Can someone please tell me how this happened?

Team USA To Be Decked Out in Uniforms Made in China

I read that headline on the ABC News website and wondered if Friday the 13th had suddenly become April 1st. If I were the boss of the USOC, someone’s head would roll. Like a ball. Probably made in China.

AP Photo

And, really, Ralph Lauren? What’s with the jaunty beret? Don’t you know what everyone thinks of when they see a beret? Hint: It’s not the United States. Pourquoi, Ralph? Pourquoi?

America is not about a double-breasted jacket either unless, of course, it’s 1985. America is rugged, scrappy and enterprising. We do not need to borrow style from the French, nor should we have our manufacturing for a quintessentially patriotic event shipped to another country.

We haven’t even seen the opening ceremony and Team USA has already lost the first round of competition. This does not bode well for our gold medal count.

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Today marks one, full week since storms rolled through and took away my internet. I love my internet. I work online, all my friends and family are online and it’s what I do all day long. It’s kind of like when you eat cereal for breakfast, lunch and dinner for five years and then, suddenly, someone serves you soup. You’re all, “I can eat this, but it’s not going to be pleasant.” If I were 80 I would add, “This is really going to mess up my bowels.”

By the third day, you’re screaming for your Golden Grahams and when day seven rolls around, you would even settle for plain Cheerios, without sugar poured on top. That’s right. No gray, grainy spoonful of sweetness at the bottom of the bowl; just a big serving of whole grain O’s. But, NO! You’re still sucking down the salty, fake-chicken, soggy-noodle soup.

Of course, this analogy is awful, but you have time to think up good analogies AND really bad ones when you don’t have internet for a week. You also have time to look in the mirror and think, I wonder what is less attractive right now; my smudged eyeliner or the toothpaste I applied to the small, undetectable zits on my chin which the 95 degree weather turned into, what I now refer to as, my power-outage boils.

But that’s not all, because that soup you’ve been eating? It looks like you washed your hair with it. Except, not in a salt-water, ocean-kissed-wavy-locks way, but more of an I-just-washed-my-hair-with-chicken-noodle-soup way.

This is when I mention that you’re wearing the clothes that sat in the washer for two days because you forgot about them, and when you remembered, you had to hang them up to dry because THE DRYER NEEDS ELECTRICITY. So along with your toothpaste-covered chin boils and your chicken-noodle soup hair, you are wearing a wrinkled t-shirt with a slight aroma of must. Not, musk. Must. Big difference.

I kid you not that I saw a guy standing in his front yard, giving himself a baby-powder bath. I’m pretty sure his clothes had been in the washer for three days.

But, my electricity is back and once I get these boils under control, the only thing I want more is my internet. My sweet, sweet internet. Without it, I wouldn’t know how cute tealights look inside of mason jars, or if the power had been out too long to save the mayonnaise, or that you can tame your pimples with toothpaste (also, crushed up baby aspirin mixed with water…just sayin’).

The air conditioning sure is nice and having to hurl small children out of the way to get to the last bag of ice isn’t the most honorable thing I’ve ever done, but I can deal without electricity. Sure, it’s because our neighbors have a generator, but still…

All I know is that the internet needs to come back to me soon, because I am already a hot mess. Obviously.

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In the seventh grade, I was in a stage production of Oliver! I acted in the bar scene, where I pumped a beer stein back and forth while singing, “Oom Pa Pa” with an ensemble. That is where they put you when you can’t sing; they make you be part of a group and pretend you’re drunk.

An added bonus? I played a boy. This should not be a surprise, because I was a 5′ 9″ twelve year old. I filled in whenever height was necessary. Need a fifth person for a pick-up game? Ask Momo! Even if she just stands there, we’ll have enough for a team!

I suppose you could say that Oliver! is where my food career started. “Please sir, may I have some more?” Also, my beer career. Though I gave up knickers, knee socks and vests long ago, the rest of my stage debut stuck. Right to my thighs.

Last weekend, while in Seattle for the BlogHer Food Conference, I heard over and over how food is part of who we are and the stories we tell. Through pain, laughter, anger and joy, food is always there. No matter where we go and what we do, it is a constant presence in our lives. Again, just ask my thighs.

You can’t have a party without food; you can’t have a wake either. What is a movie without popcorn, a baseball game without peanuts, a wedding without a cake or a cookout without potato salad? It’s just a boring, old, regular day, that’s what.

For instance, I can’t think of my grandma without smelling her spaghetti sauce. Though, it was never accompanied by spaghetti, always rigatoni, and she called the noodles “sewer pipes.” That’s right. Sewer pipes. Mmm.

That food memory is, hands-down, my favorite. Though, there are so many others. So. Very. Many. Picking mulberries fresh from the tree is right up there, as was watching my mom prepare the food for my sister’s wedding reception.

There are bad ones too; like when my cousins would make me eat a spoonful of peanut butter, relish and cocoa powder in a game of Spoons-Meets-Truth-or-Dare. *shudder*

Now I eat things like tofu which, apparently, makes other people shudder.

Whether your food memories make you queasy or make you smile, I want to know what they are. Tell me, boys and girls, what food takes you back to a place and time, and why? What is the single culinary delight, kitchen accessory or truth-or-dare moment that never fails to stir something in you? Let’s sit awhile and listen to each others’ stories.

I’ll bring the beer stein.

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I flew to Seattle yesterday morning for the BlogHer Food Conference. I started to write this post at the airport before I left Ohio, but because I hate to fly and I was going to talk about flying, I thought it would end up being one of those prophetic posts. You know, after the crash and all.

First of all I hate to fly, as evidenced by the time I took a Xanax and had two vodka cranberries. That flight? I liked. We hit turbulence and I may as well have had a cowboy hat and a lasso. Yee haw!

But, for the times I don’t have medication and I’m on the way to another city to actually work, I have to tough it out and because nothing takes my mind off of the world around me quite like being online, I ordered myself an upgrade to an exit row seat so I could work on the web from 25,000 feet. This is what I was going to tell you about when I started to write in Ohio; that I am a genius for thinking far enough ahead to get that seat.

What I didn’t consider is that exit rows give you more leg room, but you don’t get any more arm room. Lest you forget, I once held the prestigious nickname of “orangutan arms.”

I don’t know if you know this, but exit row seats have tray tables that come out of the arm of the seat. Some people might consider that before paying extra.

Said tray table is exactly 5 inches deep and sits, roughly, in the vicinity of your belly button. This is not an ideal position for typing. Sure, you could put your laptop directly on your lap, but when the plane is the temperature of roasting AND you are peri-menopausal, a hot computer on your thighs isn’t the better option. Trust me.

However, there was an upside, with the laptop sitting on the zipper of my jeans and with me being lucky enough to score the middle seat, I found that upgrading finally rid me of that “Orangutan Arms” moniker.

All it took was a swipe of my credit card and now you may call me, “T-Rex.”

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