I feel the need, planted in me...

Part of the time I was in Costa Rica we stayed at a beach resort. I was there with seven other teenagers and my high school Spanish teacher. ‘Resort’ may have been a slight hyperbole. It was a little house with some open walls that was awesome and owned by an older couple and there were monkeys in the yard. In fairness it was a resort compared to where we had just come from. Here is the resort:



It was very close to the beach, but you had to walk through a short sort of jungle-like stretch of land to get there. There were rather large burrow holes and a swamp among other obstacles. I’m pretty sure the holes were made by snakes. If I was alone I did not leisurely walk down to the sandy paradise. Instead I tried to run as fast as I could and leap over each hole, intending to leave a generous space between me and possible snake. There also might have been either alligators or piranhas in the swamp area, but happily there was a log so I didn’t have to wade through it. Not that a bouncy log that could snap at any moment and dump me into a murky bog was very reassuring, but I just tried to dart across like an agile jungle-dwelling animal that’s not normally on an alligator’s menu. I never saw a snake, alligator, or piranha, but that was probably because I never looked back and I was quick. My desire to get to the beach was greater than my fear of bitey animals.
These are my hands sticking out of a wave at the beach:



Freaking spectacular. It was practically private – I never saw anyone besides our group there in that whole week. Everything at the beach was turned up: brightness, wave height and consistency, and heat. It was…sizzly. The first day I laid out on the beach I burned in under 10 minutes despite slathering on SPF 45. After that I developed a glorious protective red crust. I had a white handprint etched into the blisters because I had rested a palm on my thigh while reading. Someone unfortunately has a picture of this. It hurt to put clothes on, but it didn’t really matter. We just ran around in hot swimsuits from the ’90s all day anyway. Like this:



One day the boys and I decided to try and maim ourselves. Nick and Eric were pretty cool, and I was 15. So. This predisposed us to want to do something that would result in a lot of bruises and rocks in our suits. (Not a good swimsuit look. I mean I need help in the top and everything, but rocks are not exactly the appropriate texture). At a certain point each day the tide on that beach did something different for about a half hour. Note how in the picture of me in a wave above, the wave happens sort of on top of a bunch of deep water already. Not so in the waves I'm about to describe. These waves would rise up to about 5 or 6 feet tall seemingly out of nowhere and smash onto the beach and flatten out. It looked like someone was kneading the ocean like dough. They’d pull up a wave mixed with rocks out of the sand and squish it down again. One minute there was a pebbly beach, and the next there was a wall of wave waiting to crush you. I’ve never seen anything so cool in my life.

Our brilliant idea of a fun time was to wait for the wave wall to accumulate and then sprint and dive headfirst into it. Ha! It was so dangerous. Sometimes the rocks were the size of our fists and we would leap in and cover our heads. It was what I bet being in a salad spinner would feel like. With a lot of frothy dressing. And dense croutons that could kill you. It was a complete rush: lack of control for about 15 seconds of moderate to severe fear for our lives. Then the wave would crash down and suck itself back into the ocean leaving us contorted and gasping for air on the beach. We’d scramble up before the next one enveloped us and the next idiot would dive in. I’m sure I flashed people several times because I was more concerned about little necessities like breathing and avoiding head injuries than keeping a swimsuit on. We really had no idea which way was up while inside the wave. There was no way to prepare for a glamorous landing; we were probably lucky no one broke their neck. Sometimes our faces would be smashed into the sand/rock mixture. Sometimes our legs would be at inappropriate angles or our arms would be lying limply at our sides. Rocks in swimsuits look funnier than sand. Have I stressed that enough? Afterward we felt fittingly like we’d been pelted with rocks for a half hour and tossed onto the ground repeatedly while being denied oxygen. We didn’t even care. I have never laughed harder while running toward imminent doom.

Partners in...climb?

