a girl, a house on the beach, and a one-way ticket...day 28

I know it was only a short time ago when I took a poll about whether I should leave Las Vegas. And granted, it was only a year before that when I asked for input about whether I should move to Vegas. And OK, yes, before that the phone lines were busy with Chicago and New York. Well, surprise surprise I'm taking an official vote again on whether I should stay here or return to Ohio. I believe voters should be well informed, so I've provided some pros and cons about living in Naples that I've observed thus far and am currently weighing.

CON: SLOOOOOOOOOOOOW TRAFFIC


PRO: LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG SUNSETS


PRO: BEAUTIFUL BIRDS


CON: KILLER BIRDS


CON: REPTILES


PRO:FAIR WARNING


PRO: RITZ CARLTON RESIDENT PEDICURIST WHO--I KID YOU NOT--BELIEVES HIS IS A CALLING FROM GOD (Formally, Prince Bryant--as the locals like to call him--served the Lord as--I kid you not again--a US Army special operations soldier).


CON: RITZ CARLTON PEDICURIST WHO DOES NOT BELIEVE LINCOLN PARK AFTER DARK AND ALL THE OTHER GUNMETAL SHADES I LIKE ARE BECOMING ON THE FEET OF ONE OF THE LORD'S DAUGHTERS (at least you can sleep better tonight, mom, knowing that finally! finally! your daughter is wearing pink toe nail polish).


PRO: AMAZINGLY NEIGHBORLY NEIGHBORS (Please note that I don't know Mr. Whitinger and am now presently wondering if this is actually a bit creepy)


CON: CHALLENGING REGIONAL COLLOQUIALISMS (such as linai, which in American means "screened in porch")


PRO: AN ABUNDANCE OF STARBUCKS


CON: AN ABUNDANCE OF HURRICANES*


Polls are open, people...

*BUT and this is just in...a reliable source, which is soooooo not Cosmopolitan Magazine, took a poll of 1.3 million Americans and listed the people who live in Florida as the second happiest in the country. And, interestingly, those in Louisiana were listed as the happiest, which obliterates the common misconception that hurricanes make people, um, unhappy.

ohio girls

I received lots of responses from readers regarding my recent post on Ohio boys. And no one seems to disagree with Ohio boys' general goodness. My favorite response, however, was actually a forward with a wink about Ohio girls.

Marrying an Ohio Girl

The first man married a woman from Florida . He told her that she
was to do the dishes and house cleaning. It took a couple of days,
but on the third day, he came home to see a clean house and dishes
washed and put away.

The second man married a woman from Michigan..He gave his wife
orders that she was to do all the cleaning, dishes and the cooking.
The first day he didn't see any results, but the next day he saw it
was better. By the third day, he saw his house was clean, the dishes
were done and there was a huge dinner on the table..

The third man married a girl from Ohio. He ordered her to
keep the house cleaned, dishes washed, lawn mowed, laundry washed,
and hot meals on the table for every meal. He said the first day he
didn't see anything, the second day he didn't see anything but by
the third day, some of the swelling had gone down and he could see a
little out of his left eye, and his arm was healed enough that he
could fix himself a sandwich and load the dishwasher.

Disclaimer: I am not a proponent of violence, but I (as someone who only very recently acquired a coffee table and as someone who presently still has not acquired a kitchen) am also not a proponent of marrying a man who can't feed himself. Only children and pet goldfish should not be able to feed themselves.

a girl, a house on the beach, and a one-way ticket...day 22

I woke up this morning with the grim suspicion that Naples may be getting to me, as in making me--if not exactly stupid--then at least slightly duller than usual. This suspicion was confirmed just moments later when I threw my car keys instead of my pajamas down the laundry shoot on my way out.

I blame my strenuous schedule.

