No Golden Fetuses Were Used in the Making of this Non-Travel Post

Fun fact: my favorite travel buddy and I were supposed to be leaving for a long weekend in Singapore.

I’m sure it’s not as nice as the pictures make it out to be.

My travel agent/boyfriend had found a great deal on tickets to Singapore a couple of months ago. He, of course, jumped on it. We were supposed to leave Thursday night and fly back on Tuesday. Just a short little weekend jaunt halfway around the world.

But eventually we came to the decision that it wasn’t a good time or a great idea (especially since I’m still paying for my greatly reduced, but still substantial portion of the Australian-Thailand extravaganza), so we swallowed the cancellation fee and cancelled the tickets.

Koalas do not come free, let me tell you.

It turns out that it was a very good decision, for several reasons. For one thing, we’re ramping up the whole house-hunting thing. And by ramping up, I mean going from zero to intense. XFE does not fool around when he makes a decision. His absolute decisiveness is one of the things I really love about him and stands in stark contrast to my decision paralysis. (Paper or plastic? Can I have both? Red or white wine? What about a rose? Chicken or steak? Ummmm, which do you recommend? — Except for ranch dressing. Then the answer is always, always yes.)

Good thing we’re not house hunting in Singapore. From Bloomberg Businessweek:

Singapore should curb the increasing trend of so-called shoebox apartments because they are “almost inhuman,” CapitaLand Ltd. (CAPL) Chief Executive Officer Liew Mun Leong said.

Shoebox apartments? I love shoes, but I would not want to live in something referred to as a shoebox.

The government last week said it’s concerned that shoebox apartments are mushrooming in the city-state as private home sales surged to a three-year high with record purchases of units that are smaller than 50 square meters (538 square feet).

538 square feet??? That sounds like the efficiency I lived in when I was in college. I wouldn’t call it luxurious, but it’s hardly inhumane.

The island-state’s population growth, scarce land and surging property values have prompted developers to shrink apartment space. Home prices surged to a record at the end of 2011 in a city that’s about half the size of Los Angeles.

So, uh, how much are we talking here?

Developers sold 1,764 shoebox units in the first quarter, or 27 percent of all home sales, the most since the Urban Redevelopment Authority began collating the data in 2007. Apartments that cost less than S$750,000 ($587,000) made up 42 percent of new home sales in the first quarter, up from 25 percent in the previous three months, the data showed.

What the What?? $587,000 American?? Dang! That price is a crime against humanity. We need to get Amnesty International in on this.

The trend of shoebox units may not be unique to the city- state, said Pratik Burman Ray, an analyst at HSBC Holdings Plc in Singapore. Philippine developers have built homes smaller than 20 square meters, while those in Thailand and Indonesia are less than 35 square meters, he said. In Hong Kong, apartments smaller than 500 square feet house two or three people, he said.

Makes house-hunting in Alexandria seem like a freaking bargain.

The cancelled trip to Singapore made me a bit nostalgic about our recent vacations. Especially when I saw this item in the Wall Street Journal:

Australia is living up to its nickname of “the lucky country,” with a new survey marking it as the happiest industrialized nation in the world based on criteria such as jobs, income and health.

Yep, I would definitely agree with that. Just getting to go to Australia made me luckier than catching a drunk leprechaun holding a four leaf clover sitting on a pot of gold.

Having sidestepped the economic malaise gripping much of Europe and with near-full employment owing to a once-in-a-century resources boom, Australia has come out on top ahead of Norway and the U.S. in the annual Better Life Index compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Speaking of lucky, Lady Gaga is in Thailand as part of her world tour and she’s staying at perhaps the nicest hotel I’ve ever stayed at, the St. Regis Bangkok. According to fans on Twitter, she’s staying in the Royal Suite. I seriously can’t imagine it being much nicer than the Caroline Astor suite we stayed in when we were there. But whatever, if she feels like slumming it, that’s her deal.

