Cheezus saves.

Now that I'm living elsewhere after all that time in New York, I sometimes feel like I'm only just discovering things about adult life, in general, that everyone else has known forever. Things like the fact that people would rather drive five minutes than walk for ten. And that they do weird things in their cars during highway rush hour -- like, orifice-picking, nipple-scratching things -- even though they must be aware on some level that everyone see them. And that heating oil is apparently the most rare and expensive substance on the planet. And that outside of the cramped honeycomb of the city, household appliances are terrifyingly large and make conspiratorial noises in the night.
And then, of course, there's the part where, if you have a yard, one corner must at all times be designated as a shrine to the Gods of Junk Food and must always contain one or more highly processed, preservative-laden, brightly-packaged items in order to appease the angry and volatile deities of all things cheez-with-a-Z.

...Or at least, I assume there's a Cheez Shrine Rule written into our local ordinances? Because this is the state of things: at any given time, in the northwest corner of our little pocket yard, there is a half-eaten bag of Cheetos. Or a partially gnawed Slim Jim. Or -- once -- an un-drunk, unopened bottle of Arizona Raspberry Iced Tea with its safety seal still in place. (The nostalgic urge for a taste memory of middle school was overwhelming, but I mustered all my self-control and left it alone just in case it was a test of faith sent by the Cheez God.)

These items appear sometime during the night, or possibly the early morning, and stay for awhile -- untouched by anyone, I assume they are all also terrified of retribution at the hands of Cheezus -- and then ultimately vanish as mysteriously as they appeared. And since this is apparently just a Thing That Is Done out here in not-New-York, I've been rolling with it (albeit keeping an eye out, because if this isn't a gifts-for-the-oracle kind of situation, then some school-aged kid on our street must have one serious hole in his backpack.)

But today, it has all officially gone too far. Because when I walked out the door this morning, there it was.

  DUN.

DUN!

DUUUUUUUUUUN!!!!

Let me be clear: it's not that someone flouted the rules of the junk food shrine by leaving an empty Kit Kat wrapper in the yard.

It's that I am the God of Kit Kats, and SOMEONE HAS EATEN THAT WHICH IS RIGHTFULLY MINE.

Butterface

You know you're in trouble when you jolt awake, drenched in terror sweat, at 5:30am on the first day of 2012 -- not with exuberant joy at the arrival of the new year, not even with a hangover headache, but with the following thought rolling through your brain, marquee-style, in a high-volume wail:

OH MY GOD WHY DID I EAT SO MUCH BUTTER.

Let me be clear: I don't usually kick myself over butter. I adorn my popcorn with it; I smear my bread with it; I melt it into a golden pool in a cast-iron skillet and fry up my eggs with glee. I am not, in general, a guilty butter-eater. But on New Year's Day, I woke up with an acute, raging case of Butter Eater's Regret -- because on New Year's Eve, capping off a month of perhaps not the most controlled eating of my life, I had exceeded even my own, laissez-faire ethics in butter-related matters when I made a pot of pasta, and just before pouring it into a bowl, carelessly tossed a sizable pat of Land'o'Lakes in to melt beneath it.

A sizable pat which was now in my head, in snapshot form, dawdling in all its obscene enormity under the scrolling WHY WHY WHY WHY marquee like a creamy golden guilt bomb.

All of which is to say, I hope you'll all understand that when, unable to exorcise that image from my mind and swiftly succumbing to overwhelming feelings of failure and fatness, I went on the internet and allowed Gwyneth Paltrow to tell me what to do.

...Look, I was in a dark place, okay?! A DARK PLACE FULL OF BUTTER AND SADNESS.

And so, I:

a) googled juice cleanse recipes
b) clicked my way down a rabbit-hole to one of old Gwynnie's vanity-project GOOP newsletters from god-knows-when
c) lost my entire fucking mind, and then
d) went to Whole Foods, where I purchased protein powder and almond milk and wheatgrass supplements and a head of broccoli that cost seven dollars.

It's the seven-dollar broccoli that let me know I've really and truly lost it.

But even as I hauled vegetables, powders, mysterious substances and peculiar oils into the kitchen and stuffed them into the fridge, I really, honestly, thought that this was a good idea. After all, people do detoxes all the time! And they seem fine! And Gwyneth Paltrow is so thin!

So I went for it.

I mean, I am going for it.

