A real trooper

First off, Chickens would like you to know that this picture? And the pure and inconsolable misery it portrays? THIS ISN'T EVEN THE HALF OF IT.

Yes, while we all survived our road trip to New Mexico this Christmas, I cannot say it was easy. Not on any of us. First off, during our three-day journey to my mom's house in Clovis, N.M., we hit a couple of snowstorms. Honestly, the roads probably weren't even that bad, and visibility was decent. But 10 years of living in California have made me jittery about driving in snowstorms, and I broke a sweat creeping through this stuff, with knots in my stomach and my hands in a death grip on the steering wheel.

Thankfully I had absolutely NO trouble concentrating whatsoever, no, not at all was I distracted by the loudly sobbing dog in the back seat. Yeah, so it turns out the tranquilizers our vet gave us to calm him during travel had virtually no effect. The only difference I could tell is that he didn't hyperventilate quite as much as usual. Which is great, since it leaves a lot more energy for ear-piercing whines. Christ almighty, dog. Do you realize your dad and I would KILL to have someone ease our pain by poking drugs and treats into our box?!

We did eventually learn the trick to calming this dog in the car: Let him carry on in his box for three or four hours until he has exhausted himself, give him a second heaping helping of Xanax, and drag him onto your lap. He'll plop down and sleep like a baby. This gives you one content (if droopy) dog:


Once we arrived at my mother's, we introduced Chickens to his canine cousins: big white Dakota; Bosco and Chico, who were a bit closer to Chickenbone's size; and a little sweetie-pie named Cuddles, who could sit comfortably in the palm of your hand. Everyone gave each other a friendly nose-to-butt "Howdy!" and then Sal and I left to check into the hotel. And by "check into the hotel" I mean "find the nearest bar and enjoy the dog-free peace and quiet." It was bliss, and not just because our small-town scotch and sodas cost less than $10.

After our breather, we rejoined the family for a five-day visit that was, shall we say, chaotic, since Bosco and Chickens became mortal enemies almost immediately. Every couple hours or so, the fur would fly, with these two lunging teeth-first at each other's faces until the nearest human reached down to yank them apart. Also, when my brother's dog Nellie paid a visit, she promptly chomped down on Chickenbone's head, leaving small, bloody fang holes in his forehead and ear. Man, they grow 'em mean in Clovis.

So you'll understand what happened next, since what's a guy to do with a vacation that sucks this bad? My friend, you know it and I know it: When all else fails, make out with a stranger. And thus did Chickenbone, who fell deeply in love with the tiny Cuddles. I am telling you, I never saw anything like it. Chickens can barely stand the sight of most dogs, much less share a lap or blanket with one, as he did many times with this wee speck of a dog. I even taught him "Give Cuddles kiss!" at which point he'd start happily slurping at her mouth. She'd growl a bit, but more importantly, SHE NEVER TURNED AWAY. Hussie. Here's a picture of his beloved, wearing her pink Rocky Balboa bathrobe:


In between the snarls and howls and barks and bites, though, were many good times. My whole family was there, together at Christmas for the first time in probably six years. We played hilarious boardgames, drank many gallons of wine, and ate more good food than any person should be allowed to get away with. In fact, the scale tells me I most definitely did not get away with it. Oh, well. Next up, a post about how my New Year's resolutions will simply melt away the pounds, both quickly and easily!

Merry Christmas, Chickens!

You got Xanax!

What's that you say? You didn't ask Santa Claus for any tranquilizers? Oh, well, then those must be from mommy's list!

Yes, I went to the vet this week and purchased five tiny blue canine sedatives, on the VERY SLIGHT off-chance that we're asking too much of the little guy to sit quietly inside a small box for 10 consecutive hours.

Hoping the pills will fit inside the Mustang, along with two adults, the dog, the dog's house, the dog's staircase, the dog's bag, a pillow, two suitcases, a flat of waters, one backpack, one pillow, coats and blankets, a small fan, gifts for three families, one bag of beef jerky and a box of Red Vines.

And now Chickens, posing for you in his new holiday sweater with red scarf, would like to wish you a Merry Christmas. See you when we get back from our road trip!

Whirlwind December

Boy, nothing like being linked to from a new blog (Hi, Gamy! Hi, Piccolo!) to light a fire under the ass. Especially since there's this gadget on her site that's equipped with a helpful public reminder of how lazy I have been about this. Yes, this post is being written solely so that gadget can suck it.

So it has been a pretty chaotic month. On Nov. 30, I peered ahead at the calendar and realized that due to various parties, programs, dinners, deadlines and shopping trips, there would be zero chance of squeezing in some exercise. And I can't very well head into Christmas break feeling like a fatass, not when I'm guaranteed to feel like one when it's over. So on Monday, Dec. 1, Sal and I began doing something crazy. Every weekday morning, we wake up at 5 a.m., and drive to the gym for a workout. Well, I get up at 5 a.m. to prepare breakfast and pour coffee, and only then will Sal get up, and I am perfectly OK with this because OMG, do you know Sal? If you do, then you know that getting out of bed in the middle of the night, in the pitch-black and freezing darkness, TO GO TO THE GYM, is nothing short of pure torture for him. Yesterday he came in from getting the newspaper, glared at me and said through gritted teeth "Did you know there are STARS AND A MOON OUT THERE?!"

Also this month, I ate grasshoppers. Grasshoppers! With little legs and little antennae, all piled up on each other in a little glass bowl. This was at a stylish new Oxacan restaurant in downtown San Jose called Mezcal, where the deep-fried bugs are served like pretzels. The owner was urging me proudly to try one, and even as I stared down at the little beasts, my heart began to beat faster and faster. I couldn't even fathom TOUCHING them, much less actually putting one in my mo- Oh god I can barely type that. OK, so first I had a beer, followed by a shot of Mezcal. Then I sat there at the bar and thought about a wonderful book I read this summer called "Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper," a memoir about a woman named Fuchsia who traveled through China alone, talking her way into the kitchens of aristocrats and peasants alike to learn their recipes and culinary secrets. And every time I feel scared to eat something new, I think of Fuchsia and her wonderful food adventures, and I force myself to try just a little. Trying just a little is why I love sushi now, and red onions, and while grasshoppers won't be a snack I pack in my purse, the taste wasn't so bad. The hard part was actually putting my fingers on the bug, and raising it up to ... well, you know. And then I just closed my eyes and popped it in. Once it was in my mouth, it had the consistency of beef jerky. Sorta dry and fibrous. It tasted like salt and lime, and I chewed it up and swallowed it. Then I ate another, just to show who's boss.

We're getting ready to hit the road on Saturday, the big driving trip to New Mexico. Remember how awhile back I wrote about Chickens hating the car ride in his crate? Next we tried a booster seat, which worked better for about four minutes until I realized Chickens cannot lay down anywhere until he has spun around in a circle at least four times. Meaning the leash that tethered him to that seat would get all tangled up in his legs. BIG failure. So now we're back to the crate, which we have strapped securely into the seat with special belts. I plan to put his little bed inside, in the hope that he'll just curl up and go to sleep instead of barking and crying for 1,300 miles. EACH WAY.

The thought of Chickenbone being so anxious and miserable that long breaks my heart, so I am really, really, REALLY hoping that it will somehow click in his little pea brain that there's nothing to be afraid of in the car. That the vibration under his feet won't kill him, and that mom and dad are right there in the front seat having a jolly time, so maybe ol' Chickens can just settle down and enjoy the ride. And I have promised him that if he can do this, when we finally get to Clovis, he can eat my mom's cat.

