What's going on with me?
However, I do enjoy a good lemon pie.
So, lesseee…what’s been going on? I spent all day Saturday cleaning because I threw a party that night. I was intending to finish off my liquor supply before I move out at the end of April, but everyone ended up bringing something, so now I have just as much booze as before. I will have to have another party this weekend, I think. (Booze for sale! Take it off my hands, please!)
It was a good time…about ten people came, and everybody knew a few other people but nobody knew everyone, so it was sort of a mixer. I stuck to screwdrivers all night, because I had a lot of vodka to kll. I had two or three. (So, basically, three.) Also there were snacks involved. The olives stuffed with red peppers were good, as were the Cheese-Its and the visually appealing veggie plate.
I drank enough to feel excited for bedtime once people started leaving. But my crazy social fiend friend Azalea convinced me and Poppy to come out with her for more crazy fiendish stuff. We ended up at a club near Dupont, salsaing with strange men. I should not have switched to rum at that point. Things got pretty sweaty and hazy. Good thing my dance partner was big and burly or else I would have been lying on the floor.
After approximately forty-nine hours of “dancing,” Poppy found me holding onto the wall near the coat-check room. Apparently I PLEADED with her to “let me go home,” which, like, hello? I was not being held captive by anyone. What was I thinking? My brain on liquor is weird.
It was 3:30 and we went home. I love taking cabs at the end of the night. It is so nice to see the blocks whizz by and know that you will be home and snuggly in your bed ten times faster than if you had walked.
I hate nights where I drink enough to actually get drunk though. I don’t do it often, maybe once a month? But I feel really bad, almost guilty, while I do it. I know that I’ll have a headache the next day, and that I’ll spend the day eating greasy foods and feeling gross and needing to spend a few days detoxing on, like, green tea and fruit to make up for pickling my liver.
In my mind, I think of my liver as “Herbert.” It’s a good solid name, the sort of name an accountant might have, and I like to keep up hope that my liver is still solid and happy and functioning. Sure enough, I spent much of Sunday eating pizza and moaning, and making mental promises to Herbert that I would treat him better from now on. Herbert is all, “If I had a nickel every time you said that…”
I am really going to have to make it up to him this time, I can feel it. Kitten gloves, Herbert! I will treat you with kitten gloves! (Until next weekend, duh.)
So yesterday was Monday, and it was a normal work day, and ditto for today. My workdays are dead boring, you guys. I am just totally counting down the days/weeks until work is over. Every night when I get home I literally make a little X in my date book. (I once told my dad this and he groaned and called me a drama queen.)
Did I ever actually come out and tell you all why I am done with my job soon?? I think I may have glossed over that. Well, I am starting up grad school in Savannah in June. So I have four weeks and three days(!) left of work, and then I will move, and then school starts. And then I will officially have the easiest life imaginable, because I’m going to school for painting. For real. I know, it’s like unimaginably slackster. I am totally appreciative of this, don’t worry!
It is surreal to be so close to this huge change that I started thinking about almost two years ago. I have a hard time enjoying periods like these, where you’re sort of in a holding pattern, you know? Where something is going to change, and you’ve done everything you need to do on your end, you’re just sort of waiting and killing time until the big day rolls around?
I tend to get sort of bogged down in, and anxious about, logistical details (thanks Mom! genetic legacy). So trying to wrap my head around a cross-country-move-and-lifestyle-change is a little frazzling. I want to skip ahead to six weeks from now, when all the craziness is done and I am just THERE, at school.
I have lists of things to do and when to do them. A little notebook full of lists. Yes, I am that anal. Perhaps I come off as sort of charmingly freewheeling here sometimes, but it’s a facade. I AM A TOTAL ANAL DORK. (Also I have now doomed myself to like 300 search hits for “total anal” I bet.)
Oh! I discovered something tonight! The exact same girl who is in a current Lifetime movie, Mom at Sixteen, was in Law and Order SVU tonight too. As a teenager having underage sex. That’s quite a niche she’s carving out for herself. Hey, Lifetime girl! Stop bogarting those plum “Illicitly Sexy Teen” roles.
