I Do, and You Do, and They Do

Why is it that things hum along quietly for years, and then suddenly a dozen of your closest friends get married at once? Does everyone go out drinking and decide it’s high time they acquired flatware with matching service pieces?

The last two months have been a blur of inflatable penises (Penni? Penne?), polite small talk with cousins from Memphis, and champagne hangovers. Between all the celebrating and our regular-old lives, we haven’t had much time for things like “preparing balanced meals” and “maintaining our household in a manner the Health Department would find acceptable.”

In June, we flew to L.A. for a wedding, traveled to Amsterdam for business, and I flew to Las Vegas for a bachelorette. We returned home to an elopement a few hours up the coast, and just helped host a wedding shower last weekend. By the end of July we’ll have attended another wedding, had four different sets of house guests, and flown to Colorado for Bryan’s twenty-year high school reunion. Bryan recently pointed out that the only thing we’ve given up since Hank was born is sleep. Sleep and basic hygiene.

This may be unsustainable. I have trouble remembering whether I’ve eaten in the last few hours, and I’ve begun to drool when there’s a lull in conversation. After July, the next time I lose sleep over love, I’d better be getting laid.

3.785 Litres

Our first day in Amsterdam, I approach the counter to order my coffee:

-May I have a latte?
-Yes!
-This may be a silly question, but do you have lowfat milk?
-What do you mean? For your coffee?
– Yes. I usually order my lattes with lowfat milk, but I don’t think they have that here.
-No, we don’t have that.
-OK, no problem.
-Why do you want that? You don’t want foam?
-No. We do that because the lattes in the states are the size of a gallon of milk, and I don’t want to get fat.
-Ah. How much is a gallon?

Karaoke Madness

Early Sunday afternoon, we stop by one of our favorite antique co-ops. This time, something is gravely different.

It seems, in order to promote their new karaoke venture at the town pub, two of the owners have set up an enormous karaoke machine amongst the porcelain creamers and table runners.

We halt just inside the front door to stare as they whoop their way through Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.” Then we realize that we are the only customers, and that eye contact is a serious mistake. We become absorbed in the rusty egg beaters and depression-glass juicers, but it’s too late.

“Hello!” the woman calls out. “Do you Karaoke?”
We are unsure of how to respond. We look at each other uneasily.
“Do you want to sing ‘Respect’?” she asks me.
“Me?” I say. “Oh no. No thank you.”
“Oh, why not!”
“Wellâ€¦ well, I suppose it’s because I’m not drunk.”
“Ahhh. Is that what it takes?”
“Yes.” I say. “That, and relative darkness.”
“Maybe a different song?”
“Maybe free coffee and a jug of Baileys would help your cause.”
“What about ‘I Got You Babe?” she asks. “You could sing it together.”
“No,” I say. “No thank you.”
“Can I get your email for our mailing list?” she asks.
We wander into the next room.

As she belts “These Boots are Made for Walkin’,” I buy a very nice illustration of a quail’s egg, and a lovely beveled mirror.

Good Luck, Kid

Before we left for Europe, we took tests that told us we weren’t pregnant. We returned home and realized those tests were in error. I quickly calculated that I’d ruined the baby in the following ways:

Very hot outdoor hot baths
Copious wine
Raw sausages
Three cappuccinos (a day)
Riding bikes fast over cobblestone streets
Second-hand smoke so thick it was like breathing water (smoked water)
Snuggling with at least fifteen bar and cafe cats
Cussing
Impure thoughts

The Baby’s First Handgun is on our registry, so you too can do your part.

It’s a Beautiful Town

We had a great time in New York, mostly because of all our amazing friends there, but the first few days were rough:

I decide to take an afternoon nap while Bryan explores New York. I return to our room, strip down to my skivvies, and climb in bed. Something is amiss. Are the sheets still damp from the wash? I sweep my hands outward to test my theory when I feel something wet soaking through the back of my underwear. I leap up in a panic and see a giant wet spot on the bed just before I tear my underwear off and run to the shower. There I scrub until my skin is gone.

A few hours later, we are in a cab. I am admiring the city lights when I smell vomit. “Bryan,” I say. “I smell vomit.” He sniffs. “I don’t,” he says. I sniff again. “Yeah, it’s pretty distinct. Maybe it’s on my side,” I say. This is when I realize that the vomit is on my seatbelt. The one I’m wearing.

