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to sum(mer) up

Ugh, I hate puns. Why did I just do that? There's nothing less funny than puns, is there? Same goes for and-THEN-I-accidentally-said-the-wrong-thing stories. I was at a wedding this summer where we got talking about waitressing and this crazy-looking girl started telling this story about how one time she was telling the specials to an old couple and instead of saying scrod, she said scrotum. Har har. It's like Everybody Loves Raymond humor. And who says the word scrotum, anyway? How does that slip out?

Um...anyway. So, I'm ready for fall. As soon as school starts back up, I'm ready for long sleeves and sleeping with the windows open. As soon as Bath and Body Works is ready with their fall candles, I'm ready too. So in an effort to hurry things along (pumpkins! foliage! cider!), here's What I Did on My Summer Vacation (imagine it written in second-grader scrawl):

- Spent LOTS of time on the Cape: 4th of July with the family, where I watched my cousins ingest a lot of meat and women; a fun waffle cone weekend with Melissa and Joe; and several days of parasite recovery, during which I lost weight but not my mojo.

- Spent my usual week at Dirty Dancing. Dealt with Hoodlum Waiter's friend who climbed on top of a gazebo and wouldn't come down and gave the event its own theme song by whispering the lyrics to "Such Great Heights," which was actually a little creepy, now that I think about it.

- Saw the following movies: Wedding Crashers, Must Love Dogs, 13 Going on 30, and Under the Tuscan Sun. I know, how girly of me. I loved them all. I saw Wedding Crashers twice because it was freakin' hilarious. ("Yeah, it could've been the soft mattress. Or the midnight rape.")

- Survived several weddings, including the Bride's. Attempted to squelch panic at the fact that my Safety Friend is now married. But lost any remaining respect for her when, while discussing Connecticut's upcoming wedding, she said, "I mean, I don't want HER to wear a strapless dress because I wore a strapless dress, you know?"

- Went to Mexico with Jenico. Pantalones optional, mojitos required.

- Pulled off Jen's surprise birthday party, with out-of-state guests to boot!

- Started planning the parents' 30th anniversary party with Dorie, who talks like this: "Yeah, I totally think that...RYAN, THAT WAS A VERY BAD THING YOU JUST DID! GO SIT ON THE STAIRS!...think that it's a great idea if we..."

- Went to lots of Sox games...and we have one more tonight (which we are going into four games up from the Yankees...and my dad text-messaged me "CU 2nite @ 6" which scared me until he told me that he has a program that turns his English into teenager IM-speak) and one more in October...the last one of the regular season, and against GUESS WHO!

- Mourned the trade of Swing and a Miss Bellhorn. Just kidding! Have fun with him, New York!

- Made more Yankees jabs in one blog entry than in the past year.

- Read some good books.

- Cut my HAIR. Phew.

And here's my summery playlist:

Magic - Cars
Steppin' Out - Joe Jackson
Love Will Come Through - Travis
You're Beautiful - James Blunt
Hot Child in the City - Bay City Rollers
Everybody's Changing - Keane
Electrical Storm - U2
Sparks - Coldplay
Love You Madly - Cake
The One I Love - David Gray
Brighter than Sunshine - Aqualung

Considering I'm kicking off fall at Bad Driver School, this season will have to work pretty hard to live up to the summer. Get your ass in gear, autumn.

for better or for worse

Every so often I find myself as a date at a wedding where I don't know anyone. It's sort of entertaining to be a fly on the wall of other people's lives. Look, there are people you never would've met, who have their own friends and spouses and parents and jokes! It's like a TV show because everyone is a character: Mother of the Bride in the Glittery Pants Suit, Grandfather of the Groom Who Makes a Vaguely Incoherent but Touching Speech About How the Bride and Groom Have Been Given a Garden of Eden.

