posting without plan, grammar or talent

I have nothing to say. I think this merits bullets. Read at own peril. Pronouns optional.

• Bored.
• Watched "Wet Hot American Summer"tonight. Ever seen it? That's one frigging funny movie. It's the perfect movie for the 13 year old me, except the 13 year old me would not have gotten half the jokes, so it's better for the much-older-than-13 year old me.
• Have been drinking a nice French pinot noir. From the Bourgogne region.
  
• Sauteed some chicken breasts and had those with black beans.
  
• Farting will commence anon.
  
• I really should pack for my trip to London but am instead avoiding everything by noodling about on the web.
• Bad me, bad.
  
• Will procrastinate further by taking a nice hot bubble bath. How decadent is a hot bath with a glass of wine? Woo!
• The bubbles will be made a bit more fragrant with black bean farts.
• Just kidding. Girls don't fart.
  
• Ever.
• We just explode.
• *Poof.*
  
• I really think I am funny here.
• You probably don't agree.
  
• Posts like this are probably why my hit counts have gone down of late.
  
• I don't really care.
• I might just change this post to '100 things about me".
• But I think I am too lazy to do 100 of these bullet points.
  
• This wine is good.
  
• And I have a whole bottle of it.
• Ok, I lie, half a bottle now.
• Yes I am a cheap date.
  
• And a happy drunk.
• I had to look at Borat's crotch again this AM.
  
• Didn't crave limes.
• Craved a lighter so I could burn the cardboard thing down. I am not anti-Borat, I am anti mankini before 9am.
• Have lost ability to write sentences. Can only do phrases.
  
• This is a bad thing for someone who must write at work.
• Told naughty stories at lunch at work today.
• Everyone at work thinks I am a freak.
• Except the Canadian girl I hang with, but she's a freak too.
• I like her.
• She's funny.
  
• She says "eh" and "aboot" just like you'd expect from a Canadian.
  
• I can't stop these bullet points.
• It's addictive.
  
• Help me!
• I think I will use the patchouli romance hippy granola bubble bath when I take my bath.
  
• Which I will go do now.
• Don't picture me naked.
• I bathe in shorts.
• Not.
  

not before the coffee, thanks

On my way to the trains every morning I pass a little video store. Lately they have had a cardboard cut out of Borat in his "mankini" standing outside the shop, advertising the Borat movie, which has now gotten to Norway on DVD.



Sigh.

I don't know about you, but for me it's awful damned early to be looking at THAT without a very large coffee first. And as I have not yet had my coffee when on the way to the train, and am hungry and susceptible to suggestion before said coffee, now, every morning, I am having cravings for margaritas. Big green margaritas with lots of crushed limes. Obviously this is a result of being assaulted by the man's lime green package every damned morning, being hungry, and my brain seeing the lime color and sublimating that into lime juice mixed with tequila. And Cointreau.

(Insert Freudian blather about crushing limes and man juice and the subconscious and all that crap. Yeah yeah I know. That above paragraph ALONE is worth a few hours with Freudian shrink I am sure.)

This morning I ALMOST turned the damned Borat cut out around because I just could not face another morning of his oddly exaggerated green crotch. But I didn't, I just walked right by it, yet another train wreck of a morning with lumpy limes bouncing around in my caffeine starved head.

God help me.

Meet Karla, World's Biggest Dumb Ass

Shit, y'all, sometimes I wonder about my viability in this world.

Tonight, feeling a bit like I am coming down with a cold (and skipping the weekly pub night) I decided to make some chicken stock from the leftovers from the roast chicken I made the other night. (If you have not made the French Laundry recipe roast chicken, well, you are missing out on something good and it's so dead easy it's kind of embarrassing.) I always make stock from leftover chicken, since it's so expensive here I feel like it's wasting it to just chuck in the trash.

So I spent two hours slowly simmering the chicken and veg and herbs and I came away with about 4 quarts of lovely, rich savory stock. The final step after cooking is to sieve out the bones and veg, so that you are left with a nice clear soup, a good base for whatever soup you later want to make.

So I set up my usual double sieve system in the sink, which is guaranteed to catch everything non-liquid, grab my pot of soup and pour it through.

Anyone notice what I did wrong? Anyone?

