We chased the sun in a 757. We lost the race, and I watched the sun set over Minnesota from my window seat. I saw dozens of lakes, scars of an ancient glacier. A mist covered the deep green land, and I thought of Ireland. As the sun dipped further, the sky turned pink, and a rainbow appeared out the window. It circumvented the airplane, and brightened to where I could see each color distinctly. A second rainbow became visible inside the first.

Not since Hawaii had I seen rainbows so beautiful. This shouldn’t be missed, I thought, and I turned to the man sitting next to me. We hadn’t spoken during the entire flight. He had spent the majority of the trip flipping through various catalogues. “Look, there’s a rainbow,” I said. The middle-aged, overweight black man with captivating blue eyes, leaned over into the middle seat, which was occupied only by his magazines and my purse. He craned his neck until he could see the rainbow and gave a slight verbal acknowledgment before scooting back into his own seat.

The plane landed a few minutes later, and the glossy pages in the middle seat slipped onto the floor. I looked down onto the blue carpet. “NUDES!” A brunette with large bare breasts smiled up at us. The man scrambled to pick up the pages, and I turned back to the window. “I guess I'm not the only enjoying natural beauty,” I giggled to myself.

More vacation:
* Critters
* My Brother, My Hero

Blogs You're Probably Not Reading But Should Be

* The Opinion Chick
What I Like About It: She's raunchy, she's bold, she's hysterical. If you like Ari Goes Down, I think you'll like The Opinion Chick.
What You're Missing:

My Stomach Lining: RIP
Although I didn’t see any of their faces, being the loud, obnoxious girl that I am, I started cat-calling at the guys, telling them they should come to apt B17 (“B as in ‘Boy,’ 17 as in ‘not legal’ which we are aren’t”), not expecting them to hear me, or come. They did and shouted back that they’d be up in a half an hour. When they eventually did show up, I realized I should stop inviting boys to parties before seeing their faces. The ringleader had a snaggletooth that could probably do major damage to anything that came in its way. It was essentially a tooth blade and it was really quite unattractive. Interestingly enough, I’d met the guy before in a bar—he was sitting next to two lesbians who couldn’t decide whether they wanted to eat my and my friends’ pussies or beat the shit out of us after we all got into an altercation. According to snaggle rock, they probably “wanted to do a little of both.”

Thanks a Lot McGreevey
The smell should have been one clue to his lack-of-home status. I tried to ignore it though, because I was tired and was happy with my seat. He then leaned over and started reading my paper with me. Annoyed I looked at him and then went back to reading. Then he started talking to himself—mostly mumbling. However, when I hear him say, “kill” approximately three times, I looked at him and said “You ain’t killing me ma-fucka” and darted to the other side of the train (Ok, I didn’t say it out loud—but I DID say it in my head).

* chrisdiclerico.com
What I Like About It: He posts great web links and writes suspenseful, embarassing (at his own expense) stories. I've met him once, and heard a long and hysterical story about his balls. I've been intrigued ever since.
What You're Missing:

One time I did steroids and took my clothes off and prematurely ejaculated
Then all hell broke loose. To this day, nobody knows exactly who’s shirt was ripped off first, but it wasn’t long before we all stood in rags. Shirts were torn, yes torn, from our bodies. T-shirts were pulled apart like wishbones on a fucked up nude Thanksgiving. Women tugged at our pants. Most of us kept them on, at least for a while. ... We danced and grinded and climbed up on tables. We forget all about the drinks for a while, and served ourselves. We got smacked, and we smacked back. We grinded, and gyrated, we poured shots down our stomachs, and we made out. Yes, we made out with everybody. Tongue kissing was sport, and we were winning.

