That's My Bix!

I got one of the coolest compliments yesterday. I bumped into the always lovely Carissa in the cafeteria and told her how hot she looked. And she said ‘Well, not as hot as Saturday night.’ To which I said ‘Do tell!’ and she said ‘Sit down! I will!’ and then we made excited girly noises, because we knew that there would be some extraordinary bonding happening.

So she told me about her great date that she had on Saturday night, with a hottie boy who was a good kisser. She was at a bar in the sticks and another woman was telling her that she was too pretty for that town, too pretty to even be in that town. Carissa, having been actually born and raised in that very town, explained that she was indeed a country girl, but she works in the city. However, she viewed this conversation as a testament to just how well she has done by listening to my fashion pointers. And then we discussed how in the last year, she went from dressing older than she is to wearing proper support garments, having her hair streaked, cute glasses, hottie clothes and cute shoes. And Penny has also been testing the fashion waters, having abandoned her 80’s hair for cute perky hair, now wears leather pants on occasion, and even wears lipstick. And now both of them have positive outside affirmation that I have their best interest in mind and that even though it might be painful and somewhat outside of their comfort zone, it will help them to become better people. Or very at least, embrace their inner hotness.

‘And,’ Carissa said, ‘we have you to thank for it. I will never doubt you again.’

I feel like a Fashion Yoda. Seriously, they shouldn’t be feeding my already too-large ego. I might just forget that my best work is with the details and start thinking I can talk someone out of their plastic jogging suit and mullet. The mark of a true artiste is in knowing their limitations. And yes, I’ve begun to think of myself as an artiste, but instead of oils and canvas, I work in Lanc’me and Victoria’s Secret. With a touch of Hootchie Mama.

Speaking of that, one of my friends has got some horrible undereye wrinklies happening. Every time I see them, I want to spackle on some Clinique Moisture Surge eye stuff. It’s painful. It really is. I’m about to have an eye intervention. Because seriously, people, don’t mess with your skin. And if you’re reading this and are wondering if I’m possibly referring to you, then yes, it’s you. If you have to wonder, then it’s you. Get yourself some eye cream and wrinkle no more.

In other news, Esteban came to bed last night and said ‘I used your crappy expensive soap.’

‘My Soap!? You used my Soap? You are not allowed to use The Soap! No using The Soap!’

‘It doesn’t lather worth a damn and the lather is gray. Also, I smell like wet laundry that’s been left in the washer on a hot summer day.’

‘That’s right! It sucks! Don’t be using my Soap!’

Because Fashion Yoda gets to keep some Jedi beauty secrets to herself.

It’s cold here.

I know, I know, oxymoron. You’re screaming at me: It’s Wisconsin, you idiot, what do you expect? But even still’ sometimes, it’s so cold that it’s shocking.

I haven’t been wearing my jacket, because winter has been but a joke up until this point. Seriously, aside from shivering in a pre-cemetary on Saturday (later at the post-funeral lunch, Mo was walking behind me up to the dessert bar and said ‘Have you dropped some weight? Your ass looks smaller.’ And I had to stop myself from saying ‘Yeah, I think it froze off back at the cemetery.’ I am much less funny in real life.) I haven’t really been cold yet this winter. The weather has been fiddling around in the mid twenties and even upper thirties. One day last week, it was almost 50. That’s insanity, right there. I was walking around outside in a t-shirt and a hoodie and not even batting an eye. That’s crazy Californian logic.

But now’ shit. Or as we would say in Wisconsin, shee-it, as though that word encompassed so much that it needs two syllables and is indeed all you need to know about everything.

Through some bit of divine intervention, I decided to wear my jacket this morning. Yesterday, it was in the teens, and that is a little too cold for even me to bear in just a turtleneck and fleece pullover. Thus, I put on my jacket, ran out to the car, cursing myself for not starting it early, and plunked down shivering in the driver’s seat, and started the car. I pulled halfway down the driveway before realizing that I couldn’t see out the windshield and my lazy trick of shooting windshield wiper fluid on the frost wasn’t working because the fluid was going syrupy and then wiping into this frozen schmear, obliterating everything. So instead, I sat there, waiting for the seat heater to thaw my hind quarters and the windows to clear. Then the fog on my rearview mirror froze and I checked the electronic thermometer.

5.

Huh, I thought. That’s pretty cold.

Then I blinked and looked at it again.

