Open for Business

Right around the time Laurel Holland was developing incredible, naturally perky yet weighty breasts, I went into business.

I have tried on several career options throughout my life. After all, Ghandi started out as a lawyer. I have been a princess, soap opera actress, cocktail waitress, veterinarian, and, memorably, news anchor for CMM news station. The last venture involved a 1984 camcorder and, often, the cooperation of that dopey, uninspired sister of mine, as well as a slew of Fox News worthy headlines around the house. "CMM News - this is Courtney Marissa Morgan, reporting from the living room, where Snowball has just urinated on the couch." I chirped into the shaking camera. As a cocktail waitress I coined "The Grandma" in honor of my grandmother Mary's request, her pointed finger adorned with metallic beige nails and gold cocktail ring, to "fill 'er ALL the way up!"when pouring her a glass of ice cold Chardonnay during the family game of Shanghai Rummy. Being a little too young to keep my attention on any cards other than the royalty for more than ten minutes (and by then the Queen had already sustained a scandalous affair with the Jack), I relegated my seven year old self to crafting the perfect Manhattan with only sixteen ingredients. I also demanded tips. After all, no one went thirsty with such an attentive server and one table of 7.

My first storefront opened summer 1990. I had carefully selected the wares and set up displays, all the prices marked on little white rectangular stickers. The tattered magazines were carefully fanned in a perfect one hundred eighty degree arc on the couch, while the golf balls showed their names in a single, neat line across their dimpled faces next to the stereo, the grass stains polished by the hem of my carefully selected dress. Familiar objet d'art, necklaces, finger nail clippers and combs graced a doily-covered tv tray. The checkout counter sat high on the downstairs fireplace, the sooty screen serving as a sort of protective face shield, much as one would see in a pawn shop. Time spent at the Country Club pool playing magic carpet with a towel in the deep end could only fill up so much of the endless summer days.

The first customer arrived. Grandpa Varga. 

Wearing a white and aqua blue polo and bucket hat, I knew I was in for a sale. Grandpa Varga was a regular in my young life, even though he lived in Glendora, California. His face - my mom's face - looking down at me as I sat in his lap, watching the pictures come to life as he read me books in his blue, velvety chair, remains as clearly etched into my memory as the taste of my mom's spaghetti sauce.  His permanent semi-tan was now a deep, earthy golden brown against his high, bleach-white socks and khakis. Walla Walla was hot that summer, but that wouldn't deter Grandpa from chipping a few balls around the backyard.

"Well well well. What have we here?" He said.

On cue, I opened the fireplace screen, which I had taken the liberty of decorating with nail polish. "Welcome to Courtney's shop. Can I help you find what you're looking for?" This dress really was the perfect thing to wear today. Look-ing sharp. 

"Yes, I'm looking for my golf balls. Have you taken them?" He said as he surveyed the magnificence of the store. He picked up a Best Western emblazoned ballpoint pen, whose sticker read $1.50, in only the very best handwriting. He put it down and chuckled.

"We do have some golf balls in stock, yes. They are on the couch. Two dollars each."

"TWO dollars each? But aren't these from my shag bag?"  

I smiled. The dimple really has always been too much. 

"Well...let me see if I have the money." He fished in his wallet. "Is there tax?"

I can't believe he's paying me for his own stuff!!!! Shit. Tax. Right. That's extra money.

"Yes. With tax your total will be five dollars." I was a socialist from the start.

"Wow, I'd better stop asking questions!" He shook his head and laughed as he pulled out five. whole. one dollar notes. He turned to head outside, "Is this your grandmother's Good Housekeeping?" He picked it up.

$3.50 read the price tag.

"I'll let her find this herself."

"Thank you, grandpa!" I fingered the sueded dollar bills, still warm from his pocket. " Send Dad down, ok?"

Suckers.

Musings

When I was eight, I was fat.

Ok, chunky.

