LOVE BLOG II: THE TALENT DOES NOT WANT TO GO DOWN THE MOUNTAIN

I was, as I reported, recently in Denver, visiting my agent and her human companions with my friends J. Krimble and Pixie Potpie. During this time, I was informed that I would “enjoy” a little trip up to the mountains.

When I suffer duress in the presence of my agent, I will sometimes refer to myself in the third person as “the talent.” This is not a commentary on my abilities, but a common term in many entertainment-based industries, used to refer to the actor/performer/writer/artist of whatever ilk. I feel when I refer to myself as a moneymaking property, my agent will take care better care to preserve my life. I am worth more alive than dead (I THINK).

I used the term at the Jersey beach, for example, when Daphne and Rexroth wanted me to “enjoy a little walk into the ocean.” The Talent did not want to do into the water. The water is where the jellyfish and the sea monsters live. Rexroth did not understand the extent to which the talent did not want to get into the water, until he was more or less carrying me. The talent did not want to be carried. The talent wanted to be put down so she could run away. The talent may have started flailing.

Let’s get back to the Rockies. So, my agent has taken me to the top of a FRIGGIN MOUNTAIN, and I was put into a line. I was asked to produce seventeen dollars, which I was happy to do. In return, I was given a large inflatable tube. I said thank you. Everyone likes a nice inflatable tube. I took it outside and happily sat in it and started eating peanut M&Ms.

“Come on,” Daphne said, catching hold of the cord on my tube and dragging me.

“Where are we going?” I asked, pleasantly.

“Here.”

She stopped me on the edge of a HUGE FRIGGIN MOUNTAIN. I dug my heels in.

“We go down,” she said.

“What?”

“In the tube.”

“What?”

She started pulling me again, and I jumped out of the tube and pulled it away from her, clutching my M&Ms to my chest.

“Betrayal!” I said. “You have brought me here to kill me!”

“No, I brought you here to go tubing.”

We were soon joined by the others, who all seemed aware of this “going down the mountain in a tube” thing. Included in the party was Trixie Implausible, who is three and a half years old. Even she, in her fuzzy pink coat of LIES, was in on it.

Which is when I snapped into self-preservation, talent mode.

“The talent does not want to go down the mountain,” I mumbled.

Rexroth thought it would be best just to get a handle on me and place me in the tube and give me a push. Rexroth thought because he was bigger than me, that this would be possible. Rexroth does not know the power of my donwanna-fu.

“THE TALENT DOES NOT WANT TO GET IN THE TUBE!” Claw, claw, claw. “GET OFF THE TALENT!”

“It’s fine!” Daphne said. “You’ll like it!”

“TALENT CANNOT WRITE BOOK IF TALENT IS DEAD AND BROKEN!”

Little Trixie sailed down the mountain on her tube with a wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

“Did you see that?” Daphne asked.

“The talent is smarter than the child,” I said calmly. “I have a college degree. I have TWO college degrees! The child can’t even read! Who are you going to listen to, me, or the one who just scribbled some lines on a piece of paper and referred to the result as ‘a picture of Dr. Freaky and his Refrigerator’? I liked the picture, but my point is . . .”

“She’s braver than you.”

“But I am rich!” I said. “She has no money! Look! I have purchased these M&Ms for myself. The child could not afford such fine things, fine things which I am going to eat while you go down and I watch.”

It took them a half hour to convince me, but I did eventually go down. Trixie (age 3 ½) told me I did a good job.

Later, I heard Daphne on the phone with a friend of ours, and she was saying, “Yeah, so, she was really brave, and she went down a few times. We’re just finishing up now and we’re all going to lunch . . . no, she’s fine. She seemed to like it. It got a little cold, but . . .”

Please, I thought, please be talking about Trixie (age 3 ½). Please be talking about Trixie and not about me. Please be talking about Trixie and not me.

She was talking about me.

Now, this is going to make you believe that I am afraid of winter sports! I am not! I just don’t like to be pushed off mountains by my agent. Have I mentioned how I learned how to ski? HAVE I? (It’s possible that I have, so feel free to SKIP TO THE END. Or, read on, in case I TELL IT DIFFERENTLY.)

See, my English friend Oscar Gingersnort comes from a very fancy and lovely family. (He has two SIRS in his family! Two SIRS! He is not excited by this, but I am. I had no idea that “Uncle Bob” who once gave me lovely bath salts for Christmas is in fact SIR BOB. These are the kinds of things the English keep from you.)

