That's My Bix!

This is supposed to be a big entry full of linky squee, but I just. Can’t. Do. It. I even took the short-cut of grabbing all of the html code off the Journalcon attendees page.

So Journalcon. Sigh.

At t-minus 5 hours to departure, I was freaking out. I mean, more than my normal pre-trip anxiety attacks. I didn’t even want to go at all and I realized that I was sort of putting off the packing because I knew that it would make me freak out even more, so instead I was busying myself with printing labels with my Chubby Tink on them (which got lost and have still not been found) instead of making sure that I had enough socks (which I didn’t, and thank you, Mary Kaye, for essentially giving me a pair of yours). At some point on Wednesday, my phone rang and I answered it in my professional sounding phone voice ‘This is Weetabix’ and Chauffi replied ‘How are you doing?’ and I shot back ‘I am FREAKING THE FUCK OUT!’ and he responded ‘I KNEW YOU WERE! That’s why I called! I just left work to call you because I kept thinking that you were probably freaking out right now!’ And so it was. Freaking out. And apparently taking to Level 2: The Fuck.

I’m not even sure why that is, exactly. It’s moved from cute quirky thing to borderline neurotic. I think all of my little control freak tendencies that I keep under wraps during my every day life all rush to the surface and the resulting traffic jam leaves me fetal in the corner, rocking myself and slashing at my wrists with my credit card. I’m going to have to pay attention to that in the future and think about alternative, I don’t know, meditation or soy drinks or alien abduction or something.

Of course, it didn’t help that I was also PMSing like hell and a tad irrational. So when on Thursday, Esteban dropped me off at the Green Bay airport and I went to check my bags and then did a double-check in my laptop bag, my cell phone wasn’t there. It had to have been in my purse, which was in my suitcase, but no. And what is more, my friend Mary Kaye didn’t even know if she was supposed to pick me up at the airport or not and I was going to confirm with her on my cell phone during my layover. I got on the plane and decided that maybe, just maybe, I really had stuck it into my laptop bag and it was just in one of the many compartments, but I would scour through when we landed. I’ve done that before, lose something that wasn’t really lost. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t. Finally, I decided that I’d just deal if she wasn’t there, as I am a 33-year-old woman and believe it or not, people have traveled successfully without cellular phones. This made sense in my brain, except that my brain was being distracted by pretty colors and Lucky magazine and had handed over the keys of my psyche to a screeching howler monkey that was throwing feces at people. This was all just a symbol of things to come. If I forgot something as important as my phone, what else did I forget? My wallet? My Clinique Moisture Surge Eye Gel to reduce puffiness? The tiaras? My shoes? My god, my god, did I bring shoes? Shoes? What are shoes again?

But I did make it through the flight and was relieved to see Mary Kaye waiting for me on the other side of security. So relieved in fact that I almost burst into tears and shouted ‘I lost my phone so I couldn’t call you.’ She smiled and shouted back ‘I know! Esteban has your phone! He’s overnighting it to the Helix!’ And it was right then that I knew everything was going to be ok, remembering her soothing email of the morning which reminded me to not freak out and that no matter what happened I had family in DC who would take care of me. And if it wasn’t ok, then we could just laugh about it later.

MK and I went to dinner near the Hotel so that I could see where it was. We were waited on by the sexy muscled Chad, who was from Brooklyn (and made a heart-pounding gesture as he said ‘For Reals’ that became Gesture #1 in our Snobby Whore Gang handbook, along with the two hands pointing to the crotch in the ‘I Heart Bush’ gesture, and floppy ear hands which meant ‘Good Girl, Good Girl!’). We got tipsy on a pitcher of margaritas, made our way back through old town Alexandria (‘I feel like we should be searching for a blacksmith to mend our horse’s shoe or something. Oh, are we going to see any hookers? Ye Olde Hookers?’)

The next morning, we managed to locate the American History building of the Smithsonian at precisely the same time as the lovely Mopie (who had been crazily calling my lost cell phone, wondering why I wasn’t picking up) and Elizabeth, who rushed off to pick up Rob, leaving us to make sad faces at Mr. Roger’s sweater, ‘She sleeps with EEEVIL’ comments at the Laura Bush portions of the First Ladies exhibit, and secret choked up tears at the refurbishment of the original Star Spangled Banner (ok, I got choked up, but I don’t know if MK or Mo did). We then trudged through what might well have been a wall of humidity outside to do a Hope Diamond drive-by at the Natural History museum (and at which time Mo happened to run into the delightful Mare and the equally delightful Stellacat in the bathroom) and we cursed the fact that the jewels weren’t actually for sale (because of course we all had millions of dollars stashed in our carry-ons), we attempted to drive by the White House. However, when we tried to drive straight on Pennsylvania Avenue, we found it blocked and the light turning red, so MK did a quick left turn, which irritated the police officer she almost hit (word to the wise: try not to make creative driving choices when near the White House. It has a very high Police To Civilian ratio) who immediately pulled us over. She explained that we had gotten confused. He replied dryly that he was GOING to write us a $75 ticket (dramatic pause’. Dramatic pause’. Dramatic pause giving birth to another dramatic pause) but it was Friday and his payday (and he just got laid, we think) so he wouldn’t. He asked us what the confusion had been and MK replied, ‘We were trying to find the White House.’ He pointed over the Rose Garden and said, ‘It’s over there. Been there for 200 years. Anything else I can help you with?’ Of course, it wasn’t polite to laugh right then but we did very much appreciate his humor and his sense of drama. And we had another hand gesture. It’s over there. Or just point to the Bush with a big dramatic pause.

