Riding coach with PK

Hello again!

In keeping up with my merry self-deprecating elf of a sister, here's a third installment in the PK Q&A series.

For those of you new to Lance. I'll recap.

In June, my sister PK arrived in St. Petersburg, Fla. without her Pantene Pro-V anti-frizz hair serum, and a viral Leona Lewis song stuck in her head.

By August, she had a roommate and two jobs - a nine-fiver at a highfalutin Sarasota preschool and a night gig at an Italian restaurant.

Since then she's gotten her own apartment in Sarasota with a washer, a dryer, a $400 couch and nothing else. She lives alone and without cable TV. On weekends I drive down from St. Pete to grab hash browns and omelets with her at the Waffle Stop diner.

We just returned from the hinterlands of Western New York, where we celebrated Christmas with our family, and shocked the bejesus out of my father with a surprise 50th birthday party at the North Collins Senior Citizen Center.

(Hello Aunt Karyn! Hello Rebecca! Thank you, Erik for your handwritten Christmas card. It's stuck to our fridge with a Led Zeppelin magnet. Dad, I'm sorry I bitched about your dial-up Internet. Mom, I'm sorry I bitched about North Collins' lack of modern conveniences. Heelya, I'm sorry I bitched about bridesmaid dresses. I promised you all shout-outs, or in some cases, apologies. Nana & Papa: I have a post brewing in your honor. It involves a Cadillac, men's underwear, and a girl named Vicky.)

But enough about that. My third interview with PK took place on a Southwest Airlines flight from Buffalo to Tampa. The guy sitting next to us got an earful, but to keep him happy I slid the latest issue of GQ - the one with Jennifer Aniston naked on the cover - into the magazine compartment in front of my seat.

--

What are your airplane pet peeves?

PK: As in in the airplane? The airport? Or overall?

In the airplane.

My feet don't touch the ground and they fall asleep.

Who is the ideal person to be sitting next to in an airplane?

Generally someone who doesn't want to talk because I like to sleep. I don't want to feel the need to make small talk.

If you could sit next to any famous person on an airplane, who would it be?

A male dancer from Thunder From Down Under.

Do you think he'll drop trou mid-flight?

Maybe in the bathroom.

Why don't you eat your airplane snacks?

I'm not hungry.

But they're free.

You appreciate my snacks more. You get excited when I give them to you.

That's true. How would you describe your trip back home this Christmas?

Bittersweet.

How so?

It's nice to have so many people around that know you well. You don't constantly feel the need to explain where you're coming from. I miss that. But it's nice to feel independent. I know I'm going back to my own place. Do you know what I mean? I look at (North Collins) and I think, there's nothing there for me besides my friends and family.

But that's all you need, beyotch!

I agree. But I think ... how do I word it? It's hard to explain. It's weird talking to my good friends and they're talking about people I graduated with or other people I went to school with and the things they're doing and I'm sort of glad I got out of there. I mean to be able to say, I experienced things.

Snob.

I was stuck in a rut.

What do you miss the most about home?

Weird things, like being able to, in the middle of the day while Dad's at work, go out for lunch with Mom, or meet up with Holly. I constantly knew I had someone to do something with ... when I had free time.

Do you have people to do stuff with in Sarasota?

Yeah, I guess more so now. But it's always me making the effort. All you need is someone to be there to talk to. It used to be I would call George (her best friend in North Collins) and she'd be like, 'sure. I'll be right over.' People are a lot less empathetic in Florida. Is that the word I'm looking for? I've come to learn that people are less attached to their friends.

Isn't that just called growing up?

It probably has something to do with that.

This was your first trip home since you moved away seven months ago. What was the first thing you noticed about the parent's place when you walked in?

Everything looks so dark and wood-like. In Florida it's all cool colors and tile. Back home everything is dark, warm colors and wood. Mom Nana-fied our bedrooms. I get a kick out of how I slept in a twin-sized bed for 22 years. I move out and it becomes a full - with a plush pillow-top mattress.

Do you like what Mom did to your room?

It looks very nice, it's just very ... it's the same thing she did to your room. They've become guest bedrooms.

Did you feel like a guest?

A bit. Until Mom said, 'why don't you vacuum?' And we got in a fight over a can opener. Then it was like I never left.

Did you vacuum?

Yes, only the bedroom though. She told me I could stop.

Did the can opener fight get resolved?

Oh my God. I was going to wrap my white elephant gift for Nana's, and Mom said to Dad, 'Look what she's giving away? These nice mugs and an electric can opener? I struggle with my can opener every day, and she's just giving this good one away?' Things got heated and eventually I offered it to her, but she refused to keep it because she said it would remind her of this argument. It blew up into her saying how everything is given to me and how nothing is ever good enough. I said, 'Mom, that has nothing to do with it. I just like crank can openers.'

But she took the can opener. I saw her opening a can of corn on Christmas.

I refused to wrap it. On Christmas she was ranting and raving about how it cuts like butter.

What does your apartment in Sarasota look like?

It's barren. I've been told it looks like I got robbed.

Yet you invested in a grown-up sofa from a fancy furniture store?

Yes, it's my prized possession. I lint roll it once every two days.

Are you ever going to put out the rug I gave you?

Not until I get a kitchen table.

When are you getting a kitchen table?

Not until I look around for a good deal.

When are you going to get cable?

I plan on getting cable in January to start the new year, but I might put if off one more month. I sort of got my fix at Mom and Dad's. There's nothing wrong with watching Legends of the Fall for the 9th time.

Your TV gets an analog signal. You know you're going to have to get a converter box when cable goes digital next month.

Wait ... wait ... I've got an itch. On my shoulder blades.

I got it.

No ... to the left. I mean right ...

What cool rigamarole did you get for Christmas?

My America's Next Top Model pajamas are cool, even though Dad says they're too sexy for a single girl to be wearing. I say, even more reason to wear them. No one is going to see me in them.

Do people in Buffalo tell you your blood has thinned in Florida? I get that a lot.

Yeah, God forbid you complain about six-degree weather. Suddenly you've got thin blood and brittle bones.

Brittle bones? Do people in Buffalo have thick bones?

Apparently.

You didn't check your ice skates on the plane because of the blades, right?

That would be correct. I also didn't want my ice skates getting whipped out at security - like, 'whose are these?' I wouldn't want to claim them even though they're $600 skates.