I longed to be a Parisian school girl with the uniform, the accent, and the inherent understanding of culture that all Americans aside from Laurel Holland lacked. Do you know about Laurel Holland? I have a big complex about her. She’s amazing. Kind of. She is so incredibly physically beautiful that she actually has an aura. She is also a little delusional but that’s ok because when you’re a complete cynic like myself, you need a little delusion in your life. Laurel Holland was the original wearer of a bright yellow puffy coat in high school. She had huge blonde hair that was naturally curly, giant tits, and skinny thighs. I loved her.

Laurel Holland could play the piano, sing, swim, and be cute all at once. I could do none of those activities well on their own let alone successfully together. My weird obsession began around the time I was 4 and at the Walla Walla Country Club pool taking swim lessons. I recall finishing a “50” which was actually more like a 21-yard swim and breaching from the water to see a slender modelesque 5 year old girl wandering along the edge with the same shoes from ShopKo, not at all worried that she was five minutes late. From then on, I have been weirdly obsessed with her.

When I moved to New York to find myself in my mid-twenties (I’m not above a cliché) I was unsuccessfully applying for an endless merry-go-round of design jobs in a West Village coffee shop when she called me. Obviously I ignored her call trying to seem somewhat unavailable or “busy”, which was embarrassing when she was standing right behind me a few moments later, still modelesque, on the edge of anorexic looking, and, obviously, still radiating sunshine out of her perfect and probably bleached anus.

“Hey! Do you live here now? It’s so great to see you!” Laurel Holland said.

“Ummm...yes. Sorry I ignored your call...I’ve just been pretty busy applying for jobs and, um, stuff.”

“Oh I totally understand. I’m writing my autobiography of my dad’s biography.”

Stunned silence.

I was 26. She was 27.

So...that’s cool. Seriously the summer earlier at a mutual friend’s wedding her mom told me that she was in a film at Cannes. I mean, that’s impressive. Her mom also wanted to clarify to me that Laurel and the film writer/director/lead actor weren’t “lovers”, which is something I could stand to never hear ever again from someone’s mom.

Moving on.

The food a Prospect Point Elementary was never enough. Soft tacos filled with horse meat, cheese “zombies”, fish sticks...it was barely a sustainable amount of calories for a child with such athletic thighs. My mom still maintains what my childhood pediatrician told her; that I was “all muscle”. He has since developed early-onset Alzheimers, so I’m not entirely sure that his opinion was valid. The best days at Prospect Point were the ones where you could help out in the cafeteria, thus receiving the leftover food as a sort of helper’s bonus situation. I didn’t figure out this arrangement until the fifth grade, which is sad because up to that point I had literally taken to eating my nails as an additional form of sustenance. I was always a little slow to sign up for the cafeteria helpers, so people like Trista Rogers got to help on the good days with the Zippy Dogs and chicken nuggets. I somehow always ended up helping on the only days left available, the days of fish sticks.

Kids are above fish sticks. At least, in the ‘90s they were. In the 50’s I’m sure that fish sticks were some kind of wonder food, the kind of delicacy the Czar of Russia would have to break up the monotony of cabbage soup. All people in the 50’s ate disgusting foods. Like aspic.

Do you know what that is? My parents tried to bring aspic back to our dining table somewhere around 1998. It was vetoed and has since never made a reappearance. Aspic is a suspicious looking so-called salad of unflavored gelatin made with tomato juice and some celery chunks. It is served with a creamy mayonnaise-esque salad dressing. The combination, which I’m sure began in France where the gelatin is legitimately extracted from pigs hooves and was probably a delicacy during the revolution, is fairly disgusting. This comes from a child willing to eat mounds of leftover school cafeteria fish sticks. As most Americans know, we either ruin or completely revolutionize the world’s best foods. Tell me that our version of Italian food isn’t way better than what you eat in Italy. Admit it. On the other hand, our watered down version of any kind of East-Asian cuisine can go straight in the toilet. School children in France probably love aspic.

I bet Laurel Holland adores aspic.

God. She's so chic.

Keep on Clenching, Friend

Ahhhh. I just got this email in my inbox about 10 minutes ago, and felt that I had to share it with the world on a mass level (or the 5 people who read this blog). Ashley is amazing. She had a baby in a blow up kiddie pool a couple of years ago and swore she would never, ever have another child. Then her husband knocked her up again and now she's due with their second. I thought this might help anyone else who is going into labor soon or considering having a child. Namaste!

