That's My Bix!

This doesn’t happen a whole lot, but Esteban and I had a simply wonderful weekend. Oh, I don’t mean that we wade through veritable bogs of shit every weekend or anything, but most of the time, the best adjective can be ‘nice’ or ‘long’ or what have you. But this? This was a wonderful weekend. And there wasn’t really anything that made it wonderful. It just was.

On Friday, I had a half day because of working long hours for my soon-to-be-riffed job. I spent most of the afternoon at the mall, searching for the perfect outfit for Esteban’s cousin’s wedding, which was at 5:00 that evening. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, but with my suck schedule for most of the week, that was literally the first block of free time I had. Also, Lane Bryant, in their infinite wisdom decided to upgrade my LB card from a gold to a platinum. This should leave me feeling ashamed and in search of a self-help group, but it’s rather funny, since I never even hit half my limit with the gold card and I pay off the balance every month. I think they’re playing an elaborate game of chicken with me, trying to find my breaking point.

I settled on a flippy little black skirt and a pink and black twinset (apparently, THE color combination this spring is pink and black, as I cannot escape it, even though I secretly think it makes me look like a box of Good N’Plenty’s), which I paired with my leather superhero boots. Naturally, I was forced by my matching compulsion to also purchase a precisely matched hot pink Dayam!Bra and bikini panties. I love that Lane Bryant is just plus-sized Garanimals.

I then skipped over to my controlled substance dealer (the OPI store, that is) and sat there with the sweater in hand, comparing it to the plethora of polish. I finally settled on one of the new Greek Isles collection (It’s All Greek To Me, for those of you who need to accessorize your Weetabix Action Figure) and then skipped homeward to do my nails and make myself irresistible.

Esteban had some brief angst and didn’t want to get dressed up for the wedding, mostly because he spent an eternity in a suit on Wednesday on the trip to Virginia and really didn’t want to jump back into it, but then his sense of guilt overrode all slacker tendencies, so he made himself look all spiffy and we were off to the insanely early Friday wedding (seriously, a wedding on a Friday at 5? Way to make every single one of your guests take at least a little time off work! Cripes.) I was trying out my new camera and played around with it, still unable to truly finesse the natural light photos. I’ve posted a few of them at the bottom, turned black and white in Photoshop, although I didn’t have the heart to remove the color from this one, as this little girl (Esteban’s second cousin and daughter of the bride) is absolutely breathtaking.

The wedding was lovely and we had it where every Esteban family wedding (except ours) is held, home of the fabulous East End Bars. We sat with Ward and June and one of the many sets of Esteban’s Aunts and Uncles. It was a lovely dinner, however the low point is when we started getting the ‘Why haven’t you squirted a 8 pound human out of your cervix yet?’ from not one, not two, but three different directions. I think I completely shut down during the climax of that tirade, just staring off at the wedding party, ignoring them. It’s annoying. It really is. I mean, I understand. I KNOW that Ward and June would like to be grandparents. I KNOW that Esteban is an only child and my occupied uterus is your Holy Grail. But it’s not like it’s just me sitting there squeezing my legs together. Esteban feels very strongly that he does not yet want to go down the kid route yet. I don’t really relish the idea of that whole messy birth thing either, but would that Esteban want to experience fatherhood, I would probably be looking into adopting a little girl from China. But regardless of these facts, why do they think that constant tirades will change matters? Their latest argument, by the way, is that we’d make absolutely beautiful babies. Because Esteban was a gorgeous child and, you know, just look at Weetabix. You have to give them props for changing their approach. They know damned well that I am a sucker for flattery. Regardless, parenthood should not be something you can be talked into. For god’s sake, they try to push grandbabies with the same arguments that fourteen year olds use with smoking. And what if there were some kind of physical problems? What if we were trying and not succeeding and what if we just didn’t want to advertise that fact to the world? Wouldn’t you feel like a damn asshole then? Huh?

Sorry. Tangent.

Despite the emotional pleas for progeny, it really was a delightful dinner. During one surreal moment, the oldest couple at the table (probably in their sixties or seventies) started talking about bray, which was bizarre, since I had just gone in search of bray last weekend for Esteban. She invited Esteban to come over and try some of the stuff that she makes (by the way, it doesn’t have anise in it but rather cloves), which is apparently better than the stuff from that single grocery store across the county. And then we got to discuss sulze. Yay for Belgian families! I was castigated as the sole French descendent in the entire room. Apparently, the Belgians and the French’ non non non. And then I taught one of Esteban’s little second cousins that when someone asked her if she was an angel (she was wearing an ‘angel’ necklace), she should reply ‘Nope, I’m a princess.’