9 am: Coffee on the veranda duhling with all of the other Neopolitans with strenuous schedules.
10 am: Sitting by the Gulf
11 am: Boating on the Gulf
12 pm: Swimming in the Gulf
2 pm: Sitting by the pool
3 pm: Reading by the pool
4 pm: Swimming in the pool
5 pm: Oprah (yes, by the pool)
6 pm: Reading by the pool
7 pm: Swimming in the pool
9 pm: Still swimming in the pool

So, I wondered...

Could it be that my new summer reading schedule, which consists of paging through other people's left behind, dog eared Vanity Fairs and Cosmos (please note here that I have been doing this not only by the pool but also whilst in the pool, as I'm aiming to be not a TOTAL slacker) is not quite as academically rigorous as, say, lecturing on Mamet?

Could it be that my current preoccupation with timing my strolls along the beach with the sunsets is not as mentally demanding or invigorating as, say, trying to OK ONE MORE TIME, PEOPLE explain that YOU DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, EXTENUATING (well, Aubry, look it up if you don't know what it means)OR OTHERWISE, USE "U," "BTW," "WINCYSIMGIS" (whatever that means) or any other textual shorthand in college English classes?

Could it be that coordinating my various bikini tops with my various bikini bottoms* does not provide the same quotidian calisthenics for the mind as, say, explaining the difference between "lie" and "lay?**"

Luckily for me--just as I thought my worst nightmare was coming true***--I came across a revelatory book entitled The Book of General Ignorance, which was fortuitously left behind at Starbucks this morning by a comparatively less ignorant person than myself (at the time). I've spent the majority of the afternoon reading it, and doing so has without a doubt constituted the greatest (and only) intellectual effort I have put forth thus far to not turn dumb while I am here.

And in one word, the book is fascinating...

1. The blue whale is 105 feet long, three times bigger than the biggest dinosaur, and weighs as much as 2,700 people. Its tongue weighs more than an elephant and its heart is bigger than the average family car.

2. A chicken can live up to two years without its head. There was a chicken in Colorado named Mike who did just that.

3. 45 billion people have been killed by a mosquito bite.

4. Not all frogs "ribbit." In Thailand they "ob ob," in Algeria they "gar gar," and in Bengali they "gangor gangor."

5. (Initially I read this one with much anticipation) If you happen to come face to face with a crocodile, your best best is a rubber band. While the downward force of its jaw closing is equivalent to the downward force of a truck falling off the side of a mountain, the upward force of its jaw opening is almost nil and can easily be contained by wrapping a rubber band around its mouth (Yeah, this is real helpful because I'm pretty sure your real trouble is over before it is time for the jaw to open).

6. Work kills three times more people on the planet every year than alcohol, drugs, and war combined. Phew...at least here's one I don't need to presently worry about.

7. 10% of your body weight is the bacteria that lives on you and in you (and they don't care about your carb intake or your P90X).

8. Gorillas sleep in nests.

9. Shrimp make the loudest natural sound by any individual animal on land or in the sea. Their sound, which is produced by the popping of the bubbles that form when they snap their claws, can white out a submarine's sonar and are waaaaay beyond the human threshold for pain. Also, when the bubbles pop, they do so so loudly that they also produce light in the rare phenomenon called sonoluminescence.

10. The largest living thing in the world is a mushroom. The largest recorded specimen of Armillaria ostoyae is in Oregon and covers 2,200 acres.


*In my defense: I am not nor ever was depressed. Multi-colored wardrobes are overrated, and now I know why. While mixing and matching bathing suit tops and bottoms is not traditionally an intellectually fruitful endeavor, over the weekend I did make an interesting connection hitherto unbeknown to me while doing exactly this: New Yorkers (present and former) and generally intense people everywhere (artists, nuns, etc.) wear all black or some shade of it to save their precious mental stores for more pressing tasks than trying to determine whether the canary yellow paisley in their bandeau top off sets nicely or sets off poorly the emerald thread in their bathing suit bottom. In other words, the variance found in the wardrobe palette of a particular demographic is directly proportional to how seriously it takes its work (or at least itself).

