Owwwwww. Ow.

I got a Levulan Photodynamic Therapy treatment yesterday for acne that isn't so much terrible as it is annoying and persistent. I've been fighting with my skin for probably twenty years; I've been on any number of antibiotics, every topical cream and gel, and I did a course of accutane a couple of years ago. The accutane was by far the best solution I've found. If I could live my entire life taking 60 mg of accutane a day I totally would. Unfortunately there are a lot of studies that show I'd eventually either kill myself, explode, or disintegrate because accutane is pretty much poison.

Whenever I tell people I was on accutane or that I've tried any thousand other acne treatments, that person invariably says something like, "Why? Your skin isn't bad." At which point I always want to point out that my skin is worse than THEIR skin so they should just shut up and nod, lucky bastards.

Anyway. Totally not a big deal and I wouldn't have mentioned it at all except that one of the pleasant side effects of the PDT is the inability to subject my face to any and all light sources for 48 hours. So I'm literally sitting here in the dark in front of a computer. And the glow from the monitor feels like a goddamn nuclear holocaust on my red swollen face.

I'm going back for two more sessions of PDT in the next few weeks so if anyone is interested in hearing about the entire process, either let me know in the comments or drop me an email. I don't know that I'll chronicle the whole thing here but I'm more than happy to email you all about it. 
¶ posted by Erin on Friday, May 09, 2008

  Dude, I never ran over a cat and I never lived In Nicaragua.****

This Etsy shop has completely humbled me. I found it last night and I immediately bought this guy:



I looked at his little green face and I don't know, he touched me in a way I've never been touched before. Not in a green way, because I've been touched like that. And not in a crazy eyed way because we all know I've been there, but in a hey, wiggle wiggle! check out my horns! watch... wiggle wiggle! way. And alright, fine, I've been there, too, but my god, people, LOOK AT HIM!

I keep going back to look at Eugene:



And Hugo:



Eugene looks just like a guy I dated in college. More specifically, Eugene looks just like a guy I dated in college the morning I backed over his cat.

He was super dramatic, that guy-- his stupid cat didn't even die. Right away.

And Hugo looks like another guy I dated during the ten months I was making a living in Nicaragua selling hollowed out walking sticks to shaky repeat tourists. I think it looks like him- it's hard to tell with a .22 round lodged in one eye. Strangely enough that's exactly what I told the police at the time. Oh, nostalgia!

Etsy has a whole area where buyers and sellers can create a personal "Treasury": a small gallery of items that a given person finds worthy of showcasing. Sometimes these treasuries make it to the Etsy front page, resulting in HUGE exposure for the shops included. I just found out I'm in two treasuries right now, meaning two awesome Etsy sellers liked my zombies enough to include them in a hard to come by treasury spot. Getting exposure to a treasury is kind of a big deal-- the more clicks a treasury gets, the more popular it is, and the more popular it is, the greater that treasury's chances of ending up on the front page.

I would really like to be on the front page. I make no bones about this.

I did not mean to run over Greg's cat, either. I had just buried that goddamn cat alive in a Costco coffee can like ten minutes before; I had no reason to believe he'd be anywhere near the driveway.

I've linked to these two pertinent treasuries in the sidebar. If you could find your way to clicking on those links, my entire current income stream would be much obliged.

And if not, that's cool. My Nicaraguan boyfriend was also oftentimes willful and unnecessarily obstinate. I found it endearing, really. Despite what the authorities claim.

****under my own name. 
¶ posted by Erin on Thursday, May 08, 2008

 

I managed to bring some sort of crippling intestinal problem home from Mexico last Friday, forcing me to miss a friend's first art gallery show, a formal fundraiser at which I had been promised a mani/pedi and gourmet mac & cheese, and Melati's infamous Tequila Stakes Croquet tournament.

The last time I became markedly ill in Mexico was around eight years ago. A good friend of mine, Jodi, was close to seven months pregnant and desperately wanted to submerge her boiling July fetus in the ocean. Neither one of us ever having actually been pregnant before, and also coincidentally being pretty dumb, we saw no problem with a woman in the third trimester of her first pregnancy driving four hours into a third world country for the weekend.

Sunday morning we had brunch at a beach front restaurant called the Costa Brava where we decided to see exactly how hard we could slap God across the face; chorizo, eggs, ham, chiles rellenos, coffee with cream. Peppers. Salsa. Pork cheeks. Runny cheese. Bring it.