Ward and June cut out (June has a terrible cold) shortly after dessert. We watched the first dance and then left early to go home and not make babies.

On Saturday morning, I got up super early and decided that I needed to make oatmeal. Not just any oatmeal. Steel-cut real oatmeal. I looked up Alton Brown’s recipe and made a shopping list (I already had the steel-cut McCann Irish oats, purchased on a trip to San Francisco, as I have never seen anything other than Quaker Old Fashioned around here) for cream and buttermilk, then took a shower, jumped into the car and ran to the grocery store out in the snooty ‘burbs, where I learned that the only people in the grocery stores at quarter to eight on a Saturday morning are shelf-stockers and really really old people. Really old people who push their carts reaaaaaalllly slowly.

Back at home, I began my Quest for Oatmeal, which, by the way, was not completed until 10:30. Apparently, real oatmeal takes a really long time. The entire morning was apparently one big lesson in patience. I also made tube biscuit cinnamon rolls and realized that the most stress I ever feel in my home is when I start to unwrap a tube of biscuits, because you’re just never sure if they’re going to explode before you’re done unwrapping them, or if you’re going to have to push a spoon into the seam and cringe. It’s like defusing a damned terrorist bomb. Don’t cut the green wire and don’t stand too close to a tube of Pillsbury Grands.

As it turned out, I wasn’t all that thrilled with real oatmeal. Esteban, on the other hand, was very happy and ate an entire bowl and asked me to save the leftovers for him instead of unceremoniously glurping them into the garbage disposal as I had intended. It tasted kind of, I don’t know, needlessly chewy or something. Maybe I screwed something up. I am willing to try it again, however. Perhaps Alton’s overnight recipe instead. We shall see.

I pottered around the house, started the (fucking) laundry, and then explained to Esteban that it was 11 o’clock and we should really head down to the tiny downtown post office and do our passport thingy. He was game, so we got into the car and started driving that way, but then I mentioned that I also wanted to go to the good butcher on the opposite side of BFE to get some meat sticks. Esteban mentioned that he preferred the hot sticks from a little country butcher in Stangelville (which is even more BFE than the good butcher, if that’s even possible), so I suggested that we skip the post office and scurry out to Stangelville and also get some fresh cheese curds at the cheese factory up the road. Thus, we made a pit stop at Sbux for a venti soy chai and a seltzer water and then I pulled out the map (because do YOU know how to get to Stangelville? Neither do we.) and off we went, trying to beat the clock, as everything would inevitably close at noon.

The cheese curds were disappointing, as they were a day old and had been refrigerated, and so were marginally squeaky. I declared them ‘ass curds’. The country butcher, however, was exciting, as there were posters advertising not only cow brains but also VEAL brains, which were quite reasonable. I kept pointedly asking Esteban if he thought we had enough veal brains or if we should get some more, because I know how he gets the munchies, donchaknow. And then he called me a knob.

After that, we went out in our search for bookshelves which are not fake wood. Esteban needs someplace to put his D&D effluvia but I won’t let him buy anymore Sauder or Crappy McCrapsalot white trash fake furniture, thus we’ve been going everywhere, trying to find something that is the right size and not all country kitsch or light oak or ridiculously expensive. We have not been having the best of luck. This time, we checked out the new Amish furniture place, which has supposedly an actual Amish buggy in the parking lot, as though there are some confused draft horses wandering the nearby mall. We found much of the light wood and Old Mc Donald stuff, swathed in quilts and covered in signs written with cutsey sayings, but nothing that I really loved. However, weird moment when a rather stout lady with a really bad bleach job walked through and she was wearing the very same red ski jacket that I was wearing! We laughed about it and then we walked out (with Esteban loudly exclaiming ‘Amish furniture my ass!’) and saw her also getting into a Chrysler 300M, only in gold. Oh god, apparently I fit the demographic of women who decorate their home all country. Gah.

Afterward, we went home and then cleaned the entire house. Together. I know! It was actually delightful, which was bizarre, because normally our joint venture cleaning situations are fraught with stress and bitchy remarks and reminders to Esteban that he is not the Head Doozer (this time, I only had to remind him of that once). I left him to clean the living room, which turned into an elongated search for the remote control (which has had a picture on the side of a milk carton for the last three weeks and is still a mystery) and then ended with us rearranging the furniture.

