Even a jobless drain on decent working-class society like me requires some sort of daily diversion to keep myself from turning feral or buying every infomercial product ever made, including the weird ones that run on the late-night foreign public access channels where I’m never entirely sure whether I’m buying a set of knives or the somewhat frightened-looking underage model holding them.
Although if an indentured child-bride came as a bonus gift with purchase, then maybe we could talk. ‘Cause those small hands could be really useful when cleaning under the fridge.
Kidding, of course. That would be wrong.
Delightfully handy, but wrong.
And since I’m already caught up on all the TV shows I’d missed while in Costa Rica (**Spoiler Alert**: Pam and Jim have a baby now and Michael’s still a moron; Phil’s still clueless, Claire’s still a shrew and their kids are still completely disposable characters; Neil Patrick Harris is still playing a womanizer despite the fact that there’s no one left on Earth who doesn’t know he’s gay in real life; Dexter’s still a serial killer, minus one naggy wife; Peg Bundy’s still in that show where we’re not supposed to think of her as Peg Bundy and Ron Pearlman still looks like a caveman) I figure I should use all this free time to work on bettering myself as a person. You know, become a kinder, gentler Erin.
Make fun of me and I will go nuts all over your ass like a rabid spider monkey.
Ahem. Where was I?
Ah, yes. As I was saying: The first step in this quest has been to start taking yoga classes two to three times a week.
Considering the fact that (a) as a general rule of thumb, I generally tend to avoid things I suck at and (b) I’m about as flexible as a Popsicle stick, this is huge news, people. Like, Go Tell It On the Mountain kind of news.
Ok, so maybe I shouldn’t compare my taking a yoga class to the birth of Jesus, but still. Epic.
So far, I’ve been going for about two weeks and the overall experience has been at times peaceful, at times uncomfortable, at times energizing, but always humiliating.
Apart from the whole issue of trying not to fart–which, believe me, is a serious exercise in discipline that warrants an entire post of its own (but I’ll spare you… for now)–I’m doing the Downward Dog and Boat and Triangle and all these other innocuous-named poses that do not, in my opinion, even come close to accurately describing the unholy torture my tendons are about to undergo.
I guarantee you that every single one of these people in this photo is trying not to fart.
And I’m doing this weekdays at noon at the local city gym, which means I’m surrounded by a roomful of 60-year-olds with bum knees and hip replacements and bursitis (not that I have any clue what that is, but it sounds pretty gross and contagious) who are positively spanking me in the flexibility department.
And I’m not proud to admit that, sometimes, while I’m struggling frustratedly through yet another pose that Grandma Blue Hair next to me is just nailing, I get the urge to flip out all Frank Costanza-style and start shrieking, “You know what, smug old people? You can take your inner peace and years of practice and shove it up your bony, freakishly limber asses!”
But I don’t, of course.
Because this is the new kinder, gentler Erin.
So I just knock over all their walkers and then run like hell.
Stop being a massive asshat to Thanksgiving just because it’s a laidback holiday.
You and I both know that Thanksgiving doesn’t ask for much. It doesn’t want to make a big scene or bum anybody out. It’s content to just hang out at your house all day with you and your folks, watching football and eating all your food.
I suspect Thanksgiving smokes a lot of pot.
I mean, c’mon, it has to, right?
But even though Thanksgiving’s too mellow to stick up for itself I, for one, can no longer sit idly by and watch you shove it around and treat it like one of those minor holidays no one really cares about. Thanksgiving is not Flag Day, dammit.
You do this every year: Steamrolling over one of the chillest, most unpretentious holidays so that you can barf out festive lights and candy canes and holly wreaths and manger displays (and seriously, how is it not illegal for people to have those gaudy-ass inflatable snow globes out on their lawn already??) all over every store window display and front lawn in America.
Look, I’ll get into your stupid spirit in due time. I’ll tolerate extended jazz versions of “The Little Drummer Boy” playing on the Muzak system of every business establishment I enter. I’ll watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Frosty the Snowman” and “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” and “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” for the twenty-ninth year in a row like it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it. I’ll listen to the incessant bell-ringing of that Salvation Army Santa squatting on every street corner–and I probably won’t even flip my sh*t and smack a bitch. I’ll wait my turn to spend a half-hour elbowing strangers in line so that I can spend all my money on gifts that I’m pretty sure no one’s going to like anyway. I’ll send out Christmas cards. Ok, that’s a lie, but I’ll feel guilty about not sending out Christmas cards.