Two hours later I was fighting hard through cold sweats and an intestinal mayday to drive us toward the US border, only slowing down to ninety once I knew for sure we were hypothetically within Medevac range. Jodi was too ill to speak; her husband took her to the emergency room that night where she was treated for extreme dehydration and mind numbing stupidity. Ultimately she was fine. And the baby was fine, a gorgeous boy. A gorgeous boy whose immune system today no doubt rivals that of a Sherman tank.

Several years went by and then the Costa Brava restaurant exploded. I don't mean it suddenly became more popular-- I mean there was a "gas meets lighter" situation late one night and the Costa Brava blew up. My lack of compassion would have made a terminator proud. The rubble is still there, huge chunks of charred concrete and exposed rusted rebar. Every time Randy and I drive by, I can't help it, I have to point.

"That's where Jodi and I ate that time. God, were we sick," I shake my head, "Tacos de cabeza... warm lettuce..." and I stop, unable to go on. Randy pats my knee. It's okay, baby, he seems to be saying, It's okay. You're just an idiot.

I haven't talked to Jodi in a few years, she moved to the other side of town and we fell out of touch. I think about her every time my stomach involuntarily churns in front of the Costa Brava concrete mountain, though. I wonder if she takes her family to Mexico. I wonder if she tells her son, now a veritable child, about the time he made the trek in her belly.

"That's the Texaco station," she might say, passing quickly through Ajo, "where I almost accidentally shat you out in the parking lot."

"That's the restaurant," she might say, pointing as I do at the wreckage, "where Mommy ate something squishy called 'tripe' and chased it with a quart of milk. That's the place," she might whisper, still pointing, "your Mommy had to set on fire." 
¶ posted by Erin on Tuesday, May 06, 2008

 

Randy and I are in Mexico this week and the internet has been a fickle, fickle mistress. The only place I've been able to find reliable wireless is in the Las Palomas resort bar several very upscale doors down from us. I'm staring out at a negative edge pool and the glistening ocean beyond through floor-to-ceiling glass. You know what else they have here? A lazy river. No, for real. A glorious meandering chlorinated stream that artificially pulses its way past two cabana bars and a sandwich palapa. If I had $600,000 and the representative wristband, I could be slowly floating on my back right now toward a ham and provolone ecstasy situation. Unfortunately I have nothing of the sort. I'm barely dressed appropriately for the bar; I walked in with sweaty flip flops, a deadorant stained tank top, and my laptop snooked under one arm and the wait staff went ahead and held an impromptu meeting as to whether or not to serve me my $4.75 Pacifico.

Turns out I qualify to drink here.

I'm glad I opted to wear my cocktail flops.

Okay, I'm almost 3/4 down on my Pacifico and I'm fending off glancing wait staff stares with my dirty hair shield. Hang on while I see how many quarters I've got stuffed in my purse...

Alright! Three dollar bills and some embarrassingly linty assorted change and I've successfully paid for another beerful of internet.

Clearly I don't have a lot of time. So I'll mention this: The past fews nights here have really made obvious the fact that Randy and I have completely disparate methodologies concerning the general "no sand in the bed" position. I, as an example, will perch precariously on the bed and brush the sand off my feet to the point where I'm defying balance, gravity, and any sense of decency. Randy, on the other pole, grabs a plastic spade and actually heaves a few loads of sand between the sheets before we call it a night. He must, seriously. It's totally ridiculous. I woke up mad this morning, and filthy.

(Oh Jesus Christ, someone just set a white glazed soup bowl full of pretzel twists on this table. If anyone else makes the ill-fated decision to sit across from me, I feel bad for their orphaned children.)

"Oh, Erin," he started, "There wasn't any sand in that bed. I only felt like two grains. Maybe three. Maybe three grains."

When he starts being silly like this, that's when I know I need to seriously start looking for his plastic shovel, that's when I know he's got some evil master plan to slowly erode my body into a walking stick while I sleep. Meanwhile I'm clueless, dreaming of pecan encrusted halibut, of Shake n' Bake chicken thighs, not even realizing I'm getting smoother and smoother. Not even noticing the gradual handle growing out of the side of my head.

I'm sitting on a common couch in this bar, right, and I just stopped typing and looked up only to see that I've unconsciously tucked all five throw pillows behind me for lumbar support, my beer is cocked precariously against one (wow, pretty expensively) upholstered cushion, and there are pretzel twists spread all over from hell and gone.

Time to jet.

Everyone! To the lazy river!!