I wore the exact same thing when we checked in to the St. Regis.

Gaga will be in Singapore June 3, so we would have just missed her. And you know how I love to hang out with my pop singers.

Perhaps the Royal Suite at the St. Regis is decorated with golden fetuses. From Huffington Post:

British citizen Chow Hok Kuen, 28, was arrested in Thailand on Friday after police found six fetal corpses in his luggage, according to the Independent. The bodies, which belonged to fetuses between two and seven months old, had been roasted, and some were covered in gold leaf.

OK, what?? You roast cauliflower. You roast potatoes. Some places even roast chestnuts. You roast a lot of things, but you DO NOT roast fetuses. I don’t care how lucky that might be.

Me, with gold buddhas, in sepia. No golden fetuses though.

Thai police made the discovery after receiving a tip that a black magic services website was offering fetuses for sale, according to the New York Daily News. Roasting fetuses and covering them in gold is part of a black magic ritual called Kuman thong, which means “golden child” in Thai. The preserved bodies are thought to bring good fortune to the owner, according to the International Business Times.

Authorities believe that Chow was planning to smuggle the fetuses to his native Taiwan, where one corpse could sell for up to $200,000 Thai baht, or $6,376, WCVB reports.

Chow faces up to a year in prison on charges of hiding and covering dead bodies, according to CNN.

Investigators say it’s unclear where the fetuses came from, though forensic tests are currently being conducted on the bodies.

I mean, honestly. That’s some really, really weird crap, pardon my Italian.

Which brings me to my last travel update. This came in the mail today:

Here’s the story: We went to Milan as part of a 14-day trip to Northern Italy and Switzerland in March 2011. Milan was our first stop and was also where we got a horrible case of food poisoning from some salami. We were sick (seriously, seriously, disgustingly sick) for 10 days. That’s no exaggeration. 10. Days. Wave after wave of disgusting symptom and discomfort for 10. Whole. Days.

So not only was Milan terribly expensive. Not only did Milan try to poison and kill us. Now Milan wants us to pay a traffic ticket that we think comes out to around $133 dollars.

Look for us on the Interpol Most Wanted list because we are not paying that nonsense.

Milan, I am currently giving you the Italian backhanded brush under the chin.

Tags: Australia, gold fetuses, house hunting, Lady Gaga, Singapore, Thailand

How to Know if You’re a Pretentious Foodie

I’m at a three day work event where I’m sitting right next to my boss, elbow to elbow, in a basically subterranean bunker with practically no cell phone service. So no personal Twitter, no Web surfing for weird blog fodder, not even texting with XFE. This must be what solitary confinement is like. Oh, plus inspirational speaker after motivational speaker.

And, I did not write anything for the blog this past weekend because I was busy not preparing for XFE coming home on Saturday evening. He specifically told me to pick something up for dinner. But I was so paralyzed by my potential to pick the wrong thing that I fell back into my default position: wait until XFE tells me what we should eat. This ineffective dining strategy earned me a well-deserved scolding. However, I did not really detect any element of surprise.

But, I did buy the ingredients for a feast on Sunday night. XFE made homemade pasta with tomatoes, basil, garlic and lobster shrimp, which are, SHOCKINGLY, shrimp that taste just like lobster. I know, right? Crazy! Let’s hear it for science and genetically engineered seafood. There are no pictures because, well, I slurped it down way too fast.

We’ve made this pasta dish before (this picture is from about two years ago), but it had been a while.

We had actually built up quite the appetite on Sunday….we went and looked at our first house. XFE has decided to dip a toe – potentially – into the housing market. This is, of course, fraught with anxiety and trepidation on my part. I’m pretty lazy and hesitant to change. But, we’re a team and I trust XFE. If he says it’s time to look into buying a house, then it’s time.

We were influenced by this handsome devil. He has a website all about the DC housing industry called the Cribline. He’s become our real estate guru. In return, we buy him dinner once in a while.