Why are you ashamed of your skates?

I'm just ashamed of the smell. They have a pungent odor from my sweat.

You could have brought your flute on the plane.

Probably not. It could be used as a club.

What's your theory behind Buffalo zits? I see you've gotten a few.

Let me tell you. I haven't broken out this rapidly and this profusely in a long time. My theory? I think there are a few things that play into it. A.) The lack of sunshine. B.) The well water. C.) The stress of our family.

Do you think you'll move back home?

Not at this point in my life. I'm sort of like in between. I feel like I don't know what I'm doing. There are days I think I want to live in a foreign country and there are days I want to move home.

What if you meet a man?

I don't think I'm going to meet a Florida man. They're not my type.

Joe's a Florida man.

He's a rare find.

--

PS. Yes, the couch pictured above is PK's most prized possession.

Roadkill takeout an economic fallout?

What better way to follow up that last ooey - gooey post than with this road kill story - a story that comes courtesy of my hometown newspaper, The Hamburg Sun, where I interned as a 16-year-old under Felice Krycia, the woman whose byline is on this article.

As a kid I frequented this China King in Hamburg, NY. My best friend's mother ordered takeout from them on what seemed like a weekly basis.

As a pseudo-vegetarian, the story makes me cringe. As a reporter from Western New York, it pleases me to share with you a roadkill headline.

Dead deer are a dime a dozen in Western New York.

Once, when the rival basketball team from Eden, NY wanted to piss off our basketball team, they stuck a severed deer head on the cheerleader bus. Whenever a high school boy shot a buck in the woods, the faculty gnawed on venison for weeks.

Our neighbors at the end of Thiel Road liked to bleed their deer from the front porch of their two-story home.

You get the picture.

On that note, bon appetit!
--

(Story courtesy of The Hamburg Sun.)

China King restaurant shut down after dead deer found in kitchen
By FELICE E. KRYCIA

It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but butchering a dead deer on the floor of a restaurant kitchen is just something you don’t do.

According to Town of Hamburg Police, they received a call about 9 a.m last Friday (Oct. 24) that a dead deer was being dragged in through the front door of the China King restaurant, located in the Big Lots Plaza at 5999 South Park Ave. in Hamburg.

When Officer Joseph Kleinfelder arrived at the scene, he located drag and blood marks from the woods on the south side of China King to the front door.

He then followed them into the restaurant through the dining room and into the kitchen, where the suspect, Tin Chun Cheung, was attempting to remove the head of a female deer on the floor between the sink and the center food prep table of the restaurant.

The deer’s legs had already been removed from the body and placed in the kitchen sink, Hamburg Police Captain A. Daniel Shea said.

“Officer Kleinfelder followed the trail right into the kitchen and saw the man bent over the deer trying to cut through its neck,” said Shea.

According to police, Cheung said he had found the deer dead in the parking lot and was going to take this meat home for his family. He went on to say he had no intention of leaving the meat in the restaurant.

The Erie County Health Department and the state Environment and Conservation Department were called in and along with the violation of a dead animal in the business, they found the walk-in-cooler was too warm and all the food inside it needed to be removed and destroyed.

Cheung was also charged with unlawful possession of wildlife, a violation of the NYS ENCON law. The Health Department then ordered the business to be shut down until all the evidence on this incident had been presented and a determination made by Erie County Commissioner of Health Dr. Anthony J. Billittier IV.

The determination was expected to be handed down Wednesday (Oct. 29), which is after The Sun had already gone to press.

This ruling will outline what Cheung must repair and do to the building before the Health Department will allow it to reopen.

“They will have to repair or replace the walk-in-cooler and have the entire building sanitized,” said Erie County Health Department Public Information Officer Kevin Montgomery. “Once all the issues are addressed, inspectors will be sent to check all aspects of the restaurant and then a determination will be made on if they may reopen.”

The deer, which had been struck by a vehicle earlier that day had reportedly fled into the woods, was disposed of under the direction of the county’s Health Department.

For a video of this story, click here.
--

PS. Happy birthday to Ro, my beloved best friend, who enjoys stories like this more than I do. I would be a sorry, humorless sack without you.

I fell for him dressed as Courtney Love

It was a blip of a moment in an overly air-conditioned bedroom.

Joe was wearing a souvenir alien T-shirt from Area 51. I was wearing his heaviest red sweater. We both had our glasses on, which doesn't happen often because Joe hates wearing his glasses. He says they make him dizzy.

I was about to embark on a solo road trip from Sarasota, Florida. to Bandon Beach, Oregon, which Joe ever so delicately suggested I return from.

Stubborn, fiercely independent, and at times straight-up flighty, I couldn't promise him that. At least not in the beginning.

The first time we met, I was standing by the Pac-Man game at a bar in St. Pete, drinking Miller Lite and making good on a dare by pole dance around a fat oak beam.

When he asked me about myself, I told him how my family had installed a corn-burning furnace in the basement of their Western New York home, and how when it burned, the whole house smelled like Orville Redenbacher's.

The second time we met, I told him I was outta here, that I was moving to Oregon or Idaho or Montana. I told him I was writing a book about a girl who spends her days righting ordinary wrongs, who makes a living on a ranch and sleeps in a hayloft that smells like manure and maple syrup.

"I have to live if I want to write it," I said nonchalantly.

We were at a birthday party in Sarasota, at a bar with a punching bag. I was dressed as Courtney Love - pink baby doll dress, combat boots, mascara smudges, the whole getup. The theme was "high school flashback," and I was never so happy to resurrect the 90s. A 1993 graduate of an all-boys Jesuit high school in Tampa, Joe was wearing a too-tiny suit and tie that made him look like Ben Stiller.

I told him I was reading a memoir by Mary Karr that was written like none other I'd read before. He asked me if my novel would be a memoir and I replied that it was pompous to write a memoir at the age of 25.

"Not that what I'm writing isn't mostly true anway," I conceded.

I was chugging too many Miller Lites, filming the party for my roommate Zac, confessing on camera in a slurred lisp that I was fed-up with doing his dishes.

Joe drove me home that night in his blue Honda Accord. Unlike most of the cars that belonged to people I knew, his was immaculate.

We went back to our friends, Max and Meredith's house - a beach cottage - where we drank some more, played games and ate leftover pasta from the fridge. Joe heated up a bowl of bow tie macaroni with red sauce, and in between rounds of (was it Taboo?) he offered me several spoonfuls, which I found comforting.

