That’s as far as I got with the planning.

UPDATE -10;30 am: Nice day for a drive so I got in the car and drove to gas station. As I was sitting there putting on my makeup, as you do, the strangest thing happened. Every time I passed the puff over my right eyelid, my eye made a noise just like this:

*SQUOINK* *SQUOINK* *SQUOINK*

Every time I touched the lid, it squoinked. No pain, no movement, just a squoink. I can’t stop thinking about it.

UPDATE 2 -12:30 pm: Went to brunch. Brunch! I haven’t been to brunch since Hector was a pup. I had a Bloody Mary and the fritatta al fiorno.

UPDATE 3 -5:00 pm: Question: did Billy Joel die or otherwise make the news? I’ve had the car radio on scan and every single classic rock station is playing his songs today.

UPDATE 4 -6:15 pm: Just made a killing on Old European-esque wine glasses from the Pier 1 clearance section. They’re super funky and heavy and a little bit lopsided and unintentionally fraught with air bubbles. The salesperson was trying to be my friend by making small talk while she wrapped each glass. “Oh, these are the pretty glasses for Girl’s Night. You send the husband and the kids away and these are the glasses that come out. The ladies will really appreciate how beautiful these glasses are.” I didn’t tell her that they were just for me and  I was buying four in case I knocked three over I’d still have one left for myself.

Did I mention that it was green glass? The better to hide the Cheese Nips fingerprints, my dear. Green and thick like an etched soda bottle, but not as uniform. Good for whites, of course not reds. I know – they’re very fey but I have plain and elegant simple clear glasses but sometimes a girl needs a little festivity at her private Girl’s Night party, no?

Anyway, they were marked down to $2.00 each so what the hell.

The dog lost consciousnesses while I was trying to take his picture. Scared the hell out of me but it turns out that he was just tired and had to take an immediate nap. I’m also a little bit scared of his freakish devotion to that Crazy Critter.

Ok. It is Nanny Pee. The dinosaur had better skin.

I love how as more and more of her eyeballs is exposed at each “procedure”, her eyebrows seem to compensate by growing farther down the side of her face.

separated at birth (of the universe)

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UPDATE:  No tornado action. Smooth flight. Arrived uneventfully and on time.

I am in the crappiest hotel on the planet. And that includes the 4 Arrowheads or whatever that disaster in Oklahoma was when I stayed there 8 years ago. It’s really more of a motel. A crappy motel. Plus, I don’t have a rental car for this trip so I’m limited in how I can soothe myself with dinner offerings. I’m stuck with a french “bistro” just off the crappy lobby. If they don’t have wine, I swear to God I am going to flip my shit. My hip hurts, I haven’t eaten all day and did I mention that I’m in one of those Stop N’ Rob kind of rooms where the my door is next to an easily accessible picture window on the ground floor and my bed is three feet from the dimly lit public walkway? If I get a bed bug here I am going to pull my hair out.

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UPDATE #2:  Quel surprise! I don’t know how they landed here in this crappy motel.  But wow! White tablecloth, small candles, fresh flowers on the table. For my first course, I had rillettes de porc à la moutarde.

house made pork rillettes with dijon mustard, red onions, cornichons, baguette toasts

I know! How did I ever live without this? It was like big super-fatty cold pork meatloaf slices! Accompanied by crisp salty things. I’m pretty sure I can replicate this with Oscar Mayer baloney in a blender*. Let’s have a dinner party!

Then I had truite grenobloise  (fresh local rainbow trout, couscous pilaf, asparagus,
toasted walnuts, capers, brown butter).  Can you even believe it? I also swilled down two glasses of French Voigne. It makes the whole crappy motel room thing seem insignificant.

*My mother used to tell me that she and her two girl friends used to have WWII-era teenage parties where they would invite the same three boys and play the radio and serve minced baloney mixed with mayonnaise and chopped pickles. The three girls** married the three boys*** and they stayed married until they all died. The power of minced baloney! Even the French know it.

**Geraldine, Irene and Aldona

***Babe, Youngy and Shanky

yeah. that would explain a lot.

I didn’t know who the CDC is talking to but even I don’t know anyone who “downs eight mixed drinks within a few hours, four times a month.” Do you? Maybe Snooki. Possibly Michelle Obama.

Oh, I see now that as I read through the article America Is Drunk, they are talking about young people. Obama voters.

“This is what is happening. It is critical we determine why it is happening… My theory is that Americans are on a flight from reality. Faced with painful facts—including the precarious state of the economy, the gathering storm represented by militant Muslims, in general, and Iran, in particular, the crumbling state of marriage in this country, the fact that our borders are being overrun, and the fact that our health care insurance system is in shambles (to name just a smattering of the troubles we desperately need to address)—we as a nation are drinking, drugging, gambling, smoking, Facebooking, YouTubing, Marijuaning, Kardashianing, Adderalling, Bono-ing (as in thinking of Chaz’s sad flight from reality as good), Prozacking, Twittering, and Sexting ourselves into oblivion.”

Now it makes sense.

not opposed to the occasional youthful bender