Mark's friend, the groom, is a guy who I sorta-kinda knew in college. He used to date a girl who lived on my floor and I'd had a few conversations with him over the years. If I'd ever run into him at a reunion or a bar or something, we would've had the "Oh, yeah! How are you?" moment and then after the job-marriage-where-are-you-living-now catch-up game, would've promptly forgotten the other one existed. Very nice guy, but you know how it is with Totally Random Acquaintances. I never imagined I'd see this Totally Random Acquaintance almost shaking with emotion as he kissed his new wife during their first dance; I found myself wishing I'd at least had lunch with the guy a few times before I was allowed to witness such an intimate moment.

(And more hazards of attending a life event of a Totally Random Acquaintance: About a week ago, I said to Mark, "So how long have Groom and Liz been dating now, anyway?" He said, "Liz? You mean Sarah?" Oh, God. "Who's Sarah?" "The BRIDE." "Oh. He's not marrying Liz So-and-so?" "Um, NO, they broke up in college." "Oh." Silence. "Well, I'm sure he and Sarah will be really happy together.")

We were seated at one of the college tables. We realized we were old when they took the alumni picture for the quarterly (third time this summer I've posed for the quarterly picture) and realized we were the oldest alumni there. Neither of us had had that experience before—there's always someone there who's a little older and drunker and bitter about life to make you feel young and vibrant and sober. And we weren't older by decades or anything, thankfully—Mark is 29 and I'm 27 (fine, I'll be 28 in less than a month), and these guys were in their early 20s. But it does make a difference.

One girl at the table had just turned 23 and her boyfriend Steve was the best man. (It occurred to me that I was also at a summer wedding when I was 23 and my boyfriend Steve was the best man, but that's really neither here nor there.) I was telling her that her boyfriend seemed really nice and did a great job with his speech (having been her, I know she'd heard him practice it 1,000 times), and she started telling me about how his ex-girlfriend used to be her friend but now they don't speak because when she asked her if it was okay if she went out with him, her friend was like OK but then just dropped out of her life and then she put this away message up on IM, right? And then the girl totally IMed her because she thought they had broken up but they hadn't, but the other girl was only with him for ten months and this one had been with him for over a year so whatever, she already beat her.

"Yeah," Mark said. "A year is more than ten months. You totally win." God, does he sometimes just say stuff so that I can blog it later?

"Yeah, I win!" she reiterates triumphantly.

Maybe being the oldest ones at the college table isn't so bad after all.

could you walk a little faster, my GOD

I had a Tylenol PM dream last night that I was walking around Central Park and I kept getting into fights with these packs of girls. Then I realized that I was walking like I drive, cutting in front of them like a lunatic. Maybe that's what all Boston drivers should have to do...spend a day walking like they drive and see how well it works out. I think they even knocked me down at one point. Clearly, you don't want to mess with New York girls when you come from the land of wicked good chowda.

I think I won't be telling this story during share time at driver retraining school.

will this be on the test?

I got my driver's license right after I turned 17, and I had a perfect driving record for the next eight years. I got hit a couple times but neither one was my fault, and both times the insurance company paid for the rental that I had to drive while my car was being fixed. Then in grad school I did the white-knuckled drive during a snowstorm to class one night. I made it to the parking lot and as I pulled into a space, I scraped against the car next to me (yes, ironic that I made it through the snow and then hit a car in the indoor parking lot). I got out and looked to see if there was damage. I didn't really see any but I left a note anyway, because it seemed like the right thing to do. The owner of the car called me; she turned out to be a professor, and she praised me up and down for leaving a note and told me that I restored her faith in humanity. Then she put in some ridiculous claim and my insurance went up. A lot. So much for being a nice person.

Okay, so there was that...technically an accident, but not REALLY. Then a few months after that, I got pulled over for the first time...no ticket. About a year later, I got pulled over again...my first ticket. Then came the day not long ago when I picked up sheet music for Mark and got pulled over for making an illegal U-turn AND got a fine for not having renewed my registration.

