Your weekly dose of nonsense

What a dreary day here in New York. But at least IT'S FRIDAY!! Yes, the workweek is almost over and the drinking may commence. Seriously, take an early lunch and get yourself a mojito. Who cares if it's only 11am, it's noon somewhere in the world, right?

For all you responsible adults who can't pick up and leave your desks to get smashed at lunch, here are pictures of some cuddly beasts. Well, most of them are cuddly. Some aren't even real.

A coati in Costa Rica

Lord. (Not THE Lord. Just Lord. That's his name.)

Sea lions on the beach in La Jolla, San Diego.

I have a million pictures from the San Diego Zoo, but this is one of my favorites.

Another reason why I love Berlin: random statues of pigs.

I heart animals so much, I let them eat out of my hand.

Berlin Zoo.

Puppies on the beach in the Dominican Republic.

Bosco in the Truckee River, Northern California.

Ana. Sweetest little puppy.

Bigger Ana and her adopted brothers

Motherlandian cows.

Duro!

Motherlandian pig.

RI.P. =(

More puppies!

Esmarelda, named after a character on a Spanish novella.

Lord, five years later. And still a sweetheart.

York. He used to sleep in my lap EVERY DAY when he was a kitten.

Rottweiler on a boccie court, San Diego.

The time I almost accidentally let my best friend die

A few years ago, my cousin Nicolle and I (well, more her than me) planned a summer trip to The Motherland. We brought along some of our friends, including my BFF Natalie. (Hi Nat!) We rented an apartment in a little "town" that exists solely because of its proximity to a tiny inlet of beach.

The house. The first floor was ours.

View of the house from the "town."

Now don't get me wrong, I am NOT complaining. The house was practically on the the beach of a European seaside village, and I fully appreciated its charm and overall awesomness. My one and only issue with the town is that it calls itself a town. Because to be a town, don't you need something more than a market and a restaurant that's only open for lunch? Just sayin'.

So we rented this super cool apartment at the bottom of a super-steep cliff, a cliff that has a total of one super-narrow road. A road not wide enough for two cars to pass each other, a road that, as of 2006, does not have guardrails. On the off chance that you've never driven on the cliff side of a 10-foot wide road with no guardrails while huge trucks are barreling towards you, I'll tell you now: it makes your butt do that thing it does when you think you might die. In fact, thinking we might die was an oft-spoken sentiment that summer.

That steep-looking road in the corner of this picture is nothing compared to the mountain roads on the other side of that hill. But you get the idea.

So because this "town" only has two businesses, and the lives of truck drivers are threatened every time they deliver goods to said businesses, the town doesn't get much traffic. As such, the trash is only picked up once a week, and from a dumpster at the bottom of that steep hill. And so every other day, my vacationing friends and I would gather up our trash, put it in the trunk of the car and drop it in the dumpster on our way out of town. It was on such a day that I almost let my best friend of 15 years die a tragic, unnecessarily embarrassing death.

We piled into the car on that scorching hot day, our trash in the trunk, ready to spend another day exploring The Motherland. As we approached the dumpter, Donna (hi Donna!) who was sitting front seat, and Natalie, who was behind her, exited the vehicle to deposit the trash. Unbeknownst to our valiant and brave driver, Nicolle, I opened my door to get some much-needed air. (Anyone who's ever gotten into the backseat of a car that's been sitting out in the sun all day knows what I mean.) As Donna got back into the car, I closed my door.

So Nicolle at this point had heard two doors slam and assumed that we were all safely back in the car. Only we were not all safely back in the car, as Natalie was only halfway in the car. Nicolle put the car in first gear and the car rolled back slightly, causing Natalie, who is 5'9" with the longest limbs I've ever seen, to fly forward as she unsuccessfully attempted to get the rest of her body into the moving car. I witnessed this, but for some inexplicable reason, didn't say anything. Nicolle then stepped on the gas and began to accelerate, causing Natalie to this time be thrust backward, while still attempting to get the other half of her flailing body into the car. Again, for reasons known only to the dumpster gods, neither one of us spoke up. As the speed of the car increased and the image of Natalie being dragged behind the car and off a cliff became slightly more real in my head, I started screaming something that sounded like, "Cole! Natalie not in car, legs out, CLIFF!" Nicolle, glancing in her rearview mirror and realizing that her friend was hanging out of a moving vehicle that she was operating, slammed hard on the brakes. This of course caused Natalie to be slammed against the open back door with a very unpleasant thud. A little stunned but otherwise okay, she got back in the car and we all took a deep breath.