The 10-dollar bill diet

I'm pleased to report that last week I hosted my first Thanksgiving Day dinner, and boy, did I hit it out of the park. And by that, I mean I didn't screw up ANYTHING. Here was our menu:

Salt-roasted turkey
From L.A. Times (so, so, so much easier than brine; tasty and moist, too)

Thanksgiving potatoes
From Skillet Chronicles (I'll never peel and chop potatoes again)

Foolproof gravy
From the Mercury News (contains white wine, mmm)

Cornbread sausage stuffing
From I don't know where, since this was made by Sal (who tossed in a handful of diced apple)

Baby salad greens with sweet-potato croutons
From N.Y. Times (easy and completely gorgeous)

Herbed dinner rolls
From Sunset Magazine (involved kneading and rising and everything!)

Cranberry sauce
From a can (since I do not care for cranberries, I didn't try too hard on this one, though next year I'm making a recipe my aunt swears by: mix a bag of fresh cranberries with one cup each of sugar and orange juice; bake for an hour at 350; stir in a few spoonfuls of Grand Mariner or other brandy before serving)

Green bean casserole
From my head, and some cans (made this with fresh beans a few years ago - it did not go well)

Apple pie
Another Sal dish (we also had pumpkin pie, brought by my mother-in-law)

I was most impressed by the salad, the apple pie and the rolls. And by the fact that everything finished cooking at the same time. And by the fact that I finally made a gravy that didn't suck. (Last Christmas I sprinkled a bunch of salt into the drippings before tasting, forgetting how I brined the bird for three days. Oopsie. Oh, and two Thanksgivings ago, I made golden-brown dinner rolls that were magazine-cover beautiful, so it was a real surprise how they'd break your teeth off.)

Also, Sal and I ran the Turkey Trot in downtown San Jose on Thanksgiving morning, and he beat me. Did you hear that? HE BEAT ME. For the first time ever. He also won his age category in the CEO/Celebrity Challenge. Even though I have run like a billion races (and never won anything) and he has done four. No, I'm proud of him, though. Especially since one year ago last week, we walked into our first Weight Watchers meeting together, determined to stop getting fatter all the time. And now he's 35 pounds lighter, so I'm guessing that helped him out. That, and maybe one of us stopped to help an old man who fell down on the race course. I demand my medal for winning the category of WHO IS A BETTER PERSON.

But it's ironic that we hit a weight-loss milestone this weekend, seeing as how I pretty much hogged out for four straight days. It was one of those stretches where you look up from your third slice of pie (in one morning) and try to remember the last time you felt actual hunger. The day before yesterday? Tuesday? You should have seen this leftovers sandwich I made, cracking open one of those herbed rolls and layering on turkey, potatoes and gravy, adding a sprinkle of cheddar before chowing down. I DARE you to ask if I was hungry when I built that bad boy.

Here's the scary part: In three weeks, we are heading to New Mexico, which is pretty much going to be a total eat-a-thon. For 1,266 miles and 10 days, we'll be living on fast food and New Mexican food, and diet sabotage is pretty unavoidable. So, to carve out a little bit of room to play, for the next three weeks I am putting myself on super-severe restrictions. I will only eat when I'm hungry, I will mostly eat decent things, and I will work out regularly. NO. BULLSHIT.

To get off to the right start, today I awoke at the terrifying hour of 5 a.m. and went to spin class. Then I vowed to my girlfriend that this month I will eat NOTHING from the table in the faculty break room. Not one cupcake, not one cookie, not a single crumb. I begged her to think of an unbearable consequence if I break my vow, and we cooked up a plan: If either of us sneaks any bites out of our break rooms, we have to mail the other person $10. Like, that very same day. This is the greatest idea ever. Wait, maybe you should get in on this, too. Like, if I know it's going to cost me $50, maybe I will not mindlessly stuff a piece of crappy old holiday fudge into my mouth. Who's in?

P.S. You can totally mail me $10 if you have a weak moment. I will use it to buy carrot sticks!

The saddest dog in the world

This here is a picture of Chickenbone on his first road trip. And as you can see, he's positively thrilled about it.

Seriously, am I the only one who can see those sorrowful little eyebrows? ACTUAL puppy-dog eyes, which bore into my soul every time I turned around to check on him? Pooch, you are KILLING ME.

OK, a little background: This year my husband and I are going to spend Christmas with my family in New Mexico. And while we like PetSmart and how they serve dishes of doggie ice cream to "hotel" guests, I hate how the animals are forced to pee and poop in their cage. I know it gets cleaned up right away, but I also know dogs don't enjoy going to the bathroom where they also sleep and eat. CALL THEM CRAZY. Plus, they don't even get to go outside! Not one time! So rather than make Chickens go through that for five days (five days during CHRISTMAS for heaven's sake) we figured we'd just toss him into the back seat and take him along.

To prepare him for four full days in the car, we took a warm-up lap in September, an hourlong drive to Fort Funston in San Francisco (that's when I took the picture above). And last weekend we tried a four-hour trip to Santa Barbara. The verdict? Chickens and road trips are not exactly getting along.

I mean, it's not like he doesn't love the car. Car rides are his favorite. Trouble is, he likes to spend them staring gleefully out the window, with his back paws digging into my legs, front paws digging into my boobs, and his panting wet doggy lips two inches from my face. So for these trips, we put him in his crate, which gets him off my lap and will keep him from blasting through the windshield like a baseball if we're in an accident.

But in the crate, he is a very unhappy little guy. And he doesn't even have the spirit to get mad about it, which breaks my heart. He just becomes this quivering, mewling mess. He whines and weeps - there were ACTUAL TEARS! - and refuses to lay down and go to sleep. Also, you know how normal dogs often sit with their butts on the ground and their front legs extended? The "sit" position? Well, Chickens never sits like this at home, I think because of his weirdly-shaped torso and short toothpick legs. But on this trip, he sat up almost the entire time. He simply could not relax.

I'm not sure what we'll do now, I guess keep practicing and trying to get him comfortable with being back there. If we haven't figured it out by December, I suppose I could drug him. Seemed to work OK on Saturday, when he wouldn't stop barking at our favorite State Street pub. After I fed him a couple of scotch-covered ice cubes, he crawled inside my sweatshirt and went right to sleep. He also had a good time at the bed and breakfast, where we stayed in a cottage that had a fenced-in private courtyard. There were lots of gorgeous plants, flowers and bushes, as well as an enormous gnarled peppercorn tree, just like the one in our back yard. Here's Chickens meditating in the sun after his petrifying car ride:

And here he snoozing in the cottage. You can't see from the photo, but right next to that bed are his little doggie steps, which we brought so he can get up and down as he pleases. That's also his favorite blue blanket, and the little half-chewed rawhide burrito he likes to nibble on at night. So, see, Chickens? WE'RE NOT TERRIBLE PARENTS! So please stop looking at me like that!

Mexico: A postscript

Finally finished a slide show of photos from the trip. It's about seven minutes long, but the music is lovely! (Also, it was taking way too long to photoshop them out, so please just disregard the sunscreen-induced oil slicks on my face.)


Cancun 2008 from Amy on Vimeo.

Mexico, part 4: El fin de la semana

Good lord, is that the sun out there?! (What, someone having a little fun with a freshly-plucked Mayan heart?)

DAY 5:
After a morning spent in lounge chairs under a palapa on our private beach (read, doze, swim, doze, read, swim, doze ... bliss) we head out for a taste of this famed Cancun nightlife we keep hearing about. Only when we get to the club zone, we find that all of the really famous places require some sort of outrageous cover charge, some of which include an "open bar." But having been around this block a time or two (god, it's good to be in your 30s) we know those places will be filled with long lines of obnoxious kids and shitty booze. So we opt for a place called Terraza, an open-air cantina with good music and top-notch people-watching.