What I’m saying is, I’ll play your stupid reindeer games. But I am not going to start playing them in early November and you know what? I sure as shizzle wasn’t going to start in friggin’ October.
SO STOP WITH THE PREMATURE DECORATING ALREADY.
You are still over a month away. That is plenty of time to stress everyone out and make the populace miserable in proper yuletide fashion.
So here’s the deal I’m going to make you, Christmas: You hold off on cramming yourself down everyone’s throats until–I don’t know, say, December?–and I hold off cramming my foot up your ass in a fit of festive rage.
Capiche?
In closing, leave us to enjoy Thanksgiving in peace. Also, leave Halloween alone.
I feel terrible because… well… I feel terrible. For the past 4 days I’ve played host to not only my in-laws, but also to the mother of all cold germs. Seriously. She’s made herself quite comfortable in my sinuses with the occasional weekend trip to my lungs, and I don’t think she has any intention of leaving anytime soon.
So aside from emerging from the warm cocoon of my bedcovers every so often to take a soothing, steamy shower or make much-needed football food (while donning plastic gloves and a grade-a surgical mask, of course), I’ve behaved much like an antisocial hermit, my days revolving around bouts of coma-like sleep interspersed with 30-60 minute increments of Flip this House and The Property Ladder watched through a semi-drunken haze as I take nips from a bottle of cough syrup.
But I have to (sheepishly) admit that there’s at least one good thing that’s come from having this cold while Justin’s parents are in town. Right now, this very minute, Justin is driving them up to Sanford to go to church. And while I wasn’t planning on going anyway, which I’m pretty sure they all knew, this cold has given me the ability to stay in bed while they got ready to leave, thus avoiding the entire awkward send-off:
KATIE
(still in pajamas, hair
tousled, sips her coffee)
Well, you kids have fun at church…
IN-LAWS
(dressed in Sunday
Best, fiddle with keys)
Silence
KATIE
(picks a piece of
lint off her t-shirt)
Umm… I hear it’s supposed to be
a great sermon today. Or is it a
Homily? The thing the guy gives?
I mean the priest. Or is it Pastor?
Shit.
IN-LAWS
Silence
KATIE
(smiles meekly)
Have a great time.
IN-LAWS
(exiting STAGE LEFT)
We’ll pray for you.
END SCENE
Okay, I’m exaggerating. Obviously. I mean, I wouldn’t make coffee until after they left because they’re not allowed to eat or drink an hour before receiving Communion, which is what they do every week in Catholic church, and I wouldn’t want to rub it in.
But if I were going with them, maybe I would make coffee first since it’s okay for me to drink it since I’m not Catholic and therefore not allowed to receive Communion and therefore more likely to fall asleep during mass (or is it a sermon? shit.) since I’m forced to sit on the bench like some unruly student while all of the good boys and girls stand in line to get a cookie and stare at me with sympathy because I’m going to Hell and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it.
But really. I think Justin’s parents are fairly okay with the fact that I don’t go to church. I’ve attended with them before, and I’ve always felt like someone shoved me onto stage in the middle of the play and no one gave me the lines. I mean, everyone else knows when to stand, when to sit, when to sing, what to say, while I stumble around a haphazard half-a-second behind everyone else trying not to embarrass them more than absolutely necessary.
So maybe this cold thing is all for the best. I don’t need to embarrass my in-laws with my church ignorance, and I can blame this entire post on my consumption of excessive amounts of cough syrup should it fall into the wrong hands. And that’s all I can really ask for, anyway.
Let me start off by stating that, technically, the above title is incorrect because ownership implies some measure of control or ability to exert your will over the subject in question.
When it comes to cat ownership, in reality you’re just signing up to share your home and all your stuff with it until either (a) it dies of old age, (b) you die of old age, or (c) one of you decides to run away and go live in the dumpster behind Subway.
Hey, is that Parmesan Oregano loaf down there??
So, now that we’ve got those pesky semantics out of the way, there are several reasons why you might be tempted to own a cat. Much like a Volkswagen Jetta, they’re practical, affordable, space-saving, long-lasting and generally require very little maintenance (this is especially true if the cat is a newer model or a mint-condition used one).
Of course, you think! A cat! Something I can love freely without all the requisite responsibility or criminal neglect charges of owning kids! What an entirely obvious and intelligent decision!
