Summer and I Had a Hilarious Misunderstanding Today

We do that sometimes.

Today, I was wearing my favorite scarf while buddying around with my friends Bea and Summer and I was just bein' silly and so, you know, I flipped the scarf up over my head as if you would if you were going into a mosque and wanted to be respectful:

The Blue Mosque, Istanbul

I began to feel nostalgic about last year's trip to Istanbul (pictured above) (because that is exactly how I put that exact scarf in that moment) and asked "Hey Summer, does this remind you of..."

She got into it and interrupted to say, with a look on her face and the excited tone of a person who knows exactly to what you're referring: 

"the Cracker Barrel"?!?!

and I was like "HUH?" because of course the end of my sentence was "...the Blue Mosque in Istanbul?"

I guess I can see where she got it wrong:

Cracker Barrel. Iowa, USA

Basically.

Privacy Shmivacy

I don't like shutting the bathroom door.

I grew up in a family of eight, and we shared one bathroom. There was no such thing as private time in there. While one kid showered, one kid used the toilet and two kids brushed their teeth and Dad was always lingering in the shadows to make sure the kid on the toilet only used one square of toilet paper.

These days, it's not like I try to pee in front of people, but I don't shut the door. It may be from my childhood, or because I don't want to be left out of the conversation, or sometimes I'm too lazy, but mostly it's because I feel claustrophobic being shut in a small room. My friends and roommates HATE this. 

Especially Summer, who grew up not being able to say the word fart.

Anyway, in my new apartment, there are too many doors for my liking. It's just me in here and there's doors on the office and my bedroom and the bathroom (which is inside of my bedroom). There are doors on my closets. I don't want any of the doors. I hate them. I wanted to take them all off of their hinges but decided I better leave the bedroom door on, in case I have guests and they want privacy. (But why? I don't understand privacy or people who need it. But: I'm a good hostess. And so my guests can shut my bedroom door if they are sleeping over and I give them my room or if they need to use the bathroom.)

I'm just happy I don't have a bathroom door to not shut anymore. Which is exactly how I like it.

Tonight Summer came over. We were talking and she went into the bathroom to use it. I followed her and asked her opinion about something. She goes, "I don't know. I'm BUSY."

I was like, "Oops. Sorry. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! This is so US." And then I left her alone.

We're not THAT close.

Backpackers. But Not on Purpose.

Summer and I both started our trip like fancy ladies in Europe, what with the wheeled suitcases and cute outfits. And then India happened. You can't really wheel a suitcase through India. Sometimes you can, but mostly you can't. So the backpacks happened. (I bought mine in Istanbul and sent my wheeled suitcase home with cousin Ross and she bought hers in Mumbai and threw her nasty wheeled suitcase in the garbage can.) Wearing every last piece of warm clothing layered five and six times on our bodies happened. Freezing train rides happened and the subsequent necessary buying of blankets and then wearing those blankets as clothes happened.

I'm embarrassed to admit that it never occurred to me that it would ever be cold in India. Well. We froze in the hill town of Ooty and the bus rides that took us to and from, we froze in Bangalore, and we froze somewhere between Mumbai and Jodhpur and every day after that. So basically half the time we were in India it was not "India hot", but rather "wet cold". As a result of this ignorance, I sent home most of my cold weather gear inside of the wheeled suitcase I sent home with Ross. I figured I'd be in Nepal for just a week and would only need a couple of things and I could always buy stuff there.

Oh, Nepal. Freezing, freezing Nepal. It's not like you can escape the cold by going in your heated hotel room and taking a warm shower. There is no heat. There is no warm water. And it's not like you have warm pajamas for 30 degree nights (0 Celsius) with no heat in your room. So there is no changing your clothes for bed. I wore all of my clothes at one time all day long and slept in them too -- 24/7. The outfit you see in the photo below did not leave my body for the last four weeks of my trip. I changed my underwear every once in a while and that's about it.

WATCH THIS:

Seriously, I couldn't be more proud of this seven-minute video than if I had been the one who spent fifty plus hours learning how to use iMovie and then trimming, cutting and editing literally hours and hundreds of video clips, adding music, looping that music and then doing it (!), but then accidentally deleting the whole thing and having to do it all over again like Summer did.

Anyway, here's our three month trip, in seven minutes, set to the perfect song.

Bad Girls from Summer Grimes on Vimeo.

"I'm on Vacation!"

Both Summer and I slept about 15 hours for four days in a row when we first got to Nepal. However I was the first to get up and get going in the afternoon. Which made me better than her, and less lazy of course. So when the breakfast waiter asked me where she was, and I replied that she was "still sleeping", I loved his reply to me, (who had just woken up at 1pm):

 

"Your friend sleep? Very long time."

 

Sadly, this is the only photo I got of Summer sleeping. So lazy!

 

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Summer-isms, Vol. 47

"I'm not even embarrassed."

"Can you imagine how drunk I'm gonna be at your funeral?"

"You know so much about ham."

"Lately I'm a one meal Sally. That is totally something you would say."

"I'm gonna miss those Hungarian boys. Their bodies were SO warm. I was like, can you just make a sandwich out of me?"

 

 

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"No More."

Summer has this thing where she falls in love with necklaces in shop windows, and the shops have this thing where they tell her the necklace she loves is $350. Then she does this thing where she says, "oh, too expensive" and then they do this thing where they say, "how much you pay?" but she can't come anywhere near that price so it's just a little embarrassing and we move on. One particular necklace baffled us, because it really looked like it was in her budget. Just a beaded number, and nothing special to indicate its expensive price tag.