Reasons Not to Go into Labor 
by Ashley Trout

If your baby is facing the wrong way you should sit upside-down with your butt in the air for at least 30 minutes multiple times a day.  Unfortunately this can’t be done in public or while performing any task that can’t be performed… upside-down.  Follow this with funny looking cat exercises all day long- also not suitable for public settings. 

Be sure not to recline ever- not at the movies, not in your car seat and not on your sofa.  Notice how uncomfortable everyone gets when they think that due to your posture you are always seconds away from jumping out of your seat to announce that you are bored and want out.  It’s fun for the whole family.  Until these result in a positively faced baby, do not go into labor.

Do not give birth if your two year old is still not potty trained and has decided within the past month to no longer sleep through the night in her own bed.

Going into labor during the hottest forecasted day of the entire year is ill advised.  110 degrees is generally reserved for things like sailing or movie theatre double features while birth-giving falls much lower on the list.

For those planning on doing a home birth, one should make sure that the midwife’s previous appointment does not live 6 hours away and is not 6 days overdue.   This leads to an array of complications.

If you ordered a sofa bed 2 months prior to the due date partly in honor of the midwife and it is
expected to show up 1 week after the birth, find a blow up mattress for the lady or do not go into labor.

Also, having one’s entire sewage system back up and simultaneously explode in every plumbing-related receptacle in the house is viewed as unsanitary.  This would be a reason not to go into labor. 

Call the plumber when you see feces floating in your bathtub.  I f he shows up and his name is Clayton, run.  If he calls his boss on your front lawn 4 times before noon, this is a bad sign.  Clenching is strongly advised.  Do not go into labor.

When Clayton and your husband have to resort to pick axing the front yard to access plumbing established in the late 1800’s, leave home.  Leave it quietly.

If you come back and there is now magically dried feces juice on the floors, walls and, get ready for it: ceiling, you should not, I repeat not, use so much bleach to clean it that your eyes burn and everyone in the house gets headaches.  This does not help the overall net effect. 

Wake your 2 year old at 11 pm and get a room at the Travelodge till both the feces and the bleach smell are removed from the house.

Until all of these feats have been overcome, clench.  Clench hard.

Fredrik

It's high-time I put some real personal information up on this post. I've received some comments asking about my personal life because I tend to stay away from that kind of topic on here, so this is it. I'll let you in.

This is Fredrik.

Fredrik Archibald Tigerbear III is our cat. Unlike his name, which means "peaceful ruler" his personality is more akin to "devil asshole with fur". Fredrik lives with Carol and Phil these days, so as not to disturb the chi that Ben and I have carefully cultivated in the apartment. You might think that's mean, but trust me, we all sleep a lot better with the separation. This is the story of Fredrik.

You should know, as a disclaimer, that I have a notoriously bad track record of picking out cats, but that's for another post.

It was my 25th or 26th birthday (I'm so old now, who even cares) and I begged and begged and begged Ben to let me get a cat. The reasons to not get one were obvious to him: the hair, the food, the kitty shitter, the claws, the clear violation of the lease. The reasons to get one were clear to me: it's fuzzy. In the end, my logic won out and I ended up at the Humane Society eyeballing the merchandise like a society girl in Barneys. I test drove all of them (except the weird ones with gooey eyes) by picking them up, cuddling them, playing fetch, and doing this maneuver. What? It's just bonding. I was almost convinced to get a cat named Snugglekins or Snickerlovins or something, a clumpy whiteish cat who probably only had a few years left in him. He would have been a great cat...mellow, lazy, and on the last legs of life just in case it didn't work out.

Just as I was about to claim Snigginpooper as my own, I saw a beautiful pink nose poking out from a shadowy cage. "How did I miss this?" I thought. I walked over and saw a handsome orange tabby with the most perfect pink nose you could ever wish for. He looked at me; I looked at him. At nine months old, he was a little younger than I was hoping for, but oh, that nose. I took him out of the cage for a brief petting session, where he bewitched me with his lively antics. He was so loving and cute and had great, thick fur. I honestly thought that Ben would love him more than Sugarmitts and my allegiance was quickly changed to this little angel of a cat.

