4.28.2010
you know you're tired
When your dog wakes you up barking in the morning and you lay down in her dog bed with her to doze off again.
4.26.2010
Project Runway binge: coping with stress
I can't make up my mind whether I'm fine, as my exterior calm suggests, or so deeply stressed that the panic is simply gasping for air under ten tons of to-do lists and can't make a noise. Last Wednesday I told I felt really good. I had a slick spreadsheet of details to accomplish but most were final touches for the wedding, some of them almost fun. More worrying than the wedding was work.
The tour for the summer has been slower in coming together than usual and by now I'd expect to have put in 4-6 weeks of planning. As of last week I'd done next to nothing. It isn't my fault or anyone's in particular, it just IS. And I was starting to think that I wouldn't get the info I needed to start until the week or day of the wedding. I would be expected to be on, available, and in overdrive and I would be distracted, to say the least.
The good news is I have now started working on the tour and am thankful to have this week to get as much done as possible. The bad news is that the day after I waxed so positive about my state of mind, I developed a jackhammer of a headache that all but forced me to lay on the couch and watch ten consecutive episodes of Project Runway.
p.s. So pleased that Seth Aaron won. And does anyone have Anthony's digits because I want to be his friend.
It was suggested to me that the headache was stress-related and that may well be true because what other kind of headache doesn't respond to Tylenol, Excedrin Migraine, coffee, water, snacks and ten hours of Project Runway?
The day after that my Project Runway binge I was back to normal. I woke early, spent a few blurry hours wandering around the Internet before attacking my lists with renewed vigor. I then largely took the weekend off and have been slammed ever since Monday. And that's where I'm like I am REALLY straddling the line that separates calm and cool from edgy and self-destructive. I'm obsessing about taking things to Goodwill and it took seven days of broken deadlines for me to pick a procession song for the ceremony and I might be drinking more wine at night than medically advised but overall, I'm good (ish) (I think).
I'm thrilled to imagine so many people I love in one place at one time, a remarkable thing in that my crowd has always been so spread out. And I'm psyched that my wedding dress came back de-egged: the yellow is now a dark charcoal grey. And I know that the tour will come together because it must. There is no alternative. It's possible that what I told people last year - that I'd be able to plan a wedding and a tour at the same time - is actually true.
The tour for the summer has been slower in coming together than usual and by now I'd expect to have put in 4-6 weeks of planning. As of last week I'd done next to nothing. It isn't my fault or anyone's in particular, it just IS. And I was starting to think that I wouldn't get the info I needed to start until the week or day of the wedding. I would be expected to be on, available, and in overdrive and I would be distracted, to say the least.
The good news is I have now started working on the tour and am thankful to have this week to get as much done as possible. The bad news is that the day after I waxed so positive about my state of mind, I developed a jackhammer of a headache that all but forced me to lay on the couch and watch ten consecutive episodes of Project Runway.
p.s. So pleased that Seth Aaron won. And does anyone have Anthony's digits because I want to be his friend.
It was suggested to me that the headache was stress-related and that may well be true because what other kind of headache doesn't respond to Tylenol, Excedrin Migraine, coffee, water, snacks and ten hours of Project Runway?
The day after that my Project Runway binge I was back to normal. I woke early, spent a few blurry hours wandering around the Internet before attacking my lists with renewed vigor. I then largely took the weekend off and have been slammed ever since Monday. And that's where I'm like I am REALLY straddling the line that separates calm and cool from edgy and self-destructive. I'm obsessing about taking things to Goodwill and it took seven days of broken deadlines for me to pick a procession song for the ceremony and I might be drinking more wine at night than medically advised but overall, I'm good (ish) (I think).
I'm thrilled to imagine so many people I love in one place at one time, a remarkable thing in that my crowd has always been so spread out. And I'm psyched that my wedding dress came back de-egged: the yellow is now a dark charcoal grey. And I know that the tour will come together because it must. There is no alternative. It's possible that what I told people last year - that I'd be able to plan a wedding and a tour at the same time - is actually true.
4.20.2010
laughing quietly to myself
About how after watching House Hunters International last night, Matthew and I both want to move to Panama.
4.16.2010
Lasik round 2
So it seems, as far as my eyes are concerned, that I'm out of the woods. I had my second round of Lasik surgery two days ago.
I was talking to Sunny the night before I went under the laser for the second time. I told her how the first round back in January worked well on the left eye but not so much on the right. I can read and use the computer, everything close up is great but long distances and low light are hard. So I haven't liked driving at night and my depth perception is janky. Oh, and grocery stores. Grocery stores are a mess.
"It is so hard not to knock over the pyramid of cereal boxes," I said. All the different colors and signs and displays confuse me and I walk around squinting and blinking, trying to tell what's what.
According to my doctor, my right eye was regressing. My right eye had been trying to grow its cornea back to its former curvature, the curvature that made it nearly legally blind in the first place. WHAT A JERK.
"But it's okay," I said to Sunny, cautiously preparing myself for failure, "Even if my right eye doesn't get totally fixed, I'm still much better off than I was before. I could wake up without glasses in the woods now and get out without being eaten by a bear!"
Because this is a very likely situation.
"Well, with your left eye," she clarified.
"You're right. My right eye would lead me straight into the den but my left eye would get me out."
Here's the thing about my second corrective surgery or "enhancement" as they called it at the doctor's office:
Surgery #1 was a procedure called IntraLase and it was bladeless and all-laser. It was very early in the morning so I was deliriously tired AND they gave me Valium so I was what we would call relaxed. I was nodding off in the cushy little pre-op waiting room when the nurse put numbing drops in my eyes and led me into surgery. They taped my eyelids back and propped my eye open with an eye speculum. It was at this point, I swear to God, that a song came on the radio, Blinded By The Light by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. Are you serious?
Blinded by the light
revved up like a deuce
another runner in the night
I didn't know what that means but through the haze, I knew that it was deeply funny.
They told me to keep still and to keep watching the orange dot, a pinhole of a light from the laser machine. I had no problem whatsoever doing this, I was chill. Even when the laser started making a zapping noise and I smelled something burning - my EYE - I really didn't care. Evidently I respond well to Valium.
This time around I expected the same. In fact, I thought it would be better because I knew more and had already been through it. I knew I would be terrified of getting shower water in my eyes in the first few days after surgery so I took extra care to do my hair on the day of in hopes that it would look cute if I didn't wash it for a day or two.
Kind of embarrassing to admit but true.
"Your hair looks really good today," Matthew said in the waiting room.
"Oh? Thanks," I tried to be nonchalant.
They called me back to the exam rooms to run a few final tests. At my appointment the previous week, they couldn't get my eye to dilate so this time they gave me Valium (sweet!) to relax and try the test again. They lowered the lights and left me for ten minutes to think happy relaxing thoughts. For the record, Valium is fast-acting; I was GOOD after about 30 seconds.
They did the test but still my pupil did not want to dilate.
"Okay, wiggle your left pinkie toe," the nurse said, "That helps the pupil."