Brad is a rather cautious person about certain things, so when he asked if I was afraid of heights I was like, “Psshh? Please.” I mean, the guy thinks he’s going to fail math, but he has like a 99.9 in the class. Whatever it was couldn't possibly be that dangerous.
We were over at Sherry’s house helping her fix it up to sell. In my machismo, I conveniently forgot that Sherry’s house is tall. You’d think that someone as uncoordinated as me would develop a healthy, adaptive fear of dangerous things like balancing high above the ground. When I saw the area of the roof we would be pressure-washing I did feel a little red flag flapping around in the back of my head (not a clump of hair! Come on now). However I had already committed myself fearlessly and I kind of had a reputation to consider here. When I said I’d only really held a pressure washer once, Brad looked slightly concerned. When I asked if he'd gone up the ladder yet and tried this, he looked green. He had indeed climbed up and didn’t seem to have liked the experience. Hmm. These observations were troubling. But what the heck, there was a ladder to cling to after all. I started ascending with the pressure washer nozzle in hand. This was not helpful and in fact slippery and cold, but it had to come along.
In a ladder I tend to like stability and in the ground the ladder is resting on I hope for a smooth, even quality. I had neither, but I did have Brad holding the ladder. How reassuring. It was a nice gesture, but we both knew that if the ladder broke or I blasted myself off of it with the hose (infinitely more likely), I was not going to fall neatly into his arms. I would probably careen off the side of the house, bounce off a couple trees, and fall to my death, so who were we kidding? Oh! The ladder. You see, the ladder thought that if it shook constantly and violently enough it just might get away with tossing me quietly into the bushes to my doom. So that’s really why Brad was there. That and to turn on and off the pressure washer – or in other words, decide when I would die. You can tell I had finally realized with some annoyance that Brad’s fears were founded.
The top of the ladder was quite a bit more wobbly than desired, but strangely this was the least of my concerns. I was holding the hose above me and attempting to clear little clumps of moss off the roof. This was all very satisfying and glorious when the chunks flew off, but I was (literally) under a lot of pressure. Counter-balancing the inner city pressure required most of my skills at once. I managed to blow some moss off the roof, but by now my left leg had inexplicably started to shake. Yippee! This merely fueled the ladder’s lust for broken bones. At least there was only going to be one person around to see me break my neck, since it probably wouldn’t be a very cool-looking death. Everyone else was painting or doing something else constructive or possibly chuckling quietly from the dormer windows.
As you can imagine, we weren’t the most proficient pressure washers out there. In fact we didn't even come close to finishing the job. Brad went back up again later and really tempted fate – I am not strong enough to control the ladder at all, but he didn’t have to know that, right? Somehow we are alive and the bloodthirsty ladder is (I think) safely resting somewhere without a person on it.

If you think I'm uncoordinated now...

I was an avid babysitter as a teenager. I wanted to be a "baby doctor" from about age three until 17, so I needed some practice with kids. Once I posted an ad (a paper ad, drawn with markers on construction paper and taped strategically to our apartment mailbox cluster) and waited for my business to boom. I was 10, and the first call I got was from a mother who needed a babysitter for her 12-year-old boy. I took down my ad shortly afterward and decided to stick with babysitting my brother. By 13 I was babysitting for several families regularly. My friend Liz and I traded off jobs and referred each other to different families, kind of like they did in the Babysitters' Club books. It was rad. I got maybe $3.50-$4.00 an hour if the kids liked me.

I babysat regularly for seven year old Lauren and 4 year old Daniel Violi. The kids were great: energetic, polite, funny, and I think for a while they might have thought I was cool. Secretly I was not very cool, but I did try hard. Lauren loved to make up scenarios that I would then be obliged to act out. Often I played the role of a blind ballerina. Arms outstretched and with my glasses off to make it more realistic, I would stagger around doing pirouettes and tripping over dressers and toys and anything else in the way. Lauren LOVED this for some reason and she had a contagious laugh, so I ended up sacrificing my dignity almost every time I babysat.

Lauren was a gymnast, and apparently in her youthful innocence she thought my blind ballerina klutziness was all acting. One day she asked if I would do a cartwheel on her new and awesome balance beam thing. It was a giant foam bar you could walk along and only about 8 inches off the floor (thank God). People usually don't include 'graceful' in their descriptions of me. I'm not sure what exactly happened, but in slow motion it may have looked like me missing the balance beam completely and kicking an expensive and beautiful lamp off of a table. My lack of control over my limbs and eventually brain lasted for the rest of the evening. In the bathroom I reached (with an abnormally high elbow for some reason) back for some toilet paper and knocked over a costly ceramic tissue holder. It shattered. Excellent.

Later I left the oven on for four hours after we made pizza and I was not asked to babysit for them again.

