spirit fingers

in order to fully expose the object of my disdain this morning i must first humble myself. i was in a nail salon. in my defense i'll state that it is probably the second, maybe third time in my life that i've ever gotten a professional manicure and this time only because i found a coupon. there, i said it.

so i was sitting at the table and my vietnamese buddy was clipping away at my cuticles while we tried to have a partial conversation in broken english (why is it that our dictation standards plummet when we're talking to someone whose 1st language isn't the same as ours? maybe its just me) when the front door opens. in walks medusa in the flesh. dyed straw-like hair cropped and feathered in the hopes of taking the focus off her face. her face, painted in a gaudy rendition of a picasso complete with darkly outlined lips filled in with an entirely different shade. i wasn't sure if she started with goth and changed her mind half-way or just really wanted us to see where her lips used to be about 35 years ago. everyone in the shop turned to greet her warmly. i don't know if i hid the horror on my face or not. one of the ladies politely asked what she needed done. she immediately held up her hands, palms in, fingers spread, and barked one word. "Nails." whatever she was trying to be or not, Highlands Ranchero was one of them. a bustle of activity ensued which included my vietnamese friend leaving my hands in warm soapy water and attending to her. i was passed off to a less trained, but just as friendly manicurist. she spoke maybe 15 more words than her predecessor but definitely didn't have the gift and i realized right then and there i was going to have to buy some acetone and fix them when i got home. i wanted to say, "hey, i was here first" or something equally as childish but instead began to ponder the idea that maybe india isn't the only country with a caste system.

bring us some 'flippin' pudding

Beck and i flew home for thanksgiving. Our boyfriends, Seth and Paul, dutifully tagged along. Along with the usual triptophane fixings was my grandmother's pumpkin pudding. Since we all were due to fly out the friday after the feast my grandma included some serious leftovers for the plane ride back. Paul and i flew out first thing the next morning. Seth and Becky would follow a couple hours later. At the airport a security guard asked me to declare any liquids. Pudding isn't technically a liquid but honest abby here had to open her trap and watch her pudding get confiscated even after a futile attempt at pleading. (pride be forsaken, this was pudding!) After a moment of sulking i looked back and saw Seth and my dad standing at the end of the terminal and realized i had a chance to save it. if i wasn't going to enjoy it than at least someone at home better. after a brief comment to my boyfriend of wanting to punch someone i marched back around to grab the cherished goods with a plan to hand it off to Seth. apparently there are some regulations about walking in wrong directions around security guards. i was nearly tackled by three of them, no, make that 4. after explaining my plight, i was released. hand off complete; i returned to my bewildered boyfriend, who was probably contemplating just how much of a spitfire he was dating.

the rest of the trip was fairly uneventful until about 2 hours outside of Denver. i looked over at Paul and noticed some rust colored liquid dripping from the overhead bin. the girl on his other side, who up until that point had been nearly catatonic with her nano, jumped up and perched on her armrest with a look of disgust and horror. i grabbed my empty water cup and handed it to Paul to catch the visceral slime and hit the attendant button. a uniformed lady came over to ask what was going on. she examined the bay above us. dry. then we all noticed some drippage two bays up. she opened it. inside was the culprit; a stowaway lobster. "who's is this?" the owner of the doomed crustacean made no move to right his messy wrong until the attendant hurried back with an industrial sized package of paper towels and said, "your lobster made this mess, clean it up." he slowly got up from his window seat and took the towels and mopped up the slop.

so let me get this straight. my pudding wasn't allowed on, which by the way, would have been eaten before the next connecting flight and somehow the overzealous security guards missed a lobster. A LOBSTER! it could have had a bomb up its frozen sea-floor sucking tush for all i know and yet my pudding wasn't given a second thought. what is wrong with this country. lobster isn't even a typical holiday dish. Season's Greetings to you, you lobster lover. I'll pray you don't get salmonella.