-5.

Shee-it.

It was then that I sucked it up and put on gloves. It took 25 minutes for the car to warm up enough to drive it. The roads are frozen. My cell phone is very possibly broken. You turn it on and then it sluggishly displays every graphic all at once in slow motion. I think I actually felt it shiver. On my drive in, the radio told me that with the wind chill, it feels like ’37.

I don’t know if the rest of the country knows what that kind of cold feels like. It’s almost unbelievable. You can feel your boogers because they are little diamonds inside your nose. If you’re wearing earrings, your body temperature can’t compete with the heat loss and the metal quickly goes frigid. If you spit, it freezes and cracks when it hits the pavement. Your hands don’t exist. Your feet are a memory. You feel like you’re never going to get warm again for the rest of your life.

Once upon a time on a January 6th, I was landing in Key West International Airport, which smelled like coconut oil and tourists. On this day one year ago, I was landing in New Orleans International Airport, which smelled like red beans and rice and voodoo. And on this January 6th, I get in a car and it smells like nothing because smells fall from the air like ice cubes when it’s 37 degrees below with the wind chill.

Right now, as I’m writing this three and a half hours later. The sun is up and it’s 2 degrees. Two tiny degrees that you can rub together like sticks, trying to start a fire. Put those two degrees in your pocket and save them for nightfall because baby, it’s cold outside.

Dear Ofelia Higgins,

Much to our shared dismay, I do not in fact have a penis and therefore cannot take advantage of your offer to enlarge it. However, should the need ever, er, arise, I will certainly let you know. Also, I feel for your unfortunate moniker, but take heart, as when I was growing up, one of my great aunts knew of a girl named Ofelia Bumps, which seems a little indecorous to say the least. Was that you? Did you get married? Did you enlarge his penis? Perhaps I’ve been too personal, but then, it could be argued that your assumption of my small penis was as well, so I guess we’re even.

Ksielja,
Weetabix

I was supposed to work today, but instead, celebrated the fact that my vacation and sick time have refreshed and took a vacation day. I had a plan, of course, I always have a plan. It was full of such good intentions, involving the laundry and hanging artwork in the kitchen and most importantly, tackling Computer Room #1, which is a time capsule of my former lives, all contained in boxes and bookshelves and scary piles of randomness. And my passport is in there somewhere too. I hope.

But, the truth of the matter is that I don’t feel quite right. Yesterday, Esteban and I trekked down to the valley to shop, and quite honestly, he was driving really sloppily, without very much control on the steering wheel and lots of speeding up and slowing down and then by the time he pointed the car toward home, I was breathing out my mouth and rolling down the car window, despite the fact that it was 34 degrees outside. The motion sickness subsided by the time we got home, but then I made the mistake of watching him play Grand Theft Auto on the Xbox, which was just the push I needed to turn completely green and be unable to look at the television or computer screens or sit in the rocking chair or anything but lie very still with a cold compress on my forehead and an ice pack behind my neck.

And I’ve been fragile ever since, although I can’t really tell if I was susceptible to the motion sickness because I wasn’t feeling good in the first place or if I’m just a spinny-headed idiot. Either way, it makes for a very nonproductive day.

I did make bread though. That’s a slight positive. Warm bread with melted butter seemed to be the only thing that could quell the reenactment of ‘The Perfect Storm’ happening in my tummy, therefore who am I to argue.

Also, I wandered around St. Vincent de Paul, which is something I love to do if I have free time. There’s something very beautiful about the stuff no one wants anymore. You just start picking up these mind pictures about the former owners, can hear their voices floating in the air above the racks and racks of 80’s prom dresses and 50’s grandma house dresses. In some ways, it’s like digging through your own history. This time, I found a copy of the same C Flute instruction book I used to learn how to play flute in fourth grade. There wasn’t a name on it, but there were dates on each of the exercises’ 1982 and 1983. It wasn’t mine, because my book was covered with practice stickers. You got one sticker for every three hours you practiced. I used to lie, and say I’d practice three times more than I really did, because I felt it was a ripoff that you didn’t get something for every hour you practiced. The stickers were day glo orange and green inventory stickers that the music guy had stamped with a harp and cross, since I went to a parochial school. Ironically, I did find a trumpet book with those same day glo orange and green harp/cross stickers on the cover. It had to belong to a boy since the ancient music guy would only let girls take flute, clarinet or French horn. I remember this specifically because when I had wanted to take saxophone, he asked me if I was a little boy or a little girl. He asked me what my favorite outfit was. I replied that it was a blue dress with a silver belt and he handed me a flute.

