That's My Bix!

On Sunday, I woke up fairly early and tried to be quiet to not wake up Jen, who was sleeping on the sofa, but figured that my shower would totally wake her up. No dice. My phone rang and I hurried to answer it, worried again that I’d wake her up with my cellular ring tone of ‘Just Like Heaven’. Wrong again. Then Chiara called and made arrangements to meet for brunch somewhere uptown at Ann Sathers and Jessamyn gave me directions to get there, Jen slept soundly through the entire conversation.

I hung up and realized that we had to meet them in forty minutes and before that happened, I had to wake Jen, call Kelly, pack up all of my stuff, get the valet to bring up the car, check out, get some money at the ATM and find this mysterious place that was apparently twenty minutes away when in general, the Weetabix method of Chicago transportation and getting lost-edness doubles the average travel time from Point A to Point B. Or in my case, Point A to Point B by way of Point X and Z and also by that famous fountain at least twice. Yikes. As I roused Jen, I realized that the entire building could have collapsed and she would have slept through it, which I sort of admire, because I sleep as soundly as a post-traumatic stress survivor. I snap awake at just about anything so I really admire her ability to fully relax and tune out the world, even while cramming her six foot tall frame onto a glorified loveseat.

She woke and I gave her the bum rush, which I still feel bad about, as I should really wear an alert bracelet caution friends and acquaintances that I hate to be late. Hate. I suspect that it comes from years of being the last kid picked up after school, the one whose teacher sits and waits with them until dark, the one who would rather die than have to walk into a crowded event that has already begun, the one who joined ever family gathering already in progress. It has broken my head, to the point where I leave for work forty minutes earlier than necessary, just to reassure myself that no, I’m not going to be late, it’s fine, it’s fine, there is plenty of time.

Jen, to her credit, managed to take a shower, get dressed, pack up her stuff, and be ready to go in the same time it took me to throw all of my things into my bags, call the valet and finish drying my hair. Which makes me think that maybe Esteban is right and I probably don’t need to take as much time getting ready to go.

We hit the street, missed our exit and then ran out of Lake Shore to Drive on, but then called Jessamyn, clarified directions, did a quick U-turn that may or may not have ripped off a part of my car (someone watched one too many Dukes of Hazard as a child), found a sweet ass parking spot and met up with Chiara, Jessamyn, Katie and Kelly while only being a few minutes late. Hooray!

We then had a really unbelievably yummy breakfast with lots of laughter and delightful company. How can a morning that starts out with so many hot women (and an adorable baby) be bad? It can’t. Also, I have seen the darkness and their name is legion, for they are cinnamon rolls. They almost made me forget about the bacon-wrapped dates. Almost.

After breakfast, we all walked to my car and then had hugs and byes and see you soons and call me girl! until we all went off in different directions towards our individual Sunday afternoon endeavors. Chiara and I tried to not be too glum, for we were off to see the fascinating exploded corpse exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. After some confusion, we found the museum, parked in the garage and ran up to the exhibit. We decided that since it was only a little after 1 and we didn’t have to leave for the airport until 5, we would wander the museum a bit first. We went into the Fairy Castle doll house, with the violin that really works and the books that are real books, then wandered up to some exhibit on industrialization and railroads and plastics and petroleum andasdraselkrja;sldk ooh, sorry snoozed off a bit. In retrospect, we shouldn’t have wasted any time and gone directly into Bodyworlds and did not pass Go because it was so cool that we could have spent the entire afternoon in there. However, after about an hour wandering through the museum, we hit the carb wall and needed to regenerate with some iced coffees in the fake Starbucks, during which time we went from slumped in our chairs like slackers to sitting on the edge of our seats, chatting animatedly about the internet and gossip and boys. The magic of caffeine. And then it was time for corpses!

