first base

Do you remember when your social life was basically all about finding a place to make out?

Before you go jumping to conclusions, I should say that I didn't have sex in high school (which will allow me to be appropriately outraged when I find out my kids are). And it wasn't like I dated a ton. I'm not sure who did, actually. In high school it seemed like you either had a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a crush and that was it. You didn't just have a random dinner date with the guy across the row in math class. Nobody was thinking, "Well sure, she's nice, but I kind of want to keep my options open." There was a great, dramatic simplicity there...if you liked each other, you were a couple, and there you were. Sharing a locker was the equivalent of a marriage license. God, in sixth grade I "dated" a guy that I didn't actually go on dates with. If you're young enough, the label itself is sufficient. (I broke up with him during computer class by telling his friend to tell him that I was moving on. No reason to be tied down at 11, right?)

Driving through my hometown recently, I was realizing how many parking lots my first boyfriend and I had been kicked out of by the town police (who were so bored they would pull up next to you if you idled in front of your friend's house for too long). I know, it sounds so tacky, but we were kids! We all have gearshift scars. The crappy couch in your semi-finished basement only worked for awhile, until parents or younger siblings came bulldozing down for some made-up reason, and then you had to act like you were really watching The State.

I have a friend (you know who you are) who apparently thinks he was born the ladies man that he is now, and claims to not recall any of these awkward teenage hijinks. But you guys do, right? Right?

burn baby, burn

I need to switch sunscreens. My old faithful pink baby bottle SPF 45 has served me well. Trouble is that it's quite literally meant for babies and not adults, and as I mentioned before, it becomes Elmer's Glue once applied. It's okay when I swim but it's a bad lounging sunscreen, and the sand ends up sticking to me like...well, there's nothing to even compare it to, there's NO HUMAN THING that gets sand stuck to them in such an extreme way that they can hardly get it off without exfoliating. Yuck.

The only problem is that my old faithful pink baby bottle SPF 45 works, even in the Carribean, which is really saying something. And I can't deal with a sunscreen that doesn't work. I'm basically allergic to the sun and when I get sunburned I get the flu, or else if I don't apply four or five even layers (no, really) I get my signature selective sunburn, such as the one I have right now in a couple spots on the backs of my legs only, thanks to hours spent learning to golf at Dirty Dancing. I once had a dermatologist tell me that my complexion was meant for "overcast London skies." Very poetic, but not helping me out much around these parts.

My friends don't have this problem. If they're not golden brown then they're at least a subtle bronze, and in that perfectly lovely summery way, not in that scary Malibu Barbie orangey way. They can use spray tanners that don't glop on like mayo, the kind that make a weak claim to contain SPF 8. But because they're my friends, they don't make Casper jokes; one of the Jens once became infuriated with a Clinique saleswoman who tried to sell me a self-tanner that I didn't ask for. No, my friends will diligently slather massive amounts of my sunscreen of choice on my back and neck to protect me from absorbing even a minimal amount of vitamin D. And they put it on evenly, because none of them want to be responsible for a selective sunburn situation.

Anyway, yeah, the switch has to happen. Unfortunately, I'm also a product queen, so when I see that there's a company that makes a sunscreen promising to be "extra soft," I immediately want it. But it's not waterproof. Be rational, Red, don't get sucked in by cute labels. So I pick up a different sunscreen, another SPF 45, and I ask the pharmacy tech if it's any good. She looks at me blankly like I'm asking her to give a dissertation ranking each of the Blistex flavors. I've been going to that pharmacy for three years now and it's not like I ever ask her opinion of anything, so am I really, truly putting her out that much?

She says, "Well, I'd have to ask the pharmacist." I nod and smile; my "would you mind?" loosely translates to "yeah, go do that." She starts to walk over to him and then turns back to me. "So, you want to know how well it works as far as...?"

I don't even know how to answer this. As far as how cute the bottle will look in my bag? "How well it will keep me from getting burned?"

"Okay." She's back in three seconds. "He says it's good."

"Oh. Okay." Is there even a pharmacist back there? Did she just ask the opinion of a row of Percocet bottles? "Good" isn't enough for me to make the switch. I have a relationship with the pink baby bottle! How do I tell her this? She doesn't care. She probably steals Oxycontin.

I bought it anyway. It's less goopy than the baby stuff, but I haven't yet had the opportunity to find out if it really works. But here's hoping it's..."good."

library books smell funny, anyway

I went to the city clerk's office in the Town I Was Born In to get my birth certificate which I need to rectify with the expired passport situation. T minus 16 days till my trip, but it should be okay, unless that's the week they started profiling sunburned redheads. Anyway, I went in and asked if they need to see anything besides my license. Turns out they don't even need that; they just need you to tell them your name, or any name, really, and give them $10. Why is it that easy to get your birth certificate, and yet the library practically does a vital organ scan before they'll approve you to walk around with a library card? I'm just saying.

marshMellow

On Saturday the humidity finally broke...whee! Jen and I went to York Beach and she ended up calling her aunt who had just moved in with her boyfriend in Kennebunkport. I was happy to go visit them but not so happy that our change of plans left us with no time to visit the Fun-O-Rama next to the beach. I took a picture of it instead, and also of a car with an "I Heart Laura Ingalls Wilder" bumper sticker. Maine is a funny place.

Jen's aunt basically dropped whatever she was doing that day to hang out with us, as did her boyfriend, which was nice of him considering he didn't really know Jen and he certainly didn't know me. And because you never get a second chance to make a first impression, I made sure that I was covered in sand when I met them. At some point my sunblock had morphed into superglue, so I was pretty dirty when I got there, despite my best attempts at removal. So they let me take a shower and then I had to pick all the little pieces of sand out of their tub. Pretty ghetto, right? You have to be a special kind of dirty to actually make the bathtub dirty too. Anyway, once I was presentable, they took us out on Saco Bay on Boyfriend's boat. Aunt took pictures of Jen and I in front of a lighthouse on an island, but we were slightly precariously balanced on the edge of the boat so the pictures went like this: blurry, cute of us but off-center lighthouse, us looking a little scared as the boat pitches and we try to maintain picture pose, me forgetting to take my sunglasses off, and finally a perfect shot. I swear, I have the cutest couple shots with my girlfriends. There's one of Connecticut and I from years ago that we refer to as our engagement picture. We almost registered at Bloomingdales.

Anyway, we stayed for dinner and had yummy pepper burgers and corn on the cob. I made the fruit salad but was having so much fun with the cherry pitter that I pitted the whole bag so it was basically a cherry salad. I only missed two pits and Jen got them both. On the way home I entertained her with my own version of "would you rather" until she yelled at me for being too gross. I'm sorry, but that game NEEDS to be way dirty in order to be entertaining. Not for the faint of heart, though, I admit.

As an aside, I really miss my other Jen. She's still in Israel doing good things and helping kids and whatnot. But I want her to come back here and hang out with me at the soup factory and talk about other people. Priorities, come on.

On Sunday, Steve came over and we went to Melissa and Joe's barbecue and had a great time, as usual. I always have a good time with them, whatever we're doing. How great is it to have friends like that? And they're coming to the Cape in a couple weeks so I'm excited for that. So is my mom! She met Joe once and already decided that he needs TLC because he works too much.

Oh, and Melissa happened to mention something in passing about passports and it suddenly occured to me that I might need one that's NOT expired, unless I decide to become an illegal Mexican citizen two and a half weeks from now. I've literally known my passport expiration date for TEN YEARS and now I have to put a rush on it to make sure I have it in time for my trip. It's nice to be in control of your life, let me tell you.

I had to go over to my clinical supervisor's house today so she could sign off on my paperwork for all my certification blahblahness. She's getting married in a couple weeks and was telling me how she had her bachelorette party over the weeekend and they all went out for lunch and then painted pottery. I think I would've thrown a clay bowl against the wall and asked where the freakin' party was. But maybe that's just me.

Bush Nominates Roberts, Son Inexplicably Rocks Out

iConfusion

I like my iPod's genre menu. Is it for times when you're going to have a dinner party and you want to set a certain mood? Genre would be a good word for Zach Braff to throw around at that party. Anyway, I especially like how it gets confused about its classification system. It doesn't want me to mix up the genres of Alternative, Alternative & Punk, Alternative Rock, and AlternRock. Eddie Money's "Take Me Home Tonight" is categorized under Blues (actually, that may be fitting). And Kermit the Frog, too, because he's singing "It's Not Easy Being Green." Too bad the extent of my knowledge of blues begins and ends with, "I got the baby-baby-babysitting blues..." White Snake is under the genre "Genre," proving once and for all that White Snake is stupid ass music, although they can still rock you like a hurricane. "Physical" by Olivia Newton-John is the only song categorized under New Romance. Huh. Belinda Carlisle, Coldplay, K.D. Lang, Tiffany, and my college acapella group are Unclassifiable. I'm imagining them all at the random acquaintances table at a wedding. But best of all, BEST OF ALL, the couple John Mayer songs that I let on against my better judgment are filed under Noise. God, how I love this brilliant little piece of machinery.

home

Dirty Dancing was great. Maybe I'll write more about it later, but it was as good a time as ever, and it was (predictably) hard to come home. I had a chance to start poking around with writing something again, so we'll see what happens with that. It's been awhile.

After all was said and done, the Bride's wedding was a blast. Granted, that was because I knew a lot of people there, and my peoples always bring the fun. We danced for hours and hydrated with wine and beer after the waiters took away our water glasses. Good thinking, guys. It was hotter than hell in the church but it all went by pretty fast. One nice thing was spending some time with Connecticut's boyfriend, who I like more and more every time I see him. It just made me feel really happy for her, and kind of optimistic in general that maybe marriage doesn't have to be a completely scary prospect. Then I'd look at the Bride's husband and try to remind myself that she's happy and to each their own. How freakin' Zen of me.

Anyway, Connecticut and Disney did my hair and Jen did my make-up and they managed to turn me into a girl. It was fun, but I was very happy to be barefoot and bobby-pin free later on that night. Several funny/random/mildly disturbing afterhours happenings later, Jen and I finally fell into bed around four. Her dad had ordered us room service breakfast for the next morning, so it was nice to ingest the hangover greasiness without having to get out of bed. Later on I stopped at my parents' house to pick up some bags I'd left there and to listen to my mom tell me how incredibly stupid and pointless she thought every facet of the wedding was.

