Dog Vomit & Vibrators

So I attended the BlogHer ’12 conference in New York City last week. I decided to go at the last minute and could attend only Saturday. The hotel was about four blocks from where I work, so it didn’t really change my commute. Just had me getting up godawful early on a day that I normally don’t have to.

Somewhere around 4:30am I awoke to the unmistakable sound of a dog throwing up very near me. I cracked an eyelid, saw Jack hurling away on top of the covers, stumbled out for paper towels, cleaned it up and went back to sleep for forty-five minutes. Then I hit snooze for- I don’t know, a while, until I was coherent enough to remember I had to get up. And then stepped out of bed right into a bonus pile of dog vomit Jack had thoughtfully left for me as a surprise.

I went for the shower.

I got to the train station in time to catch the train that I had checked on three times before I left, but- as hard as this may be to believe- New Jersey Transit provided erroneous information and that train didn’t exist. Killing forty-five minutes at Seacaucus Junction isn’t nearly as sexy as it sounds. And believe me, I know exactly how unsexy it sounds.

There was a brief shining moment during a text exchange with Jules from GoJulesGo where we thought that we might end up on the same train as it came through, but alas, it was not to be.

Speaking of Jules, she’s pretty and funny and likes to hand out moustaches to people. Click here to see me in a moustache. With sunglasses.

Do you want to know, or want other people to know, How Not to be an Asshole in New York City?

drinks — Our afternoon. The Perrier is mine. None of these people drank as much as I expected them to.

Go click on that link. Do it, or you’re an asshole. I met Jen, the author of that post, twice for about thirty seconds and loved her right away. I wish they handed this post out at the airport with the pamphlet about the taxi fares. I wish I wrote it.

I spent slightly more time with Johi, enough to know that I covet her boots and I want to be her when I grow up. Although that implies that Johi is grown up, which she totally isn’t. I mean, she’s an adult and all, but she’s not, like, boring. She probably pays her bills and stuff and doesn’t let wolves babysit her children. Or Ted Nugent. Ted babysitting her children, not wolves babysitting Ted.

Though she might play her kids a little Wango Tango every now and then, I mean I do. Doesn’t everybody?

Anyway. Johi freakin’ met The Pioneer Woman! She almost died getting into the city. Johi, that is, not The Pioneer Woman, whom I cannot speak for and didn’t meet. Twice, if you count the cab ride out of the airport, which I totally do. Twice Johi almost dying, not twice me not meeting The Pioneer Woman. *sigh* I’m not doing well kicking coffee this time around. Go read Johi’s blog because she’s freaking cooler than The Pioneer Woman. Do You Remember That Time I Almost Died?

OH MAN!!! I ALMOST FORGOT ABOUT THE CAKE!!

What would be better than a cool policeman cake for a six-year-old’s birthday party? An Axe Cop cake, that’s what. Yeah, with severed bad guy heads and comic panels. Leigh Henderson’s edible art blog: Axe Cop Cake. If you don’t click on the link, I’m quite sure you’re breaking a law somewhere and you’ll have to deal with Axe Cop on your own, in a dark alley, when you least expect it.

I met Thoughtsy from Thoughts Appear. She hauled ass on a train from a long way away to get there for just Saturday. She had candy-infused vodka and if I could have done it without being creepy, I would have cut her arms off and sewed them on to my body because they’re so buff. Thoughtsy, don’t fret; I totally would give you my arms in exchange. I wouldn’t leave you armless. She recently moved in to a house full of boys and is learning a thing or two, like about The Pee Splash Zone.

Misty from Misty’s Laws was a joy. Completely anonymous on her blog, she’s witty and snarky without being a jerk. How the hell does she do that? I loved her. I loved her necklace.

I loved that she showed us where all the good swag was at the Expo, like the free vibrators. Misty’s nickname is Ninja Snap. She does a Weekly Whacked series on her blog with pictures of the badly dressed of Baltimore (or wherever she happens to be that week). She almost never, ever gets caught snapping. I’m linking to this post because it includes the Squirrel Car, and a unicycle.