I am fascinated by human physiology and in college biology, I was always the lab partner holding the scalpel. In another lifetime, I would have gone to medical school rather than Playing With Words school. I wasn’t too worried about the ‘controversial’ aspect of the exhibit, because I could appreciate the educational aspects that to me clearly outweighed any ethical issues, especially since the donors were willing and interested in giving their remains to the Bodyworlds team. At first when you walk into the exhibit, you’re somewhat stunned by the fact that there are corpses in the room with you, and the feeling that they are just strangely shiny horror movie props. There’s an impulse to giggle when you see a skinless penis. And then you get past that. You see the tendons that allow you to move your hand. You see a lung, black with tar. A cool British voice describes the processes of the body, using the lovely Latin names of things you never knew existed. You think about how Michelangelo used to dissect corpses to understand the body, and how the statue of David is missing an important back muscle but since he was carved from scrap marble, that section of the marble was missing and Michelangelo always viewed the piece as hugely flawed because of it. You walk up to a man who is holding his own skin, flayed and limp, for your appraisal, and there are tiny blond hairs on the legs and a delicate scar along the knee. He looks introspective, like someone at the Gap, wondering if a pair of jeans is going to fit. And you wonder if you are really seeing this. If you can even comprehend your own skin being separate from your body, or being the sum of so many dedicated parts and structures and systems, two parts calcium, three parts protein, five parts oh my god.

I wish they had allowed us to take pictures in there, just because even now, I think back to the intricate infrastructures of the hand, the leathery thigh muscle, the crimson lattice work of blood vessels that all work together to make a person live and walk and talk and eat a sandwich. I can’t wrap my brain around it, which makes sense especially when you look at an actual brain sitting under Plexiglas, as benign as a strawberry-kiwi Jell-o mold, and know that you’re looking at the subconscious, the Id, the Ego. That clump of grayish pink gristle is responsible for the most beautiful music and the most unspeakable violence. You’re looking at the place where dreams come from. You’re looking at literature and medicine and astronomy and our perception of God and everything, everything, everything, comes from a dun tightly coiled mass of tissue. This is where you fall in love. This is what makes you cry. This. Right here. Why do we laugh? Who are we? There should just be an arrow pointing down at it, exclaiming ‘You are here’ because you are. Right there. All condensed down to a handful of the most precious and mysterious icon in the world.

In the early parts of the exhibit, Chiara and I couldn’t stop talking about how cool it was, how neat, how absolutely fucking insane that this was what we looked like with all our clothes off and also skin and in some cases, muscles and organs too. But then the enormity seemed to overwhelm me and I could only just walk around in awe, wide-eyed and mouth open. What a piece of work is man, said Shakespeare, or rather, Shakespeare’s pink Jell-o mold. But really, he had no idea. The body is a little like space itself. I just can’t fathom the beginning and the end of it, but it is so beautiful and complex that I can never again think of it as just a body no more than the stars are just a sky.

We had gotten through about half of the exhibit when we realized that we only had a half hour before we absolutely had to leave for the airport, but everything was so completely entrancing that it was hard to rush through anything. I started trading off exhibits, skipping any individual organs in favor of the full body displays. But to be honest, I could have stared slack jawed at the vein displays for an hour alone. We finally raced out of there, made a quick potty break, ran out the door, paid for parking at the automated kiosk, and started the car, which was perilously close to being out of gas.

The late fear started kicking in. I was terrified that we would run out of gas before we found the nearest gas station (the Chrysler’s little computer said we had 1 mile of gas left, the nearest gas station was 12 blocks away) so when we pulled up to the parking kiosk and needed the parking ticket that Chiara had just handed me less than a minute earlier, I had no idea where it was. It wasn’t in my pockets or in my purse (which is a crazy conglomeration of loose cards and cash until I find a replacement wallet) or in my pockets again or in my hoodie pockets or in my other pocket or on the floor of the car. I was getting more frantic as I was certain we would run out of gas just sitting there with the car on idle. We held up a bunch of cars until I offered to pay for the parking again but the very kind parking attendants raised the gate and waved us through. As we pulled out, the paid parking ticket fell out of the CD visor onto Chiara’s leg. Hi, I’m a dumb ass.

