Ode to my laundry

Hello there, Laundry.

Why do you loathe me?

You prim me and trim me

Flatter and clothe me.

Yet you sit in the corner,

On the bed and the floor.

When guests come to visit

You peek through the door.

As much as I wash you,

You never stay clean.

Why do you have to be

So friggin’ mean?

Leave me alone, will ya?

I’m sick of your smell.

You get off the floor,

And you go to hell!!

The washer is broken.

The dryer is pooped.

You may look so simple

But you've got us all duped.

Acting quite innocent

There in your basket.

Then, BAM!

You’re a month-long pile of weekend-sucking task...ets

So there it is, Laundry.

That’s how I feel.

Please don’t be mad,

I’m just keepin’ it real.

I know you don’t mean it,

And I guess you’re OK.

But I’m going to keep

Hating you anyway.

How to react when pickpockets attack

I love to travel.

My new name tag says so.

In fact, I love traveling so much that I am willing to substitute the comfort of down pillows in a luxury hotel for the experience of showering dorm style and cramming myself, my mom, dad and boyfriend into a room with four bunks and a glow-in-the-dark exit sign.

All for the sake of my true love: Otherland.

New places and new people. Stories of cultures past and present.

Discovery through travel is one of life's greatest treasures.

But sometimes Otherland does not reciprocate my acts of dedication.

In fact, Otherland can be cruel and callous like the cool kid on the playground who turns his back when the propitiatory pudding cup is forgotten.

I most recently experienced this fickleness in July while visiting the beautiful country of Spain, where wine flows from fountains in plazas and life-size statues are carved from Manchego cheese.

Friends and fellow travelers warned of the elaborate schemes of pickpockets who sneak about the larger cities. My family and I took the necessary precautions without allowing ourselves to become paranoid.



On our last day in Madrid, we gathered our things to make the trip to the airport, all our luggage making us proper foreigners.

When the train squealed to a stop in front of us, my boyfriend and I exchanged hesitant glances. It was 9 a.m. on a Friday, and the cars were packed from door to door. It was going to require contortionist's skill to squeeze inside with our suitcases. But we went for it. I found myself with just enough room to put my suitcase in the door, stand over it and lean back against the wall of the train to protect the zippers of my pack from wandering hands. My boyfriend was a few feet and 10 people in front of me assuming the same stance. He, however, had one hand on the overhead bar and one on his front pocket securing his wallet.

At the next stop, a wave of people shoved by me to get out the double doors. I had no choice but to exit the train to let everyone off. As I put one foot back on the floor of the car, I heard my boyfriend shouting at me from inside.

We made eye contact. I could see he was horrified.

"My wallet's gone!" he shouted over the heads of passengers. He hurriedly made his way to the exit. As he stepped onto the landing, I looked around for some sign of the thief. Surely someone cruel enough to steal a wallet and ruin a life would be wearing an orange jumpsuit and have a big, neon sign hovering over his head flashing the word "GUILTY." But everyone getting off the train was wearing clean-pressed business clothes and had no neon signs to speak of.

Both of my credit cards were in that wallet. Both were now buying someone else my Manchego cheese and my bottles of wine.

I dropped to my knees right there on the landing in the most dramatic way I could muster. I let desperation take over and leaned on my giant, purple-checkered suitcase for support.

My hands flew into the air with clenched fists. I looked to the yellowing ceiling tiles and yelled out the loudest, ugliest, most profane profanity I could think of.

The whole station went quiet.
 
I think the thief heard me. I imagine he paused for a moment in terrified guilt.

I hope he peed himself a little. 

Technology sometimes makes me believe that i'm a talented photographer

With the power of Instagram and other smartphone apps, anyone can take fancy-looking photos. I decided to experiment with a few shots I have recently taken. What do you think? 

I call this photo "Hideous creature from the depths of Florida's hell goes for a stroll." These giant grasshoppers give me the willies. I loathe them.

  This is called "Pick up your dad-gum trash, you hamburgler-loving fool!"

That is poop.

 

This is Art. 

I'm glad it told me.

