the tender skin on the back of my childhood thighs, when they bought enough of this fabric for all of the seventh generation Country Squire wagons?

5- Why did this picture come up in Google when I searched images for “Portuguese Water Dog no pants”.  This struck me as odd.

6- A handler in a specific breed ring was inciting his dog to lift it’s little cropped tail while waiting to be reviewed by the judge.  He ran his hand up the dog’s backside from the rectum to the tip of the tail several times.  Then, in a move reminiscent of Mary Katherine Gallagher (“Sometimes, when I get nervous, I stick my hands under my armpits, and then I smell them like this!”), the man put his fingers right up under his nose.  Only this wasn’t a comedy routine.  He was smelling his dog’s butt via his fingers.  Not only in public, but in the center of a show ring where he was being watched by at least 30 people.  I know he wants to understand his dog but it seemed like this was taking it a little too far.

7- I don’t have much room to talk about wardrobe since I went to the dog show in a pair of jeans and a $5 shirt from Kohls.  I said that casually… a $5 shirt.  When in actuality it is my most coveted shirt.  I call it my ‘weekender’ because I wear it every weekend… sometimes all weekend long if I can get a load of laundry done.  After realizing how comfortable the original pink weekender was I went back and bought it in yellow, blue, and gray so I could weekender all the time without doing wash.

I was nowhere near the worst dressed in the crowd though.  The audience included several people with those embroidered dog breed sweatshirts (because a wrinkly bulldog face embroidered over your left breast is HOT!) and one rather angry looking woman wearing a shirt that said “If my beagle doesn’t like you, neither will I” (I would not like to meet her beagle).

8- I took a picture because I have no class.  I was going to post it but blur out her face or put those little black bars over her eyes (which is actually a shockingly good disguise) but then my dad pointed out that I’d also have to blur out the dog’s face because the dog was likely to be more famous than the handler/owner.  This all seemed really complicated so I’m not going to post the picture and I’ll just let you look for her on your own. cough*SportingDogs*cough.  Now all of you will be staring at dog handler’s butts when you watch the Sporting Dog Group… this makes me laugh.

9- I didn’t purchase the snacks for sale.  The fried dough smelled amazing in the morning but by the afternoon the smell of fried dough became synonymous with the other overwhelming smells of dog hair and urine soaked wood-chips that filled the building.  Luckily I planned ahead and brought my own snacks from home… or the home that I was visiting 🙂  Out of the well stocked cupboard I grabbed a chocolate pretzel granola bar, Snickers peanut butter squares, blueberry and strawberry fig bars and Ghirardelli chocolate (hopefully nobody was saving that for a rainy day).  If you see plastic candy wrappers obscuring someone’s face in row 2 on TV it’s totally me.

Run! It’s ‘A Baby Story’

After training for and running my first half marathon I decided to take some time off to rest.  I didn’t work out for a while, unless you count lifting my weight in fun sized candy from the candy jar to my mouth a workout.  I finally decided it was time to get back into it when I pulled a muscle in my shoulder one morning…  while putting on my bra.  I foolishly thought that running 13.1 miles would elevate me to some pinnacle of fitness, making it impossible for me to sustain injuries while dressing in the morning.  Not so much.

Since it has gotten pretty cold in the last few weeks I decided to join a gym.  I toured the local Planet Fitness and signed up for a membership.  I was excited to see that they provided 12 overhead televisions for workout entertainment.  I quickly scanned the listing of channels, planning to coordinate my workouts with TV shows that I have been missing¹ since we can no longer get broadcast TV on our antennae.

During my initial workouts I didn’t check the TV listings before heading to the gym.  On my first visit I tried using the treadmill on the far left side of the gym, hoping to be able to see what was on the Discovery Channel TV.  I have really bad vision² so I couldn’t tell if I was watching 1985’s Teen Wolf, a documentary about Sasquatch, or if this was Man vs. Wild and Bear Grylls’ beard just got really long.  The tall hairy figure drank something that looked a lot like urine so my money is on Bear Grylls… not much has changed since we last had cable.

I really hoped for gale force winds, but nothing…

On my second visit I moved over to cardio machines on the far right side of the gym that were closer to the TVs and also underneath the ‘world’s biggest’ fan that has absolutely no cooling effect whatsoever.  From my new treadmill I could see TVs 9 through 12 very well.  TV8 was slightly out of my range but a quick check with the sign on the wall told me that TV8 was vh1.  I didn’t even know vh1 was still a station on TV so it likely didn’t have any programming that I was willing to run off the side of the treadmill for.

TV’s 9-12 were programmed to the following stations:

9- Lifetime

10-TLC

11- E!

12- CBS

I was excited to see what I could learn on The Learning Channel so I started running while I patiently waited for the 9:30am programming to begin.  9:30 brought: Frasier on Lifetime, A Baby Story on TLC, a reality show about women addicted to Botox on E!, and The Queen Latifah Show³ on CBS.  I wasn’t thrilled with any of the prospects but since I was already running I decided to stay put.  It couldn’t be all that bad…

I almost instantly knew that I would not be watching E!.  Artificially plumped women gossiping, planning their next ‘procedures’, and complaining about having too much money was not for me.  A Baby Story was the next program that I chose to ignore- it’s even less my thing than the Botoxing bitches on E! but it’s slightly less offensive so I gave it a whole 20 seconds before turning my attention to Frasier.

They were all there- Frasier, Roz, Daphne, and even the whining Niles.  It was like visiting with old friends- old, pretentious, slightly neurotic friends with an adorable, mischievous little dog named Eddie.  It was comfortable, funny, and keeping my attention from the miles I was covering while not actually going anywhere… but then it got frightening.

At one point in the episode Frasier took off his shirt before getting into bed.  For a moment. Just a moment. But nonetheless a moment too long, I thought “Kelsey Grammer was in pretty good shape”. I wanted to wash my mind out with soap!  Kelsey Grammer is not attractive, even if you put Tom Selleck’s head on his body and made it speak Frasier from underneath that lovely mustache, he would still not be attractive.  He’s a cranky old man OR preferably that fuzzy blue dude from the X-Men.

In my defense- the thought that Kelsey Grammer was in pretty good shape was a preface to a second thought that hit me a moment later “Funny how he died so young when he was in such good shape”.  Upon returning home and relating my Frasier story to my husband (who is now confident that his own aged body is well above my standards for being ‘in shape’) he told me that, although now even older, and probably less hot, Kelsey Grammer is still alive.

I was thinking of Phil Hartman, who was on that show NewsRadio, who did actually die.  I think it was a completely legitimate mistake as both Kelsey Grammer and Phil Hartman played radio show hosts on their television shows (which, when written down, sounds like a pretty crummy, un-entertaining concept for a sitcom).  Sometimes I get celebrities confused⁴.

Back at the gym… while scanning between Frasier and the Queen Latifah Show⁵.  I kept getting glimpses of implants and “Oh sh*t! What was that?!?” This is where I learned the difference between Cable and Broadcast television.  When a woman has a baby on a broadcast TV station they show her getting wheeled into a hospital room (sometimes with and sometimes without a little blue shower cap on) and then they show her looking somewhat tired (i.e. mascara is smudged and her hair is getting kind of flat) holding a dry, clean, contented infant who is sleeping soundly in her arms with his/her eyes closed.  This is not what they show on TLC’s A Baby Story.

On A Baby Story they showed everything.  The expectant mother put on the little blue shower cap (the universal signal for cut to commercial) but there was no contented infant… there was 5 minutes of footage that made me woozy while I ran.  In an effort to stay upright I grasped the bars on the side of the treadmill and held on for dear life, just like the poor, sweating, screaming woman grasping onto the rails of the gurney on TV10.  I started to feel faint and looked to the Queen on TV12 for some salvation. When the Queen cut to commercial I glanced back over to see Dr. Crane on TV9 and caught a glimpse of something that could have been footage from an Aliens sequel.  A bloody, screaming, goo covered infant  was being passed, umbilical intact, to it’s red-faced, physically exhausted mother.  Then they finally cut to commercial.  That was almost as bad as that graphic video of a woman giving birth that they made us watch in 11^th grade health class⁶.  

I’m not saying that birth is not an amazing thing- it is. The fact that a woman can produce a whole human being is pretty remarkable and I respect everyone who has birthed a child and experienced all of the wonders that go with it- mucus plugs, pooping on the delivery table, tearing, the “Ring of Fire”, and (I almost fainted when my friend told me this) babies needing to be ‘vacuumed’ out.  I just don’t want to watch this  miracle while I am running on a treadmill at the gym.