I forgot to put a FRIGGING BOWL UNDER THE SIEVE.

Before I realized it I had poured about 3/4 of the soup down the drain.

Thus giving me the Dumb Ass of the Year award.

screw this

I was gonna post about Paris but "My Name Is Earl" just came on TV and it's got Amy Sedaris doing strange things with cats on it and sorry, she's way better than blogging, so you'll just have to wait for stories.

yes I have had a couple beers tonight, what of it?

Why was I the only one who noted this?

On our flight to Tallinn on Norwegian Air, every seat had a little advertisement stuck to the tray tables. It's a new ploy to make some money, which, hey, that's fine with me, but I wonder who vets these ads, because maybe, just maybe they should sort of edit them first for appropriate placement?

So, I get into my seat, see the ad and bust out laughing. It's an ad for a new album by Norwegian singer Morten Abel:

Yeah, the title of the album was "Some of Us Will Make It".

And they put this ad on a PLANE!? A plane that's VERY FULL? In front of EVERY SEAT?

I dunno about you, but I don't want just SOME of us to make it, I want ALL of us to make it because if we don't it's gonna be one damned uncomfortable flight.

Nobody else on the plane saw the irony of it. I pointed it out to this one girl, and she just said, "Yes, it is a new album by a famous Norwegian singer". And I'm all, "Uh, yeah, but don't you think the title is a bit strange to be on an ad in a plane?" and she just shrugged and said "It's a good record". She totally didn't get why I was sniggering and taking pictures.

Is it just me or is this really funny? I still giggle thinking about it.

Inside a Turkish Bath

I went to the Cemberlitas Hammam in Istanbul. There were separate sections for men and women, so I can't tell you what happens on the boy's side, but here's what's what for the gals.

Put away all modesty. You will be naked in front of other people. Deal with it. The only people who wore swimsuits were some Americans and they wore these huge one piece suits and it just looked stupid. . They did not stay long. So, yeah, there were naked women, everywhere, all laying around on this big marble platform in the middle of the room. All lying there sweaty and soapy and lazy like. It did, indeed, look EXACTLY like what you imagine a Turkish bath to look like. I was also quite proud to note that, bodywise? I got nothing to worry about. I was definitely in the top 15% of the body attractiveness scale. This means, obviously, that no matter what you look like (or think you look like) there is gonna be someone there that makes you feel good about yourself....and someone who won't. I think I am not all that modest a person, because I felt entirely comfortable. Maybe it was just the essentially feminine feel of the place, but I really just wasn't bothered at all. Hey, we all have the same stuff, just at different levels and with different resistance to gravity.....it would have been very different if it was unisex, obviously.

The bathing room was beautiful. All greyish taupe marble, with a huge octagonal marble heated platform in the middle of the room on which all the naked ladies lounged, building up a sweat. The ceiling was domed with circular holes pierced in it that looked like bubbles (there were star shapes, too), that let the light in. It streamed into the room in swirly rays. Around the room were alcoves with washing stations in a variety of water temperatures. There was no decoration, just the dominant sculptural shapes in the room which gave it a restful appeal. The eye could wander without pausing, or could focus on the light rays. Calm, peaceful. The building was built in the 16th century.

Pretend like you are 4 years old and your mom is giving you a bath. That's pretty much what it feels like to get washed. From the minute you enter the 'hot room' you are in the capable hands of the very "seen it all" women who scrub you. And scrub they indeed do. First, after about 15 minutes of obligatory "lounge and sweat" time, the lady came over to me and dumped a bucket of warm water over me. Just...splash. Then she grabbed a scrubby hand mit and scrubbed me. First my backside, from toes to ears, then, when she wanted me to flip over for the front, she smacked my ass with a loud "pop" noise as a sign for me to flip. That surprised me a bit, and also explained the occasional smacking noises I heard as I lay in my sweaty snoozing lounging phase. I hadn't been spanked in...well, ahem, anyhow.... I flipped. She scrubbed the front of me next. She didn't exactly ignore the naughty bits, but they aren't exactly concentrated on, either, so it never felt wierd or uncomfortable. Just...motherly. It was thorough, and pleasing, and just very soothing.

