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Rock lobster

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

I am so irritated with my state and their official stance on gay marriage. Or rather, the fact that it will ban gay marriage. It surprises me, honestly. We’re usually a pretty liberal state. In fact, the first openly gay person was elected to the House here. As in, openly gay during the election, not a ‘whoops, fooled y’all, I’m really a poof!’ However, it seems as though we’ve accidentally hired a gaggle of cretins who are bound and determined to muck things up before the next election. Gah.

I hope other states start to step on board with legalizing gay marriage and make the rest of the country look stupid. I mean, what’s the big fricking deal? Quite honestly (warning: big liberal value statement coming up) I can’t understand the logic behind the decisions of most Republicans. They are so afraid of anything that would challenge a hetero-male dominated society. I wonder what kind of rights a gay fetus would get?

So, things I learned coming back from vacation:

Holy shit’ exchange rate? It is customary to use lube, babe. I’m just saying.

Cat’ cat cat cat cat cat cat cat cat CAT.

Diane Keaton wears white better than any woman on the planet.

When you have one of those blue toilet wafer thingies and no one has flushed your toilet in 9 days, that first flush is going to be awe inspiring.

Plants. Water is important for plants. Who knew?

Traveling is bad for your fingernails. Seriously, nine out of ten are currently stubby and short. I don’t know if it was the dry air on the plane or just a poorly timed culmination of two years of constant nail polish, but snick snick snick they broke off just like that. I’m currently wearing only some Triple Strong nail repair and hovering over my one remaining thumbnail.

At work, people say that they’re covering your responsibilities, but really? They’re not. And also, they’ve volunteered you for four other things while you were gone. Welcome back.

There’s a Pret A Manger where the Watcher’s Council used to be.

The Unit’s remote control is a far more wily quarry than we give it credit. I was hoping that the silent house would lure it from its hiding spot, but no. No. We have been without remote for at least three months. I’m ready to be extorted for a new one by the cable company.

Apparently it IS possible for me to enter an airport without spontaneously gushing forth as a symbol of womanhood. I know I’m going to end up paying for that big time.

The scariest thing about traveling #1: be walking alone down a deserted tube station and be confronted with a posted of zombies and then just TRY to convince yourself that there isn’t a throng of zombies just inside the completely black tunnel.

The scariest thing about traveling #2: This poster, which I kept thinking was Michael Jackson.

I suspect that summer slacker girl is starting to wake up. When we got home from England, the proverbial cupboard was bare. We had naught but a bag of smushy grapes, some cheeses, and a selection of condiments in the refrigerator. I knew that I needed to go grocery shopping, but each evening, the jet lag wore me down and I decided to postpone it until the weekend. Which is when we did, in fact, do the shopping. Not before I made a rather smashing pesto/mushroom/ baby mozzerella pizza that tasted so wonderful it was almost like I had planned it all along. It’s amazing the creativity that laziness can inspire.

Also, in general, when I am home, I am a creature of comfort. Unless I’ve gone cas all day and am already wearing a t-shirt and soft baggy jeans, I’ll generally walk into the door, shed my coat, car keys and purse in the kitchen, then head straight into my bedroom to replace anything constricting or made from unnatural fibers with usually a white t-shirt and black yoga pants or pajama bottoms (or, if it’s summer, boxer shorts). And, more often than not, a pair of gigantic grey thermal man socks.

Last night, Esteban came home in a jovial mood. My intent was to eat the rather delectable leftover burritos from the night before (a few months ago, I made burritos to use up leftover shredded chuck roast, and they were the best things ever. While shopping on Saturday, Esteban asked if I’d be willing to make them again, so I grabbed a chuck roast and spent Sunday cooking it slowly in the oven for the sole purpose of having burrito fodder on Monday. And yes, I AM rather pleased with myself) but the ‘Ban was in the mood for ‘something bourgious and unhealthy!’. We bounced ideas around a bit and then he made a suggestion of a lovely little classic supper club halfway up the Door. They don’t have much for ambience, but they have a stellar view of the Bay and also the best steaks and lobster in the area.

‘Hmmm’. I would totally be willing to get dressed for the Chalet.’ I pondered.

‘What’s wrong with what you’re wearing?’ Esteban raised his eyebrow.

‘Um’ it’s pajamas?’

‘Looks like clothes to me. Just put on a sweater and shoes and let’s go.’

And so I did. Luckily I hadn’t yet exchanged the black socks of the day for the Lumberjack socks, so I slipped on my leopard print leather loafers (which, with addition of pajamas, looked very Hugh Hefner), pulled on a fleece pullover, and followed him out the door.

Soon, we were at the wood-paneled club, seated merrily in front of the big windows overlooking the inclement weather on the bruise colored Bay as the light slipped away across the trees, sipping my most favorite of Wisconsin Traditions, brandy old-fashioned sweets with three maraschino cherries. It’s an old person drink and you can’t get them anywhere else (and if you order it elsewhere, it won’t taste anything like the stuff in Wisconsin). They look nasty and I shouldn’t like them, but I grew up eating the drunken cherries out of my relatives drinks, so I absolutely love them. And also, they knock you off your ass. By the third drink, I was fairly tipsy, relegating to the waitress the removal of the lobster tail from the shell, lest I put out my own eye.

Anyway, Surf ‘n’ Turf while decked out in pajamas’ highly recommended.

Also learned while on vacation: my job is apparently ‘not in scope’ for the impending riffings. What this means: I, along with eight other folks, am safe. For now. Until they feel like riffing us. Anyway, there it is.

I think I’m a bit disappointed. I was kind of looking forward to having five months of paid time off and then maybe even leeching off unemployment for a bit. Ah well.

In other news, apparently I’m not above using this diary for personal gain. Are any of you members in the Dave Matthews Fan Club and would be willing to score me front row or otherwise sweet tickets to the recently announced Alpine Valley concert in August? I’ll reimburse you, of course, and also love you forever and ever! Email me!

The things I do for my sad addictions. Or the things I would do’. * hint * hint*.

I know. Shameless. Forgive me.

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The London Papers

Monday, March 29, 2004

At O’Hell, we stand outside for a moment to catch our breath before setting into motion the wild unstable ride of what will in stories be referred to as Once When We Went To London. We are soon joined by a group of kids, two boys and two girls conforming to the current individualistic trend with many tats and piercings… I call them kids in my head, but then they excitedly tell us that they’ve just been guests on the Jerry Spring show-“For Reals!”-because the one boy is married to the one girl but engaged to the other girl who is married to the other boy and his wife is pregnant with his fiancée’s husband’s baby. They smoke excitedly, borrowing Esteban’s silver Zippo, and then reenact in full detail each of the fights they had been encouraged to perform for the cameras. One of the boys pulls up his shirt to show us exactly where Steve The Bodyguard grappled him under the arm, smearing a red friction strawberry under his armpit, which has only a few filaments of hair. The trip has just begun and already, strangers are showing us their armpits. For Reals.

The plane is full. We don’t sleep. I hate everyone around me. I hate everyone. I want to hit them. Everyone. We land in London, where today has been replaced by tomorrow. We blink into a hazy gray future. Outside at the taxi stand, it is like we have just walked into “A Hard Day’s Night” and I expect to see a mod group of teenagers screaming after a group of shaggy boys. Our hotel is a former Vanderbilt enclave, but really it’s just a series of twisty mazy series of moldy smelling hallways. Our room, she is tiny. Lilliputian. Esteban declares that we have arrived in a wee country and our next vacation would be somewhere where things are not so wee. Like Alaska. Or Texas. Then he looks down at my knee and says “Well, maybe not Texas.” Fiji, I correct him. We’ll go to Fiji, where the population is nee wee. Then, because I am very stupid, I exclaim “Bunch of flowers!” in my best Eddie Izzard and Esteban reprimands me for being wrong in the head.