After an hour or so, this short, fat white dude comes up to us with a plastic bottle of red liquid. He is wearing a sombrero and a very large, very fake moustache, and he looks like he really hates his job. He grumpily offers to pour us a shot, which we decline. Half-hour later, a perky little senorita comes up with her red bottle. (This time, I notice "sex on the beach" written in sharpie on the masking tape around the bottle. Classy!) We say no again, but she is darned convincing. And by that I mean she poured a shot, tilted Sal's head back, and forced it down his throat. And then a second shot. Cackling wildly, she puts the glass down, places her hands on Sal's head and wobbles it around, and then she grabs his chest. And before I know it, she's attacking me! One shot, two shot, head shake, BOOBS! Both of her hands, grabbin' BOTH my boobs, and giving them a nice, firm jiggle! I do not stop giggling for a full 30 minutes.

Then it was onto Margaritaville for food, drink, and dancing to country music and rock 'n' roll. We stay out VERY LATE. Like, after midnight even.

DAY 6:
Those moonshi-- er, I mean "sex on the beach" shots might not have been the wisest call the night before our sea adventure. But hangovers are nothing a little salsa verde and omelets can't cure. (I mean, this is practically WHY Mexican food was invented!)

Today's tour consists of a half-hour journey to a sweet snorkeling spot, an hour in the water, then a half-hour back, and every couple gets their own little speedboat to drive. Let me assure you that driving a speedboat is petrifying. OK, so are you good at those race-car arcade games? Because I suck at them. I'm that driver who makes her way around the track (one whole time, if I'm lucky) by crashing into one rail, overcorrecting and crashing into the other, overcorrecting again and ... you see what I mean. Well, that's kind of what driving this boat is like, only a jumpy touch with the wheel is actually how you stay alive. Even if you keep the wheel straight as can be, the water is constantly wobbling you, so you have to be vigilant about balance and speed, which frankly are not my top talents, you know?




I never quite relax my white-knuckled grip on the wheel, but I do eventually get the hang of it. We careen through the big lagoon and tall tangles of mangroves, and we even spent a few minutes on the wide-open ocean. When we get to the snorkeling area, we tumble out of the boats and float around with about two bazillion fish. Plus brain coral and crabs and tall furry purple tentacles sticking up from the reef, like underwater cattails. It almost feels like flying, because you can see all the way to the ground and rock formations down there, and you just float right over them!

We complete this home run of a vacation day with dinner at the Ritz-Carlton's Club Grill. Now, as an aspiring foodie, I've had plenty of fine-dining experiences and more than my fair share of top-notch service. But this place, it blows the mind. They sprinkle rose petals on our table. Place my purse atop a tiny stool at my feet. Ten seconds after I part the curtain shears with my hand to see the view, our waiter is there tying them back so we could see everything. He even apologized that there wasn't a full ocean view. Yeah, dude! Like, why does your place suck so much?!

I don't even know what to say about the food, except that it was so wonderful we could barely speak. If you are a food dork like me and you read menus and cookbooks like they are actual literature, you will dig this:

• We like to begin grand meals like this with champagne, and to our delight the chef also sends an amuse bouche of tuna carpaccio with capers and caviar.
• Appetizer of foie gras and caramelized apple on toasted brioche, drizzled in Mexican chocolate oil.
• Next Sal has the lobster soup with cream sauce, and I enjoy a mesclun salad with three pear textures (I believe they were caramelized, poached, and pureed in the dressing) with a lump of creamy goat cheese.
• With this course we are also presented with a selection of warmed bread on a silver tray, and we tried three: apricot, rosemary-garlic and potato. Goat cheese butter and blue cheese butter are options, in addition to the regular stuff.
• For his entree, Sal chose roasted duck with tequila honey sauce. There are four tender medallions placed atop sweet potato puree, plus a little drumstick planted into a tangle of caramelized onions. For me, roasted Chilean sea bass on a bed of paella, next to shrimps topped with garlic foam.
• Grand Marnier souffle for dessert, with french press coffee and tiny fresh biscotti.
  

Friends, it was a meal for the ages. As we leave, our waiter presses into my hand a tiny blue box containing a housemade truffle, and then I seriously hug him. Hard.

DAY 7:
There's one final item on my wish list, and that is to eat someplace truly authentic. Someplace locals go. Deep in our tour guide, there are two lines devoted to a little place "off the beaten path," and if you want to go there, tell the bus driver and he'll drop you off near a "sandy path" that will take you to the restaurant. But we don't need a bus, right, because on the map, this place is next to a bridge that is just like two inches from our hotel! Imagine the luck!

But two inches = two miles, and the walk is grueling, in searing midday heat with no shade. Our clothes are drenched and stuck to our bodies as we plod along silently (OK, one of us was silent; sorry, hon!) for a good 45 minutes. The bottoms of my shoes grow smooshy because of the hot pavement. But finally after walking past lots of little guys like this...


... we get to the sandy path! Which leads to a short, nameless road, and after passing this sign...


... and crossing this bridge...


... we arrive at this secret jungle oasis!




There under the trees is a rustic little beachside restaurant, with a few plastic tables beneath some palapas. It's a bit shabby, with cases of empty beer bottles stacked under the counter and up against the walls of the tiny kitchen shack, but there's a cool breeze, lively music and great views of the mangroves and water. Tied to a pier are small blue rowboats they use to catch fish every morning, and we devour the fruits of those labors with fish tacos and shrimp quesadillas while we watch Mexican kids splashing around in the water. A perfect lunch that isn't even ruined by the scary bathroom with no toilet paper and seven or eight wasp nests affixed to the ceiling.

For our last evening in Cancun, we head back to the nightclub zone, buy some souvenirs, then settle in for drinks and dinner at the very cool (though poorly named) outdoor cantina Mextreme. Here we realize we can't be losers who went to Mexico and never once did a shot of tequila. Our amigo behind the bar helped us out with that. And we proved without a shred of doubt that drinking top-shelf tequila actually IMPROVES your Spanish language skills.

And now, friends, I've turned the last page of scribbles and lists in my travel journal, so we must be at the end. If you read all of this, and especially if you enjoyed it, someday you and I will do a nice shot of tequila, too.

Mexico, part 3: The deep end

Now comes the part where not only are there beers at breakfast, lunch and dinner -- now we're actually drinking them IN A MOVING VEHICLE!

DAY 4:
Who doesn't love a nice Mayan ruin? We sign up for a daylong excursion to Chichén Itzá, a large pre-Columbian archaeological site a couple hours from Cancun. The concierge tells us the trip includes lunch, plus "a sticky bun" for breakfast on the bus drive there. Because it wasn't even 10 a.m. when we left, we are surprised when this sticky bun is accompanied by cold Corona, poured into plastic cups and refilled with a smile as often as you please.


The drive to the site is fascinating. Always something to look at out the windows. Beautiful old thatch huts sit strangely alone in the middle of nowhere. Dark smoke rises from a couple of fires burning on the side of the road. We see log lean-tos, burned-out cars, women scrubbing laundry in buckets, stern-looking federales with machine guns, pigs and cows, and lots and lots of crosses and colorful virgin statues. My favorite part was an neat old village called Valladolid, which seemed like our most authentic glimpse of Mexico. I took these pictures from my seat on the bus:






Before we arrive at the ruins, we stop to visit a cenote, a natural underground pool. Much is made of Yucatán cenotes in brochures and tourist guides, but to me they seem a bit gross. In photos the water looks thick and green, almost putrid. Our concierge had suggested that we wear bathing suits in case we wanted to swim in the cenote, but I had pretty much decided that was not going to happen.