It lives in the yard of a neighbor down the street.

My dogs toilet on this hydrant. 

It is pretty.

Someone left this in the hallway near my office. 

He knowz spelling reel gude.

I included this photo to show off my tomatoes. 

I guess that dog is worth mentioning too.

I saw this man driving down the highway. I don't think that's a real baby. Maybe he was just practicing.

this is why there should be naked kung fu classes

I often wonder what kind of person I'll be during the apocalypse.

Will I be the one who screams and runs around aimlessly? Will I search frantically for the safest route away from danger inevitably finding myself staring directly into the face of the giant, blood-sucking, human-harvesting alien machine?

Or the zombie-infested buildings?

Or the killers living in an abandoned beach house?

Or a volcanic explosion in Yellowstone?

Or the lair of a 90-year-old evangelic con artist?

Or will I be the awesome anti-hero whom everyone loves to hate because of my bad attitude and heroic deeds? Surely my calm and controlled temperament will bless me with the wisdom of Mr. Miyagi, the baddassery of Milla Jovovich, and the humanitarianism of Mother Teresa.

Yes, even the saints will be proud of me if the apocalypse goes as planned.

Recently I was given the rare opportunity to find out just how prepared I am for a battle against evil. Never could I imagine a situation more threatening, more debilitating, more grotesque.

All the lights in my house went out.

And I was in the shower.

Naked.

Being naked during the apocalypse changes everything. How many times have you imagined yourself pulverizing zombies while naked?

No times.

Because fighting in the nude would totally suck.

The first flicker of light was no bother. I was sure it was just another glitch in my house's 1957 electrical system.

Then, the sudden blackness. Paralyzing and heavy. I shrank low in the shower, feeling the porcelain underneath my feet. In my fear-stricken mind every droplet of water from the shower tapping against my skin became the jagged claw of a headless monster waiting on the other side of the curtain to use my flesh as a tea-time dress.

Surely if there were a monster or a horribly slow moving, gray-faced zombie in my house my dogs would have attacked it and marveled at its torn clothes as if they were fancy-smelling bedding.

But no sound of the dogs.

They must have already been eaten, and now I must summon all my ninja skills to fight the dog-destroying devil in my home.


The dire state of my vulnerability struck me. I would face whatever monstrous beast or demon-being was in my house with my bare hands ... and bum. The only hope a naked and weapon-free person has in these situations is the chance that the attacker might go into shock. No one expects to fight a dude in the nude.

What would a ninja do?

A ninja would never be caught in this situation. Ninjas probably shower in their black jumpsuits and shine their throwing stars with shampoo water.

I mustered up all my naked-ninja courage and ripped the shower curtain open hoping to stun the intruder with my quick movements. I immediately began blindly reaching out for any viable weapon in the bathroom. But Mr. Miyagi never taught Daniel-san how to beat the crap out of dudes with a bottle of Suave and a toilet brush.

My soapy arms reaching out into the dark, I stumbled into the hallway expecting my hands to get chopped off by a hungry Reaver at any moment. I heard myself ask "what the crap?" a couple times before my hands reached into my bedroom and felt my cell phone on the dresser. I mashed a button and the phone lit up. A beacon in the frightening darkness.

The first thing the phone's light fell on was my dog. On my bed. Lying down. Staring at me stupidly.

I left her useless self and ventured into the living room, now wielding a shoe. You can do serious damage with a high heel. Shoe held high, I jumped the corner into the living room prepared to shout my most intimidating battle cry.

The lights flashed on with a hum from the breaker box.

Just a power outage. My house was empty.

I lowered the heel to my side, wiped the suds from my forehead and sighed in relief that I did not have to fight a mass of earth-destroying aliens in my front yard

I knew there weren't any aliens out there because all the curtains and windows were open to let the breeze flow through my now very brightly lit living room.

I saw a car slow down a bit as it drove by my house, and I became uncomfortably aware of how odd I must look to my new neighborhood friend. I ducked behind the couch and sneaked back into the shower. 