Also, we have twin beds. Horrible uncomfortable twin beds. I call down and explain to the girl at the desk that this is our honeymoon (and technically, it is) and it is cruel and unusual punishment to be paying as much as we are for what is essentially a kid’s bedroom. Or that of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. However, there is nothing, nothing, nothing anyone can do and they are most apologetic while managing to be not at all apologetic. We soldier through the sleeping arrangements. Our first night of sleep finds countless springs waiting to pierce our tender bits with each movement. The next night, we request duvets and pad the bed with them. Esteban invents long detailed histories of our mattresses, involving jail breaks, Sweeney Todd and the Spanish Inquisition. At night, we giggle in the darkness like roommates, bridging the gap until sleep detangles our fingers.

We take a tour of London from the top of a bus. It weaves through the parks and streets, past J. M. Barrie’s house. “He invented my name.” I tell Esteban, and seconds later, the voice in our earphones tells us with great theatrical flourish that J.M. Barrie invented my name. Across the park, somewhere, the voice tells us, is a statue of one sir Peter Pan, who appeared in the dark of night. I have never seen the Peter Pan statue, not in all the months that I was there the first time, and even now, I crane my head over the rails but do not catch site of that playful Boy Who Never Grew Up.

Together, we wander through museums, shop in food halls amidst strange Britannic delicacies, twisting our way through Churchill’s war cabinet, climb up the Bloody Tower, perch in a private box and watch Shakespeare. Each evening, we try a different cuisine, burning our mouths on Vindaloo, tempting fate with British beef. After dinners, we sit in pubs, sipping pints of dark warm beer and tangy cider and then wander back through rainy streets to our little section of Cromwell street, trip up the marble steps into a mirrored coffin of a lift and then fall into our beds, hoping madly that we won’t be impaled by an angry wire coil.

We discover that there is a mysterious sulfur cloud that is belched from the pipes in our bathroom at random points throughout the day. It is like living with a flatulent bulldog who is unseen, shuffling along under the table until inflicting you with its own version of the Blitz. We learn to keep the bulldog in his crate and the door to the WC closed.

I take Esteban’s hand and pull him through the first floor of the Victoria and Albert museum. Years ago, I spent a quiet afternoon wandering through the Italian Renaissance wing, transfixed by images of the Virgin with her child. Such passion to create. The ability of humans to create an object that serves no purpose other than to show love… it leaves me breathless every time. I search for my favorite piece in this wing… a roughly hewn life-size wooden crucifixion, the gaunt Christ with his eyelids half-parted. Seven years ago, in some weird bit of what might have been synethesia or perhaps some snakeoil brand of religious piety, when I looked up into his luminescent eyes, I heard the sound of ancient church music, some version of a pipe organ accompanied by a chorus of voices singing in Latin. The hair on my arms had stood on end, and I looked around the wing to see if anyone else had heard it, but there was no one. I was alone amidst antiquities, each of them foreboding, as though they too were waiting to speak to the right listener. I looked back up into the eyes… they were glowing, I swear they were lit up somehow? Even though that was impossible and the light in here was more of a yellow, not that bluish purple opally light of his eyes… I heard it again, this time I could discern other instruments… a stringed something and the thin reedy sound of a recorder. Dominus te, benedicta tu in muleribus, et beneictus fructus ventrus tui, Jesus. I looked away and then looked back again, but already the music was fading, a scratchy phonograph being played in a dusty attic, disseminating into distant chatter of tourists.

On this particular afternoon, the museum was filled with people. Loud people. I dragged Esteban once again through the pre-Renaissance wing, hurrying along, always a gallery ahead of him as he lingered to read ever card and look at every single piece of brass. Finally, we came upon the triptychs I remembered, the legions of Virgins carrying their blessed infants in their left arms. But the wooden crucifixion I remembered was not there. A single soulless Christ hung on one wall, eyes closed. The only sound the babble of tourists in countless languages and the grumbling of Esteban that I move too fast, too fast.

This is not the only thing that is different than the last time I wandered London’s streets. I tell Esteban about a pub up the street from St. Paul’s Cathedral, a pub called Ye Old London Town, except that when we get there, it has been replaced by some kind of corporate restaurant catering to gothy tourists with prepackaged gargoyles and clearanced Halloween decorations. We decide to go searching elsewhere for some dinner and end up at a swank establishment in Chelsea, where, with the exchange rate, we eat $40 hamburgers and $4 glasses of water. Afterwards, we take a taxi back to our Edwardian garret. As Esteban is standing on the sidewalk waiting for me to pay our driver, a party mini-coach drives by slowly. A rather drunken reveler is standing in the open door, yelling something, but his drunken Cockney accent is indecipherable. We make out something about footballers and something about “Westminschtah” and the raised end of his garble means that he is asking a question. Esteban shakes his head to indicate that he doesn’t understand, so the reveler repeats his question regarding something footballers something something Westminschtah. Esteban shakes his head again and in glaring American accent says “No clue, man.” This incenses the reveler! “Wot!? Bloody American barstahds!” Esteban, who had four pints of room temperature chocolatey dark draught before dinner, isn’t in the mood, so makes a rather rude gesture involving his crotch that would not be lost in the translation. The reveler is shocked! He is beside himself! The bus is slowly moving even further out of earshot, so he must come up with something brilliant to put this colonist in his place.

Finally, he spits out “George Bush is a fooking wankah!”

It is four minutes before I can stop laughing and get up off the curb and get my change back from the now exasperated driver. The bus has long disappeared down the streets of Kensington, so we are unable to tell him t

hat we completely agree about Dubya being a complete and total wankah. Regardless, he has given us a true gift: from that point forward, everything is a fooking wankah. Everything. The tube is a fooking wankah. The exchange rate is a fooking wankah. The mattresses are a matched pair of fooking wankahs. In one fell swoop, I have br

oken up with “Bunch of Flowers” and “fooking wankah” has become my baby daddy.

We wander through Leicester Square. I am amazed because I remember being here, but the square itself, with its giant Swedish clock and the throngs of tourist friendly food stalls, has flitted from my memory, like a dream ten minutes after waking on American soil. And yet, the second I am there, seeing the form of Charlie Chaplin, the colored lights in the trees, and I remember the details of that past life, the hazy summer afternoons eating banana gelato on the bench, laughing with some German boys, the warm rain falling after a matinee of Les Miserables, my flatmate and I ducking into a patisserie for strawberry tortes and Earl Grey. It was all there, all had been forgotten and then in an instance, stepping out from the wings into the light. It made me giggle. Esteban was giggling himself, but he was giggling at the Swiss clock, which had minutes ago finished its little show, and the tourists who kept staring up at it, mouths agape, waiting for it to do it again. I declare right then that I hate Americans. I hate how loud they are, how brass, how obnoxious. They walk in enormous groups like cattle, they don’t read signs, they view everything like some kind of amusement park, like the Old Church Ride and the Big Government Stuff Spectacular and they expect characters walking around wearing big felt heads with white curly wigs and giant crowns. There should be some kind of sign outside every Big Important English Thing that says Your Country Must Be This Old To Get On This Ride. They are all fooking wankahs. Except, you know, those of us that get it.

I leave Esteban drinking at a pub and go to Evensong at St. Paul’s. I have to fight my way through tourists who are all looking in every other direction but at the beautiful service in progress. The voices are incredible, threatening to burst through the marble halls and gilded tile ceilings. Midway through the service, I get overcome by the beauty of the music and my eyes start to well up. Then I feel ridiculous, a poseur tourist with a religion only for holidays. In the last decade, I’ve attended regular services at St. Paul’s Cathedral more than any other place of worship. I am not Anglican. I am only barely Lutheran. Also, I find all of the gold and money spent within distasteful. I’m not sure what it proves, to spend so much money on gilding a place of worship while being a bastard to friends and family and cutting proverbial throats to make a shilling? Is it possible to buy a first class ticket to heaven? Does religion only count when there are beautiful expensive things?

