Taster Spoon

Cheap date

The Queen posted yesterday on "the first time she drank enough to feel the effects," and her first time getting blackout drunk.  Funny how we remember these things.

I was a pretty good rule-follower growing up, and wasn't even particularly tempted to flout the flimsy wristband rules when I went to college parties.  It wasn't fear of getting in trouble so much as distaste for losing one's self control and decreasing one's faculties.  It was a bit of a mystery why everyone was so into it; it didn't sound inherently fun. 

Then, the summer after my junior year in England, my friend Emma and I choo-chooed all over Europe.  We jumped the [train? ferry? I don't even remember] to Calais, scurried through Paris to spend as little money as possible before catching the train to Andorra (which I always imagined to be a fairy tale type kingdom), jostled our way through the running of the bulls in Pamplona, feasted on peaches the size of softballs in Madrid, and circled back up to Barcelona.  After the beachside hotels we afforded easily along the Spanish Eastern coast, the cost of the fleabag youth hostel in Barcelona was an unpleasant jolt and the facilities grim, and we decided it was finally time to treat ourselves to a decent meal after many days of eating scrambled egg sandwiches.  We ordered paella and sangria in a dark little restaurant with few other customers.  The young and handsome waiters seemed to understand and sympathize with our finances, and refilled our glasses lavishly.  I don't remember anything about the paella.

When we popped out into the summer heat, Emma and I floated along the main drag in a contented bubble of full bellies and mild curiosity regarding all the strangers rushing by at ten o'clock at night.  It's a good memory. 

After that, I had an appreciation for the upside of a fine buzz.   I still never overindulged, though, because I never wanted to be "that girl" who couldn't take care of herself and turned herself into deadweight whom people had to care of.  It seemed annoying, inconsiderate and rude.

The first time I ever got truly wasted, then, was not for another five or so years, by which time I lived in NYC.  In the interest of limiting costs for an evening of going out, I didn't eat very much during the day -  i.e. so that fewer drinks would be required for a giddy evening.  Most of my life's decisions are rooted in my borderline obsessive cheapness. 

As we killed time in my apartment until it was late enough to go out (I believe that, at the time, "going out" didn't start till after midnight)  I somehow thought it was appropriate to match drinks with my best friend and usual clubbing buddy, a 6'1", 200 pound Tongan man.  

We knew someone of influence, as I recall, and looked forward to going to some difficult-to-get-into club (I'll date myself if I tell you which one).  And though I do remember bypassing the long line outside, I don't remember a thing about the club because the world tilted and everything went dark as soon as we walked inside. 

I woke up in a fluorescently lit storeroom where the bouncers kept their pushbrooms and mops.  I exchanged pleasantries with the bouncer sitting there watching me and learned it was his birthday.  "Happy Birthday," I said, and laid my cheek back onto the concrete. 

The next day, when I went to the gym, I saw a member of our group from the night before running around the track.  I called out to him, ran up behind him and showered him with profuse apologies.  He turned out to be someone else.

Since that time, I've come to the conclusion that reaching that point of helplessness is actually an important rite of passage.  After that night, I felt closer than ever to the people who got me home safely and treated me with kindness - including the cheerful bouncer.  And after that night, I never begrudged anybody else who drank a little too much and needed taking care of.  I felt like I'd joined a fraternity of understanding and of mutual caring that I hadn't earlier been privy to when I was busy rolling my eyes over "that girl."

Of course I believe in moderation - it's the only way you can hope to fit everything in.  But now I roll my eyes over those who have never known the rare instance of vulnerability, dependence and excess. 

Unfinished business

I've noticed that one phrase sportscasters love to use is "unfinished business."  They used it about Sarah Reinertson regarding her second crack at completing Ironman Hawaii, they used it about Michael Phelps and his efforts to beat Spitz's accomplishment, and they used it about Dara Torres in her pursuit of gold.

Anyway, I've been feeling bad about being such a spotty poster this summer.  As we've established, I am letting down no one but the one member in my fan club, but I kind of feel like, if I'm going to do this at all, it either has to be quality material, or it has to be consistent.  Consistency, therefore. must be my goal.

Separately, I was looking though my posts to edit something or other, and noticed that I had a handful of posts that were begun but never published.  There's one that's clearly lacking a picture, there's the beginning of the final Thailand recap, and the start of a camping story. 

