secret 14 - the good, the bad, the ugly

despite the perception i gave off in my last job--apparently i did a reasonable facsimile of high-powered career woman and we all know they don't do domestic--i can cook. in fact, i can cook very well. that's not really a secret. 

what isn't widely known is that sometimes what i cook doesn't turn out that well, tho' i have written about it before. tho' i chalk that previous occasion up to having to cook outside on an old stove because my kitchen was completely torn apart. oh, and extreme clumsiness on my part.

however, this failure was more recent...i refer to it as the ugly bread incident.

it's a kind of stuffed bread which i have made numerous times. it's jamie oliver-inspired. you make a basic bread recipe, then roll it into a long relatively thin line of dough and load it with all kinds of delicious things...bacon, eggs, herbs, cheese, pesto--whatever you have around and which sounds good to you. then you close it up and usually it becomes a ring.  on this occasion, i had a new kind of flour and the dough went to pieces on me instead of staying together. resulting in this very ugly rather 8-shaped bread.

we had guests coming (for the first time--way to impress them, j) and there was no time to make a new batch, so i just had to make the best of it, serving them a couple of G&Ts first and hoping they wouldn't notice. and when they noticed, we just made a joke of it. luckily, it still tasted heavenly, even if we could hardly stand to look at it.

so that's secret 14: sometimes the stuff i cook doesn't turn out so well.

secret 13- shampoo

i'm thirty-twelve years old and have never, i repeat, NEVER, found the right shampoo.

i realize this secret is a bit of a letdown after yesterday's...i wonder if i peaked too soon...

rocking out

last week, i got a wonderful little surprise in the mail. an open heart from the lovely blog, recovery from a life not lived, sent me two stones from her parents' ranch and two packets of seeds so that i can grow some of those yummy lemon cucumbers. i've already planted them in the greenhouse and hope we might get to taste them already this year, even tho' it's a bit late in the season. i'm hoping that the greenhouse helps. thank you so much, open heart!!

and photographing these little stones made me realize that i hadn't shared the lovely little flat stones that seaside girl brought to me when she came to blog camp:

i really love them--they're so flat and smooth. and now the little stone treasure bowl on my desk looks like this:

so, as i type and work away at my desk, i'm accompanied by little reminders of my connections from all over the world. i think that's pretty cool.

* * *

i'm off to dublin for a few days, but have scheduled plenty of secrets to keep you satisfied.

* * *

and be sure to check out the new project, across ø/öresund launching this week. it's a new photo collaboration with the lovely kristina. we're nikon girls, you know. skåne was lost to denmark in 1658, but we're working on reuniting them, at least in pictures.

a creativity update - #56-59

it's almost the middle of july and i've been pondering how i've been doing with regard to those things i set out on my art journal page back in june.  

on tuesday, i managed to go into copenhagen without my camera, so i've failed on that whole "never leave the house without my camera." i still haven't had a raw week (tho' there's still time and this is definitely the season for it). i've been riding my bike every chance i get (makes me buy groceries much more sensibly, i'll tell you), so i'm keeping that one pretty well. and making something every single day, if bread counts, i'm doing pretty well there. so speaking of making things, let's check in on the evidence of creativity.

molly pointed out this should count as evidence of creativity

so it's #56.

thanks molly!

#57--i made these cheery capris for sabin.

she promptly fell off her scooter in them and ripped a big hole in the knee,

necessitating a further bit of creativity:

#58 - this embroidered patch covers up the hole.

and these we put on for good measure, to make

this one look more intentional:

the color is more accurate on the two bottom pictures.

the light was really strange on the shots of the pants.

it was clouding up to rain.

sabin has manufactured 24 necklaces

using pretty paper and scrabble tiles.

i made three.