We had a dinner guest on Sunday (not our real estate guru, unfortunately). The topic turned to whether XFE and I consider ourselves “foodies.” Now, foodie is one of those terms I don’t think you can really self-proclaim. It seems a bit pretentious to say, “Why yes, Sir Grey Poupon, I am interested in the fine masterpieces of the culinary arts.” So we went through a checklist of endeavors that might indicate that one is a foodie.

• If you’ve driven seven hours to the edge of Virginia and Tennessee to eat at a restaurant headed by two young chefs that you read about at an inflight magazine, you might be a foodie.

• And, if you got genuinely upset when you discovered that said young chefs had left that restaurant before you’d had a chance to eat there again, you might be a foodie.
• If you own a Big Green Egg and consider it one of your most prized possessions, you might be a foodie.
• If you’ve roasted a 25-pound suckling pig on your brick patio, you might be a foodie.

• If your boyfriend owns a beginner molecular gastronomy kit, you might be a foodie.
• If you’ve spent an entire day (6.5 hours to be exact) making Rick Bayless’ mole (Project Mole 2009), which required about 26 ingredients gathered from eight different stores and four pages of instructions, you might be a foodie.

• If you won’t buy pasta and only eat homemade pasta, you might be a foodie (and a real snob on top of it.)
• Ditto on barbecue sauce. Actually, anything at all related to barbecue. Double points if you’re best friends with your butcher and ask him not only for fine meat products, but also vacation tips.

Can you hear the angels singing?

• If you, while in the throws of a 10-day bout of food poisoning during a vacation in Northern Italy, insist on honoring your lunch reservation at a three Michelin star restaurant for the 12-course tasting menu, even though the price of said lunch is about the same as a hand woven Turkish rug and you go to the bathroom and throw up after every other course, but still insist on tasting everything, you might be a foodie. And, it goes without saying, you might be insane.

“If I throw up the 3-Michelin star, 12 course luncheon, we don’t have to pay the bill, right?”

• If the majority of your souvenirs from overseas trips are food-related (ie: ceviz walnuts and sahlep from Turkey; Thai curry and dried lime basil from Bangkok; mustard from Paris; smoked paprika from Spain; wine from Australia. And Italy), you might be a foodie.
• If you sweat each time you go near Customs because you’re genuinely concerned not that you will get caught with the food items and have to pay the fine, but instead it will get confiscated and you’ll never get to enjoy the item, you might be a foodie.
• If a chef’s kitchen and a place to store your Big Green Egg and gigantic grill and wine fridge are considered non-negotiable criteria in your house-hunting efforts, you might be a foodie. Or, at least a kitchen with the potential to be turned into XFE’s Stadium Kitchen Headquarters.

So, are we foodies? I don’t know. But we’re definitely crazy. And it tastes so, so good.

Tags: Big Green Egg, Food Porn, house hunting, souvenirs

What I Do When XFE is Away

My caretaker-for-life XFE is out of town for work. He actually travels for work quite a bit. I used to get really annoyed about that. For some reason, I thought he was out, galavanting and having a grand ole time.

But, I’ve travelled. I’ve been in an airport and dealt with long security lines. I’ve been at a hotel check-in counter and been told that my room isn’t ready yet. I’ve rented a car and had to drive around in a town you don’t necessarily know you’re way around. I’ve tried to find breakfast, lunch and dinner in a foreign town.

Did that bitch get more champagne than me?

So, even though he’s traveling for work, and it is the same handful of cities, I no longer think he’s out on some wild bachelor’s weekend.

I also use this time apart to have a little Poe party. Ms. Petunia and I do tons of girly things without some boy about. Toons doesn’t share the couch with me like she normally does and instead she takes over XFE’s chair.

She’s in a cheese coma.

We watch really crappy reality TV that even XFE (who will normally watch anything) would turn his nose up at. Stuff like Teen Mom.