I started trying to wiggle my pinkie but it suddenly seemed really difficult and then the nurse said, "I know it sounds gay but just wiggle it for me."
Wow. Did she just say that? My pupil suddenly dilates.
I expect to go into surgery at this point but they send me back to the waiting room. I plunk down next to Matthew and tell him I'm on Valium. I really want to smile. I want to smile so much that I become self-conscious and try very hard not to smile because I know there is nothing to smile about. I am acutely aware that my body language has changed from when I was last in the waiting room: instead of primly reading a magazine, I am slouched in the chair, legs stretched out, arms folded over my stomach, trying desperately not to smile.
Matthew can tell that I'm self-conscious about being drugged so he decides to run an errand instead of laughing at me. After he leaves I watch FOX news for about three minutes until I'm getting so pissed that I think it's going to make the Valium wear off and I switch to the History channel. Finally they call me back to surgery.
I spend a few minutes in the comfy pre-op chairs where the nurse briefs me and puts the attractive shower cap thing on my head and then? THEN? A song comes on the radio, a song by Foreigner called Double Vision.
Fill my eyes with that double vision
No disguise for that double vision
Ooh, when it gets through to me, it's always new to me
My double vision always seems to get the best of me, the best of me, yeah-ah
Are you KIDDING? I can't believe this! Is this radio station rigged?
Something Sunny had said to me on the phone was, "I hope you don't get a wandering eye from this surgery." This was purely hype on her part, an attempt to wind me up and get me going. She even said something about me becoming walleyed.
"Well," I responded, "If I do get walleyed, it will sure come in handy on the wedding day when I have to talk to so many people. I can kill a lot of birds with one stone, talking to my mom with my left eye and Aunt Joann with my right."
Anyway.
They put numbing drops in my eyes but instead of laying beneath the laser machine, I have to first sit straight up in another chair. "We're going to loosen the flap first and then use the laser," my doctor says.
FYI: the flap is the circular patch that they cut out of my eye and reattached in January.
"Okay..." I say. My doctor sits across from me with a sharp instrument in his hand. It's a cross between a scalpel and the pick that dentists use to get at the plaque between your teeth. All I know is that he's holding my eyelid open and aiming the scalpel pick thing at me. I see it getting closer and closer and then I CAN FEEL IT. It's not horrible but it's enough to make my face start to crumple and my whole body tense.
The surgical assistant who I keep thinking of as an orderly even though he's not an orderly notices and says, "You can feel that?"
"Yes," I gasp, wanting to cry because suddenly I feel like a big fat baby.
They put more drops in and my eye is totally numb but I am now trying to concentrate on breathing and not panicking. My doctor cuts the circular flap in my eye and leads me to the laser table. I feel nothing but I'm freaked so it doesn't matter. The zapping and burning smell starts and the nurse is counting backwards, I hear her say "Seventeen, sixteen, fifteen..." and I try to blink and I move enough that the laser automatically stops. It resumes and I stay still but I'm telling myself the whole time, "Breathe, breathe, breathe," and reminding myself that I have a mouth and that I should breathe through it.
It's over quickly. My doctor, the orderly, the nurse, the receptionist at the front desk, everyone is so nice. I am prepared to go home and face the uncomfortable sand-in-my-eyes feeling that I had the first time around and I cajole the nurse into giving me the special anesthetic drops that they won't name, the drops that they say only to use in case of severe pain and to throw away after 24 hours.
They give them out in an unmarked bottle and I am convinced they are narcotics. I am fixated on the mystery surrounding the drops since no one says what they are but I don't even need them this time. The pain is minimal. I keep my eyes closed as ordered and immediately fall asleep for five hours.
My greatest fear has been clawing at my eyes in my sleep. After Lasik you aren't allowed to rub your eyes and, after my first surgery, I didn't know how to keep myself from rubbing and tearing the flap open in my sleep so I slept with a bandanna over my face. This time they gave me safety goggles, clear plastic eye masks not unlike the ones you wore in tenth grade chemistry class.
I, however, remembered the eye patch that Rose made for me last summer when my eyes had so many problems with infections and irritations, the reason I decided to get Lasik in the first place. Rose rhinestoned a somewhat creepy and too-large eye onto a patch for me and this week I'm wearing it to bed every single night.
When I wake up, I can see.
I was talking to Sunny the night before I went under the laser for the second time. I told her how the first round back in January worked well on the left eye but not so much on the right. I can read and use the computer, everything close up is great but long distances and low light are hard. So I haven't liked driving at night and my depth perception is janky. Oh, and grocery stores. Grocery stores are a mess.
"It is so hard not to knock over the pyramid of cereal boxes," I said. All the different colors and signs and displays confuse me and I walk around squinting and blinking, trying to tell what's what.
According to my doctor, my right eye was regressing. My right eye had been trying to grow its cornea back to its former curvature, the curvature that made it nearly legally blind in the first place. WHAT A JERK.
"But it's okay," I said to Sunny, cautiously preparing myself for failure, "Even if my right eye doesn't get totally fixed, I'm still much better off than I was before. I could wake up without glasses in the woods now and get out without being eaten by a bear!"
Because this is a very likely situation.
"Well, with your left eye," she clarified.
"You're right. My right eye would lead me straight into the den but my left eye would get me out."
Here's the thing about my second corrective surgery or "enhancement" as they called it at the doctor's office:
Surgery #1 was a procedure called IntraLase and it was bladeless and all-laser. It was very early in the morning so I was deliriously tired AND they gave me Valium so I was what we would call relaxed. I was nodding off in the cushy little pre-op waiting room when the nurse put numbing drops in my eyes and led me into surgery. They taped my eyelids back and propped my eye open with an eye speculum. It was at this point, I swear to God, that a song came on the radio, Blinded By The Light by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. Are you serious?
Blinded by the light
revved up like a deuce
another runner in the night
I didn't know what that means but through the haze, I knew that it was deeply funny.
They told me to keep still and to keep watching the orange dot, a pinhole of a light from the laser machine. I had no problem whatsoever doing this, I was chill. Even when the laser started making a zapping noise and I smelled something burning - my EYE - I really didn't care. Evidently I respond well to Valium.
This time around I expected the same. In fact, I thought it would be better because I knew more and had already been through it. I knew I would be terrified of getting shower water in my eyes in the first few days after surgery so I took extra care to do my hair on the day of in hopes that it would look cute if I didn't wash it for a day or two.
Kind of embarrassing to admit but true.
"Your hair looks really good today," Matthew said in the waiting room.
"Oh? Thanks," I tried to be nonchalant.
They called me back to the exam rooms to run a few final tests. At my appointment the previous week, they couldn't get my eye to dilate so this time they gave me Valium (sweet!) to relax and try the test again. They lowered the lights and left me for ten minutes to think happy relaxing thoughts. For the record, Valium is fast-acting; I was GOOD after about 30 seconds.
They did the test but still my pupil did not want to dilate.
"Okay, wiggle your left pinkie toe," the nurse said, "That helps the pupil."
