The look of love

Appreciation

Dear Everyone Who's Walked Behind Me At Any Point During the Past Five Days and Neglected to Point Out The Price Tag Hanging Off the Middle of the Back of My New Fall Jacket,

Thanks.

Luv,

Groomzilla


And yes, I did pay $49.99. And no, I'm not telling you where.

Awkward and Unprepared

Awkward: Having a sex dream about a coworker.

Awkwarder: Have a sex dream about a coworker in which the two of you are laying in bed when you suddenly realize that your sleeping husband is also there, and in which you first debate and then succumb to the temptation to do it anyways.

Awkwardest: Running into said coworker first thing in the morning whilst still halfway between asleep and awake, resulting in a confusing mix of lust and embarassment and why-is-he-pretending-like-nothing-happened.



In more disappointing news: I am, as usual, running behind on Halloween, a phenomenon which continues to perplex me as Halloween is my favorite holiday. M. and I tried to find Girl Scout/Boy Scout (you guess) costumes on Sunday but the Salvation Army was closed. Thus Friday evening and/or Saturday morning will be consumed by my annual rush to find appropriate wigs and tights and blushes and, in this case, sashes and berets. If the Girl Scout doesn't pan out, I may go as a Girl Pirate. Or maybe just a psychopath. A girl psychopath.

Edit this; or, Every girl has her secrets

In order to avoid the risk of alienating the small thimbleful of visitors who continue to stumble upon this weblog -- half of whom, granted, slither in hoping for a belated look at Katherine McPhee Nude or, better yet, for advice on How to Call Off a Wedding -- I have decided, upon careful consideration, that instead of choosing between sharing either a story detailing my alarm upon viewing the physical after-effects of the upper GI series barium x-ray tests I took this morning or a story about my distress upon sitting here on this very couch at this very moment and feeling certain that I smell Dead Mouse, yet equally uncertain that I truly want to investigate, I will instead share my joyful anticipation upon learning that there is a new Crate & Barrel package waiting for us at the UPS center. Much safer territory, and much more in keeping with the original intent and spirit of the site.

On a somewhat related note: according to M., as of 4am today, I have officially started sitting up in bed and sleep-talking. This morning's harmless message had something to do with asking M. if he'd remembered to "set all [his] alarms." In the interest of safeguarding my innermost thoughts and feelings, however, I am considering resuming the use of my retainer in order to keep my secrets suitably garbled.

And....take 2.

The good news about eating donuts and burritos right after your colonoscopy is that, apparently, they don't stay with you for very long.

The bad news is that I may have to angle my side of the bed into the bathroom.



--This message brought to you by Go-Lytely, the gift that keeps on giving. And giving.--

And....cut.

Well that's over with.

I've survived with barely a scrape. Mainly thanks to my new best friend Diprivan, which was administered through my very first intravenous access somewhere between the time that I finally had to take my underwear off (they let you keep it on along with your assless johnny and your shoes-n-socks until the last minute) and the Moment of Insertion.

Seriously, I don't remember a thing. One minute the anesthesiologist was telling me I might feel a little sleepy, then I felt my brain pleasantly melting into the back of my head -- this, after I asked the nurse what the rapid beeping noise was and she told me it was my heartbeat and asked if I might be a little bit anxious -- and the next minute I was getting woken up by the nurse in the recovery room and asking her what train I was on.

It occurs to me that Diprivan should be sold over the counter and should come in 40-minute-subway-ride and 8-hour-airplane-flight dosages.

I was a little bit wary when the PA told me that "anything left in there before the procedure, we'll just suction it right out," but needless to say What We Aren't Awake For Can't Humiliate Us.

And I'm ashamed to say that even though I planned on celebrating my empty GI tract by filling it with only Good and Nutritious Things from here on out, the only thing I really wanted when M. escorted me out of the hospital was a toasted coconut donut. So that's what I got.

Oh, and the results were all fine. No colon cancer. No polyps. No what-have-you. Just a crazy owner.

