Two weeks and seven years ago, Esteban and I closed on our house. We were both very excited to be finished with the arduous process that had taken six months and involved looking at over 70 houses before we finally hit gold with our little white 4-bedroom bungalow. And even though we had to buy four appliances and all of the ridiculous things you need to purchase when you buy a house, we giddily trekked out and bought a plethora of outdoor holiday lights and pre-lit evergreen garlands to help make our new house feel like a home for Christmas.
And then we discovered that there is exactly one electrical outlet on the outside of the house. It is in the backyard and would require approximately four thousand feet of extension cord. I personally didn’t want my winter landscape to look like backstage at an Aerosmith concert and I wouldn’t have roadies with flashlights helping me navigate my way across our driveway in the dark (which is pretty much twenty hours of the day in December), so we nixed the Christmas lights. Besides, our crazy hippy neighbors across the street keep their lights up all year round and more than make up for our dark house.
But then when I was looking at the holiday greens that my mother put in my flower urns, I noticed an electrical cord coming out of the house and going into the ground. Aha! The electrical cord for our lamppost! I mentioned it to my father-in-law Ward, who works strange swing hours at a paper mill and is more handy and productive than any one person has any right to be.
He called me at work earlier this week. ‘You have an electrical outlet now. It’s at the base of the front porch.’
I have the best in-laws in all the land. Seriously.
Since my pre-lit evergreen garlands were still in their original bag in the basement, I would use those to wrap around the railings of the porch. I also bought some lights for the stink bush under the awning. Then on my day off, I set about decorating the front of the house. First was a big red bow around our lamppost. This will be a breeze! I was so very pleased with myself! Then I strung the lights on the Stink Bush. I am terribly allergic to the Stink Bush, but only if I allow it to touch my skin. One would think that I would have the good sense to put on gloves, but if you’ve had any history of reading this diary, you will know that I do not possess much good sense, nor even mediocre sense. Also, the Stink Bush (so named because the smell is very reminiscent of cat pee) has a mind of its own and does not really wish to be glammed up for the holidays. In fact, I suspect that the Stink Bush prefers a gym-teacher haircut and a wallet chain to the sparkly lights and pretty bows. Finally, after freezing my hands and stomping on the bush so that it would hold onto the light grid and then laying in the bush trying to thread the extension cord underneath the porch to light the garland on the opposite side of the porch, I plugged everything in.
The bush was sparkly and pretty. One of the garlands didn’t light. Not even a little. My hands were covered in red pinpricks that were on fire. I was itchy up to my elbows. Finally, I gave up. Screw it. And my heart shrunk three sizes that day.
The unlit garlands look like normal generic garlands. The lights on the bush are lovely. The red bow on the lamppost moves on its own and I suspect that it freaks out my car alarm. But when I drive up my street and see my house on the corner, nestled between the giant pine trees and with a glinting nest of light welcoming me home, it makes me insanely happy. It made me feel as though I participated a little in the season, instead of what I have been doing, which is calling it in. I hope to finish my cards and get them out by Saturday (squee about all the cards from the Holiday Card Exchange! Sparkles and snowmen and sexy Josephs, oh my!) and then spend some serious time sitting on the sofa, wearing thermal sock and watching Bing Crosby pretend not to be a child abuser and woo Rosemary Clooney. Because THAT my friend is what it’s all about. Thermal sock time. Got to love it.
In other news, a few weeks ago, Penny, Carissa and I went shopping to our little dead downtown mall one afternoon. It was interesting, because I hadn’t been down there since it became REALLY dead. The last time I was there, it was only mostly dead, but now, there are perhaps eight stores in the entire two-story mall. There are so few people there that they now have an actual train that drives through the halls, giving kids a ride for 50 cents each way. I mean, if you have enough room to drive an actual TRAIN through the mall during the Christmas season, then chances are that the mall is not very successful.
