And how was your Memorial Day?

A three-day weekend with beautiful weather. What more could you ask for?

Last night I was up a lot later than usual. When I went to sleep, I dreamt that it was the next season of American Idol. Katherine McPhee was back and in the final two again--against me. I was blonde and had to choose my three songs because we were just about to go on the air. I was being rushed around and thrown into hair and makeup, all the time thinking, "what are these jackasses thinking? I can't sing!" I was very dissapointed in the American public for voting for me.

Part of the reason I was up so late is because earlier that day I took a shower, laid out my clothes and blacked out for about five hours. During my slight coma, my subconscious wrote and acted out an entire 22-minute episode of Malcom in the Middle. I remember thinking it was weird because the parents each only had one line and it was the series finale. When I woke up, I realized that what was weird was the fact that I don't watch Malcom in the Middle.

In conclusion, on Memorial Day, my brain tried to eat itself.

New Jersey---Where even the graffiti is depressing

I was on the AirTrain at Newark airport today and we passed over a regular train track where a cargo train (is that the right term? Is that even a thing at all?) was passing by. Naturally the train was covered in graffiti. On two cars in a row, in different handwriting it said:

"I am trying to keep myself
but my self keeps slipping away."

"Lost in life"

I had to break into my emergency stash of Valium and airplane bottles of Jack Daniels to even make it through the rest of the trip.

Go big or go home, that's what I always say.

Me: Ahhhhhhh! I HATE you! I'm going to punch you in your...
Adonilia:...
Me:...
Adonilia: Am I supposed to just fill in the blank?
Me: No. 'Cause here's what I'm going to do.
Adonilia: Okay...
Me: So you know how we're going to move, right?
Adonilia: Right...
Me: Well, there will be moving expenses and everything, but ideally we're not going to move into a place that is too much more expensive, so I'll have some extra money and I'll start a savings. Now, I know some pretty shady people.
Adonilia: You do?
Me: Oh yeah. I could get any manner of things in a very short period of time. So I'll use these people to procure some sort of...heavy narcotic; something that will...you know, let's just come out with it. Roofies. I'm going to get some roofies.
Adonilia: Are roofies narcotics?
Me: I would assume so.
Adonilia: Hmm.
Me: Basically I'm going to put some roofies in your drink and knock you out for about a day. I'm going to rent a car--
Adonilia: Wait. Don't you need me to rent the car, since your drivers license says that you live in The Bronx, and the rental car companies charge twice as much?
Me: I'll rent it in Jersey.
Adonilia: Oh, okay.
Me: ANYWAY, so I'm going to rent a car, find someone to take care of the dog--wait. Actually, the dog will come with us. She loves car rides. Then we're going to take a roadtrip, Transamerica style.
Adonilia: Wait. Am I getting a sex change?
Me: Exactly.
Adonilia: What about when I wake up? Are you going to keep on drugging me?
Me: Yeah. It'll be a pretty constant thing. Basically, you're going to go to bed one night and wake up about a week later in California. With a wang. But more importantly, you'll have nuts.
Adonila: Which you will then punch me in.
Me: Indeed.

You can call me Mary Poppins. Or asshole. Really, either one would be appropriate.

You know that you have truly become a ridiculous individual and your life has reached a brand-new level of asinineness when this is your purse...









...This is everything that is in your purse...











...and you are making up words like "asinineness."

I know this city is killing me

I come from a very healthy family. We're fortunate in that no one in my immediate family has ever suffered from an illness more major than the flu. People in my extended family tend to live to old age and then just...die. Sure, we have our accidents; my dad's car crash, my mom's various horse mishaps and my sister and I just being stupid and falling down, but all in all, we've pretty much got our shit together, healthwise.

Growing up in a family like this hasn't made me feel invincible, exactly. I'm still terrified that one of us will get into a terrible car accident and die. There was a year in college that I was convinced, for no particular reason, that I had cancer. Then there was the time after college when the doctor actually made me legitimately afraid that I had cancer. I know that I am fallible--at least as far as the major things are concerned. It's the minor things, the afflictions of the "common people" that I strongly believe shouldn't be able to touch me.