MK dropped us off at the Helix (which was so insanely hipper-than-thou that I started delighting in seeing flaws and absolutely cackled when I found out that it had once been a HoJo’s) and we made our way up to my suite. My suite that was larger than my first apartment and bright even with the light off. I made a silent oath to fill it with laughing people before the night was through. Mo took a nap under a furred bedcover that immediately was renamed the Muppet while I went downstairs, right as Chauffi and what seemed like a million other people were checking in. We dumped his luggage into his room and then watched Judge Judy and the Case of the Mysterious White Trash Forehead Bandage until Mo woke and we went downstairs to mingle. And mingle. And mingle. Including but not limited to La The Sage (fabulous and I’m sorry if I blathered to you in the lounge that morning’ as you can tell, I am psychologically incapable of telling a short story), Sassy and Sock-Girlie (who both get bonus points for reporting that their undergarments matched their clothing), Science-Girl (whom I admire not only for her cool demeanor but also the fact that she knows what to pack for a Journalcon and isn’t afraid to share) and her fellow Canon-lover husband, Skydive-life, Russiagirl (who gave me a lovely leopard print scarf from Russia), the delightful Cosmicrayola, Summer-Gale (who has the greatest giggle), adorable Jenne1017, enthusiastic Molly, hilarious Mollykath, Mike (who was the first person to say anything to me in the Hospitality Suite and which I appreciate very much), the absolutely breathtaking Kismet, the Spoken Word-a-rific Corina (whom I know has a journal, but I’m too exhausted by all of this linky mclinksalot to find it!), and finally finally FINALLY talked to fellow Soap Enthusiast Tyger in person after missing her in Austin, as well as reconnecting with past acquaintances and old friends Chiara (who humped my leg, but also made me want to hump hers when she balanced a Nerd Rope on her head and did a shimmy to the damned floor without dropping it. Shee-it, that was hot), Biensoul (my little sister in so many ways), Hez (Least snobby of the snobby whores), Angeline (who always brings me lovely prezzies), Karen (who shares my appreciation of a good camel race), Petrouchka (minus the purple hair and the black suit this time), and the inimitable sultry TranceJen.

Houston, we have reached dangerous levels of Linky Squee. I repeat. Code Orange on the Linky Squee.

Ahem.

Chauffi and I went to dinner nearby and then scoured Whole Foods (tres convenient!) for Pom and Odwalla and mixers to go with the 48 pounds of alcohol and candy (yeah, I said it) for the Sweet Suite party. In the suite, we were joined by many folks for much hilarity and Hot Sex and then when they went up to their respective rooms to fall into diabetic comas, we were delighted by Round 2 with a fresh cache of visitors. Apparently some of whom were picking souvenirs out of my trash. (Thanks for making me feel like a rock star, SG!) I had Hot Sex with them too. It was all Sex and Candy in the Suiteabix. As it always should be.

The next morning, apparently there were actual Journalcon things to be done, but first Chauffi and I both made a prayer of thanks for Skinny Kat’s brilliant Alka Seltzer swag, and then went roaming the ghetto, finally ending up at the Worst Sbux EVER. They schooled me for specifying No Whip on my iced mocha because apparently they don’t put whip on iced drinks, and then they promptly threw whip on my iced mocha (maybe because it wasn’t really a MOCHA, it was some other gross thing which was not improved by the presence of whipped cream). Gah. However, we learned that what DC lacks in baristas, they more than make up with their homeless who are genteel and gracious and wouldn’t even dream of spitting on you. DC: Come for the History, Stay for the Homeless.

After that, we had to go back so that I could change for our panel. Mo coached me through a delicate wardrobe crisis (I was going to wear a pink cardigan with a pink camisole under it, but my camisole had apparently never made it into the suitcase, so instead had a choice of cardigan with nothing under it (wakka chica wakka chica) or a pink button down shirt with my great grandmother’s rhinestone broach (ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner). We ran downstairs, prepped for the panel and then I don’t remember anything but blushing and rudely taking pictures of the audience while Trance and Suzy were talking.

Afterward the panels, we chatted with folks in the lounge, where they were having a drink special on Blue UV and Lemonade (a paltry $5 after the discount). We then proceeded to drink until our alcohol blood level matched our age and also promised to have sex with everyone and I was giving out massages, including finally meeting the lovely Minarae and also randomly asking ‘Where’s the guy with the rabbits’ right when Pratt (sorry I was such a lush, Pratt!) was walking by and then looking at bunny pictures and plotting with Chauffi on how to get Esteban to agree to get me a bunny, and apparently letting my Wisconsin accent slip out on occasion (Braut?) And then we departed to change and I accidentally broke Chauffi and we then laughed for what might have been forty-two hours. And then I got ready, put on my cute Pucci shirt, curled my hair, put on liquid eyeliner, went to karaoke and sang ‘Baby Got Back’ and Erasure’s ‘A Little Respect’ and everyone threw their bedazzled bras at me. Except that I was still lying on the floor laughing, with Chauffi saying ‘Ahhh! Swallowing! Haa haa haa haa haa!’ and apparently the getting ready and the Pucci and the karaoke had yet to happen. And still does, because drunk people should not wield curling irons or liquid eyeliner pens, no matter how easy those bitches at the Lanc’me counter claim it is, and now I can never really listen to Toy Box’s Nelly the Elephant without feeling a little urpy. And then karaoke was karaNoke. We gave up on the empty promise of singing (although, perhaps future organizers should consider just setting up a group dinner in the Con’s hotel and then hiring someone to bring in their karaoke set up for after dinner. That would solve a lot of problems, including the one where everyone feels as though they don’t get a chance to see everyone who is there) and headed to what was supposed to be a great dance bar, except, as with great dance bars which are also gay bars, it had scheduled a drag queen show. We watched for a while, felt like underachievers until our heads were filled with too many questions (seriously, I’m a woman and I don’t look that good nor can I kick my damn leg up over my head. And where do they put their breast implants when they are at their day jobs? Huh?) and then paid a cab a dollar a block to take us back to the hotel.