Now, I’m no “cat expert” mind you—mainly because that sounds like the kind of title someone with a wide assortment of nasal sprays and appliquéd cardigans would have—but it’s been my experience that cats will generally live forever with relatively little effort on your part as long as you do the following three things:
1. Feed it. If you don’t happen to have any foie gras or festering rodent corpses on hand, cat food will do just fine.
2. Water it. And, contrary to how this sounds, you do not water it as you would a plant. The water should go in a container of some sort. Don’t feel embarrassed, it took us a while to figure out that humdinger, too.
3. Scoop it. This is perhaps the most degrading of cat ownership tasks as your cat will stand there, smugly watching you try not to gag as you dig, hunched over with a scooper in one hand and bread bag in the other, through the crapbox to collect its disgusting little nuggets like you’re on some sort of seriously lame treasure hunt.
Or you can just build a rocket ship and launch its poop into outer space. That’s also an option.
4. Adhere to the service plan. Make sure it gets regularly scheduled maintenance and take it to the dealership if it starts leaking, oozing, sputtering, stalling, or making weird knocking noises. And definitely don’t attempt to check its fluid levels yourself.
Easy enough, right?
But what you don’t factor in are the emotional, psychological and olfactory (means your nose, people) costs of cat ownership. As a former and current owner, I can attest that to own a cat is to:
1. Resign yourself to a perpetual two-inch thick layer of hair and litter grit covering everything you own. Tumbleweeds of cat hair will collect in the corners of every room and any fleece apparel you own will take on a mohair quality. This is one thing you’re just going to have to get used to unless you want to pop uppers and spend all day vacuuming and re-vacuuming until you’ve worn wheel groves into your floorboards. Best to just go for a retro vibe and get shag carpeting. And maybe a lava lamp. You know, for atmosphere.
2. Never again be able to take the shortest route from point A to point B. Cats are diametrically opposed to efficiency and directness, which is why they will devote their time to weaving around your legs, darting into your path and stretching out in major household intersections so that you either step over them or smash your face on the linoleum. Either outcome is fine.
3. Be constantly judged by something smaller, weaker and even less useful than you. Because it has nothing better to do all day, it will take every opportunity to wordlessly point out your flaws and shortcomings and silently revel in your personal failures. It will glare at you when you fail to pet it. It will smirk at you when burn yourself or stub your toe. It will glower at you when you raise your voice. And it will literally incinerate you with its laser beams eyes when you forget to feed it.
4. Never have surplus hairbands. Or paperclips. Or twist ties. Or any other small, swallowable and temporarily unsupervised object.
5. Repulse your houseguests. Cats are “clean creatures” in the sense that they clean themselves. Contrary to how that phrase sounds, they will not help you dust, wash dishes or sort the laundry. And considering you’re already too busy devoting the majority of your day to cleaning up after them and maneuvering around them, it’s inevitable that your house will deteriorate into a den of filth and madness. Just stop inviting people over and let it all hang out, baby.
6. Live in a house that always smells like something. Whether it’s that weird perfume-y scent of fresh cat litter or the eye-watering, nasal-passage-burning ammonia stench of old cat piss is up to you. Bon appétit.
7. Have your emotions toyed with. The only time a cat will ever willfully show you affection is when it wants something from you. It’s like a manipulative ex-boyfriend and you should handle it as such. Look it straight in the eye and in a firm, yet even, tone tell it that you will not submit to its ridiculous mind games any longer. If it helps you to get your point across, get a little sassy with your monologue like you’re an audience member on The Montel Williams Show. Put your hand on your hip and and start pumping your index finger. Roll that neck. You go, girlfriend.
8. Come to terms with the fact that you now live with the worst roommate ever. Make no mistake, cats are thoughtless a-holes and have no desire to change. They will use your stuff without asking and then hide it from you, they will dirty up something you just spent an hour cleaning, they will hang around the house all day long and ignore you until they need a favor. And good luck getting them to pay their share of the utilities.
9. Look insane to the normal public. Case in point: Chuckles and I don’t want our cats jumping up on the futon and getting hair and god-knows-what-else all over it–which they do anyway because, hey, screw us, right? I read somewhere online that aluminum foil repels cats because they don’t like the feel of it under their paws. So, as a last-ditch effort, we decided to cover our futon in tinfoil until the cats were trained to stay off it. Except one day I forgot to remove the tinfoil before I left the house and the landlord let herself in to the apartment to drop off a spare set of keys. And she has not answered my phone calls since. The end.