#59

there are a variety of works in progress underway...

art journal pages

combining photos and pencils

because i can't stop thinking about how the chives

look like russian churches

watercolors

and some stitching inspired by the beautiful things

i see on spirit cloth...

i don't know yet what these things will be.

so i won't give them numbers as of yet.

secret 12 - i am a beauty queen failure

back in the early 90s, when i suddenly found myself thin and full of thoughts of revenge after a particularly nasty break-up, i decided to try to earn my way to the miss america pageant. i thought the best revenge on the bad boyfriend would be for him to have to see me on t.v. and realize what he had missed out on. it was a brilliant plan. except for one thing. although i tried TWICE, i utterly failed to make it to the miss america pageant. i could be miss state fair, but could not win my state pageant to save my life. looking back, there were a lot of reasons for this which i didn't understand at the time...mostly having to do with the fact that i had a brain and they weren't looking for that. i thought i would be the first smart miss america, you see. silly me.

i proved i could walk and sing

while wearing heels.

and i had a fabulous sparkly dress, don't you think?

and i especially love this very

absolutely fabulous patsy look...

note: this is a previously-revealed secret, but it might have escaped your attention since a lot of you came to MPC quite recently. i originally revealed it here. (do check it out to see how i rocked the tiara.) and i made a little list about it here.

secret 11 - it's hard being the oldest

i grew up in a household full of babies of the family. my mom is the younger of two, my dad is the youngest of nine and of course, my little sister, the youngest in our family. now imagine this, you're the only over-achieving, striving, earnest, responsible member of your family and you're surrounded by irresponsible rebels who think there are no rules to life.

there are five and a half years between me and my sister. this means a couple of things. one, i got good and used to being an only child by the time she came along (and no one asked me, by the way--i'd have preferred to have a goat had i been asked, which may be why i wasn't asked). secondly, i broke our parents in and paved the way for her, so things were smooth and easy when she came along.

since it was a family of littlest siblings, there weren't that many rules in our household. i had just the one, "win or don't come home." which suited me, since i was the eldest. my sister also had one rule. but her rule was "no pot in the living room." fine to keep your pot elsewhere in the house, but just not in the living room. and by pot, i do mean marijuana, weed, ganga. that stuff. tho' i don't think she actually had any in high school. that wasn't 'til later, in college.

although i got my driver's license at 14, i always had to rely on using the family car or the old brown pickup when it was available. i never had my own car, not until i graduated from high school and got a little green mustang that we called iggy. of course, things were different for my sister....much different.

at the age of 12 (i already alluded to this in my driver's license post), she was home alone, playing with a friend. dad's old blue chevette was home and my sister, who was freakishly short for a 12-year-old, decided to give her friend a ride home despite the fact that she had never before driven and could hardly see over the steering wheel. she'd been in the car four years previously during my driving lessons and thought, "how hard can it be to drive a stick?" there was a back way to the friend's house, down gravel roads, so she decided it would be fine to just run her friend home.

they hopped in the chevette and headed down the gravel road. they must have gotten up quite some speed by the time they came to a little artificial hill in the road, created by the old railroad tracks. they hit that bump going way too fast, slid on the loose gravel and flew into the steep ditch. shaken, but unharmed, they hiked a mile across a field, directly to her friend's house. the friend's mom was pretty alarmed and located my dad on the golf course, telling him breathlessly that "the girls are ok."

dad finished his round of golf and went and picked up my sister and she recalls what happened as the most severe lecture she ever got. but all he did was put his hand on her knee and say, "monique. monique. monique." in a grave voice. and that was the end of it. it didn't matter that the radiator was knocked clean through the engine and the car was basically totaled. there were no repercussions. no grounding. no punishment whatsoever. she was at an out-of-town football game three nights later with a gaggle of her friends. i was stunned.

when she got her license at 14, they bought her a little brown station wagon. her own car. no humiliating waiting out front of the school for mom to arrive and pick her up in the old brown pickup. no, no, she had her own car. she could fit half a dozen other kids in it and drive across the river and drive in and out of ditches in the snow for the sheer joy of it. she would announce, "i've got tickets for a poison concert in the big town on tuesday and me and the gang are going over there and i'm driving." and do you think that anyone batted an eye that it was a school night? or that there was a blizzard raging? nope. not at all as long as she kept her pot out of the living room.

and although i didn't try to do any of those things...i wouldn't even have DREAMED of ASKING, let alone done that...i undoubtedly paved the way for her. warmed the parents up so they were more pliable to her whims. or maybe they were that lenient all along and i should have been more daring. but i didn't even try. because i was the oldest. the responsible, over-achieving one. it's hard being the oldest.