After the scrubbing came the soaping. She took this thing that looked like a gauze bag (I was never sure what exactly it was) and somehow with that thing she created this HUGE bubble of suds that she sort of whisped over my body, letting the suds go where they wanted. It felt fizzy and strange. I was about 6 inches deep in bubbles. I looked around the room and some other women were also in the sudsing phase and it looked like nothing so much as a car wash, except people were getting sudsed instead of cars. She doused me with the suds, front and back with yet another smack on the ass to flip. When I flipped this time I felt like a greased pig and nearly slid right off the marble platform. It was SLIPPERY.

Once I was all soaped up she got some more buckets of water and unceremoniously dumped them over me to rinse. You know how fish look when they are dumped out of a net and onto the deck of a fishing boat? They kind of slide around and flop? That was me getting rinsed. I was a wet flopping sliding gasping fish, slithering around on that big marble platform. There was nothing to hold onto except the edge, which I did for dear life or I would have washed across the damned thing and ended up in a puddle on the floor across the room. It was like being in a soapy tsunami. Graceful I was not.

She then helped me up and took me over to one of the many and beautiful side alcoves. They all had troughs of water in three temperatures (hot warm cold) and were not ornate, but were very sculptural and elegant. (The link to the baths actually has pictures of most of what I am describing, so you can see it. No nekkid people, it's work safe.) She sat me down on the floor at her feet next to one of the water troughs and proceeded to wash my hair, using the bucket method. That was not actually all that nice, as I am very particular about shampoos and always use conditioner, so my hair ended up feeling very tangled and rough. But still, it was cute, sitting there at her feet while she washed my hair just like my mom did when I was 5.

After she washed my hair she took me to the drying room and wrapped me up in a towel. I told her thank you in Turkish (phonetically it goes Tesh uh KUR eh dehr em, and took me three days of practice to say right). Apparently, and rightly so with the difficulty of saying it, not many people make the effort and after I thanked her she broke out into a huge grin and patted my cheek just like a mom. I swear I wanted to hug her. The Turks love it if you even TRY to speak their language.

The women who washed us wore only underwear. They were also, well, zaftig. None of them would have won a Miss World contest. However, the lady who washed me had the softest skin I have ever seen, or felt. My god, that woman was glowing. I think, working in the humid environs of the baths with not much in the way of work uniform to wear, that on breaks they just scrub themselves. And I'll tell you what, the results were amazing. To a woman, they had soft, blemish and cellulite free skin. Smooth and lovely. I would kill for skin like that.

After the cleansing I had a massage in an adjoining room. It was ok. Oddly enough a Russian woman was the massage therapist. There were TONS of Russians in Istanbul. I haven't figured out the connection, but it was surprising how strong the Russian element was in the town.

After the massage I went back into the main room to have a final rinse, and then got my clothes back on and met my father (who had his own bath in the men's section) for the walk back to the hotel. We both glowed with cleanliness and relaxation. It was cool.

I am a pervert

Today, coming back from an exhausting day of shopping where I did NOT find the perfect thing to wear to my 20th high school reunion......(here is where the large digression starts)......

but the perfect thing to wear to my 20 year high school reunion may well be an impossibility, as does such a thing exist that will remove 20 lbs, 20 years and the accumulating ravages of those years? Me thinks not. But I try. I have decided that I think I want a Diane Von Furstenberg classic wrap dress. Always wanted one, they look great on me, and it's time to splash out the money. A basic not so great dress here costs as much as a DVF stateside, so why not just get the DVF? Well.....I don't know where to find one in Oslo. Damn. And I don't have time to get one in Houston before the reunion as we get into Houston the night before.....unless i can make a run for the Galleria and get one there...and maybe get my hair done and my ass lifted as well? Surely they can do that in a few hours, right? I mean, how hard can this 20 year reunion thing be?

Ok, so I digressed, but I am really stressed about this and I have to find just the right thing that balances comfort and fabulousness with fashion-edginess. I was sort of known for my clothes in high school, you see. Gotta keep the image up....even if the ass isn't.

DAMNIT I digressed again....

OK, so on the way home from my disappointing shopping experience where I did NOT find the right thing, though I did find a couple of alternative things of interest....all black, natch.....I walked by a little table of collectible ceramics, etc., that a local lady was selling. I do have a thing for vintage glasswear, though i have been restraining myself from buying anything these past few years as, well, it all has to get moved anyhow, so what's the point? Ah, but then I saw this plate, this very collectible child's plate from the thirties and I knew I had to have it........

