This weekend my friends Elliott and Danielle are getting married. And while I could explain why this marriage is so kickass, a brief breakdown has already been published. I’m lucky that one of my closest friends found a girl who is just as incredible, witty, and lovable as he is. It’s the ideal that love stories are supposed to be: I didn’t lose a friend to a relationship, instead I got two friends through my love of one. So I’ll battle my crippling fear of flying and trek out to Sonoma to witness this ceremonial melding of amazing lives. I’m actually looking forward to it. (Not the flying part.) 

Part of my wedding repulsion, the part that doesn’t have to do with Facebook, is associated with the industry of the thing. Men and women spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a single party, which only leads to the sort of mindset that they’re getting "weddinged" instead of married. I don’t need to cite marriage survival statistics, ’cause they’re just depressing, but I believe that there’s a sort of histrionic and irrational notion that creating (and paying for) a memorable wedding will somehow solidify a union. There seems to be a herd mentality, a belief that a relationship’s trajectory and success can be viewed through the myopic scope of one single day. Shows like Bridezillas, Platinum Weddings, and Say Yes to the Dress don’t help to quell the bile that marches up my throat at the thought of a "dream wedding" either. $340 for a cake topper? Give me a fucking break.

Fortunately, destination weddings, like this one in California, are a kinder, gentler, more cost-effective animal. A destination wedding is defined as one that is "200 or more miles away from where the bride and groom live, including non-US locations," with "at least 80% of guests requiring overnight accommodations." Nearly 10% of all couples have destination weddings, with roughly a quarter of them taking place in the United States. Of course, there’s the appeal of getting drunk off of frozen drinks with stripper names and jumping into the ocean after your nuptials, which is why the Caribbean accounts for nearly half of these espousal adventures. It’s closely followed by Mexico, with Florida, Las Vegas, and Hawaii rounding out the most lusted after destinations stateside.

So why are these jet-setting lovefests a $16 billion dollar market? For one thing, they’re comparable cost-wise to a local wedding, with a traditional wedding costing an average of $20,398, and a destination wedding averaging about $20,600. Moreover, if you’re battling a ballooning guest list and don’t feel like inviting your mailman, your ex’s sister, your second cousin with the hair and her boyfriend Skeeter, then book a destination wedding for sure. The average number of guests at one of these things is only 48 people, making the average wedding away from home roughly 1/3 the size of a conventional one. Resorts, hotels, and vacation spots have caught on, marketing to couples looking to tie the knot (or clamp on the ‘cuffs) far from the usual hustle and bustle. While the travel industry limps along during this recession, there’s one thing that destination weddings pretty much can guarantee a hotel: their guests don’t cancel. It’s why destination weddings continue to grow throughout this economic fracas, while the rest of the wedding industry suffers a predictable meltdown.

Honestly, I could care less about weddings, traveling, or wine country. But I don’t know if I could care more about Elliott and Danielle. As far as friends go, they’re top-of-the-line models, and as people they’re inspiring and brilliant enough to make me anxious for them to have kids. (Seriously. He just wrote a Marvel comic book, while she has made latkes over a campfire. This family is going to be so much fun to hang out with.) I might never get over my knee-jerk pessimism regarding engagements,  but this weekend is going to be spent feeling lovey-dovey about weddings, for better or for worse.

I’ll squelch the image that holidays with my kin are like a Munsters reunion by saying that they go with flowers. Their trips aren’t nearly as self-indulgent or covered in eyeliner as my high-school meanderings, my relatives simply go and pay their respects to friends and loved ones. They do it often, not only on holidays or anniversaries. This has always seemed peculiar to me, but it’s never been something that I’ve had to confront directly. Well, except for the one time my cousins and I visited my grandmother’s grave on Thanksgiving and I kept waiting for a bloody hand to rise up out of the dirt.

I’ve never understood mourning traditions, and this perplexity only grew when my mother’s mother passed away. The way I saw it, grandma died. She was coated in three-inches of makeup and buried on an afternoon in early September, 2002. That was that. Going and leaving flowers months later, while a completely respectable idea, never appealed to me. It just felt like driving fifteen minutes to endure a stretch of awkward silence. So, much my to my mother’s chagrin, I confined my grieving to fits of tears and muttered conversations with my grandmother’s spirit, which usually just looked like me talking to myself in the car en route to work. While possibly not the most productive way to cope, it didn’t feel like a waste of carnations. And I figured that if grandma was looking down on me from some puffy white cloud in the ether, she’d probably want to give me a stern talking-to anyway. Best to avoid hanging out where her body was buried, lest she rise up and criticize some of my lifestyle choices.

Over this past year, I’ve visited my mom’s gravesite once, and I practically had to be kidnapped to do it. My uncle and I left some flowers, said a prayer, I burst into tears, and we left. It seemed like a really unnecessary way to ruin a perfectly decent afternoon. I didn’t want to go back to that place. At least the last time I was there my mom had been above ground in some sense, still laying in her Pepto Bismol colored coffin, with everyone who loved her around. Within a few months, it had just become another cold spot of hard soil, now with a few browning spider mums on top of it.

I looked around. There were gravestones with plastic poinsettias, faded in the sun. A few had wreaths with garishly bright ribbons. One or two, presumably fallen soldiers, had wooden crosses with poppies in the center. A handful had stones perched on top of them, honoring a Jewish tradition that represents permanence. Many had flowers in various stages of decay. It all seemed so depressing. I didn’t want to leave anything for my mother’s body. I wanted to continue to talk to her when I was alone, cry when I saw her picture, and call her family on Sundays. More importantly, I wanted to forget the fact that the hands that brushed my hair and ironed my shirts for twenty-eight years were six feet under a clot of dirt in Westbury, New York. The brutal reality of this whole mortal coil thing is something that her death forced me to face, and then run from. The past year has been filled with a lot of existential pondering and "crises of faith," and no fucking $12 bouquet of flowers is going to make me feel better. Roses or dahlias, they certainly won’t change my mom’s situation. After all, if any part of us lives on in death, I can guarantee that she would feel completely pissed off that she couldn’t tidy up once the flowers passed their prime and the leaves started piling up around her tombstone.

I figure that after a year I can’t cite missing my mom as a justifiable reason for staring into space or getting teary when I hear Hall & Oates. I’ve tried to maintain such an aura of stoicism and impenetrable rationale while shuffling through the funeral, sale of her house, and the bevy of legal issues that come once a person gives up the ghost. It’s anger at my own sorrow that makes me squirm when presented with the idea of visiting her grave. Why should I pretend that I’ll only feel sad there, performing some sort of misunderstood ritual by tossing a corner market arrangement by a rock etched with her name? I don’t want to have to acknowledge the fact that this sadness has been an unspoken presence in my life since the moment of her diagnosis. It trails me like a shadow. It’s not as if I can just summon appropriate grief within the wrought iron gates of a cemetery. If the ritual is supposed to work tandem with emotion, then I should have been laying flowers at every Italian bistro, pet shop, or art gallery in this city. Those are the places where I feel the loss of my mother as sharply as I do when I look at her photograph, and more profoundly than I could at a burial ground. I still don’t understand the notion of flowers.