After school surprise

While Wyeth and I waited for Mom and Dad to get home after school, we often crafted little treats that we called "surprises". We weren't allowed to use the stove, so we had to get a little creative with the microwave. We'd nuke things like marshmallows with melted chocolate chips on top and present them to our parents like a cat with a dead bird. It was bad.

One time we simply wanted to make Jell-O. I was nine years old and Wyeth was five. We followed the directions on the box. The amount of Jell-O the box would have made was enough for a huge gelatinous bowl. Then we discovered we needed the stove to create the wiggly. Just a minor detail. No matter, we thought. It would be even better to have Jell-O in juice form. Mom and Dad were going to love it. Instantly we realized it was so good that Mom and Dad could have the next batch. It was like red crack. Delicious, delicious red sugar liquid. So we chugged it all in probably 10 minutes and ran outside to play on the playground. Mom arrived shortly afterward and we jumped off the swings to greet her. And then I projectile vomited a red hose of Jell-O juice. Wyeth didn't get much farther before he shot an arc of syrupy red glory onto the grass.

Adventures in sleep - Part II: Into the wild

Other times when I'm strolling around sleeping, I find myself somewhere unexpected. I went to camp in the summers with Liz, and one time when I was about 13 we went on a 45 mile canoeing trip. We stayed at a vacated boy scout camp for one of the nights. The campsite had probably 20 or 30 A-frame tents(not sure if that is how to describe it...they had a wood floor and canvas-like roofs and doorway openings. They were shaped like tents). I slept in the middle in my sleeping bag, with Liz on one side and an unsuspecting girl on the other. Sometime in the middle of the night, it started to pour rain. Around the same time or approximately when the ground was most soaked, I rolled out of the canvas door flaps - sleeping bag and all - and landed in a puddle. I also managed to kick my tennis shoes out the door with me (how this occurred without anyone else waking up is beyond me. Maybe I somersaulted).

Generally falling out of a cabin thing and landing in the rain would shock someone awake. Instead I climbed out of the bag and wandered off into the dark. I woke up when I realized my feet were wet and was fairly terrified. One minute I was warm and in a nice tent-like structure and the next I was drenched, in wet pajamas, without glasses (this was particularly unfortunate), disoriented, surrounded by woods and wondering where all the identical little canvas houses were. It took me a long time to find the light to the bathroom (or the biffy, as we called it at camp for some reason). I then could kind of trace my way to our tent thing. Except I overshot it. This was worrisome. Most tents were empty because our group was small and there was a myriad of tents. I looked in like three before I found ours. By this point I was crying and relieved to see dry land(I know, right? Whimpy). Liz fortunately knew of my nighttime travels and helped me fix a bed out of towels and all of our combined dry clothes, because by now my sleeping bag was waterlogged. She then bungee-corded the door flaps shut in paranoia.

Adventures in sleep

As a kid I sleepwalked. (It's common, ok? And by kid I mean until age 24). Usually it was just innocent little forays into my parents' bedroom to say something unintelligible, but sometimes I did other things.

When I was seven, I wandered into the bathroom in the middle of the night, took off my nightgown and underwear, and put them in the toilet. Then I went and got my three year old brother's t-shirt and underwear and put them on and went back to bed. I can only imagine my mom's confusion when she got up in the morning to use the bathroom.

Another time I peed on a stack of books in my parents' room. Books, toilet. It's all the same when you're asleep. I was probably three.

Once when I was in high school, I stumbled down the hall and stood at the railing above our stairs, most likely with a glazed look in my eyes, partially because I am blind without my glasses and partially because I was sleeping. My dad looked up from the computer quizzically. "Hi Kiwi, what are you doing up?"
"I have to do my Arab notes," I answered, dead serious.
"I see," he said. "I don't think you're fully awake right now." I denied this vehemently, convinced that I had simply to do some notes real quick. Arab notes. Arab notes? Wait a minute...
"Hey Dad?" I said, once I was back in bed, "I was totally asleep just then. Sorry."
"Mmm hmm."
As I said in a previous post, my parents and brother are quite used to my quirks. Every time I deny being asleep until I'm back in bed and awake. The funny thing is I mostly remember what I do, I just am firm in my belief that whatever I am doing at the time is totally normal.