But when we arrive at the Ik Kil Eco-archaeological Park, I'm surprised that the cenote looks much prettier in real life. Very deep blue, and so clear you could see hundreds of fish darting around in the water. There's a big hole in the ceiling, so sunlight pours into the cave, and waterfalls stream down into the pool.


Turns out most folks are like me and have no intention of leaping into this thing. A tightly packed crowd of tourists watches from the ledge above while just a handful of people splash around in the water. But a very unusual thing happens as I stare down at the pool: I begin to feel a tiny bit brave. I wonder, just how cool WOULD it be if I could say I actually did this? Like, a little bit cool? Perhaps even a whole lot cool? And before I know it, I'm shucking off my clothes, shakily handing Sal my backpack, and then I'm standing on the ledge with all these jostling, noisy tourists and clicking cameras behind me. My heart is pounding.

The most difficult part is that there's no wading into a cenote. Can't even dip a toe, because the ledge is a good 6 or 8 feet above the water. The pool is 130 feet deep, so there's no easing your way in, no putting your feet down if you get tired. Basically, it's ALL the deep end.

So I push out of my mind thoughts of all those wiggly fish, and of how I will most definitely die today. And I leap. I close my eyes, pinch my nose, and cannonball myself down into the water. Don't know how deep I sink, but it's far enough that I'm in total darkness. As I kick my legs a faint cloud of light begins to appear above me, and it grows bigger and bigger, and then I'm at the surface. My pulse races as I float on my back and see the blue sky, and the vines coming down from the hole in the ceiling. I watch those tourists up on the ledge snap pictures, and water from the ceiling rains down on my face. It was THE BEST.


For about 90 seconds. Because then I paddle myself over to the rickety old wooden ladder and climb out. I jump in one more time, for good measure, and then I head for the showers and lunch, where we toast my bad-assness with mas cervezas.

Next it was on to the ruins, where we hear about Mayan human-sacrifice rituals. For instance, to please the sun god, the victim is laid atop a pyramid, arms and legs held down, while an executioner carves out the living heart and raises it to the sky. Then the corpse is rolled down the steps flayed, its bloody skin worn by a dancing priest. Gah!

The most impressive structure is El Castillo, a step pyramid with 91 steps on four sides. They don't let you climb it anymore because a few years ago someone fell off and died. But it's easier to marvel at the structure and imagine 11th-century living without a bunch of dumb sweaty tourists climbing all over it. The park also contains many beautiful carved stones and columns, temples, a ball court and another cenote. Only this one is where they used to dump chopped-off Mayan heads and stuff. We skip the swimming.

Time to go home, so we return to the bus and cool off with chilled wet washcloths and an open bar. "The Bucket List" plays on the TV while we try not to doze off.

The happy adventurers:

Mexico, part 2: Warming up

So having cracked open a fresh bottle of Sol (purchased last night at Mexican grocery store down the street) at 1 p.m. on a weekday afternoon, I now feel equipped to begin recapping the best of seven days and nights in lovely Mexico.

DAY ONE:
Gloomy, overcast weather welcomes us to Cancun. We also find out our hotel room doesn't have a balcony, and even more unthinkable, it has two double beds instead of a king. So we make arrangements to move into the Royal Beach Club, the VIP wing of the resort, where for the mere price of $60 more per day, we can enjoy a lavish daily breakfast buffet and happy hour with hors d'oeuvres. Oh, and a balcony, ocean view, king-sized bed, free gym access, and a private beach and pool area. We spend the next six days patting ourselves on the back.

DAY TWO:
Wanting to start out with something "easy," we board one of the teeth-rattling buses that zoom through the hotel zone and head downtown, where locals hang. Bus stops aren't marked, though, so naturally we get off too soon and must set off on foot toward the flea market. We survive three blocks of blistering heat before seeking shade at a dilapidated open-air restaurant with plastic tables and a Mexican soap opera blaring on the TV. But my lord, a cold beer never tasted so good. The bottles dripped chilly water all over our legs, and it wasn't the last time I'd appreciate this heat relief.


We head out again in search of food, ending up at a nice little cantina for more beers, steak tacos with housemade guacamole, and papas bravas drenched in a spicy red sauce. After lunch, I have my first (but, sadly, not last) unfortunate encounter with Mexican bathrooms.

First of all, many toilets here don't have seats. You must teeter on the thin porcelain rim, which seems super-icky if you are a girl, you know? So I decide to create a seat cover using toilet paper. I successfully place one strip. But while I'm straightening the second strip, the first one blows into the water. I lunge to grab it, and the second strip blows in, too. That's when I notice an oscillating fan mounted on the ceiling. Eff! So I start over with two new strips, only, a-ha! This time I'll outsmart the fan by holding the strips down with my hand until it goes the other direction, and then I'll whip around and sit down. Except while I wait, I am so still that a motion-sensor shuts off the lights. I panic. Bang the hell out of my shoulder trying to scramble out of the stall with, yes, my shorts around my ankles. Lights come back on. All right, screw the strips. I'll hover. So I assume the position, but fearing that my stillness will turn the lights off again, I begin waving my arms wildly above my head, an exercise I continued for the full three minutes it took for my poor freaked-out bladder to empty. After I tiredly stand up and drop the last wad of toilet paper into the water, I notice a sign that pleads "ABSOLUTELY NO PAPER IN THE TOILET!" I am deeply sorry, Mexico, for dropping like half a roll into that commode. And also for forgetting this rule 7 or 8 million more times.

We finally make it to the Mercado 28 flea market, and were entirely turned off by the high-pressure vendors. They all but drag you into their stores by the ear, and they yell at you if you walk away. Only high point is Sal negotiating a good price on a handsome Panama hat.

DAY THREE:

We take a ferry to Isla Mujeres, an easygoing little island full of colorful streets and friendly locals. It's easily our favorite part of Mexico. We spend most of the afternoon Miguel's Moonlite Bar, a shabby but comfortable tavern where VH1 Classic is playing on two TVs. We are served by Miguel himself, a delightful fellow who helps us practice our Spanish and supplies us with a dish of spicy red peanuts. And let me just say, four hours of laughing and drinking beers with my husband in Mexico, while speakers blare "Raspberry Beret," "Maneater" and "Red, Red Wine," is pretty much my definition of heaven.

Mexico, part 1: "Dos Soles, por favor"

While my last post indicated that our summer vacation would look like white sands and blue waters, the truth is, it looked much more like this:


Not that I'm complaining. Gulping down copious amounts of icy Mexican beer is basically the only way to survive that kind of suffocating heat and humidity. And even if you down six bottles in one sitting? You sweat so much you won't get even a tiny buzz. TRUST ME, I TRIED. So I can only imagine that the muchas cervezas were replenishing much-needed bodily fluids, like a bubbly IV drip in a pretty glass bottle. So thank you, Sol beverage manufacturers, for saving my life in Mexico like 30 or 40 times.

So you'll recall that this is the trip I accidentally bought in March 2007. And I'm relieved to report it was worth every cent. It was the kind of vacation that had all the exact right amounts of adventure and terror, of luxury and relaxation.