Archaeologists in Scotland found a bunch of perennials at a gravesite dating back 4,000 years. And while the majority of bouquets I’ve seen in cemeteries look like they’re that old, it can be assumed that leaving flowers is imbued with a sort of antiquated ceremony. I’ve never been able to think of something I’d feel comfortable leaving behind. A card would be stupid. No one would read what I wrote, except for a curious groundskeeper or an unusually literate squirrel. Stuffed toys are already creepy enough, leave them exposed to the elements for a few weeks and I guarantee that, if I were the occupant of that grave, there would be a complaining zombie carrying it to the trash. The stones that are a part of the Jewish tradition are beautiful, but my mother was Catholic, and my Jewish father has already told me he’s being cremated and left by the beach. Some people place pennies on gravestones, which is an observance that dates back to Benjamin Franklin’s time. It’s said to bring luck, or to echo the sentence emblazoned on the back, "In God We Trust." This makes a little more sense to me, since coins have been associated with death throughout history, most notably with silver being put over the eyes of the deceased to pay the underworld’s ferryman of Greek lore. I could leave my mother some of my pocket change and believe that it will give me good fortune. But this seems more superstitious than solemn.

Honoring a person’s memory can be as simple as yammering to their imaginary ghost in your kitchen, as I do, or it can be elaborate, like dedicating a mass or leaving an ornate wreath on a grave marker. I can’t judge how other people preserve their memories, even if I don’t get it. It was only about a week ago that I started to understand in my own way.

I knew that the anniversary of my mom’s death was coming up, and I figured I’d have one of the occasional basket-case days I’ve had over the past twelve months, the kind where I lay on the couch listening to The Cure’s "The Figurehead" on repeat in the dark. But instead I had the urge to visit my mom’s grave. Another reason why this is extra weird to me is because I dedicated a shelf in my closet as a little altar to her and our other dead relatives. I mean, I have a convenient place to go if I want to cry and light a candle and feel sad. But this time I want to get dressed and take the train out east, flowers in hand, in order to commemorate the day. While this is a really strange impulse, sort of like I decided to eat an entire jar of pickles or watch a hockey game from start to finish, I respect it. I’m going to go with my uncle and stand there in that uncomfortable quiet. Although I can’t guarantee it, I’m pretty sure I’ll be waiting for a hand to rise up out of the dirt.

These days, vibrators are sold at Walmart. Stores that hock sex toys are featured in the news. Shows like Sex and the City have featured devices like the Rabbit, resulting in skyrocketing sales and more cheerful ladies. Toys are no longer taboo, which is good, because I think that public recognition of sexuality can only be a good thing. But whenever something once considered sassy goes mainstream, there’s usually a boomerang effect by way of consumerism. Which is to say that, even in this economy, there are vibrators that cost more than one month’s rent. I have seen them. On the Internet as well as in a glass case, mere inches away from my grubby paws. I don’t find them impressive. They certainly don’t induce female hysteria.

To me, the Jimmyjane "luxe" line looks like the Ed Hardy tee-shirt of vibrators. It’s probably the etchings, or maybe the pretentious copy and obnoxious cost. The Ultimate Members six pack is $1,650 and looks like an adorable little rainbow from a distance, until you notice that they’ve been emblazoned with portraits of glorified ravers. Each is etched with an artist’s representation of kids from the London nightclub scene that look like stills from a Gorillaz video. Their Little Steel Tonight Eternity ($2,000) features an etching of lyrics written by that guy from the Eurythmics and 28 "stone cut" black diamonds. My sweet dreams are not made of that. The Little Platinum comes in two different varieties ($395 or $445), one that’s simply motorized metal, and the other that’s etched with a heart and a scroll. The Little Gold, which is currently on sale for only $158, or $375 for the limited edition, is made of 24K gold, but looks pretty much the same as their other models, only this one is covered in karats. The last luxe Jimmyjane that I’ve seen is the Eternity, which is a lot like the Little Steel Tonight Eternity, only without that whole weird Eurythmics thing. This vibrator looks like something that only belongs in Paris Hilton’s vaginal canal, and I don’t mean that in a good way. It’s 24K gold with a circle of diamonds around the tip, totaling .66 carats. My pussy might be priceless, but I am not putting rocks near it. Nuh-uh. Besides, with a $2,750 price tag for gold, or a $3,250 price tag for platinum, it seems more than a little ridiculous. For $3.99 and the cost of some bubble bath I can have the same sort of fun with the lights off in my tub, since Jimmyjane’s draw seems to be the fact that their toys are waterproof and quiet. (Note: I have never used a Jimmyjane vibrator, but any toy I’ve bought that was labeled as "quiet" was only comparing itself to a Def Leppard concert or a construction zone.) They also come with a rechargeable motor, which makes it seem more like a lawnmower than an intimacy device.

I’m not going to completely skewer Jimmyjane’s product line. Their Form 2, which looks like a cartoon tooth, seems particularly awesome, and I’ve had the pleasure of fiddling with it in Babeland’s store. It’s also waterproof, rechargeable, flexible, and under $200, which seems like a steal compared to those other ones. Also, the company’s founder, Ethan Imboden, is a skateboarding designer who blogs for Huffington Post. And he’s hot. So although his company’s vibrators will never see my secret cabinet, good for him for making sex toys that are fancy enough to be written about in fashion magazines and sold for the same price as a home entertainment center.

Another "ultra-luxe" line of toys are by Lelo. They include the Lelo Olga, which looks like a futuristic weapon for a robot police officer. Shaped like a car door handle, it will set you back $790 for gold, or $390 for the silver model. It would probably cost just as much to rig a time machine and zoom to the future, where you can befriend a cyborg cop to lend you his metal billyclub. Whether or not it vibrates won’t matter, as the Lelo Olga isn’t a machine, but simply a piece of metal. Lelo Yva, however, is a gilded vibrator. For $1,500 for gold, or $1,300 for silver, you can have a "splashproof" and rechargeable vibrator made out of the same stuff as jewelry. Not to confine it to the ladies, Lelo has a toy named Earl. Also plated in precious metal, it’s accompanied by a set of cufflinks. (Not kidding.) For $590 for silver and $990 for gold, he’d best be wearing those cufflinks to work the next morning to pay off the credit card bill.

For the record, Lelo isn’t simply a producer of glitzy personal pleasure tools. They’re a great Swedish company with a line of vibrators and toys that are perfectly suited for people who don’t want to put a smutty Tiffany’s purchase in their orifices. Even though they’re a bit out of my price range, the Nea has been on my wish list for a while now. My birthday just passed. Hint, hint.