In fact, contrary to popular belief, the only thing that is simple about owning a cat is figuring out what it wants. Its wants are simple: food, water, toys, and for you to leave it the hell alone.
That isn’t to say that on the rare occasion it won’t demand to be pet to reassure itself that it still wears the pants in this unhealthy trainwreck of a relationship. But, typically: see above. And as far as your wants go, it does not care about them. So stop bothering it with your pathetic neediness.
Now, here is the part where other cat owners reading this will interject and insist that their cats are friendly and their cats are well-behaved and their cats bring them thoughtful presents and do long-division. But that’s probably because their cats are outdoor cats, which means they’re independent and self-sufficient and out of your face long enough for you to actually miss them.
This post, however, specifically pertains to the indoor cat experience since that’s what I’m qualified to talk about. Our two cats, Roxy and Talula, are strictly indoor beings because we live in a city full of citizens who range on the crazy scale from Charmingly Kooky to Full-On Batsh*t Insane, and we never know when someone might decide to flatten them under their car tires just for kicks and giggles. And it doesn’t help that our cats have all the survival instinct and outdoor savvy of a bath loofah.
Ok, moment of honesty here: I’ll admit that, despite all their annoying habits and lunatic behavior, I have developed a begrudging fondness for our two little buggers. Especially now that I’m sans (that means without, people) employment, they fill what would otherwise be an endless, yawning void of thumb-twiddling, nose-picking downtime with their quirky, madcap antics.
So take whatever moral you will from this post. Just remember that you were warned.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some poop to scoop.
It’s about this time of year when my body starts convincing me I need to acquire an extra layer of fat to prevent me from freezing to death, so I’m inevitably compelled to eat lots of this:
So yesterday, in a half-assed attempt to prevent nature from taking its course, I made this.
And ate it this morning like this:
And while it definitely wasn’t my usual piece toast smeared with perfectly proportioned layers of peanut butter and maple honey, I have to say it wasn’t bad.
Allow me to explain: Normally, I consider myself an adequately intelligent, relatively self-sufficient member of the human race. However, about once every month or two, for some unapparent reason my brain abandons me for the day to go do whatever it is brains do when they’re not in your head and leaves a Jell-O mold in its place.
You know, to take care of all that pesky higher cortical functioning.
And since Jell-O molds are notoriously bad substitutes for brains, I am left with no choice but to lurch through the day, slack-jawed and drooling and generally posing a safety hazard to myself and those around me.
These are the days where I fumble to cram words together into coherent sentences, blank on what year it is, and forget basic personal information like my address, shoe size and middle name. I put cereal boxes in the fridge and spoon salt into my coffee and squeeze Clearasil onto my toothbrush. I’m positively stumped on how to spell words like “people” and “because” and spend half the day looking for things that are already in my hand.
On these days, it is only by the grace of God and vigilant adult supervision that I do not venture into public without pants on.
The reason I’m bringing this up is because Monday was just such a day.
It all started when I couldn’t find my car. Apparently I’d completely forgotten that I’d parked it on the street right outside the apartment door the night before, which means I moseyed right past it in the morning so that I could go blink at the empty space where it’s usually parked for a good 10 minutes or so until I realized what had happened.
Then, upon locating said car, I drove it to the VW dealership for its scheduled maintenance since a service reminder had been popping up on the dashboard display for several days. However, when trying to explain that to the mechanics, I completely blanked on the word “dashboard” (it’s a tricky one, I know) and ended up telling them that I’d come in “because the blinky thingy told me to.” As a testament to the fine people at Fitzgerald Automotive, they didn’t even try to capitalize on my moron-itude by overcharging the ever-loving pants off me.
But the pièce de résistance occurred later in the day while applying online for an editor position that sounded absolutely perfect for me. The company’s ad was lighthearted and whimsical and stressed, above all, the necessity for a sharp eye for detail. Eager to demonstrate my editorial prowess and, uh, eye sharpness, I spent four hours crafting a charming yet professional cover letter and carefully combing it multiple times over for even the most minute error… only to notice seconds after I hit ‘submit’ that–oh wait, what’s this? Ah, yes. I’d misspelled the name of the company. Frick.
Maybe Jell-O head is caused by hormones or a vitamin deficiency or lack of sleep or the phase of the moon.
Maybe it’s early menopause or acid flashbacks or alien technology implanted in my brain.