There was an incident in college where I went out to dinner with a friend and a bunch of his friends whom I had never met. It was a hoppin' friday night in Harrisonburg, so the restaurant was busy. When faced with a crowded restaurant and a choice of smoking or non-smoking sections, I always choose first available. Nobody's going to be smoking at my table, so it doesn't matter to me in the least, and generally, my friends agree.

Except this particular evening, I was not with friends, I was with strangers. Who soon turned into enemies. When I went to ask for first available, one of the girls told the hostess that we needed non-smoking. When I asked why, she explained that one of the guys had asthma, to which I responded, "Why should I have to wait 45 minutes just because that dude's too lazy to breathe right?"

I don't make the best first impressions.

I was, of course, kidding when I called the guy's lungs lazy, but I would be lying if I didn't reveal three things:

1. I was kind of annoyed that we would have to wait.
2. There is a part of me, a part not governed by science or reason, that kind of believes that exposing his lungs to smoke would make them stronger.
3. That I'm kind of better at life than him.

With good health comes a certain amount of arrogance. Being arrogant about something so fragile, something so often out of your control, is a dangerous thing because it can come back to bite you in the ass. I used to have a roommate who was flat-out allergic to everything. Our fridge was filled with anti-allergy pills, liquids, sprays and Lactaid. And I knew that every time I opened the fridge, laughed to myself and called her a loser, that I was tempting fate. But that didn't stop me. I could go roll around in a field of wild flowers while drinking a big glass of milk and eating a grilled cheese, and she couldn't. Therefore, I was awesome and she was not. She wore glasses when she drove, too. I mean, come on, she couldn't even see right! The question of who rocked the hardest was quickly asked and answered. I took a vision test that year and found out that I was 20/15. Nobody could touch me.

When I moved to New York, I started getting sick more often than usual. At first I chalked it up to stress and not taking care of myself and moved on. Then I read this article and found out that New York was trying to kill me--well, not me, exactly, just losers with allergies. I didn't have allergies, so this article clearly was not about me.

Then, recently, I was at work. I had to update one of our databases using a medical book with very small type. I worked for a while and then realized I was squinting. Me! Squinting! Like a common middle-aged housewife trying to read her grocery list in the supermarket. After working on this for the entire day, I had a hell of a headache. It didn't go away until the next afternoon. I started to worry. Did I need reading glasses? My dad didn't need them until he was 40. I'm only 25. Is this the first crack in my shield of genetic superiority?

Last weekend, I came down with a cold. I could feel it coming on. My eyes were watery, my nose started running, I knew it would be only a matter of time before I got a sore throat and a headache. Except none of that happened. For the past four days I've only had sneezing, runny nose and itchy, watery eyes. JUST LIKE ONE OF THOSE STUPID PEOPLE IN AN ALLERGY COMMERCIAL.

Am I this old? Have I reached the age where my body slowly just stops working? Because, no. I can't handle that right now. I've always joked about being old and boring, like how I barely partied in high school because I was too busy working all the time, paying bills and listening to Rod Stewart. Or my senior year in college where I was in bed by 8 or 9 so I could wake up at 3:45 in the morning and go work with Drinky McWhorepants and The Surly Asian. Yeah, Kona's so sleepy, ha ha. Deep down, I was still better than all of you.

But now I'm not. And I hate that. That's all I had going for me, and it's gone; replaced by a big box of Benadryl and plans for a new vision test. What am I going to do now? Learn a skill? Develop a talent? It's a little too fricking late for that. I don't really see myself becoming a master juggler anytime soon or developing "goals" or "dreams" or any of those other things that used to be beneath me. Oh sure, maybe I have "issues" and I should "talk to someone" and work on my "rage." But that sounds an awful lot like therapy. And therapy is for suckers.