"And I Was Like, Huh?": a special Dirty Dancing edition

And we drank water and ate his peppermints and talked about our years at school and stuff. And at one point he mentioned that he schedules his classes early in the morning so that he can wait tables at a restaurant in Portsmouth at night. He does it five nights a week and he said it helps him keep up with the tuition bills. And I was just like, oh my God. I wanted to hug him for being so smart and - I don't know - ambitious doesn't seem like the right word - maybe focused? Anyway, I just respected him a lot for it. And he told me that he goes to school with some people who have a lot and still complain that they don't have more and that I'm not like that. And then he told me that he'd gotten my number at school off the College website and that he'd thought about calling me a lot. And I don't know if he felt obligated to say that or what but then he said that he wasn't sure if calling me would have put me in an awkward position so he had decided not to and that he would just see me this summer because he knew he'd be back working here again. And all of a sudden I was just thinking "uh oh" because I hardly thought about him all year and I didn't know if I was supposed to have been thinking about him or what. I mean, we did practically have sex.

(For any newbies or forgetfulbies: "And I Was Like, Huh?" is a series of vaguely mortifying glimpses of yours truly at 19-ish, courtesy of Dave, who was kind enough to save all my old journal entries. Here are one and two.)

(Also, if you're a little unsure about Dave's beard, don't worry, his friend Keith is too.)

when appliances decide you're lame

Apparently even my clock radio thinks that we have a dysfunctional relationship. I overslept by an hour today. No, overslept is too nice a way to put it. I kept hitting the snooze button...so, I guess I oversnoozed. (I blame the monsoon and accompanying gray skies for failing to rouse me, but that's really neither here nor there.) The radio would go off periodically, so I basically just elected to stay in that constantly interrupted state of consciousness, because it's such a great way to start the day...who needs breakfast when you can have a panic attack every eight minutes? And then, after an hour of this, my clock radio gave up on me and shut off altogether: "I freakin' TRIED. What is WRONG WITH YOU? It's almost SEVEN THIRTY. Don't you have BILLS TO PAY? Aren't songs about Kelly Clarkson's tormented love life ENOUGH TO GET YOU OUT OF YOUR COCOON?"

Ironically, it was the silence that woke me up. Sounds like the start of a Hemingway novel.

So I started the day late, and then after one of my morning meetings I announced that I was feeling crabby. I just get more professional every day.

why I love Mark's job

Because every now and then he has to learn a totally ridiculous song because one of his music students wants to learn to play or sing it. This keeps me incredibly entertained. So you can imagine my DELIGHT when he told me that he just had to learn the music and words to "I Didn't Steal Your Boyfriend" by Ashlee Simpson for an 11-year-old. Mark likes emo and was not amused. But I was! I freakin' love it! This song really exists, and that's really the title! He sent it to me and I LOVE IT. The lyrics are exactly what you'd expect. There's a line where she goes, all pissy, "Well I'm SORRY that he CALLED me, and that I answered the TELEPHONE." I'm hoping it's a part of a pop culture war with Hillary Duff or Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton and it better be on the soundtrack for House of Wax: the Sequel. I wish these teen girls would just release albums screaming at each other: "Hey That's My Popsicle," "I Totally DID Return Your Shoes, Didn't You Check Your Closet?", "Whatever, It's Not Like You Called Me on MY Birthday."

Kevin McNotHisRealNamington at work heard me being excited about this and immediately told me it couldn't be the new song for our Battle of the Snuck-In Lyrics. Like I would've even asked.

Fine, I might've.

Speaking of, we're auditioning new songs. I loved the idea of Power of Love by Huey Lewis, but on closer inspection none of the lyrics are really usable...I mean, "don't need no credit card to ride this train"? Although definite bonus points to anyone who could've pulled off, "I really like this report you wrote, Bob. In fact, you might say it's stronger and harder than a bad girl's dream." Can't Get Enough of Your Love by Barry White was a fun option but it would involve a little more verbal molestation of my colleagues than is typically socially acceptable. Plus you'd give youself away when you had to punctuate the whole thing with a baritone "baby." I mean, it's tough to pick just one song that works for all of us, because the world doesn't move to the beat of just one drum, and what might be right for me may not be right for some.