We also eat a lot of cheese and other snacky foods. Like, for dinner. With sparkling wine.

And, we take lots of long, bubble baths. Well, I do. Petunia sits on the toilet and watches.

My bubble baths are a bit less salacious.

While I always enjoy the time apart, it doesn’t take me long to fall into my slovenly lazy ways and within about 24 hours, I start to really miss XFE and the structure he brings to my life. (By structure, I mean how he bosses me around, obviously. Asking me things like, “Did you shower today? Did you feed your cat?” What a nag.)

XFE left on a Wednesday. That night, I went for a very sweaty and humid run, laid in the tub for 100 years before finally dragging myself out and making fajitas with leftover steak.  So far so good: I worked out and managed to feed myself with items currently in the house.

Yep, everyone is fed and well-behaved so far.

Thursday, well….  Instead of working out, I went to DSW and bought three pairs of work shoes. OK, but to be fair, I’ve really started to notice how much my shoe repairs are costing me and well, it just makes sense to just start buying new shoes instead of constantly repairing them. Right?? Plus, I had a $10 coupon.

No edible shoes at DSW, but I feel like Lisa would agree with my logic.

And, instead of coming home and cooking after that little spree, I picked up sushi. When I got home, I watched three episodes of Don’t Be Tardy for the Wedding, which has been on my to-do list for a really long time, so that’s progress.

Andy Cohen, I love you. You too, Kim. Kroy, you’re alright.

And, I stayed up waaaay too late finishing The Book Thief, which is a really good book, but if you have problems sleeping, like I do, you really shouldn’t stay up late doing anything. You should go to bed and try to snatch as much sleep as you can before you wake up at 3:30 am and can’t get back to sleep again until 6 am, about 20 minutes before the alarm goes off. Which is precisely what happened this morning. While Petunia was snoring away right next to me.

OK, so Thursday was a bit of a mess.

Friday went slightly better. I did go for a mosquito-infested run along the waterfront. Which meant I could spend the evening drinking this fine swill while watching Friday night HGTV programming.

Why yes, that is an OK magazine open next to the sparkling moscato.

There’s a show on HGTV that is all about organizing celebrity and million-dollar closets. I have a total closet fetish. I’m obsessed with closet organizing. Ob. Sessed. I love organized things and I love clothes. The Container Store is my nirvana. So finding this show is major. I’ve got to check and see if it’s available On Demand.

Those Housewives have the best closets.

Oh, and dinner was some very fine cuisine of a lean variety. That would be a Lean Cuisine, for those of you with less sophisticated palates than my own.

Let me tell you, it’s a wild Friday night without XFE around. Good thing he’s back tomorrow night. That gives me only about 8 more hours of single girl debauchery.  Crap, that reminds me, I’ve got to some DSW bags to dispose of/hide.

Tags: closets, Real Housewives of Whatever, sparkling wine, XFE

Reality TV Time: I Cannot Tear My Eye-Nipples Away from My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding

Sometimes I think that Britain does things better. It’s the home of Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood. All my favorite 80s and 90s bands were British. The Daily Mail really is the best newspaper in the world, hands down. And they really know how to do the whole majestic pageantry thing. They’ve got a princess for crying out loud!

I died when I saw her in this Jenny Packham dress this week. The color! The lace! The tiny bit of waist-bling!

Then, I watch a show like My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding, and well, my patriotism is restored.

Listen up Britain: Nobody does trashy like America. Y’all shouldn’t even try. You should just take your regular ol’ Irish travellers and go home already.

MBFAGW is the American spin-off of the British show, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, which I enjoyed very much when it aired on TLC last year.

We stumbled upon MBFAGW and watched the first episode, which was fine and good. But then, last night we watched the second episode on our DVR and holy trailer park, it was amazing.