And it's not that I've decided that it's not a good idea. It's not even that I'm not enjoying myself; the recipes are easy (albeit time-consuming), the food tastes good, and my lunch was so pretty that it deserved to have its picture taken. So while I'm still not sure I'll make it, and while I'll probably be back three days from now to confess a butter relapse, and while there are certain elements of this plan which I will under no circumstances put into action (castor oil, Gwyneth? CASTOR OIL?), I'd say that things are moving along quite nicely.

But, uh, speaking of things moving along nicely? I'm just gonna go ahead and answer the questions I know you're asking -- which is to say, yes, that's how it works. Yes, this cleanse is the equivalent of rinsing out your intestinal tract with an industrial-strength fire hose. And no, Gwyneth Paltrow probably hasn't taken a solid dump since sometime in 2006.

(But if this sounds like fun to you and you want to follow along, be my guest.)

And so, let's not-look back.

Because even when I've been absent for months, failing to perform the obligatory year-end wrap-up would be more abandonment than I feel comfy with.

And it goes without saying: 2011 has been significant. It brought the end of eight lovely years in New York. An answer, finally, to the question of what I want to be when I grow up. A book, with a title and a jacket and a life all its own. A new home, one step closer to the kind that I'd like to have permanently, where I can hang up my coat, and sit in a sunny corner, and look out on a sort-of backyard when my brain wants a pause. The humbling, terrifying realization of just what a tenuous, precious thing it is to be healthy.

All in all: changes, lessons, trying new things. I've even taken up yoga -- as in real, actual exercise, despite all previous evidence that any attempt at formal exertion would be punished with the humiliating exposure of private body parts! And y'know what? It's actually kind of fantastic.

...Although, okay, I'm still not quite there with the whole impenetrable zen thing; I cannot, for instance, keep myself from laughing when the instructor says, "And then, ease yourself back into downard-facing dog", and the meditative silence of the room is suddenly punctuated by a prolonged burst of flatulence.

But anyway. The point: this has also been a year of not-posting, and I'm sorry. I've tried and failed any number of times to write about my new home in Connecticut; the reason it's so hard, I think, is that I know we won't be staying. As settled-in as we are here, with our closets and our grill and our very first Christmas tree, it's only a layover on the way to who-knows-what, and so I'm not paying attention the way that I should. And sometime -- maybe even by this time next year -- we'll be picking up again, packing our lives into boxes for transport to the next thing. Whatever it is. And I don't know that, either; I'm not driving this train.

And y'know what? That's actually kind of fantastic, too.

And so, there will be no year-end summary. Right this minute, I'm too busy wondering about what's coming to look back on what already was, especially when what already was was mostly a lot of waiting. And if I want to dwell on the past, I think I'd rather be doing it on behalf of other people -- the ones who submitted the heartbreaking photos and stories to this NYT slideshow of 2011's lost loved ones. Which, more than anything I could offer, is a fitting note to end on.

Especially if, perhaps, you need some reminding about the things that matter after briefly losing your shit at your own loved ones after they totally incinerated a leg of lamb on Christmas Day.

Not that I have ever done that!
Happy New Year!

Gentlemen, start your engines

Publishing a book -- as I've found out repeatedly over the past year -- involves a lot of waiting. Waiting to make the deal; waiting for emailed revisions; waiting for a package of neatly-stacked pages that you nearly maul the mailman in your excitement to receive and which you leave scattered around your living room long after line edits are done, just to have real, tangible evidence that yes, this is actually happening.

But when it comes to bringing home the really-realness of it all, you can't beat this...

...Or this.

With apologies for redundancy, of course, since if you follow me anywhere else on the internet you've already seen this. (Or if you passed within a 20-yard radius of my person on the day when I got the go-ahead to debut the jacket, in which case I probably grabbed you by the throat and demanded that you view it. Because mind-blowing excitement.)

And there you have it: a real, actual book available for real, actual pre-order on Amazon, and proof-positive that I have not, in fact, just been fucking with you (or myself) about the whole "novelist' thing.


And now that I've said that, a note: sometime before May 2012, I'm going to begin streamlining my online presence and launch an official site dedicated to my YA work (and most likely including a blog that, among other things, includes somewhat fewer posts about indecent exposure. Because, y'know, teenagers have parents and parents get upset about f-bombs and wieners.) I don't know yet what that'll mean for Pink India Ink -- maybe it'll continue to just exist in its infrequently-updated form, or maybe I'll find a way to fold it in -- but any creative suggestions (or polite reminders about forgotten, embarrassing content that's lurking back in the archives and would humiliate me if discovered by a larger population) are welcome.