If you're watching the Sox/Yankees game right now, why yes that IS my dad behind home plate. I made him not wear his hat because he went by himself and I didn't want him to get any objects hurled at him. Does anyone else think it's kind of funny that the Yankee Haters hats just look like regular Yankees hats?

In other news, this is really funny.

I carried a watermelon?

Packing for Dirty Dancing is kind of ridiculous because even though it's July, you're so far north that it can get pretty cold and you need warm clothes. But then the sun comes out and you need summer things. And you need shoes that can accommodate both types of weather because happy feet are essential. Plus you have to dress up every night... so yeah, I basically end up bringing everything I own, and if given the opportunity I'd probably bring everything you own, too.

The actual Dirty Dancing was on TV last night. Ha. I never really got obsessed with that movie, but it's pretty funny:

-In real life, Johnny would clearly be gay. Dance teacher, tight t-shirts with cap sleeves, and he's tired of being used for sex (his words) by vast numbers of female guests.
-No guy who works at a resort complains about being used for sex by the guests.
-Johnny spends a lot of the movie being really irritated with Baby. In movies, when you act like you don't like somebody, it tends to mean that you secretly worship them and really just fear they'll never grasp the depth of your affection. In real life, if you act like you don't like somebody it's usually just because they're a total fuck bunny.
-I also love that there was this MASSIVE socioeconomic divide and the guests were all rich and preppy and felt so above the wrong-side-of-the-tracks staff, when the place was basically like this no-frills summer camp for adults.
-I like casually working the word "socioeconomic" into sentences.
-Why was everyone impressed with the lift at the end of the dance? It was kind of dumb and it took like ALL of Baby's vacation to learn it. Sorry, I'm such a bad child of the 80s.
-"Wow, a secret room full of professional dancers! I can't believe how vanilla I am! Who should I sleep with in order to rectify that and instantly make me worldly at, what, 16?"
-Baby's hair looked like all of our sixth grade perms. What was wrong with her, and us?
-She's Like the Wind is the funniest song! Plus, doesn't Patrick Swayze sing it? Although honestly, how much did you play that tape on your Walkman when you were in middle school? I know I did.
-WAIT wasn't that Hungry Eyes song in the movie, too?
-I LOVE movies (and songs and everything else) that are so bad, they're fantastic. But you knew that.

let's all go to Saskatchewan in August

Because I couldn't live with myself if I missed this.

eye am scared

I'm not an exceptionally squeamish person. In grad school I did laryngoscopies until I was blue in the face, spent hours watching x-rays of people ingesting barium applesauce and pudding (and refluxing them, if I was lucky), cut open the vocal tract of a dead guy, and did a jillion oral exams, and trust me, some people have very bad oral hygiene. Granted, I wasn't into that part of my job, because um, hi, I'm not in medical school, but I'm just making a point: I'm not overly squeamish.

Except for one thing: I have a total eye issue. You know how sometimes people will touch their eye while they're talking to you, like they'll rub it or try to get something out of it? Yeah, that makes me want to die. I always have to look away because it totally squishes me out. And I can't touch my own eye... I have to put eye drops in by lying down, squeezing the drop onto the corner of my eyelid, and then opening my eye and letting gravity do its work.

There aren't a lot of times in your life when not liking to touch your eyeball is a problem, until you find out you need to get contacts. I'm far-sighted and wear glasses sometimes, and I used to have contacts, but I haven't worn them for years because I hate them so freaking much, and I can see fine without them. Or could, until recently. Lately I've been feeling like I don't see as well without my glasses so I went to the eye doctor, and she confirmed what I was dreading: when I'm not wearing glasses, I need to wear contacts. I don't want to wear my glasses all the time but I also want to be able to see, so this is where we are.

"I can't touch my eyeball," I tell her.

"How did you used to put the contact in and take it out?" she asks me.

"Putting it in was okay because I could just sort of slip it in without direct touching. But when I'd take it out, I'd just flick it so I didn't have to touch my eye."

"You'd flick it?" Now I feel a little ashamed.

Then she tells me she can teach me how to do it the right way. I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but I think it bears repeating: "I really can't touch my eyeball."

"Really, I can teach you. Next week, we'll set up a time and we'll sit down and I'll teach you how to do it. Without flicking."

Doubtful. "Okay."

She's confident. "It WILL be okay!"

Anxiety attack. "All right."

Now she's bordering on cocky. "It'll be a breeze, you'll see."

So, next Thursday, I'm going to touch my eyeball. Both of them. Wish me luck, or come over and get me a little drunk beforehand. It may take longer for me to find my eye, but I bet I won't be as anxious.

in which I refer to Neil Diamond twice

My mom and I were discussing the music that I was obsessed with when I was little. I loved Physical by Olivia Newton-John and any of Whitney Houston's dance songs or power ballads. I used to freak out with happiness when I'd hear What a Feeling (although I thought they were saying "take your pants down and make it happen" instead of "take your passion and make it happen"...interpret that how you will). Heartlight by Neil Diamond and Can't Smile Without You by Barry Manilow used to make me cry (Heartlight still makes me cry. In my defense, it's the ET song). And one more, apparently:

Her: And that Linda Ronstadt song.
Me: What? Linda Ronstadt?
Her: That song that went, "It's not that I knock it, it's just that I'm not in the market for a boy who wants to love only me."
Me: What?
Her: You used to LOVE it.
Me: When I was LITTLE?
Her: You don't remember? [singing] "You cry and moan and say it will work out, but I've got my doubts...All I'm saying is I'm not ready for any person, place, or thing to try and pull the reins in on me."
Me: So that song is basically the root of all my relationship issues.
Her: Wow, yeah. I should have played you more Barry Manilow.

Speaking of bad music, driving home from New York last weekend, Jen and I heard Hello Again by Neil Diamond*, and we were singing along (or, really, speaking along, because all he really does is say "hello" over and over, totally monotone: "I couldn't sleep at all tonight...and I know it's late...but I couldn't wait...hello." I was laughing so hard I was crying. Granted, I was delirious with exhaustion, but still...that song is freaking hilarious.)

*Fine, we heard it because it's on my iPod. Happy now?

lucky duck

Tonight during ESL class I made an offhand comment that one of the students was lucky. Another student, a very sweet older woman, said to me, "Lucky? What is this?"

How do you explain "lucky" to someone who understands and speaks very little English? "Lucky is when something good happens to you," I start out.

"Something good," she says.

"Yes, like...okay." I go over to my purse and take out a dollar bill, throw it on the floor, and then proceed to act out walking around idly and suddenly finding money on the floor. I pick it up; I'm excited. "I'm lucky!" (This is the unglamorous reality of teaching ESL when you only speak English.)

"I like when she acts," says one of my students. He's speaking directly to me. We haven't worked on pronouns yet.

"I know you do," I say. I once pantomimed football for him, reducing the game to sporadically interrupted suicide runs, which it basically is anyway.

Another guy imitates scratching a lottery ticket. "I win money," he says. "I'm lucky!"

Hmmm. Any non-money related examples? Didn't she see Napolean? "Shocks, pegs...lucky!"

"Lucky," she says. "I go to a party, I'm lucky."

"Good," I say, thinking, that depends on the party. (Most of the things you'd think of saying back to her don't really work: sort of, kind of, getting warmer, you're close...luckily working with young kids knocks all that figurative shit right out of you.)

I ended up borrowing her Russian-English dictionary and finding "lucky" for her. But she didn't have her glasses with her so I wrote it on the board. Have you ever written a word in Russian before? It's basically like inside out, upside down English. But she got it, and after she corrected my penmanship she told me they have nine vowels in Russian. And good parties, apparently.

speak up, sonny

Last night around 11 I was tired so my friends dropped my sorry self back at home...and then went right back to the bar and stayed until the wee hours. Tonight I plan to have dinner at 4 PM and fall asleep on the couch while watching Wheel of Fortune and knocking back some Ensure. That's right, folks: I'm now officially a senior citizen.

jegabots?

I wrote this when I was seven. Then Hasbro bought my idea and I made a fortune. Just kidding.

"My Little Ponys"

Once in a far away land there lived a big group of little ponys. The babies were named Applejack, Bow-Tie, Cotten Candy, Sugar and Spice and Taffy. The oldest were Twilight Moondancer, Star Beauty, Firefly Cloverleaf, Burning Beauty and Star Shine Flyer. One day the Jegabots horridble beasts jumped out of the blue sky the instante they did the sky darkened and the beasts let out a roar. The ponys jumped on their highn legs and ran for the doors! There were 3 little babie ponys behind the tree hiding. It was Taffy, Bow-Tie and Cotten Candy. 3 beasts roared after the little babie ponys. Eeeeeeee! they screamed before you could say “it” a beast bit Bow-Ties hair. Help! Help! Help! screamed everyone. The Jegabots flew up into the dark dark sky and were gone, so were the ponys! As soon as they were out of sight the sky lighted and the beautiful sun came out. Firefly spread her wings and flew into the sky. Come back! shouted Burning Beauty. It’s dangeres! cried Applejack. Where are you going? screamed Twilight. To get help! answered Firefly. Oh no! cried Moondancer. Meanwhile at the castle...

it's a small dating world

Do most people and their friends live in a little Days of Our Lives universe, or is that just me and mine? Over the weekend we were discussing our twisted little circle of relationships in our early to mid 20s. It went a little something like this:

I got fixed up with my coworker's best friend and dated him for a long time, and then one of my friends started dating his roommate.

One of my friends dated a guy for awhile, and then introduced him to my roommate at the time and they dated for a couple of years.

One of my friends used to date Mark's best friend.

I introduced a guy that I didn't like to a friend and she ended up deciding to marry him.

I lived with a guy for two years who originally agreed to be my roommate because he was dating one of my friends at the time. (They had broken up by the time we moved in.)

