Wherever You Go, There They Are

by Annabelle Gurwitch

  * The department just had a contest to name a new horse; names submitted included “Cotton,” “Moonpie,” and my favorite choice: “Clotilde,” after the ship carrying would-be slaves that was abandoned in Mobile Bay in 1859. “Merlin” is the name that was chosen.

  * Okay, that’s not exactly true—there are oil rigs—but you can find views that are completely unobstructed.

  * Like me, Buffett spent part of his childhood in Mobile.

  * The minimum wage in Alabama has been stuck at the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour since 2009.

  * Prior to this trip, I was in Edinburgh, where you quickly get used to the improbable sight of a fast-food joint in an anteroom of a castle. Businesses have been integrated into the ancient structure, ensuring that it remains a central and vibrant part of life in the city.

  * The Gold Coast in Louisiana is able to attract beach renourishment funding because tourism brings in big bucks, making investment seem worthwhile. Some environmentalists are up in arms that reparation funds are also being spent on tourist attractions, but a compelling argument can be made that if environmentally fragile areas have greater economic value, it’s more likely they will get preserved.

  * I forgot something. Mr. Mayor also said it wasn’t snake season, a relief, but tick season, which is even worse! Maybe he was making it up to keep me away.

  * The Inuit language is famous for having fifty words for snow. We should have more vocabulary for types of sleep. I’d call this: the slumber upon returning home: slhombering.

  * In 2014, people spent $870 million on pet insurance in America alone.

  * Ike had a heart attack during a liasion with a lady of the evening, I will later learn from a cousin. Mobile is a really, really small town.

  * Leaving the house, Ezra had yelled, “You do know someone was murdered by their Uber driver this week, Mom.”

  “If that’s how I’m going to go, I’m fine with that!” I called back, hoping those wouldn’t be my last words to my son.

  * As I write this, the Isle de Jean Charles, an island in Louisiana just four hours away from Dauphin Island, is preparing to relocate all of its residents. Only a 320-acre strip remains of what was once a 22,400-acre island. The water level is expected to rise between two and six feet by the end of the century.

  * PETA’s latest focus is educating the public on abusive practices employed during the harvesting of wool and cashmere, but they believe that the use of comfort animals in the military is also questionable. They also object to using the word “pet.”

  * A doggie-day-care center opened up down the street from my office called Bone Sweet Bone, a local pig rescue group is called Lil’ Orphan Hammies, and it just goes on!

  * Cats don’t like to be clothed, which is why it was so brilliant when the citizens of Brussels tweeted out cats in outrageous getups while police searched for the Paris bombers. Nothing says both “Fuck you!” and “We’re fucked!” more than cats in costumes.

  * For some people “family” means people who you don’t mind seeing your dirty dishes and unmade beds. In my family, it means you must scour your home for days before inviting them in or they will embarrass you by cleaning it themselves in front of you.

  * “Mary” is a name that people have disparagingly called gay men but was embraced by those same gay men it was meant to insult.

  * My dad really was ahead of his time with his idea of pet insurance and pet cemeteries in 1967. If he’d been able to finish law school, he’d have had a field day with this kind of thing.

  * The official party line in Judaism is that dogs don’t have souls, hence no ritual observances like sitting shiva.

  * For about a month, my husband was convinced our cat could talk, and that was the first time I suggested that he might want to consider getting his real estate license. The cat never spoke, but six words formed in my mind: Too much time on his hands.

  * In February of 2011, Toyota announced that the official plural of “Prius” is “Prii,” but you can’t write that or say it out loud without feeling like a pretentious idiot, so I’m pretending I don’t know that.

  * It’s just a natural reaction. The same holds true for babies. When my son was born with medical issues and had to spend time in the NICU, I learned from the nurses that research has shown that babies who are cuter and less fussy get held more, so they’re trained to resist that example of natural selection in action.

  * Moner and Nadia al-Kadri seem like great people, and I wish them all the best. Note: they brought the tabby in a baby sling, much like the one Lauren toted Mia around in.

  * A recent study showed that cats can understand a limited number of words, it’s just that they don’t care enough to acknowledge us.

  * My sister and I were second-generation campers; our father was a counselor and taught riflery, a skill he picked up at his military high school.

  * Both Joan Baez and Patty Duke recorded versions of this traditional song; it’s called “Dona Dona.”

  * There might have been more to the therapy, but I was hypnotized and can’t remember.

  * “Kettle” is the scientific term for a group of hawks.

  * A handlebar mustache takes several months to grow; obviously, he didn’t plan to come on a whim, as I did.

  * Months later, watching Veep, I will sympathize with Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s aide Amy, who turns down a job at a fictional tech start-up called Clovis because she doesn’t want to work with people who play with Legos.

  * I also learned that the premise of every dystopian futuristic movie is flawed. If there is a catastrophic event, the entire population of Earth will just be running for help.

  * It might be worth noting here that Mellow Out was not of Native American descent.

  * Getting naked with strangers is a bit too much like “W” for me. Working in theater and even on movie sets, actors regularly disrobe in front of crew and cast members; that becomes something very easy for us. Getting to know people with your clothes on, that’s a challenge.

  * We know now that there was interspecies mating between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. The temperature can drop to −40 degrees in the Altai Mountains in Central Asia, where proof of the species coexisting concurrently has been discovered, and any old hominid can look pretty good to cuddle up to at that temperature.

  * Bonobo chimpanzee females leave home and form societies based on sororal bonds. It sounds like a painful gum disease, but it’s a model for human sisterhood. Like our bonobo cousins, and like many of my female friends, Juel and I met long after we left home. Unlike our bonobo cousins, I’ve never turned a twig into a French tickler, but I admire their inventiveness.

  * Books have been replaced by wicker and rattan decorative balls in many homes. What the hell do they signify, other than a great way to measure how much dust is in your air?

  * Fargone specifically forbids consultants to say this. The Mayo Clinic is mentioned on the site, but there’s no endorsement; however, you can find consultants’ blogs touting this claim all over the Internet.

  * Later I will learn that Fargone offers an eight-hundred-dollar monthly Mercedes car allowance as a sales bonus, but you lease or buy it in your own name, so if you miss your sales number or quit the biz, tough titties, you still have to pony up for the car.

  * Each Fit Chew (the size of a typical Tootsie Roll) contains four grams of sugar, which is roughly a teaspoon of sugar. They contain brown rice syrup, dried cane syrup, sugar, and palm oil, which, according to a study featured on NPR, raises LDL cholesterol—that’s the bad kind.

  * Not to diminish the real need to fix problems in these workplaces and relieve
people from crushing student debt.

  * I don’t need to point out the irony in the daisy-chainish logo, do I?

  * There’s a lot of controversy over whether it’s entrepreneurial, which is what MLMs like to say about themselves, or whether this is akin to opening a franchise; hence the term “franchapreneur.”

  * I am now wary of the report I recently heard on the BBC about Spain’s economy improving.

  * Like many products advertised as “energy drinks,” one of the reasons it provides “energy” is that it contains caffeine.

  * Sara Horowitz, founder of the not-for-profit Freelancers Union, knows the loneliness of the gig economy. What started as an organizing tool for health insurance now offers meet-ups and drinks nights for connecting with other freelancers. Membership in the FU is free.

  * The good feeling in the air is for real. A recent study at UCLA showed that when groups of women get together it releases oxytocin, which is a stress reducer; the same hormone is not triggered in male groupings.

  * Fargone’s website makes it clear that only heirs over eighteen can inherit your business, but I doubt that she’s aware that what she’s saying is a partial truth at best.

  * There’s been some pushback on MLMs in churches. Amanda Edmondson of Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, Kentucky, says in Christianity Today: “If we aren’t careful, people can quickly become an opportunity for our financial gain instead of a brother or sister in Christ.”

  * In that movie, he develops telepathic powers that allow him to bond with women by cloyingly saying things like, “Let’s take this relationship slow.”

  * Showbiz, like cosmetics, is also a thirty-four-billion-dollar industry, but that doesn’t mean you and I are going to see any of it. I prefer the showbiz anti-recruitment ethos—even the most successful people will go to any lengths to try to talk you out of getting into the biz.

  * According to my read of a 2015 compensation chart laden with squishy language suggesting that only consultants who earn every month are factored into averages, so the possibility exists that some sister made $34 billion during one month and then sailed off into the sunset. (Retail profits are also excluded from compensation.)

  * I’ve received messages on Facebook from women offering sponsorship in It Works, a weight-loss body wrap; Terra essential oils; Rodan + Fields; Nerium; and a company whose name couldn’t be revealed unless I made a phone date with a complete stranger to hear the pitch.

  * The Fargone grapevine touts success stories like a former bus driver who is now a millionaire. None of those who repeated this example recognized this as marketing and not a vetted news story.

  * “Deep and wide” is marketing speak. Go deep into your phone book, hitting up family and friends and their contacts, then people you’ve lost touch with. “Going wide” means networking with people in regions that are less saturated: fresh territory.

  * I also heard the word “yummy” used to describe face creams by many consultants. I’d never heard that word used in that context, but it may explain why a consultant brought face cream to my potluck. Fargone consultants are encouraged to stick to the scripts that are circulated among them.

  * Depp chose to have the tattoo reworked into Wino Forever, but I prefer my idea; it’s evergreen and a teachable moment for your offspring. He’s just changed his tattoo of ex Amber Heard’s nickname from SLIM to SCUM; I think SLUMP is a better choice.

  * Okay, for Bruce aficionados the example is fraught, as Bruce’s main residence is only 12.5 miles from where he grew up.

  * The cottages are also referred to with the libido-killing moniker “medhomes.” I prefer the granny pod made from a cargo container—it’s streamlined and very mid-century. Someone please let my son know, in case early-onset dementia prevents my telling him.

  * Moshe and I actually have a lot in common, as the day-to-day life of a swaybacked-mule junk dealer is much like being an author on a book tour. I’ve sold books from the trunk of my car.

  * The number of trees sacrificed for meals prepared in Nanny’s kitchen is unfathomable. I hope those quarters we collected in the ubiquitous tree-planting campaigns for Israel in the 1970s added to the aggregate number of trees in the world enough to balance it out.

  * Why wouldn’t that goat look pained? Inner monologue of Chagall goat: Why do I have to play the violin and wear this schmata? The Bible is like a goat genocide, can’t I catch a break? It’s really hard for a goat to keep a scarf on.

  * In 2014, the station finally opened. It was only disastrous financially for us; other investors made millions of dollars.

  * Years later, I landed a role playing poor white trash in a Roger Corman production titled Not Like Us, a film that was not very good.

  * Dad also sold his double-duty Dubble to his classmates for a tidy profit.

  * Think about it: a children’s puppet named for a cut of meat? Trigger alert! Shari Lewis would be filleted for that now.

  * Hence The Little Man; see chapter 1.

  * Eggs aren’t dairy, but that’s all I could think of at five a.m. and pre-caffeination. That she didn’t correct my mistake was also a bad sign.

  * That clown turned out to be a great guy. As usual, my big sister has flawless instincts.

  * My sister’s underwear drawer is color coded and as organized as an Excel spreadsheet. My drawers serve as evidence of chaos theory and my closets are a case study in entropy.

  * It sounds a bit overly dramatic, but it’s better than being the Nail.

  * Dad informed me that twenty-two pounds of hundred-dollar bills adds up to a million dollars. Casinos can be educational.

  * Ten years later, I got my first starring role, in a nighttime TV series on HBO, whose offices were in the very same building. This was the series that was “prophesied” by my psychic father, Van Zandt.

  * Mr. Bonaduce lived until recently a few doors down from me. When he decided to sell his home, I went to the open house; the place was decorated in a style I call Celebrity Spanish Inquisition: velvet thrones, leather chairs, and full-size cutouts of the actor.

  * Vonnegut borrowed characters from Star Trek and elements of his novels appear in the series and movies.

  * I also used to swim in that creek, which was probably part of a sewage drainage system, but that has nothing to do with this story, except it may be why I am several inches shorter than my relatives.

  * It’s possible the daily consumption of bleached wood pulp is yet another reason why I am shorter than my family. Noelle ended up being the smallest one of her siblings as well.

  * I’ve wanted to fold my son’s friends who regularly hang out at our home into our family, though they may not see me as a surrogate mother—we have a converted garage/rec room that makes for easy late-night entrances, exits, and stashing of bottles of cheap wine.

  * I think Louise got that backward: diabetes isn’t caused by but does give you longing for desserts that might have been.

  * Some things can feel true, the way it can seem like eating ice cream shouldn’t make you gain weight because it’s just frozen liquid.

  * Physicist Lisa Randall explains, in Knocking on Heaven’s Door, how Rhonda Byrne, author of The Secret, says she read about quantum mechanics and immediately understood it. Randall says, “No, you didn’t.” Quantum mechanics works on a scale too small for our thoughts or “souls” to create energy with physical properties.