Ponies and Poisoned Holiday Chex Mix

I totally should not be eating this holiday Chex mix from my dad because it was given to him by one of the tenants at his building. But it’s that time of the month when it becomes of mortal imperative that I eat something salty followed by something chocolate followed by something salty. The safety of my digestive system is of no concern.

Normally food items from the father unit are TSA approved, but my dad is to being a Resident Manager as the Grinch is to Christmas.  He is unfortunately one of those people who uses what little opportunities of power life gives him to enforce things like guest parking passes with Stalinesque authority.   

How do I know this seemingly innocent Chex Mix was not made by someone who unfortunately had their car towed because they just had to run into their apartment because they forgot their wallet and it won't be longer than 10 seconds so they don't need to find a guest past to hang in their rear view mirror? Maybe this tenant, while getting their wallet, realized they had to go to the bathroom yet again for the 100th excruciating time which is why they were in a hurry to leave and get to the hospital - until they finally get to their car only to see it has been towed? How do I know it was not from that tenant?

This may make my dad sound cruel and harsh, but I assure you he’s really quite lovable in his normal non-power positions in life.

He’s also quite deranged when it comes to gift giving. My dad has always been obsessed with getting credit for giving the best gifts. This is in fact how I learned at a young age that Santa was not real. “Santa” would leave a great big giant present under the Christmas tree. But when I opened the giant gift that could only have been a clear sign from Santa that I had indeed been an exceptional child that year, my dad would always say “You know I’m the one who really got you that, right?”

Now that he has grandkids, he not only has to out do Santa, but he has to out do parents too. It’s now a tradition that after all the presents are opened on Christmas morning, Grandpa is going to show up with the uber-gift, like a huge train set, or the Guiness Book Of Records Most Gigantic Nerf Machine Gun complete with 1,000 stupid foam darts. He even bought a life-sized fake pony one year. I’m afraid this year our kids might get Air Force One.

I think it’s pretty funny and I know the kids love it. But I think it gets under the Spouse’s skin like some primordial instinct to be the best male figure in the eyes of their offspring.

Happy Holidays.

Cell Phone Divorce

Dear New Cell Phone,

There are some things I need to discuss with you. When I started this relationship, I really believed I was moving on to a less complicated life. I know it’s not right to talk about your Ex Cell Phone to your new Cell Phone, but I believe it’s necessary to illustrate where I’m coming from.

I ended my relationship with iphone 3G because I really thought things were getting out of hand. I don’t mind picking up the tab once and awhile, but he was expensive. I found myself paying an extra $30 a month for him to tell me things that my best friend, MacBook Pro conveniently told me all the time. I was also paying for the use of Apps, which I did not ever need. I was tired of scolding myself for buying the hype and becoming another iphone groupie. He obviously did not care about me.

I chose you because I thought you were different. You have limited bells and whistles, but I had been burned by good looks and fancy packaging in the past and was ready for change. However, despite your lack of extras, you seem to be a hell of a lot more complicated.

Why does it now take me 8 steps every time I want to find a phone number? I feel as though you are withholding my contacts. Why do you not conveniently tell me how many messages I’ve missed on your screen at all times instead of just on your temporary screen that disappears after I hit “ignore”. Sometimes I need to make a call and cannot spare the time to see exactly what messages I have missed. But then I forget that I have missed messages and have to go through your five thousand menu options before I can find out again how many messages I’ve missed. By this time I’ve missed more messages and possibly the opportunity to play Trivia-a-Go-Go on Live with Regis and Kelly. You may have cost me thousands in valuable prizes, Cell Phone. I do not appreciate it.

I thought it would be neat to have a slide out keyboard (your one bell and whistle), but your buttons are so small that I have difficulty um… completing my tasks. There. I said it. Your buttons are small and therefore you are inadequate.