God, I miss a lazy river. I'm going to go put my bathing suit on and try to sneak back in. I'm sure no one will recognize me; I've only been sitting here fucking shit up for FOUR HOURS. 
¶ posted by Erin on Thursday, May 01, 2008

 

My brother's taking his little family on a vacation to Disney World and I offered to drive them to the airport this morning. I woke up about three o'clock and just lay there, peering at the clock, convincing myself that if I closed my eyes I'd slip into a drooling sleep coma and not hear the doorbell and then everyone would miss their flight and my nephew would grow into a sullen anti-establishment pain in the ass kid in a 24-hour hoodie because he didn't get to hug Mickey's neck when he was two.

I did all of that until about 7:18 at which point I fell into a sleep so reptilian that Randy had to kick my shallow-breathing husk onto the floor to get me to hear the doorbell.

They made it on time. Buying us at least another couple of months before I'm yanking my nephew's earbuds out by the cord during dinner.

In other news, I'm super old and extra mean.

Totally different topic. We have three cordless phones in this house, right; one in the office, one in the kitchen, and one in the family room. There's a truly hideous Bang & Olufsen phone in our bedroom that I paid two hundred dollars for five years ago in a desperate attempt to distract Randy long enough to rid my life of this jet ski phone:


Worth every penny. The best two hundred bucks I ever spent (excluding dares and bail). I can't forget to throw this piece of crap back into the top of the closet before Randy gets home or he'll be all, "Hey, jet ski phone!" and I'll be forced to go buy a three thousand dollar NASA space phone from the astronaut store.

There's also a working antique pay phone in the Pool Table Room. It rings like this: "BLAAAAAAARGH I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE TECHNOLOGY BLAAAAAARGH!!!" It's essentially a migraine hanging on the wall that takes nickels.

Okay! So that's five telephones. Only three of the five, the cordless phones, have Caller ID, so basically you can go fuck the other two. It's 2008, seriously, I don't have time to play Russian Roulette when the phone rings. Sometimes I'll use the B&O phone to make an outgoing call, but it's roughly the size of a collar stay and trying to get the stupid thing back in its stupid base is like trying to jam a toothpick through a telephone pole without the aid of an F5 tornado. And no one ever uses the pay phone for anything because it's a rotary and thus its very presence in this century is probably in direct violation of LIFE. There's also the very real fear that if you attempt to approach it, it will suddenly start to ring and then you'll have to go to the hospital.

So! Three phones. Three phones to choose from. We bought these cordless phones in a three-pack from Costco in 2002 for $89.99. The batteries last an average of seven minutes. The phone in the office is on a table directly behind a four-pound wooden picture frame supported by a leg made out of cardboard. If you call and I answer on the phone in the office, the first thing you'll hear is a loud crash followed by, "FUCK! Hello?"

The phone in the kitchen lives on a low windowsill behind the kitchen table. An eight passenger table squeezed into a nook built for a four-seater made sense when the kids were small and ate food here, but now we keep it primarily so there's a giant obstacle between us and the phone all the time. If I'm in the kitchen and the phone rings, I have to throw three chairs across the room and then flatten myself like a ferret to slide between the counter and the table.

The phone in the family room is just a phone in the family room. I'm looking at it right now and I can't find anything particularly obnoxious about it, save the fact that if it rings I have to stand up, but that rule pretty much applies to anything that's more than a foot and a half away from me at any given time.

All of this assumes that the phones are at any point actually resting on their charging stands, which they aren't, ever. They're all invariably in the laundry room or in the bathroom or in the pantry. Completely dead, of course, because it's been longer than a commercial break on TBS.

Something else I should mention, too, is that our home phone line is also our fax line, and our fax machine is always on. And set to three rings. So everything I said about running, finding, sliding, dropping, and answering the phone? It all has to happen in under six seconds. Realistically you've got a better chance of getting a hold of me with smoke signals than you do by calling me at home. If you absolutely cannot be bothered to save my cell number in your contacts or if you're living in some parallel universe where it's perpetually 1995 and thus everybody hasn't downloaded a mobile Gmail application directly into their brain stem, you had best be ready to fax me some shit. 
¶ posted by Erin on Friday, April 25, 2008

  Two thousand dollar bike NUMBER TWO. Number One got stolen.

Strangely enough, the more I wear my glasses, the more I seem to rely on them to see shit. Which is fine, both my parents wear glasses, I'm 32-years-old, I think my delicate ego can digest the fact that these glasses serve a purpose other than banal fashion accessory. The problem is that if I take more than two steps outside during the day without sunglasses, my entire face tries to fold up like a clam shell; last week I attempted to check the mail without my sunglasses and I ended up crouched in the front yard with my fists balled into my eye sockets until dusk. It was a really unproductive way to spend ten hours. Not to mention probably in violation of our HOA.

