But here are some things I do know after 9 days in Wroxton:

• No matter where in the world I travel, it I am destined to be the ‘fourth dude’ rounding out a group of three guys.  However, it seems now I have reached the age where I no longer a guy-girl but Wendy to their lost boys.  I’m still processing how I feel about that…
• Don’t eat Bangers and Mash after 8 p.m. if you plan on sleeping that night.  I turned into some sort of evil British Gremlin
• You don’t have to tip for drinks when you are in English pubs.
• We seriously need to have “tea time” in America – I will be bringing this up with my boss at our next status update.  I may crack out from withdrawal when I get back
• Careful when you use the word utilize – it does not always mean what you think it means
• They don’t sell rice pudding in Oxford.  Trust us, we checked everywhere.
• No matter what country you are in, drinking red wine AND doing shots of whiskey is never a good idea.
• There is an actual prison in London called “The Clink” and that is where the term comes from.
• Everyone, no matter where they’re from, has a Keith Richards story.

For me, the greatest thing I learned here is to just admit all the things I don’t know.  I’ve spent years being afraid to ask too many questions and peel away the layers of my stupidity for the world to see. I guess once you accidentally brand yourself “White Girl with a Fat Ass” to anyone who has a working knowledge of how to Google – which is pretty much the entire world except my mom – fear of embarrassment is no longer an issue.

My best times during this residency have been my “Moron Moments” where I finally just fessed up that I didn’t know what they hell all these wonderfully well-read writers were talking about, because after I asked they explained it to me.  MAGIC!

I’m reading a piece that I wrote and work-shopped over the course of the week at the New Student Reading tonight.  I’m excited but also a bit nervous.  Want to read it?  I know you do.  CLICK HERE to donate to my virtual food drive for Feeding America – in support of the 1 in 6 Americans struggling with hunger and I will send it to you.

That’s the deal.  Why?  Because I’m in England and only have one night left sleeping in an Abbey/Tinderbox and I said so.  Cheers

However, the kindly british housekeeping staff at the estate keep sweeping my curtains open for me like they do at a hotel. Pip, pip, cheerio and what the frak! They totally keep breaking my beaver dam of warmth. I can only imagine what they think upon seeing all my clothes piled up on the windowsill Henry Hughes style. So today I shut the curtain tight, walled up the window with clothes and left this note,

PLEASE DO NOT OPEN CURTAIN. I FOUND DOING THIS KEEPS THE ROOM WARMER. CHEERS.

I added the cheers with the small hope that this would keep them from thinking I’m batshit crazy. Fingers crossed it works!

Yesterday I had fish ‘n chips for lunch, we were visited by an amazing poet and I learned what Treacle is and I worked on revising my drafts for pieces that I’m sharing in a workshop on Saturday and a new student reading on Sunday. More importantly, I finally managed to get my hair looking half-way decent. This morning, after a really amazing workshop I set off to walk the grounds. The sun was shining and as I trekked across the estate taking pictures of rolling green hills, fairy tale trees and the redrum-esque abbey itself I settled into a rare moment of complete peace and gratefulness. Then it started to rain, sprinkling at first. I had walked to the farthest point of the grounds, out by the waterfall (yes, a waterfall!!) and I stopped in awe to admire the grand double rainbow this sunny sprinkle-shower created. I tried to get a picture of this beautiful phenomenon but like a foreboding jump cut in a horror movie the sky went hazy grey and it started to pour. My moment was over.

Sliding back across the muddy estate while being drenched by a sudden rainstorm was actually quite fun. Only my hair is back to crap. I immediately came down to our computer lab in the basement of the abbey, not only to share this with you, but because it is snug down here and if I went back up to my room I’d be risking pneumonia.

Upcoming: Today my group workshops the writing samples I brought with me, I am on a mission to eat Bangers and Mash, and tomorrow I’m going to try and visit Oxford.

attended a lecture on the book Train Whistle Guitar

walked 3 and 1/2 miles through the English countryside to the castle from Shakespeare in Love

saw some sheep

was licked by a Scottish Terrier

ate a gammon, leek and mustard pie at a fancy pub

traded stories about famous musicians

had a pint

walked 3 and 1/2 miles home from a castle as the sun set on the English countryside

took lots of pictures – which you shall see at some point

Now I shall nap, and later work on my writing assignment.

Lloyd, I might never come home….