Other than Jimmyjane and Lelo’s bank-breaking extravagances, an Australian jeweler was rumored to be designing a million-dollar vibrator just last year. Colin Burn has already created a $38,000 platinum dildo set with 400 pave diamonds and a handle made from a rare native wood. (Heh.) He also has a cheaper model, a diamond-studded dildo peppered with diamonds and crowned with a pearl that retails for $8,000. Who buys this shit? Really. I want to know what possesses somebody to shove something made of diamonds into their most tender bits. Or maybe that’s the point, something precious for something precious. Either way, I find these ostentatious implements to be a bit of a turn off. I’m a jeans-and-tee-shirt type of gal. I’m picky about a handful of things: my bed, books, the company I keep. The thought of putting something expensive in a situation that is, by nature, messy and unpredictable just sounds like some sort of scam created by an insurance company. No thank you.

But since I can’t solve this mystery myself, and because I don’t think I’m going to get a chance to see what 24K gold feels like inside of my body, I wrote to the manufacturers and retailers to find out the answer to the question why? Why would anyone buy something like this? What prompts a company to sell sex toys made out of such costly materials? And have they experienced any sort of backlash during economic times when most people find themselves struggling just to be able to take someone out on a date that may or may not lead to the use of a sex toy? Even though sex toy sales are still soaring one can’t help but wonder if these luxurious playthings are just a misunderstood version of a stimulus package, or an inadvertent slap in the face (and other parts) to the downtrodden.

I’m still waiting to hear back, and if I do, I’ll post whatever sort of gold nuggets come from my interaction with the makers of invaluable implements. I don’t know about you, but $38,000 is enough for me to live off of for a year. My vagina will be just as happy with a battery operated piece of low-grade plastic. Hell, if I’m really feeling like treating her to an expensive night out, maybe I’ll just take a roll of quarters down to the laundromat and sit on an industrial dryer.

Suspicion of online dating isn’t new territory for me. I’ve always been fascinated with the way that the Internet has impacted our most intimate moments, and in my curiosity I’ve poked a stick at everything from chat-room sex to mail-order brides. I’ve even written about the cyber-romance industry before, but I haven’t had the unfortunate distinction of being an actual guinea pig in the proverbial labratory. Now I’m single, and although I feel more inclined to undergo elective surgery than get involved with a stranger and run the risk of going through a breakup again, I have to recognize that one day I may want to go on a date. I’m not in school anymore, and I work from home. How on earth does a sober single lady meet somebody in this town? Oddly enough, the Internet seems like the most viable option.

I’m an aesthetically-obsessed, overly-judgmental prick. Those are my good qualities. So it can be assumed that I approach the prospect of "meeting the love of my life" via computer with the same trepidation as I would taking a soak in a piranha-filled bathtub. I can say with a great amount of authority that the computer isn’t the most reflective device when it comes to a person’s physical attributes. I can show you two pictures of yours truly (or you can just Google search on your own time) where I look like a late-era Brando with a hair-piece and Ani DiFranco hit in the face with a lead pipe. While I may have a bevy of self-esteem issues to wade through in the inevitable years of therapy that await me, I do know that I am not nearly as ugly as those two computer-search-optimized photos. Alas.

So online profile pictures? I assume they’re as representative of their subjects as boxed mac ‘n cheese is representative of Italian food. And the personal revelations the sites have you provide? Please. The only one I put stock in is the inquiry as to whether or not you like cats, and I’ll only believe you if you say you don’t. My cynicism is founded in reality, and not just the reality of new-found singledom. Statistics show that men lie the most about how much money they make, how tall they are, and their age. Ladies predictably fib about physical stats like weight and how old they are. Aside from the details of deception, there’s the fact that one out of ten users is a scammer. Want more scary numbers? One out of ten sex offenders reportedly employs online dating sites to meet people. Less frightening, but still sad, one out of ten site users leave within the first three months. Already I feel like I’m potentially speed dating Max Cady.

I also have to say that the fairer sex is responsible for giving online hookups such a seedy reputation: one out of three women who meet guys online have sex the first time they meet. What’s worse? Four out of five of these women don’t use protection. Those are numbers that send me screaming from the screen.

Among the choices of sites I could scope there are some that boast love (eHarmony, Match), a number that imply fun (OkCupid, Nerve), a few that have faith (JDate, ChristianSingles), a couple that want to ruin/save marriages (AshleyMadison), and a smattering that have a pretty specific purpose that I won’t get into here (Manhunt). What I’m trying to say is that if you want a freckled, 6’0" mountain biker to shack up with for the weekend, you can find her. If you want a Korean, vegan, classical guitarist to date for the long haul, he’s there. If it’s one dirty night or one for life, you just need to figure out which site is right for you. Of course, if you’re like me, what you want changes minute by minute. Also, if you’re like me, you’re not going to pay a penny to peruse these digital dating displays. On average, an online dating consumer spends $239 per year. To me, that’s nearly $240 dollars too many. After all, walking down the street and making bedroom eyes is an activity you can partake in for free.

But I might be the only person on Earth who feels this way. Online dating is a 1.049 billion dollar industry. It trumps porn. In fact, the porn industry has pointed the finger at Internet dating as the reason why they’ve suffered a $74 million dollar decline. Searching for the one has amounted to the largest segment of "paid content" on the Internet, even more than seeing people make friction.

Of course this forces me to wonder, who spends money on this? I mean, I have social anxiety, but even if I reach a point where swapping spit with strangers is an option, I don’t have $239 bones to drop on potential suitors behind a computer screen. Out of my friends, I know only one or two who’d have the spare change to toss into the online dating cup. (Ironically, their financial and career successes have rendered them man magnets and total babe bait.) When trying to figure out who is spending dough on dating sites, I should have realized that it would have to be people who are just old enough to be doomed to fail in the bar scene, but who are at the prime age for sportscars and Viagra. Out of 80 million babyboomers, nearly 30% are single and testing the web waters. Aside from the ‘boomers flocking to the field, men outnumber women, with 52.4% of site users being male and 47.6% being female. If you have two X chromosomes and live in New York, online dating makes sense, as men outnumber us to a much greater degree in the concrete jungle.

If I needed any other reasons to feel skeptical about clicking for love, there are many. Sites have encountered problems where profiles are online for months, sometimes even years, without the user logging in. There are the predictable financial issues, too. Members can sign up for free or low-cost trial memberships, only to be charged automatically and without warning at the end of the trial. And, lastly, it sucks to be a girl. Statistics have shown that, online, men rate women’s attractiveness according to a normally distributed bell-curve, while women rate nearly 80% of men as below-average attractiveness. This can be summed up in one statement: women are discerning to the point of being picky. Which shoots us in the foot if we’re truly looking for a soul mate, doesn’t it?

