secret 30 - the local news

when i was a little girl, not a whole lot older than this, t.v. was a relatively new thing for everyone to have in their home. and we had a t.v. and i suppose it got a couple of channels. the local CBS affiliate for sure and probably a PBS station. i can even recall the rabbit ears perched on top of the t.v., lengthened with a bit of tinfoil because that must have helped the reception some.

someone must have discussed the local news and the national news within earshot of me. walter kronkite was the national news man and he seemed a bit stern and serious. i remember les and gina something (funny how only their first names come to me), a husband-wife team, were the local news people.

well, apparently, the whole concept of local and national got a little fuzzy for me because in my head, local meant that les and gina (who i was apparently on a first name basis with, undoubtedly due to them being local) could see me right there in our living room. so, if i had been upstairs taking a bath and all of my clothes were downstairs in the laundry basket by the washing machine, i had to sneak, wrapped up in a towel, behind my dad's gold chair if les and gina were on, because i wouldn't want them to see me all dripping wet and just wearing a towel.

lest you think i'm completely mad, i didn't think everyone on t.v. could see me, just the local news people. and maybe captain 11, who was also the weather man. and a bit creepy in retrospect.

* * *

and that's it, my last secret. it's been a long month, but i made it. and i hope you've enjoyed this little bit of insight into my madness. and if you want to do 30 secrets too, please let me know, i'd love to read yours. but again, pace yourself, even if you make a list beforehand, it's hard work and you'll find you don't always feel like writing about one of the secrets you've scribbled on your list. but it is actually worth it. i feel a sense of accomplishment. hmm, now which one was a lie...

secret 28 - my first and only visit to bulgaria

looking for adventure one weekend in the balkans, several of us decided to head to sofia, bulgaria on a bus. we went armed only with an overnight bag, ATM cards and a dog-eared copy of let's go eastern europe. we arrived at the bus station and found our way to the center of town.

it was the late 90s and it was quite evident that the fall of the berlin wall had not been kind to bulgaria. we secured a room at the misleadingly-named grand hotel (why are those hotels always far from grand--it's true in oslo too). the hotel, still being quite soviet in procedure, took our passports. i was used to that and wasn't alarmed (not until later). we stashed our backpacks and headed out to see the sights.

the streets were curiously quiet and there was a feeling of waiting or even more, of hiding in the shadows. there were few cars and buildings seemed dilapidated and uninhabited, tho' they weren't abandoned. we walked around an art museum and in every room were the ubiquitous little old ladies who sit on a chair in the corner of a museum room in any former socialist country, ready to catch you making a suspicious move towards any of the objects. we were a little shocked to see one of them openly reading a blatantly graphic porn magazine. that seemed to underline how different things were in that place.

there was an art exhibition in a corner of an enormous concrete performing arts center, clearly built in its day (which could have been 50 years before or 5, thanks to that fast-aging concrete unique to such places) according to leftover stalinist plans. the place was crumbling and there was no one around, so we actually wandered around the whole building, taking in the stage and even peeking backstage, being struck quite silent ourselves by the post-apocalyptic quality the place had. we felt all day that we were the last ones wandering a city that had been abandoned, any people we saw were at a distance and hurrying along furtively, ducking into doors and alleys, or so it felt.

near the main square, we at last stumbled upon a little street market and bought an old camera--in fact, it's the one that started our collection. (it's the folding camera in the center of the picture above.) there was also an old mausoleum which no longer showed any sign of who had once been in it and which was all draped with cheesy banners for a big one hundred and one dalmations event. i wish i'd taken pictures, but somehow i didn't. the old hammer and sickles which had adorned the sides were chipped away at and it, like everything else in the capital, had an air of abandonment about it. we photographed the little lobster we were carrying around with us everywhere on one of the chipped away soviet symbols.

after struggling to find a place to eat lunch because places seemed so hidden away and the streets were so empty, we armed ourselves with let's go and headed out in search of, of all things, a tex-mex place that was mentioned there. it said the food was pretty decent tex-mex for bulgaria and that they had live music most evenings. we thought that sounded good.