When it's all in one paragraph, maybe it starts to sound like a lot. But it's really not...it all took place over three years, following my aforementioned eight years of driving sainthood.

But guess what? Five offenses in three years apparently mean that you have to go to DRIVER RETRAINING SCHOOL. I kid you not. I got the notice when I got home from the Cape last week. And if I don't do it, they'll suspend my license. I'm sorry, WHAT? Isn't that more appropriate for...I don't know, NOT ME?

So today I called to sign up and pay my $100 for the honor and glory of spending eight hours on a Saturday learning how to signal and stop for pedestrians. I'm already picturing walking into the Welcome Back Kotter classroom and crying silently in the corner while the mean kids in the back throw stuff at me.

When the woman was done signing me up, she asked me if I had any questions, and just to further perpetuate my new role as a deadbeat, I asked if there was a test at the end. I'm imagining my learning permit test all over again. And my actual license test was really easy...the guy made me do a three-point turn and then asked where my dad and I were going for lunch. How many feet do you stay back from a school bus? And I still can't parallel park!

"There's a 10-question true or false test at the end," she told me.

True or false? How about, if I don't pass this test, I won't be able to drive to work and I'll lose my job: TRUE.

Dave reminded me today that I backed into his car once, after fully acknowleding that it was there and then promptly forgetting. (So much for driving sainthood, come to think of it.) He had a big dent the exact size and shape of my spare tire on his passenger door. Luckily he didn't sue me or anything, or else I would've had to go to driver retraining sleepaway camp or something.

short

In my effort to keep my blog semi-anonymous, I eventually took the advice to stop posting pictures of me or containing me (thank you, counsel). So you'll have to take my word on this: the hair is short now, people. I've participated in the wonderfulness that is Locks of Love a few times, but this time I had to go much shorter than normal in order to have the required ten inches. (Who gets to open all those envelopes containing severed ponytails, I wonder?) I've known my hairdresser since I was a kid, and she was sort of freaking out as she was cutting it. "Oh Red, this is SO SHORT. This is SO DIFFERENT for you." When your hairdresser is panicking, that's never a great sign. But it would've been pointless to cut off eight inches and have to waste it just so I could not look like a soccer mom for the next month, right?

So for now, the hair is above the shoulders. Well above it. My shoulders haven't been so visible to the world since I was born (or since the last time I wore my hair back, which was yesterday and every day before it, pretty much). But anyway. It's for a good cause, and my hair will grow back fast like the weed that it is. (Right?)

the vomit reference is important to the integrity of the story...not unlike Katie Holmes' nudity in "The Gift"

According to my doctor, I have a parasite. Mexico tried to kill me. "Their standards of cleanliness are different," he told me. "You just never know what you could be dealing with." Oh God, don't tell this to a girl who keeps a bottle of 409 in pretty much every room of her home, who was one of the first to start enthusiastically using "swif" as a real verb. Don't tell me anything else about how no one south of the border washes their hands, just tell me I'll feel better soon. Apparently my cheap vacation wanted me to pay a little more than I anticipated.

And, PARASITE? What a way to put it. Way more dramatic than FLU. Nothing like the threat of a little bodily invasion to make you want to drive off a cliff. Of course, it's provided me with hours of amusement, as I've been going around telling my loved ones, "Red's not here anymore...the parasite is here now" in my best Tony-from-The-Shining voice.

When the obvious was suggested to me (toast, tea, rice), I countered that I might as well just eat waffle cones all day because it doesn't matter, I'm just going to throw up anyway. Billy promptly asked me if I'd seen Starved, that new show on FX, that I might really like it. Point taken.

"Swear? Swear on our relationship?" and other reasons why I love Laguna Beach

I now wholeheartedly believe that everyone in America should have MTV cameras following them around during their senior year of high school, because it makes for FREAKIN' GREAT TELEVISION. There's this one girl? Who, like, doesn't totally trust her boyfriend? And so she asks him pretty much every day if he's lying to her about something? "Are you lying?" No. "Swear?" Yes. "Swear on our relationship?" Yes. This is officially my new way of asking questions of my friends.