Sunday was filled with craziness. We had caffeine at the corner Caribou Coffee (MUCH better than the previous Sbux experience) with Sassy and Sock-Girlie, bumped into Petrouchka and Minarae again, and then I packed up the trashed suite, dug through the leftover Country Defenders for additional props for my Slash dioramas (not only are there some handcuffs and a weird stick item with a handle on it, but I also have additional players, not only mustachioed Dirty Sanchez but also a crazed enemy named Bukkake, a grease monkey from the Bronz named Rim Job and a rare officer that I think I will name Commander Tea Bag) and then had to bail on my intended planned lunch so that we would be able to BWI on time. Then to find quick food, we lead a contingent of hung over but enthusiastic folks back to Brasserie Del Chad (‘For Reals’) where we watched the women’s Olympic marathon and chomped on overly crispy hash browns and bubble and squeak (‘What was that again? Squat and Gobble?’) and Chad made me hug him when I left. Good people, those chest thumpers, even though he did kill our margarita buzz earlier in the trip by telling us about his bitch ex-wife and his six month stint in prison for something he didn’t do (‘Oh, I sold drugs every day of my life, but THAT TIME, I didn’t do it!’) Ah Chad. It’s over there. For Reals.

And then MK arrived and we loaded our luggage into her Jetta and endeavored out into a mad capped race to BWI, and when you watch the next Spike Lee Joynt and wonder who that car of confused tourists are, driving through the Mookey shot, that would be us.

It was an insane shopping weekend. Insane shopping weekends make me happy, because really, as an adult, there really isn’t something akin to the plastic toy inside a cereal box kind of joy anymore (if you don’t count sex, of course, which isn’t really a joy but rather an itch that you can’t reach and it has been driving you completely insane and lower no over right no the other right oh my god, yes, that’s it, scratch that mutha, scratch it oh fuck yes my god harder harder harder yes yes FUCKING YES) but shopping fills that jones. Or at least shopping at its best: fabulous deals to reward the patient pure of heart, with pit stops for blended coffee drinks and foofy makeup counters, and most importantly, a day filled with infinite possibilities.

In some ways, I wish that it wasn’t such a meaningless task, this marathon of materialism. I wish it were possible to encounter on some forgotten clearance rack the cure for cancer, marked down to $24.99, sitting next to world peace, which has been slashed to $9.99. But it is not to be. Instead, we find adorable deep pink summer dresses at Banana Republic for $14.99 and must be happy with that. And also, Nerd Ropes, which are better than any non-chocolate candy has a right to be.

On Saturday morning, I woke up at my normal insanely early time and then couldn’t get back to sleep, so I got up and went to the farmer’s market. It was a strange feeling, being at the farmer’s market at quarter to seven. First of all, even though the calendar says that it is mid-August, it was freezing. I had on a t-shirt and a hoodie, but could have used another jacket. The vendors were walking around in winter coats and mittens and my nose was so cold that it had started running. And apparently, the farmer’s market does not officially open until 7, so it was not very crowded. In fact, aside from the Wisconsin weather, it was everything I wish the farmer’s market is all the time, birds chirping in the century old oaks lining Cherry Street, vendors saluting each other by name over huffs on thermos caps of coffee, the smell of dill piled high in a Red Rider wagon. It was too early for the girl with the violin and her tap dancing brothers. The church bells were just starting to give tentative peals and on the Fox River, a boat gave a sleeping honk to the bridge tender, undoubtedly lost in his crossword puzzle and morning Danish.

I got three tomatoes on a single stem, more blueberries (my giant crate of blueberries is currently in stasis betwixt the ice cream bars and Ore Ida Crispers in our freezer), a giant bag of caramel popcorn, and a baked donut (which I don’t really understand but it’s like the mating of a donut and a muffin and has a little bit of salty sweet going on so automatically I love it very much) along with the enormous sense of Midwestern satisfaction that I get whenever I shop at the farmer’s market, along with an extra dollop of smug from having woken up so early. Of course, I was tired for the rest of the day but so what. Blueberries! Tomatoes! A cold running nose!

I then spent the day shopping with my mother-in-rock June. I had a quest for shoes that apparently could not be met, but any day spent eating CPK’s gouda/cabbage/bacon salad and laughing at hooker shoes is not bad. When I got home, I received an invitation to spend Sunday shopping with Penny, so I heartily signed up for round two and scored a wealth of cute items for pennies on the dollar. We were an act of God barely contained in our clothes. We were weapons of god damned mass destruction but not too pithy to stop for a food court cookie. Also, I got to mock the shoppers in JCPenney, so it was a day well spent.

In other news, I am having my standard pre-trip panic attack and Esteban has exacerbated this by bidding on a car (another Chrysler! How did we become Republicans without my noticing?) and then thrusting a fistful of financial paperwork at me with the plea ‘Fix?’ like he’s four and just made a boom boom in his pants. My head may well explode, but who needs the top of ones head? I’m too tall anyway. Note to self: investigate Kate Spade’s hat line.

It is August 1996.

I am involved in a summer independent poetry workshop along with two classmates who are also beginning their senior year in the English major, Nate and Larry. It will give us three credits for summer and also give us fodder for the Distinction in the Major honor.