If there had been a demon-possessed-alien-zombie, I'm pretty sure I would have won.

the nicest way I could think of calling this guy a big, insensitive meanie

After a long day at work, I walked to my car to discover that at some point in the day, my dearest, parking-garage neighbor chose to cozy up his vehicle to my driver-side door.

By "cozy up" I mean park so close that, after a few attempts to squeeze through, I contemplated going into the hotel kitchen and dipping myself in a vat of butter to slide my blubbery bits into the mouse hole that led to my steering wheel.

I was slightly miffed.

So I wrote this note and placed it ever so politely on the offender's windshield.

And then I ran.

"Dear Person,
Thank you for affording me the opportunity to exercise my talents as a contortionist.
I have often wondered if I would ever be given the pleasure of going through exhausting efforts to enter my driver side door.
I hope that you are spreading this joy throughout the city by parking as close as possible to every car you see.
THANK you, and please continue on your quest to challenge the patience of people worldwide!"

The History of St. Valentine according to Dook

My date is cooking dinner. Delicious, juicy steaks paired with the most expensive wines. Dearest beef, how I heart thee.

He's not cooking for me. Oh no. I'm drinking hot tea, eating a block of cheese and heart-shaped pretzels by the fistful while watching Watson kick Jeopardy's ass. Me dost think I'll have chocolate chip cookies from a plastic tin for my Valentine's Day dessert.

Lavish, I know.

What does one do when one's date is busy is cooking fancy dinners for the rest of the city?

Research the history of this beloved holiday, of course! That, and stalk the rest of the world's Valentine's dates. Thanks, Twitter/Facebook/Foursquare/Reddit/Google!

Google told me the most without saying anything at all. This is what the country is concerned with tonight.

After bringing myself up to speed on everyone's date-night escapades, I decided to find out who this Valentine guy really was and what made him so great that, even centuries after his death, he still has the power to make single girls consume entire pints of Ben & Jerry's and watch Nicholas Sparks movies with tears in their eyes.


You know what I found out? Nobody really knows! How disappointing is that?

I've decided to write a report on my findings. Instead of creating a boring, copy-and-paste report -- like much of my 9th grade St. Augustine coursework (please don't tell on me) -- I've decided to create my own interpretation of the history of St. Valentine's Day, since everyone else has.  

Author's note: Any and all anachronisms are intentionally excessive.


Sometime in Ancient Rome

                               

                                   Sometime later...

 

                                      A few years later:

                 Sometime in the 14th Century:

             Translation - "Valentines day is about love and junk!"


                    


                        Present day:

Now I don't have to cook dinner for a week

Look what I found on my desk!!

my couch, my dog and nph

My dog is my favorite TV-watching buddy.

Instead of high fives, she gives me big sloppy licks on the face.

And that's how I know she ate her own poop for breakfast.

Why I think New Year's Resolutions Are Silly

Why do people make new year’s resolutions?

I find this tradition slightly humorous, but mostly irksome. Making yearly resolutions implies that the passing of one second to the next marks a magical moment in time when our former selves transform into supernatural beings. Beings who are able to instantaneously curtail habits that have plagued us for years.

It’s as if we believe that at the stroke of midnight we are granted access to an alternate universe where the “awesome” versions of ourselves live and are prepared to switch places.

There’s truth in the tired old mantra: People don’t change overnight. 

If people don’t change overnight when sleep is recharging their mighty-morphin’ powers, they certainly don’t change while standing along a crowded street, beer sloshing onto their glitter-painted party shoes, wearing tinsel for hats, graffiti numbers for crowns and waiting for a glass ball to slide down a pole.

The appropriate approach to resolutions is to make them nightly. 

Let each minute of the day allow for the invention of a new you.  I’ll share some of my new day’s resolutions. They key is to take baby steps away from old habits. 

-          Resolve: to abstain from eating an entire box of Cookie Crisp in one afternoon.

-          Resolve: to resist the temptation to manually input 3 miles into my run tracker while watching Modern Family and eating Cookie Crisp.

And so on.

Save the Earth! ... Love, Spy Kids

My nieces and nephew are budding nerds.

