Stupid Gras.

Okay. I'm pretty sure everyone I know from the New Orleans area will be significantly disappointed in me for saying this, but...I hate Mardi Gras. (Dun dun DUN.) (That was the sound of ominous thunder, beeteedubs.) I always have, though. Hated Mardi Gras, that is. I think this stems mainly from my being forced to march in parades from the fifth through twelfth grades, but there are maaaaaany other factors involved. Which I will hereby list. I feel confident in the fact that you all (all ten of you) will at least concede to the fact that Mardi Gras is not always the awesomely-amazing Time Of The Year that everyone proclaims it to be.

A of all, Mardi Gras smells like horses. Everywhere. And, to be honest, horses stink. (Please don't think that I mean any disrespect to the horsies. I have long had a fascination with horsies, in fact. They are majestic animals, and I used to want at least a pony when I was younger. We used to have the Barbie Horse And Trailer set, too. It came with TWO ACTUAL WALKING HORSES. Like, no lie. Those things could clip-clop across the kitchen floor with a robotic, heavily-jointed ease, even with a vapidly-smiling Barbie atop their plastic little backs. But their manes got tangled easily. This is what I remember about them.) But the scent of actual horses is rather distasteful. And what smells more than the actual horses is their shit. And that, my friends, is EVERYWHERE during Mardi Gras. In fact, I actually associate the smell of horse poop with Mardi Gras. I was in Central Park yesterday, and I entered by the 59th street entrance, where there's an abundance of horse-drawn carriages just waiting for hapless tourists. And whenever the smell of horsie shit would waft over to my nostrils, I would immediately be transported back to my parade days and feel a small panic come over my body. And then I would just as immediately remember that I was nowhere near New Orleans or Mardi Gras or that extraspecial brand of debauchery that makes its presence felt in the months of February and March. I was only near ordinary horsie shit.

B of all, there's no place to use the bathroom. Unless, of course, you happen to be near a Port-O-Potty, which is certainly a very attractive option for one to urinate in. (I don't even want to GO into the idea of defecating in one of those things. Although it certainly happens--and often, too, judging from the odor and residue which are both painfully present.) And there's ALWAYS a line for those disgusting things. Who wants to wait in line to pee in a claustrophobic box that smells like pee and shit (but not horse shit, at least)? I also have a personal problem of pee-shyness, so this wholly complicates matters. I can't pee in unfamiliar places or if there's no sound of running water close at hand or if I am aware that other people are waiting for me or if I am nervous in any way. (Yes, this makes my life as difficult as one might imagine. I used to be so good at peeing, too. In high school, we would have pee races, and I totes dominated. Alas.) So, there's that.

C of all, there is NEVER any place to park. (I'm using a lot of Caps Lock today, and I'm fully aware of it. I'm doing my best to convey my nearly-complete hatred of Mardi Gras, and the Caps Lock seems to be the most efficient way of doing that.) And if you do manage to find a place to park, you may as well just count on spending the night in your car, because you will most assuredly end up being double-parked. This has happened to my family on many an occasion, with one instance being particularly horrendous. I believe we were attending Shangri-La, after it moved from Chalmette to New Orleans, and this seemingly nice lady had offered up her sizeable and bricked-in front yard as a parking lot. Granted, she was charging people to park there, but I don't think my dad was wrong in assuming that we'd be able to leave the makeshift parking lot once the parade was good and over, since she was acting as if this was a legit, paying parking lot. But oh no no no. We arrived back at the lady's front yard, once the parade was completely and totally over, only to find that we had not only been double-parked but double-parked without even a hope of escape. I mean, I was probably only ten or so at the time, but I remember very distinctly that there was about a foot of space behind our Plum Mist Windstar minivan (yes, that was the official name of the minivan's color, and yes, we did refer to the van by its full name, color included, on the reg) and probably about a foot between the van's front and the lady's house. It took HOURS for us to get out of the parking spot--and this was after waiting a considerable time for the bastard who parked behind us to return from his post-parade forays and move his stupid car. And I am actually not exaggerating when I say that it took hours. Frankly, I'm not sure how my daddy managed to get us out of that space, to this day. I remember he had to move the car--again, not exaggerating here--inch by painful inch, frontwards and backwards, until we had literally jimmied the Plum Mist Windstar out of the spot. I remember being very, very nervous the entire time. My dad and mom kept having to get out of the car and re-assess the situation with each new inch of movement.

Gah. Just thinking about that incident makes me want to punch several people in the tooth.

D of all, your feet are constantly being stepped on. And yeah, we're all wearing tennis shoes, but still. Having your feet stepped on again and again and again is significantly painful. As is being elbowed in the face by some completely and unnecessarily overzealous man who thinks that the beads he has now managed to catch (at only the expense of MY LEFT EYEBALL) will actually still be important to him, come tomorrow morning. I mean, really. These are beads. Plastic, mass-produced beads. Even the "good stuff"--feather-embellished plastic spears and horribly unattractive stuffed animals and fake poop and banana moonpies (I'm so aghast at this list and the memories it evokes that I'm actually shuddering as I type this)--is not worth my left eyeball. These are cheap, stupid things that will almost immediately go in your attic or in the trash. Bah.