Adam bought shelves for my plethora of books and we installed them over our bed. One night at about two a.m. I sat up and ripped the shelf off the wall, sending about 20 books tumbling into my lap. Ow. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. Ow. Ow ow ow. (That was the landing of the books. Somebody please, remove these libraries from my knees). Adam woke up, startled by the crashing and his wide awake (now) girlfriend sitting there staring blankly at him. "I ripped down the bookshelf," I confessed. "I was asleep though. Sorry."
"Why...why exactly?"

Who knows. Probably because I'm crazed. One time at a hotel (most often these episodes occur when something is different. Like a new shelf or something, you know, big life changes), my dad discovered me walking repeatedly into the corner of the room. He didn't so much discover me visually, because he is absolutely blind without contacts, but probably heard me banging into the wall and saying, "I have to get out."

Multiple times I have gathered all of my blankets and placed them in a neat ball over in the corner of my bedroom. I then return to bed (I guess) and wake up freezing with a vague memory of carrying a ball of blankets across the room for safekeeping.

I spent the night at my friend Liz's house when I was about ten, and once I stood up from my spot on the floor and walked around the room a little. She asked what on earth I was doing and I apparently explained that I didn't want to wear the dress with the puffy sleeves and went back to my sleeping bag.

Trichotillomaniac

Tricho-who? Most of you probably don’t know the extent of my compulsive tendencies. One day when I was 11 years old I went to the hairdresser. She commented on the fact that my hair has red in it and said it was pretty. And that’s where it all began…

“Huh,” I thought. I had never really thought about my hair before. Plus I couldn’t really see the red hairs unless I looked at them up close. So I sat cross-eyed in the living room staring at my hair and decided I wasn’t properly seeing the red and I would have to see it closer. I tugged on one and it came out. Indeed it was red. It was also pleasantly textured, unlike the rest of my boring blonde hairs. It was like Doritos – one did not suffice. Soon I was sifting through my hair and freeing each red one. It was strangely relieving. Most people are probably uncomfortable right now. (“What is wrong with this girl?” You whisper. Then you realize you’re whispering to the blog and you’re just as bad as an 11 year old who pulls her hair out). Shortly I had accumulated a small pile of hair on the floor next to me. It was trance-like: I quickly became proficient at selecting the perfect hair and ripping. In a few months I had a small patch on the top of my head that stuck up a full inch. The rest of my hair was normal. This looked pretty much like you’d picture it – like a small red afro, but not curly. It was becoming a slight problem. Sometimes I would apologize to the hairs. (Just one more, I told my hair. Your sacrifice is appreciated). Then I’d slide my thumbnail along each hair and release it like curling a ribbon to decorate a gift. It would zip gloriously into a tiny ball and then I would roll it between my fingers and toss it on the pile with the others.

Soon my parents began discovering my piles. I usually gathered them shamefully at the end of each trance and tossed them in the garbage, covering them with toilet paper so no one would find a giant hairball in the trashcan. “Honey,” said my mom one day, “What on earth are you doing?”

“Um,” I replied, “hold on,” as I discovered another red friend. “I’m just pulling out the red hairs so I can see them better.”

“Ah,” she said. (Because that makes sense, I could tell she was thinking). My family was used to my eccentricities. I knew what I was doing was a little extra weird though. It was just that when I looked in the mirror and a hair was frizzed and sticking out I had to rip it. I would get a nagging thought. (You won’t find one that nice again, a voice said. Not a voice like a hallucination. Just a little voice suggesting a hair holocaust). If I simply saw the hair but didn’t rip it something bad would happen I was pretty sure. I couldn’t leave the room until the urge was satisfied, or I would fail my math test or walk all the batters next game I pitched. My dad would get in a car accident. My brother would get eaten by a tiger that escaped from the zoo and ended up inexplicably in the woods behind our house. My mom would get lost somewhere on her way home from work because she’s directionally-challenged and never come home again. To prevent this from happening, all I had to do was yank out one perfect little hair, right?