So excuses for not posting aside, I guess I'll wrap those guys up and put them out there and buy myself a week.  In the meantime, a list of other unfinished business that's fallen by the wayside this year and especially this summer:

1. Sailing certification.

2. The other 294 of my three hundred 300s.

3. Learning Japanese.

4. Riding my bike to work (more than once a year).

5. Cutting my hair.

6. Going to Tomales Bay for an oyster-filled weekend.

7. Seeing Autumn leaves.

8. Going to Yosemite at least once, to validate my impulse purchase of an annual pass last December.

But not comforting enough to provide empowering little sayings

discover what candy you are @ quiz me

The red ones at least, I hope

You Are Gummy Bears

You may be smooshie and taste unnatural, but you're so darn cute.

What Kind of Candy Are You?

The Red Shoes

Just a quick update - I went to beginning ballet yesterday, and it was a LOT better.  I was still the least flexible, and I was doing it in socks, but somewhere, at about the 70-minute mark, I actually pirouetted without falling over.  Maybe it was a fluke, but it has improved my attitude dramatically.

And the teacher was great.  Where the jazz dance class was a lot of twenty-somethings with pre-existing aptitude, this was clearly a collection of housewives and dabblers who had been learning ballet as adults.  Don't get me wrong, they were universally more talented than I am, but there was a lot more sympathetic mugging and wide eyes when he'd rattle off a combination consisting of more than three moves or mention an upcoming performance.

The teacher, a handsome, ridiculously flexible man in perhaps his late 30's, was definitely playing to the crowd.  He'd talk about us being 'divas' and 'princesses,' maintain the fiction that he was training us to be principal ballerinas (rather than mere corps dancers who run around with baskets of grapes), and generally remind us that we are delicate flowers, unlike the men who "need to be as macho as possible in our white tights."  Cue flood of giggling.  We ate it up.

The cherry on my sundae came as I was putting on my sneakers afterwards, as the beginner-intermediate class filtered in, when a woman who could have been 70 tentatively entered, approached the teacher, and introduced herself as someone who hadn't done ballet since she was a child.  I immediately said hello, and demanded to know why she didn't throw me a line in the true beginners' class and she admitted that she was there for the next level only because she was accommodating the schedule of the friend who'd roped her into it.   We both expressed relief at finding someone else who didn't have a clue.

Immediately after class I found the shop recommended by the lady, and bought a pair of ballet slippers. 

Twinkle Toes

While I was growing up and to this day, my dad has called me "Grace."  I've never been sure whether he is referring to the meaning of my given name or making a crack about my general clutziness.  I think he likes the ambiguity.

My mother has told me that when I was in ballet class with all the other three year olds, the instructor recommended that I see the podiatrist because there was "something wrong" with my feet.  My parents took me to the doctor, and, as the story goes, he laughed and said that I would never be good for ballet, but ballet would be good for me.

In elementary school I envied the girls who could turn cartwheels.  I asked my mom to put me in a gymnastics class at the Y, but I never got beyond the forward somersault.  (Wait, does that sound like anything requiring talent?  It's the one where you squat, then tuck your head in and roll forward.)  I was a big gymnastics failure.  Also, I'm not flexible.

I didn't learn how to ride a bike until I was in fourth or fifth grade.

As I got older, I move on to feeling awkward and self conscious at school dances.  It wasn't just that I knew I moved dorkily, but also that the idea of "expressing myself through movement" seemed terribly embarrassing.  The only thing that made dances tolerable was when a kind friend would take me aside and teach me the precise movements of the classic "step-touch-step-touch" dance.  As long as I could do the move and there was no room for anyone to mistakenly think I was "into" the music or that I thought I was cool, I was safe.

But I've still always admired dancers and people who are nimble and have good spacial awareness and all that.  So in college I took up ballroom dancing and sort of found my niche.  Because, just like in junior high and high school, in ballroom I could learn the precise steps.  (Swing still evades me because there is so much improvisation.)  Although learning the steps took me a very very long time, once I could do them I could do them just fine and have fun and enjoy the music and feel, well, not so lumpen.  But I don't do that anymore; I tired of having my peer group be exclusively old people and social inepts.     

As an adult, strangers have inquired more than once if I was a dancer, which I can attribute only to my long neck and propensity to wear sweatsuits in public - but I find the question incredibly flattering. 

I still have two left feet; I trip over my own toes just walking along the sidewalk. 

But a couple of weeks ago I was inundated with dancery.  I was Facebook-bullied into watching SYTYCD; Ace and I saw Fred and Ginger in Top Hat; I watched Center Stage and Stick It in one lazy afternoon.  And I decided I'd still like to Be A Dancer.

So I've investigated the neighborhood offerings, and there isn't a lot in the way of adult beginning dancing instruction.  (Although to be honest, I wouldn't mind lining up at the barre with the four year olds - I think it's the parents who would object.)  There's a "Beginning Jazz Dance" class at the community center, and a "Beginning Ballet" at a ballet school near me.

