business class

I'm at the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, and here's the thing: My hotel room is bigger than the first floor of my house. There is a bedroom, larger than two of mine at home. A bathroom complete with marble & glass shower/steam room, jacuzzi tub (for six, i swear), two sinks and a fancy dressing table between, separate room for a toilet and scary bidet (it's not scary by anyone else's standards but my own, i'm sure. i just don't get bidets. i do like a clean bum as much as the next gal, but bidets just seem so totally alien to me. although i do remember these kids from down the street from my grandparent's house in east middlebury vermont. i remember them showing me their new bathroom, and it had one of those inside. look! it's a booty washer, the little girl said as we all gathered around in awe of the little sprinkler that would shoot water up into your bum if you balanced just right). Anyway, I digress...there is a living room with fancy furniture, a foyer, an office, another bathroom, a dining room with a table for eight, sideboard, and bar, and a full kitchen without a scary stove. And there are buttons to draw the drapery. And there is (are?) drapery along three full walls--bedroom, living room, and dining room. but there is no freakin mini bar, and i could really use some mnms.

there is a funny story involving a facial and a mini-nap by the facialist (?), which i unfortunately told at dinner tonight, leaving myself and four others in tears, so i can't bear to write it here now. i will try again tomorrow. because it is a story worth getting down in print, if only i can top the verbal version. suffice it to say, there was a mask, a few pads placed delicately over my eyes, and approximately twenty minutes of drying time, during which i believe i heard some snoring. now one can't be sure, with pads over their eyes--but i have never felt so bizzarely out of place at my own facial before. it was like i was spying on the hired help while they stole a little shut eye on the clock. and what is one to do with pads over ones eyes, naked as a jaybird under a sheet. how is such a complaint voiced? and is it really a complaint? i mean, wouldn't you pay a hundred and thirty five dollars to lay still in a darkened, cool room, on a warm cushy table, under a sheet and a blanky, with a mask on your face and cool cotton balls on your eyes and have no chance of the email ding or the cell phone ring, even if there was an unmistaken snore every so often, by the aesthetician who had apparently gotten too comfortable in the side chair?

life, as bizarre as ever, is good right now.

curbing the snake

I have seen my hero and lived.

Tonight I got to stand against a wall, body to warm steamy body, in a packed auditorium smelling hot headed smells and shifting my weight so as not to lock my knees up in the very bad shoe choice I made and I got to take in the self deprecating, politically charged, feminist, democratic, god-and-jesus believin' Anne Lamott. How lucky am I?

I have tears in my eyes just remembering. The second I recognized her beautiful dred-locked head up on the stage I wanted to ball my eyes out in pure joy and ecstasy. I couldn't believe how lucky I was to see her right there in front of me. Had I been braver and raised a hand, she might have even taken a question from me. Next time.

She's a wise, wise woman, who, given a different zip code, I would follow around for years until she finally noticed me and invited me to be her friend. I have learned so much from her and am moved to the core by her writing and her mother-wisdom and her honesty. How lucky am I?

Here's how lucky I am: we were late. Not in the usual way, but yes, in the usual way. Where we had stayed too long in the pre-event cafe, sipping a glass of wine as we discussed ethics as religion. I was with my best friend--the one who luckily didn't wait so long to invite me into her life--and we stood up to leave, just in time to make it to the event with twenty minutes to spare. Only when we arrived, we were stuck in a snake--a SNAKE (which word I will note here came to me quite by accident, yet fittingly, it was a word she mentioned several times as her biggest fear & dread)--a SNAKE of a traffic jam through six packed aisles of parked cars. In twenty minutes I was in the very farthest position from the entrance and the exit, with my car locked in by other anne-stalkers, and there was absolutely no solution in sight. I would actually miss the one appearance Anne Lamott would make in St. Louis forever, I was certain. My brain started searching for another way. Another way through, over, under, around these devil cars. There had to be a way. It was now 7:02 and I was as far away from the front doors as I could possibly be.

So, right there in the atheist ethical society parking lot, i began to ask. to pray, i guess you could say. and i will tell you i now save up these prayers for only the direst of situations, as i mostly don't believe in god. but there i was, in the back row, looking at six aisles of jam packed parking lot, and a single snake that went on for at least a half a mile in front of me, moving at a car length per five minutes at this point. So i got out. i got out and ran up to the car ahead of me, who could at that moment, squeeze her car into a left turn, going the opposite direction of the other cars, the opposite way than we were expected to go, and take the chance we could exit out the way we came in. All three of her passengers told her not to do it. The wanted to wait for the light to change. I said, do you want to try going to the left here? and she looked terrified. like i was going to reach in and grab her hard cover Traveling Mercies and make a dash for the podium if she rolled her window down more than an inch. and i said you wanna try it? And all her passengers said: oh no! don't do that, we'll never get in if we don't sit here in line WAITING FOR THE LIGHT TO CHANGE. So i slunk back to my car and got in. And i watched the traffic like a hawk, up there and to the left. there was only enough room for one car to make it's way beside the building and into or out of this jam, and if anyone pulled in as i began to make my escape, we would both be jammed into a game of chicken, or king of the mountain or something. and i watched as my clearance became ten inches, two feet, three, four, six, and i wrenched my car to the left and called out to jesus. please, just give me a good spot. let me see this woman. just one good spot. and i pressed on the gas, and floored it as best as one can floor in a parking lot of gridlock, and i came up to the "in" lane and i made my right, betting it all on a favor from god.

my car slithered upstream like a water moccasin, not so much as a speed bump to slow me down, and as i turned to the right, wrapping around to the front of the building, no less than one car length from the front doors, along the yellow curb where people were just beginning to break the rules and park anyway, there was enough room for my car, with this written in the yellow paint:

here you go, you non-believer. this is my little yellow curb, which will be given up for you. take this, you, and park at it. it is just long enough for your silver highlander and a little bit of faith. anne will take the stage in five minutes. i stalled her a few minutes for you too. you're welcome.