Caustically Optimistic

Hymn of the Lutherans

This post is full of Lutheran humor, if you aren’t able to handle Lutheran humor – or if you’re not really Lutheran (ELCANS, I’m talking to you!) then please stop by again tomorrow.  The title, Hymn of the Lutherans references a hymn written for Emily's forth-coming book, Life Among the Lutherans.

On Sunday, I went to church.  My parents weren’t up when I left and must have gone to a different service (they skipped church) and the people I would usually sit by were also absent from church.  I spied my friend Linda sitting with her family so I went over to talk to her before church knowing that she’d invite me to sit with her.  Linda is sweet and good so you’d never expect that sitting by her in church would be eventful.  It was.  It opened my eyes to the whole church experience.  I have been sitting in the wrong part of the church for far too long. 

The first thing that I notice was when Pastor said, “good morning!”  He is always cheerful and we all say, “good morning,” in response the same cheery way.  Linda uttered it in the manner of someone caught before her coffee.  It reminded me of the one time our Pastor has ever lost his cool and that was when someone told a visitor they were in her seat.  Pastor came unglued the next Sunday.  It was fantastic; he will always be my favorite Pastor.  Lutherans are creatures of habit and we may have started the Reformation of Christendom but after that we’ve looked at change this way: we just want to have Christ and the right to be dumb. 

Linda’s “good morning” opened my eyes: there is a lot of crazy going on at church. 

I noticed our Elder who greets people.  I have never spoken to him personally and I am sure he’s a nice old man.  He looks like a bouncer.  Pastor tells us, “if anyone is visiting for the first time,” and we should be able to tell visitors by who is sitting in unassigned seats, “to please give Jim a hand signal and he’ll give them a welcome packet.”  Yes, I am tempted to give that hand signal but he knows I am not a visitor.  This Sunday it occurred to me that he’s probably on the look out for any lost ELCA who occasionally wander into our sanctuary.  We had to restrain Melissa when she came to visit because even though she’s become LCMS we weren’t confident that anyone had taught her the secret handshake.  We let all kinds of people in: Methodists, Democrats, the homeless, but not those ELCA ruffians.  I am about all the riffraff my church can handle, after me we’d pass the saturation point. 

Sometimes I have to miss church for work and this might have been the Sunday to miss.  It was the fifth Sunday and we do a, “Hymn Sing” where people shout out hymns and then we sign the first verse and move on.  There has to be a better method but to do things differently would be, ‘change’ and we don’t change.  However, Pastor reminded us that it was Lent and we omit the alleluias from our worship.  This prompted two ideas in our heads.  First, I sang the refrain from Emily’s Hymn of the Lutherans for Linda – and all the octogenarians in Belltone Hearing Range – It’s Lent and we’re Lutheran, we won’t sing, “Alleluia!”  We sing thee, “Hosanna!”  It means the same thing.  Linda and I considered looking for all the hymns that had an alleluia in the first verse and shouting out that hymn number but reconsidered when we remembered the watchful eye of Jim and the possibility of being stoned to death by hymnals.  The hymnals are new which would make it a great deal worse than being pelted by the antediluvian Red Hymnals. 

Our fellow parishioners have a bad habit of picking their favorite hymns.  The problem is that Pastor always calls on the old and they always pick songs that have been poorly translated from German and are impossible to sing in English.  It makes me miserable.  I was pleasantly surprised by their choices – they picked mainly Methodist hymns (meaning: written first in English) when they weren’t picking absurd hymns.  The first hymn they picked was Great is Thy Faithfulness which Leah Monster will play on her accordion and sing at my funeral, either that or Our God Our Hope in Ages Past.  The next hymn sung was, Hark the Voice of Jesus Calling, which has the second line of, who will go and work today? This is noteworthy because Linda introduced me to her sister as the person who doesn’t do anything around here to help.  This may or may not be true, but I still have a hangover from being a Lutheran teacher.  Hark the Voice of Jesus Calling is also the hymn I like to change the words to the most of any hymn in the Lutheran arsenal.  Poor Nathan can’t sing that hymn without thinking of my miserable heresies.  After this we sang the Navy Hymn. 

