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Tinsel Snowbottom? Paging Tinsel Snowbottom?

Friday, November 14, 2003

Bah.

That pretty much sums up my mindset right now. It’s officially winter and I’m trying desperately to get my warm winter ‘I love the world and Santa and snowflakes and gift wrapping even though it inevitably gives me paper cuts’ kind of attitude, but at the same time, trying to get Summer Slacker girl out of my brain is like trying to shove a cat into a cat carrier before going to the vet. She’s just not having this whole wool sweater and knitting and coating the world with holiday cheer thing. She looks at my pile of scrapbook crap and wonders when Dave Matthews is coming to Alpine again. She resents having to wear socks.

I should really be thinking about such things. Thanksgiving is in, like, four minutes! Normally, I have many presents purchased by now! I have lists of presents and lists of supplies and a cache of boxes I’ve saved through the year. I usually have a gift-wrapping theme picked out and a plan for executing said theme. A gift-wrapping PLAN! And right now, that sounds just like crazy elf logic.

I think I’m going to stand in Williams & Sonoma this weekend for a while and just sort of inhale the consumerism. Maybe if I’m lucky, they’ll be making the Ginger Pumpkin Spicey Pancakes Shaped Like People And Teddy Bears. And maybe my heart will grow three times that day.

Or not.

That having been said, it’s time for the traditional Holiday Card exchange again. If you want to get in on the card exchange and fill your mailbox with dozens of lovely seasonal cards, send me an email with your address (that you must be willing to share with other recipients on the list’ and if you want to be known as HotGrrl34 or ahem’Biensoul‘, make sure to list that as your name.) Last year, there were about thirty participants on the Big Exchange and I’m guessing it will be about that many again. I can’t tell you how fun it made the holidays, having something colorful in your mailbox that wasn’t a bill or junk mail. And fun! It’s fun!

And once again, like last year, I’ll have Esteban draw names and two lucky people will receive either a Bad Bar Weetamix or a Holiday Song Weetamix (winner’s choice, if they already have a Bad Bar mix). Also, I have, in the past, been known to save the addresses and send random cards throughout the year as well. Some people from the list got one of my handmade Anti-Valentine Valentine Cards last February. So many rewards and benefits from being a member, what more do you need? Frequent flier miles or something? Gah.

Of course, if you don’t want to be on the Big List and just want to exchange cards with me, that’s cool too. Just indicate your preference in the email.

Oooh’ I think writing the above paragraph may have sent Summer Slacker girl running. I might have to go to the card store during my lunch today. Squeee!

You know how the idea of baking a human inside my gut and then squeezing it out absolutely horrifies me? Not the concept, but the idea of it happening to ME. I mean, I needed mental recovery time when I had a wisdom tooth pulled, so can you imagine what would happen if that whole freak show went down? I don’t even like to think about it. The idea actually gives me a slight tinge of pain, like I have a bladder infection. Ouch. There it is again. Ouch.

But here’s the thing’ I could totally see myself adopting a baby someday. Some day when we figure out how to keep our house clean and not live like wild dogs. I think it’s the whole birth thing that makes me recoil in terror. Everything else’ the late night feedings, the inevitable tongue piercing at age six, the possibility that my child might like country music’ I don’t even blink. It’s the pushing thing. It’s the defecating on the table. It’s the’ oh god’ afterbirth. It’s the knowledge that from that point forward, every time you have sex, you’re risking the possibility of that happening to you AGAIN.

When I was seventeen, I bonded with a little baby named Hugo, who was adopted from China. We have pictures of him sitting on my lap and I’m feeding him cake. He loved me, for that instance, probably because I was feeding him cake. I have always had a conviction of Zero Population Growth, ever since my hippy upbringing, but was torn because I didn’t like the idea of shutting down the family track completely. But right then, looking at Hugo, I compromised that if I did decide to have children, I didn’t have to add to the overpopulation of the planet if I adopted. And I would adopt a little girl from China, because then there would be one less little girl who grows up in a culture where women have less value than oxen. Even after fourteen years, has always been constant in my brain. In fact, it’s one of the few beliefs I have which have gone unchanged for so long.

I’ve been reading with great interest Mimi Smartypants’s narrative of doing just that, and adopting the unbelievably adorable Nora. I told Esteban about my theory and he started babbling about Japanese schoolgirls being hot. So now I’m trying to negotiate the fact that I married a dirty old man in geek clothing.

My class workshopped the Car Salesman story this week. It went pretty well. Some people got it, some people came close to getting it, and some people didn’t get the ending at all. One girl thought I hadn’t finished it and that’s just where I left off. Another person had a problem with the fact that there wasn’t a motive for a character’s suicide. And also, the thing is riddled with spelling errors, missing words, really awful dialogue punctuation and a ton of awkward phrasings that need to be cleaned up. The professor’s comments were most helpful. He saw right through my struggles in the beginning of the piece, and noted exactly when the power of the story changed. It’s kind of freaky, though, that a reader could pick up on the same issues I was having as I was writing it. While I’m spoiled and pouted that there were comments other than ‘dazzling, truly dazzling’, it was good feedback and gives me fuel for revision. And now that I’ve gotten that one out of my system, I can dive into writing the shark story that has been in my brain since my trip to the New Orlean’s aquarium last January. I think the entire story exists so that I can use the term ‘echolocation bastards’. Writers are dumb, frivolous creatures. But then, you knew that already.

The words and pictures have been added to the latest Bad Bar entry. Also, Quoted has been updated. And there’s a crazy bidding riot happening on the comments of the blank entry which is making me giggle probably more than it should.

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Rinse cycle

Tuesday, November 11, 2003

I have another entry to write about our Bad Bar night on Friday, and when I do it, it’s going to go here. It’s mostly photocentric, so I’m not going to try to build the sandwich without bread, people. I don’t know where I got that metaphor’ maybe I’m channeling Dr. Phil. Until then, Nicole went to the Bad Bar on Saturday night’. Read her entry here.

I looked around on Sunday afternoon and there were mountains of dirty clothes in our bedroom. Seriously, the pile was about three feet high, with a six feet circumference. I did the math and realized that I had not done laundry in three weeks.

THREE WEEKS!

You see, the washer and dryer and drying racks and soap and stuff are in the basement and the basement has stairs and stairs require a fully functioning set of legs (of which I only have one) and the ability to haul large baskets of clothes around (of which I have very little without banging the hamper on my knee). Of course, you’d think that with three weeks of dirty laundry, we’d be walking nude, staring at our empty closet and drawers, but this is sadly not the case. I don’t know how we accumulated so much stuff, particularly since I always feel as though I have nothing to wear. I really need to either stop buying clothes (the horror!) or clean out the closet again. Since I’ve got to switch over my summer wardrobe (which consists of a shameful number of $5 t-shirts) to my winter wardrobe (heavier and therefore much bulkier than summer stuff), which will require the entirety of the shelf in my closet for folded sweaters, this would be a good time to do it.

But first I had to deal with the laundry, which I estimated to be about fourteen million loads. Plus the sheets, pillowcases and duvet, which is two loads right there. And as long as I was going to strip the bed, I should do the mattress pad too. And also Esteban’s pillows, which are not down filled because he is a surreptitious night drooler. Basically, with three weeks of laundry, I was now Sisyphus and will spend eternity hauling clothes up and down my basement stairs.

Sometimes I get nostalgic for our humble early twenties, when we lived in the little salt-box apartment building and had no money for soda and ate a lot of rice and pasta and couldn’t afford cable. I don’t know why, but it seemed much easier. Even though I literally had every minute of every day plotted in my day planner because I was working and taking 18 credits in school and working at the camp on the weekends and Esteban was working full time and then working part time at Best Buy. And our apartment was a disaster. But for some reason, it seemed so much easier then. We had about five hundred square feet, not a sprawling four bedroom house to clean. There was no garage with mice or potting shed that still needs to be painted. There were no flowerbeds that needed clearing or leaves to be raked.

Thus, I convinced myself that it would be easier to go to the Laundromat and do all of the laundry at once. Once again, this is one time in my life where a Greek chorus would have been helpful. They would have reminded me about trailer trash, about scary hair balls, about bachelors who come in and shove all of their clothes into one washer and then take up every dryer in the place. They would have reminded me about the smokers, about the fine covering of ash on every flat surface. They would have reminded me that the city has sprawled around my favorite little country Laundromat and now there are many many apartment buildings around it.

Everything at the Laundromat is now written in Spanish as well as English. In fact, I believe I am the only native English speaking person in the place who is also wearing a bra. My wad of laundry takes up seven double washers. I brought an almost empty bottle of Tide so that I wouldn’t have to lug a full one, but I run out midway through filling up the machines, thus I have to buy a little box of 50 cent powdered Tide from the machine there for the one giant $5 washer with my linens and pillows. And then there are directions in Spanish taped over the English instructions, so I accidentally put soap where the fabric softener is supposed to go, and thus am forced to run the $5 washer twice. But my sheets are now uber clean and not just white’ BRITE. Which right there proves that I am older than half of the planet.

