Andrea moves on

Tropical storm Andrea is making her way towards the Carolinas. She left us with a very calm ocean yesterday. It almost looked like it was worn out from two days of thrashing and hurling pieces of wooden boats onto the shore. Speaking of which, when I see those pieces, I can't help but wonder how old they are. Do people really still go out on the open seas in wooden dingeys, only to have them smashed to bits in storms, or are these chunks of boats destroyed many years ago? My guess is the later of the two. Today, the beach was riddled with them.

The beach looked like a skating rink today. Huge and perfectly smooth. It was covered in waves for two days with Andrea's high tide. She left sand that looked like glass. As I kneeled down to pet a local's dog, he said, "Doesn't even look like the same beach, does it?" I agreed. It didn't.

The inventor of the ocean

I was walking the beach the other day, and an older gentleman came over to chat. First words out of his mouth, "Have you ever seen anything like this before?" as he pointed to the ocean. He said almost like he came up with the whole large body of water-waves-sand-shore schematic himself. I looked at him the same way Tipper must have looked at Al when he first dialed up AOL and then said, "Have you ever seen anything like this before? It's a whole new way to get porn. I invented it."

He went on to ask me what I did for a living and what I was doing in Florida. Between every question, he looked me over as if I were for sale. He never quite made it up to my face, or he would have noticed that I was looking at him like he was delusional. I explained that I was vacationing and was really very happy just to be spending some time alone (hint, hint).

Since he wasn't leaving, I said, "This must be a nice place to be retired." (Translation: I can see that you are of retirement age.)

He said, "No, I'm just a bum."

I said, "Yeah. A retired bum."

He said, "Oh, no. Just a bum. Just hanging out."

Okay, first of all, there are no bums in the town where I'm staying. This is a very wealthy area. Second, the guy was standing there in his swim trunks. I was looking right at his wrinkly old man boobs, and those suckers were telling all the ladies on the beach, "Either this guy is old, or he sells his collagen for a living."

As I was walking away, he said, "Hey, you ought to give me a call and we'll go play."

We'll go play? Did he pluck that line right out of Creepy Shit to Say to Women for Dummies? I looked at him and finally just said it. "Sir, you are way too old for me." And that was the end of our brief romance. He left me. I turned up my iPod and walked away to grieve.

When I walked back toward the pier an hour later, he was talking to a woman twice my age. She was giving him her phone number. She'll be able to go home and say that while on vacation, she went out with the inventor of the ocean. That's one lucky lady.

Greetings from Florida

I've moved on from a very brief stay in my parents' home. I'm now in Florida for the next few weeks studying for my board exam and walking on the beach. I'm not sure how often I'll get to post. I have a couple thousand online practice questions to get through. Unfortunately, none of them are about blogging. I promise that when I do write, though, I'll try to talk more about the ocean than I do about studying.

So...the ocean today was loud. Very, very loud. There were a few storms out over the water. None of them made it to land, but the resulting wind and huge waves did. I decided to brave the elements and walk the beach anyway. It was actually really beautiful to watch the huge white-capped waves breaking as far away as my little eyes could see. And, it was fascinating to watch the storms over the water. It somehow made the earth seem immense to see weather happening in front of me but too far away to be on my head.

The only other people on the beach were young guys. They spent most of their time body-surfing and woo-hooing in my general direction. Not because I'm all that. But because they could tell from my pastiness that I'm not a local, and all the local women have already told them where to stick it. Today they learned that even visitors sometimes tell them where to stick it.

Despite the Don Juans, my walk was fabulous. A great distraction from the studying I promised to try not to talk about.

And you?
How was your day?

No place like home

I'm etching this post onto stone tablets at my parent's house. "Why the stone?" you ask. Because it is actually faster than using their computer. I am in my childhood home for the first time in over 4 months, and it's a little surreal. I am the oldest of 5 children--me, 2 boys, and 2 girls.

My sisters still live here. They share a room on the top floor of this tiny house. Their room looks like Bagdhad would if we had attacked Iraq with Abercrombie clothes. The two of them plan to move out together this summer. As one of them said, "It's not that we like living together so much. It's just that we already share so many clothes, and we don't want to split them up." So, yeah, they're staying together for the sake of the low-rise jeans. Which is, after all, what that crack-pot James Dobson really meant when he talked about family values.

My brothers have both moved out. The 22 year old is living with a bunch of guys. You can follow your nose to their place. That sweet stuff you smell ain't cookies, it's he and his roommates prophylactically treating glaucoma. You can never be too careful with your eyes.