We ended up at a random Thin Girl store. I don’t remember the name. It wasn’t a Gap or a Limited or a Banana Republic, because those fled the Titantic of Consumerism long ago. We were looking for something with sparkle for Carissa to wear to the Bad Bar later that evening. I sat in the dressing room and coached from the sidelines for an hour. Carissa had picked out an incredible pair of low rise boot cut black cords that did fine things to her ass. They were magic. Finally, I talked Penny into trying on the cords too, and they did incredible things for Penny’s ass as well. The cords gave one’s ass a team of makeup artists, choreographers and lighting team to make sure that everything was in soft focus. It took one’s ass from a Ruben Stoddard to a Clay Aiken in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. It did amazing things. I even postulated that I should try cramming myself into the cords to see what it did for MY ass.
Carissa ended up with the cords and a fitted white button down shirt (one of my favorite fashion staples). Then we coerced Penny into also buying the same cords, with the promise that Carissa would not wear her cords on the same day. Penny felt weird about the cords, however. She wears what I have affectionately termed Jeans Circa 1992, faded light blue with high waists. At one point, her hair was also stuck in the early nineties but with perseverance and the help of my lovely stylist Stacy, she has leaped into the new millennium. And now it was also time for her ass to make the leap as well.
Carissa was so hot that Friday that folks could barely contain themselves. In fact, she became lesbian catnip herself, breaking it to one girl that she was completely and unerringly straight. Penny was, as promised, attired in black leather pants and a v-neck shirt. The next week, she was making noises that she was going to return the cords. I forbade her, promising her that if she would but wear the cords, she would get so many compliments that she would see she had nothing to fear.
Yesterday, she wore the cords.
By 9 am, she had three independent compliments. Even today, she’s had at least one residule compliment when someone stopped her and told her how good she looked yesterday. And I’m certain that for every compliment she received, at least ten people were thinking the same thing.
She now believes in my eye and hopefully trusts. While I may sometimes give good PR, my mouth does not write checks that my friends asses cannot cash.
I fainted at work today. That was pretty exciting, although until just this minute (or the minute that I posted this) I was the only one who knew that it happened. It’s all the fault of Diet Coke (as is so many things, like fat thighs and inflation and those annoying pill things you get on acrylic sweaters and also the fact that you can’t make peanut brittle in the summer’ yup, Diet Coke). I swigged too quickly and then the bump in my chest as too much caffeinated chemicals tried to scurry to my gullet and then we were hearing a word from our sponsor. I knew it was about to happen, so I tried to concentrate and relax and breathe deeply but then the world was swimming and going grey and then there were no sounds and I went somewhere but then things were bright again and I was swimming in my cubicle, staring at my black keyboard and monitor which had flipped over to the screen saver and then the sound came back on as I struggled to the surface, and then fizzy noise noise noisenoise and now we’re back. Science may be blinding, but effervescence will knock you on your ass.
As opposed to Evanescence, which will only leave you wondering when girl rockers were replaced by singing t&a.
I am pretty glad that it went unnoticed, thanks completely to the fact that my desk is in the back corner of the cube farm and I wasn’t on the phone or talking with anyone right then. I just don’t want to be The Fainter. Like a kid at school who vomits in the hall and the janitor has to come with that stinky orange sawdust crap. (Heee’. I have this feeling that dozens of throats just involuntarily tightened thinking about the orange sawdust crap. Actually, I now understand why the manufacturers of the orange sawdust crap stay in business, even with that nasty orange sawdust smell. Someone hurls, they bring out the sawdust, which makes many other people hurl. Marketing genius!) For instance, the culmination of Joel’s party on Saturday night was when an acquaintance who can never drink appropriately, announced that he was going to throw up and then, in the middle of a room full of people down in Joel’s home theatre room, proceeded to demonstrate marked lack of aim towards a bucket hastily thrust into his hands. Want to end a party early? The spontaneous vom is a very effective method. Also, as I was upstairs helping clear away the food, I almost lost it when I heard Joel ask his lovely wife for the Febreeze. It was comedy. Pure comedy.
Apparently, I fainted because of something vasal something. Something about a nerve in your chest that constricts if you swallow wrong and then it causes your blood pressure to drop rapidly and then you’re down for the count. The esophagus does not need a prop.
The moral of the story: Don’t drink Diet Coke. It’s bad for you.
Also Vodka. It makes you throw up.
It wouldn’t be December if you didn’t play a few rounds of Snowcraft.
