"Nothing you say is ever going to scare me"

I think about those words a lot lately, particularly in light of the recent tragedy in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.

I think a lot about Sandy Hook, Connecticut because it is only a short drive from where I grew up.

On any and all social media, as well as in personal interactions, I declare myself to be from Philadelphia. And, in most ways, this is true. I moved to Philadelphia when I was 17. And I found my soul in Philadelphia, even though I am technically from Connecticut. But when I was 17 and all screwed up from a short life, at that point, of dealing with a family plagued by severe mental illness and, what would come to be, the horrific suicide of my father, I decided to erase my past. I decided to start life at the age of 17 instead of the age of…well, birth. 

When those shootings happened on December 14, my 38^th birthday, I found myself thinking of Connecticut. 

And of where I am from, really.

Those murders shocked everyone, of course. Killing children---or anyone, really---is completely abhorrent to most of us, myself included.  But my mind reeled even more because those murders happened in Connecticut. Clean, wealthy, democratic, and tolerant Connecticut. Even though I had divorced it for the far grittier and harder-edged Philadelphia, I had to admit that there are few states more “calm” than Connecticut. 

Yes, of course, it has its crap parts and its dangerous parts, but it is generally just a small state that, depending on your geographical location, is either a suburb of New York City or Boston.  

My mother, also from Connecticut, and I whispered to each other over email and Skype the past few nights (I had been out of the country in Eurasia for three weeks), “Connecticut?!” “This happened in Connecticut?”

The more I thought about it, though, the more I came to realize that even though that tiny state is relatively calm, tolerant, and clean---mental illness happens everywhere.

That made me think back to the time when my own mental black hole threatened to take me over the line from stable to “definitely not stable at all.” No, I have never harbored murderous tendencies, thank God.  

I do harbor very self-destructive ones.

My ability to hate and blame myself is almost bottomless at times. It is irrational.

It is destructive. It is isolating and wickedly painful. I am not a violent person but my own self-loathing often spills out of me at times in an oily black pool that laps at people’s feet. Splatters them.

When I think about what happened in Newton, CT, I actually do not think about the children as much. 

Horrible admission to make, I realize, but true.

I think about him. I think about Adam Lanza.

The killer.

And I think about his mother.

Mostly, though, I think about him.

I KNOW Newtown, Connecticut. I never knew Columbine, Colorado or Blacksburg, Virginia. But this place, Newtown, I know.

And while part of my soul wants to vilify Adam Lanza and his mother for what happened there, another part of me has been crying silently for both of them for the past week.

My own mother, when I was on the very cliff of a black hole that threatened to swallow me when I was in my late teenage years and early twenties, said this: “Nothing you say is ever going to scare me.”

I tested her on that one. Time and time again.

I also tested and vetted friends and lovers using that very same standard. I made that my own standard. I made it my religion.

What if Adam Lanza’s mother had said that to him?

I think about that almost non-stop these days.

What if his mother, or someone, anyone, had just told him that all of the horrible and wicked things he had running through his mind were not going to scare them? What if someone had given him the chance of daylight for his soul?

What if someone, anyone, had just said, “I too have horrible thoughts and horrible things running through my head.”

And then hugged him. Held him tight. Maybe gave him something else to think about.

Because it all began with self-hatred.

I know this. Although my self-hatred never materialized into violence, I do know self-hatred. I know mental instability. I know how it can creep in and smother someone.

For me, this tragedy is less about violence and more about being human.

As I watch the arguments spin up about gun control and mental illness and all of these things, I also think about how easy it might have been to prevent all of these very arguments by just being human.  By just “noticing” when someone is in trouble and needs help.

By not judging. I think that may be the biggest thing.

As I slowly---very slowly---watch all of the media coverage of this tragedy, I still wish Adam Lanza had my mother. Or my friends.

Someone who would have said to him that he could have all of the self-hatred and black thoughts that he wanted. But he could air them to the light. That he could say what was going through his head and would not be judged.

THAT might have made all of the difference.

I don’t know that for sure, of course, but I suspect it might be true.

I have never been a parent to a human. I never have trusted myself that much.

But I have been a parent, thankfully and blessedly, to many animals. And if someone, anyone, hurt my beloved animals, I might be insane with rage and guilt. So I get all of this stuff that is happening on the perimeters of this tragedy.

But still, my thoughts and my heart always go back to one simple thing: Why did no one, anyone, care enough to ask Adam Lanza what was hurting him?

Why did no one, anyone, step up and help him cope? THAT is our burden as humans. We must recognize when someone is hurting, angry or violent.

No gun laws or legislation will ever substitute that.  

That is what I think about almost constantly these days.  Or, as Oprah says, this is what I know to be true. 

A Broad Abroad: Some Lessons for Navigating the non-English Speaking World

Today, as I was preparing for my upcoming 3+ week trip to the Black Sea/South Caucasus region in a few days, it dawned on me that I have not spent any significant time in a majority non-English speaking country in almost four years.

This came as sort of a shock because, for the eight years prior to my four years of traveling/living in English-speaking countries, I traveled almost exclusively to those where little to no English was spoken at all. Or so I thought.

These past four years, however, have been spent living and traveling in Uganda, Australia, and Liberia. Not that I minded that my work took me to those places at all. I loved living in Uganda and Liberia has been both challenging and refreshing. And Australia? Well, the fact that I reverently caress the island continent on the map that hangs in my office every morning and whisper, "I love you...and I WILL be back!" might give you some indication of how I feel about the place.

But now, with Romania, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan coming fast down the pike, I realized that it was time to bring out my dusty list of things to do/not to do when traveling in non-English speaking countries. This is all, of course, based on personal experience. Sometimes incredibly humiliating and painful personal experience.

So, the list.

1. Just because you can't understand them, it doesn't mean they can't understand you.
This, of course, is a no-brainer but I fall for it every time. After two or so weeks of walking around with virtually no understanding of what is being said around me, I magically come to the assumption that the same must be true in reverse! Nevermind that English is, oh, I don't know, like the most common second language in the world...I manage to forget that and begin voicing, out loud, the thoughts and opinions that are in my head thinking that no one can possibly understand me because, DUH, I can't understand THEM.

This has led to me nearly being beaten to death with a suitcase by a rather large Ukrainian woman on a train once after I voiced the query to my traveling companion as to whether she might have been stuffed into her pink, latex hot pants the way a sausage is forced into casing.

Or...the time in the beer hall in a chilly Eastern European outpost where I queried, to myself in this case, "Is it me or does it smell like a combination of beer, cabbage and unwashed ass in this joint?" To which the sweet, innocent-looking older gentleman sitting at the table next to me replied, "Oh, it's you alright."

2. Talking out loud to yourself to provide your own company makes you look like a crazy person---no matter the geographic locale. 
This is actually kind of a subset of Rule #1 but it does carry its own set of unique repercussions. As above, when you are completely oblivious to what is being said around you---and you can't read a damn thing and have to rely almost exclusively on body language as hints for social interaction---it gets lonely. Maybe you get a touch homesick, particularly if you are from a culture like mine where we have information blaring at us 24/7, and you suddenly decide that YOU truly are your own best friend! And entertainment. And shit, since no one can understand you anyway, why not just start talking to yourself out loud?

This has come with the price tag, on multiple occasions, of suddenly becoming aware that people were giving me a wide berth on city streets and public transportation. Once, in Cambodia, I was deeply engaged in a titillating conversation with myself about why the crown prince had chosen to become a ballerina of all things---and the merit of such a move---when I looked down to see a tiny child peering at me with her head cocked to the side. Although I am not a huge "kid person" this one was rather adorable so I started to bend down to her level when her mother, I presume, came bolting out of nowhere, grabbed the girl's arm, and dragged her away with the alarming forcefulness usually reserved for when you discover your child is talking to a convicted pedophile. Or a crazy person. She shouted a few things to me in Cambodian which, of course, I couldn't understand, but her final act of pointing up the street to the local pharmacist shop conveyed a message that language could not: Clearly, I was off my medication.

3. If you are going to make an earnest purchase concerning an item that could affect your physical appearance or digestive system, guessing is never a good idea.
One of the wonders of travel, for me, is all the exotic crap one can acquire in the process. Pun sometimes intended. While I normally can identify most items by their physical appearance or some picture on the label, food items and cosmetic products hold a world of peril for someone who does not read or understand the language.  

This was the case in France a few years ago where I was vacationing with my ex. I had forgotten hair gel (I know, this seems minor but my hair is a mass of revolutionary follicles needing to be subdued on a regular basis) and needed to find a French version of such a product. I can read a little, and by this I mean a very little, French so I figured that this particular purchase should be fairly straightforward. Which is how I ended up purchasing dry skin cream that I found unusually... rich...when I was applying it for the next few days. Finally, my ex asked me if I had suddenly developed a hormonal problem that included profound grease production. My hair was so slick that a floating cigarette ash could ignite it. Ashamed, I finally asked a French friend what, EXACTLY, was in my hair gel only to find out it was not hair gel at all. (Note: There are no pictures from my time in France anywhere to be found for this reason...I looked like Tito Jackson while visiting the Louvre).