Warning #1 that this was going to be an asshole cat: his name was Pauly D. I confused him with Pauly Shore. Apparently it's this douche from MTV. Pauly Shore is probably a lot nicer.

Warning #2 came shortly after I settled up with the front desk. After I went back to pluck my new best friend from the walls of purgatory and take him to the palace in the sky that is Clinton Court, he attacked me. At the fucking humane society. This was a full-body, kitty ball wrapped around the arm back legs kicking attack. Did I drop kick him and tell him to fuck himself at that moment? No. Being a stranger to commitment had made me afraid of being labeled a commitmentphobe, so I packed him in the crate and took him home anyway.

Funny thing, when you notice balls on a cat and the woman at the Humane Society says, "Oh that? That's just swelling." know that the whorebag is wrong. Very, very wrong. Ben and I found Fredrik humping a fuzzy green blanket Brokeback Mountain-style and we thought, "Hm. That's weird." A week later when we took him in for his check up, the vet laughed and told us that those fuzzy little mounds were indeed testicles...the testicles that were supposed to be removed at the Humane Society.

The nights were rough. Fredrik attacked our hands, feet, elbows or any other body part that moved during the night. He tracked litter throughout our pretty clean apartment. He dumped his food over. He mercilessly chased cat toys up and down the hardwood floor hall for hours as soon as we went to bed. Fredrik was everywhere when you least expected him to be. He would sneak onto window sills and swipe you as you walked by. He would be in the bathtub waiting for you to shower. He would hide and stalk you when you, bleary-eyed and half awake in the middle of the night, had to pee. We called those drive-by kitty attacks, because your leg would be scratched and bitten before you even knew what was going on. He hit you when you were at your most vulnerable. Most of the laces of our shoes are 5 inches shorter due to him chewing through them. The worst infraction was when I was awakened by Fredrik ass-stamping the bed with his dirty little kitty butthole. I'm pretty sure he purposefully pinched off early to keep a little poo smear right on his 42 wrinkles (are there 42 on a cat?). This went on for endless months. I started developing PTSD from the nightly attacks.

One day, I couldn't take it anymore. I was moving to New York and Fredrik would have to wait until I had an apartment and a job before I could bring him along. That was several years ago. Several years and two cities ago, actually. Fredrik never made it to New York. Fredrik never made it to Seattle, either. Strangely enough, Fredrik still hasn't returned to my care since moving back home. It sure is nice to see him when I go to rummage through mom and dad's fridge.

I still ask people if they want to adopt a cat from me. Everyone says no. Well guess what, people? He's not up for adoption anymore. Fredrik is now the leader of the weight-loss boot camp for kitties at the Chateau Morgan, where he has 5500 square feet to run around and harass other cats. I love Fredrik, but I'm glad he doesn't live with me anymore.

Code Word : "Carrot"

I've always been a journal person. I think when I was a kid I watched too many movies or something and felt like it was what angsty/artsy people do because they cannot contain their feelings that the outside world would never understand, anyway. Though I don't really write in a journal per sé anymore, the habit of writing things down has led to some pretty random snippets that are left in my phone notes or scraps of paper after something amusing happens. I find humor in a lot of things, as well. Some might call that being dramatic, but really, I find that most mundane stories have some level of hilarity in their humanity and relatability. We are all pretty much the same in the stupid stuff we do, right? Anyway, this post was found in my phone notes...written under a comforter whilst "hiding" from a fellow yoga teacher. Needless to say, it was kind of a rough night.

... ... ... ... ... ... ...

It's my last night of yoga teacher training. Well, last night of being in New York, having fun. Teacher training ended on Friday and it seemed like a good idea to have a few days after to hang out with friends. Until now.

Lets just discuss what's happening here...I'm super, duper high and in a 6,000sq ft house in Bedford, NY. Who is my company? A Playboy Playmate, who we will call the Bunny, because that's obvious. Although, come to find out, there IS a difference between a Playmate and a Bunny, but you can google that.

How did I get here? The past 13 minutes of the Playmate's incoherent name dropping have felt like hours. HOURS.