Now, think about it...if there'd been a camera following you and YOUR friends during your senior year of high school, they would've gotten some pretty good stuff. I'd get into it, but I'm a little high schooled out from my playlist entry from last week. Okay, fine, I've already walked into it...

So you have a crush on your best friend's boyfriend, well actually, you've had a bit of a crush on him from the time he moved to town in eighth grade and he walked into your science class and Mr. Martinson put him in your lab group and that night you wrote in your diary, "I have a crush on the new boy. He's from Buffalo." OK but now you're back in high school and your best friend is dating him. So best friend decides she hates all of you preppy assholes and wants to work at a ghetto fabric store in the next town with high school dropouts, and you try to sympathize with her working class aspirations but of course it's just pushing you and her alienated boyfriend closer together, so you both listen to too much appropriately gut-wrenching music in your bedrooms and you didn't so much as hug him until after best friend broke up with him but she accused you of sleeping with him even though you wouldn't do that until much later, and then she said she was a lesbian even though right after that she started dating that kid Eric. Meanwhile there's all your wacky friends like Rob who lives around the corner and makes you laugh until you can't breathe and he's got a thing for Alison who follows Phish around and smokes up almost every day in her bedroom because her mom doesn't have a sense of smell. And there's Kevin who makes extra money working at the supermarket and lies around with you contemplating relationships and he says he'll never, ever, ever understand what girls want and he's probably married with four kids now. And there's Katie who is dealing with a stalker ex-boyfriend who wrote "my love for you always and forever is as deep as the deep blue sea" or some such shit in his senior quote and now he won't leave her alone. And there's Tara who walks that very thin line between being delightfully candid and totally pretentious and then Jane Pratt writes a book about her.

I'm sure your senior year story reads with different names and only slightly different scenarios. Come on, that's good TV, right?

Swear? Swear on our relationship?

Plate-o

So I get down the Cape and notice that, in the dining room, there's a plate sitting in one of those plate display holders, because apparently when you hit a certain age you decide plates are worth displaying. Then I look closer and see that it's a dinner plate from Dirty Dancing.

Me: Mom, why do you have a plate from Dirty Dancing?
Mom: What? Oh.
Me: Do they sell these?
Mom: [pause] Well, no.
Me: Why do you have it?
Mom: [You really have to know my mom to appreciate this next part.] Well, you know, Red...sometimes you just pick things up along the way in life.
Me: Thank you, Plato. Did you steal a plate from Dirty Dancing?
Mom: No! Well, not exactly.
Me: You stole a plate!
Mom: You see, what happened is that Hoodlum Waiter...
Me: Oh dear God. [Hoodlum Waiter is a friend from Dirty Dancing with whom I have playdates while I'm there, but he also has this weird bond with my mom.] You realize that no good can come from a story that starts with, "what happened is that Hoodlum Waiter..."
Mom: That's true. But he knew I always really liked those plates...
Me: Mom!
Mom: I thought he told you we did it!
Me: I thought you guys were KIDDING.
Mom: No.
Me: You stole a plate from a restaurant, basically.
Mom: Yup.
Me: How did you get it out of the dining room?
Mom: It wasn't easy! But Hoodlum Waiter wrapped it...
Me: Oh dear GOD.
Mom: Yeah, you can pretty much figure out the rest.

what made me laugh all weekend

Me: I just remember the feeling of UTTER JOY when you'd open a present you really, really wanted when you were a kid.
Mark: Yeah, totally.
Me: Like when I'd open a new Cabbage Patch Kid, I would almost start crying.
Mark: That's nothing. When I was eight my parents gave me the Star Wars Dagobah playset and I was so excited that I passed out.

high school playlist

I love all those random people that make all those random mixes on iTunes. I was always the mix tape maker of my friends in high school and college, so it's nice to see others with the same compulsion. Plus all those 90s mixes make it so easy to go from living in the present moment to being so completely wrapped up in nostalgia that you sit there clicking around, listening to different song clips, and when your phone rings you yell into it, "Oh my GOD do you remember PM Dawn?"

