Let's try this again.

Around this time last year, Brad and I were newly married and making the final preparations for a much-anticipated two-week honeymoon in Hawaii. And boy, were we excited! The plane tickets were purchased, the hotel was booked, our lust for Mai Tais (and, um, each other) was burning at an all-time high, and we were Ready to Go. And on the day before we left -- a day much like this one, a day where my bags were packed and my projects were wrapped up and a glorious vacation from all the stresses of work and wedding-planning and everyday responsibility was waiting on the horizon...

...I got fired.

Yeah.

I tried -- I really, really did -- not to let the unexpected turn of events ruin our trip, and it was still a lovely vacation, but... well, what can I say. As it turns out, it is just not possible to get sacked the day before your honeymoon and then blissfully ignore the looming spectre of imminent unemployment while you jet off to an island paradise for two weeks. (Well, perhaps it is possible for you. But for me, the highly unethical and spineless actions of my former employer ended up casting a distinct shadow of gloom over the entire thing. A shadow which all the mai tais in the world could not erase.)

And now, a year later, I have just one thing to say:

FUCK THAT. We are HAVING A DO-OVER.

In 48 hours, I will be here.


That is all.

See you BAMFs in October.

printing: Look at this haughty bitch.

Apparently, getting inky is a really good way to recharge after a few weeks of way too much writing. So earlier this week, I carved and printed a small reduction lino-cut in 3 colors.

Post-upload annoyance: The the camera flash is reflecting off the black ink at center and making it look not-uniform.
Dammit.

This print is based on a photograph I found online and wanted to play with. As a college student (i.e. before Photoshop was readily available, and shit, I'm old), when I wanted to make designs based on photographs, I would: 1) adjust the contrast settings on images, 2) print them out in grayscale, and 3) use a few markers to block out areas until the full-spectrum image was reduced down to 3 or 4 colors.

Now, however, Photoshop has a "cutout" filter which does all that for me. I gave it a try for this print, just to see what I'd end up with, and it certainly made life easier.... BUT, it also felt a bit like cheating. Creating the plate and printing the image on paper is all done completely by hand, but does the fact that I'm getting technological help to create the initial design cheapen the whole process? (Seriously, I'm asking.)

Here's the haughty bitch in quadruplicate:



Also, if you're currently thinking to yourself, "Hey, I've always wanted a haughty bitch like that!" -- you can have one for a few bucks. (I've got nine of her.) She's a perfect addition to any bathroom wall, where she'll sneer at you while you pee.

Bow wow wow.

Early Sunday morning, Brad and I dragged ourselves out of bed, stuffed a few bottles of water into a backpack, threw a leash on the dog, and piloted Eggo Beanrocket northward for a few hours of cliffside hiking in New Jersey. (Yes, that New Jersey. Who knew!) The route we took is known as the Alpine Loop, a lovely, long trail that winds along the Hudson and through the woods at the base of the Palisades. The hike is one of my close-by favorites -- it's a long walk, but the terrain is easy, the view is beautiful, and bushes full of fragrant flowers bloom on the path all summer long.

Given all this, you'd think it would be an ultra-popular destination for city people looking for some one-on-one time with nature, but weirdly, the loop is not particularly well-trafficked. I've spent whole mornings there without ever seeing another person, and even on a sunny-and seventy day like this one, we made our way into the woods and along the river shoreline for miles without seeing a soul. But when you do cross paths with other people -- and this is where things get slightly weirder -- they are almost always groups of elderly Koreans who appear to have bought their hiking ensembles directly off the mannequins at Land's End. (Note: It's not that I think elderly Koreans shouldn't be hiking, or even that they shouldn't be doing it in moisture-wicking, color-coordinated, khaki-and-canvas outfits in various tasteful shades of heather. It just leaves me wondering whether, given that the path's ratio of elderly Korean hikers to non-elderly, non-Korean hikers is about fifteen to one, we're missing something here. Like, say, a sign that says "Free beer and Cheetos for all elderly Korean hikers; the rest of you can fuck off." That would explain a lot.)