By now the habit was devouring a fair amount of my time. If I had to contemplate how to graph f(x)=((2x+3)^2)-5 or how to write a paper on symbolism for more than two seconds, my obsession with locating and then yanking out hair would win me over. Good thing I had enough control over myself to simply stroke strands of hair innocently during class or in public. It eventually forced me to develop a small tic – moving my head from side to side rapidly. Since there was a bald spot in the back of my head by now and as it grew back it left an uneven ugly truncated patch of hair, I was self-conscious. I figured if I walked down the halls of the junior high turning my head back and forth really fast, no one would see the spot. I sat in the back of class or wore a ponytail to cover it. I used an abnormal quantity of hair gel. I wore gloves when I did my homework or read a book. I moved the garbage can across my bedroom floor so I’d have to stand up to toss away each hair. I told Wyeth to punch me whenever he saw my ripping hair. My mom started going around saying, "Save the hairs!!" every time she caught me. (Really!)

At about age 14 I wondered if the internet had any answers. I googled “hair pulling” (was there Google back in the day? If not, I browsed the worldwide web with some sketchy old search engine). I frantically ripped hairs as I waited for our dial-up modem to make loud and discouraging noises. I had begun to rip when I was nervous, on road trips, in the bathroom, or simply thinking about stuff.

It turns out there are a bunch of weirdos like me out there. This compulsion is labeled trichotillomania. Check it out:

http://kidshealth.org/teen/your_mind/mental_health/trichotillomania.html

I still pull hairs all the time, but usually not to that severity…I have honed my self-control so that I can still wear my hair down, but only with a fair amount of product in it and a hair dryer. I love ponytail. Consider yourselves privileged to read this blog; only my family and a few people who I trusted who wanted to know why I shaved my head five times between the ages of 17 and 22 know. I had come across a story on the internet about the parents of an eight year old with trichotillomania who shaved her head in an attempt to squelch her “habit”. Shaving your head doesn’t work in the long run, by the way. But it’s a great way to make people question your sexuality or whether you have cancer.

A day in the life of a ColdFire groupie

One of the things I admire most about Adam is his ability to dedicate himself fully to his dream - playing music. His talent is raw and he possesses an ear for music without formal training. Rarely do I meet someone so passionate about a goal. It is at once impressive and contagious in that I now experience a healthy anxiety about the status of ColdFire. I want this band to succeed no matter if that success means fame or simply an outlet they can use to express themselves. I LOVE BAND.

That said, last night ColdFire played with three other bands at everyone's favorite metal dive bar: Samurai Duck. Everyone has their own fears, routines, and rituals the day of a performance. Adam's are specifically linked to the process of transporting the band to the location of a gig. Everything must be on time. Adam's definition of time distorts on show days though. While I am interested in getting place on time as well, I often forget to figure in gig time. Frankly I don't know the formula for calculating gig time and I try not to ask about it. I'm good at driving, taking pictures, and adapting to new schedules. I'm pretty sure n-2 fits somewhere in finding out how much time we have to get places on show nights, since last night ColdFire got on stage at 10:30 p.m. but we were there and unloaded and playing pool since 8:30.

Anyway. Samurai Duck is a metal venue, yet it doesn't discriminate. All sorts of people show up there. Last time a guy brought a cake inside and talked to it. He ate it with his finger. I have a soft spot for that guy though. Read blog #1. Another regular who once danced provocatively to "Belly Drop" reportedly stabbed a cabbie. Yesterday Justin (the bassist) brought a group of 7 friends - complete with a guy wearing chaps and another who disintegrated exponentially with each drink. More about him later.

As groupie I have the following rules/moral obligations/desires: I photograph constantly, I bring drinks occasionally to the band, I call everyone I know and invite them to shows, I attempt to pay attention to sound levels, and if something goes wrong onstage I try to quietly resolve it. Last night I also controlled (loose term) Dan's video camera. The other Justin (Kevin's nephew) kindly traded off with my digital camera taking photos so we could both keep an eye on the video camera, which is probably expensive and was teetering precariously above a beer soaked floor surrounded by drunken morons. After a couple songs we realized an eight foot tall guy was standing in front of the video camera. Luckily Adam brought his tripod, so Justin and I coordinated a covert camera move, Blair Witch Project style. Later when Dan watched the part on film where I tried to sneak onstage and get the tripod only to discover it was not the tripod and in fact some other ambiguous long black case, he proclaimed, "Sweet! Chicks are crawling on stage! Oh wait, that's Kira." We found the tripod eventually and tried for a pretty long time to attach it to the camera. It's hard when you're working in a dim dive dodging darkly dressed drunkards and dropping parts of the tripod on the bar floor (yeah, did you catch that alliteration? It wasn't intentional but I just went with it). My favorite part was when Justin said, "The camera hears everything we're saying." Keep in mind I was holding my digital camera as a light source while Justin was both trying to attach the other camera and dropping tripod parts. We gave up and put the camera on the water cooler on top of the bar.