The next hymn would have given away any ELCA in our midst: Onward Christian Soldiers because far from being some GOP jam-fest this song gets my ELCA Grandmother out of her seat and marching in place while she sings.  It’s comical for everyone not related to or sitting with her. We rounded this out with, What a Friend We Have in Jesus.  A hymn I never mock.

After this we had Special Music, which was so special the man in front of us ripped out his hearing aids.  The choir sang four verses of a hymn and then we were supposed to sing the fifth with them.  For this verse we were conducted by the choir director – which was absurd because I don’t know what he’s doing with his hands and I was a band nerd.  If I don’t know I’m guessing he was just confusing everyone else as well – if they were paying attention.  I ignored the conducting because it’s enough for me to just sit, stand, and kneel when told to by the Pastor or the field worker. 

To ask me to sing in some sort of order is too much.  I will admit that I liked to randomly stand up during hymns when I was younger because LCMS people are like trained dogs – they’ll all stand up if someone is standing as well.  Linda did this when there was a part of a prayer that the Pastor (or the field worker) reads and we follow along with.  Linda was reading along so everyone around her started and it spread through the church.  Sure, it was an accident on the field worker’s part to tell us to but it was neat how we’re so afraid of not following along that we can gum up the service.

This was followed, more or less, by the reading of the Scriptures.  This part is always good because I don’t have to disagree with anyone’s interpretation and I can read along and not do a “running record” of reading errors.  Not so today.  Today someone read the scripture dramatically.  It was like watching a college speech tournament – yes, Renea, it was that bad.  Linda said, “you can always tell the newly Lutheran because we don’t get excited about anything, ever.” I'm sure the prophet was all "fire and brimstone" when he went at it with the Hebrews, we are not Hebrews.  We are Lutheran.  Don't get excited and NO SUDDEN MOVEMENTS.

Thankfully, this was the point at which Pastor took control of the service from the field worker and gave his children’s sermon (I tuned in for that, they played follow-the-leader,  and talked about following Jesus when you hit a ‘fork in the road’), I was switching channels through the adult sermon (it’s a longer version of the children’s sermon), we prayed (without incident), confirmed some new members and had our benediction.  There was a social hour after church, which I know didn’t happen without incident but I had to deliver a hatchback and missed the social. 

I learned an important lesson though: sitting in the balcony means you’re missing a great deal and missing church at all is missing 

men bearing baguettes

Today I decided to stimulate the economy after a particularly frustrating day at work.  Three people this week had me demonstrate cars to them and help them find a car to meet their needs and budgets so they could buy them from other dealers.  This is frustrating; I apparently have seven children to feed and can’t feed them when I am not making money because my stellar ability help you find the car you want instead of the car you thought you wanted or the car you can love AND afford is lining someone else’s pockets.  This is another reason to go back to teaching: you can’t be taught in my classroom and go learn in another.  I had enough garbage so I decided to visit my friend at her workplace because apparently that’s acceptable and who is going to stop me?

 I was very excited about this proposition because earlier in the day I had talked to Valerie and Valerie is the reason I am fat.  Valerie made me go to McDonalds.  However, I brought Erin some McDonalds as well – we split the two cheeseburgers meal.  I realize that some call it a “Number Two Meal,” but that’s your Momma’s cooking: nothing to brag about there, shameful to the last!  After visiting Erin my plan was to go to the bookstore and use my gift certificate and buy myself a new book since I have almost finished the Count of Monte Cristo. 