That was the Different Strokes theme song. I told you I'm good at this game.

Ideas, anyone?

how interesting

Guy I Knew in College drifted back into my orbit this weekend and reinforced why he's Guy I Knew in College and not Guy I Still Know. First it was "how have you BEEN?" and then he proceeded to get drunk and decide to re-create our non-relationship. He and I were barely friends six years ago. Barely Friends Six Years Ago means that our catching up with each other should consist of what are you up to/where are you living/that's a nice plasma TV. It should not consist of the following. I wish I could remember what we were talking about, but it was literally something as innocuous as pen caps, and then:

Him: You know what I don't get?
Me: What? [Thinking he's about to make a brilliant pen cap observation.]
Him: I don't understand why you'd act interested when you're not interested.
Me: What?
Him: Why you'd act interested when you're not interested. [Did he really think my "what?" meant "please repeat yourself, I didn't hear you"?]
Me: Interested?
Him: Well, YEAH. [Said with total attitude, which is funny because whatever point he was trying to make was lost on me but he was apparently very convinced of its merit.]
Me: When? [Lest you think I conjured up this clever one-word response immediately, it was actually preceded by a few seconds of dumbfounded silence.]
Him: At College.
Me: WHAT?
Him: Yeah.

Oohhhh, and then it came right back to me: He's not just a Barely Friends Six Years Ago; I didn't like this guy at ALL.

Me: You're drunk.
Him: Maybe.
Me: Nice to talk to you again.

Let it never be said that I'm not polite.

bring on the Power Point...and pig blood

Work has been giving me way too much Tent fodder lately. So I get in today and there's a flyer in my mailbox about an upcoming workshop. It sounds interesting...and then I read on to find out that it's being presented by me. It was the first I'd heard about it. There was even an outline of the agenda!

The best part is that there's a workshop the week before to talk about effective communication amongst the staff. Oh, the sweet, sweet irony of it all.

Also? A guy I don't know asked me today how many times I've been told that I look like Sissy Spacek. Um, NONE? And thank you, total stranger, for likening me to the demonic girl who scared me almost to tears when she stood on that stage covered in blood, whipping her head around with her eyes all wide and crazy, locking doors and starting fires with her mind. That's GREAT.

best wishes for continued success, fuckers

One of the reasons I left the corporate world was... well, okay, to be able to wear yoga pants to work. But the other reason was to escape words like "open dialogue," "implemented," and "logistics," all of which were penned by ME in an e-mail to some of my colleagues tonight, without a hint of irony. Why can't I escape this business-ese? Let's pow-wow and discuss...do you have a 1:00?

learning to love yourself... it is the greatest love of all

So, okay, I'm a little twisted. There's a place in my heart for bad music. Terrible music, really. And it's that age-old question of: am I making fun of it or do I really and truly like it? Did it begin with the former and slowly become the latter? The world may never know.

Are you wondering how bad we're talking here? Think of a bad song. A really bad one. No, Peter Cetera isn't bad enough. That's amateurish and you can do better. Got one? Okay, I've got that one on the iPod and worse. Way worse. AND I know them all by heart. What's up, Air Supply?

Are you about ready to tear me to shreds, you hipster? Well, I defy you to sing along to something on the freakin' Garden State soundtrack when you're road-tripping to Maine in the rain to see Dane (Cook) with your friends. No, you need "More Than a Feeling" and maybe a little Jovi. You might need a little Scorpions as well, but you might not admit to that after the fact. That might be something that remains a vehicular secret. Hey, you can have your weekend your way, and I'll have mine my way.

Anyway. So, you know my work involves the vague performance of non-specific tasks in the field of the education of the young amongst us. It's always nice when you can mix two of your passions... your work and your love for crappy music. And what better way to do this than to bring "Greatest Love of All" by Whitney Houston into the mix. Because I'm sure you believe, like I do, that the children are the future. (And the fact that this is even something that you can choose to believe or not believe is sort of funny; they may be snorting Playdoh now, but like it or not, today's five-year-olds are, indeed, the future.)

