oops- i don't blog here anymore

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY, MOM, I’M DRUGGED

I guess it’s not the worst of the greetings I’ve given my mom on Mother’s Day. There were the college years of Mother’s Day phone calls, when I’d wake up on Mom’s Day in my dorm room at my uber-liberal, hippy, hipster college, get some breakfast, and call my mom to wish her a good day and tell her about all the fun I had at our university naked party the night before (the Naked Parties corresponded with finals week and therefore, Mother’s Day week as well).

This year’s excitement started this past Thursday night when I lost my grip while holding a kitchen knife. A sharp, new kitchen knife. I was chopping off a slice of cheese and somehow ended turning myself into a cutting board. I spliced my finger and next thing I knew, my insides were on the outside! Wow! Now I have the distinct honor of being able to say that I got six stiches after cutting the cheese. I’ve never been prouder, really.

The nice doctor who sewed me back together (“What kind of cheese was it?” was one of his questions while examining the damage I had done) had a plan: We’d trick my body into thinking it didn’t feel any pain by prescribing me more painkillers than I thought was legal- or really safe, for that matter- so that I would heal with a minimal amount of discomfort. I lugged my Vicodin, Extra Strength Tylenol, Extra Strength Advil, and antibiotic home in in the healthy hand, the injured digit at this point now swollen to approximately the size of Texas. Jeez, all this for a finger?

I didn’t even take near the amount of combined pills Dr. Prescription Happy had instructed me to do, but even so, next thing I knew, the throbbing in my finger was gone- along with every other sensation besides pure, unadulterated joy. I was as high as a kite and spent the entire weekend blissfully smiling at friends as they helped me choose dinners at restaurants (alcohol, besides being off-limits of course, was plain and simply unnecessary… I had already had quite the cocktail of medicines) and having buddies remove the hammer from my hand that I demanded to help them build shelving in my closet with (perhaps another time, they said).

I gave my mom a cheery phone call at 5 AM, thrilled to be alive. The fact that my finger now looks like Frankenstein?  Not a concern.

Anyone else excited for Father’s Day?

TRUE CONFESSIONS OF A CONDO OWNER

I wrote this after getting the keys to my condo, which is the size of a shoebox. But it's my shoebox!

Today I learned a new word: quikrete. Perhaps some of you are already familiar with this vocab word, but I wasn't until my friend Jack and his buddy Joe stopped by my new place this morning (on their way to some event that was actually called "TruckFest") to rip out my carpet and carpet padding, exposing the quikrete (Read: boring ugly under-rug flooring) beneath. We took out construction-sized garbage bags' worth of carpet and padding, and boy, was that a good thing. The previous owner had a dog. The dog had a bladder. 'Nuf said.

FIFTEEN SECONDS OF VERY, VERY, VERY LOCAL FAME

Okay, I admit it: I love the opportunity to be on television. If you’ve ever been with me when a local news camera crew goes by, please accept my apologies now for making you come with me while I chase it down (only to find that there really is no reason for them to include me in their broadcast).

Well, today the cat shelter I volunteer at gave me my big breakthrough. Northwest Afternoon, our local ABC affiliate’s afternoon infotainment show, said they would give the cat shelter a short public service announcement if, in return, we provided 15 people to be audience members on the show. Naturally, I enlisted. Who wouldn’t turn down the chance to sit only feet away from plastic-looking, self-obsessed local celebrities?

The filming was on a Monday, so the audience consisted of me and a bunch of retired or unemployed crazy cat ladies. I’ve stopped asking other volunteers how many cats they have at home because the number is just staggering, and often the subtle stench of litter on their clothing answers the question for me. Anyway, there we were, patiently waiting to be herded into the room where Northwest Afternoon is filmed, when none other but Ken Jennings of Jeopardy! fame walked in. Turns out Jeopardy Jennings used his riches to move to Seattle, and he was one of the guests on the program. This was my lucky day!!! I was quite excited to be in his presence because after he made it big on the game show, I looked him up and gave him a call. I’m not sure what I was going to say, but I thought I’d give him a ring regardless. Unfortunately, the Ken Jennings listing that I called yielded only a recording claiming that it was a different Ken Jennings, and asked if people would please stop calling. Oh, and remember when all the information on Paris Hilton’s phone was leaked out? I called a bunch of those numbers too. Also without success, also without a plan.

After the Ken Jennings sighting, the TV crew ushered us into the largest elevator I had ever seen. The crazy cat ladies marveled over it. I estimated that 500 felines could probably fit in it. When we got out of the elevator, the staff explained to us that they would be filming several segments that would air over various days this week: One with my man Ken, one with a car expert, and one with a doctor who wrote a book about how unrealistic Gray’s Anatomy is. As soon as we were seated in the studio (I pushed my way into the front row), some guy whose job it was to get the audience clapping and whooping at appropriate times explained to us that when he moved his hands, we should clap and whoop. Then he said he needed some volunteers to ask questions to the guests. My hand shot up. I was tempted to stick it out really far and use my other hand to push my arm out even further like you do when you know the answer to a question in second grade, but, shockingly, I didn’t have much competition among other audience members, and Clap-Whoop picked me.