Whenever I see names on things, I have this overwhelming urge to find those people, call them up and say ‘Here’ I found your Foundations of Arithmetic book from 1978! Enjoy!’ because it just boggles my mind that you would willingly let such intimate portals into your past go away without a fight. When push comes to shove, for most of us, the only thing that will be left of us in three hundred years will be our stuff. And not the stuff that you want to be remembered for, like your class ring or your school photographs. No. It will be anonymous stuff, like your Barbie dream date game or your dresser, where you hid your porn collection under your handkerchiefs and dress socks. That’s the material dandruff that keeps going, with or without us, that’s the stuff that has permanence, even after it’s been sent away on the Goodwill truck or to languish in your parent’s mildewed basement.

The human brain has a great vault in which it stores every single moment, every utterance of your entire life. Sometimes I wonder what a physical storeroom of our every possession would look like. It would have everything you ever purchased, ever received under the Christmas tree or as a prize for pinning the tail on the donkey. There would be tables containing legions of goldfish, each swimming merrily in perpetual circles in their own little bowls. There might be an entire mile of clothes, hanging from smallest to tallest sizes, next to shelves upon shelves of every book you ever owned, including your baby book and the Pokey Little Puppy and that tattered copy of Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret that you had checked out of the library and then left accidentally on the bus and had to pay for out of your allowance.

I have very few reoccurring dreams, but one of my favorite themes is when I suddenly stumble upon a cache of old stuff just like that. The one I remember most clearly was a dream in which I learned suddenly that my Mafia Grandmother never did sell my great-grandmother’s house (the one my great-grandfather built) in the early nineties, but instead, it had been sitting there empty all of this time. Someone had neglected to tell me that it was really mine. And I wandered through the empty musty rooms, up the stairs, into her bedroom, where there were a row of deep closets that had sloping backs due to the slant of the roof. Even in real life, those closets seemed to go on forever, getting shorter and shorter, very Alice in Wonderland. And now that they were emptied of her cedar chest containing her wedding dress, and the mountains of ancient quilts and feather pillows, I could see that there wasn’t really a sloped ceiling at all. In fact, it was a whole other room! I turned the corner and then, voila, stacks upon stacks of our history. There were cases of costume jewelry glittering under dust, there was an entire wall of trophy fish caught by my great grandfather (a legendary sportsman). And then another larger room with every ancient lamp, every stick of furniture from ancestors long passed. The signs from my great grandparent’s and great great grandmother’s restaurants and taverns. The jukebox still containing Glenn Miller and Jimmy Dorsey. Every letter ever written by my uncle in the Great War. Everything. It was all there, waiting for me to uncover them.

I thought about buying two old pairs of ice skates (one black and one white) which would have looked cool hanging in our breezeway, but then I decided it would have been too antiquey, too country kitsch and not match the rest of the house. Besides, currently the breezeway is just being used as a very large soda cooler. Instead I just dropped $5 in the donation box and left.

They say that Generation X is the first to be fixated with recovering their childhoods, fixating upon the past. The Boomers are so quick to move on to the next new thing, swallow whole the world and leave whatever is left in their wake to those who go after them. But maybe we are the first to get how ephemeral life is. Maybe we just understand everything that was lost. Maybe we never wanted it taken from us in the first place.

Finally finished the paper. I changed the topic to discuss dystopias. Fighting Wally Disney was just too innundating. And also, I had this weird feeling that if I say anything bad about the Mouse, a bunch of large men carrying violin cases will knock on my door to have a serious discussion about Chubby Tink.

Also I know this sounds horrible, but I’m really glad that Christmas is over so that I can start shopping for me again.

Also, every year there seems to be a new thing with lawn decorations. A couple of years ago, it was white wicker deer. Then it was lighted white deer. Then lighted white deer that move their heads slowly, reminding me eerily of some story that had topiary animals in a garden which moved on their own. Gah, those moving deer give me the creeps. Then came the spiral white trees last year and now this year, it is inflatable Christmas characters made from parachute material. I’ve seen many Santas, a few Grinches, a snowman or two and one very frightening yellow-eyed Elf.