The weird thing about this Laundromat is that, with the exception of the bilingual washing machines, nothing has really changed in eight years. The smell of chlorine is still there, the weird fuzziness of the corners from tons of accumulated lint. The spew sound of the washers finishing their cycle. There is even the requisite college girl doing the wash in her pajama pants. She’s with Chris Martin from Coldplay. (I swear, it was Chris Martin. Gwynnie, if you’re reading, your boyfriend is cheating on you with a girl who can’t even be bothered to get dressed at 3 pm on a Sunday afternoon.)

I buy $10 in quarters, but with the $5 Washer Debacle, I don’t have enough quarters, so it’s touch and go to see if I will have to jump in the car and find an ATM. Speaking of the car, mine is the only Chrysler in the lot, surrounded by lots of rust spots and custom paint jobs with teal stripes and magenta details and the names of owners written in white on the back window.

I inherently hate everyone here, just for being here, just for using dryers that I want to use, and picking their dryers at random, so that I have to put my stuff in dryers 1, 4, 7, 13, 14, and 15. The radio is playing ‘Maggie May’ and I hate Rod Stewart. Not for being in the Laundromat, I just don’t like Rod Stewart, and ‘Maggie May’ for some reason embodies every reason that I loathe Rod Stewart.

At a different time and a different place, Esteban and I were listening to music that we could not control and ‘Maggie May’ came on and I sneered my little Rod Stewart sneer and said ‘Ugh.’ And Esteban then made his grand daddy of all psychoanalysis claims by quipping ‘Oh, you just don’t like Rod Stewart because Kate liked him.’ Kate is his ex-girlfriend. From when he was 17. Seriously. I’m 32 years old and he thinks I’m so Jennifer Jason Leigh on his ex that I will eschew certain spikey-haired blonde British singers for their very connection? I still don’t know what to make of Esteban’s theory, but I think he’s deranged. Or needs to get over himself. I mean, I did marry him, so I’m thinking that I won. Or lost, depending on how you look at it.

I try to read my David Eggers book but end up getting irritated by his writing style and his general smarmy-assed view on the world, so instead I watched people. There is a kid who belonged to someone, bouncing around the room saying ‘One two three one two three’, which then turned into ‘one two PEE one two PEE’. And yes, that makes me laugh. I want to prompt him with ‘one poop pee’ but then I would be one of those crazy people in the Laundromat. Instead, I watch my whites in dryer. Two of my Dayam! Bras are being divas in the clear dryer window, perfectly formed as two torso-less breasts dancing amidst socks and Esteban’s tighty-whities. I take several pictures, trying to capture the boobsome ballet. No one even looks at me twice, this crazy white girl taking pictures of her laundry in the dryer.

And yes, I will post them here. Because I like you.

I lose track of which dryers are mine and throw two socks into someone else’s dryer. I try to tell him that he has my socks, but he doesn’t speak English and the only Spanish word that comes to my brain for ‘sock’ is profil’ctico. Which means “condom”. Thus, I lose two socks. And then I finally can leave, hauling my four hampers of dry and folded clothes, 18 hangers of wet-needing-to-air-dry clothes, and one big bucket of soaking wet 1000 thread count sheets, duvets and a mattress cover. The pillows are exactly like giant wet sponges. I accidentally drop one in the parking lot and it makes a Thwack sound hitting the pavement. This is not my beautiful nostalgia. This is not my beautiful Laundromat.

Last night we received an invitation to watch the Packer game with friends, but I declined (‘Do you want to go out with the guys tonight?’ ‘No thanks, you can go though.’ ‘What do you mean? You don’t want to watch Monday Night Football?’ ‘I can’t, I have homework.’ ‘It’s a PACKER game!’ ‘I still have homework.’) but was determined to not have the standard Weetasolo dinner of either cereal or toast. Flummoxed by my pantry, I ended up eating a banana and then a red pear, and then finally capitulated and had two crumpets. Which are not like toast! Oh no they are not! Even though I put them in the toaster and put chopped cherry jelly on them, it’s not the same thing.

In other news, my new down mattress topper has completely solved the cold bedroom problem. You just sort of sink down and within minutes, you’re all cozy and snug, like a baby bird in a nest. And also, I think I have finally achieved the princess bed of my dreams, the one that is like sleeping in a cloud. After I made the bed and sank down into the pillowy goodness, I heard this very strange orgasmic moan and realized that it had come from my very own ladylike mouth. So down filled mattress toppers’ it’s all good.

Dear Dave Matthews,

You know that you can really do no wrong in my eyes, right? And that I love you very much, much more than I really should? And just because sometimes I think you look a little autistic and crazy, it doesn’t mean that I don’t adore you. Because I do.

But on Saturday Night Live this week… it wasn’t pretty Dave. It was the first time that I’ve ever thought to myself “yeah, that’s not sexy” when looking at you. So, um, lay off the powdered grasshopper wings or whatever it is you’re snorting this week. That’s all I’m saying.

Love and boobies,
Weetabix

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Who are you and why are we talking about my nipples?

Tuesday, November 11, 2003
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Flaccid Unit

Friday, November 7, 2003

In the middle of the night, I woke Esteban up to tell him to roll over because he was snoring. Under the down comforter, his hand found mine and opened it. I figured he was going to hold my hand while he slept (something we do sometimes… I know, most of you just retched because it’s so cute), but instead he deposited something hot and heavy into my palm.

“Here.” He murmured. “I found that in my underwear.”

It was a quarter.

I threw it, figuring that it was saturated with testicle residue or some other vague schmeng that would give me nightmares. It hit the wall and fell behind the bed.

“Why did you throw that away? It was good money.” He was already snoring before I could answer.

The whole thing was surreal. And apparently, there are some checks that his ass CAN cash. Imagine my surprise.

The weather has gotten nasty here. Dark, rainy, cold crap. It was snowing on Monday, with actual white accumulation in some places. We continue to battle a freezing bedroom at night. It’s my fault, really. I like to have fresh air and an open window for as long as humanly possible. Right now, the window at the top of my bed is open exactly a quarter of an inch and quite honestly, you could store meat in there. Last night, as I was trying to convince myself that it didn’t feel awkward to try to sleep on my back so that I didn’t crush my knee/souffl’ and after 21 days, a habit has been established so stop feeling like a hand is going to swing up from under the bed and slice my throat, I heard in the distance weird rusty noise. And then I decided that it was coyotes, because in actuality, I was indeed half asleep, despite being on my back like an upended turtle, and had forgotten that we don’t have coyotes in Green Bay.

No, it was a flock of geese. Stragglers, I’m guessing, honking their way south across the prairie. The big Vs in the sky are getting fewer and fewer. I used to encounter at least one each morning while sipping my mocha on the way to work, but now, there’s nothing filling the big expanses of sky but sparse mackerel clouds.

I always enjoy seeing geese in the fall, even though their appearance hearkens the beginning of winter. There is just something awe-inspiring about the way they regiment themselves, about their perfect Orville Wright Meets Pythagoras task.

You know why they fly in the V shape, right? It’s because a flying goose will throw a burst of air diagonally to the rear, and if another goose is there, their wings catch that air and they don’t have to work as hard. And for years, I always sort of envied the head goose flying in the juncture of the two angles, but now I realize that he’s the work dog of the flock. The cushy spot is to the rear. And when they honk when they fly, they’re giving encouragement to the geese up front. It’s honkspeak for “You can do it! Almost there!” Apparently, when the lead goose gets tired, it falls back and another one takes over.

One of my favorite fall memories: when I was in high school, our marching band had sporadic early morning practices. Nothing used to give me a sicker feeling than walking to school and hearing the sound of a tuba bouncing off the century old brick of the high school because it meant that I had forgotten a practice and would probably get a snarky remark from my band teacher. And I liked early morning practices. I always have been a morning person and something about the coldness of your instrument slowly growing warm in your hands, and the wetness of the grass and the crunch of leaves beneath your feet, it’s a lovely thing. And there was always a weird sort of camaraderie with our marching band. During the inevitable standing around and waiting while one section’s steps were being revised, the drummers would be pounding out something you’d recognize as a riff from an REM song and then someone else would answer back with some Violent Femmes and it would be this weird early morning punk Name That Tune.