Anyway, one of Oscar’s cousins lives in Geneva, and they invited me to come along for a Gingersnort Family New Years, in which all of the cousins would go to Switzerland and hang out on or around Alps for a week. I said yes, and off I went to Switzland. I was well informed that the intention was to ski, so I went out and got some pants and a jacket and showed up all ready to go gently down a bunny slope with children.

But see . . . the Gingersnorts? They all ski. Well. And they don’t go to bunny slopes. They go to the tops of mountains and use terms like “off piste” and “black diamond.”



A picture I took of the town where we were skiing. Pretty. Also, HIGH UP.

It was decided that after a day of trying to teach me, I really belonged in the hands of a professional. A call was made. I had a little trouble following the rapid-fire French, catching only words like “American,” “beginner,” and “not very good.” I was informed that it was all set! An English-speaking teacher would meet me at the top of the mountain the next morning, and I would spend the next few days with him. His name was Jean-Claude.

And so, I did. Jean-Claude was there, a tall man, maybe around 60.

“Do you teach a lot of beginners?” I asked, to make conversation.

“No,” he said. “I teach mostly rrrrracerz.”

He paused for a moment, then added, almost as an afterthought: “I used to coach the French downhill rrrrrrracing team.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh . . . that’s good.”

“You will learn to ski,” he told me, matter-of-factly. “Everyone I teach learns to ski. Now, allez, you will come with me, like this.”

No, Jean-Claude didn’t spend a lot of time with beginners. This much became clear at once. “Allez” was the word I heard most often over those two days. “You fall down, Maureen. Get up. Allez. Now you do just like this.” Nothing stopped Jean-Claude, and he felt that nothing should stop me. I would go down the hill. And now I would learn the turn, yes? I would do the turn? I would do the turn.

At the end of the last day, Jean-Claude decided that I needed to go Higher Up The Mountain. See, this town and all the Alps around it were criss-crossed with a network of cable cars. You started down on the street, and ran like a train with several stops. You could get off on this point, or a higher one, or a higher one, or a higher one . . . whatever you wanted. I had started two stops up the mountain.

“We go up,” said Jean-Claude. “Allez.”

It also happened to be snowing that day, which is pretty common in the Alps in the dead of winter. But we went up directly into a whiteout, which I had never experienced before.

“Okay,” he said, smiling at the almost-deserted slope. “Good. Now, you grab the bar, and up we go. Allez.”

It was snowing so hard and the cloud cover was so low that I couldn’t even see the next pole on the t-bar. It was White. Everything was white. And when we got to the end (I didn’t even know we had arrived, except that I could see Jean-Claude’s red jacket. When I got right up to him, I could see his face, and he was content. I looked around. I had no idea where the slope was. I had no idea where the ground was. I had no idea where the sky was, or what left was or what right was. It was like one of those scenes in a sci-fi movie that takes place on a different planet, or in some representation of heaven or hell or the inner world of the brain.

“Okay!” he said cheerfully. “I go. You follow! Allez!”

And then, he went. He just . . . went. Off into the whatever. I had two choices: stay in marshmallow nowhereland and die, or follow. So I followed. Apparently, when you think you are going to die, and you have no idea how steep the slope is, or how fast you are going, you can ski. Because I skied. And my only thought was never to lose sight of that red jacket. I skied and skied and skied. And eventually, we were back, all the way at the bottom, and there was Oscar, waiting. He took off his goggles and shook his head.

“Bloody hell,” he said, “that was . . . amazing. That was really well done. You didn’t look like someone who’s been on skis for three days. You looked like someone who’s been skiing for . . . years, actually. That was incredible!”

“AHhhHHHhHHhhhhhhhhhHHhhhhhhhhHHHHHHhhh,” I explained.

“And that was an excellent turn at the end. You did it perfectly.”

“AHHhHHhhhhhHHhhhhhhHhhh,” I continued.

“Either he’s an amazing teacher or you’re a natural. Or both.”

Better Off Dead, Trailer
Uploaded by chefandew

ACTUAL FOOTAGE FROM THAT DAY

Oscar was too busy talking to Jean-Claude* about my progress to notice that I was slip-stumbling toward the restaurant at the base of the slope, arms outstretched. When I got inside, I had an attack of special disorientation—the white out had so confused my brain about the reality of up, down, left, and right, that it was having a hard time making sense of nice, flat, cozy indoors. I was so dizzy that I almost missed the chair and had to stare at one spot on the wall for about five minutes before everything started to get normal again.

“There you go,” Oscar said, plunking down a hot chocolate. I pulled it toward me. I wasn’t ready to drink it yet, as I hadn’t quite mapped out the route from my hand to my mouth. “Now, isn’t skiing fun?”

