I eat yogurt like you for breakfast.

I loves me a good ban wagon! The more pointless the better. In fact, one of my favorite things about living back in America is the ability - nay, the expectation - to perpetuate the collective buzz over some awesomely stupid shit.

I have actually reached the belief of late, that the American ability to wildly appreciate, say, a blanket with sleeves, is as enlightened a mindset as was that of the famous Buddhist monk who silently gazed at a picked flower for hours in order to appreciate it's beauty.

The key to fads though, is getting in at exactly the right moment. Just before the tipping point. The moment when something is teetering on the edge of popular, about to slip into the complete and total mainstream. If you get in later than this, you're my mother and her friends and that's... less glamorous.

Thus, I have recently begun eating lots of Greek yogurt. It's delish! But that's not why I eat it. I eat it because it's cool.

Yesterday at the grocery store, the 20-something girl in front of me carrying a yoga mat was buying 6 Greek yogurts. I had one in my basket. The next day I went back and bought three more!

I really don't have a point. Or - I DO - but it's totally unrelated and there's really no segue. Actually, it's more of a question.

It is this: Why do honey-flavored things, such as my recently-consumed yogurt always have this stick thing on them???

What the fuck is this thing?? Does anyone alive in 2010 even know anymore? Who is currently manufacturing these things? Are they solely used for honey photography?

Okay. A series of questions.

In conclusion, I would like to address the delicious yogurt of which I have just partaken.

Dear empty yogurt container,

Thank you for being so full of yogurt when I met you.

Sincerely,
WTF is up with that knobby stick (?)

A Tale of Three Beds

I'm not sure why, but I always seem to have a photo of my current bed. I'm not much of a photographer - and I'm no decorator for sure - but I guess I do get pretty excited and proud about dressing up a new bed. I think I need it to look like ME - or - like who I want to feel like.

In the last few years, there have been three beds: New York bed, Sydney bed and Boston bed (pictured, respectively).

I have deep love for all three, but Sydney bed is definitely the red-headed step-child. It reminds me of the line from Almost Famous where Kate Hudson says, "When we go to Morocco, I think we should wear completely different clothes and be completely different people."

On my Brit Lit II final junior year, I remember writing this rambling essay about why Moby Dick was white. For the life of me, I can't really remember what the hell I said. But my brain wants to make some connection between the way dude dressed his whale and the way 24-year-old Allyson dressed her bed. Something about blankness. A thing to be projected onto. An absence.

NY and Boston beds were made by the same girl. Someone wanting to feel rich homey-ness, comfort, closeness of friends and indulgences. They're curl-up beds. The girl who made Sydney bed was different. Someone asking life to tell her who she was.

She was me, out of context. Me, subtracted. Gone was the job, then the Hell's Kitchen apartment. Gone was the city she had lived in for seven years. Then the state. Then the country. Gone was the family. Friends. Acquaintances. Coworkers. Everyone she’d ever met - except for one person. Who she had known for exactly one year.

And the name - about to lose that as well.

Or maybe I just thought white would be pretty in that pale, light-filled little room. Either way.

PH5: Hot Girls Who Picked Up the Phone

This morning, as Matt was getting ready for work, he asked me if I was going to be a "prod memb" today. I wasn't sure if I was not fully awake yet, or if that really didn't make any sense. So I just squinted at him. Then he repeated it. "So? Are you going to be a prod memb today or what?" I shook my head. "What the hell is a 'prod memb'?" And then it clicked! He was misquoting. "A functsh memb of soci?" I asked? "Yeah. That." He affirmed.

Ohhhh man. The short answer to that question was no. But it got me thinking of a time...

Then, this afternoon, while sitting and reading a draft of my friend Archana's novel, I came across the phrase again. Spelled out completely this time. "Functional member of society."

Universe, I take your hint, and will now reflect.

There was a time in 2001/2002 when a whole shitload of girls lived together in the penthouse of a dorm on Layfayette St. in New York. It was, by all accounts, one of the best/worst years of our collective life. Two weeks into our residency, the planes hit the World Trade Towers less than 20 blocks away. For some reason, despite the fact that we were breathing what I now feel certain was cancer air, NYU and the city of New York allowed us to continue living there. We were all generally anxious to begin with, but after those shenanigans... woah. There was little sleeping and MUCH escapist behavior that year - both healthy and un.