I started trying to wiggle my pinkie but it suddenly seemed really difficult and then the nurse said, "I know it sounds gay but just wiggle it for me."
Wow. Did she just say that? My pupil suddenly dilates.
I expect to go into surgery at this point but they send me back to the waiting room. I plunk down next to Matthew and tell him I'm on Valium. I really want to smile. I want to smile so much that I become self-conscious and try very hard not to smile because I know there is nothing to smile about. I am acutely aware that my body language has changed from when I was last in the waiting room: instead of primly reading a magazine, I am slouched in the chair, legs stretched out, arms folded over my stomach, trying desperately not to smile.
Matthew can tell that I'm self-conscious about being drugged so he decides to run an errand instead of laughing at me. After he leaves I watch FOX news for about three minutes until I'm getting so pissed that I think it's going to make the Valium wear off and I switch to the History channel. Finally they call me back to surgery.
I spend a few minutes in the comfy pre-op chairs where the nurse briefs me and puts the attractive shower cap thing on my head and then? THEN? A song comes on the radio, a song by Foreigner called Double Vision.
Fill my eyes with that double vision
No disguise for that double vision
Ooh, when it gets through to me, it's always new to me
My double vision always seems to get the best of me, the best of me, yeah-ah
Are you KIDDING? I can't believe this! Is this radio station rigged?
Something Sunny had said to me on the phone was, "I hope you don't get a wandering eye from this surgery." This was purely hype on her part, an attempt to wind me up and get me going. She even said something about me becoming walleyed.
"Well," I responded, "If I do get walleyed, it will sure come in handy on the wedding day when I have to talk to so many people. I can kill a lot of birds with one stone, talking to my mom with my left eye and Aunt Joann with my right."
Anyway.
They put numbing drops in my eyes but instead of laying beneath the laser machine, I have to first sit straight up in another chair. "We're going to loosen the flap first and then use the laser," my doctor says.
FYI: the flap is the circular patch that they cut out of my eye and reattached in January.
"Okay..." I say. My doctor sits across from me with a sharp instrument in his hand. It's a cross between a scalpel and the pick that dentists use to get at the plaque between your teeth. All I know is that he's holding my eyelid open and aiming the scalpel pick thing at me. I see it getting closer and closer and then I CAN FEEL IT. It's not horrible but it's enough to make my face start to crumple and my whole body tense.
The surgical assistant who I keep thinking of as an orderly even though he's not an orderly notices and says, "You can feel that?"
"Yes," I gasp, wanting to cry because suddenly I feel like a big fat baby.
They put more drops in and my eye is totally numb but I am now trying to concentrate on breathing and not panicking. My doctor cuts the circular flap in my eye and leads me to the laser table. I feel nothing but I'm freaked so it doesn't matter. The zapping and burning smell starts and the nurse is counting backwards, I hear her say "Seventeen, sixteen, fifteen..." and I try to blink and I move enough that the laser automatically stops. It resumes and I stay still but I'm telling myself the whole time, "Breathe, breathe, breathe," and reminding myself that I have a mouth and that I should breathe through it.
It's over quickly. My doctor, the orderly, the nurse, the receptionist at the front desk, everyone is so nice. I am prepared to go home and face the uncomfortable sand-in-my-eyes feeling that I had the first time around and I cajole the nurse into giving me the special anesthetic drops that they won't name, the drops that they say only to use in case of severe pain and to throw away after 24 hours.
They give them out in an unmarked bottle and I am convinced they are narcotics. I am fixated on the mystery surrounding the drops since no one says what they are but I don't even need them this time. The pain is minimal. I keep my eyes closed as ordered and immediately fall asleep for five hours.
My greatest fear has been clawing at my eyes in my sleep. After Lasik you aren't allowed to rub your eyes and, after my first surgery, I didn't know how to keep myself from rubbing and tearing the flap open in my sleep so I slept with a bandanna over my face. This time they gave me safety goggles, clear plastic eye masks not unlike the ones you wore in tenth grade chemistry class.
I, however, remembered the eye patch that Rose made for me last summer when my eyes had so many problems with infections and irritations, the reason I decided to get Lasik in the first place. Rose rhinestoned a somewhat creepy and too-large eye onto a patch for me and this week I'm wearing it to bed every single night.
When I wake up, I can see.
3.24.2010
I Was A Teenaged Peep: A Lifetime Movie Special
I didn't want to make a big deal out of this because I live in fear of being a "bride", the high maintenance, impossible-to-please beast that I blame on the wedding industry. Yes, Bridezilla. Perhaps you've heard of her? I don't know when this term took over but I wonder if it was shortly after the TLC channel aired Say Yes To The Dress and WE tv began broadcasting Bridezillas.
If you've never seen Bridezillas, don't start now. It provides a terrible ratio of amusing to depressing that I doubt your life is missing. See Monday's show description:
Karen continues her reign of terror! When Karen can’t find anyone willing to do her hair, she is forced to revisit her original stylist for round two—and it isn’t pretty! Later, Karen has a hissy fit when asked to accommodate a wheelchair bound relative in her seating chart, and has a history-making meltdown during a dress fitting. Meanwhile, Natasha insists on driving two hours into the desert to find sand for her unity candle...
Okay, maybe that part about sand for the unity candle is kind of funny.
But here's the deal: I got my wedding dress in the mail and it looked like an Easter egg.
After sending Matthew a photo, I called Jocardo and he and I decided that it also looked like:
1. A baby nursery
2. A gay dinosaur laid an egg
3. A Peep
Or more accurately, I would look like a giant Peep when I put it on. The dress was baby blue and yellow. It was very, very pastel. It was, we all agreed, a lovely dress. For another girl.
I don't know how the miscommunication happened with the dressmaker but it did and I just DON'T get along with pastels.
Before I decided what to do, I considered making art out of the situation. I would, with a photographer (Jocardo), go to as many Easter services as possible and we'd document me and my dress at all the socials, eating sweets, chit-chatting and being Eastery. I would try to get an invite or two to a garden party, if they actually exist. We would photoshop Peeps into the shots and make an album called Me and my Peeps. These all seemed like great ideas and I was howling with laughter.
Then I hung up the phone, plowed my way through an entire bag of cookies, and watched the E! True Hollywood Story on Jennifer Aniston. I was officially bummed.
One thing Jocardo said to me on the phone when I was trying to wave off my reaction was, "Darlin' you're allowed to be disappointed. You can have an emotion about this."
But won't I seem like Bridezilla?
Matthew put an end to it, right about when I told him that I was going to do a funny art project with the Peep dress and would just find something else to wear to the wedding. He said that if I didn't write the dressmaker, he would, so we sent her an email asking if she could re-dye it.
She wrote back right away. No problem, she said. She could get rid of the yellow but the rest of the dress would be a darker blue. It can be black for all I care, I told her. Just get me out of these disgusting infantilizing shades of puke and puker.
Which also makes me wonder: Why is it so hard for me to tell people when I hate what they've done to my appearance? I've been given some of the most rotten haircuts over the years and even when I've walked out of the salon looking like one of the Three Stooges, I've thanked the stylist nicely and given them a big tip because I believe in tipping.
