Oh my hell, y’all, The Soap’s website quoted me, via Math+1’s Making of a Beauty Queen thread. Dude. The Soap!
For the record, at my facial last week, my darling facial lady Amy said that my pores were definitely smaller. Also, as this is my lady time, I can verify that the acne, she is nowhere to be had. What is more, we are now on month four and counting and I still have a fairly large bar of Soap left. To amend my quote, this may well be a six-month or more bar of Soap.
Thank you Pamie. Thank you AB. Thank you Soap.
Esteban and I made plans yesterday afternoon to leave work early and go to the very special annoying post office downtown to deal with our passport issues. Around three o’clock, just to be on the safe side, he suggested that I call them to make sure that they didn’t have special hours for passport stuff.
They did. We had already missed them.
Fucking bureaucrats.
Then, last night, we were discussing our trip and the fact that we still don’t know where we will be resting our weary heads. Mostly because I’m being really picky and also because I still really want to have an apartment in a very specific two-block stretch of Little Venice, or at very least, be somewhere within short distance to a tube station. And then it occurred to us that suddenly, somehow, there is very little February left. And our trip is exactly three weeks from today. Holy heck. When did that happen?
We talked about the possibility that we wouldn’t be able to get our replacement passports within three weeks and the possibility that our tickets are not refundable (they’re not) and what we would do instead. And Esteban said, ‘The money, I don’t care about the money. I care more about my beautiful wife crying for two days because she doesn’t get to go back to London.’ You just have to love that guy.
However, today, we both made it a point to go down to the very special downtown post office during the very special passport window of opportunity together. We walked in, were handed each two mystifying forms and told to get back in line once they were filled out. Lovely. We stood back by the table and started checking the forms, but just because I’m anal, I checked our documents. On President’s Day, we had gone down to the Register of Deeds to get copies of Esteban’s birth certificate and also our marriage certificate, but we didn’t need a copy of my birth certificate because I had one from the first time. Except that apparently my name at birth was Esteban and I was a little boy.
GARRRRGH!
I thrust my forms at Esteban and said, ‘Here, fill out mine. I’ll be right back.’ I then turboed over to the county building, parked illegally, and rushed up to the Register of Deeds, and requested a copy of my birth certificate. Then I watched as the most painfully disinterested county employee found my proof of origin amidst the thousands of records, made a copy, and then struggled for what was perhaps two weeks with replacing the book of birth certificates back in the stacks. Then I ran back to the post office, where Esteban was just completing our forms and where there was now a line of no fewer than twelve folks with stacks upon stacks of things that needed signature receipts, hazardous material vouchers, customs forms, two other people who needed passports, and one guy who needed to rent a post office box. Not a single person just needed to mail a letter or wanted to buy a book of Andy Warhol stamps. Not a single one. And of course, most of the postal workers were out to lunch. I’ve seen glaciers with more agility than some of these postal workers.
Finally, however, we made it back up to the window, and then proceeded to fill out forty-two more forms, including a maze-like procession of address labels (one going to an address that was two blocks from where we stayed in New Orleans. That made me chuckle). She then started with Esteban’s stuff first, while I stood patiently waiting for my turn, staring at my unbelievably bad passport photo (apparently, I am a very blotchy person. Also, I wore a white v-neck and the passport background was white, so I just look like a big floating blotchy head). Then she finished with Esteban and turned to me.
Esteban said, ‘So you’re all done with me?’ and left, because he had plans for lunch with his friends. I gave him a fiery look of pain because he sucks, passports suck, the postal office sucks and so does everyone else. Also, I hate both of us because why did we both lose our passports? Why? Why couldn’t we have found them? Because it cost us $334 for that little trick, all of which could have been avoided. Or been used to buy something that made me squeal. Incidentally, that’s exactly what my new camera cost (minus accessories), so the next time Esteban brings up his dismay at how much I spent on the camera, I’m going to point out our missing passports.
Also, you know how I sometimes get the feeling that I’m going to die when I go on a trip? Well, I don’t have it this time, but after I showed the postal clerk my driver’s license, I put it back into my wallet and then something fluttered down and landed on my passport application.
It was my organ donor sticker.
If I were a character in a movie, right at that moment, there would have been the swelling orchestra of dismay and a close camera angle on that electric orange sticker sitting face up right next to my Emergency Contact information.
I am so fucked.
Last night, Esteban and I were both walking through the kitchen at the same time, going in separate directions. I paused, undecided if I had just forgotten to do something, and then suddenly was overcome by a bout of ladytime bottom burpage. Or rather, a bottom burp that didn’t end. My ass just went on and on, hitting high notes, lilting question tones, making exclamations, all in one glorious butt aria.
Esteban, quite understandably, was shocked and dismayed. I was completely amused and waited for his inevitable comment on my anal symphony.
Finally, he lifted one eyebrow and calmly said, ‘Were you trying to form actual words?’
It was then that I collapsed into a hysterical laughing heap onto the kitchen floor.
Wouldn’t THAT be the coolest trick ever? Poopbonics? You’d always have something to talk about at cocktail parties, whenever someone asks ‘What have you done that no one else in the room has done?’ Ok, I don’t get invited to cocktail parties, and probably because I think that someone’s butt reciting the preamble to the constitution is very very funny.
Must resist urge to make Dubya joke. Must resist!
Dear Ralph Nader,
Wha—you’wha-wha’
No, I mean’ what the fu’
You know what? It’s not even worth it.
