“maaaHAAAaaaah the frennsch … champagne has always been celebrated for it’s egggcelence”

Oh you had me at your drunken blank stare, Orson.

Last Friday I got on the plane to Colorado, excited about my weekend plans and looking forward to seeing old friends. When we landed in Denver, I turned on my phone to briefly check email and saw one from my Dad. He only emails when he has some kind of news to share, so I opened it. Especially because the subject line was “colonoscopy” which sounded like it had comedic potential. It did’t. This is the email:

Hi Girls:

I had my colonoscopy this morning, and it is normal. Do not need another one for 10 years. I did give them a bit of excitement, however (I wasn’t awake, so I didn’t know).

Owen (my physician) said that as he got to the splenic flexure, I went into asystole. I guess it got pretty exciting for awhile, but being short, bald and Irish, I’m “indestructible’.

As the old Timex commercial used to say: “Takes a licking (or in this case a “looking”) and keeps on ticking” !!

Love,
Dad

Here’s the thing. I watch a lot of television. I’ve seen almost every episode of ER. Between that and being the child of a doctor, I know just enough medical jargon to convince myself that I can diagnose anything from hay fever to acute appendicitis. And I will have you know that I easily diagnosed my friend’s husband with diabetes (or “die-uh-bee-tus” as Wilford Brimley would say) after hearing his symptoms over the phone. Although I realize I lose my edge when I deliver my diagnosis thusly: “You say he’s thirsty all time? And lethargic? You know, Raul on The Young and the Restless had this very same problem. I am pretty sure he has diabetes.”

So in reading that email, the word that jumped out at me was “asystole.” I don’t know, for some reason I thought this was the word you hear on ER right before they yell out “CLEAR!” and zap the fuck out of the patient with electric paddles. I thought my father’s heart had stopped. I thought he had died and come back to life. And I’m sitting on a plane a million miles away.

I decided not to call home that day because I couldn’t deal with my father’s mortality just yet. The next day I got a text from my sister that said “Did you see Dad’s email??” which got me all riled up again. So I called home. This is more or less how the convo went:

Me: This is not the kind of email I want to get on the airplane.

Mom: What are you talking about? You know he’s always been hypertensive, but your father is fine.

Me: No he’s not - his heart stopped! Asystole!

Mom: His heart didn’t stop. Asystole is like a flutter, an irregular rhythm - blood doesn’t pump through the heart the way it should.

Me: Oh. Ohhh. Ok, so his heart didn’t stop! Yes, ok, that makes me feel better!

Mom: Oh, but he could have died. It will kill you.

Me: But it didn’t.

Mom: If it was going to happen, I’m glad it happened in a hospital with several doctors around him. Trust me, he’s fine. He’s at the gym now. If he wasn’t ok, he wouldn’t be at the gym.

Me: (now having visions of Tim Russert in my head) You know what, I didn’t even need to know about this. It happened and he is fine, so why did he even have to tell us?

Mom: We don’t ever want to keep things from you.

Me: No, please do - especially this stuff. I don’t need to know about it. I don’t WANT to know about it.

Mom: (laughing) Oh Clare, we’re not going to be here forever, you know.

Me: NO. Please don’t tell me these things. I’m happier not knowing.

And so on and so forth. You get the idea. So what did I learn?

1) Asystole is not the thing they yell out before CLEAR!, but I think v-fib or v-tac are the words I was thinking of.
2) It would be very embarrassing to die when someone has a camera shoved up your pooper.
3) My parents are not going to live forever?

I object.

From Vail, CO

I know, I’ve already done a Take Five Tuesday not 2 weeks ago, but I’m sooooper busy today (Thursday, I’m publishing this at midnight even though the date is screwy on this blog) finishing up projects at work, not to mention moving offices. I’m out of town for the rest of the week/weekend, so ta-ta until Monday!

Five things you were doing 10 years ago?
Turning 21 and partying on Beale Street with friends
Graduating from college
Officially moving to Memphis
Working as an assistant manager at Pier One
Working a second job at an art gallery in Midtown

Five things on my to-do list today?
Write my weekly status report
Follow up with a few sales counselors on some last minute projects
Pack the last few items on my desk for the office move
Print off my boarding pass and rental car info for my trip
Pack my suitcase for my trip

Five Places I have traveled?
all over Spain
Sydney, Australia
San Juan, Puerto Rico
London, England
Kona, Hawaii
St. John, US Virgin Islands

Five snacks or treats I enjoy?
Hot Tamales
Sour Patch Kids
Cheez-Its
Florida’s Natural Au’some Fruit (like Skittles that are good for you, yet totally addicting)
Quaker Mini Delights in Butter Popcorn

Five things I would do if I were a billionaire?
Pay off my debt
Pay off my family’s debt
Set up a charitable organization
Invest in real estate/flip houses
Travel the world

Five of my bad habits?
Insensitivity
Laziness
Talk too much
Drive too fast
Impatience