to find it, we had to go down a dark alley and into a little courtyard in between buildings. unsure of the way, but trusting implicitly those snooty harvard brats who wrote those guides, we kept going, tho' there were no signs. we entered a doorway and went down some steps and there at last was a little sign, the sounds of people clinking glasses and chatting away over the music, and the unmistakeable smells of mexican food. we had found it.

we got a table and enjoyed quite a lovely dinner. after dinner, we moved into the bar, actually passing through old west-style swinging saloon doors, where the music was playing and ordered a margarita. the owner was a friendly young mobster man who came over and chatted with us in surprisingly good english. we told him we'd found him thanks to let's go and he smiled.

finally, around midnight, in good humor, but not even close to drunk after two margaritas over the course of the evening, we headed back through the dark, empty streets to the hotel. we took a shortcut through a dark park, laughing and joking our way, to keep any spookiness at bay and we walked up the stairs at the back of the mausoleum we had seen earlier in the day. our hotel was just across the square beyond it.

as we walked up the steps, laughing about some joke or other, suddenly we were surrounded by four uniformed policemen, accusing us of disrespecting the great monument to the great leader (whose name had been rubbed off the front and replaced by the one hundred and one dalmatians banner). i don't think i immediately appreciated what was happening. they asked us in bulgarian, what we were doing there and demanded to see our ID. of course, our passports were at the nearby hotel. not speaking bulgarian and having but rudimentary macedonian (which some argue is a dialect of bulgarian), i tried to explain this and turned, indicating the hotel. they thought i was trying to get away (which i wasn't) and one of them grabbed at the small purse (coach, of course) that i had cross-ways across my body.

completely operating on instinct and not thinking at all, i pulled the purse back, and then they grabbed me and suddenly i was fighting with several bulgarian policemen while they held back my companions. on pure adrenalin, i fought back, even biting one them--i'm sure he has a perfect scar of my teeth on his hand to this day.  but then i saw a giant clump of my hair lying on the ground. seeing that made me stop.

things cooled down, one of the policemen took the angriest one aside and talked to him. the other two remained there beside me, still trying to communicate. my russian kicked in (why hadn't i tried that before?) and we managed to get through to each other. they claimed to be calling a patrol car to come and get us and take us to the station, but their radios never crackled and and it was only then that i saw their guns in their holsters and began to shake, realizing the enormity of what was happening and fearing what could happen.

my companions were with UN forces in neighboring macedonia and finally, the policemen realized that after we repeatedly pointed it out on their ID cards. but more importantly, they also realized that we had no cash on us (the angriest one seemed angriest about that). we'd used a local ATM and had only a little bit of local currency on us and about 10 deutsch marks. that wasn't enough (and i'd been way too slow to realize that was what they'd actually wanted from the beginning).

because i spoke russian, they didn't believe me that i was american, but they did finally realize the gravity of the UN identification they'd been presented. so the one i had bit (he actually turned out to be the nicest one, so i'm a little sad it was him), told me that they were going to call off the squad car they'd ordered and let us go because i could speak russian and therefore he and i could talk--giving me a conspiratorial wink and a nudge--and oh, also that UN could be "big problem."

and so we walked away back to the hotel. me shaking more and more as we got closer. i remember that i got up to the room, sank against the wall and uttered an inhuman wail that still makes me shiver, just thinking about it. we left on the first bus out the next morning.  it was all a dozen years ago, but i can tell you i can tell you that i won't be going back to bulgaria ever again anytime soon.

afterwards, i was far more haunted by what could have happened than by what actually did. four armed men. visions of a bulgarian prison. questions as to whether they even really were policemen. their radios had never crackled, so i doubted they had actually ever called any squad car. who were they? what did they really want? just money from some foreigners? the whole city was so muted and depressed and sort of holding its breath that it lent to all sorts ideas crossing my mind on sleepless nights afterwards.

my hair, of course, grew back in time and it even came in much curlier. it's still a lot curlier from that spot to this day. i also had a black eye, but when i looked at the picture of that, it still bothered me so much that i couldn't include it in this post. time does heal things, but there are some things that you never really completely get over.

secret 27 - remember her?