What?

Why, yes, I did mention vibrators. Even if you live under a rock like me, you’re probably aware that Trojan (the condom folks) have come out with a line of vibrators. I think you can buy these in the drug store? Thanks to the best twelve bucks my husband ever spent, I don’t spend any time in the condom aisle anymore. Anyway, Trojan had a booth in the secret room of the Expo where they were displaying their line, so to speak. Those of us that got there on Saturday were lucky to get the last ones.

The representative (male) was heard to remark “Yeah, we brought like, four hundred of these, I can’t believe they went so fast!”

Really. At a conference of close to 5,000 largely female bloggers. I’m shocked, too.

So I did what anyone else would do and took my vibrator to work that night.

I wasn’t expecting it to be a community effort, but it was remarkably difficult to get into the packaging, and then figure out where the (included! Thank you, Trojan) battery went. Luckily help, and an instruction manual, were available.

Scags — Follow this guy on Twitter. @Dominic1110

What you can’t see in the picture are the six other people in the office shouting instructions to us. We ladies were a little suspicious of the 1-AA battery design, but after loading it up and testing it on our temples to relieve headaches we figured it probably would do the job after all.

I met some other excellent people, like Amy from Adventures in Babysitting Men; Rachael from The Variegated Life who was wearing her very well-behaved baby; Jill Vaughn at Terra Savvy- Your Resource For Living Well; Dominique at Mixed Threads Blog– Living, loving and eating well- all in the heart of Chicago; Robin from Sunbonnet Smart– Depression Skills for Recession Setbacks, and the beautiful Jenny Gill who wrote this really excellent post called The One About Breastfeeding.

And that was One & Done Sunday, with extras. Happy Sunday.

Threats

We have a time-honored tradition in my house of going to great lengths to keep treats to ourselves.

It goes with the territory in a family of this size. Some boxes of goodies don’t have enough for everyone to get even one.

Often we hide things we like, in the pantry, in the fridge, in the freezer. We hope they won’t be found; we hope we won’t hide them so well we forget about them.

Sometimes we hide them in our rooms. Usually the dogs find the treats then. It’s a real bummer when your dog manages to climb to the top of your desk, smash one of two wedding china tea cups that you own, and pulls your purse down from the highest shelf only to dump it upside down and root out your Godiva stash. Bummer for you and the dog. And then you again, after the vet bill and the carpet cleaning and the sad, sad fact that you are, once more, out of chocolate.

Marking treats as one’s own by licking them and posting a warning regarding said licking happens in my house. That’s usually pretty effective at keeping the poachers at bay.

Lately, they’re resorting to threats.

It’s a total set-up. Leaving your fund raiser cupcakes on the counter where everyone can see them, with a very clearly written, expressly detailed threat on the box.

Simple. Clear. To the point. Of dubious plausibility.

But everybody is afraid to risk it.

They think, Will she know if I just lick the frosting? Does she really have them counted? Would she really, really really cut my hair off in my sleep? Well, if she did, she’d get in trouble! Except my hair would still be cut off.

They think, No, she wouldn’t follow through. Would she?

They wonder, Is a cupcake really worth it? Do I feel lucky?

One member of the family does.

Score one for Dad.

In the Neighborhood

I wrote this post back in February when I was in production for Superstar. I didn’t finish writing it back then; finding peace in ambiguity wasn’t high on my skills list in the middle of tech. But it’s been on my mind lately because I keep passing the intersection where this happened.

New York has different vibes in different neighborhoods, and those vibes are time-of-day dependent. I work in midtown, which is packed full of office people during the day and tourists at night. I’m rarely there past 11pm. This week the show is putting me up at a hotel because we have a short turnaround during tech rehearsals. Last night I walked out after midnight into a very different vibe in the neighborhood. One that I can’t quite shake.