The 25 year old brother is living with his new wife about 20 minutes away. That's about as far away as the two of them will ever get from here. His wife is very into family. It is fascinating to me. It's like when I see people in National Geographic with those huge rings in their lips and think, "Isn't that just a bit much? Wouldn't it be easier to do, well, just about everything, without that thing in?" That's kind of how I feel about spending as much time as she does with her kin. But, it works for her. And I'm all about whatever works for you. As long as your not sticking rings in my lips or making me spend that much time with people I'm related to. The sister-in-law is great, though. You would love her. Sweet, bubbly, kind, good with children and animals, cute, funny, nice to my brother. All that stuff I make a half-assed attempt at being (until the inevitable migraine sets in).

All that said, it's a little weird to be here. Everything that comes out of my mouth sounds ridiculously lame because my internal editor is deleting half the subjects and all the verbs from each sentence that passes my lips. I'm the one these people worry about. The one who may not end up married, may just adopt a kid, and then raise it by herself, when she's like 40, as a single woman, in a big city, in an apartment, without a private yard, far away from her family, surrounded by friends who her family would think are misguided at best, who will help her when she's in a bind, or on call, because she'll be working, full-time. (My mother is having a series of mini strokes as I write this. Even without reading it, she senses the inevitable fall of civilization at the hands of her oldest daughter.)

My family thinks that the woman I just described shouldn't be allowed to take in a stray dog, let alone a stray kid. So, when I'm home, I try to not to mention much about anything I may want to do with any of the rest of my life. As long as we don't talk about that, or anything I'm thinking or feeling now, it all goes very smoothly.

Scrub-a-dub-dub...Terroni and Lolita in the tub

I emailed my favorite soapmaker, Melanie, a few days ago and asked her if I could write about my experience with her soap. She said, "Sure" (or something that sounded like "sure"). So, here goes...Soap ad--take 1.

Lolita and I ordered 3 bars of Just Soap from Melanie. I was a natural soaps virgin, and didn't know what to expect. Lolita had been using natural soaps for years. Her favorite soapmaker seems to have fallen into a hole in the earth, though, so she was looking for someone new. We have been using Mel's masterpiece for about a week now, and we both love it. We both had skin that was dry in some spots and oily, red, and inflamed (sexy, huh?) in others. It seems to have taken care of all of this.

Despite the rather suggestive post title, Lolita and I don't actually shower together, so I can only speak specifically about my own routine here. I use the soap everywhere. Head to toe. Including my face. I follow with some of Mel's fragrance free Hemp Avocado Olive Skin Oil on my damp skin. Again, everywhere. Including a dab on my face.

My skin has never looked better. I was a little hesitant to try the oil on my face, thinking I was going to break out, but it's been great! Lolita has had a similarly enjoyable experience with the Mel's goodies. We plan to order a whole 2 lb. loaf of Just Soap next time.

Mel has all sorts of fabulous skin care products, all of them reasonably priced. She tries all of her products on her own fickle skin, so they are great for people with allergies and sensitivities.

Before you go back to thinking about girl on girl tub scrubbing, check out her shop, Althaea, and treat yourself to some fabulous soap.

Meet Lolita

After the last post, Maria asked if we could give my roommate a blog name. I consulted said roommate. She rolled her eyes. When I told her that if she didn't come up with something I was going to name her myself, she was suddenly much more helpful. She said, "Well, I spent a brief time in college trying to get people to call me Lolita. But, it never stuck."

"Lolita it is," I said.

She likes it because if you say it in a low, sexy voice, it sounds a little dirty. She's really an old married woman. But you'd never know it with that name.

So...the roommate shall henceforth be known as Lolita.

10 interesting things...

I was tagged by Maria, and we are defining interesting very loosely here.

I started by asking my roommate, "Can you think of 10 interesting things about me?"
She said, "Ten!?! That's a lot." After thinking about it for awhile, she came up with number 1.

1. The most interesting thing about me is my roommate.

2. I was voted Most Opinionated in high school.
(I just heard the crowd gasp in shock.)
Actually, I think that they confused opinionated with sarcastic. In my opinion, they should have created a new category called Most Sarcastic and then voted for me. I may have even suggested that.

3. I once had amniotic fluid in my crotch. And I've never been pregnant.
Yeah, that was a fun day at work (see...more sarcasm).

4. I once went to a Backstreet Boys concert.
Not when they were popular. Oh, no. It's so much more pathetic than that. I went during their comeback tour. I didn't (and still don't) even know their names. My friend, J, a woman who just turned 50 this year, wanted to go. We spent all day camped out because J insisted on being in the very front row for this open admission musical masterpiece. While we waited, she taught me to knit. We made scarves for the Boys.

