I Still Don't Have Any Problems; Someone Please Give Me Some Problems Because I Need Something to Write About

I thought I had a problem for a millisecond today.

During the millisecond, I turned into myself and said, "The world is full of problems, and you, myself, don't have nearly your fair share of them."

Oh my god you guys. I think I'm going to be as big as Dr. Maya Angelou.

Sleep tight, Maya Angelou. I loved you, and I liked your poems 

even though I didn't really read that many of them because I don't like poetry all that much.

British People Think They're Better Than Me And I Agree With Them

When I was a kid, the only thing I wanted more than British friends was Jewish friends (if you don't count Black friends). But this isn't about my Jewish or Black friends, this is about my British friends and how they speak. I even worked for a Jewish guy for ages which was a dream come true, but like I said, this is about my British friends.

One cool thing about my parents is that they really appreciate British humour, and they shoved that humour really far down our throats until we really appreciated it, too. I thought every British guy was like John Cleese or Eddie Izzard, and every woman was Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders or Queen Elizabeth II. 

However, now that I actually know a lot of British people, I can say that that is 100% accurate.  

My first real Brit was Kim whom I've lived with for over a year and a half. No one ever asked me to, but if I was to design my absolute perfect Brit, Kim would be her. Then ultra-British Eleanor moved in with us, and I lost the plot. Imagine it! Just imagine coming home to two flatmates who can't help but talk that way all the time.

I've got my other mates, of course, who greatly outnumber my American friends (thank god). They're always from a Somethingshire or Nottingham or a place with a university or a Somethingbury or other places that don't really exist. They pick at accents trying to tell where other Brits are from and cringe when someone's a chav. I still have no idea what the hell they're talking about, but truthfully, I can't be arsed nor bothered about it because I love all of them especially the chavvy ones.

This is my mate, Kelly's, actual voice. Her ACTUAL voice.

Aren't you just so chuffed by that!? Could it be more lush? Bloody hell.

When I started teaching, I had loads to learn because I teach British English. My first day, a kid asked me if I had a rubber, and I was like, "No, I don't have a rubber you eight-year-old pervert!" The little girl and I, through the ancient and beautiful art of charades, eventually figured out she was talking about an eraser. I didn't have one of those either.

I had to explain to my sixteen-year-old student who was about to go to the States to study that he'd better say math instead of maths if he didn't want to be crucified. He protested, but I was like, "Bu, bu, but. Shhhhhhhhhh."

I still get pissed and pissed confused, which really pisses me off especially when I'm pissed.

A car only has a boot when you haven't paid your parking tickets, football is not something I give shits about in any of its forms, and yes, I know it's wrong. I didn't name the damn sport. I'm not a fancy dress person! Why can't we just have costume parties on days that aren't Halloween like normal people!? Filling your tank with petrol at the garage makes you sound ridiculous and just say TV for Christ's sake!

That's what I want to say, but what I really do is change the way I speak because just like my father, I secretly think I am British. It drives my fellow American, Melissa, up the wall and rightfully so. I reckon that makes me the most annoying person on the planet. However, being obnoxious is the American way, and my British friends love me for it even though they claim we're all terrible and speak incorrectly. They're my favourite.

One time I asked Eleanor if British people wore black on July 4th,  

and she said "no" like she didn't even care!

The Day Fabian Was Sick

Fabian (read the post entitled An Ode to Fabian, My Greatest Failure if you don't know who the hell Fabian is) was really sick this week, and the poor fella lacked his usual fabulous energy. It was awesome!

Also, him being so ill was the absolute only reason he was allowed to get away with the remark, "I hate Jennifer Lopez. She is trying to be like a new Beyoncé." Man, that kid is a jive-ass turkey. 

I sat at the foot of his bed, propped his feet up on my lap and quite unfairly made him make a Venn Diagram about the two of us. Enjoy it.

                                       FABIAN                                             EMMA

Two other quotes worth mentioning from Wednesday are"Sophia Grace has a lot of chins," and "Did you watch Eurovision?" "No." "Well, the mowan won." "What's a mowan?" "A man-woman." "They're called transgenders." "Whatever."

I don't care about Eurovision.

Momma Always Said, "No Whiners."

I have a complicated relationship with nature in that I like the theory of it, but I'm not very good at it.

My adult life has mainly been spent in seas of concrete, human pee and far too many people whose only objective is to piss me off by not abiding the unspoken urban laws. Call me a romantic but I love it. 

