Concrete Jungle Where Dreams Are Made

this year i thought it would be very exciting and glamorous for aaron and i to take a whirlwind weekend trip to new york city for our third anniversary. we had a good time covering every street and alley of manhattan on bike and/or foot, mostly in the rain, sat in on freud's last session which fantastically satiated our collective good humor and intellect, toasted our fate over authentic italian, and wandered into serendipity, a stuffy glittery hole-in-the-wall fit only for the mad hatter's tea party. however, i clearly watch too much how i met your mother, listen to too much howard stern, and dance around to too much jay-z. new york city is awful. how do people live their lives going from one sardine can (their apartments) to the next (the street) to the next (the subway)? here is a small sampling of the reasons i will never return:

concrete, bricks, and other conglomerations. at any given moment in new york, you are surrounded in at least three directions by hard, solid rock. more if you take the tube. i am convinced that if you dare to wear a hat -- which incidentally no one does -- you will never see the sky at all. also, go ahead and write off ever feeling the grass between your toes, and also probably ever seeing your toes again. i did get one rare poetic shot though. . .

the smell. exhaust fumes. dead fish. horse's ass. pick your poison. side note: and speaking of dead horse, when we were passing through central park, we came across a group of protestors with very graphic signs depicting a dead horse on a sidewalk. the protestors did not communicate very effectively, because i thought the horse in question spooked, someone tased it, and it died. but aaron thought the horse was electrocuted from the tailpipe of the car in front of him and died. at any rate, his blood is apparently on our hands and we should be ashamed and outraged. i'm not sure how the people in the horse-drawn carriage riding by the carnage felt. . .

taxi cabs. although taxis provide a ubiquitous and much-needed source of color, they are good for little else. they're scary, rude and apparently have an elaborate system of honks that they pass along in a never ending game of telephone as they whoosh through the streets. and as aaron pointed out to me, rudeness is just a way of life for new yorkers. it's not like they walk around pissed off all the time, they just don't know any better. thanks mom and dad for raising me to believe that hospitality is the norm and you don't need a reason to smile.

the new york yankees. what a bunch of self-important jerks -- an issue obviously shared by new yorkers who, as previously noted, essentially live their lives in a series of sardine cans. it's a mystery. unfortunately, there is not a single piece of mets paraphernalia on the entire island of manhattan, but i cheered for them anyway. they impressed for all of one entire inning, thankfully saving me from the ass-kicking of my life from the large and rabid yankee fan sitting in front of me and giving me dirty looks. luckily i was distracted by a five gallon bucket of popcorn for the rest of the game while the yankees ran away with the lead via four home runs. best part of the subway series: the dude behind me in the beer line was a clemson grad, who confirmed to aaron that it is absolutely essential as a true fan to acquire a new clemson hat and clemson t-shirt every football season and fist-bumped him for his compliance. go tigers!

skinny jeans. what a disgusting trend. and you no longer need a fanny pack and camera around your neck to scream tourist! in new york city -- flare jeans, flip-flops and a smile are a dead give-away. it doesn't matter your shape, size or sexual orientation, toast point legs are IN and in nyc you have no choice but to own it. not this big booty judy though . . . i retain my right to be comfortable and unashamedly unfashionable.

the nypd. there are police lurking everywhere in the city. there are so many that they don't even acknowledge each other when they pass on the street. on a positive note, they don't appear to actually be doing anything. also, they are presumably worried about people who commit actual crimes, rather than, for example, setting off fireworks in the city limits after a rainstorm. still, who needs that oversight?

there are a few great things about new york. for example, there is a starbucks every 10 yards, full of happy, friendly, competent and efficient people who want you to drink coffee ASAMFP. street food and the ukrainian cafe serving borscht and blini at your command 24 hours a day. also, purple hydrangeas -- like the ones i had in my wedding bouquet -- were blooming in flower boxes in front of huge skyscrapers. robin quivers was presumably wandering around somewhere and i could have run into her at any moment.