 

As I remarked to Summer that the beaded necklace looked like should have been $12.00 and for added emphasis, "No more. No less." we were being followed by a couple of musical instrument salesmen, playing their musical instruments for sale.

 

In a situation not unlike this humiliating one, I accidentally looked straight into the eyes of the musical instrument salesman, playing us a lovely little tune on his little ukelele, just as I said the "No More." part of that sentence.

Super street smart, and savvy.

 

 

 

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Summer-isms, Vol. 46

 

"Yeah but they're Chinese, they're terrible people."


"One of these days I'm just gonna stop talking in front of you."

"You know what I want to see? I want to see a monkey riding a goose. That would be amazing."

"If I was a widower, and my wife was dead, I would want my first post-dead-wife kiss to be with Scarlett Johannson."

"It's like you can't put your legs anywhere in this country."

 

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The Pusher

Summer and I took an overnight sleeper bus to Istanbul from Cappadocia, Turkey. After an exhausting couple of days there, we were really looking forward to putting on our eye masks, taking sleeping pills and waking up in Istanbul the following morning. So we hunkered down in our assigned seats, in the third row from the back on the left-hand side.

Summer was awakened by the attendant, who asked her to move her seatback into the upright position. She complied at first, thinking that the man behind her needed to get out or something, but after she realized he was just sitting there, she reclined again.

I fell asleep shortly after but was woken up by the attendant, who was now telling me to sit up. I said "No! I'm sleeping!" because I've ridden enough buses to know his type. You know, the guy who thinks he can tell you you can't recline, but doesn't have enough guts to do it himself so he calls the attendant over to tell you. On a sleeper bus. Forget you, jerk. It is my right to recline! I am an American! Summer got involved and we tried our best to fight the situation. The attendant didn't take 'no' or our fit for an answer however, and forcefully moved my seat up and then left the scene. I screamed after him, "this is a sleeper bus!" in vain.

I secretly plotted to just recline again when a little time had passed. But I could feel the man behind me pushing against my seat. I tried time and time again to recline, but could not. This is going to sound like an exaggeration, but it isn't: Two hours passed. He kept pushing. I was unable to sleep of course. One, I was sitting straight up...and Two, I was really angry. I continued trying to recline, but that man pushed my seat forward for a full two hours.

Somehow, I felt strangely satisfied. Yes, even pleased that he was having to use so much force to prevent my reclining. The joke was on him, you know? Plus, I knew he'd have to get up and pee at some point. So I bided my time. Summer and I just could not believe it was happening. She reached up to snap a photo, for revenge:

Crazy eyes.

 

Eventually he did have to pee, and when he did I reclined my seat ALL the way and slept like a baby for the rest of the trip.

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Summer-isms, Vol. 45

"This makes ME want to buy a zoo."

"Is this how I find out that one of my legs is longer than the other?"

"What's wrong with the ice in this county? It melts."

"We are nothing until we do a Face Juggle."

"YOU could pass for being from Wisconsin."

 

(After reading the 25 Funniest Auto-Corrects of 2012.)

 

 

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Summer-isms, Vol. 44

"It's not right to look at someone's food and say it's gross."

"Man, there's so much I don't know about crabs."

"Finally! Cows!"

"They're on our team. The problem is they think we're on their team."

"Isn't it weird that we put animals down, but not people?"

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Summer-isms, Vol. 43

"What's gonna happen when I get dengue?"

"I'll be happy when this chicken kicks in."

"'It's all about the Benjamins.'"

"Another butt? Is it just another butt my butt is touching?"

"Plus Matt Damon would never wear his hair like that."

Summer-isms, Vol. 42

"The most racist I've ever been was when I was in Paris."

"Summer Grimes doesn't pay anybody to go to the bathroom."

"I wanted to yell, 'I'm a nurse!' But I'm not. My sister is."

"Do you know? I've never even had a business exchange with somebody named Todd?"

"I'm your best bet if we see a snake, Dummy."

Summer-isms, Vol. 42

"Did you notice how small every man's hands are lately?"

"This place is drunk in here."

"Who's prettier? Me? Or the man behind B?"

"I just heard my name." (to which he responded: 'What's your name? Stomach?')

"I just peed the stairs. I didn't pee the stairs."

Summer-isms, Vol. 41

"I have a problem. I don't like the company of men."

"I will tell you I have a hard time getting off of a bicycle."

"My car likes to be driven hard." 

"I know that sounds dirty and I'm glad it does."

"You biked better than me."

This is a screenshot of the Facetime conversation when I told Summer my mom had cancer. (Bad news makes us gorgeous.)

Summer-isms, Vol. 40

"Jay Leno is still on tv ??"

"I hate getting bad massages in other  countries."

"Don't you guys feel young again?"

"I think half of that band makes my coffee."

"I have three pet peeves in life: number one when people ride with their bike seat too low...what are my other pet peeves?"

Fancy Ladies

These two fancy ladies just pulled the trigger on a flight from Istanbul, Turkey to Colombo, Sri Lanka for sometime mid-November.

What a couple of Hoity Toits.



"Yah, it's like my body odor doesn't even smell. At all."



Summer-isms, Vol 39

"You know I couldn't wait to get this bra on and now I can't wait to get this bra off."

"I feel like every man uses Head & Shoulders."

"If I don't do it fast I don't do it at all."

"I have an invincibility complex."

"You're the worst public speaker I've ever seen in a corporate environment." (I've never publicly spoken in a corporate environment.)

Don't Sing

When Summer and I worked in Arizona, it wasn't all spiders and scorpions and gravel-filled water meter pits. There were bathroom breaks at the community pool and FedEx stops where we got to get in the car and drive somewhere. And that's where the magic didn't happen.

(Something hilarious happens at 0:38.)