curly and the amazing technicolor yawn

Do you know what's awesome? When a wave of nausea about as high and powerful as the one that kills Tea Leoni at the end of that otherwise forgettable movie about a cataclysmic comet or asteroid or some other crap like that (not to be confused with that other otherwise forgettable movie about a cataclysmic comet or asteroid or some other crap like that starring Bruce Willis) sweeps over you quickly and suddenly while at work. Oh yeah, good times.

I was clicking away on the computer today when out of nowhere I started to feel like ass warmed over. I had hot flashes and my gag reflex was working overtime. And making matters worse was the accompanying bout of I'm-about-to-puke panic I'm subject to every time I feel the need to chunder.

See, I don't know about the rest of y'all but I require privacy when things are going to violently shoot out of my orifices. As a result, I tend to work myself into a bit of a frenzy worrying if someone will dare enter the can while I'm in there depositing things in the toilet against my will. Anything other than pee that leaves my body during work hours is an unplanned and unwanted evacuation, believe you me. I can and will only vomit or take a dump under extreme duress.

Ridiculous shame issues and possible colon damage aside, it is also a desire to be considerate of others that contributes to this stage fright. When I yak, it's not a pretty sight. Or sound. I'm not quiet about it. I sound like a Marine with all my HOO-WAHS! Or do the Marines say HOO-RAH? Oh, who cares? My point is, I make lots of noise and if I'm going to suddenly have to talk to Ralph on the big white telephone and be sprawled out on the floor while whimpering and searching for the cool spot of tile, I'd prefer that my coworkers not be privy to this less-than-dignified display.

I gave my coworkers a polite explanation as to why I had to get the hell out of the office, sent a few IMs to my friends who would have been baffled/concerned by my sudden departure and got my ass in a cab as quickly as my jelly-like legs would take me.

Fortunately, my puke remained "on deck" while I was in the car. When I got home, I flung off my coat, opened up the bathroom door and let 'er ride. As a result of this fortuitous timing, I have a lot of favors to repay God because I did an awful lot of bargaining with him while I was in the taxi. I've pretty much signed over my entire income to charity, gave up cursing, took up macrame and swore off being a bitch in exchange for a puke-free ride with lots of green lights and no traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Fear not, dear readers, I had my fingers crossed during the renunciation of my bitchy ways. I'll fork over the cash and cut down on the cursing but I make no guarantees about being nicer. God's going to need a good lawyer to make that taxi-cab confession stick. Translation: My blog will remain consistently nasty and shrill. I was serious about the macrame thing though. Potholders and doilies for everyone!

Another loophole in my contract with God is that it wasn't the speediest of cab rides. He had me sweating it out at some points. For example, I could have really used some divine intervention during one particularly brutal traffic snarl in Times Square.

Admittedly, I didn't ask my driver to step on it nor did I inform him of my sickly state because if there's one thing cabbies fear more than, say, a passenger with a loaded gun, it's a passenger on the brink of a good barf. I know this because I and my touchy gag reflex have been shooed out of cabs by drivers who don't want to deal with the possible "present" I'd leave on the seat, floor and, on days when my aim ain't all that good, the window.

So, in the interest of securing and keeping a cab, my driver was not made aware of what evil was lurking in my belly. If anything, he must have thought I was having contractions because anytime a pukey feeling hit, I busted out some Lamaze breathing. Not that I've ever gone to Lamaze classes, mind you, but I have watched enough sitcoms to know the whole "Hee hee! Hoo hoo! Hee hee!" routine. Alas, I did not have the other staples of all sitcom pregnancy plots at my disposal -- boiling water and clean white sheets -- to complete the scene.

Question: Why did the sheets always need to be white? Clean, yes, I get that. But why did the color matter? Would the baby not come out if patterned bedding was waiting on the other end? Did the thread count matter? Hmm... This might be something I need to explore in the next installment of The Alan Alda Sensitivity Project.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to test the limits of my tummy with some tea and toast. Wish me luck.

i've got chills, they're multiplyin'

No seriously, I do. Yesterday a faint throb in my throat surfaced. Convinced it was just a case of parched throat, I drank plenty of fluids -- okay, beer -- to quench the small flames starting to lick at my tonsils. As the day progressed, my throat felt like I had eaten the bottle my Sam Adams Light was housed in.