I will be very sad if she shows up a few summers from now in “American Pie 7: This time it’s lemon meringue pie!” or something. We already have one Tara Reid.
3.24.2005
Reality (does not) Bite(s)
Last night I watched Reality Bites for the 496th time. This movie is to my sanity much the same way that oil changes are to a car, in that I need to watch it every so often in order to keep going. I’m sure everyone has certain movies they own and watch frequently. Personally I have a few and this is probably the “best” one, sadly. (I mean, not sad to me, because obviously I love it and worship it and in fact have a small mini-shrine for it in my bathtub, but sad to most other people, who are normal.)
The first time I saw Reality Bites was in 9th grade, age 14-ish. I went with my two best firends at the time, a girl and a boy. We all loved it, but secretly I knew that I loved it the most. Because I am crazy!
At the time, I had no personal experience with much of the movie: the post-college life, first jobs, national recessions, junky apartments, boy triangles, the hijacking of my art by a pseudo-MTV music channel, etc. But I knew one thing completely: I wanted to be Winona Ryder’s character when I grew up.
Starting with the hair. I am not ashamed to admit that I pretty much spent my entire high school career trying to get my hair to look like (her character) Lelaina’s. It was all perfect and floppy. And I loved the dark hair with pale skin and red lipstick thing - that was good too. Also, her clothes. Not all of them, mind you; even in the mid-90s I could tell that baby-doll dresses were unflattering and would not be around for long. But the boys’ Levis jeans and t-shirts and shirtdresses and Converse sneakers, yup, check, got it. All over it. It all went into my grand vision of What My Life Would Be Like When I, Too, Was That Age.
And still, even now, I love the character. How many movies, even ten years later, have really great, dynamic, young women as the main character?
She’s meant to be the straight man amongst her more obviously eccentric friends, which has always been my MO, but she’s not dull at all. She stands up for herself, and she’s supportive when her friends are worried about AIDS or coming out, and she’s smart but self-effacing and charming. Also she really does try hard to land a new job, with all those interviews and stuff. (Fast-forward nine years to my first year out of college and oh! Look at that. Another national recession and I basically DID turn into that character. but with no gas card.)
I love the clips we see of the documentary she’s putting together, and I love that we know her well enough to imagine just how good it would have turned out if the Ben Stiller guy (Michael) had not convinced her to sell it to his network.
(“It was never meatloaf!” Word, Winona.)
And all the junk food and drinking and lounging around with fun friends? To my fourteen-year-old self, it just looked like the best life ever. Certainly better than the hell that was high school.
Finally, there was the boy triangle. It’s funny, but when I watched this movie back then, it never even occurred to me that Ethan Hawke’s character, Troy, was sort of a dick. I mean, there’s that part after they sleep together when he runs out in the morning after saying, like, four words to her, but at that age I guess I never imagined how jerky that actually was. Maybe before you start having sex you have no concept of how much it can shake your life up? Or maybe I was just thick-headed, who knows.
It certainly wasn’t that I was all *Ethan Hawke, swoon!* because I wasn’t then and I’m not now, but for whatever reason when he comes to her at the end and spoiler alert asks her to forgive him because his dad dying has made him want to be a better man or whatever /spoiler alert, I was always like, “Oh, okay. Yeah, now for the kissing! Cool.”
It was NEVER an option in my mind that Lelaina should have gone with Michael, because in my mind it was way worse that he had turned her films into crap. Also, he was pretty annoying, right? He was all unintelligible and inarticulate. Whereas Troy has that scene where he answers the phone with “You have reached The Winter of Our Discontent,” which made me want to read that book. It became one of my all-time favorites, so good job there, Troy.