Whatever the reason is, it should at least come with some sort of hiring preference.
I’m not gonna lie – Erin’s Halloween post from yesterday cracked me up. I must say her Halloween looked far more entertaining than my night, during which I proceeded to drink an entire bottle of shiraz and pass out candy at my neighbor’s house because they actually decorated for the holiday and I felt it was far easier to mooch off of their hard work and holiday spirit than actually do any work of my own. Don’t worry – I hid my wine glass behind the porch railing every time the impressionable little kiddies approached, but I may have laughed a little too loudly when my neighbor’s husband told a costumeless teenage boy he looked like Justin Bieber.
Yes, I was that girl. I’m not proud.
Anyway, I think my lack of enthusiasm for yesterday’s holiday might stem from what it subconsciously implies – the cold is right around the corner. When I came home from Costa Rica, I noticed the leaves had started turning colors. I tried my best to ignore it. When I had to pull the heavy quilt over myself in the middle of the night, I tried to ignore that too. But the other night, when I felt compelled to make chili for dinner – chili, for godssake – I could ignore it no longer. The Cold is here.
And since I don’t want to be alone in my misery, I’m going to share my white chili recipe with you – my AWARD-WINNING chili.
That’s right – this recipe won the coveted Golden Ladle at my office chili contest in 2009. It even won a few votes in 2010, even though I wasn’t allowed to enter the contest as the reigning chili champ. Now those of you who can’t get enough of traditional, spicy red chili might initially repel the idea of a relatively un-spicy white chili.
But I will tell you what I told the skeptics during my Golden Ladle acceptance speech: Don’t be a chili racist – give white chili a chance!
I think I originally got this recipe from a grocery store, believe it or not. I don’t tweak this much, so here’s what you’ll need:
1 lb. sausage (I use Jimmy Dean’s hot sausage)
1 lb. (give or take) ground turkey (the more you use, the thicker your chili will be. You can use as little as 1/2 lb. and go as high as you want – I think I used just over a pound this time because I like my chili nice and thick)
1 green bell pepper
1 onion
4-5 small stalks of celery
1 Tbsp. roasted garlic (it’s actually really easy to roast garlic yourself, but I already had the jar of store-bought stuff and for the purposes of this chili, it works just as well)
1 package of taco seasoning
2 (15.8 oz) cans of great northern beans
1 (14 oz) can of chicken broth
1 (4.5 oz) can diced green chiles (the store was out of these, so I picked up 4 fresh green chiles and diced them myself – a little more work, but still tasty)
1 (16 oz) can of refried beans with diced green chiles (This is the SECRET INGREDIENT, friends. That’s right – it’s the thing that people love when they taste it but can’t quite figure out what it is. Whatever you do, don’t skip this ingredient – it’s okay if you can’t find the kind with chiles – and DON’T tell them what it is!)
1. Turn on your favorite satellite music station and dice up your celery, onion and bell pepper. You should definitely sing while you’re doing this, but be careful about dancing – you are wielding a knife.
2. If you bought fresh chiles, go ahead and dice those up as well. Wear gloves if you’re smart, but if you’re me, forget the gloves and slice them into quarters lengthwise, slice off the seedy membrane part, and then chop up the rest. That stinging sensation on your fingers will go away. Eventually.
Everything’s ready!
3. Warm up a pot over medium-high heat. Add the sausage, turkey, onions, celery and green bell peppers. If you’re using fresh chiles, add those too at this time. Sauté everything for 10-12 minutes until the meat is fully cooked and the veggies are soft.
4. Drain the excess grease, then stir in the taco seasoning. Cover and let cook for about a minute, just to let all the tasty seasoning goodness soak into the meat.
5. Remove cover and stir in the remaining ingredients (roasted garlic, northern beans (including liquid), refried beans, chicken broth, and the can of chiles if you didn’t use fresh).
6. Let sit on the stove, stirring occasionally, until everything is nice and warmed through. Serve with your favorite hot sauce on the side and enjoy!
Ever since I was old enough to understand what it was all about, I’ve loved Halloween. It’s a holiday where you get to dress up, stay out late, gorge on candy, and you don’t have to buy your ungrateful family members gifts (kidding, guys!).
So what’s not to love?
In fact, the only slight drawbacks to the holiday nowadays are the fact that (a) costumes cost roughly the same price as a black market kidney and (b) every women’s costume—whether it’s mechanic, dentist, or offshore oil rigman—requires fishnets and a push-up bra.