The truth is, I’m not really enticed by online dating simply because it goes against my pathetically romantic nature. I’d like to believe that I may meet that perfect person – the one who laughs at my jokes and enjoys long walks in the city, spankings, getting up early, and Medjool dates – and that I’ll do it in person. I don’t believe that I’ll find them in the comfort of my home. That just seems too…convenient. Even the best online dating story I know involved a little bit of difficulty. A male friend of mine was contacted by a girl on Nerve.com, only he’d just had two bad dating experiences. He politely told her he wasn’t in the headspace to go out, but he thanked her anyway. About a month or two later, he was looking on Craigslist’s personals and read an add that was devoid of a picture. He was intrigued by the description, and thought that the lady sounded nice. He wrote to her and she responded, sending a photograph. It was the same girl he’d previously rejected. They’re getting married in three weeks, and I’ll be right there watching. Although it was life-changing for him, I don’t believe that it would work for me. My little heart might just be too tired after three years with a person who I still consider my best-friend. But maybe I’ll try it. After all, it’s a lot like human window shopping, and I don’t ever have to commit to buy.

And sometimes bad things happen with such relentless force and brutality that you have to think that the Great Whatever who controls life and the universe is on steroids. During God’s ‘roid rages, the things that come to pass are often tragic: a pet falling ill, the death of a parent, Freaks and Geeks getting cancelled. But sometimes these crapstorms are funny. There are either so many shitty occurrences at once, or they arrive with such aggression that you just have to laugh. It can be comedy gold, even if your maniacal laughter inevitably turns to tears.

A few weeks ago Simon and I decided to throw in the relationship towel, while still happily clinging to the professional and friendship towels. (We have never been to a Steelers game, otherwise we would be holding onto the Terrible Towel, too.) Breakups are hard. After three years of being pinned, and ten years of knowing one another, it’s a weird decision to make. Our split would be enough fodder for several blog posts, a Morrissey tune, and a spiral notebook filled with journal entries, but that wasn’t enough. Nope. The great UFC fan in the sky didn’t deem that one issue was sufficient for our lives. (Not to mention that I was grappling with bank fraud simultaneously. But whatevs.)

Around the same time that our relationship went kerplooie, I discovered that we have booklice. How do I know that they are booklice? Because I am friends with a former library employee and because of the Internet. Booklice, for the uninitiated, are tiny. They are as big as this here hyphen: – They are clear, and they move very quickly. You can kind of pretend that when they’re running away from your enormous face they’re screaming, "Nooooo!" in a really high-pitched cartoon voice. It’s kind of cute. Booklice eat dust and mold, both of which came to our new apartment in several boxes of old books. Am I sure that they are booklice? No. But I am sure enough. Now.

Let me explain. I saw them in the bedroom. Because they were bugs in my bedroom, and because I didn’t know what they were, I called the superintendent. I didn’t know that an apartment on the other side of the street (but still somehow connected to our building) had bedbugs. I had no idea. I probably wouldn’t have called and bothered the super if I had known, since a) we had no bites, b) the bugs weren’t in the bed, and c) hindsight is always clearer.

But I called. And, in an abundance of caution, the super called in a bedbug specialist, just to check. Two days later, I stood outside of my apartment while Buddy, the bedbug detecting dog, surveyed the place. Apparently Buddy, who is certified by the National Entomology Scent Detection Canine Association, or NESDCA, smelled something he liked in Simon’s laundry bag and on one corner of my bedframe. He got two biscuits, I get to live out of plastic bags for two weeks. During these two weeks my boyfriend of three years is moving out and I have a birthday that is dangerously close to thirty.

The thing about actually having bedbugs is this: you know you have fucking bedbugs. Why? Because you have bites. Because there are tiny bloodstains on your sheets. And because you can see bugs that look like the sick and sadistic sisters to ladybugs. They suck your blood. They are vampiric little assholes who ruin the best part of your night next to nookie. I’m pretty sure they ruin that, too.

Are you suddenly feeling itchy? Relax. Here’s Ainsley’s probably-not-foolproof-but-certainly-close one-step guide to seeing if you have bedbugs. Well, two step. Step one is ask yourself, "Do I have bites?" If you answer no, you’re probably okay. I say probably because 30% of the population  doesn’t react to bedbug bites. If you’re still nervous, or if you have bites, go to your bed. Strip the sheets. Check that little piece of piping that runs around the edge of your mattress. Peel it back and take a peek. Go on now, don’t be scared to get in there. If you see nothing, chances are you’re fine. If you see little black dots that look like somebody stashed a ballpoint pen in your bed, you might have a problem. (That’s bedbug poop.) If you see bloodstains unrelated to virginity or shaving incidents on your sheets, you may want to ring up an exterminator. If you see actual bugs, well, now you know.

So what happens next, after you or Lassie find the nasties? Get ready for your life to look like something out of a Trainspotting sequel, or an episode of A&E’s Obsessed. First you have to take everything you own and put it in black contractor bags and/or heavy-duty Ziplocs. For us, this was a pain in the ass, but kind of okay, since Simon had to pack up anyway and it gave us an opportunity to divvy up our shit.

Oh, and in case I wasn’t being clear enough: you MUST pack EVERYTHING YOU OWN into plastic contractor bags. From silverware to underwear. Toothbrushes and tap shoes. Dog toys to sex toys. Bag it up. If anything could be infected with bedbug babies, spray the fuck out of it with a solution that’s 1 part rubbing alcohol to 2 or 3 parts water and, like that Fabolous song goes, just throw it in the bag. Once you’ve finished doing this, you will finally be forced to realize just how much crap you own. You will understand that, if there was a fire, you would probably be screwed. If you have pets, and presumably kids, they will think that you are moving and no amount of convincing will stop them from trembling and eyeing the door with suspicion. Snack has been living in the corner like a canine version of The Blair Witch Project for the past week.

The next step is the first phase of extermination. This is actually kind of cool, though in no way does it make up for the sort of upheaval that you’re experiencing by having to deliberate between whether or not to just throw out everything you own or painstakingly inspect and bag each item. (Take note: if you have a severe infestation and not a make-believe one, you’d be wise to just get Zen, toss everything and move. I’m not being glib. If you have a large amount of bedbugs, the likelihood of their eggs being in your stuff is pretty high. They can live for a year without feeding and a fertilized female bedbug will lay one to five eggs per day, with the male being able to fertilize multiple females in a single day. You do not want to have to go through this again. Trust me.)

Okay, here’s what happened with our extermination. Two guys showed up and, to my dismay, they weren’t outfitted like they were in Ghostbusters. They had a lot of equipment and they explained what it was for. They were going to freeze the mattress and the sofa with Cryonite, then seal the sofa in plastic. It would be my responsibility to buy a mattress casing for the mattress and put that on the bitch when I returned home. Fortunately, I’d already run out and bought one the day before. Mattress casings are expensive. They also prey upon your fear by having massive pictures of bedbugs on the front, as if to say, "Don’t feel like forking over $80 for this? Oh, that’s fine. Enjoy being a buffet for our little poster boy right here."

The exterminators then told us that they would caulk areas where bedbugs could enter my apartment, places like under the sink, around pipes, and the cracks in the baseboard. Then, finally, they would spray the fuck out of the apartment with EPA approved pesticides that included peppermint oil and rosewood oil. That sounded pretty lame to me. I mean, if I really had these bloodsucking bastards, did I simply want to go around spraying essential oils and humming Kumbaya? No. I wanted the pesticides that were not approved by the EPA. The kind that would singe my mattress, pockmark my floor, cause my eyelashes to fall out and make me look like something out of The Hills Have Eyes. But whatever. The company that owns the building was paying for this, the guys had nice uniforms, and I assumed everything was legit other than the seemingly misguided dog. I didn’t complain.