Above all, thanks for being here, for reading, and for sticking around despite the long silences.

The 8 Stages of Hiring a Housekeeper

GUILT
Stare at the Craigslist listings for cleaning services for hours before calling one. Wonder if using a cleaning service is inherently classist. Dial and hang up twice. Wonder what is the matter with you that you can't keep an apartment clean by yourself. Wonder if this constitutes failure as a wife. Wonder if wondering this makes you a bad feminist. Wonder what's worse: being a bad feminist or being a classist asshole. Dial again and speak to the cleaning lady. She is polite and all business. She also has a Spanish accent. Wonder if this makes you a racist as well. Make an appointment anyway.

WORRY
Worry that the cleaning lady will be appalled at the state of your apartment. Worry that she'll demand more money. Worry that she'll run screaming out the door and tell all her friends that, in all her years of cleaning, she had never seen a toilet that disgusting. Worry that your apartment is not filthy enough and that she will accuse you of wasting her time. Resist the urge to clean before she arrives.

DENIAL
At the last minute, throw a pile of dirty laundry in the closet.

EMBARRASSMENT
"I'm sorry, I didn't think you would open that closet."

PARANOIA
Shut yourself into another room with the dog. Worry every time the cleaning ladies speak to each other that they are saying mean things about you. Worry that they are laughing at you. Worry that worrying about this makes you a racist. Worry that they hate the dog. Worry that they think the dog is a racist. Listen to the sound of doors opening and closing. The cleaning ladies know all your secrets. Vow to learn Spanish.

AWE
The cleaning ladies are gone. Holy shit. HOLY SHIT. Wander from room to room with your mouth open. Feel guilty that you didn't wash your feet first. Feel guilty that you ever doubted them. Email husband a series of delighted exclamation points. Cry openly at the beauty of the golden light as it gleams off the toilet seat. Vow never to use the toilet again. Admire the small, neat piles into which your personal items have been sorted. Note the presence of at least one highly embarrassing item in each pile. Remind yourself to explain next time that you don't usually leave airplane-travel-sized bottles of vodka under the bed. Wonder if they saw the soy sauce stains on the sheets. Drink bottle of airplane vodka. Cry some more.

CATASTROPHE
Much later, open the fridge to retrieve a beer. Something is strange. The beer is in alphabetical order. The cleaning ladies have organized the refrigerator. THE CLEANING LADIES HAVE ORGANIZED THE REFRIGERATOR. Scream out loud. Wonder if this is going to happen every week. Wonder why nobody warned you. Wonder how long that avocado has been in there. Wait, it was that Memorial Day cookout. Oh God, it's been there since May. It has been there since May and they saw it and they touched it. They touched your avocado of shame, and you must live with that.

ACCEPTANCE
Schedule biweekly appointments. Throw away the avocado. Drink alphabetized beer. Life is so lovely.

This shit is bananas

It started with a pile of dog turds. (All the best stories do, don't they?)

In the morning, from time to time, I bring Hurley the Golden Retriever into our little side yard for some exercise. And on these mornings, from time to time, Hurley the Golden Retriever will conclude our little workout session by doing some rear-end business on the lawn. And this is, of course, fine -- because, y'know, it's our lawn and our dog and our right, as Americans, to pick up the shit at our convenience.

So, when a pile of shit first seemed to move from the corner of our lawn to the bottom of our porch stairs, I thought that I must be mistaken. Even though I could have sworn that the deuce-dropping took place elsewhere, in a spot over by the yardline, where the grass gives way to the gravel drive that runs behind our house. Even though, at the time, I'd thought to myself that yes, I needed to find a plastic bag, but that in the meantime, the poop wouldn't be in anyone's way.

Yes, I thought, I must just be imagining things. Because, in my naivete, it just didn't seem possible that any irritated neighbor -- no matter how peculiar or passive-aggressive -- would not only not bother to just ask us to direct the dog elsewhere, but go directly to the balls-out strategy of surreptitiously moving a pile of shit onto their neighbor's porch.

That is, until it happened again.

In the morning, Hurley retired to the corner of the lawn for some discreet pooping. And in the afternoon, the pile of turds had inexplicably made its way over to our porch.