But you have to get out of the hotel area. Aside from the beach -- which is of course big and breathtaking and everywhere you look -- the long strip of hotels is entirely disenchanting. For the first day and a half, I was like "Really? This is it?!" Our resort was definitely nice, but unlike the strip in Vegas, there's no real incentive (or even a sidewalk, for that matter) to hotel-hop if you want a change of scenery. Once you have visited your hotel's lobby bar, its restaurant, its beachside bar and again the lobby bar, you're kinda over it. So it wasn't until deep into Day 2 when we finally left the hotel zone that we really began to discover Mexico.

Before I get into all that, though, I need to tell you about the food. OK, I am not even making this up, over seven days and 21 meals, there wasn't a single disappointment to be found in the lot. Not one! I mean, you can't even leave town for a WEEKEND in the United States without at least one stinker of a restaurant experience. But on our trip, the worst thing I could complain about was the crab-mushroom dip at Margaritaville that ONLY didn't knock our socks off. It was merely fine. Everything else? Astounding.

I found that the Yucatán's most delicious foods are also the simplest. For instance, have you ever tasted a banana that was so mouthwatering, you actually closed your eyes while savoring it? We discovered these at our hotel's breakfast buffet. They were ugly on the outside, but the flesh was velvety and golden, like tropical candy. And evidently frijoles refritos taste a bit better than the cylindrical brown blob that slides out of a Rosarita Fat-Free Refried Beans can -- I have never had such thrilling beans in my life! Quesadillas on housemade tortillas ooze Mexican cheese and seasoned steak. Guacamole and avocados are so bright green it borders on absurd. Tacos overflow with chunks of fresh white fish, under a squirt of lime and a sprinkling of diced purple onion WHICH I ATE, PEOPLE. (Those who know me well understand that this is monumental, akin to asking a spider if he could please tickle me under the chin.)

The customer service was also astonishing. It didn't matter if you visited the grittiest hole-in-the-wall on the block (we did) or a five-star restaurant (did that, too), the service was the same: courteous, respectful and heartfelt. Servers, bartenders, hotel staff, they all want to know how they can help, how you're doing. And they seem genuinely thrilled when you tell them you're great. They clear dishes immediately, refill waters, bring beers and napkins and snacks, all with a smile. It's not just restaurants, either. Bus drivers pull over to pick you up, even if you're not at an official stop. In flea markets and other commercial areas, vendors sit in sweltering heat until you enter their store, at which point they race around turning on fans. Walk out, and the fans go off. Now, obviously tourism is the biggest thing going in a place like Cancun, so I know these people are just doing their jobs. But so's that gum-smacking broad in the Macy's shoe department, and when was the last time SHE was that helpful or kind?!

Coming next: A day-by-day rundown that will feature yours truly plunging into an underground lake, piloting a speedboat, and getting my boobs grabbed by a Mexican waitress!

Adios

So, if anybody needs me, I'll be here:

Unemployment: So far, so good

Boy, you would think that with ALLLLL this time on my hands, I would have had more time for blogging. But evidently if you take away my desk and my chair and my shackles with chains attached to cannonballs, the last thing I want to do is sit down at the computer. So here I am, with a sincere apology that I made you look at that dumb chihuahua movie trailer for so long. 

So I went to Bakersfield this week to see some girlfriends, one of three trips planned for my big month off. There are a lot of people who think Bakersfield is a worthless armpit of a cowtown, but those people can suck it. I lived there for three years, and in addition to having my very dear friends there, they also have a freaking Sonic, so like, who lives in the armpit now, huh? HUH? They also have my favorite pizza in the whole world, and also? At my favorite restaurant? The walls are covered in framed newspaper stories written by famous and talented journalists, and I HAVE A STORY HANGING ON THAT WALL. A story about the USA rugby team playing an exhibition against England at UCLA. If you ever go look at it, though, you don't really need to read the story too closely. I mean, you could just admire the byline. For instance.

Now I'm back, and I have been to a funeral, attended a meeting at my new school, and half-cleaned my house three times. I have also slept a lot, because not having a job is exhausting. Oh, and I gotta share this ... So, the whole TB thing. I will get into all that more later, because I have a strict rule that tuberculosis talk can wait just a goddamn minute while I go to Cancun. But this is funny. So, after they told me the test result, the helpful folks at the county health clinic thrust a bunch of papers into my hand and sent me on my way. I was sitting alone in my car when I first saw this cheerful diagram, which sent me into hysterics. I shoved it into the pocket of my car door and didn't find it again till just now. I think you will all agree with me when I say, WHAT THE FUCK.

This and that

I'm totally overloaded with things to write about here, so you'll forgive a hodgepodge of updates, won't you?

First, the back yard is all better. Within two hours of my post on the broken tree limb, a very nice old gentleman who owns a tree service business arrived. He let out a long whistle when he came into the yard and said we have one of the biggest peppercorn trees he has ever seen. Then he walked up to one of the fallen branches and lifted it high. Leans over to me and makes a joke that seemed to give him immense joy, despite being told hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of times: "Do you know what this is?" he says, peering at me closely. "Um ... a peppercorn tree?" I ask. He grins and says cheerfully, "It's nature's way of pruning your tree!"

Oh! Ha! Hahaha! OK, now cut the crap and go get your chainsaw.

He really was terrific, though, and the very next morning he came out and tidied things up. He even chopped up a bunch of the wood and stacked it up for us to use in our fireplace.

Sal and I also went on vacation. Now that seems like a million years ago. And every time I went to write about it, something would happen, generally something at work, and generally something unpleasant. But I'm determined to tell you, though, about how our John Williams concert was nearly ruined by a disgusting, smelly cow of a woman who reeked like she hasn't showered in a month. Mere moments after Sal and I cracked open a bottle of cold chardonnay and unwrapped our hot dogs for a quick dinner before the show, this gal plops herself down in the seat in front of me and pulls out of her backpack a tub of hummus the size of her head. The moment Sal smelled her, his eyes darted in my direction, because he KNEW I was gonna freak.

You see, there are many objectionable things in this world, but at the very tippy-top of my list are people who stink. I'm not saying that a little extra B.O. at the end of a long day (such as my nasty 12-hour shift yesterday) means you were born in a barnyard. I'm saying that folks who do not hose off their big, smelly bodies at least once a week or so really do need their own section at the Hollywood Bowl. MY GOD, I cannot stand the smell of B.O. And, I mean, we were outside! There was a breeze! And it was still so bad that I had to turn my head all the way around and take quick teeny gulps of air before facing forward again.

As the minutes passed, my temper boiled at the fact that this stench was going to ruin a concert we had looked forward to for months. So after about 15 minutes I marched over to one of the ushers and told him the problem. The show was sold out, so he didn't know how to help me. But he sent me over to his boss, who seemed to take pity on the crazy lady sputtering about showers and homeless people and garlic-flavored hummus. And in five minutes he had us moved to great seats that were even a little closer to the stage.

Oh! But the stench does not end there, my friend! Because just days after this concert, I was eating lunch with Sal, my aunt and my cousin at a pizza restaurant in Cambria when a disgusting unshowered individual sat right behind me. And when the stench wafted into my nose, I almost hurled. Again, I had to move. So you see, America, please just take a bath. I do not know what sort of nasal dysfunction keeps you from passing out when you smell your very own self, but perhaps you could try using your eyes: If you actually see folks RUN AWAY WHEN YOU GET NEAR THEM, it could be time to hop in the tub.

OK, let me post a couple of vacation photos, and then I gotta jet. These are from the Santa Barbara zoo:

This is Janine, a crooked-necked giraffe. Don't be afraid! She was born that way and the zookeeper says she is a happy giraffe, and that her neck doesn't hurt her at all.