You are hungry all the time and you lie about it. This is strange. Do you have some type of eating disorder that you are concealing from me? I charged you completely the other day and then forgot to charge you the following night. You seemed fine the next day, valiantly displaying your three-quarters full battery. But then I made one phone call, ONE 5 MINUTE phone call, and you died! What the hell? Again, I may have missed my phone call with Regis and Kelly. But you won’t tell me that, will you? I’ll have to pry it out of your compact, useless little self.

I think I want to start seeing other cell phones.

Hello World! This is not Mata Hari

So I’ve recently rediscovered how cool it is to have a blog so much that I’ve rendered myself useless these past two days. Of course the mandatory functions of hygiene and feeding my family have been executed like clockwork. But the remaining twenty hours in a day have been divided between reading and writing posts. Oh and sleep, or ten minutes of the longest blink ever, same thing. (Hi, my name is Mata Hari and I’m an insomniac.)

Alright, obviously my parents weren’t crack addicts who named me Mata Hari. They were coke addicts, but that’s another story. I don’t intend to say who I am even though I know an 8 year old hacker could probably figure out the htp/nfl whatever internety lingo and get my identity pretty easily. For now, I’ll just relax in the fact that no one yet even knows this blog exists so I need not concern myself with the intricacies of being identity raped by an 8 year old.

I’ve had several attempts at blog writing over the past few years. The first time around I was in a state of perpetual angst and thought everyone would love to read about my witty observations about why life sucks and then you die. I then thought it appropriate to seek like-minded bloggers to establish myself in a cool online community of people who were too school for cool like me.

But their blogs were depressing. And unfunny. And mine was the worst. I think I may have had half of a follower.

My most recent attempt went much better. I decided to do a little ode to my city and interview all the boutique owners and talk about what great things you could buy or stuff you could do in our quaint beach town. It became an unofficial guide and I soon had frequent followers (some even in other countries, woohooo!). People actually knew me from my blog and were shocked to meet me in real life. Okay, maybe just one people… er person. And maybe that person was like 5. But I was mildly, mildly, luke-warmedly famous. If famous meant not that famous.

Gradually blogging lost it’s luster as I started to think about how I owed it to my town to portray it in the best light possible, as if the town authorities had actually read my blog and vested this responsibility to me. I was just about ready to kneel before the mayor and respectfully wait to be tapped on each shoulder by a royal sword – Ambassador of BLANK Town.

I had originally started the blog because it was a lame attempt to get more friends. I imagined I could exchange business cards with my blog address on them and go to lunch with the cute fashionista bloggers and perhaps get great deals from certain places because I’d write about them.

Yeah, I fully imagined being like Julia Roberts in the opening scene of My Best Friend’s Wedding when the staff in the restaurant were tripping over themselves to make sure she got the best service because she was some important food critic and could possibly write a review that would end their careers. Not that I wanted the power of career-ending, but you get the gist.

I started thinking I should take on bigger issues in my town, like things that people were protesting about. For something that I had yet to earn a penny from, I was stressing out way too much about that blog.

Then one day it came to an end. I went to update my Wordpress site and the whole thing somehow disappeared. I reluctantly opened my GoDaddy account to see if it was something I could fix  (a big no-no if you’re as computer savvy as a postage stamp). I made it worse and somehow made it even more impossible to recover my stupid blog. C’est la vie!

Anyway, after a while it started to become a little strange having people I knew reading things I wrote. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I realize readers you might actually know is a big obvious part of having a blog. But it further cemented me in the personality façade I was currently trying to escape.

I’m not trying to say I have a big phoney personality, but okay maybe I do. We all do. I’ve got kids, I volunteer, I bake and I do normal mundane adult things. But I also like to say fuck, fantasize about David Beckham, fantasize about Scarlet Johansen and be generally un-politically correct sometimes. Of course I wouldn’t do any of that in front of my kids, or anyone I know for that matter. But sometimes it’s just good to get it out. I definitely couldn’t do that on “The Unofficial Blank Town Blog”.

So there it is. My rambling, roundabout reason for starting Free Mata Hari. I don’t know much about Mata, but my Wiki knowledge suggests that she was a free-spirited, sex-loving woman who got accused of some shit and got shot. Ain’t life a bitch sometimes?

