Several years ago Nathan tried to get me to watch this show called Battlestar Galactica. I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my chair and then flat out refused.
Here’s what I was picturing:
I could not be less of a sci-fi fan. In fact, I have on occasion been known to mock sci-fi types, though of course I am now married to one. After all, JACOB WONDERBAR AND THE COSMIC SPACE KAPOW is set in outer space and is, in many ways, Nathan’s homage to THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, a book I still cannot bring myself to read. Let’s put it this way. I laughed my head off all the way through Trekkies.
And so, yeah, I was not about to watch something called Battlestar Galactica.
But over the years, Battlestar Galactica was like a weed that would not die. Nathan continued to beg me to watch it and soon a growing chorus of trusted TV advisers swore I’d like it. Finally I gave in, if only to get some peace and quiet on the topic.
Ahem. Flash forward a few months and I am now a hardcore BSG nerd. It is easily one of the best written shows to ever air on television and transcends its genre. The thing is, I associate sci-fi with bad writing, cheap sets, and silly characters. It’s always a group of men in leotards leaning over their “action stations” at the same time and saying things like, “Captain! The ship can’t take much more of this!”
BSG proves that just because a story is set in outer space it doesn’t have to suck. In fact, you know what? I’m going to go there. I’m going to say it. Battlestar Galactica is what Lost wishes it was. It has a fully developed mythology, complex characters, a gripping plot, and stellar writing and acting. And if loving BSG is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
But converting new people to the show is damn near impossible. Every time I mention it to friends they raise an eyebrow and say something vague. Friends! I totally get it! I did the exact same thing for several years! Sci-fi is kind of terrible. I dig! And yet I promise this show is different.
But there’s no way to sound cool when you talk about BSG. I don’t know what it is, but something about detailing a sci-fi plot makes you go from Normal Person to Super Dork in a matter of seconds. Want an example? Okay, I’ll explain the show in a nutshell for you.
To make their lives easier, humans invented these robots called Cylons. Well, one day the Cylons rebelled and there was a big war. At the end, a peace treaty was signed, forcing the Cylons to leave the planet and never come back. No one heard from them for 40 years and humans got fat and happy. Meanwhile the Cylons were evolving to look like humans and developing an elaborate plot to destroy the human race. They nuke Caprica City and the humans have to flee to outer space. The humans come up with a new plan. They’re going to find their lost tribe on a distant, unknown planet called Earth.
Your eyes were rolling back in your head there, weren’t they? It’s a good plot. It just sounds like serious nerd fodder. But you’re going to have to trust me on this.
Another awesome/hilarious thing about the show is that they have their own slang. For instance, a Cylon that looks like a human is called a “skin job.” And one that looks like a machine is called a “bullet head” or a “toaster.” But my absolute favorite thing they do is substitute the made-up word “frak” in instances where we Earth humans would say, well, you know, the F word.
So now I walk around saying, “This is all fraked up!” and “Frak me!” to make Nathan laugh. Of course he barely has time to laugh because he’s too busy gloating that I love BSG.
As I type this, I’m sitting in a sunny little sala, listening to a burbling fountain outside. We are in San Miguel de Allende in Central Mexico and it took us a long, long time to get here. Not the actual traveling, mind you. More like the journey.
Way back in 2002 I started working as an Editorial Assistant (copy monkey) at Doubleday Broadway, a division of Random House. I have thousands of wacky stories from this era–stories about meeting Elvis Costello, surviving on $30,000 a year in New York City, and mingling with the bookish elite–but we’ll get to those another time.
Being an Editorial Assistant is rather like being an indentured servant. On your first day, they assign you to a Big Important Editor and for the next several years you are 100% at his or her mercy. My boss still works there so I shall withhold his name, but he was at that time, and still is today, arguably the foremost editor of literary nonfiction. He publishes many New York Times bestselling authors, and one of our personal favorites was a writer named Tony Cohan.
“Tony,” as we called him, wrote ON MEXICAN TIME, one of the best-selling and most important travel journals about Mexico. He is beloved in literary circles but has somehow avoided becoming a household name–which I think suits him just fine, thankyouverymuch.