I fixed a friend up with a guy I knew from college who then proceeded to stalk her. (He also had a semi-high profile job and would ask me in a really self-important way to please not to give his email address out. Like anyone ever asked.)

I dated a guy who used to date a girl that I graduated from high school with. He was actually at my (well, her) graduation, and, funny enough, he's in the background of a picture that my mom took of my boyfriend at the time, but I wouldn't meet him until six years later.

One time I got fixed up with a guy and didn't like him, and then one of my friends went out with him and didn't like him either. He's a friend of the guy that my friend decided to marry. (All of us are in the wedding party. No awkwardness there.)

I work with a girl who keeps pestering me to fix her up with a guy that dated a friend of mine in high school. (He's worked with my dad since he got out of college, and he used to write my friend love notes with Righteous Brothers song lyrics. In his defense, he was like 16 at the time.)

I'm friends with a guy whose best friend's sister Mark used to sleep with in college.

I just spent the wedding of the guy who I lived with for two years who used to date my friend sitting next to a guy whose wife used to sleep with a guy that I was forced to friend-dump because he was really, really annoying.

I'm sure there's a bunch I'm forgetting about, too. I guess it's a good thing we all decided to get our own social lives. For the most part.

no day but today

My 19-year-old self is freaking out! It's the original Broadway cast, except for Mimi.

I'm also really happy that Anthony Rapp's bio includes his stint in Adventures in Babysitting. "Take it back, Brad! Take back what you said about Thor!"

brain spillage

Some girls like diamonds. I like fighting frog pens.

After lunch at Desmond's on Sunday with Jen and Steve, it was too summery to call it a day. So they indulged me and we went to Fun and Games, where we played skee ball and some cowboy shooting game. They had Dance Dance Revolution (or their generic answer to it) and glow-in-the-dark laser tag (!!!) but we had time constraints. Another time.

Anyway, Jen and I are very, very, very good at skee ball. We almost got ivy league scholarships for it. When we tried to cash in our tickets at the end, we realized we could only afford stupid crap like a single, solitary, plastic-wrapped Swedish fish (Steve got that, it was so funny and sad!). So, being the true friend she is, Jen donated her tickets so that I could get the fighting frog pen. It lights up when you write with it. Everyone who plays with it pretends to punch their face and get knocked out. Mine is red. We technically have joint custody but I'm a little possessive.

I want someone to text me. People are texting each other and I'm not a part of it. I know it might involve turning on my cell phone, and I would be willing to do this. I once had a text message on my phone for months and didn't realize that was why it always beeped at me when I turned it on. So maybe just don't send me an important, time-sensitive text.

Dentyne Fire spicy cinnamon gum is wicked good.

I'm bored with all my shampoo and products. I need to go spend money at Sephora. Or rather, spend gift cards, because the gift givers in my life know me all too well, thankfully.

You know what would be cool? I want for Carly to come out with me and Melissa the next time we get together. This is sort of a public request for a date, so you can't say no. Or I guess you could, if you really wanted to. Text me.

me, and then some

What is your most marked characteristic?
Goofiness, for better or worse. I'm continuing to push for legislation to make uncool the new cool.

What is the quality you most like in a man?
Can make me laugh until I can't breathe, extremely smart but not arrogant about it, walks that fine line between offbeat and wacko, very kind, has fun doing pretty much anything, good kisser.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Can make me laugh until I can't breathe, extremely smart but not arrogant about it, walks that fine line between offbeat and wacko, very kind, has fun doing pretty much anything, GREAT kisser.

What do you most value in your friends?
Just that they're there, whatever the weather. Flakiness is kryptonite to friendship. For a girl who isn't serious about too much, I take my friendships seriously and I think my friends pretty much know that I adore them. (I should also say that I have some of the kindest, funniest, most wonderful friends on the planet, and many of them have friends who are also the kindest, funniest, most wonderful people on the planet, so I feel very fortunate to be surrounded by circles of awesomeness.)

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
I can be ditzy.

What is your favorite occupation?
I love my job. Having said that, it pisses me off sometimes, just like anybody's job does, but I love and believe in what I do in a way that is hard for me to express without being sappy. If I wasn't doing this I'd probably be teaching second grade. Other than that, I'd love to be a columnist again, for a real paper this time. (Jen's friend Audrey writes a column for the Jewish Advocate called Everyone Loves a Single Girl, which I think sounds like the most fun thing ever.)

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
First, I would have to have finished everything on my to-do list (notice I'm too Type A to have suggested just ripping up my to-do list), and then I'd leave for Fiji with my friends and/or Ron King.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Seeing kids that I love who have terrible parents. (Here's my PSA for any of those considering procreating, from the admittedly secondhand perspective of someone without kids: Read to them before bed, help them with their homework, make sure you feed them well, go to every school play you can, and put them first in every way possible. This isn't a "The More You Know" commercial...it's heartbreaking how many parents don't have this shit figured out. Okay, rant over.)

In which country would you like to live?
Australia or New Zealand, but only for a little while because I'd get homesick, plus I'd get sick of all the hobbits.

Who are your favorite writers?
John Irving, Wally Lamb, John Steinbeck, Pamela Painter, Oliver Sacks, J.K. Rowling, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Blake Nelson (sometimes).

Who are your favorite poets?
Quinton Duval, Christopher Gilbert, Pablo Neruda, e.e. cummings, and whoever wrote that poem about plums in the icebox.

What is it that you most dislike?
When you're mean or ignorant or too smooth; I like simple and sweet and silly. And, of course, the Big Five: coffee, cheese, potatoes, bananas, and beans. Dunkin' Donuts actually has banana-flavored coffee now...blech.

Which talent would you like to have?
I'd like to be able to sing really, really well. Then I'd go on American Idol and when I won, instead of screaming "Thank you, America!", I'd dismantle the whole franchise on live TV, but not before getting the nation grooving to my rendition of "More Than a Woman" by the Bee Gees, falsetto and all, but then I'd launch into "Baby Don't Get Hooked on Me" by Mac Davis for that "come hither, now go away" effect.

How would you like to die?
In my sleep, as an old lady, warm in my bed, and then I'll walk up the steps and kiss Leonardo DiCaprio and have all the people around us clap. Yuck. Just drop me off a building or something, but not for 70 or so years.

What is your current state of mind?
Tired, but good.

What is your motto?
Don't do anything I wouldn't do, peanut.

celebrate good times, come on

You know what became official yesterday, after I picked up my mail? It became official that, for every weekend this summer, I have either a wedding, shower, engagement party, or bachelorette party to attend. Some of them are on the same day.

Weddings are great. Music, good food, dancing, you blissfully happy with your new spouse. No complaints whatsoever. Continue to invite me; I'll continue to bring gifts, and you will have the martini glasses that you registered for despite the fact that I've never seen you drink anything aside from beer from the bottle.

Showers, however, are painful. Little old ladies, little mushy sandwiches, little glasses of punch with sherbert that give me a headache. "Wow, look at the salad spinner from Great Aunt Mary!" Don't get me wrong, I love being included to celebrate with you. But you never have and never will spin salad, and we both know this.

So in order to set aside a little time to celebrate me this summer, I'm going to Mexico with Jen. We just booked yesterday. Yay!

Love is clearly in the air, people.

Chewbecca weighs in

I'm looking forward to this Star Wars movie. I didn't see the other two. That little blond kid and the talking dino-monkey guy...they just didn't grab me. I hope the fall of Anakin is more Crime and Punishment than "mwahaha, I want to take over the world," but we'll see. I hope Lucas took advantage of the opportunity to make him complicated and sympathetic...the fall of the hero is the best kind of storyline there is, aside from maybe three wacky roommates out of college and giving it a shot in the big city.

George Lucas is brilliant in general, of course...these movies came out when we were young, and we remember it with the sort of bigger-than-life reverence you can only really have for the stuff of childhood. When you're 25, a good movie is a good movie. When you're 8, it's pure magic and you're moved in a way that you can only express by acting out scenes over and over in the backyard with your friends. Bringing back the franchise when we're all older and nostalgic for it...genius.

As far as my relationship with Star Wars back in the day, I adored Leia, of course. I wasn't really the sort of little girl to look up to a princess, but she wasn't a princess-princess. I loved, loved, LOVED how she was smart and cool and hot and could kick your ass. I just wanted to be her and strangle Jabba and befriend Ewoks and come up with a better post-carbonate line than, "Someone who loves you!"

I hated Han. He was like the Mr. Big of a galaxy far far away. I hated that Leia liked him in spite of herself, not that she had many options. Even as a kid I was infuriated by arrogant guys. "I love you." "I know." Bastard.

Yoda was boring. He talked for too long and in his death scene, he JUST...WOULDN'T...DIE. I could never become a Jedi because I couldn't get past that rambling, grammatically incoherent muppet. There was always more advice, more dying gasps, more articles to mix up. Could he be anymore abstract? The force...the power...the belief. WHAT exactly is the plan here, buddy?

I loved Obi Wan and Luke. Ahh, Luke. He was smart and sweet and didn't shoot his mouth off at the creature meetings when rat face guy analyzed the hologram of the Death Star. He had that little smile and you just knew he was going to save the universe and have tousled hair and it would all be okay.

As far as the goods...I had a C3PO and R2-D2 alarm clock that used to say something like, "R2, it's time for all good Jedis to wake up! BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!" It made me crazy. I had a thought a couple years ago that I could sell it for a fortune on eBay, but apparently 1,000 other people with the same clock had the same thought at around the same time. I had an Ewoks tape holder. Oh, and the stuffed Ewoks. I had the brown one with the brown outfit (ha, outfit? maybe I mean rag) and then I remember my weird uncle gave me the gray one with the pink outfit, which was my favorite, and I was kind of scared of him but I was so excited I thought I'd die.

So, yeah. I guess I'm somewhere between looking forward to seeing it eventually and standing in line for three weeks dressed as a storm trooper.

the best part is her non-reaction

Oprah: I read that you were teased as a child.
Jon Stewart: Who wasn't?
Oprah: I was called Okra.
Jon: Did you tell them, "I'm going to have an Angel Network"? Did you say, "I'm going to have a Wildest Dreams bus one day, and you're going to need a house, and I'm not gonna flippin' give it to you?"
Oprah: No, my big thing was that I never heard my name called on Romper Room. So you said earlier that you were fired a lot... [goes on]

Oprah: If I come back in a second life, I want to come back as me.
Jon: You know what? I'd like that, too.
Oprah: In the early nineties, I realized I'd been imitating others... [goes on]

more movies!