On one of those crisp archetypal fall mornings, we were doing one of the songs, complete with dips and spins and the marchy marchy feet thing and the band major (my friend Will, for those of you who keep large charted outlines of reoccurring players on Dumber Than A Box Of Rocks) was sniping at the clarinets for being half a beat off and then there was this weird dissonance happening. I didn’t really notice it, but then Will was waving to cut and the band teacher was reaching for his megaphone and in the slow disintegration of the song, we could hear something else resonating in the air. And by the time the final trombone clued in that we had stopped playing now, there was with it a beating of wings and a honking unrivaled by anything I’ve seen yet. They came from behind us, filling the morning upended bowl of sky with literally thousands of beating wings and graceful necks. Nostalgia is not coloring my recollection when I estimate that there had to have been ten thousand of them. It wasn’t even a V shape anymore; it was a cumulonimbus cloud of birds. One hundred and fourteen snooty teenagers wearing pegged acid washed jeans and Chuck Taylors and the United Colors of Bennetton and the random Vision Streetwear and Body Glove could only stand aghast, looking up like turkeys in a rainstorm, unable to even discern where the geese ended and the sky began. We let them pass, unable to compete with their raucous honks. When the last of the stragglers was overhead, Will raised his baton and the drummers sounded the eight count and then we were spinning and doing the pinball flapper, as though nothing out of the ordinary had even happened.

Apparently the planets are in a super-special alignment because I managed the impossible.

I’ve convinced Esteban that we absolutely need to visit London this spring. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the fares were obscenely cheap. Actually, my fare to London is less than was my fare to Austin. Note to self: investigate emergency rooms in greater London area.

One of my coworkers is also making a trip to London. In fact, we will be coming home on the very plane he’s taking to get there, and we’ll likely wave at each other at the gate in Heathrow. I was telling him about the cliffs of Dover, and how the British air attack was planned from caves and how in Pearl Harbor, when Ben Affleck goes to England and then gets shot down in the channel, that’s where it all happened. And then how he could take the ferry or the Chunnel and go across the channel and see Omaha Beach, just like in the beginning of Saving Private Ryan. And then realized that I just sounded exactly like the stupidest girl in all the world.

Oh yeah, there was a war there too. Between some people and some other people about something to do with a list that Liam Neeson had. And I think Giovanni Ribisi was there maybe? Something. Yeah.

Anyway, I’m stoked. I mean, unlimited HobNobs and Fuse bars and a Body Shop on every corner! And I can buy a replacement pair for my Doc Martens, which actually still look quite nice considering that they have been in heavy rotation for the last seven winters. Yay! Shopping! Weird VA taxes! Shitty exchange rates! Excitement!

Esteban is a bit nervous. We realized last night that this will essentially the first vacation we’ve ever taken together, for no reason other than to take a vacation. And also, the first thing we’ve ever done on our own. We never went on a honeymoon. When we went to Atlanta, most of his family was there. When we went to New Orleans and Key West, he was officially working and thus, there was always a buffer of friends and acquaintances there. But this’ it’s a whole new thing. We’re both hoping he can keep his Burgermeisterism under wraps and doesn’t get all curmudgeonly and want to just sit in the flat (I’m desperately trying to secure a vacation rental in the same area of Little Venice I stayed in the summer of 97. Hey, if it’s good enough for Jude Law and Madonna, it’s good enough for the Weet), otherwise I may throttle him before the jetlag wears off. Also, how will he deal with the fact that I am apparently irresistible to British men? Because I have never had as much flirting with strangers and unsolicited attention from men (who would see me coming and actually thrust their genitals in my direction and sometimes into my very hand), even when I was hanging out with my guy friends. But then, maybe my Anglo-catnip wore off in exchange for the Lesbian catnip? Maybe the Britons won’t be enamored of my curvy round hotness?

Oh look. I made a funny.

It’s a good thing that Esteban is not a jealous man. I’m just saying. Because I’d never be able to forgive myself if something happened and Jude Law’s pretty face got damaged.

The Unit is having psychotic episodes.

It refuses to pause live television. It seems like it’s recording things but then when you look, OOPS! not there, too bad so sad. It actually does record some things, but then suddenly they are gone from the list. Also, for reason’s known only to The Unit, it decided to start recording ‘Family Guy’. Last night, it was recording Survivor, but as I was trying to cook dinner (roast whole tenderloin massaged with olive oil, freshly ground black pepper, garlic, and Chicago Steak Seasoning, baked potatoes, asparagus, and Fat Biscuits’ nothing like one last blow out before reinstating Operation Hottie), I tried to pause it. And then everything went black. So I might have missed Hagrid’s ass crack or testicles or something and now I will just never know.

I’ve decided that The Unit despises us. The Unit senses that there is another recording device on the premises, can hear the cheery little BaBoops and grumpy Bonks with its microscopic Unit listening devices. The Unit wants to punish us for our laughter and the fact that we breathe and also have a cat that stares at The Unit for hours on end until The Unit begins to feel a little selfconscious. The Unit wants us to close the pod bay doors, Dave. The Unit feels that we do not pay it enough respect. The Unit has taken it to the mattresses.

Esteban, in a rare bit of humility, has admitted that The Unit, once lauded for style and grace and affordability, is, in actuality, as technologically reliable as’ um, something really unreliable. I don’t know. All of the writing earlier this week broke my metaphor mojo. Anyway, he’s shunning The Unit and apparently it will be exchanged for a New Unit. Which hopefully won’t hate us as much. And have a friendlier remote control, because I still can’t change the channel in the dark.

Maybe if they’d make a movie about it, I’d understand how it all worked.

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The lion in winter

Wednesday, November 5, 2003

Just to clarify something from the previous entry, I actually don’t like Bath & Body Works. I think they are the Thomas Kinkade of health and beauty lines. However I do like the candles they sell under the White Barn Candle Company line. Quite honestly, their personal care line does not impress me. Their lotion seems to actually take away the moisture from my hands rather than helping them. Also, I find the whole ‘pearberry’ thing suspect. Like, what the hell is that? However, I do have their antibacterial cucumber melon soap in my bathroom and if you press on the Godzirra soap dispenser in our kitchen, he glurgs out the lemon variety. I am not made of stone, people. But I don’t want to mislead you. I’d pick Aveda or The Body Shop lotions or even plain drugstore variety Curel over Bath And Body Works in a heartbeat.

And since I’m making recommendations, if you’re not already, start saving at least 5% of your income until you have enough to put into a money market account. You’ll thank me later.

Thus endeth the public service announcement.

You’ve just got to know that Thomas Kinkade, painter of light, has got a collection of paintings deep in the back of his closet of sun dappled brothels near streams, with hookers giving blowjobs in front of the burbling waters.

I finally finished the car salesman story late on Monday night. Esteban berated me about being lazy just because I had a parachute of the baby story in case I couldn’t finish. Finally he laid his patented Wisconsin accent on me and said ‘Getcher ass in there’nd do it!’ Which is apparently just what I needed, so I loaded up the WinAmp with a bunch of songs which were conducive to writing. I had the beginning and the ending mostly written, just had to put the meat in the sandwich, as it were, and I finally hit my stride around 9:30 at night (Which, in the Jeopardy game that is my life would fall under ‘Times When Weetabix Is Normally Getting Ready For Bed’) when I put the Virgin Suicides soundtrack in and had the Hollies ‘The Air That I Breathe’ on repeat. It seemed appropriate.

I still wasn’t sure I was going to bring it to class on Tuesday morning, but since my favorite test subject is exempt from reading the story until he finishes a project of his own, I had my friend Kathi read it to get a feel for how it was perceived. And I posted it to this page for about three hours. And then it was time to print out the stories, so I ended up handing it in with a bunch of typos and the fact that I loved a line about Monday Night Football so much that I conveniently forgot that it was Friday in the story. So yeah, if you notice it hanging out there on the bottom of the page in the ‘past entries’ thing, it’s all hidden because I realized that it’s all screwed up and have to fix it.

Anyway, I didn’t cheat by handing in the nicely polished baby story (although I’m not saying that it won’t be part of my 40 page portfolio final). And also, my professor handed back two of my assignments and said that my writing was ‘dazzling, truly dazzling’. Heeeee! I might have a crush now.

Like much of what you’ll find on M.Giant’s site, This is very funny. Actually, I had a sweater exactly like that. It was black velour with white angora snowflakes across the bust. It was beautiful, that sweater. I loved it, I really did. And then it started to disintegrate, making black puffs of sweater death every time I washed it. And then it got thin in weird places. Like directly over the nipples, so if I wore a white turtleneck under it, it had this white nipple headlight thing going on. But even still, I couldn’t throw it away. It hung in my closet like some limp dishrag for years. In fact, it might even still be hanging there, although I was pretty ruthless during my last closet overhaul. It’s all Esteban’s fault though. He refuses to relinquish his remaining 1/8th of our miniscule closet. Like he needs shirts or something. Bah.