 Visiting Erin was nice until it because surreal.  Erin is some sort of medical professional who sits around in a clinic hoping someone has fallen ill and will accost her.  I can only visit as long as she’s not being accosted.  While were discussing something – I never talk about important things unless I am mocking it – someone popped their head in and disappeared.  This troubled me on two fronts – first, it appeared to be someone who is out to kill me along the lines that I am his arch nemesis, when I could care less and second, I thought I was Erin’s dedicated stalker.  I was wrong on both counts.  It wasn’t the person who thinks they’re my arch nemesis (when truly he isn’t even a minor nemesis, just a major pain) and I am not the only one stalking Erin.

 This alternate stalker is someone that I am not happy about because I like to be special, noteworthy and I no longer am if Erin has a cadre of stalkers stalking away.  I’m just another one, and not even the first, best, or skinniest.  I can only hope I’m not the fattest because – you may not be aware of this – I am susceptible to vanity.  I wasn’t sure if I should be confrontational, annoying, bellicose, ridiculous, vulgar, or absurd.  I wasn’t prepared for this rendezvous with disappointment.  However, my fears were assuaged by the fact that his person tap-dances while I dance in circles, is in theater where I am in rhetoric, and Erin would never forsake me as her stalker after all these years.  She did stare at his crotch but he was holding a (broken) baguette in such a way that it appeared to that he was just a mere Viagra away from fame and fortune.  It was as disgusting as it was hard to turn away from – it was like a car wreck.

Indeed, I knew I had nothing to fear.  Nothing!  Who can fear something from a man holding a baguette?  It’s not like he had a ukulele or a sock monkey or a platypus.  If he had a ukulele we’d have been in another discussion!  Oh, then it would have been on like Donkey Kong.  I can pretty much handle a man with a sock monkey but it isn’t pretty; my koala can take anyone’s platypus but Emily really doesn’t like it when Winkler gets into fights with people or platypuses. 

I have bigger fish to fry.  At the Borders I discovered that I was finished with the Count of Monte Cristo because I had inadvertently taken an abridged version of the book!  This is doubly absurd because this is the second time I’ve read the book.  I almost picked up the real version of the book and toyed with learning French so I could read it in the original language as a penance but I decided on another book.  I enjoyed the writing style of Alexandre Dumas so I picked up a copy of The Three Musketeers on the basis that the book has an argyle cover.  Science and Logic: they’re everywhere!  Indeed Dumas is the one who encouraged me, through the story of Monte Cristo, to have no fear of people bearing baguettes. 

 

March Madness

The basketball March Madness is in full swing and like everyone else, my bracket is a mess.  To own the truth, my bracket was based on geographic preferences and good old American ignorance of the facts.  I have Duke and Kansas in the final game, but haven’t picked a winner.  I, however, am more excited about the advent of baseball and have decided to try and follow the season this year since I am not teaching.  I might as well.

This year my mother has announced her intention that we’ll all go to a Yankees game this year.  In the dark recesses of our souls, our minds, we’re New Yorkers.  She and Chaos Bean are actually from New York and my father is from New Jersey.  I was born outside of what I call the “Literate Belt” and inside what other people like to call “the Bible Belt,” for no apparent reason.   The unfortunate part of being the son of a soldier is that sometimes you have no definite home but Yankee baseball is transnational and all you Boston fans from outside of New England are what we call a, “bandwagon.”  There are few things more American than baseball and Yankee Baseball is America.  I know this, of course, because I was on the outside looking in for many, many years. 

Unfortunately, we live in the American city furthest from a city with a baseball team that plays the Yankees as is humanly possible without going to Hawaii (which is too luxurious to be America, really) or Alaska (which is too scary to be America).  We would have to travel to Kansas City, Cleveland, or Chicago to see the Yankees play and as much as I would prefer the former or latter, we are for some reason pointed towards Cleveland because only I have been to Cleveland.  Cleveland is a terrible, terrible city and only one good thing came from it and she has since moved to Phoenix.  Chicago is a poor man’s New York (note, irony) and Kansas City is the home to Harry Truman, Mary Tyler Moore, and I can’t think of a third thing because I am predicating this family vacation on possibly seeming my friend Mary Tyler Moore.  I cannot believe that we might go to Cleveland; I’m just not sure I have the proper vaccinations. 