I read Tony’s book before my interview with my potential boss and I think it was my working knowledge of this delightful sojourn that clinched the gig for me. And while I worked at Random House, Tony would go on to write another travel memoir about Mexico, MEXICAN DAYS, and another book about growing up in L.A., NATIVE STATE. Seriously, you should check him out if you like literary memoirs.
Tony’s first book, ON MEXICAN TIME, was about a place I had never heard of, San Miguel de Allende. What he described sounded like a wonderland to me. Cobblestone colonial streets, brightly painted stone buildings, street parades with brass bands, and a thriving community of expat artists from all over the world. On those cold, snowy nights in Brooklyn, when I had just barely enough money to pay the rent, I dreamed of visiting this sunny escape and getting lost to time–and maybe never coming back.
His follow up book, MEXICAN DAYS, picks up where the first book left off. After he’s been away for awhile, he returns to his beloved San Miguel to find it overrun with an American movie crew filming Zorro and too many gringos. He decamps for nearby Guanajuato in search of a new adventure, a town still not on foreign radars.
From the first moment I met Nathan, I began telling him about San Miguel and Guanajuato and soon he caught the fever too. For years we tried to get down here and explore the two towns we had fallen in love with through someone else’s words, but it never worked out. The timing was off. The money wasn’t there. The swine flu broke out.
Then, a few months ago, Nathan got invited to attend the San Miguel Writers’ Conference. He forwarded the email to me and said, “I’m guessing we can’t say yes fast enough…” And say yes we did.
It would be hard for a place to measure up to my wild imagination and Tony’s vivid writing, and yet San Miguel has been everything that he promised it would be and even more than my mind could conjure. There are no beaches. There is little nightlife to speak of. There aren’t even many attractions. The town is the attraction, as our Lonely Planet guidebook says.
And everywhere, there are artists, everywhere there is someone who wants to hear about your novel, who is at the ready with a hilarious story about the time he met Richard Yates. And today, we are off to Guanajuato, where our next adventure awaits.
Until then, amigos. Una margarita en las rocas con sal is waiting for me.
Making wacky homemade valentines was not the only thing we did last weekend. We also went…drum roll please….HIKING. With our dog! We need some meds!
I have gone on record several times to say that hiking is walking long distances to nowhere. I simply don’t enjoy it that much, which is funny because my parents are super into it and even have hiking stick thingies. Um, hiking poles? Well, anyway, they often fly to Colorado and don funny boots and hike their little hearts out, but somehow I missed this gene.
Perhaps I was suffering a brief bout of amnesia or was just feeling accommodating for the holiday, but somehow Nathan talked me into a day hike in nearby Point Reyes for Valentine’s Day. We were really feeling like a couple of geniuses. After all Point Reyes is really not that popular and most people would probably go to the beach, the ski slopes, or the wine country! Point Reyes, on the other hand, is known for its dairies, barbecued oysters, and hiking through foggy forests.
So we researched a trail that allowed dogs, we dressed Buster in his Chihuahua hiking gear, and loaded him in the Honda Accord for the two-hour trip. Now Buster loves himself a good road trip. At this point in the day, he’s really stoked we thought to include him. Chihuahuas hate to be left behind and their little imaginations go wild with all the fun things you’re clearly doing without them. This probably only confirmed in Buster’s mind that normally when we leave him at home we are not heading to work (as we have patiently explained one million times). Oh no! We are going on exciting road trips without him.
Our first stop was The Marshall Store and it was mobbed. MOBBED. So much for our genius theory. Anyway if you haven’t been to The Marshall Store you should tout de suite. It’s a small shack that serves incredible food and bottles of beer and wine. You can’t drink the booze on their property because of the small technicality of them not having a liquor license, so everybody eats outside on the nearby docks. I ate my weight in barbecued oysters roasted over an open fire, Nathan enjoyed a crab sandwich, and Buster just soaked up the sun, the world’s happiest Chihuahua. Little did he know things would soon go south for him. Very very south.