There's this, this, and this, which I won't be seeing, but I like the trailer because of the Westie and John Cusack's line about meat at the end.

God, I love John Cusack. "Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?" Where has he been?

play ball

I'm a little bit concerned about the random sampling of society that I've been encountering at Fenway recently. And I think it's fair to say that it's a random sampling because when you live in and around Boston, being a baseball fan is basically a part of your DNA, so it's not like there's only one kind of person you'd see there.

Now, I don't have many requirements or expectations for you, the stranger sitting next to me in the ballpark. But I've been noticing that many of my new friends seem to fall into specific categories:

The Idiot. This guy yells, "Hey, Chop Suey!" at Matsui and "What's up, Gay Rod!" at A-Rod. Over and over. First of all, not even funny. Second of all, pretty offensive. Third of all, NOT EVEN FUNNY. If there's one thing that irritates the hell out of me, it's when people with no sense of humor, or else the most generic sense of humor in the world, think they're clever. And who are the people with this guy? Are they mortified, or are they just quieter Idiots themselves?

The Beer Thrower. I don't see much of this guy anymore since I upgraded from the bleachers, but he's still lurking around now and then. When did throwing stuff at each other become a legitimate outlet for expressing anger? I thought we all learned that lesson in the sandbox, somewhere between our education on indoor voices and flushing. I just wonder if he's the kind of guy who gets mad at work and hurls a stapler at Joanie from Accounting.

The Pink Hat. Like a Pink Hat herself, I have very little to say. I just can't give this girl any press. You all know how I feel about this one.

The Fighting Couple. The best example of this was a couple sitting next to me at a game last year who had about thirty seven beers each, screamed at each other, and took turns storming out. Are couples like that horribly matched or made for each other? I'm never sure.

The Insipid Commentator. "Wow, that pitch was 86 miles an hour! That's fast! Wow, that one was 84! How fast was that one? Can you see? I can't see it, pretzel guy's in the way. Can you...oh, wow, 92! That's the fastest one yet! Wow, 90. Holy cow! Wow, 92 again..."

The Drunk Guy Who Drunkenly Pontificates on My Dad's and My Hats While Drunk. I know, it never really gets old to see a guy with a Yankees hat sitting next to a girl with a Sox hat. But when you get drunk, your thoughtful commentary on the situation gets a little tiresome. You say pretty much the same thing to us that everyone else does, but it takes you longer and you swear more. You also kind of smell.

The Crying Woman. Last night was a first for this. Shortly after sitting down I noticed the woman next to me was sobbing. Now, I'm a pretty nice person, but this does pose a predictament...do you say something to her or not? And maybe something terrible happened to warrant the crying...maybe she and her husband had tickets to this game but then last night he was eaten by a bear. No wait, that's her husband next to her, and he doesn't seem concerned that she's a mess. Well, okay, maybe it's allergies...really, really bad allergies. Or maybe she's a LUNATIC. (In the end, I did ask her if she was okay. She smiled and said she was and thanked me for asking, but shortly thereafter became the Crowd Agitator...see below.)

The Crowd Agitator. Once she stopped crying, she decided that all the high school boys sitting behind us were clapping too loud, so she screamed at them. Yelling at someone for clapping too loud at a game is sort of like yelling at someone for eating popcorn too loud at the movies...they may in fact be kind of on the loud side, but you've just got no case. So, naturally, these kids laughed at her. The more they mocked her, the more furious she became, which is a pleasant dynamic to be able to witness firsthand. It went a little something like this:

CA: You CHILDREN need to STOP CLAPPING in my EARS! This is your FIRST WARNING!
Children: Shut up! Whatever, lady! We're at a GAME!
CA (stands up, hands on hips): DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING YOU WANT TO SAY TO ME? DO YOU? HUH?
Children: Sit down, bitch!
CA's Husband: DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT SPEAKING TO MY WIFE LIKE THAT, YOU ADOLESCENT PUNK ASS BITCH MOTHERFUCKER!
CA: IF YOU LITTLE ASSHOLES HAVE SOMETHING YOU WANT TO SAY TO ME THEN I SUGGEST YOU SAY IT TO MY FACE!
CA's Husband: MOTHERFUCKING FUCKERS, ALL OF YOU!
CA (sits down and turns to me): Can you believe them?!
Me: (bursts into flames)

don't you mean House of AWESOME?

I saw House of Wax! I was so excited, I was bouncing in my seat. And it was great because it was the day after its release, it was raining and the movie theater parking lot was packed, but the only ones there to see this cinematic masterpiece were Steve and I and a woman a few rows behind us who brought her 12-year-old-ish daughters with her, and from her ranting in the ladies room afterwards she had clearly been cajoled into doing so and was none too happy about it.

It was GREAT...it had all the important elements of a terrible horror movie, like one of the main male characters telling the main female character, "OK, well, I know we just got a little bit abducted by a toothless, knife-wielding guy who collects roadkill for fun, but I'm just going to run into his house over there that's clearly the gateway to hell and use the bathroom. But I'll be right back. You stay here in the passenger seat of his pick-up truck." Attention to my guy friends: You're not leaving me to pee. I'm coming with you.

Of course, people separate throughout the whole movie. "I can't believe we just narrowly escaped death! Okay, you go that way and I'll go this way." None of these characters are like me. But I don't suppose it would make for a very good scary movie if the first time something remotely creepy happened, the main character was like, "Wow, this is totally fucked up and we're leaving right this second. Hey, did you bring money for tolls?"

Great scene in a camping tent with Paris Hilton: First, she strips for her boyfriend, and then she decides to tell him she thinks she's pregnant. Then he runs outside because he's upset that the CD he put on has stopped playing, and when he doesn't come back for a really long time, even though the only thing he left to do was check on the CD right outside the tent, she thinks "oh well" and goes to sleep. Sounds about right.

Oh, also, it had that fantastic scene where the main female character goes into the house and finds all the incriminating newspaper clippings letting you know exactly what the bad guys have done, and just as she opens her mouth to tell the only friend of hers that's survived that far with her...well, you know how that goes. I love the newspaper clipping scene, though! Attention bad guys: Make sure that whenever you do bad things, you neatly clip the newspaper articles detailing the crimes, and that you keep them in the first drawer in your house that anyone would think to look in (it's helpful if it's in a desk on top of which there's a glass jar containing a cow fetus or something equally subdued). And don't go and scrapbook those articles, oh no...make sure you stack them sequentially so the first one is about something that we know or suspect you did, but as the main character continues to sift through, we find out about stuff you did that we had no idea about but that conveniently ties back to an unsettled issue from earlier in the movie, and only then will we know the depth of your madness.

So, go see it! Or just rent it when it's in the discount bin at Blockbuster next week.

Crazy Neighbor Chuck, on honesty

CNC: How's it going?
Me: Oh, hey. Just taking out the trash before the rain starts.
CNC: It's going to rain?
Me: Yeah, supposedly all weekend.
CNC: You're kidding.
Me: No...sorry to give you the bad news.
CNC: Well, that's okay. You're a truth-teller.
Me: Right.
CNC: You tell the truth, and that's good.
Me: So take care!

yay movies

I want to see this, this (despite not liking Nicholas Cage), this (who is that blond girl? I like her), this (Helena Bonham Carter is basically perfect), and this...I love Ron Livingston ("I'm sorry, I can't, don't hate me"), Allison Janney ("First of all, you're wrong. Second of all, shut up"), and Anthony LaPaglia. Although we'll see how that one plays out, because I'm getting a little tired of the whole "two miserable people coming together and somehow suddenly being happy" thing.

And this. But you knew that already. Prey, slay, DISPLAY!

I love trailers. Oh, and movies.

Sweet Valley High

Red joined me at the local library where I picked up, among other things, Stevie Wonder's Boxed Set: At The Close Of The Century. We made our way through the children's section, which I found to be more than ample, but Red was like "eh, it's not so big" and stumbled across Judy Blume's Superfudge and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.
Then we hit pay-dirt. Every Nancy Drew book, in order.
"I had this one and this one..." Red said gleefully.
"You know what I used to love? Sweet Valley High..." We turned the corner, and you guessed it, EACH AND EVERY FUCKING SVH NOVEL EVER CREATED stood before us.
"OH MY GOD!!" Red EXPLODED. "This is the first one, Double Trouble... wait, I'll close my eyes and tell you the rest." I knew I was in for it.
"There's Oriental Summer, and the Older Sister, and Cheerleading Camp Blues... I had ALL of these!"
Then the covers eventually began to have pictures of boys on them, by this time she has recited 53 of these titles to me. "This is where my father forbid me to read these books."
"What are they about?" I asked.
"Well, each book starts out with a description of these two twins..." she read aloud. "They were blonde as the summer wind. They never needed to diet. Their teeth were white pearls plucked from the sea. They were co-prom queens. They both rode majestical stallions, and smelled like buttercups."
"So this is basically the seed that causes young women to have inferiority complexes and become maladjusted, neurotic, underconfident and have negative body images."
"Yeah. Ooh! Sock Hop Surprise!"

not even remotely entertaining email survey

What outfit are you wearing?
Black pants and a dark red scoopneck shirt.

What are you listening to right now?
Kids with intense spring fever.

What was the last thing you ate?
Salad with chicken at the 99 with work friends. Maybe I've just not been eating enough lately, but the food there was actually pretty good!

Do you wish on stars?
Maybe.

If you were a crayon, what color would you be?
Maybe purple or yellow. And also not thrilled about being a crayon.

How is the weather right now?
Sunny and kind of windy. But overall nice, thank God.

Last person you spoke to on the phone?
Mark.

How old are you today?
27 years, 6 months, 12 days.

Favorite drink?
Diet Pepsi, water, good wine, and I love chocolate milkshakes but I never really have them.