I’ve never been the type to dress up as a slutty cheerleader or slutty witch or slutty fairy on Halloween–not that I’m a hater. In fact, I’m fully of the if-you’ve-got-it-flaunt-it-cause-it-sure-ain’t-going-to-be-flauntable-forever school of thought. But my personal beef has always been more with the utilitarian aspect of these types of costumes.
The equation in my head goes a little something like this: Delicate exposed flesh + 30 degree temps + five hours of bar crawling = Hells to the no.
While I fully appreciate the “You go, girl!”-ness of showing off the goods in the spirit of Halloween, I’m not passionate enough about it to risk losing said goods to hypothermia just to prove I had ’em to show off in the first place. That’s a little too The Gift of the Magi for my liking.
Besides, I almost always go for the gag—the more silly, dorky and ridiculous, the better. So given all these factors, when I finally find a costume I like, I will proceed to wear its ass out. No lie–I will trot out that bad boy year after year until either its vital components begin to disintegrate or I am no longer able to tell in which decade the Halloween photos were taken.
Here’s my lifetime progression of Halloween costumes:
– Tiger. Worn age 1. Comfortable, stylish, flattering. I’d still be wearing it to this day if I could fit into it.
– Black cat. Worn ages 4 to 10. Crafted with minimal parental oversight, this unelaborate getup featured a black headband with ears I made out of paper Scotch-taped to it, a black leotard, black tights and a tail pinned to the seat of my britches. Which, when you think about it, is basically every slutty adult cat costume, too.
– Mouse. Worn ages 10 to 12. Same costume as above, just different-shaped ears. The cat tail made it somewhat confusing.
– From ages 12 to 17, I was far too cool to be bothered to dress up for Halloween, so I guess I just went as a punk-ass teenager.
– Flapper. Worn age 18. The store-bought costume was thin, insanely itchy and, three weeks later, I was still picking sparkles out of some unlikely nooks and crannies (uh, hello, like my ears, people? Geez.). In the spirit of the holiday, the day after Halloween I gave it to Goodwill so that next year it could go forth and haunt other poor, hapless victims.
– Nerd. Worn ages 20 to 25. This costume went the distance because it was comfortable, cheap and, c’mon, awesome. Since I was a broke, unemployed college student at the time (unlike the broke, unemployed adult I am now), I went to Goodwill and bought men’s plaid pants, thick black-rimmed glasses, and a tie with ducks on it for like $4. I then added white tape to the glasses, gelled my hair down into a slick part, acted like myself all night–and bam!
A word of caution, though: Be sure to wear full-coverage underwear because you will be fending off unprovoked wedgies from friends and the occasional creepy stranger all night long.
– Princess Toadstool. Worn age 28. I think we all know by now that I’m not the princess type, but the hubs and our good friend Kevin were hell-bent on dressing up as Mario and Luigi, so it was either be her or Toad, and I don’t need to draw any more undue attention to the ginormous-ness of my head by wearing a gigantic, phallic-like mushroom cap, thank you very much.
And, yes, that is a blowup doll taped down on the table behind us. It was that kind of party.
This year’s costume, however, is by far one of my favorites:
Wayne’s World! Party time! Excellent!
This was a last-minute Hail Mary idea–there was a party Saturday night and it was Saturday afternoon and neither my friend Christine nor I had any idea what we were going to be yet.
And the best part is this entire look cost me about $10. I already had the plain black shirt and Chuck Taylors, but I found the flannel for $3 at Goodwill. Then I went to Michael’s and bought iron-transfer letters and a black hat for $6 and had myself a little Crafty Craftertons moment.
And since I had some letters left over, I went the extra mile and made a T-shirt that says “Schwing!”
Ok, we’ve been toying with your emotions for long enough.
We’ve teased and flirted and played coy, but now it’s time to finally give up the goods.
That’s right, folks. It’s time… for monkey pics.
But first, I have to tell you a little story of how we came to get them. This’ll just take a minute. Patience, my pretties.
Here goes…
On our way to Tamarindo to spend one of our last days in Costa Rica at the beach, we made a detour to Congo Trail, a canopy tour company located just outside of Playa del Coco in the small town of Artola. In addition to offering zipline tours, ATV rides and other invigorating outdoor pursuits designed for people with far more pep and energy than we have, the park features a butterfly preserve, snake exhibit and monkey refuge. Becs had visited the monkeys earlier in the year and loved it, and since she’s been pretty much dead-on with every other recommendation, we were dying to check it out.
