Like, What Are You Saying?

A few weeks ago, my sister and I were at our parents' Japanese restaurant and we were having a conversation. An older gentleman who kind of reminded me of Peter O'Toole kept looking over at us. He was sitting, waiting for his to-go order. I thought that he wanted to jump into our conversation. My parents are very friendly with their customers, so they usually want to get to know us. My mother can make friends with anybody. She got that from my grandmother. My grandmother makes friends on the bus traveling from Princeton up to Manhattan.

"But Ama!" I said to her once. "You don't speak ANY English. How do you communicate?"

"Well," she said. "Sometimes these old American ladies sit next to me on the bus and they just start talking. By the time they're talking a few minutes, I feel too bad to let them know that I can't understand a word they're saying."

"How do they not pick up on this?"

"Every once in a while, I'll say 'uh-huh' and 'NO!' and that seems to do the trick."

Boy, those old ladies sure are easy to fool.

So this old guy kept staring at my sister and me and when his order was ready, he spend a good portion of time talking to my mother. My mother's English is not so good. I don't understand how someone who spent 5 years in Japan can speak Japanese fluently, but the same person, who comes to the United States and has been here about thirty years, still cannot read a Vogue magazine.

"What did that old guy say?" I asked my mom.

"Oh, he thought that I spent too much money on you girls because you like so many things."

"He did NOT say that!" my dad said. "What he SAID was that you girls say the work 'like' too often and you should be punished. Every time you say 'like' you should have to put a dollar in a can."

First of all, I do say "like" a lot and I can't help it. I don't know why or how I picked up this terrible habit and I blame that Catholic elementary school I attended. I'm lucky to have escaped without a Queens accent. Second of all, how DARE this old guy sit there and judge how I speak? I mean, English was my THIRD language, so even if I say "like" once in a while, cut me a break!

I think that every time that guy acts all judgey, he should have to put a dollar in a can!

What the Hell Happened to 3 o'clock?

The best time to call my sister is 3pm, because it's right after dinnertime in Tanzania. Her birthday was about a week ago and I have not been able to wish her a Happy Birthday! because everything in my life decides that it must happen at 3pm.

Day 1: Closing on the new place.
Day 2: Dealing with handyman over crazy plumbing problems in the new place.
(post coming up, I promise!--I'm still PROCESSING THE TRAUMA)
Day 3: Meeting at the magazine where I work.
Day 4: Totally overslept and then totally forgot about calling.
Day 5: Terribly long phone call with a client.
Day 6: Went out to lunch with Peter. Came back too late.
Day 7: Dentist's appointment (two cavities. boo.)

And I won't be able to call tomorrow, because the cable guy is going to show up between 2-4pm at the new place.

So I guess my sister will have been 21 for about a year before I'll be able to say, "Hey! Remember the day you were born? I do!"

I think my life is just too exciting at 3pm. She probably should have gone to Asia this summer, because nothing's really happening at 7 o'clock.

Side note: On the invitation for that fourth of July wedding, it stated that the wedding was going to take place at "Four-Thirty O Clock." Does that seem right?

We're Moving...Again!

Peter and I just closed on an apartment in Mamaroneck, where we used to live. It's a really nice place and closer to the city, which is key, since we go down there a lot.

We really liked Mount Kisco, but most of our friends and family are further south and Peter's going to be starting a new job in New Rochelle, so this way he'll be closer to work.

I'm excited about this, but everything leading up to this move is going to take up a lot of time and energy -- did I mention that I absolutely hate moving? Just thinking about it gives me a huge headache. We've moved about three times in the past few years and not once did we hire the right company -- so if anyone knows of a great moving company in Westchester, please let me know.

I guess Peter's no longer going to be the Count of Monte Kisco.

Breaking News

I was watching the new Denise Richards reality show and a BREAKING NEWS STORY usurped my show. Peter rushed into the room and said, "What's going on? Isn't that the E! channel?"

"If they're breaking news into E! it must be really serious."

We sat there, watching a French person speaking French and since I had the TV screen expanded, we couldn't see the subtitles just under the surface. Quickly, I grabbed the remote and changed the setting so that we could see the subtitles. And when I saw that it was that stupid Angelina Jolie's French doctor, it made me so mad.

"I can't believe that they're BREAKING NEWS into the SHOW I WAS WATCHING for this MEANINGLESSNESS!"