I shuffled home and crumpled on my couch, in an achy, shivering heap. I reached for the afghan my mother crocheted me when I was nine and still trembled beneath its soft, cozy thickness. I dragged my sorry ass into bed only to be kept awake by my fluctuating body temperature and an overall dull pain marching around the perimeter of my body. One thought entered my mind: "Oh God, please don't let me puke."

I am the biggest baby when it comes to the vomiting. I whimper and feel all sorry for myself. Occasionally, I cry. Call me a baby but yo, having the entire contents of my stomach violently and quickly forced back out my mouth? I no likey. Fortunately, the puking never came. But I barely slept a wink last night and today I'm a clammy, feverish, nauseous mess.

I would like to say that this bout of the funk came courtesy of a wild Pride weekend. Alas, I had to miss the parade yesterday to attend a 40th birthday party for my brother-in-law. Saturday was a bust because my delicate, lazy ass couldn't abide the rain thereby preventing me from attending the Dyke March and its various after parties. Sadly, my Pride activities were rather limited this year. Although, there was a rather raucous game of Spin the Bottle played at a fabulous pre-Pride party I went to on Friday night. Wanna know how gay the party was? A Julia Sugarbaker (of Designing Women) monologue was performed. Flawlessly and with major 'tude. Need I say more?

But back to Spin the Bottle -- I was smooching people left and right. Seriously, I found myself in a rather lucky position favored by the bottle courtesy of a sloping wood floor. Good times. Good times. My lips were, how you say, chapped by night's end. Give it up for lip balm. And communicable diseases, apparently.

I hope all you gays had a fun, event-filled and funk-free Pride weekend. I wish I could say that same. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to have some toast and ginger ale and watch some garbage TV.

high art

I spent most of yesterday hanging out with The Adorable 4-Year-Old Niece. In an effort to lengthen her attention span and break her addiction to TV, the whole family has been trying to encourage her to engage in other activities. It's starting to work because I caught her sitting by herself coloring in her Clifford coloring book. For once, she didn't feel the need to talk over people while performing attention-getting dances or a striptease. Oh yes, she's already resorting to clothing removal and flashing to get noticed. This does not bode well for the future. Girls Gone Wild, anyone?

I can't pass up a kid with a coloring book so I joined my niece on the floor and we got to work. Unfortunately, she scribbled over EVERY page in her coloring book and I just can't work under those conditions so I grabbed some blank paper instead. I love to draw but sadly, I don't have the time to do it anymore. It felt good to bust out the paper, markers and crayons while spending quality time with the niece. I asked her if she had any requests. One of these days, I WILL learn the lesson that this is a BIG mistake. Rarely do kids want a picture of a cat or a balloon or something. They want entire landscapes with their favorite characters engaged in epic battles or attending some extravagant gala complete with a horse-drawn carriage. And they want it done in 5 minutes. I can usually reason with them and manage their expectations slightly. If they push back too much, they get a half-assed smiley face or a sorry-looking dog with "WOOF!" in a dialogue bubble coming out of its mouth.

The niece requested I draw a picture of her and her two friends on a ride at Hershey Park. She recently went there and hasn't shut up about it since. According to her, the ride she wanted me to draw was a sled of some sort. I couldn't even imagine what that ride might look like so I said fuck it (to myself, of course) and drew her and her friends in the front car of a roller coaster. A few hours later, her mother was able to translate that the niece meant the Himalaya. I'm sorry but I've been on the Himalaya elsewhere and "sled" is not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of that ride. In my experience, it's been a high-speed, gyrating hangout for screaming guidos.

The niece had an issue with it at first but she came around. But not before she corrected me on her seating position. She was sitting in the middle, not on the end as I had envisioned her. She also told me that she didn't own anything resembling the tank top with a daisy on it that I had clothed her in. She questioned every pencil stroke and disagreed with most every decision. She could not wrap her brain around the shortcut technique I used to draw the people in the cars in the background. I kind of cheated and just made them out of circles for the heads and sticks at a 45-degree angle for arms. I must say that arms were raised in a joyful "WHOOOOOOOOOOO!" gesture and they looked quite happy. The effect, in my opinion, worked.

"Where are the grown ups? How come my mommy's not with us? How come we went on a big kid ride by ourselves?" the niece inquired. I quelled her fears and told her that this picture was set in the future. I assured her that they were all old enough and met the height requirement to go on the ride unattended. If the niece doesn't end up being an art director or critic of some sort, my money is on social work or risk management.