After that, we went to Tarzhay, which is starting to feel like my Saturday afternoon home. I swear, I’ve been to Tarzhay the last five Saturdays in a row. I searched for non-objectionable curtains for the kitchen but came up empty-handed (Country crap! It follows me everywhere). Then we went home to retire to the newly placed sofa and Esteban introduced me to some anime that he thought I might like (he was right, Hellsing is not bad), ordered Chinese food (which was really awful), I made a cake with pink frosting (I had an inexplicable craving for birthday cake with vanilla ice cream, so declared that it was in Sundry’s honor) and then sacked out.

On Sunday, we decided that we had expended as much productivity as could reasonably be expected the day before, so we went out for waffles and a newspaper, got the car washed, and then spent most of the day doing nothing in particular. Later, I went to visit my mom and Jonathon (who is behind in math again and has been given an ultimatum’ I will be calling his teacher on Tuesday afternoon and if he is not 100% caught up, he’s losing all of his fun toys again, including the television in his room) and then went to K-mart to see if Martha had decent curtains. She doesn’t. And also, K-mart sucks.

Then I went home and tried to download more of Sex and the City’s sixth season, changed the sheets and decided that putting a duvet around the comforter was too much work and could wait until Monday, then made myself some toast with peanut butter for dinner (more proof that I would live on toast and cereal if I lived alone) and then went to bed.

It was a very good weekend.

I can tell you right now, I’m voting for Chrome Magnum Man in the Diarist Awards.

Scott would shit himself if he were here to see that he made the finals. He wouldn’t even care that he’s up against at least one of the popular kids (although who knows’ everyone protects their stats like it was their paycheck stub these days. It may just be all hype). And then he’d probably write a hysterical entry about how he totally filled his pants with poo. And how it was the poo of a Finalist in the Diarist Awards.

I miss him.

I had the most disturbing dream in the world yesterday morning. It involved New Orleans, the corpse of Lou Costello and ear candles. And somehow it all made sense. Except that Lou Costello didn’t die in New Orleans. Even so, I totally felt like I was in some fucked up episode of Six Feet Under, except without the lickable abs of one Mister Peter Krause.

And then (and THEN!) I cruise over to read Monty’s latest and who does he mention? Lou freaking Costello.

Who is on first, my friend. Who is on first indeed.

(insert creepy ‘I’m being followed down a spooky staircase by Frankenstein’s monster’ music here)

Lou Costello was only 5’3′. Did you know that? Doesn’t that seem, I don’t know, insanely short? Maybe it’s because I’m 5’9′ but it seems positively wee.

Maybe that’s why in the dream, Lou Costello’s soul (which was really that of a Civil War-era slave slash voodoo priestess (hence the NOLA connection) named Marguerite) jumped into my body. Because of all the extra room to stretch. Lou Costello’s soul wanted space to put in a sun room. Maybe a nice gazebo for tea.

Esteban has his 14 hour trip to Virginia today. He had to leave at 4 am this morning. He wanted me to drive him to the airport, but I pointed out that if he drove himself, his truck wouldn’t even be there overnight, and thus, he can drive himself. Also, the idea of getting up at 3:30 am makes me vomit.

If I haven’t mentioned in the past, I’m a firm believer in universal karma. Karma bites my ass every time I am anything less than a perfect little girl scout. Thus, this morning, as I got up and tarried around trying to figure out what to wear (for some reason, the ability to turn on the bedroom light while I got dressed made me completely indecisive and change my clothing four times) and wonder why every single one of my Dayam!Bras chose this very morning to have one of the underwires pop through and try to skewer my boobsicles, I wasn’t really thinking about my karma. No. I was congratulating myself on scoring an additional three hours of uninterrupted snore-free, blanketed, non-jostly sleep (which, by the way, was Costello-free). And then, after I finished getting dressed, I put on my shoes and then went to warm up the car.

But where are my car keys?

And then there was no need to even ponder the question, because I already knew with a sick certainty that my car keys were in my right coat pocket which was in the coat which was currently sitting in the back seat of my locked M in the driveway. And the only other set of keys was at a nice cruising altitude of 35,000 feet somewhere over Kentucky. The spare keys which would have been sitting on Esteban’s dresser had I just gotten my lazy ass out of bed and driven him to the airport.

Nothing like a little ‘wah wah waaaah’ soundtrack to make your morning complete.