Nate, with his tribal thicket of black hair looks as though he has just stepped whole off the third spot on the evolutionary charts, is a Faculty Kid who has made an art of taking the path of least resistance. He looks like a hirsute Gilbert Gottfried and, as you might imagine, has not made much impact with the ladies. Larry, with his dirty blonde crewcut and crooked teeth, seems like an anachronism, maybe dispatched from Walton Mountain to show Gen X how to be strong and not so concerned with material things. His disposition is more that of an 80-year-old shaman rather than a twenty-something college kid. He lives in the attic of a house on the Bay and drives a car with holes in the floor, or, as he described it, ‘Like a sunroof, only for your feet.’ To this day, Larry remains one of the most extraordinary people I have ever met.

Sometimes we can coax some of our fellow students who stayed in town over the summer to join us. Bob is the elder of the group–a sage 30-year-old who has made an art of living up to the Gen X principle of underachievement. He has a bachelor’s in Theatre and a Master’s in English, but he kept the easy hours of a delivery person for Pizza Hut so that he could act in community theatre and audit undergrad writing programs. He reminds me of John Corbett’s character Chris-In-The-Morning on ‘Northern Exposure’. His hair is a work in progress and throughout the summer he has shown up with a long brown shag, a badly peroxided strawberry-blonde hack job and most recently, a black crew cut. I never see him clean-shaven, but he must be shaving because he always had stubble. His facial hair, much like Bob himself, is a mystery.

laurie is the only girl in the program whom I like, and also the only girl in the program who seems to like me. I don’t know why this is, but her matter-of-fact explanation is that the rest are posers just passing time until they get pregnant or become secretaries. I’ve written about her before. The girl Esteban always called ‘the chick with the shit in her face’ (and which Nate said was a perfect description because she did, indeed, have shit in her face). Every poem laurie has ever written only uses lower case, including her signature and I have come to think of her this way, not as Laurie, but rather as laurie. Beat grrl extraordinaire.

On this night, we are meeting at Nate’s. The previous week, our poetry guru (and my undergrad advisor) read a poem that mentioned humus, the dark rich soil and moss, except that she had written ‘hummus’. We then had a big discussion about how much more fun it would be to lay down in hummus and smell the chick peas and garlic. And then we all declared that we could really go for some hummus and laurie, being the resident vegan, declared that she would make some at our next meeting. However, cooking and laurie only were very distant acquaintances, but she felt up to the challenge, since hummus just involved blending (‘Vigorous blending!’ Nate had added. He works at the Hippy Mafia Deli, so he was well-versed in such things.) However, we all somehow knew to bring other food as a backup. I brought a tabouli salad and a cucumber/tomato/basil concoction. Larry brought peanut butter, homemade jelly from plums he procured off the tree in his landlord’s yard, and a giant boule of French bread (‘It was the only vegan bread they had!’) Bob brought three mistake pizzas from work. The mistake was that they had meat on them. laurie, however, is classy and doesn’t say anything, as I knew that she wouldn’t. Especially since I had eaten cheese sandwiches (which was the cheapest thing on the sandwich bar but could be bulked up with a bunch of free lettuce, tomatoes, sprouts and spinach) for lunch with her for three semesters and counting. Our poetry mentor, Dee, has yet to arrive.

Nate is inside his two room apartment with the big bright kitchen and lovely floor to ceiling bowed window which dwarfs the closet-like living room slash bedroom that has only one window three inches from a garage and has been covered ceiling to floor in dark cheap 70’s paneling so that it feels like a cave. The temperature inside his apartment is roughly 96 degrees. Larry has been enlisted to scrub and then chop raw potatoes which will be tossed in olive oil and rosemary needles and then roasted, undoubtedly heating the apartment to a nice round 100, while Nate is attempting to whisk together a vegan ceasar salad dressing (which will become the Best Ceasar I’ve Ever Had In My Life) from a recipe out of Vegetarian Times. Nate has endeavored to become Boyfriend Material, which, in his opinion, involves making girls laugh, cooking for them, and after a long discussion with me about what I found attractive in men, wearing argyle socks and smelling good. We were to be the focus group for Project Mate Nate.

Bob and I have moved out to sit on the stoop of Nate’s giant Victorian-turned-Tenement. Eventually, the bugs will drive us back inside, but for now, it is a welcome respite. Also, we’re worried that Dee isn’t sure exactly where Nate’s apartment is, so we hope that she will see us, sitting there in the shadow of a hundred-year-old maple.

I pick up my notebook and scribble a phrase into it, but I can’t read what I’ve written and will have to wait until I go back inside to see if it is legible.

Two girls wearing just swimming suits and their brown tanned skin, more tanned than anything but also covered in a sheen of washed on dirt, scurry across and into and out of and across the road. These might be feral children. It seems possible, probable even. Their giggles are thick with purple Slush Puppies and they whisper to each other in a language indigenous to this particular six feet of grass between the sidewalk and the curb of Webster Street. Their hair is thick and tangled as a raspberry bramble, their eyes bright as berries.

‘Do you even think she’s coming?’ I ask, certain that she has flaked.

‘Don’t know. Does it matter?’ Bob replied.

‘Well, I’d like an A for this. If I get anything less than an A, my GPA will go’.’ I made the noise of the Coyote trying to drop an anvil on the Road Runner.

‘Ah.’ Bob breathes.

This was the wrong answer. I am so not cool that I make a pledge to myself to not say anything else for five minutes.

‘You know’it’s weird’.’ Bob trails off. I wait for a few beats for him to continue, but he doesn’t, so I am forced to break my pledge.

‘What’s weird?’

