day 24: i put stuff on my cats

Sometimes on stormy Monday evenings, the only thing that can stop restless dissatisfaction and ennui from seeping through my pores like the rainwater down the chimney is fucking with the cats.

It is endlessly amusing to sneak up on a sleeping Phoenix and watch her demonstrate her ten-inch vertical jump, or convince a confused Bubba Lee Kinsey that the laser pointer he's been chasing really is hiding under the chair, and he just needs to keep looking.

And the web site Stuff on My Cat offers yet another possibility: waiting until your cat is in repose, and then piling household objects on him or her. My cats were surprisingly tolerant of this bullshit:

Wind-up crab on Phoenix

Zack Greinke on Bubba Lee Kinsey

Jack-o-lantern on Phoenix

 

St. Theresa on Bubba Lee Kinsey

Halloween candle on Phoenix

Giant crow on Bubba Lee Kinsey

day 23: the boozy explorer goes bar-hopping in waldo

First, an unfortunate side note: last week my one-and-a-half-year-old MacBook, undeniably the most expensive thing I own (I like to think of myself as "big trash day chic"), blew up.

All that crazy-talk on the screen at right is what I believe to be the equivalent of a very high-tech hangover, except instead of Advil, Gatorade and pasta noodles it's going to take hundreds of dollars to make it better. In conclusion, fuck.

* * * * *

When the boozy explorer (my Pogues-inspired drunken alter-ego) goes out in search of a good time, she expects the following:

1. Strong, cheap drinks.
2. Good music that isn't so loud it prevents conversation.
3. A laid-back atmosphere in which a girl can look charmingly disheveled (i.e., no douche- or ho-bags. How to tell if you're surrounded by 'bags: count the ratio of bleach-blonde to natural hair, and anything greater than 3:1 is probably a bad sign).

Considering my good-time criteria, on Friday night The Well was pretty much batting 0 for 3. The two-story bar next door to Waldo Pizza was so jam-packed with douchebags, if you had shaken it like a high-pressured soda can, it would have spewed toxic levels of Ed Hardy shirts and spray-tanner over several blocks. The music was too loud to hear anyone without yelling, and the bartender - a skinny 21-year-old in a short, black skirt - poured almost impossibly weak $6 drinks.

Needless to say, our next stop at Patrick's Bar and No Grill felt like a haven. As its namesake boasts, the bar's menu features microwave-only treats like popcorn, mini-corndogs, personal pizzas and White Castle sliders, and pictures of Chiefs players and famous people (including one of a smiling 20-year-old labeled "Sheryl Crow") adorn the walls. Bud Light bottles are served in silver buckets, the rum drinks are strong enough to make you forget whether you left the one or the five as a tip, and the staff is friendly (when we were about two buckets in, the bartender brought us a giant, homemade cookie to share).

There is also a Nintendo Wii, which provides some excellent people watching if you're into drunken shenanigans. And really, who isn't.

I was told these fellas were Wii kayaking, though I like to think they were just really into the World Cup:



And we weren't sure what girlfriend here was trying to accomplish by rocking this saddle, but in the end she was pretty damn pleased with herself:



And pleased with myself is the opposite of how I felt the next morning, especially since boozy treasures are not the lasting kind. Except for that time in Vegas when my boyfriend found a silver bracelet on the ground.

day 22: i stopped at a lemonade stand

At some point late every spring, I relent to the smoldering inferno of my apartment and turn on the air conditioner, an ancient window unit covered in dust and mold that this spring also became home to a nest of birds, which Bubba Lee Kinsey and Phoenix tried to grab by sliding their paws in the space beneath the unit along the windowsill.

Here's a helpful diagram to illustrate what we're dealing with (hint: I really can't draw):

This year I waited later than usual to turn it on, becaue after having strep for two weeks I am in no hurry to inhale two decades of filth and get the black lung, or whatever, which would seriously fuck up my summer. I waited until maintenence man Shawn had time to come over and clean it.

I like Shawn not only because he seems like a nice guy, but because he says things like, "It's so hot in here you really deserve a reduction on your rent. I'm going to talk with Megan about that," and "Really, you're 27? You look so much younger."

I helped him haul the 50-pound behemoth to the back stairs, where he sprayed and scraped until the coils were shiny and silver. So I feel good about having a cool apartment without potentially poisoning myself.