Which means that one of our neighbors is, in fact, picking up the dog shit and moving it twenty feet to our doorstep just to fuck with us.

"Wait a second," Brad said. "Are you telling me this has happened before? Why didn't you mention it?"
"I thought I was imagining things!" I said. "I mean, what kind of person actually carries a pile of somebody else's dog's shit from one location to another just to make a point?"

What kind of person, indeed. The answer, of course, is the kind of person who lives somewhere behind us! Although we have no idea who it is. And I know, I know: this could all be avoided by just scooping the poop right away, thus depriving this proximate weirdo of the chance to transport it across the lawn. But on the other hand, I feel that this situation has kind of escalated beyond the point of easy resolution. I mean, really, once someone is secretly depositing shit on your porch, the time for measured response has passed. And instead, I am currently considering one or more of the following actions:

- Leaving the shit on their porch.
- Leaving the shit on their porch in a paper bag and setting it on fire.
- Sculpting the shit into a bust of Hitler, shellacking it, and presenting it to them in a wrapped giftbox with a ribbon on it.
- Putting the shit back in its original location, along with a tiny suitcase and passport.
- Dressing the shit up in striped scarf and beanie and leaving it on the passenger seat of their car with a "Where's Waldo?" greeting card.

Of course, all of these responses would probably just escalate an already-volatile situation. And nobody wants that.

Which is why, instead of playing hot potato with the shitpile, I plan to just let Hurley take another dump at the corner of the yard, lie in wait by the back door until the shit-moving neighbor tries to pull this little stunt again, and then stepping calmly out of the house for a conversation about how we might resolve this little conflict like a pair of motherfucking adults.

Or I might just kick him in the face.

Days of our hives

Exactly one month ago, I was on a ferry between the Outer Banks of North Carolina and mainland Wilmington when my collarbone started to itch.

Sunburn, I thought.

But by the time our plane landed at La Guardia, the itching had spread -- across my chest, and down my arms, and onto my scalp and neck and ears. Fingers of raised, red irritation had begun to appear on my ankles and wrists. Worse, both Brad and the middle-aged stranger at the end of our row had both started to peer at my face in a disconcerting way.

The stranger was also a nurse.
"Honey," she said. "Are you allergic to anything?"

That was the beginning. I like to imagine what happened next from Brad's point of view: returning home, ordering pizza, and ultimately falling asleep next to a wife who was slightly splotchy, itchy and drowsy but otherwise none the worse for wear...

...and waking up to a lurching, swollen, unrecognizable creature who looked like an escaped extra from "Killer Bees 2: The Bumblebee Wrath".

I was stumbling around in the hallway with both my eyes swollen shut when he came out of the bathroom.

"I think I need to go to the hospital," I said.
Brad's reply, I believe, was, "GAAAAH!"

And so began the Days of Our Hives.

There is not much to be said about the Days of Our Hives. Except, you know, I had hives! I was given drugs! I came to the end of one round of steroids, only to somehow re-trigger a new allergic reaction! I was given more drugs!

The hives were always moving around, making a slow migration from one part to the next. On one day, they covered every inch of my torso with the exception of my right boob. The next, they crept in from the sides of my face until I appeared to be wearing a lucha libre mask made out of Rash. GORGEOUS. I scratched my legs and arms until the blood vessels burst and my skin was on fire, which was still less agonizing than the itching. I also enjoyed long naps in the afternoon, an inability to focus, and spontaneous crying jags during which I tearfully informed Brad that if this was going to be my life from now on, I was counting on him to murder me.

I also went to doctors. The best thing about an allergic reaction is how everyone wants to remind you that you are the one that caused it.

"What did you eat?" they ask. "Shellfish? Peanuts? Did you use a new shampoo? What did you drink? What did you touch?"

And then: "What do you mean, you don't know?"

Here's a fun exercise: Go on vacation to a location that requires a minimum of 8 hours of travel. Come back. Wait two days. Now try to remember everything you consumed or came into contact with in the past 72 hours.

If you can do this, congratulations.
If you can do this with a drug-addled brain and a full-body rash, fuck you. Liar.



...But that's all over now.
And since I'm sick of talking about hives, I'll leave you with this, instead. We're settling in to the new apartment, and our pretty new bedroom wasn't such a bad place to be an invalid.




Although it looks much, much better without a weeping, rash-covered woman sprawled on top of the duvet.