links and connections

i love the blogosphere. i've said it before. i'll no doubt say it again. but today, the thing i'm loving about it is that whole connection thing. and how connections happen and you can actually see them--in the comments, in links, on people's blogrolls, in the form of blog crushes, in sidebars...connections are visible all around us.

back in late april, when my blog became Blog of Note, a hilarious blogger who calls herself extranjera found me. i was so taken with her blog, that i used the small window of opportunity blogger had open at that time to nominate blogs for blog of note to nominate hers. for a couple of months, nothing happened, but then a week ago, what will i ever do with my life? was named blog of note. a very deserved honor. and i have found myself just as delighted watching her followers numbers rise (and even surpass my own!) as i was watching my own rise in those heady early days of BoN. yay extranjera and yay blogger!! it's stuff like this that makes me feel like the fairyblogmother™. 

while we were waiting for it to happen, a whole lot of other connections happened. and other blogs were created - collaborations in cyberspace - trans-atlantic learning adventures, hermit book club, siamese sisters, the idea of blog camp was born (thank you husband!) and the first one happened and several others have been planned, members were added to the balderdash collaboration and this week the ARWP project was launched (for all of us who battle against Real World People and would like to join a sorority support group cult). because this is what it's really all about, this blogging thing (it took me awhile to get that - for along time i thought it was about my sanity)--it's about connections.

the very best connections for me are resulting in real-life, in-person friendships--of the kind that blog camp represents. meeting B, extranjera, kristina, polly and seaside girl in person was such a great experience that i find it difficult to adequately describe it. that we're all (minus extranjera, who will be galavanting off to the US) going to get together next month near london at Bee's house and also meet spudballoo at BC 1.5 is something i'm so excited about. and it's all made possible through the wonder of the interweb. and although all of these people seem to be just ephemeral links here on my blog, those links enable them to be connected to all of you who are reading this. they're just a click away. and when i think of the multiplicity of connections that represents, it boggles my mind.

and i started thinking about all of this because dutchbaby told me this morning that she and tangobaby, who both live in SF, are getting together with other blog friends, who i also know and love--relyn and robin--and having a blog camp of sorts in SF. blog camp 1.1, we're calling it, in case there ends up being others before 1.5 near london, then we save a few numbers for those. how marvelous is that? i really wish i was there to join in the fun (and the photo walks)! i hope you fabulous women have a great time!

these connections just make me so happy. thank odin for hyperlinks! you never know what new adventures they'll take you on.

and speaking of connections, be watching this space for an announcement of a new project--one joining denmark and sweden as they haven't been joined in several hundred years...coming soon, right here on blogger.

geocaching and muggles

because we are the parents of the hippest, coolest 8-year-old on the planet (or at least in denmark), we learned this week about geocaching (from her, of course). and today, we found (through the aid of my beloved iPhone, which husband refers to as the clever phone) our very first treasure. right here in our own neighborhood.

sabin led the way...

clever phone in hand

you use the GPS in your phone 

and a super cool app
(ours is the one made by groundspeak, the geocaching people themselves)
with all the info and clues

 to help you find your way

to the treasure.

the treasure is a container of some sort.

you bring something with you so you can trade

leaving a treasure behind and taking one.

super cool concept.

we left a stone from the black hills

and took a stone.

tho' there were other items.

we also brought a pen so we could write in the logbook.

then we filed a field note.

so other treasure hunters could benefit from our search.

it's a super concept.

i'll bet there's a treasure near you

what are you waiting for?

just don't let the muggles see you looking.

then everyone will want to play.

secret 10 - i've never been to new york city

me. world traveler extraordinaire. been to the philippines sixteen times. india more than i'd care to admit. china. hong kong. singapore more times than i can count. cape town (not enough). moscow. the balkans. but never ever to new york city. passing through JFK and newark airports don't count.

secret 9 - me and dessert

of late, i've been inventing all sorts of variations on the dessert above. it's a kind of trifle or parfait or something like that...creamy, fruity, meringuey. decadent. i've made it both with a bit of sweetened condensed milk in the cream for extra richness and without. i've made it with peaches, cherries (from our own cherry tree, combined with a dash of vanilla vodka), strawberries (from our own garden). i've used bits of a sponge cake in between the layers and i've used crunched up meringues. it's pretty much yummy no matter what you do. or so they always say.

because although i love to make desserts, i can really take them or leave them as far as eating them goes. and that's it, that's secret #9--love to make desserts, don't so much like eating them (tho' you wouldn't know that to look at me).