‘College. You and I are the non-traditionals of the group, you know?’

‘Yeah.’ I was twenty-six. Almost everyone else in the English program was a standard twenty or twenty-one.

‘And sometimes, when we’re workshopping stuff, and I check out your reactions and I can tell that you and I are like the only ones in the room who get each other’s stuff.’

‘You think?’ I ask, puzzled, because sometimes Bob’s poetry is so out there and brilliant that I can only get a sense of the undertones, while all of my stuff seems insipid and completely apparent.

‘Yeah.’ He turns his head and looks right at me, but his eyes are in shadow and I can’t tell what exactly is being said.

‘Huh.’ I say, because I know that I have to say something, but haven’t any idea what it should be. I am cursing myself for breaking the pledge.

Across the gloaming, as streetlights flicker and buzz, about to fire, there are other people on porches, sitting in their own version of stasis. Bob and I watch as the red cherries of their cigarettes glow bright and then dim, followed by slivers of conversation that thread between the passing cars over to our own porch stoop.

‘Follow the bouncing ball,’ Bob says, apropos of nothing, but his voice is soft and intimate, as though he were whispering this to me in bed. I don’t know what it is about his voice. It’s a great voice and I want to believe anything it says. He’s an actor and knows how to use it well, I guess. It makes him seem strong and competent and if I did not know the details that belied that, I could believe this facade. However, I know that just the week before, he broke up with his girlfriend because she kept talking him while he was watching television, a rerun he had seen several times already. He realized that he wanted to watch the rerun more than he wanted to talk to his girlfriend and ended it right then. This is how Bob makes decisions. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of Star Trek reruns. ‘So you broke up with her? Just like that?’ I had asked, incredulous. Bob had an awestruck look on his face, as though he had been transfixed by his own logical process. ‘Yeah’ well, I waited until the commercial.’ He had perked his eyebrows and cocked his head, as though to say ‘Imagine that.’

‘I don’t really think my poetry is about anything, actually. I mean, anything more than what it is about, you know?’

In the dark, I think I hear his eyebrow rise. ‘Does it have to be?’

His battered Converse shoe sneaks out and kicks at a weed creeping up between the cracks of the sidewalk.

‘No.’ I slap a mosquito on my arm.

‘Exactly. See? Exactly.’ He pulls his foot back up onto the step.

A slender figure steps into the puddle of streetlight. It is our advisor. She is carrying several folders. I recognize that they are our manuscripts, a summer’s worth of poetry. As she steps off the curb and makes a run to beat a speeding El Camino, she drops my pink folder. The papers slip out from between the manila and flutter in the hot wind from the traffic like moths in the streetlight .

From the darkness of a neighboring stoop, applause.

Last Friday was a crazy wacky kind of day. (This just in’ after a day of walking around in my loafers sans socks, my bare feet smell like some kind of strong German beer, perhaps a sauer kraut beer tailor-made for dunking pumpernickel bread into’ mmmm. And my toes are painted sparkly blue so they look like cute girly feet but smell like nasty old plumber feet! Stealthy weapons of mass destruction! (Oooh, which reminds me’when my mom was married to my wicked stepfather, my initials were WMD. Fear THIS, bitches!)) It was my mother-in-law June’s last day of work before her early retirement (she turned 55 in June and declared three days later that she was retiring as soon as possible, which, in order to use up her ungodly number of vacation days, was July 30) and my father-in-law Ward decided to throw her a surprise party. Esteban and I, being their only progeny (and, in my case, progeny-in-law), quickly offered to help. And thence began the crazy making. So crazy that we used words like ‘thence’. And also ‘thither’. There was lots of thithering off to the costermonger and spent some ducats to procure bountiful wittles lest our heathen guests became rantipole.

I have clearly watched Shakespeare In Love one too many times.

Anyway, Ward then became freaked, as this was the first time in his Baby Boomer existence that he did not have June orchestrating in her zealous manner. Thus, he turned to the next appropriate female, which would be yours truly. Thus (thence) I was treated to twice (and sometimes THRICE) daily calls from Ward, asking me if I had made the banner yet (which would take all of fifteen minutes and take Kinko’s all of half an hour to produce), if I had talked to one of the Aunts yet, and if I had gotten the decorations yet. And then the second I got home, there would be a message ‘Hey Weetabix’ it’s Dad’ I have to tell you something about the party’ call me!’ So I’d call and he’d ask if I got the decorations yet and had I talked with the Aunts yet and did I have that banner done yet? Gah.

Finally, I was driving to the decorations place when I get a call on my mobile. It was Ward. He asked about calling the Aunts and if I had the banner done yet.

‘No, but I’m on the way to get the decorations.’

‘Oh’ you might want to talk to Nancy about that. She was going to get some,’ he said nonchalantly, as though it were all out of his hands.

Boiling. Oh the boiling.

In my mind, my tastefully decorated garden party, with fresh greens decorating the trays and bouquets of white flowers in tall vases filled with green grapes, came to a screeching halt. Nancy is a very sweet lady whom we all love very dearly, but also owns every Precious Moments figurine ever made. My tasteful soiree with the creams and the shades of green had just gone the way of little Billy’s seven-year-old birthday party. I sighed. I really didn’t care enough to play Martha Stewart.

I coordinated with Nancy, discussed the gaps in party supplies and then put my mind toward menu creation. I was thinking of canap’s, cool summer salads, rice paper spring rolls with dipping sauce, hummus, grilled pineapple and cheesecake for dessert. Esteban nixed the idea and declared that he was grilling bratwurst because he likes grilled bratwurst (oh fine, use logic). My disillusion bubble then soundly popped and I started making lists that contained directives for Ward, such as ‘Potato Chips’ some with ruffles and some without’ and ‘At least 60 brat buns!’ and ‘More Ice than you think you need and then another bag on top of that’ (the latter which they did not adhere and ended up making three ice runs before the evening had ended).