I mean.....just WHAT is that lamb doing to the boy and why does he have that sort of focused expression on his face? I just LOVE this plate, it's so thirties charming and innnocent and yet totally perverse....or, once again, is it just me that is such a sick puppy? Maybe I should keep my sick mind to myself? .......Here's a close up....(insert porn music of your choice here)....



I've entered an alternate world, people. I am Sick Disney. Anti-Disney. Disney as seen through the eyes of Marilyn Manson.

Anyone wanna come join? It's kind of fun here......

Coffee Klutz

Ever have it where it doesn’t matter what you do, but some days you end up wearing everything edible you even look at? I have those days. Usually they occur on the first day of work, on a day I want to impress someone, or when I wear something that is dry clean only. Today is not an ‘impress someone’, or a dry clean only day, but it is a ‘wear your food on your chest’ day. Ladies, you know how it is. When everything you eat just somehow ends up right there on your bosoms for the whole world to know what a complete klutz you are? I swear, when I eat movie popcorn? I lose so much of it down my cleavage that I get home and have a little snack just waiting for me in my bra.

Today it’s my coffee. It’s one of the usual paper cups with lid affairs. Basic, simple, standard. Ever notice how some of those cup and lid things are just EVIL? Like the coffee finds ways of escaping, or maybe the lid finds ways of shooting the coffee out of the cup and onto your nice white linen shirt. It’s like it’s SPITTING at you. Today the coffee is escaping somewhere between the lip of the cup and the edge of the lid. And it won’t stop dribbling. I’ve finally got this sexy napkin wrap-around thing happening, with the napkin tucked under the lip of the lid, hoping to catch any escaping drink. It’s working fairly well, but it looks like a horrible garbage collection accident happened on my desk. All dirty napkins and wilted paper cup. Sigh. So much for being elegant.

The klutziness does not end with mere beverages, however. I think my balance is off, or maybe I just don’t look DOWN, but I keep running into things and I have got bruises on my legs that would impress a prize fighter. The other day I ran into our very substantial coffee table (it weighs around 300 lbs, it’s marble topped) and barked my shin so hard I saw stars. Rich asked if I was ok, and right then I just could not talk because no word would come out except something of the four letter variety. Now, I have a knot on my shin the size of a small egg. Why do I always bang my leg in that same spot? When I am dead and they dig me up 500 years from now (which would be a miracle because I will be cremated, but whatever, let’s go with it, shall we?) they will see my shin bone and wonder why it has a big dent in it. I also keep cutting corners too close and running into door frames. And banging my hands on things. Etc. Etc. Ow.

When I was a kid Mom always laughed at me when I had “clumsy days”: Those were days where I just could not control all limbs at once. I was like Bambi on ice…growing so fast I didn’t know what to do with all the feet and arms and legs. I was a walking bruise sometimes. I think I still have those days. But now I can’t blame them on growth spurts. I think I am just a klutz.

Shit. I just spilt more coffee. I will just wear brown or black or navy blue from now on. Then at least no one will see the stains or bruises.

George W Bush, I fart in your general direction.

karla, posted by cordydan.

My friend Dan sent me a link to his Flickr page. He likes to take photos and tweak them to make a statement. He's become quite the Photoshop master. And to think we used to waste all those brain cells in college getting drunk.

Here is one of his tweaks. He sent it to me last night and I am totally laughing my (ahem) ass off looking at it.

because I'm so classy

Rich tends to dawdle when we are on our travels, always pausing to take pictures and straying way behind me.

I get impatient and walk ahead, and then he complains that my butt is always getting into his picture. SO........I gave him some REAL butt to contemplate.


I know, I KNOW. I am SUCH the elegant jet setter, no?

In which it's proved my freakiness is genetic

Story my Mom told me:

She and Dad headed down to Houston to visit my brother to check out his new house and for his house warming party. They also got to meet his new girlfriend for the first time.