As we sat there on the steps leading into Max and Meredith's 10-by-10 living room, our knees touched. Joe was still dressed in his Jesuit uniform. I was still dressed as Courtney Love. Spooning noodles out of his bowl and into my mouth, it was as if I had slopped off his plate for years.

When he walked outside to have a cigarette, I stumbled out of the living room with my roommate and left. It was late and I was tired.

The third time I saw him we were on an actual date. At the urging of my roommate, who had observed our Lady and the Tramp pasta moment, I went ahead and asked Max for Joe's phone number.

"Tell me he's not one of those too-nice, sappy guys," I said.

"No, but he's not an asshole either if that's what you're asking," Max replied.

For four days his number sat untouched. Written on a Post-It note and stuck to a cardboard-box-night stand by my bed, I agonized over making the first move. I was nervous. Feeling sheepish. Feeling like perhaps I drank too much that night, or that I had left coldly without saying goodbye.

When I finally called, he answered on the second ring. He knew right away who I was and why I was calling. He fired off date plans like a semi-automatic pistol, as I joked that simply willing your phone to dial on its own never works.

"Lucky for you, you picked up on the second ring," I said. "I probably would have hung up on the third."

Yes, I had bigger balls in 8th grade, but I was hellbent on moving to Oregon, or Idaho, or Montana. If the way we shared pasta were any indication of things to come, Oregon, Idaho, Montana - all of it - would scarcely measure up.

However, none of these moments were as compelling as the one I mentioned earlier that came two months later, a week before my Jack Kerouac-ian gallivant across the country.

We were lying on his bed - Joe in his souvenir alien T-shirt, me in his heaviest red sweater, and the pug curled up like a Roman snail beside us.

He was questioning my blind love for the Dakotas. I was romanticizing The Badlands. Reaching around my side, he kissed me somewhere near my armpit and said, "If your body were the United States, this would be South Dakota."

Though not in agreement, I let him go on.

Next, he kissed my elbow. Called it Iowa. Then my wrist. Called it Missouri. My spine - Oregon. And on it went. Lazily, languidly, and with no regard for geographic accuracy, he mapped out my road trip with kisses.

When he finally reached my lips, our glasses clanked together like timpani drums.

He didn't say it, but I knew. In that overly air-conditioned bedroom, in that heavy red sweater, in our similarly prescribed eyeglasses, his lips were home.

--

PS. Joe proposed last week. I said yes.

On being rescued.

My father taught me how to swim. 

I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, and it was in a kidney shaped inground pool in Myrtle Beach, S.C. It had a water slide and a rock waterfall. 

My father and I were in the shallow end, and I wasn't wearing arm floaties. He instructed me to swim to him, and I paddled like a hatched turtle into his arms.

"Faster. Faster," he said. "Lift your arms higher. Keep your mouth closed. Don't drink the water goddammit!"

And I paddled faster and lifted my arms higher and didn't drink the water.

Once, when he wasn't looking, I decided to swim across the pool, to the water slide where older children were clambering up the stairs and plunging into the deep end. Kicking off the concrete wall, I embarked on what felt like an epic journey, but about midway through I panicked, stretched my toes to touch the bottom and gulped a good cups worth of pool water.  For all the big-footed teasing I endured as a child, the big toes on my giant embarrassing feet would not touch the bottom.

For what seemed like years, I flailed my arms, gurgled chlorine and cried hot salty tears, a bold 5-year-old buckling halfway through her shitty plan. I remember clearly the stab of failure. It tasted like phlegm and chemicals. 

I don't recall if I cried for help or if someone else in the pool alerted my father of the blonde child without arm floaties taking in water faster than the Titanic. But when he came to get me, I remember he grabbed me under the arm pits and pulled me to the side of the pool, where I coughed sweet relief that hurt coming up.

I called my dad yesterday to ask him if he remembered this incident.  

"You saved my life," I said.

"That's what they pay me for," he replied. 

"But do you remember it?" I asked.

"You almost drowning? Nah," he said. "I remember teaching you girls how to swim in Myrtle Beach, but I don't remember a thing like that."

"I'm sure I wasn't drowning. I mean it felt like I was drowning, but it probably wasn't as big a deal to you as it was to me." 

"I tell you what," my dad said. "Same thing happened to me when I was about 6 years old. I was swimming in Lake Erie with David Koch and for whatever reason I started taking in water."

"Who rescued you?"

"David Koch. Pulled me right up out of the water."

"Do you remember it vividly?"

"You don't forget something like that," my dad said. "I remember it like it happened yesterday. Scared the shit out of me."

--

PS. The picture above is of me without arm floaties. I'm on the offending water slide in Myrtle Beach, S.C. My father is waiting to catch me at the bottom.  

Luck, faith and benevolent Canadians.

Glorious sleep. Glorious, frothy dream-filled sleep! Keep it coming, Mr. Sandman.

After spending both September and October fending off nightmares, I'm thrilled to report that November has been less cruel to my fretful unconscious.

Employed as a nanny for seven sniveling children, I would dream horrible things. Dreams that would wake me in the middle of the night and cause my head grief the following morning.

In one month I pounded an entire bottle of Advil.

Mostly, I had nightmares about the woman I worked for - the stay-at-home mother-of-seven, who spent her days in spandex exercise gear, scribbling grocery lists on the back of her kids' stick figure drawings, rattling off demands hurriedly and with a tight, cold scowl that pulled her tanning-bed skin into a kind of leather hide that reminded me of the bottom of moccasins that sell for nine bucks on Indian reservations.

The Friday before Joe and I closed on our house, Wall Street collapsed and our pre-approved mortgage was almost denied. Why? Because I quit my job as a staff writer at a newspaper so I could freelance from St. Pete and moonlight as Mr. Belvedere for one humiliating month.

The day the mortgage broker called to tell me my career switcheroo was about to cost us our house, I calmly provided him the name and number of my new spandexed employer, swallowed two Xanax and rehearsed between snot-sucking sobs, how I would break the news to Joe.

Later that day, while doped up on anti-anxiety medication, the mortgage broker called to tell me to breathe. He would use the jaws of life to secure our loan. Staff writer or disgruntled nanny, he'd find a way to approve our mortgage, of course not without first using the phrase, "by the skin of your teeth."

