I didn’t do it!

I’m saahhhh-weeee!

I know that I’ve kinda d—ed out on Sarahcentric for the past few days, but I’ve got mad excuses. Working all weekend on a last minute project, wearing a dress to celebrate the sun’s first appearance in weeks, obsessing over the “Real Housewives of New Jersey”. And the biggest distraction of them all?

Final countdown to Australia!

10 days is not nearly enough time for me to obsess over the last minute details of this trip, including my favorite paranoid delusion based on unreasonable fear-a handsome, yet evil Australian surfer plants drugs on me and I’m arrested for drug smuggling. (Is that a real charge?) Of course I didn’t do it! I only agreed to take the package because I thought there were Oreo Cakesters inside, and I wasn’t sure if they sold them in Australia! “A likely story!”, they say (because they always say that), right before I’m sentenced to a Thai prison for life. Why am I extradited to Thailand? I have no idea.

If this is my fate, I can’t be wasting my time blogging! I gotta focus on my plan to become the Queen Bee of the prison…and organize the uprising…which breaks me out of that hellhole … so I’m free to marry the prison guard who looks exactly like Brandon Lee.

So you see?! Busy, busy, busy!

Blame it on the Rain

You know what sucks most about the days and DAYS of rain we have been getting in New York City? Not the frizzy hair, ruined outfits, or slimy flip-flops. No. It’s the LAME conversation. We are so completely unnerved by these consecutive days of cloud cover, there is nothing else to do but obsess about it.

“Oh My God…when will it stop?!”
“I’m never going to get to the beach!”
“Ummm… WHEN DID WE MOVE TO SEATTLE?!”

In an effort to open the rain conversation up a little, I think now is as good a time as any to tell you a very important Sarah fact; My very first concert was Milli Vanilli with opening performances by Young MC and Sweet Sensation. When the lights went down, I very clearly remember looking at my younger sister and saying “I CAN’T BELIEVE ROB AND FAB ARE IN THE SAME BUILDING AS WE ARE!”

What does this have to do with rain? Follow my train of thought here..

Rain… Rain… “Blame it on the Rain”…ROB AND FAB!…youtube…”Girl, You Know it’s True”…ooo, what about Debarge? The Jets?

Why is this bit of Sarah trivia so crucial? Because I loved them…I LOOOOVED them with my whole being. It was the first CD I bought when I got my Sanyo boombox with the top loading CD player that you had to pop open for Christmas. Before that, I bought every single that Sam Goody had on cassette. (Let’s not think about the millions of dollars I wasted on cassette singles. I just wasn’t as patient as the other kids who listened to Z100’s Top 40 and recorded it from the radio!)

Was it there Benetton bi-raciality that I so identified with? Maybe it was there old world European flair that I found so impressive? Could it be an admiration for simple, yet powerful choreography that anyone could master? Who knows. The map of a young girl’s heart, as she sways to “Bust a Move” waiting for the Big Act, is another one of life’s great mysteries.

Yes, my heart was broken once I finally accepted the truth. But I choose to remember Milli Vanilli as they once were. Our connection is stronger than lip syncing charges! It can withstand Rob and Fab’s creative fashion choices from the late 80s! And in the end, it will chase this New York City rain away.
As Rob and Fab say in their classic, “Baby, Don’t Forget My Number”…

Love is stronger than thunder.

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Coffee Coma?

One too many cups of Graham Cracker Coffee before heading back to the city.
Head and the Big Brain stored inside still severely dehydrated.
Complete blog entry filled with humor, love, context and acceptable grammar… impossible.
This is all I’ve got…

…Intense game of Trivial Pursuit with a favorite local family upstate. “Oh my God, if we’re playing the s—ty 2003 edition we have to make it more fun. LIFELINES!” Tipsy calls to friends and family both upstate and down, as well as shouts to a Dad in the same room doing his best to ignore us and watch the baseball game.

Winning answer: The Vagina Monologues. Of course.

Good times. Exhausted. Must rehydrate.

Ohhhh no.
I may have shouted “Chartreuse!” for an answer.
Wrong.
The answer was blue.

Tom Yung Goong for the soul

Being home sick ain’t what it used to be.
But let’s face it …what it used to be sucked, too.

Remember pleading your case to Mom in that crucial half-hour window, before you had to get your uniform on to make it to the bus stop in time? And let’s say she bought it this time. You’re not Typhoid Mary, but you actually do have a bit of a fever. Enough for her to be concerned and keep you home, but not enough to ruin what is sure to be a full day of cartoons and unlimited bowls of cereal in bed!

After you smugly wave good-bye to your brothers and sisters, you receive your first terrible shock…they stop running cartoons! There were no 24-hour stay-at-home-sick kid networks in those days. After Heathcliff and The Jetsons, it was nothin’ but Sale of the Century and Another World for as far as the eye can see. Panicked, you realize you have to wait until 3pm for the first great cartoon of the afternoon, Alvin and The Chipmunks. 3pm! Sure, there was always Loony Tunes at two. But what if they run the really old episodes with World War II references that you’re too young to understand and basically freak you out, instead of the Ali Baba Bunny episode?!

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Ohhhhh God! Adding insult to injury, your bratty brothers and sisters have already housed the Cocoa Pebbles, Apple Jacks, and any other decent cereal worth its weight in sugar-probably on purpose. So there you are in your pajamas with your mother, pouring a pound of sugar on Grape-Nuts in a desperate attempt to make them edible, lost in the wilderness until Alvin, Simon, and Theodore rescue you at 3 o’clock.

From yesterday’s home-sick day, I am here to tell you that not much has improved. First of all, I was probably dying. My head was 400 lbs, throat was on fire, and my complexion was similar to the girl from The Ring. Sure, I have a DVR with Tavis Smiley episodes, Kung Fu Panda, and the Real Housewives of New Jersey. I ate a little better ordering the best Tom Yung Goong (thai soup) I have ever had. But overall… boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooring!

Please, someone call Alvin and tell him I’m dying! Tell him to bring the Chippettes because those episodes could not be beat.

And send Cocoa Pebbles…STAT!

Bowling Bachelorettes in Brooklyn

This weekend’s gratitude journal…

Thank you for what must have been the smoothest trip from Queens to Brooklyn this city has ever seen. Although this did negatively impact my hairstyle, (more time was needed for the curls to naturally dry before applying my patented finger-scrunching technique,) I was thrilled to arrive in Brooklyn via public transportation without my usual mental breakdown.

Thank you for a bachelorette like Kim, who would rather do a cannonball off the Brooklyn Bridge then have a horribly embarrassing bachelorette event. Due to her strict ban on all party favors and games penis-oriented, we were free to have an excellent dinner at Flatbush Farm followed by rock and bowling at Melody Lanes. I forgot how cold the pitchers of Bud are. I also forgot how all of the New Edition, DeBarge, and Bobby Brown they play goes so perfectly to my skilled dance moves after every turn.

Thank you for motivating me to write the next day after way too much Bud. There was no way it was going to happen in Queens since I would be dangerously close to my couch and “Real Housewives of New Jersey” re-runs. So big thanks for the google search that brought up Cafe Grumpy in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I knew I was risking my mental sanity depending on the G train for anything. But Greenpoint- with its homemade pierogies on every corner and quiet cafes where it’s actually possible to get work done - is well worth the risk.

And thank you for the long summer Sundays. There is plenty of time to hole up in a cafe, but still make it back to Queens to witness this typical scene. I don’t think I’ll ever walk by one of these parks and pick up a game of basketball, handball, or chess. Still, it’s nice to know that after 8 years in New York City this is technically a right I can exercise any time I want.

Thank you.