When I looked at Peter, he gave me this look he always gives me when I'm being totally stupid. It's a look that says, "And...?" As in, "Let me give you a few seconds to process what you just said and run it through your brain, because you obviously skipped that part last time."

"Okay, fine," I said. "I can't believe that they're breaking into my meaningless show with their meaningless news!"

WONDERFUL

So we survived the fourth of July wedding. It know that Peter was very nervous at first, driving to the wedding. Of course it was a really long Catholic wedding with a lot of standing up and kneeling and standing up again. I kind of felt sorry for the priest because he was like, "Do you promise to raise your future children Catholic? You promise, right? Yup, you said it and now you have to."

Whenever we attend christenings and weddings, the priests do act a bit harrumphy about all the people the Catholic Church has lost over the years, especially when people are supposed to go up and take communion, and he tells everyone not to come up if you're not prepared -- and then only five people go up.

We did the receiving line and Peter kind of hesitated before going up to his sister, and he almost turned around to walk away, but she acted very normally and thanked us for coming. Later, at the reception, Peter's nephew was kind of all goofy around Peter, as if they were still very close. I guess he just doesn't get it. We showed up because it was an obligation, but it's difficult when people who have acted in an awful manner in the past assumes everything is okay just because you show up at his wedding. There's a large disconnect there.

I think that it was a bit healing for Peter to see everyone one last time. He doesn't think that we will see his older sister's family ever again. I'm still processing what happened, so I'll post more about the wedding later on.

The nicest thing happened. We were sitting at this table with an older gentleman, someone whose wife had worked with Peter's sister about 45 years ago. I was a little tipsy (after downing four drinks as soon as we got there) and talked with him about all sorts of things. At some point I went to the bathroom and Peter said that while I was gone, this guy said to him:

"I've met a lot of people in my life, but that woman you're with? She's WONDERFUL."

And then when Peter told him that we were married, he said:

"Oh! Now THAT makes sense!"

And then he went on and on about how lucky Peter was, which was really sweet. Dealing with Peter's family is really trying because no one seems to want to get to know me and whenever I reach out to people, it's met with nothingness. So it's so affirming when other people say: Hey! You're WONDERFUL.

Going "Poo-Free"

Last night I decided to try a new way of washing my hair. I found it here.

My usual shampoo is a very no-nonsense cheap-o Head and Shoulders 2-in-1 shampoo I've been using since forever. Mostly because it's the only shampoo that doesn't leave my hair all gunked up. I have really wonky asian hair that is straight, but has this (very) slight wave to it that makes it kick out.

Okay. I have to come clean. My hair is fabulous. It's my own fault that I am too lazy to actually brush it and put product in it. Because it is so straight, I can go for several weeks without brushing it.

I have this strange thing with vanity. I attended an almost all-white Catholic school with mostly Italian and Irish kids. Suffice it to say that diversity isn't very prized in an Irish/Italian Catholic environment. For the first fourteen years of my life I was convinced that I was hideous and would end up a lone spinster like those witches in fairy tales.

The style that was popular in my elementary/junior high school was the gaudy Guidette with her pouf of hair-sprayed hair and long red fashion nails. Let's not forget those shiny pink lip-glossed lips. Gloss that come in the white plastic tubs you buy at the local drugstore. And the mascara! Oh yes, the mascara!

During this time I learned to not look at mirrors too much. I used to have to wear a uniform so there goes any need to pay attention to fashion. My only desire in high school was to blend into the crowd.

After junior high, I attended a school that was VERY asian. In fact, there were so many asians, I no longer stood out! Okay, it was a nerd school, but for the first time in my life, I fit in!!

I started to wear makeup, do my hair, and wear all sorts of ridiculous outfits (after all, it was the early nineties).

Then I met my friend Amanda, who had been horrified that a mutual friend of hours took two hours every morning to get ready for school.

"Do you mean," Amanda said. "That this girl spends TWO HOURS looking at herself in the mirror?"

I never thought about it that way before. Through Amanda, I was given books by Derrida, Wittgenstein, Kristeva, and JD Salinger. She introduced me to The Cure, New Order, and indie punk bands. We bought second-hand clothes by the bag and wore the same thing three days in a row. It was a messy, dirty, fabulous life. I no longer cared how I looked. I went out on dates in my ugly white sweatshirt with the orange collar and sleeves. I felt that if the guy didn't like what I looked like all non-dressed-up, then he wasn't worth dating.