When we closed Oct. 3, and the subject of my employment came up, the woman who owns the title company kicked me under the table, and without making eye contact said to Joe and I, "If anything has changed with anyone's employment situation, please by all means don't tell me."

I never stopped writing for the newspaper. Juggling both jobs, I banked my Belvedere money for furniture and scribbled notes at night about how the protagonist in my novel would never be a nanny, because to subject her to such tyranny would be to limit the depths of her character.

Four years of college and four more years of reporting and here I was, folding some woman's thong underwear into a silk square smaller than a postage stamp. One night, while putting her children to bed, the 6-year-old turned to me and snapped, "You use a lot of big words for a first-time babysitter. What are you a scientist or something?"

"Well," I replied. "Before I was your babysitter, I was a reporter. My job was to write stories for the newspaper."

"Like the St. Pete times?" She asked.

"Not quite," I said. "But something like that."

Two weeks later, on a Wednesday afternoon in mid-October, after Joe had assembled my new pine desk and we'd scheduled our first trip to Ikea, the spandexed mother-of-seven fired me.

Who would have thought that in these piss-poor economic times that getting shit-canned would feel so good?

I started this post weeks ago. At first it began like: "She was a straight up rich bitch, who despised me for reasons I'll never know. She fired me because she claimed I couldn't be trusted with her children ..."

And you know what? I deleted the whole sour-pussed rant. The world is too hopeful right now to mop up my absence on this blog with negativity. The last headache I had was the result of two glasses of champagne, consumed Tuesday night during Barack Obama's acceptance speech. So in the spirit of optimism, I'll spare you the tirade and leave you with a story about luck, faith and benevolent Canadians.

I've always thought lucky pennies were underrated. If you're like me, when you find a lucky penny you forget to note which side is facing up when you pick it up.

As children we're taught (perhaps by grandparents or big-fannied aunts) that pennies are lucky. That when we find one we should pocket it. Forget the fact that Lucky Penny lore only holds true when a coin is found head's side up. For those of us who operate on whimsy, technicalities like this are easy to dismiss.

If you're a hopeless non-denominational optimist like me, you have faith in the idea that pennies can't possibly be cursed. What kind of prick universe would this be if half the pennies we found were responsible for half our misfortunes? If I could add up all the pennies - lucky or otherwise - that I've collected over the years I could probably buy Joe a nice steak dinner on the better side of Tampa. Besides, if all pennies can be used to make wishes then certainly no penny is luckier than another.

But why the subject of pennies? Specifically the crusty, oxidized one that was given to me last month by a Canadian man after my car was pinned between a concrete wall and a motor home while driving 75-mph on the interstate?

I'll spare you the details of what could have been a dreadful accident. As talented an embellisher as I am, I cannot exaggerate non-existent, non-dreadful details. I can only credit my reaction time, the fact that I was listening to The Chemical Brothers, and two benevolent Canadians.

In the nanoseconds that passed between the offending motor home to my left, and the concrete wall to my right, I somehow managed to summon a previous life as a tomboy in the sticks of Western New York, where as a teenager I drove a demolition car named The Vaginator in the fields behind an ex-boyfriend's house.

Locking the brakes on my Honda Civic, I kept the car on a straight skid as I pinballed between the RV and the wall. Had the benevolent Canadians, who were driving behind me when the accident occurred, not pulled over to provide a witness statement, the officer who responded to the crash would have cited me for failure to yield the right-of-way.

"Failure to yield the right-of-way?" Cried the benevolent Canadians. "She had nowhere to yield to!"

"Yes I understand," said the officer. "But if the people in the motor home wanted to argue the situation she would've had a hard time proving her case."

While we waited for the necessary paperwork to wrap up one of the benevolent Canadians handed me a penny.

"I found it by your car," he said cheerfully. "Pennies from heaven you know."

Funny, I thought. My godless family never phrased it like that.

On Tuesday, I got my car back from the collision shop. It looks brand new thanks to four new tires, a rearview mirror, and a week's worth of banging out and buffing up. The guys at Wulff's Collision on 20th Avenue couldn't have been nicer or more skilled.

As for the penny, it went back into circulation sometime last week when I purchased ice cream at CVS. I have no idea if the benevolent Canadian found it heads up or heads down, and I totally forgot to ask.

Losing the hockey mom vote.

Before I leave to cover U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan's election party at the Sarasota Hyatt, I thought I'd share with you this anecdote:

My mother, who hasn't voted in an election since 1980, cast her vote today at the Langford Fire Hall in North Collins, NY. 

In a rural Erie County farming town that still uses the old lever and curtain voting booth, my mother cast her vote for Barack Obama. She even called to share the news, she was so proud of her voter participation. 

Later in the day, while waiting in the check-out line at a Marshalls department store near Buffalo, N.Y., my mother overheard two ladies discussing today's election. 

Said one lady to the other: "White people should be ashamed of themselves, voting for Obama." And then, turning to face my mother, she croaked: "Did you vote?"

My mother, in her trademark non-confrontational Western New York accent, replied: "You should be ashamed of yourself. At moments like this I'm ashamed to be white."

Mom, in your honor. This post. 

For the best election coverage in the Tampa Bay area, click here.

Squinters for Obama!

I should have gotten a press pass ... 

Attending Barack Obama's rally today in Sarasota hadn't occurred to me, until I was held up at University Parkway and U.S. 41 as Obama's motorcade passed. 

For the hell of it, I turned toward my buddy Roger's favorite Ed Smith Stadium, and walked one mile to the field, where I ferreted my way through the town's underground democrats. 

Before I leave for my 4 p.m. massage, I'll leave you with four observations from the ground:

1. One Obama supporter was in such a hurry to park his Ford pick-up truck that he drove it off the road and into a grassy ditch, where he instantly buried the back tires in the mud. I'm not sure how the christ he's going to tow the thing out. He ran the hitch underground.

2. Two teenage boys discussing the nature of their mothers' apathy: "My ma never votes," said one boy. "Where does she live?" Asked the other. "Pennsylvania," the boy replied. "Shit, dude. That's a swing state," said his friend.

3. Sarasota City Commissioner Fredd "Glossie" Atkins doing a kind of Christmas storefront Santa Claus jig in the front row bleachers. When the speech was over, Glossie held up five fingers and repeatedly yelled, "Five days."