But we found the gas station and then the highway and were on our way. Phew! Except that apparently there was major road construction and hence traffic jams on a Sunday afternoon. Garg! I started sweating immediately, worrying that we were really really going to miss Chiara’s flight and oh my god I was the worst person ever. Late! I was going to be a late person! I started cutting in and out of lanes like a jackass, trying anything I could to make some forward progress. It was like we were the unlucky team on Amazing Race and about to be eliminated. I was pretty confident that she’d make the flight or be ok because I would make sure of it and accept nothing less. So then I decided that it was silly to worry about the possibility of something bad happening, when that something that not had actually happened yet. The time would be better spent enjoying Chiara’s delightful company instead. So we chatted about hot men and flings and the secret of inner hotness while making a mile’s progress over 40 minutes, but then we were rolling smoothly, 40, 45, 50, 60 miles an hour and life was grand once more. We made it to the airport at 6:30 for Chiara’s 7:04 flight and with absolutely no time for schmoopy goodbyes, my friend was off in a sprint. I made a mental wish for speedy security and a nearby gate. As I drove away from O’Hell, around 7:05 I saw a plane climbing into the clouds and I imagined Chiara snuggling into her seat, pulling out her iPod and exhaling over a harrowing ninety-minute airport transit. I learned the next morning that she had indeed made her flight, so all was well.

I pointed north and followed the line of Lake Michigan for 200 miles. The weekend was exhausting, but so very well worth it, between babies and martini flights and tapas and sequined circle skirts and belugas and spleens, it was like being set loose inside Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory only without the Oompa Loompas. I rolled up my driveway by ten that evening, climbed into bed, and fell asleep immediately, secure in the knowledge that I had not wasted a single minute of a wonderful weekend.

You can read more about the weekend from Chiara, Jen and Kelly.

At some point in the last week, I passed that magical point where I no longer have short hair and officially have ‘long’ hair. Personally, I’ve been paying attention, and I knew that it was finally getting longer. At least six people have independently said ‘Wow, Weet, your hair is getting really long!’ as though I’ve been trying to pull one over on them, or maybe there’s a lever in my back that you crank to make it grow. After two years of struggling with the length, at my last appointment, my stylist Stacy agreed that I look acceptable with long hair, and suddenly there is progress. I had suspected that she was surreptitiously hacking away back there and this change of heart coinciding with the appearance of inches of hair is very suspicious.

Aside from the weirdness with the secret cutting of my hair, Stacy has also taken liberties with other things, namely hair color. I don’t know if she’s unnaturally distracted or what, but at the end of February, I asked for medium brown with lighter caramel colored highlights (like J.Lo, because apparently I was smoking crack that day), argued with her for about five minutes about how I didn’t want red because she really thought I wanted red and then when she was walking back to mix the color, she even said ‘And no red? Just a little red? I’ll put just a little red in too, to warm it up, yes?’ Arrgh. Then she ended up inexplicably foiling my entire head and then didn’t do the back portion at ALL because she had already used a hundred sheets of foil. I think she was sick of doing it. Finally, instead of the closely blended browns, I ended up with muddy espresso and crazy platinum blonde streaks. It was so very wrong. My sister Mo had pointed and laughed at me, but then went to visit Stacy also and ended up with exactly the same hair, despite her request for the normal warm brunette.

So tonight, I’m cheating on my stylist. I’m going to the Aveda salon I visited while Stacy had a broken foot. The Aveda salon gave me extraordinary color that was soft and lovely and flattering and exactly what I wanted, and with the exception of pushing their products a little too strenuously (because, man, it’s not like I’m not going to buy the stuff. I’m thisclose to being a serious Aveda snob, and even when Stacy stopped working at an Aveda shop, I still crossed the picket line to pick up their Purefume hairspray, so cripes), their atmosphere is calm and austere and they offered me fancy coffee, so yeah, my loyalty only goes so far. And actually, I’m still going to go to Stacy to get my hair cut and not mention that I had it colored elsewhere. She won’t even realize it for months and months, because she didn’t notice last time.