It’s at this juncture that I should tell you what was going on in the other building, the one with the one documented bedbug case. They had Buddy inspect the seventeen other apartments over there. He found ‘bugs in fourteen of them, including one apartment where the tenant had moved in two weeks ago, and one guy whose mattress was literally brand new. It seemed suspicious. The super was perplexed, and probably terrified of the total bill along with whatever other fallout would occur. I had been lucky enough (if I can use that word) to be first in line for treatment, while the rest of the building slowly discovered that they were dealing with more than eccentric neighbors. I’ll also take the opportunity to say that I’m extraordinarily fortunate to live in a building that would cover the cost of this. Many people aren’t so lucky. I have friends who have suffered through actual bedbug infestations and they had to cover it on their own dime while using things like black pepper, eucalyptus oil, and sheer willpower to combat the sons of bug bitches before ultimately deciding to discard their infested furniture and move away.

Simon and I took Snack and vacated the premises while we let the Bedbug Busters go to work. We hung out away from our computers for the day because they were being treated as well. (Bedbugs can nestle inside of electronics.) It was a nice break, if you twist my arm into looking for positive aspects of this ordeal. Snack was fortunate enough to crash at her grandfather’s house for the night, since a pesticide treatment isn’t exactly the healthiest thing for a dog to endure.

After the guys finished, they called us. We had to remain away from the apartment for three hours following the fumigation.

"Fumigation," I snorted. "More like aromatherapy treatment."

When we arrived back at the apartment, the door was sealed off with blue tape. I can only imagine what the neighbors thought this meant, since I’d decided it best not to publicly announce the scourge upon our house. Already among my closest friends I was being regarded as a bit of a buggy pariah. We opened the door and it was as though every stick of Winterfresh gum that had ever been chewed was suddenly lodged in our nostrils and throat. I had visceral flashbacks of making out with a kid named Damian on the floor of the yearbook room in my sophomore year of high-school because he used to chew Winterfresh to cover up the smell of the Parliaments he smoked during his free third period. The minty refreshment permeated every square inch of the place. Still searching for the positive, I figured that this would remedy any scent of Simon that he’d leave behind for me to pine after following the big move. Now I’d only be left with memories and the overpowering scent of Wint-O-Green Lifesavers or gum.

It’s important to wipe down every hard surface after the pesticides have been sprayed, because the oils leave a slight film that you don’t want to ingest. I have to say that for two men traipsing around my apartment, they left it in better condition than they’d found it. It actually looked neater, which may have been from them moving around and rearranging the mammoth contractor bags of crap that had become my new home decor.

Two weeks from the first treatment, you have the second, which is basically only a repeat of the fumigation. Sounds easy enough, until you realize that you have to live out of plastic bags the whole time, just in case any errant surviving eggs hatch. In fact, if you truly have a bedbug infestation, it’s recommended that you live out of Ziplocs for three months. To hammer this point home, remember the apartment in the building next door, the one that did have a serious bedbug problem? They took their kids and haven’t been back for eight weeks. They’re planning on staying away for at least another month, and they’re lobbying to have the building pay for their entire apartment to be stripped down to the sheetrock and rebuilt. This shit is serious.

Serious enough that my super decided to have another dog take a sniff at all of those places where Buddy smelled bugs. The second dog, whose name I didn’t catch, was walked through the same apartments and he found nothing. My super said to me, "I’m damn sure that if we’d taken that dog through your apartment, we wouldn’ta found anything." The exterminators were contacted after that first treatment and they admitted that they’d found no evidence of bedbugs in my apartment. Hey, at least I’ve prophylactically blasted my home with mint, making it bug-free and smelling like fresh breath. It also gives me an opportunity to sort of move in again and to settle into my single life in the apartment that was originally intended to house the two of us. That is, I’ll be able to do that at the end of these two weeks.

So here I sit, writing while surrounded by looming black bags filled with my belongings. Simon’s received the keys to his new place and is moving in tomorrow morning. All of his clothes have been laundered, his stuff packed and sealed. And while we know that this is the right decision, both for ourselves as individuals as well as for our company, it needs to be said that bedbug treatment and breakups are like the bugs themselves: they suck.

(Take note: A woman named Alina, who is a single, self-employed, and expecting her first child in an area far from her family, is dealing with a bedbug infestation. Any change you can toss in her cup would be going to kick some insect ass. Good karma + sound sleeping.)

In spite of the title, they aren’t simply jobs that have to be completed in the same amount of time Dennis Hopper gave Keanu Reeves in Speed. (115 minutes.) Any project that’s a labor-intensive, hour-devouring gig that’s only given a week or less can be considered a rush. Just because a week is a lot of time (168 billable hours,) that doesn’t mean that it’s enough to write all of the text for a page-heavy website. So whaddya do? Cry, because you need the money but you can’t say no? Say no, and eat a can of beans for dinner? Say yes, then passive aggressively do the work naked, with FUCK Y’ALL written on your knuckles?

You don’t have to go through that much trouble. Many copywriters have chosen to have a little client-training tool in their arsenal called a "rush job fee" or "rush charge." The latter sounds like a conservative talk show host playing football, but it’s far sweeter than Limbaugh being pummeled by Polamaltu.

Earlier this week we were emailed by a client who wanted help on a project and needed a list of taglines in a matter of hours. The details of the gig were confusing, and the parameters for the taglines were more rigid than Gwyneth Paltrow’s diet. We were also working on two other projects at the same time, along with crafting a proposal. Were we willing to put all of those things on hold to help out a previous client who was in a jam?

I am too much of a people-pleaser to make these decisions on my own. Simon deftly pointed out that, if we were in too much of a hurry, the quality of our work would suffer. What’s more, if we agreed to the flat-rate the client was offering, we were basically selling ourselves for less than we were worth, and at the expense of both our work and our regular non-rush clients. Simon set his jaw. A line was going to be drawn. Like Dr. Phil always says, we need to set boundaries. It was time to permanently establish our rush rate.

There are a few arguments for a rush charge. For one thing, it serves as a bit of a detriment to those clients that might otherwise abuse the fact that they can call you at 4:45 on a Tuesday afternoon and ask for a press kit by the end of Wednesday. Certainly if they’re charged your rate and a half, that will (hopefully) put a little speed bump on their racetrack as well as sweetening the stress-filled deal for you as a writer. A freelance copywriter has the privilege of setting their own rush rates, though I’ll go out on a limb like an adventurous kitten and say that marking rates up by 50% is standard. It’s like time-and-a-half for employees in the retail world. Some writers only charge 25% more, others make the hike depending on the size and scope of the project, while still others just refuse to take any time-pressured gigs on principle. Another interesting angle I’ve heard is not charging a rush fee at all. That, by charging extra money, you set the precedent that a sum of money will coax you into pushing your other clients’ deadlines back. Some writers say that this allows them to use their schedule as the only guide as to whether or not they’ll accept a project from a frantic speed-demon of a client.

