12.22.2007

If I Could Turn Back Time…

…I would not have said this thing, this awful awful thing, possibly the worst thing I have ever said. I once read a line by Dave Barry in which he said that you should never mention a woman’s pregnancy unless “you see an actual baby emerging from her body at that very moment,” or something like that, and hoo boy, Dave Barry was right.

E and I just went out to a large family dinner at a very fancy restaurant, a holiday dinner hosted by two sets of his uncles/aunts. Afterwards we were all leaving and I was chatting to two of his female cousins about their boots, both of which had heels. Now, it had been my first time meeting these girls. One of them I had sat near at dinner and spoken to a lot, and I really liked her. The other, I hadn’t sat near, so I really hadn’t gotten to know her at all. Based on what I could see at the other end of the table, I believed her to be a very pretty, slim, pregnant lady.

I am sure you can see where this is going.

For some psychotic reason, my brain suddenly became possessed by Lucifer, and I said to the one woman, “Well, I am just impressed that you’re walking around in heels at all while pregnant.” And then suddenly there was, like, a rupture in time and space. Every adult relative of E’s was suddenly staring at us and listening as the girl said, “What? I’m not pregnant? Do I…do I look pregnant?” And at the moment she was saying this I glanced at the other girl, the one I’d been talking to a lot, and she looked HORRIFIED.

Luckily I somehow came up with a way out, like, instantly, and immediately began backpedaling with a line about how “Oh no, you don’t look pregnant at all; I must have gotten the names confused! I was just going on what I thought I had heard! E told me that someone in the family was pregnant and I was just sure it had been your name! But obviously I just mixed up the names! It was so many people to learn tonight! Oh no, I wasn’t going on how you look at all.”

Thankfully the one cousin immediately began trying to talk through who in the family actually IS pregnant, who I might have “gotten confused” about. She did come up with a name and I was like, “Yes, it was her! Geez, I am so bad with names; I’m so sorry!”

And the not-pregnant cousin was very gracious and just started, sort of, alternating from rushing from person to person saying her goodbyes to assuring me that it was fine and no problem. I was babbling like the village idiot, just trying to get all of the relatives in earshot to understand that I was just bad with names, and did not in fact think that this perfectly not-pregnant woman was FREAKING PREGNANT, oh my god, it’s the worst thing you can say to a woman, oh my god.

I have blown it with E’s whole family now, I am sure. Three hours of behaving myself at the epic dinner, only to have blown it all in the 30 seconds of goodbyes. Shit. I will never be able to sleep tonight. I will beat myself up about this for a week, I’m sure of it. I mean, maybe years from now it will be sort of a funny story, but right now I just want to, like, burn myself in effigy to atone for this.

supine @ 11.02 pm |

12.21.2007

Festive, balmy 80-degree December

Ah, hello. I am typing from my sofa on my lovely day off from the gallery, web surfing with The Devil Wears Prada on in the background. I love that movie; it is one of my guilty pleasure movies. I have lots of movies that I just know so well that I like having them on in the background when I am drawing or catching up on emails, things like that. I can never just sit and have complete silence. I always need either music or a movie on in the background. (Is this a pathology?)

And now I am going to tell you my favorite Background Movies. Yes. I am putting it all out there. Some of these are, I guess, “good” movies, but some are universally despised(*), to the point where I consider my liking them to be almost a badge of honor to my weirdness.

Bridget Jones’s Diary
The Birdcage*
Tommy Boy*
State and Main
The Devil Wears Prada
Auntie Mame
Shallow Hal*
Sideways
Wonder Boys
The Big Lebowski
Collateral
Primal Fear* (I can’t help it; I love Edward Norton so so much)
Something’s Gotta Give*

I have a very good friend, my closest friend from college, who ALSO admits to loving Shallow Hal. I cannot tell you how shocked/delighted I was when she told me this. It made my love for her increase, like, tenfold. Our friendship was meant to be.

So, you, dish now. Horrible movies that you inexplicably love so much that you own them and watch them over and over. Let’s all be vulnerable together.

supine @ 4.47 pm |

12.16.2007

Last week I opened to rave reviews (ha! dirty)

Check this out for weirdness: my tattoo is so totally excellent that it has landed me a mention in a major newspaper. For real. This is because, about two weeks ago, E and I drove up to Atlanta to attend the opening of a group art show in which I had some drawings. It was inexplicably freezing that night and I had packed badly, not bringing tights to go with my skirt, not bringing a heavy enough coat, etc, but at least I had a sort of cute outfit on.