Mom was having a nice time at the party, chatting with my brother's friends, many of whom she has known since they were kids. (She (and Dad) are the kind of parents that our friends will actually go visit on their own, without us. They are pretty cool, usually.) So, anyhow, she's chatting in the kitchen with some of Kit's pals. She looks through the door into the living room and sees my brother and his girlfriend engaged in a rather long kiss. Mom excuses herself from the conversation, sneaks up on the young lovers and sticks her face right into theirs, yelling "SUCKY FACE! SUCKY FACE!" in her Marlene Dietrich meets Heidi Klum German acent.

This is a true story. Told to me on Saturday in laughing tones, by a woman who once pinned me down on the ground using her freakishly strong German arms and dropped spit trails over my face, only to suck the spit back up at the last second. I screamed and screamed and fought..... but she is STRONG and I only succeeded in dislodging the spit wad. Into my face. By then she was laughing so hard she ran out of spit (and the control thereof).

I was 26 at the time.

It all explains SO much, doesn't it?

Karla and the Man-Eating Hammock

I think it's been established that my life can never be simple. And that I can never be cool. I can try as hard as I want, but The Gods of Goof always remind me that I am under their constant surveillance.

So, today I was out on our wrap-around deck, wearing a bikini top and shorts, doing some cleaning. The deck is walled with heavy clear glass to keep anyone from falling off, and it looks cool, but it also means NO privacy and that glass gets alarmingly dirty, especially after the late pollen showers we've had. I noticed the neighbors had all cleaned THEIR glass, which meant, dammit, that I had to do ours to keep up with the Joneses. (Though in Norway it's keeping up with the Lunds, I guess.) It was a great opportunity for tanning, as it's a beautiful day, hence my wearing the bikini top and shorts. I would have worn the bikini bottoms, too, but glass walls and great visibility to the neighbors nixed any ideas of my exposing my ass to so many in such a bug under a magnifier way. Bikini tops are perfectly acceptable hereabouts, and in hot weather you see girls wearing them walking around, perfectly comfortable. (Yes, guys, Norway is heaven in summer.)

So I got busy with the cleaning, being extra careful not to douse the people five stories below with water spray from the hose. There are shops and cafes down there, and it would not be nice for me to hose down innocent shoppers and eaters. (Not nice, but it would be fun...and it was tempting. But I refrained. I'm evil, but not rude.) I got pretty soaked in my cleaning frenzy, and let me tell you it was COLD water. But the glass is clean of pollen and all is sparkly.

AFter all my hard work, I fixed myself a sandwich, got my latest book du jour (James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces", yes I am behind but hey, I am also half a world away, ok?) and settled down for a nice laze in the hammock.

THE HAMMOCK OF DEATH!

I ate my sandwich, drank my lemonade, and snuggled in for a good read in the warm sun when I noticed that my swimsuit top was sort of bunched up. I tried to sit up to fix it....but got yanked back down to the hammock. Oh SHIT. My top was tangled in the hammock strings. Somehow, someway, the hammock had grabbed the back of my top and it was SERIOUSLY twisted in the ropes. I could feel it, when I reached around and there was NO WAY I could get it unstuck. Now....this is bad.

I am 5 stories up. The phone is nowhere near me. I am tied to a hammock. By my very small bikini top. In the bright sun. I have sun screen on, but it's about 4 hours til Rich comes home and I don't really want to bake myself to a fritz. And boy can I sunburn. To add to this, I am RIGHT next to the glass wall, so anyone in the whole building next door, and many of the folks in our building, can see me really clearly. Not to mention the workmen who have built scaffolding on our building to fix some enginneering issues that have cropped up.

People, I am fucked.

I tried to just hang out calmly in the hammock, wiggle back and forth, hoping that however my top got IN the ropes it would work its way OUT. Nope. I gathered my book to my chest and used it as camouflage as I twisted my top around to see what was going on in back. OUCH.. That hurt. However, I could see that the hook of my top was double twisted in the rope... and it was no longer holding my top closed.

My only choice is to remove the top. I can't extricate myself any other way. FUCK.

I am not an exhibitionist. Especially on my own deck where the neighbors would forever remember me as that strange hammock-obsessed girl with the removable bikini top. (And these boobs have RARELY seen the light of day....which explains their perfection, if I do say so myself.)