So anyway, here's my high school playlist. I only have a few freshman and sophomore year songs, and then move right into junior and senior year songs, because they were much more musically memorable (say that five times fast). Anyway, this will soon be followed by my college playlist...and hopefully in a couple years, a 20s playlist. No small feat.

Birdhouse in Your Soul - They Might Be Giants
Possibly the most important song of my high school years, because it introduced me to TMBG and also to life beyond Top 40 radio. I remember the exact moment that I heard it, sitting on the floor with my friends in Alison's living room, knowing my life had changed. I think I was 14.

Spending My Time - Roxette
Roxette's Joyride and TMBG's Apollo 18 were the first CDs I ever bought. This song was my anthem for my crush on Peter, whom I adored freshman year summer. And still do, but in a different way.

Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover - Sophie B. Hawkins
I remember my dad picked the cassette single off the floor and that title really got a reaction out of him, and I was all, "Dad, jeez, what's the problem?" I think he knew then that there was nothing left to do but hope for the best.

Silent All These Years - Tori Amos
Ahh, Tori. I knew every breath on her first several albums and adored her. This song kicked it off.

Freak Me - Silk
Ha ha. HA HA HA. Even when I was 14 I knew this was a horrendous sex song. It was in the same place on the charts for several weeks and so they played it at around the same time every night on the radio and it was when I'd be taking a shower, and I remember blasting it and singing along as I washed my hair. (My poor parents.) Plus I read an interview with Joey Lawrence in Sassy where he said that it was his favorite song and I thought that was really funny. (By the way, if you also read Sassy and remember Margie, you should read this.)

November Rain - Guns 'N Roses
Right?!? The video! Oooh, what HAPPENED? I always felt like Axl loved her SO MUCH that he just squeezed the life right out of her. Plus that girl knocked that other girl off the bar stool with one hand and that was cool.

Smells like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
Naturally. This was a milestone song for anyone who went to high school in the early 90s, regardless of whether you were really into them or not. Recently I was watching something on VH1 where all the 80s metal guys were talking about how thrown off they were when the world started transitioning to the grunge phase, and I was thinking about how big and important it felt at the time, certainly not like just the latest phase. I think it was the perfect time to go to high school; I missed the hair bands and made it out just before boy bands made their comeback.

Jeremy - Pearl Jam
Which song to pick? I went with this one mostly because it was my first introduction to Pearl Jam and also the one with the deeply memorable video, not because of the ending but because of all of Eddie's faces. Oh God, I loved Eddie Vedder so much and STILL DO. I can't even talk about it, I'm getting dizzy.

Round Here - Counting Crows
Good camp memories.

Cryin' - Aerosmith
Oh, man...like everyone else, I loved it for the video. I probably watched it 100 times. I loved, loved Alicia Silverstone and her clothes and her attitude and her hair and everything.

No Rain - Blind Melon
I never completely loved this song, but I have such a happy association with it, from around the beginning of my junior year. I can't even put my finger on it, but it was just good stuff.

Big Empty - Stone Temple Pilots
This was a driving around with friends song, back when driving anywhere was awesome just because you could.

Hunger Strike - Temple of the Dog
More Eddie goodness. OHMYGOD, I'm listening to it right now and I can't even deal, he is the sexiest man on the PLANET, I don't care how much saying that dates me.

Leaving Las Vegas - Sheryl Crow
I'm not sure why I liked this one so much, but I just remember loving it. I also remember that if I started playing it when I left my house, the line "take this loser hand and make it win" was on by the time I pulled into Justin's driveway.

Big Star - Letters to Cleo
Loved them, loved this song, total senior year stuff.