As I began coloring in the picture, she started perking up as the image came to life. She was OVERJOYED when I colored one of the people in the background green to signify that he was on the verge of puking. She also now knows what the word "puke" means, by the way. When I told her that her friend was in the line of vomit fire, you would have thought that I gave her the key to a candy store and told her to run wild. She was in hysterics. I had won her over. She was totally on board with my artistic vision. She carried around the picture for the rest of the day and told everyone about the nauseous guy on the ride and how her friend was going to be covered in puke soon. It's her new favorite story. She no longer is repeating rather tawdry lines from Jimmy Neutron and SpongeBob. Um... score?

A drawing frenzy ensued after this. I tried to make the next exercise a bit more educational. I became overjoyed when she recited the alphabet and wrote down the letters in very mangled handwriting. We sounded out the letters and she gave me a keyword for each which I then illustrated. She came up with apple, banana, cookie, dog, elephant... and then she went off on a tangent about clowns so that ended that little lesson.

The niece HATES clowns. She was taken from a birthday party screaming and shaking because a clown showed up honking a horn. I can't say I blame the kid. Yesterday she decided she needed to put in writing exactly how she feels about clowns. "Make a sign that says 'No clowns allowed!'" I'm all about the anti-clown propaganda so I happily obliged. I began with the nose. She looked uneasy and said nervously and quietly, "I didn't think it was going to be that big." I crumpled up the paper and began again. Once the proper proportions were agreed upon, I got busy. Just as I was finishing up the universal symbol for "no," she had a slight change of heart. "Well, maybe we can make another sign that says, 'Yes, clowns for other kids allowed.'" Okey dokey. I illustrated her flip-flopping stance on two separate signs. She was pleased.

I took a few more requests and then I set out on my own mission: drawing a sandcastle on the beach. I sketched it out using burnt sienna, maive, chestnut and several other colors to get the desired shade and texture of sand. I created a turret and a tower with a hollowed-out window. I was pleased with my progress. The niece said, "You need flags on that!" and began drawing random strokes on my paper. With blue-violet crayon!!! BLUE-VIOLET!!! Or was it violet-blue? No matter, it didn't match! It wasn't in my predetermined color palette. I was pissed. So I leaned over and drew a random line on her egg-octopus-with-creepy-smile man thingy. She didn't like that one bit and protested. Tough noogs is what I had to say to that.

But that's the risk you run when you color with kids. I love to sit down with a box of crayons and a fresh page in a coloring book and just start coloring away. What I don't love is when kids say, "Oh let me help you!" and proceed to deface my otherwise pristine work of art with random scribblings. I know I'm supposed to applaud their dexterity and creativity and all that... but that shit annoys me. I'm at an age where I not only have enough fine motor control to stay within the lines and go all in one direction but I also understand shading, smudging, contour, cross-hatch and other techniques. I don't need some snot-nosed punk messing up my picture.

I have to say that I've gotten quite good at quickly snatching things away fast enough while saying, "No, get your own!" I fully realize I'm supposed to be mature and should set a good example and all that other crap but this is definitely an issue of respecting boundaries and OPP. Today it's someone else's page in a coloring book, tomorrow it's tags on buildings and scratchings on subway car windows. You say neurotic and OCD on my part, I say civic-minded and responsible.

pride, puking and pop

Um, where did the weekend go? I cannot believe that it's Sunday night already. I spent every second of this weekend in the company of others and it seems that time rapidly accelerates under such conditions. I had to beg off attending a cabaret show at Joe's Pub this evening because after a whirlwind weekend, I just needed to come home and unwind. I love socializing and being active but I began feeling overstimulated and needed to just be alone. I can get very Garbo-like at times.

I spent Saturday afternoon in Coney Island gawking at the Mermaid Parade attendees. We never made it to the actual parade because our subway got stuck behind a stalled train on the approach to the Coney Island station. But we managed to get an eyeful nonetheless. To the stringy-haired, really pale man sporting nothing but a flimsy g-string with a long tusk attached to the front, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for the dry heave. I haven't done that lately and my gag reflex and abs needed the workout. On a positive note, your translucent, sickly-looking complexion made me feel a bit better about my fair British skin. Hell, I looked like Malibu Barbie in comparison.