I’m not a fan of blow up anything, particularly not these parachute material things. It’s reminiscent of a car lot, only in this case you inevitably get to chose from either a teal Saturn with a dolphin air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror and a window decal declaring that the owner likes ‘bad ass toys’ or a 1994 Astrovan with rust around the wheel wells and a trove of vintage French fries under the seat.

Apparently there is some inflation mechanism that keeps these things going, as I only ever see them in one of two states: fully turgid or completely deflated, an empty bag of Christmas. I’m starting to suspect some kind of yuletide chupacabra is on the loose, sucking all the joy out of the paraphernalia. Perhaps the Bumble was laid off due to serious cutbacks, as is often the case with big business, and is back on his habit of venison and holiday icons. Perhaps it was destroyed by herds of roaming prelit wicker deer.

I’m bummed that I never get to see one in the process of deflation. I think it would be one of the best things ever. Even so, I love the metaphor. It’s that holiday buzzkill that everyone needs to get them back on track for the serious business that is January.

Speaking of deflating, my left leg is still only about fifty percent operational. It starts to swell if I stand too long or walk too much, although I don’t really notice it until I’m standing there and then realize that I can only bend my leg about five inches, as the skin is too taut over the bulbous whatever-it-is-in-my-knee. Thus, I’ve become obsessed with stretching my legs, bending my knee, completely dedicated to preventing it from happening again. Also, I keep bending at my waist, trying to get my head closer and closer to the floor. I’ve always been able to touch the floor with my knees locked, but now I can get my palms comfortably flat on the floor. I realize that this is not that big of a deal, but in Wisconsin, where people are stiff and unyielding and think yoga is a new product by Dannon, it’s pretty impressive stuff. My sister and mother can’t do it. My new goal is to touch my nose to my calf, but I have a feeling that in order to do so, my liver will be shoved up into my throat and part of me is very skeptical that one should ever know what their own liver tastes like.

If you’re squicky, get off the ride right now, because I’m going to talk about the woman time, ok?

I’m a pad girl. I just don’t like tampons. Oh, I’ll wear them, but I won’t like it. I think it offends the natural order of things, what you have to do with a tampon. I mean, if it’s not fun, then I don’t want to have anything to do with it, you know? Certainly, I’m no fan of the alternatives, but with me, the pad is the least of all evils (of course, I still do wish that you could go to some spa or something and have a Swedish woman named Helga push on your abdomen and have everything expunged with in a single afternoon, after which you can retire to the lounge for lots of iron-rich steak and also Cosmopolitans because enough vodka and everything is made better.)

As are most women, I’m very brand loyal to my Always feminine protection. Always have used them, always will. I like the Dri Weave, I think. Also, they are the most expensive. As my mother would happily point out, I find a way to be snobby even about menstrual pads.

The wings, however, are a side bonus. They’re kind of a pain in the ass, those wings. They seem to do their job of keeping the damn thing in place, so I put up with the extra putzing around with the additional adhesive strip and all is well.

Nothing, but nothing can ever be simple. There are many different types of Always pads. Not just the panty liners, the maxi and the overnighter-almost-adult-diaper thing. No. There’s a maxi pad, there’s an ultra-thin, there’s ultra-long, there’s regular super thin no wings, there’s slender, there’s plus size and lest they be insensitive to those who want to wear pads but do not want to see the after effects, they also come in black.

That’s not what has irritated me.

A while back, they started coding the Always feminine protection with symbols so that you wouldn’t forget the type you used. The symbols were a heart, a club, a diamond and a spade. Like playing cards. Let’s pretend that instead of spewing the very stuff life is made of, we’re sitting around playing a nice round of bridge. And don’t forget, it’s not a maxi-pad, it’s a bird! It gives you wings to celebrate the magical time of womanhood! Much like that hairy lady told you in fifth grade when they rounded up all of the girls and brought them into a room to watch a film strip about a flower and showed you to use a maxipad with a belt, even though most women hadn’t used belts in the last fifteen years. Wings! Fly away, little butterfly! But don’t make a mess!

A symbol. Because we have our periods, you see, and therefore we are far too stupid to remember what will keep us from fouling up our white tennis skirts at the big country club picnic. No. Remember your symbol for you have a working uterus and cannot think for yourself, Always told us. Remember your symbol! It said it right on the package, in pink script letters. It was urgent–like it was important. My god, your symbol! It was everywhere. It was even printed on the adhesive strips, like it was a box of Lucky Charms or something.