As for food, let me just say this...what the HELL is wrong Russians putting mothballs in the candy aisle? Or maybe it wasn't the candy aisle afterall. Maybe it was indeed the mothball aisle. But who the hell makes mothballs look like hard candy? That's my question. Needless to say, you don't ever, ever want to eat a Russian mothball. I will leave it at that. (Note: There is not a picture of the Hermitage from my time spent in Russia anywhere to be found for this reason...mothballs are devastating on the digestive system.)

4. Sometimes it pays to take the guided tour.
I hate guided tours. Let me just put that out there right away. I am also one of those travelers who generally eschews seeing the normal tourist sites in favor of going to local markets and restaurants as my love of food and shopping generally outweighs that of art or architecture most days. I know this is very backward of me but I DO try to see the big items (Louvre, Vatican, Great Reclining Buddha, Great Wall of China, Great Barrier Reef, etc..). Nevertheless, I get to know a place best through its markets and its food so that's where I normally do my exploring. This is all fine and good but eventually I tend to run into an enthusiastic local or a "friend of a friend"who insists on showing me something off the beaten path. Some gem or another that is unknown to tourists. This usually, and by this I mean 75% of the time, turns out to be wonderful and I get to see things others don't. Occasionally, however, it is disastrous.

Which is how I ended up in a twelfth century Georgian bathhouse at midnight with a gang of Russian gun smugglers and their prostitutes. And dining on the side of a mountain in Kosovo with a wanted war criminal who casually ticked off his kills over a splendid fish stew. And trapped in a car for six hours in Costa Rica with a friend who insisted, INSISTED, that the restaurant was "just right around this curve!!" And evaluating the quality of cows---internally and with rubber gloves included---at a bride ceremony in South Sudan.  And nearly trapped in a former concentration camp in Poland on the night of Easter Sunday. And eating a half-formed baby chicken at someone's mother's house in the Philippines. And falling off a motorcycle in Belgium into a snow bank after taking a "short" ride of eight hours in the middle of January. And attending circumcision ceremony for a twelve year old (TWELVE YEAR OLD!!!) boy in Ivory Coast. And nearly shooting a Brazilian general's 94 year old mother after I was encouraged to "just try that beauty" in a semi-remote Amazon outpost. (The "beauty" was the gun, not the mother).

I could go on...but I won't. Have these experiences shaped me and made me a more well-rounded person? Probably. But do I feel that I could likely have saved a lot of personal trauma and peril to myself, and others, by having just taken the guided tour? Absolutely.

5. The U.S. is the only backward-ass country that doesn't use the metric system and I should really learn how to deal with that by now.
I have no idea why Americans hate the metric system so much but it totally screws you when you go abroad, particularly in non-English speaking countries. I really can't get a handle on why we seem to be the only remaining country to measure things in miles, pounds, feet, yards and Fahrenheit but it bites me in the ass each and every time. No matter how many places I have been or lived.

The problem is completely intuitive. When you are raised your whole life to measure things in one way and suddenly you are forced to do math to figure out the very basics of life, things get messy. Which is how I ended up misjudging the distance between where I was staying in a lovely, but remote, Panamanian beach town and the nearest city where goods could be procured. I read "feet" instead of kilometers and ended up walking for three hours through the rainforest in 110 degree (Fahrenheit!!) heat before rolling into town looking like Rastafarian hillbilly (see above about the hair thing). I was so sunburnt, dehydrated, and delirious that when a local shop owner came running out carrying a bottle of water, I actually told her that I loved her. She then called both the ambulance AND the police.

Or the time I decided to bake cookies for my teaching colleagues in Hungary and misread milometers for ounces in the recipe and ended up putting so much baking powder into the dough that rather than gifting them with a sweet treat, I gave them the power of self-propulsion. In the same country, I also memorably told my class that I weighed 120 kilograms to which a rather outspoken student said, "Well, at least you are carrying it well!"

And thus concludes my list of things I must either avoid or remember to remember in the coming days. This time, luckily, I have written it down. It seems simple enough but when you see pictures of me on Facebook wearing a tank top in the Siberian winter, dining on fertilizer, or being slapped into a straight jacket for frightening innocent children...don't laugh.

I am doing this so you don't have to.

Six Boxes

So today I realized that my entire life fits in six boxes. Literally.

I came to this realization when I received the last five boxes of my stuff from my ex, Chas.

Chas and I broke up rather messily about two months ago although, in retrospect, we both needed it to happen as badly as it hurt.

Breakups SUCK. There is just no way around that one.

And this one doubly sucked because I actually was still in love with the guy when I broke up with him. Or he broke up with me...or we broke up with each other. Whatever, still sucks.

Funny thing about this one was that it took us finally having a week of happiness to realize just how miserable we had been making each other for nearly three years.

It was July 4th week and I had taken a vacation to be down at the Jersey shore with him. I normally commuted between Philadelphia/Jersey and DC, where I work, once a week. But I had slowed down on the commuting. I had started to choose staying in DC more than wanting to be in Jersey or Philly. We'd always had a "passionate" relationship but I was beginning to realize the fights were getting more ugly, more personal. More frequent.

But that week we had no fights at all. We did things like go to the beach together, go to the pool together, garden together, cook together, go out to dinner with friends together...you know, all the supposedly "normal" stuff couples do together.

And that's when I realized that we were not really together anymore. The fact that I was so amazed that this particular week we were doing stuff "together" made me realize that for well over a year we hadn't been doing anything together consistently but fight. That for almost a year, we hadn't been together at all.

No, nothing is ever uniform because life is not uniform. So of course there were wonderful weekends and days and moments the entire time. But there were long, long stretches between those weekends and days and moments. Even if they were only seconds. There were times when we could barely be around each other because we were so TIRED of each other. Too tired to fight, too tired to love. Just too damn tired.

So we had this amazing week together before I got on a plane to go to Liberia for ten days and I was happy.

And I was so shocked to feel happy that I knew it was over.

What then commenced was likely the worst breakup in my entire of history of breakups. It involved friends, family, pets, possessions, money, my job, my ego, my self-worth...all of those things. It pulled into itself every single aspect of my life. It was like a two-month long vortex where I just surrendered to hell.

And, boy, do I do the "surrender to hell" thing quite well. I spent days, maybe even a week, in bed. I missed work. I stopped talking to many of my friends. I barely spoke to my family.

I cried a lot. A LOT.

I was THAT friend who called and begged her other friends to tell her that she was still a good person. I made people recount, in painful detail, the good things that they remembered me doing or the good things they remembered feeling about me. Hell, I made my mother tell me stories she remembered about me when I was, like, six years old, that might give me a glimpse into the soul I supposedly had but had most certainly lost.

I was your worst nightmare if I was your friend or your family. I was THAT person who fell apart in the grocery store shopping for a friend's birthday party looking at ground meat because it reminded me of meatloaf. And he loved my meatloaf. And yet he never really loved me and how much I put into making that meatloaf perfect.

Yoga made me too open to emotions so I stopped doing yoga.

I supplemented this with shopping. Which, while it is nice to acquire new things, ended up making me realize I had all these new things and no one to show them to. And no where to put them because I had now abdicated not only my relationship but also my residence.

Once again, I had abdicated my residence like some sort of crazy nomad.

I had nowhere to live, again.

That's only partially true, of course. Because I live in DC with two of the most wonderful people that God has gifted us with as humans. Seriously. (And if anyone reading this has any qualms about same sex marriage and the validity of "that" love, I would dare you to be around these two for ten minutes and not wish YOU could experience that for a few minutes. I have never been so surrounded by love or loved. And complete and utter lack of judgement. THAT is something every human should experience at least once. If God is not in that equation, then I don't know who the hell is).

But it is THEIR house and even if I have my own space and my own place...it's not mine.

And my best friend in the world also opened her house to me every weekend. But, same as above. She makes gardening look like God's very own work. It is almost blinding beauty. I can't take enough pictures or be grateful enough for being this lucky to have such sheer beauty in my line of sight every weekend.

But. Still.

So it has taken two months. It has taken a loss of several friends who just couldn't take "this Patti" anymore. Who couldn't figure out why I couldn't seem to dig myself out of this seemingly minor situation--as compared to others---and kept sitting down and wanting to quit.

Who were sick of me crying over ground meat on an otherwise innocent Tuesday night in a grocery store.

Today those boxes arrived.

The remaining five of them. The remaining five boxes that represent my life...thus far.

All nearly 38 years of it.

In six boxes.

That's immensely sobering, by the way.

And I kept waiting for something to happen. For some emotional eruption. For me to freak out as I did when the first box arrived. For me to call someone and drag them into my drama. For me to cry. For me to go to bed. For me to want a glass of wine at an inappropriate time. For me to want to call or write HIM and tell him what an awful mistake we made in breaking up.

I did none of it. I felt none of it.

I wrote this instead.

Not sure if this qualifies as "healing" but oddly I don't feel awful or numb any longer.

Progress, if nothing else.