However, the party was lovely, aside from a moment of panic when June screwed up the surprise portion by demanding that she was sick of being at work and wanted to come home two and a half hours early. Which she later thought was funny and I think is an apt metaphor for my mother-in-law, but whatever.

Most of Esteban’s friends were off doing some male bondage (er, bonding. I think they call it ‘Men’s Camping Weekend’ for a reason that might involve naked drum circles and ritualistic urination, but who knows. Certainly they aren’t talking) but I was pleased to see Phil and CC make an appearance. CC and I chatted about gender bias in school and growing up hippy and about what would happen if someone were to drink the slurry of beer and butter that the brats were sitting in.

In all, it was a lovely evening, filled with many many drunken retirees and soon-to-be retirees. Finally, most of them found their way back to their Lincoln Town Cars and left us to deal with the stragglers. In this case, a friend of June and her white-haired sugar daddy named Harold, both of whom were completely marinating in Jim Beam. Esteban and I sat quietly, smiling politely at our drunken elders.

Harold and I started talking about golf, during which time he felt compelled to give me a drunken golf diatribe that involved mostly pointing at me and repeating himself loudly, telling me that he’s 74-years-old and he’s been playing for 14 years and to go slow on the upswing and bring it down hard on the downswing and if I’m lucky I can hit a 50 like he did just last week, and he’s 74-years-old! Point point point!

I smirked and made a remark that it was easy for him to say that the trick is to take your time, but as a woman, if we go slowly, immediately the men are asking to play through, even when we can only go as fast as the guys in front of us.

Harold straightened up his back, revved up his pointing finger and roared, ‘PISS ON THEM! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! PISS ON THEM, those little ASS FUCKERS! You piss on them! They are ass fuckers and you just use your putter and you show them how its done! Bullshit! Don’t give me that bullshit! PISS ON THEM!’

I cannot tell you how unnerving it is to be bellowed at by a 74-year-old man after an emotionally and physically exhausting day. I was completely flummoxed. I wasn’t exactly sure what Harold wanted me to do with my pretty pink putter. Certainly he wasn’t suggesting that I actually piss directly on marauding foursomes? Or take my putter and show them how what exactly is done? The ass fucking? What?

Luckily, they realized that they were the last ones at the party so his young (56-year-old) chippy guided him off to their waiting hired car, where his reminders of ‘Remember! Fuck them! Slow on the downswing! Stick your butt out! They are ass fuckers! PISS ON THEM! PISS ON THE ASS FUCKERS’ echoed through Ward and June’s snooty sleeping suburb, giving it a nice Bourbon Street touch. It were as though Harold was playing to my twisted subconscious. We later learned he had demolished the better portion of a bottle of Seagram’s 7, therefore any ulterior motive is highly suspect.

I spent most of the day on Saturday stiff and with a mysterious nagging headache, despite the fact that I had only had two green apple wine coolers during the entire seven hour party the night before. Then on Sunday, I woke up and realized that I couldn’t move.

Correction: I couldn’t move my head.

My miserable stress had once again taken control of my neck and upper back. I laid in bed until noon reading Al Franken’s left-wing book with a heating pad turned on High, unable to even nod my head in agreement about the liars and their lying (although in retrospect, I could have shouted, ‘Piss on them! The ass fuckers!’ without any pain whatsoever).

When the heating pad didn’t really help and the weight of my own head felt like I was balancing a bowling ball on my fragile neck of pain, I called the pharmacy to refill my muscle relaxant prescription and then sat on the big ugly recliner watching my AbFab DVDs and mainlining red sugar-free Kool-Aid until I actually had a little red Kool-Aid mustache and felt a tad bit white trash because of it. And, I am ashamed to say, watched Velvet Goldmine just to see Ewan McGregor’s penis as it danced across the stage.

Bless me father, for I have sinned. And paused, reversed, and then sinned again.

On Monday, I still couldn’t move when I woke up at 5 am, so I declared it a sick day, took another muscle relaxant and then passed out until well past noon. Showering was a new level of hell (trying to shampoo when you can’t lift your arms above your head is absolutely delightful!) and the muscle relaxants just weren’t doing much more than making me very groggy, so I bit the bullet and called a chiropractor.

I’ve never been to a chiropractor and was a little uncertain about what to expect. The only experience I had was when I was growing up, my mom’s boyfriend’s friend was living in our big old hippy house for awhile (it was almost a commune for awhile), and the girl he started to date (whom Angeline bears a striking resemblance) had been in some kind of really bad car accident and carried around a Prussian Blue curvy back pillow and had to sit in a specific one of our mismatched kitchen chairs. She went to a chiropractor all the time and acted as though she’d been bent wrung out afterwards. I think now that she was a huge hypochondriac. With my admission that maybe I should try a chiropractor, maybe it made me a hypochondriac as well, considering that I am still going to physical therapy for my messed up knee. And maybe I would also stop shaving my legs and drive a rusty old magenta Pinto which I would name ‘Joan Baez’ and start wearing Birkenstocks exclusively, even in the winter, with organic free trade wool stockings.

Anyway, with some trepidation, I carefully drove myself to see Ricci. Ricci the Chiropractor. Ricci, who seemed to be imbibing caffeine at a steady pace, took an X-ray, determined that two of my vertebrae were twisted, including one suspiciously close to my most painful spot at the base of my neck.