So I was standing around, looking at things and guzzling my free white wine, and a woman comes up to me and says, “Hi, I’m so-and-so from the AJC, and I love your outfit!” I was confused. I did not know what the AJC was, except that it was the same acronym as a company I once worked for years ago. Also she spoke quite quickly, and sometimes my brain doesn’t process things very quickly.

(Does anybody else have this problem??? God, this is embarassing. When I used to work for a fairly highstrung corporate president, I’d get so stressed out when he started barking a sting of orders at me. I would have to grab a pad and scribble frantically, knowing that there was NO WAY I could ever comprehend and remember everything later. Even if later was, like, twenty seconds later, when he walked out of the room. Sometimes I think I am pretty smart, and other times I think I might be slightly brain damaged.)

Anyway. She repeated her name and that she wrote a Nightlife column for the Atlanta paper. She repeated that she liked my outfit and handed me her card. Suddenly I realized what was going on, and that it was very very important that I charm her. I mean…the press! At a show in which I had drawings! So I really tried to work it. She was very nice and asked me lots of questions about myself, writing everything down, and had me spell my name and everything. At one point I gestured toward the wall on which my drawings hung, and it was then that she saw my wrist tattoo. She got very excited and had me tell her about it, what it meant and everything. I thought we were still talking about my art but by then she was way more interested in the tattoo thing. Which is fine.

After E and I got back to Savannah, I checked the Atlanta paper every few days to see whether my name had shown up in her column, and lo and behold, a few days ago it did! Here is the bit about me:

“Meanwhile, we were taken by the art [I] was displaying - on herself. S.B.’s not much into tats, but these were the sweetest blue roses you ever saw. (Wonder if we could get one printed on some notecards?)”

HOLY CRAP, you guys. It was my name and a glowing review of my tattoo! How excellent is that??

(At first I was bummed that none of the actual art was mentioned anywhere in the column, and then it hit me that this was a nightlife/culture/gossip column, and that I just needed to chill out.)

Besides, a woman’s tattoo receiving a positive review in a Southern newspaper is probably unheard of! It’s like I have broken the sound barrier or something.

supine @ 11.55 am |

12.14.2007

My Big News…BACK to senior year!

Well. Apparently it has taken me two months (you know, after the initial three months) to work up the energy to write a tiny little post about my recent changes. What have I been doing with my spare time? Let’s just say that if sitting on one’s ass and watching South Park DVDs equaled writing blog posts, I would have one outstandingly updated blog.

My awesome news is that I was able to quit my waitressing job! It was so thrilling. For the last few months, I had just been getting more and more fed up with work, to the point where I would wake up in the morning and if it was a day I had to go in to the restaurant, I would just dread it allll day long. There was nothing particularly horrible about this particular job I had really; I was just burned out of the act of serving in general. The only thing standing in my way was the huge loss of income if I quit.

It is too bad that you can’t make the same money working retail or in a coffee shop or bookstore as you can as a bartender or server. I had spent some time doing little calculations, trying to see whether if I just upped my hours at my gallery internship and also cut down on my expenses, I would still be able to make ends meet, but unfortunately the difference between an average shift’s tips and my hourly gallery pay was just too much. So I was resigned to just keep on waitressing (and complaining bitterly about waiting on rednecks and cranky oldsters to anybody who would listen).

And THEN! Bliss! I was on Craigslist one day and saw a posting from an SAT prep company, calling for teachers/tutors. Luckily I happen to be a good test-taker, and have a history of good standardized test scores, so I was eligible to apply. Long story short and two interviews later, I got the job! I am now a part-time SAT teacher/tutor! And although the classes are only held twice a week for a few hours each, the hourly pay is terrific so I was able to quit the restaurant.

So, I have not yet started the actual teaching part of the job; the next class starts mid-January so I am still in the self-training phase. The company sent me a huge box of teaching manuals and booklets, and I am trying really really hard to make myself sit down and go through them all. This part of it, admittedly, is going slowly, because right now I am on break from school and this just feel like, you know, more school.

Also I am pretty terrified about this job, because what if the kids don’t learn anything and they do badly on the SAT and don’t get into college?? I will have ruined their lives. I mean, if I messed up at my last job, somebody just had to, like, wait a long time for their entree, so this is a pretty large jump in responsibility.

I keep having these visions of standing at the front of a room full of frat boys who are snickering about my boobs while I ramble on and on about modifiers. Oh my god. I hate high school kids.

supine @ 9.36 am |
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