A few weeks ago I jokingly got fake nails in New York. Because I've never done gel tips before and didn't know what I was getting into (I have since ripped them off my fingers in a semi-drunken state to reveal cracked and bleeding stubs underneath, pretty! And so worth it!) I didn't know when the nail lady glued the three inch extensions to my finger that she would cut them to a less talon-like length.
I sat there with a heavy heart while she bantered in Mandarin to her colleagues and I accepted my fate as a disabled person who could no longer use her hands. I whispered to Laura, "I didn't think they'd be so long."
She laughed at me, "They cut 'em down, goofy!"
I felt such relief followed by shock that I was going to let someone fuck up my hands. Out of what? Politeness? The feeling that I had agreed to do something and couldn't back out now even though I totally actually could?
As for the dress, the reason I chose that dressmaker was because her dresses come in all colors and aren't so wedding-like that I can't wear it again and again. But not if I look like a piece of Easter candy, something I was willing to accept for many hours. What the hell?
If you've never seen Bridezillas, don't start now. It provides a terrible ratio of amusing to depressing that I doubt your life is missing. See Monday's show description:
Karen continues her reign of terror! When Karen can’t find anyone willing to do her hair, she is forced to revisit her original stylist for round two—and it isn’t pretty! Later, Karen has a hissy fit when asked to accommodate a wheelchair bound relative in her seating chart, and has a history-making meltdown during a dress fitting. Meanwhile, Natasha insists on driving two hours into the desert to find sand for her unity candle...
Okay, maybe that part about sand for the unity candle is kind of funny.
But here's the deal: I got my wedding dress in the mail and it looked like an Easter egg.
After sending Matthew a photo, I called Jocardo and he and I decided that it also looked like:
1. A baby nursery
2. A gay dinosaur laid an egg
3. A Peep
Or more accurately, I would look like a giant Peep when I put it on. The dress was baby blue and yellow. It was very, very pastel. It was, we all agreed, a lovely dress. For another girl.
I don't know how the miscommunication happened with the dressmaker but it did and I just DON'T get along with pastels.
Before I decided what to do, I considered making art out of the situation. I would, with a photographer (Jocardo), go to as many Easter services as possible and we'd document me and my dress at all the socials, eating sweets, chit-chatting and being Eastery. I would try to get an invite or two to a garden party, if they actually exist. We would photoshop Peeps into the shots and make an album called Me and my Peeps. These all seemed like great ideas and I was howling with laughter.
Then I hung up the phone, plowed my way through an entire bag of cookies, and watched the E! True Hollywood Story on Jennifer Aniston. I was officially bummed.
One thing Jocardo said to me on the phone when I was trying to wave off my reaction was, "Darlin' you're allowed to be disappointed. You can have an emotion about this."
But won't I seem like Bridezilla?
Matthew put an end to it, right about when I told him that I was going to do a funny art project with the Peep dress and would just find something else to wear to the wedding. He said that if I didn't write the dressmaker, he would, so we sent her an email asking if she could re-dye it.
She wrote back right away. No problem, she said. She could get rid of the yellow but the rest of the dress would be a darker blue. It can be black for all I care, I told her. Just get me out of these disgusting infantilizing shades of puke and puker.
Which also makes me wonder: Why is it so hard for me to tell people when I hate what they've done to my appearance? I've been given some of the most rotten haircuts over the years and even when I've walked out of the salon looking like one of the Three Stooges, I've thanked the stylist nicely and given them a big tip because I believe in tipping.
A few weeks ago I jokingly got fake nails in New York. Because I've never done gel tips before and didn't know what I was getting into (I have since ripped them off my fingers in a semi-drunken state to reveal cracked and bleeding stubs underneath, pretty! And so worth it!) I didn't know when the nail lady glued the three inch extensions to my finger that she would cut them to a less talon-like length.
I sat there with a heavy heart while she bantered in Mandarin to her colleagues and I accepted my fate as a disabled person who could no longer use her hands. I whispered to Laura, "I didn't think they'd be so long."
She laughed at me, "They cut 'em down, goofy!"
I felt such relief followed by shock that I was going to let someone fuck up my hands. Out of what? Politeness? The feeling that I had agreed to do something and couldn't back out now even though I totally actually could?
As for the dress, the reason I chose that dressmaker was because her dresses come in all colors and aren't so wedding-like that I can't wear it again and again. But not if I look like a piece of Easter candy, something I was willing to accept for many hours. What the hell?
laughing quietly to myself
About the email Kelly sent me two weeks ago, right before I saw her for the first time in several years:
"Can't wait to see you! Should I be expecting any surprises visually? i.e. third tri-mester baby bump, face and/or neck tattoos? Wooden leg? Large hump on your back causing you to bend over severely? Malformations of the hair (mullet perm)?
I just want to be prepared and do what I can to avoid saying "Hi!" followed by a clearly shocked/nervous swallow. I will love you though, no matter what. You know that right?
Good. I look the same, except MUCH hotter. ;)"
"Can't wait to see you! Should I be expecting any surprises visually? i.e. third tri-mester baby bump, face and/or neck tattoos? Wooden leg? Large hump on your back causing you to bend over severely? Malformations of the hair (mullet perm)?
I just want to be prepared and do what I can to avoid saying "Hi!" followed by a clearly shocked/nervous swallow. I will love you though, no matter what. You know that right?
Good. I look the same, except MUCH hotter. ;)"
3.18.2010
laughing quietly to myself
About how when I got into bed last night, Matthew, asleep, thought I was Patsy and kept pushing me away with his feet and saying, "Down! Down!"
3.15.2010
3.12.2010
How I came to own a crock pot
The summer of 2003
I remember clearly the summer of 2003. It was the summer I said to one of my New York roommates, Joleen, "If I ever act like I'm gonna get married, please remind me of the summer of 2003." She laughed and promised to do so.
She didn't come through, however, mainly because she fled to New Zealand on a ship, leaving $11,000 in debt, no forwarding address, and a roomful of crap for me, Roopa, and Lee to get rid of. Not that we weren't thrilled to sift through her old sweaters, dildos, and handcuffs, DON'T GET ME WRONG.
It was in the summer of 2003 that everyone in my life got married. And by everyone I mean five friends, which was a lot in three months. It was a lot of travel - to Alaska, Washington State, Michigan, Cincinnati, and England - but that was no problem, I like travel. It was some responsibility - as the minister in two of the weddings - and while that was slightly nervewracking, I pulled it off and was happy to give that gift to Sara and Gail.
No, it wasn't really the logistics, it was the emotions that got to me.
I was in a "relationship" at the time - a sort of maybe kind of relationship with someone who would never be into me enough to lose the quotes around our so-called relationship and who wasn't supportive of me the way I was supportive of him. I imagine that some part of me knew this and was envious of my friends. Not for their marriages so much as the love and trust that their marriages represented and that they'd found, that which eluded me.