Aversion to Outward Signs of Hurting

Since my last post about what gets on my nerves as a traveler, I have gotten a bunch of emails from friends and not-so-much-friends calling me out on the carpet about a lot of things that they dislike about Americans. While I didn't intend to create a culture war here, there are some pretty legitimate gripes that were brought up in these emails that are worth addressing. But the one that struck me, in various forms, again and again, was this:

"You may think other cultures are over-emotive, but many cultures think that Americans are unhealthy in their near complete aversion to outward signs of hurting or trauma. There are some things you just can't paste a smile on."

Wow.

How true is THAT statement, right? (The writer was from Hungary, BTW).

Americans ARE culturally predisposed to act happy and completely in control of their emotions no matter what might be going on around them or inside of them. This is pretty much true.

Sure, we have Oprah and Dr. Phil and even the lovely Ellen DeGeneres to talk us through these things. We have affirmations, and yoga retreats, and support groups, and a near constant onslaught of advertisements for some drug or another that will take away the pain/depression/compulsion/sadness.

Many (if not a lot) of us are in therapy. Many (if not most) of us are on some kind of anti-depressant or rely on alcohol or another narcotic to provide something similar. Most (if not many) of us spend a decent time on the Internet trying to figure out what is wrong with us. Or, if we're not quite there yet, trying to diagnose a "friend" who seems to have something wrong that might be similar to our own. Or, if we're not even close to there yet, spending inordinate amounts of time paying attention to the outside of our bodies (hey, how about working out for two hours a day, seven days a week...look how healthy I am!!) while ignoring the inside. Or we put it completely outside of ourselves; i.e. God has a plan. (And this is fine, I am all about God but I still don't think this approach is particularly healthy either).

However, none (if not any) of us feel that we can completely and totally lose our shit outwardly for an hour/day/week/month because we are experiencing some serious emotional trauma. THAT is an absolute no-no reserved only for "crazy" or "unstable" people.

I know this well because I have personally wanted to lose my shit outwardly for the better part of a month over two very difficult personal situations.

And I have. But only with "safe" people. Only with the people that I know will not judge me for losing my shit. I am lucky to have these sort of people in my life. I am afraid not all (or enough) of us do.

Anyone else? Business as usual in my world!

I smile, I go to work, I go to the gym, I go to yoga, I go shopping for stuff I really don't need because the art of acquiring things distracts me from what's going on inside.

But I also drink too much wine, download self-help books to my Kindle that I don't ever seem to have the energy to read, and I sleep. A LOT.

When other people can't see me, of course. Or at least not the majority of them.

Outward signs of hurting? Not too many. Most Americans are much more comfortable if you just act "normal." Overly emotional behavior does indeed make us very uncomfortable. Me too, truth be told.

I was talking to a good friend the other night (one of the ones who knows I am screwed up right now but still seems to be dedicated to sticking by me) and he said, "I just don't know what to do when someone cries in front of me. Women, kids, other men...I just don't know how to react."

I pointed out to him that he had been listening to me lose my shit for the past two weeks and was holding up like a champ.

"But...it's YOU," was his response.

Fair enough. I also don't know what to do most of the time when someone is emotionally in turmoil. Particularly if I don't have a close relationship with that person.

I long ago learned that telling someone to "smile" or that "everything is going to be fine in the end" are two of the very worst things you can say to someone in an emotional crisis or mired in depression.

No one, unless you are someone who manages to walk around high all the time, wants to smile when their world is falling apart. No one. I don't care what Oprah and Dr. Phil have to say about this matter...you do not want to smile when you feel miserable. A writer I admire very much, Augusten Burroughs, said this on the topic, "Asking someone to smile or to do affirmations or try to look at the bright side when they are in the midst of a crisis is like sprinkling baby powder on the turd your dog just left you in the living room. It's still shit underneath"  Exactly. Case closed.

And of course we know it will be some semblance of "fine" in the end. But what's YOUR definition of "fine?"    My definition of "fine" does not cover certain, if not most, things. I am not going to tell someone who has lost dozens of friends and comrades in a war that he/she will be "fine." I am not going to tell someone who has just discovered that her child has cancer that he/she will be "fine." And I am certainly not going to tell someone who is going through a catastrophic breakup of a marriage, the death of a loved one, the loss of a pet, multiple amputations...that they are going to be "fine."

These things, and many others, put a major dent in your soul and change you as a human being. Fundamentally.

I (and no one else, for that matter) has any business telling you that you are going to be "fine." THAT is up to you to decide, not me.

Ditto with the "God has a plan" crowd. Again, not in anyway against religion or spirituality here but that one gets me too.

I damn well hope God/the Universe/Whatever has a plan. Someone must because, right now, I don't.

So until God tells me, exactly, what His or Her plan is, and how it concerns my present hell, I don't need to hear about it from you.

This all came home to me last week when I was in the most unusual of places.

I was at a food truck in Washington, DC.

It was a particularly hard day and I was trying not to give into an urge to cry. I managed to distract myself most of the day with work and then my shields just crumbled when I got outside. I was tired. Tired of trying to hold it together. Tired of being "fine."

When I got up to the window of this particular food truck that I frequent every week because I love the owner (he is an much older Spanish guy and ALWAYS emotive) and the food is fantastic.

I placed my order and he looked at me and said, "You look like you're about to cry. Why don't you? You'll feel better, bella."

Then he gave me a free lemonade.

He called me beautiful AND gave me a free lemonade. And he didn't once tell me that I should smile, that I would be fine, or that God had a plan for me.

And, you know what? That made me feel better than almost anything else had that week.

Go figure.

 (p.s. And thank you, Anika from Hungary, for making me write this blog. Point deserved and well taken)

A Traveler's Rant

So this blog once again finds me in Liberia, a country I occasionally find "challenging." After thinking through my issues not only with Liberia but with other locations as well, I figured I would just get this rant off my chest in the form of an open letter. I realize it seems bitchy and ungrateful (and I am certainly not ungrateful in any sense) but since I often come home and "inappropriately misdirect my frustrations at innocents" after a difficult travel experience, I decided to write this down. 


Dear Country X and Her Peoples,

Thank you so much for allowing me to visit you and get to know your amazing culture and citizens. Thank you for opening your hearts and homes to me. I cannot be more thankful.

However, in the interest of full disclosure, I want to get some things off my chest.

1. I know Americans are insane about the whole "being on time" thing and I apologize for that. Frankly, I am not nearly as bad as I used to be. Nevertheless, I must admit that I wanted to carve out your eyeballs with a melon baller yesterday when you showed up to pick  us up for a workshop a full hour and twenty minutes late. Especially when my colleague had food poisoning and was doing everything in her power to keep it together so she could conduct YOUR WORKSHOP FOR YOU. And, on that note...

2. Please CALL ME if you are going to be later than, say, 15-20 minutes. I will be a lot calmer if you call. And when I ask you why you didn't call, please don't tell me your mobile phone was lost under the car seat when I have seen that you are more likely to misplace your penis than your mobile phone. And...

3. If you're going to lie to me to save face, please be creative about it. Please don't tell me that the tire had a slow leak exactly between the hour and twenty minutes you were late. A slow leak is SLOW. It doesn't happen in exactly an hour and twenty minutes. Please at least give me a creative lie like your grandmother was slowly pecked to death by chickens overnight or your roof collapsed killing an armful of newborns. Hell, you can even tell me you suddenly discovered a pencil sharpener in your rectum. Just be creative and try to shock me out of being so pissed off.

4. Do not touch me if I don't know you. I'm sorry, I know Americans are a bit cold like that but we generally hate being suddenly grabbed and hauled over to a shop stand to look at something. We also don't particularly like being touched and grabbed by strangers while walking down the street. We actually don't like being touched by strangers, period. Once I know you, I am happy to give you a hug or accept one. Even a pat on the knee (Read: KNEE) is fine. But if I don't know you? Please keep your hands to yourself.

5. Please stop trying to convert me. Again, I know American secularism seems absolutely heathen to you and you are truly afraid for my soul but, please, let me worry about that. I have politely listened to your entreaties for weeks now and you know how all I do is smile and nod vaguely but refuse to engage you further? It means I am not interested in going further. Me and God? We're all good, you're just going to have to trust me on that one.

6. I know it seems completely normal to you to think it is strange of me not to have children at my "advanced" age, and, worse yet, not to want them. I realize in your culture children are gifts and they are, most times, in mine too. I just don't want one. And screaming at me: "You can do it!!! Please, you must know you can do it!!!" is not going to change my mind. I know I can do it. Hell, I even know HOW to do it. I just am not doing it. Can we let it rest already?

7. While I realize that I have more money than you do and that it is entirely appropriate in many cases to ask me to share, can we just cut to the chase about it? I am OK with sharing when I can but I really, really get uncomfortable and, yes, annoyed, with the elaborate stories that I have to sit through for no less than 30 minutes until we finally get to the asking price. Can we just pick a time to meet, do a quick negotiation, and then I will do what I can? I can't always promise I will have it to give but, if I do, I will give you what I can. Save the elaborate stories for, say, when you're going to be an hour and twenty minutes late, OK?