However, sometimes I just need to see a tree that doesn't have a hippie attached to it by a slack line or nine million dog turds in the tiny square of dirt surrounding it, so I was thrilled to spend my spring break reconnecting with our mother, Earth. 

I eased into it with a day trip to some natural hot springs located in the French Pyrenees. I think you should reread that sentence. We drove for a few hours, got lost, asked for directions in Sprenchlish and finally parked the car at the top of a baby Pyrenee. The journey down wasn't exactly harrowing but we forded a stream, got kind of sweaty, got lost again, whined a bit and interrupted a beautiful woodland couple who directed us towards Heaven. Heaven is a series of warm waterfalls pooling then spilling into the next down a steep hill. We striped to our underwear and couldn't wait to join the other nature lovers in sharing our dirty body fluids in glorified cesspuddles. It was incredible. 

A couple of days later, I threw my pack on my back and whined all the way to the bus station because we were going camping! We hopped off the bus in Tossa de Mar and consulted an iPhone before beginning our hike to the site. I think our hike was a healthy mixture of awe, whining, excitement and getting lost (get it together Apple). We were starving by the time we got there, but we decided to set up camp first. It was then that I learned two things: I'm pretty useless, and I'd forgotten just about everything.

Next, we wandered around in a hypoglycemic daze whining and hunting for food. We whined past two restaurants that looked amazing but were closed until we finally arrived at a place that had mediocre over-priced pizza; it was the best mediocre pizza I've ever had. That night, we nestle into our tents and whispered sweet good nights.

The next morning, we woke whining and feeling like shit. Well, all of us who didn't have an awesome air mattress designed, made by and purchased by wimps (I'm looking at you Riri and FraFra) felt like shit. The rest of us couldn't wait to be wimps, too, and thankfully, the campground supermarket sold them.

We spent the next four dreamlike days at the beach, clamoring through the wilderness after Fra, playing celebrity guess it games, making Fra do everything, drinking tea, watching Fra swim, drinking wine, hating the other campers, telling scary stories, drinking beer, eating the barbecued food made by Fra, talking about how great we are and showering. But I'm pretty sure we spent the majority of our time at the campground supermarket. It was a fantastic supermarket.

The last morning it was raining and cold, and we could no longer pretend that we could totally live there forever as we'd declared several times. The whining was pretty profound as we squished the air out of our mattresses, wrestled our tents into the world's tiniest bags and dreaded airing out all of our wet equipment. We took a taxi in lieu of hiking back to the bus station to catch the earlier one. As we pulled into Barcelona, we all felt very happy to be home even though none of us can claim it as our hometown. Who cares? It's ours now.

These are the exact people I'd choose to spend a zombie apocalypse with.
Fra is not pictured but he, we agreed, is the only reason why we'd survive it.

I'm Way Too Young To Be As Old As I Am

I am now older than Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix ever were, and that just proves to me that being talentless and unsuccessful wins the race.

Last Tuesday, I woke up feeling special because it was my damn birthday. I put on my special pants and my special sweater, ate special pancakes and smeared on my special face.

I was a bit hurt that the strangers on the street weren't wishing me a happy birthday. I felt like I was being very obvious about it.

Though I had to work (thanks for nothing Mom and Dad), I enjoyed my classes more than usual because I was thinking about my birthday outfit the whole time, and the theme of the day was me.

Birthday Outfit:
-puffy-outty skirt in my signature green
-deep v-neck embroidered shirt that makes me look well traveled and cultured but that I got at TJ Maxx in a   St. Joseph, Missouri strip mall
-brown boots with red shoelaces that I need to fix because theya makea me fall dahwn (I'm serious)
-black thigh highs that I immediately tore
- knew that would happen, so I put on my cheap reserves
-dried flower headband that's special because it's from Jenna, and I feel like a king when I wear it

I was told that I had only two responsibilities: clean yourself up and meet Poppie at the Barceloneta metro at a quarter to 10. Poppie is the best person to walk with because she holds you tight and says only funny and/or interesting things.

She's also a deceitful little trickster who lies out of her weasel mouth.

Here's the thing about surprises...I love them. In fact, I never ask questions about anything ever because I want everything to be a surprise all of the time. The downside to never asking questions, however, is that you become very ignorant which is exactly how I felt when I was led into the back room of an unassuming tapas place. I was expecting two or three of my girlfriends, but no...

My friends! All of my beautiful friends were there! And they'd made Emma masks, so they were even more beautiful than usual!

