A post for Ricci's 26th birthday

This is Ricci and Mbaye.

If you've met them, you know they're a pretty dynamic couple.

Ricci moved to Senegal a year ago.

To say she moved there "to find herself," would totally undersell her career ambitions and gut instincts.

She's a remarkable photographer with an adventurous soul. And like all of us, she settles into comfort zones and second guesses her impulses, of which she has many.

When we were both journalists living in downtown Sarasota, Ricci would frolic around my shanty cottage in her bathing suit, reminiscing about the beach picnic we had just had as if it had happened 30 years ago. I suppose it's because she knows a good thing when she's got it. That, and she's grateful for moments. Not stuff.

But Ricci utterly thrives when she's plucked herself out of a comfort zone. Some flowers live OK in the shade but blossom in the sun. Such is the case with the Ricci species.

Last January, the night before her flight to Dakar, Ricci called me to debate her decision to move to West Africa.

"Buck up," I said. "Board the GD plane. Africa was all you could talk about for months. If you turn around now, you'll have shackled your brilliant whims and awesome plans to fear and anxiety."

In truth, I wasn't that eloquent and Ricci called several friends that day who were all likely to say jump, so of course she boarded the plane. Had she dialed my German grandmother I'm afraid she'd have accepted a full-time job as a staff writer for a magazine in Chicago with medical, dental and a 401K.

So Ricci moved to Dakar and worked as a correspondent/photographer for Voice of America, a radio and television broadcasting service governed by the United States and stationed in countries around the word.

And so it was, that as my life became increasingly domestic hers became fiercely independent. At night I'd browse her blog, blown away by the pictures – Bill Clinton on an AIDS mission, the president of Iran at an Islamic Summit, men in wheelchairs playing basketball, big-bellied women stirring vats of cous-cous, children sliding off the backs of beached whales, goats getting slaughtered in the street ...

I was so proud of her – mostly for politely stomaching goat intestine soup – that tears wet my laptop. Every now and then she'd post a picture of herself, and even in a headscarf and dusty pants I could tell she was euphoric.

Then she met Mbaye, a soccer player with a come-what-may attitude and contagious smile. They dated for nine months in Dakar and then Ricci moved back to Chicago.

A month later she flew back to Dakar. By Thanksgiving she and Mbaye were back in the states – Mbaye for the first time in his life.

Rather than explain any of this I'll dig up an old e-mail written by Ricci in bullet-point fashion, as I'm sure she was writing it while filing a story about Senegalese scrabble champions, while photographing a sword-juggling monkey, while carrying on a conversation (in French) with a soothsayer, while daydreaming of malted milkshakes.

Heids,
Filed the story and now ready to file my story with you.

• have bought plane ticket back to states for sept. 17. this freaks me out, because i do not want to truly leave to dakar.
• also have plane ticket back to dakar, where i will stay from oct. 20 -- nov. 22 (i have some work to do here at that time)
• my boy and i are going to the us embassy next wed. to apply for a visitor visa so he can come here and meet the fam. we're SO nervous. i'm scared of the us government. if they say no, i guess we'll just have to get married so he can come visit. (do NOT get me started on the ridiculousness of this process. i'm actually documenting it (via words).. it's SO convoluted and feels like some ridiculous Willy Wonka-type, bureaucratic scavenger hunt. Just so he can come VISIT!!) our country blows sometimes.

Not one to stop at a visitors visa, Ricci contacted a sports agent in the U.S., who arranged for Mbaye to try out for several soccer teams on the East Coast. In between tryouts they stayed with me for a weekend in St. Pete.

I interviewed the couple earlier this month on a sun-drenched stretch of interstate on route to Sarasota. Since Mbaye speaks only French and Wolof – his native Senegalese language – and since the only French sentence I know goes something like, "Ohh la la j'ai une rendevous avec David dans 20 minutes ..." I asked Ricci to translate.

Note: Unless Mbaye gets signed to an American soccer team he will have to return to Dakar in May.