So! Love questions! Um . . . . I’ve sort of talked about winter sports more than love, haven’t I? I will remember this for next time. But let me answer one question, very quickly.


Stephanie W asks:
Have you ever been out with a guy who TRIES to act all suave and sophisticated, but every time he TRIES to act that way, he messes it up somehow?

Perhaps I can refer you to this story about my first boyfriend?

What other LOVE QUESTIONS can I answer for YOU?





* Jean-Claude really was this good, and that was his real first name. He never offered his last name. So remarkable was Jean-Claude that we became a little obsessed trying to figure out who he was, and it is a minor urban legend around these parts that he might have been . . . might have been . . . Jean-Claude Killy. Now, Jean-Claude Killy is one of the most famous skiers in the world—a six-time Olympic gold medalist, co-president of the 1992 Winter Olympics, subject of the Hunter S. Thompson essay “The Temptations of Jean-Claude Killy,” among many other accomplishments. The age and background are right, as is (I’m told) the general location. He was known to live in the area. It is possible, in some bizarro world, that Jean-Claude Killy (who retired from skiing in 1968 at the age of 24 after winning basically everything there was to win) actually works as a ski instructor in this particular town in the Alps. It makes a kind of sense that he might not want to sit around the house all day. It is possible that I was instructed by one of the greatest skiers in the world. It is the story we choose to believe, and therefore, anyone who accuses me of snow cowardice can just suck it, because Jean-Claude Killy taught me how to ski, and I lived.

THE LOVE BLOG, VOL. 1

Every year, come February, people are filled with questions about the nature of love. Personally, I would have tried to skip over Valentine's Day, but my birthday falls just two days after (today, the 16th). I am, in essence, a creature of Valentine's Day. Cupid himself, the fat little monster, presided over my birth. So it is only natural that I am an expert in all things romance.

I've tried to cover up this fact for a long time, because I didn't want to show off. But I feel it's time to come clean and put my special abilities to good use.

I have been collecting up QUESTIONS OF LOVE in the last few days. Every day for the rest of this month*, I will attempt to answer at least one QUESTION OF LOVE.

Today's question . . .

Beth asks:
What are the top 5 worst declarations of love in literature?

5. The Seagull, Anton Chekhov

Treplyov: I wrote a very modern, incomprehensible play for you to star in. Because I know you want to be an actress.
Nina: Oh, thanks!
Treplyov: And I shot you this seagull, because it kind of reminded me of you.
Nina: What?

awkward silence

Treplyov: I’ll just leave it here.



Do. Not. Want.

4. Oedipus Rex, Sophocles

Oedipus: Oh my wife, you are so hot.
Jocasta: I know. And so are you. We’re both really hot. Isn’t it great that two totally hot people could meet and get married?
Oedipus: It is. We even look alike! It’s like we’re RELATED or something!

laughter

Oedipus: By the way, did I mention that the oracle thinks I’m going to murder my dad and marry my MOM?
Jocasta: Why, no. Good thing I’m not your mom, huh?

laughter

Oedipus: Yeah, and it turns out I was some random abandoned baby left on a hill, and that the people I thought were my parents aren’t—so it was pretty pointless for me to run away from them, because I was scared I might marry my mom. And then I randomly killed some dude on a road, and then I solved a puzzle, and I got to marry you. Which was awesome. Why were you single? You’re so hottttttt!
Jocasta: Someone randomly killed my husband on a road.
Oedipus: Weird. But at least you didn’t have a baby and then just leave it on a hill . . .
Jocasta: This is awkward. I’d better go kill myself now.



Google "unclaimed children." Stop talking to Sphinxes. Put on some pants.

3. Hamlet, Shakespeare

Ophelia is sewing in her room when Hamlet, her boyfriend, runs in, half-undressed, covered in filth. He stares at her. And stares. And stares. And grabs her arm. And stares. And runs away.

Ophelia: What the @%^$?



Wrong.

2. “Saul is a Weird Dad,” The Book of Samuel, Chapter 18

David: Your daughter Michol is my main squeeze. We must be married! You are her dad. Please let me.
Saul: Well . . . only if you get me 100 pieces of skin. Guy skin. You know what I mean.
David: What?
Saul: You know. I want you to go kill 100 guys and give me the skin from their . . . you know.
David: Are you saying what I think you are saying?

Saul stares inscrutably into the distance and nods.

David: Seriously? Can’t I just, get you a cow or something? Or a bunch of really awesome rocks?
Saul: NO!