I have no idea if anyone will ever actually read these words because I have not yet figured how I’m going to get this blog out there without telling anyone about it. I certainly can’t link it to my Facebook and say “Hey look at the blog someone else is writing! And all the similarities between this person and me are PURE coincidence. Pass it along, thanks!”.

Adventures at The Pink Palace Pt 2

Part 2

The next four days are a little blurred from my memory. I know we quickly befriended nine of the most amazing Aussies I’ve ever met and one crazy Irish chic.

The rest of that day included perfectly respectable vacation activities such as a “car safari” to visit castle ruins, pretty beaches and a kumquat distillery.

Yeah a kumquat distillery! I’d never even seen a kumquat and was amazed that people made rare crystallized liquor out of the little things.

That night we gathered at the Pink Palace Palladium for dinner and witnessed the obligatory reenactments of traditional dance and plate throwing. I imagine it was vaguely similar to being at a large family wedding and not knowing anyone there. You smile big and nod your head to the music hoping it will be over soon.

Then suddenly at 9:30 the tables were removed, the lights went out and the disco ball appeared, but not before the announcement that shots were only 1 euro each. Our Aussie friends dragged us to the front of the bar as though it was a stage and Michael Jackson was about to appear (obviously I mean when he was alive because an appearance now would make anyone piss themselves whether they were a fan or not).

The next thing I knew, there were 12 of us lined up at the bar each with shot glasses five rows deep. I couldn’t believe I was standing in front of a bar with 60 shots on it. It was beautiful in an I’m-about-to-experience-the-hangover-of-my-life-and-have-no-idea-yet kind of way. You know, one of life’s great milestones of monumental stupidity.

SO FUN!

The great thing about being young was that the hangover didn’t happen right away. My liver gave me a full 96 hours to consume as many gyros, beer and kamikazes as my heart could desire. I had no problem waking up to get on a boat and see the Ex jump off a 50ft cliff the next day. I guess that’s not saying much since I was really looking forward to seeing that.

I didn’t expect Koala Dave to motivate us with his bare ass, but that made a great souvenir photo. Funny how I never got his face.

The second night started much like the first except that the 200 of us that were staying at the Palace had already lost our introductory shyness from the vats of alcohol previously consumed. All of a sudden, an Aussie girl was topless. Then I’m topless. Then a guy came breezing past me in all the glory his United Kingdom flag boxers could possibly muster while screaming to the Summer of ’69. It was a sea of boobies and boxers.

EHhhhhPIC!

Yes, I'm Cher and I party with Bald Britney and the ghost of Marilyn

By the third night we were beyond drunk and dressed in pink togas. I made out with a lovely gal from Colorado. The Ex enjoyed it, which defeated the purpose of trying to prove I was over him and into girls. The crazy Irish chick was lap dancing one of the Aussie dudes. One of the staff members said he’d never seen anything like that before.

I’m so thankful Facebook wasn’t public back then.

In conclusion…(he,he, why do people only use that phrase in high school papers?), the Pink Palace should definitely be on your list of things to do providing you are not over the age of 28 – or 40 if you’re a skeevy dude looking to pick up chicks.

P.S.

And the hangover…yes it did come, during the fourth day while I was on the booze cruise. I swear it was a cruel joke from the ancient Greek Gods as revenge for peeing behind one of their statues.

I walked in slow-motion past the three-foot long funnels of beer that were being poured into everyone’s mouth as we rocked back and forth in the middle of the damn sea. I must have been a severe shade of green as I slipped across the salty deck and barely saved myself from falling over the side as I hung on for dear life to the restroom door. After we finished rolling over the waves and I could see enough through my crossed eyes, I made it safely to the porcelain throne and released my organs to freedom.

NOT FUN.

Adventures at the Pink Palace Pt 1

View from our room at The Pink Palace

I was 23 and sick of my new found independence as a stripper named Isis. So when the opportunity came to go on a three-month backpacking Euro Trip with my Asshole-Reason-For-Seeking-New-Independence-Ex-boyfriend, it took me five minutes to pack.