As it turns out, it was a very effective way of weeding out the duds. Although it probably only works when you're 22-years-old.

Anyway, I've recently wanted to go more green in terms of the products Peter and I use in our house. I now only use green products to clean almost everything (except for the occasional use of bleach) and yesterday I learned about a new way to wash my hair using baking soda. It's not just good for baking!

I put one tablespoon of baking soda into one cup of hot water. After I wet my hair, I poured this mixture on my head and rubbed it in for about a minute. Then I rinsed it, finished my shower and went to bed.

Yes, I take my showers at night. It's something I've always done. I like to go to bed all clean. I've been trying to convert Peter since we met, but he is a morning-showerer.

The next morning, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my hair was shiny, bouncy, and smooth. This baking soda thing is the greatest shampoo ever! I'm going to keep using it for a few weeks before I decide if I'm going to completely go "poo-free" -- so hopefully this will work out because it's even easier than the Head and Shoulders 2-in-1. Not only am I lazy, but I'm frugal too and baking soda only costs pennies. So I can save a whole $20/year!

I Love Boston, but Those Red Sox Fans Better Chill

Yesterday Peter and I made an impromptu visit to Boston. Yes, we drive 3 hours to go on a day trip. We told our friend John we were going and his reaction was that it's not worth it.

"What do you do? Drive for six hours just to spend about four hours in Boston?"

Why? Is that crazy?

This is something I've always done with my parents. We'll drive four hours to go to a restaurant we like. Every spring, we'd drive all the way to Washington DC from NYC just to look at cherry blossoms for about an hour. Sometimes you just want to go to another city, isn't that why we have cars?

On the way there, we stopped by a visitor center on the highway to pee. The old guy behind the counter gave Peter a look of evil and it took me a moment to figure out that Peter was wearing his Yankee hat!

Walking with Peter down Newbury Street when he's wearing a Yankee hat is a misery of dirty looks and constant barrage of: "Nice haaat."s (picture Boston accent here)

Peter wanted to get a Boston Red Sox hat because he likes their colors and he likes the team as long as they don't play the Yankees, but I am putting my foot down. No Red Sox hat is allowed in my home, just because of all the stupid fans that have given us such a hard time in the past. In NY, I would never notice if someone was wearing a Red Sox hat, let alone make a comment about it.

When we got into town, Peter stuffed his hat into his pocket and people pretty much left us alone.

Walking down Boylston Street, we noticed that Boston is now about 65% Asian. When did that happen? I mean, don't get me wrong, it's an improvement :) -- but since when? Is it because there are a million colleges and universities there and Asians love to study? Hmmmm...

Also, Peter noticed that there are a lot more attractive people in Boston now. Is Boston the new New York? Now THAT will really piss off those Bostonians.

They Said This Would Happen!

Hey! I got my first hatemail!

Okay, more like hate comment.

I've arrived!!

I'm strangely ecstatic about this. In fact, I'm so excited and I can't stop grinning.

Yes, I know it appears that we're being complete jerks about this stupid wedding, but it's mainly because there's a lot I haven't explained to my readership so here goes (take a deep breath):

We're not exactly happy to be attending this wedding because Peter has a very strained relationship with that part of the family. Basically, his sister and mother had a falling out over the purchase of a kitchen appliance.

Although Peter has purchased a dishwasher, a refrigerator, a sofa, a dining room table, three air conditioners, a microwave, and any other household appliance that needed purchasing in his parental home, when his eldest sister decided to purchase a new stove for his mother, her husband informed Peter that he would be chipping in for it. That was fine for him, in fact, he had wanted to buy his mother a stove just a few months previously for her birthday, but his mother insisted that she didn't need nor want a stove and she would actually prefer the cash, thank you very much.

I think that Peter's mother keeps quiet about all the things he does buy for her because she wants to play the martyr card in front of her other children. So this whole time there has been a lot of resentment amongst the other children (who only visit her once or twice a year) on how Peter had been fleecing her dry until he met me (the villainess) and then he moved out and abandoned her. I'm sure she never tells them that he paid off the large credit card debt she accrued buying Christmas presents for them. I'm pretty sure that all she does is complain about the stuff that Peter doesn't do for her instead of looking at all the things he does. Basically she's a glass-half-empty kind of person. If the glass is Peter and the empty air is all the unrealistic things she expects from her youngest son.