And yet, these voices make swirling patterns in the empty space of God above me. The basses and tenors pulse along with the airy sopranos, each syllable becoming a painting, each note washing color in the current of sound. Soon the program in my hand is covered in inky splotches, and even still, I cannot help myself. I know that no matter what I do, I won’t be able to explain this to anyone, much like I am embarrassed when I lose control listening to Ave Maria or Mozart’s Requiem. It’s not so much my own belief that moves me but rather the strength of their love. That anyone could feel so strong and be moved to create such beauty. I weave my way out of St. Paul’s and stop at a Marks & Spencer, purchasing a small packet of grapes and some white nectarines, then wander down the hill, popping perfectly turgid parcels of fruit into my mouth and feeling them explode as sweetness against my throat. This is beauty, right here. This is holy perfection.

Esteban keeps making me laugh. Each and every day, almost every hour, I am amazed that he is so completely funny and brilliant. We should have taken a honeymoon years ago. Hell, we should go on honeymoon every damn year from now until forever. Late one night, after giggling across the great divide between our twin beds/torture racks, we both sigh, which is the sign that we’re about to fall asleep, and then Esteban whispers, “Isn’t ‘fucking wanker’ an oxymoron? I mean, if you’re a wanker, you’re a habitual masterbater, and if you’re a fucker, then you’re, you know, getting something something? So how does ‘fucking wanker’ even make sense?” Which makes us laugh again. Drunken Westminschtah guy… we salute you.

I teach Esteban to read Tube maps and soon the names of the lines are tumbling from his mouth. Our vowels start to get softer, our accents less pronounced. I can feel words growing form inside my mouth, making round jaw breakers that I must speak around. My brain voice starts to sound out long ahs, short ohs, gentle els and lahs. We wander through Portobello Road market, Covent Garden, and Camden Town (which Esteban renames Bong Water Market). We watch pigeons argue for discarded cigarette butts (“Don’t go for that… it’s bad for your health.” “Weet, admonishing the pigeons is really a lost cause.” “Well, it’s not like they can read the warning labels.”) and get chills as the blustery wind blows through our clothes. I stop in each candy store, looking for new chocolates to try. Every night, we sit cross-legged on our respective beds, watching weird shows on the four English-speaking non-static channels and use really bad English accents to make up names for new British sitcoms (“Brumbly, Grumbly and Snout!” “52 Uses for a Cold Pot of Porridge!” “Cocksmiths!” “That’s a town, not a show.” “It totally needs to be a show! It should be a wakka chicka wakka chicka kind of show!”) and chomp on many chocolate bars, all of which easily trump the flavored sweetened wax we call chocolate here in the colonies. Esteban discovers that he also likes Hobnobs. This is a very disturbing development. Finally, I tire of carting back heavy bags of chocolate to have them summarily feasted upon in the evening and declare, “There will be no more munching on my chocolate!” We seal the deal by devouring four different Cadbury bars and one big Lindt something crunchy something.

On our last evening in England, Esteban releases me to go to the theatre, as he does not like musicals, does not like opera, does not like sitting in wee theatre chairs with no leg room. I wander up cobbled streets, through back alleys, down Jermyn and up Haymarket, to sit in the first row first balcony and indulge in one of my guiltiest pleasures. Afterwards, I wander back up to the tube. Esteban recommended that I should take a black taxi back to the hotel and avoid scary late night tube riders, but I am enjoying myself too much, trying to soak up every tiny bit of London I can before we fly out in twelve hours. I decide to walk up to the next tube, just so that I can enjoy sounds of traffic on water-covered cobble, the smell of wet Macintoshes and the sound of Brits shaking out their brellies. The moon is a fingernail sliver above Piccadilly. In the distance, there is a low peal of church bells, chiming eleven times through a light fog.

It is then that I remember a dream I had once about walking on a night just like this one, through a deep fog, until I found a statue garden in a church courtyard. In it, the statue of Peter Pan and at the hour of eleven thirty on a specific day, the statues would come to life. In my dream, I wanted to find out if it was true, so I sat myself down on a cold stone bench and waited. And waited.

And then finally, eleven thirty came and went and nothing happened.

But for whatever reason, (because in retellings of dreams, it is imperative to use some variation of the phrase “for no reason whatsoever”), I stayed in the courtyard until midnight, and a little before then, the statues began to shake off their slumber, knock the pigeon droppings from their shoulders, step down from their pedestals and walk stiffly about. And when I got over the astonishment of stone moving on its own, I looked up and there was Peter, staring down at me, asking what kind of stone was I made from?

As I wander back through Westminster chasing the shadow of Peter Pan back towards Kensington, I wonder if I would follow him straight on ‘til morning, without a second thought to my other responsibilities. And perhaps on this trip I have done just that.

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Not Dead. Not a Whore.

Friday, March 26, 2004

I wasn’t dead. Just in England. I just got back and haven’t had a chance to write anything yet, but sheesh, you guys were going apoplectic on the comments section. I was waiting for the conspiracy theories to begin.

And, um… prostitution? A courtesan maybe, but certainly not anything as common as a prostitute.

So yeah, a big London entry to come. Full of pictures and a million characters of html that make my head ache just thinking about it (whine whine whine). Until then, here’s a preview.

Have a lovely weekend.

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Vegeteraphim

Friday, March 12, 2004

Argh.

If you’re too lazy to hit that link, essentially, the folks in Bahston (home of my lovely former math tutor Mary, who occasionally starts math fracases on the comments section) are grumbling because they don’t get a special dispensation from the Pope to eat hot dogs on Good Friday if they go to the Red Sox opening game.

The thing that bugs me is this line ‘I think it’s very insensitive to the huge number of people who are Christians and fans.”

Ok, first off, the no meat during lent? Not necessarily a Christian thing. It’s (as far as I know) only a Catholic thing. Even though I’m not a practicing Lutheran, I find that assumption really offensive. Don’t reign me into your crazy Fish on Friday thing! Also, if I were Catholic and if I did believe strongly that one should not eat meat on six specific Fridays a year, then I certainly wouldn’t dream of forsaking that belief so that I could eat a damn hotdog at a baseball game. Either it’s a sin or it isn’t.

Here’s an interesting anecdote: one of my first big incredulous fights with Esteban when we first started going out was over the fact that Esteban claimed that Catholicism and Christianity was the same thing. You see, he grew up in a very rural and very Catholic portion of Wisconsin. I don’t know that there are any non-Catholic churches in that area, and if they are, they keep a pretty low profile. His entire family is Catholic. He was baptized Catholic. He just didn’t realize that there are Protestants out there, or maybe thought the Protestants were the Amish, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and that one religion that meets in school gymnasiums and doesn’t let women cut their hair or wear pants.

We had long entrenched debates about it, in which I took several different approaches, both dogmatic and sociological, and also covered historical stuff that he had never been exposed to, complete with the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and Henry VIII and Martin Luther ruining what must have been a beautiful hand-carved wooden door (guess who’s been hanging around the Hundred Dollar store too much?). I even went the logical left brained way, by pointing out that all Catholics are Christian, but not all Christians are Catholics. I may have even drawn a Venn diagram, although, in my defense, I was taking a logic class at the time, which pumped, up the left side of my brain and I think I actually got high off saying the phrase ‘That’s a logical fallacy’ because I said it no fewer than four hundred times a day.

It was grueling work, that stubborn argument between two mulish (or assish, since we’re being all Biblical) people. If I even understood the concept and rules of sainthood (another thing that I don’t think Lutherans have), I would probably expect to be bodily consumed into heaven on just the merit of having the tenacity to forge onward through what we have now come to call The Troubles. It was years before he realized that yes, there were indeed non-crazy Protestants out there, and that there were concrete differences other than the fact that Lutherans don’t have to pay attention to the Pope. Other than to make fun of his Ovipositor hat.

Also, what does being a fan have to do with eating a damned hot dog? Will it prevent your team from winning? Why is baseball more important than your religion? And if you can get a dispensation for something as ridiculous as eating a hot dog at a baseball game, isn’t the no meat thing sort of silly to begin with? I mean, when Christ was hanging on the cross, did He chastise the Romans for eating Egg McMuffins? No. It’s a historical given that some pope in some century wanted to save the Italian fishing industry, so he made the ‘no meat on Fridays, no meat at all during Lent’ thing. And then since then, another pope decided to ease back on the meat ruling because maybe he was up for reelection. Or maybe it was one of his campaign promises. It’s politics, that’s all it is. And probably also Mel Gibson’s fault somehow. Or Meryl Streep. But not Christopher Walken, because he’s hotchachacha hot. In a crazy random kind of way.