The compromise: when I'm running around during the day I wear my cheap Target sunglasses to drive and then I switch to my prescription glasses when I'm safely inside wherever it is I'm going. The end result of all this switching-- sunglasses, prescription glasses, sunglasses, prescription glasses-- is that by the time I get home my brain thinks its been staring through a kaleidoscope all day and I'm ready to throw up.

Yesterday morning I was cleaning out the drawers in our bathroom and I ran across a pair of dusty prescription sunglasses. I don't even remember getting prescription sunglasses-- they might not even be mine. They're the same boring style as the glasses I'm wearing now, though, and when I put them on my eyes don't cross uncontrollably, so I'm assuming they are. They must date back to my gratuitous student loan days-- or maybe even way back to my twenty thousand dollar credit limit days. Those were good times-- just ask my two thousand dollar bike. Or my bankruptcy attorney.

I had a bunch of errands to run yesterday, so I cleaned all the makeup debris off the found glasses and I tried them out; I wore prescription sunglasses that potentially belonged to an ex-roommate circa 1999 while I was driving, and regular glasses with my prescription from 2003 the rest of the time. When I got home I still wanted to throw up, but in a much more complicated and expensive way. Which I'm calling an improvement. Maybe if I root around a little more I'll find that 18^th century gold-plated monocle my platinum Discover Card bought off eBay in 1998 and I can really round this shit out. 
¶ posted by Erin on Wednesday, April 23, 2008

  Would it help if I chewed more gum?

Yesterday I went to get my teeth cleaned for the first time in two years. Ordinarily I'm an "every six months" girl, but I haven't had health insurance so I've been counting on my Sonicare toothbrush and my platinum dental record to steer me through the gap. I've never had so much as a hint of a cavity, no aches, no pains, no trouble. My brother's the same way; neither one of us grew up with any compulsive tendencies to scrub our teeth for thirty-five minutes at a pop, either, so I can only assume our childhood drinking water was fortified with fluoride and deck sealant. I could chew through a leather armchair and come out stronger on the other side.

Knowing this, it wasn't that I was particularly concerned about getting to the dentist, but more that I missed the gratuitous praise. Listening to the dentist commend the condition of my mouth is a lot like listening to my grandmother praise me over the dinner table for being a good eater. If I could just get my mom to recognize my talent for growing hair and fingernails, my self-confidence would be through the roof.

So I was reclining in the chair yesterday, mouth clean and open, readying myself for the role of overachiever, when the hygienist ran her finger around the outside of my top teeth. She paused and hoisted my upper lip.

"Oh," she said, "You've got some exostosis here, huh?"

I'd never heard that before. And since it didn't sound anything like, Wow, you've got great teeth, I was at a loss.

"Okay, what is that?"

"It's extra bone that grows underneath your gums," she explained. "It's usually not a problem. Does it bother you at all?"

"No." Seeing as how I'm not in the habit of yanking my lip up over my ear, I didn't even know it was there. I'm sure it'll start bothering me first thing tomorrow, though, thanks.

The hygienist explained that if it became painful I could look into having it removed. As best as I was able to ascertain, it's a very simple procedure wherein your gums are peeled down and your mouth bones are ground down with a Dremel sander. I was disappointed to hear it's also fairly cost-prohibitive because now I have to choose between having this done or going ahead with my original plan to have my right arm cut off and then reattached with binder clips.

While I was busy eeny-meenie-miny-moe-ing my surgical torture options, the hygienist started poking around my lower teeth where things, believe it or not, took a turn for the worse.

"Wow!" she breathed, gently probing at a molar, "There's a six millimeter pocket here."

Because this didn't sound anything like, Great job, you've earned a sticker, I opted not to reply with Aw, thank you.

"You've got some bacteria impacted underneath your tooth inside your gum," she went on, "and as it gets worse and becomes infected, you lose bone in that area. We measure the bone loss in millimeters on a scale of one to twelve. And right here," she poked, "You're at a six."

Oh.

She reached down and unfurled a 16" x 20" full-color poster to really punch her point home.

This is the only relevant picture I could find online. It is not at ALL representative of the poster to which I was subjected. This picture is all pink and polite and clinical. The poster I saw was covered in graphic photography. There was blood and oozing and what may or may not have been live insects digging below the gum line.
I was too horrified to say anything, I just sat there and stared, disgusted, wondering how far into my jaw bone the weevils had burrowed. It was like "Scared Straight!" for dentists. Only Scratch n' Sniff could have made a more direct statement.

The nurse rolled the poster back up.

"When was the last time you flossed?" she asked.

"Uh, the last time I ate corn." I was too terrified to lie.