This Tuesday I went to jazz dance.  A friendly student introduced me to the teacher, who was very welcoming.  I asked if the class was truly for beginners and warned her that I knew nothing and had no natural aptitude.  She said students weren't expected to know anything, and it would be a perfect fit.

*sigh*

I creaked through the warm up, approximated the stretching, and stumbled through the routine.  It was terrible.  I don't mind being bad; it didn't bother me that I was the worst.  I already know this is something I'm not good at, and I recognize how counterproductive pride can be (I wish I'd discovered that one sooner in life).  But the chasm between me and the rest of the other "beginner" students was so vast, I felt like I was in the way.  A lumbering elephant among flamingos. 

At one point we were supposed to pirouette across the floor in three lines - no hiding in the back - and I couldn't even turn in one of the directions and just walked across the floor like a big, dejected loser.  The teacher didn't even bother to adjust me during any of the techniquey bits, and I know it was a kindness.  She talked to the class about how it wasn't all about getting the precise steps but was about showing emotion (the music was an 'introspective piece,' so we weren't supposed to be checking the mirror or one another), and looked right at me - but as we know, that self-consciousness isn't going anywhere if I know I'm screwing up the basics.  By the end I was near tears and extremely frustrated. 

The friendly student, a guy named Chris, told me afterwards that he totally got my situation, that he had come to dancing "late in life" and comisserated about the lack of true beginner options for grownups.  He said he was in my boat a few years ago, but just threw himself into a million different classes.  I remembered how I cried frustrated tears in my first spinning class many years ago, and how far I've come since then.   

So this weekend I'm going to try the beginning ballet class.    

Misty water colored logos

One more note on the Leaning Tower Y. 

I always thought that the logo for the Leaning Tower Y

 

was expressly designed to reflect the leaning tower. 

You see there, the way the left side of the "Y" looks like a leaning building?

 

But I have since discovered that all Ys use the same crooked-line-plus-gay-triangle. 

 

At least the Village People were on the right track.

Scattered pictures light the corners of my mind

I have mixed feelings about Apartment Therapy.  I like to look at the pictures, but I'm starting to tire of the incessant worship of all things mid-century modern.  And I get particularly annoyed with the commentary, 80% of which is meanspirited and rude.  If you can't say something nice, people.

Nevertheless, I came across this post, and it made me smile.  This is where I learned how to swim in 3rd through 5th grades, at the Leaning Tower YMCA.   It's also where I learned to say, "Annie are you okay?" and to inflate my pajamas to make a life raft.

The Y had one of those snack machines where it was a carousel with sliding doors, and you could get, like, a plate with a slice of pie on it or an orange or a carton of milk.  

They also had a vending machine that displayed a chapstick my dad had encountered only once before.  It was - get this - vanilla flavored.  (Note to the youngsters: this was back in the 80's when almost no toiletries were vanilla - can you imagine there was ever such a time?  The whole dessert-in-the-bathroom thing was once quite revolutionary.)  One evening after picking us up from swimming, I remember my dad spent about five bucks trying to get that particular chapstick that was displayed.  He kept getting plain and cherry, until he realized that the display chapstick was never going to come out.  We squinted at the packaging through the vending machine window until we could make out the manufacturer and ended up calling them.  But they didn't sell chapstick over the phone.

And in a Boy Scout raffle, I won 10 video rentals from the shop right across the street from the leaning tower.  I always secretly wanted to rent Chitty Chitty Bang Bang but ended up getting something the whole family wanted to see.  I think we rented Flashdance for my mom and she made us promise to leave the room for the R-rated scene.  To this day, I don't know what scene was R-rated.  Was it the strippers dancing to Maneater?  We fell asleep anyway.

 

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Thumble

Hi, remember me?  I got an inquiry (An inquiry!  One! Yes!  Isn't that sweet? I have a fan!  One!  Fan!) as to my location and well-being and rattled back a bunch of excuses about not having time to write about that (great) trip to Montana but feeling obligated to post chronologically so have been trapped behind that brick wall but also busy busy and figuring out my life and will I ever have children because apparently certain friends of mine think I'm over the hill and thinking maybe of possibly someday shopping for a house and this sailing thing, I don't know about it, and I lost my wallet, and then I found my wallet but lost my I.D. and credit cards, and apparently certain people think I'm not responsible enough to have kids anyway, and how will I fly to Erie without ID, and maybe I'll audition for a reality show if ANYBODY would trust me with their video camera - I mean, nothing anybody wants to read about, trust me.  But really the short answer would have to be - I lost my camera.