I’m actually half Catholic and half Lutheran, whatever that is supposed to mean. I’m only Lutheran because my mother acquiesced to my father’s will and baptized me in the Lutheran church with his entirely German last name rather than her own rather beautiful French one. My mother’s family is imbued with a Dauphinic sense of Catholic legacy. In a shocking bit of heresy, my great grandmother converted to Lutheranism to marry her second husband, and together, they sat on the board of a Lutheran private school and made certain that their only Lutheran grandchild had a proper red Jell-o with bananas and whipped cream parochial education. At least until I balked in the fifth grade and demanded to go to public school. So it’s not like I have something against Catholicism. I don’t. If anything, when I was a kid, I had wished that I was Catholic so that I would be like all of my friends and also get to wear the school uniforms that they did.

For what it’s worth, I do get behind the idea of giving up something for Lent, even though it’s not specified by our synod (and I’m not sure I would anyway, but that’s back to my comment about technically being Lutheran). It seems like a nice thing to do for your faith and I like the idea that it’s something that is a personal sacrifice for the whole period of Lent. None of this arbitrary meat on certain days thing, though.

Why would you give some guy or group of guys the power to not only invent a sin, but then ask them to absolve you of that sin? It just doesn’t make sense to me.

Did you hear that sound? It was the sound of a hundred emails getting Bible verses copied and pasted and then a self-righteous mouse-click on the Send button.

Of all hymns, I like Lenten hymns the best. They are all bloody and gothic and A-minory and talk about being stricken, smitten, and afflicted. That’s some strong stuff, right there. That’s my verdict. Lenten hymns to the top of the charts with a bullet! Or, you know, a rock thrown by a small child. Next on TRL: Pontius Pilate gives ‘Abide With Me’ two clean thumbs up!

In case you weren’t convinced of my inherent blasphemy, right now I’m working on a short story that puts Jesus, Hitler, Joan of Arc, Anne Frank (and a bunch of other people) as cast members of a reality television show like Survivor. Except I keep feeling like I’m going to get struck by lightening whenever I work on it. Or attacked by locusts. I may have to paint my computer with lamb’s blood or something. Gah.

Dear Pastor Beulow,

I am going to hell. You were totally right.

Sincerely,
Weetabix Marietabix

Dear Everyone,

Why aren’t you on Orkut yet?

Seriously?
Weet

Dear Esteban’s Friends,

I had something else to write about, but then Esteban said ‘And I better not get shit about this from my friends’, which tells me that one or more of you habitually still can’t keep your fat mouths shut about what you read on this diary. So cut it out. If you can’t be creative enough to come up with your own material, just don’t say anything.

I’m serious.
Weetabix

Dear Kirstie Alley,

It’s not like I didn’t warn you. Freakjob.

Sincerely,
Weetabix

Dear Jake,

Heh.
Weet

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Blimey! Prize Inside

Wednesday, March 10, 2004

Some things:

I had Monday off because it’s my hell week at work this week. It was like playing hooky from school, in a way, because I hadn’t made any plans. I didn’t know what to do with a whole day. Also, my house is more or less in order, barring the big projects like cleaning Computer Rooms #1 and #3. #1 will have to wait until we finish Computer Room #2, which currently has no ceiling, walls or floor. Nothing like starting a new project while there are many other half-finished rooms in the house yawning ‘Bored Now’.

Then I decided that I didn’t have enough jam. Or rather, my friends didn’t. I bought $70 worth of jam last October, but with my generous spirit, I gave my last two little jars to K.Lo and Akkelly, so I had but half of one big jar left for my own self. Well, actually, I think I had a small cherry blackberry one too, although I have decided to stop trifling with the pretenders and devote myself fully and wholeheartedly into my addiction to the Chopped Cherry variety. Thus, I decided that if I got my act together I could make a jam run up the thumb, have Swedish pancakes and lingonberries for lunch at Al’s, hit the cheese factory on the way back and be home by early afternoon. And it would be an adventure! And that’s exactly what I did, except that it wasn’t an adventure, but rather just a lugubrious four hour drive so that I could essentially be a picky eater.

Speaking of that, I suspect that I’m getting the beginnings of my flutter tummy phenomenon again. Yesterday, I drove around during my lunch hour, uncertain of a single thing that sounded decent. I decided upon sushi, except that I drove to the sushi place with a feeling of impending doom. Sushi. The very idea was making me sad. And that made no sense! Unhappy sushi is an oxymoron. It’s all happy sushi! It’s in the very fiber of sushi itself, somewhere between the sticky rice and the seaweed. And wasabi! Nothing makes you love your life and embrace the joy that is your nose like some lovely nuclear wasabi.

Once in the store, I grabbed a tray of random rolls that included my favorite tekka maki and went back to work, feeling completely apathetic and confused. I was not so much with the sushi. I started thinking that maybe it was smelly, except that it wasn’t. Then I took a bite and it was fine. I convinced myself that I do love sushi and I love tekka maki and I love eating healthy stuff, so be happy damn you! Except then on my fourth bite, there was a big chip of bone. And honestly, I don’t even know how that happened, but needless to say, we were done eating sushi. I finished the day with Cracker Jacks, because the prize inside was a predictable fold ‘in of dinosaurs that folded in to reveal a meteor. Or perhaps a booger. Don’t know. It was very post modern.

Regardless, I then had a full-blown flutter tummy, which demanded that I eat like a latchkey kid for the rest of my life. Later, I did attempt some very mild three-day old cheddar, but even that made me a little squeamish. Finally, I cut my losses and for dinner, Esteban made himself tortellini and leftover tenderloin, while I had a very delectable peanut butter and chopped cherry jam sandwich on French peasant bread, accompanied by a glass of juice.

This morning, I woke up early and knew that there was no way that I’d be able to eat anything out of the vending machine or from a drive through for breakfast, so I assembled a fruit salad and spent twenty minutes cutting and peeling an orange, kiwis, a banana, strawberries, and grapes, and then combined them with my Operation Hottie standby of pre-cut fresh pineapple from the snooty grocery store.

I left for work early and decided that I wouldn’t chance a mocha at Sbux, but by the time I had crossed the river, I talked myself into some jet-fueled pick-me-up, so I continued to a different (horrors!) coffee place and got some kind of uber mocha with a double shot of espresso (which was.. let’s just say ‘intense’ and leave it at that, shall we?). And it was all good! I was happy! I walked into work half an hour early and took care of the few people who had called early even for the East Coast then popped open my fruit salad and began to munch on my fruit in a way that can only be described as self-righteous.

Then I noticed a black something on my pre-cut pineapple chunk. A smashed something black. A smashed something black with what might just have been wings.

My poor flutter tummy began radioing distress signals to my brain, but my brain decided to be rational. It couldn’t be a bug. Couldn’t possibly be a bug. Bugs have one two three four five six legs and one two antenna, oh shit, the math works out’ ok, it can’t be a bug because it’s winter and we don’t have bugs in our house, except that it could have come from the store, oh god yes, I bought pineapple with a smushed bug in it! BUG! BUG! ABORT! ABORT!

Man. I am so sick of Cracker Jacks and that smug-assed little sailor. Salute this, you bastard.

I’m feeling the traditional Pre-Vacation panic attack starting to come on. It’s a pity, because I’ve been gloriously free of anxiety about the impending England trip. Right now, I’m panicking about money and thinking that our budget will translate into roughly seventeen British pounds after the conversion rate. I also can’t decide whether I should make a cash exchange before we go, so that we have cash for the trip, or what if I can’t use the ATMs to access my savings account? Or what if some pick pocket steals all of our money and passports and I have to sell myself on the street to pay for our hotel room? Which I could probably do in a matter of a few hours, because for as much as I am catnip for lesbians, I am apparently absolute crack for the English guys. Seriously. I have never been hit upon quite so frequently as when I was in England. Maybe they’re just more aggressive. Or maybe I’m just hot on Greenwich Mean Time.