8. Speaking of that, can we just agree right from the beginning on what you're going to rip me off on? I know it's possible because, quite frankly, my culture does it too. For example, we basically tell foreigners, "We are going to totally ass rape you on things like visas, airplane tickets, hotels, and medical services so just be prepared." Can't you do the same? Can't you pick, oh, I don't know, ten or fifteen items that you are totally going to screw me on and leave it at that? And I mean this for the citizens as well as the government. I am perfectly willing to be extorted, but in trying to extort me each and every day and make me negotiate for everything, you are driving me into the arms of other foreigners when I would really rather be giving the money to YOU.

9. I know this is a long shot but...is there any way you can learn the term "browse?" Americans are really uncomfortable being followed around while shopping. Even worse, we really hate having someone permanently glued to our arm or back while shopping. It makes us nervous. And it makes us less likely to buy something when we get nervous. So, you see, it actually works against you. I know I will probably never be granted this request but it would be such a gift from you to me. Heaven sent by God.

10. Is there any chance we can do anything about the peeing? I realize that it's often impossible to rush to a public facility to take a leak but do you have to do it right in front of me? I'm not squeamish---I pee too, you know---but it's often hard to have a conversation with you when you're peeing. I don't know where to look. I don't know whether to acknowledge the fact that you're peeing or just ignore it. Should I say, "Oh, look, you're peeing right now!  Shall we carry on with this discussion in a moment or two when you've finished?" Or should I just be like, well, this person is peeing now and I am just going to pretend that he/she is not? It's just kind of socially awkward that way, you know?

Anyway, thank you so much for listening to me and I am definitely more happy to have visited your country than to have not but if we can consider any of the items on my list, I know we'd get along a heck of a lot better.

Sincerely,

Patti

11 Things You Need To Know About Cooking

OK, my first cooking blog other than my first, first cooking blog telling you why I should be writing a cooking blog.

Anyway, these are my top eleven tips for the kitchen. Find your own as you will, but this might be some place to start.

1. Season every layer of whatever you are cooking. I know chefs say this and it is easy to rush by but it will make the difference between a good meal and a great one.

2. Boil and Simmer are two different things. I have screwed up so many recipes by not learning the difference between the two. Boil is bubbles breaking the surface. Simmer is bubbles NOT breaking the surface. It makes all the difference in things like...

3. Chicken Stock. Make your own. Trust me...I know it is a laborious process and I will post how I do mine here. But just do it. Make a whole big batch and freeze it in inexpensive Tupperware containers or leftover Chinese takeout plastic containers. There is a world of difference between boxed/canned and homemade. Make a bunch on a cold day and it'll be with you for months. (If you absolutely cannot find the time to do this...always go with Swanson...they have the best chicken broth/stock).

4. When you make a sandwich, put salt and pepper on it (inside). My mom does this and I thought she was nuts until  I tasted the difference between her sandwiches and others. Just a crank of S&P will do wonders to even the most basic sandwich.

5. Get a good knife. I know, elemental, right? But I have been in so many kitchens where I have seen cooks fighting with their knives and it makes me so sad. I was lucky...when I graduated from college my dear friend (who is now a five star chef) got me a Henkels knife which she probably shelled out $100 for at the time. But, dammit, I love that knife as much as I love my dog. Seriously. I get it sharpened once a year and the thing can cut through anything. Cooking is a pleasure...spend your money on getting the right tools and start with a good knife. Most chefs will tell you that you only need one. I agree.

6. Speaking of the right tools...get a good cutting board. I have no real recommendations on specific types of wood (and yes, it should always be wood, NEVER PLASTIC...forget the crazy American obsession with germs...get yourself some decent hot water and forgo the plastic...always...it HURTS food, I promise) but my mom handed me one a few years ago that is bamboo and teak and I love it. Your knife, your cutting board, and your pan are your lovers in the kitchen. Pick the best ones.

7. You can revive pizza to its former glory by frying it in a saute pan. Really. Take a piece or two, crank the heat to low, put it in a non-stick or regular sautee pan, and cover it. Five to ten minutes...perfectly done piece of pizza. Crisp on the bottom, melting on the top. I learned this one only a few years ago and I have never messed with a microwave or oven since...

8. Even in the most dire of pinches, Italian dressing will be your friend. I try never, ever to be in a cooking emergency but sometimes it does happen. Friends show up unannounced, etc. Always have a bunch of chicken parts in your freezer and a bottle of Zesty Italian dressing in your pantry. For whatever reason, this combo works and people think you're awesome even though you just pulled defrosted chicken and Italian dressing together. Never be without these two.

9. Always have an easy appetizer up your sleeve, My mother always has a bag of shrimp in the freezer and a few blocks of cheese and some crackers at the ready. She also buys nuts when they go on sale and trolls the Dollar Store for small plates and napkins which she hides away until these moments. My trick, in the winter, is always to have some chili in the fridge which I serve with some crackers and cheese. I also buy tons of water chestnuts (in the Asian section of your store), terriyaki sauce and bacon. Wrap the water chestnuts in the bacon (whole chestnuts, wrap in raw sliced bacon, insert toothpicks, drench in terriyaki) and then broil the whole mess until it is browned and caramelized. You will be a God or a Goddess...trust me.

10. Learn to love your freezer. This is an important one. I try to eat fresh, local, non-chemically enhanced food because it just makes me feel better. But I live in a part of the country where this is not always possible. So I stake out the best farmer's markets to find the best stuff and then I freeze it. This means I have delicious blueberry pancakes in January or perfect sun-ripened tomatoes in March. It IS worth the effort. Stock up.

11. For God's sake...don't stress. Food is meant to be wonderful and a pleasure. Just get a few things down and you'll be fine. It is not a contest...life really never is.

Warning Labels

A couple of weeks ago I was helping a friend and her husband set up their brand new grill on their deck.

This couple are food freaks like me but, unlike me, they actually know how to operate a grill without setting fire to small grassy knolls or one's entire porch.

So as we were loading this monster, six burner, double propane tanked, 300lb stainless steel beauty onto their deck, I spied a curious warning label plastered to the grill.

"PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO USE INSIDE OF THE HOUSE."

It took me a minute to process the warning before pointing it out to my friend, who merely shrugged and rolled her eyes.

"But wait," I said, stopping her, "WHO would ever think to use this INSIDE of a house?"

She sighed, "This is America, my dear, if there is someone who would contemplate such a thing, he or she lives here. Furthermore, our country is so damn lawsuit happy that all manufacturers are compelled to give such warnings lest they be sued by some idiot. Why is this so shocking to you?"

But WHO would contemplate using a commercial strength grill inside of the house?

Needless to say, I am at times so very saturated in my own culture that I forget some of its absurdities. But my friend was right. There are the most ridiculous messages on consumer goods these days that it is stupefying to contemplate.

"DO NOT USE IN THE SHOWER" reads the label on my hairdryer.

"DO NOT MICROWAVE BEFORE REMOVING THE BOX!" my microwave pizza labels says.

And, a recent favorite upon receiving prescription eye drops from my optometrist:

"NOT FOR RECTAL USE."

Well, thank goodness because if these are working so well in my eyes then....

I mean, really?

My new computer that came a month ago: "DO NOT ATTEMPT TO OPERATE WITHOUT REMOVING PACKAGING!"

Paint thinner: "DO NOT INGEST ACCIDENTALLY."

New dog crate: "NOT MEANT FOR SMALL CHILDREN UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!"

I kid you not.

Fellow Americans, take a look around the next time you buy something and behold the warning label which, in most cases, by far exceeds the bit for how to operate said product.

I forget these things because, as I mentioned, they are so commonplace.

You will not, for instance, find a sign in a zoo in Budapest that tells you not to stick your hands in the lion's cage. That's because Hungarians assume you know that doing so might result in your hand being bitten off.

You will not find labels in Australia that warn you that consuming an entire bottle of wine might well lead to you being drunk.

You will not find, while white water rafting in Uganda, any signs that ask you to sign away your first of kin because this might well be a dangerous undertaking that could result in bodily harm.

You will not find in South Africa any label on a common household product like furniture polish telling you not to stick it up your nose.

Finally, in most every other country but ours, you will not find a label on your hairspray telling you that holding it next to an open flame will like cause a combustible reaction leading to severe disfigurement.

Or at least a very bad hair day.

You are expected to figure these things out for yourself.

If not, well, Social Darwinism at work, as they say.

In any case, so concerned by the label on my eye drops telling me not to use them on my ass, I decided to see if the opposite was true.

Seeking out the medicinal aisle at the local supermarket, I grabbed a tube of anti-hemmorhoid cream and furtively surveyed its label.

And there, right there, was this:

"NOT FOR OPTHALMIC USE."

I, for one, want to know these Americans who are confused about their orifices to such a degree.

Or maybe I don't.

I think one might be running for President at the moment.

Off to grill packaged pizza in my bathroom!

Nurturing

Lately, I have come to benefit immensely from the presence of a nurturing friend.

I am going through a rather painful and long process in a personal relationship at the same time as writing a book chapter, making a few rounds of public speaking engagements, and being asked to write two articles for a major magazine on two topics that I don't know much about.