Okay, the details of weddings bugged me too. I could not relate - painfully so, at times - to the things that crop up around weddings. Buying houses, remodeling houses, wanting stuff for houses you are buying and remodeling. Starting a wedding registry to tell people what stuff you want to put in your houses. I rented a teeny tiny room that I filled with my teeny tiny possessions. I shopped at thrift stores and sales and sometimes put things on credit. I didn't get it and I didn't think I wanted to.
I remember when Sara was in town before her wedding. We walked around the city, drank mimosas at a bar in Grand Central Station, and then she dragged me into Williams-Sonoma. She ogled kitchen goods while apologizing for it, brushing it off as just a weird wedding phenomenon as inescapable as gravity. I was a good sport, mainly because she was cracking me up by being such a little bitch to the store worker who asked us like three times if we needed help. Each time she'd answer, "I'm sorry, whaaat?" until he shrugged and left.
In the end I enjoyed each wedding even if I didn't get it and seriously doubted that I would go through such a thing myself.
My very own wedding registry
I was resistant. The stark consumption made me uncomfortable. Apparently it's rude to announce your wedding registry on your wedding invitation but it's equally rude NOT to have a registry. I'm okay with being rude unless there's a good, practical reason not to be.
Conflicted, I called Sara.
"Look," she said, "It's a guide for people. People who know you well may give you something more personal but you're having a lot of people come to your party and many of them will want some direction. You help them out and you get some things you need. If you don't do a registry you'll end up with fifteen salad spinners and no easy way to return them." (Note: I may have paraphrased some of that.)
Something about that sunk in. I am morally opposed to salad spinners and don't want one, much less fifteen. And now that I like cooking, I've learned a lot of new words, like dutch oven, and it would be awesome to have one. And I've been tenderizing meat with a Patron tequila lime squeezer that I thought was an ice cream scoop for the longest time. This damn registry might actually come in handy.
That doesn't mean I didn't get in a really bad mood while walking through Crate & Barrel zapping things with my registry zapper. Quite a few people told me how much fun they'd had zapping things they wanted. I want that. Zap! That's shiny. Zap! How many do you want? Four? Zap Zap Zap Zap! It made me sullen and short-tempered. The zapper started to feel like a neon arrow pointed right at me, the materialistic one. It was far easier for me to handle on the internet so we finished the registry online where, I have to say, I ended up picking out some stuff that would be rad to own. I am not gonna lie.
Things have started to show up at our house, gifts that are sent to us, waiting on the porch outside our door. It is bizarre and, because I am so unfamiliar with the process, practically magical. I didn't know people sent gifts ahead of time, months before you are married or in my case, in between your Vegas wedding and your Kentucky wedding. I thought you carted your gift to the wedding and made someone cart it back home. This whole SENDING concept really streamlines the process.
So where am I now? Somewhere in between where I was and, most likely, where I'm going to be. How is that for obvious yet vague? I'm looking forward to using my new crock pot.
I remember clearly the summer of 2003. It was the summer I said to one of my New York roommates, Joleen, "If I ever act like I'm gonna get married, please remind me of the summer of 2003." She laughed and promised to do so.
She didn't come through, however, mainly because she fled to New Zealand on a ship, leaving $11,000 in debt, no forwarding address, and a roomful of crap for me, Roopa, and Lee to get rid of. Not that we weren't thrilled to sift through her old sweaters, dildos, and handcuffs, DON'T GET ME WRONG.
It was in the summer of 2003 that everyone in my life got married. And by everyone I mean five friends, which was a lot in three months. It was a lot of travel - to Alaska, Washington State, Michigan, Cincinnati, and England - but that was no problem, I like travel. It was some responsibility - as the minister in two of the weddings - and while that was slightly nervewracking, I pulled it off and was happy to give that gift to Sara and Gail.
No, it wasn't really the logistics, it was the emotions that got to me.
I was in a "relationship" at the time - a sort of maybe kind of relationship with someone who would never be into me enough to lose the quotes around our so-called relationship and who wasn't supportive of me the way I was supportive of him. I imagine that some part of me knew this and was envious of my friends. Not for their marriages so much as the love and trust that their marriages represented and that they'd found, that which eluded me.
Okay, the details of weddings bugged me too. I could not relate - painfully so, at times - to the things that crop up around weddings. Buying houses, remodeling houses, wanting stuff for houses you are buying and remodeling. Starting a wedding registry to tell people what stuff you want to put in your houses. I rented a teeny tiny room that I filled with my teeny tiny possessions. I shopped at thrift stores and sales and sometimes put things on credit. I didn't get it and I didn't think I wanted to.
I remember when Sara was in town before her wedding. We walked around the city, drank mimosas at a bar in Grand Central Station, and then she dragged me into Williams-Sonoma. She ogled kitchen goods while apologizing for it, brushing it off as just a weird wedding phenomenon as inescapable as gravity. I was a good sport, mainly because she was cracking me up by being such a little bitch to the store worker who asked us like three times if we needed help. Each time she'd answer, "I'm sorry, whaaat?" until he shrugged and left.
In the end I enjoyed each wedding even if I didn't get it and seriously doubted that I would go through such a thing myself.
My very own wedding registry
I was resistant. The stark consumption made me uncomfortable. Apparently it's rude to announce your wedding registry on your wedding invitation but it's equally rude NOT to have a registry. I'm okay with being rude unless there's a good, practical reason not to be.
Conflicted, I called Sara.
"Look," she said, "It's a guide for people. People who know you well may give you something more personal but you're having a lot of people come to your party and many of them will want some direction. You help them out and you get some things you need. If you don't do a registry you'll end up with fifteen salad spinners and no easy way to return them." (Note: I may have paraphrased some of that.)
Something about that sunk in. I am morally opposed to salad spinners and don't want one, much less fifteen. And now that I like cooking, I've learned a lot of new words, like dutch oven, and it would be awesome to have one. And I've been tenderizing meat with a Patron tequila lime squeezer that I thought was an ice cream scoop for the longest time. This damn registry might actually come in handy.
That doesn't mean I didn't get in a really bad mood while walking through Crate & Barrel zapping things with my registry zapper. Quite a few people told me how much fun they'd had zapping things they wanted. I want that. Zap! That's shiny. Zap! How many do you want? Four? Zap Zap Zap Zap! It made me sullen and short-tempered. The zapper started to feel like a neon arrow pointed right at me, the materialistic one. It was far easier for me to handle on the internet so we finished the registry online where, I have to say, I ended up picking out some stuff that would be rad to own. I am not gonna lie.
Things have started to show up at our house, gifts that are sent to us, waiting on the porch outside our door. It is bizarre and, because I am so unfamiliar with the process, practically magical. I didn't know people sent gifts ahead of time, months before you are married or in my case, in between your Vegas wedding and your Kentucky wedding. I thought you carted your gift to the wedding and made someone cart it back home. This whole SENDING concept really streamlines the process.
So where am I now? Somewhere in between where I was and, most likely, where I'm going to be. How is that for obvious yet vague? I'm looking forward to using my new crock pot.