The next morning we are walking along Central Park near the hansome cabs. There are dozens of horses, and all of them are shitting and pissing in the street or in canvas collection tarps attached to their haunches. From the smell, I’d say they’ve been doing this for years, perhaps centuries. The stench of asphalt-baked piss, ammonia, and rotting horse dung is so overpowering that I actually begin to gag in the street. I’m stumbling forward, trying to outpace the stench while doubled over, heaving.

Then we went for lunch.

Robbing You Kind

While we were away, someone stole the radio out of our car. The thief gingerly picked the door lock with a bobby pin, nudged out the radio, unplugged it (leaving no damage to the dash), and then re-locked the doors before leaving.

You know you’ve been in the city too long when you feel grateful to the person who robbed you.

Beauty is My Weapon

The Weapons of Terror

Originally uploaded by MaggieMason.

We arrived at the airport ready to fly into New York, and there was a news crew in the lobby. This makes me nervous, I said. Bryan said news crews always broadcast from the airport. Really, I said. Sure, he said, they’re always here. Why, I asked. Because it’s a place where they can always broadcast live if they want to. I raised a single eyebrow at him. His look suggested he learned this information from an authoritative guide entitled Preferred Habitats of Local News Teams. In actuality a bunch of guys had just been arrested in London for plotting to blow up planes. Of course, we didn’t discover this until we were in the security line.

In the best of circumstances, airport security teams see me through a different lens. To them, I appear to have sharp objects taped in concealed places, and a mouth ringed with the gunpowder I’ve been eating for breakfast. Accordingly, they searched my bag and confiscated everything in it. Well, almost everything.

They took my Revlon Lipglide in Sparkling Sangria, they ignored my metal nail file. They confiscated my Origins Pinch Your Cheeks tint, but bypassed the box of matches. They pulled my Aveeno Sunblock Spray, but left my razor-sharp cuticle scissors.

With each item they took, my mental calculator added another $20-$30 to my cumulative agony. By the time they were finished, they’d yoinked about $150 worth of cosmetics. I was surprised to find that I actually wanted to cry in frustration.

I told the security guard that he was nearly doubling the cost of my ticket, and asked if there was some way to ship this stuff. You can, he said, but it’s $9 an item. Bryan finally just went back to the front counter and checked my box of toiletries. Of course, when we got to the gate, they made us check our bags anyway.

The upside is, our plane totally did not blow up en route to New York. So it was a good trip.

Margaret Mason, Authoress

Hey everybody, I just wrote a book! It’s called:

No One Cares What You Had For Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog

Are you astounded, my friends? I am totally a book writer. When people ask what I do, I can be all, “Oh, me? I’m a writer,” and then take a sip of my sophisticated cocktail. Then I can squeal and jump up and down, and maybe do a little touchdown-type dance of some sort.

Anyway, as you may have discerned from the title, my book is a writing prompt book for bloggers. It contains 100 ideas that will help you post. Ideas that will make you feel like feeding the Web with your sugary wit until it grows ponderous and bloated.

If you don’t have a blog, I respectfully request that you start one immediately. If you decide against that course of action, consider purchasing thirty or forty copies of the book for your friends who do blog. They will totally love it.

No One Cares What You Had For Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog is out in August, but you can pre-order your copies here and I will sign them for you. I will sign them “EEEeeee! Love, Maggie”

Scary, Part II

A brief conversation with my new nieces, one of whom seems to be a better judge of character than I am.

Lauren (age 7): We didn’t like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Me: Why?
Sophia: It was scary.
Me: How was it scary?
Sophia: I don’t know, it had real people.
Me: That makes it scary?
Lauren: Well, it had real people, and that’s scarier than cartoons, but it’s also like, when they were talking? They sounded mean, but the words they were saying were nice. So that was too scary.

Insight fron an 8 Year Old

My niece and nephew come to visit for a weekend, and we spend a day on the town.

Me: Hey, do you want to go into that comic book store across the street?
Trevor: Comic book stores are kind of scary.
Me: Really? Why?
Trevor: Because the people in there are weird.
Emma: Really weird.
Me: What do you mean?
Trevor: Like, did you ever see Napoleon Dynomite?
Me: Yeah.
Trevor: They’re all like that, except in real life.
Me: Really?
Trevor: Yeah. And they’re saying things like, ‘My rhombut defeats your algorph.’ It’s really weird.