--

Mbaye, are you nervous about your soccer tryout next week?
(Ricci translates)
"He says he’s a little nervous because he doesn’t know who he’s going to meet and if they’ll be as nice as they were last time.”

Ricci, are you nervous?
“I’m nervous about him flying by himself, about him getting lost at the airport or something.”

You don't feel the fate of your relationship hangs on whether or not he makes the team?
“I just have to think we’re going to work it out no matter what happens. If he makes the team, great. If he doesn’t we’ll figure something out.”

Have your communication skills improved, dating someone who doesn’t speak English?
“If we have a fight — and it’s usually me who gets mad because he rarely gets mad — I want to make sure I say how I feel correctly in French. And after I go through it in my head I realize if I can't explain it simply in terms he can understand, then it’s probably not worth getting mad over because it’s convoluted and more my problem than his.”

You’ve learned to not overreact.
“There’s a level of communication that has to be there because sometimes when you speak the same language, you just assume what somebody means when they say something. For us, when I say something, it’s like this is what I’m saying, but this is what I mean.”

What do you guys fight about?
(Translates into French for Mbaye)
Ricci: “I don’t think we’ve had a big blow-out fight.”
(Mbaye interrupts in French.)
Ricci: “Oh yeah. We had one in Senegal.”
(Mbaye again.)
Ricci: “It was over money.”
(Mbaye again.)
Ricci: “And we got in one once when we got in a car and I didn’t know where I was going. I was freaking out and he was l like, ‘Don’t freak out you’re going to get in an accident.’”

Is that his role? To calm you down?
“Oh yeah.”

(Ricci laughs. Translates into French.)

Mbaye (in broken English): “She is never calm.”

Ricci: “One time I was calm and peaceful and he was like, ‘What’s wrong?’ and I said, ‘Nothing, why?’ And he said, ‘When the volcano is quiet one must question why.’”

Did Mbaye have anxiety about coming to the United States?
“He worried that my friends were going to think he was different or maybe not a good guy. He wasn’t afraid that they would be mean. He just figured they’d act weird around him.”

Did we act weird?
(Translates)
“He says no. He says all my friends were so nice and took such good care of him.”

Does he have a favorite American food?
(Translates)
“He says he has a stomach he doesn’t understand. It accepts everything that goes into it.”

How has your relationship changed in the United States?
“In Africa he knew how to get around and he knew the language and I was the person who didn’t know what was going on. If we’d have to get something done, he would know exactly what to do and I wouldn’t even ask questions. In Africa we never spent the night together. There were days we wouldn’t see each other. And here, I don’t think we’ve been apart more than an hour — once when he flew to Charleston for a tryout. I was worried at first that we would get sick of each other, but we’ve gotten along better the more we’re together."

(Translates into French for Mbaye.)

“He says the relationship is better here. When we were apart I'd call him 20 times a day.”

Because your insecurities are magnified when you’re apart. That's pretty normal, I think.
“Yeah. We fought more in Senegal than we do here.”

Were you worried Mbaye wouldn’t adapt to American shizzle?
“I was worried he might get homesick, but I wasn’t worried about him adapting at all.”

(In lousy French) Le Ikea pullout couch etait-il comfortable la nuit?
Mbaye: “Tres comfortable.”

Ricci, how would you describe your relationship with Mbaye?
“It’s easy. It’s almost like … I don’t know ... I’m happy. Girls always say, ‘I want to find The One. I want to find The One,' and when you think about it, it’s like, oh this is it. Anticlimactic is the wrong word because it has a negative connotation, but I don’t know … it just feels good.”

Finding The One was less dramatic than you thought.
"Yes, I guess."

The people in your life better be comfortable around cameras. Does Mbaye ever tire of being your model?
“He loves it. He always jokes he’s the poorest model in the world.”