There are even more reasons that I love Reality Bites. Here they are, along with accompanying embarassing personal information about me:
1. The music. So, the girl I saw it with bought the soundtrack and made me a copy (on CASSETTE, no less) and we would hang out after school together and listen to it all the time. She even convinced me to (oh god, am I seriously about to say this) record the two of us singing, a capella (no music to back us up!), the Lisa Loeb song Stay, into my tinny tape recorder. And then we would play the tape back and listen to ourselves singing and argue over who sounded better.
And this might single-handedly explain why I did not have my first kiss until I was fifteen, so, moving on…
2. The cameos. I actually had good musical taste when I was in high school, Lisa Loeb notwithstanding. I was OBSESSED with Soul Asylum, and I mean before they came out with that song with the missing kids that everyone can sing in their sleep. I loved them and I loved the singer and I loved that he and Winona were dating in real life. So when he showed up with one scene and one line, it just clinched the movie’s coolness for me.
3. The hair. I wanted to think of a third random reason I love this movie, but I think I have gone on for QUITE LONG ENOUGH ALREADY, thank you. So I am going to say it again: Winona Ryder’s haircut. It is masterful.
Aaaand, just to give you all another reason to feel better about yourselves, the other movies I mentioned before? The ones I also watch frequently to cheer myself up? Include “Tommy Boy” and “Shallow Hal.”
And yes, I am aware that I am the only female person ever to like that last one. I’m not proud of this stuff, people.
3.21.2005
My boss is totally cool with these dinners, by the way.
Last week was full of fun times. One day I had an appointment with the dentist for a cleaning. I had to wait a while, so when I fnished filling out my forms I passed the time just sort of looking around the waiting room. At one point, I happened to glance down at my chest and I noticed the most horrible thing: my boobs appeared to be way lower than I remembered them being!
Was I wearing an especially inept bra? Was it due to my heavy sweater? Could it just have been an optical illusion, caused by my looking down at my chest, instead of at it, like in a mirror?
Surreptitiously, I sneaked a glance at the man sitting next to me. He was still working on his forms and hadn’t yet noticed that I was, like, ogling myself. Since I had some time to kill, I grabbed my bra straps just above the cups and pulled them upwards. Well, that was better - high boobs! I decided that my bra straps must have gotten loosened in the washing machine or something. Slowly the fear dissipated and I settled back in my chair with a magazine from the coffee table. It was from June 2004. (Yup, I go to sort of a ghetto dental office.)
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Also, that man who was in town for work last week? Asked me out. Oh yes. And do you want to guess how old he is? Go on, guess.
HE IS FORTY-SIX.
(I am twenty-five.)
Um, yeah. I went out with him, because why not? It’s just dinner. It was just a work dinner between two work colleagues. A totally platonic work dinner which involved sake.
Totally fine!
Anyway, I had a really good time. We went for sushi, which was his idea. He was all knowledgeable about the sushi and the sake, and I am not, so I let him do the ordering. We actually had a lot to talk about. It started out about work, but we also talked about dating (he is divorced and, according to my boss, dates a LOT) and traveling and music and pets and Sideways and other assorted topics. The age conversation was sort of funny.
Work Dude: So, is your boyfriend moving to Georgia with you?
Me: What boyfriend? The one in my head?
Work Dude: Oh, [my boss] made it sound like you had a really serious boyfriend, like you were practically engaged.
Me: What? Maybe you’re thinking of someone else; he’d never say that about me.
Work Dude: Hmm…maybe.
Me: Anyway, you can’t get married at 25. That’s crazy talk.
Work Dude: You’re 25?!
Me: How old did you think I was?
Work Dude: I just…I don’t know. You look young, but you come off much older when you speak. Like, 30? I don’t know.
Me: (Wow, I need to buy some better eye cream!) THIRTY? Keerist. So, how old are you?
Work Dude: OH! Ha ha ha. Forty-six.
Me: (Passes out in my sushi.)