The personal relationship meltdown part, of course, sucks. The others...well, they are challenging.

But now that I seem to have diverted some energy from trying to save a house afire (relationship), it seems I have plenty of time to learn about the pan-European financial crisis. Ditto that on smallish, landlocked Central Asian nations. Further ditto on a quantitative analysis on terrorism trends in an oil-rich African country.

These are things I never had time to think about these past two years and, perhaps, will never need to think about again.

When I got myself into the sort of deep-seated analysis one finds themselves performing after spending a week with one's inquisitive Italian mother and a few or ten bottles of wine, I discovered the new person in the equation.

I have finally gained back a nurturing friend.

Now please understand me here: I love all of my friends deeply. They each add a dimension and a gift to my life that I cannot produce for myself which is why they are my friends. If not I would be a serial killer with killer PowerPoint skills and an appreciation for watercolors.

And although I am fortunate enough to have lots of friends, I only have a handful that I consider the very best friends I have ever had in my life. That will likely continue as most of them have been part of my life for decades if not the entire thing.

But, before a few months ago, I didn't have a nuturer.

My mother, who is certainly one of the best friends I have ever had, is NOT a nurturer by nature.

She will freely admit that the day I learned to speak fluently enough to have a conversation and stopped wetting the bed were the best of her life. (These two things did not occcur in tandem, by the way.)

I remember, being a horribly shy child, wetting the bed for the five thousandth time at age 4 or so and my mother coming in my room.

"OK, it has now been four years of you pissing on the bed. I love you and I understand that you must have some anxiety issues to make you void on furniture regularly. I am willing to take you to a psychiatrist. I am willing to medicate you. Hell, at the moment, I would like to put you in the oven with the convection setting on....but there will be no more of this. If you pee the bed one more time, you are going to do your own sheets or you are going to sleep in pissy ones. It is up to you. Tomorrow, I will show you how the washer and dryer work..."

And she did.

And I never peed the bed again.

(Well, except that one embarrassing incident in college that involved a lot of beer....but that is neither here nor there).

No, my mother is not a cruel person. She has never starved me of love or praise or attention. She just didn't want to do laundry in the middle of the night anymore.

The same can be said of two or three of my other very close friends.

They are endlessly giving of their time, advice, knowledge, and love. But they are not nurturers by nature.

The closest nurturer is my friend Connie, who is also my second mother. She rescued me from the most destructive path I have ever been on in my life when I was in my late teens/early 20s. She made me go back to college, moved me into a house behind her, made sure I learned valuable skills to distract my mind like gardening and cooking, and kicked my ass when I fell out of line.

But she too had a line in the sand when it came to nurturing.

"If you get knocked up and ruin your career---and you will have one, I promise---I will take the baby and put it in an aquarium. I will raise you children like Tarzan and then I will give them back to you when you find the love of your life. Do not get knocked up. Ever."

These were her words to me during my sophomore year of college.

Needless to say, I did not get knocked up.

Another, who I will not mention by name, listens to me intently and then says, "I will write a check for whatever you need. Money is not an object, you can have anything you want. But, if I were you, I would get drunk and go to Tahiti for three weeks, it always works for me!"

Which, admittedly, is a wonderful friend to have.

The final two, both male, say, after listening to me, "Can I kill him/her/them now? Just let me know...I have guns, you know."

But now, finally, I have a friend who looks at me when I finally admit to whatever is bothering me and says, "You need a cookie."

Or, "You need a bag of potato chips and I know that you are disgusting and put hot sauce on everything but I am going to go get you a bag of potato chips and a bottle of hot sauce and I will even eat it with you while you sob uncontrollably."

Or, "Your roots are growing out and your hair, while pretty, needs a touch up. Give me the number of the salon. And yes, I am coming with you."

Or, "Let's go get a pedicure at lunch time. I know it is extravagant but everyone feels better when their toes look good."

Or, "I am coming out with you to drink but I will remain sober while you drink seven glasses of wine and cry uncontrollably and then I will take you home, tuck you into bed, and make sure that when you wake up in the morning, there is both aspirin and water by your bedside. And I will never bring it up again unless you do."

Now this, THIS, is a treasure.

This kind of friend is worth more than all the gold bars in Fort Knox or wherever they keep the stuff these days. This is the kind of friend that you can be your absolute worst around and they do not judge you for it. As a matter of fact, they just fall naturally into the role of dealing with you so that you never consider it's a burden to them.

This is why living is sometimes so good. People like this.

Not that all the other people who want to send you to Tahiti and make you wake up and take control of your own destiny do not play similarly important roles. They absolutely do.

But for me, I need a nurturer in my life. I try as hard as I can to play that role for others but it is of second nature to me. I am more of the personality that will kick you in your ass to get you out of a rut. I am not the cookie-baker although I can nurture.

However, I am a deep appreciator of natural nurturers. And I am so very grateful for this wonderful soul who, just now, text messaged me to let me know that she's watered my office plants that I have been neglecting in my heartache. She also admonished me for letting my office fall into a mess of papers and has cleaned it up.

She also reminded me that we need to book our tickets to Liberia for July and get our September trip started going to Eastern Europe.

She keeps a constant line of contact open with me even though it might be the weekend.  She never fails to step up to whatever I throw at her.

And she makes awesome baked goods that involve sugar cookies and pineapple tarts.

I wish for you all to have a nurturer in your life. I hope most of you do.

It is a rare and under-appreciated gift and I would like to start giving out awards for it.

I love my nurturer.

And no, you cannot have her.

Liberia Part I: Plane Crash

Ever hear the saying, "Be careful what you wish for?" and think to yourself, "Whatever does that mean?"

If you're really wishing for something, it implies that you must really want it, right?

Must really need it in some deep metaphysical sense, correct?

Well, that saying would just about sum up my feelings about my most recent trip to Liberia a few weeks ago.

Liberia screwed with me in ways that I have yet to unpack.

Ways that I have been unable to write about it until now. And, even now, I don't think I can do it justice in one telling so I am breaking the story up into three of four installments...if only for my own sanity.

First, at little background on how I actually ended up going to Liberia in the first place.

(Oh,and quick history lesson. Liberia is a smallish country in West Africa that is often wrongly called America's "only colonial experience." We actually never colonized Liberia, in the sense that the Brits, French, Belgians, and Portuguese colonized other parts of Africa. We just sent a contingency of freed American slaves back there in the 1800s in a dumb-assed move to send black people back to Africa. Because all black people just have to be from Africa, right? Yeah, as I said, DUMB-ASSED MOVE. It would be like sending someone who has a Chinese last name but was born here and has relatives that have lived here for decades back to China and saying, "Yo, figure it out! Good luck with the language and all that!" In this case, in the 1820s a bunch of geniuses picked what they thought was a suitable piece of land in West Africa and started shipping freed black American slaves there thinking this was the perfect solution. Unfortunately, the current inhabitants of the lands declared, unilaterally, as the new homeland of the freed American slaves didn't think this was such a good idea at all. Neither did the freed slaves. But, who cares what they thought, right? HOWEVER, this did set up a dynamic in the minds of both Americo-Liberians--the settlers---and later Americans themselves about "who" Liberia actually belonged to and "who" is ultimately responsible which plays out today...but more on that shortly.)

Anyway, history lesson aside, this was not my first time to Liberia.

My first time was back in October of 2003 and I literally arrived there the day a ceasefire ending two decades of brutal civil war came into effect. Literally that very day.

And Liberia was truly my first look at how savage wars can be. Sure, I had spent time in the Balkans before that and had seen the initial aftermaths of some nasty wars but this conflict had a whole new dimension I was unfamiliar with completely.

And I was scared shitless. It was the first time I had ever seen drugged out child soldiers. The first time I had ever seen people, innocent people, who clearly had been tortured and mutilated---women and kids, too. The first time I had ever seen, up close, what a landmine does, after months in the jungle without being doctored. The first time I could look at someone and tell by their physical appearance that they had recently been raped, brutally. And the first time I actually feared for my life as kids, LITTLE KIDS, with guns and crazy, bloodshot eyes surrounded me on a sidewalk asking what "I had for them" as they waved rusty guns around in my direction with the safeties off.

Part of me wanted to run into the relative safekeeping of my scarcely functioning hotel and not emerge again until someone guaranteed me an armored convoy straight to the airport and back to the U.S...or at least a more "calm" African country...like Ghana where I had arrived from.

But I didn't do it.

Because I knew that if what I thought I wanted to do for the rest of my life was really what I was going to end up doing, I could not run from this no matter how scared I was. I had to look at it. Look right at it.

And grow a pair pronto.

This was part of the reason that, nine years and several war zones later, I had to go back to Liberia. I had to see what nine years of aftermath looked like for both of us.

I also had to get back to Africa to erase the thought that the last time I had been there, albeit in Uganda, it had felt like I had left with my tail between my legs.

So when the colleague who ran the program abruptly quit in early March, I quickly lobbied to get my intern, Christine (written about in the previous blog "Mean Girl's Club) hired for the post. And then I just as quickly went on a campaign to get my boss to let me go with her to Liberia.