...i think her name was monica something. and she went on to design purses. poor girl. and to be honest, who wouldn't have done what she did given the chance. cigars or no.

and if one were given the chance, say because one was at the same university where said most powerful man on earth happened to be giving the commencement address and one happened to be part of the backstage team. and well, backstage, there was a window. and because in person, he is seriously charismatic....

you be the judge....

secret 26 - me and lenin

ok, i admit it. the first time i went to russia, one of the things i wanted to see was lenin's tomb on red square in moscow. it's a masterpiece of constructivist-modernist architecture and i found the notion of actually seeing lenin (or whatever was left of him) deliciously creepy. and it lived up to every expectation i had and then some.

photo found here.

i queued outside with a bunch of ancient, bent little old russian ladies in dark coats, colorful scarves and fur hats. it was a cold day, with wisps of snow whirling around and a bitterly cold wind blowing across red square. it was 1994 and they weren't sure at that point if they were going to keep it open, but i lucked out and found it was open that particular day.

it was a somber thing to proceed through. you walk in on the left and get the chance to walk slowly all the way around him (or at least you did then). there were guards to keep you moving--a bit like with the british crown jewels, you're not allowed to stop and as i recall, no photos were allowed (if i took some, they are, like so many of my secrets, home in my parents' basement). there was a hush and it felt very solemn and reverent. many of the elderly ladies who shuffled through ahead of me (thank goodness for them, because they walked slowly and enabled me to walk slowly) became very emotional, dabbing tears and choking back sobs.

leaving politics aside completely, it felt like something special, although lenin himself is so preserved and maintained over the years that he looked quite waxy and unreal, and it did cross my mind that there wasn't much of the real him left. but i think that what made it a special experience was sharing it with these elderly women who may have been small children way back when, women who had seen the entirety of the soviet union (and survived). and the architecture of the tomb creates a special experience as well, it's dark and imposing and cavernous and somber. and well, totally fitting as a mausoleum. they really got the architecture right. and seeing it the dim, wintry daylight of a mid-winter day added to the atmosphere.

it made such an impact on me, that when i returned to russia in the summer of 1997, i went back. the line was shorter then and it was summer, so the mood was lighter, but there were still many ancient little ladies coming to pay their respect. i don't think it had the same impact the second time, but i do recall exiting and going right back in line again, to have a second look. i wasn't sure i'd ever get the chance again. and i haven't, so perhaps i was right.

but there is something really special about lenin's tomb.

secret 25 - psst, over here

psst. over here. i've got a juicy rumor for you. did you hear that...

nope, i'll stop there. because the truth about me and rumors is that i have an uncanny ability to make rumors be true. i've even tried it with ones i made up all by myself. and every single time, they end up true. so it's pretty dangerous with me and rumors.

in my previous two jobs especially, all of the rumors i was involved in turned out to be true. people began to realize it and they had a kind of awe. if you're known to be the possessor of good information, it turns out that people often come and give you good information. which then nicely feeds your reputation and enables you to continue.

people would come to me with tales of problem colleagues and we'd discuss their transfer to outer mongolia. or west africa. and before you knew it, they'd be packing their bags. and it wasn't that i worked in HR and could actually arrange for these transfers. i think it was more of a sixth sense or an ability to see a situation and make an accurate mental assessment.

thankfully, i'm not actually using that ability much these days. and i have to tell you, it's really nice for a change. i try to use my magic wand only for good these days.

secret 24 - devaluation

it's no secret that a few years ago i had a fulbright scholarship to study in the balkans. i've written about that several times here on the blog, mostly because it's where i met husband and if i hadn't gotten it, i don't know how we would ever have met (shudders and blood runs cold thinking of that one).

but here's the kicker. getting a fulbright totally devalued the fulbright in my eyes. because i figured if even i could get one, it must be easy. the mystique was totally gone. it must be that they hand them out like candy. (frankly i feel a little bit that way about Blog of Note now that i got it too, tho' i'm not as ready to say that out loud, so please just whisper it to yourself.)

secret 23 - husband is a domestic goddess

i actually had a different secret all ready to go for today, but then husband just expertly threaded a needle for the child. with a 6-strand embroidery thread. a task i momentarily thought him incapable of. because even after more than a decade, i sometimes forget how domesticated husband really is. he can thread a needle, load the dishwasher, cook a wonderful meal, paint the walls and ceilings (even especially the fiddly bits where the line has to be really straight), measure and hang pictures so they're perfectly straight, arrange the liquor cabinet artistically, hang wallpaper, comfort a sick child, doctor a wound, and carry a stuffed tiger all over dublin.  these and many other things that are normally done by the woman of the house.