I met the Bunny about a month ago when I first walked into the studio and plopped down on a folded blanket around a sharing circle. She was pretty and had cute clothes, so I thought, cool. She had these super cool pants that had like, slashes in them, and I liked her glasses and Perfect Bun hair (I now own a Perfect Bun, btw). She also had a throaty laugh and beckoning smile, plus she wasn't 23 like many of the others in class. Little did I know that a week later I would be actively trying to avoid being cornered by her, telling me her latest yogic revelation, name drop, or other ridiculous story I didn't ask to hear.

She is one of those weirdos who thinks that they like to remain anonymous, until they actually are anonymous. Having achieved some level of B or C-list fame - I'm not actually sure what status a usual Playboy Bunny/Playmate has as we aren't talking about Holly or Kendra here - and living in Hollywood still means that you can feel like somebody. In New York, no one really gives a shit. Isn't that great? I saw Naomi Campbell walking down the road a couple of years ago and thought, "Hm. That's a skinny, tall black lady" and moved on with my day until a realized it was her an hour later. It just happens. Famous people live places, too. Kyle MacLachlan of Twin Peaks fame is from Yakima, for christ's sake. He wandered into my friend's shop in downtown WW a few weeks ago and she asked if he was a relative of hers, thinking he looked kind of familiar.

So, in short, most normal people don't give a shit about celebrities, because celebrities or even "celebrities" are still just fuckers like the rest of us, aren't they. The Bunny loved being anonymous only until she realised that none of us had ANY idea who she was. Then, when she spilled the beans to me and Craig and we didn't freak out and tell everyone else, she suddenly had a burning desire to tell everyone her life story. "Fraud" is the term she used, I guess. If I identified myself with everything I've done in my life I probably would just die. It's too overwhelmingly shameful. Nevermind that I still, after a full month of spending every day together, couldn't tell you what most people in that class do for a living. We all just showed up.

Have you ever been in the situation where you are suddenly transported back to a time in life (i.e. Camp Chiajuana for Girls or whatever) when you honestly believe that what you are doing is so revelatory, so important, that you will never forget the group of people that you're going through it with? I cried. Honestly wept in front of twenty other people at the closing ceremony (obvi there was burning sage, for real) just two days ago. I'm not sure if that's enlightenment or just like, temporary insanity but I can feel the shroud of cynicism gently enrobing me once again, and I'm damn happy about it.

Anyway, we all had this great idea to do a barbeque post-training out in Bedford, which is where one of the coolest cats I know lives and she invited us to check out her new house. There was some discussion of a sleepover, but since I was the only person who was excited about it, we made it a Game of Thrones viewing night. So spoiled. I got to watch the first three episodes of this season at the TED office thanks to Aya's boyfriend. Uh-mazing. I've been so cracked out on Game of Thrones I haven't even cared about Mad Men. Or shopping. It's a big deal. An hour on the Metro North from Harlem and voilá, le chateau. This house is awesome. AWESOME. It's covered in windows and is a cool, traditional looking house but with all of this ecclectic/mid-century modern stuff going on inside. I love that. Who else is there? My oh my, it's the Bunny, just sipping on a glass of wine with Kate's boyfriend/co-inhabitant, an unwelcome yet existing person to the party. Surprise surprise to all of us, there she is, talking about some inane thing that went in one ear and out the other.

Midway through celebratory delicious wine, we pull out a little medicinal marijuana chocolate. I have never experienced pot from something that actually has packaging before. We all go for a little nibble, aside from the Bunny, and about thirty minutes into dinner everyone is stressing out. Except the Bunny. I don't know if any of you have ever been super super high when someone you know isn't high around you, but it's stressful. The last time I felt this stressed stoned was when I was in Seattle at a friend's condo, and I was sure that I would be unable to back my car out of the drive without going over the ever-growing granite cliff of my mind. That night in Seattle we watched Never Ending Story, which is a terrible moving to watch because if you are at all anxious about the passage of time, it truly never ends, and there is a lot of crazy shit going on in there. Too much. Maybe TV viewing isn't the best for me in this condition, because before that was an incident with Tron, the new one. Don't even get me started about how confusing it is that REAL Jeff Bridges is IN Tron but CG Jeff Bridges is IN REAL LIFE. Again, too much. That and all of the moto-light-cycle races that happen in that, with the disappearing roads and whatnot. And what is #3 from House doing in this? Ugh.