But what to do? What to do? What would someone else do? Someone who isn’t clueless, someone who has lived alone even four or five months of their adult life? What would they do? Call in sick? Tell your boss that your car keys have been outsourced?

I plunked down at my computer and looked up locksmiths in my area. There was one less than a mile away. I called. He said he’d be right over and it would cost me $25. So I called work, told them I’d be a little late, and then sat down and consoled myself with MTV and many many thick slices of toasted sourdough schmeared with chopped cherry jam.

Problem solved. Lesson learned. Karma, you win.

This round, anyway.

You are eighteen.

You go on a blind date. He is a guy who has a summer job working in the paper mills. He has a mustache. You have your hair done in a sticky cotton-candy configuration called Julia Roberts Ala Pretty Woman. You are both awkward and don’t know what to say to each other because it is weird. It is weird. You keep repeating it to each other. You start telling each other lies to impress each other, growing bigger and bigger and bigger. He never smokes. Well, maybe a little bit. You smoke like a chimney. Except that you don’t. How weird. Weird. And in your head, you think ‘what a weirdo.’

He touches your face, fingers grazing over cheeks lightly. And you think a little of you breaks away right then. He drives to Lake Michigan and you stand at the water’s edge, listening to the waves lap against the shore and just at that moment, over his shoulder, in what was probably a warm-up act for the Pleiades, you watch a liquid drop of starlight off its hook and into the black.

‘Make a wish’ he reminds you, as though to not wish were unheard of.

He’s so weird. You’re not sure you even like him, even though he touched your face that way, all soft and delicate like you were made of porcelain. You decide to be optimistic and in your head say to the stars ‘I hope this date doesn’t turn out to be a mistake’ and decide that if he asks what you wished for, like some corny John Hughes movie or something, that you’re going to say that you wished for a red Porsche or a cream colored Mercedes with a buff interior, but instead, in a reverberation like the tremor of a silenced church bell, you get the answer of certainty that it will work out, that you will marry him, that this is fate and you have no choice. You sigh. Oh great, you think, mustache weirdo. Just great.

And then he kisses you. And you realize that you never really had a choice.

You are twenty.

He asks you to marry him.

You say yes, maybe, maybe yes, maybe but not right now, but maybe. Then the two of you are giddy and go to the truck stop and the waitress is the only person you ever tell. You sit in the booth that has become ‘your’ booth, the one in the farthest back corner, away from the counter and the Vitality Juice machine and the scary brillo-headed cooks who smoke as they flip burgers, wielding spatulas like samurais. You both declare that to the waitress that you should get a free piece of pie for having just proposed. The waitress laughs and doesn’t give you free pie, but you just don’t care.

You never tell anyone else.

You are twenty-four.

You’ve lived together for three years. You are both working fulltime jobs. He lets you drive the good car, so then you buy him a car. You don’t talk to each other. He is insufferable. You are even more insufferable. You spend most of your hours in the bedroom watching a tiny 13-inch television while he sits in the living room playing Doom. You start to envision yourself as one of the characters in Big Head Todd’s ‘Bittersweet’. You feel as though no one could possibly understand you because certainly he does not.

You have emotionally overwrought marathon fights followed by insane makeup sex.

He asks you to marry him again. You tell him no and that you won’t say yes until he has a ring or a date in mind, because you have a feeling that if you say yes without either one, you’ll be responsible for getting both of them and that bugs you.

Then slowly, bit by bit, the fights just drops away. You both realize that you’re each scarred from words and threats and unspoken desperate thoughts. You both realize that you were young, stupid and youngandstupid. He tells you that he can never imagine being on the earth without you. You realize that he is under your skin. He urges you to go back to school and works two jobs while you drop down to 25 hours a week and pick up 18 credits a semester. You have your own language. You finish each other’s sentences. You know what he’s thinking but don’t even know how you know it. One night, you both take a self-scoring IQ test. He grades your test and says that you scored 150. You grade his test and find that he scored 142, and when you tell him that he’s 150 too, you realize that you’ve never loved anyone this much in your entire life.

Then one cold November night, he asks you to marry him a third time but this time pushes a beautiful flashy solitaire, one he designed around the gold of both his parent’s wedding bands, onto your index finger.

And this time you say yes.

You are twenty-five.