He then led me to a massage table-looking thing and invited me to lie down. Oooh, a massage? He was going to massage it until it felt better? Yay! Love massages! Sure, they didn’t have any Enya playing or dim lights, but I’ll take my unexpected massages where I can get them! He started rubbing my lower back vigorously, told me to take in a deep breath and then let it out slowly.

I started to exhale and then he seemingly punched his fist into my abdominal cavity. I said ‘Oh my gosh!’ and heard a big pop and crack!

He exclaimed, ‘There it is!’ and seemed quite pleased with himself.

I was a little taken aback, quite honestly. Then he instructed me to lie down on my back. Ok, apparently we were done with the shocking weird cracking of the back thing, so I trusted him. He rolled a little stool up behind my head and started pushing on my neck, pulling it, asking me if it hurt when he did this (yes) and when he did that (yes) and when he did this other thing (yes). Finally, he told me to breathe in and I thought ‘Oh fuuuuuuuuck.’ And then laid there helplessly as he wrenched my chin over to the side, in a move I’ve watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer perform hundreds of times.

Just when I started to feel my head rip off my shoulders, a resounding crack reverberated throughout the room. ‘Aha!’ he exclaimed.

I wanted to shout, ‘Did I NOT just tell you that my neck hurts? Huh? Huh?’ Except that I didn’t, because sometimes I am but a meek little sheep. Instead, I relaxed as told and then allowed him to reef on my head the other way until there was a nice high pitched pop crackle snap of excruciating pain.

He pulled me back up and said, ‘There’ how’s your headache?’ while he razored some Vivarin tablets to make for easy snorting.

But glory be, the headache, she was gone. For the first time since Friday. I tried turning my head. Amazingly enough, I could now turn my chin halfway to my shoulder. It was progress. We had made progress! I was a bit giddy. Or maybe just happy to still have a head attached, albeit a painful bowling ball of a head.

He instructed me to cease and desist with the heat and switch to ice and also take Advil instead of the muscle relaxants because he felt it was a joint issue rather than a muscular thing, so the muscle relaxants weren’t doing any good.

I made another appointment as he had suggested, went home, sacked out in front of the Tivo with my ice pack and tossed back a few Advil. And later another muscle relaxant.

Sorry Ricci, I’ll come back for the startling readjustments, and maybe the muscle relaxants weren’t doing any good, but they’re not doing any BAD either.

If loving happy drooling sleep is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

Yesterday, Esteban and I went to the Farmer’s Market and bumped into one of my favorite Wives Of Esteban’s Friends, CC. I think we relate on a decent level because she recognizes that I’m not just a snipey bitch concerned with filling the conversation with how I/My Husband/My House/My Car/Life is better than everyone else’s (Notice that the other Wives fail to gloat about their careers’ heh) and, while CC may not realize this, I had a fruity hippy liberal upbringing. CC’s parents ran a homeless shelter/political asylum/whatever it was that they called it back when I was working for another local homeless shelter, but the difference was that they actually lived in the place too, shared all of their meals with them, killed the cockroaches that their residents brought with them in their belongings. Now that’s some serious liberalism. The two weeks that Greenpeace took over our house one summer really can’t compare. I mean, the worst that happened (other than the fact that the FBI tapped our phone) was that the hippies used up all the hot water. (Which, actually, always made me a little perturbed, because we were specifically chastised for abusing electricity and water when I was growing up and then the Greenpeace people came in and sometimes took two or three showers in a day. And they ate Skippy while we were slogging through Arlo’s All Natural Peanut Butter/Cement stuff. Fucking posers.)

I love that CC is the only wife to unapologetically keep her own name when she got married, too. I actually took Esteban’s last name when we got married, for several very complicated reasons, but mostly because it was something that he felt strongly about and he seemed to want us to share a name and that I become Weet Abix than I did about remaining Weet Woohoo. In weeks before our wedding, I was flush with impending nuptial hormones or something and was feeling very generous. And it certainly has made things easier. Before we were married, we had joint finances and whenever I dealt with banks or businesses, they were very skeptical and perhaps thought I was trying to scam them by paying some guy’s electrical bill or depositing money into his account. Once I had that Abix suffix, problems dissolved like a drunken Vegas ‘I Do.’ It was like some kind of societal reward for playing along with the patriarchal bullshit, a pat on the head by kindly white-haired bankers, offering me a lolly while calling me sweetheart. All of my writing, however, is credited with my maiden name, which was part of the original agreement, and in some strange psychological afterburn, while I no longer have to think about signing my name Weet Abix, if I am asked to initial anything, I will automatically sign with my original set of initials. Apparently, while my conscious understands my very rational decision to become absorbed by my husband’s surname and the fact that I believe feminism is about the freedom to make choices that are not specifically related to societal pressures or expectations, my subconscious is currently planning a Burn Your Bras rally. While my inner princess crosses her arms and snips, ‘Absolutely not! Do you have any idea how much those things cost?’ Besides, all of that whale boning and Kevlar certainly couldn’t be good for the environment. But I digress.

Which is pretty much to be expected.

I had walked right past CC and didn’t recognize her because she was carrying her grandchild, Ava. That hardly seems possible. I didn’t even know, but apparently CC’s youngest had gotten married at 19 and now had a baby of her own. Not only does it seem impossible that I am friends with grandparents, legitimate grandparents, but also, I remember when CC’s daughter was, like, seven years old or something. I mean, I don’t feel as though I’ve grown up enough to have a baby, how is this twenty-year-old doing it?