In episode 2, we meet 14-year-old Priscilla, a gorgeous and mighty mature-looking young gypsy girl in Douglasville, Georgia who is on the hunt for a husband so she won’t end up an old maid by 18. Even better, we meet Priscilla’s father, Pat Baby, who is throwing his daughter the world’s best Halloween party so she can meet her future husband.

Priscilla tells the camera how she really wants to get married and stay home to take care of a husband. She tells us this while she cleans these enormous, gaudy porcelain figurines. These things look like they might have been designed for Versaille. But they’re in a trailer. My co-TV-commentator XFE cracked, “Taking care of a husband? More like taking care of a trailer full of knick knacks.”

Yes, I had to take pictures of my TV. Because otherwise, who would believe me?

Pat Baby, we learn, is a paver, which the narrator tells us is a skill passed down through generations. This actually involves spraying asphalt over gravel. Not really seeing the whole artisan aspect to this endeavor, but ok. Pat Baby, by the way, LOVES his job. He’d really rather not be doing anything else.

Priscilla orders her dress from the Dressmaker to the Gypsy Stars in Boston. She talks about how she wants to be a “human light bulb” and proclaims her love for “Skurotsky” crystals. And pink. Lots of shades of pink. The dressmaker doesn’t let Priscilla and Pat Baby down. When she sees her dress, Priscilla proclaims, “I want to kiss it.” Pat Baby, meanwhile, exclaims, “It makes me wish I was a cross dresser.” Then, they take the dress out for a walk. On the streets of Boston. And along the River Charles.

We also get a glimpse of Priscilla’s “dance outfit,” which Pat Baby assures us is “risqué, but tasteful….highly tasteful.” When Priscilla’s mother Lou Ann sees the outfit later in the show, she exclaims that the slutty outfit, “brings out the pureness of her soul inside and out.” Pat Baby also expresses interest in trying on the rhinestone covered, heart-cutout, high-heeled boots. Man, these gypsy men are quite comfortable with their masculinity.

Quick reminder: This girl is 14.

When they return to Georgia, it appears that Pat Baby’s sister has died. And, it’s a suspected murder. And, that’s it. That’s all we ever hear about that. Pat Baby, while holding a Michelob Light, sobs at his sister’s hay-covered grave (why hay?) at a cemetery that has, I’m not kidding, a pay-day-loan billboard right outside the entrance. Pat Baby vows to throw the best Halloween party ever in dedication to his sister. Oh, by the way, our Gypsy Joe Dirt already has a brand new, memorial tattoo of his sister’s name on his forearm.

So that right there is a pay-day-loan billboard advertisement right outside the cemetery.

Speaking of tattoos, it’s time for Pat Baby to get his Halloween costume together. He’s going as a swashbuckling pirate, so, of course, he needs another tattoo. When Priscilla questions the logic of getting a permanent tattoo for a temporary event, Pat Baby says, “Of course I want to do this! It makes a statement!” It does, indeed. And that statement is that you are kray-kray.

According to Pat Baby, the liquor store, not Disneyland, is the happiest place on earth.

Pat Baby also prepares for the party by going to his “favorite place in the world, the liquor store” to buy a few cases of vodka, rum and some beer.

Meanwhile, Priscilla’s mother is, of course, having a hard time locking down a party venue. Maybe because she keeps telling everyone how rowdy things are likely to get and how untrustworthy her people are. Might want to keep that on the down low, Lou Ann. She lets us know that her crowd has been banned from a few funeral homes.

The party goes off very well. Priscilla is dazzling and her dress is the envy of all the other gypsy girls and their mothers. Her makeup is, suitably over-the-top. She focuses pretty heavily on the eye makeup, because “Somebody told me the eyes are the nipples of the face.” Yep. Eyes. Nipples on your face. And they need to be made up.

Priscilla has vayjazzled her eye nipples.

I literally do not have the words. Just think about that. So, if your eyes are the nipples of your face, what does that make one’s mouth? NEVERMIND. I take that back.