I felt all of the emotions at the same time, and they're lucky I didn't die. The decorations were great, the presents were thoughtful and undeserved, the masks were creepy and amazing and they'd gotten me real good. But those things were the icing. The cake was that for the first time, I was looking straight at my Barcelona experience in the faces of the people I've grown to love after having met them at different times along the journey, and they'd come together for no other reason than me.

The older I get, the more it dawns on me that I may just be the luckiest person in the world.

Untitled Birthday Song
By Adi Mahler

I think it fits you very well
a birthday on the 1st of April

That life is just a little joke
celebrate it well

I won't get over sentimental
I'll just tell you that

They say ginger flame burns hard
but I find in you tranquility

They say that gringo is fake and false
but I find in you sincerity

They say it's hard to find real friends in Barcelona but
I found a real friend in you

I was suppose to write more
but just got addicted to Game of Thrones

So I hope I'll remember all the words and sing them right

It's not embarrassing to say the truth to someone like you
and look around you
it's not only me that...

Then everyone sang!

We found a real friend in you (repeat a bunch of times)

It kind of makes you want to barf and gag but also makes you want to cry, doesn't it?

Feel More Awesome, Okay?

A couple of weeks ago, some friends and I drove to Waikiki, a nude beach surrounded by yellow cliffs nestled in the forest near Tarragona, because why the hell wouldn't we?

We parked the car and every one immediately needed to pee again because we'd only stopped once along the harrowing eighty-minute journey. We schlepped our crap onto our backs and started walking blindly into the woods. About a minute and a half in, we all found our pee spots. I was in my hiking outfit: an ankle length black dress that doesn't allow my legs to take full strides and wedge-heeled boots. After I gathered the hem up and over my incandescent butt, I couldn't really see or remember what I was doing, but my mother's voice echoed in my head, "Stick your bottom way out." I did that and only peed on my shoe a little.

Melissa lit a cigarette, we took a picture and continued our hike.

After asking for directions several times, contemplating how long we could survive in the wilderness on the provisions we'd brought (we guessed we'd just eat everything outright and hope for the best) and more photos, we eventually found the promised land.

I peeled my shoes off, dug my feet whose second toes are longer than the big toes into the finest sand I'd ever felt and reveled for a second. After we'd snapped out of it, we found our spot and peeled nearly everything else off.

We kept our underwear on, and I'll admit that I was a little relieved because I still haven't figured out the right style for my flaming pubic hair that draws way too much attention. I apologized for my razor burn because I wanted my friends to know that I knew as we eeked our way into the frigid water and gathered my courage to dive into a big wave I knew I wouldn't be able to jump over. While submerged, I felt like millions of lil' baby stingrays were fighting over where to play on my skin, and all those strange bumps on my areolas bubbled up. It felt good, really good.

We quickly got out because we're not heroes, and all the wine, cheese and Kelly's hummus were calling. I tried a few different sitting positions before I was satisfied that my winter gut wasn't spilling over too much. I've always felt a little strange eating without clothes on, but our spread was too good to not; my stomach noticeably expanded. After we finished, Sam took a photo of us holding food over our nipples because we're hilarious. I noticed that I'd forgotten to pluck my two determined nipple hairs as I pasted avocado skins to them.

Thankfully, Poppie brought a small bottle of sun lotion SPF negative number because I'd violated the first rule of ginger club and hadn't packed any. It was better than nothing, so I smeared it over my skin reminding myself for the billionth time that we're embarking on yet another summer I will go through without being a bronzed goddess. It smelled like coconut ambrosia!

We took more photos, did sand cartwheels and waded into in the sea once more because we are the luckiest people on the planet. But sadly, even the luckiest people have to put their clothes on and go meet others in town for a traditional Catalan dinner.

Like real assholes, we fell all over ourselves trying to convey the magic of what we'd just experienced to our friends while they had been working. Flipping through the photos, I felt myself getting a little less excited. I had no idea my thighs and stomach looked so doughy. Hold up, when did I get cellulite? What if my boobs were bigger? Maybe that would balance me out?

You see what I did there?

You just wanted a cool story about an incredible experience that I made infinitely less cool and incredible for you because of my body issues, but I feel like that's what a lot of people, especially women, do to themselves daily. We don't wear what we want to wear, eat what we want to eat, have sex like we want to have sex or go to the damn beach sometimes because we're preoccupied with the 2% that we don't consider perfect instead of the 98% that's banging. We're robbing ourselves of so much feeling awesome time.