I should have the Aveda girl cut my hair too, because I trimmed my own bangs (Stacy gave me weirdly crooked Betty Page bangs) and you know, I really should not trim my own bangs. I think I’m going to put up a Post-It in my bathroom that says, ‘You think you can handle it, but the truth of the matter is that you cannot. It seems like a good idea when you’ve got the scissors right there and a mirror and a well-lit place, but in actuality it’s one of the worst ideas that can ever come into your head because you will close your eyes when you snip so that the hair doesn’t get into them and when you open your eyes you will have turned into Pugsley Addams. Sincerely, Crooked Bangs Girl’ which I’m sure would confuse Esteban and also the transient spiders that seem to want to live in our shower (what is up with that?) but if it stops me from taking matters into my own hands again, so be it. Right now, there is hair in my eye, but then a hank of it is sticking a little askew because it’s too short to hang right and has some impressive Mohawk ambitions. It’s good to dream big, I guess.

In other fashion mishaps, last week saw the demise of not one, not two, not three, but four mofo pairs of sunglasses. My Nine Wests lost a lens when the rim cracked, my DKNYs and my Mizrahi for Targets both lost earpieces and my CK’s seem to have committed seppuku, leaving me with one impulse purchase of a bug-eyed pair of Baby Phat’s with rhinestone BP detailing (that left this member of the fashion police to respond ‘Oh honey, you didn’t.’) I am somewhat aghast myself, as it’s like being stranded on a dessert island wearing high-heeled sandals and a velvet ball gown. The BP’s had their time and place, when I felt like being fun, wearing too much lip-gloss and my bedazzled DKNY t-shirt. They were the fashion equivalent of a one-night stand with a punk rock drummer’ great fun while it lasts but not someone you want to go antiquing with on rainy Saturday afternoons. Had I realized that I would be down to one pair in the space of three days, I would have chosen a bit more carefully. And honestly, I am entirely too picky about sunglasses. It takes me months to find a pair that I am happy with. Maybe even years. And they are not just a fashion accessory for me. I have a theory that people with blue eyes are more sensitive to sunlight, or maybe I am part vampire (which would explain the nearly translucent skin during the winter months and the wisps of smoke that waft off my unprotected flesh during the summer when I forget sunscreen), but if it is sunny outside, I need to have something. It is non-negotiable.

After making due with the BP’s giant Zsa Zsa Gabor lenses for a few days, I found myself standing before a cheap sunglass kiosk in the mall. I found a pair that were cute and then decided to load up because my goodness, if my personal version of a sunglass rapture happens again, I don’t want to be stuck trying to drive while looking through a Viewmaster. Watch out for the Tyrannasaurus, Scooby Doo! So now I have three brand spanking new cheap pairs of sunglasses to surround and taunt the Baby Phat’s. There’s a pair of fake Burberrys, a pair of fake Dolce and Gabbana’s and what is clearly becoming a disturbing trend, a big squarish brown pair of fake Chanels. When I wear them I suspect that the resemblance between me and Kim Cattrall is striking. Only that I’m younger and cuter and not a ho.

You would think that I would be happy with this trove, but I will tell you that this is not so. Tomorrow I am trekking to Chicago, where I will go look at oceanic animals and inside-out corpses with Chiara and have martinis with Tobermory and also have a delightful evening of sangria and tapas. Nothing says fun like a weekend with some of the prettiest girls on the internet. And I’ll also be looking for some more sunglasses. Because you just never know, people. You just never know.

