Friday, July 26, 2013

And She Says Dance Like No One Is Looking....

I have a love/hate relationship with trainer Tracy Anderson.....see below:

And still going (sorry about the sirens)....

Friday, July 19, 2013

No Dumping!

After I graduated college, my friends and I decided to move to Los Angeles, so we rented an RV to make the trek from Maine to California. We even met with producers at MTV and pitched a reality show but unfortunately (or not?) it was 2003, when the idea of a reality show was still very new to the entertainment world. Nowadays there are reality shows about everything from crab fisherman to chunky beauty queens from the south. There were five of us girls and Sampson, the English Mastiff, (RIP Samps) who piled into that RV on the cold and snowy day back in January, 2004. None of us had ever driven a vehicle that large and it made things even harder because my Jetta was being towed behind the RV, so there was no way we were ever going to attempt to back that thing up. It was straight ahead all the way to LA!
There were some crazy adventures along our journey, which would have made for an amazing television show, and we finally arrived in LA after we took a few weeks to tour the US. But before we could drop off the camper at the rental place we had arranged for, we had to empty out the sewage tank, which we completely forgot to do at the last campground we stayed at. What the hell were we going to do now? If we returned the camper with the tank full, there would be a huge charge. After we all put our heads together, we decided to do something that we definitely should not have but it was a temporary fix.
Have you ever seen those signs on the side of the road that say, 'no dumping?' I always assumed it meant 'don't poop on this street' which I thought was strange because technically you can't really poop on any street but now I know what those signs really mean and we definitely broke the rules that day. We pulled onto an abandoned street near the highway not far from the RV rental spot in Santa Ana and while Sampson stayed in the camper, we all took our places to execute the plan. One girl was the getaway driver, one girl was the co-getaway driver, two girls were on lookout duty and the last and very unfortunate girl was the one who had to pull off the sewage release cap. As the lookouts gave the signal, the plan was in full attack mode and although it happened so fast, I can still remember the sound of the rushing 'water' dumping all over the street, the squealing of the wheels as the camper hauled ass away from the scene of the crime and the immense laughter coming from all of us, except the girl who had to pull off the cap and was now running to keep up with the camper, avoid the 'mess' and jump in before we drove away with out her. I won't name any names....

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Our apartment has a lot of windows. Windows we keep open a lot. Windows that can be seen by the parking structure across the street. I am aware of this fact but sometimes I forget. And last night was one of those 'sometimes I forget' situations. After my shower, I applied some sunless tanning spray to my pale ass skin. The product states that you must let it dry for at least 5 minutes before getting dressed. Not a problem for me- hell, I will let it dry for ten minutes!
I walked out of the bathroom, butt ass naked, letting my newly bronzed skin dry and started talking to Anthony, who was on the couch. I happened to glance out the window (our blinds were open, of course) and literally made eye contact with an old man who was sitting in the parking garage across the street smoking a cigarette. Without saying a word, I turned my head away from him and retraced my steps backwards into the bathroom, shut the door and busted out laughing. I'm pretty sure I made that guy's night. I know I made Anthony's night because he didn't stop laughing for about ten minutes.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Stand By Me 2: Starring Erin and Rhoda Demchak

When I would come home from college for the summer about ten plus years ago, my mom and I used to love to take walks together after supper. We would talk non-stop about everything while burning off those calories power walking- it was great! We would usually walk near our house in Durham or drive to Lisbon to walk on the bike path until they opened the bike path in Brunswick. How excited were we! On our first  trip to the bike path, we parked off a deserted road in Topsham (as we were instructed by the writeup in the paper) and walked to the entrance. Because it just opened, we weren't exactly sure where to go from where we parked the car to join the bike path, so we asked a random stranger who was getting into her car for directions. She told us to walk up a bit and when we saw a bridge, walk across it until we saw the signs for the path. Easy enough, we thought, as we made our way to the down the street. Except the bridge that we saw was not the bridge that we were instructed to take.

As we looked out into the distance, we saw a huge bridge over the Androscoggin River (that picture doesn't lie) that resembled the railroad tracks on Stand By Me. We looked at each other, looked at the sign that said 'No Trespassing,' looked at each other again puzzled and proceeded to walk across the bridge. I was terrified because we had to step carefully over these rickety pieces of wood with nothing to hold onto as the river rushed beneath us. I tried to hold it together though so my mom wouldn't get scared and thought, if everyone else who went to this bike path took this route, it must be okay. When we got to the other side (what seemed like an hour later) we saw the bike path below us and climbed down a steep hill to join it. A few people who were already on the path looked at us strangely but I thought nothing of it. I am not sure how or when we found out that we literally trespassed and definitely took the wrong bridge (the bridge that lady meant was the overpass equipped with a sidewalk) but I think my mom peed her pants laughing. What the hell were we thinking? And why did we think it was normal to walk across the railroad tracks?

To this day, I have no idea how we made this mistake and I have been to the Brunswick bike path a million times since that day and die laughing every time. I blame my mom...Who Else But Rhoda?