I held little Ava for a few minutes, to relieve CC, who had pishposhed the need for a stroller and then was carrying not only little Ava around, but also three loose peppers. Seems that she had visited one of the flaky (her word) organic people, asked for three green peppers, and the long bearded flaky organic farmer guy, taking notice of the fact that her arms were already full of a very adorable twenty-pound baby, very nicely stacked the big peppers in the crook of her elbow. Now, he did actually have paper bags available, but apparently the elbow method of pepper transportation made more sense to him at the time.

Ava, however, was cranky and was not susceptible baby kryptonite that is my buoyant cleavage (normally, a child in my arms is out within minutes, because apparently my shelf is the gateway to dreamland and also, I have a professional grade baby bounce walk, highly tuned after Jonathon joined our little dysfunctional clan) and wanted nothing more than to eat and sleep (and well, who doesn’t). Given that my magic breasts are not THAT magical, I handed her back to her wee mother, who then trailed off through the streets toward their minivan. It was a sweet baby moment, however, before the squinchy mouth started.

I am a sucker for certain baby types and the pale little round faced babies with the light blue eyes and the flaxen hair are absolutely adorable, and that’s probably the only reason that I offered to hold her, despite CC’s green pepper conundrum, because I’m somewhat guarded about babies. I think babies are great. I truly do. But if you are right this moment thinking ‘Well, why don’t you have one then?’ that’s the reason. If I try to hang out with a baby for any amount of time or otherwise express interest, I’m almost positive that a group of middle-aged women wearing cheerleader costumes designed by Christopher Banks will jump out of nowhere, shouting ‘B’A’B’Y! You don’t need no alibi! You’re fertile! Yeah, yeah, you’re fertile! Woo!’ And it’s too bad that I cringe so much at the prospect of having to have that same discussion or plead my case in the Reproduction Injunction with people whose business my uterus distinctly isn’t, that I’d rather just eschew that opportunity to smell baby hair and remain anxiety-free about my childlessness. And also, babies love my face. So yeah, anyway, if people could manage to keep from voicing their assumption that occasionally liking to hang out with babies automatically makes one an excellent parent, perhaps I’d do it more often. Until then, I keep my distance unless I am assured that no one is going to make a smug ass comment. But luckily, CC is cool that way and would never try to foist her own agenda under the guise of ‘just trying to help’ or whatever the hell is going through the minds of otherwise normally sane people who feel compelled to comment on the status of my uterus, so Ava and I could chill. Until she started crying, that is. Maybe she was sort of disappointed to not see the human pyramid, complete with baton fallopian tubes.

I spent the rest of the day doing house projects. Esteban had a list, you see. I had a list too, of course, but my list ended up being abandoned in favor of assisting with Esteban’s list. The reasoning here is that I know if I did not do my ‘clean out the laundry area’ on Saturday, I would certainly be doing SOMETHING to improve the state of general nomadic disrepair that exists in our bungalow, and I didn’t need help to do my thing, but if Esteban didn’t get help putting in a storm window on the front computer room window, then it would simply not get done. And if not on Saturday, then it would probably not get done ever because that window has been without a storm since’ a depressingly long time. I suspect that the year began with a 19, quite truthfully. (Note to Reproductive Cheerleaders: and why exactly do you want these people responsible for a helpless human?) Tilly quite enjoyed licking the three-inch thick layer of frost that developed over the winter months.

Thus, the window needed to be scraped, primed, and painted, which I would do while Esteban took apart the bathroom sink so that I wouldn’t have to brush my teeth over the kitchen sink and go to work with a white ring around my mouth. Esteban wondered about re-glazing the window. Absolutely! I volunteered, as I had glazed the garage windows when we replaced those storms. Sure, that was something like’ 1997, but certainly my experience glazing two windows seven years ago has left me a window glazing artisan! We made an appropriate stop at the Hundred Dollar Store for $60 worth of little odds and ends, went back home and began our projects.

Three bloody gashes later, Esteban announced that the bathroom sink was finished, but leaking and he was going to call Phil and have him look at the sink. I had just finished taking off my first strip of antiqued cracked glaze. The stuff was’ well, amazing. It is a wonder that I didn’t break any panes of glass (not to mention, a fingernail!) Esteban and Phil left for two rubber ring doohickey things and I put in an emergency call for single-edged razor blades. Hell, if it didn’t work on the glaze, I could always slit my wrists. The afternoon sun beat down and I felt as though God had placed a magnifying glass directly over my head.

Finally, at 5:00 pm, I had finished with the bottom half of the window. That’s when I asked Esteban if they came out of the frames. Imagine my surprise when I learned that they did. In fact, I think I almost puked. The spot where I had accidentally jammed a copper wire brush into my skin started bleeding again in sympathy. I handed Esteban the razor and said ‘I’m going out for burgers for dinner. Work on this for a bit.’ I then hopped into the car, blew ice cold air conditioning in my face, cranked up the iPod, and blew ten miles out of town to pick up High Maintenance Burgers. Thirty minutes later, Esteban had made three inches of progress on the window. Then we realized that we had purchased the wrong kind of primer. We ate dinner, hopped back into the car, went back to the Hundred Dollar Store where Esteban assured me that a $70 Dremel tool (and another $40 of supplies) would do the job. Of course, I wanted to point out that a brand new window with attached storm window would be about $200 and I wouldn’t have to scrape or glaze or paint or do anything else involving my blood. But I’ve learned that making sense in such situations is not really a good idea.

The fucking window has become our Vietnam. But at least the bathroom sink now drains. I’ve exchanged one wicked house pain for another. The cheery whoosh of our waste water as it disappears down 16 little holes can make me forget about the evil squinty eye on the front of our house. At least until the body count is tallied.