Too Shy
We hurried over to his house and actually turned on the Mets game, but we stared impatiently at the clock on the wall over the TV, counting backwards until midnight. By 11:45, the excitement level was intense. Jimmy, 9 years old, turns to me and says,
“My penis is hard and sticking out like a broomstick.” He literally grabbed a broomstick from behind the door to his back yard and put it between his legs like he was a witch riding it. He made a jerking-off motion around the stick. I had no idea what that motion was. I think it was also the first time I heard the word penis.
“Mine too,” I replied.
“Why is it doing that?”
“I think it has to do with sex,” I tried to exert some seniority. (I was 10.)
“I heard you make babies by sticking a peanut in the mother’s butt.” Jimmy told.
“I don’t know how you make babies. I am pretty sure you don't use peanuts.”

* Enhanced Shenanigans
What I Like About It: Deadcutter's sense of humor reminds me of how silly my college friends and I can get. Just being ridiculous and running with it.
What You're Missing:

I ain't often right, but I've never been wrong.
Anyway, I found my stun gun in one of the boxes that I was taking into the attic and decided that I would give Amy a few hundred thousand volt shock to the ass to get her going. So I'm sitting in my chair reading and watching TV, waiting for the perfect moment. She finally walks by close enough for me to reach her, and I lean over and give her a little shock to the left side of her ass. I tell her, "Good hustle." She screams, yells a few choice words at me and keeps walking to the back of the house. I think to myself that that went very well. ... About ten minutes later, Amy is walking by with some laundry when someone punches me in the side of the neck. I'm pretty sure that Andre the Giant ran in through the front door, picked me up out of that chair, then body slammed me on the carpet over and over again. I vaguely recall waking up on my side in the fetal position, nipples on fire, testicles nowhere to be found, soaking wet, with my left arm tucked under my body in the oddest position. Apparently, Amy didn't read the instructions for the gun and learn that you weren't suppose to hold the damned thing on someone for longer than three seconds. Either that, or she did read them, and decided a ten second blast would be a better learning experience for me.

Sister of Grendel
I think that my wife also sprung from the loins of Cain. I had a dream that I woke up in the middle of the night and Amy was leaning over me with a knife pointed at my heart. I thought it was a dream until this morning when I found a knife stuck under the mattress on her side of the bed. I was trying to be nice and make up the bed; instead I discovered that my wife toys with killing me in the middle of the night. This would explain the bruises that I have woken up with recently – especially the black eye. She told me that I rolled of the bed and hit the nightstand, but I wasn’t too sure about that.

And if you are reading these, bless your heart. Carry on.

I stuffed some cash and my ID in my denim skirt pocket and slipped on my flip flops. There’s still sand in them from my vacation.

Flip, flop, flip flop, down four flights of stairs into the pink and green and mirrored lobby.

Flip flop, flip flop, across the grassy median of the nearest avenue.

Flip flop, flip flop, past the postage stamp-sized yards, garden flowers glowing in cloud-diffused moonlight.

Flip flop, flip flop, past the bingo hall and Gladiator Gym. (Maybe that’s where the neighborhood’s gay population works out. Tee hee.)

Flip flop, flip flop, into the grocery. I haven’t been to this store before. The subway is in the other direction and so that route is tread more often. This is closer, and I don’t know why I don’t come this way more often.

“Marlboro Lights, please,” I tell the guy behind the counter. I put my ID on the counter. He picks it up and looks at me. Looks at the ID, looks at me. Holds it up even with my face. Looks at the ID, looks at me. He calls over the guy that’s messing with the lottery machine. “Yeah yeah,” he says. The first guy, who is of indeterminate nationality, sells me the cigarettes. “It doesn’t look like you,” he tells me.

What?! This is the best ID picture I've ever had! Much better than the frizz perm of my college ID. Much better than the grainy picture ID from the pool. This one is clear, I'm smiling, and most importantly, looks like me!

“Seriously? It doesn’t look like me?”

“No, not really.”

I turn to the guy who is behind me and line and hold up my ID next to my cheek. “Does this look like me?”

The guy looks at the ID, looks at me. Looks at the ID, looks at me. “A little.”

“A little?! What?!”

I'm reminded of the first tagline I had for this blog: Pictures of me don't look like me. Harumph.

Flip flop, flip flop, huff puff, huff puff.