But yeah, it was a good time, even if it did get a little weird afterwards. At dinner he had told a story about a show he produced in Chicago that had all these fireworks and tumblers and light shows and blah dee blah, and he mentioned that he had photos, and I agreed that I “should see them sometime.” Then I walked him back to his hotel, expecting we’d say goodbye in the lobby, but he started heading toward his room. I asked where we were going and he said, “To see those photos!” I was thinking, “Um. Okay, weird.”
When we got to his room, he asked to take my coat and I said, “No no no! I’ve, um, I’ve gotta go in a minute. I’m just going to keep it on.” Smooth, right? I know; I should give lessons.
I oohed and aahed over the photos and then left and things were fine.
The next day at work he called and said he’d had a great time and would I like to go out again before he went back to Chicago on Monday? I am a very trusting soul, so we made dinner plans for Sunday.
That night a very random thing happened. I was walking past the White House one night after work when a bike courier whizzed past me and yelled out my name. I whipped around and there, sailing by me, was a guy I went to high school with! Awesome. I yelled out a hello and he waved and kept pedaling. Immediately I called my friend, who had dated him senior year, to tell her. She was very excited that he was still cute. We decided that he didn’t stop to talk because he had been dispatched on a super-rush job and the fate of important documents was his responsibility! Ah, the glamorous life of the bike courier.
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My dinner with Work Dude last night was great. He’s a very interesting guy. We went to another nice restaurant, and we ate and drank a lot, and just talked and talked. I left my umbrella at the restaurant, which is sort of a bummer, but whatever. It’s not every Sunday night that I get a chance to wear fancy shoes. Also, again this time he had a “reason” to invite me up to his hotel room afterwards, but it turned out to be totally fine. Better than fine - freaking awesome! Are you ready? He had bought me a present.
A box. Of Godiva. Chocolates.
Oh, the ecstacy! The agony (of not being able to button my jeans) and the ecstacy (of the hazelnut truffle). What a great weekend.
3.15.2005
Office Escapades and Wax On/Wax Off.
I think my boss is trying to wring every last drop of usefulness out of me before I finish working here. Today I had to get in at 7 (in the morning!) to meet a courier picking up some equipment for a show, and tomorrow I will be here at 8 to do the same again. My usual start time is 9, so arriving at 7 was kind of painful for me (read: I felt like a six-years-dead corpse all morning). Walking here, the streets were empty except for the other workaholics – mostly men, with beige overcoats and bad haircuts. I felt very dissimilar, as I am a woman and have a black coat. (Although I am not too proud to admit that my hair is pretty bad right now.)
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This is gross, but I think someone broke into my apartment last night solely to take a crap. When I work up this morning and stumbled to the bathroom, I practically had a heart attack when I saw that the toilet had magically sprouted contents that I swear were not there the night before. Possibly I hallucinated this, seeing as it was so early, but somehow I doubt it.
I am frightened. Hold me.
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Remember last August, when I went on that work trip and got all het up over that older guy from New York? Well, all my coworkers are in Vegas right now for a show and so is he. I fought tooth and nail to be able to go, but alas, there “wasn’t room in the budget for a PA.” Am the Little Match girl apparently.
They did send the office manager in our Chicago office, who is my age. We are total BFFs. We IM and have squealy girly conversations about girly things. I {heart} her!
Of course when I heard that she was going to Vegas and I was not, I called her immediately and told her the whole story of the Hot Guy. She was very enthusiastic and told me she would call as soon as she met him, to give me the low-down on whether he was equally flirty with her (and was, therefore, a ho).
Dun dun dun! The plot thickens!
Last week, out of the blue, he emailed me, causing me to nearly break a window emitting a Darryl-Hannah-in-Splash “eeeee!” noise. Because I am that smooth. He asked whether I would be in Vegas, and I said no, and he wrote back that “that was too bad; he was hoping to see me.” (I shit a brick.) Also he said that he’d be in DC in May and maybe we could go out then? (I had a mild coronary.)
I wrote back and said that that would be great, but that I was moving on the 11th so hopefully he’d be around before then. And then I waited…and then I heard nothing.