You know this song because it was on that tape with all the other songs you made up dances to with your friends when you were nine, or you know it because your sister or neighbor and her friends made up dances to it. This song is great for several reasons. One is that it's just total drama rock, God love it. Another reason is that it's apparently the product of two half-songs that accidentally got recorded as one. Whitney starts out all like, "Kids are important! Give them pride!" and then without warning launches into, "Don't you take my dignity. I love myself. It's all right here in me." Um, I thought we were talking about kids, but okay. And then? THEN?

She sings the song again. The song consists of her singing the same song twice. The actual song is, what, 58 seconds long? And then she sings it AGAIN. Why is this acceptable? If I'm at work giving a presentation and I run out of shit to say, do I just start over, verbatim, shushing everyone who tries to say, "Red, you just told us all of this two minutes ago"? No, I don't. And I bet you don't either. And yet we let this crack-addicted pop star get all repetitive on us. Unfair.

So, basically, what I'm saying is that anyway you slice it, THIS IS A GREAT SONG. And I've had a running contest with three people that I work with and the rules are as follows: You have to work one of the lyrics from this song into an otherwise serious conversation. The person on the receiving end of the lyrics has to not pick up on this and respond to your lyrical plagiarism as though it's your actual thoughts. It's harder than you'd think, which explains why it's been going on for awhile and why I personally thought there could never be a real winner. Witness a couple of failed attempts over the past year:

Me: ...and I told Parent how funny Her Kid is...
Brian: Right... children's laughter can remind us how we used to be.
Me: Nice try.

Lauren: ...and it's just that everybody's searching for a hero, and people need someone to look up to.
Kevin: Have you never found anyone to fulfill your needs?
Lauren: Damn it.

And then this week, after a particularly brutal meeting, Kevin is seething over a lawyer's (unjustified and pointless) dismemberment of his credentials. He's complaining to me and the others. We listen, wide-eyed, supportive. Then I take a shot that I'm sure won't work: "Well, you know, no matter what they take from you, they can't take away your dignity."

He responds: "I know, it's like..."

Oh, shit. All of us around the table immediately launch into what can only be described as SHRIEKING. I won! I won the Whitney Houston battle of the wits! And WHO ELSE is more deserving, I ask you?

cutting to the chase

Pondering the Amazing Race lately has got me thinking about these kind of shows in general. The reality genre is pretty tired, obviously, but it still amazes me that ANYONE on ANY of these shows gives a freakin' crap about anyone else on the show. Isn't the point to win the money or the job or a pretty, pretty pony or something like that? And isn't it like, what, a month of this manufactured reality and then you're back to your actual life? Why does anyone obsess over a perfect stranger's idiosyncracies and try to deconstruct their issues and get to the bottom of why they wander the streets at night shouting obscenities at parking meters? Who freakin' CARES? Maybe I wouldn't make such a great contestant on one of those shows because I just couldn't engage in that shit. I have enough crazy in my life from the people I love, let alone people I don't even know. People on these shows are pretty quick to get into screaming matches with other people, without stopping to think that it DOESN'T EVEN FREAKIN' MATTER. If Nancy and Bugaboo on the other team think that I'm [insert adjective here], I believe the correct reaction is a look of incredulity that they've even presumed to make eye contact, accompanied by of the following responses:

Why are you here?
Why are you talking?
Why do you exist?
Zip it, Brer Rabbit.

New Englanders having a conversation about lobster... what's next, the Kennedys?

Dear Red,

Do you just go around begging people to take the lobster out of the shell for you?

Hoodlum Waiter

***

Dear HW,

Yes.

Red

***

Red,

LAZY.

HW

***

HW,

I just consulted the Dirty Dancing website, and it says you're to be well-trained and smartly uniformed. It said nothing about belligerent.