I peeked out through the glass to see if anyone was looking, or out on their balconies. Pretty clear. The workmen were on a lunch break or something, I'm not sure, but they weren't in the immediate vicinity. It would be a simple matter, now that the back of my top was open, to wriggle out, leave the damn thing attached to the hammock and run like hell into the flat.

I gathered my book over my boobs (note to self: always read bigger books from now on, no small paperbacks), slipped the straps over my shoulders, rolled off the hammock onto the deck sans bikini top and ran like the dickens into the flat, clutching the book as tightly as possible. "A Million Little Pieces" became my One Great Hope of Modesty.

I am proud to report I only have one small bruise (besides that of my pride) from my roll off the hammock.

I came back outside clad now in a very large, hook-free t-shirt, and it took me about three minutes to get the top unhooked from the hammock. It was REALLY caught. Caught like a fish in a net.

Why do things like this happen to me? Do I have "dork" tattooed to my forehead? I mean, c'mon!

The Word d'Oh!

Best Feeling in the World:

Jamming to your iPod, walking down a secluded bridle path in the middle of a gorgeous Norwegian meadow on a (chilly) spring day. No one can see you, you are warmed up from your exercise, and Cameo's immaculate jam "Word Up" comes on to play. What do you do? You throw down with your best fashion gal cat walk dance-o-rama, groovin' and shakin' for all it's worth, singin' like the Beyonce you know you are, but keep hidden from the rest of the world. You are Stealth Beyonce, after all, you don't want to make the world jealous by flaunting your brilliance. WORD UP! IT'S THE CODE WORD! NO MATTER HOW YOU SAY IT YOU KNOW THAT YOU'LL BE HEARD! WOO!.

Ah, but this being my life, Best Feeling in the World is rapidly followed by...

Worst Feeling In the World:

When in the midst of your jam and your best completely raunchy booty shake, a group of bike riders comes wooshing by you from behind, you having not seen nor heard them due to your closed eyes and cranked iPod. They give you the thumbs up and a couple of "Woo woo's!" in the manner of "Jam on, crazy old lady!".

Why oh why can't I ever just be cool?

Live drunk blogging!

Woo!

Hi y'all!

I'm drunk!

Ooh, i just farted. I made chili for dinnner.

Ok, so I am watching Eurovision with some friends and we are drunk and screaming and watching Eurovision. Oh, I said that already.

Ok, so...I vote for Lithuania. Their song was called "We Are the Winners (of Eurovision)".
And they were and so I voted. Well, I hope they win,. Cuz we all decided they get 12 points for having balls.

Germany ruled also. It was a bunch of Krauts dressed like Texans doing a hoedown song kinda thing. And I'm a tex-kraut and so it ruled. I like them.

woo!

WOOO!!!!!

Now is Greedce. One of those sincere power ballads. Blagh. The lead singer is bendy, though.

Lesley sez, "It's a bloody good pahty Dahling..!!! Do we really need to see between her legs? Honestly." (referring to the Greek singer chick who did some yoga move.)

SWEET! next comes Finland, the band LORDI, a Christian Zombie death metal band....no, really. HARD. ROCK. HALLELUJAH!

Does this even make sense? who cares. I'm having fun. Oh no, the French band is coming up. The token French girl at our party is going nuts. We need some rope to tie her down.

MUCH better

Rich saw my hair when he came home from work and was nice about it, but did mention that it was "colorful", as did my very sweet next door neighbor.

I went and got a 6-8 week semi permanent rinse (color called "Marokko") until I can figure out what to do next. It's now toned down substantially and closer to what God gimme. I also convinced Rich to chop about three inches straight off the back, right after I did the re-color. Hey, it was wet and I saw some shaping was necessary. He did a good job. It's bouncier now.

I am so gald I don't have to look at my big orange head anymore. Oh man that was AWFUL.

I hate you all.

Seriously. Thanks for the commiseration, dudes. NO...instead you say you want pictures. Pictures of my sad orange head.

Some friends I got, eh? (Except Badger, who offered to go with me to Sally Beauty Supply and figure this out. I like Badger. I haven't forgotten about your T-shirt, by the way.)

Fine. FINE! Here's my calico head. The spectacular blotchiness does not show up that much, but you can see roots and the orange pretty clearly.

Calico Karla. Oh Lord.

It doesn't look as bad here, but you can see I've gone about 7 shades lighter.

