Not to be confused with the Marvin Gaye song of a similar but slightly different title, I am obsessed with the Amos Lee tune (particularly the live version) “What’s Been Going On.” I can do a decent job with the guitar, but I can’t sing that low to save my soul. Which is fine in general, seeing as I’m a woman, but a bummer in that I really love the hell out of that tune. Oh well. Download’s Amos’ version. It’s worth the $.99.

Writing. What else would I be doing?

Anyway, I’m just sitting here watching Old School and drinking some horribly sweet, overly dyed apple soda (Just a small bottle. I couldn’t help myself. I had to know…) and thinking about anarchy.

Not really.

I just threw that last part in to see if you were paying attention.

So anyway, as is often the case with me when I get myself into remote locales with very little human contact and even less English, I have been wallowing in my own habits and taking an excessive amount of self-portraits. Luckily, my habits tend to be pretty healthy and self-driven and I’m rather photogenic, but then again maybe I’ve already been alone too long to judge?

Me in front of tonight's sunset

So here’s a random smattering of stuff in my life circa 9:48pm Mountain Time:

My back hurts

I’ve been brushing my teeth with tap water since I got here on Thursday. I suppose I just like to tempt fate. Or prove that I have a superior immune system. Or lose five pounds the painful way. Time will tell…

I’m already sick of corn tortillas.

Random horses.

I was sitting out front today and four horses just came randomly sauntering by.

My only tie to the modern world is a super flakey dial up 3G connection that occasionally makes the touch pad on my MacBook freeze up and stop working and which delays incoming emails as much as two days and isn’t even powerful enough to run a YouTube clip. I am completely cut off. With 25 days to go. But I’m still sane. Mostly.

I’ve written five chapters of the new book. It’s going pretty smoothly, which either means it’s inspired gold or total drivel. Time will tell here as well…

Tonight's sunset all by itself.

I don’t like the American landlord and his Mexican wife is really unfriendly. I could bitch about this at length, but a) who wants to hear me bitch and b) he knows about this blog, and I hate to be a jerk. Sufficed to say, he went to Stanford 25 years ago, and works it into EVERY SINGLE CONVERSATION. Whateves, dude. It’s ancient history now.

There’s a mosquito on my thigh.

I tried to take a bath last night, and got about two inches of hottish water into the giant tub before it started to come out of the spigot cold. So basically it was like splashing in a hot puddle. Not so much…

Me in front of the only walls in this joint that aren't pink.

Special K is different down here than it is at home. It’s somehow kind of corn flakey or something. It’s not bad. Just different.

Topes are those giant, unexpected bumps in the road and totopos are what they call tortilla chips.

The ocean is literally 50 yards away (over a sand dune covered with some seriously prickly stuff), and I can hear it roaring all the time, which is super awesome.

It’s been cloudy and raining all weekend and barely 10 degrees warmer than back home…but tomorrow all that changes when the sun comes back out! (The sun had better come out tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there’d damn well better be sun…)

I’m driving around in a 2000 Nissan Frontier with plates from South Dakota and expired tags. I’m basically begging to get pulled over. See “not so keen on the landlord” above.

The beach here in Todos Santos by day

I am definitely in the early stages of Carpal Tunnel or some other forearm overuse problem, which totally sucks. I actually woke up in the middle of the night last night my right arm hurt so much. This happened when I was writing my graduate thesis a few years ago. And when I was finishing the first book. Basically, it’s like an overuse injury I’m still using. Ow.

I bought some bagels at the corner store and despite the fact that they were frozen, every last goddamned one of them was molding, and I just threw them away rather than drive them back and fight about it, because I don’t know enough Spanish to explain that “These bagels are molding, and I don’t want a replacement because I am now afraid of your food. Please just give me back my 550 pesos, thank you very much.”

Getting all artsy.

Will Ferrell just said my favorite line of the movie, “I think I see Blue. He looks glorious!”

As mentioned above, there are 25 more days to my literary experiment.

And there ain’t much going on but me, my daily workouts, my writing, and trips to buy overpriced spoiled foodstuffs.