So we arrived, wide-eyed and eager to handle us some monkeys–except, when we got there, the staff informed us that the regular monkey handler (how sweet of a job is that, by the way?) would not be in today and, as such, the monkey exhibit was closed.
Considering we’d just spent the last 40 minutes driving 20 mph down a dirt road, puttering past goats and straw huts and people who looked startled to see a large metal object moving of its own accord, this was not the news we wanted to hear. Fortunately, after a little haggling and pleading and cajoling, they agreed to let us in. All they had to do was prep the cage for us and then we could commence getting our sweet monkey action on.
Only there was one small problem:
This guy.
Apparently, there’s a strict social structure amongst the capuchin monkey community (totally not the hippy, free-lovin’ Phish concert vibe I was expecting), and this bad boy just so happened to be the alpha male of this particular clique. And while he may look all “Aw shucks, ma’am” in the above photo, believe you me, he ruled his 9×9 foot domain with tiny Totalitarian fists. And he was positively pissed about us trying to come up in his house.
When initial efforts to remove El Capitan from the cage were unsuccessful, the interim handler got down to business. Sensing an ensuing battle, he called for backup and escorted the three of us outside the fenced area, suggesting that we go walk around, see the sights and come back in 15 minutes or so.
Not easily deterred, we let him guide us out but quickly scrambled to find a good vantage point on the other side of the fence from where we could watch the juicy drama unfold. And man, are we glad we did, because what happened next was the most unintentionally hilarious hour-long standoff involving five grown men and a monkey that we will ever see in our lifetimes.
It was hard to tell what the staff’s battle strategy was, but it seemed to involve each man taking a turn tentatively stepping into the cage, only to sprint out two seconds later with three pounds of screeching, frothing, pure and unadulterated monkey rage quick on his heels. At one point, one staff member finally succeeded in snagging the little guy in a net; however, in his excitement, he failed to follow through by covering the gaping hole at the top and the monkey ended up escaping and scaling onto the top of the nine-foot-tall cage. From there it proceeded to shriek and taunt the staff members, possibly even saying bad things about their mothers.
With this latest turn of events, the group below did a quick huddle and, after some lively discussion and finger-pointing, one of the staff members climbed up on top of the cage as well and the two reluctantly began an awkward interspecies tango involving zigging and zagging, advancing and retreating, parrying and thrusting, shucking and jiving. After about 15 minutes, the monkey finally decided it had had enough of making a fool of the staff and allowed itself to be humanely captured. Although Katie, Becs and I didn’t actually witness the resolution because, by that point, we were steeped in our very own melodrama of trying to laugh without peeing our pants.
But the saga did have a happy ending and the grim-faced, beady-eyed staff finally allowed us in.
And here’s what I learned about monkeys that day:
They are very affectionate.
Very, very affectionate.
Maybe even a little too affectionate.
They like to eat sunflower seeds and have atrocious table manners. As such, you will spend the rest of the day picking shells out of your hair and from down the front of your shirt.
They have zero qualms about personal space.
None whatsoever.
And although they are masters at volumizing, oddly enough they do not make the best hairdressers.
Mainly because they don’t take customer feedback well.
Yes, a monkey bit my scalp.
So that’s that. Thanks again to the Congo Trail staff for all the memories!
But I had to share this with you. Now that I’m back home, I’ve been trying to distract myself with various projects I’ve been putting off around the house. We’re going to be having several house guests over the next week or so, and it’s time some of these things get finished.
So. I love maps. I love looking at them, using them – hell, I MADE them for a living at one point in my life. GPS? No thanks. Maps – yes, the foldy, papery kind – are far superior.
I’ve had this world map that my sister-in-law gave me for Christmas for years now, and I’ve never hung it anywhere. The map itself is beautiful, and I didn’t think the black metal frame did it justice. Enter this horrible reproduction painting I bought on a whim a couple of years ago and also never hung.
Yes, that is dust from 2 years of closet banishment.
I noticed the frame happens to be the perfect size for my map. Easy switch, right?
Not so much.
It took an embarrassing amount of time, but finally – finally – I won.
I may not have been a fan of the metal frame, but no one can say it wasn’t quality.
Speaking of quality, I didn’t actually have a way to attach the map to the wood frame. Enter the masking tape.