An hour before the show, these two little bitches came and sat down in the line in front of everyone. So, everyone stood up and rushed the door. Backstreet fans do not tolerate cutting in line. The bitches remained seated Indian style facing each other, trying to ignore the rioting crowd that was gathering rocks to stone them. I didn't even care about the Backstreet Boys, but when one of the bitches rolled her eyes at J, I lost it. I stood right in between the two of them, leaned over, and said in a real low growling voice, "Look, you little bitch, you can sit there as long as you want. But if you roll your eyes one more time, I'm going to gouge them out of your head with this knitting needle."

Apparently...I had what they refer to as Backstreet fever. I thought that meant you liked the band. Turns out, it means the band makes you want to blind people.

When we finally got in there, we were in the front row. The blond Boy reached out his hand to me, like they do for all the girls in the front. I just looked at him and shook my head no. You know how many people he'd already touched? Gross. He laughed. I'm not sure that had ever happened to him before.

5. People with large vocabularies turn me on. Vocabulary is not being used as the world's lamest euphemism here. I am acutally referring to people who know lots of words and can use them in sentences.

6. It took me 4 tries to get euphemism spelled correctly. I'm a terrible speller.

7. I had to go off of the Pill because of migraines. That's not the interesting part. The interesting part is that my booby parts fell off when I did it. I think my nose grew, though, so that makes up for it. When you ask the fellas what they look for in a date, they often say, "I'd really like a woman who's well-endowed. You know, with a huge schnoz."

8. I love vacuuming. I bought myself a new vacuum for my birthday. That's how much I love it.

9. I'm also in love with my MacBook. Madly, passionately in love with my MacBook. Love it even more than the vacuum. You know what they say, "Once you go Mac, you never go back."

10. I'm a dog person, but this summer, I bonded with a cat. An old, fat, smelly cat with bad breath and dissociative litter disease (that's a technical term for poops on the carpet).

I never, ever thought I could like a cat. I prefer my animals big, and stupid, and wagging. She is small, stupid, and scratching. But, she was my only companion, and we sweated out the summer together in the 90 degree heat in a ghetto apartment. She'd wrap herself around the back of the toilet (the coolest spot in the house) and I'd sit on the side of the bathtub and talk to her about how she was almost as good as a dog.


Susan, Ryan...consider yourselves tagged.

A severe weather warning is in effect...

Straight from the mouth of our local weather guy:
Stay away from the windows.
Because if a tornado comes, it could hit you in the head,
and cut your face, and whatnot.

I'm hiding in the bathroom.
With my pepper spray.
We'll see how tough that funnel cloud really is when I blind his ass, and kick him in the balls, and whatnot.

When you can't get your hands on some Advil

Any of you work with this woman?

Actually, I should probably ask, "Which one of you made this postcard?"

Cramps

Update

Case you don't make it to the update at the end of the It's over (the test, not the divorce) post, I'll tell you here--no court for me today. Last minute continuance filed by Ex's lawyer yesterday afternoon. I didn't even know that was possible. Sucks. But, I'm okay.

In fact, I'm having a pretty great day. It must be those good vibes you're all sending me thinking I'm in court.

Pat's bush

Roommate (that's her real name, by the way) and I were dropping something off in the administrative offices the other day when we ran into our very favorite administrative assistant, Pat. We stopped to chat, and Pat said, "Hey, ya wanna see a picture of my bush?"

There must be a little teenage boy living inside me, because the first thing I thought about was not a picture of an azalea.
I said, "Uh...what?"

She said, "Well it was just so nice and sunny yesterday, and my bush looks so good in the sun, I thought I'd take a picture." By this point, I'd figured out what kind of landscaping she was referring to, but it still struck me as hilariously funny.

Roommate, apparently, wasn't in on the joke. Damn her. Usually, she can be counted on to be amused by the same things that I am, and we can share one of those "Did you just hear what I just heard?" looks. She let me down this time, though.

So, I was all alone in the world trying to think about tortured kittens to keep from laughing. And Pat just kept going on and on about her bush.

"Here it is! I took this picture from my deck. I just love to sit out there in the spring and look at my bush."

"Oh, it's purple," Roommate said.

"Of course my bush is purple. Purple's my favorite color."

"It's gorgeous," Roommate said.

"Yeah," Pat said, "I just love it. I've been showing everyone my bush."

I count myself lucky to be among the many who now can say, "Pat showed me her bush, and it's lovely!"