The latter half of the day was spent at several Pride-related functions. The first one we attended looked like a convention of softball coaches. I was not pleased. I may play softball but I don't wear the apparel off the field. The addition of a visor or a pair of Tevas to the ensemble is especially irksome to me.

While getting ready for the evening's festivities, I consumed two Yuenglings. Throughout the course of the evening, I drank several Coronas (the beer selection was rather lacking) and several more Sam Adams Summer Ales. I enjoy the latter but when I drink it on tap, there are dire after effects. I have yet to learn this lesson. I must also learn to eat heartily before going on a bender. I had nothing substantial in my belly to absorb the ridiculous amount of beer I was pouring into it. Late in the evening, I staggered outside with a friend for a cigarette. I totally should not smoke but once in awhile, I get the hankering. My friend's brand of choice is American Spirit. Apparently, the fiberglass and chemicals in other cigarettes are more compatible with my system. A few puffs on one of these all natural cigarettes totally went to my head and well... there was vomiting. Luckily, I was outside when this occurred so there was no embarrassing dash to the bathroom knocking down and/or spraying all in my path. I was sitting on a bench and felt the rumblings so I turned my head and quietly let fly. NO ONE noticed. I was quite proud of my stealth puke. My friend was off getting me a soda when this happened so I thought I got away with the shame of public puking. She returned with the soda and I took a few sips before she went to the bathroom. While she was away, I do believe I fell asleep on the bench. Yes, I was clearly the bar's most notorious sloppy, drunk girl last night. Someone poked me and asked, "Are you okay?" I opened my eyes and thanked them and waved them off. Just as I was saying I was fine, I got the uh-oh feeling again and, well, there was more vomiting. This time there was a barking noise and splashing involved. It was not a casual barf whatsoever. God bless the women around me because before I knew it, I was handed a bottle of water, two Tylenol and a poppy-seed roll (there was a deli right next to the bar).

The second spew was the one that returned me to normalcy. Sometimes you just need a good ralph to set you straight. And sure enough, I perked right up and became bar friends with my saviors. They were a lovely couple from Brooklyn and I thanked them profusely before I left. The cab ride home was slightly dodgy with the constant stop-go movement and the way that NY cabs seem to catch air when going over potholes. That bouncing around didn't do me any favors. Luckily, my cab driver was the nicest man. I got yelled at once before when I entered a taxi on the brink of puking. The driver threatened to kick me out of the cab but I managed to convince him that I could hold it in. Thankfully I did hold it in but that driver was the biggest bitch about it. Last night's driver was really compassionate and offered to adjust the air conditioning and try alternate routes to get me home faster. He was quick on the draw to open and close my window based on the shade of green I was turning. He checked in with me and asked how I was feeling throughout the ride. If I wasn't an exhausted sloppy mess, I would have made note of his medallion number and sent a note of high praise to the Taxi and Limousine Commission. He did me a solid but sadly I was too drunk to return the favor.

I'm happy to report that there were no additional bouts of chundering. I took a shower, put on my pajamas and passed out in bed without once waking up wondering if another heave was on deck. I rolled out of bed at 1:00pm, cursed myself while cleaning the shrapnel off my cute Spanish slides and then made my way into Manhattan for the Pride parade. I played social butterfly for a bit and then settled in with some good friends at a bar off the parade route. With a stomach still slightly off-kilter, I stuck to seltzer. Later, we went to a party on a rooftop in Little Italy and I maintained my sobriety, even passing up a bong and 'shrooms. I was tired of being in an altered state and just needed to be aware and in control. Instead, I took in the scenery and inhaled the brisk breeze on the rooftop and that was enough for me. I also had a lovely conversation with a guy who was actually one of the kids in a Jell-o commercial with Bill Cosby years ago. Of course, he could have been lying but it sounded good. We were all captivated and asked lots of follow-up questions: "How is Billy Cosby? Was he nice?" "Did you get tons of free pudding?" "How do you feel about Jell-o Pudding Pops?"

So now I'm ending my weekend with a cup of tea and the Subway Series (go Yankees!!!) The sounds of the game and the soothing rattle of the A/C are a welcome change from the whistle-blowing and screaming and the disco and pop that filled the past few days. I seriously reached my limit with "Toxic," "Hey Ya!" and "Yeah." They are all catchy tunes in their own rite but the three formed an unholy alliance and tailed me the entire weekend. I'm so happy to be home alone, no longer battling a hangover and finally free of the tyranny of Top 40.