And now for a knee update (skip if you’re knee squeamish):

I also paid Dr. Perky a visit yesterday, because my knee continues to resemble a boysenberry souffl’ rather than anything remotely human. I am glad that it is not shorts weather because I would feel compelled murmur ‘I am not an animal!’ as I hobbled around, my knee preceding me into rooms by minutes. Dr. Perky was very impressed by the fact that most of my leg is now a humble shade of waning summer tan, rather than the majority of a box of 64 crayons that she witnessed two weeks ago. She also remarked that the hematoma issue has resolved itself quite nicely and labeled me a ‘well-coiffed speedy healer’ (she’s loving my subtle autumnal highlights, apparently. She’s such a cheerleader for my various fashion experiments’ is it any wonder that I adore her so?) but is concerned by the fact that there is still a water balloon floating on top of my knee cap. And I mean that literally. Even with my leg bent in a sitting position, I can push into my kneecap at least an inch. It’s exactly like a gel wrist rest. Except, you know, gross and somewhat painful.

Thus, she referred me to an orthopedic specialist whom I swear was named Dr. Lorax. Like the Dr. Seuss character. Apparently, he speaks for the knees. He speaks for knees for knees he likes to squeeze. And squeeze he did, until I almost decked him. And then he gave me the option of sticking a needle in there and sucking out all of whatever was in there. Right then! That very instant! With no quick shots of vodka to steel my nerves or anything! Insanity!

The choice was a needle or no needle. I picked no needle, with the option to needle sometime in the future. Because I do not like needles, no ma’am, I do not like them Sam I Am.

On the plus side, M.Giant thanked me for taking one for the team at Journalcon, so apparently, it was for the good of online diaries everywhere. I had no idea that my drunken stumble would make me a martyr.

Man, nothing like winter to put a dent in my pocket book. At lunch on Monday, I went to Bed Bath & Beyond and bought a king sized feather bed and a replacement down pillow (yay for sales on Pacific Coast down!), and even with a gift card and a 20% off postcard thing, it was still $180. Today at lunch, I went to the mall and actually Squeee’d at the new OPI colors (I got me a Thoroughly Modern Millie and something else I can’t remember) and also the holiday gift packs of the frou-frou hair products (every time I write that word now, I hear Esteban repeat ‘Product’ in his geek voice, as has been his habit of late) which left me hauling out the aforementioned two new OPIs, a Redken hair starch, and two Tigi styling things for $40. A quick stop into the Lanc’me counter scored another $20 lipstick, shade Sexy. And as I was limping out with my beautiful haul, I kept thinking’ wow, I have a 60 minute lunch and I just spent 60 dollars. And on Monday, it was triple that. It’s a good thing that I work, because if I had the time to actually shop, I would be a weapon of goddamned mass destruction.

When I came back, one of my coworkers was aghast that someone had just spent $12 for a tube of Mary Kay lipstick. I could only look at them and shake my head.

Amateurs. If they only knew about the $40 perfect pair of lips that required two tubes of Prescriptives (standard lipstick in the shade of Popular with Swoon lipgloss over it made your lips look like you’ve just been eating fresh strawberries. In France. Fed to you by a rogue peasant boy wearing breeches. Sultry breeches).

Note to parents: This is how people without children spend their time. Thinking too much about lipstick and nail polish. You’re jealous. Admit it.