Nor do I ever want to experience it.  While I think I would be the world’s best⁷ pregnant woman I have absolutely no interest in giving birth or caring for the resulting child for 18+ years of it’s life.  I’m perfectly happy that the products of my life be the bi-monthly hair goblin in the shower drain, the mostly inedible cooking that my loving husband only gags on when he thinks I’m not looking, and the writing on this blog that a 10^th grade English teacher would call “marginal”… if she was in a generous mood.

Maybe the Planet Fitness staff could possibly change the channel or pretend that TV10 is broken when A Baby Story came on…  Not gonna happen.  So yesterday I moved back over to the left side of the gym and took my chances with what I couldn’t see on TV’s 1-6. I watched something that could have been a documentary on life in New Hampshire or a do-it yourself show, something like This Old House for New Hampshirites.  I came home and checked the Discovery Channel schedule to find out what I had been watching-

MoonShiners

Maybe it will help me relate to the locals….

I thought these were my neighbors, but like I said… my vision isn’t that good.

1- I normally don’t watch a lot of TV.  We haven’t had cable since early this century and the stuff we can get in on our antennae isn’t always consistent.  For example- I missed months of Family Guy episodes before realizing that if the skies were clear AND I sat in a kitchen chair placed exactly 2.7 ft in front of the TV AND held my left arm out at a 45 degree angle, we could get FOX on our antennae.  I sat in this position for an entire season.  Then we got a dog and I trained him to sit in that spot and be the FOX transmitter.

2- My vision is terrible! Like- legally blind in one eye but can’t claim the food for my my ‘seeing-eye’ dog as a tax deduction- terrible.  I could probably fill an entire posting with stories about my bad vision that are funny but not-funny in that –I almost drank poison by accident- kind of way… and maybe I will.  Making a note of this.

3- Queen Latifah has a talk show now… which means I could probably get one too.  It’s amazing what money can buy.

4- When I did a quick fact check on Google it turns out that Phil Hartman, who may have also been in pretty good shape (for an old dude) didn’t die of a heart attack or anything preventable by fitness, but he was murdered by his wife.  Then I had to Google ‘Dad from Malcolm in the Middle’ because in my mind that guy (Bryan Cranston- more recently known for his role on Breaking Bad) was Phil Harman’s doppelganger.  In a side by side comparison I think my confusion is justified:

I also get the following celebrity pairings confused:

Rachel Bilson and Mila Kunis– I’m pretty sure that their DNA strands would be almost identical if compared in a lab.  I don’t need to know which one is which but whatever one got to be the poster girl for Magnum Ice Cream Bars is my secret girl crush.

Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes– They shared the big screen in “Wrath of the Titans” but probably also shared a womb.

Tommy Lee Jones and Classic Gucci Handbag– I think the resemblance speaks for itself.

5- She had on the ‘Most Amazing Kids’ and there was a yo-yo prodigy that made me wish I was 9 years old again so that I could grab a yo-yo and cultivate an actual marketable skill instead of watching Hey Dude reruns on Nickelodeon after school.  I guess that’s why I went to college… or got my Masters degree… Hmmm, maybe I should look into getting a yo-yo?

6- I remember sitting at my desk 4 rows away from the door when the screen was pulled down, blocking my only escape from the room (by the by this is totally against fire code SVHS), and then the projector behind me started rolling the black and white film. As the birthing process began on the screen I started to sweat and the peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I had for lunch began turning into a cement brick in the bottom of my stomach.  By the time the baby’s head was coming out (I believe that I have heard my child-ed friends refer to this as crowning) I was covered in a salty sheen reminiscent of the 1485 ‘English sweating sickness’ epidemic, I felt like I was going to vomit and my mouth was producing copious amounts of saliva to lubricate the whole wheat bread and sticky peanut butter that were about to make a reappearance on my desk.  I looked at my classmates- all of the girls, and 50% of the boys wore looks of disgust while the remaining 50% of the boys were leaning as far forward in their seats as possible with their eyes popping out of their heads. I put my head down on the desk and tried to remember to breathe deeply, just like they kept telling the woman in the movie.  After what seemed like hours, in which I took a total of 5 breaths, I heard a baby screaming instead of a woman screaming in pain, then the projector reel and my torment ended.  I lifted my head from the puddle of sweat on my desk, watched the room spin around me, decided I would never have children, then went to 7^th period math.  I’m pretty sure that seeing the same birth video today would elicit the same response.

7- No really.  Out of all the women that were ever pregnant in the entire history of the world, I’d likely be the best at it.  I would be glowing.  I would be joyous. I could fill up my ‘Buy 10 scoops & Get 1 scoop free card’ in one visit to the ice cream store.  I would eat EVERYTHING.  I could finally talk to my stomach without people judging me like they do now.  Really the whole concept sounds amazing and blissful.

One time I even pretended to be pregnant so I could sneak a whole big bag of SunChips (because that single serve size is just a joke) into the movie theater when we went to see Kung Fu Panda.  I stuffed the bag under my jacket and I snapped it in there using the snowskirt- thus making my unsupported illusionary baby much more believable AND also minimizing arm contact likely to expose me if the telltale SunChips bag crunched under my coat.  I’m sure that I glowed as I got to feel slightly maternal for just a few moments- walking with a slight backwards lean to support the child that I loved so much.  We chose our seats in the theater and I birthed the crinkling bag of chips.  We named him Harvest Cheddar- so appropriate for the next generation of Cheese-men.  That’s where the similarity ends because then we devoured Harvest Cheddar’s insides and that’s a whole weird area that I’m not even comfortable joking about.

32- Aaaannnd that’s a wrap!

Taylor Swift hit the music scene in 2006, about 10 years too late to save me from myself and the music that made me feel so angsty and misunderstood in the mid-90s.  (Not even Taylor Swift could have saved me from the 1996 worldwide music-dance crazes that were the Macarena and riding The Train with the Quad City Dj’s… but that’s another story all together).  As if a teenager needed more fuel for the fire of their misery…

Alanis Morissette brought us the Jagged Little Pill, which I played non-stop on my Sony CD player the size of a small refrigerator.  I wanted to put my “sweater on backwards and inside out” just so somebody could say “how appropriate” and I could feel wounded by their judgment.  I remember how my 16 year old mind was blown (BLOWN!) by the irony when my friend got into her first car accident as we sang along with the plane crash lines of Ironic at the top of our lungs (this couldn’t possibly have been distracted driving- it was fate and we were both now convinced that it would ‘Raaaiaaain’ on our wedding days).

Next came No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom.   I remember singing along with Gwen to Just a Girl, it was so freeing to finally be able to express my feelings about the decades of oppression that I’d suffered while ‘the man’ kept me down.  In reality the line in the song that applied most appropriately to my 17 year old self was “I’m just a girl, I’d rather not be, cause they won’t let me drive late at night”.  This was actually true since Pennsylvania teens are given a ‘junior driver’s license’ from the ages of 16-18 that doesn’t allow them to drive after 11pm without a parent or a note from their place of employment.  It had nothing to do with being a girl but I grasped onto the injustice of it all nonetheless.

In 1998 we got Jewel, who like Taylor Swift, was a country crossover star.  Her music was not pop, she was not angry enough, and her message was completely lost on a 17 year old.  Not to mention that in the big single off of her Spirit album, Hands, all she talked about was how small her hands were.  If her hands were so small- how was she going to handle the colossal teen problems that I had? Not to mention poverty, world peace… and all that other stuff that she sang about that I blocked out because it wasn’t about me.

Taylor Swift’s brand of positive pop-country would have been a welcome change from all of the suffering and anguish.  For example, at that age I probably could have used some more songs like Our Song, about the blissful joy of young love:

Cause our song is the slamming screen door, Sneakin’ out late, tapping on his window, When we’re on the phone and he talks real slow’ cause it’s late and his mama don’t know

rather than songs of heartbreak and vengeance like You Oughta Know:

Cause the joke that you laid on the bed that was me, And I’m not gonna fade As soon as you close your eyes and you know it, And every time I scratch my nails down someone else’s back I hope you feel it…well can you feel it

The fact that Taylor Swift missed the window in my life when I most needed her hasn’t stopped me from enjoying her songs now.  For the past 7 years I’ve been age-inappropriately trilling along with her as she passes through the milestones that we all go through on our way to adulthood (Note- I am not claiming to be an adult).  I totally got Teardrops on My Guitar, I wanted to get all pyro when she sang Picture to Burn, I loved Mean and I Knew You were Trouble… but like everyone else in the world I wanted to throw a brick through my car radio whenever Taylor sang “We-ee are never, ever, ever, getting back together”.

Taylor’s song 22 was released earlier this year.  Since I don’t ever like to miss the opportunity to sing along with a good song, especially in the car, I did my best to keep up with young Taylor on 22**. 