David goes off and kills 200 guys, comes back with 200 pieces of you-know-what skin.

David: Look, here. Just . . . just take them. Can I please marry Michol now?
Saul: Two hundred pieces of [DELETED] skin! TWICE as many as I wanted! Go and marry my daughter, who will not be consulted in this process!

Saul runs off, with his bag of [DELETED].

David: Dude. You are so creepy.

pause

David: And why did I bring twice as many as he asked for?
[Saul, in the distance: I am so Youtubing this s%^t!]



Weird.

1. Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare

Juliet: I love you so much, I’m going to pretend to be dead and get buried. Also, I’m 14 years old.
Romeo: Oh no! You are dead! I am going to drink this poison I have in my pocket!
Juliet: Oh no! You are for reals dead! Fake death fail! I am going to drink your leftover poison! Wait . . . none left! Poison fail! Then I will stab myself!

stabs

(Seriously. If anyone tells you this is a romantic play, DO NOT DATE THEM. MAJOR READING COMPREHENSION ERROR.)



Dating fail.

Do YOU have questions? Perhaps I can help. The MONTH OF LOVE** starts now.














* Or, you know, whatever.
** Or, you know, whatever.

SEE AMERICA, BY ACCIDENT

As many of you may know (and many more may not), my beloved agent, Daphne Unfeasible, lives in Denver. This is a fairly recent development. She was your standard, high-powered fancy New York agent—and then she met the dashing Rexroth Implausible and decided to merge their empires. She now runs Unfeasible Enterprises from her mountain stronghold in Denver.

As it ALSO happens, Daphne, ever the professional agent, was born 36 hours before me (to get the lay of the land and set up some deals). In fact, many of us have birthdays at the same time—including Rexroth, and our friend J. Krimble. It has often been our tradition to spend our birthdays together. This year, Daphne suggested that we do so in Denver.

So yesterday morning, J. Krimble, his female companion Pixie Potpie, and I all headed off to the airport to catch what was supposed to be an easy set of flights to Denver—one from New York to Chicago, and then another from Chicago to Denver a few minutes later. We had attempted to get a non-stop flight, but it turns out MANY PEOPLE wanted to come to Denver when we did, and we thought, what’s a quick transfer between planes?

And so, our story begins.

WELCOME TO CHICAGO

“I’ve never been to Chicago,” I said, as we came in over Lake Michigan. “They say your first trip to Chicago is always the best. Doesn’t Lake Michigan look like the BELLY OF AN ENORMOUS DRAGON from the plane?”

“I’ve been to Chicago once before,” Pixie said.

“Oh,” I replied. “Well, they say that your second trip to Chicago is always the worst.”

J. Krimble was looking at his watch in concern.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” he said. “Technically, we have forty minutes to make the connection, but we’re almost fifteen minutes late.”

“What are you worried about?” I asked. “It’s not like they would sell us a ticket if it was impossible to make the connection. This was the suggested route. The airline PLANNED this trip!”

“Right!” Pixie said. “And we have, what, twenty minutes to get over there? And they know we’re supposed to be on the plane.”

When we landed, the automatic status alert text I had signed up for blipped on to my phone.

“Here we go,” I said, feeling very efficient. “Gate B29.”

“B29?” J. Krimble said. “We just passed that gate. It’s, like . . . WAY over there. It’s going to take us forever to get there. We’re going to have to run.”

I didn’t really believe this, and neither did Pixie. We truly believed that United Airlines had our backs. (I did mention that this was UNITED AIRLINES, right? I really want to get that fact across.)

But we agreed, mostly to appease the worried J. Krimble, that we would all run over to our new gate. And run we did! All the way across Chicago airport, through an amazing connecting hall with pastel glowing walls and a rainbow of rippling, disco-like lights overhead. I wanted to stay and do some dancing, but was dragged on. We ran and ran and ran. We ran along moving sidewalks, and up escalators, and were rewarded by getting to our gate a full ten minutes early. All three of us ran up to the desk and said, “HiweareherefortheflighttoDenver.”

And the woman behind the counter tipped her head to the side and regarded us in the same way dogs do when you make an interesting noise.

“Oh, that plane is gone,” she said, matter-of-factly.

Five little words, delievered without the slightest amount of care, applied with the light touch like the hand of the fairies as they paint on the morning dew. Oh, that plane? Is gone! Tra la la!

For a moment, we could not process this information. “But . . .” we said, holding out our tickets. “But . . . we have these tickets.”