Here we go

Which is worse:

Getting on a subway when you're not sure if your Go-Lytely has, ahem, run its course (in fact you're pretty sure it hasn't)?

Or getting a forty (okay thirty) foot camera stuck up your bum?

Make it stop?

Please?

Please Baby Lord Jesus?

I don't ever want to see my bathroom ever again.

In other news, M. just came bouncing back from the refigerator announcing how much he loves cheese slices as a snack. I can't wait to eat a cheese slice. Or my own hand.

Please send help

NOT. FUN.

Good Lord

Ruh-roh, Reorge.

Food Glorious Food

The best thing about being a starving person presented with a bowl of freshly boiled chicken broth is, in my mind, the swiftness with which one feels free to depart from societal norms, toss the spoon aside and drink directly from the bowl. Less time washing cutlery means more time on the toilet, I say.

I am my own punchline; or, 30 is the new 80

On tonight's menu we have me, sitting on the new loveseat, anxiously preparing for a colonoscopy which will take place in roughyl twelve hours. I have not eaten since breakfast - - strike that, yogurt at ten thirty - - in accordance with my colonoscopic instructions. I am dizzy, light-headed, sorrowful, angry and for some reason feeling just a lot bit paranoid. As in, everyone on the street is looking at me. I am considering the alternate explanation that they may have been staring less at me and more at the wild-eyed and panicked look on my hunger-starved face. It has occured to me more than once today, Gosh I finally know what it feels like to be a starving refugee. I've downed two of the roughly twelve, chilled glasses of Go-Lytely which await me tonight, to be consumed every ten minutes until the gallon-jug is empty, which will act as a gastrointestinal death brigade and clear the way for the forty-foot camera which awaits my bum. I've eaten exactly two-thirds of one Edy's Tangerine Flavored Fruit Ice, one-third per glass of Go-Lytely to cut down on the taste -- oh yeah, definitely tastes better chilled, thanks Pharmacist -- carefully rationed because I am fearful that the Strawberry and Raspberry Flavored ones have too much Red Dye #40, which is a no-no. If that camera sees red, I want no mistakes about it. I am also concerned that the Edy's box touts the fact that their product contains "real fruit", which could mean "real fruit bits", which are also a no-no, but I feel safe to assume that any stray bits of frozen, processed tangerine will not be mistaken by the colo-cam as anything alarming.

So now I sit here in T-shirt, boxer briefs and black socks, looking every bit the part of the octagenarian I seem to have become (last week was the Neurologist, and did I mention another one of my molars seems to be developing a dark spot?), patiently waiting for my hot pan of chicken broth dinner to cool. My stomach is already making funny noises, a full forty minutes ahead of schedule if I am to believe the Go-Lytely label. I am scared of what the evening will bring. I've suggested to

**break: glass #3**

M. that I will sleep on the new pullout sofa this evening, so as to be closer to the loo and so as not to wake him up every fifteen minutes, but the New Couch Owner in me fears that this is too risky a venture -- what if you have a dream that your Go-Lytely kicks in, and then it does, but you're still dreaming, or at least thinking you are? -- and implores me to just sleep on the dirty rug.

I will now pour my lukewarm chicken broth into a plain white bowl - - but first, Glass #4, which leaves me with no more than twenty minutes of freedom - - and sit here and eat it and whistfully yearn for the days when I was young and carefree.

Moonzilla

Dear Mouse #3,

Well, it’s been a full week now since we came home from our honeymoon in Italy, only to find cute and adorable You waiting for us in the kitchen! I must say, the look on your sleepy little mouse face peeking out from the mouse trap was priceless. Someone doesn’t have a very good poker face! I don’t think I’ll ever figure out just how you managed to squeeze yourself length-wise through the entire trap! Needless to say, you’ll be receiving a bill from me in the mail for a replacement, since you weren’t exactly in a position to be easily disposed of! LOL!!! :P

Anyways, Italy was great! Now that I’m over my jetlag, I’ve been trying to figure out how to best capture our experience there. In the interest of time and space, I thought a top ten list might suffice. Here goes!