What a flake, right? I was all “Whatevah, I’ll do what I want!” (tm Cartman) about it, because, I mean, he’s hot, but life’s too short to deal with such asshattery.
A few days later, the Vegas trip rolls around. Chicago girl (her pseudonym is going to be Glenda) calls me on Sunday, on my cell phone no less, to tell me that she had just met him and he had given her the same “Do you want me to seduce you, Benjamin?” look he was throwing at me that whole week. What a hussy! I cannot believe he is so shameless. Does he not know how much girls talk to each other? Hello? He is totally not going to be able to string both of us along.
And THEN, as if Glenda and I did not already have enough reason to be skeeved out, dun dun dun part two occurred.
The phone at work rings this afternoon and I answer. There is silence, then the rustling of a hand cupping the mouthpiece of their phone.
Glenda: Hol. Ly. Shit.
Me: What?
Glenda: He’s married.
Me: WHAT???!!?
No wonder he periodically drops off the face of the earth and then pops up months later – he’s a married, skeezy tool. Man, I so am not going to “hang out” with him when he comes to DC.
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Today was not all bad though. A freelancer working on another show for us, the one in town, came into the office to partake of our wireless internet. He is a nice guy; I met him a few months back. Very chatty. At the end of the day, my boss called in to say hi and he told me to watch out for that guy, because he (the boss) had told him where we hide the office booze. Yup, my boss keeps a bottle of scotch in his office. He also walks around shoeless sometimes. He’s special.
So I called out to the guy, “Hey! You gonna get into the booze?” and he goes, “YES. And so are you.” This is how it came to be that I tried scotch on the rocks for the first time. (It was pretty bad.)
After work, I was buzzed enough that getting my eyebrows waxed seemed like a good idea. (Pssst…don’t tell anyone, but I got my upper lip done too. It is so silky smooth! Ah, sweet wax.) The waxer lady kept asking me questions as she leaned over me, and I had to talk with my lips clenched together because I didn’t want her to smell the scotch on my breath and think that I was some crazed afternoon alcoholic girl.
Of course then my eyebrows and lip were all red and I was embarassed to be walking home amongst the crowds. I am paranoid enough to think that everyone was staring at the angry red moons where my Jack Nicholsonian eyebrows and moustache used to be. Thank god I am safe at home now! I can be alone with my pink welts and my scotch buzz. Good times.
3.12.2005
Safe! Ty! Dance! (Safety Dance)
This week at work we put on an event here in DC, which is unusual for us. There was a graphic designer in town who I am friends with, so we met for coffee Thursday night. It was great, and I love seeing her, BUT. I am not used to drinking Starbucks-strength coffee in the evening. All I had was a latte, which is mostly milk anyway, but it did CRAZY things to me all night. (Heh, dirty.)
I was tossing and turning for probably an hour, with my mind racing and my heart pounding like I was a coke fiend or something. I mean, it was freaky. Am I actually this old now, that I’m going to have to be one of those “Oh no, I couldn’t! No caffeine after 3pm for me, ha ha ha!” people?
The worst part was the song stuck in my head the whole time. It was not a good song. It was actually the worst song ever. The granddaddy, the behemoth - nay - the very SUMMIT of suckiness. Seeing as how I am a giving person by nature, I will give it to you now.
Wellllll, we can dance if we wanna! We can leave your friends behind! Cuz your friends don’t dance and if they don’t dance, well they’re no friends of mine!
You can thank me later.
Speaking of music, over the last month I have gotten a little carried away adding songs to my Shopping Cart in the iTunes music store, and now I am stuck. It’s too big to purchase! I will have to sell a kidney to start fresh in that store!
I don’t know what to do; my music exuberance has totally boxed me into a corner. I tried highlighting just a few lines and clicking Buy, but it didn’t work. It took me to a “You have $54,234.99 worth of music. Buy or cancel?” window.
