Don’t plan a vacation that is going to cost an ungodly amount of money unless you have said money already stashed away in a piggy bank.

Otherwise, you end up spending weeks upon weeks upon weeks doing nothing but working your fingers down to the nubs so that you actually have money to spend on the trip after you are done paying for hotels and transportation. Aside from working out in an effort to minimize butt juttage so that you don’t knock small children down when passing them on the beach, that is.

Quick butt juttage sidetrack here. This is a true story. And not like a Fox News or 700 Club true story. This one is actually real.

When we went to Ireland last spring, we flew out of D.C., but on our way back home we pit-stopped in New York, so, when we went home, we flew from JFK to Long Beach. So, anyway, on that flight back, we get on the plane and we are all situated, our seatmate tucked safely by the window, me in the middle, and Shawna on the aisle.

This woman starts down the aisle toward us and she was, literally, nothing but butt. Like, she could have just been a head sitting on top of a butt with appendages for the amount of torso she possessed. We see her coming and think to ourselves, “Selves, it’s all good. Just don’t get in the way of it.”

It’s really all that you can do.

So, of course, she is in the row directly across the aisle from us. She stops beside our row, turns to put her carry-on up and Whap! Shawna takes the butt right in the shoulder. If she had been standing up, it would have totally put her right down. So I have to look away and cover my face, because, inside, I am laughing hysterically. And the best part was, she didn’t move for like two minutes. She just stood there, resting her butt on Shawna’s shoulder.

To be fair, I feel like I now have to share about the time that we went to the NYC Pride Parade and a super tall guy who was walking in the parade came over to talk to the person next to us and turned away from me and his butt was pretty much even with my face and he was wearing chaps without anything underneath. And they proceeded to have like a ten minute conversation. Yeah. That happened.

The butt juttage story also reminds me of the Kim Kardashian tray table incident, in which she supposedly knocked some guy’s drink into his lap or something,  just by, you know, trying to turn sideways.

All of these butt mishaps. Seems like a design flaw to me. If I were the Great Creator, I would still give people butts of unusual size (the world would be a sad, booty-deprived place without them), but I would also give them whiskers to help them better navigate tight spaces. Seriously, is this concept really that hard? How do I apply?

Wow. That really wasn’t a quick sidetrack at all, was it?

Anyway, heathens and hedonists, that’s where I’ve been. Nowhere.

Except for tonight. My first night off in about two weeks.

David Ford played in Philly tonight. It was the best performance of his that I have seen to date. And he played the one album cut that I like to cuddle up to when things start to get really heavy, and that I never thought I’d get to hear live. And it was sooooo goood to hear it. He also had some new songs that were truly special, one that gave my tear ducts a good cleansing, and a new “instrument” that simply blows the mind. If he is coming near enough to you for you to make it to one of his shows, please, I implore you, make it to one of his shows.

With any luck, you too will have a very special blond next to you who screams out the wrong performer’s name when David starts his first song, then pretends to be the biggest fan in the room. If you are really lucky, she’ll also miss three full songs at the end of the show because she is in the bathroom, and when she returns to the table, she’ll have her hair fixed differently, have her makeup touched up and smell like she’s taken a whore’s bath in perfume, seemingly in preparation for her post-performance meet-and-greet with the man with the changing name. At least, that’s what ours did.