Once we saw that she was okay, we couldn't help it. We tried not to, but it really wasn't under our control. We started laughing....hard. The realization that she could've been flung out of a moving car and thrown against a dumpster was just too much for us to handle. Newspaper headlines ran through our heads and we laughed even harder. "Girl dies tragically taking out garbage." "American has deadly encounter with trash bin." "Deathly dumpster dive leaves woman dead." If humor can be found in something as awful as your best friend letting you die in dumpster, then leave it to my friends and I to find it.

While scary at the time, Natalie was able to laugh about it afterward. And while I've apologized many times for watching her almost perish, I feel I should now do it publicly: Nat, I'm sorry I almost let you die that day. From now on, I promise to always make sure you're all the way in the car before the driver takes off.

Although if you do somehow end up in a dumpster, I can't promise I won't make t-shirts.

Story of my life

While I was in the Motherland last year, I went shopping at a really cool mall. We passed a store that my cousin and her friend loved, but mentioned they could never afford. My first thought was, "Then let's please not go in there because I can tell right now that I love the clothes and will end up buying something even though I've spent the last 6 weeks drinking wine and smoking cigarettes all over the Motherland instead of looking for a job and I really can't afford it. So please can we not go in there."

Fast forward to the part where I left the store with a $100 jacket. A jacket I loved, a jacket I had to have, a jacket that spoke to me. It said, "No one else will have a jacket like this at home. You will be the only one with such a fabulous jacket because this store doesn't exist at home. People will ask you where you acquired such a gorgeous piece of outerwear and you can answer, 'Oh I got in Europe.' People will envy your jacket, you must BUY this jacket." And so I did.

Fast forward to the part where I wore the jacket in New York for the first time and a friend asked where I got it. The moment I was waiting for, the moment I had anticipated the first time I tried the jacket on. In my best nonchalant voice, I casually said the line I'd been rehearsing for weeks: "Oh this? I actually got it in the Motherland. We were shopping at this little store and it spoke to me." And then my friend asked a question....a passing, innocuous question raised out of pure curiosity. She asked, "What store?"

Now this wasn't a question I had anticipated anyone asking me; I assumed that my simple explanation would be enough, that by mere virtue of the fact that I bought the jacket in the Motherland, a country not known for its trend-setting fashion or in vogue style, people would just assume the store didn't exist outside of Europe.

But I kept my cool. This wasn't a problem; surely I'd mention the name of the store and my friend would say, "Hmm, never heard of it," and I'd smile a satisfied smile. And so I said the name of the store with a slight inflection at the end, a minor raise of the voice to connote a question... almost as if I was challenging her to answer me. But then something completely unexpected happened: my friend said some combination of, "Oh my God, really? I LOVE that store! There's one right by my job and I can't go in there because I'll have to walk out with something."

If someone had snapped a picture of my face at that exact moment, I'm sure it would've been the saddest photo of me anyone has ever seen. My hopes, dashed. Dreams, crushed. Ego, bruised. I am no stranger to people in the Motherland complimenting me on my American-bought clothes, compliments that I always politely shrug off. But for once, just ONCE, I wanted an American to compliment me on something I'd purchased in Europe....something that wasn't a t-shirt with "Gone Dutch" written on it or a pen that had a monument sliding around on top of it, something that was chic and stylish and was popular in Europe before it got big here. Oh the devastation!

But hey, that's okay. I have plenty of other cool clothes and accessories that people can ask me about. There's that awesome yellow handbag my cousin got me for Christmas. And those funky earring I'm always wearing. (Let's not even talk about my shoes.) And at least I have that cool scarf I got in Bosnia. How many people can say they have a handmade accessory from a war-torn, Muslim country?

Wait...probably a lot of people.

Coffee, Christ, and some cussing

Every so often, when I'm missing the Motherland, I log onto one of the local radio stations' websites and listen for a few hours. It both makes me smile and makes me homesick, but it mostly keeps the memories of my friends and family fresh in my mind. (It also helps with not forgetting the language.)