Anyway, it’s a successful party, in part because Priscilla also meets a very good-looking, nice-smelling boy (those were her criteria for a husband) so hopefully we’ll see the actual wedding later this season.  And more eye-nipple makeup.

“I believe nipples are the windows to your soul.”

Tags: Eye-Nipples, Gypsies, Reality TV, white trash weddings

Weekend in Pictures

Very good weekend. We were waaaay social. Like we actually talked to other people. And hung out with them! I’m sure they’ll never call us again.

We actually went out Friday night for dinner, Saturday afternoon for drinks and cornhole, and Sunday we went to a vineyard for the afternoon, just the two of us. We also battled squirrels and planted our THIRD tomato plant of the season. At this rate, we’ll have tomatoes by August. And, we now have the trashiest, most metally front yard ever.

Great French bistro, amazing foie gras with figs.

Desert wine. Why not?

Our roses.

Cornhole at the Rock n Roll Hotel. Man, I suck at that game. I think the score was like 102 to 16

Hefweizzen at the wonderfully named Star of Shamrock (Jewish – Irish place).

Tomahawk steak for dinner (brontosaurus size)

Since it was a large 2-pounder, we could cook it nice and slow and get a really good crust on it. Probably the best steak ever.

Winery humor. Bought a couple of bottles of white, including a bottle we sat on the winery patio and enjoyed. The weather was PERFECT.

So, we’re still having problems with tomato vandalism. We’re sure it’s squirrels. I wanted to give up, but XFE is personally peeved, so this is how we’re dealing with it. We planted some more items today and then created these metal thunderdomes. Bring it, stupid squirrels.

Tags: Awkwardness, cornhole, plant vandalism, steak, Wineries

I Guess That ‘Here Comes the Bride’ is a Pretty Catchy Jam

Poor Reese Witherspoon. Parents are, indeed, a neverending embarrassment.

According to several media reports, Reese Witherspoon’s dad got married back in January. But before you pull out the congratulatory champagne, keep in mind: he wasn’t divorced from Reese’s mother. The Tennessean had the story first on Thursday:

The Hollywood star’s mother, Mary Elizabeth Witherspoon, who is known as Betty, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against her husband, John Draper Witherspoon, seeking to have his new marriage to Tricianne Taylor annulled. The lawsuit accuses the two of bigamy….In her lawsuit, Betty Witherspoon said she loves her husband and does not want a divorce.

OMG, Mad Men alert! Her mother’s name is Betty?? And her father’s middle name is Draper?? And there’s some domestic shadiness surrounding some lies involving multiple wives and different lives?? Total Mad Men moment.

Wonder if he’s thinking about getting hitched?

John Draper Witherspoon played the bumbling idiot husband card when ol’ Betty confronted him:

“When I confronted my husband, he said he didn’t know who Tricianne Taylor was and that he did not remember getting married,” she said in the affidavit.

That’s right! Deny, deny, deny. “Hmmmm, let’s see. I remember waking up that morning, and I remember having eggs for breakfast, but I do not remember getting married.” Not that it didn’t happen, mind you — just that he didn’t remember it. But, records show he did file for the damn marriage license, according to the reports.

Oops. There’s a picture.

Also, I must admit, I’m very intrigued by this little tidbit.

Reese Witherspoon’s parents have been married for 42 years, but her father’s drinking and hoarding problems prompted the couple to move to separate houses in 1996, but they never divorced, according to the lawsuit.

What’s really interesting about this is that the Tennessean did not mention that Betty also highlighted his infidelity as an issue, but several other media reports did.

Since John Draper Witherspoon has a successful daughter, his hoarding was of a much higher caliber than the mountains of Wal-Mart clothes and garage sale appliances you’d normally see on A&E’s Hoarders.

“He owns at least five motorcycles, five boats and recently bought a black Cadillac.”

Anyway, I can pretty easily see how something like bigamy happens. I’m almost positive that my mother, who’s been married four times, wasn’t technically or legally divorced from all of her husbands before she married the next one.