"And when was the last time you ate corn?"

"I don't like corn."

She left me then to let the billing department know they needed to compile an estimate before sending over someone from the hard-sell team to explain why these particular antibiotics weren't covered by my insurance and then sell me a timeshare in Omaha.

Needless to say, I left without a sticker. Two hundred dollars worth of medicine later, I have learned three things: 1) My teeth are not the bionic, indestructible instruments I claim them to be, and as such I can no longer take them for granted, 2) I seriously need to learn to like corn, and 3) if my gynecologist whips out a poster next week, it's going to be a problem. 
¶ posted by Erin on Saturday, April 19, 2008

  Crammed Organisms

I found out earlier this week that I was accepted into the giant Crammed Organisms plush show in St. Louis beginning in June. In celebration, I present to you... Pirate Zombie.

 
¶ posted by Erin on Thursday, April 17, 2008

  Someone remind me to invite my parents.

Randy and I are still on board for getting married, for those of you wondering whether we just brought it up, got everyone all excited, and then promptly forgot about it again. Like that time we were supposed to celebrate Christmas for the 2,006^th time in a row only I forgot about it until December 28th. Or that time I told my nephew if he would just lie down and close his eyes already he'd wake up covered in peanut M&Ms. Or that time anyone I've ever known had a birthday.

So... We've decided to go to Belize next February!

That's it. That's all I've got.

Given the shameless lack of juicy details, I'm trying my best to keep the subject as casual as possible. "Oh, you're getting married?" people ask. "Yeah, but it's really not a big deal," I say, hoping to keep the conversation train from taking the now almost inevitable plunge into Bridal Canyon. It usually works, though I'm not sure if it's the dead end tone I employ or the ensuing fake narcoleptic seizure. It's amazing how few people seem to want to discuss wedding gowns while I'm face down in a plate of fried chicken.

Every now and again someone with good intentions will hint about needing to plan a shower, and I immediately begin laughing it off by yelling, "NO!" which isn't laughing it off at all, really, it's just yelling. Bridal showers are perfect and lovely for young women who are entering into a new phase of life with their soon-to-be partners; friends and family coming together to provide sage advice and some much needed home essentials? Beautiful! For a woman who's been living in sin for eight years in a house with not one, not two, but six fondue pots? Seems a tad gratuitous to me. And honeymoon gag gifts lose their punch when the couple in question has already made it through the seven-year-itch. I'm all for celebrating, celebrating is great! Thank you! Yes, let's celebrate! Pick a night and I'll cook you dinner. Bring a bottle of wine. And a fondue pot-- apparently we're collecting those.

I am excited, truly, just in an "inside voice" way. There's not much to be done, so I don't spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about it. I'll need to get a dress, sure, and make sure someone brings a camera. We're leaving the country, so honestly my biggest challenge is getting my passport renewed sometime in the next ten months. At least I won't have to worry about a name change; Randy's son, Chris, and Erin² are getting married in November, and as much as I would love to make the rest of our lives a slapstick series of misdelivered mail and credit snafus, initial reconnaissance efforts tell me that Erin² has already staked a claim to every name specific email address across the domain globe. Like Christopher Columbus and beach front property, that shit is spoken for. I was 95% sure I wasn't going to change my name anyway-- I already adopt Randy's last name when I call the cable people to make clandestine authorized changes to our premium channel lineup-- but the thought of not having a relevant gmail address shot that last 5% in the chest.

So really right now it's business as usual. My brother called a couple of weeks ago and left a message: "Hey, I hear congratulations are in order!" I had to call him back to figure out what the hell he was talking about.

"Oh yeah!" I said. "Thanks! We're going to Belize next February. You want to go?"

"Absolutely! So next February," he went on, "Does that give you enough time to plan everything?"

"IT'S REALLY NOT A BIG DEAL," I said. And then I had to hang up because I couldn't talk with my head mashed inside a bowl of Cobb salad. 
¶ posted by Erin on Monday, April 14, 2008

  Plus you know his nest is gonna be HUGE.

It's been so beautiful outside lately I've been leaving the doors and windows open all day. The good news is that The Jake can now achieve his soul's desire to lie exactly half inside and half outside the house like a bumpy, whiny welcome mat. The bad news is that I realized today there's a woodpecker somewhere and I'm pretty sure he's working on devouring our house. Either that or there's some guy hiding in our attic, banging on shit with a hammer. I'm hoping for woodpecker; a guy with a hammer is going to be a hell of a lot harder to shoo away with a tennis ball. 
¶ posted by Erin on Wednesday, April 09, 2008