From my point of view, everyone should want to charge a rush fee. The hasty precision required to get a rush job done rivals that of a field surgeon (from what I’ve seen in  reruns of M.A.S.H.) and the amount of stress that those jobs cause practically demands that you mandate an extra half of a paycheck. Otherwise you would have to ask yourself, "What’s in it for me?" If the answer was only the inklings of an ulcer, most people would just say fuck it, and refuse the work. Again, I’m too much of a work-hungry sop to have learned to charge a rush fee on my own. If I hadn’t worked in a team I probably would have just accepted rush jobs for a flat rate, or worse, my standard rates, and I would have ground my teeth down to tiny nubs with regret. I learned the seemingly counterintuitive rule over the years that, because I need the work, I have to charge a rush fee. If the client really needs the job to be done well, they’ll pay it. It’s that simple.

The main factor to consider for rush jobs isn’t simply scheduling, it’s our relationship to the client. Admitting this is a bit like admitting that I flirted with one guy just to meet his friend, but there are two categories of clients that can automatically get rush jobs from us. If a previous client who we have a longstanding relationship with calls us up and asks for something with a laughable turnaround time, we think about the jobs we’ve worked on together. If they’ve been exciting, and have turned out in a way that doesn’t make us want to take a broken Michelob bottle to our eye sockets, and especially if working with them has been drama-free, we’ll say yes to the mess. The other group of instant affirmatives are rush jobs that turn us on. If I’m called to work on a project that includes writing copy for an iPhone game featuring an Erasure song and jumping unicorns, I will say yes, even if I only have a matter of hours to pen that shit. (That actually exists, by the way.) Other fantasy examples would include being brought in on W+K’s incredible Old Spice campaign or working on anything with Steve Nash. In reality, actual projects of ours that have been rush jobs have included an AIGA article, a display book for a renewable resources organization, and assorted taglines for a bunch of different companies. The one thing that they all had in common was that they were so enjoyable, the time would have passed that quickly anyway.

There’s one rule of thumb you should keep in mind if you’re considering you’re rush fee: no two-timing. What I mean by that is that it’s like dating. You don’t flake out on someone you’re seeing at the last minute just to go out with a girl who has bigger boobs or a faster car. Don’t bump already established projects or put work on hold just for a job that could potentially pay you more in a shorter span of time. That isn’t fair to your current paying clients who aren’t such divas that they demand work on the spot. Be discerning. It’s one of the better perks to being freelance, other than wearing only underpants while being on a conference call.

Now you try to get Paula Abdul out of your head.

There are over 500,000 dog owners in New York, amounting to more than 1.4 million dogs. I’ve seen pet spas run out of minivans, biscuit bakeries, and entire boutique shops dedicated to outfitting the urban canine in ridiculous sweaters and rhinestone-swathed collars. Friends of mine feed their dogs all-vegan diets, others make meals for their pooch from ingredients in their own kitchens. I know people who let their cats sleep in their bed, which is a bit startling if you think about their hygiene and habits. (Would you consider licking yourself to be an adequate shower?) I love animals, and I love animal owners, but nobody I know has been able to provide Snack and I with a sufficient diet and exercise plan.

It’s easy to be tripped up by the pet products that you see in nearly every grocery store, Whole Foods, and pet shop. After all, pet-related spending actually grew in 2009, which isn’t surprising. It’s hard to topple a $41 billion dollar industry, even in this economy. New products are introduced to the market constantly, the selection of food and treats for pets rivals that of grub for bipeds. There is raw food for dogs made with grapefruit, dried kelp, and ground flax seed. There are holistic dog treats that are made with barley. There’s even an institute for canine massage. It’s hard not to feel like I just have to buy Snack a few organic carrots and spend $25 on a bag of specialized food in order to make her lose seven pounds and shit gold nuggets.

A study reported that owners who don’t walk their dogs were 58% more likely to have weight problems as opposed to those who strap on their sneakers and pad along with their pooch. But generally people can tell if they’re fighting the battle of the bulge. They stop needing belts, it’s hard to tie their shoes, airlines make them buy whole aisles to accommodate their girth. Less than one-third of Americans are of a healthy weight, and most of them are aware of it.  Dogs don’t care about statistics, and they don’t sigh with despair when they can’t fit into their skinny jeans. It’s estimated that 25 to 40% of dogs are overweight, but their owners often aren’t aware of it.

So how can you tell that your poodle has too much oodle? Cesar Milan, the patron saint of sexually ambiguous dog trainers, says that you should be able to feel each individual rib of your dog’s ribcage. If you place your hands on either side of your dogs ribs and you feel nothing, they’re probably carting around some extra biscuit baggage. If you can see their ribs or they’re sticking out, then your dog could be underweight. In Snack’s case, if you place your hands on either side of her ribcage it feels like you’re holding a couch cushion. Cesar also says that you should look at your dog from the side and see if there’s a waistline. The dog’s abdomen should be slightly tucked up. Too deep of a tuck, your dog needs to eat some cake. A hanging abdomen or no tuck at all is a sign that your dog is overweight. From the side, Snack looks like she swallowed a helium balloon. Yeah. Time to enlist Richard Simmons for some Panting to the Oldies. The Pomeranian has to lose the paunch.

How do you get a hound to drop some pounds? Keeping in mind what Milan whispered, and poking around other dog-savvy sites, I think I have a plan.

Get rid of all snacks and treats other than dog food. 

Snack eats Alpo’s "Snaps" three times a day, one after each successful walk. Sure, at one point she was able to get me to give her those cookies pretty much on command with her cuteness, but I’ve curtailed that. I’ve reduced her to one Snap per day, broken into three bits. Cesar says that "high quality treats" (i.e., not those that are purchased for $3 at the corner mart, i.e., not Snaps) can be brought back into the kitchen once the dog’s dropped the weight. Of course I fear that, without Snaps, Snack will go on strike, shitting only on the rug and dribbling piss on every surface. Whether or not that’s the case remains to be seen. She didn’t rebel too much when I stopped giving her treats after every time I used the toilet.

Ditch the wet stuff.

Fortunately Snack has been off wet food for a while now. Personally, I always found the stuff extremely gross, even if it smelled good and the can proclaimed it was something theoretically tasty, like beef bourguignon. (You salivate every time you’ve smelled Mighty Dog. Admit it.) Wean your dog off of wet food slowly and don’t sweat it if they refuse to eat only the dry food. They won’t starve. When they get hungry enough, they’ll eat. Trust me. Snack used to put up little fights like that all of the time when she was younger. Granted, if your pup doesn’t eat for two days and you’re working out with him or her, give your vet a call. It could be the sign of something else. Oh, and don’t bother getting dry food that’s specifically for doggie diets or weight loss. Everything I’ve read indicates that dogs can lose weight on regular crunchy old dog food.

