Sins of the Amish: Buggy Nights

If you're a guy and watch too many movies, your idea of girls' weekends might involve pillow fights, giggling, and hanging out in lingerie. In reality, girls' weekend is about four things: baggy pajamas, laughing so hard you make awkward snorting noises like a small feral hog, mimosas, and eating a truly obscene amount of tortilla chips. And on occasion, when your group is a mix of 90% bookworms and 50% former stars of high school plays, girls' weekend involves taking turns reading the most ridiculous passages from a giant stack of romance novels out loud to everyone: "Oh God, are those tentacles?!" It was about when we got to the tentacles that I remembered The Sins of the Amish.

A couple of years ago, I happened to mention to some friends at dinner that I had never read a romance novel. Since I enjoyed making fun of them, I thought I should probably read one. My friend, who we shall call Rose, said she could recommend one she'd really enjoyed. But there was a problem: Rose couldn't remember the title. So using keywords from her description of the plot, I tried to google it. I failed. But in the process I did discover a previously unknown subgenre: the Amish romance. At which point I decided that the only thing more fun than reading a romance novel centered on a religious group so conservative that you're not allowed to wear colors would be writing one. So I sat down and wrote the first chapter of "The Sins of the Amish."

Without further ado, I give you "The Sins of the Amish" Chapter One: Buggy Nights. . . .

As Ethelfrieda sensuously dipped her fingers into the rendered pig fat, she met Hans' searching gaze. 

'No,' she thought, 'Johann must be done castrating the spring lambs by now. He could walk in at any moment.' 

Deaf to her mental pleading, Hans took a step forward, the afternoon sun catching the sweat glistening on his bushy sternum-length beard. In that light he looked more like Sumerian warlord than an Amish cowherd. He stepped closer again, eyeing her hungrily. 

'No, Hans,' she said, 'I must make the offal pie.' 

'You are more tempting than any offal pie, Ethelfrieda,' he said. 

He reached out with both hands to undo the first hook-and-eye of the black wool dress she had fastened up to her chin. He silently cursed their ordnung's prohibition on buttons. It would take at least an hour to undress her. 

'Let's go to the buggy,' he said.

'No, Hans,' she said, 'we have defiled the buggy too often. Grand-uncle Yoder found your suspenders when he took the turnips to market last week. He suspects.' 

Hans banged his fist on the butcher block, sending the rendered pig fat sloshing out the sides of its 200 year old wooden mixing bowl. '

Yoder does not govern my passion!' he shouted. 

But she was right. Their love was verboten.

Ten Things I Completely Misunderstood as a Kid

When you're a little kid, a lot of things go right over your head, both literally and figuratively. Everyone has stories about the things they didn't quite understand as a child. Like finally noticing the dirty jokes in Disney movies. Or the horrifying moment when you realized that hamburgers were actually made of cow. Or realizing that your deceased goldfish did not actually leave to join the circus. So for your holiday reading pleasure, I've put together a (somewhat embarrassing) list of things I completely misunderstood as a kid:

1. During the first Gulf War, I was very concerned about the fate of Louisiana. I was five years old, and the only gulf I was aware of was the Gulf of Mexico.

2. In the fifth grade, I played Erato, supposedly the muse of lyrics, in my class’s  Greek play. I didn’t think about it again until over a decade later, on a trip to a museum, where I learned I had actually played the muse of erotic poetry.  When I was 10 years old.

3. If I had had to write a dictionary definition of God in kindergarten, this is probably what it would have looked like:

God: (noun) the being over America, as described in the Pledge of Allegiance.

4. At the beginning of the first grade, I thought werewolves were a real (and entirely non-magical) species of wolf. So when our teacher asked us to name some animals, I raised my hand and said “werewolf,” just as one might have said “baboon” or “prairie dog.” This (understandably) resulted in peals of laughter from my classmates and teacher, who, to my total confusion, said “Someone’s been reading too many scary stories.” It was my first week at a new school. I didn’t raise my hand again in a science class until the 10^th grade.

5. For a long time I thought a ham was a kind of bird. (This is all the more ridiculous being from Virginia, commonwealth o’ ham.)

6. My babysitter told me that being angry makes your liver turn black and die. This had two results: 1) I drew a lot of pissed-off-looking pigtailed stick figures with giant black blobs in their bellies; and 2) even as an adult, I still find it hard to be angry for any great length of time [without worrying about cirrhosis].

7. I believed that all toys with moveable eyes were secretly alive and controlled by my cousin.

8. I had no concept of time. I have seen a video of my second birthday. When my parents asked me how old I thought my grandfather was (we shared a birthday), my answer was “six.”

9. Trees are part of nature. Paper comes from trees. Throwing paper on the ground is littering. Littering is bad. Conclusion: Once you have taken tree-parts out of nature, they can never go back, or the planet will be destroyed. 