(**At this point I really must insist that you stop what you are doing and take 4 minutes to watch the music video for 22 on You Tube- click here.  Don’t be embarrassed, just turn down the volume on your computer or put some headphones in… I won’t tell anyone else that you watched it.  The video and lyrics will play a key role in the rest of the blog so just watch, oh and you’ll need to watch again later so keep the window open.)

Did you watch the video? Was it pretty much what you remember your early 20’s being like?  It was a very accurate representation in my opinion.  The only things that weren’t quite right were the guys wearing suits at the party (where were those guys when I was in college?) and the huge ice cream cone that isn’t actually made out of ice cream (I’d likely be in prison right now for murdering the person that brought that to the party or I’d be in intensive care for eating a plastic ice cream cone… either way I’m glad it never happened)

Once I learned the 22 year old version of the song and enjoyed the nostalgic feeling of falling in love with strangers and making fun of my ex’s I started editing the lyrics to be more fitting for myself at 32.  My song 32 slowly took shape, verse by verse, each time I heard 22 played on the radio.  The final product ‘32’ by Taylor Thrift (Not Swift because let’s be honest- at 32 we’re a lot more frugal and a lot less fast than we were at 22…) is presented here for the first time ever in print:

It feels like a perfect night to dress in yo-ga pants

And sit on the sofa, uh uh, uh uh.

It feels like a perfect night to bake some cookies

Or eat a pan of brownies uh uh, uh uh.

 

Yeah,

I’m eating food but feeling guilty at the same time

It’s slower to metabolize

Oh, yeah

Tonight’s the night when I forget about my waistline

It’s fine.

 

Uh oh!

I don’t’ know about you

But I’m feeling 32

Everything will be alright

If I don’t see my rear view

Goin’ to the grocery (to make this line work you’ve got to say it fast and slur the syllables together.  don’t say gro-cer-y, say gross-ree like you’re from South Philly)

To get some more food

Everything will be alright

If I just keep eating like I’m

32, ooh-ooh, 32, ooh-ooh

 

It seems like one of those nights,

The bars are too crowded

Too many cool kids, uh uh, uh uh, 

It seems like one of those nights,

I’ll ditch the whole scene and end up sleeping

Around 9:30

 

Yeah,

It’s cheaper to just drink alone at home on Friday

That boxed stuff’s really classy

Oh, yeah

Tonight’s the night when I’ll be hanging with my best friend

It’s wine

 

Uh oh!

I don’t know about you

But I’m feeling 32

Everything will be alright

If I only have a few

Shit the bottle’s empty (again, sing it South Philly style. You didn’t expect this to be perfect did you… I’m not Weird ‘Mel’ Yankovic!)

Oh, I’ll just have 2

Everything will be alright

If I just keep drinking like I’m 

32, ooh-ooh, 32, ooh-ooh

I don’t know about you

32, ooh-ooh, 32, ooh-ooh

 

It seems like a really good night,
To go to Target
It seems like a really good night,
To read my Redbook
It seems like a really good night,
To lie down early
I gotta have sleep, I gotta have sleep

 

Ooh-ooh, Ooh-ooh, ye-e-e-e-eah, hey
I don’t know about you (I don’t know about you)
But I’m feeling 32
Everything will be alright
If I don’t see my rear view
Shit the bottle’s empty
Oh I’ll just have 2
Everything will be alright
If I just keep acting like I’m
32, ooh-ooh, 32, ooh-ooh
32, ooh-ooh, yeah, yeah, 32, ooh-ooh, yeah, yeah, yeah

 

It seems like a really good night,

To go to Target

It seems like a really good night,
To hit the Redbox
It seems like a really good night,
To lie down early
I gotta have sleep, I gotta have sleep.

 

The video for 32 has yet to go into production but I have some ideas.  When I secure corporate funding from Target or get sponsored by Redbook, here’s what you can expect:

I’m thinking about starting with a sheet cake just like Taylor’s video- only in my video we’ll put the cake in a room with a hidden camera, a bunch of 32 year old women, and only one fork.  I’m guessing after 5 minutes the footage will get extremely interesting and music video worthy.

To minimize skin damaging sun exposure (cancer, wrinkles, stuff we didn’t worry about 10 years ago) and avoid wearing swimsuits, the cast of 32 will not be made to sunbathe on a pool deck or at the beach.  They also won’t wear those big heart shaped sunglasses… I’m SO sure those have UVA/UVB protection Taylor!  Instead we’ll go to a place where the lighting is as bright and warming as the sun, and the atmosphere is just as soothing and relaxing.  Target on a weeknight.

The video will continue in Target where the 32 cast will dance through the aisles waving good deals (including Little Debbie snack cakes, TV on DVD value packs… seasons 1&2 Breaking Bad anyone?, and fleece blankets to snuggle with on the sofa) in the air instead of pom-poms.  They’ll pop the corks off of bottles and boxes of wine instead of confetti guns.  Then they’ll make a human pyramid to reach the last sale item on the top shelf and stare meaningfully into the frozen foods case trying to decide what type of ice cream to purchase instead of gazing into the breaking waves on the beach.

The video will move outside of the store and we’ll race our red carts, rather than our stud-driven bicycles, back to our responsible looking vehicles (a mini is so glamorous) where we’ll throw groceries and home goods into the back seat to the rhythm of the music.  The group will then separate and the video will follow one 32 cast member as she heads for home and the final scene.

The final scene for 32 will show the woman getting ready for bed instead of getting ready for a big party.  She’ll put her hair up in a ponytail and wash her face while a clock on the wall shows the time elapsing from 9:05-9:10pm.  Instead of mysterious strange men dancing around in suits there will be a husband in a t-shirt and baggy Hanes sweatpants that shuffles over from the kitchen carrying a REAL huge ice cream cone <3.  At this point we’ll tastefully edit the footage so folks aren’t exposed to the vulture-like consumption they probably saw in the cake scene at the beginning… it’s almost bedtime after all.  The final scene will show our 32 lady singing “I gotta have sleep, I gotta have sleep” and then jumping into her soft comfy bed, instead of the pool that Taylor jumps into.

The Big Finale!

Okay, so now you need to play the video again, sing along with the lyrics of 32 instead of 22 while envisioning the video masterpiece that I just described playing in the background.  I’m quite certain that I’ll be receiving one of those little Moonmen statues at the VMAs next year.  Hopefully they’ll award my category early, that way I can stop at Target on the way home for a celebratory bottle of wine and get into bed before 9:30.

(It was my birthday last week and I called “That’s a Wrap” on being 32.  I’ve only been 33 for about 5 days but so far it seems that I’ll be able to keep eating, drinking, and acting like I’m 32-ooh-ooh.)

Run Free or Die! My first half marathon.

I’d like to thank the academy…

You know those acceptance speeches that actors and actresses give when they win an Academy Award? It seems like they thank anyone and everyone that they ever met in their entire life. Specifically. By name. Since the rest of us don’t know who Henry Gobs is it’s pretty boring to listen to.  I decided that if I ever got to write an acceptance speech I would try to be more descriptive in my thanking OR I would just yell “I love you all!” and be done with it like Cuba Gooding Jr.

Until a year and a half ago I’d never really won anything, except a few games of monopoly, ‘’free tickets’ in scratch off lottery, candy BINGO, and competitions that were prefaced with the words ‘everyone is a winner’, hardly things worth preparing an acceptance speech for.

When I finally won an actual competition, a triathlon 2 years ago, it came as a complete shock.  There must be some mistake I thought.   I don’t win things.  I’m just here for fun and the post-race food¹.   During the awards ceremony they did indeed call my name, proving it was not just an error. I went up to the winner’s table and collected my prize².  I didn’t take the microphone from the race director and give an acceptance speech because I was speechless (I hope somebody marked this down in the record books.  It actually happened).  I wasn’t like all of the Oscar winners that- gasp, place their hand over their heart or their mouth,  then get up to the podium and say “This is so unexpected!” before pulling out a folded piece of notebook paper that they had tucked in their pocket with the names of everyone they have ever met on it… unexpected, sure.  I really was shocked and completely unprepared so I didn’t get to give what I’m sure would have been one of the best acceptance speeches of all time.

After my speechless moment, I vowed to never be so unprepared again.  That’s why, when I had the idea³ to run a half marathon I started preparing in more ways than one.  I wanted to be physically ready but also ready with a completely ‘spontaneous’ speech to give when I received my finishers medal.

I selected a race based on timing (I needed at least 10 weeks to prepare) and the awesomeness of the finisher’s medal.  There was a race sponsored by a running club in New Hampshire whose motto was “Run Free or Die”.  I was assured in an email from the race director that yes- their finisher’s medals did say “Run Free or Die” on them and that no- sneakers with jet packs were not considered appropriate or legal footwear for the event.  It seemed to me that having a “Run Free or Die” medal would somehow solidify my new identity as a New  Hampshirite.  I needed one of those medals- I just hoped that my quest to earn one would lead to Running Free… and not Dying.