now, lest you think he's rather effeminate for a viking, i can assure you that he does all the manly man stuff too...lifting heavy objects, building no less than six buildings/sheds in our garden, roofing, mowing the lawn, digging, transporting one part of the yard to another part of the yard, gutting and then entirely rebuilding our kitchen (this took a rather inordinately long time due to about 600 other projects going on simultaneously), lifting and removing an ungodly heavy old radiator, building and then tending the green house, ordering bugs online for the greenhouse (then releasing them there, because i certainly wasn't touching them, i hardly wanted to open the mailbox), killing spiders, salting slugs, opening difficult to open jars and bottles of wine, digging a hole under the stairs big enough to bury a body in (huh, what?)...

oh, and he really is a viking. or at least goes sailing in a viking ship on a regular basis. he's in the red shirt and the rockin' gap hat kinda in the middle.

he does tho', have worryingly girly taste in alcoholic beverages. every time we ordered the guiness and the bulmers cider at our local pub in dublin (we went there three nights in a row, that makes it our local, right?), they handed him the guiness and me the cider and it shoulda been the other way around.

but best of all is husband's sense of humor, best expressed here, in the selection of axes he left out for us when i arrived home with the blog campers.

in short, husband is a keeper. and is pretty much the reason that polly and seaside girl decided at blog camp that they wanted to start a new i need a danish man blog. girls, when are we going to get that up and running?

secret 22 - i'm a bad, bad mom

so, a few years ago, when sabin was still going to her børnehave (kindergarten or pre-school as we'd call it in the states), i was in mumbai, trying on gorgeous sparkling loungewear. just moments after this shot was taken, my phone rang. it was the børnehave, calling to say that sabin hadn't been picked up and well, they'd really like to close, so could i please come and get her. oh the horror!! i was three (and a half) time zones away and may as well have been on the moon, rather than the couple of blocks away i'd have been if i'd been home.  thankfully, while i was on the phone with them, our neighbor girl, who picked sabin up regularly and was a kind of nanny, showed up. she'd been scheduled to pick sabin up that day and had been delayed leaving her real job, so she was running late. so my panic subsided.

but it did cross my mind that maybe i should be there for sabin a little bit more on a daily basis, so that she wasn't the last kid picked up every day from school. it took almost two years for that to sink in and become a reality. but you'll be glad to know that i'm a much slightly better mom today. these days i only occasionally put her on a trans-atlantic flight by herself, make her sit in monkey class, force her to stay in dumpy eastern european youth hostels with no room service or leave her all alone as the only member of our family in the country (just for a few hours).

oh, and after all those gorgeous things i tried on, i didn't end up buying a single thing.

p.s. picture is from december 2005, so hopefully i look nothing like this anymore...hair is quite a lot longer in any case.

secret 21 - the secrets are exhausting

these secrets...i've gotta tell you. they're exhausting. i cruised along quite nicely until about 16-17 and then all of the things i had scribbled down in my little blog notebook began to seem a little picked through. the gems are taken, the ones that remain (save maybe two) are a bit tame and perhaps even, dare i say it, lame (lamer than that one about never having found the right shampoo, you ask? yes, lamer than that).

oh, i've got oodles of secrets that aren't lame, but many of them have to remain secrets. to protect the innocent. and even more importantly, the guilty. and to keep this blog from getting one of those adult content warnings you have to click to enter (we only just squeaked past that one yesterday). i wish i had something really juicy left, like having posed for playboy's "girls of pan-am" or something like that, but that wasn't me, it was my cousin and as we also learned i never really went for that dream of being a stewardess. oh, not to disappoint, there actually are a couple of rather juicy stories left (not playboy juicy, but juicy nonetheless).

since this whole exhausting month was inspired by spudballoo, who must have been even more exhausted than i am since she dressed up in costumes for all of her secrets, i'm going to tell you that like her, there is one lie among my posts. maybe it's already there. maybe it's not. but once we get to 30, there will be 29 truths and one lie. and i might, just to torture spud, who quite possibly deserves torture for this little venture, never reveal which one was the lie. (just trying to ensure that it's not me she chops up to take home from blog camp, she'll have to leave me alive if she ever wants to find out.)

