The Day I Almost Lay Down on Railroad Tracks - My Mother's New Computer

If you woke up this morning feeling great, poured yourself a cup of coffee, made it to work with relatively little hassle, and settled easily into your day with all the optimism and fresh-faced idealism of a bored, civic-minded rich kid, you're missing out on a mind-blowing experience that I feel compelled to share with you.

Go buy your mother her first computer.

Purchasing a computer for the otherwise technologically-illiterate is a surefire path to prescription medication, alchohol over-indulgence, and the eventual (but certain) completely new experience of the taste of gun metal in your mouth.

Back in the 80's, I should have seen this coming. I laughed out loud at the parents who made me come home whenever the electricity went out during a storm just to reset the blinking clock on the VCR. Oh, ho ho, so funny. And bite me in the ass it did.

I got tired of shopping for and booking all of my parents' flights on line, checking them in 24 hours before departure, and printing out their boarding passes and driving them over to their house. I got tired of them asking me about the mystery of "the email" and "the google". I thought that instead of my mother tirelessly bugging me for printouts of the 7,000 photos I take of my child in photographic hard copy format, I would purchase them a computer, thusly forcing their transition out of the Ottoman Empire and into the Space Age.

BOOM boom BOOM boom BOOM boom BOOM boom.... da.... da.... daaaaa..... DA DAAAA!

I tried to conduct our initial introductory classes in a helpful and pleasant manner, and thought they were successful. However, our following classes included such deflating questions from my parents such as "What's a mouse?" and "How do you turn this stupid thing on?". Now my mother just calls me in the middle of my workday, asks, "Are you busy?", gets a distracted "Yes", and then launches into a convoluted series of questions for the next fifteen minutes, the essence of which is "How do I print out page 2?".

Lucky for her, her future son-in-law has St. Teresa-like patience, and recently interrupted a dinner at a friend's house 6,000 miles away to log into a web-based program to access my mother's computer and help her to print out page two.

I was going to get her a GPS for her birthday.

She'll be getting a map and a magic marker.

The Man Bang. WHY, America???

I actually saw this haircut THIS WEEK. Man bangs, straight across the forehead. Of course, the guy also had a gigantic bluetooth headset wedged into his earwax and a pick up truck that read "AMERICA - speak to her in English" emblazoned across the back window, so he was bottom barrel scrapings, but he's still sharing my oxygen. And his hair offends me.

I thought this was some kind of farmer thing. Not that south Florida is some sort of metropolitan mecca of style, but jeez. I've caught both of my fiance's kids with straight bangs, and I'm not sure if it's the fiance, or the kids mother, but it will end. I will shave their little heads. Or just a straight line down the middle. Or a big circle, right on top.

America, you make me weep.

The Relaxation Kick in the Pants that I Desperately Needed

Hello friends. I'm your Vitameatavegamin girl. Are you tired, run-down, listless? Do you poop out at parties? Are you unpopular? The answer to all your problems is in this little bottle.

I just spent a few days in Jamaica, and I fell asleep last night dreaming about green mountains, sandy white beaches, and turquoise water. Yeah, I work in the Caribbean... but there's just something about the Jamaican people and those crazy mountain roads that makes me want to just pack up my shit and move over there. It's not just the sunshine. I have sunshine. People are just so laid back that you're forced to relax, and I got more sleep in a few days than I have in the two weeks prior to my trip.

Patois is more than a language, it's like Jamaican flavor - it's the difference between plain chicken and jerk chicken with smashed scotch bonnet peppers. There's "yes", and then there's "ya mon". "Wa g'wan" is so much easier than a stiff "hello, how are you?".

I'm shutting down, and going to go have a Red Stripe on the balcony and listen to some music. (Maybe some Natasja Saad - a Dane who spoke crazy patois like a native, and seemed to really embrace everything Jamaican.)

Jah bless. :)