Is it frustrating for him to not be able to communicate with your friends?
(Translates)
“He says he’s not frustrated. He’s sorry he can’t speak English but the fact that people try to talk to him is the most important thing. He says there’s a lot a smile and hand gestures can communicate.”

In what ways is this relationship different than others you've had?
“Well, we don’t speak English and we’re biracial. Those are the obvious ways it’s different. He makes me a better person. I feel like I have to be a better person because he raises the bar for me. Sometimes I’m like, but what do I do for you?"

How has the biracial thing played out?
“I have a lot of friends who date Senegalese men, but it’s also like ‘he’s with her because she has money and connections. Or, 'he’s using her to get further or whatever.' Someone said to me once when we were applying for a visa – 'how do you know he’s not just using you for the visa?”

That’s a rotten thing to say.
“First of all I said, 'He wouldn’t do that because he’s a good guy and an honest person.' Second of all, there’s a level of trust in every relationship. How do you know your girlfriend is not cheating on you? You have to trust people are who they say they are in any relationship.”

But generally you haven't felt discriminated against?
“Most of my friends are super liberal and accepting. I’m sure there are some people who have problems with it but then it’s like, it’s not your relationship. I’d rather be with him and have these kinds of problems than be with somebody who doesn’t make me happy and have people look at us like we are – quote – normal."

True dat.
“I feel like most of our problems are the world's problems, not our problems."

And what does Mbaye think?
(Translates)
"He says people look at us strangely because we’re beautiful.”
--

PS. The picture above was taken during a turkey sammie picnic on St. Pete Beach. For a glorious list of sammie recipes click here.

Tree frogs, bums & the dress I didn't keep.

To be honest, I've put more thought into purchasing a six-pack of Charmin toilet paper.

...

I bought my wedding dress last month for $128 at White House|Black Market, and I returned it last week not because I didn't like it, but because I thought I could do better. 

Also because toothpastes have caused greater fits of indecision. 

I blame the tree frog who showed up by our front door last month, who for one week, no matter where I moved him to, would return to our front door to hibernate precariously close to the welcome mat.

"That frog," I told Joe, "is going to get stomped on."

Remembering a former new age-y boss, who once confessed to me during a long Christmas shift at Waldenbooks, that he had a groundhog spirit guide, I decided to reference the frog in Ted Andrews book, Animal Speak.

According to Andrews, if a frog has presented itself, "it may be time to breathe new life into an old project or goal."

The frog is a symbol of fertility, rebirth and resurrection. Since I'm in no hurry to get preggers, I took this is as a message to get cracking on The Book, which I realize has nothing to do with returning The Dress. 

But you know, I digress. 

Armed with frog knowledge I took off to purchase a present for a friend in downtown St. Pete, and as usual, I passed a gaggle of bums, and as usual, one of them called out to me.

"M'am," he croaked. "Can you spare some change so I can get ointment for my foot."

This is a new one, I thought. Foot ointment. Surely this bum - I'll call him Jed - has milked other ailments in the past, but foot ailments? C'mon, dude. Wear shoes and your feet won't slough off. 

Mildly irritated, I looked at Jed's foot. 

Sure enough the shit was horrible. Propped up on a curb, looking as if it had been shot, the foot was purplish, bulbous and the wound was the size of a fist and oozing something green. His toes, what I could see of them, looked gangrenous.

I reached into my purse, pulled out a dollar bill, handed it to Jed and snapped, "That foot. Is dis-gusting."

Jed took the dollar bill and nodded gratefully, his ruddy face creasing in the afternoon sun like an origami crane. It hit me just then, like a sack of bricks to the belly, that bums are ageless. Not ageless in the sense that they are young, but ageless in the sense that they are without an age. To those of us who pass them by, bums are just bums with no names and no ages. No numbers and letters to hang over their heads. Just time. 

Humanity is a funny thing when it socks you. Wrinkled by dirt, and wounded by the absence of time or perhaps by the weight of time, I blushed when Jed thanked me. When I passed the bum sitting to him, I handed that guy a dollar bill and said, "take your friend to a walk-in clinic."