From there we set off for our hiking adventure. Now our guidebook mentioned that the first part of the trail is technically a shortcut through a cow pasture. No biggie, right? It also said we probably wouldn’t see any cows but to be careful if we did because they can get aggressive and run you off the trail. Hmmm…This is what we found when we got there. Buster was not super excited about them.
Then, things went from bad to worse about 10 yards into the hike. A puddle. A HUGE puddle. Well, I thought, we’ll just carry him through this part and I’m sure it gets better up ahead.
Wrong. We walked for over a mile THROUGH A COW PASTURE, ignoring angry looks from aggressive cows and sinking up to our ankles in mud and manure. Did I mention the smell? Disgusting. Meanwhile, O Short One is beginning to get really upset. Was this our idea of fun? he wanted to know. Dragging him through mud puddles up to his armpits? Because this was officially Chihuahua abuse.
Finally, I called it an official disaster and we headed back to the car, only to be forced to retrace our steps through the Swamp of Sadness with our little Artax. He spent the entire two-hour ride home glaring at me, as if he knew what awaited him.
Like cats, they don’t recommend you bathe Chihuahuas much (or ever). I probably give Buster a bath once a year and a weekly wipe down with little doggy grooming wipes. Their skin dries out and they loathe getting messy so they’re never very dirty. It’s just a better system all around. But he was FILTHY and there was no avoiding it.
Never again. I’ve sworn off hiking for real this time.
You know how people always say Valentine’s Day was invented by greeting card companies to sell red-and-white cards with canned expressions of amour? Well, it’s kind of true and kind of not. That’s not why it was invented but it is certainly why it’s so popular. But usually when people quote that old chestnut, what I hear them saying is, “I don’t feel like celebrating love this year.” And hey, BEEN THERE.
After a particularly nasty break-up in early adulthood, I took a nice long sabbatical from New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day–the two most romantic days of the year (allegedly). And then, I met Nathan, and life seemed very very sweet–even when, by all accounts, it was crashing down around my ears–and I felt like feteing love again.
We’ve now been together seven Valentine’s Days and somewhere along the line we developed the funny tradition of making each other offbeat cards. Actually, I just confirmed it with him and indeed this was my BRILLIANT idea. In fact, I think when you see my card, you’ll be like, Oh yeah. That has Alison written all over it.
You see, I am not, what you might call, “a crafty person.” My handwriting has repeatedly been described as that of a “twelve-year-old boy’s,” I can barely match my clothes, and my mother’s only advice for me when I announced that I was getting married was, “Oh god. Please pay people to do all the crafty stuff for you.” My only creative outlets are writing and cooking. You’ll note that neither involves “artistry.”
Yet once a year I ignore all evidence to the contrary and attempt to make an handmade Valentine for Nathan. After all, what corporation makes a greeting card that could properly express the very specific outpourings of my love and affection? None, I tell you.
This is what it looks like when I get creative
Behold, his Valentine. Well, a page from his Valentine. His “card” is actually a stapled-together, multi-page booklet. This page is very meta, which is why I love it. Or very Magritte. I’m not sure which. Maybe it’s both?
Coming to a Kindle near you summer 2011
Hungry for more? Okay, here’s another page. I’m particularly proud of this one.
You, Improved! Hahahaha
I only wish I had photos from the year I made him a Barack Obama Valentine. That one was the stuff of LEGEND–second only to the year I cut up an entire Victoria’s Secret catalog and pasted little word bubbles coming out of the models’ mouths.
His Valentine for me is even better. He went with a New Yorker theme, wherein he cut out their esoteric cartoons and then mocked them without mercy. Has there ever been a magazine that collectively knew so very little about love? Good, I’m glad we can agree.
There’s just something about making your own Valentine that makes you feel connected. Plus, making your own doesn’t let the greeting card companies win. There’s nothing wrong with feteing love. But only do it if you want to and do it on your own terms.