The race was 13 weeks away and I needed to start training.  I perused some old Runner’s World magazines that were destined for the recycling bin before our big move.  I found an issue that advertised a 10 week beginner half marathon training plan.  I made some adjustments to the plan by removing all references to tempo or race pace (I didn’t care how fast I ran, I just wanted to live) and scratching out all of the Saturday runs and replacing them with a workout called “Carb loading”.  The modified plan seemed feasible enough so I decided to start training the very next day.  I consulted the training schedule- a rest day… this was going to be easier than I thought.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t FDA approved.

I trained fairly religiously for the next few months.  I had a couple of setbacks⁴ and some pain⁵.  But I also got to spend a lot more time with my foam roller, Chip, AND I got to combine my favorite activity- eating- with running⁶. Before I knew it- 13 weeks, 190 miles of training runs, 10 trays of ice cubes, a bottle of ibuprofen, and one and one half tubes of a German pain relieving cream called Traumeel were all long gone.  Race day was upon me.

The day before the race we drove to North Conway, NH, a beautiful little town in the Mount Washington valley (which desperately needs your help in their search for a missing teen girl named Abigail Hernandez.  Please take a look at the photos here to see if you recognize her).  We checked into our motel, picked up my race packet, and went out to drive the course.  It was hillier than I thought and when we got back to the motel I cried about the hill at mile 3.  The only thing that could fix this was more hill training, and since this wasn’t possible on the eve of the race I turned to the next best alternative… junk food.

What you eat for dinner the night before literally fuels your body for the race.  I decided to fill my tank with pizza from a tiny alleyway pizzeria called Boston Brothers.  I ordered a pizza with pesto instead of red sauce (cause who wants heartburn on race day?), chicken, black olives, and pineapple.  The man behind the counter verified that I did indeed want to put pineapple on a pesto pizza, I confirmed my order, he made a face like he just threw up in his mouth a little, and then he told me it would be $17.95.  Half a pizza, 2 chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies the size of my head, and a huge glass of milk later I felt fueled… or at least deep enough in a food coma that I calmed down about the mile 3 hill.

I got into the bed and shifted myself and my pizza baby around like a beached whale to get comfortable.  I then miraculously managed to get some sleep.  I normally suffer from insomnia but it seems to get even worse when I am nervous about something.  Sometimes I’ll sleep only a few hours on the night before a race.  My pre-race rest time is plagued with trips to the bathroom and waking up from strange dreams- which on this night may have included a dream where the road at mile 12 came to life,  swallowed me like a giant tsunami wave, and spit my aching body back to mile 10… but it’s all a little hazy.

I accidentally hit the start button on my GPS watch when I turned it on. Thus we now have this map and the valuable data about my wait in the Port-a-Potty line and walk to the race start.

I woke, not quite rested, in the morning and drove down to the park 20 minutes before the race start.  I saw some crazy people running around the park to warm up⁷.  I shook my head and got in the long line for the port-a-potties.  I waited in line for 6 minutes 40 seconds, sat completely still in the port-a-potty for 2 minutes 25 seconds, and walked to the race start in 4minutes 15 seconds at a max speed of 3.2 miles per hour, burning a total of 12 calories (See map inset).

At the race start volunteers held up signs where runners of different paces should line up.  This cut down on jumbling at the beginning of the race since the faster folks were towards the front of the group and the slower folks towards the back.  I walked to the 10:00 per mile group and hung with my people.  I was appalled to see that there was a 6:00 per mile group at the very front.  There is no way I could ever run a 6 minute mile, even if I was being chased by a bear, for just one mile- let alone 13.1.

I panicked when I realized that the discrepancy in pace per mile would deliver the 6 minute mile runners at the finish line 53 minutes before me…  what if they ate all of the pizza?  I made a mental note to add more speed intervals to my training for the next race and then shifted myself slightly in front of the other folks in the 10:00 per mile pace group hoping to guarantee myself a slice of pepperoni.

And then, with the sound of a gunshot, 435 bodies and 870 feet ran onto the course.  We squeezed ourselves through the starting arch and spilled out onto the road, like M&Ms spilling out of the ‘big’ bag when it accidentally rips all the way down the side instead of just the corner ripping off at the top (they should really work on this defect… I’ve lost lots of good M&Ms this way).  We all wore smiles as we ran past the park for the first time at mile 0.3.  We were fresh and full of adrenaline, waving at our cheering friends and family members.  12.9 miles later when we came to that same spot on the road and headed into the park to run through the finish arch, few wore smiles, some wore tears (of joy and pain) and it honestly felt like everyone that got there was a winner.

As I crossed the finish line I was given a medal (which I am still wearing right now as I write this) and this time I was prepared.  Even though I was wearing sweaty spandex instead of something fitting for the red carpet I put on my best Oscar winner face and unfolded my completely impromptu acceptance speech:

(Reverb on microphone)

Thank you everyone for this great honor (holds up finishers medal and turns from side to side).

First and foremost I’d like to thank the Race Director and the Town of North Conway for laying out a beautiful race course (except for that hill at mile 12.5 that almost made me throw up) and hosting a well organized, safe, and fun event.

I’d also like to thank the following people who were out on the course today:

The North Conway police: for making stern faces, waving their arms, and not allowing people desperate for good deals to turn their cars into the outlet stores that lined the race course.  I tried to thank each and every one of you as I ran by on the course but I probably missed some of you.  And to the police officer who told me it was his cute twin that I saw and thanked a couple of miles back- it was only mile 4, I wasn’t quite delusional yet, I knew it was you again but I don’t mind thanking you twice- once for the safety and once for the laugh.

Those people at mile 8 with the sign advertising ‘Fresh High Fives’– I know you weren’t there specifically for me but I needed you more than you will ever know. Your enthusiasm and hand slapping carried me for a whole mile.

And a big thank you to all those back home that supported me during my training:

The Hill People Heckler– This mid-70’s local man lives on the dirt road opposite mine under the power lines.  Each Sunday morning, right around the time I was out for my long run, he would take a quick trip (liquor store, bacon run… who knows) somewhere in his old beat-up pickup truck.  After seeing me several weeks in a row, he decided to bestow upon me some sage running advice.  He was headed home, he pulled his truck up next to me, rolled down the window, took the toothpick from between his teeth and told me “You might want to pick up the pace a little.” He then rolled up his window and drove away.

Eminem, P!nk, Kesha, and the 37 other artists that kept me company during my training runs and the race.  I put a full listing of my audio support crew and the race playlist that could cause eardrum hemorrhaging in folks with good taste in music below. 

I loaded extra music into the playlist just in case things went awry and the race took me longer than I thought.  Katy Perry Roar-ed me across the finish line… which, sadly, meant that I did not get to hear the epic back to back arrangement of Flo Rida’s Whistle and the Baha Men’s Who Let the Dogs Out?

Food– Training burned a lot of calories and I was always so thankful to have you around to quell my voracious appetite.  Special thanks goes out to avocados, honey bunches of oats cereal, candy, and pie.

And last but not least those people that I couldn’t have done this without, I am forever grateful to each and every one of you:

Oh Magnum!

My physical therapist– She took the time 2 years ago to treat me like a person, instead of a babbling lunatic… which is how I acted on my first visit to her office⁸.  She was like an angel of mercy in a Lole track suit and Saucony sneakers.  She spent months scraping and taping to get me back up and running again.  And then to solidify her place amongst the divine she told me where I could get these earrings.

My running mentor-  An amazing athlete and an even more amazing friend who inspires me to challenge myself both physically and mentally.  I have learned so much from her, about running, about life, and about where to get the best cookies, cakes, pizza, salami, ice cream bars, and stale candy.

My husband– I could write pages and pages about my most avid and dedicated supporter and how thankful I am for all that he does.  But they’re starting to give me the signal to wrap it up so I’ll just end with the final words he said to me this morning before the race started.  He gave me a big hug and said “You’re gonna do awesome.” I said “Okay”, not really sure if I believed it myself or not.  Still hugging me he said “Your hair smells so good, how could you not do awesome?” He gave me a kiss and walked away.

He was right.  My hair smelled good. And I did awesome.

(Cue speech ending music)

“I came in like a wrecking ball!”
I probably should have added that to the playlist.

1- I love that they cut race food into bite sized pieces. If there are 5 different kinds of muffins and bagels on offer you don’t have to commit to just one variety.  You can try the double chocolate muffin, the apple struesel top muffin, the blueberry muffin, the everything bagel, and the whole wheat sunflower seed bagel (not speaking from experience).  AND you can top it all off with a big swipe of cream cheese from that 5 gallon bucket at the end of the table… nobody is monitoring that thing.  They might as well just put an ice cream scoop in there for portion control because that’s how much I’m sawing out of there with that little plastic butter knife anyway.