And, amazingly, after about 563 text messages, 75 emails, and three dozen late-night phone calls, my boss relented.

"Yes, yes, you can go...PLEASE GO...if it is that important to you, then you can certainly have the assignment. I hesitated because you have so much other stuff going on right now but since I am clearly never going to have another waking moment of peace in my lifetime unless you get to go, then go. With my BLESSING!" she added.

Yes, I can be insufferable when I want something. I don't necessarily like that part of myself, either.

So, three weeks later, all vaccinated and medicated against every disease known to mankind, Christine and I found ourselves at the airport in Atlanta on a non-stop flight to Monrovia, the capital of Liberia.

The first thing that gave me pause for consideration was that there actually WAS a non-stop flight between the U.S. and Liberia.

Travel in most of West Africa, even between countries right next to each other, often entails traveling as far off the continent as Belgium to swing back to go what is the equivalent of 150 miles between two neighbors. I once flew to France to get between Sierra Leone and Senegal which are almost right next to each other. While France and Sierra Leone most certainly are not. And things haven't changed all that much since then.

Thinking about this with the flights, the words of my colleague and good friend, Nate, rang in my head from a week before.

Nate grew up in West Africa as the child of missionaries and has long harbored a deep and abiding love for the countries of the region and the culture. More than that, even, Nate loves the type of chaos and extreme deprivation that would make even Peace Corps volunteers swoon. He doesn't mind the corruption, the seediness, and the harshness and starkness of everyday life in some of the world's worst places. He thrives on the shit, actually.

And, he, this wonderfully amazing and strange person, said unto me:

"I fucking hate Liberia. Most corrupt, soul-draining, chaotic, confusing, annoying, shady place ever. I never, ever have any desire to go back there."

I had to admit I was shocked by this. Nate likes NIGERIA, for God's sake. I mean, I kind of did too but Nigeria is certainly "top of the pops" when it comes to corruption and chaos in West Africa.

Poor little Liberia, how could it be that bad?

"Americans have completely messed the place up," he told me.

"How?" I asked.

It was never really a colony in any sense and what could we have possibly done in nine years to make it worse than it was? I actually liked everyday Liberians back then despite the circumstances. They were actually some of the nicest people I had ever met. What, pray tell, did we have to do with this gross change?

"Wait," was all he said. Ominously.

So boarding the non-stop flight to Monrovia, I thought back about how strange it was that there would be such a flight if tons of Americans were not taking it.

And not just one non-stop, but two, per week.  Yeah, OK, it stopped in Ghana for a refueling but we were not allowed to get off the plane. So it was, for all intents and purposes, a non-stop flight between Atlanta and Monrovia.

Boarding the plane, I went into my usual "airplane mode" meaning that I go into a zone somewhere between beatific meditation and a non-substance induced stupor and surrender for the next 14 hours.

I don't do this purposely but after so many years of travel and so many hundreds and hundreds of long-haul flights, I just sort of relax into it and really only something really shocking can jolt me out of it.

This is how I deal with long distance and long spells of time. This is how I deal with not having something I want immediately. This is how I deal with the guy next to me who keeps whispering queries about whether I have found Jesus or not. This is how I deal with turbulence. This is how I deal with someone who feels the need to slam his seat back into my knees every hour or so. This is how I deal with children whose parents think they are entirely too cute and allow them to crawl over the back of the seat in an attempt to do a face-plant in my dinner....

Well, you get it.

And, given that I was on a Delta flight and, as mentioned in previous blogs, traveling on an American carrier anywhere, anytime, is akin to being made to feel like you are merely an annoying mosquito to be smacked into quiet submission for such a transgression as requesting an extra water...well, best to zone out, I have learned.

So upon boarding, I quickly noted that the plane was a circa 1978 Boeing 747 due to the fact that there were still actual ashtrays in the arms of the seats. I noted that the crew seemed much younger and more...animated, I suppose...than most of the mean, hardened biddies on most American flights. I noted that our seats were the very last row, in the middle, at the end of the plane, with no windows. And next to the bathroom. I noted that the smell I had mistakenly identified as an overflowing toilet was actually going to be dinner...

And then I just shut down. Out with the Kindle, in with the headphones, and out with myself.

In another hour or two, the sewage smell was brought forth in form as our supper. Supposedly designed by some star chef who I had never heard of (and I am a foodie), it was your normal offering of shredded and dry beef blobs with some congealed brown gel floating over cardboard masquerading as vegetables with a side of wilted salad. I swear, hospital food is gourmet compared to U.S. airline food these days.

After poking around for a few minutes, I settled on the bread and butter as the most edible offering when coated with the packaged salad dressing.  Then, after drinking the proffered thimble of free wine undoubtedly produced in some dirt farmer's bathtub in Idaho and marketed as "a vintage American varietal," I decided to try to sleep the rest of the way to our refueling stop in Ghana...some 12 hours in the future.

I was awakened by Christine jabbing me in the ribs a short time later and whispering, "They want to give us a drink! A free one!"

Certain that I was dreaming because WHO, WHO??!! gives a free drink to anyone on any American carrier anymore these days??? I pushed her off, muttering, "Yes, Alphonse, I shall see you in the ballroom for the cotillion dance, and please wear your waistcoat and nothing else!"

Then she tried the more direct route and smacked me, hard, on the cheek.

"Jesus, Christine! WHAT?" I asked, finally awake now.

She discreetly pointed upwards and I noted that two of the flight attendants; both young, handsome in an almost beautiful way, and smelling divine, were holding up a drinks menu to us.

"Cocktail?" the one drawled, and then broke into a fit of hilarity and secret shared winking with his flight attendant partner-in-crime.

"Really?" I asked, eyeing the bright pink and very complicated cocktail that he was pointing to on the menu that listed off some liquors that I didn't think legal to be put together.

"Yes, really!" he purred. "Marco and I are bored and we have perfected this cocktail so would you like one?"

I was about to ask more questions, still confused and sure this would cost a fortune, when Christine said, "Yes, we would each like one!"

Ah, the young, so trusting.

But, alas, two fantastically pink and very sweet cocktails appeared before us post haste. And gratis.

Since I don't drink most liquor, I was shocked to find myself enjoying it. It was so sweet, and so....pink...I couldn't taste any alcohol. I finished it with relish, half convinced there was no alcohol in there to begin with, when another turned up in its place seconds later.

By round four, the flight attendants were perched on the arms of our seats and we were all laughing, joking and poking each other after uttering blithely stupid remarks that just seemed so damn hilarious. It was like a big, drunken sleepover party 3,000 miles above the Atlantic Ocean.

They kept remarking that they had to welcome the "newbies" properly and somehow, somewhere, this echoed in a corner of my mind that made me want to ask WHY we were newbies and how come we were getting all these free drinks when no one else was... but I decided to stop questioning it.

Maybe we were just THAT fabulous, I considered, hazily.

I think we passed out somewhere about six hours into the journey. Or at least I did.

The next thing I knew I felt the plane making the slow descent that wakes your stomach up before your head.

Coming rapidly back to my senses, I realized two things right away: I was still slightly drunk and that the plane was banking and coasting at a very strange angle.

I looked over at Christine for a second and realized she was clutching the arms of her seat and was white-faced. Also, an eerie calm pervaded the formally chatty and loud cabin.

And then I had the strong premonition that I was going to die.

Which is kind of odd for me. I can count on one hand the times I truly felt like my dance card was up and only once else was it ever on a plane, despite all those flights.

Another time, of course, was with those child soldiers in Liberia.

How fitting.

But that morning, I felt it wash over me in a wave as the plane started tipping back and forth in the air in an attempt to right itself. I wanted to look at Christine or at least grab her hand but felt tremendous guilt that I was the one who might have put her on a plane to die.

And that was about all the thought space I had before the place tipped forward violently and its front wheels met the runway. Propelled by this opposite-of-normal landing, it immediately catapulted backwards onto its rear wheels before slamming down unceremoniously onto the runway again.

"Americans!" I remember thinking, "These are fucking Americans doing this piloting...this crash landing...they can't even blame this shit on untrained African pilots..."

Then my thoughts were cut off  again as the plane began shimmying to and fro down the remainder of the runway at what seemed to be a much-too-fast speed.

I looked forward to see that entire panels of the inside of the plane had come loose on the second slam-down and passengers were literally holding them aloft over their heads. Luggage threatened to spill into the aisles as other cabins popped open.

A creaking and dragging noise on the outside of the plane portended similiar damage to the exterior.

Still, we slided to and fro for another 90 seconds before coming to an abupt, screeching halt a few feet from the terminal in Ghana.

Right before we did I heard one of our wonderful flight attendants who had gotten us so amazingly drunk ponder, "Jesus, I hope we don't have to bring out the truck this time!"

TRUCK?! TRUCK?!!

Like a fire engine? A truck to break the impact between the plane and the terminal? A hearse?

Who needs a truck to stop a plane?

I tried to look back at them to ask what was going on when I realized I had whiplash or whatever the equivalent is of one's head going backwards and forwards in space way too quickly.

I looked over at Christine, asking if she was OK.