I have mentioned in the past that Green Bay is a radio wasteland and I think nothing demonstrates this simple truth more than the fact that I had to move from this city of more than a hundred thousand to the sleepy little college town of Stevens Point in order to experience my first truly wonderful radio station. Located three blocks from my dorm, WWSP provided the soundtrack for that eighteen-month stretch of my life. I would wind around the surrounding farmland and embark deep into the national forest, just to have an excuse to listen to the radio on the tinny speakers of my red Chevrolet Monza. Yes, that’s right. A Monza. To this day, I’m still not sure what a Monza is supposed to be, animal or mineral, earthly or otherwise, English or maybe some other rich Corinthian leather of a language. I used to imagine that ‘Monza’ was perhaps slang for a form of venereal disease, perhaps named after the exotic hooker who was first diagnosed with the disease. Suffice to say, however, the Monza lived up to its name in that it was shaped like a suppository, rode about three inches off the ground, and was plagued by a weird miasma of mechanical problems until the transmission decided that it had had enough of this bullshit and completely dropped out of the car at a neat 90,001 miles. They don’t make them like they used to, for which we should all be thankful.

But for what it was worth, the Monza played its role in shaping my musical tastes. I just didn’t think it was possible that there were other people out there who liked to listen to the same kind of music that I did, the tapes that I had stashed around my room, the songs that they played at the dry punk club where we hung out and sweated off our midnight runs to Taco Bell. It didn’t seem possible, and yet, there it was. Which meant that the cretins in Green Bay who were adamantly playing the Paula Abdul and Bel Biv Devoe on not one, not three, but eighteen bagillion stations, were doing so not because the FCC would not allow them to play music by the Violent Femmes or The Replacements or The Cure, but because they WANTED to. Such disillusionment.

And so, I made mix tapes. Most of them have long since been lost, the victims to many messy moves, and thus when I discovered Napster back in, oh, 1998 or something, I quickly and without guilt set forth trying to recreate all of my mix tapes from my college years. These mix tapes, the Napster of their day, were taped from the radio to my boom box. Ah boom boxes. How quaint a word. I can’t imagine what my 18-year-old self would think of my iPod.

The problem with this is that my mixed tapes were just snippets of my listening pleasure during those brief few lovely months in Point, and then my recreation of said mix tapes were limited to only the artists and song titles I knew or could remember.

However, recently, due to the divine intervention of iTunes and their deliciously addictive music store, I have rediscovered a lost pearl. Peter Murphy’s Cuts You Up. Oh yes, Peter, yes. The moment I hit the preview and heard those haunting strings, it was like my head had transported back to May 1990, on my way out to a beach party, my hair in pigtails and my sunglasses on, a pair of long black leggings pulled over my swimsuit because there would be boys (during winter months, I cultivate a proper Victorian consumptive pallor) and also because May in Wisconsin is not always the warmest of months. And the sun was shining and there were overly charred 99-cent turkey dogs and possibly some underage drinking about to happen and I had the lucky coincidence of being the adored freshman roommate of a very popular and beautiful upperclassman, so it was an automatic in to hang out with guys who looked like actual men, who shaved and smoked and had bartending gigs and played guitars. And it cuts you up. La duh da da da DA da duh da da ladadadadadaaaah.

Thanks to reader Barbara, who has been sending me free Pepsi iTunes, I snagged that bad boy up before I even had a chance to consider it. And then, 1990? You’re soaking in it.

The song may have been released earlier than 1990, but because of radio free Green Bay, I never heard it until it was played on constant thirty minute loop on WWSP (the down low of the low end) and then never heard it again when I moved back to Green Bay. Peter Murphy disappeared from my brain, like the last name of my friend Karen and my old dorm room number (but my phone number was 345-6464! Still know that one! Because the health center was 346-4646 (and maybe still is), but on campus callers only dialed the last four digits and I’d regularly get calls requesting test results and bottles of Rid. This is why I never slept with anyone from that school’ I’m pretty sure that they all had raging cases of clap and genital lice). And then, just like that, he was back. Finding me in the morning, after dreams of distant signs. And this, my friends, was a delightful and unexpected find. A glimpse back in time, something I haven’t made banal through overplay and introspection. Sure, it’s only a matter of time before the cobwebs are cleared and I have new memories associated with it, the way that ‘Just Like Heaven’ now makes me think of my wedding weekend and how ‘All Out Of Love’ makes me think of hugging strangers-turned-best-friends at bar time. But for now, it’s there. I’m 18, fresh from my first professional writing gig, an entirety of college and life and possibilities stretching out like a Get Out Of Adolescence Free card and I have just discovered that there are people out there who like the same things I do, in just the same way. And that is a wonderful thing.