2- A pint glass… really?  I just kicked some serious ass.  Couldn’t we have taken the time since my finish to cast a life sized bronze sculpture that would forever grace the shoreline of the reservoir I just swam in?  I was at least hoping for a medal- a big gold one, that I could wear every day for the rest of my life.  Is that too much to ask when I just gave a gold medal effort?  The pint glass sits in a place of honor, right next to the car token from my winning monopoly game in 1996.

3- Sometimes I have good ideas, but most of the time I have really bad ideas…  that time I ordered asparagus as a topping on a pizza, that time I thought we needed a second cat, that time I thought I could rally car race over a concrete parking lot divider in my Nissan Sentra, that time I decided to play roller derby… I could go on and on.

4- I thought I was going to be some kind of sea level running phenom.  I thought I would have an amazing aerobic capacity at this elevation, having been used to running at 4000 feet and then moving to 400 feet.  Mel T. Cheeseman would be to New Hampshire running what Lance Armstrong was to French biking… except my weakness would be candy instead of steroids.

What actually happened was that I got to New Hampshire and had to repeat one of the weeks on the training plan several times as I became accustomed to the New England Flat terrain (described here).

5- Sometimes it was a lot of pain.  There were entire weeks where I thought that the bones in my right knee, or my left knee, or both of my knees had been turned to dust and I kept waiting to collapse onto the pavement like a Stretch Armstrong doll.  There were days that my legs were so sore I couldn’t stand up from the toilet without using my upper body strength to push myself up from the seat or pull myself using a grip of death on the wall next to the toilet… exactly how were the geriatric handicapped people that lived here supposed to get on and off the toilet?  No wonder they moved out.  This place is ill equipped.

6- I wanted to pack a picnic lunch with a sub sandwich, a bag of potato chips (the single serving size bag, I wasn’t going to overdo it) and a peanut butter cookie.  I was encouraged by wiser, more experienced runners to pack an energy gel instead.  Something about it digesting better…

7- How much energy did these people have?  Did they realize we had to run 13.1 miles? I conserved as much energy as possible that morning, even debating whether the effort of lifting my arm to brush my teeth was worth it.  I warmed up by layering fuzzy fleece pajama pants and a huge sweatshirt over my race outfit.  I hastily stripped off the extra layers at the edge of the park and handed them to my husband 5 minutes before the race start.

8- I was fresh off of a visit to a podiatrist who told me that I had the arthritic feet of a 60 year old* and that there wasn’t much hope that I could ever return to running.  I felt like a 4 year old racehorse being sent off to the glue factory.  His ‘treatment plan’, which he told me couldn’t possibly heal the horrific condition of my feet, was meant to make me more comfortable by minimizing my symptoms.  It involved the purchase of a cane. A CANE! I tried to relate this diagnosis to my new PT at my first appointment.  Instead of speaking calmly and clearly, I cried and wailed incoherent sentences ending in “…cane” and “… old gluepot” as I gasped for air through rivers of mucus and tears.  It was like I forgot the word ‘physical’ came before the word ‘therapist’ in her job description.  She managed to glean enough information from my story to understand that it was my right foot (and not just my head) that needed help.  I repeated everything else more coherently and she assured me that she would get it fixed.

*Did this mean that somewhere out there a 60 year old out was running around on my 30 year old feet?  I always thought that the organ/body part thief story was just an urban legend.  I dug deep into my brain trying to remember if I ever woke up in a bathtub full of ice with no feet after a night of hard partying in college… nothing was coming up. I knew I shouldn’t have drank the punch at those frat parties!

A weekend with Carbie!

Oh Barbie… who puts shoes in a vending machine.
B-5 is for mini Nutter Butters!

If this were the world of Mattel toys I would be a doll named “Carb-ie”… Barbie’s slightly chubby friend that’s always raiding the fridge at the Dreamhouse looking for carbs.  If it were Carbie’s dreamhouse there would be a HUGE pantry full of food instead of a closet full of clothes and there would be a (possibly hijacked) ice cream truck in the driveway still broadcasting “Pop goes the Weasel” in that creepy faux music box kind of way instead of a Barbie Corvette.  Skipper would be replaced with a personal pastry chef and Ken (who I don’t believe could bake a damn thing except his fabulous plasticized buns) would get traded in for ‘Ken’-tucky Fried Chicken.

Unfortunately, since this isn’t the world of Mattel toys I cannot raid Barbie’s Dreamhouse fridge and the fridge at my Dreamhouse (aka geriatric apartment described here) sometimes gets empty.  Our supplies were dwindling to dangerous levels when we left last Friday to go on an overnight trip to New York for a wedding¹…

On Saturday morning I woke up starving and attended the hotel’s continental breakfast… which I will be polite in describing as ‘insufficient’.  We went early to the wedding venue and since my husband was tied up with his duties as Reverend I decided to make myself useful.  I dubbed myself ‘freshness checker’ and spent the late morning ensuring that none of the cocktail hour potato chips were getting stale.  After I thoroughly inspected a handful² of chips from all 5 bowls I diligently moved on to pretzels…

The ceremony began around noon- the bride was beautiful, the groom was bearded, and their lifelong bond filled our hearts with love… and now it was time to fill our stomachs.  I proudly set out the bowls of potato chips and gave guests an insightful little wink when I put them down to let them know I had verified their freshness… a couple of people looked at me confusedly and someone asked me if I had something in my eye but I’m sure they figured it out once they tasted those chips 😉

The BBQ luncheon was delicious and filled me sufficiently enough that I could finally stop chewing and mingle with some of the other wedding guests… and then the dancing began.  I can’t normally get into day-dancing at a wedding.  It’s usually not dark enough and nobody is quite drunk enough at 3:30 to really give it their all.  I tried to start a sober, day-dancing frenzy by busting out all of my best dance moves… unfortunately I think I may have actually chased people off of the dance floor as I ‘lawn-mowered’ around.  In the end, despite my best efforts to ruin dancing for everyone, for the rest of their lives, Miley Cyrus’ Party in the U.S.A. set the dance floor on fire and the day-dancing was a success… until someone said the word dessert!

Pirate or should I say ‘Pie’-rate Carbie surveying the loot!

Everyone knows that at weddings dessert is the most exciting part of the meal and dessert at this wedding certainly did not disappoint.  The dessert table boasted a stunning display of 12 (12! I just yelled that!) different kinds of pie and 3 different kinds of cookies.   Most of the pies were homemade by the bride’s father, a master of pastry and fruit fillings who I referred to on that day as not only ‘father of the bride’ but also ‘Sugar Daddy’.  I tried 7 pies, 2 cookies AND wrapped some of the 3^rd kind of cookie to go in some aluminum foil that I managed to find… in my car (you’d be surprised how often this comes in handy, especially when you’re a Carbie!).

After a final dance to AC/DC’s Hell’s Bells- in which I busted out ‘the sprinkler’ and my husband performed an epic leaning, arm flailing maneuver that required medicating with icy hot before he was able to drive- we said our goodbyes and I rolled my pie-filled self to the car.

I woke up on Sunday morning for a long run.  I was nervous that I may have strained some muscles day-dancing at the wedding but everything, including my newly incubating pie-baby, seemed to feel just fine.  I came home, had a protein shake and started looking for some real food³.  It was then that I remembered the sad reality of Friday’s bare cupboards.  Even the foil wrapped cookies from the wedding were long gone, eaten as a late night car snack on the way home.

While lamenting my late night car cookie binge I suddenly remembered a bag of Skittles that I purchased to eat as a car snack but (shockingly) didn’t open.  I ran out to the car and found the cold, crunchy candy covered orbs of sweetness just waiting to be consumed.  Like a person who just found water after wandering parched through a desert for weeks, I knelt down next to the car on the bare ground, tore into the package, and poured it into my mouth… so eager to taste the rainbow.

This rainbow was not quite right.  Upon further inspection of the shredded packaging I pieced together the “Now  with Green Apple” logo from the top of the bag.  Skittles had the audacity to change the ‘original’ flavor combination by replacing lime with green apple.  When did they replace lime and why? Who didn’t like lime?⁴

I spent the rest of the morning methodically working my way through different candy color combinations to determine which made the most delicious flavors when consumed together (naturally, as a candy connoisseur I worked out the most delicious flavor combinations for the actual ‘original’ skittles years ago but my system completely fell apart without lime).  Sometime around noon, or 8oz into the pounder of Skittles, I slipped into a sugar induced coma and I can’t recall anything else that I did or ate that day except for a fruit smoothie that I had around 8:30pm while watching an episode of Magnum P.I. (because I never forget a date with Tom).