My symbol was a spade. The spade was on the pads that offered you the most protection. It was hefty, that spade. It meant business. Those girls who were hearts, they were petite little things who thought cramps were a tiny pinch and then nothing, so they would go back to training for the Olympic gymnast team. The club girls didn’t understand what the fuss was about and just went back to their riding lessons and practicing their dressage. And the diamonds were too busy studying Nietzsche and not wearing makeup. But we few, we crampy few, we band of spades. We were popping Advils like Pez and believing Clearisil when it said that it was ‘flesh toned’ as we’d walk down the hall, our cords make Zirh Zirh Zirh noises, while we held our books close to our boobs, which were always spilling out of the top of our bras, making a delightful four-breast appearance under our shaker sweaters. We spade girls walk up and down stairs with the careful grace of Audrey Hepburn, lest we lose control of our abdominal muscles. We spade girls know the terror in a sneeze. We spade girls look at Midol commercials and laugh and laugh and laugh. Yup. A spade. You can’t miss a spade girl.

They labeled me. Even though I didn’t want it, Always decided that they knew what was good for me better than I knew myself, and unless I wanted to defect to Kotex and have unfortunate accidents for the rest of my days, I had to suck it up and take my place in the ovulating ranks.

So obviously, it worked, because I remember my damn symbol. Not that I ever cared. Not that I ever TRUSTED the damn symbol in the first place, choosing instead of read the comforting words of Ultra-Thin Maxi with Wings with my own eyes. But still, that nugget remains in my brain.

They stopped putting symbols on the Always packages.

Someone figured out that women are not two-years-old. I mean, it’s a good thing, because it was insulting, just like the blue liquid they use on the commercials to demonstrate absorbancy is insulting. But now I’m stuck with this bit of trivia in my brain. I’m a spade. Not a clover, not a blue diamond, not a purple horseshoe. I’m certain that when my Alzheimer’s Disease proceeds to the point where I can’t remember the names of my friends and family, I will still remember my damn symbol on the maxi-pads-that-want-to-pretend-they-are-birds. They should just call it Always Until We Don’t Feel Like It Anymore.

Proof: You can’t trust anyone. Fuckers.

Yeah, I’m a touch cranky.

The comments section wants to tell you about this one time? In my vagina?

I should be writing an academic paper for my grad school applications, and yet here I sit about to tell you about my life. Although, it could be argued that there is nothing really academic about my choice of topics (the elimination of the mother figure in Disney movies), and probably nothing remotely unique either, and yet, I simply cannot bring myself to do it, feeling it is much more important to update my silly little diary. If this hasn’t further fueled the arguments of certain people in my life that I’m afraid of success, I don’t know what will. But yes, the diary, the DIARY’. All set? Here we go.

I managed to keep my head from exploding and looked smashing while I did so. I worked on Tuesday, but it was a dead dead dead day. All the more lovely, as it gave me ample chances to get caught up on old business and then I didn’t have enough time to start any new projects, thus had a perfect excuse to be a slacker for the remainder of the day. Or work at the same speed as normal people. As God as my witness, something will change in my job in the next six months or I will spontaneously combust.

I ran around looking for last minute gifts after work, but was dissuaded from actually obtaining any of them whenever I’d look at filled parking lots and the long lines in the stores. I’m starting to not enjoy Christmas. Especially because it seems to require a level of organization and forethought that I simply don’t have the energy to achieve. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am relatively organized and manage to select gifts which are just so and it seems to make the receivers very happy indeed. However, I’m still wrapping gifts at the last minute and worrying that I didn’t get enough and that I missed someone and that my cards won’t make it out by Christmas Eve (normally I like to have them done on the weekend after Thanksgiving, but this year, with the 50+ hours I spent on applications, it was an impossible goal, and I got them in the mail with only seconds to spare). I think that I would be a wicked stay-at-home person. Seriously, I would make my own wrapping paper and have cr’me brulee oatmeal each morning and scones with jam I put up myself last summer, made from strawberries from my own garden.