You are two semesters shy of graduation. His parents encourage you to buy a house while interest rates are down, so you do because it sounds like a good idea, but then just as you are signing the papers, you realize that it will be at least a year before you have a wedding. You gripe. You are irritated, because he has medical insurance and you do not. He hems and haws about expensive weddings. Then you have the opportunity to spend the summer after graduation in England. Without him. And without even thinking twice, he tells you to do it. And so you sit in a darkened recording studio, speaking into a caricature of a microphone, taping a personal message to be played over the loudspeaker at your college graduation, you thank him for believing in you and being your hero and your voice cracks when you say the words ‘best friend’. And the day after he hears this recording, you get on a plane to England, fully expecting to crash into the Atlantic, but you don’t and it is wonderful, the best thing ever, but at every ruin, at every Old Historical Place, you keep thinking how much he would love it there.

You are twenty-six.

His parents inform you over dinner that he must make up his mind about a wedding, otherwise they are going to Hawaii the following year and they need to know in advance so he says ‘fine, let’s do it’. And then you choose flowers and cakes and venues and attendants and a church and music to walk down the aisle. And even though he balks at the prices of everything, when you confide in him that you can’t decide between two dresses, one perfectly fine reasonable dress or another one by a designer that costs twice as much, he tells you to buy the expensive one because otherwise you’ll be wondering what you missed out on and feel less confident. And you realize with that answer that he knows you better than you do yourself.

You are twenty-seven.

It is your wedding day. You almost oversleep because of the muscle relaxants you took the night before, so you run around franticly trying to get everything together. Then, somewhere between the driveway and the bathroom, you lose the keys to your rental car. You freak out. You call him and tell him what happened and try not to cry. While you’re getting your hair and makeup done at the stylist, he and the best man tear apart the house, but never find the keys. He calls and apologizes and tells you that things will go wrong and the day will still be perfect because you’re both going to be together forever.

Later, an hour before the ceremony, he waits for you in an empty church while outside your families and friends scurry around in their nice clothes, their voices floating in through the open windows. Then you walk down the aisle and meet him in the front of the church and your throats get tight and your eyes fill with tears and you can’t speak to each other so instead you nod and smile tight smiles as you try to keep from crying because in this moment, you know in a reverberation like the tremor of a silenced church bell, that this person is exactly the person you’ve always wanted to see standing there. Waiting for you.

Happy Valentines Day Bucky.

Last night, Esteban was going to stop home for a little while after work, so after I picked up my new digital camera from EdFex (it’s so CUTE! Squee!), I scurried right home so that I could pick up some miscellany and the house would look all nice and tidy and I could be all smarmy, as if to say ‘Look at how clean the house is when you are gone! Obviously you are a messy bessy, only the male version of bessy which I can’t think of right now!’ Only I wouldn’t say it. I’d be like ‘Ain’t nothing but a thang.’ And then he’d persevere to be neater and not leave his little Esteban nests hither and yon like some oversized bearded raccoon.

But he never showed up. So I made my broiled salmon and marinara-over-rigatoni dinner for myself and sat around watching Lost In Translation and willing the battery for my new camera to charge so that I could play with it. And then Esteban called. From his parent’s house.

Apparently, he had already been there. Picking up some clean laundry.

‘The kitchen looks good, sweetie.’

Good? Good?! The kitchen looks INFUCKINGCREDIBLE. I mean, considering that he has literally not done a single of his kitchen duties in all of 2004, by rights, the kitchen should be covered in possibly grey fur, with large scales of mold on the walls. We should be wallowing in garbage in there. But no. No. Instead, there is a wide-open space decorated by flowering paperwhites and orchids. There is a calendar on the refrigerator and it is turned to the correct month. The cupboards have all been wiped down. Everything sparkles. Everything. Now when the microwave beeps, there is a choir of angels. This is not just good. This is the good that deserves a month of groveling and perhaps a shrine.

Of course, I’m probably being overly grumpy. The onslaught of Tilly’s nocturnal pleas for attention continues. This morning, it was 4 am. I pushed her out of my face and subsequently off the bed.

When Esteban and I first moved in together, he brought his rather talkative whiny Chelsea along with him and she would meow and meow and meow beyond the range of normal human tolerance. And apparently, one night, Esteban came to bed after I was asleep and Chelsea, figuring that movement meant that it was time to have adoration heaped upon her, began her feline tirade. And Esteban swears that in my sleep I said ‘Stupid cat! I will throw you up against the wall!’ Which was pretty much the only thing in our little bedroom that wasn’t our king-sized bed. That’s one of our private jokes that has bridged the years. Grumpy tired Weetabix? You get thrown up against the wall.