anyway, it was a good experiment. i am glad to be home. here's to another fifty years of big sky and open space, aaron ruda -- i love you!

blue skies, setting sun. cherry pies, bubble gum. lullabyes, come undone. blue skies for everyone.
{bob schneider}

Enter Pecans McWalnutson

when i have time to breathe, i like to try to remember what 2010 was like. i spent 41 1/2 of 52 weeks of 2010 growing and incubating another human being inside my uterus. (but only 1 of 52 weeks getting that process started ;) it is hard to believe that six months and eighteen days ago, i was forty pounds up and P was happily whirling around in the dark, without any idea of the carrots and chocolate icing that awaited him today. for those of you who missed out on the day-to-day joy ... here is a small sampling of my very own fact or fiction:

#1 you can buy the unscented kind. false. everything has a smell of some sort and that smell is vomit-inducing. is it okay to avoid washing your hair for the entire first trimester? to pass down an edict on your assistant that there is to be NO ripe cantaloupe in the office? to ask strangers to pump your gasoline? people will make a lot of exceptions for pregnant ladies, but you have to draw the line somewhere. plus, no one has yet attempted, at least not to my knowledge, unscented mexican food.

#2 pregnancy is the most beautiful and glorious time of your life. false and false. interesting, yes. miraculous, yes. glorious . . .uh, no. remember the extra 40 pounds? add a few uncontrollable and unexplainable emotional breakdowns, a big dark manly stray hair in a very visible and completely unacceptable location, and a constant pressure on your bladder and see how glorious you feel.

there is an additional layer of falsity in that the nine-month pregnancy is a big myth. i was pregnant approximately 287 days, give or take 24 to 48 hours. (yes, that is how accurate the measurements get). with 30.41666666666 days per month in a non-leap year, i was actually pregnant 9.52 months. to add insult to injury, most people assume that after 4 weeks, one month has passed. according to this (faulty but widely-used and easily-applied) method, i was pregnant for 10.25 months.

#3 it will get better once xy and z happens. false. sure, eventually your sense of smell tones down and you can begin to moisturize again -- thankfully just in time for the real expanding to begin -- but also just in time for you to develop a debilitating reaction to dairy products (which incidentally prior to pregnancy constituted 3/4 of your diet). okay so maybe you reach the point where people can tell you have a little pregnant baby belly and don't just think you've had too many late night french fries anymore -- definitely a plus in terms of door-holding, grocery-carrying, restaurant-choosing, etc. -- but right about that time you realize that your plan to just be a cute pregnant person in loose airy sundresses all summer is out the window because you could be mistaken for dumbo from the knees down. you eventually regain the ability to eat again, but you don't want to risk the unbelievable heartburn. oh and "once you have the baby, you'll go right back to normal." sure. see #4 for more exciting details.

#4 after you squeeze the baby out of your hoo-ha, you're going to bleed like a stuck pig. true, unfortunately. specifically, my mom alerted me to blood clots the size of a dinner plate. first, that is REALLY big. P wasn't even the size of a dinner plate. second, this is a weird comparison that made me second-guess the whole miracle of life video we watched in mrs. j's 10th grade biology class and consider that maybe the new baby is just deposited out of your hoo-ha by a saucer-shaped UFO with friendly three-eyed green dudes waving you off into your new life. at any rate, thank you to those who gave me the friendly warning.

also, unthank you to those of you who forgot to mention the giant disposable mesh granny panties. although admittedly, this is the only reasonable solution to problem #1, so perhaps this was an open and obvious condition of which there was no duty to warn or protect.

#5 it will never be the same. true. this is especially apparent to me as i break into a full-body version of silly kindergarden/camp songs a la do your ears hang low? do they wobble to and fro? and bananas unite! bananas split! or most recently, when i tell P a bedtime story i made up as i go along, about a squirrel named pecans mcwalnutson who wants a shiny new green bicycle sooo badly. naturally, he gets on the internet and applies for a credit card so he could get what he wants right now. i then spent the next 2 nights attempting to correct my poor choice on night 1 by explaining all the industrious things pecans did with his bicycle to earn money to pay off his credit card before incurring too much interest and fees. i guess pecans and i both will be learning it as we go . . .