As far as I can see it, my only alternative now is to just buy the songs one at a time, thus ensuring that my next credit card statement will resemble the Magna Carta in length. Has anyone figured out a way around this? ITunes people, are you out there? Please make it possible to buy part of a shopping cart, as that afternoon I spent clicking through the opuses (opusi? opusasces?) of Madonna, the Bee Gees, and Depeche Mode is going to be the death of my savings.
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Has anyone else been watching that “Sexiest Bodies” countdown show on VH1 lately? I love countdown shows of any kind, but this one in particular is genius and I am hooked. Basically, it counts down hot actors, rock stars, sports stars, etc, and shows clips of them being hot while other celebrities gush over their hotness. And media people talk about how much the celebrity goes through to look so good: the diets, the exercise regimes, how many hours and how many times per week.
Now, after watching this for a while, I have had a thought. Astounding, I know! Just go with it.
The women they profile are either very skinny, like Kate Beckinsale, Kelly Rowland, or Madonna, or curvy, like Salma Hayek, Carmen Elektra, or Scarlett Johansson. And according to the show, there is (generally) an ENORMOUS gulf between the lifestyles of these two types. It ranges from doing nothing athletic, to working out for three hours a day, six times a week, and being vegan or macrobiotic.
So my thought is: why is there not a corresponding huge gulf between the two body types that result? Do you know what I mean? You’d think that the difference between being a fitness addict and a fitness abhorrer would result in more of a body variation than between, say, Tom Cruise and Jude Law.
Personally, my body is a lot closer to Scarlett Johansson’s than to Kate Beckinsale’s (except for that part about her being stacked, hello), and my lifestyle also involves a lot of sitting quietly while eating junk food. I am with her; it’s just not ANYWHERE NEAR WORTH IT to live on wheatgrass juice and run every morning just to get my stomach like 3 degrees flatter. For that fine a distinction, who cares?
Scarlett is crazy hot anyway. I would cross to the other side for her any day. Yeah, I said it.
Diarist Awards, Best New Blog nomination
Also, there is news. I got nominated for a major award (tm A Christmas Story) and it is awesome!
I don’t really expect to win, because if history is any indication (ie. that softball team I was on in the fourth grade), I kind of fall apart in the big game, har har. But I am SO pleased to be in the running. Anyway, go vote for someone. For me! Or for, you know, that other guy, the one who hangs out here sometimes. (Edited to add: The one whose name is Peter. Peter! Peter Peter Peter! Because he guilted me into being a nice person, like he is.) Or for Whitney, who I have never read but am sure is a lovely, deserving person.
A final thought for the weekend: “We can go where we want to! Night is young and so am I! S, A, F, E, T…”
3.8.2005
Countdown to Sav : 2 months left!
What is up with the weather here? It was pouring as I walked to work. Then it transitioned seamlessly to snow. Snow snow blizzard snow snow. Nothing stuck, unfortunately. After two hours it stopped, and now the skies are completely clear. I am excited to see what will happen tomorrow, and my money is on either tornadoes or locusts.
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Our bathrooms at work are in the hallway and are shared by all the offices on this floor. We have actual KEYS to get into them; they are that exclusive. Every time I go in there and use the paper towel dispenser, my eye is caught by a nearby toilet that has a big spot of rust inside, right near the pipe hole thingy. For some reason, EVERY TIME I see this toilet I have the same thought: “Gross, someone didn’t flush!” and then a split second later I remember that it’s just the rust spot. What is up with my brain that it repeats this exact process about 300 times a week? It’s like I’m a goldfish, merrily circling my little fishbowl with my little seven-second fish memory.
“Look! a castle.” swim swim swim “Look! a castle.” swim swim swim “Look! a castle.” And on and on.
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I am finally getting around to doing all the essays and forms and stuff for my scholarship applications. You know, because I have four due in the next two weeks. (BRILLIANT.) One that I started on last night asks for every piece of financial information on me as well as my parents and stepparents; not just income but also bank account balances, mortgage information, assets, and debts. Annoying! Plus they go out of their way to say, “Even if you are an independent student, please fill these sections out,” which seems really counterintuitive.