* * *

and yes, i admit this secret is a bit lame, but it's because i'm in a mild depression over managing to leave the house without the camera today (it's wednesday as i write, at least for a few more minutes). and then i kept stalking seeing a swedish guy and his aggressively perfect family in tivoli who was taking shots in perfect light from odd angles with a leica M8, which only further depressed me.

i'll try to be back on form tomorrow...in the meantime, enjoy the pretty pictures of the dessert. :-)

the simple things

beautiful christina at soul aperture is doing simple things wednesday once again....so here, i give you the simple things that are making me happy right here and now...

beautiful viking ships at sunset...

our pooka on the beach...

our pooka jumping on a rain-soaked trampoline...

the fearlessness of our pooka...

how friggin' strong the pooka is...

these two people:

my favorites in the world...
(not that they're simple)

i hope you'll play along too...

what are the simple things making you happy?

right.

this.

very.

minute.

secret 8 - oooh, i'm driving my life away

i had some really weird thoughts as a kid. like that eventually, you wouldn't need to pay attention to those pavement markings which signified a no passing zone, because you would get so experienced at driving that you would just know when someone was coming. luckily, by the time i turned 14 and got my license, that wacky thought had gone.

yup, you read that correctly. i grew up in a place where you get to drive, fair and square, lawfully and legally, at age 14 (brief pause here for anyone with a 14-year-old to come to since they have undoubtedly fainted). it was, i'll grant you, a learner's permit. which meant that you could drive between sunup and sundown, but that if you drove "after hours," you needed an adult in the car. and by an adult, i think they meant parent, as i don't recall any of us trying to hang out with 18-year-olds after dark. at least not for the purpose of driving.

but i digress.

when i turned 16, the license converted to a regular driver's license, where i could drive (and did) at all hours of the day or night. because a) there was nothing to run into out there on the prairies and b) there was nothing better to do out there on the prairies. it could get a little dull out there on the prairies. contrary to the picture presented by laura ingalls wilder and that show where michael landon played her dad.

before you get your license, you have to attend driver's ed classes. our driver's ed classes were taught by the elementary school principal whose name i don't recall and wouldn't want to use here anyway, but i can picture him and his rather creepy, freakishly heavy black mustache to this day. during the driving part of the classes, i was paired with a girl named snow. snow, as you might imagine, had suffered some brain damage from all of the dope clearly smoked by her mother during pregnancy--because you'd have to be high to name your kid snow, right? she had a sister named spring and a brother named rusty or rock or something like that. very naturey that family.

anyway.

snow had clearly not been paying attention during the classes, so when we went for the driving bit of the course, mr. mustache had to save us from certain death on hairpin gravel road curves more than once with the little brake that had been installed on the passenger side of the car. his car surely forever had my fingernail marks embedded in that little handle on the door, where i clutched it in fear for my life while snow drove.

since i had been practicing driving already for ages in my dad's old blue chevette (later totaled by my sister at the age of 12), i passed the driving part of driver's ed with flying colors. and then it was time to take my driver's test.

the driver's test people came to town once or twice a month and camped out at the city office. you went in and took a written test (which a blindfolded monkey could pass) and then, if you were new, you had to go out for a little drive with the examiner--BYOV--bring your own vehicle. i had been saddled with lurch, our elderly station wagon--picture the one from that chevy chase vacation movie--only dark blue with faux wood side panels, not green like the one in the movie.

now this car had been dubbed lurch because of its tendency to die on you whenever you slowed down (and definitely when you stopped, like at a stop sign). it would then lurch to a stop. and you would spend the next five minutes turning the key, furiously pumping the gas pedal and begging it out loud to start.

naturally, this happened to me at a four-way stop right in front of my grandma's house right by the school. lurch died and i  pumped the gas pedal and begged it to start again. which it only did after about 38 tries by which time the sweat was pouring off of me from both nervousness and the sheer exertion of getting the damn thing started again. the examiner, not even remotely able trying to stifle her laughter, put me through a few more paces and then directed me back to the city office, saying as we pulled up there and she wiped the tears of laughter that were streaming down her face that i had passed the test and that if that was the car i was going to have to drive, i DESERVED that driver's license.