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The Car Salesman story

Tuesday, November 4, 2003

Car People
I’m just your average guy. Not much to look at, not much in the whole brains department. I ranked 56th in my high school class of 112. That is pretty much me right there, squatting in the middle of things, trying not to get noticed too much. I had a job after school in the parts department of a local car dealership, Andersen Chevrolet, and when I graduated, it seemed pretty logical to stay at Andersen with the intent to work my way up to selling. Anyone can tell that selling is where the money was from looking at the salesmen, with their giant class rings and wardrobe from the Penneys in Iowa City. Selling cars seemed like it suited me just right, but my boss Gus didn’t think so. “Bobby”, he said, “there’s people people and then there’s car people. You and me is car people, Bobby.” He’d usually pat his meaty paw on my shoulder right then and it would be hot and, more often than not, moist from sweat. His father is our town’s butcher and runs Lieke’s & Sons Meat, only the Sons part is Gus’ brother and not Gus. We didn’t talk about that fact very much, although in some ways, car parts are a lot like cow parts. It all fits together and makes the animal go. I was pretty happy at Andersen Chevrolet. Once I caught myself getting misty-eyed with pride when I saw a Chevy commercial and that “Like a Rock” song playing and knowing that in some small way, that was what I did, made America strong like a rock, one shock and strut at a time. And walking in from the employee parking lot, smelling that mixture of WD-40, Turtlewax and wet pavement while the little triangular plastic flags snapped at me from above? That was just about my favorite part of the day. But three years after graduation, I was still sitting on the stool behind the parts counter, hunting and pecking parts numbers into an ancient greasy computer for $6 an hour. One night, after John Madden made X’s and slashes on the screen on Monday Night Football, I was a little antsy, so I stayed up late and watched a show by a man with enormous teeth, trying to sell you his self-empowerment program. Right then, I decided that there was no reason that I couldn’t be following my dreams and start right away. So the next day, I wandered down the road to Andersen’s main competitor, Rivers Executive Auto. “Bobby,” Mr. Carleton Rivers Senior said. “I’ve been doing business in this town for thirty-two years and I can see you have potential.” He hired me right then for selling cars three days a week and Saturdays. REA, as we always called it, was a class act. The lot was filled with lots of imports. If you wanted an Audi or a BMW, you went to talk to someone at Rivers. The general feeling at Andersen was that the people at Rivers were a bunch of pricks and assholes. That was the punch line to this great joke that Zubby in the detailing shop told, but damned if I can remember how the rest of that went. Something about a proctologist I think. I’m real bad at remembering jokes, to be honest. I have three nice clean ones that I tell during awkward pauses during a sale, because every good salesman should know some jokes. I memorized them from the Reader’s Digest. I keep trying to memorize more, but it just seems like my brain can only hold onto three at any one time. Most people don’t buy more than one car a year, so that works out just fine. And after two weeks, I sold my first car, a 97 dark green Volkswagon Passat to Mr. Richard Davis, the head of Tuckerton Mutual. It was a present for his daughter who just graduated with really good grades from Princeton. Rich, as he asked me to call him, clapped me on the back just like we were on a golf course or something and the best of buddies and it was the greatest feeling in all the world, knowing that you’re finally doing something you’ve always wanted to do. I think I finally understood what Brett Favre feels like when he throws a killer pass, or maybe Dale Earnhardt Jr. when he rounds the last lap. And to think that I had that infomercial and Mr. Rivers to thank for it. Otherwise I would have been still sitting behind the parts counter down the street, listening to Diego tell stories that started “So I was doing her from behind.” Which were always pretty good stories, though, as you can well imagine. Mr. Rivers gave me a victory present’that’s what he called it’when I sold that Passat, and said “Good job, Bobby! Keep it up!” which made me feel pretty good. It was a nice silver key chain with the REA logo on it. I don’t use it, because I’d just scratch it up, but it looks real nice. That’s one of the things I like about Mr. Rivers. He never treats you like you’re his employee, but instead like we’re all part of the Rivers family. That’s what he says, even. “You’re part of our family now.” Just like any family, there were family politics. The sales team consisted of a team of eight, including five guys that collectively had been selling automobiles since Ford was playing with Tinker toys. We called them the Poker Gang, because they played poker every Tuesday night and came in on Wednesday mornings looking grey and smelling like sausage and cigars. The other three of us just sort of orbited around their little group, which was fine with us. We all got along pretty well, for the most part. Mr. Rivers is partially retired and mostly only comes in on Fridays to sign our paychecks, so his son Carleton Rivers The Second walks around, acting like he’s the boss. In my opinion, he’s not my boss until a ‘II’ appears in the name on the dotted line of my paycheck. Carleton The Second never says that we’re part of his family. Or at least he doesn’t say that to me. I think because I accidentally called him Junior during my first week. I had heard a bunch of the guys in the garage call him Chuck Junior and assumed that was what he preferred until everyone heard me call him that and started laughing behind coughs. Carleton The Second pretended not to notice me for a long time. But then a few days after I sold the Passat and got my victory present, Carleton The Second strode toward me across the lot, looking all the world like a bull going for a red flag. “Bobby? Hi, can I talk with you for a minute?” he said, like he was my boss or something. “Sure can! For as many minutes as you want!” I grinned a little but Carleton the Second didn’t smile back, so then I stopped. “I saw that you sold the 97 Passat to Rick Davis the other day. How did that go?” I broke out in a big smile. “Oh, it went great! It was a graduation present for his daughter and I think she’s going to like it.” He looked up at me from under a peaked eyebrow, sort of sideways. “Did you happen to see the Lexus he drove up in?” I nodded warily, starting to feel like this was a test. “Well, I was watching that sale and I noticed you took him right over to the older imports.” “He said he wanted a used car, something that was young feeling for his daughter but also safe and moderately priced. And that wasn’t brown.” “Ok, ok, but you walked him right by a Lincoln LS and the Saab 9S. Here’s the thing, Bobby, Rick Davis is one of the wealthiest men in town. There’s no reason on earth that he should have walked off this lot with anything less than a 20K sale.” I wanted to say something about how Mr. Davis liked to be called Rich and not Rick because it was bugging me the way that Carleton The Second was acting like he was Mr. Davis’s best drinking buddy. Instead I finally ventured “But he specifically said he wanted something moderately priced for his daughter. And he was real happy, too!” “Yeah, I’ll bet he was… you talked him into saving ten grand. Here’s the thing… consider the person, consider the clues that they give you. He drove onto the lot in a Lexus. He was wearing an expensive watch. That means you can push to a higher end, and that means a bigger commission for you. I know this was your first sale, so it’s no big deal… it’s just something to think about in the future, ok?” I was about to say something about how it wasn’t right to force someone to spend more than they want to spend just because they make more money, but Carleton The Second just grinned an automatic deal closer grin and then walked with long strides back across the lot as though he had just given me the best gift ever. After that, he always acted real helpful. Constructive criticism, I think he called it one time in a sales team meeting. Carleton The Second always liked to use those kinds of words, like “goal building” and “building our business,” which was dumb because he was very fond of reminding us how it was his business and not ours. It’s not that I didn’t pull my weight on the lot. I landed potential buyers, but lots of times, I would come in for my afternoon shift and there I’d see the nice couple with the baby that I had talked to the day before and had practically test drove every car on the lot. But there they were talking to Ira Stone, one of the Poker Gang. Then once I talked to a real nice young guy who was looking to buy his first Beemer. After I sold him a nice silver 2002 524, Carleton The Second pulled me aside again and told me that I had just snaked Ira on the deal and that it was a low down trick and he won’t put up with such things in his establishment. So he gave the commission to Ira and there Ira sat, with his own commissions and also a bunch of my commissions and there I sat, barely making my draw. I didn’t say anything to him about it though. Just got more careful about reminding the unsures that they should come back and talk to me, Bobby Gershack. It was the week before Thanksgiving, a blustery Friday that couldn’t decide if it wanted to snow or not. Car salesmen hate snow days because it means that each and every speck of snow needs to be cleared off the cars. Snow on the cars is customer repellent. I suppose they didn’t want to be reminded that they were freezing their tuckus’s off while car shopping, but to the car world, it means that the sales staff would be outside with chapped wrists and wet gloves, knocking snow off of everything and then sweeping the snow off the blacktop so the customers wouldn’t have to tromp through a drift to check out the latest Jaguar. Mr. Rivers and Carleton the Second were off at a convention in Las Vegas, enjoying the fine desert sun. Mr. Rivers allowed the employees with the most seniority to take turns being in charge, which meant that the Poker group had a rotating turn at the helm. It was Ira’s turn this time. Most of the sales staff were huddled under the overhang in front of the showroom, speculating whether it would snow or not and if it would snow before the end of the day, or overnight, which meant that Saturday’s morning crew would be out there, soft brushes in hand. I was one of the Saturday early guys, so you can pretty much believe that I was sitting there, wishing the guys who had the afternoon shift would stop their cackling. Cheri, the only woman employed by REA who wasn’t a receptionist, took a long drag of her Virginia Slim and sent me a sympathetic look. I rolled my eyes back at her and she smiled back. I liked Cheri, not just because she laughed through her role as the butt of the majority of the Poker Gang’s jokes, but also because she taught me about how the hardest part of selling cars wasn’t the selling cars part but other things. Things like Carleton the Second. Like Ira. ‘Would you look at that?’ one of the Poker Gang guffawed. ‘Look at da wittle girl! She’s my granddaughter’s age!’ I squinted out across the rooftops and spotted a girl purposefully weaving her way between the cars. ‘Granddaughter!’ laughed his buddy. ‘I’d say Great Granddaughter, jackass. But I’ll bet that she’d pass for my niece!’ A wave of laughter erupted at this, another of their Poker jokes, I suspect. Ira straightened up his tie and pulled his hands out of his gloves. ‘Well, we’ll see if maybe she wants to sit on my knee.’ He raised and eyebrow at his cronies and then laughed at his own joke until his face turned a little red and some sputum hit the pavement and blended with the salt crystals that someone had spread in case it snowed. ‘Bobby’s turn,’ Cheri spoke up nonchalantly from behind the pack. They stopped and looked at her quietly. ‘It’s Bobby’s turn.’ She sounded for all the world like a preschool teacher correcting a rambunctious group on the playground. Ira regarded me and then shrugged. ‘Go on, boy! Ain’t going to sell nothing to her anyway!’ I slipped my hands out of my gloves and into my pockets so they’d be warm but not sweaty when I shook her hand. I found her standing next to a silver 2000 Mercedes E55, one of the more expensive cars on the lot. It was a lease return that Carleton The Second had picked up from an auction in Florida. Half the sales team was certain it was never going to sell in Iowa. ‘Hiya there!’ I said to her back as she peered into the car windows. Her white fleece hat had ears, like a kitty cat. She jumped backwards, her backpack purse sliding off her shoulder, and looked up at me. She was beautiful, the sort of sad delicate beauty of girls who spend too much time in libraries, breathing dust and not getting enough sun. She had blonde hair the color of corn silk, tucked neatly behind her ears, in which sat earrings that seemed too big to be real diamonds. The way her clothes were put together, I guessed that the earrings were probably real. But it was her eyes that made me stop short. The color reminded me of a bowl that my Aunt Trudy got my grandmother from England, that was all light blue with white raised plants and people on it, but it was more than that. Once I remember hearing Diego talk about the water off Puerto Rico and how just staring out at the ocean would hypnotize him and make him excited to live and at the same time feel like sinking down into it until he hit the sandy bottom. And that’s the way I felt right then, as though I could have stood there looking into her eyes forever. ‘Hi!’ She gave me an immediate unguarded smile. ‘I’m Bobby.’ ‘I’m Katie.’ ‘Hi Katie,’ I said automatically. ‘Hi Bobby.’ She watched me with those enormous blue eyes. We both stood there for a moment. I rocked on my heels and then remembered that the salesman was supposed to be in charge. ‘So, can I help you find anything?’ ‘Um’ well, I like this.’ Her face cast downward and was reflected in the tinted glass of the Benz. &AAkA7wC,AL0-Nice car. You have excellent taste.’ The corners of her mouth curled a little. ‘Actually, it’s not my taste really. My grandmother’ my grandmother used to have one very similar to this one.’ ‘Grandma had good taste then.’ ‘Well I loved it too,’ she added quickly. ‘She used to pick me up from school on Fridays and drive me home with the sunroof open. And I’d usually be so tired that I’d crash out in the backseat and have these incredible dreams. And then the car would pull up to a stop at the gate, it would wake me up.’ Her gaze drifted to the pinpoint where the road met the horizon beyond the cornfields, and in that moment, there was something there on her face, something frail and beautiful and ghostly hiding there, just beyond my reach. Her lips parted. Then she sighed, squinted and shrugged everything off. My hand wanted to touch her, wanted to light upon shoulder, maybe then graze up to her cheek and let my thumb brush away anything that might have fallen, but then I thought better of it and just stuck my hand in my pocket. She cleared her throat. ‘So, yeah, my father says that he’ll buy me whatever car I want. So, um–this one is nice.’ She allowed her face fall blank, her voice was completely dead. ‘Ok, yeah!’ I exclaimed, a little too loudly. ‘Would you like to take it for a test?’ She looked up at me and then smiled a perfect smile that reminded me of school pictures, her mouth moving but her eyes staying the same. ‘Perfect!’ ‘Ok, let me get the keys to open the box and then you can take her out.’ I spun on my heels and trotted back to the sales area, knowing that by rights, I should be going on the test drive with her. We’re supposed to go on test drives with anyone under thirty and any customer who comes in by themselves, but for some reason, I felt like I had to show her that I trusted her with this or she’d walk off the lot and I’d never see her again. ‘Perfect,’ I heard her say softly to no one. Two and a half hours later, Katie and the Benz hadn’t yet come back. Most test drives last about twenty minutes. It was four o’clock and the lot was about to close. Ira was furious. ‘What do you mean, you let her take the car! Just take it? You didn’t drive along with her!? You didn’t even get a copy of her driver’s license! You don’t even know her last name!’ Ira spat a bit on my REA jacket. While he had every reason to be angry, he really shouldn’t have been mad about the copy of the license. We were a small town dealership and very rarely took a photocopy of a driver’s license. Mr. Rivers thought it seemed unfriendly, but Ira was just looking for more things to scream, so I didn’t bring that up, just let him holler. ‘By rights we should call the police! Doesn’t matter, Junior’s going to be back from Vegas tomorrow. You’d better hope that’s a drive and ditch, boy-o! Because the only way you’re going to save your job is if that car ends up back here without a scratch.’ Ira stormed out the glass double doors of the show floor towards his ivory Town Car. ‘Don’t worry about it, Bobby. It happens to all of us,’ Cheri said softly behind me. ‘Has it happened to you?’ I asked her. ‘Well’ no.’ I heard her take a breath as though to say something else and then let it escape slowly. ‘Yeah’ that’s what I thought.’ ‘Listen, Bobby, Ira’s right. It’s probably a drive and ditch. It’s that time of year, you know, the college kids up at the University are pledging fraternities and sororities, that kind of thing. You know why there are no church bells in the entire county? Because every fall they get thrown over a bridge into the Iowa River. It’s a prank. Either that or the car might turn up in the lot sometime in the middle of the night. You know, like they wait for everyone to leave and then return it. Big joke, har har, it’s all just so they have something to tell their grandchildren. You’ll see, sweetie. It will be ok.’ ‘Carleton the Second is going to shit a bird. Absolutely shit a bird.’ I didn’t like to swear. My mom always told me that it was a sign of poor upbringing, but this seemed like a good time to do it and it made me feel an ounce better. ‘It will be ok,’ she repeated, but I don’t think even she believed it. I left the lot without saying anything. A slow light snow was falling with grey battleship clouds threatening more to come. The back of my throat burnt like old metal and rust and battery acid and yet sickeningly sweet like antifreeze. I took the long way home, between fields of finished sunflowers and walls of dried corn stalks. A stolen car! And it was my fault. There would be police in the morning. I was in trouble, no bones about it. I thought about my time at Andersen Chevrolet, about the parts department, about Gus saying that he and me, we were car people and not people people. And that’s the thing about cars… once you understood them, you knew what made them run and what things made them stop running. People, you just never could trust what you knew about them, not like cars. I thought about the night as it stretched out ahead of me. I’d get home, heat up a Hungry Man dinner, peel back the foil to expose the tater tots, and sit with a Miller High Life watching television. And I thought about how they’d probably make me clean the snow off the cars in the morning before they fired me. And that’s when I saw the Benz. The shape was unmistakable, a stylized lump of platinum having no rightful business among the yellow stalks of corn. And when I got close, I could see the windows all down. At first I worried that they were busted out, but that just seemed silly, thinking about the girl smashing out the windows. Unless she had been a decoy and had given the car to someone else. A boyfriend maybe. And I could see my dealer plate on the back with my neat “Bobby” written in Sharpee above the number. It just about broke my heart. I parked my truck next to the car. If I was lucky, it was a drive and ditch, like Ira had said, and the keys would be somewhere nearby. In fact, if I was real lucky, I could walk the cornfield and find them glittering within the tractor ruts before nightfall. Maybe she hadn’t thrown them too far. I had decided that she had been alone. It was a dare, maybe for a sorority. There couldn’t be a boyfriend. No. Not Katie. I hopped out of the truck, and groaned when I saw that the sunroof was open too. I wondered how long everything had been open. Had the snow fallen into a cold or a warm car? If the leather was ruined, it was just as bad as a stolen car as far as Carleton the Second was concerned. I stuck my head in the window and exhaled when I saw the keys dangling from the ignition like a lady’s earrings. On the front seat, her white kitty cat hat and backpack purse, open. And then a medicine bottle and a can of diet soda and a puff of wadded Kleenex. And that’s when I noticed that Katie was in the backseat. She was laying there, hands folded under her cheek, looking for all the world like a doll. I hung half in and out of the window, my fingers grasping the door, and held my breath, waiting for her chest to rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall, because she must have been only napping there on those fine leather seats, had to have been only napping. And when my lungs caught on fire, I took another gasp and held my breath again, counting to sixty in my head until my ears pounded. Then I exhaled. But she never stirred. No tiny sighs, no soft exhales, no goose bumps making the tiny blonde hairs of her arm stand up. Nothing. Snowflakes dusted her cheeks like tiny freckles and all I could think was that they should have been melted but they weren’t. It should have melted. My own arms were covered with pin prickles of ice water. She wasn’t napping. Maybe it had started out that way, but it wasn’t a nap any more. Somewhere in the distance, a train whistled in the thin light. I reached in through the window and opened the door softly, like I was worried about waking her up. A quick turn of the keys and the good old German engine came to life with a sotto voce growl. I clicked the car into reverse and pulled out slowly, feeling the stalks of corn brush against the undercarriage. I put it into drive and eased off the gravel onto the long grey ribbon of road before us. I thought about Katie. I thought about how sad she must have been when she walked onto the lot. I thought about how I had wanted to grab her right then, fold my arms around her and hold her while seven car salesmen watched from forty feet away. I thought about how the sunflower field looked like a choir of children, bowing their faces as I drove Katie past them. The railroad tracks ran parallel to the highway out of town. The whistle blasted a low dirge into the crisp air and my face froze in the wind from the open sunroof and we were nose and nose with the engine of the train, racing along at 45, 50, 55 and climbing. The late day sun was sinking down behind the skeletal black trees, turning all of the frost into magic and the train was blowing, clearing our path and I was thinking the Benz and me and Katie, we could just drive like this into forever.