Of course, I’d never really DO such a thing. But apparently I would push you off the bed onto the carpet if you were relentlessly obnoxious.

Tilly was very sullen this morning. She did not join me in the shower for Between The Curtains Time. I think she held a grudge. She did however nose open the bathroom door afterward to make sure that I wasn’t doing anything that she might be interested in, and also to attempt to jump into the sink while I was brushing my teeth (with the new Colgate Simply White toothpaste, which make my teeth startlingly blue while I’m using it. Like I just blew a smurf or something). This is why I don’t have kids. I can’t even keep the cat in line; what would I do with a toddler?

I checked in with Jonathon’s teacher yesterday. Seems that he didn’t turn in one of his assignments last week. So I called him.

Weetabix : Hey Jonathon.
Jonathon : Hey
Weetabix : How’s it going?
Jonathon : Ok.
Weetabix : How’s math going?
Jonathon : Ok.
Weetabix : Are you doing the homework and stuff like you’re supposed to?
Jonathon : Yeah. I’m all caught up.
Weetabix : Oh? What about page 208, numbers three through twenty four?
Jonathon : (silence)
Weetabix : (silence)
Jonathon : Um’ oh, yeah.
Weetabix : Yeah.

He’s got until tomorrow and then he loses the Game Boy and his DVDs again, as well as his television. He should know better than to mess with me on this subject. I just want to stand over him, like some soccer mom slash gangsta chica, taunting ‘Bring it on, eighth grader. I will kick your ass every time. I earned that right by wiping eight hundred of your poopy diapers!’

He’s lucky he’s not a cat.

In other news, I’m still probably laid off.

They keep saying ‘if your jobs will be retained’ to keep the carrot on the stick. The prefix ‘as’ is silent, of course.

But one bit of excitement today: I finally got in touch with my college advisor who had been out on medical leave! Squee! I heart her so very much! We had a lovely talk and she will indeed write letters of recommendation for me (unfortunately, it is woefully beyond the deadlines for most of the programs, but hopefully they won’t hold that against me) and she’s now the chair of her department, so she feels this will make her recommendation that much more valuable. And I’m going to stop by her office next week and we will ‘sit and giggle’ (her words) and gossip and also she has ‘a proposition’ for me, having something to do with writing. So yay.

When talking about her medical leave (what an ordeal! I can hardly believe she is still intact), she said, ‘You know how it is as a writer. We tend to live on the edge and take everything for granted and be self-destructive’.’ And yes, I do know. I know exactly. Exactly. The truth of the matter is that I simply do not have enough contact in my every day life with creative people. It’s one thing to meet metaphorically via the internet and email (and to some extent phone calls) but most of the people I interact with on a regular basis never really understand the whole writer thing. And while my friends get that I’m not your average Cheesehead and they totally respect the writing thing (one of the reasons I love them totally), but there are some things that only other artistes can understand. So having this connection makes me want to jump up and down. I talked with her while I was at work and then had a stupid grin on my face and jumped up out of my chair from the exuberance, forgetting how terribly out of place I looked in the Cubicles of Lethal Outsourcing, but I just couldn’t help it. It was wonderful to remember that I’m not just a lackey for The Man.

By the way, Marn?I want her to adopt me. That is all.

(Ooh, and also Evany, who got the kick to the ass today! What is it with all the diarists losing their jobs recently! Man!)

I had a weirdly productive weekend. I mean BIZARRE levels of productivity. I can’t quite figure it out. Normally, I’m happy if I caught up with the laundry, but this’ this was freakish. I probably won’t even remember everything in the retelling.

It all started last week when I got sick of looking at the messy recyclables in the kitchen. So I picked them all up and straightened. And then you could see the schmeng on the floor where the recyclables had been overflowing. Ooohkay. Thus, I loaded the dishwasher (it’s one of those that you roll over to the sink), moved the microwave cart, and then took out all the garbage and proceeded to sweep and mop and Swiffer the hell out of that area. It’s still our grungy 1968 linoleum with the drywall mud from our kitchen expansion last year permanently encrusted in the patterns, so it doesn’t get all that shiny nor pretty but at least it wasn’t harboring any sentient germ life forms.