“Okay, you’re going to ask our automotive expert about ways to get better mileage from your car,” he told me. Fine. I could do that. I was [gas] pumped – I was going to use the word “exorbitant” to describe gas prices in my question, I decided. Yes, this will be a jolly good time.

Next thing I know, Clap-Whoop is asking audience members if they want to ask Ken Jennings questions. No fair- I totally would have chosen that over asking a mileage question! The ladies got pretty excited about that and signed up to ask questions such as, “What do you do now that you’re not on Jeopardy!? Do you write wikipedia entries?”

The show started and I drooled a little with envy as my fellow audience members asked Ken Jennings their questions, but at the commercial break, after his taping was over, the show’s hosts allowed us to ask him more questions off-air.

“Where exactly in Seattle do you live?” I asked with a big, innocent smile on my face. I turned up the Chuckles Charm- I didn’t want Ken to think I was stalking him. Because I’m not. Really. I was hoping he might answer me in the “What is North Seattle?” format, but he didn’t.

Next up was the doctor who was out to reveal how wrong Gray’s Anatomy is.

“Who watches the show?” A producer asked. I raised my hand.

“Okay, let’s have you ask her what’s wrong with how Gray’s Anatomy portrays hospitals.”

“But I’m asking a gas question,” I responded. Surely I couldn’t get the word “exorbitant” into my Gray’s Anatomy question.

The producer shrugged and cued the prompter or something and next thing I knew, the show was back on the air and I was stuck asking the stupidest question possible about a fictional TV show.

The guest came on and Whoop-Clap guy moved his arms wildly for us to applaud. The doctor then answered the show’s hosts’ questions about what’s realistic about Gray’s Anatomy. Nice setup. My mind raced through possibilities of questions: Are there any exorbitantly unrealistic aspects of the show? Does Gray’s Anatomy distort the truth about hospitals in an exorbitant fashion?

“And Elizabeth in the audience has a question,” the show’s host, Elissa, who the car expert later called Elise, said.

“Uh- what’s wrong with Gray’s Anatomy?” I asked. Hmmm. That didn’t exactly come out right.

The doctor explained that the show doesn’t show the emotions that doctors have behind closed doors- that they often cry after telling a patient he or she has cancer, or they break down from exhaustion and stress. Actually, this woman looked like she had perhaps been crying all morning. I was real glad I brought that up.

I guess I didn’t woo the producers with my question (or maybe it was just that I should have been wearing more concealer- they tape the show in high-definition), because they cut out all audience questions for the gas expert.

Not exactly the big moment I was hoping for… But at least now I know where Ken Jennings lives.

YO, YO, YO

For years, people have told me to try yoga. Good for stress relief, good for concentration, yadda yadda yadda. So for years, I have gone to the occasional yoga class, hoping every time that I will be as amazed by this bizarre series of stretches as everyone else seems to be. And every time, I am sorely disappointed (key word: sore).

But I have always felt as though I would jive well with the yoga type: I mean, I take vitamins just like they do. So this morning, I gave yoga another go-ya.

My gym offers several yoga classes. I decided to steer clear of “yoga buns” out of pure fear for what that meant and opted for “Piyo,” with its apt description of combined Pilates and yoga exercises. It’s always a pleasure to be singled out at the beginning of class when the instructor asks “Who’s new here?” Luckily, I was not the only newbie.

I have to give the woman who was in front of me credit for sticking out the entire class. She was probably in her mid-50s, in okay shape, and had definitely never done yoga- or perhaps anything outside of her home- before.

If you’ve ever seen me do anything anywhere, you know that I sweat- a lot. If I got paid for every ounce of sweat I produced, I’d be one hell of a rich, saturated gal. Anyway, in this yoga class, even with the fan turned off, I was not schvitzing even in the least bit. By about 10 minutes into the class, the woman in front of me was completely covered in sweat. And I mean completely covered. Her hair was soaking wet. The sweat-o-meter only got higher when we were instructed to balance on one foot and lift the other leg off the floor. This woman could not balance for her life. Limbs went flying in every direction at the speed of light. The instructor, who was standing nearby, gently told “the class” that if we couldn’t balance, we should just take it slow and only lift our leg a small amount off of the floor. No use: the woman’s leg shot up like she was a ballerina and then she just totally wiped out, collapsing in a big, sweaty pile onto her mat.

I was doing okay with not laughing by avoiding looking at her until our next set of exercises. We had to do downward dog or something. As usual, everyone was facing the front of the room, and the instructor was facing us. But I guess that woman in front of me was so disoriented from her balance experience, that she forgot which direction to sit. So there she was, a couple feet away from me, looking straight at me as she panted wildly while we both tried to figure out how to hook our right arm under our legs and grab our other arm. In addition, she started making strange grunts at this point. Well, that was it. I burst out laughing (as I have a tendency to do).

So much for relaxation and increasing my concentration… Yoga, you have won again.