Their clever sarcasm is developing nicely; they can play Plants vs. Zombies better than any adult I've ever met; and their tasteful appreciation of fantasy and science fiction is blossoming into a prized book collection.

Not bad for a nine, seven and six-year-old. Needless to say, I'm quite proud.

During a recent visit, they spent a day crafting stories and notes, leaving slips of paper that contained snippets of their creativity in various places about the house. We found one posted to the side of the refrigerator shortly after they left town.

It pretty much sums up all qualities of their excellence.

"Popo" is their grandfather's nickname.

Silly Bandz, aliens and spies. Epic.

owning a home can be kind of crappy

I spent most of Sunday spraying poo off the back patio.

It was not bird poo.

It was not dog poo.

Unfortunately, most of it was probably my poo. As well as some from a few recent visitors.

Thank you, friends!

Right now you should be thinking what the coconuts was I doing Saturday night, and where can you get some.

But alas, this was not a result of a fantastical night on the town flowing with wine and honey liqueur. This was a natural disaster.

How on earth is a poo-smeared patio a natural disaster? Is there some horrible caca-slinging storm system developing over water-treatment plants and traveling across the nation to punish homeowners for eating extra drippy McRibs and giant baskets of delicious boneless buffalo wings dipped in the spiciest mango habanero sauce?

 

 

No. Happily, there is no such storm system to fear. 

This is the evil doing of plumbing. This sad state of affairs is a natural disaster because, of course, toilet use is a natural human occurrence; however, a back-flow of the pipes and plumbing intended to hide evidence of said toilet use is, in my humble opinion, a most unfortunate and morbidly stinky disaster.

I guess I can consider myself lucky that all the back-flow happened outdoors and not inside my bathroom. The plumbing gods must have known that even the strongest incense sticks and patchouli sprays from Whole Foods would fail to mask the stench.

The scrubbing bubbles would probably throw up and die of convulsions before serving any purpose in a poo-bathroom cleaning quest.

Luckily, the guy who owned the house before me decided he wanted a toilet in his workshop-shed-hut thing he built in the backyard, which had to be removed to sell the house to me.

While tearing the building down, the contractors were kind enough to leave the drainage pipes open to the elements. Probably to provide me with some options in case I had an overwhelming need for a potty visit and didn't feel like walking all the way to my bathroom.

I could just pretend like I was hiking in the Andes mountains again and aim for the tiny opening in the ground.

Thanks, contractors!

As I stood there, hose in hand, vigorously spraying water to wash away all the yuck, I wondered if this was listed as one of the warnings on any of the first-time-homebuyer sites I read while doing my research.

It should have been made pretty visible. I would list it as one of the top things to consider before making a purchase.

After the third or fourth time of spraying my dogs with the hose to scare them away from what they thought was the most glorious and tastiest puddle of deliciousness in the world, I decided something must be done.

I called the one person who had more experience dealing with plumbing disasters than anyone I knew: my dad.

Since I can remember, my dad has done all the plumbing in the houses we lived in. He once enlisted his children (that includes me) to help dig up the drain field around our septic tank in the back yard.

Wherever there was a leaky faucet, a bubbling toilet or a pipe to dig up, my dad was always there to fix it. He's the thriftiest guy I know.

When he and my mom graciously came over to console me and attempt to use his plumbing super powers, I was grateful and relieved that my problem would soon be solved.

My dad stood over the drainpipe with one hand on his hip and one on his chin. Thinking.

He shoved a pipe snake in the pipe.

It didn't work. He thought some more.

He shoved the pipe snake in the pipe again.

......


"Well, that's a problem alright," he said.

My mom gave me a sad look. "Our family has always had a curse with plumbing," she chimed in. "It follows us wherever we go. You must have caught it."

Great. Wonderful.

I'm cursed. I have a poo hex on my head. What kind of family has a poo curse?

Mine. That's what kind.

I should have put a lid on that pile of rotting food

Dogs are sometimes kind of awesome.

Backyard compost heaps are environmentally friendly.

Together, they are a rancid disaster. And they are not, in any way, friendly to the environment of my living room.