10. One of my earliest memories is of throwing a tantrum at age three over a pair of overalls. I ran around screaming like a Tasmanian devil, before my parents eventually captured me and imprisoned me in the overalls. My thoughts at the time were not exactly clear, but this pretty much sums it up:

Overalls = End of the Universe

How to Wear an Avocado

Spa day. Ordinarily this would mean lounging around in a fluffy white robe all day, drinking water with floating cucumbers in it. Or listening to a CD of whales groaning at each other while a stern woman with needle-thumbs attacks my pressure points. Or being dipped in Hungarian mineral mud and left to ferment in a steam room with no clock. (Because when you put mud on an airplane from Europe, it becomes fancy mud.) DIY spa day, however, was something else entirely. DIY spa day was about playing with food. 

I've been reading a lot of articles recently about the presence of harmful chemicals in beauty products. Articles with fun titles like "Is Your Lipstick Trying to Murder You?" and "Carcinogens: Our Cosmetics in Crisis." OK, I made those up, but they're no more dramatic than the real headlines. Over and over again the message was drilled into my brain: the opposite of wellness is chemicals. So, clearly, our DIY spa day was not going to be as simple as buying out a shelf of the local drugstore. Instead, we'd be whisking together our facial mask and body scrub in the kitchen, like dermatological Betty Crockers.

I went to work finding recipes without frightening or impossible-to-find ingredients. (I have no idea where to buy pure algae. And no promise of luminous skin was going to make me smear my face with the placenta of a farm animal, in some Real Housewives meets Lord of the Flies quest for beauty.) I also ruled out things that would smell bad. Raw egg. Beer. Mayonnaise. All of those were out. In the end, we selected two (incredibly vague) recipes:

Body Scrub: A bunch of sugar, a banana, and some sweet almond oil. (Consistency of cookie batter.)

Facial Mask: An avocado, a banana, some yogurt, some olive oil. (Consistency of monkey brains.)

Lauren and I went into this phase of the project a bit skeptical, to put it mildly. I didn't expect big results. To be honest, I didn't expect any results, except maybe smelling like a banana. And Lauren doesn't even like bananas. We were wrong. Scrubbing our hands and feet with the sugar/banana goo made our skin so soft, it was like having hands made of butter. (In a good way, not a Tim Burton movie kind of way.) It was so good, we packed up the leftovers and brought them home after the retreat was done. This led to my subsequent discovery, which is that when you use the scrub in the shower, it makes you and your home smell like Funfetti cake. I still can't decide if that's good or bad. We might have noticed that aroma earlier, except after the scrub we put on argan oil. Which smells like ham. Or tanned deerskin. So here's my verdict on argan oil: overhyped, over-priced, really stinky.

Last but not least, there was the avocado facial. First things first, if you read the ingredients list above, you may have noticed that our face mask was technically edible. So you may be wondering, did you taste it? Answer: yes, we did. And while I'm not about to suggest you bring to your next party, it was much tastier than the green juice. I would rather eat that entire bowl of face mask with my hands tied behind my back than have to take one sip of the green juice. 

Also, eating it might be easier than using it for its intended purpose. Putting on a thick layer of gloppy avocado was a challenge to say the least. It was not interested in cooperating with the half hour time requirement and voiced its displeasure by making my face sting with varying degrees of intensity. A rogue avocado chunk also spent five minutes abseiling down my nose before making a kamikaze plop onto the sink. Needless to say, it was not very glamorous. And I'm not sure it did anything for my skin. 

But I did learn an important lesson: it is very difficult to wear an avocado. 

Lauren and I, demonstrating sea monster chic.

Chachaphobia and the Dance of Wellness

Dance and I are not a match made in heaven. When music is playing, I lose the ability to count. My right foot and my left foot have creative differences and haven't worked together for years. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with my arms. I have a deep-seated fear of the cha-cha. And sometimes I crash into inanimate objects. Like the floor. But with the soaring popularity of workouts like Barre Method (which I've tried before), Zumba, and pole dancing classes, Lauren and I knew we were going to have to give dance fitness a shot.

For our "art as wellness" day, we'd be taking on four DVDs: The New York City Ballet Workout; Sizzling Salsa; Belly Dance: Arms, Abs, Hips, Buns, and Thighs; and Carmen Electra's Aerobic Striptease Hip-Hop. At this point you're probably thinking, "Aerobic striptease counts as art?" But have you ever tried to do sexy face while sweating profusely and doing late 90s dance moves? I'm telling you, it's an art. You might also be thinking that the name of our belly dance DVD sounds more like a dinner menu for cannibals than a workout. I agree. So I have renamed it Belly Dance: Isolations from Hell. 