Five places I have lived?
Mobile, AL
Birmingham, AL
Memphis, TN
Dallas, TX
N/A

Five jobs I’ve had?
Harco Drugstore cashier
Daycare for 6 wk. to 6 mo. olds
Gallery assistant for art dealer
Associate Manager at Z Gallerie
Indentured servant at Match.com

from Married To the Sea, the champagne of comics

This weekend I had occasion to try out some drink recipes. The verdict? They will definitely all get you very drunk, very fast. So fair warning imbibers, pace yourself. Or else you’ll be like me on Sunday, unable to move. And slightly catatonic. Seriously, it was a struggle for me to stay awake yesterday. It wasn’t like a normal hangover, but like I’d been run over ten times by an 18 wheeler.  Be ye not so stupid. Drink water in between your 45 beergaritas. Oh, and the beergarita was the one drink I didn’t photograph. But I remember it well. So well. My other favorite was the Shandy - delicious and effervescent. Also, if you’ve never heard of it, Chambord is a raspberry liqueur that is heavenly when splashed in a glass of champagne.

Beergarita
4 bottles of Corona
8 oz tequila (I cut this to 6 oz and it was still VERY potent)
12 oz thawed limeade concentrate
lime wedges and salt to rim the glass

Chambeer
1 part Chambord
3 parts beer

Shandy (or Radler)
1 part beer
1 part sparkling lemonade (I also have sparkling berry lemonade as an alternative)

Pineapple Martini
1 oz pineapple juice
1.5 oz vodka
.5 oz Chambord

I know it’s been a ridiculous amount of years, but this video still gets me. It was supposed to be all hardcore and alternative - it kind of was in a very small way, but not really. Anyway. I still love it.

Cheers, interwebs!

That’s right. That’s how I roll. I may be old(er), but I still know how to have a good time.  Last night we had tickets (2nd row behind the pit) and all access backstage passes to the Death Cab For Cutie and Rogue Wave shows.  But you know, there are some clues that things have changed. Like for instance, we sat the entire time. And can I tell you how grateful my back was for those wonderful seats?  Also, when you’re hanging out on the band bus after a show having a serious discussion about mineral rights and drilling for oil instead of trying to be all flirty and cool, you know you’re not a young pup anymore.  Anyway, it was an outstanding night all around and I must insist that you check out Rogue Wave who were superb.  And just a really nice group of guys, too. Which is rare with musicians, who often take douchebaggery to an entirely new level.

Rogue Wave:

Death Cab For Cutie

That phrase, “teenage eagle”, made me laugh so hard last night that I was convulsing and crying uncontrollably. Not sad crying, but that kind of “oh my god if I don’t stop laughing my spleen may come shooting out of my nose and I live alone so who will rescue me - that’s not a good way to go” kind of crying. I’d finally get control of myself and dry my eyes when I’d look over at Ella who had wisely decided to move to the other side of my bed - and the look on her face would send me into fits of laughter all over again. I know this sounds crazy, but I swear she makes human-like gestures. She wasn’t facing me, but she was sort of slightly looking over her shoulder at me with a sideways glance, like she might suddenly say through clenched teeth, “are you DONE yet, with the laughing and the carrying on? GOD you are ridiculous sometimes.”

Anyway, I read ”teenage eagle” in the new David Sedaris book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames.  I was reading Eat, Pray, Love, but honestly, I was so annoyed with it and I had to put it down about halfway through.  I think a more appropriate title might be Eat, Pray, SHUT THE HELL UP. Oh my god, self-aggrandizing much? This woman makes me want to punch myself in the head with her whole “finding myself” schtick. I mean, I get it, the importance of finding yourself - but seriously, we can’t ALL afford to take a year off work and flit around the globe playing in the process. And at a certain point I just lost all sympathy (or empathy) for her. I’m already so self-involved and ”screw the world” as it is, I don’t need to read something like this to push me further down that hole, you know?

So I turned to Sedaris, as I always do. Because he’s one of the few writers in this world who can make me forget about my own life and just laugh. And I mean, really laugh. I love the way he writes, I love the way he tells a story, I don’t even care if half the stuff in his stories happened in real life or not, the point is he makes me believe that they did. And that makes any story 10x more fascinating, at least to me. If you really want to treat yourself, get a cd or MP3 of him reading one of his stories. Unless you are a robot, you will laugh. His delivery is just pitch perfect.

Here’s the passage that had me rolling:

I was at the grocery store with my sister Lisa and I noticed her pushing the cart with her forearms.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said, “you don’t ever want to touch the handle of a grocery cart with your bare hands. These things are crawling with germs.”

Is it just Americans, or does everyone think this way? In Paris once, I went to my neighborhood supermarket and saw a man shopping with his cockatiel, which was the size of a teenage eagle and stood perched on the handle of his cart.

I don’t know, the image of a pimply-faced teenage eagle, it kills me. Like, maybe he’s trying to fly to the next forest over and his Eagle Dad is all, “not while you’re living in MY nest, you won’t!” Ok, in retrospect, it’s not that funny. But I guess I needed to laugh and this just hit the spot. Either way, I can’t wait to finish this book. I’m about 100 pages in after my first night of reading - it took me weeks to get that far with Eat, Pray, Love, so this is a good sign.