When Sal walked up to this bald eagle, he solemnly sang the first verse of "America the Beautiful" in its entirety.

I was watching the toucans when I heard Sal hissing at me to come look at something. He's waving his finger and pointing wildly at two turtles who are MADLY going at it. I mean, you can actually hear the top turtle grunting repeatedly as he bumps and grinds with his girl below. Look close, you can even see his open mouth! And so before I know it, this little girl runs up to the tank and begins laughing hysterically. "MOMMY!" she whirls around, laughing. "Lookieeeee! They're playing leapfrog!"

No longer newly wed

Let's see, one year ago today I was running around town like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to finish umpteen-million last-minute wedding preparations. Meanwhile, Sal was at home, tasked with typing in and printing out place cards for our 162 guests. Therefore I was surprised when I walked in the front door and saw that, in fact, this had not happened. And by "surprised" I mean "ready to skin someone alive with my bare, but beautifully manicured, hands." The computer was dark, a bunch of ink-smeared, crunched-up labels were strewn about the room, and in the middle of the mess sat Sal looking slightly fearful of his wild-eyed bride.

But before I could go all waah-ooh-waaaah-don't-you-care-about-our-wedding on him, I realized what was going on: Evidently our printer hated the place cards I bought at Target. Chewed them up and spit them out. So realizing how likely I was to explode into full-on bridezilla mode if I came home to no place cards, Sal ditched the printer idea and began to write them out individually.

By hand.

In CALLIGRAPHY.

That, friends, is the kind of man I married. The kind of man who, two weeks after he proposed, bought a calligraphy kit at Barnes and Noble and spent hours at our kitchen table teaching himself the craft. I lost track of how many days it took for him to hand-address all our invitations. They were exquisite. And because he had ALL that practice, it was no trouble for him to crank out the place cards, too.

I married a man who saves the day, all the time, sometimes even saving the day multiple times in the exact same day.

So off we go to Southern California to celebrate one year of matrimonial good times. We're headed first to Los Angeles, where we'll see John Williams and the L.A. Philharmonic perform movie music at the Hollywood Bowl. And the Dodgers. Then we'll enjoy a few sunny days in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo before heading home. When we return, I'm sure I'll have many fine vacation tales to tell, and hopefully this time they won't end with a syringe in my spine. See ya!

P.S. Thanks, Gamy, for the hilarious anniversary card!

My graphic content

I'm afraid I had planned an entirely different topic for this post-Memorial Day weekend update. I had hoped to write about dressing like a pirate Friday for a "Pirates of the Caribbean" party. And going to San Francisco with my husband, where we attended a three-day James Bond film festival at the Castro Theater.

Instead, I am forced to write about diarrhea, blood and vomit. Sometimes mixed together, sometimes not. Proceed if you like, or, you know, just sit this one out. I understand completely.

I'm 99 percent sure I know where it all went so terribly wrong. It was an evil little burger joint near the theater. We were hungry when we got to SF, and through the window we saw the ground beef cooking over the flames of a carousel grill. Mouthwatering. Sal ordered a cheeseburger, and I had the same, but with mushrooms. It looked like they were cooking up fresh mushrooms, so I was surprised when they tasted like absolute shit. On a burger that, coincidentally, also tasted like shit. I was hungry, so I tried to keep eating it, but it was just so gross. I even told Sal, "These mushrooms, they taste funny." I only ended up eating about half, and if me not polishing off an actual cheeseburger doesn't tell you something was SERIOUSLY wrong with that food, I don't know what will.

But evidently half is all it takes, since an hour later as settled in for the first 007 movie, the shakes set in. I shook so bad my teeth chattered. I don't know that I have ever felt so unreasonably cold. A cold that hurt my very bones. I bought some tea in the lobby and that helped a little, but then I felt cramping and a really uncomfortable backache. Later that night at the hotel, I had the first -- but holy mother of god, by no means the last -- bout of diarrhea. The next two days were a blur of stomach cramps, burning fever, nausea, back and neck aches, and SWEET JESUS THE DIARRHEA. Sunday night I didn't fall asleep until 4:30 in the morning because it just wouldn't stop.

That was also the night I vomited. You see, because the sickness sort of ebbed and flowed, Sal and I enjoyed a brief respite early that evening when I was starting to feel like maybe I had shrugged it all off. The hotel we stayed at had this awesome soul food restaurant, so we had a couple cocktails at the bar there and then feasted on dinner. I had a bowl of gumbo, a piece of fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, and some jalapeno cornbread with butter. I'm telling you these items now, because you'll see them again later in the story. (HA! Get it?!)

Anyway, as we waited for the check, I started to tank again. My forehead was getting hot, and I was feeling kind of queasy. By the time we got back to our room, the chills were back in full force. I got in my pajamas and under the covers but was still shivering with cold. Sweet Sal gave me his coat to wear, and then he took off his socks and put them over my shaking hands. Does that sound gross? It wasn't. I probably would have put his underwear on my head if I thought it would warm me up at all. I got in bed and shook and shook and shook. I couldn't sleep because my body ached too much. Plus I kept having to get up and go to the bathroom. At around 1:30 I felt a burbling in my tummy and I lunged for the toilet, where I tossed my cookies so violently that it set off a fresh set of stomach cramps, which in turn set off some more diarrhea. (And by the way, the way I am so freely discussing this very personal sort of subject with everyone should tell you JUST HOW MUCH diarrhea I have had in the past six days. Like, the word means nothing to me anymore. Diarrhea. Diarrhea. I have it. I don't care. Diarrhea. See? I am completely at one with diarrhea.)

I felt no better when we got home Monday night. Went to bed early with another fever, and more of these unholy stomach cramps that at this point are so painful they bring tears to my eyes. I get up every hour to have diarrhea. At around 4:30 a.m., I'm on the toilet and the cramps are actually making me dizzy. I see black spots on the bathroom wall. I stand up and when I turn around to flush, I look down and gasped. Blood. BLOOD IN THE TOILET.

The room begins to spin, and I run wailing into the bedroom where I shake Sal awake. I slump down on the floor and bury my face in my hands. "Baby," I sputter. "I need you to go, right now, into THAT BATHROOM, and look in the toilet, and tell me whether that is BLOOD, or GATORADE." You see, in my addled state, I really thought it could just be all the fluids I was using to keep myself hydrated. And the moment I got home that night I started slugging fruit punch Gatorade. And, like, OF COURSE that could come out my ass. I haven't peed in two days because my body has turned into some sort of freaky one-lane funnel! EVERYTHING comes out my ass now! But Sal - who I'm sure never felt more like a husband than the moment his wife demanded he go inspect her poop for blood - agreed with my first assessment. Which panicked me all the more. We considered going to the ER right away, but I was so, so exhausted. We agreed to lay down a little while to see if I could get some sleep. But at 7:30 a.m. I woke up and had the same thing all over again, so we headed to the hospital.

The ER nurse handed me a clipboard where I wrote down my symptoms. Diarrhea, cramps, vomiting, fever, sore back and neck. Before she even leads me out of the waiting room, she asks me to touch my chin to my chest. "Does that hurt?" Yeah, that hurts. I'm whisked to a special room where someone slaps a big red sign on the door. And the doctor rushes in wearing a mask. He tells me that because I have neck pain, they are worried I have spinal meningitis, and that he wants to do a lumbar puncture to rule it out. But then he goes on and on about how it's a risky procedure, invasive and painful, and it's up to me whether I want the test. I can't even believe we are having this conversation. We begin to quiz him on what, besides the neck pain, could indicate meningitis. And I keep bringing up the food poisoning. He waves that off. "The food poisoning, that is just a story. I deal with facts. The fact is that your neck hurts and we are concerned about meningitis." I'm like, "But didn't you see about the blood? The blood in my stool? Does THAT go with spinal meningitis?" No, he says. And then he goes on to suggest that I perhaps was just so incredibly unlucky that I ate the bad mushroom burger AT THE EXACT SAME TIME I caught myself a case of spinal meningitis. And then he told us a story about a boy who got spinal meningitis, and two days later, that boy died. This doctor, he's not so good at the bedside manner.

We agonize about it -- under the impatient glare of the doctor's eyes above his stupid mask -- for about a minute and a half and reluctantly decide to do it. After all, when I asked "Well, what if we DON'T do the test, then what?" the doctor's response was, "Well, I guess you could go home and come back when you get sicker!" He stalks off and I collapse in tears. All I wanted was for someone to fix my cramps and diarrhea, and his solution is to jam a giant needle into my spine? Why not jab my eyeballs while you're at it, doc?

The next hour is a whirl of masked medical people testing my blood and hooking me up to an IV and various other monitors. Then they wheel me away for a CT scan of my head, and when I'm done they put me in a different room. The Puncture Room. A nice man comes in and says he's going to be my coach, and they ask Sal to leave. Then Dr. Mean and his assistant had me scoot to the edge of the gurney and curl myself over into a C, so that my spine jutted out. As they are positioning me, I'm bawling and considering all the various ways this could go wrong. (For instance, what if I accidentally have diarrhea RIGHT WHEN THE NEEDLE PIERCES MY SPINE?!? And then I'll be covered in crap AND paralyzed forever!) My coach asks me if I want to hold his hand. Based on the way he rubbed his palm when the procedure was over, I'm wondering if he regretted that kind offer. But I was honestly so glad for him. He was so much nicer than the main doctor, and he kept patting me on the shoulder and telling me what a good job I was doing. So this Bud's for you, Mr. Lumbar Puncture Assistant Guy.

After it was over, I had to lay down flat on my back for an hour. They injected my IV with some morphine, which helped quite a bit. Then the door bursts open and the doctor says "Good news! You don't have meningitis!"

You don't say.

Then he says all sorts of wonderful things, like "Want to go home? Want some cramp medicine and then you can go home?" Um, yeah! All swell ideas! But then he comes over and starts pushing around on my belly. He frowns. Does it hurt here? Yes. How about here? Yes. And here? Doc, I have had almost nonstop stomach cramps for three days. I think my muscles hurt. But no, now the doctor is afraid it's appendicitis. He would like me to have a CT scan just to be sure. So back I go to X-ray, where they send me into the big white doughnut again. This time they did a dye contrast, so they shot some stuff into my IV that made my body feel like it filled up with warm water. And there was a weird metallic taste in my mouth. After the test, the X-ray tech pushes my gurney into the hallway and says "Someone'll be right here to get you." So I lay there and wait. And wait. And wait. Several people pass, but nobody even looks over at me. Nearly 15 minutes pass and I'm starting to get impatient. But I'm also high as a kite. So for a gag, I pulled the sheet up all the way over my head for awhile.

Unsurprisingly, it wasn't long before someone rushed out to push me back to my room. About an hour later, the doctor comes in and chirps about how I don't have appendicitis. Then he goes, "But wow ... your colon! It's REEEEALLY inflamed! So I guess that goes along with your food poisoning story!" I tried to shoot him my best laser-beam death glare but I'm afraid I was too weak to do any damage. So I put my real clothes back on and went home.

I wish I could say the story ends there. But about an hour after I left the ER, an excruciating headache knocked me flat and it basically hasn't gone away. And that was four days ago. Yesterday I finally went to my real doctor, and he said he believes I'm leaking spinal fluid. (He said this after noting, with surprise, that I have three holes in my back instead of just one.) The cure for this, believe it or not, is to do ANOTHER LUMBAR PUNCTURE. Only instead of taking out some fluid, they would inject a little bit of my own blood to form a "patch" over the leak. You can probably imagine what I thought of this plan. So instead he gave me some lovely vicodin, and we're going to cross our fingers and hope my spinal hole heals itself over the weekend.

I will leave you with a little memento my husband grabbed that morning in the emergency room. While trying to cheer me up with jokes (like when I returned from the CT scan of my belly, asking me if the results showed that I "was fat" and "needed gastric bypass") he also thought it would be high comedy to snap a cell phone picture of me in my weakened condition. It is only now that I can admit he could have been right:

This photo cost me $20 and ten years off my life.

Do you see that face? That is the face of a woman who had no idea she was about to almost die 37 times in that very car. Yet thanks to a gruff but incredibly talented racing instructor named Mike, I lived to tell the tale of my four-lap, 160-mph spin around the Texas Motor Speedway.

When we heard we'd be treated to a race car ride at this conference, many of us thought it would go like this: A little car would chug over and pick us up, one at a time, for a lap around the track. You know, something ladylike. Instead we were first deposited into the Speedway Club, a nine-story entertainment facility overlooking the track, where they filled us with pizza, tacos and free booze. Which I'm pretty sure was meant to prep us for the two-page waiver we had to sign down on the infield. As we stood around a table scribbling dozens of initials and signatures as fast as we could, I asked if the group anybody was actually reading this stuff. "NO!!!" came the gleeful chorus. Good girls.

Then we climbed into fire suits and helmets and lined up next to ten stock cars. Ten! This shit is for real! And here comes Racing Instructor Mike, who helps me into the car. As he was strapping me into a web of, like, seven seat belts, he asks what I'm doing here. "Um ... I'm here to ride in a race car?" He gives me a long, tired look and says slowly, "No, I mean, who ARE you people?" Ah.

Anyway, no more chitchat, because soon the engines start. The car starts to fill up with fumes, and my heart starts thumping so hard. The rumble of the engine rattles your guts, even before you take off. It's too loud to talk, so we just sit there waiting for the crew to check all the cars. Then I feel a tap on my knee. I look over and Mike gives me a questioning thumbs up. Thumbs back up to you, Racing Instructor Mike!

Then we took off, and surprisingly it wasn't the speed at all that scared me most. No, what really made me poop my fire suit was going 160 mph NEXT TO NINE OTHER CARS. Those drivers were really fooling around, too. Trading places, zigging and zagging, swooping and sliding ... I don't think I breathed once the entire two minutes, I'm serious. Didn't blink, either, no, not once, because I couldn't peel my eyes off the bumper of the car TWO INCHES IN FRONT OF US. Or the fender of the car TWO INCHES FROM MY DOOR. The best part, though, was in the middle of the last lap when Mike actually removes his helmet. There's a hook dangling from the roof of the car, and he's trying to hang it up there. But he can't quite get it, so he turns his head to stare at the hook, steering with one WRIST on the wheel while the other hand fiddles with the effing helmet. And this, friends, is why moments later Mike had to literally lift my shaking form out of the car and set me on the ground. I proceeded directly to the bar, took off my sweaty helmet, and swigged a cold can of Bud Light.

P.S. The rumor was evidently untrue, and Christine Daniels did not attend the conference. But I did shamelessly eavesdrop on two reporters talking about Lisa Dillman being out of the country right now. And that Lisa has said she knew of Christine's transsexuality long before the rest of us did.

How I grew old in Dallas, Texas

Our conference includes a tour of the The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, and we walk past a wall of photographs chronicling JFK's marriage and family life.