My cousin has run away from home. His younger sister saw him yesterday afternoon, and his parents waited up until 1am, hoping he would come home. He didn’t. They called the police. His car—which he just got a few months ago—was found at a nearby Park & Ride. Presumably he took a bus somewhere. He left home his ATM card and didn’t take any bankbooks. He didn’t take any clothes. They think he might have had about $300. My uncle, the missing cousin’s grandfather, told my mother that they received an email from him today saying he’s alright. The whole family is a wreck. I hope he comes home safe and sound. Soon.

* UPDATE (08.19.04, 08:57): My mother got an email, stamped 4:30am, that said, "They are bringing him home this morning. The police did a great job of finding him. Don't stop praying until we start to unravel this and figure out the whys."

Thanks for all your good thoughts!

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Read: Bedbug Diary: Part VI»

Back when I was a wee teen, I was shaving my legs in the shower and dropped the razor into the bottom of the basin. Bending over to reach it, my foot, propped on the ledge of the tub, slipped. I stepped on the face-up razor. The water running beneath my foot turned red. “Help!” I shouted. Leaving the shower on, I hobbled out of the tub and wrapped a towel around myself.

My brother was the only one home. He came to the bathroom door and said, from the other side, “Are you OK?” “No,” I whined, nursing my bleeding foot. I told him to come in. We sat on the white tile floor, and I showed him my toe, a nice bit of which had been cleanly sliced off. “What do I do?” My brother, an Eagle Scout with a first aid badge, showed me how to put pressure on it to stop the bleeding.

My brother. He’s a year and a half younger than me, and was just one grade behind me in school. It’s just the two of us, my brother and I. We grew up close, doing everything together. Though we bickered over Legos, the remote control, and space on the family room couch, we got along well. I dare say, we were each other’s best friend.

One sunny summer day, again in my teenage years, I was cutting our large sloped lawn with the family tractor mower. My brother and I shared this chore. One week he’d mow and I’d trim, the next we’d switch. It was my turn to mow. While horizontally crossing a steeper part of the grass, the tractor stalled. It would do this sometimes on the steep parts. To restart it, though, it had to be on flat ground. I shifted the tractor to neutral and hopped off to push it down the hill. My left leg made singeing contact with the hot exhaust pipe. “Help!” I shouted. I sat down on the grass and looked at the swollen and torn blister on my thigh.

My brother heard me and came out the front door. He found me lying on the ground, crying with pain. “What do I do?” He said it was probably a second-degree burn, possibly third. We put a cold wet cloth on it and then wrapped it in a clean bandage. My brother finished mowing the lawn.

And just last week, on our family vacation, we were in the final stretch of our kayak tour through a saltwater marsh. I fell behind the small group as we approached the boat landing. For some reason, I couldn’t seem to paddle in a straight line, and had to continuously correct my swerving kayak. (I later realized that I must have been rowing with my paddle upside down; maybe I flipped it when we stopped to play with the mud snails from the bottom of the marsh.) My brother, the strapping sinewy young man that he’s grown up to be, noticed I was behind and paddled back to see what was up. As he floated near, I dunked my paddle deep to rudder to the left. I did it too hard, my kayak began to tip sharply and water rushed into my lap. Panicking, I let go of the paddle. I was adrift. “Help,” I whimpered. He maneuvered to pick up my floating paddle, and rowed to hand it over to me, as I slumped pathetically in my useless kayak.

“Thanks,” I said. “You’re my hero.” He just laughed and we paddled on to land our kayaks.

* More on my brother: I Remembered More

The Hungry Heron

I was sharing a golf cart with my mom, and I was driving. I love driving a golf cart. We were motoring from the clubhouse to the first tee. We weren't in a rush, since there was a party in front of us that hadn't started off yet, so we took our time. We paused by a pond where we saw a black and white heron standing in the water up to his knees. He had a fish in his mouth, about five times the size of his head. I parked the cart and we waited to see him swallow it, to watch his neck expand to choke down the fish-shape. He never did. He just stood there, a single yellow eye trained on us gaping vouyers. We moved on, and Mom said, "Maybe he just likes to eat in private."