4. An exasperated man in a Montgomery Air Conditioning & Heating uniform elbowing his way through the crowd, frantic because he couldn't find, "the wife."

Dummy watches figure by drinking Mich Ultra

Go Rays!

This is the uber bizarro Rays dummy sitting on the porch four houses down from my apartment.

However, I should point out that Joe and I no longer live at our apartment in Old Northeast as we relocated 20 blocks north to a home we bought two weeks ago on 2nd Street across from the idyllically-named Coffee Pot Bayou. 

Since I'm in the middle of finishing a story that helps pay our mortgage, I best not piss away the valuable midnight hour.

But I promise you I've got a crapload of self-indulgent, heartwarming stories to sum up the last three weeks of my trifling life. None of which will include Saturday night's Tampa Bay Ray's nail-biter victory over the Boston Red Sox. (For more on that click here.) 

So, as my Aunt Dot would say, I hope you have a blessed Monday. We'll be in touch soon. 

Grandpa Ra

I stayed with Joe's grandpa a few weeks ago. I started this post while we watched a baseball game on the couch:

Joe's Grandpa Ra (his mother's father) has lived with Joe's parents since 1985. When the Bardi family moved to Tampa in 1989, Grandpa Ra moved into a garage-converted apartment separated by two doors and a laundry room.

Last month he celebrated his 90th birthday. Save for the cane he keeps by his blue recliner, Grandpa Ra isnt hearing impaired, memory impaired or anything impaired come to think of it. 

He's also three times the cook I'll ever be. 

A Brooklyn, N.Y. native, Grandpa Ra was a diehard Brooklyn Dodgers fan until Walter O'Malley moved the team to Los Angeles in 1958. In the years that followed, Grandpa Ra begrudingly rooted for The NY Mets.

Joe says he still hasn't forgiven O'Malley for the move and when I asked Grandpa about it, he said, "Joe's goddamn right." 

So I persisted. 

"You're still upset about it after all these years?"

And he shouted, "UPSET?! Agghht."

Agghht is Grandpa Ra's favorite expression. He uses it to punctuate his frustration at the beginning of sentences. (And to mark his frustration at the end of sentences.) It's an endearing conversation staple. 

Example:

Me: "If the Rays make it to the playoffs, will you go to a game?"

Grandpa: "Agghht. I don't like going to the games because I have to get up so many times to go to the bathroom."

Me: "Even if it's the playoffs?"

Grandpa: "Agghht. Can I fix you a sandwich?"

(In the middle of this conversation, Joe walked through the living room and announced that he was going to take a shower.)

Grandpa: "Why dont you just jump in the pool?"

Joe laughed. Shook his head and walked into his parents' house presumably to take a shower. Grandpa shrugged, made the agghht noise and turned his attention back to the TV presumably to the baseball game he'd been watching.

"You know," he rasped. "Lou Gehrig. They called him the Iron Man, and then he got a disease and just like that he was gone."

"Yeah, it's pretty sad." I said. 

"Iron Man. Agghht. He lived two years after he got that disease."

To change the subject, I asked Grandpa Ra if he ever caught a baseball during a game.

He smiled and said yes:

"At a Philadelphia-Mets game at Shea Stadium. MaryAnn wasn't married yet. They tried to kick us out. They said I interfered with the play. They come over and ask me for the ball back. 'Hey,' they said, 'you either give us the ball back or we make you leave.' I said no. And I tell you what, they made us move, and they gave us better seats than we had before. The whole family. We had the best seats in the house."

How about them apples?

Wondering where I've been?

Yeah. Me too.

I feel like Angela Bassett trying to get my groove back. It's 12:30 a.m. and I'm sitting on my couch, watching a rerun of Desperate Housewives, wearing Joe's noise canceling headphones, my iPod on shuffle. 

I started several posts and saved them all as drafts. 

I started one about Joe's Grandpa. I started one about Bus Stop Pete. I started one about Bus Stop Pete leaving his empty beer cans in plastic CVS bags on the street corner, prompting a post about bad habits and enablers and how Pete isn't entirely to blame for littering since the city removed his trash can weeks ago.

I tossed around the idea of writing about my love affair with Stephen Colbert.

I started another chapter in my novel. I quit my job as a reporter. I flew home for a long weekend with Joe. I flew back Sunday night. On Monday morning, I started my job as a nanny for seven kids who live in a mansion on the water in St. Pete. 

I watched the latest Coen Brothers film. I learned that my friend Sam and his wife Beth are expecting a baby named Nevin. I saw The Smashing Pumpkins at Ruth Eckerd Hall. I listened to the first presidential debate from my bedroom while writing a story for the paper. I rushed my pug to the vet for what I later learned was E. Coli poisoning. I made an appointment with a therapist and cancelled it one week later. 

I watched my first best friend's little brother tie the knot on Lake Erie Beach. Mesmerized by eight industrial windmills spinning in the distance, I was impressed by Buffalo's push toward alternative energy. 

I sat bleary-eyed at midnight, curled in Joe's lap, through so many episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm I lost track of the funny ones, which is a knock on my mental retention since most episodes are memorable.

I'm no fan of Desperate Housewives, and although I'm watching it right now, it came to my attention five minutes ago that Nicollette Sheridan's character is named Edie and so is the protagonist in my novel. (FYI: My Edie is named after the two-for-one CVS ice cream Joe and I got addicted to when we started dating.)

And yes, Joe is asleep right now.

I've been scatterbrained and distracted lately. Save for writing one chapter in the second-from-the-last seat in a Southwest Airlines flight from Buffalo to Tampa, I've done very little writing. I've been clogged. 

This home-buying thing has turned me into a wordless ghost, paralyzed by momentum. Back when I lived in a tiny cottage without air conditioning, I had a neighbor named Matt Orr who liked to pop in with a bottle of wine every now and then. I remember once, the first time I quit my job as a reporter, he asked if I was sure I was making the right decision.

I had just ended an 8-year relationship with my high school sweetheart. Two weeks into the breakup, I had also quit my job. Why? Because neither one seemed right at the time.

"Oh well. Some people just do it all at once," Matt said, sipping from his merlot. "You're probably just one of those people."

"What kind of people?" I asked.

"The kind that do it all at once."