Which is to say, my camera drowned during a very exciting, tear- and swear-word stained river crossing in Montana, and, see, I bought that camera at the same time I started this blog, and so maybe I'm just ignoring the one to avoid dealing with the loss of the other.  Or maybe I'm just too lazy to create meaningful content and don't have the alternative of posting jokey pictures. 

But it's been an eventful week, and I've been away long enough that probably nobody remembers that I went camping anyway...so ...here's one for you, kid.

I chopped off my thumb Wednesday night.  It was a particularly tough Gruyere rind that I had been attacking, and you know how they say, "Never cut towards yourself"?  Yeah.  That's a good tip.  A good rule of thumb, if you will.

I honestly debated whether to go to the emergency room.  I didn't know whether there was anything anybody could do, and I avoid doctors.  (I don't know why, I'm not scared of them.  I guess it seems like a waste of time when I feel pretty healthy anyway.  But I've heard someone give that as their reason for why they don't exercise, and I argued with it, so I should take my own advice.)  So I thought about wrapping it up in a kitchen towel and going to bed (it had been a long day, it was about 1:30 in the morning, I had had half a glass of red wine and didn't want to seem irresponsible). 

But about 1/4 inch of loose thumb was looking back at me and turning pale, and I decided that a stitch in time might save my thumb.  So I went upstairs and brushed the wine out of my teeth with my non-bleeding hand, then fumbled all over the house looking for any kind of ID (I think I lost my passport in Montana) or my insurance cards.  But then I remembered how everybody in California is always getting mad about illegal immigrants taking advantage of emergency rooms' "help everybody" policy and realized I could wing it.  I grabbed a checkbook and my emergency credit card just in case.  And my library card.  And my 24 Hour Fitness card.

I went to El Camino Hospital, a hospital I'd never been to before.  I've only been to Stanford's ER (for myself and others) and it is always a mob scene.  So this was about equidistant from my house and I figured the wait surely couldn't be worse than Stanford's. 

They were very nice at reception and there was only one other person in the waiting room.  I read Sunset Magazine and decided I want to spend a night here some time, and they called me in.

Through this process, perhaps five different people checked in on my pain level, and to each I honestly reported that I hardly felt a thing.  It was like a 1 on that 1-10 scale they use.  Every single person then said, "Must have been a sharp knife!"

So I'd like to take a moment to recognize.  Something I have made note of many, many times over the past year and a half, but have probably never mentioned out loud, is that one of Ace's contributions to our household was a fabulous set of knives.  Every one of them is useful for something, and they're easy to keep sharp, even though we just throw them in the dishwasher.  So thanks, Ace!  They make my life easier!  Well, usually.

To make a long story less long, I asked the doctor to save my whole thumb.  I considered telling a sob story about being a pianist or a professional Thai masseuse, but figured it wouldn't change anything.  So after a technician (named Ben, I think) cleaned up as much of the gore as he could (great new tip: KY jelly dissolves blood easily without rubbing), the doc and I were looking at my thumb, turning it this way and that, when suddenly I got really light headed and nauseated and kept asking for something to throw up in, and the doctor said I was white as a sheet and the next thing I knew they were shoving an IV in me, trying to inject me with something, and making me lie down. 

So now I have to speak for all those people who faint at the sight of blood and guts.  I always assumed it was just squeamishness and was mildly critical...but now, having nearly passed out myself, I can only say that there was no emotion accompanying the experience.  I wasn't scared or grossed out or anything - it just came over me. 

The doctor stated that he would have to take my entire nail off, something about it growing in weird if he didn't.  We agreed that if he were a manicurist, he would be receiving a very small tip.  (Discussion topic: which is more of a slap in the face to a service provider, no tip, or a very small tip?)

He took off the nail, and apparently (I was dying to see, but didn't want to pass out) the top of my thumb came with it.  He said he couldn't save it...and predicted that I would heal up with a short thumb.  Then he left me alone for about an hour, and it was only at that point that I started getting weepy.  I don't know if it was the thought of having a stumpy thumb, or maybe the pain was catching up to me, or maybe I was feeling forgotten, or maybe I was just so tired - it was now about 4:00 on Thursday morning. 

I finally called for someone to help me and after more delay Ben came back to swaddle me up.  That hurt like hell, and I was annoyed that they'd waited so long that the anesthetic was wearing off.

I got home and went to bed around 6 am on Thursday, but not before emailing my new workout partner that I would not be making it.

He called me throughout the morning to tell me about the pixie dust.

Here's the video:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7376191.stm

That afternoon (yesterday), I called the doctor in Pittsburgh.