I had no idea what to expect in Europe. Luckily, movies like Taken and Hostel hadn’t come out yet and I was too naïve to know about black market organ harvesting or slave trade. I was more eager than a four-year-old with cake to go on an adventure to the other side of the world, to places where I didn’t speak the language with the man-boy that I despised at the moment.

Ex-boyfriend and I had met during our Freshman year in college. We majored in History and it was our passion for Greek and Roman history that brought us to the first two countries. Italy was epic. That’s an understatement.

It was transforming in a way that resembles what it’s like to actually see a blade of grass when you test your vision in a new pair of eyeglasses. It’s like duh, the world actually existed long, long ago before I was born and, unless the world really does end in 2012, will probably continue to go on long after I die.

But my story does not take place in Italy. Somewhere between our exploration of the ruins in Rome and the ruins in Athens, came a layover on a tiny island called Corfu. I had no prior knowledge of Corfu, but we had heard that the hostel there was legendary.

The Pink Palace was the second largest hostel in the world. It boasted endless days of booze-cruising, cliff diving and private beach sunbathing, as well as endless nights of toga-partying, debauchery, internationally represented nudity, bi-curious attempts and mind-fucking cyanide-esque shots for 1 Euro each.

AWESOME!

After a treacherous hover boat sail across the Mediterranean Sea that was not unlike the Hindenberg disaster, we arrived at what seemed like a 100 ft cliff with a boat harbor at the bottom. We were met by a friendly Australian dude (I’ll just call him Koala Dave because I was too drunk during our stay to stamp into memory the minutiae. I had to look that up just now. Had no idea how to spell minutiae and I’m probably not using the word correctly.)

Koala Dave didn’t say much, but he did mention that he had been a visitor just like us a couple years ago but had decided not to leave. It was like hearing about Hotel California. Anyhow…

After the Pink Bus arrived at our very pink establishment, Koala Dave escorted a bunch of nauseous and sleepy, globetrotting young adults from all over the world to a meeting room. It was there that we were assigned our rooms, maybe one rule, and a list of activities we could sign up for. And after the three-minute introduction, we were promptly served with our first shots of pink Ouzo. It was 7:30 am.
This was a sign of yet to come.

Eff You and Your Coffee

Spouse, I realize we have an interesting situation in which it has been long ago established that niceties and consideration are not necessary to operate in this business deal previously referred to as marriage. However, when you make promises and then forget them, it is not just the anti-climactic rediscovery that you are full of shit that upsets me. What upsets me is that I make plans around said promises, schedules are arranged and errands are planned around the words that come out of your mouth.

When you uncharacteristically said, “Hey, why don’t I wake up early with you so we can get the kids to school and then go grab coffee?” I figured that meant WE are freaking getting up and getting the kids to school. I know I should’ve pinched myself to see if I was dreaming, or at least made you sign some kind of promissory note to make sure the statement was legit. But I did not, and perhaps it is my own lack of foresight that I should be upset about.

I assumed your statement implied that someone is packing lunch for Child A and a different someone is helping Child B get some clothes on. Somehow, like the poetic, slow-motion, machine-gun wielding dance-like scene from Mr. and Mrs. Smith, we would work synergistically through the “I don’t wanna go to school” tantrums, toothpaste on the ceiling, “I lost my homework” chaos that is morning. WE would get the kids to school.

Imagine, just for a moment, the near-homicidal thoughts that may have gone through my mind when, Cheerios are on the floor, Child A is screaming because he tried to zip his pants by himself and caught his pee-pee, I’ve got T minus 8 minutes to get it together and get un-brushed, undressed, unruly offspring into the vehicle and YOU are still sleeping.

And then for a moment, just a moment… I know, I know it’s a stretch…but try if you will to imagine the restraint it took to keep myself from strangling you with an electric cord when you wake up in time to see me hauling ass out the door only to say, “You didn’t make coffee this morning?”