While discussing this trip my mother was very, and unusually animated.  When Chaos Bean announced that she would never consume a hot dog in public under normal circumstances she would most definitely do this in a scenario that placed her at a Yankees game.  My mother then announced she would eat a hot dog as well and perhaps even have a beer.  This is newsworthy in and of itself but the fact that she’d follow that up with, “I might even fart,” caused me to renew my wish that I were adopted.  Here is my mother, who decries the idea of eating and behaving in a low manner deciding that at a Yankee baseball game she is going to, “toot, toot, toot, for the home team.”  Disgraceful. 

This does however bring up the important fact that I need to move somewhere bigger, Emily is right: I’m a city boy.  Cities have major league baseball and while that doesn’t always include the Yankees it can at times include the Mets, who are a poor substitute but a substitute nonetheless.  I just discovered this week while bringing my sister lunch at work (and she works in HELL)  that Louisville has a Wolfgang Puck Express denoting that this is a connection you’re making on your way somewhere else because it was found on the street and not in an airport like it’s brothers and sisters.  I noted to my father that it made the town suck a little less and that it was like a beachhead in the battle to make this town civilized.  He noted that it was just an express and we didn’t have a real restaurant yet.  Indeed, I must go then to a larger city where I can teach, see baseball games, and eat well.  I am accepting applications. 

 

Kianauts

I am happy to report that the United States Government is not the only one wasting tax money.  I heard on NPR (I know, a new-source of ill repute!) that the Government of South Korea had spent money to find a way to make kimchi fit for space-travel.  Apparently, gamma rays in space will mix with the bacteria in the kimchi and making it do something we’d hear from Melody about from a Science Fiction entertainment and kill the cosmonauts and astronauts in the space station.  Either that or it’d do something to the bacteria and it would come back to Earth and kill us all or mutate the humans. 

According to NPR the Koreans cannot live without kimchi.  I think the Koreans need to toughen up but I don’t pay taxes in Korea so who I am to judge?  I just hope they have Hyundai making their spaceship and not Kia; the poor bastard won’t make it to the stratosphere in a Kia and they would have wasted all that money on irradiated cabbages.   Yes that is what they did: they irradiated the kimchi so it wouldn’t have the bacteria that make kimchi, kimchi.  Essentially, they put it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and everything was fine.  One of my art professors at the University once said that some of the best things in Art happened on accident and perhaps this is true as well about science – I think he was wrong but he has a classroom and I do not so I’ll keep my opinions to myself.  No, no I won’t. 

I have no idea what you’d call a Korean astronaut or cosmonaut.  I’d call them a Kianaut since that is what I am alleging they’ll be strapped to.  I will delete all the comments that will come flooding in about how people have a Kia and love it or that they’re reliable or safe.  I know that some of them have high safety ratings but those come from the government – the same geniuses that brought us our economic situation, the Iraq war, unmitigated climate change, and a world-class public transportation network.  Okay, we don’t have the last one but I think you’re getting my point: they’re not exactly good what they do, or don’t do. 

Also, you do not love that Kia: you love what you paid for it.  I can’t wait to see you try and trade that bucket in.  I had a Saturn once and I would have told you that I loved it.  I would have sworn up and down that I loved that Saturn, but I am a liar and I was lying then.  I was very happy with the Saturn.  I was very happy that I wasn’t walking. I did not love it.  I wouldn’t want to be strapped to it and ride all the way to Connecticut again or from Connecticut to Arizona and I wouldn’t want to be strapped to it and shot into space.  I am sure the trade-in value of the Saturn directly correlates to the amount of change stuffed in the cushions and their ability to take the tires off the car and put them on another vehicle. 