Happily, I have yet to go totally Ernest Hemingway, but I am pretty isolated, so I guess we’ll see what happens. I am half-Irish, you know.

Da da da da da da dum dum

Da da da da da da dum

Tequila!

then I’m somewhere in my early seventies. Or whatever age it is that you are officially way too old for amusement parks.

I spent the day today at HersheyPark for the first time in at least fifteen and perhaps even twenty years. 

Once upon a time, my dad, brother, and I had season passes (which my dad still has and even produced yesterday. Sadly for you, it was during my awkward protracted Jody Foster ugly duckling adolescence period, so I will not be posting it for you here). Anyway, back in the day we went regularly, and even once famously opened and closed the joint (10am-10pm).

Thus, I wanted to go there today.

I was excited to relive the glory.

Even though the weather was complete and total crap, I was pysched.

Bundled up in my warmest available clothes (I hadn’t really packed for rain and 50-something weather), we started with a well-known fixture of the HersheyPark of my youth, The Comet. It’s a traditional rollercoaster with a giant drop and several smaller drops and a whole lot of sharp turns, and as we slowly cranked up to the top, the familiar anticipation kicked in.

And the first drop was exhilarating.

And by about the second sharp turn and drop number three, I realized I was no longer cut out for this kind of thing. I was a little nauseated, and I’m pretty sure I had felt my brain whack up against the wall of my skull at least twice.

This was a bummer realization – too old for the coaster – but the pounding in my head was hard to ignore.

Then I started to muse about how if I ever did have a kid, I’d be one of the killjoy moms who stood at the entrance of the Sooper Dooper Looper and said, “That’s okay, honey. You go ahead and have a good time. I’ll wait for you here.”

And, if I barfed after riding on the baby water flume with the twelve foot drop, I’d be my own mom.

Anyway, next it was the bumper cars where a fourteen year old boy with a gleam in his eye gave me whiplash. Twice.

I honestly heard something crack during the second impact, and I wished they’d handed me a neck brace at the door. When you find yourself WISHING for a large foam rubber neck brace, you know you’re at least 72 years old on the inside.

Thus, you can understand my elderly apprehension at the sight of the Pirate Ship. Basically, I had an immediate and terrifying flashback to my harrowing experience on the catamaran in Hawaii. In fact, after watching it for a minute in line, I announced that I would be watching from the ground (see: Killjoy Mom, above). 

Did I mention there was a middle schooler convention going on? Oh yes, and oh joy.

Hundreds if not thousands of 14-year old girls and boys. SHRIEKING girls and boys. SHRIEKING IN MY EAR when I caved and went on the Pirate Ship. So what the motion of the ocean didn’t do to my head, the screaming children did.

To quote my dad, “Teenagers are so annoying.”

Amen.

Now in my dad’s defense, he hung in like a trooper and probably would have gone on some of the more nauseating (looking) attractions that my cousin and I eschewed. Moreover, it’s important to note that during the famous 12-hour occasion, he was older than I am now. In other words, I am a lot lamer than my dad. Or, if you prefer, my dad is a lot less lame than me.

Case in point: I feel a little bit whipped, like I suffered a blunt force trauma, got into a car accident, and spent some time on a Pirate Ship.

The upside? 

This may finally send me to bed at an hour conducive to converting me to something like east coast time.

Okay, sorry about that. Between the crazy pregnancy stories and the planetarium flashbacks, I managed to overly postpone my plans to tell you about my time in Paris.

So, I got there Wednesday -a week ago - after a typically restless sleep on the train. It’s mostly the rocking and rolling and related jostling, but it’s partly the subpar bunk-style Murphy beds.

Mister Corn. My new best friend.

And possibly they’re pumping poison gas into the air during the wee hours.

I have no actual proof.

But I do have suspicous anecdotal information.

Here’s the story:  As you may or may not remember, back in August on the train from Lisbon to Madrid, I accidentally slept with my ‘Day and Night’ contacts in. Supposedly you can wear these contacts for a month straight without issue, but my eyes will have none of that.

Anyway, I woke up in the middle of the night that night and my eyes burned like sulfuric acid, and I took the contacts out and didn’t put them back in for three weeks…just to be safe. And then when I did put them in, all hell broke loose, and I actually thought I may have scratched the cornea or something, but happily it all worked out in the end.