Red

***

Red,

I think it also says that the guests are required to dress appropriately. You might want to think about that next year, before you pack.

HW

***

OH, IT'S ON, BITCH!

***

Bring it, Princess!

"ooh, careful, Red's getting emotional"

I cried at work today. Yeah, I did.

I don't cry that often, but I do cry easily. I cry if someone around me is crying. Happy tears, sad tears, it doesn't matter, I'm right there with you. If you're my friend and you start crying, my reaction crying time is like 1.6 seconds; for strangers, it's more like 2.8. I also cry when someone is mean to me. There, I said it. I don't have much in the way of a tough outer shell. Sometimes that's good, and sometimes it's to my detriment. You push me out of the sandbox, and I'm not in your face wagging my finger like a reality show diva...you're just gonna see some tears, plain and simple.

I happened to be in meetings all day that were pretty tense...lots of emotions and issues and messiness. (Not to mention the fact that I'm not supposed to even be in meetings on Thursdays, but the woman who does my schedule completely disregarded this and booked me all day and then I had to cancel all the kids I should have seen today. Boo.)

Everything went mostly fine except for one bullet at the end of the last meeting. I was on my way out and could FEEL the tears coming. So I turned and went up the stairs to go back to my office, hoping that Supergirl wouldn't be there. She wasn't, but the psychologist was, leaving me a note. How perfect was that? She deals with crazy people all day long. It went a little something like this:

Her: Red, I...are you okay?
Me: Hi! Yes.
Her: What's wrong?
Me: Well...[cries]

So that went on for about fifteen seconds but she didn't bat an eye and immediately made me feel better. I guess I'm going to have to work on upgrading my candy coating to a suit of armor. So start insulting me and throwing stuff. Really, it'll be character building.

ten years post Rydell High

Considering my recent forays into the past (because college was clearly the dark ages), you wouldn't think my upcoming ten year high school reunion would freak me out at all. And it doesn't, for the most part...it's just strange. If you had asked me at 17 who I thought I'd be at 28, I would've thought I'd be a completely different person. Not that I really wanted to be, it's just that at that age, ten years is such an unfathomable amount of time that I couldn't imagine who I might end up being on the other side of it. And I suppose I'm pretty much who I thought I'd be: I went to school, found my way to meaningful work, try to pay the bills on time, held onto some good friends and found some new ones, thought about getting married but didn't, basically got a life (instead of a so-called life...and let the mid-90s references begin!).

My five year reunion was pretty anti-climatic. All the guys were investment bankers and all the girls were in marketing. Actually, it's funny how some stuff comes rushing back to you when you see someone that you literally haven't thought of since the last time you laid eyes on them, probably at some bonfire during senior week. There's this kid Paul that lived next door to my friend Katie, and we spent all of elementary school and junior high terrorizing each other. I slept over Katie's house all the time, and he and his friend Brian would sneak over and throw stuff at the windows or make weird noises outside and then, for whatever reason, it was ON. They'd chase us around the yard and I don't even know what the goal was, because one time one of them tackled me but then neither of us were sure what to do next, so we just got up and kept running. I remember Paul's most ingenious hiding place was taking a huge branch from the woods behind the house and impersonating a tree. Anyway, we saw each other at our five year reunion and went, "Oh, my God! Barnyard Commandos!" Because that was, um, what we called ourselves. There was this kid Scott who told me that whenever our teachers read examples of good writing aloud, it was always something that he or I had written, and apparently he felt like he was always vying with me to be the best writer. (Maybe he could start The Sticky Bun Tent and we could have a blog-off.) And then there was Billy MySameLastName; we discussed the pain of separation after being next to each other for every alphabetically-ordered event throughout twelve years of school. There are so many random people that you feel like don't even exist outside of the one tiny memory you have of them...how can Barnyard Commando be a corporate lawyer?

And I'm happy to have an excuse to see my high school friends, because no matter how long I go without seeing them, hanging out with them again is always like no time has passed. I guess it's just like that with people that you've known for so long and spent so much time with. They're not a part of my everyday life anymore, but I'm excited to have a built-in reason for us all to go out together again.