Favorite sport?
Baseball. Come on.

Hair color?
Red.

Do you wear contacts?
No.

Siblings?
None.

Favorite month?
October.

Favorite food?
Now I have my favorite summer food on the brain: grilled marinated chicken and veggie shishkabobs (is that a real word?), soft serve chocolate ice cream cones at Fenway, lobster rolls at the raw bar in Mashpee.

What was the last movie you watched?
I Heart Huckabees, I think. It wasn't as good as I wanted it to be.

Favorite day of the year?
The first day it feels like spring, the first day it feels like fall, and my first night at the Balsams.

What do you do to vent anger?
I talk to my friends about everything. I talk to my mom. I talk to the assistant manager at Lady Foot Locker. Woman knows her stuff.

What was your favorite toy as a child?
I was obsessed with my Barbie Town House, especially the elevator. I loved My Little Ponies; I used to write stories about them. I loved my Fisher Price record player. I played Olivia Newton-John and the Cabbage Patch Kids album, which I still know by heart. I loved Care Bears, Rainbow Brite, all that stuff. I was a little girl in the 80s, what can I say?

Summer or winter?
Ummmm...well, the end of a long winter is a bad time to be objective. I don't hate winter, like most people, but I'd have to go with summer. Although I really prefer spring and fall. If you care. Which you probably do not.

Hugs or kisses?
Depends who's giving it, I guess?

Chocolate or vanilla?
Chocolate.

When was the last time you cried?
I don't remember, actually.

What is under your bed?
It used to be a wayward Roomba, until I found him. That thing is possessed.

What did you do last night?
I went to the game with my dad, FlyingJ, and Jen, and watched Schilling get his heart broken by the Yankees.

Favorite smell?
Beachiness.

Plain, buttered or salted popcorn?
Light butter and salt.

Favorite car?
I don't know, so long as it's black and not a sedan, but not a gigantic whale car either.

Favorite flower?
Yellow tulips.

Number of keys on your key ring?
Five...my apartment, my mailbox, my car, my classroom, my parents' house.

How many years at your current job?
8 months.

How many states have you lived in?
Just the one.

What is your favorite restaurant to visit for breakfast and what do you order?
I don't really go out for breakfast, but if I do I like eggs benedict and cinnamon toast. Has this survey been a lot about food?

If you looked back at your high school yearbook photos, what is more embarrassing? Your hair, your clothes, your glasses, or your complexion?
High school pictures were okay, I guess, but the junior high hair (perm) was really not.

If you had to change the color of one of the following, which would you change and why: the walls in your living room, your car, or your eyes.
I wouldn't change any of those. But thanks!

dog blog

Me: I'm getting a dog.
Mark: You're getting a dog?
Me: Yes.
Mark: YOU are getting a dog?
Me: Yes.
Mark: You're not getting a dog.
Me: Yes, I am.
Mark: Do you know what a dog will do? A dog will shit ALL OVER your apartment. It will chew up EVERYTHING YOU OWN. You'll have to walk it every day. You'll have to walk around behind it, holding a thing that picks up dog shit. You will literally have dog shit in your hand EVERY DAY. A dog will lick itself and then it will lick you. You are not going to deal well with any of that.
Me: I'm getting a dog.
Mark: You're not getting a dog.

"they're all wax! everyone!"

I haven't been this excited since Spring Break Shark Attack.

In other news (if that was news), I'm getting one of these!

American Idol Top 5

Jen:
1. Carrie, 2. Bo, 3. Nadia, 4. Vonzell, 5. Constantine

Mark:
1. Carrie, 2. Nikko, 3. Bo, 4. Scott, 5. Anwar

Me:
1. Carrie, 2. Nikko, 3. Bo, 4. Vonzell, 5. Scott

We're so lame, I know. Sorry.

hypochondria

I diagnosed myself with Borderline Personality Disorder on my way to work this morning. The radio ad was like, "Are you sometimes anxious? Do you sometimes want to yell at people? Then you may be eligible for a study on Borderline Personality Disorder."

The ads for kids are good too: "Does your child's attention wander? Do they have trouble completing activities? They may be eligible for a study on what it's like to be seven."

When Peter was getting his masters in psychology he told me that he diagnosed himself with every weird condition they studied. After my aphasia class in grad school, Gili and I were convinced we were about to have strokes. At least we could have had a double stroke party, sort of like the Brady sisters double wedding.

Sorry, that's just my BPD talking.

Top TV Shows

My Top 5, or 18

1. American Chopper
2. House
3. Good Eats
4. A Cook's Tour
5. The Simpsons
6. American Idol
7. Justice League Unlimited
8. Iron Chef America
9. Mythbusters
10. The Contender
11. World Poker Tour
12. Seinfeld
13. 30 Minute Meals
14. $40 a Day
15. Teen Titans
16. Yu-Gi-Oh
17. Judgment Day
18. Home Movies

Red's Top 5

1. House
2. $40 a Day
3. Sex and the City
4. Real World/Road Rules Challenge
5. Do you have any clementines?

we're gonna need a bigger boat...and budget

As fully expected, Spring Break Shark Attack was the greatest event of my life. I was BY MYSELF giggling and shrieking on the couch. I'm not kidding. It was fantastic for all the following reasons:

- Main Character Girl wants to go to spring break with her friends, but her dad says no. She screams that he had an affair, which is apparently supposed to be her argument for going. It doesn't work.
- Brilliant foreshadowing: Dad says she can't go to Florida because the guys down there are all SHARKS. Oh snap.
- Coincidentally, MCG is supposed to leave the next morning for Habitat for Humanity and instead goes to see her friends. We know this happens because they show her waving goodbye to her loving, cheating parents, then they do a close-up of her smirking, and then the next shot is Florida. That's editing, baby!
- MCG's Brother is also down there but he's doing marine research. We know he's smart because he's a good-looking guy who they threw some big glasses, bad clothes, and greasy hair on.
- Brother warns MCG about the "ecosystemic consequences" of an artificial reef they've built and how it's riling up the tiger sharks. But because Brother tells MCG to stay out of the water, she screams that he can't tell her what to do, that no one can control her. Because that's what you're really trying to do when you tell a member of your family to avoid a flesh-eating monster.
- A Sleazy Guy Who You Know Is Going To Die First is dancing at a club with his girlfriend, who is MCG's friend. Then he turns around, sees another girl, and drunkenly picks her up with, "Hey, wanna hook up later?" Hot.
- Dad shows up to bring MCG home. She again screams that he had an affair. Irrelevance abounds.
- MCG meets the only non-drunk guy on spring break. We know he's supposed to be intelligent and sensitive because he storms out of the club to go to the bookstore next door. He's also a poor local, and when you're poor you're sensitive. If you're rich you wear hair gel and put roofies in soda.
- After a huge shark attack on a boat during which everyone almost dies, MCG's friend complains that her fake ID is ruined.
- In the brilliantly downplayed final scene, a bunch of spring breakers are dancing on some floaty thing when 900 sharks begin to swim over. MCG and Sensitive Boy immediately set sail to throw vats of chum out the back of their boat in order to draw the sharks away. They don't bother telling the lifeguard about the situation, although she maybe could have helped by blowing her GET OUT OF THE WATER whistle.
- Roofies Guy gets eaten. Shark gets indigestion from hair gel.
- MCG can not only drive a boat, but drive a boat after its engine has been bitten off.
- It turns out the whole thing was a ploy by the owner of another beach who tried to divert the sharks over to his competitor's beach so that all the spring breakers would come party at his beach. He didn't really want anyone to die, but he was also really concerned about his snack bar losing business. Now that's living the American dream.

spring!

It's the first day of spring, and the weather is actually nice. Unfortunately the relatively mild temperature is contrasted by the piles of snow everywhere, but a few of my windows are open for the first time in months and that's enough to make me happy. I got to spend time this weekend with Jen, Mark, and Steve. Steve and I made public service announcements on his new digital camera, which I'll post here if I can figure out how to do it, if only because it will make Joe happy (to see Steve's creative genius) and Jason happy (to see me on the Internet, without me having to figure out iSight). Although I've lived in my apartment for almost three years (!), I just discovered a truly great hole-in-the-wall Mexican place less than a mile away that scores big in both the food and atmosphere categories. I got a long and involved activity done for my kids that I've wanted to put together for awhile (I won't bore you with the details, except to say that it involves fishing poles, magnets, and large quantities of velcro). I silently cursed Melissa for apparently buying ALL of the free iTunes Diet Pepsis in the tri-state area. I finally coaxed Jen into reading my blog by telling her that I talk about her in it and who knows what I could be saying, so she sat down and read it in its entirety and probably for the last time. Hi and bye, Jenny.

Also, I did my first lesson plan for my ESL class. I'm volunteering as an ESL teacher for a literacy group in the next town. I've wanted to do volunteer work for awhile and this language-y stuff is up my alley anyway. The training has been on Monday nights for the past three weeks. I have two more Mondays to go and then I'll be able to start teaching a class of my own. I haven't worked with adults since grad school so it should be fun.

But it all pales, PALES, in comparison to this, which is already the highlight of my weekend, and it's not even on until tonight. I am so damn excited.

why are people like this allowed to live on the planet?

Reasons I Knew This Other Town Chairperson Was a Complete Fuck Bunny:

1. At one point he said, "Why don't we hear from Cameron now?" and then everyone sat there in silence looking at each other. Then Fuck Bunny turned to me and was like, "Cameron? It's Cameron, right?" When I corrected him, he looked at me like I just really put him out by not being named Cameron.
2. Once I re-introduced myself, and everyone else continuously referred to me by that name throughout the meeting, he insisted on calling me by my full name. Don't do that. Don't extend the name. I wouldn't call you Fuck Bunniford.
3. When clarifying a point he was trying to make, he would say, "Do you understand this?" like he was addressing a zygote.
4. Whenever anything remotely anecdotal or light-hearted about the kid was shared between staff and family which, hang onto your hats, is actually important to building rapport in a relationship that is full of delicate balances, Fuck Bunny would clear his throat and say, "Yes, so ANYWAY..."
5. After the meeting he told me he wanted to talk to me for a minute, and then informed me that because I have a notebook in which I take notes during all my kids' meetings that my notebook is now public record and that it could be sequestered, and I suddenly pictured it sitting on a table in a little room, all alone and not allowed to read newspapers. Did he mean subpoenaed? Are they the same thing, in this case? Will it be testifying for or against Michael Jackson? Cameron needs answers.

