How did they know?

I got this little gem in the mail the other day. Yes, it’s on my fridge but only because I was saving it for you. It was my first piece of junk mail in Iowa City which is doubly disturbing. I must be in the librarian-spinster demographic now, targeted for my closet baby obsession which will eventually be manifested in a creepy collection of dolls or cats that I talk to.

They don’t even pretend like you’re going to keep her in the box. “Tiny Miracle Emmy has every feature of a So Truly Real (that’s a registered trademark) baby doll. From her Real Touch (also trademarked) vinyl skin (our exclusive formula) to her softly curled, micro-rooted hair, wispy eyelashes, and tiny, hand-painted fingernails, “Emmy” is so life-like! When you hold her and cuddle her, she feels almost real.”

Pure Gold.

I went to a lovely wedding 2 weeks ago and I managed to both bring my camera and take pictures. I got a few dark, badly-framed pictures of the bride and groom and the cake and all that. And then everyone started to get a little sweaty from dancing and red-faced from drinking and I know I took some first-rate drink pics. At some point I realized my camera didn’t have a strap anymore and that totally blew my mind.

As I was leaving I spotted a camera on a table that looked just like mine (with a strap!) just as some lady reached for it. And of course it was my camera and we traded back so that she had my pictures (and zero battery life) and I had hers. She said she had to get her pictures back because her parents had been fighting and she took a bunch of them dancing together and they were pure gold and might help nudge them back together. We shared email addresses and after specifying that hers was yahoo.ca, not yahoo.com, she rolled her eyes and said, “Get this. My husband is French Canadian.” And Haskell said, “Oh, I’m so sorry,” because that seemed appropriate and she said, “We’re working on it,” like he was potty-training or something.

Here, the estranged husband and wife find their spark.

Oh no! He tried to grab her ass. He blew it!

 

In which rambling takes a gronk.*

So, I’m at the Iowa Public Library. It’s where I hang out. The floors are shiny. The wireless is free and, unlike home, totally functional, the librarians have my back during tornadoes, and they have a liberal stance on snacks by library standards. I specifically asked them about their snack policy when I signed up for my card because I don’t like to break rules. There is a vending machine but it’s in its own room with little tables and a closed door which seems to say your cheeto fingers must not leave this room. But it turns that it’s okay to snack anywhere “as long as you don’t make a mess.” They don’t even mind the crunching. Just wipe your hands on your pants before you turn the page.

Encouraged, I took a snack break. I was going for Diet Dr. Pepper (DDP), my drink these days – it’s delicious with popcorn! Really washes down the butter! They don’t carry DDP in the vending machine room but I was able to choose between Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi. From the same machine. It wanted to know WHOSE TEAM R U ON? It was not easy to decide because even though just weeks ago I discovered Diet Pepsi can be delicious after years of Pepsi-bashing, I haven’t finishing mapping out the hierarchy of refreshment, yet.

I know Diet Coke in a can trumps Diet Pepsi in a can, while Diet Pepsi trumps Diet Coke as a fountain beverage in a paper cup. But this machine had bottles and I have no idea which is better in a bottle since I think bottles are only good for Mountain Dew and Sprite, but I wanted a brown soda so I decided to give Diet Pepsi a chance. It’s not bad. I’m drinking it now. I’m predicting that it’s better than Diet Coke in a bottle because that’s so worthless, but I am etching this in my mind so that I can do a comparison tomorrow. Of course DDP trumps everything. This is scientific method at its best.

*gronk – the last in a series of wrong turns. I was going to title this, “in which rambling takes a turn for the worse” as a way of bracing you for the worthlessness of this post, but I decided to save it with this $40 vocabulary word courtesy of Whitney.

A Twister!

There have been two tornado warnings in the two weeks since I’ve moved here. There was one last week that I never heard about and I immediately had a nightmare about that. I dreamed my neighbors were banging on my house to try to warn me to seek shelter, and when I woke up in a sweat, they really were banging on the house, but just for fun. Also retching in the bushes. They’re in a band!

When I was at the library yesterday the tornado sirens went off twice and the librarians escorted us into the basement. I was alarmed when they announced that a “wall cloud” had formed on the west side of the city, but no one else seemed concerned, and even the librarians seemed annoyed by the safety protocol. If I’m outside when the sirens go off, am I supposed to knock on the nearest door and plead for shelter? Jump in a ditch and cower? Or just roll my eyes like everyone else and hustle home?

The land of funny hats.

I went to Switzerland a few weeks ago for no good reason with Kate and Michelle. It’s a green country. We rode the train. We ate bread and cheese and drank wine on the streets.

This is how we rolled.

It’s hard to teeter-totter with Michelle. She just stays up. Overall, I was most blown away by the playground equipment in this country. There were plenty of ways for kids to strangle or mangle themselves. Good clean fun. A+

Homeboys are persecuted there. They seek refuge in the U.S.A.

We had a hard time finding this particular attraction in Basel, but Kate would not rest until we did. The king up there on the wall is sticking his tongue out at loathsome peasants of this town. I guess they had to put it up high so the peasants couldn’t pull it down with their grubby fingers. That’ll learn ’em.

We hiked up Harder Kulm to that tiny red-roofed building and they served us beer and ice cream.

The view from the top of Harder Kulm: the willage of Interlaken.

I heard Mt. Pilatus is haunted by Pontius Pilate because his body was dumped there. I didn’t believe it but Wikipedia confirms this local legend. His body was so evil that other burial spots in Italy, German, and the bottom of a lake rejected it, and “the corpse’s final disposition was in a deep and lonely mountain tarn, which, according to later tradition, was on a mountain, still called Pilatus, overlooking Lucerne. Every Good Friday, the body is said to reemerge from the waters and wash its hands.” Mountain tarn. Mountain tarn.

Here we have somebody trying to outroof somebody else.

After a long hike, nothing numbs your feet quite like a glacial stream.