i think i should probably take a page from spudballoo and get a formal grudge book and scrawl my parents' names there for making me take lurch to my driver's test. i guess they wanted me to really earn it. and i did and i've been driving ever since.

a bit absent from the blogosphere

it's summer. and as long as we have real summer and not the usual danish summer (read: pissing down rain), i will find myself far from the blogosphere. which is why i haven't been commenting much on your blogs. but i haven't forgotten you and i will be back, i promise. as soon as i feel prepared for my interviews at the end of the month in singapore and the weather really does turn to rain as they've promised. but right now, it's just so glorious outside. and there's so much to do...

like play viking...

help husband put up his tent...(by photographing him doing it)

notice the contrast between me and husband...

covet some kayaks...

and covet these even more...

and watch the sunset...

and make strawberry parfaits

with strawberries from our own garden

and build a dam at the beach...

and again with the sunset...

so i hope you all forgive me and wait for me to come back.

because i will come back.

and i do miss you all.

but as i said before, summer is so fleeting in these northern climes....

secret 7 - barbie girl

once upon a time many years ago, i had a very good friend that i hung out with all the time. she worked at the same newspaper i did and was in charge of all the kids who had paper routes, so i used to tease her about whether she'd done her paper route that day. i actually used to tease her about a lot of things. because she could take it and she could tease back.

we had a lot of great times together. we ran the hash. we had sloth weekends where we did nothing but play nintendo all weekend. we played cards into the wee hours of the night. we had a game called "drink two" where you had to name who sang a song first when it came on the radio and if you did it, the others all had to take two drinks of their drink (i was rubbish at that game). we watched star trek: next generation marathons and real world marathons on MTV. one sloth weekend, my sister and her friend went to target and came back with presents for everyone. they brought me something sparkly and they brought michellea a pork sandwich.

back then, i had a little bit of a thing about barbie. i collected the christmas barbies and other collectible editions of barbie (hmm, maybe that should have been my secret--oh well, consider it a little bonus extra secret, because the real secret is coming up and it's a doozy). these, i had on shelves in my living room. well, michellea wasn't really a barbie girl. and in fact, on one or other sloth weekend, she let it slip that she was kinda freaked out by dolls in general (a bit like i feel about clowns) and that all those barbies staring down from the shelves above the t.v. were kinda freaking her out. i surely laughed maniacally at the time.

well, college ended and we all went our separate ways, moving to other states, but staying in touch. in those days, via telephone, where we could actually have three-way calls due to the miracle of mid-90s technology.

i always kept the doll thing in the back of my mind and then, when a friend was visiting from germany, i told him of the plan i'd been brewing. i would cut up a barbie doll and put the pieces into identical envelopes and send them to michellea from all over the world. i'd send a couple home with him for him to mail from germany. i'd distribute the others to other friends and ask them to send them from places that michellea wouldn't suspect of me. i'd save the envelope with the head myself and send it after a few weeks with a note, revealing it was me and go down in the annals of practical jokedom. it was a genius level practical joke.

so my german friend used his pocket knife to chop up a barbie (it hurt me a little bit to cut up barbie, but it was also cathartic in a way). we carefully placed the pieces of her in identical little manila envelopes and i printed address labels and addressed them. my friend took several of the envelopes and i distrubted the rest to other friends to send from random postmarks.

in those days pre-9/11, my sister actually got a guy who sat next to her on a flight to denver to take one of them and mail it from his home in colorado. he thought it was a hilarious story and thought it would be a riot to take part in it. another friend was going to the bahamas and she took a couple along with her to mail along her journey.

michellea was working at a big university, running a residence hall. the bits of barbie began to trickle in. and she, of course, thought it must be someone in her hall--there was a guy who was a bit delusional and fancying himself the new jesus and he headed her list of suspects. my sister and i were also on her suspect list (she knew us well) and i remember that michellea called me and we had a three-way call with my sister, wherein i remember strongly denying the whole thing, tho' i had to use the mute button to laugh uproariously. then, sadly, the unabomber, who hadn't been caught or active for some time struck somewhere or other and then the bits of barbie began to seem a bit frightening. we heard that michellea's mom wanted her to call the police. so we called her& right away and told her it was us and that it was just a practical joke. by then, i had sent the head, revealing the trick.