"Yeah maybe," I said. "I think it's better that way. If it's going to be tough, it might as well be really tough, right?"

And then we toasted to being single and to air conditioning, and how climate control is overrated in the company of good friends. 

(Side note: Last year, around the same time I started back at the newspaper, Matt, a Realtor by trade, launched an events-listing web site. He leases office space under my old office, and without actually seeing his face in the window, I'm sure I walked past him every day on my way to work. It was nice knowing he was there. Even though I had moved some 40 miles away, we were still neighbors in a way, which pleased me. To save gas he now drives a Vepsa knock-off and his new company, this week in sarasota.com is doing really well. So congrats to Matt.)

The first time I left the newspaper, I took a job at a local marble yard. I received an e-mail last week from one of my favorite coworkers. His big sister has embarked on a solo cross-country road trip with her dog, similar in nature and gut instinct to the trip I took last summer, which is always inspiring news. Here's an excerpt from that e-mail:

"So my sister Lori is traveling across country in a piece of shit car with her dog, sleeping in a tent and stopping in all the small towns. Does this sound familiar? I don't know if you remember me ever talking about her. I think I may have mentioned once that you and her would get along great. Anyway, I've attached a couple emails that she has sent so far, I thought you might find them interesting. As I read them I found myself thinking about your trip. I hope everything is going good for you. Keep in touch. I want an autographed copy of your book when it's on the best sellers list."

Joe's sister, Rosey, passed the bar exam last week. We helped her move into her new apartment today, drinking our weight in water, and cruising with the radio off on our ride home because there was so much to talk about, so much to plan and so much to be excited about.

As we exited the highway toward our neighborhood, with its cobblestone streets and hodgepodge roof lines, I noted the comings and goings of people in their yards. For the fuck of it, I made a stupid face, pushing my nose up in the air, curling my lip into Elvis' trademark sneer.

"Would you still love me if I looked like this?" I asked Joe.

"No," he replied. "Because with your sunglasses on I can't see your beautiful eyes."

I used to pride myself on my lightness of being. Infectious zest was my badge of honor. Irritating as it was, being bubbly was kind of my modus operandi, but somewhere along the line that gusto turned to fear and anxiety. I'm working on reverting. I'm working on being less selfish. Less brooding. 

For those of you who are interested in the first chapter of my novel, I'm refraining from posting it here. I'm afraid the opening line is too sexy for my Nana, who reads this blog. 

On second thought, my Nana is a fairly racy bird ...

On third thought, I think I'll keep the rest of Edith Armor's story to myself. Some things are too exciting to share. 

--

PS. Photo by Joe - snapped while picking apples at Stonehill Orchard in North Collins, NY.

The start of a plot.

The coffin was smooth, buttery and brown. When Edie touched it earlier in the parlor, she made a mental note to remember the way the wood felt on her palm, how well it had been sanded. She wondered if it had been sanded by hand or produced in some factory. When I get home, she thought, I'll look it up on the Internet. Coffin production.

And if in fact, her research should suggest that most coffins are produced by factory workers overseas, Edie would insist that night, while lying next to her husband in bed, that if she died before he died, that she should be buried in a hand-sanded coffin.

Likely, he would say, "Edie, baby. Why are you so morose?"

And likely, she would reply, "I don't want you to have to worry about picking one out."

And likely, he would say, "That would be the least of my worries."

And likely, she'd respond, "But if you're standing in the coffin aisle at Home Depot and you have a choice between a coffin made on some assembly line or a coffin painstakingly sanded by a man for days--"

He would interrupt, "You want the one sanded for days?"

And she would reply, "Yes."

No one had recognized her. Not under the umbrella-shaped black hat she bought at a Goodwill store. Not with the black veil shrouding her big, wide unmistakable Edie eyes. Not with the way she slid into the parlor as if to leave no footprint, as if she were just air and space seeping between shoulder blades, rising up among knobby knees in a cold funeral parlor that smelled like a cheap air freshener and damp clothes. Not with the way she pursed her lips and never opened them, not even to breathe the word hello, how are you, or sorry for your loss.

It had been the three little white girls at her side that gave her away. Timid and clinging to their mother's stockings, they were the only little white girls in a sea of black faces, and Edie knew that if she brought them, that no amount of black netting, nor big-brimmed hat would take away from the fact that she was Edith Armor.

Standing under an oak tree, at the top of a wet hill, she hoisted her youngest daughter onto her hip, pushed the child's dark hair away from her eyes and kissed the brown birthmark that was shaped like a bird. Her two youngest daughters, blonde twins in black tap shoes, grabbed each others hands and stared at their feet.

It was the first time Edie had been to a funeral in the rain, and other than that one extraordinary detail, there was nothing else extraordinary about the day.

--

PS. Illustration is Reincarnation by Hisss.

Plot eureka

Ran into another guardian bum-angel yesterday. I didn't take his picture for fear that it would reveal he didn't exist.

FYI: it was not the same street prophet who predicted last month that our final offer on the house would be accepted. This guy was wearing a gray T-shirt that read: "I lost my #. Can I have yours?"

I was taking pictures of these fine ladies at the corner of 2nd Street and First Avenue (outside of Ivanka Ska's House of Ska) when this bum-angel said, "You should go across the street and see if the photographer over there needs your help."

I looked across the street, saw nothing, and snorted, "What photographer?" 

"There's a photo shoot at the post office. The models are wearing the same kind of getup as the mannequins. If I were you, I'd go see if the photographer could use a hand. You never know."

Because bums are northern stars, I sighed, pedaled across the street and watched as two statuesque (albeit extra terrestrial-looking) models pouted for a short blonde photographer who looked not unlike myself.

Intimidated by these specimens and feeling pretty weird about approaching the photographer, I pedaled back to the House of Ska and told my guardian bum-angel that I felt uncomfortable interrupting the shoot.

"Hey, you know never," he said. "She might not need your help now, but in the future say she's got a job that requires an extra set of hands, she'll remember you."

"I don't have any business cards," I replied.

"So," he said, challenging me. "What you do is you come back to the store here - I presume she works for the owner - and you leave your card and say, 'I saw you had a photographer out here Saturday. If you ever need help, or she's not available, call me.'"

Thanking the guy for his two-cents, I pedaled home and considered the idea. 