I used to clean every flat surface in my apartment with 409. Hey, it puts grease on the run. How could I resist? But after using it on a beloved antique wooden tabletop for a year, it began to eat away at the varnish. I started thinking, Hey, maybe this 409 stuff is kind of toxic. Maybe it’s eating away at my skin too!
That’s when I went looking for a newer, greener all-purpose spray. I did some casting around for awhile, trying different products, and finally settled on the Clorox Green Works Natural Glass and Surface Cleaner. And after a year of using it, I’m ready to declare it a Green Scheme Success.
I use that one in the middle, the clear one. This is not to be confused the Green Works Natural All-Purpose Cleaner. I decided against that one because it’s dyed green and I have this weird thing about “green” products being dyed green. I mean…it’s not green just because you DYED IT GREEN. Also, isn’t it the very antithesis of being green to unnecessarily DYE something green? (It probably is eco-friendly, but I have my hang-ups so I went with the clear one.)
Now out there in Hard-Core Green Internet Land, there’s a big debate going on about how green these products can be when they are produced by Clorox, a company with a checkered environmental past. But the Green Scheme is not here to debate the relative greeness of products. All products have their pros and cons and those are debated all over of the Internet. (Inhabitat did a good deep-dive into Green Works if you want to geek out on it.)
No, the Green Scheme assesses products on their day-to-day practicality. And this product gets a HUGE thumbs up from me.
I have sort of come to hate our black granite countertops because they show every speck of food and every bit of grime. Sometimes I think if I wrote my autobiography it might be called: My Life Cleaning My Damned Countertops. And cleaning them had been impossible before I found the Green Works spray. The streaks! Ahhhh! They were everywhere!
But this stuff works wonders on them. Just a few pumps, a quick wipe with a paper towel, and voila! Streak-free perfection. Even better, I use it on that beloved wooden tabletop and the new coat of varnish has stayed put. If you’re looking for a new counter spray, give this one a whirl.
Well, the bash at Holly’s was incredible, but you’ll have to hop over to her site to check it out. However, I can share with you two of the cheesiest pictures of us you’ll ever find.
Holly had the brilliant idea to stage prom-style portraits at the party and we were more than happy to oblige. Behold, awkwardness recaptured.
In this one, I’m smiling so hard it physically pains me to look at myself.
And in this one, I’m adoring Nathan like he’s Don Draper to my Betty Draper…but like, during the first season…when I’m still content to just make him cocktails and smoke cigarettes instead of eating and watch the maid raise our two perfect children.
Tonight chereHolly at Nothing But Bonfires has invited the lot of us over to celebrate her 30th year on this mysterious planet. And she has one request: dress to kill. The funny thing about this request is, when she made it, I had to clarify.
Me: So you want the guys to wear…suits? Or did you just mean that they should dress up in a general sort of way?
She laughed and said in her most polite British way, “I was thinking suits, if they don’t mind.”
Ohhhhhh. That’s when my thoughts immediately went to this:
Baby Alison bought this dress in France. Picture it. 1997. I am a small-town Southern girl who’s gone off to college and discovered–loophole of loopholes!–you can complete your French minor by studying abroad. Realizing my parents would sign off on this because, you know, it’s still school, I quickly sold them on the idea and was off on my first great travel adventure.
(Wait, no. The first time I went abroad was in high school for basically the same reason. Language study. But at the time, I had been studying Spanish. They combined the Spanish and French classes into one big trip and took us on a two-week whirlwind tour of the two countries. Entre nous, I had no great affection for Spain, the country we explored first, but the moment my toes touched French soil I knew I was home. I would never take Spanish again.)
That summer is one of my fondest memories. I was so completely charmed by Paris and so utterly overwhelmed by the glamor of it all. And for the last two weeks, we went to live in Lyon because our French prof was from there and she missed home. I had no idea there was somewhere on the planet even better than Paris, but there is and it’s name is Lyon. And, miracle of miracles!, instead of getting stuck with yet another French family I got…wait for it….wait for it…assigned to live with a twenty-five-year-old girl named Emmanuelle. Manue, as she was called, looked like my cool French older sister and her boyfriend, who was in a band, secretly lived with her. His name was Julien.