Because we didn’t just . . . evaporate, the woman was forced to take a better look at us and accept our presence.

“It left ten minutes early,” she said, not without a touch of pride. Look at the good job we at UNITED AIRLINES have done today!

“It WHAT?”

“And it was oversold,” she added, as if implying that we would NEVER have been on that plane, even though we were fully ticketed passengers. As if we should have known better.

“But . . . “ we said. “But . . . we have these tickets.”

She glanced at the tickets out of politeness and gave us slips of paper that more or less said the following: IT APPEARS THAT YOU HAVE PURCHASED ONE OF OUR “TICKETS”! SOMETIMES, WHEN WE AT UNITED AIRLINES SELL YOU A TICKET, IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT WE WILL ACTUALLY PUT YOU ON AN AIRPLANE. IF YOU LIKE, YOU CAN TAKE THIS TO CUSTOMER SERVICE, WHERE ONE OF OUR REPRESENTATIVES WILL ASSIST YOU IN THE PROCESS OF SUCKING IT.

“There’s an 11:09 to Denver,” the woman added. “But you probably won’t make that either. We board in a few minutes, and it’s way oversold. It’s always oversold.” Tra la la!

So we ran all the way to customer service, where we got in a big, long line. While waiting in the big, long line, we had time to process that information. The customer service woman was in a good humor, and seemed to regard our problem as a pleasant dilemma, not unlike a brain teaser.

“Oh, you’ll never make THAT flight,” she said with a smile. “ALL the flights to Denver are sold out. Oversold.”

“But . . .” we said, holding out our tickets and pieces of paper. “But . . . we have these tickets and pieces of paper.”

She took the tickets and pieces of paper.

“Oh, see,” she said. “You didn’t have seat assignments for Denver.”

“They wouldn’t give us seat assignments for Denver,” J. Krimble said.

“Your seats were on standby,” the woman said, still smiling.

“We weren’t standby,” I said. “We bought these tickets months ago. These are full tickets. We were promised seats. On the airplane. To Denver. It’s not our fault that your computer wouldn’t assign us a seat, or that the plane took off ten minutes early, or that the other plane was ten minutes late.”

But I said it nicely, because there is no reason to be rude! But this was all true. We were not standby passengers. We were three people who were supposed to be on their way to Denver.

“I KNOW you aren’t standby,” she said. “But you HAD NO SEATS.”

I ask you, readers. What do you do with that?

“Now what I CAN do,” she said happily, “is put you all on a plane to Tulsa.”

“A plane to TULSA?” I repeated.

Tulsa, for those of your unfamiliar with American geography, is in Oklahoma. Which is not anywhere near Denver, Colorado. It’s not even in the area of Denver, Colorado. So I wasn’t entirely sure why she would think we would be happy about going there. But it seemed like there was a possible plane we could get on in Tulsa that would take us to Denver.

There was no apology offered in any of this—it was all offered as if this was a kind of bonus. “Six more hours of travel!” she was suggesting. “A trip an airport in Oklahoma!”

We asked her what the alternative was, and she made it more or less clear that either we were going to go to Tulsa, or we were going to live in the Chicago airport.

We said we would go to Tulsa. New tickets and pieces of paper were produced.

“Can we sit together?” J. Krimble asked.

“No,” the woman replied. “But this plane to Tulsa is so small, you’ll PRACTIALLY BE ON TOP OF EACH OTHER.”

Our Tulsa tickets required us to go over to F terminal, reachable by a tiny shuttle that looked like it had been produced in Stalinist Russia—grim and gray, with foam popping out of the seats. F terminal didn’t seem as loved as B or C terminal. Our best option to grab some food was a very angry sandwich shop where they threw together some sandwiches that exploded in the bags.

“I feel like they just don’t care,” I said, looking at the total collapse of my sandwich. It had exploded to pieces in the bag. “It’s just a bag of sandwich now.”

“Would you like one of your birthday presents now?” J. Krimble asked.

I said I would. A small wrapped object was placed on the table.

“I would give you yours,” I said, “but it is on its way to Denver.” This was true. I had checked my bag, but inside, there were birthday presents for everyone. I wondered if I would ever see it again. Then I unwrapped my present, only to find this!



Yes! The Unauthorized Biography of Robert Pattison, star of Twilight!

I stared at the book for a moment and flipped through the very unauthorized photographs.

“This is wonderful!” I said. “Now I am going to read this to you. Let’s begin . . .”

SCENE: CHICAGO AIRPORT, A CROWDED GATE

It was Pixie’s turn to read. J. Krimble was looking moderately suicidal. We were on page 15.