The last thing on my mind was a wedding dress, but then I passed White House|Black Market on the corner of 2nd Avenue and 2nd Street. And though I've never purchased anything from this yuppity boutique, I'm a fan of simple semantics. A store named White House Black Market that sells only white and black merchandise is a store after my utilitarian heart.

I instantly spotted the lone ivory sheath hanging on a back rack in the oft-forgotten clearance corner, and for the helluvit I asked to try it on. To the delight of the women behind the counter, it fit like a kind of satin liquid – save for a teensy bit of gut-sucking and an obvious granny panty line. 

"Linda," said the one saleswoman. "Get over here. You're not gonna believe how well this dress fits."

"Like a glove!" Squealed Linda. "Oo! We've been waiting for someone to buy this dress!"

Oh Lord, I thought. My Cinderella moment, and here I am still contemplating Jed's seeping foot. 

I asked one of them to unzip me so could I purchase it because after all, it fit like a glove and when you're wired like me, you don't question the significance of that. 

"How long do I have to return it?" I asked.

"Return it?" They snapped. "Why would you return it?"

"In case I find something better."

This was apparently the wrong thing to say, because as I left the store, bag in hand, both women forgot to say goodbye, good day or good anything for that matter. 

Sashaying past my guardian bum angels, I winked. Frugal, no-frills and with a 30-day return policy, I had just bought my wedding dress. Or at least, I was dating my wedding dress.

It was simple, so ho-hum that it slid easily behind our bedroom drapes. And when Joe got home from work I boasted about the price like I had just purchased two-for-one lamp chops at the downtown butcher. 

"Wow. $128," he said. "Nicely done."

So not a Big Deal that it's behind the bedroom drapes. But don't look, I said. It's still a wedding dress goddammit.

And then, two weeks later I returned it. I think the saleswomen had a bet, because when I walked in with the dress in a Target bag, the one smirked at the other like, Itoldyouso. 

"Yeah," I mumbled. "It didn't work out."

"Well that's too bad," the one woman said. "It fit you like a glove."

On my way up 2nd Avenue I passed Ann Taylor, walked inside and purchased a fetching tweed number for the rehearsal dinner. 

Guess what?

It fit like a glove.

--

PS. The dress pictured above is the one I didn't keep. It was unfussy, prettier than some dresses and less pretty than others. It was slightly beaded and cheaply priced, but in the end, not the dress for me. We had too much in common.

Treading dopamine, waiting for my ship to come in.

There are eight men outside my office window sawing down a tree. The noise is sharpening all the Q-tips in my house into tiny white knives.

These clowns have been cutting down trees all week. It's like listening to 100 dentists bore 100 cavities at once.

I'm half inclined to ask them if I can have a few logs for our outdoor fire pit, but I'm sure the City of St. Pete has loftier plans ... what with its stellar reputation for recycling.

It a spectacular day out. Gray. Rainy. Sky the color of a chalkboard. Perfect writing weather. It's not that bad weather inspires me to write, it's that the break in 75-degree monotonous sunshine triggers spirited introspection, which is such an ungrateful thing for a Buffalo girl to say, so my apologies to the folks back home.

Which brings me to my next tangent. Lately I've been fascinated by the human brain, in particular the day-to-day drudgery that is pierced by darts of distraction dipped in dopamine. What triggers these stabs of bliss and ambition? And why must they hit at the most inconvenient times?

Dopamine, just so we're clear, is a neurotransmitter, a chemical produced in our brains that serves as a lifeboat for neurons. When I picture dopamine, I picture ladies in Victorian dresses treading cold blue water in the North Atlantic as the Titanic sinks slowly in the distance. I picture a sea of dopamine carrying yellow lifeboats, and I picture bustle gowns like sensory neurons, billowing out under glacial water, desperate for a lifeboat, stockinged legs paddling dopamine like dendritic cellular projections.