There’s a radio advertisement on local stations right now for the musical tour of Oliver. It took me a few minutes but then I realized that the announcer was trying to do an English accent. Or rather, every English accent that was ever spoken in the United Kingdom, and also perhaps a touch of Australian. It’s like they took Winston Churchill, David Bowie, Hugh Grant, the Young Ones, Jamie Oliver, and also the guy who used to sell me my Time Outs by Warwick Tube Station (whoa, I just remembered his name was Billy and his dogs names were Major and Sergeant’ crap, like I need THAT clogging up my brain) and just whirled them around in a blender and then glurted out a radio spot for Oliver. Or rather Owlivah. Which you can learn more ahboot aht Whydnah Centah doot comb.

I had an MRI on my knee. I’ve never really considered myself claustrophobic, but when I started getting shoved into what is essentially a big fucking coffin, it was a little freaky. Luckily, though, they stopped at my neck, and also let me listen to one of my CDs. For future reference, I would not suggest listening to Jane’s Addiction, because you cannot move while being throttled by the magnets and while those crazy dogs are barking at the beginning of ‘Been Caught Stealing’, I defy you to refrain from shakin’ yo ass. Or shakeeng guv’nah’s ahss.

They had a big awards ceremony at work yesterday. My sister Mo got one, which was cool. The weird thing was that they announced the nominees for said awards a month or so ago, but many of them were team awards. One of them was my team, but the way that it was worded, I wasn’t sure if I was included on that or not.

Then, however, at the end of the team awards section, they started talking about my project, and then I knew that I had one too, because I am the only person who does anything on my project at my office. Which made me very glad that I didn’t wear slummy clothes that day and actually looked rather cute in a white button-down, flat front black trousers and black shoes with leopard accents, since I had to get up and walk up there by myself.

Then I started to walk away without shaking the hand of the guy who is responsible for the impending outsourcing, which made everyone titter. That’s me, baby, corporate rebel. Except that really I just got flustered and didn’t realize that he wanted to shake my hand and say congratulations. And apparently, when I did realize my mistake, I did a little curtsey. Because not only am I a modern career woman, I would do fine in Elizabethan high court as well.

Also related to the impending riffings, they announced an April date for the upcoming spring banquet a few weeks ago and then today, sent out another email indicating that the date had changed and that it will now be in May.

I snarked to the folks on the other side of my little artificial wall ‘Because they won’t have to pay for as many dinners then?’ and they tittered. Except that a few seconds later, suddenly another email from someone many departments away, that said ‘Gee, is this because we’ll have less people?’.

Ah, the horrors of Reply: All. It was the best thing that happened all day.

What’s cooler than cool? Apparently me: On Orkut, I am apparently almost twice as cool as I am sexy or trustworthy. I guess I’d better stop hanging out behind the roller skating rink, pressuring the other Orkuters to smoke. I just don’t know what to make of all those ice cubes.

Esteban doesn’t know what he wants to do in London. He’s taking my word that he wants to see the Tower of London and I already plan on dragging him to my favorite V&A museum (the Renaissance wing is the happy place I go to whenever I am sitting in the dentist’s chair). The comments section would love to hear your ideas.

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A visit to Casa Bix

Friday, March 5, 2004

Thank you all for indulging me with my maudlin bullshit yesterday. I’m shaking it off, slowly but surely.

I still think that they’re a bunch of wieners, though.

I went to the doctor for my knee yesterday. She agrees that four and a half months is really a long time. She now suspects that there may be cartilage damage and thus, I’m scheduled next week for an MRI. Apparently, my only other option is to go back to Dr. Lorax who is just itching to stick a big fucking needle in there and see what he can suck out. Obviously, you can understand my decision. If they gave you good drugs to go along with the needle in your knee, maybe I would have chosen differently.

Speaking of drugs, I kind of (totally) want to zip over to Amsterdam when we go to England in a couple of weeks. To, you know, visit the Anne Frank museum. Among other things. Yeah.

The worst fallout from my knee has been the fact that for months I had to sleep on my back with a pillow stuffed under my leg to keep it somewhat bent. Last weekend, when I went to put my 750-thread count sheets on the bed, I noticed that in the spot where the pillow had been, there is a flurry of teensy tiny hard fuzzball things. My lovely sheets pilled because of my stupid drunken sausage injury! You can mess with my body, but do NOT mess with my snobby sheets!

I hate Texas.

Dooood!

Ah, poor Martha. Or rather, stupid Martha. I really don’t have any opinion about insider trader, although, in the famous words of Dr. Martin Luther Cochrane, if she did the crime, she’s got to do the time.

Even though she’s now a convicted criminal, I have a hard time disliking her for being the hardass that the media is playing her to be. According to the above article, she once threatened to stop doing business with a company because she didn’t like their hold music. That’s totally something I would do. Or at least think about. I mean, I immediately dislike people for using the word ‘ain’t’ so who am I to judge?

I’m a little bit curious to see if she shows us how to turn antique milk glass into a very effective shiv for sticking the bishes. Seriously, they wouldn’t even have to send Martha to jail. They could just force her to stay at a Motel 6 on 128-thread-count dingy sheets and live on a diet of Funyuns from the vending machine. She’d probably lose it completely.

The weirdest thing is that Rosie O’Donnell was there showing her support. You just know that Martha wouldn’t normally have anything to do with Rosie O’Donnell. At one time, I think I wrote here that people are either Marthas or Oprahs, but I think there’s another segment’ the Rosies. The Rosies think they’re Oprahs, but they’re just wishful thinkers.

Although, I may be bitter because a few weeks ago, Horatio Sans was doing Rosie O’Donnell on SNL and he was wearing one of my favorite fleece pullovers. Which is dead to me now.

Do midgets have normal sized sexual organs? Or is it all to scale? Because somehow I’m having a hard time imagining Mini Me hung like Ron Jeremy.

Which rhymes. Damn. That SO needs to be a rap lyric.

Esteban comes home tomorrow at some point. He’s not sure when. His flight isn’t due back until well after 10 pm, but he said he’s going to camp out at San Francisco International and hope to stand by on an earlier flight to Chicago.

I’m totally ready for him to come home. Time drags when I’m alone in the evening. I’ve made myself some incredible gourmet meals this week, watched two movies, and straightened everything but the dining room. I think it’s making me a little crazy, as last night, I was certain that when I looked up in the darkness of my bedroom, I was going to see the Klaatu Beratu Nicto robot about to suck out my brains (brains? Why brains? Robots don’t eat brains?) Also, I’ve begun to have conversations with the cat. If someone doesn’t save me soon, I will start saving aluminum foil in balls and knitting toaster cozies with big pink pompom balls on the top. Or become one of those people who talk excitedly to the hosts of the home shopping network about my collection of Marie Osmond porcelain dolls.

Last night, I was wandering around taking random pictures to experiment with the camera settings. Must get this right before Europe! Anyway, because I really wanted to get yesterday’s entry off the index page, you get to be a voyeur and see random glimpses of my house.

This is our phone cubby in the living room. Our house was built in the late forties, and thus has several little cut outs in various places. The little slot underneath was meant for a phone book, however, not even the Sc-Sh section of the Green Bay phone book would fit in that little slot anymore. The cubby looks into the hall and then into the kitchen, where you can see the dishwasher (aka The Clutter Catcher) is rolled over to the sink and you can also see my dinner in progress (spinach, mushroom, and feta salad followed by chicken tortellini with marinara), our Wusthof knives, our random knives, my auxiliary utensils (ie, the stuff that doesn’t fit in the two utensil drawers), our rice cooker and the corner of the stove. Exciting!

Turning 15 degrees to the left, in the hall, is the new frame I got at Eddie Bauer a few weeks ago, filled with my Japanese flash cards that I found last June when Patsy Cline and I wandered around the bookstores in the Mission. I love the one for Many, which looks like sperm. It’s not sperm, though, but tadpoles. Except that really, it’s sperm.

The whole thing is a big double entendre, with the cock and the kitty and the cherry and the big wood versus small wood. Don’t look at me that way. I didn’t put the porn on the flashcards.