It's over! (the test, not the divorce)

My exam is over! It is was my last exam of the pre-clinical portion of medical school, and I felt amazing as I walked away from it. Trekking to my car, I thought about how fast these first 2 years have gone. It feels like just last week I was looking at my first perfectly normal pathology lab slide and thinking, "I don't know, looks like a tumor to me."

We normally take our exams as a class in huge lecture halls. We have to be there 15 minutes before the exam starts so that Carol, Queen of the Test Nazis can yell at us about how important it is to be there 15 minutes before the exam. It is important, because she has a full 15 minutes of screaming to do before we can start. After the verbal thrashing, she reads this very long, very official statement that basically translates to, "If you little bastards cheat on this test, I'm going to hang you up by your toenails and beat you and then let the 1st years practice physical exams on your bruised and broken asses." In the middle of this statement, she says something about no cell phones or pagers being allowed in the testing room and then stops, puts her paper down, and waits to see if anyone has any banned electronic devices they want to pull out of their pants and fork over to a proctor.

After all this, just after we've forgotten everything we've studied for the past month, she gives us permission to write our names on our answer sheets (do this without permission and you just bought yourself another 2.5 minutes of yelling) and start the damn exam.

Today, though, I took the exam separate from the rest of the class because I had a court appointment during tomorrow's scheduled exam time. (More on the had later.) I took the exam in the campus testing center, a high-security compound where they often administer standardized national exams. They wouldn't even let me take my car keys with me into the testing room. I had to lock them in a locker and then hand the locker key to a proctor. I was understandably bummed--all that time I spent copying a months worth of notes onto my keys completely wasted.

The testing room has separate stations for each test-taker. This morning, I was the only one. A sign on the door warns you that your every move is being audio and video recorded, and there's a camera over every station. Proctors sit behind mirrored glass watching you, both on the monitors and in the flesh.

I sat down in my assigned station. I thought that since I was the only one there, I should get to choose my station, but no such luck. (Damn Test Nazi.) The Nazi stood over my shoulder and read the whole, "If you, little bastard, cheat on this test..." statement. She even stopped at the banned electronics portion, lowered her paper, and looked at me, waiting to see if I was going to pull a cell phone out of my ass. At this point, I couldn't help it--I started laughing. It all just seemed so asinine. Who the hell could cheat in here? The laughing confused her, but we pressed on. She gave me permission to write my name on my answer sheet. I nearly misspelled my last name. (Apparently, I don't work well under pressure.) She then turned my test face down in front of me and said, "Ready, go!" I was a little slow on the start because I was trying to suppress the laughter and kegal myself out of peeing my pants.

I started the test and quickly forgot I was being watched. I got to a particularly annoying question and said, "What the fu--?" I stopped myself just before the "ck" and looked up at the camera to whisper, "Sorry, protor lady." Normally, I wouldn't feel so bad, but some of these proctors are old. I mean really old. Like volunteer for the board of elections, get excited about jury duty, work as part-time Walmart greeter old. I generally try not to use the really potent curse words around the elderly. You know, out of respect.

All that said, the exam went just fine. And I was really glad to be done!


Finally, explaining that "I had a court appointment" part. I heard from the lawyer man this afternoon. He had just received notice of a last minute continuance filed by Ex's attorney. I was really pissed. I was really looking forward to being divorced this time tomorrow. I talked to lawyer man, though, and we came up with a plan of attack to get this whole thing over with sooner rather than later.

So, all that emotional upheaval this weekend for nothing? Yeah. Except, that I actually feel much better about my ability to handle all of this now. I'll revisit all of your amazingly supportive words and kind thoughts before I go to court June 20th. In the meantime, I'm reminding myself to let go of the things I can't control and focus on what I can.

All in all, this was a pretty great day for me. How was yours?

Christine Daniels, Sportswriter

Old Mike, new Christine
A column from LA Times sportswriter Mike Penner who will be taking a few weeks off and coming back as LA Times sportswriter Christine Daniels.

So...you think her readers will love her as much as they loved him?

I hope so.
There aren't enough great women sportswriters.

Studying, fuming, and preparing for a solo flight

I just read a comment from Cheryl that said, "Time for a new post. Where are you?" I'm here, I'm here! But my computer isn't. It wasn't running off of the battery and is now out for repairs. Hopefully, it will be back by early next week. For now, I'm writing from my roommate's. Truth be told, though, I may not have posted anyway. I have been busy studying for an exam I take Monday and have been spending every spare moment burning calories fuming about my family.