and if, after this, you still want to do your own 30 secrets, my advice is, pace yourself. it's exhausting.

secret 20 - why i stopped going to the library

warning: disturbing, not necessarily for children content ahead.....

it's ok to turn back now.


although it takes place in a library, this gets a bit ugly.


you have been warned.


continue at your own risk...

when i was at university, i spent lots of time in the big main library. lots of time. i had a favorite spot on the 3rd floor, near the PG stacks. i was there late one afternoon, sitting at my usual table, head bent over the books. i glanced up and saw an overweight, sweaty, rather greasy guy in a sweatsuit, peeking around the corner. this wasn't really that unusual, it being a big ten university in the upper midwest, so i didn't think that much of it.

i got up to go get some book or other and went down the aisle just adjacent to the one he was lurking towards he end of. i was reaching for some book or other and caught sight of him again, peeking around the corner. and now it seemed he was behaving rather suspiciously, because he seemed to be actually watching me.

again, i just thought, "loser, get a life," and went on looking for references to bakhtin and menippean satire. a search which took me to the other end of the aisle he was in and so i went around the corner and glanced up and realized that he was indeed watching me and that he had his sweatpants pulled down and was...you guessed it...having a lovely time with himself (note: not using the correct technical term to avoid coming up in creepy searches and getting a whole bunch of new followers that i wouldn't be that keen on having). right there. in the library.

i must admit that i totally freaked. so freaked that i didn't even shout at him or scream or anything or make fun of him for being small and pathetic (i only thought of that afterwards). i actually ran back to my table, grabbed my things and fled the library. i went directly over to the campus police station, which was nearby and reported him.

i went back to the library together with a police officer and the guy was, of course, long gone, tho' the evidence was right there, clear as day on the floor. ew!! yuck!!!

it turned out i wasn't the first to report such activity by a person fitting his description. i never did find out whether they caught him. luckily, it was almost the end of the semester, so i didn't really have to spend much time there again for several months. because i can tell you it definitely put me off the library.

i never did feel the same studying on that floor again. i'd go get the books i needed and study in a totally different spot. you just never knew after that...

p.s. i didn't really think a picture of this one was appropriate...i hope you agree.

secret 19 - when i grow up

as kids we all go through phases as to what we say we want to be when we grow up. we try them on and abandon them for different reasons. over the years, i've wanted to be:

: : a paleontologist - abandoned this idea rather early when i decided that all the good dinosaur bones would be discovered by the time i grew up.

: : a lawyer - this is the thing i assumed i would be for years. right up until i didn't get into law school.

: : a riding instructor - i actually carried around application materials for johnson & wales college in rhode island for this. i think i just wanted a really cool trunk for my riding equipment and i never did really apply.

: : governor of the state i grew up in - yup, i could have been the sarah palin of the upper midwest. or not.

: : russian literature professor - got the farthest towards this one. but then life took me in another direction. and i never really liked the teaching that much, what i liked was the writing and the research. and the theory. oh, the theory. still love that.

: : spy - abandoned when i realized that i never really could keep a secret and that if i were to spy it would most likely be for the other side (due to deep and abiding loathing for ronald reagan).

: : writer - i've always thought there was a highly autobiographical novel in me, waiting to come out. it might still. when the conditions are exactly right. it's kinda why we built that whole writing house place in the garden.

: : stewardess - this one never really seems to go away. it stays in the back of my head and although stewardesses are really just waitresses in the sky, i still have some kind of romantic picture of that job in my head (despite how much time i spend on planes).

jobs i've actually done:

: : secretary - a couple of times, once to the vice president of a refrigeration company and once to the head of a foundation.

: : newsroom gopher - at a daily paper during college. spent a lot of time at the courthouse writing down who had gotten all those public intox and public urination tickets on the weekend. i also had to call all the bars and find out what bands were playing where, so i always knew what was going on. that was cool.

: : waitress in my favorite pub - it really was a pub and i was hanging out there so much i decided i might as well get paid for it.

: : eLearning developer - making training materials for a product i knew very little about. ha! funny how that can happen.

: : middle management - responsibility for big budgets and some 200 days a year of travel.