Then on Saturday, I got up uber early and continued on my productive ways, with lots of laundry and dishwashing. Then I zipped through Sbux for a venti soy chai, then went to the bank, the post office (to mail Submission #5 of the week! Go me!), got the car washed (third time this week’ dinglefarfer snow) and then stopped at an outlet store that was going out of business (probably because *I* never shop there’ this was my second time in the store, the first was when it opened). We made plans with my siblings to go to Lord of the Rings: Now With More Hobbit-yay, so I ran home and got the Two Towers extended dvd for Mo, who was sitting home in her sweats being a slacker. And then it was 10:30. Seriously, it was like I had the power to slow down time itself. I picked up Esteban and we went to a local art show. Esteban then negated our lunch plans by filling up on overpriced fake nachos and cookies (‘But they’re snickerdoodles!’), and we wandered around and sniffed at most of the art, which looked like it belonged in a craft show rather than an art show. There was one photographer whose work impressed Esteban very much and then I remembered that he was my favorite photographer at the summer art fair downtown. Turns out that this is his second show. Fabulous work. I bought some raffle tickets for the scholarship fund and put all of my tickets toward winning one of his prints. Man. I hope I get it because it’s beautiful.

After the art show, Esteban went back to work and I returned to our domicile to reign supreme once again. It was as though the spirits of all of my housewife foremothers took over. I cleaned the entire kitchen (since Esteban has apparently decided that he no longer does any housework whatsoever, or perhaps his level of tolerance for clutter is far higher than mine at the moment. And also, Ward and June have gone on a cruise so Esteban is staying at their house in the snooty suburbs ten miles away to tend to their dogs, thus there was no chance of him rectifying the situation in the next week), which involved three loads of dishes (mostly because last week, in apparent preparation for this Superwoman weekend, I was a cooking goddess, making on three separate nights, jambalaya, beef stroganoff, and chicken parmesan from scratch, and brownies, which were not from scratch, but just as good). THEN I tackled the expanded part of the kitchen. It only has a sub floor (Esteban has been putting off dealing with the kitchen floor for six months now.) so we tend to treat it like part of the garage instead of one side of a room. It had several empty boxes from Christmas and several storage tubs which needed to be, you know, stored. It also had three bags and a box of stuff for charity. I cut down all of the boxes into manageable size, dragged the charity stuff to the trunk of my car, and basically kicked the kitchen’s ass. Then I pulled a big braided room rug out of storage. It’s one of those blue and white numbers that I bought a long time ago because I love the combination of blue and white together, but I hadn’t fully developed my strong aversion to all things countryesque. We’ve been using the smaller versions of that rug in front of the sink and door from the breezeway, but never used the big room one because there had never been a place for it. So I flipped that over the subfloor. Esteban’s not going to like it, but I will defy him to tell me that the bare wood subfloor looks better than the braided rug and then he’ll grump off like the burgermeister he occasionally is.

Then I tidied up the living room and Swiffered the entire floor, including the part covered by the big rug. It was a cleaning coup. I think I did some other stuff too, but I don’t remember. It was a cleaning black out, I suspect due to the furious chemicals I was inhaling.

Then, while waiting for Esteban to pick me up in the parent’s minivan, I cleaned out the mail in the mailbox! I know! Where did this all of this efficiency come from? Esteban, Mo, Jonathon and I went to dinner at Sports Bar #219, after which, I used the bathroom and plugged their lightweight toilet. Which was pretty funny. I ran out to the table and announced that we had to flee (FLEE LIKE THE WIND!), as I caused their water saver toilet to malfunction and retain my very ladylike bouquet for the joy of the next patron. But there would not be fleeing, as Mo instructed Jonathon to use the bathroom right as I was running back to the table. So we were forced to wait, me cringing the entire time, certain that the Poop Police would swoop down upon me and force me to admit that girls do in fact make boom boom. If they could only keep me from laughing, that is. Because even now, three days later, I’m smirking.

Then we went to see the Hobbit movie, which was surprisingly packed, considering that it’s been out for several months. I rationed my giant Diet Coke this time so that I wasn’t experiencing bladder explosion and pain during the four hundred different endings. Although seeing it a second time, it allowed me to analyze it a bit more. There are so many stupid parts that they could have cut, for instance, the four different scenes that Gandolf and Aragorn say ‘Do you think Frodo is dead?’ ‘Boy I sure hope not.’ ‘Me too.’ This time I was even more struck by how spectacularly bad the dialogue in certain places. For instance, the scene with Aragorn and the dead guys:

