Nature Red in Tooth and Claw

I have said it before and I'll say it again...I am not a nature person.  Get me away from decent taxicabs and all night delis and I wilt.  Not to mention that I'm convinced that trees are out to get me, and that one of these days butterflies will grow teeth and then THEY'LL get me. 

This said, you can imagine my extreme distrust of going out on Tuesday for Gods Behaving Badly to be recently dead in a park an hour outside New York.

To give the place (Croton Point Park, I believe) its due, it is absolutely lovely.  BUT.

First of all, trying to get something to eat was a production number.  Crafty was a van ride away, for God's sake, and when we got there, there were a lot of perfectly lovely donuts waiting for us, and I was starved.  Unfortunately, the idiots running Crafty were evidently also city types, because instead of putting sturdy plastic covers on the donuts, they had loosely covered them with Saran wrap.  The result was that when we got there, the table was completely covered in a swarm of bees.  We had to fight them off to get any breakfast.  See what I mean about not liking nature?  That never would have happened in a decent deli.

Then we wandered about being dead.  They did have one thing that I thought was utterly marvelous.  We were all given what were supposed to be orientation packets for the afterlife, and true to the movies' insane attention to detail, they had actual orientation schedules and maps of the Underworld in them, which was hilarious.  From what was on the orientation schedule, it was clear that they had taken these things directly from a university orientation booklet, but it was funny anyway.  Things like Managing Your Credit in the Underworld (it's the one thing I thought I wouldn't have to worry about after death), cocktails in the Hades Bar, introductions to the medical clinic (eh?), and my absolute favorite...Safe Bicycle Riding.  Um, we're supposed to be dead ALREADY.  My only thought was that (since this particular item mentioned helmet safety) well, I suppose that even if you're dead, you wouldn't want to spend the afterlife with a misshapen head from a bike accident, now would you?  Not if you're going to have an elegant cocktail in the Hades Bar, anyway.

I'm back on this next Tuesday and maybe next Wednesday, and then I go back to my little law firm on Thursday, so money coming in...yay!

The cats are playing a very loud game of chase and running into things and knocking things over.  Teenagers!

Love, W.