The comments section wants to know which songs are your musical time capsules.

story! I finished my stupid story. Finished. It’s been done for about twelve hours, but I’ve been playing with it, trying to turn it into a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end. And it does. It has characters, it has a plot, and it has lines that make me happy, which isn’t too bad, considering that it’s not the story I set out to write last week, and was something that I sort of changed and started working with on Friday. And now? About fifteen minutes ago, it stopped being something that I’m working on and started being its own thing. If I had any idea what it was like to push out a baby from an uncomfortable place, I would make that comparison, except that I don’t and I find the whole ordeal to be kind of, well, disgusto, so I won’t. But I have to say… that transition, the almost audible pop that it makes when you realize that it can stand on its own two feet, that it has gone from something that “might be” to something that “is”? Extraordinary. I’m posting this so I’ll remember what that feels like, so that when I’m whining about writing (because God help me, half the time it sucks so much, this fear that your idea is just so damned wonderful you’re going to ruin it by trying to get it on paper, like holding a moth too closely that you prevent it from flying) and how I’ve got a queue of stories lining up inside my head, I’ll remember how it feels to let even an accidental one out. Even though in a day, I’m going to think the story sucks again, right now, it is a very very good feeling.

It’s been a quiet kind of Saturday. The kind of Saturdays that I remember as a kid in the summer, Saturdays that don’t mean anything really. I have decompressed quite a bit in the last two days. I now have deadline zen. I think the catalyst was an emergency half-vacation day yesterday and a trip to the spa for a delightful facial, impromptu foot massage (during which my specialist Emme complimented my pale peach toe polish, still shiny and perfect from last Sunday’s pedicure), and makeover. We discussed my habit of laying on a thick slash of eyeliner across my upper lid, ala Marilyn Monroe (or The Girl In Third Row at Poison Concert in 1988), and lo, I have seen the error of my ways. And spent a bazillion dollars on more Aveda products. One would think I already owned everything Aveda makes, but apparently, one would be mistaken. But their powder foundation is lovely and does not leave a corpsey wax sheen like the one I’ve been using. I should just rename this diary ‘Weetabix’s Quest For The Perfect Foundation’ as it seems all I ever talk about.

The positive of my facial, aside from the quiet delight of having cool little soft brushes apply various concoctions and ablutions on your face and neck, is that Emme complimented me on the elasticity of my skin. Then she pressed on it a couple of times as though she were appraising a turkey in the meat department, made a satisfied sound, and said ‘Yep, 24, maybe 26.’ I wish someone would tell this to the skin under my eyes. Note to people in their teens and twenties: use a daily sunscreen. Yes. Really. You’ll thank me in a decade.

Speaking of age, thanks either to the facial (imagine Esteban giggling here, as I cannot say the word ‘facial’ without him smirking) or my utter lack of makeup today (I usually go au natural on the weekends, in effort to lose my high maintenance status. I’m hoping to hit medium-maintenance by my mid-thirties. Which is next year. It is so. Hush. Leave the old lady to her delusions and no one gets hurt) I got carded for my mojito at the new sushi place last night. Which pretty much made up for the sup-par tekka maki and the mayonnaise they put on my crab roll.