3.10.2010
my new favorite greeting
Renee got in my car and asked me:
"Yoda or The Incredible Hulk?"
"Yoda!" I replied.
Then she handed me a Yoda Pez dispenser but that's beside the point. I just think her question is a good way to say hello.
"Yoda or The Incredible Hulk?"
"Yoda!" I replied.
Then she handed me a Yoda Pez dispenser but that's beside the point. I just think her question is a good way to say hello.
3.09.2010
How to get on my bad side
Yep, strangers telling me to smile - especially men, oh wait, it's always men - infuriates me as much now as it did when I was a teenager. Today I was crossing a street and he was in a pickup truck waiting for the light. I wished I carried a knife like my husband. I wanted to slash his...tires.
3.08.2010
I take photos in bathrooms
Usually the photos just make me laugh. I am, sometimes, very easily amused.
I originally snapped this for the Archaeologists Rule! part but then I was like Aimee? What the hell is up with your handwriting? I am convinced that Aimee wrote that about her own ass, is living in an 80s teenage movie, and has big, permed, hard-as-a-rock hairsprayed hair. The bangs are especially huge.
I like the bag of dicks expression. It has not yet reached the threshold of overuse that makes me crazy.
This one sums it up. Someone thinks the bathroom stall is a great place to be clever - YOU SAT ON MY CLYMIDIA - but they misspell chlamydia and thus don't seem as clever as intended. That, however, makes for a fantastic opportunity for someone else to be mean - TOO BAD YOUR DR. DIDN'T TELL YOU HOW TO SPELL IT DUMB ASS.
On a gentler note, I was at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park yesterday and I used the bathroom. I was thinking when I walked in, "This is a great bathroom. So huge. And clean. With dressing room lights, nice." Then I looked up from the confines of my stall and saw these strange yellow trees, which I would call art.
I originally snapped this for the Archaeologists Rule! part but then I was like Aimee? What the hell is up with your handwriting? I am convinced that Aimee wrote that about her own ass, is living in an 80s teenage movie, and has big, permed, hard-as-a-rock hairsprayed hair. The bangs are especially huge.
I like the bag of dicks expression. It has not yet reached the threshold of overuse that makes me crazy.
This one sums it up. Someone thinks the bathroom stall is a great place to be clever - YOU SAT ON MY CLYMIDIA - but they misspell chlamydia and thus don't seem as clever as intended. That, however, makes for a fantastic opportunity for someone else to be mean - TOO BAD YOUR DR. DIDN'T TELL YOU HOW TO SPELL IT DUMB ASS.
On a gentler note, I was at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park yesterday and I used the bathroom. I was thinking when I walked in, "This is a great bathroom. So huge. And clean. With dressing room lights, nice." Then I looked up from the confines of my stall and saw these strange yellow trees, which I would call art.
3.05.2010
Dog etiquette
The face of a ho?
I was at the dog park with Patsy. There was only one other dog there - Rufus - and the two of them played hard, roughhousing, chasing, and rolling around in the dirt. Right at the end, just before we left, Rufus jumped on her back end and tried to hump her for all he was worth.
Patsy didn't go for it and snapped him off. She isn't into ass play unless it's herself licking herself for A REALLY LONG TIME, JESUS. No one else is allowed to go there, not the veterinary assistant with a thermometer, not Rufus, no one. But when Rufus chased our car and barked at Patsy through the window, she whined and barked for him inside and I commented that they seemed into each other. Does one attempted hump in dog language equal love?
Two days later Patsy's eye was pink on the inner rim and goop was seeping out. We took her to the vet and she was diagnosed with pink eye.
"That slut Rufus!" I said. "He totally gave her pink eye!"
I took her back to the vet a few days ago because we were out of antibiotics and while the eye is no longer gooey, it still seemed too pink on that one edge. Dr. Baker checked it out and told me that she didn't think it had been contagious in the first place, just an irritation, that pink eye is rare for dogs and that it would have spread to her other eye.
Apparently Patsy's third eyelid - Dogs have three, I did not know that - is just plain pinker than the other one. Fine. The other vet must have called it pink eye so we'd wash our hands 3,000 times more daily than usual, it's cool. Perhaps we inadvertently escaped succumbing to H1N1, I don't know.
ANYWAY, with the new non-contagious bill of health we were finally allowed to go to the dog park again and the last two days were sunny and warmer so all humans and dogs were happy. I was standing in the grass yesterday watching the dogs when I recognized Rufus' pizza delivery guy owner on the other side.
"Rufus has arrived," I texted Matthew.
And 30 seconds later, "And he's eating Patsy out."
She didn't put up a fight.
I was at the dog park with Patsy. There was only one other dog there - Rufus - and the two of them played hard, roughhousing, chasing, and rolling around in the dirt. Right at the end, just before we left, Rufus jumped on her back end and tried to hump her for all he was worth.
Patsy didn't go for it and snapped him off. She isn't into ass play unless it's herself licking herself for A REALLY LONG TIME, JESUS. No one else is allowed to go there, not the veterinary assistant with a thermometer, not Rufus, no one. But when Rufus chased our car and barked at Patsy through the window, she whined and barked for him inside and I commented that they seemed into each other. Does one attempted hump in dog language equal love?
Two days later Patsy's eye was pink on the inner rim and goop was seeping out. We took her to the vet and she was diagnosed with pink eye.
"That slut Rufus!" I said. "He totally gave her pink eye!"
I took her back to the vet a few days ago because we were out of antibiotics and while the eye is no longer gooey, it still seemed too pink on that one edge. Dr. Baker checked it out and told me that she didn't think it had been contagious in the first place, just an irritation, that pink eye is rare for dogs and that it would have spread to her other eye.
Apparently Patsy's third eyelid - Dogs have three, I did not know that - is just plain pinker than the other one. Fine. The other vet must have called it pink eye so we'd wash our hands 3,000 times more daily than usual, it's cool. Perhaps we inadvertently escaped succumbing to H1N1, I don't know.
ANYWAY, with the new non-contagious bill of health we were finally allowed to go to the dog park again and the last two days were sunny and warmer so all humans and dogs were happy. I was standing in the grass yesterday watching the dogs when I recognized Rufus' pizza delivery guy owner on the other side.
"Rufus has arrived," I texted Matthew.
And 30 seconds later, "And he's eating Patsy out."
She didn't put up a fight.
3.02.2010
laughing quietly to myself
About how we got home from a play on Saturday night and wanted to watch a movie.
"What do we have from Netflix?" I asked.
"Downfall," He said, "It's a 2 hour and 36 minute documentary that adopts Junge's point of view to recreate Hitler's final 12 days in his Berlin bunker."
"Yikes. Anything else?"
"But I'm a Cheerleader..."
"What do we have from Netflix?" I asked.
"Downfall," He said, "It's a 2 hour and 36 minute documentary that adopts Junge's point of view to recreate Hitler's final 12 days in his Berlin bunker."
"Yikes. Anything else?"