When I picture our brain, I picture the globe. Divided into hemispheres, our brain is not unlike the earth. The frontal lobe is where most of our dopamine-sensitive neurons sit and stew, waiting patiently, hands clasped on their laps like southern belles at the Kentucky Derby, for a dopamine breeze to blow their hats off.

Often when we think of our brain's pleasure molecules, we think of serotonin. But in my not-so-expert opinion, serotonin is fleeting. Like a bite-sized Snickers. Dopamine however, seems more enduring. Like a gallon of chocolate ice cream.

Just the sound of the word dopamine is intoxicating. First discovered in 1952 by a Swedish scientist, (who by the way wasn't awarded his Nobel Prize for this discovery until 2000) dopamine is my enemy and my lover.

I drink dopamine every day in my coffee, and I know I could get it elsewhere if I wanted, but I tell myself to buck up, synthesize it on your own.

Which is why I'm throwing every ounce of literary ambition into a novel. I want to swim laps in a sea of dopamine. The last time I attempted a novel, I was so filled with dopamine it seeped out my eyes. 

--

PS. The picture is by Norbert Wu. It is not a Victorian bustle gown but the largest jellyfish in the Antarctic Circle. It was featured in TIME Magazine and published in Wu's 2004 book, Under Antarctic Ice. 

Ringing in the new year with ABC gum

Happy New Year! 

Resolutions are for the birds. To quit doing some thing, or to start doing another thing, there has to be a motivating factor.

For example, I stopped chewing gum in 8th grade because it disgusted me. Cows chew on cud. People should know better. Plus, it's too conveniently stuck to the bottom of things - chairs, shoes, desks, bathroom stalls, a pair of Levi's Silver Tabs in 7th grade homeroom. 

I had a friend who liked to shove her chewed gum into whatever bottle of beer she was drinking. As a child, this same friend also placed chewed gum on her cafeteria lunch tray while she ate, and then after lunch, would pop the gum back into her mouth for more chewing. 

I brush my teeth twice a day, floss occasionally, and avoid garlic. If my breath reeks, I pop a peppermint. Aint nothing so rank inside my mouth that a hard candy can't lick, which is why I have not chewed gum in 13 years. 

Canadian artist Jason Kronenwald created this portrait of 1960s pixie, Twiggy, using people's chewed bubble gum. Check out his series of Gum Blondes here. To create his paintings he hires a team of chewers to chomp on wads of gum, (he prefers the texture of Trident) and using a bevy of colorful flavors, which Kronenwald asks his chewers to mix inside their mouths, he stretches the gum across planks of plywood and begins molding the visages of famous blondes. 

As a blonde, I'm mildly insulted by the connotation of this art. Hey, Kronenwald: ask your grandma to start chewing on those Bit-O-Honeys she keeps in her candy jar, then have her fork over her dentures. The sticky aftermath will make for a nice series of brunettes. 

My father is disgusted with his beer gut, so to whittle it he started walking today from his house on Langford Road to the town highway department on Eden Road. (It's about three miles.) I called my mother this morning to talk about overpriced wedding photographers, and my father, gung ho and out of breath, answered the cell phone. 

"What's up with you?"

"Ah yes," he rasped. "I'm walking."

"Walking?"

"I'm almost to the highway department."

"You sound out of breath."

"I'm OK. It's beautiful out."

"Is it?"

"It's 19 degrees out, but no wind and bright sunshine."

"And you're walking to the highway department?"

"Yes. I'm almost there."

"Did you bring the cell phone in case you needed to call Mom to pick you up?"

"I brought the cell phone in case I fell dead from a heart attack I could call 911 before I hit the ground."

"What did you and Mom do for New Years Eve?"

"Fell asleep."

"So did we."

"That's OK. At least we all woke up."

"Right. Alright Dad, good luck walking. Tell Mom I called about wedding photographers."

"Will do. Happy New Year."

"Happy New Year."

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.

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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.

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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."

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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. 

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