In fact, last night, I dreamed that I looked out my kitchen window at our little potting shed and in the little flowerbed where I planted white tulips and hostas, there were some single lovely tubers of rhubarb sticking out of the snow. Rhubarb? I have never planted rhubarb in my life! What is more, rhubarb, I believe, only grows in the spring, but apparently, this was some very hearty rhubarb, just begging me to make a rhubarb crisp from scratch, which would then be eaten on a back porch that I do not own while sitting upon a porch swing that has never existed. I don’t know what that all means. I think it means my brain was either telling me that even when I thought that time had run out, there was still time. I hadn’t blown it. Either that or I’m jonesing for some rhubarb.

I gave up on last minute gift purchases and went home empty-handed, where Esteban had likewise given up on being productive because his article is kicking his ass. We were both vaguely starving. Esteban wanted poutin. I don’t know why. He didn’t either, but he settled on the rather horrible steakhouse chain near our home, because they have nachos on their salad bar, and he figured that nachos were a suitable replacement for French fries with gravy and cheese. Ugh, I just involuntarily gagged typing that.

We both ate a rather unremarkable dinner (in fact, I left over half of my ‘steak’ sitting on the plate because it was vomity) and then we went home. I got a hair in my butt to sing ‘Santa Baby’, so I called Joel, as Joel and Cheri were my karaoke buddies back when we used to do that. They apparently had too much to do on Christmas Eve and didn’t want to stay out late, so they passed. Esteban offered to go out with me, which is unusual because he loathes karaoke. Thus, we went to the Ass Splinter bar, which followed serious admonitions from Esteban to check everything before I perched my adorable bottom on it. ‘Because going to the emergency room with you really sucked!’ He said. Yes, dear, as I was sitting there with subcutaneous wood and a man named Howard prodding my tender skin with sharp metal instruments, my heart was bleeding for you.

When we walked in, Born to Run Guy was up. Funny how I haven’t done karaoke in Green Bay in well over a year and the same people are still out singing the same songs. Gah. Tone Deaf Karaoke Girl was there and called my name as soon as I gave her some songs. Thus, I did Santa Baby, followed by A Thousand Miles, which I tanked because I had exhausted my feeble bronchial lungs with a big jazz sound on the first song. The Skeevy guy who hit on a bunch of us two years ago (despite his wife) and tried kissing Penny (also despite his wife) was there and Esteban recognized him. It turns out that he’s some vp of a very large local company that recently toured Esteban’s lab. He came up to me later and nervously said ‘I never would have connected you too. I didn’t know you were married.’ And I nodded and said ‘Yep, we’ve been together for fourteen years.’ He laughed even more nervously and then fled the bar.

Esteban got the thrill of experiencing Tone Deaf Karaoke Girl’s braying and then it was my turn again. This time I did suicide karaoke, selecting Norah Jones’s Come Away with Me, despite the fact that I couldn’t remember how it went or how it even started, but I was pretty sure that it was in my range. It was, and it was good, jazzy and mellow and working perfectly with my somewhat congested throat. It’s just synchronicity when you can make your sore throat work for you. Gotta love that.

On Christmas Eve, we spent most of the day wrapping gifts. Esteban, thankfully, took up his reigns as Chief Gift Wrapper and I oversaw the operation while we watched It’s A Wonderful Life, drank bottled water (but it was Christmasy bottled water!) and argued who did a better Jimmy Stewart shouting ‘Mary!’ (mine is clearly superb). Of course, I made the mistake of trying to get ready for our traditional Eve functions during the part when George realizes that his life is, in actuality, wonderful, and he is the richest man in town and then Sam Wainwright cables that he hears that George is in trouble stop he has authorized his offices to advance him up to twenty thousand dollars stop hee haw and Merry Christmas, well, that was just about the time that I was attempting to lay a precise Cleopatra-esque line of eyeliner over my fluttering gold eyelids. Because every time someone cries and messes up their liquid eyeliner, a drag queen gets her wings. Even with the teariness, I looked lovely, but then made the mistake of thinking about my great-grandmother and how much I would love to go to Christmas Eve candlelit service at her church and how I was wearing her smoky crystal necklace and how much I missed her especially around Christmas, and bam, another squealing drag queen looks FABULOUS.

We had a lovely dinner with Ward and June and opened presents. June clearly had fun emptying my and Esteban’s Amazon wish list and now I have books to read until July, and also several DVDs to round out my John Cusack collection. Then we went over to Esteban’s Aunt’s house, where twenty people crammed themselves into a six person living room.