Later that night, while walking to CVS to get the usual chocolate ice cream, ketchup and charcoal, I had an epiphany. A plot epiphany.  It hit me when I passed a woman in hospital scrubs who, after rushing to get off the bus at 4th Street and 8th Avenue, asked me for directions to a house by the bay.

The plot epiphany was so powerful that it instantly made my stomach hurt. Scurrying home with my bag of ice cream, ketchup and charcoal, plot poured from my mouth like frothy Pop Rocks. 

It is the first plot idea I've ever had. 

With Joe's help, I ironed out some details, hammered out a synopsis and lovingly named my protagonist. 

Anyway, what I'm getting it is ...

I'm leaving my regular post at the newspaper. I put in my unofficial two-week notice last week. Instead I'll work as a freelancer, which will allow more time to write for myself and supplement the income I'll make as a nanny.

A nanny you say?

Yes. In two weeks I start watching seven kids in St. Pete.

Seven kids you say?

Yes. One family. Seven kids.

11 people I've interviewed in Sarasota

Divine guidance can be found in a reporters notebook.

...

"No one ever wanted to ride with us in the winter because we only had two blankets. And in the summer, when temperatures reached 95 degrees, we choked from the heat because the car didn't have air conditioning."

- Roberta Tengerdy, with husband Tom, on the 1967 Volkswagon Beetle she bought her sophomore year at Colorado State University, the same year she met Tom. 

"You're lost if you don't believe in it. It's something you don't exactly feel. You just know it's there. You know that when you die, times going on forever. It's not the end. It's the beginning."

- 100-year-old Mildred Bessie Barton Hill on heaven. 

"That's a good question. If the cheese were square it'd stick out the side of the sub."

- Subway superstar Jared Fogle on why the sandwich franchise that made him famous cuts its cheese into triangles.

"He needs his shade. He's a very spoiled bird." 

- Johnny Malone on why he sits under the awning at Whole Foods with his cockatiel, Bobby.

"Everything has changed but everything has stayed exactly the same. Often people will say to me, 'why do you still have Cathy on a diet?' And I say, look at the headlines. It's an endless turf out there. While it's redundant in a way, these are the things we keep wrestling with - our relationships with food, our relationships with the opposite sex, our relationships with our mothers, our relationships with the clutter on our desks. The things we face each day are what I love writing about and women have this fabulous capacity to keep having hope even if there's no hope to be had."

- Cartoonist Cathy Guisewite on why she's refrained from changing "Cathy," to conform to 2008 post-feminist ideals. (The comic strip, which debuted in 1976, began as a series of sarcastic sketches Guisewite would mail her mother ripping on her pathetic mid-20s love life.)

"I'll tell you one thing. He changed. I think he saw a lot of things too young for his lifetime. He came back a  man and I never thought I'd say that. He's a little more guarded and careful now. He's quiet now."

- In 2004 Sherri Vroom's then 20-year-old son, John, served eight months in Iraq. Two years later he was deployed again.

"Well, she has beautiful hair. She has a beautiful face and beautiful eyes."

- Seven-year-old Caitlyn Gutierrez on why her mother is beautiful.

"I'm gonna de-bone them first. That way I'm not sitting on one wing for too long."

- Gilberto Noriega on how he planned to win the Munchies Fire-In-Your-Hole wing eating challenge. (He lost.)

"I look at the bus as a research and exploration vessel. It functions as an idea and information hub. We're researching, exploring and recording our findings."

- Roth Conrad on why he and friend Bob Downes (right) bought their old high school bus, converted it to run on vegetable oil and drove it across the country. See link.)

"I'm an outgoing person. I like to be the funny guy. I want people to notice me. If I had any other role, I wouldn't have been as funny as I was."

- Baseball catcher Connor Davis, 13, on how he knew he owned his middle school production of The Wizard of Oz when his drama teacher cast him as The Cowardly Lion. (His dream role: Dracula.)

"What I told the jury at the onset was that I was going to ask the questions that needed to be asked ... because if not me than who?"

- Assistant Public Defender Adam Tebrugge on how he handled the pressure of defending Joseph P. Smith, the man sentenced to death for the 2004 murder of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia. 

--

PS. Cathy Guisewite photo courtesy of People Magazine. All other photos are mine.

Granny panties rejoice. The thong is out.

I noticed that in the alley outside of our apartment, some woman with a small ass lost two thongs. If the butt floss belongs to anyone you know, please tell them this is no way to amputate a whale tail.

PS. Happy Birthday to a woman who has always rocked timeless bloomers. My mom! (She turns 48 today.) 

I was born again because of Ross.

This is a story about a bicycle, and the power a bicycle had over my life when I was about 21 years old.

His name was Ross (yes, he was a he) and I first laid eyes on him when I was dog sitting for my Aunt Shirley, who lived next door to my Nana and Papa in Brant, N.Y.

Brant, N.Y. is one town over from North Collins, and it is where all my mother's relatives live. Most of them live on Brant-North Collins Road, a winding, rural, two-lane stretch that cuts through Southeastern Erie County. It is also the same road I grew up on five miles north of my Nana, my Aunt Shirley, my Uncle Joe, my Aunt Helen and so on ...

By the time Brant-North Collins Road gets to my house it is called Langford Road.

Once you pass my house, Langford Road drops down a hill, runs past Crances Superette, past Aaron Skora's house, past the Friedman farmhouse, past Fox Road and the New Oregon Church and ends in a valley, where two brothers named Ed and Mike Snashall used to live.

For the purpose of this story, I will call Langford Road Route 249, which is its official Department of Transportation designation.

Save for high-speed traffic and the usual blind spots, Route 249 is a perfect road for cycling, and its paths through the towns of Farnham, Brant and North Collins have not changed since 1935.

Ross was the first bicycle I pedaled on Route 249 that didn't have training wheels. He was a clunker of a 10-speed I spotted hanging upside down from ceiling rafters in Aunt Shirley's basement. The only fetching thing about Ross was was that under the dust, he actually had a brand name. See here. And here. 

The day I handed my aunt $25, I pedaled Ross home and pledged out loud to my mother that I would bike at every opportunity until I dropped 25 pounds. 

(A side note: At 21 I weighed 25 pounds more than I do now, which is what happens when you party in the woods at 17, 18, 19 and 20.)

Beer-belly up and feeling pretty shitty about it, I stuck to my plan.

