Ten Thing Thursday: Lions and Goslings and Illness Edition

1. Lions and tigers and…you guys, those wild animals escaped in my mom’s town! She said it was absolutely nuts there–like, don’t let your dog out, no school nuts. I just heard Jack Hanna, former director of the Columbus Zoo and all around TV animal guy, say that there are only 1400 Bengal tigers left IN THE WORLD and 18 of them were killed in Ohio today.

That is very, very sobering, and very sad.  Apparently, Ohio has really weak laws preventing private citizens from owning exotic animals, which puts my friend with the lion in more perspective.

2.  Down with patriarchy: Last week, I confided that I would enjoy lapping dew from Marky Mark’s navel.  This week, I’d like to direct you to Feminist Ryan Gosling for an example of what Mark will be saying–in a thick Boston accent–while I am making sweet sweet love to his abs.

3. Speaking of Ohio: The beginning of my lifelong fascination with obscure religious sects and cults was the Amish.  I’m not from Amish country, per se, but it was not uncommon to see groups of them at the grocery store or driving a buggy down the road in my home town.  In sixth grade, we went on a field trip to an Amish family’s home and they cooked us lunch and we saw how they did things without power and jumped on their huge trampoline (so analog!) and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. And now, they have their own cult and they are attacking each other with beard trimmers!  I am not ashamed to tell you that I immediately set up a Google news alert to track these developments. I am planning a trip home to buy some cheese and investigate.

4. Cold season: I have been mainlining Vitamin C this week to fight off an ominous tickle in my sinuses.  I leave for Paris in 23 days, and I have a long history of being too ill to enjoy vacations. For lack of six more interesting things to tell you about, I’m going to enumerate this history now.

5. California, age 14: Growing up, we had one “cool aunt” who lived in California, and I was sent to visit for a few weeks the summer I was 14.  I loved it, though as I try to remember why all I can think of is the new foods I was introduced to: quesadillas, avocados, chile relleno, almond-stuffed olives, garlic-stuffed olives (I think I teared up with joy the first time I ate one), and freshly caught trout, cooked over a campfire in Big Bear. My aunt taught me that the cheeks were the best part.  Prior to this, I don’t believe I had ever seen fish still attached to its skeleton. (I mean, seen it on a plate. We had goldfish.)

But the trip was almost ruined when I came down with a raging ear infection and pharyngitis days before I departed. It was only my second time on an airplane, and I was in no way prepared for the searing, unbearable pain in my ears during take-off and landing. I couldn’t hear for a week after we landed.

6. France, age 17: Let me tell you how many candy bars I sold to fund this trip: a shit ton. Let me tell you how many of said candy bars I ate myself and then paid for with my babysitting money: 90%, easily. My school group went to Paris in February for three weeks and stayed with families in the suburbs, meeting up almost every day to do touristy shit.  It was freezing, and we were always tramping around drafty castles, and I was also drinking quite a bit for a 17 year old, and therefore, I was sick as a dog for the last two weeks. That did not stop me from loving every second of it, though. My host father was a baker. Swoon.

7. Spring break, freshman year: Flight delayed for three days due to ear infection.

8. Christmas, age 24: The back injury that ultimately ended my waitressing career (thank god, in retrospect, as my liver is currently my best organ) rendered me unable to sit upright, so I spent the whole time I was home lying on the dining room floor and visiting with my family from a prone position. It was weird.

9. Ireland, age 27: Again, damp freezing cold, copious alcohol consumption, and sleep deprivation combined to give me the flu. I also sustained a severe facial windburn atop the wall around Derry City, so my face was tomato-red and exquisitely tender. When I had to blow my nose, or rest my fevered cheek on the scratchy pillow cases in our inadequately heated bed and breakfasts, it hurt like fire. I was miserable, and my sister was PISSED at my inability to rally, what with so many Irishmen unkissed.

I spent nearly all of one of the most scenic drives of my life, through the northwestern corner of the country and around the coast in Donegal, with two cashmere scarves wrapped around my head to block light and air while my sister passive-aggressively blasted The Pogues for hours and hours.  She said she needed it to stay awake, but I know that she just hated me.

10. Vieques, Puerto Rico, age 32: My mom and I took my sister here for her 30th birthday. We swam in the world’s brightest bioluminescent bay, and it was amazing. The beaches there are beautiful. I had to go to the hospital and get antibiotics for a–wait for it–ear infection. Once again, upon landing, I was completely deaf.

The emergency rooms in Puerto Rico are not like the emergency rooms here.  And being deaf did not improve my Spanish comprehension skills.

Bonus: Africa, age 34: After a week in safari camp on the plains of the Serengeti, my left ring finger started to hurt a little.  Within a day it was hugely swollen, green, and devastatingly painful, on par with the pain I imagine one experiences in childbirth.  We were on the emptiest end of Zanzibar by this point, so I borrowed some antibiotic ointment from the hotel and hoped for the best. I had to carry my left hand around in my right hand most of the time, trying to keep anything from touching my boo-boo because the slightest little contact made tears come to my eyes.  This made my sunburned walk into town with my sister and her boyfriend that much more enjoyable, let me tell you.