"But I'm a Cheerleader..."
3.01.2010
strange apples
I'm turning again to NaBloPoMo because NBPM (abbreviating an abbreviation = awesome) helped me immensely to write more back in November.
The theme for March is STRANGE(R). Who else is liking that theme? Such range and possibility! I'm going to start with apples.
Something has changed with me in the last few months. I've never liked cooking. I always felt clumsy, awkward, and inadequate in kitchens and preferred to stand around drinking wine and clean up afterward. The entire time that I lived with Sunny and Shane in Chicago, I sat on the couch in the kitchen drinking wine before dinner and all the way up until food was on the table and then would try to make up for that by doing dishes.
Since moving out of my parents' home in 1993, I got by on mediocre stir-frys, take out, salads, sandwiches, and things already half made. I tried my hand at a few recipes back in 2007 and made some attempts last year but was always pretty tense, not exactly enjoying the process.
There were a couple of times this year when M and I were cooking together and he would do something - LIKE TRY TO TALK TO ME or worse, KISS ME - and I'd get all anxious and pissy because I was busy counting minutes in my head, trying to make everything hot and ready to serve at the same time and I was sure that something would burn while I was casually and lightheartedly recounting my day.
Then, and not even slowly, it was a super quick process, cooking started to get fun. It became what people always said: just following directions. Which in and of itself was new for me seeing as I never had a use for recipes before. Moreover, it because less of just a lab experiment and more of a relaxation. Little things that used to seem like a mighty big pain in the ass, like washing lettuce or all these fresh herbs that I now like to use - is, dare I say, meditative. I can stop whatever else it is that I'm thinking about and do something physical and tangible and, suddenly, rewarding.
I GET IT. Weird.
The other thing that people always said and I didn't think I agreed with is, "It's no fun to cook just for yourself." Whatever, I thought. I didn't like feeling clumsy and inadequate but figured that it just wasn't my thing because groups of people cooking made me feel less comfortable, not more. If my eggs are going to be runny, I'd rather keep that "fun" to myself and not have to try to covertly drain them in the sink.
Maybe it's because I now have a kitchen that's mine and I'm not borrowing anyone else's, and maybe it's because I don't feel like I have to be some Donna Reed character of perfection just because I get my cook on and I'm married and I own an apron - shut up, it's black and tough looking - and cooking is something that both M and I are into learning more about.
Whatever it is, I took it to a whole new level today.
I was at Kroger and hadn't made a list. I stopped in the magazine aisle and flipped pages until I found something easy to make - chicken with asparagus in pesto cream sauce - in a Paula Dean magazine. It was delicious and heavy and DID I MENTION DELICIOUS and the next morning I read all the recipes. Most of them I wasn't going for, e.g. tater tot casserole, but I saw a photo of a perfectly beautiful apple sliced into four horizontal pieces and cemented back together with slabs of peanut butter.
I read the ingredients: two types of peanut butter, creamy and crunchy, honey, granola. Paula Dean wouldn't need to know that I'd buy organic apples, peanut butter with flaxseed, and gluten free pretzel rods to stick down the cored middles of the apples. It would look just as trashy and/or like a kid's after-school snack as the photo.
Today I made those apples and I made them with a reason. Matthew and I have been both a little worried and a little tired from things we can't control. We're letting go and chinning up but today had its suck and I thought those apple stacks in the photos looked HAPPY. I decided those apples would be sitting on the kitchen counter when M got home from work. Then I realized that wow, I'm feeding an emotion. I've eaten plenty of emotions, oh have I, but I've never ever wanted to make someone feel better by feeding them.
Guess I'll add that to the long list of things I never understood until now.
From the top they look like boobs.
I like how the one on the right is so crooked. I put the apples slices back together wrong. Paula Dean's were not crooked.
The theme for March is STRANGE(R). Who else is liking that theme? Such range and possibility! I'm going to start with apples.
Something has changed with me in the last few months. I've never liked cooking. I always felt clumsy, awkward, and inadequate in kitchens and preferred to stand around drinking wine and clean up afterward. The entire time that I lived with Sunny and Shane in Chicago, I sat on the couch in the kitchen drinking wine before dinner and all the way up until food was on the table and then would try to make up for that by doing dishes.
Since moving out of my parents' home in 1993, I got by on mediocre stir-frys, take out, salads, sandwiches, and things already half made. I tried my hand at a few recipes back in 2007 and made some attempts last year but was always pretty tense, not exactly enjoying the process.
There were a couple of times this year when M and I were cooking together and he would do something - LIKE TRY TO TALK TO ME or worse, KISS ME - and I'd get all anxious and pissy because I was busy counting minutes in my head, trying to make everything hot and ready to serve at the same time and I was sure that something would burn while I was casually and lightheartedly recounting my day.
Then, and not even slowly, it was a super quick process, cooking started to get fun. It became what people always said: just following directions. Which in and of itself was new for me seeing as I never had a use for recipes before. Moreover, it because less of just a lab experiment and more of a relaxation. Little things that used to seem like a mighty big pain in the ass, like washing lettuce or all these fresh herbs that I now like to use - is, dare I say, meditative. I can stop whatever else it is that I'm thinking about and do something physical and tangible and, suddenly, rewarding.
I GET IT. Weird.
The other thing that people always said and I didn't think I agreed with is, "It's no fun to cook just for yourself." Whatever, I thought. I didn't like feeling clumsy and inadequate but figured that it just wasn't my thing because groups of people cooking made me feel less comfortable, not more. If my eggs are going to be runny, I'd rather keep that "fun" to myself and not have to try to covertly drain them in the sink.
Maybe it's because I now have a kitchen that's mine and I'm not borrowing anyone else's, and maybe it's because I don't feel like I have to be some Donna Reed character of perfection just because I get my cook on and I'm married and I own an apron - shut up, it's black and tough looking - and cooking is something that both M and I are into learning more about.
Whatever it is, I took it to a whole new level today.
I was at Kroger and hadn't made a list. I stopped in the magazine aisle and flipped pages until I found something easy to make - chicken with asparagus in pesto cream sauce - in a Paula Dean magazine. It was delicious and heavy and DID I MENTION DELICIOUS and the next morning I read all the recipes. Most of them I wasn't going for, e.g. tater tot casserole, but I saw a photo of a perfectly beautiful apple sliced into four horizontal pieces and cemented back together with slabs of peanut butter.
I read the ingredients: two types of peanut butter, creamy and crunchy, honey, granola. Paula Dean wouldn't need to know that I'd buy organic apples, peanut butter with flaxseed, and gluten free pretzel rods to stick down the cored middles of the apples. It would look just as trashy and/or like a kid's after-school snack as the photo.
Today I made those apples and I made them with a reason. Matthew and I have been both a little worried and a little tired from things we can't control. We're letting go and chinning up but today had its suck and I thought those apple stacks in the photos looked HAPPY. I decided those apples would be sitting on the kitchen counter when M got home from work. Then I realized that wow, I'm feeding an emotion. I've eaten plenty of emotions, oh have I, but I've never ever wanted to make someone feel better by feeding them.