: : journalist - now i'm editing a magazine.

and here we come to the secret...i still don't know what i want to be when i grow up. do you?

secret 18 - fired

my parents met at a newspaper. my mom was a typesetter and my dad a sports reporter. they always referred to the building as the scene of the crime when we drove past as a kid. my dad always told the story that he was fired from that job because he refused to wear a bow tie, which was part of the standard, required uniform. and i loved and admired that story and although one never hopes to be fired, it taught me that it's not really all bad if you are...

boring brown microsofty door

it's really true that when one door closes, another one opens. in may of 2004, i was fired. from no less than microsoft. no warnings. no reason. and i had a lawyer that eventually proved it. the only reason was an insecure boss (probably another failed state pageant wanna be--tho' from north dakota--which is also why i dislike fargo--another story for another day--and even more pathetic than being a miss south dakota wanna-be (we do all need our albanian and north dakotans are quite frankly south dakotans albanians--don't really know who the north dakotans have to look down on--perhaps people from idaho?)).

the real reason i was fired was that my boss wanted to kill my project. another area of microsoft with funding for it contacted me and wanted me to finish it. it was easter and a lot of people were on holiday. and i agreed, without securing permission. and a purchase order was opened. thereby foiling my utterly incompetent and insecure middle manager (whose name i will gladly tell you directly if you email me) in her attempt to stop my project. but which made me appear insubordinate. which perhaps it was. but it was actually in the best interest of the company (which her reason--hating me--was not). anyway, she had the power and she fired me--illegally, as it turned out--and they had to pay for that--six months of salary--which nicely gave me the summer off.

just an aside--i only accidentally worked for microsoft because they bought the danish software company i was working for--meaning that i did not choose to work for The Man. however, i actually did enjoy it. big companies have huge possibilities. and they teach you that if you make good arguments, you can do whatever you want. and that's a good lesson.

much prettier door

anyway..it's true that in being fired another door opens...because what it meant was that i saw other possibilities all around me. and answered an ad in a newspaper and got a great job that i loved and that afforded me the opportunity to create an incredible network and see a whole lot of the world. and although that job burned me out, leaving it (of my own accord, incidentally) in turn opened yet another door...

even prettier door

so you never know what series of events that being fired can set off...and what doors it may open for you, even far beyond what you think the statute of limitations might be. perhaps a door to a whole new life....which might be the life you should actually be living. 

i wonder what's behind this pretty, bright door...

(VEG, this one is for you.)

secret 17 - reality t.v.

i remember the early days of reality t.v. i was a loyal follower of MTV's Real World, especially the one in SF, with puck (he was so awful) and rachel (bitch nose) and pedro, the sweet guy who was dying of AIDS. i watched Real World marathons when they had those on the weekend--staying in my PJs, ordering in pizza, asking people to bring over beverages--because i was glued to the t.v. and couldn't leave. i also loved MTV's Road Rules and think of MTV as the pioneer of reality t.v., tho' i know there are those who beg to differ. mostly because those shows were pretty scripted and probably not all that real.

but then, i drifted away from reality t.v., so aside from the odd episode of stylista or the aptly named biggest loser or the evil (and FAT!!) tyra banks' america's next top model when i'm alone in a hotel somewhere, (shh, twitterers, i wasn't going to mention that brain-numbing episode of paris hilton's new BFF that i accidentally watched) i don't really follow reality t.v. today. i'm rather old school about it.  so no temptation island, big brother or survivor here.

however, this has not stopped me from coming up with several sure-fire reality t.v. concepts:

1. Quack Docs - real people performing surgery on other real people. simple surgeries, not heart transplants and such. we're talking appendicitis or removing the odd lipoma. the kicker is that you would find people so desperate for their 15 seconds of fame that you would have willing "victims" on both sides. people who wanted to perform surgery and people willing to have it performed on them.
2. Near Miss  - ordinary people as air traffic controllers. harder to get permission for this one, i'll grant you. and it could be a one-off, where you reveal at the end that the whole thing actually took place in a simulator (the simulators are that good). but once people knew the kicker, it would lose its appeal. better to have it take place in an airport like, say, detroit, where people wouldn't mind the near misses quite as much. 
3. Gay Construction - this idea arose out of TV Danmark's Gay Army reality show, where gay scandinavians were paired with an american drill sergeant who tried (actually quite sincerely) to whip them into shape as army recruits). Gay Construction would involve giving a lot of asphalt, building materials and heavy machinery to a group of particularly effiminate gay men and having them build things - roads, houses. i have a picture in my head of the guys in evening gowns and high heels, trying to get the big rolling machine going.