With the Louvre behind me.

ANYWAY, my point here is that I woke up in the middle of the night on the train from Barcelona to Paris last week, and I didn’t have my contacts in this time, but my eyes were burning something fierce, and it was exactly like I remembered it…without the contacts and the corneal scarring.

Suspicious.

Otherwise, Paris was lovely. I like to just walk the streets and take it all in. Except when there are monsoon-like torrential rains, which there were, so that’s too bad.

As always, I struggled with the language. I took four years of French in high school and some overachieving part of my brain believes that I should still remember all that stuff, but the bulk of my gray matter will not cooperate with this aspiration. 

One night I had a dream that I remembered everything I’d ever learned and spoke with a spot-on accent, and when I woke up I was super disappointed to to realize it wasn’t actually real.

Did I mention it rained?

By and large we could get by, and what I do remember was enough. More accurately, it had to be enough, so I made it work, but I find it very frustrating to be unable to effectively communicate. The major hardship came in with the handwritten menus  scrawled in white on black chalkboards at pretty much every brasserie in town.

This is charming in theory, but in reality it’s like taking an eye exam and a foreign language test at the same time. Minus a few key items (pommes frites, names of known pastas like penne or linguine, and escargots), what was delivered to me was often not exactly what I was expecting.

Sometimes it was completely left field of what I was expecting in a “oh. So THAT’s what ballotine or rissole or soissons means…”

Oh well.

A brief but glorious parting of the clouds at Sacre Coeur.

To ease the foreign-ness and take a break from the rain, we went and saw Angels and Devils in its unaltered form. The movie itself was all right – not great, not terrible. Tom Hanks is looking good. He’s seen doing laps in the Harvard swimming pool early in the morning, and he looked so fit I would’ve bet money that wasn’t him. Actually, now that I type those words, maybe it wasn’t him? Maybe it was a much more buff body double? Who would ever know? Except me and my eagle eye (once outfitted with corrective lenses, of course).

Anyway, the movie was mostly a welcome dose of American English, but specific to the situation, everything said in Italian (which was a fifteen minute chunk of talking, all told) was translated into French, so I found it something of a double whammy for my saturated brain (which still furiously tried to translate despite the futility of the effort.)

Me at Sacre Coeur.

Otherwise, I saw through the plot almost immediately. I’m a bad person to go to the movies with. Within the first twenty minutes I identified the ‘real’ bad guy, and  announced my theory. Due to the filmmakers need for an onslaught of unfathomable and unbelievable twists and turns, for a long time going there, it looked like I was wrong, but in the end I was oh so right.  As always.

So there you have it: food, movies, and rain. The rains in Spain may fall mainly on the plains, but the rains in France dump all over Paris. And then some.

The first day, while walking back to the apartment from the Eiffel tower we got caught in a torrential downpour. It was the kind of rain so ferocious you’re confident it’s going to back off at any second. But it didn’t.

It just got worse and worse, and I seriously started to wonder if I might get struck by lightening channeled through my cheap H&M umbrella which would blow inside out at the first sign of the slightest breeze. But after a while, you realize you’re so wet that you’re committed, and you’re pressing on even if an ark comes floating down the road.

That’s how I found myself totally drenched up to my BUTT (seriously, my jeans soaked up so much water that even my underwear was wet) and neither the denim nor my shoes would dry out the entire time despite the fact that they were lying over a heater. In fact, I had had to pack them up wet.

Thank you, Paris, for making my brand new sneakers smell like mildew.

I’ll remember you fondly each time I catch a whiff.

I’m back! Back in the US, back home, and back in an electronically connected kind of way. At least for now.

Highlighting the smallness of the train compartment...and the greasiness of my forehead. (Seriously, what is up with my forehead? It's like the Exxon Valdez spill up there.)

Through the magic of pushing ‘F12′ and some other brief keystrokes and about an hour of white text running across a black screen, the computer somehow miraculously looks like it did last week.  I in no way trust that this a permanent situation, but while it is actually working, I’m willing to run with it.