Okay, back to the original story: New York has this strange law that the stove store cannot hook up the stove. You need to unhook the old stove if you want to have the store carry it off and you need to hook up the new stove. I'm not sure why a Sears technician cannot do this, but he can't and don't even mention it to him because he will shrug his jumpsuited arms at you.

So when the new stove got delivered, Peter's mom insisted on not asking her landlord to unhook the old stove. I don't know why, but she was really against it. So for a few days there were two stoves in her kitchen. Then, there was a phone call from Peter's sister to Peter wherein he told her about this strange New York Stove Law.

In frustration, she called Sears and had them cart away the new stove and return it and she no longer wanted to buy the stove for her mother. In fact, she didn't speak to her or Peter for about four years.

You know how sometimes a stove isn't just a stove? I think that this stove represented a lot of things to Peter's sister and what happened was just the last straw. The fact of the matter is that Peter was born when his mother was in her forties and his elder siblings were already adults, so a lot of water got filled up under a lot of bridges even by the time he was born. There's a lot of crazy family dynamics that he doesn't even understand because they predate him. So this stove thing happened and his sister snapped.

During this time, Peter's father died. (That was a complete nightmare in and of itself without any support system for Peter or his mother during this terrible time.) Peter's eldest sister's entire family did not attend the wake, the funeral, or make any phone calls to the family.

There was a lot of resentment all around, and Peter's mother still has not forgiven them for not attending the funeral. I mean, I had to pick out the coffin and I was all, "The one with the big gold cross. No! The one with the roses. No! The one with the big gold cross. Wait. Uhm. I'm not sure. Can you show me all of them for the third time?" The funeral director was very patient and nice and I was so afraid of picking the wrong casket and the whole time I wished that someone older and wiser could help us out. (Ultimately, the funeral director assured me that yes, the one with the roses is completely appropriate and very Catholic-y)

It's true that for a long time Peter and I have judged this family very harshly for what they put his mother through and the embarrassment this caused her in front of all the other people who attended the funeral service. She doesn't like to feel that her family has completely fallen apart, but sometimes being confronted with it at the age of 84 is extremely difficult and she's not very good at dealing with feelings.

Peter has tried his best to reach out to his nephew. He had called him and not received any telephone calls back. He had asked his nephew to serve as a groomsman at our wedding, hoping that this would mend things a little, but his sister's family did not attend. In fact, their RSVP note was written in ALL CAPS to convey the fervency of their refusal, I suppose.

Because Peter's nephew did attend our wedding and he did stand up for us at our wedding, Peter feels obligated to attend his nephew's. Also, we understand firsthand what it's like when family does not attend a wedding since his sister did not attend ours. We didn't want to do that to anyone else. So we are attending the wedding, but we have reservations about everything. This will be the first time he will have seen his sister in about six years and he's not sure how that's going to be like. He doesn't really understand why his sister has removed herself from our lives, this was a sister that he had felt very connected to until six years ago. He feels that this relationship is completely damaged and irreparable.

The reason we're attending this wedding is that we were invited. And yes, it probably didn't matter which day of the year it was going to happen, but the fact that it was happening over the 4th of July weekend gave me an excuse to bitch and moan about it without really talking about the real issues.

But now that piece of hatemail has forced me to open up that can of worms, so THANK YOU HATEMAIL!

I am trying to be more positive and hopeful about this Friday and I guess that means I'm going to have to stop bitching and moaning. Which sucks because I LOVE bitching and moaning!

So okay, positive feelings from now on!

Second String

As I had mentioned previously, we're going to a wedding on the Fourth a July. And no, we're NOT HAPPY about this. A friend of mine commented that only very rarely does a Fourth of July happen to fall on a long weekend day and to take away that long weekend from everyone who has to be at the wedding (guests and also the catering staff) is not okay. Fine. Fine. Fine. Enough ranting about this stupid freaking wedding already!

Yesterday, Peter got invited to the bachelor party, which of course, is being held on Saturday. That's right. 2 days notice.

I mean, which is ruder? Not getting invited to an event or getting invited two days before the event? You might as well tell the person that a lot of other people couldn't make it and now you're calling the second string people. I'm annoyed whenever people are phony and I think this is a completely asshole thing to do. Just man up and not invite a person at all instead of using the "I invited him two days before the event so I invited him" rationalization.