We did not get off to a good start. The first move of workout #1 was simple: "Breathe in." For reasons unknown, this resulted in a high-speed collision in which I accidentally gouged Lauren with my ring. (This was after she fell off the ottoman trying to put her sneakers on.) It didn't get much better from there. I spent half the time walking backwards and forwards counting and waiting for an opportune time to get back in sync with Carmen Electra. It was rarely, if ever, successful. This led to an important discovery: striptease counting is not great exercise. But this was a wellness retreat. I needed tough workouts. It was time for drastic measures. It was time for The 3-Fold Path to Dance Madness for Those Who Suck at Dance, or 3FPDMTWSD (What, the acronym is too long? You must not be from Washington.)

Step One: Take a deep breath. Accept, without judgment, the fact that you're about to make a fool of yourself.

Step Two:  Mindfully, position yourself away from staircases and open windows. 

Step Three: Visualize a chihuahua drinking Red Bull. Harness his ch'i. Dance, little rat dog! Dance!

This was my strategy and I went all out. I flailed my arms. I leaped unnecessarily. Was it graceful? No. But it was a workout. It may have been a completely different workout from the one Lauren and the people on the screen were doing (as seen in the picture below), but still, I highly recommend amped-up chihuahua ballet. I was all ready to channel my energy into the next workout. But that was before we started it. Sizzling salsa: the ultimate test of my commitment to looking like an idiot.

The New York City Ballet Workout (sort of)

It is, without question, the most irritating workout DVD ever made. It's led by a Disney villain with psycho eyes, who stares into the camera with rapturous glee and yells "Welcome to my fiesta!" You know, in the way Satan would if he was hosting a theme party. (And don't even get me started on the endless use off the words "sizzling," "spicy," "flavor," "heat" and the 50 other stereotypical words to describe all things Latin, from people to burritos.) Still, I persevered. I put a tragic amount of effort into doing "samba arms." I tried to tune out Cruella and focus on doing my own crazy-pants version of the merengue. But then the unthinkable happened. I pulled a muscle. In my back. Doing something called the mucho mambo combo. (It involved a lot of flinging.)

Once you have injured yourself doing the mucho mambo combo, you have hit your rock bottom. Here are some steps for caring for your mucho mambo combo injury:

Step One: Don't talk about the mucho mambo combo injury. Ever. (Clearly, I broke this rule.)

Step Two: Denial. Don't even admit it to yourself. 

Step Three: Try and keep the pain grunting to a minimum. People ask questions.

But honestly, aside from the aforementioned pseudo-salsa misery (which I blame on this DVD and not all salsa dancing), I have to say it was pretty fun. Once I stopped caring how bad I was at dancing. And if my sore calves were anything go by, it was a good workout. Amazingly, my back mysteriously healed itself during the night. In fact, I felt great when I woke up in the morning. At 6:45 AM. And I am not a morning person. Maybe anything is possible when you dance like a Muppet in need of an exorcism.  

NOTE: You can also check out Lauren's post, Why I Don't Dance Sober, on Just My Mazel.

The Green Juice, or, When Leprechauns Poop in a Glass

When we were first planning this project, there was one thing I knew we'd have to do that I was absolutely dreading: green juice. I spent hours looking through green juice recipes, but eventually had to accept the inevitable truth: celery is always included. 

It is difficult to describe the degree to which I loathe celery. It is my lifelong nemesis, and it permeates even my earliest memories, thanks to the vile snack favored by preschools across America: "ants on a log." In fact, there are only three things I remember about preschool: swingsets, singing oddly repetitive songs about Virginia wildlife, and those heinous bits of stuffed celery. Every day, the "ants on a log" would appear. And every day, I would scoop out the raisins and peanut butter with my tongue and leave the empty celery canals on the plate. (I maintain this is closer to the behavior of an actual anteater and should have been seen as an homage to our fellow mammals, rather than poor table manners.) In fact, "ants on a log" was such a constant presence in my childhood that, to this day, one of the things I like most about being an adult is that no one can make eat celery. 

And then came bootcamp day of the DIY wellness project. To be fair, no one forced me to do this. But Lauren and I agreed to try the biggest wellness trends, and it seems like half the fluff articles I read online extoll the wonders of green juice (and juicing in general). It seemed like cheating to only put in the green veggies I like (which is, incidentally, all of them except for celery). And that is what led us to put celery, kale, wheatgrass, cucumber, an apple, and a pear in a blender yesterday, and dare to drink the neon green sludge that was formed as a result. 

And it was every bit as bad as we thought it would be. It was like you chopped up Ursula the Sea Witch and put her in a glass. It was like koala barf - in a glass. It was like leprechaun poop - in a glass. It tasted liked celery. And we made a video of it. So for your viewing pleasure (or digust), Lauren (of Just My Mazel) and I present "The Green Juice, or, When Leprechauns Poop in a Glass."