This morning I was listening to the station's live feed when a popular song from this past summer came on. It reminded me, among other things, of one day in particular. I was sitting at a cafe on the main road in my town. The terrace of this particular cafe ends right at the street, separated only by some hedges. A car pulled up to a break in the hedges, stopping dead in the middle of the busy road. It was the town priest. He rolled down the passenger window and yelled to my cousin, "Is Elvira here?" (Elvira is the proprietor of the cafe.) When my cousin answered no, the priest started to drive off, but not before some cars behind him started beeping. At the top of his lungs, and with a typical Motherland hand gesture, he screamed "Ah wait a second you son of a whore!"

Nescafe Vanilla promptly shot out of my nose and much coughing ensued. It was truly a great moment.

On being unemployed

Yesterday I made a pizza from scratch and baked two kinds of oatmeal cookies. Three days ago I baked buttermilk biscuits. A few days before that it was a raspberry tart, and a week before that, a cheesecake. Since I've been back from the Motherland, I have organized my house room by room, cleaned out my closet, driven my grandmother around, run errands, and babysat my 12-year old cousin. This all comes after 7 weeks of making pasta from scratch, doing dishes 3 times a day, cleaning and doing laundry for 9 people, picking up 2 kids from school, and fetching the occasional bucket of water from the well when the plumbing went out.

I need a motherfucking job.

How to annoy me

Tell me I look "healthy" and that Europe really "suits" me.

Yes fuckers, I know I didn't lose those 5 pounds like I was supposed to. That's a little hard to do when the family you're staying with eats 4 times a day and makes things like plum-filled gnocchi with butter and sugar breadcrumbs on top, spaghetti carbonara with pancetta and truffles, and crepes with Nutella. And did I mention the fresh eggs and homemade cheese and sausages and prosciutto? Oh I didn't? Well good, more for me.

And no, the motherland isn't Italy.

Back in the city

So I took the bar exam in July. That was fun. When I recovered from wanting to gouge my eyes out with a pack of index cards, I decided to have a completely different kind of fun. So I packed my bags and set off for the Motherland....the land of wine and food and familiar faces, and a constitution that I would not need to know....the land of pristine Adriatic beaches and towns built in the 1600's and zoning laws that meant nothing to me. For several glorious weeks, I swam in waters bluer than the sky, watched live performances in an arena built in the 1st century AD, and hung out with people who didn't know what "sui generis" meant. It was fantastic.

Aside from a visceral need to escape New York, my other reason for going Home was to oversee the transfer of some of my family's land. Even after it became clear that the property issue would not be resolved in a timely manner (in a Balkan country? I'm shocked!) I decided to stay. And I waited. And nothing happened with the property. So I drank some more wine. Still nothing. Two weeks turned into seven, and before I knew it, my mother was telling people I'd moved to the Motherland. I took that as my cue to come home.

So here I am. Back in New York. The land of Noise and Dirt and all things gentrified. (Although I must admit, eating sushi again is pretty awesome.) Just in case there was any doubt, here's how I know I'm back to my REAL home:

(1) I boarded a plane in Europe listening to fabulous women in scarves speak foreign tongues and watched gorgeous men wearing loafers drape their arms around said fabulous women; I landed at JFK listening to overweight tourists in flip flops complain about how they couldn't get a decent burger in France.

(2) I went out last weekend and got lost on the way home. I called a friend and explained where I was, using phrases like "Sunnaco gas station" and "motel sign that says '$29.99 an hour." A few weeks earlier, I would've said things like, "The cows with the horns, in the field with the pond, by the train tracks" and "The church.....no the other church.... no, the one at the bottom of the hill."

(3) I've done nothing but watch TV on demand and on the internet since I've been home, as compared to making pasta from scratch and carrying buckets of water from a well.

(4) I successfully explained the Jewish holiday of Sukkot to a friend instead of explaining how Jewish people marry Catholic people all the time here in NY, and it's perfectly acceptable.

(5) Yesterday while walking on the Upper East Side, I found myself saying the following into my cell phone: "Wait, so he called his therapist and she said what?" Just a few short weeks ago, I would've found myself saying, "Wait, so which beach are we meeting at, the one where you can fish, or the one we have to walk a mile to get to?"

I suppose it's good to be back. But not really.