Kate and boyfriend disappear, he thinks he's about to go through cardiac arrest and she's afraid of saying something bitchy to the Bunny. Game of Thrones is forgotten...but not by me. The Playmate and I head downstairs to watch, because at this point I'm adamant that I not miss a single moment. As we were trying to figure out some multi-zillion dollar projector screen (totally normal for her, I'm pretty sure she told me she slept with John Mayer or something. He probably has a projector screen, too.) the corduroy from the couch was feeling really intense under my feet. THE RIDGES! I cowered in the corner of the sectional, trying to slowly melt into it. We made it through the last 10 minutes of GOT, which was pretty much the whole reason I wanted to spend the night, anyway, but then, in order to wait for the next episode, have to sit through an hour of VEEP. In any normal state, I would probably like this show. In this state, I do not. It's horrible. Three minutes feels like thirty. I can't focus on the story line. I don't get the sarcasm, or do I? I'm afraid to laugh at inappropriate times. I'm afraid the Playmate will know I'm high. I'm afraid I will throttle her and tell her to stop telling me about the person texting her dirty pictures that, no, I don't want to see. I'm afraid we will start talking about nipple size and sex and parties and famous people. We do. I can't take it anymore...so when she goes to the bathroom I bolt upstairs as fast as I can. Sneaky! I run to the guest room, close the door, and hide under the comforter, texting Craig, Joelle, Ben, and Aya in search of anything soothing.

I miss Game of Thrones.

Moving on. Here are some of the texts that I sent in my state.

And, of course, Ben...who I can usually count on to be the voice of reason.

So, as you can imagine. I passed out soon after the discussion of mac and cheese sandwich. The idea is too great to even fathom, and it overwhelmed my already over-stimulated senses with its ridiculousness, rendering me incapacitated and in a state of unconsciousness. The next morning I awakened, and everything was fine. The bunny was asleep and hadn't come to ask me why I left her the previous night, and my friend had recovered from her fit of being fairly sure she and her boyfriend were going to die.

That, my friends, is why you should never do drugs.

Until you forget about it and try again.

How to cure a sunburn overnight!

Ok, ok. I swear the post with the playboy bunny and the medical cannabis chocolate is next. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to write about another attempt to heal thyself. This was Tuesday night, and this is what I look like on the couch:












You like that shirtless pic, don't you, you perv. Hey guess what. That's not a racerback tank I'm wearing, that's a sunburn. Looks good, eh? Oh, and that thing on my foot? That's an ice pack for a yet-to-be-diagnosed foot problem, which I'm pretty sure (based on WebMd, of course) is a stress fracture. Awesommmmmme.

I hate sunburns. I can't imagine that anyone actually enjoys them, but they are pretty high up there with annoyingly stupid things that you could have avoided. Like most of my injuries, they are dumb and predictable. Once, when I was a lifeguard and was in the intense summer sun from 9am to 6pm every day without break, sitting in front of a shimmering pool, I was so tan I looked gross, similar to a 40 year old woman with chubby 16 year old cheeks. Then I burned, but only right at my hairline, so when that peeled it was pink. I had a neopolitan head that was so horribly disfiguring only my straw cowboy hat could save me (OMG so many mistakes all in one summer). I also once burned the letters "T O M" onto my stomach with strategically placed sunscreen, which was awful because it hurt so much I couldn't sleep with any covers on for a week. Plus I looked like an idiot until November. I never had a chance with Tom, so even though he found out about it it's not like that was a big loss. Ahhh. To be thirteen again.

Anyway, I've really embraced being super white in the past few years. I mean, not really. I, too, think it looks horrible to be ghostly pale all through the summer but my hypocritical dad (yes, the one with the beautiful, deeply-tanned man calves come August) has basically beaten into us that we WILL get cancer from the sun if we dare to go outside without block. This attitude, like most decisions you know are good for you but make you pretty square, means that you can't allow others to enjoy being tan, either. I can't be running around with lobster-red wings for the next several days, because I am WAY too self-righteous about sunscreen and sunburns to let anyone see me like this.