That stated, below is a post I wrote for you on Wednesday morning in a cafe on the Left Bank. I’ll also add some pictures you missed out on due to the unexpected technical difficulties. Anticipate a few days of back posts, and we can talk again ‘real time’ on Wednesday or Thursday.

French Rip Van Winkle

Actually, thanks to the rocking and rolling train from Barcelona to Paris, this is not at all true. Rather, I slept crappy, and although I don’t remember my dreams very clearly, I can only imagine they involved being out on rough seas or on a nauseating ride at an amusement park.

Rather, this title refers to my (henceforth unnoticed) title gaffe the other day. My first instinct was to call it ‘Spanish Sleeping Sickness’ and maybe mention tsetse flies – and you know what they say about trusting your first instincts – but clearly I didn’t, and instead made a reference that I now realize makes no sense.

Day one in Paris, and already the weather is turning foul. Happily, I was having a good hair day.

I was lying there in my train bed last night, mentally reviewing the message Shelley left me that (in essence) ‘Rip Van Winkle is the one who slept forever, and Rumplestiltskin something about taking or killing the lady’s baby,” and maybe she mentioned this (most likely) or maybe I remembered (less likely) but didn’t he also have something to do with spinning golden thread? Or a loom that made golden thread?

 And isn’t there also a weird booze called Rumplemint? What is that? Is it minty? Does it have anything to do with Rumplestiltskin? Two days ago I would’ve suggested it would make you sleep, but now I know that’s wrong. Does it help you make gold? Or is that Goldschlager?

Meanwhile, I started thinking about how it would be nice – but also slow going – to be able to make golden thread. And how do you sell it? By the ounce, I guess, because probably it takes a lot to amount to any kind of weight. Or maybe not. I’ve never handled the thread that goes into making brocade, but the finished product is damn heavy. Perhaps gold thread would be really heavy too?

The Louvre.

Anyway, now it’s clarified: Rip Van Winkle slept a long time, and Rumplestiltskin has something to do with gold thread (maybe) and infanticide (maybe).

So, from there, I started to get confused: What is the story where the parents steal cabbages and vegetables from some lady’s yard? I think she’s a witch? Is that Rapunzel? Curse you, Into the Woods and your musical storyline of mixing together a dozen or more fairytales. Now I’m all confused, and I can’t keep anything straight or remember the details anymore.

Or maybe it’s not Into the Woods fault? Maybe it was all the years I spent touring with the Rolling Stones and the hardcore rock and roll lifestyle? Enough years of heavy drugs and nameless, faceless groupies will do that to a person.

Oh wait. That didn’t actually happen.

Hmmmm….

It takes a serious hike to get to the Eiffel Tower.

In other news, I am now in a very quaint Paris bistro eating a croissant and drinking café au lait and listening to Snoop Doggy Dogg and Eminem. Not a total ambience killer, but definitely an unexpected juxtaposition.

Earlier in the week, I could have sworn the forecast was sunny and low 60s/high 70s…but now it’s low 60’s and rain every day, which fits in with my impressions of Paris. I’ve never been here when it wasn’t raining. On the other hand, maybe I looked up Paris, Texas by accident?

So anyway, we’re killing time because it’s only 10:30am, and we can’t check into the studio apartment we rented until around noon. So there you have it. There’s probably other stuff I meant to tell you, but I can’t think of it right now, largely because I’m tired due to the aforementioned restless night and the drug-induced brain damage that didn’t happen, so it’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Or never. Either way.

Bernard Réquichot's 'Episode de la guerre des nerfs' at the Pompidou.

So I saw that the ‘best job in the world (caretaker of an Australian island for six months for the paltry pay of $150,000 AUS) winner was announced.

And it wasn’t me.

See, what did I tell you? Zany.

My submission video featured me sitting on my back porch, trying to get through a speech that barely fit into 60 seconds (I kind of had to speed talk it).

Plus, something (apparently) went wrong when I uploaded it, and their site was so overloaded that by the time I got my ‘submission rejected’ e-mail…the contest was closed.

But when God closes a window, he opens a door.

Something like that.

Right?

Right????