I was walking to my hotel and came upon two young guys with skateboards. I watched them move very slowly out into the street; they were looking intently at something in the road. I followed their gaze and saw a man lying in the bike lane, unconscious, next to a taxi, liquid spilling out on the ground away from him.

I asked one of them, “Did he get hit or is he drunk?”

(In case you haven’t been here, you totally talk to strangers in New York. It’s just what you do.)

“I dunno,” the young guy said. He looked really worried. The cabbie was standing over the unconscious man. His cell phone was in his hand, but he didn’t seem to be calling anyone.

“Has he called 911?”

“I doubt it,” the guy said. We were two blocks from a police station and about an avenue over from a hospital.

I moved closer. Other people, take-charge type people, suddenly appeared. A woman picked up the unconscious man’s cell phone from the ground and started looking for a contact that said home. A man asked the cabbie what happened as he pulled his own Blackberry out and dialed 911. The cabbie said the man hailed him and he hit him while he was stopping.

I saw that the liquid spilling out on the ground wasn’t urine as I had assumed, but Snapple. A broken Snapple bottle peeking out of a plastic Duane Reade bag.

An old man came up next to me and said, “Is he a doctor?” referring to the take-charge man on the phone. “I think he’s a doctor,” he said.

It was pretty to think so. Comforting enough for me that I decided to walk away though I didn’t feel good about it. But I wasn’t going to add much to the scene. The take-charge type people were there and I had half a brain cell left and I needed it to find my hotel.

The old man said to me, “New York. Always something happens here. You be careful,” and he smiled at me and we went off different directions.

That Richard Thompson song Did She Jump Or Was She Pushed was running through my head and I was wondering if the unconscious man was going to be okay when another voice interrupted me.

“Hey, you don’t know where the Hudson Hotel is, do you?”

A friendly guy in a suit. The only kind of strangers in New York I don’t usually talk to. Especially when we’re walking the same direction and that’s my fricking hotel that he’s asking directions to.

“Um, yeah, it’s just up here another street and then almost to the next avenue. You go left,” I said, and then I slowed my pace, hoping he’d pass me by.

“The weather said it’s supposed to be sixty-seven degrees tomorrow,” he said, matching my pace.

Crap.

I made some small talk back over my shoulder as I changed tactics and sped ahead. I hoped he’d lose sight of me. I had the extra assurance of knowing that there is no name on the outside of the Hudson Hotel. One of those swanky New York things that had always annoyed me up until this moment. You go in an unmarked entrance and up an escalator to get to the lobby.

CC was working early mornings and should have been sleeping at this time, but I hadn’t talked to him all day and the events of the evening had me raw and edgy. I hit speed dial 2 on my phone and it rang and rang and rang. I got his voice mail. I hung up and resisted the impulse to look over my shoulder to see if the suit was still right behind me. I tried to pick out his footsteps. Tried to judge how close he was. I was all twitchy.

And here’s why I love my husband. He called me back all sleepy even though he had to get up in like three hours and when I said Hey I just saw a guy that had been hit by a cab he stayed on the phone with me til I got to my room. Because he gets it. He knows from experience how messed up your head can get during production. He also knows the neighborhoods, how they change at different hours. How at some point in your city life you will probably walk away from someone on the street who may or may not be dying because help is on the way, and you are not it.

And because I get it- how when you’re the spouse at home while your other is away in production, you worry- I didn’t mention the suit. I stayed on the phone with CC not talking much, me listening to him try to stay awake, him listening to me trying to get to my room.

Before I hit the elevator I allowed myself a shot across the lobby and saw that the suit wasn’t there. Me, in the clear. There never was anything to see here. All in my overextended imagination.

Imagine that.

In my room, I said goodbye to my husband and took off my work boots. I cracked the window above my bed and let the sounds of the city spill in across the windowsill, down the wall and onto the pillows.

The words of the old man came back to me: New York. Always something happens here. You be careful.