Then I met my co-workers for an open house at Dan Meiners, an extremely high-end florist and interior design store where I discovered, among other things, a $65 candle, hanging terrariums, and more orchids in bloom than I've ever seen in one place.

Everyone there was beautiful, thin and most likely rich, and I would have used my hidden super power (hint: laser beams out of my eyes) to melt their fancy sno-cones if I hadn't been so eager to try one for myself.

And it's a good thing I did. Made by Fresher than Fresh, Kansas City's "first all-natural snow cone stand on wheels," the flavors bypass the traditional bullshit like cotton candy and blue raspberry and go straight for adventurous stuff actually found in nature, such as blackberry lavender, watermelon basil and, the one I tried, agave hibiscus.

The next table had beautiful cyan glass jars cooling in tubs of ice, and when we approached a dude handed us plastic cups and began pouring sample after sample of Get Real Food Company's locally-made organic soda. Available for $3 a bottle, flavors include mojito, ginger beer, rootbeer and, my favorite, Citrus Kicker, which finishes with a mild chili pepper burn.

Oh, and I also stopped at a lemonade stand for the first time ever. Two nine-year-old girls and their bored-looking older sister handed my co-worker and me two glasses of tangy pink liquid for 50 cents a pop. "It has a hint of watermelon," one of the girls said.

Ah, summer. Some days you're perfect.

day 21: i was proud of kansas

My home state is infamous for some rather unsavory reasons that mostly involve willful ignorance and bigotry: like a hateful, homophobic Santa Claus, so-called pastor Fred Phelps compiles his "god hates you" list at Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka; schools teach "intelligent design" as a "viable alternative" to evolution under the directives of the Kansas State Board of Education; Women’s Health Care Services medical director George Tiller, one of only three physicians nationwide providing late-term abortions to desperate women, was gunned down in May of 2009 while attending mass in Wichita.

In other words, I have a lot of reasons to lie about where I’m from.

But finally, the small town of Greensburg, population 1,574, has given me something to be proud of.

In 2007, an F5 tornado (for those of you who didn’t grow up in Tornado Alley, this is basically like the finger of god descending from the clouds, singling you out and saying you’re fucked) destroyed 95 percent of the town within an hour. People’s lives were instantly and permanently ground into a mash of dust, twisted scrap metal and clapboard. Deaths totaled 11.

When the chaos finally settled in the federally-designated national disaster area, those who stuck around were faced with the daunting task of how to rebuild. After examining cost, sustainability and return on investment, Greensburg decided to go green.

And not trendy “look at me, I drive a Prius and eat only raw foods” green, but all-out Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-platinum certified green. The whole town, from schools to civic centers to Kiowa County Memorial Hospital, has embraced the high standard of sustainable and environmentally-friendly design, making Greensburg the first city in the U.S. to do so.

Some changes in Greensburg include utilization of wind and solar power, building with recycled materials, recycling construction waste, harvesting, purifying and re-using rainwater, and designing buildings and homes to make the most of natural lighting. Even the landscaping has been considered to promote water conservation, and plants are drought-resistent Kansas natives such as buffalo grass. (Pictured above: the town's new Arts Center.)

Greensburg's efforts have been nationally-recognized, and they were recently nominated for a VH1 Do Something award (click the link to vote for them). Which, while an awesome achievement for a small town, still pales in comparison to finally giving this Kansas girl and others like me something to brag about.

day 20: i fell in love with junot diaz

The last time I immediately connected with a writer in a way that made me say “fuck yeah” I was 21 years old and visiting the south side of Chicago.

My then-boyfriend and I had taken a road trip to see the Cubs play, and at a bookstore down the street from Wrigley I discovered Dangling in the Tournefortia by Charles Bukowski.*

Being so young, I had not yet seen anyone write the way he did and get away with it:

From "I didn't want to"

it is difficult for me to get interested or angry.
when a cop stops me for some infraction I simply sink
into some great sea of disgust.
“do you want to know what you did, sir?” he asks me.
“no,” I say.

“message”

I’ve been sitting in this
room for hours typing, and drinking
red wine.
I thought I was
alone here. the door is closed
and the window.
now a big fat fly
ugly and black sits on the edge
of my wine glass.
where did it come
from? so silent, motionless
like that.
that’s the way
it might be with death.