"Wow," one gum-smacking intern remarks to her friend, evidently staring at Jackie Kennedy for the very first time. "His wife was cute."

Taking a little trip

Tomorrow I'm getting on an airplane and flying to Dallas. Every time I tell somone I'm going to Dallas, they cringe. But truly, lots of fun things await me there!

I'm going to attend a conference for the Association of Women in Sports Media, otherwise known as AWSM, and cheesily pronounced as "Awesome." I'm really looking forward to it, and not just because it's a break from office and home-buying chaos. It's also because I get to ride in a race car! Seriously. On Friday night we're going to Texas Motor Speedway, where I'll take a ride in a race car at 150 mph for four laps. I also get to wear a "fire suit," which I presume is to keep the barf from getting on my clothes.

The conference itself should be neat, too. Dave Barry is the keynote speaker at the gala Saturday night, for one thing. And for another, I hear Christine Daniels will be attending. Do you know Christine Daniels? She is the L.A. Times sportswriter formerly known as Mike Penner, who last month wrote in the newspaper that he is changing his gender. I have been following this story closely, mostly because I have always been mystified about transsexualism. I'm not against it, I just plain don't understand it. But Christine explains it in a way I can digest. And the story of her struggle, which she is still telling on her blog, is quite gripping.

Then there's the matter of the hotel. I just adore staying in nice hotels. Last night I was reading the description of this one, and my toes curled to read about the Crabtree & Evelyn toiletries, the down pillows, the 250-thread-count sheets. I don't even know what an "ion hair dryer" is, but I'm sure as shit glad I'll have one in Dallas. And I am trying to enjoy all this anticipation as much as possible now, because I know what will happen when I'm actually there. I'll climb into in that big comfy bed and realize that sleeping without my husband, and my little dog curled up under the blankets next to my stomach, pretty much sucks. And even something called a "Serenity Bed Super Topper mattress pad" won't help.

SOLD! To the girl with the white knuckles and the cold sweat!

At first I swore I would not blog about this, because the regret, guilt, and sheer forehead-slapping idiocy of my very own self felt too painful to display. But after a couple stiff drinks, a good night's sleep and a long yoga class, I have unclenched just a little, just enough to maybe tell you what I did this weekend that burned a fresh ulcer into my stomach lining:

I accidentally bought a $5,000 trip to Cancun.

Yes, an accident. No lie. See, I go to a lot of fundraisers with my husband, who writes about them for his column in the newspaper. These events often have live auctions for things like fancy jewelry and exotic vacations. Sometimes I think it's fun to be the very first bidder on an item, especially because the first bid never wins. Well, at Saturday's auction there was this cool Hawaii vacation valued at $14,000. And obviously there's no way that would sell for a really low price, so for fun, Sal and I agreed I could bid up to 5K. We were right, and it ended up going for around 10K. Oh, well! But a little while later, another interesting item came up: seven nights at a four-star resort in Cancun, plus first-class round-trip airfare, valued at nearly 10K. I leaned over to Sal and whispered, "Pssst! Wanna try 5K on this one, too?!" "Sure!" he says. So I do.

AND I WIN.

You really cannot imagine how I froze, how the shock and fear coursed coldly through my veins when the grinning auctioneer pointed in my direction and yelled "SOLD!" And then came the clapping and cheering, and people coming up to thank us so much for the donation, and then I nearly toss my cookies because I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING. Five thousand bucks? Five thousand bucks -- and here is the part that really makes me puke -- on a credit card!?!

OK, admittedly, we are in relatively good shape as far as credit cards go. And for the record, Sal isn't freaking out about this at ALL. He points out that we already had plans to do a big vacation this year, so this is money we would have spent anyway. Plus, it's for charity. Plus, though it might seem like bad timing to buy this trip now with house-hunting and all, it actually could be the last best time for us to do something like this. I bet after we land ourselves a nice fat mortgage, and later a kid or two, it won't be cool for mommy to suck down a couple martinis and run around waving paddle No. 241 in the air.

But I just couldn't stop kicking myself. The queasy guilt was turning my stomach inside-out. And it made me realize that a reaction this violent doesn't have anything to do with houses or vacations or anything like that. It comes from a deep understanding of what it's like to live with unmanageable debt. I'm not talking about the kind of debt that tells you it's time to cut down on four-dollar lattes. I'm talking about the kind of debt where, one afternoon in college, I stared down at the credit-card bills and realized that even with BOTH of my part-time jobs, I didn't have the money to make my payments. So I got up from the desk, put on a skirt and heels, drove to the mall, and got a third job at a costume jewelry counter at Foley's department store. See what I mean? That kind of frightening, nauseating debt that keeps you awake at night. And over the past five or six years, I have been able to shake that off and become a responsible adult, with a savings account and great credit and financial freedom that I try to never take for granted. So to go five grand in the hole in rougly 45 seconds, well, it felt like a fist smashed into my gut.

But like I said, I'm starting to get over it. Me and money have come a long way, and I know one teeny auction blunder isn't going to send us into financial ruin. And seriously, OK, I don't think there are too many horrifying mistakes in life that come equipped with a week of relaxing on sunshiny white beaches of the Caribbean Sea.

Reno doesn't suck!

We spent the holiday weekend in Reno, celebrating my mother-in-law's 67th birthday. My mother-in-law pretty much rocks. She is beautiful and dainty and vibrant, a woman who is seriously able to ooze class and sophistication at the exact same time she declares that she's "so hungry she could eat the asshole off a skunk."

That was during our wait for breakfast in Boomtown, a funny little casino where I washed a bacon omelet down with a Bud Light, and then won $78.55 in a penny slot machine. A fine ending to a fine weekend! Before I left, people couldn't get enough of telling me how much Reno sucked. One friend sneered, saying the best thing about Reno is that "if you drive far enough, you can find a Macaroni Grill." But I'm here to tell you, people are wrong. Cheap gambling! Booze flowing! You can get a hot dog and a plastic cup of Coors for TWO DOLLARS! I ask you, what's not to love about Reno?!

We stayed at the Peppermill, a hotel and casino bulging with so much neon and mirror that it literally caused my vision to blur several times. I mean, it had to have been neon and mirror, right? No way could it have been the incredibly cheap liquor they used to make all those great free drinks! (And did you ever notice how after awhile, shitty gin smells a tiny bit like pot?)

The highlight of the trip was probably Saturday night. Unfortunately we had to leave the birthday girl behind (she had a terrible case of food poisoning), but it was fun for my husband and I to set off on our own. We started the evening with a very, very good steak dinner, and then, having grown tired of crappy alcohol, we found a bartender who could make us a real drink. He was a bit of a grizzled old fellow whose nametag said Stephen, but all the other servers called him Stevie. And let me tell you, our good friend Stevie does not give a fig about his employer's profit margin. Stevie was that swell, one-in-a-million kind of casino bartender who pretends not to notice that you're calling your liquor while playing 5-cent video blackjack. And, he brought refills (me: Sapphire and tonic, husband: mandarin and tonic) before we could even ask. Good ol' Stevie! After four or six drinks there, we visited that cool magic money wheel and each picked up an extra 30 bucks. Candy from a baby! Then we retired to a bar surrounding the "cabaret" stage, where dudes with guitars rocked out 90s hair-band tunes. Next to me sat a sweaty (but friendly) old fat man who talked my ear off about how passionately he adores tequila. Tequila this, tequila that, tequila, tequila, tequila. That's pretty much all I remember about that conversation.

Anyway, now I'm back and ready to blog some more! Thanks to everyone who reads this blog. I think now there are ... there are like eight of you! Wheeeee!