I guess it's on my brain today because I just got this email from Peter:

...Anyway, so apparently if we want to go, we have to send So-and-So our $35 by October 15th. Which isn't that far away. I want to go, but it won't be any fun if you guys aren't there too, so i just want to see if you have your outfit picked out yet and have marked off your calendar. I mean, i'm sure there's no way you would miss it, but if you're even considering that, please let me know ASAP. We can have a pre-party/drinkup somewhere to help numb ourselves in preparation...

And, of course, the big question: Will I finally find out if the ex-boyfriend ever got the sex change? Haven't I waited long enough?

pettiness brings me great joy

So there's this annoying girl with an annoying blog. Apparently she's sort of famous. If the world of blogs were high school, she'd be the class president and I'd be outside on the jungle gym smoking Marlboro Lights and possibly wearing smudged eyeliner. In other words, it's my duty to mock her and point out that she writes the most contrived, patronizing shit I've ever read. I don't fault her for being serious sometimes, but she writes about her life with a somberness of Tori Amos proportions. She always has 47 comments tearfully praising her supposed eloquence. So here's my tribute to her. It'd be funnier if you knew who I was writing about, but you'll just have to take my word on it. Besides, her drama club friends would totally kick my ass.

The laminator jammed today. I had put together a nice little autumn activity for my students: pumpkins, apples, red and yellow leaves, assembled with love and rubber cement, edges trimmed just so. The laminator didn't do the right thing. Instead of coating my work with a transparent seal, it choked and swallowed and spit it out. I unplugged it and that was that.

It made me think of you. You, who always wanted everything just so. I wanted to be perfect for you. I tried to keep everything smooth, creaseless. Edges trimmed just so. But it was just a glossy version of myself, a Kodak. Maybe I wasn't doing the right thing by deceiving you, by not being transparent. I think of you when nothing around me is perfect and I just want to pull the plug. You and the surfaces we were never able to smooth over.

"And I Was Like, Huh?" and other insights from the dorm

Where were YOU eight years ago today?

10/3/97
So I'm officially twenty. I'm so old. The Bride, Googleable Name, Josh and Girl with Bunny took me out to dinner and it was so fun and they gave me presents and we took pictures and then we came back here. And then we went out on the balcony and these three guys came out and one of them was a sophomore and two of them were friends of his who didn't go here so they hung out with us for a bit and one of them started telling me that Jim Morrison walked on a balcony once and he wasn't scared at all but he scared everyone around him real bad because I guess they thought he was going to fall. And I listened but I was sort of like, huh? And then I gave Josh some of the candy my parents sent me and he accidentally threw his keys off the balcony so we went down and looked for them and that was pretty much a buzzkill.

baseball or physics?

Anyone who knows me knows that I inherited my love of baseball from my dad. But much to his dismay, I did not inherit his love for the Yankees, and instead chose to go toward the light. So...this is a big weekend. And this is his explanation of it all, which made my brain hurt:

If the Yankees and Red Sox end up tied, the Yankees win the division, because they will have won the season series 10-9.

The only way there is a Yankee-Red Sox playoff game Monday is if the Yankees, Red Sox, and the Indians are all tied. That can only happen if the Red Sox and Yankees split the final two games, and the Indians win their last two games.

so....

If the Red Sox win Saturday AND Sunday, they win.
If the Yankees win Saturday OR Sunday, they win.

The only exception is if the Red Sox and Yankees each win 1, and Cleveland wins 2, leading to a Red Sox-Yankee playoff Monday.

his boy Elroy

Condo meeting the other night. There should've been a two drink minimum. I hadn't met the guy who was hosting before, but I'm always curious to see the other apartments in the complex because we all have the exact same layout. Keep this in mind when I tell you that Mr. Silk Shirt and Jeans took me on a tour of his place and proceeded to trash everything that was there originally: He got rid of the "God awful" bleached hardwood floor, which is still all over my downstairs. He gutted the "terrible" kitchen; I've done no such gutting. He got rid of "that horrible thing" in the doorway between the kitchen and living room; I affectionately refer to my odd countertop extension as the peninsula. But he was kind of one of those people who thinks they've made the place hip and modern, but it's really just a robot maid away from being the Jetson house. Clusters of tiny silver lights suspended from the ceiling by thread-like wires that look like they belong on the inside of a control panel sure say home to me, after all. Then he moved onto the artwork.