Which brings me to what I’m really going to talk about, my Hair. I’ve discovered the most efficient way to complain about the petty details in life is by utilizing bullet points so let’s review:

• I lugged a ridiculously heavy electricity adapter/converter to the U.K. which is undoubtably part of why my luggage was overweight
• along with that came a hair dryer and hair straightener (Thank you Caroline for teaching me to straighten my hair – now it’s like hair crack. I can’t stop) and a small bedside clock. note: the clock is unhair-related but factors in later. And of course, hair product
• BUT God forbid with all of this packing and electricity preparedness, I had actually packed my HAIRBRUSH. the manual item that I need the most.
• A friend smartly pointed out that, “thank goodness they sell hair brushes in England” which is logical and fine if you are anywhere near a store and not in a long-ago century manor that Lord North once lived in.
• Then we were asked to check our electrical products in at reception upon arrival so they could test them – due to the fact that a spark or any kind of malfunction from any electrical device could set off the fire alarms or far worse, set a fire (7 minutes to take hold of the tinder box!)
• Unfortunately, the guy who checks electrical things was apparently at the pub all night and I never got my stuff back. So, when I went to bed I had no hairbrush, and no working hair dryer or straightener. and no way to tell what time it was or wake myself up in the morning.

This morning, I did wake up. Late, but early enough to grab the last of breakfast (which I went to with my hair in a ponytail and my bangs looking like a member of an 80s rock band) and on the way back from breakfast I checked back in at reception. The electrics guy was still hung over from a long night at the pub, but the kindly, super helpful Mrs. Doubtfire-esque woman who was there very generously let me rifle through a box of items left by former students and pick out a British hair straightener and tiny alarm clock. I got my bag of useless American devices back and remembered that my hair dryer (while now useless to dry hair) is shaped like a hairbrush so I can use that until I can get myself back to this century and buy one. The rest I lugged here all for nothing apparently.

I’m going to go back to my room now and use the British hair straightener. I know this is riveting for all of you and exactly what you expected to hear about from my trip overseas to go after an MFA in creative non-fiction – so I will keep you posted on how my hair comes out!

I ordered and ate Thai Food like it was my JOB!

I wish I could say I hated myself for this, or got sick or couldn’t sleep because I was too full.  But no, I slept on a care bear cloud of carbs and had the most amazing dream….

55 hours until my trip and I need a salad intervention.

Why am I experiencing a full-body panic attack?  Because this Friday after work I’m flying to London where hopefully a van will be waiting to pick me up in “the meeting place” (yes, according to the information packet I received it’s just called ‘the meeting place’ and that doesn’t freak me out at all…) to take me to Wroxton University in Wroxton England – for a 10-day writing residency.  This residency kicks off a 2-year MFA program in Creative Non-Fiction with Fairleigh Dickinson University.  What is Creative Non-Fiction, you ask?  Well, you’re reading it right now.  And if you are a WGWaFA fan, it’s what you’ve been reading for quite a while now – what do you think?

Thank you to everyone who has read and donated to WGWaFA! To date we’ve raised a total of $5260 to fight hunger in America.  That means I’m only a little over $700 away from my goal of $6000 raised.  CLICK HERE to donate to my virtual food drive for Feeding America and keep it going.      Quell the panic people!

It has been requested that I blog during my trip and I’m going to do my best to keep you all updated during my time in England.  It occurs to me now, as I am on the precipice of a program entirely reliant on my life being interesting enough to write about, what the hell am I going to write about?  Here’s a quick mental list I’ve come up with so far:

• The time I met Santa Claus and Robin Williams on the same day while working at Disney World
• accidentally crossing the border into Mexico and trying to explain to the Federales our car full of Children’s theater props and costumes
• helping deliver my niece (if you can call mostly watching and not passing out helping)
• the card I bought for him on a whim, wrote a heartfelt message in two years later, but chickened out on delivering
• almost getting kidnapped out of a hospital waiting room as a small child and thinking it was all a dream for years
• 100 first dates (I would go into detail but it’s too depressing for the second day of the year)
• how when I was a kid, I once told a priest during confession that I killed somebody, just to test if they really do keep whatever you say during confession confidential.  And they don’t!

Help me out here kind readers – which of these stories appeal to you?  And are there any others I’ve shared on WGWaFA over the years that you think make excellent candidates for developing as part of this new program- let me know?  I’d love to hear from you!

Alright, the numbness is reaching my fingers… more…  soon

My natural state is to focus on what I don’t have instead of all wonderful things in my life. And nothing brings this sniveling streak out in me more than Christmas. Ever since I was a kid and my entire family would cram into my grandmother’s stuffy one-bedroom apartment in an assisted living building where they would reminisce about the wonderful Christmas pasts they used to have pre-me. Big Italian Christmases with homemade sauce, spicy sausage and small-town neighbors coming over for my Great-Grandmother’s famous cookies. My Aunt would often say how, as kids, her and my mother and uncle would run up and down the stairs to work off all the food and make room for more. Because another amazing meal was coming after Midnight Mass.