for your viewing pleasure, a little clip from Gay Army:

do you have any reality t.v. show concepts lurking in the back of your mind?

secret 16 - my marilyn phase

back in the pageant days, i went through a marilyn monroe phase (doesn't everyone?). as you can see here, i even had a white dress like THE white dress. and the hair--the hair was pure, platinum marilyn. i even did a whole photo shoot as marilyn and some of those pictures are actually pretty good. but i don't have any of them here (they're clearly in the parents' basement). this photo is from an appearance at the state fair (i was miss state fair), hence the rockin' tiara. if only i'd been standing on a grate so my skirt would blow up....sigh.

secret 15 - me and matisse

disclaimer: i'll admit that this secret has been revealed right here on this blog before most of you started reading. and since i'm scheduling these posts because i'm traveling this week, i'm totally and blatantly recycling this one. because it's just so good...

matisse's goldfish (1912)

it was the summer of 1994, i was leaving russia alone after studying there for a semester. i had a few days in moscow and spent one of the them wandering the halls of the fantastic pushkin museum, where this wonderful painting hangs in a wonderful, large room that's full of other matisse paintings. strangely, i found myself alone in the room, standing there before the wonder that is the dance. i turned around and across from me, there it was, goldfish.

i approached slowly, savoring the moment and savoring the fact that i had it all to myself, even the mean old guard lady who usually sits on a stiff chair in the corner was elsewhere. i could scarcely breathe. i got closer and closer to the vibrant colors. and then, there i was, standing close enough to touch it. i could actually touch it, there was no glass, just the thick layers of paint that matisse himself laid on the canvas. and no one there to stop me.

so, i did it. i touched it, gently and just with my index and middle finger of my left hand. right there in the leaves near the pink flower of the lower right corner. i felt a nearly electrical thrill pass through me and i felt transformed, even if just for a moment. i had literally touched greatness. and i didn't get caught.

secret 14 - the good, the bad, the ugly

despite the perception i gave off in my last job--apparently i did a reasonable facsimile of high-powered career woman and we all know they don't do domestic--i can cook. in fact, i can cook very well. that's not really a secret. 

what isn't widely known is that sometimes what i cook doesn't turn out that well, tho' i have written about it before. tho' i chalk that previous occasion up to having to cook outside on an old stove because my kitchen was completely torn apart. oh, and extreme clumsiness on my part.

however, this failure was more recent...i refer to it as the ugly bread incident.

it's a kind of stuffed bread which i have made numerous times. it's jamie oliver-inspired. you make a basic bread recipe, then roll it into a long relatively thin line of dough and load it with all kinds of delicious things...bacon, eggs, herbs, cheese, pesto--whatever you have around and which sounds good to you. then you close it up and usually it becomes a ring.  on this occasion, i had a new kind of flour and the dough went to pieces on me instead of staying together. resulting in this very ugly rather 8-shaped bread.

we had guests coming (for the first time--way to impress them, j) and there was no time to make a new batch, so i just had to make the best of it, serving them a couple of G&Ts first and hoping they wouldn't notice. and when they noticed, we just made a joke of it. luckily, it still tasted heavenly, even if we could hardly stand to look at it.

so that's secret 14: sometimes the stuff i cook doesn't turn out so well.

secret 13- shampoo

i'm thirty-twelve years old and have never, i repeat, NEVER, found the right shampoo.

i realize this secret is a bit of a letdown after yesterday's...i wonder if i peaked too soon...

secret 12 - i am a beauty queen failure

back in the early 90s, when i suddenly found myself thin and full of thoughts of revenge after a particularly nasty break-up, i decided to try to earn my way to the miss america pageant. i thought the best revenge on the bad boyfriend would be for him to have to see me on t.v. and realize what he had missed out on. it was a brilliant plan. except for one thing. although i tried TWICE, i utterly failed to make it to the miss america pageant. i could be miss state fair, but could not win my state pageant to save my life. looking back, there were a lot of reasons for this which i didn't understand at the time...mostly having to do with the fact that i had a brain and they weren't looking for that. i thought i would be the first smart miss america, you see. silly me.