Every day I get more and more annoyed that this wedding is going to be on the Fourth.

But I'm not the only one. Peter's nephew put down a "plus one" on his response (according to his grandmother) so I asked him who he was bringing.

"Oh. I'm not bringing anyone."

"You can't do that! They have to pay for that plate!"

"Uhm. They're getting married on the Fourth of July. That's my 'fuck you' in return for their 'fuck you.'"

Isn't family grand?

Thank God It Wasn't Acoustic

One of my many 35th birthday presents this year were two tickets to the 15th anniversary of Liz Phair's "Exile in Guyville" concert. 15 YEARS!!!! Yah, we're old.

When Peter and I first met, he loved that album. And then when he met me, it was one of the only CDs I ever kept in my car, so we would listen to it over and over and over again. Finally, it got to the point that he declared that we must exile "Exile in Guyville." It's truly one of the best angsty break-up albums ever created. I love breakup albums. Listening to those songs has the same effect as reading my stupid journal entries from college. Nostalgic and sad and happy all at the same time.

Right before we left the house for the concert, Peter went on the internet and found this website announcing that Liz Phair was going to play an acoustic show.

Peter was VERY upset and said he NEVER WOULD HAVE BOUGHT the tickets if he had known it was going to be an ACOUSTIC show. How the hell is she supposed to play all those songs acoustically?

When we got to the concert venue, Peter asked me if I could see a drum kit on stage. There were a zillion million people there and I'm shorter than he is, so I don't know why he was asking me. He ran up a set of stairs and came back with a HUGE smile on his face because the drum kit? IT WAS THERE!!!!

Whew!

The awesome thing was that there wasn't a terrible opening band. Liz Phair came on a few minutes after showtime and played the whole album. She looked adorable and halfway through the concert, she took a few steps back and I saw that she was wearing the teeny-tiniest pair of shorts. Yes, it took me about an hour to get a glimpse of her legs because of all the tops of heads in front of me. Why do all the tallest people insist on being right up front at a concert? Tall people suck.

It was an awesome concert. I loved my birthday present.

What's Wrong With Liz Cho's Feet?

Every week I get about 15 people on my website because they put in the keywords "Liz Cho Feet." It's the second most popular keyword phrase for my website. I didn't think anything about it, because I know that there are foot fetishists out there, so I'm sure "blah-blah-famous-celebrity" plus "feet" would rank high on any list of words searched.

However, today I was telling someone this story and she said, "Well now I'm worried. Is there something wrong with Liz Cho's feet? Maybe she has really deformed feet."

Now I'm worried too.

I'm also worried about her hair. Those people at ABC News don't know how to make Asian hair look nice.

That is Incredible

My favorite shows growing up were Little House on the Prairie and The Incredible Hulk. They were the perfect bookends to my school week. Little House on Mondays and Hulk on Fridays.

I became obsessed with The Hulk ever since my parents took me to the Universal Theme Park in Hollywood, CA where I actually got to meet The Hulk. I begged and begged my parents to buy me The Hulk dining set, which included; a plastic plate with three grooves cut out for your basic food groups, a plastic cereal bowl, and a plastic mug. All emblazoned with The Hulk in various states of Hulkiness.

My parents were not cheap, but when we first arrived in this country, my father didn't earn much money, so I didn't have many things growing up. It was pretty amazing whenever I asked for something and actually got it. I got a lot of mileage out of that purchase because for years I would not eat one meal without using that dining set.

I am convinced that I met the actual Hulk, but Peter insists that it must have been a stunt guy. After I met him I got to lift up a yellow and orange van with my mother. These events are as clear to me as something that happened two minutes ago. I'm pretty certain that it was the actual Hulk no matter what he says.

I love The Hulk as if he were a member of my family. And every week, as I watched the last few minutes of the show -- hearing that sad musical refrain (do doo do dooooo...do doo do dooo) as Bill Bixby walks with his head bent low down a dirt path -- I would be close to tears.

A few years ago, I was extremely excited to experience Ang Lee's "Hulk." Oscar-award-winner director, my favorite television character of all time, Jennifer Connelly, etc. etc. This was going to be the greatest cinematic feature of all time!