“Please stop,” he said.

“No, no,” I said. “This is my birthday present. We are going to read it. Please continue, Pixie.”

“This book is like, fifty pages long,” J. Krimble protested. “And forty of them are about the filming of Twilight. And thirty of them are about his HAIR.”

“Yes,” I said happily. “That is why I like it.”

“Listen to this,” Pixie said, reading, “Rob’s nicknames are: ‘Rob, Patty (what his friends call him), RPattz (what fans call him—though he thinks it sounds ‘like an antacid pill’), Spunk Ransom (long story!)”

“Spunk Ransom?” I said. “I want to hear a story that ends up with you getting the name ‘Spunk Ransom.’ I want to hear it right now.”

“Next fact,” she said, reading on. “‘If he weren’t an actor, Rob would be: a pianist (or Jack Nicholson).’”

“There’s already a Jack Nicholson,” I replied. “Maybe Jack Nicholson is just a job you can have. Maybe Rob Pattison will be the next Jack Nicholson!”

“It also says he doesn’t like children, and it says there’s a picture where it looks like he wants to eat a baby. There are a lot of exclamation points in this book . . .”

J. Krimble put his head on his knees.

The woman at the desk wasn’t lying about the size of the plane. We had to duck to get inside, and the jetway was two feet long. In the front, a very precious little girl was talking to her father.

“I’ve named the plane!” she said, in her adorable little girl voice. “I’m named it AMELIA!”

I turned to look at J. Krimble, who crammed in a few seats behind me. He mouthed the words: NO THAT IS A BAD NAME FOR A PLANE.

I opened my Rob Pattison book for a moment, then put my head back and . . . .

zzzZZZZZzZzZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

SCENE: TULSA AIRPORT

I was very groggy when we landed.

“Why are we in Oklahoma?” I asked.

“Because United Airlines hates us,” J. Krimble said.

We had LOTS OF TIME to kill in Tulsa airport, so we wanted to see all we could. The first thing we saw was a police guard at the women’s room right at our gate. We watched as a small team of policemen took a sniffer dog inside.

“Tulsa is exciting,” I said.

We decided almost immediately that we liked Tulsa, largely because they had a large display of these shirts:



But looking at t-shirts could only entertain us for so long, so I pulled out my new book.



CAN ANYONE RESIST?

When they finally called our flight, J. Krimble went up to make sure we were actually on it.

“Is this plane really full?” he asked. “Can we sit together?”

“Oh,” the woman at the counter laughed. “It’s SO full. It’s . . . 101% full.”

“That is one percent more full than it should be,” J. Krimble said, politely.

We all got middle seats. I took a picture mid-flight to commemorate the moment:



ME

And so . . . many hours and states later, we arrived in Denver. And there was Daphne, waiting for me.

We were immediately struck by the fact that they had a carosel for normal bags, and then another one with long, tall compartments, perfect for a person to ride in standing up! I ran for this, but Daphne caught my arm.

“No,” she said. “For skis.”

“But . . .”

“For skis.”

I walked past, sadly . . . every moment twitching to hop on board and ride around. We went off searching for my bag at the baggage service desk.

“Oh yes,” they said, “it’s right there, in the middle of the floor.”

United Airlines, faithful to the last, had left my unattended bag in the middle of the floor for what I assume was about six hours.

So, if you are considering a trip across the country, why not try UNITED AIRLINES?

Now that we have recovered, I resume work on the BLOG OF LOVE, which I hope to post TOMORROW. Thank you all who sent in your romance questions. I study them now, and hope to provide you with the very best of advice for your Valentine’s Day. If you have any questions to get in at the last minute, please ask, and I will certainly try to address them.

THE BADGER DIARIES, THE AFTERMATH

Those of you who bravely made it through The Badger Diaries, parts one, two, three, four, and five may be wondering . . . “What happened after you left the castle?” Or you may not be. I don’t want to make any assumptions about what you do with your personal wondering time.

In any case, I am here to provide the answer . . . and to tell you how this connects to THE FUTURE.

About the other residents . . . in my account, I am frequently paranoid about them. This was the reality. In fact, they were all quite nice people, and after I left, I communicated for a while with Ron, Nigel, and even Petunia, I think.

It turned out, almost everyone was experiencing something similar . . . the castle had the habit of doing that. In the last few days, as we all started to get to know one another better, Hubert explained this. He said that frequently, people completely went nuts in the first two weeks, and then calmed down in the third week, and grew to love it by the fourth. Which is exactly what happened to me.