michellea never did get all of the pieces of barbie, some were lost in the mail. she kept them in a shoe box for quite awhile thereafter. and she had to admit, unabomber aside, that it was a pretty good practical joke. the only thing is is that she's not yet paid me back for it. so i'm still on guard.

secret 6 - the truth about me and crossword puzzles

despite being a person who loves words. adores them. is practically addicted to them. simply can't get enough. and who has even been fondly accused of having a mild case of hypergraphia, i don't like crossword puzzles. never have. they feel like a trick to me. like there's something a bit malevolent in them. so i never do them. ever. not even if i'm really bored.

and to ease the blow of such a short secret today, i'll send a little surprise to the first person who guesses the book above correctly.

summer is so fleeting

the weekend started at the beach at sunset and ended by a crackling fire in the garden. in other words, it was perfect. hope yours was too!

secret 5 - honeymoon(s)

i've been on three honeymoons. two were my own and one was a friend's. (and i'm going to present them out of order.) EDITED: i'm highlighting the friend's honeymoon. because it's really unusual for someone to go on their friend's honeymoon (there have been misunderstandings on this point so i felt i had to explain, tho' one would have thought that was rather obvious).

honeymoon #1: the starter husband and i went to vancouver for our honeymoon. that trip is when i had the only good white asparagus i've ever had--in a restaurant called the hermitage, where the chef was the former chef of the king of belgium. other than that, all i really remember is a trip to a japanese garden that was so peaceful and beautiful the memory of the atmosphere stays with me very clearly even today.

honeymoon #3: what i think of as my real honeymoon, when husband and i went to london for a quick weekend getaway after we got married on his birthday in 1999. he was at the military academy and could only take one day off, so we got married in a very small, very private ceremony then shared a glass of champagne with his solder friends who had shown up to make an arch of swords for us and ran off to the airport. we had a wonderful weekend wandering around london and being madly in love.

honeymoon #2: my friend gabi's honeymoon. in truth, i wrote about this a long time ago before anyone was reading my blog, but it's such a good secret, i had to use it anyway. i also previously told the story of getting my visa for the trip in this post if you're interested.

it sounds a bit strange to say i went on someone else's honeymoon, but in all fairness, gabi and i had planned the trip to visit our friends in kazan together and then she suddenly decided to marry her longtime boyfriend. since she already had the trip planned and the friends were expecting us, they turned it into their honeymoon. however, i already had tickets and my visa, so i went along too.

it was a wonderful trip. we flew to moscow and took the 13-hour train ride to kazan. you can see us drinking tea on the train above. i completely adore russian trains and some of my fondest memories are from journeys on trains in russia. i can highly recommend them.

we met up with our friends in kazan and i went off with my pals and left the honeymooners to themselves. i vaguely recall that we bought some vodka in a kiosk (big mistake) and proceeded to have an evening full of toasts and laughter. the next day, some other friends came to pick me up and take me to their dacha, but i couldn't really stop throwing up after all that really bad vodka. i meekly took some truly awful black substance that i think contained a lot of coal which was handed to me to try to help me stop throwing up (i was weak and defenseless) and then spent the rest of the day recovering at the dacha, which was beautiful and idyllic.

a few days later, i rejoined gabi and her husband and we boarded a beautiful old 1950s steamer for a cruise up the volga river to moscow. that was a truly wonderful trip. long, beautiful summer days, interesting stops along the way. i still have a handmade basket that i bought from an elderly woman all clad in black who was selling baskets and mushrooms she had found in the forest.

we were the only foreigners onboard the cruise and i remember a long conversation with an elderly gentleman who informed me that all americans are black, tall and played basketball, because that was the impression he'd gotten from the NBA. he was surprised and a little disappointed that i was none of those things and i think he may not really have believed me that i was american. he kept asking if i wasn't from the baltic states.  that probably had more to do with him not expecting an american to speak russian and my strange accent, which was always being called prebaltika by various russians. i don't know why i'd have a baltic accent in russian, but apparently i do.