And truthfully, I really don't think I can accurately go into how awful parade marching was. Suffice it to say that one year, during high school, while marching in an obscenely long Metairie parade, I ran ahead to the McDonald's at the halfway point of the Bonnabel loop with a few other cheerleaders to use the bathroom, and ended up dropping my white beanie into the toilet as I relayered my cheerleading turtleneck, uniform top, hoodie sweatshirt, and jacket. And the toilet had NOT been flushed yet. And I had to put it BACK ON MY HEAD. Because the remaining fifteen cheerleaders were wearing beanies, and we all had to look exactly alike. Re. Volt. Ing. (Actually, that will NOT suffice it to say, upon further reflection. Among my many other disorders, I also cannot drink water whilst participating in cardiovascular physical activities, because it makes me extremely nausated. I was pretty desperate one parade during high school, however, and swigged a half bottle of water out of sheer dehydration. Huuuuuuuge mistake. I could barely march, let alone bust out our painfully repetitive cheerleading parade dances, due to my nausea. I ended up vomiting profusely all over my pom-poms during the last quarter mile of the parade. Bleh. So gross. So awful. Mardi Gras, I hate you. I hate you.)

Really, the only truly good thing about Mardi Gras is kingcake. And even that is a bit stale (oh yes, pun indeed intended) for me, since I was forced to have a kingcake every single year for my school birthday cake. I used to dream of being able to bring in a beautiful white sheet cake, heavily and beautifully iced with my name and rosettes, with a strawberry jam filling. Instead, my sisters and I were forced to immediately relinquish any of the babies we found in kingcakes during each Mardi Gras season so that my mother could collect them and manually insert them into the giant kingcake I would bring to class each year on my birthday. Which totally made getting the baby not as cool and special. One year, seven kids in my class got the baby. Seven. So getting the baby that year was only one-seventh as cool as it could've been. Whatevs. Gotta make the kids feel special, yada yada yada.

Good News: My Sympathetic Nervous System is Working. Quite Well, In Fact.

Today is Tuesday. On Tuesday mornings, I work the front desk at a dance studio downtown, beginning at 8:30 am. I have to leave my upper-east-side apartment by 7:40ish--7:45 at the absolute latest--to make it on time.

This morning, I awoke at 8:30.

Naturally, extreme panic immediately took place in my body and brain. I am quite amazed, though, at the method of response my body chose in this time of dire need: a combination of auto pilot and instant prioritizing. First: get out of the bed. (Which was actually more difficult than one might imagine, this time around. I sleep with two sets of covers, and in my state of hysteria, I became tangled up in the both of them. Lots of frantic leg-kicking ensued. This is easy to imagine, I'm sure.) Second: pick up cell phone, which is resting next to bed on nightstand, and wonder why the hell the alarm didn't go off. This was easily figured out--it had shut itself off in the middle of the night, despite its still being plugged in and charged. (My cell phone alone deserves a blog, really. It has served me well for the past year and a half, but it must be very, very near its death, because it has developed certain idiosyncrasies which sometimes make it difficult for me to carry on a normal life. For example. My phone likes to send its own text messages--which are never composed of anything more frightening than gibberish like 99999iiishshsoogogogg or 89898989898oooo--to made-up phone numbers that usually include an alarming number of sixes. It also likes to tell me that it's about to die, even when fully charged, and then it follows through on that warning by shutting itself off in the midst of a phone call. But I digress.)

So, I spend a precious ten seconds cursing my cell phone. That was apparently necessary, according to my parasympathetic nervous system, which is now in overdrive. It feels as if I have ice in my veins. Now: pants. Those must come on. I spy a pair of slightly-dirty jeans on my bedroom floor and throw them on. I still have my socks on from yesterday, so that leaves only shoes. Tennie sneaks are thrust upon my feet with speed and absolutely no grace. I stagger to the bathroom as I'm shoving my heels into my converse and assess the situation that faces me in the mirror. Naturally, I immediately wish I hadn't. I still have my makeup on from the previous day, and my hair is a fright. (I do not mean that in a figurative way. My hair literally gave me a fright. It...scared me.) I had had plans of taking a shower this morning--delusions of grandeur, now--but all but the essentials must be abandoned. Face-washing? Nope, my brain answered. None of that. No time. Hair-brushing? Ahahaaaa, my brain laughed. Good one, you little jokester, you. Coffee? My brain didn't even dignify that one with a response. So, I brushed my teeth. And put my contacts in. Those were my only hygenic and aesthetic allotments of the morning.

I grab my coat off one of the kitchen chairs, snap up my purse from next to the coffee table, run out the door and down the stairs, and haul ass to the subway station. I promptly began sweating (truly, this is a miracle of both science and God, that I began sweating in thirty-four-degree weather), once on the train, when I realized we were going at roughly a snail's pace and that I had absolutely no shot of getting to the dance studio by even 9 am.

I didn't officially enter the studio until 9:18. Luckily, the front desk manager who works with me, Arianne, had very kindly opened up the studio sound systems and let those poor people who were waiting for me to open everything up inside once she got here at 9 am. I then frantically rushed around, doing my opening duties at hyper-speed, studiously avoiding looking at my reflection in the mirror, frightful hair trailing behind me in my wake.

I need...a shower.