Meanwhile, there is no footage of me astride an ostrich. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever even seen an ostrich. Maybe at the zoo? Do they have ostriches at the zoo or are they not exotic enough?
Anyway and regardless:

1. Ostriches are clearly forgettable

2. Even if they are busy being overlooked at the zoo, I suspect the zookeepers aren’t too keen on visitors riding the wildlife.

3. Same goes for the giraffe, of which there are no photos of me kissing. There is one of me in the foreground and a giraffe in the background and the barrier imposed by fun-busters at the San Diego Zoo between us.

4. There once was a photo of me touching a real, live elephant in Thailand, but it was storming at the time and something went weird with the flash, and I look like a specter or a bad PhotoShop job.

5. If bestiality is what it takes to win the Best Job in the World, then I don’t want it.

(***sniff***)

So onto Plan B: The Amazing Race

I don’t know if they have this in syndication or a unique version in other countries, but The Amazing Race is a show that’s been on for a long @ss time. I’m not sure how long. Many years. It also holds the distinction of being the only reality show I would consider trying to get on (minus, of course, Bret Michael’s Mechanical Bull of Love Part IV or anything where I might end up the lucky mother of Flavor Flav’s fifteenth child.)

As for The Amazing Race, the premise is that you and a partner race around the world and perform varying tasks typically relevant to the country and culture in which you find yourself. It’s like an insane scavenger hunt with the added bonus that the winner (of something like 12 teams) wins a million dollars.

Yep.

That’s right.

One million dollars. (***insert Dr. Evil voice and crooked pinky***)

This could be us! Think about it.

Anyway, it seems to me that a little bit of a ‘hook’ is required to get onto the show. Right now, there’s a pair of friends who are former Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, a Chinese couple/brother and sister (despite my enthusiasm for being on the show, I don’t really watch it very regularly. Partly because I don’t know when it’s on. Regardless, I’ve never seen part of a couple episodes this season and didn’t quite grasp whether those two are related or involved…I suspect related. Anyway, they speak Chinese and a huge chunk of the show is taking place in China which is a MAJOR boon for them. Last episode I saw, they were in first place of three. As in the final three. The million is so close they can smell it.)

So back to the point, if anyone out there is up for trying to win a million dollars, I am looking for a partner. I figure ‘we don’t actually know each other; we met on my blog” might make good TV? Or if you’re a personal friend that has been lurking or otherwise failed to reveal your willingness to give up a month of your life racing around the globe with me, speak up! Provided we can drum up an exciting ‘made for TV’ story (former lesbian lovers turned straight? Brother and sister separated at birth and only recently reunited? Two formerly blind strangers who met while receiving retina transplants?) that’s 50% of the battle.

Otherwise, so that any of you fussy couch potatoes don’t go getting your hopes up, I anticipate you will provide the following skill set:

• Strength and intellect
• Brains and brawn
• Devastating good looks
• A calm disposition, particularly when dealing with a less-than-calm and possibly shrill and maybe even freaking out on you teammate
• Fluency in three to four languages that aren’t English (I’ve got us covered in English)
• Willingness to eat bugs, molds, slimes, and whatever other horribleness they serve up
• Enthusiasm in dealing with all the challenges involving extreme heights
• Ability to carry me – emotionally and physically – throughout said race
• Readiness to hold my hair back if I have to puke
• Eagerness to give a sizable portion of your luggage capacity to your teammate (What can I say? I like my shoes to match my outfit, particularly when appearing on national TV.)
• Provide unqualified, unflagging positive feedback and unlimited unconditional love
• Ability to deliver consistent and relentless Tony Robbins-esque pep talks and cheerleading sessions at the drop of a hat.

All joking aside, I think I’d be damn good at this. My own parent has suggested I was ‘born to win The Amazing Race.’ Seriously.

That stated, if you’d like to cash in on an easy half-mil, drop me an e-mail.

Midgets need not apply.

(Sorry. That was uncalled for. If you’re a super strong little person with a cast iron stomach, please apply. In fact, we’d probably have a better shot of getting on.)

What I meant to say was:

Lithuanians need not apply.

I know you’re a jerk. You know you’re a jerk. Let’s call it a day.