The toothbrush is there because it hangs right next to the bathroom. And the thing on the bottom isn’t a flower, it’s a lotus. In case you were confused.

Speaking of flowers, this is the orchid I bought at Home Depot so people wouldn’t think I was a lesbian. You can also see a corner of the blue rug I dragged out storage to hide the wood subfloor, and the English ivy that I’ve had since 1992.

By the way, I hate our refrigerator, because everything in our kitchen is white except for that. And you know how much I need things to match.

Going into the bathroom, this is one of my biggest shames. My product whoreness. Sure, it looks normal, except that you can’t see the second cabinet, the one on the opposite side of this one (which contains my OPI fetish and even more hair gunk). The two baskets on the top two shelves are pushed halfway or more into Esteban’s side of the cabinet, which gives me more room for my hair gunk. The top basket is where beauty products go to die. I can see gold mascara hair stuff for putting gold streaks in one’s hair (makes a sticky mess that you can’t see on dark hair) some really awful hot pink Estee Lauder lipstick, and every bit of Gift With Purchase makeup that I’ve ever received. In the little green makeup bag (also a gift with purchase), there are several eye shadows, tubes of Body Shop Vitamin E eye cream and Clinique Moisture Surge Eye stuff and also most of the jewelry that I wear all the time. And also loose change. I’m not sure why that’s there. And also a thing of dental floss. There’s another thing of dental floss in the basket on the 2nd shelf too. Compulsive about my teeth? You think, considering that there are two different toothpastes too? You see, I use the whitening stuff at night (which gives me an enviably blue mouth while I’m brushing) and the Super Clean stuff in the morning, so that I’ll not have the breath of a corpse after my morning Sbux.

On the middle shelf, I see a black Tweezerman poking up from one of the baskets, but wait, is that a blue Tweezerman poking up out of my brush cup too? Is it because I’m terrified of sending my precious Tweezerman to be sharpened, so I have two. Or, um, three. Ahem. The cup that I store my brushes and eyeliners in is one that we used to take camping when I was growing up. It’s got rust spots on it where the enamel cracked, but I can’t bear to get rid of it. I decided this was a good place for it, since if it fell, it wouldn’t shatter in a room where we often are barefoot. There are more eyeshadows sticking up out of the basket here too, along with my Prescriptives foundation (in Real Vanilla, because in the winter, I am pale like the undead). You can also see my precious Soap, in its gilded container, next to my Clinique Moisture Surge face gunk and my Coty airspun powder. Normally, there would be Prescriptives Magic Powder here, but I ran out and forgot to get some while in Milwaukee. The Coty smells exactly like my great grandmother.

The bottom shelf contains my hair gunk. I can see at least five Tigi products here, as well as at least two Aveda things. And sadly, on any given morning, I’ll use at least three: either the Rock Star or the Sexxed Up, the Cat Fight or the Bed Head, and the Pure-fume hair spray. I don’t see my Aveda Volumizing Tonic or the Redken Spray Starch, so those must be in the other cabinet. In the lower left, also pushed mostly into Esteban’s side, you can see a plethora of ineffective rosacea medicine.

Being a girl isn’t hard. You just have to be able to make payments.

I’ll spare you the rest of the photos. Have a lovely weekend.

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The one with the vulva thrusting

Thursday, March 4, 2004

You know how I suck? No? Apparently every graduate application committee on the entire planet thinks so. Yeah. I can’t believe it’s round two of last spring. Last spring, the rejection was really hard to bear and yet I am subjecting myself to round two. I simply cannot believe it. I’m completely confused. I must be doing something wrong, but I can’t figure out what it is. I can’t even blame my late third recommendation from my out-of-commission advisor, because three of the ‘you suck’ letters came from schools that had four of my recommendations, all in plenty of time.

Perhaps in my personal statement, I should have written about the artistic quality and expression of my oral gratification skills. I still think naked pictures next time.

Official score for those of you keeping track at home: Iowa, Minnesota (Adam! Grrrr!), Indiana, Madison (wtf?), and Michigan all think I suck. Programs who are still contemplating my suckiness are Missouri, NYU (who might be so disgusted that they can’t even bring themselves to type my very name on the ‘sorry that you’re a talentless hack’ letter), Milwaukee, and the two San Francisco schools.

Cockeyed optimist, that’s me.

I’m so looking forward to getting the mail tonight.

Speaking of the mail, did I mention how I found Esteban’s passport? It was on his desk. Where I told him to look in the first place. Regardless, we received our new passports yesterday, which is proof that the American tradition of throwing money at problems is a valid solution for just about anything.

One cool thing: I sort of look like either a groupie or an international spy in my new passport photo. An international spy who smuggles important microfilm in her double chin, but still very mysterious nonetheless. I’m so going to get strip-searched in Heathrow.

On Tuesday night, I attended Abigail’s very first dance recital. She was so freaking adorable that it made my ovaries start their own rendition of ‘Feed Me Seymour’. My organs are big fans of Broadway shows.

I went very early to score some seats in the second row. I ended up having to save the entire row, since Mo indicated that a ton of people were coming. My mom and Mafia Grandma showed up, late as usual. Mom started admiring my new little shiny camera and when I mentioned that I needed a smaller camera with a better zoom and quality for our trip to England in two weeks, she got all grumbly, because she NEVER gets to go ANYWHERE. And here I get to go twice. As though there’s a travel fairy leaving airline tickets under my pillow or something. Gah. Her attitude is getting so very old.

Mafia Grandma never said anything to me. Not even one word. She must be mad at me, but I can’t figure out why. She talked to me at Warren’s funeral, but only after I talked to her first. Whatever. I just don’t have the patience to dance in my family’s particular waltz of dysfunction anymore. And if they don’t want to include me in their reindeer games, all the better.

It probably didn’t help that my mother kept relaying comments from my grandmother and I kept making snide or snarky comments about them. For instance, one of the jazz dance classes had a performance which had something to do with racial unity or peace or something. It was hard to tell because they were 12 years old and the speaker system was very bad and the steps were choreographed by monkeys. For props, they had an easel with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s picture on one side of the stage and on the other, an easel with Robert Kennedy. While I was trying to figure out how Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr figured in with the particular song (because they were both killed in the same year? By assassins? At hotels? Maybe?), my mother, sitting between myself and Mafia Grandma, leaned over and whispered, ‘Grandma wants to know who is in that picture on the right side?’

‘Bobby Kennedy’ I whispered back.

‘Oh. Ok. She thought it was maybe Ron Howard.’

While I’ll admit that it was a rather bad picture of Bobby Kennedy. But’

‘OPIE? Dr. Martin Luther King and OPIE?’ I whispered back. ‘How exactly would THAT work? They are dancing to freedom and also the genius that brought us Jim Carrey as the Grinch?’

My mother shrugged and leaned over to whisper to Mafia Grandma that it was, in fact, not Ron Howard and the dance was not, in fact, a celebration of the movie ‘Cocoon’.

I started laughing to myself, then snapped a picture of Bobby Ron Kennedy Howard, just so that I could show Esteban later.

My mother nudged me again. ‘Grandma wants to know if Dr. King is maybe related to Johnnie Cochran.’

I hadn’t thought there would be anything to top Bobby Ron Kennedy Howard, but apparently, it was the ‘If it does not fit, you must have a dream’ connection.

‘Is it because Johnnie Cochran is the only other black man she knows?’ I asked. My mother smiled and nodded.

‘Tell her that Dr. King is Johnnie’s brother.’ I whispered back.

My mother relayed the message. Mafia Grandma made a satisfied grunt and continued to watch the dancers.

Somewhere there is a black civil rights leader doing a triple gainer in his grave.

I beg of you to explain what was in the dance teacher’s head when she instructed her girls to do this dance move?

I don’t even understand it. They did this several times during the routine, which allowed me to wait for it and then take a picture. The song was a really bad version of ‘The Tide Is High’, and at one point, each girl lipsynced the Not!Blondie lyrics into a hairbrush. Or didn’t lip sync them, just holding a hairbrush up to their mouths and staring blankly out into the audience. Probably mortified that they had just wiggled their vulva’s at several hundred people.