My divorce is finalized on Tuesday. I go to court at 9 am. There have been many court dates, but they were all pre-trial hearings, so I didn't have to go. The lawyer man took care of it for me. I have to be there Tuesday, though, for the grand finale of my marriage. I thought that it would feel kind of like that--like a grand finale, complete with fireworks. Now I'm not so sure. I think I'm just going to be exhausted. I'm sort of exhausted just thinking about it.

I haven't seen the prince-not-so-charming since the restraining order hearing this summer. My parents were with me at the time in case they had to testify about all the sick and twisted shit he said to them after I left him. The whole thing was extremely embarrassing. Mr. Ex sent me 78 emails after I left, some of them disgustingly sexual. These were photocopied as part of the evidence, and by the time we got to the hearing, dozens of people--the civil mediator's office, the prosecutor's office, legal aid, his attorney, my parents--knew about them. I felt like I was on a Springer episode.

The day of that hearing was one of the most stressful days of my life. At one point, his lawyer threatened to question me on the stand in front my parents about my sex life. When I said, "Bring it on," he backed down. I will never forget how that felt. He was going to ask me about things that were completely untrue, but I didn't even want to go there. I wasn't thinking, "Bring it on." I was thinking, "Somebody just fucking shoot me."

What the hell does this have to do with my current fuming about my family? Well, completely immature as it may sound, I'm more than a little pissed that not a single one of the six of them has offered to be with me on Tuesday. I am not going to ask them because this is, above all else, my mess. I have no place asking them to take a day off work and drive 2 hours for a what will hopefully be just a 10 minute hearing. I'm an adult. And I'm capable of handling this (she says, trying to convince herself). Plus, they spent the summer treating me kind of like I was going to break in two if they didn't hold on for dear life. I don't want to start that again. (Does all this sound a little contradictory? It should, because my feelings are nothing if not ambivalent.) The sight of my roommate sends the ex straight to Rageville, so she is definitely not coming. And, as far as other friends go, there is an exam at school that day (the one I'm taking Monday), so they are out.

So...Tuesday will be a solo flight. In some ways, this will be a good thing. It will be good for the prince-not-so-charming to see me standing on my own two feet, not propped up by the loved ones, as I officially dump his ass. Unless he sees it as an opportunity to approach me after. Just in case, the lawyer will walk me to my car, a copy of the restraining order will be in the glove box, my emergency overnight bag packed in the trunk, my cell phone charged, my pepper spray peppered. It will feel a bit like my summer all over again, even if everything does go off without a hitch in this getting unhitched.


Well, that's what I've been thinking about. That, and reproductive physiology, the subject of my exam. Those last 82 paragraphs of emotional baggage and verbal diarrhea oughta serve as a warning--be careful what you ask for, Cheryl.
Thanks for reading.

Play bingo with Phil Spector tonight at 8

I thought about this post while I was in the shower. So...if you read it and it sucks, I suggest you print a copy, put it in some kind of waterproof sleeve, and try it again in the shower. It will probably sound much better with those great bathroom acoustics. Plus, what the hell else have you got to do in there?


I read an article in SF Gate today about the debate over cameras in the courtroom. This debate has experienced a rebirth as the murder trial of record producer Phil Spector starts today--a trial that will be televised on Court TV. I, for one, think that cameras in the courtroom are a bad idea. Not because they may interfere with justice (who are we kidding, that woman is blindfolded with cheesecloth) but because they make for bad TV. People who can afford televisions already spend entirely too much time sitting in front of them watching utterly useless crap, and this only adds to the cesspool.

It's almost as bad as the new bingo game that will soon be on prime time. Bingo, a game that is too boring to play outside of nursing homes and catholic church basements, will now be taped for your viewing pleasure.

Who on earth thought this would make a good spectator sport?

The TV gods, that's who. They realized that people have entirely too much spare time on their hands (time they could be spending reading my blog in the shower, by the way). The TV gods noticed that Who Wants to Be a Millionaire has been on for over 60 seasons now, and they realized that people will watch anything.

I can hear them now:

TV god 1: Hey, I've got an idea, let's videotape people playing bingo and then put it in a prime time spot right in between that British nanny with her naughty chair and Howie Mandel with his Mr. Clean earrings.

TV god 2: That's the stupidest fucking idea I've ever heard.

TV god 1: Listen, dude, these idiots watch Meredith Viera ask poorly dressed accountants from Idaho questions about the pyramids. They'll watch anything.

TV god 2: Yeah, did you see that one last week with the lady from Tennessee? I really thought she was going to win the million. That's what happens when you use your life-lines too early, though. You don't have anyone to help you with the hard ones.

TV god 1: So...that's a go on the bingo, then?


The moment they televise traffic court and solitaire, I'm throwing out that damn TV.