AH yes. SOOOO sexy.

In which I prove I am an idiot of the first order

Oh. Shit.

I'm sitting here in my bathrobe, with a towel wrapped around my head. A towel I may never take off. Ever.

You see, I thought it would be a good idea to highlight my hair today. "It's summer!", I told my self. "What better time to give yourself blonde highlights than a beautiful summer day in Norway? All the Norwegians have them, and the blonde might hide some of the grey you've got. So yeah, it's highlight day today! Go Karla! You are so smart by doing it at home and saving the $100 it would cost at the salon!"

So I went at my lovely red hair like a comb wielding banshee. I used a kit I got in the US last time I was there. (Norwegian kits come with the instructions in Norwegian. I'm sure I could be fine, but I prefer to do it in English so that when I am squinting confusedly at the instructions with goop in my hair and latex gloves on my hands I don't have to do the added thought process of thinking in Norske. ) I planned exactly where I wanted the streaks, and, having been told that with curly hair they should be a little bolder and wider, I went for BOLD.

Um, have I neglected to mention that when it comes to hair I am a rank idiot? I mean, I can't even hold a curling iron. Blow drying my hair means I turn my head upside down, blow the hair dry, stand up and whatever frizzy halo I end up with, I push back and go on with my day. I use goop and gels, of course, but I am TERRIBLE at styling my hair and always have been. Which means it's good that I have a curly mop, because it always looks the same...like a curly mop.

But now, my curly red mop is sort of, um, a calico orange blobbed curly mop. What I saw of it. I got out of the shower, looked at the results of my handiwork, screamed, and wrapped it in a towel. I didn't even have my glasses on and I could see how bad it looks. That's BAD, because I am BLIND.

I look like a calico cat. My highlights are LARGE ORANGE BLOBS. ORANGE. BLOBS. And the grey? Still there.

I'm scared to take the towel off. I don't want to look.

This may well be my first true hair disaster.

Damn me and my clever ideas.

this is not me. it's someone else.

Do you ever have those moments, that I call Talking Heads moments, where you're all "This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife!"? It usually happens to me when something good happens or when I am about to do something that I just can't quite believe will happen to ME as opposed to someone else who is cool or something.

I can totally handle the bad stuff. That seems more likely to happen, anyhow. Falling on my ass in public, making a mess, getting angry in a grocery store. That's normal. The good stuff? Freaks my ass out.

So here I am about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime and I am so FROZEN. Last night I was reading some travel books Bonnie sent me, and I'm all like, "haha funny stories to exotic places by hip people with cool lives and big adventures....that's never going to happen to me".....then I realized that I have either been to most of the places they are writing about, or am about to go to them.

And that freaked me out.

This is not me!

I am not this traveling gal with the small (yes small this time!) suitcase and the sunscreen and bikini and the passport photos for visas to countries where they only use US Dollars because their own currency is shit.

This is not me who will have to meet the border police for a country that's only had open borders for like, five years, and talk my way in, handing over surreptitious dollars as bribery to some tiny officious official who's probably, like, KILLED people before, and who could steal my passport and make me his giant white sex slave, and here I will have to act cool like I know what I am doing when I barely know how to make a sandwich.

This is not me that might ride an elephant and go to Angkor Wat and Laos and ancient Buddhist temples and be all Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider (though substantially flabbier and without that miracle bra she sported). (Oh and there will be NO tying of knives around my upper thighs. Can you imagine the chafing that would cause? Oy.)

It's not me that now has a startling familiarity with many of the best beers in the world, from the breweries themselves. (Though that sounds closer to me than the others..mmmm beer.)

It's not me that has ridden a camel in the Egyptian desert, bargained in the souks of Marrakech, climbed the ancient temples of Malta, stood in the wild howling winds on the Hill of Slane in Ireland and floated down the Nile at sunset.

So I'm reading these travel books, with stories about girls flying to Luang Prabang and the plane almost crashing (yikes! I'm doing that in a week!)(and thanks, Bonnie, really) and other girls in Paris having strange adventures with wine and men (which has also happened to me, a couple of times) and other adventurous things, and I feel like they are so foreign, these cool writing travel mavens. That they are something I can only aspire to be.

And yet, somehow, another part of me says, you've been everywhere they've been....what's holding you back? Why can't you believe the good stuff?