Dude, I want some of whatever these people are smoking that they think people will actually tell them this. There is no way I can ask my parents all that stuff! My dad especially would FLIP.
(Sorry for all the boringness. What can I say? Things are boring.)
OH! Heh. I do have one good story.
One Good Story
On Sunday we had a family thing for my aunt, who was turning 50. She had warned everyone that she was dragging out a karaoke machine that they had bought for my cousin a few years ago. Incidentally, this is the same cousin who got busted for smoking the reefer a few weeks ago. He totally got EXPELLED from his school, you guys. They had to attend a hearing to learn which of the other local schools would admit him for the rest of the year. Now that is hardcore. (Also, I want to know how a Nice Suburban Boy goes from karaoke parties to BUYING JOINTS IN SCHOOL in the span of, like, three years.)
Anyway, I am my grandma’s and her live-in lovah’s designated chauffeur for all trips to the suburbs, because they live in DC too. When we arrived, my aunt opened the door, Cosmo in hand, and was all, “We’ve started drinking! Karaoke to follow!”
My uncle has one of those fancy silver cocktail shakers and he knows how to use it. He made me a Sea Breeze, which was excellent, and I recommend it to you. (It has pink grapefruit juice so it’s a very smart thing to be drinking during flu season, don’t you think?)
Now, we are not a loud demonstrative family by nature. I mean, we’re Jewish, so there’s always drinking (THANK YOU JESUS. I MEAN GOD), but we are not outgoing performing types. We are doctors and teachers and gov’mint worker-bee types. But I tell you, the karaoke turned that living room into Star Search for a day.
We sang the Beatles, and the Carpenters, and a bunch of random 60s pop CDs. There was even one brief, ill-fated attempt by my aunt to get us to sing Brooks and Dunn, but that ended really quickly when it became apparent that she was the only County fan in the room.
I like doing lame, dorky things so I had a good time. At one point, my stepdad was butchering “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and my aunt and I were doing a total dork-ass synchronized dance behind him. A few minutes later my grandma pulled me aside.
(Now, you have to realize that my grandma is German. I don’t know what significance this actually has, but she uses it as an excuse to just say WHATEVER THE HELL SHE FEELS LIKE SAYING, WHENEVER SHE FEELS IT. When you try to call her on it, by saying, completely for example, “Grandma, it hurts my feelings when you tell me my arms are too short for my body,” she will come back with something like, “Ach! Well, what can I say. I am German! We do not beat around the bush like Americans do; we speak the truth.” Never mind the fact that she has lived in America for like forty years now.)
So anyway, she pulls me aside and gives me perhaps the biggest compliment she has given me, ever, in twenty-five years of life: “Ach! You are a good dancer. You actually have rhythm.” And I was very pleased and just about to thank her, but then she continued with, “I don’t know where you get it from, because neither your mother [her daughter] nor your father has any rhythm. Is it possible that you are part black?”
What?? Who, what, where? I seriously swear to God she said that. Holy lord, she is insane.
However, I must say that the high point of the day also involved her. It was when someone thought to pass the microphone to her, and she “sang” A Hard Day’s Night. And by “sang” I mean she did a spoken-word German-accented rendition. Complete with “Ach!” every few lines.
May cannot come fast enough.
3.5.2005
Please mail me some chicken noodle soup
Hi there, I have a cold. It has turned me into a snotty, stuffy mouth-breather (sexay!), which is sort of cramping my style. My nose is all, “Screw you and your CVS-brand cold tablets! I will run when I want to run!” I hate snot. I hate my angry, red, Bozo-the-Clown nose. I hate that a whole week has gone by since I wrote anything or went to anyone elses sites (I’m sorry about that), but I do love that an entire week of work has gone by, which means eight weeks until freedom and grad school.
In my fog of sick I have allowed the dirty dishes to reach frightening, Orange Alert proportions. They are at the point where I couldn’t wash them even if I wanted to, as they’re piled right up to the faucet and there’s no room for water to come out. My sink has become a game of Tetris, like at the end of a game when you’re totally fucked and two seconds away from losing. (Game over.)