Quite honestly, I loathe going over there. It’s really stupid. Not only is their house far too small to entertain, but also, Esteban’s family is comprised mostly of Belgian farmers. I, at 5’11’ in heels, was still dwarfed by his cousins and even, in once case, a cousin’s child. This particular aunt has four grown children, none of whom are under 6 feet, even through three of them are girls. (For physical evidence, I offer this rather horrible picture in which you can see that I look like a rather ripe fruit moments before I am swarmed by a tribe of giant men who celebrate Dockers.)

The ridiculous part isn’t that we all cram into her closet of a living room. The ridiculous part is that the very same people then all get up and go back out into our now-cold cars, and drive ten miles away to the house of a cousin. A cousin who had been at the FIRST HOUSE. In fact, the very same people all get up and go to this other house. For what? The cousin has a larger, more appropriate house, you see. It’s far more comfortable to go to their house. You don’t fear getting up to go to the bathroom because your chair will be stolen seconds after you leave it, because there is space for everyone. There are lovely snacks, usually shrimp cocktails and brands of beer that I’ve actually heard of.

But apparently, the aunt is very concerned with How Things Look, and if she concedes the role of Grand Christmas Eve Hostess to her own niece, then that would be admitting to everyone that her home is not as splendid and her cooking not edible and her children freakishly large. And we can’t have that, so instead we’ll create a fire hazard in her little home and count the minutes until we can all flee to the cousin’s house.

Stupid crap. Utterly stupid crap.

To make matters worse, Esteban parked the M in the last possible six feet of space in their driveway, and when I opened the passenger door, I accidentally let it hit their homemade (read: sloppy) raised rock garden. Thus, there is a huge white ding in one of my car doors. Brilliant. God bless us every one.

I secured a spot next to June on the open loveseat and then proceeded to stare blankly into space for the next two hours. They pretty much ignore me. The three girl cousins all enjoy playing ‘One Up’ with each other and enjoy bragging to the point where it is distasteful. In fact, someone gave the youngest girl cousin (the worst offender, because her two sisters both have illegitimate kids and one has been in trouble with the law, thus feels that she is the princess of the family) the perfect opportunity to gloat about how she enjoyed her recent cruise. She began the story ‘It was fabulous. Our third cruise! My husband of five years (can you believe it?) bought me a pink tourmaline ring there.. two carats. And he got my wedding ring reset so that we could have rubies added on. Because I’ve been married for five years now. Would you like to see?’ and then she’d thrust her hand into the face of anyone who turned her way. I don’t know why I’m so annoyed by it, but it’s beyond tacky into embarrassing. I mean, if she really wants to go down that road with me, strap on and hold tight. We can talk about how I am on a salaried career path (arguably one I’m not thrilled with) and she has a job that pays hourly and she will always be doing the same thing for the rest of her life. We can talk about the five trips I took in 2003 and how we’re going to Europe in a few months. We can talk about the two ‘ carat diamond princess-cut diamond earrings sitting in my ears that I didn’t need a man to buy me but I bought myself. Bitch. Go ahead. Belly up to that table and let’s see you how do. Oh no you di’int!

Thus ends the petty bullshit portion of today’s entry.

At one point, June tapped me on the hand and said ‘You’re doing so good! I’m proud of you!’ because apparently I didn’t show signs of impatience or exasperation at the stupid girl crap going on around me. But I think I braved the boredom by simply trancing out, into this weird Buddhist state. It was like I had resigned myself to five hours of cramped boring shyte and therefore went to my own happy place of nothingness. I think that’s how prisoners survive getting sent to solitary.

Then we were saved and went to the cousin’s house, where I ate her cookies, tried to control my allergic reaction to her real Christmas tree, and further continued my zen trance. Esteban rescued me around quarter after 10 and announced that we were leaving, which prompted everyone else to also go searching for their coats. My one Christmas wish is that someday, somehow, someone will realize that it is the stupidest thing in the world and we won’t do it anymore. It’s enough to make ME want to buy a new larger home, just so I can invite everyone over to our house. And then, when the youngest cousin is wandering around looking at all of the lovely d’cor and furnishings, I’ll just be sitting there, acting all ‘Ain’t nothing but a thang, yo.’

Ok, now I really have to write that Disney dead mother paper. More about Christmas later. Happy December 26th!