It was truly a night of mysteries.

I got to try out my new camera in low light settings, and as you can see from this photo of Abby (which has not been given a color wash in Photoshop’ that’s how it turned out), I haven’t quite figured out the finer points yet. There are fewer options than my Canon EOS, so it makes it harder to figure out the combinations I need to get the results I want. Also, the little window on the camera makes things look a lot lighter than they are once I download them off the camera, so that’s sort of messing with my ability to regulate.

In normal light, it seems to be working very nicely. Here are some of the spring melt fog and hoare frost (no, really, I’m not making that up! That’s what it’s called. It’s one of the few things I remember from my college meteorology class.) we had last week.

Have a lovely week.

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Lip my stocking

Monday, March 1, 2004

It was a lovely weekend. Another one, actually. Right up there with last weekend as lovely weekends go.

On Friday, Penny, Carissa and I all took a half day to embrace one of our most favorite of pastimes (aside from sex, that is) and embarked down to the land of the Hootchie Mama on the hunt for some prime cheapass clothing. The Hootchie Mama store was, as always, in a vague sense of upheaval, as though the store were suddenly flung together by men wearing ski masks and staffed by confused women who are only temps and have been working there for three days. I expect to look through the back door and see hijacked trucks from other stores being unloaded by distracted people with guns sticking out of the back of their pants. Which, to me, always seemed like a good way to blow your own ass off, but that’s probably why I scored so low on the Gangsta part of my career aptitude tests in high school.

I am, by the way, even more convinced that there is something slightly amiss about the Hootchie Mama store. I was willing to chalk Mo’s score of a brand new suede jacket for $8 as a freak clearance double markdown occurrence, but this time, there were racks upon racks of Venezia jeans, which are, to my knowledge, only available at Lane Bryant and normally priced at $49.99. These were $12. Perhaps they fell off the back of a truck.

Penny and Carissa made some awesome scores. They bought a jacket, jeans, and at least two shirts for under $50. Then, we raced out to my favorite mall in all the land, but after a quick sweep, we didn’t find anything really intriguing, so made a pitstop at the Godiva store and stocked up on ridiculously-expensive-but-totally-worth-it-chocolate. They have a seasonal truffle right now: Banana. One of my little food idiosyncrasies is that while I’m not overly fond of most artificial fruit flavors (and feel that fake grape flavor is a scourge upon the earth), I love me some banana anything. Bananas are my very favorite of all fruits and fake banana is just fine and dandy too. Thus, a Godiva truffle with banana? Hell yeah. I got two, but I should have stock piled, because it is a mouth orgasm, and Godiva has this irritating habit of making seasonal truffles that I love, teasing me with their ephemera and then wiping them from the face of the earth with an aristocratic ‘har har’. Witness the tragedy that is the extinct candy cane truffle, for instance. You’d think they would keep a few breeding pairs around or something. Gah.

We then scurried over to one of my favorite little hole-in-the-wall Italian places down by Miller Park for dense brick-like garlic bread (which, despite the description is buttery and wonderful) and enormous plates of pasta and melted cheese. After that, we drove home and discussed various sexual acts and then played a rousing game of ‘Marry Fuck or Kill’ in which I am now betrothed to that clueless nerd Ralph Nader and Carissa will soon be Mrs. Norman Bates, which created memorable exchanges as ‘Well, Foghorn Leghorn is big.’ ‘But he’s a chicken? You’d fuck a chicken?’ ‘I’d marry Yosemite Sam, because he’s in law enforcement, and I’ve heard they get a good pension.’

I woke up early on Saturday and ran out to pick up Esteban’s dry cleaning for his impending tour of the West Coast, then was going to run out to the good butcher, but after I crossed the river, I decided that I had really woken up before my ambition and I just didn’t care all that much and there was plenty of stuff in the freezer anyway. Thus, I did the circle tour of our city then went back to my neighborhood when I remembered that we were waffling about just buying decent but cheap bookshelves at Target, since Esteban plans to pretty much trash them anyway. And the bookshelves in question were on sale, ending that day, so I took it upon myself to make an executive decision and buy two bookshelves anyway. If we decided later that we didn’t like how they looked, we could take them back. Thus, I made my sixth consecutive Saturday trip to Target and dropped $200 on shelves and miscellaneous sundry items (because black Woolite? How did I ever live without that? I ask this of you! It’s laundry soap! It’s gothic and vampirey! It’s the best unlikely combination of genres I have ever seen!), including a replacement DVD for my scratched copy of Bridget Jones’s Diary (mmmm’ Firthy goodness). Then I went back home, crawled back into bed with Esteban, who was snoring peacefully, and listened to the water drip off the neighbor’s back garage, because it was warm and lovely and melty and dare I say it, spring.

Esteban decided that he needed headphones for his trip, mostly because I have been using his really nice professional studio cans to listen to MP3’s on my pc, except that the cord is really really long and usually falls off the desk and I always thought that Tilly was just being really cute and playing with the dangling cord, except that she was really being an awful hellbeast and CHEWING HALF THROUGH IT. So I only had sound out of one side of my head, thus, I likewise needed headphones. And a new hands free thing for my cellphone, since the last one that I loved got lost with my cellphone last year. And Age of Empires II, because I’ve had the jones for that game something fierce and have given up trying to find my copy. Plus I didn’t have the expansion pack anyway. Thus, we stopped at our favorite little Mexican caf’ for lunch then over to the local Megalomart to have our electronic lust sated. Esteban also picked up a CD/MP3 player for his trip and I insisted upon buying a headphone splitter for our trip to England too. Thus, Saturday was, as Esteban put it ‘a three hundred and fifty dollar day before noon.’ More if you count lunch, but I didn’t bring that up to him.

We went home, played with our various items, then I made dinner (roasted whole tenderloin, baked salt-encrusted potatoes, green beans, and Fat biscuits, which I always seem to either overcook or grossly undercook, but after Esteban pointed that out, I had to make them just to prove that they are NOT my culinary Waterloo and that I AM capable of excelling at both a fine chocolate ganache AND institution grade biscuits from a can) and we lounged around, clutching our food babies and then sprawled on the couch watching the rest of Hellsing.

On Sunday, Esteban decided that he was going to skip his D&D, as he wasn’t feeling well and he also had a ton of work to do before jetting off to parts unknown for the upcoming week. I ate a bowl of Special K Vanilla (verdict: it sure isn’t Red Berries, people) with sliced banana and a glass of pineapple orange juice (Is it possible that the bacteria in our mouths is what makes orange juice taste good, and if we lived in a world where God was a dentist, none of us would drink it because it would taste the way it does right after you brush your teeth?), then sat down to put ice on my gimpy knee and read Replay(which isn’t my normal kind of read, but it’s been the first book that I haven’t been able to put down since Secret History) until Mary Kaye (she of the tampon stories in the comments section) swung by to visit. We ended up going out for lunch at the place where you throw peanut shells on the floor (and indeed some actual stubborn peanuts as well) and then raced back across town to catch a matinee of Love, Actually, which by the way is the greatest movie ever, and also full of eye candy. And also more nipples than is probably practical, but ah, those nipple-crazy English people! And Firth! Lots of Firth! But sadly, no Firth nipples. Strangely enough, when we sat down in the theatre, who was in the row ahead of us but Penny? And yet, it was so. Proves that I simply cannot get away from her. And she was dressed very nattily, which made me happy.

I went home to hang out with Esteban, since I won’t get to see him again until next week. We played on our various computers and then retired to watch the Oscars, which was a new experience for me, as they are always on a Sunday and thus I have watched them by myself for the past thirteen years. I was surprised to find that he was totally interested in the Oscars, perhaps because of Lord of the Rings, but I think not. I impressed him with correctly predicting five of the six major awards (damned Sean Penn! Damn him all to hell! Way to break my streak, you bastard) and then made him disdain when I claimed that if the academy wasn’t completely subjective, they would have given Lord of the Rings awards for the last three years instead of trying to make up for snubbing them the last two years and now feeling obligated to heap on the awards and screw other perfectly Oscar-worthy films this year. Perhaps Hollywood is feeling tired of hiding in the D&D geek closet. It’s got to be getting crowded in there, what with Sandra Bullock’s giant white wedding cake dress. They’re ready to stand up and hold their eight-sided die and magical ring of regeneration high. Or not.