After a few miles of trekking and a short swim in the Hudson for Hurley, we turned around and made our way back toward the trailhead. The day had gotten gorgeous, and a fair number of people had started coming out to hike. We saw a couple families, one woodsy-looking man hiking solo, and of course, several groups of elderly Koreans (including one in which all the men were sporting blue-accented outerwear, and all the women, pink. Cute.) We had reached an intersection in the trail and were about to start on the switchback climb back to the top of the cliffs, when we saw a youngish guy with a sleek, brownish-orange dog coming toward us.

"Hello," we said, allowing the dogs to greet and sniff each other.
"Nice day for a hike," he said.
"It is!"
Reaching down to pat Hurley's head, the guy gestured down the trail. "Are there a lot of other people out today?"
"A few," I said. "And there were a couple of those big groups of elderly Koreans in matchy hiking-wear."
"Oh," said the guy, his look darkening.
"What?"
"They really don't like dogs," he said.
"Well, they like to eat them!" I said.

The guy blinked at me.
I blinked back.
Brad coughed a little.

They like to eat them?

Somewhere inside my head, the part of my brain assigned to keep me from just saying whatever pops into my head looked up from the beer it was drinking and said, They like to EAT THEM?! What the fuck? I left you alone for TWO SECONDS!

Both dogs looked vaguely offended.

I'd like to say that things got less awkward from here, but the guy just said ""Heh" -- I'm still not sure whether this was a chuckle or an expression of profound discomfort -- and then we parted ways.

Also, I'm not sure what it says about me that, having finished writing this, I really, really want a hot dog.

Briefly (or, About That Dress)

Since my last post, my mother has been in touch with me several times to say that I really ought to post a better photo of my dress from Sunday night. She is recommending this as a kindness to the fashion-obsessed, but also as a kindness to her, because she did the alterations on it and she wants to brag.

I, of course, am just adding this to the pile of incontrovertible evidence that my mom is The Awesomest Shit Ever -- yes, she is, because how often does your mom email to tell you that you really should be posting more pictures of yourself on the internet? -- but given that I've heard from a couple of you wanting to know more about just what I'm wearing in the Roofied Photo, I'm also going to follow her advice. So!



Brad snapped this picture of me in the park, before we got on the subway (and also before my bangs were plastered to my forehead by a lovely combination of sweat and Brooklyn street grime, yaaaay metro system.) The dress was an $11 vintage flea-market find, so if you were one of the readers who was hoping to purchase it, I'm afraid you're out of luck. But if all you wanted was to feast your little eyeballs on an emerald confection of chiffon and pressed velvet... well, here you go.

Dressed up and drinking

On September 6, 2008, Brad and I got married.
Which means that this Sunday, September 6th, was our first wedding anniversary.

Yaaaay!

The first year of marriage has been lovely, and it has gone by fast. And in honor of our reaching this little milestone, I was absolutely planning on a blog post -- a cute little essay about the ups and downs of Brad and Kat: Year One, beginning with a revisit of the wedding, and ending with some sort of whimsical yet poignant observation about the nature of marital love.

Yeeeep, that's what I was going to do.... until around nine o'clock last night, when a brief but highly memorable incident involving some recalcitrant beets and a contaminated box of pasta and one glass of vino too many caused one half of our marital team to end the evening in the fetal position on the floor of our very hot, very smoky, very purple-stained kitchen. weeping.

Weeping and covered in beet juice.

(In the interest of preserving my dignity a bit of mystery, I won't be telling you which one of us that was.)

Anyway, all of this is to say that one of us is too exhausted from sobbing amongst the beets to update his or her blog in any meaningful way right now.

But I know I have to give you something, so here: This is a picture from our anniversary eve in which my husband looks handsome as all get-out and I look like I've been roofied.


You're welcome.

There is no dignity in death.

For two years now, our apartment has been the scene of an ongoing battle – an epic battle between good and evil, between primal instinct and evolved intelligence, between MAN and BEAST.

Which is to say, we have a mouse problem.