Red's March Movie Madness '05

Sideways - 4.5 piglets. The first movie I've seen in a long time during which you felt every inch of awkwardness and sadness that the main character was experiencing, and then a few minutes later you were laughing so hard you were crying (really, crying). No imposed morality...the rat character was still a rat at the end, without getting his proverbial tail cut off. And a great ending that was satisfying without having everything wrapped up in a bow. It was so nice to see a movie that managed to not be moronic mainstream but also not self-important independent. (I'm talking to you, Zach Braff.)

Constantine - 1 piglet. I hate movies that touch on these huge, scary things (angels and demons and exorcism, oh my) and then have the bad guys look like the most generic crap you'd expect. Like in Signs, when the alien looked like you would if you went to Target around Halloween and bought an alien costume for $14.99. But back to the movie at hand. Some potentially interesting stuff going on here, but Gavin Rossdale as a demon, and Keanu as the mediator between heaven and hell? Shoot the hostage.

But I'm a Cheerleader - Piglets Not Applicable. I was planning to watch this movie but then forgot it was on. Then I cancelled my movie channels. Darn.

Mark's March Movie Madness '05

Note: All films are scaled on a 1-5 Piglet Ratio, with 1 as the lowest, and 5 as the most esteemed.

Siddhartha - (4 piglets) This is the 1972 Conrad Rooks adaptation of Herman Hesse's revolutionary novel. The work that changed the life of every modern day Buddhist and Beat Poet. Why only 4 Piglets? WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED? Is Siddhartha the Buddha? According to Rooks, the BOATMAN was the Buddha, and then, at the end Siddhartha becomes the new boatman, BUT he is so old by the end of the film when he finds nirvana the he could not have gone on to teach all of his disciples and students. After the Buddha sat under the Bodhi Tree and gained enlightenment, he went on to teach the Way. I am so confused about this film. If anyone knows what the Hell just happened, please Email me or make a Posting to my blog. Thanks.

I Robot - (5 Piglets) I can't remember the last time I saw such a great film. First of all it's about fuckin' ROBOTS, I mean what could be greater than that! Robots that run rampant and are on the verge of annihilating all humankind, and what's better than THAT? Will Smith is totally jacked AND he is partially an ANDROID!! I mean COME ON!! And what could be better than THAT?!?! The main robot has grown a soul, destroys a killer computer, and then becomes the GOD OF ALL ROBOTS!! Owwwwwwwwwwwww!!

SAW - (3 1/2 Piglets) This movie should have been called: "I want to be Se7en." Lame. Not scary. BUT there were enough interesting plot twists to make it watchable, and, at the very end, perhaps even commendable. Great ending (except for the penultimate tag-line). Oddly enough, not enough violence for a would-be violent movie.

Sideways - (5 Piglets) A perfect film. Not a shot or a scene wasted. A young wine taster and borderline alcoholic goes on a week long romp through wine country with his soon-to-be-married and infidelic best friend. The film is really about the old philosophical adage "is the glass half full or half empty?" Which plays nicely with the fact that these two friends coming at life from polarized angles. It's also about finding the right person to spend time with, and how easily life can fuck that up.

Constantine - (4 Piglets) John Constantine is basically a demon-slayer, which you would think would put him on the side of righteousness, however, he isn't a believer... he doesn't have any faith, so his soul is caught in limbo, being fought over by the powers of Light and Darkness. This movie isn't the next Matrix, in fact, it really isn't very good. However, there's this one brilliant shot of an Angel with fully spread wings, praying over a dead man that makes the film worth seeing. Also, the theme of the cosmic battleground between Heaven and Hell actually taking place here on Earth (not in the afterlife) is a wonderful step towards the truth and modernizing the way we look at our lives and spiritual evolution.

Flight of the Phoenix - (2.5 Piglets) You're the captain of a plane that goes down in the middle of the Asian Desert. You have limited supplies and water, and your crew is dying left and right. To top it off, there's a tribe of potentially hostile mercenaries scavenging the land, and they are hot one your trail. What to do? Well, make ANOTHER plane out of your plane! Why not? You have all the parts and you have a plane architect right there among you. The only thing that you DON'T know is that he actually builds MODEL PLANES, not full-sized, fully functioning aircrafts. Are you fucked? Tune into this summer flick to find out.

we were just trying to look like Tiffany

So this is what happened to all my old jelly bracelets.

damn you Noah and Allie

I'm not a particularly sappy person (except when looking at old issues of my college paper). I don't usually like sappy movies. But then I saw The Notebook and had a shamefully sappy reaction to it. I mean, it's based on a NICHOLAS SPARKS novel. That's like one step up from Harlequin, right? We're talking the Lifetime movie of literature. So I tried to forget about this dark moment in my life, but then Mark got me the DVD when it came out, perhaps because my uncharacteristically girly reaction to it amused him. So I tried easing into it by just watching the trailer. And proceeded to cry like a baby. At a COMMERCIAL for a MOVIE that is so SAPPY I could DIE. What the hell is the matter with me?

In other news, I'm having a Dance Dance Revolution party. I already called O.P.P. and Easy Lover, although I had to fight a Certain Phil Collins Enthusiast for the latter. You know who you are.

Can you tell I figured out how to put in web links?

1997

I was at my parents' house over the weekend (why yes, I did have some peanut butter while there) and was doing that familiar rummage-through-the-crap-you-left-behind-and-see-if-any-of-it-is-crap-you-want-to-take-with-you routine. I claimed a long forgotten pair of shoes which, sadly enough, were identical twins to the ones already on my feet, proving my resistance to wearing anything except black boots with a slight heel. I opened what I assumed to be an empty shoebox and discovered it was filled with random stuff that I hadn't wanted to throw out but didn't know what to do with (I now have an attic full of junk experiencing the same kind of identity crisis). Long letters from my summer camp best friend who I never saw again, a Cherry Poppin' Daddies CD to serve as a painful reminder that I once jumped on the swing music bandwagon, pictures, mix tapes, and a eight-year-old issue of my college paper, the illustrious Wheaton Wire. Of course I sat right down to look at it and I was immediately the happiest person on the planet to have found it again. It doesn't sound like much, I know, but it took me right back to May of my sophomore year.

There was an article on the Head of the Peacock, which was the annual make-boats-out-of-duct-tape-and-string-cheese-and-fall-in-the-pond event that kicked off spring weekend, which was just one of those perfect college experiences. Anyone who went to school with me and is reading this right now can feel free to berate me for my overly romanticized memory, but it just always seemed that spring weekend came on the actual weekend when it really started to feel like spring...which, as anyone who grew up or went to school in New England knows, is nothing short of miraculous after a long winter.

There was another article reviewing the Indigo Girls concert that had just happened on campus. At the time, they were one of my big favorites, and the concert was completely perfect...perhaps partly because I hadn't yet met Jason, who would forever taint my love for the Indigo Girls by commenting, "Great, another song about FEAR." Anyway, I was there with my friends, hearing some of our favorite songs, and it was just a great night.

There's a picture of the members of the male a capella group, who were like our own personal boy band, promoting an upcoming concert (or should I say jam) which means there's a picture of Mark, who I wasn't friends with at the time, and hardly ever talked to while we were both in school together, except for the time he was visiting someone in my dorm and stopped by to tell me he'd lived in my room two years earlier. Another time, I was sitting on a bench talking to someone and he walked up to ask me if I was the same Red that his friend had made out with recently. I wasn't, but don't you love the genesis of conversations between college students?

There's also my column, which is probably the reason I saved the paper to begin with. I started writing it freshman year and continued it pretty consistently, I think, through senior year. I have absolutely no idea what I wrote about, to be honest, but I must have come up with a hell of a lot of crap. This is the only issue I saved so I'm not even exaggerating when I say I can't remember at all. There's also a big picture of me next to the column, because the layout editor at the time had a crush on me. It sounds cute, but of course, because it's me, it ended up working against me. He came by and took a picture of me but then told me that he didn't have pictures of Keith or Luke, the other columnists, and didn't seem particularly motivated to acquire them. I didn't know Keith yet because it was his first column, but I called Luke and told him he had to give this kid a picture because I couldn't be the only one with one. So Luke turned in this picture of himself wearing a huge clown wig with his baseball cap on top. So there's clown guy, pictureless guy, and a disproportionately big but normal picture of me, which made me look like the girl who didn't get the joke.

Keith's debut column, and the only one I really remember, except for the one when he used my name in vain, was about halogen lamps and how they shouldn't be banned because...well, because fuck you, we like our halogen. We were all pissed when they banned them, even though they were PILLARS OF FIRE. I love the causes you jump on when you're nineteen. Maybe it's because the only things you own when you're nineteen are your clothes, some books you never read, and...a halogen lamp.

Fittingly enough, my column title in that issue was "Memories, Like the Corners of my Mind." I didn't actually always quote Barbra Streisand, but you'll have to take my word on that. So, yeah, it was just a nice little nostalgic snapshot. Call me sappy, but it made me happy.

peanut, peanut butter...and jelly

You may be familiar with my relationship with peanut butter. It's probably the most tumultuous relationship of my life, actually. I love it way too much, in all its many forms...creamy, crunchy, extra crunchy, in sandwiches, on toast, on crackers, as an ice cream flavor, in any form Reeses deems acceptable, it don't matter. No good can come of my prolonged exposure to peanut butter. Whenever I would buy it I'd tell myself, it's protein, it's all natural, it's made from peanuts, for cryin out loud, and even the low-carbers can eat peanuts! But then I proceed to eat peanut butter for every meal of the day, simply because it's in my possession and I LOVE IT. It just doesn't matter if it's reduced fat if you go through a jar in under a week. So I've restricted myself to only having it when I'm staying at my parents' house, which is not often. Good, right? Until I get to my beloved Whole Foods today and I'm wandering the aisles in the innocent pursuit of that honey in the plastic teddy bear bottle. AND THEN, as I'm looking at the list of stuff that's in every aisle, you know, that sign that says: water, pasta, pretzels, etc...I see the words Peanut Butter Machine.