She considered this stoically for a few moments before nodding, "Yeah, guess I am. Not dead, am I?"

Needless to say, our one hour stop-over in Ghana became three as they DUCT-TAPED the interior of the plane back together.

I promise, I am NOT kidding here.

Christine was staring out the window watching what they were doing to the exterior of the plane.

"What's up?" I asked her.

"You don't want to know."

And, she was right. I did not want to know.

And our wonderful flight attendants? They finally made an appearance again just as we were getting ready to take off for Liberia although they were getting off in Ghana....crew change.

"How you doing, lovely?" the one asked me.

Well...other than the fact that I almost just fucking DIED I am fine....

He giggled at me before giving me a perfumed hug and bidding us farewell.

Then I realized what all those drinks were about. What the "newbie" statement was about.

This obviously happened regularly.


We took off for Liberia----in the SAME PLANE---shortly thereafter.

(Part II of this story will explore such fascinating topics as how one can subsist on fish heads and red palm oil in the jungle for a week with no functioning toilets in sight....stay tuned).

Roach Karma: Killing Granddaddy

"What the HELL are you doing?"

That was the shouted inquiry.

A perfectly reasonable one, of course, if shouting is ever reasonable.

It was last Sunday night, Easter, actually, when my boyfriend found me squatting between our toilet and the bathroom wall holding roach carefully wrapped in toilet paper and examining its undercarriage.

"I am going to close my eyes and I am not going to see you holding a...BUG...and looking at it that way. And then I am going to wipe my memory of the whole thing," he told me.

OK, so I am completely weird sometimes and I like to look at animate objects. I am also a huge animal lover and ultimately curious and that shit even extends to the roaches in our house that we had been trying to get rid of for the past three months.

Let me preface this with the fact that we are both anal-retentive clean and neat freaks. Well, not me as much as him but we're pretty much both slightly nuts on not having bugs in the house.

So the arrival of a roach in our very clean house was a bit of a shock. I saw it in the bathrooom one night on a midnight foray and nearly killed myself tripping over my robe to get back to the bedroom,

"We have a roach!" I breathed into his sleeping ear.

And, as Jesus raised Lazarus, the man was on his feet in twenty seconds.

He followed me into the bathroom long enough to see the bug scramble for all it was worth underneath the sink/vanity.

"FUCK!!" he exclaimed.

Every moment of his carefully constructed image of being "the neatest man on the planet" had been shattered; his expression said, "It was all for naught!!!"

I am a little less nuts on this sort of thing having once had a baboon shit on my thigh in Rwanda  and a monkey throw its own vomit at me in Costa Rica.

Plus dozens of other animals have puked, shit or pissed on me in my years as a vet tech in Philly or volunteering at the local Audubon rescue shelter as a child.

I am pretty hard core that way.

I figure it makes up for not having kids.

At least I hope so.

But roaches were too much for Chas, the penaultement "neat freak."

And, to be honest, they are a little too much for me.

Like Chas, I have had it drilled into my head since childhood that roaches = unclean people.

We both couldn't live with that image, even if only between ourselves.

So the next day we repaired to the local Walmart and he armed himself for battle...if there is a chemical or repellant known to mankind that he didn't buy that day, then I do not know it.

He bombed the house, he bugged the house, he took them on, one-by-one.

"I will not, NOT, have roaches!!!" he promised.

I temporarily moved me and the dog out fearing that we would grow two heads or get some exotic form of cancer from all of the chemicals.

When all was said and done, it seemed like we had triumphed. No roaches to be seen anywhere for the next two months.

And then, last Sunday, the roach reappeared. And it was the same roach. The original granddaddy of them all.

How do I know this?

Because when Chas caught me picking up the roach last weekend, it wasn't my first time. I had actually picked him (or her, it's just so hard to know about these things with bugs) up before because I had never seen one that big and I was wondering what freaky anatomy had led to a five inch roach.

This roach, Granddaddy Roach, had odd yellow spots on his undercarriage. As did the one I was holding last weekend.

Mind you, I haven't manhandled a lot of roaches in my time but I am pretty sure they don't usually come with yellow spots on their bellies...or whatever you call the flip side of a roach...

So what I was doing last weekend was merely ascertaining that this was the same roach who had started our population and trying to figure out how he had survived the chemical holocaust that had happened in our home.

"Put. It. Down. Now!" Chas said to me.

"Then I am going to step on it and we're going to be done with this and go back to bed...after you take a shower and wash your hands in bleach," he finished.

Oddly, I couldn't accept that.

Not the shower and bleach thing, of course, I was not intending to go back to bed with...roachy hands. But the killing. The blatant killing.

That I couldn't accept.

Why, when I had stood idly by, and even encouraged, the mass chemical campaign in the house for months beforehand and not now? Not in the simple stepping on and killing the Master Roach?

Because I felt like he deserved to survive. He had beat the odds. He had made it through. He was a fighter, a survivor. And I had held him in my hands. Twice.

I conveyed this all to Chas who looked increasingly more horrified with every argument I put forward to save the roach's life.

"I am calling your mother because this is beyond ridiculous" he said, "I cannot reason with this but I bet she can."

My mother is possibly even more of a neat freak than Chas so him calling her would certainly not be to my advantage.

(My mother, being Italian, has no compunctions about using guilt to get me to do things. I could already hear the conversation: "I always KNEW you were the dirty child of the two of you...and YOU were the one who would end up with roaches in your house...")


No, that couldn't happen.

"Wait! I will put him outside. It's nice outside now and he'll like it better out there," I said.

Looking exasperated, he said, "Just get rid of the damn thing and come back to bed. Shower first."

So I picked the prettiest part of my newly planted gardens and set the roach free, some theme music to "Born Wild" or "Free Willy" playing in my head.

Back inside, I carefully checked under every counter, vanity, and dark space to make sure there were no "relatives" lingering around.

Then I made myself a cup of herbal tea, too restless to go back to bed immediately.

Finally, about two hours later, I got in the shower and proceeded to scrub my hands thoroughly.

Stepping out, reaching for the towel, my foot landed on something hard.

That gave way in an unpleasant crackle and a distinctive SPLAT.

Knowing before I even raised my foot to look at the inevitable, I closed my eyes and sent up a hasty prayer to try to ward off any unpleasant karma.

Then I looked down.

Granddaddy was dead.

And you know how I knew it was Granddaddy by now, of course.

Stepping back into the shower for Round Two with my foot, I felt dreadful. Like really, really bad.

Waking Chas up for the second time that night, I told him the deed was done: Granddaddy was dead.

"Patti, I love you for many reasons and your kindness towards animals is one of them. HOWEVER, I do not want to spend another moment of our relationship talking about roaches or roach karma anymore. Actually, I don't ever want to talk about the ethics of killing roaches again. Is that OK?" he said.

I suppose he is right.

But I still said a second prayer that night.

I prayed that my boyfriend didn't reincarnate as a roach.

Strangers in a Strange Land

As tourist season is now fully upon us here in Washington, DC, I figured I would post something that I wrote a few years ago when I thought I was stuck here and never going to travel again. I have since traveled. But, alas, so have they. 

Strangers in a Strange Land

When it all finally came to an end, over a year ago, and I returned from almost two years of traveling the globe for my job, I had a crisis. I normally had some sort of crisis in between my travels and, especially after trips to particularly exotic locales or extended periods away, I always panicked about returning home. Until that point, my panic was, in part, assuaged by the knowledge that I would soon be leaving again. This time, however, I did not have guarantees, no promises that I would be off on a new adventure soon. That fact, in and of itself, made me neurotic.

As I was grappling with the fact that I was no longer a “foreigner” but once again a “native,” I began to view, with increasing annoyance, those that I consider “strangers in my own land,” specifically: tourists.

I will freely admit that I have no patience, none whatsoever. I think I come by it honestly enough, for watching my mother in action confirms that this gene was certainly missing from at least her side of the DNA pond and my memories of my father are similar.

Case in point:

We’re in Publix, a supermarket chain that predominates the South, and we are in the checkout line. The cashier, clearly afflicted with some organic disorder that has greatly reduced the time-action function of the brain, is slowly turning over the packaged deli ham, trying to find the barcode for scanning the item. Yes, it is obvious that, with such an item, there is only one place it could be and, yes, this has been going on for about ten minutes but, really, what can you do?

So there is this poor woman smiling happily while contemplating the location of a barcode on an essentially two dimensional item without a lot of hiding places but she is happy…she doesn’t know that there are about fifty customers in line waiting for her to find the solution. Nor does she realize who is at the front of the line…the potential new owner of the ham product…my mother.

She is fuming. “It is right there…right there!!” she hisses to me, “What is wrong with this picture??? Is she retarded or something??”

Well, um, yes, mom, she is indeed retarded.

 I try to convey this subtly, while the cashier has begun opening the package to see if maybe, just maybe, the solution might be found on an individual piece of ham…

“Well she shouldn’t be working the goddamn checkout line in the middle of Christmas season,” my mother announces. At the same time, she grabs the ham, slowly being dissembled to her horror on the conveyor belt, and scans the thing herself and unceremoniously plops it in the shopping bag. No one, neither my mother nor the cashier, looks particularly upset. I, however, am mortified.

