Why, yes. I would like to wear an enormous hot pink sombrero with my plastic Mickey Mouse rain poncho and have my picture taken. BECAUSE THE INTERNET NEEDS TO SEE THIS.

Last year, I went to a personal development type thing in Las Vegas. In one exercise, we were given servants and told to keep them busy. Most people sent their minions marching across the room to fetch things necessary for the early stages of a bloodless coup. I made my minions do a kick line and move a potted plant two feet to the left. I’ve since decided there are two types of people in the world – those who are productive and those who exist only to amuse themselves. You can probably guess which one I am.

(For further proof, please see the foam sword fight or the lunchtime napkin haiku.)

Nothing resets your dials like a vacation. Just getting out of your own space – the space with the storage closet you’ve been meaning to clean for a year, the piles of bills that need sorting, and the heavy psychic fog of dreams gone rancid – for a few days works veritable miracles. (I’m kidding about that dreams gone rancid thing. Dreams are sturdy and you get to cling to them until you die. And after you die I assume you’re too busy learning to fly with your freshly bleached wings or rattling chains in your younger brother’s attic to care.) Whenever I get home from a trip, I’m filled with the undeniable urge to tackle projects and do all those things I’ve been meaning to do, at least until I remember the storage closet and its overwhelming desire to bury me in old greeting cards and tennis rackets circa 1989.

But if nothing else, four days of wine and cheese and MINI ICE CREAM CONES:

You can’t see them very well, but they were chocolate and cookies and cream and covered in sprinkles and delicious and I’m so glad that dress had an empire waist.

…leave me craving nothing more than a green salad and lots of apples. I even went to a dance class tonight, my first dance class in two years, something I’ve been talking about doing, oh, FOR AGES. I’m pretty sure the Cretaceous period made a glittering comeback, complete with troupes of plucky ichthyosaurs doing the lambada while I’ve been talking about taking a dance class and not doing it. But now I have! So I shall bask in my triumph, at least until I can move my legs again.

Coming from San Francisco, land o’ winter coats in May, walking out of the airport into wet, tropical heat was surreal. Even more surreal than the daily downpours seeping into the mangled soles of the unwary (my green sneakers finally got tossed in the hotel garbage can after I realized that maybe three gaping holes meant new shoes would be a reasonable purchase). Torrential downpours are standard fare it seems, and I got quite adept at pulling a plastic poncho out of my purse and over my head without even breaking stride. Vacation can teach a person any number of useful personal insights, namely how annoyed I get by drunk men in hot tubs (very), how quickly we’ll brave sheets of rain to get to the next glass of wine (very), and how sad I am to abandon a pair of beloved shoes (also very).

We went to Disney World, a place I love unabashedly. Fake pirates, fake safaris, fake Eiffel Tower – what’s not to love? Sure, seeing kangaroos and flamingos and hippos in their native habitat would be incredible as would actually going to Germany – as opposed to Epcot’s questionable interpretation of Germany – but Disney World is great fun. Especially when you’re attacked by random birds for your ability to purchase french fries. (There’s a good picture of me almost losing a finger to an eager beak, and you’ll just have to take my word for that until pictures get uploaded into the digital world.) That goes in the memory bank, as does the full moon rising as the chains creaked us to the top of the roller coaster. And the fly flailing in a full glass of wine, a circumstance heart-breaking both in the fly’s valiant attempts to swim to safety and my sullied glass of rather nice white. I was tempted to fish it out and carry on drinking, but such uncouth action doesn’t really mesh with lobster bisque and fireworks filling the night sky above us.

–

Florida pictures will be forthcoming. I usually wait until I have everything in one place, but as often as not that means things never get posted. And because this blog has been giving me some serious performance anxiety lately, I’ve decided to post every day. Every day for a month. Here is where I want to insert the wishy-washy disclaimer about how I might not actually do it, we’ll just have to see, but I don’t want to be that person, the one I so often am, who says she’ll do things and then…doesn’t. So. There we have it. In the meantime, take a look at Leah’s gorgeous pictures of Kristin and Scott’s wedding if you’re so inclined. Here’s the inevitable shot that crops up every time there’s a camera in the vicinity –  me, being…me. I really need to grill my mother about my true parentage, because I’m pretty sure I’m a muppet.