I would listen to these stories with a palpable Christmas lust. And an anger formed in my tiny Grinch heart because I always felt cheated that I had arrived into this family right when everything went to crap. That my childhood Christmases involved endless car drives back to my mother’s hometown with my parents fighting the whole way, illness, guilt (Catholic and Italian a divine mix) and my Christmas stocking on the cold tile floor of my Grandmother’s tiny nook of a kitchen because that was the only area of the apartment out of sight. My mother tried her best but when the stories of the good ‘ole days, back when Christmas was actually fun, would start up after dinner I would go into my Grandmother’s bathroom (the only room with any privacy) and cry. Or, sometimes, if it wasn’t too frigid I would go out onto the porch shared by her floor. I’d look out at the twinkling lights of the small town that we journeyed to twice a year, but where I wasn’t actually from since we moved away when I was little, and I could never shake the feeling that I’d somehow missed out on my own family. On belonging anywhere.

Every year I say I’m not going to let Christmas make me crazy and every year it does. I could bitch now about all the ridiculous things that have made me want to cram a candy cane down someone’s throat in the last few days and believe me there is enough fodder to make it frakking funny. But I’m not going to do that. There are five days to go in my Cray Cray Season and I am going to write about five people this year who have made my life particularly special.

• MARK FISHER -  I feel like a walking commercial for Mark Fisher Fitness sometimes but the positive impact he has had on my life this year has been extraordinary. At a time when my self-esteem was at an all time low he made me feel like a Super Ninja. The words sad dog, porn star, snatched, Turkish get-up, “my Why”, GLORY and of course NINJA have become a part of my regular vocabulary. Along with improving my overall health, Mark continues to make me feel like a hero of fitness and inspires me to ‘get better!’ every day. I am the Kelly Clarkson of Snatched, having won the first 6-week Snatched before/after picture contest in January. And through donations and by winning back my entry money, Mark also helped WGWaFA raise $600 for Feeding America. I am so proud of him that he has recently opened the Ninja Clubhouse, a full-time location of his very own and I’m so excited to take classes there in 2012! CLICK HERE to check out Mark Fisher Fitness!!
• ROB & JUSTIN -  I am cheating a little bit here with a two for one. But when my sister got married, that’s exactly what I got. Two for one, a brother and a nephew. Two geeks who love Superman and comic books (and also golf and McDonald’s but nobody’s perfect) and have treated me like family from day one. They have visited NYC twice, once just to come see a play that I wrote! We have taken a cruise to Alaska on the ‘BrokenBoat’ and have rocked Halloween. There is a quote from the movie “Say Anything” that I have always loved Don’t be a guy; the world is full of guys. Be a man.   And Rob & Justin are two men who I am very lucky to have in my life.
• My niece. Ever since they pulled my niece out of my sister and dumped her little gooey body on me (if you are ever in the position to watch a cesarean, trust me stay on your side of the curtain. It’s like an eclipse, once you look it’s hard to look away and it burns your eyes!) my world has never been the same. This year I got promoted to Auntie KJ. Whenever I’m talking to my sister on the phone and she tells my niece, “Guess who I’m talking to? It’s Auntie KJ” hearing her little voice pipe back, “I need to see her!” is the greatest thing ever. She is smart, feisty, has her mother’s facial expressions, loves to yell “Poop Feet!” like her Auntie KJ taught her, and is the most fun person I know. She has brought the Christmas spirit back to our family and I am so proud and honored to watch my sister become an amazing mother.
• BILL – He is by far the most random friend I’ve ever had. Our friendship is 90% hilarious emails/texts and 10% fabulous food. It is a rare and magical combination. He checks in on me when he doesn’t hear from me in a while, never gets sick of my complaining (funny or not), is pro-Ice Cream and a supportive fan of my writing and my fundraising efforts.  I long for the day when I no longer have disastrous dating stories to tell Bill but until that day at least his hilarious email retorts make it all worth it (almost…)  Once, when I had my heart so badly broken I could barely function this message from Bill was the first thing to truly make me feel better:

Two more things. These aren’t nice but I’m being honest and I am an inherent pessimist and cynic. That helps me and maybe it will help you. I’ll root for your final act but, of course, have to figure shit like that generally doesn’t happen (as you know). And I think the whole “me, not you” stuff is always bullshit. Especially from men. We’re never trying to figure ourselves out or really analyzing things. We’re just narrow-minded, self-destructive, extremely selfish morons.