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When integers attack

Monday, November 3, 2003

Esteban : So what did you do today?

Weetabix : I attempted to shop, but the leg is thwarting my shopping joy. I went to my favorite scrapbook store, oestensibly to buy a new black scrapbook for all of those pictures I took out of the sticky photoalbum while I was an invalid, but I didn’t find any I liked, so instead I bought a bunch of paper. Which is stupid, because I’ve got all of this actual art paper from real art stores and instead I keep getting suckered by the very beautiful printed fake ass art paper at the scrapbook store.

Esteban : Is that so bad? If it makes you happy?

Weetabix : No, it’s not so bad, it’s just that it doesn’t make me as happy as the art paper. And actually, for what you get, the art paper is significantly less expensive because you get a huge sheet for $4, whereas you get a 12×12 inch for $1. And it’s…

Esteban :This is a snobby thing again, isn’t it.

Weetabix : Um…Yeah. Yeah, totally. I hate the sincere kitsch of the scrapbooking stores. I hate the other shoppers who are wearing denim shirts that have been decorated with puff paint. I hate the minivans in the parking lot. But apparently, it is my kryptonite. I am powerless in the scrapbook store. And the women who work there… I doubt they could get jobs anywhere else. They don’t understand computers. They work at glacial speed. There was one person in front of me and it took the lady fifteen minutes to deal with both of us. So then I was cranky.

Esteban : You? Cranky?!

Weetabix : Ttthhbbt. Then I went to the mall so that I could use my Bath & Body Works coupons at the White Barn Candle place. They have a candle that smells like firewood that I love, but I didn’t buy it the first time I saw it.

Esteban : Why not? That’s unlike you.

Weetabix : Ok, this is stupid, but the demonstration models had a silver cover on the candles, but if you buy it, you don’t get the silver cover. It was only for the tester, apparently. So, if they hadn’t shown it with the silver cover, I wouldn’t have known about it, but because there it was, now I wanted the silver cover and felt like I was losing out.

Esteban : Wow… this is a whole insight into the mind of a woman… right here. I’ll bet the marketing people at Bath and Whosits have no idea.

Weetabix : No, I’m sure they don’t. But then I just decided that I wanted it bad enough that I didn’t care about the silver cover and was just going to buy it anyway. So I’m standing there, and there are two women who are loving the new snazzy scents and they just blurt out to me that the candles must be more expensive because of the silver cover and I said “Well, you know, you don’t get the cover.” and they didn’t believe me, and found two boxes which were open and had silver covers on them. But then one of the Bath And Body Works ladies came over and confirmed that you didn’t get the cover. So right away, they snatched up the two in the open boxes with the covers. And thanked me for helping them.

Esteban : So you didn’t get one.

Weetabix : They weren’t firewood scented.. they were like orange something something. The saleslady said “Thanks for making those sales for me!” so I pouted and said “I want a cover. Can I buy one? Do you have extras?” so she went off to look. Meanwhile, I wandered over to a holiday display and was huffing some new candle scents and then a different customer looks at me and says “Wow! Did you know they had Creamy Nutmeg?! Smell this, it’s really different!” So I did, but was weirded out because it was like I was suddenly everyone’s Candle Shopping Buddy, and then I felt like I had to reciprocate so I offered her a sniff of the one I was holding, which was Cinnamon Vanilla.

Esteban : I just had this weird mind image of both of you rubbing the candles on your crotches.Weetabix: (long pause) Um… Yeaaaaaaah. Esteban : I told you it was weird. Weetabix: ANYWAY, she freaked out because she loved it so much, so then I was helping her find the size of Cinnamon Vanilla when the saleslady walks up and says “Wow, you should get a job here!”

Esteban : Yeah, I can really see you hawking candles.