It started as soon as we moved in. It was impossible not to be immediately aware of the mice – not when they were fleeing across the kitchen floor every time we came through the door at night, not when the wee hours of the morning were punctuated by the unmistakable sound of chewing, not when I spent the entirety of our first weekend at home vacuuming up mountains of tiny turds that had accumulated behind the stove and inside the cabinets. (Despite all the trouble they’ve caused, I have to give our mice props; they are record-breakingly prolific poopers.)

“This is a problem,” said Brad.
“I’ll give you some poison,” said our landlord.

He did, and the mice went away.
For awhile.
Then they came back.

“Ugh!” said Brad, discovering a fresh sprinkling of turds scattered abundantly across one of our cutting boards. “We can’t LIVE like this!”

And so began the battle. Not just between man and beast, but also between husband and wife, as it turned out that Brad and I do not react with the same level of disgust to the idea (and evidence) of mice hanging out in our kitchen.

“THIS IS FUCKING DISGUSTING!” he would shout, furiously scouring a cast-iron pan which held the latest deposit of droppings.
“It’s gross,” I would reply.
“NO,” he said, “It’s not just ‘gross’, it’s FUCKING HORRIBLE.”
“Why are you shouting?”
“How can you NOT be shouting?!”
“Please stop shouting.”
“I will NOT stop shouting until you REACT APPROPRIATELY TO HOW HORRIBLE THIS IS!.”
“I WILL NOT SHOUT JUST BECAUSE YOU THINK I SHOULD BE SHOUTING!”

And so on.

For awhile, peace was restored to the apartment when several stray cats moved into our back alley. The mice promptly vanished from the premises, and at night, the air would be filled with the squalling sounds of fighting and feral cat sex... but to us, it was simply the Glorious Musical Accompaniment to a Mouseless Existence. From our fire escape, we would watch the big toms humping away atop their hapless ladycats, laughing like loons as we gleefully anticipated the birth of still more cats to kill still more of the horrible mice.

Several months later, one of our neighbors waved to us on the street.

“Hey, I just wanted to let you guys know,” he said. “I called animal control about those cats in the alley. They came and got ‘em all this afternoon.”
“Oh,” we said. “That was… proactive of you.”
“Hey, no problem!” said the neighbor.

After we were safely inside our apartment, Brad looked out the window at the cat-free landscape and said, savagely, “That fucker.”

The mice came back, of course.
I went to the store and purchased poison pellets, which we placed strategically around the apartment, only to find that the mice were wholly disinterested in eating them. The turds continued to appear. The marital strife re-began in earnest.

Another call to the landlord yielded a visit from his daughter, who showed up at the door with a plug-in device that claimed to repel mice via ultrasonic sound waves.
“Are you kidding?” we said.
“But I don’t want to kill them!” she said.

Gamely, we plugged in the ultrasonic mouse-repellent.
They pooped right next to it.

A week later, more poison appeared in the hallways, and the mice went away.

And then, approximately ten days before some friends were slated to be in our apartment for an evening of grown-up socializing, Brad suddenly froze in the middle of the room and said, “Shhhh!”

I listened.
And then, from a corner, beneath the radiator, came the sound… of chewing.
Not only had the mice returned, they were now out, eating our woodwork, in broad daylight.

“That’s it,” said Brad.
“Indeed,” I said.
And so we came to the mouse trap.

The problem, of course, is that mouse traps are tricky, or sticky, or just generally unpleasant to deal with. A traditional trap would pose a hazard to the dog; a glue trap meant disposing of a still-living-but-very-sticky rodent; and as for those oh-so-humane, “No Kill” traps… well, we were way beyond that.

But then, Brad discovered what appeared to be the Holy Grail of Mouse Traps, one of mankind’s most innovative developments: a fully-enclosed and reusable mousetrap that advertised itself as “safe for children and pets” and bragged openly about its clever design and discreet appearance. The package went so far as to claim that one need never even see the mouse – it would crawl through a hole into an expertly-constructed hidey-box, the trap would snap shut within, and the unsightly corpse would be safely enclosed inside an impenetrable wall of plastic. It was the ultimate in mousetrap design, efficient to a fault, a perfect little black box of death.