A quick disclaimer and a word of forewarning: We made this video at the end of bootcamp day, after multiple workouts. This is what we look like covered in sweat, sand, salt, and no makeup. Vanity went out the window on Day 1 of the project. And for those with sensitive ears, we apologize for the loud celery-induced expletive in the middle of the video. (It was a moment of weakness.)

One post, two flavors? Check out Lauren's take on the green juice experiment at Just My Mazel.

Because Laughter is the Best Medicine

Lauren and I have arrived in an undisclosed location on the East Coast with one mission: to get well. "Are you sick?" you may ask. No, we are not. Confused? To be honest, so were we. I consider myself to be a healthy, active person. And yet not a day goes by that I don't receive bits of advice, often contradictory, that subtly imply that my life choices will result in me falling into a heap of distress and disease before I hit 30. (Example: "You still eat wheat? But wheat is poison!") Never mind that health trends are propelled in and out of the limelight faster than a cheetah strapped to a jet pack.

Typically I just roll my eyes. I've never smoked. I workout. I eat an unholy amount of spinach. So I never bother with these new-fangled ideas. (Yes, sometimes I'm like a crotchety old man from the Victorian era.) But then Lauren and I came up with the project. A three-day DIY wellness retreat, where we would unscientifically test fitness, diet, and beauty trends day and night. We would jump on the wellness bandwagon. We would run barefoot. We would drink coconut water. And we would blog about the disasters results.

Our retreat is divided into three themes (guess which one we're looking forward to the least):
Day One: Artsiness as Wellness
Day Two: Boot Camp
Day Three: Spa Day

And we have two rules.
1. Everything is DIY. That means no personal trainers, fancy gyms, or fitness classes. We don't actually get to go to a real spa.

2. Safety first. We will not be taking strange herbal supplements. We will pay attention to aches, pains, mental collapse, etc. as we put our bodies through the ringer.

Oh, and there is one last thing. We're not doing a juice cleanse. We know it's the biggest trend out there right now, but it doesn't mesh well with multi-hour workouts. (And call me crazy, but here is my logic on juice cleanses: Mother Nature opted to give me teeth. My teeth are useless for defending against a yeti attacks. Ergo, they are meant for chewing. Thus, I chew.)

So stay tuned for additional posts, as we go through hell to get well. Because if there's one theory we subscribe to, it's that laughter is the best medicine.

(You can also check out Lauren's blog, Just My Mazel, to continue reading about our reluctant road to wellness.)

With Cheeks the Color of a Baboon's Backside

Much like our canine friend the chihuahua, I am not made for the cold. Blame it on my lifelong acclimation to muggy Virginia summers, my Mediterranean roots, or just general wimpiness. If the temperature dips below 70 degrees (21 degrees Celsius for all my metric system readers), I'm probably chilly. In fact, I'm usually so cold in my apartment that I wrap myself head to toe in blankets like a polar burrito (as seen on the right).

Why then, you may ask, do I plan so many trips that require the following packing considerations:
"I wonder how many pairs of thermal underwear I can fit under these jeans."
"I should probably own more faux fur."
"Is my coat puffy enough to protect against moose antlers?"

The reason? Offseason travel. Sure, you can empty your wallet to escape winter at a crowded tropical beach. But why do that when you can spend pennies to risk frostbite alone in the tundra? Here are three reasons I take the cold-weather option.

1. I travel with Pulpo, the human furnace. While I'm concerned with my ears turning black and dropping off my head, Pulpo is flapping his jacket open in the wind like a flightless bird trying to cool off. Conveniently, I can use him to syphon off body heat like an iguana on a hot rock.

2. Traveling in the depths of winter really is much less expensive. Places that are completely unaffordable in nice weather are suddenly dirt cheap. All you have to do is wade through four feet of snow to get to your hotel room.

3. Here are some things you can only do in winter: Go on a sleigh ride through a herd of elk. See bison clearing the snow with their heads. Be the only visitors at Blarney Castle. Stay in a luxury hotel for $95 a night. And last but not least, drink something called a hot apple pie toddy. (Obviously these are not all at the same place. Do not go looking for bison or cocktails at Blarney Castle. You will not find any.)

And sometimes the practical reasons go right out the window, because winter is spectacular all on its own. Like in Wyoming. Yes, the temperature is -5 degrees (-20 Celsius). Yes, you're vaguely concerned that your frozen toes may fall off when you remove your boots later. Yes, your wind-burned cheeks have turned a shade of scarlet typically seen only on the back end of a baboon. And yes, you're on a snowmobile at dawn looking like an arctic storm trooper, wearing a giant helmet and person-shaped padded snowsuit. But isn't it worth it, when this is what you're sitting in the middle of:

Of course, people will still think you're crazy. When you return from your travels, they will most likely say something to the effect of "Didn't you just freeze?" or "Seriously? Who goes there in January?" And you will be able to hold your head high, with your cheeks the color of a baboon's backside, and say "I do. I go there in January."