One thing that probably saved all of our lives was the obsessive reading and subsequent talking about of a little thing called HP (Harry Potter, to the rest of you). There simply was NOT enough time in the day for "HP-times."

Thus - to make more time for Harry - we began shortening all of our words, phrases and sentence structures until we were practically all speaking a creepy twin language. The phrase "functsh memb of soci" was one that came up often - as a description of what we were not. We were reclusive and strange. (But togeths!)

When the boys of PH4 wrote in magic marker on the wall next to the elevator, "PH5 is full of lesb" (still not sure whether someone passed out while writing the last word or had simply been listening in on our ways of speech), we proudly declared ourselves, scratching out "lesb" and replacing it with "hot girls who pick up the phone." Meaningful song lyrics from our favorite late-night phone sex commercial (shown above), which had come to mean, basically, being awesome.

If an outfit "picked up the phone," it was hot. If a class we were taking "did not pick up the phone", it blew. Girls from PH5 howevs, ALWAYS pick up the phone. Yesterday, today, forevs. Congrats on becoming functsh membs, ladies. You inspire me.

Damn you, 20s!

Remember when you went off to college and thought, "Nobody knows me here! I'm going to totally re-invent myself! Start introducing myself with that nickname I always wanted, dress sluttier without copping shit from my friends..."? Well, now look at yourself, fellow late-20s-er. You're pretty much the same person you were in high school. What the hell happened to You 2.0?

I'll tell you what happened. The dirty bitch slap that is your 20s. You tried to change. But it was like that time at the beach when you decided to swim really far out and then looked back, had a near panic attack and almost drowned, frantically trying to get back to where you could touch.

Phew. Thank god you got that out of your system! Now you can move back to the area where you grew up and borough down some thick roots before you feel the absolute panic that you're just floating out there in the middle of the dark, sharky ocean!

I too went to college. I moved to New York. I put pink streaks in my hair. Then I chopped it off. I wore backless, nylon shirts from Joyce Leslie (Forever 21s crack whore little sister). I decided I was someone who could get away with calling people "Babe" and "Sweetie." I tried (so hard!) to care about things like current events and politics and to make interesting, culturally diverse friends.

Strangely, I've noticed recently, I'm pretty much back to where I started. Blonde highlights, Us Weekly, white friends. I've collected a few things from my travels; an Australian dude, a thicker skin, etc. But mostly, at 28, I have way more in common with 18-year-old me than with 25-year-old me.

I can't figure out if this is moving forward, becoming enlightened and wise to the value of what was there all along - or just a complete regression. Meh. Who really cares? I kind of haven't been this content in a while.

Ahhh, what a wayward journey you were, early and mid-20s. I am not sorry to see the back of your hysterical highs and lows. If only what I know now, I knew at 23 when I was way hotter.

I hate blogs! (when they're other people's blogs)

Yup, that's right. I don't think your blogs are interesting, other people. Why, you ask? Because they're full of stories about YOU. And you're just not as interesting to me as I am.

It was out of this mind-set that my blog, Rockin Ruby Slippers, was born. A blog about me. Finally!

I am a writer. The thing is, I just don't write very much. Motivational problems. Probably 90% of my life is being lived in my head at the moment (because it's pretty awesome in here). I spend most of my time day dreaming because that's what makes me happy. But... my husband is kind of starting to get annoyed.

So I started a blog! Not interesting, you might be thinking, and - believe me - I understand! But honestly, other people, this just isn't about you. The purpose of this blog is for me to WRITE. Every day. And hopefully share some of it.

I decided to call my blog Rockin Ruby Slippers as a tribute to the life-lessons-bitch-slap-to-the-face that has been the last few years of my life. Included are such all-time classics as: Falling in love with an Ozstralian! Running away to Oz with him! Getting married! Having several nervous breakdowns - and - finally - clicking my sparkly heels and re-emerging back on the flip side, con husband.

So I invite you, friends and users of the internet, to join me on this journey. Please to enjoy!