And I wouldn’t want to go to space anyway, not if there is radiation that could somehow make kimchi worse.  Methinks the Korean government is actually using kimchi to control its people – both in the north and the south, around the world, and if they let it go into space it might lose its opiate qualities and allow the Korean Kianauts to see the truth.  They’d come back to earth and they’d free their enslaved brethren that have hitherto been drugged into believing that their government was good and kimchi was edible.  Don’t laugh, Australia, I know what you’re up to with the vegemite.  I’m very hard to fool.

 I just don’t see the point in going into space: we already have Tang and Velcro.  What else are we going to find in space?  They’re always telling us that we find a lot of inventions in getting ready to go to space and in going to space.  Considering our current situation the time of having so much money to waste on earth meant needing to waste it in space as well are long gone.  Why do we need to go into space?  Do we need to go to Mars?  We don’t need to bring back Martians for day labor or to outsource our jobs to Mars; going to Jupiter would be stupider.  Going to space to say we did it is stupid.  I’ve done a lot of things to do them and to say that I’ve done them and, ‘for science.’ 

Anyone who reads this knows that I do a lot of stupid things and if I am any example to anyone, if I’ve brought anything to the world through the work of my writing it should be this:  I am an idiot.  I do dumb, dumb things.  I am not an example to follow.  So please, lets not send the Kianauts into space, it seems foolhardy at best.  I’m also pretty confident, as confident as I am about anything, that kimchi and Tang being separately disgusting will not mix together very well at all. 

 

“Frozen Dead Guy Days”

Greetings, virtual friends!  This is Christopher’s friend, Emily, and I’m hijacking the blog today.  I hope you don’t mind.  Christopher and I have been friends for several years.  One of our favorite activities is to take field trips together to unique locales, important historical sites and interesting festivals.  Unfortunately, Christopher was unable to accompany me on this weekend’s excursion, but I thought it was so unique that I wanted to chronicle the events of the day and he relented to letting me post it on the blog.   

To preface, I live in the great state of Colorado; a state diverse in culture and scenery.  By culture, I mean to say that there are many varieties of white people.  In the small town of Nederland we encountered the endangered subtype of white people classified as “Dirty Mountain Hippies.”  As opposed to the species of white people found downstream in Boulder, the less elusive “Dirty Educated Trust-Fund Hippies,” these mountain hippies can be distinguished by the fact that they actually live in shanties, and drink Miller Lite.  The “Dirty Educated Trust-Fund Hippies” only drink micro-brews and drive expensive hybrid cars.  Both types can be found wearing dreadlocks and ugly ponchos. 

My friend Cindy and I ventured up to Nederland today to partake in the festival called (and I am not making this up) “Frozen Dead Guy Days.”  The celebration is a community festival that honors a man who is cryogenically frozen and kept in a Tuff Shed in the town.  Apparently, after Grandpa Bredo died in Norway in 1989, his family arranged to have him transported to the U.S. and cryogenically frozen.  They brought his body to the small mountain town of Nederland and kept him in a shed behind their house.  Eventually the town discovered that the body was being kept frozen on their property.  Because there was no ordinance against it at the time, the family has been allowed to keep their grandfather’s corpse frozen in the shed, aided by regular deliveries of dry ice.  The townspeople began celebrating “Frozen Dead Guy Days” in 2002 in honor of Grandpa Bredo.  It is a celebration of the macabre and the absurd, like Halloween in March. 

I had never been to Nederland before.  The drive up from Denver is quite beautiful.  Past Boulder, you drive up the mountains on a pretty typical two-lane highway with lots of curves and several boulders that loom over the road on cliffs that look like they could fall and smash your car at any minute.  But it was truly breathtaking, and we stopped to take our pictures by a frozen lake outside of town.  The town itself was packed as we arrived.  We found a place to park and then headed to town to line up with the hundreds of other people and waited for the parade to start.  Then it started to snow.  Really hard.  The parade began with the winner of the Grandpa Bredo look-alike contest walking up the street.  He was accompanied by this year’s Ice Queen who kept getting groped by onlookers.  Their triumphant march was immediately followed by a multitude of old hearses from the Denver Hearse Club driving up the street.  Did you know that Denver had a hearse club?  Me neither.  After watching the parade for ten minutes and seeing hearse after hearse, Cindy and I were covered in snow and very, very cold.  So we headed into the nearest pub for lunch.  Yet again, we got to watch some drunk guys try to grope the seating hostess.  Dirty Mountain Hippies. 