i proved i could walk and sing

while wearing heels.

and i had a fabulous sparkly dress, don't you think?

and i especially love this very

absolutely fabulous patsy look...

note: this is a previously-revealed secret, but it might have escaped your attention since a lot of you came to MPC quite recently. i originally revealed it here. (do check it out to see how i rocked the tiara.) and i made a little list about it here.

secret 11 - it's hard being the oldest

i grew up in a household full of babies of the family. my mom is the younger of two, my dad is the youngest of nine and of course, my little sister, the youngest in our family. now imagine this, you're the only over-achieving, striving, earnest, responsible member of your family and you're surrounded by irresponsible rebels who think there are no rules to life.

there are five and a half years between me and my sister. this means a couple of things. one, i got good and used to being an only child by the time she came along (and no one asked me, by the way--i'd have preferred to have a goat had i been asked, which may be why i wasn't asked). secondly, i broke our parents in and paved the way for her, so things were smooth and easy when she came along.

since it was a family of littlest siblings, there weren't that many rules in our household. i had just the one, "win or don't come home." which suited me, since i was the eldest. my sister also had one rule. but her rule was "no pot in the living room." fine to keep your pot elsewhere in the house, but just not in the living room. and by pot, i do mean marijuana, weed, ganga. that stuff. tho' i don't think she actually had any in high school. that wasn't 'til later, in college.

although i got my driver's license at 14, i always had to rely on using the family car or the old brown pickup when it was available. i never had my own car, not until i graduated from high school and got a little green mustang that we called iggy. of course, things were different for my sister....much different.

at the age of 12 (i already alluded to this in my driver's license post), she was home alone, playing with a friend. dad's old blue chevette was home and my sister, who was freakishly short for a 12-year-old, decided to give her friend a ride home despite the fact that she had never before driven and could hardly see over the steering wheel. she'd been in the car four years previously during my driving lessons and thought, "how hard can it be to drive a stick?" there was a back way to the friend's house, down gravel roads, so she decided it would be fine to just run her friend home.

they hopped in the chevette and headed down the gravel road. they must have gotten up quite some speed by the time they came to a little artificial hill in the road, created by the old railroad tracks. they hit that bump going way too fast, slid on the loose gravel and flew into the steep ditch. shaken, but unharmed, they hiked a mile across a field, directly to her friend's house. the friend's mom was pretty alarmed and located my dad on the golf course, telling him breathlessly that "the girls are ok."

dad finished his round of golf and went and picked up my sister and she recalls what happened as the most severe lecture she ever got. but all he did was put his hand on her knee and say, "monique. monique. monique." in a grave voice. and that was the end of it. it didn't matter that the radiator was knocked clean through the engine and the car was basically totaled. there were no repercussions. no grounding. no punishment whatsoever. she was at an out-of-town football game three nights later with a gaggle of her friends. i was stunned.

when she got her license at 14, they bought her a little brown station wagon. her own car. no humiliating waiting out front of the school for mom to arrive and pick her up in the old brown pickup. no, no, she had her own car. she could fit half a dozen other kids in it and drive across the river and drive in and out of ditches in the snow for the sheer joy of it. she would announce, "i've got tickets for a poison concert in the big town on tuesday and me and the gang are going over there and i'm driving." and do you think that anyone batted an eye that it was a school night? or that there was a blizzard raging? nope. not at all as long as she kept her pot out of the living room.

and although i didn't try to do any of those things...i wouldn't even have DREAMED of ASKING, let alone done that...i undoubtedly paved the way for her. warmed the parents up so they were more pliable to her whims. or maybe they were that lenient all along and i should have been more daring. but i didn't even try. because i was the oldest. the responsible, over-achieving one. it's hard being the oldest.

secret 10 - i've never been to new york city

me. world traveler extraordinaire. been to the philippines sixteen times. india more than i'd care to admit. china. hong kong. singapore more times than i can count. cape town (not enough). moscow. the balkans. but never ever to new york city. passing through JFK and newark airports don't count.