The only reason I had the fruit smoothie instead of the chocolate ice cream that I was craving is that I realized I may not have consumed any fruits or vegetables during the day and I feared, cue frightening intro music- dun, dun, duuuuuunnnnn!- The Scurvy.  Yes, I just called it ‘The Scurvy’ instead of just ‘scurvy’.  I like to show the disease some respect as this was not the first day I’ve slacked on Vitamin C consumption⁵ and the loss of my teeth is rather frightening to me.  My husband and I actually talk about it fairly often… so much so that we sometimes just call it ‘The Scurv’.

I finally went to the grocery store on Monday morning and refilled the cabinets with actual food.  I was sure to grab some things that would fight off the Scurv, some healthy items, and some of that fun-sized Halloween candy… for special moments (or until i can no longer chew).  After last weekend’s pie and Skittles bender, and the ensuing gut rot that followed⁶ I think I might need to do some kind of cleanse.

Since I don’t think I could possibly endure whatever that lemon juice, tea, cayenne pepper mixture is I’ll probably just try to cut back on junk food consumption.  I’ve come up with my own 5-step program to use through the end of October or until the fun-sized candy sales end:

1. Open candy jar

2. Remove one fun sized candy

3. Close candy jar

4. Consume candy.

5. Repeat steps 1-4 until you feel sick or all of the candy is gone⁷.

I’ll let you know how it works out!

1- I will admit that in the past, I have attended events just for the food on offer*, however, this wedding was not simply a gustatory endeavor.  Two of our best friends tied the knot and we’re so happy and honored that they decided to include us in their special day- Congrats Amber and JT!

*That’s right, this is a footnote within a footnote… please put away your MLA Style Manual.  Before you judge me for my past food mooching offenses you should know I don’t do this at weddings.  I attended a couple (okay several) presentations at MSU that I had absolutely no interest in- “How to get your kid through college”, “Following MLA guidelines and writing style”, “Passing freshman Chemistry”- just for the mint brownies.  I also did a brief stint in a book club based solely on the book-themed dinner discussion nights.  It was almost difficult to consume the pineapple upside-down cake while we discussed the complexities of leprosy in the book Moloka’i… almost.

2- I wanted to notate that it is a unique definition of handful that I am using.  Webster defines handful as:

1- the quantity or amount that the hand can hold. 2. A small amount or quantitiy. 3. Informal. A person or thing that is as much as one can manage or control.

“They look like big, good, strong hands, don’t they?”
-RockBiter-

Clearly Webster has not seen me in action at a finger foods party with no plates.  I’ve got hands like the Rock Biter from The Neverending Story.  Except unlike the Rock Biter who let the man with the racing snail and the nighthob get carried away when the Nothing came calling, I’m pretty confident that nothing (including ‘The Nothing’) could possibly pry the dozen (+/- 1) brownie bites or the 5 baby eggrolls from my fingers… except for my mouth.

3- I’m pretty sure finishing a long run gives you the license to eat whatever you want for the rest of the day.  There is actually something called the “glycogen window” during which you need to consume more calories to build and repair your muscles after a long workout.  I heard the glycogen window referred to one time and had it briefly explained to me.  I am not certain what the actual “window” of time is for consuming the extra calories but I like to drag it out, sometimes for weeks, after intensive bouts of exercise.  I remember pulling up to a Wendy’s about three weeks after my first triathlon and using the glycogen window as an excuse to get “The biggest order of fries you have.”  The attendant informed me that was a Large… what the hell happened to ‘Biggie’ size Wendy’s (does anybody else remember this or am I just crazy)?

4- My missing lime Skittle was so reminiscent of my missing tan M&M that I decided to write a letter to the makers of Skittles the following day so we could discuss their wrongdoing (At press time I still had no response).  Luckily I still had the 2003 M&M email to use as a template:

5- Though now that I think of it, I may have been okay since Skittles just might have some Vitamin C in them.  The ingredients lists “Natural & Artificial Flavors” just before  3 red dyes, 3 blue dyes, 4 yellow dyes, and something called titanium dioxide (which I’m going to just go ahead and assume is making me stronger somehow or making my teeth stronger to fight The Scurvy).

6- Which stopped me from getting my blog posting done… okay, okay, that’s not entirely true.  It was the gut rot AND I was working on some blog maintenance.  I wanted to take this gut rot footnote moment to thank all of my new subscribers.  If you’re not a subscriber and would like to be- just click on that lovely blue “follow” button on the right hand side of the screen and you’ll get notification of all my new posts sent directly to your email (does it get any better than that?).  If you’re not a subscriber and you wouldn’t like to be- I completely understand.  To everyone that actually made it this far into the post- Thanks so much for reading!

7- I cannot stress enough how critical Step 3 is!  If you close the jar between candies anybody that comes in won’t know that it’s your 9^th baby Butterfinger, they’ll think you’re just reaching in for the first time.

I’m kind of like June Cleaver…

I pack my husband a lunch each morning and send him off to work with a goodbye kiss and a wave from the window just like June Cleaver… except I’m still wearing a bathrobe and slippers at 7:30am instead of a belted floral cocktail dress and pumps… oh and the food I make is probably not as good… oh and we don’t have a son named Beaver (thank god!).  He goes to his office and spends the day riddling out solutions for Old MacDonald and his organic dairy cows.  His project involves yada yada plant species, blah blah blah grazing, something or other milk production, and (incoherently mumbling) winter forage.  I’m a little hazy on the details as my interest in the project faded when I learned we would not be getting any free organic milk or have a chance to go and pet the cows.

While he is at work I play happy homemaker¹.  For the first week or so of my unemployment there was still some unpacking, organizing, cleaning, and sitting in the shower to be done in order to get us settled into our new apartment.  I worked quickly through those tasks and then I wondered- what the heck do I do now?

I decided to be a stay-at-home mom.  In the past, our children (One-eyed Willi, Animal, and Remmie) have been used to caring for themselves 6 or 7 hours of the day (read: sleeping) while we were both at work… and to be honest they really weren’t all that demanding after we got home either.  Nonetheless, I thought maybe they needed some mothering… or s-mothering.

I started tending to their needs like they were fuzzy victims of the Crimean War and I their Florence Nightingale.  They found my sudden exuberance for their well-being disturbing and gave me the general impression that my presence during their normal resting hours was unwelcome.  For example, my cats were not very happy about their new ‘exercise hour’ (I didn’t know cats could pant) and the dog was less than thrilled when he had to sit for this portrait like an old-school British Royal (you have to capture them at every age… they grow so fast).

Remmie VIII

After what I’m sure was completely unintentional claw to skin contact and several one-eyed leers from Willi during our mid-morning Bollywood Dance Workout DVD (they had this at the library- awesome!) I realized that maybe I wasn’t giving the cats enough space.  After all, they are both in their teens and everyone knows that girls just don’t get along with their mothers at that age.  So I decided that I could best tend to our cats best by solving the great catbox crisis of 2013.  Our cats don’t go outside so they have an indoor litter box, which unfortunately for us is now in our bathroom right next to the toilet².  There the catbox sits and there the catbox stinks… and I know what you’re thinking but I am SURE it’s the catbox!

To reduce the odor I tried using baking soda- the directions said that 9 pounds of Arm and Hammer would keep 10,000 gallons of pool water fresh and sparkling clean… I figured our cat box was about 10 gallons but since I really didn’t want it to smell I went ahead and added the whole 9 pounds.  The baking soda seemed to help the smell a little but the white powdered paw prints that showed up all over our apartment made it look like a crime scene from one of those cheap dollar store ‘cat’ burglar novels; The Litter of the Law, Mew is for Murder, CopyCat Killer³.

I then tried containing the smell with a physical barrier.  This meant an upgrade from our regular cat-box to the Clever-Cat® box, this is basically a Rubbermaid storage tub with a hole in the lid… only better⁴.  The cat jumps into the hole in the lid, goes to the bathroom, and pops back out the top while simultaneously cleaning the excess litter (but apparently not baking soda) off of their paws in the ridges on the top of the box. The packaging assured that the Clever-Cat® had a 4.6/5 star rating in pet satisfaction (How are they polling these pets?  I’ve yet to receive a courtesy call in the middle of dinner asking Animal for her valuable opinion…). The box came with instructions on training your cat to use it but we just set up the box and our cats figured out that was the place to pee… they’re like feline-Einsteins or something.

Sadly the CleverCat® alone didn’t seem to contain the odor so we got creative and made a franken-box.  We put the lid from our old covered litter box on top of the CleverCat®.  Now the cats have to go through something akin to a Double Dare physical challenge⁵ to get into the catbox and go to the bathroom.  It still smells.