The only one I’m positive she went through the motions of getting divorced from was the first one. Husbands 2, 3, and 4 are a bit sketchier. And actually, come to think of it – I’m pretty sure she IS still married to number 4, who split the scene (oh, I was around 18 at the time, so that’d be about) 22 years ago.

If memory serves me right, I think she tried to claim that one of them abandoned her or must’ve died or something and therefore, she didn’t need to go through the legal process of getting divorced. By her logic, you could just put an “abandoned” ad in the Penny Saver and go ahead and set the wedding date for the next one.

I think she thinks it’s like common law marriage where in some states (not Virginia, thankfully for XFE and me), if you live together long enough, you’re considered married. By her accounting, if you DON’T live together long enough, welp, you’re divorced.

Don’t worry, Reese. We’ve all got crazy kin.

Tags: bigamy, Reese Witherspoon, White Sheep Syndrome, White Trash Roots

Why I’ll Never Be a Forehead Model

*Before you read this (and, you really should) , go here and vote for Petunia Potpie. She’s on the second to last page, so you actually have to scroll past all the other cute pets and vote for mine. Thanks.

Sometimes it happens in meetings. Or at the nail salon while I’m getting a pedicure. Mostly it happens on the metro.

I’ll be looking down, writing on my notepad or reading a book or magazine, and all of a sudden I’ll feel it.

(Get your minds out of the gutter).

I feel someone looking at me. Staring intently at my forehead. When I look up, they usually have the good grace to look away, only to be caught again a few seconds later. It’s like they’re trying to figure something out, but aren’t quite sure….

I feel you, Maxwell. I feel you.

This morning, it happened at the dentist’s office (yes, again I was at the dentist’s office where I received the wonderful news that I have to get a gum graft for my receding gumline. Oh joy).

Only, since my dentist has the bedside manner of Frankenstein, instead of politely looking away, he just pointed and came right out and asked, “Did something happen to you there?”

I don’t even need to look to see where he’s pointing.

He’s pointing at my scar on my forehead. Who can blame him? It’s certainly one of the most, um, distinguishing features on my face.

I actually have two scars on my forehead. The first runs right along my hairline. It’s very white and deep like a chalky crevice right before my curls start up.

That one was acquired when I was very young, I think around 8 years old, but honestly, I couldn’t say for sure. My nomadic gypsy childhood coupled with my mother’s propensity to lying makes my personal historical timeline a jumble of real and imagined memories. (Did that really happen or is that something mom just used to tell people to entertain them/garner sympathy/get something out of them?)

Regardless, I think I remember what happened. I think it was winter. I think we were living in Arkansas or maybe it was Missouri. I think my mom was out with whatever boyfriend she had at the time, perhaps getting or cutting down a live Christmas tree. (This is how my childhood memories work. Everything is just out of reach.)

I do know that I was doing — I was performing (what we called) pinwheels on the railing of a below-ground storm cellar. The railing was above ground (obviously) and I had hooked my leg over it, threaded my arms under it and clasped my ankle. Then I twirled myself over again and again, kicking my free leg out behind me to build up some really good velocity. I was a school yard, monkey bars, pinwheel expert and I was showing off for some other kids.

I don’t remember how many times I got over the bar or if I even made it over that first time, but my head hit the concrete base attaching the railing to the storm cellar. I was, to say the least, quite woozy, but incredibly calm. Until the other kids started pointing out that I was bleeding. And I looked down in the snow and saw blood.

I have other vague memories – a terribly young babysitter wrapping my head in a quilt and waiting for some adults to get back and take us to the hospital (remember, there were not cell phones back then.)

I don’t know how many stitches I had, but I do remember the rather rakish bandage headband I was rocking when I got home later that day, where I proceeded to jump up and down on the couch (this was not what the doctor ordered) singing “Ten little monkeys jumping on the bed. On fell off and broke his head. Mamma called the doctor and the doctor said: No more monkeys jumping on the bed.” (Repeat at least 9 more times or until you get yelled at).