Dead Guys : The way is shut! Now you die!
Aragorn : I don’t think so.
(Fight. Aragorn can apparently hurt the ghosts.)
Dead Guys : Only the big sexy elf sword can hurt us!
Aragorn : See? I told you.
Dead Guys : We thought it was broken!
Aragorn : Oh, yeah, it got fixed.
Dead Guys : Oh.
Aragorn : So, wanna come fight with us then?
Dead Guys : (whoosh around and dance like the Thriller video)

Seriously, I’ve seen episodes of Scooby Doo with more compelling dialogue. Cripes. Although, the best part was during the latter part of the movie when something rather surprising happens to one of the characters, and our entire movie audience screamed. Seriously. Screamed. I knew it was coming too. As the suspense was building, I kept thinking that if I were anywhere but repressed little Green Bay, there would be someone in the audience talking back to the screen, saying ‘Don’t go in there! Look behind you! You need some bigass can of Raid or something, Fredo!’ And then I would have had utter glee. But when everyone screamed, I just laughed and laughed and laughed. I’m certain someone thought I was psychotic, but I couldn’t help it. I had actual tears because it was so funny and I ended up leaning over into the coat chair to muffle my laughter. Hysterical.

Then homeward, where I sacked out to become a dance floor for Tilly’s version of Lord of the Dance. Her new favorite trick is to launch herself over my sleeping body, only she uses my sleeping body as a spring board. Very fun stuff. It’s her way of waking me up, since I’ve been able to successfully ignore the pawpawpaw on my cheek and the head butts. But the fourteen pound bowling ball being dropped onto my ribcage? Not as easy to overlook. I can’t wait until Esteban comes back and can pet her into submission. I simply cannot devote the time and energy to placating the cat. Especially not when I am SuperCleaningOrganizingWoman!!!

So yeah, Sunday was more of the same. I continued the onslaught on the laundry and kitchen, but this time, I took it at a slower pace. Since I had a huge load of laundry to put away, I watched some netflix movies while I folded. Zoolander will forever be the Matching Sock movie, as that’s what I was doing for the entire DVD. Then I tried to hang some pictures, but realized that my Japanese flash card hanging was not going to be safe sitting on two nails. I would have to get some picture hangers. So, I steeled myself, made a list on the back of an envelope pulled from the recyclables, and then went out into the cold. First I stopped at Sbux for some sustenance, then dropped my trunk full of donations at Goodwill, then I endeavored to the Hundred Dollar Store (aka Home Despot). My entire list was as such:

D batteries (for flashlights)
Furniture polish
Picture hangers
Drain opener
Level

Hahahaha’ silly Weetabix. Silly, silly Weetabix. The list, she is so quaint.

Of course, I forgot to add Spot Shot to the list, as I ran out during the Tilly Barfatorium that was the last two weeks, but it was conveniently near the furniture polish, so that was fine. I needed 5 D batteries, but they only seemed to come in packs of 4 (for about $5) or 12 (for $11), so I ended up getting the 12 pack since regardless I had to buy more batteries than I needed and might as well get enough to fill both flashlights twice, rather than not have enough when the first batteries went dead? It’s probably faulty logic, but ah well. Then it occurred to me that while I was cleaning, I had needed a step stool, but we broke our ancient one during spring cleaning last year and now I had no way to reach the back shelves of our pantry. Ah ha! I was in the right place. The drain opener ended up being $11 but it’s a huge amount and it seems as though I’m always buying drain opener for the bathroom sink. And then I ended up grabbing a really pretty white and purple orchid for the kitchen. I suspect it was because I was being overloaded with all of this manly Home Depot stuff and needed some femininity to make sure everyone knew that I was actually a girl.

Total cost of trip to Hundred Dollar store for picture hangers: $118. And I forgot to buy the level.

I shouldn’t be surprised anymore. I mean, they should do away with the ruse of free will at the home improvement store. We could just walk in, hand over our hundred odd dollars, they would hand us a random bag of whatnot, and then point us in the direction of our overpriced domestic autos and lightweight extended cab trucks with the leather interiors, leaving us with feelings of self-sufficiency and rugged frontiersmanship. In the way that we’ve convinced ourselves that the suburbs are the country and it’s us against the land. Us and our $3499 lawn tractor, that is.

Anyway, I went home, hung some pictures, did our taxes ($39 refund! Wow! Almost enough for another trip to the home store. I suppose it’s better than paying in like last year! Woot!), did more laundry, watched two more movies and then headed off to bed with an enormous sense of accomplishment.