Anyway. We rented skis, a really big SUV, and trundled out into the frosty wilderness of snow-covered hotel chains and In’n'Out burgers. I never managed to get an accurate count, but the ratio of digital devices to people was at least 3:1 in that car – cell phones, GPS, weird lollipop-like contraption to hook an iPhone to the radio, laptop to watch Entourage. All we needed to complete the scene was Guitar Hero and a Victrola. My only contribution was a plastic flask of Yukon Jack, described on the label as the black sheep of Canadian liqeuers. It was purchased at a gas station in Vacaville and consumed to the dulcet tones of ceaseless mockery. Insulting my taste in alcohol didn’t stop anyone from asking me to pass the bottle.

Driving past very chilly cows.

As a pretty average skier, I can get down most blue runs without much trouble. My technique could use some work and I’ve been known to greet pine trees with my face, but I can generally hold my own. Not with this crowd. I’ve been skiing with this friend before, but it was about five years ago. Since I can’t remember what happened five days ago, I have to forgive myself for forgetting that he’s a much better skier than I am. So are his friends, a pertinent little fact I discovered the hard way. After a so-called warm-up run, where I did less warming up and more falling and displacing skis, we started for real. As we hovered at the top of the run, he turned to me and said, “It’s like staring into the abyss, isn’t it?” Then they pushed off the ledge and tore down the slope like they were on a mission to beat the Austrians for the gold. I pushed off the ledge and went careening down the mountain with a face full of snow and my limbs splayed in all directions. I would gather my skis, poles, shattered cool, and at least one glove and set off again, only to find myself sliding backwards down the hill like a turtle, legs wrenched in every direction but the comfortable one.

What I learned that day: 1) I am not ready for black diamonds, especially inadvertent ones. 2) People are very nice. Every time I’d go tumbling, some good Samaritan would stop and ask if I was OK, stand below me as I tried to reattach my skis or gather whatever bits of ski gear had flown off. 3) Next time I’m going skiing with a trauma surgeon.

Post-abyss

The hot tub and steak that night were well-earned. And I have a new item for my 2010 bucket list: Get down a black diamond without giving myself a concussion.

My second visit was a mere technicality. My flight had a layover in the Las Vegas airport on my way to start college in New York, but I was too distracted to notice anything besides the glaring slot machine lights. I was moving 3000 miles away from home and I’d befriended a girl on the flight who, oddly, handed me her cell phone because her boyfriend wanted to talk to me. Confused, I took her phone and listened as he shrieked, “I WANT YOU TO STAY AWAY FROM HER!” I’d forgotten all about that until I passed that same row of slot machines 13 years later, and the memory of being afraid for her came rushing back. I wonder if she ever escaped him.

So this weekend was my first real experience of Las Vegas. I was there for, of all things, a personal development workshop. It’s too easy, isn’t it? Like shooting pigeons in a pie. “So you’re going to personally develop your crack habit?” “You’re going to personally develop your pole dancing skills?” “You’re going to personally develop your addiction to margaritas in two-foot tall plastic cups?”

After expecting a tawdry street full of dimly buzzing fluorescent signs and panhandlers busking the twelve dollar hookers, I was entirely charmed by Las Vegas – the bright lights of the Strip, the disarmingly clean Venice, the geographically incorrect New York. And the pole dancers. They were surprisingly graceful, with their improbable tans and unfortunately fuzzy boots.

To Sum Up a Very Eventful Weekend In One Paragraph, Because This Post Is Already Too Voluminously Full of Adverbs

I received a marriage proposal, got more hugs in three days than I have in the past year, and organized a two-man kick line for my own entertainment. Four people said they liked my hair. I saw Ka with my new Australian friend, the one who accidentally wandered through every parking lot on the Strip with me and taught me to call obnoxiously large, gas-guzzling cars “Yank Tanks.” I saw a pirate show featuring more spangled hotpants than pirates, and was asked by an accomplished psychic if I’d started writing my book yet. (My brain blew with an audible pop. I wonder if she knows I lied when I said yes.) I ate the most amazing steak of my life and vowed two days later to cut meat from my diet. I met smart, kind people from Belgium, Denmark, Romania, and Flushing, New York. I marveled at the amount of material one can use to cover one’s loins and still claim to be wearing a skirt. I ate peanut butter fudge ice cream and drooled over patent leather high heels in the shop windows of the Bellagio. I vowed they would be mine and was informed by a dry Australian voice, “If we can’t manifest a penny, we probably can’t manifest Dior.” We didn’t find a penny.