This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife. Who's life is this?

i should not be allowed to touch the office coffee machine

Here at the spanky-schwanky offices where I work, there is this coffee machine that is so advanced it practically grows the beans and milks the cows itself. This thing makes like 12 different kinds of coffee, plus hot chocolate AND tea. It's a push button miracle. It's like a caffeinated R2D2 but with more options and better language skills.

In other words, I am doomed to fuck it up something awful.

I've already overflowed about 6 coffee mugs, spilled the rare successful coffee attempts everywhere three times, made the machine make a horrible screaming noise, and used someone else's mug by mistake. I've made espresso when I wanted chocolate, chocolate when I wanted espresso, the machine spit at me once, and one time had a line of three people behind me patiently waiting while I repeatedly pushed the hot water button to get little blips of water, not realizing I had to HOLD IT DOWN to get the amount of water required.

I am Coffee Machine Disaster Girl. There needs to be someone (in technical lingo, we shall call this person the Coffee Interface Liaison, in Karla Speak the Idiot Proofer) between me and the machine. In otherwords, I need a Starbucks Barista right here, at the office, just for me.

Will someone just please make me a damned mocha that won't fight back or embarrass me? Please?

lists, observations and what have you from my recent trip to London

1......Number of times I fell flat on my face in front of High Street Ken Underground Station in London last weekend.

2......Number of newspaper sellers I yelled at in front of High Street Ken Station when I discovered it was their damned newspaper binding that they left on the sidewalk that my feet got tangled in.

3.....Number of bruises I sport from that adventure.

4.....Number of people who asked if I was alright and offered to help me up.

78....Number of curse words I muttered under my breathe as I dusted myself off and scurried away, blushing furiously.

1.....skirt I bought at a shop nearby to assuage my shattered ego. (Number of skirts bought in total on this trip, 2)

2...beers I had at the pub afterwards.

3....number of times I had fish and chips in a four day period.

3.....celebrities sighted. They include Elvis (well, spittin' image, anyhow) and the Queen (see previous about spittin' image) at a fish and chips shop in Pimlico. (The food was good, atmosphere spartan, Elvis wore all black, the Queen wore mauve. They too had the fried cod.) Also saw one of the Two Fat Ladies from that cooking show filming her latest tv cookery spot at the Borough Market. She sailed majestically through the market in her long skirt and apron, larger than life, calm center of a furious melee of hangers on, assistants and gawkers.. I think the other Fat Lady died a while back.

1....number of amazing steak sandwiches I had at Borough Market. Free range beef on a sourdough "bap" with mayo and rocket. YUMMY.

7.....Number of Grande Skinny Vanilla No Whip Mochas I had at Starbucks.

6....number of times I got to make my standard joke at Starbucks when they asked me if I wanted whipped cream on my mocha. "No, thanks, that would ruin the skinny part, wouldn't it?".

1/2.....number of laughs I got when making my joke.

9....Number of pubs visited. Had fish and chips at two.

1580....The year one of the pubs was built.

8.....hours per day spent walking each day.

3....number of London Walks tours I joined.

102....Room number at the hotel we stayed at. Britannia Court Hotel, fun and funky. I recommend it.

38....average temerature in Fahrenheit while we were in London. It was not warm.

585.....cost (in pounds) of a Mulberry purse I fell in love with. Obviously my tastes run to the posh.

0.....number of Mulberry purses I bought.

1.....husband who remains married to me as I did not buy that purse.

20....percentage discount I received when I bought Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince on CD as read by Stephen Frye. My collection is thus far complete and I am thrilled. These cd's are better than the movies. They are not available in the States. And they cost a bomb. I consider it an investment. In me. Yeay!

7.....percentage of the Mulberry purse price the Harry Potter CD cost.

5....approximate number of miles walked on a jaunt through Hampstead Heath to Kenwood House and thence to the Spaniard's Inn pub for fish and chips and then back to the Tube Station, where we decided instead to go to another pub instead of heading back to the hotel.

7....alcohol units I had that day, including beer and wine.

4....number of times Rich told me to quit snoring that night.

300....cost in dollars for both of our round trip tickets from Oslo to London on BA. Cheaper than RyanAir and way nicer. Score!