He went on to say that there had been cases of the writers REALLY LOSING IT. One tried to escape by bicycle and flipped over the handlebars, another went for an aggressive walk on the path and fell down the wall of rock I describe on the in the fifth section—the one that slopes down, down, down to the river in one solid sliding board of stone. Apparently he was down there in the river for a while, until the housekeeper noticed he was gone, hours later.

I did have to trim a small section entirely devoted to how I used to steal the internet for the entire last week—because it contained a lot of details about the personal lives of the others. But I should admit that I was sneaking around for the last five days with a cord I bought in town. There was a phone jack in the main hall, right by Hubert’s room. Once Petunia noticed this, it was all over. We would wait for Hubert to go out, and then we would all cluster on the stairs and hover around the jack, plugging in our computers, using some old dial up connection that Petunia had. If we heard Hubert come in, we’d all scramble, like roaches when the lights come on.

I got addicted to the phone jack. Unlike the others, I was in a foreign country, and desperately wanted to talk to people from home. I got more brazen. I used to do these sneaky drive-bys in the hall. I’d have the cord rolled up and hidden in my hand. If I was sure Hubert was busy outside or watching TV (he had one in his private rooms), I’d slink along, plug the computer in, suck the e-mails right off the line, yank it out, and KEEP RIGHT ON WALKING.

To get this good, I had to prep in my room beforehand. I’d have e-mails ready and written, all in the outbox. I’d have the prompt window up. I’d have gone through all the settings quickly, so I knew exactly what to click. I was fast and crazy and reckless.



THE PHONE JACK

And one time, I almost got caught. That phone jack was in a VERY public place. I heard Hubert come along unexpectedly, and I pulled the thing right out of the wall and scrambled to the sitting room where the others were—and then Hubert came in, and I was doing a terrible job covering, and I had to sit on the cord for about AN HOUR.

But those illicit e-mails allowed me to plan something. See, I figured since I’d already come all the way across the ocean, why not STAY across the ocean for a bit? I’d had to buy a ticket quickly, not really knowing when I was going to return, so I had five days to kill. So I thought I would go back to London, then take the Eurostar to Paris!

Sounds exciting, right?

I made this plan from someone from America, who was to fly over the day I left the castle, and meet me in London, at the flat where my friends Trevor and Grace Dangerous lived. (This flat was the model for Richard’s home in 13 Little Blue Envelopes—at least in location. Their actual flat was immaculate and stylish.) Two tickets on the Eurostar were purchased. A hotel room was obtained. All systems were go!

On the morning I was to leave, I was having breakfast with Nigel and Petunia, when the phone rang. It was for me. The person on the other end of the line was my travel companion, who I will call Biff.

I thought it was very clever of Biff to be calling me when he was supposed to be 42,000 feet directly overhead, about to land at Heathrow Airport in 30 minutes time. He told me that Things Had Gone Wrong—that he had been about to leave for the airport when he noticed a Tiny Problem. His passport was expired. He was still in America.

This caused a bit of a snag.

I spent the last hour of my stay literally running through the castle, as this conversation made me late. I was in an utter panic, throwing my last items into my suitcase. WHAT TO DO? I was about to be thrown into this trip by myself.

My bag was ridiculously large. (I had borrowed it from my parents at the last moment before leaving, because my parents take TOURS and CRUISES and other things where people carry your bags for you, and they are oblivious to the fact that their bag is actually people-sized. I could fit in the suitcase. I know this because I tried. I got really bored one night in the castle and climbed inside to see if I could zip myself in, and I made it 80% the way around. Anyway, my mom was all, “Just take the big bag. You’ll be sorry if you don’t bring enough sweaters and hats!” So I borrowed the big bag, because I was in a rush, because I had exactly five days to prepare for the trip, including ticketing and paperwork, and all the other things you have to do. I filled it with every sweater I owned, thinking, “I am going to Scotland, in the winter, for a month.” The bag became a running joke to all who saw it. It didn’t fit in Trevor’s car. It barely fit up the stairs to our rooms. It was two times the size of any suitcase that anyone else brought, and was clearly AN AMERICAN’S BAG . . . so a tip for any Americans thinking of traveling abroad, take it from me . . . LITTLE BAG. Seriously. You don’t need that stuff. I tell you this as someone who goes to England several times a year and had to buy progressively smaller suitcases for each trip . . . well, partially because Oscar Gingersnort, keeper of the London Office, owns a “sportscar,” or, as I like to put it, “a car only slightly larger than a hamster ball” and it literally has no backseat or trunk, and whatever suitcase I carry must fit ON ME. You will not run into this specific restriction, but I’m telling you, JUST BRING THE SMALLER BAG.)