I was happy this weekend. Best of all, I now have some handy tools to transfer said happiness to my everyday life. Here’s what stuck:

1. It’s easy to be friendly and open in a room full of friendly and open people. But I can recreate that ease of interaction anywhere I go – especially if I yank out the earbuds, stow my iPhone, and pay attention to the living, breathing humans in front of me.
2. You can make someone’s day by recognizing their effort or buying them coffee. Yes, kindness can be purchased for three dollars and fifty cents. If you don’t have three dollars and fifty cents, smiling works too.
3. It’s worth taking the time to figure out the truth of my emotions and reactions. It’s astonishingly easy with a little practice.
4. I waste a lot of time on activities that don’t noticeably improve my quality of life. Like, say, aiming my browser toward my email 97 (billion) times a day.
5. I love writing these little notes to you people and I want to do more of it. When I’m writing a blog post, I lose all sense of time and space and resurface only after hitting publish. Then I dive back under to futz with word choice and remove extraneous commas. I do like me some extraneous commas.
6. I’m not quite where I want to be yet, but I can see it from here.
7. Scratch that. I’m precisely where I want to be. Being otherwise is to miss what’s in your lap. And then you just offended a perfectly nice lap dancer.

As a certified California history nerd, Donner Pass tends to make me twitchy. It feels odd to bop my head to Vampire Weekend in my air-conditioned car while sailing merrily past the spot where luckless pioneers had to eat their frozen colleagues in the dim hope of surviving ’til spring.

Then I found this spot and forgot all about the Donner Party diet:

Not only does my new phone have a camera, it can also email those pictures to everyone in my address book from the beach. And no, I didn’t utterly abuse my newfound super-powers, why do you ask?

I’m rather fond of just picking up and going – no real plan, just follow whatever caprice enters my head. That’s the genius of traveling alone. If you decide you want crab cakes and white wine, you simply type “Where can a girl get seafood around here?” into your phone and your phone spits out suggestions and a map. And off you go. No need to fulfill anyone else’s similar yet contradictory hankering for a shredded beef burrito.

Wherein I cater to my every whim.

I read my book on what might be the most beautiful beach I’ve ever paid $8 to sit on. (Seriously, it’s worth it. If you ever pass Sand Beach on the south shore, fork over the cash.) I ate lobster bisque and watched the sun go down over this highly questionable bit of signage. The next day I went on a hike and inspected the wildlife – a dude with what appeared to be a perm circa 1994 and his two dogs Rufus and Maximus, a naked man with a paunch who was far less noticeable on the secluded beach than he was bouncing down the trail wearing only his shoes, and a prehistoric mini-dinosaur who did pushups on the rock next to me while I offered a genial “What up?”. Then I drove home after being in Tahoe a grand total of 26 hours.

Though I occasionally have to smack out of my head the thought that I’ve completely mismanaged my life because I’m not married with an infant and going to some cunning job with stock options every morning (especially since cunning jobs with stock options don’t really exist any more) (though I understand husbands and infants still do), these are the moments when I realize I’m very happy where I am.

Perched precariously to get this shot. I am nothing if not dedicated to my art.  

How could you not be when staring at this? Even if, two minutes later, you miss your footing and tumble ass over tea kettle down the hill and are still finding dirt in your pockets days later.

This is how I travel, see. I go with friends intent on some lofty purpose – to push the bounds of reasonable human endurance or master medieval Italian. While they’re doing that, I take a nap.

Apparently, my driving goal in life is to be well rested.

But not today, apparently. I woke up at 4 a.m. this morning and instead of dutifully falling back to sleep, I opted to research flights to Sydney. I was about two delirious minutes from punching in my credit card numbers and tapping out an email quitting my job when I realized that if I’m interested in drastic change, perhaps a nice haircut would be a smarter choice.

Graceful as our large hooved alter-egos on skis. 