I spent the rest of my time following Manue around, admiration for her written all over my face, and she tolerated me in a completely endearing French sort of way. And one afternoon we went shopping together and stumbled upon this dress in a boutique. It was the Soldes–the once in a year sales–and it was on sale but still an unfathomable amount of money to me at the time. We both tried it on and we both got one. (This made it better somehow. She wanted one too! It was cool!)
I’ve worn it a few times and I always get compliments, but thanks to its FLOOR LENGTH hemline, there are not a lot of uses for it in my life. In fact, I haven’t worn it since grad school in 2001 so NATHAN HAS NEVER EVEN SEEN IT ON MY BODY. In fact, I’m not entirely sure he knew it has been crouching in our closet for all these years. But voila!
Anyway tonight it’s making its grand debut and, as I told Holly, I MIGHT even wear lipstick to celebrate the occasion.
(Record skips at the party.)
Um, yeah. That’s correct. I don’t, uh, ever wear lipstick. I also don’t change my earrings. Oh, I haven’t mentioned that yet? Well, basically every morning I get ready in 20 minutes. 10 minutes in the shower and 10 minutes out of the shower. Now, true, I am a busy lady but that’s not exactly why I do this. The truth is I get bored and just think, Well, this will have to suffice.
You see, the entire world falls into two simple categories for me: Things That Seem Worth It and Things That Don’t. I believe many people know and love these two categories but they also have one entitled Things I Don’t Love But Do Anyway Because You Should.
That’s kind of where I fall apart. Should I put a little more effort into my appearance every day? Probably! But it doesn’t seem worth and thus I don’t. Now this isn’t to say I waste time because the good lord knows I do. But I waste it on Things That Seem Worth It. For instance, I can lose an entire day to cooking. I can’t explain it, but I just enjoy it.
However, there are a number of very normal things that people do that I simply skip.
Things That Don’t Seem Worth It:
Going to the Gym
Changing My Earrings
Shopping in Person (I only shop online)
Sending Christmas Cards
Eating Something Different Every Day (I eat the same thing all week)
Taking a Lunch Break
Doing Stuff to My Hair
Flossing
99.9% of All Hobbies (basically everything but cooking and writing)
Wearing High Heels
Hanging Out with Acquaintances
You get the basic idea. This personality quirk makes me a little odd, but it also helps me be uber-efficient so I guess it balances out somewhere down the line. And I come by it naturally. My whole family is this way, though their lists differ from mine quite a bit.
So tonight, I’m going to spend probably a whopping 30 minutes getting ready and I’m going to wear a dress that looks like curtains and put on lipstick and have the time of my life. Happy birthday, Holly!
My aunt passed along some old pictures this morning and I can’t stop looking at them. Behold, my father as a young hipster.
For some reason, I’ve always been obsessed with old pictures. In fact as a petulant middle child, I once compared all three baby books in my family–my brother’s, mine, and my baby sister’s–side by side and found that mine had the fewest pictures. Yes, I counted them. AND mine did not contain a clipping from my first haircut–as theirs did. Seeing this as SCIENTIFIC PROOF of a problematic and systematic policy of ignoring me in favor of my siblings, I brought it to my mother’s immediate attention.
She shrugged and admitted that my childhood was a very busy time, with my brother becoming a big boy and my baby sister riding on her hip. She apologized and promised they loved us all the same. Ha! Likely story, lady.
“Well, when I’m a mother, I’m going to make sure that I take the EXACT same number of pictures of each child,” I said. She smiled and said, “You do that.”
To this day, it’s one of their favorite stories about me. Oh middle child angst! The truth is, I’m a natural ham and no amount of attention is really enough. There could always be more, more, more! But thanks to my over-achieving siblings, I’ve learned to share the spotlight. (They’d make Chelsea Clinton look like a lazy dolt.)