Everything was going great:















Derrik and Adam were jamming,




















Justin was belting riffs (Adam helped me with the band jargon),

















Dan and Animal were laying down beats,

















AND Justin's extremely intoxicated friend was climbing onto the stage and taking the mike! I took a couple pictures because I thought they'd invited him on stage to say something or announce a song. It turns out they hadn't. Soon Adam had to pull the mike away while Heidi, Justin, and I tried to convince the guy to come down. He sort of jumped into my arms, but happily Justin caught him before I died. Later he tried to join the band again but I convinced him in the nick of time to sit down next to me off to the side. Adam was ready to gently nudge him offstage with his foot, he said later (but not in those words). "This one's a good song, huh?" I offered. He replied he jusht wanted to shing backup.




















He danced uncomfortably close to Justin (bassist) for the last two songs. I guess every show has its crazed fan.

Despite the chaos, ColdFire rocked that metal scene. My contracted anxiety about the shows is always calmed by the clarity of their sound and the positive impact they have on their crowd.

"'Peace' can't be said enough; we should hang these flags up..."
-"Burning Flags" lyrics by ColdFire

I went to Elba

I am in an Italy storytelling mood. I think I'll go back to the present soon though with these posts. There were many good and beautiful things that I loved about Italy, but in November of the term I lived in Florence I decided to travel to Elba. No big deal, I traveled almost every weekend I was there. Elba is the island where Napoleon was exiled to and that's about all I knew about it. It was an awesome island in the middle of the Mediterranean, I supposed. I could probably swim and hike and stuff. There were brochures and travel guides that indicated this. It would be great. As you might anticipate however, this trip was doomed from the start.

I rode on a train, sleeping through the whole ride until I luckily woke up at my exact stop. This was disconcerting. I could have accidentally rode on to Rome or something. But I didn't; instead I boarded the last ferry to float to Elba for the next three days. The last ferry? Why? Oh, just a little weather issue. Just a minor STORM that hit only Elba and the surrounding waters. I may have used float inappropriately. We traveled vertically on giant waves until we miraculously reached Elba. Heavy rain occurred, which was not that bad I thought at first, being from Oregon. There was no way I was buying an umbrella, especially with the wind. The wind and rain situation that was occurring was rather severe.

I made it to my hotel two blocks away (thankfully I reserved a room at a hotel beforehand, since my experiences with last minute hostel reservations had not been good) and immediately was down to pretty much no dry clothes, since I was pretending to be an efficient and environmentally conscious hippie at the time and brought one outfit for the whole trip. This was a poorly planned decision. So I tried drying my clothes for about an hour, thinking (futile thoughts) that the storm would maybe cease and I could get on with the hiking and swimming. It...didn't. If anything it got worse and by about 6 p.m. everything was pitch black. Black and very wet. I needed some rain boots, since my shoes were instantly soaked and were not drying. I only had two days here, so I wanted to get going. I figured maybe I could just walk and see like one landmark or something and the next day I could do everything else. Elba is a tourist island. So there is one store that is sort of like Kmart, only much more random. I saw it on my way to the hotel. There were a few groceries but mostly random touristy things like postcards showing a dry and sunny island with cute little Italian people walking around looking at shops and going on hikes and swimming in the Mediterranean. I saw maybe three cute little Italians the whole rest of the weekend. No stores were open for the next two days, except one cafe by the ferries. But gloriously, Italian Kmart was open AND had rain boots in my size. Cool. I bought an umbrella too, just for kicks. And you know, the hope. The hope that the umbrella might prevent some water from going down my neck.