time slowed down there on the volga. it stretched out in a very good way. there was time for writing in my journal, sketching, reading, exploring long-abandoned old manor houses and churches along the banks of the volga. lots of time for talking to people, hearing their stories. drinking countless cups of tea and the occasional glass of vodka. the locks were fascinating, as were beaches where people swam next to signs saying "danger zone." all of the contrasts and beauty and vastness of russia were there. i loved every minute of it.

in some ways, it was actually my friend's honeymoon that was the best of the three i've been on. that's a little bit funny, isn't it? maybe because there were far less expectations attached to it than to the "real" ones. and maybe there's a lesson for all of us in that. tag along on your friend's honeymoon. you'll have a great time.

secret 4 - that stuff in my parents' basement

over the years, every time i've moved, some of my junk stuff beloved belongings has ended up in my parents' basement (they have a very big basement). the last move, which was undertaken as a poor student and involved crossing one of the world's major oceans and only as much overweight luggage as the airline was willing to take without charging extra (turned out to be 7 checked bags between two people), meant that a whole lot of stuff was left behind in my parents' basement.

it includes items as diverse as my archived wedding dress from the marriage to the starter husband to a very smart, very early 90s black & white suit that i would undoubtedly piss myself laughing at if i saw it now to books and CDs and photos and papers from the rhetoric course i took during my first year in college to an ancient mac that can do a cyrillic font. i think there's a box of barbie dolls and some collector's music boxes from the franklin mint (it was a phase). my saddle is there (probably more than one). the silver halter diamond h pansy won for overall grand champion mare in 1982 and which we bought from my horsetrainer so many years ago. knickknacks collected at flea markets. dishes. pots and pans. some of those plastic things you can make your own popsicles in.

from moves before that one, there are odds and ends of very student-y garage sale furniture, boxes of college sweatshirts and shoes and garishly colored bill cosby-inspired sweaters and about 600 pounds of trophies that i won with various horses throughout my childhood.

every time we're there, dad asks when i'm going to take all that stuff. and here's where we come to the secret. i'm not. never. ever. aside from a few of the books (i can't seem to locate my marxist collection) and some pictures i've been looking for that must be there and a certain trophy with a gold horse on top and a blue body that was the very first one i won with my pony merrylegs when i was sent into the show ring wearing little black & red pants and barely old enough to walk on my own, i'm not going to be loading up a container with all that crap stuff.

i suppose someday sabin will happen upon those boxes of clothes and find them to be charmingly vintage and then they will make the trip. but until then, they languish in my parents' basement and i'm sure they feel quite at home.

sharon, i know you're reading, and you're welcome to share this secret with dad. tho' i suspect he already knows it. 

secret 3 - i've been deported

the time: early fall in the late 90s.

the place: belgrade airport

the characters: girl with large blue backpack, flying in from a future secret frankfurt. bitter and nasty passport control guy. gorgeous modelesque friend waiting outside.

backpack girl approaches the desk with her green (yes, it was green, ben franklin commemorative or some such thing) passport, which did not contain a pre-obtained visa to enter serbia. it did, however, contain two visas from visits to serbia in the preceding months and about a dozen for macedonia (those each took a whole page!). she thought those would show her trustworthiness--since what she said was that she was visiting a friend in belgrade and then taking the train back down to skopje.

but she was up against nasty bitter passport control bureaucrat. he was a little testy because the americans hadn't really been that nice to serbia what with threats of bombing belgrade (i don't think that that point that it had actually been bombed) and sanctions and such. and although backpack girl wasn't responsible for those actions and didn't even agree with them, she was the one who was standing right there, wanting special treatment. because she really should have gotten the visa before she came.

so what does nasty passport control guy do? he sends her right back onto the lufthansa plane she came on. and she didn't even get to tell willowly, statuesque friend who she could SEE outside the windows waiting for her what was going on. but lufthansa did let her sit in business class since the flight was pretty full and so she got her first experience of business class travel on a flight from belgrade to frankfurt.

and that's the story of how i got deported from serbia.

and there didn't really seem to be any pictures in my photo library that went with this post, so that's why it's uncharacteristically photo-free.

blogger gets it right again!

yay for extranjera whose hilarious and noteworthy blog was yesterday's blogger blog of note! safe travels, dahling! can't wait to see your follower numbers rising. that's just fabulous! and totally deserved!

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stay tuned for Secret 3 later today.