Of course, the first sign of trouble was Eric Bana, he of the ruination of all things cinematic. Only he could make revenge-seeking Jewish assassins boring (Munich). But I was still keeping that flame of hope alive...until I went to see the movie. Which was the biggest disappointment EVER.

So now, there's this new Hulk movie, and I had extra-bigger-high-hopes for this one. Ed Norton's in it, and he doesn't ruin movies! He's in Fight Club and Red Dragon and he's been nominated for Oscars...

ALAS! I hear through the grapevine that this new Hulk movie is even more of a disaster than the original. So I asked my sister yesterday while she was over my place:

"Why can't they make a good movie about The Hulk? I mean, it's all there...The gamma-radiation, the great protagonist, the villain who thinks he's doing the right thing even though he isn't, it's like The Fugitive on ACID. This movie can practically write itself. Why can't people just put it together properly?"

"I know," she said. "What's so INCREDIBLE about THE INCREDIBLE HULK is that they can't make a great movie out of this. That's the INCREDIBLE part."

Bio-De-Breakable

We've been taking the dogs to the Kensico Dam for early evening walks this spring. It's good exercise for us and the dogs and it's actually brought us all closer together. The dogs have been happier and they're actually more affectionate.

Walks are bonding. Cesar was right!

The great thing about this park is that they have dog poop bag dispensers all over the place and yesterday I got one and noticed that it was bio-degradable! This is very good news because I've just been made aware of all the terrible plastic that's going in landfills everywhere to never break down and piling up all over the planet.

So when Rocky pooped, Peter picked it up with the bio-degradable bag and said, "Gross! This bag almost broke on me!"

I guess that's the thing with bio-de-breakable-degradable bags.

Worried About Making Friends

My sister Jenny is heading off to Africa in a few days, a continent that no one in my immediate family has ever set foot on. I have no idea why she's even interested in this kind of thing, but she's been taking Swahili for the past few years and now she's taking her new language skills out on a test run.

As the day of her departure approaches, I get more and more nervous.

Because I'm so much older than her, I feel a bit more parental toward her than the normal sibling relationship: kind of like a third parent, but one with no power, sort of like a step-mother. I remember when we brought her home from the hospital -- my mother held Jenny in her arms as we rode the car home. Internally, I was freaking out because I felt that it was highly unsafe for this fragile baby to be transported in the car without any protective gear. But I kept this to myself. My parents were not the type of people who liked to be told what they ought to be doing by a teenager. And by my parents, I mean my father.

When we got her home, my father placed her on the crib mattress on the floor in the living room so that we could all look at her. She hardly weighed anything at all when you held her; it didn't seem normal. That day, I kept rushing to her side to check to make sure she was breathing. It's a good thing that she was a pleasant baby because I jostled her about five times an hour during her first few days of life. I think my paranoia irritated my parents.

Watching her prepare to leave for Africa, I get the same kind of feeling I got when we brought her home. I want to stuff her in a car seat and surround her with a dozen air bags, but she still has to go out into the world on her own. And the world she wants to go to is Africa.

The other day I asked her if she was scared.

"Yeah, I am scared," she admitted. "I'm scared that I'm going to be really lonely there and I'm not going to make friends. Or that no one is going to like me."

"WHAT? You're scared you're not going to MAKE FRIENDS? Aren't you scared that you're going to get robbed or mugged?"

"Uhmmm... Yeah, I guess I'm a little scared of that too."

Suitcase Story

When my sister came over our place to help out with our tag sale, she saw that I had two of my mother's suitcases in the basement. I told her that one of them was broken, which we didn't discover until I tried to close it while the taxi was already waiting at our front door.

"Oh," she said. "That suitcase has been broken for a while. I knew about that."

Which begs the question: Why did my mother lend me a busted suitcase?

This is the sort of things she does, which makes me think that she lives in a parallel universe, one in which suitcases miraculously fix themselves.

This busted suitcase caused Peter and me a tremendous amount of stress. Do you have any idea how frustrating it is after spending two hours finally managing to squeeze everything we wanted to bring into the suitcase -- only to discover that we couldn't lock it? All this so that we could check our bags for once in our lives.

(This came after an hour-long conversation on checking vs. not-checking, with me always on the side of not-checking because I grew up as a paranoid New Yorker. I haven't checked a bag in about fifteen years. I have really bad luck with checking because my bags are always sent to Alaska whenever I'm going to any other location. Peter finally won the debate by saying, "I will BUY YOU a new WHATEVER GETS LOST if we can PLEASE CHECK THE STUPID FREAKIN' BAGS!)