Ross and I were inseparable. He was rusty and so was I, and we welded together like fuzzy blue corrosion. He was a boy bike and therefore had the boy-bike bar, and I didn't mind that I had a circa-1983 boy bike with a chain that required so much grease I would go to bed with oil skids on my calves. I only cringed when Ross would, without warning, switch gears every time I stood up to pedal. 

Clunk-clunk. 

But even that was OK, as I bragged to friends that I had found myself the only automatic transmission bicycle in town. 

"You're like a born-again biker," said Ro (the best friend.)

And I was totally evangelical about cycling. I'm certain I logged 300 miles on Ross in one summer. I worked as a recreation director at a day camp four miles from home, and I'd bike it nearly every day with a lock box that contained the day's lunch money on my back - 15 pounds in dimes, nickels and quarters.

Just for the hell of it, I would pedal 30 miles into the suburbs listening to the usual mixed tapes. Ani DiFranco. Indigo Girls. Counting Crows. George Clinton. When the A side would end, I'd flip it to B. Often on these 30-mile rides I would have to flip a tape three times.

A couple months in I recruited Ro, who I forced up Route 249 in 95-degree heat, holding her water bottle out like a carrot, taunting her with it until she reached the top of the hill. It was, she says, the worst and the best motivation she ever endured.

When fall came I was 15 pounds lighter and totally addicted to the road. Sometimes, when I reached the top of a steep one I would cry, not out of frustration but out of a profound sense of accomplishment. And sometimes, on those long even stretches, I would belt out whatever song I was listening to on my mother's little yellow Walkman and glare maniacally at slack-jawed, bug-eyed truck drivers as they banged past. 

When winter came I insisted on pedaling through light snowfall. December air is intoxicating and I used to pop a peppermint candy before a long December ride just to heighten the taste. 

When January came and the air howled through my ears, I would wear a headband to cushion the stabs. And when eventually, inevitably, snow would blanket my town, I would pout about how I couldn't wait to move to Florida, where I would bike every day.

But of course that didn't happen. I moved here in the fall of 2004, 25 pounds lighter and with a Schwinn bicycle I bought a year after pedaling Ross from one end of Western New York to other. 

The Schwinn cost me close to $300, and though it took me on a 65-mile ride around Lake Chautauqua in Upstate NY, and across the state of Rhode Island for a last-hurrah trip Ro and I planned the summer before I left for Florida, it lacked Ross' depth of character. It didn't have an automatic transmission. It's paint wasn't peeling and and it didn't have a name. It was of course, totally tricked out with a tachometer, dual water bottles, a flashing rear light and gel seat, and shortly after I moved to Sarasota it was stolen outside of the Selby Public Library.

Lucky for my waistline, I never chunked on the 25 pounds I lost from three years of devout cycling. And yet the road fever is extinguished. I've tried since to rekindle it (by assuming that if bought a nicer Schwinn it would return) but the compulsion to blaze 30 miles in one day has yet to sock me. 

Until now.  

Two stolen Schwinns later, I'm back at Square One with a $40 Target bike, trying to explain to Joe how important it is that he ride with me.

He's making headway. Slowly. 

Which is another story for another day ...

--

PS. Bicycle photograph by Julie Frame. For more of her work click here. To purchase photographs click here.

Once again, a bum is right.

I won't bury the lead here, or wait until the end to mention that we got the house.

And as always with me, the day I was told our final offer was accepted, I kind of already knew.

While walking my pug Thursday morning, a man on a bicycle called out to me, "Excuse me m'am."

Noticing his body was buckling under backpacks and a bed roll, I paid special attention, as homeless men and I share a kinship.

"Yes?"I asked.

"What is your name?" The man on the bicycle asked.

So I told him mine and the pug told him his.

"You're blessed today," he said. "You are beautiful and today is beautiful. Good things come to you today."

And I said, thanks. And he said, good day.

Now. Had I not mentioned this story to Joe upon immediately entering the apartment, I fear he would have outright said I was lying, when later that afternoon, after a lunch interview in Sarasota, my phone rang and Joe said, "We got the house."

And like I said, I kind of already knew, so after squealing, "WHAT? WE GOT IT?" I lowered my voice and said, "Well, I suppose the bum already knew, right?"

And Joe agreed. He's used to things like this by now. We all have guardian angels. I have bum angels and if you ask me, Joe is damn lucky to have a girlfriend with bum angels. Especially in St. Pete, where bums abound.

And so our conversation took a turn, not in the direction of bum premonitions, but in the direction of total baffled shocked. After back-and-forth negotiations this week, we never expected the homeowner to accept our final offer. We were still $18,000 apart. Sure Realtor Randy gave us hope, what with his positive percentages and all. But $18,000 is still a pretty big unflushable turd, if you know what I mean ... or at least it's a turd to be reckoned with.

Cynical journalists. We were still not convinced. Even me, the hopeful one, the dreamy one, the one with bum angels at her fingertips. Even I was not convinced.

So after work we met up with Realtor Randy at The Ale House in St. Pete, where he said he'd be sitting in full Philly Eagles regalia watching a preseason game at the bar.

When we got there we were still so unconvinced that neither one of us felt compelled to order a beer.

"C'mon! Order a round," Randy insisted.

"Nah," Joe said and I shrugged.

"You guys just bought a house. Get yourselves a beer!" He cheered, throwing his own giant stein in the air.

"We'll celebrate when we're at our kitchen table," we replied.

Randy shot Joe a look. The kind of look that said, dude I carted your ass all over St. Pete for two months looking at houses. We find one. The guy accepts your crappy offer and now we're at a bar, signing the final offer and you disrespect me, your devoted Realtor, by denying one celebratory beer?

We could not get past the fact that no one runs away with Florida real estate, not even in 2008. Begrudgingly we each ordered a brewski, and by the time the last line was signed in Randy's stack of Keller Williams paperwork, we were both feeling good and celebratory.

Later that night while grocery shopping at Publix, I noticed that Joe reached for the cheapest, smallest can of bread crumbs.

"You never buy that little can," I said.

"We're homeowners now. We're going to be poor for awhile." He said.

I smiled and clicked my heels. In my head of hopeful girly bubble thoughts, I catalogued this moment under The Most Rousing Line Of The Night and proceeded to the check-out.

--

PS. The illustration above is by New York City artist Kelly Mudge. To purchase this hauntingly excellent painting click here.