Want to peek at a few more? I’m so glad you asked! Here are my grandparents on my dad’s side, Preston and Myrtle:
My sister is basically a copy of my grandmother. It’s almost freaky how much they look alike and no one looks like my grandfather. If my grandmother hadn’t been such a teetotaling, bible-thumping kind of lady, I might cry foul. But we’re talking about a lady who wouldn’t play BINGO at her retirement community because it’s GAMBLING! In case you didn’t know, gambling is a sin to god-fearin’ Southern folks.
Here’s my Aunt Judy getting married. I think this was before people thought to smile in pictures. Can someone explain that to me? The need to be grim? In real life, Aunt Judy is the life of the party. Also, can we all agree that the girl’s got style? In spades?
And here’s my mom, rocking the coolest hair ever. She was stunning and we all fight to say we look like her, but alas, my dad’s genes have proved to be much, much more dominant.
I love the way old pictures help you stop and remember that every day, every moment, time is passing. And though it doesn’t feel like it now, this hairstyle, that dog, it’s all fleeting and important and one day, you’ll look back on it and think, My god. We were so young then!
Or maybe I’m just going to end up being that weird aunt that’s obsessed with genealogy, the one who turns up at Thanksgiving every year saying, “We’re related to George Washington! And the Queen of England! And Eli Whitney!”
your body does not want to get out of bed in the morning. And while I do blame Maui a little, there’s another contributing factor. WE HAD A BED MAKEOVER! You see, recently we got massages and at the end of the session my masseuse said two highly embarrassing but unrelated things.
1) Were you a gymnast? Because you’re really…muscle-y.
Me: (Dying in shame) Um, no.
2) Oh, well. Your back and neck were really messed up. I almost never have people that bad off.
For my entire adult life–no wait, longer than that–for my entire life, I have hated my bed. I HAVE HATED MY BED. Sorry. I wasn’t sure if the desperation was really coming through. I never used to understand when people rhapsodized about staying in bed all day or spent a full five minutes bragging about how comfy their bed was. Beds? They’re merely a necessary evil.
And for as long as I can remember, I’ve been trying to fix the problem. I’ve owned every kind of wacky pillow ever, I’ve tried soft mattresses, firm mattresses, side sleeping, back sleeping, floor sleeping, no pillow sleeping. Nothing. ever. works.
Until now.
I’ve been holding off on saying anything for a few weeks, worried I was going to jinx it, but Nathan just confirmed that this isn’t in my head. I have officially and successfully given our bed the best makeover ever and now I have to DRAG myself out of it every morning.
I bought a three-inch, memory-foam, stay-cool mattress topper on Overstock.com. (Don’t you love them? I swear the company is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy.) Two years ago, my sister got one of those horrifically expensive Tempur-Pedic beds and every time I’m at her apartment she brags and brags and brags about how it’s changed her life. I’ve always been tempted to get one but I can’t bring myself to part with the cash, so this little mattress topper was my compromise with myself. I figured we could at least get a sense of what the Tempur-Pedic was like.
It arrived in three days flat and the shipping was only $2.95. How, I don’t know. It was heavier than a piano. The only thing I can figure is someone REALLY SEXY over at Overstock is sleeping with the CEO of UPS.
And now, I can’t wait to go to bed at night. This sucker minimizes movement from the person on the other side of the mattress, which is great for me because Nathan has been known to RUN in his sleep. It provides just the right balance of support and softness, and every morning I wake up feeling like a newborn baby. I don’t see how a real Tempur-Pedic could beat it.
The only problem with a bed makeover is that no one really gets to see the proof of all your hard work and research. Anyone want to come over and have a bed picnic with me? No, I didn’t think so. Sigh. Well, you’re just going to have to trust me on this one.
Alison Presley lives in San Francisco with her husband Nathan Bransford. She's locked in an unhealthy relationship with her work-in-progress (a novel). And so far this year she has eaten 10 frozen pizzas from Trader Joe's.
And here’s my mom, rocking the coolest hair ever. She was stunning and we all fight to say we look like her, but alas, my dad’s genes have proved to be much, much more dominant.