My more recent head decoration occurred not at the hands of a male stripper (as you might rightly imagine if you read this blog regularly), but while on vacation in New Orleans with friends.

We were staying at the W in the French Quarter, a lovely hotel with gorgeous bathrooms with very large glass showers covered in beautiful dark gray slate. Slate, let me tell you, is a very, very unforgiving surface.

So beautiful, so dangerous.

I slipped. It’s as simple and unexplainable and befuddling as that. One minute I was upright, doing normal bathroom beautification things, and then I was on my hands and knees holding my head.

Every time I think of the wet thud sound my head made against the slate, I get a metallic taste in my mouth. For several weeks afterward, I would jerk awake whenever I had that falling feeling you get when you fall asleep.

Initially, I had the same peaceful woozy feeling as the first time. And once again, I saw the blood, this time against wet black slate instead of stark white snow. Hmmm, not just a bump on the head and two ibuprofen then?

We made a frantic trip to the Tulane University emergency room, (that was an interesting car ride during which I tried to reassure and joke around with an understandably distraught XFE and our nervous hotel-supplied driver.)

The emergency room was surprisingly not busy at 7 am on a weekend morning. I would have expected there to be a lot of drunk, injured people so early in the morning, particularly in New Orleans, but no. Just us. Which provided ample opportunity for every person on duty to stop by and see the girl with the gnarly gash on her head. The reaction was always the same. I would remove the washcloth from my head, and there would be an “OHHHH!” It was fun the first few times, but the novelty eventually wore off.

I think I got seven or eight stitches this time. Despite XFE’s reservations, I waived my right to wait around a couple of hours for a plastic surgeon and opted for the on-duty doctor to stitch me up. I kept up the merry banter, trying to put everyone at ease and convince them all that I would be just fine. I was, after all, old hat at head injuries by this point.

I did not get a jaunty headband this time. I also did not jump on any beds. But XFE did take me on a fairly substantial shopping spree to make me feel better, complete with a splitting headache, a massive goose-egg and huge black stitches. The shopgirls were very kind, if horrified. It was a precursor of things to come.

The stitches stayed in for about a week, and you couldn’t really cover them since the injury was up near my hairline (again – only diagonal this time instead of horizontal – in fact the two scars almost touch). Bandages wouldn’t adhere. So there I was, with stitches just exposed. Made for some interesting times at work and on the metro. I felt pretty much like a monster.

Honestly, none of this is cute. The pout, the bags under the eyes, the airport bathroom stall. Oh, or the stitches.

Two months after the incident, we were visiting XFE’s family for Christmas. His mother tried to be reassuring, saying that the scar was hardly noticeable. His father, to my eternal mirth, shouted out, “What do you mean? It’s huge! It’s right there on her forehead.”

A year-and-a-half later, my scar is fairly faint, but I wouldn’t say it’s unnoticeable. The emergency room doctor this time did a much better job than the first time. There’s definitely less of an indent.Plus, I’m a quick healer, a skill that came in very handy when I was young.

I think when most people see my scar they think it’s a shadow from my hair or perhaps even a makeup line. Some sort of trick of the eye. I bet they wonder why they hadn’t noticed it before.

Except for my dentist, who’s been seeing me every three-to-four months for the past five years. He didn’t mistake it for anything other than what it is – a scar. Something with a story. A story he wanted to hear.

Maybe I should point out the other, older one and ask him if he knows what a pinwheel is.

You’re looking at my scar, aren’t you? I can tell.

Hey, did you vote for Petunia Potpie? Go here and vote for Petunia Potpie. She’s on the second to last page. And she has no (visible) scars. (I can’t say she hasn’t been emotionally scarred by living with us).

Tags: FrankenPoe, head injuries, New Orleans, travel-related injuries