My most recent innovations involve the attachment of a cat and odor director (still in design phase).  This will either be made out of PVC pipe (like a kitty culvert) or a large piece of canvas affixed to the top of the box and the wall (kind of like a boat sail, making it even more appropriate to call the top of the box the ‘poopdeck’).  As I work diligently to pass from design phase to prototype construction the cats sleep soundly on the sofa, thankful for my efforts towards enhanced feline sanitation and also for their much needed rest from Abs of Steel.

Remmie’s care has been a bit more time consuming.  In Bozeman I used to take Remmie to the off-leash dog park (that was about a mile from our house) once a day to run around.  In New Hampshire the nearest off-leash area is 15 minutes from our house. The entire trip with run-around time at the park is about an hour and a half.  Since I was already working up to my ‘mother of the year’ award with the cats I thought I’d take it to the next level and clinch my mother’s day breakfast in bed by taking my pup to the park every morning… it also helps that I have nothing else to do.

Remmie loves the dog park here!  There are miles of trails mowed through tall grass, a wooded path with lots of squirrels and chipmunks, a water access where dogs can swim around in the bay, an eagle scout project⁶, and a population of super slugs that could possibly take over the world if only they could get organized⁷.

A couple of days after I started our daily park visits Fred noticed that Remmie no longer went to the bathroom on their morning walks.  I didn’t think it was any kind of health concern since he normally went first thing at the park.   Fred pointed out that there would likely come a day when we couldn’t take Remmie to the park in the morning and that we’d then need to leave him alone at the house holding it like a drug smuggler in a TSA screening room.

I remembered that when we first moved into our apartment our landlords showed us an outdoor dog kennel in the back of the yard.  They said we could put Remmie out there whenever we needed to since they didn’t use it anymore.  Other than the eerie vibe given off by the dilapidated Fisher Price playhouse⁸ nearby, it seemed like a nice place for a dog to hang out.  It would also solve our problem, allowing us to leave Remmie outside so he could go to the bathroom whenever he liked.

We decided to give the outdoor kennel a try while we went on a trip to run errands one afternoon.  We couldn’t have been gone for more than a couple of hours.  When we returned home Remmie was hiding in the plastic doghouse rocking back and forth like that little girl from The Exorcist and the whole area smelled faintly of pea soup.  ‘The power of Christ compels me’ to make time to go to the park in the morning from now on.

Some days I start to feel like maybe I need to get back to get back into the working world.  I know I’ll miss all of those magic moments that you can never get back… things like Animal’s umbilical cord falling off (that was an umbilical cord right?), Willi’s first steps (towards the sofa in the morning), Remmie digging his first hole in the backyard, and catching whoever it was that peed on the floor right in front of the CleverCat® franken-box (apparently they weren’t up to completing the American Ninja Warrior course required to get inside).  I’ll also miss sending my husband off to work and welcoming him home in the evening (okay, sometimes still in my bathrobe and slippers) with a hot, delicious meal that I’ve worked so hard to prepare during the day (Manwich anyone?).  I think it will all be worth the sacrifice of time spent with my family if I can get just the right job.  Actually, I think I’ve found it and I applied today… Caramel wrapper at local Candy factory.  Please keep your fingers crossed!

I dig it!

1- Only until I can find gainful employment of my own.  My original plan was to attend pastry school when we got here but the course I was interested in was delayed until January.  Now I hope to find work that doesn’t involve wearing a scratchy ‘team’ polo shirt or cleaning a fry-o-lator…  but after re-reading this blog post before posting it I’m starting to think the polo (with an undershirt of course!) might be a better option than insanity.

2- This was the only non-disgusting place to put it… really.  At our last apartment we installed a cat door on our utility closet and put the cat box in there.  We called it the ‘cat-cave’- kind of like the bat cave, only the cats never came out with utility belts or a cat-mobile (so unfortunate).  What happened in the cave, stayed in the cave… they had their privacy, cat-Gotham was crime free, and our house didn’t smell like urine. Everyone was happy!

3- I didn’t make these up.  All titles available on Goodreads… which begs the question, what kind of standards do they have there for calling things good?

4- The reason I know it’s better is because we actually tried making a DIY version that WAS a Rubbermaid storage tub with a hole cut into the lid.  The first time our rotund feline jumped up and attempted to get into the box the entire lid split right down the middle.  Unfortunately we missed the actual event but I can picture her standing paralyzed with fear as the crack slowly migrated from the hole in the lid and proceeded between her paws to the other end.  There was most assuredly that brief moment where she hovered in mid-air like Wyle E. Coyote before dropping into the litter 12 inches below and releasing a cloud of white baking soda dust that engulfed her entire body and rose up out of the litter box like an Arm and Hammer Hiroshima.  We bought the Clever-Cat® the following day.

5- We ordered red jumpsuits and tiny white Reeboks for the cats but they seem to be making due without them for now. Do you think they gave those Reeboks and jumpsuits to the contestants after Double Dare or do you think they kept a whole collection of slime covered plastic pants and sneakers behind set?  And if that was the case- who was washing all of the slime off of the clothes and shoes after the show and how did they put that on their resume after the show ended:

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

 Game Show Laundry Attendant                                                                                                  1986-1992

Nickelodeon’s Double Dare

Supervisor: Marc Summers

• Removing troublesome stains- slime, gak, cool whip, chocolate syrup, pie filling
• Polishing Reebok sneakers to a show stopping shine
• Maintaining game show wardrobe and props department- jumpsuits, oversized clown pants, enormous foam taco shells, etc.

6- In Bozeman kids had to bushwhack a 10 mile hiking trail over the river and through the woods AND build an entire trailhead restroom facility to become and Eagle Scout.  They had to tame the wilderness like young Tarzan in sahara shorts and knee socks.  Here in New Hampshire you can become an Eagle Scout by building a bat house.  It’s a lovely bat house and I’m sure the bats enjoy it. I’m just thinking there need to be some sort of National Standards instituted in the Eagle Scout program.  A kindergartener with  some balsa wood, a nail file, and an image of Michael Keaton from 1989 could probably make better bat ornamentation than that.

7- These slugs are like plump, cooked, Ball Park Franks, with antennae.  On our first visit to the park my dog gleefully ran over, thinking the dog party piñata had just burst leaving hot dogs on the ground for everyone!  He took one sniff, backed WAY up and gave me a look of complete confusion and dismay.  He was like Kristin Stewart in Eclipse… only much cuter.

8- I am pretending not to see this on a daily basis.  It troubles me that this is still here and our landlords’ children are all in college with no children of their own.  The other day when I got home I could have sworn I saw a trail of breadcrumbs leading up to the door and a wisp of smoke coming out of the pink plastic chimney.    I just went into my apartment, locked the door, and pretended not to hear the cackling.

Little Debbie’s Birthday

This week’s posting is not about life in New Hampshire (though there is a lot more to tell, don’t worry!).  Today is a very special day, it is the 1^st birthday of someone very near and dear to me.  So this week I dedicate my blog posting to telling you her story- the story of Little Debbie.

One cold late February day in 2012 I was walking my strapping self down Main Street in Bozeman.  A recruiter for the local roller derby team ran up to me and started talking to me about joining the team. I took down some information and lumbered on down the road like the Brawny man sans beard.  This short encounter was followed by an aggressive recruiting process, similar to an NFL draft, in which I was promised sports cars, tropical vacations, a luxury apartment, and enough bling to sink a pirate ship¹.  I decided to sign up.

I started attending roller derby practices with the team’s ‘Fresh Meat’ group in March.  I was getting more comfortable on my skates, learning to stop without running into the wall, and spending most of my time deliberately falling over.  One of the most important skills in roller derby is learning to fall safely, so you practice the approved falling techniques- the right and left single knee fall, the double knee fall, the total biff, the 180 degree single knee fall, the baseball slide, the Luke Duke General Lee hood slide^2a, the Lindsay Lohan fall from grace^2b, and the Charlie Sheen^2c – until your kneecaps turn to dust.

Once Freshies have fallen the requisite 8,888 times at practice OR worn completely through their first pair of toe stops (whichever comes first), they are given a skills test to determine if they can safely progress to the next level and become ‘contact-ready’ skaters.  I passed this test in April and actually believed that I was contact-ready… until I got out onto the track and start getting hit³.  The blissful days of tumbling repetitiously to the floor during ‘Fresh Meat’ training were over and my education in pain began⁴.  Bruises spotted my arms and legs, I developed a case of mastitis⁵, and a perceptible limp was slowly but surely becoming part of my walking posture.  I bought padded shorts and continued on with my training… I learned additional skills like blocking, jumping, juking, whips, hip and shoulder checks and the dreaded can-opener.  I also learned team plays, roller derby strategy, and what it meant when someone yelled “Jesus Hands”, “Glitter”, “Fatty Controller”, or “Oklahoma” at me on the track.

My training partner reminding me to stay low.