After lunch, we trekked downhill and followed the crowd of people to the next activity.  In order to get to where it was held, we had to cross a very skinny bridge and then literally walk across part of the frozen river.  We prayed that the ice would hold us, as we had just eaten a very big lunch.  Do you remember fording the river while playing “Oregon Trail” in grade school computer class?  It was a similar experience, minus the oxen and the cholera.  We arrived just in time to watch the Polar Bear Plunge.  If you aren’t familiar with this, it is an event wherein brain-damaged individuals think it’s a good idea to jump into a frozen river.  The best part is that after diving into the frozen mountain river, the people emerge with looks on their faces that seem say “Holy crap!  I didn’t realize this water was going to be so cold!  I think maybe my nipples fell off somewhere in there!”  Really?  They didn’t realize when they signed up for this that the water was going to be COLD?  The crowd cheers and laughs, as they are nice and warm and bundled up in their North Face jackets and sipping on their soy lattes, while the participants are struggling to keep the hypothermia from setting in.  Each participant was generally costumed or had some other theme for their dive.  There was a guy dressed like Superman, another guy in a suit who looked like he was getting baptized, some people who had painted the Norwegian flag on their stomachs, and there were even a few kids that took the plunge.  But the best moment had to be when these two skanky hippie girls in bikinis were about to go on and as they were doing a faux striptease while de-robing, someone from the crowd shouted: “This isn’t Rock of Love, girls!”  See, hippies can be funny, too! 

After the Polar Bear plunge concluded, we walked over to the obstacle course that had been set up for the next event, the Coffin Races!  The idea of the coffin races is that each team designs and builds a coffin to carry one of their teammates through a variety of obstacles, most of which are just big piles of snow.  Each team also comes up with a theme and again, most are costumed.  I am very tall, so I perched myself up on a rock and watched from behind a bush.  Even though I could see through the bush, it made taking pictures somewhat difficult.  In each heat two teams would race against each other.  There were two separate “Octo-mom” teams this year, but this one was my favorite:

The “babies” are carrying their crazy-pants mother through the obstacles that they encounter.  It’s really funny how art imitates life.   

Here’s where the teams have to perform a Chinese fire drill around the coffins.  This is team “Ground Control to Grandpa Bredo” competing against the “Corporate Zombies.” 

We wandered around town for a big after the activities had ended.  I had some really terrible hot chocolate and then we decided to drive back to Boulder.  Of course, we paid the obligatory visit to Pearl Street (where we got to walk by some Hippies doing street performance!  Oh joy!), we patronized the Dushanbe Teahouse.  It’s a really unique place, and the décor is amazing.  I had the Morrocan Mint tea and Cindy had some chai: 

At this point, I must mention that Cindy had been talking to me ALL DAY about taking me to a particular cupcake shop in Denver after we got back into town.  She promised that I would love it.  So we chose to just drink some tea and save ourselves for the cupcakes that were awaiting us back in Denver.  As we left, we were both excited for the cupcake ecstasy that would greet us upon our return to civilization.  Little did I know that in deciding to get cupcakes, Cindy and I would be forced to become ninjas in our attempts to elude our arch-nemesis who just happened to be at the SAME CUPCAKE BAKERY!!  What were the odds of that??  And so, we had to drive around the block several times while Cindy wore a disguise until She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had left the bakery.  But it was worth it, because the cupcakes were amazing.  I had a strawberry one and a chocolate one.  Unfortunately, they are not open on Sundays, or I would probably be there today.  On second thought, maybe it is fortunate after all.

it doesn't end well

I turned thirty-one this week and unfortunately have not yet grown up.  Birthdays aren’t a big deal for me, but people like to do nice things for you on your birthday and it’s rude not to let them do it.  My parents and sister got me frames to frame things from the campaign to match the frames they gave me at Christmas.  They also each gave me the same birthday card, it’s an inside joke in our family about disregarding Stefanie (ostensibly and in sensibleness our voice of reason).  However, my sister gave me the gift that we all want from our family without intending to.  