A block from the store the umbrella blew inside out and almost ripped off the handle. I tossed it in the nearest garbage can. The rain boots kept my feet dry, but as with everything on the island, came at a price. I walked around looking at the storm for a long time, telling myself how good it was that I was making the most of this adventure. I then developed chafed calves. Chafed may be a gentle adjective. My calves had a bleeding ring around them from the strangely sharp plastic tops of the boots, like the boots were trying to amputate my feet slowly. I tried stuffing my pants into the boots to pad the bloody ankles. This made the inside of the boots wet since my pants were obviously soaked. Nobody was out touring, so the next day (clad in damp tennis shoes and bloody pants) I decided I was going to get my money's worth for going to this island and I hobbled a few miles down the coast. Apparently when your calves are chafed it feels like a chain of open blisters sawing through your legs. Weird. After breaking a second umbrella I decided to just go for a swim in the Mediterranean just to say I did it. After that I pretty much just curled in a ball in the hotel and thought dry thoughts. The next day, mercifully, was when I was scheduled to depart. The first three ferries of the day were canceled, but I finally boarded one and floated (horizontally) away from Elba. Victory! Then I got to the train station and the workers were on strike...

A 75-year-old man beat me in a sprint when I was 17...

Steroids? You think. No no, this guy was literally an emaciated 75-year-old Italian man who just happened to be jogging (or is it yogging?) along the Arno River at the same time as I was. I used to go for a casual jog before class every morning in Florence until an old guy not only stayed with me in a dead sprint for a quarter mile, but then pulled ahead and won! Maybe it was because he was used to the abnormal quantity of dog feces on the sidewalks and streets in that city and I was attempting to dodge them, but I mean, I was like 60 years younger than the guy. And I frequently exercised. I had seen this guy running before several times. At first I just thought he wanted to jog along with me and ask me about where I was from or something, but then he said something in Italian like "Veloce?" Or something. I think he meant, "So when you jog, do you like to sprint? Because I do and I'm wicked fast." I thought he was joking kind of and besides, he wasn't wearing an uncomfortable amount of spandex or a fanny pack with water in it which would suggest he's a marathon runner. I probably said something like "Si. Sometimes fast I run" and then he said something that was the equivalent of "We race now." Back then I knew a tiny amount of Italian and I liked not speaking English. Life is much more spontaneous and fun when you don't quite clearly know what's happening. So I figured, what the heck? We had been jogging along at a nice normal clip for about a mile or so talking, and I told him I lived near the Ponte Vecchio (the famous bridge, complete with a secret tunnel that you can go into and then look at art on a day trip with a tour guide) that was coming up in about a half a mile. And that's when he suggested the race. This was at like 7:30 a.m. and there were tons of vespas and people walking to work in their nice sleek Italian clothes, totally not expecting some crazy old guy and a teenage girl to come flying down the sidewalk. I never saw that guy again, but I imagine he's still running along the river every day, challenging young people who think they have a chance.

I tried to make a cake for your birthday, but...