• TOMMY – My niece’s half-brother is one of the sweetest young men I have ever had the pleasure to know. In the short time that I knew him, my two favorite memories of Tommy are – the two of us trick or treating around my sister’s neighborhood the year we all dressed up as Peter Pan characters. He was Peter (or rather psycho-Peter which was way cooler because it involved fake blood) and I was Wendy. And dancing at my sister’s wedding. He looked so sweet with his sweaty tousled hair and purple tie. He was so excited to be there, for our families to all be joined and to dance. I never minded less being single at a wedding. There are still moments when I am in church, or on the subway or even at the gym when I have to stop and remind myself that Tommy is no longer with my family. His loss was far too soon but I often see his sweet face in my niece’s smile. He is her angel. Tommy’s kind heart has forever touched my life and my family.  Please take a moment to visit the site for the Memorial Dog Park in his honor.

There are many, many other friends and family who have made my life special this year.  My sincerest thanks to all of you and to all the generous people who have donated to my virtual food drive to help Feeding America fight hunger in our country. CLICK HERE if you would like to DONATE and help me reach my fundraising goal!

Happy Holidays!

Gavin -  Santa’s a lot like Steve Jobs.

Ivanna -  Don’t shower with Comet!

Rio -  Clarice, do you remember the lambs? wrong game

Eric -  Blonde toupee on a deer is ok, but a red nose . . . .

Todd – Bumbles also drip-dry, apparently       & Sarah – and comes out dry! it’s a miracle…drink!

Rio – I love to play with Charlie in my box

Gavin -  When does Rudolph kill Aslan?

Brett -  What’ up with the butt shot?

Julia -  That lumberjack is the kind of man I’m looking for. A beardy, big ginger man with a pickaxe!

Julia -  Damn it Rudolph, that nose of yours! Dick!

Todd -  That’s exactly how fast I gain weight during the holidays.

Gavin -  All those umbrellas lead the misfits right back to the trash.

Amanda -  Man, Santa just got the last word too. It is Rudolph’s special.

And a $50 donation has been made to Feeding America in honor of the grand winners of the evening, Todd & Eric with their combo comment:

Todd:  Is the doll only a misfit because she’s a girl?

Eric:  She wasn’t originally a girl.

And  due to my total incomprehension of the time difference between the East and West coast  (aka WEST COAST FAIL) one brave Rudolph player continued to comment to a nearly empty FB house.   So a special $25 donation has been made in the name of Lauralea for her hilarious represent of the West Coast viewing.  My favs are:

Lauralea

• Here son, put on this black face…

• Why is the guest room in King MoonRisers castle so freakin’ small?

• I mean, Rudolph’s parents are missing for a year and all Santa is worried about is that Christmas is coming and he needs Donner to pull his sleigh? Dick!

• How come the Owlfish just gets shoved off the sleigh without an umbrella? I’m calling the SPCA!

Thank you to everyone!  Together we have raised $235 for Feeding America.  That will provide 1645 meals to the 1 in 6 Americans struggling with hunger this holiday season.  Please take a moment to donate to my virtual food drive or pass this link onto friends and family:  http://help.feedingamerica.org/goto/whitegirlwithafatass

And a special shout-out to Adam McGovern with his minute by minute Rudolph Wrap-Up – my top pick:

Minute 21: “Being different is what makes it so grand” — it’s LITERALLY What She Said!

CLICK HERE to check out all of the comments on the Rudolph Drinking Game Facebook page.

RUDOLPH DRINKING GAME

Here’s the gist -  I watch RUDOLPH THE RED NOSED REINDEER every year.  Last year, for a myriad of reasons, I made it a drinking game by doing a shot every time Santa acted like a Dick.  I was surprised how many people joined the fun and participated by texting and writing me on the Facebook in real-time during the show.

It made an excellent cover for the fact that I was essentially sitting alone in my house doing shots of Jameson while watching a children’s Christmas special.

So, JOIN ME, won’t you?  Tomorrow night, 11-29-11 tune into CBS at 8:00 p.m.  Watch Rudolph.  Do a shot whenever Santa acts like a Dick (any kind of shot will do.  Chocolate Milk even – everyone can play!  hell, get the kids involved.) and comment on this post or I’ve set up a handy Facebook event to showcase the fun.  CLICK HERE and RSVP yes to play along with us.

The funniest comment of the night will win a $50 donation in their name to Feeding America through my virtual food drive.  What a great opportunity to provide 350 MEALS to the 1 in 6 Americans struggling with hunger this holiday season.

If you can’t play along with us tomorrow night -  CLICK HERE to donate directly to my virtual food drive.  And please feel free to spread the word and see how many friends and family we get to participate in this new dysfunctional holiday tradition!

* I also enjoy that since last year’s post “Rudolph Drinking Game” has consistently appeared on my stats page as a common search term.  You have to give the people what they want…