Gepetto - Belly
See above.

Add it Up - Violent Femmes
Justin made a mix tape for me around the time that we were going from being best friends to being in love but not yet telling each other how we felt, so the tape was so charged up it was ridiculous. Anyway, this was the first song on it. (In retrospect, could his feelings, however dysfunctional, have been any clearer?) It was also the song Ethan Hawke sang to Winona Ryder in Reality Bites when he was all mad and jealous that she was dating Ben Stiller. ("Have I stepped over some line in the sands of coolness with you?")

Good - Better than Ezra
Just that nostalgic-emotional-graduation feeling of thinking you're totally separating from most of the people that you've been so close with for so long. And you are. Thankfully when you're 17 you're scared but also convinced there are bigger and better things out there for you. And there are.

Violet - Hole
Ha ha ha. I was trying to figure out which song from Live Through This needed to be on this list; I loved that album. I was tempted to put on I Think That I Would Die, for the title alone.

Terrible Lie - Nine Inch Nails
Oh Trent, with a name like that you should've been playing lacrosse. And getting to third base with Kelsey.

Hand in my Pocket - Alanis Morissette
I realized during my senior year summer that Alanis made good eating disorder music. For whatever reason I remember especially liking the lines "I'm sick but I'm pretty" and "I'm tired but I'm working," like I was spending eleven hours a day crunching numbers and supporting a family of six or something, and not putting in 25 leisurely hours a week at a bookstore in a strip mall. (The tired part probably resonated with me because I was only eating that sugar-free Jell-O at the time.)

Master and Servant - Depeche Mode
I remember Peter made me a Depeche Mode mix and I was like, WHAT IS THIS?

Stay - Lisa Loeb
This one was also from Reality Bites, which was clearly a big movie for me around this time. "Vicky just figured something out, something wonderful...Evian is naive spelled backwards!" Yeah, I can still quote the thing to death. And it forever impacted how my peoples and I dance to My Sharona. Anyway, I just thought this song was so great and meaningful, and I loved the stream-of-consciousness of it because it was how I was trying to write at the time, "I have so much to say that I...and this other thing, and I don't know, you just...", like emotional ADD.

Punk Rock Girl - Dead Milkmen
I loved this song! "We went to a shopping mall and laughed at all the shoppers." I remember playing it over and over and over on Justin's and my radio show at the school station on Thursday nights, 7-9. It was the perfect time slot except for the fact that I missed My So-Called Life.

Live Forever - Oasis
Another sentimental favorite. I almost put "Maybe you're the same as me, we see things they'll never see, you and I are gonna live forever" in my senior quote, but instead I quoted St. Elmo's Fire: "Nothing mattered but the moment we were in." Cheeeeese, but at least it wasn't Silk.

There may be a jillion that I forgot. What are some of yours?

no mas tequila, por favor...OK, uno mas

I could say a lot of things about Mexico, but a picture is worth a thousand words. Have you ever stayed in a hotel room with an in-room liquor dispenser? If not, you must be an upstanding member of society. The funny thing is that it was one of the things I was most excited about for this trip and, of course, we didn't use it once. The drinks were free everywhere, and we couldn't rationalize doing a shot out of a water glass in our hotel room. (We also had a fridge full of Corona and instead drank all the bottled water to stay hydrated. Ha, we're senior citizens.)

But getting back to the in-room liquor dispenser (that's how I started most of my sentences over the past few days). How freakin' great is it? I'll be honest, I was a tiny bit disappointed because I was expecting this spout emerging from the wall producing vast quanities of anonymous grain alcohol, and I was going to fill random things in our hotel room with the booze just to teach them a lesson about making it too easy in the spring break capital of the world. It was comforting to know that they were at least pushing the old familiar Jose, but what's up with Home Run rum, or whatever the hell that stuff is? That's not okay!