**Eh, on second thought…I’ll return to this come September.

***Contrary to what you may believe due to my previous posts on my fear of aliens, gorillas, raisins, and cantaloupes, waking up really, really dumb is actually my worst nightmare.

little fluffy dogs: a field guide to flexers, charmers, and ostensibly sensitive types part 3

Let me preface this final part of the field guide series by saying two things.

First, Ohio boys should be given the benefit of the doubt before being pegged as flexers, charmers, or ostensibly sensitive types. In fact, I love-just love-Ohio boys, particularly my Ohio boys. Cases in point: A boy from, say, California or New Hampshire would never willingly climb INTO a Taco Bell dumpster late at night searching for the wallet I was pretty sure I threw into the trash with the leftovers earlier that evening.* Nor would a boy who was not from Ohio gather his brothers to meet me at a inconveniently located gas station in the middle of subzero January night to--in what was a true gesture of Ohio masculine teamwork and effort--pull off the super cute boots that try and ugh try as I did WOULD. NOT. COME. OFF.**

Second, unlike the first two parts of the field guide series, what I have to say below is not so much for women as it is for the Ohio boys themselves. While it is true that Ohio boys can misbehave with the best of them (both the Vegas millionaire flexers and the Wall Street charmers***), at the end of the day, they are just solid guys who love Jesus (OK, OK, and Lebron), horses, their mamas, and their girlfriends, too.

The pointers below were borne of my observation that the attendant difficulty of being recognized as a good guy in a state full of, well, good guys is an unfortunate one, and that ultimately the onus of distinguishing one good guy from all the others belongs to the fellas themselves.

So, gentlemen: listen up.

Here's what to do...

1. Refuse to wear a blue dress shirt. By not wearing a blue dress shirt, the Ohio boy can automatically separate himself from 95% of other Ohio boys. Don't believe me? Well, then, go ahead and look in your closet. Do it now. What you are seeing is exactly what 95% of all the other boys are seeing. Most likely there is a disproportionate number of blue oxfords hanging there. And yes, for the record, light blue, slightly less light blue and sky blue all still qualify as blue.

2.Eschew all public displays of sports mania. I know I know BUT if you can do this in addition to wearing a not-blue shirt, you will automatically belong to the upper echelon of good guys in Ohio.

3. And, finally, pretend like you have never seen The Shawshank Redemption, let alone that it is your favorite movie OF ALL TIME and congratulations just like that you, my friend, are a member of the elite 1% of the male population in Ohio.

4. If you cannot imagine following any of the above, you, alternatively, could move out of the state. It is out of state--trust me--where you can truly shine. (Now you may end up a small fish in a big pond, but at least it is guaranteed that you will be a small fish not lost in a massive school of other small fish wearing blue shirts, genuflecting Lebron, and gushing about the profound depth of The Shawshank Redemption). And take heart, many of your brethren have already made such a move. It has been my experience that regardless of where I live in the country, Ohio boys abound. In fact, 8 out 10 boys who live in Naples, Florida are from--surprise surprise--Ohio.

*This is a true story and may persist as the single sweetest thing a guy has ever done for me even though he didn't find my wallet. And...AND when I found my wallet under the car seat the next day, this gem of an Ohio boy only yelled and chased me around for 5, 10 minutes tops.

**When I made this late night SOS call, NOT ONCE did this Ohio boy nor his (Ohio) brothers say to me "Just sleep in the freaking boots...who cares?" or "Why would you buy boots that won't unzip?" Ohio boys do not presume to understand you--if you refuse to sleep in boots or buy footwear that is super cute but highly nonfunctional then the Ohio boy smiles, shrugs, and simply says One! Two! Three! Pull!

***Please note that no self-respecting Ohio boy would ever hire a personal stylist, as color coordination of wardrobe has by default been rendered unnecessary because blue goes with everything (duh). Likewise, no self-respecting Ohio boy would ever be caught dead walking a little white fluffy dog just to impress a girl. Plus, little white fluffy dogs tend to get lost among the snowbanks 9 months out of the year, which makes the whole facade less than worth it anyways.