Play

The most important thing you can do for a fat dog is to make them move around more. Yes, this requires you to actively engage the unwilling dog to run, walk, fetch, jump, whatever. Don’t just leave them out in the yard, if you’re lucky enough to have one. If you put Snack in a yard she takes a leak and then finds a shady spot to sit. There’s not much activity that goes on if a fat dog is left to their own devices. I know that I need to take her for longer walks, not just the two to three block jaunts she goes on three times a day to do her business. The key here is to take it slow and increase the activity slowly. Also, you have to be consistent. Just like people who work out twice and expect to be a size 2, the dog’s physique won’t see any benefit if they aren’t active regularly. If they play fetch or like to chase stuff, that’s a sneaky way to get them to run around. In Snack’s case, she’s cursed with being a Pomeranian. She coughs after about two minutes of exercise, which I’ve read is caused by everything from her trachea being fragile to her suffering from doggie allergies. A trip to the vet is definitely in order.

Portion control

Reduce how much you feed your dog by a quarter. That means if you’re normally giving them a cup of food twice a day, only feed them 3/4 of a cup twice a day. Don’t make your dog skip a meal, that’s just stupid and something Paris Hilton would do. (I’m just guessing.) Also, Cesar says that two smaller meals per day is better for the dog’s blood sugar regulation versus just one big meal.

If you decrease the meals by a quarter and double the exercise, your dog should start seeming more svelte in about two weeks. If you don’t even notice a small difference in their weight, you might want to contact your vet to make sure there’s nothing else going on. Also, make sure your dog doesn’t have access to any additional treats or food. This means that you should make sure they can’t get into the garbage, that you don’t have any Snickers bars lying around, and that your roommates or bedmates know not to feed your pup no matter how intensely they beg. Snack is a fan of staring at you from a close distance. It’s really creepy, and it usually motivates people to give her a taste of everything from pad thai to Goldfish crackers. She’s a crafty little fatty. This is why she looks like a Butterball turkey wearing a fur coat.

For more information on dogs and whispering, check out Cesar Milan’s website. And for information on feeding your dog a vegan diet, you can contact the Vegan Dog Nutrition Association. My dog is not a vegan, but she likes the way they smell.

This is nice. This is fine. I don’t mind peering into the lives of people who are now strangers and seeing the trials and tribulations that they choose to make public. After all, I work on the Internet. I’m a voyeur at heart. But the one thing this Facebook fad has caused is a prominent feeling that I’m being left behind. I’m not getting married. I’m not having kids. My job is difficult and I don’t like to brag about how embarrassingly close to being unemployed I feel like I am at times. (I mean, obviously I don’t mind whining about my troubles on the Internet. But I don’t want the kids who always said I’d be a broke, lonely loser in high-school to see that I am a broke, unmarried, mostly happy loser years later.) I can’t imagine my status updates being so interesting.

Looking for clients. OMG.

Looking for more clients. LOL. More clients would indicate that there are some. J/K

Clients need edits. FTL

(I should make it clear, I’m not really sure what any of those acronyms stand for, and I make it a point to stringently avoid them, as well as their hideous step-sisters, emoticons.)

But my own personal shame aside, I often click away from Facebook with a feeling of failure, as though somehow I’m not doing enough, or I haven’t achieved anything of merit simply by not being married or having kids. What complicates this issue is that I don’t want to have children. Part of me does, sure. (Hello, hormones.) But the brain bits know better. Thankfully.

The reasons why I want to eschew reproduction have a bit to do with my upbringing, but mostly they have to do with math. There’s more to having kids than an episiotomy, swollen tits and diapers. It requires money. Lots of it. According to Babycenter’s "Cost of Raising a Child Calculator," my kid would cost me $206,416. Do you know how many vegan burritos that is? If someone handed me that sum of money right now, my first thought would not be, "Oh, yay! Now I can afford to bring life into the world." It would be that I could buy 1950s horror movie memorabilia, take my closest friends on a trip to Costa Rica, and get Phoenix Suns season tickets. And I’d probably have enough money left over to fly myself to Phoenix for the games via first class. I would not think about utilizing my uterus and squelching the rest of my youthful vigor. See? That’s what I think parenthood is. A possibly prolapsed uterus followed by eighteen (+) years of regret. This is why I’m not having kids. But beyond that, the cost breakdown makes that 206K even harder to swallow. I’d be wasting it on what exactly?

Once you’re finished having a human being ushered through your cervix, afterbirth and all, expect a bill somewhere between $5,000 and $8,000, unless you had a cesarean. Then you’re paying $12K. (I’m not going to state why I believe it costs more to circumvent the vaginal canal.) Sure, insurance can cover most of the damage, but expect to pay at least some costs out of pocket. Then, during the first year of its life on earth, a baby can burn through nearly 11K on diapers, formula, baby furniture, and garb alone. Disposable diapers might as well be called disposable muggings: if your kid goes through seven or eight poop pantalones per day, you can expect to spend between $80 and $130 monthly on keeping his or her digestive activities under wraps. And don’t think you can simply go all hippie-dippie and opt for cloth diapers, either. Even if you decide not to have them laundered, and choose to do it yourself (the level of gross-out I’m feeling here is palpable), it can cost you nearly $1,000 by the time your kid is potty trained. And why buy the formula if you can get the milk for free? Consider that formula costs roughly between $1,000 and $2,300 if you expect your child to bottle feed until they’re one years old, you can plan on spending at least $40 a week on the stuff. I say go the route of breastfeeding, baby. Hopefully your spawn will have no problem latching, though I hear it can be really painful. And you can get chapped nipples. Or…infections. I have mine pierced, and I’ve been through my own low-grade infection issues. I am not doing that again. Not if I can possibly avoid it, anyway. But, yeah, for more information on putting the sweater puppies to work, you can always consult La Leche League.

So you’d figure that – happy accidents and broken condoms aside – most people, those Facebook fiends (intentional typo) included, have chosen to take on this burden. They’ve looked at their lives and said, "You know? Everything is too tidy. I can plan my schedule, sleep close to eight hours every night, spend money on myself and do occasional fun things like go on romantic vacations and binge drink in posh clubs. That’s so boring. What can permanently remove all of these things from my life, or at least remove them for the next, oh, two decades or so? I know! I’ll have a baby!"

You’d be wrong to assume that most of ‘em know what they’re signing up for. 76% of expectant parents say that they feel financially prepared to have a kid. Ask them again a few months later, and you’ll find that a screaming, money-eating gremlin can really put things into a different perspective. 41% of new parents will admit that, looking back on it, they weren’t as financially ready as they’d originally thought. A big reason for this has to do with hospital bills, which often aren’t factored in when expectant parents are crunching the numbers. Many of them miscalculate just how much of their delivery would be covered by insurance, and one in four pairs of new parents ended up spending more than $2,000 out of their own pockets simply for services associated with a normal delivery. Most of them had assumed that they’d only be spending a little under $800 to cover it. Wrong.