Kristin, Scott, and I went skiing last Friday and had the entire side of the mountain all to ourselves. I love skiing. Love it. Whipping down a hill with the wind in my ski cap and hot chocolate with Bailey’s waiting at the bottom is one of my favorite things. Even with the mystery bruises that blossom after every trip. Kristin and I spent our time tipping over and trying to figure out how to stand back up again while Scott spent his time waiting patiently at the lift.

Picture by one of the dynamic Kristin/Scott duo. Sadly, my camera just doesn’t work this way. Yes, that’s right. I’m blaming it on my camera.  

Something about the snowy outdoors makes me giddy. Giddy yet relaxed. Sort of like drinking a large cup of coffee and chasing it with bourbon. Only less with the toxicity and more with the healthful fresh air. After our invigorating snowcercise, we’d sit in the hot tub with the snow lightly falling and Beulah rooting through the drifts for an errant stuffed lobster. After giving up on the slopes on Friday afternoon, I sat in the hot tub with Kristin and Scott, saying, “Well, this sure would be romantic for you two kids…IF I WASN’T HERE.” Then I chuckle, put my feet up, and begin a longwinded story about my tax returns.

Spending Valentine’s Day weekend in a cozy Tahoe cabin with a pair of couples who are too damn cute to reside comfortably on planet Earth can be a recipe for Fifth Wheeldom, but I have never once felt like an extra cog, wheel, or random appendage with my friends, and bless them for that. In fact, Valentine’s Day dinner was a symphony to romantic discontent, with a menu of braised short-ribs, bitter chocolate, and smashed strawberries. Nothing was skewered, but only because we couldn’t smash the artichokes onto anything appropriately pointy.

Snow, bourbon, lovely people, and a fluffy dog = best Valentine’s Day yet.

(If you want to see Robot in the Ski Lodge, Clumsy Attempts at Karate Kid Impersonation, Snow Faceplants, and Cute Trundling Brown Dog, video footage is here.)

We drove out to Point Reyes on Saturday to walk on the beach and let the Vitamin D soak into our pasty faces. And found Adventure! Uncertain terrain! Wildlife that steadfastly refused to fetch onion rings! Join the drama queen in green sneakers as she answers the pressing question: Do or don’t I attempt to cross a ravine by balancing precariously on a bit of plastic pipe?

Accidental 8-Mile Hike: a Photo Essay

[Instructions (mainly for my mom): Above link takes you to photo number 1. Take a gander at the poor photography with mysterious dark splotch in every frame, marvel at the witty prose below it, then click the next photo on the right to continue the story. Click on each picture until you reach the end or get bored and wander off.]

Maybe the earth picked up speed, or maybe it was just the moment that 400 years of clinging became too much. Whatever it was, a chunk of the stately building above the canal just gave up, falling with an audible splash into the water below.

We may have treated this example of a venerable city’s decay with blase disregard. “Did a piece of that building just FALL OFF?” We may have laughed, braying like American donkeys as we speculated on the purpose of the fallen architectural soldier – decorative or structural? Would the whole building follow suit, sliding gracefully into the canal as a displaced house cat hopped from window to sinking roof to the foot of a solid bridge? Or did someone on the top floor simply toss an apple core out the window because they couldn’t be bothered to find a garbage can? We continued over the bridge and the building, falling to pieces before our eyes, was forgotten at the sight of the first still-open gelato stand.

Only later did I pause to think about how Venice might one day be entirely under water. A magnificent city drowned because the foundation couldn’t hold its weight. Pieces are always falling away in life. Maybe it’s a job, a relationship, a beloved threadbare t-shirt, but we’re always losing bits of ourself into the water.

When we were in Venice, we were planning to try for a baby this autumn. Autumn has come and gone and plans have been put on hold. Not disintegrated, but frayed around the edges because the foundation wasn’t as solid as previously believed. Maybe that plan will resurface for us, maybe it won’t. But I accept where I am, and it’s a good place.

Venice is vibrant, even as it crumbles. It’s a city filled with wizened men smoking cigarettes and families parked on the street with baby in stroller, dog on leash, wine glass in gesturing hand. Sunshine can still bathe the whole, even as pieces fall away. Lopsided isn’t broken, it’s just different. Especially if you learn to gaze at it head on.

Fierce mustache that makes me wish I could grow facial hair.

Scare the hell out of small children. And me.

Tie your horse to a rodent bursting out of a brick wall.