I am so very tired today. Seriously, y’all, I’m not even kidding. I am fantasizing about working somewhere in a large city because chances are that I could walk down the street from my building, wander into a Starbucks and then mainline espresso until my head stops weighing four hundred pounds. Forget dark circles under my eyes, I have simply blackened empty eye sockets. My damned teeth are tired. How sad is that? Tooth-tired?

I was on Amazon looking for a Wusthof knife and saw a corkscrew, except I thought it was a cockscrew and found it rather presumptuous indeed, although I was rather intrigued. If one should have a cockscrew, I would much rather have one sanctioned by Williams & Sonoma rather than some every day cockscrew. I’ll bet that if Wusthof did not make cockscrews, then the yuppies and Martha Stewart would never see any action at all.

Oh yeah, the tired. It is, of course, the fault of the mickey fickey Lord of the Rings. Ok, it is really my fault because I married a science fiction geek. Or, as Esteban might say, cleverly trying to deflect the blame, I am a Ren Faire geek cleverly disguised as a cool person. Although, even with my blatant elfwanking, I would not normally have participated in the madness that is an evening showing of a three and a half bazillion hour movie on a work night. Because it is almost the darkest day of the year and my body is telling me that I should be asleep by about two thirty in the afternoon, therefore eight o’clock (cock) feels like midnight and by the time we had saved the Shire and ensured everything would be good in Middle Earth forever and ever and ever, I was fighting off an impending coma. Even now, my head, she is so large and heavy. And the clock, she is so slow.

That having been said, aside from the fact that there was not nearly enough Weaving (there is never enough Weaving in my mind), the movie was very enjoyable. My tummy is now regretting my choice of dinner last night (popcorn and Whoppers), and demanded a fast food lunch today. Perhaps it became confused by the fatigue and thinks it is the Morning After The Bad Bar. It lobbied for a Big Mac and fries but I countered with the option of an Arby’s Roast Beef and Diet Coke (80 Gallon Drum size). We then went through an arduous mediation, which included contract riders demanding soft pretzels with plastic yellow cheese, and finally compromised on a bean burrito and a small bag of nachos with said plastic yellow cheese. I would here make mention that if one is very tired, so tired in fact that they are constantly fighting an impending headache, one should maintain a diet of soft foods, preferably things that have been pulsed several times in a blender. One should not chomp upon extra-crunchy tortilla chips, as each and every crunch will echo like tympanis inside one’s fragile noggin, which, for the purpose of this demonstration, has had the protective skull removed and is comprised of one gigantic baby’s soft spot. Watch now as she falls asleep on her desk and her head flattens out like a water balloon!

As;odkjq3a;eoijga;ohgaoehgoarewi /;

Aqresogijeb

Erbpoiejfrbtpoob2jug

;kkjiooioilijjoij

Ouch.

Heh heh heh. My head typed “poo”.

Yup, this diary is worth every penny.

This right here? The only time that the concept of the death penalty has ever seemed reasonable to me.

Seriously, y’all, my teeth are TIRED!

And now for something that isn’t completely stupid: The AFA set up a poll so that their members could vote against Same Sex Marriages. Their intent was to go to congress and show them that Americans are inherently against gay marriages. The pesky little thing about the Internet is that usually ANYONE can get to something and you can’t keep one group of people from accessing something like a poll (unless you password protect it or whatnot, which would I suspect have defeated their purpose of having an open poll) and when people who were not right-wing nut jobs found out about it, word got around. I guess the poll started out at about 4% FOR legalizing same sex marriages and the rest Against. After I voted, it’s at about 41% in favor of legalizing same sex marriages, with another 6% in favor of a civil union that did not allow the adaption of a spouse’s name (which, I might add, is a dumb distinction, because I believe anyone can have their name changed for any reason. There’s a woman here who legally had her name changed to Michael Jackson about fifteen years ago… hmmm, I wonder what she goes by now?)Here’s the thing… no matter how you feel about homosexual sex and love and general snuggle-bunnies, one thing is for certain: it’s going to happen whether you want it to or not. Preventing gay marriages does not protect the sanctity of marriage in the least, just like preventing black people or women from voting didn’t protect the sanctity of the democratic process. If you think your marriage is in danger, it certainly isn’t because David and Steven want to get married legally. Perhaps you should start spending some time loving your spouse instead of worrying about other people like some Gladys Kravitz. If you want to vote yourself, you can go here. (Thanks for the link, La Wade!)