Ok. I am not a cook, but I like food and I kind of like cooking if there's a lot of batter to eat and when there's no pressure. However, last Sunday was Cortney's birthday and my name was picked to make something or buy something to bring to work on Friday. This felt slightly pressure-y. Normal people might not feel the inner, inner city, inner city pressure (it's just a cake, I mean come on), but I am not normal. As Friday got closer I became slightly more panicky, and started poring through recipes for the perfect dessert. Fortunately Oliver's birthday was Thursday, so I made some fudge on Tuesday and then baby food bars for Thursday to practice for my cake. This was probably inconvenient for Nancy and Matt's new healthy diet, but I had to pawn off some of the dessert on them. It did get a little out of control for a few days there. I decided I should bake a cake, since it was a birthday after all. Who cares if I had never made one before, right? Immediately I realized that this endeavor might be slightly out of my league, since I am not really in any sort of ballpark when it comes to cooking. And especially cakes. Cortney likes lemon, so I chose a white layer cake with lemon filling (just for in between the layers, not like a filled pie or something), and plain frosting that I would somehow figure out how to make lemony later. Apparently it's never a good idea to start making something if you don't know how all of it is going to work. First of all, I don't read cookbook language well. For example I looked up lemon zest on the internet. That didn't really make sense, so I looked up how to make it. Then I looked up what kind of utensil to use (it turns out that vegetable peelers are not the best kind for zesting. Neither are cheese graters, counter-intuitively. I tried both.). Then I looked up what size to cut what was peeled. Or zested? None of the things I looked up really gave me a straight answer, because of course it's in chef language which I don't get. Anyway.
First of course I needed cake pans. I wanted to make a perfectly round little tower of cake (HA! My poor, simple-minded last week self). So I bought three cake pans (somewhat of an impulsive purchase, but hey. There is a distinct possibility I will have to make a cake in the future. But hopefully not soon). The recipe said to use either three 8"x2" pans OR three 9"x2" pans. This seemed a little generous for a cake recipe, since I thought it was all supposed to be very specific measurements. I wanted my cake to be tall because Cortney is tall and I just wanted it to be tall instead of round and flat, but there are no 8"x2" pans in Eugene, so I got the other size. Then I got all the ingredients, including cream of tartar which I have never heard of. Strangely it is shelved with the spices. I forgot lemon juice so I went back to the store. (Keep in mind this prep work was done like two days in advance because on Thursday night I had class from 8 a.m. until 2 and I had to stay longer in my lab and didn't get out until 6:30 and I had no idea how long it takes to make cake. It also takes longer if you don't know what any of the recipe means).
After having mild anxiety attacks throughout much of Thursday anytime I thought about the cake (I often thought about the cake. I like sugar and I just bought lots of sugary ingredients that would somehow even if I wasn't sure how yet, make a cake), I finally got home and started following the recipe precisely. Or as precisely as someone can in a second language. The first half was easy (theoretically). Combine things like sugar and flour and butter with a mixer. Then the mixer broke. Of course, it was $7.99, but I bought it TWO DAYS before for the baby food bars practice round. Sheesh. Back to Fred Meyer for the exact same mixer, which I figured was kind of stupid since my chances were still the same for getting a mixer that would break, but I was desperate. And not about to drop $50 on a mixer that I probably don't deserve to own since I can't read cookbooks. Then I picked up Adam from practice and thankfully he knew what "when the egg whites form soft peaks" meant. I still managed to waste 8 eggs on that though. I'm not really sure how, but it happened. Fortunately I was paranoid while shopping and bought two dozen eggs instead of one (thank you, fear. Thank you). Finally I had both a flour/sugar/other things mixture and an egg white/cream of tarter mixture and I needed to "fold" the egg whites into the other mixture. I guessed how to fold it and tried that a few times and then ended up just stirring it until it looked mixed. While I did that (multi-tasking is often called for in cookbooks, to my chagrin. What I mean by "while I did that" is "before I did that"), I preheated the oven and greased and floured (happily there was a description of this on another page in the cookbook. Who knew?) the three pans. I divided the whole mixture between the pans and put them in the oven. For 25 minutes I looked at the clock every two minutes. Then I took out the little cake parts and stuck forks in them to see if anything stuck to the fork. Luckily nothing did, because I probably would not know what to do if it did. No thanks to the cookbook, which had nothing about defending against things sticking to the fork. I dumped each cake out of its pan onto a plate. Of course they were not quite the perfect shape, but I figured I'd deal with that later after the filling was done. The filling went glitch-free shockingly, probably since I had googled lemon zest on the internet the day before. I put the filling in between the layers and then had a very strangely shaped cake. I cut off (with a knife, it toppled and slid a lot and was fairly terrifying) about an inch around the circumference of the cake. It wasn't even, but it looked better than before.
Frosting time. Remember my lack of foresight about the frosting? Yes, this did end up mattering. I had no powdered sugar left after the baby food bars, so I went with a recipe that I had ingredients for. Boiled white icing requires a candy thermometer. They should really list the materials needed up there with the ingredients at the beginning of recipes. Like a science project. You know, hypothesis (Cake success?), materials, procedure, results, conclusions. Works cited. Well, shocking, I didn't have a candy thermometer. No problem, my already slow - and now fueled by sugary batter - cooking brain thought. I'll just estimate when 230 degrees is and it'll probably work...nope, not really. I know boiling is 120 degrees. But beyond that there is really no reference point. Long story short: The frosting died. It looked bubbly and was definitely goopy and weird. I put it on the cake anyway, just on principle and set it in its new cake carrier to see if it would survive the night. In the morning I threw the cake in the garbage, and then (my future planning skills are clearly non-existent) wanted to see what it would taste like. So yes, I ate cake out of the garbage can with a fork like a crackhead. It tasted good - I carved in past the frosting. So at 7:23 a.m. I bought a cake at Sweet Life with beautiful frosting called Chocolate Orgasm. And it was perfectly round! But mine was taller.