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

i was lazily flipping through our 5 channels last night and came across a breaking news story: osama bin laden is dead. of course, i immediately consult with the internet (strike one) via wikipedia (collaborative writing by anonymous internet volunteers: strike two) to confirm that osama bin laden did in fact die on or about april 24, 2011, which death was reported by the mass media on may 1, 2011. the internet also stated that the u.s. government was in possession of bin laden's "corpse." this time, i am declining to preserve precious space on the internet and choosing instead to offer my comments.

anyone else dies, it's a "body" or "remains." a terrorist leader dies, it's a corpse. also, why does the u.s. government think it's okay to take possession of said corpse? leave him where he belongs. let's not risk the possibility that jihad is contagious. (go ahead and laugh; i guarantee you some university student is researching the genetics of extremism as i type.) also i hope no foreign government will risk the monumental hex i am preparing in anticipation of this possibility and will leave me where i belong when i am gunned down by a tranvestite weilding an automatic weapon. (long story.)

today, of course, the story has changed. the u.s. government, probably confronted with criticisms set forth above, now claims it has disposed of the remains in accordance with the muslim tradition of interring a body within 24 hours of the death. i don't know anything about muslim tradition in general, or muslim funerals specifically, but i'm pretty sure it does not encompass pushing a corpse, weighted down with cinderblocks, out of the plane on your way over the pacific ocean.

to add icing to the cake, the illustrious president obama then got on the tv to make sure the world knew that he, personally, is responsible for bin laden's death. right. if "personal responsibility" means he got a message handed to him advising of same during the first 9 holes of obama's weekly golf game (apparently cutting the game short), then okay obama, YOU DID IT! YOU SAVED AMERICA! except wait ... his speech continues to assure us that the war on terror is not over. in fact, far from it.

and terrorists rest assured that if obama continues to devote a significant portion of americans' hard earned money exclusively to finding and destroying you for an entire decade, he will find you. #1 like terrorists give two shits if we find them. they want to be found, and then martyred for their cause. that is the whole problem with those nutcases. and #2, even i, a non-terrorist, would be tempted to commit some violent crimes against unnamed (although deserving) persons nearer the end of my life if i knew i had ten years of freedom before the authorities caught up with me. ugly ex-girlfriends and coldwell-banker property management, watch your back.

i am frustrated with the media's intensity and sensationalism of otherwise unnoteworthy events a la the current tally of tiger woods' mistresses and the idiots who voluntarily participated in a ridiculous sweat lodge ceremony while dehydrated and malnourished in their quest for spiritual strength and brett favre's (repeated) struggle with retirement. yesterday's breaking news also reeks of falsity and hopes of re-election. so i thought, if everyone else can do it, why not me? thus, aaron and i have decided that we are going to capture a terrorist this week. (i think it will be this guy: he has the longest name on the FBI's most wanted terrorist list at muhammad abdullah khalil hussain ar-rayayyal, and seems like a good choice as he has far eluded authorities for more than the 10-year window of safety obama has informed terrorists they can expect.) we will then hold a press conference, complete with claims of DNA identity confirmation and grainy photographic evidence of the offender a la the georgia big foot hoax. we will then announce that aaron's bike shop, sultana cycles, is personally responsible for the capture. and if you hate terrorism and/or love america, you will come purchase a bike to show your support. then we will have all we need to escape what is soon to be the third-world country: the US of A.

in sum, i <3 propaganda and brute force. that's how crimes against humanity happen. get there, america.

p.s. big thank you to the onion, which has commemorated bin laden's death with all the glory and sarcasm it deserves, noting among other things the "terrific news" of the violent death of a human being, and reminding me that there is still hope.