The Baby Dolphin

One early morning on the beach, I was reading a book and my brother and his girlfriend were chatting beside me. They broke my concentration when they stood up to look out at the ocean, sparkling with early light. A group of dolphins were swimming by out in the low tide, probably a dozen of them over a few minutes. A beautiful sight, two or three dorsal fins gliding out of the water at a time.

Later that same day, I was on a kayaking tour with my dad and brother. We came upon a lot of dolphins on the tour, but the view was much closer up than the ones we'd seen that morning. The tour guide noticed that there was a mother swimming with her baby, a pair she'd been seeing often this season. Once, the baby dolphin did an adorable little leap, his belly even coming out of the water, about 15 feet in front of my kayak.

The Open-Mouthed Alligator

I was about to tee off on the 7th hole, a wet par 3 that I was fairly certain I wouldn't be able to cross with any kind of grace. I was having a terrible game. I took a few practice swings, with Mom and Dad looking on. I paused to make my real shot and Mom whispered, "C! Look!" I lifted my eyes off the ball. About 30 yards in front of me was a six-foot alligator at the water's edge. He was frozen in place, his mouth wide open, baring all his razor teeth. My dad scoffed at my mother. "Great timing," he said. "You could have waited until after she shot." I did hit a terrible tee shot that plopped in the water with a splash. When I reached my fingers into the pond to retrieve it, I was hoping that gator wouldn't run over and snap my little digits right off. I could have used my dad's ball retriever to get the white dimpled devil, but you know, I like a little danger every once in a while.

* And for those following the saga, the exterminator is coming tomorrow for treatment #3.

The elusive black and white Diesel knock-offs! Hooray!

* All of these pictures are totally stolen [1] [2]

Tired of reading about bedbugs? I’m tired of writing about them. Here’s some things that have brought me joy in the midst of this insanity.

* I put this image as the background of my work computer. It’s tiled across my screen about twenty times. Since I’m not used to it being there yet, it makes me giggle every time I minimize my windows and see it. Will told me that a rival fantasy football team of his was called The Nerfherders, which kicked off a whole Star Wars discussion. I was in the market for a new background for my computer, and told him that if he found a picture of Han & Leia in an embrace, I’d put it up. Lo and behold. I’ll submit to my Inner Nerd and admit this picture makes me all tingly. So inspired, I watched the entire trilogy over the weekend.

* While chatting in what have become nightly bitchfests and offers of comfort, Emma and I discovered a mutual love for Sour Patch Kids. She was eating them; I was sucking on a Sour Patch popsicle, with an open bag of Kids right next to me.

* I caught up with some friends on the phone. They just got back from a month spent in Spain. It was good to hear their voices again.

* I watched Def Poetry and yet again recognized poets that I have met before. (Not that they'd remember me, but I remember them.) My friend Cristin hosts a poetry slam here in New York, and I had the pleasure of meeting several of Def’s featured poets before they were HBO hits.

* I caught Maria Full of Grace at the theater just down the street from my apartment. Not until the title character arrived here did I realize that much of the movie was filmed right here in my own neighborhood of Jackson Heights. I could hear little happy mumbles throughout the audience as we all saw Roosevelt Ave under the shadow of the 7 train grace the screen. I was extra glad I was catching the flick here in my ‘hood.

* I played 20 Questions with Brady. She was logged onto the Internet on her wireless laptop, live from a bar in SoHo. Over Instant Messenger, she asked me who was sitting across from her. I quickly figured out it was a male celebrity, and spent the next 20 minutes tossing out names and asking for hints. I was tickled to correctly guess she was gazing at a bearded Ewan McGregor. I almost leapt out of my chair and headed to the bar to catch a glimpse myself!

* I’m leaving for a sunny, activity-filled vacay with the fam in just {counting …} 36 hours!

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Read: Bedbug Diary: Part V»

* Experimental

* I just awoke from a dream-that-wouldn't-end about Paris Hilton and Nick Carter, with some Christina Aguilera thrown in. *shudder*

Note to self: Must stop reading Defamer before bedtime.