I actually gasped out loud. I heard myself. Then I went to find said machine. People, it was glorious. It was this big, crazy-looking thing with jars of different kinds of peanuts. That's right, it wasn't just a peanut butter machine; it was a MAKE YOUR OWN peanut butter machine. I gasped again. Audibly. Then I realized I required back-up. Suddenly I became a frantic cell phone user.

Mark: Hey.
Me: I have a huge problem.
Mark: What?
Me: I'm at Whole Foods and there's a peanut butter machine.
Mark: There's a what?
Me: A peanut butter machine. A machine that makes peanut butter!
Mark: You need to just keep walking.
Me: No. I want to use it!
Mark: Keep walking!
Me: I can't!
Mark: Oh, fuck. Can I call you right back?
Me: No! I need help!
Mark: I'll call you right back.
Me: Okay.

Jen: Hey.
Me: I HAVE A HUGE PROBLEM.
Jen: What?
Me: I'm at Whole Foods and there's a peanut butter machine!
Jen: Of course there is.
Me: You've seen this?
Jen: Yeah, I've been using it since I was like eight.
Me: You knew about this and didn't tell me?
Jen: Yeah, it's no big deal! Just buy a little!
Me: You are not a good friend right now.

Other Jen: Hi, it's Jen, please leave a message and I'll call you back.
Me: I don't care that you have a job and that you're at it right now and so you're not answering your cell phone. I'm at Whole Foods and they have a PEANUT BUTTER MACHINE AND IT'S RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME AND NO ONE CAN HELP ME. Call me.

I shook off the bad karma by not giving in to the peanut butter machine and by allowing Whole Foods to inspire me in other ways, which led to my making lemon garlic chicken, rice pilaf, and glazed carrots* for Jen and I. So I'm still without the PB, but at least I'm making a stab at domesticity.

*Until today, I was not aware that one could glaze a carrot.

What Would Guy in My TV Do?

My favorite thing about my TV is that it has opinions. The info button doesn't just tell you the name of the movie and a two-line summary...it will inform you that the movie you're inquiring about is a disappointing farce, or that it's dim-witted but entertaining, or that it's an intriguing journey into the human condition that has its dull moments. And it seems to be kind of a fancy pants because it likes pretty much anything that's won an Oscar, but movies with people like Ashton Kutcher and Tara Reid piss it off and it starts throwing around words like tedious and horrible. Sometimes it tries to behave and will just say non-committal things like, "This 1996 adaptation of the best-selling novel XYZ stars Goober McWhoeverton in an epic struggle of good and evil," and in the next breath it's like, wow, that was totally craptastic. I love it.

P.S. Happy 30th, Joe!
P.P.S. Thanks for the help with the sidebar, Darren. And by help I mean, doing it for me.

the trouble with clean living

Mom: I've been reading this book on healthy living and I really liked it until I got to the part where they started telling you everything you can't eat. You can't eat fish because of the mercury. You can't eat anything that's been washed because of the chemicals it leaves behind.
Me: So what can you eat?
Mom: Legumes.
Me: I think you should stop reading that book.
Mom: So I'm thinking, what's safe, then? Should I just eat a freakin' flannel sheet?
Me: A what?
Mom: But it couldn't be clean or else I'd risk eating some of the laundry detergent chemical residue. So, a dirty flannel sheet.
Me: Do you still want to go to Legal tonight?
Mom: Do they serve sheet?

make it stop

I was looking at this book the other day that gave a script of what you tend to say when you run into someone you haven't seen in awhile, along with a translation of what you really mean. It was funny because "hi!" actually meant "shit!" It made me think about this woman at work who makes me feel like my face is caving in. She's one of those people who really isn't all that bad, plotting evil in the lunchroom or anything, but she'll just stop and talk to you about absolutely nothing for huge, gaping spaces of time throughout the day. I'm not even positive that she works there; she might just wander around, talking. If I've got three kids hanging off me, and one of them has just been bitten by a mountain lion and the other one is eating a rusty nail, she'd still stop me to have some inane conversation that is inevitably a recap of a conversation we had the day before to address an issue that was not an issue the first time around. I swear, I'm starting to hear, "Oh Red, one quick thing..." in my sleep. She's a well-intentioned black hole. WHY does every workplace have somebody like this? So anyway, I'm wondering if anyone has had any luck with finding a polite way to say, "Please stop talking to me about stupid crap." My "best wishes for continued success" only works on e-mail. Perhaps, "Would you be so kind as to refrain from engaging me in conversation that bears no relevance to anything?" Actually, that just makes me sound British. I need ideas...

the result of learning you can "audioblog"

And no, the second one IS NOT ME! I only do dramatic readings.

the hazards of laziness

The thing about working in a school and getting a snow day is that it's like a happy little gift out of nowhere, you enjoy it, and then you're back to the routine. The problem with three snow days in a row is that you forget the routine. It's been almost a week since you've been to work. You thought you liked your job, but you realize that what you really like is sleeping until 9:30, taking a long shower, eating Cookie Crisp while reading Oprah magazine, taking your sweet time browsing the aisles at Trader Joe's and, if you're like me, organizing your drawers and cleaning out your freezer. You can't remember the last time you were so well-rested, deep-conditioned, and fully exfoliated. The only problem with this is that your friends don't really like you anymore, and throughout the day they contact you by phone and email you to inform you of how their feelings for you have changed. But then you think, friends? Work? What's that? I think I'll paint my toenails.

And then, as if you're not already spoiled enough, your alarm clock goes off on Thursday and you think, wait a second, nobody called me, does this mean I have to go to WORK? Why didn't they call off the whole week? Boston schools are off for the week! Come on, people!

I know, I don't like me that much right now either.

dreamsicle

Not to be one of those people who talks about their dreams, but I've had the following two dreams in the past two nights:

1) I have a toddler named Peter. I'm not sure why he's named Peter, and I'm telling my friends/family/faceless people around me that I don't think I meant to name him that. They say, "You can't change his name NOW," which seems reasonable. I turn around and suddenly he's Gumby. Lesson: You really can't turn your back on kids for a second.

2) I'm hanging out with my friends and suddenly realize that I have a wedding ring on my finger. I become really upset and try to get it off, but the ring starts getting smaller and my finger starts getting bigger. I'm extremely panicked until I finally get it off and throw it on the ground. My friends find the entire thing hysterical. Suddenly I see a mall and I proceed to run through it. Lesson: Always walk in malls, and when carrying scissors.

And on the "You Think YOU Had a Bad Day?" front: My mom's friend had been in a relationship with this guy for five years, and the other day he left her a voice mail saying, "I never want to see you again. Don't call, don't email, don't come over." Then he took all the gifts she'd ever given him, along with some food she'd made him recently, and put it in a giant trash bag on her front step. Then he left another voice mail saying, "Don't forget you owe me $100 for the football pool."

I laughed too, don't feel bad.

just, you know, stuff

On Saturday, sometime after encountering the waitress that was full of hate, I met up with Mark, during which I arrived at a couple of realizations: 1) trying to keep up with Mark in a public place is like trying to keep up with a toddler with ADD in a public place, and 2) my taste buds are dead. I am obsessed with all things spicy. I order extra spicy sauce for my sushi because they can't make the spicy maki spicy enough for me. The most ghetto habit that I picked up from my old roommate was a love for Frank's Red Hot sauce, which I put on things never intended to be made spicier. I also put ground red pepper on anything that sits still long enough. My poor tongue. I clearly have a problem.

On Sunday, I watched the Golden Globes pre-show and some of the show with Jen

(during which we determined the following catty things: dresses that have a different type of fabric just on your boobs, a la Star Jones, are not that cute; Jen finds Orlando Bloom more attractive as a Hobbit than a human; Annette Bening was so unimpressed by her award and delivered a speech with such calculated aloofness that it made me instantly hate her--she was much better as a jolly pregnant lady at the Oscars; Jennifer Garner is cute as hell, I know, but the dimples thing is getting really irritating; Natalie Portman was wearing a nightgown; and Renee Zelwegger will just always suck hard)

in between going down to Cora's, where it became even more singularly clear to me how much I loathe football and that I cannot wait for baseball to start. Jen and Cora live in the same apartment building, so being over there is like college all over again, especially because Deb and Dave were there, too. (The other Jen is considering taking over Cora's apartment when Cora moves to Connecticut this summer. This would make my life more fun, but the Jen and Jen differentiation much more confusing.) Dave continued to try to figure out a way to steal all my iTunes music legally, while I continue to use iTunes to make CDs for my friends that contain songs like Rock the Casbah and I Wanna Sex You Up. Jen modeled dresses for me to wear to a benefit for her dad, who is a math teacher at a Jewish school and is being honored next weekend for years of service. But because of their rules, you basically can't wear anything that shows any skin, so she ended up looking like Mary Poppins, albeit a hot Mary Poppins.

Then I had to sadly tear myself away from the TV and schlep to meet the other Jen, whose friend's band was playing in a hole-in-the-wall in Allston. I feel like I'm karmically indebted when my friends ask me to go with them to see no-name bands in no-name bars because so many of mine did the same thing for me. I ran into some other people from college, including That Guy Luke who was the other columnist in our campus paper. All we needed was Keith and we would have finally had a freakin' meeting, seven years after the fact. And in keeping with my New Year's resolution to cook more, today I made black cherry Jell-O. Hello, it requires boiling water.

The biggest news of my weekend is that I finally learned how to use my cell phone to the fullest of its potential. I put a whole bunch of numbers in it, changed the wallpaper, and the ring! I am unspeakably excited about this!

I'll still probably never turn it on though, who am I kidding.

"I MEAN, WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE DON'T HAVE A CORKSCREW?!"