Top Ten Tips on Honeymooning in Italy

1) Keep your accommodation expectations low. One hotel may have comfortable beds and a modernized bathroom, but an underhanded management staff and tins of liverwurst on the breakfast table. Another may have a gracious staff and a community International Tabloid table, but a perpetually damp bathroom that smells of eggs. Then again, you may strike it rich with a place like La Poesia, in Monterosso al Mare, where the beds are clean, the showers are hot, and Nicoletta gives you prosciutto and cannolis for breakfast. Or, you may get bumped out of your hotel on your last night in Rome, but upgraded to a better place with an enormous bathroom and a suspicious but memorable mirror over the bed.






2) Eat and drink a lot. As in, constantly. After the third or fourth day, a casual glance at the locals’ tables will cause you to reconsider the need to order three courses each, and you will discover creative ways to have your prosciutto and gnocchi and lamb and veal and risotto and bread and pizza and focaccia, and eat it, too. Without spending needless Euros. You will also discover the joys of table wine by the carafe. Here you should feel free to ignore the fact that most of the locals order a half-bottle of wine and stretch it out between two people over two hours. It is a sin to leave an enormous 7-Euro carafe of wine unpurchased and/or unfinished. That goes for lunchtime, too.








3) Gelato. Don’t be the six hundredth annoying person to come back from Italy gloating to anyone who will listen about having found the best Gelato in Italy. Do eat it. Every day. At least once, maybe twice. You can even call it ice cream if you want, because that’s pretty much what it is. Common decency should restrain you from taking the Midwestern Tourist route of shuffling down the middle of the street trying to keep up with your tour group whilst negotiating your foot-long cone piled with 3 quarts of multi-flavored gelato, but two or three or four scoops are perfectly acceptable.




4) Speaking of which, swear right now on your mother’s mother’s grave that you will never, under no circumstances, without exception, travel to Italy with a tour group. They are evil and should be eradicated. They push you against the wall when you’ve only had three seconds to consider Boticelli’s Birth of Venus, and they ruin your trip to the gelato store. They cut lines at every museum, and their leaders confuse and irritate you with the multicolored umbrellas and scarves-on-antennae which serve as evil tour group rallying sticks. If you are low on cash and high on cunning, however, you will learn to look vacantly at a wall or a tree while the tour guide next to you unknowingly provides you with his or her expertise on the statue or painting or ruin at hand, free of charge.




5) Museums in Rome and Florence don’t appreciate amateur photography. While the man in the Sistine Chapel may sound as though he is groaning unintelligibly in an obscure Eastern European dialect, he is actually repeating, over and over, the simple transinternational phrase, No Photo. You will find yourself first sheepishly considering that your camera flash might have contributed to the premature peeling and fading of countless frescoes. Soon thereafter you will find yourself wondering why flashless photos are also prohibited or, more confusingly, what damage a flashless photo could possibly do to a marble statue. As you pass through the museum store on the way to the exit, you will appreciate the Italian Museum Bureau’s plan to steal your Euros with postcards and prints and coffee table books full of the countless pieces of art which were unable to find their way to your memory card. Unless, of course, you acted fast and carried your camera at your hip.






6) A reframing of point 5. Italy is full of statues and paintings and columns and whatnots. All of which look famous. Many of which are not. Only the most diligent of honeymooners will take the time to check their Rick Steves guidebook to make note of each and every piece of art they encounter. That being said, only take photographs of the ones you absolutely know are famous. Sprinkled in with a few that may not be famous, but which you really, really like. But don’t bother trying to remember what they’re called. Chances are you’ll get home and upload your photos and forget what any of them are, and then you’ll type “Uffizi statue” into Google Images to try and figure it out so you can label your online photo gallery, and you’ll get 50 pages of results documenting 3.2 million other honeymooners’ perfectly captured one-of-a-kind shots of the exact same stuff you photographed, famous and otherwise.








6a. Save yourself the trouble of lugging a camera around Italy and, when you get home, go onto Google Images and steal everyone else’s photographs. Because they will quite literally be identical to the ones you took. Photoshop your faces into the foreground.