Esteban ordered a roll called ‘Rich Heat’ which was rolled in some kind of finely chopped green pepper which apparently should be classified as a deadly weapon by the FBI. It doesn’t even hit you until after you’ve chewed and swallowed it, and it isn’t like wasabi, where you feel as though the top of your head is going to blow off and then just as suddenly, it is gone and you’re wondering if you were just a wuss and then take another big bite. No. This stuff kicked your ass and then rode you like a pony. I should have known and not trusted my beloved, who took the first bite, drained his glass of seltzer, stared out the window for a minute and then offered me a bite. And then laughed and laughed and laughed while I made squeaky noises through what was left of my mouth. So evil, that man. He didn’t eat all of that one and took it with him to his Dorkathalon too, but pity the fact that Joel is on Atkins, as I’m sure he took one look at the rice and turned it down. Maybe Scotty Boom Boom was game, although I doubt it, as I don’t think Scott is a raw fish kind of guy. Although, most people wouldn’t think Esteban was a raw fish kind of guy either, for that matter. It’s the flannel. It defies psychological profiling. I’m sure that’s why 3 out of 4 serial killers prefer it over any other fabric.

The Clampett’s trailer is still parked on the side of our house. You know, just ‘until winter is over.’

It hit 70 degrees today.

Of course, I’ve been willing to go over and talk with them about it for months. I mean, I have to park my car outside because our garage is full of construction crap, and I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. In fact, during our talk, I’d be perfectly calm and maybe also mention a storage facility where you can park such things as ATV trailers for the low price of $30 a year. Which I would be willing to pay for them. It would be the neighborly thing to do, doncha know. But no. No. Esteban would handle it.

The grass under the trailer has withered to a jaundiced yellow. He’s been balking and procrastinating, because he didn’t want to do it, but given the fact that we’ll need to mow the lawn at some point in the very near future, he went over there today. He talked to Lady Clampett and she promised they would be moving it tomorrow. Then Mr. Clampett came back and made sure that it was ok that they’ll be able to put it back there next winter. Oh, you mean, in six months?

I was not home when this happened, as this would have been the perfect time to mention my landscaping plans. I’ve already picked out the holly bushes. They are very beautiful, nice glossy evergreen leaves. Not very nice to brush up against, mind you, but very pretty and appropriate to the age of the house. But no, my quick-to-please husband said it would be fine. Fine! After relaying this information to me when I returned, my landscaping plans received a veto. Apparently, I’m being unreasonable. It’s unreasonable, this desire to not have a trailer parked literally a foot off of my bedroom window. Sometimes Esteban digs in and it becomes pointless. One must then resort to using strategy. The standard pissy snit is futile. Maybe stealth landscaping under cover of darkness. I don’t know. I have some serious contemplation to do. Gah. Why do we have to live in the nice section of the country? I think I’d do much better in New York, where they wouldn’t even dream of pulling this kind of crap.

Dear Target,

In part of my quest to completely live up to my social demographic, I stopped by today because it is Saturday and I feel compelled to do so, or if I don’t, I might have to start sculpting a Target store out of dirt in my kitchen (You know what’s funny, Target? The fact that no one under the age of 30 gets that joke. But you and I do, Target, and that’s one of the reasons that I like you. Because you get me) I needed a new shower curtain rod, but I walked out with one bag and a receipt that claimed I had just spent $119.93. I think I may have blacked out, Target. Or are you piping a chloroform mist down near the Mizrahi purse display? But apparently you now have decent 400 thread count sheets and they were on sale and how could I say no to that? Especially when I just got a new 600 thread count duvet marked four million percent off elsewhere? I can’t just put that on my boring old existing sheets, can I Target? But you knew that. And you know that 400 is the lowest I’ll go, so you put it out there, knowing that my chloroformed zombie-self would instinctively grab for something it understood, something to make sense in the confusion. And even though I’m resistant to that shabby chic stuff, you knew that white things with little blue flowers are the only girl things that I like, don’t you? That black based floor lamp with the white shade and black detailing? Come now, that was hitting below the belt, don’t you think? And the tiny Venetian mirrors? Well played, Target. Well played.

Until next Saturday,
Weetabix