So, let me think about any interesting things that have happened this week. I did see Sideways with that guy who I’ve been mildly dating. I hadn’t really wanted to see it; the story sounded sort of ho-hum and I don’t have any particular interest in wine, but this guy (who I will just refer to from here on out as Sheldon, because it suits him in a “When Harry met Sally” sort of way) had loved it and really wanted to see it again.
We went on Wednesday, which I agreed to before I learned that the new America’s Next Top Model series was starting that night. Doh! Sheldon is like, ruining my life! Gosh!
(Yes, I have Napoleon Dynamite on Netflix.)
(Also, sad, right? I wasn’t excited about a date because it interfered with my TV time. Good Lord.)
The movie was better than I had expected. I really really disliked the main character, Miles, but the other guy, Jack, was entertaining. The movie was very obvious about making Jack the Asshole Cheating Jerk, but honestly Miles (the Nice, Mild Weenie) got under my skin much more. He was so passive-aggressive and whiny and spineless. Anyway, so it was my fourth date with Sheldon, and I really feel more and more lukewarm towards him as time goes on. We’ve only had one date that took place in one of our apartments, instead of out in public, and I spent the whole night pressed up against one arm of the sofa as he inched closer to me. So there has been no kissing, not even to say goodbye (Sparky, there’s your salacious details! See, I wasn’t keeping any good secrets). I am hoping that he can tell we’ve moved into Friends territory.
Ass Talk, part one
After the movie, he suggested we get a drink and I said I was just going to go home, but then we ended up standing outside the theatre chatting for like ten minutes, in the 4 degree weather, because we are brilliant. And this was when it happened. He told a story about falling off his bike the day before, and he used the word “fanny.” As in, “So I stood up on the pedals to get my fanny off the seat.” Yes. Seriously.
This is a problem. He is a thirty-five-year-old man. No thirty-five-year-old man should use the word fanny, ever. I’m sorry, but hello? Fanny??! If you can’t say ass, say rear end or butt or something. The word fanny is too Victorian for even five-year-old girls to be using, am I right?
(As an aside, did you know that in England, fanny means vagina? It gives a whole new meaning to fanny pack, doesn’t it? Heh.)
So it is never going to work between Sheldon and me. I am not attracted to him, he has no lips (did I mention that?), and he used the word fanny. That’s it, thats the triad of Romantic Kiss of Death. RIP, Sheldon. It was good sort of knowing you.
A paragraph with no mention of an ass
Another thing that happened this week was that yesterday we held the second round of interviews for my replacement at work. I am pleased to say that my boss and coworkers and I all had the same first choice at the end of the day. My replacement is going to be a BOY, ooh la la. A Southern, bilingual, liberal, idealistic boy. Awesome. He is adorable. He calls me ma’am even though he is MAYBE three years younger than me. I love it.
Back to the Ass Talk
In other TV news (also, back to TV! thank god), the Country Movie Channel (CMT) keeps playing The Great Outdoors, which is one of my all-time favorite corny 80s movies. CMTs commercials are crazy! They are all for albums with names like “I love the USA!” or for The Dukes of Hazzard, which incidentally was one of my favorite shows as a child. (I totally grew up in Georgia. My other favorite show was Hee Haw. Did that even play outside of the Deep South?)
When I was little, I had a big crush on the blond guy in The Great Outdoors. What happened to him? He was so cute. Also, weirdly, Annette Bening is in it. I guess everybody gets hard up for rent money sometimes. I love how, since it’s on TV, they have to edit out the word “ass.” There’s that one scene, you know? Where they keep saying, “Blow it out your ass, Uncle Roman!” etc. Well, the TV people have turned it into “Blow it out your kazoo,” which just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
I now have a ginormous pile of used tissues sitting on the floor next to me, which means it is time for me to go and take more of my ineffectual cold tablets. Take care, you guys! Be well.
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