Luckily (I thought), I had borrowed not one, but TWO suitcases from my mom for precisely this event. But as it turns out, I should have borrowed THREE suitcases because the other one was missing its keys, keys my mother forgot to include when she lent me the suitcase. So we ended up having to not-check our bags. And we are now going to buy our own suitcases so that we will know what our suitcase situation is at all times. And no one is allowed to borrow our suitcases because that would put the knowledge of our suitcase situation into jeopardy once again, and we can't have that.

However, I did find a couple of my dad's bank statements and some important papers in his suitcase. When I told my mother about it, she said, "So THAT's where it went! Your dad is SOOO disorganized. We would NEVER have found that paperwork if you hadn't borrowed the suitcase!"

The sad thing is that I have inherited my father's keen sense of organization. Which drives Peter Up. The. Wall.

Is That a Bat?

Tonight Peter steamed some cauliflower and totally forgot about it. About half an hour later, we're watching late night television and we hear this squeaking and whistling noise. Peter keeps saying, "Pause the TV!" and, "What's that noise?" The best one was, "Is that a bat?"

I told him that it sounded like a rice cooker.

Finally, he got up and walked around the apartment, something a normal person would have done the second he heard that noise. When he got to the kitchen, he said, "Oh yeah! I'm steaming cauliflower!"

Help Us!!!!

Today I went to see Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.

It was bad.

You know it's a bad movie when everyone sitting around us is checking their watches every few minutes.

My sister and I went to the theater at 62nd street and Lex. It's one of those strange movie theaters in NYC that go up and up and up. It's more vertical than horizontal, and when we walked in, the ticket taker told us that the restrooms were on the first floor, which is downstairs.

I needed to pee because I always need to pee. Peter says that I have the bladder of an 80-year-old woman.

We went to the bathroom and took the escalator up, but when we got to that level, the only other escalator was coming down to us. We tried to run up the down escalator, but then other people started to come down.

Immediately, I scream at these people:

"Get help! We're STUCK! Don't come down! Get help!"

And only in New York would this group of people completely ignore us and walk past us...to open the exit door located right behind me.

GREAT STUFF!

Two days ago, on the hottest day ever created, my condo had its annual tag sale. I thought that it would be a great opportunity to get rid of stuff that I didn't want to move into my new place.

My very first problem was that I didn't have any tables to put the stuff on, so my sister suggested that I put towels and blankets on the floor. She is a veteran of many tag sales and garage sales, so that's what I did. She was also oh-so-nice enough to actually come and help me with the sale since Peter said in no uncertain terms that he would NOT be helping me AT ALL and that I WAS CRAZY to even try to attempt to sell my junk.

At around 9:42am, I called my sister, who said she would be here at 8:30am - she's usually punctual, but when I called, her sleepy voice said, "Oh, crap."

At 10am, I laid down a dozen towels and loaded all my stuff onto them... BY MYSELF while Peter was sleeping soundly in bed. Although he did at one point open up one eyelid and say, "You aren't going to ask me to help you, are you? Because this is a really stupid idea and you are ON YOUR OWN."

Thanks.

Jenny got there by 10:30am and said, "Hey! I brought all my crap...uh...I meant...GREAT STUFF!"

After she laid all her stuff out, we had a mass of people come by who bought some clothes, a bar of soap, my 4 tubes of Aquafresh toothpaste, and a bunch of rags. As I looked at all my things, I said to Jenny:

"Y'know. When I put all this stuff together, I thought it was great stuff, but now that they're all laid out on the asphalt, it kind of looks like just a bunch of crap no one is going to want."

"Don't feel bad," Jenny said. "I mean, if it was stuff you wanted, you wouldn't be trying to sell it."

"I just wished I had better things to sell...but why would I want to sell my good things?"

"My point exactly."

Our big accomplishment of the day was selling a HUGE stuffed dog Jenny's friend won at Great Adventure, and has been sitting in our house for 4 years causing my parents mountains of distress. But whenever we told them to just throw it out, my mother wouldn't because she said that some kid out in the world is going to LOVE this stupid stuffed dog, so she felt bad just chucking it out.

Well, we found her. This little girl asked me how much we were selling the dog for and I said, "A Dollar!"