"These are all original Bowies," he said, with that mixture of casualness and pride that only a guy in a silk shirt and jeans can muster.

Bowies? I'm probably going to regret this coming out of my mouth, but, "David?"

Turns out, I'm right. Then he points to a ginormous one over the fireplace, all bright red except for a big blue-green circle in the middle. "That one, too. That's his eyeball."

I tried to smile. Of course it's not a Monet or a picture of little girls running through a field of wheat. No, it's David Bowie's eyeball enlarged 10,000 times, because I live in a freakin' funhouse.

it's okay to hate a toddler, right?

My new neighbors apparently have 37 kids. The mom warned me when they were moving in: "We REALLY have kids." I wasn't sure how to interpret this. Was she thinking I wouldn't believe her? Have there been incidents of her fabricating offspring in the past? Apparently she was just trying to tell me that they're kind of loud. They do run around like lunatics, but I'm used to being around kids so it doesn't faze me. No, it's other things that faze me and make me quiver with hate. So I'm about to drive off and their youngest, she's probably barely three, was rolling around on the trunk of their car like she's Daisy Duke. In an effort to be able to see where she is and thus not run her over, I said to her, "Sweetie, I'm going to pull out, so can you go stand on the grass for a minute?" She looks at me and replies, "No, because this is my car." My thoughts went like this: 1) That was a good sentence for a three-year-old. 2) What an uppity bitch. 3) You can't think a three-year-old is an uppity bitch. 4) Seriously though, what an obnoxious little tatertot.

So, we'll see how the newbies work out. As long as they don't walk up to my open window and start randomly talking to me, like some other neighborhood gems, then we're good.

lost and found

You're all going to be really proud. Actually, you probably won't care. Ha, either way, you're reading this so you're mine and it doesn't matter if you care or not. What was Steve's line in his first and only blog entry? "Right now I own you because I'm doing the thinking for you"? Yeah, something like that. His delivery was better, I'm sure. Dating him was the only time I've ever had to play the straight man.

Anyway, I finally have a TV show that I'm going to watch every week! I made the strategic decision to become a fan of Lost. Conveniently, before the second season premiere tonight they had an hour long recap of the first season. It was actually the perfect way to watch a suspenseful show, because it was all the good stuff cut together, and when something happened they'd explain it all immediately, but if I'd watched the whole season it would've taken weeks to get all the answers.

Actually, maybe I'll just wait and watch the second season recap in a year before the third season premiere. Hmmm.

I also watched The Office and liked that, too! It's an exciting new TV world for me! It's motivating me to get DVR already. (Or is it a DVR? Subscribe to DVR? I don't even know. I feel like my mom when she calls her portable music device her "pod.")

Except once again customer service monkeys stand between me and technology. I had to get a new modem over the weekend because my old one died and when I called Comcast to hook me back up and I asked the guy about DVR, he very snootily replied that he works for the COMPUTER division of Comcast and that every customer service person couldn't possibly know EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING. Jeez, apparently.

And then I said, "Well, I didn't mean to IMPLY that you should..." at which point my dad, who was under my computer desk installing the modem, looked up at me in disbelief as if to say, "Are you seriously fighting with the Comcast guy that you JUST got on the phone with?"

Anyway, Lost is scary. I don't usually like things that are scary, creepy, whatever. I don't like those ads for that new show about aliens: "Mommy, you smell different." UGH! That's because she's a fucking ALIEN DEMON BEAST WOMAN who is going to suck your brain out through a straw and then the forensics team will come in and take pictures and shake their heads and go back to headquarters and look at the cells under microscopes which they somehow can see perfectly even though all their offices are practically pitch black in order to create a more intense lighting environment for dramatic reaction shots!