No, she did not die and leave me a huge sum of money. 

And people do like to do things for your birthday.  When I lived in Phoenix the birthdays were epic.  I knew by the time I was there to ‘go with the flow’ of a birthday.  When I was twenty-one I didn’t know this and despite James’ best efforts I wouldn’t drink and didn’t get so drunk I was sick from it so James had to do it FOR me.  When things happen on my birthday or if we do something it’s always spectacular: mullet hunting in Philadelphia comes to mind or climbing the Coliseum in Rome.  I didn’t know it at the time, but this would be the birthday that will (hopefully) end all birthdays.  This was the mother of all birthdays.  It was birthdatgate.  Is there a cliché I am leaving out? 

My sister took me out for dinner after work.  I had worked about ten hours and it was a depressing, unproductive day.  I didn’t really want to go out for dinner but I was hungry and I wanted to cook and clean up a dinner less than I wanted to go out for one.  We agreed up on a restaurant and as soon as I got home we were supposed to turn around and leave again.  My sister made me change clothes because I didn’t want to go anything on my work clothes.  I did what she wanted but wasn’t totally aware of why at the time. 

My sister and I don’t get along very well because I am a jerk.  I try to go along with things when we are and not upset the boat.  We went to a place she likes to go with her friends (and can now never show her face in again).  We ordered wings and French-fried potatoes, she had diet Coke and as per Lent I had iced tea.  I will own the truth: I wanted a beer or a diet Coke, but because it is Lent and I had to work the following morning I passed on both respectively.  I should not have passed. 

After a bit I didn’t feel good and we asked for the check and I went outside for fresh air while she finished the transaction.  There was a bar two doors down from where we ate without an outside patio for working on lung cancer.  These people, who had gotten a beer and maybe even a diet Coke with a little something, something in it all watched me come to the realization that my dinner wasn’t staying with me and that I wouldn’t have time to make it to a respectable place to toss my cookies.  Instead, somewhere on Bardstown Road – a road once maintained by Abraham Lincoln’s father – there is a puddle of sick left by me on my birthday. 

I didn’t do this last year when I had a thing or seventeen to drink.  I didn’t do this ten years earlier in Rome with my college buddies when drunken vomiting would be considered a right of passage or cute.  I did this from food poisoning like an old person on a public sidewalk like trash.  I did this being heckled by drunks who, I hope, slipped in it on their way home.  You’ll notice that I had the presence of mind to take a picture of it but not to find a toilet.  I also text-messaged my sister mid-hurl to try and light a fire under her.  It did not work. 

I spent the ride home picking vomit out of my nose and fielding phone calls about my birthday and how it was going, “I made a big splash…”on the sidewalk of Bardstown Road. I'm really glad my sister made me change my clothes.  Vomit and argyle do not mix. 

And as an epilogue to my tale of sadness: today, when I was at a meeting at work one of my coworkers said, “I thought I saw you throwing up on the sidewalk last night but I realized that you wouldn’t do something cool enough to puke on the side of the road like a Hobo.  You don’t party seriously enough.”  Indeed, DeAnna pointed out, had I stayed in Phoenix and partied seriously I wouldn’t have had something on my stomach to make me sick.  How is leaving your dinner cool?  Seriously?  Upon elaboration as to how ‘cool’ the experience was or wasn’t, there is nothing cool about pulling a half-eaten fry out of your nose.  I really need to chew my food better. 

And this is what my sister gave me for my birthday: Blog Fodder.  I wasn’t going to have anything to say to all those well-meaning people who asked, “did you get anything nice for your birthday?”