Her mom smiled and gave me a dollar and the look on that little girl's face was priceless. This whole tag sale idea was worth it if only to see that expression on her face, because after 6 hours of standing in 95 degree sunstrokey weather, we made about 80 dollars.

At 4pm, I told Peter, "You know what valuable lesson I learned from all this? I learned that I should just throw out my junk because it just isn't worth all this effort for 80 bucks."

"You couldn't of figured that out before?"

I guess not.

It's Gonna Be a Rude Wedding

A few days ago, I went to an editor's meeting at the magazine I work for and someone said something about the 4th of July. I said, "Oh, I can't go to that. I have to go to a wedding that day."

"A WEDDING on the FOURTH OF JULY!!!! HOW RUDE!!!!" One of the interns practically shouted this in my ear and I almost passed out from the fright.

Someone else said, "Who has a wedding on the fourth of July?"

The intern said, "Well, I hope you didn't get them a GIFT because you OBVIOUSLY aren't GOING!"

I said, "Well, I kind of have to go because it's my husband's nephew's wedding. And not only do I have to get them a gift, I'm going to have to give cash."

This reaction was really strange to me. More so because the intern who thinks it's SO RUDE is actually Australian, and it's kind of funny that his ire got all tangled up in his panties. The general consensus all around the table was that this person who is planning his wedding on the Fouth of July should be punished forever and mean things were said about him by complete strangers. Things like:

"He doesn't want people to attend. That way he gets the gifts without having to pay for meals."
"He wants to ruin everyone's weekend."
"He's cheap."
"He is really self-centered."
"He wants you to sit in traffic for a million years."
"He wants everyone at the wedding to resent him."

I am very upset that I have to give up my fourth of July because this is the only holiday I have with my family. My parents own a restaurant that is open on Christmas (because they have a lot of Jewish customers) and New Year's. The fourth of July is the only day they close the restaurant and we all get together to have dinner at a nice place and watch the fireworks. The fact that I have to go to this wedding really makes my sister mad and every time it gets mentioned she whines and says, "But that's OUR holiday! They get Thanksgiving, Easter and Christmas! They can't take the fourth of July too! It's not fair!"

Those Catholics are so damned selfish.

I guess it's a good thing no one in my culture gets married in July, because it is the Month of Death and a very unlucky month for marriages. Plus, the number 4 in Chinese actually sounds like "death." So no Chinese person would EVER get married on the fourth of any month, least of all the Month of Death, but then again, fireworks is good luck so perhaps they cancel each other out?

But I wouldn't chance it by having a fourth of July wedding. Hey, 1.3 billion people can't be wrong, right?

What do you think Internet? Is it extremely rude to have a wedding on the fourth of July?

Late Night Shenanigans

The other day I was taking the dogs out at three in the morning. Which is pretty normal in our household because we're up until 4am almost every other day.

One time a friend of mine who claimed to be a night owl came over our house and when he started to nod off at 2am, I complained and he said:

"I said I was a NIGHT PERSON. I never claimed to be a PRE-DAWN PERSON!!!!"

And I had to be all, "Sorry dude."

Anyway, so I am walking over to the garbage can with a plastic bag full of poop and I maneuver past all these cars that are parked along the garbage bin. I do this illegal thing where I toss the bag over the fence and it lands into the bin. The tossing over the fence is AGAINST THE CONDO ASSOCIATION RULES, but we live like rebels.

As I maneuver back out of the line of cars, I almost DIE OF A HEART ATTACK!!!!

The reason I nearly dropped dead right on the spot?

Some creepy guy with googly-eyes in parking spot #22 is talking on a cell phone and looking at me with the eyes of one of Satan's minions.

I let out a stifled scream. It was a scream that started in the back of my throat and was muffled right away by the fact that I remembered that it was 3AM IN THE MORNING and did not want to wake up everyone in Mt. Kisco.

I'm actually quite proud of my scream. In high school, my friends said it was a total Vickie-Vale-played-by-Kim-Basinger-sampled-by-Prince-in-his-Batman-song kind of scream. A genuine horror-flick scream.

Although now that I think about it, maybe I should have just let it rip because then THAT MAN'S WIFE would wake up and see whatever the hell this guy was up to. Because if you're hiding in your car talking on your cell phone in the middle of the night - you are so not living your life right.