OK, so clearly Jen has made me watch CSI a few times lately, and I HATE THAT SHOW. This is how she ropes me in: "...and we can cook dinner and make that CD and watch CSI and have ice cream and you're pretty." OK, not a direct quote, but you get the jist. Mind tricks, people. And then just plain bullying: She puts it on and goes, "Oh, we don't have to watch it if you don't have to," so I reach over and change the channel. Then she changes it back. Then I change it. Then I cry a little because I know she could beat me up. She's been working out a lot lately.

Anyway, after one episode of CSI I had a dream that I killed a bunch of people and someone else was blamed for it and I went to look at real estate, and while I was walking through this empty house with Jennifer Love Hewitt, I realized that I was going to have to turn myself in and how much that was going to suck. Does this suggest something disturbing about me? I mean, beyond the dream acquaintance with the Party of Five she-devil.

on People Who Respond to the Question "How Are You?" Literally

I'm a pretty freakin' nice person. I'm not one of those big-eyed, big-toothed, salesperson types who offers a chirpy "How ARE you?" that sounds like it should be served on top of waffles when they really mean, "I happen to be walking by you and can't very well just IGNORE you, can I?"

No, I'm pretty freakin' sincere. Right? I care. If you're my friend, and you call me and I say, "how are you?", I want to know. If you're a friend of a friend that I met once at some random place and I thought your name started with a P instead of a B, and you call me and I say, "how are you?", I want to know. If you're reading my blog, and you somehow get my number and you call me and I say, "how are you?", I'm simultaneously calling the police on my cell, but that's beside the point.

But there are times when "how are you?" does not warrant much of a response. When you're at work and you're walking by a colleague and you say, "Hi John, how are you?" The correct response is any of the following:

"Good, Red, how are you?"
"Good thanks, and you?"
"Fine, you?"
"Doing OK, thanks."

The correct response does NOT begin with "well..." It especially does NOT begin with a big sigh and then a "well..." It also does not begin with "actually...," "let's put it this way...," or "to be honest..."

You get my point. But there's a guy at the Place I Work who does not understand the rules. The first time I experienced his rambling and apparent lack of social cues, it was only the second time I ever met him. We were passing briefly in the hall and I quickly said, "Hi, What's-His-Name, how are you?" The encounter lasted just long enough for a "good," "fine," or an "OK." Maybe even an opportunity for him to inquire the same of me and for me to reply quickly. But no. I got the "well..." And not just the "well," but the "well, Red..." He welled me AND named me, and I immediately knew I was in it for the long haul.

You can imagine my horror when he walked into my office the other day and started talking. What the hell could I do? I could've been stuck there all day. I wished for Supergirl to breeze in, thinking the two of them might be a match made in heaven: He loves to talk, and she LOVES EVERYTHING! What could be better?

But no, I was alone. For the most part, if you wander into my office and I'm not busy and your overall presence doesn't make me want to die, I'm all for seeing you. But it's just not that simple with this guy. So eventually I did that mostly-stare-at-my-laptop-screen-and-say-"uh-huh"-a-lot until he went away. Yes, it's shitty. But what can you do? I hate ramblers, especially when they make you feel like you don't even need to be there. They just want to talk, and talking to oneself is still considered socially unacceptable in most circles. I'm casting my vote for making it A-OK, if only to help unload people like this from my life.

life lessons from driver's ed

It was a combination of Clerks ("I'm not even supposed to be here today!") and The Breakfast Club ("You just bought yourself another Saturday! Instead of coming to prison, you'll come here!"). It was a preview of my life if I don't change my hoodlum, law-breaking, illegal U-turning ways. It was eight and a half hours of sitting at a table in a small room on a beautiful day, filling out endless reproachful questionnaires intended to determine why I'm such a leech on civilized society. I will now be driving like a little old lady for the rest of my life.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

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.

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.