And while I remember every negative thought I had about myself that day, I also remember not having a single criticism of my friends' gorgeous bodies even though I knew that they, sadly, were dealing with their own hangups. They're idiots, though. I thought they looked beautiful, confident and sexy.

And you know who else did?

The naked guy who was masturbating behind us the whole time.

I don't remember eating a bowl of fabulous before this hike, but I clearly did.

What Can I Say? I Like the Ladies.

I have way more guy friends than girlfriends because girls are so jealous and bitchy. 

If you've said this recently, I want you to know that that's a "you problem" and not an issue with an entire sex or gender, and I hope that your "you problem" resolves itself quickly. 

Most women are awesome and some women suck, but unlike men, I don't have to constantly remind myself that I do like women.

Here's why: 

They're always on my back caring about how I feel and if I'm happy, they won't stop nagging me about how great and worthy I am and they won't shut up for two seconds so that I can forget that they have valid thoughts and feelings they want to share with me because to them I am the most important person in the world at that moment. Fucking bitches. 

Throughout my life, I've been extremely lucky with the ladies, and I think it's simply because I listen to them, support them and think they're funny. 

My first girlfriend was my mom followed four years later by my sister. If you don't know them, imagine the most talented, hilarious and intelligent person you know, tell that person you chose him/her because that will really make her day then completely forget about that person and go meet my mom and sister. To say I'm lucky to have them as my life partners is a gross understatement while saying that it's their kampf to be stuck with me is pretty accurate. They're my best friends. 

Andrea let me get away with far too much showboating when we were little, and I partially blame her for my inflated ego. She effortlessly brought out an imagination in me that I would love to have back. We conquered a lot of imaginary worlds together, and she always played the blind Mary to my overzealous Laura Ingalls Wilder because she trusted me to lead her through the sunflowers and up the ladder into her tree house. Jesus, Andrea, I hope you let yourself peek every once in a while. 

Then there was Annie. She was an exotic (from Connecticut!) bright light in a town that I was starting to feel angsty about. Very few times in my life have I felt a level of terror comparable to the time we kicked a soccer ball through a window from the inside of the house, or looked at the aftermath of our butterscotch pudding fight in her kitchen or squeezed ourselves under beds and into cupboards trying to hide from Nazis. I watched Gandhi and Empire Records with her rolling up our skirts and selling Jagged Little Pill to imaginary customers on the floor of her bedroom. I think she, more than any childhood friend, helped form the adult me. 

You know the last scene in American Beauty when Lester Burnham reflects on his life the second before he dies? I think my second will end with..."and Margaret." 

I started a new paragraph because I wanted the drama. That won't actually happen, but we both really like the film. Margaret isn't my friend, and she isn't my sister. She's my Alaskan appendage. Together with our college room/soulmates, Christine and Ana, we talked about our studies, men, and far more important things than men. We helped each other decide who, what and where we wanted to be. We're still talking about it, and although she doesn't just give me the goddamn answers, there is no other voice in the world I want to hear scream, "Emma! What are we doing with our lives!?" 

I now find myself in another country deeply entwined in a group of women politically incorrectly called The Gypsies. They're irreverent, intelligent, brave, creative and my life source. Each day I come home to two women who are responsible for making it a home and who really want what's best for me, as I do them. And although I teach Rosemary's Baby after Children of the Corn on Wednesdays, I always look forward to the day because the women I meet for coffee make me laugh and inspire me.

Have I seen most if not all these women succumb to jealously? And are they capable of laying down a thick layer of bitch?  

Mos Def 

But they don't do it because they're women. They do it because they're humans, and I don't want to be friends with people who aren't humans because that would mean I was just an actual crazy person. 

I could never describe them as jealous and bitchy because that's not who they are. They're individuals who aren't just navigating the stormy seas of life; they're trying to conquer them like bad ass pirates, and the coolest pirates are covered in scars, right? Maybe their moments of weakness are just one pirate reaching out to another pirate saying, "Hey, buddy. I need your help getting over this wave." 

I lost the point in that really awesome pirate metaphor, but what I'm trying to say is that I wouldn't be nearly as confident and independent as I am without the help of these women and so many others. I need them when I'm sad, weak and tired; I need them when I'm happy, excited and proud, and I want them to come to me for the same reasons. They can wiggle their way into cracks that men just can't seem to fill...even the gay ones.