We bought two.

And then, after several false alarms and three days of obsessively glaring at the still-untripped trap whenever I passed it, this morning’s check revealed that we. Had. Done it!

Giddy with murderous glee, I reached for the trap. This is great, I thought, seizing hold of it and pulling it out of the corner, and I’m so glad I won’t have to see the dead mouse, that’s really good, I always feel bad when I see their poor little HOLYFUCKINGSHIT OHMYGOD.

Because what we have here, dear readers, is a rather unequivocal case of ITEM NOT AS DESCRIBED.




Seriously. Dude. DUDE.

I know I can’t speak for the whole world, here, and perhaps it’s just that we have exceptionally large mice (?), but if I had to describe the particulars of this mouse trap? “Discreet” is not, NOT, the word that comes to mind. I mean, at the risk of stating the obvious, I can see that mouse.

Not to mention that those stiff-and-splayed hindquarters sticking obscenely out of the Death Hole are infinitely grosser than anything I’ve ever seen in a traditional mouse trap. I can handle a dead mouse, y'all; this, on the other hand, looks less like a straight-up dead mouse and more like a piece of misplaced contemporary art from an exhibit titled “There Is No Dignity In Death”, which is being shown in an illegally-obtained warehouse space down by the Navy Yards and in which the featured work is a life-sized latex sculpture of somebody drowning in a toilet while wearing a clown costume.

Which, granted, sounds sort of interesting, but it is nevertheless not something I want hanging out in the corner of my living room.

But I digress.

Back to the good news: The mouse is dead. And I have reason to believe that he was a lone mouse, unaccompanied by fellow rodents, and therefore that the battle between man and beast has finally, finally come to an end.

But if this happens again, we are getting a fucking cat.

In which I only call you when I need a favor.

I have just realized, amazingly, that the three-year anniversary of Pink India Ink has come and gone without so much as a hiccup. Three years! Can you stand it? My relationship with this blog is officially the longest of my entire life -- longer than my marriage, longer than my first relationship EVAR, longer even than my college romance with a highly unsuitable, but nevertheless entertaining fellow who recently provided me with a poignant reminder as to why one should not attempt to reestablish communication with old boyfriends unless one is willing to suffer the possibly-humiliating consequences.

And in all that time, dear readers, I have never asked you for anything... until now.

IT'S HANDJOB TIME.

Oh, wait, I'm sorry. My mistake. It is not, in fact, handjob time. It is, however, the first day of the semifinal, "wishlisting" round of Trazzler's NYCGO travel-writing contest, and I am a semifinalist.

And this is where you come in.

What sort of favor am I asking of you?

I need you to vote for me. I got past the first round on writing ability alone, but now, it's a popularity contest. The ten semifinalists with the most-loved trips on Trazzler will proceed to Round Three, and frankly, I would really like to go to round three. So, if you would like to help further my career/celebrate the 3-year anniversary of Pink India Ink/make me very, verrry happy, please do the following:

1. Click here to visit my trip page.
2. Click the green "wishlist" link at the top of the text.
3. When prompted, either a) sign in using your Facebook account and allow the (totally non-obnoxious) application to access your profile, or b) create an account via the (totally quick and easy) sign-up system.
4. Come over to my apartment and let me kiss you with gratitude.

What's that? You want an additional incentive?

Alright then. If, by some miracle of modern internetting, I actually win this contest? I will post a photo of MY BOOBS. And I will post it ON THIS BLOG. I am not kidding. (Credibility check: If you know me in real life, you know I am not kidding. Clearly, I consider my chances of winning to be slim at best. But I dare you to prove me wrong.)

Well, are you voting? Go vote. Vote vote vote. I'll even provide the link again:

VOTE!

Update: For those who expressed concern, I should add that a) there are 200 other people in this contest, b) my trip is in, like, 30th place and c) in light of the way I used to make money, I've got less anxiety about (and more material for) making good on such a promise than the average person.