Anyway, I was packing my monstrous bag and running around in an upset panic, because all had gone to pieces. I was ALREADY nervous that day because I was going to be traveling back to London on a SLIGHTLY ILLEGAL TICKET. Well, not illegal but . . . I had this train ticket that was supposed to be used at a completely different time, because when I bought it, I had no idea when I was leaving the castle . . . so I had made this plan to get on the train with it, pleading American Stupidity and hoping I could talk my way out of the hundred or so pound fine by saying, “Well, gosh! I just don’t know the ways of your fancy train, here!” Which is not right, obviously, and no one should do that . . . but frankly, it almost always works. You can get away with a lot in the UK just by playing up your American accent and blinking a lot. It helps if you carry a Coke and wear a sweatshirt with the name of a state university on it. It doesn’t improve our national image, but it will get you out of trouble. (Travel tip!)

ANYWAY . . . I was packing my bag and generally losing my mind, and the bag was TOO HEAVY TO LIFT. So Nigel came to my rescue and carried the bag all the way down the stairs, and the groundskeeper drove it and me up the path to the road.

Where I was deposited. When you’re done at the castle, you’re just done. I had to wait for a bus to Edinburgh (a trauma in and of itself, getting the bag on there, etc.). And then I had to get the bag to the train. And then I had to trick a conductor.

Which I did, successfully. But not without getting a lecture. I spent the entire four hour train ride trying to look meek and sorry—and inside, my wheels were turning. What was I going to do? I had two tickets to Paris, and only one of me.

Trevor met me on the other end and commiserated with me. Neither he nor Grace could go to Paris. We tried to find someone in the next few hours who could, but there was simply no one. The notice was far too short. I mean, there I was, running around with a ticket, saying, “You can have this FOR FREE. Just come with me to Paris! Right now!” But people had to “work,” and “do things,” and they wanted to come the next day or the day after.

So I ended up in the Eurostar station by myself, sipping a coffee and waiting for a train to France. While I was there, I picked up a napkin at the Costa Coffee and drew a stick figure on it.

“You will be my companion,” I said to the napkin. “We will go to Paris together. I will call you Napkin Biff.”

And so we did. I sat Napkin Biff in the real Biff’s seat. The entire ride to Paris, I waited for someone to ask me if that napkin had a ticket, because I had it right in my pocket and was ready to produce it. “Oh yes,” I would say. “Here it is.” And I would be known as the person who bought a Eurostar ticket for a napkin.

But no one did.

For the next three days, I took my napkin friend all around Paris. It hailed much of that time. The sky turned pink and green. The trees were bare. There was a strange smell in my hotel room, and for fun, I watched Scrubs dubbed into French and the last helicopter explosion movie I had left. I took a full photographic record of my travels with Napkin Biff (which seems to have vanished from my hard drive—I have asked Daphne if she has copies).

Mostly, I spent my time in the Louvre, drinking tiny coffees until I shook, and putting together the puzzle for 13 Little Blue Envelopes.

And there, I bring you back to the present . . . or, to about three weeks ago, where the story picks up.

So, I’m sitting working with Libba Bray and Cassie Clare, and Robin Wasserman, like I often do. I was talking to my beloved agent, Daphne, online. We were discussing an EXCITING NEW PROJECT I am working on. I had hoped to be able to tell you what that project is, but cannot reveal it yet, for various reasons . . . but I HOPE TO TELL YOU SOON.

Anyway, I was talking to Daphne, and Cassie leans over to me and says, “Hey . . . want to go write in a castle in Ireland?”

And I said, “Yes. When? Yes. What? Who’s going? Okay. When?”

Because I sometimes ask questions out of order.

So, on the fifth anniversary of the Scottish castle, I am going off to work on the SEKRIT PROJECT in an Irish castle . . . but this time, with friends! I will be joined by Cassie, Robin, Holly Black, Carrie Ryan, Ally Carter, Diana Peterfreund, Sarah Cross, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, and Sarah Rees Brennan.

I know. I know. Ten YA writers. One Irish castle. Ireland, are you out there? Are you ready for us?

Takeoff for that is this time next month. By that point, I hope to be able to reveal my SEKRIT.

Feel free to guess MY SEKRIT in the comments, or to reveal SEKRITS of your own!


PS . . . my addiction to Twitter grows. It is now approaching my addiction to Facebook. Please, come join me on my upward spiral.