6b. Rick Steves gets things right about 2% of the time. Do not read his book in public or you will be thrown to the tour groups and scowled at.




7) Speaking of which, if Rick Steves mentions a “long tunnel” leading to a beach in Cinque Terre, what he actually means is the most terrifying experience of your honeymoon, encompassing a rusty steel door that creaks open after the scary Italian voice over the intercom mumbles “Pronto” and then slams shut behind you, leaving you alone in a tunnel full of scary alcoves and lit only by the faintest of miniscule lights. A really long tunnel. Like, a mile. Literally. Your instincts will scream at you to turn around, to get out, to not be like the stupid girl who climbs the stairs in the horror movie, but you will press onwards, mainly because you harassed your new husband to go there in the first place, and you will lie to each other about how it looks like there’s daylight just around the next corner, and then you will come to a scary abandoned camper in the middle of the tunnel, and it is at that point that you fully understand that this is where you will die, this is where the scary tunnel people will come out of their camper to slit your throats and drink your blood. You will take unrecognizable pictures of the dark tunnel ahead of and behind you, and you will know in your heart that these will be the last pictures they see when they discover your lifeless and violated body three years from now, and it is at that point that your mother will look to the heavens and gnash her teeth and wonder aloud why her son would have kept going into the tunnel, and more importantly, a tunnel to a nude beach. Then you will come to the end of the tunnel, pay your 10 Euro ransom fee to exit the tunnel, and spend exactly nine minutes on a rocky, 50-yards wide beach populated by exactly seven nudists who will not stop staring at you in an unwelcoming manner. You will take off your bathing suits and sit huddled together on your blanket with your legs crossed and, when that doesn’t make the starers stop staring, you will put your clothes back on and go back through the tunnel. Sheepishly.








8) Cinque Terre is quite possibly the most beautiful place on earth. Definitely the most beautiful place in Italy. Best of all, between the claustrophobic and dark beach tunnel and the death-defying drops along the trail between Monterosso and Vernazza, all fears will be conquered. Go here for more than two nights or you will spend the better part of the first day trying to figure out why you didn’t.










9) The Cappucin crypt in Rome is the singularly most creepy-outy thing you will ever see. Everything is bones. Walls, bones. Ceilings, bones. Chandeliers, bones. Cappucin means creepy in Italian. Evidently.






10) No trip to Italy is complete without a final one-night stop in Amsterdam, where of course your friend is generous and savvy enough to score you a surprise private champagne canal tour with a lascivious skipper and a pan full of Bitterballen. Followed by Chinese Indonesian food and, of course, a stop at Lelebelle.






11) Cats in a boat? Cats in the forum? Cats in Italy are cat-dorable?







So that’s all for now, Mouse #3. I was sorry to come home last night to find your friend Mouse #4 in a similar predicament to your own. You can only imagine the guttural shriek that erupted from somewhere beyond my bowels when his little head started moving! The emotional distress of having to dispose of yet another trap, rather than simply disposing of its contents like the pack of the package said we could, was matched only by the emotional distress of having to quadruple-bag your tiny friend in the hopes that four plastic bags would suffocate him four times as fast. I hardly slept a wink, wondering what terrifying thoughts must have been running through his tiny, half-crushed head! If it weren’t for the venomous rage I felt towards him for having traipsed his dirty little paws through my kitchen cabinets, I might have tried a little harder for a rescue-and-release on 9th Avenue. Dr. Faustus was right, you little guys really do love Swiss Miss!

You’ll notice - - or your friend will, anyways - - that the pest man was here today to seal your entryway with poisonous goo. You’ll also notice that we spent the day performing a top-to-bottom cleaning in preparation for and celebration of the arrival of our Brand New Couches. Hadn’t noticed the collection of feces you’d accumulated behind the trash can!! Let it be said now that if we catch any of your little friends sullying our freshly cleansed living space, we’ll crush your tiny fucking skulls faster than you can say Arrivederci!

Have fun in Hell!

Luv,

Groomzilla