Anyway, we had a great time. What else can I say? You know how it goes in Mexico.

reheated groomsman

The Bride is back from her honeymoon and wants to fix me up with the Best Man. She didn't tell either of us this before the wedding, and at the blessed event he actually picked up Jen. (Shocker, I know.) While Bride was away for two weeks eating grapes or whatever she was doing, Jen and Best Man went on an uneventful first and last date. Nice guy, no connection, no big deal. But it does sort of make me not want to date the guy myself, as you can imagine. However, this, I was not expecting:

Me: I'm not sure I can date Jen's leftovers.
Bride: Well, I MARRIED your leftovers.

Whoa.

Me: Umm...
Bride: Well, I DID.
Me: Well, I mean...I never really DATED Groom.
Bride: No, because you wouldn't even agree to go out with him ONCE.
Me: Well...
Bride: You hated him as soon as he opened his mouth.

She's laughing, unfazed, apparently finding this hilarious. I should point out that this is the FIRST time she's had a sense of humor about this stuff. For a year and a half now it's been more like, "You were the catalyst for our love!" and hokey shit like that.

Bride: Yeah, I was telling someone that lame line that he gave you, remember how he said...
Me: Yeah yeah I remember.
Bride: ...and how you called me and you were like, "Listen to what this total loser said to me!"
Me: I definitely would have chosen my words more carefully if I'd known you were going to marry him.
Bride: It's okay. I tease him about it all the time.

All the time? Suddenly Groom's inexplicable loathing of me doesn't seem so inexplicable.

Bride: So anyway, Groom was the one who brought it up. He said, "What do you think about Red and Best Man?"
Me: Oh.
Bride: We talked about it a lot, actually! See, he's sort of shy but YOU could bring him out of his shell.
Me: Uh-huh.
Bride: Plus his family lives far away so you guys could spend the holidays with your family!
Me: Holidays?
Bride: We figured it all out! We even gave you kids.

This is maybe a good time to mention that I don't really want to be fixed up with anyone, particularly not someone with whom I already have imaginary children.

Also? The new sunscreen doesn't work. What's that about?

outlaw

I'm back from a great weekend on the Cape with the family, Melissa, Joe, Kelsey, and Trent. I'm working this week to pay for mi vacacion that I'm leaving for on Friday. And today, this:

Mark: Hey.
Me: Well, I got your freakin' sheet music.
Mark: What happened?
Me: I got pulled over by the Ritzington police for making an illegal U-turn.
Mark: Really?
Me: I'm next to the field where the American Revolution started and I got pulled over for making a U-turn.
Mark: That sucks.
Me: Not just that. It turns out my registration is expired. I JUST sent my check to the registry but it's late. I swear I've NEVER been late with that before. So this cop tells me I can't drive my car.
Mark: No way.
Me: Yeah. He tells me, "Well, technically I should have you towed, but you can leave it behind that church over there and get someone to come get you."
Mark: So where are you now?
Me: Behind the church!
Mark: I'm sure he left already. Just go.
Me: You think?
Mark: Yes.
Me: What if he's waiting for me?
Mark: He's not. Just inch out.
Me: What if he sees me trying to leave?
Mark: You're not a fucking prisoner. Tell him you were confused.
Me: Confused about what "don't drive your car" means?
Mark: I'm sure he's gone. Are you checking?
Me: Yes, I'm inching out. This is a strange situation.
Mark: Do you see him?
Me: No, but it was an unmarked car. He could be anywhere!
Mark: I'm sure he's not waiting for you.
Me: You don't know about policemen in small towns. Okay, I don't see him.
Mark: Okay, then go.
Me: I'm going.
Mark: You're fine.
Me: Now I'm on the run from the law.
Mark: You're a felon. I shouldn't even be talking to you.
Me: You're involved in this too, Thelma. I never would've been in Ritzington if I wasn't picking up your sheet music.
Mark: I don't know anything about that. Who is this?
Me: I'm a dangerous criminal.
Mark: I'm hanging up.

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.