Guess I'll add that to the long list of things I never understood until now.
From the top they look like boobs.
I like how the one on the right is so crooked. I put the apples slices back together wrong. Paula Dean's were not crooked.
2.26.2010
quick question
Since when do reporters on the radio describe traffic on the interstate as a HOT MESS??
2.19.2010
i like you a lot
You know the feeling. You're all rough around the edges that day and someone does something sweet and nice and you have to smile because they have great timing. I like that feeling. Thanks Halle.
2.17.2010
I got me an emergency contact person
Matthew emailed me this card in April 2008 when I was in Berlin. I was sitting in a cafe and I got all embarrassed, flushed, and silly-tingly when I opened it and saw what it said: Someday I'd like you to be my emergency contact person.
I was alone, quietly and happily freaking out. Emergency contact person! Does he realize the IMPLICATIONS of this ecard? Does he know what he's saying? This is serious. A lot of people say a lot of things they don't mean but Matthew didn't seem like that so my heart beat rapidly, my crazy crush swelling.
I keep thinking of this card because I JUST WROTE HIS NAME AS MY EMERGENCY CONTACT PERSON. That's what happen when you decide overnight to get married in Vegas!
Do you like how we look like we're choking each other in the second photo? Yeah, me too. Married for 28 seconds and already at each others' throats.
Here's the thing about marriage, because I'm an authority after 47 days. There is this whole paperwork side to it, which DUH. It is a civil contract after all. Thankfully, when a lot people do it now it is for love but technically, and in the eyes of the law, that is whatever. And the religious aspect? Equally whatever. Which is why it's funny when people get all high and mighty about their precious, sacred marriage for religious reasons: Marriage didn't start out that way and it doesn't seem to be ending that way either. Legally it's all about finances and assets and insurance and the right to do this and that for and to each other. It's totally not romantic. Romance and/or love is what we MAKE it.
I'm going to steal something now from Robert Louis Stevenson and Elizabeth Gilbert:
MARRIAGE IS A FRIENDSHIP RECOGNIZED BY THE POLICE
I like that.
I'm really into picking apart what marriage is, and has been, and will be. Because it has been evolving since its inception and I'm sure it can be something different for every person and couple and I'm sure that I don't want to fall into some way of being just because I'm married.
I read a post on Offbeat Bride that I liked about people dangling their ideas over you, sort of daring you to be different but mostly begging you not to be. It's over here.
By the time M and I got married - and will get married again in May with friends and family - we'd done some long-termy type of transactions like buying a car and a dog together and were already investing in each other. Plus we've been living in sin for a year. We'd said many times that we already felt married and had - and this is significant, or not - changed our Facebook statuses to married. If the Internet is involved, it's ON.
Side story: Right after he and I met, he web-searched me and found my old Friendster page. Friendster said that I was in a relationship and he got all pissy and interrogated my cousin who introduced us. She assured him that I hadn't checked Friendster in a trizillion years, just needed to update my account, and wasn't a skanky liar on purpose.
Speaking of the Internet, I was afraid to tell my parents about Vegas for three weeks after Elvis walked me down the aisle while singing Love Me Tender. It started when Matthew and I got back to Mandalay Bay and were waiting for a bottle of tequila to arrive and he sent a mass text to his friends that said something along the lines of I'M MARRIED!!
"You do realize you're friends with my dad on Facebook, right?" I said.
"Oh shit."
"Yeah."
His follow-up mass text was more or less "Keep it on the DL for now, no Facebook".
Once I got up the nerve to break the news to Mary Ann and Bob, they LAUGHED. Too bad I shit a river imagining painful, guilt-inducing reactions on their part, revolving mainly around the theme of why were they paying for so much of a wedding in May when we were just going to make a mockery of the whole thing at the Graceland Chapel where Jon Bon Jovi was married.
Nope, they thought it was funny. I have got to start giving them more credit.
I was alone, quietly and happily freaking out. Emergency contact person! Does he realize the IMPLICATIONS of this ecard? Does he know what he's saying? This is serious. A lot of people say a lot of things they don't mean but Matthew didn't seem like that so my heart beat rapidly, my crazy crush swelling.
I keep thinking of this card because I JUST WROTE HIS NAME AS MY EMERGENCY CONTACT PERSON. That's what happen when you decide overnight to get married in Vegas!
Do you like how we look like we're choking each other in the second photo? Yeah, me too. Married for 28 seconds and already at each others' throats.
Here's the thing about marriage, because I'm an authority after 47 days. There is this whole paperwork side to it, which DUH. It is a civil contract after all. Thankfully, when a lot people do it now it is for love but technically, and in the eyes of the law, that is whatever. And the religious aspect? Equally whatever. Which is why it's funny when people get all high and mighty about their precious, sacred marriage for religious reasons: Marriage didn't start out that way and it doesn't seem to be ending that way either. Legally it's all about finances and assets and insurance and the right to do this and that for and to each other. It's totally not romantic. Romance and/or love is what we MAKE it.
I'm going to steal something now from Robert Louis Stevenson and Elizabeth Gilbert:
MARRIAGE IS A FRIENDSHIP RECOGNIZED BY THE POLICE
I like that.
I'm really into picking apart what marriage is, and has been, and will be. Because it has been evolving since its inception and I'm sure it can be something different for every person and couple and I'm sure that I don't want to fall into some way of being just because I'm married.
I read a post on Offbeat Bride that I liked about people dangling their ideas over you, sort of daring you to be different but mostly begging you not to be. It's over here.
By the time M and I got married - and will get married again in May with friends and family - we'd done some long-termy type of transactions like buying a car and a dog together and were already investing in each other. Plus we've been living in sin for a year. We'd said many times that we already felt married and had - and this is significant, or not - changed our Facebook statuses to married. If the Internet is involved, it's ON.
Side story: Right after he and I met, he web-searched me and found my old Friendster page. Friendster said that I was in a relationship and he got all pissy and interrogated my cousin who introduced us. She assured him that I hadn't checked Friendster in a trizillion years, just needed to update my account, and wasn't a skanky liar on purpose.
Speaking of the Internet, I was afraid to tell my parents about Vegas for three weeks after Elvis walked me down the aisle while singing Love Me Tender. It started when Matthew and I got back to Mandalay Bay and were waiting for a bottle of tequila to arrive and he sent a mass text to his friends that said something along the lines of I'M MARRIED!!
"You do realize you're friends with my dad on Facebook, right?" I said.
"Oh shit."
"Yeah."
His follow-up mass text was more or less "Keep it on the DL for now, no Facebook".
Once I got up the nerve to break the news to Mary Ann and Bob, they LAUGHED. Too bad I shit a river imagining painful, guilt-inducing reactions on their part, revolving mainly around the theme of why were they paying for so much of a wedding in May when we were just going to make a mockery of the whole thing at the Graceland Chapel where Jon Bon Jovi was married.
Nope, they thought it was funny. I have got to start giving them more credit.
2.15.2010
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