Weetabix : I know… zero interest. But then she does this weird stealth hand off of a silver candle lid and says “Here, if anyone asks about it, tell them Steff the manager said you could have this.” So, yeah, I got a silver candle lid.

Esteban : Wow… that was like a mini Christmas special.

Weetabix : About the importance of being altruistic. And getting free stuff.

Esteban : I’m getting misty.

Weetabix : But here’s what I’m wondering. If you had a choice between spending $35 and getting $10 off, or spending $50 and getting $15 off, which is the better deal.

Esteban : Hmmm… I think they’re both the same.

Weetabix : I don’t think they’re the same, but I think they’re close. That was my coupon… I ended up spending $35 and getting $10 off, but the coupon said “or better yet, spend $50 and get $15 off”, but I don’t think it was necessarily better.

Esteban : I think most people, including you, would automatically decide that you’re getting more off, therefore it’s a better deal, and spend more money. It’s interesting that you didn’t.

Weetabix : It was the leg. I was cranky already and therefore very suspect. But I’m not sure if I was right.

Esteban : Well, let’s see, 15 goes into 50 three times with a remainder, so it’s something like 35%.

Weetabix : Um, no… it’s 30%.

Esteban : That’s what I said… 30% with a remainder.

Weetabix : No, it’s not. It’s 30% exactly. You have to divide 15 by 50.

Esteban : That doesn’t even make sense. You don’t divide the big one into the small one. Why would you do it that way?

Weetabix : I don’t know, but that’s how I remember it, because it seems wrong. You have to go against your instinct.

Esteban : Well, I get the right answer my way, so it must be right.

Weetabix : No it isn’t! You can’t have a remainder and then just lop it off! It’s 30%! And I can prove it because if you double 50, it’s 100, and if you double 15, it’s 30. Therefore, 30%!

Esteban : What kind of crazy logic is that?

Weetabix : I don’t know… but it makes more sense to me than dividing. It’s shopping math, which isn’t scary like real math.

Esteban : I don’t understand how yours is right and mine is wrong.

Weetabix : Think of it this way… if you had $1.50, and wanted candy but all the candy cost 50 cents, how many pieces of candy could you get?

Esteban : Three.

Weetabix : Same thing. Just move the decimal. 30%.

Esteban : My answer is good enough for standing in line at the store!

Weetabix : But it’s not right! Math is an exact science.

Esteban : Why did you ask me if you already knew the answer.

Weetabix : Because trying to figure out the 10 and 35 makes my eyes cross. I think it’s like 29% but then the whole “better yet” thing makes me think I’m wrong.

Esteban : Ten goes into 35, three times with a remainder.

Weetabix : I told you, it doesn’t work that way. Your equation is wrong.

Esteban : I’m solving for x.

Weetabix : What? X! That doesn’t even make sense.

Esteban : Neither does your whole double everything and then subtract voodoo. If mine doesn’t make sense, why does it work?

Weetabix : It DOESN’T work. You get a remainder. It’s not even right.

Esteban : It’s close!

Weetabix : It’s only close in this instance. It wouldn’t be close if you had other numbers.

Esteban : Oh yeah? Give me two numbers where it doesn’t work.

Weetabix : I can’t.

Esteban : Why not?

Weetabix : Because my head is all full.

(stunned introspective silence)

Weetabix : You know what?

Esteban : What?

Weetabix : We are both apparently very stupid.

Esteban : That we are.

Weetabix : This is worse than the time that I learned that I earned a bachelor’s degree in English Lit without ever having read anything meaningful. I mean, this is fourth grade math and it leaves us completely incapacitated.

Esteban : That it does.

Weetabix : This pretty much proves right here that Darwin totally had his head up his ass. How did we make it to adulthood? I mean, seriously. How?

Esteban : Calculators.

Weetabix : I love calculators.

Esteban : And computers. Computers with calculator programs. And easy interfaces with bright colors and big letters.

Weetabix : And you know what’s weird?

Esteban : Hmmm?

Weetabix : Along with the knowledge that we are apparently both retarded, came an intense craving for Ritz crackers with aerosol cheese.

Esteban : Mmmmm… cheese that squirts. Them’s good eating.

Weetabix : Let’s never talk about math again.

Esteban : Agreed. 100 percent.

Weetabix : Ouch. Percents.

Esteban : With a remainder.

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No, not one of those “Which Powderpuff girl are you” things

Friday, October 31, 2003

This entry will be gone by tomorrow, but DUDE! I scored 99.5 on this mofo! (It helped that I got the bonus round right… although I think it would have been higher… it didn’t total points for some correct answers because I had spaces after the word… be careful!)

Quite obviously, I do not listen to new music enough.

The Donnas? Who? And what’s all this Sean Jean Paul Sean stuff I hear the kids going on about? Eh?

Let me know your score in the comments. And don’t cheat!

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Greyhounds don’t float on no water

Thursday, October 30, 2003

I simply cannot get over how different my days are without another person in the house. It’s almost like my mind is quieter. I remembered to take the DVDs back to the store. I return my ice packs to the freezer the second they go limp. I bought some lovely Bosc pears and arranged them in our normally stark fruit bowl. I had time to take all of the garbage to the curb’ even the stuff hanging out in the garage. I wrote last night, transcribing and editing the car salesman story from the handwritten stuff in my journal. I have exactly three days to get it done and revised and ready to hand in for workshopping. That’s a bit scary, right there. I’m still tempted to hand in the Baby Story and be a cheater.

I have never lived alone. I directly went from my mother’s house to a psycho bitch roommate to living in sin with Esteban. Wait, that’s not entirely true. For one semester at college, I had a private dorm room. By outward appearances, it was lovely’ a cool loft bed, a mauve rug with coordinating bedspread and beaded pillows, Chinese paper lanterns everywhere strung with white Christmas lights, a mahogany louvered room divider, a nice reading nook with an $8 Goodwill chair covered with a $39 Pier One throw, and black and white photography prints on the walls.

Looking back, it was actually one of the loneliest periods of my life.

I had just broken up with the hottie and most of my friends were living off campus. The girls I knew in the dorm thought I was an idiot for breaking up with the hot blonde who played guitar in their favorite cover band (whenever I read that phrase, my mind automatically continues it ‘Crystal ship’ they do a Doors show, you’d be really impressed, in fact, it goes a little like this&AO8AvwC9AO8AvwC9- The Dead Milkmen broke my brain.), so it was nothing but cold shoulder. My other group of friends had all pledged Phi Omega. I had declined the invitation (too busy with the student government thing and also dating two boys) in the fall and by spring, they were all completely absorbed in their own affairs. Likewise, I drove home most weekends to hang out with Esteban, therefore I had removed myself from an enormous part of college social life. Also, I took a meal plan that was not centered around the cafeteria, therefore there was no mealtime bonding over the mysterious Salisbury steak.

In essence, I had voluntarily cast myself in the role of commuter student who happened to sleep in a dorm four days of the week. And for the most part, I was ok with this arrangement. You would have thought that given my solitude, I would have been pulling A’s in all of my classes, but quite the opposite. I rarely went to classes. I had a horrible schedule that semester, full of classes that I couldn’t stand (hi, advanced algebra? You suck!). Ironically, I was kicking ass at my job on student government mostly because I didn’t want to go back to my miserable little concrete cell. I remember at least one week where I drove back to school and then did nothing all week but work my office hours and go to my meetings and drive around to the old cemeteries on the Wisconsin River and stare out at the wide expanses of water after which I then drove back home on Friday afternoon. In fact, at the end of the semester, when I panicked and went to my Chemistry professor and asked him for an incomplete, he told me that he’d never even seen me in class (not entirely the truth, but very shamefully close). I actually WAS attending Algebra classes, but despite my best efforts, it eluded my poor right brain and I kept getting D’s and F’s on the tests. In the end, I F-bombed everything but my English class, lost my all of my scholarships and free ride for poor performance, and moved back to Green Bay dejected and feeling like a complete failure.

And to this day, I don’t know exactly what happened. I mean, I can repeat the facts, the history, the dates, but I don’t understand why it went down that way. If you think it sounds unlike me, you’re right. It just doesn’t fit with my type A personality. I sort of think I was depressed, but I don’t really know why. Sometimes I think it was because I was left to my own devices and became this effervescent mushroom, a sort of weird Suzy Coed Jekyll and Hyde. I was still doing the dances, the fund raisers, the weekly RHA governance meetings, making posters and the like, and yet there was just this longing to get back to room 164 and sit in the semi-darkness and read anything but my textbooks. I still don’t know what to make of it all, but it makes me sad to think about it, to think of how much longer it took to get back into a good school because of that academic stumble, of how I now owe the government a luxury automobile (imported even!) because the scholarship people gave their money to someone more deserving, of how much of everything that was wasted by that stupid five months.