Of course, this is being written by a girl who would be willing to deliver babies for $800 a pop. After all, it’s hard to generate new copywriting clients, and I’m always trying to think of a new way to make money. I would rather deliver a baby than have one of my own. I’m also wholly immature, a tad OCD, and very, very selfish. Not a good mix for a potential parent. As though my body knows what my brain first recognized, I’ve only had my period once since January 2009. So I don’t expect to be bringing an even tinier, even louder, even more demanding version of myself into the world any time soon. I’m not judging any of my peers who choose to have kids. Heaven knows, many of them seem to be in stable relationships and marriages where bringing another life into this world looks like a fairly sensible thing to do, even if it seems a tad like just following protocol to me. It’s a beautiful thing to create human life and pass along your genes. I thank my parents for it every day. So don’t think that just because I’m personally opposed to having a baby of my own that I spit in the eye of the concept as a whole. It just ain’t my thing. I’ll stick to "liking" pregnancy posts on social networks, and ogling squirts in strollers. And the next time I update my status, I’ll make sure that it’ll be something that I believe induces just as much jealousy as a little bundle of joy. Like winning a trip to Costa Rica, or sleeping ten hours in a single night.

Greetings from Ditch Plains! I took the train out with my stepmom and I’m writing this by the beach. If I ever complain about anything again, you have the liberty to punch me in the face.

I was working on a post about experiential learning and how its value had decreased over the years. I was citing a conversation I had recently with Alex Sherker, an outstanding tattoo artist in New York, and I was going to tie it in with patience in this age of immediacy, how technology robs us of experiences, blah blah blah.

This morning I rode a rusted beach cruiser to the health food store in town. I’d run eight miles when I got up and I wanted something to eat, and drink. Being sober means that I get my liquid jollies from stuff like coconut water and frozen banana smoothies. Last night my dad was even conscientious enough to provide me with some fancy organic French soda to drink, in lieu of the wine he and his dinner guests consumed with gusto. I’m not only a recovering alcoholic, I’m also a vegan who doesn’t eat sugar or artificial sweeteners. One of the things I like to drink that fits my stringent requirements is GT’s Kombucha. Last year this health food store had the stuff, so I precariously pedaled my way into the heart of Ditch. It was there that I learned that GT’s Kombucha had been recalled due to discrepancies over the alcohol content. They pulled my favorite overpriced drink because it could be booze. Jesus Christ. Does this mean I have to recalculate my sobriety date? Has my wagon been toppled by some hippie whose homespun hooch hid behind the guise of homeopathy? Did Lindsay Lohan actually tell the truth about her SCRAM bracelet? Well, at least I saved four dollars.

I looked it up online, and here are the facts, some of which I’d already known:

Lindsay Lohan was fitted with a SCRAM bracelet as part of her probation agreement stemming from drunk driving and misdemeanor drug charges. The bracelet (or is it ankelet?) is meant to monitor Lohan’s blood alcohol content, along with random drug testing.

The hot mess can’t drink, do blow, or spray tan, but she can get her wisdom teeth out and drink kombucha at the MTV Movie Awards. Wait, wait, sorry. Scratch that last one.

The SCRAM device detected alcohol on the night in of the awards. Lindsay blamed the alarm on kombucha, and she reportedly took a urine test immediately afterward to prove that there was no alcohol in her system. But the attention that Lohan brought to the drink and its sloshtastic qualities had nothing to do with the recent Whole Foods recall.  It seems that Whole Foods beat Lindsay to the punch, so to speak, by pulling kombucha until GT can prove that its alcohol content is under the .05% that the label claims. Otherwise it may have to be labeled as an alcoholic beverage, and be subject to the same taxes as the hard stuff. That would at least justify a $4 price tag on tea. Anyway, it seems that GT has broadened the recall beyond the scope of the yuppies: it’s now nationwide, and it’s posted on their website.The excuse that’s presented is that it may continue to ferment after bottling. Right now, no one knows for sure. Even though Lohan posted the grammatically questionable response to the situation on Twitter, "the truth, is refreshing."

I discovered kombucha about a year ago when I had a craving for spirulina. It looked like bottled pond scum, but I liked it. If I drank two per day it cost roughly as much as the magnums of wine I had been putting away every night during the downslide of my alcoholism. I understood that handing over Abe Lincoln every time I wanted something other than water was ridiculous, but the stuff made me feel good. I say that with all of the honesty of an alcoholic who has been sober for over two years. The stuff made me tingle. Did it feel like getting drunk? No. Did it happen every time? No. But I know that I drank it in voracious gulps (the same way I drink, or eat, everything) and I looked at it as my special treat to myself. Not unlike the way I looked at wine, whiskey, and women in my heyday.

What I’m trying to say is that the stuff wasn’t water. A lot of people have attributed kombucha’s punch to caffeine, even though the GT site claims that it only contains trace amounts. I only drink green tea, and not that much of it, so it’s possible that the snap-crackle-pop that kombucha caused was simply a coffee-like buzz. But I doubt it. Still, I didn’t think that it was anything like being tipsy and I didn’t see it as a direct threat to my sobriety. I didn’t want to drink a bathtub full of the stuff, and I easily subbed in coconut water on days where it wasn’t available or when I was trying to figure out what was making my stomach upset. If it had been booze, I would have drank seven or eight in rapid succession, walked across New York to find a store where it was in stock, and shit myself stupid if it caused intestinal distress. I also would have stolen your girlfriend. I may not know the alcohol content of a soda, but I know the alcohol content of me. When I contain alcohol, I am a mess. An addicted, sloppy, ugly mess. Kombucha didn’t make me a mess. But.

Why am I documenting this on a blog that’s dedicated to work? Because if I weren’t sober, I wouldn’t be working. If I started drinking again – drinking stuff with more of a kick than kombucha – I wouldn’t be doing very much. My apartment? Gone. I wouldn’t be able to cover the maintenance. Simon? Poof! I’m sure he could stick around for a while, but he knew me when I was out, and that whole making-out-with-his-friends thing got old to him pretty fast. Snack? Not as if I can specifically correlate the two, but my dog seems a lot happier since I kicked the habit and she hasn’t run away. My job would be the first to wither and disappear as my relentless pursuit to get out of my skin took over. There would be no motivation for much more than destroying myself, and I would wind up in worse shape than last time, which was penniless, lonely, listless, and not writing. I have my fair share of drinking-related horror stories a la Lindsay Lohan, those telltale clues that pop up as you start to veer in the direction of dependency. I’m not proud of them, but they’re there, and they’re a-plenty. I don’t need any more. And while other alcoholics I’ve spoken to have insisted that kombucha isn’t a problem, that was before today’s recall. Perhaps they’ll still be at peace with drinking it after the recall, so long as it isn’t labeled as an alcoholic beverage. Maybe they don’t see it as a threat. But to this alcoholic, I think I’ve come too far and achieved too much to give it all up for the green stuff, even if it doesn’t necessarily lead to a slip. And maybe that’s how this post is about experiential learning after all.