Don’t get me wrong, my mother is not an unkind person nor is she opposed to having the disabled get a fair shot at the job market. She is actually quite the opposite under most circumstances. What my mother suffers from, and what eventually puts her over the edge, is that she has no patience.

If it comes between getting that ham in the bag or waiting patiently while the woman with Downs syndrome tries to figure out where the barcode is lurking, my mother is going to do it herself. She has no patience, or political correctness, on these occasions.

I am the same with tourists.

Having grown up either in or within close proximity to major East Coast metropolitan centers my entire life, I have admittedly become the very embodiment of all that people that are not from these areas absolutely loathe. Still, when coming back from one of my months-long foreign trips, especially when I knew it was the last one, I clung to the familiar…the “known.” I fell back on old habits and got particularly irritated when I was forced to confront the fact that there are other Americans who do not live this way or, even worse, are more foreign to me than many of the people I met on my travels. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I can understand them, even with their odd accents, but I think that makes it worse, not better. Then I am forced to pay attention.

I must say, all of the stereotypes about my people, us “East Coast Metropolitan dwellers” are true: we are always in a hurry, sometimes rude, never randomly chatty unless we know we’re dealing with one of “our own,” and intensely cliquish. Tell me you’re from Boston, New York, Philadelphia or even Trenton and I am willing to open lines of communication; tell me you’re from Fargo and all bets are off. I am not proud of this fact and I freely admit that it may have become more intense over the past two years of travel but, for all practical purposes, it is true.

Unfortunately, over the past five years, my East Coast base has been Washington, DC, our nation’s fine capital. And, unlike Boston, New York or Philadelphia, it is not large enough to escape from the yearly onslaught of tourists venturing out to see where the decisions that fuel their diesel engines are made or those pretty trees that them there Japanese folks gave us when they spring into their full glory in April. Although I do find the cherry blossoms lovely as well, secretly I am a little ticked off at the Japanese for giving us those damn trees because, for me, it signals only one thing: The Beginning of Tourist Season.

Because DC is a small, compact city and not particularly amenable to drive in (while roundabouts may seem perfectly comprehensible to the Europeans, they scare the shit out of Americans and have no place in our country) if you want to get anywhere fast and with the least amount of mental anguish, one must use the public transportation system. This is where the trouble starts.

I have experienced, in just about every corner of the globe, the rules of using a particular city’s public transportation and I can assure you, there are RULES. In DC these rules are strictly adhered to and, if not heeded, are likely to be the cause of some fairly brutal behavior if not an outright death sentence.

For starters, when getting onto the Metro system, you immediately rush the doors but then patiently move to either side to allow exiting passengers off of the car. Once you are fairly certain that the majority have cleared out, you immediately forge ahead, pushing and elbowing to get the one or two vacated seats. If there are none, you move to the center of the car and glare menacingly at people occupying two seats because of luggage or too many packages and wait, all muscles tense, to spring into the first available seat.

I personally play the “watch the body language” game and try to intuit who might be getting off at the next stop by watching to see if they are gathering packages or subtly shifting in a manner which indicates their imminent departure. Mind you, this does not always work and I have, on a few occasions, jumped into unsuspecting laps or crushed holiday presents but, nevertheless, I persist.

If, however, you are forced to stand, as is normally the case when jammed into the morning rush hour trains, you bear it with dignity and grace, making minimal eye contact with those around you and refraining from screeching when the train comes to an unexpected lurching halt that results in your foot being squashed by someone’s high heel or hot Starbucks coffee being splashed in your face.  There is little to no talking and, except exchanging the occasional “this sucks but what can we do about it?” glance with someone, you keep your eyes on your paper, your book, or the floor. No one is particularly fucking happy about being jammed into a metal box at 8am and being mercilessly tossed about while every other message announced over the PA system tells you that the seemingly innocent forgotten parcel on the seat next to you might well contain an explosive device planted by a terrorist.

“Please take account of all of your belongings and if you notice an unattended item, do not touch it or attempt to move it, report it to your friendly Metro rail employee immediately. Thank you and have a wonderful ride!”

Let’s see…is that my greasy abandoned McDonalds sack on the seat in front of me?

No, I think not.

OK… it’s not, then what are the chances it contains a terrorist’s bio-chemical weapon of mass destruction or some C-4 explosive?

Pretty good, they tell me.

Now…if I could only dislodge myself from this sea of humanity long enough to find a friendly Metro rail employee…

It truly never ceases to confound me.

Regular riders and city natives take none of these things too seriously.

Sure, we’re vigilant, but if the abandoned newspaper menacingly rolled around an empty Doritos bag is going to blow…fuck it, we’re going to die. We accept that. It is one of life’s great risks. We are stoic about these things. Not the tourists, however, never the tourists.

The tourists take these directions seriously, especially those from the Midwest. They’ll be goddamned if their vacation is going to be interrupted by some crazy A-rab bombing the subway.

“Is that your bag?”

Yes, it has my laptop in it, it’s on my lap, it’s mine.

“Are you sure?” “It looks suspicious…”

Most Americans are friendly, even us city dwellers, and tolerate these inquiries as parents would a child.

“That is the stove, junior, if the circles on top are red, don’t touch it.”

It’s the fact that they have to talk to everyone that kills me. Why do they have to talk to everyone??

I am sitting on the Metro a few hours after rush hour busily reading my notes for a meeting when it happens: a tourist meets a local.

Unfortunately, as circumstances would have it, the local is blind and the tourist, well, is equally so.

She’s perky, blond, and possesses one of those accents that scream CORNFIELD while he, dressed conservatively in a grey suit and sunglasses, possesses a white cane and orange-vested dog emblazoned with the logo: Seeing Eyes for the Blind.

For the first few moments I am hopeful that she will be quiet although all my senses are on full alert. She is surveying the scene with the wide-eyed wonder of a child when her gaze falls upon the blind dude with the dog. Then, of course, it happens.

“Is that your dog?” she inquires.

Immediately, I want to scream. The dialogue starts up in my head.

Is that your fucking dog??? Not only am I blind but now I have some goddamn dressed-up dog following me around??

“Um, yes, she is my dog,” he replies, the picture of patience.

She absorbs this. I silently implore her to shut up. But no…

“She sure is pretty, isn’t she?” she responds.

CHRIST!!!!

“That’s what they tell me,” he chuckles good-naturedly.

“No, I mean her coat is all shiny, she looks real healthy, don’t you think?”

Oh please, please shut up. Please shut up, please…

He tilts his head toward the ceiling and nods, then reaches out to stroke the air where the dog’s head is supposed to be. Still, no clue.

She, however, has found her groove.

“I have a dog too, you know” she tells him.

Meanwhile, convinced that this can only get much, much worse, I have begun staring at her intensely trying to make eye contact. It’s the one thing we have going for us that he, most certainly, does not.

“Is that so?” he replies.

I begin miming, hoping she’ll notice me. I am making slashing gestures in the air around my eyes hoping to convey to her that she is talking to a blind man. She takes no notice.

At that moment he chooses to lift his shades and turn in her direction. Then I see it….I am momentarily horrified.

Not only is he blind….he has no fucking eyeballs. None. Just closed lids and empty sockets where eyeballs (maybe?) once used to be. Either way, they are not there now.

I sit back in relief…now that she has seen he has no eyeballs, this ridiculous conversation will end.

“Yup, I have a dog too…her name’s Sally,” she continues.

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!

I start miming in her direction frantically again, trying to point out that the man, the nice man on the subway with the nice dog, HAS NO FUCKING EYEBALLS.

Then I realize that I am hopping around like a goddamn spastic and people are probably wondering if I am either foreign, blind, or retarded, so I will myself to stop.

“She loves to go for runs…Sally does,” she conveys.

Mr. No Eyeballs is nodding at the ceiling again.

“Hey, I bet your girl would like to go for a run too!! Don’t ya think?”

“I sure as hell hope not, walking is about the only speed I can go at these days,” he replies.

Luckily, I am saved. Saved by my stop.

I burst free and try to shake it off. Upon hitting the office I immediately relate the tale to my colleagues.

The office manager, Mike, tries to reason with me.

“Patti, why do you get yourself in such a huff over this shit? They (he is also from the East Coast and uses “they” as liberally as I do to describe our fellow countrymen) can’t help it.”

No eyeballs!!! I protest. NO EYEBALLS!!!

He sighs and pats me on the head in a fashion that conveys: “You have a lot to learn young samurai, a lot to learn.”

I retreat to my office, scolded. Later that night, I call my mother to convey the story.

“Yeah, I know about the Midwesterners,” she sympathizes. “But they are very honest people and I like doing business with them.”

No eyeballs, Mah, NO EYEBALLS!!!!

“I have ones that come to buy property in south Florida and want to know where the basement is. When I tell them it’s too hot to have a basement or more than one floor, they generally accept that fact although they look confused.”

I am intrigued. Why? Why are they confused?

“Because then they want to know, if there is no basement, where the furnace is located.”

I feel better. Who needs to go abroad when there are so many strangers in our own land?