So I'm out to lunch with The Bride, and the waitress comes over to take our order. The Bride orders something without tomatoes and I order something without cheese, and then I joke that we're so high-maintenance. The waitress doesn't smile and practically rips our menus out of our hands. Then New Waitress comes over and tells us that Old Waitress is on break so she's going to be our waitress now. We then proceed to watch Old Waitress serve every single table around us for the next hour, sweetly asking our table neighbors if they want lemons in their beverages, or if they're interested in the dessert menu. So, basically, she took a break from us.

Me: What the hell happened? Could we have been more polite to her?
Bride: No. We were so polite!
Me: We were the politest people I know.
Bride: Maybe she was mad we didn't order drinks?
Me: It's lunchtime!

So we're basking in this rejection when suddenly Bride's ex-boyfriend walks by. This is the guy that she dated for a few months, years and years ago, but he just never really went away until she met her husband (fiancee, whatever, in print that just sounds like someone who should be handling your finances). I couldn't have picked him out of a line-up, to be honest; I only met him once like six years ago. He didn't like any of her friends because he was 30 and we were 21-22 and he thought we were immature. Um, you think? We still thought 30-year-olds were kind of icky back then. He came to a New Year's Eve party we were having at somebody's apartment and literally threw a screaming fit in the middle of the kitchen because they didn't have a wine opener. Hee! I love good theater.

Me: Where is he? I want to see him.
Bride: You know what he looks like.
Me: I met him once in like 1981.
Bride: Third booth, against the wall.
Me: Let's send him over a bottle of wine and no opener!
Bride: Where's Old Waitress? I think I'm ready to start drinking.

missing phone update

[See New Year's entry for background]
So, while Friend is at my apartment, she gets a call from her mom: "Somebody named Anthony called to tell you he picked up your phone at the bar." Friend is ecstatic and calls Anthony and arranges a time to meet to pick it up. They end up meeting somewhere in Boston. Anthony's friend drives up, Anthony gets out of the car, says "you're missing a phone?", hands it to Friend, and leaves. The entire exchange apparently took about 3.2 seconds. That seemed kind of funny to me; you'd think he'd have offered some explanation for why he picked up the phone, or make a joke about it, or something? But whatever, Friend was just happy to have it back. Then she checks the recent calls and sees that Anthony called a bunch of 900 numbers. Nice. Then she sees that he also called me. Recent calls looked something like this:

1-900-HOTANDUNDERAGE
1-900-HARDERFASTER
Red cell
1-900-OHYEAHRIGHTTHERE

What? Suddenly it's a Lifetime movie.* Was I in on this all along? Who can you trust? Am I running a second "business" out of my home? Am I Anthony? Then we realized that, alphabetically, my name is first in her phone, so he probably just called the first name listed before thinking to call the home listing. Still. It kind of creeped me out. Note to strangers: don't be calling me in between your phone sex. I never thought we'd have to have this conversation, Anthony. Yet here we are.

*I will be played by a young Meredith Baxter.

Bahama mama

This morning I was leaving the gym (notice how I say that all casual, like this wasn't the first day in months and months that I've been to the gym) and there was freezing rain and snow falling, and the ground was already slippery. I got in my car and "Kokomo" was playing on the radio. Uggghh. I'm usually not someone who hates the cold and complains about winter. I like winter, I like the snow, I don't even mind when it gets dark early (I know, I'm in the minority there). But this weather just kind of sucks. And then I took a shower and I have this scrub from Bath and Body Words called Fine and Sandy that smells exactly like beach. And then I read Melissa's journal about her maybe wanting to go to Aruba this year and I thought, why did she marry Joe instead of me?

I couldn't help but think about where I was exactly seven months ago, in Freeport on Grand Bahama Island. Jen and I went right after I finished grad school and stayed at the Westin at Our Lucaya Beach and Golf Resort, which was just perfect. Balcony off of our room, the Westin's self-proclaimed "heavenly bed" and "heavenly bath," which is what we constantly referred to them as, of course (it's so much more poetic when you can say, "hurry up, I need to take a heavenly shower too!"). Sugar Beach was right next to the hotel and the Carribean was like a big, warm, turquoise bath. We would laugh at ourselves because when we said we were going swimming, it was more like prolonged periods of floating punctuated by taking pictures of ourselves underwater with a disposable camera. We had facials and mud baths and massages; mine was a "Swedish Scents" massage, I suppose to get in touch with my ancestry, and Jen's involved lots of aloe vera, chamomile, and honey because she was pretty burned by that point. We got to swim with a fiesty dolphin who was so thoroughly trained it was like he was a person, which is kind of sad, but we're the dumb tourists who encourage such things. Every night we went to the marketplace across the street where there were lots of restaurants and bars and dancing and slightly odd nightly performances, always involving a man in purple satin pants doing backflips to "Who Let the Dogs Out," all of which provided endless hours of amusement and flavors of rum that we didn't know existed. There were a ton of honeymooners, and they shamelessly tried to market everything as a couple experience ("enjoy a romantic breakfast with passion fruit, starry-eyed syrup, and heart-shaped pats of butter!"), so of course we benefited from that, without having to cuddle afterwards. Actually, ha, at one point we were thinking about having "the massage of togetherness" because it said it was for two people, only to find out that that was a MUCH better idea for an actual couple. The locals tried to impress us with their use of Americanisms, like "I'll be back" in a Bahamian-influenced Arnold accent, so that was kind of like 1991 on Crazy Planet. All in all, it was just a blast, warm and fun and lazy.

So that's what I'm thinking about today, while it's still raining ice out there. Blech.

snow day!

Ahh, the joy of working in a school in the winter. The roads didn't really seem all that bad, but I'm not complaining. They even called off school in the town I grew up in, where they NEVER closed school, unless maybe there was a street gang waiting out front to kill us all. And even then we'd probably only get a two hour delay. When you grow up in the suburbs, you learn how to handle thugs.

So they have this thing called a phone tree, and if school gets cancelled, somebody calls somebody who calls someday, etc. etc. until the entire staff gets called. When I first heard about this I thought it was kind of dumb because we all grew up listening to the radio to hear about cancellations, so why do we need somebody to call us? But okay, if that's how it works. I'm at the end of this "tree" because I'm a new employee, so I don't have to call anyone, I'm just a call receiver. A woman named Paula, who is a teacher's aide for some of the kids I work with, is the one who is supposed to call me. This morning, my phone rang at 4:45 AM. I honestly have no idea what I said to Paula. Usually, the phone ringing will wake me right up. I must have been in some crazy R.E.M. pattern because I didn't really understand what that noise was or what I was supposed to do to make it stop. When I finally snapped to semi-consciousness, I had what could have only been an absurd conversation with this poor woman. I remember asking her if she'd called me earlier. (What?) I remember her laughing. Tomorrow I'll have to tell her that's about what she can damn well expect every snow day. I like my sleep, people. But actually, I don't mind her interrupting it. If you want to call me at some obscene hour and tell me that I don't have to go to work, then God love you, here's my number.

what I'll be reading

As far as I'm concerned, there's absolutely no better present than a gift card to a bookstore. Especially when said bookstore is also online and you get to come home from work and everything you ordered is in a giant box on your doorstep.

This is what I ordered with one of my holiday gift cards, should you be interested in my reading habits, or at least intended reading habits. I mean, I don't know if they're exactly up to Keith's discerning standards*, but they work for me:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Best American Short Stories of 2004 edited by Lorrie Moore
Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn--and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff (that was clearly a copy & paste moment)
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Your Own Worst Enemy: Breaking the Habit of Adult Underachievement by Ken Christian
Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now by Gordon Livingston

*Getting to mock you in print and knowing you can't edit it out: priceless.

and so it begins

...and, what do you know, it's out of my system! Cut to this morning at 1:30: I've just scratched during a particularly brutal game of pool and our waitress comes over to tell me that my friend just threw up on the bathroom door. What? Last time I saw her, about twenty minutes ago, she was dancing with Some Guy to Some Band and having a grand old time. So I get to her, and her seven or so Magic Hats are now on her coat, her hair, and, yes, the bathroom door. I feel awful for her and I'm really surprised; this is totally unlike her. Now she's locked in a stall with her head in her hands and the bouncers are telling me I've got to get her out of the bar. Come on guys, don't you know the real fun starts after the projectile vomiting? I talk to her through the door for awhile before she agrees to open it and then we leave. Some Guy starts running after us because he wants to come too. I don't think so, Some Guy. Then he pulls out a napkin on which she apparently wrote her number for him, but he says he can't read it and wants her to give it to him again so he can write it down legibly. I get us a cab and turn around to put her in it, and somebody else tries to take it. I tell this person that that's our cab. She's kind of annoyed and Some Guy cuts in to ask her for a pen. Cabless Woman is bewildered but gives him one. As we're getting in, he's saying, "She has my number, please just call me when you get home and tell me she's okay." In the cab, I ask her if she really wants me to call him when we get home. She kind of does. Then she realizes her cell phone is gone. Tears ensue. We get home and I call Some Guy to tell him she's fine. He says, "Can you call me in ten minutes at [a different number]?" What, and then enter my credit card number? I hang up with him and call the bar to see if they found her phone. No phone. Then mine rings.

Me: Hello?
Some Guy: Heyyyy.
Me: Hi.
Some Guy: How are you?
Me: I'm fine. [Friend] can't really talk right now, she's sleeping.
Some Guy: Oh, that's okay. How are you?
Me: Tired. I just wanted to tell you we're home and she's okay.
Some Guy: That's so nice of you.
Me: Well, you asked me to a bunch of times.
Some Guy: Right. You know, I got shut off right after you guys left.
Me: You what?
Some Guy: At the bar. They cut me off.
Me: No kidding. Okay, well, goodnight.
Some Guy: What are you guys doing tomorrow night?
Me: Um, not sure.
Some Guy: We should all get together sometime.
Me: Definitely. Night!

Cut to this afternoon at 2:30: she's still sleeping. I've called the bar again and the cab company but the phone seems to have disappeared. She did wake up long enough to say, "Maybe Some Guy asked for my number and I gave him my phone?" Then she got mad when I laughed. But come on, that'd be pretty funny. Okay, better go make sure she's still breathing. Happy 2005, all! Next year I'll be home sitting on my couch. Feel free to join me.