Despite being a skinny girl from a middle-class Kansas City suburb, I somehow related to this middle-aged drunk living with whores in Los Angeles motels. In our own way we each tested the limits of what felt safe and crossed lines that left us vulnerable and exposed but ultimately still bored with our own extremism.

Then this spring I visited a St. Louis bookstore with my boyfriend Jason, and while bending over to pet the resident cat I spotted Drown by Junot Diaz.

From the first story about two young boys in the Dominican Republic plotting to steal the mask of another boy whose face was eaten by pigs, I was owned. The story played on my natural sense of voyeurism with the unsympathetic and sometimes cruel curiosity of children.

And the rest of the book doesn't lighten up. The characters of Drown inhabit a world of perpetually leaky faucets, stolen jewelry, and thin walls through which you can hear the daily dramas of the people above and below you. 

But Diaz’s matter-of-fact, occasionally cynical voice belies the stories’ quiet tragedies – a boy’s father abandons his family; a teenager carries on a dead-end relationship with a crack-addicted hooker; a pool table delivery boy helps a young maid escape an abusive relationship with her boss – and makes them at times even funny.

In fact, most of the characters’ experiences are accompanied by little introspection or analysis. Yunior, an adolescent boy who appears in several of the stories, has not yet begun to string together the moments of his life to make whole, meaningful events. And this, I believe, is the part of Drown I love most, as in terms of growing the fuck up already I’m a late bloomer.

*Yes, I know he’s not considered a “literary” writer and it’s a stretch to even call him a poet, but he’s gritty, dammit, and that’s how I like ‘em sometimes.

day 19: i rode a horse in the rockies

I have always feared horses in the way other people fear god; I regard them with such respect that approaching them - and much less riding them - makes me feel as though I've crossed some unspoken boundary and will pay the price with broken bones and possibly my life.

But today I climbed on the back of a sweet old mare named Dixie at a ranch in Rocky Mountain National Park, and accompanied by a small group of other inexperienced riders and two young guides, she carried me along a dusty trail through the mountains.

Once I got over the initial feeling that I was at the mercy of a creature much greater than I (according to guide Lindsey, you can hang your entire body weight from a horse's insanely thick, muscular neck), the feeling was actually kind of exhilarating. 

Dixie obediently followed the horse in front of her - "they're pack animals," Lindsey explained - and would turn or slow with the gentlest tug on her reins. 

As we rode past snow-capped peaks, lodgepole pines and countless grazing elk, guide Jake pointed out the Aspen trees fenced off beside the trail.

"They're the world's largest living organism," he explained, "because they all share a root system. They're all connected underground."

He was referring to Pando, an Aspen grove in Utah with a root system that is approximately 80,000 years old and covers 107 acres. 

My shock and awe intensified as Jake explained that elk eat Aspen in the winter, and the bacteria from their lips turns the white bark black.

"Other animals don't want to eat it," he said, "because they assume it's dead."

This led to an intense "holy shit, everything is connected" moment that ended abruptly when Lindsey told us the park was becoming overpopulated with elk, so the blue collars worn by some of the females were not tracking devices as I'd assumed but actually birth control. 

When the ride ended I went to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and barfed up the rest of my cash for specialty chocolates and espresso bark. But I enjoyed my two-hour retreat from it all.

day 18: i saw old faithful erupt

It has been slowly sinking in since Monday, but today when we stopped in West Yellowstone for lunch and I found it odd that the rainwater puddles in the parking lot weren't boiling, bubbling, hissing, or steaming, it hit me: for the past three days, I have been in the most insane place on Earth.

Featuring all the colors of one of those giant jawbreakers you ate as a kid, Yellowstone is home to two-thirds of the world's 900 geysers and is totally going to blow someday. Steam rises from the ground. Groundwater shoots hundreds of feet into the air. Mud puddles boil. 

And of course, there are geysers galore:

near the Fountain Paintpot en route to Old Faithful

Spouter Geyser

Cliff Geyser

Giant Geyser

Grotto Geyser

Castle Geyser

Anemone Geyser

Pearl Geyser

Old Faithful, pre-eruption

Old Faithful, mid-eruption

Geyser Hill

And finally the two geysers that appear to have been named specifically for my brother:

Depression Geyser

and me:

Tardy Geyser

Also, if you step on a geyser, you are so fucked: