My Husband Gave Me Crabs

Don't they look delicious:

He bought them live, off the back of a truck. He didn't realize that Phil's Live Crabs was just a pick-up truck in the middle of a busy intersection and when we got there and I pointed and said hey, I found it, it's that dirty pick-up truck over there in front of that biker bar, he said no, no, that can't be it, they have a phone number and positive reviews on Yelp. They were great and the kindly woman selling them gave us detailed instructions on how best to cook them: beer, old bay seasoning and water about 3 inches high boiling in a pot. She warned us not to let them warm up too much while still alive because then they'd get agitated and start moving around. On the way home, my husband kept freaking himself out that the crabs had gotten loose and were going to take over the maxi pad we're still driving. When we got out of the car for beer, he talked about that very hypothetical and said if it happened, we just let them have the rental and we walk home. I put one on the floor because I wanted to see what Truffles would do:

He got pissed and picked up the crab and dumped it in the pot right away. He wouldn't let Truffles play with Pinchy. At one point, as he was wrangling the "agitated" crabs, I heard him say "let's dance, motherfucker." It was all amazing, we made a giant mess and barely had room for dessert, which was a few extravagant bars full of chunks from my favorite Philly bakery (Flying Monkeys). I don't know what happened to that half of Guinness Whoopie Pie. . .

Getting old isn't an exciting thing to celebrate anymore. I'm at the point where I wake up with a little pimple and it makes me feel young again and I love when dumb kids in their 20s are like "aren't you 28?." Ugh.

Facebook has helped to make birthdays awesome, though. If even for only twenty seconds, people you don't hear from very often will take time out of their day to wish you a happy birthday. The happy birthday Facebook wall is a beautiful thing that people would be stupid not to love. I love it. It's my favorite thing about Facebook.

It wasn't my best day - I got a tough rejection letter today. Not that it was mean, it was actually very kind and the person sending it said she liked my writing and enjoyed the book and got other people in her office to read it, but it just didn't fit with the agency list. It happened to be someone I really wanted to work with and it bummed me out. I get a lot A LOT of rejection - and I did date for like more than a decade, so there was all of that you're not pretty/thin/rich/interesting/hairy/bald enough type of rejection, but these days most of my "career" is rejection. It's a lot of sending letters to people and explaining the work I did and asking them to read it and then in response, it's mostly no. Sometimes it's more, like today (and very kind) and sometimes it's like "don't feel badly, it's just that we're really exclusive" - which is like, sorry, it's not your fault we don't read the shit you write, but maybe Weird Al Yankovic needs writers? I'm hoping that like dating, it's a numbers game and just eventually someone says yes or feels sorry for me and makes me crabs and gives me health insurance. I did eventually win the dating game (and my husband is awesome), so I'm trying to stay positive about it all.