So what do we do when we have a problem? GOOGLE IT! Fortunately I had some aloe on hand from an aloe juice cleanse that I couldn't handle. (How the fuck does Izzie drink that shit? If you want her recipe for a sure-fire way to shit your pants, here it is: peel a giant piece of aloe vera, blend it with some lemon juice and water, then try to not gag as you drink it, if you can even get to the point of it going back to your throat without spitting it out. Horrible. Literally the worst thing I've ever had in  my mouse.) Anyway, so I had my lovely bedside man-nurse, Benjamin, rub a little fresh aloe on me, which of course did not yield immediate redness relief within 5 minutes, so I turned to the internet, the source of all divine answers to important questions (i.e. "signs he's a douche").  

Well, oh, well! (I just heard that in Nate's voice that he uses for the dog). It seems my good buddy HONEY came up as a solution! If you're not familiar with what happened last time I tried a homeopathic remedy with honey, go here. That went pretty terribly, but it's been awhile since I tried to cure myself and now appears to be a good time to try, try again. It seems that if I just rub a little honey and coconut oil on my back, I'll be sitting pretty come tomorrow morning. See this blog for the amazing testimonials. I feel like everyone thinks I'm pretty, oh what's the word...gullible, but seriously, how could you not believe it? Coconuts grow in tropical places. People in tropical places are in the sun a lot and must need a sunburn solution. According to honey, honey cures everything. Ben said it's a bad idea, but I think it's going to work out really well.

Right. So here's what happened. Turns out that when Ben dutifully covered my back with honey and coconut oil, it made everything really sticky. Really, really sticky. And oily. I'm wearing one of his t-shirts so I don't get mine all gross (he loves that!). So now, instead of just feeling like I have satan's fire billowing hot air onto my back, Ben's shirt is stuck to me and my skin feels like it's peeling off. Super. Thanks a fucking lot, Google! What are you going to tell me next, to get an x-ray on my foot? "Consult a physician"? Screw you. I go to bed and fire up a few minutes of Game of Thrones, just to soothe my tired soul before drifting into a fitful sleep.

Morning.

Lindsay and I used to spend a LOT of time at the Country Club pool in the summers. I think most kids, given the option of swimming in a pool for five hours or being at home watching Young and the Restless with their mom or Mormon babysitter, will gladly hang at a pool and order milkshakes all day long. I got into this thing where I would take a spare towel, sneak it into the pool with me, then pretend to ride it underwater like a magic carpet. Imagine being the lifeguard watching that...I don't know why no one stopped me. Wasn't anyone concerned about this towel getting wrapped around my body and dragging me to the depths of the pool, where my hand would get caught in the drain and I would drown and be featured on that hit show, Emergency 911 Calls? I could play the magic carpet self-entertainment game for HOURS. I got super sunburned every time, and that in conjunction with holding my breath for really long periods of time while I was "flying" would leave me so exhausted that I would pass out within fifteen minutes of being home. I was THAT tired yesterday, my skin being unused to any kind of sun radiation, and I'm pretty sure that's what conjured up a weird-ass dream. Anyway, I digress.

I awaken in anticipation after an insane dream involving Ben, Katelin, and a double decker bike that I built myself. Ben was a real creep in this dream, and I actually saved Katelin until I started driving on a highway in Portland going the wrong way. Oops! I realise I might have experienced heat stroke as well. I pull up the shirt and reveal softly-scented coconut butter-smooth skin...which still looks radioactive red. Exciting. I would say that it had 0% to -5% effect. Upon further internet research it appears that putting oil on a burn is considered by some to be a terrible idea, similar to throwing grease onto a fire. I'm not sure what the honey was supposed to do but I can assure you that Ben's shirt is now crunchy like it has some kind of unmentionable body fluid on it.

My rating of this internet-found remedy? -2 stars. Zero for the ineffectiveness, minus one for the false testimonials, and minus one for the ugly pink website that it comes from.

Disappointment stings, and so do my shoulders.