In July the team took a short summer hiatus and I took a longer summer hiatus to train for a triathlon and go on vacation.  When I returned to practice in early September I had high expectations of my post-hiatus performance… but neglected to remember my high center of gravity.  One of the most fundamental maneuvers used to stay upright on skates on the track is to –stay low– in derby stance.  During one of my first practices back I was not abiding by the- stay low– mantra and instead was surveying the pack from above like a giraffe hanging its head out the top of a circus train car.  I was knocked on my caboose by a well-deserved hip check.  The bruise from that fall alone was pretty substantial…  but it got worse.  A few weeks later my skates flew out from underneath of me during a speed drill at practice.  All of my body weight slammed down onto the hard concrete floor in the exact spot where the other bruise was finally beginning to heal.

Immediately following my slip I felt intense pain in my left hip but I got up and kept on skating on.  About 30 minutes later I lowered my arm and noticed that I had a little more junk in my trunk than normal… I  panicked when I realized, upon further inspection, that I may have exceeded trunk capacity and gone into hatchback.  I was afraid to look at it myself so I hobbled home after practice and made my husband take the first glance.  His eyes dropped, his face turned green and then he tightened his lips to fight back a gasp and his gag reflex… I swear this isn’t his normal response to viewing my derriere.  He recommended ice.  Lots of it.  Right away.  Then he disappeared for the rest of the evening.

I crawled out of bed the next morning,  supporting my new baggage with both hands.  The area was so inflamed and round that I felt like Atlas carrying the world as I shuffled over to the full-length mirror.  I took a peek at my rearview- my leg was purple from mid-thigh to hip and attached to my left butt cheek was a hematoma the size, shape, and texture of the Death Star.  The whole area was hot to the touch and strangely numb⁶.

Over the next few weeks I repeatedly slathed my entire leg from waist to knee with arnica cream.  The color of my leg changed from purple to deep blue to blue-green to yellow… it was like my own personal aurora borealis.  A month after my fall the color of the bruise was merely a shadow under my skin but the large lumpy contusion remained just behind my hip bone.

The large bump clearly wasn’t going anywhere and since we’d be spending some time together I decided to give it a name.  The name Little Debbie seemed most appropriate since the remainder of the lumps on my backside were made by Oatmeal Cream Pies (I swear they just stick right on there after I eat them!) and I’m almost certain that the stripy stretch marks on my thighs were caused by sophomore-year-of-college overconsumption of Zebra Stripes cupcakes⁷.  She’d probably feel right at home, surrounded by friends… and she did.  Another month went by and like a bad houseguest Little Debbie was no closer to leaving.  I decided to seek professional help:

December- Debbie does Physical Therapy- A process called ASTYM was performed on the area to help circulation and speed healing.  This process had been extremely effective on past injuries so I sat hopefully and fought back tears as a sharp plastic blade was repetitively scraped over Little Debbie.  No response.

February- Debbie does Chiropractics– I’d never experienced the percussor gun before but was assured that the vibrations from the gun, which replicated the wavelengths of light between the atmosphere and the earth, would cue my body into the fact that there was a tumor of clotted blood attached to my left butt cheek (as if I didn’t already know) causing my body to rush fresh blood to the area to carry away any remaining damaged cells.  It sounded groovy and new age.  I wish the tree-hugging back cracker actually had a tree in his office so I could have grabbed for a wooden stick to bite down on as the miniature jackhammer tried to crumble Little Debbie to pieces.  No response.

April- Debbie does Massage Therapy- After an extremely relaxing massage, a Chinese technique called Gua Sha (very similar to ASTYM), was performed on the area followed by a cupping treatment.  The Gua Sha wasn’t all that bad… I imagine the little wooden raking tool that was used had more give than the plastic shark fin they used at the PT office.  The cupping drew some of the old blood up to the surface and left a pattern of rings.  It looked like Little Debbie had been hugged by an octopus… awww.  No response.

June- Debbie does M.D.– During a routine appointment I asked my Doctor, who is somewhat used to strange questions from me,  if she could pull the remains of Little Debbie out with a syringe or something.  No response… from the Doctor or Little Debbie.

August- Debbie does Acupuncture– Little Debbie was treated to a liniment, a hot compress, and several needles. I was sent home with an herbal ‘Wu-Yang patch’ to apply later… it smelled like a combination of Ramen Noodle seasoning and Icy Hot.  I applied it on the weekend and didn’t leave the house for the entire day.  No response.

That brings us to today, 1 year after the ‘birth’ of Little Debbie.  She’s not as colorful as she once was and she has gotten a little bit smaller over time (she’s gone down from Death Star size to something more on the scale of Jupiter’s 4^th moon) but she is still here.  She’s proven resilient to every treatment I’ve sought to eradicate her and has carried on despite major loss of lumpy neighbors in the

last few months to the ‘New England Flat’ terrain of New Hampshire (see definition in last week’s post).

My gift to Little Debbie for her 1^st birthday is a promise to end to our ongoing battle.  I will accept Little Debbie as a long term part of my life and an enduring reminder of the amazingly fun time that I got to spend playing roller derby.  From this day on I will embrace her and not seek to eliminate her.  I will not have her scraped, gunned, cupped, needled or coated in anything that makes her smell like CupO’Noodles InstaLunch®.  Now I really must go and celebrate with Little Debbie- we’re spending the day on the sofa with friends… a whole box of Oatmeal Cream Pies.  🙂

I’ve invited some friends over for Little Debbie’s birthday…

1- Actually I made all of that up…  but you almost believed it because I’m so tough, right?   The true (and much less interesting) story is that I saw a listing on the local events calendar for a roller derby practice at the fairgrounds, I looked up information about the team on the internet and went to the practice to check it out.  All of the pushing, shoving and falling looked like amazing fun AND I used to be pretty good at skating 20 years ago… how much could I have forgotten?

2abc- I made these up and sadly none of the falls that I had to learn were even remotely close to the still rolling, butt slide fall that I perfected at CN Skate palace in 1987 during the Gator.  For those of you that missed the life-altering opportunity to attend open skate at CN Skate Palace and do the Gator, I am SO sorry.  For those of you that know what I’m talking about… Shake It Up!

3- After the first night that I skated ‘contact ready’ I made the mistake of telling my husband I was pretty sore because I got hit a lot.  He then took it upon himself to initiate a home-based, borderline spousal abuse, training plan that he called “Roller Derby Tough”.  His genius plan for desensitizing me to roller derby hits was to punch and push me at random, unexpected times throughout the day.  While riding in the car he’d throw a right jab into my shoulder, while walking the dog he’d run up from behind and slam into me, in the morning he’d shoulder check me as I stumbled out of bed… he was  really enthusiastic about helping me. Immediately following each “training simulation” and to drown out any complaint from me he would yell “Roller Derby Tough!” in my face.  Despite his dedication to the cause the training plan didn’t actually help me in any way- it mostly just pissed me off.

4- I couldn’t believe that I had so looked forward to leaving the shelter of the Fresh Meat group.  As Freshies we couldn’t wait to get out on the track and start colliding with other players.  We wanted it so bad that we would all line up and bash our hips and shoulders into the hard concrete wall to perfect our hitting techniques in anticipation for the big day.  After realizing how innacurate a Freshie’s vision of being ‘contact-ready’ was I tried to pass this knowledge on to the new Fresh Meat and encourage them to enjoy their safety while it lasted.  My advice fell on ears deafened by the sounds of bones crunching against the gymnasium wall.  They rolled their wild eyes at me and gritted their teeth harder on their mouth guards in order to endure more self-induced trauma.  They were like horses chomping at their bits…

5- I knew that the high speed wristguard-boob collision had done some damage but I didn’t realize just how much… until I woke up and Right had become drastically larger than Left.   I went to our town women’s clinic and saw the doctor there.  Apparently Mastitis is a disease normally contracted by breastfeeding mothers.  The doctor questioned me profusely about my milk production, my nursing schedule and my pumping habits.  20 questions later she finally got the point that I had no children, no milk, and thus no normal explanation for my swollen, angry looking boob.  She prescribed me some antibiotics, reminded me not to feed the baby while I was taking them and sent me on my way.  I guess roller derby isn’t listed in the Physician’s Desk Reference as a cause for Mastitis.

6- Kind of like dentist numb- only you know how your face feels really swollen when you get Novocain at the dentist but it isn’t actually swollen… that was not the case here.

7- Being born and raised in a suburb of Philadelphia I spent most of my childhood eating Tastycake® cupcakes and soft pretzels.  Luckily at that age nothing really seemed to stick or I would probably have a giant roll of butterscotch krimpet crimping over the top of my jeans.  When I left the Philadelphia area and went away to college there were no Tastycakes ® to be found and Little Debbie helped me fill the emptiness with her sugary snack cakes.