We finished watching the Oscars in bed, using Tivo whenever necessary to gawk at a snide comment or Julia Robert’s enormous mouth (seriously, her mouth’ it’s unreal. It’s half her entire head. I suspect that if she unhinged it, she’d be able to swallow Peter Jackson whole. Maybe also Fran the music chick with the flowers in her hair, looking for all the world like she ended up in the Shrine Auditorium when she got lost on her way to the nearest Ren Faire). I started to ‘nap’ (which is the word I use when I’m tired and want to go to sleep but Esteban wants me to stay up and watch the Oscars with him.) He woke me up for the big ones at the end and then watched all the winners up on stage and didn’t turn it off until they were announcing the official airline of the Oscars. Because, as he added, clicking off Ricky Fitts, he wouldn’t have been able to sleep with the suspense of wondering’ American? Or NWA? But no. It was Ted. So we could both sleep soundly.

You want to know another reason I love Bill Murray? As if I needed another reason? When he didn’t win the Oscar for Lost In Translation (you mean you still haven’t seen it yet? What is up with you?) he didn’t look all fake and chippy (Depp, I’m looking your way) and clap when they announced Sean ‘I overact and played a retarded person on death row who was sodomized and did lots of anguished primal screaming so give me an Oscar dammit!’ Penn’s name for Best Actor. No. He looked like he knew that he had just gotten royally fucked over. Because just how many opportunities do you think Carl from Caddyshack has to win an Academy Award? Not bloody many. But it just doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. He’s going to be back up on that horse, taking one for the team, and even if God in heaven above parted the clouds and said ‘Bill Murray is KING!’, it just wouldn’t matter. Because he’d still never win an Oscar when all of the pretty people are too busy stroking each other’s dicks. It just doesn’t matter. IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER!

Ah Bill. Even in Meatballs, you were pure genius. All my love and boobies, baby.

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This little ennui went to market

Thursday, February 26, 2004

I’ve been vaguely weepy for the past several days. I don’t know why. It doesn’t make sense. I should be fine, and yet, I’m not. My eyes welled up watching someone else on television cry. I got vaguely upset reading a story about donated clothing from Goodwill getting sent to Africa and sold to people who can scarcely afford it. I cried for Sarah and her really really bad day, and then again when I was telling Esteban about it and we were both saying how completely horrible it would be and how frightening and scary and miserable and wow. I even got a little verklempt when Ward called me at work to tell me that he wouldn’t be able to come over and put up baseboards because their shower drain started leaking, but he’ll be over tomorrow, because I have a truly wonderful father-in-law.

There might be several reasons for the ennui. One is that Esteban is showing signs that he is becoming anemic again. We don’t know why. I’m terribly worried about him. Also, he’s just been informed that he’ll be going on tour of the west coast next week, going to Denver, LA, San Diego and San Francisco for certain. So he’s going to be vaguely ill and also away from home where I can’t look at him sternly and say ‘Did you take your pills? Hmmm?’

Also, I’m really frustrated by my knee. It’s been over four months and it’s still swollen and still achy and disagreeable and I am well and truly sick of it. I don’t know if it’s because I am most certainly going to lose my job and I don’t know if I’m going to get into any graduate programs whatsoever this fall. And if I do get in, I probably won’t get any fellowships or scholarships and won’t be able to go anyway. And as if to solidify this very fact, yesterday and the day before, I received two ‘I’m sorry but no’ letters. Indiana had over 300 folks vying for 12 spots. Madison, who addressed me as ‘Applicant’ gave me empty compliments that my application was strong, but they only have 6 spots. Yup, 6 spots for fiction every two years. Man. Sucks to be me.

Thus, even though I will likely be out of work in the near future, to cheer myself up, I took advantage of the sale at Demeteronline.com today. I covet their weird fragrances (Earl Grey Tea? I’m so on that.) but I never really succumb to make the plunge. However, today (only!) they have 10% off. I signed up for an account and then didn’t make a purchase right away’ half an hour later, I got an email from them with a $10 off coupon code. Man, nothing to lift the spirits like girly stuff had on the cheap.

Speaking of that, if you are thinking about buying The Soap but don’t know if you’ll want to commit to a $37 bar of Soap that you might not even like, might I suggest their trial size bars, which are still ridiculously expensive, but at least you’ll know if you’re a Soap convert or not.

Last night, I help Penny clean out her closet. Or rather, closets. She had three closets, two dressers, and three under-bed storage bins.

If you’ve ever wondered what ever happened to the costumes from Family Ties, they all relocated to Penny’s closet. She never realized that she was allowed to throw clothing away. That, to me, is astounding, mostly because I go through my closet at least twice a year when I flip from summer to winter and back again. I always have a bag or box behind the loveseat in my bedroom destined for Goodwill. The rate at which I purchase new stuff demands that I be ruthless with the whole ‘out with the old’ thing. However, Penny had ample closet space and doesn’t get out shopping much. Except apparently to Christopher & Banks, which was the label on almost all of her more current pieces.

Most importantly, Penny was game for ‘What Not To Wear’. It helped that I chastised her on Monday for wearing a really awful Huxtable sweater and then on Tuesday, caught her wearing a pastel checkerboard number that received the kiss of death when the not-overly-stylish 55-year-old coworker mentioned that it was ‘dated’. Which was much nicer than my adjective ‘fugly’.

We started slow, with the offending sweaters. She made a conciliatory sacrifice of four acrylic nubby sweaters right off the bat, knowing that I feel very strongly about fake clothing and have been known to shout a Joan Crawford-esque ‘No Artificial Fibers! EVAH!’ We had a minor confrontation about a strange black Christmas sweater with gold beading and sequins, but then it was smooth sailing from that point forward.

After wading through a veritable sea of pastel plaid shirts and waxing fondly on doing it with Jake Ryan, we made it through with many giggles. Apparently nothing brings out my inner Carson like bad fashion flashbacks and raging hormones. Maybe that’s Carson’s secret as well. Actually, for the most part, I didn’t say anything, only lifting eyebrows or looking aghast at the blouse with a print depicting an inside-out peacock. Also, she was nervous about whipping out her legwarmers, but I snatched them right back up. Because damn, girl, they’re back in style. So now I have some legwarmers. Penny doesn’t trust my motives, thinking that I’m merely hoarding them for some nefarious plot. Nope. She gives me too much credit.

But that doesn’t mean that I won’t stoop to posting pictures of her wearing a neon shirt on this here page.

Heh.

There is something about the pictures on this page that make me urpy. Specifically, this one.

It’s probably because, in a rash of kistchy nostalgia, I purchased a can of EZ Cheese for our road trip to Minnesota, figuring that it would be a handy vehicle for cheese to mouth consumption. Except that it tastes like salty cheese caulk to me and also, the delivery of cheese to a Wheat Thin should never sound exactly like the swickle swickle swick of a constipated turd being painfully extruded.

And speaking of constipated turds, I was watching abbreviated versions of the two most recent American Idol episodes (I record them on Ricky Fitts, which allows me to fast forward through commercials and Ryan Seacrest humping the leg of everyone in the viewing audience, thus I can watch the whole ordeal in under 45 minutes) and it occurred to me: does the Pen Salesman from American Idol look like a hobbit to anyone else? He even kind of sings like a hobbit. And then I thought, now that shit would be funny. Middle Earth Idol. A ranger singing Garth Brooks, a shield maiden of Rohan kicking some Aretha. An orc warbling Whitney Houston (seriously, not one but TWO Whitney songs this time? And C’est Celine? Gah.). Now that’s some mofo entertainment, right there.

This right here is why I haven’t been invited to write for Saturday Night Live. Or anyplace else, for that matter.

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Pre-Cadaver

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

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.

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