Stay in school, kids. Don’t be a dumbass like Weetabix. And also? If you’re all artsy fartsy, get a damn Algebra tutor instead of the expensive calculator. (I had to retake Advanced Algebra to graduate, so I got a tutor and suddenly had the magical click happen in my brain and got the second highest grade in the class. Not to mention graduated with honors and with a distinction in my major. Yay! Happy ending!)

So yeah, the alone thing. I’m still not sure what to make of it. When I tag along with Esteban on trips, or make my own solitary ventures out into the world, I am perfectly happy to wander around singularly exploring. I can eat in a restaurant by myself without being too upset (as long as I have a book). And these short bursts of Home Alone-isms’ it’s sort of refreshing in a way, like writing with your left hand. But all the time? I don’t know that I could handle it. I think it would creep under my skin. I think I’d get sad. I think I’d end up sitting in the dark, listening to The Cure’s ‘Disintegration’ and subsisting on just tea with equal until the tell-tale dark circles appeared under my eyes and I started to write really bad poetry with slant rhymes and images of pasty white girls in Victorian dresses..

I got a flu shot today at work and am pretty sure that I’m going to die from it (because what if I’m allergic to eggs? Wait, this sounds familiar. Oh yeah. It is.) and if I die alone, who will stop Tilly from eating the face off my still warm corpse? Sure, I’m getting incredible sleep in an empty bed right now, but there are giggle fits, no mini-blast furnace raising the temperature under the covers to 140 degrees. I’m the only one there to appease the cat and thus when I have nasty cramps, there will be seventeen pounds standing on the small of my back in the middle of the night, kneading it like bread dough.

Homer’s love interest Candy in John Irving’s The Cider House Rules said that she didn’t do well alone. I think that might be my problem too. I don’t do well by myself. I’m not afraid of it… I just think it’s like duck walking a long distance. Not pretty.

Ok, enough with the Happy Hour at the Estrogen Martini Bar shit. Esteban’s coming home tomorrow, so perhaps I’ll stop being such a head case.

One of my other weird solo home things: since Esteban isn’t in the bedroom trying to sleep when I wake up in the morning, it means that I can turn on the overhead light while I get ready, which is a real treat, because normally I get dressed in the dark (yes! It takes quite a talent to look as good as I do considering that little fact, non?) . And then two days ago, it occurred to me that I could also turn on the television as I got ready (one of my favorite things to do in hotel rooms) and watch music videos. And this morning? The Madonna and Britney song, where they’re sort of dancing but mean weird angry dancing like in the ‘Beat It’ video but also lesbo-yay. And then the simulating masturbation with the cane?

What is up with the cane, Madonna? Did you break your hip? Maybe you shouldn’t be doing the weird acrobatics around that empty bed frame (which were, um, not sexy). I really care about you, Madonna. You were the first concert I ever attended and you allowed me to say that I saw the Beastie Boyz before anyone even knew who they were. We have a history. We were both like a virgin (except, well, I was probably a little more like one than you were, but you know). And I totally understood the whole MTV music awards kiss. I mean, shee-it, Madonna, I EXPECT the unexpected with you. The tranny in the Justify My Love video with the long fingernails? Cutting edge. The burning crosses in Like a Prayer? Beautiful. Paddling the Chihuahua dog in ‘Human Nature’? You just have layers that go on forever. But this new video? First you’re at a club and then wandering around a condemned building with crazy lathe mazes and then a room that has trees with fallen leaves in it? And it makes you rub your cane on your can and then do some more dancing that is fighting and also somehow yoga? I think it might be time for an intervention, Madonna. I’m just saying.

Go talk to the boys from Outkast. Their ‘Hey Ya’ video has made me want to have their babies. And also involved a cane, but did not make me squeamish.

Appropo of nothing, when my leg wasn’t all wacked, I could totally do the Madonna Gap yoga pose, but not the Missy E split. I haven’t yet figured out what that means, but I have a feeling it means something.

You can use the following line to pencil in your own joke about having ones legs open:

I got an email confirmation from a reputable source that the Verizon Guy is batting for the other team. My Can Do boyfriend! This is almost worse than losing Starbucks Guy!

Pardon me, I must now go drop my cell phone in the river. Followed by a single red rose. And a single bitter tear that I was not born with a penis.

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Blahety Blah Blah Fishcakes

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

I had class last night and was able to shake my apathy, although it’s hard when I’m essentially in an Intro To Fiction class with people who’ve never taken a writing workshop before. We talked about theme last night, something I loathe to discuss. The concept of theme, I feel, is completely attributed to the reader. It’s such an English Majory thing that it makes my teeth itch. If a writer decides that they want to write something about desolation (which, by the way, is arguably the theme of the car salesman story I’m currently working on) and then sets about thinking up characters and a setting and a plot and whatnot, then they’re probably going to result in a lousy story. Above all else, there should be a story. If you have to think about the theme beforehand, then your story isn’t a very strong one. Which brought a discussion of how much you should reveal to the reader and how much you can demand from them and I just shake my head, not that I’m so much better of a writer, but I honestly don’t even think about such things. I never am conscious of how much I demand from my reader or how subtle I am. I just write. Just write. Just write. I just wanted to scream it to everyone. Just write, God damn it. Stop thinking and just write. But I should listen to my own advice. So I did, and wrote some more of my car salesman story, the end part that I’ve already got figured out inside my head, and felt lost in the loops and swirls of the black ink and irritated by the talking going on around me and reminded myself that yes, yes, I CAN do it again, at least one more time. At least for now.

And then we read “Hills Like White Elephants” by Hemingway (who is probably on my short list of Authors I Do Not Care For, however, if you want a demonstration of artful dialogue, that story is it). And someone thought that the man wanted the girl to get breast implants. Because that was all the rage in the 1930’s. And then a boy (I wanted to use the term ‘guy’ here, but I doubt he is even shaving on a regular basis yet) stated that in the 30’s, women had no rights and she would have automatically caved to the man’s will, so that wasn’t realistic. Yes, little man, the personalities of women only turned on with the advent of the birth control pill. Until then we were just pretty little automatons with nice boobies for your pleasure. Can I get you a cigar and a brandy, my love?

Breast implants. Seriously. I think I saw my own brain with the furious rolling of my eyes. I wonder at times why I’m even trying to do this whole graduate school thing, since I’d end up getting a job teaching little zygotes and explaining to them that Jonathon Swift wasn’t REALLY suggesting that the rich eat the Irish babies and no, Jane Austen did not totally copy Emma from the movie “Clueless”. But in reality, I love words too much. I get slightly high during every class, thinking about what words can do and how impossible life would be without them. And even as much as talking about theme bothers the hell out of me, it reminds me how passionate I really am about the topic. And it’s hard to be apathetic when you’re telling a room of undergrads that if they bother to think about theme before they write a story, they’re just wasting their time. I’m probably going to make a really awful lit professor.

But on the up note, it turned out that we didn’t have a story due last night, but in fact, next Tuesday. So I don’t have to cheat and turn in the freshly revised Baby Story (which has now been titled “Where She Was”, posted here for 24 hours due to the pleas on the comments section… I feel like Marie Antoinette… Let them eat bad short fiction!)*, so I have a reprieve and am determined to finish my car salesman story. Mostly because I am in love with ending so much that it actually hurts. And that, I think, is why I have to write. Right there. Because I’m afraid of what might happen if I didn’t let them get out.

Thank you for bearing with my existential mini-crisis these last few days. And now we’ll return to our normal Dumber Than A Box of Rocks programming, already in progress.

Dear Internet Connection At My House,

I miss you! Where did you go! Why do you flake out whenever Esteban leaves the state? I don’t understand the DNS and the firewall. You have me at your mercy! Come back! I’ll lick you all over and rub you on my naked body, I promise!

No, really!
Weetabix

Dear Ricky Fitts,

I love you!

Weet

Dear Starting Over,

You’re so wrong, you’re right. Congratulations, I am totally your bitch.

Yours truly,
Weetabix

PS. If you make me cry when someone leaves the house this week, I’m going to be so pissed.

Dear Anderson Cooper, Verizon Guy, and Henry Rollins,

In the past few weeks, several jealous people have vocally doubted your sexual orientation. This is just to let you know that I refuse to believe them and you’re still my Silver Fox Boyfriend, my Can Do Boyfriend, and my Scary Punk Tatooed Yet Sensitive Spoken Word Boyfriend, respectively.

Kisses on your naughty bits,
Weet

Dear Boat Trip,

Please disregard .000001% of your video rental totals from last weekend. I sent my spouse out to the video store without a list. He didn’t realize.

Sincerely,
Weetabix

Dear Jessica Simpson,

Yours truly,
Weetabix

Dear Wisconsin Winter,

You fucker.

Sincerely,
Weetabix

*Except that I decided to pull it after 8 hours. Because I said so.

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